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NSA attempting to squash entrepreneur for selling parody t-shirt - robwilliams88
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/30/minnesota-man-sues-nsa-dhs-after-they-try-to-quash-his-parody-merchandise/
======
aaronem
From the National Security Agency Act of 1959 [1]:
Sec. 15. (a) No person may, except with the written permission
of the Director of the National Security Agency, knowingly use the
words 'National Security Agency', the initials 'NSA', the seal of
the National Security Agency, or any colorable imitation of such
words, initials, or seal in connection with any merchandise,
impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner
reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is
approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency.
Up to the Supreme Court whether or not it's in accord with the First
Amendment. Either way, using the word 'squash' to describe a cease-and-desist
letter strikes me as a bit inflammatory.
[1]:
[http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/nsaact1959.htm](http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/nsaact1959.htm)
~~~
robwilliams88
The NSA is still the one pursuing this ridiculous claim.
~~~
aaronem
Well, they would be if anyone were.
Now that I read the quotation more closely, though, I find cause in it to
reconsider my original opinion:
> [...] in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such
> use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency.
Frivolous as I find it, I rather strongly doubt that anyone is going to
mistake McCall's parody for something 'approved, endorsed, or authorized' by
NSA. As such, I doubt the case will get anywhere near the Supreme Court,
unless whoever in NSA's legal office is behind the C&D really feels the need
to pursue a hopeless cause that far; it seems almost certain that the first
court to rule on the matter will do so in McCall's favor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does FireJail reduce the need for Docker? - notsony
https://l3net.wordpress.com/projects/firejail/<p>Firejail is a SUID sandbox program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces, seccomp-bpf and Linux capabilities. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table. Firejail can work in a SELinux or AppArmor environment, and it is integrated with Linux Control Groups.<p>$ firejail firefox # starting Mozilla Firefox<p>$ firejail transmission-gtk # starting Transmission BitTorrent<p>$ firejail vlc # starting VideoLAN Client<p>$ sudo firejail "/etc/init.d/nginx start && sleep inf"
======
gmuslera
Look a lot like containers. But docker is a bit more than that, the first that
jumped to my attention is what is related to filesystem (layered images,
repositories, CoW image+running container fs, volumes) seem to be missing. It
runs everything in the normal filesystem by default?
The ecosystem build around it (compose, kubernetes, weave, machine, swarm,
etc) will be missing too.
Its desktop app focus made me remember of
[http://subuser.org/](http://subuser.org/) that is docker based, but maybe it
have less requirements.
But is another voice in the container space, and could be more fitting than
other alternatives for some use cases.
------
twunde
It looks like more of a complement to docker than an alternative. Docker does
a good job of making apps/services deployable without really having to care
about the infrastructure underneath. One of Docker's current issues is a lack
of security (a security breach in one container can be exploited to access
other containers on the same machine since containers share resources with
each other)
If I'm reading the documentation correctly, this doesn't do virtualization ala
freebsd jails or true containers but is more like a chroot jail, which grants
a locked-down view of a filesystem
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Media Is Always Wrong About the Value of a College Degree - colinprince
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/economy/89675/bad-job-market-media-wrong-college-degree
======
tokenadult
How do the historical snapshots related in the interesting submitted article
compare to the analysis of Charles Murray
[http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles-
murray-%E2%8...](http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/20/charles-
murray-%E2%80%93-for-most-people-college-is-a-waste-of-time/)
that what employers need is a signal of competence, but a four-year college
degree is a very costly signal for a job-seeker to obtain, and only an
imperfect signal of competence to an employer?
Isn't it possible that college degree holders are at an advantage in seeking
employment by comparison to persons without college degrees even if students
are learning very little during their four years of college?
[http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-
coll...](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college-
students-not.html)
------
tzs
Please do not link to the print version of pages. Most of us are not reading
on printers. If we do want to print the article, we are capable of doing so
without your help.
The print version formatting generally makes the article much harder to read
on screens. For example, the column width is such that the text is very small
on mobile devices and the lines are long enough that zooming makes ot so
massive horizontal scrolling is required.
~~~
wccrawford
And I say the opposite. If we want the article split across multiple pages and
riddled with ads, we're smart enough to find it on the site. (Or hand-edit the
URL.)
~~~
tzs
If you are so smart, why can't you just hit the "print" link on the regular
page?
How is it better to make those of us who want to actually READ the article go
through multiple steps (dealing with the print dialog, then either finding a
link to the regular page or hand editing the URL), as opposed to making you go
though a single simple step of one extra click?
~~~
michaelcampbell
The same could be said for the other camp. Give it a rest; he chose one
version to post that you didn't happen to like, many do.
------
tgrisfal
Spoilers: the media is usually wrong about anything involving statistical
data.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A guide to OCR with Tesseract, OpenCV and Python - ole_gooner
https://nanonets.com/blog/ocr-with-tesseract/
======
sandreas
The preprocessing step uses otsu, which is pretty inaccurate, because it uses
only one single threshold value for the whole image. An adaptive thresholding
algorithm (like Sauvola or Wolf binarization) could improve the whole
preprocessing A LOT on many images, that are not only black and white. See
[https://github.com/chriswolfvision/local_adaptive_binarizati...](https://github.com/chriswolfvision/local_adaptive_binarization)
for details.
Other nice resources: \-
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306352164_Watershed...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306352164_Watershed_algorithm_based_segmentation_for_handwritten_text_identification)
\-
[https://isi.edu/integration/papers/chiang11-icdar.pdf](https://isi.edu/integration/papers/chiang11-icdar.pdf)
------
onemorelizard
The article is pretty great. Most tutorials I've found online working with OCR
basically run you through the installation process and a basic few CLI
commands or an introduction to their C++ API. This one takes you through some
interesting details like the bounding box info, template matching bits and
playing around with the config. The training process for tesseract, though not
included in this seems like a task.
------
m3nu
Automatically finding specific boxes/fields is quite interesting. I maintain a
Python package[1] that processes invoices using a template/regex-based
approach. It works alright, but eventually runs into some limitations. The
box-model from the article could push it further.
1:
[https://github.com/invoice-x/invoice2data](https://github.com/invoice-x/invoice2data)
~~~
mpeg
Hey this is great, I made something ad-hoc to do this for a client and might
borrow some ideas to improve it.
I heavily leaned on AWS Textract for the bounding boxes though, as the kind of
data I had to extract didn't have very well defined fields. I used some of the
techniques described in this link [0] particularly around table extraction.
I really like how you define the fields in YAML though, I defined mine in code
and it ended up being a bit messy.
[0]: [https://datascience.blog.wzb.eu/2017/02/16/data-mining-
ocr-p...](https://datascience.blog.wzb.eu/2017/02/16/data-mining-ocr-pdfs-
using-pdftabextract-to-liberate-tabular-data-from-scanned-documents/)
------
MayeulC
I've skimmed over the article, which seemed to give a rather sincere overview
of the OCR market, then tesseract, the way it works, and how to interface it
with python.
However, the article is also an advertisement for nanonets, so they also chose
to highlight the complexity side a bit before putting themselves forward.
As someone who hadn't heard of them before, this could be written in the
title. They seem to lease (I prefer that term) an API to do OCR with a couple
rules and templates depending on your use case.
I am not entirely sure what they expect with this? Maybe SEO or to hijack
search results?
------
jftuga
OCRmyPDF (based on Tesseract) works very well:
[https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF](https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF)
OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be
searched.
------
wswope
Potentially helpful notes:
The character whitelist/blacklist functionality doesn't work for the default
LSTM-based engine.
Regarding preprocessing, upscaling the image size can have a dramatic impact
on performance.
IIRC tessdata_fast (which the article mentions) is the default that ships with
most prebuilt versions of Tesseract, so you probably don't need to mess with
that. In my use case, I found that tessdata_best actually performed slightly
worse in terms of accuracy.
------
udayrddy
"Let's assume you've created an OCR model to detect Name, Address, DOB from
Drivers Licenses. Since there are 3 categories in this model, each API call
will be priced at $0.01 * 3 = $0.03/image. So if you're on the Medium plan,
you'll get 99/0.03 = 3300 API calls."
Woah !! That is insanely high priced.
------
ngcc_hk
Compatibke with TensorFlow js?
------
Aaargh20318
The title is a bit misleading (and doesn't match the linked article). This
isn't about building an OCR engine, it's about _using_ an existing one.
~~~
dang
Yes. We've changed the title to that of the article. From the site guidelines:
" _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don 't
editorialize._"
Submitted title was "Building an OCR Engine with Python and Tesseract", which
broke that guideline, assuming the page title didn't change.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mark Cuban on ReplyAll - arigold123
http://abovethelaw.com/2015/05/a-conversation-with-mark-cuban/
======
Someone1234
This reads like an advertisement for "Dust." Hard to see it as anything else,
just a celebrity endorsement for the product.
------
baaron
I'd be curious to hear from a lawyer if a system like this would cause a
Rosario violation (in New York, for instance).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Edited version of the Linode log file for April 15th - ZeroCoin
http://turtle.dereferenced.org/~nenolod/linode/linode-abridged.txt
======
ZeroCoin
If you're wondering, I stumbled upon that text file while reading the official
company response to the recent hack here:
<http://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/>
I was interested in setting up a Linode account but I think it's best to wait
for some more information at this point. Thoughts?
~~~
magic_haze
> 06:00 < AlexC_> ryann: So, are you saying CC details have also been
> compromised?
> 06:00 < ryann> Yep
> 06:00 < AlexC_> ryann: And you plan on releasing these?
> 06:00 < ryann> They did try to encrypt them, but using public key encryption
> doesn't work if you have the public and private key in the same directory
Jesus Christ. I agree, there is something very wrong with how Linode is
treating this situation. Cperciva's comment a couple of days back about the
doubletalk in the official statement seems especially precinct, and the new
claim about both the private and public keys for the credit card info being
stored in the same place... appallingly incompetent if true.
~~~
scraplab
The CEO has already stated that the private key had passphrase encryption,
which is strong, and only stored in their heads. You have to take their word
on that, but I don't see any proof of CCs being decrypted.
~~~
leeoniya
i cannot imagine that a remembered passphrase would take too long to brute-
force on a few multi-GPU setups. unless they did something meaningful like
making it a long sentence rather than some short-but-complex-for-humans 15
char string. <http://xkcd.com/936/>
~~~
eridius
Specifically what they said is it isn't stored digitally. So maybe they have
it written down on a piece of paper.
------
threeseed
Wow. I didn't realise just how incompetent Linode actually is. Not only
terrible security at a coding level but completely non existent audits.
I wonder what they were after if not money. What are people hosting ?
~~~
err_badprocrast
Notably seclists/nmap is (was?) hosted on Linode and was tampered with in this
attack.
Apparently, the hackers looked up a Quora list of notable sites hosted on
Linode and went after those [2], suggesting that the attackers wanted to burn
a 0day for some notoriety or to damage Linode/Coldfusion reputation.
1\. Technical info: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/coldfusion-hack-
used...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/coldfusion-hack-used-to-
steal-hosting-providers-customer-data/)
2\. <http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2013/q2/40>
------
TikiTDO
05:21 -!- mode/#linode [+b _!_ [email protected].*] by akerl
05:24 -!- ryan| [[email protected]] has joined #linode
05:24 < ryan|> quite rude of you
05:25 -!- ryan| was kicked from #linode by akerl [ryan|]
05:27 -!- root__ [[email protected]] has joined #linode
05:27 -!- root__ is now known as ryan||
05:27 < ryan||> Quite rude out of you
05:27 < ryan||> To ban me like that
Really puts into perspective the difference in the levels of skill involved.
When dealing with someone of this level, they really should have just notified
everyone immediately. There's no telling what info these people have now.
~~~
InclinedPlane
Uh, why? Because they have access to different IPs? That's trivial.
~~~
TikiTDO
The speed at which he switches hosts implies he's got quite a sophisticated
tool chain set up for this. The level of skill really becomes parent if you
read the rest of the log though.
~~~
InclinedPlane
There are several minutes of delay in there. I could just about set up a brand
new VPS, ssh to it, install irssi and connect within that amount of time. Let
alone logging into a system I already had set up.
It does not impress me in the slightest bit.
~~~
D9u
I agree... Then the skid chose the nick "root_" in an attempt at appearing to
have "rooted" some box... It's no difficult task to ssh into another server
and reconnect, and if "ryan" is who I think it is, he's a bot herder who
enjoys DDoS attacks on those who upset his false sense of superiority. He's
well versed in server management, but exploiting other's servers is what he's
working towards, and he failed to crack a server belonging to some friends of
mine, so his only recourse was a DDoS.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What do you use for Fuzzing (generation and mutation) Peach Fuzzer - ianceicys
http://www.peachfuzzer.com/
======
ianceicys
I'm looking into solution for fuzz testing and I'm wondering if folks are
using peachfuzzer or just using PREFAST, and FXCop. What are the pros and cons
of peachfuzzer?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 Internet Giants, 10 Years ago - queso
http://owocki.com/2011/01/01/10-internet-giants-10-years-ago/
======
solipsist
It really does seem that there was less of a focus on design back in the day.
Sure, times change, fads come and go, and styles change. However, you can't
tell me that Youtube's page was anything pretty even with 2005 standards [1]
or that Wikipedia invested a lot in their design [2]
What's not surprising is that this seems to be changing. Businesses are
investing thousands on the design of their websites and it hard to believe
that any more money spent in the area could really make them noticeably
better. Twitter, an example of a website that is leading the next generation
of the Internet, seems to have been quite stylish when it came out itself.
They probably didn't spend that much money on design, but it's evident that
they spent time on it. Other startups are doing the same - coming out with
killer designs the moment they are released. That definitely wasn't the
philosophy 10 or 15 years ago (just look at Google [3]), when design took time
to evolve and never started out that good.
However, all of this brings up the issue of functionality in comparison
design. I'm sure there were websites at the time that had spent money and time
on a good design, but those aren't the ones that succeeded. The ones that
ended up becoming the internet giants of 2011 were the ones with hideous
interfaces and childish logos, but evidently with great functionality. Does
that mean that all the time we are spending on design is useless, or that
design itself is useful and has become a bigger factor in what makes a website
successful today?
Personally, I think that the time we spend on design is worthwhile, as our
usage of the web has increased dramatically over time and therefore a slick
and intuitive interface is a key component for a website to have. Users spend
so much time on certain webpages, that unless another one can prove to have a
more productive and pleasing interface, there is no reason to switch. So what
do you all think?
[1] Youtube (2005):
[http://web.archive.org/web/20050428014715/http://www.youtube...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050428014715/http://www.youtube.com/)
[2] Wikipedia (2002):
[http://web.archive.org/web/20020930123525/http://www.wikiped...](http://web.archive.org/web/20020930123525/http://www.wikipedia.org/)
[3] Google (1998):
[http://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/http://www.google....](http://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/http://www.google.com/)
~~~
johndar
_However, all of this brings up the issue of functionality in comparison
design. I'm sure there were websites at the time that had spent money and time
on a good design, but those aren't the ones that succeeded. The ones that
ended up becoming the internet giants of 2011 were the ones with hideous
interfaces and childish logos, but evidently with great functionality. Does
that mean that all the time we are spending on design is useless, or that
design itself is useful and has become a bigger factor in what makes a website
successful today?_
I fully agree with you there. If your product has potential, design is _not_ a
key factor. Design becomes a key factor when your product characteristics are
similar, if not equal, with competitors. That's the main reason we are seeing
a surge of design in web/UI lately: higher competition and lack of innovation.
This also reaffirms my theory that _getting there first_ , when it comes to
features, has much higher impact than long design phases (that can eventually
be postponed).
------
Ysx
Twitter started in 2006, not 2003: <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter>
~~~
cantbecool
The image for the old twitter page says 2007 at the bottom of the page.
~~~
ksowocki
Thanks for the comments. I've corrected the post.
------
patricklynch
My big takeaway:
Crazy to think designers needed four small images to get a box with rounded
corners.
------
ameyamk
I still can't tell if eBay has actually gotten any better over the past 10
years. :P
------
ameyamk
Amazon was missing from the original list so here you go: 2000:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20000229073549/www.amazon.com/exe...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000229073549/www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html)
2009:[http://web.archive.org/web/20091027180426/http://www.amazon....](http://web.archive.org/web/20091027180426/http://www.amazon.com/)
~~~
ksowocki
Thanks. I'll give it an add.
------
Ryan_IRL
Was youtube also a matchmaking service? I'm a little confused by that "I'm a
Male seeking ..." form below the login box.
~~~
istvanp
It mas most likely an ad (image) made to look like it was part of the page.
Those are still around and still fool neophytes.
~~~
Ryan_IRL
Wait... did you just call me a non-native plant species?
~~~
istvanp
My comment was not directed at you. I was simply stating a general fact. In
this context it also took me a second to realize it was an ad.
------
joeyh
Wow, I'd forgotten how cheerful Ebay used to look.
Almost makes one want to use it..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is window management on OS X broken? - phoobot
How is it possible to manage windows with multiple screens and multiple spaces using just the keyboard?<p>(Tiling might solve this, but my main issue is productivity)<p>This involves a set of simple features:<p><pre><code> * Maximize windows
(Move to another screen and it is still maximized
even though the screen is bigger, crazy right?)
* Cycle windows (on just the current screen and space)
* Focus another screen
* Move windows to another screen or space
* Optional: Move the mouse to the focused window
</code></pre>
I tried tools like Spectactle, Amethyst or Mjolnir, but it took only a few minutes to realize that something is broken or missing.<p>Is this somehow possible? How do you solve this?
======
brudgers
I use Linux and Xmonad. I'm sold on tiling window managers for productivity.
Xmonad will run on OSX with some limitations...it depends on Xwindows.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Our vision of Wunderlist - CReber
http://christianreber.com/blog/our-vision-of-wunderlist
======
julianpye
So basically Wunderlist Pro is a reboot of Wunderkit, only this time not based
on Titanium like WK was and which turned out a nightmare to build a
productivity app on, but based on the architecture of your reworked Wunderlist
app?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Bit of Context on Trump, NATO, and Germany - jseliger
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/01/bit-context-trump-nato.html
======
jibalt
The commenters rip into the author for putting his tribalism aside long enough
to be sensible on one subject. That site is quite the cesspool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Front-end Job Interview Questions - clarke78
http://darcyclarke.me/development/front-end-job-interview-questions/
A list of questions for Front-end Developers in Job Interviews
======
pan69
If you jumped on a project and they used tabs and you used spaces, what would you do?
issue :retab! command
Nice. So if you invite me into your home you wouldn't mind if I start to
rearrange the furniture?
If you get onto some else's project or you start working on an existing code
base, the polite thing to do is to familiarize yourself with the formatting
conventions of that project rather than reformatting everything the way you
like it.
To me, programmers who can adapt to an existing code base without getting anal
retentive about tabs and spaces and what not, is to me a sign of a mature
programmer.
------
Gigablah
Can you describe the difference between progressive enhancement and graceful degredation?
Bonus points for the answer “no one can”
Not quite -- the former is the technique and the latter is the objective.
Semantics :)
~~~
clarke78
Having a sense of humour means bonus points
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CSS - Level 4 Selectors - smaili
http://css4.rocks/
======
Manishearth
A lot of the comments on the post about :has complain that browsers haven't
implemented it yet.
The reason it hasn't been implemented is (probably) that it's a big perf
footgun (not because of laziness). It essentially doubles the amount of work
you need to do in applying the cascade. I suspect some browsers implement it
internally anyway, but leave it off for web content.
I don't remember the exact circumstances, but a month ago we were discussing
some optimizations in Servo (which has parallel styling, making `:has` even
worse), and often my thoughts would be "thank god :has doesn't exist", because
it would often destroy the premise of the optimization.
I'm sure that optimizations can be done so that pages without :has are
unaffected and pages with :has aren't affected as much, but how much is
enough?
So I'm skeptical if it will ever make it. I'm not involved in the discussions
here so I don't know what the current status is.
I mean, I've often felt the need for :has. I wish we could have it. I'm not
sure if it's a good idea taking perf into consideration.
~~~
Senji
I've used :has in uBlock filter declarations and it's perfect.(uBlock
implements its own :has for its filters)
It should be relatively trivial to isolate the elements targeted by :has and
incur the performance penalty only for them instead of the whole dom.
~~~
Manishearth
> relatively trivial
No, that's the point, it isn't, because of various optimizations it turns off.
I need to think about exactly what they were, but it's not as simple as
isolating the has selectors.
------
mmastrac
EDIT: I'm wrong, see [2]
One of the big changes here is that the :has selector is available in regular
stylesheets. This is going to open up a wonderful array of interesting
possibilities (virtual selectors like "parent of" or "previous sibling", for
example).
When I last reviewed the spec [1], it was limited to use in JS
querySelector*() calls only.
[1] [https://grack.com/blog/2015/01/11/css-
selectors-4/](https://grack.com/blog/2015/01/11/css-selectors-4/)
[2]
[https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#profiles](https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#profiles)
~~~
combatentropy
It's a little disappointing if the :has selector never makes it into
stylesheets, just JavaScript's querySelector. Then again I'm thankful for what
we already have. For example, even the old :hover selector seems to me like it
would have been slow, but it's not. Others like :checked, :disabled, and
:target further eliminate some JavaScript. HTML 5 eliminates more, like
autofocus, datepickers, and most form checking (I think? I haven't used it
much.)
The :has selector would have wiped out all but about 2% of my JavaScript
needs. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind JavaScript as much as other people. In
fact, I kind of like it. But given the choice between declarative (CSS) and
procedural (JavaScript) it's generally shorter to use declarative.
------
wanda
Nice to see a parent selector in the form of :has.
Some people seem to believe such a selector has always existed — at least I
see some mentions of it on StackOverflow sometimes.
Now it looks like finally we will finally be able to do things like:
nav:has(>a.active){
background-colour: red
}
if you wanted to change a navigation bar's background color without
JavaScript.
:lang seems a bit weird. Seems easier to use a lang= attribute on the root
node or data-lang on any node, and then using an attribute selector like so:
[lang='jp']{
font-family: 'Noto Sans'
}
or perhaps:
.box {
color: #111
}
[data-lang='c'].box {
color: #f44500
}
~~~
gsnedders
Note however the different profiles (see
[https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#profiles](https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#profiles)).
Notably, the dynamic profile excludes :has, and that's what's expected to be
used for selector matching in CSS in browsers. (:has can't be matched in a
single-pass of the document with a single-node lookahead, which is something
no browser vendor wants to give up.) The static profile is likely to be used
by querySelector and similar.
The only thing new with :lang in Selectors 4 is wildcards (with "*"). Note
that if you do want to use attribute selectors you likely want to use |=
rather than just =. |= allows either the exact value or a string that starts
with it followed by "-". :lang exists for similar reasons to :link—making
selectors generic, so they can work with things except (X)HTML.
I don't get why you'd ever use data-lang rather than lang, though? Notably,
data-lang wouldn't get passed through to the AT layer. You can use lang on any
element, not just the root.
~~~
Klathmon
Does the profiles thing feel like a really really bad idea to anyone else?
Taking CSS and splitting it into parts that can be in the stylesheet and parts
that can't seems like it's only going to cause confusion, and won't really
help anything.
The major reason you'd want something like :has is because you want to style a
parent in CSS only. Without that being in the "dynamic profile" it leaves it
to JS only, which (if i'm reading things correctly) would be able to do the
same thing by doing a lookup on the parent, then doing a lookup in that node
for the child which would be faster than how current CSS engines would find
that node if they had to start making multiple passes.
~~~
angry-hacker
They resist the whole parent / has selector avoidance with incremental
rendering and performance issues.
------
andrewmcwatters
Thank you for not titling this CSS4. Although in the long run, this misnomer
will probably still carry on.
------
gkilmain
I see conflicts with caniuse.com. For instance :scope. CSS4Rocks says
supported in all browsers but IE. caniuse.com says its only supported in FF
and mentions it has been removed from the current specification.
~~~
gsnedders
> For instance :scope. CSS4Rocks says supported in all browsers but IE.
> caniuse.com says its only supported in FF and mentions it has been removed
> from the current specification.
I can't find :scope on caniuse.com? There's Scoped CSS there, but that's a
largely unrelated (and, as you say, abandoned) HTML feature.
~~~
gkilmain
I think you're right. One looks like an attribute (caniuse.com), cssrocks is
:scoped, a pseudo.
------
sdegutis
Looks like this is a bunch of links to what's basically CSS4? (Not sure why
all 4 links on the landing page go to _the exact same page_ , but whatever.)
If this really is the future of CSS, then I now hate CSS even more than I
already did.
~~~
Raphmedia
Why would those handy extra selectors make you hate CSS more that you do?
Why do you hate it in the first place? Because it's trendy to do so?
~~~
sdegutis
Because it's getting exponentially and disproportionately more complicated to
just make what ought to be a pretty simple e-store. At this rate I'll soon
need to know how to do advanced calculus just to figure out how to make an
interface that supports both mobile and desktop.
~~~
Raphmedia
If you find CSS hard to grasp you should seriously consider actually learning
it instead of randomly writing words in the hope that things will stick.
Over here, CSS class is given on the same level as the Programming 101
classes. The class you give to new students because it's easy.
~~~
sdegutis
Everything I've said in this thread has been misinterpreted and/or
misunderstood and I just don't have the time to clarify, gotta get back to
work.
~~~
Raphmedia
No hard feelings. :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Understanding Algorithms for Marketers - squidrings
https://medium.com/@PurpleGreenLemon/understanding-algorithms-for-marketers-94a223e9ff92
======
MordodeMaru
404
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Uber Free Rides During the Sydney Siege - jweir
http://blog.uber.com/sydneysiege
======
chetanahuja
The original surge pricing was the latest piece of evidence that there's
probably no adult human making the calls at the top. The rightful horror
expressed in the initial media coverage would have been obvious to almost any
actual adult participating in normal human society on a day-to-day basis.
~~~
walterbell
High prices (algo or otherwise) have the side effect of generating at least
two surges of news articles - one for the price surge and one for the human
intervention to reduce pricing. By now, this must be a well-honed skill.
~~~
chetanahuja
You seem to be implying that Uber _wants_ news coverage of it's surge pricing
during every humanitarian crisis. To me it sounds like a surefire way for
activists to push for laws banning the practice of surge pricing (more
normally known as profiteering or price-gouging in a crisis).
~~~
walterbell
Have activists been successful in changing Uber policies? Activists and irate
taxi drivers generate even more news stories, i.e. more free coverage and
watercooler talk for each Uber launch.
~~~
chetanahuja
Perhaps you've not been following the news lately.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+bans&oq=uber+bans](https://www.google.com/search?q=uber+bans&oq=uber+bans)
~~~
walterbell
One could argue that those events have not changed _Uber_ policy, except for
conciliatory blog posts.
Uber, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to lobby for legal changes in the
court of public opinion, rather than working directly with regulators. Such an
approach requires maximum public visibility to gain new riders before the
service is shut down, in order to garner public support for reversal of court
rulings.
This playbook has been consistently applied in many cities globally. Cities
and activists need to develop defensive strategies which do not play directly
into Uber's campaign for maximum public visibility.
------
mhomde
Quick nice reaction from Uber, the PR was really starting to turn against them
with surge pricing making it cost 100 AUS to get the hell out of dodge
BTW,seeing the situation unfold is Sydney is insane. Been at that café and
have friends working a block away
------
greenyoda
Apparently, their surge pricing, as reported earlier, was generating too much
bad PR for them:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8750431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8750431)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Bipolar Lisp Programmer - Chris2048
http://marktarver.com/bipolar.html
======
abrax3141
This is a rather broad over-generalization that tries to simplify a complex
history into a pop psychology explanation. There’s no simple set of reasons
that Lisp doesn’t hold a prominent position in the current software
topography, and it’s doubtful that Lisp programmers’ psychodynamics have very
much to do with it.
------
Chris2048
See also:
[https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html) (HN
referrer directs somewhere else, so paste URL directly into address bar)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Protect IP Renamed E-Parasites Act; Would Create The Great Firewall Of America - yanw
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111026/12130616523/protect-ip-renamed-e-parasites-act-would-create-great-firewall-america.shtml
======
DanielBMarkham
The key point here, as another commenter pointed out, is _they are not going
to give up._
You can win a battle here, perhaps rally around your congressman and get it
killed, or petition the president to veto it, but it doesn't matter. They'll
just be back again next year, and the next year, and the next.
This is the importance of constitutional amendments: they settle things on a
broad scale exactly to prevent this kind of nipping (although it still
happens, it just takes much longer time) We need an amendment or two around
internet and computer freedom, specifically that computers are extensions of
our minds, not machines to play content on, and that the internet is our
primary form of political organization and persuasion, not a fancy telephone
line.
I hate to be all doom-and-gloom, but I think that boat has sailed. The tech
community _might_ get its act together, give up all social causes and form
some kind of committee or group to push for such amendments, but I seriously
doubt it. Half the community is in bed with big media and the other half are
just as concerned with other issues as this one. We are not organized,
coherent, or focused.
Just saw a great series on PBS, Ken Burns' "Prohibition". It was all about how
focused groups can make big changes -- but it takes a long time. I don't see
the kind of anger and outrage against this as we had against alcohol. Very
sad, because this is a lot worse.
~~~
JoshTriplett
I agree with you about the persistence problem; the government acts like a
rotten two-year-old that keeps trying until it gets its way. Like a two-year-
old, it learns what it can get away with and tries harder each time. _Unlike_
a two-year-old, it doesn't grow up and learn what not to do.
We shouldn't need a constitutional amendment here; the constitution is a
whitelist of things the federal government may do, not a blacklist of things
it may not do. While the constitution does sadly include the notion of
copyright, it does not include anything allowing regulatory authority over the
Internet.
~~~
jbooth
Hang on one second, who in the hell is "the government" in this situation?
The politicians supporting this bill, mostly republicans, work the phrase "I'm
anti-government" into every single public speech they give. Those are the only
supporters on the public payroll, the rest are all corporate entities and
lobbyists, as well as the Chamber of Commerce, natch. Those are your pro-
government marxist ideologues in this story.
I really think the phrase "the government" or even worse, capital-G
"Government", should be banned from any discussion of policy, it turns
everyone involved into an idiot. Government and industry both have lots of
moving parts.
Lastly, I agree that our existing constitution should prevent this sort of
law. I'm not optimistic about the current "small-government" supreme court
agreeing with me.
~~~
jwhitlark
The sponsors of this bill break down as 16 Democrats to 11 Republicans. How
does that work out to "mostly republicans"? It appears that this has support
from both parties, and I think casting it as a party issue will weaken
opposition.
~~~
jbooth
Ok, it's bipartisan, but the only meaningful opposition has come from
democrats, and the entire political spectrum of "anti government" has lined up
behind it. I'm just saying breaking everything down to "government" is a
ridiculous tagline that obfuscates more than it helps.
I mean, even if this is approved, it's basically the government doing
extremely cheap contract work for the companies who'd benefit. I have a
problem with it being done, period, if the ISPs formed a cartel with the MPAA
to do this without the government it'd be just as bad.
~~~
CWuestefeld
_the only meaningful opposition has come from democrats, and the entire
political spectrum of "anti government" has lined up behind it_
Which Libertarian think-tank was it that was supporting the bill?
Really, jbooth, your partisanship isn't helping anything.
~~~
jbooth
Some of the think tanks on all sides are alright, but most legislators on both
sides ignore the principled argument as soon as the established industry
weighs in. That's the problem. I said it was a bipartisan failure in my last
comment.
------
danilocampos
As long as our bandwidth and/or content is in the hands of corporations who'd
rather fuck us than cultivate virtuous, reciprocally beneficial relationships,
we will never be free.
I always worried, as a kid, that one day I'd grow up and think nostalgically
back to days before the internet had been made dull and sterile by government
rules.
I wasn't imaginative enough then, or even as a young adult, to predict this
kind of nonsense would happen instead.
The internet is destined for a bleak period. We care, we're pissed, sure. But
most people aren't. Most people don't even know. And wouldn't care if they
did.
This law, or one like it, will be subverted in breathtaking and terrifying
ways. Thought using the DMCA to shut down early thanksgiving coupon sites was
bad? That's going to seem cute by comparison to what you can do when a
moronic, bureaucratic authority can disappear entire websites at will.
I've been scratching my head for years trying to think of a way out. But I
just can't. The most powerful means of distribution and communication in human
history is either in the hands of inept, short-sighted, unimaginative buffoons
or subject to regulation from the same.
I'm excited for the practical and technological revolution that upends this
control. But I can't imagine what it would look like or how it would work. And
that leaves me a pretty sad panda while we wait for it. But – this kind of
stupidity is bad for _everyone_. Even the morons who want this law passed. So
I'd like to believe that this period will pass with the same inevitability
that will bring on its start.
~~~
VladRussian
>I've been scratching my head for years trying to think of a way out. But I
just can't. The most powerful means of distribution and communication in human
history is either in the hands of inept, short-sighted, unimaginative buffoons
or subject to regulation from the same.
if you think about it, the Earth's most advanced political systems - the US
and the other Western democracies - are just refined implementations of 2000+
years old architectural principles - the Greek's "democracy" (decisions and
laws are made by a group of people limited to the size of the big room, the
modern refinement of this ancient system is that the members of that group are
supposedly elected instead of just being rich and powerful elite of the
society) and the Rome's "rule of law" (a law overrides moral and any other
motivation/rationale). It's somehow disappointing that human race hasn't been
able to come up with (or more precisely - hasn't evolved enough for) a better
system. [The most recent attempts to build new, and thought at the time as
significantly improved, systems - fascism and socialism/communism - turned out
to be catastrophic disasters.]
>I'm excited for the practical and technological revolution that upends this
control. But I can't imagine what it would look like or how it would work.
every time significant technological development happens - be it steam engine,
Smith&Wesson, radio, cars, phone, television - it looks like it would change
the world and free the people from the control of the system ... well, as it
happens, the system just absorbs the technological development as a more
advanced tool for the control. And it is happening the same way with the
computers and the Internet. All the improvement in the society comes from
improvement in people (which of course is frequently technically facilitated
and accelerated by the technological advances). "Peasants are also humans, not
a property", "women are also humans, not a property", "blacks are also humans,
not a property", "gays are also humans", ..., (some day we will even evolve
enough to recognize the rights of animals and look back in horror to today's
treatment of them as property) - all this is just a change in people minds,
not a change in law (which follows the change in minds) and not a change in
technology (which though does usually help a lot)
>And that leaves me a pretty sad panda while we wait for it.
Look at the "Occupiers" - like the new born kittens they don't know what to
do, where to go, yet they have already "born" while we're sitting and waiting
:) [ note : i don't have illusions - many of the Occupiers will become
lawyers, government employees, political officials ... - ie. indistinguishable
part of the system and will try to forgot their "stupid mistakes of youth",
yet just for a moment they are "born" and it became an undeletable part of the
whole human race history and evolution]
~~~
yuhong
>It's somehow disappointing that human race hasn't been able to come up with
(or more precisely - hasn't evolved enough for) a better system.
A little off topic, but since it was bought up, I am going to mention that I
have been thinking of a systems where members of Parliament or Congress are
hired by a committee from the general public and then last for something like
20 years terms (unless he or she themselves resign of course). It would take
advantage of the separation of powers spreading power out among different
kinds of people, so it would not have the problems a dictatorship or monarchy
have. It would also allow specialization.
~~~
VladRussian
it sounds like a hybrid between Supreme Court and the corporate board/CEO
scheme.
To me the problem lies deeper - it is in the principle that government/state
is a concentrated power (taken away from people by force) and what behaves
like a violent force against the people. Any tweaks to the current system is
tweaks with who and how authorizes the application of that violence.
The government should get it power through willful delegation from people. The
US was a nice attempt to implement the idea. Unfortunately the "willful" isn't
there anymore. And without it the government looses moral ground under its
violence.
The next stage would be government/state system that acts not through force.
What can be used instead of force? Persuasion/education, consensus...? it is
though too far fetched for any specifics.
------
fredwilson
I am headed to DC tonight and my partner and I and a few other VCs
entrepreneurs and folks from Google are going to try to talk some sense into
congress on this bill. Wish us luck tomorrow.
~~~
brown9-2
Can you share what types of meetings you have lined up, if you'll be speaking
to any members of Congress in a formal setting, etc?
------
AJ007
Consider a blacklist of our own, if you write, vote for, or play a role in
legislation that restricts and censors the internet you will be barred from
using our service.
Imagine a future in which politicians are incapable of using even the most
basic web services and technologies because they have been barred from use. It
would be quite an embarrassment if you could not have a Facebook or Twitter
account, couldn't advertise on Google, and your email was rejected by most
ISPs.
Of course, this should paint an image of how ludicrous the notion of any
blacklist is.
~~~
colinyoung
I think this may actually be genius. Someone call Zuck, Jack, and Larry.
~~~
notahacker
I think Wikipedia Italia had a better idea. Forget the politicians, Google and
Facebook have the ability to highlight the implications to virtually everybody
in the US. Big corporations might not often be inclined towards grandstanding,
but there's precedent when it comes to Google objecting to censorship. A
little "if this Bill passes, we'll be serving a lot less search results"
message above every search performed by US users would be sufficient to make
the bill politically suicidal, methinks.
------
khafra
I would have called this too ridiculous to pose an actual danger before the
PATRIOT Act.
It points to a deeper problem, though: Lawmakers intent on passing something
that a large portion of the public finds objectionable can often achieve their
goal simply by persistence; renaming and resubmitting a bill each time
oppositional furor dies down, or slipping pieces of it into unrelated bills
until it's effectively passed.
I'm normally far more progressive than conservative, but at times like this I
wish there were some penalty associated with proposing or backing a really bad
bill, or with legislation by subterfuge.
~~~
troutwine
> I'm normally far more progressive than conservative, but at times like this
> I wish there were some penalty associated with proposing or backing a really
> bad bill, or with legislation by subterfuge.
I believe the intended result for this, if a sufficient portion of the
represented find this behavior objectionable, is to lose one's office. This
assumes an educated electorate , or at least the voting subset of the
represented to be so educated and so opposed.
~~~
sp332
But oftentimes, the party of the incumbent won't run another candidate (since
that might split the vote and lose the seat to the other party). So the only
way to vote an incumbent out is to vote for the other party, which may also be
against your interests.
~~~
troutwine
You might also turn in a blank ballot. Depending on circumstance, this might
be a fine way to signal to the incumbent that they did not do a Good Job,
though you in general support the policy of their party. Close races, etc,
will change the calculus of voting. Some states do not include blank ballots
in the vote totals, others do.
~~~
andymurd
An simple improvement to our voting system would be to include a 'none of the
above' option on all ballot papers. If 'none of the above' should win, another
ballot must be held and the original candidates are excluded from running.
------
jonnathanson
The sad thing about all of this is that the backers of the legislation stand
to _lose_ , in the long run, if their legislation is passed.
Consider the VCR. Back in the 1980s, when the VCR was a new and disruptive
piece of technology, the film industry lobbied to have it outlawed or at least
severely restricted. They lost that battle, and it's fortunate for them that
they did. A decade or so later, home video sales and rentals would grow to
account for nearly half the revenue of the entire industry. What had initially
been seen as a menace came to be seen as a savior. Highly ironic, to say the
least, and the irony is compounded even more by this attempted legislation.
~~~
electromagnetic
Totally agreed. The internet is merely a medium, you aren't going to stop
piracy by "banning" it.
What really pisses me off is that I have to wait 2-3 months for a film to go
from cinema to dvd. I don't pirate because I'm fiscally short, I pirate
because I just saw an amazing movie and I want to watch it again. I don't want
to go back to a theatre, I want to watch it at home, but I can't. The irony
is, I can go to a nearby hotel and rent pre-pay-per-view movies that are still
showing in the secondary phase of the cinema market (cheapie theatres). Why
can't I rent pre-pay-per-view at home? I pay 8 bucks for a fucking PPV as it
is, why can't I pay the $11 I would at the hotel or at a theatre.
I don't get why when _I want to pay them more money_ they make it impossible
for me to do so.
~~~
jonnathanson
Film studios and TV networks are eventually going to come to the realization
that piracy is a marketing vehicle for them. Of course, they'll still need to
find a way to make money off of their content, and that's an understandably
tricky situation. But recent studies have shown that movie pirates are also
movie studios' biggest paying customers.
The big challenge for studios right now is that there used to be two
lifecycles for any given film: the exhibition lifecycle (i.e., the theatrical
release window), and the ownership lifecycle (i.e., DVD or Blu-ray purchase).
These days, both are being compressed, and ownership is increasingly
unnecessary. Piracy may or may not be a legitimate threat to ownership, but
that's sort of beside the point, because ownership -- as a fundamental concept
-- won't matter in the cloud-driven, on-demand world of the very near future.
But piracy can still exist as an interesting _exhibition_ tactic. It just
needs to be harnessed in the right way, and/or a compelling and equally
convenient alternative needs to be created.
This is a very tough spot for studios, but legislative attempts at sticking
their heads in the sand are not going to solve any problems for them -- and
may, in fact, exacerbate their problems by putting innovation attempts on
hold.
~~~
electromagnetic
> Of course, they'll still need to find a way to make money off of their
> content, and that's an understandably tricky situation.
Not particularly. TV networks regularly make money off of their content
online. I can go to virtually any networks website and stream an episode of
whatever and get adverts in the regular breaks. Why not simply do the same
with a movie?
People don't care about giving up 18 minutes of their lives for 42 minutes of
a show. Why do the movie networks have such a hard time grasping that people
will gladly give up 30 minutes of their lives to advertisers for a 90 minute
film.
I genuinely think they don't do this simply so they can say "well people are
stealing because they just don't want to pay".
~~~
Avenger42
The issue I see with that is that we've grown accustomed to breaks in our TV
shows, whereas we would likely see any break in our movie experience as
jarring and negative.
Something more like YouTube's banner ads along the bottom might work.
~~~
electromagnetic
Banner ads piss me off more than a commercial break. I'm used to advert breaks
in movies around the holidays when every network runs old movies so I'm sure
it wouldn't be a huge leap.
Perhaps cut the breaks to every 30 minutes or so. An advert break every 10
minutes in Titanic would likely induce suicide.
------
anigbrowl
Rep. Lamar Smith is also the legislative genius behind the bureaucratic
monstrosity that is our current immigration system. I don't like him much, as
you can probably tell.
Two things you can do: Write, on paper, to your congressional representatives
and explain briefly and politely that this legislation will hinder job growth,
hurt exports, and mention that you will donate only to legislators who vote
against this bill. Then follow through. If you can afford it, make a donation
to a known existing opponent and include a copy of your receipt with the
letter to your representative. Money talks like nothing else does. It does not
have to be a large amount. Nor is it important for you to agree with the other
politician about everything. All you need to do is make it clear that there
are votes and issues at stake on this particular margin. A pattern of small
donations outside of election season will get people's attention.
Donate to either a primary or general election challenger in Rep. Smith's
district.
~~~
ericd
Here's the wiki for the 21st district of TX (Mr. Smith's):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texass_21st_congressional_distr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texass_21st_congressional_district)
Seems like he's been in office since 1987, so there may not be much hope for a
challenger in any given election.
Any standout opponents of this thing that I could donate to instead?
~~~
anigbrowl
Ron Wyden seems to be the leading legislator for tech freedom, but I admit to
being a poor scorekeeper in this area - I like law more than politics, so I
don't pay enough attention to individual congresspersons.
~~~
ericd
Yeah, I've donated to him this year already. Wondering if he has any
counterparts on the house side...
------
xorglorb
Another concerning section is the power to take action against, "any entity
that knowingly and willfully provides or offers to provide a product or
service designed or marketed for the circumvention or bypassing of measures
described". Does this mean that the Tor Project would be shut down? It would
be nearly impossible to eradicate a piece of open source software, but if this
bill has passed, it would not be a leap to imagine a bill making the use of
Tor or related services a felony passing.
------
adestefan
For a minute I thought this was satire put out by one of the campaigns against
the Act. I was thinking, "Who would really call something that?" I'm glad I
clicked the link to see that it's actually what happened.
~~~
Vivtek
Same here - the utterly tone-deaf nature of the name literally made me think
it was a link to the Onion.
It is just freaking weird that the biggest, most blatantly rent-seeking
organizations in the world call their own legislation the E-PARASITE bill.
~~~
etherael
E-PARASITE bill; the bill by and for e-parasites.
Seems legit, no?
------
charlieok
The government has identified DNS as an especially vulnerable component of the
internet and intends to attack it:
"A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures
designed to prevent [...] the domain name [...] from resolving to that domain
name’s Internet Protocol address."
Hard to tell which incarnation of this effort will become law, and when, but
it seems prudent to assume that it will. Rather than simply hope the
government won't attack the network, or petition the government not to attack
it, we should engineer improvements to the network which increase its
resistance to attack.
Time for a more distributed, probably peer-to-peer, DNS.
It's been said that the internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes
around it. That's precisely what these threats call for.
------
dminor
Didn't Wyden put a hold on the "PROTECT IP" act in the Senate? Does that make
this moot, or will there be a new bill in the Senate?
~~~
cdh
Weird coincidence. I just saw Wyden speak a few minutes ago at a town hall
style meeting here in Oregon, and asked him about PROTECT IP when he was
taking questions.
I'm not sure he can keep it on hold indefinitely, but he definitely sounded
committed to doing whatever is within his power to oppose it.
------
ojbyrne
I thought the name change was great. As long as you recognize who the real
parasites are.
~~~
ericd
Yeah, the irony is pretty intense.
------
JoachimSchipper
Silver lining: the word "IP" is apparently so unpopular that it's better not
to associate your proposals with it.
~~~
waqf
I would like you to be right: do you have evidence that this was the reason
the name was changed?
I am personally hoping that "PARASITE" has a much more negative ring that will
make it easier to campaign against the bill.
~~~
Natsu
Yeah, the people we think of as parasites and the people they think of as
parasites are two different sets.
Brand _them_ as the parasites and kill it. Maybe a Googlebomb is in order,
listing the sponsors of this bill as e-parasites? Sadly, the document linked
on SCRIBD doesn't seem to include the list of cosponsors and mentions only
"Mr. Smith of Texas".
Does anyone know where to find out who all is sponsoring this? A quick search
only found a bunch of news about it and copies of the bill, but no further
information.
------
manuscreationis
Is anyone putting together any kind of concerted, consolidated effort to kill
this bill?
There must be some kind of movement one can throw their weight behind to help
stop this nonsense.
~~~
there
<http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/pipa_house/?source=eff>
~~~
manuscreationis
Thanks for this
------
libraryatnight
These things scare me because I think a significant amount of citizens don't
know what they stand to lose, and I think politicians understand just enough
to know exactly what they're taking away.
------
rooshdi
First COICA, then Protect IP, now E-PARASITES Act? Looks like I have to
contact my local congressmen again. Seems like they spend more time renaming
this bill than actually reading it.
~~~
dextorious
> Looks like I have to contact my local congressmen again.
Yeah, you and some giant company with tons of cash to finance his next
campaign.
Guess who's gonna win his support.
------
jneal
IF this were to become law, that would definitely be scary, but from the
description of what they require of the ISP, it sounds like they aren't
blocking access to the server, just keeping the DNS from resolving to the IP.
Thus, could you not use a public DNS (or foreign DNS) server, thus getting
around the blocked DNS from your local ISP? Just an idea, or wonder, of mine.
~~~
dextorious
Yeah, let's just allow them to pass their restrictions bit by bit in
subsequent laws, arguing that "as it is we can still get around it".
It doesn't matter if we can get around it using a public DNS server. For one,
tomorrow they can even outlaw using non government compliant dns providers).
What hackers tend to forget is that such problems are not technical, are
political. "Bypassing" by technical expertise is not a solution, it's monkey-
patching a system that's broken and dangerous.
1) Even if geeks can bypass some restrictions, they too tend to lose
--content, community participation etc-- if the general populace cannot do it
just as easily, or is scared not to do it.
2) Even the cleverest bypassing can be outlawed.
3) One should not trust one's self to always be one step ahead of the
government in the bypassing game.
Take P2P for example. Say you're totally bypassing the P2P download
restrictions with some clever hackery that makes you untraceable online, be it
Tor or whatever. What good will it do if the authorities can come knocking on
your _physical_ door and find that same illegally downloaded stuff in use on
your computer?
------
srl
I hate this sort of article. Every month or so, another "look at this evil
bill that will destroy our liberties" article comes out, and everybody gets
all worked up about it.
tl;dr - The judges sitting on federal courts and the supreme court aren't
responsible to voters, don't need campaign funds, and don't have a career to
worry about. In the unlikely event that this bull makes it out of congress and
past the president, it'll be struck down. Just like it has been every time
before.
Sure. If this bill was an enforced law, that would be bad. Unthinkably bad.
But that goes for a great deal of what happens in congress - especially the
House. A small portion of this manure actually manages to make it out of
congress and past the president - and it gets taken to the courts. The more
interesting cases make it to the Supreme Court, where the nine judges who
aren't up for re-election, have no career to worry about, and are already rich
enough to be well impossible to buy off, get the pleasure of telling - in this
case - the entertainment industry to go stuff it. The supreme court has
repeatedly refrained from supporting this sort of thing, and they're unlikely
to start in the future. Even if the worst happens, and this thing gets passed,
the courts will strike it down long before the bureaucracy finds a way to
start enforcing it. It's highly unlikely to affect any of us.
Some other commenters have almost correctly pointed out that "they're not
going to give up" - because in many cases, fighting for these inane laws is
their day job. First, there's also a group of people whose day job is to argue
these sorts of laws. And another group whose day job is to strike them down,
_even if_ the opposition is poorly argued. Second, those lobbyists are likely
to be loosing their jobs soon as the industry paying for them begins to fall
apart.
So, please. Stop freaking out every time one part of the government does
something stupid. Writing to your local dimwit to point out the obvious: ok.
Running in panicked circles on the internet: unhelpful and irritating.
/rant
~~~
geori
After Citizens United, I no longer trust the court.
~~~
learc83
You do realize the consequences if they had ruled opposite of what they did--
that a movie made by a corporation was not protected speech covered by the
first amendment.
Books, movies, magazines, television, radio, and many websites, would no
longer be protected under the first amendment, and would be open to government
regulation and censorship.
------
jrockway
I think I'm just going to start copyrighting trivial javascript and CSS code,
then sue the fuck out of the MPAA when one of their offshore developers steals
it from me. Fight fire with fire, they say.
~~~
DanBC
Has anyone done an audit for all the websites of the supporters of this act?
I remember some recent HN article about someone (German politician?) who had
used a photo without permission on his website.
Lily Allen has spoken out about piracy, but used then distributed music via
her blog.
------
marquis
How is this working out for Australia? I understand a blacklist/firewall was
put in the place there?
~~~
brc
No, it died just before the last election in August 2010. Officially it's 'on
hold', but practically, it is dead.
How? A lot of pressure put on a lot of politicians in the run-up to the last
federal election, which promised to be very close (and was actually one of the
closest in history).
You obviously have to pressure whomever holds the majority, but you've got to
let the other side know about it as well.
So Australia is filter-free for the foreseeable future - it's become a 'dead
issue' that politicians aren't willing to spend political capital on.
US Folks should take this as a bright data point that these battles can be
won, but it will take a lot of effort.
Personally it's something that Tea Party and OWS types could get together on,
because it sucks for everyone. That's what happened in Australia - they took
heat from both 'sides' of politics and it got dumped (sorry, _postponed_ )
~~~
ericd
That's great news! Do you have any nuts and bolts information on how this was
organized? (Was there any formal opposition?) If so, that could be very useful
here...
------
jcromartie
The sad thing is that it seems that the worse a bill is, the more likely it is
to pass.
------
brandon6
How would this effect Canada or Europe?
------
nobody3141
I do like American government acts.
I always picture the governor in Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles:
"Patriotism is good isn't it?"
"Yes Governor"
"So I should sign this PATRIOT act without reading it?"
"Yes Governor"
"Parasites are bad aren't they?"
"Yes Governor"
"So we ban them ?"
"Yes Governor" ....
If only Mr Obama had found a way of making his health care bill spell out "IF
YOU VOTE AGAINST THIS YOU ARE SO GAY" ACT - he would have got it through.
~~~
trusche
> he would have got it through
Huh? You realize it's law, right?
------
fleitz
Does stopping internet piracy mean no more talk like a pirate day?
~~~
brandon6
I hope not
------
hugh3
The problem is that the only people who bother getting up in arms about this
are the objectively pro-piracy crowd -- the folks who think that they _ought_
to be allowed to freely download a copy of any movie in existence without
paying for it if they happen to feel like doing so. Otherwise known as the "I
want to do _X_ , therefore _X_ should be legal" school of legal thinking.
I see some of that crowd in this thread. I'm not interested in arguing with
'em. But when the loudest spokesmen against some particular piece of silly law
(and this is a silly law) turn out to be extremists with a position that most
thoughtful people would disagree with, it makes it difficult to put forth a
coherent argument against it.
~~~
billybob
'Otherwise known as the "I want to do X, therefore X should be legal" school
of legal thinking.'
You mean like "I want a monopoly, therefore monopolies should be legal. Also,
I should have police powers to enforce my monopoly: search people's computers,
shut down their internet access, make accusations based on flimsy evidence
like IP addresses, and presume guilt rather than innocence."
Like that?
I mean, if society were a roomful of people, and someone stood up and
suggested that, would you nod and agree?
I'm not saying copyright isn't a useful tool for society to encourage creation
of works, but it does need to be balanced with other things. Not least is the
fact that it hinders the creation of derivative works. This argument is even
stronger in the realm of patents.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quickjack - clickjacking and slicing made easy - timf
http://samy.pl/quickjack/
======
defen
I tried to copy and paste the URL for the example Facebook clickjacking, and
couldn't figure out why it was failing. And then I thanked myself for having
installed NoScript.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Explosions in Brussels Kill at Least 13 - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/world/europe/brussels-airport-explosions.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
======
spriggan3
It's horrible, as a french here, my thoughts are with my fellow Belgian
friends.
------
jgrahamc
This news is everywhere. We simply don't need it reported on HN.
~~~
Fastidious
HN isn't only about reporting, but about discussing, no?
~~~
jeremysmyth
"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic."
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
------
lolive
Terrorists must have been really pissed off by Apple's yesterday annoucements.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should You Use a Credit Card to Finance Your Startup? - mchang16
http://www.employeeevolution.com/archives/2008/04/11/should-you-use-a-credit-card-to-finance-your-startup/
======
Readmore
No, no no no! Not even if it is at 0% interest. I've done this, I'm still
paying it off, don't do it.
~~~
mynameishere
_Not even if it is at 0% interest_
Yes.
------
thorax
Very interesting to read the responses here. They aren't at all what I
expected to see on this particular site.
I personally know two very successful 'exited' entrepreneurs that would never
have had their companies acquired if they didn't rack-up an insane amount of
bonus miles on those early startup credit cards.
My belief is that if you _absolutely_ believe in your startup, you should be
willing to get essential funds anywhere legal on reasonable terms, especially
if the amounts are in the magnitude of $25,000-30k of debt. Clearly you
shouldn't _start_ borrowing on credit cards, but doing some financing on the
credit card when things are tight and failure is the only alternative... It's
a no brainer to me, and it's part of the reason I've stayed out of debt my
entire life, so that I have that extra flexibility if it is ever needed.
$25,000 in equity early on is going to cost you a lot more down the line, if
you truly believe your startup will be successful.
I think it's great to hear people who have learned so solidly not to use
credit cards. But when the chips are down, what is an entrepreneur but someone
who takes calculated risks for things they believe in?
Do what you must to keep your dream alive. If it can't succeed, quit, but if
it _can_ and _should_ succeed, a successful entrepreneur will do what they
need to do to make it happen. There isn't a "no" or "never" in that equation.
------
mchang16
There are so many other ways to finance a start-up, that this should probably
be the LAST option...and it's so high-risk that if you can't get money another
way, you might want to wait until a better idea comes along that you can get
someone to finance.
------
noodle
imo, no, unless you're doing the 0% APR across credit cards dance. there are
just too many other, cheaper ways of getting a little bit of money.
------
reynolds
We do a ton of stuff on our credit cards, but really only to scale an already
profitable campaign.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LinkedIn is 99% Java but 100% Mac - kungfudoi
http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2008/06/linkedin-is-99.html
======
dmix
"A new engineer that comes in gets a new MacPro with dual quad-core CPUs and
12GB of ram and a MacBook Pro."
That's my kind of company. I'd do the same if I was in their position.
~~~
Hexstream
I really feel like a newb, only using 450MB RAM max...
How do you fill up any significant portion of 12GB RAM on a workstation
without doing intensive video editing?
~~~
tx
Easy: run several VMware instances on parallel desktops ("spaces" they call
it). We do that for:
a) Testing cross-browser compatibility, each version of IE needs its own VM,
plus Opera/FF on Linux
b) Have a copy of deployment environment running, i.e. VM for an appserver and
the mailserver running separately, etc.
Moreover, I like to have instances of PhotoShop and Fireworks running in their
own "spaces", and both of them love RAM.
Basically each programmer gets his own farm of machines he can do anything
with. The key is to never reboot. We don't have 12GB machines, but 4GB get
eaten pretty quick.
~~~
mpc
I would imagine the biggest hit is B. If you're developing search
functionality or other features that work against the social graph then you'll
probably need to get a large chunk of that into memory.
I've worked on a couple of non-trivial web apps, but nothing even close to
linked in and 4gb was a necessity at times.
~~~
whatusername
An VMWare sharts to chew through my RAM - espeially if you're trying to do
something non-trivial in a couple of VM's simultaneously.
------
softbuilder
If they give you big enough monitors you can fashion them into walls for your
cubiclette. Ugh.
Seriously, I'd trade a 30" monitor for a quiet spot with almost any view and a
minimal amount of privacy.
------
jrockway
Amusing screenshots. It seems that the bigger the monitor you give people, the
more space they waste. I can't believe that people still want to manage the
position and size of their windows.
------
st3fan
"""most of our core business logic is written in Java on a Spring/Jetty/Tomcat
stack"""
Which is an AWESOME stack. We use it too :-)
~~~
mosburger
I might be retarded, but I don't get it... Jetty and Tomcat are both servlet
containers, why do you have both in your "stack"?
~~~
st3fan
They probably run stuff on both jetty and tomcat. For standard web apps there
is no difference. For some specialized stuff, like cometd, you could prefer to
use one or the other.
------
omnipath
"The down side of the whole deal is that you have to choose between two 23’’
or one 30’’ Apple Cinema display. Life is tough and you just can't have it
all."
Tough? Two 23'' all the way. My heart went all a flutter reading the
development box specs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Twitter Streaming API and why you should use it - Fenn
http://fenn.posterous.com/why-and-how-to-use-the-twitter-streaming-api
======
bootload
Fenn are you using this with adioso?
~~~
Fenn
It's not actively in production yet, though that was the original purpose for
writing it - I realised it was useful so thought I'd decouple it and release
it as a standalone opensource library.
~~~
bootload
_"... I realised it was useful so thought I'd decouple it and release it as a
standalone opensource library. ..."_
Beaut.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google: Fewer Ads, More Money - danielha
http://blogs.business2.com/beta/2007/03/google_fewer_ad.html#more
======
python_kiss
When I write articles, I try to minimize the number of ads in them in order to
have better control over where the user clicks. If, for instance, a user
clicks on an ad selling "knifes", he or she is unlikely to revisit the website
and click on another ad or link on the website. With each successive ad, the
control over where the user clicks becomes more chaotic.
The basic premise is the same as the one mentioned in Biz 2.0 magazine: If
there are no ads on your site, you will not make money off of it. If there are
too many ads on your site, nobody is going to click on them.
Daniel, thank you for posting this since before reading it, I did not have any
factual data to back my claim :)
~~~
bootload
_'... if there are no ads on your site, you will not make money off of it
...'_
Where is the investment opportunity with ads? Is it the Aggregation of
attention?, eyeballs? It's not about the advertising. The real value in the
intelligence of users, not eyeballs? ... that's where the money is. [0]
The way I look at it, UGC (user generated content) really just another form of
advertising? [1] So when you write content (commercial info about a product
made for profit) I'm really writing an ad, my ad. I value readers & their
ideas and as such don't want to distract them with freeloader advertisers.
Reference
[0] Dave Winer, 'How to Make Money on the Internet v2.0'
<http://davenet.smallpicture.com/2001/02/13/howToMakeMoneyOnTheInterne.html#4>
[1] Dave Winer, 'How to make money on the Internet, 26 November 2006, MP3,
10.6 Mb, 10 min.'
<http://static2.podcatch.com/blogs/gems/snedit/cn26Nov06.mp3>
------
danielha
Similar to how in, say, supermarkets where the number of brands of a product
on the shelves may show a negative relationship with the number of sales.
Offer customers too many choices and they will become overwhelmed and not
choose anything.
~~~
teki321
And the sad thing is that there are really big stores with a lots of stuff but
you have to visit at least two of them to get whatever you want :(.
Another really bad supermarket practice is when a product have got 3 different
flavoring and one of them is going well, but nobody buy the other 2. The
result is that they will abandon the product totally, it doesn't matter that
one of the flavors went really well.
------
paahijen
This is a bit smart, 'cos the clients fearing that fewer ads will be shown,
will actually be willing to pay more $$s and thus the PPC rates will go up!
Not sure about the long term impact though.. (eg. a frustrated client, inspite
of bidding extremely high for a few keywords might not see his ad appearing at
all, may switch to other system.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Take a Walk - thunk
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/08/09/how-to-take-a-walk/
======
neilk
Tangent, on "having a life".
I met a woman from New York who was visiting SF. We both had been to Burning
Man. She expressed her distaste at how much time San Franciscans spend on
their art projects. According to her, New Yorkers "have a life".
So, that bar conversation ended pretty quickly. But later on I got to thinking
about it. There might be positive senses of "having a life", but I think she
meant it in the more common way -- a horror of getting too enthusiastic about
anything.
Oh yeah, we could plant a rose garden in our backyard, but you know, _we have
lives_.
It makes me feel tired just contemplating it.
~~~
simonw
I get really infuriated by the phrase "too much time on their hands", when
used to dismiss acts of creativity (like building a model of the Eiffel tower
out of match sticks). At least they weren't watching TV.
~~~
Tichy
Some TV shows might be more worthwhile than building an Eiffel tower out of
match sticks.
~~~
simonw
[http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2007/01/04/eiffel-
tower-m...](http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2007/01/04/eiffel-tower-made-
of-matches/)
~~~
mcobrien
I was with Tichy until I saw that link. Amazing work.
~~~
eru
Amazing, indeed.
It's too bad the guy did the illumination with LEDs, instead of using matches
for that, too. (Although that would have worked only once.)
------
rdtsc
This is very important for programmers. You need to take a walk to recharge
your batteries. To clear you mind. Well, it works for me anyway.
Do it during lunch, after work, after dinner. On the weekend , for a longer
walk. Parks and trails work best. Less crowded streets in the city work as
well.
Don't rush, just walk slowly.
Observe things.
If you end up thinking about the problem your are working on, that's fine, if
you notice a bird's nest, that's fine too.
Walk like you have no place to be, look around. You will feel weird at first,
but that's fine. Try not to care about that.
Think of it as something between meditation, relaxation and exercise. Sort of
a all-in-one.
It's easy. There is nothing you have to do to plan for it, no special gear to
buy, all you need to do is to say "I want to take a walk" and then ... take a
walk.
~~~
jonsen
_Observe things. ... , look around._
Also look up. In city streets there are things to see above the horizontal
plane we strongly tend to confine our view to.
~~~
smutticus
No one ever looks up. No really. No one ever looks up.
I used to have a balcony over a very crowded alley with constant foot traffic.
I would stand there quietly and watch people think they were alone in this
alley all the time.
Drunk people were the best. One corner of the alley was constantly getting
pee'd in so they installed a metal skirt that bounced the pee back on the
pee'r. You could watch drunk people pee in that corner then walk away with a
wet pant leg without ever noticing. Hilarious. And not once in the 3 years I
lived there did someone look up.
~~~
AndyKelley
I think I can remember three different times I've decided to look up and I saw
someone watching me. I waved "hello" to them and continued on.
------
nhebb
I grew up in a SW Portland neighborhood with no sidewalks. The road shoulders
were narrow, unsafe, and often muddy. I never saw people out for leisure
walks. It just wasn't enjoyable.
Now I live in the outskirts of Portland, in a place with modern suburbs grown
up around a quaint old town. Sidewalks are everywhere. I take walks all the
time, and I see other people out for walks daily.
It's seems like common sense that urban and neighborhood design can have a
huge impact on the livability of an area, but a lot of the suburbs created in
the US abandoned the sidewalk to save a few bucks and cram more houses per
acre. I don't know if the tide has turned, but I'd never live in a
neighborhood without sidewalks again.
Home buying tip: Look for a neighborhood with a strip of grass between the
sidewalk and the street. It's a small detail that has a big impact on
"neighborhood" feel.
~~~
timknauf
Woah, we've had some 'pack 'em in' zoning here in New Zealand but I've never
seen anything where they left out footpaths entirely. Has anyone got a
representative Google street view link for SW Portland or something similar?
(And is this really quite common across the US?)
~~~
smutticus
This is the American suburbia I know best. Falls Church VA.
[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=falls+church+virginia&sll=38.833156,-77.344952&sspn=0.069401,0.205479&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Falls+Church,+Virginia&ll=38.879416,-77.158924&spn=0.004335,0.012842&z=17&layer=c&cbll=38.879773,-77.158715&panoid=uTfAKipY-r2K9LBoVbzSoQ&cbp=12,5.95,,0,5)
Portland is not a good example of American urban planning gone awry. As it's
probably one of the most sensible cities in the US.
And yes, unfortunately neighborhoods without sidewalks are all too common in
American suburbs.
~~~
Luc
So you need to trespass through people's gardens to walk down the street? Or
do people just walk in the street?
~~~
randallsquared
In general, people do not walk down the street at all. I used to live in a
place that looked a bit like this (except spread out a bit more) in Alabama,
and while you'd once in a while see someone walking down the street, it was
pretty rare except for kids too young to have cars (under 16, basically).
------
jasonkester
I started disagreeing with this immediately, since I take walks all the time.
But it occurs to me that I do it a lot more now that I've moved to Europe.
It's just a lot more walkable here. In Pamplona I could walk out my front door
and be blasted with the fact that I was in a medieval walled city with cobbled
streets and narrow alleyways. Any direction I went had some guaranteed Cool
Stuff to pass by and probably would end me up perched on some 600 year old
military fortification looking out over the farms.
Contrast that to living in a typical LA suburb with no sidewalks and nothing
to see apart from apartment complexes and possibly a Starbucks if you press on
far enough. It sorta sucks the fun out of the experience.
I've definitely done my share of walking in the 'states too, but then I've
made a point of living in some pretty walkable places. NW Portland and Venice
spring to mind as places I spent a ton of time simply wandering around.
Other places I've lived... San Gabriel, Tigard, Gresham... Not much walking.
I think maybe it has more to do with where you are than who you are.
~~~
ews
I did the opposite. Moved from Spain to California few years ago. I was so
shocked for the complete lack of sidewalks on San Francisco's South Bay that I
ended up taking a complete collection of pictures about it.
It's somewhat common in some areas in the US, and literally unthinkable in
Europe. I am lucky that I live in San Francisco now, where most of the city
(besides some areas I found between the Sunset and Glen Park) has sidewalks.
In fact, the first think I heard about SF before moving here was that it is
'very walkable'
My impression is that the tendency is somewhat reversing. I am an spoiled
Franciscan now, so I don't know how is it on other parts of the country, but I
have been hearing more and more people talking about moving closer to their
offices (when they can) and walking or biking to work. Again, this is from a
pure SF perspective, not sure how is it on other places in the US.
P.S. Gosh, I love Pamplona, you are lucky. The txistorras are one the best
unknown meals in the world.
~~~
ltr
San Francisco is a walker's paradise. In particular, there are the off-street
stairways that take you to all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies.
There has even been an excellent book published about San Francisco's
stairways: _Stairway Walks in San Francisco_ by Adah Bakalinsky. There is also
a good web site: <http://www.sisterbetty.org/stairways/>
------
euroclydon
Sometimes I'll go for a long walk, maybe six miles. I don't walk fast or
listen to music, I just look around, maybe at people's yards. I like to see
who has a bird feeder or interesting landscaping. When I first start, my mind
is full of thoughts and my muscles and legs are full of bounce, even tight,
but after four miles, my mind is nearly empty, except for the kind of slow
easy thoughts that someone who works the land all day, someone who sees the
sun rise and set, might have, and my legs are heavier, yet loose, and ready
for many more miles. After five miles, my gut feels lean and empty, my body
feels purged of something.
~~~
bootload
_"... Sometimes I'll go for a long walk, maybe six miles. ..."_
I don't think it's just a function of the distance but the frequency and the
empty mind you report is pretty close to describing meditation - empty mind
observing - great stuff.
------
vgr
I am pretty darn surprised that THIS post has gotten vastly more discussion
than just about any of my ribbonfarm posts that's gotten on HN.
A few quick adds, since I seem to have mildly offended some of you.
0\. The tangent on "having a life" here is fascinating. Nothing to add, but I
am now seriously curious about the ethnography of that phrase.
1\. Is this anti-American? I don't really think so. There is research (see
Robert Levine, "The Geography of Time") that shows that cultures have
characteristic tempos, down to typical walking speeds. Yes, the vastness of
America has something to do with it, but I think 80% of the dynamics are
social, not physical, and also relatively recent (cellphones etc. have helped
Americans express this preference a lot more clearly). Back before Thoreau's
time, I think this wasn't so characteristic of America. There are no better
celebrations of idleness than the works of that uber-American writer, Mark
Twain. The disease is fairly new.
2\. "If you are thinking about blogging about your judgments of how others are
not taking a walk, then YOU are not taking a walk." Very fair and Godelian
critique, but I am talking about idle foot-and-mind wandering here, not
meditation. I'll leave that kind of walking to the Zen monks. My model isn't a
Zen monk, it is Tom Sawyer walking along kicking a can or something. The xkcd
Bored with the Internet strip <http://xkcd.com/77/> is sort of my point as
well, except that I still take walks anyway, despite the irony.
3\. If I came across as judgmental or telling people how to _actually_ take
walks... sorry. Meant to be mostly tongue-in-cheek :) Poor writing execution,
not intent.
------
techiferous
I took a stand-up comedy course a couple of years ago. I found out that it
takes a long time to come up with material. You can't just sit down and start
writing jokes. They come when they are ready and you'd better be ready to
write them down.
When I had some time in the evenings to come up with material I would sit at
home without much inspiration. However, I found that when I walked to the
convenience store to get a snack, I would inevitably return with at least one
new joke idea, maybe more.
Walking was such a predictably good way to loosen up my creativity that when I
got stuck I would head for the door and tell my wife, "I'm going to the
convenience store to buy a joke."
~~~
reneky
Turns out it's easier to let your mind wander if you're busy with a simple
activity, like walking:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/science/29tier.html>
~~~
briancooley
My favorite is juggling. I learned how recently after someone on HN posted a
link to a Youtube video. At first I found it required a lot of concentration,
but now it just takes my mind off coding for a few minutes during a break and
it gives my wrists a little stretch away from the keyboard.
------
JacobAldridge
There's a quote that comes to my mind, on occasion, which I love, and which
sums up the attitude I want toward life and that which is expressed here.
"Some people walk in the rain, and some people just get wet."
Be someone who walks in the rain.
~~~
AndyKelley
Two weeks ago I was hacking away in my apartment. It was a normal Arizona
summer day, clear skies and 106 degrees F. All of the sudden my window started
rattling and I had no idea what was going on. Peering behind my blinds I
observed sheets of water falling from the sky. We get rain like that maybe
once every year. I promptly undressed, donned my bathing suit, and went for a
walk in the rain.
~~~
bruceboughton
I was shocked until I re-read "birthday suit" as "bathing suit" ;)
------
docgnome
This reminds me strongly of a John Muir quote I've recently been finding to be
very true.
"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find
out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that
mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and
irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life."
I find more enjoyment in a simple hike through a forest than I've had at work
for a very long time. Also, I find that when I go back to work after a trip to
the forest or even just a walk outside the city, I feel better and am less
crabby about going back to work. I think this is something that is sorely
lacking in many people's lives. Not recreation but just being out in whatever
wild we have left. Aaand now I sound like a crazy hippie.
------
bootload
I like walking. [0] I like it a lot. It's my preferred mode of transport but I
also do it to keep my observation skills sharp and mind clear. I used to like
running, but that requires a whole different level of concentration and
preparation. You also get injured more. Less so walking. Walking is one thing
pretty much everyone can do. I've kept up walking ever since I was a kid at
school. From Primary to High to Uni I had to hoof it [1] and the one thing I
noticed from High School onwards - _"I stopped seeing my peers walking"_.
The author is correct observing nobody walking any more. I see a lot of
runners who I join occasionally and the only consistent walkers the elderly
(fit) and ethnic (fit). Why? Well people don't see the value in it and simply
write it off as wasted time. Here's the thing, the benefits are cumulative so
it might appear a waste of time but the advantages (fitness, psych, clean air,
thinking) roll on, the more consistent you are.
[0] Last year I clocked up 2000K ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157623445003205...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157623445003205/)
This year I walked 240km from Canberra to Mt.Kosciuszko (9 days) ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/collections/7215762379...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/collections/72157623796440209/)
This month I covered all of the city of Singapore on foot in 2 days ~
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/collections/7215762454...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/collections/72157624546470369/)
[1] Because every time I saved up enough money for a car I bought a new PC.
------
gcheong
If you are walking around and getting caught up in judging to what extent
other people are not taking a walk so that you can later write a blog post
about it, then you are not taking a walk.
------
frobozz
I strongly disagree with this point:
> If you pass anybody, you are not walking slowly enough for it to be “taking
> a walk.”
There are people around who walk painfully slowly. When I go for a walk, I let
my legs swing at a natural cadence, with my natural stride length. If I have
to change that, to ensure I don't overtake some dawdler, it places a stupidly
unnecessary restriction on the definition of "taking a walk". IMO, it removes
some of the idleness from it if you have to actually think about how you are
walking.
~~~
infinite8s
I think he was trying to say that "speed walking" is not the same as taking a
walk.
~~~
frobozz
I don't see where you get that idea, because it isn't what he said. What he
said was "If you pass anybody, you are not walking slowly enough for it to be
“taking a walk.”"
i.e. You can only be classed as "taking a walk", if you are the slowest person
around, or if the only people slower than you are far enough away that you
won't catch them up.
This makes it extremely difficult to take a walk, particularly if you start
anywhere near an old people's home, or a primary school, or an area of town
where lost tourists peer down each side street in search of a landmark. Note
that this is in the paragraph that declares "taking a walk" to be "not
difficult".
Taking a walk by my definition - walking at my body's natural pace, aiming for
nowhere in particular - is easy. His definition makes it very difficult
indeed.
------
derefr
A re-quote from the comments:
> If you need to listen to music while walking, don’t walk; and don’t listen
> to music.
I tend to never listen to music _unless_ I'm taking a walk. I have no anxiety
about idleness, but I _do_ have an acute anxiety about others' opinions of my
taste in music—it is such that I can only stand to _enjoy_ music when there is
no one close enough to me to hear it. Seeing as I live in an apartment with
thin walls, this means going for a walk.
~~~
dionidium
The last sentence of this comment makes no sense. Do his neighbors have such
acute auditory ability that they can hear the music from his headphones -- the
ones he takes on those walks -- through their walls?
~~~
jasonkester
There are few things more relaxing than coming home on a Friday afternoon,
mixing a nice cocktail, and cranking some truly embarrassing music from your
youth on the stereo, at full volume through big speakers.
To pull that off, you need thick skin or thick walls.
------
balding_n_tired
"In my 13 years of taking walks in the United States, I could remember only
ever seeing one native-born American taking a walk."
Where in the world does this man take walks? Down the median of I-5?
I have a hard time coming up with a reason that "taking a walk" must exclude
walking the dog; taking with a friend; even chatting on the phone, though
that's not my habit. Nor can I see why one may not pass anybody--in a walking
part of the world does one end up with large queues of walkers with the tail
end going slower and slower?
I write this having just walked in to work, a bit less than an hour, right
around half an hour slower than riding the bus. Yes it is purposeful, but it
is not the most time-efficient way of accomplishing the purpose.
~~~
sophacles
I think the goal of taking a walk is similar to meditation -- empty out the
consciousness for a while. Phones, dogs, friends talking, remembering a
shopping list, etc don't do this well. The passing thing probably should not
be considered as a hard rule, just as a loose guideline -- "if you are walking
fast enough to pass someone walking with purpose, you are probably not really
idling"
------
pjscott
Taking walks is an essential part of how I program. They're like garbage
collection pauses to clear out irrelevant details that were clogging my
thinking. You know how a lot of people say that they do their best thinking in
the shower? Walks work the same way.
They're also good for just relaxing.
~~~
jasonkester
Hacky Sack works great for this too. Better still if you can grab the whole
team and sack out in front of the building.
I suspect Smoking works the same way.
------
michaelfairley
"You will not sweat."
The author has clearly never lived in Texas during the summer. (A decent-
length leisurely walk around Austin at midnight during this time of the year
will inevitably result in more than enough sweat.)
~~~
vgr
Actually, I _did_ spend a year (and parts of 2 summers) in Austin. I used to
go for late night walks near my apartment, which was just off 183, well north,
in strip-mall land.
If you walk slowly enough, you won't sweat. Or maybe that's just Austin.
------
dchs
"Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than
a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own
company."
\- Seneca
------
neutronicus
I bike.
Something about the scale of the American suburb makes walking totally
infuriating for me. I need the wind in my hair and the landscape sliding by to
really relax - inching by the same cookie-cutter houses every day kills me.
I enjoy walking in the city or the park, but I can't just impromptu do that.
------
johnfn
I liked the article; it expressed something that had been lingering on the
edges of my subconscious, but that I had never brought to light - like most
good articles do.
What I don't see is why it had to have an anti-American bias. It doesn't help
make your point, and all it does is antagonize your American readers. I am an
American, I also take walks.
~~~
brianpan
I disliked the part where he assumes he can tell where someone is born by
looking at them. :(
I wonder if he thinks he looks like a native-born or an immigrant?
~~~
philwelch
Can't you? People throw off subtle cues all the time, and whether they're
native born or not is something that isn't hard to pick up from that.
Conversely, take a native born person of Japanese or Indian descent, and send
them to Japan or India. The natives there will be able to tell he isn't native
born.
~~~
brianpan
You can see culture, not birthplace. Those are different things.
If you see me on the street, I believe you will see my family culture
(Chinese) and where I was brought up (American Midwest). You will not see
where I was born (East Coast).
~~~
philwelch
I bet if I saw you on the street, you would register as American to me. (East
Coast and Midwest register the same to me.) I would be able to tell you apart
from someone who was actually born and raised in China. Conversely, if you
went to China, the people there would be able to identify you as foreign-born.
Your culture is similar and related to, but very different from, the culture
of people still living in China. I might be able to tell you apart from more
assimilated Americans of East Asian descent, though.
~~~
brianpan
Me specifically, yes. But I was born and grew up in the same country. I still
think it's presumptuous to say that you can at a glance determine a person's
place of birth. I have friends- people I've known for some time- that surprise
me both because they were born overseas when I thought they were born in the
states and vice versa.
And I'm talking about a relatively _easy_ case of Chinese vs American. Are you
going to tell me you can tell a Canadian-born person from an American-born at
a glance?
Yes, many times you can tell where someone is from because of stereotypical
cultural things that are difficult to hide. But to assume you can go for a
walk and identify with certainty who is American born and who is not is
ridiculous.
~~~
philwelch
Yes, technically if you're born in Azerbaijan but whisked away at age 2 and
grow up in America you'll read as American. And technically if you were raised
in a culture almost identical to American culture (like Canada) you'll also
read as American. That's a quibble, not the main point.
------
jleader
I found the article interesting, but I thought it was somewhat overly
argumentative. In particular, the claim that immigrants take walks and
Americans don't struck me as an implausible over-generalization. I liked his
points about the right attire for walking, but the "your walk doesn't count
if..." part bothered me.
------
leftblank64
This guy here knows what it's all about: <http://imjustwalkin.com/>
~~~
bootload
_"... This guy here knows what it's all about:<http://imjustwalkin.com/> ..."_
not a touch on Ed Stafford: 859 days & 4,000 miles of walking the entire
Amazon ~ <http://www.walkingtheamazon.com/> but looking at the shots,
beautiful scenery. Envious.
------
d0m
Beautiful article. Quick summary for the lazy hackers: people don't walk for
the sake of walking anymore.
The last few paragraphs were the most interesting in my opinion if you don't
have the time to read it all.
~~~
duck
Beautiful indeed!
_summary for the lazy hackers / if you don't have the time to read it all_
Had to laugh when I read this though, since this article is in so many ways
talking about the same ones that will read that summary and click on to some
other article on here.
Walking as the author describes is one of those simple pleasures that we have
been gifted, but so few of us ever slow down to realize it and to receive it.
~~~
d0m
Same, I laugh when I wrote "don't have the time" since it was exactly what the
article was talking about. Good catch.
------
k3dz
The Americans never walk. In winter too cold and in summer too hot. ~J.B.
Yeats
~~~
pjscott
I walk anyway. It's worth putting up with the heat or cold.
------
kalmar
There can be something akin to meditation in walking, or "taking a walk". An
approach I've taken in the past is attempt to hear all the sounds. Not to
listen to, just hear. Wherever you are, there are likely enough sounds for
this. If you catch yourself focusing on one sound, gently let it go back to
the level of the rest. If you find yourself not hearing sounds, gently let
yourself hear them again.
I believe this is quite similar to bringing your mind back to the breath in
sitting meditation in Vipassana and similar practices, though others may
correct me. The difference here is that it's perhaps somehow more obvious when
your mind has strayed from its object. In fact, there are forms of walking
meditation in Vipassana and other practices. These focus -- again, I believe
-- much more on the walking: the walking and its sensations are the object.
Generally you would walk up and down a short stretch; this avoid the worry of
a route, or how to return to the starting point.
------
araneae
He's claiming that he's somehow better than all of us because he takes walks
with no purpose. I really doubt that there's any additional benefit to doing
so over say, walking your dog. I hate when people try to tell me the "right"
way to do something, especially when its benefits are more a superiority badge
than tangible.
------
warwick
I've made a habit of taking a walk around 2 pm every Sunday. No matter how
busy things get between school and business, an hour or so walk helps keep me
grounded.
In much the same way that starting the day with breakfast gives my days a
sense of rhythm, walking once a week gives my weeks a good demarcation.
------
joshu
The ribbonfarm guy really impresses me.
~~~
dpritchett
You might want to subscribe to his newsletter then:
<http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/04/28/be-slightly-evil/>
------
foxtrot
I am amazed at how may people are saying they grew up with no pavements
(sidewalks), is it because they found no need for them as the location was too
remote for anyone to walk to anywhere they may need to go or that they thought
no one bothered to walk so why spend money laying down something that no one
will use?
I take "walks", however not in the sense of the article. I find that a walk
before work is great and on your lunch if you have had a crappy morning.
However I walk with a purpose, I think about thinks I see, get my brain
interested in stuff I wouldn't usually think about. It gives inspiration and
helps figure out problems that otherwise seemed impossible to overcome.
~~~
thyrsus
On my suburban street, without sidewalks, the pedestrians and children playing
own the street nearly as much as the cars - the traffic is sparse, and there
are stop signs on just about every corner. The kid's games are suspended to
allow cars to pass. There are pedestrians; I'm not enough of a connoisseur to
know if they're "walking" ;-).
------
newmediaclay
Amazing read. This also demonstrates another benefit of living near a college
campus - acres and acres of beautiful land and architecture just begging to be
walked through. It is no surprise to me that one of the few places he saw
Americans walking through was a university. I live in Chapel Hill, NC just two
blocks from the college and I find time almost every weekend to just stumble
through campus to clear my mind, check out new buildings, and enjoy myself.
------
city41
I'm American and I take walks all the time. I rather enjoy walking quite a
bit. My favorite was when I used to live in Chicago. The never ending expanse
of sidewalk and streets meant I could leave my apartment, and just walk ...
for hours. I used to walk home from work at the Field Museum, just because I
enjoyed it. Although I guess that doesn't fit his definition of "just taking a
walk", as about 3 hours later I'd arrive at a destination, my apartment.
~~~
jamesbritt
One of the biggest things I missed when I loved form NYC to the Phoenix area
was the option to walk places.
In New York I would take the A train from Washington Heights to Columbus
Circle, and either walk up to the Metropolitan Museum, or down to the Village.
It was endlessly entertaining, with sights and sounds to fill the mind.
What a joy.
------
dionidium
This sense of needing a purpose, a direction, a reason for doing something is
certainly not unique to taking a walk. In a diner I frequent I was recently
asked if I were a student by one of the servers who has often waited on me
while I was reading. I'm not. And his reaction to my answer conveyed a sort of
disbelief or at least a hint that I am wasting something, that I am throwing
away a chance to convert this time into something tangible, beneficial.
------
eitally
The author's implication "taking a walk" as somehow preferable to those other
ambulatory activities is more than a little biased. Walking for the sake of
walking is still a conscious decision to act, and whether the act of leisure
is superlative is a completely subjective decision -- as neilk positive in his
reply.
------
kristiandupont
I am reminded of Steve Pavlina's article "Go for a Presence Walk". I have
submitted it here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1592732>
He takes walks with 100% attention to the immediate sensual inputs. It's
basically a kind of meditation.
~~~
petrichor
"100% attention to the immediate sensual inputs"! that's the geekiest
description of meditation that i have ever heard. in other words: awesome.
walking meditation what it is usually called, but i love the term "presence
walk".
------
jiganti
Immersing yourself in a problem for a long time often establishes a number of
assumptions in your brain about how said problem should be solved. When stuck,
withdrawal from the direct effort of work can free up some of these
assumptions, letting your mind entertain other possible approaches.
------
wallflower
A random walk is not just of benefit as an algorithm to software developers
but in real life.
------
acgourley
I don't take walks. It's not because I'm afraid of how I will be perceived -
that's crazy, how could everyone else know? Why would they care?
I just have a lot to do, and when I do have downtime, I prefer to spend it on
sites like Hacker News. That's all.
------
rue
Me, I like walking. Or going by bus/tram/train/airplane.
I think what I really like is the going somewhere part in general, although
not necessarily somewhere in particular.
Walking in itself is one of the more pleasant ways of going somewhere
nonparticular.
------
prs
I love the energizing effect a walk can have on my mind. What I also love is
to have a smartphone and a notebook with me. This allows me to quickly jot
down notes and thoughts once I get kissed by a muse.
~~~
metageek
A møøse bit my sister once.
------
Harj
i often take walks, especially in SF. as strange as it may sound i can't think
of another activity that gives me as much of a sense of pure freedom as
purposeless walking (and thinking) in a city
------
themanr
I feel very lucky to live very close to a promenade - a space designed for
taking a nice little walk by the sea. As others have said, walking is very
helpful for problem solving and creativity.
------
dugmartin
If you really want to learn to appreciate slow walks go with a couple of young
kids. My wife and go walking most nights after dinner with our two daughters.
We call them Zen Walks.
------
Qz
I went for a walk today. The fact that my car was in the shop being repaired
had absolutely nothing to do with this. Nothing. I swear. I should go check
out my new tires.
------
karlzt
“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
------
adnam
Or: how to be patronizing.
------
karlzt
why walk in the street? I walk in my house everyday, it's save and I can walk
naked.
------
jasonwilk
Walk hacks. Definitely a first.
~~~
whimsy
I don't understand this obsessions with calling things "hacks."
This isn't a hack. It's an activity. I can't think of any conceivable
definition of "hack" that this article would also fit.
~~~
rdtsc
It's a hack because it is an unusual or counter-intuitive way of solving a
problem. Or meta-solve a problem -- recharge your mental batteries so when you
get back you solve your real problem better, if you wish.
This is just as much a hack as articles about exercise or nutrition are a
hack. They hack the hackers, who ... hack.
~~~
qwzybug
Yes, and that's why it's dumb to call articles about exercise and nutrition
"hacks". When all of human endeavor falls under the rubric of the "hack" the
word ceases to mean anything.
Hack your commute, take public transit! Hack your next dinner party with
parlour games. Delightfully clever key hack keeps all your keys on the same
ring. Hack Mexican food with a "burrito" sized tortilla! Hack your brain with
REM sleep. Hack the sun with a straw hat. Hack hygiene with silver oxide
"deodorant". Hack girls with compliments. Hack your windowsill with a pot of
wheatgrass, and hack the sky with the goddamn moon.
It's stupid. Take a walk.
~~~
brosephius
to be fair, programmers overuse the word too. nobody writes code or programs,
everyone says "I'm an XYZ hacker" or "I hack on XYZ". the word means nothing,
it's just trendy in an odd sort of way.
~~~
nickdjones
You need to make new friends.
~~~
brosephius
not sure what you're referring to, but if you're suggesting my programmer
friends all say "I hack this/that" I should clarify that I'm mostly referring
to bloggers and other web presences, which admittedly isn't really a
representative sample. but, putting that aside, I could use some new friends
anyway.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Jeong Kwan, the Philosopher Chef - nether
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/t-magazine/jeong-kwan-the-philosopher-chef.html
======
justifier
a beautiful piece
the major takeaway for me:
If you wander the grounds of the monastery,
it becomes clear that Jeong Kwan has another rare
ingredient in her larder, one that rarely comes up
in discussions about the latest hot chef: time.
universal application
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Netflix introduces Lemur: x.509 certificate orchestration (2015) - Padrio
https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/introducing-lemur-ceae8830f621
======
madjam002
I had a look at Lemur a couple of months ago for certificate orchestration,
but settled on Hashicorp Vault as it has a more solid API and seems more
active community-wise. It's fantastic for managing a PKI with an external
(offline) Root Certificate Authority.
~~~
packetized
To be fair, Vault and Lemur cover slightly different use cases. Lemur is nice
for controlling the distribution of certs from a variety of issuers, including
Vault.
~~~
gcb0
> let's create something that can control the settings for our component that
> control the setting for other components.
~~~
packetized
User-operated self-service for certificate issuance isn't exactly a cut and
dried proposition for most orgs. Lemur helps in a lot of ways.
~~~
gcb0
I know, but now, what controls credentials and instance bootstraping for that?
it will always be the "not invented here" type of deal. you can always add
something else to bootstrap it further. I can't think of a use case where
lemur/athenz/other x509 brokers adds real value (or convenience) versus a well
defined process and bare bones things like etcd and such.
Thinking you can bypass the well defined process step is just an illusion.
what most CTOs do is offload that to the few devops handling their
abstraction. when that team grows too much, add another layer on top with a
smaller team.
------
packetized
Could we add a (2015) tag here? Lemur’s been around for quite a while.
~~~
PantaloonFlames
It’s in the title, fwiw.
~~~
lccarrasco
It probably wasn't when the OP posted it.
------
crusso
Typo in the title. Should be "Netflix"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Fabchannel - The Reasons Why We Stopped - danw
http://www.fabchannel.com/
======
jfornear
As a longtime user of Fabchannel, I'm disappointed by all this. The future
looks bleak for labels unwilling to embrace what their real customers, music
fans, want. Instead of turning to fear and taking defensive measures, they
should be taking advantage of the changing times.
Related: <http://muxtape.com/story>
------
JacobAldridge
Nice, well-thought out communication about why the business stopped (albeit
poorly laid out). Also a great example of pg's comment that for startups _"If
you can just avoid dying, you get rich."_ [1]
It's always a shame to see a business you know _could_ work ultimately
discover that they can't. Without knowing much more than what this blog
covers, I can imagine this is a business model that will work at some point.
My best guess about the difference between that future, successful site and
Fabchannel is that the next site will come from much closer to the major
labels - leveraging solid relationships into an acceptable product, instead of
creating a solid product but not being successful at generating the required
volume of relationships needed to make it viable.
[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Arsenic DNA paper exposes flaws in peer review - ilamont
http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439#sthash.y6DGan5d.dpuf
======
rubidium
``we need to get past the antiquated idea that the singular act of publication
– or publication in a particular journal – should signal for all eternity that
a paper is valid, let alone important''
Most scientists I know (physics) don't have this idea. They know publication
is just a step. Most grad students learn at some point that just because it's
published doesn't mean it's correct.
Publication is a checkpoint, not a finish line, for any theory or experimental
result.
~~~
jofer
Very true, but he does go on to state:
> If we had, instead, a system where the review process was transparent and
> persisted for the useful life of a work
That is a very interesting idea. (Reviews are currently confidential and
usually anonymous -- only the author and editor sees the reviews, and only the
editor knows who wrote them.)
Not only would this reduce blatantly petty reviews, it would also give some
recognition to the work that goes into reviewing a paper. It's currently an
important but very thankless job. It's considered polite to acknowledge
reviewers at the end of the paper (even if they remain anonymous), but it's
often not done.
~~~
arjunnarayan
I'm going to respond to this in the context of academic computer science
(which works off conferences), in particular, the systems subfield. YMMV if
you extrapolate this to non-CS science and journals, so take this with a grain
of salt.
The bottom line is I, as a powerless grad student, am _very_ comfortable with
the level of reviewing competence I have witnessed (and been a part of).
The proposal to deanonymize reviews has a huge flaw: Namely, there's no way I
(as a grad student with no political power) will write a critical review of
somebody famous if I know I won't remain anonymous.
The risk of blowback is too damn high. (And given the small pool, writing
style would probably be sufficient to deanonymize, if my entire trail of
reviews were public). There's no way I have the balls to write a critical
review of a paper by, say, Robert Morris or Larry Peterson, for some
prestigious venue such as SOSP, when I'm asked to write a review. Unless I
know for sure that there's absolutely no risk whatsoever of being identified.
Look. Reviewing is thankless and hard. Anonymity exists so that we can be
critical and not risk career suicide. Last year at OSDI I received 9 reviews,
and they were all exemplarily thoughtful, even the obligatory "strong reject"
one of them. The problem of "petty reviews" _has_ a solution: The program
committee is self policing, and the reviews are not anonymous within the PC.
(For example, at SOSP this year, there are 28 PC members.) You know that most
of your reviews come from this gang of 28. You might have one or two
externally solicited experts in addition, but that too is not anonymous _to
the PC members_. If there's a culture of meanness, the PC members and PC
chairs can fix this by internal policing (and they do).
~~~
jkimmel
Your point regarding anonymity is highly valid, and I appreciate that you
bring it up. There is actually a concept I'm rather fond of that seeks to
address this, usually referred to as peer-reviewed peer review [1].
Essentially, anonymous experts review publications in much the manner they do
now, with no risk of their identities being revealed. A _separate_ set of
review-reviewers then rates the publication-reviewers themselves, scoring them
on a standardized quantitative scale (1-10) based on the validity of their
claims and the depth of their assessment. In this manner, experts collect an
"aggregate reviewer rating" of sorts analogous to an h-index [2], call it an
R-index.
This R-index can then serve to select accurate reviewers for future
publications. A high R-index could also be included as a positive bullet point
on a CV, providing some reward for reviewers to put a high degree of effort
into their otherwise unrewarded reviewing work.
A few potential flaws are evident: what is one to do if early reviews are
scored poorly, and you are no longer able to provide new reviews to increase
your R-index? A grace period before scoring could potentially remedy this, ie)
an R-index is not assigned until a reviewer has written >10 reviews.
[1] -
[http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.338...](http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00020/full)
[2] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index)
~~~
arjunnarayan
I like the R-index idea. It's basically Slashdot's meta-moderation system? I
always thought that had some promise. However, it does add even more _work_ to
a system that is extremely stressed (writing reviews is so much work! Imagine
having to read papers, read reviews and then review the review on top of
that!)
But basically existing program committees (in computer science) do serve that
meta-moderation purpose (without the empirical R-index metric). The entire PC
does get to see the deanonymized reviews of the other program committee
members. If someone's just being an unhelpful jerk, they're probably not going
to get invited back in the future.
------
suprgeek
This post takes the lead-in with the Felisa Wolfe-Simon "Arsenic DNA" paper.
In recent times I remember this was one of the most Hyped-up papers something
akin to the Cold fusion paper by Fleischmann and Pons.
The contrast in the public response to the two incidents is fascinating. While
Cold-fusion became a career-ender for anybody associated with it and
Fleischmann & Pons both suffered pretty much banishment, repeated experiments
have shown that there is something funny going on with that particular mix of
compounds (Heavy water, Palladium, Nickel etc) - excess heat.
With arsenic life however, follow-up experiments have proven that it was
contamination that was a cause of the result. So there is NO ARSENIC based
life. Yet the lead authors of pretty much a gigantic false claim -orchestrated
shamelessly by NASA- seem to be doing pretty well, dodging the basic questions
with that most famous catch-all - more work is needed (hence more money should
be sent my way) to prove the (bogus) claims made.
~~~
ars
> excess heat
There is no excess heat, it's measurement error caused by miscalculating how
much hydrogen recombines in the cell.
If you build a calorimeter that recombines all hydrogen you find no excess
(but it's really hard to do accurately).
~~~
leephillips
And, even more tellingly, there are no fusion neutrons emitted.
~~~
maaku
That's not very telling when what they were claiming was aneutronic fusion.
~~~
leephillips
The Pons / Fleischmann claims about their "cold fusion" experiment had nothing
to do with aneutronic fusion. In fact, the definitive debunking of their
claims consisted in the failure of other labs, and of P & F themselves, to
detect fusion byproducts, including the expected neutrons:
[http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050399s...](http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050399sci-
cold-fusion.html)
------
dekhn
His title is a red herring. he admits later he didn't actually do this. His
point is actually a rebuttal to John Bohannon's submission of a fake article
to public/open journals, demonstrating the Science Magazine also makes the
same poor errors in review as the open journals.
~~~
klmr
His title is the _hook_ , not the catch. So it can’t be a red herring.
~~~
dekhn
I actually knew that when I wrote that, somebody was gonna call me on it.
------
tgb
Warning! This title is a total lie! I know it's a lie done intentionally and
calculatingly, but most of the time most people don't read past the title and
will assume that it's true. I really think this needs to be edited! Even if it
'spoils' the article. Please do this, whoever can!
At the time of writing the posted title here is the same as the article title:
"I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at
subscription based journals"
------
eli
If you want to talk about honesty and integrity in publishing, you shouldn't
give your blog post a blatantly misleading linkbait title.
~~~
donohoe
True - but to make a very valid point about the state of peer review in
science journals it is perfect.
~~~
eli
You needed a demonstration to see that people can easily mislead each other on
the internet with bogus headlines?
~~~
donohoe
No, I was disagreeing with you that the post was about "honesty and integrity
in publishing".
------
badman_ting
The Last Psychiatrist talks in his/her blog sometimes about what a joke peer
review is. Here is one entry:
[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/wakefield_and_the_aut...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/wakefield_and_the_autism_fraud.html)
~~~
judk
LP is so sarcastic and snarly that it is difficult to understand what they are
trying to say. Not an effective tone in an article about the problems of
misinformation.
------
justncase80
There should be an "Open Source" science journal. Where anyone can submit a
paper and anyone can peer review or freely read said articles. User accounts
could have a vetting process to verify their real world credentials and the
articles they review would be weighted accordingly. Funding by donations and
for-pay apis to do advanced searches perhaps? How awesome would it be to be
able to freely read a repository of this kind of information? And to also be
able to accurately say what is or isn't the current "scientific concensus".
I feel like this shouldn't be too difficult to make.
~~~
robotresearcher
[http://www.plosone.org/](http://www.plosone.org/)
PLOS ONE is this. It is well respected already. The initial invited reviews
are mainly a junk filter to establish baseline methodological quality and NOT
to evaluate significance.
From their "About us" page:
"Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to
determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance' required
by a given journal, PLOS ONE uses peer review to determine whether a paper is
technically sound and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record.
Once the work is published in PLOS ONE, the broader community is then able to
discuss and evaluate the significance of the article (through the number of
citations it attracts; the downloads it achieves; the media and blog coverage
it receives; and the post-publication Notes, Comments and Ratings that it
receives on PLOS ONE etc)."
~~~
jamesjporter
I'll just mention for those unaware that the author of the post is one of the
founders of PLOS, which is an umbrella organization under which a number of
journals (including PLOS ONE) are published.
------
IgorPartola
Here is a real case of this happening:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)
~~~
housel
The point of the Sokal affair seems to lean more towards proving that
postmodern cultural studies as a field is lacking in substance than to
demonstrating the ineffectiveness of peer review in general.
~~~
primelens
What bugs me about the Sokal affair is the implication that they didn't catch
a bad review process but proved an entire discipline to be a sham (a
discipline which they understood relatively little of to begin with).
So, when you get junk accepted in a humanities journal, its because the field
is about bullshitting anyway - when you get junk into a science journal it's a
hitch with the review process?
~~~
lmm
Was the Sokal paper published with inadequate review? Or was it passed by
experts in the field?
~~~
magicalist
All it takes is reading the wikipedia article...
But yes it was and no it didn't. That's always bugged me about the Sokal
affair and people holding it up as an example of anything. While the editors
did publish the paper, which is a basic problem in and of itself, they _claim_
they wanted big revisions that Sokal refused to make, but then they published
it anyway. Since the whole point of that journal at the time was to get wide-
ranging viewpoints, I think there is some merit in the editor's claim of a
simple betrayal of trust: they assumed Sokal was being straightforward, and
the worst that would come of publishing his piece would be a bunch of letters
telling him to stick to his day job. In any case, I don't know if we'll ever a
definitive story of what really happened, how carefully they vetted the paper,
etc.
Regardless, the journal he submitted the paper to was not peer reviewed, so
the whole thing demonstrates nothing about the peer review process.
------
utopkara
The problem is not the opaque peer review system.
Instead of making the reviews transparent, some journals solicit notes from
other researchers to discuss the published articles. It is an ethical
responsibility to publish notes which criticize previously published articles,
regardless of how painful it is for the publisher to publish them.
e.g.
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6069/665.summary](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6069/665.summary)
Reading an article that falsifies claims of another article is pure scientific
joy. And such articles are not uncommon at all!
The problem is, as pointed out in the beginning of the paragraph "we need to
get past the antiquated idea that the singular act of publication – or
publication in a particular journal – should signal for all eternity that a
paper is valid, let alone important".
------
mwc
In legal practice, decisions are tested on appeal or by subsequent tribunals.
While this process is currently conducted by paid-for editorial teams, most
practitioners rely on citation tools which for any judgment provide links
through to subsequent decisions which have, for example, "approved",
"considered", "distinguished" (as in disapplied due to different facts, but
this can have the practical effect of confining an earlier decision to its
particular facts) or "overturned" that decision.
Although Google Scholar seems to provide some authority measure through the
"cited by" tool, I've often wondered why academia (or perhaps I've just missed
it) hasn't developed a comparable "precedent" system for research.
------
zokier
> Any scientist can quickly point to dozens of papers – including, and perhaps
> especially, in high impact journals – that are deeply, deeply flawed – the
> arsenic DNA story is one of many recent examples
Dozens of flawed papers out of how many total papers? Numbers are meaningless
without a context.
------
joshlegs
peer-review scientific analysis has been an issue for some time if you ask me.
As the guy points out, all you have to do is find a few people already
receptive to your idea. I'm not really sure why "peer-review" is so lofty a
concept anyway.
~~~
jpmattia
> _I 'm not really sure why "peer-review" is so lofty a concept anyway._
I agree. Will someone tell pg to turn off the upvotes?
------
jvdh
There are 250+ journals that have cancer growth as part of their field? That
shows you the problem right there.
There is absolutely no way that a researcher in that field can keep up with
publications in all of those journals.
------
unreal37
Hey Michael Eisen, we get it. You don't like the peer review journal process
and having to pay for access to scientific research. If you don't like it,
make a better system.
Also -1 for having the worst form of linkbaity title, which is one that is
utterly false and misleading, and lying for the first two paragraphs of that
blog post.
~~~
tedsanders
To me, the title was obviously satire from the moment I read it.
Also, he did make a better system. He co-founded the Public Library of Science
(PLOS).
~~~
judk
Does PLOS protect against false claims somehow?
------
lutusp
Quote: "So I created a manuscript that claimed something extraordinary - that
I’d discovered a bacteria that uses arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorous
[sic]."
This tongue-in-cheek piece would be more plausible if the author could spell
"phosphorus".
~~~
piyush_soni
Really, get away from your computer screen for a while. Get a passport, visit
places. Know about the rest of the world, what they wear, what they eat, how
they talk, _how they write_.
~~~
judk
Where do they write "phosphorous"? They don't indiscriminately sprinkle 'u'
after every 'o'. That would be "phosphourous".
~~~
DanBC
phousphourous?
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Phosphorous#Spelling_and_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Phosphorous#Spelling_and_etymology))
> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the correct spelling of the
> element is phosphorus. The word phosphorous is the adjectival form of the
> P3+ valence: so, just as sulfur forms sulfurous and sulfuric compounds,
> phosphorus forms phosphorous compounds (e.g., phosphorous acid) and P5+
> valence phosphoric compounds (e.g., phosphoric acids and phosphates).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Troubleshooting Java Applications – Sun Microsystems shows the way - girishgupta
http://www.sercononline.com/suntechdays09/
In the upcoming Sun Microsystems conference named “Sun Tech Days” to be held on February 18-20 at HICC Hyderabad, there is a full session dedicated to how different tools can be used for trouble shooting different kind of problems encountered in Java application development. This will be demonstrated by using case studies.<p>The tools which will be discussed are VisualVM, JConole, JDK commandlines like jinfo, jps, jstack, jmap, and jhat.
======
macmac
Please don't post blatant advertising.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Juggernaut – Experimental Neural Network in Rust - afshinmeh
http://juggernaut.rs/
======
amelius
I'm a bit confused. How useful is this if:
\- Rust cannot compile to the GPU
\- Neural network programs are usually not large and therefore do not need the
type safety that Rust offers
\- All cool neural network research is done on Keras/Tensorflow, so developing
on that platform gives access to new algorithms automatically
\- Scripting in Python is virtually at least as fast as anything else because
you can use Tensorflow which uses the GPU
~~~
hobofan
> All cool neural network research is done on Keras/Tensorflow, so developing
> on that platform gives access to new algorithms automatically
I disagree with that assessment. The implementations that come with research
are rarely of a quality that they can just be picked up and used. Yes, the
community is bigger with Python frameworks, which gives you quicker access to
the new stuff, but the effort is about the same as writing a new
implementation in another language.
~~~
danieldk
_which gives you quicker access to the new stuff, but the effort is about the
same as writing a new implementation in another language_
Not really. You can just serialize a Tensorflow graph, freeze the variables as
constants, and then load and run the graph using Tensorflow's small and
convenient C API. There are bindings to the C API for multiple languages (e.g.
Rust and Go).
This is how I use neural networks in my Rust (and formerly Go) programs: I
just build and train the graph in Python and then use it in Rust.
Newer versions of Tensorflow also have the XLA compiler, which compiles a
graph to executable code that you can link directly into an application. I
haven't tried this approach yet, since the C API serves me well, but it looks
promising.
------
yorwba
I'm confused by several of the API choices in the example. Why is the training
set part of the network? I would have expected it to be a parameter to the
train() function. Same for the activation function, shouldn't this be a
property of the layer rather than fixed for the network as a whole?
I get that this is just in the early stages and more for learning than
anything else, but it doesn't seem very well thought-out IMO.
~~~
afshinmeh
Thanks for your suggestions, yorwba. I do see what you mean about the API and
I will work on this.
For now, if you want to train a model, you need to pass data to the NN struct
not train method but as you mentioned, probably it is better to pass it to the
train method.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for your comment!
------
blahman2
Keep going! I really like being able to follow projects that start small, as
opposed to 'here is my 10000 line toy project.
That being said, you will probably get some flak, probably because of the
insane amounts of rust evangelism people on hn have had to deal with
------
bmh100
What is your goal in writing this project?
------
shadowmint
There's nothing to see here.
Trivial NN implementations are a dime a dozen, and this one is no different.
It's just a partial work in progress; it's not a 'Show HN'; it's just a few
hundred lines of toy code.
...and that's the same feedback it got on /r/rust last week.
I don't see why it's turned up here now.
(Just as a baseline, at this point, if you can't use your NN implementation to
_at least_ do a basic classifier on MNIST, its probably not worth showing
people)
~~~
overcast
Basically because it's ticked off all the buzzword bingo that works on HN.
Unfortunately that's how it goes to front page.
~~~
afshinmeh
No not really no! I'm trying to gather some information and feedbacks about my
project. I don't care (at this stage of the project) to be on the first page
of HN or not, as long as I have some good feedbacks to improve it. Thanks
anyway!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Non-Euclidean Virtual Reality - ArtWomb
https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00513
======
ArtWomb
Code: [https://github.com/henryseg/non-
euclidean_VR](https://github.com/henryseg/non-euclidean_VR)
Web:
[http://www.3-dimensional.space/nil.html](http://www.3-dimensional.space/nil.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OpenOffice 3.0–How to Get it Early, Including for the Mac - sant0sk1
http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/10/10/openoffice-30-how-to-get-it-early-including-for-the-mac/
======
thomasmallen
Congrats to the OOo guys on providing a native Mac port! This is a step in the
right direction.
However, this is a feeble effort compared to the far superior NeoOffice port.
Slow, ugly; it looks like it was thrown together very quickly. I 'm crossing
my fingers that at some point OpenOffice treats the Mac platform as a first-
class citizen. Until then, I'll stick with NeoOffice.
~~~
netcan
I'm quite happy with NeoOffice, personally.
------
Alex3917
Well, at least including x86 macs...
This is the first time that the killer apps that would make me want to buy a
new computer are all open source. The new open office, the new gimp, etc.
~~~
schizoidboy
I'm a bit naïve about Macs... Can someone explain to me why many open source
programs need to be "ported" to a Mac? Isn't it just a make -> make install?
~~~
smanek
Usually that does work but there are a few issues.
First of all, since there is no package management to speak of, you often run
into dependency hell (A requires B requires C requires D ...). Thankfully, we
have macports (think of it like a limited version of apt) to get around most
of those problems.
The real issue, for graphical apps at least, is that X11 apps don't look and
feel like native Mac apps which run on Quartz (correct me if I'm mistaken).
------
tdavis
Or just download the perfectly capable RC3 from openoffice.org and wait a few
days...
~~~
kylec
They're actually on RC4 now:
<http://download.openoffice.org/680/>
~~~
tdavis
Point and Match, sir!
------
charlesju
docs.google.com!!!
But in all seriousness, Open Office is such an awesome product, I just hope
3.0 works well on the Mac.
~~~
unexpected
OpenOffice.org is a great product, but it's never going to be taken seriously
mainstream with a name like "openoffice.org"
~~~
nailer
In much the same way Microsoft Office 2007 is just called Office 2007,
OpenOffice.org is just called OpenOffice by regular folks.
------
newt0311
Umm... LaTeX >>> WYSIWYG document editors.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017) - propman
https://oceana.org/blog/seaweed-could-be-scrubbing-way-more-carbon-atmosphere-we-expected
======
ariehkovler
Really interesting. Makes me think of Daisyworld and the Gaia Hypothesis.
Daisyworld is a model Earth covered in black and white daisies, that either
absorb or reflect light. In the model, black daisies need less light because
they absorb more, increasing the Earth's heat absorption. White daisies absorb
less so need more light, but also reflect more light back, increasing the
surface albedo of the planet and lowering its ambient temperature.
Because of this, there's a feedback loop were even if the sun gets a little
hotter or colder, the successful daisy would spread and either warm or cool
the Earth in response, effectively acting as a stabilizer. Gaia theory
suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems.
Anyone who ever played SimEarth in the 90s, it was based on this theory and
even had a Daisyworld simulation built in.
In this case, the paper is suggesting that seaweed grows much faster in
response to raised CO2, and then sequesters some of that carbon underwater.
One question I have is how sequestered the undersea carbon really is and
whether it will have other, unknown effects on the deep see ecosystem.
~~~
matt42
>> Gaia theory suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems.
Earth may have tricks to save its ecosystem, one of them could be temporarily
increase temperatures and sea levels, just enough to end humanity.
~~~
samfriedman
Something I think of often when people say things like "we need to stop
climate change and save the world!" The world will be fine, it's not going
anywhere: humans and the species we like on the other hand...
~~~
older
Are you George Carlin?
~~~
samfriedman
Ah, yes, that's where I first heard that thought! Thanks, just a bit of
cryptomnesia.
[https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4?t=144](https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4?t=144)
Side note: something I've never seen before on that Youtube video: it links
the Wikipedia page for climate change right under the video. An attempt to
battle misleading videos perhaps?
~~~
rement
The Wikipedia links are a new initiative Google is doing to combat fake news
and misleading information [0].
0: [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-
news-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-news-
experience-on.html)
------
s_dev
Also relevant: Feeding dairy cows seaweed mitigates the amount of methane they
pass. Irish famers are beginning to do this because seaweed is easy to come by
in Ireland.
[https://phys.org/news/2018-05-seaweed-relieve-gassy-cows-
dai...](https://phys.org/news/2018-05-seaweed-relieve-gassy-cows-dairy.html)
~~~
nickkell
Hackernews loves these articles that give some kind of hope for a magical
solution to climate change. It's easier than the thought that it will require
a huge concerted effort across the world and changing the habits of millions
~~~
LeifCarrotson
It's not individuals exercising bad habits that causes climate change. It's
the fact that the current political, economic, and ecological landscape
incentivizes behaviors that cause climate change.
The deterrent of trying to give people a guilt trip for driving in a hurry or
for eating beef is not sufficient to counteract the tremendous tragedy of the
commons that makes those behaviors happen. Regulations that associate
financial costs with the ecological costs that people and businesses are
currently free to ignore are the answer, along with technologies that use
those funds to reverse the needs that remain.
Get your priorities straight: When the half gallon used while people brush
their teeth is the most important waste of water, then address it! But when
the farm down the road pays next to nothing to pour out three feet of water on
its entire land area, any expenditure on toothbrushing habits is wasteful.
~~~
atourgates
I'd even say that the focus on personal responsibility for climate change is
creating unnecessary resistance.
I live in a conservative area, and I've been trying to be more proactive about
trying to understand the viewpoints that cause people to be skeptical of
things like climate change.
I recently had a conversation with someone who was skeptical of climate change
- but had an education with a scientific background and the tools that should
help him land on the side of clear science.
What it came down to is that he feels personally attacked by many of the
personal recommendations for reducing CO2 emissions.
For example, when someone says that we need stricter emissions regulations for
vehicles, what he hears is "you're a bad person for driving your old truck."
In reality, if we could get people like him to emissions regulations for new
vehicles and stop guilting them about driving classic cars, we'd be doing
great things for the planet.
My impression is that there's a significant number of people who aren't
opposed to the actual large scale changes that would make the biggest positive
difference in the fight against climate change, but are put off by the "only
you can stop climate change by switching your gas lawnmower to electric" style
rhetoric that does more damage than good.
------
caseymarquis
Most of what I've read lately seems to indicate climate change can't be
mitigated through societal restraint at this point. I think we need to
seriously approach an engineered solution akin to terraforming. I'd love to
know what efforts are being made in this direction.
~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
>we need to seriously approach an engineered solution
We haven't tried the political solution yet. Since limiting carbon emissions
is the cheapest and easiest solution to climate change, it would be a good
start to have politicans serve the people's interest instead of the fossil
fuel ones, don't you think?
~~~
0xffff2
What are the people's interests here? Selfishly, I happen to like driving my
car. Cheap gasoline is in my interest. What needs to be served to tackle
climate change politically is the global greater good. We don't have a great
track record with global anything in politics, nor do we have a great track
record on serving the greater good, so I don't like those odds.
~~~
dwaltrip
What do you care about more, cheap gas or the types of lives your
grandchildren or great grandchildren will be living?
Regulations solved the ozone issue, leaded gasoline, etc. It has also failed
many times. It's tricky, I get it. But it can be possible to create effective
regulations. Sometimes situations demand we try -- this looks like one to me.
------
beerlord
Can we bio-engineer seaweed which doesn't decompose and can't be eaten?
Its not a joke - these were the circumstances of early Earth, before microbes
evolved to digest lignin and cellulose. Trees would fall and not decompose,
eventually being compressed into coal.
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01/07/the-
fantastically-strange-origin-of-most-coal-on-earth/)
~~~
hawkice
It would probably be dangerous to engineer an organism that doesn't break
down. Imagine a living, growing plastic. Except not a Dr. Who villain.
~~~
beerlord
Well presumably we could still collect, dry and burn what accumulates on the
shore, and the rest would fall to the seabed. If the alternative is a hothouse
Earth, with large sections of the planet rendered uninhabitable,
geoengineering schemes like this are going to be necessary. We can start with
iron fertilisation experiments - Australia has a lot of it, and is near
oceans.
~~~
cimmanom
Wouldn’t burning it defeat the carbon sequestration purpose?
~~~
NinjaViking
That would be a desperate attempt to reverse a runaway process, if it turns
out to be too successful.
------
akuji1993
Stupid question incoming. Does it really help us to trap even more CO2 under
the surface? If something exposes that CO2 again, it will be back up in the
atmosphere right? So it feels like this would be a "solution" like storing
used uranium underground in lead containers - eventually it will become a
problem. Or am I completely wrong here?
~~~
ianai
I don’t think it can truly use seaweed to sequester carbon unless we harvest
the seaweed and entomb it underground - but it has to be somewhere the
decomposition won’t leak carbon into the atmosphere.
~~~
plufz
The (early) findings of the study is that is sequestered from leaking into the
atmosphere. From the article: "The study estimated that about 11 percent of
total seaweed production may be sequestered, most of it after it sinks down
into the deep sea."
------
pvaldes
There is a lot of the word "seaweed" repeated in the article, but they are
talking about brown macroalgae. A group comprising a few families inside the
huge diversity of extant algae.
Pointing this can seem pedantic, but the detail is important. Brown macroalgae
evolved to live in cold waters. In the limit of their distribution you raise
the minimum water temperature two degrees and the plant is unable to reproduce
anymore. As they have short lives, at 25 celsius degrees they went locally
extinct very fast. Is their kryptonite.
Moreover, they are adapted to live in a permanent state of guerrilla quiting
warm areas on years with "The Niño" event, and massively recolonizing the area
in the next year. This is the reason for their famous superfast growth.
In extensive areas of the south of Europe, entire submarine forests of the
"european Kelp" Laminaria and Saccorhiza (comprising a huge biomass) went in
an accelerate decay and are totally gone in the last few decades. They can't
return because the local average temperature raised a few degrees in the
coastal areas. We need to keep this in mind if we count in this creatures to
store our excess of carbon.
------
sn41
Didn't Freeman Dyson talk about this idea?
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/the-
dan...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/the-danger-of-
cosmic-genius/308306/)
~~~
annadane
I believe in climate change (and Dyson does too, he just doesn't like the
alarmism) but Dyson is a very interesting person and clearly should be taken
seriously.
------
raverbashing
At least one good news
Maybe we should look into farming seaweed (and other algae)
~~~
Shoh3pif
From the article:
_> All in all, super-powered seaweeds could sequester around 173 million
metric tons (190 million tons) of carbon each year, about as much as the
annual emissions of the state of New York._
It's not that much in comparison to the emissions of the entire industrialized
world.
Every bit helps of course, but it's not a magical solution to our problems.
~~~
DennisP
That's how much is happening naturally, with a low percentage of seaweed
sinking to the depths. Large-scale farming operations could do a lot more.
~~~
Shoh3pif
Intensive farming only happens when the material is used in a profitable way.
Growing things only to dump them in the oceans is only profitable with
subsidies or carbon taxes.
Extensive farming would likely have the natural rate of sequestration.
------
andy_ppp
Make me wonder if we could grow seaweed and turn it into oil...
~~~
bacon_waffle
Not seaweed exactly, but some algae produces a significant amount of oil:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel)
------
wj
Does this mean that, like barbecue, it should be eaten in moderation because
of cancer risks?
~~~
EamonnMR
Unlikely. The carcinigens you worry about in barbecue are compounds formed in
the extreme heat of cooking by that method, not formed inside living
organisms.
------
wallace_f
By contrast reddit's front page is trending a Vice article with the opposite
sentiment
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization - mikece
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/18/gaming-disorder-is-officially-recognized-by-the-world-health-organization/
======
mattlondon
This is made worse in my mind for games that are essentially single-player yet
have some sort of online element that means you cant just hit pause or save &
exit whenever you want. You have to keep on going for longer than you want
until it is "safe" for you to stop.
In the old days you could just exit out to the pause menu or save so you could
go to the toilet or answer the phone or talk to your family and your in-game
activities were safe. You could pick and chose when and how you wanted to
play.
Now you _cant stop_ when you want, because if you do you'll just be left
"idle" in-game. This means that you're prey for other players or NPCs in game,
and you risk losing your character's progress and you're back to the start
(sometimes there is a significant time-investment to this progress so
understandably you dont want to risk it). You can only stop when you get to
some sort of safe-place in-game, which means you have to play longer than you
want to.
So you get situations like where if I am playing a game and my wife asks me to
come and see something or make a cup of tea or something, I have to ask her to
wait until it is "safe" for me to stop. I feel like I am prioritising the game
over my wife (and I guess I am to an extent).
I dont like this.
I really wish games would allow you to just quit whenever you want without
risking your in-game progress.
~~~
OberstKrueger
Do you have any examples of games like this? I know there are singleplayer
games that require you to be online even when playing solo(i.e. Diablo 3), but
when you're solo, you can still pause the game. Curious to know what
developers don't allow such actions.
~~~
Drakim
Only ones I can think of is Dark Souls and Resident Evil 6, as other players
can invade your single-player game to try to kill you.
~~~
slazaro
How is it a single-player game then? I think I'm out of touch with newer
games...
~~~
mattlondon
They're single-player in that you play on your own, but you play on your own
with a lot of other people playing on their own. So you could be on a server
doing your own thing, and if you see another character whilst playing, that
could be a human person doing their own thing, or it could be a NPC doing
their own thing (but with the option of interacting with other human players -
chat/trade/fighting etc)
It is essentially a single-player experience but on a shared playing area.
If that makes sense!
Its kinda cool, but this forced you-can-only-quit-when-we-say-so thing is not
cool. Why you cant just safely despawn when you pause or exit I don't know. I
guess it is there for "realism"
~~~
ericdykstra
Let's say your in a game with PVP, are you saying you should just be able to
"safely despawn" to avoid a fight that you think you're going to lose?
Just because you personally have a problem with the way some games work
doesn't mean every single game designer needs to shape their programs to your
preference. If you don't like it, play a different game.
~~~
noxToken
> If you don't like it, play a different game.
It's not that I hate it or the developers for implementing the mechanic. It's
that it's not always conducive to a person in a relationship or with children.
You can always dismiss the person as the problem by telling them to play
something else, but clearly those people don't want to play something else.
We understand why (in some cases) you can't just quit at any time. Like you
said, that means someone can avoid a PvP fight or a lopsided ranked match by
disconnecting without repercussion. It sucks sometimes when you can't help but
disconnect at the drop of a hat, and I don't necessarily think that those
types of mechanics are the fault of the developers.
For example, I was playing a ranked match when my partner fell ill. They were
making it fine for a while, but I was asking if we should go to urgent care.
They flip-flopped multiple times on going over the course of 10 minutes. Then
I plainly asked, "Do you definitely think that you need to go? I don't mind
disconnecting to take care of you, but if I do and you decline, I'll get
penalized for no reason." It makes sense that I would incur a penalty for
dropping the match, but it still sucks.
The point is that if the developing company can find a way for quick
disconnect that doesn't interrupt the spirit of gameplay, it would be a boon
for a lot of players. I know that competitive/ranked modes are pretty much off
limits for me during most of my play time, but that doesn't mean that I don't
want to play against people who are trying their best.
------
keerthiko
> 2\. Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes
> precedence over other life interests and daily activities
This needs to be further qualified, such as by "over extended periods of
time". If you spend a weekend prioritizing gaming over other life
interests/activities, it's no different than having a crunch week at work and
prioritizing work over life interests/activities, neither of which should be
considered a disorder.
Edit: This is shoddy reporting on TechCrunch's part, the official WHO ICD
listing [0] qualifies it thus:
> The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant
> impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other
> important areas of functioning [...] The gaming behaviour and other features
> are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a
> diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if
> all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.
[0]:
[https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/e...](https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/1448597234)
~~~
widowlark
"For a diagnosis to be made, the negative pattern of behavior must last at
least 12 months: "It cannot be just an episode of few hours or few days,"
Poznyak said. However, exceptions can be made when the other criteria are met
and symptoms are severe enough."
[https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/health/video-game-disorder-
wh...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/health/video-game-disorder-
who/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29)
~~~
keerthiko
Yep, see edit on my post.
------
Rotdhizon
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people
can see it. Here is my own experience with this.
As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical
condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid
teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college
now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't get enough sleep
because I can't stop playing. As soon as I come home I am on, and I won't get
off until the early hours of the morning. It's a mixture of reasons why I
guess; it keeps my mind off of reality, I enjoy the satisfaction of winning
frequently, and it fulfills my desire of being in a progression based system.
Achievements, knowing that my actions will eventually unlock achievements and
level-ups, it keeps me going. I can't play games that don't have progression
systems of some sort because I feel like without progression, it's a waste of
time. Sure you can kind of get that in the real world, but it's harder and
takes so much longer. Why do that when I have an easy alternative sitting on
my desk? I really want to break my addiction to gaming as it really does
affect some parts of my life, especially academic.
~~~
ericdykstra
Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for
progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit.
Games can be a fantastic story-telling medium, a competitive environment where
you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents, a lot of
pure fun, or a way to spend time playing cooperatively with friends. All of
these can be worthwhile activities in different ways.
Grinding mindlessly to make some numbers go up is not worthwhile at all.
Playing a game just for the progression that you wouldn't play otherwise is a
sign of addiction and can have a substantial negative impact on your life. I
love games, but some self-awareness about what they are actually doing for you
goes a long way to making them a part of a healthy, productive life rather
than something that destroys it.
~~~
naravara
>Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for
progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit.
That might be clear for you, but it's not for everyone. The way the OP
describes his motivation for gaming sounds extremely similar to people with
gambling addictions.
Self-awareness isn't enough for everyone. Some people are just wired to
respond to that dopamine hit from progression systems in an especially strong,
self-reinforcing way. They need more help and one of the first steps to that
is endorsing more ethical game design that doesn't go so heavily into building
addictive feedback loops.
~~~
beenBoutIT
Sadly, these people are effectively destined to be exploited by one thing or
another. From crack rock to food or sex or anything else that they find
enjoyable.
------
kingbirdy
I'm curious why this needs its own definition, rather than being part of a
larger "addiction disorder".
~~~
dragonwriter
Because there is no larger “addiction disorder”, and trying to create one
would have a messy and complex definition compared to distinct definitions
that happen to share some features.
~~~
brandonjm
Yet the same organisation that seems to care so much about giving every little
addiction it's own name also lumps every variety of autism under the same
umbrella term.
~~~
mmirate
Each addiction clearly and openly differs in the object of addiction.
Whereas, with autisms, we don't yet know how to analyze symptoms well enough
for there to be a bijection between set-of-symptoms and underlying-autism-
variant; indeed, we can barely even separate autism's causes and effects, if
at all.
~~~
Semirhage
The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological
mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling.
Defining the disorder by the pathology rather than an obtuse collection of
symptoms which have a tendency to overlap and merge might be too much for
psychology, but it’s the scientific thing.
~~~
dragonwriter
> The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological
> mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling.
No, it doesn't. There seem to likely be some similar key mechanisms involved,
but the shared mechanisms aren't the whole story, otherwise someone addicted
to something would be addicted to everything.
We give different diagnoses for different allergies, even though allergies
have a common key mechanism.
------
mmjaa
I stopped playing mainstream video games last century when, after a 'quick
network game of Starcraft and maybe a bit of Quake on a Friday afternoon at
the end of the work week', I emerged from the dungeon we'd made at work for
the purpose, only to discover it was Sunday morning, and more than 24 hours
had gone by since any of us had even thought about what we were doing.
That was my personal wake-up call. Now I only play MAME games that require,
max, 10 or 15 minutes of investment .. and then I simply stop.
I sort of miss the arcades of the 80's, which didn't seem to really propagate
this addiction as readily as the current madness does.
~~~
nostrademons
Arcades absolutely did promote addiction, they just sucked at it compared to
today's games.
In a classical arcade, you walk into a darkened room filled with animated CRTs
and strange noises. They literally have blinders, designed to shut out your
peripheral vision so the game is the only thing in your consciousness. When
you die, you have 30 seconds to insert more coins and continue, otherwise you
have to start all over from the beginning. Pretty much everything about this
is designed to trigger your adrenalin-based threat-and-reward reflexes.
If modern computer games are more addictive, it's only because they've figured
out how to trigger even _more powerful_ primal instincts. MMORPGs and MOBAs
add a social aspect, and very often a cumulative acquisition aspect
(experience, gold, credits, etc). Simulations and worldbuilders like SimCity,
Minecraft & Factorio engage our higher brain centers like planning and
optimization. Mobile & casual games have figured out how to squeeze gaming
into even smaller timeslots within our lives.
It's also interesting how gaming & gambling have converged. It used to be that
a slot machine was a machine where you pulled a lever and tried to match up
dials. Now you walk into a casino and it basically looks like an arcade, with
lots of computerized gambling games on backlit LCD displays, while Internet
games like CryptoKitties let you play & trade with real (well, fake) money.
~~~
bitL
> they just sucked at it compared to today's games
Games these days are far far more interesting than most movies, TV shows or
other forms of entertainment. With photorealistic rendering coming combined
with AR they might even override the need for exploratory travels outside pure
relaxation stays (i.e. if you can visit Alaska/Antarctica/Japan/Petra/whatever
with photorealistic graphics, would you really want to travel there? I guess
you'd rather go to some beach or clubbing place to unwind instead)
~~~
filleduchaos
Of course people would still want to travel. I don't know how to put this
nicely but not everyone is a recluse.
~~~
bitL
I traveled around the world already. Now I'd rather visit some places only
virtually and park on Maldives or Miami for relax.
------
matt_s
PSA: Playstation has a 'Family Management' feature where you can limit game
time played on sub-accounts. You can set time limits per day and the action to
take like auto-logout. It reminds the player as they get closer to being out
of time.
I don't think we know the effects of modern video games on younger (aka
developing) minds yet. Many of these games hire psychologists [0] to help
engineer game play to keep people wanting to play because if they get bored
and move onto another game it could be a loss. I don't think old school games
like Zelda or Mario were engineered this way.
Think about a game like Tic-Tac-Toe and how after a certain age it becomes
boring. Now add leaderboards, points for certain types of wins, customizable
X's and O's, customizable game boards, avatars, seasons, etc. The game is the
same but now you have multiple games encompassing the game of popular 'skins',
points, 1-upping competitors, etc.
[0][http://theconversation.com/the-business-of-addiction-how-
the...](http://theconversation.com/the-business-of-addiction-how-the-video-
gaming-industry-is-evolving-to-be-like-the-casino-industry-83361)
------
nickjj
All 3 of the article's points could be applied to any hobby / passion driven
profession.
Next up...
Guitar disorder
Karate disorder
Baseball disorder
Fast forward 10 years...
Someone coins the term "hobby disorder" after detecting numerous patterns of
people wasting their life away on doing things they enjoy.
Fast forward 20 years...
Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a
corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and
a few large tech companies took over everything).
<tinfoilhat>
Sounds like a good way to begin the journey towards even more income disparity
between the 1% and the rest of us.
</tinfoilhat>
~~~
Micrococonut
This is really funny. How much have you "innovated" while gaming? You are
living under the thumb of entertainment media already. You're trapped in your
time waster instead of innovating.
~~~
ekianjo
Everything is a time waster until you know, investments pays off. Playing an
instrument is a time waster until it turns into something you can market. Its
difficult to judge future benefits of current actions.
~~~
ionised
Why does everything have to turn into something you can market?
So you spend a few hours playing games and you have nothing to sell or shill
on Hackernews. Is that a problem?
Did you enjoy yourself playing those games? Yes? Then why isn't that enough?
Downtime is important.
------
Synaesthesia
I started playing Starcraft and watching it about 2 years ago. I’ve always had
an obsessive mind and had stopped playing games since high school. It’s
reached a point where I almost dedicate every free moment to playing. Games
are incredibly addictive and it can be hard to stop. Back when I didn’t play I
never understood why people play games so much. Games used to be only for
geeks and boys but now everybody plays them. They are addictive and I think
it’s a growing problem.
~~~
ericdykstra
Starcraft and RTS is general is a great game that rewards higher-level
strategy thinking, attention management, and a number of other skills.
Becoming proficient is no joke, and pros need to spend more of their time
practicing than traditional sports because there is less of a physical tax
from practice.
But it's just like any hobby. If it's not your profession, you need to make
sure you're not putting your long-term health or the health of your
relationships or other responsibilities aside just for quick shot of pleasure
or adrenaline.
~~~
WhompingWindows
For Starcraft specifically, I've probably played 2k hours of SC:BW and maybe
3-4k of SC2, so I'd agree it is no joke and practicing is quite important. I
managed to reach the top 2% of MMR by grinding out numerous games (as Zerg,
FWIW), averaging 2.5 h/daily at my peak. I would practice economy/production
(macro) and build orders outside of my matches, then bring those in to the
competitive 1v1 ladder and figure out all the weird rush builds that needed to
be scouted for/prevented.
I actually am trying to cut out games, however, since I find the stress on the
wrists/hands that comes with coding + piano + gaming to be too much. So, when
push comes to shove, I just end up watching some SC pro matches these days, as
opposed to putting my wrist health in jeopardy.
~~~
ericdykstra
That's awesome! Reaching Master League in SC2 is quite an accomplishment. I
did it myself with Zerg and then Protoss, but only barely and only in 2
seasons.
The high intensity, unreachable skill ceiling, and quick feedback loop of
Starcraft really taught me how improving a skill needs to be an active
process. You don't just get better by grinding out games (at least not
efficiently); you need to study your own play, find weaknesses in it, and work
on them methodically. Having that background has helped me in other kinds of
skill acquisition.
------
bitL
How about addiction to social networks, status updates, fake snapshots
pretending one's having a dream life and for virtue signalling? Being glued to
a smartphone for that is more profound than basement-dwelling gamers.
~~~
keshav_
they didn't say these things can't be addiction.
~~~
bitL
Why is suddenly some fringe gamer "epidemics" treated as more important (WHO
level? seriously?) than vastly more prevalent smartphone-based social
addiction?
~~~
willio58
If the WHO hasn’t started looking at social networks and the like, it’s just a
matter of time. Why should there be a hault in studying the effects of games
just because there hasn’t been enough studies on social networks and phones?
~~~
bitL
Only by "shouting" about it and comparing it to a more benign addiction I can
individually bring focus to that issue.
------
amelius
Why is every researcher treating addiction like it's bad behavior that needs
to be avoided in order to be cured, instead of researching ways for humans to
keep on getting the satisfaction, while curing the side effects?
(I know "curing the side effects" sounds bad, but it's basically what we
want).
~~~
skohan
It may not be possible. Addiction is a disease of our systems governing
attention and motivation: Normally those systems should adapt so that we pay
attention to those things which are most relevant to our long-term well-being,
and so we are motivated to act in ways which sustain our well-being and
success.
Addiction occurs when a pattern of exposure to an acute stimulus activates our
reward system in such a way that our attentional and motivational systems are
subverted to cause us to seek out more of that short term reward, at the
expense of our long-term happiness.
The "satisfaction", as you put it, is the subjective experience of that
overwhelming, system-breaking reward signal. To get that experience without
the resulting behavioral consequences would require us to fundamentally
augment how reward affects the brain. It's doubtful it's possible to do that
with addictive stimuli without causing wide-reaching effects on general
learning and adaptation.
------
Micrococonut
Gamers are so sensitive about their addiction. Like an alcoholic being called
out.
~~~
asfasgasg
I don't think most people would advise "calling out" as an effective modality
for approaching addicts in general.
~~~
Micrococonut
Good point. But I think the reactions are pretty telling that there is a real
problem.
~~~
Karunamon
A bit of well poisoning, don’t you think? That one can’t call shenanigans
without supposedly being affected?
~~~
rosser
It's not the fact of calling shenanigans; it's the vehemence with which it's
being done.
There's an inflection point beyond which "[he] doth protest too much,
methinks" becomes at least as parsimonious an explanation, if not moreso.
EDIT: Not to say that's happening here, specifically, but ... _gestures
around_ there's definitely some emotionally-driven reaction to this idea,
amongst (and probably also behind) some of the criticism.
~~~
icebraining
Nowadays that society is more liberal in its acceptance of nonconforming
behavior, referring to addition is one of the most effective ways of getting
general acceptance to curtail people's freedom, so it's no wonder that people
react with alarm.
------
oligopoly
Next up Social Media Disorder (SMD), Internet Disorder.. I'd be surprised if
the latter isn't a thing already
~~~
ekianjo
i expect Wikipedia Disorder as well for people who are too curious and read
too much. So basically any deviation from the normal boring person is a
disorder,says the thought police.
~~~
creep
Yes, and anyone looking for help in managing their lives will get slapped with
any such term and made to feel like deviants.
I've been "diagnosed" with all sorts of things. ADHD, ODD (obsessive defiance
disorder), asperger's (ASD 1), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), and I'm
sure I qualify for others. The thing is, there was always this search like
that to look for what was the ultimate cause for my distress. And then, after
all that searching, nothing came of it because I grew as a person. And I think
there's a small thing there, which is that if you have a diagnosis, you have
an excuse, and oh, you'll have loads of friends with similar diagnoses who
will encourage you to whine and wallow in it and make excuses, and there will
even be competition as to who is the worse for it.
I think the system is very wrong.
------
ourmandave
Isn't there some overlap with gambling addiction, given the tactics used by
games like Candy Crush, etc.?
~~~
kdll8
Financial investing...
------
Tycho
Video games are fine for some people, but for nerd-like personalities they
present far too great a temptation to supplant real life goal obtainment with
virtual status/achievement. I think its helpful to make people aware of this
tendency, and unhelpful to wave it away with a comparison to some more
widespread non-nerd past-time like watching TV or sports.
~~~
loupeabody
How precisely do you define "nerd-like" personalities and what is it about
them that is susceptible to having a "gaming disorder"?
I feel like there's not much that would separate a gaming disorder from
addictive behavior in general. So much so, actually, that to grant a special
term for a video game related illness comes off as a little ridiculous.
~~~
Tycho
The essence of nerdiness is the elevation of the abstract at the expense of
what's real, including the elevation of accomplishment in abstract domains
(eg. video games) at the expense of developing social skills and progressing
towards real life milestones, and the misunderstanding of social relations and
social status owing to incorrect, reality-starved mental models. Often
manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.
As another poster (always_good) observes, there is a huge observable
difference between video game addicts and substance abusers. I would not
expect nerds to be substance abusers, and I would not expect substance abusers
to be video game addicts, but everything about video games, in their
construction of alternative realities and virtual goals and online
communities, is like a glove tailored to the hand of nerd-dom.
~~~
loupeabody
> Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.
You callin me a nerd, Tycho?
So, broadly, I can agree that a tendency towards escapism is what would make
someone develop a "gaming disorder". And perhaps video games are the pinnacle
of what our culture can offer as the richest form of escapism.
But I still don't think that's enough to draw a categorical line between the
vices through which escapist tendencies become pathologized. It seems to me
the solution to the mentation of escapism is to reinforce what you appeal to
as "anti-nerdiness": pursuing meaning in a world you can (and do) fully occupy
with the senses. And I agree there too.
Noting the bit at the end of the article about how terribly few people
manifest a "gaming disorder" is what I'm not pleased to hear. Calling it a
"gaming" disorder makes it seem like if you get rid of games, you've solved
the problem. But obviously that's not necessarily the case, and so I think
it's a useless distinction which potentially obscures the real issue.
If the WHO is making an indictment against the entertainment industry to
formally warn against the ethical risks of making games which exploit escapist
tendencies, that's fine. But I don't think there's actually much of a problem
here that couldn't already be meaningfully identified as an addictive
tendency.
~~~
noobermin
While not all addiction is due to escapism, it cannot be escaped (no pun
intended) that it can be a catalyst. What we as a society need to stop doing
(same re opiod addiction for example) is stop labeling and treating symptoms
instead of addressing the root causes.
------
em3rgent0rdr
Calling everything a disorder should be officially recognized as a disorder.
~~~
tomnipotent
This is the perfect word to call them.
dis·or·der
noun
- a disruption of normal physical or mental functions; a disease or abnormal condition.
verb
- disrupt the systematic functioning or neat arrangement of.
- disrupt the healthy or normal functioning of.
------
vectorEQ
Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence
over other life interests and daily activities
So, we all have a code and/or computer disorder. gg guys, lets get on dem
zombie pillz ...
'gaming addiction' would be better term. and then even ,the problem is being
addicted, not gaming.. people get addicted to all kinds of shit. having a
interest in something more than other things is normal. and call that a
disorder is criminal.
~~~
piva00
It's vague because it's an individual case-by-case assessment, it's not
something easy to simplify to a checklist, it's a spectrum.
Yes, if the increasing priority begins to affect other aspects of your life
negatively it's a disorder, like any other addiction, don't get defensive
because you can relate to the description of the symptom.
~~~
inter632
> Yes, if the increasing priority begins to affect other aspects of your life
> negatively it's a disorder, like any other addiction
Loads of people that have a passion for something, whether it be music,
painting, coding, cooking, etc.. are experiencing a negative impact on their
lives in some way. This seems very obvious to me. I play guitar and for many
years I've practiced more than 10 hours a day. This had a very negative impact
on my income to the point I had to stop to avoid becoming homeless. Is my
passion a disorder because I don't make enough money with it? Are all
successful musicians suffering a passion disorder? Should they quit making
great music for the world and work for McDonalds living a depressed, and above
all pointless life?
Some years later I started coding and a new passion arose. For years, and
still today I code often more than 10 hours a day. Only now it positively
impacts my income. Do I have a disorder? Do I need to stop and get treatment
for being a passionate coder? I honestly think I'm quite lucky to have a
passion for something that renders income.
I've played World of Warcraft for years, sometimes a real lot too. I have
great memories of great times with my online friends. It is not something I
will regret when my life comes to an end. I cannot play as much as I want
because it will negatively impact my income. Should I regret now because I
possibly have a 'gaming disorder', should I feel bad about the good times I
had? Should I prevent others from having the time of their life? Should we not
better ban eSports completely because too much gaming is bad? All pro players
back to poverty, doing a stupid depressing job, but totally enjoying their
'disorder free' life?
Oh, and btw, I love coffee :)
------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
This whole thing with trying to place a medical diagnosis on behaviors is too
much. This is really no better than the old Greek humors theory where if you
were sad, you had an imbalance of melancholy.
There are a bunch of human behaviors, many of which are destructive, for which
we don't really have insight into the underlying bio-physical explanation.
Without that understanding, we should not be turning them into medical
diagnoses.
~~~
contravariant
So basically you're against clinical psychology?
------
hugja
Correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't South Korean have Gaming/Internet Addiction
Centers for those with "Gaming Disorders"? I remember seeing something about
this from a eSports documentary some time ago. Unfortunately I don't remember
name of it.
Edit: found it
[https://youtu.be/of1k5AwiNxI?t=1150](https://youtu.be/of1k5AwiNxI?t=1150)
------
amarant
does this mean I can call in sick to play more splatoon? I think this means I
can call in sick to play more splatoon.
------
rhacker
So we're basically just replacing the word addiction now?
~~~
falcolas
More accurately, addiction to the point it has a severe negative impact on the
rest of the patient's life.
~~~
rhacker
I was severely addicted to video games when I was a kid. My parents kept
saying I was going to be a garbage man (ignoring the insult to garbage men) I
don't think it would be the norm, but because of my interest in games I was
interested in computers and here I am. I'm not like a top earner 1M / year AI
developer or anything, but it definitely didn't impact my life. Now if my
parents had taken me to some kind of "gaming disorder" center to get fixed, I
would.. probably be a garbage man right now.
~~~
icebraining
Taking you to an addition center would be an overreaction as a first measure.
More sensible first steps would be to simply limit the gaming time, possibly
by getting you to do something else for part of the day.
------
georgios
An important aspect of identifying new disorders or creating new diagnoses is
that it facilitates access to treatment and services for those that need it.
That means that those few people that have serious consequences because of
excessive gaming will have the right to get treatment covered by insurance.
------
jokoon
As crazy as it sounds, I think I managed my gaming time by actually designing
my own because the games i have been playing never satisfy me.
I usually get bored pretty easily, and there are no games that can really make
me play for a long enough time because there is something that frustrates me
about the game mechanics.
It's actually very satisfying to think about game design as a programmer, and
to spot what can be improved in games i like so i might better enjoy playing
and sharing them in the future.
------
announcerman
Is obsessing over things related to real life like social ties, money, career,
or anything else that will surely pass after you die a disorder? If it isn't
then why not?
~~~
cirgue
Because activities related to those things create sustained material security
and personal fulfillment. Your efforts at building a strong network of friends
pay dividends for decades, the equivalent amount of time playing video games
has no bearing on your life a year from now.
~~~
announcerman
So in your opinion all efforts that result in the optimization or improvement
of something decided as relevant by yourself are worthwhile?
~~~
cirgue
All any of us have here are opinions, and yeah it’s my opinion that any time
spent doing things that don’t lead to some better future state is the pastime
equivalent of junk food: I eat junk food and enjoy it from time to time, but I
also don’t ever make the mistake of confusing it with nourishment or trying to
justify why it’s good for me.
~~~
announcerman
I do not mind your opinion or way of life, but if I consider other things to
be relevant, why can't I use my time to improve in them? Just as you do with
the things you consider relevant? As long as the activity doesn't infringe on
anyone's liberty why should you be branded as defective for engaging in it?
Besides, it is hard to pinpoint what a better future state means. Doesn't it
mostly depend on what you consider important to improve?
------
srrge
As a 43 year old with two jobs and two kids, I found myself playing 500 hours
of PlayerUnknown's Battleground in a few months. I had to uninstall the game.
The addiction was very real.
~~~
matt_s
Did you lose your job, destroy relationships with your family and friends?
Or did this merely replace 500 hours that would have been spent watching TV,
Netflix or other types of entertainment?
The word addiction has a real meaning with some clinical ways for a trained
person to diagnose somebody as having it.
I think of addiction more like alcoholism. Sure video games are engineered
these days to be huge time sinks but that doesn't make it an addiction. If you
can drop it (like you did) and it doesn't impact your life, its not an
addiction.
~~~
srrge
I am self-employed (I actually run two small companies) and I sent some of my
work days playing PUBG. Also I had less interaction with my kids and wife, and
no other hobby really.
I looked at PUBG videos very often, sometimes live streams, at the office
during the day.
I was thinking about PUBG all day long. It was bad.
~~~
matt_s
Awesome that you're running two companies!
I was just pointing out there is a difference between an actual clinical
addiction vs. a really bad habit.
I know the feeling about gaming and have been in similar shoes. I actually
stop myself and check if I am doing something out of habit or because I want
to... and have found I want to do other hobbies more, its just the inertia to
get over the habitual actions that is the problem sometimes.
~~~
srrge
The point that you dispute is the term addiction. You mention an "habit" for
instance. My point is: video games can REALLY be an addiction even for older
people.
------
s0adex
I once had this problem. Especially when I used to work from home. The game
was one click away from being opened. I used to play around 6 hours per day on
weekdays and the whole day on weekends. I had to do treatment to get rid of
the addiction, I really don't know how I didn't lose my job at that time.
Although I ended up replacing it with other kinds of addictions, these new
additions are way more subtle than the gaming and easy to manage.
------
zeofig
Now they just need to recognise the disorder making my dota 2 teammates so
noob.
~~~
rteDev
They have. That's the Dunning-Kruger effect.
------
shiburizu
I'd say the following points need to be made about "gaming" because the
perception does not reflect reality when you play a videogame:
\- the classical "neurotic player who doesn't like distractions and spends
hours on VoIP getting angry at the game" is the reflection of a lot of the
people who get into real-time multiplayer in MMORPGs or now games like
Fortnite. This isn't quite how it stands for a lot of games, genuine one-and-
done experiences like God of War or going back a bit to the Wii didn't have
this continuous "one more" feedback or ridiculous length of content (3 hours a
night raiding is tiresome and stressing for some people)
\- The fighting game community has the oddity of gathering in large
tournaments, building community on them and treating their games with immense
discipline in learning to the point where others complain the barrier of entry
to being "good" is too high. More than any other genre, fighters offer real-
life experiences. E-sports is picking up on this*.
\- Something to consider when determining the "why" of prolonged play is also
the community or social aspect of the game. I play a lot of videogames, I
admit, and one of the things that makes me commit a lot of hours into a game
is when I can talk about it, talk to people in it, build a common interest and
execute it. I live in a country where I speak my second language more than my
first and hopping online to play in English is definitely some strong
escapism. This is my experience, but so many people get online these days for
the strong community tools (Discord, subreddits). It's primarily this aspect
that makes me question any attempt to compare it to gambling/watching
sports/binge watching movies or what have you. Gaming is built on a huge
internet infrastructure because social features build long-time users.
I totally appreciate the definition of gaming disorder being sacrificing other
healthy parts of life to continue feeding your need to play videogames but
maybe this made sense if everyone was still playing the Super Nintendo (and
even then we mocked it) but the world, and maybe it's just because enough huge
corporations threw enough money at marketing to make it happen, has managed to
genuinely change real-life because of videogames. This is far too dismissive.
Other posters mention this and I'd probably say that they refused to consult
people in the game development industry/competitive gaming
organizations/prominent players because they'd like to poison the well by
assuming they'd never admit they have a problem (Although I suppose that might
have to do with EA and the like refusing to have ethical debate instead of
filtering us through an endless marketing machine, taking notes from
Hollywood)
Side note: First post on HN after long time browsing. Feel free to rip this
apart.
------
creep
Oh! They've come up with a new disorder again. How nice.
------
inter632
Hmm, this feels odd.. Do they mean: eSports professionals are having a 'gaming
disorder', unlike old fashioned sport professionals?
------
Mirioron
A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just
being a bad parent.
Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general
addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person
has an addiction for something.
This just looks like a scapegoat to me.
~~~
dragonwriter
> A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just
> being a bad parent.
That's just as true of lots of diagnoses of physical and mental conditions and
injuries. (bone fractures and PTSD are obvious examples.) The fact that bad
parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the
condition.
> Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general
> addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a
> person has an addiction for something.
The inherent differences between different subjects of addiction require some
source specific variation, but various addictive disorders in either the ICD
or the DSM do have generally similar criteria.
> This just looks like a scapegoat to me.
A scapegoat for what?
~~~
Mirioron
>The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the
diagnosis of the condition.
You misunderstood me. The bad parent causes it by being there. If you removed
the bad parent then there would be no problem.
One of the criteria (although not mentioned in this article) is that the
person is having negative consequences happen in a family situation because of
their gaming. A bad parent could cause these negative consequences by simply
being a bad parent and as a result the kid could withdraw into gaming. With
this disorder around the parent can simply blame the kid playing games without
looking at their own behavior.
>A scapegoat for what?
For people who alienate those close to them, so that they can blame something
else other than their behavior. If a kid wants to interact with their family
then they will.
------
XalvinX
Yet more bullshit "diseases" invented by the psychiatric community to push
drugs for their big pharma overlords. Doesn't the WHO have better things to
do, like fighting real diseases such as malaria?
Everybody goes on little sprees of one kind or another during their lives.
Up next, "sudden love syndrome" ...the symptoms are about the same, aren't
they? No, in fact they are exactly the same if you replace "your new serious
romantic interest" with "video game".
And also, I remember being pretty addicted to D&D for awhile in my teen years,
so we clearly need "RPG disorder" and better throw in "Board Game Disorder"
for people hooked on Scrabble or Risk.
WHO, GTFO!
~~~
bitL
Can't wait to see the name of "medication" for gamers - "game over" pills?
~~~
XalvinX
Wow, at least one person on the same page as me here. I just don't care what
people think..."addiction" to a game and the associated anti-social and
possibly self-destructive behavior is just not a disease. Or, if it is, then
the sky is the limit on what will be called (and yes, medicated) as a disease.
And I don't like the trend...look at the stats, they are medicating tens of
millions of children in the US alone for crap just like this.........
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Graph of Netflix speeds shows the importance of net neutrality - Libertatea
http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/04/25/this-hilarious-graph-of-netflix-speeds-shows-the-importance-of-net-neutrality/
======
lotharbot
I know some websites (like ESPN3) only allow you access if you're on a
subscribing ISP.
Could Netflix take a play out of that book and charge a different rate for
Comcast customers vs others, and in particular, make it enough of a PR issue
that other ISPs would be more willing to cave?
~~~
JohnTHaller
Netflix shouldn't have caved and should have displayed a simple graphic about
the slowness in their player along with the number for Comcast support.
Displace the anger and support issues around the slowdown to the proper party,
the one that's at fault. Cost them some customers.
Of course, the problem with that is that Comcast has a monopoly in many areas
they serve. Just like Time Warner does. And folks simply can't switch. So,
even though Comcast's customer satisfaction rates are absolutely abysmal, they
don't lose customers over it.
Your solution would make more sense. Netflix should charge Comcast customers
more and itemize it on the bills as a 'Comcast Network Slowdown Tax'.
~~~
e40
As a Comcast customer I would have called and complained. If enough people
complained, it _might_ have had some effect. However, in my area, there's only
two choices: crappy DSL from AT&T and Comcast. There's really no comparing the
two services. I had the DSL offering for a few years and it was absolute crap.
With Comcast I get amazing speeds, but when service is needed, it's Comcast.
In other words, it's horrible. Here's what happens when you call them due to
an outage:
You tell them you power cycled the modem. They make you do it anyway. You ask
them to do a traceroute and they either say "I don't know what that is" or "I
can't do that" or "Yeah, we'll get to that after a few other things".
Last time I called, 20 minutes into the call he does a traceroute and finds
the problem is a few hops from my house. Yeah, he wouldn't do it it first
thing, so he wasted a bunch of time.
Sometimes, if they won't do the traceroute, they'll send someone out, in a 4
hour window, only to tell you when they get there at the problem is not near
your house. Or, the problem is fixed by the time they arrive.
It's one of the most frustrating customer service experiences you can have.
~~~
cfreeman
I agree that Comcast is horrible but you can't expect them to skip the most
basic troubleshooting steps. That probably solves the problem for most non-
technical users who call in.
~~~
e40
A traceroute takes a few seconds. 99% of the time I call it's mainly to tell
them to please track down the problem (outside of my home... only once over
the years was it my modem) and fix it. To have to wade through 20 minutes of
prelims, when a 20 second command could make it obviously unnecessary, that's
just dumb.
The fact that you thought I was suggesting skipping the basics is bewildering.
~~~
chrisabrams
I deal with the same issue on Verizon. I found that using LiveChat, the
support there seemed to be more tech. focused. If I start by sending a screen
shot of my traceroute, I usually can get what I need within a few minutes.
------
chatmasta
The dependency of the Internet on a small number of ISPs is an anachronistic,
unsustainable requirement. When the Internet was first starting, they were
necessary to lay cable and maintain network infrastructure. As a nice
consequence of building the infrastructure, the ISPs got to charge for routing
traffic as well. But this makes no sense. Why should the ISP's have so much
bandwidth routing power?
Routing inherently lends itself to decentralized algorithms, and the research
is starting to catch up to the ISP's. Mesh networks are growing in popularity,
and once they reach a critical mass they will be unstoppable. Expect to see a
rise of reliance on mesh networking in universities and urban centers.
BitCoin is going to revolutionize bandwidth routing. In decentralized routing
algorithms, payment for bandwidth is a difficult problem to solve because it
depends on centralized components of the system. But BitCoin enables 1)
micropayments, and 2) distributed transaction storage, which both benefit
bandwidth routing research. Some point soon, routing will be completely
decentralized, and the infrastructure providers will receive micropayments of
BitCoin in return.
As my senior thesis, I'm researching "TorCoin," a proof-of-bandwidth
cryptocurrency mined by transmitting bandwidth over the Tor network. This
summer I am working to apply this research in a business environment. If any
of this interests you, definitely reach out to me and we'll schedule a chat:
[email protected]
~~~
endersshadow
Planet Money recently did a really great show [1] about the ISP routing power
in the US vs. other countries, and what led to those decisions. The irony is
that they were doing everything they could to _not_ be anachronistic, and to
plan for the future. The US chose poorly. Anyway, it's worth a listen.
[1]
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/04/299060527/episode-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/04/299060527/episode-529-the-
last-mile)
------
DemiGuru
IMHO I think the best response to that would be for Netflix to charge the ISPs
that want to carry their service. Reverse subscription if you will. The demand
is there, ISPs would be reluctant to alienate the customers even more.
------
scottkduncan
Or you know, not allowing more consolidation in the cable industry.
------
coldcode
Comcast's CEO seemed to indicate that Netflix did this on purpose. Yeah,
likely.
------
Gepsens
This is what happens when there is an effective monopoly and it is applied.
But seeing as how Windows roamed free for decades, the US doesn't seem to have
any problem with huge monopolies.
------
morgante
I don't understand what is "hilarious" about this graph.
------
ymichael
Is it me or the graph in the post doesn't say anything about actual speeds,
just their changes since Jan 2013.. misleading title?
------
unfamiliar
That is the most irritating page layout I have come across yet. What is that
red bar even there for?
------
imroot
"The data are from Netflix."
Really, Washington Post?!
~~~
gnoway
Is it actually wrong? Data is plural.
I kind of assumed it was one of those 'correct grammar' things like 'an
historical' that looks wrong but isn't.
~~~
gergles
"An historical" actually is 'wrong' (for as wrong as anything can be in
English, which generally isn't very). "Historical" doesn't make a vowel sound
when read (which is the rule).
~~~
blahedo
It does if your dialect has a silent H there. A lot of people that pronounce
"an historical" do so with a silent H.
~~~
chinpokomon
Maybe not silent, but definitely muted. It's a soft "H" and probably borrows
its pronunciation from Spanish.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How can I engage again? I’m not sure it’s possible - srednalfden
Seems a number of these questions pop up every few weeks, so maybe I can get some perspective.<p>I’m 37 and live in Europe. I fell out of society in my teens due to abuse and never managed to get a grip on the working world. After sporadic manual jobs in my late teens I had a breakdown, and I haven’t worked since.<p>I’ve taken courses over the years on various subjects, and even got part way through a degree from the OPen University. I read for hours a day, and have taught myself basic coding.<p>I’m thinking that finding work as a developer or any type of IT role after 17 years of not working will be....tough. I do have some hope remaining, or I wouldn’t be making this post.<p>In my situation what would you do? I have a small amount of money to live on each month, but it only covers the basics. I’ve had to summon the courage to post this, so please have some empathy when replying.
======
michaelpinto
Idea: Can you volunteer for a local non-profit to build up a resume?
------
Cypher
Work for yourself, get into blockchains! its all new and people don't quite
know what they're doing so you'll fit right in :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is any tool lacking for more companies embrace remote work? - soneca
I know there is a work culture in the way too, but aside from that, what kind of tool (if any) would make more companies decide to try remote work?
======
alistairSH
The first hurdle isn't tool or tech-related; it's management. They need to buy
in. If they don't, remote work won't work.
About half my team is remote, and that's not uncommon for my division. We use
Slack for collaboration. It was rolled out recently - prior to Slack, it a mix
of (lots of) email and Skype. We use BlueJeans for larger meetings.
For day-to-day work, this all works well. But, it's also ingrained in the
culture - we've had many remotes for a long time.
For new project kick-offs, especially greenfield dev, it makes sense to bring
the remotes into the office for a week or more. I've done this three times now
over the past 5 years. It fosters a sense of team and also allows easy white-
boarding and fast/effective collaboration.
All my remotes are within an hour +/\- time zone and a short flight away
(office near DC, remotes in Carolinas and Mid-West). Teams spread across
continents introduce more problems.
------
savethefuture
My companies biggest concern is ensuring that people are still working while
at home, when in the office they have the ability to walk around and see that
you are at your desk. While it is still possible to be working on other things
besides work, they at least see you are in the office and in front of your
computer. When at home they've said in the past "We dont know if you're really
working". For my position remote work would work great, if I dont have code to
show for, I'm getting fired, but other positions in the company have a problem
"proving" work I guess. So it comes down to a lack of trust and guarantee that
people are still working while outside the office.
~~~
BjoernKW
That's another problem with cargo cult work today: Work is commonly measured
in time wasted instead of value created.
The reason for this is that when it comes to work society is still largely
caught in Taylorism / assembly line thinking. When you had to maximise the
output of an assembly line measuring work in terms of time made sense. With
office / white collar / knowledge work this management approach simply breaks
and it has been broken for decades: Mock work, people pretending to "work"
while in reality they're only butts in seats is a widespread phenomenon that
not only impairs productivity but mental and physical health as well.
It shouldn't matter how much time you spend on a task as long as it gets done
before the deadline and you're available for others to ask questions or give
feedback. The current system favours those who are less productive. It also
favours those who've learned to game the system.
There are saner, more reasonable approaches to assessing work such as results-
only work environments and value-based pricing. It's about time we adopt
approaches like these instead of relying on 200 year old cargo cult management
methods.
------
31reasons
Eye contact, Face-to-Face meetings, shared space, white boards. I think next
generation VR will be a tipping point for remote work.
~~~
jpindar
What exactly are we going to be seeing with VR that we can't see on a regular
monitor now?
~~~
GFischer
The success of the Microsoft Surface Hub shows that regular web meetings have
a long way to go yet:
[https://convergenttechblog.com/2016/12/22/the-microsoft-
surp...](https://convergenttechblog.com/2016/12/22/the-microsoft-surprise-
surface-hit-of-the-year-the-surface-hub/)
Comments here are enlightening:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166032)
_Its a product that finally got almost everything right when it comes to a
digital whiteboard. And yes to another point that was raised here certainly
integration with Mircosoft services was a plus. Its great to have a computer
interface that is remote on half the board and white board interface on the
other. You can mock up while you have the specs inches away from your face on
a huge screen so everyone in the room can read and interact. The skype
integration kills it as well; there 's been a number of times I've seen teams
huddled around the board mocking things up with one or two people remote._
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Comments on “Urban Myths about NoSQL” - wglb
http://danweinreb.org/blog/657
======
lemming
You _cannot_ sacrifice partition tolerance. See a much more eloquently argued
blog post than I could come up with by the ever excellent Coda Hale:
<http://codahale.com/you-cant-sacrifice-partition-tolerance>. In fact, re-
reading it now I realise it was originally a rebuttal to Stonebraker in a
different article.
It's really common sense if you think about it. You cannot ever _guarantee_
that any system with more than one node will not suffer a partition. You need
a network between them, and your dog might chew it at any time. When ( _not
if_ ) that happens, what will your AC system do? It will either not be
available, or it will not be consistent. It's impossible to have both.
I'd be interested to know what happens in VoltDB if I have two machines in a
cluster and I pull the plug between them. Does anyone know?
Edit: more great stuff from the also ever excellent Henry Robinson:
[http://www.cloudera.com/blog/2010/04/cap-confusion-
problems-...](http://www.cloudera.com/blog/2010/04/cap-confusion-problems-
with-partition-tolerance). Good links at the bottom, too.
Second edit: removed unnecessarily inflammatory first sentence.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
100 Thing Challenge - mshafrir
http://www.guynameddave.com/100-thing-challenge.html
======
viraptor
It's interesting to see other people collecting that many items... I can
hardly name 30 items that I _want_ to have (not including clothes), but that
probably just depends on the personality. Then again, being able to put
everything you actually need in one big suitcase, is a nice benefit.
~~~
whatusername
Really? No equipment-related hobbies?
My list has at least 15 items that are basically dedicated to hiking. (And I
could probably do with a couple more on there)
~~~
viraptor
That includes equipment - 6 items for paddling, 2 sets of weapons and a
guitar. The rest is just electronics, travel bags, books (around 20 items, so
it makes ~30 in total).... can't think of anything else.
------
proemeth
In the wake of "Up in the air", nice film I recommend, that opens a few doors
without being over the top. Just enough to start your own thoughts.
<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon offers Whole Foods discounts to Prime members - jrs235
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-whole-foods/amazon-cuts-whole-foods-prices-for-prime-members-in-new-grocery-showdown-idUSKCN1IH0BM
======
assblaster
Amazon's game is pretty clear:
1) under price to get market dominance,
2) then increase prices higher than competition
3) before customers realize they're actually more expensive than the
competition.
I stopped trusting Amazon at step 3 and only shop there if they actually have
the cheapest option. They act like grocery stores: advertise a low price on
one item to get you in the door, but profit off the other items.
~~~
matte_black
Unless I’m saving at least 10% off or at minimum $20 by not buying an item at
Amazon, I don’t really give a shit if I pay more. It’s just too convenient.
I always laugh when people say “It’s cheaper!” somewhere else and then it
turns out it’s only by like 4 bucks.
~~~
B0btheBuilder
On top of the convenience, I don't have to risk putting my credit card
information into random websites. My parents dislike online shopping because
they're fearful of getting credit card information lost or stolen online.
Amazon is one of the few places they trust online.
~~~
toomuchtodo
I don’t understand this. You’re never liable for fraudulent credit card
transactions, therefore this is irrational behavior.
~~~
MiddleEndian
The time, anxiety, and exhaustion of dealing with fraudulent charges outweighs
the abstract concept of liability in this case.
------
anilshanbhag
I still fail to understand why people shop at Whole Foods. Whole foods store
are smaller, have lesser choices and are significantly more expensive. Every
grocery store sells organic food. Even with 10% discount, their prices will be
higher than Trader Joe's / Star / Kroger.
~~~
brandonmenc
Agree. I shop at the world HQ here in Austin, and even it has not sated my
longing for the Wegmans of my homeland.
~~~
bane
The local WF is right between two Wegmans where I live and there's no
comparison. Wegmans is probably the single most impressive grocer I've ever
encountered.
------
pointillistic
How is this being implemented? A Whole Foods card tied to Amazon, Amazon
Credit Card or an app. In other words how do they know in Whole Foods who has
Prime?
~~~
matwood
You have to get the WF app and scan it at checkout. The app has a 'sign in
with your amazon account' button.
------
drivingmenuts
I wonder if we'll still be able to call it Whole Paycheck after the discount?
Fortunately, in Texas, we have HEB - Amazon will have to work pretty hard to
beat their prices + convenience of being everywhere.
~~~
solotronics
and if you want an upscale atmosphere we have Central Market (which is like a
whole foods but better in every way :] )
~~~
drivingmenuts
With correspondingly higher prices than HEB (it's owned by HEB).
I've been to the central Central Market. The lack of products is kinda off-
putting. Better to go hit the HEB at Mueller, which has a huge selection from
upscale to downscale products.
And beer in growlers.
------
nabla9
It's Sam's Club vs Jeff's Club vs Covetton House
Pick your unique curated lifestyle today.
------
Shivetya
I am not overly worried and while news sites like to make it out as possible
doom and gloom for the existing retailers the key is, they have 463 locations
nation wide.
that isn't enough to disrupt but it is enough with a pliant press to make it
seem you can. ALDI has 1600+ stores in 35 states and while its expected
customers are more limited by means the appeal of ALDI does cover a lot of
income levels.
~~~
matwood
I agree. Plus, I think most people shop at grocery stores based on convenience
first, and then everything else. I have a WF that I could easily visit during
the week, but it is also so busy that I end up going to a different store that
is in my neighborhood.
At some point though, these discounts are going to get deep enough to get me
to put up with the WF crowds.
~~~
cptskippy
> convenience first
This is definitely a huge factor in the equation and just due to proximity. We
live in close proximity to 6 grocery stores, 3 are the same brand. The store
we choose to shop at comes down to selection because even among the 3 same
branded stores the stock varies.
------
quadrangle
Ugh, WF was one of the remaining anonymous, non-loyalty places. Damnit
~~~
mmt
What's your complaint, though?
You, personally, will still be able to opt-in to the old model by not using
the loyalty program and paying the old Whole Paycheck prices, right?
~~~
quadrangle
as if the concept of "old prices" has any reality in the world going forward…
Prices will continue to change and the idea of what they would have been
becomes nothing more than a counter-factual speculation.
There's always been a tension if avoiding loyalty-systems means paying extra,
whether going to a more-expensive store or simply refusing to participate in
the system.
These are systematic things.
You didn't consider for a tiny second that my complaint was about the way the
_system_ works and affects people overall rather than being a personal
complaint as though I was one of those delusional libertarian folks seeing
myself as some totally isolated individual actor… I'm complaining about
loyalty systems and tracking and its effect overall on, yes, even individual
anonymity and liberties etc.
~~~
mmt
> as if the concept of "old prices" has any reality in the world going forward
So.. you're saying that the answer to my second questions is "no"? If loyalty
programs routinely distort pricing that much, then the opt-out I suggested
doesn't exist.
> Prices will continue to change and the idea of what they would have been
> becomes nothing more than a counter-factual speculation.
Still, I don't think we have to speculate. When loyalty cards first came out,
there were some chains that slow to implement or, for whatever reason, decided
their implementation needed cancelling and ended up trumpeting their failure
in their ads as a feature to consumers "no card needed for discount!". How'd
the pricing work out then?
> You didn't consider for a tiny second that my complaint was about the way
> the system works
That's a pretty huge counter-factual speculation (to use your words),
considering I was merely asking questions. In point of fact, I did consider
it.
> affects people overall
OK. So, if I understand correctly, you're worried about WF jumping on the
loyalty bandwagon because of the implications for society/other-people, not
for yourself. In that case, no opt-out strategy would be good enough, be it
paying the non-discounted price or some version of 867-5309. That's fair.
~~~
quadrangle
Thanks for the reasonable reply, and sorry for assuming things in your initial
question.
I definitely see everything in a much more social context. I rarely make any
decision thinking merely about the immediate short-term individual costs and
gains. I can only technically but not sympathetically grasp how people can
have self-centered, myopic mindsets, but obviously enough people do. I
frequently fund myself having to bring up the idea that pro-social thinking is
even a concept to consider.
Understanding that everything I personally experience is colored by my pro-
social mindset, I feel really differently (positively) about places like
Trader Joe's that refuse not only to have loyalty cards but even to have loss-
leader discount sales and other such bull crap. The relationship between
Trader Joe's and their customers is fundamentally more respectful and honest
than these other stores.
Incidentally, I don't mind the sale discounts at places like Grocery Outlet
because they are actually based on overstock and so actually pricing to
supply-and-demand as opposed to playing some game with prices. Their
highlighting of how much you "saved" over "other stores' prices" is annoying
though.
Finally, I happen to know that many of the discount sales at other stores are
actually forced upon them by outside brands. Brands are pushing their names
and provide product at a discount to the store with the requirement that they
promote a sale, all to drive the brand recognition etc. and that's part of why
Trader Joe's is free from that crap (by not emphasizing outside brand names).
------
bane
I get the impression from long-time Whole Foods shoppers that the quality of
the store has definitely gone down since the acquisition. There's a new one
not too terribly far from where I live so we decided to check it out and came
away deeply unimpressed.
\- Maybe 7 different kinds of fruit and vegetables. And I'm stretching this.
Most in two varieties, organic and not. There was virtually no selection of
fresh produce and what was there wasn't highly impressive in its freshness.
The homeopathy section of the store was larger and better stocked.
\- All of the meats were vacuum sealed and prepackaged. No fresh fish or
butcher. And I don't mean "butchered in the shop and plastic wrapped". I mean
packaged at like a factory god knows where. Some of the meat was past the
sell-by date.
\- An extraordinarily large section of milk and milk-alike products. I
remember years ago (the last time I shopped at a WF) there being different
kinds of milk from different mammals (goat, etc.), but not like 4 different
kinds of cow milk and then a dozen different varieties of vegetable-based
"milks".
\- The hot food bar was flavorless and in some cases bad...also very
expensive.
\- A quarter of the store was turned over to some kind of bar.
\- A definite feel from the employees of not wanting to be there.
I thought it might just be this store, so I went to another one near my work
for lunch and the same problems. The organic wine selection is fantastic I
guess.
Keep in mind that this store is not far from a couple Wegmans (absolutely
fantastic top-tier grocers who's organic produce section alone is the size of
the entire WF's produce section) and in the middle of a ring of large ethnic
and South/East Asian grocery chains (read:they all have local fresh fish
markets where you can get fresh fish filleted on demand right next to a giant
wall of fresh butchered and wrapped meats and animal parts from an entire
menagerie of fauna).
The local regular old grocery I can walk to was a better experience tbh. It
felt very much like a very expensive Aldi in terms of selection and quality.
~~~
joezydeco
WF changed their supply chain recently and has been a source of problems as
well:
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/02/08/empty-
whole-...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/02/08/empty-whole-food-
market-store-shelves-anger-shoppers/308599002/)
~~~
matwood
It's worth noting WF did this _before_ the Amazon purchase. Timing wise people
tried to blame it on Amazon, but they really had nothing to do with it.
~~~
hedora
Yeah, this was a classic pump and dump scam.
If the victim weren’t a giant, ruthless megacorp, I’d probably be outraged
instead of amused.
The context here is that WF used to use their back rooms to hold excess
inventory, but transitioned to a just in time delivery model. This had two
primary effects:
For a few quarters, their numbers looked better than they should, since they
were juiced by selling down a bunch of inventory that had been stranded in the
supply chain.
The second effect hit after the acquisition: The JIT supply chain they setup
was an unreliable disaster, so the availability of goods at the stores
plummeted after the buffer of backroom stock was depleted.
------
montrose
At first glance I read "prime members" as "prime numbers," which was
intriguing but confusing.
~~~
k__
as a non native speaker, I have this issue rather often, hehe.
Prime can mean in German "Primzahl" -> prime number and "Erstklassig" -> first
class.
------
barbelldan
Elitists club on the way. Actually from the business perspective that's a
smart move. I'd love to know what are the churn numbers of Amazon Prime
program.
~~~
bpicolo
It's like 100 bucks a year, not all that different price-wise from a Costco
membership. Amazon overall has been trying to make Whole Foods less elitist
than previously
~~~
dragonwriter
> It's like 100 bucks a year, not all that different price-wise from a Costco
> membership.
Its $120, the same as Costco Executive membership, and twice Costco Gold Star
membership.
~~~
Fins
With cashback on Executive membership, it always ends up being free (and then
some) for me. On the other hand, Amazon was just not worth the aggravation of
having to deal with their customer "service".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Next-generation video encoding techniques for 360 video and VR - tilt
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1126354007399553
======
corysama
Video presentation of the same material:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpuUUxMfaJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpuUUxMfaJs)
------
dates
ok i have a 360 camera and this is really sweet but what could i even do with
the video once encoded with facebook's transform? yet at least... guess i'll
have to watch the video and wait a few month/years for more adoption. I'm
having a lot of fun using my camera to generate sky/light maps for 3d
animation. its a ricoh theta s. a very weird product ahead of its time in a
fun but buggy way!
------
IvanK_net
I see nobody focusing on 360 degree (whole-sphere) stereo videos. It is much
bigger challenge, I think.
~~~
jorge_leria
The challenge on 360 stereo is on the creation side. While you are able to
capture decent mono 360 video with two or three cameras 360 stereo is a
different beast you need at least 6-8 cameras and a lot of processing.
~~~
IvanK_net
I think you need much more than 6-8 cameras, at least 60 - 80 cameras, so you
can get a decent image for each spherical angle of a head. The challenge is to
efficiently compress 60 almost identical video records.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Use YCNews as a blog engine? - damir
Why not? You've got title and text box, instant visibility and threaded comments. What more could a blogger want?<p>Any way, good morning folks. :-)
======
aston
How about the ability to use hyperlinks in your post?
------
aneesh
Using links and images in a post.
> _Why not?_
Because Blogger, WordPress, etc are customized for blogs! This site is a
forum, not a blog per se.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hyper_, the container-native cloud, is now generally available - scprodigy
https://blog.hyper.sh/hyper-is-generally-available.html
======
resouer
This is how container cloud should look like, i.e. a giant docker in the
cloud.
In fact docker itself has a very nice api/cli, but obviously dockercloud does
not, that's a pity.
------
nogox
Looks very simple to deploy a few containers. Nice work!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone in a need of a django guru? - ohnivak
Hi there,<p>Having programmed things like http://beepl.com, http://nrds.co.uk, and most recently (the prototype - click demo) of http://vanillamonitor.com, I consider myself top python / django programmer.<p>Unfortunately, the company went to liquidation and I am desperately looking for a payed project.<p>Anyone in a need of a talented django developer?<p>Thanks,
Jan<p>[email protected]
======
deedubaya
Guru. Wizard. Haxor. Rock Star. Code Jesus.
Please avoid those labels to describe the work you do.
------
ohnivak
Clickable links <http://beepl.com> <http://vanillamonitor.com>
<http://nrds.co.uk>
------
ntide
What did you do to get started (with Django)? I understand nothing beats hard-
earned experience, but were there any tutorials or books that stood out in
particular?
I'm saying this as a complete newbie to web development.
------
marklit
Throw your CV up on CWJobs. I've been coding Django for two years and every
time I put it on there I get 100 phone calls coming in.
~~~
hnwh
you mean this? <http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/>
------
orangethirty
Shoot me an email (in profile).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What happens to your domain if the registrar goes out of business? - joell
======
ohashi
This has happened before. RegisterFly went under. Another registrar (I think
it was godaddy) took over their customers under the auspices of icann.
------
wilfra
That registration has value - its an asset that makes recurring revenue - so
they'd likely transfer (sell) it to another registrar. You'd get an email with
a link to a new backend to login to etc. This has happened to me numerous
times over the years (they usually call it an acquisition, but I suspect many
of them were effectively going out of business). It is a slight pain to learn
a new system, but you never lose the domain or anything.
Worst case scenario Verisign or ICANN would step in. The registrar doesn't own
the domain, you do. They are just the custodian. Similar to how a stock broker
doesn't own the stock you hold with them and even if they go out of business,
you still own the stock.
------
bashzor
[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+happens+if+your+registrar+goes+out...](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+happens+if+your+registrar+goes+out+of+business)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin – The Magic of Mining - mgertner
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21638124-minting-digital-currency-has-become-big-ruthlessly-competitive-business-magic
======
danbruc
Mining is what will ultimately make Bitcoin fail. You want to give everyone a
single vote so that the majority can agree on which transactions are valid and
which are not. But because you don't want a central authority that checks ID
documents you come up with the idea of mining - make having a vote in the
Bitcoin network an expensive thing by requiring to buy hardware and then spend
more money on electricity to keep you hardware alive. It's not really fair
because if you happen to have a lot of money you can buy a lot of votes.
But the really bad thing is that you just made Bitcoin transactions pretty
expensive - I got six Dollars per transaction for electricity only about a
month ago. Even worse, processing more transaction will or should not lower
these costs. If Bitcoin would really take off processing transactions worth
billions every day, you really don't want to protect them by hardware and
electricity costs only worth a few millions because the growing transaction
volume will also increase the amount of money someone would be willing to
spend to mess with your system. At least up to some limit you really want the
total mining costs proportional to the transaction volume.
And from there down it goes. Bitcoin transactions are not cheap even if the
current low transaction fees suggest it. As the block reward goes down all the
costs of running the Bitcoin network will end up as transaction fees. And
transaction costs of several dollars are the death of micropayments and
Bitcoin adoption in the underdeveloped world, two of the most lauded arguments
for Bitcoin. I am not dismissive of the idea of cryptocurrencies but Bitcoin
with its proof of work scheme won't be the queen of the prom.
~~~
mrb
Your math is wrong, making your entire premise/argument invalid. A transaction
costs $0.60 of electricity as of right now:
150000 kilowatt (power consumption of the global Bitcoin network [1]) ÷ (3600
(sec/hour) * 7 (transaction/sec)) = 6.0 kWh/transaction
The worldwide average price of 1 kWh is $0.10, so a transaction costs $0.60 in
electricity to be processed by the network.
Also, the 7 transaction/second limit comes from the current 1MB block size
limit which was chosen by agreement. It will be increased in the near future.
If it is raised to, say, 10MB this would allow 70 transaction/sec, hence
reducing the electricity cost of a transaction down to $0.06.
[1]
[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323522](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323522)
\- the global hashrate has increased by 50% since this article was written
(~200 petahash/sec in August 2014, up to ~300 petahash/sec today) but at the
same time hardware efficiency (hash/sec per watt) has increased, so the
ballpark number is correct
~~~
sharpneli
Where do you get 150 000 kW? Even assuming all the miners are the best I could
find (Achilles lab series) [1] that comes to 190000kW based on current
hashrate [2].
Your transactions/second is also bit off. Right now based on blockchain.info
the highest transaction day had 115787 transactions [3]. And that day the
backlog of unconfirmed transactions got as high as almost 6000 unconfirmed
transactions [4]. It doesn't matter at all if the network can "theoretically"
support 7tps if it chokes at 1.3tps
That brings the actual kWh cost into 40kWh/transaction and up to the same
ballback as what GP had.
Based on the arguments on forums right now it looks that increasing the block
size is impossible. Because that would hard fork the blockchain.
When new coins are no longer being awarded to miners then people will have to
start to pay the transaction fees themselves. Right now the mining is
subsidized by what basically amounts to printing money and thus effectively is
a small inflationary tax to everyone using bitcoin.
[1]
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison)
[2] [https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-
rate](https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate)
[3]
[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions)
[4] [https://imgur.com/GAklIdZ](https://imgur.com/GAklIdZ) The most delicious
moment was not screencapped, but this is quite close. Even as this was
happening the miners happily issued small blocks (500kB and less).
~~~
vanzard
The network never "choked" at 1.3tps. There are peaks of activity near the
theoretical max of 7 tps (check for blocks close to 1MB in size). There are
thousands of unconfirmed transactions because their senders chose to include
fees that are too low (or no fee at all), so miners decide to not process
them.
> When new coins are no longer being awarded to miners then people will have
> to start to pay the transaction fees themselves
That's not how it works. People (senders) already pay the transaction fees
themselves.
~~~
sharpneli
7tps is achievable only when every transaction has a single input and a single
output. Real transactions are not like that, not by far.
People do not include enough transaction fee. I just clicked open a block with
most transactions on the recent list on blockchain frontpage
[https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000017f4d893e29b1e...](https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000017f4d893e29b1e5b0ba5d65d0416aed997afbf836c63f17c)
+.1715506 worth of transaction fees. That's by far not enough to support a
decent mining rate. In order to support current mining rate a single block
must have roughly 25BTC wort of transactions fees.
------
Animats
That's a good article on Bitcoin mining.
Last week a big cloud mining operation, CEX.io, shut down.
([http://www.coindesk.com/cex-io-halts-cloud-mining-service-
du...](http://www.coindesk.com/cex-io-halts-cloud-mining-service-due-low-
bitcoin-price/)) The price of Bitcoin has dropped to the point that their
operation was unprofitable.
Because the total weekly reward to all miners is fixed, all miners are in
direct competition. If mining effort doubles, return on mining investment
halves. The big operations are starting to hit that limit. The little guys hit
it a long time ago.
------
brainy
guys here in africa ze are starting to accpt bitcoin and i think this will
have a positive effect on the coin [http://techunzipped.com/bitcoin-
conference-africa/](http://techunzipped.com/bitcoin-conference-africa/)
------
thefreeman
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Bitcoin+%E2%80%93+The+Magic+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Bitcoin+%E2%80%93+The+Magic+of+Mining&oq=Bitcoin+%E2%80%93+The+Magic+of+Mining&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.239j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8)
~~~
drivingmenuts
Thank you.
------
mrb
_" last year it performed even worse than the Russian rouble and Ukrainian
hryvnia"_
A number of journalists have relayed this claim lately, but I find it
disingenuous as it avoid talking about the real reason (volatility) and it
hides the big picture (Bitcoin is up 3200% over the last two years [1]).
Otherwise, this is a good article about mining. But one comment I would like
to make is that people, like this author, sometimes claim Bitcoin's mining
consume a lot of electricity. But compared to what? It is fair to compare it
to the many data centers owned and operated by credit card processors, banks,
and all sorts of financial companies, but only to the portion of these data
centers that fulfill a role roughly comparable to Bitcoin: processing
transactions, verifying fraud, etc. Let's do some math: North American data
center market power consumption is about 12 gigawatt [2]. I don't know what
the world data center power consumption is, but let's assume ~3x that, or 30
gigawatt [3]. Let's assume that 1/3 of these data centers belong to financial
companies, so 10 gigawatt are consumed by financial data centers. If half of
these data centers are used to process transactions and for anti-fraud
purposes, that's 5 gigawatt. By comparison, Bitcoin's mining operations
worldwide are estimated to consume 150 megawatt [4]. So Bitcoin mining uses 3%
of the electricity of what financial companies use for similar purposes.
[1] From $6 in January 2013 to $200 as of today:
[http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg730ztgSzm1g10z...](http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg730ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zl)
[2]
[http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/01/15-g...](http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/01/15-growth-
forecast-north-america-colocation-market-2014-0)
[3] 30 gigawatt is also approximately in line with the often quoted estimate
that data centers use ~1% of the world's electricity (~1% of 2500 gigawatt).
[4]
[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323522](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1323522)
\- the global hashrate has increased by 50% since this article was written
(~200 petahash/sec in August 2014, to ~300 petahash/sec today) but at the same
time hardware efficiency (hash/sec per watt) has increased, so the ballpark
number is correct. In fact the economist article also estimates it at ~135,000
average american homes, or 168 megawatt (1 average home = 1250 watt).
Edit: @the_mitsuhiko: By definition, "volatility" is a price variation over
time, regardless if it is consistent or not.
~~~
bdcravens
In all these discussions of Bitcoin's price over N months, I don't see anyone
consider this: 2 years is 44% of its tradable life (first trades on Mt. Gox
were in July 2010). You might as well talk about Apple's performance since
2000, which is 44% of its tradable life. In which case, you see similar
returns (almost 3000%)
So if Bitcoin goes down to $30, that's an amazing investment, right? After
all, that's a 500% ROI!
~~~
cgjaro
Nobody talks about "percentage of tradable life" because this is a pointless
metric. You don't see banks publishing prospectus saying "this investment
gained x% over y% of its tradable life". %/year is what matters to all
investors.
> So if Bitcoin goes down to $30, that's an amazing investment, right? After
> all, that's a 500% ROI!
Absolutely. Buying at $6 in january 2013, and selling even at $30 would be a
500% ROI and a great investment over 2 years. What is your point?
~~~
bdcravens
"%/year is what matters to all investors"
Exactly. Only one in Bitcoin in January 2013 were those who were really deep
in the community. Investors don't care what the price was before they
purchased.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US health officials alarmed by paralyzing illness in kids - georgecmu
https://apnews.com/2b43b0f510a1419d8c436e13d082dafa
======
gnat
That paralyzing illness:
> acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, a rare, mysterious and sometimes deadly
> paralyzing illness that seems to ebb and flow on an every-other-year cycle
> and is beginning to alarm public health officials because it is striking
> more and more children.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Systems Design for Advanced Beginners - _ttg
https://robertheaton.com/2020/04/06/systems-design-for-advanced-beginners/
======
dzink
As a solo tech founder of several sites, I’ve had the pleasure of digging into
each of these problems and more over the past few years. Some topics worth
adding to the list for consumer sites:
1\. Prototype and benchmark each of your stack pieces before you pick a stack.
It is far easier to fix architecture mistakes when you don’t have 10000 users
expecting overnight customer service. If you are using new technology, find
good open source products to see how they’ve structured their projects. Your
architecture, designed for speed and experience, will be your key
differentiator. Inherent speed at core task, design to user needs, and name
choice are the 3 musketeers of a solid growth.
2\. Prepare for abusers to attack your system from every direction, especially
if you enable users to publish content under your domain. You will see bots
looking for Wordpress installations, users trying to fill content with SEO
links, users trying every hacking vector known to market. Collect known
vectors and test for them and never refuse a legitimate bug bounty request.
3\. There is an eternal debate about the trade off between building a quality
product at start or opening early to get user feedback before you get too deep
into features. There is merit to both choices as a solo founder. The moment
you open the gates to users, your ability to make changes comes with very high
friction. With time, trying new features becomes a tremendous luxury hidden
under bug requests, roadmap, customer service replies, etc. Build your biggest
riskiest assumptions first.
4\. Testing is hard as a solo founder. Selenium is your friend. If you don’t
spend time with them, your users will take that time in multiples after a
mistake.
The best way to learn is to come up with a product you really want and build
it in your own time. You can test launch in a weekend.
When I started launching consumer sites solo as an engineer, I went from a
tight specialization to being unafraid to try any tech if it gives me an
advantage in solving a problem. Once you’ve simulated enough problems and
dealt with the consequences of your choices personally, you can play that 10
level chess game with the architecture of each new feature much faster.
~~~
cactus2093
This is interesting advice because every company I've come across that has
been successful enough to get past the early startup phase has by and large
ignored all of this.
The companies I've seen succeed were 100% focused on shipping their product to
customers. Not 90% focused on customers and 10% focused on code quality, but
100% focused. They'd rather have to spend 30 engineer-days a few years from
now fixing an issue if they get to that point than spend 3 hours getting it
right upfront.
As an engineer that goes against every instinct I have, it really seems like
spending a couple hours upfront must be a better use of time. It seems like it
should be possible to spend 10% of your time setting yourself up well for the
future, that's still just a rounding error of your time. And then if you do
survive another few years, you'll have a huge leg up on other series B or C
stage competitors if you're not hindered by a lot of tech debt at that point.
But from a capitalist perspective, it's probably not so crazy. If you are
working with a $200,000 seed round in the beginning, and an engineer costs
$80,000 a year, 3 hours of their time costs $115 which is 0.06% of your funds.
And more importantly, that $200k is maybe enough for a year of runway, so 3
hours is 0.14% of the time you have to live given a 40-hour a week year (or
0.07% of an 80 hour a week year). Every bit of that starts to add up. Whereas
by the time you're a later-stage company and you've raised, say, $40 million
dollars and are paying engineers $150k, 30 engineer-days of work is $17,300
but that's only 0.04% of the money you've raised plus your runway is now
approaching infinity if you're close to profitable.
I'm still kind of playing devil's advocate here, my instinct really wants to
believe that a better balance than what I've seen is possible. One huge
missing factor is that people have a strong tendency to ignore spread out
costs like the time wasted fixing bugs that pop up later whereas the upfront
cost of writing a bunch of tests is more visible. But it has been interesting
for me to consider that maybe most founders really are acting pretty
reasonably, even though it originally seems pretty careless and lazy to let
your startup build up a ton of tech debt early on.
~~~
jacobr1
There are compounding gains from making "the right choice all else equal."
This is one of those semi-mythical 10x engineer super-powers. Or it might just
be experience. But technical choices need to be made and making slightly
better ones will pay off even in the short term. The technical changes should
just optimize for rapid change rather than stability or scale.
------
semicolonandson
Thought I'd post this here since I imagine there's a strong cross-over of
interest:
If you'd like a guided video code-tour of how all the pieces of a production
web-app fit together, I publish detailed weekly screencasts showcasing the
code, systems, and architecture behind Oxbridge Notes, the business that's
supported me for the past decade.
So far I've covered:
— software dependency vetting
— data integrity systems (constraints, foreign keys, transactions etc.)
— integration testing systems
— trade-offs in software quality between customer-facing and admin areas
— softer stuff, like designing for SEO (marketing ease is a critical part of
any system I design, as an indie-hacker)
[https://www.semicolonandsons.com/series/Inside-The-
Muse](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/series/Inside-The-Muse)
~~~
sciencewolf
Hey Jack,
Just a heads up - I tried to sign up for your mailing list but kept seeing
"ERROR: Did you forget to type your email?" even after typing the email. I've
tried a few different emails and also tried viewing the page in incognito
mode. Hope you get this fixed soon, as I'd really love to get more of your
content!
~~~
igneo676
I get the same error :/
Also, it'd be great to be able to turn off the mailing list sign up on the
videos. I'm already technically subscribed via RSS and it'd be great if the
videos play through without intervention
------
moonchild
They have this diagram:
+-----------+ +--------------+ +-----------------+
|Web Browser| |Smartphone App| |Client Libraries/|
+-----+-----+ +------+-------+ |Other API code |
| | +-------+---------+
| v |
| +-----+------+ |
+--------->+ Steveslist +<-----------+
| Servers |
+------------+
Why not this?
+-----------+ +-----------------+ +--------------+
|Web Browser|-->|Client Libraries/|<--|Smartphone App|
+-----------+ |Other API code | +--------------+
+-------+---------+
|
v
+-----+------+
| Steveslist |
| Servers |
+------------+
~~~
filipn
Yes, I think the second diagram that you showed is the preferred way of doing
things, since using or "dogfooding" the client libraries will ensure they are
always tested and correct, plus you'll get immediate feedback from the other
developers who work on the apps as well.
~~~
amarant
In this day and age, your client libraries should be generated automatically.
And of course used in your apps/webpage to save time.
See openapi/swagger for good examples how client generation works
~~~
awofford
I've been using openapi/swagger for generating my clients and honestly think
it creates a mess of files and manually keeping clients up to date is not a
huge task. I'm not sure that I buy into "your client libraries should be
generated automatically" as a blanket statement.
~~~
kqr
Granted, APIs aren't updated often, but when they are, generated clients can
save a lot of time. I can update a generated client in half an hour and be
very confident of its correctness, whereas a manually constructed client would
take hours to update and test.
Of course, the generated client is not very convenient, being a 1-to-1 mapping
with the API. You build a high-level client with the more common operations on
top of the generated one.
It's possible to do this in a way that gets you the best of both approaches,
with some up-front planning.
------
dreamcompiler
Nice tutorial! One small nitpick:
> Calculating a hash value from an input is computationally very easy, but
> reversing the transformation and recovering the original input from its hash
> value takes so much time and computing power that it is, practically-
> speaking, impossible.
The above is true for encryption but not for hash codes. Recovering the
original input from a hash code is not just practically impossible; it's
_provably_ impossible -- even with an infinite amount of computing power --
because in general a hash code contains less information than the original
text.
~~~
sz4kerto
Actually, it might be occasionally possible. Not perfectly, of course. If the
input space is limited and you have other constraints on it, then you might be
able to find the original text. For example, let's say your input is a 280
character long tweet, the hash is only 16 bytes long. If you find that "I AM A
STABLE GENIUS" is one of the inputs that hashes to the given hash value, then
you can be reasonably sure that this was the original text, given that most of
the other inputs with the same hash won't be meaningful English sentences.
~~~
talaketu
I'd say the count of believable English tweets would be many orders of
magnitude greater the count of 16 byte hashes, so in general we can't just
find a believable tweet and declare that we found the plaintext. There would
be many possible collision.
The phrase you mentioned is notable (with a slight edit) - so I suppose you
mean you could index phrases by notability, then it may be tractable find
tweets of notable phrases, since the number of notable phrases is relatively
low.
------
Hyperborian
> How do they store their data?
SQL.
> How do their different applications talk to each other?
Proprietary APIs.
> How do they scale their systems to work for millions of users?
T H E C L O U D
> How do they keep them secure?
They just... don't.
> How do they make sure nothing goes wrong?
They just... don't.
> What are APIs, webhooks and client libraries, when you really get down to
> it?
Easily outsourced to India.
~~~
mberning
That last point is so painful and true. I work with a product that has dozens
if not hundreds of “connectors” to interface with other systems and you can
tell that most of them were farmed out to the lowest bidder.
------
gmanis
I have been doing a greater part of the things elaborated in the post as a
solo founder/freelance software person. Albeit the scale of things I need to
handle are relatively small.
What kind of a job profile should I be looking at if I am in a position where
I absolutely need to have one?
I don’t slot particularly well in any one thing I feel, neither a great
developer nor a great systems person. And I did do a bunch of recruiting and
tech consulting too:
~~~
fapjacks
Have you ever considered working technical support? As a lifelong generalist
programmer, I never imagined I would work in a support role beyond what every
programmer at a startup is expected to do, but I was persuaded to cross over
by someone I greatly respect. That support team was the most talented team I
ever worked with in almost twenty-five years in tech, and working in that role
grew many different skills both in and out of tech in ways I never imagined.
Hacking broken production environments back online and writing and pushing
bugfixes is exhilarating, and it was the single most valuable experience of my
career.
~~~
gmanis
Never considered support role to be honest. Maybe it feels a little inferior
after having those degrees I guess but that’s my own bias. I did think of like
a product management role at startups but they all expect you to have pedigree
or previous work ex in similar role. Catch-22!
~~~
fapjacks
Yeah, that's exactly what I thought, too. It is just one of those weird
cultural artifacts that when someone says "tech support" we automatically
conjure this mental image which is both not really technical and not really
flattering. It was definitely one of those life moments when I had to sit down
and talk myself out of a baseless prejudice.
Also, the sibling commenter mentions one of the big reasons I found so much
joy in it. This kind of hardcore technical support is in many respects closely
related to working on greenfield projects. In my experience, the fun stuff
usually ends up with some unfun caveats like company bureaucracy, office
politics, or having the tech stack chosen beforehand, this kind of thing. But
there's an interesting inversion when a company's production environment is
broken and you're the one that can fix it. Obstacles magically disappear and
you have a _tremendous_ amount of freedom to do your job, with effectively two
different companies doing what they can to enable your work, because the only
thing everyone cares about is getting it working again.
You do have to be able to walk the walk -- and I cannot stress enough that it
takes a certain type, and just knowing your shit isn't going to cut it -- and
you also have to get some personal enjoyment out of chaotic environments, and
be able to talk people out of a tree sometimes. But you'll never run out of
new and interesting problems to solve, you'll be testing your mettle far more
frequently than your peers, and you'll be expanding your professional network
every week about as much as everybody else does once or twice a year when they
go to a convention. It's the closest thing the tech industry has to a
firefighter or superhero or something.
~~~
Davertron
Maybe infosec or cyber security would be similar? I'm a fullstack turned
mostly FE developer these days, but I'm very interested in security and it
seems like there is a lot of demand out there for that skill set and plenty of
opportunity. It seems like it would push a lot of the same buttons that you
mentioned (fixing broken systems, lots of autonomy, working with smart folks).
I tend to get bored with long-term projects unless there are still interesting
problems to be solved so working on lots of smaller projects sounds pretty
appealing, and there's seemingly no end to new systems/devices/websites that
are just riddled with holes. Seems like a perfect role and potentially more
lucrative than IT (although this is just pure guessing, I haven't compared
numbers).
~~~
gmanis
I have explored security world too. Lots of experiments with reversing tools
like IDAPro, ollydbg.
Recently a client asked if I can help reverse their own android app because
the developers were holding their source code hostage. It was lots of fun and
lots of struggle but overall satisfying.
Maybe something like basic security freelance work especially basic webapp
security(xss,sqli,csrf, the likes) and some process security with maintaining
proper logins, maintaining and rotating credentials etc.
Thank you for your ideas.
------
amdelamar
This basically outlines my current job. Huge system with many, constantly
moving/upgrading parts and services across teams, all while utilizing dozens
of internal services, tools, and navigating corporate policies. I’m thriving
in it, but totally recognize it’s a steep learning curve and takes longer to
onboard newcomers.
Eventually you get to enjoy deprecating old services as much as building new
ones, simply because you never have to teach others about them again.
------
bibabaloo
> Steveslist currently has a very simple and slightly fragile cron setup. We
> have a single “scheduled jobs server”. We use crontab on this server ...
> This setup isn’t scaling very well ... We’re considering setting up a new
> system using a modern tool like Kubernetes.
Do people use Kubernetes for running scheduled jobs like this? It seems like
it'd be overkill but in saying that I'm not sure if I know of anything that
can be used for running scheduled tasks in a reliable and observable way
that's scalable. Maybe Jenkins?
~~~
cyberdrunk
> Do people use Kubernetes for running scheduled jobs like this?
We do, mostly because we already have Kubernetes and automation to deploy to
it, so why not? The reliablity and monitoring are better than something we'd
cook up on our own.
------
pc9
How can I gain practical experience in these things? The jobs I've had mainly
revolve around adding new features, not doing any of the things described in
the article. Does working at bigger companies actually give you experience
with this?
~~~
taigi100
Yes and no, depends. It gives such experience to a software architect,
otherwise not really. Tho, software architects do a lot more than just systems
design (tho, that is pretty much their main task). But yes, you get a job as a
software architect or something like an "in-training" one, helping one, etc.
at a big corporation to get such experience (I'd argue that small companies
only need some code design, you want a lot of systems/software design you
should go for a big corporation)
~~~
mav3rick
You evolve into the architect role as an IC. No new grad is hired like this.
You design things and keep going up in scale.
~~~
taigi100
It happens from time to time, but yes - there is no specific job / hiring for
this.
The default/common path is evolving into the architect role which seems like a
"bad" process of developing an architect.
The best way to develop a new architect, is to have him learn alongside a
mentor/teacher who is an architect himself. Developing and architecture are
very different jobs which require different mindsets and skills. Also, I've
seen many places, teams, etc where people are mostly made to implement feature
after feature with no time in between for learning, self-development, courses,
etc.
Otherwise, after you've just "arrived" to that architect role you start
learning on your own what architecture really is and means.
~~~
mav3rick
Developing and architecture are absolutely related. Many ideas seem great on
paper till you go and implement them and find out the pain points. All the
great architects have often been in the weeds of their systems.
------
rustamm
Regarding DB backups, it would be useful to add that it is not enough to
simply make backups, one should also test that the backups are actually
restorable.
~~~
chasd00
also the restore/recover process has to be laid out step by step and be as
simple as possible. No one is doing a restore in a relaxed, easy going state
of mind. Restores are done in full panic mode with the team thinking about how
they're going to break the news to their families that they've lost their job.
------
rhlsthrm
Just recently started messing with AWS Amplify. It's crazy how easy it makes
basically all this stuff. It really makes it simple to be a solo founder and
manage every piece of the stack.
------
imvetri
Title corrected - Web application system design for advanced beginners
~~~
fouc
Yeah, it's not true "Systems design" since it's specific to programming
------
avipars
I love the phrase "Advanced Beginner"
------
zeckalpha
Don’t forget a system for organizing contributions to all this code, a system
to ensure compliance with the many legal regimes “Steveslist” is offered in, a
system for onboarding new hires, a system for expanding market share, a system
for keeping money and reporting on it to wouldbe investors, and a system of
systems designers that know how to respond to changing and ever expanding
requirements.
Don’t sell yourself short: there are systems everywhere you look, not just
where there’s convenient precedent to make a web service.
------
zealsham
This is the best thing I have read in 2020. As a bug bounty Hunter this is
insanely helpful to me .
------
Roybot
> To do this, we need to write database queries that aggregate over the
> entirety of our data. We don’t want to run these queries against our
> production SQL database, because they could put an enormous amount of load
> on it. We don’t want a huge query issued by an internal analyst to be able
> to bring our production database to a grinding halt
What kind of query would you have to write to bring down a production db? What
makes a solution like hive much better - I guess its optimized for this?
~~~
sradman
> What kind of query would you have to write to bring down a production db?
Scans and Sorts, seen in a query plan, are relatively expensive to run in a
production row store. OLAP queries (GROUP BY with aggregate functions like
COUNT, SUM, and AVG) do large^/full table scans by definition. They take
seconds to run while your goal in a Cloud OLTP system is thousands of requests
per second. An automatic sort issued per query in an OLTP system is
pathological and represents a vector for a DoS attack.
> What makes a solution like hive much better - I guess its optimized for
> this?
Column stores use compressed bitmap indexes that are optimized for scans over
a small number of columns. Hive is SQL over Hadoop, and is inherently slow but
it does offload the processing from your Production OLTP server. Hive supports
the RCFile format which is partially column oriented. The ORC file format is
fully column oriented, replaces RCFile format, but requires Presto (or
equivalent). Hive is brownfield for existing Hadoop clusters but it has no
place in a discussion about greenfield architecture other than discussing
historical systems.
If you have a need for GROUP BY style analytics, a true column store like
Presto, Impala, or RedShift is a necessity.
^EDIT: based on zbentley's comment
~~~
zbentley
> OLAP queries (GROUP BY with aggregate functions like COUNT, SUM, and AVG) do
> full table scans by definition
Isn't it only a full table scan if your query isn't otherwise filtered? Those
functions have to read every row of "something", but that something might not
always be a whole table.
~~~
sradman
Very true, I've edited my comment. Some GROUP BY queries are inexpensive and
are fine in an OLTP system if the WHERE clause restriction limits the result
set size, most however, are meant to scan a large number of rows.
~~~
Roybot
Thank you - this was insightful.
------
iblaine
Systems Design is a formidable topic because it can go in so many directions.
This is a good guide. Might I also recommend something that includes caching,
partitioning, indexing, and NoSQL vs SQL. More detail can be found here
[https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-system-
design-...](https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-the-system-design-
interview)
~~~
humanlion87
I remember using the course you have linked to some time ago - it was very
useful. I noticed now that the course is sold on a subscription model. I don't
remember being that the case. Would you happen to know when that changed?
~~~
iblaine
I don't. I came across this in 2018 and recall the course being for sale for
$80.
------
withinboredom
> We’re considering either splitting up our cron jobs into multiple servers,
> or setting up a new system using a modern tool like Kubernetes.
:facepalm: beanstalkd can handle a pretty massive amount of jobs before you
need to start worrying about scale. I love the huge jump from simple to
complex.
~~~
zbentley
To be fair they offered a simple option (splitting crontabs) as well.
------
brianzelip
Really like the prose/Adventure-like writing style of this "tutorial"!
------
tinalumfoil
> database engines that are quick at small queries are typically unacceptably
> slow of answering giant queries
Even with proper indexing? I haven't seen this issue with Postgres but maybe I
wasn't working on large enough data sets.
------
boredatworkme
off topic: I like the simplistic design of this website. Can someone please
help me understand if this is hosted on WordPress or something like that?
~~~
tonyedgecombe
It might be Jekyll according to [https://robertheaton.com/2014/07/26/lessons-
from-a-surprisin...](https://robertheaton.com/2014/07/26/lessons-from-a-
surprisingly-successful-blog/)
------
rataata_jr
This is amazing. Thank you Robert.
------
giggl
Great post! Thanks for sharing.
------
pantulis
Great post!
------
forgotmypwbctbi
anyone else just getting a blank page here?
------
banq
no DDD?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How San Francisco Planned Its Own Housing Crisis - ohjeez
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/demolishing-the-california-dream/
======
phlakaton
I spent a lot of time digging into this article. Very interesting and
provocative reading for this Bay Area resident. Thanks for sharing!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft [pdf] - DVassallo
https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/363/bmj.k5094.full.pdf
======
bediger4000
I read this and I'm not sure if it's a joke, or bad scholarship or what. As
in, did anyone actually jump from a plane wearing (or not wearing) a
parachute?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Multiplayer Set (nodeJS card game) - akanet
http://multiplayerset.com/
======
cmaggard
Interesting, but ran into an issue. Made a private game, saw a set immediately
(all single, all stripe, different shapes, different colors). That one
wouldn't take though. Mashing hint three times though highlighted three cards
that weren't a set (single/single/triple,blue/blue/red).
Using IE8 but I don't think it would make a difference.
_edit_ My friends and I are Set nuts though, so I'm kinda stoked about this
for us.
~~~
akanet
It MIGHT be a browser issue. Did you reload/switch browsers?
~~~
cmaggard
Switched to Firefox, and still not showing a valid set. (quantity different,
color different, fill and shape similar).
cody dot maggard at gmail for the game URI if you want to check it out.
------
utexaspunk
Oh man- this could be bad for my productivity... Does this have the blessing
of the creators/copyright owners of Set?
~~~
DrJ
blessing or not, this game is going to be a problem for my productivity.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Find beautiful images in 5 seconds - sameganegie
http://bestproductips.blogspot.com/2012/07/find-free-images-in-5-seconds.html
======
Rhymenocerus
This seems pretty cool for an ad-free site. But I guess it has static results,
they're not doing a web search.
------
sameganegie
Yes, i think that the site pick just the first result of image of the search
engines
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Resources to learn on how to self-build a house(home)? - pawanpe
I have read many articles where some people self-built their home. It's inspiring. Want to check if they are any valuable resources online or connections to talk to, on how to self-build a home. Nothing fancy in plan. Just a 200 square yard plot with 1500-2000 sq ft construction in two or three levels
======
oldmancoyote
I have "built" 3 homes. By that I mean 'I served as my own general
contractor'. I initially wanted to do the work myself. After taking the local
owner-built-home adult education course, I concluded that there was way too
much work to make it practical.
After "building" my first house as my own general contractor I did some
calculations and found that there was about 10 years of labor involved. That
was with pro subcontractors.
As my own general contractor, it took about a year. I might be possible to do
it in as little as 6 months, but that would be an intense grind.
I have known people who did much of the work themselves, but they still used
some subcontractors and hired help. These houses often spent years with a
finished exterior and severely limited finished living space. The rest of the
interior was just empty space. There were treats of divorce along the way
before it was eventually finished.
With finished walls and roof, it looks like you are nearly done. Not by a long
shot. The most money and time spent is still ahead.
I strongly recommend serving as your own general contractor. You can save 20%
to 30% and get the house you want not what someone thinks will sell lots of
copies. Find an owner-builder course. I took the same course half a dozen
times to keep focused and motivated. Believe me you will get enough
opportunities to hammer some nails, lay some tile, install cabinets, etc. to
satisfy yourself. Once you are done, you will know you built a house. Believe
me. It's a lot of work and worry.
If you insist on doing it "yourself", try to find a design intended to be
build in habitable stages. The saltbox design from America's early days is an
example. The first stage was a very basic shed. When the opportunity arose,
the next stage was a connected tall gable roofed structure. The shed became
the kitchen. As the family grew and the opportunity arose, a second story or
loft was built inside the second stage. You get the idea.
About multiple stories, figure a big cost increase.
Don't feel down about this post. Building your own house, no matter how it's
done, will entail lots of ups and downs. This is only the first. You will get
back up, and do it again and again. Once it's done, it's an awesome
experience. For me it was always a bit of a surprise that I was done. You just
keep your head down and pursue each task as it comes. Then finally your are
done.
~~~
pawanpe
Informative and helpful! Thank you!
------
billconan
[http://www.domegaia.com/](http://www.domegaia.com/)
I found this link interesting
~~~
pawanpe
thank you!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: AI-driven predicative ratings for rental apartments - francisj
https://beta.getaugrented.com/
======
FinnVoid
Pretty Cool Concept!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Comparing Instagram's growth with Facebook and Flickr - mryall
http://mattryall.net/blog/2012/04/instagram-vs-facebook-and-flickr
======
mryall
This is a post I wrote a while ago, but forgot to submit to HN. I think it is
still a very interesting chart, even though it's now a couple of months after
the acquisition.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don’t Even Think About Reading This Post - lordoftheflies
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20130812001541-69244073-don-t-even-think-about-reading-this-post
======
mariuolo
Ok, I didn't.
Was there anything else?
~~~
mattlutze
Nothing to see here, move along.
Definitely don't press that red button over there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What every programmer should know about memory (2007) - jimsojim
http://lwn.net/Articles/250967/
======
dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=What%20every%20programmer%20sh...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=What%20every%20programmer%20should%20know%20about%20memory&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)
------
asgard1024
What every programmer should know about memory:
Even though it may not seem so at first, memory is very lossy, especially in
old age. So, write comments, write documentation, make notes. Diagrams help
too.
It's best to acquire these skills at early age, since at older age memory
stores also require more cycles.
There are also ways to boost memory. One option is that emotionally charged
events are very well remembered. Thus, don't be afraid to experiment; the
bigger mistake you make, the better you will remember it.
Edit: Ah, nevermind. Apparently this is a different type of memory that
programmers have to deal with. Still, I hope this advice was useful.
------
ilurk
Obligatory "Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know"
[http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_laten...](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html)
------
wyldfire
What every programmer should know: large capacity and blazing fast NAND is
poised to change everything you used to know. JEDEC is working on
standardizing large capacity NVDIMMs [1][2][3], and that will probably mean at
the very least a new tier in this hierarchy. And perhaps changes to swap,
filesystems, databases, and boot/initialization will come to capitalize on
this new tier.
[1] [https://www.jedec.org/news/pressreleases/jedec-announces-
sup...](https://www.jedec.org/news/pressreleases/jedec-announces-support-
nvdimm-hybrid-memory-modules)
[2]
[http://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/files/Brett_William...](http://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/files/Brett_Williams_Server_Forum_2014.pdf)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVDIMM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVDIMM)
~~~
vvanders
Unless they get CAS latency down(the little I know about flash points to
probably not) I don't know if it's going to change that much.
------
fmstephe
I would love to read an updated version of this. The fundamentals won't have
changed much. But the details are changing and Urlich went into a lot of
detail in this doc.
Great Read.
~~~
rasz_pl
Wiki could work for updating this writeup efficiently, good example is the way
linux booting was described using github.
[https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides](https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides)
------
thecatspaw
this is way to low level for every programmer to know. While there probably is
some use for this, the average java/python/ruby/node.js programmer will never
need this information.
When working with embedded systems this information is more usefull, but very
few programmers actually do work in that industry compared to others, e.g. web
~~~
peterwwillis
> the average java/python/ruby/node.js programmer will never need this
> information
That's what every kid in school ever says about a subject they don't care
about. They're usually proven wrong.
Just in the first few pages you'll find this gem:
This leakage is why a DRAM cell must be constantly refreshed. For
most DRAM chips these days this refresh must happen every 64ms. During
the refresh cycle no access to the memory is possible. For some workloads
this overhead might stall up to 50% of the memory accesses (see [highperfdram]).
You don't think a Java, Python, Ruby, or Node programmer might need to know
this at some juncture?
Having a deep understanding of how things work helps you visualize everything
going on and see potential problems before they happen. This kind of deep
thinking is helpful in all kinds of activities.
~~~
SilasX
"Would benefit, eventually, at some point when butting up against resource
limitations if they're advanced and do this for a while and no one's around to
point this out of them on code review" != "everyone needs to know"
~~~
peterwwillis
I think I get what you're saying here. You don't "need" to know this to write
code. Which is true - heck, you don't "need" to know how a tcp/ip connection
works, or how disk storage works. But one day you might.
When you put fuel in your car and you turn the ignition and step on the gas,
the wheels move. So all you need to know is where the fuel goes and how to
turn the ignition and where the gas pedal is. But one day, I guarantee you,
the wheels will stop moving.
When your boss storms up to your desk and says "Why aren't the god damn wheels
moving?! We're losing ad revenue every minute!!", I hope Code Review Guy is
around to tell you how fuel injectors work.
~~~
yongjik
You know, I have a really hard time imagining a situation where your boss
storms up to your desk and says "Why aren't the goddamn wheels moving? We're
losing ad revenue every minute!!" and you reply "Aww goddamn, I forgot to
account for DRAM refresh cycle."
There's knowing how fuel injectors work, and there's knowing how copper
crystal in the wire admits an energy band for free electrons.
~~~
peterwwillis
The point isn't to know the answer to every problem. The point is to be
educated enough to even have a _guess_ as to where to start _looking_ for the
problem, and then start trying to figure out the answer.
------
pvg
That one is quite the evergreen (and probably needs a '2007'):
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=what%20every%20programmer%20sh...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=what%20every%20programmer%20should%20know%20about%20memory&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
------
gpvos
Article is from 2007. (And as someone else writes, details have changed and
the article is rather detailed.)
~~~
TheBakaAniki
I wish that was the case. I wouldn't have to worry about DRAM latencies
anymore
------
petewailes
On a similar note, for the difference in timings and sizes on a scale you can
relate to, is this:
[https://plus.google.com/+PeterBurnsrictic/posts/LvhVwngPqSC](https://plus.google.com/+PeterBurnsrictic/posts/LvhVwngPqSC)
------
mud_dauber
Memory product guy here.
Great content & relatively current. FWIW, the subject gets even more
interesting if you consider how switches & routers manage the flow of packets.
The memory hierarchy gets even more esoteric.
Regarding the "this is too low level for programmers" comment: only if you
don't need to understand how latency, bandwidth & power works at a fundamental
level. Every programmer I know _wants_ to understand this stuff.
------
jheriko
there are just three things i wish programmers knew about memory... none of
them are especially low-level or require depth of understanding.
never dynamically allocate it unless forced.
really. never allocate at run-time it unless you are absolutely forced by your
algorithm.
if you absolutely really must allocate memory on the fly, have a budget so you
can do one big up-front allocation and carefully reuse it. even better, don't
allocate it to start with.
~~~
rootlocus
I'll remember that the next time I'm using python.
~~~
azinman2
Or Java or go or ruby or Scala or php or....
~~~
vvanders
Still very much relevant in Java if you don't want your GC to churn like mad.
Heck even some of the cache aware algorithms can be taken advantage of with
some smart use of ByteBuffers to get a 10-50x improvement in performance.
~~~
azinman2
Few applications need this... mostly in the financial space. The GC is quite
good at quick temp objects these days.
------
draw_down
Definitely start off with a huge preamble about the olden days and document
structure and how to report problems. Sheesh
------
Dowwie
wait.. I have to know ALL of this?! is there a TL;DR?
------
mwnz
Again?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Woman Scored $1,200 A Month In Fancy Dinners Using Match.com - kunle
http://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-how-she-made-1200-a-month-using-matchcom-2011-11
======
paulhauggis
guys do the same thing.
Replace "$1200 a month in fancy dinners" with sex.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A teenager discovered a new planet on the third day of his NASA internship - kerng
https://m.sfgate.com/news/article/A-teenager-discovered-a-new-planet-on-the-third-14966111.php
======
jobseeker990
Usually who ever is in charge of the lab gets the credit for any discoveries.
You never hear much about undergrads making discoveries because the
professor's name goes on the paper.
I wonder why this article keeps appearing everywhere. I'm not sure why they're
allowing the student to get the credit. Maybe it's a feel-good-encourage-STEM
piece.
~~~
currymj
I think it would be very unethical for an undergraduate who contributed to a
research effort not to be listed as an author.
normally the professor's name goes last on the paper, and the convention is
well understood that being last author means they functioned in an
advisory/funding role and may not have done much of the actual work.
there's plenty to be cynical about in the world of scientific research but
it's definitely not the norm for professors to claim sole credit for work done
by their students or employees.
~~~
toyg
Most of the stories I’ve heard from people I know who used to be in the sector
(mother, brother, ex-wife, friends...) don’t match your perception. This is in
Europe, but still: credit is hard currency in that world and people can be
pretty cut-throat about it.
~~~
currymj
People can be cutthroat about trying to get their name on papers to which they
contributed little, and they may be reluctant to discuss work too openly with
others lest the discussion be construed as a collaboration which would require
coauthorship. But I think leaving people off the paper who made some
contribution is really frowned upon at least in the US.
------
overlordalex
If anyone at home wants to discover new planets (without the need for a NASA
internship) there has been a citizen science project running for several years
[1]. It uses TESS data (I believe Kepler data was used before TESS) and is
essentially the same as what the intern has done
I'm mystified why this story is getting spammed so far and wide? Is this a
recruiting advert?
[1] [https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-
eisner/planet-h...](https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-
eisner/planet-hunters-tess-mobile/classify)
~~~
capableweb
> I'm mystified why this story is getting spammed so far and wide? Is this a
> recruiting advert?
It ticks all the boxes of becoming a viral story:
\- "A teenager discovered a new planet on the third day of his NASA
internship"
\- "Teenager" > relatable to people who share most on social media
\- "discovered a new planet" > woah, aliens/space
\- "the third day of his NASA internship" > Wow, what a accident/savant
~~~
Izkata
Don't forget "teenager discovered" -> special skills not needed / anyone can
do it / "I" could do this too.
~~~
happytoexplain
Can somebody clue me in on the cynical overtones of this thread?
~~~
allovernow
Scientifically illiterate media tends to occasionally treat fairly mundane
work as exceptional when performed by a teenager. Particularly if they're from
an underrepresented group. It's frustrating to read about such exaggerated
accolades.
But laymen eat this shit up.
~~~
happytoexplain
While I follow this explanation and agree with it outside any other context, I
usually find that this position is actually more negative/harmful/self-
gratifying on par than that particular flavor of misleading writing is.
------
konschubert
I think that a discovery is made by everybody who enabled the collection and
analysis of the data, not just the person who happens to stumble upon it
during a routine processing of the data.
(Now it may be that I missed it and the intern did something special that
prevented this discovery from being otherwise overlooked. )
(And of course none of this is meant as a jab at research interns, it’s
honest, fun work and a great way to learn!)
------
rolltiide
What is the point of this article? I've seen it on a few mediums,
publications, the morning show.
Isn't there a whole set of enthusiasts looking at snapshots of the entire sky
to see if changes or orbital patterns represent planets or other things for
categorization?
It just seems like that is being ignored, and its also an aberration to
elevate this action as interesting.
It has nothing to do with who gets the take credit for it. That's a red
herring to the whole discussion.
It could have just as easily been another headline about "planet found in
habitable range" with a random artist illustration. But honestly, maybe this
way is more effective since the PR engine is going on overdrive. Its just
weird to read.
------
dakial1
It seems that the framework used to discover the planet is, in basic terms, to
follow trajectories of what is visible (stars) and identify anomalies that end
up being planets. My doubt is: Couldn't this be made in a massive way using
software? To identify the anomalies and the identify them (as planets or other
things)?
------
Koshkin
In the course of his lifetime, every man should plant a tree, have a son,
write a book, discover a planet...
------
zihotki
The whole article is described in one sentense, you can save the click.
Discovered, and what?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What abilities do Admins of Gsuit have? - LasEspuelas
Recently I was jolted away from the naive world I used to live in. I received an email from a manager in the company I work for. Quickly noticed that I wasn't supposed to be reading the poor performance evaluation of one of my co-workers and that everyone else in the company was also copied in the email. Probably a common enough snafu that should be followed by a sincere apology and pleas not to read. Instead, after five minutes, the email disappeared from my inbox and all other inboxes in the company. No follow up email explaining or apologizing. Just a pure cover up. I am left pondering if anything in my work mail box is reliable. Have they deleted stuff before? What can I do to keep proper records of my email communications? What else can admins do in addition to visit everyone's email inbox and deleting a particular email?
======
epc
I have a single user G Suite account. The admin UI has a panel where you can
pull up some delivery information about messages using various search
criteria, and you can delete messages by message id. I haven’t seen anything
in the UI which would pull up the actual text of the message. However there’s
additional features around data retention that may allow messages to be
retrieved (e.g. for responding to subpoenas).
This isn’t new or exclusive to G Suite, Exchange and Lotus Notes had similar
features, even PROFS on mainframes had them.
------
arkadiyt
\- you can search/view email subjects (but not content)
\- you can delete individual messages
\- you can block emails matching certain criteria (like sender, etc)
\- you can use advanced routing to route all mail through your own mail
server, which would give you full access to message content, the ability to
modify incoming messages on the fly, etc.
You could create a gsuite account for $5 and play around with it for a month,
then cancel your account.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Have you seen this PG page? - tojileon
http://www.paulgraham.com/gateway.html
======
prakash
No.
Interestingly, PG has favored polo shirts right from high school, thereby
taking the decision making out of what to wear for the next 20+ years;-)
------
henning
I was so disenfranchised from the "ra ra, go team" crap in high school that I
don't even have any yearbooks.
------
arvid
In the chess club picture seated on the far right is Peter Monta. Smart guy,
entered CMU at age 16 I believe. We had class together for two years at CMU in
the Math Studies honors program.
------
Alex3917
Somehow the self-aggrandizement spoof on high school yearbooks manages to be
both brilliant and hilarious at the same time:
[http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111004_gotham_hi...](http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111004_gotham_high_class_of_96_part_1.html)
[http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111104_gotham_hi...](http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111104_gotham_high_class_of_96_part_2.html)
[http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111404_gotham_hi...](http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111404_gotham_high_class_of_96_part_3.html)
[http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111604_gotham_hi...](http://www.self-
aggrandizement.com/archives/111604_gotham_high_class_of_96_part_4.html)
------
edw519
What a fantastic page! I also went to Gateway High School for 6, er I mean, 3
of the best years of my life. I had no idea Paul Graham also went there. What
a small world. I was several years ahead of Paul. I discovered his essays a
few years ago, and here I am now.
I also had Dr. Schultz for a class called "World Cultures". We watched films
like "On the Waterfront" and "High Noon" and discussed them afterward. I
remember him vividly. I still have my film project (The History of Art to the
tune of Magic Carpet Ride) from that class. I suppose I should have it
digitized and loaded onto Youtube. One of these days.
I self published a parody of Mad Magazine about Gateway. Still have the comics
about principal O'Toole, and the teachers who influenced me: Laura Barrett
Mikesell, Laura Sproull, Ann Bitter, and, of course, Ann Kapisak (geometry)
and John Drumm (calculus). Because of that magazine, Mrs. Mikesell strongly
encouraged me toward a career in journalism. Fortunately for me, the English
department at Allegheny College sucked and the math department excelled, so
I've been a hacker ever since.
Funny how a few kind words from a teacher make such a difference for so many
years.
Thanks for the memories, Paul. Any chance you're related to Mark Graham, who
was our Student Government president? Feel free to contact me off-line edw519
at yahoo.com.
Ed Weissman, GHS '73
~~~
Jd
Wow, movies on the Wild West are definitely what kids from Western
Pennsylvania need to be learning about in a "World Cultures" class. What else
did you watch? Riddle me skeptical.
~~~
rms
I went to public high school in a Western Pennsylvania suburb (two PA Turnpike
stops away from Paul Graham's alma mater, which means our suburban strip
wasn't quite as good) and in my best social studies class (US History) we
watched an unreasonable amount of full length movies, including Band of
Brothers in its entirety. We didn't do a whole lot in the class, but at least
he told us that Westerners killed all of the Indians. He told us to just read
Howard Zinn if we wanted to learn something.
~~~
Jd
Define 'best' in the construction 'best social studies class'? Learned the
most? Most fun? Coolest teacher?
~~~
rms
All of the above, but I only have my other high school history/geography
classes for comparison.
~~~
Jd
So... sorry to be a spoilsport but if
(1) The aforementioned class was the one in which you learned the most AND (2)
Your teacher told you to read Howard Zinn if you wanted to learn something
IMPLYING (2') Your teacher didn't think you were learning anything
Then mustn't we conclude (3) You didn't learn learn anything in your high
school social studies classes
?
~~~
rms
Yes, that would be the logical conclusion.
~~~
Jd
Just checking ;-)
------
jpalacio486
Just makes you appreciate how simple life in high school really was.
~~~
Goladus
In some ways, maybe. I look back on my old schedule, and figure I was spending
50-55 hours a week in class or school activities, an estimate with a very
vague notion of transit time and not much consideration for interruptions.
(eg, school gets out at 2:45, practice starts at 3:30, what can you accomplish
in 45 minutes?)
------
pageman
maybe it's the high school version of his essay News from the Front (it
doesn't matter where you went to high school also?)? :P
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Emprestimo Online Dinheiro Rapido e Seguro Pela Internet - creditospbvw
http://www.emprestimosonlinerapidobvw.com.br/
======
creditospbvw
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internet, aqui esta a melhor financeira que faz emprestimo de dinheiro on line
na hora e rapido pela internet, empréstimos pessoais online para pessoas com
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pessoal online é sem consulta a serasa e nem spc, seus emprestimos são rápido
fácil mesmo para autonomos e assalariados negativados e com restrições, para
fazer uma simulação de empréstimo pessoal entre em nosso site e preencha um
formulario para analise de seu crédito agora mesmo, você esta dizendo preciso
de um empréstimo urgente on-line pela internet sem consulta e sem comprovação
de renda e emprestimo pessoal online no carne, no boleto ou débito em conta
para você autonomo e assalariado com nome sujo, não pegue dinheiro emprestado
com agiota para ter mais problemas ainda venha conhecer nosso portal
financeiro de emprestimo pessoal online para negativado e crédito pessoal para
quem tem restrição no nome, agora já tem a solução dos seus problemas
bancarios e financeiros, para solicitar seu emprestimo online pela internet
acesse o site e faça uma analise de emprestimo pessoal por telefone ou mesmo
pelo website é na hora rapidos seguro e fácil.
[http://www.emprestimosonlinerapidobvw.com.br/](http://www.emprestimosonlinerapidobvw.com.br/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Yahoo CAPTCHA Cracked. - hhm
http://www.0x000000.com/?i=502
======
derefr
A CAPTCHA method that just came into my head at this moment, and thus is
completely unfounded and horrible: "Please compose a haiku on the topic of
'togetherness' [or something equally vague]. Your work will then be passed
through a Bayesian filter specifically trained on that topic."
------
dawnerd
I really like to use reCpatcha. Sure it's not the most secure, but it's for a
good cause, and it keeps out the basic bots.
For anyone who doesn't know what recaptcha is: <http://recaptcha.net/>
~~~
nickb
I wrote about reCaptcha before and the big problem with it is that it can be
hard. And by hard I mean that the majority of people can't solve it. If you
have a big site and you have a spam issue, then by all means, use it. But if
you're a small site that's trying to grow and a site that considers every
potential user to be precious, stay away from it because the last thing you
want is to frustrate people!
Since you will not be a target early on, consider not using captcha at all
since spammers don't target sites that have no traffic.
~~~
thomasswift
do you have a link? i love to read your thoughts. I have been thinking about
using recaptcha, primarily because of the little refresh button and of course
the captcha.
~~~
nickb
it's somewhere on N.YC but I can't find it anymore :(
------
rms
I'm surprised the Russian hackers gave away their implementation for free. I
suspect it was an unintentional leak.
Anyone else remember that Chinese website that was selling captcha hacks for
20 different types of captchas?
------
dejb
Oh my god! The singularity has begun!
------
ajkirwin
A long time ago I decided, that if I were to ever have a captcha system, it
wouldn't use ones of that style, which are getting so.. randomized these days,
it's hard for a human to read.
Frankly, I think knowledge or logic based captchas are the way to go.
"Todd is three times as old as Jane is. When Jane was ten years younger, Todd
was five times as old as Jane is. How old is Todd?" for example.
Sure, takes longer to think about, but if someone can write a script to start
parsing logic puzzles like that, quickly, and use it to defeat website signup
authentication methods?
I'll buy that person a pint.
~~~
marcus
I'd take you on that bet. Write the system and I'll write the solver. I drink
Guinness :)
A better system would be to ask the user to identify the gender of a person
based on an image to tell whether the picture is of a dog or of a cat and so
on, these tasks are trivial for a person and very very hard for a program.
~~~
apgwoz
My introduction to AI class required us to write a classifier for people in
the news (20 different images of 10 different people). We were given the
location of the people's faces, but we were able to get 60% accuracy using
SVMs and the 32x32 block of pixels (nose, eyes, mouth region). This was the
"baseline" system. Some systems were getting nearly 85+%. I must admit though,
that this was a restricted dataset, but the faces were not all looking
straight ahead the way eigenfaces are, and I'm sure with enough data, and
enough features that sort of CAPTCHA could be defeated a large percentage of
the time.
~~~
marcus
You are confusing two different tasks, identifying a person out of a small
comparison group is relatively easy - just deconstruct the face & compare
certain facial features. There was a ton of research on the subject and even
some working commercial products (my schools AI lab uses one we built as a
lock).
Identifying gender is significantly harder.
You want something a lot harder, have them click on the picture of the more
attractive person, use data from a hotornot type site (just make sure the data
isn't public). Good luck solving that with Support Vector Machines. If you
want to generate more data just use build RE-CAPTCHA type system.
~~~
apgwoz
I don't see why it'd be harder with good features, and after looking at the
article again, 35% accuracy was considered a success. Obviously, I'm not as
qualified as you in this sense, but it seems logical based on results I've
seen (again, admittedly not the same quality as you've probably seen).
~~~
hhm
I checked on the "obviously, I'm not as qualified as you in this sense" by
looking at the user info, and I remembered that "Ideas to monetize new
artifical intelligence" thread... so Marcus, sorry if it's offtopic, but how
did you solve that problem? Are you doing captchas maybe? :)
~~~
marcus
Doing CAD - Computer Assisted Diagnosis - working on improving early cancer
detection in Mammography.
~~~
marcus
In a way I understand trying to apply the algorithm manually for each client
is wasteful, negotiation with each client is tiring especially when its with a
7B company.
I'm thinking about using the idea I got of building a web-service around it,
and letting people find their own uses for it.
Considering applying to YC with the idea.
~~~
hhm
Thanks a lot for your reply and details! I was very interested on it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code - ljf
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/05/on_call_netware_hell/
======
coreyp_1
tl;dr - just a horror story of a dev being asked to work on an old system, and
the company being incompetent. In the end, they stiffed him $5,000. No
resolution, so don't waste your time reading it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What does "the Cloud" mean to you? - ryanelkins
I keep running up against different definitions of "the Cloud" and was wondering if there is a right answer or at least a general consensus on what exactly the term means. When I say that our startup, IActionable, is in "the Cloud" I'm referring to our use of Windows Azure, MS's cloud, and the distributed nature of our service, meaning that we can elastically scale within the resources of MS's cloud and boast some level of stability like a large company while only having to pay for the resources we use. Apps running within Azure, Amazon's cloud, Force.com, Google's App Engine, or Rackspace's cloud are "in the cloud" according to this definition.<p>I've noticed, however, that many people say they are in "the Cloud" where they define the cloud as a server on the internet. Their thinking goes that since they store all the information remotely and there is nothing on the client's computer, their client-server architecture makes them "in the cloud". By this definition every server on the internet is a cloud, and every web app is in some cloud or another.<p>So is it one or the other? Is there some other definition that I'm missing out on?
======
novum
(Disclaimer: I work at Salesforce)
We at SFDC hear a lot about offers to businesses of "your own private cloud",
which is essentially marketing jargon for something very un-cloud-like:
running software locally, on your own servers, while you're completely
responsible for the entire operation. It's a grossly disingenuous hijacking of
the "cloud" terminology that I've found promotes confusion.
Most of the other responses here would match my own definition of the cloud:
software, offered as a service, where all the underpinnings (data center
management, software updates, redundancies, reliability) are abstracted away
from you. The key is that you only need two things to access a cloud resource:
A web browser, preferably != IE6
An internet connection
When I explain the cloud to people who don't read HN, I usually make a
comparison to Gmail and MS Office. You access Gmail through your web browser,
and there's no local software to download. When Google releases a new feature
or a bugfix or a security patch, there's no action required on your end.
You're simply up to date the next time you connect.
Contrast that with MS Office, which comes on a CD/DVD, requires a local
install process, and needs to be constantly patched for features and security.
All of the work to maintain that software falls to you, the end user.
~~~
rmc00
If you don't mind, I'm curious to find out why you view the private cloud as
un-cloud-like. I don't think the cloud is defined by where the service is
hosted or even how the service is paid for. To me, cloud computing is defined
by 3 big ideas.
1\. Virtualization is key. I think the cloud is marked by a construction from
dynamic pools of virtualized resources.
2\. Instead of focusing on individual physical components, the cloud focuses
on pools of compute resources. This seems to have led to higher priority for
service delivery.
3\. Finally, I think the cloud is defined by being convenient for the consumer
instead of being convenient for the provider.
Within those constraints, I usually call a cloud private if it is under the
control of an enterprise IT organization, in a way similar to older systems. I
think of the cloud as public if the provider is mostly in control instead of
the tenants.
With that definition of the private cloud in mind, the model offers a lot of
advantages to larger IT departments. The private cloud allows IT teams to more
quickly provision resources in support of business initiatives. It's also a
better way to invest in IT infrastructure. The model is inherently scalable,
which means that IT funds can be used to create value instead of keeping the
lights on so to speak.
Obviously, private clouds aren't for every IT organization, but I think the
private cloud has merit. As organizations globalize and just generally get
big, economies of scale can be leveraged internally to increase the quality of
IT projects and services.
~~~
Goladus
I agree. A private cloud should also have a standard API, so that applications
can be conveniently moved to a public cloud when it is secure and cost-
effective to do so.
~~~
jnoller
There; I disagree - if there were a standard API for clouds I might agree -
otherwise, it makes sense for internal clouds to adopt the API most convenient
for the end-users of that API. Sadly, that might mean something like SOAP,
which would make me sad.
------
lnguyen
The use of the term "the Cloud" is basically for anything that's not the
traditional way of requesting and utilizing IT resources (aka rigid, pre-
allocated, persistent and more than likely tied to physical systems). And
that's probably why you're seeing so many different definitions.
What I think "cloud" should mean is the combining of individual resources
(computing, storage, etc.) into a large virtual pool that can be accessed and
allocated dynamically. This can be done within a corporation's own set of
servers and devices (private cloud) or by tapping into someone else's
collection of resources (public cloud providers like Amazon, Azure, etc.).
~~~
jnoller
Completely agreed; which is why "private cloud" isn't as an insane a term as
you might initially suspect (as I did when I first heard it).
If you have a global company, such as GE running it's own "private cloud"
where CPU, Storage and platforms can be spun up by departments, users and
others "on demand" and destroyed just as quickly, and it's distributed, fault-
tolerant and modular in architecture - why should that not qualify as "cloud"?
------
Goladus
To me, a cloud is a distributed system of computing resources where the
resources can be dynamically allocated with an API. A hosted application
should be able to increase or decrease the available processors, memory, and
disk without human intervention. Human oversight should be implemented at
points where it makes sense for business and security, rather than at points
dictated by the limitations of technology. This means a cloud should do be
able to do significant automated management of DNS, networking, and
provisioning of fundamental operating system details.
The line between any classic distributed system or cluster and a 'cloud' is
blurry, but generally speaking a cloud's API should be internet-compatible and
capable of using commodity hardware to scale up with minimal (and preferably
asynchronous) intervention from system administrators.
As for 'The Cloud' -- currently I don't think there is 'The Cloud' the way
there is 'The World Wide Web', but it's theoretically possible. Right now 'The
Cloud' generally means 'A Public Cloud', which is a publicly available
distributed system like the one I described above. A Virtual Private Hosting
service is not a cloud, because allocation of resources typically involves a
sales contract of some sort. But the service itself it might theoretically run
on a cloud, and you can build a cloud out of VPSs.
------
fizzfur
If my mum starting using The Cloud in sentences she would mean "The Internet",
she doesn't have the concept of a server, and doesn't really need to, she just
knows it's "Out there somewhere".
I think it would be unlikely for one of my peers (mostly developers) to
mention "The Cloud" unless they were trying to be intensionally buzzwordy for
comedy effect. They would be more specific.
I/We would however say:
a cloud to mean clusters machines (probably split into VPSs)
xxxx's cloud to mean xxxx's server infrastructure/platform
I like The Cloud as a common term to mean "Stored/Processed out there in the
internet somewhere", not as a well defined technical term.
~~~
ryanelkins
I think it feels "buzzwordy" because too many people abuse it. It is a
legitimate term but it is being stretched to the point where it is no longer
useful. To me a cloud is a system where I can dynamically change my resource
usage without having to really understand the underlying structure supporting
it. I don't install an OS, I don't monitor specific servers for failure, I
never upgrade anything; that level of minutiae is abstracted away.
~~~
lsc
This is a valid definition... but it's not most people's definition. For
example, if you are running on ec2, well, you've still gotta install the OS
(granted, there are tools that make it easier, but you still have to do it,
and you still have to keep up with security patches, etc..) you've still gotta
deal with failure, deal with upgrades, etc...
Granted, you could say that ec2 isn't cloud... you could say that ec2 is a VPS
system with a decent and fast provisioning API. Your definition would say that
hiroku and google app engine are 'cloud' - something few people would argue
with... it's just that most people call ec2 'cloud' as well.
This, I think, is why most technical people find the term 'cloud' to be
useless... there isn't a strong and generally accepted definition that isn't
so nebulous as to be not very useful.
~~~
jnoller
I don't think the need to consider maintenance and scalability removes
something from the definition of "the cloud" - consider the fact that on
modern VPSes and EC2 I can spin up new resources within a heartbeat - sure, I
still have to think about stuff, but instance on for elastic resources is what
I think caused the "cloud" term to come into being.
~~~
lsc
so your definition of the cloud differs from the definition ryanelkins gave.
This is all well and good, both the "completely abstracts hardware and OS
details" definition that Ryan gave and the "just allows you to really quickly
provision new hardware" definition you gave are fine definitions, and both are
useful services in many cases. but my point is that you get five nerds in a
room and you are going to have at least three completely different definitions
of "cloud"
~~~
jnoller
You're right - and that worries me (personally, and professionally). I do
think it's time the collective "we" start being a little bit more responsible
with the term, so that others might.
Otherwise I'm worried we're going to see someone try to rebrand the internet
as "the cloud" and then we're all doomed :)
~~~
lsc
I think "the cloud" has never had a solid, specific meaning, and it probably
never will. I don't begrudge marketing and middle management their own set of
jargon. Really, letting marketing and middle management have their own overly
vague words can be good sometimes. If the boss asks you to put something "In
the cloud" you have a lot of latitude to choose the solution that is most
suitable for the situation.
Hell, maybe "cloud" will end up in the vague but useful category like
"solution" I mean, sure, "solution" is even more broad than "cloud", but
sometimes it seems more concise than "product or service" in a sentence, so
it's still a word that I use sometimes.
------
mathgladiator
For me, it is the idea of outsourcing infrastructure and treating computers as
a utility.
~~~
keefe
yes, agree. I think this is the talk from startup school where bezos used this
metaphor : <http://wn.com/jeff_bezos_at_startup_school_08>
------
Qz
Computers I can't see and don't own. Suspiciously similar to a botnet.
Actually I'm less paranoid about it than that, but only slightly.
~~~
byoung2
How does that make Amazon AWS (which most people would call "cloud
infrastructure") any different from traditional shared hosting?
------
technomancy
"The cloud means replacing your ops team with a clip-art picture of a cloud--
PROBLEM SOLVED." --Coda Hale
------
dgudkov
IMO, cloud service is any service that a) scalable on demand, b)has ~100%
uptime, c) require no maintenance from customer. It doesn't matter whether it
is one server or 10000 servers - if it fits this model of consumption - it's
cloud.
~~~
whatusername
So cloud service is an outsourced mainframe? That's about the only thing that
fits all 3.
~~~
dgudkov
Why not, say, youtube?
------
acabal
Whenever someone asks me what I think of cloud computing, I just reply with
this video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UYa6gQC14o>
------
Artagra
For me personally, I'd largely agree with your first definition - but I would
expand it to services run on "private clouds" (ie, a corporate having a couple
hundred virtual machines on a rack full of blades I would consider "cloud
based").
However, if I look at our customers (techies and enthusiasts who build their
own computers), they define a cloud based service as anything primarily online
- IE, your second definition. I think this definition is gaining ground.
------
obsessive1
I don't think of the cloud as just a server elsewhere on the internet, but
more of a group of servers, like EC2, or Windows Azure, where the data is
shared between them, and backed up in various places.
I have heard many people refer to the internet in general as 'the cloud',
which I can understand, but I don't think of that as it's primary definition.
------
rblion
Optimist: Decentralized infrastructure that powers 21st century commerce and
acts as an infinite storage space for personal files.
Pessimist: Data Star (Earth's version of the Death Star) that will just become
another way for more ads to find us where ever we go in space and in time...
------
teyc
Most people couldn't put their finger on exactly what Cloud is, but they don't
realize they fail because they don't understand the True Nature of Cloud.
A cloud is not Azure. It is not AWS. It is not Rackspace.
A cloud is not definable by what it is, but by what it is not.
Asking for a definition of a cloud, is like asking for the definitive IP
Address of www.amazon.com.
A cloud is a hand-wavy indirection, and abstraction of a compute or storage
infrastructure.
Each of the products you mentioned are not Cloud. They are manifestations of a
cloud. But they are not the Cloud, as they are no longer abstract.
------
g9
A cloud is a visible mass of droplets of water or frozen crystals suspended in
the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body. (c)
wikipedia.
------
joey_bananas
To me it means not being in control of my own data.
------
dstein
Outsourced data center on a pay-per-use basis.
------
auxbuss
I think of it, at least this week, as:
resilient Internet services with persistence
------
crad
To me, the cloud means trusting the base performance and uptime of my
application to someone else.
------
abraham
The (generally) light fluffy things in the air that produce rain.
------
billswift
There are already 33 comments here, and not a lot of agreement. "The Cloud"
just seems to me to be more marketing sucker-bait, basically (Web 2.0)2.0, I
wonder what they are going to call ((Web 2.0)2.0)2.0?
~~~
jnoller
I'm biased; but I suspect that much like "Web 2.0" there is some truth to the
"marketing". Web 2.0 saw the rise of user generated content, richer/leaner and
more interactive websites and applications.
I suspect the "cloud" trend will continue to allow us to abstract more of our
computing resources, and make computing/application construction pieces more
of a utility/commodity then they ever have been.
So despite it being used a bit too much in marketing - I think there's some
fire behind all the smoke, and dismissing it simply because marketing people
are blowing it around a lot runs the risk of ignoring a major technological
shift.
~~~
billswift
There is always some truth in effective marketing; like all good lies, it uses
truth in the service of falsehood.
------
cies
to me it means: computing power behind an api.
so my scripts can manage the data center (by growing/shrinking resource usage)
------
Spoutingshite
Seriously, after all these years aren't we past this repetitive question?
------
konad
I think it came from one of those network diagrams where you have :
local server <> picture of a cloud <> remote user
I now have to deal with management types who have read too many magazines
wanting their data stored "in the cloud".
The management of the company I share an office with is seriously thinking
about moving all their email "into the cloud" because the person that was
responsible for backup did it wrong and they lost some important emails. They
now associate "in the cloud" with "reliable". They are paying for an expensive
consultant to come in and tell them what to do.
------
jpr
> many people say they are in "the Cloud" where they define the cloud as a
> server on the internet.
To me, cloud would mean that the service has very good reliability, which your
run of the mill "server on the internet" does not necessarily have.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Toutpost (YC S13) Wants To Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice - garry
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/16/toutpost-wants-to-turn-online-debates-into-shopping-advice/
======
dictum
>Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice
When I read the headline, I imagined a service that crawled forums and
discussion boards and used NLP to determine useful shopping advice.
If that happened, all those non-slept nights spent battling people who were
wrong on the Internet would finally pay off.
([http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/))
~~~
bobsil1
Arro does something similar (I'm a founder). Scan a product's barcode, it
analyzes several million reviews and shows better choices:
[http://arroapp.com](http://arroapp.com)
~~~
marianne_navada
Love the idea. I found myself spending an hour at a target aisle rereading the
reviews I compiled for a DSLR.
~~~
bobsil1
Awesome, thanks! That's our exact use case :) Any suggestions, please let me
know, or send via the feedback tab.
------
josh2600
I don't know, I see this as potentially cool, but really very spammy.
Think about how trivial something like this is to manipulate, and if we're
talking about the value of consumer electronics going into the hands of our
nations youth; well that doesn't inspire me with confidence. If there's
potential to gain, there will be potential for exploitation (see Cory
Doctorow's excellent piece 'All Complex Ecosystems have Parasites'[0])
I don't think you can monetize uneducated commentary. This would be a lot more
interesting, to me, if the conversations were between experts and the points
were upvoted by the community. I see value in moderated debates with scoring
provided by the community. I don't see value in anyone spouting their opinion
and having upvotes on each side.
It's like reddit but with consumer sentiment at stake.
[0][http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt](http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt)
~~~
aelaguiz
You are absolutely correct. Most review systems which are owned by the
merchants are largely viewed as a mechanism for increasing conversion. We
don't make money by selling things though.
So although attempts to game the system will abound we are expressly and only
incentivized to create a pure community with a genuine dialog. If the users
lose we lose. Given incentive that strong we will have to confront gaming head
on rather than be complicit.
------
TYPE_FASTER
I had an idea a few years ago. Instead of getting people to come to a new
site, why not harvest all the data on existing enthusiast sites out there?
They have alllll the info on what model years are good and which to avoid,
etc.
~~~
TYPE_FASTER
Also: [http://www.epinions.com](http://www.epinions.com).
~~~
aelaguiz
Epinions has definitely got it's place but we are going for a community rather
than a paid long-form review destination. We feel like human beings talking
conversationally about the things they love is more accessible and
interesting.
------
taddeimania
stackexchange for shopping. pure genius.
------
whiddershins
That is so smart. Congrats, I hope it works out. I would personally use that
all the time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WTFPL - Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License - phreeza
http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
======
gmlk
Similar: <http://tunes.org/legalese/bugroff.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SXSW plans coming soon to foursquare - thankuz
http://foursquare.com/sxsw/
======
danvoell
Thanks for the heads up.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Pittsburgh Suspect’s Internet of Hate - nradov
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/what-gab/574186/?single_page=true
======
eksemplar
America has a problem with right-wing terrorism. What I find the weirdest, as
a foreign outlooker is how it’s defended.
Nobody had any problems with ISIS getting censored off the internet, but these
right-wing nut jobs somehow have a right to spread their equally harmful
propaganda?
I don’t get it.
~~~
liftbigweights
> America has a problem with right-wing terrorism.
We really don't.
> What I find the weirdest, as a foreign outlooker is how it’s defended.
As a foreigner, what makes you think you know what america is really like?
Just because of the nonsense you see on the news?
> Nobody had any problems with ISIS getting censored off the internet
I did and many americans did. I don't believe in censorship. The easiest way
to combat extremism is to show it.
> but these right-wing nut jobs somehow have a right to spread their equally
> harmful propaganda?
If it is harmful, isn't it better to discuss it? To put it out in the open?
> I don’t get it.
My advice is to take a class in philosophy, history and educate yourself.
People who think like you are why nazi germany and the soviet union existed.
"Harmful propaganda" is the excuse every authoritarian uses to enslave their
people. "Harmful propaganda" is itself harmful propaganda.
How do the saudis silence lgbt? By saying it is harmful propaganda. How do the
chinese silence religion? By saying it's harmful propaganda. How do the
russians silence democratic advocates? By saying it is harmful propaganda.
If there is harmful propaganda, then lets bring it to light and expose it.
Only sneaky authoritarians with ulterior motives use "harmful propaganda" as
an excuse to curtail people's rights.
A vegan shot up youtube a few months ago. Is veganism harmful propaganda?
Should we ban all vegan content? Of course not.
Funnily enough, you have so much in common with the right-wingers you claim to
hate. They hate "harmful propaganda too" and want it censored.
~~~
malmsteen
The main argument against what you say is that you believe that a bad idea
will diseappear by itself if its in the open. Its not and theres thousands of
examples to show that it can propagates and contaminate parts large chunks of
society(historically: "gays are sicks", "blacks are not humans". More
recently: "jews control the world" is making a surprising comeback in parts of
europe).
Whereas when you silence it, it diseappear overnight and sometimes ots a good
thing. I personally think the "hate speech" classification and ban on is a
good thing. I dont agree full freedom of speech is a good thing.
I agree however that its stupid to associate too much killers with the
ideology they claim to belong. They are just psychos / weirdos most of the
time.
------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
Gap is to Twitter what Boat is to Reddit.
The problem with pushing extremists to their own platform is that the readers
don't experience any countervailing views.
~~~
amaccuish
I see countervailing views to things like gay marriage all the time on
Twitter. I don't however need "countervailing" views for the extermination of
jews.
~~~
rkeene2
The world can become a better place if people who disagree about things talk
to each other.
[https://youtu.be/ORp3q1Oaezw](https://youtu.be/ORp3q1Oaezw)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Leaked Andreessen Horowitz data reveals how much SV startup execs get paid - JimmyAustin
http://uk.businessinsider.com/andreessen-horowitz-internal-data-reveals-how-much-silicon-valley-startups-pay-for-talent-2018-9
======
fogetti
The "article" is just a glorified link to the paywalled subscription only
content.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sensible TableView: A breakthrough in iOS table view development. - tarekskr
http://sensiblecocoa.com/buy-now.html
======
leon_
Ehm, I don't see a "breakthrough". You can add any control/view to a
UITableViewCell.
Or am I missing something?
~~~
tarekskr
Hi Leon, thanks a lot for your comment!
The breakthrough is that STV will automatically bind this added control to one
of your object's properties. Have you watched the video tutorials? (Core Data
video tutorial for example: [http://www.sensiblecocoa.com/video-
tutorials/watch/7/coredat...](http://www.sensiblecocoa.com/video-
tutorials/watch/7/coredata-integration.html))
This scheme has enabled our customers to cut their development time by one
tenth in some cases. You can see some of our customer testimonials here:
<http://www.sensiblecocoa.com/buy-now.html>
Thanks again!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Eulogy for the Xserve: May It Rack in Peace - ugh
http://db.tidbits.com/article/11735
======
thehigherlife
Having worked with Xserves in the past, this article is pretty well
formulated. The only thing i disagree with is that they should have moved to a
2U system. Many educational institutions that were running maybe only one or
two Xserves did not have 4Us in their rackspace for 2 servers. Small schools
only had half racks to begin with.
------
TheCondor
What will Apple serve up Apple's services on? OSX on Mac Pros or just racks
and racks of minis?
Or will there be some sort of dense blade chassis?
I see 2 issues that they need to solve, 1) they need more density than 1U,
that's just how it seems to be going. 2) They need virtualization.
~~~
DougBTX
Apple can install their own OS on any hardware they like. Including virtual
hardware.
------
corin_
"is scheduled to die in the winter of 2011"
I thought it was scheduled to die on January 31st?
~~~
pmjordan
I can't spot the contradiction. Pretty sure the northern hemisphere is
implied.
~~~
corin_
Hmm, not sure why my brain worked like that.
I live in the UK, so January is very much still in "Winter", but for some
reason when someone says "Winter 2011" I think of it as the same as "Q4 2011".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HN Show: ConcussionJS, an experimental, rapid web dev platform - the_concussed
I recently created an experimental, rapid web development platform called ConcussionJS. Its initial target use case is converting HTML prototypes into fully functional applications without the hassle of traditional web development.<p>Six steps to test ConcussionJS for yourself:
1) Create your HTML markup
2) Include the ConcussionJS JavaScript library (http://www.concussionjs.com/concussion.js)
3) Add additional ConcussionJS HTML attributes to your markup (Built on KnockoutJS syntax; example at https://github.com/concussionjs/concussionjs-core)
4) Load your HTML file in a browser (Chrome and Safari tested)
5) Go to admin console add some records
6) Re-load your HTML file<p>Voila -- you now have a dynamic, database backed website. No custom client-side script required, no server-side coding or hosting, and you can try ConcussionJS on an HTML file located anywhere, even running off the file system directly (e.g., file(s) could reside on your desktop sans web server).<p>ConcussionJS can be used both as a cloud platform or run locally. Find more deployment option details at https://github.com/concussionjs/concussionjs-core<p>Tutorial: http://www.concussionjs.com<p>Example Applications:
+ http://samples.concussionjs.com/contacts.html
+ http://samples.concussionjs.com/twitter-bootstrap/blog/
+ http://samples.concussionjs.com/foundation/timesheet/<p>ConcussionJS JavaScript library: http://www.concussionjs.com/concussion.js<p>ConcussionJS mission description: http://www.concussionjs.com/#about<p>Github page: https://github.com/concussionjs/concussionjs-core<p>I'm looking for feedback and would welcome ConcussionJS collaborators!!
======
the_concussed
Thanks everyone for checking out the site. Would be great to get your
perspectives on any of the following:(i) Do you think I should add a custom
ConcussionJS sign up/login, or stick with Google/Facebook authentication?,
(ii) what kind of projects would you use something like this for, (iii) what
additional features would you like to see?
~~~
skram
Personally, I'd love to see a simpler setup process. Maybe allow using just
MongoDB instead of both Redis and MongoDB?
It was also a bit annoying (to me) that at the beginning of installing from
source it seemed possible to install somewhere other than $HOME but the
install.sh scripts had so many references to $HOME I decided it wasnt worth
changing them all.
~~~
the_concussed
Great feedback, and agreed on both fronts! I added Redis to the mix because it
has support for a really nice rate limiter pattern that's simple to implement,
but its probably overkill for what people want when they deploy locally for
experimentation or to contribute to ConcussionJS. I should probably have a
production fork of concussionjs-proxy for the short term with the rate
limiter, and a master fork built exclusively on mongo.
RE the built in dependencies to the $HOME directory, I agree that it's a
weakness of the install scripts. I'll add this as an issue at
[https://github.com/concussionjs/concussionjs-
core/issues](https://github.com/concussionjs/concussionjs-core/issues).
BTW, there is a command-line tool that I've yet to document that you might
find handy. It supports:
$ cjs app --create YOUR_APP_NAME $ cjs app --start YOUR_APP_NAME $ cjs app
--stop YOUR_APP_NAME $ cjs app --restart YOUR_APP_NAME
You can see the documentation by typing: $ cjs
\--create also supports a --template argument (e.g., cjs app --create
YOUR_APP_NAME --template YOUR_TEMPLATE_NAME) which copies the contents of the
specified folder with the matching name in concussionjs-core/app_template.
Behind the scenes the command line uses a cool util called mon
([https://github.com/visionmedia/mon](https://github.com/visionmedia/mon)), a
super lightweight version of Monit, to keep the nodejs process running for the
app specified (e.g., monitoring the process and restarting as necessary).
~~~
skram
Thanks - sounds good.
~~~
the_concussed
Fixed the $HOME directory dependency issue! Thanks again for the feedback.
------
forlorn
Clickable
[http://www.concussionjs.com](http://www.concussionjs.com)
------
skram
This looks rather nifty!
------
dreamdu5t
Amazing project. Change the name immediately. Concussion is a horrible name...
~~~
the_concussed
What do you think about MomentumJS? I have that domain registered, too.
~~~
X4
I also agree, not only was remembering concussionjs hard, but it's also too
long and confusing. The project is really really awesome though!!
I'd suggest to implement an abstraction allow implementation of more flexible
models by using: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-
driven_design](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best Host for Wordpress Blog - dawie
I am currently hosting my Wordpress Blog with Media Temple. I am not very happy with them though.<p>Any suggestions?
======
billturner
Perhaps telling us what you don't like about Media Temple will help you out a
little.
If it's a relatively low traffic weblog, there are cheap hosts like
dreamhost.com. If you don't require a lot of customization (themes, plugins,
etc) you can just set it up at wordpress.com and go with their options. If you
want a little more power, and don't mind the sysadmin duties, pick a small VPS
from linode.com or slicehost.com.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists assessed the options for growing nuclear power. They are grim - spenrose
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/7/11/17555644/nuclear-power-energy-climate-decarbonization-renewables
======
spenrose
Abstract of the referenced (and paywalled) PNAS article:
"Nuclear power holds the potential to make a significant contribution to
decarbonizing the US energy system. Whether it could do so in its current form
is a critical question: Existing large light water reactors in the United
States are under economic pressure from low natural gas prices, and some have
already closed. Moreover, because of their great cost and complexity, it
appears most unlikely that any new large plants will be built over the next
several decades. While advanced reactor designs are sometimes held up as a
potential solution to nuclear power’s challenges, our assessment of the
advanced fission enterprise suggests that no US design will be commercialized
before midcentury. That leaves factory-manufactured, light water small modular
reactors (SMRs) as the only option that might be deployed at significant scale
in the climate-critical period of the next several decades. We have
systematically investigated how a domestic market could develop to support
that industry over the next several decades and, in the absence of a dramatic
change in the policy environment, have been unable to make a convincing case.
Achieving deep decarbonization of the energy system will require a portfolio
of every available technology and strategy we can muster. It should be a
source of profound concern for all who care about climate change that, for
entirely predictable and resolvable reasons, the United States appears set to
virtually lose nuclear power, and thus a wedge of reliable and low-carbon
energy, over the next few decades."
~~~
nkurz
[http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804655115](http://sci-
hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804655115)
------
sand500
How much good does putting the capital for a new nuclear power plant into
gridscale energy storage do?
~~~
spenrose
Those investments are happening anyway because they make sense on their own
terms.
"batteries have a slate of use cases and multiple value propositions; with
costs declining, analysts say there is much more capacity on the way."
[https://www.utilitydive.com/news/eia-700-mw-of-utility-
scale...](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/eia-700-mw-of-utility-scale-
battery-capacity-installed-in-us/514409/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Multiplayer Codenames game using socket.io - polishdude20
My friend and I got together to build this Codenames game online to play with your friends. We usually play twice a week and voice chat over Facebook.<p>Might be useful to some of ya'll!<p>Let me know what you think!<p>http://gamecraft.live
======
amw
Nicely done, would love to contribute some bugfixen, source code hosted
anywhere?
------
uxamanda
Thanks for entertaining me and my family for a couple hours today :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How a little bit of TCP knowledge is essential - dar8919
http://jvns.ca/blog/2015/11/21/why-you-should-understand-a-little-about-tcp/
======
Animats
That still irks me. The real problem is not tinygram prevention. It's ACK
delays, and that stupid fixed timer. They both went into TCP around the same
time, but independently. I did tinygram prevention (the Nagle algorithm) and
Berkeley did delayed ACKs, both in the early 1980s. The combination of the two
is awful. Unfortunately by the time I found about delayed ACKs, I had changed
jobs, was out of networking, and doing a product for Autodesk on non-networked
PCs.
Delayed ACKs are a win only in certain circumstances - mostly character echo
for Telnet. (When Berkeley installed delayed ACKs, they were doing a lot of
Telnet from terminal concentrators in student terminal rooms to host VAX
machines doing the work. For that particular situation, it made sense.) The
delayed ACK timer is scaled to expected human response time. A delayed ACK is
a bet that the other end will reply to what you just sent almost immediately.
Except for some RPC protocols, this is unlikely. So the ACK delay mechanism
loses the bet, over and over, delaying the ACK, waiting for a packet on which
the ACK can be piggybacked, not getting it, and then sending the ACK, delayed.
There's nothing in TCP to automatically turn this off. However, Linux (and I
think Windows) now have a TCP_QUICKACK socket option. Turn that on unless you
have a very unusual application.
Turning on TCP_NODELAY has similar effects, but can make throughput worse for
small writes. If you write a loop which sends just a few bytes (worst case,
one byte) to a socket with "write()", and the Nagle algorithm is disabled with
TCP_NODELAY, each write becomes one IP packet. This increases traffic by a
factor of 40, with IP and TCP headers for each payload. Tinygram prevention
won't let you send a second packet if you have one in flight, unless you have
enough data to fill the maximum sized packet. It accumulates bytes for one
round trip time, then sends everything in the queue. That's almost always what
you want. If you have TCP_NODELAY set, you need to be much more aware of
buffering and flushing issues.
None of this matters for bulk one-way transfers, which is most HTTP today.
(I've never looked at the impact of this on the SSL handshake, where it might
matter.)
Short version: set TCP_QUICKACK. If you find a case where that makes things
worse, let me know.
John Nagle
~~~
jvns
One thing that confuses me is -- are ACK delays part of the default TCP
implementation on Linux? I originally assumed this was some kind of edge case
/ unusual behavior.
~~~
andreyf
So it would appear, according to the man pages:
[http://linux.die.net/man/7/tcp](http://linux.die.net/man/7/tcp)
_In quickack mode, acks are sent immediately, rather than delayed if needed
in accordance to normal TCP operation._
So "normal TCP operation" is to delay ACKs "if needed". Not sure if "needed"
is the right word to use, but whatever.
Looks like RHEL has a system-wide fix:
[https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterp...](https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_MRG/1.3/html/Realtime_Tuning_Guide/sect-
Realtime_Tuning_Guide-General_System_Tuning-
Reducing_the_TCP_delayed_ack_timeout.html)
~~~
sourcesmith
There is also "ip route change ROUTE quickack 1"
------
jfb
I really enjoy reading Julia's blog. Not only does she have a real, infectious
enthusiasm for learning; not only is the blog well written; but I also often
learn a lot. Kudos.
~~~
bufordsharkley
Yeah, I was going to post something to the same effect. Her posts (and videos)
really drive into not just the how, but the WHY people should care, and her
writing is lively and clear. I really love the ambition she has to learn all
these things and share it with the world, and to make it inclusive for folks
of all experience levels.
------
barrkel
This is a general problem of leaky abstractions. If you're a top-down thinker,
you're going to have a bad time some day and have a hard time figuring it out.
OTOH bottom up thinkers take much longer to become productive in an
environment with novel abstractions.
Swings and roundabouts. Top down is probably better in a startup context -
it's more conducive to broad and shallow generalists. Bottom up is great when
you have a breakdown of abstraction through the stack, or when you need a new
solution that's never been done quite the same way before.
~~~
dunkelheit
Careless piling of layers atop layers is the main reason why everything is
slow when computers are crazy fast. Every moderately complex piece of software
is so inefficient that it is better not to think about it or else you become
paralyzed in horror ;)
Usually something is done to mitigate these inefficiencies only when they
become egregious. And that is when even basic knowledge of the inner workings
of underlying layers really pays off (see also: mechanical sympathy).
~~~
kuschku
I am currently writing a client to a synchronized application system, and you
only really notice how it’s layers upon layers when you write custom functions
to serialize/deserialize primitive data types to a raw socket, and then on the
next layer already can just abstract and write objects first to a HashMap, and
then use the HashMap serializer for sending the actual object. And then you go
yet another layer higher and use reflection to automatically sync method
calls.
It’s really crazy to think about it.
------
p00b
John Rauser of pinterest gave a wonderful talk about TCP and the lower bound
of Internet latency recently that has a lot in common with what's discussed in
the article here. Worth a watch I think if you enjoyed the blog post.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8orjQLacTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8orjQLacTo)
------
PeterWhittaker
Summary: If you know learn a little, you realize that each packet might be
separately acknowledged before the next one is sent. In particular, note this
quote: _Net::HTTP doesn’t set TCP_NODELAY on the TCP socket it opens, so it
waits for acknowledgement of the first packet before sending the second._
By setting TCP_NODELAY, they removed a series of 40ms delays, vastly improving
performance of their web app.
------
colanderman
You don't need to entirely disable Nagle; just flash TCP_NODELAY on then off
immediately after sending a packet for which you will block for a reply. This
way you still get the benefit Nagle brings of coalescing small writes, without
the downside.
(Alternatively, turn Nagle off entirely and buffer writes manually or using
MSG_MORE or TCP_CORK.)
------
dantiberian
I came across this this week working on the RethinkDB driver for Clojure
([https://github.com/apa512/clj-
rethinkdb/pull/114](https://github.com/apa512/clj-rethinkdb/pull/114)). As
soon as I saw "40ms" in this story I thought "Nagles Algorithm".
One thing I haven't understood fully is that this only seems to be a problem
on Linux, Mac OS X didn't exhibit this behaviour.
~~~
tirumaraiselvan
That might be because Mac OS X implements modified Nagle's algorithm as
mentioned here at the bottom:
[http://www.stuartcheshire.org/papers/NagleDelayedAck/](http://www.stuartcheshire.org/papers/NagleDelayedAck/)
~~~
masklinn
So OSX implements a slightly modified nagle to remove the bad interaction
between nagle and delayed acks?
------
bboreham
Why wouldn't an http client library turn off Nagle's algorithm by default?
------
neduma
Can wireshark/riverbed (application perf tests) profiling help to solve these
kind of problems?
~~~
spydum
Wireshark can show you the delay but it won't tell why it's there. You might
assume it's some quirk of your application.. Most people don't consider the
kernel/network libraries and drivers.. Those are all black magic
------
rjurney
In highschool I carried TCP Illustrated around with me like a bible. I
cherished that book. Knowledge of networks would eventually be incredibly
useful throughout my career.
------
mwfj
This can be generalised. It is also one of my favorite ways of doing developer
interviews. Do they have a working/in-depth knowledge of what keeps the inter
webs running? So many people have never ventured out of their main competence
bubble, and that bubble can be quite small (but focused, I suppose).
For all I know, they believe everything is kept together with the help of
magic. I guess I don't trust people who don't have a natural urge to
understand at least the most basic things of our foundations.
~~~
hueving
I used to thing this way before I realized it's just an arbitrary hoop you
make people jump through. To you, people understanding TCP might be what you
claim is a basic foundation. However, it's just about as arbitrary as asking
people to explain 802.11 RTS/CTS or clos switch fabrics, which are both
equally as important to delivering day-to-day network traffic. Additionally,
they both can come up as things you need to understand when trying to optimize
jitter/latency in sensitive local network traffic applications.
Don't judge people based on which components of networks they happened to take
an interest in and dive into.
~~~
sokoloff
On the other extreme, I've seen people ask why is that IP address divided by
16? (10.0.0.0/16)
~~~
jacquesm
And then you have to explain to them that it's divided by 2^16...
------
Ono-Sendai
This is my proposed solution to this kind of problem: Sockets should have a
flushHint() API call:
[http://www.forwardscattering.org/post/3](http://www.forwardscattering.org/post/3)
~~~
Animats
Look up the history of the PUSH bit in TCP.
~~~
Ono-Sendai
Ok, and is there a portable way to set this PUSH bit in the sockets API? the
semantics seem a little different as well since the PUSH bit seems to do
something on the receiver side as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Does My Rails App Need a Service Layer? - rudyjahchan
http://blog.carbonfive.com/2012/01/10/does-my-rails-app-need-a-service-layer/
======
mwynholds
I love it! As rails matures and is used on bigger and bigger projects, it
starts to look more and more like Java. It used to be all about rapid
development... but now we're all talking about performance, and threads, and
service layers. Thank god node.js is here to remind us that we really don't
need any of that crap.
------
zalambar
Jared suggests using services to translate into different protocols. I see a
further use for services to translate models into different representations on
the same protocol in order to support a versions API. Let a service handle
mapping outdated API payloads to the latest version of the domain model.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SkillMint – find your perfect activity partner - dimasf
https://skillmint.com
======
dimasf
I was having a hard time finding tennis and ping-pong partners with the skill
level that would match mine in my area. Every single service or platform that
I've found was either too old or not too compelling to use it. That's when
SkillMint was born. It allows you to find a partner for any sports or music
skills you have.
Any feedback is welcome. And hopefully you'll like it so much that you'd want
to use it yourself :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
River (Typography) - keiferski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)
======
throwaway3157
The caption of one of the article's images says "Czech proofreader's marks for
a river". Does this mean that points were deducted for a student
unintentionally creating a river? The article does not elaborate
~~~
keiferski
There is a section which talks about the (perceived) negatives of rivers. In
short: it makes the text harder to read.
> Typographers try to minimize or eliminate the river effect. In Finer Points
> in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type, Canadian typographer Geoffrey Dowding
> explains as follows.
> A carefully composed text page appears as an orderly series of strips of
> black separated by horizontal channels of white space. Conversely, in a
> slovenly setting the tendency is for the page to appear as a grey and
> muddled pattern of isolated spats, this effect being caused by the over-
> widely separated words. The normal, easy, left-to-right movement of the eye
> is slowed down simply because of this separation; further, the short letters
> and serifs are unable to discharge an important function—that of keeping the
> eye on "the line". The eye also tends to be confused by a feeling of
> vertical emphasis, that is, an up & down movement, induced by the relative
> isolation of the words & consequent insistence of the ascending and
> descending letters. This movement is further emphasized by those "rivers" of
> white which are the inseparable & ugly accompaniment of all carelessly set
> text matter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you want from a personal finance web app? - rendezvouscp
I’ve seen a number of comments from dissatisfied users of personal finance web apps. Some people are unhappy with Mint, some want to use Mint but can’t, and others seem unhappy with the personal finance web apps as a whole.<p>My question to you: what do you want to be able to do with your personal finance solution that you currently can’t accomplish?
======
bgraves
I was using Buxfer for a while and liked it, but it's been shut down for a
while. I'm trying to use Mint.com -- but there always seems to be some bug or
connection issue with one or more of my accounts. The thing I liked about
Buxfer was the auto-category rule system. Basically, you could categorize or
tag any transactions based on a set of rules (i.e., Tag all transactions equal
to $52.36 as "Student Loan Repayment").
------
iuguy
Full support for UK banks. I hate having to go to the bank site, download the
data in Quicken format, go to the finance app site, upload the data, demungify
the data then classify the spending. At that stage it's offering me little
more than can be achieved with a spreadsheet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Crowdsourcing and user generated firings - olefoo
http://www.rogerd.net/articles/crowdsourcing-and-user-generated-firings
======
run4yourlives
I think "crowdsourcing" is a bit of a flaky concept, really. You're not
getting anything valuable from Average Joe, you're either getting a democratic
assessment of something (ie, 1K Average Joes), which is nothing new, or you
are tapping into the top 1% of a particular niche.
That being said, the concept of firing your employees to tap the crowd as an
entity for free is completely flawed.
What I find more likely to happen is that the crowd, whether the 1% or the
group as a whole will begin to understand the value they create and will start
to charge for that value. If the business community wants to hasten that
reaction by ensuring the crowd is as under-employed as possible, then so be
it. This generation of workers has shown themselves to be much more adaptable
than "super efficient" businesses ever were.
~~~
olefoo
The thing about crowdsourcing in tech support is that the crowd is the one
that's experienced the problem, and is practiced in using the solution. The
thing that Brad Smith does not understand is that the technical support staff
from Intuit play a different role in the ecosystem around his product than
user experts; and removing the in-house tech staff would likely drive away the
user experts.
I don't think the 'crowd' is going to wake up and start charging for things
they currently do for free because the most effective forms of crowdsourcing
depend on small individual contributions being given collective effectiveness
by the context.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do programmers still buy printed books? - acangiano
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/08/15/do-programmers-still-buy-printed-books/
======
DanielStraight
Yes.
I buy lots of printed books (and not just for programming). I've probably
bought at least a dozen computer books this year alone. I've read several of
them cover to cover, substantial portions of several, and used several just
for occasional reference. My favorite type of computer books to buy is more
theoretical books. Most books to learn a technology are not much better than
tutorials online. Reference books don't really beat Google. However, books
intended for READING are much better in print. There is no way I would read
Code Complete on a computer screen. 800, or however many pages it is, is just
way too much not to have paper and ink.
Another point for books, you OWN them. Most digital content, you don't really
own. If it has any DRM at all of any kind whatsoever, you don't own it. You're
leasing it at best. Furthermore, accidental deletion and disk failure are much
more likely than your house burning down or flooding to destroy your books.
It's even worse if the content lives on someone else's servers. I don't want
the availability of my books to be subject to some company's continued
existence. If Honda goes out of business, I still have a car. If O'Reilly goes
out of business, I should still have my books. There are other ways this comes
up. If my internet access goes out, I should still have my books.
Another point of books, you can resell or gift them. I bought a computer book
recently that I didn't find very useful. I think I got it for like $30 used on
Amazon. It's still going for about the same price. So basically I can sell it
and have paid nothing for it. Try that with a PDF.
Another advantage of books, you can go to a bookstore and browse through them
all you want. If you really wanted, you could go to Barnes & Noble, get some
coffee, pick up a computer book and read the whole thing there in the store.
Sure, some places give previews, but they decide what part of the book the
preview comes from and how much you can see. When you're shopping for books,
you decide (assuming you're in a store, not on Amazon).
------
bayareaguy
For me the whole point of buying programming books is to save time and these
days fewer and fewer printed books accomplish that.
Before the web I used to drive 50 miles every other weekend to buy books from
Computer Literacy to add to my personal library when I didn't have a need for
them because of the time saved having them at hand later. I don't do this
anymore, in part because for my needs the web is often sufficient but also
because Computer Literacy eventually went out of business and there's no
comparable store anymore worth that trip.
These days I'm _thrilled_ whenever I do find a printed programming book likely
to save me time compared to searching the web. The last such book I found was
Kurt Jung and Aaron Brown's "Beginning Lua Programming". It's full of well-
organized time-saving details and an excellent companion to Roberto
Ierusalimschy's "Programming in Lua", a book at the same quality level as
K&R's "The C Programming Language". Unless the price is an absolute bargin, I
won't bother buying a printed book unless it's as good as those.
------
jrockway
I sold more printed copies than electronic copies (of my Catalyst book).
Personally, I buy ebooks whenever possible. Printed books are fine, but you
have to wait for them to arrive. When you buy an ebook, you can start reading
immediately.
For technical books, I don't mind being forced to read in front of my
computer. I am going to want to play with "real code" while I am reading
anyway, so I am probably not going to be too far from my computer. (An
exception; I read "Real World Haskell" on two very long flights. There was
just a lot to play with when I got home...)
For non-technical books, the Kindle is much nicer than a physical book.
Smaller, lighter, cheaper content, and nobody knows what you are reading
about.
------
erikstarck
I do! Books are great for learning. You can tell how difficult something is
simply by the weight of the book. Books have a linear structure suitable for
learning. You always know how far you've got and how much you have left to
learn by the number of pages left. You can even feel it with your fingers!
No online tutorial comes close. Just wish they had a CTRL+F.
~~~
pjonesdotca
I like that Pragprog gives you the option of buying both the deadtree and pdf
versions. That way you CAN have your Ctl-F and something to read on holiday at
the same time.
------
yannis
Programmers always spent their money on books and computers and they will
forever! :)
------
draegtun
Perhaps the question should be "Do programmers still read printed books?".
Because I still regularly buy printed books but a lot do seem to end up on the
shelf unread or barely read collecting dust :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Running Is Always Blind - brahmwg
http://m.nautil.us/issue/38/noise/running-is-always-blind
======
corecoder
Interesting article, but I don't get why so much surprise at the notion that
we don't consciously control every single muscle, joint and nerve as we run.
We never ever consciously control every anything, period. Just try to list the
movements of each phalanx as you tie your shoes or even scratch your head, and
you'll easily see that we just have no idea.
~~~
lloeki
Well, yes and no, my experience tells me it all depends on the level of
control of your body that you have, and training for a particular task.
Learning to ollie is a typical example of that: there are movements that you
have to consciously apply, yet the best way to ollie is to not think about it
and just _do_ a ollie, as each movement isolated doesn't mean much and it's
only when the whole thing connects together that it works [0]. As Rodney
Mullen says [1], you can only be conscious about sub-movements that really
don't exist by themselves (only as part of a larger move) and connect together
to form (and possibly create) a movement or a trick. It's really hard to
describe, because mostly you don't really think about it, you just feel it,
but at the same time it's a conscious action on your part, kinda like
meditation or doing a _kata_.
[0]: Braille Skateboarding - 5 steps to better ollies:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrOZxOTIv-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrOZxOTIv-g)
[1]: Rodney Mullen - Pop a ollie and innovate!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEm-
wjPkegE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEm-wjPkegE)
~~~
corecoder
Also: I can't skate, but I used to be able to juggle almost decently. Sure,
learning to juggle involves some degree of conscious learning, but really the
cerebellum does almost all the work. You look at someone doing a new trick and
understand the understandable part, then you keep trying until you can perform
the trick decently, and I ensure you that there is absolutely nothing you can
explain afterwards that you couldn't before the training (once you get the
understandable part).
------
jqrd
Makes me think of orienteering running -- at the competitive level, you can't
afford to slow down much (and definitely you can't stop running) just to look
at the map and plan your route. So not only you're not looking at how rough
the terrain you're stepping on right now is, your brain is also busy with
evaluating different options and trying to optimize for the least effort to
get from point A to point B (and repeat this 100 times or more in a race) --
for example, should I take the long way around the hill with rougher
vegetation vs go straight up 100 meters elevation and down on the other side.
------
js2
_Jurek never looks down, no matter how uneven the ground may be._
Scott Jurek is one of the greatest trail/ultra-runners of all time, but I find
this hard to believe. Of course you don't look directly down at your feet, but
your gaze (at least, my gaze) when trail running is a few feet in front of
you, much closer than when running on a smooth surface. He must have a visual
image of what's in front of him.
I run a lot of road miles (60+/week), with the occasional trail run, and I'm
not a very good trail runner (went down three times in a 12 mile trail run a
couple weeks ago). I find trail running much more mentally taxing than road
running. I'm constantly scanning the ground for trip hazards, then looking up
for branches and turns. I don't dare look at my watch. If my attention flags
for a second, that's exactly when a root grabs my foot or my toe slams into a
rock. A lot of this may be due to poor technique (I don't lift my legs as much
as I should) or the rather rugged single-track where I run. And then there's
running poorly marked trails where you have to navigate as you go, which is
another issue altogether.
In any case, interesting article. Single-track trail running is definitely a
different beast than road, track, or cross-country.
~~~
LeifCarrotson
Technique/form and experience definitely make a big difference in trail
running. I usually do about 30 mpw on trails, and my gaze is 10-20 meters
ahead, or yes, at my watch. Peripheral vision, I think, plays a large role.
That's a reflex you have to train.
And single-track running shouldn't be that much different than cross country
running: The races aren't meant to be held on golf courses!
~~~
js2
I didn't run in school so I haven't seen a lot of xc courses. I just
occasionally run on a local xc course. It's all screened gravel, except for a
single (long) grass hill. I've run a couple other xc courses and they've all
been easy compared to the local single-track. I recently ran the UIUC xc
course and it's an all grass loop around their arboretum with a single man-
made "hill".
The single-track in my area is very rugged, with lots of roots and exposed
jagged rock, so I think that may be part of it too. But point taken.
------
oinsurance3
You can't run from troubles, you can to face them and solve them
~~~
crottypeter
Some problems _are_ solved by running :-)
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running_shoes](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running_shoes)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cheap, 'safe' drug kills most cancers - bmunro
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html
======
bbgm
The original article is from four years ago. Here's an update:
[http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/...](http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/cure-
for-cancer-resurfaces-and.html)
Alas that headline, like so many in this space, is misleading and converts
promise into something a lot more definitive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DNA Reveals Red-Haired Chinese Mummies Come from Europe and Asia - diodorus
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/07/18/these-red-haired-chinese-mummies-come-from-all-over-eurasia-dna-reveals/
======
walterbell
PBS has a 2005 historical overview of the politically/economically contested
region of Uyhgur,
[http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/china401/links.htm...](http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/china401/links.html)
~~~
contingencies
Uyghur is way late in the piece, post-Islam. Previously it was largely
Buddhist with some Iranian beliefs, probably Tibetan Bons and Nestorian
Christians for good measure. The British Museum has an awesome 20th century
gold dinar (or similar arabic-inspired coinage) minted in Xinjiang, great to
show unbelieving Chinese friends who think Xinjiang like Tibet and Yunnan are
"inalienable parts of China".
~~~
powerapple
how is that anything to do with Tibet being part of China? You really like
your Chinese friends I guess.
~~~
contingencies
Can't read English? Brainwashed nationalist with rich corrupt parents who was
sent to the US to get an education because you couldn't compete domestically,
I guess.
------
gnoway
Not really related to the article, but big thumbs down to messing with the
browser buttons. I scrolled down two articles and then had to hit 'back' about
5 times to get off the page. I'd be interested to know who thinks this is good
design or a good idea - does it get the site more ad impressions or something?
------
contingencies
Not news. They also have, famously, tartan-like fabrics.
~~~
greglindahl
... checkerboard fabrics are not unique to anywhere. This history [1] isn't
very comprehensive but it gives you an idea of where they've been found...
lots of non-Western European locations.
1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartan#Origins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartan#Origins)
~~~
contingencies
Hey Greg! We met at one of those Linux events in SF 4 or 5 years ago. Congrats
on selling Blekko.
I agree with your point: it's probably more a default factor of the processes
around weaving looms than specific conscious creation. Here in Asia the
backstrap loom is the most widely deployed (in a pan-traditional-cultural-
sphere sense), and linear designs are frequently deployed.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom#Back_strap_loom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom#Back_strap_loom)
~~~
contingencies
See also
[http://www.academia.edu/9974664/Looms_Weaving_and_the_Austro...](http://www.academia.edu/9974664/Looms_Weaving_and_the_Austronesian_Expansion)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Move over Silicon Valley, here comes.....Buffalo. - edw519
http://skunkpost.com/news.sp?newsId=3288
======
waterside81
As a Canadian and a Buffalo Bills fan, this pleases me to no end. Driving
through Buffalo is very depressing. Abandoned buildings and empty streets are
in abundance. It's amazing to think Buffalo was a thriving part of the US only
30 years ago.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Outsourcing: Get Over It. - jdueck
http://www.thewealthyprogrammer.com/2008/02/outsourcing-get-over-it.html
======
doubleplus
A condensed version...
If you have a family to take care of and you just lost your job to
outsourcing, you just need to follow a few simple steps:
* Don't be prejudiced.
* Beat out hundreds of other programmers for a management job or start your own business.
* Be eager about... something.
* Read an economics textbook.
* Dream about traveling the world without having to work much.
* Help someone do... something. The Wealthy Programmer says greed is bad.
------
tx
Wow... I haven' seen such pretentious blog in a while. He worked for over 100
companies within last 20 years! Jesus... After those I was expecting no less
but a comparison of his code printouts with football fields.
"I become a wealthy programmer, and you can too!".... Yet his 2nd blog post is
labeled "How to get promoted to Management" where he basically suggests to
start sucking up to your immediate boss.
WTF? Who upmodded this junk?
------
mojuba
I worked for outsourcing companies in some third world countries for years,
and here's my advice: don't outsource your work if you can and you will save a
lot of money in the long run.
Or, if you feel you need 50 Java programmers for a single project, you suck
anyway, with or without outsourcing.
------
tlrobinson
At this point in time I'm not worried about outsourcing, since I probably
wouldn't want to do most of the jobs being outsourced _anyway_. I have no
desire to write accounting software, etc for Fortune 500 companies for the
rest of my life.
I'd much rather work on interesting and creative projects. I don't think
outsourcing lends itself well to these types of problems, though that may
change in the future.
------
rms
My undergraduate education was in Industrial Engineering. Industrial Engineers
are the outsourcers. They have been portrayed memorably as "efficiency
experts" in movies such as American Beauty and Office Space. There will always
be jobs for Industrial Engineers, until they start outsourcing the
outsourcing.
------
st3fan
I'll try to turn this crazy post into something more usable for this crowd:
From a startup point of view I think outsourcing the development of your core
product is very dangerous. You need to be in constant touch with your product
and have a direct feedback loop during development. That can be very hard if
you outsource.
Setting up a remote team and building up a good relationship with them can be
very fruitful however. We've done it too and we consider those people first
class colleagues. It does take a lot of effort; lots of Skype calls and
visits. But it works very well.
S.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21722216-there-was-just-one-fatal-shooting-whole-2015-crime-dries-up-japans-police-hunt?fsrc=scn/tw/te/rfd/pe
======
JohnJamesRambo
[https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-japan-ever-convict-men-
fo...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-japan-ever-convict-men-for-rape)
they could work on this. It seems all crime isn't drying up, just the things
the government wants to call a crime.
~~~
will4274
Warning: site has malicious ads which navigate you away on mobile
~~~
smegel
Not if you browse with javascript disabled by default.
~~~
zpr
These days, that might also be a crime.
~~~
linkregister
First they came for the Ad Blockers, but I did not speak out — because I
wasn't one.
Then they came for the VPN Users, but I did not speak out — because I wasn't
one.
Then they came for the JavaScript Disablers, — and there was no one left to
speak for me.
;)
------
Houshalter
This is 20 years old, but there is something weird about Japanese crime
statistics. They might not be as good as much of a low crime society as
commonly stated: [http://sci-hub.la/10.2307/29766810](http://sci-
hub.la/10.2307/29766810) ( _Is Japan Exceptional? Reconsidering Japanese Crime
Rates_ )
~~~
taneq
This is purely anecdotal but my sister lived in Japan for many years, and she
tells me that the policing there is very... uneven, I guess you'd describe it.
The police won't get too involved in anything that's not a sure bet to be
solved (eg. unexpected deaths are very likely to be written off as suicide)
but on the flip side, once they accuse you of something the conviction rate is
near 100%. Also if you get a speeding ticket you have to write an apology
letter saying how sorry you are, as well as pay the fine.
~~~
kleiba
For those interested in this, there is a very good Japanese movie whose
English title is "I just didn't do it". "Based on a true story, the film
focuses on the story of a young man charged with groping on a train. Following
the events depicted in the film, he was confirmed innocent and saved from his
effective imprisonment after a five-year legal battle." [1]
You'll find in this movie exactly what the parent describes, the apology
culture as well as how difficult the system makes it for you once you've been
accused of an offense.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It)
~~~
agumonkey
Talking about movies, albeit a different kind, swedish movie kopps is a comedy
about a city so devoid of crime, the agents starts to make up things to keep
their job.
~~~
kleiba
Even though this is really off-topic, Kopps is a great movie, as is Jalla
Jalla by the same director the latter being even more off-topic as it has
nothing to do with crime nor Japan but is instead a romantic comedy set in
Sweden.
------
stephengillie
A group is formed to handle a perceived type of problem - a committee or task
force. They triage and rank these problems, then deal with them in decreasing
order of determined importance.
Solving each problem has costs, such as disruption to other people's lives -
both involved parties and bystanders, but this disruption is seen as a
necessary evil. Below a certain threshold of problem, solving problems becomes
too expensive, and the cost is greater than the problem-removal benefit. These
groups rarely dissolve when they are past this point, due in most cases to the
ego of an individual human or small group.
This is a generalization of many concepts, but I've never been sure what to
call it.
~~~
hateduser2
Why ego? This is just as easily explained by habit/routine/dependence on the
group by its members
~~~
tankenmate
“It’s hard to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on
him not understanding it” -- Upton Sinclair
It's rare for a open ended committee or organisation without founding scope to
vote for its own dissolution.
~~~
hateduser2
I think actually that’s what I meant by dependence on the group for money or
wellbeing (livelihood?). Separating those things from ego (pride)
------
Noos
If I were to speculate, I think, no, there's still plenty of crime, but like a
lot of Japanese culture, it's dealt with informally by the group. To actually
go to the police is an admission your local culture or group can't harmonize
what happened, so you need to have harmony forced on you. That doesn't mean
actual innocent or guilt; just that harmony is maintained.
If it ever has to escalate to the police in that kind of culture, it's
something really serious that the normal means of informal dealing and
restitution won't work at all. And the mindset when that happens is dangerous,
because the objective can be more "quickly restore harmony by any means
necessary" than "find the guilty." Like the old chinese kung-fu movies where
they would grab someone, torture him, then make him sign a confession. It's
more important to resolve the situation to restore balance than disrupt that
to right wrongs.
Again, this is real speculation, but Japanese are people too; they don't
somehow possess a special human nature that removes all the nasty emotional
impetus behind crime.
~~~
larkeith
I wouldn't be surprised if this is partially the case, but the homicide rate
suggests to me that there is also a significantly lower amount of (serious)
crime - it seems difficult and unlikely that murder would or could be handled
without involving authorities.
~~~
Nexxxeh
During the recent gun crime argument in the wake of the Vegas shooting in the
US, someone pointed to Japan as an example of strict gun laws.
Japan has more than double the suicide rate than the UK, and noticeably higher
than the US.
I wonder if some murders in Japan are written up as suicides in order to close
the case quickly?
Plus I would would guess Japanese people are more likely to kill themselves
than go on a murder spree of family members or coworkers, but that's just
based on what I've seen as an outsider.
~~~
jopsen
Japan is notorious for extreme work ethics.. so a high suicide rate is not
surprising.
I'm don't think it's fair to make wild speculation like that without sources.
It not like they haven't investigated the high (but also falling) suicide
rate:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan)
------
superquest
Reminds me how Roman soldiers built roads throughout the empire during the Pax
Romana, when they had no wars to fight.
~~~
javajosh
Indeed! However, asking modern police to do infrastructure work of that sort
might be too much. However, what police officer would turn down an opportunity
to get trained as a programmer, and then put to work in forensics, workflow,
or national cyber defense?
------
roryisok
Probably just me, but economist articles never load properly (windows phone,
so there's that). Page keeps popping me back up to the top of the article,
happened 4 times and then the text disappeared. Oh well.
At least I can infer from the headline that crime is very low in Japan. I
wonder what they're doing that the rest of the world aren't
~~~
cperciva
Crime rates are dropping almost everywhere; the exceptions are short term
increases during episodes of societal disruption (e.g. wars).
One of the reasons Japan's rate is so low is that they're ahead of other
countries in the race to grow old; the vast majority of crime, and especially
violent crime, is committed by young people.
~~~
eru
> [...] the vast majority of crime, and especially violent crime, is committed
> by young people.
Or to be more precise: young males.
~~~
cperciva
Males are more likely to commit crimes, yes; but not necessarily as much as
conviction statistics would suggest. There is systematic under-reporting and
under-prosecution of crimes committed by females, which seems to be driven
largely by a perception that women are "harmless".
~~~
eru
They are probably committing different kinds of infractions, too. Some of them
more criminalised than others.
------
jsemrau
When I was still living in Tokyo and went shopping for groceries near my house
using my Mamachari, I would get stopped at least twice each way.
~~~
gwilkes
That's weird, I've heard that Tokyo cops do that but I've never been stopped
once in eight years of living in Saitama (the prefecture just north of Tokyo).
It's certainly not because I blend in, I'm cacausian and 188cm tall.
~~~
jsemrau
Well it happened to me when living in Tokyo. In other parts it might not be
like that.
------
sliverstorm
Firefighters in America are doing the same thing, as buildings become more
fireproof & smoking declines.
------
mongol
Come to Sweden. Police is in crisis.
~~~
vortico
You post is tongue-in-cheek but it brings up an interesting question: Is an
experienced foreign policeman a better candidate than an untrained lifelong
citizen who is just starting a career? I would guess no, since laws and "the
way of doing things" are so different that it would be better for trainee
police to start with a clean slate.
~~~
kwhitefoot
It's almost certainly a good idea to have a few such people in a reasonably
sized group because they will be able to challenge the 'we do it this way
because we have always done it this way' mentality that eventually takes over
most long lasting groups of any kind.
~~~
vortico
"The way we do things" is the legal code, and I believe this is better changed
in court, not at a police office.
------
jhiska
In other words, the police are trying to create crime so they can justify
their investigations.
------
fishmeat
Beware the crappy link laced with popup ads and trackers.
------
NedIsakoff
How about working on the groping issue?
~~~
snvzz
Can you elaborate on this groping issue?
------
wordpressdev
Do these stats cover the Yakuza?
~~~
iliketosleep
That's exactly what I was wondering. As far as I know, many streets in Japan
are still ruled by the Yakuza.
~~~
donatj
They’re supposedly having a heck of a time recruiting the younger generation.
There was a pretty good documentary about it on Netflix
~~~
lr4444lr
Those damn herbivore/hodo-hodo/millenials... you can't even get them motivated
to join crime syndicates. </s>
~~~
conanbatt
Heck of a time is positive!
------
Giorgi
Don't they have full-scale mafia operations? Ya, fight that
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub’s Large File Storage is no panacea for Open Source - narner
https://medium.com/@megastep/github-s-large-file-storage-is-no-panacea-for-open-source-quite-the-opposite-12c0e16a9a91#.310ve89hz
======
jedbrown
In the interest of not propagating this common misconception:
"The main problem with Git is that binary files are stored “as is” in the
history of the project, so that every single revision of a new binary file
(even if just a single byte has changed) is stored in full. [...] On the other
hand, source files being mostly text, they are more intelligently handled and
typically only differences between revisions are stored in the commits."
This is false. Git stores the full version of each file in "loose" format and
uses compressed incremental diffs (originally based on xdiff) in packfiles
(after "git gc") without distinguishing text vs binary in either case. The
issue is that binary files are often compressed themselves (so a one-byte
semantic change has nonlocal effect) or have positional references (like jump
targets in an executable, causing small changes to cascade).
These factors explain the inefficient handling of binary files, but improving
efficiency requires changing the semantics. LFS follows in the path of a few
other tools (based on smudge/clean filters) that try to hide the semantic
difference from the casual user, though that difference seems to bite people
more frequently than we'd like.
~~~
paulddraper
This. Unlike many other systems, compression in git has nothing to do with
commit order or file types or really anything VCS related. The way delta
chains work in git are ingenious and transparent.
The problem is that "binaries" are large amounts of data with high entropy.
------
pbiggar
How uncharitable can a single blog post be! The entire post is discredited by
the author repeatedly projecting his unfounded opinions onto GitHub, such as
"My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware
of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as-
a-bag-of-rocks pricing model."
"All the marketing material pimping GitHub’s LFS support [...]. I do not
believe this is unintentional."
"This is completely batshit. The side effect of this pernicious, greedy
pricing model is to [...]"
"I honestly couldn’t believe that GitHub would be willing to do something that
shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought they could
extract from some of their users".
Charitable explanation for forks not working: they haven't yet written the
code to make this work with forks, and it's better to ship something working
early, than to make it work in all cases.
Charitable explanation for charging for bandwith: bandwidth costs money. (I
believe this is a real problem for Dropbox, which doesn't charge for bandwidth
but must still pay for it). Also, all CDNs, and also AWS charge for bandwidth.
Overall, while GitHub may be able to support it's OSS folks better by changing
the pricing on some parts of its product, this post is incredibly
uncharitable. I hope the OP will consider removing the unfounded narrative
that he's projecting onto GitHub (esp the "marketing dickwad" thing - wtf) and
focus on the facts.
[Disclaimer: my company partners with GitHub on lots of stuff]
------
paulddraper
> Case in point: if a very popular Github repository (such as the one for the
> Linux kernel) decided to start using LFS for some of their files, they would
> instantly alienate all of their users. They would no longer be able to
> properly fork the project, or even clone it to get its binary files stored
> via LFS. Nobody would be able to send a pull request to Linus as a result
> without considerable effort.
Odd example. Linux doesn't use GitHub pull requests.
~~~
Jasper_
They still use pull requests, though, just in the form of email-based ones.
[https://git-scm.com/docs/git-request-pull](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-
request-pull)
~~~
jumpwah
Except that's not a "pull request".
~~~
Vendan
Except it is. Just cause github does pull requests differently doesn't mean
you can't do pull requests in pure git. Remember, git came before github.
~~~
jumpwah
> Remember, git came before github.
That's exactly my point. Using a "request-pull" instead of a "pull-request"
will probably mean you can do this git-lfs thing with it. My understanding was
that it was not working with "forked" repositories, which you need to have to
make a "pull request". To make a "request pull" (or to just send a patch
file), you don't need to "fork". ;)
------
dantiberian
There's a lot of assumptions here about GitHub being greedy. I've got no idea
how much money it costs GitHub to support Open Source projects, but it must
easily be in the millions. I think that by this point GitHub deserves the
benefit of the doubt before launching into vicious accusations.
~~~
SwellJoe
While I don't think github is deserving of "vicious accusations", I do believe
it is foolish to assume that the github we know today will be the github of
tomorrow.
SourceForge.net was once an excellent and trustworthy steward of Open Source
software projects. It was predicted by some folks in the free software
community that it would not always be the case, and alternatives like Savannah
were maintained in order to act as a hedge against that concern. I believe it
is more than reasonable to assume that github will change, and it would be
downright dangerous to assume that we can rely on a profit-motivated
corporation (even one as cool as github currently is) to remain a trustworthy
repository forever.
So, sure, say nice things about github; I also think github is a good product,
and I appreciate their free hosting for OSS projects. And, sure, you should
use github if it provides value for you and you're willing to accept the
price. But, don't ask me to trust they'll never change, because history
indicates they will. It's probably also unfair to suggest that someone
criticizing some valid concerns about github's current behavior, based on
their own experience with Open Source projects hosted at github, are making
"vicious accusations".
~~~
pbiggar
Really? These aren't vicious?
"My guess is that some high-level greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware
of the asinine implications of his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as-
a-bag-of-rocks pricing model."
"All the marketing material pimping GitHub’s LFS support [...]. I do not
believe this is unintentional."
"This is completely batshit. The side effect of this pernicious, greedy
pricing model is to [...]"
"I honestly couldn’t believe that GitHub would be willing to do something that
shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought they could
extract from some of their users"
~~~
SwellJoe
OK, those are maybe a little vicious, and probably not entirely fair. Still,
the implication of not being able to fork a whole project from github if you
use LFS is a pretty big deal.
~~~
pbiggar
GitHub has added features, and made their product better for their customers,
but have not yet made it possible to use from everywhere on their platform.
Perhaps that is a big deal (I don't use LFS and until recently neither did
anyone else), but it's a far cry from what you said in your original comment,
such as "I do believe it is foolish to assume that the github we know today
will be the github of tomorrow."
They implement a feature in a restricted manner and all of a sudden they're
evil?
~~~
SwellJoe
No, of course not. I have nowhere said github is evil. I've said it would be
foolish to believe they never will be, because we have seen on a number of
occasions that good companies turn bad (with varying definitions of "good" and
"bad") when given sufficient monetary motivation to do so.
SourceForge is the best past analog for github, and I think it's worth
learning from history. SF.net didn't start out evil and untrustworthy; they
started out good. Who's to say github won't do the same?
~~~
pbiggar
Its not that I believe good forever, but rather that I think it (it being your
first comment) was a weird way to take the conversation. Like, why did that
even occur to you in this context?
~~~
SwellJoe
I left some of the early parts of my thought process out of the conversation.
My thought process went something like this: "This is a feature that is
currently, probably accidentally, causing vendor lock-in for github users, as
there is no easy way to take a project in its entirety back out of github, if
it has enabled this feature. That kind of lock-in has been used in the past,
by vendors across a wide spectrum, for evil purposes. Github, were it ever to
become evil, would find this the kind of thing that would screw users and
produce profit."
I don't believe github _today_ has evil intent (though the author of the
article seemingly does believe that), but I reserve the right to be skeptical
of what the company's intentions will be in the future. Just as I should have
been more skeptical of the the future intentions of SourceForge in the past. I
think my position on this is entirely fair to github (which is a company and
product I like), but I'm also trying to not to be a total sucker and make the
same mistakes over and over again.
~~~
pbiggar
I see. Yes, lock in has been used for evil in the past.
I thought the OP noted that MS also offers git+LFS (and for free)!
------
alkonaut
The most interesting takeaway for me was that Microsoft seems to privide the
only(?) free git hosting that includes LFS?
Does anyone know if their repos supports forking in combination with LFS too?
------
nkurz
This seems like an odd problem, but I'm not as familiar with Git as I should
be. Is there not a reasonable way to download only the most recent version of
these large binary files on the initial request, and then download the
historical versions only in the (likely very rare) case that the user actually
wants to use them? This would seem more useful in this case than hoping that
binary diffs the repository small enough.
~~~
icebraining
If you're talking about binary files merged into Git itself (not Git LFS,
which is a separate mechanism), you can use "git clone --depth <n>" to get
only the latest <n> revisions of the tree, and then use "git pull --unshallow"
if you need to fetch the rest of the history.
~~~
alkonaut
Can I do that automatically so that only binaries are fetched shallow, and
text is fetched deep? Otherwise it's not very useful.
~~~
icebraining
My best guess would be to keep the binaries in a submodule, then after fully
cloning the main repo, you would fetch the binaries with "git submodule update
--init --depth 1".
------
lemevi
Edit: I was wrong, however I learned from the conversation so I am leaving it
here! Thanks to those who corrected me.
> On the other hand, source files being mostly text, they are more
> intelligently handled and typically only differences between revisions are
> stored in the commits.
This is completely incorrect, git stores whole blobs from one commit to the
other.
svn stored patches, but git does not. Every version of a file is stored in its
entirety in your git tree since the beginning of the repository's existence.
This is one of the reasons why git is so fast. You can go through your objects
in your .git directory and verify this for yourself[0].
$ find .git/objects -type f
.git/objects/ff/a5d733354ae6f8bdc67764d58d87c9a3161f66
.git/objects/ff/deb08f4856bd6eb5b31d7f800b3e480ae3e2e0
$ git cat-file -p ffa5d733354ae6f8bdc67764d58d87c9a3161f66
...file contents appear...
[0] [https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects](https://git-
scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects)
~~~
saurik
This is only true for recent commits: as you accumulate commits, garbage
collections are performed of the loose blobs and the remaining generation is
stored into a pack file, which has been carefully ordered by similarity and
stored using a delta-encoding. For more information, this chapter from one of
the popular online books about git might suffice.
[https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Packfiles](https://git-
scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Packfiles)
(edit: After I started responding to your comment, you edited your comment to
link to the same book! I recommend you continue reading the later chapters:
"you'll never believe how it works" ;P.)
------
bhuga
I suspect setting up the free LFS reference/test server[1] that GitHub
provides would have taken less time than writing this post complaining that
GitHub isn't free enough.
1: [https://github.com/github/lfs-test-server](https://github.com/github/lfs-
test-server)
~~~
nmc
This being a test server implementation probably indicates that it is not
meant to be run in production environment.
------
sytse
At GitLab we're working to support LFS. Initial support might or might not
work with forks. As now with our Git Annex support storage will be free with a
soft limit of 10GB of disk space per project (includes Git, Git Annex and Git
LFS data) and there is no bandwidth limit. It will work with public and
private projects (both are free).
------
eshamow
I'm not sure I understand why artifacts can't be stored in a different service
- even an S3 bucket, if not a real repository service - and fetched
dynamically via a build process.
Is there a reason why binary blobs need to be stored directly next to code in
order to be versioned?
~~~
megastep
The way I understand it, it should be possible, though it's more complicated
since they seem to infer the LFS URL from the repo URL by default. So if you
wanted to say keep your repo on Github, and store your LFS files on S3, you'd
need to explicitly tell git where to write the files. There are configuration
values for that.
Also you'd need the necessary LFS server piece on Amazon's side.
~~~
eshamow
I'm thinking that rather than using git for versioning the binary artifacts as
well, you tag and version your git repo, then tag and name/label your
artifacts in another storage service. You then allow a build tool to assemble
from both locations.
------
forrestthewoods
I wonder if Perforce Cloud will be able to fill this role at all. Probably
not. Open Source isn't their target audience. But it could be a consideration.
Has anyone tried the new Perforce/Git stuff? Is it any good? We're still on an
older pre-Helix version.
------
bsimpson
The post seems hyperbolic. I'd love to hear GitHub's rebuttal.
~~~
megastep
I am the author and yes this was very much unapologetically hyperbolic. At
least it got the conversation started.
~~~
ansiton
I don't think you needed paragraphs like "My guess is that some high-level
greedy marketing dickwad, completely unaware of the asinine implications of
his brilliant idea, signed off on this dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks pricing model.
He then directed the grunts to somehow implement his grand vision on GitHub’s
servers. That’s when shit started to hit the fan." ... to get the conversation
started. Your other points were sensible and lucid. This was a distraction and
had the paradoxical effect of making me more sympathetic to github. The same
looks to be true of other posters in this thread.
If you were consciously choosing to take a hyperbolic tone, can I ask if you
might reconsider that decision in future posts? Or at least concretely test
your idea that calling people "dickwads" and "grunts" gets you more traction.
I appreciated you raising the bandwidth question, and comparing it with other
services. You made a good argument. Thank you!
~~~
nacs
It's his personal blog not some corporate blog or newspaper.
I'm not sure it's within your rights to ask him to change the way he writes
within his own bubble because you don't like his word choice.
~~~
bsimpson
It's just as much within his rights to call someone out for it as it is for
someone to write as he likes.
Clearly the post was written for an audience. Being needlessly inflammatory
could certainly turn the audience off, and/or undercut the author's
credibility. Ansiton's advice was both helpful and valid.
------
cwyers
> I honestly couldn’t believe that GitHub would be willing to do something
> that shortsighted, visibly motivated by greed from the cash they thought
> they could extract from some of their users.
They're a business. C'mon here.
~~~
megastep
My argument was that this was actually bad for their business. This is not a
customer-friendly move.
~~~
i386
People who make products make these sort of tradeoffs all the time and the
tradeoff is rarely something thats permanent. For the fast majority of people
who need this kind of functionality (LFS), breaking forking is a inconvenience
compared to the value being added.
~~~
megastep
I would completely agree with you if that was the way GitHub presented that
feature, being open about the consequences of adopting it. They haven't done
that, and as a result their customers are not properly informed on the trade-
offs they are making.
------
i386
Shock and horror: commercial company has a paid value add.
GitHub is not a charity.
~~~
facetube
I wouldn't necessarily describe a paid feature that breaks all forking for an
entire repository a "value add".
~~~
megastep
Yes, my criticism was not that they're trying to make money from this, but
rather that they are crippling their core product in an effort to monetize it
some more.
~~~
i386
No, they are trying to solve a problem for their customers - storing large
files. They charge money for this feature. It's disingenuous to think that
they are breaking their product on purpose to extract money from you.
~~~
megastep
It is not disingenuous if it is exactly what they are doing. The entire cause
of this problem, and the reason it breaks so many things, is because they are
trying to monetize bandwidth usage. This model is unsustainable because free
users only get a paltry 1GB/month and their attempt to enforce that is what
breaks forks.
If they would just stop trying to do that, then we would have nothing to talk
about.
It is not at all uncalled for to criticize the way they are trying to do
business, especially when it affects you as an existing customer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Pope is not fooling anyone on Twitter - sonabinu
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2413253,00.asp
======
byoung2
* The biggest offender is Obama. This guy hasn't got time for this nonsense. I can just imagine him saying, "excuse me, Prime Minister, I need to tweet my concerns about the Farm Bill."*
Obama is transparent about this. The tweets he writes personally are signed
"-bo". The rest are written by staffers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google drive is down - mcalmels
http://drive.google.com/
======
benjaminva
It was also down for me but came up again. It's been long since I have
experience my last Google outage, very curious what happened with this
Service. Does anybody know?
~~~
mcalmels
For me it is forever down :( I get a 502 error. I don't know what happened.
Any suggestions? (hacker attack? ;) )
~~~
benjaminva
It has been down for others too:
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoogleDrive?src=hash](https://twitter.com/hashtag/GoogleDrive?src=hash)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CodeAbbey - website for really newbie programmers - RodionGork
Hi, Friends!<p>Few months ago I've started developing a web-site with a goal to provide some help to newcomers in programming.<p>http://codeabbey.com<p>In its core it is a collection of programming problems - to solve them users should write some code, process random input data and submit correct result (so it is result which is checked).<p>After a while I decided it would be useful to allow people to see each other's solutions - of course only after the given problem is solved by this particular user - so one can learn something comparing other's code with one's own.<p>Later I came to idea it may be useful to allow comments under solutions, so people can write some messages pointing out potential problems or disadvantages etc.<p>This functionality was added only few days ago.<p>As you see, I'm a bit slowpoke in inventing features to my site. So I would be glad to be hinted with more ideas about things to be probably added to it.<p>For example right now I have no clear idea how to popularize comments system just implemented. Probably commenting should give some "compassion points" to user and some tasks should require spending some of these special points for solving. Not quite sure it would be good.<p>Thanks in advance for all your hints, advice and ideas.
======
cookiem0nster
Hi! congrats on your new site. I think it's a lovely effort, and very
worthwhile. One piece of input, at least from my end, is to provide your users
not only with the answers, but also with some elaborations on things they
should / shouldn't do when writing code. This will be of course more evident
when they tackle problems when they have to work with string or collections
and things like that. Instilling some good principles, even just slightly, at
the very beginning is something which will dividends for people learning to
program just a bit down the road. Just my two cents, and once again - great
job and best of luck!
~~~
RodionGork
> some elaborations on things they should / shouldn't do when writing code
Hm-m-m... Not sure whether I get you right, but your hint give me the
following idea:
after submitting an answer, if it is correct, the user should be able to view
some editorial remarks at the results page - discussing good and bad
approaches to the problem.
For example some people here used each-by-each comparison (with O(N^2)
performance) to filter out non-unique words in a string instead of hashmap...
Thanks, this looks like important feature I should add!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Caddy 1.0, Caddy 2, and Caddy Enterprise - mholt
https://caddyserver.com/blog/announcing-caddy-1_0-caddy-2-caddy-enterprise
======
reacharavindh
I was excited about it and had it in my "check it out for next project" list.
Then saw that they were adding "ads" or some arbitrary junk to headers to
annoy users into considering a paid tier. I never bothered to look at it
again. I saw that the ads thing was removed, but the project lost that bit of
trust to be considered seriously after that. It may be a wonderful thing that
I am missing out on. But, just saying how my thought process went.
I will perhaps try it for some toy projects. But, I will have to watch the
words with oil in eyes before using it in any serious projects. If I don't
have the time to do that diligence, then this thing will not be considered....
This is the cost of losing trust with potential users.
~~~
roblabla
The "ads" were a simple Caddy-Sponsors header being sent on every HTTP
response, containing the string "This free web server is made possible by its
sponsors: Minio, Uptime Robot, and Sourcegraph". It could be removed (legally,
the license allows it) by compiling from source. This whole thing was largely
a non-issue, and overblown.
The bigger issue that came with it was a website redesign that was fairly
misleading (it looked like Caddy was going to be closed source), but when it
was pointed out, it was clarified to clearly point out that Caddy is a Free
and Open Source Software. To me, this reinforced my trust in the project. They
went the wrong way, people didn't like it, they fixed it.
The fact that, in today's world, a single misstep generates an immediate and
irrevocable loss of trust, even when that misstep is quickly corrected and
apologies are issued, is incredibly weird to me. It pushes people to hide
their mistakes instead of being open about them...
Disclaimer: I'm a happy user of Caddy, using self-built binaries. I'll take
this chance to thank the developers behind Caddy. You have made my life a lot
easier :).
~~~
TAForObvReasons
> The fact that, in today's world, a single misstep generates an immediate and
> irrevocable loss of trust, even when that misstep is quickly corrected and
> apologies are issued, is incredibly weird to me. It pushes people to hide
> their mistakes instead of being open about them...
This happened in the past too. What people did in the past was "move to
another town", but in the age of the Internet you can't really run away from
your public gaffes.
In this particular case, it's commendable that Caddy reversed course on the
ads. However, many people's first exposure to Caddy was this ad story and it
is extremely hard to change first impressions.
------
bovermyer
Very important excerpt:
> Beginning today, commercial licenses are no longer required for commercial
> use of any Caddy binaries.
~~~
jack12
I don't understand the change. If I understand the history correctly,
previously commercial usage restrictions only applied to official binaries
downloaded from their site, and now:
>Going forward, only commercial use of ... the download page ... requires a
subscription
So now you're allowed to commercially use the official binaries without buying
a license, but you're not allowed to acquire them without that license? I
don't really understand how that's a distinction with any difference.
Is the expectation that (non-commercial) 3rd-parties will mirror the official
binaries, and that's why it's a useful change?
~~~
TAForObvReasons
> Now that version 1.0 is tagged, we will see about working on integrations
> with Digital Ocean, various Linux distros and package managers, and making
> an official Docker container.
So it seems that if you use the Docker container or an APT repository, there
is no need for a subscription. However if you pull from their infrastructure
you need to pay. Interesting way to muddy the waters and extract money from
those who don't understand the situation.
~~~
mholt
That's not correct. To clarify the facts:
\- You can always build from source, and you could have always built from
source, for free, for commercial use, since the source code is and has always
been Apache licensed.
\- 3rd-party distribution channels such as Digital Ocean images, Linux package
managers, Docker, etc, have nothing to do with commercial or free use.
\- Using our official download page (or getcaddy.com) for commercial purposes
requires a subscription.
~~~
TAForObvReasons
The Caddy source code is hosted on GitHub, not on your infrastructure AFAICT.
If that changed, then what you wrote is different from what I wrote.
Otherwise, nothing written in the previous comment differs from what you just
wrote.
~~~
mholt
Your comment does not qualify "need to pay", which is only required for
commercial users.
If Caddy is as unpopular as HN makes it look, then that's probably nobody.
Right?
~~~
TAForObvReasons
Just to be clear: it seems that the same exact binaries distributed via a
docker image or through standard distro packages managers are free for
commercial use. The difference is that obtaining it from you directly costs
money. This is a part of the business model that HN users would likely find
distasteful. You're charging people who aren't technically competent enough to
realize that other places offer the same exact binaries for free. Why even
permit the side channels in the first place?
~~~
mholt
That's also an incorrect characterization. Those 3rd-party channels do not
give you the power to customize Caddy the way our build infrastructure does.
Try customizing Caddy with plugins through apt or DO images and let us know if
you find a way to do that!
~~~
gtirloni
I understand other projects have similar compilation requirements but now
you're just spinning a technical difficulty as a feature.
The fact people are still having trouble understanding your licensing terms
should give you pause.
------
francislavoie
Big news! Very exciting to see Caddy push forwards.
------
SpiffyMelon
This is great news!
Thank you Matt, and everyone else who has contributed to such an amazing
project :)
------
regecks
Really happy to read that OS packages will be available. Thanks for responding
to feedback!
All of these changes look great.
------
vorpalhex
What does Caddy offer over truly open source projects like Traefik?
~~~
mholt
I'm ready to answer your question, but define "truly open source" for me
first.
~~~
vorpalhex
FOSS, in the sense of freedom of speech as much as beer. Hinky enterprise
license requirements for builds, their previous banner on non-enterprise
versions, etc are not truly free, just a different kind of cost.
~~~
eridius
The enterprise license requirement for Caddy 1.0 is for using their build
infrastructure, not for using the build. The banner was something that could
trivially be removed (if it was even present this way) by compiling from
source.
FOSS doesn't meant the company doesn't deserve to seek a business model. In
fact, I applaud Caddy's approach towards finding a business model without
interfering with the FOSS nature of the project itself. If you want to avoid
Caddy's business model entirely, just build from source.
~~~
vorpalhex
Which brings me back to my original query - why bother with that nonsense when
I can just use Traefik?
If they're fussing with licenses to make money, what's to keep them making
future license tweaks that do affect the source?
~~~
eridius
Traefik also has enterprise licenses. I'm not sure what your point is.
Literally the only thing Caddy has done that has impacted non-enterprise
customers was that sponsor header that they removed pretty quickly when the
community told them they didn't want it. And enterprise customers have always
had the option of compiling from source if they don't want to buy a license.
------
brunoqc
It sounds like Caddy 2 will be open core. I'm not a fan.
~~~
yroc92
What are your reservations with such a model? Just curious.
~~~
axaxs
Not OP. Inevitably, most time/development is spent NOT on the core. Cool new
features are not added to the core. I understand the business model and why,
but it's not something end users like to see.
~~~
vorpalhex
See Elasticsearch for an example of this. "Oh, you actually want auth on that
otherwise entirely public cluster? Oh, well, now you better cough up some
money for an enterprise subscription..."
~~~
gtirloni
Which is just fine if they weren't taking free contributions from anywhere.
Once you start talking about a community building this great thing, your moral
bar should much higher for how you treat users.
------
chrisweekly
Does Caddy (still) need to run as root?
~~~
mholt
No program _needs_ to run as root. What are you referring to?
~~~
neilsense
Probably because it'll bind to low ports. setcap would fix it for OP.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ER bills: A baby was treated with a nap. His parents got an $18,000 bill - uptown
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/28/17506232/emergency-room-bill-fees-health-insurance-baby
======
hsienmaneja
America is a wonderful place to be rich or wealthy. Medical concerns are a top
reason for personal bankruptcy.
------
akeck
This type of billing is probably not helping the US birthrate, which I believe
is now below replacement.
------
typetehcodez
As long as consumers follow along, this will not change. We've allowed the US
healthcare system to become a toxic cesspool of greedy insurance companies
with laughable and corrupt government oversight. IMHO, The only way this
changes is if everyone stops paying.
~~~
pavel_lishin
> _IMHO, The only way this changes is if everyone stops paying._
Great! I'll start the next time I need a medical procedure. Of course, this
protest will get only more and more effective - once my bill is sent to
collections, and I'm forced into bankruptcy and become homeless, I'll amass
all sorts of medical maladies!
~~~
lujim
The reply next yours says the same thing without the toxic feel that makes the
internet a slightly worse place for everyone. Go out in that big world and
find something that makes you a happier person.
~~~
pavel_lishin
You're right. Today's been a rough day, and I keep trying to tell myself that
if I don't have anything constructive to say, I shouldn't say anything at all
- but I can't seem to listen :/
------
lujim
Wow. Now imagine you were hiking in the mountains, you break your ankle, and
need the help of search and rescue to get out of there. After you get a
$15,000 bill for a Trauma fee from the hospital you get a $10,000 bill for a
search and rescue fee from the state. Yes it's the Ticket Master business
model.
If anyone hears that I'm missing in a forest somewhere, please do me a favor
and don't call anybody.
~~~
pavel_lishin
> _If anyone hears that I 'm missing in a forest somewhere, please do me a
> favor and don't call anybody._
Very well, in accordance with your wishes, we'll let you die in the wilderness
in order to save you $10,000.
~~~
lujim
Fair jab. My point was that the Search & Rescue "pay to play" model seems
unreasonable. It was originally intended to be used in cases of
negligence/recklessness but is apparently being used in plain vanilla S&R
activities somewhat randomly based on the whims of local authorities.
The case I'm talking about was similar to this article. S&R possible
overreacted and charged a guy $9000+. There was no danger, just a
miscommunication. That seems similar to this article where a guy got a minor
scrape on his head from tipping over his motorcycle and an entire Trauma team
was readied unbeknownst to him. Yet he still got the bill.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Uber-truth about the slavery economy - smacktoward
http://terrychay.com/article/the-uber-truth-about-the-slavery-economy.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tychay+%28The+Woodwork%29
======
namesbc
For an alternative opinion:
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2458816,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2458816,00.asp)
With Uber drivers making more than double what cabbies make, it seems that
Uber is actually freeing the cabbies from the "slavery" of medallions.
~~~
zenbowman
A very good point. I was speaking to a cabbie in Vancouver, where a cab
medallion is right about half a million dollars (Canadian). Cab drivers
effectively have the choice of being indentured labor to the cab companies who
buy medallions, or accepting massive debt and becoming indentured laborers for
the bank.
Uber seems like a much better option.
------
qq66
Well as far as exaggerations go, equating $15/hr freelance with "slavery" is
much more disturbing than any exaggeratioms Über is making.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cool Google Chrome hacks - epi0Bauqu
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/10-really-cool-google-chrome-hacks-501492
======
sam_in_nyc
Half of these are bookmarklets, which will work on any browser that supports
Javascript.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Normalization is from the devil - suraj
http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/09/06/normalization-is-from-the-devil.aspx
======
michael_dorfman
_If you think about it, normalization in RDBMS had such a major role because
storage was expensive_
Umm, not really. Two words: referential integrity.
------
jkmcf
The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
Every un-normalized database I've inherited has been a colossal mess and
practically unusable -- especially if there are important relations. A de-
normalized database is a thoughtful process which I rarely see a developer do
-- they just want to get programming and don't think about long-term issues.
------
gxti
The particular scenario in the article is one in which denormalizing would be
not only more efficient, but more correct as well. As the author points out,
an invoice should always reflect the order at the time that it was created,
not including any subsequent changes in pricing. However, this is strictly a
matter of correctness! In order to denormalize, it should either be
demonstrably more correct (in which case it is not technically denormalization
at all), or a significant performance bottleneck where the cost of maintaining
two copies is overshadowed by the savings. Doing so in the name of performance
without any proof that there's savings to be had is folly.
------
toddh
Normalization minimizes the chance of update anomalies. Removing
inconsistencies doesn't sound very devlish.
------
Groxx
Why was the line between Customers and Orders removed? Adding CustomerID to
Orders just does the same thing.
All they've done is remove the connection between Products and OrderLines,
which is partially rational in the real world: what if you want to give a
discount? A partial refund? What if your products change prices at times? If
you don't include the cost on the OrderLine, you've gotta handle version
issues for every single instance.
As to the product _name_... why would it change? A new company took over the
product? I'll bet it has a different cost, new packaging, and a new
description. Is it really the same product? And, by disconnecting them,
they've now lost _any_ ability to do comparative analysis, recommendations,
num-sold... anything meaningful aside from _displaying_ the order.
If your only goal is _display_ , just save the rendered webpage you presented
them. It has as much meaning, and will _always_ look the same. If it's _doing_
anything with your data, normalize away.
------
adelevie
Something like this will work (ActiveRecord): Customer.find(:all, :include =>
{:orders => {:order_lines => :product}})
Pretty trivial, and loads all the needed records in a single query.
~~~
texel
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure ActiveRecord will issue a
separate query for each of those :include clauses.
~~~
adelevie
[http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Associations...](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Associations/ClassMethods.html)
> This will load all comments with a single query. This reduces the total
> number of queries to 3. More generally the number of queries will be 1 plus
> the number of associations named (except if some of the associations are
> polymorphic belongs_to - see below).
Good call. Still, the difference between 1 and 3 queries is nothing compared
to 3 and 100s (n+1 problem).
I wonder what AR can't turn that into a single query.
~~~
texel
Oh you're right about that. What may not be entirely obvious though is that
oftentimes 1 query can be _far_ slower than 3 queries. In a lot of cases, that
one query would have to do joins against multiple tables– I've personally seen
speedups of 20x or more by just decomposing a single complex query into a few
smaller and more focused queries.
------
nwmcsween
Always normalize a relational database. Denormalize caches.
------
bhiggins
Normalization has nothing to do with storage or performance, it has everything
to do with modelling the problem correctly. The point about a product's name
changing or a person's name changing is valid, but the solution there is to
keep revisions in the DB when it's important.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anyone Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk? - stevewilhelm
======
mchannon
Used it a fair bit; gets expensive, and you get what you pay for, unless you
spend a fair amount of money (some people have trouble being honest- maybe
they're in too much a hurry). You can opt to not pay people who don't do the
job, and that usually involves sewing in secret tests and checks to find out
who those people are.
Surprisingly, most turkers (laborers) are US or India based. You can limit by
country, or even by state. They average in the 30's, and run the gamut from
~40% full time turkers to janitors to security guards to police to teachers to
attorneys and physicians. Many are high school or less, many college-educated.
Happy to answer any more detailed questions.
------
tmaly
I used it in the past, but I was thinking of using it again. I am still trying
to come up with a decent strategy. Someone passed along theirs to me, but I
have not been able to go through it yet.
Essentially I am looking to avoid hiring someone on fiverr as its more of a
hassle with poor results. Turk is what I am considering now even if I get some
duplicates.
------
courtneyhwilson
Depends on the kind of work you're looking to get done. If it's relatively
high volume and you need enterprise grade results there are better options
like CloudFactory. Check them out.
------
khillman
An option to consider is Alegion. We specialize in maximizing the efficiencies
of cloud labor (i.e. MTurk). Would be happy to discuss your project and see if
we can help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's a good JS logging solution? - sandinmyjoints
Loggly is super slow. Airbrake's js client appears to be second-class at best. Nothing else I've found seems, well, great.<p>Needs:<p>* Log arbitrary events, not just caught exceptions.<p>* Support down to IE8.<p>* Decent reporting and aggregation interface.<p>* Some kind of sensible de-duping.<p>* Bonus: API to query my data.
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sideproject
I saw this.
[http://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/74](http://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/74)
Not sure if it helps.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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