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Complaints as Amazon Raises Cost of Prime - uladzislau
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/technology/amazon-is-raising-prime-membership-fee.html?hpw&rref=technology
======
imroot
My biggest gripe with Amazon isn't the rising cost of prime, but, it's with
the fact that my long-standing amazon account (seriously, I've had this
account since 1999) is now being throttled. When I'm using my prime account,
and select two day shipping, most items don't leave Amazon's warehouse until
two or three days later, meaning I'm getting my "Free Two day shipping" items
nearly a week later.
I love Amazon.com -- I use it for a lot of things (to the tune of almost 8K in
the last six months), but, watching my account get throttled like this makes
me not only want to step away from amazon prime, but, from amazon in general
-- if you can't be honest with me that you're going to throttle my
account/shipping speeds, please let me know. I'll gladly upgrade to next day
shipping, but that doesn't mean shit if you're going to sit on my order at the
warehouse side for two or three days.
~~~
abat
I've had the opposite experience. I've started to get things faster with the
new 7 days a week delivery partnership with USPS. The one downside is that
USPS's tracking is terrible compared to UPS's.
~~~
imroot
With USPS, if I don't get my package delivered between Monday and Friday, I
won't get it -- the carrier who delivers on Saturday is afraid of my dogs and
just marks my packages as "Business Closed," and Sunday delivery is only for
the metro areas -- so, it's effectively Monday-Friday delivery only for me.
------
BadCookie
My family has both Prime and a Netflix subscription. Lately I've been finding
that there is a lot of overlap between the two for streaming content. The
price increase from Amazon is just the nudge we need to think harder about
which subscription services are worth keeping ... and the most likely result
is that we'll be cutting Netflix. I wonder how many others will come to the
same conclusion.
~~~
meritt
I wasn't aware anyone actually factored Amazon's streaming service into the
valuation of Prime.
~~~
alttab
It's actually getting good. I'm 50/50 on that and Netflix. Netflix is more
like hbo... go for the exclusives.
------
buttsex
Here's a way [0] to lock in another year at $79.
[0] [http://slickdeals.net/f/6784580-heads-up-amazon-prime-
price-...](http://slickdeals.net/f/6784580-heads-up-amazon-prime-price-
increases-to-99-49-for-students-on-4-17-buy-a-gift-membership-to-lock-in-
another-year-at-reduced-rate?p=66743626#post66743626)
------
lnanek2
Wish they would unbundle the stupid video stuff I don't want. ;/
------
natch
I've been considering canceling since most things I order come with "free
shipping for orders over $25." This makes canceling a no-brainer, unless I'm
missing something. Even if my price is grandfathered (not sure if it is, after
renewal time) it's still $79 more than free.
~~~
Nogwater
Isn't it the difference between 2-day shipping (and sometimes faster) vs. slow
shipping (typically 3-5 days for me)?
~~~
wallywax
And $3.99/item 1-day shipping, which I find comes in handy quite often.
~~~
jamiesonbecker
I just tried to get something delivered 1-day yesterday and it was $7.99.
Bulky item, though, maybe it's higher for that.
------
psaintla
The people quoted in this article are ridiculous. You either buy enough from
Amazon to make Prime worth it or you don't.
~~~
wwweston
Well, on an immediate level.
On a less direct level, I'm not sure the economics of using a heavily
subsidized shipping service to the increasing exclusion of local retailers
while they get you hooked on the concept and then incrementally raise the
price over time are completely legible.
~~~
valar_m
What do you mean by "heavily subsidized shipping service"?
~~~
bdcravens
The idea being that most Prime members use more than $79/year in shipping
costs, that Amazon is subsidizing the difference to gain market share.
------
keithg
Maybe it's not about the shipping. Lots of people are "cutting the cord" of
their cable or satellite providers in favor of online video content. Amazon
sees the opportunity to get more from those customers with little price push
back because $99/year is still cheaper than $99+/month for cable or satellite.
~~~
jggonz
Minor anti-Comcast rant:
I have an important event coming up on April 29th: The Comcast 2 year contract
expires. I can't wait till I get to make that phone call and cancel the
service. Amazon has such a superior product to anything out there right now.
Amazon Prime + Roku and Netflix + Roku/Chromecasts have been a much better
experience and cheaper.
------
zobzu
I'd be happy to have prime for shipping only. I don't care for any other
service. It's not like if prime videos were any good. They're not.
Also here's the problems with prime shipping:
\- 2 days shipping is often 4 days (maybe 30% of the time or more)
\- price on prime item is HIGHER than the same item non-prime. The main diff
is that the non-prime takes generally 6 days + (which means more than a full
week since those are business days), but the price is about the same (except
you paid $79 - now $99 more for Prime on top)
So basically what i get with prime is slightly faster shipping for approx the
same price as normal. I'm not planning on renewing. In fact I already
cancelled auto-renew.
Not related to prime but it also often happen that other online shops have
lower prices than Amazon, making your prime a little more useless ;-)
~~~
thaumasiotes
> 2 days shipping is often 4 days (maybe 30% of the time or more)
I see a lot of other people making this complaint. For me, Amazon displays a
guaranteed _arrival date_ , not a guaranteed shipping duration. What's going
on here?
------
harrystone
I'm almost $100 ahead on shipping this year already and it's only March.
------
tofof
Can someone explain the final paragraph to me? I don't see how losing $800
million while gaining $150 million is a net positive, which is what the
article implies. Similarly, I don't follow how $800M can be (mere) 1% while
$150M "would be a lot". In what way did NYT fail math - bad calculation of one
of the two, or not being able to subtract in the correct order?
~~~
lnanek2
The $800 million would only happen if one quarter of the prime users left,
that isn't certain, just an if. It doesn't make sense to add and subtract
them. The $150 million is certain due to price increases unless people leave.
If you were the business deciding things you'd actually have to multiply the
800 by the probability of it happening to get the expected value, for example,
and of course there's the factor that people leaving cut into the
effectiveness of the price raise as well. I think they did it simplest just by
stating the two numbers separately.
------
Dylan16807
So prime launched in 2005. Adjusted for inflation the original price is
$94.62, which makes this closer to a $5 increase in real cost.
------
fnayr
Just canceled auto renew and got my brother to do the same. Too many items
weren't eligible for two day anyway.
------
PhasmaFelis
Since submitters won't bloody stop submitting paywalled articles, has anyone
yet made a simple, reliable Chrome plugin to bypass the NYT's paywall?
~~~
jrockway
I just typed in my credit card number, and paid for the paid content.
Crazy, I know.
~~~
Dylan16807
Pretend for a moment the paywall isn't super leaky. You think it's reasonable
to submit an article to HN that only 1% of people can read?
~~~
jrockway
I don't think it's unreasonable. Content costs money to write. You can pay for
it with your eyeballs, or you can pay for it with your wallet. (In the case of
the Times, you have to do both. Sigh.)
~~~
Dylan16807
That's a strange reply. I didn't mention anything about paying, I asked about
submitting to HN. Paying for content is great but I think it's rude to aim for
the front page with a source that excludes a vast majority, even if they were
preternaturally prone to signing up.
|
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Elastic Network Adapter – High Performance Network Interface for EC2 - jeffbarr
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/elastic-network-adapter-high-performance-network-interface-for-amazon-ec2/
======
illumin8
Does anyone know what type of hardware they are using to accomplish this? Is
it just your standard Intel X520/540 10GbE adapter, or is there some secret
hardware they have access to?
FWIW, saturating line rate 10GbE has been problematic at times in the past due
to challenges like single-threaded drivers, which could only run on 1 core at
a time, even if there are 128 logical cores in a system (like the X1
instances). There are also challenges offloading VXLAN encapsulation to
hardware at 10GbE line rate, but it seems like AWS has figured that out.
~~~
netguy6
Since it offers 20Gbps to the VM, i'd guess it's a 25GbE NIC, since those and
accompanying switches have just come out.
VXLAN in the NIC (and the switch) at full line-rate offload has been a thing
for at least 18-24 months.
Most Modern NICs also support all of the features listed here, like checksum
offload, Receive steering, multi-queue, etc. Check out Mellanox CX4/5, Intel
X710, QLogic, and Netronome if you want fancy stuff. They aren't even that
expensive anymore.
Their Linux driver has support for every current and future standard:
1/2.5/5/10/25/40/50/100/200/400G, nice future proofing.
They also have a DPDK driver:
[http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/tree/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_co...](http://dpdk.org/browse/dpdk/tree/drivers/net/ena/base/ena_com.c)
~~~
illumin8
Thanks, but my guess is that it's actually a bonded 2x 10Gbps link, which
would also give you 20gbps, and cost a lot less per port.
~~~
netguy6
With current per port costs and economics, that doesn't make much sense. The
$/Gbps/Watt improves with every spin of the chip, and every increase in serdes
bandwidth.
10GbE (64x10G) - ~$4,500, $70/port
10GbE (32x40G) - ~$6,000, $50/port
25GbE (72x25G) - ~$7,000, $100/port (Seen as low as $5k)
25GbE (32x100G) - ~$9,000, $75/port (Seen as low as $7k)
2x 10GbE = $100
1x 25GbE = $75
Not to mention the extra cabling costs, and complexity.
------
tevenian
Huh -- why is Amazon introducing ENA as a paravirtual virtual device? They
already provide Xen netdevs to VMs.
The Xen PV device would be able to use the (more efficient) xen bus/event
channels for interrupts vs. ENA (MSI-x, by looking at their driver on the
Linux netdev mailing list).
The Xen PV device already also supports multiple queues for xmit, see
netback_init() in netback.c.
2\. The ENA LLQ interface (pushing short packets via CPU write-combiner
writes) only makes sense when you are writing to a physical
PCI-e/Hypertransport/QPI device.
I suspect that this ENA NIC is at least partly implemented in silicon/firmware
rather than dom0 s/w.
Perhaps something like Azure's smart NICs? (SIGCOMM 2015 keynote)
------
jewel
20gpbs is fast enough for a raw 4K video stream at 60 frames per second in
ABGR format (e.g. what you'd get out of a video card). That's slick.
------
xchaotic
Tl;dr 20gbps virtual Nic
~~~
illumin8
Oversimplified - it's also a multi-threaded driver with multiple queues. This
should hopefully allow you to fully saturate the 20gbps available to you.
|
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What did Google do to my Wordpress.com hosted blog on Jun 14th? - cpswan
http://blog.thestateofme.com/2011/06/19/what-happened-on-jun-14th/
======
nbpoole
The title posted here is misleading. Why do you think your blog's traffic
numbers imply that Google did something to impact Wordpress.com as a whole?
~~~
cpswan
I made the implication because something seems to have changed fairly
fundamentally, and although it may be ridiculous to extrapolate from such
limited data I wouldn't be at all surprised if other Wordpress.com users are
affected.
------
dpcan
The take away here is that Google may be far too powerful for our own good. On
any given day, if Google and its algorithms deem you unworthy, your
livelihood, income, traffic, etc, could be washed out to sea and there isn't
much you can do about it. We've all allowed Google to have this power. Oops.
I sell on android. Very soon the new market client is supposed to come out,
based on what they said at Google I/O. On that day, I may never sell another
app, but I have no idea what will happen, maybe I'll sell a million, but at
least I'm aware that I'm at their mercy.
~~~
bauchidgw
sorry, but with a sample size of 250 visits / day /blog such a takeaway is a
little bit overblown. rankings and google traffic are a fickle thing, yeah, so
what? that just means that you heve to be clever-er.
~~~
cpswan
If the search terms had dropped the post from page 1 to page 2 then no big
deal, but there seems to be more to it than that. Terms that were frequently
bringing visitors aren't now showing up anywhere near where near where things
were before.
The general tone of feedback seems to be that this is normal, nothing
interesting to see, move along. I was just hoping for a better explanation
than that.
------
bauchidgw
1) pretty small sample size 2) go to webmaster tools -> your site on the web
-> search quieries -> look for answers
~~~
cpswan
'no data available', but as I said I don't especially care about SEO, so I
didn't have the tools configured.
|
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MailChimp OAuth2 library for Django - kennethlove
https://github.com/kennethlove/Banana-Py
======
kennethlove
A little library I put together over the weekend for MailChimp's new OAuth2
offering. Lets your users authenticate against MailChimp and you get back
their credintials so you can create a user or whatever.
Super-simple but it works.
Demo app here: <https://github.com/kennethlove/Django-MailChimp-OAuth2>
------
jsdalton
I know what Mailchimp, Django and OAuth2 are, but I'm struggling to understand
the purpose of this library. Can you shed a bit of light on how or where this
might be used?
~~~
kennethlove
Sure. Say you're building an app that leverages MailChimp's platform for
sending emails. Someone that uses MailChimp could come sign up for your app
using their MailChimp account, which would be validated through this library
and the OAuth2 provider (MailChimp) and you'd know they were a real user and
you'd have API keys to make calls on their behalf.
So now they can use their account and your app and everything is hunky dory.
I know that's pretty general and all, but that's how you'd use it. MailChimp
is trying to move away from API keys and all that 'messy' authentication and
toward OAuth2.
~~~
ashconnor
Do many users sign up for MailChimp accounts? I thought they were a mass
mailer/newsletter company.
~~~
kennethlove
I can't really answer that since I don't work for MailChimp.
The OAuth2 service is aimed at people building apps for people that _use_
MailChimp, not people that subscribe to a mailing list hosted on MailChimp.
Like how you'd use Twitter's OAuth2 service to build apps for people that use
Twitter, not those that just read feeds.
|
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Why your new gas can is ridiculous and evil - GirlProgrammer
https://tucker.liberty.me/why-your-new-gas-can-is-ridiculous-and-evil/
======
Vexs
You know what I'd prefer? An explanation of why exactly these things don't
work. Not a page long rant that vaguely covers some problems and then goes on
a tangent to the effect of "government makes me sad".
Now, I've never had to deal with the new gas cans- I still have some old ones
from the 90s. And, full disclosure, I just read over this now, but the overall
theory behind the can seems like a pretty good idea- unlock the spout thing,
and press the spout down and gas comes out. Take pressure off, and the spout
closes, thus preventing spillage.
I will concede that there's a more than unnecessary amount of child-safety
things and locks. Not only would they not stop a very determined child they're
just kinda silly. Additionally, the lack of vent seems like a design flaw- and
a simple one way valve would solve the problem. Or you could use a mechanism
like an olive oil bottle.
[http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2014/07/07__18_44_07...](http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2014/07/07__18_44_07/fp3dstur_v05_p01_01.jpg4b2ee92e-a58c-4a82-bdcb-f370c336b1e8Large.jpg)
All this is to say that I really hate posts where someone talks about a
problem vaguely, and then rants about the government without proposing a
solution that isn't "go back to the way things are." Is it a solution looking
for a problem? Yeah, probably. Did a bunch of unnecessary stuff get tacked on?
Seems so. But it doesn't mean there isn't a problem to be solved.
~~~
Outdoorsman
They're difficult to use for two reasons:
1} The ones being sold where I live have a release--a sliding thumb lever--
that you have to slide and hold down to release fuel...it's part of the neck
of the spout...this ties up one hand which would normally be used to either
hold the can by the handle, or support it from the bottom...one hand on the
handle and one supporting the bottom provide better control when tipping and
pouring...
2} The release on the neck is positioned so that there are only a few inches
of "free spout" at the end...this makes it awkward to insert it deeply enough
into a car fuel tank filler neck...
The larger and heavier the can the greater the difficulty...
------
Outdoorsman
This article is funny and spot on...
My house is on 35 acres, which I maintain...at any given time I have around 20
gallons of gas in 5-gallon cans, and 10 gallons, or so, of diesel in my
barn...fuel for the mower, Gator, tractor, garden tiller, etc...
>>government “fixed” the gas can. Why? Because of the environmental hazards
that come with spilled gas. You read that right. In other words, the very
opposite resulted. Now you cannot buy a decent can anywhere. You can look
forever and not find a new one.<<
This is so very true...I "baby" my old cans...I want them around until long
after I'm gone...
The only real solution for reliably pouring from the new cans, especially into
a car, is a long-necked, broad-mouthed funnel...
I've decided to also baby the funnel, in case changes in it's design are
mandated at some point... :)
~~~
amalag
I thought I was just dumb when I kept spilling gas when trying to fill the
lawn mower with an odd shaped spout.
------
geophile
I got one of these new and improved gas cans. It was very similar to the old
one, that worked, except it had some spring-loaded thing to close
automatically. To put gas in my boat I have to hold this can with one hand and
try to twist the stupid spring thing with my other. Doesn't work. I ended up
getting rid of the spout and pouring the gas, sans spout, into a funnel.
So yeah, the workaround defeats every supposed advantage of the new design.
------
nickfromseattle
I was dangerously low on gas and in gridlocked traffic. Rather than risk dying
in traffic, I pulled over into a parking lot a couple of blocks away from the
gas station, walked over, bought a plastic gas can, filled it, and walked
back.
I spent 15 unsuccessful minutes trying to get any of the gas into the tank
before giving up and driving anxiously to the gas station. I seriously thought
I was struggling to be a functional human being.
I'd buy a heavy duty water spout.
------
masterleep
Why, it's almost as if government bureaucracies were low-accountability
compared to businesses that compete for consumer dollars.
------
cafard
I fill up a lawn mower ever week or two in the summer and don't find the tab
difficult to use.
|
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Digging into the Privacy Sandbox - feross
https://web.dev/digging-into-the-privacy-sandbox/
======
gundmc
Without detailed prior knowledge in the domain, it seems to make sense. I'm a
proponent of privacy-aware advertising online and think the free services
supported by advertising are a net positive.
That being said, I don't see how you can orchestrate such a shift among all of
the browser vendors. It's asking a lot of those dev teams to accommodate use
cases that they don't directly benefit from. I don't want this to be an
instance of Google throwing their weight around and forcing a major change
without some sort of consensus.
------
akersten
Why are we building this shit into the browser? Did we forget what user-agent
means? I really don't want my browser to be running a consensus algorithm for
doubleclick, or whatever the hell the turtledove proposal is.
This article makes it sound like advertisers having a hard time targeting
their ads is somehow bad for a user! I see that as a very good thing.
How about, we remove 3rd party cookies, and then _don 't do anything else_?
Even the name of this is gaslighting. Privacy sandbox? More like "A bunch of
APIs for advertisers to use, to profile your behavior with native support from
your browser, while telling you your privacy is improved because we don't do
it with scary cookies anymore." Not quite as catchy I guess.
|
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9 People You Meet at Y Combinator (and what you can learn from them) - naish
http://foundread.com/2008/04/22/9-people-you-meet-at-y-combinator-and-what-you-can-learn-from-them/
======
johns
Wow, this was terrible. First off, he meant "9 Stereotypes I put people into
at Startup School." Second, he didn't include anything that you can learn from
them. If he was too good for the event, he shouldn't have gone. Space was at a
premium and someone else could have benefitted from being there in his place.
------
gruseom
Ugh. I wish somebody would come up with some sensible criticism because I
don't like being in the position of dismissing it all.
Edit: removed grumpy pre-coffee stuff.
------
edw519
Geez, I was at the same event and didn't meet any of these people.
Maybe I have no powers of observation whatsoever. OTOH, maybe OP should spend
more time noticing what's important than what's meaningless.
Honestly, this was one of the best lineups of speakers ever. In any forum. For
free. If OP prefers to cruise the rest of us, maybe he should just hit the bar
scene and give up his seat to someone who couldn't get in and really cared.
Spooged?
~~~
Xichekolas
Haha, well you met me and I am definitely number seven.
But I am ok with being number seven at the moment. I'm in no hurry to be some
'1337 1n51d3r' like this Larry Chiang guy. I mean, he spends so much time
stereotyping other people he doesn't even have time for grammar, or, you know,
forming a readable English sentence.
But numbered lists work as blog posts. Give the guy a break: he was just using
a formulaic way to say nothing... memorably. I'm sure he had to hurry up and
publish so he could go sign his term sheet from Sequoia.
~~~
edw519
You can't be number 7 - I saw you eating pizza.
I think you just came up with number 10 - the 1337 1n51d3r.
I'm really kinda surprised by the whining that came out of SUS; there wasn't
much, but if it's > 0, something's wrong.
It's like getting a gift and then complaining about it. Come to think of it,
that's exactly what it is.
------
wave
The article doesn't contain about what you can learn from them. I don't know
if I like the name calling.
------
mattmaroon
I missed the group of Ohioans. Bummer.
|
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Everyone dials in - dwynings
http://nat.org/blog/2010/04/everyone-dials-in/
======
ghshephard
I get pulled into a _lot_ of conference calls each week, some of them internal
product calls, some of them customer calls. Even though the conference rooms
are typically within a 90 second walk of my desk, I (and a good number of
other people in the same building as me) dial in rather than going to the
room.
Over time, people start to develop all sorts of etiquette for these type of
meetings (it's roughly the same for people who go to the room and just work on
a laptop) - if their attention is required, their name is called out, and the
context for the request is spelled out - the assumption is that the person has
been working on something else.
Microsoft Exchange (or iCal, or whatever mechanism that feeds the various
calendar apps) helps a lot - everyone has the meeting in their calendar, and
so various PDAs, Smart Phones, and Calendars of each individual light people
up and most people come online within 60-90 seconds of each other.
This is actually a really good solution for the downside of multi-tasking - I
can focus 100% on something else, and then, when I'm actually required for the
5-10 minutes of a 90 minute call, I can pay attention at that point.
In effect, you can get 20 people on a call, and instead of taking up 30 person
hours (20 * 1.5 hours) - it may cost the organization a small fraction of
that, with pretty much the same results.
Clearly for those meetings in which full participation is required, other
tactics are required - and I really do try to close my laptop and pay 100%
attention to what is going on.
I haven't noticed much difficulty, btw, in working by teleconference - I think
people just learn to develop new techniques to optimize the medium - Learning
to Mute, call from a good line, judge pauses appropriately to break in, etc..
------
danielle17
We've got a lot of people who call in remotely for our weekly team meetings,
and in general I think conference calls are torture - but not because of the
sound quality (putting everyone on mute except the person speaking seems to
help). The thing that drives me crazy is waiting for people to call in so that
the call can start. I've been hoping someone will build a Twilio app (I work
for Twilio, but haven't hard time to make this one) that will call out to all
the participants of the conference call, and drop them into the call when they
answer so that they have to be on time.
Another cool solution is the recent feature 37Signals added to Campfire for
conference calling, which posts the call transcript back into the chat - nice
for people who can't be on the call, or couldn't hear very well.
------
whughes
There's a conference call scene in this (relevant, interesting, funny) video
which I think applies to this topic:
[http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-
outsourc...](http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-outsourcing-
own-jobs-oversea,14329/)
I think that it could become a liability to do this at some point, though.
When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting at
least some time. If a meeting is more effective in person, then have that
meeting in person! You shouldn't be afraid to exclude one or two people if
they're traveling; they're already excluded anyway. Why provide an illusion of
close involvement?
~~~
MichaelSalib
_When everybody is calling in and people have flaky quality, you are wasting
at least some time._
I've never noticed flaky microphones or audio quality from remote
participants. Ever. But I've often found that local participants are
completely inaudible. If every local participant just used a bluetooth
microphone (or really anything dedicated but the shared conference call
microphones), things would be so much better.
------
rmorlok
I work on a team that has members distributed across two locations. We use the
policy described above, but there is a flip side to this problem. Most of our
developers are one location with a 1/6 minority in another. The larger group
of developers loses the advantages of face-to-face communication for meetings
in favor of equal footing for everyone. Is that a net improvement on quality
of communication? I don't know, but I'd rather meet with my colleagues in
adjacent cubes face-to-face rather than over the phone the way we do now.
~~~
chadgeidel
As a developer "on the other side" I can tell you that you would be surprised
how hard it is to follow along at these meetings.
For example: Most of the meetings I attend are largely ad-hoc with printed
material being handed out at the time of the meeting - usually not available
on the company intranet (or emailed) until after the meeting. It makes it
immensely difficult to follow along and contribute in a meaningful manner.
Honestly, there are many benefits to having everyone "remote" for a group
meeting. It focuses the meeting. After the meeting you still have the luxury
of walking over to your co-workers's desk and chatting in detail about the
problem.
------
th
Requiring the communication medium to be the same for everyone during a
meeting is a great idea. However, I don't this conference call method is
scalable for phone conversations. I can't imagine 15 person conference call
would be very effective.
I think for larger meetings this "level playing field" solution would probably
work much better for video conferencing or combined text/audio conversations
such as on Skype. This way simple cues such as "I've got something to say when
you are finished" can be used without interrupting.
~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I've found past 5 or so people, text works a lot better for the major
portion of the discussion. We even use IRC as a main meeting medium for one
project.
However, this does require that everyone be "text-fluent", i.e. able to
effectively produce and understand communications in a text-chat medium, in a
way that feels like conversation rather than people sending short memos to
each other. True of most people <30; intermittently true of people above that
age, depending on the person.
~~~
count
I'm on a 12 person call twice a week for about an hour. It works remarkably
well, with the caveat that it only does so when the manager running the
meeting is present. It helps to have someone run the meeting with an 'iron
fist' - keeps everybody on the same page and organized, without letting it
spiral off into details that are irrelevant to the other 10 people on the
call.
------
ydant
I am in exactly that situation. It would probably help, but everyone "over
there" is in an open plan office. It's great idea, though.
------
drac
even when everyone dials in, the people using a cellphone or joining
conference calls while travelling are at a distinct disadvantage. Any number
of calls I join have at least one guy having to drop out and come back in
because the signal keeps fading.
The other thing I've noticed with a large number of dial-in participants is
that there can be a lot of silent attendees and very few people talking. YMMV
~~~
count
Large numbers of silent attendees is normal in meetings with lots of people in
person too - most people just don't have anything to say!
------
aantix
Skype is adding five way group conferencing. Maybe this could help to
alleviate such issues.
<http://mashable.com/2010/05/05/skype-group-video-calling/>
------
JoeAltmaier
Strange to hear of people on this site, talking about dialing in. There are
many better solutions available. Sococo.com for one.
------
stretchwithme
that's a great idea.
i'd also like to it possible for only one person to speak at the same time.
and keep track of who's talking the most. in some contexts that can be
helpful. it might be useful too if each partipant only had the floor for so
long.
|
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|
Happy Guys Finish Last: The Impact of Emotion Expressions on Sexual Attraction - espeed
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Happy-Guys...in-pres-Emotion.pdf
======
crazygringo
OkCupid had already figured this out back in Jan 2010 [1]:
> _For women, a smile isn’t strictly better: she actually gets the most
> messages by flirting directly into the camera_
> _Men’s photos are most effective when they look away from the camera and_
> don’t _smile_. _Maybe women want a little mystery. What is he looking at?
> Slashdot? Or Engadget?_
> _We were sure [MySpace angle] pictures were lame. But we were so wrong. In
> terms of getting new messages, the MySpace shot is the single most effective
> photo type for women._
[1] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-
profile...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-
pictures/)
~~~
rlu
I always thought OkCupid's blog posts were very fun/interesting. I think they
first one I read was about how quality of the picture matters (e.g. phone
picture vs SLR...lighting...etc.)
I was disappointed to see just now that the latest entry is from April 2011 :\
~~~
simcop2387
They stopped then because that's when they got bought by match.com :/ They had
lots of fun demographical stuff on there too.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OkCupid#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OkCupid#History)
~~~
chimeracoder
I worked on the OkTrends team at OkCupid during the year before the
acquisition, and I can assure you that that timing is definitely a
coincidence.
The posts took a _lot_ of work to create. When I was there, there were two and
a half people working full-time[0] just on OkTrends (two engineers full time,
and one founder part-time).
I can't give an average time per post, but to give you an idea, "The Real
Stuff White People Like"[1] was predominantly my work[2], and it took almost
two months, from start to finish.
If you're wondering why it took so long to create that, remember that we
started each blog post as a blank slate - at most, we had a vague question
that we wanted to explore, and it took several iteration for us to hit upon
anything closely resembling the analysis that you'd end up seeing in one of
the OkTrends reports.
It might be easy to create something if you have a specific destination in
mind at the start, but the key to making OkTrends posts work was _not_ having
a specific result in mind - instead, letting the journey guide the process.
Anyway, I left to go back to school, and around that time, the other engineer
on the data team started having to do more internal data work on top of the
OkTrends research (he stayed at OkCupid for over a year after I left, but he's
since moved on as well). That's what caused the slowdown in the posts during
late 2010 to early 2011, not the sale to Match.com. As noted below, Christian
is working on other projects as well, which have unfortunately left little
time for OkTrends.
It's very unfortunate that the timing makes it look like Match.com put the
kibosh on OkTrends, because that's not at all what happened, though I
definitely see why people would make that mistake.
[0] By "half", I mean that we two engineers spent close to all of our time
working on the data/stats, and the founder spent about half his time working
with us on the projects and writing the posts.
[1] [http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-
peopl...](http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-people-like/)
[2] I did the stats/munging/research - none of the writing. Christian is a
much funnier writer than I am.
~~~
simcop2387
Definitely good to know. It certainly looked the other way from an external
viewpoint given the really close timing. That being said, I'd love it if
they'd start up again it was always fascinating from a sociological
perspective at what was working for people and what wasn't (It never helped me
though, I ended up meeting my SO over IRC instead...)
~~~
chimeracoder
> I ended up meeting my SO over IRC
You're not the first person to tell me that! A friend of mine met his husband
on #gaynyc. I still love OkCupid, but I always idle in that chan now, just in
case.... :)
------
xenophanes
the controls are terrible. her hair isn't arranged the same in every pic and
her breasts are more visible in the happy and pride pics than the neutral one.
all the pics are way too over-acted, the "pride" girl pic isn't a typical girl
pose (it's super exaggerated for a guy, and even less realistic for a girl).
these poses have little to do with real life. it's just ivory tower BS,
incompetently done (quite apart from being so unrealistic, the bad controls
are just incompetent even within the narrow field, just by basic scientific
standards)
~~~
x0054
Plus, the guy looks down right creepy in the happy picture and he is showing
off his muscles in the pride picture. Their shame poses are idiotic. They
would have gotten much better results by cropping faces only.
------
mariomorales
I'm confused as to why this post is suddenly at the top of HN, it isn't a new
article nor does it present a new idea. There are countless of studies that
show that women are more attracted to men who seem
mysterious/proud/narcissist/dangerous/the opposite of your minivan-driving
soccer dad. Does this imply that the HN community is generally unaware of the
difference in the male-female sexual preferences and thus finds this article
mesmerizing? Is there nothing else as worthy of the front page? Am I just
being cynical?
Here's a post from Heartiste (at the risk of losing my credibility) that talks
about the subject.
[http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/why-are-men-
with-d...](http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/why-are-men-with-dark-
triad-personalities-so-irresistible-to-women/)
------
Scienz
This is highly anecdotal, but when I was younger (from ~5-15 years ago), I
noticed I was far more likely to have people start fights* with me when I was
in a good mood and enjoying myself. Yet this never seemed to happen when I
walked around with a bit of an angry look in my eye, like I had been having a
bad day and was just waiting for someone to start something. I even informally
experimented with it, sometimes approaching people in a cheerful, happy way,
and other times approaching them like I was in a really bad mood. Men seemed
to treat me much better when I was faux-pissed, and much worse when I was in a
good mood. The authors didn't experiment with this (that I could tell), but
I'd hypothesize that males have the same reaction towards happy expressions in
other males - they don't like them and it initiates aggressive tendencies.
*You might ask why I was getting into fights in the first place, and all I can say is that high school and college are rough and most of the population doesn't seem to be as sophisticated as the typical HN reader.
~~~
PavlovsCat
This always puzzled me.. when I have a great day, and walk around with a
puffed chest smiling at people, women positively seem to ignore me. When have
a bad day, or didn't wash my hair or something, it's the opposite, and I get
eyed when I don't really want it. Once I walked around sulking, more or less
staring at the ground, and a random young woman told me I was "very
beautiful". I said thanks, but thought "WTF?! I look like shit."
Maybe people like it when they feel like they have to offer something to a
person.
------
xenophanes
what is this crap and why is it upvoted?
> In contrast, women over the age of 30 tended to rate shame- and happy-
> displaying men as equally attractive (and both more so than neutral).
happy guys finish ahead of control, not last... and the BS title is from the
original paper.
that's over 30, but several of the graphs in the paper (not all) show happy
guys beating the control. meanwhile i don't see anything clearly indicating
happy guys lost to the control overall; it looks more the other way around. at
the very least, it's not clear happy guys finish last and lose to the control.
EDIT: the abstract says:
> happiness was the most attractive female emotion expression, and one of the
> least attractive in males.
so they knew the title was BS and didn't repeat the claim in the abstract. in
the abstract they use weasel words, in the title they intentionally lie to get
more attention/views.
------
xenophanes
There are a variety of alternative explanations, consistent with the data. The
conclusion in the title is just one of many possibilities they didn't
differentiate between.
It could be, for example, that guy photos do best when they stand out instead
of looking like every other guy. it could be that the best guy photo would be
a happy smiling guy who stands out in a different way, but when you remove
everything else from the photo and the choices are standing out or being
happy, both good, then standing out is better.
this is a standard practice in pseudo "science" – get some data, make up a
conclusion that doesn't contradict the data, say you have evidence for your
conclusion (or say something stronger), don't carefully think about everything
else you could have included instead and how to pick between them.
as usual with bad "science", there is no section titled "sources of error" or
similar. nor is there a section covering alternative conclusions compatible
with the data. if you aren't thinking about all the ways you could be wrong,
it's not really science. (and if you think about them but don't publish that
part, you're not publishing science)
------
userbinator
What is with all the use of line graphs for showing categorical vs continuous
data? Did the authors not know about bar graphs? It looks absurd and
ridiculous.
~~~
kszx
Intuitively agreed at first. But then I imagined the main alternative of
clustered columns/bars and now tend to think that line graphs can be grasped
more quickly.
Any other alternative graph formats? Maybe just show the deviations from the
neutral control?
------
bernardom
Interesting idea.
I'm curious as to how accurately sexual attraction can be measured by looking
at a picture of a person. I don't have a better proposal, barring actually
filling a resort with cameras, inviting a bunch of single people to it, and
tracking what happens. You could send in some actors who do shame, pride, etc
and see how they do, but you'd need to control for their relative physical
attractiveness. So I guess you do lots of groups, and the actors change their
role every time. Or get identical twins. You'd have to be careful with ethics,
though.
------
logicchains
More scientifically: happy faces are more attractive.
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699931.2013.817...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699931.2013.817383)
Note the study I reference only used faces, and used the same facial images,
digitally altering them to alter the facial expressions. As opposed to Happy
Guys Finish Last, which used different photos and included the upper body in
the shots.
------
dancingtime
"Participants and procedure. In this study, 184 Canadian undergraduates (50%
female; age 17–49 years, median 21; 52% Asian, 48% Caucasian)..."
It would be unwise to draw any conclusions from this study since it was
preformed on such a non-random, non-representative slice of the general
population.
------
mydpy
Seems like this research could benefit from a complementary studies and
shouldn't stand on one test alone.
------
fblp
The photos used in this test are terribly inconsistent.
Each photo has different lighting and distance from the camera.
The happy smile are those artificial smiles that people make when they are
posing. A genuine sincere smile may rate completely differently. The person
raises their arms for the pride photo, and the posture and visible biceps in
this photo may completely distort the perceived attractiveness.
------
foocc
Reis et al. (1990): American college students attributed smiling persons
greater sincerity, sociability, and competence but _less independence and
masculinity_.
------
guelo
Is 52% Asian, 48% Caucasian a typical Canadian college student ethnicity
distribution?
~~~
josu
I really can't understand why they didn't take into account the cultural bias
tided to the different races. I would guess that Asian people are looking for
different values in their partners than Caucasians. And even if I were wrong,
I don't think that they should dismiss that proposition without even checking,
or citing a relevant paper on the subject.
------
gedrap
A photo is a tiny, next to non-existing, subset of sexual attraction. Unless
all you need is sexting ;)
------
LukeWalsh
> t(45) = 3.44, d = 1.02, p = .01
I know this is probably extremely simple statistics, but what are these terms?
~~~
nsp
> t(45) = 3.44, d = 1.02, p = .01
I know this is probably extremely simple statistics, but what are these terms?
They're metrics about the strength of the finding - depending on the
statistical method you're using, you'll get different ones. They're using
ANOVA (analysis of variance) here, which basically compares likelihood mean
result of two cohorts is the same.
T(45) gives the t score, which is a measure of deviations from the mean, so
3.5 higher than you'd expect if the populations were the same.
p values is probability it occurred by chance(given equal populations), so 1%
in this case, which is pretty strong.
I'm not positive on d, but I think it's a measure of variance within the
groups.
Disclaimer: was an Econ major in college but haven't used anova in a long
time, I am not a statistician, this is not statistical advice.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_variance](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_variance)
------
riemannzeta
Another win for xkcd
[http://xkcd.com/374/](http://xkcd.com/374/)
|
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Ask HN: Do you know of any bootcamps for computer security? - jc_811
I'm aware of all the bootcamps that have sprung up in recent years and these are almost all geared exclusively towards development/design.<p>I have a high interest in learning about the security side of things (vulnerabilities, hacking, etc) and have begun a recommended reading list starting with 'Gray Hat Hacking The Ethical Hackers Handbook'<p>I've always learned better though with a mentor/course and was wondering if anyone here knew of any bootcamps (or similar things) geared towards computer security.
======
runjake
Offensive Security's PWK course is probably your best bet. In-depth training
and a highly-regarded certification. Online mentoring via web forums and IRC
and they are great folks.
I went through PWK and its predecessor PWB.
It's pretty damned cheap and you can get from 30-90 days lab time. I recommend
90 days, though.
It is kinda boot camp style and pretty demanding. You will learn how to chase
the EIP CPU register and write your own exploits, as well as web vulns, sqli,
etc etc.
[https://www.offensive-security.com/information-security-
trai...](https://www.offensive-security.com/information-security-
training/penetration-testing-training-kali-linux/)
------
dsacco
Cody Brocious used to run Breaker 101, that's the only "bootcamp" I'm aware
of.
If you'd like to learn, read _The Web Application Hacker 's Handbook._ That's
all you need for a strong start.
------
jtfairbank
Not quite what you are looking for, but there are lots of fun challenge sites
out there you can use to learn and practice.
[http://www.wechall.net/](http://www.wechall.net/) has a good list.
------
a_lifters_life
Check out Sans.org
~~~
video-host
Check out
[https://pentesterlab.com/bootcamp](https://pentesterlab.com/bootcamp)
|
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LSD and coding [comic strip] - jirinovotny
http://www.componentowl.com/comics/28
======
tzs
I have programmed while on LSD. All I managed to accomplish was writing a
program to make the cursor jump around randomly on a Lear Siegler ADM-3A
terminal. I then turned the brightness way up on the terminal, and the bright
jumping cursor induced some pleasant visual effects.
------
leephillips
Did not laugh.
|
{
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Data Shows When Employees Are Most Likely to Leave Their Jobs - podbaydoors
http://blog.entelo.com/new-entelo-study-shows-when-employees-are-likely-to-leave-their-jobs
======
dozzie
> Someone who has spent one year at their current employer is more than ten
> times more likely to leave to go to another company than someone who is five
> or more years at their current employer.
Except the chart does not support this claim. Authors seem to confuse
probability of leaving at certain point with number of employees that left at
the point. The little data that was presented does not say how many employees
in total reached those 5 years at the company.
|
{
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|
Spain Has a Tenured Faculty Problem - thesyndicate
http://bhargreaves.com/2013/04/spain-tenured-faculty-problem/
======
auctiontheory
Reminds me of rent-controlled housing (in San Francisco). Once you're in, you
have to do (i.e. pay) a lot less than the going rate, locking up spots
indefinitely.
------
seanmcdirmid
I disagree with the article, it's quite easy to move countries actually.
------
pfortuny
Real (not estimated) figures for 2011 and for 2012 & 2013 would be shocking
(there have been a lot of firings of non-permanent workers).
------
blahedo
Those graphs do not tell the stories that he claims they do. Or at least, not
without a lot more explanation than he gave.
|
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Show HN: Enophp – PHP library for the eno notation language - simonrepp
The eno notation language[1] now also has an official PHP library:<p><a href="https://eno-lang.org/php/" rel="nofollow">https://eno-lang.org/php/</a><p>It features the same API and featureset as the JavaScript / Python / Ruby libraries, and also comes with the same extensive testsuite that has been growing during implementation of the other libraries, with already well over 90% coverage at the time of release.<p>Happy to hear your feedback and answer any questions!<p>[1] A user-friendly format for file-based content: <a href="https://eno-lang.org/" rel="nofollow">https://eno-lang.org/</a>
======
deathanatos
I'm curious what data types exist in this? The (loose) specification says,
> _In eno there is no type differentiation on the language level, there are
> only textual representations ( "strings"), which are always referred to as
> values._
Yet the example seems to show floating points being parsed as such. While I
can see allowing the implementation some leeway — they may not all have the
same notion of integral types, for example, Python & JS parse JSON "3"
"differently" — Python as an int, JSON as a "Number" (IEEE floating point) —
this seems more vague than you'd want. But that could just be due to the spec
still coming along.
Is there anything you think Eno accomplishes over TOML (my present choice when
dealing w/ configuration files, great for humans) or YAML (arbitrary but more
complex data structures that still need to be touched or input by a human;
more complex, but generally still human usable) or JSON/CBOR (machine to
machine interchange of loosely typed data)? (I list them all since I presently
"use" them all for slightly different choices.)
And +1 for having ABNF. (Even if rough.) And I appreciate that it is specified
in terms of Unicode code points, which is very appropriate IMO for a textual
language.
~~~
simonrepp
The design principle for types in eno is that the _language_ itself has no
notion of types, there are only plain textual representations. Meaning, types
are _never inferred_ from a document. Instead, when parsing an eno document
the _application_ explicitly requests the type it expects for each field,
thereby validating the document during parsing. From the perspective of the
_libraries_ for parsing eno, types are defined as simple functions/closures (I
call them "loaders"), that basically take the string value from a field and
validate/transform and return it as the proper type. Some of these loaders
currently ship with the libraries for convenience (int, float, datetime, etc.
- this is not a hard specification though, just a sensible predefined
toolbox), but there can be any number of types, whichever types an application
needs in addition can be defined and used on the fly.
This is the main point that differentiates eno from almost all TOML/YAML/JSON
like formats, and the implication of this is that eno is extremly simple and
very accessible for non-technical users (so far all casestudies have verified
this to be true) and a highly reliable data source for developers, but it also
comes at the cost of losing generic de/serializability, so it depends on the
usecase whether eno should be chosen over other formats. :)
There are also some other things that are unique to eno (e.g. all parser and
validation error messages are fully localized and in user-friendly humanized
language) or painfully missing in some other formats (e.g. having any number
of "multiline string" fields that don't hang indented against an invisible
left margin somewhere in the document), feel free to explore further on the
website if you're curious!
Thanks for your interest and the feedback on the ABNF (much appreciated!),
hope I could clarify things a bit. :)
|
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|
Brainwashed: How to Reinvent Yourself (Seth Godin) - albertcardona
http://changethis.com/manifesto/show/66.01.Brainwashed
======
mseebach
_When exactly were we brainwashed into believing that the best way to earn a
living is to have a job?_
I don't buy this. Humans are risk-averse and a having a job isn't the _best_
way to earn a living - it's the _easiest_ and to a certain extend the safest.
Founding a start up, or working as a freelancer isn't for everyone, and
pointing fingers and yelling "you're brainwashed because you didn't make the
same superior choices I did" isn't very constructive.
~~~
DenisM
Taking risk aversion to its logical conclusion one will end up selling himself
into slavery - a good slave owner will take care of housing and nutritional
needs of his slaves in good or bad times because he has vested interest in the
slaves being alive and healthy. It's easy to see drawbacks of slavery, and so
it stands to reason that risk-aversion, like many other natural urges, must be
controlled.
Employment in that regard is the same story - you are trading in part of your
autonomy in exchange of lesser risk exposure. It's rarely a good trade.
~~~
foldr
Taking virtually anything to its logical conclusion is a bad idea. The logical
conclusion of risk non-aversion isn't all that pretty either.
~~~
DenisM
The opposite of risk-aversion is not risk-seeking, as you seem to imply, but
risk-management as I have explicitly advocated in my previous post.
~~~
foldr
I don't share your intuitions about opposites. Risk-management is in any case
a middle-of-the-road position. A person might rationally decide that the best
risk/reward balance, given their particular goals, was to get a job.
(Especially if these goals include doing a lot of stuff outside of work, since
startups don't give you much free time.)
------
DavidMcLaughlin
So many of his points are patently false. I wonder if the author is aware of
the bubble in which he lives.
In fact, when trying to get through this manifesto I was constantly reminded
of this Bill Watterson quote in his Kenyon speech:
_Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare
achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the
good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an
eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to
the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding
job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities
is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home
and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a
job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You'll be told in a
hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be
satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a
million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them._
~~~
mxyzptlk
Thanks. I didn't know about that speech. Here's the whole thing...
<http://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html>
------
iskander
>Do you remember learning to factor quadrilateral equations? x2 -32x +12? Why
were you taught this? Why did they spend hours drilling you on such clearly
useless content? Simple: you were being trained to be a compliant cog, someone
who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation
and surprise.
Oh god...
~~~
yagibear
I liked the quadrilateral (as opposed to quadratic) touch.
~~~
anatoly
And the x2 (as opposed to x^2) touch.
------
PostOnce
I have no idea where this is coming from. I mean, I know my share of
naysayers, but this is America. We're told from day one "You're in America!
You can be or do anything you set your heart and mind to!"
_The American Dream_ isn't exactly an obscure phrase...
So, "brainwashed into believing you're average" is complete nonsense.
~~~
staunch
The American Dream is precisely about being average. The white picket fence
and all that.
~~~
DenisM
More accurately, it's believing you could be anything you want and choosing an
average comfortable life. This is in contrast to not having the choice at all.
People like having choice, not necessarily using it.
~~~
stinkytaco
What's wrong with a comfortable life? I mean, from a genetic perspective, what
I really want is for my child to have children. Having and "average,
comfortable life" has, thus far, been a pretty good way to achieve that.
~~~
DenisM
I didn't say there is anything wrong with that. What exactly are you arguing
against?
~~~
stinkytaco
The corollary to your statement is that if I have an average, comfortable
life, I did not choose it. I simply let myself "fall into" that life. I view
this as a negative statement, though perhaps you didn't mean it that way. I
_chose_ a comfortable life and worked to achieve it. It didn't just _happen_
to me because I coasted along.
------
bricestacey
Apparently this is only the intro to a larger manifesto that you have to click
"View this Manifesto" through to read. (didn't realize at first) Here's the
link:
<http://changethis.com/manifesto/issue/66.01.Brainwashed#view>
------
Angostura
The message I take away from this is that Seth believes he much much more
special than the people who draw a wage.
~~~
DenisM
And he's right, he is more special. He is also ready to explain you how to
become special - a better you.
Imagine that a person is in fact brainwashed - how would she react to someone
trying to explain it to her? Would she perhaps become defensive? How would she
go about discovering if she is brainwashed or not? How would she go about
changing that?
I submit it is in fact nearly impossible to use one's own world view to
understand the limits of one's own world view. The best way to explore the
boundary is to listen to someone who has gone further than yourself in a given
direction.
The other great option is to look for people with a more limited world view
than your own, pay attention to patterns of behaviors and convictions that
make those people limited and then look for the same patterns in yourself. I
have made many great self-discoveries using this tactic.
------
greyman
I understand the article appeal to the would be entrepreneurs, but still, I
feel somehow warped "marketers" thinking behind it, something I would call a
disrespect or disdain towards an actual work.
For example, I have been working in a team of about 1000 people, consisting of
software developers, testers, QM people, sales and management, who together
worked on a large software system deployed in hospitals.
There are several companies fighting in this niche, and all of them are big
corporations. The magnitude of the task just doesn't allow any small startups
to compete. And yet, most of the people working on it are employees, because
just that is the way the work is organized.
But let me ask, why should some marketer call it "compliant work"? Why it
doesn't deserve to be called just a "work", at least?
Maybe what Mr Godin doesn't realize is that what he calls "compliant work" is
something which allows him to survive in society - food he eats, clothes he
wear, or doctors who care after him... most of this is "compliant work"...
------
revdinosaur
It seems that this is nothing more than an (average) attempt at providing
self-help type information in the form of a conspiratorial stab at public
education. (Seven Ways to Blah Blah Blah.) Notice that he immediately derives
the goal of public schools from a result: people become complacent, therefore
the "system" intends to brainwash people to be complacent!
------
jafran
ugh, is he serious? does anyone actually believe that the reason people don't
run their own businesses is because they were brainwashed? as opposed to, um,
lemme check, lack of desire, lack of funds, lack of skills, etc. i have issues
with this assumption that the natural state of everyone is to be above
average. i don't think the math works.
------
msort
A good read. Summary: Through failures, learn the ability to ship arts (work
that matters) and ship them.
------
zeynel1
"Do you remember learning to factor quadrilateral equations? x2 -32x +12? Why
were you taught this? Why did they spend hours drilling you on such clearly
useless content? Simple: you were being trained to be a compliant cog, someone
who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation
and surprise."
I agree with this. He's right.
|
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Show HN: Scenario.js: Crazy Simple A/B Testing with MixPanel - jakiestfu
http://makerstudios.github.io/Scenario.js/
======
karolisd
There are JS errors in the presentation and it doesn't show an example of an
actual test.
|
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Show HN: Polyhedra Viewer - tesseralis
https://polyhedra.tessera.li
======
tesseralis
Polyhedra Viewer: app to explore the relationships and transformations between
various convex polyhedra.
This has been a passion project of mine for the last six months (with
different versions going back further!) It's partially inspired by George W
Hart's virtual polyhedra ([http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-
polyhedra/vp.html](http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vp.html)) I
wanted to make something accessible and beautiful, since a lot of the
resources that already exist aren't very friendly to people not already
obsessed with polyhedra.
I'm still (sort of) working on it, so suggestions and comments are welcome!
~~~
MrEldritch
I immediately tried to construct my favorite obscure polyhedron (the rhombic
dodecahedron) and found I simply could not take the dual of the cuboctahedron!
:P
That aside, this is a really fantastic little toy here - I'd never really
understood the relationships between all these shapes before, or exactly what
some of these operations _were_ , geometrically speaking.
~~~
jacobolus
> favorite obscure polyhedron (the rhombic dodecahedron)
Obscure? Come on! The rhombic dodecahedron is the Voronoi cell of the FCC
lattice, making it (arguably) the most natural 3-dimensional analog of the
hexagon. It shows up all over the place!
You might enjoy these rhombic dodecahedral dice
[https://www.mathartfun.com/thedicelab.com/SpaceFillingDice.h...](https://www.mathartfun.com/thedicelab.com/SpaceFillingDice.html)
~~~
MrEldritch
It's "obscure" to me (and also my favorite) because I had never even _heard_
of it before I tried to find out what the most natural 3-dimensional analog of
the hexagon was. :)
~~~
jacobolus
Also see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_conjecture)
------
sgroppino
Excellent stuff!! It'd be great if you could flatten the shapes to printable
A4 paper so kids can cut and build real models (and paint them, etc).
~~~
tesseralis
Absolutely! Nets are totally in the feature pipeline. Until then, check this
out: [https://www.korthalsaltes.com/](https://www.korthalsaltes.com/)
------
yshklarov
This is fantastic, I love it! I've been looking for something like this.
Your definition of "uniform" doesn't look quite right: It's not enough for the
symmetry group to be vertex transitive, you also have to require that the
faces be regular polygons (see the wikipedia page on isogonal solids for
examples of vertex-transitive solids which don't have regular faces). Also,
"vertex-transitive" means that for any pair of vertices, there is a rotation
or reflection symmetry of the solid which sends the first vertex to the second
-- this is not equivalent to the definition you give, for example, the
pentagonal cupola is not vertex-transitive but it does seem to satisfy your
definition. The standard definition of "uniform" for higher dimensions is
recursive: A convex polytope is called uniform if its facets are uniform and
its symmetry group (including reflections) is vertex-transitive; a
2-dimensional polytope is called uniform if it is regular (i.e., is a regular
polygon). So, in three dimensions, a convex polyhedron is called uniform if it
has regular faces and its symmetry group is vertex-transitive.
~~~
tesseralis
good catch! I forgot to put the "regular faces" part because everything in the
app so far is regular faced. I was trying to make a definition of "vertex
transitive" that's intelligible for someone without a math background but I
obviously have a bit to go! I'll update the text based on your comments.
------
andybak
Wonderful.
1\. Do you plan an open source licence for any of the underlying code?
2\. Is the construction parametric or is it based on a large catalogue of the
various polyhedra and associated constructions?
3\. Any plans to allow stacking of operations? First thing I tried was to
apply multiple truncates but it's only a toggle switch. But then your code
knows when an operation results in another named polyhedra so I'm guessing you
might be using a catalogue of relationships rather than geometrically
truncating a mesh representation.
4\. This is crying out for a WebVR mode...
I've been playing with a combination of the Wythoff Construction and Conway
Operators to do something similar in Unity: [https://github.com/Ixxy-Open-
Source/wythoff-polyhedra](https://github.com/Ixxy-Open-Source/wythoff-
polyhedra) but I haven't had time to wrap it in a nice UI
~~~
tesseralis
1\. The source code is here: [https://github.com/tesseralis/polyhedra-
viewer](https://github.com/tesseralis/polyhedra-viewer), under the MIT
license. 2\. Both! I do have a catalog of the polyhedra (adapted from
[http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-
polyhedra/vp.html](http://www.georgehart.com/virtual-polyhedra/vp.html)). Some
of the operations, like truncation, are done parametrically, but others, like
expansion, I "cheated" and relied on knowing what the result is b/c I was just
too lazy to figure out the math. 3\. I don't think so. The primary focus is
the relationships between the regular faced polyhedra, so only the operations
that keep you within this particular set. Unfortunately you can only truncate
something once before the faces become non-regular. 4\. I know right??? First
I need to figure out how to VR... _shrug_
Yeah, generic Wythoff and Conway operators are wild... I'm still not sure I
fully understand them. Maybe your thing can help me eventually ^^
~~~
andybak
> Maybe your thing can help me eventually
Maybe my thing can help _me_ eventually! Most of the clever code is from
elsewhere and I need to brush up on some fundamental maths to really
understand it. I've ended up with two different mesh representations which I
convert between (one for the base Wythoff stuff and the other for applying
Conway operators). Ideally I'd rewrite one of the other to get rid of this.
You do start to get awesome results by just fiddling with different chains of
operators so I'd love to wrap that part in a nice UI and release it as a toy.
It is of course very easy to end up with way too many polygons as most
operators double the count at the very least.
I'm very jealous of some aspects of your app. I might need to borrow some
ideas... :-)
~~~
tesseralis
Borrow away! Which parts are you thinking of, if I may ask?
~~~
andybak
1\. The UI for choosing which face type to perform some operators on. I had a
numeric input field which is fairly unfriendly in hindsight.
2\. I didn't have twist, elongate or several of your other operations. They
won't always make sense as general operations but it's given me some ideas.
3\. Lots of little UI touches. I was fumbling around with various UI ideas and
you've given me a better sense of direction.
------
dosy
The shapes remind me of chemistry, molecules, enzymes, proteins, viruses.
I would add 1 thing only: physics to the interactions, so the shape will keep
spinning after I swipe across it.
------
lrc
It's a treat. It's like a well-produced color mathematical atlas come to life.
------
jacobolus
Great work!
Have you seen this one?
[https://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/](https://levskaya.github.io/polyhedronisme/)
Also, you have probably seen Wenninger’s books, but if not those are great.
~~~
tesseralis
Bookmarked! (so that's what propel actually means...) I don't know how I
missed it in my initial search for polyhedron resources.
Of course I know Wenniger's books! Though I haven't had the chance to actually
read them yet.
------
perilunar
Wonderful resource. Nice to see X3D used 'in the wild' also.
------
mpax
Really neat!
2 features which might cool: stellation and .obj export
Iirc these things apply to 2d tilings also? I remember trying to do some
esher-esque drawings using such tilings a bunch of years back.
~~~
tesseralis
Already ahead of you! You can see the .obj download links at in the Info tab
(e.g. polyhedra.tessera.li/tetrahedron/info)
And yeah, the same operators can be used on 2d tilings
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation#Oth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_polyhedron_notation#Other_surfaces))
~~~
mpax
Perfect!
------
hguhghuff
How would I export these shapes for use in threejs or other web based 3d
display?
Can they be exported as gltf format?
~~~
tesseralis
I don't have gltf, but you can download the .obj files (e.g. at
polyhedra.tessera.li/tetrahedron/info), which three.js can read.
------
apexal
This is extremely informative and mesmerizing!
|
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General Chaos: Senior Military Officers on the White House - jseliger
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/military-officers-trump/598360
======
jseliger
Don't be dissuaded by the noise around the topic; the article is worth reading
in full.
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SendGrid click tracking links are marked as physing - soci
http://sendgrid.me/wf/click?
======
soci
All mails send through SendGrid with the click tracking option, are marked as
physing by gmail.
Also, Safari and Chrome will promt an anti-physing message when clicking the
link
I've talked with SendGrid support. They are working hard to fix this.
|
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Square releases API for taking payments in your own Android apps - jrodbx
https://corner.squareup.com/2016/05/introducing-squares-register-api-for-android.html
======
mcpherrinm
The iOS version was announced previously:
[https://corner.squareup.com/2016/03/introducing-squares-
regi...](https://corner.squareup.com/2016/03/introducing-squares-register-api-
and-ecommerce-api.html)
------
cft
There's no such thing as "your own Android app", unless the apk is sideloaded.
All apps downloaded by users from Google Play are essentially Google's, if you
are not "too big to get banned."
[1] Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on
Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment,
except for the following cases:
Payment is solely for physical products
Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players)
1\.
[https://play.google.com/about/monetization.html](https://play.google.com/about/monetization.html)
~~~
lern_too_spel
This API is for physical PoS, where the user running the app is selling
things, not buying digital things. That developer agreement doesn't apply.
~~~
tn13
As a small publisher and given Google's lack of customer support on such
issues I will wait till this gets adopted to better understand best practices.
|
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The difference between UI and UX design - tigranhakobian
https://blog.prototypr.io/the-difference-between-ui-and-ux-design-5fa7e23e3c83
======
parvenu74
“UI is what is on the screen; UX describes the user’s reaction to using the
UI.” I forget where I read that but it’s the best short differentiation of
UI/UX I’ve ever seen.
|
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Justice Dept wants NSA phone records kept longer - JumpCrisscross
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/justice-dept-wants-to-keep-phone-records-longer/2014/02/26/d5bf3eb2-9f22-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html
======
DyslexicAtheist
using NSA in the title on HN submissions will make sure your post will never
take off and gain traction: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-
ranking-really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-
really-works.html)
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Umask setting is ignored by npm for some directories - kpcyrd
https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/9359
======
tyingq
This bit is interesting:
_What I observed (even with newest npm 3.10.9) that it sometimes creates
node_modules directories with permission 777. when doing the npm install
multiple times the results vary, most of the time it results in 755 but
sometimes in 777). This seems to have nothing to do with the source tarballs
content (retrieved from registry.npmjs.org) but a more general issue. As
mentioned, its not deterministic and the tarballs definitively don 't contain
any files/directories with such permissions._
If that's true, it may take a while to unearth the root cause.
~~~
varikin
I thought further up it mentioned that it starts with the permissions of the
files in the tarball, then grabs process.umask (of the npm-tarball subprocess
maybe?) and then overrides the execute bit. If that is correct, that is 2
layers of questionable permissions being applied leading to non-
deterministicness.
~~~
tyingq
Perhaps, but the author of the comment I quoted seemed to be performing the
install over and over, on the same machine. I assume neither the tarball
permissions nor the umask would be changing, so it's odd.
~~~
varikin
Well that further complicates it.
~~~
jacquesm
Does it fork off any background processes? If so that would be the first place
to look, the code executing in parallel with the main program.
------
xiwenc
Yesterday after I did `pacman -Syu` on my Arch Linux I noticed the following:
( 95/121) installing grunt-cli [########################################] 100%
warning: directory permissions differ on /usr/bin/
filesystem: 755 package: 777
warning: directory permissions differ on /usr/lib/node_modules/
filesystem: 755 package: 777
:facepalm:
~~~
clux
Managing node with package managers feels like a a bit of a fools errand at
the moment. They are going to be wrapping npm somehow, but when npm can't even
do things right..
~~~
dima55
They absolutely should not be wrapping npm. npm is attempting to do a job that
package managers should be doing to begin with
~~~
int_19h
The problem is that there is no single package manager that covers every
platform. If you are writing an inherently portable library in node.js, as an
author, are you supposed to also provide packages for RPM, dpkg, pacman, brew
etc? Or do you expect distros to package every tiny thing?
So in practice there is a niche that npm covers, that wouldn't be filled if we
removed it.
On the question of whether the system package manager should wrap npm - the
reason why you want to do so is because it lets npm dependency resolution work
regardless of how packages are installed. If the system package manager just
does its own thing, then next time you do need to npm install a package
(because it's a relatively obscure package that's not in your distro), you
don't want it to install copies (or worse, yet overwrite) all the dependencies
that you've already installed by other means.
------
Matachines
The lack of activity in the issue is sadly not rare for npm.
~~~
AgentME
Yeah, I reported
[https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/10463](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/10463)
(npm fails to install everything from a shrinkwrap sometimes -- the feature
specifically for locking down the dependencies to make things
deterministic/reproducible!) about a year ago and it hasn't received much
attention. It was labeled "big-bug" once but got downgraded to "support"
somewhere along the line.
I use npm in a continuous integration/deployment system for a project. The
system used to do a git checkout, `npm install` to get the dependencies, and
then a build, but then we ran into a few extremely confusing issues where we
actually had a couple old dependencies tested and deployed into production
because npm install failed to respect the shrinkwrap fully (yet it still
exited successfully). We finally had to write a script which compares the
node_modules directory against the shrinkwrap, and if there's a mismatch, it
removes the entire directory and re-runs `npm install`. Thankfully `npm
install` tends to install everything fine from a fresh slate, but it's just
soo slow (which is also surprising to me, because shouldn't most everything be
cached into ~/.npm if I've installed nearly all of the same dependencies
recently? I would think that installing from a shrinkwrap of many things I've
installed before would mostly be un-tarring things from cache)...
------
nathancahill
Reminds me of PHP back in the day. Doesn't work? chmod -R 777 /var/www
~~~
mst
freenode #perl still periodically has to talk somebody trying to get a CGI
script running out of using 777 to avoid having to figure out permissions
properly.
~~~
kuschku
It’s also an interesting task: How do you configure a folder so that two
users, who are in no common groups, can read, write and execute everything?
Even if the other user uploaded it with 700 set?
~~~
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd
If there's really no way to run these processes as the same group at least,
there's always ACLs:
setfacl -m u:NON-OWNER:rwX,d:u:NON-ONWER:rwX,d:u:OWNER:rwX DIR
(Allows NON-OWNER to read, write, execute if already executable for anyone to
that directory, and allows NON-OWNER and OWNER to do the same for newly
created files.)
~~~
kuschku
I’m not sure that solves the issue of a user (user:user) uploading and
creating files via SFTP, but www-data:www-data having to execute, read, and
modify them.
~~~
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd
It works pretty well for me, to get Web DAV access to my files on my NAS.
The default ACLs make sure that any newly created files can be accessed by
both users.
|
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Learning Rust with Entirely Too Many Linked Lists - pcwalton
http://cglab.ca/~abeinges/blah/too-many-lists/book/
======
kibwen
Alexis isn't exaggerating about the frequency with which this question is
asked in the context of Rust (I blame C), so I'm super psyched to have such a
definitive and comprehensive resource to answer this question once and for
all!
|
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BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders - edward
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-robbery-50-to-60-teens-swarm-11094745.php
======
jraines
I wonder if commuting by BART constitutes a "good cause" w/r/t California's
concealed-carry law. I doubt it, but it'd be kind of funny to hear a court say
out loud that in Alameda County, "exposure to risk of coordinated gang train
robbery" doesn't constitute a "non-mainstream circumstance" placing one in
harm's way.
~~~
Apocryphon
Could a handgun really deter a crowd of _40 to 60 people_? Especially if some
might be packing heat themselves? Or could just overpower you regardless?
There's situations where concealed carry could help but I'm not sure if this
case is one of them.
~~~
AcerbicZero
A train is probably the optimal situation for deterring a large group with
only a handgun, assuming you have a chance to draw before they swarm you.
Long straight lines, plenty of bodies in a row, ~10-15 rounds, and you could
probably cut that 60 number down into the 40's surprisingly quickly. Depends
on how crowded the train is in general though.
~~~
jacquesm
And kill a couple of innocent commuters with your ricochets and misses. Or did
you think that your ability to tell the 16 year old that wasn't part of it
from the 16 year that was when you're in a hurry mowing people down was still
functioning? Life isn't a FPS.
I hope that if I'm ever in the subway and it's robbed that you are not in the
same car, same for any other dirty Harry wannabe's. Better to hand over my
wallet and cell phone than to end up with a bullet from a well meaning
bystander.
~~~
jimmyk
It's estimated that guns are used defensively (not necessarily fired) by
private individuals hundreds of thousands of times per year in the US, and yet
we don't see an epidemic of innocent bystanders being accidentally shot. Why
do you think that might be? Could it be that your characterization of
concealed carriers as "dirty Harry wannabe's" is wildly inaccurate?
~~~
jacquesm
Read that comment again: the guy is seriously considering going on a shooting
spree with a train full of commuters and robbers. What do you think the
chances are of that working out? Do you think this upstanding citizen and
class-A marksman will be able to place '10 to 15 rounds' (his words, not mine)
with the precision required not to injure anybody else?
[http://americablog.com/2013/02/vigilante-walmart-shopper-
ope...](http://americablog.com/2013/02/vigilante-walmart-shopper-opens-fire-
on-shoplifter-hits-three-cars.html)
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3252074/Police-
looki...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3252074/Police-looking-
vigilante-carjacking-witness-shot-thieves-accidentally-hit-victim-head-
fleeing-scene.html) (uk)
[http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/264755/carjacking-gone-
wrong...](http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/264755/carjacking-gone-wrong-
houston-texas/)
[http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/vigilantes...](http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/vigilantes_worry_even_gun_inst.html)
How many links do you want?
Those were much less complex situations.
And you think putting all that in a crowded subway car is going to improve
matters?
~~~
jimmyk
I don't think he was suggesting it would be a good idea to start unloading
into the mob, only that it would be very effective in reducing the mob's
numbers compared to other situations where the mob is more free to move
around.
>How many links do you want?
Just 1, but this time to statistics. I didn't suggest no one has ever been hit
accidentally in a defensive shooting, just that it's incredibly rare compared
to the amount of times guns are used in self defense, and not worth fear
mongering about by suggesting concealed carriers are dirty Harry wannabe's.
------
bdrool
An earlier version of this article said something like "BART did not
immediately report the incident" (can't recall exact wording). This statement
or any equivalent appears to be removed. It looks like newsdiff.org doesn't
track sfgate.com, so I can't find the exact change. Regardless, the article
originally indicated BART didn't report the incident to the public right away.
That leads me to say: sweeping this kind of crime under the rug will not help.
Instead, it will lead to a repeat of the Goetz vigilante incident in NYC in
the early 1980s:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shooting)
[http://nypost.com/2011/12/23/one-of-bernhard-goetzs-
victims-...](http://nypost.com/2011/12/23/one-of-bernhard-goetzs-victims-
kills-self-on-anniversary-of-subway-shoot-2/)
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-feldman/bernie-
goetz-t...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-feldman/bernie-goetz-the-
subway-g_b_6369128.html)
That last link in particular contains a stunning statement:
> The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically — so much so
> the authorities even held back the numbers — the truth hurt too much.
The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works. Please note
I _hate_ the idea of vigilantism and hope with every fiber of my being that
things do _not_ come to that, but it at first glance appears that things are
headed in that direction, which I am immensely sad and scared to see.
~~~
glangdale
> The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works.
[ citation needed ]
~~~
bdrool
I already gave one, just a few sentences above.
~~~
WillyOnWheels
You're justifying writing "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is
that it works" by including a link to an article written by a NRA spokesman
that basically says "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that
it works", without backing it up.
I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back
you up. I've wasted my life.
~~~
bdrool
> that basically says "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is
> that it works", without backing it up
That's a quote from me, not from the HuffPo article. The article says "The
crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically…", as I quoted
originally.
> I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back
> you up. I've wasted my life.
I replied to you here with a source that only took a few minutes to find:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189548)
You seem very emotional about this topic. I would urge you to look at it more
dispassionately. As I already stated (but it bears repeating), I absolutely do
not want vigilantism to be the result of crimes like this, but I fear unless
there is an open and honest conversation, things may end up there anyway. I
believe the best (and perhaps only) way to avoid such an outcome is to
consider the possibilities that may result from various actions (or
inactions), unpleasant as they may be.
------
randyrand
> The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the suspects appear
> to be minors.
Does anyone have info on the law here? Pictures that include minors in them
are shared all the time over the internet and media - many times without
having permission from all the people pictured - which I believe is still
legal. Why is sharing a picture of a minor illegal in this instance?
~~~
samtho
I am not a layer, but:
Innocent until proven guilty, and once the images get out, they are
automatically guilty in the eyes of the public. Should any minor get their
record sealed when they turn 18, they would still be known to have committed
those crimes.
As they have not been apprehended the suspects, it is unknown if they would be
tried as an adult. The new outlet is erring on the side of caution here
because if the case where a suspect is tried as a minor, gets their record
sealed at 18, and will be liable for slandering the adult's name with a crime
he or she committed as a juvenile.
~~~
schoen
> The new outlet is erring on the side of caution here because if the case
> where a suspect is tried as a minor, gets their record sealed at 18, and
> will be liable for slandering the adult's name with a crime he or she
> committed as a juvenile.
Wait, what? Are you saying that the Right to Be Forgotten already exists in
the U.S. with respect to criminal convictions of minors?
~~~
SamReidHughes
Yeah the parent's wrong, you can talk about crimes all you want.
------
lancefisher
>The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the suspects appear
to be minors.
Really? If you're old enough to rob a train, you should be old enough to have
a wanted poster.
~~~
jacquesm
That's because that wanted poster then stays around forever because of the
internet and their records can't be wiped when they reach the age of majority.
~~~
WillPostForFood
Police typically don't release booking photos of minors, because there is
nothing to gain, and there is the potential cost you mention. But surveillance
footage that might assist in the apprehension of the criminals, even kids, is
often released, and rightfully so.
~~~
jacquesm
In this case they write they have good hope that the department they are
working with will be able to ID the suspects so there is as far as I can see
no need to release the footage.
~~~
WillPostForFood
It just shows it is a low priority, and they don't want people to see the
footage because it makes BART look bad.
------
mrspeaker
Something similar to this happened on a train to Paris a few years back and at
the time I remember thinking that it seemed like the stupidest crime you could
commit. 40+ people to split the takings with, and you only need 1 of the 40+
people to get busted to lead to the rest (the french criminals weren't
minors). I know I shouldn't try to apply logic to it, but... it just doesn't
seem like a sound profit-making venture.
~~~
defen
> it just doesn't seem like a sound profit-making venture.
It makes more sense if you look at it as a territorial dominance display.
"They" are in "our" territory so we're going to assault and humiliate them.
------
headcanon
Looks like its time for SF to film a sequel to The Warriors. As if we needed
any more reminders of the state of dystopia we find ourselves in.
~~~
Neliquat
Lol, if you think modern sf is as bad as 80 nyc, you need a cold shower.
~~~
headcanon
Oh I'm sure it was way worse, just a joke :)
------
some-guy
Reminds me of the Warriors' slogan, "Strength in Numbers".
In all seriousness though, as a daily BART commuter, I hope this doesn't
become a trend. I don't think there's any reason to panic just yet -- I feel a
lot safer inside of a BART car than on the freeway.
------
eof
40 to 60 teens working in concert? that's the real news here
------
justboxing
No mention of Guns or Knives in any of the stories. Does anyone know how these
'teens' successfully committed their robbery?
If I don't see a gun or a knife and some kid walks up to me and says "Hand me
your wallet and iPhone", I'd simply tell the 'teen' "Yeah, let me see you take
it."
~~~
MagnumOpus
And maybe that makes you a slightly less desirable target than the elderly
lady in the next carriage over, but maybe it also means you get your ribs
kicked in and your skull smashed by a dozen yobs. One stray kick in the nuts
is all it takes.
------
youdontknowtho
This is bad, but these kinds of stories serve to convince people that crime is
up when, in fact, it is down.
~~~
Altay-
Crime went down becausr wr locked up all the Urban Youth scum. Now theres
chatter of letting em out and going soft on crime. If that happens, crime will
back up.
------
locust101
I thought Oakland was being gentrified?
~~~
shawn-butler
(One of?) the underlying interpretation is that this is a response to that
gentrification.
------
russellbeattie
What are you going to do, whip out your handgun and start taking down 16 year
olds? Your iPhone 7 is totally worth a teen's life - or hell, 4 or 5 of them -
especially if they're black, right?
One would think you Trump voters would have gotten a clue by now.
~~~
Mizza
To anybody outside of California who is baffled by this comment - yes, this is
actually how rich white liberals there actually think.
When you have such stark financial and class inequality in a dense urban
environment like the bay, being mugged of your iPhone occasionally is
literally seen as a kind of moral tax that you pay for your gentrifying
presence. To defend yourself from it would be politically incorrect, both
individually to the "victim" of your self-defense, and to your class as a
whole, as you should essentially accept the mugging as a tax on your
privileged position in the cultural landscape.
I know many tech workers who live/lived in Oakland who have been mugged
(including pistol-whippings), who essentially just accepted it. Some did not
even report it to the police, as in their world-view, to do so would be to
enlisting an inherently oppressive, violent and racist force.
~~~
russellbeattie
I'm quite sure that the only one baffled is you. An iPhone is not worth a
life. Robbery happens, and killing, or threatening to kill children to prevent
it is wrong. This the moral decision, not a PC one.
Seriously, how do selfish, cowardly, sociopaths like yourself continue to
operate in this world. The last people on Earth thst should be given weapons
are people like you.
~~~
Mizza
Again, this perfectly illustrates the attitude of white Californian liberals.
I didn't once advocate for, or even once mention, guns in this situation
(obviously shooting at a crowd of people on a busy train is an absolutely
terrible idea for a whopping number of reasons) - but now I - a person you
have never interacted with previously - am a "selfish, cowardly sociopath" for
simply explaining the attitude that accepts the fact that, as you put it,
"robbery happens", that it is better to let 50 teenage gang members assault
and rob a train full of passengers than to threaten a single one of them.
In fact, I never even actually disagreed with you! I'm just trying to explain
to any other Europeans reading this the context of how your comments could
possibly make sense, because outside of the Bay Area bubble, they seem quite
shockingly absurd.
|
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Ask HN: Take a web development company to the “next level” or do something else? - bugaboo
OK so what do you do to go from being a self employed web developer to running a profitable web business?<p>I've been building websites and web applications for various clients over the last 10 years. Things usually go pretty well but there are still feast / famine cycles. Each client gets their own custom proposal - though most small business web solutions seem to end up being a WordPress blog with some customizations. I'm happy to have the work but this is getting old and it seems like something needs to change.<p>The amount of information about how to run a profitable business is overwhelming. Everyone seems to be selling a class with their "best way" to grow from a web business to selling products (saas or ebooks or web based schools / classes or productized consulting and on and on...).<p>I have built a few failed saas web apps and one that has a single customer... In addition to experience solving a variety of business problems, dealing with customers, selling hosting, etc.<p>Right now it feels like I'm just floating along and things just work out. I'd like to take more control and define some goals to move into being a product / saas based business...<p>It seems odd / empty to say that without more specific objectives but at this point I'm unsure if I should focus on building another web app, work on writing and creating educational material, keep doing web consulting and raise my rates or move on to doing something completely different.<p>I imagine others have been through similar situation s before... Any thoughts or suggestions?
======
brudgers
Though there are outliers that produce successful products (37signals being
the most famous), a web development company is going to scale linearly by
adding staff and client projects and seeing revenue growth based on stable
margins over stable unit costs. This means that the "next levels" are going to
be bigger versions of previous levels not quantum leaps.
There's nothing wrong with that strategy. It just means that the business
grows horizontally and the role of an owner/manager will tend to shift from
production to administration and sales and human resources.
The quantum shift into a company based on producing and selling a product can
be abstracted as starting a new company (it may help to keep in mind that
there's nothing that prevents a person from owning two or more companies).
Maybe the consulting sustains the owner while they develop the second company.
Random advice from the internet: It's not going to be appreciably less work
growing one kind of company over the other. It's probably harder to get
reasonable initial success as a product company versus a consultant. It's
going to be hard to be successful at both.
Good luck.
~~~
bugaboo
Thanks - that helps put things in perspective.
Yes ideally my goal is a product business weather it is under my current
entity or a new one. Consulting work will fund and support those projects
until they can sustain themselves. I'm not looking to hire employees and turn
into an agency though would like to get "more professional" and simplify the
consulting business.
I'm probably answering my own question after re-reading it... I should just
try some of these classes and see what works.
Thanks again!
~~~
brudgers
I'm not sure that a class is necessarily the place to start or that expending
capital on courses is the best allocation of resources. There is a lot of
sound advice available as open source. Even Sam Altman has some:
[http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)
~~~
bugaboo
Yes this is helpful and inspiring.
Thanks for the link - I hadn't seen this resource before!
|
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Why college students stop short of a degree - vellum
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/27/us-attn-andrea-education-dropouts-idUSBRE82Q0Y120120327
======
vellum
The Harvard study mentioned in the article:
[http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathway...](http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/features/2011/Pathways_to_Prosperity_Feb2011.pdf)
|
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Ask HN: Mathematics in computer science - vaidhy
I have been asked to give a talk on applications of mathematics in computer science to a set of post-graduate and doctorate students in math. I am looking for ideas to convey the beauty of math in CS. The obvious topics are probability and stat in ML, Trig in graphics, number theory in cryptography, category theory in OO, sets in relational algebra. Let me know if you can think of more connections :)
======
egiva
One of the most beautiful applications of math+cs (for me) involves genetic
algorithms. Being able to have two models duke it out (via survivorship), or
mutate - to see your code select the best models to fit a set of data is
beautiful.
Basic Info: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm>
You can also increase the complexity of this field by using GAs to train
neural networks for fitting data or processing it in innovative ways:
<http://www.generation5.org/content/2000/nn_ga.asp>
YOUTUBE: NN + GA simulation: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXDUqAmdEq4>
Neural Network at work: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2aZAWXyw6c>
------
nandemo
I'd call these "interplay" rather than applications:
* combinatorics in computational complexity, analysis of algorithms, optimization, etc. * logic in formal methods. * lambda calculus and category theory in programming languages (more so in functional languages than OO). * linear algebra in graphics, graph theory, etc.
------
C-ford
Geometric algebra: [http://www.amazon.com/Geometric-Algebra-Computer-Science-
Rev...](http://www.amazon.com/Geometric-Algebra-Computer-Science-
Revised/dp/0123749425/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314888629&sr=1-2)
It is to linear algebra what Lisp is to assembly.
------
derrida
Kolmogorov / Chaitin complexity. A measure of the simplicity which a given
pattern (program output) can be represented. A question that will get the
applied math majors going -> Is Kolmogorov complexity a good measure of the
generality of a physical law or mathematical theorem?
------
MaysonL
Try graph theory: possibly exploring some of Erdös's work on random graphs.
------
stonemetal
Semantics, especially Denotational and Axiomatic.
|
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Google Is Pulling Websites from Searches at Russia's Request - jasonhansel
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/hayesbrown/google-pull-sites-search-engine-russia-roskomnadzor
======
luckylion
Is this news? Google has been pulling websites from searches for lots of
markets, including Western countries Like Germany, France.
|
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Migrate from GitHub to Bitbucket - mansilladev
http://befused.com/git/github-bitbucket-move
======
mansilladev
Another swell guide to migrating (and reasons why):
[https://www.topdraw.com/blog/moving-from-github-to-
bitbucket...](https://www.topdraw.com/blog/moving-from-github-to-bitbucket-
why-and-how/)
~~~
jredmond
The Bitbucket pricing on that page is outdated - the updated version is
[https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=cloud](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=cloud)
.
~~~
mansilladev
Actually, this is directly from the Bitbucket docs:
"Import a repository from GitHub or GitLab" \-
[https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/import-a-
reposito...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/import-a-repository-
from-github-or-gitlab-951409524.html)
------
parvenu74
Is there a comprehensive list of "alternatives to GitHub" out there? Of
course, source control hosting is only one part; who has features for process,
project management, issue tracking, etc that truly rivals what GitHub has?
------
a_lifters_life
This was exactly what I needed today. Thanks
|
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The unemployed developer - a tale with expected end - vaksel
http://bolddream.com/2009/05/30/the-unemployed-developer-a-tale-with-expected-end/
======
catfish
Nice Fairytale for the youngsters.
Now for the real story.
51-22 = 29 years of programming for the same company. Which means John started
programming about the time the IBM XT came out. So I doubt his MASM 4.1 and C
skills would have lasted him the 29 years he worked at BIG JOB. In fact, given
the pace of change, its pretty much a go he didn't last 29 years at any single
BIG JOB.
Worse yet, when John started he likely worked on a Mainframe or Micro using
VMS or a commercial *nix variant and had COBOL skills. Since the WWW was still
a text based protocol running on a military network John wasn't likely to have
any Internet skills at this point.
John likely ran a Wildcat BBS, or E systems communication system using dialup.
John did this until about 1992 when the Net finally took. Along the way John
continued with COBOL and his Mainframe buddies shifted over to the net. After
Y2K fewer and fewer of his buddies stayed in COBOL and the market for his
skills went through the roof.
Today John still hacks out COBOL for legacy systems and makes about triple
what he did in 1989 when he started because the idiot children of this age
think the only way you can carve out a living is with your RUBY slippers,
drinking a cup of JAVA, while you fight it out with INDIA for your job.
But John doesn't have that problem, because believe it or not he knows what an
AS400 is, and YOU DO NOT.
John is socking away enough bank by being available for legacy gigs because
the market passed him by. Thank god for that...
And yes I know John. More than a couple of us old farts do...
Now lets stroll down that hill and have a poke with all them cows....
2 centavos..
~~~
ibsulon
Many of those kids in India know what COBOL is too, they were taught by
Infosys....
~~~
catfish
Before Y2K this was a factor. Now days security sensitivities have driven the
work back home.
------
tptacek
What I learned from this post:
* The author thinks startups are better than large companies
* The author thinks senior developers at large companies are older than startup developers --- else, why bring up age?
* Despite admonishing his protagonist to learn one new language _per year_ , the author believes "career rust" is a problem of age --- else the story would have worked with a 28 year old dev still writing in PHP.
* The author really likes unit tests.
~~~
vladev
I've worked with many 28 old wring in PHP4. But, somehow, I feel that there is
hope for them - someone 50 year old dog might show them the light.
I've made John 50 because I wanted to make it too late for him to fix things
(although he still stands a pretty good chance to get back on track). Do not
wait for something to happen. Stop repeating "Will read this book after the
next release" - start reading now in you spare time.
Improving constantly is the main moral of this story. It has nothing to do
with age.
~~~
tptacek
You did not just gain credibility by saying "50 is too late for him to fix
things".
------
ellyagg
Assuming the developer was wise with his money, he should be fine. I don't
feel too sorry for him.
~~~
tptacek
Assuming the only sharpening tool in the "youngster's" box is picking up
another vanity language for their resume, I don't feel sorry for him either,
because he's busy kicking their asses on real projects.
|
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How 7 Lines of Ruby Will Speed Up Your Heroku Deploys - nthj
http://www.thirdprestige.com/posts/how-7-lines-of-ruby-will-speed-up-your-heroku-deploys-10x
======
pkroll
Anyone have any luck getting this to work on a previously installed app? It
seems to be getting the custom buildpack, and after reading the code a bit it
seems, yes, it says it's caching the assets, but it never says it's using the
cache on the next push. :/
~~~
nthj
I'd be happy to help you debug. Would you send me an email to
[email protected]?
------
rys
The article brings up a good point: must you watch the deploy like a hawk and
do nothing else while it happens? The author mentions reading HN. What's
stopping you doing something else during the deploy that's actually
productive, to hide the time cost?
~~~
joevandyk
It's hard to switch back and forth between tasks, especially if you have to
poll the original task occasionally.
------
tomfakes
I think the Heroku Rails 4 buildpack does this automatically. And Rails 4 and
Ruby 2.0 build assets faster anyway.
|
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Opening a Delaware Corporation: an Incorporation Guide for Foreigners - diegogomes
http://myeverwrite.com/opening-a-delaware-corporation-an-incorporation-guide-for-foreigners/
======
markmccraw
It seems that this post may have been artificially upvoted by the author of
this post.
The oldest comments are all at the bottom and are short, trivial and grayed
out comments. One of those comments appears to be legit and another appears to
be from a fellow Brazilian entrepreneur. However the rest are suspect.
The submitter/author of the post created his account 23 days ago.
The following accounts were all created 22 and 23 days ago and have only
commented on everwrite related posts.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mateusbicalho>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bgrossi>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lucasarruda>
These accounts were created shortly after this was submitted and have only
posted on this submission with the same short, positive comments.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jpresende>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=eusouomatt>
These all do have real name formats, so perhaps these are all employees of
everwrite and were asked to come vote this up? I'm not sure what the official
rules are here, but it certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouth to send five
associates here to vote this up and comment on the article in the early stages
of the post, where five upvotes likely makes a large difference. And if it's
straight up sock puppeting, it's simply unacceptable.
EDIT: I take back that one of the early comments seems legit, this account
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lucianot> is also associated with
everwrite in some way.
<http://twitter.com/#!/lucianot/status/114152173767639042>
I hate to be the one who makes the drama, but the whole thing seems
disingenuous to make all these fluff comments without disclosure and is not
beneficial for the community. Imagine if a company with 2000 employees sent an
army this way!
~~~
diegogomes
We shared the post with some friends, that's for sure. But everybody seems to
have liked it. ain't that a good post? We thought that by writing about our
incorporation adventures we would be giving back to the community. Sorry if
you didn't like it, unfortunately we can't please everybody.
~~~
markmccraw
The quality of the article is not the issue. It's just that if everyone
behaved the way you did, HN would merely be a contest of who can call in the
most favors/have the most accounts under their control.
~~~
diegogomes
So now you rule here. And i can't mail my friends with my article here. Ok
then.
------
jpdoctor
Note: $2K is about $750 too high. (Hell, I think the whole thing is way high
for what is a cut and paste exercise to a junior lawyer. I think this industry
is ripe for a startup to make a boilerplate, perhaps open-source.)
~~~
diegogomes
I don't think so. The lawyer helped us a lot with incorporation, TOS, Stock
options, so we spent U$2k. This is not directly related to incorporation, but
we did some of this stuff in the same pack. Will clarify on the next post.
~~~
jpdoctor
> The lawyer helped us a lot with incorporation, TOS, Stock options,
I was guessing that's true; it's pretty standard for a lot of people.
------
cmer
I wrote this for Canadian startups wanting to incorporate in the US, but it
applies to most countries AFAIK. [http://blog.carlmercier.com/2011/08/29/us-
incorporation-for-...](http://blog.carlmercier.com/2011/08/29/us-
incorporation-for-canadian-startups/)
------
kseudo
On a similar vain we are thinking of incorporating in the US but we will also
need a bank account there. Anyone know what the procedure/requirements would
be for this?
~~~
diegogomes
On the next post we will publish about opening a bank account. We chose
Silicon Valley Bank. Great entrepreneur support there.
~~~
kseudo
Cool... Im looking forward to reading it already, great work.
------
alexpogosyan
Thanks for sharing. As far as I know there is no double tax treaty between
Brazil and the US. Does this mean you will have to pay income tax twice?
Also very interested to know how did you get a US bank account. As far as I
know it is not possible to do it remotely since Patriot Act has been passed.
~~~
justincormack
The US doesnt have any double tax treaties. If you are Brazil resident, but
have US income you may well be double taxed if you are employed in the US. If
you are not Brazil resident then Brazil wont tax you. Only the US taxes non
resident citizens I think.
~~~
jrmg
_The US doesnt have any double tax treaties._
That's not true. <http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-trty/>
------
kennethologist
Thank you for sharing! I've been researching this for quite some time and now
I finally know how to do this. The StartupLawyer mentioned in the article
should be releasing articles and guides like this!
~~~
diegogomes
Glad you liked! He is, have you seen his bloig startuplawyer.com? Helped us a
lot!
------
chaostheory
Going on a tangent, what are the primary reasons people incorporate in
Delaware as opposed to say Nevada or Wyoming? Is it mainly because more
lawyers nationwide are more familiar with Delaware laws?
~~~
jpdoctor
Delaware law is very favorable to the corp.
As an aside: Nevada used to be a big flag to the IRS, since it was one of the
few states (the only?) that did not data share with the feds.
~~~
chaostheory
I agree with the Nevada statement.
------
diegogomes
Check out the second episode of this series here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3018620>
------
AmaralHerberth
Tks a lot :)
------
eusouomatt
tks for sharing it, truly helpful!
------
bernardoporto
Very interesting! ;)
------
mateusbicalho
Thanks! Very useful :)
------
lucianot
This is really helpful. Thanks for the post.
------
bgrossi
Great! Thanks for sharing...
------
lucasarruda
Very nice post! Thanks for sharing all the process and info.
------
jpresende
Awesome guide! Will definitely help us in the future. Thanks!
|
{
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RandomDNS – aims to improve the security, privacy and anonymity of DNSCrypt - XzetaU8
https://github.com/pwnsdx/RandomDNS
======
mike-cardwell
"RandomDNS aims to improve the security, privacy and anonymity of DNSCrypt."
"It can randomize the server choice at runtime and can rotate it frequently."
Re privacy, randomizing the server choice reduces privacy. It means they all
end up with your DNS queries instead of just one of them. This is exactly why
Tor has entry guards.
I can't see any evidence of this application increasing security or
"anonymity" either.
~~~
MajesticHobo
What about a system that uses a different server for each separate lookup?
~~~
mike-cardwell
Still less preferable to just using one server
------
CiPHPerCoder
Why not just forward DNSCrypt queries over Tor?
~~~
cat-dev-null
What's the point? DNSCrypt is already encrypted and Tor offers zero privacy
but it does offer the FBI helpfully monitoring to de-anonymize Tor clients and
servers. Using a VPN and DNSCrypt together would far better. Plus, Tor adds
unnecessary latency (unusable for daily use) and suspicion, rendering it's
benefit nearly nullified apart from paedophiles or people trading drugs.
i2p and others seem to be headed in the right direction as to future of
distributed, overlay networks.
[https://vpn-services.bestreviews.net/vpn-comparison/](https://vpn-
services.bestreviews.net/vpn-comparison/)
~~~
CiPHPerCoder
> DNSCrypt is already encrypted and Tor offers zero privacy but it does offer
> the FBI helpfully monitoring to de-anonymize Tor clients and servers.
This is pure FUD.
> Using a VPN and DNSCrypt together would far better.
[https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29](https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29)
Don't use VPN services.
~~~
Matt3o12_
We'll, I trust my VPN equally or more then my ISP. In Germany, there has been
a lot of debate about the so called data retention law. While I assume that my
VPN does the same, the data is a lot less valuable because I'm well over 4,000
miles.
~~~
joepie91_
> the data is a lot less valuable because I'm well over 4,000 miles.
That is a very dangerous assumption to be making.
------
cat-dev-null
Can't see the benefit when I have load-balancing and HA using dnsmasq fronting
dnscrypt-proxy to 6 separate hosts.
------
Daviey
My assumption was that this service would provide random responses to look
ups.
~~~
ape4
Now _that_ would be secure.
------
nyan4
If only people stopped writing this stuff in javascript.
~~~
mbreedlove
I agree. It seems like a maintainability issue. I can't imagine anyone
familiar enough with DNS to contribute has experience working with Node.
Maybe I'm wrong...
~~~
toolz
I would never contribute to a JS project, but it is the most used language in
the world. Which language would you expect to have more overlap than the most
used language in the world?
~~~
bluejekyll
It is NOT the most used:
[http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index](http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index)
Java is number one, still. Like six years running at least. JavaScript is
somewhere between 4-8 depending on the survey you look at.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Copying data is wasteful, mutating data is dangerous - feross
https://pythonspeed.com/articles/minimizing-copying/
======
DecoPerson
I'm not super familiar with interior mutablility, but I don't think this is
the same "interior mutablility" as used in Rust.
Interior mutablility:
A, immutable, points to B.
B, immutable, points to C.
C, mutable, points to D.
D, immutable, points to E.
Even though A and B are immutable -- B points to C mutably, so you can modify
its contents. Some "interior" part of A (and of B) is mutable. You can't
change which C is pointed to by B (because B is immutable, or rather we only
have an immutable reference to it), but it's open season on the contents of C.
What this article describes:
We have 2 operations.
We are passed in Array A.
We can either:
\- Apply both operations to A, modifying it even though the "owner" may not
want this.
\- Copy before each operation (or as part of them), which leaves A untouched,
but requires triple the memory usage.
\- Cooy before (or as part of) the first operation only. The second operation
can be applied in-place on the copy. This leaves A untouched and only requires
double the memory.
They're totally different concepts. I don't know what you'd call the second
concept -- I think the important part is that A remains untouched, so...
"Avoiding side effects while reducing memory usage", or "How to make
performant pure functions" ?
~~~
DecoPerson
I also see this as a bit of a premature optimization. The triple memory usage
one may be significantly faster than the in-place one -- and the memory usage
is temporary so unless you're in a constrained environment that's not a
concern.
Avoiding unintentional or unexpected side effects is a good thing. Pure
functions are great. Do whatever you can do keep your visualization helper
thing pure and avoid bugs.
Then, once it works, if you have performance issues, do some profiling.
If the profiling shows this helper method as a hotspot, then it's worth
optimizing.
At that point, you'd want to follow standard Python, numpy, and pandas
optimization strategies -- which I'm not familiar with.
Aimless optimization like this is a waste of time. Good program structure
(data is available when you need it without tonnes of calls), the right choice
of data structures and algorithms (hashmap vs list), the right choice of
underlying tools (Julia vs Python) and targeted optimization (profiling) are
the ways to go.
~~~
kllrnohj
The slowest thing CPUs do by far is access memory. I don't see any possibly
way that, for the given example, using more memory would _ever_ be faster. At
best 3*N all fits in cache and it's not as bad, but even then it's still at
least one more cache miss which means it will still be slower even if it's not
by much. Temporary memory is the worst type of memory. It's cache misses &
pipeline stalls for no point.
"Premature optimization" is not an excuse to write obviously bad code. Fixing
this simple thing now is much faster, and simpler, than digging a big hole,
jumping in it, and then hoping you can find something to pull yourself back
out later.
In the same way it's important to scatter about asserts and verify parameter
arguments do in fact conform to the documented contract, it's also important
to always keep an eye out for openly wasteful code.
~~~
davedx
> it's also important to always keep an eye out for openly wasteful code.
No, that's the point. It's really _not_. If your "openly wasteful code" does
its job well and is readable and maintainable, it DOES NOT MATTER that it is
"wasteful".
If, on the other hand, the wasteful code causes your program to execute in 60
minutes instead of 10 seconds every time you run it, then it does matter and
you should optimize it.
Why is this such a difficult concept?
~~~
kllrnohj
If you're trying to use Knuth's quote from 1974 as your justification for that
concept then you've misunderstood his argument and should read the full thing,
not the single phrase.
This article is not advocating premature optimization as Knuth was discussing
nor does the article's advice result in the evil that Knuth was warning
against.
If you have some other evidence or paper justifying why we can ignore obvious
inefficiencies please provide a source. That's a rather radical claim to make,
though, which may be why you find people struggle with the concept.
------
TheFuntastic
As a game developer working in managed languages (aka Unity/C#) this problem
is one of my biggest headaches. I was hoping the article would provide divine
insight, unfortunately the recommend solution doesn't really solve the problem
(as I see it).
Whilst 2n array alloc is better than 3n, both are creating short lived memory
objects. Do that in a hot code path and suddenly you've got tremendous garbage
pressure your garbage collector is going to choke on.
One can optimise this by calculating results into a cached array, but that
creates opportunities for bugs (results of previous caches persisting). I
would dearly love to see a solution that allows me to code in a functional
style without sacrificing performance.
~~~
strictfp
Arena style allocation helps. You still get the allocations, but GC is cheap.
IMO both Java and the CLR are in desperate need of multiple heaps with
separate GCs to solve these problems. One big heap simply doesn't scale well.
Erlang is the only example I know of that does this right. I know that the
golang GC is low-latency, but I'm not familiar with if it can sustain high
allocation rates.
~~~
lostcolony
Nope.
Golang still uses one global heap; it just allows for stack based allocation
in situations it can do it (avoiding putting stuff on the global heap), so
copies _can_ be cheap re: GC.
~~~
jen20
The CLR also allows stack allocation, and many of the newer .NET Core
libraries have been built with a focus on eliminating unnecessary allocations.
~~~
WorldMaker
Some of the biggest of .NET Core's advances in stack allocation (and resulting
performance boosts) likely won't make it into Unity until around the release
of .NET 5, though. It should be interesting to see how Unity adapts when the
tools show up.
------
perfunctory
> But mutation is a cognitive burden: you need to think much harder about what
> your code is doing.
One way to alleviate the problem is to use naming convention.
normalize(a) # mutates in place. note: no return value.
b = normalized(a) # no mutation. returns a new instance. note the adjective.
Python does this in the standard library
a.sort()
b = sorted(a)
~~~
kburman
I like how ruby way of declaration if a method does mutate object or not but a
exclamation mark at end to tell it modifies the object
a = a.sort or a.sort!
~~~
jonnycomputer
I like the idea of adding an exclamation or some other mark to the individual
parameters in the method declaration since a method might mutate some but not
all parameters.
------
mrkeen
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned Haskell's ST library yet. It hits this
exact use-case, and comes with some pretty sweet safeguards from the type
system.
[https://wiki.haskell.org/Monad/ST](https://wiki.haskell.org/Monad/ST)
It allows you mutate arrays and other stuff "on the inside" like this article
suggests, but it's also able to wrap up the operation so it appears pure from
the outside, so the caller doesn't have to guess or rely on naming conventions
to figure out the mutability.
It's your choice on whether you want to do the copy on the way in ('thawing'),
on the way out ('freezing'), or both, by using the 'in-place' variants of thaw
and freeze.
~~~
pwm
Exactly. The only problem is that you need a language with a sufficiently
powerful type system that can express both phantom and existential types.
~~~
chii
> The only problem is that you need a language with a sufficiently powerful
> type system
why is that a problem?
~~~
skosch
Because everyone and their grandma can whip up a quick Python script after a
few days of practice, whereas learning Haskell is a much bigger investment?
------
xg15
This seems like a problem that would be suited for an optimizing compiler.
You could imagine some hypothetical language in which _all_ objects are
immutable, as far as the programmer is concerned - however the compiler is
allowed to reuse objects behind the scenes if there is provably no way that a
side-effect could be introduced.
E.g., in such a language, the first variant would be the only legal form to
write the normalizing function:
low = array1.min()
high = array1.max()
array2 = array1 - low
array3 = array2 / (high - low)
return array3
However, this could be safely turned into the following during compilation:
low = array1.min()
high = array1.max()
array2 = array1 - low
array2 /= (high - low)
return array2
... because array2 is not visible outside the function and therefore could not
cause side-effects.
~~~
zzzeek
it is theoretically possible that a library like numpy or pandas could do this
directly. That is, if you take each of these transformation operations and
store them, but not actually run them until needed, that is, when someone
accesses the individual array values, you only need to make one copy and there
is no impact on the programmer to have to worry about this.
I was doing something similar for SQLAlchemy recently. SQLAlchemy is all about
capturing Python operators and operands into data structures that represent
intent which can be invoked later.
edit: here is a demonstration:
[https://gist.github.com/zzzeek/caa4a7ed94f326fbbc031acecb9d7...](https://gist.github.com/zzzeek/caa4a7ed94f326fbbc031acecb9d7a44)
edit edit: it is actually possible with numpy by using the Dask library:
[https://dask.org/](https://dask.org/)
~~~
masklinn
The problem with the library doing this is you end up with the same issue as
in Haskell: you accumulate thunks and both memory use and location of CPU
hotspots becomes much harder to predict and troubleshoot.
~~~
zzzeek
so...turn off the "thunking" feature while you are debugging.
~~~
JeremyBanks
That won't help when you're debugging the performance implications of
thunking.
~~~
zzzeek
compare memory / callcounts / time spent with thunking turned on vs. off would
give a good idea of it.
i can say for my side of things thunking is a _super_ huge performance gain as
it allows for quick gathering of expression intent and then the computation
side on the other side of a cache.
------
cultureswitch
This is rather dumb. The only reason there is an intermediate array in the
original copy-based code is because the normalization is badly written. After
you obtain max and min, normalization is a single map() function, not two.
As for the overall problem: always choose immutability and then make it faster
by first taking advantage of optimization patterns that immutability allows
you to use safely. In a case like this, doing the normalization lazily is what
springs to mind.
If memory allocation and de-allocation is an issue, use more explicit memory
management. Though by experience it is rarely the actual problem. There's
basically no chance that it is an issue here, Python interpreters aren't
stupid enough to give back memory to the OS immediately after a variable falls
out of scope.
~~~
markus92
Do you have any links to some examples or help on how to do this exactly?
Reason being that in our group we have a ton of normalization code that looks
_exactly_ like the 'bad' example from this post. As we use relatively large
datasets (4D MRI images), memory is a bit scarce...
~~~
naveen99
Pytorch has a built in normalize function:
[https://pytorch.org/docs/master/_modules/torchvision/transfo...](https://pytorch.org/docs/master/_modules/torchvision/transforms/functional.html#normalize)
It just subtracts the mean and divides by standard deviation, both in place.
------
nayuki
How I would summarize the article is that mutation should be confined to
internal objects that have not been published yet or are temporaries that are
thrown away.
Theoretically, you can make every API mutate data. If the user didn't want to
mutate data, they can explicitly make a copy first. Whereas if there only
exists an immutable API to return new objects, then it's hard or impossible to
get the benefits of mutating in place.
As far as I know, only Rust, C++, and C give support at the type-checking
level to denote which functions will modify the interior of their arguments.
This way, you can distinguish behaviors easily - for example in Rust:
impl Vector {
// The method reads this current vector and returns a new one.
pub fn normalize(&self) -> Vector { ... }
// The method reads and modifies this current vector in place.
pub fn normalize(&mut self) { ... }
}
The article gave this subtly flawed example in Python:
def normalize_in_place(array: numpy.ndarray):
low = array.min()
high = array.max()
array -= low
array /= high - low
def visualize(array: numpy.ndarray):
normalize_in_place(array)
plot_graph(array)
data = generate_data()
if DEBUG_MODE:
visualize(data)
do_something(data)
In Rust, it would be a type error because visualize() takes a reference but
normalize_in_place() takes a mutable reference:
fn normalize_in_place(array: &mut numpy::ndarray) {
let low = array.min();
let high = array.max();
array -= low;
array /= high - low;
}
fn visualize(array: &numpy::ndarray) {
normalize_in_place(array); // ERROR
plot_graph(array);
}
let data: numpy::ndarray = generate_data();
if DEBUG_MODE {
visualize(&data);
}
do_something(&data);
~~~
masklinn
> As far as I know, only Rust, C++, and C give support at the type-checking
> level to denote which functions will modify the interior of their arguments.
1\. C and C++ allow casting away constness, which may or may not be UB
depending how the parameter is defined
2\. Swift also provides this ability to an extent: _struct_ parameters have to
be flagged `inout` to be mutable
I'm sure there are others.
~~~
nwallin
Rust can throw away constness in unsafe blocks, which carries the same caveat
emptor that const_cast carries.
~~~
steveklabnik
Only in certain circumstances, though.
------
benibela
That is how strings work in Delphi/Pascal.
All strings have a reference count. When you change a string, and the ref
count is not one, it is copied before the change. If the ref count is one, it
is not copied
------
capableweb
Seems like "both libraries make copies of the data, which means you’re using
even more RAM." is a assumption (that copy data leads to more RAM usage) and
I'm guessing the libraries (haven't used them myself, nor python, so not sure
how feasible this is) can be implemented like a persistent data structure
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure))
and therefore get both immutability (which leads to less bugs, no mutability)
and not that high RAM usage. Clojure is a famous example of something that
implements persistent data structures.
~~~
perfunctory
> can be implemented like a persistent data structure
you don't get much benefit from persistent structures if every element of an
array is modified, like in the examples in the post.
~~~
pipeep
If the data structure has a reference count of one, you can safely mutate the
data structure instead. Many persistent immutable data structure libraries use
this as an additional optimization.
------
anaphor
There are also data structures such as zippers which are immutable but
minimize the amount of data you need to copy, at the cost of potentially using
more space overall. Zippers are cool because they can be generalized to many
different types of data structures as long as they can be expressed as
algebraic data types.
------
jackcviers3
If your language allows mutation:
1\. Immutable first. 2\. Data structures should use partial copying [1]. 3\.
Data structures should be lazy by default. 4\. When you've profiled a
bottleneck, and identified memory allocation and copying as the bottleneck
culprit, then use a mutable data structure internal to the operation (copy
your lazy immutable data structure once into the mutable one, taking only the
portion of your lazy structure that you need, operate on the mutable structure
in place, then return an immutable, lazy copy of that structure out of your
operation.
This will isolate the need for mutation reasoning to performance critical
parts of your application/library, and let you still reason about the rest of
your program with referential integrity, while avoiding performance
bottlenecks.
Never use a mutable structure in a mutable reference at the same time. You
don't need both.
1\.
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Purely-
Functional-Structures-Chris-Okasaki-
ebook/dp/B00AKE1V04&ved=2ahUKEwjb9YfGk_nmAhXULc0KHYaRAw0QFjAXegQIBBAH&usg=AOvVaw2G1ZviAl6c7fVGecHERvwq)
------
alexhutcheson
In other languages this is less of an issue, because function signatures can
include information about whether the argument can be modified or not. For
example, in C++:
// Definitely doesn't modify 'array', because 'array' is copied.
vector<int> Normalize(vector<int> array);
// Almost certainly doesn't modify 'array'.
vector<int> Normalize(const vector<int>& array);
// Probably *does* modify 'array' (otherwise author would have used
// const reference instead of pointer.)
void Normalize(vector<int>* array);
In Python every function uses the 3rd approach, so you have to signal to the
user in some other way whether the argument will be modified or not. In Ruby
and some other languages the convention is to append "!" to the function name,
but in Python most people seem to just mention it in the docstring.
~~~
pansa
There is some convention in Python - for example `reverse` and `sort` are
mutating, whereas `reversed` and `sorted` are not.
However, I don’t know if there is a good reason why the mutating versions are
methods and the non-mutating ones are standalone functions.
------
333c
Why does this blog post have a recaptcha?
In addition, I just finished reading the Rust book last night, and I don't
believe this is what interior mutability is (at least as used in Rust).
~~~
nhumrich
I see no recaptcha.
~~~
333c
Here's a screenshot:
[https://i.imgur.com/a/84Hb9Jq.png](https://i.imgur.com/a/84Hb9Jq.png)
------
perfunctory
> To reduce memory usage, you can use in-place operations like +=
btw, I think it's a design flaw in python that `a += b` is not always
equivalent to `a = a + b`.
~~~
notduncansmith
As someone who has never used Python seriously I have to ask... why not?
~~~
perfunctory
Because I once learned that `a += b` is just a shortcut for `a = a + b`, just
a syntax sugar. Now I have to constantly remind myself that it's not the case
in python.
edit: I might have misunderstood your question. If you meant "why it's not
equivalent" please see the falkaer's answer.
~~~
im3w1l
They aren't equivalent in C++ either.
~~~
perfunctory
My C++ is a bit rusty. Does it manifest itself in the standard library as
well? The problem with python (in my view) is that this behaviour is
implemented in the standard library and therefor propagates to the 3rd-party
libraries by convention.
~~~
zabzonk
> Does it manifest itself in the standard library as well?
Yes. For example for std::string `a = a + b;` will (at least notionally)
create a temporary string and then use the assignment operator. `a += b;` will
not do this.
------
drej
The problem and solution are broadly fine, but having done a bit of
performance critical work, I usually dislike when a function allocates without
a) me asking, b) me having the option to tell it not to.
I like passing in pre-allocated containers to house the results of my
computation. That way I have not only predictable memory consumption, but I
can also avoid costly allocation (and de-allocation) in tight loops. Having
worked with Go a bit, there were times when I used this (like passing in byte
slices to readers), but oftentimes you couldn't just tell a function not to
allocate (which it did for safety), because you and only you knew it'd be safe
to modify the structure in place.
The bottom line is that people should not be "always copy/always use pure
functions" or "always use mutable structures, because performance!!!", but be
aware of what the upsides and downsides of each are.
------
nnq
Better pattern is to follow the style of Numpy or Pandas and other libs (that
OP also mentioned, but then failed to apply it in his own examples), _letting
the caller /user of your functions choose, if/when they want better
performance, to opt-in for in-place modification_, like have either:
def normalize(data, inplace=False):
if not inplace:
data = data.copy()
...
or:
def normalize(data, out=None):
if out is None:
out = data.copy()
...
_Please, do follow this pattern for any libraries you release, having value-
semantics-by-default to prevent shooting yourself in the foot + opt-in in-
place mutation option for better memory performance is the right thing, and it
's quite easy too with Python, Numpy and Pandas!_
~~~
ourlordcaffeine
Julia has this as well, functions with a '!' at the end mutate the data,
functions without make a copy.
So you have the functions 'filter' and 'filter!', 'sort' and 'sort!' etc.
------
wbillingsley
Scala's collections API also uses some mutable internal data structures
locally (and temporarily) within some functions that present a pure API.
List[T] is one of the classic immutable data structures, and a List[T] cannot
have its contents modified. But within the prependAll method, it can create a
mutable List factory (ListBuffer) to do its work building the new list that it
will return.
So, if you follow this (contrived) example in your IDE, calling this:
val f = List(4, 5, 6).prependedAll[Int](Array(1, 2, 3))
will take you inside StrictOptimizedSeqOps, which does this:
override def prependedAll[B >: A](prefix: IterableOnce[B]): CC[B] = {
val b = iterableFactory.newBuilder[B]
b ++= prefix
b ++= this
b.result()
}
The mutable data structure doesn't escape the function, so to the caller it
remains referentially transparent.
------
ajuc
There's a 3rd option - keeping a modifications' log and applying them all
destructively on just 1 temporary copy only when the result is needed.
A = normalized(X*b - M*N*k); //creates a pipeline
A.calculate(); //calculates all the stages destructively on the new copy
------
hannofcart
I think one way numerical computation APIs can offer optimizations of this
sort is to expose a chaining API.
For eg:
chain(my_large_array).op1().op2().op3().result()
Using this, the chain() start could copy the input data once, but thereafter
do a series of in place mutations in op1, op2 and op3 to improve performance.
Do numpy APIs provide such facilities?
~~~
pornel
Rust iterators combine like that if the operations are per-element (iter + map
+ collect).
For optimizing complex access patterns you'd need a language like Halide.
------
namelosw
Or just use an immutable language or library and you'll have the best of both
worlds. Unless you're writing an operating system. But the example was given
in Python so I guess it's perfectly fine.
The idea of immutable data structure is just like strings in Java or other
modern languages: it seems like a reference type but works like a
value/primitive type. It maintains a constant pool that all "foo"s in the same
virtual machine points to the same reference. For immutable data structures,
they work in the same way.
On top of that, there's more underlying sharing mechanism. For List(1,2,3),
it's actually might sharing the same List(1,2) with List(1,2,4) to minimize
the waste.
------
roywiggins
This seems more like "defensive copying" than "interior mutability" to me.
Ideally you'd have a compiler that could perform optimizing magic to detect
when the copy isn't needed, but that's not going to happen in CPython.
------
kstenerud
This is why you want a two-tiered API: High level and low level. The high
level API chooses a static trade-off in performance, size, etc for the 80%
case, and the low level API gives more explicit control over what's going on.
In this case, you could create the function normalized() for the 80% case, and
normalize_in_place() for users who need to optimize this path (choosing to
take on the extra responsibilities that come with it).
------
vmchale
I think Futhark approaches this with uniqueness types. A bit strange (maybe
that's just me?) but it works well with arrays.
Also it compiles to Python nicely.
------
DarkWiiPlayer
What about lazy evaluation though? That could get the functions 2*A memory
down to just A while still keeping the time O(n)¹
Of course, maybe the author just chose to limit this blog post to this one
solution, but it wouldn't have hurt to at least mention some further
optimizations :)
¹ And some O(1) data like the min and max values of the Array
------
bfield
Specifically on the point about Pandas, last time I checked the inplace flag
did not save any memory. Under the hood, it creates a temporary copy which is
copied back to the original dataframe, and then the temporary gets removed
next garbage collection cycle. If that is no longer the case I would love to
know about it though!
------
blt
Matlab gives you these semantics by default. IMO, it's a big reason why it has
been so successful with non-CS programmers. Mutation is often more intuitive,
but as long as you break your code into functions, you automatically limit the
scope of mutability bugs that can occur.
------
wlib
Isn't this solved perfectly with an affine or linear type-aware optimizing
compiler? Where all data is immutable unless the types prove to the compiler
that there are no mutation conflicts. I believe Rust implements this and Idris
2 does so as well with quantitative type theory.
~~~
masklinn
Rust would be very different and the problem wouldn't exist in the first
place, because the function would signal its behaviour and intent through
taking the parameter by reference, mutable reference or value.
~~~
wlib
That's what I meant
------
IshKebab
This is just a straightforward memory optimisation; nothing to do with
interior mutability.
------
ed_balls
Another option is to have a data structure that you have frozen and then you
unfroze it for the hot path and then freeze it again when you exit it.
------
lsb
Does the Numba JIT do this? This definitely seems like a compiler optimization
that I want to mechanically run on my code
------
pmarreck
Don’t functional data structures basically “diff” data, which is a reasonable
compromise?
------
DrFell
I have been mutating data for decades without any unexpected behavior
gremlins.
------
zackmorris
Another option is for the language's runtime to use copy-on-write (COW):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-on-
write](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-on-write)
So basically every buffer can be made immutable and then only copied when
written to, using something like refcounts and diff trees to internally track
mutations from an immutable parent buffer. Languages like Clojure due this to
manage state. I believe the Redux also does this internally, although I've
only studied it and haven't had a chance to use it professionally.
In practice, this looks like a language where everything is value-based
instead of reference-based.
So like, in C# where you pass objects by reference, a COW language passes
everything by const value. Then an imperative language statically analyzes the
code to detect mutation (my own theory is that this can never be accomplished
with 100% certainty, at least not with a simple implementation). So basically
buffers act like Git instead of byte arrays, creating a new snapshot with
every mutation.
Or functional languages can disallow mutation altogether, or reduce the code
into its most minimal representation and handle mutation at special breaks in
execution (like monads). I'm grossly oversimplifying all of this and probably
using the wrong terminology, but am more than 50% confident that I can derive
what I'm talking about, so will just go with it hah.
I think that the complex imperative implementation I'm talking about is
probably Rust. The simple functional implementation would look like a pure
immutable Lisp running within the Actor model, handling state only through IO,
and dropping monads altogether. The catch being that complex functional code
might have so many breaks in execution that it would practically be happening
on every single line and begin to look like an imperative language with all
its flaws. This is the primary reason why I shy away from impure functional
languages like Haskell, because I don't think they have solved this core issue
of mutation clearly enough (not to mention, I think functional language syntax
is generally write-only and not readable by others or yourself in 6 months
hahah). As far as I'm concerned, this is still an open problem.
In another life, I want to make an imperative language that's primarily
immutable, that uses higher order functions (or better yet, statically
analyzes code for side effects and converts foreach loops into higher order
functions automagically), and transpiles to a purely immutable Lisp. It would
be associative array-based and look like Javascript. The idea being that we
could write code in the human-readable imperative style and let the computer
distill it down to its pure functional equivalent.
~~~
tome
> not to mention, I think functional language syntax is generally write-only
> and not readable by others or yourself in 6 months
This is rather tangential, and sorry to hijack your message to get on my
soapbox, but I and many others who program in Haskell and a dynamic language
(Python in my case) find that Haskell code we've written is _far_ easier to
come back to than code we've written in the dynamic language.
~~~
zackmorris
Ya I tend to agree actually, but in the real world I keep getting scolded for
being too "functional". I think that it might come down to the easy != simple
argument, which the whole CS industry is still grappling with in other areas
as well.
------
londons_explore
Copy on write?
|
{
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}
|
The Code-Free Developer Interview [YouTube] - PretzelFisch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TttMpdihdcw
======
chasingthewind
We used many of the techniques described here at my former employer and they
worked quite well. I recently changed jobs and although the "dig into the
candidate's experience" was used often, the code review and the design
collaboration weren't used much.
One employer had a Codility test which they were then going to follow up with
a psychometric screening that I didn't do because I accepted another offer. I
spent 8+ hours creating a sample app for another firm. In another case I had a
take home challenge that took 4-6 hours followed by a phone screen that
included a live coding exercise...all before the onsite of course. The
opportunity I accepted was actually closest to this...it was heavy on
conversation and discussion, featured a design exercise, and had no live or
offline code test.
Long story short, the approaches were all over the map and while I did very
respectably on all of them and passed on to the next stage in every case, I
definitely felt like the approach described in the video and that I'd used
successfully at my former employer was superior. We never hired someone and
later regretted it. We were always able to get a reasonable sense of their
knowledge and skill from the techniques described here.
------
mabynogy
Good programmers are often autistics. Some can't even have a simple
conversation without stressing a lot. Going to an interview puts already a lot
of pressure on those folks.
A smart recruiter should be able to detect those profiles. It's visible.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
The Shutdown Problem: How Does a Blockchain System End? - gnodar
https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.07254
======
hanniabu
I don't see this as an issue. If the chain is important enough, it will
continue on from usage. If it's not useful enough to keep alive, then why
bother with keeping it alive as a mean of archiving it?
~~~
mathgeek
Because there's a certain critical mass during the descent where 51% attacks
are possible, but coinholders still have value to lose.
~~~
ethbro
Part of the attraction and frustration of blockchains has been their obedience
to the laws of mathematics.
The answer to the stage of a blockchain you mention would seem to be, "If the
blockchain isn't distributed and scaled enough to be resistant to a 51%
attack, is there really any value remaining in it?"
~~~
jerguismi
If 51% attacks begin emerging, the chain still functions. People just need to
require more confirmations. Then you require so many confirmations that the
51% attacks aren't profitable any more.
This kind of chain might become very slow, but still have the same properties
as blockchains do have.
Btw the same thing can be thought has having a block time of 1 min, where de
facto standard is awaiting 10 confirmations, versus just having 10 minute
blocks.
------
benatkin
I remember when I thought FlappyCoin was going to be as big as Dogecoin. Nope!
I wonder what happens with a devalued Altcoin. I read through the article and
the gist seems to be that a 51% attack is possible. I wonder if this has been
pulled off with any that were at one time popular. If I were a flappycoin
millionaire it would bother me if someone had taken my coins even if they had
no monetary value. I imagine some others would be more annoyed than I would
be.
~~~
oconnor663
People have pulled off 51% attacks on altcoins that were arguably popular at
the time, most notably Bitcoin Gold. However, note that a successful 51%
attack doesn't allow the attacker to steal arbitrary balances. What it mainly
allows them to do is to undo their own spending, which they can exploit to
commit fraud on exchanges in the short term.
~~~
kpcyrd
This is the correct threat of a 51% attack, although if the currency is
unpopular enough, had little use and everybody stopped mining, you could
theoretically fork from the genesis block and replace the whole chain as soon
as your fork becomes longer than the original chain.
There is little to gain from attacking a system _that_ unpopular, but you
could "take" everybody's coins in that scenario.
~~~
therein
That's beyond a 51% attack, though. You'd have to have much higher hash rate
than that to catch up to the chaintip from scratch as you mine.
------
esotericn
This isn't a shutdown problem. That's getting the directionality confused.
This is actually the failure mode of most altcoins in the wild. They get
attacked because the consensus was never reliable.
There are still tons out there (easily more than 50% by number) that could be
smashed into oblivion by anyone with a decent amount of money tomorrow.
------
rocqua
Have N self-appointed archivists publish a timestamped record of the
blockchain. Any query can then be based on N of these archivists.
I'd imagine such a record to be: the final block header, and a Merkle tree
root hash of every block using a more time-resistant hashing function. The
Merkle tree root hash prevents rewriting the chain later through brute force.
The actual consensus mechanism has prevented wrong writes.
Timestamping could be done by publishing in newspapers, or in other
blockchains.
The biggest issue comes at the moment 'archiving' is announced. History-
rewrite attacks then suddenly become a lot more valuable, so you'd probably
need to say 'We are archiving the chain as of 100 blocks ago'. This prevents
anyone from mucking with the end of the chain, but comes at the cost of
discarding the last 100 blocks.
------
arcaster
Seems like every blockchain should have a baked in “genesis” procedure and
“felling” procedure (yep, a logging term since you’re “severing” the Merkle
tree) to tie up all sources of new transactions and stumping or “tarring” the
blockchain. Sureley there’s fantastic logging vernacular to draw from to name
the period between the start of a “felling” and the resultant stump.
------
keithtom
1) you could just post the last block ID to an active blockchain or
centralized data store if you must, then anyone can download the blockchain
via a torrent for example and verify the entire chain; this just requires some
trusted data store. If you don’t have one, then you are screwed anyhow and
probably shouldn’t have shut down that blockchain.
2) if there is utility in the blockchain, chances are it won’t shut down.
------
jhoechtl
By consensus?
------
swfsql
> 2\. The elements of the sequence are data blocks that are chained together
> via digital signatures.
This is incorrect. Digital signatures are used when (S) signing a transaction
which must refer some precious transaction with a receiver address
corresponding to the public key which verifies signature S.
Blocks are chained by their headers hashes. There are no keys nor digital
signatures involved here..
~~~
tfha
The generally accepted theoretical / abstract term for a winning block hash is
'dynamic membership multi-party signature'
To call the solution to a block a 'signature' is not incorrect.
~~~
swfsql
Thank you, I wasn't aware that they used the term "signature". Before I have
only seen this term as "digital signature" from pub-key cryptography, so I
think it's confusing to repeat the term for different things (unless there's
some hidden relation that I didn't catch). I mean, it was confusing for me, at
least.
(personal opinion): On the other hand, I don't understand why it's called a
"signature". Pub-key signs are used to prove integrity of some information and
some form of authenticity related to the priv-keys. Block header hashes are
related to integrity of immutable info, but are not related, in any way, to
authenticity. So I still don't find it obvious, nor that it's appropriate,
that it's a "signature".
~~~
tfha
A signature basically says 'someone qualified authorizes this to be valid'.
In the case of a block, the signature happens to prove the
authority/qualification without needing to be connected to a specific
identity.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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|
Google Launches Presentation with help from Zenter & Tonic - wcrosby
http://docs.google.com
Google launched the newest addition to the office family tonight with Google Presentations.
======
staunch
This is great. I'll definitely be a user. I've never been a big fan of
creating Documents or Spreadsheets, but Google Docs has me creating some
useful stuff, now that will include Slides. A very nice addition to my Firefox
OS.
I did find it incongruous to see _"You can start new online documents by
emailing them directly to this email address: <long string>@prod.writely.com"_
Damn it. I want to email upload to The Google, not Writely.
------
dannyv
I saw what Zenter had before, and Presently incorporates little to none of
Zenter's awesomeness. Next version...
~~~
JMiao
I agree. I met Wayne & Robbie at a YC tea (the day after a rehearsal demo,
which I heard they rocked), and immediately fell in love with the way Zenter
actually leveraged the web to make presentation software BETTER.
------
ivankirigin
I love it. I haven't seen the old Zenter, so I'm not sure what to compare it
to. I made and published a presentation, then added a slide. It took a
refresh, but this is why online documents are awesome. You can click send and
publish the doc, and still edit it.
Too bad a loaded presentation requires a refresh to get the updates. The
spreadsheet is really live.
Also, it would be nice to get a web-cam mic input as a presenter.
------
henning
wow. after making a simple presentation with this thing, i don't want to stab
anyone to death the way i do whenever i use PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org (i
always say fuck it and use LaTeX/S5 instead). thanks, google!
~~~
omouse
You really need to try using Apple's KeyNote. I haven't stabbed anyone to
death ever since I discovered it :D
------
paul
Go Zenter!
------
ideas101
It would be interesting to know how Yahoo and MS responds - I wonder someone
like ZOHO is still not yet bought - may be too expensive but definitely to
look forward for as they also have project management (like MS Project) and
CRM tools and apps ...
|
{
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|
Uber Expands Driverless-Car Push with Deal for 24,000 Volvos - prando
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-20/uber-steps-up-driverless-cars-push-with-deal-for-24-000-volvos
======
greenyoda
Extensive discussion a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741019)
------
Fricken
I'm not in Pittsburgh or any of the places where people are taking rides in
Uber's autonomous test vehicles, but from a few YouTube videos it appears they
can't get more than a few blocks in urban traffic without needing human
intervention. They've been at it for about 2.5 years now, not including the
work that was inherited from the CMU robotics department.
I think if a company can program and train an autonomous vehicle to reliably
go 5 or 10 miles in city traffic, then it's an indicator they've got the
genius level problems solved. Safety validation is a whole other ball game,
labour intensive but not super difficult.
A few companies have passed that benchmark. There are others who, in spite of
being ambitious and well-capitalized, and having had a few years to incubate,
appear to be painting by numbers, and don't seem to know what to do when the
instruction manual runs out of instructions.
Talent is the big X factor in this race and not everybody's got it. Do you
think Uber will be ready to receive another 24,000 Volvo's on top of the ~200
they've got somewhere in the 2019/2020 timeframe?
I'm not betting on it.
------
chinathrow
To give some perspective about these numbers: currently there are 13,587
medaillons in NYC alone.
~~~
DeusExMachina
It's hard to compare the numbers though. Autonomous cars work 24/7, so you
definitely need fewer to provide the same coverage as human taxis.
How efficient it will be though, we still don't know.
~~~
DrScump
Medallion cabs (leased by the owner to other drivers) are generally worked all
shifts that fares can be found.
|
{
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|
Not sure you should take that start-up job? Think like an investor - esharef
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/28/not-sure-you-should-take-that-startup-job-think-like-an-investor/
======
scottbartell
One very important part that this strategy seems to ignore is one's passion
towards the startup's vision. I think it's essential to work on something that
you really believe in, and everything else is secondary.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
The NoSQL Hype Curve is Bending - tswicegood
http://phparch.com/2010/12/29/the-nosql-hype-curve-is-bending/
======
latch
Some NoSQL solutions are general purpose, and some aren't. I think the
analysis is accurate for those which aren't (Cassandra), but way off for those
which are.
The advantage of NoSQL for the average folk isn't their speed, but rather it's
their dynamism. This is especially true if you're coding in a static language.
You also gain from the shift to map-reduce vs group by.
There seem to be two other points to the argument. First, someone made a funny
Youtube video (and it was funny!). Second some people failed with NoSQL. Not
especially good arguments.
------
mark_l_watson
The author is an SQL language and MySQL database consultant, and he writes an
article questioning NoSQL. Fair enough, and I agree with his point that
different NoSQL datastores have different strengths and weaknesses and it can
be difficult on a new project to know up front which CAP tradeoffs may be OK
to make (e.g., HBase may have better tuning for faster consistency but
Cassandra is likely easier to set up across different data centers; MongoDB is
very easy to use in simple master slave or replica sets setups if no sharding
is required; etc.)
Personally, I use PostgreSQL and MongoDB for most of my work but make a real
effort keep up to speed on CouchDB (actually, BigCouch is more interesting),
HBase, Cassandra and a few RDF datastores.
------
ibejoeb
I've had a pretty good run at cleaning up after botched database jobs, so
caveat emptor...
Two things:
1\. Most day-to-day problems involve relationships among entities. It's not
stodgy or wrong to use a good RDBMS when that's the problem you're dealing
with.
2\. Many NoSQL adopters wind up building a relational database on top of
something else. That's a fun job, but not everyone can afford to ditch 40
years of R&D and pretend they've invented something. I think a lot of the
allure in implementing these solutions comes the hype, promise of a silver
bullet-like solution, and the opportunity to dabble the intricacies of
creating a database.
~~~
yrb
You could also arge that adopters 'sql style RDBMS' end up building a NoSQL
datastore.
If you find you are using a lot of EAV, polymorphic associations, multicolumn
attributes, trees, graphs it might be a better option to go down one the on of
the many NoSQL routes. Key/Value, Column Stores, Document and Graph databases.
Sometimes you can make huge gains in design simplicity because you persistance
and/or queries map far more cleanly.
An interesting example of "NoSQL" on top of an "RDBMS" is Salesforce [1].
A huge upside to RDBMS in my view is that they are 'well understood' in
production, and operations know how to deal with them.
It is a big design space out there, and you can make a lot of tradeoffs :)
[1] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/SalesForce-Multi-
Tenant-A...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/SalesForce-Multi-Tenant-
Architecture-Craig-Weissman)
------
jamesbritt
Does attention and interest == hype?
I've seen many articles about NoSQL, but few that insisted it was the shit and
the True Path for all development.
Mostly the articles explained what this or that DB was, or how this or that
company solved a problem using some NoSQL tool.
It's new (for many people), interesting, and worth talking about.
If anything seems over-inflated to the point of hype, it's the idea that
there's all this hype about NoSQL.
~~~
catshirt
to answer your question: true
------
seanmcq
One of the biggest costs of a NoSQL solution in an early-stage startup: what's
hot today may be abandoned by everyone else by the time you're a real company,
leaving lots of effort inventing clever solutions to novel problems created
entirely by your data.
It's much more feasible to start with a solid database and add caching for hot
data than it is to try to build a company and a brand new database technology
at the same time.
------
gabrtv
I took me 3 months or so to finally grok CouchDB map/reduce queries. Now that
I've seen the light, I'm not sure I'll go back to an RDBMS any time soon -- at
least not for bread and butter webdev.
"...You must know what will be the questions that you will be asking upfront."
Even in SQL land you need to know your queries in advance. Sure you can do
table scans on unindexed fields, but you're going to crush i/o.
With Couch you can always deploy new views during a maintenance window for
queries you didn't anticipate. Same thing with adding indexes in an RDBMS to
handle unanticipated/slow queries.
At least with Couch I know that my queries are more-or-less pre-computed in
B-trees. I know I'm not scanning the same tables over and over.
Moreover, if you know what you're doing wrapping conflict handling around
Couch's MVCC is straightforward.. and you get all the benefits of offline
replication.
In my case, I've built a service that calculates utility-style usage based off
Couch range queries that are reduced into a cost calculation. Given any date
range I can reduce a utility fee an order of magnitude faster than I could in
SQL land.
YMMV, etc.. but I'd say this is a case of "haters gonna hate".
------
michaelchisari
It seems contradictory, since startups thrive on making radical departures
from the status quo, but I think there's a strong case to be made to build
your foundation (the stuff nobody sees, but plugs along silently in the
background) on tried and true technologies, as opposed to the hot new thing.
Of course, in 5-10 years, some NoSQL solutions will be the tried and true
tech, and we'll be arguing whether DoublePluSQL is really worth all the hype
it's been getting.
~~~
neilk
> startups thrive on making radical departures from the status quo
Meanwhile, Pinboard.in quietly sucks up the Delicious community, using
technology that's as dishwater-dull as possible.
Delicious itself is floundering, due to (among many other things) a
problematic migration to a framework that was internally marketed as the sexy
new thing. That framework wasn't NoSQL at all (quite the opposite) but the
point stands that the cost of new frameworks can be dear.
~~~
zeemonkee
Do you have any reference for this ? Delicious' problems as far as I've read
anywhere are due to Yahoo's cutbacks, plus having to integrate with Yahoo
services, making it hard to break off and sell to another company. However
I've not heard about any specific technical issues with Delicious itself.
~~~
neilk
I worked one floor away and have friends who worked on Delicious. Generally
they haven't talked about this, so I don't think I should. Plus I'm getting a
bit tired of all the TC "scoops" that come out of all of this bitching in
public.
------
jforman
This is a terrible article. His three main points:
1\. "You find yourself writing lots of code to reinvent the wheels that SQL
gives you for free, and before long you’ve unwittingly reinvented the
relational database."
NoSQL came about because people were sharding their data and managing
relationships outside of the data layer in custom code anyway, and they were
well-served by putting some of that complexity back into the data layer. This
wasn't a trend because people don't understand the mathematical beauty of
normal forms. This was a trend because altering the schema of a heavily
accessed MySQL table will bring your website down.
2\. Digg
A Digg engineer on Quora recently said, "The whole 'Cassandra to blame' thing
is 100% a result of folks clinging on to the NoSQL vs SQL thing. It's a red
herring." ([http://www.quora.com/Is-Cassandra-to-blame-for-
Digg-v4s-tech...](http://www.quora.com/Is-Cassandra-to-blame-for-
Digg-v4s-technical-failures)). Yup.
3\. The MongoDB is Web Scale video
...really?
------
fleitz
The irony is that most of the arguments for NoSQL have nothing to do with SQL
itself and everything to do with the underlying storage mechanism and ACID
semantics. A more accurate acronym would be NoB-tree or NoACID.
~~~
gregschlom
Would you care to elaborate on that?
------
Luyt
This is actually the first time I came across
<http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6995033/>
I have always seen the relational-databases-VS-nosql-databases as a false
dichotomy. I think these systems serve different purposes. I use
MySQL+memcache for a site now, but I'd have no hesitation to use CouchDB for
another site if that's more suited for it. I'd even use them both if that's
beneficial for the webapp.
~~~
Luyt
And the followup: "MySQL is not ACID-compliant",
<http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7091415/>
------
DrStalker
NoSQL is a terrible name for a technology. Why define it by what it isn't,
instead of what it is?
I've pretty much ignored NoSQL because of this, and because I haven't had any
data storage problems that aren't easily solved with either a relational
database or LDAP.
------
p_nathan
A chap named Brooks wrote an article a long time ago that went by the name "No
Silver Bullet".
Sorta sad how the world keeps looking for the silver bullet to slay the
vampires of software. You'd think by now we'd know...
------
linuxhansl
Yep... I never quite bought the NoSQL hype.
The only valid point was to relax some of the guarantees (like consistency) in
order to achieve better scalability.
In the end once cannot escape the CAP theorem
([http://www.julianbrowne.com/article/viewer/brewers-cap-
theor...](http://www.julianbrowne.com/article/viewer/brewers-cap-theorem))
~~~
ethangunderson
Is there a NoSQL database that claims that? I don't know of one. Rather, they
attempt to implement different facets of CAP. Also, the CAP theorem, as it
stands, is showing its age, Brewer himself has said it needs to be updated.
------
Charuru
I'm one of those who dove head first into NoSQL primarily because of hype.
I've learned better. Relational is now my default, and I identify specific
cases, specific tables that I know for sure won't need complex querying, and
move those to NoSQL.
Though the end effect is that NoSQL still stores 60+% of my data.
|
{
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Tynt’s Chief Operating Officer Talks About Privacy - domino
http://www.tynt.com/tynts-chief-operating-officer-talks-about-privacy/
======
timdoug
timdoug offers one-line opt-out (in /etc/hosts):
127.0.0.1 tcr.tynt.com
...and this is cross-browser and doesn't disappear when I clear my cookies.
~~~
jamesbritt
BTW, are there any advantages to either that or
0.0.0.0 tcr.tynt.com
?
~~~
bonsaitree
No. They're both "reserved" loop-back addresses, but 127.0.0.1 has more
cultural/conventional weight for this explicit purpose and also avoids any
possible semantic overloads with dotted-quad zero and/or null values.
~~~
jamesbritt
Thanks.
Since I have a local web server running that will respond on 127.0.0.1 I'd
just as soon avoid the overhead of the wasted hit and rendering of the local
page, unless there was some notable value to using that address over all
nulls.
~~~
inklesspen
Your local webserver will likely also respond on 0.0.0.0; if you bind to a
port on 0.0.0.0, you listen on all interfaces, which is the default in apache.
~~~
jamesbritt
Ah, interesting. Thanks.
------
pierrefar
Careful with this line:
_iVillage who have realized 800,000 new visits thanks to Tynt’s link-back
service_
No it's not visits: the linked case study says 800k _links_. Mind you, that's
also very good (from an SEO perspective), but it is a very important detail to
clarify.
------
logic
"WARNING! Tynt Blocker has detected Tynt.com's tracer script in use on this
site."
I can't recommend this Chrome extension enough. :)
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/achmnghbfplhfomh...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/achmnghbfplhfomhiohmojicomlgmkam)
~~~
chrisbolt
Why the need to alert you? To me, that seems just as annoying as Tynt.
~~~
logic
Late reply: yes, it's annoying, but thankfully not many folks seem to have
rolled this out. You receive a single popup for a given domain, confirming
that you want to block tynt for that site; the page is then reloaded, sans
tynt.
There's another extension based on Tynt Blocker (named, creatively, Tynt
Blocker 2) that doesn't ask for confirmation first:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ajefkgbbbikgjalb...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ajefkgbbbikgjalbdibncckphodjfnci)
------
aresant
From a PR review I thought it was clear messaging - understanding but not
apologetic and got me to read their case study - well played tynt, well played
------
spicyj
The opt-out page has been there for weeks; it's nothing new.
|
{
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|
Ask HN: Restream.io but for TikTok? - justanothersys
I really need a way to stream to TikTok from OBS / any RTMP streaming software and seems like the big players in this space don't offer it.
======
phillipseamore
They want users to use their own app. You might get some insight from this
unofficial API though: [https://github.com/szdc/tiktok-
api](https://github.com/szdc/tiktok-api)
~~~
justanothersys
yep saw that, was hoping someone already put it into a product of some kind
~~~
phillipseamore
No one will support TikTok without official support from them. They could
change something one day and a whole lot of work would be for nothing. I also
don't know if that unofficial API would even work, if I'd designed the TikTok
app it would be using a special handshake, tokens or a specific user agent to
enforce only allowing streams from the official app.
------
thepapanoob
as far as i can tell theres really no way to stream to tiktok seems like they
only allow video uploads
|
{
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|
The Original Hacker's Dictionary (1988) - tosbourn
http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html
======
daeken
The modern version of this jargon file is maintained by esr here:
<http://www.catb.org/jargon/>
------
tjr
I stumbled upon the last printed edition of this (ESR's version) at a
bookstore in high school. I had dabbled with programming on and off since
elementary school (back when that was unusual!), but now I was seriously
getting into it.
While almost none of the terms in the book resonated with me as anything I had
heard before, I strongly identified with the cultural aspects described in the
book. I suddenly felt like my ways of thinking about computing, and about the
world in general, were in fact not that strange, but shared by a lot of people
who were into programming.
The book introduced me to many things that I went on to become more involved
with; at least indirectly due to the book: learned LaTeX, Emacs, and Lisp;
studied Knuth, reading carefully until I earned a check; volunteered for GNU,
resulting in working directly with RMS.
As a technical resource, the book is close to useless now. But it was mostly
useless when I encountered it. Maybe there's still some value left in it
somewhere...
------
unimpressive
I'm more interested in what a modern jargon file would look like. (Don't even
dare mention Raymonds version.) It's obvious to me that if you were to start
today, it would make the most sense to start from scratch. You could probably
even find them automatically with a script that searches for non-dictionary
words. Any that show up often enough could be considered for entry into the
new file. [0]
The main issue would be figuring out what counts as a hacker community, and
what communities to grab words from.
[0]: Of course, this wouldn't catch words that have been re-purposed from
their standard dictionary usage.
------
hakaaaaak
The peculiar nouns "-osity" thing was not originally a hacker thing.
Discounting other unnecessary word endings being introduced to the public at
large by the Fonz in Happy Days when he continually added the "-omundo" to the
end of things, the "-osity" type of adjective -> noun mutilation may have been
picked up from surfer/Cali talk, introduced into the mainstream by movies such
as Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Spicoli) and later by Bill and Ted's
Excellent Adventure and Pauli Shore (on MTV and then in really bad movies).
By the same token terms like "barf" and "bogus" were just popular terms in the
very early 80s because of all of the California influence.
Of all of these, the ones that look most familiar for the time that really
have little to do with popular culture of the time were: BITBLT (just because
I remember seeing it and thought "what the hell"), crash (mid to later 80s
when used the first Macs), and down (which wasn't really used much until the
90s, because when you couldn't connect to a BBS or Compuserve, etc. - which
almost was never the case to my memory - you just couldn't connect, and prior
to modems there was no connection- just cassette tapes and eventually floppies
- and no I did not have a card machine :) and I didn't see a minicomputer with
a huge-ass 8 inch floppy until my first network admin job in the 90s).
Basically, the majority of this is "bogus". ;)
~~~
bikenaga
"crash" and "down" go back further than that. I'm looking at my copy of
HoToGAMIT ("How to Get Around MIT") from 1972. In the Appendix there is a
Lexicon of MIT Words, Phrases, Acronyms. The entry for "crash": "(1) To sleep
in a place where one has not paid rent, such as a friend's apartment. (2) To
join a party without being invited. (3) To cease functioning, as in a computer
system."
And the entry for "down": "(1) Feeling depressed. Said of a person. (2) Non-
working, gronked. Said of a machine."
The Lexicon occupies pages 222-232, so it isn't very long, and most of the
entries are MIT-specific (such as acronyms for organizations). But there are
some entries (like the one for "hack") which occur in the Hacker's Dictionary.
HoToGAMIT was published by the Tech Community Association, and was distributed
to incoming freshmen.
~~~
hakaaaaak
Nice! Was just talking about my own personal experience. I'm sure that people
that delt with mainframes talked about them being "down" when terminals
weren't working. In the mid 90s I remember talking with my parents and them
not knowing what a server was, but by ~2001 my dad at least probably knew
about a website being "down".
------
wuest
I see a lot of the person who got me into programming in this original copy.
The SNR of this document is favorable when compared to that of the currently
maintained version, to my sensitibilities.
------
kennedysgarage
Always interested to see what domains are available in any old dictionary. I
didn't see anything that I cared for, have at it:
chinenual.com
connectorconspiracy.com
doprotocol.com
fenceposterror.com
glasstty.com
hardwarily.com
linestarve.com
munchingsquares.com
pessimizingcompiler.com
realworldthe.com
rightthingthe.com
shiftleftrightlogical.com
smokingclover.com
softwarerot.com
waterbottlesoccer.com
yu-shiangwholefish.com
------
lmm
Meh. A record that doesn't evolve is dead; ESR gets a lot of criticism for his
stewardship but I'll take a Jargon File that updates over one that doesn't any
day
~~~
jsqr
The site maintainer for the 1988 verion, Paul Dourish, gives a counterargument
in his preface ('...Unfortunately, in the process, [Raymond] essentially
destroyed what held it together, in various ways: first, by changing its
emphasis from Lisp-based to UNIX-based (blithely ignoring the distinctly anti-
UNIX aspects of the LISP culture celebrated in the original); second, by
watering down what was otherwise the fairly undiluted record of a single
cultural group through this kind of mixing; and third, by adding in all sorts
of terms which are "jargon" only in the sense that they're technical...'). At
the very least, the 1988 version is livelier.
For more amusing grumpiness, see The Unix Hater's Handbook:
<http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf>
~~~
jcd748
I'm torn, because while ESR did add a lot of emphasis on Unix/C culture (which
is very important in hacker history), the last five or ten years he's really
taken it off the rails, adding terms from war blogging and other sources that
really have nothing to do with hacking at all.
~~~
WalterGR
_...he's really taken it off the rails, adding terms from war blogging and
other sources that really have nothing to do with hacking at all._
And terms of his own devising that haven't caught on. That seems like the
cardinal sin of a lexicographer.
------
mseepgood
There are people who haven't heard of the Jargon File?
~~~
bcantrill
A part of me has this initial reaction as well: "Who has not heard of the
Jargon File?!" But then I remember that there was a time once (long ago now)
when I hadn't heard of it either -- and I remember my own delight in
discovering and inhaling it. At the risk of sounding patronizing, discovering
the Jargon File is practically a rite of passage for nerdy youth. So to anyone
reading the Jargon File for the first time: enjoy it, and (as long as you're
learning about our shared history and culture) take a moment to also read the
Story of Mel, the Last Real Programmer.[1]
[1] <http://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html>
~~~
joezydeco
Same here - I discovered it in 1991 by buying the paperback edition from MIT
Press. I still thumb through it from time to time (I'd say it's good bathroom
reading but I don't want my wife to flag it).
It's a wonderful pre-Internet artifact that I love having. I really don't care
about updates or active-vs-printed stuff.
------
zdw
I particularly enjoyed the entry on Tail Recursion.
~~~
derefr
I imagine a modern version would have an entry for Tail-Call Optimization that
used history.replaceState().
|
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Ask HN: What Unix tools are unfarily ignored, in your opinion? - znpy
So last week there was this thread about GNU Expect.<p>I can tell, a tool i recently discovered is GNU info and info-based documentation. Way better than manpages, more thorough, more easily browseable.<p>Wha tool do you think is unfairly ignored or underappreciated ?
======
dozzie
My suggestion is maybe not a _tool_ that is ignored, but vast majority of its
_options_ : /bin/ps from procps (Linux-specific).
I constantly see people blindly typing `ps aux', `ps eax', or `ps -Af' and
_grepping through_ the results. This is stupid. ps has so many process
selection options, including command name (I regularly use -u, -C, -p, --ppid,
and -t).
The other aspect is its output formatting. Again, so many fields can be
chosen, fine-tuned for either ease of processing or displaying on the screen,
but people tend to stick to `x' or `-f' formats for no good reason at all,
relying instead on text processing after ps has done its job.
------
wernsey
I think Awk is really underappreciated these days.
It is available everywhere so no need to install or configure it, and the
language is so compact you can keep most in your head and not need to .
Even though it is marketed as a language for text processing, it is very
flexible. I even finished a lot of Project Euler questions with it.
~~~
a-saleh
Any good resources for learning it?
I keep hearing good things about this little language.
~~~
dozzie
Honestly, `man awk' (or `man gawk') is good enough not to need anything else.
I learned awk this way over a decade ago.
------
stephenr
In the web world, make is effectively unheard of, or considered "too hard to
use", and thus we end up with dozens of nodejs based build tools that
constantly replace each other.
I think static site gen is probably another area where make could be quite
useful.
~~~
flukus
This predates nodejs, every ecosystem has been re-implementing make, poorly.
Java has ant/maven/gradle, .net has nant/msbuild/psake. Ruby and python have
their own. I wrote a post recently about using make with higher level
languages (TLDR- it's much more simpler and more concise than it's
"successors"):
[http://flukus.github.io/2016/11/30/2016_11_30_Rediscovering-...](http://flukus.github.io/2016/11/30/2016_11_30_Rediscovering-
Make/)
~~~
stephenr
That is true, but I feel like it's exposed to a broader audience in the front-
end dev world: you can be a backend dev in whatever language you like and
you've probably worked on a project where a front end dev has introduced some
ridiculously complex build system for css files.
This is literally the comment I was given by a dev who was continuing someone
else's work, about how the front end assets needed to be built:
i) install npm
ii) install grunt globally (npm install -g grunt)
iii) install bower globally (npm install -g bower)
iv) install bower packages (bower install)
v) install npm packages (npm install)
vi) run grunt
------
theonemind
I'd say perl, but you could debate whether "ignored" really describes it.
Something in that neighborhood (perhaps under-appreciated) does. I see people
doing a lot of ugly shell pipelines and contortions with sed, awk, and bash
that perl can do easier. Perl runs everywhere, usually already installed along
sed/awk and friends, runs comparatively fast for a dynamic scripting language,
has great documentation, and chews up and spits out the problem domain of sed,
awk, and bash. It has the same command line switches on OS X, Linux, BSD, and
even Windows.
------
stevekemp
The post was "A Surprisingly Underappreciated Unix Automation Tool":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13130218)
------
CalChris
Spell checkers.
------
db48x
tac
|
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From Disco to Techno, He’s Seen It on Sugar Hill’s Dance Floor - mykowebhn
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/arts/music/sugar-hill-brooklyn-eddie-freeman.html
======
kwindla
Sugar Hill is such an evocative name.
There are quite a few neighborhoods and towns named Sugar Hill around the
country. Most of them (all of them?) perhaps named as either a descriptive or
hopeful reference to the possibility of a post-emancipation "sweet life" for
black Americans.
Sugar Hill Records takes its name from the Harlem Sugar Hill, rather than this
article's Brooklyn-via-North-Carolina Sugar Hill.
------
RickJWagner
Ah, new realization!
When I was in high school in the 80s, one of the most popular songs on the
local mixed-tapes was an early rap song-- 'The Sugar Hill Gang'. I expect this
is where the song got it's name.
That music still takes me back to good times.
~~~
bitwize
Apparently the Sugar Hill Gang were named for a different Sugar Hill, per
another comment on this article. Good eye though -- the Sugar Hill Gang were
the first hip-hop act to make a record that had widespread commercial success.
------
dstick
Open since 1979! That’s fantastic considering the business a club is in. Major
kudos to Freeman staying relevant for so long. Turning down 15 million -
that’s passion :)
------
syndacks
I actually met this guy at one of the said "techno" parties a few years ago. I
was sitting at the bar and all of a sudden he just started talking to me. We
chatted for a while before he mentioned he owned the joint.
A real nice guy. His philosophy was "back then, I bought real estate instead
of investing in my company's stock...[but NYC is expensive AF now so good luck
doing that!]"
Also, the article implicitly suggests (while still playing identity politics,
as NYT just can't help), that gentrification revitalized his club.
~~~
xrd
Isn't a comment about an entity or author playing identity politics in itself
identity politics as well?
|
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How Apple’s Transcendent Chihuahua Killed the Revolution - bootload
http://blog.longreads.com/2015/06/16/how-apples-transcendent-chihuahua-killed-the-revolution/
======
swombat
Sorry to be so critical, but this article really feels like it's trying to
hard to make some elaborate point. It's seems kind of like a long bitching
session about modern technology that somehow manages to blame everything on
Apple (because that's a popular target, I guess). Or maybe it changes target
halfway through - I don't know, after about 5 minutes of reading I started
skimming.
I think the eventual point is that we are so busy with Apple's gadgets that we
don't have the time to consider whether the world is going the way we want.
If so, again that's a cheap shot at Apple, who's hardly the main driver or
benefactor of modern society's obsession with vacuous and constant
entertainment over substance.
Apple didn't kill the revolution (if the revolution has indeed been killed).
Society killed the revolution. We're heading for a Brave New World type
society of sated indifference, and most people seem to be ok with that (even
though a few vigorously disagree). That's hardly something to lay at Apple's
feet.
~~~
collyw
At the end of the day, there are 3 main players molding a great deal of the
tech world, and Apple is one of them.
------
sambeau
_" Few are excited about the Apple Watch"_
I feel the author has extrapolated his feelings onto the population of the
world. Apple is selling 5-8x as many Watches as it sold iPhones when it
launched.
36-50m excited people is a lot of excited people.
Apple sold 6.1 million first generation iPhone units over five quarters.[1]
Apple is predicted to sell 36-50m Apple watches in its first year[2]
[1] [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/21Apple-Reports-
Firs...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/21Apple-Reports-First-
Quarter-Results.html)
[2][http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-watch-sales-to-
reach-36-milli...](http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-watch-sales-to-
reach-36-million-over-first-12-months-predicts-analyst/)
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Projection is too easy, sadly.
------
cmsj
Well that was pretty miserable.
I sort of feel like the author has entirely surrendered to the ennui he
describes, but he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to tend to his Vine
profile, he doesn't have to accept the implicit delegation of tasks to him by
email.
Particularly in the social media areas, the claimed obligation is really
nothing more than vanity. It doesn't matter in the slightest if I am popular
on Instagram - to attempt such a thing would only be an exercise in self-
gratification.
I also have a fundamental problem with claims of planned obsolescence (all of
the devices that run last year's Apple OS upgrades will run this year's. Talk
to some Apple engineers about how much time they spend trying to make things
work for users on older devices - this is done not for evil reasons, it's done
because they care).
Looking back and panning the original iPhone as being crude and slow seems
somewhat unfair given the vast increases in hardware performance that have
happened since. Yes, the iPhone was pushing the hardware limits in 2007, and
yes it was a primitive product compared to what we have now, but all phones
back then were slow - the difference was that the others were ugly and ill-
conceived, as well as being slow.
It seems very strange to me to claim that the _purpose_ of the iPhone was to
teach us how to accommodate treating a tiny device carefully. The only way to
make a networked, general-purpose computer fit in your pocket, is to make it
the size of your hand, which means it's small, its components are small, its
case is packed tight with hardware, and its input surface is small. If the
author feels this can be fixed, he stands to make a considerable amount of
money, presumably by inventing holographic UIs, or direct brain interfaces.
Otherwise, I will continue to think that the _purpose_ of the iPhone was to
put a computer in my pocket. That it is fragile and needs to be used
precisely, is a necessary compromise for its form factor.
Is it possible to unwittingly make yourself a slave to the technology? Of
course, but it's possible to unwittingly make yourself a slave to almost
anything. I think that is the key failing of this piece, it seeks to place the
technology at the centre of the argument, with Apple standing above us,
herding us into digital stables. Instead, _we_ are at the centre of the
argument. _We_ control how obligated we feel towards any ephemeral, abstract
collection of bytes.
So, delete your Facebook profile and go for a hike. Or, don't. Either way, own
your choice and never submit to ennui. You chose, not someone/something else
:)
------
excitom
Funny how memories of the same event can vary among people. When thinking back
to the original iPhone I remember my business partner saying how it was the
first thing that made her excited about new technology in a long time. I was
skeptical, but became an instant convert the first time I tried it.
~~~
ArkyBeagle
There are a million ways to say "you kids get off my lawn".
I can't imagine there not being a backlash. I personally never lashed in the
first place; I find slab phones tedious and will buy the last flip phone
offered. I don't text; I don't chat; I don't get that much email. My Facebook
feed has become a magazine I trawl through in some imaginary waiting room.
The Chihuahua metaphor works for me. Chihuahua dogs of good character still
challenge the perception of those who think a dog should be on a human scale.
------
blt
this article is extremely overwrought. it's hard to get past the author's
delight in his own cleverness.
anyway, I am getting bored with articles describing how smartphones are
ruining our culture. smartphones are a natural result of digital hardware
development. if apple hadn't released the iPhone someone else would have
gotten there eventually. they are the ultimate computer, the end of the road
for devices that have an LCD screen. the next big step will be something like
a HUD or direct brain interface. meanwhile, annoying quirks and flaws in the
software will recede over time, just like cooperative multitasking and DLL
hell receded from desktop OS's.
I agree that smartphones are damaging our culture. so do many others. what are
we going to do about it? smartphones aren't going away. sadly, it's in the
developer's economic interest to exploit addiction behavior in its users. it
all feels inevitable to me. so I don't care how eloquently you describe the
culture damage, I want to hear your ideas on how to fix it.
------
TazeTSchnitzel
The original iPhone was crude and slow? Was it, now?
I had an iPod touch 2nd gen (nearly identical hardware) back in 2009. It was
wonderful. It may have had 128MB of RAM but unless you jailbroke it, you
really couldn't tell.
------
biomene
What leads someone to change the default black colour of text to grey? Why
would anyone purposefully make the text so hard to read, specially on website
dedicated to long texts?
|
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How to actually ship your side projects - bgnm2000
http://getnashty.com/shipping-projects
======
luxpir
Appreciate the point of view condensed into a one minute read. Reminds me to
a) read less, do more and b) let users broadly dictate and test features.
~~~
bgnm2000
Yea, I think just "doing" is the biggest part of the battle. Because even
though they're side projects, they're still real work, that can take equally
as long.
~~~
luxpir
That's it. But it's easier said than done in most cases - especially with
actual paying work coming in every day. Blocking off a small amount of time
every day takes a real big effort when all of the ground work is done and
you're at the polishing stages.
|
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|
BitHub = Bitcoin + GitHub. An experiment in funding privacy OSS - chilgart
https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/
======
yan
This is very cool, but my initial reaction was "this is amazing" to a
misunderstood model of what this is.
This is: Create a pool of btc, distribute to those who commit to current
round.
What I thought this is: Anyone can tip on individual commits that they find
useful or of exceptionally high quality, akin to Reddit Gold for code. This
way, not all commits are treated equally and great commits can be compensated.
To further the reddit gold analogy, this can tip for premium features (i.e.
tip some btc or usd for a month of free github premium) or just straight out
money.
I realize there's gittip, but this is on the level of commits, not developers.
~~~
madcat123
Sure, except that tippers (users) are not likely to be in position to judge
the quality of a commit, nor really want to wade through hundreds of commits
to decide which ones might be worth spending money on, and for the most part,
just want to support the development of the project rather than micro-manage
it. It's a nice ideal us developers can dream of, but the model implemented
BitHub is just easier to use.
To use a restaurant analogy, a shared tip jar that gets split evenly at the
end of the night results in much fairer distribution (and includes the chef
and cashier as well) as opposed to personalized tips which get unfairly /
unevenly distributed between waiters. Most people tip because of the full
service, from ambiance to service and cooking, not just the front-man
performance.
And you can still always ways to tip individuals developers (or waitresses)
personally if you so wish.
~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Perhaps this would create an incentive for contributors to better explain the
significance of their changes in their commit messages. Whether or not this
would be a positive effect is up for debate.
------
gkoberger
My gut instinct was "this is perfect". However, sferik says it's made
maintaining his repo much, much harder:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882374)
(SFErik had nothing to do with the bitcoin stuff; someone else put up the
money and started it for his repo.)
~~~
moxie
Our hypothesis with this project is that any commit, even a "fluff commit," is
better than no commit, and that the overhead of trying to build a more complex
accounting model is higher than the cost of paying out 2% for "fluff."
Basically, worse is better.
But, we could be wrong! We'll see.
~~~
diminoten
I actually think your attitude is the right one to have for this kind of
experiment. We can pontificate endlessly on what people might do, how people
might exploit such a system, but I'm of the (possibly naive) opinion that just
because a person can, doesn't mean a person will.
I suspect that, despite the _potential_ for abuse, you won't actually see very
much actual abuse.
~~~
Nzen
Alternatively, it may influence commit behavior. People may not want to be
accused of filing fluff commits & slow their contributions to accumulate
'enough' changes to justify the payout.
~~~
conroy
We added a FREEBIE keyword today for commits that are small enough the author
doesn't think they should get a reward.
------
munificent
This seems like a _terrible_ idea to me. I believe the entire world of open
source functions based on intrinsic motivation: people participate because the
act of participation itself is enjoyable. This has some flaws (less fun stuff
like docs don't get as much love), but unlocks a _huge_ pool of untapped
motivation in people.
Studies have shown that if you add in even a small amount of extrinsic
motivation (i.e. pay people) it dramatically affects their perception of
intrinsic reward. In other words, if you pay someone for doing the _exact same
thing_ , the _task becomes less enjoyable_.
If we start throwing cash around, it's going to have a huge impact on the
psychological aspect of open-source, and probably not for the better.
~~~
tedks
>Studies have shown that if you add in even a small amount of extrinsic
motivation (i.e. pay people) it dramatically affects their perception of
intrinsic reward.
These studies are typically set up such that there's no choice; you have kids
(usually) do some activity like drawing for either no reward or extrinsic
reward, and then see how many continue once you remove the extrinsic reward.
There are a lot of possible explanations for this; the one I like the most is
based on self-perception theory, which would predict that once you've accepted
the reward, you attribute your motivation to the reward.
There are some differences between those studies and this scenario:
1\. Open-source developers have a far wider range of options, and must
actively choose to work on a project with financial reward.
2\. Open-source developers who have already contributed some amount for free
should be less influenced than new developers -- they already have had
altruistic/intrinsically-motivated self perceptions.
Developers that are attracted to OWS projects because of this reward probably
won't stay if the reward is removed, but I'm not sure, and don't predict, that
OWS projects will attract fewer developers overall because of this.
I think that intrinsic and extrinsic motivators can definitely co-exist,
especially for domains where there are differences in the tasks -- for
example, offering these bounties for "less fun" stuff (or dynamically offering
more for parts of the repo that have been touched further into the past).
~~~
munificent
> These studies are typically set up such that there's no choice; you have
> kids (usually)
There's a lot more literature behind this than just studies with kids, though
I'm a total novice here. Here's[1] a painfully detailed meta-analysis I found.
> Developers that are attracted to OWS projects because of this reward
> probably won't stay if the reward is removed, but I'm not sure, and don't
> predict, that OWS projects will attract fewer developers overall because of
> this.
Reducing this down to just "more or fewer contributors" is the kind of over-
simplifying that I worry about here. The software industry is not historically
people-savvy, and open source is an entirely social phenomenon. It's easy to
mess things up.
I'm less worried about the number of people changing than I am their
relationship with the projects they work on changing. Right now, if I send
someone a patch, I feel good because I know I'm doing a purely good thing. If
I send a patch to a project that pays for patches, that's not _bad_ , but it
means now I feel more like I'm freelancing or some other more complication
jumble of emotions.
Likewise, if someone sends me a patch, do I get excited that they want to be a
part of my project? Have I met a kindred spirit? Or are they just gunning for
a chunk of BTC in their off hours?
I'm not saying introducing money is a bad thing here, but like all other
avenues of social activity, involving even a small amount of money radically
changes the nature of it. Don't believe me? Try tipping your parents after
they have you over for dinner. Maybe leave a fifty on your significant other's
bedside table and see how that goes. :)
[1]:
[http://www.rug.nl/gmw/psychology/research/onderzoek_summersc...](http://www.rug.nl/gmw/psychology/research/onderzoek_summerschool/firststep/content/papers/4.4.pdf)
------
Morgawr
I think this is genius.
Call me naive but this is a really nice idea. Reminds me of flattr except it's
automated. The idea of having bounties to various project issues and setting
up a commit/pull-request payout could be a real incentive for a lot of people
to contribute to actual open source software.
Bitcoin is just the icing, makes this really well integrated and anonymous
too. I can't wait to see where this project leads us to. Maybe an actually
fully decentralized open source employment career?
~~~
mateuszf
One thing I see as a problem here is that anonymity enforces very careful code
reviews focusing on security imlications of the changes.
~~~
matthudson
I think that can be a feature as well.
Also, are the contributors anonymous in the sense that you have no way of
knowing the identity of the contributor? Or, anonymous in the sense that the
contribution originates from a particular pseudonym?
------
VikingCoder
I've got kind of a complicated picture to paint, so please bear with me...
1) Services can be bought with Bitcoin.
2) Github is awesome, but currently it's a totalitarian regime. Anyone with
power can accept a Pull Request. There is no other form of government
possible.
The thought occurred to me that for some kinds of projects, it might make
sense to encode a form of government into the Source Code Repository / Source
Code Review / Account system, itself. And possibly to have the entire thing -
government, source code, data, and the running project itself - be self-
hosting on a cloud server.
Self-hosting is the critical, and very interesting part to me. You pay your
membership dues with BitCoin, and the service pays for its own hosting with
BitCoin. And perhaps that's it - no one else has the keys to the BitCoin
account, no possibility to profit off the service, it just pays for itself as
long as it can, and then shuts down.
You could imagine a direct democracy, of everyone who pays their monthly
membership fee. Or perhaps you gain voting privileges once you've been a
paying member for 3 months in a row. All kinds of parameters could exist, and
a single Community could possibly even modify their own laws, through
something like a Constitutional law process. Maybe if the community is really
successful, the governing body can start paying people with BitCoin to fix
bugs, add features, create new art assets, etc.
There could be separate partitions of government. Like, picture an MMO RPG.
Member for 3 months can vote on engine. Member for 12 months can vote on the
content of the game itself, like where cities go, how much manna a spell
costs, etc. Or maybe you get the right to vote, once you've completed an in-
game quest!
As the code is modified, the service waits for all of the unit tests to pass
before accepting a code change, waits for the government to approve of the
changes, and then does something like restart the server at midnight.
And depending on the licensing, it may be possible for someone else to throw
some BitCoin at a new server, and fork the whole Community, picking slightly
different Constitutional and legal parameters. Over time, people end up with
accounts on systems that have content and laws they like.
I've got a lot more thoughts about such a system, and I hope it comes to exist
some day.
~~~
dustyneuron
I had the same idea, it's great to know I'm not alone :-) I was imagining an
'enforced' democratic website ie the website runs the live code that any user
can submit patches and/or vote on, and no-one has root.
At some point this sort of thing becomes a co-operative business... kind of
big for a side project :-/
Anyway I started a python prototype (see my profile), and would love to bounce
ideas off you!
------
hnha
I have found (small) money to not be a good incentive or motivation for people
to work on FOSS. It might be worth trying for small simple tasks but it really
is a one timer and not benefiting the continuing work and maintaining on the
software on the long run.
------
mike_hearn
Hmm. I took a look at the code and was disappointed to see it's using the
Coinbase API. Hardly decentralised.
Unfortunately it's hard to replace with direct usage of the P2P network
because it relies on sending money to an email address: i.e. a trusted third
party has to hold the money until the recipient picks it up. What if they
never pick it up? What if they don't actually want bitcoins?
It seems to me like a decentralised solution would be easy to code up, if only
we add an additional requirement: someone who wants a payout should put a
Bitcoin address into the pull request or commit description. Then BitHub would
be able to make payouts directly from its own wallet with no Coinbase
dependency, and a committer has to opt-in to receiving the funds.
I might take a look at coding this up soon. BitHub is Java so using bitcoinj
and XChange would be very easy.
------
shazow
As many others in this discussion, I'm not sure whether this will be net
positive or not, but I would try it if I could make the payments per merged
pull request.
Additionally, I would like to provide bonuses for each checked-off item of
1\. Does it have appropriate tests?
2\. Is there appropriate documentation?
3\. Has it been peer-reviewed and signed off? (Reviewer shares this bonus.)
These are the above-bare-minimum things I would like to encourage in my open
source projects. Not everyone has time to go above and beyond when fixing a
bug they encountered, but it's more than appreciated when they do.
In fact, maybe the payments should only be for the bonuses, not the merged PR
itself.
------
ErikRogneby
I wonder how well this would work tied in to the stack exchange model?
~~~
sejje
Now HERE is an interesting idea.
That said, I'm not sure what field to try this on. StackOverflow is damn near
perfect, IMO, in its current state. There are endless high-quality answers,
without rewards.
------
shtylman
IMO bug bounty payouts are a more effective use of funds for a project. Paying
per commit is like paying per line of code. At least with a bug bounty you
(the giver) can specify which particular item interests you. If you want to
donate money to the project as a whole, then it seems easier to just
communicate with the project owner/maintainer and send them funds directly.
------
bdcravens
In the line of worst case scenario that seems to permeate today's world,
GitHub can now become a tool for money laundering. All you need is a few
scripts creating puppet users and repos, and automate shill commits and pull
requests.
------
dmix
I'm going to try this out. I'm a freelancer who wants to contribute front-end
dev/UX/UI to OSS crypto projects but don't have the ability to join a project
full-time. Plus most of my "free" time where I'd normally contribute to OSS,
I'm now writing or maintaining my own projects.
I'm going to dig into WhisperSystems to see if there is anywhere I can
contribute.
Hopefully more OSS apps do this.
It'd be nice if more projects open-sourced their marketing landing pages or
homepage as well. I'd love to be able to do conversion-optimization and
copywriting for OSS projects, instead of just programming.
------
donpdonp
I'm excited about the mix of coding and compensation. As a coder with a strong
open source ethic, I feel there are enough secondary benefits to direct
compensation to justify the potential loss in 'pure' motivation.
The twist I would like to see, which I feel fixes the fluff commit problem, is
to write unit tests associated with a coin bounty. It puts a burden on the
test author to write tests that are not easily gamed, but thats good practice
anyways.
------
j_s
So right now the model is similar to tip4commit, but by running their own
service the model can be changed to whatever works best down the line.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882374)
[http://tip4commit.com/projects/230](http://tip4commit.com/projects/230)
------
jordigh
The problem about handling donations can be given to an external party like
Software Conservancy, the Apache Foundation, or for GNU software, the Free
Software Foundation. We use the last one for GNU Octave.
This seems to me like a better solution for collecting donations, which is a
solved problem.
------
spindritf
You could use the m-of-n feature of Bitcoin where a certain number of people
from a larger group have to agree to a transaction and manage the funds for
the project collectively like that. Whether to set rewards for committers, or
just pay for the new build box.
------
fatbat
I think the idea has potential but would this not encourage users to purposely
commit sparsely?
------
joemocquant
You should take a look at Devcoin (devcoin.org): A crypto-currency specialized
in rewarding open source projects (hardware, software, music, blog posts ...).
The main differentiator here is that 90% of mined coins go directly in
rewards.
------
salient
Moxie are you communicating with the DarkMail guys at all? I'm sure they would
appreciate your input.
------
jnbiche
I think this could work as long as you have very detailed contributor and
style guides.
------
em3rgent0rdr
This is great! I just sent them $100 in BTC! I love what WhisperSystems is
doing!
------
j_s
I look forward to when StackOverflow integrates BitCoin.
------
dlsx
I think you would be better off implementing something easier to use like
dogecoin. The reddit community seems to be adopting it, and it seems much more
reasonable to buy 1000 doge for $1 than .00001 BTC
BTC has a huge problem and the mBTC uBTC just ended up confusing people even
more.
|
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Transformation Priority Premise Applied - Adrock
http://blog.8thlight.com/micah-martin/2012/11/17/transformation-priority-premise-applied.html
======
Adrock
The author walks through the iterative construction of the following Clojure
code for figuring out how to make a specified amount out of coin
denominations:
(defn change-for [amount]
(let [denominations [25 10 5 1]
amounts (reductions #(rem %1 %2) amount denominations)
coins (map #(int (/ %1 %2)) amounts denominations)]
(mapcat #(take %1 (repeat %2)) coins denominations)))
He does it while trying to minimize the "cost" of the code, which is defined
in an interesting way for anyone who mostly writes imperative code.
|
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Show HN: A conversational bot to treat anxiety - superphil0
https://www.pocketcoach.co
======
superphil0
Pocketcoach is a digital therapist that helps you overcome anxiety stress or
panic built on Facebook messenger
~~~
devinplatt
Hi Phil! I like that you are trying to help people with their anxiety and
stress. I think CBT is interesting and as far as I know, CBT is one of the top
recommended approaches today.
I'm curious why you decided to use a chatbot?
~~~
superphil0
Hey Devin, thanks! We really love the feedback so far. the format of
conversational therapy was a perfect fit for a chat bot. Also it's really
simply to to get started, we want to move towards an app eventually.
|
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NASA Technical Standard: Crimping, Cables, Harnesses, and Wiring (2011) [pdf] - GuiA
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/87394.pdf
======
ceequof
Page 50: Hey, that's how you're supposed to use heatshrink! Wow, I've been
doing it wrong for years.
Page 62: Mildly surprised that they don't want crimped connections soldered,
but I suppose that compromises flexibility, and shouldn't add all that much
strength if they're properly crimped.
Page 76: Wow, had never heard of "connector saver" jumpers before. Sounds
bananas, but I suppose if you're going to test everything ten times for every
launch, it's mostly reasonable.
~~~
engi_nerd
I currently work as an aircraft telemetry and instrumentation engineer, and
have also done similar engineering on rockets. So I spend a lot of time
thinking about (and have been trained very thoroughly about) connections and
how to do them.
> Hey, that's how you're supposed to use heatshrink! Wow, I've been doing it
> wrong for years.
Out of curiosity, how have you been doing it? The way shown in this manual is
the standard way to do it in my world.
> Mildly surprised that they don't want crimped connections soldered
I'm confused as to why you would think about soldering a crimped connection.
Properly crimped connections will stand up to a good deal more vibration (and
are pretty much gas-tight, staving off corrosion) than soldered connections.
Plus, crimping is quick and easy with the right tools. Maybe there are some
niche applications where you'd do both. I've never seen it.
> Wow, had never heard of "connector saver" jumpers before. Sounds bananas
Totally not bananas when you look at the spec sheet for something like a
D38999 series connector. Connector savers are a normal thing in the aerospace
world. Most connectors are only rated for a few hundred mate/demate cycles
(Usually 250 or 500). Every time you mate or de-mate a connector you run the
risk of damaging a pin or socket. So the connector savers are sacrificial for
when you test. They get mated to the real connections once at the beginning of
your tests, and demated at the end. Then you give your real connections a
thorough check at the physical level and hook them up.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
_I 'm confused as to why you would think about soldering a crimped connection_
Because most crimped connections (at least in the hobbyist/DIY world) are
_crap_. So after crimping, the only way they hold together is with solder.
There are no applications where this is better. Every connector manufacturer I
know recommends against doing it. You can get away with doing it if you
support the soldered end against vibration, but you should do that anyway.
It's really a training issue. People haven't been taught better and there is a
lot of bad advice floating around hobbyist forums. I have only been using good
crimping tools for the last few years since I started making a product with a
50-conductor harness. Until I spent $200 on a crimping tool and took the time
to research how to make good crimps (Molex has an excellent document), I never
realized how they were supposed to look. Now most of my tools are used,
purchased at auctions of dead companies, but I have $400 crimping tools I paid
pennies on the dollar for. Even so, I normally farm out crimping to a company
that does it with automated machinery, better and faster than I can do by
hand.
~~~
asynchronous13
Most of the crimpers I use are $1000+. I was totally shocked at the expense
when I first switched from home hobby to professional work, but the quality of
the crimps is simply incomparable. Very much worth it for reliability.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I don't think I've seen a manual tool that was so expensive. Are you using
some kind of pneumatic crimper? I thought of getting even better tools, but I
found an outfit that will cut and strip wire to my spec. and crimp on any
contacts I need, and they do it cheaper and faster than I can.
~~~
engi_nerd
No, that's about how much a good manual crimper costs. But man, the results
you can get out of them are fantastic.
------
raymondh
Technical standards would be vastly improved by adding a because-clause to all
of the do-this and don't-do-that requirements.
Section 9.5: "NOTE: Do not use spiral wrap sleeving on mission hardware
including launch vehicles."
If you knew why, then you could make intelligent decisions for cases to
specifically covered by the standard. Possible reasons: Poor strength to
weight ratio, unreliable under high-g load, makes visual inspection difficult,
there is a better but more expensive substitute, etc.
~~~
TeMPOraL
From a point of view of a person not employed at NASA manufacturing plant who
would like to learn something from that document, I agree. But my guess is
that this standard is created for people who are paid to obey, not to think,
because there are decisions made higher up the chain that depend on the
components being deterministic.
This reminds me of an anecdote I saw on HN once, about Apple hardware team
sending boards back to Chinese manufacturers who replaced a capacitor (or some
other part) with a cheaper one without realizing it was vital for the product
to work for reasons they were not aware of.
------
noir_lord
Years ago I trained as an (industrial) electrician with a particular focus on
hazardous environments (flour mills etc, lots of suspended flammable dust),
lots of the stuff in here is familiar :).
Working with armoured cable all day was enough to make me decide to go do
something else as a career.
|
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Respect the competition - jasoncrawford
http://jasoncrawford.org/2010/03/respect-the-competition/
======
sradu
Does anyone have more details about Amazon's policy of not talking directly
about competitors?
It seems to be an interesting approach, but I don't think this is the whole
picture.
I am thinking of two situations where I am wondering how that would work:
* small niched vs a big player that is present and known on the whole market
* small business "competing" with another small startup for the same market (eg posterous vs tumblr)
------
DeusExMachina
I think this is something Microsoft is doing wrong these days. They laugh at
competition (Ballmer is pretty famous for this), while competition eats their
markets.
------
xiaoma
I'm not sure the situation is that simple.
Steve Jobs has mocked Apple's competition for pretty much as long as I can
remember... and laughed all the way to the bank.
|
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The Air Force Initiative to Replace the A-10 Warthog Is Vaporware - ourmandave
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-air-force-initiative-to-replace-the-a-10-warthog-is-1771018719
======
beloch
CAS is a job best done by relatively slow, but well armored aircraft flying
low and slow. Pilots need to have time to develop awareness of both their
allies and their enemies. Pilots of this type of mission are going to come
under fire, which is something the air force is fundamentally unwilling to
accept. Marines in planes, on the other hand, are likely to accept similar
risk to marines on the ground if it reduces risk for all. Given that CAS
pilots must work most closely with those on the ground, it makes little sense
for them to be air force.
That being said, drones are probably the real A-10 killers. They can fly right
down an enemy's throat without risking their pilot's lives. VR technology
promises to give drone pilots a better field of view than any cockpit offers,
and pilots could potentially switch control to a new drone when their previous
drone is forced to return to base. This means one pilot could follow an
engagement from start to finish, instead of multiple pilots trading off. This
would greatly reduce the likelihood of pilot error and friendly fire
incidents.
~~~
gozur88
>CAS is a job best done by relatively slow, but well armored aircraft flying
low and slow.
That _was_ true, but it's not true any more. Modern targeting pods (like the
Siper XR pods on the B-1) mean you can get the same situational awareness from
much farther away. Between targeting pods and laser guided weapons the A-10 is
obsolete.
Low and slow is dangerous. Aircraft defenses (lasers, flares, chaff, ECM)
haven't been evolving as quickly as threats at low altitudes. Not by a long
shot. You're fine against a dozen guys with rusty AK-47s and RPG-7s, but once
you start fighting armies equipped with something like Pantsir or NASAMS
you're in big trouble.
~~~
Warhawg01
A-10s having been flying with targeting pods (Litening and Sniper) and
dropping laser and GPS-guided weapons for years. So how exactly has their
presence made A-10 obsolete again?
~~~
arjie
Can't say I know very much about this, but if you can see and hit things well
from a distance why go close? And if you don't need to go close, why do you
need something that is built to go close over something that can carry more
ordinance or fly for fewer dollars per hour or get there quicker? Surely it
costs something (speed, flight range, maybe) to get the ability to go close
and if you don't need that ability you can use that cost elsewhere.
~~~
Warhawg01
Sometimes standoff is good and necessary. Stay out of threat range, not be
seen or heard by the enemy as you follow them with your targeting pod, etc.
Sometimes standoff is pointless. Friendlies on the ground are in a knife feet
with the enemy less than 100m away and they need air support. Now close, and
slower to better maintain SA on who the friendlies are and who the enemy is --
and the ability to deliver weapons with lower Risk Estimate Distances and/or
Collateral Damage Estimates is critically important. The GAU-8 does both. The
F-16 gun is useless. A laser guide bomb in this scenario may present too much
risk for fratricide.
A-10s can carry more ordnance, for a longer time over a target area, and need
less tanker support to do so, than an F-16. And for less $/flying hour. It
does cost speed. A-10s don't go anywhere quickly. But it can perform CAS in a
standoff roll, or in a close-in fight equally well.
------
awinter-py
If there's a consensus on what's wrong with pentagon procurement, the bullet
points are: (1) no 'feasability feedback' mechanism to reject wishlist items
that inflate complexity or delivery date, (2) focus on 'joint procurement',
i.e. one product that solves army / air force / navy problems, i.e. a flying
submarine with wheels, (3) lead times are too long for bespoke products (by
the time it's delivered your needs have changed).
A-10 was built based on CAS lessons that had been learned the hard way in Nam,
where helicopters had to take the place of fixed-wing airplanes that couldn't
do the job. (meaning it was built to do one thing well). It wasn't a swiss-
army knife.
If you believe that it's not practical to build a swiss-army knife aircraft,
then you probably weren't surprised by the crappy fighters we turned out in
the 90s and 00s. The head airplane designer on china's F-22 killer basically
laughed when he was asked about the F-35, and said 'the best thing that ever
happened to us was when the US decided to put VTOL in their main fighter --
and not even in all of them.' China could never afford to do that but arguably
the US can't either. A post-IOC F-35C had its wings fall off (yes) and the
pentagon lockheed liaison's explanation was 'the pilot was too heavy, we're
looking into it'.
Even more interesting than the A-10 is the F-16; it was a backburner project
at lockheed and the pentagon tried to shut it down because they didn't want it
stealing any PR thunder from the bigger badder F-15. These days the F-16 is
doing every job because it's cheap, easy to maintain, lots of people can fly
them. Lockheed just shut down the line for these but the aftermarket is
booming.
~~~
engi_nerd
"A post IOC F-35C had its wings fall off”
Stop making things up. The C variant won't be declared operationally capable
for at least another year, probably two. No C model " had its wings fall off".
A test aircraft undergoing lifetime fatigue testing in a loads fixture had
some wing spar cracks. I don't mean to dismiss that issue, because it _is_
serious, but that's hardly having the wings fall off.
~~~
awinter-py
ok, fair point.
[http://www.janes.com/article/55987/wing-spar-cracks-found-
on...](http://www.janes.com/article/55987/wing-spar-cracks-found-on-
usn-f-35-variant)
------
tired_man
If the Air Force is so bent on getting rid of these wonderfully useful, tough
machines, then perhaps they should entirely leave the ground support role to
the US Marine Corps and the US Navy, both of which have a long history of
providing ground attack support to troops.
The A-10 is the best damned aircraft at this role since the AD-1 Spad's were
retired.
All the Air Force wants is glitter and fame, they aren't really interested in
life on the ground. Give them their wish, take the A-10s and give them to
someone who will use them to their fullest potential.
~~~
TylerE
The thing is, the last A-10 rolled off the production line _32_ years ago.
Airframes have finite lifespans.
~~~
the_ancient
Then Build more Airframes...
Start up the production again, I would rather them scrap the F35 program,
which is vaporware at this point, than the A10
~~~
adamson
Huh? F-35s are in production
~~~
bpodgursky
F-35s will not be able to fire their cannons until the 2020's (last I
checked), because the software has not been written.
~~~
mikeash
That must be one fancy-pants cannon if it takes three years to write the
software to drive it. How is that even possible?
~~~
ceejayoz
Cannons have substantially nastier failure modes than the latest Twitter
clone, and as such have much longer software development and testing cycles.
A look into a similar process with NASA:
[http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-
stuff](http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)
~~~
mikeash
My incredulity is not because I think it's easy to write reliable software,
but because a cannon shouldn't need more than "if button then fire." From the
other reply, apparently it's way more complex than that though.
~~~
engi_nerd
Additional complexity comes from the F-35's Stores Management System (SMS). In
addition to the basic accounting tasks of keeping track of what kinds of
weapons are loaded, and on which stations, the SMS keeps track of how much the
stores at each station weigh and provides that information to the flight
control system (FLCS). FLCS can then compensate for the weight distribution of
the stores. The gun must integrate with the SMS.
[http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2010armament/TuesdayLandmarkADougHa...](http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2010armament/TuesdayLandmarkADougHayward.pdf)
for some more information.
------
cromwellian
Perhaps this is an Airforce/Fighter Jock fetish with speed? The A-10 isn't a
super-fast super-maneuverable sexy jet, and they'd rather have more
F-22s/F-35s with all of the checkbox Nth-generation bells and whistles
(stealth, super-cruise, etc)?
It's like an MVP product that serves customers vs a product loaded with
features that only the developers wanted. The A-10 is boring and simplistic
and old tech. Forget the fact that the F-35 is expensive, buggy, not the best
in any category, and gets owned by earlier generation jets.
~~~
zrail
This is exactly it. The Air Force brass is all fighter jocks these days.
~~~
nradov
The top Air Force brass is a former A-10 pilot. I'm pretty sure he understands
its strengths and weaknesses.
[http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Arti...](http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Article/104966/general-
mark-a-welsh-iii.aspx)
~~~
zrail
Flew an A10 for three months in training. AFAICT he then flew F16s for the
rest of his operational career before transferring to command.
------
smegel
Give them to the Army Air Corps. The pilots need to work more closely with
soldiers on the ground than other pilots or air control, and the army are the
last people who want to see these planes go.
Then the Air Force Generals can get stars in their eyes about fast jets and
stealthy bombers without the hassle of a little flying tank.
------
jessaustin
FWIW, and since this is on-the-ground perceptual anecdata maybe that's not
much, A-10 training flights in southern Missouri (i.e. out of Whiteman AFB,
with possible attack runs over Ft. Wood) have picked up appreciably during
recent months. Over the last month, if I spend a day outside, I definitely
hear/see a pair of Warthogs at some point. There were _years_ for which that
was not the case.
------
smoyer
My favorite aircraft ever - I loved it at air shows [1 - 1978] as a kid and
later when my son and I played the A-10 Cuba [2] video game together.
[1] [https://www.oceanaairshow.com/](https://www.oceanaairshow.com/)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-10_Cuba)!
~~~
warmwaffles
a-10 cuba, good times
------
Overtonwindow
I almost started to say I don't understand the military's obsession with
fixing things that aren't broke, but then I remembered defense contractors,
campaign contributions, defense spending, and egos.
~~~
vonmoltke
Actually, the A-10 is "broke" in the sense that it can no longer perform its
mission in a modern air defense environment. The current fleet is also old and
wearing out.
That said, there are plenty of military commitments that involve CAS in
environments with minimal to non-existent air defense. The sensible thing to
do would be to replace the A-10 in kind with a fairly cheap, modern version
while working on a more expensive, more survivable complement. That makes too
much sense for the Five-Sided Playpen, though.
~~~
bubuga
>Actually, the A-10 is "broke" in the sense that it can no longer perform its
mission in a modern air defense environment.
I'm sure that the A-10 can still perform its mission in a modern air defense
environment, mainly due to the fact that the bulk of today's missions involve
an enemy with limited resources, limited industrial capabilities, and limited
technical skills.
> The current fleet is also old and wearing out.
I'm sure the US is quite capable of putting up a military aicraft program for
a mark 2 version of the A10 thunderbolt, one which is focused on tackling the
maintenance/cost issues of the current version and even increase the
reliability of the whole airframe. The last four decades in the aviation field
were very fertile with regards to technical progresses.
~~~
vonmoltke
> I'm sure that the A-10 can still perform its mission in a modern air defense
> environment, mainly due to the fact that the bulk of today's missions
> involve an enemy with limited resources, limited industrial capabilities,
> and limited technical skills.
To answer both you and robotresearcher, the US has not faced an opponent with
a modern air defense system since Vietnam. The closest was Serbia, and NATO
specifically held off on low level missions for a while there because of the
Serb AD network.
> I'm sure the US is quite capable of putting up a military aicraft program
> for a mark 2 version of the A10 thunderbolt, one which is focused on
> tackling the maintenance/cost issues of the current version and even
> increase the reliability of the whole airframe. The last four decades in the
> aviation field were very fertile with regards to technical progresses.
That's basically what I said in the next sentence. I'm not sure what your
point is here.
------
johansch
As a foreigner.. I don't get it. Is it all about pork/creating jobs in various
states rather than over-all value to the country?
~~~
jakelarkin
yes and the US Air Force is too much in the pocket of defense contractors and
out of step with forces that actually wage combat in the current conflicts.
They drag their feet on effective and low-cost solutions like the A-10 and
drones and want spend all trillions on vanity "air-superiority" aircraft, for
winning hypothetical dog fights with next-gen China/Russia fighter jets.
------
eximius
It is amazing how terribly managed our military resources are. I cannot even
fathom where to begin to fix it.
~~~
maxerickson
Note the J in JSOC, discard the existing branches of the military and build
integrated units around desired tactical capabilities.
I guess you'd still have room for a Navy doing it that way, but you get the
idea.
~~~
mentalpiracy
This is easier in theory than it is in practice. While obviously each branch
puts together its own integrated units for various missions, th8e real
detriment to this kind of idea is what you would lose when breaking down the
larger command/logistics backbone of the Army/Marines/AF/Navy.
I totally agree that the current system is not maximally efficient, but how
would these new integrated units be managed logistically? Would each unit
field its own logistics personnel? That might make sense, but then you end up
with a lot of duplicated effort for little marginal improvement. Would we need
an entire separate command structure for the sole purpose of heavy equipment
movement and base management/support? If no, who might be the logical choice
for this role?
~~~
maxerickson
I'm being a little sarcastic, but you could have units organized around
providing logistics. Get this here, get that there.
Realistically, you might just end up with even more bureaucracies defending
their own turf and resisting change.
The other thing that might happen is that you end up with less redundant
capabilities and better integration. It's kind of stupid that the presence of
a jet engine dictates that close air support be under a different command.
------
jasonwatkinspdx
These articles just get worse and worse.
Opinions about the merits and flaws of the A-10 are largely irrelevant: the
inventory is rotting, and there are no factory resources for replacement
parts, let alone new aircraft. Keeping the A-10's going would require what
amounts to a reverse engineering and reproduction program comparable in cost
to developing a new aircraft.
Even if you're the biggest fan in the world of them, it simply does not make
sense to keep the A-10's going. Sentiment does not prevent the decay of the
aircraft, nor does it whip into existence cad files and factory tooling that
no longer exists.
The A-10 costs around 20k per hour to fly. The predator series drones, T6
Texan, and the Super Tucano all cost 1/5th to 1/10th that per hour to operate.
~~~
Warhawg01
The inventory is rotting? Laughable. The Mission Capable Rates are in the
80-90% range. There haven't been "factory resources" for parts in decades, and
yet the fleet still manages to fly at a high rate. CAD Files? Factory Tooling?
You have very little understanding of how aircraft maintenance in the Air
Force works. Ever heard of a sheet metal shop? Those dudes can make
_anything_.
An A-10 flight hour costs <8K. Source: I managed a $54M, 7200 hour A-10 flying
hour program. I have flown A-10s for 18 years.
~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
I'm skeptical you are who you claim, but if so you know you're being
hyperbolic. Airframes have a limited lifetime; fatigue adds up. Despite the
overwhelmingly positive performance to date, an aging fleet that's more
expensive on margin to operate than alternatives doesn't make sense.
~~~
msbarnett
The AF just rewinged the A-10 fleet. Ranting about airframe fatigue in
relation to the A-10 is nonsensical; the money has already been spent
refreshing the airframes. Their current expected lifespan is until 2040.
~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Yup, at a cost of around $2billion to extend around 200 aircraft to 2040. It's
exactly the problem I'm talking about: those wings cost ~10mm per aircraft,
twice the base price for a brand new Texan.
I don't think that was prudent spending vs alternatives, but to be fair, it
was a decision made a decade ago when the future was a bit more murky.
------
fixxer
The Air Force attitude to the venerable A-10 has always struck me as pure
budget bloating. I love that flying pig.
------
hudibras
All I'm going to say is that the A-10 fanboys win the argument at the
unclassified level, but it might be a different story when the discussion
moves behind closed doors.
~~~
dsr_
"If you only knew what I know, you would agree with me."
"Okay, what is it?"
"I can't tell you."
This is not an argument which ever works. Don't try it.
~~~
engi_nerd
If you know those sorts of things, it is generally best to stay away from
arguments about capabilities. It isn't an argument that works, you're right.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Changing Date to January 19, 2038 disables Android devices (2011) - JamilD
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=16899
======
georgeevil
In my understanding this problem is related to the definition of time_t type
in C/C++. It is defined by UNIX/Linux OS system libraries on 32 bit systems as
a 32 bit varable. Thus whatever software that relies on it has the 2038
problem.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Apple is now worth 1.5T dollars - headalgorithm
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/today-apple-became-the-first-us-company-worth-1-5-trillion/
======
seibelj
With the Fed setting interest rates at 0% through 2022[0], all equities will
continue to rise in our nothing-fails, free-money, inflationary economy.
[0] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-debates-how-to-set-
policy-f...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-debates-how-to-set-policy-for-
the-post-pandemic-economy-11591781402?mod=hp_lead_pos2&mod=hp_lead_pos1)
~~~
cko
It seems to me that assets are inflationary and consumer products are somewhat
deflationary.
Most people don't own assets, so even if the Fed gives money directly to
consumers (e.g. UBI), that money will be just enough to live on, and trickle
up to the asset owning class.
~~~
chrisseaton
> Most people don't own assets
Almost everyone owns a pension.
------
beezle
Thank the Fed for this bubble explosion. All those bonds they've been buying?
What do you think happens with that loot?
BTW -
MSFT 1495B AMZN 1320B GOOG 1002B
TSLA 188B (QCOM+AXP)
(edit grammar)
~~~
chrisseaton
I thought the government _sold_ bonds in an emergency, not _bought_ them? Who
are they buying them from?
~~~
MagnumOpus
The treasury issues (sells) bonds and t-bills to banks/asset managers/random
people, in order to get money to give away in bailouts and handouts. The
Federal Reserve increases its balance sheet ("prints money") and buys bonds
and t-bills in order to keep demand high and interest rates low.
(Net net this causes the value of the dollar to drop and to devalue against
"real assets" like company shares, real estate and commodities. This "asset
price inflation" is a desired side effect.)
~~~
beezle
That's not really what has happened here.
Asset/fund managers buy all types of fixed income instruments - government
bills, notes, bonds, municipals debt, corporate debt, mortgages, bank loans,
on and on.
During the mayhem in late Feb/early March the secondary market for any and all
of that debt for all intents vanished. This left many funds in difficult
positions - their cash reserves are low and not sufficient to meet large daily
redemptions therefore they need to sell assets they own. Those that also owned
equities/commodities (balanced style funds) sold those more liquid assets,
adding fuel to that dumpster fire. However, debt only funds were still left
with no where to go.
Thus the Fed stepped in and agreed to purchase exceedingly large amounts of
debt instruments - pretty much anything rated investment grade. Thus the Fed
monetized those holdings and we are now seeing that cash pushing up equity
prices.
The above is a little bit over simplified and leaves out many other players
(ie repo problems)
Also - the Treasury issues debt every week to meet the regular financial
obligations of the US government, not just for special needs (various
bailouts)
------
zwieback
I had an Apple ][ in the 80s, (the last Apple product I loved unconditionally)
and I told my dad "we should buy stock, it'll be great". Unfortunately, I had
no money then.
~~~
cko
It's ok. If you had money you may have bought some stock, but it's less likely
you would have held onto it this whole time.
~~~
zwieback
Very true - I remember the crisis before Jobs returned, probably would have
dumped it and bought Pets.com or something like that.
------
xtiansimon
I just want to take this moment to remind peeps:
"You can take my Mac when you pry my cold dead fingers off the mouse." Power
Computing circa 1996
------
mcphage
I think Apple reveals the upper limit of what Capitalism can produce. Worth
1.5 trillion dollars, with hundreds of billions in the bank, and what are they
doing with it? Stock buy-backs and dividends? They have tremendous margins,
and mostly high quality products, but they can't or won't leverage their
profits to either lower costs, or raise quality on their bad components. So
they're winning in the profit category, but can't seem to translate that into
winning elsewhere. More money seems to be only so useful, and they've crossed
that point.
~~~
PaulStatezny
I don't understand why you're being downvoted. I think this is an interesting
point. They're not cycling that money back into the economy, they're holding
onto it. Which, in general, is considered bad for the economy, no?
~~~
perl4ever
Their money doesn't represent resources sitting idle. The whole point of the
financial system is that there isn't $X trillion idle. The securities they own
are claims on stuff other people are using. Talking about cycling it back into
the economy is nonsense, because it isn't, can't be, taken out.
~~~
mcphage
> because it isn't, can't be, taken out
Well, they do when they issue stock buybacks and dividends.
~~~
perl4ever
How can that be? At the time the money is paid, nobody knows what the
recipient will use it for. So how can anyone be taking any specific material
stuff "out" of the economy? Apple doesn't pay dividends in, say, eggplants. If
you buy some with your dividend, they haven't been taken out of the economy
any more than anything that's consumed.
------
drannex
Definitely overly inflated.
------
nikolay
I just wonder how those Republicans who claim that Trump is fighting the Deep
State, part of which is the Fed, take the fact that the Fed actually supports
Trump for the upcoming presidential elections. Or maybe don't just don't see
what's going on...
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Darpa set to develop super-secure "cognitive fingerprint" - coondoggie
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/darpa-set-develop-super-secure-cognitive-fingerprint
======
brmj
This is stupid. High quality, memorable passwords are easy once you throw away
the conventional wisdom that they ought to look like 10 characters of line
noise and move to a non-obvious phrase. Also, I suspect technology of this
sort would be problematic if the user was distracted, for example.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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|
Google to reject Chrome extensions outside of Chrome Web Store - IBM
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/07/chrome-on-windows-to-start-rejecting-extensions-from-outside-the-chrome-web-store-in-january/
======
Zikes
There's a comment on the Chromium blog [1] (via magicalist's comment [2]) that
nails this: if security is all they cared about, a signed certificate is all
that's necessary.
Knowing that option exists and persisting with their store-only approach means
they must have an ulterior motive of some sort, most likely control and money.
Ad blockers that target Google Ads will be no more, as well as anything else
that the user might want to use to subvert or circumvent. Extensions will also
have to adhere to Google's moral code, and developers will once again be
beholden to a greater authority in order to operate their business.
Just like with Facebook and the Apple app store, if you build a business on
Google Chrome Extensions you now face having the plug pulled at any time for
any reason, with absolutely no recourse.
[1] [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-
fr...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-from-
malicious.html)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=magicalist](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=magicalist)
~~~
jfoster
Would a signed certificate approach allow them to deny extensions, or not? If
yes, they could still deny ad blockers that way. If no, it is a weaker form of
security than this is.
~~~
Zikes
The alleged reasoning is to stop malware. A signed certificate must come from
an authority willing to put their own reputation on the line, but Google does
not need to be the only such authority.
~~~
haberman
Great! I am the "Definitely Not A Malware Author" certificate authority and I
have signed this "Definitely Not Malware" extension.
~~~
sirsar
Not quite. The DNAMA would quickly lose hard-won reputation once DNM was shown
to be malware. Google not being the only CA doesn't mean everyone gets to be a
CA.
~~~
haberman
> Not quite. The DNAMA would quickly lose hard-won reputation once DNM was
> shown to be malware.
No problem. I am a completely different "Definitely Not A Malware Author 2"
certificate authority and I have signed this "Definitely Not Malware"
extension.
> Google not being the only CA doesn't mean everyone gets to be a CA.
Oh. In that case who gets to decide who gets to be a CA?
~~~
JSadowski
Who decides who gets to be a CA for SSL certs? Similar process. Somehow my
browser doesn't recognize a CA that would allow any random person to pretend
to be Facebook.
~~~
haberman
The web browser authors/distributors decide what root CAs will be included in
their browsers. So in this case concerning Chrome, Google decides.
Which means Google is still in charge, ultimately.
Which means that this digital signature scheme hasn't actually accomplished
anything.
~~~
Zikes
Google controls the entire browser, meaning they are in absolute control,
ultimately. They could inject code into your banking web sites, they could
block all the porn, whatever they want.
The idea isn't that the certificates would wrest control away from Google,
it's that they wouldn't be able to use "omg the malwares" as a shield for
their intentions. If there's a root CA that's handing out certs for malware
extensions then sure, pull the plug, but if the root CA is handing out certs
for ad blockers and Google pulls the plug then it'll be plain as day what
they're doing.
Heck, all the browsers nowadays use extensions of some sort, maybe they could
form a consortium for extension certifications so no one company would be in
complete control. You could bet Mozilla would keep that sort of behavior in
check, at least.
~~~
haberman
> If there's a root CA that's handing out certs for malware extensions then
> sure, pull the plug, but if the root CA is handing out certs for ad blockers
> and Google pulls the plug then it'll be plain as day what they're doing.
Pulling a root CA is no more public than blocking an extension from the Chrome
Web Store. In both cases it is clear that Google has taken the action, and
whoever has gotten blocked can protest it publicly (just like people do now
for Apple App Store rejections). The Chrome Web Store doesn't give Google any
kind of "cover" or "shield."
Additionally, revoking an entire root CA that was letting malware through
(intentionally or unintentionally) would be far more intrusive than pulling a
single extension from the Web Store, because every extension that the CA had
approved would be affected, even if they were not malware.
What annoys me about this entire thread is that the OP (which was voted to the
top of the story's comments) presumes that you can sprinkle some crypto fairy
dust and get just as much security against malware without having to give up
any control. And it goes so far as to assume bad intentions on Google's part
for not doing it. But it's not that easy; crypto isn't a magic wand that lets
you have your cake and eat it too.
> (OP:) if security is all they cared about, a signed certificate is all
> that's necessary.
Um no. It's not that simple.
------
taway2012
I am displeased by this change. Although the Firefox version of my extension
is more work to develop, I will be pouring most of my resources into that in
the future.
I currently have a product that uses a Chrome extension to work. I am
privately beta'ing it out by hosting it on my own website.
Because I don't want to be killed with negative reviews of my unpolished first
version in the Chrome store.
Now I am forced to show my work and suffer brickbats in public even before I
finish it. WTF.
Second =======
And post-Snowden, the Chrome web store publication process is _LESS_ secure
for my users than me hosting the app myself. In the Chrome store, you send
Google your raw source (possibly minimized) files. They will sign it and push
a blob to the end user. [https://developers.google.com/chrome/web-
store/docs/publish](https://developers.google.com/chrome/web-
store/docs/publish)
AFAIK, there is no way for the end user to have any assurance that the file
being pushed by Google was the file that the developer intended to push.
With a privately-served version, the equivalent of a secret key created by the
developer needs to be compromised to push updates.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this.
~~~
ender7
IIRC, the CWS allows you to distribute alphas and betas to a specific set of
users.
~~~
taway2012
Yeah, I looked into that. There doesn't seem to be a way to have a "hidden"
extension whose URL isn't public, but which can be downloaded without signing
into a Google account.
That sucks for people in my network who are being kind enough to test my
software.
Instead of just messaging them on
Facebook/Twitter/Skype/Email/SMS/iMessage/Linkedin with a URL, I need to find
out their Google account and add it to a dashboard and they need to be logged
in before they download.
------
mtgx
The security excuse is BS. Show me the numbers for what an enormous problem
this is, to justify why such an _extreme measure_ is needed, Google!
And even if it does affect a ton of users, I'm sure there are other ways for
Google to fix this, even if not completely. But assuming for a moment this
wasn't a _malicious_ move from Google's part, I'm still angry with the lazy
decision to "just close off non-store extensions" to fix the problem.
Should I expect side-loading to be gone from Android soon, too, Google? Don't
you dare!
The way Android handles this issue is the best possible _compromise_ (there
will always be a compromise between security and freedom - and that's a _great
thing_ ). In Android sideloading is disabled by default, and if a user knows
what he's doing, he'll enable it and do whatever he wants.
So why can't Google do the same with Chrome?! Disable sideloading by default,
but still keep the option in settings somewhere. What's the big deal? Unless
they have a completely different agenda behind this...
Also, I'm not sure, but do Chrome extensions work in Opera or Safari? I think
it's about time we call Google on this and ask them to open up the format, so
other browsers can use the same extensions. The browser _shouldn 't_ be
another vector for "lock-in".
------
magicalist
actual source instead of useless techcrunch filler:
[http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-
fr...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-from-
malicious.html)
Wasn't this already largely the case? You have to manually download extensions
and then drag them into the extensions manager to install them outside the
store right now, don't you?
The only change here seems to be that now you need a checked "Developer mode"
box in order for that to work. I guess that discourages randomly checking the
box, but if they had just labelled it "Allow third party extensions" it would
make the change seem less overbearing.
~~~
Oletros
Developer mode only allows installing unpacked extensions, no?
~~~
recuter
No. If that's the case I think that's new.
~~~
hayksaakian
this was the case at least a year ago when I was making a chrome app/extension
------
zmmmmm
Very disappointing if there is no workaround available to the "ordinary" user.
Enough to make me fully question whether I want to use Chrome at all.
Question: what is the situation with ChromeOS? If this applies to ChromeOS
then it is essentially in the same locked down, anti-competitive state that
the Apple app store is in. It is the main reason I avoid Apple devices and
would pretty much put ChromeOS devices on the same blacklist as well for me.
~~~
chestnut-tree
_" Question: what is the situation with ChromeOS?"_
I don't know, but why would anyone even consider running ChromeOS? The fact
that you have to sign in (with a Google account) gives Google _unprecedented_
opportunity to track your activity in the OS. Even something as simple as
printing to your desktop printer requires sending your documents via Google's
cloud print service.
Imagine having to sign in to Windows or your Mac with your email address and
having to remain signed in always to use the OS. Most of us would be
horrified. I'm just astonished by how little comment is made of Google's
insatiable appetite to track and record online behaviour.
~~~
zmmmmm
I am not concerned about "tracking" very much. I'm not sure what the giant
issue is that you and others have with that (ie: exactly where and what is the
harm you perceive, in concrete terms?).
Btw, new versions of Windows all but force users to sign in with an email
address and then proceed store all documents by default in SkyDrive. Skype is
turned on and signing out is not allowed, thus you are every minute constantly
advertising your presence and activity to Microsoft. Plus even searching your
hard drive sends the query to Bing and shows ads to you as a result. So I am
not sure Windows is on track to be much better than ChromeOS in that regard.
But while I don't mind the "tracking", I consider freedom essential. An
operating system must allow the freedom to develop applications that are
hostile to the interests of the platform owner. That is the only defence
against a descent into a monopolistic kind of dark ages. Eg: imagine if
FireFox had never been allowed to run on Windows? We'd probably still be using
IE6. New disruptive technologies can only develop when they have the freedom
to do so, and it is rarely in the interests of the incumbents for it to
happen. So this is what I care about far more than the implications for
privacy and tracking etc.
------
Deeehem
This has made me very, very irritated. I was quite upset at the initial change
to preventing installation of third party extensions via a download, but then
I realised it was for the best.
However, to fully remove the ability to install third party extensions is just
ludicrous.
I develop a small Chrome application for internal use at my workplace. The
staff love it, it helps them do their jobs a lot quicker. I don't see any easy
way other than (as mentioned), building Chromium to remove this limit, as has
been done before with crx files.
Might just move to Firefox and take my workforce following with me!
~~~
jfoster
Private extensions are possible via the Chrome Web Store. You can make it
available to anyone with the link, or a list of "trusted testers".
------
JohnTHaller
Let's start betting on when Google starts to squeeze ad blockers through
feature changes or right out of the web store.
~~~
winslow
And Firefox will be there with open arms :)
~~~
throwaway2048
Funded almost solely by Google.
~~~
Encosia
Microsoft would probably be more than happy to take Google's place there, even
if Firefox does compete with IE.
------
makomk
Naturally, extensions that block certain kinds of Google ads (such as Youtube
ads) are not allowed in the Chrome Web Store.
~~~
thesnider
Seriously? What about [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-
plus/cfhdo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-
plus/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb) (AdBlock Plus), for instance?
~~~
dingaling
Adblock Plus by default whitelists Google ads.
[https://easylist-
downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...](https://easylist-
downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt)
------
Newky
So for normal (non-admin) users there is no way to opt-in to this. I can't
understand that.
I don't think anyone would have a problem if this was a simple opt-in system
like downloading unofficial apk's on android. Only a select few would be
opting in, and those are not the core audience that Google is pretending to be
security conscious about.
Giving no ability to switch on this ability for a normal user makes Google
lose face with the general tech community. I don't understand the reasons
behind this.
~~~
Jochim
Don't you usually want to limit non-admin users from installing things you
don't know about anyway?
~~~
Newky
If this was something that a lot of admin users wanted to restrict from their
users surely Google could have made the complete disabling of this feature
from all users available in the admin panel.
But that should be an opt in feature for the admin.
------
jack-r-abbit
Someone called "Google OS" posted[1] this about installing extensions not in
the web store:
_The developer option will still work: replace the crx extension with zip,
extract the files to a new folder, go to the Chrome extensions page, enable
developer mode, load unpacked extension and select the folder you 've
created._
Sounds like a huge pain in the ass but at least people doing this are less
likely to be in the same group of people that are complaining about malware.
[1] [http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-
fr...](http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-from-
malicious.html)
------
dustywusty
Finding it very strange that this change is presented under the guise of
safety, as there are absolutely very malicious extensions currently
circulating on the Chrome Web Store.
~~~
jfoster
They do seem to have very little policing of the Chrome Web Store. It's
actually annoying to have an app on there that is legit, as so many of the top
places in the store are taken up by unscrupulous rip-offs of Super Mario Bros
and Sonic the Hedgehog. I could make some money too by putting classic games
into a javascript emulator, plastering the page with ads, and submitting a few
hundred apps (one for each game) to the Chrome Web Store. I'd rather play by
the rules and have Google properly run their marketplace, though.
------
splatzone
Another day, another step closer to Apple.
~~~
Touche
Presumably Chromium has no such restriction.
~~~
jack-r-abbit
I'll admit I don't fully understand the Chromium <=> Chrome relationship. (I
believe that Chrome is Google's browser built on the open-source Chromium
code.) But isn't this an announcement made on the Chromium blog? It would
appear to me that this is going to be in the Chromium source... not just
Chrome. Am I missing something?
~~~
Touche
Not sure if the Chromium binaries have this restriction turned on but it
doesn't matter as someone will compile it without it (probably the official
Linux channels, for instance).
------
BrianEatWorld
Does this really solve the problem?
I imagine most of these complaints come from people who pick up the extensions
via bundling (not opting out of something when installing software). As those
bundles run off of executables with admin privileges in Windows, the last
change was circumvented simply by altering some files in the user's chrome
directory and the registry. I imagine a similar tactic will defeat this
measure. At least before the removal of the third party installation route,
Chrome was able to control the messaging and generate warnings. These changes
are simply pushing the malevolent even further underground.
------
zobzu
Surprise surprise. Closed garden mode.
------
kmfrk
Amazing, an actual reason to consider the Blink build of Opera.
------
Joona
I'm guessing it's time for alternatives then. Has anyone tried the new Opera,
and what other browsers are out there?
Or maybe I'm just overreacting.
~~~
zobzu
Firefox, Chromium.
~~~
SudoNick
I think Mozilla may be headed in the same direction.
Add-on File Registration System: [http://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/01/mozillas-
add-file-registrat...](http://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/01/mozillas-add-file-
registration-system-serious-consequences-developers/)
Merging of AMO with Firefox Marketplace:
[http://www.ghacks.net/2013/10/26/thunderbird-seamonkey-
kicke...](http://www.ghacks.net/2013/10/26/thunderbird-seamonkey-kicked-
mozilla-amo/)
~~~
jeorgun
In Firefox's case, at least, it's clear that the only motive in doing so would
be genuine concern for the safety of their users— Mozilla wouldn't have any
incentive to stop people installing extensions that hurt their own business
model.
------
hexis
Today's serving of feudal security is brought to you by...
------
fiatjaf
People who commented until now don't know how blessed is this measure. If
you're a programmer, you probably don't get lots of malware in your computer,
but if you ever had to use the same Windows PC as your uncle, mother or
brother-in-law, even for a short time, you would know how bad it is to see
huge amounts of malware and changed home pages, new tab pages, default search
engines, everything messed up inside Chrome.
I don't know how these people get all these malwares, but is a fact that they
get them installed. And if you don't have a better solution, Google at least
has a temporary potentially good one.
------
quasque
Does anyone know if this will include Greasemonkey-style scripts as well?
(e.g. like the ones from userscripts.org)
------
signed0
Just for Windows users.
~~~
lowboy
So far.
I believe that part of Goog's motivation is to stop malware, but part of their
motivation is platform control. I just don't know the proportion.
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Fatalities per capita vs miles driven - b_emery
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/17/science/driving-safety-in-fits-and-starts.html
======
rayiner
One thing I find amusing about traffic fatality statistics is that it shows
how distorted peoples' perceptions of threats are. Using 10-15 as the
estimated number of traffic fatalities per 100,000 people, the number of
traffic fatalities one would expect among an NYC/LA/Chicago-sized group of
people is on the same order as the number of people murdered in those cities
every year.
Moreover, unlike murder traffic accidents don't discriminate. If we look at
just whites (who in Chicago account for 4% of murders but 31% of people), the
number of people dying from murder is about 1/5 as many as one would expect in
a similarly-sized population to die from car accidents.
Indeed, the people we care the most about protecting, our precious middle-
class kids, are much more likely than average to die from a car accident,
while they are far less likely than average to die from inner-city violence.
Statistics like these really call into question those who move to the suburbs
because of perceived safety. I grew up in a suburb, and drove everywhere like
suburban teenagers are wont to do, and with that in hindsight I'm raising my
daughter in a city where she doesn't have to ever get behind the wheel.
~~~
dbloom
"Traffic fatality rates were highest in exurban areas. combined traffic
fatality and homicide-by-stranger rates were higher in some or all outer
counties than in central cities or inner suburbs in all of the metropolitan
areas studied."
[http://www.minority.unc.edu/sph/minconf/2004/materials/lucy....](http://www.minority.unc.edu/sph/minconf/2004/materials/lucy.et.al.pdf)
------
gacba
That visualization has an Edward Tufte feel about it. I wonder if he
influenced the author at all. It's pretty cool.
------
b_emery
"Americans drive a staggering number of miles — close to three trillion every
year, according to the government. (That is half a light-year, or 120 million
trips around the world.)"
It's not often that you see light-years used as a unit associated with
driving!
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The aerodynamic drag – type inference analogy - SanderMak
http://mergeconflict.com/archives/23
======
colanderman
_One would figure that the Agda compiler could figure out the type of not
based on its simple definition, but nope. An algorithm that could figure it
out would absolutely fall flat on a dependent type._
Not totally correct – it's totally possible to infer (some) types in a
dependently typed system. For example, in Coq:
Coq < Definition not x := match x with true => false | false => true end.
Coq < Check not.
not
: bool -> bool
The trick is simply knowing when to stop – that's what turns an undecidable
algorithm into a decidable, sound, but incomplete algorithm.
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Another Cloud Ping - jread
http://cloudharmony.com/ping
======
jread
This is a follow up to the earlier AWSPing post. I just created a very similar
http-based ping based on that, but with the following difference:
* Use JSON-P to avoid same-origin-policy request failures (this also fixed the Opera failures) * Repeat request 6 times (1 warmup + 5 measured) and display mean, median, min and max latency measurements * Allow ping against 40 different provides including 4 AWS regions
|
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What questions you never asked to yourself? - AliBoukeroui
======
sethammons
There are infinite questions I've never asked myself. First one to come to
mind, "why does my neighbor have the name that they do?"
This might be a more interesting prompt with some extra guidance. "What
questions you never asked yourself when you were younger that you wished you
had?"
------
nickmajor
Where is the spider from a few days back that I tried to kill but got away?
------
tmaly
I think early on, a big one might be "What do I really want?"
------
maydemir
"What questions I never asked to myself?"
------
mybuggycode
Choosing between coding and whisky.
~~~
AliBoukeroui
I'm a coder. I say go for coding
~~~
taauji
I am a coder. I say go for whisky.
~~~
krapp
I'm a coder. I say why not both?
~~~
AliBoukeroui
hahaha
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Show HN: DueProps, my employee motivation startup after selling Hashrocket - obiefernandez
http://dueprops.com
======
lostbit
This fits very well in with the article discussed in
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4042931>. I've just told my company's HR
to please evaluate DueProps. It seems to be very nice for this goal of
recongition made fun.
------
mark_l_watson
Obie, that is a very cool idea! It also sounds like you are out of the
consulting services business.
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SHA1 sunset will block millions from encrypted net, Facebook warns - jonbaer
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/12/sha1-sunset-will-block-millions-from-encrypted-net-facebook-warns/
======
mtgx
Those same people run Android devices with dozens of vulnerabilities that can
own their devices. It's probably for the best that we force them to change
them. Otherwise it feels like we may as well continue to support Windows XP
because there are still a few million people out there who use it and are
vulnerable to all the latest XP exploits.
|
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Which startups still have affiliate programs? - capex
The fact that affiliate programs are fast disappearing from the 'credible startup' world is food for thought for this type of marketing. But I want to find out which startups still offer an affiliate program?
======
staunch
Dropbox was in very large part built on their affiliate program. Doesn't get
any more credible than that.
PayPal's affiliate program was a big deal too (Dropbox's was influenced by
theirs IIRC).
~~~
hboon
Did Dropbox have an affiliate program on top of their referrals?
------
dchuk
we're (serpIQ.com) building an affiliate system this month for our product.
Hope to have it online by April 1st.
Not sure what you mean by disappearing from the credible startup world,
affiliate programs are a fantastic way to grow your user base, especially for
bootstrapped companies.
~~~
capex
The reason affiliate marketing sometimes backfires is that you can't filter
out who's writing about your product and what they're writing. 37Signals
stopped taking new affiliates, and instead started a 'Tell-a-friend' program
coz these kinds of recommendations are more personal and have better chances
of getting looked at favourably. If I could choose, I'd pick a referral
program over an affiliate program. But thanks for listing your product. It's
interesting to know who's behind affiliate marketing today.
~~~
AznHisoka
Also, some cannibalize your sales.. they rank for brand keywords or bid for
brand keywords, and take away sales you otherwise would have gotten anyway.
------
jeffepp
There are tons of startups that have affiliate programs...
Fab, Chargify, 20x200, SnapEngage, Sendgrid, Trada, Leads360, Hootsuite &
Getaround to name a few off the top of my head.
------
gregsqueeb
WePay.com <https://www.wepay.com/referral/invite>
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The Spacing of Binary Floating-Point Numbers - wglb
http://www.exploringbinary.com/the-spacing-of-binary-floating-point-numbers/
======
userbinator
There's a related article on the site about the spacing of _decimal_ floating-
point, which most people would probably find more intuitive:
[http://www.exploringbinary.com/the-spacing-of-decimal-
floati...](http://www.exploringbinary.com/the-spacing-of-decimal-floating-
point-numbers/)
This spacing is also why generating a random floating-point number the "naive"
way will result in a non-uniform distribution.
~~~
onnoonno
What is the naive way? Interpreting a random bit string as a float? Or rather
randint(1000000000L)/1.0e9?
~~~
emilga
The naive way is presumably to just throw all the floats in a hat, mix them
up, and pull one out. This is the method you described.
The problem here is that the floats clump together around zero, and they
spread out further away from zero. So the hat-method is biased towards smaller
numbers.
A possible better method -- this is just an educated guess -- might be to
divide your interval in half, pick the left or right half randomly, and then
divide the resulting interval in half, etc. until your interval contains only
one float. I'm not sure how efficient this would be to implement, or if there
are any edge-cases to consider, but it would at least avoid the inherently
biased distribution of the floats.
~~~
onnoonno
Hmm, but the randint(...)/... method should come pretty close to a uniform
distribution on the 0..1 interval, shouldn't it?
It wouldn't have maximum entropy, though.
------
amelius
I just wish I could replace my floating point numbers by an arbitrarily more
precise version of them (no matter what the cost in terms of performance), in
order to simply test the hypothesis that rounding errors are causing, for
example, convergence problems.
~~~
simonbyrne
I actually do this quite regularly in Julia: it provides a BigFloat type which
wraps the MPFR library. Since it has generic methods, you can simply do
something like foo(big(x)), and all the internal computations will be done in
extended precision, and the result can be compared to foo(x).
~~~
amelius
Does this also work with matrix type of operations? For example solving a
linear system?
~~~
simonbyrne
Yes, you can define an Array of BigFloats, and most of the linear algebra
operations have general purpose fallbacks that work as expected.
------
chrisBob
I really didn't understand floating point numbers until I wrote an app that
displays the pieces and the equation[1]. It even shows the min increment to
the next possible value. Sorry it's still iPad only. If more than 10 people
ever download it I will take the time to make it universal.
[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/float-
explorer/id928900898?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/float-
explorer/id928900898?mt=8)
~~~
jstanley
Out of interest, why is this an app and not a web page?
~~~
chrisBob
I am most comfortable with Objective-C. I agree that this would be better
suited to a web-app, but I don't have the time to invest in learning a new
language to do it at the moment.
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Moonjs: Apollo Guidance Computer Simulator - davidbarker
http://www.svtsim.com/moonjs/agc.html
======
Animats
That's cute. Now someone needs to hook it up to Kerbal Space Program so you
can fly with it.
~~~
armistice
KSP controls and UI are already a thousand times more powerful than this,
though, so you'd have to disable all of those. The game would be unplayable
without a ground station helping you out with the tracking, guiance and so on.
Which, incidentally, is how this computer is designed to be used.
~~~
Animats
True. But the web version just has zero velocity at all times, so the guidance
computer can't do any guidance.
~~~
chrisrhoden
You can run through a simulated launch by following the instructions on
[http://www.svtsim.com/moonjs/checklist.html](http://www.svtsim.com/moonjs/checklist.html)
------
olla
A lot of simulators and emulators in javascript emerging lately. Advances in
javascript are making it more useful as a real programming language as it
seems.
~~~
rjaco31
I would guess it's more advances in javascript engines' performances that in
the language per se.
~~~
olla
You might be right.
------
rglover
This is awesome!
I am decidedly _not_ a math person, however, what would one need to know to
interpret the different values being displayed? In other words, what would I
need to know as an astronaut using this and how would that influence what I do
in space vs. what happens on the ground at Houston?
~~~
armistice
All you need is to have is a manual for the codes. This thing is mainly a
shorthand assembler computer connected to sensors outputting raw number data.
------
pacomerh
Cool simulator. I'm curious, I was under the impression that the JS after the
name was meant for libraries or frameworks not just anything built with
javascript, I guess I was wrong.
------
martin1b
Add some sound effects, including rocket sounds and shaking the screen during
launch this would be incredible!!
Very nice!!
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Patton's sword and the future of work - awinter-py
https://abe-winter.github.io/change/2017/05/05/pattons-sword.html
======
Animats
The US military's approach to officer development is totally different from
the civilian world. Someone who's been an officer should describe it here.
It's normal for officers to go from combat units to full-time schooling and
back again. Biographies of generals often show several cycles of that.
The military maintains schools of its own, and will ship promising officers
off to civilian universities. Gen. Daniel Bolger got a PhD in history from the
University of Chicago during his career, between his two tours in Iraq and
another in Afghanistan. That's normal at the higher levels of the military.
At the lower levels, everybody gets run through task-oriented schools, which
are usually better equipped with equipment and simulators than civilian
operations. In the military, after being lectured on something, you usually
practice doing it. Military education is set up to produce results in minimum
time, not at minimum cost.
Here's a US Navy simulator.[1] That's not a real ship; it's a full-sized
mockup indoors, near Chicago.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0eGmEcACBM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0eGmEcACBM)
~~~
omnimus
Well US is putting like 54% of US yearly budget into military. That money must
go somewhere. It makes sense it might produce best education. Compare it to 6%
US is putting into education. I wonder what would happen if those two numbers
were switched.
~~~
Mvandenbergh
The US spends 15% of total government spending on education. 6.4% of GDP is
spent directly on education which is about 1% more than the OECD average.
12% is spent on defense including veterans. [numbers different than previous
poster because I've used %s of total gov't spending rather than just Federal]
So if we swapped then we would increase the US defence budget at the cost of
education. Donald, is that you?
[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2017UStn_1...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2017UStn_18ts2n_2030#usgs302)
[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp)
~~~
aleksei
I'd imagine the education spending per capita to be higher in the military
though? So if that was swapped the point might hold.
------
roymurdock
Really enjoyed the author's style of switching back and forth between deep
historical dive and musings on current situation. Flows really well.
Went back to re-read for main prescriptive points around current trends in
education, and got this: _We need to offer more kinds of education to adults
who have started their careers as well as to companies that need their staff
to get better at something...If we get this wrong it could be disastrous...the
risk of population collapse may be reduced by promoting individual learning
and innovation_
Wish the author could have offered more guidance here to his opinion on
leading educational programs, especially WRT the modern day corollary to the
cavalry sword/tank metaphor in a few important industries. The finance take is
interesting, but outdated, mainly discussing floor to electronic trading (70s,
80s).
Otherwise great article, thanks for the share.
------
taylorbuley
My wife's great-grandfather was in that low speed car crash that killed Patton
in the German country side. He was Patton's chief of staff. I was always
amazed how a warrior so great could die so unremarkably.
~~~
golergka
> I was always amazed how a warrior so great could die so unremarkably.
Great enough to avoid death in combat? After all, not dying in combat is
supposed to be one of the main tasks of a warrior.
~~~
sgt101
Valhalla called, it was hard to work out what was going on on the other side
of the line, but I think that they said that you're wrong.
------
linkregister
I was offered a job where a selling point was its continuing education at an
in-house "university". The starting salary was lower than comparable jobs.
I'm not sure if they were ahead of their time or if it was a bad deal
disguised as a good one. Maybe the in-house training was only on proprietary,
non-portable information.
The author is right, the military is unmatched in its opportunities for
education and managed career progression. It has its downsides, of course.
------
eli_gottlieb
Thanks for writing this. I've been trying to figure out where I'm going with
my career lately, and even if I've got one at all right now. This article
really affirmed that the couple of directions I've been thinking of (finally
break down and learn webdev, pursue ML/cogsci research) were in the right
ballpark.
I couldn't have predicted ten years ago, when starting university, where
things would be today. Yes, everything that's a Big Deal today existed in
infancy then, but it existed in infancy _among many competitors_. I thought a
lot of it was a passing fad, and I've been wrong multiple times over on that.
Lessons learned: stop expecting fads to pass, build fundamental skills far
stronger and broader than you ever thought you'd need, and overall, stop
letting history happen _to_ you. Get out in front and choose which path gets
taken for yourself.
~~~
jgamman
Watch out for selection bias. The question is what are the odds you are going
to pick the right fad?
~~~
eli_gottlieb
I very much agree, hence the two latter items in the list. Fundamentals need
to be much stronger to deal with decades worth of passing fads than I thought
they needed to be when one set of fads seemed permanent (ie: when I was young
and starting out). The best way to not get caught up in fads is to be the one
out in front propagating real, effective new technologies or methods and
letting other people turn some into fads and some not.
"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
------
ameister14
A small point - Teddy Roosevelt was not FDR; Twain thought that Teddy was
crazy, not that Franklin Delano was.
~~~
awinter-py
crap, sorry -- muscle memory. fixed.
------
tempodox
If there is a point to all this, I must have missed it.
~~~
lubonay
I think the main point is that one must not lose their ability to adapt when
faced with rapid environmental changes. The 21st century can be defined so far
as rapid changes all around, so this is pretty relevant.
------
dvanwag
Some of the comments on here are the very reason military leaders don't share
experience with those that have never lived the life.
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Watson – A CLI to track your time - Walkman
https://github.com/TailorDev/Watson
======
georgewsinger
Feature suggestion: allow people to comment on individual tasks (in addition
to just tags).
~~~
willdurand
Hi! Co-maintainer of Watson here. Good suggestion, thanks!
|
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NYPD Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven’t Committed a Crime - AshFurrow
https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-nuisance-abatement-evictions
======
gist
It's really not an artifact of being a minority it's an artifact of being poor
and/or living in a poor neighborhood. The same thing could happen in better
neighborhoods but as wealth increases so does access to better resources to
combat this type of behavior by the police or by government. In that sense
it's (just) no surprise another advantage of having money. What you gain is
the ability to buy better "advice" (legal or otherwise) and hence get a fairer
shake out of the world. In many cases (I won't comment on this one) it's
perhaps not that the law is being used unfairly but rather that poor people
don't have the resources to question and fight what is going on and perhaps
raise the right issues with those that try to take advantage of them. Or
simply to communicate and be taken seriously.
~~~
pstuart
It's an artifact of The War on Drugs.
~~~
kaonashi
Which was instituted to criminalize minorities.
------
sandworm101
>>In partnership with ProPublica, the Daily News reviewed 516 residential
nuisance abatement actions filed in the Supreme Courts from Jan. 1, 2013
through June 30, 2014
This does seem like an evil program, or at least a well-meaning program that
is being abused. But 516 actions across a state over an 18-month period? Even
if there is a disproportionate impact upon minorities, if there was systemic
racism behind this I would expect far far more given the number of potential
victims.
|
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(Newspaper) Copyright Trolling for Dollars: Media’s Latest Answer to Money Woes - hga
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/
======
hga
A blog I check everyday is shutting down because of a lawsuit from this firm.
No attempt at solving any possible problems with exceeding Fair Use, just an
out of state Federal lawsuit for $75,000 (the minimum you can sue for this
kind of thing). Like the RIAA it would appear that in their legal strategy
they're entirely focused on getting small settlements that aren't so small for
the bloggers and other small organizations they are suing (in one case,
they're suing one of the newspaper's own primary sources for a story!
[http://chanceofrain.com/2010/05/review-journal-sues-its-
own-...](http://chanceofrain.com/2010/05/review-journal-sues-its-own-source/)
Which puts the newspaper in an impossible position to continue reporting on
the story.)
In the case I'm familiar with this isn't clear cut and economically damaging
copyright infringement like with the RIAA's lawsuits, just excerpts of 6
stories. If taken all the way to trial and judgment the damages would be de
minimus, but who can afford to fight a Federal lawsuit for these sorts of
stakes in another state?
Perhaps worse, look at the end example in the article where the defendant
claims the proper venue is the DMCA since the possibly infringing material was
submitted by a user. The lawsuit ought to be easily cleared up, but again that
takes retaining a lawyer and going to the courtroom....
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Skype is censoring links to 8chan - Frozenlock
Skype will remove links to 8chan for the recipient.
(8ch.net)
======
drdeca
What?
Are you citing anything for this that I am not seeing? Can you give more
detail please?
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Startups Suck - provokeme
We are in a post startup era. SAS is over. The cloud is here, almost fog. I see accelerators everywhere. Social businesses. Bing bing. Bling.<p>Where is the money? The customers? Seems to me that there are too many startups making products for no one and solving problems that don’t exist. It would inspire me if all this human capital was doing something. Curing disease. Getting off this rock. Expanding emotional or intellectual space. But most of these startups are just creating web forms. Information ^curriers. Scuttlebutts.<p>We don’t spend time on high technology, pushing limits.<p>Another startup, another photo wall of founders and unqualified C-level execs. Wow.<p>Maybe this internet thing made us too introverted. Too focused on our own awesomeness.<p>Humility is rare.<p>Well, it may be time to regroup.
======
wamatt
I agree with you, but there are other possibilities.
Singularity University is a superb experience and filled with big thinkers. eg
"Made In Space" for example is building 3d printers in space, opening up the
possibility of building replication technology on the moon.
I'm staying with a 20 year old that founded a company that is reducing solar
costs by 20%+. They have some pretty large customers signed up.
------
aw4y
totally agree
------
batista
Curing disease? That's nothing special compared to my latest startup.
It's for social sharing of fair-trade coffee brewing tips and lets users
upload Lomo style pictures of their coffee cups, that it plays in a slideshow
with a Mos Def soundtrack. We have a maxed-out Heroku account serving it, all
done in node.js and Sinatra, of course, though we will be rewriting some cpu-
intensive parts in ZetaLisp to run on some Lisp Machines.
------
JuurianChi
:facepalm:
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Who wants to create an implied social network? - skyz2hot
I know many people think Color sucks, but I like the concept. An implied social network is pretty cool. Have any of you guys considered making a implied social network?
======
phlux
Call it "NudgeNudge.com"
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Recommended Reading for Software Engineers - hoskinator
https://medium.com/capgemini-dynamics-365-team/recommended-reading-for-software-engineers-6b2d09466b25
======
masonic
Just another spam collection of Amazon affiliate links.
|
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Speed Matters for Google Web Search [pdf] - epi0Bauqu
http://code.google.com/speed/files/delayexp.pdf
======
epi0Bauqu
Here's the actual URL to the PDF that I submitted:
<http://code.google.com/speed/files/delayexp.pdf>
HN automatically turned my link into a scribd link...
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Comixology removes in-app purchases on iOS - nickmain
http://support.comixology.com/customer/portal/articles/1519530-what-s-changed-with-comics-version-3-6-for-ios-
======
huxley
I can understand Amazon/Comixology's position on this but it takes serious
chutzpah to announce that in the same blogpost as:
[http://comixology.tumblr.com/post/83931330905/important-
chan...](http://comixology.tumblr.com/post/83931330905/important-changes)
"We’ve made changes to our Google Play Android Comics App so please, update to
version 3.6. In this new version we have a new comiXology in-app purchase
system and a great new cart feature, one of our most requested features."
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Help Us Bring Productivity Enhancing Smart Glasses to Market - HishamElHalabi
Hey everyone!<p>For around the last two years, my cofounder and I have been working on our own startup, trying to help people improve their focus and stop procrastinating. We've developed the Auctify Specs, a pair of smart glasses designed to track your productivity throughout the day and give you real time feedback to help you stay on task when you get distracted. They can detect your activity using computer vision and blood oximetry, and implement proven psychological methodologies to keep you motivated and focused on achieving your goals.<p>Today I'm excited to announce that our Indiegogo campaign has finally launched! Check out our campaign page to read all about our product and see Specs in action, and if you'd like to support us! We'd also appreciate any feedback you have to give us :)<p>https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-first-productivity-boosting-smart-glasses#/
======
Someone1234
Unethical product.
Large companies will be the primary purchaser for this product, and will use
it to "enforce" productivity metrics where employees get dinged for literally
glancing away for mere seconds. This is like an Amazon Warehouse handset but
now using "computer vision, blood oximetry, and psychological methodologies"
to monitor employees.
Even if you aren't marketing it that way _now_ , you have absolutely no
control over the market competitors once this has been proven viable (or if
you get purchased).
~~~
giantg2
Using this mindset, we should ban all knife sales, processed foods, and cars.
Just because some people abuse a product doesn't make the product itself
unethical. The product adopts and amplifies the ethics of the user.
------
matt_s
The website doesn't describe what specifically the glasses do to improve
focus. It doesn't state there is a camera so if I have to tap something in an
app that says I started task X, and veer off track and start browsing HN, how
do the glasses help?
I'll guess that everything happens in the companion app and the glasses are
just a couple sensors/mic/speakers. Isn't forcing the user to check their
phone to check their "productivity" counterproductive? Phones are the biggest
distraction people have.
What happens when the frame design you chose falls out of fashion like when
people like "frameless" glasses or something else?
------
madamelic
This is a privacy nightmare, having a camera you don't control on your
glasses.
Imagine all of the things you don't want public, now watch all of those things
become public from streaming it all to a closed source app of unknown security
practices
~~~
muzani
Sure, but my phone runs Android, which probably feeds everything to Google
anyway, which includes position, voice, camera, every message I send. I
probably bring my phone around more than my glasses.
~~~
madamelic
Are you filming yourself in the bathroom, taking pictures of your credit card,
taking pictures of confidential work documents, taking videos of meetings and
then sending them all to an unknown person every day all day?
Also Android is open-source, gives more controls and isn't taking constant
video of your life without your consent of where that media is going, how it
is stored or for how long.
~~~
muzani
I take pictures of personal identification because it's a legal requirement to
hail a car (now that taxis are going extinct). I need it to use ewallets,
contact tracing, all these things that are legal requirements because of
COVID. I'm fine with the government having this, but not with this going in
the hands of Google, Xiaomi, etc. I take photos of passwords sometimes, when
there's no way to copy paste them from a protected computer.
We've had meetings early in the morning on Skype, which sometimes I drop in
and Bluetooth in my car. We write meeting minutes and email them. Gmail is
blocked by the company, but some of the consultants use it. Word is used to
write them and now it syncs to a cloud. I can leave my phone on the table and
nothing prevents Xiaomi from secretly recording it.
These are all questionable security practices. Our main competitors are tech
giants, not some guys raising money on Indiegogo, and one of the clearance
requirements is blocking Google Drive on computers.
Open source is great and all, but it's still easy to obscure. WhatsApp stores
"no messages on their servers" but I don't buy that it's not reading my
messages and giving "analytics" to Facebook.
Glasses, I can take off.
------
muzani
I'm skeptical that this isn't just an overpriced RescueTime. But what I'd love
to see is detection of pupil dilation over the day.
------
Dksense
Sounds good! All the best.
~~~
Dksense
Thank you.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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Ask HN: Is there a such thing as an automation tool? - WesternStar
The history of precision in the industrial revolution is rife with machine tools. Machines that make machines. Do we have automation for the process of making automation? I think AutoML is slightly different. Is this question meaningful or "not even wrong" in your opinion?
======
tgflynn
It seems like a robot that builds robots would be one example.
Another would be a program that writes programs. There's a word for that:
metaprogramming and people do it all the time.
~~~
WesternStar
More a robot that build robots. I mean like you are running a service and
something automagically builds the automation for running that service given a
few inputs.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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Outside.in saves newspapers - fromedome
http://www.businessinsider.com/outsidein-saves-newspapers-2009-3
======
mikepellon
Did newspapers give too much away too fast? Would the beauty of things online
be ruined if we required a subscription to our favorite local and national
news sites?
We have a new printing press and it’s called WordPress, Blogger, Typad,
Movable Type, etc. etc. Where there are economies of scale there are new
business models and there is change. But, should newspapers have been more
careful in how they dealt with the demand for newsI’ve read a few books that
say that newspapers’ biggest mistake was when they failed to acknowledge the
internet as a new industry, a product and service that wouldn’t just
compliment what they were already doing, it would cannibalize and eat away at
their pages.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Free Pascal #1 Binary Trees Computer Language Benchmarks - boyter
https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/performance/binarytrees.html
======
igouy
see TNonFreePooledMemManager
[https://www.freepascal.org/docs-
html/fcl/pooledmm/tnonfreepo...](https://www.freepascal.org/docs-
html/fcl/pooledmm/tnonfreepooledmemmanager.html)
|
{
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Buddy system - good idea? - pennyfiller
So i'm trying to learn how to code and it's fun because I have a live social networking website to play with...but there's so much to learn and I'm overwhelmed and if I mess up, site goes down and I'm always lost on how to fix it.
Then I figured, wouldn't it be great if there were some cool tech volunteers who would willing to teach like myself in real-time? Sort of like, one-on-one tutor...we can share screens...this way when I code, the person can correct my mistakes or I can watch that person code, fix things and see how things get done.<p>Anyhow, do you think something like this could work? I know there's a push out there to get more people to learn how to code.
======
adrianscott
what tech are you programming in?
~~~
pennyfiller
basic lamp stuff.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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|
Ask HN: What paid services do you use now for your startup? - iamwil
I was looking around for server setups, and I ran into an old HN post about what paid services people use.<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=545229<p>Now that it's more than a year later, has consensus changed? Or is it mostly still the same? What paid services do you use?
======
joshkaufman
This is for my business education course / consulting business:
Slicehost (website hosting) Aweber (autoresponder/broadcast e-mail) Amazon
S3/Cloudfront (media server) Google Apps (e-mail) Skype (international
calling) Dropbox (backup) Chartbeat (analytics) Powerpay (merchant account)
Backpack (reference / reminders) Evernote (database)
I'm seriously considering Ruby Receptionists (callruby.com) for in-bound call
handling - I'm on the phone a lot, and it'd be much better than letting
incoming calls go to voicemail. (I use Google Voice currently.)
------
ccollins
At Airbnb we're using Amazon AWS (EC2, EBS, ELB, S3, Cloudfront), Dropbox,
Cloudkick, Pingdom, Twilio, Clickatell, ZenDesk, RingCentral, BrainTree,
MaxMind, MailChimp ...
and more I can't think of right now :)
------
f1gm3nt
I'm looking into twilo (I always forget the name and have to google it). I use
phonebooth and google apps. For hosting I'm using host gator til my sites or
apps need a dedicated server. When that time comes I have a business partner
to front hardware and hosting. For office space when it comes to that time I
have made a few connections that I will barter services for.
------
tbrooks
1\. Voip.ms for phones, IVR, voicemail 2\. Dreamhost for small sites, pgrmr
for large sites 3\. SendGrid for email delivery 4\. Bittorrent for everything
else
------
mleonhard
For RestBackup.com, I'm using:
\- Amazon EC2, EBS, ELB, S3, SimpleDB, and SQS
\- Sendgrid.com for mail delivery
\- Pingdom.com for monitoring and alarm notification
\- Google Apps Premium for email hosting
\- Linode.com for DNS hosting
\- Namecheap.com for DNS registration and SSL certs (putting off buying from
Verisign)
\- JungleDisk.com for backups
\- T-Mobile prepaid mobile phone
------
mindcrime
Hosting: Slicehost, Amazon AWS (EC2), Time Warner Cable (a couple of servers
sitting in the spare room in my apartment)
And, er, um, that's about it right now. We're really not far along enough to
need much more.
------
AmberShah
Rackspace Cloud for Windows (app hosting)
ASmallOrange (wordpress hosting)
Fotolia
MailChimp
MailboxForwarding
GoDaddy (domains only)
DropBox
Google Apps
Google Voice
------
jonah
Intervals for project management, Backpack for quick notes, MailChimp for
email, AT&T :( for telephone, Verizon for DSL, and SBWH for VPS.
------
jmathai
Linode (VPS)
MSNI (merchant)
Twilio
Pingdom
AWS
MailChimp
Comcast (build server resides in garage)
------
troymc
Google App Engine, Amazon S3, Google Apps Premium, Second Life Premium, Skype,
Carbonite, Squarespace
------
c1sc0
Google Apps, Basecamp, Dropbox, Google AppEngine, Nearlyfreespeech for cheap
hosting
------
asanwal
A few we use for a variety of things are.
Mailchimp Google Apps SurveyMonkey
------
MadQA
google apps
dnspark
maxcdn
evernote
------
jeffepp
Dropbox. Currently in trial and considering: Performable, SnapABug, SendGrid
~~~
jrach19
Hi this is Justin from Performable. We want to provide the best service
possible for startups. Please let us know how we can help in any way.
------
marknutter
Evernote, dropbox, slichost, google apps, basecamp, lessacounting
------
vgurgov
Amazon, Rackspace cloud, encoding.com, google apps..
------
pwim
Harvest for time and expense tracking.
------
babyboy808
Curdbee.com
dropbox
Skype
------
lleger
Dropbox Github
|
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Notice of security breach on Ubuntu Forums - onosendai
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/07/15/notice-of-security-breach-on-ubuntu-forums/
======
jrowley
I like the direct communication style of this document.
~~~
creeble
Indeed, if only all such disclosures were so transparent.
I suppose transparency ends up being in reverse proportion to perceived
liability, or some approximation thereof. This seems rather minor.
------
AlphaGeekZulu
Although they obviously failed in their security efforts, I think, they did a
good job in communicating the incident. No beating around the bush.
------
zaroth
They used this access to download portions of the ‘user’ table which contained
usernames, email addresses and IPs for 2 million users. No active passwords were
accessed; the passwords stored in this table were random strings as the Ubuntu Forums
rely on Ubuntu Single Sign On for logins. The attacker did download these random
strings (which were hashed and salted).
Is that a session token they are talking about? What part of the OpenID
protocol would involve saving a so-called "password" in the users table which
is really just a "random string", but which was also hashed and salted?
Ubuntuforums does use Ubuntu One for SSO, there should be no "passwords" at
all in the table, so I'm not quite sure what to make of that paragraph.
Typically session tokens are not salted and hashed, although you can actually
do that do avoid having to revoke them after a breach.
~~~
hueving
It's likely leftover schema from when a password was used instead of the SSO.
I've seen this when a system transitioned to SSO that is based on another
forum technology that also supports password. Just filled the regular password
fields with garbage basically.
------
ProxCoques
Not another one? Didn't they get p0wned a few years ago?
~~~
awill
yep.
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/21/ubuntu_forums_breach...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/21/ubuntu_forums_breached_18_passwords_pinched/)
------
guessmyname
> Hardening
> We’ve installed ModSecurity, a Web Application Firewall, to help prevent >
> similar attacks in the future.
> We’ve improved our monitoring of vBulletin to ensure that security patches
> are applied promptly.
What? They _just_ added a firewall in their forum? What were they thinking all
these years then? Either none of their engineers thought about adding an extra
layer of security to this website during all these years, or the chain of
command in this company is so strict that any suggestion from their engineers
is dismissed until a security breach is detected. What a shame, first Linux
Mint, and now these guys.
~~~
0x0
A "WAF" like modSecurity is not the same as a network packet firewall. And a
WAF might contain lots of heuristics and overly strict rules that might break
web applications in subtle ways.
~~~
guessmyname
What are you talking about? I am saying that they added ModSecurity just now,
why didn't they added it years ago? Whether a WAF will affect some features in
their forum has nothing to do with my comment that was intended as a critic
for the bad timing of their sysadmins. Why add ModSecurity now "after" the
breach and not before? Wasn't it obvious that someone would try to hack their
forum?
Are you just saying that my critic makes no sense?
~~~
0x0
Sorry, I thought you assumed they were talking about a "normal firewall"
missing since the start. Installing a WAF isn't always standard procedure for
LAMP stacks as far as I know, so I wouldn't fault them for not doing that
initially. Obviously they have changed their minds now :)
|
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Did they find the malaysian plane yet - ilhackernews
http://didtheyfindthemalaysianplaneyet.com/
======
eip
[http://i.imgur.com/W8cCvpJ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/W8cCvpJ.jpg)
~~~
nextw33k
An interesting alternative theory, however it's unreferenced and from a post
on 4chan. Not exactly the most trustworthy collection of people.
~~~
alanpca
Snopes has covered it already:
[http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/malaysiapatent.asp](http://www.snopes.com/politics/conspiracy/malaysiapatent.asp)
------
not_paul_graham
Am I missing something obvious or is this just a static webpage?
DID THEY FIND
THE MALAYSIAN
PLANE YET?
maybe...
|
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}
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Nest Protect smoke alarm recalled - linker3000
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/portable-devices/nest-recalls-protect-smoke-alarms-over-fears-it-may-not-actually-protect-that-well-1249938?src=rss&attr=all
======
krishnakanthc
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6517422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6517422)
I told you so ..
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Why I moved to Silicon Valley - KingJames
http://jottit.com/jpf2v/
======
KingJames
Which technologies are having the greatest impact on information flow in 2008
compared with 2004? YouTube and Facebook stand out for me.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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Productised services: #1: Product companies - joshuacc
http://swombat.com/2011/12/12/productised-services-products
======
j_baker
Am I the only one who finds the designation "product company" useless? To me,
it's as meaningful as "wet water". _Every_ company has a product. Now
certainly some companies have more tangible products than others. And it's not
always clear what a company's product is.
But at the end of the day, a consultant's expertise and knowledge are just as
much products as Apple's iPhone.
~~~
swombat
The difference, as I discuss in this article (and the next), is that a
"product company" sells something other than skilled time, whereas a "services
company" sells skilled time.
When you buy Windows, you're not buying someone's time. When you buy a
consultant, you're buying someone's time. Clear?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Top JQuery Functions to Plain Old JavaScript - omarld
These are my top most commonly use jQuery functions converted to Plain Old JavaScript.
======
omarld
Oh oops! Something went wrong here! I'll post again.
------
Gunvig
???
|
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Amazon Web Services terms of use: run far away, run fast - sean_hogle
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amazon-web-services-terms-use-run-far-away-fast-sean-hogle?trk=prof-post
======
sean_hogle
A few commenters dispute whether the IP non-assertion covenant applies to
"Your Content", defined in the Amazon terms as "Content [that is, "software
(including machine images), data, text, audio, video, or images"], that you or
any End User transfers to us for processing, storage or hosting by the
Services in connection with your AWS account and any computational results
that you or any End User derive from the foregoing through their use of the
Services". If Amazon intended to capture "Your Content" in the non-assertion
covenant, it would have done so expressly, the argument goes, and so therefore
"Your Content" is excluded from the non-assertion.
My response: section 8.1 of the terms states "EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN THIS
SECTION 8 [where the non-assert clause resides], we obtain no rights under
this Agreement from you or your licensors to Your Content, including any
related intellectual property rights" (all caps added). The implication
clearly is that Amazon obtains no IP rights to "Your Content" EXCEPT as
section 8 provides. Seems fairly clear to me.
I would never allow my client to knowingly sign up to this.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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Show HN: Contentful-based email content editor - sedzia
https://github.com/bandraszyk/contentful-emails
======
shaqbert
The gist: have your content folks work with a CMS, while having your devs work
with an API. So that the content folks don't mess up the email templates.
|
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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I Don't Want to Hire You If You Can't Reverse a Binary Tree (2016) - Posibyte
http://thecodebarbarian.com/i-dont-want-to-hire-you-if-you-cant-reverse-a-binary-tree
======
kwillets
Just traverse the tree forwards and backwards simultaneously and match the
moves. I hate peevish interviewers. If you want to show off, write a paper.
bool is_mirror(left_tree,right_tree) {
if( !left_tree && !right_tree)
return true;
if( !left_tree || !right_tree)
return false;
return is_mirror(left_tree->left, right_tree->right)
&& is_mirror(left_tree->right, right_tree->left);
}
bool is_symmetric(tree) {
!tree || is_mirror(tree-left,tree->right);
}
------
coreyp_1
I don't think this hiring methodology is good. Just look at all of the
negative comments on the post itself! Many of them make good points.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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47% Of Americans Don't Pay Income Tax, 45% Think The Tax System Is Just Fine - aresant
http://www.businessinsider.com/coincidence-47-of-americans-dont-pay-income-tax-45-think-tax-is-just-fine-2010-4#ixzz0l6gpz23M
======
barlo
I find it interesting that many of those in the lower income brackets, who pay
little to no federal income taxes, think their taxes are too high. A lot of
these same people are actually profiting from the credits in the current
income tax system.
Strange.
~~~
joezydeco
Wouldn't the taxes they _do_ pay (such as sales tax) equal a larger amount of
their disposable income than the higher brackets?
------
jdavid
this article makes no sense. is there another one reporting on the same news?
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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|
IPad thoughts from Ben Fry (creator of Processing) - ewjordan
http://benfry.com/writing/archives/608
======
CrLf
The control that Apple has over the iPhone and the application distribution
channel does contribute greatly to the iPhone's success. It makes the platform
easily accessible to people who aren't inclined to search the internet for
apps and are, in fact, afraid of doing it for all the malware experiences they
have on their PCs. They know the App Store has everything, and that they can
reasonably expect that the apps won't harm their device.
But, the iPhone is still just a phone. Most people don't hit the walls of the
room Apple has them locked in. Heck, most people don't even do much with their
iPhones... They rarely browse the web or use it to do serious email (one line
replies in a pinch are not "serious email") because they find the screen too
small and the experience too cumbersome when compared to a real computer. They
install some apps, but never really use them besides the first few minutes,
unless they're games, which also says much about the typical iPhone user:
phone calls and games.
The people that complain about lack of openness are the exception.
Now, the iPad is not an iPhone. Nobody will buy it to make phone calls,
although they will certainly play games in it. The iPad is more of a computer,
and more people will hit the walls of Apple's control. _This_ is what's going
to define the iPad's success.
It is a beautiful device, but if the average Joe expects it to behave more
like a standard computer than an iPhone, and if Apple doesn't make it more
open, it may very well end up a failure.
I like the iPhone, and if I weren't the kind of person that lives fine with
just a basic phone, I would prefer one over the alternatives (android et al)
even though it is much less open. On the other hand, I won't buy an iPad
despite how beautiful it is because it is too expensive for something that's
not a real computer.
~~~
pvg
_The control that Apple has over the iPhone and the application distribution
channel does contribute greatly to the iPhone's success._
Does it really? The iPhone was hugely successful well before there was an App
Store.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
Yeah, you couldn't install _any_ applications on the device, which is the
ultimate control. You can easily argue that the device is much more open now
that developers are able to create the 150,000 apps that have been downloaded
more than 3 billion times.
~~~
pvg
You still can't install _any_ application on the device. You could easily
argue a lot of things but what on earth are you talking about, as far as the
initial success of the iPhone is concerned?
~~~
tree_of_item
You're confusing the use of the word "any" here. In the previous post, it was
used to mean that there were _no_ applications available for the iPhone.
You're using it here to mean "you can't install arbitrary applications" which
is something different.
As far as the initial success of the iPhone is concerned, the device gaining
traction without "any" applications (in the first sense) is largely important
when speaking of the necessity of the App Store.
------
cpr
His thoughts make a lot of sense, but I really wonder if he's not missing the
forest for the trees, like a lot of writers on this subject.
It's not the little hacks (e.g., font organizers, window minimizers) that are
going to make or break this platform: it's going to be the immersive apps that
capture people's imaginations. (And most "real people" don't care about OS
hacks.)
I know I've already got way too many killer ideas for this platform, really
the first to incorporate touch computing in an intelligent, affordable
fashion, and I suspect many others are in the same boat.
So the lack of hackability may simply not be an issue. Within a given app, the
world's your oyster; you can do just about anything.
The gatekeeping problem may be the bigger issue, but there are so many great
apps waiting to be built that are completely non-controversial from Apple's
point of view, and that will fulfill the promise of the platform.
The recent sweep-up of semi-porn and cookie-cutter apps makes complete sense
to me; as a retailer, who wants all that crap on their shelves? And as a
developer, why would I want to be doing anything in those areas (unless it's
simply to exploit people for their money)?
I do have some areas of concern that affect my plans: Will Apple ever permit a
full-blown non-Safari browser app in the store? That's a biggie. And will
Apple ever permit an interactive programming tool like Smalltalk adapted for
the touch screen, or (one of my ideas) a graphical meta-calculator building
tool that ultimately allows the user to do "real" programming?
Ultimately, I think the answers are yes and yes, but the unsureness of those
answers is troubling.
~~~
orangecat
_Will Apple ever permit a full-blown non-Safari browser app in the store?_
If it's just a WebKit wrapper, probably. If it's a different rendering engine,
not a chance.
_And will Apple ever permit an interactive programming tool like Smalltalk
adapted for the touch screen, or (one of my ideas) a graphical meta-calculator
building tool that ultimately allows the user to do "real" programming?_
Smalltalk, no. Graphing calculators with variable assignments and stuff, sure
as long as you can't create things that resemble real applications.
_Ultimately, I think the answers are yes and yes, but the unsureness of those
answers is troubling._
I'd be looking at developing for Android tablets, where you don't have to give
the manufacturer a kill switch to your ideas. Or HTML5 if possible.
------
alain
The worst enemy of freedom in software is not Microsoft, it's Apple. You're
pretty free to develop and distribute software as you want on Windows. On new
Apple devices, they control the way the software is distributed, they tax you,
they make you obey their rules. Imagine a world with appstore as the main way
of distributing software for any kind of devices. This would be hell. This is
where Apple is going. Stop using Apple. Use Linux, or if you can't, use
Microsoft.
~~~
rauljara
This is only true of the iPad/iPhone ecosystem. For OSX, they give away
development tools better than the ones microsoft charges ridiculous amounts of
money for. Almost all apple-made software (even the kind they sell) doesn't
even make you enter a license key. If you are honestly worried about a closed
app store coming to OSX based on what Apple does with phones and devices that
they clearly think of as large phones, you are paranoid.
~~~
bad_user
Sorry, but having worked with both, Visual Studio is miles ahead of Xcode. I
even did an app for a client in C++/Qt that wanted it running in OS X ...
developed 100% in Visual Studio. That's because at the time (at least) Xcode
wasn't even having Intellisense (and Visual C++ does have the best
intellisense available).
Visual Studio Express is free to use ... and it's enough for almost every need
you might have. And before that you could use the #Develop which is an open-
source IDE for C#/VB.NET.
And while Xcode doesn't even support intellisense properly, Visual Studio is
in a different category altogether considering that you can also develop with
it web applications / Silverlight clips, supports many more languages and has
a really healthy plugins ecosystem.
Not to nitpick, but Microsoft is endorsing Mono lately as THE Linux/FreeBSD/OS
X alternative. On Linux I can have a dotNet app that uses Windows Forms
running ... can you do the same with Cocoa?
Of course Mono for Apple would be an abomination that had to be destroyed
(considering how they sued Psystar and even Wired on publishing an article
about hackitoshes)
(pretty ironic I'm defending Microsoft, since I've been badmouthing them for
years, but compared to Apple they start looking like saints)
~~~
sjs
> Of course Mono for Apple would be an abomination that had to be destroyed
> (considering how they sued Psystar and even Wired on publishing an article
> about hackitoshes)
Cocoa is a direct descendent of NEXTStep which is an open spec. Hence the NS
prefix on class names. Here's "Mono for Apple":
<http://www.cocotron.org/>
<http://etoileos.com/>
<http://www.gnustep.org/>
You mention MS "endorsing" Mono as if that means something.
~~~
grinich
Don't forget Cappuccino!
<http://cappuccino.org/>
~~~
sjs
Yes, and this recent thread[1] on the Cappuccino mailing list has links to
several other Objective-X languages.
[1]
[http://groups.google.com/group/objectivej/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/objectivej/browse_thread/thread/61a965b76eddd31b/3ebd668260d17526?#3ebd668260d17526)
But the first ones I linked are all Objective-C. Well, Étoilé has implemented
a smalltalk-esque syntax now.
------
Kilimanjaro
The iPad will sell like hotcakes and while some preach doomsday for freedom
others will make millions developing for it.
At the end, pops and moms will be happier than ever with their new computing
experience that doesn't crash every day and has to be formatted and
reinstalled every other month.
~~~
aw3c2
"Kilimanjaro, I want to send some of our holiday photos to aunt Annie with
your mom's iPad. Where can I plug it in? Dad."
"Kilimanjaro, your father bought a book which I would like to read too. Could
you tell us how to copy it to my iPad too? Love, mum"
~~~
tumult
"Hi Dad. You'll have to buy one of these
[http://images.apple.com/ipad/specs/images/usb_connectors_201...](http://images.apple.com/ipad/specs/images/usb_connectors_20100127.jpg)
for the iPad, unless your camera has built-in uploading. Look on the box for a
WiFi icon."
"Hi mum. Plug your iPad into iTunes and click 'add device to authorized list'
under the Advanced menu when dad is logged into his iTunes account."
~~~
Zev
_"Hi mum. Plug your iPad into iTunes and click 'add device to authorized list'
under the Advanced menu when dad is logged into his iTunes account."_
That one actually isn't too hard to walk people through on the phone. I did it
with my mom and dad for their iPod's a few months back. Took all of five
minutes; most of which was waiting for the iPod's to finish syncing.
------
loumf
The iPad and iPhone puts the needs of the user over the needs of the
developer. I agree that the whole "take down the network" line is ridiculous
-- but "take down your phone" is not at all ridiculous. Most of the apps I
have bought are from unknown (to me) developers -- I would never download a
Mac OSX app from any of them without doing a little research to get some
confidence that it wasn't going to be malware. Most of the time, it isn't
worth the trouble -- I buy OSX software all of the time, but only from
established vendors.
With the app developer program, approval process and store, there is a pretty
good chance (better than ever) that your device will keep working and that
apps you use can't (won't try to) do anything malicious. It lets single
developers get access to a market that is very hard to break into.
Certainly, there are decisions Apple has made with the AppStore and approvals
that are ridiculous. But, in the history of all human endeavor, there is no
complex operation that doesn't have problems. The vast majority of apps are
approved without incident. Apple has solved many more worse problems with app
distribution than the ones they created.
My main gripes are lack of transparency of the process (and your progression
through it) and no way to revert to a previously approved version (or fast
track a bug fix). Also, the lack of any way to offer paid updates is a big
issue for funding future versions of apps. The control over the platform
doesn't bother me at all (as a user or developer).
------
middayc
database error: here is the cached version
[http://209.85.129.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://benfry...](http://209.85.129.132/search?hl=en&q=cache:http://benfry.com/writing/archives/608&cad=h)
------
rimantas
To use an example, if things “just worked” then I'd be able
to copy music from my iPod back to my laptop, or from one
machine that I own to another.
True for the first part, as for the second: this feature is built in into
iTunes, it even allows you to see the music that's not on your computer and
copy it with a simple drag and drop.
The thing that will be interesting about the iPad is the experience
of using it — something that nobody has had except for the folks at
Apple — and as is always the case when dealing with a different type
of interface, you're always going to be wrong.
Not sure what he has in mind talking about experience. I gather few folks had
a chance to try it out after it was presented and all were raving how fast
that thing is. Then a lot of folks keep saying "it's just a bigger iPhone",
but don't know what the UX will be. Well, if it just a bigger iPhone (it's
not) user experience is going to be as good, only better.
Then people cry and predict the end of hacking, tinkering and programming.
Folks, don't forget: with iPad also comes out new _free_ SDK. But maybe
shouting about freedom is just a tad easier than using it.
------
bugs
My favorite criticism of the ipad came from a morning show host who is
somewhat tech savvy was asked by his co-host if he wanted one he responded:
"I already have one it is called an iphone."
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Ask HN: Do you think the web is really dying? - dbosch
Apps have won the mobile platform.
Can we expect the web to rise again?
======
claudiulodro
I think the web is the _only_ viable platform for new things.
If you look at the data[1], the most usage is on apps but nobody is
downloading new apps. Everybody is using the Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Uber,
etc. apps they already have and they are not interested in finding new apps.
Most of those apps have a ton of links to content on sites around the web (FB,
Pinterest, Reddit app, etc.) That's really the platform of the late 2010s: Web
content.
Even Hacker News is a platform for by web content!
[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-
consumers-...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/majority-of-u-s-consumers-
still-download-zero-apps-per-month-says-comscore/)
------
BjoernKW
In terms of consumer products perhaps apps have won although the web
definitely is far from dead in that area as well. Most apps also draw upon web
resources / services / APIs in one way or another. So, it's no clear-cut
either-or distinction.
Regarding business software mobile apps for the most part have a supporting
function. The vast majority of B2B software products is web-based.
------
ademup
Globally? Lol, no. Personally Yes: to the extent that I visit 17 sites every
day and all of these most frequently link to each other. Eg: HN pointing to
AnandtTech. 20 years ago I browsed 50+ unique sites every week, hundreds a
month with very little overlap. The early StumbleUpon was amazing.
------
LarryMade2
Really? What about mobile web?
Mobile apps has a lot more work to enter and also get adoption. Responsive web
can cross the lines from mobile to desktop.
Though it might be more about what sort of Apps you are referring to.
------
whb07
Source? Mobile has won over desktop sure, but I don’t know if the bulk of web
traffic in mobile is on dedicated mobile apps.
Source: most sites I consume are via Chrome/Safari on mobile.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
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Physics is stuck – and needs another Einstein to revolutionize it - laurex
https://www.salon.com/2020/09/06/physics-is-stuck--and-needs-another-einstein-to-revolutionize-it-physicist-avi-loeb-says/
======
SuperTachyon
Sure physics is “stuck” in the sense that in the last 30 years it hasn’t made
the progress as revolutionary as in the 30 years before that. But it’s still
progressing probably as well as any other foundational subjects. What happened
in the late 20th century was more of a miracle in the history of human
knowledge. We couldn’t expect that to happen every few decades.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
They Fixed the Keyboard - ryanbigg
https://ryanbigg.com/2019/11/they-fixed-the-keyboard
======
sgwealti
5 hours of use is not much time.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
macOS Sierra and Gatekeeper Path Randomization - milen
http://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2016/06/29/sierra-and-gatekeeper-path-randomization/
======
makecheck
This sounds strange; in order to refer to files outside your bundle with a
_relative_ path, you would have to be using something like
"../../../SomewhereElse/filename.xyz", which is utterly fragile to begin with.
I can only assume that this was used to find other applications. Still a
fragile dependency; for example, sometimes I put things in
"/Applications/Utilities" but sometimes I put them in "/Applications", which
means there is no single parent directory that is guaranteed to hold
everything. And even if that weren’t the case, the OS has always let you run
applications from anywhere you want.
Therefore, it has always been possible for apps to break when doing this, and
they were just _lucky_ if they ran on a system where it worked. It sounds like
in Sierra it will just be much more likely to break.
~~~
rarepostinlurkr
Thats pretty much exactly what people do. If you are feeling bored, you can
check the post and pre flight installer package scripts of some of your most
used software.
Regex system versions, string compare versions in Ruby (great for "10.9" ->
"10.10"), check that their installer package (an OS X binary) is running on...
OS X. Sometime developers do this out of ignorance, sometimes its done out of
laziness (don't want to do anything platform specific), or business decisions
(don't want to do anything platform specific!) or because there was no better
way to do it (no supported API).
How about applications that have an installer, lay themselves down in
/Applications/ then have a folder inside called "Plugins", from which they
load relative arbitrary code? More common than you might think!
------
eridius
> _The problem with Gatekeeper Path Randomization is that copying applications
> to a read-only disk image will break functionality in many, if not most,
> existing applications._
This is extremely hyperbolic. I'd say it could break functionality in a small
number of apps (that don't support running from read-only media, which is
definitely a problem with the app and not a problem with the system). I doubt
it's a lot, and it's sure as hell not "most".
------
veidr
This just goes to show that Apple _really_ needs to solve their app
installation problem.
I remember a time when "just move the app into the Applications folder" seemed
really simple. Like Apple, I thought it was a fine idea.
We were wrong. Having to move the application in Applications turns out to be
absolutely _baffling_ to most users. (Including many people I am fond of, e.g.
my dad.)
A lot of apps now offer to move themselves when first launched from the
Dowloads or Desktop folder; the OS should handle this.
GPR itself still seems janky, but this would help (since apps in Applications
don't get GPR'd).
~~~
zepto
The Mac App Store should have solved that problem, but they have severely
neglected it, both as a software component and a business service.
------
zZorgz
The main concern is that software updaters will not be able to easily replace
an app bundle if it is translocated to a readonly mount. The user will have to
move the app somewhere else first.
Apple wants developers to use dmgs (and signed ones particularly) but updaters
don't have an easy time with apps being launched from those either, and people
don't think dmgs provide a good user experience as well.
~~~
eridius
Software updaters need to handle the case of the app being on read-only media
_anyway_. If your app breaks because it was launched from read-only media,
that's absolutely a problem with the app and not a problem with the system.
~~~
zZorgz
Perhaps, but it's unlikely that many do. Updating such an app would involve
writing the new update to a different location, which could pose a challenge
for not confusing the user. The Mac App Store doesn't have to deal with this.
Some developers that distribute their app in dmg's try to nudge the user to
move the application for them into /Applications, but that's kind of hostile,
and developers shouldn't have to go out of their way to do that.
Before 10.12 at least, developers were generally okay with the updater not
running on read-only media - this is more intended behavior rather than being
'broken'.
Anyway, just pointing out the real concern from the article.
~~~
eridius
In the case of a software updater, I think "not updating" is probably correct
behavior. Broken behavior would be the app crashing or misbehaving or throwing
errors because it tries to update the app on read-only media.
~~~
zZorgz
Not updating is what most apps currently do in this case.
The author's concern is that they (and many other developers) ship apps in
zips, have many users download them, and run them from ~/Downloads/ or
wherever their browser downloaded the app to. Only in 10.12, this practice
will prevent most 3rd party apps from being able to update themselves.
The author wants an info.plist key (plus perhaps app signing) to opt-out of
translocation and say that they are competent enough. Before thinking that
this "defeats" the point, people may miss that Apple is fine with opting out
provided you code sign and package a dmg.
The author and many others also don't like dmgs, however, and find that they
confuse many users. What the author is concerned about does indeed affect a
lot of apps.
~~~
eridius
I would expect that people who run an app from ~/Downloads are doing so
because they don't know if they want to actually keep it and are just testing
it out. Similarly, many apps already check if they're launched from a DMG or
from ~/Downloads and ask the user if they want to move the app to the
Applications folder, so that's a pretty simple fix for any self-updating app
to adopt.
~~~
zZorgz
I don't want to be asked about moving apps somewhere else especially for
testing them. It is kind of hostile. And it's a burden for the dev to include
yet more code for this. IMO, Apple should have a way to solve the issue for
out-of-store apps.
(I really don't know if that many apps do this btw, I think most apps I
download today are packaged in zip..)
Other users are just baffled and run apps from disk images or Downloads just
because.
The authors point is that at least before 10.12 zip was a decent approach.
Too bad they aren't offering signed zip or something similar that takes same
advantages that a signed dmg does..
~~~
eridius
A signed zip is still dangerous. If the attacker can convince the user to
download two files instead of just one, the attacker controls the names of the
folders that contains the extracted zip contents (i.e. the name of the zip),
so any app that looks at ../foo/bar would still be vulnerable.
The Info.plist approach (where the app declares that it has no such relative
path dependencies and so should skip gatekeeper path randomization) seems like
the best approach for fixing this "issue".
------
chmaynard
After reading this post, I still don't understand what the problem is. Are Mac
developers writing apps that modify files stored inside the app bundle? If so,
isn't this considered a dangerous practice?
~~~
Rumudiez
I think the concern is stated here:
> However, many users run applications from the Downloads folder, never moving
> them.
Basically, unsigned apps __might __not work when run from the Downloads folder
without changing the Gatekeeper setting in Security & Privacy settings.
I don't view this as an issue because I already have to go there to launch an
unsigned app for the first time to hit "Allow."
~~~
pfranz
I'm still amazed Apple hasn't done anything to encourage people to move apps
from Downloads into Applications (or from a disk image); which is a big part
of this problem. I see Applications launched from Downloads or copied to the
Desktop all the time. It's almost always out of ignorance and maybe laziness.
Almost every App has a custom background image on the disk image and shortcut
instructing people to copy the application to Applications. I've also seen
various apps check and pop up a dialog asking if they should move themselves
to Applications for you.
Much like the first-run warning dialog, I'm surprised Apple doesn't have a
similar dialog offering to "Leave App and Launch", "Move App to Applications
and Launch", or "Move App, Create a Shortcut Here, and Launch". With a
preference or flag to suppress the dialog.
~~~
blacksmith_tb
I doubt it's laziness, I would think most users have no idea what the
implications of running from a dmg / the desktop / ~/Applications or
/Applications really are... It doesn't help that there are also .pkg
installers that have a wizard-y interface (and which often are run from a
mounted dmg, e.g. VirtualBox). Apple could impose some order on the mess, but
I tend to find their solutions to problems like these heavy-handed, so though
that would probably benefit most users, it might not be a win for the more
technical ones.
~~~
pfranz
I'm sure it's ignorance for most people, but I know it's laziness with some
people I know.
I think the whole .app folder idea was a great idea that I'm surprised others
(Windows/Linux) haven't copied. The /intention/ is that anything that would
need to get installed/fixed happen when the app is first launched. This both
removes the need for an installer and helps repair things (if the App was
moved or preferences were deleted). Thankfully installers are pretty rare in
my experience. Usually it's for pretty involved things (network monitor, VM
environment) or lazy multi-platform devs (Microsoft Word, or Adobe).
I think the App Store is the most straightforward for the average user--I just
wish they'd improve it so it was used more.
|
{
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|
The Star-Spangled Banner's third verse - barbe
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/video-do-you-know-the-star-spangled-banners-third-verse/
======
pcunite
The third verse is expressing this sentiment: "neither a hired hitman or a
person forced into attacking us will win. They will both meet a gloomy end
while the banner continues to wave triumphantly over any and all who oppose".
Its a very grim reminder of the horrors of war. It took a lot to create the
nation of America. It was very costly to also bring about the freedom of all
people. America set a precedent for the rest of the world to follow.
A good rendition: [https://youtu.be/N_lCmBvYMRs](https://youtu.be/N_lCmBvYMRs)
------
eesmith
I learned about "the gloom of the grave" from, of all things, Asimov's short
story "No Refuge Could Save" \-
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Refuge_Could_Save](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Refuge_Could_Save)
> While questioning a suspected German spy, he performed a word association
> test on him. When Griswold said "terror of flight," the suspect replied,
> "gloom of the grave." This was evidence that he was a spy who had been
> trained up in Americanisms, since the two phrases allude to a line in the
> third verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and no native-born American could
> possibly be familiar with the third verse of the national anthem ("except
> for me, and I know everything," added Griswold).
I never put the context together to realize it was talking about threatening
to return free people to slavery.
More Wikipedia context about these lines at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-
Spangled_Banner#slave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-
Spangled_Banner#slave) . That page also mentions the NAACP call to remove the
national anthem/
------
eqvinox
Still better than the German national anthem, which is the 3rd verse of a poem
whose 1st verse is outlawed as nazi paraphernalia...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied)
"Germany, Germany above all, [...]"
[edit: this is only intended to point this out as a "similar curiosity"; both
are quite questionable in current times.]
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
Show HN: Vue Flags, a component with 230 countries (and a backup flag) - LeCoupa
https://www.growthbunker.dev/vueflags/
======
cruhstaller
Nice!
I added an issue because the flags of Switzerland and Vatican should be a
square.
|
{
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
}
|
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