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San Francisco Is Preparing for Life After This Tech Boom - getgoingnow http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-06-09/san-francisco-is-bracing-for-life-after-this-tech-bubble ====== matt_wulfeck Honestly, at this point it's too late to start "preparing" for a pop. I'm dubious the city can come up with 6 years of money to ride out any kind of economic turmoil without great pain. Individuals can simply move to a better and cheaper location. There's many more mature and cheaper tech hubs now than there were in 2007. The city is stuck with itself and its tax liabilities. And in a place where you can't cut down a tree without posting 90 days notice, good luck rolling back some of that spending. ~~~ ashwinaj I was in one of the so called "low cost tech hubs" of Dallas/Austin in 2008 during the recession. Anecdotal, but people in tech were doing a lot worse than in SV due to lack of jobs. If you were a reasonably good engineer in SV, you kept your job or at worse got a job at a lower salary in SV, while in Dallas/Austin people were losing jobs outright and unemployed for months since there weren't enough companies around. This may have changed 8 years on, but I'm skeptical from what I hear from friends and acquaintances in Texas. From an R&D operational point of view, you cannot just up and move all major operations from SV to <insert any tech hub> on a whim. It may work for a 10 person startup, not for a company with thousands or even hundreds of employees. ~~~ todd8 My anecdotal observation about the size of companies moving to Texas is different. My neighbor just moved his company of three hundred employees to Austin. Another neighbor's company, Dimensional Fund Advisors relocated to Austin, about 1000 employees. On my small street (10 families), half work for or run companies that moved operations to Austin. Toyota just moved to a suburb of Dallas, 4000 employees. The operational cost savings are substantial. ~~~ legodt The specific suburb Toyota moved to, Plano (75093), is notable because it is the home of many large companies, tech included. Companies like PepsiCo/Frito- Lay, Gearbox, and UGS are headquartered there alongside large offices for companies such as HP and various financial institutions. Plano is an upper- middle to upper class suburb of Dallas where housing for families is far more accessible than inside of Dallas itself. Whether this suburb-based expansion model can apply to other tech hubs in different states is debatable, but the pattern is still worth noting. ~~~ amyjess By the way, the proper term for something like Plano is an "edge city" [0]. It's a suburb that's managed to grow enough of its own industry that residents can both live and work here without having to commute to the city. Personally, I love it. I have a very cheap cost of living (paying $1 per sq. ft. means you're being gouged here), a spacious home in an area with no noise, _and_ a short commute all at the same time. Also, since we have so much tech industry here bringing a lot of H1-B workers and other diverse employees (plus a major tech university that hosts a large number of international students), there's been a huge boom in good ethnic food here. Dallas is kinda the opposite of most other cities: where other cities have white flight suburbs and a diverse urban core, Dallas has _huge_ concentrations of Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese people (among many, _many_ other ethnicities) in the suburbs, while the city is full of white hipsters who think living in a tiny loft is cool. As such, you find the best food in the suburbs. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city) ------ rm_-rf_slash Question for San Francisco tech workers: if there is a massive recession caused either locally (over-funded companies that don't make money going bust) or globally (China is expected to hold debt over 300% of GDP by 2020), what will you do to protect yourselves? What languages or frameworks do you recommend learning? Which industries need engineers and are relatively insulated from economic downturns? If the Bay Area slams the brakes on growth, where will you move? What non-tech skills would you recommend brushing up on? Perhaps most importantly: if things went bust today, how fucked would you be? ~~~ zer00eyz Having been through the cycle twice I'm going to tell you a secret. You could be the greatest developer, who has honed skills in every language and still be in bad shape. What you know has NOTHING to do with your ability to survive. You need cash on hand. A lot of it. That recommendation about three months in the bank, you should have six months or better yet a year of your current salary. If you get laid off, you better start living lean. Cut every expense you don't need to make that money last as long as possible. You need to have a network, cause skill alone won't get you work. Its quickly going to turn into "who do you know" and "who can get you in the door". It is vital that you build and maintain these relationships NOW, cause when it hits the fan, its going to be too late. Honestly, the down has always been good for the bay. There is a lot of "medium talent" in the bay right now, and a down market is very much going to clear all of that out. ~~~ ido It's always a good idea to save, but if you get fired in the US do you not get unemployment benefits? I've been laid off in Austria before (a few years ago, the company I worked for downsized about half its workforce around ~2010) & was IIRC entitled to unemployment benefits for about half as long as I worked there (ended up finding a new job before the benefits ran out). ~~~ arebop Unemployment benefits in California* last for 26 weeks, but the maximum benefit is $450/week, enough to cover about half the rent payment on a studio apartment in the Bay Area. Prudent workers save on their own for the possibility of unemployment. *(corrected from U.S.) ~~~ ido Interesting that it's not a percentage of your wage, seeing as you pay more unemployment insurance/social security the more you earn (at least you do in Austria and Germany). In Austria it was 55% if your net salary IIRC. ~~~ laxatives I believe it is tied to wage, but it isn't really designed to support high income earners and has a relatively low ceiling as far as software engineers are concerned. ------ vmarsy That chart showing a big bump after 2000 and 2008 was intriguing, I was curious to know how it looked before 1996 Does anyone knows what "bubble" happened in 1990 in San Francisco? [https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=city:CT0667000000000:CT5363000000000:CT0644000000000&fdim_y=seasonality:U&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:U&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=city:CT0667000000000&ifdim=country&tstart=631872000000&tend=1447056000000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false) ~~~ packetized Presumably, reconstruction after the earthquake in 1989. ~~~ gumby Actually the 89 earthquake did a surprisingly small amount of damage to the bay area (in SF primarily the marina and small but significant damage to the bay bridge; outside it was the cypress structure and much of downtown santa cruz). In addition, the reconstruction was spread over a long period (for example they haven't finished with the bay bridge). ~~~ dragonwriter > Actually the 89 earthquake did a surprisingly small amount of damage to the > bay area (in SF primarily the marina and small but significant damage to the > bay bridge Also, SR-480, I-280, and US 101 all saw significant damage and closures requiring reconstruction and redesign (either of the freeway itself, or of transport networks because, as in the case of SR-480, the freeway was just deleted entirely after the damage.) > In addition, the reconstruction was spread over a long period (for example > they haven't finished with the bay bridge). The Bay Bridge damage from the earthquake was repaired fairly quickly; the seismic retrofit to make it better able to survive future earthquakes (and, more specifically, the replacement of the Eastern Span as part of that retrofit) has taken longer. ~~~ gumby Yep. My point was that none of those was responsible for any sort of economic "uplift" (in quotes because of the broken windows fallacy). BTW after writing that comment I just walked by the old chemistry building on the Stanford campus which was closed by the earthquake (I was actually in that building a earlier that summer). They've finally started work on fixing it -- more than a quarter century after it was declared unsafe! ~~~ dragonwriter > My point was that none of those was responsible for any sort of economic > "uplift" (in quotes because of the broken windows fallacy). The damage to SR-480 (the Embarcadero Freeway) might be a significant counterexample to that, since it was the earthquake damage that provide the impetus to overcome the resistance to demolishing it that had stopped that from happening two years before the earthquake, and allowed the improvements in that area that took place once the freeway was removed. ------ guyzero "States are also readying for bad times by squirreling away more cash in reserves." Now both huge companies and local governments are hoarding cash. Which is problematic for the economy as a whole. ~~~ tosseraccount Cash is in the bank being lent out to others. This is good for the economy as a whole. Saving for a rainy day is prudent fiscal policy. ~~~ rsync "Cash is in the bank being lent out to others." Yes, in your textbook it is. In reality, in 2016, banks are hoarding that cash outright, or "lending" it to other banks, etc., for near-zero returns. ------ robertelder I think by definition, you can't 'brace' for 'a bubble'. That's the central part of the metaphor that the bubble 'bursts' as a sudden event at a time you can't prepare for. The act of anticipating for a 'bubble' and preparing for it is the exact kind of behaviour that prevents it from happening. ~~~ ghshephard You can't predict when the bubble will occur, but you can certainly brace for it. Hiring contingent workforces that can be immediately let go if tax receipts fall, not entering into any long term contracts with large penalties, based on the belief you will always have a large population, and, most, most importantly, don't enter into long term unfunded liabilities with the hope/prayer/belief that times will always be good, and that the future will be able to pay for the present. Unfunded Pension Liabilities (among many other things) crippled Detroit, Puerto Rico, and, very soon, Chicago. Also - for large infrastructure investments, certainly issue bonds for things like water, sewer, hospital, basic infrastructure - but don't get too crazy/extravagant with Sport Stadiums, or overly complex derivative hedges that blow up if the economy tanks. If you really want such nice toys for your city, consider saving for them rather than going into debt. Municipal finances are not like Federal (or heck, even state) finances - you really do have to balance your books. ------ mc32 This is wise, just like guv Brown is being prudent with respect to tax receipts while his colleagues insist he's bring stingy in a time of plenty. Apparently, those people are unaware of the hole Grey Davis dug while riding high on the wave of late nineties tax receipts. ~~~ azinman2 Except SF ran a deficit of 100M last year despite record revenue. Youd never know they have billions more than just s few years ago, the streets are in a shameful condition, homeless situation is quite bad, and public transit is a joke. They're doing a terrible job of managing their money. ~~~ Decade It’s not the money that’s terribly managed. And it’s our money, not theirs. It’s that we have an awful degree of citizen participation, being directed with a dumb combination of social feel-good and suspicion of authority. So, a couple days ago, we had Proposition B, which forbids the City of San Francisco from spending less than $64 million of the general fund on parks, gradually increasing to $89 million, even if the city is running a $100 million deficit, in addition to a percentage of property tax, with additional committees and reports. This proposition passed overwhelmingly. Along with every other proposition that suggested increased taxes. It’s hard to run a city effectively when you’re being hamstrung by all sorts of requirements and interminable committees. _Streets_ could be in better condition if fiber and sewers could be coordinated with each other and with other street maintenance. _Homeless_ could be better if we acted like we were a state-level region with state-level decision-making, so let’s build housing for the people already, and not a cluster of democracies squabbling over a homeowner’s right to what’s in the sky over a several-square-mile region. _Public transit…_ It reminds me of the James Madison quotation, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Sadly, public transit is run by men (and women), not angels, so there’s all sorts of possibilities for corruption and selfish decisions. From requirements designed for the benefit of campaign contributors, to iron-clad income security for people whose jobs should have been automated away. It’s a mess, and attempts to fix it with regulations tend to block sensible decisions and cause loopholes. In summary, it’s not the money that is mismanaged. It is the people. ------ matt_wulfeck > The unemployment rate was 3.1 percent in April, the lowest since 2000, and > home values are at a median of $1.1 million, the largest among the 50 > biggest U.S. cities. Mayor Edwin Lee on May 31 released a record $9.6 > billion budget proposal. What goes up must come down. Here's my completely opinionated ideas of how an individual in San Francisco can ride out the economic change: 1\. Sell your home. 2\. Have a 6 month nest egg saved up. 3\. Have an up-to-date resume. The "sell your home" part is not valid in the near-zero interest rate world, which who knows how long that will last. ~~~ SilasX But the interest rates can stay low indefinitely; the Fed is determined to keep it that way because of how many people depend on home value. Even moving short-term rates to 0.25% is met with shock. ~~~ dragonwriter > the Fed is determined to keep it that way because of how many people depend > on home value. No, the main two things that the Fed manages with monetary policy (and they tend to be balanced against each other) are inflation and employment. Low rates are used to spur employment at the cost of risking inflation, high rates are used to constrain inflation at the risk of harming employment. ~~~ SilasX I know what the textbook says; I'm talking about the political realities of pursuing a policy that would cause a precipitous value in people's homes. True, the Fed is nominally Independent, and Immune to Political Influences, not in practice it's not. The bankers that contribute to its policies also have to worry about mortgages going underwater from a return to historically normal rates. ~~~ dragonwriter > I know what the textbook says; I'm talking about the political realities of > pursuing a policy that would cause a precipitous value in people's homes. The political reality is that the Fed has fairly consistently -- and reasonably predictably by experts looking at the same signals that the Fed overtly claims to watch -- made rate decisions as one would expect considering the combination of employment-related and inflation-related considerations they consider under the "textbook" case. So, conspiracy theories about home prices are unnecessary. > True, the Fed is nominally Independent, and Immune to Political Influences, > not in practice it's not. I won't argue that the Fed is someone subject to political influences, OTOH, those strongly militate both for working to promote employment and working to constrain inflation, which are also the Feds overt mandates. > The bankers that contribute to its policies also have to worry about > mortgages going underwater from a return to historically normal rates. After the 2009 crisis, the wave of defaults that occurred then, and the tighter lending policies that banks have taken since, there's not a huge risk there. ~~~ SilasX The last time unemployment was this low [1], the Fed had rates near 5%, and yet raising them to 0.25% is considered shocking, even with inflation very low -- almost nothing over 2015 [2]. How would you explain the reticence? [1] [http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000) [2] [http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical...](http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx) ~~~ dragonwriter > The last time unemployment was this low, the Fed had rates near 5% Well, leaving aside looking at current rates rather than leading indicators (since, while problematic, its a lot more convenient), the time you were referencing with a ~5% Fed funds rate also had inflation rates near 5%, not hovering around 1% (like now) after more than a year of being substantially below 1%. > and yet raising them to 0.25% is considered shocking, even with inflation > very low The Fed raises rates to _control_ inflation. With low inflation, you expect low rates. It also lowers rates to improve employment, but with virtually no inflation, there's little reason for tightening the money supply. The last time inflation was this low this long -- in the mid 1950s -- the effective Fed Funds rate was also quite low, though a bit higher than now (around 1%, rather than 0.37% now). ~~~ SilasX >The last time inflation was this low this long -- in the mid 1950s -- the effective Fed Funds rate was also quite low, though a bit higher than now (around 1%, rather than 0.37% now). So then you agree that returning to historic real rates would require the Fed to do something currently unthinkable -- ~1% rather than 0.25%? Edit: Also consider what a shift of 0.75% does on the implied price of a house when mortgage rates are at 3.75%: [http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/current- interest-r...](http://www.bankrate.com/finance/mortgages/current-interest- rates.aspx) ~~~ dragonwriter > So then you agree that returning to historic real rates would require the > Fed to do something currently unthinkable -- ~1% rather than 0.25%? No, for three reasons. (1) A limited sample problem; the present circumstances are nearly historically unprecedented. When the _only_ post-WWII comparable in inflation terms is in the mid-1950s (and, conveniently, its also very roughly comparable in at least headline unemployment terms, though other employment measures may not look similar), and that's deep in the Bretton Woods period which puts entirely different constraints on the effects of (and thus the calculus feeding in to) monetary policy, you've really got no good comparison in history. (2) The current _effective_ federal funds rates (what was around 1% in the 1950s period with similar inflation) is 0.37%, not 0.25% (The current _target_ rate is 0.25%-0.50%, and the actual effective rate happens to be right in the center of that target range.) (3) Prior to the recent jobs report, which showed gains at a slower rate than anticipated, most predictions were for a July increase in the target rate, possibly followed by another in September. After the recent jobs report, predictions are mixed, with an increase by September seeming commonly predicted, with some possibility of a July increase still on the table. Raising the target from its current level (which, again, isn't 0.25%, but 0.25%-0.50%) isn't "unthinkable", in fact, it seems to be what everyone is thinking. ------ vonnik San Francisco is one of the few cities in the US where half the inhabitants _wish_ its chief industry would stumble and the bubble burst. ------ teslaberry the next tech bubble bursting in the u.s. will see the reformulation of outsourcing to india and china as the 'solution' to the next tech recovery. the great depression lasted 12 years from 29 to world war 2. every time the tech bubble has popped since 99 the fed lowered interest rates and increased money supply. i dont think that one will work so easily after the next bubble because interest rates will have to go negative and money supply has EXPLODED in the last 8 years. the fed doesn't like high gold or oil prices so how much more can they increase money supply after the next bubble busts? the fed has taken 25 years post volcker to paint itself into this corner. the results of the next bubble bursting will be multi-decade cycle in nature meaning a bigger bustup than any of the 2008, 2004 , 99 bubbles. ------ bejar37 Sort of crazy to me that the budget for SF is $9B. Boston, which is around 200k people smaller, has a budget of <3B, which seems like a huge gap. What kind of services does SF provide that a pretty comparable city like Boston doesn't? ~~~ jdavis703 In the spirit of teaching a person to fish, instead of handing a fish: [http://budget.data.cityofboston.gov/#/](http://budget.data.cityofboston.gov/#/) [http://sfmayor.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/mayor/budget/SF_Budget_...](http://sfmayor.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/mayor/budget/SF_Budget_Book_FY_2015_16_and_2016_17_Final_WEB.pdf) (see page 11) One example, public safety is almost 3 times more expensive. It looks like social services is also about 3 times higher. On a per capita basis, it looks like SF actually pays less for transportation. But since the budgets are broken down by different categories, it's kind of hard to tell. I'd need to do more research. ------ AstroJetson Very nice to see they have a rainy day fund. Watching the city government here they really believe the TV show title "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" Wish governments were paying attention to past history ~~~ rconti Jerry Brown's been very good about this for CA as a whole. SF doesn't have to worry a lot because they're already insulating themselves from tech by not bothering to tax Twitter or other big tech companies in the first place :) ------ bishnu Implicit in this "life after" plan is that things are going okay in San Francisco right now, which is a pretty interesting conclusion to come to. ~~~ dragonwriter > Implicit in this "life after" plan is that things are going okay in San > Francisco right now, which is a pretty interesting conclusion to come to. If things were that bad, people wouldn't be _willing_ to pay current SF real estate prices to live there, no matter what the supply of housing was like. ------ weatherlight I wonder how this would affect Silicon Alley? ------ moribondus The SF advantage is so incredibly ephemeral. Everybody wants to go there, because everybody else is there. If that is all there is to it -- and it is -- this process can very easily go into reverse mode. SF is insanely expensive. You do not need any part of SF to write good software. It only makes your software more expensive. Some day -- that could take quite a bit of time though -- SF will crash and burn, simply because there is no reason why it wouldn't. ~~~ dredmorbius It's been ephemeral for some 60 years now. Some ephemeralities are more durable than others. Not that they cannot change.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Simonne Jones on the Intersection of Science and Pop Music - arbitraryy http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/27/simonne-jones-gravity-interview/ ====== arbitraryy (Full disclosure. Simonne is a friend) We all love reading about inspiring people with immeasurable passions for creating. I am especially moved when those passions are rooted in a vision of humanity’s advancement. Simonne Jones is a person who embodies these features and someone who I am inspired by every day. Her tenets of invention are analogous to how startup companies realize their own success. \- Her creations fill a gaping hole in an industry \- She has an undying love and desire to create \- She works inspired and tireless daily in her pursuit of getting others to realize their own potential \- Technology is her vehicle Just like startups in their industries, she is creating something novel in the music world. She pairs pop beats (she produces her own music) with complex scientific and philosophical metaphors (she has a formal education in the sciences) that is otherwise devoid in modern pop music. Her music and voice are wonderful to listen to first and foremost, but is also scientifically educational and emotionally connected in lyrical content. Simonne released her first EP "Gravity" last week on major label Vertigo/Capitol (A division of Universal Music) (Spotify Link here: [https://open.spotify.com/album/2mSTYu3wB3Qhg45pKIYAuY](https://open.spotify.com/album/2mSTYu3wB3Qhg45pKIYAuY)). Do you find it encouraging for music that a major label is interested in promoting an artist that is also a scientist?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system - bmj1 https://blog.cyber.fund/huge-ethereum-mixer-6cf98680ee6c ====== ve55 Why is the link at the top of this article ('cyber•Fund') to [https://cyber.fund/system/Paragon](https://cyber.fund/system/Paragon), a page for 'Paragon', a very shifty high-budget ICO? Given the other things Paragon has paid big bucks for (anything you can imagine, from paying Youtubers 5 figures per video to get their subscribers to 'invest' in them to paying for mass reddit vote manipulation to buying very expensive ads and sponsorship programs to lying about their company model, CEO, etc), it seems really out of place to me that this article links to them as the first link. ~~~ KGIII At first, I thought you might be hyperbolic or had fallen for some sort of propaganda (for lack of a better term). I don't know much about ICOs and I know/knew less about Paragon. I figured I'd check and just let you be, figuring I'd not get involved. So, I went to Google and entered, "Paragon ICO complaints Reddit." In two minutes, probably less, I'd confirmed that they were as bad as you claim. I spent about a half hour and read a bunch. If anything, you didn't even mention some of the biggest issues. The whole thing is shady as hell. They mysteriously went from two to five 'programmers' retroactively. Not only will they not name the programmers, they won't show any of their previous work, such as a GitHub account. The owner probably isn't the owner, but is her husband and he has a storied past that makes me question his ethics. And it goes on and on. It's like the Equifax of crytocurrency, with regards to a continued stream of negative results. One of the complaints is that they are just in it for the money. Well, yeah... I can see that. I can even rationalize that. But, instead of sticking with their agreed pre-sale amount, they sold like five times as many coins. How the heck is this even legal? I bet US currency was involved and it has been shown before that that's all it takes for the US Feds to get involved and go stomping across borders. Seriously, how is it legal? You didn't even exaggerate! They appear worse than your claim! As for how they ended up on that site and as the top-most link, I find it hard to give the benefit of doubt. It took me one single search to confirm what you said. I only spent the additional time because I like a good train wreck. I will give them some credit, their balls must need a cart to carry them around. This kind of money attracts strong enemies, regardless of the legality. There is no way in hell that this is legal. ~~~ ve55 Haha, I appreciate the response, I'm glad that upon doing your own investigation you found that my wording was reasonable. As far as legality goes, it's difficulty to say. I think that a project like this is likely paying lawyers good money to make sure they stay 'in the green', but lawyers can only do so much to protect you when you do the things that they're doing. We all know that projects like Paragon and many others are the reasons why regulations will come even harder in these areas. As for to what extent the law needs to protect investors from making terrible investments, I'm not sure, the game changes a lot when companies start completely lying to their investors, and that does seem to me (as a non- lawyer) like one of the many good places where lines can be drawn. ~~~ KGIII The only thing you might be guilty of is minimizing it. I figured if I was doubtful, other people might be doubtful. Rather than have you be dismissed, it seemed to me that confirming your post was the prudent thing to do. I was pretty shocked. That's fodder for a whole HN link and thread. I really figured you were blowing it out of proportion. Nope... Hell, the list of complaints goes on and on. I'm reminded of when drones were gaining in popularity and people, notably on Slashdot, were saying all the things they were doing and how nobody could stop them. I told them that is how you end up with draconian regulations. I was moderated quite heavily in the downward direction. Fast forward a few years and they are complaining about draconian regulations. Which is to say you're right. They are going to end up coming down on this, and coming down on this hard. I'm sure some rebels will say it can't be prevented, but laws don't work like that. They don't prevent anything. They'll just make cryptocurrency illegal, use and possession, and selectively prosecute the offenders. That's worst case scenario, I guess. They may just regulate ICOs heavily and stop the regular person from investing. I doubt that will bother the wealthy and established players much. Even better, they'll be doing it 'for your own protection.' Those sound bites will appeal to the masses. By the way, this is one of those times I wish an HN poster had been wrong. ~~~ ve55 A bit interesting, just posted after you made this comment was [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15335146). So maybe companies like Paragon will get in trouble with the SEC for their dealings, even if they do not sell 'securities'. ------ dahdum Aren't these the temporary deposit addresses that exchanges give out? You deposit and then they sweep the balance to their hot/cold wallets as necessary? Also the ReplaySafeSplit and related contracts were due to the ETH/ETC split, you had to move your coins to be safe. I see no evidence of a "mixer" being the cause. ~~~ homakov Such a waste of tx! Ethereum should allow sending directly to 0xAddr#input where input could be kind of tag that is used to identify you. ~~~ DennisP This actually is possible. Every Ethereum transaction has a data field that can store an arbitrary amount of data. Normally this is used for function calls to contracts. An exchange could make a contract that lets the user put in their userId when sending eth, and then everybody would be sending to the same address while still being identifiable. It would even be possible to reject deposits which do not include the userId, or which have an unknown userId. I think the main reason exchanges don't do this is that they deal with lots of cryptocurrencies, so they use the simplest method that works for all of them: just make a unique deposit address for each user. ~~~ homakov Yes, that's what I said. The ABI-intended input field could easily be used as personal ID. Furthermore in some cases you need to transfer money to other wallet specifically so it could call some method, and this way you would literally run any method by passing #methodIdarg1arg2. Clumsy but tx cost saving ------ alexjray “Ethereum transactions” and “quantity of ETH transacted” are two very different things. This title (and article) is deceiving. Please see Vitalik Buterin response to this before reading. [https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/i-think-this-article- real...](https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/i-think-this-article-really- deserves-a-bold-clarification-correction-1bed386b056b) ------ ChrisClark Good to clarify, it's actually 68% of the value, the amount transferred. They are only about 10% of the number of transactions. ------ atomical This is obvious if you've ever poked through a few random transactions on etherscan. The big exchanges use temporary accounts to move funds to users. It makes sense that would make up a majority of eth transactions because fiat is the only way to purchase ether. ------ shemnon42 Is the story that 68% of the traffic is naked laundering or that 68% of the traffic is people buying into ICO that are not already enfranchised in ethereum? ~~~ Alex3917 It's not laundering, it's spoofing by some of the earliest Ethereum holders who are trading with themselves on the exchanges to create the appearance of volume and liquidity to drive up the value of their coins. ~~~ mst Genuine (but possibly stupid) question: How do I tell the difference between that and the 'exchange temp accounts' theory promulgated upthread? ------ TeeWEE These are just temporary addresses at exchanges: You pay the exchange x euro, the exchange gives you y ether to adress (temp) E, then you transfer from E to your own wallet K ------ Animats This mixing ramped up around the same time as the price did. Etherium was around $8 at the beginning of 2017, where it had been for years. By midyear it was in the $300-$400 range. Is this mixing somehow involved with a scheme to pump the price? ~~~ Taniwha Doesn't this screw up people's taxes, making them liable for realised capital gains, and also making them completely screwed if the value of the currency goes back down again ~~~ charlesdm You are only liable for CGT if you sell an asset (= realised gain). So, if you buy a stock at $10 and it goes up to $100, your CGT liability is a certain percentage of $90 ($100 - $10) upon liquidation. If you buy a stock at $100 and it goes down to $10, you end up with a $90 (generally carry forward, some jurisdictions allow carry backwards) loss that can be used to offset other gains. ~~~ Taniwha yes - but isn't that what's essentially happening here when you run your coin thru a mixer and mix it with other coin (which must have the same value) - you sell your coin and get back a new one with today's value - voila a taxable event .... ~~~ charlesdm I would assume you would argue that you merely moved money (or assets) around, just like you would wire money from A to B. Moving stocks with unrealised gains from broker A to B is also not taxable. The only person you would ever have that conversation with would be the IRS (or your local tax authority outside of the US), and they are bound by confidentially. ~~~ Taniwha yes but that act of mixing your coin with others effectively gives you back mostly other people's coins .... what's their value if not today's value? ~~~ uncoder0 If I go get change for $10,000 in $100 bills and ask for all $1's do I realize 10,000 dollars in capital gains because those are "other people's dollars" ~~~ Taniwha but they're dollar bills, the currency we pay taxes in, they're always worth $10k no matter what happens to their actual intrinsic value ... a better example is: I buy 10oz of gold for $1000 (this was a while ago), this week I exchange my gold for a different 10oz of gold (less a small commission to the exchange) currently worth $10,000 - is that a taxable transaction? I suspect yes ------ atomical I would be interested in seeing the charts on etherscan modified so that these temporary accounts are removed. [https://etherscan.io/chart/address](https://etherscan.io/chart/address) It's going to screw up a lot of analysis. ------ XR0CSWV3h3kZWg The article doesn't seem to support the claim. ------ thisisit This whole analysis is very confusing. The first analysis about temporary addresses makes sense. Addresses used only for one hour. But what bearing does "transaction value" has? The real metric of a mixer controlling a currency would have been number of transactions. Mixing is about spreading the transactions far and wide and across many addresses to make it difficult to trace. When you look at the graph below, the mixer accounts for barely 11% of the transaction volume. If I go further and read about the core and shell, the analysis falls apart even more. The idea proposed is that the shell accounts are the ones responsible for generating output and inputs to external accounts like the exchanges and also talk to core which consists of 90% temporary accounts. Fair enough. "In the end, it turned out that the total amount transferred into and out of the core is 4 times higher than the total that entered and left the shell and the core taken together." How is this even possible? If assume flow of 1 ETH ignoring fees. Poloneix -> Shell -> core -> Shell -> Kraken From the statement "total that entered and left the shell and the core taken together" = 1 ETH into shell + 1 ETH into core + 1 ETH out of core + 1 ETH out of shell = 4ETH Total for core is 2 ETH - 1 in and 1 out. If shell is there to interact with the core, how is core doing 4 times the amount. Unless of course the confusion is dividing the total in and out of 4 by actual transaction of 1 ETH. All exchanges need to segregate customer amounts to ensure everything works smoothly. Let's assume I have 1 ETH, then sent it to Kraken. No trades done and simply withdrew the ETH. Here's what will happen: Me -> Kraken Temp account + network fees (mostly pool accounts ~ 0.0002) -> Me + Kraken account for withdrawal fee ie 0.005 + network fees (again pool) In which case, two scenarios can occur: a. Kraken temp account is tagged - So my account and pool accounts can be considered to be the shell. The in and out total for me is 1.9946 worth of ETH (1 ETH out + 0.9946 ETH in after Kraken and network fees). On the block fees side, in and out of the shell is 0.0004 ETH. Total is 1.995 in and out of the shell. While Kraken is doing 0.005 ETH. b. The worse case scenario - Kraken temp account is unmarked. In this case the temp account becomes the shell while my personal account and pool becomes the so called core. Now this happens: Core transaction volume - 1.995 ETH Shell or Kraken temp account - 0.9998 In (after fees) + 0.9946 out (after Kraken and network fees) = 1.9944 ETH Kraken - 0.005 ETH Actual volume is 1 ETH but counting the transaction volume blows this thing up. ------ seibelj It's an ETH mixer, it helps you obfuscate ETH, the same exists in BTC and all other crypto currency systems without inherent privacy. ~~~ cgb223 But since its still on a permanent immutable blockchain, couldn't someone still trace Bitcoin/Eth transactions with perfect accuracy? ~~~ dsp1234 Let's say you hand me a $100 bill, and that you have marked that bill. I then take that bill to a bank and ask for 3 $20 bills and 4 $10 bills. The bank takes that $100 and puts into the vault, and takes out the bills I asked for out of the vault. Later, someone comes in with $100 worth of bills, and asks for a $100 bill. The bank goes to the vault and gets the marked $100 and gives it to that customer. Tracking the bill doesn't help, because as soon as it's in the bank, what happens to it (and how it's exchanged), is hidden from you. Mixers work the same way. ~~~ dahdum You're right, but the article didn't find a mixer. They found the temporary deposit addresses every exchange uses and then wrote a FUD article to drive traffic and awareness of their sketchy ICO. ------ 45h34jh53k4j Oh no! The emperor's has no clothes!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Do you use gmail for work? (Yes/No) - gregmuender Just answer "yes" or "no" in the comments. I'm curious because we are vetting both Microsoft Outlook and gmail apps. ====== misiti3780 yes	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Rudder: An etcd backed overlay network for containers - pquerna https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-rudder/ ====== wmf I'm glad to see this since an easy overlay for Docker is badly needed. But ugh, userspace encapsulation. This would be a lot better if it used OVS + VXLAN. ~~~ philips The plan is to add more backends; we started with userspace encapsulation because it works everywhere and is easy to setup and control. Initially we wanted to use an existing in-Kernel encapsulation format like a simple ip-ip encapsulation. However, IP-IP doesn't work on AWS. Then we looked at VXLAN but it relies on multicast which doesn't work on most cloud networks either. Most recently we started looking at the VXLAN DOVE extensions and are getting a prototype together for this. tl;dr the initial goal is to show that something generic is needed and can work, we will get something that is performant and/or has encryption next. ~~~ jpgvm The kernel VXLAN implementation actually supports manual endpoint configuration via NETLINK (or newer versions of the iproute2 package). ------ derefr Would this allow you to mesh together containers in separate datacenters? Or mesh together, say, the containers on your home PC with containers in the cloud? I'm guessing not. What I'm really excited for are the possibilities of docker containers with public-routable IPv6 addresses. It would move the world away from "one host: many services on different arbitrary ports", and back to the "one host: one service, possibly speaking a few protocols with ports being used for OSI- layer-5/6 protocol discovery" model of the 1970s (and eliminate the madness of SRV records, besides.) Imagine if, say, bitcoind (which normally speaks "JSON-RPC" to clients -- a specific layer-6 encoding over HTTP) sat on "bitcoind.host:80" instead of "host:8332". Suddenly, it'd be immediately clear to protocol clients (e.g. web browsers) which hosts they could or couldn't speak to, based on the port alone! The whole redundancy between schema and port in URLs could go away: they'd be synonymous. And so on. ~~~ shykes I totally agree that containers in general, and Docker in particular, could play a big role in moving the status quo towards IPV6 and a more sane approach to service-oriented networking. I would love to turn on IPV6 by default on every Docker runtime everywhere - the question is, how do we deal with 1) existing host systems, 2) existing networks and 3) existing applications which may not be IPv6-ready? We are already upgrading the guts of Docker for more powerful networking and clustering in general, so if you give me a solid answer we can get this out the door pretty quickly :) ------ Oculus Only recently did I realize what a power house the team at CoreOS is. They're building some really cool shit. I can spend hours on their blog just right- clicking and searching on Google. Definitely a good way to learn tons about distributed computing and that whole subject area. ------ MartinMond This is interesting, it's pretty similar to [http://tinc-vpn.org](http://tinc- vpn.org) which is a mesh VPN. ~~~ eyakubovich Correct, tinc is another example of a mesh overlay network. However tinc requires configuration files to be created on each host and then distributed to others. If machines are part of an etcd cluster, you can use Rudder to create a mesh without the need to create and distribute configuration files. ------ contingencies Sorry, what problem does this solve? _Things are not as easy on other cloud providers where a host cannot get an entire subnet to itself. Rudder aims to solve this problem by creating an overlay mesh network that provisions a subnet to each server._ ... is unclear. What host for virtualized infrastructure needs an entire, fake, non-internet- routable subnet that it cannot provision itself? I believe there's a broken one size fits all network architectural assumption or provisioning methodology at the root of all this. (Edit as reply to child as rate-limited: Sounds like I was right, and it's docker's fault. How is this not better solved with the standard approach of applying network namespaces and/or unique interfaces to containers?) ~~~ wmf It solves port conflicts caused by running multiple copies of the same service on the same host. Kubernetes likes to have a few sidecar containers hanging off each service instance (e.g. memcached might have an sshd sidecar that wants to be on port 22 and nginx might want to have its own sshd sidecar also on port 22), and if your host only has one IP address then Docker has to do dynamic port mapping and your service discovery system has to track port numbers and such. ~~~ jbeda sshd is kind of a poor example. Kubernetes has an idea of a pod -- a group of containers that share an netns and have an IP. Reasons you might want a pod: * A thick client or client side proxy that follows the ambassador pattern for service discovery and access. * A data- loader and data-server pair. The loader would grab data from some persistent source and write it to disk or a shared memory segment. The data-server would then use that data and serve it up. You'd could run the data-loader at a lower QoS so it doesn't stall the data-server. * Some sort of server and a log saver. The log saver could periodically batch up and compress structured log data and upload it to a persistent store (such as BigQuery in GCP). You want to build/configure/restart/upgrade the log saver separately from the server. You'd also run the log saver at a lower QoS. Inside of Google we have all sorts of examples where we have sets of containers/tasks/processes that are co-scheduled onto a machine and work together. ------ vquemener FYI there's already an open source software going by the name of Rudder : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudder_$software$) ------ mrmondo "... it has almost no affect on the bandwidth." \- looking at those numbers it's not the case at all, those numbers are really low to start with (as AWS isn't exactly the fastest) but obviously this would be much more noticeable at the higher end of the scale when we're talking about 100-200MB/s transfer rates, not to mention nearly doubling the latency! ------ kapilvt also works great with lxc, i pushed a juju charm which automates the config for lxc [http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hazmat/charms/trusty/rudder/tru...](http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hazmat/charms/trusty/rudder/trunk/view/head:/readme.txt)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Aggregated Feedback from YC Partner on Today's Show HN - kevin For those of you who didn't know, I reviewed a bunch of Show HNs today. Many thanks to everyone who submitted Show HNs. I’m really sorry if I didn’t make it to your post. Some posts were beyond me to review…like that 99 Haskell project…well, I did like your quote even though I don’t know enough (any) Haskell to get the joke.<p>I’m always trying to get better at giving feedback. Please do let me know if there’s ways I / we (at HN) can do this better. I have no doubts I probably misunderstood things or am completely off the mark. Hopefully, it’s still useful to the creators. What I’d love is for others to do similar approaches so we can compare.<p>Thanks again! ====== kevin For those interested, here are the reviews I did last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708886) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709005) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709034) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709081) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709133) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709179) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709205) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709219) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709275) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9709526) ~~~ theodorewiles Wow. This is next-level feedback. I posted my MVP to show HN and got some sign-ups, but unfortunately limited feedback. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708353) Very, very valuable to see your thoughts on other projects! ------ kevin Here the link to my comments stream: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=kevin](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=kevin) Direct links to comments since that will change over time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746489) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746518) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746592) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746708) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746763) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746871) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746971) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9747651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9747651) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9747858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9747858) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9747919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9747919) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748006) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748036) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748178) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9746711) ~~~ voiceclonr Amazing to see you put so much effort into reviews! Thanks! ------ digisth Are you using any specific criteria for which ones you review? Was there an initial post somewhere about your efforts here? This is very cool to see. Thanks. ~~~ kevin I started by working my way from the top, but the order shifted throughout the day. I'd only skip one if I realized there was nothing for me to really say. I tried not to talk just to talk. However, as you can see, sometimes the only thoughts I had were tangents. Dan posted that we were going to do this again earlier this week via a Tell HN. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9735139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9735139) ------ hayksaakian Thank You for doing this. I appreciate that you review the Show HNs. It's refreshing to see someone from YC giving tangible feedback on businesses/startups/ideas -- in public.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A great list of command-line tips - shocks http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse/sort-by-votes/ ====== avar The #1 thing that'll improve most people's workflow is learning how to use readline effectively. I'm continually amazed by how many people who use shells daily use the arrow keys to navigate around, don't know about common things like C-r to reverse-search through history and other commands that make editing on the command-line a breeze. ~~~ thirdhaf In aid of helping others along this path, here's a crib sheet I've found for readline shortcuts. I've been meaning to become more efficient in using bash and this might just be the push I need. <http://www.bigsmoke.us/readline/shortcuts> ~~~ avar Thanks. That's an excellent reference. I've been pointing people towards the relevant section in the readline or bash manuals, but this is much better. ~~~ thirdhaf I've honestly tried to use the man pages for bash before, they are unarguably complete but unfortunately difficult to get started with. The chances of me knowing ahead of time to either search first for "readline" followed "Commands for Moving" or read the full man page until I get to line 2957 is slim. ------ vog _> Next time you are using your shell, try typing ctrl-x e [...]. The shell will take what you've written on the command line thus far and paste it into the editor specified by $EDITOR._ I'm astonished this works in bash but not in zsh. ~~~ read_wharf And if you use set -o vi in .bashrc, or set editing-mode vi in .inputrc, then 'v' will do the same thing, e.g. $ blah blah[ESC]v puts you in vim with the command line thus far. ~~~ e40 I tried "set -o vi" and every v sent me into the editor. This was on the latest cygwin. ~~~ jlebar Well, you must have been command mode. Try pressing "i". ------ Aethaeryn This is _almost_ a useful resource, but there are many bashisms on the list! Its utility is kind of limited for those of us who use a different shell when they don't have some sort of standardized "this only works in bash" warning. ~~~ chimeracoder I have the opposite complaint: I'm using bash, but thinks like mtr aren't part of coreutils, so I think of them as just separate programs that happen to work at the command-line. I could just as easily list ttyter as a command-line 'tool' for tweeting from the command line. I don't really have a solution to this, because at the end of the day, the goal is to do more things at the command line, but it'd be nice to have a way to distinguish between features of the shell, features of the OS, and non-OS programs that have command-line interfaces. Even if I'm interested in all three, it's nice to know that 'sudo !!' can be expected to work machines than mtr, for example. ~~~ bostonvaulter2 mtr is pretty awesome though, you should install it and give it a try. ------ joelthelion No love for autojump? (<https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump/wiki>) ~~~ qwertyboy Autojump rocks! Currently I am using [fasd](<https://github.com/clvv/fasd>), which is inspired by Autojump but works for stuff other than cd. ~~~ burke I'm using rupa/j. This looks way featureful. Thanks for the link! ------ K2h On win7 I found forfiles command the other day that allows me to do a dir with a date restriction. By using the > redirect to output to file I got a list of files that changed in a certain time. [http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc772390(v=ws.10)...](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc772390$v=ws.10$.aspx) ------ stevengg another great list [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/mi80x/give_me_that_on...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/mi80x/give_me_that_one_command_you_wish_you_knew_years/) ------ mise This is a related commandline script that allows you to search commandlinefu.com <https://github.com/samirahmed/fu> ------ kordless Use this to help remember them: alias fu='curl -s [http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse/sort-by- votes/p...](http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse/sort-by- votes/plaintext) \| grep -vE "^$\|^#"' Put it in your .bash_profile file in your home directory on OSX, or your .bashrc file on Linux. Simply type 'fu' on the command line to jog your memory! ------ hashfold loved all the commands...specially "python -m SimpleHTTPServer" ~~~ minikomi alias pyserv="python -m SimpleHTTPServer" ------ dfc Yawn.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A CIA calendar the CIA gift shop refuses to sell - benologist https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-cia-calendar-the-cia-gift-shop-refuses-to-sell-yes-and-heres-the-strange-story-behind-it/2016/12/28/bde03862-c604-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html ====== escape_goat It would be interesting to gain some professional insight on what's happening here, as I (like several other responders) find this article somewhat objectionable. The story that is presented literally ends with these words: > the gift shop can’t sell the calendar because "it’s not an official work of > the U.S. government There's no need for punctuation, no need to close the quote. The story is over. There's still a question in my mind, though, about how this came to pass. Looking at the story closely, it appears to largely consist of a human interest filler piece on one particular man's hobby devotion to the CIA, as well as the sentimentality of several former operatives; actually, I imagine some frowns at the CIA to see the story being published, because it looks awfully like a major national newspaper known for investigative journalism _doing a favour_ to former (and possibly current) CIA employees by publicizing their pet project. I don't have the experience to look at an article and recognize what it was meant to be, but the structure seems very awkward, and I am wondering if we are seeing a story that just turned out to be meaningless and was published anyway (the gift shop refusal) or a rather boring (to anyone without a 'patriotic'-type interest in the CIA) human interest piece that was unwisely and badly rearranged to justify a clickbait title. Knowledgeable replies would be very welcome. I am willing to say things that are wrong if that would help inspire you. ~~~ nyolfen speaking of WaPo running CIA PR, from today: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/27/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/27/why- its-so-hard-to-prove-russia-was-behind-the-election-hacks/) ~~~ Natsu The Washington Post does a lot of favors they don't publicize. For example, this: [https://wikileaks.org/dnc- emails/emailid/2699](https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699) They made an arrangement with the WaPo to quietly add DNC donors to the party invite list. They wanted to put that on their donor price sheets, but the lawyers wouldn't allow it. It's not clear how or why this kind of stealthy donation of services from the WaPo to the DNC was better. ~~~ 1337biz At this point I don't even click on WaPo links anymore even when the headlines sound interesting. Their one sided political ideologism makes the most politics-free stories into left-wing manifestos. ------ djsumdog I think it would be interesting and heartbreaking to view this calendar. The CIA is not the noble intelligence agency that's sold to the world. There is testimony given before congress that confirms they have injected propaganda into major magazines for decades and they have refused to answer any questions about TV propaganda. > Flip to April for “The First Sting,” depicting a CIA-trained Afghan > mujahideen striking Soviet helicopters with a Stinger missile. The mujahideen was created when the US convinced Egypt to release their criminals (murders, rapists, some political prisoners) and let them gain freedom by fighting a war in Afghanistan. That's where you get the Taliban. Also in case anyone has forgotten, the US is still bombing Afghanistan. Their civilian population is terrified of drones. It's been the longest military campaign by the US ever. (see the BBC documentary: The Power of Nightmares) ~~~ linkregister > The mujahideen was created when the US convinced Egypt to release their > criminals (murders, rapists, some political prisoners) and let them gain > freedom by fighting a war in Afghanistan. That is a theory I have never come across before. Can you point me to the book or article that you got that idea from? ~~~ djsumdog I'd start with the BBC documentary: "The Power of Nightmares." It comes in three parts and covers the entire cold war era up to the early 2000s. You may also want to read up on Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss. ------ tyingq This post[1] about the CIA gift shop was far more interesting to me. [1][http://savageminds.org/2013/11/13/made-in-china-notes- from-t...](http://savageminds.org/2013/11/13/made-in-china-notes-from-the-cia- gift-shop/) ------ rrggrr I'm hopeful that after the Washington Post hires the 5 dozen additional reporters it plans to add in 2017, readers will again see real investigative journalism. The hard-hitting reporting of the 1970's and 80's has been replaced by opinion pieces masquerading as journalism and puff pieces like this. ~~~ chrissnell No doubt. I subscribed to WaPo in hopes of finding a politically neutral (or at least, balanced) paper that focused on real news and not political opinion and crap. The last year, however, has been dreadful for that paper. It feels like 80% of the first page of front page content has been anti-Trump opinion pieces. I want to read about the war in Syria, ISIS, finance, the American economy, and technology. This stuff should be the mainstay of any U.S. paper. ~~~ iscrewyou Do you recommed another paper I can subscribe to that tries to reports more neutral? ~~~ chrissnell I sure wish I had one to recommend. I asked this question on Facebook last year and got a bunch of good responses from some friends: * The Economist (left-leaning but has good reporting) * Wall Street Journal * BBC * Christian Science Monitor ~~~ davidw The Economist is not particularly left-leaning - they're quite in favor of free markets and a light regulatory touch for many things. The Financial Times is another good one. ~~~ muninn_ I mostly agree, but I felt like they were bursting at the seams to criticize Trump. Hardly a piece on the site that I RECALL had anything positive to say about the Brexit, Trump, or other movements. I like to read positive and negatives for both. Overall, a good site/magazine. ~~~ snerbles Better to say that The Economist is pro-globalism, right or left. ~~~ muninn_ Yeah maybe that's more accurate, depending on what you mean by globalism. ------ tlrobinson I imagine he's going to sell a hell of a lot more of them due to this article than he would in the gift shop. ~~~ __jal I'd rather read the story of how they managed to land that product placement. ~~~ gertef [http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html) ------ themodelplumber Fascinating. Where can I read about the Manchurian ambush and the guy shooting into the Chinese biplane? ~~~ Leynos The events depicted in "Ambush in Manchuria" are described here: [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol50no4/two-cia-prisoners- in-china-1952201373.html) This appears to be the painting in question: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/7190299989](https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciagov/7190299989) The circumstances surrounding the gentleman shooting at the biplane from a helicopter are described here: [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol52no2/iac/an-air-combat- first.html) I agree with your sentiment that the WaPo should have provided more detailed accounts or external links to such. ------ taxicabjesus I once had a passenger who'd moved to Scottsdale, Arizona when he was a Green Beret (Army Special Forces). They'd picked Scottsdale because General North needed an airport with a big enough runway for their planes [1]... I always wonder what the secret services are really up to. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Contra_Affair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Contra_Affair) ~~~ chrissnell Sorry to break it to you but any time a random person offers up that they were in special operations, they almost always are lying. This paradox is well- known among military servicemembers but not as much by civilians. You never, ever here these fakers offer up that they were an Army cook or a Navy supply clerk, even though there's 1000x more of these than there are special operators. If someone ever tells you he or she was a generator mechanic or a network tech in the war, they're almost certainly telling you the truth. ~~~ MR4D Special Ops also includes Airborne. That's roughly 30,000 people right there. Seems to me that it's a poor understanding on part of the public that spec ops means you're a badass. Of course, your comment about the cook is spot on, and too many people make it seem as thought their role in spec ops was bigger than reality. ~~~ chrissnell Not exactly. The Army, Navy, and Air Force all have special operations forces that are Airborne-qualified (they've attended the U.S. Army Airborne School) and many are also Military Freefall-qualified (aka HALO). That does not mean, however, that all airborne are special operations. In fact, the _vast majority_ of Airborne troops are not special operations- qualified. Most are members of FORSCOM, which is the traditional major command for U.S. Army ground forces--i.e. not special operations. An example of such a unit is the 82nd Airborne Division. Airborne, but not special operations. To further complicate things, it's also possible to be a member of a Special Forces unit but not actually be special operations-qualified. Like every other part of the military, special operations requires a vast logistics machine to keep it moving and there are many non-combat personnel who belong to these units and are Airborne-qualified who are not special operators. Typical non- combat jobs in these units include vehicle mechanics, logistics specialists, etc. Relatively speaking, the special operations units of the U.S. military are a tiny percentage of the overall force. Given their traditional status as "quiet professionals", it's extremely unlikely that someone offering up their status as a "green beret", "Navy SEAL", or "Army Ranger" is telling the truth. Source: I am a Captain (Engineer branch, very not-special) with eight years of service. Currently serving in the U.S. Army Reserve. ~~~ MR4D Thanks for your addition. I left out of my post that there are different commands and different definitions of "special" because I was typing on my phone (which I hate). Have a great new year and thanks for all your work. ------ disposablezero Intelligence agencies proportedly of democracies should invest more in cultural (and philosophical) self-reflection. That might mean "wasting" comparatively tiny sums on art, architecture, history, archival, philosophy and other non-mission-oriented realms because they may bring social wealth and beauty to where there may otherwise be only perfunctory, brutalist utility. ------ sytse I can't read the article, when I use the web link the WP complains I've read too many articles and I don't see an easy way (outside using dev tools) to get rid of the popup. Of course it is their right to ask me to subscribe. ~~~ tvon I'll sum it up: The inaugural “Secret Ops of the CIA” calendar was produced by the nephew of an agency contractor killed in the line of duty and features reproductions of the actual paintings that have hung for years inside the hallways of the CIA headquarters in Northern Virginia. (...) The calendars are on sale for $28 at the International Spy Museum (...) (...) Toni Hiley, the longtime CIA museum director, said the gift shop can’t sell the calendar because “it’s not an official work of the U.S. government.” ~~~ sytse Thanks! ------ ommunist If you want to fight global terrorism, you needto create one first. Commemorating this very idea, 'The First Sting' painting is priceless.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Monthly Rentable Gitlab/Jenkins CI Runners - hardwaresofton https://runnerrental.club ====== sytse Cool to see this. By the way at GitLab we're planning to charge per minute for runners [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/3314](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3314) ~~~ hardwaresofton Thanks very much for the heads up! Awesome to see that Gitlab is solving this pain point. I doubt there's any point to trying to run this service since per-minute charging is so much more efficient from a cost perspective and is where I was going to head to as well... I guess I'll keep this around and see what the per-minute prices are and see if there's any space there. ------ Ayesh I don't think any service can beat Hetzner's €3 server with 1vCPU 2GB 20TB specs. ~~~ hardwaresofton You'd be right, except Hetzner's €3 server's vCPU is actually _not dedicated_. Check out their pricing page, and look at "default" vs "dedicated vCPU"[0] (they start at ~€9/vCPU). Hetzner is an excellent service by all means (I thoroughly use and enjoy it), but I'm not sure exactly what the performance of a 1vCPU "default" plan is -- honestly it's probably enough, but noisy neighbors might be a thing. [0]: [https://www.hetzner.com/cloud](https://www.hetzner.com/cloud)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WildDuck IMAP server compresses emails by 56% - andris9 https://github.com/nodemailer/wildduck#storage ====== jepler This looks cool, anybody used it yet? ~~~ andris9 I don't think it's been used much as the project is fairly new. Wild Duck powers [https://ethereal.email/](https://ethereal.email/) but this is mostly for fuzzy testing purposes, I hope to get strange emails that would fail the system. I've been building Wild Duck to replace the Courier based mail cluster we have deployed for 150k+ mailboxes in my day job. The current system really shows its age and something better was needed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Quintura for Kids - intuitive and safe search engine for kids - Paul http://kids.quintura.com ====== e1ven That's a very clever site, but I worry about scalability- If you're adding links manually you're going to run into the same problem that yahoo ran into, but without the Ad-revenue to try to overcome it. I'm also slightly worried that it's a difficult thing for kids to type or say, but I imagine they'll have it bookmarked for the most part. ------ rms Not bad at all, how do you guys compile the white list? ------ jwecker Very good clouding.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Supreme Court sides with tech company in patent dispute with Postal Service - donohoe https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/SpK9IoiRrI-acWR0VMVU1g2 ====== duxup >The Postal Service then petitioned the Patent Office to review the patent, and the Patent Board agreed with the Postal Service that Return Mail's patent was ineligible to be patented, and it canceled the claims underlying the patent. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit then affirmed the Patent Board's findings and invalidated Return Mail's patent claims. >In the most recent June 10 ruling, however, the Supreme Court said that a federal agency is not a "person" who may petition for post-issuance review under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals' ruling and remanded the case for further proceedings. This seems weird, so the postal service can't ask for a patent to be reviewed, but I can? If the Postal Service can be at the mercy of some patent owner it should be able to ask for the patent to be reviewed. ------ howard941 Link to the opinion [https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/17-1594](https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/17-1594)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: New research topics in networking ? - vinutheraj Hi, I am starting on my MS thesis this year. I am looking around for some good areas in networking to do my thesis in. I worked in VANETs ( Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks ) for my BS degree. I didn't find the field that fun though. Can someone suggest some good topics in networking to work in, you know just throw in some ideas, whatever you feel like !<p>Like Delay Tolerant Networks are really researched on now as well as Ad-Hoc Networks, is there some other really interesting research going on in networking ? ====== jacquesm I like the concept of 'MANET's, they offer some great potential. ------ plinkplonk What topics did your advisor suggest? ~~~ vinutheraj 1.Trust Models in VANETs, 2.Attack Graphs in VANETs/MANETs I was kinda looking for some info on other research areas, other than these though !	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
CIA Secretly Owned Global Encryption Provider Spied on 100 Foreign Governments - dsego https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2020/02/12/cia-secretly-bought-global-encryption-provider-built-backdoors-spied-on-100-foreign-governments/#323824f8580a ====== a3n > "Spying between friends, that's just not done,'' Ms Merkel said as she > arrived for a two-day European Union summit where the growing spy scandal > has hijacked the agenda. [https://www.news.com.au/world/german-chancellor- > angela-merke...](https://www.news.com.au/world/german-chancellor-angela- > merkel-says-spying-on-friends-not-done-after-claims-us-tapped-into-her- > mobile-phone/news-story/af9e1d03fa2655e680c99ee3161ce063) Ahem ... > The Swiss company that global governments trusted with their most sensitive > of conversations for more than fifty years was actually owned by the U.S. > Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in partnership with the West German BND > intelligence service, according to an investigation based on CIA documents > obtained by the reporters.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google Search Stories - EricBurnett http://www.youtube.com/searchstories ====== TotlolRon also here: <http://www.search-stories.com> and with an SEO friendly domain.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Faster Python calls in Cython 0.21 - andreif http://blog.behnel.de/posts/faster-python-calls-in-cython-021.html ====== raymondh Nice work Stefan :-) For people who care about performance, Cython Numba and PyPy are a vital part of the Python ecosystem. They let you create highly performant code while retaining Python's clarity, learnability, and rapid development capabilities. These gains don't come easily; instead, they are the result of years of thinking carefully about what the machine actually does internally and coming up with more direct paths to accomplish the same goal. Thank you for your work. ~~~ rch Seconded. I was really surprised to see that his proposed Cython talk didn't make it into PyCon. Maybe SciPy would be more receptive? ~~~ raymondh This has been an issue in Python talk selection for several years. One year the PyPy folks didn't have a single accepted talk despite having heroic accomplishments that will greatly affect Python's future. And last year, scientific and numeric talks almost non-existent despite the booming growth of PyData community and the wide adoption of Pandas. See [https://twitter.com/dabeaz/status/413287588426809344](https://twitter.com/dabeaz/status/413287588426809344) Part of the reason is that there has been an effort to get new people on stage regardless of experience level and to get substantially more women on-stage as well. See [https://us.pycon.org/2015/speaking/cfp/](https://us.pycon.org/2015/speaking/cfp/) and [https://twitter.com/tarek_ziade/status/455409302912921600](https://twitter.com/tarek_ziade/status/455409302912921600) The overall net effect has been positive, making the community more inclusive and giving more stage time to new, fresh talent. The downside is that there is less room for other players (for example, none of the proposed talks from Continuum were accepted). ------ ris I was actually considering the other day that I was surprised Cython (and numba?) don't do something where they use a copy of the libpython source to allow them to inline calls back into python-land. Yes, fraught with packaging/distribution difficulties, but possibly worth it for situations where the speedup is needed. ------ stuaxo This is cool, how hard would it be for the cpython core to implement similar optimisations ? ~~~ ris Er. Essentially impossible because the inlining only works at situations where you know a whole bunch of things at compile-time. CPython knows essentially _nothing_ at compile-time. ~~~ fijal It's not _impossible_. It's "easily" done if you have a JIT, but even without a JIT, you can inline the call on the bytecode level using similar techniques - you have to be able to rebuild the chain if someone asks for it. One can (easily) argue that the complexity is unnecessary and the speedups are unclear. It really depends how hard you try :-) PyPy is generally achieving speedups mostly by: * avoiding allocations by escape analysis * avoiding escape through frames by removing frames * avoiding another level of allocations by inlining calls (and avoiding frames)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Haiku? - Red_Tarsius <p><pre><code> Reply in haiku. See one you like? Upvote it! Gather points to win! </code></pre> Original thread (6 years ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=780569 ====== MichaelCrawford There was a young lady from Bright Who traveled much faster than light. She made love one day In a relative way And came on the previous night.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Research paper: Interstellar flight is at least 200 years away - llambda http://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.1066v1.pdf ====== Steuard It's an interesting analysis, but I'm extremely dubious about the degree of extrapolation going on here. It's hard to imagine that the past 25 years have been typical in human history, or for that matter that the past 125 years have been. Is it really safe to make _any_ quantitative assumptions about how technology and society will support spaceflight 200 years from now? Those concerns are only magnified by the author's willingness to list a "nominal readiness date" of the year 5000 for humanity to be able to capture and use 100% of the entire galaxy's energy output (last line of Table 5). It would take 20 times that long just for us to _reach_ the other edge of the galaxy, even assuming light speed travel. ------ Ralith This paper appears to assume that no revolutionary changes in energy production make it vastly more available. Am I misreading it? With projects like polywell fusion reactors[1] showing great promise, I'm not sure if the conclusions drawn on that assumption are very predictive. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell> ~~~ rubidium "calculated based on 27 years of data on historic energy trends, societal priorities, required mission energy, and the implications of the Incessant Obsolescence Postulate " Yes, you're right. He's assuming everything proceeds growing the way it is now. You gotta start somewhere when predicting the future. ~~~ stfu The problem is, that things like these create a misguided perception in the general public. Papers like these should be full of disclaimers that making predictions about any technology 200 years in the future is at best highly speculative. Ultimately I would argue the value of a constructed research like this is very little more than the work of a scifi author who just makes up some story based on the last 27 years of his life experience. The choice ultimately comes down to what method one prefers for speculating on what is going to happen 200 years from now. ------ mmphosis "We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody." _\--Buckminster Fuller_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth> ------ kstenerud Interestingly, the author dismisses the 0.3c matter-antimatter possibility in favor of a much more modest 0.03c, and then goes on to list "earlier", "nominal", and "later" scenarios while ignoring an entire order of magnitude of velocity. ------ DennisP That's a pretty interesting way to look at it. It also makes sense given that it'll take longer than that to exploit our own solar system, given that it's got millions of times the accessible resources of Earth. ~~~ rbanffy The vertical axis of the graph on page 6 is in log scale - it already accounts for exponential growth, considering we get there in 600 years, which is, IMHO, a very reasonable (and I dare to say, optimistic) extrapolation. Consider you need more than access to raw materials: you need the manufacturing capacity to harness the power source. Covering the Moon with 100% efficient solar panels wouldn't even put us on 1 at the Kardashev scale.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Data Visualization and D3.js Newsletter - Issue 62 - sebg https://www.dashingd3js.com/data-visualization-and-d3-newsletter/data-visualization-and-d3-newsletter-issue-62 ====== jnazario didn't know about this, kind of cool, we use some D3 at work. however, would be nice with some graphics ... just sayin.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ai Weiwei: The US is behaving like China - fchollet http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/nsa-surveillance-us-behaving-like-china ====== defuzz I always thought the PRC is behaving like the USA, because it tries to close the economical and technological gap to competing nations. Not bad for a single-party socialist state constituted 1949 compared to a federal presidential constitutional republic constitued 1788.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Kim – A Python serialization and marshaling framework - mikeywaites http://kim.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ ====== sandGorgon We are really looking for serialization libraries that will work with pandas and scikit. This stuff is really all over the place - PMML, Arrow, Dill, pickle. Some stuff won't work with one or the other. I will actually _pay_ for consistency versus performance. There are way too many primitive serialization libraries. Surprisingly none for the higher order ML, etc stuff. Give the kind of people behind Arrow, I would love wrapper that will use Arrow to do all of this...But doesn't matter at the end of the day. ~~~ mhneu Python's data infrastructure has a huge problem: serialization and thus saving data results. A good serialization library should serialize: - classes/objects (best practice: objects for holding data) - pandas/numpy objects (must have: minimizing space) - namedtuples (currently: a mess, factory implementation) - dicts and lists of dicts (must have: space efficiency) Compare to Matlab: save(f, 'anyobject'); anyobject=load(f) Python is terrible at this and it limits use in real data analysis environments and limits competition with matlab. ~~~ fnord123 > Compare to Matlab: save(f, 'anyobject'); anyobject=load(f) If you want matlab files in Python you can use `scipy.io.loadmat('file.mat')`. PyTables (built on hdf5) is a better solution since the hdf5 format is a lot more flexible than matlab's (ime). But Parquet is looking to be the best solution moving forward as it's gaining a lot of mindshare as the go-to flexible format for data and will be / is used in Arrow. But really, Matlab is on par with pickles when it comes to serialisation. It's a trap solution. ~~~ auxym Actually, since Matlab v7.3, .mat files are actually hdf5 files. ------ limdauto I'd like to congratulate the authors regarding the clever naming. I totally get the Eminem's reference. Disclaimer: Posting this comment because my colleague pointed out that I could get some points. ~~~ _e Kim: A JSON Serialization and Marshaling framework that Mathers ------ Dowwie Cool project! In the case of serialization libraries,unless you are validating as part of your (de)serialization, I'd recommend avoiding schema-driven serialization libraries. These Kim-like libraries, such as Marshmallow, introduce quite a bit of overhead. If validation isn't required and performance matters, I recommend choosing a lighter-weight serialization/marshalling alternative, such as that provided by asphalt-serialization: [https://github.com/asphalt- framework/asphalt-serialization](https://github.com/asphalt-framework/asphalt- serialization) Asphalt-serialization supports cbor, msgpack, json, ... and is easy to wire up This recommendation is based on my own experience using Marshmallow for Yosai, analyzing its performance and then refactoring to a ported version of asphalt- serialization. ~~~ mikeywaites Hey Dowwie! That's a great point and an important distinction to make. As I mentioned in some of the other comments, we have certainly been focussed on features over performance so far but we are actively working on dramatically improving the performance of Kim. I guess it's almost important to pick the right tool for the job. Thanks for sharing the link to asphalt too. I'd not see that before. ~~~ Dowwie Keep up the good work, Mikey. :) See you at PyCon, maybe? ~~~ mikeywaites One of the engineers from our team is going to be there for sure. Im certainly keen to go so fingers crossed. ------ voidfiles I added Kim to my ongoing set of python serialization framework benchmarks here is how it ranks. Library Many Objects One Object --------------------- -------------- ------------ Custom 0.0187769 0.00682402 Strainer 0.0603201 0.0337129 serpy 0.073787 0.038656 Lollipop 0.47821 0.231566 Marshmallow 1.14844 0.598486 Django REST Framework 1.94096 1.3277 kim 2.28477 1.15237 Comments on how to improve the benchmark are appreciated. source: [https://voidfiles.github.io/python-serialization- benchmark/](https://voidfiles.github.io/python-serialization-benchmark/) ~~~ makmanalp This is brilliant, exactly what I was looking for. I did a profile recently on some API calls and found that 40-50% was being spent on serialization with marshmallow, which I'm looking to drop. I'll be doing this stuff for myself, but would you be curious in having: a) Support for lima: [https://lima.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://lima.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) b) more benchmark cases (serializing a larger list of objects) ------ yeukhon Nice, but I recommend closing issues [https://github.com/mikeywaites/kim/issues](https://github.com/mikeywaites/kim/issues) which have fixes (some of them show 'merge'). It's one thing I as a user look at choosing whether to adopt a project or not. ~~~ mikeywaites absolutely. Im a bit annoyed at myself that I hadn't got round to that yet but thanks for raising it. ~~~ yeukhon I will submit a PR for some doc fixes :-) on the way look out next 24 hours! This is an awesome project for a couple years, great run! ------ sakawa It does look like marshmalllow[1]. How does relate Kim with it? [1]: [https://github.com/marshmallow- code/marshmallow/](https://github.com/marshmallow-code/marshmallow/) ~~~ tinnet Obviously no OS developer owes anybody an explanation, but man would I appreciate if more projects had a "why you should use this over related projects" (like e.g. pendulum does [https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum/blob/master/README.rst...](https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum/blob/master/README.rst#why- not-arrow)) ~~~ pekk I know the pain of searching for software to meet your requirements. But unless you have a friend you can really trust to provide informed recommendations, nobody can take this pain away for you. If all require projects to say negative things about other people's projects while talking up their own, a lot of projects are going to distort the facts. In the end, if we don't have the ability to evaluate the software ourselves, then all we are measuring is who can shout the loudest and who is the most aggressive against other projects. Quiet projects will still be good, but now those would be overlooked even more because they aren't shouting. With this requirement you are making your life easier but you are making life harder on open source developers by forcing them to deal with unnecessary inter-project drama and to divert lots of effort into marketing that could have been put into code. That might make sense in proprietary products, but in open source this kind of demand just hurts the ecosystem. If the pain of choosing is too much then choose something that is standardized, or the most popular thing, or what your trusted friend recommends. People will seek out the very specific projects they need. If you don't even know why you are using something, it isn't the responsibility of someone else to tell you why you are using it! ~~~ tinnet I think you're right, when actually using it for production software it's probably wise to not be a trailblazer :) For me this wish for a comparison (that I'd love to be objective and in god spirit of course - naive?) is probably coming more from "shopping around" between projects. Or just when seeing a new thing on HN and wondering if I should investigate adding this particular thing to my toolbox. ------ siddhant Cool! Are there any speed comparisons available between this and marshmallow (or other alternatives)? ~~~ mikeywaites Hi Siddhant, We've not really dug into performance yet, though if you look at the last patch (1.0.2) we yielded a 10% speed up by removing an erroneous try/except block. We've really focussed on features initially and performance is something we're actively researching now. Perhaps we can get some initial benchmarks together and share them with you this week. They will be useful no doubt as we start to plan a release focussed on speed ups. Thanks for reaching out! ------ amelius Can it serialize cycles? ~~~ mikeywaites Hey Amelius, thanks for the message. Gonna be honest, I'm not sure what you mean by cycles. Can you elaborate a bit? ~~~ amelius Roughly speaking, by cycles I mean a structure that refers to itself somehow. For example: A = {} B = {} A["ref"] = B B["ref"] = A So would it be possible to serialize A and B, and of course to deserialize them? Note that print A gives {'ref': {'ref': {...}}} which is of course not a suitable serialization, since you can't recover the original structure from it. ~~~ jackqu7 Yes, this is possible as long as the second level nested object has a role to stop infinite recursion from occurring. Cycles are not automatically detected. class BaseMapper(Mapper): __type__ = TestType score = Integer() nest = Nested('NestedMapper') __roles__ = {'nested': blacklist('nest')} class NestedMapper(Mapper): __type__ = TestType back = Nested('BaseMapper', role='nested') name = String() obj2 = TestType(name='test') obj = TestType(score=5, nest=obj2) obj2.back = obj >> BaseMapper(obj=obj).serialize() {'nest': {'back': {'score': 5}, 'name': 'test'}, 'score': 5} ~~~ arnarbi That's not a solution as it will not restore the same object graph, it will just repeat values. One way is to to store a table of objects (as identified by id()) encountered during serialization, indexed by the order you encounter them. If you encounter an object you have already serialized, serialize an index into that table. On deserialization, construct the same kind of table, and deserialize an index with a reference to the same object. See e.g. AMF for an example format that does this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Message_Format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Message_Format) ------ ziikutv So this takes JSON and maps it to namedtuples? Silly question, what happens with Unicode? ------ rat87 I was just looking for something like this or marshmallow. ------ ff7c11 why not pickle :) :) ------ BuuQu9hu Sorry, I must be harsh. No. This fundamentally doesn't offer much advantage over a .toJSON() instance method and a .fromJSON() class method. Don't say "security-focused" if you can't handle cyclic object graphs. ~~~ mafro Please elaborate on the reasons for your opinion :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
India Approves World’s First Passenger Hyperloop System - redpillor https://www.archdaily.com/922794/india-approves-worlds-first-passenger-hyperloop-system ====== gameoftrolls_ Next step, a Hyperloo system	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If Your Vibrator Is Hacked, Is It a Sex Crime? - cratermoon https://gizmodo.com/if-your-vibrator-is-hacked-is-it-a-sex-crime-1820007951 ====== mikehines The headline sounds like a Philip K Dick title. ~~~ ellius Hahaha nicely done ------ ashildr Being a relatively kinky person myself I’d still. consider shoving quite a sizable Li-Ion battery into my body a way bigger potential problem than some foreign person activating my buttplug. But yes, the question is interesting. I can imagine situations where unknown people taking control is part of the play. ------ anigbrowl An interesting question. I'm inclined to say yes, insofar as the device is identifiable as a sex toy rather than just 'adjustable thing #73'. As to which sex crime, that depends on both the circumstances and the degree of information about them available to the remote abuser. Those inclined to offer defenses of the form that 'it was just a prank, 1337 h4x0r5 couldn't have known how it would impact the victim' should brush up on the 'eggshell skull' rule in tort law, which basically says the person who commits a tort is liable for all consequences, not just easily foreseeable ones, and the concept of strict liability, which can mean you're fully responsible for the outcomes of some criminal acts even without proof of intent. Judges often pieces of existing conceptual frameworks when presented with a novel situation on which they have to issue a ruling. ~~~ vanattab If sell a laptop bundled with pornography/livecam software and market it as a "sexual entertainment system" would any hack of that system also be elevated to the level of sex crime? Even if all the attacker saw before launching the attack was the ip address? ~~~ anigbrowl I don't think so, but I'm not an attorney. You'd have to some prior awareness, I bring up the strict liability idea just because if you did know that you were hacking some stranger's sex toy, your lack of complete knowledge about what they doing with it at the time probably wouldn't be enough to avoid liability. I mean, otherwise you could grope strangers on the subway while keeping your eyes closed and claim that you weren't looking at them so you didn't know that your groping was causing them distress. Then again pretty offer some pretty wacky defenses, especially where sex is concerned. ------ rm_-rf_slash I think the CFAA statute is appropriate, but as to whether it would be a sex crime, I think it would have to depend on the context. If a vibrator was hacked and messed with but nobody was using it, then it's just hacking. But if someone was using it, then I think a sex crime charge is fair, especially if the hacker knows its being used intimately, which would be akin to being a peeping Tom, but creepily closer. ~~~ angersock CFAA is hilariously overly broad. Charging it as a sex crime seems a bit off, least of all because of all of the treatment of sex offenders in the US. There seems to be a qualitative difference between turning on a publicly-exposed vibrating buttplug and forcibly inserting something into the rectum of an unwilling participant. Like, is it really reasonable to say that somebody should lose the right to vote and bear arms because they issued a POST request to an unsecured web server in their neighborhood that happened to be a sex toy? EDIT: I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims here, but using toys that are properly locked down is the responsibility of the participants--much like making sure they're sterile. ~~~ kelnos > I don't want to sound like I'm blaming victims here, but using toys that are > properly locked down is the responsibility of the participants--much like > making sure they're sterile. Despite your "I don't want to sound..." prefix, that is literally the definition of victim-blaming. Just because I leave the door to my house unlocked, it doesn't mean people have the right to enter it without my permission, and it's not my "fault" if they do. Engaging in sexual contact requires consent. I expect it's legally debatable if remotely turning on a vibrator that's already inserted into someone counts as "sexual contact" (I would say it is, or if not, should be), but if it is, it requires consent. I think intent and foreknowledge does matter here: if someone just found a random web server and sent some requests to it without knowing what it is or what it does, I'd say that's unwise, but not criminal. But if it's obvious from the name advertised by the device and/or the names of the endpoints accessed, or requires knowledge of a protocol specific to a connected sex toy, I'd say that should be enough to establish nefarious sexual intent. ~~~ dogma1138 There is nothing wrong with blaming the victim as long as one does not absolve the perpetrators from any guilt. People need to take back some shred of personal responsibility if I get piss drunk and pass out on a bench and wake up without any of my stuff sure the assholes who stole my phone and wallet are still criminals but i also was a moron for getting piss drunk and passing out in public. If you get robbed because you didn’t locked the door then it’s just as much your fault. We don’t live in a vacuum we know exactly how to avoid various situations which is why we don’t leave a laptop visible in the backseat of a car when we park it in public, why we secure our bikes, lock our doors and don’t use 123456 as a password. ~~~ kelnos I agree with you, but I don't think to the degree you'd like. Yes, people need to take responsibility for taking risks (intentionally or otherwise) when those risks result in bad consequences. I think the concept of "fault" is really just not useful here. Sure, if I forget to lock my door, and I get robbed, I share some of the fault ("just as much", though -- hell no), but... so what? The result is the same as if I did lock the door and they broke in anyway. I certainly screwed up, but that doesn't somehow make it more moral/legal/ethical for the thief to come in and steal. > We don’t live in a vacuum we know exactly how to avoid various situations > which is why we don’t leave a laptop visible in the backseat of a car when > we park it in public, why we secure our bikes, lock our doors and don’t use > 123456 as a password. The problem is that this is a super cynical view of society. We are actively making society worse by thinking this. I've been in countries where people park their scooters on the sidewalk and leave their helmets unsecured on the seat for hours. No one steals, because that _just isn 't done_. And what's so magically different? If I go and park my car in a safe suburb in the US, I can leave my laptop visible in the backseat without consequence. If I do that in certain parts of a city, well, there goes my window and my laptop. Do we really want to teach people that they have to be paranoid about everything? Do we really want it to be accepted and ok that your belongings aren't safe inside a locked car? That's a pretty shitty society, if so. I hesitate to use this example since it's a sensitive topic, but you can easily extend this to the tired "well if she had been dressed mode modestly, maybe she wouldn't have gotten raped". Obviously getting a bike stolen because you didn't lock it is nowhere near as bad. But you're muddling cause and effect here. "The bike got stolen because it was unsecured." No, the bike got stolen because there are assholes who steal bikes. "That woman got raped because she wore suggestive clothing." No, she got raped because there are piece of shit assholes who rape women. ------ jondubois Well I think it depends on the degree of control which the attacker is exerting on the device and the type and quantity of information which they extracted from the device during its use. As an actuator, a vibrator has a very limiting set of features for an attacker to exploit and act upon. As a sensor, I don't think they're very advanced. ------ robbrit This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "penetration testing".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Drupal developers wanted. Pay rate: $10-$12/hr - Tangaroa Just thought I'd forward this wage scale for a recent job opening to give readers an idea of what the programmer job market is like outside of San Mateo:<p>Hourly Rates (Introduction):<p>Intern $10-$12 / hour<p>IC $12-15 / hour<p>Hourly Rates (Experienced with Drupal Theming):<p>Intern $15-$18/ hour<p>IC $18-$20 / hour<p>Translation: Intern == student, IC == independent contractor. Location? This is in the San Francisco Bay Area. Suffice it to say that things are different on the other side of the GGB.<p>I won't say who's hiring because I don't need the competition. I'm asking for $15/hr. Wish me luck. ====== JoeCortopassi I also hear that In-n-Out(burger chain in California) pays $11/hour plus benefits and vacation for a job that requires no previous skills (flipping burgers. The reason companies like this exist, is because people think, "Because I was able to teach myself, my skills can't be worth that much". No surprise they are looking for interns so they can get cheap wages, but I doubt they will follow through with the teaching them part of the deal. The Independent Contractor part is equally amusing, cause after all the taxes, you'd be better off working for In-n-Out ------ byoung2 Those numbers seem awfully low, especially for the Bay Area. You could make $11-13 flipping burgers at In-N-Out with a lot less stress and more free food. ~~~ Tangaroa Yeah, it's low even for around here. They were asking for students, though, so low wages can be expected. ------ jacksondeane There is no way someone with adequate computer skills, let alone programming skills can only find a job for $15 an hour in the Bay Area. ------ jlambert1 I own one of the larger Drupal agencies in the US with offices in SF. Those rates are totally below market, even for trainees! ------ criveros I am an intern making $20 dollars an hour with little experience. ------ brandoncordell That's super low. Even for Florida! ------ Tangaroa A follow-up from the company's autoresponder: <blockquote>We are in the midst of reviewing all submissions and will contact chosen candidates during the week of June 8th to schedule an interview. Due to the number of applications, only those we wish to interview with will be contacted. If you have not heard from us by 4pm on Monday June 11th please assume the position has been filled.</blockquote> To my knowledge, the opening was announced last week.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Dirty Secret of 10x Engineers - ericxtang http://www.erictang.org/blog/2014/01/17/dirty-secret-of-10x-engineers/ ====== doctorwho Some people are just better at exploring problem spaces, avoiding dead ends and making insightful connections that lead to solutions. It doesn't always come with experience, some people could work forever and never solve even a moderately difficult problem. These people build websites. The 10x engineer has a mindset and an approach that yields results more consistently than his/her peers. ~~~ ericxtang Very true. Engineers like that are extremely rare, and usually have serious golden handcuffs. However, there are a lot more people with similar mindset but limited programming experience. With the right culture, those are the usually the people who can make a big different at a startup. ------ pasbesoin The dirty secret of 10x engineers is that you have to learn to prevent the other crabs from dragging you back down into the bucket (whether deliberately or out of ignorance). Crap workspace? Leave. Crap cohabitants (not just in need of assistance, but willfully negligent or _so_ far behind that you can't get your job done)? Find better people to be around. The hard part: If you're a nice person, it can take a while to really learn and internalize this, and it can remain difficult to execute. It's not about being "better than". It's about circumstances that hinder your own performance and leave you counter-productively frustrated. No situation is perfect, but there are points past which they become destructively counter- productive. ~~~ kosma It takes just one bad apple to spoil the entire team. I've been in this situation three times. Reporting that your teammate is dragging the entire project down is a horrible feeling - but it's the only responsible thing to do. If you don't, you buy one person's peace of mind at the cost of the whole team's well-being. PS. Dr Glover was right: nice guys are _not_ nice. They just try to cover their asses and stay quiet. ------ memracom You know why CRUD apps are called that? Because skilled developers know that once you have built a CRUD app a half dozen times, the work is simple and straightforward with no challenge. This work is called crud work because it is not very desirable by people who look for challenges. On the other hand, it is easy to build these CRUD apps 10 times faster than a developer who has not learned all the ins and outs of such work. CRUD apps happen to be highly useful in most companies, i.e. there is a lot of market demand. Some people like this kind of work just like some people like to work on an assembly line. And it may even be worthwhile to pay someone a higher salary to churn out apps like this. But that does not make someone a 10x engineer. It just means that they happen to be working in a 10x environment right now. Next year they may be struggling to keep up with iOS developers who are all on their 3rd iOS app. My takeaway is that if a company really needs and wants 10x engineers, they should advertise the narrow details of the job that needs to be done and avoid listing irrelevant stuff like education and all the technologies involved. The ad should say something like Ruby on Rails for over 3 years with at least 10 apps built using MySQL backends. But if you need someone who is creative, can adapt to change and new technology, has experience with certain generic technologies like async servers, then please say that in so many words. And pay them more than average. Because the majority of developers are average developers and they share some characteristics. They have been working with more than one kind of technology. They are good at learning new things. They know how to adapt to new tools and new business requirements. They have used some stuff in the past, but because they have no desire to become 10x well-paid developers using that exact same set of technology, you should not be judging them by matching up lists of acronyms and names. ------ CmonDev "Startups work on problems that have not been solved, and they are usually extremely challenging." \- Web/mobile apps on average? "We hire ridiculously intelligent people", another London company I know says "We only hire top 5% of candidates". The truth is both of you hire the best people out of the small subset that was interested enough to interview with you. Just like anyone else. The general idea is true though :). ~~~ memracom Companies that really hire the top 5% of candidates, never advertise open positions. At most, their careers page says that they accept applications at any time if you think that you fill the bill. Most of their hires will come from reaching out to people and referrals. ~~~ CmonDev The point is nobody hires the actual top 5% of the best people, just the subset that happens available and interested in them within given period. ~~~ ericxtang top 5% is a very relative description. There is no hard measure, and everyone have a different standard on what they are "measuring in their head". Our perceptions are extremely biased by our own experiences. 90% of the time I really have to get to know the candidate before making any decisions. Of course the biggest constraint is available qualified candidates at the time. That's why hiring is so hard, and people who are really good at it tend to be veterans who have been in the industry for a long time. ------ kosma There's nothing dirty about shipping. 10x means shipping - and nothing else. It's just one trait - being able to attack small chunks of work and finish them before moving to the next one - and it doesn't say anything about the quality of one's work. Here's why: you can _learn to ship_. Being a "10x" is half of Joel's "smart and get things done". Don't ever forget about the other half. ------ pmichaud The thesis is that everyone is a 10x engineer at certain moments. But that if that same person is put in a more challenging situation, they no longer will be 10x. Also, that's the situation they should consistently be in. Otherwise, a consistently 10x engineer indicates coasting. It's a workable hypothesis, but where is the data? ~~~ placeybordeaux The dirty secret of the blog-o-sphere. ~~~ memracom The dirty secret of all science. People only study things that someone will pay for. And often the questions that you or I would like to see answered never attract funding. Recently someone discovered that booth babes do not work as a marketing tool by spending their own company's money on some experiments. Unfortunately this kind of thing is rare in the public eye. Some people think that Google has done such studies but they are part of its secret sauce. ~~~ ericxtang I've heard Google has a special process, unfortunately even if they make it public, it would only help startups in a very limited scope. The hiring requires are different, especially when it comes to a lot of the "soft skills". ------ RyanZAG If a '10x' engineer is going ten times slower than a normal and is therefore not a '10x' engineer anymore, wouldn't a '1x' engineer on the same difficult problem also go ten times slower and be a '0.1x' engineer? ------ sopooneo Take as given that under condition X all people can exhibit Y behavior. It does not necessarily follow that a particular person can exhibit Y behavior _only_ under condition X. ------ j45 10x engineers wouldn't read this because they're busy doing something	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: If you could build anything, what would you build? - traverseda You're already wealthy beyond compare. Profitability doesn't concern you. All the standard startup stuff has fallen by the wayside.<p>What do you build? Do you hire a team, or are you building it to learn? ====== panorama This doesn't answer the spirit of your question, but regardless of the product/service, I would build a company with an emphasis on employee happiness (which also doubles as a recruiting tool): \- Full-remote \- 4 days/week instead of 5 \- 2-3 months mandatory PTO \- Bootstrapped This isn't lofty or anything, it's really what I aspire to do some day soon. To me there are few sane reasons to build a company predicated on the 40 hour work week in an era where work is intellectual and not based on quantifiable throughput (like working in an assembly line). Today, I would gladly take a 20% paycut to work 20% less per week (e.g. get Fridays off), and so I'd want to build a company in the same way. I personally think the world is already headed in this direction (with remote work being the first big change). ~~~ explodingtardis This is really interesting. I would love to hear more about how you would go about doing this. Mind if I email you? ~~~ panorama Sure, my email is in my profile. I want to clarify that I don't think this will necessarily work for every company, especially high-growth, high-competition companies like Uber. Probably moreso for companies that acknowledge, due to market cap, that they will never be a billion dollar unicorn. ------ angersock Moon colony. Sex robots. Sex robot moon colony. Open a chain of small 100-bed hospitals throughout the US, give them doctors working normal hours and software to handle all the management stuff. Accept cash and credit only--no medicare, no insurance, no bullshit. Just cheap healthcare that people can rely on, payable on exit. Start a scholarship for hackers at colleges--must have less than a 2.8 GPA to apply, and must have cool hacks submitted every semester. Hacks that aren't some stupid fucking sociomoboloco sharing economy coupon thing. Hacks that have teeth. Oh, and two gigantic hands, two thousand feet tall, flipping the bird to NY and SV. ~~~ miguelrochefort I like #2. ------ AnimalMuppet Fixing drug resistant bacteria. Here's the plan: You go into the doctor's office. You give a small blood sample to a machine. It finds the bacteria in it, and DNA sequences them. It then looks them up in a library of known antibiotics, and prescribes for you an antibiotic that will kill exactly what you have. If it can't find an antibiotic that will do the job, it sends the DNA sequence to the US CDC. They hand it to a supercomputer, which solves the protein folding problem, and therefore can determine what the surface of that bacteria exposes. They then derive an antibiotic that will kill it, and add it to the library in all the doctors' offices. Taking the blood sample is a solved problem. Scanning the DNA is close. The protein folding problem is harder, and deriving an antibiotic from the surface geometry is really hard. So those are the problems that need solved to do this. I think it could be done in 30 years, but I can't guarantee it... ------ mindcrime If I could work on _anything_? If I was already wealthy and really, really didn't have to think about making money from it? Then I'd work on fusion reactors. I'd have to hire a team, but I'd also want to dig in and learn as much as I can myself. ------ ilaksh Not sure I should really just give you all of my best ideas, but people will probably ignore this anyway. Distributed artificial general intelligence app, probably something like using deep learning with a virtually embodied agent. A digital circuit IP or maybe separate USB dongle that does path tracing in hardware, maybe based on procedural generation from a built-in Forth. Various business and government ideas built on Ethereum, promoted with the intention of displacing existing more centralized institutions with decentralized ones. A backyard exchange website where people can rent out or share their backyards for tiny house 'parking' and/or high-tech gardening like aeroponics or aquaponics, or whatever they want besides being a big waste of space collecting dog crap. A deep underwater research living facility for testing closed eco-systems for space/the moon/mars. Mesh and optogenetic BCIs explicitly for human enhancement. Robots based on mulitlayered-multibraided electroactive-polymer muscles with anatomical mimicry. A unification of computer science, programming, and math. Or, a metalanguage and representation tying together classical programming and mathematical notation with interactive and/or visual programming, with the common part reused in all types of informations systems. Simple, low-priced home aeroponics systems sold in grocery stores, with plastic supports enabling sweet potatoes to grow. A new operating system for virtual reality. A small, lightweight hot-rod electric skid-steer with heads-up-display using ultracapacitors and high friction to enable very high-speed cornering and acceleration. A house, fully paid for, for every person or family I could afford. ~~~ traverseda >A new operating system for virtual reality. Elaborate. ------ Someone1234 I'd want to start an infrastructure company, internet (fiber) and cellular. But unlike traditional ones I'd build or buy the physical infrastructure and then resell access to any party which wanted to buy it, from big to small. I'd then use all of the profits to expand, then resell, repeat. Essentially I'd want to become an "invisible" company that sits behind public facing ones, and let's them take all the credit/blame, while I just continue to expand and resell. Kind of like "Level 3 Communications" but in the "last mile" segment (all the way to consumer's front doors/businesses). Then if I grow big enough, I'd start buying up companies like AT&T, take their infrastructure into my pool, and then resell the consumer/business arm off to someone else (and have them rent back space on the network from us). The eventual goal would be a complete monopoly over all US infrastructure assets, but a completely fair one, big and small companies would pay the same dollar price for raw access and could resell at profit margins they felt suited their business model. The hardest part aside from the billions of dollars it might cost, is setting up a pricing scheme which is rational, but also encourages continued growth. Most of the ways companies currently split up a fixed bandwidth network is kind of clunky and doesn't scale very well. ------ hanniabu I'd create a music generation software. You pick your base sounds and the mood you want to create, and the software will take it from there. There's already tons of research out there on what make a song happy, sad, etc. - all that would essentially be needed are base sounds as a reference point and the software would create various versions of an instrumental by cycling through example or custom melody patterns whcih alter the pitch of those base sounds. With all the info that's out there, I'm really surprised this hasn't been done before. Would definitely need a team for this, but I'd love to get my hands dirty in between managing. ------ T-A Maybe non-rocket space technology [1]. Totally worth it even if all it does is help Musk reminisce some more about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [2]. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- rocket_spacelaunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rocket_spacelaunch) [2] [http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-lecture-at- the-...](http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/elon-musk-lecture-at-the-royal- aeronautical-society-2012-11-16) ------ imakesnowflakes If I had unlimited amount of money, I would buy all the advertisement channels of the world and fill them with classical music. I would by all the billboards spaces and burn them to ground or if that is not possible, I will paint them sky blue with white fluffy clouds or camouflage them. Just kidding (not really). A bit more realistically, I would build an open source car company. I mean, a car which is 100% documented and documentation publicly available. with all the diagnostic tools and information how to use them available publicly. ------ codegeek A free service where I can connect with doctors, medical professionals to talk about health issues. Nothing formal but more casual information discussions. ~~~ infiniteseeker Quora for doctors ~~~ Someone figure1.com ------ J_Darnley Since I am unskilled I wonder how I became so wealthy. Then I hire a team to build the things I want. The things I want to build: Firefox with the 3.6 or older interface and uses libavcodec for video decoding; a clone of Windows Explorer for Linux; a perfect clone of Winamp; media library software that links together all the best features of existing programs. ITT: things that will never happen. ~~~ traverseda >ITT: things that will never happen. That's the idea ------ petervandijck A system that's as good (no, better!) at teaching as an individual teacher, at worldwide scale. (Not sure if it's doable.) ------ traverseda I think the GUI application paradigm completely broke the unix way. You used to be able to pipe programs into eachother. This means that if you used programs enough you'd eventually pick up programming skills. I'd like to make modern GUI stuff work a bit more like that. I'm imagining a state synchronized pseudo filesystem. Instead of storing files, it stores hierarchical C data types. A folder, with an array of vertexes and faces, inside another folder that contains textures and metadata. They're not folders, just nodes, but hopefully you get the idea. You can use your image editor to edit those textures, and the changes would show up in real time in your 3D scene editor. Small applications that do one thing well, because the "file types"(data structures) are standardized enough. Programs subscribe to changes in a file, sometimes over a network, using a state synchronization protocol. Think rethinkDB, but optimized for very fast read/write, not querying data. If you wanted to query the data like that, you'd have a daemon watch the folder, and index the data. The point is to focus on speed above all else, so you can watch real movies or stream real content in it, and then build your indexing a layer above that. Of course there are a whole lot of problems with that approach, and it's well beyond me. But I'd hire some C tutors, and the guys who make btrfs, and see what could happen. In my heart of hearts, I know this is probably just because I want to live in a world with a real metaverse, and I think this will get us one step closer to the kind of collaboration you'd need to get real work done in a virtual environment. But I still think it's a pretty good approach. I do find there's an advantage to hanging out and working with people in a real space, and I'd like to break that down a bit more. See: #Problems in unix design, the art of unix programming, Eric S Raymond [http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch20s03.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch20s03.html) >#A Unix File Is Just a Big Bag of Bytes >A Unix file is just a big bag of bytes, with no other attributes. In particular, there is no capability to store information about the file type or a pointer to an associated application program outside the file's actual data. >#File Systems Might Be Considered Harmful >Was having a file system at all the wrong thing? Since the late 1970s there has been an intriguing history of research into persistent object stores and operating systems that don't have a shared global file system at all, but rather treat disk storage as a huge swap area and do everything through virtualized object pointers. #The Verse 2 Protocol [http://verse.github.io/](http://verse.github.io/) ------ miguelrochefort A better communication paradigm. ------ canterburry Teleportation ~~~ jimsojim I am curious how are you going to go about it? ~~~ canterburry Ensure my financial stability and I'll work on an answer...works for you? :-)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Analysis Paralysis: Stop worrying about your code - gadr90 http://blog.gadr.me/stop-worrying-about-your-code/ ====== marcoagner Very good. This excessive and paralysing worry used to affect me and I still got some. Very real mistake. ------ gestapo Good, good.. We are watching. ~~~ gadr90 Thanks for the viewership! :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Pig: high level language to process big datasets via Hadoop - bayareaguy http://www.scribd.com/doc/2027476/pig-webscale-processing-Yahoo-Research ====== bayareaguy Christopher Olston from Yahoo Research presented Pig at the UCB DBMS lunch talk today. It's a framework that translates a high level processing specification into Hadoop jobs. Users only worry about providing functions for specific data parsing and computation. Pig and Hadoop do all the rest. Here is a sample program (taken from slide 11) that joins two big datasets (Visits and Pages) to find sessions that end with the "best" page: Visits = load '/data/visits' as (user, url, time); Visits = foreach Visits generate user, Canonicalize(url), time; Pages = load '/data/pages' as (url, pagerank); VP = join Visits by url, Pages by url; UserVisits = group VP by user; Sessions = foreach UserVisits generate FindSessions(); HappyEndings = filter Sessions by BestIsLast(); store HappyEndings into '/data/happy_endings'; Pig is open-source. It's being "incubated" as an Apache project. More details here: Apache Page: <http://incubator.apache.org/pig> Subversion Repository: <http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/pig> Powerpoint slides: <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~olston/pig.ppt>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Slack impacts workplace productivity - charlieirish https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18511575/productivity-slack-google-microsoft-facebook ====== cvs268 _> How Slack impacts workplace productivity_ like all tools, it impacts positively when used in the "right" way (TM)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How should I design my MS in CS curriculum? - cubecul I'm coming from a social science background. I've taken a C++ course, data structures, discrete math and intro to systems programming. I would love some advice on how to think about how best to plan my MS in CS.<p>The requirements are loose: 12 courses in 1 year, generally no restrictions. I have been thinking of primarily two ways to go about this. The first is to just do a well-rounded CS education, pursuing this article[1]. The second is to spend nearly all the courses in cognitive systems. In this case, when the course schedule doesn't provide much in the area, I would propose an independent reading modeled after a course from a stronger school (probably Stanford).<p>If I'm not interested in pursuing more school after this, does it matter what route I take? Is this actually a useful question to ask? If so, what do I lose/gain by going one way or another?<p>[1] http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/ ====== ScottBurson What do you want to do with the MS after you get it? ~~~ cubecul Move in the PM direction, though how to get there is still up in the air ------ masters3d What school is this? ~~~ cubecul Northwestern	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
We can't get enough of audiobooks - prostoalex https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/13/listen-up-rise-of-audiobooks-steven-poole ====== Wowfunhappy I was very disappointed to see this article complain about Audible DRM without mentioning the variety of DRM-Free audiobook providers. • downpour.com • libro.fm • audiobooksnow.com (The last of these has a handful of DRM'd books, so you need to check the listing first, but the vast majority are DRM-free.) While none of these retailers have as large a library as Audible, their offerings are more than decent, particularly if you don't mind hopping between sites sometimes. This isn't vodo.net, or even gog.com. Note that like Audible, Downpour and Libro.fm have subscription plans, which are all-but required if you want books at a reasonable price. Unlike Audible, however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and quickly unsubscribing. I know that Audible DRM is currently easy to remove, and that's great, but we should support the true DRM-Free providers where we can, or they might disappear. And if that happens, who knows what Audible will do. –––––––––– Honorable mentions: • audiobookstore.com sells DRM Free audiobooks, but they always seem to cost much more than on other sites, even with a subscription plan. I've also never found a book that was available here but not on one of the cheaper DRM-Free stores. • Graphicaudio.net offers DRM Free downloads if you don't mind paying a couple dollars extra per title. But these are very much not normal audiobooks. ~~~ pixelperfect > Unlike Audible, however, it's easy to game the system by subscribing and > quickly unsubscribing. You can do this on Audible without problems. I have an Audible library of 15 books that I accumulated over a few years through various promotions, never paying more than 33% the normal cost of a subscription. ~~~ Wowfunhappy I have a few issues with how Audible subscriptions work: • The cancellation process requires many more clicks. If your process is to subscribe → buy → cancel each time, this gets very annoying. • You can't buy additional credits without outright changing your overall subscription plan. • If you cancel your plan, you immediately forfeit any unused credits. ~~~ cstejerean So use your credits before you cancel? Also why do you need to buy more credits? You can buy audio books directly for $ once you exhausted the credits. I use credits for audio books that cost more than the price of a credit and $ for audio books that cost less. ~~~ rando444 I've been in this situation before. The unsubscribe process ends up taking hours of time because now you need to find 1-5 books to get before you cancel. It's also frustrating because they won't allow you more than 5 credits, so if you have 5 credits, they will take your monthly payment and give you nothing in return. Worse still is if you click on the wrong thing on Amazon it will re-activate your audible account automatically. I've had my audible account accidentally re-activated multiple times and not noticed (my amazon email goes to a non- primary email) All in all I've made many payments with max credits and gotten nothing in return, purchased a ton of books that I'm only partially interested in, and actively cancelled the service at least 3 times (including being forced to waste time shopping for books to complete the task every time) If you don't see this as a consumer trap, it's because you haven't tried to get out and stay out yet. ~~~ piva00 The limit on credits is what ultimately made me cancel Audible, I wouldn't care if I could keep stacking them up for a year but I go through long phases of not purchasing audiobooks so after a while I noticed I wasn't getting new credits while paying a subscription and realised that... It's their business model, like a gym, Amazon makes more money out of people not using their credits than from using them. ------ theseadroid An anecdote from me: Before I discovered audiobooks I rarely read non technical books, especially fictions. I just couldn't find enough time to finish books at a satisfactory pace. What's more, I couldn't enjoy many types of exercises and because of that I just didn't exercise enough. I find the activity of doing those types of exercises by themselves or even with music is too low in information density, that I just became bored after a while. Now with audiobooks I read many non technical books while I do those types of exercises I couldn't enjoy before. If a book is not great I dont find it a waste of time. The combination of audiobooks and exercising is the right amount of information density for me to enjoy the moment. The result? I exercise much much more now. Also I started to use the local library for audiobooks. Comparing to the effort of borrowing paper books or device restriction of borrowing ebooks, borrowing audiobooks is just a much better overall experience. ~~~ kitten_smuggler Not sure how you exercise to audiobooks, unless maybe its running or something like that. Up-tempo music really helps increase my cadence. I've tried w/ podcasts and audiobooks and am forced to switch back or else just find myself half-halfheartedly working out. ~~~ throw0101a > _Not sure how you exercise to audiobooks_ If you lift weights, there's a lot of waiting involved between sets. You can listen to stuff while you're idle, and then hit pause as you're doing your reps. When you're just starting out you may only need 90s rest, but as you progress to higher loads, that will rise to (say) three minutes, and then even longer the more 'advanced' you get. ------ alltakendamned Audiobooks just don't work for me, I would continuously zone out. I'm curious if people listening to them a lot simply have the same thing going but accept it, or if they are able to maintain focus on the spoken words better ? Another issue I have with them is that I can't quite skim to a paragraph of interest. ~~~ xtracto Same thing happens to me, I have to really pay attention while listening to an audiobook, otherwise I lose the thread. Also, why are audiobooks 5 times more expensive than their dead-tree version? [https://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Wakes-James-S- Corey/dp/0316...](https://www.amazon.com/Leviathan-Wakes-James-S- Corey/dp/0316129089) [https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781478998938-leviathan- wakes](https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781478998938-leviathan-wakes) That's crazy. ~~~ hombre_fatal It's a production with actors. Sometimes expensive ones. It's surely along the same continuum that explains why a 90 minute movie or season box set is more expensive than the book it's based on that takes weeks to consume. Wouldn't surprise me that consumers value it higher than "just a book." Another way to look at it: that's 21 hours of content for $35. Doesn't seem crazy compared to, say, going to the movies or buying a $60 video game that might not even have 10 hours of gameplay. ------ olodus Since they mention education but only seem to have mostly bad things to say about audiobooks in that context (unless I missed something, I skimmed that part) I would like to add how this has changed dyslexics relationship with education and with books in general. My brother is dyslexic and before I think he never read a book ever. This year he got a audio book he wanted as a Christmas gift and he was super happy. That the library of Audio books is expanding is a great thing. I do however agree with the article that the prevelent use of closed formats could be very bad in the long run though. I do think audible is a good deal but I don't like that they use closed formats. There are however still libraries and the increase in audio books can luckily be seen in their available stock as well. ~~~ ddebernardy What surprises me with respect to dyslexia is how poor accessibility options are in modern operating systems. If I understood the research correctly, dyslexia researchers get material improvements in reading speed when they increase the amount of space between words and lines. The gist of the explanation given was that dyslexics basically struggle to separate out the word they're trying to focus on from the surrounding wall of text. Put another way, while this is fine for normal readers: quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Changing it to this makes it easier to read by dyslexic readers: quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Perhaps OS designers aren't unaware of it (hint hint if you work on an OS); or perhaps the research isn't as conclusive as I recollect. If the former, it seems like a no brainer to throw in an accessibility option to enable this OS- wide. ~~~ stordoff Has there been any research/discussion about how this would work for non- dyslexics (I know it would be an option, so not an issue; I'm just curious)? I find myself wanting to go from "quick brown" to "lazy dog" in the second one, even reading it slowly, and I'm not really sure why. ~~~ ddebernardy Insofar as I can recollect, sort of, at least if you infer what happens when the space between words or lines is too large. The gist of the issue for a dyslexic reader, as I understood it anyway, is a focus problem. Picture an ellipse of sorts over the word you're trying to focus on as you read. A dyslexic person will struggle to get the ellipse on that word, and instead gobbles up part or all of the text around it (parts of the words before and after, and parts of the words above and below) - or not enough of it? - leading to fatigue and slow read speed. If memory serves me well: \- By increasing the space enough, you make it simpler for a dyslexic reader to focus on each word, improving reading speed. (Anecdotally I find web typography more readable with slightly increased line height and word spacing, so methinks it's not just dyslexic readers who benefit.) \- By increasing the space too much, however, you make it harder for readers (dyslexic or not) to follow the flow of text (words become disconnected, if you will, as you've experienced in the second example), and that ends up degrading the reading speed. \- Every reader (dyslexic or not) has an optimal spacial arrangement. You can kind of see the effect in action by increasing the line height, kerning, and word spacing in an html document. Increase either of those three too much and the text gets harder to read. Increase one or more of them slightly above the default values and the text will be more comfortable to read. ------ damontal One problem I have with audible is that because I'm paying around $15/month I feel the need to use my credits on books that cost more than this. So I miss out on shorter books, plays, etc I'd like to read. I have a bunch of books in my wishlist that are around $9 and I won't burn a credit on them. I guess that's part of their business model... get you to spend money in addition to your subscription. ~~~ kss238 I wish someone would make a netflix for audiobooks. I'm guessing licensing is an issue. ~~~ inanutshellus Depending on where you are, this may be freely available to you right now through your local library. Talk to your local library about whether they're on Overdrive / Libby. If so, you can listen to unlimited audiobooks, ebooks, magazines, and comic books 24/7\. It's fantastic. It's free. Yay public libraries. ~~~ pahool Also, keep in mind that, depending on where you live, you may be able to carry cards for multiple libraries. In California, for instance, many major public libraries only require state residency. So, while traveling within the state, pick up library cards for as many libraries as you can. When I was living in California, I had library cards for Los Angeles County, Los Angeles City, Santa Monica, San Jose, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland, and I could use the e-resources of any of these libraries. Additionally, there is a plugin for Firefox called "Available Reads" that allows you to enter your Overdrive account information for your various library cards. Then, when browsing goodreads, the plugin will show you the Overdrive availability of the books you are browsing at all of the libraries at which you are a member, and provide links out to the catalog entry for those libraries' copies of the ebooks/e-audiobooks. ------ mistercow > Since the 1980s, cognitive psychology has consistently established that > recall is indeed better after reading (printed) text instead of listening to > it, a conclusion bolstered by a 2010 study (David B Daniel and William > Douglas Woody), which found that students did worse on a test if they had > listened to a podcast of a scientific article on child cognition rather than > reading it. I wonder if any of these studies allowed the subjects to rewind. I skip back constantly when listening to audiobooks, because I zone out or get distracted. If you were to study my comprehension while taking away that feature, I'm sure I'd score lower than reading with my eyes. Conversely, if you had me read with one of those apps that shows you one word at a time, and didn't let me rewind, I'm sure I would score lower on that than on audio. ~~~ suzzer99 Same here. The 30 second rewind is key. My 1-hour commute each way is mostly sitting in slow or stop & go traffic on the same freeway. So 95% of my brain is available for comprehension. And I can always rewind if I get distracted by actual driving. I can honestly say that audiobooks on my commute have changed my life. For whatever reason I just can't find a comfortable enough spot to read an actual book for more than 30 minutes at a time - and even that feels like a chore. It bothered me for 2 decades that I didn't read enough. Now I get 2 hours a day where I am transported into another headspace, inspired, engaged. I actually look forward to my commute. The only downside is when I come down off Mt. Everest and show up at work - my motivation to do my job is pretty low. :) ------ ivan_ah Did y'all know macOS has a built-in text-to-speech system that is pretty decent? Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Speech and set a keyboard shortcut, then you can turn any piece of text into an audio book by simply selecting it and pressing the text-to-speech keyboard shortcut. You'll need to set the Speaking Rate pretty high for this to be useful. It works great for news, blog posts, HN discussions, and amazingly powerful proofreading tool for writers. More info with screenshots here: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit#) ~~~ vel0city The Mac line has had text to speech functionality since the very beginning, even being somewhat showcased at the first reveal of the Macintosh by Steve Jobs. [https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=208](https://youtu.be/2B-XwPjn9YY?t=208) Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since 1984. ~~~ ivan_ah > Although, I imagine the quality of the reader has greatly improved since > 1984. Exactly. I've tries a number of text-to-speech options before and found the voicing to be almost unusable, but the Alex voice in macOS (at least since 10.5) is pretty good. It even does the right context-dependent thing for polysemy cases, e.g. "I live in the mountains" vs. "I went to a live concert". ------ ibudiallo I recently started recording some articles I wrote as audio. For the few I have tested, it made a significant difference. Some readers went out of their way to tell me how much they enjoyed the audio version. Most people get distracted too quickly to finish reading an article. But with audio, the story becomes the distraction that keeps them listening to the end. ~~~ petercooper I would also prefer to hear your tone of voice because it will tell me a lot that your writing can't. For example, if you're saying something slightly contentious (as is common in tech nowadays!) I would be able to tell if you're joking, trying to provoke me, or are playing devil's advocate solely by your tone and the framing.. whereas in the written form, it could be hard to tell. ------ Causality1 Many people decide they don't like audiobooks because they don't approach them correctly. For example, pair your audio with your expectations of how you'll listen. If you intend to listen while doing a cognitive task like working or driving in dense traffic, leaping headlong into a brand-new series is likely to make you lose track because you can't keep your focus on the words 100% of the time. For those scenarios sticking with a lighthearted podcast or a book you've read/listened to before is best, and save the new stuff for mowing the lawn or riding public transportation. If you have a hard time getting through the beginning of some audiobooks as I have, I've found it useful to "prime the pump" by reading the first few chapters of a book and then switching to the audio version once I'm familiar with the names and setting. ~~~ Krasnol Exactly. I use audiobooks mostly on tedious tasks daily. Like washing dishes, feeding the washing machine, dryer, ironing, etc. Often I tend to bundle those tasks together for a longer listening experience. Other then that it's great for commute on trains, planes, taxis, or bike or if you go somewhere where waiting is expected. It takes some time to get into though. I have struggled with it in the beginning so I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't be such a big deal if I miss something. Now it became almost the only way I consume books for entertainment. ~~~ kd5bjo >I started with a book I read already some time ago so it wouldn't be such a big deal if I miss something. This is where I’m at in learning a second language. The audiobook will keep marching onwards, so I won’t get road blocked by things I don’t know yet. Because I already know the story, it’s never longer than a minute or so before I manage to catch the plot thread again. It’s also been helpful to read along with the printed book as the audiobook is running. ------ Ensorceled I've been reading for more than 50 years and listening to audiobooks for the last 30 or so. I find I get different things out of the two formats. When I listened to Lord of the Rings (by the excellent Rob Inglis), there were all sorts of turns of phrase and whole sections that I didn't remember from my previous readings (multiple). But this article is spot on for me, I can't listen to audio books where I'm trying to learn something while doing anything other than driving. Some non- fiction is also simply too dense to effectively learn from while listening, I want to stop and reflect, re-read and make notes. I started listening to "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" on Audible and quickly abandoned it for the hard back. My dead tree copy has numerous notes and a few dozen stickies as bookmarks. ------ reallydontask Audiobook paired with a good set of noise cancelling headphones on an early train is as good as a commute gets. Your 20 second trip to the (home) office is not a commute. I do those too sometimes :) ~~~ copperx How do you deal with the excruciating slow speed of audiobooks? Even on 2x speed I feel I can do twice as fast by reading with my eyes and get better retention. Anything faster that 2x makes the speech unintelligible, but reading fast feels like things get more coherent. ~~~ gfody I’ve heard this a lot. I always listen at normal 1x speed and that usually seems plenty fast as my mind gets busy with visualizing the scenes and characters and filling in bits of detail and whatnot for realism. I wonder if folks who speed it up have their minds similarly engaged or if they’re just having a much lesser experience. To me it’d be like trying to watch a movie on fast forward. ~~~ kd5bjo Not necessarily lesser, but different. My brain doesn’t generally visualize anything, but it’s good at building a semantic web that connects cause and effect. If you ask me to describe the physical characteristics of a character in a book that I read, I probably can’t, unless it has an effect on the plot. But I have no real trouble keeping track of what’s going on in books like _The Count of Monte Cristo_ where everyone has half a dozen names and different motivations they’re willing to show to different people. I also listen to things at 1x speed because I don’t care for the audio artifacts from the speedup process, but I have to be in the right mood for it. If I’m too energetic, the book won’t hold my attention and my mind will wander to other things— I’ll mentally shut it off and have no idea what’s going on when I try to resume the book. ------ JansjoFromIkea For me audiobooks are a way more relaxing alternative to podcasts in that they strip away the need to choose what to listen to for several times as long and, usually, once I'm in the mood to listen to one I can stay in that mood for a long time. Listening to Robert Caro's gigantic history books a couple of years ago war an extremely pleasant experience. Literally a month or two of no podcasts at all and just this pair of extremely deep well written biographies. ~~~ icebraining I just listen to podcasts in the order they get published. Alternatively, you can pick a podcast that started long ago, and just binge on the archive - Mike Duncan's work alone is enough to fill probably three or four months. That said, I listened to the Power Broker, and fully recommend it. ~~~ alexhutcheson I highly recommend binging the back catalog of Hardcore History[1] if you haven't already. Yes, you have to pay for the older episodes, but it's a tremendous amount of really great content. My favorite individual episode is "Prophets of Doom": [https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-48-prophe...](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-48-prophets-of-doom/) [1] [https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history- compilati...](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-compilation- episodes-1-49/) ~~~ icebraining Yeah, I've heard many hours of Hardcore History, but while it's certainly good, Dan Carlin's style - both the writing and the speech - frankly tire me a bit. There are too many times when it's too over the top. I much prefer Mike Duncan's or Mark Painter's styles. ------ agotterer Since the beginning of this year I’ve listened to 9 audio books. That is 9 more books then I read in the past 5 years. I like the idea of reading but prioritizing time for it meant that it took months to complete a book, if I completed it at all. Now I listen while I walk to work, do the dishes, drive, etc. ~~~ drainyard I know how you feel! I listened to "Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep" in less than a week and finished "Game of Thrones" in 3 weeks because of audio books. Before that I could barely finish a short book in a month, and a large one like "Game of Thrones" would take me most of a year to be honest. ------ mlang23 I read a lot of audiobooks on YouTube recently. Fascinating how a service so public can be so full of copyright violations. I guess I know now why upload filters are the new big thing. ~~~ hombre_fatal Though, sheepishly, trying to listen to audiobooks on Youtube is why I ended up paying for Youtube at one point: so I could turn my phone screen off while listening. Maybe Youtube knows this. ;) ~~~ mlang23 Yes, listeing to stuff while screen is locked seems to be one of the motivations for teople to pay for a youtube subscription (apart from getting rid of Ads of course). As a VoiceOver user, I dont care so much. Tripple- tapping with three fingers will turn the screen off/on (screen curtain). This at least saves a bit of battery. Interestingly, ads dont really bother me as most audiobook providers haven't enabled ads anyway. You can easily listen to 10 hours of pratchett or dick without a single second of advertisment on yt. If ads are enabled, they can lead to pretty hilarious situations. When I was listening to an audiobook of GoT on YT recently, it contained quite a bit of ads. Funnily, one of the ads regularily heard was an audible ad. And the book was clearly stolen from audible. So in the end, YT was passing money from audible to the ebook thiefs. How ironic. Oh yeah, but hacking videos are apparently illegal now on YT. Go figure. Looks to me like yt is creating its own pretty arbitrary law. ------ ghevshoo Blinkist sounds interesting, even if it feels more like cheating than regular audio books. I already feel a bit guilty saying I read book X, when I really listened to it. Their website doesn’t explain much and the reviews are vague as usual. Does anyone have a personal reference for it, or know how it works? Is it real people reading or a computer voice? I presume the shortened texts are using something like [https://smmry.com/](https://smmry.com/) ~~~ shadeless I have been using Blinkist on a daily basis for the past few months. I'm pretty satisfied with the subscription as it's a great time-saver, in 15mins I either find out that: \- the book is not worth spending hours of actual reading \- I enjoy the summary and it makes me want to read the whole book \- or I like the summary, copy the highlights into personal notes, and carry on Real people are both reading and summarizing the books, so it's much higher quality than the automatic shorteners. ~~~ ganesh7 That. And even without trendy 'blinkist' I used to take a similar approach by first reading some prepatory materials before investing time to read the book. Listening to an audiobook is just another way for me to complement but no replacement. I would not say this is fool proof. You will never be able to get the "key takeaways" of every book by reading some summary. Sometimes the key takeway might be the way a book is written, how something is repeated while other things are left out that are most valuable. Likewise quotes that once meant nothing to you, you will only understand after studying material by the other in depth, etc. just some thoughts. ------ hi5eyes graphic audio presents the stormlight archives greatest listening experience.ever. epic fantasy on another level ~~~ abryzak If you enjoy the Stormlight Archives I would also highly recommend the Lightbringer series of books by Brent Weeks. I won't spoil anything besides saying that the series has a number of really memorable plot twists and a very interesting magic system. Simon Vance does a fantastic job narrating the audiobooks and I'm eagerly anticipating the fifth and final book of the series which is due for release in October. ~~~ tpetry It‘s a very good series! The shadow series of him is very great too. ------ kilroy123 I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't like audio books. I also feel it's faster to just read a real book, and I retain a lot more information when I read. ~~~ Ronsenshi You're not the only one. I don't dislike audio books, but compared to text it's just not as immersive. When reading a a good text book I get transported into it. I visualize whatever author wrote and eventually it's not even reading - it's more like a flow of information. With audio books I don't get that - which is OK for some types of books, but definitely not something I'd pick for fiction. ~~~ arethuza I listen to audiobooks a _lot_ and I generally love them but sometimes I do miss the ability to easily skip back and re-listen to a particular short section again - yes you can skip back a fixed amount easily but that takes you to a random point in the text. Local, sentence/paragraph level, navigation in audiobooks is really bad. ~~~ jplayer01 This is something I've noticed with podcasts as well. The tools and players available are atrocious and I don't understand why everybody puts up with them. ~~~ SyneRyder Which players have you tried? I find the players have lots of microfeatures I wouldn't even have thought of - like if I've stopped playing a podcast in Pocket Casts & pick it up a couple of hours later, it rewinds a few seconds so I get the context of what I was listening to again. Pocket Casts is nowhere near as good since the NPR acquisition, and probably not as good as Overcast or Castro or any iPhone clients, but I definitely wouldn't say it's atrocious. ~~~ jplayer01 All of them. And most of them are glorified radios. The few that do expose functionality for navigation and bookmarking within a podcast episode (beyond rewinding or FF by x seconds), they make it _way_ too unintuitive to use and make you use too many clicks to use it. And there's almost no functionality around saving and organizing the episodes you've listened to. Hell, most podcast apps don't even provide a way to check your played history in a sane way (if at all). Where in the fuck is the Evernote of podcast apps? I want to tag episodes, organize them into folders, link different episodes, bookmark certain spots of an episode, _tag the bookmarks_ , add comments/notes at certain times AND TAG THESE AND ORGANIZE THESE, etc. ~~~ SyneRyder Okay, I admit - that is an absolutely brilliant idea. What you've described is exactly how I use Pocket with blog posts (highlighting, searchable note taking, tagging) but for podcasts. Count me in. I know Overcast made some attempts at timecode bookmarking & sharing snippets, but I don't think their approach is the solution. (I'm on Android so I've never got to try it.) [https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast- clips-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-clips-with- overcast/) ~~~ jplayer01 Yeah. That interactive, metatextual layer is missing for me for podcasts. I have a decent process (that I'm still refining) for saving and organizing websites/articles/books/pdfs/notes, and if I'm looking for something, I can find it reasonably quickly, but podcasts are this blackhole where information and context go to get lost. > [https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast- > clips-...](https://www.cultofmac.com/622288/how-to-share-podcast-clips-..). Okay, that feature is pretty damn cool. Add that to my must-haves in my dream podcast app. ------ Japhy_Ryder I'm not usually an 'audiobook' guy, but, currently listening to How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, which is read by him. He's an excellent speaker/reader and it's nice to hear him read it exactly how he meant it to be read. ------ Pandabob I've been a fairly heavy user of Audible until this spring when I started to go back to regular, physical books. If you're reading books with lot's of graphs or pictures in them, the Audible experience is kind of subpar. Also, the experience of "browsing" audiobooks is kind of clunky and there's effectively no way to search the book. I will say that the audio version of The Economist is pretty great. If an article has pictures or graphs in them, I can just open the article from the app and listen to it simultaneously. I hope more magazines/newspapers would add similar functionality to their offering. ~~~ DanTheManPR I'm always reading/listening to two books at once, one audio-book, and one in a visual format. A lot of technical or older books aren't available in any electronic or audio format, and so I want to always be in the habit of reading visually so that I can accommodate those. ------ AlchemistCamp Listening to books is just too slow. For the right kind of book with a slower narrator, I _might_ be able to listen at 2x or 2.5x and still understand it. But why not just devote my full attention, read it at 8x and probably have better recollection than from passive listening? Other books require more work and I probably read at 1x speed with frequent pauses and re-readings. I'd never understand those if they were audio. The one time I might go for an audio book is when outside exercising or commuting, but that's when I listen to music or podcasts. ~~~ KUcxrAVrtI Have a try to synthetic speech books, I use espeak to create my audiobooks at 1000wpm for non-technical books. ------ tus88 I am really surprised at how popular they are. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but when I want to read, I read. Listening to someone else read a book....doesn't feel right to me. ~~~ rorykoehler Reading is tiring. I spend all day looking at text at work. Audio books are an escape from that. They free me to do something else too. I use them in the following scenarios: strapped into the decompression machine at the chiro, stretching at home and winding down for bed with the lights off to stimulate melatonin. I couldn't read a book in any of those situations and they cover 100% of my book consumption. I didn't read books at all before audio books (at least not since I was a child, except for studying purposes). I agree that a good narrator makes a huge difference. ------ malhotra_chetan Totally relatable. Plus somehow I have noticed that I work out for more time while listening to audiobooks when compared to working out with blasting music. I use this service called auditus.cc to convert all my epubs. And the fun thing is the reading voices available are pretty varied so if I start getting bored from one voice, I make sure I use another one next time. ------ durnygbur Not only audiobooks. Do you have „radio theatre”? In my country we have it - it’s an awesome form. ~~~ simcop2387 It's one thing that I love to get a hold of from the BBC, things like the HHGTTG radio play and others are just fantastic. I'm not fully aware of a lot of others but there's some podcasts like Welcome to Nightvale and the other productions that the group does that are also wonderful. I think that's where a lot of those kinds of things have ended up because it can reach a much larger audience and is easier to fund because of that (from ads and from sales and donations depending on how they do it). ~~~ durnygbur In Poland there is a special division of the public radio (Teatr Polskiego Radia) producing the auditions. Hard to find a weak or uninteresting production. Unfortunately not many new are appearing recently. Some commercial radios tried to copy the form and produce something similar but it was nowhere near the artistic and quality level of PR’s (ended up with something loud and vulgar). ------ zxcb1 The trend reminds me of McLuhans literate and tribal man [https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview- mar...](https://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall- mcluhan/) ------ djohnston I didn't start using audiobooks until this year, but they've markedly improved my ability to fall asleep quickly. It used to take at least an hour, and now I'm usually out within 30. Except when I get to the climax :p ------ qrbLPHiKpiux They have to be done the right way. There’s a known talk radio show host who also writes books. I tried one of his audio books and it was not read by him, but by someone else. I couldn’t continue with it and got the print version. ------ raehik I love audiobooks (and anything media that comes with audio too) for learning languages. Inflection and hearing what's written is hugely beneficial to understanding, and it's much more memorable for me. ------ BooneJS I started buying audiobooks during my time in the Bay Area with round trip daily commutes of 2.5 hours. Now I’m in a car for just over 3 hours a week and I’d rather lounge around with my e-ink Kindle. ------ Simulacra I am hopelessly addicted to audiobooks. I’m much too hyper active an attention deficit to read these days, Unmedicated by the way, seems like an interesting idea worth pursuing ------ ajairaj For me audio books are great when I listen to a book which I have read long time ago. This way I can revise my favorite books, and I wont worry if I miss some sentences. ------ timwaagh i personally dont like them very much as they tend to force the pace and you might miss quite a bit. im a slow reader who tends to process everything. unless its boring then i just skim. you can't really do that with audiobooks. plus they are quite expensive.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Closing Communities: FFFFOUND vs. MLKSHK - _pius http://waxy.org/2017/04/closing-communities-ffffound-vs-mlkshk/ ====== AdrianRossouw I ran a large online community with tens of thousands of users that existed for nearly 19 years. When it came time to close it down, I left a notice on the site for several months before i made it read only... then the helpful guys at archive team[1] helped me create a complete archive of the site on archive.org with their irc bot. once that was complete, i replaced the site with a notice and linked to the archives from there. As an aside, one of the old domains that we used for a while lapsed at some point, and some spammer put up a copy of the pages from the internet archives with ads injected into the content. That eventually went to an SEO landing page a few months later. [1] [http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page) ~~~ abstractbeliefs For those that don't know, Archive Team and Internet Archive are two different groups (though with an overlapping membership). Internet Archive are a non-profit org that are legally held to high standards, as they should be. They're a very stable place to have data archived. That comes with a few limitations, like not making information available if there's any (even accidental) indication that the upstream site want it kept private - see the comments about robots.txt in tfa. Archive Team, on the other hand, are a fairly fun and radical group that are far more loosely organised, who will archive what they can when it's needed, and horde it. Fuck your robots.txt![1] If you can get involved in either organisation, it's highly recommended. They both have interesting challenges and solve them with neat tools. [1] [http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Robots.txt](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Robots.txt) ------ dawnerd Thesixtyone is also closing in a few days and didn't give much notice. No way to export anything either. I've tried to scrape the site but considering how many days are left I can't possibly finish. ~~~ zokier With stories like this, I always find it bizarre that artists/creators do not keep personal master copies of their works. I don't think it's fair to push the blame of losing the works completely to the service operators, I feel that creators also have some responsibility to employ due diligence _if_ they want their works to be preserved. ~~~ khedoros1 Agreed. Putting something on the Internet makes it convenient to access, but I've never created something that I cared about that I didn't keep a local copy of. The idea actually makes me a little uncomfortable.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Best file format for archiving photos - reaperducer Today I discovered that macOS Catalina dropped support for some raw image formats. I have 20,000 photos from 19 countries archived in one of the newly non-supported formats. Lots of people long dead, and places that no longer exist, or that I will never be able to revisit. Luckily, I have an old Snow Leopard machine that I can dedicate for the next six months converting these files to something useable. But what? Since they're camera raw, I'd rather not go JPEG. I'm considering TIFF, but want to make sure there isn't something better that might still be supported years from now. ====== mceachen I've been working on digital archiving for a while now (check my profile for my current project). Here are some points to consider: 1\. Don't delete your originals. Your conversion process may end up being lossy in some way (like with color depth or with metadata), and your future self will thank you for keeping the originals. 2\. TIFF is a container format. It can hold a JPEG, or a lossless format. Don't think that all TIFFs are lossless. 3\. Can dcraw not read all your originals? I've been really impressed by how many different raw formats that tool handles. You may not need to convert them if dcraw handles them. If PhotoStructure can import your raw files, dcraw can (as PhotoStructure uses dcraw under the hood for raw-to-tiff conversions). 4\. Know that the default for images is to become irrelevant to the viewers of tomorrow. Add whatever content and context you can to as much as you can. ------ fsflover [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format#Standardizati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format#Standardization) ------ mytailorisrich Probably something lossless, ubiquitous, and that can handle more than 8 bits per channel. I think TIFF is the major standard and has been so for decades. Of course that may change in the future but at least, because TIFF is ubiquitous, I am sure that it will be easy to covert to a new standard and that there will be plenty of time to do it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Respect: Poland on ACTA [video] - mazsa http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=YPiV_SB-scM ====== mazsa \+ <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQdMtSmkVBs>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What are the best resources to learn Spring framework? - navbehl Hi, I've recently started working on a project built on Spring framework. I've worked on Java 8(mostly Android and only used lambdas) and Play framework(Scala) ====== gdfer The spring reference docs are quite good. I'd take a scan through those first, maybe focusing more on the areas you will need so you have an idea what it can do and how.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask YC: How much do you make on advertising on your site? - mixmax A lot of startups are depending on advertising on their site, but it is often hard to find numbers on what kind of income you can expect from this.<p>The numbers, of course, vary depending on your niche and your audience, the type of advertising you use, and how aggressively you place your ads.<p>Still I think it would be interesting to see some numbers and/or ranges. Anyone willing to share, or point to some good resources on this? ====== rrival RefreshThing.com : 58,434,725 impressions, 19,730 clicks, $3,083.27 rev, Nov 06-Present. Dropped AdSense from most of the content last May to simplify the design. This is AdSense only, not affiliate (CPA) revenue. ~~~ mixmax nice little app... Your numbers might be skewed towards the low end due to your business model. I presume that a refresh is an impression here. But thanks a lot for sharing. :-) ~~~ rrival Yes - and prior to May there was an AdSense 728x90 in the top frame (fun with auto-refreshing CPM rev =) ). ------ pchristensen Well, my blog earned $2.16 in Amazon affiliate commissions this month! That was on something like 10K views. Time to go swimming in my bathtub full of cash! ------ thorax I have one gaming site with forums that makes 400,000 impressions a month. It makes probably $140 in Adsense in a good month, plus about $170 in targetted banner ads from sponsors who approached me directly. As such, it's enough to cover the servers of that hobby and pay a little towards my other dedicated servers. By no means is it bringing in enough money for any business. That would require better conversion/click rates or a lot more impressions than I get. I could probably get the banner advertisers to pay up to 50% more by bargaining harder (since there are a number of small business suitors), but I like them to get solid return on those advertisements. ------ inovica We started running one site with Google Adsense. It didn't generate much money, but showed us what kind of keywords DID generate clicks. We used this knowledge to start selling banner adverts and that has brought in a lot more. We're not talking fortunes - it brings in around $4000/month, but that passive income helps ------ nextmoveone I read somewhere TechCrunch generates $214,000 per month from advertising. ~~~ run4yourlives I highly doubt that number. 214K a year, maybe, just maybe. I'd be surprised if facebook even brought in that much per month. ~~~ utnick facebook brings in 4-5 mil a month according to wikipedia ~~~ run4yourlives Sure it does. ~~~ axod You haven't tried affiliate marketing much have you. One of my sites has around 1,000 visitors a day, generates $5k-$10k revenue a month. ~~~ optimal Wishing axod would elaborate . . .	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
In short the US has no clue where Snowden is. - ForFreedom With all their PRISM tech the US cannot find Snowden which is clear from the Bolivian incident. ====== nishithleo India has rejected NSA leaker Edward Snowden's request for political asylum, the External Affairs Ministry said Tuesday. [http://www.wral.com/india-turns- down-nsa-leaker-s-asylum-req...](http://www.wral.com/india-turns-down-nsa- leaker-s-asylum-request/12618307/) ~~~ 007emma007 It looks as if he is on the run for shelter now-a-days and there's not a single country thinks he has done a great job keeping with interest to business in the US ~~~ nishithleo Thats what the whole thing is about but i think he will get a shelter ------ dotcoma Let's hope it stays that way.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chatbot Fail - imartin2k http://thewalrus.ca/chatbot-fail/ ====== SixSigma Clicking buttons is not inherently superior. Text interfaces work very well for a subset of people.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
In 2016 LA voted to spend 1.2B on the homeless, but the problem keeps growing - wallace_f https://youtu.be/gazX_feRSW0 ====== wallace_f I quickly searched for an estimate of the homeless population within LA city: ~36,000. At 1.2B that is over $33,000/person. Honestly, I wonder at what point can we look at these results and ask ourselves is it better to just give people $33,000? ~~~ Fjolsvith With the population of LA County at 4 million, that 1.2B comes in at $300 per person taxed. That's $300 out of the pocket of each resident given to the cause. (But, I'm sure that a good portion of that actually gets pocketed by some officials along the way.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon S3 and offline development - ACSparks Let's say I want to use S3 to serve all of the images for my site; I also do alot of my developing offline on a local setup.<p>Do I just have to bite the bullet and have the page layout broken when I am not online? ====== ACSparks Nevermind, I can just use htaccess to redirect image paths when I am developing on my local computer.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: A friend introduced me to a client, now he wants a 25% cut - thrwwwy123 I work as an independent software consultant in a somewhat specialized area. A friend recently introduced me to the founders of a company that are looking for help in this area. It's interesting work and I want to pursue it. However, my friend is insisting that I bill his company at my rate of $X/hr, and he bill them at $1.25X/hr. The client appears to be fine with the rate he quoted them.<p>I understand that business is all about relationships, and I want my friend to be compensated for the value that he's provided. However, this seems pretty steep to me, especially if it turns into a long term engagement. In my experience, recruiters usually charge a one time fee, but his reasoning is that he's more of a staffing agency than a recruiter.<p>While theoretically I should be content with earning my rate, this has also made me realize that I should be charging more.<p>One possibility I'm thinking about is that we engage under his terms for a short term initial contract, after which point I start billing the client directly, either at my current rate or at his. However, I'm not sure how this might be received by both the client and my friend, nor what the norms are in this type of situation.<p>What does HN think? What is the value that a staffing agency provides to justify their cut? Is my friend being reasonable? ====== saluki If you're getting your full rate, let your friend enjoy marking up your services. Make sure he's paying you promptly though, not paying you after he waits for the final client to pay his invoice, so specify he's your client in the contract and that he's comfortable paying your invoices in a time frame you expect not dependent on the final client paying his invoice. Maybe he will bring you other engagements, you could even outline this in your contract with him that he will actively market you to his network. Finding projects isn't trivial, it's mainly relationships and who you know. If he can keep bringing you projects I'd enjoy the ride. Maybe let him know that for future engagements like this you're increasing your rate if you think you need to increase it. ~~~ brudgers The standard rate doesn’t include a premium for the nonstandard conditions. ------ aksss If he's the one managing the relationship, doing the end-customer billing, it's perfectly normal to have a markup, especially if it's for a short-term engagement. He owns the relationship and is subcontracting you to perform your service. A referral fee would be appropriate if he was handing the customer off to you for direct billing and leaving you to manage your relationship directly. In essence, he's also warranting your work (which means he's bearing risk). Don't be so quick to say that this means you should raise your rates. If you did, he might not sub work out to you anymore and you'd lose the advantage of having people like him finding you work (which is a cost you'd need to bear). We have worked with subcontractors like this where they see us marking up their service and think they should raise their rates to what we're billing. That's the wrong response, because I can't then mark that up further. It just means we're going to find someone else to do the work for the rate we need. Ultimately, maybe it would be good to consider a higher bill rate for direct engagements and a lower bill rate for subcontracting jobs, and in the meantime try and move more of your business into direct engagements. But again, this takes work and will cost you, but at least you derisk the approach by continuing to get business (and build reputation) through subcontracting. ------ davismwfl I have built two successful consulting groups, while some people here are saying 25% cut is normal that is astronomical in my experience for what he is providing. I would never agree to that rate just for an introduction, 8-12% is more reasonable for an intro and payable only when the client pays their invoice. If your friend is doing some work and on-going management or something than that's a different story and this may all be very fair. But if he is literally just making an intro and then now saying you have to sub-contract from him that is odd to me and for me and has red flags all over the place. Essentially it seems like he wants to control the client relationship and just have you do the work, there are a lot of potential downfalls here. For example, if you aren't talking directly to the client and instead he is playing middle man you may get a bad wrap from the client because your friend doesn't understand something properly. That client then talks to other potential clients and next thing you know you are taking a hit for your friends behavior. If he is letting you have direct access to the client and he literally is just billing, his 25% is insane. Other downfall is if you don't control the client relationship how are change requests going to go? Is he going to properly represent them? How is billing going to be handled, they pay him net 30 and you wait again to get paid so you now risk 45-60 days of non-payment? Is his company big enough you can feel confident he'll pay you timely and properly? If things go south, is his company large enough to compensate or protect you during a legal suit? Is he carrying all the proper insurance? This just has so many red flags to me. Essentially IMO your friend is taking advantage of you by introducing you to a client he knows (maybe does business with regularly) and he knowing you charge too little is jacking your rate to something more reasonable and taking the difference. With friends like that you don't need any enemies for sure. I usually introduce friends to clients for free because it is good business to make sure clients stay happy and my friends find work. Plus if a friend fucks up I am not on the hook for their screw up, just for the intro which I can manage around. For people I don't know or that are just acquittances, I'll do intros but I do take a referral fee paid as they are paid from the client. Only time I take money for an intro when a friend is involved is if I need to get involved or the value of the contract would be such they can afford to pay a fair referral, but I'd never ask for 1/4 of the value even if I told them to charge 1.25x more. Don't compare to staffing agencies, that isn't an accurate representation unless that is the business your friend is in. ~~~ thrwwwy123 Thank you very much for the detailed response, this is extremely helpful. > But if he is literally just making an intro and then now saying you have to > sub-contract from him that is odd to me and for me and has red flags all > over the place. This is indeed the case. But the work is interesting, and I believe my friend is just inexperienced. How do you suggest I proceed? > Is his company big enough you can feel confident he'll pay you timely and > properly? As far as I know this is among his company's first engagements of this kind. I don't believe he is able to pay until the client pays him. > If things go south, is his company large enough to compensate or protect you > during a legal suit? Is he carrying all the proper insurance? These are great questions, thanks. I will follow up with him regarding legal and insurance. > For people I don't know or that are just acquittances, I'll do intros but I > do take a referral fee paid as they are paid from the client. I think this kind of arrangement would make more sense under the circumstances. What is the fee you normally take? Do you have any advice for how I can convince my friend that this is the better option for both of us? > Don't compare to staffing agencies, that isn't an accurate representation > unless that is the business your friend is in. I believe that is the business he wants to be in. Can you please clarify why this isn't an accurate representation? Thanks again, you've been very helpful already! ~~~ smacktoward _> I believe that is the business he wants to be in. Can you please clarify why this isn't an accurate representation?_ Not the parent, but: a staffing agency typically handles lots of administrative stuff for its workers. They handle billing the client, they make sure taxes are withheld and give you the documentation you need at tax time, they may provide group benefits like health insurance. They also provide the legal entity the client contracts with, so the workers don't all have to incorporate individually. This is the ongoing value they add, they shield their workers from all the messy and complicated hassles that come with entrepreneurship. If the idea is you're an independent contractor who's still expected to handle all that stuff yourself, your friend isn't acting as a staffing agency. They're just bringing you on as a subcontractor. As to whether the amount they're asking for is reasonable, _anything 's_ reasonable if all the parties involved agree that it is. It sounds like you don't, and are looking for some justification you can hang that objection off of. But you don't need a justification, you're two parties trying to strike a deal, it's perfectly within your rights to say "I think this deal sucks" and make a counter-offer you like better or even walk away. That may not be _smart_ , depending on how badly you need this work -- remember though, he needs you to make this deal happen as much as you need him! -- but it's absolutely something you can do. ~~~ thrwwwy123 Thank you! ------ mdorazio Consultant here. 20% cut is pretty normal. 25% is a bit high, but not excessive. Also, no, recruiters often don't charge a one-time fee anymore - they will often get an initial fee plus a percentage of the employee's salary if they stay for a full year. To your next point, what you're describing about going direct to the client is not only likely a breach of contract, but also generally a dick move. If you want to get 100% of billable with no sales/subcontracting commission, find your own client. ~~~ thrwwwy123 > To your next point, what you're describing about going direct to the client > is not only likely a breach of contract, but also generally a dick move. We haven't signed anything yet. I wouldn't go direct to the client immediately, but rather let him have his cut on the initial engagement. After that point, I feel like I would have more of a relationship with them than he does. > Also, no, recruiters often don't charge a one-time fee anymore - they will > often get an initial fee plus a percentage of the employee's salary if they > stay for a full year. Just to clarify: this isn't a full time engagement, but a short term hourly contract, with potential to extend to long term if things work out. > If you want to get 100% of billable with no sales/subcontracting commission, > find your own client. This is what I'm struggling with. What does it mean to find a client? Is it the case that as soon as there is someone performing an introduction of any sort, they are entitled to an ongoing fee? ~~~ mdorazio It seems like you're thinking about this in terms of perceived value fairness instead of objective if/then outcomes. If your friend hadn't brought the client to you, you would get exactly $0 from them. Ever. 80% of a profitable amount is a hell of a lot more than 80% of nothing. If you've never actually landed a client yourself, it's _a lot_ more difficult than you're likely thinking it is. I highly doubt this is merely an introduction based on nothing - more likely your friend has been working his network for a long time, vetting potential people who need work done, ruling out the ones that can't or won't pay a decent rate, setting up a business and all the contracts you need _beforehand_ to make it easy to get started, etc. You're also probably not accounting for the fact that being a subcontractor has a lot of benefits. You're not that one that needs to chase POs, AP payments, renewals, etc. on a regular basis. To your last question, it tends to be a spectrum in practice. A casual introduction that leads to a deal with no actual involvement from the salesperson will have a lower rate (possibly one-time) than one where the person is setting up the whole deal and subbing it to you. In your case, your friend already quoted the company a rate and they're ok with it, so this isn't a casual intro - he basically did the hard part for you. ------ brudgers Your standard rate does not include the overhead created by the more complex relationships. Your standard rate doesn’t apply a discount for the lower probability of future work when you don’t own the client relationship. Your standard rate does not include a risk premium for the increased chance of payment problems, law suits, and misunderstandings. If you think it’s bullshit, then it’s costing you. Here you are on HN fooling with “the deal” instead of doing billable work. And it’s just the honeymoon. It takes a while to learn to trust your gut. It takes a while to learn avoiding bad projects is important. If your friend can find someone else should you take a pass, then your friend can find someone else for the client’s next project, too. My gut is “the deal” isn’t in the client’s interest. But I could be wrong. The test is your friend getting the client to sign a contract paying 25% of whatever the client pays you. That’s the test of a win-win-win. Good luck. ------ yabadabadoes In my market, most consultants bill the customer directly and pay 20% of the first 2 years to each other as finding fee for introducing a new customer. When they subcontract in the fashion you suggest, it is more about keeping the relationship and looking like more of a one stop shop. It's really not a good way for them in terms of numbers and responsibility. I would raise my prices on future business to 1.25x or try 1.5x given the indication the market supports it, and so I could pay fees and costs of finding new customers from my standard rates. I would look to negotiate something that would work in future business in both directions (assuming your friend also does some consulting) making it clear that the more the deal looks like subcontracting the more likely it is a one off deal. ~~~ aksss > it is more about keeping the relationship and looking like more of a one > stop shop. IME, it's often about the customer trust relationship and convenience. The customer doesn't want to deal with 10 W-9s and managed 10 new vendor relationships, and they trust us to source the other work and warranty it. A good analogy would be a GC in construction. ~~~ yabadabadoes > A good analogy would be a GC in construction. Yes, and a GC is very much on the hook, dealing with communication and looking to make as much as any subcontractor on the project even if that is by taking a small percentage from each. If a project amounts to work by one subcontractor, I think a busy GC doesn't make an offer. ------ codegeek Everything is fair in business. Your friend has a right to ask you for whatever cut he thinks is reasonable. You have the right to negotiate that. It is simple. But make sure you don't undercut/undermine your friend. I would just say "Hey 25% is a bit high and I would like to give you x% instead". You may now think that your friend is not really adding a lot of value by a simple introduction but if he had not introduced you to the client who probably are going with you due to the referral, you would make $0. That is how business works. Referral and Networks is the key and try not to burn bridges with anyone. ------ chrisbennet Consultant here, some data points: 30+ years experience, consulting prob 10+ years If they are paying you on a timely basis (not waiting until they get paid, pay you even they don’t get paid). * Yes, OK even if they take up to 100%+ Intro and nothing else: I try to give these away. Your “friend” is trying to exploit you in my view. Intro and nothing else: If he won’t let me take nothing. (He’s stretched or otherwise needs financial help) I’d give him 20%. ------ muzani I've done an 80% cut from someone who intro'ed me to a major telco. Sometimes the value of the job is not just the money, but also the connections. He charged them a ludicrous price, but also paid me well. It depends a lot on his role. I'd be happy to pay up to 50% to someone who acts as a full time agent, dealing with negotiations, client filtering, writing and proofreading contracts, harassing them for payment. They have to eat too. Unfortunately, most people who take this role don't do it very well. But as a pure referral fee, 10% seems fair. ------ Fr33maan While you could increase your rate, I feel it's fair as your friend company is billing his client for the entire period. For me it feel like your are employed by your friend company. 1.25x is really low then. If he just introduced you to the client then it's not his company who should bill the client but yours. In this case it's your client and your friend just get a commission, 25% seems then pretty high. I usually give 15%. But what I understand is that the business relationship is between the client and your friend, it's not your client. ~~~ thrwwwy123 Regarding who the business relationship is between: I've never worked with the client before. But as far as I know, neither has he, beyond introducing me to them. ------ svennek I think that his cut is about normal, I have heard of higher and lower. Both short and long term... I think you are going for a world of hurt, if you try to cut him out later. My advise, in the contract with your friend make sure, that HE is listed as your customer (and not the end customer) and hence that HE has to pay you regardless of what the end customer does (i.e. he cannot say "I didn't get paid, so neither will you"). If he barks, then you have some room for negotiation... Also for a long term engagement 25% is a rather cheap sale (which is even free (in monetary terms) for you)! ~~~ ddingus This: >My advise, in the contract with your friend make sure, that HE is listed as your customer That is a reasonable margin, but only when your friend is willing to earn it. Paying for value now will serve you later. Then, yes! Up your rates for work you source. Leave the margin there for work brought to you. Find enough, and form a firm. That is where the real money is for both of you. Seems like your friend is already thinking along those lines. Join him, bring others to the party and make similar deals. This will leave you and your friend as peers, a great basis for establishing a firm. Invest in your networking with your time freed up by other people taking on work. Bank some money so you can offer similar value to others. ~~~ thrwwwy123 > That is a reasonable margin, but only when your friend is willing to earn > it. Can you please clarify what you mean by this? Are you saying that his 25% is reasonable as long as he takes on the risk of paying me, regardless of whether the client pays or not? > Paying for value now will serve you later. Can you please also clarify what you mean by this? ~~~ ddingus Yes. If it was just an introduction, that does not warrant an ongoing 25 percent. That kind of thing is what finders fees or referral fees are for. However, if your friend is leveraging his relationship with the customer, and he is carrying the risk, that does warrant an ongoing percentage. What I mean by both recognizing and paying for value serving you later is you will be participating in and learning from and how to do business at a higher level than just a simple client relationship. You too can cultivate relationships and you too can leverage them and carry risk and profit. Value takes many forms. And when you learn to see it, pay for it, later you also can do it, and ask for payment. Just the negotiation on this will benefit you. Make the case referral vs ongoing customer relationship and carried risk. You are happy to pay for the latter, otherwise there needs to be a cap on things as you will be doing the work, taking the risk and building the relationship. You should get all the income. Everything costs something. If he wants 25 percent, fine! You need to come to an agreement on what that pays for and all is well. And you need to make sure those things are real, so that your own time, appetite for risk and resources are otherwise free. If they are not, then your friend is not adding value and the 25 percent is a freebie, unreasonable. And maybe he can only add some value. That is fine too, maybe he takes 20 percent. That is the basis of negotiation right there. Think in these terms and more deals get made with better terms and fewer hard feelings, everyone adding value, doing work, making money. Make sense? Also, do raise your rates. Get a client that will pay them and then find a friend with whom you can make a similar arrangement. Take care of this friend to get your percentage cut. Does that also make sense as a future possibility? If it does, then you now have a basis for placing value on time you free up that goes beyond billable hours. That is the next step beyond mere contracting. ------ Spooky23 I did something like this once and was able to have the middleman pay me upon customer acceptance of the time card. I benefited from not having to deal with the receivable. There was also the ability to push off business issues to the middleman and avoid mixing money with the technical work — which was hard for me at that stage of my career. If you think this may turn into longer term work, negotiate a compromise. Maybe you pay your friend for a year, for a particular project, or something similar. ------ cascom I don’t understand why you care if you are Still getting full billing? E.g. list is $100/hr and you are still getting $100/hr net... ------ TaylorGood I give a 25% referral fee standard and bake it in on the backend. Value based projects have plenty of "margin" where I am happy to share the profit. That business wouldn't have happened otherwise. Does his company regularly practice "finder" services? ------ rajacombinator Your friend is in the wrong here for not discussing terms up front. Maybe an honest mistake by him. Tell him whatever you’re comfortable with and walk otherwise. But this “friendship” is likely over regardless of the outcome. ------ Mikeb85 If he's marking up by 1.25x, he's actually only taking 20% of the total (0.25, his cut, divided by 1.25, the total charged, is 20%). Dunno, it's probably not too bad. And it is his client after all... ------ sarcasmatwork Value depends on the user, and the ones that benefit from the arrangement imho. Counter offer with something lower? Make sure contracts are signed when an agreement is made. ~~~ thrwwwy123 Just to clarify, are you suggesting that I offer the client to bill them directly at a lower rate right off the bat? My friend would not receive this well, since he would get nothing from the introduction, and he probably not refer me to something similar in the future. Do you think my friend is being unreasonable? ~~~ segmondy You're being unreasonable. ------ rat9988 I have a hard time understanding how does his rate affect exactly your situation. ------ cityzen how much time have you wasted thinking about this? Is it worth it? after over 20 yrs of being independent, any engagement that starts out with drama will end in drama.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Discover, Listen and Discuss Classical Music - ClassicalmOnly https://classicalmusiconly.com ====== ClassicalmOnly Hello HN! I am really excited to show you Classical Music Only, a social website dedicate to discover, listen and discuss classical music. I actually tried to do a "show HN" thread 6 months ago when the first alpha release was published but somehow the link was dead and nobody saw it except me:D. Now the website is in beta phase and has become much more mature since first published. The website has many features that you can be interested in, among them: * Create classical music lists, listen to them and share them to the whole world * Ask for work recommendations and let the community answers you by adding and voting for classical works that are relevant to your question * Discover new works through personalized recommendations on your homepage, using the categorized basic lists filtered by periods, composers and genres or using community list * Open discussion and start debates about your favorite composers and works * Review classical works, read others' reviews * Discover the most favorited recordings for any classical work. Add your favorite recordings * Follow your friends and favorite users to see their posts on your homepage * See latest posts (discussions, reviews, recordings) of your followed composers on your customized homepage feed * Share stories, blogs and news about anything related to classical music * Listen to top works filtered by period, genre or composer. If you're bored, you can listen to a random masterpiece using a magic button on your homepage! I am really excited to read your feedbacks and happy to answer any question. ~~~ StavrosK Pretty long and off-topic shot, but would you (or anyone else) happen to know this piece? We've been looking for a name for years: [https://soundcloud.com/stavrosk/unknown-piece-from- brewsters...](https://soundcloud.com/stavrosk/unknown-piece-from-brewsters- millions) On-topic, how can I listen to a performance? I clicked through to a few lists but haven't found any buttons to do that on the site. ~~~ p1esk If you can produce a MIDI encoding of this piece, I can run it through a classifier trained on a large dataset of classical composers, and identify most similar pieces. Alternatively, you can ask someone who trains deep learning models on audio files, and has a large classical dataset. ~~~ StavrosK The person who transcribed it was kind enough to send it to me, I'd be grateful if you could search for it: [http://mormolyke.com/stuff/brewsters.mid](http://mormolyke.com/stuff/brewsters.mid) ~~~ p1esk Ok, I will email you when I run it. ------ MrJagil Hey, just a quick note, I'd personally enjoy a big fat action button on the landing page that just says "Play" (just like the "i'm feeling lucky" button on the "TV" page). I know you have higher ambitions with the site (social, etc), but, anecdotally, i'm studying for exams right now and don't really have the motivation to parse all that text and creating a new user, but you could've easily had me listening for an hour if the content was easily, immediately accessible. good luck! EDIT: Who am I kidding, I'm procrastinating so I might as well procrastinate right: It would be nice if the linked videos used youtubes timecode function, to skip intros. It was a bit jarring to hear the presenter in this video, for instance: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=IInG5nY_wrU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=IInG5nY_wrU) ~~~ jdlyga This is why I love Youtube live channels. They just play a constant stream of music without having to sign up or do anything else complicated. ~~~ dogruck What are your favorite YouTube live channels? ~~~ schuetze Not OP, but I'm personally a fan of chill-hop stations, such as Lo-fi Hiphop Radio 24/7\. This kind of music lends itself to studying and working, as it has very little lyrical content. Find it here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBh9soLSkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQBh9soLSkI) ------ timmonsjg Coming from someone who's not very familiar with classical music and who signed up to start getting into it... Why am I forced to 'star' 5 composers and 5 works upon registration? I recognized a most of the top ~10 composers but I'm sure most people will just click the top 5 and move on which really defeats the purpose doesn't it? And then once I'm at the homepage, I don't immediately see where I can review / change my stars. ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Hi timmonsjg, the welcome page has 2 main purposes: 1\. you see posts on your homepage feed of composers you followed (of course you can see all other posts without leacving the feed but only posts related to your followed composers are loaded by default) 2\. Get work recommendations based on your followed composers and starred works. You are right that it sucks if you know little about classical music. A skip button will be added soon. ~~~ data_scientist A short optional sample of every composers and songs would be nice, just to get an idea of the music. I can't remember music in my head (kind of Aphantasia for music), so it's really hard for me to choose just from the list. ~~~ NTripleOne This is a great idea tbh, most people actually know far more classical music than they think they do - but they couldn't tell you the name of a piece or its composer for the life of them. ------ ajnin At a quick glance, a few remarks about the onboarding : \- the "I'm feeling lucky" button you mention in the comments here ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489)) is nowhere to be found, maybe not on the home page ? I did a ctrl-F to be sure but nothing. \- You ask me to choose 5 of my favorites composers, but you only show me the top N most popular ones ... it feels very rude, you basically ask me to lie, imagine if on a regular music site I could only like something in the current top 40. Also consider that the probability that the 5 favorites composers of a given person are all in the top 40 is very low. I feel like presenting them that way is only going to make the most popular artificially even more popular which I don't think is something that you want. \- It seems even worse for the "favorite pieces" list. The probability that a person's favorite pieces are all in the top N you selected is very very low. The majority of the pieces in that list were composed by composers I didn't choose just before. \- The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) was in the list 4 times, and The Rite Of Spring twice, as well as Chopin's Nocturnes (which is several pieces, by the way). Apart from that I like the high-density layout, a welcome departure from the usual sites composed mostly of empty space. ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Hi ajnin, thanks for the thorough feedback > \- the "I'm feeling lucky" button you mention in the comments here > ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861489)) > is nowhere to be found, maybe not on the home page ? I did a ctrl-F to be > sure but nothing. It's on the TV page [https://classicalmusiconly.com/tv](https://classicalmusiconly.com/tv) > You ask me to choose 5 of my favorites composers, but you only show me the > top N most popular ones > The Four Seasons (Le Quattro Stagioni) was in the list 4 times, and The Rite > Of Spring twice, as well as Chopin's Nocturnes (which is several pieces, by > the way). These 2 points are totally valid and I am aware of them. These 2 points are connected to each other due to some technical difficulty (or maybe a bug?) in Django. We had difficulty to get unique random set of filtered items. That's why you see probably some duplicate items. Other users may have not experieced it because it happens randomly. That's why we ordered composers by some other metric. However, you can follow/unfollow any composer at anytime later inside their profile pages or on the TV page while listening a work by that composer. > It seems even worse for the "favorite pieces" list. The probability that a > person's favorite pieces are all in the top N you selected is very very low. > The majority of the pieces in that list were composed by composers I didn't > choose just before. Because The starring stage doesn't depend on the followed composers' stage. It's rational because you may want to star works within a bigger set of items and not be bound by followed composers only. ------ jdemler Just tried to find two "modern" composers: Vasks and Gulda. You have neither. Peteris Vasks [0] is "now is one of the most influential and praised European contemporary composers." [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Vasks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Vasks) ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Thanks jdemler for reporting, you can also add composer requests in the website itself at [https://classicalmusiconly.com/request/composers](https://classicalmusiconly.com/request/composers) I will add all pending requests before the weekend ------ galobtter This seems mostly like a social site for discussing/reviewing classical music + a fancy way to categorize youtube clips. The recommendations doesn't seem that useful as I've already listened to many of the pieces, and youtube provides recommendations which are pretty useful ~~~ ClassicalmOnly > The recommendations doesn't seem that useful as I've already listened to > many of the pieces Good for you! Currently there are some 500 works that are marked as "masterpieces". Not necesarrily all of them are Mass in B minor or Mozart's requiem tier. You may be surprised that you can discover some great work you didn't know about using this button. I am currently planning to add some filters so you can get a random work from a filtered set (Genre, period, century, composers' country). Of course, it will be improved as more works are added. But for now, it works totally random from a filtered set of works that are marked as masterpieces. ~~~ galobtter Haha I just clicked the random button for masterpiece and it gave me Mozart's Requiem. I was looking at the recommendations based on the pieces I chose anyhow. I personally like to listen to various pretty obscure pieces by composers I like (dvorak's symphonies 1-4), and don't really go by genre, period etc. Maybe others will find it useful ------ taserian Slightly off-topic, but is there a resource that collects the music cited in Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach"? I've never been good at reading music notation, so those sections of the book (which I need to re-read sometime soon) are glossed over, and I feel I'm missing out. ~~~ genieyclo [https://open.spotify.com/user/rspeer/playlist/3q3TsI67o6rUfS...](https://open.spotify.com/user/rspeer/playlist/3q3TsI67o6rUfSdjJTyNvT) ------ cellularmitosis It is such a shame that _Adventures in Good Music_ is no longer syndicated on the radio. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Haas#Adventures_in_Good_M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Haas#Adventures_in_Good_Music) ------ tequila_shot Just tangetial : if you don't know anything about classical but would love to learn a lot, then Colorado Public Radio does a fantastic job. Listen for yourself: [http://www.cpr.org/classical](http://www.cpr.org/classical) ------ Raphmedia Very good. The only missing feature would be a way to be able to navigate with the music still playing. Perhaps a simple "open in popup" like a lot of radio website used to do would work fine. Ideally having the website as a single- page-app. ------ dvt Hey, awesome project! I'm a huge fan of classical music and can definitely see myself using this. I'm going to share it with my dad who's also a big classical aficionado. Anyway, my question may get lost, as this post really blew up, but here it is. I'm launching a project I've been working on soon-ish, and I'm wondering: what steps did you take to gain traction? My project is somewhat socially-oriented like yours (i.e. there's no paid product), so I'm wondering if you can share any insight into how to get it out there and get high-qualify contributors. Thanks, and again, awesome job :) ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Thank you for this awesome feedback! I didn't take any special steps. I just made a show HN thread and frankly I didn't expect to be that successful since most successful threads I saw were SaaS or other technical projects. I am truly indebted to HN and the community for featuring the thread. I also submitted it on ProductHunt but it failed miserably :D Thanks again and good luck with your project. ------ guiomie I like to listen to random classical music, but I know nothing about composer and songs. This means, that quiz at the beginning to know my preference, should there not be a way to skip it for users like me? ------ yawn I know this is a wall of questions, but I'm really impressed with your accomplishment. I'm interested in the origins of the site, how you chose the tech stack, any scaling issues you might have, how you create the content on YouTube, how you are handling cost, etc. I've been wanting to create something similar for a different domain and worry about scaling and costs. Have you written about any of this anywhere? Thanks for any answers, and good luck! ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Thank you! I hope you really enjoy it. The main stack is Vue for frontend and Python/Django + Golang for backend. I might share my pleasant experience in the future with vue enthusiasts since I became one myself! ------ lerie82 Was disappointed to see it was based around YouTube clips, however, a wonderfully great idea. ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Listening using YouTube is just one feature among many other features like creating lists, asking for recommendations, discovering top recordings for any work, discover top works ranked by users' stars and filtered by genre, period, composer or century. It's intended more to be a social website than something like Spotify for classical music so you can discover new works, review and discuss classical music. ------ Raphmedia [https://classicalmusiconly.com/auth/social/complete/facebook](https://classicalmusiconly.com/auth/social/complete/facebook) gave me an error 500 ~~~ ClassicalmOnly That's weird, I will look into the logs and see what can be done. Thanks Raphmedia for reporting. ~~~ Raphmedia Using create by email gives me (in chrome network console) "account already exists" and trying to log with that account sends a call which is never answered. Perhaps it's the HN hug messing your website up... ~~~ ClassicalmOnly You cannot create a new user by email currently. This is for already registered users who want to login only using their emails because they forgot the password or username or don't want to type them. ~~~ Raphmedia What about this here : [https://i.snag.gy/1jPRFW.jpg](https://i.snag.gy/1jPRFW.jpg) ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Yes, this is the old way if you want to: (username + password + email), do you have a problem registering with this method also? ~~~ Raphmedia Yes. I get {message: "account already exists"} but when I try to connect with that account, I only get an error 400. ------ j7ake Is it possible to listen to classical music on your site without registration ? ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Yes. You might want to register to get work recommendations based on your taste from your followed composers and starred works. ------ geff82 Cool someone cares about the special needs of the fan of classical music! There is another cool site, too: www.idagio.com . It is a Spotify for Classical music. ------ Freak_NL How do users pay for their use of this site? Are the free users loss leaders for the premium subscriptions, or is the user's data monetized? ~~~ ClassicalmOnly The website is totally free. There is no premium subscriptions. Users data are not monetized. If you want to support the project, you may donate using Patreon or bitcoin. ~~~ deadmetheny I would just like to say that I appreciate that you're doing this purely with donations as the income stream. I really dig the social aspect, and more people discovering the joy of classical music is always a good thing. Cheers! ------ camhart After you sign up you're forced to pick favorites... I don't have any because I don't any. ------ benob What's the point of following a dead composer? As if they were going to compose new work... ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Hi benob, following composers serves for 2 main purposes: 1\. you get posts on your homepage feed of composers you followed (you can also see other posts on your feed but the default is filtered by your followed composers) 2\. Discover work recommendations based on your followed composers and starred works ------ shenbomo Does the web application provide APIs for searching certain work based on tags etc? ------ vermooten Great idea, will keep looking in on it for content. Thanks OP! ------ gondo are all the entries linking only to youtube videos? ~~~ ClassicalmOnly Currently yes. But if there's enough interest. I shall start working on compiling Spotify albums. YouTube will remain the default option though since it's open and doesn't require registration.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Uranus – Memo and Task App - resotto https://github.com/resotto/uranus ====== k2enemy I love new note taking and TODO apps, but Docker, Tomcat, Java, Postgres, etc for a minimalist web app? Seems overkill. ~~~ resotto Thanks for your reply! So you mean you want more functional one, right? ~~~ pointytrees I think the feedback was, this looks like a very simple (but possibly useful) app, it should not have such heavy dependencies. ~~~ ravenstine What's heavy about any of that? I don't know what Tomcat is, but Docker is just a means of installing and running software in a VM(if host isn't Linux), Java is a perfectly fine language and runtime, and Postgres is a powerful and widely-used database. Any other self-hosted web app would require at least a language runtime and a database. ~~~ nurettin Tomcat is a web server. Possibly thrown in as a word to be more verbose when making a point. To me, size of the image is more important than the number of servers in it. ~~~ resotto Thanks for your opinion! Actually, I cared about the size of images but I think I could do more efforts on it! Next time, I’ll try to do so! ~~~ nurettin I currently use taskwarrior and nextcloud to synchronize task states between computers. This web based solution would help get rid of the synchronization part if it replicated enough of taskwarrior's functionality. What I use most in taskwarrior is creating, starting, stopping and closing tasks under projects, then I use hooks written in python which read the changes from stdin and post the task changes to jira and slack. So if this project could support web hooks, I could write a glue service for it to call when new tasks are created or states are changed. ------ dcraw Looks cool. You may like [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/) ~~~ nitins I use Dynalist which is also similar to workflowy. ~~~ spraak I love Dynalist and I've been using it for the past 3 (?) years or so, I just wish it had Vim controls. ------ nprateem Uranus, seriously? "Don't forget about that important meeting we've got tomorrow" "Boss, shove it in Uranus" ~~~ nudq Those stupid jokes are why we'll have to rename the planet in the future (according to Futurama). It'll be called Urectum. Also a great name for Memo and Task apps. ~~~ resotto Thanks for your explaining! I determined to do so! ------ trpc > In order to use Uranus, please install Docker in advance so looks like I've been using it the wrong way all along ~~~ quickthrower2 Docking Uranus before deploying is wise. All you need to do then is flush and wipe Uranus to minimise your chance of an infection. ------ tobr Tiny suggestion: GIFs showing someone enter “a”, “b”, and “c” as their tasks tell me that this is more about the system and tech than what it’s like to use it to handle tasks in a real situation. Surely there must be a good example of a real world scenario where moving things around in a hierarchy is useful? ~~~ resotto Thanks for your suggestion! I agree with you 100%! I’ll re-upload these gifs as more realistic one! ------ bigwheeler It took me quite some time to install all the dependencies needed to get into Uranus, but once I was in, it was quite pleasant. Are you planning on spending any time making Uranus mobile friendly? ~~~ Zyst I guess I’m a child ~~~ djsumdog No no, I am too. It just makes me think of that gag in Animaniacs. ------ jxy > In order to use Uranus, please install Docker in advance. Do people forget about the existence of filesystems and that we can literally put texts in a file using your favorite editor? ~~~ djsumdog I assume they're starting small but want to expand it out to web interfaces, syncing and maybe even a mobile app. Text files + git do have limitations when you're on a phone or other mobile device. ~~~ quickthrower2 My next pet projects might be online apps that work purely via saving state to the Dropbox api. So I don’t need to see your data, and you can see your data anywhere via my apps, or if really stuck as plaintext files on the device(s) you’ve synced to. If syncthing via browser is a thing that’d be cool to. Anyone interested in collaborating? ------ kazinator You forgot my birthday again. Why don't you stick it in Uranus? ~~~ resotto You mean I should implement login function?? ~~~ instantwhat He's trying to tell you, in an indirect, humorous way, that the name of your product, when spoken in English and pronounced a certain way, sounds like something other than the name of the planet and mythological god. His comment has been downvoted according to HN's sense of humor, or lack thereof. ~~~ resotto Thanks for your explaining! I understood now. Honestly, I didn’t have any idea to this project but I like names of planets or gods, so I named this as Uranus! ~~~ huhtenberg This is such a common joke that it has meta-jokes based on it - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czFnIvKOJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0czFnIvKOJY) (That's the "urectum" bit from Futurama) ~~~ resotto Aha! Guys above said just this common joke! OK, thanks for your kindness^^ ------ kmonad this looks a bit like an overweight but under-featured orgmode. but i might be missing something? ------ altotrees Despite all the dependencies, I really like the clean, simple UI. Very uncluttered, which for a todo app is super important, in my opinion. ~~~ resotto Thanks for your opinion! Yeah, I think so too, so that I made Uranus as simple UI memo & task! ------ researcher7 To be honest, it is hard not to joke about the name, but I'll not do that. Looks interesting. Thanks for sharing. ~~~ resotto Thanks for your replying! Yup, I need rename this LOL Thanks! ------ klohto Thank god, I thought HN would bash me for being childish but nice to see I’m not alone... ------ dtujmer haha Uranus	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Pragmatic Bookshelf announces new Pragmatic Guide series - tswicegood http://media.pragprog.com/newsletters/2010-08-25.html?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=%5BBookshelf%5D+Pragmatic+Guide+series%3A+Pragmatic+Guide+to+Git&utm_campaign=%5BBookshelf%5D+Pragmatic+Guide+series%3A+Pragmatic+Guide+to+Git&utm_term=View%2Bit%2Bin%2Byour%2Bbrowser_ ====== milesf Great to see the prags are continuing to push things forward with another new series. Really wish they'd bring the podcast back, though. ------ johnswamps How is this different from their existing book on git? What's the difference between "Pragmatic Guide to Git" and "Pragmatic Version Control Using Git"? I'm assuming the latter is aimed more towards people without version control experience? ~~~ tswicegood Correct. My first book is part of the Pragmatic Starter Kit which is aimed at people who are just starting out. There's a lot of good material in it for people who have used VCS but don't understand them well, but it starts off explaining what a repository is, what a commit is, and so on. This book is much more concise and assumes the reader has a basic understanding of version control systems and is looking to get up-to-speed on Git. ~~~ TrevorBramble There is no reason for someone who has read your first book to buy the Guide, correct? This is a reduced and reformatted field guide that contains no information that isn't in the larger Git book? (I'm almost finished reading your first book and as someone who is very capable with Subversion it has helped me tremendously with grokking Git. Thanks!) ~~~ tswicegood Well, I might be biased, but I think there's a place for both books on a bookshelf. :-) The first book is aimed at getting your started down Git with little or no previous knowledge, the second book serves the same purpose assuming you have a basic grasp of VCS, but it serves a dual role as a reference. Check out some of the excerpts that are available on the book's site to get an idea for what it looks like. The idea is that it gives you a quick reference when you're trying to remember how to do a particular task. ------ ihodes Just want to say; I just bought the Git Guide PDF, and its already proved useful as a quick reference. There's definitely room in my Programming PDF folder for guides like this. ~~~ tswicegood Glad you're already enjoying it. Thanks for the purchase. :-)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Strategy maps for software development – now free for solo users - rocksoug http://www.systemmeasure.com ====== systemmeasure In response to HN feedback, you can now use systemmeasure.com as a solo developer for free.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
April 1 Executive Order permits sanctions against cyberattackers - corndoge https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging-significant-m ====== vijayboyapati AKA donating to Edward Snowden is now a crime.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Open Labware: 3-D Printing Your Own Lab Equipment - Galeno http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002086 ====== grkvlt See also _Open-Source 3D-Printable Optics Equipment_ published March 2013. The article is available as an open access PDF as well: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0059840 http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0059840&representation=PDF ~~~ ajford I've seen that one before. My optics prof was planning on testing it out for the undergrad classes, where the precision was within tolerances. It was gonna free up a few grand worth of optics equipment to go into the grad level labs and the research labs. He seemed pretty pumped about it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Verizon Suffers Cloud Data Leak Exposing Data on Millions of Customers (2017) - Varcht https://www.darkreading.com/cloud/verizon-suffers-cloud-data-leak-exposing-data-on-millions-of-customers/d/d-id/1329344 ====== Stefan-H I find the reporting of this as a "data leak", as opposed to a more aggressive term, rather concerning. "UpGuard in its data estimated that up to 14 million customer records were exposed, but Verizon stated that data on 6 million of its users was affected." I don't see how this would be considered a "leak" rather than a "breach". Are we starting to become desensitized to these security issues, leading to the reporting on them similarly weakening? Is the downplay of language a form of shielding the companies responsible from backlash? ~~~ jsty "leak" might be used to denote the release in a more passive / accidental sense, whereas "breach" in its traditional usage denotes a purposeful attack, such as if the release stemmed from a wilful actor. From the Oxford English Dictionary: Breach. A gap in a wall, barrier, or defence, especially one made by an attacking army. ------ drugme Interesting, but [2017] ~~~ dang Thanks. Added above. ~~~ Varcht My Mistake. I try to be good about that, for some reason it just popped up in my aggregator and I did not look closely at the date. ------ el_s3v3n This article is from 2017. How is this news?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Did a Chinese hack kill Canada’s greatest tech company? - goatinaboat https://www.afr.com/technology/did-a-chinese-hack-kill-canada-s-greatest-tech-company-20200706-p559gu ====== Normille Paywall.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Linux 2.6.37 - Linux Kernel Newbies - mattyb http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_37 ====== requinot59 For the french people out there, a summary of the main new features is available here: <http://linuxfr.org/2011/01/05/27723.html>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Betacup Challenge - Design A Sustainable Coffee Cup - Tichy http://www.thebetacup.com/ ====== philk I have a hard time seeing how this is anything other than a feel-good distraction that provides little in the way of real benefits. Non-disposable coffee cups do not make up a meaningful proportion of our environmental footprint as a whole. If there's a need to change something (such as environmental footprint) then use market mechanisms[1] to implement it. [1] For example, if landfill needs to be reduced one could charge money based on volume/weight of rubbish collected. ~~~ Tichy What's wrong with a feel-good distraction? Instead of implementing "Hello World" in 120 languages, why not tinker with papercup designs? ~~~ philk I don't have a problem with someone tinkering with coffee cup designs if it gives them enjoyment. I just find the pretense that it's going to make a non- negligible difference to the environment puzzling and intellectually dishonest. _What's wrong with a feel-good distraction? Instead of implementing "Hello World" in 120 languages, why not tinker with papercup designs?_ Why not do something actually meaningful? There's an awesome talk by Richard Hamming on pg's website (<http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>), where he recounts: _And I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your field?'' And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said, ``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?'' I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with!_ ~~~ Tichy "58 billion paper coffee cups" doesn't sound so negligible to me? Sure, it is might not be as paramount as plugging the oil spill to me, but perhaps making a small impact is better than no impact. I just mentioned the 120 programming languages because I am sure that post would make it on HN, too. Are you working on superimportant stuff all the time? Also read Richard Feynman's books - he claims when he was stuck for a while, he only managed to make progress again when he started to do calculations on the rotation of thrown paper cups just for fun for a while. He later derived some quantum mechanics stuff from those paper cup equations. ------ retube My brother takes his own cups and receptacles to coffee shops and take-away joints. On more than one occasion the cardboard coffee cup / styrofoam tray was used as a measuring device, before then being thrown away, leading to much "you're missing the point" frustration. ~~~ sp332 You just have to train them! <http://www.wastedtalent.ca/comic/dear-vancouver- barristas> ~~~ MaysonL One of my favorite coffee joints (at the local library} actually gives you a discount for bringing your own cup. [it also has cream instead of half-and- half] ------ gorm Clay cups work fine in India and they are sustainable <[http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay- cup/...](http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/>); ~~~ patio11 Sustainable just means "more flattering to my sense of aesthetics than the alternatives." It is highly non-obvious to me that producing paper cups is more resource intensive than producing clay cups, or that waste produced by clay cups is easier to store than waste produced by paper cups. Clay cups, for example, require dredging up a whole lot of water and river mud, which (despite the fact that it is done inefficiently by poor people, which is apparently the working definition for "environmentally conscious" for reasons I do not pretend to understand) is not an ecologically neutral action. Scale it to Starbucks level consumption and that is an awful lot of river mud. 11 million metric tonnes, by my back of the envelope math. Plus whatever energy you use in construction of the cups, which aren't exactly carving themselves out of the mud in a carbon-neutral fashion. This could be averted, of course, if people would simply _consume less coffee_ , but that might be a bridge too far for the latte liberals at Starbucks. I'm sure they'll find a cup which looks absolutely nothing like a paper cup, which will ostentatiously proclaim that consuming _this_ cup of coffee makes you a better person than consuming _that other_ cup of coffee, which is about 99% of the purpose of environmentalism: social signaling of moral worth among rich people for whom traditional religion holds little attraction. ~~~ Tichy Maybe some other material could be found, that is less costly to produce than paper or clay. I think for paper a lot of chemicals have to be used? Didn't McDonalds experiment with "eatable" packages? Some grain (sweetcorn?) might have the property of being easily molded into cups (think ice cream cones). Then add some wax to make it water proof? Except I suppose wax would melt from hot coffee? Also, growing corn requires water, too. Just as an example - you don't have to treat sweetcorn with chemicals to make it moldable. Maybe a lot of properties of paper are not required for coffee cups, so a simpler material could be used. ~~~ what Are you talking about PLA and the like? It's pretty much a biodegradable/compostable plastic made from corn starch or sugarcane. I've seen utensils made from it in some cafeterias. But they can make lots of things with it, here they make coffee cups: <http://www.cagreen.ca/Hot%20Cups-0> ~~~ Tichy I wonder if the makers of the betacup challenge were aware of that - I suppose not... ~~~ what They might still consider it "wasteful" since the same number of cups would be thrown away. But I believe they can be made with the waste products from the processing of corn or sugarcane that already happens. ------ decklin I don't think any of these designs will help if they continue to give them away for free. ~~~ patio11 I'm absolutely flabbergasted at how effectively the supermarkets in my town changed behavior by charging for bags. Of course, it helps that they're a cartel: if any store in this neighborhood hadn't adopted the "5 yen per bag OR bring your own" on the same day, they would have done quite a bit of business. I even bought myself a shopping bag, even though my math brain told me that I would likely have to live in Japan for at least another six years until I had recouped the $9 it cost me. ------ jhaglund what wrong with people carrying their own travel mug? <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00015CMVE/> is what i carry everywhere ~~~ Groxx I was kind of thinking the same thing. Can we submit the no-cup design, where one simply does not supply disposable cups? People would get used to bringing their own mug pretty quickly, methinks. ~~~ Tichy I picture a kind of coffee fountain, where people would catch coffee with their palms, like they would from a well. Ouch. ~~~ Groxx That'd oxidize the coffee too quickly though. It'd be gas-station, burned-in- all-night coffee in 30 minutes. Wounds heal. Good coffee is forever. ------ rameshnid My design would be a giant coffee shaped recycle bin in the coffee shop and the 2 streets adjacent to it. Would lead to more effective recycling.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Big data: are we making a big mistake? - feelthepain http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2xH3TZgd9 ====== api I think there are two things here. First is the suspect notion that mere statistics can supplant understanding. It sort of boils down to "with enough data, correlation now equals causation." But the second I think is AI. I'm not sure all these systems are truly theory-free. What they are is AI creating its own body of "theory" within its own quite alien "mind." There is understanding here. I'm not sure how to distinguish the two except to ask whether the data analysis system in question is merely correlating or whether it has induced a model -- a Bayesian model, a trained neural network, any number of other sorts of computer models that can be induced from training data.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Association of insulin resistance marker with severity and mortality of Covid-19 - sudoaza https://cardiab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12933-020-01035-2 ====== arkades Please note: The calculation of TyG is ln (fasting blood sugar) x triglycerides/2). Many studies make the error of calculating it as (ln (FBS x TG))/2\. The only online calculator I've found, I think, falls into the latter category, or has worse errors - I didn't go through it too rigorously, but I put in values beyond what human life can sustain and didn't get close to the cut-off for this paper's bottom risk tier. If you look at studies/calculator using the latter calculation, it looks like this study looks at _really, really_ severe diabetics. If you compare with the appropriate calculation, though, they're looking at more run-of-the-mill "not optimally treated and obese" diabetics. Hosseini 2017 did a paper analyzing a number of other TyG papers and calculating results under both calculation methodologies, for context. Please also note that this paper does not state _when_ the results were collected. Insulin resistance/hyperglycemia is a symptom of sepsis - if these labs were drawn on already-severe patients, it would be entirely unclear whether they reflect a cause or an effect (or, as is almost certainly the case, both!). ~~~ dreamcompiler > The calculation of TyG is ln (fasting blood sugar) x triglycerides/2). You have a extra right parenthesis, which makes it ambiguous. Do you mean ln (FBS) x triglycerides/2 Or ln (FBS x triglycerides/2) ? ~~~ tw000001 Doesn't matter since both multiplication and division are...commutative? Don't remember the terminology but (10x2)/4 == 10x(2/4) == 5 ~~~ rat9988 It matters here because he is using ln, and we don't know if we should stop at the first right parenthesis or the second. The word you are looking for is associative. ~~~ CydeWeys Ooof, thanks for that. I didn't realize that was the natural log function because of the space. My brain was parsing it as the word "In" and essentially ignoring it. ~~~ pbhjpbhj There shouldn't be a space IMO, reading it out of context I couldn't see what the issue was either as I too was not parsing the ln as log_e. ln x or ln(x) but not ln (x) ------ subsubzero Covid-19 is a very strange disease, it seems like it is amplified either way (severe vs. non-severe) depending on health. This seems different from the flu as the flu hits everyone very hard, the elderly/sickly especially hard. With covid some people who have it, do not and will not have any symptoms which cannot be said for the flu. I feel like the insulin marker data is an albatross, having high TyG means alot of systems in your body are not doing well, and the virus attacks weakness, it(covid-19) is also found to produce extreme clotting so that is probably why people with diabetes/heart disease and hypertension are all at high risk. ~~~ nradov Asymptomatic infections are about as common with influenza as with SARS-CoV-2. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586318/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586318/) Some influenza strains hit young, healthy patients harder than the elderly by triggering a cytokine storm. This was particularly bad in the 1918 H1N1 pandemic. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711683/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711683/) ------ ashtonkem I've suspected for a long time that Insulin resistance is going to be one of the next big areas of focus for public health, but I thought that it was going to happen the moment Apple finally figured out blood glucose measurement through the skin. I did _not_ see a pandemic being part of it. ~~~ gumby I love my Apple watch but I am astonished at your faith in their ability to do noninvasive glucose measurement. People have broken their picks on that particular coal face for decades. For that matter DM2 is an area of quite active research (and, like diagnosis, has been quite active for decades) as the financial payoff for any success is enormous. The only downside for transdermal diagnosis is the lack of consumables, which makes it a tough market to enter and to be funded for. That _is_ an area that's good for Apple as they are already selling the platform, so this would be a feature that would add to sales. And one I'd use. ~~~ dreamcompiler O2sat measurement has been noninvasive without consumables for a long time and many phones can do it now. Why do consumables matter? ~~~ gumby Investors don’t typically like diagnostics as the margins and volume tend to be quite low. They also tend to be more “vitamin” than “aspirin”.* Consumables, a least, give you recurring revenue and even in some cases the opportunity for a razor-and-blades model. You’d be surprised how many med products are designed specifically to require consumables. * (funny analogy to use in a med context) ------ 49para Insulin Resistance is the start of (all?) metabolic disease. So easy to resolve using fasting, intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore etc diets. Unfortuneately it slowly builds up over decades and only once disease has progressed do Drs move on to treat the resultant disease (and mainly with cholesterol lowering drugs). Instead of measuring fasting glucose levels (which indicate diabetes), insulin levels should be measured as they are the leading indicator. ~~~ conistonwater > _So easy to resolve using fasting, intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore etc > diets._ Or, you know, you could resolve it by eating a balanced diet too. ~~~ dghughes On my mother's side of the family they were practically vegetarian or normal as it was called back then. Vegetables all week and maybe on Sunday a roast probably fowl of some sort. This was during the 1940s. There were nine children and the parents on a farm in a small rural area. So no extravagant purchases no pop, candy, etc. My mom told me one Christmas her present was an apple and she was excited! The apple came from the tree out back. Sounds good? But all the women (grandmother and aunts) in the family developed diabetes, one male (uncle) too. Type 2 diabetes isn't always due to a poor diet. ~~~ 49para All carbohydrates become sugar, sugar elevates insulin, constantly elevated insulin leads to diabetes. I'm not sure all the causes of Type 2 diabetes but I would wager that the current epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes is caused by too much sugar. ~~~ conistonwater It is not currently established what the exact relationship is between sugar in your diet, obesity, diabetes. They are all basically risk factors for the next one, but they definitely don't _cause_ (in the strict scientific meaning of the term) one another---there is nowhere near enough scientific evidence that would support that. There's enough uncertainty about the whole process that saying "avoid known risk factors" is about the best advice you can get. ------ danans Given that insulin resistance is strongly correlated with obesity [1], I'm surprised that wasn't a factor they controlled for, especially since the respiratory difficulties associated with obesity seem to be a significant risk factor for death with Covid19 cases. 1\. [https://obesitymedicine.org/obesity-and-insulin- resistance/](https://obesitymedicine.org/obesity-and-insulin-resistance/) ------ shakil Lets not confuse correlation with causation. All this study shows is people with insulin resistance are at significant risk of dying from Covid, it doesn't identify what actually kills them. However, if you look at the role Vitamin D plays [1] in suppressing cytokine storms, which is what actually pushes over an organism to the point beyond recovery from Covid, and then understand that Vitamin D deficiency is common [2] in Type 2 diabetes, you can begin to understand the fuller picture. 1\. [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20058578v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20058578v4) 2\. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26375925/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26375925/) ------ hirundo "[triglyceride and glucose] index was closely associated with the severity and morbidity in COVID-19" So perhaps part of the reason why COVID-19 morbidity is lower in Japan/Korea/Taiwan compared to the U.S. is due to lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome. I wonder if that's also true for Europe. ~~~ arkades > It suggests a protective effect of a keto/paleo diet. No, if it can be taken at face value, it suggests a protective effect of a healthy lifestyle. ~~~ floatingatoll If taken at face value, it suggests a protective effect of low insulin resistance as measured by the TyG marker. Everything else is interpretations and chains of logical reasoning. Neither of you are particularly wrong necessarily, but a third option is that someone could be sedentary and eating carbs every day and have low TyG. It's common to state that "activity XYZ will provide action-at-a-distance medical benefit ABC" because stating accurately what's going on takes more words that sound less certain: "Paleo and keto diets may weaken Covid-19 by lowering insulin resistance" "A healthy lifestyle may weaken Covid-19 by lowering insulin resistance" But it's really worth saying it like this, even though few do. (And yes, these aren't 'maybe' enough, but they're an improvement.) ~~~ arkades You replaced the word "suggests" with "may". You're seeing a distinction between these two words that I apparently do not, since I take them both to indicate "this is a possibility, though not the only one, and a far from proven certainty." I would add that, even there, my statement was predicated on making an inference about dietary habits - something I cast doubt on with the opening, "if taken at face value." Something I further opined on in my other post, where I pointed out that the paper may be reversing causality. I feel like you're criticizing a strong inference having been made, that I think pretty clearly wasn't.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to talk to someone who's been a victim of child abuse - justask I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask such questions, but I'm out of choices, so I figured I'd give it a shot.<p>Without me knowing what emotions it would set off, yesterday I pointed my girlfriend to read the HuffPO article about Bill Zeller (after reading about it on HN). To my complete surprise and shock, when we were together last night, she told me that reading that article brought back a lot of memories: she was abused by a cousin of hers (a female) when she was 6.<p>She said that at the time, she felt guilty: for both letting her do this, experiencing joy, knowing about things she did not think she should have know about that early in her life and more. This is also the reason she has trouble trusting people (She doesn't drink, and despite me asking her over and over for the reason, she never told why until last night). She does not feel like she was scarred sexually (we have a healthy sexual life despite our relationship being relatively short, but she's also enjoyed a similarly healthy sexual life with her ex-boyfriends). However, she did say that she does think about that time every so often, and feels depressed whenever she does. She speaks with this cousin of hers from time-to-time but says they never discuss what happened (the cousin, btw, was 11 at the time). She has also not told anybody besides me and her ex-boyfriend (whom she was with for a long time). She has not spoken with her parents about it, not a professional.<p>My response, when she told me all this was of complete shock, and anger at the cousin. I told her that she has nothing to feel guilty about, that this isn't something she had control over and that all the guilt lies with her cousin. I also asked her if she had similar feelings towards life as Zeller did (re: suicide) - No. I also told her that she should think about speaking with a professional: this might bring out and resolve issues she does not even know exist.<p>Beyond this, I did not know what else to tell her. I have absolutely no training in mental health (all knowledge I have on the subject, come from TV shows/movies). I was hoping to solicit some advice from the HN community regarding how I could talk to her, to make her feel better, more comfortable and stop feeling the guilt she does from this incident. ====== AndrewDucker Let her talk. Listen. Hug her (if she wants - some people find that digging up these memories causes them to temporarily feel uncomfortable when touched). Don't tell her that she has to talk about it. Or pressure her into it. Let her know that you're willing to listen, and let her come around to it in her own time. If she wants to see a professional then support that - but don't feel that everyone necessarily _needs_ to. If she can deal with it herself then that's fine. If not, and she wants help, then that's fine too. Remember that this is personal, and different for everyone. And only she knows how she's dealing with it. Things will, most likely, get bad and then get better again. Digging stuff up is painful, and it will make her sensitive, and more likely to be triggered by things. Give her time, and space, and she will probably get past this, and be happier in the long run for it. But you can't rush it, you just have to live through it. Bear in mind that you will (most likely) get frustrated because you want her to get better and deal with this in the way that you think is healthiest. Try not to take this frustration out on her. Oh, and take it as a compliment that she trusts you enough to talk to you about it. ------ stretchwithme I think dwelling on a bad experience strengthens the memory in your head. So once you've learned what you can from it, make a conscious effort not to think about events that make you suffer. Doing something physical can help take you out of your head. Things like Qi Gong or Tai Chi. Meditation also can help calm that part of your brain that tends to dwell on things. But these are approaches that a person can take if they are interested in addressing the problem. In other words, if your girlfriend is asking you what she can do, make suggestions. It may be that she just wants you to listen. ------ Mz Accept her. Don't try to fix her. Don't let this change your view of her too much. There is a lot more to her than this. Don't magnify the issue by focusing on it excessively. If your shock and anger remain, get help for the difficulty you are having in coping with your feelings. Don't make it her problem that you are shocked and angry. Not all men react that way. Peace. ------ pasbesoin This is remarkably similar to someone I knew. She definitely decided to find her own way. After the time to develop some trust, she availed herself of my ear and perhaps a bit of my perspective, but did not want to be told what to do. (She was also more than a bit of a user, emotionally and intellectually but not materially. But I'm not ready to conflate the experience and these qualities. Professionally, she was quite successful.) ------ klbarry I totally understand your need for guidance, but this might be better put on Reddit.com. There would be a lot more people answering your query, and topics like this are common and acceptable there, and I've always seen a lot of quality answers. If you get a lot of advice here, that's fine, but keep Reddit in mind as an alternative.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Too Many Cooks – Exploiting the Internet-of-TR-069-Things (2014) [video] - milankragujevic https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6166_-_en_-_saal_6_-_201412282145_-_too_many_cooks_-_exploiting_the_internet-of-tr-069-things_-_lior_oppenheim_-_shahar_tal ====== badrabbit This is one of my favorite C3 talks. I wonder how many TR-069 services are still online? There has been a _lot_ of IoT exploitation and abuse since then. ------ ac29 Slides: [https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/system...](https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/system/attachments/2525/original/too- many-cooks-exploiting-tr069_tal-oppenheim_31c3.pdf)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Do We Need Data Science When We’ve Had Statistics for Centuries? - petethomas http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/05/02/why-do-we-need-data-science-when-weve-had-statistics-for-centuries/ ====== pitiburi So, so much ignorance in only one paragraph. It states that Statistics was only able to understand what is going on now, while Data Science lets us make predictions. And with Data Science we can now apply maths to softer disciplines like Health Sciences. I... I... I can't even answer, it's so frustrating... ~~~ DerpDerpDerp I kept trying to write a reply to this, then I just gave up and upvoted your comment. If only there was some way to offer you a beer over the internet. ------ jamesaguilar Like asking, "Why do we need software engineering when we've had computer science for a century." They're not different things, in any meaningful sense. Data scientists use statistics, combined with the power of computers, to make computations that would have been difficult to do a century ago. But they aren't different disciplines like this guy seems to think. ------ dj-wonk How can we use data science to filter out articles like this? There are some hapless people that read this kind of thing and believe it. But seriously, we need to make an effort to promote a more accurate view. Who are the journalists that get it?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
My Mistakes - jobeirne http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes ====== javert Too bad he is still wrong about a lot.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Testimony of Ms. Soon Ok Lee (2002) - mckee1 http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf&wit_id=4f1e0899533f7680e78d03281fe18baf-2-1 ====== guyht For anyone who is interested on reading more about North Korean prison camps, Blaine Harden's 'Escape from camp 14' is an incredible read. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797365-escape-from- cam...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797365-escape-from- camp-14?from_search=true) ~~~ hdevalence Indeed, although it's not an easy read, and it takes time for the horror of spending one's entire life, birth to death, in a concentration camp, starving and being tortured to really sink in. ------ greenburger For a detailed analysis of where North Korean prison camps are thought to be located see [http://freekorea.us/camps/](http://freekorea.us/camps/) Some of the camps are massive, for example Camp 22 is estimated to be 225 sq. km and holding 50,000 people [1]. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Int...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_North_Korea#Internment_camps_for_political_prisoners) ------ zoba George Clooney has a satellite he uses to keep track of a warlord. Individuals have capabilities which were previously accessible only to nations. I wonder if it is possible that an individual might intervene in North Korea, instead of a nation... but the parallels of a individual intervening in another nation's affairs sound a lot like terrorism. Some more thinking to do here... ~~~ astrodust That's actually an interesting project. Here's a link for the lazy: [http://www.satsentinel.org/our-story/george- clooney](http://www.satsentinel.org/our-story/george-clooney) He doesn't have his own satellite, obviously, but buys satellite imagery to document war crimes and to warn against incursions. ------ DanBC That's from 2002. See also [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10413950/UN- inquiry-chief-reduced-to-tears-by-North-Korea-brutality.html) from 2013. EDIT: Corrected year typo, thank you kohanz! ~~~ kohanz _June 21, 2002_ I'm guessing "2012" was a typo for "2002". ------ dba7dba To those trying to somehow link Guantanamo to labor camps in NK, please, stop. You are only making yourself look foolish. Such comparisons don't help your cause at all. 500 or so prisoners in Guantanamo versus 200,000+ in NKorean camps. The NKorean prisoners don't get medical help, freedom to worship religion of choice. The 500 are NOT there along with their wife, kids, grandkids, on both sides of the family. In NK, once a person is taken to one of the camps, it usually means 3 generations of his family is taken there. Think about it, 10+ or more people (including little kids) are dragged away to labor camps because of actions (or perceived actions) of 1 person in the family. Please, stop comparing Guantanamo with NKorean labor camps. ~~~ olefoo What about comparing Corrections Corporation of America and it's privatized prisons to DPRK labor camps? Perhaps a bit of a stretch given how clean and sanitary private prisons are known to be. But since American prisoners are forced to labor at wages that are a fraction of the market rate for the same work and are charged for their incarceration at a rate higher than it is possible for them to earn in prison... perhaps it is not so different. ------ adamio What about never again? Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation, given the human rights violations similar to the Holocaust? edit: Note, I'm genuinely asking here, not implying anything should/isnot being done ~~~ w1ntermute > Are Jewish orgs doing anything to help this situation They're too busy recreating the Holocaust with the Palestinians as the victim. Every couple of months we hear about the Israelis expanding their lebensraum by building some new settlements on Palestinian land. ~~~ swordswinger12 Israel != the international Jewry. Assuming as such is thinly-veiled anti- Semitism. ~~~ w1ntermute > thinly-veiled anti-Semitism Oh please. Make one negative comment about Jews and you get called an anti- Semite. It's even worse than with blacks. ~~~ tptacek What an embarrassment that this comment got voted up. ~~~ w1ntermute Oh please. All I did was say something that is true, but politically incorrect. Just because it offended your sensibilities doesn't mean it's false. ~~~ moocowduckquack Congratulations, you just won the moocowduckquack memorial sickbag for Bigot of the Week. ------ middleclick Does North Korea have a future? Is it possible that someday that the current rule is overthrown and the rights and lives of people are restored? Can anyone with knowledge about this comment? ~~~ woodchuck64 Would it be a bad thing for China to covertly take over North Korea? One less headache for them, one less for us. I say we look the other way. ~~~ bcoates China doesn't exactly have a successful track record of bringing neighboring Communist states under control. ------ firstOrder Hopefully someday we'll see hearings on Americans massacring South Korean civilians some day ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Gun_Ri_Massacre) ). We even have written orders and memoes showing it was U.S. policy to fire upon civilians. Or maybe supporting the dictatorship in South Korea, and it's massacre against members of the democratization movement in 1980 ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movemen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Democratization_Movement) ). General Wickham sent troops from the DMZ so that the South Korean army could commit the massacre actually. We could go on about Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib torture, the NSA spying on all e-mails, phone calls and web site browsing and saving it forever etc. But no, let's hear more about a US Senate hearing on human rights in North Korea - from 11 years ago...what a farce. ~~~ roel_v It's quite offensive by itself that you're even suggesting the things you are listing are within 2 or 3 orders of magnitude within what is happening in North Korea. ~~~ DominikR What exactly makes you believe that this testimony is accurate, and not just manufactured by the US government. It wouldn't be the first time they did that. ~~~ dba7dba You think the Senate testimony is fabricated? How about this story? [http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149061951/escape-from- camp-14-...](http://www.npr.org/2012/03/29/149061951/escape-from- camp-14-inside-north-koreas-gulag) If you think camp 14 is fabricated, how about detaining 85 year old American veteran with no due process? But i know, you will keep saying it's all fabricated... ~~~ DominikR I am not defending the north korean regime, since there is enough data that proves that it is oppressive and violates human rights on a large scale. (just like the US government did with all their wars since 1950 that killed millions, or extrajudical executions of US citizens in the war on terror, or torture and indefinite detention without trial) And no, I am not strictly believing that the Senate testimony is fabricated, it's just a possibility for me, since there are documented cases where testimony was fabricated in front of the Senate to legitimate a war. ------ huhtenberg Recommended follow-up reading - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp) I know most of you _heard_ of it, but, seriously, take a moment and look a bit closer. ~~~ Finster Really. You're trying to compare Gitmo to North Korean prison camps? Certainly, Gitmo is no picnic, but I have to question if you actually RTFA. ~~~ 27182818284 The trend is what is disturbing. As time moved over the last 10 years they got closer rather than farther apart. ~~~ NoPiece How so? All but 164 detainees have been released from Guantanamo. They were never close, and Guanatanamo is slowly being shut down. ~~~ BrandonMarc While true, one reason the U.S. doesn't _need_ Gitmo so much anymore is we're still going after and finding the same people, but now they are executed with drones, rather than captured. ~~~ pekk If one of the parties had allowed it, we could have dissolved Gitmo years ago ------ deliminator Also interesting is this interview with prison guards who have defected. Camp 14 - Total Control Zone [Abridged]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb1iwo4txE4) ------ BorisMelnik heartbroken, I wish we could do something over there. ~~~ leokun Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea. It would destroy that city and the global economy to "do something over there". ~~~ downer91 I am uncertain that it would "destroy the global economy." That sounds like hyperbole. Convince me. It would be any unhappy event, assuredly, but if "the global economy" wasn't destroyed by the Iraq debacle, I'm pretty sure that a similar conflict in Korea would carry comparable consequences. All the same, I do not advocate any sort of war. Not out of squeamishness, but mostly because even the victors are handed empty promises by war. War isn't as productive as people would like to romanticize. ~~~ leokun [https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:KOR:IRQ&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false) ------ richardlblair The lack of formatting on that page is driving me insane. It's so hard to visually parse. ~~~ richardlblair God damn, this is so hard to read. Not because of the formatting, but because the stories told are so terrible.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Opencats Applicant Tracking System - brudgers http://www.opencats.org/ ====== frompdx I hate to judge a project by the technology choices but no SSL on the landing page and PHP is just the tip of the iceberg here. \- Every table uses MyISAM. Interesting choice, but maybe the fancy features of InnoDB aren't really needed. \- HTML in the database for storing page templates. The entire workflow in terms of HTML views of the application process are stored in the database. That's got to be rough to maintain. [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca...](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca93874d02c7288728df0f87/db/cats_schema.sql#L432) \- Uses mcrypt (not for passwords), which is deprecated and also abandonware. [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca...](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca93874d02c7288728df0f87/lib/Encryption.php#L43) \- Passwords appear to be stored as md5 hashes. [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca...](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca93874d02c7288728df0f87/lib/Users.php#L840) \- Yep, md5. [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca...](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca93874d02c7288728df0f87/lib/Users.php#L93) ~~~ randtrain34 and fun XSS vulns [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/issues/406](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/issues/406) ------ twunde So if you look at the copyright, it was from 2005-2007: [[https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/develop/constants....](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/develop/constants.php)]. Maintaining and upgrading PHP from that long ago is a real challenge and typically involves several major rewrites of the core. For anyone reading through the code, this is where a significant portion of the code smell comes from especially since some of the updates were never finished (an example is that namespaces are setup to allow autoloading, but the files I looked at also had include_once in the files). The global $_SESSION['CATS'] is almost certainly from the 2005-2007 era. Then there is the faux security fixes (sprintf'd sql instead of parameterized queries.). FYI, the age of the codebase also explains why they're using MyISAM instead of InnoDB. This gives me flashbacks of early career codebases. I've seen so many of the mistakes here (including the HTML in the db. God, I remember the original dev being so proud of that mistake. 2 devs working on the same page? Who's going to overwrite the other's html?) ~~~ lucb1e > The global $_SESSION['CATS'] is almost certainly from the 2005-2007 era. How would you do it nowadays? I still write a lot of small scripts and rarely have more state to maintain for a user session than conveniently fits in PHP's session mechanism. It's usually $_SESSION['loggedin']=bool, ['userid']=x, and perhaps a few convenience fields that are shown on every page to avoid unnecessary database roundtrips like name and anti-csrf token. It's file-based so it probably doesn't work on multiple servers (I think you can also configure it to be database-backed, but from what I remember that's nearly as much work as just writing a proper solution yourself if you need that sort of scale), but until your software doesn't fit on a single, medium- beefy server anymore, is there an issue with this session global? (Assuming you don't have a runaway dev that thinks they need to replicate every vaguely user-related field into the session or something. I never saw that, but with php being a common beginner's language, I could see how some people here might have run into that or have a similar argument. I think you'd have issues with such a guy/gal no matter what.) ~~~ twunde It's much rarer to see $_SESSION or $_COOKIE nowadays. Most frameworks have session libraries that have some validation checks built in, handle csrf/flash messages and easily plug into backends (being able to have sessions use redis, etc in 2-3 lines of config makes session handling soooo much easier. And you're less likely to run out of disk space :P). The main issue with $_SESSION was that it is very easy to create a giant multidimensional array and have inconsistent logic creating fields. Another advantage is to bring the session variable in line with that of other languages so that devs switching languages won't be WTF as often ------ orf Looks dead, and the code looks.... yeah[1]. Bonus[2] 1\. [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/develop/lib/Candid...](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/develop/lib/Candidates.php#L1310) 2\. [https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca...](https://github.com/opencats/OpenCATS/blob/77c1f2bcf1bc92f4ca93874d02c7288728df0f87/lib/DatabaseConnection.php#L480) ~~~ frompdx FIXME: Security issue, this function is not enough for sanitizing user input. Not off to a good start. ------ rhc2104 Hi y'all. Some of the comments here are mentioning some of the technical issues that this system has. In addition, the license that it uses has restrictions and is not OSI approved, so some people wouldn't call it Open Source. Is there demand for an Open Source Applicant Tracking System to be created? If you would be interested, please comment here: [https://github.com/rhc2104/hiringhats/issues/1](https://github.com/rhc2104/hiringhats/issues/1) ------ psychometry PHP and no SSL available on the main site? Pass. ~~~ rgj “Working towards full PHP 7 compatibility” PHP 7.0 was released in December 2015... ------ loa_in_ While the project's implementation is outdated, it still is easier for brave souls to maintain and extend it than start your own from scratch. The project is on GitHub. The link is on the website. ~~~ t0astbread True, although if I were tasked with inheriting a project like that I'd probably still do a total rewrite with the old code as a basis. I'd just be way too afraid of letting a security issue slip through, especially if I don't have tools to check. ~~~ lucb1e While I generally agree, it might also be worth pausing to think about the threat model before the baby out with the bathwater. Consider who uses this -- and I don't mean that recruiters have zero technical knowledge (rumor has it that some do) but rather that an applicant will see very little if anything of this. If you test and secure those public fields properly and make sure the rest is behind basic auth with individual user credentials, you probably covered your threat model. XSS/CSRF vulns potentially cause you to lose track of who put that exploit in (one user could have put an exploit in that makes another do something), so you know it was an insider, just not who. Once you have your update management figured out (at least for public systems) and people no longer click attachments to invite ransomware (I have yet to see a single client with these two boxes ticked), rewriting your internal limited-to-recruiters applicant system might be the next thing to tackle. ~~~ bastawhiz I strongly disagree. If you miss one meaningful vulnerability (SQL injection seems to be a known issue) and a bad actor takes a crack at it, you've suddenly leaked the PII for hundreds or thousands of individuals. "Limited to recruiters" is easy to say in the abstract—if you're the sort of person who's building off of a piece of software written in "old PHP" that hasn't seen many (any?) meaningful updates in the last decade, you're probably not the sort of person who is up-to-snuff on the right way to secure the application. ------ ab_testing Does it create a public url for the job where a non registered user can create an account and apply for a job? I went though the demo application and it looked like that functionality is not present.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fake Tweet Erases $136B in Stock Market - bmahmood http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-04-23/fake-report-erasing-136-billion-shows-market-s-fragility ====== fr0sty Subtitle should be: Realization that Tweet was Fake Creates $136B in Stock Market. In less than 5 minutes everything was back to normal. The interesting question is whether the people panic selling were skittish human traders or twitter-based algorithms trying to get a jump on the headline. ~~~ akandiah > The interesting question is whether the people panic selling were skittish > human traders or twitter-based algorithms trying to get a jump on the > headline. It's sometimes neither of those. A lot of stop-loss orders will have been triggered. ~~~ fr0sty I doubt that is true. The overall market moved less than 1% and I don't think individual names moved much more than their normal daily trading ranges. ------ kevinpet Reality: fake tweet causes scoreboard to indicate inaccurate value for several minutes. Nothing has been erased.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SeatGeek Powers Artist Listings For DuckDuckGo - savant http://seatgeek.com/blog/seatgeek-news/seatgeek-powers-artist-listings-for-duckduckgo ====== iowahansen How does DDG's relevance engine work? e.g. Adele is on tour right now, but DDG won't return a SeatGeek listing for it ~~~ epi0Bauqu Looks like a bug -- will fix. I'm detecting and calling them in this case, but I'm not rendering it. Not sure why I'm throwing it out yet. Update: looks like SG doesn't have any info on those concerts, with info defined as average price. ~~~ epi0Bauqu Fixed this bug. Thx!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Oculus Rift Game That’s So Real It Nearly Destroyed Me - cyphersanctus http://www.wired.com/2014/07/alien-isolation-oculus/ ====== ispolin Sounds very similar to the "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat"[1] film shown at the dawn of cinema. Some of the audience supposedly jumped from their seats in terror as the life-size train seemingly came straight at them from the movie screen. I wonder if this kind of thing happens for any mediums you aren't familiar with from childhood. 1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Arriv%C3%A9e_d'un_train_en_ga...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Arriv%C3%A9e_d'un_train_en_gare_de_La_Ciotat#Contemporary_reaction) ------ EvanKelly The military has a history of using video games as training tools for soldiers. Modded SNES units were used for rifle training and various other games have been used for tactics. The author's description of his reactions suggests that the Oculus Rift could potentially be utilized to train soldiers for stressful situations.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Port of Windows UWP Xaml Behaviors for Perspex Xaml - wiso https://github.com/XamlBehaviors/XamlBehaviors ====== brudgers Perspex is a multi-platform .NET UI framework using XAML that can run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, iOS and Android. [https://github.com/Perspex/Perspex](https://github.com/Perspex/Perspex)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Online Pawn Shops Lend Cash Fast - chocoheadfred http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203518404577094701656317574.html ====== vsl2 Brick and mortar or online, still basically a loan with a very high interest rate (~36% in this case) while also putting up collateral worth more than the loan. Only use these services in the most dire of financial circumstances. If you're in a situation where you have to pawn valuables, it may be time to start thinking about getting a normal job to reassess and regroup. ~~~ mattwdelong I don't know where you're getting ~36%? Borrower in OP had a 3% interest rate, and the article stated an industry average of 10-20%. With that aside, I don't entirely disagree with your argument. ~~~ dangrossman Interest on loans/credit is reported in terms of annual rate, not monthly. This loan at 3% per month is 36% per year. You won't find a credit card in the US at an interest rate that high. ~~~ pavelkaroukin I would not be so sure about credit cards. I was in search for basic credit card when just moved to USA to start my credit history somewhere... I was offered credit cards which are: 1) Secured. I.e. I have to have whole credit line amount as a cash on CD with the same bank. 2) Annual fee is 50% of credit limit 3) standard APY 37.5% and penalty APY even higher 4) Credit line - less then $500 And I bet this one was not worst one. ------ lisperforlife If you have to borrow at 36%, you are doing it wrong. You must consider your exit strategies or simply look for a job. ------ ohyes I'm reminded of a line from the producers: "Never invest your own money." I don't see how one could make methodical and appropriate business decisions with the gun pressed to their head of potential financial ruin. ------ wmf I was hoping to read of something truly innovative, like putting up your Steam account as collateral. Oh well. ------ blacksqr Lend ~~~ teaspoon That's a non-error: <http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/nonerrors.html#lend>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Coronavirus prevention guide at stopcorona.org (repo link at the bottom) - imlina http://Stopcorona.org ====== imlina Need contribution for new features such as translation to different languages	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Hungarian Approach and How It Fits the American Educational Landscape (2015) - jpelecanos https://blogs.ams.org/matheducation/2015/01/10/the-hungarian-approach-and-how-it-fits-the-american-educational-landscape/ ====== loriverkutya As a hungarian, I'm pretty surprised by this article, since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on education on all level. And however in the past, math education was world class, now the "old school" teachers are retiring and other than a handful of elite schools (Fazekas, Eötvös, Radnóti etc) most of the schools are way below the european average. (source: [https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/hun](https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/hun) ) Also usually only one or two hungarian university manage to get to any of the "best 500 universities in the world" list. ~~~ baxtr > since the quality of hungarian education is getting worse and worse, thanks > to the "reforms", which basically means they are spending less and less on > education on all level I always wondered what good metrics are to measure the quality of education. Since you say “worse and worse” can you share any insight to that? I mean you could potentially refer to the OECD world rankings but somehow I don’t trust those lists, since they “feel” quite mechanistic. ~~~ kbart I'm not the OP, but I'm from another Eastern Europe country where education level falls fast and dramatically. Few key indicators of that: 0\. I was attending an elite gymnasium and we deliberately used old "hard science" (math, physics, chemistry) textbooks from 70'-80', because they were _much_ more advance level than modern ones. Most of math/physics taught during first/second year at university now, was taught in 11-12th grade back then. 1\. Anecdotally, but _all_ teachers complain that every year students are getting less motivated, performing poorer, having shorter attention spans. With local "no children left behind" equivalent it's enough just to attend some percentage of classes to get passable grades. 2\. Every few years some kind of "reform" is performed to reduce the difficulty of final exams to maintain failure rates at bay and keep statistics nice. 3\. Combined points 1 with 2 this leads to universities full of students that have neither motivation nor skills to perform there. Since such students make up majority in most less popular programs, the difficulty level is also reduced to adapt. 4\. Degrading higher level education quality reflects on its prestige as potential employees no longer trust universities to produce prospective candidates. This closes the loop back to point 1 as current pupils deem education "worthless". 5\. Fun fact: entrance exams to non-prestigious universities from 70'-80' were (maybe still are) widely used as assignments in national level competitions when I was at school (late nineties to early 00'). To paraphrase that -- a skill level that once was expected from _anybody_ who wanted to be accepted in university now puts you at the very top. ~~~ naasking > Anecdotally, but all teachers complain that every year students are getting > less motivated, performing poorer, having shorter attention spans. Most of these points smack of rosy retrospective bias. Kids have great attention spans if content is delivered to them in a way they can engage in, for instance, interactive computer games. Teachers are just out of touch with kids, and really they always have been. It's why kids almost always like younger teachers more. ~~~ Viliam1234 > Most of these points smack of rosy retrospective bias. Well, accusations of bias can go both ways. Maybe it feels bad to admit that there is a serious problem with no obvious solution in sight; and pretending that we don't see anything is how we bury our collective heads in the sand. Instead of accusing each other of biases, let's discuss evidence. As was mentioned in a few comments in this thread, high-school textbooks in multiple countries are gradually dumbed down, so much that 20 or more years old textbooks are now considered a material for gifted kids. (I can confirm this.) Your turn. > Kids have great attention spans if content is delivered to them in a way > they can engage in, for instance, interactive computer games. If the only problem is that humans are losing the ability to learn without playing computer games, perhaps we could fix it by making all the necessary games. But we better start making them really fast, because there is a lot of knowledge to cover. And while we are at this type of solution, we could also fix problems with nutrition by genetically engineering a broccoli that will taste like heroin. Situation is not that bad if kids are still willing to pay attention to addictive things. ~~~ naasking > As was mentioned in a few comments in this thread, high-school textbooks in > multiple countries are gradually dumbed down, so much that 20 or more years > old textbooks are now considered a material for gifted kids. (I can confirm > this.) Your turn. And what do you think that proves exactly? Did you prove that the kids using the old textbooks actually absorbed the more advanced material? Did you prove that outcomes using the old material are better than with the new material? Perhaps the new textbooks simply distilled the relevant material that the vast majority of kids actually grasp, without all the unnecessary detail that was just skipped over. I can think of plenty of different scenarios to explain the evidence that's been listed here, and only one of those explanations are "dumber kids and/or dumbed down education". The exact same arguments have been trotted out about the dumbing down of liberal college education, where in the 1900s, every college degree meant exposure to poetry, art, history, philosophy and more. Modern college education is then portrayed as poor substitute, completely ignoring the fact that our body of knowledge is at least 10,000x larger than it was in the 1900s, and a direct comparison is frankly laughable. > If the only problem is that humans are losing the ability to learn without > playing computer games, perhaps we could fix it by making all the necessary > games. Talk about missing the point. As evidenced by my use of "for instance", that was merely an example. Even among adults, interactive systems are clearly more engaging, and given the environmental factors that shape modern kids, you obviously are already too old to grasp their thinking process if you can't understand that different environmental factors entails different learning processes. Which just proves my point that adults are and always will be out of touch with the kids of their day. ~~~ kbart _" And what do you think that proves exactly? Did you prove that the kids using the old textbooks actually absorbed the more advanced material?"_ Well, yes, at least some pupils did. See my comment about degrading exams difficulty and problems in contemporary national competitions. Math problems are fundamental, so it's a good indicator of skills, despite changing times. Science _is_ boring at most times, you can't gamify everything. ------ leni536 I would like to point out two of my favorite high school competitions in Hungary. One is KöMaL [1]. It's a monthly journal, one has to send back solutions to the problems. The competition is during the whole school year. It has problems from math, physics and computer science, these are separate contests. I did the "P" (theoretical physics) competition. Sometimes I took a look for the "B" math problems and I could never solve a single "A" math problem, those are freaking insane. [1] [https://www.komal.hu/info/miazakomal.e.shtml](https://www.komal.hu/info/miazakomal.e.shtml) The second competition is the Eötvös Physics Competition [2]. Unfortunately the problems are not translated to English. This is a single round competition for the whole country. There are three physics problems fitting on a piece of A4 paper (single sided). The students can use anything (any number of books, calculator), the competition is 5 hours long. All high school and first year university students participate in the same contest. It's designed to filter out the very best physics students in the whole country (typically only one or two students can fully solve all three problems). [2] [http://eik.bme.hu/~vanko/fizika/eotvos.htm](http://eik.bme.hu/~vanko/fizika/eotvos.htm) ~~~ ptero Russia (Soviet Union actually) had somewhat similar mail in programs that IMO we're very useful to stimulate those with high interest in specific fields beyond what a school would do. IMO stimulating and developing top end is something sorely missing in US education, which is mostly focusing on helping those behind to catch up. That is useful, but pushing 1-2% of best students as far as possible is just as important for the society long term. My 2c. ~~~ digi_owl And mail in may be better than extra classes or similar, as it may avoid various "tall poppy" issues. And these days it can even be done electronically. ------ niftich I took my first eight years of math in Hungary; admittedly, some time ago. Though I'm not sure if things have changed since then, or were different at higher levels, the way the article describes it very much reflected my experience. Starting out, there was a balanced mix of rote learning the basics (as it was done in other subjects), then moving towards creativity and gradual, independent rediscovery, and it was done so in a way that didn't feel stifling if you somehow knew to do it a different way. Ultimately it's a small country; there was a math bee you could compete in at a local level, and then your district would send the best representatives to the countrywide event. It was a prestigious event, and pretty stressful, but ultimately fun. The questions asked at the national competition were always really oddball and obscure and required both creativity and judicious use of everything you've learned. Come think of it, the culture of the competitions in various subjects made school really fun. Some other aspects of my primary school education in Hungary were not so stellar. In other subjects, there was very much a focus on facts in isolation, without really understanding or delving into context, notably in History. Literature I also found limiting, as much emphasis was placed on poetry analysis, which I found to be subjective; nonetheless, diverging from commonly accepted analyses was did not result in a good mark. When I came to the US, I found an emphasis on critical thinking in the Humanities, which was a breath of fresh air. But in math and science, the quality and method of instruction in Hungary was top-notch. ~~~ koube Why is Hungarian math so forward looking but not the other subjects? Is Hungary especially good at math? ~~~ patkai This question is not just worth understanding in itself but it would be essential to ask at many levels, as science education is becoming the key to the survival of humanity. As a Hungarian who left the country 20 years ago I have been fascinated by this surprising success of the country, partly because I did not personally get a good science education there. Actually, it was very unbalanced, with most of it barely mediocre, while some of it absolutely brilliant. The successful people came from 2-3 high schools (or "gymnasiums", for ages 12-18) in Budapest in the beginning of the 20th century, and whatever success Hungary had in the natural sciences was mostly a result of the work and heritage of that generation. There is a very good description of this in Norman MacRae's book on John von Neumann, worth reading. A quick summary of the "reasons": 1\. Boom: at that time (from 1867 till WWI) Budapest was booming, more attractive to immigrants than New York. Actually, most of the city you can see today was built in those times. 2\. Culture: as a result of the boom and the wave of immigrants it became a very liberal and open minded place (though this did not apply to the feudal class at all - their kids typically became soldiers or playboys) 3\. Motivation: in a feudal society studying and intellectual eminence was the way to go unless you were born an aristocrat. Parents, students, teachers were willing to put time and money necessary to make their kids excel. This may not sound unusual with all those helicopter parents you see nowadays, but actually this was huge. Imagine growing up in a family where you knew - and your whole family knew - that your only chance of making it is to be the best at math your abilities allow. 4\. Education: I don't know where to start, so I can only give examples. Imagine you are a 12 year old child and your teacher borrows you his favourite papers on quantum physics and asks your opinion on them. Then you give a smart comment and your teacher contacts the relevant professor at the university to have a tea with you at your house next Sunday. 5\. Language: most of these kids learned Latin and Greek, and in before their teenage years also spoke at least German fluently. 6\. The "marble table": Stanislaw Ulam (in his autobiography, another amazing read) and also MacRae tells about the most important ingredient, the marble table at the café (the easy-to-erase whiteboard of the time). In Central Europe mathematicians met at cafeterias, discussed all day (often meaning 12 hour days at a cafe!), challenged each other, and did rarely work in isolation, not worrying too much about "who thought of it first". They happily took young kids in, 15 year olds sipping juice and 50 year old Banach drinking something much stronger (may not have been Banach, but you'll read the book!). It was such a well-known "way of doing math" that the IAS in Princeton was officially established to re-create this culture and pull the typical American professors out of their ivory towers. It is an elitist system, I know, and does not solve mass education challenges. But this small elite circle had an impact on almost everyone in the country's education system. Even if you weren't a Wigner, Teller or Neumann, you spent 6 years in this environment and possibly became a great teacher, similar to the one who taught half of these people, the great László Rácz [1] and taught in this fashion. Also, a similar great science education happened in Japan at some point (50's, I think ), but I only read this as a side note in the book on Neumann. Anyway, it is possible to do this again and with two small kids I'm very interested to know how. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_R%C3%A1tz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_R%C3%A1tz) ~~~ pliny >Anyway, it is possible to do this again and with two small kids I'm very interested to know how. Here's a context-relevant place to start: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a- gen...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-genius/) ~~~ mncharity I wonder if the review is missing some aspects of "concentrate on one subject"? On one subject, a mentor can be a master, and master instructor. And such instruction is crucial for developing deep expert understanding. But in the future, with better content, and improved learning infrastructure, one might imagine these becoming available for more than one subject. Both the concentration on one subject, and that subject being chess, contribute to the effort having nice properties. Like non-superficiality. An integrated and deeply organized body of knowledge and skills. Developing transferable knowledge (within the subject at least), rich feedback, and reflective building of mastery. But it's the properties that matter. Chess, or another one subject, might be taught in a way that fails to have the nice properties. And as learning infrastructure improves, the nice properties may become available without the "one subject" or "and it's chess" restrictions. There's a long history of exceptional masters teaching their field/craft to their children from a young age, who in turn become exceptional masters. The challenge is to scale that. The straightforward "a gaggle of masters in everyone's pocket" is AI-complete implausible. But the art of the next decade is crafting human-computation hybrid systems. Things like eye tracking, and big data, provide opportunities that no master mentor has ever had. We just need to get around to building on them. ------ gizmo686 I would to see this approach applied more in the sciences as well. I my college syntax (linguistics) class, most of the teaching was done by the teacher giving us a (carefully curated) set of data to explain as homework. Class time was spent making sure everyone got to the same answer and understood the arguments behind it. When there are multiple reasonable answers, they also made sure that students understand the other ones and why we rejected them (sometimes the reason is as simple as 'we need to pick an answer, lets just vote'; other times it is 'both are reasonable explanations, the field went with B, read Chomsky 1987 if you want to know why.'). We would then generally talk about problems we still have (especially if the data was English, and students could come up with new data that didn't work as nicely). ~~~ pmoriarty _" Class time was spent making sure everyone got to the same answer and understood the arguments behind it."_ How many students were in your class? With the typical undergraduate class sizes that I've TA'ed at (about 30 students or so), there's just not enough time during the class to go over everything with each person individually and explain everything to them if they don't get it. Even if there was time, if someone is slow the rest of the class will be bored to death waiting for you to explain something to them (possibly over and over until they get it). Some of the more advanced students will be bored by any explanation, while the most detailed explanations with many examples are necessary for other students. There are office hours and lab time, and some students make the most of that, but some don't. I actually spent a lot of my time helping out students who were lagging behind and needed a lot of attention, and wound up kind of neglecting the talented ones who didn't need any help, but who I think would have gotten more out of the class if we were able to engage them more, challenge them more, and cater to their interests more rather than trying to cater to the lowest common denominator. I'm not sure what the right answer here is in classes where students vary widely in skills, interests, and abilities. ~~~ gizmo686 25\. It also does not typically require much individual attention; generally presenting a cleaned up version of the arguement is enough. If multiple students have a problem, they tend to have the same problem, so the work scales sublinearly. Of course, larger class sizes will always make teaching more difficult. ------ maksimum > After the student investigation, the teacher highlights important ideas > embedded in a concrete problem, and summarizes and generalizes their > findings. In particular, the teacher’s summary makes sense and is > meaningful, because students have had the experience of playing around with > these ideas on their own before coming together to formalize them as a > class. It's important for students to get their hands on examples and play with the ideas we're trying to present on their own. One issue I have is that this takes so much time. If you're introducing concepts that the students don't have good intuition about, you have to go so slowly. Even then it feels like some students can't follow. I think it's beneficial when it's possible to get students to engage with the material on a daily basis as reading or homework. Hard to do when they're expected to take 4 classes (college) or 6-8 (high school) and dedicate study time to each of them. ~~~ gizmo686 When you use this approach, you generally cover less material, but cover it better. For most classes, this seems like a good tradeoff. 4 classes isn't really that much. You can essentially replace the time students would normally spend "studying" with them spending that time working on the problems. Further, in my experience, this type of work is far more engaging than traditional studying, so it is easier for students to spend time on it; and the time they do spend tends to be more thoughtfull. ~~~ jacobolus Moreover, as people practice, they can get generically better at meta-skills such as (in no particular order) skimming, close reading, constructing mental outlines of arguments, drawing diagrams and pictures, inventing examples to match given specifications, testing concrete examples against abstract statements, generalizing specific relationships discovered in the examples to abstract laws and proving them generically, discarding or modifying abstractions to better match a wider collection of examples, working backwards, discarding dead-end problem-solving strategies while mining them for partial useful results, breaking problems down into manageable pieces, deductive logic, generating hypotheses likely to be interesting, abandoning whole problems which turn out to be too hard and switching to something else, cross-applying solution strategies from one field to another, simplifying complex arguments by discarding or separating extraneous or duplicated steps, writing up explanations in clear and coherent way for various audiences, researching past work in an efficient way, diving into new fields with completely alien notation and terminology and quickly taking the lay of the land, and so on. These skills are more generically useful than recipes or collections of facts about any particular subject, because they serve as multipliers for quite generic learning and problem-solving efficiency. One big problem with trying to teach a single specific course in a very problem-centered / student-driven / socratic style is that often students have not been sufficiently trained in any of these meta skills, and as a result move at much slower pace than their potential because they waste a lot of time on inefficient problem-solving methods, get side-tracked, throw away useful work, explain things poorly, don’t get around to crystallizing their useful results, and so on. The more courses get taught in this style, the faster each subsequent course can move as students figure out how to learn effectively. ~~~ katdev That's a nice list of meta-skills. Do you have any further reading to recommend on identifying/teaching meta-skills? ~~~ jacobolus You could try Polya’s _How to Solve It_ , and follow up with Schoenfeld’s _Mathematical Problem Solving_ (which cites a lot of other material). These are rather focused on problem solving per se, and don’t really discuss larger- scale strategies for research or learning. You can try just diving into child development and education literature. Not sure what out there really tries to be comprehensive in summarizing the best techniques for teaching and learning arbitrary meta-skills. ------ jonsen Math is much more than what I was taught in school. I discovered that as a child when stumbling upon this Hungarian math book at the local library: [https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Infinity-Dover-Books- Mathemat...](https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Infinity-Dover-Books-Mathematics- ebook/dp/B00A73IWVY/) ~~~ fogetti Hey, that looks awesome! Thanks for recommending it. I put it on my bucket list. ------ chx Let's make this very clear: this is _not_ a typical Hungarian approach. This is what Fazekas and to an extent a few more similar specialized high schools do. The typical Hungarian approach is frontal instruction with no respect to the learning speed differences. Source: Personal experience. I am a Fazekas alumni and have a Hungarian maths teachers masters as well. I am bankrolling a very small reform school in Hungary so I am in contact with current Hungarian teachers every day and also I am obviously very interested in what's going on so I read a lot. ------ karllager A friend of mine enjoyed her first years in school in the Pannonian basin; I am not sure, whether they did something special - but it was enough to get her into a selective German high-school specialised in maths and sciences later in her life. Always admired her for the experience, as she repeatedly speak of it if it has been fun and games. ------ chatmasta My high school did something similar [0]. We never had math textbooks, only a book of problems. Each night we had 10 problems we had to solve. When we showed up in class the next day, each student would present a problem on the board and discuss their solution. It worked well for the really disciplined, rigorous kids who were super interested in math and already had a solid background in it. But for someone like me, who never quite did all the homework, it became a game of getting to class first so I could present the one problem I did last night. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_table) ------ otakucode There were 2 documentaries produced by famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman called High School and High School 2. In one, a group of average students are followed through a typical high school in a middle class predominantly white area. In the second one, a group of students are followed through an experimental high school in a predominantly impoverished area with mostly a Latino population. The 'experimental' nature of the school was that every single class, every last one, was completely restructured to center around one thing: critical thinking. Teaching by fiat ('this is how it is because I say so and I am the authority') was banned. Every bit of teaching was through asking questions and having them answered, students challenging teachers on an equal intellectual playing field (unequal in specific knowledge of course, but equal in capacity to reason and challenge assumptions). The experimental school produced the highest proportion of students to go on to receive college degrees (not just attend college, but finish) every seen in the country. The results were absolutely amazing and tremendously good. But... it's harder for teachers to teach that way. They can't plan ahead. They have to know their subjects inside and out, not just read off of a lesson plan. If a student asks a question that the teacher can't answer, the teacher has to admit it and try to figure it out with them, which many teachers are not emotionally mature enough to participate in alongside an adolescent. It gives a great deal of power and agency to adolescents, and our society is obsessed with stripping adolescents of every iota of control over their own life and denigrating them as much as possible. So widespread adoption of such schooling cannot gain much support at all. The documentaries also did a good job showing how the "traditional" schooling methods broke the 'spirit' of adolescents and sucked the love of learning and figuring things out right out of them, turning them into disinterested husks of human beings, while the experimental school left them as vibrantly full of a love of life and learning as they entered it. Such things are of course difficult to measure and generally distrusted by our "pleasure is a sure sign of hidden dangers" mentality. ------ AJRF I'm not "bad" at math per se, but would there be much benefit in going from the ground up learning in the Hungarian form? I guess you could blow through the first 7~10 years of schooling in less than a year of dedicated study, but teaching yourself just up to before college level would take you a few years, right? Is there any online courses that have this content? ~~~ patkai Reading George Polya's books might be a way of learning this technique. At least they explain very well the method of thinking about math. ------ tioga I grew up and studied math in Hungary and graduated from Fazekas, the school mentioned in the atricle, and its "special math" high school class. I also spent a year in high school in the US so I have some basis for comparison. My experience was pretty much exactly as described in the article as well and I am forever grateful for the school and my teachers for giving me a foundation I could build on later in life. I'd like to point out a few things though, others have already touched upon some of these: First, similar to why it's hard to replicate the Silicon Valley startup model elsewhere (or at least why it takes such a long time), the issue is somewhat similar here. The method of teaching is just one part of the equation. It was a whole "ecosystem" of fantastically knowledgable and respected teachers who could anywhere else be university professors or researchers, publications (such as KoMaL), camps, competitions and other extracurricular activities aimed at elementary and high school students, and a culture of math and science being interesting and fun vs. the stereotypical hard and boring. The way of teaching feels a little bit more of a consequence of this culture rather than the source. You can pick your own preferred origin story for how that culture emerged: a booming industrial economy in the age of the Austro- Hungarian empire, a multi-ethnic, liberal (in the original sense of the word and given the context) country, the migration and resulting concentration of Jews in Budapest, or a series of exceptional teachers and mentors. The highly visible world-wide successes in the first half of the 20th century then later provided an on-going narrative that benefited the national ethos and hence made plenty of funding available in the second half (conveniently forgetting the austro-hungarian, the economic boom, the liberal or the jewish part of the story). But in any case the culture and the support system is (or at least was) there and that one is very hard to replicate at a broad scale, although certainly easier within specific communities. As someone mentioned, even in Hungary it is not broadly present and is limited to a certain set of top schools. Also, there is a flip side to this story. Personally, I really liked math before going to high school and completely lost interest by the time I finished. Partly because a lot of kids around me were much better so I felt like a failure, partly because I was more interested in computers and programming and also in finance, all of which was looked down upon. The prestige of winning a programming competition was nowhere near the same as placing well in math or physics. Working as a developer on the side was considered a distraction. I think this was for the better for me personally. A decent number of my classmates got burnt out and had severe depressions due to the pressure. You were almost expected to win a gold medal at the International Olympiad and eventually become a world-wide math celebrity. I can't shake the feeling that a lot of them "peaked" at the end of high school, although perhaps that's partly the result of the rapidly declining university system. Again, I'm very grateful for what I got but it's more in terms creative thinking and problem solving than specific math skills. In fact, I got to learn other subjects, such as history and literature through the same method which I now realize is very unusual in a country where those subjects are usually heavily biased toward insitilling a national identity as opposed to fostering independent thinking. ------ kvch_ For some reason I never knew that Hungarian Maths teaching is so outstanding. My high school teacher who came from Romania to Hungary always told us that he learned topics much earlier than we did. For example he learned equitations in grade 5 and we learn them in grade 7. So I figured that Romania must be better at teaching Maths. Having gone through all levels of Maths in Hungary, from elementary school until BSc of university, I want to point out that this method sounds good as long as the teacher is able to keep the attention of the class. In my school, a few teachers were unable to do that and it was a disaster. Children were playing, talking and doing nothing in classes. Even preventing others from learning the material. Fortunately, I have never had these kind of teachers. However, if someone did they were doomed at university, because the expectations were too high for them. So I think it is quite a big disadvantage in Hungary. If you miss out in high school, because you were busy being a rebellious teen, there is a good chance that you never make it. You only realize it after you started university, because it is pretty easy to get into science courses of top universities in Hungary and very hard to actually graduate.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The 'Self Drive' Act puts America on the road to reducing congestion - abhi3 http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/349375-the-self-drive-act-puts-america-on-the-road-to-reducing ====== Animats The link is to a PR piece from a right-wing lobbyist. The actual bill is here.[1] It's mostly about federal preemption. NHTSA can set standards, and states can't. There are also some irrelevant giveaways regarding exemption from bumper and crashworthyness standards for low-volume vehicles. The preemption part will allow companies to test self-driving heavy trucks in California, something California DMV does not currently allow. Also, currently the California DMV can revoke the vehicle licenses of a self-driving car manufacturer if they do bad stuff, which DMV did to Uber. DMV can probably still do that. Some of the safety standards are explicitly weak. "The Secretary may not condition deployment or testing of highly automated vehicles on review of safety assessment certifications." But NHTSA still gets to set standards, and they can order recalls. There's not much about liability; this doesn't change who's responsible for accidents or for vehicle defects. The requirements on manufacturers are mostly toothless - "submit a plan" comes up regularly. There are no privacy standards, so Tesla can watch you in your car as long as they admit somewhere that they do that. Can DMV still make manufacturers submit crash reports and disconnect reports? Not clear. The bill text is _IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this subsection may be construed to prohibit a State or a political subdivision of a State from maintaining, enforcing, prescribing, or continuing in effect any law or regulation regarding registration, licensing, driving education and training, insurance, law enforcement, crash investigations, safety and emissions inspections, congestion management of vehicles on the street within a State or political subdivision of a State, or traffic unless the law or regulation is an unreasonable restriction on the design, construction, or performance of highly automated vehicles, automated driving systems, or components of automated driving systems._ Now manufacturers get to litigate "unreasonable restriction". (Some self-driving car companies hate those reports, because they show their technology sucks. Google/Waymo is fine with it. Latest accident report: Uber vehicle just taken out of auto mode was rear-ended while stopped.) (The biggest lesson we have so far from self-driving car accidents is that the non-self-driving cars need basic automatic braking to prevent low-speed rear- ending the self-driving cars. Google/Waymo cars keep getting rear-ended when they detect they're entering an intersection with blocked lines of sight. They'll advance a bit into the intersection, detect cross traffic, and stop. The human-driven car behind them then sometimes hits them, at very slow speed.) [1] [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/3388...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house- bill/3388/text) ~~~ socalthrowaway It's illegal to enter an intersection if unsafe to do so. The biggest concern having driven around self driving cars in California is that they absolutely cannot handle mixing with traffic in situations like merging onto rush hour freeway traffic. Try watching one get off and watching the gap increase as more and more cars do the same while you are stuck behind the car trying to enter the freeway. It's the eternal good Samaritan problem. Same in normal traffic as it tries to drive 'safely' and maintain a following distance which leads to the same issue of stopping a whole lane. ------ bryanlarsen Reducing congestion? Self-driving is going to make congestion much, much worse. Self-driving makes driving cheaper, safer, easier & more accessible. Anytime you do that for anything, usage increases dramatically, often in ways that are difficult to fore see. But it's not hard to predict a few: \- cheap delivery will be used for everything \- people will send and summon vehicles from everywhere. I might drive to work, send my vehicle home so somebody else can use it, summon it at the end of day, and drive home. \- et cetera ~~~ kcorbitt Agree with everything you say. Personally, I hope that self-driving cars are introduced alongside a road-use tax that moves the true cost of road construction and maintenance (and the opportunity cost of all the last currently dedicated to roads) to users, rather than the general public. ~~~ shuntress >moves the true cost of road construction and maintenance ... to users, rather than the general public. Public infrastructure should not be a la carte. ~~~ ecshafer Buses and trains are. why should roads be purely subsidized? Why should free parking be subsidized. Car driving is massively subsidized and it has a hugely negative impact on the environment, it's expensive, does not scale, and difficult to maintain. Reducing car use, and shifting to a transit and walking focused style of living is better on every front. ~~~ jessriedel Whether or not car driving is subsidized, it's incorrect to suggest that it's levied uniformly across the population. Gas tax makes up a very large fraction of public spending on roads. Also, although buses and trains charge per user, they are also heavily subsidized. ~~~ Fricken Busses are part of the public transportation infrastructure, just like roads, sidewalks, bridges and everything else. It's weird that they aren't fully subsidized. ~~~ hueving But roads aren't fully subsidized. That's what the gas tax is for. Drivers of electric cars are currently free-riders, which is something that will have to be addressed if they become a significant fraction of drivers. ~~~ thatcat Electric cars are technically still taxed on electricity, registration, and purchase. They shouldn't be taxed further until other cars are forced to pay the full cost of their effects including NOx and CO2. ~~~ hueving Those taxes are not specifically for roads like the gas tax is. ------ brndnmtthws Want to reduce congestion? Invest in public transit infrastructure. ~~~ chc In most of America, this idea seems to be even less practical than self- driving cars. America is pretty much designed to be a pessimal case for public transit. San Diego, where I live, does invest in public transit infrastructure and has relatively extensive mass transit options (buses, trains and trolleys), and yet public transit is still largely unusable outside of fairly small, specific areas. In order to use public transit, I'd have to walk half a mile to a station and then my commute to work would be four times as long as it is by car. So when I hear "invest in public transit infrastructure," I feel like it isn't a concrete enough suggestion. Does it actually mean tear down most of America and replace it with a country where mass transit is practical, or what? I'd love never to have to drive again, but merely investing in public transit demonstrably isn't enough. ~~~ akgerber The issue with San Diego is not the lack of infrastructure, but the land use— many businesses and offices are in unwalkable office park hellscapes that are designed to make driving easy to the exclusion of any other mode of transit. Since public transit requires a walking trip at both ends, it will never be very popular in areas where one needs to take a dangerous mile-long walk across a sea of parking and high-speed arterials, instead of a quick jaunt through a lively neighborhood. ~~~ chc That was exactly my point: A lot of the US is laid out in a way that is pessimal for mass transit — "hellscapes," as you put it — so investing in public transit infrastructure doesn't seem like enough to make a big difference. The problem isn't just a lack of investment, but also that mass transit isn't very well suited to America as it exists today. Any proposal to make public transit happen in America that doesn't address this seems pretty unrealistic to me. ------ ouid The title could do a lot more to indicate what the Self Drive act actually is. A house committee drafted some legislation that grants the federal government regulatory power over self-driving cars, or rather strips it from state governments. At least as far as it is reported in the article. ~~~ Kadin It'd be interesting to see what the reaction is from people and companies in the field. Preemption legislation seems a little premature, to me. Sure, it would stop states from hindering autonomous-vehicle development, e.g. to protect entrenched interests or because of irrational fears, but it could also stop states interested in being on the forefront of research from doing more interesting things. It seems like the sort of thing you'd want when products were further along the development path and having a broad, harmonized-rules marketplace is necessary to move further, but not when most of the tech is still pretty early R&D work. ~~~ ballenf Preemption is needed most for nascent industries where the economics are uncertain. It gives investors more confidence to invest in an unproven technology if you can at least predict one aspect of the landscape on a national level. Down the road, you can start to relax the preemption (theoretically) and let the market forces keep unwise state regulation in check. ------ riffic You want to reduce congestion and make mobility improvements for many? Look to cities that make cycling a way of life through infrastructure, planning, and design. ------ mtgx I've just seen this infographic showing that 5G connectivity is also about "car to car communication" (among other things): [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJCxYZ1XoAAm_CL.jpg:large) I _really_ hope that's just wishful thinking from companies like Qualcomm and wireless operators and _not_ something car makers are actually considering. Making the cars' critical systems (such as the self-driving systems, which would respond based on other cars' actions in car to car communication) be accessible from the internet sounds like a terrible idea. This is why I hope this type of law is _not_ rushed, as car makers and companies like Uber and Google/Waymo hope it will be. ~~~ ocdtrekkie There's a lot of potential gain from car-to-car communication, but I also see a huge risk. I can be reasonably confident in my car's own sensors, but only God knows what my car is being told by other cars about the world; the opportunities for malicious activity there are huge. It's hard to imagine a system that uses V2V that doesn't rely on some manner of trust, like a closed/encrypted system with car manufacturers having CA-like signing authority or something. And if I've ever learning anything, it's that car companies are not great at network security. ~~~ smileysteve I too saw F8 and The Furious. ~~~ ocdtrekkie Ha, I actually have not. Though I did see the trailer which looked ridiculous. ------ saosebastiao I'm confident in many benefits of autonomous vehicles, but reducing congestion is not one of them. Quite the opposite, actually. Wanna know what happens when you no longer have people looking for parking but rather have them picking up and dropping off at the curb? Visit a busy airport or pickup/dropoff curbs at a large suburban elementary school. Now throw in the fact that in order to get to _your_ destination, you'll have to drive _through_ those clusterfucks that are caused by _other people 's destinations_. Oh, and all the cars that might not be circling looking for parking, but are now circling looking for new passengers. Oh, and all the new cars on the road when lower costs move people from transit into SOVs. That's the future, embrace it. ~~~ mchahn When there are a lot fewer cars, congestion will go down. Cars will be shared. Sort of a Uber without drivers. Why own your own car? ~~~ chc Will there be a lot fewer cars, though? Assuming you want to achieve the same throughput, you'd still need about as many cars as there are at rush hour today. ------ dayaz36 25k is less than 1% of most major auto manufacturers yearly production numbers. No article I've read on this news has put that into context and instead praises the legislation as liberating car manufacturers to bring FSD cars to the masses. Most people don't read past the headline let alone look into the facts of the article. Also nothing good EVER gets passed legislation unanimously. Last time the House passed legislation this quickly and unanimously was when they passed SOAPA. Something feels fishy about this. I haven't read the legislation directly but I bet if a journalist went through it fully, somethings would surface that people wouldn't like. ------ ynniv _The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the SELF DRIVE Act with a vote of 54-0._ _The act correctly delineates the purview of federal versus state regulation for autonomous vehicles. In short, federal regulatory bodies have authority when it comes to the car, while states have authority when it comes to the driver._ A bipartisan, unanimous vote to secure future regulator power, story at 11! _eyeroll_ The Federal government gets to regulate the car that drives itself, and the State gets to regulate the driver that's actually just a passenger. ------ dexterdog I don't get this assumption that SDCs are going to reduce energy usage. Sure, it will be better on a per-mile basis, but people are going to be traveling a lot more than they are now. ~~~ WillPostForFood It may not, but hopefully it is an opportunity to push the transition to electric cars. If we are going to effectively replace all cars, let's make some smart choices on the replacements. ------ letlambda A new designated felon would be required to sell highly automated vehicles, the Cyber Security Officer. You'll sign some documents certifying everything is fine, but of course, everything won't be fine. When your cars get hacked you'll go to jail for defrauding the government and/or manslaughter. I bet it pays real good though. ------ ilaksh Does it give them permission to remove the backup driver? In Waymo's case it seems like they are mainly waiting for a law that says that and then they can deploy for certain routes and conditions. ------ revelation The idea that a bill "sponsored" by corporations whose sole purpose is selling as many cars as possible will "reduce congestion" is probably the most ridiculous idea this turn of the century. What's next? McDonalds innovation on nutrition facts labels to reduce junk fat consumption and improve health outcomes? ~~~ WillPostForFood If corporations selling cars were "sponsoring" a bill, they should be sponsoring a bill banning self driving cars, because they are an existential threat to the business of selling cars.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Recommend a domain-name registrar.. - blintson I want to start my own website, but I'm not sure what domain-name registrar to buy it from. This place seems like a good place to ask, any suggestions? ====== rms I'm glad to hear no one has recommended Godaddy. They are not good. They raised their prices and they try to upsell you and autorenew you for services constantly. I have used Namecheap for the last 7 or 8 years and have been very happy. But they have also raised their prices. Nearlyfreespeech.net is just about the cheapest registrar out there, at $8.59 year and they advocate for the privacy and security of their customers as much as humanly possible. <https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/domains> ------ bearwithclaws NameCheap all the way. Great usability. Be sure to grab a coupon here before purchasing: <http://www.namecheapcoupon.com/> ------ ccheever For small little projects, I've used Dreamhost with some success and also done hosting there (cheap, easy, not super performant.) I've also used 1and1 for things that need more configuration, etc. It's reasonably cheap and they don't keep trying to upsell you all the time like GoDaddy does. ------ NonEUCitizen I started using internet.bs recently. Very happy so far. Also, look at this related thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=708640> ------ Derrek I'm a fan of 1and1.com. They give free private registration, and I haven't had any issues with them over the past couple years of use. ------ ahpeeyem I have been using powerpipe.com without any hassles at all for about 8 years; their .com domains pricing is now $6.88/year. ------ chipmunkninja gandi.net. they're not the cheapest, but they're extremely reliable, your data are protected by strict local privacy laws (company is french), and it just "works". never had a single problem in the some years i've been using them. ~~~ jawngee _thumbs up_ ------ oomkiller I use namecheap.com. Never had any issues with them. ------ 8plot moniker.com is my favorite.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
United Airlines' 26 different ticket fare classes - billboebel http://cwsi.net/united.htm ====== billboebel Even as a 100K flyer this shit is extremely confusing to me. No wonder the airlines are so screwed up.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Airbnb is dead to me - longwave http://drupaler.drupalgardens.com/content/why-airbnb-dead-me ====== flippyhead I continue to use AirBnb but have been pretty disappointed in their customer service. I rent out a family cabin occasionally and someone who stayed there scratched the floor accidentally wearing winter boots with spikes on them. They admitted this, apologized and were generally totally awesome about it. It took me __months __to get Airbnb to figure out how to deduct money from their damage deposit. They first said I had to call the police and get a police report, which I refused to do -- call the police on these nice tenants who already explained it was their mistake and were 100% willing to pay! Ridiculous. Every few times we'd exchange support emails it seemed like some new person would take over and never read the past emails so I had to repeat the same stuff multiple time. Ultimately I ended up emailing the CEO after I found some blog post where he said he wanted to personally hear from everyone and anyone. He never replied but the problem magically got fixed soon thereafter. I fear the day I end up with really terrible hosts like you did because I have no faith AirBnb will actually be there for me. Looking forward to trying housetrip, there really need to be a solid alternative to AirBnb. ~~~ potatolicious This seems like a theme with pretty much all internet companies, big and small - undercut the competition by cutting corners on things that "don't matter", until they matter. Google for example has almost no way to reach customer service, even for their paid products. When it works it works great, when it doesn't God Help You. Ditto Uber/Lyft/other cab companies, where there seems to be no end of people who were put in seriously unsafe situations and were unable to get any attention to their issues until they blogged about it. Who knows how many cases we haven't heard of because they weren't able to get their concerns to the top of Reddit/HN/wherever. This sort of thing happens in any low-margin business. Not only is there not enough money to hire good customer service, but what little customer service exists is not empowered to make things right for the customer, because thin margins and $$$. It turns out that keeping spare rooms on standby, generous rescheduling/rebooking policies, and all the niceties we associate with hotels are powered by the fatter margins they enjoy. The big innovation we've made in the last few years is making low-margin low-rent business models seem boutique and high-end. ~~~ mistermann The older I get the more cynical I get, and the further I drift leftward politically in favor of more government regulation, the underlying reason I think being that generally speaking, most cultures (and especially "high achievers" within) are fundamentally dishonest - like teenagers, they often cannot be trusted with serious responsibility. They have highly potent skills, but they don't have the corresponding maturity or morality to safely wield those skills. And this goes not only for small startups, it is applicable across huge blue chip companies as well, the latest being VW (and now it appears other auto manufacturers). ~~~ dandare A guy from post communist country here: how is more government regulation going to solve anything? ~~~ mistermann By restricting what companies can and cannot do and forcing them to prove certain risks are _genuinely_ covered before coming in and "disrupting" (aka destroying) industries that have generally done a somewhat decent job of things for decades. I'm just getting tired of people advocating free market principles and proclaiming that industries will police themselves, and then turning around and lying and cheating, with next to no consequences. I'm saying this as a pretty extreme economic right wing person - today's conservatives bear little resemblance to traditional ones. ~~~ aianus > to prove certain risks are genuinely covered Why? I'm well aware of the risks of using AirBnB (or being a contractor instead of an employee or whatever) and _choose_ to take them on because I believe I come out ahead overall. Not everyone wants the nanny state watching out for them at every opportunity. ~~~ mistermann Not even reads Hacker News - feel free to link the location on AirBNB's website that informs regular people about the nature of things that can go wrong, and details on how they will handle that (or not, as the case may be). ~~~ mistermann *Typo: Not everyone reads Hacker News... ------ davidhariri I had a nightmare experience on vacation in Mexico that was word for word the same response from Airbnb. Because I took my wife and I out of the potentially dangerous rental, without first contacting Airbnb, they couldn't refund us anything. I followed up with evidence that the rental was unfit and unsafe with pictures, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I'm never using Airbnb again. Worst customer experience I've ever had. Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. Oh also, over the time you email their customer experience reps, they assign you a NEW customer rep each time so you have no relationship with whoever you talk to next during a conversation. Some people are understanding, others are a __holes. Such a terrible experience, overall. It 's a wonder they're as big as they are. ~~~ deveac _> Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability._ You did not leave a rating or review of your unfit rental on airbnb? ~~~ larrys So that's great but then you are doing part of the work that airbnb should be doing. ~~~ superuser2 >airbnb should be doing According to you. Paying in to something with zero or negative ratings on a reputation-based market always carries risk; it should be priced accordingly. ------ deveac _> Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all._ I don't know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn't even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting "no, it's cool, I know them"), and furthermore didn't even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred. It's nice that they were "all cool" with the host and decided to play musical buildings instead of contacting Airbnb right there, but when they did that, they went off the books and _severely limited Airbnb 's ability to quickly and effectively_ sort through the issue. A customer that didn't even book a room though the service had an issue and went with a "handshake" from the host to resolve it instead. Let's walk through the alternate scenario. Customer desiring a room actually books a room through AirBnB. Customer arrives and hosts tells them the apartment is no longer available. Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly. No driving around in a strange city to a place you've never set eyes on, and if you want to book another apartment with the host, you do it on the books. ~~~ Elessar Have you ever travelled to a foreign country where you don't speak the language? You really need to put yourself in the tourist's shoes. If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that's all I can do. You rely on their ability to communicate, and if they're being kind and doing their best to make your stay comfortable, then that's fantastic. What you're suggesting is that you're going to start making international calls with some website's support staff while you have luggage on the street, no place to stay, in a foreign city and completely on your own. You're also going to blow off the only person (the host) who cares at all about your situation. Are you kidding me? ~~~ mikeash I've traveled quite a bit, including to Barcelona. If you speak English (and this person clearly does) then "don't speak the language" is not an issue there, or indeed almost anywhere. If I book a place for a certain period, then I'm staying for that whole period. If the host suddenly changes their mind and tells me I have to move, no way. I'm contacting the booking agency and having them tell the host to get lost. If the booking agency doesn't help then I'm initiating a chargeback and finding a hotel. At no point is it reasonable to just pack up, hop into a complete stranger's car at their insistence, and be driven off to some place where they won't even tell you where you're going. Traveling _used to be_ pretty interesting when things went wrong. I got stranded in the Beijing airport once with only a rudimentary command of Mandarin because the airline canceled my flight and never told me, and I had to hunt down an airline employee, borrow a phone so I could contact people, etc. But now? Bring a smartphone and you're a few taps away from communicating with anybody you need. Host is being obstinate? Call AirBnB. Still doesn't work? Book a new place. You make a mistake taking a car with a stranger and he takes you to a place where you don't even know where it is? Open up a maps app and find out where you are. Can't talk to people? Google Translate to the rescue. You better believe that if the host refuses to honor our agreement and starts trying to jerk me around, I'm going to blow them off and sit with my luggage in the street while I resolve the problem myself. Relying on strangers to fix your problems, when said strangers have already demonstrated that they don't really care about you, is setting yourself up to be a victim. ~~~ yardie You place far too much faith in AirBnB's customer service line. I've called it before. I've sat outside the apartment I rented waiting on hold listening to the same 3 damn songs forever (hey did you know the music they've selected is produced by their employees?). AirBnB wasn't reachable when I needed them the most. Sitting on the curb with my wife and 4yo at 10PM without a place to go. Trying desperately to find any hotel with a vacancy at the height of tourist season in a small tourist town. That incident has soured my wife on me ever booking a sharing economy rental again. ~~~ mikeash I'm not placing _any_ faith in AirBnB. I laid out a chain of actions, one of which is contacting AirBnB, and the next link in the chain is what to do if that doesn't work. No doubt you can get stuck in a crappy situation here. But you certainly have choices that don't involve doing nothing while your host carts you off to some undisclosed location. ~~~ yardie I apologise. When I've retold the story other peoples' responses are simply "contact AirBnB" as if that wasn't the first thing we did. We eventually found a place for the night, resolved the issue with AirBnB (though weeks later), and promised to do a little more forethought into our next rental. ~~~ mikeash That's OK, and I'm glad you got your housing trouble figured out. AirBnB definitely _should_ be prepared to handle problems like this right away, but I can't say I'm too surprised that they don't. ------ protomyth This is why hotel regulations popped up in the first place. If you don't want the government to crack down, you really need to protect your customers. If this happened to the son or daughter of a US Senator (I know it happened in Spain, but kids do take trips) then I would expect a whole world of problems. ~~~ bachmeier Welcome to the lemons problem. Information problems are very real in the hotel industry. Most of the customers have limited information. Akerlof (husband of Fed chair Janet Yellen) got the Nobel Prize for starting the literature. No, I do not have plans to use Airbnb. It sounded like a really bad idea from the start. ~~~ aianus You're well-compensated for the risk you take on Airbnb, it's not like it costs the same as the Four Seasons. ~~~ icebraining And the risk is overrated - if the host seems dishonest or the place isn't as described/shown, you can still check-in to an hotel. I find it depressing how this will probably go away, and people like me who can't afford to pay for a stay at an hotel will just lose the option of taking the risk. Hurray for the infantilization of society! /s ~~~ mattdotc > if the host seems dishonest or the place isn't as described/shown, you can > still check-in to an hotel. When I am traveling - for business or pleasure - the last thing I want to do is scramble to figure out where I will sleep that night. I value my time too much, especially for a pleasure trip, to go through that kind of ordeal. Also, you can save money if you pay in advance for your hotel. You won't have time to even comparison shop if you're rushing at the very very last minute. So, I wouldn't say the risk is overrated, but instead that people can stomach different amount of risk. I like to be well prepared and have firm plans on my trips, but I know other friends will just book the first things they find and figure out what they're doing when they get there. ~~~ raisedbyninjas Prices for last minute bookings can also be discounted. Check out the mobile app Hotel Tonight. ~~~ dreaminvm Aside from using HT when they gave out free credits, their rates have been consistently more expensive than a comparable hotel on Priceline Express and Hotwire. ------ scottmcdot Just tonight, my mother checked into an Airbnb in Vienna, Austria. She sent me photos of the bed which did not have new sheets, the towels which were not fresh, a band aid on the floor and some rubbish bins full of cigarettes and ash. The apartment was overall pretty dirty. The host's contact phone number goes straight to message bank (I also tried many times) and the host is not answering emails. In this situation, what do you do? She's travelling alone and in her 50s and as you can imagine, she's pretty upset. I decided to get her a hotel and called her an Uber. I then called Airbnb and they said they will attempt to contact the host and they will get back to us. She wouldn't know what to do without me and if I weren't available, she'd probably end up wandering the streets at night looking for a hotel because she'd be too upset to return to the Airbnb place. I think for now, I will stop recommending Airbnb. ~~~ mikeash Not defending the host's actions or AirBnB in any way here, but if you're not capable of getting a hotel on your own, then you probably shouldn't be traveling to foreign countries alone. Edit: well, that was unpopular. Am I wrong, or just saying it inartfully? ~~~ josefresco I'm 34, capable as the next guy and would probably have difficulty re-booking a room, in a foreign country while also being "homeless". In fact, during summer months I'd have difficulty booking a room 5 min from my house last minute. ~~~ scottmcdot I agree. It was 5pm and I had my laptop in front of me so I could quickly call hotels in the area to see if they were available. By around the 8th ok-looking hotel, I had found one that had a room available. This would be very difficult for my mother on her slow iPhone 3GS. ~~~ secabeen Interesting point. I think I'll be sure to carry a paper travel guide (Lonely Planet, etc.) when travelling internationally just for the hotel reviews and phone numbers in case of problems. 10 years ago, when travelling internationally, my first step when arriving in a city was to park myself at a payphone in the train station and start calling places. ------ outside1234 Its equally bad as a host. I have a place that rents very well in the summer (its near the Ocean) and a group of people showed up, didn't like it for whatever reason, and AirBNB canceled the reservation with no penalty despite there being a super clear cancelation policy in place. No recourse (customer service blew me off: "sorry, renter didn't like the bed."), no way to rent it for a week on that short of notice, I lose $1000. Really shitty experience - I prioritize Holiday Lettings now. ~~~ ghaff But what _should_ Airbnb (or any company managing rentals) do under that circumstance? The renter is doing the equivalent of a return for "item not as described." I'm perfectly willing to believe that this renter had some expectation or requirement that to your mind or mine was totally unreasonable. Or maybe they found a better deal nearby at the last moment. But there's no real way an Airbnb can start investigating the firmness of beds or other property details. The only alternative is to tilt the other way and basically make it impossible for renters to get a refund barring all but the most obviously mis-advertised rentals. ~~~ josefresco Day of arrival refunds don't work for any industry that relies on reservations, appointments, or rigid scheduling. It doesn't need to be "impossible" to get a refund, but being able to show up and say "no thanks" (for seemingly any reason) when the result is the business losing substantial revenue - is a bad situation for all. ~~~ ghaff Well, it often does with hotels up to 6pm or so if guaranteed with a credit card. My point is that there is a very wide variance in properties. While some walkaways will be for trivial or non-existent reasons in the minds of an average person, others will be for much more substantial reasons. Property ratings aside, it's really hard for the broker (Airbnb) to distinguish those except in the most extreme cases. As a result, you probably need a sensible default but that default is going to inherently favor either those renting or those renting out the property in the case of a dispute. ~~~ josefresco "hotels up to 6pm" maybe big city, high volume hotels which have no problem re-booking. For smaller accommodation businesses with a limited stock, 24-48 hours is standard. ------ leoedin This is a fundamental problem with online markets of any kind. There was a period in the early 2000's when "eBay SUCKS" type websites would surface regularly from angry users. But then, as now, you see both kinds of story. Ones like this one, where the seller / renter was anywhere from an outright fraud to unscrupulous, but also the other way - stories of buyers who "returned" goods and got refunds, only for the returned item turning out to be fake / faulty / nonexistent. I'm sure AirBnB have equally large problems with people who have an uneventful stay, leave and immediately lodge a complaint against the host. It sounds like AirBnB could probably be nicer about this, but equally the author of this post _did_ violate their terms of service (which aren't unreasonable - letting people book for other people opens the door to agents and unscrupulous 3rd parties who charge a fee without adding value). It would be interesting to see the perspective of AirBnB support. I wonder how many possibly fraudulent refund claims they deal with on a daily basis? ------ archagon Wow, what a nightmare. I'd like to think that they'd have my back in this kind of situation, but I guess not. Personally, though, I've stayed in almost 40 different European Airbnb rentals over the past year and didn't have any problems. It's not risk-free, but it's certainly better than trawling through the local equivalent of Craigslist. (Granted, I mostly stayed with people renting out a spare room, so there was probably less of a chance of them being terrible or crazy.) As with all booking services, I always engaged my sketchiness radar before booking. Does the host sound conversational in their listing? Do the photos have the Airbnb official photographer seal? (Or do they have lots of grainy photos interspersed with unrelated photos of attractions in the city?) Do they have a fleshed out profile with photos? Reviews? References? What do they sound like when I message them? Even on a supposedly safe booking service like Airbnb, it's important to assume that each listing is sketchy until proven otherwise. You can usually tell if a host has good intentions by taking these things into consideration. ~~~ frandroid Renting a spare room is a key differentiator. All these bad experiences in the thread here have one thing in common: they're all for a whole suite. That's basically renting from all these real estate tycoon wannabes. ~~~ pavornyoh @Fandroid, I don't know about that analysis. My experiences have been good and bad. I rented a spare room and was kept up all night by the people in the next room if you know what I mean ..:) ------ grishas Several months ago, members of my team at work booked various Airbnbs for a large conference in San Francisco. We booked early to get a better deal, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Airbnb hosts didn't know the conference was coming up (or was that big). As we got closer to the conference time, pretty much all of us had our stays canceled on us by the hosts. We were then forced to rebook at significantly higher rates. In some instances, even THESE got canceled by the hosts. We're 99% sure that the hosts were given better offers and made the deals privately. Having used Airbnb a few times now, I'm definitely seeing the benefits of hotels for peace of mind. ~~~ jenno If you cancel on a guest as a host, Airbnb _heavily_ penalizes your listings. They will be outranked by pretty much every other listing for at least a couple of months. (It happened to me and many other hosts I know.) ------ patja Sounds like they may have gotten into the tough space where choices were few and you take a Hobson's choice and get burned. I've learned with Airbnb to be disciplined about ignoring any unreviewed listings and really only looking at listings that have at least 15 reviews over at least a year. It is clear that there are outright scammers using the site, as well as perhaps the well meaning but incompetent or those who play a little fast and loose, to be generous. I almost booked a place in London for a Christmas stay 4 months out before I discovered through my own sleuthing that 100% of the listing photos were from a real estate listing for the flat and it was for sale. ------ kazinator Regarding the comments below the blog post, what is the point of countering him with anecdotes of good Airbnb experiences? Good experiences don't reveal anything about Airbnb itself, because the dispute mechanism isn't invoked; they are simply the result of a good host transacting with good guests (incidentally, by way of Airbnb). That's like saying, "I've had only good experiences with ABC Insurance; their premiums are low, the coverage is great and their friendly staff answered all my questions." (Wonderful; but did you ever try to collect on a claim?) Only reports of experiences of invoking _the critical use-case_ are meaningful and relevant. A black spot in that area obliterates a thousand glowing reports about anything else. ------ xmlblog I will never use Airbnb again, either. Booked a flat in London that looked clean in the pictures, but was disgusting when we got there. Also wound up paying walk-in rates at a Holiday Inn (which were astronomical, but at least the room was immaculate and modern). Fortunately, I always book travel with my American Express card—and _they_ sure know how to handle disputed charges. ------ aianus You have completely the wrong expectation of how Airbnb works. The hosts are randoms and Airbnb has no way to deliver a consistent quality experience like a hotel. Airbnb is like eBay, not Amazon. You need to realize that when you get the last apartment in a city at conference-time (almost certainly not a superhost with good reviews), you're obviously taking a big gamble that it doesn't work out in order to save a few bucks. > so we had to shell out 9 nights of walk-in rate hotel fees So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river. ~~~ bachmeier > So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would > have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river. Worst case scenario for this story is that the driver takes them out of town, shoots them, and dumps their bodies into a river. ~~~ phaemon This is Spain we're talking about. It has a homicide rate about one sixth of the USA. It's a safe western European country. ------ autobahn Seems like a common theme in "sharing economy" companies - start off with a great concept and great execution, but once they become popular, some part of them just falls apart. For uber, it's the way they treat their drivers. The churn is incredible. But as long as they continue to offer cheap rides and can lure new drivers in with empty promises, they'll continue to exist. ~~~ brianwawok A sharing economy works when you have a lot of like minded people in the same social circle. Once you invite the masses and investors, you lose what made it work... ~~~ drzaiusapelord How can a driver be in the same social circle as a well off professional? At the end of the day, very few industries are peers between worker and client. ~~~ brianwawok Yah right... they can't. Though the first drivers in Chicago were Hipster Musicans, which were fun.. similar culture to yuppie coders. But over time, it has moved to more and more recent immigrants who do not speak English as a first language. ------ chopete My ongoing first time experience forced me to create this basic question set. The realization is airbnb is no different from craigslist. There are no minimum standards/rules. There are awesome deals out there. Only people with a good question set end up choosing a better deal and the rest get stuck with bad deals. Room 1\. Room size (width x length in ft) 2\. What lighting do you have?. Or you have only one table lamp? 3\. Is there a table? 4\. Do you provide a towel? 5\. Send me a picture of bed size and also the measurements. (width x length in ft) Please don't just say queen or king. I need the width and length. I have seen hosts mention the sizes incorrectly. 6\. Do your personal belongins stay in the room?. Any don't touch belongings? 7\. Does the room have a knob(inside) for privacy? 8\. Is there a fan? 9\. Total house built up area in square footage? (excluding garage) Sharing 1\. How many airbnb guests stay there? 2\. How many guests I share the rest room with? 3\. Is there space in the fridge for me?. How much (approx)? 4\. What is the typical temperature maintained in the house?. Are there guests with a requirement to keep the room warm despite me sweating? Cleaning 1\. What is the cleaning schedule for house?. 1\. What is the cleaning schedule for rest rooms?. 2\. Who do we call if the shared rest room is soiled?. Location 1\. Are there any loud sounds/noises from surroundings/roads at night? ~~~ archagon I quickly learned while traveling over the winter that my #1 question was: do you have heating?! Apparently some people get by in 0 degree weather without it somehow! ------ IanDrake I'm not trying to blame the victim here, but rule of thumb...never use AirBnB outside your own country and that goes double for Spain[1]. 1) - Go to google, type in "AirBnB Spain", then look at the auto complete. ~~~ robbyking I'm an American, and I used AirBNB a number of times in Italy this past spring. I only booked rooms with 4.5/5.0 ratings, and only from hosts who have hundreds -- or at least dozens -- of positive reviews. My experience could not have been better. ~~~ archagon All my Italian hosts were lovely! ------ hoopism Customer service is a joke. I posted this on HN about a year ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200) They turned me from being an advocate for their service to never wanting to use their service again. I travel frequently with kids, we use alternatives now. ------ nikanj This July, I went on a weekend trip to Victoria with my parents who I see two or three times a year. About an hour before we should have arrived at the accommodation, our hosts calls me and tells us his son needs the place so he needs me to log on airbnb and cancel our reservation. He was _very_ persistent and kept calling me and leaving messages, despite me telling him he needs to tell airbnb himself. I guess he wanted us to take the heat for cancellation instead. I ended up spending most of my day communicating with airbnb, hotels and motels. Around 8pm I managed to score the last two hotel rooms in the city, and could finally join the rest of the family. Airbnb did pay the difference between the hotel and our original reservation, but I still lost an entire day with my family. Nowadays I only make airbnb reservations in big cities where coming up with on-the-spot backup is easy. ------ brianwawok When I travel I don't have time for dealing with this crap. Hence, I overpay for hotels. Not foolproof by any means, but the big chains will generally be pretty legit and have the room you ask when you get there. ~~~ greg_harvey I guess this is what I learned last week! :-( ------ whiddershins I must say, anecdotally, I have friends who have had similar, very scary, air bnb experiences, even in California. I stayed in an Air BNB in Baltimore with a dog that genuinely tried to bite me. I'm great with dogs, this one was crazy. And my girlfriend and I had a similar very uncomfortable experience in Rome, being moved from place to place and having our rooms double-booked ... I can't remember whether that particular reservation was booked through Air BNB or not, but the feeling is very unsettling not to mention a time and money drain. I think the blog post is spot on, in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter. Of course property damage to the host is a concern, but it can be seriously scary to be stuck somewhere strange feeling unsafe and with nowhere to go. Compare to Uber. With Uber, if a driver gets many negative ratings, they are booted. Yet there are still many many drivers available here in NYC. I've talked with drivers, and they expressed a lot of concern about their ratings and how they are perceived. Air BNB is failing to create a culture of accountability, and failing to step in quickly to make things better for people who use their marketplace. If at all possible, I think they should at least do more to address the edge cases. Unhappy, scared, customers are not going to use the service. I love Air BNB, they are not dead to me, but if they don't address this well I am afraid competition or regulation might. ~~~ cwilkes _in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter._ I tend to think of the people that have to live next to this modern day flophouse. They didn't buy a space in a hotel, they didn't expect random people to come in at all times of the day. ------ ermintrude I had a bad stay with airbnb. I can't be bothered to repost the whole situation but their customer service was fucking shit. ~~~ mkw5053 Same here. They still owe me $500 (which they claimed in emails) and have since completely stopped responding to any emails. ------ matthewcanty Shame there are no negative reviews on his apartment to cement this all together. I think I'm right in thinking that both parties must review one another before it is published. Therefore why would he ever review your negative experience. ~~~ spatten If you both review, then the reviews show up immediately. If only one of you reviews, then the review shows up after a waiting period (I think it's ~2 weeks). So presumably the negative review will show up soon. ------ calbear81 As a host themselves, they afforded the other host too much of a courtesy before reporting a bait and switch to AirBnB and letting them get involved. Getting the AirBnB team involved is more about leverage as the host doesn't want to get booted from the platform so they are more likely to not push you around taking you from apartment to apartment. Also, what was the reputation and reviews on the host used? ------ wehadfun Unless you are 21 and looking for an adventure use Hyatt, Hilton, ... when dealing with foreign countries especially if you don't speak the local language. ~~~ ghaff Eh. I'm no particular Airbnb enthusiast--indeed, I've never used it. However, I have stayed at any of a number of non-chain places around the world from the large to the tiny and I've rarely had a terrible experience. (And some of my worst hotel experience were at large chains.) Especially for business travel, I do like a degree of predictability but that doesn't mean I feel a desire to restrict my travel to where I can stay in business hotels. ~~~ mfringel I think it's more about "governed by local hotel regulations." ~~~ ghaff That's not what the parent wrote though. He named a couple of large international chains. (Of course "local hotel regulations" may also not amount to much in some places I've stayed but that goes with traveling.) ------ Beltiras I just booked at AirBnB for the third time for an upcoming conference. The two previous times were a very good experience for me. All three times I'm getting prices way below alternative lodgings. I do take care to research the places and make sure to only use well reviewed hosts. I think that rather than make a dodgy AirBnB booking I'd pay more. I've booked hotel rooms that turned out to be rather shitty. This is a horror story to be sure. I think AirBnB dropped the ball but I can see their options narrow since the customer didn't complain immediately. They should kick the host regardless. ------ ampersandy The root of these bad host stories seem to be that the guests arrive and don't immediately contact Airbnb about issues with the rental. Because of this, Airbnb just denies any liability and puts the blame on the renters instead of the host. This seems trivial to solve -- Airbnb should make check-ins a mandatory part of all stays, and any issues with the accommodations would obviously be included in this initial check-in. There would be no chance for a host to move you across Barcelona before realizing you've been totally screwed or before Airbnb starts denying any and all responsibility for the problem. ~~~ patd I've had an issue with Airbnb this summer. I contacted them within the first 24 hours (as it's the rule to get a refund) and contacted the host exclusively through Airbnb so there would be a trace. They told me that I should have left more chance to the host to fix the issue (I left the place after 20 hours and tried to get ahold of the host multiple times). They never fully refunded me even after countless mails and calls where I quoted their own terms and conditions to prove that they needed to refund me. In the end, the customer service told me that "refund" does not mean "a total refund" but whatever they're willing to give. The customer service lady was very nice but it seemed like her hands were tied and she was not allowed to just fully refund me. I'll never use them in the future. ------ malyk Just because this thread is filled with negativity... My wife and I have stayed in a bunch of airbnb's (Aptos CA, Oregon House CA, Portland OR, Palo Alto, CA, San Diego CA, Princeville & Kapa'a HI, Seville & Barcelona (Las Ramblas) Spain, Venice & Florence & Rome Italy, and maybe another one or two that I'm forgetting) and the experience has been well above average every single time and every one of them were cheaper than the hotel alternatives. No idea what we're doing differently, but we meticulously look through reviews and make sure we exchange a few messages with each host before we book. ------ bouyoul420 This happens with registered hotels and Expedia too. I had to be in Paris for a few days a couple of years ago so I chose a nice hotel on Expedia, and not very expensive as well. However, when I showed up, the hotel had no trace of the reservation. The manager didn't want to call Expedia because it would not change anything (no space left, he claimed). Instead, he very nicely called another hotel to find space for me. I even thanked him... However, the other hotel was the shittiest hotel I have ever stayed at and would probably not have survived a listing on the Internet. The manager there was crazy and the hotel was so bad they couldn't even manage to track which rooms were occupied by guests. And since it was a walk-in, I paid super high rates. While staying at that hotel, I heard multiple guests with the same story as me so it was not an isolated technical problem on the part of the local hotels (seems more than one hotel was in on it). When I complained to Expedia, it turned out the first hotel had cancelled the reservation right before I showed up so no foul for them (despite my never being told about it before showing up at the hotel). Expedia gave me a voucher in the end but the listing for that hotel stayed on the site. ~~~ greg_harvey Yup, Expedia are also terrible. I blacklisted them some years ago when they had a hotel listed as 100m from the centre of Santiago De Compostela (also in Spain) when it was actually 10km from the centre! Bit of a difference. I don't mind a mistake, but Expedia basically tried to deny all responsibility and blame the hotel. Had a real scrap to get a refund. ------ 1024core AirBnB's customer service is undergoing growing pains. We rented a place via AirBnB that seemed to have good reviews. Upon checking in, as soon as the lights were turned off, cockroaches came out and were crawling over us! So at 3AM I called AirBnB and wanted to get out. They helped me find another place, but I could not leave a review of the previous place! No wonder they had such good reviews! It defeats the purpose of a review if you can't leave really bad ones. ------ Quanticles It looks like Airbnb is focused on keeping their costs low instead of keeping their quality up. That's a good short-term strategy........ ------ brador This is the Groupon/Kickstarter/Ebay problem. Everything is awesome until something goes wrong. Then the user leaves forever, and tells their friends. Trust is broken. Eventually the loses mount and the company crumbles from bad press. Amazon fixes this with 10/10 customer service. The only known solution. ~~~ jprince I once had a terrible experience with their kindles. They shipped me one that was a dud, and when the screen went haywire in the first few days I called and they admitted that this batch had issues. Unfortunately, they told me, I would have to shell out 100$ for a new one, even though it was their fault. Even Amazon screws up royally, too. I bought a Nook and never looked back, and haven't bought a book from Amazon since. ------ cirenehc I've had some horrible experience with Airbnb in LA. One place has close to perfect reviews (the lowest scored category is 8/10 in cleanliness), but the place is dirtier than a gas station's bathroom (smelly sheets, moldy showers, dirty old floor and squeaky bed). I've never met the host in person and he ran this thing like a refugee camp; there are about 50 people living in that (fairly large) complex and no one seemed happy. I went back to hotels/hostels after that experience. ------ vchamakkala I think there are a handful of hosts that do not care about their guest' experience and instead are mostly focused on the financial gain of renting out their place. That being said, I'm an airbnb host who has rented out my 2nd bedroom in nyc to some of the most amazing individuals I've ever met, and many of them are some of my best friends now. It really depends on the host. And I think that 90% are fantastic. ------ unKlever A sample size of n=1 is an anecdote not data. Totally horrible experience but seemed to hinge on a particularly bad actor with knowledge of how best to exploit customers and airbnb. It is pretty shitty, I hope they make it right because it sounds like you acted in good faith, but this seems like a really complicated edge case. I had a similar experience this week with Dashlane (a password mgnt app) where i installed it and it corrupted >70 passwords locking me out of vital accounts. This is why my HN UN is green for instance. Customer support was totally shit for a while but I tweeted them and they responded and actually read my responses. I ended up losing all the data but they[0] _eventually_ provided some time to look into the issue deeper as well as a free 12 month account. Should they have helped me better up front, when the data may still have been recoverable? I think NO, but want to say yes. I had a free account and didnt had non-traditional settings. So while i would gladly trade the free account for my credentials back I bear some responsibility. I AM NOT INDICATING YOU(or the writer) ARE RESPONSIBLE. My point is that some situations are really shitty and are not indicative of the experience/views of an organization. If this occurs only very rarely, conpanies can still have a great business and unfortunately some people will be casualties to circumstance [0]xavier, if you are reading this. Thanks for the account credit and making things right, Cheers! ~~~ greg_harvey Right, but an organisation is only as good as its response when something goes wrong, no? And Airbnb's response was... well... ------ iamleppert Serves you right for owning a Drupal IT Consultancy. ------ damian2000 My opinion is that when you're using something like AirBnB, you can't expect hotel level service when things go wrong... instead of making last minute decisions, research the place a bit - look through the comments, start up a thread of conversation with the host to make sure they can communicate in your language... ------ MaxScheiber First, sorry to hear about your experience. I wonder if you would have any luck escalating this to Chesky, Gebbia, et al. The Airbnb founding team really seems to take pg's advice on start-ups seriously. I'm sure that they're huge proponents of delighting their users, which your experience obviously isn't an example of. ~~~ s73v3r Doesn't sound like it, otherwise they'd prioritize customer service, and we wouldn't be heading as many of these stories. ------ jbverschoor Had a very bad experience with airbb support too.. Appartment was digusting and not as advertised. airbnb refused to help. 1500 euro gone, as we moved to something else. I've had a bit too many bad experiences with the offerings of hosts and service of airbnb. I hope this unicorn will die, and will be replaced by something proper ------ pbreit Sounds like a horrific experience but unfortunately, it's hard to assign much credibility to the OP. Sounds very difficult to deal with. Like, no, a random photo from a balcony in no way proves that you weren't staying somewhere else. ~~~ josefresco That fact that they were even asked to provide "proof" is insane on so many levels. ~~~ pbreit Yeah, it's comically insane that a company like that would not bend over backwards to appease its customers. First, make sure travelers have a place to stay. Second, treat all parties as innocent (unless it's chronic). Third, try to sort out what happened in an empathetic manner. ------ debacle We had good luck with Airbnb in the past, but only because of good (great) hosts. I have a feeling therein lies the rub - Airbnb's business model assumes a good host and a good guest, and when that falls short everything falls apart. ------ dmitrygr One word: chargeback Let AirBnB explain their idiotic policies to Amex/Visa/MC ------ renderfox Not sure a bad Yelp review is really HN worthy... ------ LePetitDev On a related note, Drupal is dead to me. ------ mschuster91 This, my friends, is why regulation does make sense. Unregulated markets end up fucking people over. ~~~ josefresco No too much! just enough. ------ suyash Airbnb has the worst customer service, no one to respond emails etc. ------ pavornyoh What a story. A bit scary especially in a foreign country. ------ spikels This is an attempt to get a refund from AirBnB, right? Has HN become a back channel customer service platform for YC companies? Unfortunately since it seems to work so well. I expect we will see more of this. ~~~ greg_harvey Nope, it isn't. I didn't post it on HN. I didn't even have a HN account until I decided to reply to a few comments (including this one). This is simply someone so annoyed and frustrated with Airbnb's apparent indifference to bad hosts they decided to blog it and tweet the blog post. Everything else was beyond my control. And actually, the money is a side point. It was company account, meh, who cares? The REAL point is there's someone gaming Airbnb, they know this, but they're not removing this person from their listings. That's what really pees me off. ------ randyrand He instant booked without reading the reviews? Reviews are so important on transactions like these. Basic interneting rules. ~~~ greg_harvey Nope. "He" (me) read the reviews. They were OK. I can only assume the user has only recently started using (gaming?) the Instant Book feature, because we're the apparently the first to report a "bait and switch", but I doubt we'll be the last. ------ warfangle Hotel regulations are awful! ------ notlisted Hmmm. I won't repeat my qualms with AirBnB. I'm afraid that this comment will get downvoted/banned in a bit, and like any negative post/discussion about AirBnB, the discussion will mysteriously disappear from the front page… ~~~ icebraining Do you have any links to those previous discussions? ~~~ notlisted I don't want to tick anyone off here, I enjoy HN, and have for a long time (over 6 years). Perhaps I don't understand the ranking, but more than once active discussions just went away, with low-vote/low-interaction topics replacing them. I only see articles in my comment history from over a year ago. Search here isn't great, e.g. I can't find the article where PG himself commented on something I said. Here's a few where I participated [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687) In this one I reacted to someone else with the same impression [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889) I asked for clarification on the policy, instead I got a downvote. Since that time, I'm keeping quiet. ~~~ dang I assume you mean [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357)? I appreciate that you don't want to "tick anyone off here", and you haven't, but you have said some things that aren't true. I think I've answered most of them at [1], but there's at least one other. It isn't true that we single anti-Airbnb stories out. We don't treat them any other way than comparable stories about something else. I think there's a general phenomenon affecting this. Once startups become hyper-successful, there's a noticeable HN backlash against them. Perhaps this is because they're no longer the underdog. Airbnb and Uber ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165)) are clearly in this category, and we've noticed others. The trouble with such backlashes is that the discussions they lead to are super repetitive. Even more than the indignation, it's the repetitiveness that makes them unsuitable for HN. 1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239) ------ RomanPushkin For me it's the same as hotels, but with less service. I've relocated to SFBA a year ago, and it was cheaper to rent Extended Stay America rather than AirBnB with weird rules. We had a kid, and one guy was mentioning "no dogs or kids" in his AD. That's ridiculous! DOGS OR KIDS! O-k-a-y. Will never never never use AirBnB again. ~~~ ghaff Any number of bed & breakfasts and other small properties that aren't Airbnb are "no kids." And, of course, the majority of hotels are no dogs. ~~~ lotsofcows I think he's complaining about the manner of writing. It's very reminiscent of "No dogs, blacks or mexicans". ------ pi-err TL;DR: friends had a bad experience once with Airbnb, will not use again. This is not about Airbnb as a business strategy or work place or UX etc. Speaking of UX, I do find that Airbnb does a pretty good job at managing expectations and making sure people find their fit (I don't have any figure though). ~~~ s73v3r It is entirely about AirBnB's UX. Going to the rental is the largest part of their UX. If that's a bad experience, why would anyone want to try it again.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Free transportation for life - prezjordan https://medium.com/we-live-in-the-future/32eeaacc207a ====== droithomme > 1\. Supercharging stations cost very little to install False. > 2\. They are solar powered False. The ones with solar paneled roofs do produce electricity which is sold to the electric company at an inflated rate of 26-32 cents a kWh, the station then buys normally produced electricity back at normal rates of 8-12 cents a kWh. The electricity produced is nowhere near enough to maintain a four car charging station that is running 85kWh 90 minute long recharges or 40kWh 30 minute long recharges on 4 cars throughout the day, this is a simple matter of physics, area, and solar technology. > 3\. They can dump 150 miles of drive time into your car in an hour True. ~~~ julian37 _3\. They can dump 150 miles of drive time into your car in an hour_ Which works out to what, one hour of idling at the station for every two hours of driving, making your trip roughly 50% longer compared to a gasoline car? We need much better batteries and/or better charging technology for this to become attractive. Graphene-based batteries are a promising candidate: <https://vimeo.com/51873011> (For the record, I think Tesla and their Supercharging stations are awesome, just wondering why the author would list this ridiculously long stay at the charging station as a "mind blowing" feature.) (And yes, battery swapping instead of recharging would also solve the problem.) ------ aqme28 Completely ignores the cost of the car, which is elevated to pay for the charging stations. Especially notable is this part: _"If you make a middle-class salary of, say, $40k to $60k after tax in the USA, you're spending 5% to 15% of it on gas."_ If you make a middle-class salary of $40k to $60k, you probably aren't buying a Model S. ~~~ veemjeem Well, the Tesla S is essentially their first consumer electric car. It's like buying the first laptop Apple produced (Powerbook 100) which costs around $6000 in today's dollars. ------ saosebastiao Oh, so we have been hoodwinked, duped, and bamboozled by the mysterious "political industrial complex" huh? All this time, electric vehicles have been perfectly viable and competitive with internal combustion? It is all just a big conspiracy? That is a perfectly interesting opinion...but it also happens to be one that will make me disregard any further opinions you might have. ------ gcb0 i can pay $20k for a car (actually driving one that i paid $2k, but i will leave that edge case out). then i can use $10k of gas a year. maybe will have $10k year of repairs. and it is _certain_ and proven for ages. now, tesla. I have to pay $60~80k... not depending on leather or comfort, but how far I have to drive! then there's the fact that there's still not know pricing model for charging stations. it's all fine now that the costs of the cars are paying for it. but what will happen next year if Kia starts to make electrics. do you really think Elon will continue to let everyone uses their power stations? will he make it tesla only (and ultimately failing his model as nobody will be able to charge easily as every company will do the same) or will he start to charge for it? Then there's the fact that nobody knows if those cars will last the same as my $20k 2nd hand cars. How much will you spend on battery over 10years? may be zero. may be another $60k. so, option A) $20k upfront, $10~20k an year for gas/repairs. option B) 60~80k upfront, 0 to $80k an year. yeah, having $0/year would pay off option B in 4years, but it's not certain. The fact that i never spent one dollar in Vegas will make me stick to option A for now. ~~~ RansomJac They're currently Tesla only... ------ jstalin So much pessimism here. Although I can't afford a Tesla S, I thank god for those who can. They are the early adopters that make the market for future models that surely will be cheaper, either from Tesla or another company. Tesla is on to an awesome idea and so far it's an exciting execution. If only they could get the price for a supercharge-capable car down to $30k, then I'd be happy to get one. ------ jaggederest Battery pack replacements are going to be the cost of ownership of electric cars. With as extensive a pack of batteries as they have, it'll be very expensive. Lithium ions discharged at least every other day only last ~5 years. ------ JumpCrisscross I wondered what the present value of people's expected gas expenses are, i.e. if you told a random American you'd give them free gas until the end of their days (given they consume gas at the author's rate), how much would you have to set aside today into a safe asset to cover the future expense? TL;DR about $100 000, without hedging longevity and fuel price volatility risks. The median U.S. age in 2011 was 37.3 years [1]. Thus, the median year of birth was 1973 and cohort life expectancy 74.7 years for men and 79.5 years for women, or 77 years on average [2]. Let's assume 39.8 (best 29.8; worst 49.8) years. Let's assume the author's $250/month petrol expense. U.S. city petrol prices have increased at an average (standard deviation; CAGR) of 5.5% (19 percentage points; 3.2%) from 1980 to 2012 [3]. Let's use that (best -13.5%, 0%; 3.2%; worst 24.5%) as our expected gasoline inflation rate. Linearly extrapolating today's 10y30y [4] to 40y we get a crude discount rate of 3.8% (best 3.2%; worst 4%). Thus, those cash flows are worth $167 934 today, though this varies from $16 765 for the best case, $56 038 for the best case assuming flat nominal petrol prices, $106 732 for the base case with CAGR, and $218 031 for the worst case assuming 5.5% petrol inflation (using the worst gave a nonsense result for nominal gas prices). [1] [http://www.census.gov/popest/data/national/asrh/2011/tables/...](http://www.census.gov/popest/data/national/asrh/2011/tables/NC- EST2011-01.xls) [2] [http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_7_1970.ht...](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Tbl_7_1970.html) [3] BLS APU00007471A (U.S. city average, gasoline, all types, per gallon/3.785 liters) [4] <http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Bonds> ------ _mulder_ Interesting article but too many holes to hold much weight. In no particular order.. You only don't pay for the charging electricity when using a supercharging station. If 'free' travel involves spending an hour a day at a service station waiting for the car to charge, then it doesn't seem quite so free! It would be more convenient to charge overnight at home but then you pay for this energy. A minor point, but name any consumer device made in 1985 still receiving regular updates, software or hardware. Finally, Selling a vehicle that only needs replacing every 50 years isn't going to be much of a business plan. Negativity aside, I think its a great idea. I rarely drive more than 60 miles a day and I'd love to have an electric car. I'd even hook it up to some solar panels and I'm sure the economics would be comparable to a fuel car. If only the cars were a shade cheaper. ~~~ saraid216 > Selling a vehicle that only needs replacing every 50 years isn't going to be > much of a business plan. It makes me sad that this is true. Is this really the only place we can go now? We have to produce crappy product in order to artificially create turnover so that income remains steady? It makes me hate capitalism. ~~~ HeyLaughingBoy Are you serious? Your definition of a crappy car is one that doesn't last 50 years? I've heard of high standards, but really... ~~~ saraid216 It's a problem in virtually all industries. Lasting solutions simply aren't a good business model. ~~~ HeyLaughingBoy That's odd. Last I heard, farm and construction equipment manufacturers were doing a great business selling stuff that stood up to decades of hard work. Of course, they cost multiples of what a cheap family car (itself capable of a decade+ of use with proper maintenance) does, but that's a minor issue. And there are those annoying over-the-road trucks that easily rack up well over 1,000,000 miles and keep going. But it's a crappy business model, so they should all be out of business tomorrow! Of course you can build a car that will last 50 years. The problem is that very few people would be willing to pay the price, so no one bothers making them. FWIW, I have a garden tractor in my garage that's coming up on 30 years old and I expect to get at least another 10 years out of it. ~~~ saraid216 > The problem is that very few people would be willing to pay the price, so no > one bothers making them. Do you have any idea why this is? ------ alberich I think I'm missing something. How's that you'll be driving "for free" ? Someone has to pay for the energy the cars will be spending.The cars need maintenance. The car will be the "fastest, sexyest" for how long? There is no free lunch. And Mr. Musk is not trying to give humanity free drive for life... he's just trying to make money. He is just trying to make his stuff popular so he can sell more of it and make more money. It's just business. ~~~ lox The article claims that the supercharging stations are solar. The whole point of the article is about independence from oil, if you ignore the hyperbolic title. Jason isn't saying Tesla isn't out to make money, simply that they are out to make money from great cars, rather than the oil industry. I'm still skeptical that the charging stations will scale up to a national scale, but I admire Musk trying. ~~~ elemeno As another comment on here points out, the power produced from the solar panels is nowhere near enough to power the charging station. At best, it helps them offset the costs slightly due to the difference between the price they sell the (solar) power to the grid, and the price they pay for power from the grid - there's a 18-20 cent/kWh difference in their favour. ~~~ alberich So, actually the tax payers are paying for the "free" ride :) ------ jbuzbee Free transportation for life? Sounds good, but what about maintenance such as battery replacement, tire replacement, windshield, fluids, plus insurance, tolls, parking etc. May not be as expensive as fuel, but there's no such thing as a free-ride ~~~ maxmcd Exactly, and during those 3-4 decades that the car is around, you have to replace the battery pack 3-4 times. I'm all for EV's and the apparently impressive quality of this specific car, but it would be nice to see a more accurate cost benefit analysis. ~~~ kux Battery replacements are around 10k/decade[1]. Quite a bit less than the 30k/decade estimated petrol specific costs provided by the author. 1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Battery> ~~~ greenyoda Your break-even point depends a lot on how much you drive each year. I drive about 3000 miles a year (primarily to get to mass transit) and my car gets about 25 mpg in local driving, using 120 gallons of gas a year. At around $4 per gallon, that's only $480 a year or $4800 per decade. My car is 12 years old, so I'd expect a car bought this year to be more efficient. ------ malbs Once everyone is driving a Tesla, and filling up for "free", where do the taxes come from to pay for the infrastructure? In Australia, the high price of fuel comes because the government puts something like a 50+% tax on it. Most people (incorrectly) assume that your car registration pays for infrastructure dev/maint, but car registration just pays for insurance/payouts for car crashes, and running of the registration system. Most of themoney used to build and maintain roads, highways, etc, comes from the fuel tax. If we transfer to a new form of fuel that is supposedly free as this article suggests, where does the aus government look to get the money to pay for the roads? ------ TamDenholm Just one minor comment, he used to spend $250 a month on gas, i'm amazed, thats absolutely nothing. Here in the UK it costs me £100GBP to fill my tank with diesel, which lasts about 10 days, granted i drive a fair bit, but £300 a month is $465 USD. So i hear ye, bring the electric cars and their super charging stations over here, i'll deal with the minor inconvenience of waiting an hour for a charge, which i personally think is a temporary problem. In the mean time, i'm planning to see how viable making my own biodiesel is. ~~~ TamDenholm Just because i was curious, i did a quick google: [1] Cheapest gas in California is $3.71 a gallon. [2] Cheapest petrol in UK is £1.32 a litre (rounded) 100 litre fill up in UK is £132 or $204.88 100 litre fill up in Cali is £97.89 or $124.43 [1] http://www.californiagasprices.com/ [2] http://www.petrolprices.com/ ------ pedalpete Great read, but a bit too much blowing sunshine. The idea of 'free' energy for purchasing a car which will last significantly longer than your current car could have major long-term economic ramifications which could need to be considered in the long-term. I'm not saying we shouldn't be doing these things, it's great, it's innovative and disruptive. But cars that last longer and don't need as much repairs (theoretically) means less being built, less being repaired, less jobs all the way down the line from the manufacture of spare parts to the installation and general maintenance. There are similar implications for moving from the massively complex oil industry to a much simpler and flexible electric one. Particularly if solar is the chosen source, vs. hydro or nuclear where, I think, more people would be needed in the process. Lastly, a reduction of spending and resulting taxes (which for fuel are currently huge) would also have mass implications for government. Maybe we don't label any of these things good/bad. They just are, and will need to be dealt with. I hope people are looking at these opportunities and the implications for the economy. Lastly, how do people feel about calling Elon Musk the 'heir to Steve Jobs and the second coming of da Vinci'? To me, he is as different from those two as they are to each other. Prolific and brilliant, absolutely, but Steve Jobs isn't the second coming of Rockafeller, so why the comparisons, and do they fit? ~~~ jeffreyrusso You could say the same things about the internet or about software... that ingraining these technologies into every part of our society could have major long-term economic ramifications that deserve consideration. Even today, the number of low to middle-wage jobs that could still be replaced with software- driven solutions will amount to a huge number of jobs that will no longer be necessary. Agree with you that we shouldn't label these things good or bad - they represent progress. But we shouldn't ignore the likely ramifications of massive shifts like this until society feels the pain. ------ yock The nerd in me couldn't resist doing the math, and given a few starting figures for my current situation ($13,500 car loan,60 months, good interest rate, $350/mo on gas) it would take 14 years of driving a Model S to make up for the fact that I'm not paying for gas. This discounts the fact that I don't have the $1000 - $1500 a month for the Tesla car payment. This electric car business is exciting for sure, but it'll be some time before it benefits my income bracket. ------ BruceIV What got me is a charge rate of "150 miles of drive time in an hour" - so it takes an hour to charge for every 2.5 hours of driving? ~~~ dman Would be neat if the battery itself was something that was like a module. You could drive up to the driving station and some kind of robotic arm would just hook up - swap out your battery module and replace it with a charged version. In essence companies owning the charging stations would own a pool of batteries that they would charge and swap in and out of drivers cars. ~~~ droithomme The Tesla battery contains over 6800 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells. It costs $40,000 to replace. This battery has a life expectancy of 500 charge cycles. That means the battery cost per 240 mile charge is $80, and the company would have to charge that to recover just their battery costs. Add another $20 to handle tax, labor and the cost of maintaining the equipment and the recharging, so $100 per swap, assuming this is run as a non-profit endeavor. Do you feel there is a large market for people willing to pay $100 for every 240 miles they travel? Such a network of replacement stations assumes that the market will pay these costs. ~~~ dman a) [http://green.autoblog.com/2012/11/30/tesla-adds- replacement-...](http://green.autoblog.com/2012/11/30/tesla-adds-replacement- battery-pack-costs-to-price-increase-deta/) suggests that the battery replacement costs are much lower ( < 12000 in the worst case for the 85-kWh pack and as low as 8000 for the 40kwh pack). I dont know if this price assumes that you will be turning your old batter in - otherwise I would imagine you would be able to recoup some money for that via selling it to recyclers. b) Also [http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...](http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries) suggests that the 500 charge cycle number is only valid if every cycle depletes the charge to 0. Assuming that each cycle discharges to 25% - the number of cycles goes upto 2000 - 2500. Assuming a price of 10000 (Using a medium capacity battery as well as assuming whole sale prices) and a depth of discharge of 25% per cycle and hence assuming battery life of 2250 cyles - you get the battery cost per charge to be 12000 / 2500 = 4.8 . Assuming a 10% tax rate thats about 5.28 dollars per cycle. This number does not seem bad at all. ~~~ droithomme Tesla offers, for a $12,000 fee at time of purchase, a replacement policy that will replace the battery AFTER 8 years of use, and only after 8 years of use. This brings the price of the 240 mile range model to $91,900, plus tax and licensing. It is not a warranty that replaces the battery if it fails. It offers no coverage before 8 years, and at 8 years one may replace at any time. Tesla also has cited a price of $40,000 for battery replacement for drivers whose batteries have failed due to not being recharged properly or other reasons. This price is consistent with the lowest wholesale costs of these battery cells on the global market, with no markup for their added value of the battery enclosure, cooling, heating, monitoring, and recharging hardware, thus it is a fair deal and good value as Tesla is clearly not taking any profit at this battery price point. Tesla does not sell the 85kWh batteries (the ones needed to have a 170-240 mile range) for $12,000. If you hand them $12,000, they will not hand you a battery pack. If Tesla could sell these batteries at this price, they could sell a tremendous number to Nissan, GM, Boeing and others. They could even charge $20,000 and would still have plenty of buyers as it is far below the lowest wholesale cost of the 6800 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells it contains. Or even better, customers could buy the 6800 new 18650 cells in the pack from Tesla for the $12,000, remove them from the battery pack, and become a wholesale dealer of the cells, able to undercut Panasonic's lowest wholesale price by up to 75%. One could make millions selling new battery cells to laptop battery pack manufacturers that use these cells. It is a sure fire guaranteed profit if, as you say, Tesla is selling battery packs containing 6800 brand new 3100mA 3.7V Panasonic 18650 Li-ion battery cells for only $12,000. It is the bargain of a lifetime. No VC would pass on funding such a venture, it is a guaranteed profit. The claim that Tesla is selling these battery packs for $12,000 is false. Tesla is not selling these batteries for that price. They will sell these batteries for $40,000 though, as Tesla's Vice President J. Joost de Vries has stated that that is the price for those who need a replacement. Tesla does offer to deliver a replacement battery in no less than eight years from purchase date for $12000 (February 2021 if you buy today), to the original owner, provided this fee was paid for when the car is purchased, and provided Tesla is still in business. This is not the same as selling batteries for $12000. ~~~ dman Thanks for providing this information - I stand corrected. ------ cpursley Agree with overall idea expect the call for government involvement. Let the market figure this out. If the math makes sense for most people, then it makes sense. If I could get a 25-35k electric vehicle with free or cheap charging and 150 miles on a charge, I'm in. ------ getabike I have free transportation for life, it's called a bicycle. But I guess for those who have to drive, this is great. But bicycling is easier than you think, and has many benefits. ------ pinchyfingers This article is old. Also, J cal wants to have Elon's babies so bad. ------ Datsundere I turn off my computer at night to save electricity.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why don't India have big open-source projects? - sudokill India has great programmers and an abundance of brilliancy similar to china but somehow there are no big open-source projects / libraries / languages coming from in India. I would like to ask this question to HN readers. also if you are Indian, please share your opinion. ====== KuriousCat I can comment on few factors \- Lack of time/resources: If you consider young professionals, most of them are forced to start their careers working for Multi National Companies with very low starting salary, the starting salaries are almost the same since last 10 years despite significant increase in rents/commodity prices.This forces many to commute for more than 3 hours in noisy traffic heavily draining their out of office energy. \- Lack of inhouse leadership: Most of the bright college students are drawn to global programs like gsoc or spend time in internships abroad, contributing but not in Indian programs. \- Attitude of faculty: Indian universities have a lot to catch up in their teaching style. Often, feedback is harsh and faculty are hard to find. In contrast, most US universities have a lot of grad students who are able to fill in and guide youngsters. ~~~ neophyt3 As an Indian, I totally agree and most of them have a mindset of a) churning out money or finish something very fast in substandard way from OS projects and that too out of the box and if they cant then rather tuning it they will look for another EASY option b) being a user of product rather being creative and motivation to create one ------ CyberFonic United Nations has 193 member countries. Of those only a handful can lay claim to having one or more big open-source projects/libraries/languages. So the question does not relate solely to India. Looking at what factors lead to such results might provide some insights as to what could be done to foster such contributions. ------ known 97% people are Poor and earning bread/butter for the family is top priority for them; [https://archive.vn/pOmij](https://archive.vn/pOmij)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Kill Y Combinator - brianstorms http://blog.moviegoer.com/post/16333492475/kill-y-combinator ====== phaus When the whims of an American special interest group are catered to at the possible expense of the entire global economy, not to mention the entire world's freedom of speech, I consider it only natural and responsible to desire Hollywood's destruction. Successful business is about finding new ways to create value for your customers. It's not supposed to be about spending every last cent they give you in an attempt to undermine their rights. ~~~ malandrew Completely agree. I value rights and freedom more than the industry that produces TV shows and movies. If Hollywood were to disappear, TV shows and movies would still be produced. A form of art only disappears when people cease to practice it of their own volition. YC's RFS really was more about creating competition that debases the power that MPAA and RIAA supporting companies wield via dilution. More forms of entertainment => less power any form of entertainment has to impact legislation and government. The Internet produces a myriad of entertainment filters from which one is free to choose. The Hollywood system produces a small number of filters curated by a handful of people in one one city in one state in one country of the World. Diversity is more valuable and Hollywood threatens that. Do I lament the loss of a species? Certainly. But if it is necessary to preserve the ecosystem, so be it. ------ Apocryphon I think this is an article that focuses on the inflammatory title of pg's article, without really looking into his points in-depth. I really don't see how the author of the piece really disagrees with pg. ------ b0o interesting to see this on news.yc but i got an error message.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Want good health in your golden years? Keep working - jasoncrawford http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10374175-247.html ====== groaner Interesting, though I would suspect another factor at work here: people who choose to continue working past retirement do so because they find their work fulfilling. That can work wonders for their emotional (and even physical) well-being. Orchestra conductors, from what I've noticed, seem to live particularly long lives, and many of them continue conducting into their 80s and 90s. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a combination of physical and mental vigor in addition to simply loving what they do.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mashable's Responsive Redesign - gisikw http://beta.mashable.com ====== akshat I found the design distracting, and was not sure where to look first. I normally look for the main content on the left side of the screen. Since "The next big thing" column is in green, I expected that to be the primary section, but then because it was smaller, moved to the right section. Overall, I prefer blogs to have the more traditional feel. ------ tangue Such a lack of hierarchy... Too many conflicting visuals patterns at the same levels. White space, alignment... It's responsive yes, but is it pleasant for the reader ? I'm not talking about beauty, _de gustibus et coloribus non disputandum_ , just of the whole interaction. ~~~ meritt We should pitch in and buy the design team at Mashable a few copies of [http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach- Usability/...](http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach- Usability/dp/0789723107) ------ rmrfrmrf Shades of the Gawker redesign here. I just don't see the benefit of having 3 distracting, content-filled columns with the most important information being on the far right (on the desktop and tablet versions, anyway), unless their target audience was using Arabic or Hebrew as their primary language. ~~~ thetrendycyborg The reason that the big content is on the right is that it is the most popular content, likely already read. The new stuff is on the left, and we want the eye to move across the page in the natural way to help promote newer and rising content. ~~~ rmrfrmrf Why would content that you've already read be the most prominent? Following the convention of 'newest on top' would make more sense. ~~~ thetrendycyborg The big content is for the people who jump into the site and want to read just a few articles. It's the "most important". It gets clicks. The people who sit on the site all day are going to appreciate the left column, but it doesn't have the same prominence, because we already have their attention. By throwing the big stuff on the right, we're also making people who jump into the site for the big stuff move their eyes across the content, which might prompt a click. We've thought very hard about who our site is designed for and the path their eyes will take. The column hierarchy is designed for different groups of people looking for different content. ------ levymetal If the primary goal is discovery of new content then I think it works pretty well. I'd prefer the "Rising" and "Hot" columns swapped, but perhaps I'm not the primary audience. I'd also like to see excerpts in the "Rising" column to help make a decision of whether I want to skim or go into detail. Also, scrolling seems to lag pretty badly when new content is loading. Using Chrome on a 2011 13" MacBook Pro. Tried InfinityJS? <http://airbnb.github.com/infinity/> ~~~ cheald The scroll lag is, unfortunately, due to loading in the ad units. We're using all the usual tricks (precompiled template builders, batching builds in a document fragment and doing a single append to the DOM), but the ad iframes are just brutal on performance. We aren't using the "usual" social buttons there for similar reasons; a glut of iframes is performance death. Unfortunately, ads pay the bills, so they're less negotiable. We're working on it, though, and aren't happy to be content with it just yet. My goal is to be able to achieve smooth scrolling on low-end hardware, and while we're admittedly not there yet, we're gunning for it. ~~~ levymetal Hey, are you calling my MacBook low-end? :p ~~~ cheald Hah, no. I just mean that when I'm done with it, it'll ideally feel like butter on a Raspberry Pi. :P ------ bluetidepro > " _Use anything from your Nexus 7 to your mom's iPhone 4 to browse > Mashable's new adaptive design._ " (A quote from within the left column > marketing image) Is it often referred to as "adaptive design", I've only heard it as "Responsive Redesign". Is there a difference between the two in any way? _I doubt so, but I just figured I would ask so I don't miss something with the lingo..._ Also, for the record, my mom actually has an iPhone 5 and I only have an iPhone 4. ;) Ha ~~~ gisikw It's largely a semantics game. Some people use one to refer to device- responsiveness versus screen-resolution-adaptiveness. Under that definition, both apply to our redesign :-) ~~~ bluetidepro Oh, okay. Awesome. I figured as much, but you never know these days and I didn't want seem like an idiot down the road using the wrong term or something! Haha Great design, by the way. I personally love it! :) ------ humbyvaldes Am I the only one who doesn't like this trend? ~~~ RollAHardSix YANA. - Just made my day I got to use that! I too, do not like this trend. Does the average consumer (statistically)? ~~~ cheald (I'm the tech lead at Mashable and on this project) Our analytics and testing have indicated that there's a direct correlation between how visual (versus textual) our presentation is and how well it performs. Personally, I prefer a much more linear and text-heavy presentation (I spend all day on HN!), but our core audience is apparently different from me. Over the past couple of years, our audience has grown to be much more general and less tech-oriented (as I'm sure many HN readers have noticed), and the new design was done with that in mind. I didn't like it at first, but it's grown on me. The article pages are much more "traditional" in terms of presentation, as well, which helps (and yes, I know you can't see them right now; sorry!) ~~~ meritt Keep an eye on your ad revenue because you have a serious case of information overload at this point and the well-padded banner advertisement went almost entirely unnoticed for me. Advertisers will see that consumers never click nor react to their ads (Unless it's a CPM media buy and they don't get to see stats...) any longer and will eventually seek higher performing placement. ~~~ cheald We absolutely will be. We're trying to find ways to integrate advertising in ways that are less obtrusive than normal; we're readers, too, and hate obnoxious ads as much as the next guy. We do direct ad sales rather than through a middleman, so we have some leeway in how stuff is presented, and we work with our advertisers to make sure that everyone is happy. At the end of the day, advertising pays the bills, so we have to figure out the right balance there. Initial feedback from our advertising partners has been very good, though, and we'll be watching it closely, because...well, we like being able to pay rent. :) ------ zachwill Interesting that you can't look at any of the articles without signing up. No thanks. ~~~ cheald It's a technical measure, not a marketing one. We're going to open up pieces of the product to general use as we smoketest and validate their performance. The join page is more or less there to be served Very Very Fast (and still let people be notified when stuff opens up) more than it is to lock people out of content. This iteration is a ground-up custom build rather than an iteration on Wordpress, so we're being conservative with our testing. It won't be that way for too long. ~~~ pknight Are you guys moving away from WordPress or will the new design be ported over? Anyhow, I actually think it looks fantastic. ~~~ cheald We're moving off of Wordpress with this redesign, and don't have any plans to port it at this time. ~~~ tsiokos Should we expect a tech stack overview blog post? ~~~ cheald Yes! We're going to let it simmer in production a bit before we do a writeup on it, but at some point we'll definitely do a breakdown of what we're doing and why we did it. It's been a fun build, so we're looking forward to that. :) ------ mischov It's not so bad when my browser is small enough to keep it at one column, but I find two or more columns disjointed, distracting, and hard to read. I'm all for responsive but readable is good too. ------ laacz Why on Earth they would not let me see anything else? I understand e-mail harvesting, but that just drove me away after one click. ~~~ cheald Load control. We're keeping it gated for a short period while we make sure that we don't have any major performance issues that fall over under load. We'll be opening it up once we've smoketested it. ------ dw0rm When I hear about responsive design I always try to resize the window and see how the things rearrange. This one feels really slow during the resize, almost freezes the browser. And just a couple of clicks have caused redirect loop. ~~~ cheald Yikes, you definitely shouldn't be seeing redirect loops. Do you happen to still have the URL you got it on? We're doing some muckery with Varnish that may be causing that issue; I'd like to track it down and kill it! We're working on minimizing reflows and improving the speed of any given reflow, as well. It's not where we want it to be yet, especially on lower-spec hardware. Thanks for the feedback! ~~~ dw0rm Unfortunately, I don't have the URL as I have erased browser history since then. But I tried again and didn't see this issue. ------ klapinat0r After "The Next Big Thing"'s bulletin: _Internet Eats Up Guy Fieri's Awesomely Bad NYT Restaurant Review_ it just stops, leaving me to scroll just two columns, with a blank in the middle. Is this an error? ------ thetrendycyborg Why was this changed from "Show HN"? gisikw worked pretty hard on this. ~~~ gisikw Yep. Filled out that title box and the URL box and everything. ...oh, oh, you mean the redesign. Yeah, that too. ------ thetrendycyborg There's a write up of it here: <http://mashable.com/2012/11/14/introducing- the-new-mashable/> ------ Meltdown Really horrible! They should adopt the HN design philosophy -- less is more! ------ webwanderings Wouldn't it be cool if all three of the columns would scroll independently? ~~~ nunomaia No. ------ chucknelson Content...overload... ------ halayli The site is overwhelming. ~~~ scottscanlon My first impression as well. ------ camus Great work ! the UI looks great and very appable ;) I would though if it would be better to have a big headline with a photo at the top then as many columns as you want at the bottom of the headline. The page needs its element to have a clear hierarchy. Good luck.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to Vote on Hacker News - shrughes http://shrughes.com/p/how-to-vote-on-hacker-news/ ====== devmonk This is the stupidest thing I think I've ever read. Kudos to the moron who wrote it. I hope you get the HN you deserve. ~~~ TGJ Here I was thinking it was satire.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tech founder's tale of sex, drugs and underground lairs (2008) - slm_HN http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/11/nicholas200811 ====== dang This title is such an egregious violation of HN's rules that, rather than rehabilitating it, we're just going to kill this post. The story is of dubious quality anyway. Edit: never mind; users flagged it. Thanks! ------ glimmung 2008? ~~~ tlb I changed the title, thanks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nvidia stuffs desktop GTX 1080, 1070, 1060 into laptops, drops the “M” - antouank http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/08/nvidia-pascal-laptop-specs-gtx-1080/ ====== pluma Well, it makes sense. If you're going with a dedicated graphics card in your laptop, battery life is already out of the window, so you might as well get as much processing power as the thing can handle. As a proud owner of a laptop that could double as a self-defense weapon to cause massive blunt trauma (and a charger that falls squarely into the same category) I welcome this decision. I am however considering getting a lighter notebook with longer battery life in the future. Having the power of a full desktop machine in your backpack comes in incredibly handy when you need it but it can get a bit awkward working with it on the train. ~~~ overcast The issue isn't so much battery life, as it is heat dissipation. How does that thing handle cranking out that much? Granted the new 1000 series is pretty damn efficient at what it does(my 1070 is amazing for the price), it's still a lot for a laptop. ~~~ cma From the article: more CUDA cores at a lower clock. Since clock scaling isn't linear on power consumption, doubling the cores and halving the clock (as an example, not the actual ratio they used), leaves you with a net efficiency gain. ~~~ jsheard Tom's Hardware nicely demonstrated the non-linearity of power consumption in their desktop GTX1060 review: [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia- geforce-gtx-1060-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce- gtx-1060-pascal,4679-7.html) At factory settings the card draws 120W and pushes ~110fps in their 1440p test, but throttling the power limit down to just 60W only reduced it to ~90fps. (As an aside, the AMD RX480 comparison shows why people are disappointed with Apple supposedly using AMD Polaris GPUs in the upcoming Macbook Pro refresh) ~~~ m_mueller I just don't understand why Apple seems to prefer AMD. Bad experience with Nvidia's drivers in the old Core Two Duo MBPs? Does AMD have a better track record? ~~~ kitsunesoba Apple is a backer of and is invested in OpenCL. OS X itself leverages OpenCL throughout the OS (Quicklook for example uses it to make previews faster) and of course FCP/Motion/etc make heavy use of OpenCL as well. Nvidia cards are capable of OpenCL but they've never performed as well with it as they do with CUDA. AMD has always been the better option for that. Of course Apple could implement CUDA support in their software, but they've never been big on running with vendor specific standards that they had no part in the development of. ~~~ pjmlp You have some outdated information. Although Apple created OpenCL and gave it to Khronos, they have the most outdated support for OpenCL. The future on Apple platforms is called Metal compute. There were around 6 Metal talks at WWDC 2016 and zero about Khronos technologies. ~~~ mixmastamyk How does that impact the AMD vs. Nvidia part of the discussion? ~~~ pjmlp It doesn't matter which cards are better at OpenCL, because it is a legacy technology on Apple platforms, most likely to never be updated beyond the current version 1.2 (latest is 2.2). [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202823](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT202823) Apple develops their own drivers for Metal Compute. ------ aedron The most exciting thing to me in portable PCs is the 'VR backpack' form factor. As cool as the HTC Vive is, moving around with a fat cable sticking out the back of your head is a big detriment. Putting the PC in a backpack will be so perfect for VR - bigger batteries, more efficient (without the LCD), no cables. These GPUs will make VR backpacks even more viable, with reduced power consumption, better performance and reduced size. I am super excited to see what will be coming out in this field over the coming years. ~~~ imtringued The portable PC could double as a counter weight for the headset. ~~~ ddalex and everybody would need neck braces just to keep the contraption moving ~~~ nkassis how about an exo skeleton which as a bonus can provide force feedback. ------ lewisl9029 Anyone here have any experience with the new generation of TB3 External GPU docks like the Razer Core? $500 is pretty steep for what's essentially just a tiny case + power supply, but if it works as advertised with no serious pitfalls, I might be tempted to make a splurge for the extra flexibility. Though I wish someone could make a smaller, cheaper graphics dock that's built specifically to house less power hungry, single-slotted cards like the RX 460. Something like that would be more than enough to handle my modest gaming needs for the foreseeable future. ~~~ vitovito I wrote up my initial experiences here: [http://vitor.io/razer-blade-stealth- core-gtx-1080-12h](http://vitor.io/razer-blade-stealth-core-gtx-1080-12h) Works pretty well, no insurmountable issues. I haven't done any 3D engine- related dev on it yet, but am not expecting issues. ~~~ lewisl9029 Thank you for that very informative write up! Very glad to hear the tech basically just works. I hadn't bothered to look up the dimensions and weight on the Razer Core until you mentioned it though, and realized it's barely any more convenient to move around than my current desktop PC case (SilverStone FTZ01, only about 150mm more in a single dimension), which removes a lot of the appeal it had for my use case, unfortunately. I honestly wouldn't mind a non-upgradable version that uses one of the laptop cards listed in this article if it means they could make it appreciably smaller and more discrete than a slim-SFF desktop case. I mean, the dock itself is a modular component that can be upgraded as a whole anyways. ~~~ xchaotic I also appreciate the review, but I think it's a case of too little, too late and too expensive. For that price you can simply build a spare HTPC in a box of similar size or get a powerful laptop with good GPU built-in. ~~~ lewisl9029 The problem with either of those setups is you don't get the flexibility of being able to use the same portable, quiet and power-efficient laptop for both work on the go and for gaming at home, so you never have to worry about keeping things in sync between multiple machines (which is easy enough if you just need files, but often impossible if you also want to sync arbitrary settings for frequently used applications). For many people like myself, the TB3 laptop + GPU dock combo is worth a lot more than the sum of its parts. ------ WoodenChair I think this is a sign they're worried about AMD Polaris. Most people don't realize just how much AMD has turned around the past year. I saw an article recently about people shorting Nvidia. Full disclosure: I'm an AMD stock holder. ~~~ jdietrich Polaris is not a serious threat to Nvidia. The GTX 1060 is significantly faster than the RX480 at a similar retail price; the GTX 1060 is considerably more expensive than the 960 was at launch and I expect that Nvidia have retained good margins. The RX480 seriously missed AMD's efficiency targets, hence the PCIe power fiasco. AMD have nothing to compete at the high end and have no serious HPC offering; with PC sales shrinking year-on-year, HPC is a crucial driver of growth. Polaris is just barely enough to keep AMD in contention. As with their CPU range, AMD are relegated to a value-oriented offering for the low to mid market. This isn't a good place to be. Nvidia can afford to squeeze AMD's margins, because they have a monopoly on the more profitable high end. AMD are also being threatened from below by Intel's increasingly powerful iGPUs. ~~~ snovv_crash >The GTX 1060 is significantly faster than the RX480 at a similar retail price Not from what I saw. Slightly faster or equal in DX11, slightly slower or equal in DX12/Vulkan. And not price-comparable either, there is a $50 difference. If you are pointing to the EVGA etc, note that they have a single fan and as such are going to throttle quickly. For a good price comparison I suspect we will need to wait for the rumoured 1050Ti, which should be _actually_ price comparable to a 4GB RX-480. Personally, if I was building a upper-midrange gaming PC right now, that marginal $50 would go to a bigger SSD, not to buy a 1060 over a 480. ------ yread Notebookcheck has a better review with link to reviews of the actual laptops and lots of benchmarks (synthetic and games) [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-Pascal-for-Notebooks- In-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-Pascal-for-Notebooks-In-depth- Benchmarks-for-the-Geforce-GTX-1080-SLI-GTX-1070-and-GTX-1060.171566.0.html) ------ xlayn Another good reason for dropping the M is in my opinion all related to how good another company got at creating gpus... that's Intel. Intel first eliminated the whole aftermarket entry level gpu industry and will probably eliminate the middle tier also. As Pluma states "If you're going with a dedicated graphics card in your laptop, battery life is already out of the window, so you might as well get as much processing power as the thing can handle" ~~~ matthewaveryusa I'm actually really excited about external GPUs (eGPUs) that supplement your laptop when you need it. I think this is the perfect compromise. [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2984716/laptop- computers/how-...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2984716/laptop- computers/how-to-transform-your-laptop-into-a-gaming-powerhouse-with-an- external-graphics-card.html) ~~~ xlayn Yes, I gave a read to it but if I remember I think there was a piece that didn't perform up to the speed of the thunderbolt link making the whole solution run 1/4 speed. The solution approach I think goes as back as when using the express card port on elitebooks [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDiizICogMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDiizICogMQ) It would be incredible on the other hand to get this solutions as official products from vendors like nvidia or asus without the DIY (not because I'm against it but to push making use of this solutions officially will improve the state of the solutions). ------ catpolice "And if you can make it look like it's for grown ups too, that'd be great." THIS. I'm not going to buy a laptop that looks like a prop from a Michael Bay movie. The best current option for a laptop with a GPU and a design that wouldn't be embarrassing to leave the house with is the Microsoft Surface Book, which is expensive, has a mediocre GPU and is actually still kind of embarrassing to own. I'm pretty excited about the day that gaming laptop manufacturers realize that their target audience isn't entirely composed of guys whose main fashion inspiration is Reaper from Overwatch. ~~~ devonkim I don't see how much room for design there is on a Surface book besides the keyboard dock assembly, but even that looks pretty spartan with clean lines and a rather pale gray that could be mistaken for an Apple laptop from the Aluminum Powerbook era. So I don't know what's embarrassing about it except for, contentiously, the monochrome Microsoft logo attached to it. ~~~ serge2k The surface book is one of the few that isn't embarassing. Most of the gaming laptops are big plastic bricks with red LEDs everywhere . ------ NDizzle Man. Hopefully these come with some kind car-like exhaust heat shield between the keyboard and everything else. I tried playing games on my macbook pro, and while it ran fine (guildwars 2, a few years ago) the machine got so blazing hot that I had to play with an external keyboard. After a few days of doing that I figured that having the laptop that hot for extended periods of time wasn't a good idea and quit playing. Probably for the better. ~~~ MollyR I ran into this same issue. I've been quite fond of the idea of external gpus for this exact reason. ------ pjc50 So what about that great big "?" in the table: TDP? How hot is it going to run? How well is the laptop going to handle it - does it now require an all- metal body? How well is the essential issue of fan and heatsink maintenance considered in the design of the laptop? I ask this because I have two GPU laptops both of which gradually degraded in usability over time entirely because of thermal issues. ~~~ jon-wood Did you try removing the heatsink/fans and cleaning them out. I was close to replacing my laptop because it was constantly overheating and it turned out the problem was a copper heatsink grid thing which was densely packed with dust, insulating the entire computer. Since cleaning that out my laptop is good as new. ~~~ pjc50 Yes, that was my first thought on experiencing the problem. It's often quite hard to do (that's why I mentioned "How well is the essential issue of fan and heatsink maintenance considered in the design of the laptop?" above). One of my laptops requires taking the whole thing apart from the keyboard side in order to get at the heatsinks below, so I gave up. And of course there are laptops on sale which are glued shut. Air duster works reasonably well but can force dust further into cracks. ~~~ TillE > And of course there are laptops on sale which are glued shut. Are there? Even Macbook Airs can be opened with nothing more than the appropriate pentalobe screwdriver. I had to do it a while ago to clean out the fan which had developed an annoying clicking noise. ~~~ pjc50 Microsoft Surface. I suppose you could call it a tablet, but it has a keyboard and an i7 processor and runs Real Windows including games. The tablet/laptop distinction is being eroded, and "tablets" are much more commonly held together with glue. ------ moobsen "Gears of War 4 looks amazing in 4K" Why would you put a 1.920px × 1.080px screenshot next to that? 4K = 4096 × 2160 Pixel ~~~ Narishma When people talk about 4K they usually mean (whether they know it or not) UHDTV, which is the standard used in consumer monitors and TVs and in which 4K = 3840x2160. ~~~ FlyingAvatar I think his point was the screenshot was regular HD, not even UHDTV resolution. ~~~ moobsen Yes, sorry if that was not clear. Just made me question every "4K" mentioned in the article. ------ saturdaysaint This makes sense, as the increasing capability of tablets and phones has made portability a lot less of a priority in a laptop for me, at least. It's almost hard for me to imagine why a MacBook Air was an appealing buy for me in 2011 - I think that a decent laptop was superior for a lot of general use tasks that any recent iPhone can now do just as comfortably/quickly. When I have to use a full system at home, I expect some sort of a major advantage in terms of capability and I care a lot less about form factor. I wonder if Apple even has a response in these areas where svelteness has much less of a premium. ------ Aardwolf I don't understand the somewhat negative tone. Small light laptops is a market, but big ones certainly too? E.g. LAN party. ------ hatsunearu Meh, this is bullshit. NVIDIA laptop GPUs were always the "same chip". Each "chip" in NVIDIA can be floorswept differently, with parts lasered off and its operating clock range adjusted. This is why the 1080 and the 1070 is the "same chip"\--GP104. Previous mobile chips were actually the "same chip" as the desktop ones, except they lasered more off and reduced the clocks even more, sometimes reduced the clocks a lot and lasered less to make the performance better by cramming more hardware. They just dropped the M thing to show that "oh look, we've come this far!" but in reality, none of their policy actually changed--just floorsweep differently to have less TDP and hopefully it's close enough to desktop tier perf. edit: what they are, are different SKUs of the "same chip". edit again: I'm not saying this isn't any small achievement, Pascal has brought a ton of improvements to the design. I'm just saying it's a marketing move that I expect the HN crowd to look through. ~~~ jdietrich Nope. Unlike previous-generation mobile parts, these are functionally equivalent to the desktop parts - same number of cores, shaders and ROPs, same memory bandwidth. Of course clocks are slightly lower and these parts are binned for higher efficiency, but the performance is very close to the desktop parts. The 980m was substantially cut down compared to the desktop 980 and only had about 55% of the performance. ------ devy Besides gaming, anyone has used this beefy laptops to run GPU intensive machine learning algorithms? I am curious to see if it's practical to use a gaming laptop vs. a desktop to run tensorflow calculations. ~~~ mattnewton Personally I just built the desktop and ssh in with an old macbook. Best of both worlds- you're using the wired connection at home to download stuff, and your mobile device is just running a terminal and a browser so it has long battery life, and you can turn off the laptop and let the desktop chew on your model. ------ mrmondo Amazing advances in GPU technologies over the past few years. I love this comment: "...Oh, and don't forget the power adaptor, which—as I saw with some models in performance demos—is literally the size of a brick." ~~~ douche As long as it's not a wall-wart... Whoever seriously considers it a good idea to block off 2-3 outlets in a powerstrip to run one DC inverter ought to be bludgeoned with that inverter until they see reason. ~~~ GrumpyYoungMan Absurd as it may sound, one can find extremely short 3-prong extension cords designed specifically to take care of the wall-wart problem. Search Amazon for "1 foot extension cord" for examples. ~~~ Vexs You can even get shorter, down to a couple inches. They're fantastic. ------ tus Good! We don't need portability in laptops that much anymore. We have smartphones and tablets for that. ------ samwestdev What about thermal throttle? ~~~ mastazi Well you can always get a laptop with a liquid cooling dock! :-D [https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ROG- GX800VH/](https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/ROG-GX800VH/) ~~~ audreyt That setup actually works really well; its predecessor GX700 was one of the few previous-gen laptops that can drive HTC Vive _and_ Oculus Rift (adapters required) at the same time. [https://plus.google.com/+AudreyTang/posts/VGebgzXnefP](https://plus.google.com/+AudreyTang/posts/VGebgzXnefP) ~~~ mastazi > That setup actually works really well I'm sure it does, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise! The new version (the one I linked) has dual GTX1080 in SLI so I'm sure it's a beast, and the liquid cooling docking station is actually very ingenious. I was just amused by how unconventional it is, given the current tendency towards ultra-thin and/or convertible laptops	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Enemy AI: chasing a player without Navigation2D or A* pathfinding - atomlib https://abitawake.com/news/articles/enemy-ai-chasing-a-player-without-navigation2d-or-a-star-pathfinding ====== b0rsuk A fascinating AI technique is used in one of the best roguelikes, Brogue. The author called it "Dijkstra Maps". Basically it's about generating a heatmap for all the squares on the level. You can start with 0 at player position, and from that point use a simple floodfill algorithm, putting down increasing numbers with each step. Then a monster simply examines all adjacent squares and selects the one with lowest number. This has at least two notable advantages: 1\. You only need to do the path generation once, and it scales very well with the number of monsters. 2\. It's really good at combining several concerns, because you can generate a couple of heat maps for different concerns and add them up. For example one heat map is about proximity to player. Another could be about proximity to health pickups, or proximity to cover, or proximity to open space if a monster likes to keep distance and shoot. If a gas trap is triggered, you can use a "danger" heat map. Then a monster can easily get closer to player and at the same time choose the path which has fewer harmful effects. That's why centaur archers in Brogue are so annoying, monsters avoid traps intelligently, monster groups avoid wasting their numerical advantage by chasing player through a corridor. He described it in detail in this article: [http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=The_Incredible_Pow...](http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=The_Incredible_Power_of_Dijkstra_Maps) And in case you're wondering, Brogue source code is licensed on AGPLv3. ~~~ 60654 Sounds like a classic potential field implementation, and yeah, they're very useful. There are two problems: scaling with map size (large maps or high detail maps), and update cost in action-heavy games (if the field source moves on every frame). But for small roguelikes it's a very good fit. ~~~ b0rsuk Thanks for the alternative name! Helps further research the technique. The core idea is relatively simple so I'm not surprised these are known. But finding a name of something you know is not easy with just a search engine. ~~~ 60654 Sure thing! And as I mentioned in another comment, if you google for "potential fields" and "flow fields" in games, there's a whole bunch of papers and talks on this. ~~~ b0rsuk Now that you mentioned "flow field", I remember seeing it in a Supreme Commander AI demonstration technique. Two columns of tanks can navigate through each other seamlessly, without chaos. And in realtime. Imagine seeing this in the days of Warcraft 1, where it was common for a unit to use left hand rule across the entire map because the bridge was momentarily occupied. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHuFCnYnP9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHuFCnYnP9A) ------ simias I'm always saddened that more works doesn't go into making fun and original game AIs. Most AAA games that are released these days have utterly predictable AI, modern shooters don't seem a lot more evolved that Quake 1. It's too bad because games like F.E.A.R. have shown that even simple AI heuristics can lead to very interesting emergent behavior. TFA demonstrates that very simple AI tweaks can make the enemies feel more organic and realistic. I suppose that some of the problem is that good IA doesn't make for nice trailers and ads (since you can just script those to do whatever you want anyway). ~~~ hutzlibu Yes, even a simple implementation of selfpreservation would make KI so much more realistic. Meaning, if the enemy has low health, he is likely to run away. Or if they see all their allies die, etc. This is really not so hard to implement, simple games could do this for ages. Or at least basic tactics, I think in Far Cry 1 enemies did not run away, but were smart enough to sneak and circle around you, later in Crysis or the other Far Cry titles, they were just cannon fooder. Makes everthing more hollywood kaboom ~~~ PeterisP Does having enemies run away make the game more fun for the player, or does the need to chase them become an annoyance? If an enemy sneaks around the player, gets in cover and concealment, and shoots them while the player does not understand where the fire is coming from, is it an enjoyable experience? Smarter and more realistic does not necessarily mean better. We don't write enemy AI for the purpose of it being effective in fighting, it's there to provide entertainment for the player. It's also about creating the intended emotions. Games are intentionally designed to create a particular set of experiences. There's a niche of games that relies on gratification of overcoming some frustration (e.g. Dark Souls series) but the majority of gamer market prefers a 'power fantasy' emotional experience, so many games are intentionally targeting that. If we want the player to feel powerful, then we design so that their character can defeat many enemies; if we want the player to feel smart, then we design enemies so that their behavior has exploitable weaknesses that they player can discover and feel satisfied while 'outsmarting' or 'tricking' the opponents. In most game genres we don't want the player to feel outsmarted by the computer unless they have made a substantial mistake that the average player is able to notice and correct. ~~~ hutzlibu "Does having enemies run away make the game more fun for the player, or does the need to chase them become an annoyance?" A good game mode does not require finding and hunting down all enemies. It has targets, like "go there"(story continues), "blow up X", "clear area Y" "if an enemy sneaks around the player, gets in cover and concealment, and shoots them while the player does not understand where the fire is coming from, is it an enjoyable experience?" If the game gets the graphics and gameplay right, for sure! (I still have memories from Vietcong, where you get ambushed in the jungle and don't see anything and just die, until you learn to move in cover and watch the terrain) And you have the muzzle flash for example. And if you do not see it ... the fun is in getting scared and rushing to cover. Where the enemy cannot see you anymore (if the KI is not cheating) and then move to a different position to find him. Or you can have the kill cam, where you see upon death, where the enemy was, that killed you. "If we want the player to feel powerful, then we design so that their character can defeat many enemies" True, but there are various ways to implement this, without ZombieKI. Like in crysis for example, where you have superior tech. Or more hitpoints, because you play a badass. Or in general, you as a player have quicksave and load. The computer does not. So yeah, I know that the target audience is dumb and wants fast food, so to say, but they also consume what is avaiable. And the standard is mostly ZombieKI, or ultra hardcore realism like in Arma, which is clearly not for everyone, but I really don't see, why the "AAA" games could not invest a tiny bit more in KI that does not break immersion. ------ DennisP It might make sense to have the monsters repulse each other. By spreading out, they'll end up taking multiple paths around obstacles, coming at you from different directions, so it looks like more intelligent coordinated behavior. ~~~ ghthor I've used this pattern before in game AI's and it works well. If you combine it with a somewhat random searching incentive the "hive" will spread out and search for the player(s). I also let the "hive" communicate with each other if they find a player they let each other know and then set a new waypoint for that area. When they repulse each other they take different pathways around objects and it looks a feels great to play against. ------ mrspeaker So simple and obvious as soon as you see it in action. I love "hacks" like this: really easy to code, but with a big impact - and so many potential uses too! I'm adding "scent trails" to my bag of tricks for sure. ------ DonHopkins This is how The Mighty Slime Mold hunts. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWbY7kWesI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWbY7kWesI) >How This Blob Solves Mazes \| WIRED >Physarum polycephalum is a single-celled, brainless organism that can make “decisions,” and solve mazes. Anne Pringle, who is a mycologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains everything you need to know about what these slime molds are and how they fit into our ecosystem. ------ dfgdghdf This technique shows how game AI is different from academic AI. The goal is to create interesting gameplay with minimal performance overhead. This system is just as fun a as "correct" system, but far simpler to implement and cheap to execute. ~~~ jfkebwjsbx It is academic AI. A lot of papers go on how to implement algorithms fast or how to implement the best approximation within a given time, etc. ------ unnouinceput This technique won't work if your player has teleport abilities like sorcerer in Diablo 2 or Assassin in GuildWars. In those case, you can teleport quite some distance and enemies in a 3D environment will get stuck on a upper slope while a simple path algorithm will make them still chase you. ~~~ rochak Well, teleporting is a tough problem to solve to begin with. One way to solve it is to have enemies distributed uniformly and restrict their movement to subsections. Once the player teleports, only the enemies in the closest subsections will use the algorithm to reach the player. ~~~ Skunkleton You could use a traditional path finding algorithm, letting the mobs look around confused while the path is computed. ------ 60654 TLDR: instead of doing generic pathfinding, the player avatar drops decaying "scent" into the world grid, and enemies follow the player by doing gradient ascent. The first time I've seen this technique in use was in the classic SimAnt game by Maxis, in the 90s; in research it was also explored in the ALife community. It's a cool trick, but by itself it's not quite enough, it's good for insect behavior but not much more. But what _has_ been useful is combining standard pathfinding with this. For example, imagine if one of your units dies and drops some "scent of death" into the surrounding area - and that scent gets incorporated into A* as a large cost value for traversing this terrain. Now all your other units will "smartly" start avoiding the dangerous area for a while, without having to do any expensive analysis of _why_ the unit died there, e.g. was there an ambush there or some such. (Google for "potential fields" and "flow fields" in games for more examples from commercial games.) ~~~ anotheryou "If no line of sight..." I might add ~~~ badloginagain Makes me think you can add scent trails to many objects- like the path of a fired arrow. Would help mitigate the "stealthy archer" problem Skyrim AI has. ~~~ enchiridion I'm not familiar with that problem. ~~~ flqn The "stealth archer" build in skyrim is overpowered since the enemy AI can't usually know where the arrow came from, and they tend to aggro, look around their immediate area, then go back to the idle state allowing the player to shoot them again from a safe, hidden spot. Rinse and repeat, and almost any encounter in the game with hiding spots is trivial. ------ Datenstrom A former colleague of mine Meghan Chandarana was doing some really awesome work which incorporated a similar "bread-crumb" algorithm for swarms dispatching groups for tasks and navigation back to the swarm. It wasn't the primary focus but was really cool to see work. If you want to see a application of it for swarms her paper is here: [https://www.ri.cmu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/SMC2018.pd...](https://www.ri.cmu.edu/wp- content/uploads/2018/08/SMC2018.pdf) ------ dmos62 My first thought looking at the animation was Boids [0]. The scent trail approach is interesting because it simulates/respects fog of war (though the game doesn't seem to use it otherwise). [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids) ------ carapace Cool! I was playing around with my lil asteroid sim[1] and I wanted to trace the trajectories of the asteroids, so I put a particle generator in the asteroid "base class" and set it to emit sixty particles with lifetime set sixty seconds, zero momentum and velocity, and unaffected by gravity. I bet you could adapt that to make a "scent trail", eh? [1] [https://git.sr.ht/~sforman/SpaceGame](https://git.sr.ht/~sforman/SpaceGame) but it seems I deleted the experiment. The commit that has it is [https://git.sr.ht/~sforman/SpaceGame/commit/7cc3981631db22be...](https://git.sr.ht/~sforman/SpaceGame/commit/7cc3981631db22be3fa77dc479f111ff86f91a08) FWIW. ------ JabavuAdams All of the obstacles in that video are small and convex. This is the easy case of obstacle avoidance. Basically use modified steering behaviours. If that's all you'll ever have, then great -- don't build a system that you don't need. If you ever move to large non-convex obstacles, like a maze -- there will be mounting problems until it would have made more sense to use a navigation or path-finding. ------ x0re4x Hmm... pretty sure I already saw something like that long time ago: [https://github.com/id- Software/Quake-2/blob/master/game/p_tr...](https://github.com/id- Software/Quake-2/blob/master/game/p_trail.c) ------ xg15 What I'm surprised to not have seen more often is attempts to preprocess a map, group points of it into larger sections and then perform pathfinding on those sections - e.g.: \- split a map into convex polygons \- use pathfinding to find out which polygins you have to traverse (either by making each polygon a node in the pathfinding graph or by selecting points on the polygon's edges and using those as nodes) \- move in a straight line _inside_ a polygon. It seems, especially for "almost convex" maps, this could move a good deal of pathfinding computation into the build phase. ------ timwaagh I had this problem as well with a simple game i made. what i did instead is to just randomize the movement a little. And that was really enough. Making them any smarter would have made the game really short. ------ Dotnaught If you’re modeling an intelligent pursuer, the algorithm should anticipate future travel rather than just following. ~~~ itdagusszous In games the goal of the developer isn't necessarily to have intelligent agents, but to have agents that are fun to play against. Sometimes the goal is to have them be intelligent, but sometimes having them behave in "dumb" but predictable ways makes the game overall more fun. ~~~ dkersten This is the reason usually given for using relatively simple techniques like behavior trees, but, anecdotally, I find that the biggest let down in most games is that the AI is so dumb that it 1) is immersion breaking, and, 2) get same-y and boring very very quickly. ~~~ eru Yes. It depends on what the game is trying to achieve. Subset Games, the makers of FTL and 'Into the Breach' have talked about this extensively. 'Into the Breach' deliberately has the enemies telegraph their plans one turn ahead of time, and the game is all about interfering with those plans. The rest of the game's design carefully reinforces the message that the enemy units are not intelligent. The backstory has them as basically oversized insects. If you have a game that pretends to give you realistic human antagonists, but they behave mechanically dumb and predictable, that breaks immersion like you suggest. One big problem is that having very smart AI that's purely there to oppose you in a zero sum game ain't fun to play against for most people. The handicaps a modern chess or Go engine would have to give you a normal human for a fair fight are ludicrous. And people seldom want fair fights in their games. They want a feeling of accomplishment, but without actually putting in all that much work. Even hardcore games like XCom cheat in your favour behind the scenes. There are at least two ways out of this while still avoiding the boring repetition: \- carefully make the NPC make believable human-like (or animal-like) mistakes, instead of easily exploitable repetitive mistakes \- give the NPC goals that are in conflict with the player, but not 100% so. A silly example of the second option: Take a game like Thief that's all about sneaking around stealthily and stealing stuff. Now realistically, most of the guards are just hired goons. They don't want to die, but they don't particularly care about protecting the place. They do care about being seen doing their job, so they don't get fired. So your job as a player could be, in addition to staying unseen, to provide plausible distractions and reasons for the guards not too investigate to closely. Higher ranked guards, and owners, would be under higher pressure to perform and won't get away with excuses. So they would be more alert. Using the same trick over and over again would lower it's effectivity: guards can't plausible claim to their higher ups to have been tricked again and again. If you are starting to become aggressive to a guard, or he learns that you called one of his friends, the guard's priorities will change towards more self-preservation. A pacifist run might even earn you respect and admiration from the lower level guards. Just like cat burglars are often admired in real life. Seen a bit more abstract, the game now becomes one of three factions: the thief (that's you), the low level guards and their employers. All with partially overlapping, partially conflicting goals. You can throw insurance companies into the mix, if you want to make it even more complicated. Thanks to the non-zero sum nature of the partial conflict, you can crank up how smart everyone acts, without overwhelming the player: Eg smarter guards might figure out a way to de-escalate that still looks like a plausible and even courageous move to their employers. ~~~ dkersten I think you've hit the nail on the head. I absolutely agree that "dumb" AI can be explained away and integrated into a game's design and story in ways that make it much more interesting and believable than typical bad AI on its own. I also agree that by providing a flexible and interesting enough scenario, with conflicting goals and motivations, you can improve the AI in ways that are both noticeable to the player and add extra layers of interesting gameplay. As an aside, unrelated to your reply, I just remembered another common excuse, which is that the enemies only exist for X seconds before the player shoots them, so effort on smarts would be wasted on them. For some games, I think its for sure the case, but I also feel that in many cases the enemy only exists for a few seconds _because_ they are dumb and uninteresting. ~~~ eru All agreed. Both 'dumb' and 'interesting' AI can be useful in a game, it all depends on your game's design. To give another silly example: Tetris by default has very 'dumb' AI that just gives you pieces at random. You could imagine variants of Tetris with more interesting piece selection. For example, an AI that makes pieces as unhelpful as possible while keeping their distribution statistically indistinguishable from true random selection. Or there was an inversion of the 2048 game, where an AI plays the normal game, and your task is to give them unhelpful numbers. ------ atum47 really great tutorial. ------ FZ1 Why are they calling it "AI", though? There isn't any AI or ML. You leave a trail for the enemy to follow, and they follow it. It's not even path-finding, it's path-following. Which is pretty much an if- then statement. It's a neat, simple approach, and fun to watch. But there isn't any learning, or knowledge, or other AI. ~~~ marcinzm AI does not mean ML, it is a broad field that is a superset and not a subset of ML. Or as Wikipedia describes it: >In computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals. Leading AI textbooks define the field as the study of "intelligent agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. ~~~ FZ1 > AI does not mean ML Hence the 'or' in my statement. Neither are present here. ~~~ marcinzm >any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. This does exactly that. ~~~ FZ1 Every program that has ever existed does this. So, you're saying that all programs that have ever existed, then, are all AI. You make no distinction whatsoever. I would say that the more a program thinks on its own which actions to take to maximize its chances of success, the closer to AI it is. If it's doing exactly what it's explicitly told, then it's not really intelligent, is it? ~~~ serf >>any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals. >Every program that has ever existed does this. No, not every program is self-tuning, nor do they all take inputs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Forcing the password gropers through a smaller hole with OpenBSD's PF queues - bootload http://bsdly.blogspot.com/2017/04/forcing-password-gropers-through.html ====== m0nty I used to do something similar for porn-site visitors when I worked at a school. Discipline was not well-enforced, I had zero authority as the IT guy, and when I blocked a porn-site in the proxy, they all moved to another one within minutes (it's not as though the Internet was going to run out of them anytime). Solution was to make a squid queue with about 1KB/sec bandwidth, and dump the most-visited porn websites into that queue. Sure, you'll get your smut, after about 10 minutes per pic download time. This worked far better - it was a bit like shadow-banning the website, in that they wouldn't be notified it was blocked, it just would be (to all intents and purposes). AFAIK, they never figured it out. ~~~ narrowrail I'm not sure if I understand. If they are operating through proxies, shouldn't the network admin be unable to MiTM them without a client-side cert? So, banning a list of websites should not work. What am I missing? ~~~ yellowapple It sounds like OP is actually the one in control of the proxy (think enterprise-grade ones rather than proxy sites like hidemyass.com). Even if that weren't true, one could always just throttle the proxy as if it were a porn site. ------ gerdesj There are a _lot_ of systems that can follow this style of approach to dealing with the baddies. Bear in mind our gear these days have huge amounts of RAM and a fair bit of CPU. We have kernel based firewalls that can handle utterly huge tables and highly sophisticated queueing mechanisms. Heading into userspace we have mailer daemons a plenty, Squid, HA Proxy and the like, all of which can be used in this way. For example if you enter three bad usernames into a certain Exchange OWA I manage, then HAProxy sends you off to a fake login page and I hoover the data. If you enter a legitimate username but multiple incorrect passwords then the same thing happens. The fake login page runs rather slowly but not too slow. IPs that fail are fed to the firewall. I maintain a whitelist of IPs for users that have a static IP at home. If a legitimate user falls foul of that lot, they are reminded about VPNs. Funnily enough simply ratcheting up your TLS to 1.2 minimum fixes an awful lot of cracking attempts. Older unpatched systems simply can't even connect, let alone try to login. Sadly this wont be an option for many orgs (someone will insist on owning some wanky old thing and be too stingy to upgrade it and have enough clout in the firm to foil you) but as I happen to own mine I get to lay down the law 8) ------ tyingq I use pam_shield for something somewhat similar on Linux boxes. It's a more direct approach than something like fail2ban. Just null routing the offending IP addresses though. I suppose traffic shaping would do more to help others by keeping the bot occupied. Maybe I need to look into how /sbin/tc works. ------ tener This limiting approach is new to me. Why not just drop current and block future connections? ~~~ breckinloggins It looks to me like the equivalent of keeping telemarketers on the phone in an inane conversation instead of immediately hanging up on them. The latter just frees them up to call the next victim. ~~~ tener In that case I'm not sure if it works. I fully expect the spammers to have the software to deal with similar behavior. In contrast with telemarketers the computers multitask pretty well. ~~~ pyvpx there is still an upper limit to the number of TCP connections an IP can open. sadly this does remind me of that photo of a Darth Vader with a Brita water filter in a large body of water. you're not really going to have an impact, but you are doing _something_ ~~~ infogulch Just in case you're really lazy: [https://www.google.com/search?q=Darth+Vader+with+a+Brita+wat...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Darth+Vader+with+a+Brita+water+filter+in+a+large+body+of+water&tbm=isch) ------ DamonHD I spent some time providing huge tarpits to SPAMmers also (I get about 10k SPAM delivery attempts per day on my small SMTP server), but in the end I've had to spend my time on other things... ------ jf_sebastian Interesting read from a great author, I can highly recommend his Book of PF if anyone is interested in knowing more. ------ chaz6 I just whitelist my ip ranges, and anything else gets dumped into a honeypot (using ipset lists). ~~~ ams6110 More cynically, just block everything from China and you've covered 95% of the attacks (based on the stats reported in the article). ~~~ Sunset China, Russia, Eastern Europe,South America. ~~~ eriknstr [https://securitytoday.com/articles/2017/03/03/top-5-countrie...](https://securitytoday.com/articles/2017/03/03/top-5-countries- where-cyber-attacks-originate.aspx) The United States is the #2 top source of cyber attacks, accounting for about 10% of all malicious traffic in the world and with 17.12% of cyber attacks initiated from there. What you need to look at is how much of the traffic that hits your servers specifically is malicious relative to the amount of traffic that is bringing you revenue. Then you decide what countries to block. ------ mrmondo Interesting read, thanks for posting! ~~~ mrmondo Did I break HN post regulations for this comment? (Just trying to figure out why I had 5 down votes in the interest of not breaking it again if I did). ~~~ grzm Your comment looks pretty innocuous to me. Only thing I can think of is that it doesn't add much to the conversation. Members may have downvoted for lack of substance. Adding reasons you found it interesting, pointing out things in particular would make a good contribution to the discussion. It's speculation, but I hope it helps.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Notice a jump in Page Rank today? - newmediaclay Looks like Google updated their Page Rank today for the first time since September 08. I know our site jumped to a 6. Anyone else notice a bump? ====== axod Where is the definitive place to assess ones pagerank? edit: <http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php> Looks like Mibbit is a 7 :) ------ Eliezer <http://www.overcomingbias.com> 7... we get a _lot_ of random incoming Google traffic. Though it's worth noting that our traffic stats fell off a cliff over winter break, for some odd reason. Anyone else seen this? Or is it just that OB is commonly read as a procrastinating substitute for school/work? Holiday cliff: [http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s28overcomingbias...](http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s28overcomingbias&r=12) ~~~ fallentimes We witnessed this as well and a similar, but much shorter trend over Thanksgiving. I would guess it's due to people dealing with holiday stuff and not being at work. My parents still don't believe me that most people don't do anything at work for significant chunks of the day (or in some cases all day). Traffic is usually best for TicketStumbler Tuesday - Thursday and worst on Saturday & Sunday. ------ fallentimes Woohoo <http://ticketstumbler.com> is now a 5! ~~~ fuelfive Congrats! Same with the frog. Posterous and CO2Stats are up to 6 now, wtg guys. ------ tokenadult Can someone see if the Friendly Atheist (that phrase just written out as two words) now returns Hemant Mehta's blog site as the first result? For a while he was way back on the second page of results, even though he should plainly be in first place. (I used the wiki tools to modify results for that search on Google, so I can't tell if there has been an improvement.) I see a mixture of better and worse results with my usual torture-test searches. It still looks like brief entries on blogs get page rank that is too high compared to more substantive articles, presumably because they get lots of inbound links. ~~~ epi0Bauqu Nope. It returns wordpress.com/tag/friendly-atheist/. Note that if you delete your searchWiki changes, it will revert to the original order. ~~~ tlrobinson Or, you know, log out. ------ merrick33 Matt Cutts officially confirmed a pagerank increase yesterday on twitter - <http://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/1087531183> ------ bd Still the same. Though PR doesn't really seem to matter that much anymore. My site with PR 0 gets much more traffic from Google than my site with PR 4. ------ epi0Bauqu Yup, 4 :) (for duckduckgo.com & gabrielweinberg.com) ------ sachinag <http://www.dawdle.com> dropped from a 6 to a 5. Not happy, since all our inbound links are from October 2008-onwards. They're not _that_ old. ------ newmediaclay Yea, we jumped to a 6 and blogged about A New Year a New Page Rank. [http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/page-rank-updated- in-d...](http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/page-rank-updated-in- december-2008) I think submitting to Yahoo and getting some press for our microsite were the biggest factors. We also put footers on the bottom of our sites linking back to us which can't hurt ------ paul9290 Does anyone here use grader.website.com on Hubspot? It perplexes me that my site receives a much higher grade then my competitors, yet their page rank is higher (we have more inbound links then they do). Is Hubspot's grader reliable? ------ PStamatiou went from a 7 to a 4. wtf? i blame my bbPress forums, which I didn't realize for a while didnt no follow links until i hacked the theme a bit to no follow. ------ hs will a google search query increase page rank? for example if i search "ycombinator startup" then google (PR10) will produce links (no rel=nofollow in <a href>) i think that will increase search volume index in google trend, but not sure about page rank ------ mg1313 No changes for my wesite :(...I guess I need more link development and more updates to the site. ~~~ fallentimes Have new content daily/weekly has been huge for us especially as organic traffic is concerned. ------ gscott From 3 to a 4 although another site I maintain stayed a 3 so it wasn't a universal jump. ------ catone I think it actually happened a few days ago. I noticed a jump last week. ------ EGF No change for me on my sites - hopefully its a rolling change ------ ejs Nope, still at zero for me... really need to work on that ;) ------ parenthesis Does anything apart from google.com have a page rank of 10? ~~~ EGF usa.gov is the only one I know. Adobe and Apple used to have PR 10s but they are now 9 ------ jhancock yep, my yet unmarketed shellshadow.com is from 2 to 3 now. 2009, the year of inflation ;) ------ wheels Went from 4 to 5.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Finally, some good news about the Silicon Valley housing crisis - Futurebot http://www.vox.com/2016/3/7/11173750/google-silicon-valley-housing-crisis ====== davidw I think in some ways that this is one of _the_ issues facing the US right now. Economists generally suggest that easing the shift from low productivity areas to high productivity areas is very beneficial, but NIMBY housing policies stand in the way. And these things have repercussions all throughout the country. Here in Oregon, there is a steady stream of people who are bailing out of California in part because of the housing prices. This causes resentment here, because it is pricing locals out of certain markets (Portland and Bend, likely others). Ultimately, without dealing with the root causes of the issue, the process will just keep repeating itself elsewhere. My view is that there should be a wider range of densities, and more walkable, bikeable neighborhoods. Ultimately, it is a supply issue - you cannot keep that steady and increase demand without forcing people out. Granted, maybe not everyone can have a ranch house with a large yard and a two car garage, but... not everyone _needs_ that, either. Here are some sites I'm fond of: [http://marketurbanism.com/](http://marketurbanism.com/) [http://missingmiddlehousing.com/](http://missingmiddlehousing.com/) [https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/](https://clubnimbyblog.wordpress.com/) and of course Matt Yglesias' book: [http://amzn.to/21hwbb6](http://amzn.to/21hwbb6) ~~~ mmanfrin Portland, Bend, Boulder, Austin. People are looking for the same young, urban, progressive environment that the Bay Area has provided since the Gold Rush, it seems. There is something innate the Bay Area that has nothing to do with tech, but tech is in the middle of it and has become the boogeyman of ails to those currently living in SF. It's a misdirection for NIMBYs to focus the agitation towards because the more they deny, the more valuable and scare the homes in this special market become. I think fighting NIMBYism is a sisyphean obligation for the Bay Area. People will always want to live here -- tech jobs or not. ------ oppositelock I live in Mountain View and follow some of the city council discussions here. While the city council approved high density housing, many residents are doing their best to stifle any development up there. This city's home owners, especially the older ones, are very active politically and also very anti-development. There's this attitude, which I consider to be very selfish, that "I bought into Mountain View for how it currently looks, and I don't want it to change", all the while, these same residents bemoan the high prices of housing and everyone except techies being priced out. As of today, we're probably going to see a decade of environmental review challenges before a single unit gets built, since this is the most effective way to block development with red tape in California. ~~~ dmitrygr To play devil's advocate, protecting one's (likely) most significant investment is not selfish - it is reasonable. The fact that you do not like their actions doe snot make them any less reasonable and sane. ~~~ davidw > protecting one's (likely) most significant investment Because some additional housing is going to completely crater house prices in the area? I don't buy it. ~~~ sliverstorm You can get more out of a house than resale value, and thus "protecting" doesn't pertain only to resale value. If you buy a house because it has a nice view of the mountains, fighting billboards that obstruct your view is "protecting your investment". ~~~ davidw I can understand protecting genuinely historic stuff, but Silicon Valley? The area is all about change. If there weren't constant change, the area would still be rural. I can understand wanting to channel it to some degree, too, but it's ultimately an iron triangle where something has to give. Right now, it's the less economically fortunate who are getting turfed out and losing access to an area that generates a phenomenal amount of wealth. ------ jasondc With 3 miles between Google <-> Caltrain, maybe a light-rail project could also help push a project like this forward (connecting the new densely populated Google housing with the rest of the area). ~~~ ihaveajob This so much. Public transit doesn't stand a chance if it's not accompanied with sensible zoning that favors high density near the stations. Very often I was the only rider in my VTA lightrail on my commute to Intel, passing by block after block of office parking lots. ~~~ nradov We'll never get significant ridership on VTA light rail unless they find a way to speed it up. It's just so _slow_. That would require buried or elevated tracks separated from cars and pedestrians so that it can safely run at higher speeds. But building grade separated light rail tracks would take years and cost tens of billions, so politically it's a non-starter. ------ wpietri As a San Franciscan, I heartily approve. A lot of the conflict in San Francisco is driven not by people who work in the city, but by people who reluctantly commute to places like Mountain View. One study of corporate bus commuters said about half would rather live closer to work. I think the next step is to create more urban life down there. I frequently hear of people who hate the commute but think the areas near their office might as well be in a desert. ------ nwah1 Those who understand the Law of Rent know that artificially increasing supply is not a real solution to the problem. Rent is set by the differential between the locational value over and above the best available rent-free land. The most effective policy for housing affordability is to exempt improvements from taxation and heavily tax the value of the land, thus encouraging idle speculators to sell it off cheap. ------ Shivetya It is good they are going to support the building of more housing. However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for the lower priced housing. As in, everyone else pays more. It might be better to work otherwise as those moving into the new housing would surely be vacating other housing. Yes there will be people totally new to the area moving into the new housing but the majority should be local movers. Before some throw out the idea that its needed to have the developers sell below market it will push some out of the market as well as the cost of the market value homes have to increase to pay for the subsidized homes. In other words, politicians do this to gain votes all the while hoping those who are adversely affected are not annoyed enough to vote against them ~~~ wpietri > However the requirement to sell twenty percent at below market value is > simply going to pass that cost on to everyone else who cannot qualify for > the lower priced housing. That's not necessarily true. Future purchasers are one source of money, but others include builders, investors, and landowners. If the 20% requirement is typical and historically consistent, then presumably that has already been priced in by the property market. In other words, the parcel value may already be discounted from your alternate-universe value to reflect the below-market requirement. In that case nobody really pays more; it's just that whoever held the parcel when the requirement was created wasn't able to sell it for as much as they might have. Even if it were 100% true, I don't think anybody involved would be shocked to hear it. If you have a limited commodity that you sell at auction, the richest people will get the commodity. With housing, that means you may in effect create a community of only rich people. Presumably the citizens of Mountain View want a different outcome. If you just don't like the mechanism, you should suggest a different one. But if you're disagreeing with their goal, then the mechanism's mostly irrelevant. ~~~ Aeolos Beautifully written. ------ baron816 Looks like bus rapid transit (BRT) could be a great solution for SV. If they could get dedicated bus lanes (which is probably politically impossible) you could really clear up a lot of traffic and establish a way for people to forgo owning a car. ~~~ cbhl The problem with BRT is that according to California's definitions, it has an unavoidable negative environmental impact. It took six years to do the environmental assessment for the Van Ness BRT in SF. [http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/transit-projects- are-...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/07/transit-projects-are-about-to- get-much-much-easier-in-california/374049/) ~~~ r00fus So essentially this 2013 environmental report says that it'd make traffic tougher - assuming the same number of cars and no decrease due to bus ridership. Note: "The encouraging news is that this law is about to change. California will soon reform traffic analysis under CEQA by replacing "level of service" with another metric more in line with its environmental and urban mobility goals. " Does anyone know if this has indeed changed? ------ benzofuran What're the legal requirements if Google chooses to make a "company town" \- ie all the other benefits are included already, perhaps they'll start throwing in a 1BR apartment within spitting distance of the campus and a tram / peoplemover connection between the two. Would they still be required to meet the Section 8 / Affordable provisions if the units were only available to employees? ~~~ cbhl I imagine the city would pick who gets to stay in the affordable units through a lottery or similar; IIRC, Facebook has a similar development next to their "1 Facebook Way" building. 10k housing units might be enough to give one or two years' worth of Google new hires an apartment; there's no way that it's sustainable to just throw it in as a benefit (plus the tens of thousands of existing employees would be outraged). I imagine they'd use it for temporary new-hire housing and/or intern housing. ------ vram22 The "city" of Magarpatta outside Pune, India, seems to have worked out a good option of "walk to shop, walk to work" (though vehicles are still allowed). I've been there a bit. Google the name and check the first few results. I'm not saying that their model can be a solution for the SV issue, just mentioning it as an interesting related story. What makes it more interesting is that the people behind it are from a farming family (but educated), not city types. ------ lostmsu That's not a real solution, because its not scalable. They should literally be scaling horizontally rather than vertically. There's a lot of less densely populated space around. ------ hellofunk >The city approved a new planning document for its North Bayshore district that envisions the creation of up to 10,250 units of high-density housing. Mountain View only has about 32,000 households total, so that would be a substantial 32 percent increase. It's a little disappointing when the only solution to housing prices is to cram thousands of new dwellings together in a pile. My experience has been that quality of life suffers in such "developments" but maybe it will surprise us all to the contrary. ~~~ davidw If the population increases in an area, how _else_ are you going to deal with it besides density, or simply telling them 'GO AWAY', which most economists agree is a terrible idea, given that adding people in highly productive areas is such a win. Population density is generally very low in most of the US. It can go higher without too many problems. ~~~ ghaff Modulo the load on transportation and infrastructure--which seems likely to be substantial--to the degree that you're going to add that much housing, this seems a pretty sensible way to do it. It's generally impractical to bulldoze a large tract of low-rise housing to build slightly higher housing. So just about the only solution is to put high-rise housing somewhere that it has a minimal [EDIT: the least] impact. That said, I wonder how well it will work to build a bunch of high-rise suburban housing while making it difficult for residents to have cars and without great transportation options. ~~~ crzwdjk If anything, the load on transportation would actually go down. One of the big problems in Silicon Valley is that many of the cities (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino) are adding tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of housing units. Which means that the only option is for people to either commute ever longer distances or crowd ever more people into the existing housing. And while it's not practical to bulldoze housing for even a 100% increase in density, there are plenty of single family houses that can be replaced with 6-10 unit apartment buildings. Even in SF itself. ------ ArtDev There is a whole country full of beautiful affordable places to live. Silicon Valley? Yuck. I will never live there again (thank goodness). ------ trhway i only wish the federals followed the suit and let 100M (1/3 of the US population, about the same as MV new allowed units ratio to existing) new immigrants into the country	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Heavily-Commented Linux Kernel Source Code [pdf] - turingbook http://www.oldlinux.org/download/ECLK-5.0-WithCover.pdf ====== rst Of possible (mostly historical) interest at this point, a similar commentary on a fairly early version of the original Unix kernel, by an Australian cs prof named John Lions -- which was very widely circulated among CS students in the '80s, despite this being technically in violation of AT&T's copyright on the book. It's availble online here: [http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php](http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/Lions/index.php) Note that the code is written in a very archaic dialect of C, and for hardware that didn't support paging in any form (just swapping). Nevertheless, it was an important introduction for a lot of people at the time, not just to the basics of OS implementation details, but also, how to find your way around a nontrivial sized codebase. ~~~ dmix There's also the great "The Design of the UNIX Operating System": [https://www.amazon.com/Design-UNIX-Operating- System/dp/01320...](https://www.amazon.com/Design-UNIX-Operating- System/dp/0132017997/) Which is probably less relevant today in terms of directly understanding the implementation. But an interesting and enlightening read. Things were much simpler and fundamental back in the 1980s. It's easier to understand that way. Then layer on top. ~~~ nicklaf Slightly more recent: _The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System_ , which includes some of the Berkeley additions to the kernel, such as TCP/IP and sockets. And then there's xv6 [1], a small Unix running on vx32 from MIT for teaching purposes, full of comments, and available as a booklet that is directly inspired by Lions' commentary on the 6th edition of Unix. I actually agree, though: to really appreciate the classics you should start with (Maurice) Bach. :-P [1] [https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2018/xv6.html](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2018/xv6.html) ~~~ nicklaf Correction: xv6 runs on QEMU, not vx32 (although Russ Cox co-authored both xv6 and vx32). ------ wgerard Hah, this is amazing! This reminds me of how I used to (and still do, sometimes) read third-party code. For an OS class in college, we had to modify fork (and re-build the kernel) to track how many times a particular process had been forked (and probably some other statistics I'm forgetting at the moment). I remember going through a very similar process for the first time - injecting white space below chunks of code, writing out my own comments, and then using that to figure out how to modify fork. Looking at the author's fork.c comments gave me a feeling of nostalgia. The useful part of course is going through yourself and writing your own comments, but it can be really helpful to start with something like this (and then write your own version of the comments). ------ Etheryte To briefly understand just how thorough this book is with providing all of the necessary background information and context, the chapter that actually matches the book title (Kernel Code), is chapter 8 and starts on page 319. ------ iicc KernelVersion 0.12 1117 pages 11.1 MB > The main goal of this book is to use a minimal amount of space or within a > limited space to dissect the complete Linux kernel source code in order to > obtain a full understanding of the basic functions and actual implementation > of the operating system. To achieve a complete and profound understanding of > the Linux kernel, a true understanding and introduction of the basic > operating principles of the Linux operating system. This book's readership > is positioned to know the general use of Linux systems or has a certain > programming basis, but it lacks the basic knowledge to read the current new > kernel code and is eager to understand the working principle and actual code > of the UNIX operating system kernel as soon as possible. Realize the lovers. ~~~ CraftThatBlock 1117 pages for millions of lines of code doesn't seem too bad, relatively speaking ~~~ badfrog Only ~20k lines. From the book's into: > The current Linux kernel source code amount is in the number of millions of > lines, the 2.6.0 version of the kernel code line is about 5.92 million > lines, and the 4.18.X version of the kernel code is extremely large, and it > has exceeded 25 million lines! So it is almost impossible to fully annotate > and elaborate on these kernels. The 0.12 version of the kernel does not > exceed 20,000 lines of code, so it can be explained and commented clearly in > a book ~~~ tomxor > The 0.12 version of the kernel does not exceed 20,000 lines of code > The 4.18.X version of the kernel code is extremely large, and it has > exceeded 25 million lines Is most of this drivers though? whats left once that's removed? ~~~ metildaa Glue code for the drivers :P ------ halfelf Chinese reader here. When I was in college about 11 or 12 years ago, a previous version of it is considered as one of our textbooks for the Operating System course. Most assignment and homework is about to add or modify some modules into kernel 0.11. ------ ziroshima The title of the book doesn't seem to do the content justice. ~~~ roguepandaz Totally, this should be "a new manual to linux" ~~~ kccqzy A new manual to old Linux. ------ Jach Great work. In the preface the author states > At present, people in China are already organizing human annotations to > publish books similar to this article. Maybe Chinese programmers will herald an increase in literate programming? Seems like a lot of effort could be saved in back-annotating by just starting the program as a literate one in the first place... ~~~ htfy96 I think the prevalence of book of commented sources in China partly comes from the way that Chinese big companies interview people - asking a lot of implementation details (especially for DBs), even though in most cases that is useless in daily work (similar to Leetcode questions in US interviews). IMO, literate programming sounds more like software development in Japan, where big companies engineers write high-level specification, then the 1st outsource company models class hierarchy, followed by the 2nd outsource company writing function declarations and comments, eventually implemented by the 3rd outsource company. ~~~ Jach Here's my favorite example of a literate program: [http://www.pbr- book.org/](http://www.pbr-book.org/) I don't see how such a thing could be constructed using that Japanese way. Though I'm not sure how any software could be constructed in that Japanese way. ;) ------ entelia09 This is a really dumb observation, but my apartment is in the cover photo! (Vancouver BC, Canada) Sorry, I got super excited! ~~~ mimimihaha Just went to Vancouver a few months ago and I immediately recognized the aquabus and the background. I was just where the picture was eating the market's beefjerky! Crazy small world. ~~~ entelia09 True! I got so excited when I saw the cover photo. ------ wuxb Many of my friend read the Chinese/original version of it more than a decade ago. It's a dictionary-style book. Unfortunately I never had the patient to read it. ------ alexitosrv As other commenters pointed out, this seems like an excellent piece! Is not too often than a one thousands pages book catches my attention, and then after a while I notice I been reading intensely the first few pages wanting for more, and so far only has been some paragraphs about the people involved at the very beginning of Linux!. It seems heavy, but rewarding. ------ leommoore Super piece of work. A great way for people to see how Linux works up close. Thanks for sharing. ------ efiecho I just wanted to read a few pages and save the book for later, but I ended up reading for 10 hours straight, I could not stop. Amazing. You can tell the author has put so much work into this, I'm really grateful that he has released this for everyone to read. ------ xerxex Unrelated: I am from Vancouver, BC and it is so coool to open a totally unrelated PDF and see a picture of your neighbourhood. ------ 4j4y Can someone redirect me to the section of the book where they explain how exactly kernel manages sockets, binds the port and keep tracks of bound/allocated ports. ~~~ simplicio I don't think v.12 (the linux version covered in the book) had sockets. ~~~ fulafel Yep, it seems 0.98 was the first version to have experimental tcp/ip. ------ black-tea I'd really like to contribute to the kernel one day. Is this work worth reading for someone like me, or is it more for historical interest? ------ qwsfg Appreciate the effort but I’m sorry to say the writing is so not the best I can barely understand some of the sentence ------ AnyTimeTraveler I wish there was an epub version, so I can read it on an ereader. PDF's aren't nice to read on mine. ~~~ anthonybullard If you can, try Calibre[0]. It can do the conversion and ebook management for you. [0] [https://calibre-ebook.com](https://calibre-ebook.com) ------ linkmotif This book looks amazing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Professional Coworker - mcrittenden http://mikecr.it/ramblings/the-professional-coworker ====== lsiebert First I like a lot of this article. Thinking about one's role in the community of the company, and the responsibilites product, is important and valiable. That said: Maybe it's nitpicking, but responding to every IM or email in an hour or less? If communication is key, it's much better to set up clear times when you are available for talking then to respond quickly to emails, at least for things that don't require repeated interactions. One might also up expectations for urgent replies that can interrupt you, but you will have communicated expectations. You can have a give and take with the above, but in general, you will respond more effectively if you chunk your reading and sending e-mail. Then, absolutely be available at the set times, and respond to messages during them. ~~~ mcrittenden OP here. I sincerely don't understand why it's difficult for some people to respond within the hour. Even if you just set aside 5 minutes per hour to respond to whatever came in in the last hour, that's still vastly more helpful to your coworkers than boxing out specific areas of your day where you will respond and expecting them to be attentive to that. Where's the reluctance? Honest question. ~~~ lsiebert hmm... thought I replied from mobile, but I guess it failed to post. I guess it's because I find it hard to focus, or rather to shift focus. I'd much rather chunk my time (and get economies of scale), rather then shift between two discrete tasks. They don't have to be attentive. Heck, they can put URGENT in an email, and I can make my computer beep the moment that comes in. But most e-mails can wait.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
China’s tyranny of characters - kafkaesq http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/07/language ====== pipio21 It is important to note that China had alphabetic systems, like Mongolian, since a long time ago. It was a conscious decision not to use them. Learning to write and read is much easier in alphabetic so the elite opposed it from the start as they viewed it as a menace to their status. They were right, when people in Europe could read Calvino's printed Bible and own one themselves it changed the status quo radically, creating lots of problems to the people on top. Before printing it took three years of a worker salary to copy a book. The same process happened in Korea and Japan, with equivalent systems to alphabetic, the difference is that in China elites won, because it was central planned. It was not easy though, specially at first it faced very strong opposition in these small countries. "as though Europe had thrown away Latin and decided to enforce French across the continent." That is exactly what happened with Napoleon. Then the fashion language to speak became German, then after WWII it was English, because of the Americans new world hegemony. ~~~ Retric They use the same written language with multiple spoken languages. That does not work with an alphabet. Signs use the same principle. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol) Though Arabic numerals have become fairly universal. ~~~ kafkaesq _They use the same written language with multiple spoken languages. That does not work with an alphabet._ It can work if you make it work (and ignore side effects). As attested by the many, many languages have been (forcibly) switched over to invented or completely foreign alphabets, over the millennia. ~~~ Retric You can map a spoken language to a random set of symbols. long A sound = vr in language 1. Z sound = vr in language 2. But, unless each language also has a different spelling you can only have one language end up even vaguely phonetic, the other is just going to have random symbols mapping to words. As in "Krithnotrix" -> "Bob" because in L1 "Krithnotrix" translates to a short word. This means if you have 10 languages then ideograms are easier in 9/10 of them. ~~~ kafkaesq Except that mappings between real languages and writing systems don't work that way (being in general far from truly phonetic). ~~~ Retric Sure, they are not perfect, but you don't want rainbow and monkey to both be spelled VVKX because they are homonyms in another language so they must be homonyms in all your languages. ------ jasonjei Language is powerful in China. Wars were fought in China to unify culture. For example, the Chinese language in modern vernacular is generally not referred as a language in itself but referred as zhongwen, or "Chinese culture." The first emperor to unify China realized how important for maintaining power it was to have the people using a single common language (just as it were with the Roman Empire, compared to after its fall). The Qin dynasty despite its short reign laid the cultural foundations for generations of China (including and up to now). Before that, China was a collection of several warring states with their own written languages that the Qin dynasty immediately abolished. It allowed them to centralize administration of standards and take power from local lords to the central bureaucracy. What is happening in Hong Kong is a power play by the mainland authorities, just as it was in many instances in mainland history starting from the first emperor. My mother's family was from southern China, and relocated to Taiwan when the Communists won, my maternal grandparents' family having worked in the Kuomintang government. While my grandparents' native tongue was Cantonese, the only language my mother knows from her years in Taiwan is Mandarin (the Taiwan authorities had a strict prohibition on non-mandarin Chinese dialects). ------ tokenadult Here is a written example of differences between the Cantonese language and the Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) language when written in Chinese characters. I've seen many examples of signs or other written language in public places in Hong Kong that are incomprehensible to literate speakers of Mandarin, and some examples of written Taiwanese in Taiwan that are incomprehensible to people from anywhere else. How you might write the conversation "Does he know how to speak Mandarin? "No, he doesn't." 他會說普通話嗎？他不會。 in Modern Standard Chinese characters contrasts with how you would write "Does he know how to speak Cantonese? "No, he doesn't." 佢識唔識講廣東話？佢唔識。 in the Chinese characters used to write Cantonese. If you can see the Chinese characters at all as this is displayed on your screen, you should easily be able to see that many more words than "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" differ between those sentences in Chinese characters. ~~~ auganov Well that example is rather radical. As long as you know (or can guess) traditional characters you can read a HK newspaper just fine with a stutter here and there. ~~~ spacehunt That's because newspapers in HK are still written in Modern Standard Chinese most of the time. In less formal contexts such as social media, however, written Cantonese is rather more common. ~~~ auganov So the subtitles on HK videos, tv etc are usually sanitized to be standard? ~~~ spacehunt Often yes. For video only the really local content (eg. 100Most) are subtitled in exactly the same characters as the ones actually spoken. (Edit: actually I just rewatched some 100Most content after I wrote the above and no, sadly even their videos are subtitled in Standard Modern Chinese.) ------ eonwe This is only partially related, but I remember watching the news in the nineties and being dumbstruck on how Académie française policed the usage of language in public life. It was probably about use of Anglicisms in television or by politicians. I forgot about it for years until I learned from Wikipedia that that wasn't just a reaaction against Internet, but a policy that has been going on for centuries: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha) So the mandarinisation doesn't seem that odd against such a background. The similar effort bore fruit in France as I think now virtually all people in France speak Parisian French compared to 12% or so at the advent of French Revolution and the following policies. ~~~ bitwize I learned about the Académie Française in French class (1990 or so). I thought they were guarding against anglicisms creeping in through teen slang -- "c'est too much" and that. ~~~ macavity23 Also through vocabulary. 'Le weekend' (vs 'la fin de semaine') is the classic example, both of what l'academie does and how utterly (though heroically) doomed its efforts are. ------ wyuenho David Moser, like many people, Chinese or otherwise, who's argued in the Communist party-line idea that a phonetic written language, or in fact any simplification of Han script helps eliminate illiterates, simply cannot comprehend statistics. Case in point: Japanese, a language that mixes 3 different scripts, one of which is Kanji (Han characters), is taught to everyone in Japanese since pre-school. An excellent Japanese reader can comprehend about 3000 Han characters, incidentally, is also the average number required for a Chinese speaker to read newspaper. Japan's literacy rate has been around 99% for so long that the government has basically stopped reporting that statistic. In the past 30-40 years, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, all regions that continue to use the "complex" traditional Han script, has achieved 95+% literacy rate. We don't hear many people in those regions complaining about how hard traditional Han characters are. As a comparison, India, which teaches Hindi and English in school, both of which much simpler scripts than Han, has achieved an average of 74% literacy rate in the most recent census. All of the above tells us that the complexity of a language's written script has very little to do with literacy. The dominant factor in improving literacy is the introduction of free primary and secondary education across a region. No other factor even comes close to achieving a high literacy rate. So stop with this non-sense that the Han script is too complex to teach, learn and use now. 100s of millions of people have done it. Another point of this article is that the Han script is too rigid, which is not true. The 6 ways of constructing new Han characters has been recognized for millennia, it's just over the dynasties, the rulers have been reluctant to invent new ones to cater to new ideas. It's the people who forces down a way to use it that's rigid. ~~~ jbooth I know about 200 words of spoken chinese and can write maybe 4 (including yi er san ;)). Now, admittedly, I'm just picking it up here and there rather than attending classes and spending hours writing characters over and over, but I think learning the strokes for 3-5,000 characters is undisputably 'harder' than learning to write 26 or so letters and a really consistent pronunciation system like pinyin. That's not to say you're wrong that literacy is all about education. But harder is still harder. ~~~ komali2 It's true - Chinese kids age 7 can write less words in Mandarin than American kids age 7 can write in English. However, it doesn't change the fact that the difficulty of the language has nothing to do with literacy rate. China has a low literacy rate because huge swaths of the population don't have access to education. I learned Japanese and Chinese to a fluent level, and at least from my biased point of view Japanese is a tremendously more difficult written language. Not only do you have just as many "characters" (kanji, hanzi, 汉子, 漢子, whatever) as you do in Mandarin, those characters can have many different pronunciations. You also have katakana (phonetic, 46 + modifications), hiragana(phonetic, 46 + modifications), and just for fun the occasional English (phonetic, 26). And yet, Japan has a 99% literacy rate. Compare that to the USA's 97.9% literacy rate, a country that teaches English (26 letters, phonetic), and I think the argument that difficulty of the language reflects the literacy rate falls apart. ~~~ Nadya You aren't biased - just educated in the languages. ;) To illustrate the difficulty of Japanese for others, I'll provide an example: 生 - raw (nama) 生まれる - to be born (u・mareru) 生きる - to live (i・kiru) 生活 - living; life (sei・katsu) 生地 - cloth; fabric (ki・ji) I'll stop there. There are _more_ readings for that single kanji but they are obscure or an "alternative" to a more commonly used kanji. To my understanding, this problem does not exist in Chinese - which uses a single reading mapped to a single character. The same character, in Mandarin, would be read 'shēng' with many of the same meanings (to be born, life, raw) The above example is one of many kanji with multiple readings in Japanese. How do you know which reading to use? Context and because you know the word. :) That problem isn't unique to Japanese, English suffers from it as well! Think of homophones like tear and tear. You use context to figure out how it is read. It adds some level of difficulty but isn't impossible. ~~~ spacehunt There are lots of characters that have more than one reading in Cantonese, Mandarin and other Chinese languages -- in fact 生 has 2 readings in Cantonese: [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F#Pronunciation](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%94%9F#Pronunciation) ~~~ Nadya I stand corrected, thank you. I had Mandarin in mind, although that fact was unclear since I only mentioned it in my example. I'm unfamiliar with Cantonese and lack any knowledge at all of other Chinese dialects. So at least for that character - it has one reading in Mandarin. The two readings in Cantonese are a single (and similar) vowel apart, nothing like the differences between "nama" and "ki". So I'll change my argument: even though Chinese has multiple readings - Japanese takes it a step further in complexity. According to this page [0], most sound differences in Mandarin are a variant opposed to a completely different sound. Variant sounds are easier to memorize because they often "make sense". In Japanese, variant sounds often occur because it is "easier to pronounce". If I had to wager a guess, Chinese variant sounds are done for the same reason - though I could be wrong on that as well. :) Thank you for the correction. [0] [http://pinyin.info/chinese_characters/](http://pinyin.info/chinese_characters/) ~~~ spacehunt I agree, the multiple readings in Cantonese/Mandarin are nowhere near as different as the different readings for the same Kanji in Japanese. I never meant to imply otherwise, sorry if I sounded I was. As someone trying to learn Japanese, it is one of the harder parts of the language for me to learn. Conjugations frustrate me more though. :) ~~~ Nadya I didn't take it as such - I took it as a correction to my misinformation and updated my argument to reflect the new information. My backing point was 'Japanese makes kanji more difficult than Chinese" but my information wasn't correct originally. Might I ask what you find difficult about conjugations? I might be able to help. With the exception of U-Verbs (五段) I found that they are very consistent and very "mathematical". Nothing else gets as complicated as "house and houses but mouse and mice, goose and geese but moose and moose". While there are still exceptions due to etymology, they are relatively rare. The same 2 verbs are exceptions to most everything and there are only a few common words which are exceptions, such as いい conjugating as よい. I concede that 五段活用 is a pain in the rear but it is something you get an "ear" for over time. So if that is were you get frustrated my only advice is chug- chug-chug along! Eventually if you conjugate one of the words incorrectly it _sounds_ wrong to you, even if you aren't certain you were wrong or not. ~~~ spacehunt Yes, it is the verb conjugations that are tripping me up (the English Wikipedia page on this [1] has a complicated chart that looks slightly scary), but they are getting easier the more I use them. I do find many parts of Japanese grammar to be very consistent, like you said. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_verb_conjugation) ------ cheatdeath In Hong Kong, I sometimes see peoples screens when I'm using public transport. WhatsApp audio recordings are very popular, sometimes I can see the entire conversation is just audio recordings back and forth. Other times it's Chinese (I can't differentiate which), sometimes English, often a mix. I've only seen someone drawing characters with his finger once. ~~~ andyjdavis Keep an eye out for either Pinyin or Zhuyin. I believe they are somewhat common for texting purposes. You input this stuff and your device starts displaying characters for you to pick from avoiding the slower process of actually drawing characters. Links for those unfamiliar with those two things. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo) ~~~ footpath Although in the case of Hong Kong, neither Pinyin input nor Zhuyin input are likely to be used, as both are based on the phonetics of standard Mandarin Chinese. There are alternative input methods that are shape-based ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_comp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_input_methods_for_computers#Shape- based)) such as the Cangjie, and Cantonese-only input methods. ~~~ andyjdavis I actually have not come across Cangjie before and it looks really interesting. Thank you for the link :) ------ mahranch > gaining so much regional identity and independence that they want to do a > Brexit of their own. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've wanted their own Brexit from day 1. At least Hong Kong does, and even Taiwan probably too. Especially Taiwan. I feel sorry for Taiwan, watching stuff like this ([http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/30/hong- kong-student-begs-for...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/30/hong-kong-student- begs-for-international)) from Hong Kong and knowing that's a real possibility for them. At least the pro-China people in Taiwan (yes, they exist) will have to reevaluate their opinions after seeing how China has handled the Hong Kong return... ------ kiwidrew At least in Hong Kong, "new" characters for spoken Cantonese are often derived from existing Chinese characters that sound similar, despite those characters having a completely different meaning. Wikipedia has a fascinating entry [1] with many examples of this. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese#Cantonese_ch...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese#Cantonese_character_formation) ------ legulere > But central authorities are also now worried about any regional languages > (which it insists on calling dialects) among the Han majority It's not as clear cut that variations of Chinese are languages and not dialects as the economist makes it out. This is very similar to arabic. Wikipedia for instance also calls them dialects. This is very different from Uighur and Tibetan which are pretty clear cut separate languages, but which are intermingled here in this article. ~~~ jacobolus Wikipedia calls them “varieties” because to call them “languages” would result in a giant political flamewar. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese), also see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese) That doesn’t mean they aren’t distinct languages (and not mere “dialects”) by any definition a modern linguist would typically use. Calling them “dialects” would be similar to calling English, German, and Dutch “dialects” of “Germanic”. ~~~ legulere English is pretty far from continental western germanic (German, Dutch, ...). Continental western germanic is actually a good example of a group where the distinction between dialect and language is not clear. There's a dialect continuum in the area [1], so you often can't draw clear cut lines what belongs to one language and one to another. \- With Low German the question is wether it is an own language or just a dialect of German. \- With the three frisian varieties the question is wether they are different languages or just different dialects of Frisian. \- Luxemburgish can be considered just a dialect, like the German dialects spoken just behind the border that are essentially the same, or an own language. \- Dutch belongs to a dialect group that also spans over wide parts of Germany and Luxembourg [2] \- And there are many more things to think about like Afrikaans or Yiddish [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_West_Germanic_continuum) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages) ------ Freak_NL Weird. On Firefox, with ad-blocker and PrivacyBadger disabled, I am stuck on a page with only navigation menus and a title that reads 'Explicit cookie consent'. In Chrome I get the expected I-agree-to-your-cookies consent form. Anyone else getting this? ~~~ seszett I've had this for a while on this domain, which Chrome and Ghostery. I haven't been able to read their articles for months at least. ------ panglott "the use of a standard language is undeniably helpful in educating the poorest and helping them engage with broader development trends in the country and across the world." This is what the powerful say every time they're trying to forcibly strip a community of its language and culture. But is it even remotely true? The major varieties of Chinese have as many speakers as major European nations. Is it really to be believed that local varieties of Chinese or minority languages can have no recognition in school? ------ peteretep Crikey, 'duang' is a much better word than 'boing'. ------ kazinator [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_kana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_kana) ~~~ PeCaN Hokkien Taiwanese is no longer particularly prominent in Taiwan, let alone the Taiwanese kana (according to that link they're not even all in Unicode). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuyin) is more relevant, as it's still moderately widely used today in Taiwan. ------ ianbicking Out of curiosity, how do writers deal with dialog with Chinese characters? It seems like characters would give the meaning but not the voice. ~~~ vilhelm_s There are some complications when Chinese characters are used to write non- Chinese languages, but in general Chinese characters correspond to sounds (one character per syllable). You might like this article, "The Ideographic Myth". [http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html](http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html) ~~~ Aelinsaar That was a really fascinating read. ------ allemagne >The inflexibility of the Chinese script has always reinforced the inflexibility of the Chinese state. The democratization of Taiwan and Hong Kong must be pretty frustrating to writers who want people to take these kinds of baseless yet simplifying statements seriously. ~~~ Noseshine "reinforced", not "caused". ~~~ dibujante "Movable goalposts", not "fixed goalposts". ------ gbog "the boxy prison of Chinese characters" What does it even mean? We are all "prisoners" of our language, because we can't easily think and express anything that cannot be molded in this language. But Chinese characters may actually give more "freedom" to their users, in that they convey directly their meaning, without the necessity of a sound. See 凹 and 凸, they mean concave and convex. Avoiding the articulation over the pronounciation is a blessing in many respects. It allows more people from distant cultures to converge with the writen language, and share much more. ~~~ Chathamization Only a tiny minority of Chinese characters are pictographic, and most characters have a phonetic element. You'll have a better chance guessing the pronunciation of a random Chinese character than guessing the meaning of a random Chinese character. ~~~ panglott The value of iconocity in the more pictographic characters is more of a mnemonic tool. It's much easier to _remember_ the meaning of the more pictographic ones.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is IT bad for your health? How our jobs might be killing us - Lemeowski13 https://enterprisersproject.com/article/2016/4/it-bad-your-health-how-our-jobs-might-be-killing-us ====== noxToken > _I am absolutely convinced that I set myself up for this event over my > decades of travel, lack of sleep, late-night dinners, entertaining clients, > and long hours at the office in my 20s and 30s._ I did this for over 5 years starting at 18 (in a non-tech career field). I vowed that I would never take a position where 55+ hour work weeks are the norm. I hated working. My hatred at work enveloped my personal life. It was hell for me and everyone who was close to me. It's ridiculous that we (generalizing) allow this to be the norm. I understand extenuating circumstances, but we have _got_ to take better care of ourselves instead of letting the rockstar dev or code ninja monikers control us. Regardless of my opinion on work hours, I'm glad that OP is in better condition. Edit: The author is a CIO, so it's more understandable that longer hours are expected. I'm more talking about the 2-3 year devs in field who are letting their jobs drive the bus. ~~~ dozzie In most fields, somebody working for 2-3 years hardly qualifies as experienced, much less a veteran. ~~~ noxToken Around here (my physical locale), calling someone a 2-3 veteran is a colloquial term. It just means that the person has some experience. Edited.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ScienceLeaks - kilian http://scienceleaks.blogspot.com/ ====== roadnottaken This is plain-old piracy and I'm a little surprised to see it getting up-voted on HN. There are plenty of open-access journals, but most scientists choose to publish in closed journals instead for a variety of reasons. I think the results of research funded by taxpayers should be free and, indeed, that is now required by the NIH and there's a huge resource available here: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/> However some of the research published in traditional journals is funded from elsewhere and, as such, I can't think of any reason why we "deserve" free access to it. ~~~ forkandwait For the most part, scientists publish in the highest prestige journal possible, because that counts the most toward tenure/ pay raises/ grant application chances; the most prestigous journals are -- for historical reasons -- still closed since they are profit centers for big for-profit publishing houses like Wiley. On the other hand, all the scientists I know wish they could give their papers away for free because it builds their reputation to have people use and cite them, even undergrads at state colleges that can't afford the bigger database subscriptions. Except for textbooks, scholars almost never make royalties, so the profit incentive isn't what you might think. A scholar makes more money by getting raises from the university, speaking and consulting fees, and publishing undergrad textbooks (sometimes). All of these are increased if their is a wider dissemination of their work. Finally, .... in the US, almost all research is funded by taxpayers, directly or indirectly, it's just NIH funded stuff that must be free. Finally, finally .... if it weren't for the fact that the prestigious journals are a ticket to tenure and promotion, there would be no reason to publish anywhere except for Arxiv: so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken system... ~~~ roadnottaken _"so called "peer review", to be honest, is a broken system..._ " To misquote Churchill: Peer review is the worst system for scientific publishing... except for all the others. ~~~ zeteo It's not misquote, it's paraphrase. ~~~ roadnottaken No, to paraphrase is to summarize or re-word [1]. I changed the meaning (from _democracy_ to _peer-review_ [2]). I'm not sure misquote was the best word- choice, but I definitely wasn't paraphrasing. [1] <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/paraphrase> [2] "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”" -- Winston Churchill ~~~ zeteo If you google "to paraphrase Winston Churchill", you hit the figure of speech that you've used. It's a pretty common turn of (para)phrase. PS: Don't rely too much on dictionary.com, it's not the best. E.g. the New Oxford American Dictionary correctly gives the second meaning of "paraphrase: a rewording of something written or spoken by someone else". ~~~ eli It's a common phrase because it's meant to be funny. The word "paraphrase" is being used ironically ------ pornel Isn't this copyright violation? It might be difficult to defend publication of entire papers as freedom of speech. Also it's hosted on Google Blogger which will respond to DMCA complaints and enforce their TOS ("Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service"), so it won't last long anyway. It should be ScienceTorrents. ~~~ dmix If you're going to do something like this at least put some effort into not getting shutdown. Buy your own domain with private whois, servers in europe, etc. ------ ajays The intention is noble, but the implementation is horribly broken. I agree with Rosie that the current system of paywalls is horribly broken. (I spent 10 years in academia, so I have some idea about the system). The example cited (the "arsenic life" paper) happens all the time: you hear about some exciting new discovery, only to find that the paper is locked behind a paywall. This is NOT how it should be! With the Internet, there is no reason for most (any?) of these pay journals to exist in their current form. The research is typically funded by the government (like the NASA "arsenic life" research), so why should its findings be closed? We (in the CS/EE field) should be taking the lead here and getting rid of ACM and IEEE journals. After many years as a member, I cancelled my ACM and IEEE memberships because it was clear that these organizations existed solely to support themselves. There are some courageous authors out there who will put up copies of their papers for public access. I even know of one author who put up a PDF of a book that he published. We need more such authors! ------ aedocw On the topic of journals, and what gets published, "Wrong" by David H. Freedman should be required reading. Fascinating book, he documents how hard it is for researches to get negative results published (i.e. 10 studies on a new drug, 9 studies show it does nothing, 1 study finds there might be something positive - only the positive study will be accepted.) ~~~ jls11 Huge problem. It affects more than just medicine. Negative results are not collected or disseminated in many fields. They never show the "messy kitchen." Succinct lists of failed paths would be more useful than a lot of positive results that get published. ------ Alex3917 For what it's worth, reddit.com/r/scholar is a much better resource for exactly the same purpose. ~~~ Geee Also if somebody isn't aware, Google Scholar finds all sources of articles and there's usually a PDF available somewhere. ~~~ djacobs Mm... I'm not sure about that. Google Scholar is a good resource, that's true. But there are hundreds of papers I've looked for that are simply not accessible without proper access. That said, I don't support this site. ~~~ btmorex Are you clicking through the "All x versions" link? There are often pdf versions that are mistakenly out in the open (i.e. on some random university web server). ------ Bud How is this site planning to stay in existence for longer than about an hour after it costs some organization a significant amount of money? Does Blogger just ignore takedown requests? ~~~ hugh3 It isn't, but if you read down it's described as a stop-gap solution. If people are actually using it by the time it gets taken down then it will get resurrected elsewhere. Here's my question: suppose I, as a kind-hearted university-based individual who respects the needs of the journals to make money but is also interested in making sure that the general public can read important scientific research, decide to upload some papers to this site. How can I be sure that it'll never be traced back to me? ~~~ pornel Make sure documents you're uploading don't contain any of your personal metadata. Ensure that you're not the only person who owns the copy you're uploading (it could be watermarked or be a unique revision of the document). Upload via TOR or similar. ~~~ Bud The second requirement seems like it will be especially difficult to fulfill, especially if the document in question is legitimately available only from a journal. Most users will not be able to reliably spot any and all kinds of watermarks or embedded invisible metadata. ------ dnautics I wanted to start a 'scienceleaks' site that was actually a site that facilitated the whistleblowing on scientific fraud. A small raffle for a cash prize can be a huge incentive for underpaid grad students. ~~~ natnat I don't think a financial incentive for leakers would be a good thing. Wikileaks works fine without offering anyone money. ------ dxjones Prediction: ScienceLeaks will be taken down within 1 week. The only reason it wouldn't be shut down is if nobody uses it. The copyright holders for academic journals have a huge financial incentive to crush ScienceLeaks. The law is on their side, right? ... and why would Google Blogger defend ScienceLeaks? They prefer people to use Google Scholar instead. ------ elvirs Most of the university students have to almost all scientific documents thanks to the library subscriptions of their universities. It will be really easy to fill the website with thousands of papers but is it worth it? is it right to do so? If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries and get access to any paper you need without violating copyright. ~~~ mechanical_fish _If you are doing academic work you can easily apply for membership to any of those libraries_ Warning: _Pet peeve alert_. Scientists routinely complain that the public unfairly brands them as isolated ivory-tower eggheads whose work is too insular and rarefied to have any relevance to the real world. They also complain that the general public has a poor idea of how science actually works: People often view it as some kind of alternative religion in which the priests stand in front of documentary cameras wearing white coats and handing down dogma. Then these scientists turn around and publish most of their actual writing and almost one hundred percent of their data, data-driven reasoning, and detailed experimental design in journals which are prohibitively expensive to read unless you're currently affiliated with a university. Which is, in turn, exorbitantly expensive, either in cash or in opportunity cost. Trying to understand science without reading the primary literature is like trying to understand jazz by reading the _New York Times_ and watching the occasional Ken Burns documentary. Reviewers do _write_ a lot about jazz, and they go on an on about how important and highbrow it all is, but if you haven't actually listened to a jazz piece for more than two minutes you're never going to get the point. Jazz is about the music. Science is about the detailed methods and the data and the literature. ~~~ elvirs you don't have to be a student or pay the university to use the library. ~~~ mechanical_fish You have obviously never been to Harvard, where in fact you do. (You can also _work_ at Harvard and get a library card as a perk. I often contemplate this fact.) The good news is that MIT has a much more awesome library and you can, in fact, turn up in person at MIT as a civilian and read copies of _Nature_. Of course, you have to make the time to do that. The parking is tricky, so you'd best ride the train. Even in the Boston area I have yet to find a neighborhood library with a _Nature_ subscription. If, in fact, you know where I can legally get access to, say, the _Nature_ and _Science_ journals without either paying hundreds of dollars a year or physically traveling to the local college library please, please paste the instructions here. ~~~ elvirs ok this is what you do: you go to the library only once, get a membership card and a username/password for electronic use. and use that username/password to access electronic resources of that library from anywhere. i hope this helps. edit:grammar. ~~~ djacobs Harvard, for one, doesn't let you do that. You can't even get into most of their library buildings without an ID. ------ zzzeek DMCA in 3..2...1... ------ eplanit The new Misguided Morality: Theft = Liberation. ~~~ flipbrad unless, of course, it plays a useful role. an ecosystem can thrive with both predator and prey - even with paratism. Point here, expressed more eloquently above, is that free and unrestricted knowledge can be a tremendously beneficial thing to society. You lock it up for good cause. Do Nature et al provide a useful service, the value of which is commensurate to the fees they charge? I'd argue that they don't: the fees they charge for access are because they have the best papers. One does not submit to Nature on strength of service, but on strength of the goodwill attached to the Nature brand, nurtured mostly through exclusivity. Besides some possible but implausible effect as an effective signal-to-noise filter (which I would argue it isn't, given that it is so exclusive, being largely faithful to a print format which has limited capacity), that's not a very good reason to prevent those with curiosity about the world - but who don't have $32 per article they want to read. Piracy of this sort, if it could be kept to those that would not otherwise purchase this article at any profitable price point for the journal, could actually be economically/education-optimal, perhaps? Also, the last time I checked, copyright had exceptions for academic use. Although I think these are usually limited to copying/reproduction, not the right of publication/distribution, I find these to be distinctions that just aren't warranted in the digital era.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Xinjiang Procedure - jacquesm http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/xinjiang-procedure_610145.html ====== myf With no attempt to disapprove the medical~execution claim, there exists quite a number of over generalization of the political and cultural background of Uighurs and Xinjiang. The history told in the article was sort of misleading. I grew up with some of them and there are more content to the current situation. Please consult <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people> for a fuller understanding. I am no wiser than wikipedia. ------ Wazowski I have never read anything more disgusting in my life.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How the Co-Founder of Foursquare Tracks His Life - dshipper https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-naveen-keeps-track# ====== mxuribe I've been moving more and more towards conventional text files saved locally, but synced through things like dropbox, nextcloud, etc. (so that they're available wherever i am). However, a bad habit that i have is that my reflex is to search online for something first, instead of first doing a desktop search of local files. Also, recently i've found myself saving a PDF version of webpages more and more in order to archive the content. I really dislike - no, i hate - PDFs...but trying to archive html content is annoying nowadays. Ok, so if i use wget or curl or even manually "save as..." from a web browser, the snapshot comes with so much junk - a simple html file balloons into a larger- than-should-be file (and associated folder) because it has all the content plus loads of javascript and other crap. When i want to archive stuff, i only want the content, the metadata (title, author, publication date, etc.), and nothing else - maybe the imagery if its essential to the content. It did seem that for a time - maybe a few years ago - web page articles did have CSS that stripped away some/most of the ad crap when you print - or at least "save to PDF" \- which made downloads/archives of the content at least a little smaller, if not at least cleaner to view...but, not seeing much of that anymore. ------ takanori Interesting. I’ve found myself using the new iOS 13 task app in a similar format to how Nareen uses Asana. Going kanban is a good idea. Though admittedly I run out of tasks fairly often and it not easy coming up with new stuff always. Anyone ever seen a repository of tasks? I’m imagining finding something I’m interested in and subscribing to the daily tasks for that topic? ~~~ bgilroy26 >Anyone ever seen a repository of tasks? I’m imagining finding something I’m interested in and subscribing to the daily tasks for that topic? This is such a cool idea! I think things like Awesome X lists for X technology to learn[0] or Fullstack Python are examples of this, and obviously for cooking/recipes this is a solved problem, but the idea of a github-like fork/clone system for general public todo lists is really motivating [0]. e.g. [https://github.com/onlurking/awesome- infosec](https://github.com/onlurking/awesome-infosec) ~~~ takanori I’m going to build a prototype. DM if interested. ~~~ zigzaggy I don't see any contact information in your profile. I love this idea too, especially for the project management work lifestyle I am currently living. ------ pcardoso > For over a decade, he's been recording quotes, and images, blog posts, and > articles in a digital commonplace so he can always find them later if he > needs them. Interesting, I have been doing an app for this use case for a while. I have to ship it one day. ------ andreygrehov I once had a phone call scheduled with Naveen. He missed it twice and finally made it to a third time. Not making any conclusions here, but just take such articles with a grain of salt and do what works best for you. ------ davidp670 I found Asana a little overwhelming for my individual needs. I like the public Pinboard feature. I've been using Bookmark OS ([https://bookmarkos.com](https://bookmarkos.com)) to save bookmarks and organizing my notes	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance - baq https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/ ====== dang Submitting follow-ups is not a good HN practice. It's better to link to the new article from the original thread (in this case, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23395689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23395689)). See [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20follow- up&sort=byDate&type=comment) for past explanations. In addition, though, this article is a straight-ahead dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21312966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21312966) from 8 months ago. That's something you could have found by using HN Search: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=technologyreview%20smart%20rich&sort=byDate&type=story). (This is how I found it.) ------ karmakaze It's luck and two other things. > explore different kinds of funding models to see which produce the best > returns 1\. Having funds (e.g. family wealth) makes it possible to capitalize on any chance opportunities 2\. At the extremes, taking risks will play a factor: fortune favours the bold. You may win or lose bigger--you'll less likely land in the middle.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AeroFS Raises $10M Series B - polvi https://www.aerofs.com/blog/aerofs-raises-10m-series-b/ ====== SandersAK I have to say that AeroFS is a company I've always admired from a distance. They don't raise that much money, they don't make a fuss, and they just keep growing. ~~~ nickpsecurity Makes them not come off as a fad or BS scheme to get a VC exit on a non- product, yeah? Interesting traits. I hadn't noticed it until you pointed it out and then... what you said might be why I hadn't noticed them lol. I'll add that a tech company operating in stealth or low-buzz mode has the extra advantage of building up quite an income stream before competitors' marketing or legal teams notice. That money helps when either responds to the new threat to their market share. Some of the best companies I ran into in robust, software engineering are still unknowns. You don't see them or their methods on HN, Reddit, and so on. Yet, they continue to slowly grow and be profitable by word-of-mouth as they deliver results day in and day out. Nothing wrong with advertising but I admire those companies the most. ------ nickpsecurity This is a product that seems to have the right features, is very flexible, and is extremely usable. That's a great combination in INFOSEC. As usual, I assume low assurance methods and plenty 0-days waiting until proven otherwise with rigorous review. Yet, doing a great job on the first part can generate enough revenue to gradually improve on the second part. I wish them luck. ------ beat Congrats, AeroFS! I'm glad to see more proper enterprise software making progress in the startup world. ------ thedogeye Nicest founder ever. People should give them even more money. ------ apazzolini I really like the philosophy behind AeroFS and how I get to keep my data on my computers only, but recently the app is taking up more and more RAM. I've seen it creep up to over 1GB until I restart it, and that's only with a 10GB shared folder between 3 machines. Aside from that, I've never really looked back since deleting Dropbox and my account there. Hopefully this round of funding brings about some performance improvements :) ------ cpach Congratulations! I see that it was over two years ago since the A round[1] so I guess that the business is going well :) [1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/funding- round/a052c0385588a052cbe...](https://www.crunchbase.com/funding- round/a052c0385588a052cbefdd17ea2319f2) ------ bifrost AeroFS is one of my favorite products, people need to be using this. ------ thingsilearned Congrats guys!!! I love AeroFS! ------ newy Congrats Yuri and the AeroFS team! ------ chatterbeak I like the concept; you wonder why Dropbox didn't enter this space. ------ Olshansky Congrats Yuri! ------ xxcode Why would they choose no-name investors? Maybe these investors are the new A16Z ~~~ yurisagalov Avalon and NHN are actually far from no name :) Avalon has been our partner from our Series A and has funded some amazing startups like Indix, SkyCatch, Nanigans, CloudKick (YC S09), Chartio (YC S10), and Cloudant (YC S08). As an aside, Rich Levandov, who is on our board, was also one of the founders of Phoenix Technologies, creators of Phoenix BIOS NHN is not well known in the valley, but it's Naver Corporation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naver_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naver_Corporation)) which is one of South Korea's largest telecoms, and is also the parent company behind the Line messaging app. We haven't talked much about it in our release, but one of the reasons we partnered with NHN is that there's a lot of need for data sovereignty in EMEA, and NHN is in a position to help us enter the asian markets. ~~~ walterbell What's your take on TiSA prohibitions against data sovereignty, [http://www.innovationaus.com/tisa-threatens-data- sovereignty](http://www.innovationaus.com/tisa-threatens-data-sovereignty)?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ZeniMax Responds to John Carmack’s Comments After $500M Verdict - avisk http://uploadvr.com/zenimax-responds-john-carmacks-facebook-note-experts/ ====== gregw2 Regarding the drive-wiping, which does not seem to have been an issue the jury had to rule on (merely an relevant piece of evidence to other issues in this suit), reading between the lines, perhaps Carmack didn't wipe his drive but somebody else did? Both parties' statements would be true in that case.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tell me your name... - pascalc16 http://tellmeyourname.com ====== dsschnau What a compelling way to demonstrate an argument I've been having with people over the years!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Intel-Funded Study Finds AMD Procs Incl. Ryzen Vulnerable to Side-Channel Hack - Fjolsvith https://hothardware.com/news/amd-processors-past-decade-zen-vulnerable-side-channel-attack ====== uranium235 Yeah I saw this a couple of days ago this is unsurprising other than it didn't come sooner. While everybody was booing Intel when rizon came out go figure something else is wrong with x86. I still don't think I'm gonna run out and buy a power / Talos setup, I'm not even looking to get good fpgas to run riscv. Fuck it, the thing that's gonna get you hacked is something else really lazy that you probably did. ~~~ Ghjklov The best architecture is no architecture. Big brain move. They can't hack you if you don't have anything to hack. ~~~ uranium235 Yeah I mean there's that but we're trying to do stuff that such nihilistic sentiments never could appreciate. There's a lot of truth to why these kinds of things like fips 140-2 level 3 are a thing even though yeah if you weild them foolishly they won't do you any good but I don't know. I just could never trust any of the stuff Intel marketed mostly because of the systematic poor quality of hardware accompanying their shit ------ uranium235 Maybe check with modern sparc or power or arm if you want hardware guarantees for always on and really secure if it's worth it to you. personally, I don't have any real experience other than what I've seen in tech specs but I'll bet at least one of them has something more competent than tcg, which ought to have been the first indication for a lot of people that x86 platforms are kind of half assed ------ uranium235 Just saying if you want like fips 140-2 level 3 sec you should probably talk to the black suits instead of going to Linus tech tips	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Macron Push to Drop CIA Code Quickens as Trump Calls EU Foe - DyslexicAtheist https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/macron-push-to-drop-cia-code-turns-serious-as-trump-calls-eu-foe ====== pjc50 Intelligence and counterintelligence among the allies of NATO is a complex business. It can't be stopped entirely and it's too lucrative to renounce, but at the same time there have to be invisible barriers of "norms" that prevent it getting out of hand. Especially now there's a president who wouldn't recognize a norm if he fell over it in the street. France spy on Boeing and pass it to Airbus, while the NSA do the same for Boeing, but would France tolerate CIA interference in its elections? [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- europe-32542140](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32542140) ~~~ freeflight This has not much to do with NATO, but much more with Five Eyes [0]. You either with 'em or you are one of their targets. Out of curiosity: Do you have any evidence for France spying on Boing and passing it on to Airbus? I mean, where's France's equivalent of ECHELON? [1] Especially in the context of US dominance of the social media sphere, it's hard to imagine any other country having similar access and capabilities to the US's. [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes) [1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm) ~~~ oomem Supposedly Frenchelon: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon) [https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon](https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon) ------ raesene9 I've been somewhat surprised for a long time that the EU hasn't done more to foster local tech companies and seemed content to rely on foreign suppliers. Dependence on other countries will always leave a risk that they can leverage that against you, either by allowing for spying or backdoors, or by threatening to withold supply. Obviously for smaller countries it wouldn't be practical to use homegrown technology, but the EU should have sufficiently deep pockets to do so, at least in strategically sensitive areas. ~~~ fetbaffe Problem with the EU/Europe it is still the old companies from more than 100 years ago that is dominating the economy and they influence the legislative process, education systems & job markets etc. This is at least true for Sweden. Take a look on the OMX Stockholm 30 index, consists of the 30 most-traded stock on the Stockholm stock exchange. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMX_Stockholm_30](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMX_Stockholm_30) If you trace the origins of these companies the youngest was created in the 80-thies for Comviq that later became Tele2 (created in 1997) Basically all of the others are from the 50-ies or before, many founded in 19th century. ~~~ tajen Problem in Europe is that there’s always a chase against rich people, too. One could not build Apple in France, they would get mugged – at best you get laws against the concentration of money. Meanwhile you get benefits if your startup is in one of the approved sectors and employing doctorates. You don’t get money if you are just reusing proven tech like Apple does; You have to do research. That means we fund research a lot, while we tax implementation. I guess it’s mostly great for competing countries. And thus, the economy is mostly guided in Europe, as opposed to innovative. ~~~ fetbaffe Yes, and I think we can sum it up with Europe = old money, US = new money. It is hard to become rich in Europe, families that are rich became rich a long time ago. ------ simonh Any non-US government using Palantir software or services is basically handing over their intelligence infrastructure to the US, now a declared foe of the EU for a start. Nice job Peter Thiel. ------ seren This is also a natural consequence of globalization, and the increasing complexity of digital layers. At one point, it becomes impossible to have a 100% home grown solution, except maybe if you are really big, like the US or China. ~~~ danmaz74 > except maybe if you are really big, like the US or China Or, potentially, the EU... ~~~ tanilama EU is not a unified entity in terms of defense. Thought they might try to stay away from a close tie with US under current administration, I doubt that they can or want to get rid as an ally as whole. ~~~ glenndebacker Not being disrespectful but the country that is a lot against unification or more EU collaboration is leaving in March next year. So while I'm not particular pro-brexit but I do think this could have also a positive impact to the EU in regards of more unification or more EU collaborations. ~~~ kryptiskt It's not going to happen. The Nordics are skeptic against a more federal EU. Most of Eastern Europe is too. Italy has flipped now. Hell, even Germany are rolling their eyes at a lot of Macron's proposals. ------ nova22033 Palantir isn't "CIA code". Palantir received seed funding from In-Q-Tel. Don't they have fact checkers and technical consultants at Bloomberg news? ~~~ falcolas In-Q-Tel's customer is the US government. It is a VC company whose own funds come from the Letter agencies. VCs have outsized influence on what companies do, being investors (and in In-Q-Tel's case, BIG investors). Saying that Palantir has been influenced by the CIA is not that huge of a leap. > [In-Q-Tel] invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping > the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped > with the latest in information technology in support of United States > intelligence capability. \- Wikipedia > IQT is the not-for-profit strategic investor that accelerates the > development and delivery of cutting-edge technologies to U.S. government > agencies that keep our nation safe. \- In-Q-Tel's About Page ~~~ Kalium You're absolutely, completely right! In-Q-Tel is publicly owned and controlled by the CIA. With that said, it's worth knowing that the US government tends to use established systems as vehicles for doing arbitrary things with money. So In- Q-Tel winds up investing money for any government agency that wants to do it. So while In-Q-Tel spends what is _technically_ always CIA money, it's very possible that it could have come from anywhere in the federal government to serve purposes that might have nothing to do with any of the CIA's goals. ------ mariushn I didn't know about [https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com) , an alternative to Google. Any feedback on it from personal experience? ------ aurelien The fact is that the cyber world is under the hand of the new colonialists. ------ digitalzombie We, the USA, is not going to have any friends left... Seems like Trump is pissing off Canada, Mexico, NATO, and EU. ~~~ danmaz74 I (a EU citizen) still hope that Trump - and his peers over here - isn't going to last long enough as a president to do permanent damage. ~~~ vetinari It wasn't Trumps administration that openly spied on Merkel... and she didn't do anything. Five Eyes will be never a friend of continental Europe, no matter what administration. ~~~ simonh Western countries have always spied on each other, jostling for position and influence. That is nothing new. Openly declaring hostile intent against an ally - that's new. I'm not sure if people in the US really understand how horrified everyone, of every political stripe are about Trump's behaviour towards us and the elected Republican leadership's complicity in it. It's not just about Trump anymore. He could be kicked out of office at the next election, sure. But the elected republican leadership, who have their own democratic mandate, are just rolling over and letting all this happen. If they can't be relied on now, they can't be relied on after Trump either. As a conservative Brit, that grew up politically during the titanic partnership between Reagan and Maggie, this is all bewilderingly horrible. I still remember the Falkland war and the way that, while it took the US a while to realise what was happening, in the end here was never any real question over here that we would be able to rely on the US in the end. I don't think that would have been substantially different under any subsequent US president even right up to Obama. But now? I don't think there is any such confidence. Can you imagine a British Prime Minister worrying about what Trump might tweet after we sank the Belgrano? ~~~ fetbaffe EU is not really the same as the UK, especially if UK is leaving the EU. Trumps criticism is against the EU, Trump is a nationalist, something he is scolded for by the left, but everyone wants to forget his nationalism when it fits the argument that he is anti-UK (or any other European country) And not to mention, Trumps "foe" comment was in regard to trading with EU, not a military conflict. ~~~ simonh I'm perfectly aware he's a nationalist, why do you think I'm forgetting it? I'm concerned principally with what he's doing because of it. Trump's trade actions against the EU, including Britain, and other allies were on national security grounds. He's publicly sided with Putin against his own national security agencies. None of this is encouraging from a European perspective. Nobody is anticipating military conflict between the EU and US, but hostile acts via security agencies? Especially targeting trade and economic activities? Operations on that front that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago cannot be discounted.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Semantic Snakeoil - kennethlove http://brack3t.com/blog/2011/semantic_snakeoil/ ====== matttthompson "It’s currently impossible to be 100% semantic and still be useful." I disagree. As I understand it, in this argument, "usefulness" is defined as "is styled correctly with CSS". To this end, the author cites using `"class"="span6"` on elements, which are presentational, but not semantic. This argument may have held more clout a few years ago, but tools like Sass have pretty much solved this problem of separation of content and presentation. Using a framework like Compass allows `"span6"`, for instance, to be expressed as a function on a semantic element, leaving your markup intact. CSS frameworks, like Twitter Bootstrap, still stuffer from this conflation, but that's just a limitation of the tools. I make no claims to a prescriptive argument on the matter--go ahead and do whatever works--but I would be interested what the author would think about Sass, or Less. ~~~ kennethlove As the author, I think we're pretty much on the same page. My example of ``span6`` is from the Twitter Bootstrap (which is also available as Less). I don't think tools like Less and Sass can save us from this decision, though. You can write hundreds of rules to handle different configurations of HTML elements and remain completely semantic, but eventually you'll have the same configuration in two places where you want them to appear different. Then you have the decision of giving one of them an ID or giving them classes and those have to be semantic (and custom to your site, requiring learning from future devs) or generic and breaking the "semantic all the things!!!" rule. People are trying to figure this out. Semantic.gs is a great example of that. I just don't see, in our current browser, markup, and styles situation, a way to avoid generic classes that's still new-developer-friendly. ~~~ matttthompson You know, as nerdy as it is, it's this sort of Aristotelian dichotomy between content and presentation that I really nerd out on. I'm reminded of an old SimpleBits staple where Dan Cederholm challenged us to find the most correct way to mark up breadcrumbs. But I digress... I'm always glad to hear about more creative solutions to solving this dilemma. In my experience, since switching to Sass, I can't really think of a case where I had to sacrifice semantics for style, but perhaps that's an effect of being a designer who's wary of such things (letting the man who shovels sh*t decide how many elephants there should be in a parade, et wot). Anyway, I don't think I share any normative urgency, (especially with something like W3C specifications). At the end of the day, I'm overjoyed that Sass saves me from 99% of semantics issues. For that other 1%, there's always the style attribute, no? ;)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Store(): a temporary mailbox for all your incoming email - old-gregg http://blog.mailgun.com/post/store-a-temporary-mailbox-for-all-your-incoming-email/ ====== alexk Interesting fact: This feature has been implemented from scratch by our intern, Satshabad. ------ sync Interesting, love this functionality. Why the three day limit? Why 'temporary' at all? I've been looking for essentially an API for an email inbox. Does something like that exist? ~~~ alexk We've introduced the temporary storage because it's exactly what our customers asked for: in most cases they don't want us to store the messages, but instead need a temporary storage so they can pull fully parsed messages when it's more convenient. However if there's a lot of demand for the persistent storage, we'd definitely consider adding it. ------ songgao Awesome. I'm really looking forward to the point when I can kick Gmail and use mailgun as my email service provider :-) ~~~ old-gregg Oh my... You have no idea how much Mailgun engineers would love actually do that. "Gmail for geeks" is a wet dream around here.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is Apple's iCloud Music Match a Possible Honeypot? - phiggy http://betweenthenumbers.net/2011/06/is-apples-icloud-music-match-a-possible-honeypot/ ====== cheald This reads really poorly. MD5 hashing to identify MP3 files? Checking hash incidence in order to determine if a file has been illegally copied? Seriously? The very concept is so weak and ludicrous that it makes the entire rest of the argument just seem silly. He also completely ignores the fact that MD5 is not considered to be collision-resistant anymore. The idea of using MD5 hashing as forsenic evidence is so wrong, it's scary. Let's not forget that nobody gets strung up on possession of illegal MP3s - it's the distribution of them that the RIAA gets you on. You have to be caught in an infringing activity (downloading from an unauthorized source, or providing downloads without a license) to be dinged on copyright infringement. To the best of my knowledge, nobody's ever been nailed on possession of illegal MP3s without a transfer component, because it's neigh impossible to prove that the files _aren't_ legally licensed, and the burden of proof lies with the accuser. ------ eridius Paranoia and hysteria. Apple has always shown themselves to care about the users first and foremost. There is no motivation for Apple to do this sort of thing. The article suggests that the RIAA could force them to, but I don't see how - if Apple doesn't collect the information in the first place, the RIAA can't possibly demand that they release it. ------ banjomonster Does't iTunes Genius already gather information on what songs you own (and how often you listen to them)? I don't see how this is more of a threat - unless Genius is only gathering info on songs purchased through the iTunes store.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Take a Tour of the Millenium Falcon with WebGL - avgp https://spaces.archilogic.com/3d/archilogic/4yzpzool?modelResourceId=5d2038e3-dfe3-411d-b489-f1f85f61ab30&mode=view ====== CaseyJParker That was incredibly cool. I would really like to see this running on an engine with a bit more power, and some very basic FPS-like features. I mean very basic. Imagine that same walkthrough tour, but with collision, interaction with doors and ladders, annnnnd maybe some blinky lights on the computers. That said, as it is it's amazing!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Django Async: What's new and what's next? - sanketsaurav https://deepsource.io/blog/django-async-support/ ====== Bedon292 I love Django / Django Rest Framework and have used it for a long time, but we recently dumped it from a project in favor of FastAPI. There is just so many layers of magic in Django, that it was becoming impossible for us to improve the performance to an acceptable level. We isolated the problems to serialization / deserialization. Going from DB -> Python object -> JSON response was taking far more time than anything else, and just moving over to FastAPI has gotten us a ~5x improvement in response time. I am excited to see where Django async goes though. Its something I had been looking forward to for a while now. ~~~ lmeyerov We ended up with 2 python layers: \-- Boring code - Business logic, CRUD, management, security, ...: django \-- Perf: JWT services on another stack (GPU, Arrow streaming, ...) So stuff is either Boring Code or Performance Code. Async is great b/c now Boring Code can now simply await Performance Code :) Boring Code gets predictability & general ecosystem, and Performance Code does wilder stuff where we don't worry about non-perf ecosystem stuff, just perf ecosystem oddballs. We've been systematically dropping node from our backend, where we tried to have it all, and IMO too much lift for most teams. ~~~ VWWHFSfQ Similarly, we ended up doing the same. Boring CRUD/CMS stuff is all in Django. That's 90% of our codebase and by far the most important. Our "user scale" endpoints are all implemented in Lua in NGINX and just read/write to Redis and data changes go into SQS and processed by Celery back in the Django app. It scales phenomenally well and we don't lose any of the great things about developing all of our core biz-critical stuff in Django. ------ silviogutierrez Great article. But I think this part may need as second look: If your views involve heavy-lifting calculations or long-running network calls to be done as part of the request path, it’s a great use case for using async views. That seems true for long-running network calls (IO). But for heavy-lifting calculations? I thought that was _the_ canonical example of situations async won't improve. CPU bound and memory bound, after all. ~~~ ghostwriter Perhaps they meant that heavy long-running calculations could be offloaded to a worker pool with a help of concurrent futures and run_in_executor() \- [https://docs.python.org/3/library/concurrent.futures.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/concurrent.futures.html) \- [https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio- eventloop.html#asy...](https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio- eventloop.html#asyncio.loop.run_in_executor) ~~~ pdonis This will only help if the workers are separate processes. Thread workers will hold the GIL in Python and prevent network I/O while they are doing CPU bound tasks. ~~~ dr_zoidberg > Thread workers will hold the GIL in Python and prevent network I/O while > they are doing CPU bound tasks. Using cython: with nogil: # whatever you need to do, as long as it # doesn't touch a python object If you're doing heavy calculations from python you should at least be considering cython. ------ abledon Whats the most elegant way for cutting edge Django to do websockets? is it still to 'tack' on the channels package [0] ? compared to FastAPI[1] I really don't want to use it, I only miss the ORM since in FastAPI it looks like you have to manually write the code to insert stuff[2]. [0] [https://realpython.com/getting-started-with-django- channels/](https://realpython.com/getting-started-with-django-channels/) [1] [https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/advanced/websockets/#create- a-w...](https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/advanced/websockets/#create-a-websocket) [2] [https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/sql- databases/#create-...](https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/tutorial/sql- databases/#create-data) ~~~ scrollaway As someone who's done over a decade of Django work: Do use FastAPI, _especially_ if you need websockets and such. Django is great for CRUD apps, MVPs and such. And I've used it with success for larger platforms, but it doesn't take long for me to want something closer to the metal whenever I need custom work. FastAPI has filled that need wonderfully well. I also miss the ORM though… SQLAlchemy is a pain. ------ hyuuu time and time again, whenever I start a new project, Django has always been my go-to choice after analyzing the alternatives. I've worked on large scale, mono-repo, billion users to side projects over the weekend, Django really stay true to the batteries included philosphy. ------ leafboi Wasn't there an article about how the async syntax was benchmarked to actually be _slower_ than the traditional way of using threads? What's the current story on python async? reference: [http://calpaterson.com/async-python-is-not- faster.html](http://calpaterson.com/async-python-is-not-faster.html) ~~~ tomnipotent The built-in event loop has meh performance, would love to see the benchmarks re-run using libuv - that would help close some of the gap. ~~~ leafboi They max out the speed with tests. It does use libuv. Uvicorn is the indicator as it uses libuv underneath. If you heard of Gunicorn, Uvicorn is the version of Gunicorn with libUV, hence the name. ------ dec0dedab0de I think the article and some of the comments are not really looking at this the right way. For most things you're probably better off "doing the work" in a celery task, regardless if it is IO bound or CPU bound. Then use web sockets just for your status updates/progress bar, instead of having your front end poll on a timer. ~~~ emptysea The downside of using web sockets is they complicate deployment and reliable delivery is more difficult than `/status?since=$pk` ------ honkycat I love django, have not used it in years though. I've been in JavaScript land. I'm consistently surprised that there are not awesome web frameworks in JavaScript similar to Django ~~~ anaganisk I recently stumbled upon keystone and Strapi, they seem a potential contender ~~~ midrus I'm also coming from Django. I've found Keystone to fit my brain a lot better than most alternatives. Tried strapi and it looks good for basic stuff but the documentation is just absolutely terrible, and once you get out of the really basic stuff you're on your own digging into their source code to understand how to do anything. Nonetheless, ok it looks promising and maybe in a few years it could be something more interesting (to me at least). ~~~ midrus Oh, and by the way, the reason I'm not using keystone either is because it doesn't support sqlite (for real). ------ djstein I’ve seen lots of blog posts, even the Django docs, saying async is available but still haven’t seen any real world examples yet. Do any exist? Also, I still haven’t seen how the async addition will work with Class Based Views. Also, Django Rest Framework is still considering spending time for support. Until these two use cases are viable many users won’t benefit. ------ kissgyorgy > If your views involve heavy-lifting calculations ... Nooo, not at all. Your tasks should be I/O bound, not CPU bound to take advantage of asyncio. Maybe the async server using multiple threads with multiple event loops, but don't ever do a CPU-heavy task in an event loop because you just invalidated using asyncio completely. ------ IgorPartola Looking at the async view example, at what point can we just drop async/await keywords and just have Python assume that everything is asynchronous? ~~~ anaganisk javaScript ecosystem went out of the way to bring async await keywords, despite Node.js being asynchronous by using call backs and promises. The argument being code readability, While async await are just wrappers around Promise system. ------ ArtDev I had a bad experience with Django. I found it cluttered and slow. I really wanted to like it. It might seem funny but a more straightforward framework like Symfony didn't get it in the way and ended up much faster. Python should be much much faster than PHP but I guess the framework matters a lot too. ~~~ IceWreck > Python should be much much faster than PHP How? Afaik PHP is faster than Python in most aspects.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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