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Programming language expert != programming expert - jawns
http://shaungallagher.svbtle.com/programming-language-expert-programming-expert
======
pcvarmint
The title is backwards (or has side effects). I was about to shudder when I
saw the HN title!!!
Programming language expert != programming expert.
~~~
randallsquared
I was excited because I thought I was going to read a novel argument, but no,
it's the same opinion everyone else holds. :)
~~~
Jun8
I frequently find that the value I get from HN is from comments, rather than
the actual posts.
------
Jun8
So William Safire != James Joyce.
There's some truth to this idea but it's much weaker in the proglang domain, I
think. The problem is that, unlike innate faculties like natural language, in
formalized systems like math, proglang proficiency _is_ highly correlated with
being creative. The Faulkner-Hemingway example doesn't quite work in math
(Leaving aside exceptional prodigies like Ramanujan).
As a side thought, can I add that I abasolutely detest Hemingway's bombastic,
macho personality. His interaction with Fitzgerald was famously appalling,
quite different from the Woody Allen's nostalgic characterization.
------
clubhi
I love the comment about RGB to grayscale... I don't have any experience in
this type of work but it was pretty obvious to me that you can't divide by 3.
That would mean it doesn't matter what value you give each color...Red would
be the same as Green and Blue... Who would ever think this?
~~~
yaur
What he really means is take an average R=B=G=((R+B+G)/3), when you really
need to convert it to YUV and use only the Y channel.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Hacker News and Reddit comments everywhere - MelSchlemming
https://epiverse.co/
======
indit
Love this. Is it possible to add link submission to Reddit or HN? Especially
when we know that the link is not in them already.
~~~
MelSchlemming
Thanks :)
As in post comments/threads back to Reddit/HN? Possibly in the future. We were
originally all about our own comment system (which we've temporarily removed)
and we wanted to limit users to our ecosystem. But we've recently started
questioning a lot of our approach (we'd been hoping to apply for YC, but are
really struggling with traction), so we could very well do that.
Posting links to Reddit would be a little iffy in that users would need to
pick a subreddit. HN should be fine.
(We have a subreddit too in case you want updates:
[https://reddit.com/r/Epiverse/](https://reddit.com/r/Epiverse/))
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Who will solve ticketing? - whapworth
Rukkus is looking at the problem correctly IMHO, http://rukkus.com/blog/rukkus-manifesto/ , but not creating the right solution...aggregating isn't the way to go.<p>solution needs to consider: penalties for bad actors (scalpers, etc), rewards for super users (diehard fans), and controls on how tickets go on sale that favor the FANS that make artists famous.<p>Some thoughts:<p>Problem: If you’ve ever tried to buy a ticket to a popular upcoming show/event, you know just what a P.I.T.A. it is. Tickets sell out in seconds and then loyal fans are left struggling to find tickets on secondary markets or have to go in with a serious game plan to try to be one of the few that lands an actual ticket when they go on sale, ever refreshed a page a thousand times?
======
wiseleo
The current situation is more like this:
Venue sells tickets, where the face value can be considered as the wholesale
value as far as the fan is concerned. Secondary markets buy up the wholesale
inventory, accept the risk of spoilage, and sell to the highest bidder.
So what is the solution? Making tickets non-transferable except by entering
transaction details on the venue site could be one approach. Transferring the
ticket voids the original ticket and generates a new ticket. Limit number of
transfers per user. Provide a validation site where a potential transferee can
validate the ticket by uploading its QR code or entering its ID number.
This would be difficult to enforce as anonymous debit cards purchasable with
cash exist. Limiting numbers of purchases is ineffective as scalpers have ways
to bypass the current ticket number restrictions already allegedly in effect.
This is who you are up against in addition to Livenation:
[http://aegworldwide.com/about/companyoverview/companyovervie...](http://aegworldwide.com/about/companyoverview/companyoverview)
Disrupting venue owners would be difficult as exclusive contracts with
Ticketmaster (aka Livenation) are long-term and in place. Building a solution
that they want to acquire and implement is probably how you would succeed.
~~~
kbenson
TicketMaster/LiveNation have gone a long way towards increasing the legitimacy
of secondary marker buying and selling. Their TM+ product allows buying
secondary tickets directly from the event page on TicketMaster/LiveNation,
selecting seats from the seat map, and as you suggested, reissues the tickets
with new barcodes while invalidating the old ones.
It's a mistake for anyone to assume that there are scalpers (brokers), and
there are fans, and they are always separate. Many, many fans buy more tickets
than they plan on using and sell on the secondary market. There are also those
who buy tickets and find later they can't attend, so need to offload the
tickets to recoup from investment. Assuming only brokers resell tickets
completely ignores the reality of the situation.
Brokers play an important role in secondary markets by spreading risk (as you
mentioned), while also adding a level of professionalism to the entire
secondary market. There's numerous metrics tracked by the exchanges they sell
on that greatly penalize problems and bad behavior. It's in everyone's best
interest if they plan to continue to use the system in the future to by a god
actor.
The venues and distributors know what to do to really hurt the vendors, which
is to accurately price the inventory from the start. This is a hard problem
though, so it's not fully implemented. Some distributors undoubtedly retain
inventory to sell on the secondary markets for higher profit. That said, even
if the tickets were priced perfectly on the primary market (TM/LN/AXS, etc),
there would _still_ be a secondary market, because the prices are not static
over time. Values would fluctuate over time, which still allows for
speculation purchasing.
------
whapworth
Solution: Build a better mousetrap than ticketmaster/livenation tyrants that
rewards true fans and diehards...and also put stubhub and other secondary
markets out of business. Credit card companies are figuring it out and buying
up huge quantities of tickets to sell to their card holders as a
"reward"...they make money and act like they’re doing card holders a
favor..SMRT. Need to consider: penalties for bad actors, rewards for super
users, and some control on how tickets go on sale that at a base level favors
the fans. Also need to consider 4 key stake holders: artists, venues, labels,
and fans. issue is that the interests of the artists, venues and labels are
all aligned, ie. sell fast and price high, but not aligned with the fans, who
are the VERY ones that make the artists famous and should be the most cared
for.
User: Concert/show ticket buyer
Benefit: solve a HUGE current pain point for concert/event goers. this is a
big market, and RIPE for disruption, ask anyone about how
unpleasant/cumbersome the experience is. Make it easier, faster, and maybe
even cheaper for loyal fans to go to the shows of the artists they make
famous.
any thoughts?
~~~
oxalo
Is there really money in this? As someone who has suffered the pain of insta-
sellout-tickets, I understand. But from a business perspective, you need a way
into the market, and 'supporting the loyal fans' I don't think will cut it.
~~~
teovall
Use the artists as a back door around the label and the venue.
Happy fans and a good purchasing experience make for more sold tickets and
more loyal fans. Concerts are artists' bread and butter. That's where they
make most of their money.
------
helen842000
I thought this had already been solved somewhat.
There are many events in the UK that use tickets with your photo on them. One
example is Glastonbury where you have to pre-register your photo before the
tickets go on sale and you get a registration number.
Then the person buying the tickets on the day enters the registration numbers
of the people they are purchasing for, similar to passport number when buying
plane tickets.
No page refreshes required on ticket day because tickets are only sold through
the 1 vendor site so they have the full pool of tickets. Scalpers don't bother
to get in the online queue because they are non-transferrable.
If you decide not to go to to the event you can return your ticket for a
refund, those returned tickets then get offered up at a later date for anyone
that previously registered but missed out. There are no person to person
trades. All tickets sales are vendor to person.
------
teovall
Seems like you could just model it on the way airlines do ticketing.
* Your ticket has your name on it.
* ID is checked at the door and must match your ticket.
* When buying a ticket, you can choose a refundable ticket for a higher price than a non-refundable ticket.
* Tickets can be sold through resellers who get a cut.
* Resellers are all selling from the same pool of open seats so they have to have competitive prices.
* Ticket prices rise as the concert date gets closer.
* "Frequent fliers" can get rewards and other preferential treatment.
~~~
wiseleo
This creates a problem with tickets where the attendee is not the person
paying for the ticket and could be one of several potential companions of the
person who is paying for the tickets.
I can no longer just give a pair of tickets to someone as a surprise and tell
them to go have fun. I could, in theory, give them a gift token that
corresponds to reserved seats and then it would be up to them to register
their names. Then the scalper can sell such tokens and we are back to where we
started.
~~~
teovall
You can buy a plane ticket for someone else. You just can't fly using someone
else's ticket.
Why would that not work for concert tickets?
The only issue I can think of is giving two (or more) tickets to someone as a
gift so they, and the friend(s) of their choice, can go to a concert together.
This could be handled by selling "friend" tickets that are only valid if the
person named on the primary ticket is accompanying them. There would probably
need to be a limit on the number of "friend" tickets that could be purchased
along with each primary ticket.
For a scalper to sell these tickets, they would need to accompany their buyers
through the doors. Scalpers wouldn't be able to resell their primary ticket,
which would increase the costs for scalpers but not anyone else. Each scalper
would only be able to sell a small number of tickets due to the friend limit.
~~~
whapworth
or maybe you need to attend a certain percentage of the concerts for which you
buy tickets....just to prevent the person who buys tickets for eight different
shows in a night and goes to none.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quick and easy way to measure power consumption - J3L2404
http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2012/may/the-quick-and-easy-way-to-measure-power-consumption.html
======
CharlesPal
Can anyone find a link to the actual product?
The only clue appears to be: "The new metering device will be presented at the
Sensor+Test 2012 trade fair in Nuremberg from 22 to 24 May"
~~~
hollerith
This is typical of HN submissions that link to fraunhofer.de: they
misrepresent some impractical or extremely speculative idea as something
practical or a finished product.
------
theatrus2
Nothing new - hall effect systems have been on the market for years
[http://sensing.honeywell.com/index.php?ci_id=3108&la_id=...](http://sensing.honeywell.com/index.php?ci_id=3108&la_id=1&pr_id=4938)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An AI from 1985 that played Rogue better than humans - okasaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rog-O-Matic
======
dalke
This was also brought up last week here at HN at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8676464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8676464)
through a link to the Scientific American article "An expert system
outperforms mere mortals conquering the Dungeons of Doom."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hiring Contractors: Employment Agreements - c0w
I'm a huge fan of outsourcing (elance) and have been working with numerous contractors through them for more than a year. I've spent thousands of dollars and completed dozens of mini projects, and plan on continuing to use their contractors far into the future. However, not once have I had the contractor sign any formal employment agreement/contract. There's a part of me that's saying "c0w, you need to protect yourself. You need contracts!". To those of you who have expertise in this area: what clauses should be in this contract to protect me? In researching this question today I've come up with the following list that seems to be a good starting point:<p>--Standard employment clauses
--Non-disclosure
--Non-compete
--IP and Trade Secrets
--Forum to settle disputes
--Non-Disparagement<p>What am I missing here? Does anyone know of any free sample contracts or templates I could use that are going to protect me and my interests?<p>I found a site called rocketlawyer.com and they have a number of sample agreements available for free. Has anyone seen these? What's the consensus on them?<p>https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/questions.aspx?document=34044058&utm_source=1024&v=3#q1
https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/questions.aspx?document=34044083&utm_source=1024&v=3#q1
https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/questions.aspx?document=34044085&utm_source=1024&v=3#q1
https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/questions.aspx?document=34044086&utm_source=1024&v=3#q1<p>Thanks,
-c0w
======
al1x
Many of these things are covered by elance's Independent Contractor Services
Agreement, found here: [https://www.elance.com/p/legal/Independent-Contractor-
Servic...](https://www.elance.com/p/legal/Independent-Contractor-Services-
Agreement-140127.pdf)
IANAL but supplemental agreements may not even be necessary.
~~~
m4wk3r
[http://help.elance.com/entries/34758-sample-contract-
agreeme...](http://help.elance.com/entries/34758-sample-contract-
agreements#stage=edit)
elance has a sample nda and mnda available. There must be some use cases where
supplemental agreements are useful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Swaks – Swiss Army Knife for SMTP - mooreds
https://jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/
======
ahungry
Swaks is really nice for testing mail related things.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Capt. Sullenberger on the FAA and Boeing: Our Credibility Is Being Damaged - GoRudy
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/capt-sully-sullenberger-where-boeing-and-the-faa-went-wrong-in-this-ugly-saga-2019-03-19
======
neilv
The most immediate concern is the tragedies of all the lives lost in the
crashes.
Separate from that, I also thought of credibility, since I've been proud of
the FAA's and aviation industry's professionalism and numerous safety
achievements. I've also sometimes held up some of their practices as models
for more responsible software engineering.
I look forward to authorities gaining a comprehensive understanding of
whatever went wrong, and taking whatever corrective/improvement action that
suggests, as honest professionals. That's what's largely worked for aviation
safety.
~~~
tuna-piano
I agree.
I'm proud of being an American and a human for many reasons. (rational or
irrational) I feel pride in Yosemite, the constitution, and our air safety
establishments. It's truly amazing that (still) in the US we've gone so long
without a truly catastrophic commercial passenger aviation accident (something
like a billion flights!).
This whole saga really leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and leaves me
with a lot less pride in the US air safety institutions. I hope the truth of
what happens comes out and the establishment fixes what was wrong.
-How did the design limits of MCAS get changed without updating the safety requirements for MCAS?
-Why didn't Boeing/FAA take the issue seriously between Lion and Ethiopian?
-After Ethiopian, why did Boeing, the FAA, US Airlines and US Pilots unions not ground/request to ground the MAXs, while foreign counterparts (including the Canadian pilots union) did?
There's a chance the FAA was acting on its best data and actually didn't think
there was any significant danger.
~~~
thecleaner
I hope that if theres a process problem it is quickly found and solved. The
FAA has done a fantastic job with air safety. We can only hope that no such
accidents occur in the future.
------
chmaynard
Many Americans consider Sully a hero. This statement will be very influential.
------
nickgrosvenor
Oh shit, when Sully speaks people listen... No one wants to be on the wrong
side of this hero.
------
asimjalis
The question is whether it was an issue with the plane or with the FCC. If it
was with the FCC can the FCC debug itself?
~~~
gizmo686
I assume you meen FAA.
A problem with the plane _is_ a problem with the FAA, because the FAA signed
off on the plane. Seperatly from figuring out the technical failures that led
to the crashes, they need to figure out the regulatory failures that led to a
plane with such failures being approved.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Defund Facial Recognition Before It's Too Late - sneeze-slayer
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/07/defund-facial-recognition/613771/
======
JoshuaDavid
I am not sure what "defunding" would accomplish at this point. At this point,
the research has been done, and the products are available for astonishingly
low prices. We don't stop oil spills by defunding offshore oil wells that have
already been dug, and attempting to do so is likely to result in more oil
spills as the money for maintenance is cut. Similarly, I'd expect that if
budget for facial recognition is slashed, the parts that will be cut are
oversight and training, and so now instead of just dealing with questionable
technology, you're dealing with questionable technology used by people who
have no idea what they're doing.
Also, as long as public spaces are under constant video surveillance, stopping
facial recognition now only solves the problem temporarily. I think at a bare
minimum, we need standards for when this evidence should be admissible in
court (at current tech levels, probably approximately never) and when it is
acceptable to use it in searches. The technical ship has sailed, so any fix is
going to have to be legislative at this point.
~~~
DyslexicAtheist
"> Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have continued efforts to ensure federal
regulation that offers a stable and profitable market in which facial-
recognition technology is, in fact, used by law enforcement, in direct
opposition to the movement the companies claim to support."
if these Tech companies were serious about fighting inequality it would be
more effective to start banning racist AI/facial recognition instead of
scrubbing Technology language from words like "blacklist", and "master/slave".
------
7ArcticSealz
...I will have to hide my elongated skull now...
------
core-questions
> Rooted in discredited pseudoscience and racist eugenics theories that claim
> to use facial structure and head shape to assess mental capacity and
> character, automated facial-recognition software uses artificial
> intelligence, machine learning, and other forms of modern computing to
> capture the details of people’s faces and compare that information to
> existing photo databases with the goal of identifying, verifying,
> categorizing, and locating people.
I'm sorry, what? Does this person think that phrenology / physiognomy, two old
pseudosciences that have been discredited for a hundred years or more, are
actually at play within ML systems?
I'm totally willing to believe that ML facial recognition systems
insufficiently trained on a wide enough set of faces will mistake one person
for another. Sure. But to pretend that the system is based on eugenics belies
a critical lack of understanding of what these things actually do, and
ascribes agency and racial animus to a computer program. Pretty clear to me
that this shows the author doesn't really know anything about how these things
work.
The reason to not want facial recognition in public spaces is the same as to
not want mass surveillance: a reasonable expectation of privacy by citizens.
Of course, if also want no police in these areas at the same time, one should
not be surprised if eventually they go from peaceable public squares, to a
haven for petty crime, to eventually a fearful place people avoid.
~~~
joshuamorton
> I'm sorry, what? Does this person think that phrenology / physiognomy, two
> old pseudosciences that have been discredited for a hundred years or more,
> are actually at play within ML systems?
[https://callingbullshit.org/case_studies/case_study_criminal...](https://callingbullshit.org/case_studies/case_study_criminal_machine_learning.html)
This _shouldn 't_ be a problem, because as you note phrenology is
pseudoscience that's been discredited for over a century. And yet.
To the broader point, I'd argue that in generally any attempt to predict
criminality from facial structure/face picture is phrenological in nature. And
people who do know what's at play with ML systems _do_ agree with this take:
[https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1276147230295166984](https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1276147230295166984)
~~~
core-questions
> And yet.
Well, what's happening there is not a study of phrenology at all (which
posited specific regions of facial/skull structure being indicators). It's
actually a very interesting thing to look at. There was a previous one that
was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone was
homosexual via ML.
Here's the thing: if this turns out to have actual predictive power, then it's
a subject worthy of scientific study, whether you like the outcomes and
conclusions or not. Plenty of other worthy areas of endeavour (e.g.
psychometric IQ research) have also revealed uncomfortable truths. If instead
these things turn out to not have any legitimate research value (i.e. can't
make predictions that can be experimentally verified), then we can stop
looking at them, but as long as they continue to maintain a relatively
consistent relationship to observable reality, they're as worthy a form of
science as any other anthropological research is.
We have a choice either face this head on, include it in policies, and build
our sociology around the truth, or we can put our heads in the sand to make
people feel better. I for one believe that truth is far more important than
feelings, and that if we had continually given higher credence to feelings the
Enlightenment and most scientific progress we've had would have been far
slower if it had happened at all.
~~~
joshuamorton
> one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone
> was homosexual via ML
Yes, which was also phrenological in nature.
> one that was reporting some degree of success in determining whether someone
> was homosexual via ML
I've yet to see any "uncomfortable truth" from psychometric research that
wasn't relatively easily explained as culturally tied.
> but as long as they continue to maintain a relatively consistent
> relationship to observable reality
The point is that neither this study nor the homosexuality study have a
relatively consistent relationship to observable reality. Your priors on us
being able to predict, independent of social conditioning, some arbitrary
social attribute based on someone's face should be very, very low.
And "predicting" some arbitrary social attribute based on social conditioning
is just encoding social bias into the model, which is bad.
> and that if we had continually given higher credence to feelings the
> Enlightenment and most scientific progress we've had would have been far
> slower if it had happened at all.
You mean like all the scientific progress that came out of phrenological
research?
~~~
JoshuaDavid
> Your priors on us being able to predict, independent of social conditioning,
> some arbitrary social attribute based on someone's face should be very, very
> low.
What does "independent of social conditioning" mean here? Can you give some
examples of social attributes that arise independent of social conditioning?
~~~
joshuamorton
> What does "independent of social conditioning" mean here?
So we know, for example, that if you train a model to predict "criminality"
based on face here in the US, it will find that race is a strong predictor of
criminality.
The first problem with this specific example is that the data is biased:
certain communities are overpoliced. We know, for example, that black and
white people use marijuana at around the same rate, but that black people are
more likely to be arrested for use. So they'll be more likely to be
represented in a dataset of "criminals" even if they aren't actually more
criminal. So that's one social factor. But let's pretend that we can construct
a socially untainted dataset that represents the true underlying crime rate,
we correlate it with face images, and the racial disparity still exists. I
want to reiterate that we're well off into the world of fantasy here, but for
demonstration purposes.
There are generally 3 conclusions you can draw from a correlation like this: A
directly causes B, B directly causes A, or something else more complex is at
play. It's unlikely for facial structure changes to directly cause
criminality, and unless you're Pinocchio, criminal behavior isn't going to
directly cause changes in your face.
So what more complex thing is at play? Well one answer is genes. It could be
that the genes that make someone darker also make them more naturally
predisposed to violence. That is, some factor C directly causes both A and B.
Or it could be even more complex, for example that socially, people who
exhibit black skin are more likely to be placed in conditions that breed
criminal behavior[0]. Since economic and social status are heritable, and so
is skin color, this seems reasonable to conclude, and there's lots of other
evidence that this is the case.
But if that's the case, then looking at a picture of a face doesn't actually
have predictive power. At best it just recognizes that your average black
person is likely to have been raised in a situation where they were more
likely to commit a crime. It doesn't have any predictive power about a black
person who wasn't raised in those conditions.
So by independent of social condition, what I mean is that such a model isn't
useful unless you ascribe to the belief that the genes that cause facial
structures are correlated with the genes that cause criminal behavior (which
presupposes that those genes exist).
Otherwise you aren't actually looking at even a direct correlation and in fact
it's very likely that if you divide your subpopulation up in smart ways,
you'll find that there are groups against which you are unfairly biased.
Just because the social signifiers in the study we're looking at aren't as
obvious to you or I as skin tone doesn't mean they aren't there, and again
that presumes the data is good, which we know it isn't.
> Can you give some examples of social attributes that arise independent of
> social conditioning?
I don't know that I fully explained this above, so let's create another
fantasy world to explain this more concretely. Let's agree that murder is bad.
This is solely a social agreement, but we decide on it based on ethical
beliefs.
Imagine that in this fantasy world there are genes that cause one to
occasionally enter a bloodlust that forces one to go on a relatively
uncontrollable killing rampage. Or for a more direct fantasy example, turn
into a werewolf that then goes into a relatively uncontrollable killing
rampage. Or be an Orc which is "naturally" evil (this is actually a relatively
common fantasy trope, huh).
This genetic marker would imply a genetic predisposition to criminal behavior,
despite any social conditioning. Compare this to a relatively normal human
child who is trained from a young age that they are "no one", a part of a
greater movement that requires assassinating the wrong people, and that this
assassination is sometimes necessary for the greater good.
Both are more likely than your average person to commit a crime, but one was
conditioned to this socially while one was genetically predisposed. If this
cult holds onto family lines, there will be similarities between cult members,
but people who escape the cult or who were never a part of it might be
unjustly thought to be criminal, solely because they resembled the cult.
To jump back to the original statement, this means that if you set up a
confusion matrix that includes "family of cult members" as a category, your
model will perform badly and discriminate negatively agains them. You can see
why this might cause huge issues like, for example, causing the justice system
to chase or harass people who are related to criminals.
Hopefully that explains. It's essentially a correlation vs. causation issue.
[0]: I should note here that this is true whether you ascribe to the belief
that "black culture" encourages/celebrates criminality, or the belief that
"white supremacist and social structures" push black people into situations
where they can't avoid crime.
~~~
zajio1am
> There are generally 3 conclusions you can draw from a correlation like this:
> A directly causes B, B directly causes A, or something else more complex is
> at play. ... Hopefully that explains. It's essentially a correlation vs.
> causation issue.
Note that for predictor it does not really matter correlation vs. causation.
That matters for intervention. If you have feature A that in the population
always causes features B and C, and no other causes them, then presence of B
is perfect predictor of C, but intervention that changes B (and not A) does
not affect C.
On the other hand if feature D causes feature E in 90% cases, and no other
causes it, then D is predictor of E with 10% false positives, but intervention
on D affects E.
It is true that 'perfect causality' predictors, where the set of accounted
factors are only causes of a predicted feature, have advantage that they work
the same for any subset (or any change) of population. While predictors that
ignore some causal factors (like the predictor from the first example that
ignores common causal factor) may have vasly different probabilities for
subset (or change) of population (when distribution of ignored factors
change). But in practice most real-world causal networks are super complex and
many real-world tests ignore many causal factors. So it is kind of isolated
demand for rigor [1].
[1] [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fzeoYhKoYPR3tDYFT/beware-
iso...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fzeoYhKoYPR3tDYFT/beware-isolated-
demands-for-rigor)
~~~
joshuamorton
> Note that for predictor it does not really matter correlation vs. causation.
> That matters for intervention.
Yes, but you don't build a model without intending some intervention, so this
distinction is irrelevant in the context of applied ML, although it is a true
statistical fact.
> So it is kind of isolated demand for rigor [1].
I don't see how. The isolated demand for rigor "fallacy" that Scott Alexander
talks about is when you ask for rigor to be applied in ways that are bad
faith. Let me rephrase my concern:
We have lots of evidence that real-world causal networks are super complex and
many real-world tests ignore many causal factors. Similarly, we have no
a-priori reason to believe that facial structure is correlated with {sexual
orientation, innate level of intelligence, innate criminality}. And in fact we
have strong reasons to believe that most of the way that those things present
is due to cultural influence.
So if someone shows up with a groundbreaking study that shows that they can
predict some innate attribute based on facial structure, it's likely that
they're actually seeing cultural biases (or cultural correlations) and not
innate factors (or correlations with genotypic things). In other words, our
priors should be that any model in this space is simply discriminating based
on stereotypes, not revealing some innate way to "predict" these attributes.
The model isn't a _predictor_ but a _recognizer_ , and while semantic, that's
a very important distinction.
------
rexreed
It's too late.
~~~
core-questions
It was too late even before facial recognition technology existed, because
it's not like you can't apply modern tech to older video footage.
------
m0zg
Sorry, I'd much rather defund The Atlantic. Facial recognition at least has
valid uses beyond surveillance. The Atlantic has no known good uses that I can
discern.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Would you pay for a desktop bug tracking app made for solo developers? - captain_mars
When I am working alone, I often feel the need for a desktop app that would help me easily log bugs and 'ToDo's for whatever project I am working on. I'm thinking of writing it myself.<p>Can you please look at the features I have planned, and tell me whether you would pay for this app? If no, is there a feature I could add that would change your mind?<p>The features:<p>1. Mac OS X native app (Windows later).<p>2. Ability to manage bugs and features/ToDos of multiple personal projects through a tabbed interface.<p>3. Bugs can be categorized (functionality bug, performance bug, UI bug, etc.)<p>4. Bugs can be assigned severity levels (say 1-5), and <i>you</i> have the freedom to define whether the numbers apply in ascending order (1 = least severe, 5 = most severe), or in descending order.<p>5. You have the ability to change the names of the categories and and the severity levels. The app will adapts to <i>your</i> mental model; doesn't force you to adapt to mine!<p>6. Features and ToDos can also be assigned priorities: "this release", "later release", or "maybe". Of course, you can change these labels too.<p>7. The app is fully keyboard-enabled: you are able to bring up the app, move from one project to the other, add/remove a bug or ToDo, and make notes about them, all from your keyboard. No need to stop your work, grab the mouse, and then click in a few places. (Normal mouse support will be there, of course.)<p>8. No lock-in: Export data at any time in CSV, HTML or plain-text formats.<p>9. Optional preference: The app stays out of your way, in the Menubar. Only pops up when you ask for it through a keyboard shortcut.<p>Price: USD 15 - 30<p>HN, would you find this app useful enough to buy? Is there something I should do differently? Do you want ability import from / export to Bugzilla, etc. ?<p>Thanks!
======
RVijay007
I personally like to keep my bug and issue tracking, along with ToDos with my
repository, like on Bitbucket, so that it is all well compartmentalized
together. If the app would be able to synchronize with these online repos
tracking systems, then I could see myself using this app. The synchronization
is important as I have multiple systems that I use for development (desktop
and laptop), and would want the issues automatically updated on both.
~~~
captain_mars
> If the app would be able to synchronize with these online repos tracking
> systems, then I could see myself using this app.
Thank you. I will consider this feature.
However, what about Dropbox integration? If the app synchronized to Dropbox so
that you could access your bug list on all your machines, would that work for
you?
------
beat
First, consider building it as a SaaS web app rather than a desktop app. I
don't want to be tied to my desktop with it! I want to be able to see things
from my phone, other computers, etc.
More importantly, what does this offer me that I can't get elsewhere, for
free? There are a zillion bug tracking apps already. You need to offer
something I can't get elsewhere.
Don't think too much about price, or about making it inexpensive in order to
get more customers. I value my personal time at $100/hour, so if an app can
save me just one hour, it's worth $100. But it has to not only be worth an
hour, it has to be worth an hour above my alternatives.
~~~
captain_mars
Thanks for your inputs.
> First, consider building it as a SaaS web app rather than a desktop app. ...
> I want to be able to see things from my phone, other computers, etc.
I will consider it. I was thinking of making this a desktop app, because I was
visualizing it as something I would use only while coding. I had not
considered that someone may want to access the list through a phone. But now
that you mention it, I can see the possibilities.
For example, someone may want refer back to the list of open bugs on their
personal project, while commuting back from work. Or someone may think of a
great idea for their app while not being near their desktop, and may want to
make a note of it.
> what does this offer me that I can't get elsewhere, for free?
Most apps (Redmine, Mantis, Bugzilla etc.) are browser based ones, and I
believe desktop apps can be slicker and faster. More importantly, most bug-
tracking apps force the user to adapt to them, rather than letting the user
adapt the app. I also find them a little too complex for a solo developer.
Thanks again for your inputs!
------
captain_mars
It's now midnight in my time zone, and I will be going to sleep. But, I will
read every comment when I come back online in a few hours, and will reply to
any question you ask.
Thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MIT creates analog "brain chip" - raywalters
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/105067-mit-creates-brain-chip
======
JoeAltmaier
Since it runs faster than a neuron, with fast context-switching it could be
possible to model a human brain using such a device using fewer than 100
billion - perhaps as few as 100 millions? That leaves the 1000-connections-
per-neuron issue - a switch 100 million long and N wide to shunt simulated
impulses. So that work remains.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In Mathematics, It Often Takes a Good Map to Find Answers - yarapavan
https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-math-it-often-takes-a-good-map-to-find-answers-20200601/
======
ssivark
I highly recommend Bill Thurston’s gem of an article _On proof and progress in
mathematics_
[https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236](https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236)
Talks about the human aspect of pursuing mathematical research, how they shape
the attitude of the field towards a problem abs are crucial in progressing
towards knowledge. Should be very readable for everyone; no formal math as
such.
~~~
sabas123
It was a good read, thank you for sharing.
> "It was an interesting experience exchanging cultures. It became
> dramatically clear how much proofs depend on the audience. We prove things
> in a social context and address them to a certain audience. Parts of this
> proof I could communicate in two minutes to the topologists, but the
> analysts would need an hour lecture before they would begin to understand
> it. Similarly, there were some things that could be said in two minutes to
> the analysts that would take an hour before the topologists would begin to
> get it. And there were many other parts of the proof which should take two
> minutes in the abstract, but that none of the audience at the time had the
> mental infrastructure to get in less than an hour"
I wonder if we would ever get to a point where we would find an effective and
desirable mental infrastructure such that this wouldn't happen.
~~~
ssivark
Category theory is supposed to be one such tool, even though some find it very
abstract. It's very much in the spirit of finding analogies among theories and
analogies among analogies. (I swear I'm not trolling :P) I'm still working on
my understanding of category theory, but somebody who has the mathematical
fortitude might enjoy: [http://groupoids.org.uk/pdffiles/Analogy-and-
Comparison.pdf](http://groupoids.org.uk/pdffiles/Analogy-and-Comparison.pdf)
In general better abstractions(similar ideas as in a recent discussion of
Peter Naur's "Programming as theory building").
------
amirhirsch
I liked this article. One notable point that felt like it was missing in the
article is that the Prime Number Theorem, that the count of primes grow like
(n / ln n) was provided such a map by Riemann in the letter in which he put
forward his infamous eponymous hypothesis. That letter introduced the idea of
using analysis to the Prime Number Theorem, extending the groundbreaking work
of Riemann's friend Dirichlet who introduced the world to analytic number
theory in Dirichlet's Theorem on the infinitude of primes in arithmetic
progressions. It would take nearly half a century for mathematicians to digest
the application of Fourier Analysis put forward by Riemann, and the proof of
the Prime Number Theorem came only in the early 1900's. By then the analytic
machinery would have been more commonly taught -- probably largely due to the
advent of electrical engineering.
Erdos and Selberg eventually put out fully arithmetic proofs of the Prime
Number Theorem. And generally the helicopter analogy from the article probably
doesn't apply so well to mathematics because you can probably always reduce
theories and encapsulate all the dependent proofs to arithmetic first
principles, but of course you already have the map.
Recently the proofs of the Sensitivity Conjecture by Hao Huang and of the
Bounded Gaps Between Primes by Yitang Zhang surprised mathematicians in how
little new machinery these seemingly intractable problems required -- in the
case of Zhang application of "hard work" on top of GPY and Hao Huang, a single
clever insight.
~~~
tzs
> and the proof of the Prime Number Theorem came only in the early 1900's
That's just a little too late. It was proved in 1896 independently by Hadamard
and de la Vallée Poussin.
Hadamard, J. "Sur la distribution des zéros de la fonction zeta(s) et ses
conséquences arithmétiques (')." Bull. Soc. math. France 24, 199-220, 1896
de la Vallée Poussin, C.-J. "Recherches analytiques la théorie des nombres
premiers." Ann. Soc. scient. Bruxelles 20, 183-256, 1896
------
mmhsieh
The difficulty in coming up with a good map of mathematics is summarized by
this quote by Banach:
"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better
mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best
mathematician can notice analogies between theories. One can imagine that the
ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies."
~~~
jordigh
Haha, it's like Maclane said: "I did not invent category theory to talk about
functors. I invented it to talk about natural transformations."
You gotta go at least to the third level of abstraction to get the real meat.
------
CatsAreCool
I liked this article since it points out a problem in math where it can be
hard to know what is currently known.
Perhaps a result can be proven using a little known proposition in a
completely different area of math, but it is hard to find that result in the
literature.
That is one reason I came up with
[https://mathlore.org](https://mathlore.org). It is a place to collect
mathematical info (with links to articles for a deeper look) so you or others
can find it later when you need it.
It supports of public collection of math info as well as allowing you to build
your own private collection so you can keep track of what you have learned.
The hope is it will be useful to others to help learn math and prove new
theorems.
------
physicsgraph
The article is sparse on what a detailed map for mathematics would look like
and merely points out that some topics have related techniques for solving
them.
I don't think a map for math techniques is feasible, but a map relating topics
via mathematical steps is possible in Physics [1]. (Disclaimer: I'm the author
of that map for Physics.) I think the reason that a map in Physics is feasible
is Physicists do not use math techniques in the way mathematicians do, and the
objectives are different.
[https://derivationmap.net/](https://derivationmap.net/)
~~~
knzhou
It seems to me that your map is _far_ too detailed to use practically. You
spell out every algebraic step, including stuff as simple as "divide both
sides by T", so that deriving f = 1/T from T = 1/f takes about 10 nodes. This
is like building a model train to a _larger_ scale than an actual train --
what is the use?
Education research tells us that what you actually want to do is the exact
opposite: chunk as much as possible. You should learn algebra separately, and
then use your preexisting knowledge of algebra to group f = 1/T and T = 1/f
into one conceptual node. If you need 10 nodes every time something that basic
is done, then your map will contain a vast amount of redundancy and be too
large to use to get anywhere...
~~~
physicsgraph
I agree that navigating a map of Physics at the very lowest level would not
enlighten any student or researcher. My expectation in mapping atomic steps
for a wide swath of the domain might enable insights not otherwise accessible.
The chunking of atomic steps is what enables leaps in understanding. The
mapping process starts with understanding each step.
~~~
knzhou
Well, I recommend doing a concrete, nontrivial derivation from start to finish
just to see how this approach scales. As a basic example that is typically
covered in about half a page in books, try doing a full derivation of the wave
equation for a wave on a string. I would bet that once you set up the 1000
nodes required to do this, you'll be completely exhausted, and moreover will
have gotten no new insight! If you're not tired yet, try deriving the equation
describing waves on a stiff rod -- it'll take at least 1500 nodes, most of
which will be exactly the same as the ones for the wave equation.
Furthermore, this excessive mathematical structure hides the physical
assumptions that really drive the validity of these equations. A real string
doesn't actually obey the wave equation perfectly. The reason has to do with
physical aspects of the string itself, not minutiae in the mathematical
derivation of the wave equation. I can't think of an example where progress in
physics was stalled because somebody tried to divide both sides of an equation
by T and failed...
~~~
ZenOfTheArt
A Fitch derivation of the existence of the intersection of all members of a
nonempty set is a better place to start because it can be done in less than
ten sheets of paper longhand. The ratio of triviality to pages consumed is
quite shocking when you finally confront it. It is at that point that you
realize intuition has no formal translation but is vital since the level of
detail seems to blur and darken intuition when holding a proof to the standard
of formal derivation rather than the ordinary informal standard. So far, I’ve
seen relatively little interest in mathematical intuition or even honest
appraisal of what it is or how mathematicians should develop it. Rather the
trend seems to be pretending that mathematical intuition doesn’t exist and
treating formalization as a no-op. I think this is due to an anti-intellectual
atmosphere that views mathematics as a source of problems for the military as
opposed to pastimes for civilians.
------
utkarsh_apoorva
> But imagine how poetic it would have been if the technology for constructing
> such a machine had been available to da Vinci all along.
Very poetic indeed.
Most of entrepreneurship is applying known models to new areas. Intellectually
not nearly as stimulating or hard as theoretical math, but the shape and form
looks similar - you do not know if a solution exists, you do not know if a
problem really exists.
What's funny to me is that, since it's usually applications of engineering,
the technology is almost always there. It's a matter of tinkering a collection
of things the right way.
I ditched a career in Physics to start a company long back. This post made me
think I probably haven't lost much :-)
------
swayvil
Isn't mathematics essentially ALL map?
The only measures of goodness that I can come up with are logical consistency,
elegance and lurking mystery.
------
amandavinci
The analogy of maps and boats is just an instance of the exploration-
exploitation idea. I have seen instances of this pop up every time we discuss
problem solving in some form. It falls in the perennial variety of ideas that
can't be revisited enough.
------
rmrfstar
Maps turn out to be useful in experimental physics too.
Here's a neat BBC piece featuring Gell-man and Feynman on Strangeness -3 [1].
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGeW6Nc6IMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGeW6Nc6IMQ)
| {
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Samsung: first EUV based process - tooltalk
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-7nm-chips-euv-7lpp,37944.html
======
tooltalk
Samsung's official press release [https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-
electronics-starts-p...](https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-
starts-production-of-euv-based-7nm-lpp-process)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Impact of exchange rate on starting startups in SV - getp
Just curious: who's finding it more and more attractive to take their euros and start a startup in Silicon Valley because of this ridiculously favourable exchange rate:<p>1 Euro = 1.4846 U.S. dollars (nov 28 2007)<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=euro+in+dollar&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enNL176NL226" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=euro+in+dollar&sourceid=n...</a>
======
davidw
I don't think it's quite that easy to get into the US, although maybe I'm
wrong. I'm trying to think of some ideas about selling stuff to Italians from
the US and have a few, but haven't done anything concrete yet. I'm actually
trying to stick to a few things (like Hecl) for a little while, which is
tough.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What Is No Code of Conduct? - stargrave
https://nocodeofconduct.com/
======
JMTQp8lwXL
I think it's reasonable for large software projects to have Code of Conduct.
When I'm working on something small with few collaborators, it's too much
process.
"No Code of Conduct", to me, looks like what All Lives Matter is to Black
Lives Matter, that is, a deflection from the actual problem.
I somewhat agree with the general 'Don't be a jerk' principle. It has its
place. But it doesn't scale for large projects.
This problem is, it's too discretionary. It isn't an actual policy you can
point to if someone to decides to become zealously sexist or homophobic in a
software project -- things that I haven't encountered much, but if you're
maintaining a project with 10,000+ stars and hundreds of contributors,
maintainers sometimes have to wear a moderator hat.
~~~
downerending
You _do_ have to moderate, but it's not clear that a CoC makes any difference.
You have people that are chill, people that will take direction when they
unintentionally are not, and assholes. A CoC doesn't help with any of that.
When I read some of the rather hateful comments coming from the most ardent
proponents of CoCs, I feel like something's really gone wrong with the
project.
~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
Having a CoC ensures moderator actions (bans, etc) are applied evenly when
communities grow so large, they need multiple moderators.
People that violate CoCs probably don't care to read them anyways, but I don't
think that's the primary purpose of such a document.
I would speculate the author of "No Code of Conduct" hasn't hasn't ever had to
confront the complexities of moderating a large group of people.
------
mdszy
>Once again, we are not going to tolerate our community being overridden by
the mob. If this starts to happen, we will nuke, delete, lock, close, ban, and
do whatever we have to do to put the fire out. These discussions drag on and
on and on, and they don't make communities better.
"if you don't shut up about being mistreated by our community, we're going to
ban you"
The level of sheltered techbro is too strong.
If you can afford to "not care" about issues, shut the fuck up yourself and
don't try to shut out others who are affected by these issues with bullshit
like this.
>Q: Your name is offensive. CoC sounds like Cock, and I feel that this is a
group of white males that is trying to downplay the seriousness of this issue
in our community, and I boycott your movement, and am going to tell others to
as well!
Nice strawman. Wow.
Also way to demonize everyone who is sick of techbros being assholes by
calling them "the mob".
This is disgusting.
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Case Study: Freescale Netbook Design at SCAD - dnewcome
http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/case_study_freescale_netbook_design_at_scad_by_dave_malouf_14241.asp
======
onreact-com
Take note that the big box displayed on that first image is not the actual
Freescale netbook which actually looks like this:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/22046787@N03/3177930623/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twenty Dollars Per Gallon: How the rising price of oil will change our lives - tokenadult
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/14/20-dollar-gallon-business-energy-oil.html
======
cpr
For a more critical and very thoughtful (if somewhat vengeful) look at peak
oil and what it implies, see The Long Emergency and A World Made by Hand, both
by James Kunstler.
His book on suburban blight, The Geography of Nowhere, is also fascinating.
<http://kunstler.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you monitor financial markets? - maximedb
Hi HN,<p>How do you monitor financial markets?<p>I used to have a Bloomberg Terminal license at my previous job. Now that is gone, I lack a good tool to monitor markets (like WEI<Go>/WB<Go>/GMM<Go>). Or something similar to the launchpad?<p>Which app/website do you guys use?<p>Thank you,<p>Maxime.
======
arthurcolle
Koyfin is decent. It does not have good terminal commands like BBG
unfortunately. It is surprising that no good extensible alternatives exist,
but I suppose this is part of Bloomberg's cachet. I used BBG at Goldman when I
was working in agency CMO structuring and it is definitely powerful, but I
found it a little annoying that there was no API I could write scripts
against. I moved laterally from technology to trading and there was massive
hesitance from partners higher up to allow lateral moves to still have
developer access in general, so that was an unfortunate situation all around.
~~~
maximedb
Thanks, I will check it out. There are a few python wrappers around Bloomberg
APIs. For example:
[https://github.com/kyuni22/pybbg](https://github.com/kyuni22/pybbg). It
mimicks the Bloomberg Excel formulas (BDP, BDH, BDS). Quite powerfull. But you
can hit the daily limit easily (500,000 data points per day max). They
released the Bloomberg Query Language (BQL) that you can use to make larger
queries. But not all FLDS fields are available yet... They also provide BQNT,
a jupyter notebook where you can run BQL queries and share "apps" with your
colleagues.
------
Bostonian
If you have an Interactive Brokers account (real money or test) you can use
Traders Workstation, and IB also has an API that lets you pull data. There is
an active mailing list
[https://groups.io/g/twsapi](https://groups.io/g/twsapi) .
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Exchange at Georgia Tech - timtamboy63
http://startupexchange.gatech.edu
======
gte910h
A neat thing about where this is: There are condos available for 75k (up to
about 700k) near there, most in the <300k range. There are 2600 sq ft duplexes
in the <500k range, and many single family homes in the 200-450k range there.
All walkable from that incubator location. One of the "main drags" for
nightlife is nearby too.
~~~
jdchizzle
Are you referring to the library or Georgia Tech in general?
~~~
gte910h
Sorry, I thought that was a link for
[http://venturelab.gatech.edu/](http://venturelab.gatech.edu/) not the student
one. Had the names backwards.
------
lcusack
Looks great! Wish I had this when I was in college.
One thing though, you might consider changing "businessmen" to a gender
neutral term.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What free photo hosting service should I use for my GitHub projects? - aviaryan
I am looking for a reliable free photo hosting service where I can host images for my blogs and github projects.
It would be nice if that service has album feature so that I can categorize uploaded images a/c project.
So far I have tried Imgur and PostImage but they didn't appeal to me.
Imgur wasn't user-friendly (no direct way to upload to existing album) whereas PostImage was buggy.
======
aviaryan
I went ahead with PostImage because despite being buggy it had a clean
interface, had album feature(gallery), direct links, mass upload etc.
------
smt88
Why not just use AWS S3?
~~~
lovelearning
OP wants a free service. Picasa with public visibility for albums comes to
mind.
~~~
aviaryan
Looks good. Do they have an API or are there 3rd party tools available ?
~~~
lovelearning
API: Yes ([https://developers.google.com/picasa-
web/?hl=en](https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/?hl=en))
They have their own web and desktop client to upload and manage albums. 3rd
party tools likely exist (since there's an API) but I've never used any.
------
aliirz
why not create your own CDN if you have some hosting space or create one on
AWS?
~~~
aviaryan
I currently don't have hosting space and I plan to use free AWS for a project
(later on).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Google Knol failing? - larryfreeman
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/11/poor-google-knol-has-gone-from-a-wikipedia-killer-to-a-craigslist-wannabe/
======
TomOfTTB
Is it failing? I think it's a little late for that question. More like "why
did it fail?"
I understand the nature of a company like Google is to cast your net wide,
devote a small amount of resources to a bunch of products and hope some of
them take off. That's what Knol is part of and that's fine. Google's mistake
has been not improving or shutting it down before it became an embarrassment.
Given that I consider articles like this to be exactly the level of mockery
they deserve.
~~~
tokenadult
_Google's mistake has been not improving or shutting it down before it became
an embarrassment._
Yes. But there was probably too much corporate inertia to shut it down within
forty-eight hours after it was opened to public posting, by which time it was
a huge embarrassment.
------
naz
Knol is Google trying to Cuil Wikipedia
------
rimantas
Honestly, it took me this headline to recall that thing exist at all…
------
sown
Well...here, courage is being scared of embarrassment but doing it anyways.
nice try, G.
------
kqr2
_Why Google's online encyclopedia will never be as good as Wikipedia_
<http://www.slate.com/id/2200401>
------
sachinag
God, I hope they shut it down. It was immediately populated by SEO freaks who
kept looking at PR flowing from a google.com domain. And it made me feel like
I had to do it, and I hate doing shit purely for SEO reasons.
------
I_got_fifty
Oh, yeah Knol. Is that still around?
------
jmonegro
Google what?
------
onreact-com
Google just needs to downrank Wikipedia a little and it fails. I guess Google
Knol will sooner or later rank above Wikipedia. We all know that Eric Schmidt
has denied that "don't be evil" has been ever an official motto of his
corporation.
~~~
whughes
Sorry, but Google Knol does not and probably will never match Wikipedia for
sheer scope and variety of content. You can't outrank Wikipedia if you aren't
even competing with it.
Knol has ~300,000 articles in total, many of which are instructional on
specific subtopics. Wikipedia has 3 million articles in English on every
topic. Not only is Wikipedia much bigger, it also has a more specific focus
(creating an encyclopedia).
~~~
onreact-com
Yeah, but you can outrank where you already have an article. ;-) Once Knol
ranks above Wikipedia more people will notice and contribute.
------
sho
Just the name was bad enough to doom it, IMO.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair - enraged_camel
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-18/young-white-america-is-haunted-by-a-crisis-of-despair
======
irrational
I worry about this for my oldest son. He has dyspraxia and apraxia. In
practice that means he has difficulty with memory (at 15 he still doesn't know
his multiplication tables) and putting things in order (such as speaking - you
have to put phonemes, words, sentences together in order to speak). But, he
doesn't look like he has a disability and he doesn't speak much so people
don't readily realize he doesn't talk like other people. There are people who
know him for years without realizing there is anything "wrong" with him.
Unfortunately there is no way he will be able to go to college. He is
basically flunking middle school despite putting forth his best effort because
he simply can't remember anything and can't put things in order to respond to
questions or write things down. However they will basically pass him since
they have documentation that he has a disability. He will get a high school
diploma because if you have a documented disability and attend public school
they will basically just give you a diploma if you at least show up. College,
obviously, doesn't work the same way. I'm not really sure what will become of
him. I'm not sure he could hack a trade. He could do manual labor, but that
doesn't really pay well enough to live on your own, at least where we live.
I'm afraid he will end up with the problems outlined in this article.
~~~
sbardle
I went to a school where a number of friends were not academic in the
slightest. They left as soon as they could often with no qualifications but
gradually learnt trades.
Many now have their own businesses (one is a plasterer, another a builder) and
they earn good money, own their own homes, and have no student debt.
The reason? They had supportive parents. Many of the people who are falling
into despair tragically come from very broken families.
~~~
emodendroket
I'm guessing the successful people you're describing do not have severe
learning disabilities. And I find it at least questionable that parenting has
gotten markedly less supportive in the past few decades.
~~~
will_brown
>And I find it at least questionable that parenting has gotten markedly less
supportive in the past few decades.
Look at the trends of the past few decades: divorce; single parent; and dual
income households. There is in fact remarkedly less two parent, supported by
single income households, meaning it's a rareity for a child to simply have a
parent at home when they return from school to fix them a healthy snack, ask
how their day was, or help with homework. Certainly it's not a single cause,
but stability in the home is indisputably tied to mental well being of the
child.
~~~
curveship
US divorce rate is lower than it's been for 40 years.
~~~
jdmichal
You're discussing the derivative (rate of change) of the actual issue. The
issue isn't how fast divorced households are growing; the issue is that they
exist at all. Even if the divorce rate was zero, there would still be existent
divorced households. And broken households don't do any favors for children,
even if the parents do their best to make it seem amicable.
~~~
dragonwriter
> You're discussing the derivative (rate of change) of the actual issue.
The rate of change is the rate of new divorces minus the rate at which
divorcee households are ending (if the concern is divorced parents with
children, by death of the parent, child, or the child leaving the household.)
> Even if the divorce rate was zero, there would still be existent divorced
> households.
A declining, eventually to zero, number of them.
~~~
jdmichal
Of course I'm not taking a stance that the rate of change is not important.
And of course it would need to drop in order to reduce and eventually
eliminate occurrence...
I was instead pointing out that simply bring up a reduced rate is not really a
counterpoint. Especially when, as you accurately point out, the divorce rate
is not even the entire picture for the rate-of-change of divorced households.
See also Arizhel's sibling comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14150694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14150694)
But hey, will_brown did a better job of making the same point and defending
himself:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14150843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14150843)
------
ryandrake
> The fates of the less-educated and those who graduate from universities
> diverge in dire ways. Middle-aged white Americans without four-year degrees
> are at increasing risk of dying, a well-documented trend driven not only by
> drug use but also by alcoholism, suicide, and slowing progress against heart
> disease and cancer.
While that's pretty damn horrible, the fate of people with newly-minted
bachelor's degrees isn't much to write home about either, unless you happened
to major in the few areas of study where gainful employment is possible.
Crushing student debt, high cost of living cities, an unreachably inflated
housing market, low (but non-zero for now) job prospects, the looming threat
of automation and robotics, underemployment--and if they get a professional
job--a workplace full of only entry-level opportunities, with senior and
management opportunities sucked up by boomers who refuse to, or can't, retire.
Sure, it's not at the level of dying of a heroin addiction, but there's plenty
of anxiety and lack of opportunity to go around.
~~~
posguy
Its the power of capital over labor, whereby capital is extremely stratified
in the hands of very few people, and they have shifted political power so as
to avoid investment in the laborers (aka everyone below themselves) and ensure
they do not become a threat.
Additionally, they will usually influence monetary policy to ensure their
status is never challenged, which is why rapidly rising housing prices aren't
a major political issue at the state and federal level, despite our tax code &
loan incentives encouraging ballooning housing prices.
Also, this is a decent piece:
[https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/...](https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-
own-same-wealth-half-world)
~~~
thesagan
Within capitalism itself, some economists also argue that wealth concentration
tends to suppress investment opportunities, because there aren't as many
"moneyed eyes" on economic events worthy of capital and management; investment
gets tunnel vision.
I don't have any links on-hand but there's plenty of material out there (from
reputable sources, and not-so-reputable ones) with a quick Google search.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=wealth+concentration+suppres...](https://www.google.com/search?q=wealth+concentration+suppress+investment&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS734US734&oq=wealth+concentration+suppress+investment&aqs=chrome..69i57.12408j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)
~~~
breatheoften
It seems like capitalism really needs something like a wealth tax -- ideally
with the rate tied to the change in concentration of wealth over the whole
society, so during periods of time when capital is concentrating, the wealth
tax goes up vs epochs when it does not...
Interestingly, I was reading about the idea of a wealth tax and came across
this depressing nugget ...:
> In 1999, Donald Trump proposed for the United States a one off 14.25% wealth
> tax on the net worth of individuals and trusts worth $10 million or more.
> Trump claimed that this would generate $5.7 trillion in new taxes, which
> could be used to eliminate the national debt.[18] A net wealth tax may also
> be designed to be revenue neutral as where it is used to broaden the tax
> base, stabilize the economy and reduce individual income and other
> taxes[citation needed].
~~~
prodmerc
Is that accurate? 15% could generate that much? That's mind boggling, I always
assumed it would take a 50%+ tax on multimillionaires/billionaires...
~~~
breatheoften
I can't comment on accuracy but considering the source ... I wonder if there
is even a way to find out -- I'm not sure if anything in existing tax code
would serve as a good proxy for estimating "net worth".
------
cmahler7
We're at the point where the United State can either become utopia or
dystopia.
Automation can either allow everyone to do whatever they want with almost
unlimited leisure, or continue as it has destroying the middle class and
consolidating wealth for the elite.
I used to be hardcore capitalism but if something isn't done to spread the
wealth we are going to have our own French revolution with the plebes rising
up against the elite. The anger that got trump elected is just the beginning
if things don't change
Unfortunately, basic human nature probably won't allow this change to happen
without violence.
~~~
temp-dude-87844
It's difficult to imagine a violent uprising in a state with such militarized
police and widespread, distributed armed forces presence as the US.
When even outside of times of unrest, encounters with the police result in
getting fatally shot or seriously injured much more frequently than in
comparably high-HDI states [1][2], it would take the cooperation of police and
the military to allow unrest to take its course instead of being quickly
crushed; this is culturally unlikely in the US which holds public order and
the continuity of government in high esteem.
[1] [https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-12/when-it-comes-
police-...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-12/when-it-comes-police-
shootings-us-doesnt-look-developed-nation) [2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-
counted-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-
police-killings-us-vs-other-countries)
~~~
Retric
It's one thing to turn a foreign country into a police state, when you need to
actually be a productive society that simply stops functioning with large
scale unrest.
The problem is not direct force of arms, the problem is society needs a vast
number of soft targets to continue to operate. If large numbers of people
chose to simply take down power lines there is almost nothing the police or
military could do. City's water supply pipes are similarly easy to destroy and
difficult to replace. Roads are harder to destroy, but easy to prevent most
civilian traffic.
~~~
temp-dude-87844
I'm not sure whether you're saying that sabotage of infrastructure performed
by the populace is a good way to perpetuate unrest in a way that a militarized
state can't squash, or whether you're saying that the state can quickly
destroy key pieces of infrastructure to cause pain to people who refuse to
fall in line. Because both are true, but the latter is far more likely _and_
effective: after all, who wants to destroy the last remaining enablers of
their comfort, shelter, and livelihood just to prove a point... and then what?
One only need to look at the city of Flint, whose water pipes continue to
deliver lead-laced water to households black and white, but society has
largely routed around the damage: we carry on with our lives and ignore it's a
problem. It's only a problem for those in Flint.
Meanwhile, the military and police can turn off utilities, blockade towns,
enact curfews, and isolate even the flow of information, all without firing a
single bullet. This way, pockets of unrest can be abated before they become a
movement so pervasive that the military themselves defect.
~~~
Retric
Except nothing says it's your power line you destroy. The failure is when
group A destroys B's infrastructure and group B destroys A's infrastructure
but both groups A and B are in the same country.
The gap from tagging aka spray-paint to tossing bricks through windows is
tiny. So, yes you can have independent enclaves that are protected, but it's
easy to get into no mans land where the police don't come to some and then
most areas without a lot of backup.
------
Animats
From the article: _“America is not a great place for people with only a high
school degree, and I don’t think that’s going to get better anytime soon. "_
That's it. It just doesn't take that many people to make all the stuff. Erie,
PA isn't going to come back.
The mantra used to be that people would be employed in "services". But
services are more automated, too. Services done at some fixed location are
rapidly being automated. Mobile services, too. Some recent developments:
* Stock picking in an Amazon warehouse - robots taking over. [1]
* Doordash delivery - robots now deployed in Redwood City. I've seen one in the downtown area. People just ignore them as they roll along the sidewalks. Their active six-wheel suspension can climb a curb. [2] There's an experimental partnership with Mercedes where a self-driving van holds multiple robots and lets them out for deliveries.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14062360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14062360)
[2] [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5g2a2g_a-robot-that-
delive...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5g2a2g_a-robot-that-delivers-
food-to-your-door_tech)
~~~
exhilaration
> * Stock picking in an Amazon warehouse - robots taking over.
I just wanted to offer a data point here, my buddy worked at the Amazon
warehouse in Breinigsville PA a few months back and said he never saw a robot.
Reading Hacker News I would have thought that Amazon had their robots widely
deployed but that doesn't seem to be the case.
~~~
Animats
Amazon has fulfillment center generations. They usually don't automate
existing fulfillment centers; they build new ones and close the old ones. Kiva
robots went in at Gen-8, in 2014.[1][2] Breinigsville PA was built in 2011, so
it's not a Gen-8 center but is too new to replace.
[1]
[http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/15-03-03-1.php?cid=9051](http://www.scdigest.com/ontarget/15-03-03-1.php?cid=9051)
[2] [https://vimeo.com/113374910](https://vimeo.com/113374910)
~~~
castle-bravo
Is this an anti-union strategy?
------
Touche
The article doesn't support its conclusion that drug addiction is caused by
people's dim prospects. The man in this article was already an addict before
he was old enough to have any perspective on his future potential.
I think the deeper problem is that kids are not inspired to gain their own
ambitions. So many people walk through life with no ambitions beyond what they
plan on doing next weekend.
I think a huge issue is the way material is taught in school tends towards
hero worship. Scientists, authors, are all looked at as mythical creatures who
achieved things that mortal man cannot. It makes us all feel as though the
best we can ever achieve is being a cog in a wheel. It took me many years
after school to realize that something as simple as starting your own business
was actually achievable (by me!) and not something relegated for those who had
been born of a higher caste, or of some superior skills.
~~~
framebit
Chris Arnade has a lot of first-hand experience witnessing this modern
despair. He writes, "What I saw was huge parts of US, more than reported, was
filling with drugs. And where there was drug there was despair."
Source: [https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/drugs-despair-and-
trump-1c6...](https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/drugs-despair-and-
trump-1c6704d659b3)
~~~
Touche
Of course, economic hardship is at the heart of many of society's problems,
drugs included. I don't argue with that. What I am skeptical of is the idea
that people, once they reach adulthood and see dim prospects, turn to drugs to
cope with that depression. The article you linked to pushes the same idea.
From my bubbled existence, most of the people who I went to school with who
became drug addicts were always part of "the bad kids" cliques; those who
always saw life through the prism of partying and never had ambitions to be
much of anything. Maybe my perspective is totally wrong, and most drug addicts
were B students who just decided not to go to college, but if that's the case
I'd love hard data.
~~~
throwanem
> What I am skeptical of is the idea that people, once they reach adulthood
> and see dim prospects, turn to drugs to cope with that depression.
Do you really find the idea of people self-medicating depression hard to
encompass? I'm having a hard time myself, encompassing the idea that there is
anywhere in the world this might seem like a controversial question.
~~~
Atheros
He almost certainly understands that. But he is saying that he wants data that
demonstrates that the economic hardship causes the depression rather than drug
use causing the depression. Obviously these causes are all intertwined but I
think he's saying that it probably isn't particularly unidirectional.
"The man in this article was already an addict before he was old enough to
have any perspective on his future potential."
~~~
throwanem
FTA, my emphases:
> Johnson started using opioids in high school after breaking his collarbone,
> first in football and again while wrestling, and he got hooked on his
> prescription, _his mother thinks_. He was a functional addict at first,
> caring and warm, but _things slipped out of control after he graduated and
> found that his skills—art and cooking, but not academics—meant little in the
> workforce_.
In Arnade's formulation, this is how a front-row kid who succeeded looks at a
back-row kid who failed. "Where's the numbers?" and "Always looked to me like
drugs are for people without ambition in the first place." Which, fine, if
that's how you want to look at it. But, speaking as a back-row kid who's known
a lot of front-row people and had a lot of front-row jobs, it doesn't aid
understanding.
~~~
Touche
What I was trying to say is that it's more complex than the article paints it.
Certainly despair, and economic despair in particular, is at the heart of many
of societies problems, drugs included.
But it's not necessarily the one in despair that turned to drugs. It might be
his/her kids, who grew up without a supportive family (or perhaps were abused)
when then found friends who accepted them, who turned them on to drugs. I
mean, drug stats are what they are, more than 50% start before their 18.
~~~
throwanem
I mean, maybe? Where are you trying to go with this?
------
lispm
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system)
The German dual education system addresses this. Normal jobs have a formal
education system where young people learn practical things in companies and at
the same time they learn more theoretical things in special schools. One gets
some kind of degree and it also enables them a further path for education and
career. You could have gotten education in jobs like plumber, aircraft
mechanic, medical assistant - there are more than three hundred apprenticeship
occupations.
This gives young persons with more practical skills a real education and
career path. There is also a positive social status for those who went through
this system.
The companies also pay them for taking this education. Around 850 Euro per
month.
[https://www.bmbf.de/en/the-german-vocational-training-
system...](https://www.bmbf.de/en/the-german-vocational-training-
system-2129.html)
> In Germany, about 50 percent of all school-leavers undergo vocational
> training provided by companies which consider the dual system the best way
> to acquire skilled staff.
[http://www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149927290/the-secret-to-
german...](http://www.npr.org/2012/04/04/149927290/the-secret-to-germanys-low-
youth-unemployment)
> The Secret To Germany's Low Youth Unemployment
------
ams6110
_“America is not a great place for people with only a high school degree, and
I don’t think that’s going to get better anytime soon,” said Angus Deaton, a
Nobel Prize-winning Princeton University economist._
Coming from a Princeton egghead that's not a surprising point of view. It
seems very typical for those with education to look down upon the less-
educated.
The truth is, US high schools miserably fail the non-college-bound student. I
know people without college degrees who make six-figure incomes in the trades
or as entrepreneurs. They did not get there with any help from high school
guidance counselors or administrators (all college-educated), who basically
write you off if you are not college-bound or come from an impoverished
background.
The message from traditional education for anyone not going to college is "you
have no future" rather than helping to explore the limitless expanse of
possibilities that are open to anyone who has the motivation and encouragement
to pursue them.
~~~
rfc
This. 1,000x. Some of the most successful folks I know went into trade, became
"masters of their domains", and then bridge their skills with business to
create their own businesses.
As an example: A friend from back home got into boring right out of high
school. 20 years later, he runs one of the most successful directional boring
companies in the region and is a multi-multi millionaire. He was told in high
school that if he didn't go to college that he would fail.
I don't find this to be a unique story from my perspective but I do have some
bias.
~~~
anigbrowl
No offense, but isn't this just anecdata? I don't deny that people can do
extremely well taking non-traditional paths, they certainly can. But pointing
out the existence of exceptions isn't a substantive response to the
observations about the larger trend. You can always find exceptions to any
trend but generalizing from them is fallacious, as any casino owner will be
glad to confirm.
~~~
chrshawkes
I personally make close to 150k per year as a developer and a YouTube
personality. I didn't go to college.
~~~
throwanem
> But pointing out the existence of exceptions isn't a substantive response to
> the observations about the larger trend.
I'm an exception, too. I'm not about to argue that, because I exist, the trend
doesn't.
------
zeteo
> Johnson started using opioids in high school after breaking his collarbone,
> first in football and again while wrestling [... T]hings slipped out of
> control after he graduated and found that his skills — art and cooking, but
> not academics — meant little in the workforce.
> At one point [... he] got a full-time job making wood pallets. [...] “It’s a
> stupid job. It doesn’t matter if you’re high to work it”
It's hard not to think the kid was let down by the system. It should be
inconceivable that you can go through K-12 without being told very sternly
that a) skills in sports, art and cooking are not very marketable, and will
probably only get you "stupid jobs" b) in the current environment, even McD
may require a college degree soon, so you'd better bite the bullet on those
academic skills. Any adult in a position of responsibility should have known
these facts. Yet for 12+ years they've failed to communicate them. The kids
are allowed to drift aimlessly, and then it's somehow their fault if they end
up in a very bad place at the end.
~~~
anigbrowl
Skills in sports, arts and cooking are highly marketable and the evidence of
this abundant, just switch on your TV. These are also highly competitive
injuries in which a great deal of strategy is needed to succeed because the
economics are brutal and the media is dedicated to presenting (almost) only
the upsides in order to attract an ongoing supply of cheap labor that can be
exploited for short-term profit.
I resent your suggestion that people engaged in these field are doing 'stupid
jobs'. It's insulting to to large numbers of people who work diligently and
develop significant skills in those domains whose product you have chosen to
declare worthless.
~~~
zeteo
Yes, and winning the lottery is highly marketable too, isn't it? I didn't say
working in sports, arts or cooking was a stupid job. The stupid job is what
you get if you can't make any money using the skills you've developed.
~~~
anigbrowl
Apparently you think that anything other than being at the peak of one's
profession is a 'stupid job.' There are large numbers of jobs that depend on
people being diligent rather than innovative, and those jobs are certainly
easier to automate, but that does not make them stupid jobs. Stop devaluing
hard work just because some people choose predictability over risk.
~~~
zeteo
> Apparently you think that anything other than being at the peak of one's
> profession is a 'stupid job.' [...] Stop devaluing hard work just because
> some people choose predictability over risk.
The "stupid job" was what the kid himself called his employment making wooden
pallets. It wasn't a job in sports or cooking and I nowhere implied that I
agreed with his assessment. If he had been hard at work and passionate about a
line cook job that didn't pay well, then we'd be having a totally different
discussion.
~~~
anigbrowl
I still reject the idea that someone who is interested and good at cooking
should be discouraged from it because they're likely to end up in a 'stupid
job,' as you aver. I'd be more cautious about encouraging someone to pursue it
now that kitchen automation is on the horizon, but aspiring to be a chef or
run a diner or some other food-related employment used to be a _perfectly
valid career choice._
Every job can theoretically be automated away. Yesterday I was thinking about
someone I knew who specialized in detecting detecting cancer on biopsy slides
(I forget the technical term for her job). Last time I saw that person was 15
years ago and I was musing on the fact that her job as she described it then
may well have been taken over by machine learning since, or will be soon if
not. Did her teachers and family do her a terrible disservice by not telling
her to get into a line of work that would be harder to automate? Probably not.
I'm arguing that we need a different approach as a society to choosing jobs
based on an assumption of remorselessly increasing technological efficiency
and cutthroat competition. This hyper-Darwinian approach to employment,
productivity, and economic decision-making is reducing the quality of life for
an increasingly large number of people, and at some point they are going to
get tired of holding up the pyramid from which more fortunate people self-
righteously piss down upon them.
------
dkhenry
The tolerance for abject racism in the media these days is appalling. This
article's contents have nothing to do with race, and more to do with economic
status. This is the flip side of a media that has espoused the ideals of
identity politics, they can't even see past someone's racial grouping to
identify a problem facing all Americans ( and most likely other nations too in
our globalized economy ). Bloomberg should be ashamed of their journalistic
quality and integrity
~~~
allemagne
They address why they're looking at whites a few paragraphs in, though
>While blacks and Hispanics without college degrees are also falling behind
economically and socially, middle-age mortality has worsened for whites in
particular over the past 20 years—a fact some attribute partly to social
context.
Do you specifically disagree with this?
~~~
joatmon-snoo
This comment misses the point - that by focusing specifically on white
America, there's the subtle implication that now that white America is facing
issues that minorities have faced for generations, this is a problem that we
should care about.
------
ageofwant
Many of the Beautiful Machines science fiction from the 60's promised now
exist, but not for you or me. We never stopped to think who these things would
actually belong to and who would benefit.
The 'liberation' of business that replaced the controls put in place before
has brought us to a place where corporate feudalist rules supreme. Those that
defend capitalism and democracy frequently confuse the one with the other.
Hating on 'communism' while being oblivious to the fact that the capitalism
they so feverently defend has died 20 years ago.
Mark Blyth has a lot to say on the topic
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSYb6RbuOG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSYb6RbuOG0)
~~~
cartoonfoxes
Good stuff - Mark Blyth's lectures are consistently excellent.
------
wonderwonder
A four year degree is no longer an advantage but rather a base which allows
you to have even a hope of competing. Not having a degree is of course a
disadvantage.
As automation and outsourcing continues, the issue will only worsen. On top of
that we are constantly bombarded with images of the life we should be living
via advertising and television. Not meeting these media driven standards leads
to further depression and despair.
Doctors prescribe opioids because drug companies encourage them too, leading
to an easy addiction and escape for the depressed.
We need to start treating people like they matter and help them understand
that there can be joy and happiness in even the simplest of lives.
~~~
throwanem
Joy and happiness are nice things to have. Making rent every month is nicer.
~~~
wonderwonder
Of course rent is important. But we don't need a 3/2 when a 2/1 will meet all
of our needs. I feel like we are driven to buy things beyond our needs and our
inability to afford those things is one of the drivers of despair.
~~~
throwanem
It's not nothing. But it's nothing next to the fear of ending up homeless.
------
pjmorris
I think you could strike 'Young' and 'White' from the title, and it'd still be
accurate.
~~~
analyst74
An interesting thing I noticed after moving to America, is that race is such a
big deal here that many issues have to be labeled by race, even if they apply
universally.
Canadian medias on the other hand, seem to be much less interested in playing
the race card.
~~~
rubidium
Canada has <5% minority groups... most are 2-3%. It's pretty much all white
(86% or something)
US is 60% white roughly.
It's a bigger deal because it's a more noticeable issue.
~~~
Raphmedia
Depends on the area. The coasts are very different.
~~~
macintux
I was astonished by the diversity in Toronto. A much more global feel than I
get in the midwest US.
------
temp246810
The sad thing that I've observed is that any mention that this gets in the
media or any earnest attempt to address this gets met with:
"Oh now that it's white people dealing with drugs, it's a crisis. America is
so racist".
That's a load of crap on so many levels. I hope we figure out our next chapter
here as a society.
~~~
ChrisLTD
Why is it a load of crap on so many levels?
To take one example, the media and politicians have put a huge spotlight on
the plight of coal and manufacturing job losses, while only recently did we
learn that in fact we're losing even more retail jobs.
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/the-
sil...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/the-silent-
crisis-of-retail-employment/523428/)
Want to guess at the racial and gender makeup of those manufacturing jobs vs.
retail?
~~~
jnicholasp
I'm not making an argument here, since I don't know the answer to my question,
but is it possible that a higher proportion of coal and manufacturing jobs
were traditionally living wage, support-a-family type jobs, as compared to
retail jobs? And if so, wouldn't it be reasonable to focus attention on the
losses in the two categories somewhat differently?
~~~
ChrisLTD
That's an interesting point, but it leads me to a different conclusion. Given
the higher numbers of people employed in retail, shouldn't we focus _more_
attention on the fact that those jobs can't support a family?
~~~
jnicholasp
> those jobs can't support a family
Should they be able to? Absent some kind of deliberate regulatory or
collective-bargaining action to prop up the price of labor in a given
category, I assume the prevailing wages tend to reflect an implicit agreement
between employers and potential employees on what that labor is worth. What is
the argument for propping up the price of labor beyond what people are willing
to do it for?
Or, put another way, what is the argument for why jobs should be seen as
existing for the sake of giving workers enough money to live on, rather than
as existing because some people want certain things done and are willing to
pay a certain amount to have them done? In the second case, the value of
having certain things done is not infinitely variable: some actions will
create x value in the world, and can only be worth doing if they cost <x to
do. Requiring that those actions be paid >=x will simply mean that those
things will cease to exist. Is it a better world if we regulate out of
existence those jobs whose performance is worth less than a family-supporting
wage?
~~~
ChrisLTD
Thanks for the thoughtful response. The argument for propping up the price of
labor is that 1) we don't want working people to starve on the streets, 2)
politically we've decided it's not the government's job to keep able-bodied
workers off the streets. #1 is clearly right, while #2 should be up for
debate.
As for wage floors killing jobs, the effect would depend on the height of the
floor. Modest increases in the minimum wage have had practically no effect on
employment, but I'm sure massive hikes would cause problems.
~~~
jnicholasp
Thank you, too.
I'm not convinced that propping up the price of labor directly follows from
your point 1), which I do of course agree with. It seems better to me that the
government do what it can to encourage the creation of jobs that are valuable
enough to support living wages, rather than mandate that jobs which are not
valuable enough to do so cannot legally exist. The former, I think, encourages
creativity and the development of new possibilities, while the latter
restricts freedom and limits the diversity of the economic ecology.
------
gerbilly
> “He just saw his life as not what he wanted it to be, and he didn’t know how
> to get it there,” said Sue Johnson, _who lay next to her son’s corpse for an
> hour._
It made my heart sink to read this sentence.
Edit: Highlighted the part that made me sad. You _never_ get over the death of
a child.
~~~
_rpd
It's heartbreaking.
> “He just saw his life as not what he wanted it to be, and he didn’t know how
> to get it there”
I think though, that this is a near universal aspect of the human condition.
~~~
ryandrake
Indeed. I don't know anyone whose life is where they want it to be. Certainly
not me.
------
stinkytaco
We've been on a collision course with this since we left subsistence
agriculture and started living in larger groups. Automation's rate has
accelerated since the industrial revolution, but it's been happening for
thousands of years, which is why I think more people don't see it as a
problem. Society's increased consumerism and rising standards of living has
allowed people to move into producing things other than food and eventually
into service, but it's foolish to think this can continue indefinitely;
automation will put more and more people out of work.
~~~
CPLX
That is nonsense. Things got _horrible_ for average workers at the dawn of the
industrial revolution. Then they improved markedly due to progressive reforms,
and are now rolling back in the face of regressive policies and rising
inequality.
It's not really that complicated. Progressive policies, regulation, and tax
policy have better outcomes. There are just powerful and wealthy forces with
vested interests working hard to argue otherwise.
~~~
stinkytaco
I'm not talking about working conditions. I'm referring to employment. We need
less people to do stuff. Thousands of years ago everyone was involved in
subsistance. Pretty soon we developed technologies (the wheel, the plow) that
meant we needed fewer people to do that. So people were able to move on to
doing other things (like making pots or clothing). Pretty soon we automated
those things as well (potters wheel, the loom, etc.) and people needed to
start making other things. Over time not making anything at all, but doing
service work became more common. But automation means we don't need service
work as much either. We're running out of places to move people who's jobs
were automated out of existence. I don't deny that life is much better for all
this technology, but we need to acknowledge the other problem.
~~~
CPLX
> We need less people to do stuff.
A thousand years ago there were 400 million people on earth. Today there are
764 million jobs in China alone. So, on a literal basis at least, that's not
turning out to be true so far.
Your supposition is that _this time it 's different_ than all the other times
people have claimed that automation and technology will make everyone idle.
But maybe it's not different this time. Maybe technological advancement
proceeds relentlessly and has for awhile, and today only looks special because
we're in it. Maybe the mechanisms by which economies achieve full employment
don't work in the way you're describing.
~~~
Jtsummers
GP's statement would have been better written as "we need fewer people to do
stuff relative to the output they produce". Our workforces, globally, are far
more productive than they've ever been thanks to various force multipliers.
Better fertilizers and machinery and pesticides and GMO seeds mean we need far
fewer people to produce the same amount of food as before. The same is true
for most industries, or we are moving towards it being true for them.
There may be 764 million jobs in China, but it's almost certain that those
workers are doing more than just double the work of the 400 million people
from 1000 years ago (as measured by output).
------
anorphirith
it's really getting annoying how US news outlets always separate the
ethnicities in USA, let's stop focusing on who's white and who's not. I'm sure
a lot of these same problems mentioned in the article affect other
ethnicities.
~~~
anigbrowl
If socioeconomic outcomes are heavily biased by group membership (which
certainly appears to be the case) then it would irresponsible not to report on
that fact. Racism is a major factor in US society whether you want to
acknowledge that or not.
------
str33t_punk
I lived a a suburban, white, middle to upper middle class town in Connecticut
until four years ago. There was a massive opioid problem in my high school.
There were several overdoses a year. We even had a kid OD in the bathroom.
I am still Facebook friends with many of these kids -- none of whom really
finished high school. I see them go in and out of rehab on social media all
the time. More and more of my friends who did end up going to college are
dropping out for various mental health issues. A lot of them are not
rebounding.
It's all very surprising coming from a middle class suburban town in CT but it
is the new normal I guess -- many friends of mine from other suburban / rural
areas tell me their towns are facing the same issues.
------
TYPE_FASTER
I didn't really get it until I heard a radio piece where a guy being
interviewed remembered factory jobs running a stamp press were paying
$30-40/hr. Those wage levels aren't coming back.
------
hive_mind
I don't understand this focus on "white".
Young people everywhere are haunted by crises and despair.
------
gambiting
"America is not a great place for people [....]"
It seems to be true in general, unless you have a boatload of money, but then
I would argue you would be ok pretty much anywhere. HN has been bombarded with
such grim news of the US that I honestly feel bad for Americans(maybe I
shouldn't, I don't know), but at least on paper, the world's greatest country
doesn't look that great to live in anymore(UK is looking worse and worse by
the minute, so maybe it's a general trend).
~~~
Wohlf
You think this because you've bought in to media hyperbole. America and the UK
are fine places to live, they may have some problems but they are fine. Our
homeless are often better off than the lower classes of many countries and
millions of people risk life, limb, and fortune to come here.
~~~
anigbrowl
_You think this because you 've bought in to media hyperbole_
I love it when people make evidence-free assumptions about other people they
know nothing about. That's what makes this society great.
------
throwaway2048
these problems get 100 fold worse with increasing automation, and probly
needing a triple PHD to actually get a job, maybe.
The fantasy that millions of jobs are going to fall out of the sky is exactly
that. We need to think of real solutions, and soon.
------
alistproducer2
As a parent, that mother's story is horrific. I couldn't imagine the pain of
something like that. Not just because her son died, but there's no way she
doesn't somehow blame herself for how he turned out (as I know I would).
Moving one, there's is something to be said for the effect of expectations.
The data shows that you don't see the same levels of mortality rise in any
other population. Simply put, us minorities don't have a false narrative of
the American dream instilled in us and therefore don't expect to achieve it.
We don't experience suicidal disappointment in ending up in a dead end job
because our role models (parents grandparents) are statistically likely to
have held those kind of jobs.
Personally I hate "white privilege" as a trope, but it does speak to something
real: minorities, until very recently, were largely locked out of the American
dream (as white people know it). The wealth of white households was 13 times
the median wealth of black households and 10 times the wealth of hispanic
households[1]. Numbers don't get like that over night. They are the result of
generations of discrimination and institutional systems designed to exclude
and screw with people that were not white. The point I'm making is that the
average white person today probably doesn't even realize that, relative to
other groups, their expectation of what a "nice" life is is basically seen as
unattainable for others. Hence, we (POC) don't kill ourselves because we
failed to reach the unattainable.
As the economy, and society, has diminished the ability for many whites
(especially in rural areas) to take vantage of their "privilege" and they're
forced to play the same game as the rest of us, they find themselves feeling
like failures right out the gate and aren't quite sure why - hence the anxiety
and subsequently despair.
The answer to this is not that white folks "check their privilege" \- although
it would help to stop being in denial about it and the effects it has on them
and their expectations. The answer is to realize that rugged individualism is
just a myth. In no other culture is this myth so central, and now so damaging.
Despite what their parents and grandparents, and TV shows and movies have
taught them, their relative success is not due to how much tougher they are
than other folks and America is not, and has never been a meritocracy.
At this point, white America can continue to believe this rubbish at their own
peril. Support policies that acknowledge people need other people and we will,
evidently, kill ourselves if we go at everything alone as "rugged indivduals"
unless the game is rigged in our favor (even if we don't realize it).
1: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-
wealt...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-
great-recession/)
------
LeoSolaris
The way that title is worded makes me think that the author thinks that "Young
White America" believes they should despair more!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
State of the Watch(ely) Address - CaseyGeneAllen
http://www.watchely.com/news/state-of-the-watchely-address/
======
CaseyGeneAllen
Watchely is the new solution to watch sales and research. Watchely aims to
close the gap between watch buyers and sellers, helping them approach online
and auction watch sales more informed through intelligent analytics. We've
utilized the power of big data science to help build a better marketplace.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: 2 Questions about React Native for paying clients - neospice
My team is about to begin an estimated 2yr web + mobile project. We're considering using React Native but I have two very real concerns and I'm wondering what the community's opinions are on them:<p>1. What are our options if React Native stops being supported?<p>2. What are the patent implications for my client? I've heard talk that React Native opens you up to patent infringement.<p>Are these reasonable concerns? Any input is greatly appreciated.
======
onion2k
_I 've heard talk that React Native opens you up to patent infringement._
There is a clause like that but it's only relevant if you compete with
Facebook. There's a theoretical problem that might arise if you make
something, it gets really popular, and then Facebook copy it. Technically then
you'd need to either settle with FB or retool your product. It's a legitimate
worry for some companies, but equally it hasn't stopped a lot of people using
React and React Native. If it's at all likely consult a lawyer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eric Schmidt: We paid $1 billion premium for YouTube - Timothee
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10360384-261.html
======
Timothee
Since the acquisition price of YouTube has been used as some kind of reference
since it happened, I'd be curious to know the impact it could have on other
companies' valuation.
Obviously, it's impossible to tell, but if you think of YouTube as worth $600M
then, instead of $1.6B, I'm sure it'd change the perception of other companies
like Facebook, Twitter and the rest.
------
kierank
Does he include the value of the significant increase in Google's status as a
telco in that comment?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: If a Tree Falls in the Forest, an indie horror game written in Clojure - mysterymachine
http://sisyphus.rocks/if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest
======
krapp
Given that this is Clojure scripting in a Unity3D game, the HN crowd might be
more interested in the code than the actual gameplay.
Also, a screenshot or gameplay video and listing minimum system resources
would be nice for those who don't want to commit to downloading a binary and
running it just to see what happens. On the lowest possible graphics setting
it seems to use far more RAM and memory than a simple 3D game like this
should. I don't have an ancient system by any means but it completely froze
Windows the first time I opened it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge - golmansax
https://hackernoon.com/cold-calling-for-my-startup-and-how-i-learned-to-embrace-the-challenge-31f16728de48
======
plinkplonk
I hate _getting_ cold calls. So I avoid doing it to other people.
Yes that makes me less of a salesman. So be it.
Tangent: In India you can report unsolicited sales calls to a central
(government) authority, where you can sign up to get on a "Do Not Disturb"
list, and get any sales caller who ignores this fined, and eventually get his
number disconnected etc.
The system isn't perfect, and there are some impressive hacks to bypass it,
but the situation now is _much_ better than before these regulations existed.
Where one used to get multiple spammers a day, now weeks and months can go by
before getting one (who I promptly report). My number must be on some shared
"cranky idiot who hates cold callers" list, I almost never get these calls
now.
A minister was interrupted in parliament while presenting the annual national
budget (iirc) by someone who wanted to sell him a credit card(!), which led to
this regulation.
And it is a godsend. Cold callers should all burn in hellfire (imo)
~~~
sremani
Are you an entrepreneur? Have you built a business? When things are done to
extreme sure.. the slimy salesman or the spammy robo-calls are a nuisance.
Take a list of the world's 400 billionaires and ask them who has NOT Cold-
Called?
My guess is its less than 10. Or to put it another may, most successful people
Cold-called, their "heros" or experts in their field or successful people in
town etc.
So I disagree the way you put cold-calling.
If you want to start a business, I strongly suggest you to change you attitude
towards Sales. Unfortunately, Engineers have this unjustified hate towards
Sales, not every sales pitch or call is unethical or pushy.
~~~
Nullabillity
Yes, all cold calling is horrible and unethical. Whether or not it works is
besides the point.
~~~
gnicholas
This is an interesting perspective. I agree that some types of cold-calling
are terrible, like if you sell credit cards and just randomly call anyone who
might want a credit card. This is untargeted, and if everyone who sold
general-purpose goods did it, we'd all be inundated.
In the B2B context, things seem a little different, especially for startups
who have products that are not known. If you work in a particular field and
someone calls you to tell you about their new product that is relevant to your
company and your specific role, that seems much less terrible than the
untargeted calling described above. And in some cases, you may actually be
glad that you were called. I don't think it's fair to say that "all cold
calling is horrible and unethical", since it can be done in very targeted
ways. And small startups in particular (who are here on HN) often try to cold-
call in as targeted a way as possible—because when you're spending CEO time on
the phone, you're very sensitive to wasting anyone's time.
At the end of the day, it comes down to balancing the benefits to people who
are glad you called and the detriment to people whose time you wasted. If
you're not targeted, you're likely a net negative to society. If you're very
targeted (as many small startups are), there's a much greater chance you're a
net positive.
------
EtDybNuvCu
If you cold-call me, I will spend the first few minutes feeding you false
information. I will deliberately drag out the process, and at about 12min into
the call, I will confess that I've been faking everything. At this point, I
will attempt to tilt you so that you lose your temper and start cursing at me.
On a really good day, you'll be so angry that your manager will have to come
onto the call. I will feed them a few minutes of fake information, then
attempt to tilt them as well. On the best days, you and your manager will sit
around a reverse phone book and dox me, looking to find ways to intimidate or
control me while I laugh and attempt to keep you on the line. My record is
52min, lasting over multiple phone calls, ending in a dramatic reading of a
maths paper over the phone to a speakerphone consisting of three levels of
management.
I want your business to fail if you cold-call.
~~~
goatherders
Lol. You do realize that you are wasting your time, not mine?
My business succeeds BECAUSE of cold calls. So your drop in the ocean matters
not.
~~~
michael_h
How many cold calls can you make per day?
What if they're 52 minutes long?
------
gnicholas
One useful tip I got from a friend in sales: open the call with an offer to
set up a call at a more convenient time. It seems strange to immediately ask
for another call, but it is really helpful in showing that you're
friendly/flexible, and you recognize that the person you're calling is busy.
About 30% of the time, the person was happy to chat in the moment (they had
chosen to answer a call from an unknown number, after all). And the rest of
the time, you benefit from setting up a time that is more convenient for them.
Some of the time you end up never having the later call—but it seems this
happens where there wasn't a great fit to begin with, so it actually saves you
time talking to an unlikely lead.
~~~
ftio
This is a great technique.
1\. Ask if they have 30 seconds to chat.
2\. If they say no, ask for another time that works better. People are polite,
so many will not say no. Schedule this time immediately and have them confirm
on the calendar right away.
3\. If they say yes, immediately start asking them empathetic questions that
demonstrate knowledge of their problems, followed by, "Does any of this
resonate with you?"
~~~
michael_h
Being honest, what I would do: schedule a time for the call back and make sure
to not pick up the phone at that time.
------
overcast
Cold calls like will likely get forwarded to our internal extension that
relays to "Lenny". The longest we've had someone on the line talking to the
bot is currently at 8:37 on the leaderboard. :D
~~~
goatherders
I don't understand this. Say you're not interested and move on. Being a dick
to someone trying to earn a living says a lot about your character. And I
promise, the sales rep doesn't care. Their job is dials and talk time. Your
bot is helping them reach their daily quota.
~~~
908087
Cold calling people you have no previous relationship with is a dick move.
Lenny just helps some people return the favor.
419 scammers are "just trying to earn a living" too.
~~~
goatherders
I call people I don't know all the time because I have something valuable to
offer and want to share that with them. It's no different than any form of
advertising....its just more direct. Put another way, if I could call you
today and offer you a service or product that solved a big problem you have
for a fair renumeration you would be thankful.
~~~
908087
Other forms of advertising don't make my office phone ring while I'm in the
middle of something, or make my home phone ring while I'm eating dinner to
ambush me. Cold calling makes e-mail spammers look polite by comparison.
Also, despite the fact that I despise and block everything the internet ad
industry throws at me, that industry arguably provides something in return for
the trouble of putting up with their bullshit. Cold calling provides me with
absolutely nothing beyond a rude interruption of my day at best.
I don't care what you're offering, because I subconsciously tag anything
associated with cold calling as a scam and file it in the same mental folder
as that "free cruise" I "won".
------
goatherders
Cold calling is wildly effective. It just takes making more than 2 calls a
week. I tell my team "get 100 on the phone without selling something and I'll
give you $100" been doing that for years and have never paid a rep the $100.
~~~
MatthewRJones
Eh... I'm not sure about "wildly effective." A few years ago I started a
business and cold called for several hours each day for the first four months.
I didn't make a single sale, and I'm told I have an excellent phone presence.
What succeeded for me was SEO, direct mail, and email campaigns. I still had
to do sales pitches, but I was working off warm leads from people that
actually wanted to hear from me.
I'm not saying cold calling doesn't work. I'm saying it's an inefficient use
of time. Yes, some people will buy, but there are far more efficient ways of
reaching potential clients.
~~~
goatherders
It wasn't wildly effective for you, over four months, for your product/service
to the specific people you called at the price you offered. A valid data point
for sure, but far from empirical.
~~~
ecdavis
No true cold caller.
------
whataretensors
Cold calling is not for me. I hate even answering email or inbound
communication.
One thing I've realized working on my own is that you can do anything you
want. You don't have to do the thing you hate the most to make progress. It
will feel draining, feel like more work, and be less productive than focusing
on where you are strong.
~~~
WalterGR
You've made a living being self-employed and by doing exactly what you want to
do?
Is that it?
How do you accomplish that without communicating with others?
~~~
whataretensors
Yes. I find projects that do not require much human communication. Some is
fine.
You always have to do things you don't like when building a business. I'm just
saying don't make something you don't like part of your scaling strategy.
------
908087
Cold calling me is a guaranteed way to prevent yourself from ever getting my
business, and I know I'm not alone in that. My subconscious automatically tags
companies that cold call as scams.
~~~
52-6F-62
I have to say I fall into this bucket.
Most of the cold calls I get are, in fact, scams— so to save myself agony and
time-out-of-life, that's the category it goes into for me.
\--
Two shorts:
Number one:
I regularly get rotating numbers calling from scam credit collection agencies
(second-tier, purchased bad loans allegedly). I regularly now get called for
somebody who isn't me, and they're always threatening. Though my favourite was
receiving a threatening call once about 'urgent business matters' that
pertained to me owing a significant amount of money in outstanding debt to the
company I currently work for, and hold accounts with. Ridiculous. That's the
camp cold calls fall under for me.
Number two, and so much more infuriating:
a major telecom company held a sales campaign in the lobby of my _apartment
building_. For a week! Every day when I arrived home I would be confronted by
two or three sales people to try and convince me to change internet providers.
And god they were persistent. Even worse, two of the four elevators were down
so most of the people in the building were sitting ducks who couldn't very
well escape. Couldn't even deal with the doorman to pick up a package without
one sidling up to try and sell to me while I was in a conversation.
Just thinking about it grinds me. If I need something, I will look to buy it.
If I recognize inefficiency in my day or workflow or whatever—I will pursue a
solution. If I am unhappy with how much I'm paying for internet or some other
service, I will try to find something better.
What I don't want is to be confronted and put on the spot when I'm not
actively seeking to do business.
------
lefstathiou
Cold calling is an extremely effective strategy for us. Most important lesson
I learned building our SDR program is that nobody natively likes cold calling
so to do it well, it needs to be their only job.
When I had account managers that had to do their own cold calling they greatly
underperformed. When I had someone whose only job was to cold call and book
demos which were then closed by account managers one person was getting more
meetings than all my account managers combined.
Some people don’t like getting cold calls, I personally don’t mind and the
number of people that don’t mind statistically out number the ones who do. We
have tons of data to support this. I highly recommend evaluating this as a
strategy in any B2B customer acquisition program.
~~~
alexbeloi
> the number of people that don’t mind (cold calls) statistically out number
> the ones who do. We have tons of data to support this. I highly recommend
> evaluating this as a strategy in any B2B customer acquisition program.
I don't doubt it's a good strategy, but I doubt most people actually "don't
mind". What kind of data do you have to support your claim?
If you replace "don't mind" with "tolerate", I would find it more believable.
------
maxxxxx
Cold calling can be extremely effective if you can make yourself do it. Some
years ago I did that for a few weeks to promote a piece of software I wrote
and I made a ton of interesting connections. Not just for my product but there
are a lot of small business owners who are very willing to discuss business in
general and you can gain a lot of business ideas that way. It can be very
exhausting though if you don't enjoy talking a lot or take rejection
personally.
------
rpedela
Are there any good resources on who to call and where to get phone numbers?
Obviously it should be potential customers, but should it be the CTO of the
company if it is tech product for example? And how do you get their phone
number?
~~~
goatherders
Yes. But you don't need them. You need Google, LinkedIn, a spreadsheet and
time. Calling the main line of 99% of companies will get you to the person you
are looking for. The other 1% are multibillion dollar companies that aren't
going to buy from you.
~~~
istorical
Actually, multibillion dollar companies make the best customers, because they
won't balk at a $400,000 contract, they'll expect it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How does TikTok/IG build video filters/story editor? - throwaway9494
Is there open source software that they use to start with, or does creating filters/video effects/story editors require to be built from scratch? If so, is there a special skill set required for this and does it require a large team or can it be done by a few people?
======
fancythat
You could use MLT
([https://www.mltframework.org/](https://www.mltframework.org/)) as
programmable video editor it works perfectly for this scenario.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ZFS released for Mac OS X - mchanson
http://tenscomplement.com/our-products/zevo-silver-edition
======
bri3d
A bit more background:
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/03/how-zfs-is-
slowly-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/03/how-zfs-is-slowly-
making-its-way-to-mac-os-x.ars)
The company was founded by Don Brady, who worked on the Apple ZFS for OSX
project until it was cancelled.
Sadly, their website includes only marketing-buzzword compliant "tech specs"
and contains no benchmarks, and there's no support for booting from ZFS.
Hopefully they'll either get their act together or someone will pony up the
$20 and post benchmarks and details (assuming, of course, that's not against
the license).
~~~
rjurney
Even on non-boot drives, ZFS can be a real boon. I used it for a 1U appliance
on a solaris machine on two disks, and it saved me the cost of a RAID card.
~~~
bri3d
Right - ZFS _is_ awesome even as a non-boot storage pool. But one of the main
drawbacks of MacZFS (the open-source competitor) is that it can't be booted
off of, and this product doesn't seem to offer that feature as a competitive
advantage.
Presumably this product offers support for the latest zpool version and is
based on a much more recent ZFS codebase (and hence should perform better as
well), but because their site is so devoid of benchmarks, it's hard to tell.
~~~
rjurney
Looks like Silver does mirroring, but not RAIDZ. I <3 RAIDZ. RAIDZ with
snapshots helped me sleep at night.
------
ComputerGuru
No ZFS encryption, no boot support, and costs 20 dollars.
I have no problem with the price tag, but I really fail to see the benefits of
this over MacZFS, they don't even discuss whether or not graceful degradation
for HFS resource forks is implemented or not.
Sorry, no cigar.
~~~
bingaling
The lead developer, Don Brady did a lot of HFS development for Apple:
[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aopensource....](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aopensource.apple.com%20%22don%20brady%22)
I understand that HFS compatibility/graceful degradation of native
applications was a high priority for this port.
That's not saying it's implemented, but I it's a goal.
------
tiernano
Hmmm.... unless you pay double, or more, and wait for a while longer, only
supports a single disk, and no mirroring or RAIDZ features... $20 gets you one
disk, $40 gets you mirrors and 2-4 disk, and the platnum offering, with no
price, gets you RAIDZ1 and 2 (single and double parity) and 2-10 disks...
sorry, i think building a NAS and exporting the storage to more than just OSX
is the better option... AFP, they say, is not even fully working on Lion...
------
oomkiller
I don't want to pay for a commercial product that doesn't integrate well with
the OS, and that is configured by a GUI. I want ZFS to be integrated into the
OS, bootable with encryption, like we were supposed to see in Snow Leopard.
~~~
Terretta
Sounds like you're looking for their "Developer Edition":
[http://tenscomplement.com/our-products/zevo-developer-
editio...](http://tenscomplement.com/our-products/zevo-developer-edition)
------
cobychapple
Looks like their hosting account got suspended. Here's a Google cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Atenscomplement.com%2Four-
products%2Fzevo-silver-edition)
------
antoncohen
I have been looking forward to this release, but the hardware I want to use it
with doesn't exist yet. I want to use a Mac Mini has a filer head, connected
to a small JBOD, using the data integrity, compression, dedup, and snapshot
features of ZFS.
So to the hardware manufacturers, here's what I want. Either a Thunderbolt to
SAS adapter, that basically has an LSI Fusion-MPT card in it, and of course a
Mac OS X version of the mpt2sas driver. Then I could connect it to any JBOD.
Or, integrate the SAS HBA into a drive enclosure, directly connected with
Thunderbolt. What I don't want (dear Promise) is a $2500 drive-less 6-bay
enclosure with hardware RAID. I don't want hardware RAID, ZFS will do RAID
better than hardware.
~~~
zdw
Is there a reason you need MacOS X as your server OS?
Plenty of other options out there which have more testing and have substantial
history with ZFS. I'd seriously look into OpenIndiana or similar - I run this
with much success on an HP Microserver, which has plenty of expansion
possibilities with a small form factor, ECC RAM, etc.
If I was the developer, I'd see about giving away the low end version as a
loss leader. As is, charging $20 = less people will test it = less stable.
~~~
antoncohen
I wanted to reduce the amount of constantly running computers. I still want a
desktop/media center, I wanted to combine that with [ZFS] file server. I'll
probably end up running FreeNAS + a desktop. The reason I don't want a FreeBSD
or Illumos-based OS as a media center is because of no Netflix streaming
support, and Flash performance is poor too.
~~~
icepick
I'm running ubuntu 11.10 + ZFS for Linux. Works great.
<http://zfsonlinux.org/>
------
Wilya
This lacks details.
The wikipedia page for ZFS claims that they implement ZFSv28 (same as
FreeBSD), but I'm skeptical.
While I understand the lack of encryption (it's one of the very latest
additions to ZFS anyway), I see no mention of compression, snapshots, dedup,
easy raid, everything that makes ZFS so cool.
Instead, they market.. sharing ? It's a local filesystem, it _should_ be
shareable through classical means anyway...
PS: ok. On-disk format is v28, but they just didn't implemented the associated
features ? That's plain weird.
PPS: Disregard what I said. Should have delved more into the website..
~~~
rjurney
<http://tenscomplement.com/our-products/zevo-platinum-edition>
------
foobarbazetc
Without encryption, this is a huge step back from HFS+.
~~~
wmf
In theory you should be able to run ZFS on top of CoreStorage.
------
hackermom
I would want that to be bootable before even considering it. Give me anything
bootable that is faster than Apple's current codebase for HFS+ and I'll buy
it.
~~~
dserodio
If boot speed is your main concern, just use a SSD. I've upgraded a month ago
and I'm still amazed at every single boot.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
France Demand Removal of 15M Project Gutenberg Books from Internet Archive - alanpetrel
https://boingboing.net/2019/04/11/one-hour-service.html
======
atomwaffel
Original blog post from the Internet Archive:
[https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10/official-eu-agencies-
fal...](https://blog.archive.org/2019/04/10/official-eu-agencies-falsely-
report-more-than-550-archive-org-urls-as-terrorist-content/)
~~~
dfrage
Two day old HN discussion on this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19627885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19627885)
Yesterday's HN discussion on this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19646035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19646035)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Illegally climbing the Golden Gate bridge at dawn (2011) - jcbmllgn
http://www.nopromiseofsafety.com/?p=1680
======
dkokelley
I'm really not sure how I feel about these things. On one hand, these are
great escapades, and they result in fantastic pictures. I do like seeing
"forbidden and forgotten areas". On the other hand, I would never want to
encourage anyone to do something like this. It's illegal for a reason. The
reason is not just your own safety. If he had fallen on to the road side of
the bridge, not only would he die, but he would risk the safety of others
driving across the bridge. Even in the best-case where he doesn't hit a
vehicle or cause an accident, the morning commute is screwed up because of
what on the surface appears to be another suicide.
~~~
DanBC
People committing suicide would tend to jump off the bridge into the water?
There are, very roughly, one person committing suicide per fortnight from the
Goldengate Bridge.
One idea to slow down that number o fdeaths is to install a big net. It'll
hurt when people land on it, and that might be enough to snap them out of the
impulsive decision to end their lives.
The net would cost about $45m.
Some people might feel that spending the money on mental health services and
suicide prevention services would be a better investment.
([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/us/26bcjames.html?pagewant...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/us/26bcjames.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0))
Superficially it's obvious why Fresno CA has such a high suicide rate (14.8
per 100,000) - low employment, high crime, staggering drug (especially meth)
addiction. But Sacramento CA has higher rates of suicide (22.7 per 100,000),
and it's not as easy to work out why.
~~~
ryguytilidie
I'm genuinely curious how a net to go under the bridge would cost $45m. How?
~~~
lostlogin
I've only been there once, but I'm picking that harsh weather, height and the
need for attachment points outside the existing bridge make it expensive. I'm
not at all surprised that it is expensive, but I am that it hasn't been done
yet.
~~~
timr
A primary complaint, believe it or not, is that the net would hurt the
aesthetics of the bridge.
People have been pushing for a net for years, but a variety of (lame) excuses
keep conspiring against it. The reality is that there's no really good reason
to keep from doing it...just a lot of little bad ones that seem to win.
~~~
sneak
How about "it's not society's job to keep people (even insane ones) from doing
what they want with their own bodies"?
You can take this to apply to everything from the inside of one's uterus to
hurling oneself off a bridge.
~~~
lostlogin
It is societies job to look after everyone, especially the unwell. I do recall
there being a handrail, so someone believes in some safety.
~~~
sneak
Handrails are to prevent accidents by people not trying to hurl themselves
off.
You are confusing safety with coercion.
~~~
lostlogin
I get your first statement, however If someone falls off due to poor sight/bad
knees/inner ear problems or someone jumps off due to a temporary depressive
illness, I see little difference. All relate to medical problems. It's not
that I'm rabidly anti suicide - I am pro suicide rights - but I'd hardly call
a net coercion. Can you explain this for me? Grafton Bridge in Auckland has
put up Perspex screens for suicide prevention (and the safely of those under
the bridge) instead of nets.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafton_Bridge](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafton_Bridge)
------
base698
I have been BASE jumping for quite a while and within that community there is
a strong thread of leave no trace. It reduces the legal risk, eliminates
property damage, and keeps it open for everyone else.
Back to Joe, I found his blog and saw a picture of him setting off fireworks
on top of a crane I had just climbed and jumped in the city I used to live. I
kept thinking the increased security probably should have led to my arrest
since setting off fireworks isn't exactly stealth and if I was property owner
and found that I'd definitely be horrified enough to increase security. I
tracked him down and took him out to an antenna for him to climb and
photograph warning him what could happen if he kept posting so publicly. He
was eventually was arrested for this:
[http://www.nopromiseofsafety.com/?p=311](http://www.nopromiseofsafety.com/?p=311)
He was an interesting dude. Modified a car to have a skin of bottle caps all
over it. He does not walk to the beat of normal society's drum.
~~~
dboat
"He does not walk to the beat of normal society's drum."
...says the base jumper.
~~~
base698
We come from all walks of life. Met more than a few start up founders,
doctors, and Googlers
------
bluetidepro
Amazing things like this make me wish I wasn't afraid of heights. Even the
pictures sort of make me feel uneasy. Haha Regardless, this is incredible.
~~~
nsxwolf
You're not afraid of heights, you're afraid of falling. To me, NOT being
afraid of heights is irrational.
~~~
singlow
I love falling. It's hitting the ground that I'm afraid of.
~~~
ImprovedSilence
Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing.
~~~
foobarbazqux
Hi Ford.
------
oldcigarette
In railfanning we don't look kindly on people who trespass to great the
'perfect shot' because they just end up screwing things up for everyone else
with ever increasing rules, surveillance and fences. Please think about the
consequences of your actions when doing something like this.
~~~
base698
Same for BASE jumping. I had a talking too with the guy from this blog. He was
eventually arrested, but after getting a few things we were jumping locked up.
There is a history of tar and feathering (with cold tar) people that ruin it
for everyone else.
------
incision
If you like this sort of thing, you might appreciate Vitaly Raskalov [0].
0: [http://englishrussia.com/2013/03/22/on-top-of-the-
pyramide/#...](http://englishrussia.com/2013/03/22/on-top-of-the-
pyramide/#more-122040)
~~~
joshfraser
I was offered the chance to do this in Egypt. I was told that it was totally
safe as long as I brought along enough bride money in the event that we got
caught.
~~~
wololo
how much?
~~~
joshfraser
$20
------
shawabawa3
> In a choice between a 300-foot-fall to water and a 30-foot-fall to concrete
> the winner is discernable if not immediately clear
I'm guessing the correct choice is the concrete, but for some reason I feel
like I would still prefer to go for the water...
~~~
nathanb
This is why I love the TV show Mythbusters: they routinely demonstrate how our
intuition on these matters is wrong.
(A 30-foot fall onto concrete might still kill you, but a 300-foot fall into
water will definitely kill you. And if the fall onto concrete doesn't kill
you, it will be much easier to get you the medical attention you need if
you're not floating in San Francisco Bay).
~~~
Xcelerate
Huh, I never saw the Mythbusters show. Why would a 300-foot fall into water
definitely kill you? I know the world dive record is 172 feet. And terminal
velocity for a human is about 120 mph. I imagine if you make yourself flat for
most of the fall you could lower that speed and then right before you hit the
water take a "pencil" position. Would you not at least have some chance of
surviving that?
~~~
nathanb
Water is noncompressible. Maybe the word "definitely" was misused because
there's always the possibility for a fluke, but my understanding is that at
terminal velocity hitting water is functionally equivalent to hitting
concrete.
Look up the "hammer drop" episode of Mythbusters if you want to see the long
explanation.
The second point still stands, though. I'd rather fall onto the concrete,
where I could get help quickly and if I knocked myself out but survived I
wouldn't drown.
~~~
glurgh
In a 300 foot fall, you're not reaching the bottom at terminal velocity.
Mythbusters have in fact gone over this a few times and the results are a bit
different - falling from such a height onto more or less anything is almost
certainly lethal. Given equivalent height, even at terminal velocity, you're
still slightly better off falling into water.
~~~
base698
You're still going about 80 mph. Just from memory it's roughly 20 mph/second
until you hit 4 seconds where it's reduced to 10 mph/second due to air
resistance. The greatest chance you'd have is to impact shallow water with
mud. This has saved at least three people, of which there are fairly
spectacular Youtube videos.
------
gesman
This is lovely and amazing!
90% of chance of law enforcement to be in touch with you soon, unfortunately.
This is akin posting Youtube video of yourself breaking legal speed limits.
~~~
Ricapar
Just FYI:
Date: February 24, 2011
If they haven't given him a call by now, they probably don't care at this
point.
~~~
ultimoo
I wonder whether the statute of limitations applies to such things. I hope it
does.
~~~
aroch
It'd be trespass and other crimes on federal properly, so 5 years, no?
~~~
devb
How is it federal property? It's owned and operated by an independent quasi-
governmental organization.
~~~
aroch
The bridge is classified as a national monument, which would protect it as
federal property.
~~~
devb
I can't seem to find a single thing online that supports your statement,
either concerning the monument part or federal jurisdiction of the bridge.
~~~
devb
Further, it does not appear on this list:
[http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/sites/antiquities/Monuments...](http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/sites/antiquities/MonumentsList.htm)
I'm assuming you made an error.
------
yason
I caught myself wondering why climbing the bridge has to be _illegal_.
You can't practically damage the bridge. You will mostly just hurt yourself if
something happens. Theoretically the worst that could happen is you could fall
onto a car but the damages incurred by a dead climber would be peanuts for any
insurance company — people crash their cars by themselves alone all the time.
And that could already happen because climbing being illegal doesn't stop the
people who want to climb the bridge, as demonstrated in the article.
Of course, there's there "could" track where anything "could" happen thus it
must be declared illegal before it happens, but you can extend that thinking
to nearly everything until living just becomes impossible. For example, it
"should be illegal to climb the big rocks on the shores because you could fall
on an innocent party on a boat".
I would be inclined to reserve the illegal status for activities that actively
affect other people. Stealing, mugging, murdering, manslaughtering,
kidnapping, etc. Conversely, accidents just happen.
~~~
mabhatter
Because if the general public was doing it 50% or better would be squished.
Public employees have to clean your guts up off the pavement each time it
happens. It's not "victimless" after the same old guy has scrapped 30 people
off the bridge and has mental health issues.
------
dfc
_It is the most photographed landmark in the country_
I am sorry but that is BS. I could not find any statistics about "photographed
landmarks" but a quick check of any measure of tourism and this seems
extremely unlikely. For starters San Francisco's tourism does not come close
to NYC.
~~~
DanBC
([http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43240059/ns/travel-
travel_tips/t/m...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43240059/ns/travel-
travel_tips/t/most-photographed-places-earth/))
> _Mining data from 35 million Flickr photos, scientists at Cornell University
> made some surprising discoveries: Not only did the world 's most
> photographed cities (and the most captured landmark in each) emerge, but
> also so did the most common angles for shooting each place._
There are some American cities in the top twenty-five; and some Californian
cities there; and San Francisco is listed at number 3, but for Union Square,
not the Golden Gate Bridge.
This[1] AOL page has another list of US sights.
([http://news.travel.aol.com/2009/08/27/must-snaps-americas-
mo...](http://news.travel.aol.com/2009/08/27/must-snaps-americas-most-
photographed-landmarks/)) - they say it's the Coit Tower.
[1] A bafflingly bad page! Here's the tiny text-reading box on my display.
([http://imgur.com/aRPqWr5](http://imgur.com/aRPqWr5))
~~~
dfc
Why did you say "there are some American cities...and San Francisco is listed
at number 3" and not mention:
1st most photographed city: New York
Landmark: Empire State Building.
Updated:
Found the source[1], the golden gate bridge did not make their list of top 7
in san francisco. Which could be due to the methodology but it is important to
note that there is a problem of selection bias in the article, which may
artificially inflate SF's prominence. Its worth pointing out that for NYC
landmarks the apple store was ranked higher than liberty island (AKA statue of
liberty). Francophiles can rest easy, the Eifel Tower crushed the competition.
[1] [https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~dph/papers/photomap-
www09.pdf](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~dph/papers/photomap-www09.pdf)
------
milliams
Awful choice of font colour.
~~~
apexys
Better than pure white though. Too much contrast is problematic for some
people.
~~~
milliams
On my screen however, I literally couldn't read it without selecting all the
text.
~~~
nathanb
Consider: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/color-
toggle/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/color-toggle/)
------
Ricapar
He missed the part of the story where he has to get back down!
~~~
martin-adams
Maybe he's still there.
------
js2
Performance art from the Williamsburg Bridge:
[http://gothamist.com/2011/11/19/video_see_the_williamsburg_b...](http://gothamist.com/2011/11/19/video_see_the_williamsburg_bridge_a.php)
If you enjoy these sorts of stories, you'll love watching Man on Wire --
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Wire)
------
quackerhacker
Mesmerizing. Apart of the glitz, I think of living in a city, is exploring.
When I was young with friends in SF (we were around 12), I remember the most
adrenaline pumping thing we did was walk in the muni tunnel off I think Duboce
(back in 01', so I'm not sure of the right names) and we'd always climb to
roof access in the condo where they lived.
------
lcrs
There's a lovely little book by John Law which includes climbing this bridge,
back in the 70s:
[http://www.furnacepress.com/publications/law.html](http://www.furnacepress.com/publications/law.html)
------
bjourne
Why does every photographer have to use that "make colors look like xbox
games" effect on their photos? I much rather look at unprocessed photos that
have not been distorted by color enhancing filters.
------
nazka
Someone has an idea to find what camera he used? I tried to find it on flickr
and google.image but there is nothing. I really like how it captured the
colors and the light.
------
barce
You can get a permit for this and do it legally:
[http://www.parksconservancy.org/visit/tours/golden-gate-
brid...](http://www.parksconservancy.org/visit/tours/golden-gate-bridge.html)
~~~
aray
Looking at those photos it seems like they just have a staged segment where
you can get a "climbing the tower" picture taken, not actually climb the
tower.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/parksconservancy/sets/721576304...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/parksconservancy/sets/72157630405662316/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The most frequent 777 characters give 90% coverage of Kanji in the wild - sova
http://japanesecomplete.com/777
======
diego
The thing is, 90% coverage is not that great. What happens is that you
understand common words that make up for a lot of structure, but when an
uncommon word appears it's probably important to the sentence. For example,
"son, if you go to the plumbf tomorrow morning don't forget to pick up some
zlonks."
98% is closer to what you need in order to read a text and have an idea of
what's going on. See this article:
[https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2016/08/25/what-80-...](https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2016/08/25/what-80-comprehension-
feels-like)
~~~
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
Being fluent in Japanese as a second language, I agree with this. It's Zipf's
law and sounds great, but 90% isn't as useful as it sounds. You'll mostly
recognize a single common Kanji of compound words consisting of 2-3
characters, or common structural words. It's a far cry from being able to
understand content you find in the wild.
Also, "understanding" a Kanji is an ill-defined term. Most Kanji have multiple
meanings based on context, and many different readings. So for each Kanji
you're not learning a single character, but possibly a lot more. Especially
the Kanji that correspond to more abstract concepts you cannot learn by
themselves. They don't have a concrete meaning like "eat" or "drink". You
essentially have to memorize all of their word compounds, a single character
does not help.
EDIT: I also started out learning Japanese by memorizing the top 2000 Kanji
using Spaced Repetition. While it definitely helped, it wasn't nearly as
useful as some of these marketing-driven sites want you to believe. Kanji
meaning are too complex to be captured like that. Even if you "know" all Kanji
in a word you'll likely not understand the word's meaning unless it's
something simple and concrete. I think you are much better of memorizing and
studying word compounds. Over time you will automatically "pattern match" the
Kanji you see often to their abstract concepts.
Example from 1min of browsing a JP text: Take "可能" which is a very common word
that usually means "possible". Knowing the two Kanji (tolerant and ability) it
not going to help you. It could mean dozens of other things based on those
simplified Kanji meanings. This is not an exception, the majority of words are
like this. On the other hand, let me give you a bunch of words containing "可":
許可、可決、可能性、不可欠 (permission, approval, possibility, essential) and you start to
pattern-match that "可" corresponds to something like "positive possibility",
but it's hard to translate.
~~~
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1
Afterthought: Kawaii (cute) is actually 可愛い, also containing "可", which
literally may mean something like "a thing that can be easily loved", or
simpler, cute. But you wouldn't be able to guess that if you just know the
Kanji.
~~~
mytailorisrich
I don't know for Japanese as meaning sometimes shifts from Chinese, but in
Chinese the standard definition of 可 is "can, may, be able to".
You obviously learn it by itself but as Chinese words are mostly a combination
of 2 characters, you immediately also have to learn e.g. 可以 (can, may, be able
to), 可能 (maybe), 可爱 (cute) etc.
So someone who's learning characters in order to get 90% coverage (or
whatever) would not simply learn characters but learn actual words. Learning
characters in isolation would not be that helpful, indeed.
When you don't know a word (i.e. a combination) but you know the individual
characters it is much easier to learn the new word either by guessing or
checking.
In context, the meaning of 可爱 would be fairly straightforward to guess, for
example. Even in English 'lovable' is a synonym of 'cute'.
~~~
fenomas
> the meaning of 可爱 would be fairly straightforward to guess
To be honest this whole thread about 可愛い is more or less bonkers, because it's
an ateji. The word's meaning doesn't derive from the characters, the
characters got arbitrarily attached to an existing word because they were
similar in sound and meaning.
As such, the whole thing is about as meaningful as talking about how easy it
is to guess that 珈琲 means "coffee"...
~~~
mytailorisrich
I must say I don't know much about ateji in Japanese.
In this case, though it does seem that the characters where chosen at least
partly because of their actual meaning.
It seems that it is both an ateji and a jukujikun [1] because the word does
not come from the characters but the characters do have the correct meaning.
[1][https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84#J...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8F%AF%E6%84%9B%E3%81%84#Japanese)
~~~
fenomas
> the characters where chosen at least partly because of their actual meaning
Sure, didn't I say they were in my post?
The point was, in a discussion of how well X predicts Y, it's not very useful
to examine a test case where Y came first and X was chosen post-hoc to match
it.
~~~
mytailorisrich
> _Sure, didn 't I say they were in my post?_
No, quite the opposite actually ;)
~~~
fenomas
> the characters got arbitrarily attached to an existing word _because they
> were similar in sound and meaning_
~~~
mytailorisrich
It does not seem arbitrary in this case because the meaning does match.
I do take your point that using that word in the discussion above, which is
about Japanese was not the best example. On the other hand, it is a good
example in chinese.
~~~
fenomas
(A) In Japanese the meanings don't match that closely. The word didn't
originally mean cute, but rather pathetic or pitiable, and evolved over time.
More info: [http://gogen-allguide.com/ka/kawaii.html](http://gogen-
allguide.com/ka/kawaii.html)
(B) By arbitrary here I mean that there is no linguistic connection.
"Arbitrarily chosen because they are similar" => "chosen for no reason other
than their similarity".
------
vsnf
An interesting assertion, but the article is both vacuous and confusing. It
doesn’t link to the underlying study, combines what one tends to think of as
kanji (single characters) with more complex juku-kanji (multiple characters)
with straight up whole dictionary words. Some of those words are presented
with English definitions to the side, but most aren’t. Some of the kanji are
presented with pronunciations, but most aren’t. There’s no support for the
thesis statement.
I have no particular reason to disbelieve the headline, it sounds reasonable
enough, but this page in specific is doing nothing to persuade me of its main
point.
~~~
sova
A Japanese Logographic Frequency List (2000) Chikamatsu et. al
[https://researchmap.jp/YOKOYAMA_Shoichi/%E8%B3%87%E6%96%99%E...](https://researchmap.jp/YOKOYAMA_Shoichi/%E8%B3%87%E6%96%99%E5%85%AC%E9%96%8B/?action=multidatabase_action_main_filedownload&download_flag=1&upload_id=6391&metadata_id=18550)
~~~
wodenokoto
Great find, digging up what appears to be the base of TFA’s list.
Some critique of using the linked list: That is based on a newspaper corpus
from 93, which explains why day/sun is at the top, which they won’t be for
list created from Wikipedia or television subtitles, both sources that are
arguably closer to “in the wild”
------
kazinator
I know around 10,000 Japanese words. As far as kanji goes, I've studied some
1200 of them intensively; through vocab I know many more as parts of words. I
quite often have to reach for a dictionary when reading.
If you know 777 kanji in some way (like associating them with meanings,
through your native language) and you haven't crammed on any vocabulary, you
absolutely will not be able to read a thing.
In fact, even if you continue that way and memorize over 2000 kanji, and
recognize every single one in a given document, you still won't be able to
read anything without vocab.
The broadened knowledge will help support vocabulary building, though.
~~~
matt-attack
> I quite often have to reach for a dictionary when reading
So when reading kanji, how do you look up a word (picture) you don't know?
Since there isn't a minimal set of characters, the notion of "alphabetical
order" seems impossible. Weird that I've never thought about this until now,
but I'm honestly baffled.
~~~
laurieg
Let's say I see the word: 銀行 and want to look up the first character. I notice
that the left hand side is 金 so I go to a dictionary, turn to the kanji
radical section[1] find 金 and then find the original character by number of
strokes[2]. This character has 14 strokes. If you have any experience with
kanji then counting strokes is pretty trivial.
Also note that on the site linked to common kanji have a red background. Many
of the characters are obscure so radical + stroke count narrows done the
choices to very few kanji.
[1]
[https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu.html](https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu.html)
[2]
[https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu08002.html](https://kanji.jitenon.jp/cat/bushu08002.html)
------
kazinator
> _Take solace in the fact that Japanese Complete has arranged the kanji and
> the verbs based on a frequency analysis of the Japanese corpus._
Jim Breen's KANJIDIC has frequency information.
[http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/KANJIDIC_Project](http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/KANJIDIC_Project)
> _The 2,501 most-used characters have a ranking which expresses the relative
> frequency of occurrence of a character in modern Japanese. The data is based
> on an analysis of word frequencies in the Mainichi Shimbun over 4 years by
> Alexandre Girardi. Note: (a) these frequencies are biased towards words and
> kanji used in newspaper articles, and (b) the relative frequencies for the
> last few hundred kanji so graded is quite imprecise._
------
olsgaarddk
A few years ago I downloaded several hundreds of megabytes of Japanese
subtitles, split into 3 categories: live action/drama, anime and foreign
film/tv
I’ve listed them in a google sheets together with a few other corpora
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yb5dq4ahdwc_g0aQTL3Y...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yb5dq4ahdwc_g0aQTL3YM6i2mKiZ2m-AvhpwygbZD4A)
Choose the jimaku tab for subtitles to see how big the variation between
corpus can be.
According to other comments here, it appears that OP list is based on a
newspaper corpus from 1993.
~~~
echelon
The source links appear to no longer work. Do you know where we can download
Japanese subtitles?
I would love to attempt to segment a bunch of Japanese subtitles into words
and then do frequency analysis. My interest is in increasing my listening
ability, so I want to put the most frequently spoken words into SRS/Anki, and
perhaps even break it down by anime.
Alternatively, has anyone already done this?
~~~
olsgaarddk
That was my initial goal, but I had a lot of trouble with vanilla MeCab not
understanding a lot of the text. But this was before neologd, so i think it
would work better now.
I don’t have the source code on me, but I scraped it from a website that
publishes subtitles. The scraping was easy, the cleaning not, and I believe
this spreadsheet is generated from my first attempt at cleaning.
A lot of sources in Japanese nlp and linguistics have a bad habit of changing
url often, so it bitrots easily. Sorry.
------
xxxpupugo
This means very little though.
Take me as English learner for example. I would say I was only able to
understand everyday English without too much of a hassle, after I acquired
like around 10k words, which as I just checked had a coverage about 98%+.
Noted, it is still NOT enough, actually far from enough. Right now I believe I
master around 15k to 20k words, by various estimates, and navigating English
on the internet is like a charm, very little context switch in between with my
native language.
Still, reading literature is huge undertake for me. I would still need to
pardon myself about every once a page that if I stumped upon certain unknown
words/phrases and can't move on before fully understands it, my pleasure of
reading would be ruined. Such comprise frustrates me still, to this day. On
the other hand, I will never have a second thoughts reading most cryptic novel
in my own language, understanding might still be a challenge, but unlikely due
to my insufficient vocabulary.
~~~
wingerlang
How do you check your coverage? Or even how many words you know?
~~~
bspammer
Just googling around, I found this test: [https://www.arealme.com/vocabulary-
size-test/en/](https://www.arealme.com/vocabulary-size-test/en/)
No idea about its accuracy, but as a native English speaker it's telling me my
vocabulary size is 30k words, which sounds roughly correct.
~~~
thwave
I've tried it now and got 22k, which seems not so bad for a foreigner ("Top
6.53% Your vocabulary is at the level of professional white-collars in the
US!"), but I feel like I cheated: most of the more fancy English words are
just misspelled Latin, and having even a modest Latin vocabulary (I'd don't
think I know more than 4k Latin words) makes their meanings pretty obvious.
------
redthrow
If Japanese people just used kana (like Korean people use hangul today), kids
in Japan don't have to spend countless hours learning this complex (and often
irrational) writing system.
[http://kanamozi.org/hikari959-04.html](http://kanamozi.org/hikari959-04.html)
> If you really want to be native-level Japanese, kanji are essential
There are visually impaired people who have difficulty learning kanji but
speak Japanese fluently. Language is not just for people who can read and
write, let alone reading and writing complex characters, or spell things
"correctly".
Richard Feynman:
_If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come
to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell
"friend," I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell
friend_
~~~
asutekku
Have you read japanese written only with hiragana? The language has so many
homonyms it is hard to distinguish them from a text as it is a heavily context
based language. I’d argue abolishing kanji and using only hiragana/katakana or
roman alphabet makes learning the language harder after the very beginning
when your vocab starts to increase.
~~~
redthrow
I'd recommend playing the excellent SNES game Mother 2 (マザー２）, a huge hit in
Japan and nobody complained about the text being difficult to read.
Or you can watch one of the let's play videos with narration here:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UrqsO2JQ0&list=PLC4EWNG6GsuY...](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UrqsO2JQ0&list=PLC4EWNG6GsuY5SExvHdnN9l9nP_ghz5vo&index=2&t=0s)
~~~
innocenat
But games don't show you pages and pages of Hiragana. And it's old games --
it's accepted technical limitation.
Have _you_ read pages and pages in Hiragana? Or even paragraphs? It's not fun,
and it's take a lot of concentration.
~~~
redthrow
It's no harder than having conversations in spoken Japanese where you don't
see any text, kanji or otherwise.
It would look awkward initially, but that's just because people are just used
to the status quo which is kanji-kana mix.
~~~
innocenat
Spoken Japanese has intonation and rhythm which make identifying word
boundaries and homonyms easier.
Reading hiragana (especially without space as word boundaries) is totally
different. Reading long hiragana by speaking aloud help, but there is still a
problem of ha/wa and he/e.
~~~
redthrow
Using space is a given if you write exclusively in kana. See Kanamoji-kai:
[http://kanamozi.org/](http://kanamozi.org/)
Also, the very reason there are so many homonyms in written text in the first
place is _because_ of the kanji (over)usage - that is, because people think
there are visual cues they are less careful about choosing words that are also
understood easily by people listening to the words.
When people speak, at least if they are a competent speaker, people tend to
avoid the overuse of homonyms (mostly kango).
------
jaredklewis
A brief tangent, but something I've noticed is that the meanings of words like
"fluent" and even "native" are so ambiguous and poorly defined, that it is
almost impossible to have a meaningful conversation about language learning
unless you avoid them completely.
The marketing materials for language learning resources tend to make full use
of this vagueness, like this one does. I wish these resources instead did more
to enlighten their prospects as to what one can actually expect to achieve and
in what kind of time frames.
Languages are endlessly deep. "Native" is not even close to the top. Even
amongst "native" speakers, skill with and understanding of language is
enormously varied. Compare the wedding toast of a skilled public speaker with
that of an average one. Compare a literature scholar's understanding of a
classic novel with that of an ordinary high school graduate. It's night and
day.
IME, 777 kanji wouldn't get you very far in a newspaper and certainly not a
novel. It would likely be enough to understand 90% of ordinary emails and text
messages.
So many great resources to learn Japanese with these days; this vocabulary
list is not one of them.
------
franciscop
This is known in the education space, and tests like the JLPT N5-N1 are based
on this! Also when learning English, the learning material and exams are based
on this. The order of frequency is not strictly followed though, if you have
to learn "Monday" now and "Tuesday" in a couple of days, it makes sense to
bundle them all by concepts at once and learn "getsukasuimokukindonichi". So
in Japanese learning, on a day-to-day it might seem like you learn random
difficult-easy words or characters, but overall you only have to _memorize_
the top N characters/words for the next test and you'd be alright.
I made a free website to memorize Kanji that works offline:
[https://core.cards/](https://core.cards/). Initially I did maintain a list of
the top 100, top 500, and top 1000 (approx) if I recall correctly, extracted
from Wikipedia lists, to learn Japanese Kanji. But now I've switched it to
just follow the JLPT because they were almost the same.
------
echelon
Does anyone have frequency lists of vocabulary broken down by type (verb,
noun, etc.)? I've seen word lists on Wiktionary, and I'm attempting to cross-
reference jisho and other sources.
How many words do you need to comprehend for daily competency? Would the
10,000 suffice?
How many words do you need to be able to watch anime aimed at children (eg
Bono Bono) or teenagers (Boku no Hero Academia)?
~~~
sova
Great questions, let's figure out the answers! I think 6,000-7,000 words (just
a wild guess based on experience) would cover a lot of daily conversation,
plus specializing in whatever domain you're in a little.
------
bgee
Disclaimer: native Chinese speaker, knows some Japanese, English sufferer
Putting aside the argument of whether removing all Hanzi from Japanese text
would actually be more efficient or not, the question to me is: why stop at
Hanzi? Why not romanizating all the Japanese literature? Surely almost all the
reasoning in favor of getting rid of Hanzi can also apply here?
edit: grammar
~~~
angelsl
That's essentially what Korean did. They replaced everything with their own
morphophonemic orthography.
But even then they still use Hanja to disambiguate sometimes.
~~~
bgee
I was not even talking about Hangul, the point I made was on using a Latin
alphabet. If we are revamping the whole writing system, why reinvent the wheel
if the main goal is "efficiency"?
edit: obviously Kana has already been created
~~~
redthrow
There have been notable Japanese people who argued that the Japanese writing
system should adopt Latin alphabets since ~150 years ago.
[https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%...](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E%E5%AD%97%E8%AB%96)
I'm personally fine with both romaji and kana (learning kana is not a big
cognitive burden anyways).
I'm even fine with kanji (or Latin or anything) if people learn it
voluntarily. What's not ok is kids being forced to learn them in school.
------
LastZactionHero
As someone who spent a lot of time learning kanji alone, there's not much you
can do with kanji alone. It's a helpful step in learning actual words,
learning strokes, finding patterns, but I'd be skeptical of the utility of
this list.
If you're going to rote memorize something, I'd probably start with the
radicals.
------
visarga
What about kanji combinations? I bet you got to learn many thousands (made of
the same 777 kanjis).
------
wrp
Vocabulary frequency lists have long been very popular with publishers, so I
assume as well with language learners. The assumption behind these is that
with knowledge of, say, 90% of the vocabulary you encounter, you will
comprehend 90% of the writings you encounter. It doesn't work out at all that
way, though, because it is generally the low frequency vocabulary that carries
the key information in a text and on which the interpretation of everything
else hinges.
~~~
jacobolus
In the US, there are beginning reader books (e.g. the “I Can Read!” and “Ready
to Read” series) which intentionally use somewhat limited vocabulary. These
are somewhere between a picture book and a chapter book: they have usually 1.5
pages of text and 0.5 pages of picture in each 2-page spread; the text is set
in a large font but there are at least a few sentences per page; usually the
books are 30–50 pages long, with 3–5 “chapters”.
I don’t know how useful these are for independent reading by 5–6-year-olds,
but anecdotally they are great material for reading to 2-year-olds, better
than most picture books. (Note: some of the recent readers are garbage
marketing gimmicks with movie tie-ins, ranging from boring to
incomprehensible; skip those.)
~~~
bdowling
Notable examples are _The Cat in the Hat_ , which uses 236 words, and _Green
Eggs and Ham_ , which uses only 50 words. (Wikipedia)
------
echelon
Before this falls off the front page, I figured I would ask the following:
1) Does anyone have a resource for Japanese subtitles (in Japanese/kanji, not
English)?
2) Does anyone have good frequency { word => frequency } lists? Especially if
they are topical, eg. school-related, anime-related, industry-related.
3) What are the best programs for segmenting Japanese text into words
reliably?
4) Does anyone have a vocabulary set for any given manga, anime, or film that
you could study before watching?
5) In addition to Anki and Wanikani, what are good SRS apps or programs?
6) Does anyone use Skype (or similar) to practice with native Japanese
speakers? How is it? How did you find people to practice with?
7) What is the inflection point (in terms of raw # of vocabulary) to being
able to understand Japanese anime or drama? What JLPT level does this
correspond to?
8) How many new words do you acquire per day of study? How long have you been
studying? Have you taken any of the JLPT tests?
~~~
htns
5) zkanji: [https://github.com/z1dev/zkanji](https://github.com/z1dev/zkanji)!
It's got a dictionary from which you can directly add words into its study
decks when looking them up, and it has handwriting recognition plus let's you
easily find similar looking kanji (with shared components etc), which is great
when tesseract ocr fails, or when the text is so blurry/compressed you can't
really even see it clearly (the online Japanese war history archives really
love to compress their scans).
~~~
echelon
Thanks for the head's up! :)
Not long after this HN thread, this thread popped up on Reddit. It answered a
lot of my questions ([1], [2], [4], and [7]), and I found it immensely useful:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/crlsqj/googl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/crlsqj/googlesheet_anime_frequency_list/)
------
kerorin
私はネイティブの日本語話者です。確かに777個の漢字を知ると90%をカバーできるとは思いますが、それがイコール日本語の90%をマスターしたとは言えないはずです。実際、この文章は極めて平易ですが、外国人にはそれなりの難易度になっていて読むのに非常に苦労するんじゃないかなと思います。
それから、リストのすべてをレビューしましたが、一部「経（ふ）」や「格別空」は言葉としておかしいです。また「恬然」や「整復」は明らかに頻出語句ではなく、ソースに偏りが見られます。
I'm a native Japanese speaker. I agree that 777 kanjis are contained in common
sentences at the rate of 90%, but it doesn't mean you can complete 90% of
Japanese. Actually, these sentences are very easy to read for Japanese people,
although it's hard for foreigners because of the difference of vocabulary. I
also reviewed the list. I believe「経（ふ）」and「格別空」are odd as a word. In addition,
「恬然」and「整復」 are not frequently appeared so I think there was a bias to choose
sources.
~~~
kerorin
You can estimate your Japanese vocabulary size on this site.
[https://www.arealme.com/japanese-vocabulary-size-
test/ja/](https://www.arealme.com/japanese-vocabulary-size-test/ja/)
Here are examples of native Japanese speakers. Usually we can achieve 20,000
easily. My result was 36,000 words.
[http://burusoku-vip.com/archives/1798300.html](http://burusoku-
vip.com/archives/1798300.html)
[https://b.hatena.ne.jp/entry/s/www.arealme.com/japanese-
voca...](https://b.hatena.ne.jp/entry/s/www.arealme.com/japanese-vocabulary-
size-test/ja/)
------
timwaagh
So what is the typical reason for people to learn Japanese? Is it a good
destination for something more important than visiting a few shrines or buying
rare manga? I'm currently learning vietnamese, another east Asian language.
It's very difficult. I'm very good at learning languages, generally. But not
this one. The only reason I'm doing this at all is i'm here anyways after my
plans failed two days into the trip and I can't communicate so I'm alone and
shit out of luck. I don't think I will know a reasonable level even after the
three weeks are over. Waste of a trip but I still get some decent pictures to
post online.
~~~
vharuck
I like learning foreign languages because it's interesting to see how they
outline ideas and idioms are a great way to learn about the culture. So it's
an enjoyable hobby that builds a skill (maybe of little value, but I can
deceive myself).
I chose Japanese because I watch and read a lot of stuff from Japan. It's also
very different from English, which is fun.
------
euske
The frustrating issue is that they don't state in _what situation_. I'm
certain that most people will just do fine with only 100 kanji characters for
daily life, or no kanji at all if they're just a tourist. But if you're
applying for a full-time Japanese speaking job in a Japanese company, knowing
only 777 characters is a joke (which is about the 5th-grader level). Just like
a programming language, the level of fluency required depends on a task.
p.s. just confirmed that the list is not enough for filing a tax in Japan.
They don't have words like 所得 (income), 控除 (deduction) or 医療費 (medical
expense).
------
fortran77
Not really sure what the major point is. Sure, there's a core set of "units"
(words / Kanji characters) that are useful when trying to learn a language. I
didn't even attempt to speak English conversationally until I had about 200
verbs and 500 nouns and maybe 100 adjectives memorized. This lets you have
useful conversations and basic understanding when reading, but it's still a
struggle to get that last 10%.
------
rootsudo
Website is about 777 kanji that give 90% coverage of Japanese.
No Kanji at all, english words and some romaji like "tsu" which, can also be
kana.
I was disappointed by the article.
~~~
emilfihlman
Disable automatic translation.
------
Shorel
Seems similar to what Fluent Forever (book, application and website) claims.
Memorize the 625 most used words to jump-start your language learning and then
you can move to grammar and other stuff.
[https://blog.fluent-forever.com/base-vocabulary-list/](https://blog.fluent-
forever.com/base-vocabulary-list/)
------
lttlrck
For non-experts it is helpful to know there are around 50000 kanji characters
so 777 is ~1.6%
[https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11735/how-
many-...](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11735/how-many-kanji-
characters-are-there)
------
chasontherobot
I've read through the linked paper and I can't understand where they get the
assertion of 777 characters give 90% coverage. The original paper isn't even
about that topic, but rather comparing and contrasting a corpus created in
1994 with a corpus created in 1962 and 1976.
------
dvduval
Yes, I have been studying Chinese for about five years now and I can recognize
about 2700 characters. Looking at this Japanese character set, I'm guessing I
know 80% or so. I always act like charts like this.
~~~
jackklika
I've noticed the same where I can understand the basics of a Japanese program
if there's subtitles. But there are some oddities like 食 being used in a verb
(as in 食べる) or 行 as to go. But you still have good context and can at least
understand the topic in most cases.
~~~
wilsonthewhale
knowing Cantonese helps here, as both the verbs you mention are still common
verbs in modern Cantonese.
------
slashcom
Zipf’s law
~~~
causality0
Beat me to it. To expound upon this, Japanese is not unique in basically
adhering to Zipf's law. In many organization data sets, including the
vocabulary of most languages, the most commonly used word is twice as common
as the second-most, and the second-most word is twice as common as the third-
most, and so forth.
~~~
fenomas
> second-most word is twice as common as the third-most, and so forth.
Normally Zipf's law refers to the frequency being inversely proportional to
rank - i.e. the 3rd most common element would be 1/3 as frequent as the first,
not 1/4th.
------
canjobear
A simple information-theoretic argument suggests that most of the information
is in the remaining article 10%.
~~~
tfha
Not enough information. For example, in English some of the least common
characters are also generally not important for conveying information.
Your argument only holds if Kanji was designed to be optimal in compressing
information, which is of course not how Kanji came to be.
That doesn't mean you are wrong, but your argument is invalid.
~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Aren't kanji closer to english words than english letters?
------
WalterBright
It's similar to learning about 3000 words in a foreign language will make you
passably fluent.
------
RadioHacker
Wouldn't 777 words in any language give 90% coverage of all the words in a
typical newspaper?
~~~
grzm
One difference here is that Japanese characters can be combined in various
ways to create different words, so the 777 characters can be used to create
many more than 777 words. Compare with the Simple English Wikipedia which
strives to use only the 1000 most commonly used English words. I think you'll
find that that experience quite a bit different from reading a typical English
language newspaper.
[https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_W...](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_English_Wikipedia)
Another example of "using only the ten hundred words people use most often" is
Randall Munroe's "Up Goer Five":
[https://xkcd.com/1133/](https://xkcd.com/1133/)
It may be helpful to think of "characters" as representing some middle ground
between words and alphabetic letters, a little like word stems.
------
viburnum
I thought the number of standard kanji was only about 1900 to begin with.
~~~
fiblye
2136.
But the list isn’t at all comprehensive. There are a considerable number of
kanji in regular use that aren’t on the list, and when you include
place/person names, it grows massively.
It’s possible to memorize all the standard kanji, but crack open a history
book and you won’t recognize half of the words.
~~~
viburnum
Haha, it was 1,945 when I was studying Japanese, times change. Kind of
surprised they added characters rather than further shrink the list.
------
blondie9x
This is kind of common knowledge. JLPT 4 then 3 then 2 then 1. Done
------
ekianjo
Lol, 777 kanji is just too short to even be comfortable reading emails at work
in Japanese. So what good is 90 percent if the only thing it allows you is to
do shopping?
~~~
quicklime
777 of the most popular kanji from general Japanese might not be useful for
work emails, but if you find the top 777 from a corpus of your own emails, it
might be.
It's not hard - I've done this before using a corpus made up of work
documents. There's a part-of-speech analysts tool called mecab that gives the
word stems, and makes it easy to find word boundaries (since Japanese doesn't
use spaces).
The output went into Anki and it didn't take long before I was reading emails
and documents at work fairly easily.
~~~
sova
genius
------
microcolonel
The long tail is full of crucial nouns.
------
foota
In other news only 24 english characters give nearly 100% of all the
characters in use in English
~~~
cyborgx7
But knowing 24 characters doesn't make you understand 100% of the words.
Actually, it gives you 0%.
~~~
phlyingpenguin
It turns out there are more than 777 words commonly used. Kanji is not
different in this respect.
------
gfodor
now do mandarin please :)
------
andrewkondelin
hgv
------
knolax
This is just a confirmation of Zipf's Law[0], which applies to all languages.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law)
------
H8crilA
Yet another (re)discovery of Pareto's distribution. Net worth, stock returns,
popularity of words in languages, casualties in wars or natural disasters,
size of cities, popularity of artwork pieces like songs or computer games, ...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Applicatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Applications)
~~~
sova
This is closer to 90:25 rather than the typical Pareto of 80:20
~~~
H8crilA
80:20 is a pop-culture take on the distribution. It does a good job of
visualising it to someone who doesn't know maths.
It's really any distribution with the CDF of the form x^(-a)
~~~
sova
The wikipedia article says it's commonly formulated as 80:20, so that's where
I'm getting my info. You're saying it covers every nice Pareto ratio, which is
very different. Because 90:25 is much better than 80:20 but they are part of
the same phenomenon. Well, you can call everything a Pareto phenomenon then
and what's the point if everything fits in this universalish category? How can
I explain the value of 90:25 without invoking Pareto and having it constantly
diluted to 80:20?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A static file server in x86 Assembly - ingve
https://github.com/jeaye/toybox/tree/master/httpd-asm#a-static-file-server-in-x86-assembly-
======
rightbyte
With that much syscalls assembly actually looks kind off clean.
__; TODO: It 's possible to climb outside the web root using ../ __
But (not) doing stuff like that in asm is where I remember why we use high
level languages like C.
------
basementcat
Note this is i386 assembly; these types of syscalls may not work on all amd64
Linux distros (won't work on WSL).
------
Maultasche
This is the most readable assembly code I've ever seen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin's Fatal Flaw - frankphilips
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-miners-approach-dangers-threshold-2014-1
======
27182818284
So I was thinking, "Wouldn't the people in the pool just opt out as they're
obviously enthusiests?" Sure enough I see in the article a bit down the page:
"As soon as the Bitcoin community realized what was happening at GHash,
"independent" miners who'd subscribed to the collective removed their
computers from the pool."
------
malandrew
How can the bitcoin network verify that two or more hashing pools whose total
hashing power are greater than 51% are not secretly colluding behind the
scenes?
------
notastartup
This reminds me of a story of the the dot com bubble. An investor hears his
parents are investing in dot com and they do not own a computer or have any
idea what it is. they simply buy because the prices are going up and everyone
else around them is buying. He got worried sick and dumped all his shares.
Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. I feel that
bitcoin, while it has the place in the right heart, is not going to survive
when it wipes out people's value. Then the media will go insane about how they
can't trust cryptocurrencies ever again and a new one emerge. The government
fully is aware of this, and it's in their best interest to let it crash, let
people discredit it with their own hard earned money.
~~~
Casseres
Good story. One of my coworkers has been trying to buy some Bitcoin for weeks
now, but he doesn't understand it. He just sees that it's going up. He hasn't
been successful because he's at sea, but I imagine many other uninformed
people have been successful in buying Bitcoin.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
E Ink's Russ Wilcox on why the Kindle 2's e-paper screen took 12 years, $150 million - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/02/26/kindling-a-revolution-e-inks-russ-wilcox-on-e-paper-amazon-and-the-future-of-publishing/
======
KB
Wow, I work next door to E Ink and never had a clue what type of products they
made. Its interesting to find out they are involved in making the Kindle a
success.
Has anyone here purchased a Kindle 2 yet? Anyone willing to offer their
personal experience with it so far? (I trust HN reviews more than reviews
elsewhere)
~~~
fortes
I've had the Kindle since it first came out in late 2007. Here's my take
(warning, probably won't be that new / insightful):
Good:
* Excellent for traveling. I have a 2GB SD card and more books then I'll ever read on any single trip.
* Fairly straightforward to convert into Kindle format. About half of the books I read are from Project Gutenberg and therefore free :)
* Book/Magazine purchasing is fast and efficient (instant gratification is nice)
* Battery Life: Not as amazing as people say it is, but still quite impressive
* Text resizing: Reading at the Gym / on a bus is much easier when you can bump up the font size
* Carrying case: Leather, makes it look like a moleskine
Meh:
* Internet access: Nice, although the screen refresh is slow enough to make it a little painful
* Audio support: Never tried it, so can't say
* Page turn speed: Takes a little to get used to, but then it's fine and doesn't really interrupt reading
* UI: A little counterintuitive at first, but easy to adjust to. Occasionally slow, and you do accidentally press buttons a bit
* Price: The device is expensive, and occasionally books are more than you might want to pay (I'm used to the library :) ).
Bad:
* Selection is wanting. There are many books that aren't available.
* Graphics: Illustrations don't translate well to 4 colors. This rules out a bunch of books
* My first kindle died within the first month, it was a pain to replace, but at least done for free
* Really bad for skimming / flipping through pages quickly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are global wages about to turn? - SimplyUseless
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34488950
======
alexhu11
The elephant in the room I don't hear people discussing is the impending
spectre of deflation. If the labor supply diminishes what happens to aggregate
demand? Judging from the example of Japan, demands implodes as fewer people
buy goods and services because they aren't working! This deflates the currency
and pushes the economy in recession.
Most of the developed world is sloughing off huge portions of its working
populations. For example, Italy is set to halve its workforce in the next
decade. There are huge economic, social, and political ramifications.
~~~
InclinedPlane
All the more hilarious in the context of the "immigrants are stealing our
jobs" narrative that has always been popular.
~~~
function_seven
Well, yeah. If jobs are cut in half, and the immigrants steal the other half,
then were are you?
(I'm not seriously making this statement, but "they" are)
------
hwstar
I have to disagree about the demographics. The job market will not improve. It
will continue to deteriorate.
China may have a growing middle class, but there are over 1 billion people in
India and 1.1 billion people in Africa which have yet to be brought into the
middle class, and companies will take advantage of this army of reserve
labour.
By the time these countries have been exploited, then robotics will have taken
over and most everyone will be unemployed.
Once fully automated, are the owners of the robots going to be even richer
than today, and the rest of the world population left to live in misery, or
will there be a revolution (peaceful or violent) which forces redistribution?
~~~
cpursley
> By the time these countries have been exploited.
While I agree with many of your points, and certainly there are many people
who get exploited. But overall, if employers and employees are agreeing to
mutual employment terms without coercion, then by definition it is not
exploitation.
Additionally, things robotics and 3D printing are different than events like
the industrial revolution which a large amount of capital was required. The
owners of robotics and computing will be much more distributed and require
less capital.
Brining people into the middle class with the modern infrastructure and
stability that comes with is a really great thing. Robotics will only augment
the quality of life for these people, freeing up massive amounts of human
potential.
~~~
cpursley
The example I like is the farming revolution. There was a point when only 97%
of people worked on farms. Now that's flipped. Only 3% of people work on
farms. Are those 97% without jobs and nothing to do? No, of course not. The
economy expanded and new industries emerged that nobody expected. The
(farming) machines unlocked massive amounts of human potential. I don't expect
the robotic/software/3D revolution to be any different. I'm pretty optimistic
about what's coming.
~~~
wstrange
Previous innovations have essentially automated human (or animal) muscle
power. A tractor is vastly more powerful than a horse.
AI (or whatever you want to call it), is coming - perhaps not as fast as its
proponents would like, but I think we can agree it will happen.
This is the first technology that automates the power of the human mind.
The range of jobs that _can 't_ be done by a machine is going to get
increasingly narrow
~~~
Futurebot
Right. Part of what's missed is that we don't need great GAI to get rid of
lots of jobs; weak "AI" / deep learning / related automation techniques get us
a long way there. We have existing examples in law document review, article
topic summarization, etc.
Another thing which is often missed is how complementarity may play out for
certain jobs: it's NOT going to necessarily be "program / robot replaces every
job X", but instead "program / robot allows one person to do the job
previously done by 50." You can still have massive unemployment without
getting rid of every worker doing a certain job (and their job may change more
to be a machine guide / manager / error corrector.)
An example I see all the time now is in supermarkets. You have self-checkout
lanes that are overseen by one person. It used to be 5 lanes staffed by
people. Now you only need one to intervene when something goes wrong. 5
workers have become 1 without eliminating the job "register person"
completely. Instead, they've changed into "auto register checkout manager"
while everyone else got the ax.
~~~
zanny
And on the topic of register checkout manager, you can easily see the natural
progression towards the elimination of the profession entirely.
The registers get more self sufficient as the software matures. The security
systems become cheaper and more accurate to eliminate the lackluster security
effect a clerk has standing there. The clerk is removed entirely. Then the
shelf stocking is automated with computer vision and maybe magnetized sticker
guide rails in the floors.
And then people realize its stupid to go to a store to buy stuff when you can
virtually tour a mall of everything and have whatever you want shipped to you.
You order it, it goes through computers without ever interacting with a
person, and a manufacturer ships you it instantly.
And that process gets automated too. The transport goes from self driving
autos transporting your goods using standardized automated transfer mechanisms
to your automated mailbox to a fabricator in your own home that comes from
Star Trek.
None of that (besides the fabricator part at the end, thats going a bit heavy)
is nothing novel or even new. It exists. It just takes market pressure and
time to make it economical to implement and for culture to accept it. Because
it _is_ more efficient, and it _will_ inevitably happen because its better in
every way except the "but people aren't doing it!" angle. It does not take AI
sentience to move boxes or see dirt on a floor through dictionary lookup and
fuzzy logic processing.
~~~
Futurebot
In the developed world, I think we'll be seeing the hybrid approach for the
next few decades at least, but yes, we will get past that to your fully
automated vision. Also, the non-evenly distributed future effect means we'll
likely see that vision in SF in, let's say, 2100, but won't see it in Flint,
MI until 2150. It is coming, though.
------
csense
> The global population grew at a rate of almost 2% a year throughout the
> 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s. That slowed to a rate of between
> 1% and 1.5% a year in the 1990s and 2000s and that rate of change is now
> forecast to fall relatively quickly...The working-age share rose strongly
> for the 40 years to 2012...An ONS report of 2014 found that UK real wages in
> the 1970s and 1980s grew by an average of 2.9% a year. That fell to 1.5% in
> the 1990s, and 1.2% between 2000 and 2010...
According to the article's own data, rising real wages have occurred during a
time of increasing population and an increasing share of the population being
working-age, and slowed as population growth slowed. But the article goes on
to argue
> A smaller workforce though should raise demand for workers
but doesn't this contradict the very evidence cited in the article?
------
konschubert
I see two ways how wages can grow: More wealth is generated (per time) or
income is redistributed to the working population.
I don't see how any of these follow from the observations noted in the
article.
~~~
betaby
You don't own that non-robotic/robotic factory - only sub-percent of the
population does, neither you can tax them properly - tax 'optimization'. Thus
redistribution is not happening today and there is not going to happen. Most
of today's redistribution is from earners income tax, not from business. And
less workers means less people from whom to redistribute.
------
mjevans
How about the impact of automation on jobs. Will this finally mean that we
have robots perform more of the drudgery work? Maybe a return to artisans
lovingly crafting luxury goods?
~~~
hugh4
You can already get lovingly handcrafted luxury goods if you want them.
They're expensive, and they're not going to get cheaper.
If I need a new wallet I can buy a cheap one which was mass-produced in a
factory for ten bucks, or I can buy a nice one which was _also_ mass-produced
in a factory for two hundred bucks, but if I want one that was lovingly hand-
crafted by an artisan over a period of a week and a half I've gotta pay a week
and a half's skilled wages, and there aren't that many people with the money
and the desire to surround themselves with pointless proof-of-work.
------
Swizec
Does this mean that there are less people competing for jobs every year and we
should negotiate accordingly?
What are the implications on job hopping? In theory my market value should go
up every year even if all other factors remain constant.
~~~
Futurebot
If one is in a non-routine job that requires creativity, the human touch,
synthesizing (currently) difficult concepts together, etc. then the job market
is going to be great for a while. Software developers (particularly, as
several recent papers indicate) with great communication skills and high
emotional intelligence, "designers" (used very broadly - could be anything
from art design to system design), marketers, artists of various kinds (though
this will be subject to the superstar effect), politicians, certain kinds of
teachers (I'm including everything from the creators of tutorials to Sal Khan-
types) and various types of business owners/managers will be in good shape for
a while. Anyone in these categories willing to become non-stop learn-for-
lifers ([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-
relevant-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-in-
a-career-workers-train-nonstop.html)) will likely be OK. So yes, your
negotiating position may actually improve a great deal.
If one is in an a "routine" job (as defined by Autor), one should be thinking
very carefully about the next few decades. Upskilling, becoming autodidacts,
and most importantly agitating for political change will be things that this
group needs to engage in (the former two to stay relevant; the latter to keep
eating.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing unlimited private repositories - fuzionmonkey
https://github.com/blog/2164-introducing-unlimited-private-repositories
======
hunvreus
1\. Take a gazillion dollars in funding on an over-hyped valuation,
2\. Go through significant organizational changes that end up with the
departure of a co-founder (and more suits in the building).
3\. Notice that a significant segment of your growth (VC-funded startups) are
running out of money.
4\. Switch to a user-based pricing to generate more revenue for investors, but
spin it as a freebie "Hey! Look at the cool unlimited shit! No, no! Don't pay
attention to the fact you're gonna be charged 3 times as much as before for
the same service".
The bottom line is that GitHub is free to do whatever the heck they want; if
they believe that charging per user is going to make more (financial) sense to
them, then they can go ahead and do it.
But I'd appreciate if their PR department didn't expect us to swallow this as
a positive change. Most coders understand basic maths.
~~~
cstejerean
Per user pricing makes a lot more sense than per repo pricing. This way larger
organizations pay more money than smaller ones regardless of how they
structure their code.
This is a good deal for small organizations that like to have many small
repositories (for internal libraries, utilities, micro services, modules,
etc).
Sure, it screws up a few models that rely on external collaborators to get
access to private repos, but those can stick with the old model for a while
(at least 12 months). And in the meantime GitHub may adjust their model to
accommodate those situations too.
Lastly, this is a huge freebie for individual accounts that now get unlimited
repos for $7/month. That will benefit a lot of people.
So I don't see this as PR spinning, but rather as an overdue move on github's
part to a model that makes a lot more sense and benefits small organizations
and individuals.
~~~
fps
I work for a non-profit open source organization that collaborates on github
([https://github.com/edx/](https://github.com/edx/)) We have lots of people
who aren't employees, but have signed a contributor agreement with our
organization and contribute changes to our software. Our bill will go up from
$200/month to over $2000/month with this new pricing. We can afford it (it's
still a small fraction of our AWS bill) but it will force us to look at other
alternatives. Github's code review tools are already pretty mediocre compared
to other tools like gerrit, and we've long since moved off of github issue
tracking due to lack of features compared to JIRA.
~~~
sequoia
> We have lots of people who aren't employees, but have signed a contributor
> agreement with our organization and contribute changes to our software.
So you have volunteers, working on your proprietary, private software for
free. The labor is free & now you're complaining that you'll have to pay a
per-free-laborer fee for the infrastructure to manage all these free-laborers?
I hope I'm missing something here...
~~~
fps
the software is AGPLv3'd, and run by hundreds of educational organizations
around the world. Those organizations typically contribute changes back via
Github. Non-employees don't contribute to our private repositories. We gain
quite a bit from maintaining a large open source community, but it's not "free
labor."
~~~
mjlee
From the announcement:
"These users do not fill a seat:
_Outside collaborators with access to only public repositories_ "
~~~
fps
Ah, I didn't see that part of the announcement at all. That makes the new
pricing much closer to what we were paying before. Thanks for pointing it out!
------
arnvald
A small comparison:
Team | Cost Before | Cost Now
1 repo, 5 users | $25 | $25
1 repo, 10 users | $25 | $70
11 repos, 5 users | $50 | $25
11 repos, 10 users | $50 | $70
5 repos, 50 users | $25 | $430
50 repos, 5 users | $100 | $25
50 repos, 50 users | $100 | $430
I'm not sure how common are organizations with few users and large number of
repose - I guess software houses that keep old projects (for maintenance and
future requests from clients) fall into this category, but who else?
The other case where it becomes cheaper is personal accounts.
In all the other cases - it just looks like a raise of prices.
~~~
giovannibajo1
Even for software houses, it's VERY problematic as we add customers to
projects as external collaborators and we're going to get billed for that
forever, even if most customers have very light usage, and even for non active
projects.
I was thrilled by this news but it's going to be completely unaffordable for
us. We have 29 users and 51 external collaborators. We have recently upgraded
to the Platinum plan ($2460/yr), but switching to the new user plan would
raise the bill beyond affordable for us ($8k+ per year).
I think it is a big mistake to bill for external collaborators, it completely
screws software houses that need this model to use GitHub.
~~~
taspeotis
I keep my eye on Microsoft's Visual Studio Team Services. It has a bit of a
clunky name and aimed more at enterprises but I think at some point they will
position it as a competitor to GitHub. It's free for the first five
developers, and no charge for "stakeholder" user accounts.
[https://www.visualstudio.com/pricing/visual-studio-team-
serv...](https://www.visualstudio.com/pricing/visual-studio-team-services-
pricing-vs)
So 29 users would be $182/m (check my maths) and you'd pay nothing for the
external collaborators (assuming they fit the "stakeholder" role ... no need
access to the code).
~~~
bad_user
If you no longer want/need the social aspects of GitHub, you can just move to
GitLab. Much more affordable and you can self host it yourself. We have an on
premise GitLab installation. Besides the rare upgrade, it's pretty hands off.
And it's costing us $0 in licensing fees for over 60 users ;-)
~~~
taspeotis
I looked at GitLab, it seems to come off second best in terms of features [1].
[1] [https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/overview-of-get-
sta...](https://www.visualstudio.com/get-started/overview-of-get-started-
tasks-vs)
Hard to argue with free though, if that's what you're looking for.
~~~
bad_user
I've always found VSTS to be at the same time expensive, bloated and missing
essential functionality. I think the mentality of .NET / Microsoft developers
is strange. By following Microsoft's lead, wherever that may take you, you're
missing out and you don't even know what :-P
~~~
vtbassmatt
I'm a PM on VSTS. If you're willing to share what we're missing and what's
bloated, I'd love to hear it. [email protected] or a reply here would be much
appreciated. Thanks!
------
beberlei
The incentive changes for this are so massive, nice "experiment" from an
economics perspective.
1\. penalizes OpenSource organizations that need a few private repos for
password, server configuration or other things. Was 25$ before, now for
example Doctrine with 48 collaborators it would be 394$. Even if just the
admins have access to that repository.
2\. penalizes collaboration, inviting every non-technical person in the
company? 2-5 employees of the customer? not really. Will lead organizations to
create a single "non-technical" user that everyone can use to comment on
stuff. not to mention bots, especially since you need users for servers in
more complex deployment scenarios.
3\. rewards having many repos, small throw away stuff and generally will lead
to "messy" repositories lying around everywhere that are committed on once or
twice and never touched again. "Not having to think about another private
repository", imho will produce technical debt for organizations.
4\. users in many private orgs will need to pay or get paid for every
organization each. I myself will be worth 45$ now for Github, being in private
repositories of five different companies.
All in all, this just shows that Github does not care as much about open
source anymore as it cares about Enterprise.
Btw: Mentioning the price jumps in repository usage of the old pricing is not
really helpful. Consider a pricing that would be per repository (1$ for
personal, 2$ for organizations) and doesnt have jumps and compare that to the
new per using pricing. The new pricing only feels better for some, because you
pay marginal costs for every single user instead of the old pricing where
every 50 repositories you have to suddenly pay 100$ extra.
Edit: Forgot about bots, and deployment machine users (which even Github
recommends for many scenarios)
~~~
sdm
Yup, #2 would hits us very hard. We have just over 40 people split between two
organizations; everyone has access to Github and all have been trained to use
it. Only about half are developers; are a lot of rules in a simple DSL that
business analysts maintain and designer need to be able to update art and
that's not even counting the bots. We have about as many Github users as repos
-- we archive anything that's out of date to long term storage. If we are
forced to switch to the new pricing model Github will likely lose us as a
customer. The new model is just insanely expensive. The main reason we choose
Github was the ability to have everyone use it. Feels like an outright cash
grab honestly, especially with #4.
------
gelatocar
What about companies like Epic Games that have few repos but many users?
With their 2 private UnrealEngine and UnrealTournament repos they would have
been paying $25 a month and under the new pricing structure will have to pay
$815,913 per month...
edit: That's based on what I can see as a UE4 subscriber, 2 private repos and
90657 users.
~~~
bkeepers
We are reaching out to customers that are in unique situations such as the one
you're mentioning here. If you have questions about how the pricing changes
affect you, please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected].
~~~
Sephr
If you need to give Epic Games special treatment just because they have a huge
amount of outside collaborators, then your pricing model is broken.
It would be more fair to charge _$9 /mo per organization member + $1/mo per
active outside collaborator_ (somewhat similar to AWS CodeCommit) than to
charge for every single active and inactive member and collaborator equally.
Maybe throw in a 50% bulk discount for active outside collaborators over 1000.
This is not a "unique situation", it's how many organizations use GitHub (just
on a smaller scale than Epic Games). As giovannibajo1 puts it[1], this change
is very unfair to software houses. Giving Epic Games special treatment is only
avoiding the issue.
If 5% of Epic Game's 90664 collaborators are active for a given month, then
with my proposed pricing model it would now cost them ($9/organization member
+ ~$2766)/mo, instead of >$800k/mo. No special deals needed, and everyone
(presumably) is happy.
This proposed pricing model also scales well for software houses that have
have many active outside collaborators. For example, a company with 20
employees and 50% of 100 outside collaborators active in any given month would
be charged $230/mo. With 50 employees and 50% of 500 outside collaborators
active, it would be $700/mo.
This should also work well for large companies. 200 employees + 30% of 4000
outside contributors active = $2900/mo.
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673352)
~~~
lucasnemeth
Business are free to close deals with clients in their own terms whenever is
lucrative for them. Almost every single company will have "unfair" treatment
for big corporations... That way they can get big paying clients. clients that
could possibly host their own solutions... It might be that Epic Games in the
old business model, with so many users, was not profitable for github, but
they are open to negotiate a middle term. It's just business. It is fair.
I think github is on their own right and if you have a case where you think
you would be able to negotiate with them, you can send them an email as
well... If not, go search another company that have a better cost/benefit for
your use case.
------
biztos
I find it interesting that so many people here are unhappy with the change.
Sure, prices will go up for a lot of organizations, but is $9/worker/month
really a lot to pay for all the stuff GitHub offers? At Bay Area prices isn't
that about 5 minutes of developer pay per month?
For independent use it seems like a very positive change, in fact I'm guessing
it's a direct challenge to GitLab. I was considering moving my stuff to GitLab
simply because I'm tired of bundling experiments/prototypes into umbrella
repos just to stay under the 10 repo limit at GitHub. For people like me this
will be awesome, and I take it as a good sign that they're responding to the
competition.
One thing I don't get however: how do they count shared access to private
repos?
If I have a private repo and you have a private repo, and we each grant access
to the other's repo so we can collaborate, do we now have two or four billing
units?
They say "you can even invite a few collaborators" \-- but how are you billed
if it's more than a "few?"
I don't mind if they try to close the loophole of making up an "organization"
out of a lot of "individual developers" but it seems a little vague.
~~~
krstck
> At Bay Area prices isn't that about 5 minutes of developer pay per month?
I work for an academic nonprofit. Asking to spend any money is like pulling
teeth, and any purchase I make has to go through many layers of bureaucracy
who don't understand or care what I do and have no incentive to make my life
easier. I don't want to leave Github, but now I _have_ to, because I just
won't get the approval to spend hundreds a year. But I know that's nothing to
Bay Area companies, so the rest of us will just go kick rocks or something.
~~~
WillAbides
> I don't want to leave Github, but now I have to, because I just won't get
> the approval to spend ~100's a month.
No you don't have to leave GitHub now. GitHub isn't forcing existing customers
onto the new pricing, and it says in the post that if that changes at least 12
months notice will be given.
~~~
StevePerkins
What announcement are you reading? It states very clearly that this is the new
pricing model, period.
Yes, existing customers have a 12-month grace period before they're impacted
by a price change... but that clock just started ticking. There isn't an
indefinite opt-out for this model change.
~~~
WillAbides
I'm looking at this one [0]. Specifically this item in the FAQ:
> Will GitHub force me to move to per-user pricing after 12 months?
> No. At this time we are not enforcing a timeline to move and if in the
> future we do decide to set a timeline we are committing to giving you at
> least 12 months.
[0] [https://github.com/blog/2164-introducing-unlimited-
private-r...](https://github.com/blog/2164-introducing-unlimited-private-
repositories)
------
grawlinson
That's cool but seeing as Bitbucket has unlimited private repos for everyone,
I'll be sticking with Bitbucket for private trash and Github for public trash.
~~~
k__
Same here. That's the cool thing about Git. Everyone uses the same "protocol"
so you can simply move your stuff around.
~~~
rplnt
But does bitbucket/etc have emoticons in commit messages?
~~~
zxcvcxz
This is why github is going the way of alta-vista. They should be focusing
their energy elsewhere.
------
sudhirj
What's with all the negativity? This is really good pricing - all individuals
now pay much less (a flat rate of $7), all small shops pay almost the same
thing ($30 to $90 for 3 to 10 people). Both groups no longer need to think
twice about creating repos, which has always been a huge pain that I've seen.
I've even thought twice about microservices because the repo cost would be a
pain.
This will affect enterprises - but then they're either already on Github
Enterprise or are used to per user pricing anyway. Google Apps, Slack etc all
have (quantitavely similar) per user pricing. Google doesn't charge you based
on the number of emails you send, nor does Slack charge based on the number of
private rooms there are - that would be dumb.
The band of companies between small shops and enterprises are likely to be
affected, but then this is really employee lunch money.
~~~
pilif
> This will affect enterprises - but then they're either already on Github
> Enterprise or are used to per user pricing anyway
my organization currently contains 15 github users. 2 of which are used by
error reporting tools to open bugs (Sentry, Crashlytics), one of which is used
by Jenkins, 3 of which are outside contractor for which github now will get
the money multiple times as companies move to the same billing method.
We had 9 repos on github (and about 20 smaller ones with less collaboration on
a self-hoste gitolite installation), so we paid $300 per year.
Now I have unlimited repos of which I still only use 9, but now I pay $1300
per year, whereby 3 of these accounts I'm paying for aren't actually real
people and another 3 of these accounts I'm paying for even though multiple
other companies are also paying for them.
Aside of the nearly 5x increase in price, I think it's also unfair having to
pay for practically unused bug-reporting-only accounts and having to pay for
accounts that are already paid for by a multitude of other companies.
I don't think this is good pricing for me.
Also as this isn't just a moderate increase, but a whopping 5x increase, I
also strongly consider moving back away to a self-hosted solution because
increasing the price by 5x is breaking the trust put into github as a third-
party provider.
Increasing the price a bit is fine. But 5x is excessive.
~~~
skywritergr
It sounds like it would be a big help if github offered unlimited read-
only/bot accounts. Not sure how technically feasible is that but it doesn't
sound impossible.
~~~
tomschlick
Or as someone mentioned above, if they went the Slack route of not charging
for users who don't push/pull code in a 30/60 day period. That way you could
still have collaborator users (issues, PRs, etc) and only pay for the users
who actually code.
------
rspeer
This is, of course, a positive way to spin the fact that they're raising
prices significantly for many organizations.
I'm glad there's at least a year that we can keep using the old plans.
~~~
0xmohit
s/many/most
------
bsnape
This has almost quadrupled our monthly cost ($850 vs $2914). We have ~300
users which will have to be reduced massively to save costs - perhaps with
non-engineers sharing accounts or having no access at all. I'm not sure if
charging per user is really in the spirit of open collaboration that GitHub
champions.
I slo wonder if charging per user rather than per repo will also discourage
the creation of open-source repos from orgs? There's no longer a (reduced)
cost benefit after all, even if that was a minor influence compared with the
other benefits of open-sourcing your code.
~~~
odonnellryan
You have 300 employees and an extra $6/mo/em is going to break you? How much
do you spend on toilet paper? :)
~~~
smackfu
Doesn't say they are employees.
~~~
odonnellryan
So it's an open source project?
I guess it can be a NFP that has closed-source repos. But why?
~~~
Xylakant
Doesn't have to be OS. It could be a commercial product that grants access to
the source.
~~~
odonnellryan
It's possible, but that's a weird requirement (weird you'd want all your
clients on the same repo, anyway) and you'd be able to circumvent this and
come out pretty swell on the other side if that money is really worth it to
you.
~~~
Xylakant
Why would they not use the same repo? It can easily be a standard product -
look at the example further downthread of the unreal engine: All clients get
access to the code. 2 private repos and 90657 users.
That's an extreme example, but we also have a single repo that a lot of
collaborators get access to.
~~~
odonnellryan
That's a good point. It still seems like an odd use-case!
------
0xmohit
With this change, BitBucket pricing [0] gets to appear pretty attractive.
(If you were an organization with few private repositories and large number of
users, Github was earlier more affordable.)
[0] [https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=cloud-
pricing](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=cloud-pricing)
~~~
0x0
It was already pretty attractive: Personal accounts get free unlimited repos
(so inf% cheaper than github), and for organizations with few numbers of users
but a huge number of repositories, github's largest plan was too small. :)
~~~
lucaspiller
> Personal accounts get free unlimited repos
And teams of up to 5 people.
------
kapv89
Nothing beats [https://bitbucket.org/](https://bitbucket.org/) when it comes
to free, unlimited, private repositories. It has seen the first hosted
repositories of far more startups than github ever will. Which is special
achievement in itself.
~~~
therealmarv
You should check out gitlab.com
~~~
dreamsofdragons
I have, I'll continue to use bitbucket.
~~~
Kratisto
Any reason why? Just wondering.
~~~
msbarnett
GitLab's UI is pretty terrible, even compared to the not-so-great-either
BitBucket UI.
GitLab's UI/UX is regressive to the point that when you visit a repo, you have
to click another link just to see the damn sourcecode. It's as though they
ignored every advance in source-code UX post-Sourceforge.
The stacked global and per-repo sidebars are confusing in a way that baffled
me for several minutes, as well. They need a serious rethink of their UI/UX.
~~~
andromeduck
IDK, you have the option of whether to show files vs readme on landing but I
actually actually prefer landing on readme first as it gives me an idea of
what it is I'm looking at before deciding to dig into the code or not.
The main issue with GitLab right now IMO is that it's so fucking slow at times
-- ike seconds per page slow...
~~~
sytse
Sorry that GitLab.com is slow. We're working on it in the appropriately
numbered issue [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/operations/issues/42](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/operations/issues/42)
BTW on-premises GitLab installations should be fast already
------
bufordsharkley
Have been using Github for a community radio station, have been encouraging
all staffers to use github accounts to file issues against our private repos,
etc. The friendly policies for many collaborators have made this attractive,
even though most users have rarely interacted with the repos, if at all.
Now each user for the private repo has a significant cost (pretty significant
for a non-profit community radio station); looks like we'll have to rethink
this whole Github thing.
~~~
moby
Certainly appreciate your question around pricing for non-profits here - have
you applied for non-profit status through GitHub?
We do have discounts to support eligible non-profit organizations, and you can
request the discount at
[https://github.com/nonprofit](https://github.com/nonprofit). Feel free to
reach out to Support ([https://github.com/c](https://github.com/c)) if you
have any further questions around this!
~~~
wbillingsley
Out of interest, why do you require charities to have no religious affiliation
at all? Perhaps there's some US tax or legal aspect to it?
At at first glance from overseas, it seems oddly churlish and monoculturalist
(dare I say "fearful of the prayerful") to disallow community groups and
charities where actually yes their beliefs did prompt them to step out in
service, and they are not ashamed of that.
I can't imagine it's a big part of your revenue base, and I wonder if there's
more people like me who casually read it and quietly think "ooh, that's a bit
inward-looking and snarky -- and goodness they put it on the page twice to
make sure" than groups who are actually affected by it.
Suddenly those cheery octocats under "We love people who are changing the
world" seem just that bit more limited and exclusionary. If I was in a
satirical and provocative mood, I might ask, are they holding hands in
togetherness, or to keep the undesirables out?
~~~
nosefrog
Excluding religious groups from special nonprofit deals is pretty normal in
the US. For example, my employer does donation matching for non-religious
nonprofits. You're reading a lot more into it than you probably should.
------
romanovcode
I see absolutely no reason why one would pay GitHub for private repositories
when there is Bitbucket, or much better alternative to GitHub altogether -
GitLab.
~~~
Singletoned
Yeah, this makes internally hosted GitLab VERY attractive for us now. Even the
Enterprise edition is going to be significantly cheaper than GitHub.
~~~
sytse
Glad to hear you're considering GitLab, our on-premises pricing can be found
on [https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/)
------
therealmarv
It seems most users here don't have gitlab.com in their radar and only
mentioning Bitbucket as competitor. I've recently switched all my private
personal repos to gitlab.com which also allows unlimited private repositories
because gitlab.com seems to have better UI and more features than Bitbucket
(when not buying any additional Atlassian Jira etc. products).
~~~
zxcvcxz
Same here I love gitlab and especially their UI. I've seen some gitlab devs on
here before too and they were really friendly. Only draw back is that the
sites kind of slow for me, but so was github.
------
patcon
This is absolutely fucking atrocious news for any company who wants to run an
agile operation.
I always framed the "Github vs Bitbucket" as an "agile vs enterprise"
mentality -- BitBucket made you think hard about adding new people, and air on
the side of limiting access -- ie. conceal by default. That's perfect for
enterprise, but the worst fucking incentive ever for an org that wants to make
as many projects as possible accessible to all company members. GitHub (in
times past), removed this cognitive burden of thinking "does this person
/really/ need access....?" \-- ie. transparent by default.
But now they've fucked up.
I was always in favour of avoiding self-hosting when there was a great hosted
service like GitHub available. But I would now never advise any company that I
cared about to use GitHub. It will contort and twist the openness you wish to
imbue in your growing company
------
rdancer
This is an awful pricing model.
⇒ One-size-fits-all never fits all. Getting rid of tiers is naïve and
misguided. Even if just for anchoring and the illusion of choice in face of
terrible choices, tiers are a necessity. Sales will suffer, customer
satisfaction will suffer.
⇒ I don't care if existing private customers pay the same or less. The price
points should have been retained, and customers let to switch to a lower tier
if they wished. Capturing consumer surplus leads to increased revenue. Github
needs that money; the more money they throw away foolishly, the closer they
are to bankruptcy.
⇒ "Starting today"?! At least current developer plans have been grandfathered
in, with a 12-month notice period. Still, if an org has been in the process of
planning a move to Github, they will have to re-evaluate.
Github has been such a great platform. A major stumble like this, I'm worried
they may not be with us for much longer.
------
t3nary
Does anyone know if this will effect student plans as well? So far it included
a free micro plan with the usual 5 private repos. Would be pretty awesome, I
just had to host a repo somewhere else a few days ago because I ran out of
private repos.
Other than that it sounds like a great improvement, it'll make it a lot more
likely that I'll pay for GitHub when I'm not a student anymore.
/edit: [https://github.com/pricing](https://github.com/pricing) makes it sound
like this is for free student plans as well
~~~
bkeepers
Good question! Students get free private repositories for 2 years. You can
request the student discount at
[https://education.github.com/](https://education.github.com/)
~~~
t3nary
Awesome, thanks for the confirmation :)
------
ThePhysicist
It would be interesting to know how many users and repositories a typical
organization has on Github.
To me, it looks like they're just "optimizing" their pricing, as I would guess
that most large organizations using Github have significantly more users than
repositories, especially with the recent trend towards "mono-repositories".
That said, SaaS pricing is really hard to get right from the beginning. I run
a code analysis company
([https://www.quantifiedcode.com](https://www.quantifiedcode.com)) and we
thought a lot about which kind of pricing would be the best for us and our
users (we decided to use per-repo pricing). In the end, your pricing needs to
support your business model, so it's normal to change it especially if you
have a lot of data on how your users use your product.
I wonder though if this will drive organizations to other solutions like
Gitlab or Bitbucket, as those are significantly cheaper and pretty easy to set
up these days (and you get the extra benefit of a self-hosted solution that
can be hosted in your own, secure infrastructure)
------
m4tthumphrey
I find it quite hard to comprehend why people use Github for private
repositories. There are many free alternatives. BitBucket seems to be the
famous one, but Gitlab has grown into an amazing product with 3 different
offerings; On premise community edition, on premise enterprise and hosted
(like Github).
We have used the on premise community edition for about 3 years now. I first
installed it when you had to run about a billion commands manually and it was
great even then. Now you can install it with an apt-get and a few lines.
Lets not forget about the obvious negatives of Github (ignoring pricing).
1) Its hosted which means it can go down 2) It is closed source 3) Feature
based is quite small (compared to Gitlab)
Gitlab is a regular release cycle, once a month which always comes with new
features.
I personally think it is a no brainer.
~~~
xillion
If every organization went to free alternatives, not only would those free
alternatives need a source of revenue to support the new business, I think
you'd find they too will change their pricing structure to better fit the
people that use their product.
One thing I also have to mention is a majority of for profit organizations
have no problem paying for services they use. HN is a special snowflake on the
internet, it's not a reliable source of market research by any means.
I can guarantee you none of the competitors are in it to provide a charity.
They all want and NEED to make money somehow, I think you'll be surprised how
long free solutions tend to last.
~~~
seanclayton
On Gitlab.com's homepage[0] there is a giant product listing showing you
exactly what you are saying they need to have: A source of revenue (GitLab
Enterprise Edition).
[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/](https://about.gitlab.com/)
~~~
xillion
I understand their Enterprise offering offsets the costs of hosting the open
source version for you. But should another product be the dependency of
determining if the open source version is free? What if the Enterprise
offering stops making money? Wouldn't you rather pay for the service you use
so it supports future development? It's like Apple depending on product A to
give away B for free, that doesn't seem like it'd scale a whole lot. Product B
will just reach into the resources needed to build and manage product A.
Just my 2c anyways, happy to hear feedback on why I'm wrong :)
------
kuon
Now I have to pay for external collaborators? Are you kidding me? We are a
small team of 5, but making softwares for other, I'll have to move away from
github with the new pricing, we have nearly ten people per repository that
might just be exec who never accessed the repo but must have access to it.
~~~
lucasnemeth
git is distributed. You can give access to a mirror of your git repo for execs
that don't access the repo or contribute to it. They don't need to be github
users, they just need git access to an url. If github is still convenient for
you, there is a solution to avoid paying for this users. It only really makes
sense to have developers added as github users (of course, it used to be
convenient to just ask them to be github users, but it never really made
sense)
~~~
kuon
I know git is distributed, that's not the point. Github as a platform is
convenient and understood even by non technical people. They can browse files,
even edit on the web.
~~~
lucasnemeth
I hope they create a stakeholder account for that. But it is wrong to put all
your eggs in one basket. Github is nice to show to non technical people but it
is definitely an over kill.
------
pilif
The linked page is telling us that eventually, only the new plans will be
available. For my case (15 users in the organization, using the bronze plan
with a lot of not-so-important repos on our own server), this will be a price
increase from $300/y to $1380/y - nearly 5x more expensive.
I really hope the old plans stay around as long as possible.
Also, consider external collaborators that are part of multiple organizations:
Github will now receive the $9/month per external collaborator and
organization they are in. That's one hell of a deal for github.
~~~
heartbreak
I'll assume that none of your 15 users are software developers and that none
of your users live in a first world country. I'll assume you pay a user
$15,000 USD per year in salary. $225,000 for all 15 total. Cost of Github:
$1,380. New operating costs: $226,380. I see that they have gone up by %0.6.
Crushing.
~~~
pilif
Some of these users are used for various error-reporting tools to report
issues as. I'm not paying these any salary, nor are they actual, you know,
people.
Some of these users also aren't developers but just need access to the bug
tracker. Some of them are outside contractors for whom multiple companies are
now paying the github tax.
But sure. $1.3K isn't much, but it's 5x more than what we had to pay
previously and it's being sold as an _improvement_.
It also means that I have to be much more mindful what other bot-accounts I'm
going to add to the organisation. Plus now that github has increased the
prices by 5x, who's to say they don't do it again at a late time?
I don't have a problem with moderate price increases. But 5x is too much.
~~~
heartbreak
$1,380 is so small an amount that when I worked at BigCorp I could expense
that and more each month without approval. No one cares about a thousand
bucks.
~~~
Xylakant
That amount may be change for $BigCorp, but I do care about 1380 USD. If you
have them and want to get rid of them, care to send them to me? I'll use them
for a good purpose.
------
lox
Pretty angry that Github have made this change with no mechanism for adding
machine users without paying a per month charge. It seems like a key feature,
which is currently horribly painful to manage and now expensive.
How does everyone else create credentials that CI can use to checkout code?
~~~
giovannibajo1
Both Travis and Circle automatically install a deploy key into the project. It
doesn't require additional machine users.
~~~
lox
That's fine if you have a single repo, but CI normally needs to access lots of
different repos. GitHub's documentation describes why you need machine users
for anything but the most trivial deployment.
[https://developer.github.com/guides/managing-deploy-
keys/](https://developer.github.com/guides/managing-deploy-keys/)
It's also what GitHub does internally.
~~~
teraflop
If I understand that page correctly, the only real difference is that Github
arbitrarily prevents you from using the same deploy key for multiple
repositories. If they lifted that restriction, this problem would go away.
------
tyingq
If you happen to be a group that will be affected negatively by this move
because you have a need for read-only users...
Gogs has mirror functionality where you could self-host access for those users
in a fairly painless way. Screenshot of import screen:
[http://i.imgur.com/J4vWCIB.png](http://i.imgur.com/J4vWCIB.png)
More on gogs here:
[https://github.com/gogits/gogs](https://github.com/gogits/gogs)
(no association with gogs, just thought it might be helpful)
------
caseymarquis
The number of very small teams or individuals this encourages to start using
github probably allows every organization who can't afford this to leave and
github to still increase the money they're making. It seems like a good move
based on my imagined profile of their user base. 1 million teens and young
20-somethings just decided they'll give 7$ a month to github.
For bigger organizations, this is practically no money compared to other
software they're using. So they'll just take the hit.
Sounds like the only customers being lost were those using github for no-
commit users. Is that really a huge segment? If so they just need a special
account status to fix this.
I think the question is why this took so long.
~~~
matthoffman
> Sounds like the only customers being lost were those using github for no-
> commit users. Is that really a huge segment? If so they just need a special
> account status to fix this.
I would think this is a large segment, or at least Github would like it to be.
Any software company that sells its software directly, and so has a sales
team, a support team, marketing and so on will need to make all of those
people users in Github if they're going to raise GH issues, see the code,
prototype something for a client, help with branding, or anything else. If
you're using Github the way they want you to (issue tracking, wiki, all of the
things Github adds over vanilla Git that are "sticky"/hard to transfer to a
competing service) you don't want to restrict access to just your developers.
You want your whole company to be using it.
In any software company I've worked for, those non-developer users number 3-4x
the actual number of developers. And I've never worked for a company that
would consider restricting which users could raise issues with the product.
I agree that having a non-commit account status that didn't count toward the
per-user pricing would fix this, for that particular (I think common?) case.
------
StevePerkins
TL;DR - GitHub is switching to Bitbucket's pricing model, but with a monthly
charge of $9/user rather than $1/user.
Seems bizarre to me. The "enterprise" market they're chasing are largely
Atlassian customers already, and Bitbucket has a competitive edge there with
its JIRA integration. GitHub's distinguishing characteristic was a different
pricing model, that for some organizations makes more sense than Atlassian's
does.
If they start competing apples-to-apples, but at 9x the cost, why would any
enterprise use GitHub unless they have a hipster CIO/CTO who just thinks it's
a "cooler" brand?
~~~
hrez
Github is betting on stickiness aka lock-in. That might prove to be bad bet.
Short term everybody who saves (small teams) will switch to new price model.
No sane org will opt to multitude of price increase voluntarily. So github
looses revenue short term. If github forces the switch on everybody many big
orgs will jump the ship one way or another. So github looses again.
------
stephenr
Hopefully this opens the eyes of at least _some_ people into realising that
GitHib !== git, and GitHub !== dvcs (similarly, git !== dvcs). There are
several alternatives out there, almost all of which provide _more_ options at
_lower_ cost than GitHub.
I know, I know "everyone is familiar with github". If your developers can't
function without GitHub specifically, you have a bigger problem than the new
GitHub pricing.
------
Ghostium
Hmm, I still will use Gitlab instead of Github. Unlimited public and private
repos for free is nice.
~~~
marcosscriven
Does anyone know how Gitlab plan to sustain that?
~~~
educar
a) They are vc funded
b) They give things free to drive up adoption. For example, I don't think it
will be free anymore if it was as popular as GitHub. Since that would not be
sustainable.
IMO, it's a poor decision by gitlab to give things out for free. Instead of
innovating on features, they try to keep it cheap.
~~~
sytse
Having a free GitLab.com doesn't mean we don't innovate on features. See
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/blob/master/CHANGELO...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/blob/master/CHANGELOG) and [https://about.gitlab.com/2016/03/29/gitlab-
runner-1-1-releas...](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/03/29/gitlab-
runner-1-1-released/) for features we recently added.
~~~
educar
Sorry, I didn't imply GitLab was not innovating. (Apologies for wording my
comment poorly). In fact, quite the opposite. I want to see GitLab build a
product that people willingly pay for.
(I say the same for all companies. Charge money for your product. If people
see value, they will pay.)
------
AndrewGaspar
I'm glad. Occasionally I would delete abandoned projects to make space and now
they can live forever to remind me of my failure!
------
BradRuderman
Its unfortunate that this doesn't promote trying to get business users to look
at the code. In our organization 3 or 4 users are read only and really just go
in at times to check specific errors, or logic for certain SQL queries, they
don't really contribute. We will now have to pay $9 per month for these type
of "read only" users.
~~~
majewsky
Couldn't you just use the same account for all of them, with a shared
password?
~~~
Xylakant
how would you restrict to repositories then? Given a large enough set of
external stakeholders using a single account is not feasible.
------
n9com
This change worked out well for us. Gone from paying $200/month to just
$25/month for our 5 person organisation.
~~~
elmigranto
You could've had it for free this whole time. (And still can!)
[https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing)
~~~
xillion
Free != better
------
ismyrnow
Github is... adopting the old Visual Studio logo?
[http://static.flickr.com/2768/4307936121_5b5e51a790.jpg](http://static.flickr.com/2768/4307936121_5b5e51a790.jpg)
------
ACow_Adonis
As a solo developer who had currently paid up for monthly access annually, I
feel obligated to feed back that this is pretty good news for me. Go github.
The 5 private repositories was a bit grating and making me considering a move
elsewhere. I was going to have to consider changing how I stored/structured my
projects in order to stay under what seemed to me to a relatively arbitrary
limit, which interfered with some of my automated tools and how I'd set them
up to assume a separate repository for each project.
I realise there are a number of bigger organisations for whom this
realistically means a hike in prices, and I'm winning relative to their
losing, but as someone who wants to keep advantages to the little guys (that's
the genuinely little guys, not a bunch of 50-100 guys bankrolled by several SV
millionaires/billionaires)...well, I feel its my duty to weigh in with
positive feedback against what is probably going to be some negativity from
the bigger guys...
~~~
r3bl
Five private repos were more then enough for me.
When I ran out of them, I noticed that there's at least one that either does
not need to be private anymore or just does not have to be on GitHub since I
ditched that idea. It was a nice way for me to keep my GitHub profile nice and
tidy.
------
nateguchi
I'm sure a lot of people will be moving from Bitbucket to this, Bitbucket's
plans were great for hundreds of repos, but Github's ecosystem is definitely
preferable.
~~~
Cozumel
Why? BitBucket is superior in every respect, plus importantly they give free
private repos for every user. No price gouging like we're seeing with GitHub.
~~~
matthewmacleod
Oh, come on. It's OK to dislike this change, but "BitBucket is superior in
every respect" and "price gouging" are far from objectively obvious.
~~~
Cozumel
Well look at the price changes people posting here are facing, ones from $2k a
year to $8k, that's gouging!
~~~
karim
These people are outliers --- the average developer with a handful of repos is
probably going to save money with the new pricing.
------
jamies888888
Very cleverly worded to sound like a price reduction when it's actually a
price increase.
------
Cozumel
'unlimited private repos' if you pay. BitBucket gives you them free and always
has!
~~~
a_imho
bitbucket used to offer 5 private repos for free
------
xchaotic
So what makes them think that they can get away with it? There's already
decent competitors - GitLab, BitBucket, Azure or you can just host your own
git repos - gitlab will even give you a nice Web UI for it. Why do they think
that people with stick with github, if we're talking $thousands/year then
surely migrating to another git repo provider is worth it?
~~~
stubish
Vendor lockin. Because there is a lot more involved that accessing files in a
.git directory. All those CI systems and workflow plugins and whatnots such as
travis-ci work with github, not git. And all the inflight issues and pull
requests etc. Migrating or giving up the features you use has a cost (not just
in dollars), and if github has done their sums right most customers will
realize they are better off staying where they are.
~~~
a_imho
Travis CI is pretty minor player (google search 10M > hits), and I would say
3rd party service integration is exactly vendor lockin.
Imho this makes sense, because users who cared about pricing already moved on
to cheaper alternatives and/or not used github to begin with. I agree, mass
migration or phasing out github is unlikely because of the associated costs,
however with all the other great services around new users might think twice
where to sign up.
~~~
sytse
Just wanted to mention that on GitLab.com we offer unlimited GitLab CI to run
your tests [https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-
ci/](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-ci/)
[https://about.gitlab.com/2016/04/19/gitlab-partners-with-
dig...](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/04/19/gitlab-partners-with-digitalocean-
to-make-continuous-integration-faster-safer-and-more-affordable/)
------
voltagex_
Is there a way to get billed annually for a personal account? Makes budgeting
easier and also protects me against AUD/USD changes.
~~~
vinmat
Yes, you can pay for a year upfront for a personal account.
------
red_admiral
For small private projects, gitlab.com has had unlimited private repos for
$0/month for a while now.
~~~
sytse
And on top of that we don't charge for collaborators.
------
mattyohe
All I ask is that Github implement Slack's Fair Billing Policy. Managing who
at the organization can access a service is a silly task.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this follows that model. They're open to
feedback: [https://github.com/contact](https://github.com/contact)
~~~
jackweirdy
I wasn't aware Slack had that model. It's really interesting.
Here's the link for anyone else who wants to read:
[https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/218915077-Understan...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/218915077-Understanding-our-Fair-Billing-policy)
------
partycoder
I am strongly considering moving to gitlab.
~~~
atonse
I have some private repos on gitlab and it is sloooooooow to push and pull. It
routinely takes 10 seconds to push or pull.
That itself makes deploys seem like a chore. And it's enough to make me come
back to github for a mere $7.
~~~
sytse
I'm sorry GitLab.com is slow, we're working to make it faster in
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/operations/issues/42](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/operations/issues/42)
~~~
atonse
No worries – It's just not a good fit right now but can change back once the
performance improves. My loyalty to github is 95% about the performance, not
really anything else.
I've actually been following that thread and it's been interesting to read and
watch the progress.
~~~
sytse
OK, thanks!
------
drinchev
Wow. Companies definitely suffer. For me ( freelancing dev, working primarily
with startups ) it's a huge win.
GitHub vs BitBucket was always about :
1) 3rd party integrations ( CircleCI - e.g. ) - sadly bitbucket is behind
that.
2) Issue management. Bitbucket's default behavior doesn't support labels or
any other way of managing the issues structure.
Now, honestly CircleCI + GitHub for 7$ is just extremely cheap. ( talking solo
devs / small teams ).
------
nikolay
This is way too expensive! Self-hosted GitLab is cheaper and has better
uptime!
Not to mention, they should have made you pay only for users with commit
rights!
~~~
glusterfuck
Only if you assign no value to your own time, and assume you can do a better
job with availability and durability than a dedicated Operations team and a
multi-million dollar budget.
~~~
hrez
Like Salesforce has?
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/11/marc_benioff_publica...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/11/marc_benioff_publically_apologizes_over_salesforce_na14_instance_outage/)
------
discodave
For comparison, quoting from the AWS CodeCommit pricing page...
AWS CodeCommit costs:
$1 per active user per month For every active user, your account receives for
that month:
10 GB-month of storage
2,000 Git requests
And the 1 year free tier is:
5 active users 50 GB-month of storage 10,000 Git requests
~~~
voltagex_
It took a bit of searching to find out what a "Git Request" entailed: "A Git
request includes any push or pull that transmits repository objects. The
request does not count towards your Git request allowance if there is no
object transfer due to local and remote branches being up-to-date."
Anyone who's using CodeCommit - have you hit the limits? How much did you go
over by?
~~~
majewsky
I don't use CodeCommit, but I doubt that an average developer would be hitting
the 2000-request boundary (that's 100 requests per day assuming a 5-day work
week). Technical users like a CI might be more problematic.
~~~
vacri
I think it's 2000 requests overall, and if you add in a few buildplans for
each of a few repos, you'll easily hit it. Still, it's not pricey if you do.
------
imron
The main image on that page looks remarkably similar to the 2010 Visual Studio
logo:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/samer/archive/2010/01/27/quick-
share...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/samer/archive/2010/01/27/quick-share-the-
history-of-visual-studio.aspx)
~~~
dawnerd
Also
[https://step-3.app.box.com/s/k77k28sy0bdpo2drg2sqrbjhht25k9a...](https://step-3.app.box.com/s/k77k28sy0bdpo2drg2sqrbjhht25k9af/1/7858651297/64780303461/1)
------
konole
Link to plans: [https://github.com/pricing](https://github.com/pricing)
------
andrewljohnson
How many startups have a non-core-dev-advisor who they will now pay $9/month
to get occasional comments from? Or not?
One downside of this change is if you have a private Github org, you are now
incentivized not to add advisors/randoms to your org/repos. I wonder how much
scurrying Github sees to remove errant users from orgs.
------
alanfranzoni
Do outside collaborators count as paid users?
~~~
vinmat
Hi alanfranzoni,
Outside collaborators on public repositories of an organization are free. Only
the ones invited to collaborate on private repositories are counted as paid
users.
Hope this helps!
~~~
j4mie
So to clarify: if I'm an organisation with 100 private repositories, and I add
an outside collaborator with access to just one of them, I have to pay $9 a
month for them?
I was quite excited about this change (we're an agency with a large number of
repos and a relatively small number of users) until I read your comment.
~~~
giovannibajo1
Yes, they're actively screwing agencies and software houses.
When they introduced the new organization features, I smelled they were
heading here, but I honestly thought that the "outside collaborator" concept
was meant exactly for not billing this kind of rare users. Guess what,
greediness has no limit.
------
imcotton
GitLab gets 1 point without doing anything, oddly.
------
throwaway2016a
This change actually saved me a lot of money per month. We use micro-service
architecture and furthermore do consulting work so we had a Platinum level
plan with only 7 people with access. This greatly improved our billing
situation.
Although I can very much see how it could go the other way.
------
sandGorgon
Thank you - this is very exciting. Bitbucket uses a per-user pricing and it
has been extremely useful for us. People forget how useful it has been to not
worry about the number of scratch repositories we can create as we experiment.
Our main repo is a single monolithic repo. But do you not ask your
consultants/outside resources to work on a company repo ? how do you price
that I wonder.
I am not sure why people would like stuff to be priced per repo. It is a
fairly unintuitive model for me and is a huge problem when you need to go an
explain to the finance team that you need to spend more because you "created
more repos"... say wut? Spending per user is a very clean way of pricing.
------
timvdalen
While unlimited private repositories sounds good, this change means that our
GitHub costs are now 2.3x higher.
If this is going to be enforced, we'll need to decide between cutting away
users from the org or moving to a different platform.
------
tanepiper
There is an element of "double dipping" here that I see as a problem.
I already pay $7 a month for my own personal Github account, and for me
personally it's nice to have no limit.
But if we switch to the new model at work then not only am I paying my $7, but
my company will have to pay an additional $9p/m for me to have access to the
repos I use daily for work.
Even if they removed me from the organisation and added me as a collaborator
this will be an additional cost.
They can spin it how they like but I suspect for a large number of
organisations they are going to see quite an increase in cost from using
Github.
~~~
heartbreak
Does your ISP double dip if they charge your employer for business internet
access and you for home internet access?
------
shrugger
But why should I use Github over Gitlab? I don't care about popularity, Gitlab
already offers the minimal set of features I care about, and has demonstrated
a neutral business model.
Github had leaks coming out about how 'white men' aren't suitable to solve
GH's business problems, why should I want to associate with an organization
that discriminates people based on the color of their skin rather than by the
contents of their code?
I'm glad that they are offering this, I think their customers will put this
offering to good use, but it doesn't convince me.
------
hartror
Finally! While as others point out this can work out more expensive the
improvement is is that it scales as my company scales and doesn't act as a
disincentive to developers spinning up new repos.
------
spriggan3
The pricing is clearly designed to make more revenue from businesses with a
lot of users, which makes sense for Github but not for big teams in /mid sized
shops who will be paying a lot more.
~~~
lucasnemeth
It will attract more small companies and freelance single developers as well.
------
oneeyedpigeon
Misleading headline alert; should say "for paid accounts" I got _way_ too
excited there :-(
------
petetnt
Links not up yet, but you can already switch your plan
[https://github.com/organizations/your_org/settings/billing/p...](https://github.com/organizations/your_org/settings/billing/per_seat)
for unlimited private repositories at $25/month for your first 5 users.
$9/month for each additional user. (Edit: Up now! Personal plans get upgraded
to unlimited too!)
------
CiPHPerCoder
This change was beneficial to me.
Before upgrading, a grand total of 4 users had access to our private
repositories, of which we were only using 7 out of 10. I was nervous about
running out of repositories moreso than the cost of adding people.
(If we grow our team, it's because we have a lot of client work that's outside
my immediate strong suits and we had to hire. If we do that twice, I'll gladly
pay the extra $9/month.)
------
samstave
Well, I will say that this is a good thing, because when we had paid for ~20
repos at a last company, and eng made a new repo - number 21, that was then
made public by default as we were out of private repos. FUCK THAT.
He made a mistake and checked in (yes this is on him) an AWS access and
secret.
Within hours we have 1,500 machines launched in every region doing bitcoin
mining....
Making a repo "public by default" is pure BS.
------
piyush_soni
Still, not even a couple of free private repositories?
------
mark_l_watson
This will help organizations that keep huge monolithic repos on GH - one of my
customers does that. They have one repo that should be dozens of smaller
repos.
I use GH for my open source projects and code examples for my books and I use
Bitbucket (which is also a great service) for my private repos. I have always
felt somewhat guilty with this setup, working both companies for free
services.
------
danpalmer
I think the new pricing structure makes a lot of sense, however is awkwardly
limiting in some respects that GitHub might not have considered.
We have essentially 2 classes of GitHub user on our organisation - developers,
and non-developers. While our devs use GitHub all the time (and therefore are
worth the $25 a month for the development team), our other users might edit a
specific few config files, or jobs pages (for example) once a month - paying
$9/month each seems quite overpriced.
We want to be an open company, one that doesn't keep secrets from employees,
one that doesn't create unnecessary barriers to productivity, or have
unnecessary process, so giving GitHub access to everyone in the company who
wants it is important to us - this stops us from reasonably doing this. As a
result, we likely won't be switching to the new pricing structure for as long
as possible, which is a shame, because it would be nice to not have to think
about private repos.
------
dblock
If someone is unsure about this math, our (we're
[https://github.com/artsy](https://github.com/artsy)) bill goes up from 450$
to 1051$ per month.
But it's not about just the money, it's about incentives.
\- We have large amounts of open-source code, so we were encouraged to open-
source more to avoid jumping to the next tier.
\- We're going to probably close access to a bunch of code to a big chunk of
our organization. We have hundreds of humans. Whereas before we would give
them permissions to view as a default and hope they look at our code one day
or at least know that they can, or sometimes would get a link to look at a
change from a discussion, we'll now have to have to see whether it's worth
9x100s of people every month.
I am not complaining, Github provides excellent service. Seems worth it at 5K$
a year and probably 10K$ a year, too. I wish it didn't just double though and
was more gradual.
------
erikrothoff
This is awesome! I'm currently paying 50 USD per month for more repos on my
private account. Definitely the right way to go.
------
joeblau
I just had a discussion with my buddy about repositories yesterday. He wanted
access to some code I had for uploading CSV files to iCloud and it's hosted on
a private repo on GitHub. He was saying "I still use BitBucket's private
repos"; My response was that the GitHub community is a lot stronger. Outside
of community, it was hard for me to convince him that GitHub is worth it.
I've been using GitHub for a few years now to host private and public repos
and paid private repos was always a point of contention. Now that they are
unlimited, I can say that GitHub is definitely going to be the home to all of
my future projects. I really feel like GitHub has been kicking it up a notch
in 2016. Awesome work team and thanks!
------
Rapzid
All those private repos and no way to organize them :( Where are the
namespaces/projects github?
------
shepbook
I think this is a clear win for individual users that have been paying for
GitHub. For organizations, I'm curious how many organizations they have just
bumped above the $300-500/month mark. A lot of companies allow managers
discretionary spending limits that they can spend without requesting approval,
and if makes me wonder if they just made a bunch of managers need to start
asking for approval for their GitHub bill. Another comment mentioned that
having it filter up that the cost of a service just increase several times,
will likely result in people being told to investigate alternatives. If that's
the case, there are a fair number of alternatives to go to, depending on your
specific situation.
------
benguild
This is nice. Now I won't have to keep deleting private repos to make room for
new ones
------
jrgifford
Is there a definition of "a few collaborators" anywhere? How many people, and
is it per repo or per paid account? Really need more information before I
decide if GitHub continues to get my $7/month or not.
------
Twisell
The main drawback of a lot of Cloud based business model I have seen is that
nobody think its fine to pay for leechers.
The per user pricing is pretty reasonable but only when you think of seeders
(publishers/editors/pushers call them as you like).
For instance I would love to subscribe to a BI cloud suite that really fit my
need, but I'm basically the sole query editor and I have potentially 200
private readers + some public OpenData. I simply just can't come to my boss
and ask that we subscribe to this service on a 200 users basis while only one
users will really have the use of the license...
------
Illniyar
Can two individual priced accounts collaborate on the same private repository?
~~~
bkeepers
An individual on the Personal plan can add users to their private repositories
for free.
------
derrekl
There is one case we have where the newer per seat pricing doesn't facilitate
how we're using github. One of our repositories is "docs" with a bunch of
markdown files, pdfs, images, and other documents related to our tech. It's
mostly used in a read only way by a bunch of non-developers while engineers
contribute heavily to the documentation. Paying $9/month per biz person to be
able to view the documentation is too much and will force that use case off to
Confluence or some other wiki/documenting tool.
------
donatj
We have a large number of people in our organization who have GitHub access
who do not code and instead file or manage tickets. $9 a month just to be able
to file a ticket is rather steep.
------
manigandham
It's amazing how cheap people/companies are if they're complaining about these
prices.
$9/user/month for one of the best and easy-to-use platforms to store and
manage your repos and help your software development, which for most companies
is extremely important to their product.
Slack is $8/user/month and yet people have no problem with that pricing. Git
is also extremely portable and easy to move and takes minutes to self-host so
what's the problem here?
------
willcodeforfoo
This is awesome! I have wanted a different pricing structure for personal
accounts for a long time.
And for those who have issues with the organizational changes, did you see?
> I am an existing organization customer and prefer the per-repository plans.
> Can I remain on my current plan?
> Yes, you can choose to continue paying based on the number of repositories
> you use. You can also upgrade or downgrade in the legacy repository
> structure based on the number of repositories you need.
------
Revisor
Why don't more people use Assembla? We've used it for years and it has so many
more features than Github. Tickets, milestones, time tracking, standup, wiki,
unlimited repos with protected-branch merge rights, file sharing,
discussions...
There is no free plan but the pricing is fair in my opinion:
[https://www.assembla.com/plans](https://www.assembla.com/plans)
------
gommm
That makes a lot more sense in term of pricing and if that had existed
earlier, I'd probably not have bothered hosting my own gitlab repository. I
like to have a lot of little repos even keeping some of my private experiments
and so the limit of repositories never really made sense to me.
It might make sense however to not count collaborators with read-only access.
Of course, now that I have gitlab, there's very little reason for me to come
back.
------
chj
self hosted gitlab, for about 10$/month you get unlimited repos, unlimited
users.
------
thomascarney
In the spirit of offering alternatives, we created a quick price calculator to
show you whether you’d be better off moving from GitHub to Planio:
[https://plan.io/github-alternative/](https://plan.io/github-alternative/)
But don’t hate us too much GitHub. We still love you :)
------
keithnz
I like gitthub, I have my open source stuff with github, but when it comes to
private repos, bitbucket just seems better pricing and in someways just a
nicer and cleaner interface
[https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing)
------
keithnz
I like github, I have my open source stuff with github, but when it comes to
private repos, bitbucket just seems better pricing and in someways just a
nicer and cleaner interface
[https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing)
------
andreamazz
As much as I would love to switch to GitHub for our private repos, it still is
way more expensive than BitBucket.
------
danvoell
I hope this doesn't lead to less open sourced software. Since it will be
easier to keep your code private.
------
BinaryIdiot
Looks like with our company the price goes from $25 a month to $133 if we move
(or are forced to move) over to the cost-per-user model.
GitLab was already looking good, if we're forced to change well likely move to
GitLab. Github's pricing was already overly expensive for what you get, in my
opinion.
------
meetbryce
Seems like a good move, it's unclear to me what the difference is between
Personal & Organization.
------
wickedlogic
Comments here are mostly from a single org view, due to the many X increase
for that orgs price (large teams only)... but if I work on n_orgs repos, I'm
now worth 9-25*n_orgs to github. That is a big shift from a model where I had
no direct value to them as a unit.
~~~
wickedlogic
Worth noting that for some (many) companies with large teams, this amounts to
a new laptop or two in price change... and while a cost change, it really is
noise (to some extent) for the value provided.
------
Aissen
I know a lot of companies that are too cheap to pay for hosting (or even host
in-house), and therefore use bitbucket with its unlimited private repos. It's
their gateway drug, and once they get used to that, good luck having them move
over to github.
~~~
Scea91
Why use the derogaroty 'too cheap'? Maybe they are just not 'too stupid' to
pay more than they have to.
~~~
Aissen
I guess my critic is that you should always know why you use a service, and
not just use it because it's the cheapest solution out there. In particular,
is bitbucket(/github/gitlab…) adapted to your needs ? Will it support your
growth ? Is it ok to have your source code on someone else's (or another
country's) server ? Lots of question to be answered, and a conscious choice to
make, without looking at only pricing. I was talking about companies doing the
latter, not all bitbucket free users (of which I am one myself).
------
arc_of_descent
So I have a normal user account at $7/month. Great, I now have unlimited
private repos.
I also had an organization a/c (only 1 user) at $9/month. I switched to the
$25/month, so yes, its now costing me more.
I understand math. Why not just give me $5/user? :)
------
jdudek
Yay, no more using single repo with orphan branches to save on number of
repositories :-)
------
mikey_p
I think this is great. I'm part of a small 2-person consultancy (my wife and
I) and we've been abusing a user account for our business for sometime on the
'medium' plan since it would give us 20 private repos, although over the last
6 years, we're had to cycle stuff to backups, rotate it around in order to
keep older client work in there.
It's been hard to justify upgrading to an organization for awhile, since our
work is hit or miss and we both have other jobs form time to time. We aren't
much in terms of load on Github, but we'd like to be able to store 40-50
private repos or add more without worrying about our limit. The new
organization pricing makes tons of sense for us since it's very close to the
old 'medium' plan we were using, instead of being 2.5 times as much, which we
never felt we could justify.
------
tedmiston
> Over the next few days, we will automatically move all paid accounts, from
> Micro to Large, to the new plan. If you’re currently paying for one of those
> larger plans, look out for a prorated credit on your account.
Bravo, GitHub.
------
aavotins
Christmas is early this year.
------
emodendroket
So basically they're going to start using the same model as BitBucket?
------
ausjke
bitbucket still sounds like a better deal as far as money goes, though github
somehow catches all the eyeballs. bitbucket has been providing similar service
for less since long time ago.
------
kaffeinecoma
I'm really looking forward to no longer having to figure out which project I
have to axe to keep my "small" plan under the 10 repo maximum. That was always
annoying.
------
napperjabber
Pretty sure this wont end well for Github. They seem to be making a lot of
moves like this recently. It's only a matter of time until a mass migration
begins IMO.
------
benbenolson
This is just another reason to move to something like Gitlab or just self-host
your Git repos. It takes literally seconds to set up your own Git server, so
why not?
------
z3t4
What's the difference between a GIT server and say a HTTP server? To my
understanding, Github are unable to scale GIT, so they have to price
accordingly.
~~~
lox
This is not how pricing works.
~~~
z3t4
You would need a lot of margin to not base the price on the production costs.
If 200 users cost double as much as 100 users, it's hard to not base the price
on number of users.
~~~
lox
Pricing is a function of what people will pay for it, not what it costs to
make. Consider Slack as a fine example.
~~~
z3t4
I read an article not long ago that Github had to spin up three physical
machines, just to handle one customer. Although it was an extreme example.
Compared to slack, who could probably have a million users one a single
machine, making it almost zero marginal cost per new user. While a user for
Github means buying more hardware and a notable marginal cost.
If you for example are a reseller of commodity goods, you can't have a lower
price then the price you buy it for. So you can't have a model of say
unlimited goods for a monthly fee. And the price will most likely be based on
per good.
~~~
jssjr
I think you're referring to the GitHub Engineering blog post [1] about our git
storage tier. We [2] store your code on _at least_ 3 servers, which is an
improvement in many ways from our previous storage architecture. There are a
lot of servers [3] powering things but not the millions it would require to
give every customer three dedicated machines. Developing efficient solutions
to problems is a requirement (and a fun challenge!) for anything at GitHub's
scale.
[1] [http://githubengineering.com/introducing-
dgit/](http://githubengineering.com/introducing-dgit/)
[2] I'm a GitHubber. [https://github.com/jssjr](https://github.com/jssjr)
[3]
[https://twitter.com/GitHubEng/status/730429227896463360](https://twitter.com/GitHubEng/status/730429227896463360)
~~~
z3t4
It was another post about someone using Github to host "packages".
------
wtbob
Definitely cool, but I honestly think that if your organisation needs more
than a handful of repositories then it's very likely doing something wrong.
------
NicoJuicy
I really don't understand why Github sets their prices higher while GitLab (
mostly) is gaining more and more traction...
------
gshulegaard
So...GitLab looks better and better every day.
------
alexchamberlain
This is great for private accounts; it encourages better practice of smaller
repos.
------
edpichler
To me this is a good change, I have lots of private repositories and a small
team.
------
mikeflynn
Sounds like a lot of companies are going to end up with multiple GitHub orgs.
------
kazinator
For less than these price plans, you can have your own domain and server.
------
jonmaim
Sorry it's too late, I already migrated to bitbucket 6 months ago.
------
geostyx
I think I'll stick with my own private Gogs instance anyway.
------
cloudjacker
bitbucket: still unlimited free private repositories
------
gohrt
What's the delta from the old model?
------
bfrog
github, soon to be the next sourceforge
------
softinio
This is fantastic news in my opinion.
------
sqldba
I love the clickbait. It's missing 3 words - "for paid users". Everyone has
clicked it to be disappointed. GitLab++.
------
jtchang
Yay! No more bitbucket for all my private repos. I wonder if this change is
because of competition?
~~~
wfunction
BitBucket allows unlimited private repos for _free_ ; GitHub's seems to be
just for the paid plans?
~~~
opless
Yup no reason to move from bit bucket yet.
------
ArtDev
I will stick with GitLab.
------
mnml_
too expensive
------
jiang101
I'm a member of a Github organisation with 63 members and 20 private
repositories. As far as I can see, this changes our yearly cost from $600 to
$6564.
------
samir16
Its awesm
------
cwmma
and bitbucket's sole reason for existing has gone away
------
Zypho
Everyone who is crying right now would be crying more if Github were to make
the price free for private repos because with that, the amount of open source
libraries they use would be cut in half.
~~~
Zypho
-points but no reasons?
Agreed this will impact some organizations in negative ways such as the non-
for-profit orgs. To that Github offers support in this sense here:
[https://github.com/nonprofit](https://github.com/nonprofit)
Like others, without specific data, I would assume this will impact the
majority of users on Github for the better and that organizations with many
contributors needing access to private repos are the minority. In any pricing
structure change, there is always going to be a minority that is impacted
negatively. I don't think Github would have made this decision without
analytics to back it up.
Another fair point is I think this structure is more appealing to companies
who prefer to look at cost-per-employee for something that is an everyday tool
rather than cost-of-architecture.
------
alchemical
Honestly when I read the title I thought GH switched their business model and
offered _free_ users the ability to start a private repo, but this is not the
case.
If it is the case that I have to pay to have privacy on Github, then it
imposes a privacy-rich versus privacy-poor dichotomy which I am uncomfortable
with. Now I know as far as these things go (GH can be subject to National
Security Letters), that GH is not really absolutely private. (Backdoors into
people's 'secret' GISTS anyone?).
GH had an opportunity here to change their business model so that free users
can avail of private repos, and GH could still manage to bring in revenue. GH
primarily makes the bulk of their income from what I call 'stakeholder
accounts'. That is; those companies who simply couldn't function correctly if
GH didn't exist. It is in these stakeholders that there is a symbiotic
relationship of revenue for GH, and value for the stakeholder(s).
There are very little lone private individuals who have that kind of symbiotic
relationship, and so at least give these low income users the same equal
rights of privacy as behemoth tech organizations. It makes sense.
In terms of how GH gets revenue from these users, there are countless other
ways to do this instead of relying on the monolithic device of a premium
subscription model. Offer paid licenses for their proprietary GH clients. (A
one off payment of $20.00 for the GH Windows client is something I would
actually pay money for)...
~~~
pothibo
It's 7$/month. You sure can be made uncomfortable easily.
If someone wants a private repo but doesn't value his/her private code to the
amount of 7$/month for ALL their private repos, then I guess it shouldn't have
been made private in the first place.
FWIW, a Big Mac combo is around the same price. One is junk, the other is
where you showcase/store all your professionnal knowledge and experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google +1 button for websites - abraham
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-button-for-websites-recommend-content.html
======
duopixel
Google is trying to throw it's weight at something it's competitors already do
better. Even if it does catch on, we all lose with the social sharing craze
that is littering the web. More clutter, slower loading pages, and gimmicks to
get to you upvote a site.
This has happened before, first it was the syndication format craze with icons
for RSS, RSS 2.0, atom, xml, etc. Then it was the aggregator craze (Digg,
Reddit, StumpleUpon, etc) and now it's the social craze (Facebook, Twitter,
etc).
There's a clear need for sharing what you like, from the perspective of the
user and the publisher. I've put these buttons into my design, but I'd rather
see the browsers' favorites revamped into a searchable database that allows
easy sharing and get rid of this madness.
~~~
swombat
_we all lose with the social sharing craze that is littering the web. More
clutter, slower loading pages, and gimmicks to get to you upvote a site._
Couldn't agree more. I've made a deliberate effort to not buy into the craze
with swombat.com. Anything that can't be restyled as a text link which blends
into the no-graphics minimalist style of the site just ain't gonna happen.
One small concession I've made is that I show the reddit upvote widget for
people who have come directly via Reddit. Like that's helped me. ;-)
~~~
thomasgerbe
I love the way Good implemented the Twitter/Facebook sharing feature. Very
minimal.
~~~
swombat
Good?
~~~
user-id
I'm guessing <http://www.good.is/>
------
mtgentry
It's unclear what the user gains by clicking on a +1 button. Clearly my
friends won't see my recommendations because Google doesn't connect me to
them.
They should just come out and say "listen, we know search is broken. We need
your help to fix it! Click on this button when you see something you like on
the web."
Position it as a passionate call to arms to all google users. Right now it
feels like a boring press release.
~~~
Lewisham
Google does connect you to social graphs it can see:
[http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer...](http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=1067707)
I wouldn't say that +1 is saying "search is broken" at all. It's just another
signal.
~~~
mtgentry
Re: the social graphs, I should have said that for me personally, my friends
aren't on any of those services so that's why it isn't relevant.
I'm saying +1's main reason for existence SHOULD be to fix search. And they
should say as much. A better search experience is a much more valuable thing
than friend recommendations.
------
tmugavero
Ugh, another button. The check-in buttons are coming next. Soon, there will be
an aggregate button that lets you Like, Follow, +1, Check-in, Tweet, Post to
FB, and save the page for later. There will be no more corporate or personal
websites to house the aggregate button either. They will live on an aggregate
page which has all the feeds from all the social networks in one place. This
aggregate page will itself live on a social network which will have many
clones that need to be aggregated. Goodbye signal, hello noise.
------
braindead_in
One thing that's going in it's favor is the SEO advantage you get. This data
is eventually going to play some role in the SERP rankings, one way or other.
I'm not sure if it's confirmed by Google, but it apparent enough. That's
incentive enough for sites to add this button.
~~~
nanoanderson
This is something I feel like people are discounting.
+1 won't displace Liking as a _social network feature_, but it will be very
interesting to see how it plays out as a _social search feature_, which is why
I'm looking for how best to implement it on my own sites.
Wouldn't you be more inclined to choose a result on Google if people you
know/trust +1'd it?
~~~
braindead_in
Yes, Google can easily rank the search results based on +1's in your social
network if you're logged in. The implications are really interesting. It has
to succeed though first. People have to start +1'ing for it to happen.
------
tristanperry
It'll be good to test this feature; it sounds like it could be a useful
addition to the other social-esque 'like this' type buttons.
One thing though, the 'add +1 to your website' page
(<http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html>) is broken for me.
I see the following in vanilla Firefox 4.0.1, Windows 7 64-bit:
<http://www.tristanperry.com/pics/GoogleSite.jpg>
Changing the settings doesn't fix the fact that the preview doesn't appear
(and that its bounding box is overflowing)
Just an FYI.
~~~
abraham
They just started working for me.
~~~
tristanperry
Ah yep, works for me now. Is working well :)
------
anigbrowl
I wish it came with a -1 as well, but I imagine that will develop by itself.
Significantly, this is based on your contacts, rather than what everyone at
Facebook/Digg/whoever likes. I think this is a winning characteristic.
~~~
flyt
Sorry, but Facebook's graph describes my actual friends. Gmails with my bank
and landlord are not a better representation of my contacts.
~~~
MatthewPhillips
To most people Facebook's graph represents their friends, their family, their
coworkers, people they went to high school with, random people who sent a
request even though you met them once at a party... that is the norm. I've
been saying for a while that the best representation of a true social graph is
on you Android and iPhones. the people you call, text, email, and Facebook
wall post are the people you care about. Why Google and Apple haven't used
this to their advantage yet, I'm not sure.
~~~
nostrademons
There're potential privacy implications to using your call logs to build an
implicit social graph. People have an expectation that their phone call
records will remain private; look at all the trouble the NSA got into when
they started spying on them. There's no such expectation when you explicitly
give your relationship data to a third-party website.
Not to say it won't happen, but a bunch of things need to be worked out on the
legal/ethical/cultural side of things before this is practical. As PG always
says, social changes take longer than technical changes.
~~~
MatthewPhillips
No need to violate anyone's privacy; do it completely on the client side. Then
bridge to public via Buzz (in the case of Google).
~~~
hessenwolf
I have two contacts in my email, one is my Mom, and the other is my male boss.
All of a sudden I am seeing lots of transgenderfication sites in my results.
Mom?
It would still be a violation of privacy because it is crossing the
friend/contact line.
------
pasbesoin
Given what my friends "Like" on FB (I'm friends with them for other reasons),
a similar signal (aka "noise") in Google search results seems almost or
actually to be a disincentive, for me personally, to forming "connections".
I think this may be an attempt to conflate two things that for some (many?)
remain separate domains.
EDIT: OTOH, general initiatives to improve search results (i.e. Panda) have
been quite useful, for me.
Now I'm sitting here, wondering why/how I end up repeatedly sounding negative
about various Google "social" initiatives -- as actually incorporated. It's
not that I'm against their trying. But... they do seem to keep missing the
mark.
------
paulnelligan
I'm feeling like this is another 'Buzz', another failed attempt to get social.
The proposed idea of sharing stuff with my 'friends and contacts' rings very
hollow, since the vast majority of my google contacts are people I've only
emailed once, and never have met. For a company seemingly filled with very
smart people, this is a pretty basic mistake.
-1
------
bauchidgw
well, lets just hope they don't just deprecate it - due to the "economic
burden" - the second after we all implemented it.
------
bad_user
Pff, doesn't work with Google Apps accounts, as these accounts can't have a
Google Profile.
So here is Google offering me the best and most useful online service I ever
used (Google Apps), and they can't integrate it with their services properly.
~~~
MartinCron
Not only that, it's the flavor of their services that you are paying for.
Drives me crazy.
------
Sephr
What's with everyone making up tag names and undefined namespaces nowadays?
<g:plusone>? A simple <span> with a class or data attribute would suffice.
~~~
Encosia
I had the same reaction. Looking into the documentation[0], it turns out that
you can also use a div with data- attributes instead, like this:
<div class="g-plusone" data-size="standard" data-count="true"></div>
[0] <http://code.google.com/apis/+1button/>
------
yahelc
Best feature here: built-in support for callback functions. Makes Google
Analytics integration seamless!
------
notYoursAtAll
added to my Enterprise hosts file: (for workers)
127.0.0.1 www.co2stats.com 127.0.0.1 apis.google.com 127.0.0.1 l.sharethis.com
127.0.0.1 w.sharethis.com 127.0.0.1 wd.sharethis.com 127.0.0.1
plusone.google.com 127.0.0.1 platform.twitter.com 127.0.0.1 www.google-
analytics.com 127.0.0.1 seg.sharethis.com
any others I am missing? need to make sure this garbage is kept off of
business workstations and the network
~~~
mtogo
Thanks!
Hopefully Ghostery/Disconnect will start blocking this soon, too.
------
petervandijck
Which friends though? Who are these friends that I am recommending it to??
~~~
paganel
Your GMail contacts. Wait, they can't do that anymore! I genuinely don't know
then, they must have a clever algorithm in place to create a brand new list of
friends, depending on your past searches.
------
johnyzee
Isn't "+1" kind of an insider reference to the Slashdot voting system? It may
be instantly recognizable to us, but is it really intuitive what this does to
the vast masses of everyday-Joe internet users? Seems to me like another hit
from engineer driven Google product development.
Also: _"But sometimes you want to +1 a page while you’re on it. After all, how
do you know you want to suggest that recipe for chocolate flan if you haven’t
tried it out yet?"_
I may be having a case of the Mondays here or something, but I really hate
this kind of forced chipperness in corporate communication, and I am seeing a
lot of it from Google, most recently in the 'funny' "Let's put more cats on
the internet!" marketing for the Chrome netbook. Again it seems like some
high-brow Google engineers, based on statistical evidence that humans have
feelings, decided to employ some grandmother type to filter all their
marketing through.
~~~
mdwrigh2
> "Again it seems like some high-brow Google engineers, based on statistical
> evidence that humans have feelings, decided to employ some grandmother type
> to filter all their marketing through."
It seems like you, based on unstatistical evidence of Google Engineers,
decided they were all Borg and incapable of feeling.
------
mikecane
I'm surprised WordPress.com wasn't on board with this at the start. It already
has Like buttons (ugh) as well as Twitter, Facebook, etc. WordPress is
otherwise great at getting its blog posts into Google results, so I figured
this was a natural.
------
olalonde
In case anyone's wondering how to add the +1 button to their Posterous (which
doesn't allow Javascript), feel free to use this iframe:
<!-- default size: 110x30, tall: 50x60 -->
<iframe src="http://dev.syskall.com/plusone/?url={Permalink}&size=tall" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:0;width:50px;height:60px;"></iframe>
I'll publish the PHP script on my github[1] shortly in case you want to host
it yourself.
[1] <https://github.com/olalonde/google-plusone-posterous>
------
rglover
Out of all of Google's social efforts, this is the most promising yet. What's
unique about this is that (if they're keeping a search oriented business
model) it could allow for a more social ranking system. In other words, after
a link gets so many recommendations, it moves up in search. I for one would
love a search feature where I could click "recommended" and see if anyone I
know has had experience with the topic. Baby steps are imperative with this
one.
------
speleding
Hmm, too bad that the HTML4 code they propose fails validation with my
validator (Nokigiri) and the HTML5 code they propose doesn't seem to work on
HTML4 pages.
I solved it by mixing and matching the two: <div class="g-plusone"
size="small" count="false"></div>
This fails the official W3C validator but it works with Nokogiri. The odd way
to set the language of the button {"lang":"de"} trips up syntax error marking
in my IDE too.
------
hxf148
Tried to integrate it on <http://infostripe.com> but ran into issues of it not
rendering as expected or when expected, the counter balloon having some CSS
background issues.
I'll try it again in a bit but I am disappointed so far with the
implementation. Maybe it's getting crushed.. but it is Google..
------
AndyNemmity
Well, the +1 button worked for a good 10 minutes, and then my site stops
responding trying to pull the js from google. down for 2 minutes, now back up
again.
Must be a frenzy.
EDIT: when it came back up, it also didn't have my saved +1. I had to redo it.
Seems pretty buggy right now.
EDIT 2: Okay, my site is down again. I'm removing the button for awhile.
~~~
willscott
That seems hard to believe. The buttons seem to show up fine on tech crunch
and google search.
It's difficult to imagine that Google has been 'slashdotted' due to serving up
a javascript widget...
~~~
AndyNemmity
I certainly agree, it's not like I don't use google to host jquery, or any
other number of things.
However it was seriously hanging on that one js call. Perhaps it's just my
experience, but I'm going to wait at least an hour before I try again. I like
my site responding.
------
executive
and yet there is no +1 button on that page..
~~~
abraham
There is now.
------
kaerast
This has the same problem as Facebook Likes - you can create a +1 for a url
other than the one you are currently on. And spot the javascript callback
which encourages a '+1 this page to reach the video' setup.
------
zitterbewegung
I sort of have an issue with the name. I can understand that the average user
would understand Facebook's Like and Twitters follow but I see that +1 is sort
of technical jargon...
~~~
Drakim
Nah, even my technological challenged family understands the concept of giving
a website plus one point. +1 is fairly simple to understand as a positive
thing both inside and outside of a computer context.
------
prasunsen
Funny, the "Get code" link in the email Google sent me goes to 404 page. Fail.
~~~
prasunsen
What's the deal with the downvote? Even the button in the Adsense interface
does not work.
~~~
MartinCron
I didn't down vote, but I guess it was a reaction against using "fail" as a
standalone sentence. There are some curmudgeons who don't like that newfangled
interweb colloquialisms.
------
jarin
Ok, I've added it to one of my clients' sites (NOT WORK SAFE
<http://www.dirtyhotproductions.com> NOT WORK SAFE).
I'm not sure if anyone will use it on there (especially with the big warning
about your +1s being publicly viewable), but here's hoping it boosts search
engine rankings at least.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An iPhone Tester Caught in Apple's Supply Chain - uladzislau
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/166250-an-iphone-tester-caught-in-apples-supply-chain
======
tostitos1979
Makes me sick :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CloudEdit: A Backbone.js Tutorial with Rails - jamesjyu
http://www.jamesyu.org/2011/01/27/cloudedit-a-backbone-js-tutorial-by-example/
======
jashkenas
Fantastic tutorial -- thanks for taking the time to put it together.
There's a couple things that might be better handled differently:
* Use a collection to keep track of "Documents". You wouldn't have to implement url() yourself, write the manual getJSON() request, or map the response into Document models.
* As previously mentioned, templates would help avoid a lot of the messy string concatenation here.
* You can use the "change" event to listen to changes on documents, instead of re-rendering the Index every time ... That said, with so many people editing the list of docs simultaneously, it probably makes sense to refresh the Index from scratch.
* You shouldn't have to call "delegateEvents()" again inside of Edit#save, as long as the Edit view's "el" hasn't changed.
Great work -- I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed
tutorial.
------
dreyfiz
This is the best walkthrough for learning Backbone.js that’s been posted to
Hacker News yet. (In that I actually feel empowered to go use Backbone to
create something, now that I’ve read it). Thanks for posting!
~~~
dreyfiz
Part of what makes Backbone hard to learn from a lot of the tutorials that
have been posted is that the authors aren’t experienced at it enough to be
opinionated, which makes me feel lost. jamesjyu’s tutorial is opinionated
about some matters of taste, which is confidence-inspiring.
Backbone itself isn’t all that opinionated: it just offers a bunch of legos to
put together however you wish, feeling free to ignore many of the pieces. So
it’s easy to feel adrift trying to learn how to use it confidently.
------
callmeed
Great tutorial but when I see this in the conclusion:
_Backbone.js really introduces a new kind of data flow for Rails apps.
Instead of data flowing like this:
Rails Model => Rails Controller => Rails View
It now flows like this:
Rails Model => Rails Controller => Backbone Model => Backbone Controller =>
Backbone View_
I get confused. 5 components instead of 3—sweet. Why do I want backbone as
part of my rails app? Just to ajax-ify everything? Will it reduce the load on
my server?
~~~
dreyfiz
You want Backbone as part of your Rails app to clean up your Javascript and
make it easier to do hard things…it’s meant for apps that let the user do
significant client-side state manipulation.
The alternative to “5 components instead of 3” isn’t “just 3”. It’s “3 well-
understood components on the server, and a bunch of jQuery/prototype spaghetti
on the client that I really wish was better-organized and easier to extend.”
If this describes your app, you might do well to look at Backbone.
------
Pewpewarrows
This looks like a great tutorial, but please, for the love of maintainability
stop stringing (pun intended) your views together by concatenating a bunch of
lines together all over the place.
Underscore.js (which is required (and from the same team) for using Backbone)
has a built-in templating with logic feature. In your html make a <script
type="text/html"></script> with your template code inside of it, which will be
overlooked by the browser during rendering, but you can still select and get
the contents of it by slapping on an id. Then it's just a quick call to
_.template() with your data object and it renders out beautifully. It feels
analogous to your usual MVC structure, and is much easier to debug and update.
~~~
jashkenas
James is also using Jammit here, which has built-in support for JavaScript
templates (of any flavor). I agree that it would simplify the tutorial to get
all of that string concatenation out of there.
That said, he clearly thinks that leaving templates out of it is the simpler
solution: "For the purposes of this tutorial, I'll use simple string
concatenation in my views." And from the point of view of someone just getting
started, he may very well be right.
------
foobarbazoo
I'd be willing to do the identical tutorial for SproutCore, if the author will
allow his page to be copied and edited.
(I didn't see a license anywhere allowing that.)
~~~
effkay
I would like to see that!
------
steele
Any secret sauce in not worrying about rails 3 forgery protection?
~~~
steveklabnik
His example app is running Rails 2.3.8, and also includes this little option
that's important:
ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = false
If that's not in your environment, it changes the JSON from {"id":n, ... to
{"doument":{"id":n,..., which is kind of a big difference.
James, I'd consider adding a note about this to your tutorial. Also, the link
to your GitHub is a fake one; I managed to guess it properly though. Oh, and
all of your commits show you as both the committer and the author, I think
your git config is wrong. Make sure git config --global author.email is your
github email.
~~~
jamesjyu
Oh man, that is embarrassing. Link is fixed now. I'll add a note about the
json later.
~~~
steveklabnik
No worries, it happens to everyone. :D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
US rail freight is the world’s best. High-speed passenger trains could ruin it - cwan
http://www.economist.com/node/16636101
======
_delirium
Most of this article is pretty good, but it mostly isn't about any sort of
relationship between high-speed rail and freight trains. That comes in only at
the very end of the article, and is quite speculative.
They admit that the _current_ batch of high-speed rail lines being built,
mainly California's, will run on new lines that won't interfere with freight.
The _Economist's_ worry seems to be about the more extensive proposed high-
speed rail network that's currently on the drawing board, which is proposed to
include extended portions on existing freight rails (at 110mph) to link
together the purpose-built higher-speed segments. They seem to be thinking of
plans like this one: <http://www.fra.dot.gov/Pages/203.shtml>
But is that really even a medium-term worry? I'll be surprised if even
California's line gets finished by 2020. I would be _very_ surprised if this
more extensive national HSR plan that's supposed to follow later gets anywhere
anytime soon. The map linked above is the result of a process begun in 1991,
which has not been turning into a high-speed-rail network at any particularly
great rate of speed. It'll be a miracle if they settle on a final plan by
2020, much less fund it or actually start building anything. I'll eat my hat
if that entire network is built in my lifetime!
~~~
Empact
One reason to be a bit more optimistic is Texas (<http://www.thsrtc.com/>).
Their equivalent plan to California's is loads cheaper thanks to their more
agreeable geography (plains, mostly).
More importantly, the lighter touch of the state government means rather than
do a full-on government build and operate (ala California/Amtrak), they're
looking at private build & operations under a long-term lease, with the
government providing liability limitations and eminent domain, in return for
owning the infrastructure after the lease expires in some decades of
operation. This means the builder is subject to market forces: they can only
recoup their build costs within the lease window by getting to operations as
quickly and efficiently as possible. The incentives are the opposite for
government construction: the milk flows during construction, so there's a
disincentive to ever finish, and when things go over budget, it almost always
means more money, rather than anyone cutting their losses.
To get a sense what a difference this makes, consider that the NYC subway
system was built by competing private concerns under the long-term lease model
(ala Texas), between 1905 and 1940. In 1940 the system was unified under
government control (ala California), and basically the system was frozen in
time, with no expansion happening in the 70 years since (see:
<http://www.diametunim.com/shashi/nyc_subways/>).
~~~
_delirium
I do think Texas's plan is one of the most promising, but I suppose my guess
is that it'll still take a long time, partly because it's been looking
promising for a _long_ time now: the first feasibility study was launched in
the 1980s. The state actually awarded a contract to a private group to build
high-speed rail in the Dallas-San Antonio-Houston triangle, under terms like
those you discuss, in 1991, but it was killed, largely by Southwest Airlines
lobbying, in 1994. I went to high school in Texas 1996-2000, and a new high-
speed rail plan was being discussed that entire time too, but the talk never
went anywhere. In the early 2000s, it was revived once more, this time as part
of an ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor (which would have had freight rail, high-
speed rail, car-only freeways, and truck-only freeways), but that died a few
years later as well, partly due to a nativist backlash against its role as the
"NAFTA superhighway".
Now there's yet another HSR plan, separated back out from the road plans,
which might work this time, but I probably wouldn't put any money on _this_
being the year the 20+-year impasse is broken. Honestly I haven't seen any of
that supposedly lighter-touch, actually-functioning Texas state government on
this issue, just a multi-decade series of special interests and politicking
resulting in no rails being built.
~~~
narrator
I think rail doesn't get anywhere in the U.S because it makes it to easy for
"undesirable elements" to get to places they're not wanted too easily. I think
that's the incredibly sad but honest truth of it all.
The class differences in the United States are far more extreme than most
people realize, mostly because people stay inside their tight little class
bubbles all day long in their private cars, driving to work and back and
rarely venturing out to get a latte every once in a while.
~~~
DavidAdams
I don't agree with this comment in this context, but I do know for a fact that
the Washington DC Metro does not extend to the popular Georgetown shopping and
nightlife district for precisely this reason.
~~~
_delirium
That's the same reason Atlanta's MARTA doesn't extend into Cobb County. I
don't think it has much to do with intercity rail, though; it seems to be
mainly an issue with opposition to metropolitan-area rapid-transit systems,
with people worried that they'll blur boundaries between nice and not-nice
neighborhoods within the same city.
------
Zak
I feel compelled to point out that high-speed passenger rail isn't likely to
be anywhere near as successful in the US as in Europe even if heavily
subsidized.
One problem is population density. The US is geographically twice the size of
the EU, but has three fifths the population. Germany is the size of Montana,
but has 90 million people. Typical travel distances are short, and the number
of travelers on any given day is high. Fixed costs would be proportionally
higher for a US service as a result.
Local transport upon arrival is a big issue. Most European cities have public
transportation systems that are effective enough for large portions of the
population to not own cars. This is only true in a _very_ small number of US
cities (probably fewer than 5). For many people, any cost savings from taking
a train instead of driving would be offset by the cost and inconvenience of
securing transportation at the destination.
A final issue is that very long distance train travel still takes a long time
compared to air travel. Using a generous estimate of a 100mph average
(remember, the trains have to make stops), a high-speed train would take 20
hours to get from LA to Chicago. I think few people would opt for that over a
3 hour flight even given a significant difference in price.
~~~
melling
Rather than pointing out where it won't work, how about finding places where
it will work. The northeast, for example, is densely populated and the major
cities are close. The real problem is building straight tracks so trains can
go 200mph.
NYC to Philly - 95 miles
NYC to Washington DC - 225 miles
NYC to Boston - 220 miles
Washington to Bostin - 420 miles
~~~
mikecarlucci
Exactly. We have airplanes for cross country travel. The train technology that
exists in other countries could make even Boston to Toronto doable.
~~~
riffic
People need to slow their fucking lives down. cross country travel by rail is
much more enjoyable than flying, even if it takes 2-3 days. Give me wifi and a
sleeper, and leave flying for those who haven't figured this out yet.
~~~
randallsquared
_cross country travel by rail is much more enjoyable than flying, even if it
takes 2-3 days._
Not in my experience. I took Amtrak from Atlanta to DC in 2008, and it was
basically a 13 hour flight -- same kinds of seats, only marginally more space,
and the food service amounted to paying exorbitant prices for awful sandwiches
that could have been vended from an office machine. I would prefer to spend 10
hours in an airport and 3 hours in flight, given the chance; airports are at
least quite comfortable, in general.
~~~
rdl
Rail seems like it would be a win for someone who was mobility impaired
(wheelchair, old, morbidly obese, etc.). The only other viable option would be
a specially outfitted car or bus.
The times I've taken Amtrak (mainly for amusement value; Seattle-SFO and SFO-
DEN), it was mainly old people (many of diminished mobility), some religious
groups (mormons? menonites?), and foreign tourists. And mostly empty seats.
------
masterponomo
There's also a major issue of right of way. Atlanta has freight lines running
right through very built up parts of the city (including right outside my
condo window here--I see 6 Norfolk-Southern tracks with at least 100 trains
per day). We've already had controversy over the amount of property that would
have to be taken through eminent domain, even when just adding passenger lines
to the existing rail corridors. There's no realistic estimate yet, but it will
be in the tens of billions. Billions spent to tear down buildings and build up
rail, for no certain benefit. That's a tough sell.
Markets talk. As the article said, when rail was deregulated, the business
ditched passenger and emphasized freight. That's what is in demand. If
government has to fund something, that's often a signal that there is not an
organic market demand for it.
------
lr
If US rail freight is so great (which I do believe it is) then get the f
__*ing trucks off the interstate highways! Let's load up the rail system with
the freight it was meant to serve. If not, then make way for the passenger
trains, and the tractor trailers can have the roads, which they destroy with
every wheel turn they take!
~~~
megablast
This was mentioned in the article. A number of trucking companies are doing
this, and just using trucks for move it around locally.
This has increased congestion on the railroads, and the new passneger traffic
will make this even worse.
It really is worth reading the article, very informative. I remember reading
some ridiculous statistic about how cheap it is to move a ton of cargo in the
US before, now I have a few more details.
~~~
lr
I did read the article. :-) And absent from it is the fact that the federal
government gave the railroads the land in the first place. I love The
Economist, but leave it to them to bemoan regulation, but leave out a simple
and fundamental fact like that.
The article even mentioned how new tracks are being put in for long distance
passenger traffic -- which will not impact the freight trains -- but that
local traffic has to be on freight lines, and this does impact freight because
of freight's erratic schedule. But perhaps with more use freight will be less
erratic. Perhaps the best solution is to move freight transfer stations (where
rail freight moves to trucks) out from cities, and allow passenger service
closer in. This does not help freight that has to go through the city in the
first place. But, if we can move off of coal a little faster, then maybe we
will have the capacity for increased freight and passenger rail service.
~~~
olefoo
You know that sounds like a job for some simulation software, especially if
you could model things like adding intermodal terminals and adding links to
the network constrained by the cost of right of way. Even better if you could
figure out how to model the politics and market forces, if you could come up
with something that helped railway executives make better decisions about the
environment they operate in (apparently they lease rights of way back and
forth, and the company running the train is not necessarily the one that owns
a given stretch of track), you would have a saleable product.
------
jsz0
I don't think Americans should make yet another sacrifice to appease big
business who would rather use rail capacity for freight instead of passenger
traffic. For once the American citizens should be the priority here.
~~~
confuzatron
Is it in Americans' interests that more freight should go by road, at a higher
cost, so some Americans can travel by train? It's not a simplistic 'big
business bad, passenger trains good' argument.
~~~
Retric
If it's 1 to 1 then yes. People cost a lot more to transport on roads than
bulk freight so it’s a net gain to the economy.
Edit: The total cost to the economy to send a single person per car is about
60c/mile if you include the cost of maintaining and expanding highways /
increased congestion on existing highways. It costs to use busses, but the
benefit is primarily from getting people out of private cars and high speed
trains are much better at this.
------
lutorm
I thought this article about electrifying railways in the US was an
interesting perspective, too:
<http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4301>
| {
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Stacking up your idea - rajesh301
http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2012/06/05/stacking-up-your-idea/
======
Fizzadar
So very, very true. It's too easy to get caught up thinking of new ideas
rather than focussing-on/re-thinking one idea.
| {
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Monzo Lost £6.7M Last Year: And This Should Terrify Traditional Banks - benjaminwootton
https://www.contino.io/insights/monzo-lost-6-7-million-last-year-and-this-should-terrify-traditional-banks
======
micael_dias
No idea how the article justifies traditional banks should be terrified
because Monzo lost £6.7M?
~~~
glutamate
Because they are using "the latest technology such as AWS, Docker, Kubernetes
and cloud native architecture"
/s
~~~
Daviey
TBH, this shouldn't be sarcasm. Having first hand exposure to finance infra &
software architecture.. traditional organisations are crippled by tech debt
and decisions made 20-30 years ago!
I'm betting most traditional organisations are envious of being able to start
their architecture from scratch.
------
jbob2000
I just started working for a "traditional bank". To my surprise, we're
operating just like Monzo (and other tech startups); small, talented teams
working closely with product owners, using the latest and greatest tech (our
tech stack is very similar to Monzo's).
The banks aren't stupid. If there's a buck to be saved by switching to a
different operating model, they will absolutely swap. In fact, it's already
happening.
------
themanual
there is also another company called Revolut in London doing the same thing.
~~~
asherwood
They're very different, they don't have a banking license, don't want one &
are mainly focused on international payments, rather than current accounts &
an open marketplace.
~~~
vizzah
"don't want one"?
they are offering personal bank accounts and recently, business bank accounts
(apparently powered by Barclays).. the growth and interest seems to be not
less than Monzo`s, so one would guess they'll have to get their own banking
license soon.
------
baybal2
I asked google.com what mozno is and haven't found a thing
~~~
richmarr
Monzo, not mozno. It's a startup aiming to provide a replacement for the
traditional current account.
| {
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The Xerox Star: A Retrospective (1989) [pdf] - mpweiher
http://www-lb.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2008/cmsc198G/Handouts/XeroxStar.pdf
======
DonHopkins
Go Terps! UMD has a lot of experience with Xerox Stars.
When Mark Weiser [1] was at the University of Maryland, he talked Xerox PARC
into donating a huge pile of Xerox Star workstations, printers, file servers,
software and money to the University of Maryland CS Department, so even the
secretaries could use them to make posters announcing the annual CS Department
picnic.
So when we eventually got our hands on a 512K "Fat Mac", it was kind of a
disappointment that seemed like a tiny slow little low resolution one-button
Xerox Star without any networking or hard disk.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weiser)
~~~
valuearb
Well the Xerox Star was $16,000, the Mac $2,000. And the Mac did have
localTalk, a super cheap 232 kbps office network that worked really well.
When the Mac was released, the Xerox team actually had a much different
reaction than yours. Notice the screen shots in the PDF, every object fits in
a rectangular area. The original Mac supported non-rectangular regions, making
it's graphics far more advanced than the Star, despite the much lower power
hardware. Xerox engineers were flabbergasted the Mac could do that.
~~~
leejoramo
Indeed, one of the big reasons for the Mac's early success was built-in
networking.
GUI + standard networking + laser printer = revolution of graphics design and
production
~~~
digi_owl
And may be providing Apple an inside track with MSM to this day...
------
gumby
I wrote microcode for the Dandelion (we used the internal names for the
machines at PARC). You could boot it into completely disjoint worlds:
Smalltalk, Mesa, Interlisp (this is what I used) or the Star environment --
they weren't simply apps running under a common OS.
After the Alto, all of PARC's custom workstations (Dolphin, Dorado -- an ECL
machine!, and the Dandelion) were generically called D-machines.
------
jbotz
The Xerox star: so far ahead of its time, it's still ahead of its time.
------
pjmlp
The Xerox Star alongside Mesa and Tajo/XDE development environment was a great
system, with type safety, developer and user productivity in mind.
~~~
rdzogschen
Interesting to see that GUI essentials have not changed that much.
| {
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Signs A VC Is Just Not That Into You - eladgil
http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/07/signs-vc-is-just-not-that-into-you.html
======
nrmehta
The article is good but I don't think it delves into the "middle ground" which
is so common for startups. A very small percentage of companies elicit huge
interest (i.e., fast action, term sheet quickly, etc.) A surprisingly small
set of companies that meet with VCs elicit signals that are clear nos (e.g.,
not responding to emails and so on). These are usually ones where the idea is
so dumb or the pitch is so bad, the VC questions the entrepreneur's
capabilities. I'd say the vast majority of meetings turn into this netherland
where the VC isn't sold on the idea but also isn't sold on NOT funding the
idea. S/he either doesn't know the space well enough, isn't sure his/her
partners would agree, doesn't have enough clout in the firm yet (see previous
point), doesn't know the entrepreneur well enough to feel conviction, etc. So
s/he doesn't say yes. But s/he doesn't say no yet either because s/he wants
the optionality in case (a) another VC firm who is well respected or know the
space decides to go after it (which creates the super-annoying lemming
effect), (b) another partner and his/her firm gets "conviction" on the company
independently, (c) s/he hears other good things about the entrepreneur, etc. I
think for most entrepreneurs, this is the most annoying category to be in.
~~~
tptacek
I'd be very careful with this attitude. What VCs are trying to do is retain
the option of saying "yes", for _almost everybody_. They are happy to have
your team spend time maintaining that option for them. If it costs them almost
nothing, why wouldn't they?
The best rule of thumb here is "maybe means no".
~~~
a5seo
What's a nice but clear way to end the conversation without damaging the
relationship in case you want to pitch them for Series B?
~~~
ChuckMcM
They are offering it, the 'lack of response'. You can choose to drop people
and then been strictly interpretive of their requests (or lack there of) for
followup. So if you leave a meeting and there are no next steps, just stop
talking. Later at your series B you can offer to bring them up to date on your
current plans.
Understand that some (many?) VC's understand that saying "no" explicitly can
hurt your prospects with other VCs (you will be asked to explain why that
other VC said "No" which is impossible to do usually because you don't have
the complete picture). So they let it drift quietly silent and understand when
"you are really busy and might not get back to them for a while."
~~~
eladgil
Agreed. You can basically stop trying to prompt them to follow up with you
(since they are non-responsive / won't suggest next steps typically in this
scenario).
Another tough thing to balance is the flip of this - how to politely drop a VC
you do not want to talk to further, who is interested in your company and
knows you are fundraising...
------
stevenj
pg's take: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3550195>
~~~
eladgil
Ha. That is pretty good. There are some steps between "Hi" and "Here is a term
sheet" but you can definitely tell if someone is very excited.
Unfortunately, it is harder to tell if someone is disinterested as VCs try
hard to maintain or preserve relationships for the future, which makes them
more cautious in just saying "no" outright. I think the good ones are pretty
up front about not being interested early.
------
ramblerman
Are we really reduced to this...
Half of these could come straight out of Vogue, "How to tell if you're date
liked you?"
------
gojomo
Is there a way to turn this around by gently prompting the VC to start playing
the role of a truly interested investor? That is, challenge them to reverse
some of these listed signals. If as a part of normal conversational
cordiality, the VC plays along (to avoid sending a clearer no-interest
signal), eventually they're hyp _mo_ tized into thinking they are interested?
For example:
"What are your suggested next steps?"
"When should our next in-person be?"
"Which more senior partner will be handling the next steps?"
"Why should I take money from your firm?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Who Is Cloning Who? Business2.0, try again - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/09/who-is-cloning-who-business20-try-again/
======
gatorade
Well I'm not cloning this grammar. Humph.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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New phenomenon breaks inbound TCP policing - RachelF
https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2530363
======
colanderman
Title is wrong; updates come over TCP that has been modified not to perform
link sharing.
I have seen this with my wife's computer. Though I haven't seen the large-
window phenomenon (haven't looked), what I do see is dozens of active
connections opened to the same destination, which of course defeats both TCP's
link sharing and standard QoS algorithms.
I work around the issue by bucketing any Akamai IP ranges I find into a very-
low-priority queue, and let those TCP connections fight it out. Seems to have
worked well.
For those interested, here are the Akamai IP ranges I use:
23.0.0.0/12
23.32.0.0/11
23.64.0.0/14
23.72.0.0/13
104.64.0.0/10
2001:428:4403::/48
2001:428:4404::/48
2001:428:4405::/48
2001:428:4406::/48
2600:1400::/24
~~~
rhubarbquid
It's also not Windows 10 specific, the post also mentions Office updates
~~~
JonathonW
There's a mention somewhere in the middle of the thread that someone had seen
something similar with Apple's software updates, too: maybe it's a more
general Akamai issue?
Even if it is isolated to the servers distributing MS's updates, I'm having
trouble seeing how this could even be MS's fault-- it's the server side (owned
and operated by Akamai) that's misbehaving here.
~~~
colanderman
I'm not convinced either way. Windows Update is the one opening the dozens of
connections (it has to if it's behind a firewall), not Akamai; Akamai's just
serving the data. But Windows Update is possibly just calling out to an Akamai
library that opens the dozens of connections on its behalf.
If there are also congestion-algorithm shenanigans like the forum post
suggests, then Akamai is definitely at fault. But the issue I see is that of
connection hogging.
~~~
kev009
* [https://developer.akamai.com/stuff/Optimization/TCP_Optimiza...](https://developer.akamai.com/stuff/Optimization/TCP_Optimizations.html)
* [https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2013-press/aka...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/news/press/2013-press/akamai-speeds-downloads-and-online-video-quality.jsp)
------
chadnickbok
Hey cool, someone forgetting _yet again_ why we use TCP.
We don't use TCP because its fast. We don't use it because its reliable
(although that's really useful). We use it because _we kept breaking the
internet_. Once you get above a certain threshold, the network can't keep up
with you and packets start getting dropped. The problem is that backing off
just a little doesn't allow the network to recover.
Instead, we need to use exponential backoff in the face of packet loss to
ensure that the network as a whole can recover.
But if you're pretty much the only connection misbehaving, and everything else
backs off, then you can kinda get away with not using exponential backoff. The
problem is that the applications that is was "kinda okay" to do this for was
VOIP and friends, where realtime delivery is really important and exponential
backoff causes noticeable drops in quality.
For a great read about these kinds of issues, check out the TCP-Friendly rate
control RFC:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5348](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5348)
~~~
wtallis
> Once you get above a certain threshold, the network can't keep up with you
> and packets start getting dropped. The problem is that backing off just a
> little doesn't allow the network to recover.
Another aspect of this problem is that the network is too hesitant to drop
packets [1], so by the time you've noticed packet loss things have gotten bad
enough that the drastic backoff is needed. Widespread deployment of ECN and
AQM would allow for more rapid feedback before any huge backlog develops, and
consequently a less extreme response to congestion signals could be used.
[1] Arista would rather their 10GbE switches add up to 100ms of queuing delay
per port than drop a packet: [https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-
devel/2016-J...](https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/cerowrt-
devel/2016-June/010701.html)
~~~
jfindley
Slightly OT, but that link is _astonishing_.
That anyone can think adding 100ms of latency to a 10Gbe switch, even under
heavy contention is a good feature is absolutely staggering.
~~~
iofj
It's not quite 100ms. A bit less. The explanation is simple : if tcp
exponential backoff fires, you will have a very bad time on any tcp
connection. Site owners, obviously, don't want that.
Try this : iptables -A INPUT -m statistic --mode random --probability 0.001 -j
DROP
And see how your internet works. TLDR: sometimes loading times go through the
roof, some instant messages go through in <0.1s, and on occasion it takes 30+
seconds, on occasion it's a DNS query that gets dropped and a page load
suddenly takes 1 minute for no identifiable reason, large downloads always
"get fucked" (suddenly lose 90% of their bandwidth and take several minutes to
recover). Burstly traffic doesn't work. If you start your firefox with 20+
tabs open 80% of them will never load.
You will not enjoy the experience.
So yes, people think that adding 100ms of latency is better than dropping a
packet under contention.
~~~
wtallis
Your numbers are ridiculous. There's a huge gulf between buffering _millions_
of packets per switch port before a single drop, and a 1 in 1000 drop
probability. You're also assuming that the drops are indiscriminate when a
refusal to consider AQM and fair queuing is what led Arista to this absurdity
in the first place, and you're presuming that latencies would still be
astronomical in a world without massive queues.
A 10GbE network in a datacenter without bufferbloat would have RTTs orders of
magnitude smaller than the 100ms queuing delay Arista considers acceptable;
the effects of a congestion event would be ancient history by the time
Arista's queues could drain. Even outside the datacenter, 100ms is a pretty
long time for most connections in a managed-queue world. A congestion event on
a device using fq_codel won't kill your DNS request or TCP handshake; it'll
slow down an established flow and if you're using ECN you won't even lose a
packet. It's only in a DDoS-like scenario of thousands of unresponsive
connections (such as TCPs with a large initial window) beginning to transmit
simultaneously that you'd see some flows getting unfairly penalized, but
things would equalize within a few RTTs if the traffic was real TCP and not a
true DDoS. You only see it take _minutes_ for a download's throughput to
recover if you're going over multiple satellite links or through a severely
bloated queue.
~~~
iofj
Okay make it one in a million. You will still be able to tell, and still see
the phenomena I'm talking about.
------
chopsywa
I was the OP in the Whirlpool post. I use Mikrotik extensively to manage
connections and have done for many years. This has only become an issue
recently and it has happened enough times now for me to ascertain that it is
when there is a Windows 10, or Office 2016 using the new Windows update doing
its thing. I have tried to limit the issue by creating limited new tcp
connections per second to any given IP address and even limit maximum
concurrent connections.I have seen on occasion during this issue occuring a
sudden huge burst of new outbound connections. I was thinking this would cause
a type of DOS attack with thousands of SYN ACKS coming back.
The real kicker is that the connections are all to servers (Akamai) on port
80, so any serious blocking breaks all web browsing. The cynic in me says the
whole Windows 10 update thing has been made to operate in lockdown
environments when non-well known ports are blocked. Intentional, or not, the
Internet is basically broken while this happens as Windows is ubiquitous and
people all over the world who have successfully used inbound rate limiting to
create successful shared Internet connections are going to be getting angry
support calls. I hope my post goes viral so it starts to get seen by the likes
of Microsoft and Akamai engineers. The local ISP I spoke to where I initially
noticed this problem pretty much fobbed me off with the old "nobody else has
reported the issue."
~~~
riskable
Well, the good news is that this is a temporary problem. There's only so many
computers out there that will get the Windows 10 upgrade and presumably that
number will drop like a rock as PCs either get upgraded or the users switch to
Linux ;)
~~~
MertsA
Windows 10 updates going forward will use the same method.
------
jsnell
Where did the HN submission title get UDP from? I don't see anyone in that
thread suggesting that the updates were done in UDP, and all the traffic in
the trace file is all TCP.
The trace is indeed a total mess, but I'm not convinced it's anything to do
with TCP acceleration. There's absolutely massive levels of reordering and
packet duplication happening in ways which are not consistent with TCP
acceleration at all. It's much more likely that it's some kind of
configuration problem elsewhere in the network.
From eyeballing the trace, almost half the payload segments there are
duplicates, while a much smaller proportion are retransmits. (You can tell the
difference e.g. using IP ids or by TCP timestamp TSvals / TSecrs).
~~~
dang
We changed the title back to what the article says. The submitted title was
"Windows 10 updates via UDP bypassing QoS restrictions".
Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you please not to rewrite titles except when
they are misleading or linkbait. It seems like in this case the rewrite made
it more misleading.
If anyone suggests a better title, we can change it again.
~~~
RachelF
Apologies for that, I was trying to summarize the linked article in the title,
not to mislead.
------
voltagex_
PCAP is at [https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-
replies.cfm?t=2530363&...](https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-
replies.cfm?t=2530363&p=3#r52). It's not UDP.
I'll have to see whether this is what causes my 100 megabit downlink to behave
as if it's capped at 30 megabits sometimes. The router can barely keep up as
it is.
~~~
riskable
I've had a problem similar to this with my 150 megabit downlink (sigh, wish I
had that much upload). The thing to remember when troubleshooting these sorts
of problems is this:
Not all iptables rules are created equal.
State tracking has _significantly_ more overhead than other types of
rules/filtering/shaping (even though state tracking is required for certain
types of shaping). You may or may not have already done this but if not try
this:
iptables -t raw -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 443 -j NOTRACK
iptables -t raw -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j NOTRACK
(replace eth0 with your Internet interface)
State tracking on port 443 and 80 is mostly useless and it's where you're
likely to see the majority of your (high bandwidth) traffic. Setting NOTRACK
on those ports can make a HUGE difference while still enabling your squirrel-
powered router (let me guess: It requires no active cooling? haha) to shape
traffic like "teh big boys."
~~~
voltagex_
For years and years I was on ~8 megabit ADSL. I thought 100 megabit fibre
would solve all my problems but it just moves my problems into a different
class.
Thanks for that info. As soon as I can work out why the default congestion
control / single connection speed on FreeBSD 10 is so bad, I'll be running
that as a router.
------
NeutronBoy
I've actually seem the same thing recently - updates will soak up all
available bandwidth, to the point where web browsing is basically impossible.
~~~
xufi
For clarification, Is it soaking up bandwith because its doing the (I forget
the term) where it uses your connecion for other Windows 10 users while they
update?
~~~
colanderman
"Peer-to-peer transfer" is the term. You mean this hellspawn?
[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/solutions/products/media-
delive...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/solutions/products/media-
delivery/netsession-interface-faq.jsp)
I have seen my wife's Windows 10 computer upload crap from time to time and I
suspected but could not confirm that it is this. How is this even possible,
given that we're behind a NAT? TCP simultaneous open, I suppose?
I've not yet been able to figure out how to block these shenanigans. I
_really_ don't appreciate MS/Akamai profiting off of my (rather limited)
upload bandwidth.
~~~
xufi
Ah yes thats the term, I believe (not for downloading) but another MS app
Skype uses the same thing when youre talking to someone on a lower
bandwith/ADSL connection. I believe it uses the same TCP mechanism of some
sort which I havent looked in to.
~~~
jodrellblank
SuperNodes, which Skype used up until Microsoft bought them out (in May 2011)
and stopped doing that (in April 2012)?
[http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-
replaces-p2p-s...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-
replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/)
~~~
xufi
Oh I see. I figured they still used them. Skypes Ui sure has suffered sadly.
~~~
riskable
It's not just the UI that suffered. The latency and performance of Skype calls
dropped significantly after they switched from P2P to Microsoft Notification
Protocol 24 (aka MSN Messenger Protocol)...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Notification_Protoco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Notification_Protocol)
They also introduced serious security problems when they made that change...
So instead of Skype messages going from one client directly to another they go
through Microsoft's servers (where they are stored and intercepted by TLAs)
_unencrypted_.
They also introduced a new "feature" whereby their systems read everything you
write:
[http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Skype-with-
care-M...](http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Skype-with-care-
Microsoft-is-reading-everything-you-write-1862870.html)
------
0XAFFE
It's interesting how on the forum this is totaly not about Windows 10, but
more about Akamai and here all people are bashing on Windows.
~~~
chopsywa
Sadly my findings are that it is the new Microsoft update protocol and Akamai
in combination.
------
thomas-b
I've seen on multiple win10 laptops where it just get all download bandwidth
(no noticeable upload) to a point where websites won't open and skype looses
connection. That's on a 5Mb line. I do see many connections opened by a single
process on Microsoft IPs mentioned.
I believe it was really only update related but I saw it happen when actually
no updates were available. I just ended up limiting the corresponding process
bandwidth whenever it gets annoying.
One into the other, I'm mainly just very surprised this kind of thing can
happen. Except that I'm fairly happy with win10 though as opposed to the usual
MS bashing we can hear. One thing into
------
mcguire
A key part:
" _It was the same range of source addresses and this was with Windows server
and then Office updates. What seems to be happening is that instead of the
sending server reducing its window size when packets are dropped, it just
keeps re-sending large windows, which are obviously being dropped at my end.
The queue algorithm has no idea of this and it will be letting packets through
at a rate it thinks is correct, so the flow continues even though much of the
traffic is dropped. However as the traffic keeps coming, the link is totally
saturated._ "
Translation: someone broke TCP flow control.
------
wmf
Windows has a feature to perform _low_ priority downloads of updates called
Background Intelligent Transfer Service: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc776905(v=ws.10...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc776905\(v=ws.10\).aspx)
There's also the Windows Update Delivery Optimization P2P feature:
[http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-
update...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-update-
delivery-optimization-faq)
~~~
colanderman
The problem with BITS is that it assumes that the computer it's on is the only
computer on the network. (In a switched network, how could it know otherwise?)
So it will start bulk downloads while other users are trying to use the
network interactively, with predictable consequences.
I basically just configure my network as if everything connected to it – both
clients and the ISP – are bad actors trying to DoS me (albeit, a DoS regulated
by TCP Vegas). Between my ISP's bufferbloat and these shenanigans from
MS/Akamai, it's not a bad approximation.
~~~
wmf
IIRC BITS used Vegas-like (or these days we'd say uTP-like) heuristics to
detect cross traffic and back off, but who knows what the latest version is
doing.
------
noonespecial
This isn't a new problem for us VOIP'ers. Bad actors have been breaking TCP
for a while. We solved by putting a great big server/router up at a datacenter
with a fat link. Any connection that misbehaves by ignoring TCP drops or
flooding with UDP for more than a few seconds gets rerouted through that
server. (New connections are made through this route.) It has _outbound_ rate
limiting down the pipe to the local networks.
Keeps the local networks happy and fast. Isn't as expensive as routing
everything through a datacenter because only misbehaving IP's get rerouted.
Had the added side benefit that I could "protect" offices from the
"involuntary" win10 upgrade.
------
Sami_Lehtinen
New phenomenon? I think it was first VOIP apps I ever used with Windows 3.11
which already had some protocol level tricks to work around TCP limitations.
Like using ICMP and or UDP traffic. Hardly news. I've been thinking this since
reading about TCP for the very first time. I've even published a concept of
"Bandwidth Hog", which is transfer protocol designed to optimize your
transport. By stealing others bandwidth, aka not sharing it fairly.
[http://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/bandwidth-hog-quick-
concep...](http://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/bandwidth-hog-quick-concept-
draft)
~~~
colanderman
It's "new" in that it's been deployed by the most widespread desktop OS, so
networks _without_ compromised machines or bad actors have to deal with it
now.
------
KaiserPro
Ah, this looks like using multiple TCP streams to counter latency based
throughput. Its not really new, its used in VFX to shuttle large amounts of
data about.
------
uudecode
Is it not OK to criticize Microsoft on HN? This title was changed to remove
any mention of Windows. Just curious.
~~~
e40
I think it's that they (HN mods) like to use the original title.
~~~
MertsA
Especially when the submitted title contains relevant context for the article.
Can't be having that.
~~~
mikeash
The submitted title was just plain wrong.
~~~
MertsA
After looking at what the original title was, I agree. In this case it needed
to be changed but just dropping the part about UDP would have been fine. In
most cases though it honestly seems like when HN titles are changed it's
changed for the worst. It looks like I'm not the only one who feels that way
either.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4102013)
~~~
mikeash
Go ahead and fight it in those cases, but this is not at all good example.
------
0x0
Really, pushing Windows 10 has now become so urgent we can't let TCP slow us
down?!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brazen Careerist: Answering the toughest interview question - brlittle
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/02/19/the-answer-to-the-toughest-interview-question/
======
brk
Interesting, and we've all heard this thing about whoever says a number first
loses.
Having been on the hiring and hiree side of the table, I don't think this is
as universally true as people make it out to be. I've both paid more than
budgeted, and been paid more than the budget, on several occasions when it
seemed the "fit" was right.
I usually try to get a feel for the salary range, the phase of the company
(pre-launch, post-launch but small sales, sales flowing, etc.), and the
overall position. If I can get the company (or candidate) to offer a number
first, that's great. If not, so be it. I think that more often than not I've
told candidates what the salary is for a position before they've asked. If
they would've worked for less, oh well, I'd rather compensate all members of
my team fairly... employees that got the salary shaft soon find out and become
bitter. If they wanted more, they can reconsider or negotiate. It matters
little to me when I'm in the hiring position.
------
icky
If you've got someone in the company recommending you apply, discreetly ask
them what range to expect. Worked for me! ;-)
------
prakash
What Penelope mentions is not necessarily true. The interview candidate can
give a number an set the bar at the high end.
Read Bargaining for Advantage by G Richard Shell -- this has more info on what
I am talking about and is probably the only book you need on the subject.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Insecurity in the Jungle (disk) - cperciva
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-06-03-insecurity-in-the-jungle.html
======
tptacek
Summary: Jungledisk doesn't protect the integrity of encrypted data, and
doesn't securely derive keys and is thus vulnerable to fast offline attacks.
The thing Jungledisk right is to use the same block cipher mode as Tarsnap
(and, incidentally, virtually every mainstream encrypted storage system).
The impact of using unauthenticated encryption to store data is that your
backup provider could end up owning your machine. Attackers can carefully
choose which data to corrupt. They can exploit the randomization of corrupted
decryption to set up conditions for memory corruption exploits, and, in more
sophisticated but totally realistic attacks, exploit guesses about known
plaintext to produce attacker-controlled nonrandom plaintexts. A backup
provider with client-authenticated crypto can't do that, because the keys that
encrypt the data also ensure it's integrity.
The password storage issue is no different than any other password storage
problem; again, direct your attention to <http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-
store-a-password/>, mentally substituting "storage of password hash" to
"derivation of AES key".
To my mind, the key derivation is the real problem here. A surprisingly large
number of secure encryption storage products don't ensure data integrity.
Realistic attacks against that vulnerability are feasible but difficult: you'd
have to be targeted.
If you're going to write an article about how a competitor's encryption is
inferior to yours and cast it as a vulnerability report, I'd suggest not
recommending your own encryption scheme as the replacement. The scrypt
recommendation in this article sticks out like a sore thumb. Virtually nothing
uses scrypt.
We can nerd out on CTR mode vs. CBC mode; I'm starting to come around to
Colin's take on CTR because of ciphertext indistinguishability as I see more
practical vulnerabilities that take advantage of it. I think the padding issue
is a red herring. CBC padding is easier to get right than absolute rock solid
reliable generation of CTR nonces and absolute rock solid management of CTR
counters, which are things I see people get wrong regularly.
Distinguishability is the real problem with CBC.
~~~
cperciva
_To my mind, the key derivation is the real problem here. A surprisingly large
number of secure encryption storage products don't ensure data integrity.
Realistic attacks against that vulnerability are feasible but difficult: you'd
have to be targeted._
I think the lack of integrity is more important than you're making it sound.
There's a lot of situations where a lack of integrity can be exploited to
create a lack of privacy too.
But the main reason I mentioned the lack of integrity first is that I needed
to mention the lack of HMAC to explain why they had the ridiculous "salted key
hash" construct.
_If you're going to write an article about how a competitor's encryption is
inferior to yours and cast it as a vulnerability report, I'd suggest not
recommending your own encryption scheme as the replacement. The scrypt
recommendation in this article sticks out like a sore thumb. Virtually nothing
uses scrypt._
I think you're misstating what I wrote a bit. I said that scrypt is the state
of the art in the field -- which it is -- and that given that Jungle Disk was
around before I developed scrypt, they should have used PBKDF2 or bcrypt.
~~~
tptacek
I'd rather geek out about CTR v CBC than harp on the scrypt recommendation.
Consider the scrypt thing a friendly style note. You wrote an article about a
competitor's insecurities. When you do that, don't recommend they adopt your
own cryptosystem unless (like CRI had to do with DPA countermeasures) they
have to. Here, it just made you look unnecessarily petty.
What privacy attacks were you thinking of? Call some of them out.
~~~
cperciva
_Consider the scrypt thing a friendly style note._
Note taken. :-)
_What privacy attacks were you thinking of?_
Things like replacing files with malware.
~~~
tptacek
Yeah, we were saying the same thing, I think, but you said it more clearly.
------
rarrrrrr
My understanding is that SpiderOak, Tarsnap, and Wuala all do this correctly
(using one of PBKDF2, bcrypt, or scrypt.)
Colin - Perhaps the companies in the backup space that put effort into
handling this carefully should work together and create a PSA style website
with a matrix chart of how the varies providers handle "encrypted" data. Make
it a separate domain and do our best to be elaborately objective about it. Any
interest?
~~~
tptacek
What block cipher mode does SpiderOak use, and how does it verify the
authenticity of its data? Tarsnap goes through a lot of extra trouble to MAC
its data; few other providers do. You'd hate to see everyone treat key
derivation as a shorthand for "doing all of encryption right".
I looked on the SpiderOak site, saw a lot of material on how keys are derived
and not stored on SpiderOak servers (great!), but didn't see a lot of details
about the mechanics of actually encrypting and checking data.
~~~
rarrrrrr
Thanks for asking. If you're interested, would be very happy to discuss
SpiderOak's crypto strategy in depth with you the next time I'm in Chicago.
Could share source code, etc. IMO, most interesting parts are the key scoping,
which allow users to selectively publish ("share") portions of stored data by
publishing the appropriately scoped keys.
SpiderOak uses AES256 in CFB mode with authentication via HMAC. The code is
careful about unique nonce/counter usage, crypto code is confined to specific
modules that rarely change, and reviewed by cryptographers outside SpiderOak.
Client and server have minimal trust relationship.
Being paranoid about data integrity (not only because of crypto issues, but
also because bitrot happens routinely at petabyte scale) the data
authentication happens repetitively at a few different layers. From all end
user devices, we see about one bit error per 4.2tb of upload transactions.
~~~
Locke1689
Why CFB vs CTR? Is there some reason parallelization is unneeded or
impossible?
~~~
tptacek
Also... what counters?
(Regardless: happy to get together anytime in Chicago).
------
imajes
@cperciva: Thanks for this; now i'll convert my 8char ascii system password to
a 10char one. Do you have any data showing how large a password needs to be to
make it ridiculously expensive for a TLA (gency) to commit a large amount of
hardware to cracking? i.e. how much time past the 10chars does it consume ?
~~~
cperciva
It depends on your KDF. MD5 is ridiculously weak; the standard MD5-crypt is
1000 times stronger; bcrypt is better yet; and scrypt is vastly stronger.
The best source for this my scrypt paper, really.
~~~
SoftwareMaven
What license is the scrypt code released under?
~~~
tptacek
It's BSD licensed but probably not easy to integrate on your platform. BCrypt
is an easier choice. When we see Java and .NET implementations of scrypt,
we'll start recommending it, but I'll be honest and tell you that we rarely
recommend scrypt today.
------
euroclydon
If, like me, you're wondering: "Does 1Password use all the stuff?"
<http://agilebits.com/products/1Password/user_guide>
~~~
jmtulloss
More details here:
[http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/agile_keychain_design.h...](http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/agile_keychain_design.html)
~~~
euroclydon
Thanks, that's the page I was on -- stupid AJAX navigation!
Anyway, the document seems *nix specific. Does Windows have a /dev/random?
------
kevindication
Stupid question: Why is the 34 character password easier to crack than the 8
character password?
(Upon re-reading I think I may have missed the assumption that the long
password only contains english text, no punctuation, numerics, etc.)
~~~
cperciva
Yes, the 34-character is English text.
------
PonyGumbo
Given the available options, what's the best option for automated backups?
~~~
dchest
Apart from Tarsnap, maybe Duplicity <http://duplicity.nongnu.org>?
~~~
cperciva
Agreed. There are some things I dislike about duplicity (e.g., its reliance
upon GPG) but it's probably what I would use if I couldn't use Tarsnap.
~~~
click170
What makes you shy away from backup apps that rely on GPG?
~~~
tptacek
Cryptographers hate GPG. GPG is ugly as sin†. Unfortunately (and I mean that
only with a little bit of snark), GPG mostly still works, in the sense of
standing up to active, informed attackers with modern techniques.
† _For instance, look how it handles message integrity._
~~~
cperciva
Your definition of "mostly still works" is "it's secure as long as you ignore
the vulnerabilities people keep on finding"?
~~~
tptacek
This is a slippery slope argument that ends in you arguing that the best
tested cryptosystem in common use (TLS) is _also_ insecure. All cryptosystems
have vulnerabilities; the question is, how workable is the system after those
flaws are fixed.
~~~
cperciva
Well, yes. I also think SSL is too complicated for people to get right. ;-)
~~~
tptacek
For the record, I respect the critiques practitioners have of GPG.
Unfortunately, their alternatives tend to be ad-hoc. There should be a clean,
simple, GPG-like standard, perhaps based on ECC and AE cipher constructions,
to replace GPG. But until that happens, in the choice between ugly and
workable vs. simple and fragile, ugly and workable is the right choice for
most people.
As always I think you drastically underestimate how dangerous this stuff is
because you've dedicated your career to it, while normal implementors --- even
crypto enthusiasts (look at Tor and SSH) --- have little of the nuance
required to get it right.
I like the fundamentals of TLS more than you do; I don't think it's a bad or
needlessly complex protocol (except maybe session resumption). I see that
reasonable people can differ on that point. But, _very importantly_ , TLS is
also a vehicle for collecting and implementing the best known methods in
cryptography. I think you tend to overlook that.
As always, my opinions are as a software security practitioner and not as a
cryptographer, since I am not one.
~~~
sigil
It sounds like Colin is taking issue with openssl the implementation, while
you're defending TLS the protocol. In that case, I agree with you both.
(As an aside, it's great to see two of my favorite HN commenters in the
security field engaged in conversation at this level.)
~~~
tptacek
The appearance and track record† of the code in OpenSSL does the credibility
of TLS no favors, and it is totally understandable why someone who had to deal
with software security for a platform that ships and depends on OpenSSL would
become allergic to it.
But, two responses to that:
* First, what Joel Spolsky says about rewrites. Sometimes code is ugly for a reason. Clean rewrites of OpenSSL will inevitably introduce bugs. Introducing bugs in SSL†† implementations is perilous.
* Second, there are mature alternatives to OpenSSL. For instance, most? browsers don't use it.
† _In fairness, that's because OpenSSL dates back to a time when nobody was
getting C software security even close to right._
†† _I use TLS and SSL interchangeably, which is a foible I should work on
correcting, but the difference doesn't matter much here._
------
drivebyacct2
I continue to not understand how people imagine these services working (de-
dupe, block level updates, etc) without access to the unsecured version of the
data. As for the claims about what Amazon could do to your data... there's
even less sinister options. S3 is _not_ 100% safe storage. There's a chance
for bit rot and that may occur. If you don't check the file yourself, you
won't know. Again, that seems a bit inevitable, no?
edit: left out a 'not'
~~~
gst
De-dupe: Wuala encrypts the file with a key derived from the file itself. This
key is then encrypted with the user's key and both (the file and the encrypted
key) are uploaded to the cloud. Disadvantage: If the file is known to an
attacker (i.e., a copyright holder) the attacker can possibly find out which
users have access to this file. Advantage: Allows for de-duplication, but is
more secure than Dropbox.
Block-level updates: I don't see a problem with this. Partition the file into
blocks on the client (before the encryption). The server doesn't need access
to the data for this.
~~~
tptacek
As Steve Weis pointed out in an earlier thread about schemes like this,
deriving keys from the contents of files breaks semantic security. Lay
engineers reason about this problem the way you just did: "the RIAA can tell I
have Lady Gaga MP3s". But practitioners are worried about much more subtle and
devastating flaws, particularly in cases where attackers may exercise some
control over the blocks being encrypted.
Any scheme that derives passwords from file contents gives me the willies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Founders Shouldn't Delegate Support Too Early - stevenklein
http://blog.statuspage.io/why-founders-shouldnt-delegate-support-too-early
======
kapilkale
We faced this problem at my last startup, and I think we handled it reasonably
well.
The team remained 3 founders until Mar 2012 (1 year after launch) when
customer support and other operational tasks started _significantly_
distracting us from more critical things like building product and growing the
userbase. At that point we hired a community manager to handle support / ops.
We were profitable by then.
There were a few major advantages in delaying this long:
\- Doing support ourselves helped us achieve product-market fit. It's critical
to be in contact with as many users as possible in the early days.
\- Saved money. Early on, a community manager would have had 2 hours of real
work per day, and would have cost us $50K / year. Didn't make sense unless
there were 6+ hours of work to do per day.
\- Kept us from building support tools. Since we were all technical, we just
ran everything from the command line. And when we hired our first community
manager, we hired someone with immense coding aptitude. They handled support
from the command line for nearly a year when we finally built out enough tools
for a nontechnical person to do the job.
------
misiti3780
I completely agree - I have seen multiple start ups go from bootstrap to
raising money and then filling desks just because they think that is what they
need to do - the first place they off load is usually customer support. On a
side note, I usually avoid working with / for companies that do this just
because I have always thought it was bad signal.
------
conorgil145
I think this a great approach to creating customer evangelists! I am an early
employee (not founder), and spending time in our ticketing system helping
users has given me good insight into where we can improve our
tutorials/FAQ/etc type materials.
Users also do not expect to get a detailed response directly from the engineer
who developed the feature they are asking about. They are usually pleasantly
surprised. A few weeks ago, I spent about 30 minutes answering a technical
question for a user and he was so happy with my response that he tweeted about
it. It made me feel pretty incredible, we have an excited user, AND we now
have the start of a good article for our FAQ section relating to that feature.
Definitely time well spent.
------
laurex
Totally true. Our founders learned this too, there is a story about it here.
[http://www.olark.com/customers/why-we-do-all-hands-
support](http://www.olark.com/customers/why-we-do-all-hands-support).
Ultimately the lessons you learn doing support apply to anyone on the team who
deal with product or customers (i.e. pretty much everyone).
------
nbarry
I'm a huge fan of delegation, though I think the author's points are all
excellent. Here's how recommend doing both: Hire someone to process and review
customer complaints. Give them very specific guidance about how they're to
handle customer concerns. If they can solve the problem within some
predetermined short amount of time (say, 20 minutes), they should solve it. If
it will take significantly longer, then they should escalate it to someone who
can probably solve it faster, and can provide a more remarkable support
experience.
The support screener should also summarize all the different types of tickets
we get into categories for executive review.
------
brandnewlow
I handled Perfect Audience support for the first 5 months after launch until
it just became overwhelming. We then tried moving to a rotation of engineers
and that was also overwhelming. Then we hired someone who's done a terrific
job of it. Nevertheless I still read maybe 50% of the support requests that
come in and help with support on the weekends to keep my head in the game.
------
gedrap
StatusPage blog posts from time to time pop up on the front page, and I read
all of them, from their very beginning. A great blog, well done guys, you
documented the process of working on a startup amazingly well.
Also a great example of content marketing for the target audience (which I'm
sure HN is). I guess those HN homepages contributed nicely to the growth? :)
------
bcx
I gave a talk about some caveats we ran into with delegating support early on:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs2NN-
qQZf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs2NN-qQZf0) a few years ago. In
particular it bundled up a lot of customer feedback inside of one
department/person and started isolating us from our customers.
------
aml183
Completely agree. Learning what your customers are thinking and understanding
needs will help you build a better product. If you delegate to others you will
lose touch with your customers which will ultimately hurt your startup.
Your customers also feel important if you have the founder emailing you. It
really makes you feel valuable as a customer.
------
vijayaggarwal
Completely agree. Those thinking of delegating/outsourcing customer support
should read Fred Reichheld's book on _Net Promoter System_ and I'm sure they
will change their mind.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your Treadmill Desk Is Over. Now It's All About the Hamster Wheel - 1337biz
http://sfist.com/2014/09/18/your_standing_desk_is_over_now_its.php
======
AdmiralAsshat
Coming soon: Sipper water bottle attachment with soylent refill packs.
------
pknight
I hope this is not meant to be serious.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Researchers wirelessly hack a Corvette's brakes using an insurance dongle - Tekker
http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/11/9130203/wireless-hack-corvette-brakes-insurance-dongle
======
stephengillie
Other article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10042834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10042834)
(wired.com)
\---
The hack requires the car have an OnBoard Diagnostics (OBD) probe installed.
_The specific dongle in question is made by French company Mobile Devices and
distributed by a San Francisco insurance startup called Metromile, the latter
of which has a partnership with Uber._
After that it's an SMS attack to root the dongle. The dongle lets them into
the CAN bus, which is how the Jeep and other cars have been attacked.
_“If you put this into a Prius, there are libraries of attacks ready to use
online. "_
\---
Think you're safe if you just don't use one of these dongles? You're only as
safe as the other cars on the road:
_An executive order from the White House in March called for federal agencies
with fleets of more than 20 vehicles to use telematics systems whenever
possible to improve vehicle efficiencies. That could mean many thousands more
government-owned cars and trucks using Internet-connected dongles in the near
future._
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Book Machine at Harvard Bookstore - Jakob
http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2009/09/event-book-machine-at-harvard-bookstore.html
======
NathanKP
I wrote a better article about the Espresso Book Machine about five months
ago. It has quite a few more details for those who are interested.
[http://inkweaver-review.blogspot.com/2009/05/espresso-
book-m...](http://inkweaver-review.blogspot.com/2009/05/espresso-book-machine-
better-than.html)
~~~
10ren
There's one here in Melbourne already, out of 15 in the world.
<http://www.ondemandbooks.com/our_ebm_locations.htm> We usually get cool stuff
last.
$US100,000 is a long way from mass-market, but we already have cheap
home/office colour laser printers, so it seems conceivable. Imagine one in
every library, kinkos, post office, video store... very science fiction.
~~~
NathanKP
Yeah it is very far off from the mass-market yet. And the problem is that
before the price goes down it will have to reach a sort of saturation point
after which its own popularity will take over.
You're lucky to live near on of the fifteen in the world. ;)
~~~
10ren
Actually, it doesn't sound too promising:
_This bookstore has an Espresso Book Machine which sometimes works._
[http://www.librarything.com/venue/34802/Angus-&-Robertso...](http://www.librarything.com/venue/34802/Angus-&-Robertson
---Melbourne-CBD---Cnr-Bourke-&-Elizabeth-Streets)
~~~
10ren
I went and had a look, but it wasn't running. Apparently, it's usually on
between 10am and 3pm (though that's not stated on their website).
There was a sample book, and though the cover and binding were great, the
printing was a significantly less bold than a real book. Maybe low toner, but
that was the show-off "sample" book... The print also looked just like those
pdf's you see of scanned books - not as good as a real book. I was
unimpressed, because I think it could easily look much better.
The catalog is only about 100 books, more expensive than I'd thought, starting
at about $16 AUD (about $14 USD). Range should change with Google's massive
out-of-copyright catalog - price too, I hope.
------
elblanco
This is very cool tech. Hopefully it finds it's way to pretty much everywhere.
It's a mystery to me why it hasn't shown up in every Border's and Barnes &
Nobles yet. I'd gladly pay a few bucks to get some classic literature printed
on demand.
------
marram
[http://www.thesponty.com/events/242040/Unveiling_of_The_Book...](http://www.thesponty.com/events/242040/Unveiling_of_The_Book_Machine_at_Harvard_Bookstore)
~~~
alec
Why not just link to the actual Harvard Book Store event page?
<http://www.harvard.com/events/press_release.php?id=2390>
------
10ren
video of version 1 <http://www.bookshop.unimelb.edu.au/bookshop/p?Z.ebm>
video of version 2 <http://www.ondemandbooks.com/video2.htm>
The videos have a boring start but become cool.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Benefits of a NOLS Education - rjett
http://findthepulse.com/blog/2008/09/16/the-benefits-of-a-nols-education/#more-51
======
jonas_b
Sounds a bit like the army without taking crap and doing idiot chores all day
long.
On a more serious note I genuinly believe that if not made obligatory,
everyone should be strongly encouraged to spend an extended time in the
outdoors. It's a great way to get to know other people on a profound level,
while also getting to know yourself.
In addition to the skills you learn there, the wild has a way of putting
things in perspective and instill a sense of belonging. As counter intuitive
as it may sound, you're never more in touch with mankind as when you leave it
all behind for a moment.
------
robg
I can't recommend NOLS enough. I did a month-long course after undergrad in
Australia. Take a semester off from school and do a course for credit instead.
Or, if you're out of school, find time to do a course that's as long as you
can afford. The skills you learn are innumerable - both practical and
psychological - and the views you earn are majestic.
------
JoelSutherland
Another alternative is Outward Bound. I went on a 21 day mountaineering course
in the Sierra Nevadas that was life-changing.
Having met with people who have done both, Outward Bound offers courses where
the most demanding are about the same as a NOLS course.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Scale of the Universe 2 - oliverdamian
http://www.htwins.net/scale2/
======
ari_elle
A job well done. Absolutely astonishing !!!
Also: Nice music! This portrays exactly the wonder i feel and almost
_spiritual mindset_ i am in when looking up in a cloud-free sky at night,
being aware of the mind boggling structure surrounding the earth :)
Some kind of automatic travel through the animation with a manually settable
speed would be very nice in my opinion.
An awesome interactive feature would be:
-> Little symbol on every depicted thing/structure to fold out a short definition of the object with a link leading to more detailed descriptions (e.g. Wikipedia articles).
_This way it would be especially a great exploring tool for children_
And big thanks for making it available in different languages!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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We're coach.me now and we're all in on coaching - nstart
http://blog.coach.me/lift-now-coach-me/
======
tonystubblebine
I gave a lot of inside thinking on product hunt today:
[http://www.producthunt.com/posts/coach-
me](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/coach-me)
~~~
nstart
Hey, it's great that you saw this thread. I started reusing lift about two
weeks ago, and it's pretty interesting how much of a behaviour change it can
induce.
I'm still not ready however to buy into getting myself a coaching plan since a
lot of the plans feel like people motivating you to do something everyday. For
things like drawing which is something I started to do recently, I would like
some way to have a mentor who could look at what I've drawn and give me
advice, and practical examples of how to improve. Someone who could identify
my weak points and craft exercises for me to improve on.
The problem I've faced so far though is, none of the coaches seem like that's
what they'll do. Maybe they can do it. But it doesn't feel like that's what
they want to do. With bios referring more to motivation and accountability I
feel like I'll just get a person who gives me a pep message each day. Which is
what the coachdotme app has done anyways.
This is my barrier to entry into the paid coaching plans. To sum it up,
1) the current experience doesn't let me feel like I'm personally connected to
the coach
2) I don't know if this coach is ready to mentor me the way I'd like to be
mentored
3) Kind of like the 1st point, but there's no way the current experience makes
me go "omg. What I would do to be mentored by that person". Just as an
example, after watching DrawWithJazza and proko on YouTube, if they showed up
on coachdotme, I'd be pretty stoked. Instead, the top result for draw is some
max person I've never heard of and while I'm sure he's good, I can't get
myself to do the leg work to find out.
Just some feedback I hoped you'd be interested in.. Cheers. And good luck with
the pivot
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The world’s newest mineral is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before - ghosh
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/26/the_worlds_newest_mineral_is_unlike_anything_weve_ever_seen_before_partner/
======
danieltillett
At first sight this story looks to be some sort of joke - really polar bear
peninsular in Australia, but it seems to be real. Here is the original paper
[http://minmag.geoscienceworld.org/content/78/1/131.abstract](http://minmag.geoscienceworld.org/content/78/1/131.abstract)
------
biot
Original source:
[http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/140424/the-w...](http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/140424/the-
worlds-newest-mineral-unlike-anything-weve-ever-seen)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Whenever – a sticky notes app with date countdown - chenzhepeter
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whenever-sticky-notes-wit/nfbcejefjldiddbganfjdlmgiafffhpd
======
bossivy
Nice app! Love the idea. The time could be more precise though.
~~~
chenzhepeter
Thanks, glad you like it. Currently it is only for date but I can add optional
view for hours as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Privacy restrictions on Facebook posts are visible to users - compsciphd
https://plus.google.com/110402443423554417660/posts/YgQGEZPWvPk
======
mkjones
Hey folks - thanks for the post. I'm an engineering manager at Facebook and
worked a bit on this issue earlier today. As some people have pointed out,
we've since pushed an update to the Graph API.
A bug in a recent update to our code caused this unintended availability of
some metadata about the audience of posts. Keep in mind, the intended audience
of the actual posts wasn't affected. So far, this is the only report we've
received about the availability of the metadata, and we addressed the
situation within a few hours.
As always, developers must abide by our Platform Policies, including
obligations that protect the information they access through our APIs. For
example, developers may not use someone's information outside of the
application without the person's permission. Additionally, people can control
whether applications have access to their information and posts through their
settings.
~~~
smokeyj
What kinds of systems are in place to make sure private information stays
private? Facebook invites so many people to spill their personal lives on the
internet, and many of them are under the impression they have privacy and
control over their data. When this trust is gone, everything about facebook
will go through a mental-filter consisting of "What happens when Facebook's
permissions bug-out, and my boss has full access to my profile?", and
conversations will go the way of small-talk. I guess that's what people should
be asking, but it seems only the tech-savvy realize there is no privacy.
~~~
autophil
Be assured that Facebook's permissions will bug out time and time again. Just
like when Facebook changes or adds a new feature - permissions get clawed back
to being public.
Why are people so forgetful about this? Maybe the answer is similar to why
some people stay in abusive relationships.
~~~
adgar
> Maybe the answer is similar to why some people stay in abusive
> relationships.
As someone who was in an abusive relationship for a couple years, who found
himself giving everything for nothing in return and not understanding why
everything sucked: I can sort of see your point. The bits and pieces are
there. But it's a really, really stretched metaphor.
Abusive relationships involve deeply personal manipulation and that's why they
get such a hold over you. Consumer apathy is not even close to being directly
convinced by someone you love - often using your own fears against you - to
stop caring about your own needs.
------
badclient
I am one of the biggest fan of facebook's privacy settings and bat for them
for providing such granular control. However, this has creeped the fuck out of
me! I make extensive use of this feature and am going back through a bunch of
posts reevaluating the settings knowing the person can see it.
Almost 100% of my posts in past 6 months have custom settings but there is no
way I can go through each one of them.
This is HUGE from my perspective. I am typically the guy to tell others
constantly bitching about fb's privacy settings to move on. But alas, the day
has come when I am officially scared to use facebook.
~~~
res0nat0r
> This is HUGE from my perspective. I am typically the guy to tell others
> constantly bitching about fb's privacy settings to move on. But alas, the
> day has come when I am officially scared to use facebook.
Um, what kinds of friends do you have on Facebook? Maybe you shouldn't be
friending these people in the first place.
~~~
smokeyj
Maybe privacy controls should offer privacy, instead of tricky-dick
shenanigans.
~~~
res0nat0r
This isn't "tricky dick shenanigians", it's an oversight of one team working
on one small part of the entire Facebook infrastructure. It is cool to hate
Facebook on HN now, because they make a lot of money and the audience here is
predominately trying to bootstrap a startup but that doesn't change the fact
that one of the most popular and largest sites on the Internet has an issue
which was developed most likely by a few engineers.
These amateur hour type comments which seem to always follow Facebook posts
anymore seem to say more about the fact that more and more HN commenters have
no experience working in an enterprise environment and believe their 10
instance AWS based startup they are currently involved with somehow is
comparable to the Facebook ecosystem.
~~~
smokeyj
Who's hating on Facebook because they have money? I'm hating on Facebook
because they can't secure a CRUD app, and don't really seem to care much
either. This isn't the first occurrence of a permissions snafu, which tells me
they should invest some more of their bundles into QA and testing. But then
again, click-bots probably offer a better ROI.
~~~
res0nat0r
They do care, note the top post of this story now is from a FB employee
stating they've fixed the error 7 hours after it was published.
Also Facebook is slightly more complex than a CRUD app.
~~~
smokeyj
Damage control != caring. Caring would be fixing their systems after the first
few privacy fuck-ups. Why are you so determined to paint FB in the best of
light?
Honest question. How many more breaches have to occur before you consider FB
reckless? Or is your allegiance unconditional?
~~~
res0nat0r
I'm not defending Facebook I just have actual experience working in real world
enterprise size companies. My previous gig was as an engineer for one of the
largest websites on the Internet. It employes thousands of engineers and
software developers working on hundreds of different small teams who all
release early and release often.
There isn't some magic wand that Zuck can somehow wave to prevent software
bugs from occurring. That's how things actually work in the real world.
~~~
smokeyj
You're evading the question. How many more privacy breaches have to occur
before you consider FB reckless? I'm not talking about security breaches, I'm
talking about code being pushed that breaks expected privacy functionality.
This is especially pathetic considering they're "enterprise". You would think
they engineered some kind of security test to check for these things. Why it's
not in the build-process points to negligence in my eyes.
------
badclient
While them showing the Except list may be a bug, them listing out individual
users you have made something visible to is a feature. I only started seeing
it yesterday and just went back to delete any individual user-only post that I
could easily remember having made. Here is what I see when I click on some of
the custom icons:
"These are other people who can see ----'s post. When you share with a
specific set of friends, they can see the audience. However, your friends
can't see when you put them on a list like Close Friends or Acquaintances."
This feature makes NO SENSE. Please remove this, facebook.
------
zzleeper
I think this may be already 'fixed', I'm seeing "privacy": {} in all of my
json results..
~~~
rhizome
Good thing Facebook has a rigorous and innovative hiring process that gets
them the best of the best.
~~~
human_error
You don't need best of the best to modify, most likely, one line of code. I'm
pretty sure anyone who can code would modify it correctly. You need the best
of the best who won't do this sort of issue in the first place.
~~~
badclient
I used to think I can tell fixes that require one line of code edit. But after
having worked on couple of somewhat complicated projects, even the smallest of
edits often impact at least some other system and even if they do not, because
of the possibility that they may, you have to do rigorous QA. So yes, while
this could easily be a 10 second fix for a new product with few users;
facebook likely spent several hours to implement a fix for this,
------
svachalek
I saw discussion of this a while back but unfortunately can't find the
original link. The essence of the argument boils down to the purpose of
privacy settings on postings; the concept of an "everybody can see this except
Bob" setting is completely stupid from a traditional security perspective, but
it makes sense if you're planning a surprise party. You don't expect Bob is
going to try to circumvent the security AT ALL because it's like punching
through a wet paper bag. It's like subtly tapping your watch at a party. It's
not an unbreakable code, it doesn't need to be, it isn't meant to be.
~~~
compsciphd
Let's say you're upset with someone, want to vent so say it anonymously and
restrict said person from seeing it, so you can vent publicly, and not
embarrass anyone (presuming people wont be able to figure out via the post
itself who you are talking about).
Because of this, your efforts might be wasted.
~~~
unreal37
As soon as that person sees your Facebook account using the mobile phone of
another friend of yours, the jig is up. Don't "vent publicly". Vent privately.
If you do this a lot, you will have publicly offended a lot of friends of
yours and it will backfire one day. One day someone will know who you are
venting about, and copy it and send it to them just for fun.
------
AustinGibbons
also added to the g+ but...
<https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/bounty/>
~~~
compsciphd
oh well, didn't know about that. This isn't really too complicated, I just
can't believe no one has looked at the json for the newsfeed before!
~~~
nikcub
I went through this as well, but it turns out that an outside perspective is
all that is required to noticing that something is unusual or not right.
Don't underestimate what you may consider to be normal or obvious, as it may
not be to others.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Would you use an API for your personal bank account? - elwell
Transaction notifications primarily. Open to other function ideas.
======
mschuster91
Most German banks already have this with the open HBCI standard, allowing
pretty much everything with a bank account. There are lots of apps for every
OS providing a wide range of banking features (simple tx list, sending tx,
some even placing recurring charges or draft other accounts).
German bank Fidor is known for sending a tx notify email immediately after
each transaction with your account card.
------
cryptolect
Hell yes.
I've been writing API code for a bunch of bitcoin-related exchanges lately,
and on reflection, it seems quaint that my bank doesn't offer an API, if only
to do read-only queries of transaction history and balances.
For instance, if I'm selling bitcoins on localbitcoins, and someone marks a
payment sent, it'd be really nice if I could automatically verify at the bank-
side, and then automatically release bitcoins to the buyer. The closest I
could get to that, is if they (the bank) offered email notifications upon
deposits, and I then parsed those to see if they were localbitcoins related.
So yes, I'd probably use an API, but I wouldn't expect more than read-only
access for average consumer accounts.
------
pwg
If my bank had a properly secure API to download the electronic statement
.pdf's they generate I'd use that.
It would beat the trouble of having to manually click to download each one,
and then being presented with a suggested filename of "session.cgi" to save
the thing into (i.e., they are not even smart enough to set the mime headers
to give a proper filename to the file).
~~~
glimcat
This is really easy to automate, even without an API. And by "easy" I mean it
should take around 30 minutes -- although you could take arbitrarily longer by
adding a pretty web UI or reporting or whatever.
The problem comes in when you try to do things like "solve this for the
thousand most common banks, while not making users enter their credentials
every time, with adequate coordination with each bank to avoid being blocked
for logging into numerous accounts, with adequate security to avoid mass-
leaking online banking credentials."
------
pfyra
I created a very basic automated tool in PHP for displaying my accounts
balance and transferring money between my accounts in Nordea in Sweden [1]. I
happened to put it on github just yesterday.
Had they a real API I suppose I would use it rather than this. I have a couple
of accounts for different purposes and like to avoid moving the money manually
every month.
[1] [https://github.com/pfyra/nordea-php](https://github.com/pfyra/nordea-php)
------
sytelus
Get list of tx for personal finance app that can show trends like Comcast
secretly upping their prices or identify tax savings and things like that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Dutch city closes its schools in response to a threat on 4Chan - lucb1e
https://plus.google.com/100221912051999668442/posts/J1aqrPXKZmt
======
lucb1e
Last times I've posted a Google+ link I got some comments from people who
couldn't read it. For those, here is a copy:
\----
TL;DR: Schools were closed in a Dutch city yesterday because of a message on
4Chan. Nothing actually happened.
A message was posted on 4Chan two days ago, stating that a person was going to
kill his teacher and as many others as possible on a school in Leiden. The
Zürich police found this in a regular scan and contacted the Dutch
authorities. The message also said that he or she would be carrying a note
which was to be publicized. If not, a friend of his would do so on the
internet that afternoon. This note was what convinced that the police that it
was a real threat; it was something a real killer might think about.
After some deliberation, the major of Leiden decided together with the police
that schools should be closed yesterday. Both Zürich and the Dutch authorities
seem to have failed to notice that this was 4Chan they were talking about, and
the website even carries the headline: _"The stories and information posted
here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take
anything posted here as fact."_
One of the biggest Dutch news websites (nu.nl) now reports that 4Chan is
calling the would-be killer's post a "work of art", without naming sources.
The translation of 4Chan's publication, according to nu.nl, fits the headline
exactly, and they even cite a part of the sentence. They seem to have
completely missed the point that this message has been on the website for
months ifnot years.
Anyway, the schools posted on their websites that they would be closed that
day and also e-mailed the students. Most got the message, either via social
media or from the e-mail directly, and those who came to school were told by
personnel what was going on. Besides those, the only people roaming the place
were media and police with bulletproof vests.
I don't know what you'd do if you were expecting someone with a gun to come to
school, but I wouldn't close the place, tell everyone, and hope for him to
come anyway. You might as well post a tweet asking him to turn himself in.
Later that day another kid actually tweeted that he was heading over to Leiden
"right now" and was going to shoot a teacher. This made national news as well,
but a few hours later he tweeted in full caps that it was a joke and that he
was sorry.
A little while after that a suspect was arrested. He used an "open proxy", but
with the help of the FBI they managed to find the person. He was suspended
from a nearby school since late 2011 because of his behavior. Upon searching
no firearms were actually found.
Today schools opened again and police remains on guard incase the current
suspect turns out to be not to be the perpetrator. Nothing happened yet
though, so I'd say it was all just a great overreaction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Can Mushrooms Treat Depression? - gkop
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/can-mushrooms-treat-depression.html
======
nalahal
As someone with depression, personally I wouldn't recommend mushrooms to
others in a similar situation. I've tried them once and it was a rather
uncomfortable experience. In fact, a quote from the acticle describes my
experience fairly well - "When suffering depression, people get stuck in a
spiral of negative thoughts and cannot get out of it". This does tend to
describe my thought process in general, but this was exacerbated on mushrooms.
I had little control over my thought process, which made me anxious, which
made the experience harder to deal with. Although, when considering certain
personal issues at the time which would normally cause me anxiety, they did
feel much less significant.
That said, I've heard many stories of people experiencing life changing
epiphanies from mushroom trips as described in the article, and I am intrigued
by articles like this and the science behind it. Perhaps my environment, or
the specific mushrooms I tried made it worse. Also, having tried them once and
come out the other end fine may make future experiences less uncomfortable - a
large part of what made it difficult was a concern that my mental state would
be permanently affected by the experience, and this was not the case. Still,
it makes me less inclined to try them again until I'm in a better mental
state.
For what it's worth, these were the variety of "magic truffles" which are
legal and readily obtainable from high street stores in Amsterdam, but as far
as I'm aware the active ingredient is the same psilocybin as other forms of
magic mushrooms. I wasn't on any medication at the time, though I have heard
of certain anti-depressants and other medication either having a negative
effect, or negating the effects of mushrooms entirely.
~~~
danmaz74
For serious treatment, the drug should be taken as part of a psychological
therapy - in the right setting, with the right preparation and assistance. As
a matter of fact, the author is advocating to make medical research easier,
not that people take it at random and hope for a miracle ;)
~~~
digi_owl
Yep. The problem right now is that everything is locked down because someone
somewhere may get some escapism out of it.
At the same time developing brains are fed all kinds of uppers and downers
because they react badly to an outdated educational system.
------
jrapdx3
Seems like interest in potential beneficial effects of hallucinogens has been
rising. It's certainly true for ketamine, as it's being studied as a therapy
for treatment resistant depression. The results look promising but the jury is
still out re: satisfying FDA approval requirements.
As the article says, psilocybin could have favorable effects in depression,
possibly resembling results with ketamine. Other hallucingenics are often
mentioned in this regard, like LSD or mescaline. There have been reports of
utility of low dose THC for depression.
In discussions of potential value of any drug the pivotal issue is the
risk/benefit ratio. Hallucinogens have unmistakably caused adverse reactions.
Panic, psychosis, dissociative states have been observed often enough to
warrant a high level of caution in using such drugs.
Part of the problem is the randomness of bad reactions. It's usually difficult
to predict which users (or subsets of users) will endure adverse effects at a
particular drug dose. Drug interactions is another concern. A great deal of
study is necessary to sort out the parameters of (relatively) safe use.
~~~
cnrsvxz
There are a few non-hallucinogenic and non-sedative derivatives of ketamine
being studied at the moment as antidepressants. Anecdotes of their use seem to
be positive, but of course those should be taken with a grain of salt. See
LongeCity's Brain Health forum for some crazy threads relating to this.[0]
On another note, this summer I experimented with NSI-189[1] for depression to
great effect. It's a hippocampal neurogenic agent currently prepping for phase
2 trials. I found that its antidepressant effects over a one-month cycle were
remarkably similar to my single psilocybin experience a few years back.
Specifically, they both (or rather, I) exhibited two characteristics:
(a) "Illuminating" rather than the "dulling" of traditional antidepressants. A
feeling of irrational filters being lifted from all my senses and the
cognitive functions directly adjacent to them. It doesn't feel like a band-aid
like tricyclics and SSRIs do. It feels like a realization that the depression
is a lie, that it doesn't reflect the actual state of the world.
(b) Persistence of the effect long after the chemical was no longer in my
system. Where "long" was approximately two years for the psilocybin, and I'm
coming up on four months after cessation of the NSI-189 with not just steady
benefits but continuous improvement. This matches the results found in the
Phase 1b trial.[2]
Now I haven't gotten an MRI to see if my hippocampus has grown to an abnormal
size, like was found in an early mouse study, but my experience has made me
extremely optimistic for the next ten years of antidepressant research. I'm
fairly certain we'll be able to narrow down the exact mechanisms by which
psychedelics alleviate depression and isolate them from the permanent
destructive potential of most psychedelics.[3]
[0] [http://www.longecity.org/forum/forum/169-brain-
health/](http://www.longecity.org/forum/forum/169-brain-health/)
[1] It is currently not being sold, and its patent-holder Neuralstem is being
quite threatening toward would-be vendors. There is nothing illegal about
purchasing it, but it would be difficult for anyone in the US without indirect
access to a quality Asian synth lab and a domestic third party testing
facility.
[2] [http://smithonstocks.com/neuralstem-phase-1b-results-for-
nsi...](http://smithonstocks.com/neuralstem-phase-1b-results-for-nsi-189-are-
very-encouraging-but-it-is-early-days-cur-buy-4-38-for-paid-subscribers/)
[3] I should mention that though I'm comparing NSI-189 to traditional
psychedelics in this comment, it doesn't actually have any major immediate
effects. Common anecdotal effects include heightened taste and smell, back-of-
skull pressure/ache and mild parasthesia. A couple instances of major, painful
parasthesia in individuals with previous nerve damage. But no headspace, no
high, no rush, no immediate feeling that you're taking a drug at all, and the
antidepressant effects do not reveal themselves for at least a week.
~~~
atomical
I'm curious where your supply comes from. Are you a chemist?
~~~
cnrsvxz
No, there are various online communities for experimental, legal drug use,
each with their own themes and safety guidelines that depend on the users'
goals. Overseas labs are not too hard to come by, but language barriers and
repeated shoddy synthesis (see also: Alibaba) can raise the effective cost by
orders of magnitude. Then it's worth your while to get the sample
independently tested after importation. This, combined with significant
economies of scale, leads to group buys being a common method of acquiring
substances. One trusted person who has contacts and a history with known
quality labs (who often ask not to be revealed to the whole group, especially
if they're in Europe) is chosen to organize the money, make the purchase,
having preliminary testing done, repackage into each person's order, and ship
them the rest of the way.
I neglected to mention precisely how I acquired it because, as mentioned,
Neuralstem is not joking around. (It wasn't as a group buy.) They do not have
any existing treatments on the market and currently have just two in human
trials: NSI-189, an antidepressant and ostensibly nootropic, and NSI-566, a
stem cell treatment for ALS. It's not surprising that they're freaked out by
use of one of these treatments years before it could ever be approved as a
pharmaceutical.
------
brookside
I tried Psilocybin recently, with intent to see what changes the experience
might make to my mood and mental outlook. My trip was quite uncomfortable, as
others have related. I'm glad I tried mushrooms, however. Upon return to this
astral plan I was immensely grateful for sanity and the little pocket of
warmth in time and space that is our existence. In the days since I have found
my mood to be better.
My Psilocybin trip was an almost terrifying experience that served as a good
reset. I will definitely consider repeating this on a periodic basis if
needed, being most respectful of the dark power these little fungi possess.
------
acd
They say two great products came out of Berkeley BSD and LSD
------
discardorama
It is sad that most of such research (on psychoactives, etc.) is happening in
the UK, and not the US (which has a lot more resources). Our Drug War(TM) at
work.
Aside: "... Paul Expert at King’s College London ..." : this guy was born to
be a researcher. :-D
~~~
cnp
Actually, quite a bit of research is happening in the US, with Johns Hopkins
and NYU being at the lead.
------
increment_i
Mushrooms are not for the faint of heart. Generally, they will cause extreme
anxiety in those who are naturally prone to it, possibly to the breaking point
-- especially if in a public or unfamiliar setting. However, the drug itself
is highly psychoactive and can truly lead to some amazing revelations about
life in general, that break through the shroud of depression.
~~~
hnnewguy
> _Generally, they will cause extreme anxiety in those who are naturally prone
> to it, possibly to the breaking point_
Generally? No.
I've taken and been around people who have taken mushrooms for over 15 years.
I still dabble on occasion. I've never seen or even heard of someone reaching
a "breaking point". This is not to say that it can't happen, but saying that
mushrooms will do it, generally, must be supported.
That said, mushrooms are no fooling around. If you have no experience with
"being high", and the altered mental state that that entails, I would never
recommend diving into multi-gram does of 'shrooms. Once you've had some
experience, it's much easier to tell yourself, "I'm high, this will pass.
Enjoy it."
------
gregpilling
I tired them in Bali last year (they have been made illegal since then) and I
thought my mood was slightly changed for a few days. I did not get some large
effect, but there was some minor effect. Mostly I felt happily drunk.
I have battled depression for years, and while I would agree that there was
some minor uplift, it was not a major change in my case.
------
namunu
The most interesting thing to me was the importance of ritual in the trials.
Bad experiences might be linked to a defficient or lacking framework-- the
power of expectation and psycho social cues perhaps being undervalued in all
sorts of treatments.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
While Drafting SOPA, the U.S. House Harbors BitTorrent - username3
http://torrentfreak.com/while-drafting-sopa-us-house-harbors-bittorrent-pirates-111226/
======
atomical
I love how the article ends, 'Although the above is interesting, as the House
is the place where lawmakers are currently trying to push though SOPA, this
revelation might actually help their cause. If even people at the House are
“stealing” content, we really need SOPA to counter it, they may say
The question is though, whether SOPA will be able to break the habits of
millions of Americans, as there will always be alternatives available. And
even if it manages to put a dent in the current piracy rates, is that really
worth it considering the potential damage SOPA can do to the open Internet and
legal businesses?'
Their article is link bait with one arguably substantive paragraph at the end.
~~~
gasull
Yes, but interesting anyway.
The title of the article should be "What the US House bittorrents the most"
~~~
atomical
Which is actually even more misleading. How about, "Staffers pirate content in
US House."
------
a_a_r_o_n
To borrow a phrase, "When the Congress does it, that means that it is not
illegal."
Nixon/David Frost interview, 1977:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvyDn1TPr8>
------
neutronicus
I'm ignorant of how YouHaveDownloaded.com works. Does it have any way to weed
out dummy IP addresses inserted by trackers? Claiming to have peers in the
House seems like exactly the sort of cheeky thing the TPB trackers would do.
~~~
SurenTer
Yes, it has. YouHaveDownloaded performs random check of obtained IPs - to make
sure they actually up/download.
~~~
obtu
Not really, there were martian addresses in there last time I looked.
------
bediger
They don't practice what they preach, because they're not the kind of person
they're preaching to.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Segment was just breached in a Cyber attack - abari
Got a mail today from segment Analytics that my account was part of their data breach. Who knows of what really happened please?
======
120bits
Maybe this[1] can give you more insight
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886872)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Probability and Statistics online courses - aaossa
Hi HN,<p>I'm looking for good courses about this topic because I want to remember some stuff and be ready to learn about machine learning and deep learning later.<p>Do you have some course or a book to study about this?<p>Thanks!
======
mindcrime
First:
[https://www.coursera.org/specializations/statistics](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/statistics)
I've taken the first 3 classes in this specialization and would say it's been
invaluable. There's an associated textbook available online for free at:
[https://www.openintro.org/stat/textbook.php](https://www.openintro.org/stat/textbook.php)
Second:
[https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-
science](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/jhu-data-science)
I've taken the first 6 classes in this specialization as well, and have found
them to be pretty valuable. These, so far, have been more about the mechanics
of programming in R, and less about the math. The Duke one above is more math,
less R. But both are an intermingling of both mathematical concepts and R
coding. I find that these two tracks complement each other very well.
Third:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FtHB7V14Fo&list=PL5102DFDC6...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FtHB7V14Fo&list=PL5102DFDC6790F3D0)
A set of videos on Statistics from "Professor Leonard". This is just
recordings of all the lectures from a standard college Stats 101 class. But
the guy is a good lecturer, explains things well, and has a sense of humor
which keeps things interesting.
He also has videos on other topics as well, if you're interested.
More:
I believe Kahn Academy also has a section on Statistics and Probability.
You might also find some of the stuff linked here useful:
[http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.ht...](http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html)
or
[http://mathbooks.reddit.com](http://mathbooks.reddit.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Python – Lightweight snake game running in the console - Kanse
https://github.com/tancredi/python-console-snake
======
vkjv
Nice work! IMHO, Snake is one of the best games to get your feet wet
programming. I have very fond memories of writing a snake game on the TI-83.
IIRC, my event loop was so slow that I didn't even need any wait states to
make the game playable.
------
Tankenstein
Excellent! Just as a tip, when writing curses it's best to run everything in a
curses wrapper, so wrap your main function in curses.wrapper(main) basically.
If you don't do so, crashing messes up the terminal.
------
coreyja
Not working for me in OSX 10.10. Here is a PasteBin of the error I'm getting.
[http://pastebin.com/CicWMAc2](http://pastebin.com/CicWMAc2)
~~~
tancredi
Try to use with maximised window - it's a bug that happens when trying to draw
on a window that's too small
~~~
johnmaguire2013
Regarding this, does anyone have tips on how best to do curses layouts that
support different window sizes? I'm working on a procedurally generated
console game in my free time, using Python + curses, and this is an issue I
run into as well.
I've been considering taking some time to try to write some sort of "fluid" or
"dynamic" layout framework for curses (i.e. specify percents for width /
height, and have it automatically expand). Seems like a giant pain though...
------
ben174
Since this is a snake game, and it's python, you really should switch to
snake_case rather than camelCase :)
------
stillsut
Doesn't work on windows -
ImportError: No module name fcntl
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apache Calcite Avatica 1.0.0 – Framework for building database drivers - based2
https://calcite.apache.org/avatica/news/2017/05/30/release-1.10.0/
======
mcguire
A wrapper around DB protocols? Requiring a third-party Java server to
communicate with the database?
~~~
ccleve
No, I think this is more designed for the case where you're creating a
database implementation yourself. This provides a protocol and a JDBC driver
so you don't have to build them from scratch, just as Calcite provides a SQL
parser.
I've seen other databases do this by implementing the PostgreSQL wire protocol
so they can use off-the-shelf PostgreSQL clients.
~~~
ccleve
(Look like the parent comment, to which I was replying, got deleted.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hey.com is a love letter to the open web - Ask11
https://twitter.com/alekseykulikov_/status/1272887192495566849
======
peace2all
Huh? In what way? Nearly everything they "invented" has been around for years,
and in some cases a decade.
They blasted Apple and Gmail for causing Inbox problems, but all their
"solutions" are common ways we have always managed our inboxes.
[https://mrtechimist.wordpress.com/2020/06/16/apples-email-
an...](https://mrtechimist.wordpress.com/2020/06/16/apples-email-and-
basecamps-new-hey-emails-top-20-features/)
~~~
tjholowaychuk
yeah absolutely nothing new here
~~~
naikrovek
Congratulations. You all missed the point entirely.
~~~
tjholowaychuk
How so? It's just a basic marketing site, nothing newsworthy at all
------
nikolay
If you want a truly spam and effort-free email, use Boxbe [0]. I receive
thousands of emails a day. I've paid to use SaneBox, but then it was losing
important emails and I still ahd to go thrue all emails. Honestly, Hey
deceives people a little - in the beginning, their mailboxes will appear clean
simply because it's a new email account. But will time and autogenerated
senders, Hey will drown in email just like any other service.
[0]: [https://www.boxbe.com/](https://www.boxbe.com/)
------
dbbk
Maybe its web client app is, but the service is not. It's a closed,
proprietary system.
------
skavi
Did anyone actually read the tweets? They appear to be referring not to the
webapp product itself, but to the marketing/information pages.
------
juststeve
No IMAP
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to keep settings in ASP.NET Core? - goorion
http://foreverframe.net/how-to-keep-settings-in-asp-net-core/
======
tracker1
Just... no[1]. For most of the example settings either environment variables,
a secure service, or enough environment variables to connect to a service, or
other environment pki in place for such communications.
Stop putting your settings in config files for service applications... if it's
something that runs on a desktop, sure. If it's a server app, don't do it.
[1] [https://12factor.net/](https://12factor.net/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pricing an online service - ppolsinelli
http://pietro.open-lab.com/2009/11/03/pricing-an-online-service/
======
DenisM
This post raises some important questions and has great links to places where
other similar questions can be raised and discussed.
However I disagree with one thing: having a single price point is the single
most expensive mistake you will ever make in your company. Where you make the
mistake is in assuming that what you think is good for you (simplicity of
single price point) is also good for your users. Don't do this - validate the
assumption. For what it's worth, many others did and they found that having
three distinct choices is optimal - less than that and you are leaving money
on the table, more than that and you confuse people.
~~~
ppolsinelli
In the post I am claiming simplicity as something that users will appreciate,
not the producer. Your is an argument which assumes that "segmentation" is
better than a unique price, which is the very assumption of classical texts,
and which I doubt - its one of the points I make in the post.
Of course, I may be wrong...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Ethereum Startup Just Vanished After People Invested $374K - gridscomputing
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5j34x/ethereum-startup-confido-vanished-after-people-invested-374k-ico
======
Analemma_
ICOs are a scam. In other news, that guy selling you the Brooklyn Bridge might
not be legit.
~~~
ngan
ICOs, just like any other investment opportunities, need to be researched
properly. Not all ICOs are scams, some are great ideas backed by a reputable
team. Just gotta do your homework.
~~~
bhouston
ICOs are worse that over the counter penny stocks at this point being promoted
by boiler room call centers.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_\(business\))
The ones that win are those who get the discount prior to ICO and then
liquidate during the ICO for a main currency like bitcoin/Etherium. Which is
nothing more than the standard boiler room scam, updated for 21 century
technology.
------
ghostbrainalpha
Does anyone know how many investors this is? What was the average size of the
investment that people lost?
~~~
dreit1
Most of the money lost was people who bought post ICO. I've heard it range
from 7 dollars to 90k dollars. 90% drop in one day is brutal
------
huangc10
Unfortunate for all the early investors of Confido. Ink announced on their
blog that they will airdrop Ink tokens for all current Confido token holders
(as of 11/20/17 1:30pm PST). [https://medium.com/@PayWithInk/ink-airdrop-for-
confido-token...](https://medium.com/@PayWithInk/ink-airdrop-for-confido-
token-holders-54340af8d163)
~~~
make3
what does airdrop mean in this context?
~~~
ngan
You get tokens deposited to your address, free. It's one of the cool things
about cryptocurrencies, people can just give you random monies without your
approval.
~~~
nivertech
if the airdropped token is a security token, then it's illegal. And since this
a gray/developing area every token has a high chance of being classified as a
security token.
This also may result in unwanted tax and other liabilities on the receiver's
side.
It's a flaw in Push payments design. Either receiver need to confirm tx or use
a design based on Pull payments.
------
hkmurakami
For those wondering before clicking the link, yes this was a ICO round.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Boeing 737 Max Simulators Are in High Demand, But Flawed - howard941
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/business/boeing-737-max-simulators.html
======
bronco21016
I’m not sure where the misconception comes from about simulator training being
equal to the aircraft being a new type certificate. The DC-9/MD-80 series/B717
are all the same DC-9 type certificate despite spanning many decades, longer
than the 737 even. Pilots receive a DC-9 type certificate to fly any variant,
however, for obvious reasons, the FAA requires what’s known as differences
training in a simulator to transition between the different aircraft.
I can’t possibly imagine that the FAA is or any aviation governing body is
going to jump from iPad distance learning to full on new type certificate.
B737 type rated pilots will receive 2-3 sessions in the MAX simulator and be
sent on their way flying 737NG and MAX variants and the aircraft will go on to
have a normal safety record.
The more concerning aspect of this entire situation is finding where the
system broke down to prevent this additional training to begin with and how do
we fix the breaks in that system.
~~~
ozmaverick72
They will have to fix the simulator first. As I understand it they can't
currently simulate the handling of the aircraft under MCAS failure modes. If
they correct the simulator and require pilots to train for the handling of
MCAS failures then I have to problem with the reintroduction of the max on the
same type certificate. From what we are hearing in the press it sounds like
Boeing is still pressing for nothing more that a dumb iPad lesson. If the FAA
falls for that they will loose all credibility in my eyes.
~~~
wjnc
Has the whole world subscribed to FAA oversight or would other regulators be
able to pick their own fight with Boeing?
~~~
lrem
EU has its own oversight that has, at least at some point in the past, been
pretty much copying FAA word-for-word. Other countries obviously have their
own, but also leaned on FAA for its influence. Yet another aspect of soft
power of the US.
------
tlb
How would you accurately simulate the force needed to turn the trim wheel
under aerodynamic loads that vary with elevator position? It sounds like a
very tricky mechanical setup.
~~~
krallja
Brakes, or a strong motor.
~~~
dbcurtis
The way I would approach it (based on mechantronics I have done for robots) is
to back up the control wheel with an encoded motor. (Position/rotation encoder
on the tail shaft.) The encoder will give you wheel position, the motor allows
you to apply arbitrary torque to the wheel to simulate the feedback forces
felt by the pilot. Typically, that would be done by measuring motor current
and writing a control loop that controlled for target wheel position (based on
encoder) and target maximum motor current (as a proxy for torque). Then the
simulator would give out the simulated results of wheel position and torque,
which the control loop would attempt to follow with its control law.
Alternatively, you could put an actual torque sensor between the motor and the
control wheel, which might buy you some accuracy at considerably more expense.
For a flight simulator, expense is unlikely to be an issue -- I tend not to
have that luxury, and typically don't need that much accuracy anyway.
These kind of control systems are all over modern aircraft, much less
simulators. Any new grad control systems engineer should be able to knock
something like this out.
~~~
blattimwind
> The way I would approach it (based on mechantronics I have done for robots)
> is to back up the control wheel with an encoded motor. (Position/rotation
> encoder on the tail shaft.) The encoder will give you wheel position, the
> motor allows you to apply arbitrary torque to the wheel to simulate the
> feedback forces felt by the pilot. Typically, that would be done by
> measuring motor current and writing a control loop that controlled for
> target wheel position (based on encoder) and target maximum motor current
> (as a proxy for torque). Then the simulator would give out the simulated
> results of wheel position and torque, which the control loop would attempt
> to follow with its control law.
Or you just buy a COTS servo that does all that for you. Just saying, hardly a
need to reinvent these particular wheels...
~~~
dbcurtis
Yeah, good point. I'm sure there are servos that have the required specs. I'm
just not in the habit of looking at catalogs where the prices are that high :)
Maybe I should switch to building flight simulators so that I can order the
good stuff :)
~~~
rasz
racing sim guys already figured it out
[http://opensimwheel.wikidot.com/](http://opensimwheel.wikidot.com/)
------
forgetcolor
Why does MCAS have to take control of trim at all? Would it not be sufficient
to alert the pilot of an imminent stall situation so they can adjust the angle
of attack themselves? Is it because doing so would put the MAX too far afield
from the old 737 such that it would require simulator training?
~~~
cjbprime
There's an airworthiness rule requiring monotonically increasing yoke
backpressure as the plane approaches a stall. It appears that the MAX violates
this rule aerodynamically due to extra lift at high power generated by the
high and forward nacelles, combined with the yoke being mechanically coupled.
It can get easier to induce a stall as the plane approaches critical AoA.
This isn't directly the same thing as saying the MAX will stall itself: if you
aren't pulling back on the yoke near critical AoA then you don't stall. It's
just easier to stall with the yoke than regulations say it must be. MCAS
"fixes" that handling issue.
I don't think an audible warning would be sufficient to turn unairworthy
behavior into airworthy, so if all the assumptions above are correct, that's
why it has to use trim -- or a stick pusher, but perhaps that wouldn't have
enough control authority and also I'm not sure the MAX _has_ a stick pusher,
as opposed to just a stick shaker. It's a very mechanical cockpit, in general
the forces you feel are coupled to aerodynamics, in stark contrast to an
Airbus (or even more modern Boeing airframes).
~~~
cmurf
Maybe it's 25.173(c)
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/25.173](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/25.173)
In the working case, MCAS presumably triggers at a particular AoA, trims nose
down (but is this a fixed amount and what is it?) which in effect requires
more stick back pressure to maintain the angle of attack. Thing is, it seems
like MCAS, again in the working case, has a trigger AoA and will incrementally
nose down until it goes below some defined angle of attack - which is not
really a stick force moderator alone. It's acting as a kind of AoA guardian.
------
bumby
A good software assurance program in a flight environment should also be
ensuring simulators are of high enough fidelity for testing and training.
As this story develops, it sure seems like there are either gaps in Boeings QA
program or there is a culture that overrides quality concerns
~~~
crocal
> A good software assurance program in a flight environment should also be
> ensuring simulators are of high enough fidelity for testing and training.
Actually, "must" not "should". Aeronautics certification standards require
tools such as simulators to be qualified for their intended use. Similar
requirement have been introduced in recent release of railway standards.
~~~
bumby
I agree with you're correcting my imprecise wording, but it still seems like
there's an issue with the certification process if this particular "must"
didn't get built in.
I guess my question is: why didn't the QA flag get raised on this or if it
did, why wasn't it given any credence?
I'm not trying to armchair quarterback this, but I'm legitimately curious if
this issue is one the certification process is expected to catch
~~~
bbayer
Certification process is generic enough to apply it to different types of
aircrafts. There is no specific requirements for different subsystems
introduced by manufacturer. Simulation fidelity is tested against real world
data but it is not possible to collect data for every condition that might
occur during flight. You may refer to FAA FSS Level-D QTG document for further
reference. [1]
[1]:
[https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/nsp/media/14CFR60_Sear...](https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/nsp/media/14CFR60_Searchable_Version.pdf)
------
heisenbit
Considering how fast and strong the trim wheel is spinning under MCAS control
the simulator may be unsafe to use. Touching a wheel spinning so fast is
outright dangerous.
~~~
tjohns
The trim wheel spins like that anyway under normal operation, both due to
pilot input and while on autopilot.
More importantly, you don't grab the trim wheel while it's moving... If the
aircraft is operating normally, you use the trim switch on the yoke.
The only time you'd spin the trim wheel by hand is if you've had to cutout the
electric trim motor... and once that's done it's not going to move on its own
anyway.
~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
> once that's done it's not going to move on its own anyway.
Unless the short is somewhere where you don't expect it to be, which is why a
memory item if the runaway trim continues is
STABILIZER TRIM WHEEL - GRASP and HOLD
~~~
Doxin
They teach pilots a specific way to grab the trim wheel for that scenario as
to not break their wrists. It still can (and occasionally does) cause abrasive
wounds to the hands however.
------
jayalpha
"who will need to approve them before the plane can start flying again."
Yes, thanks. I guess I pass for now.
------
inamberclad
Every simulator is flawed, some are useful.
------
FabHK
Small nitpick: I don't think MCAS is well characterised as an "anti-stall
system".
~~~
avar
From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Augmentation_System#Operation)
> "The system is explicitly designed to override pilot action and prevent them
> from regaining control authority, in order to avoid an inadvertent stall."
If it's not an anti-stall system what would you characterize it as?
~~~
FabHK
Good question. Not sure the "flight envelope protection" description in the
Wikipedia article is good.
If I'm not mistaken, MCAS was put in to fulfil certification requirements
stipulated in 14 CFR § 25.173 - Static longitudinal stability, and § 25.175
Demonstration of static longitudinal stability, which states that "The stick
force curve must have a stable slope". The MAX has a curved slope in some
regions of the flight envelope, due to the fact that the nacelles generate
lift in front of the centre of gravity. (It is not clear to me whether the
slope of the stick force at high AoA in a MAX without MCAS goes negative, or
just decreases (while staying positive)).
Note the Wikipedia article you quote also says:
> It is thus distinct from an anti-stall device, such as stick pusher which
> physically moves the pilot's control column forward when the airplane is
> approaching a stall.[5]
See also here [1]:
> Numerous reports have incorrectly said that MCAS is a stall prevention, or
> stall recovery, system. It is a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation
> System and would not be expected to activate during any normal flight
> conditions.
Or here:
>> It does seem MCAS is closely related to protecting the plane from entering
a stall scenario.
> Only in the sense that it is giving the pilots the feedback, through the
> stick force, about how close the plane is to a stall, that the pilots are
> used to from previous 737 models. The point of MCAS is that without it, the
> stick force feedback as a function of angle of attack would be different
> from what the pilots were used to, so they might misjudge how close to a
> stall they were.
[1]
[https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/engineers-...](https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/engineers-
take-on-the-737-max-design.118273/)
[2] [https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/boeing-737-max-mcas-
sy...](https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/boeing-737-max-mcas-
system.967958/page-3)
------
FabHK
Question:
> In a tense meeting with the American Airlines pilots union after the crash,
> a Boeing vice president, Mike Sinnett, said he was confident that pilots
> were equipped to deal with problems, according to an audio recording review
> by The New York Times. A top Boeing test pilot, Craig Bomben, agreed,
> saying, “I don’t know that understanding the system would have changed the
> outcome of this.”
Should that be Craig Bomben "disagreed"?
~~~
voxic11
No he is agreeing that the pilots were as well equipped as they could have
been, because he believes understanding the system wouldn't have made a
difference anyways.
~~~
droithomme
Ok, so you believe it was a sarcastic response. Very interesting take. You
might be correct.
~~~
FabHK
I don't think it was a sarcastic response, and I don't think GP meant it that
way, either.
Remember, Boeing at the time had not disclosed MCAS to the pilot community.
Both speakers are from Boeing, and the first one says that the accident
pilots, even though they did not manage to fix the problem, were well equipped
(by standard Boeing procedures for stab trim runaway) to do so. The second
speaker agrees, saying that knowing about MCAS would not have made any
difference.
~~~
droithomme
_> The second speaker agrees, saying that knowing about MCAS would not have
made any difference._
The article directly quotes him as saying, "I don’t know that understanding
the system would have changed the outcome of this." The "this" refers to a
deadly crash in which everyone died. He is saying that if a pilot knew about
MCAS, the plane still would have crashed. He said this in response to a claim
that pilots didn't need to know about MCAS. That is disagreeing by using
sarcasm. The Times interprets it though as agreeing and doesn't see the
sarcasm.
To summarize:
Claim: Pilots don't need to know about MCAS.
Response: Correct, even if they knew, given the system's flawed design,
everyone still would have died in this case, so, technically, knowing about it
wouldn't have helped.
Now maybe that's not what he meant. But it looks like he did. I don't believe
that the context of the conversation supports an interpretation that he was
agreeing that sufficiently skilled pilots would not have crashed whether or
not they knew about MCAS given that he refers to "the outcome of this" not
changing, the "outcome of this" being the crash.
~~~
cptskippy
What part if that is sarcasm? If anything he's saying a failed AOT sensor
means a fatal crash regardless of whether you know why or not. Which is
alarming and terrifying.
~~~
FabHK
Given that he's a Boeing test pilot (and in the context of agreeing with the
VP), his take would probably be that pilots should have followed the good old
Stab Trim Runaway checklist, and all would've been fine (whether or not you
know about MCAS).
~~~
cptskippy
I am genuinely confused though about how his remarks we're sarcastic.
~~~
FabHK
I agree with you that the test pilot's remarks were not sarcastic. However,
you write "he's saying a failed AOT sensor means a fatal crash regardless of
whether you know why or not", and I disagree with that. He's saying a failed
AoA sensor invoking MCAS can be fixed like any other Stab Trim Runaway,
regardless of what you know about MCAS.
~~~
salawat
Except that it doesn't manifest like a classic Stabilizer Trim Runaway.
The classic Stabilizer Trim Runaway is a continuous uncommanded actuation of
the trim mechanism on a particular direction.
Catastrophic MCAS failure manifests as a series of discrete, amplifying
activations, which are far easier for a pilot to dismiss as the normal
operation of the Auto-Trim, and speed trim systems.
The is is a manifestly different pattern to look for, and was only caught by
one air crew (on the penultimate flight of the Lion Air aircraft) by the
assistance of a third, uninvolved pilot along for the ride.
I understand how one could see Boeing's internal test pilot as being
reasonable, but keep in mind who signs his paycheck, and future prospects for
him if the company gets found liable.
Perspective, and understanding of what different parties have at stake is
essential in evaluating what is _actually_ being communicated, and why. Words
have long tails in the aftermath of a crisis like this.
~~~
FabHK
Yes, agreed with everything. I don't think Boeing's test pilot's dismissal
(basically: they had their checklists, and knowing about MCAS wouldn't have
made a difference) was reasonable, but neither do I think it was sarcastic.
------
droithomme
_> Boeing has maintained that simulator training is not necessary for the 737
Max and regulators do not require it, but many airlines bought the
multimillion-dollar machines to give their pilots more practice._
Boeing is only arguing this because if they say simulator training is
necessary, then the plane _must_ be recertified. Their executive MBA analyst
and stock watcher types under no circumstances will tolerate recertification,
therefore regardless of facts, their position _must_ be that simulator
training is not necessary. Even though it obviously is. Key point to observing
this and everything else about this debacle is that Boeing has no concern
whatsoever for safety, professionalism or lives, and is only interested in
their own profit, executive bonuses, and stock dividend gains and will do
absolutely anything to protect those, even though it inevitably is going to
lead to another crash and more deaths. At which point they will again start by
doing everything they can to blame the pilot and the culture of whatever
country he hails from, as well as paying shills to post nonsense and attack
pilots, engineers and others who question their narrative publicly.
~~~
MaxBarraclough
But that's only half the story.
The other half is that the FAA -- which is meant to be the counterweight to
those perverse incentives -- is no longer credible.
(I've made this point before [0] but it bears repeating here.)
[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19888207](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19888207)
~~~
SilasX
That’s not making the point; that’s just asserting it.
~~~
virtual_void
I’m confused as to the difference.
No snark intended.
I’m likely missing something.
~~~
jplayer01
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_a_point](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_a_point)
"(idiomatic) To argue or promote an idea."
It isn't enough to just say a statement when you want to make a point. It's
usually expected, especially here on HN, to put some effort into demonstrating
why you believe that statement is true, something which his linked comment
doesn't do. It doesn't need to be anything elaborate, even references to other
comments mentioning things FAA has done would be more than enough to make the
point, which gives people something factual or "real" to respond to or look
into.
I don't think there's anything wrong with his statement per se. You don't
always need to write a treatise whenever you want to join a discussion or
throw in your two cents. Just that when he says he's made the point before,
it'd be more helpful to link to something more substantial than the same
statement in a different place.
~~~
SilasX
Thank you, confirming this is what I meant (except this is better than I could
have said it myself).
------
gist
> Since the two fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 Max, airlines around the world
> have moved to buy flight simulators to train their pilots. They don’t always
> work. Boeing recently discovered that the simulators could not accurately
> replicate the difficult conditions
Typical article which does not address the entire context of the issue. In
other words it isolates what a 737 simulator can't do without regard to what a
typical simulator (for another aircraft or by even a different manufacturer)
is or is not able to do. [1] The idea is to make the manufacture look like a
total ignorant screw up in every way to create anger and compelling content.
[1] This is like a news story talking about what a company fails to do and
then gets hacked without talking at all about how likely the same thing
happens at another company.
~~~
FabHK
Are you suggesting that most simulators get control forces wrong for things
that can realistically occur within the recoverable flight envelope after one
single sensor fails? I'd have thought that that is something you'd want to get
right.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: AWS (North America) Is Having Issues - rahuldottech
Check https://status.aws.amazon.com/<p>Reddit is affected: https://reddit.statuspage.io/
======
bkovacev
Heroku is also affected.
[https://status.heroku.com/](https://status.heroku.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why developers don't care about security - ffwang2
https://franklyspeaking.substack.com/p/frankly-speaking-9820-developers
======
giantg2
Developers don't care about security because the business pays them and the
business only cares about output.
Sure, the security budget is defined, but they typically leverage a developer
ad an ASC to do most of the work as an above-and-beyond effort while paying
them the same amount.
That's been my experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fluent Design System - wiradikusuma
http://fluent.microsoft.com/
======
sctb
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317171)
------
romaniv
Interface design is very, very important at this stage of evolution of
computing, and I am disappointed in the overall direction taken by the
industry in this regard. What we (desperately) need is work similar to the one
that was done by Douglas Engelbart and still done by people like Alan Kay and
Bret Victor. Instead we get things like Bootstrap, Metro, Material Design and
now Fluent. (I am aware they are very different in scope, but their overall
influence on real applications is quite similar: establishing certain wide-
spread normative patterns.) Shallow and reactive things. They don't invent and
define new ways of UI interactions and information presentation (examples from
the past: clipping window, icon, hyperlink) and concentrate mostly on how
things look.
You might counter that this is the domain of MIT Media Lab rather than
Microsoft and Google, but at this stage new UI concepts have to be adopted by
entities with significant influence to be adopted at all.
~~~
miguelrochefort
I completely agree with you.
I came to the conclusion that we need a completely new language, a new
communication paradigm. We can't continue to build single-purpose apps for
every single thing. We need a single interface that's general-purpose enough
to let people communicate what would today take 1000 different apps (or 1
natural language).
I believe that the future of UI will be a mix of task management concepts (to-
dos, task dependencies, task delegation, timelines) and binary interaction
(Akinator, Tinder, Mechanical Turk). Add a graph knowledge base, a blockchain,
a network of trust, smart contracts and you're set.
I've been trying to start a discussion about this for years, without success.
If anyone is interested in discussing this space, I encourage you to let me
know.
~~~
chiefalchemist
Aren't those things voice/language processing aim to solve? That is to
liberate the user from the device/interface and let ask for - as we typically
do human to human - what then want and need? And voice to VR and many things
change. Some, perhaps, not for the better. Welcome to The Matrix?
~~~
miguelrochefort
Natural language interfaces are horrible. I don't know what people doing voice
recognition and language processing are thinking. This is extremely short-
sighted, and doomed to fail.
I'm thinking about a completely new communication paradigm, one that's short
of a brain interface.
~~~
chiefalchemist
Perhaps. Which I think is why brain interface is the Holy Grail. No
typing/touch. No vox. Just think it.
p.s. Natural language is still in it's early stages. Think of the early (non
UI) PCs. That is, over time voice as an interface will get better, and better.
It will get there. Just not yet.
------
plgs
Link to a channel 9 recording of yesterday's talk about Microsoft Fluent
Design System:
[https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/B8066](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/B8066)
It has a bit more content than the landing page IMHO.
------
m_fayer
Ugh. This looks like MS trying to one-up Material Design (itself already on
the rich side), and in so doing I think they've gone a step too far.
It does look good, in a sci-fi movie UI kind of way. But it would be a
nightmare if many of the apps I use day to day started to look this way. All
the animation, depth, texture - it's too attention grabbing, self conscious,
and annoyingly, deeply, branded.
Software is not supposed to be a high-design object, taste is very individual
and any object with so much aesthetic weight imposes on our consciousness.
While highly designed things can bring us a lot of pleasure, we should be free
to judiciously choose them for ourselves.
Many pieces of software are non-negotiable high-use tools. They should be,
first and foremost, highly usable - and if there's an insistence on imposing
an aesthetic experience on the user, it should be acknowledged that the user
likely has no choice but to use the software, and may be temperamentally or
socioeconomically unlikely to appreciate the aesthetic experience being thrust
upon them. (I wonder what my 75 year old Russian mom would make of all the
depth effects, Windows 10 already confuses her and hurts her eyes.) So if
we're going to insist on infusing our software with some particular design
aesthetic, it should at the very least be light, minimal, and easy to ignore
for those who aren't interested and just need to get their work done.
------
nxc18
They don't say it at all, but perhaps the biggest change here is that they're
making headings big and bold now. For quite a few years, Apple, Microsoft, and
Google (even pre-material) all seemed to be competing on thinnest, smallest,
ultralight-est headings.
edit: I stand corrected. Their marketing site and all their videos are
(apparently) inconsistent with their guidelines:
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/typograph...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/typography)
------
nailer
Also: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/style/)
for examples and code.
~~~
MichaelGG
The calculator example for Acrylic[0] looks atrocious:
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/images/ac...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/images/acrylic_app-pattern_full.png)
What is that trying to convey? Large spaces with no division? Looks broken.
0: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/acrylic](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/style/acrylic)
------
stupidcar
I think the trend towards more animation is fine on a micro-scale – buttons
and so forth — but I predict there will eventually be a big backlash against
these huge, complex parallax transformations. They are just too exhausting to
watch.
~~~
DrD4nger
Agreed, but I imagine that the parallax/animation aspect will be used
sparingly, or very discretely, and only within a few applications. I would be
towards the shading, transparency, and having the content cut off flush to the
bottom of the window being the most common use of their fluent design
principles.
I will be very upset/nauseous if they overuse the parallax effect. The
settings will need an off switch.
------
trevman
Just an FYI, click 'Build' in the upper right for actual information.
------
ezekg
That video was essentially useless seeing as the clips never lasted for more
than a split second (maybe I'm just bad at focusing this morning?). Other than
that, this _looks_ pretty good. I really like the white/monochromatic stuff
I've seen floating around on Twitter lately. (I'm a Mac guy that hasn't used
Windows since 7.)
------
have_faith
What is it exactly?
~~~
devopsproject
It uses ML and AI in the cloud to identify people who don't read the linked
article before commenting. It is working brilliantly.
~~~
jdormit
I read the article, and I still have no idea what "Fluent Design" actually
entails.
~~~
devopsproject
It's literally the first sentence
> An eloquent design system for a complex world
It is a set of design guidelines described with flowery language.
~~~
jdormit
Right, but what makes a design fluent? Are there guidelines? Other than using
"light", "depth", etc.?
~~~
devopsproject
flowery language
The next time your read about a tech or new startup that uses really
unnecessary words, come back and visit this thread
------
whowouldathunk
For now it's a few things that are available out of the box for XAML apps that
target the Fall Creators Update SDK:
1\. "Acrylic". It's the blur/color-blend/noise effect that you can see on the
Edge tab bar or top of Photos app in the Fall Creators Update.
2\. Mouse over lighting effects. You can see that briefly in the video when
the mouse over a ListView and tiles.
3\. Lots of small animations
4\. "Depth", meaning 3D transforms and shadows used for emphasis
------
anentropic
Lens flares on everything! To the future!
------
sonar_un
The video wasn't very good at explaining the system, and the website itself
didn't even use the same effects that were used. For instance, there was heavy
use of parallax scrolling in the video, but the website didn't have it at all.
Seems like a missed opportunity.
~~~
nxc18
The website has plenty of parallax scrolling, especially with the background.
Maybe it just isn't on mobile? It is subtle.
~~~
sonar_un
Strange, it is working now. Chrome Mac.
But yes, it is subtle.
------
marsrover
If you're on the fast track for Windows 10 insider builds, you can see a
preview of this by opening your calculator. I expect you'll be thoroughly
disappointed.
------
agumonkey
I like it enough to be curious. It's still a bit fluffy (scale wasn't clear).
Still something there.
------
irq-1
With Firefox on Xubuntu the site is unusable -- zooming down to 30% you can
see most, but not all, of the text.
Maybe it's my system, but Microsoft doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
~~~
DocSavage
It's broken with my up-to-date Chrome on MacOS. I could see the site properly
with Firefox Aurora.
Aside from the sketchy web page, though, the site is very vague. Yeah, I see
there are elements to design but what is the "Fluent Design System" and how
does it champion the use of those elements?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study catches 2 bird populations as they split into separate species - vaksel
http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Study_catches_2_bird_populations_as_they_split_into_separate_species.asp
======
teilo
For some reason, this domain is redirecting to Bloomberg.com.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kim Dotcom’s Mega 3, with Bitcoin. Two bad ideas that go worse together - davidgerard
http://rocknerd.co.uk/2016/08/10/kim-dotcoms-mega-3-with-bitcoin-two-bad-ideas-that-go-worse-together/
======
facorreia
One of the most sensible pieces I've read about either subject.
~~~
HoopleHead
Strange definition of "sensible" you've got there. It read more like a
petulant teenager's froth-lipped rant, to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
High school student hacks into Apple servers and downloads 90GB of secure files - davvid
https://9to5mac.com/2018/08/16/melbourne-apple-hack
======
davvid
The part that caught my eye: _The teen [...] used VPNs and other tools to try
to avoid being traced, but Apple’s systems logged the serial numbers of the
MacBooks used to carry out the attacks_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A world-famous urbanist says New York is becoming a “gated suburb” - endswapper
http://qz.com/808749/a-world-famous-urbanist-says-new-york-is-becoming-a-gated-suburb/
======
JBReefer
I work as a software developer in Silicon Alley. I don't know anyone that owns
an apartment in Manhattan that paid for it with money they earned. A few paid
for apartments with family money, but the rest of us rent. My family has lived
in the city for a long, long time, and I understand this isn't a wholly new
phenomenon, but it's gotten much worse in the last 3 years.
How is this sustainable in the long term?
To make things worse, where I live in Astoria the local community board is so
obsessed with parking (we have 2 fucking subway lines, more than the Upper
East Side) that all large new buildings have underground parking, making them
dramatically more expensive. This is to "keep things affordable."
It feels so kafkaesque. I've thought about moving to Kansas City, where
they've been building like crazy and the new streetcar is very useful.
~~~
Futurebot
It's a disaster. No single factor affects people's decisions as much as the
rent in this city; lives here revolve around it, especially if you're only
making so-so money. I think about how different life here would be if
everyone's rent was only, let's say, 10% of their income (jobs, hobbies,
social lives, etc.)
The rental increase treadmill keeps turning faster and faster, and the need to
keep moving neighborhoods every few years is not a picnic.
I was born in Brooklyn and have lived in NYC my whole life, and the rental
situation just gets worse every year. Unless and until we start dealing with
the issue seriously, it's just going to keep eating more and more of people's
incomes. I wrote a post on this a while ago summarizing the issue:
[https://medium.com/@spencer_th0mas/fixing-the-nyc-rent-
crisi...](https://medium.com/@spencer_th0mas/fixing-the-nyc-rent-crisis-or-
the-rent-is-still-too-damn-high-edb13ca853cc#.mzgoimq52)
My rental history looks like this:
1995: 300/month sublet (Kensington)
1997: 625/month 1BR walkup (Brighton Beach)
1999: 675/month
2000: 1450/month 1BR walkup (Upper East Side)
2001: Above raised to 1650, moved
2002: 1125/month studio (Yorksvillle)
2009: 1175/month studio (Yorksville) - landlord wanted the apartment for a
relative, had to move
2010: 1750 1BR walkup (Lower East Side)
2011: 1800
2012: 1850
2013: 1900
2014: 1950
2015: 2000
2016: 2180
All the old apartments I lived in are now at least 400-500+ more. It's out of
control. I'm probably heading back to south BK when my lease is up; at least
studios under 1400 still exist there.
------
arcanus
> This problem is ingrained not just in New York, but a stack of “superstar”
> Western cities like London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Florida argued
I can attest that it is certainly happening in Austin, TX.
I suspect this is strongly correlated with the drop in crime in cities as
well. The very concept of “gated suburb” cities is pretty cyberpunk, imo.
------
johan_larson
> If you look at what people are living in on the Upper East Side, in these
> new towers, [it’s] 3,500 square feet for a family of two, a parking spot in
> the garage or next to your unit
What the heck is he talking about? At least here in Toronto, high-rise units
tend to be small, often very small compared to suburban houses. And it's hard
to find condos with three or four bedrooms. They tend to have two at most.
3500 square feet? That's the penthouse, man. It's for the guy in the silk
ascot and velvet robe who invites his friends (who are of an age with his
daughter or granddaughter) over for a pool party.
~~~
snrplfth
Getting development permission in New York City is extremely difficult and
expensive, much more so than in Toronto. Also the level of demand is much
higher. This tends to drive developers to serve the upper end of the market
moreso than the middle. As a result, new Manhattan residential towers really
do have a remarkable amount of big luxury units. (Richard Florida would
probably know, he owns a house in Rosedale. He travels in these circles.)
------
strict9
Always wanted to live in NY, but knew owning a place would be impossible (also
a developer). Chicago is probably as close as NY as I'll get, and that's fine.
Can easily afford a large SFH or two-flat (with tenant paying most of my
mortgage) with a yard. This is with a short walk to train station (less than
30 minute commute), to work in a big city with a wealth of culture and
entertainment options.
I can't find that particular combination anywhere else in the US.
~~~
Mekkanox
Washington, DC? I think though that in the surrounding metro area, a SFH costs
more on average than in Chicago.
~~~
strict9
DC would also be an excellent choice, but anecdotes seem to imply housing is
very expensive--I'll have to look more in depth.
------
snrplfth
Maybe they should allow the construction of more housing. Seems like if you
have supply problems, you should permit supply to grow.
~~~
mancerayder
It's NYC, not Houston. :-) Some considerations:
* The city's already very densely populated, increasing the density comes at the price of having to ensure the infrastructure can handle it. The most obvious is the creaking subway system, which has gotten hella overcrowded in the last few years, but you also have other infra that needs to go along with it (the type where you tear up the street and fix layers of piping, cabling, and all the rest)
* The 'not Houston' comment is partly snarky, partly to make the point that what makes New York City what it is, or Paris or London what they are, is their character and that's partially zoning and building code. I suppose you could raze all the brownstones in Brooklyn Heights and build mega apartments, but do we really want to do that?
* Politically, changing zoning is hard. Density is pushed back on by the local neighborhood. Next you have affordable housing advocates that push back against zoning, in fact in places like Bushwick, even if you include 25-30% affordable housing in a new development, you still have picketing, protests and loudspeakers. In Williamsburg, under Bloomberg there was massive rezoning that lead to the neighborhood essentially turning into an extension of Manhattan. Partly this involved rezoning light manufacturing, and allowing building by the riverfront. That said, affordable housing advocates and people in that camp decry Williamsburg as a great tragedy because the rents went up for the poorer people that were there before.
* Finally, after all I said they ARE building more housing. But they can't build housing faster than the people are moving here and also the people are making babies. People have a tendency to multiply, and the economy here has been pretty stable. 8M residents in 2000 compared to 8.5M today. The demand fills faster than the supply can keep up.
~~~
snrplfth
Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn are very densely populated, but there's a
lot more to the city than that. Huge swaths of the New York metropolitan area
are two-storey houses, and what I suggest is upgrading these to five or six
storey brownstone-style housing. Yes, infrastructure does need to be built,
but by putting more people in less space, you increase the ability of the city
to pay for infrastructure. After all, cities that are losing population (de-
densifying) generally do not find it any easier to pay for their existing
infrastructure. And if people want New York to stay just the way it is
physically, then they're going to have to stop complaining about the prices.
Increased supply or increased prices, that's the trade-off.
Yes, changing zoning is difficult, and the way Bloomberg went about it only
made it worse. Because the up-zoning (permitting more development) was limited
to a very few neighbourhoods, it meant that the new development was
concentrated there, with noticeable effects. If he'd up-zoned a wider area,
that development could have been more spread-out and less disruptive. As it
is, though, he actually down-zoned large areas of the city, often those low-
rise neighbourhoods which could have handled more density. Just as in San
Francisco, increased housing supply will in large part need to happen in the
inner and outer suburbs.
New York is building housing, but not that much:
[https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nyc-
hou...](https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nyc-
housing.png?w=600&h=371) . Just because there's a few big noticeable towers
going up does not mean that there's a large amount of housing being built.
Also, just because supply isn't keeping up, doesn't mean it does nothing at
all. By building more housing, the increase in price is _less than it
otherwise would be._
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shkreli’s plea from prison: Free me and I’ll cure Covid-19 - asebold
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/shkrelis-plea-from-prison-free-me-and-ill-cure-covid-19/
======
chmaynard
Urban dictionary:
"Sociopaths are people who have little to no conscience. They will lie, cheat,
steal and manipulate others for their own benefit. They know exactly what they
are doing, they just don't care because they don't think that way. If you are
naive enough, they will brainwash you into doing exactly what they say and
what they want..."
Does he want to get out of prison? Yes. Does he want to find a cure for
Covid-19? Who knows, but it's beside the point.
------
op03
If Snotboogie always stole the money, why'd you let him play?
Got to. This America, man.
------
mmhsieh
I say it's worth a try.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Watch Live Twitter Updates on Your Favorite Topics - Running On Heroku - moorage
http://www.riveti.com/
======
tlrobinson
Twitter search with auto-refresh?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't forget: [1,2,100,200].sort() // JS - residualmind
I had somehow completely forgotten (or suppressed) this behaviour in Javascript....
======
AquiGorka
Jajaja, yeah, the other day I was helping out a newcomer and we came into this
and had to explain how it is different if you compare Numbers vs Strings...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An easy way to use GNU Screen over SSH - Anon84
http://www.earthinfo.org/an-easy-way-to-use-gnu-screen-over-ssh/
======
bcl
I think you guys are being a bit harsh on this article. Its not as if it was
saying "ssh to remote and run screen" was something new. It does provide some
useful hints on .screenrc setup and while running a script to connect to the
remote screen may not be for everyone it is useful.
------
swombat
This is all pretty basic... not sure why this is news-worthy.
And, as thras pointed out, it's needlessly complicated. All you need to do is:
ssh yourserver -t "screen -D -RR"
And you'll have a new screen session, or reattach to your old screen session,
however you left it set up.
If you're on a mac and you want to set up a different background colour for
each server, check out my tutorial at: <http://www.swombat.com/setting-up-
terminalapp-with-tr-0>
~~~
Locke
Indeed, it is really basic. I guess I could see value in aliasing that to save
typing. In my case, I have a "Screen" menu in fvwm with menu entries like
this:
+ %terminal.png%"caspian" Exec exec xterm -geometry 80x25+30-28 -T "screen : caspian" -e ssh -t [email protected] screen -x -R
I have menus for local screens as well, with entries like:
+ %terminal.png%"dorothy" Exec exec xterm -geometry 80x37+30+60 -T "screen : dorothy" -e screen -x -c $HOME/.screenrc-dorothy -R dorothy
I usually create a new screen config for each project that launches shells in
the right directories, etc. For example, here's my .screenrc-dorothy:
chdir $HOME/projects/dorothy/lib/dorothy
screen -t lib 1 zsh
chdir $HOME/projects/dorothy/test/dorothy
screen -t test 2 zsh
chdir $HOME/projects/dorothy/ext
screen -t ext 3 zsh
chdir $HOME/projects/dorothy
screen -t irb 4 zsh
at irb# eval 'stuff "irb -r dorothy\015"'
chdir $HOME/projects/dorothy
screen -t zsh 0 zsh
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{rk}%H %{gk}%c %{yk}%M%d %{wk}%?%-Lw%?%{bw}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{wk}%?%+Lw%?"
That gives me shells in the directories I'm likely to be working from, and
starts an irb session in another shell.
I guess this is only newsworthy if you're not the type to customize your
environment to your liking. Well, that and the fact that gnu screen is
somewhat difficult to learn and researching it is a pain because "screen" is
such a poor, generic name for a project.
I'd love to see this turn into a thread of neat things that can be done with
gnu screen.
~~~
pyr3
> researching it is a pain because "screen" is such a poor, generic name for a
> project.
Really. I find it pretty easy to use search terms like "gnu screen" or
"screenrc" to get lots of results in Google...
------
philh
I find the main problem with running screen over ssh is that the remote screen
doesn't interact well with the local one. I tend to just have multiple local
ssh sessions and not run screen remotely, but it isn't ideal.
~~~
kaens
The solution to this is to use a different escape sequence than C-a on the
remote machine, or on your local machine.
I put escape ^Ww in my local .screenrc, and this alleviates most if not all
the problems with running screen on both the local and remote machines.
------
thras
Was there a hard way? I just ssh to the machine and type 'screen -Rd'
The article seems like needless complication.
~~~
w1ntermute
If I understand correctly, it is newsworthy because it provides a method by
which you can automatically go to a particular session and/or shell in that
session by running just one command on your local machine in which you specify
the Screen title of that session/shell.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bamboo Train: How Cambodians hacked together rural transit - mtalantikite
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Catching-the-Bamboo-Train.html
======
quarkness
I was lucky enough to catch a ride on one of these trains in 2008
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeJjcAm_JfU>
~~~
bbx
Haha great video. I've actually been there 3 weeks ago! It hasn't changed a
bit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: The most advanced scientific concepts with which we regularly interact? - Splendor
What are the most advanced scientific concepts that a "normal" person interacts with on a regular basis?
======
27182818284
Cell phones are an easy one, but I'd also throw a vote out for Lasers because
of the photoelectric effect, quantum mechanics, miniaturization, etc that went
into the modern, ubiquitous laser. Even if you don't own a DVD player, you've
probably been part of a grocery store checkout recently where nobody thought
anything of it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bing Visual Search: A great Innovation - tekunik
http://tekunik.blogspot.com/2009/09/bing-visual-searcha-great-innovation.html
For long ,search engines are displaying users a list of links as the search results.We all know how Images help in explaining a particular topic as compared to text.Images also help consumers in better and faster decision making.
======
DanielStraight
Not to downplay what Microsoft is doing, but if it only works for preselected
inputs, it's not search. It's just web pages you access through a search box
instead of through links.
~~~
tekunik
that's why I told it's only for structured data. If microsoft can do this
dynamically then it will have some impact.Never the less it has opened up a
new area for the search engines to fight it out in near future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kenyan runner just became the first marathon runner to break the 2-hour barrier - pseudolus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/12/eliud-kipchoge-breaks-two-hour-marathon-record/
======
ColinWright
Pick your source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231660)
(bbc.co.uk)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231529)
(theguardian.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231503)
(dw.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231479](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231479)
(nytimes.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231450)
(wsj.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231449](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231449)
(sportingnews.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Startup CTO’s Guide to Ops (1 of 3): Guiding Principles - willwagner
https://medium.com/@cgroom/the-startup-ctos-guide-to-ops-1-of-3-guiding-principles-2607e21d9f89
======
xiaodown
> While I love reading Hacker News posts about the amazing infrastructure at
> successful companies, I worry that these discussions may encourage an over-
> emphasis on perfection and scale.
God yes! I read all these blog posts about people's amazing automated
deployment systems that use 17 different technologies where they have F on top
of E on top of D on top of C on top of B on top of A on top of Kubernetes on
top of Docker on top of AWS, and it's like, A.) When did you actually do any,
you know, "work" \- the stuff that you can charge clients for and make money?
And B.) What's going to happen when some company or someone releases a patch
or security update for any of the 7829271 applications in the stack that
breaks everything?
You know what we run? Linux. On AWS. Using chef - although every community
cookbook I ever look at makes me less sure that that was the right call (most
community cookbooks make me think suicide might be the right call).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you have a software consultant or outsourcing horror story? - Shanerostad
I'll start:<p>My friend's first startup took a dive after spending $80,000 to work with a local development company. It turned out the development firm was just a front to outsource all of the work overseas and take a big cut.<p>Long story short, 5 months later he ended up with no app, no money, and a lawsuit that he couldn't much afford.<p>Has anyone else had an experience like this?
======
edent
Ooooh yes!
A few years ago I was working for a large company. We needed some help
building an app and a back-end service. Our team _could_ have built this - but
we were stretched a bit thin with other work.
So we found a great technology partner. They'd helped us in the past, and they
could take care of everything.
After a few weeks, it turns out that they'd over-sold their abilities as a
back-end provider. They could do the app no problem, but were going to have to
use another company to build the database. No worries, they've done this loads
of times before.
We were quite behind schedule, so agreed to it. I was sent to give a briefing
to the twice-removed company.
I talked them through what we were doing, the designs we had, and how it
needed to be built. I explained the challenges we anticipated, the regulatory
environment, and the timescales.
Their lead consultant looked over what I'd presented and said - "This is
excellent work. We'd like to hire you."
"I'm flattered," I said, "But I quite like my current job."
"No, you misunderstand," the consultant said, "We want to hire you to build
this for us. It looks like you know exactly what the client wants and,
frankly, I don't think we have the skill in-house to build it on time."
"..."
He thought I was from the first-outsourced company.
I gently let him know that _I was the bloody client!_
Needless to say, the project collapsed shortly thereafter.
~~~
ratsimihah
"No, you misunderstand,"
This must've been funny!
------
nameless912
Boy oh boy oh boy do I.
I was transitioning between teams and needed something to do in the meantime,
so I got put on a testing and validation team for an internal product. I was
to collaborate with our overseas IT team and figure out why their tests
weren't catching bugs in production.
After two weeks of wrangling, hand wringing, and bad vibes, I finally got them
to send me their test automation code and a link to their Jenkins where they
were running their tests.
The Jenkins was in a sorry state: disk overflowing with garbage, 10+ releases
behind, and not tied into our corporate LDAP (it was using local admin-
everything accounts instead). But that didn't hold a candle to the test
automation code itself.
It didn't compile.
No seriously, I spent two more weeks just trying to get it to compile on my
laptop, and I _could not_ make it work. Mind you, this was a pretty bog-
standard setup (Python unittest-based suite, Selenium for frontend testing,
and an in-house [but not terribly unusual] integration test library written in
lua).
I never once got it to compile, all the while their engineers insisting that I
must be doing something wrong because it works fine on their Jenkins server,
as evinced by their test reports being generated every night.
Turns out that wasn't true either, though: they had built a series of
obfuscations such that the Jenkins job scanned the written tests, marked most
of them as passing, and randomly failed the rest. This had been going on for
over a year and a half and apparently no one had noticed. They were faking
test results and slowing down developers because no one could figure out why
tests were failing randomly.
The worst part is, when confronted with the problem, their defense was that
they were worried no one was reading their reports, so they did it once a year
ago and forgot to turn it off. Problem is that the report generation was
fairly sophisticated with quite a few special clauses to handle specific tests
which had to "pass" or "fail" in a particular way. So they clearly invested
some time into it.
They finally admitted they were in too deep a couple weeks after that initial
confrontation, and fired from our team. But because they're the favorite
consultancy of another manager at the company, they continue to this day to
consult for the company. It's really sad.
~~~
brianwawok
That is a new record. I can kinda understand incompetence "ok we hired too
many people, some were not very good and we haven't fired them yet"...
annoying but it makes sense.
But this is outright fraud. This is the literal definition of negative value.
Paying someone money to test, then those testers failing "random tests"
wasting actual developer time on non-bugs.
(With that said, this is very weird an offshore team would own the unit tests
for a project.. the developers should own it)
~~~
nameless912
Trust me, I know. Having someone else write your tests just screams
incompetence to me, but this project was like 4 years in at this point. I
wasn't going to convince them to change that.
------
rhacker
I am taking over a codebase that was written by an outsourced team in
Pakistan. The code is in a total chaotic copy-pasta state. I swear the main
thing you'll find in outsourced code is the inability to refactor or re-use
code for similar features.
One recent thing I just found is a view that has about 8 source HTML files,
all of which is quite complicated angular1 code. Then when the team was asked
to have a slightly different button for an ADMIN logging in, they duplicated
all the files and changed the button. Since then management had them add new
features to the view (that would apply to admins and other users) and they
basically coded up the changes requested in different ways in the admin/non-
admin views.
Same stuff in the REST code - I don't really get it either - when you talk to
the tech leads they are often very intelligent and totally get the criticisms.
I think the problem is these outsourcing companies are hiring junior
developers and teaching them just enough to write code to just barely get by
the requirements. Literally every feature I go through in this code base its
like I'm turning over a lovely cake to find worms inside.
~~~
MartinCron
I swear some projects are outsourced to a whole different _universe_ , one
where people haven’t yet figured out that copy/paste is not a good idea.
------
mopeloi
I was the only engineer at a not-tech-oriented NGO, so they had me on-site to
check up on the team developing their app. At the end of December they had an
initial app - I'm not a mobile dev, but it looked OK for an MVP. We showed it
to leadership and everyone approved.
We then went on 2 weeks vacation. When I came back, I was surprised to hear
the contract was nearly up - they had supposedly been working over our
vacation. This app looked identical to the MVP we'd seen before. I was upset,
but there wasn't much we could do. Also it turns out the app didn't look
flashy enough for leadership. This was a major wake-up call for me - I messed
up here by not critiquing the app or making clear work hours expectations -
but also I discovered that demo-ing an app to a whole group leads to a lot of
group-think. The criticism only comes later and then you are screwed.
------
everdev
Similarly, I was running a digital agency and the performance of one of my
first employees took a nose dive. After trying everything I could think of to
help him turn things around I had to let him go.
Shortly after, I got an Email from an unknown individual who said he knew the
employee and asked if I could chat. Turns out, my employee was subbing out all
of his work and stopped paying his sub, who then stopped delivering. The sub
proved this to me by confirming some confidential information that he
shouldn't have had access to.
After revealing that he had taken part in this scheme, the sub then asked me
for a job! Needless to say I told him he wasn't a good fit.
~~~
linsomniac
Somewhat similarly, I once hired an employee who didn't have the skills we
needed but said he was motivated to learn, seemed like a good fit from a
personality standpoint, and had really great communication during the
interview process.
We spent a year trying to bring him up to speed, waiting through all sorts of
excuses, and worse, all of his communications were terrible (bad spelling,
inability or unwillingness to use a spell checker, bad grammar). It was so bad
that we eventually made him get any communications that went to clients (~30%
of his job) be reviewed by a coworker before they were sent out.
At the last "PIP" meeting we had I asked him: "I went back and looked at all
of the e-mails we exchanged during your interviewing, and they didn't have any
spelling or grammar or punctuation problems. How did you do that?" "Oh, my
wife wrote those."
~~~
stansult
Should have hired his wife from the start
~~~
linsomniac
That's exactly what I said to my other management team. :-(
------
Thriptic
I have one in the context of an academic lab. I was in the process of
refactoring a project a coworker had left behind which was basically spaghetti
code. Our lab had a collaboration with another lab, and that lab offered to
extend the functionality of our code base for mutual gain. They assigned this
project to a Ph.D. student who picked it up as part of their Ph.D. thesis. I
hooked this researcher up on our Github and asked them to send me anything
they had about their project (requirements, design, issues, desired interface
blah blah) so I could understand their plan and prepare for the integration.
Fast forward 6 months and I still had not received anything. They also had not
committed any code to the repo I had set them up with. I contacted them and
said that it would be difficult for me to insure that our programs would
interface correctly if I had no idea what the interface was supposed to look
like or what their program was supposed to accomplish. She said she "was
working on it". After several more months of not hearing anything and being
under time pressure myself, I contacted her and demanded she upload her code
to Github immediately. She refused, stating that this code was her personal
property and that she was concerned I would "steal her IP". I lost it and sent
her an email, CCing her adviser and my adviser, informing her that all her
work was the property of her employer, and that if she didn't upload it I
would contact our university's legal department and inform them that she
intended to steal IP that was university property.
At this point her adviser called me and quietly informed me that the reason
she hadn't uploaded anything was that she had nothing to upload. She had been
struggling for over a year and had made 0 substantive progress on her project,
lacked the programming and scientific knowledge to do what she wanted to do,
and was faring very poorly as a researcher. She was subsequently rushed
through their program and graduated in 3 years from a program that typically
takes at least 6 years to complete.
The project never got finished.
~~~
lainga
She was faring poorly, so she was rushed through and graduated early? That
doesn't seem very good, is it common in academia?!
~~~
Thriptic
Done to save face. Dropping her would reflect poorly on the lab as it's
basically admitting failure to properly vet candidates and/or mentor. She also
had industry political connections which made booting her difficult for
economic blow back reasons.
~~~
lainga
Nuts. Where do you live, roughly? I'm just an undergrad but I don't think
political or industry (well -- maybe industry) connections do much at Canadian
universities.
~~~
bigmanwalter
Oh sweet summer child. Connections are everything everywhere.
------
badwork
I've been on the other end of this a fair few times (hence the anonymous
account).
The first time I was working on an app, most of our pair programming with a
much more experienced dev. I needed to keep the job to keep my visa. When the
more experienced developers quit I couldn't get anything done. I strung things
out as long as possible but eventually people cottoned on to the fact that I
wasn't productive.
The next time I had pushed really hard to get the job. "Fake it till you make
it" they told me. I spent two months at the job and I didn't even manage to
get the development environment set up. I used to hide in the toilets crying
from the stress. I was let go at the end of my probation period.
I just wanted to let people know what it's like on the other side. Not
everyone is some bad guy trying to screw you over. Sometimes it's just a
normal guy trying to get by and not managing.
~~~
throvvaway2
That's entirely your fault. If you had no idea what you were doing the correct
play would be to raise your hand and ask for help. Find seniors that could
help out. Stop pretending (lying) and start being a professional.
------
clavalle
I've had a some outsourcing successes and failures.
In the first one, I got what I deserved. I underpaid developers from a poorer
country who ended up being 'yes' men who continually checked in catastrophic,
unmaintainable code for simple problems. It burned me over and over again but
the rates were just so good it was hard to get off the sauce. We ended up
paying for those savings many times over.
Another time I had the opposite problem. I paid premium prices for premium
developers that required so much hand-holding and reassurance and
clarification that I may as well have wrote it myself. I kept thinking that
they'd get ramped up once they got used to our idioms and way of doing things
but they never did.
~~~
arethuza
Many years ago the startup I had co-founded outsourced a chunk of development
work because an investor wanted us to - what was produced was pretty much
"catastrophic, unmaintainable" code that took a few developers on our side to
rework (probably rather more than it would have taken to write the code from
scratch ).
What we did like about the code was that each developer in the offshore team
had created an exception class based on their own name - so the application
would report "There has been a XXX YYY Error" \- where XXX YYY was the name of
one of their developers.
[And after ~15 years I can still remember the relevant name for the first one
of these I saw].
~~~
gandhium
> each developer in the offshore team had created an exception class based on
> their own name
This is wonderful! Did they honor their work hierarchy, i.e. exceptions from
junior developers will always extend exceptions from senior ones?
------
tomohawk
Worked for a large government agency that outsourced their IT department. I
was on a team that was asked to look at the RFP before it was put out. We
flagged things like incentivizing the contractor for resolving issues.
Predictably, the contractor that got the work created as many tickets as
possible for resolving any given thing.
Years later, the agency now has no IT competency and they pay a lot more for
much less service than before. They also have a lot less flexibility in what
they do. They almost have no choice but to keep rewarding the contractor for
poor quality service.
It's been interesting watching a situation where things keep getting worse and
worse because the agency is basically too big to fail and will probably never
run out of money.
------
linsomniac
Tale from the other side, I used to run a Linux consultancy and we once had
someone engage us to develop a custom Linux distribution. This guy's father
was a patent attorney, and after spending significant time developing this
distribution for him he couldn't pay because he had spent his budget on
patenting it. But he needed some changes beyond the initial scope of work to
get it to a viable product, so he was trying to get us to do more work while
at the same time not paying his 6 month old invoices.
Probably the biggest "nightmare" we had was a local publisher, and this was
back in around 2000, who wanted to put their magazines on the web. They were
highly targeted "yellow pages" for tourist towns, so they really wanted to
take their existing PDF artifacts that they send to the printer and make them
available on the web as clickable hyperlinked things inside a web based
viewer.
So we proposed making a proof of concept, we spent a few weeks working on
splitting the multi-page PDF, making a viewer that would pre-cache pages,
allow you to zoom and scroll, and defining the bounding boxes for some pages
so that you could click and go to the homepage of the advert you were clicking
on. We demoed it for them and they liked it, but they said they had decided to
put that project on hold. I explicitly asked them if they were happy with what
we had built and they said yes.
Around a year later I get a series of calls from them and from a new web
development shop they have hired, saying that they wanted a refund because the
work we did "our new consultant says they could have done in 10 minutes". My
feeling from the conversations I had with them at this point was that the new
developer was going to get paid out of the money they got back from us.
I don't remember what our final resolution was, we always worked very hard to
make our clients happy. We really didn't like that they had said they were
happy with what we had done, then a year later some third party called us
telling us our work was crap and we should give a refund. And the whole "We
could have done it in 10 minutes" was not a very good tactic, it just pissed
us off.
~~~
marpstar
I've been on the other side of that argument. In my case, a client had spent
$50,000 on a pretty plain static brochure website. They're not tech-savvy, so
they wanted to move to a CMS they could manage on their own.
When I told them it'd be $2,500 to put their existing site into a new
WordPress site, they thought I was joking. That was the day that I realized
value pricing is a real thing.
In your situation (with money already in hand), I probably would've just told
them "Then pay them 0.25 my hourly rate to cover their 10 minutes of work with
a 50% bonus. Why are you wasting your time calling me?"
~~~
ewams
u "Should be able to do all this for about $2,500"
dem "really? You must be joking"
u "hehe, yea I have a funny sense of humor. I meant $25 thousand, not 25
hundred, har har"
dem "oh ok, heres your money"
u "thank you"
~~~
ewams
Just so you know I was being serious.
~~~
randomname11235
Out of the same league, where "If it costs nothing, it can not be worth much":
Me working for a large multinational: I would like to support this OpenSource
project that we regularly use, can we donate some money?
Boss: OpenSource? NO WAY. We're not commies.
Me: I would like to buy 100 CD's with software to distribute among my
colleagues since it will give them the change to learn about some really cool
security tools, all installed on a bootable linux live CD.
Boss: 10k Only? GO FOR IT!
That same night, we spend burning 100 CD's and printing 100 labels.
And that, dear readers, was a (really small) push into the development of
Auditor, the Linux Penetration Testing Distro. we all learned to love (Hi
Max!).
------
roel_v
Not my ass on the line and not a major burn, but still: I got an email many
years ago from a guy who said essentially 'I got your email address from <guy
we both know>, are you interested in picking up some side work and if so, can
we meet'. I say okay and when we meet, he explains that they had this SaaS
idea (an industry-specific collaboration/data sharing tool essentially; this
company did other work in this industry, they weren't a software shop but saw
an opportunity and wanted to branch out) and they contracted it out to a
largish 'web agency' as that was called back then in the area. They had
delivered a mostly working product, developed using their own 'framework' (as
everybody and their dog has).
But now of course it needed maintenance as well as some additional features
(software of course is never done). That web agency had said though 'well
these small contracts aren't really worth our time - we delivered what you
asked, if you want small work on top of it, we have to charge you ridiculous
rates'. So now this guy was looking for someone who could do some occasional
work on it every few weeks, for a (for that time) complex web application,
written in an undocumented proprietary framework. Yeah good luck with that, I
politely declined, after explaining the situation - from the look on the guy's
face, he only then and there fully realized the position this 'web agency' had
put him in.
Heard from the guy we both knew months later that they were still looking, and
after a year or two the product disappeared from their website. Not sure if it
was the tech that took it under, but I never quite understand how companies
think they can completely outsource the whole workings of a product they
intend to offer, without even having someone on their own team who understands
that product.
~~~
MartinCron
I have seen permutations of this scenario multiple times. I have some sympathy
for organizations in this situation, but it is entirely self-inflicted.
~~~
reboog711
At one point, a lot of my consulting business was figuring out code like that,
that others have written.
~~~
slake
We have a term for it. We call it code refurbishment!
------
tluyben2
Yep, had this a few times in the past 25 years. I am good at working remotely
with people, but it taught me that, before trusting, I have to sit with people
through a few sprints. It is hard to fake who is doing the work if you go in
hard and work with the team for a few weeks. Not many (including very, very
large shops) have the resources to fake that (note that you need ‘evil’ agents
who are also good at what they do in software dev and in my world that seldom
mixes); it will be easy to detect if they drop the ball after. Since taking
this approach I have had only solid outsourcing experiences. But yes, lost a
lot of credit & money before that realisation.
------
beckler
I was an intern when this happened, but yeah.
We were working on a program to manage a piece of industrial hardware, and the
hardware was a handheld device. The contractor hired to build out the firmware
put something like 16 people working 60 hour weeks on this. For about 12
weeks, they toiled away, and then we decided that they should join our demos
and demo what they had.
Well, it was incredibly bad. They had basically just created some Qt
templates. They had very little, if any, code written under the covers. The
logic just wasn't there, but the interface was at least nice. It was pretty
clear these guys had no idea what they were doing. Our director of development
were all over these guys every day for weeks after that.
Eventually my internship ended, but I heard that they ultimately decided to
drop the contractor and hire in house for it, and it eventually got released
about 4 or 5 years after I left there.
------
jacquesm
$80K? That's peanuts. Government projects that are outsourced run in the 10's
or in some rare cases even 100's of millions of $/E/YourFavoriteCurrency and
get cancelled because of non-delivery with alarming regularity.
I see a lot of outsourcing deals in my daily practice, 70% or so ends well,
20% ends with a lot of friction and 10% or so fails utterly leaving the
contractor with a damaged reputation and the contracting party out a lot of
money. It's not rare to see these end up in court.
You _really_ need to do research on any company that you want to outsource
part of your development work to. Talk to their other customers, get to know
the people in the team that will do the actual work, in other words: do your
homework.
If you don't you're going to end up in trouble, more or less guaranteed.
~~~
vram22
>$80K? That's peanuts. Government projects that are outsourced run in the 10's
or in some rare cases even 100's of millions of $/E/YourFavoriteCurrency and
get cancelled because of non-delivery with alarming regularity.
Right. I'm not an expert in the study of this [1], but even just as a regular
dev (and sometime manager or team leader, with some training and experience in
software engineering techniques, including successful application of such
techniques in real projects), I take an interest in this, and have come across
multiple such cases in just reading the tech news - magazines, web sites, etc.
A couple of related links:
[https://www.google.co.in/searchq=large+software+project+fail...](https://www.google.co.in/searchq=large+software+project+failures)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_and_overbudget_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_and_overbudget_custom_software_projects)
There are ways to overcome these failures, or rather prevent them, but they
require disciplined use of techniques, from top to bottom of the team, which
is not very common, for various reasons, either lack of knowledge of the
techniques at all, disbelief that they are effective (if done right), or lack
of political will to implement them, or penny-wise-pound-foolish mentality.
[1] There are people who are:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capers_Jones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capers_Jones)
Quotes (from the above Wikipedia article):
"High-quality software is not expensive. High-quality software is faster and
cheaper to build and maintain than low-quality software, from initial
development all the way through total cost of ownership."
~~~
jacquesm
> High-quality software is not expensive. High-quality software is faster and
> cheaper to build and maintain than low-quality software, from initial
> development all the way through total cost of ownership.
That would be hilarious if it weren't the truth. But nobody actually wants to
take the time to do it right so they end up doing it wrong and then taking a
multiple of the time anyway.
~~~
vram22
Ha, you explained it better than the quote did. And worse is that often they
repeat the same mistake in the next project, and the ...
------
throw_me_away_0
> My friend's first startup took a dive after spending $80,000 to work with a
> local development company. It turned out the development firm was just a
> front to outsource all of the work overseas and take a big cut.
What I get from this story is your friend raised an inadequate amount of money
to build a company that required a technical background that he/she didn't
possess, though should have.
80k over 5 months is 16k a month, which should get you roughly one qualified
engineer. Unless the project was very simple, 5 months isn't a lot of time.
Maybe they didn't understand what was possible within that time-frame /
budget?
There's nothing wrong with outsourcing. I'm outside of the US (though from
there) and companies outsource to me -- not because I'm cheap, but because
there aren't that many people who do the specialized work that I do, in any
country.
On the other side of it, most work that gets done for startups is relatively
simple. There are plenty of competent engineers all over the world that can do
the work.
> It turned out the development firm was just a front to outsource all of the
> work overseas and take a big cut.
Turns out Apple outsources all of their manufacturing to China and takes a big
cut. Maybe I should start buying only `Made in the USA` (or wherever you're
from) computers?
~~~
brianwawok
16k a month can get you a mid level + an intern, or one senior with some cash
depending on where in the US you go. It also gets you about 20 guys in India
with a PM in the states.
I can guess which way they went..
------
Pr0ducer
Company I work for was recently acquired. Day 1: Everybody except the Sales
team is on 90-days notice. This included the software development team. They
have a whole process in place, with a catchy name: "Lift & Shift." During the
next 90 days, they are doing "knowledge transfer" with their team, and I
checked out individuals on github. Bangladesh, rural Russia, Vietnam, and
Isreal, just to name a few of the various publicly stated locations. Does that
count as Outsourcing?
------
whistlerbrk
I understand that most major purchases have guidelines and ways to protect
consumers but I just can't imagine spending 80k on something and not
consistently demanding to see progress toward an end goal.
When I was consulting I had a build pipeline to production up as my #1 task.
Doing this kept me honest and prevented a month of "go to production" issues
at the tail end of the project from surfacing but far more importantly was
building trust with my clients. They could see what was happening all the time
and if something was going off track we could correct it quickly.
~~~
roel_v
"When I was consulting I had a build pipeline to production up as my #1 task."
I used to cost that out as a separate item on my offers, but half of the time
people would balk at paying for such things. No amount of explaining how it's
better for all parties could convince some people. Now, that sort of prospect
was someone you don't want as a customer anyway, but in the beginning you want
to convert every prospect...
------
klekih
So I'm working on a project, within a product company, where 3 of the main
components were written by an outsourcing company. From time to time I had to
solve support tickets for those components.
Now I use this C# code I found there as "do-not"s. Let me give you few
examples: classes with 24000 (yeah, 24 thousands) lines. Tens of classes in
the same file. Methods with hundreds of lines. Switches in switch in while in
while(true). Operations (push and pop) on same queue from different threads
and lot of commented code with synchronizing logic which shows they just
didn't understand how threads can share a bloody queue object. Copy-paste of
logic because why do you have classes. Use statics, you dumb. And the most
evil thing, the best and worst example is a class which uses an array[] with
fixed size but behaves like a List with dynamic size. No generics. No use of
.net classes.
I can't imagine how those projects were signed by the main architect while he
asks, during usual code reviews, for nitpicks: change the name, move the
property upper with a line, etc.
I think the time and money spent to fix various things within those
componentes could have been greatly reduced if not that messy haywire code.
------
simonswords82
I'm sorry but if your friend spent $80k on a development company and didn't do
enough due dil to ensure that the company he was spending all of that money
with wasn't outsourcing it - that's on him.
There are a dozen basic things he could have done in order to ensure that he
wasn't stiffed. Off the top of my head:
\- Visiting the offices meeting the team, including those people specifically
assigned to his project
\- Requesting staged payments so he pays as phases are met and not prior to
receiving any deliverables
\- Checking the contract to ensure there's no mention of outsourcing. Did he
even check the contract at all?
\- Getting references from former customers to ensure the validity of any
claims made by the development firm
\- Searching online for feedback and reviews about the firm
\- Just asking questions in general. "Where is my app going to be developed
and who by?" seems like an obvious one before you spend nearly a hundred
thousand dollars
Edit: Looking at your post history you seem to be associated with a software
development company. Did you not speak with your friend about his decision to
spend an extraordinary amount on a development project ahead of him getting in
this mess?
~~~
Shanerostad
This was well before I worked here. We were still college students at the time
and he actually received a seed round of investment from a young angel-firm.
They were the ones who advised he worked with said company, so he thought they
knew what they were talking about. Long story short, a partner was friends
with the owner of this 'development firm' that ultimately created this mess.
Just another example of how bad advice and bad investors can kill your startup
before it even gets started.
------
staticelf
Not like that but I worked for a company and we were low on staff, one by one,
each programmer quit without getting reinforcements even though this was
stated many times. It wasn't until myself resigned, the last programmer on
this particular project, that the people in charge woke up and hired several
guys from another country less than 1 month before my last day at the company.
I got told to train them in the application but how far can you get in like 2
weeks with a remote team, really? They seemed very competent however, so maybe
not really a horror story but the whole thing was totally unnecessary because
if we had gotten reinforcements when asked for it, maybe not everyone would've
resigned.
~~~
rubidium
Alternate story: leadership wanted to switch to outsourcing the work. Created
a poor experience for everyone and let the devs quit on their own. You were
the last one out, so they ask you to train their new team.
~~~
hippich
why would management sabotage company like that? I think in USA it is pretty
easy to lay off people.
------
carbonatedmilk
I've had lousy outsourcing experiences and I've had good ones. The best
outsourcing experience I've had involved a very technically adept CTO, some
solid pre-thinking about architecture and scalability, and (most importantly)
an API-first, Microservices first mindset. This meant we could write API specs
and test cases, define max-execution times and then hand the problem to the
freelancer and let them figure out the solution. Of course we did a few other
things right: Good onboarding, an open Slack, excessive communication / code
review / feedback for the first few weeks. We also lucked in to finding a
couple of great Ukrainian developers just at the time the Ukrainian currency
took a nosedive, so we were getting $50/hr engineers for $30/hr rates. (Final
thought - I went to try and poach one of the freelancers a year or two later -
His rate had roughly tripled as a result of having gotten all the good
experience working on a 'modern' app stack (React + Express + AWS Lambda +
Microservices architecture).
------
potta_coffee
I've done a lot of work for clients, most of the work I get is cleaning up
after incompetent outsourced (overseas) developers. I know there are competent
developers overseas, but a lot of companies go for the low bidder and get
burned, then have to spend twice the amount (or more) than they would have if
they'd just done it right the first time.
------
hunvreus
If you hire a team to get the job done:
1\. Make sure you do a bit of research: talk to past clients, meet with the
team... 2\. Trust your gut feeling when it comes to the team lead. Ultimately,
the team will only be as good as their leaders.
More importantly, if you're an early stage startup you should probably NOT
hire an external team (and that's coming from a consultant).
Find a technical co-founder and go through the grind of building it on your
own.
------
adamqureshi
We are a small Design + Dev shop in NYC. We charge around $30k to build an
MVP. One recent client said she found an outsource company who can build her
site / web app for $1k. Im like ok so you don't like the work? whats the
problem. Our rate is $125/hr PP. I told you that from the get-go. She said, no
but i paid $30k for a site / web app and i see a bunch of other companies paid
way less. Im like you drive a range rover ( top of the line) Why don't you
goto range rover and say to them, I can find an indian company to build me a
range rover and why the F*%K should i pay $150k+ for yours? See what they say
and that is my answer. It seems to be the case its hard for "some" customers /
people to understand the value of what you are offering. That is why you
cannot compete on PRICE. Inevitably these people with an idea want to build an
app or have an idea ( its like a disease here in NYC) and have NO CONCEPT or
CLUE and when they goto upwork ( name your third world provider here) they get
ruined. So now off the jump i say to new customers / clients this is HOW MUCH
we charge and you can go F#!K yo-self if you can't pay ( well not like that
its in my mind, but you get what i mean) i keep it professional. I have
changed my approach to getting customers. The first thing i do is explain that
we do not outsource to 3rd world. We live and work here in NYC. This is what
we charge so we can eat and if you do not value our work, no one is forcing
you to work with us and you can go outsource your work to a 3rd world country
( outsource) and find out for yourself. After educating the client , they now
want us to build new features AND even gave us another gig. We live in NYC
where everyone is a gangsta. Ha ha! Real-talk.
~~~
hunvreus
I'd say: work for enterprise clients.
You get to learn how to build things at scale and they pay better. Startups
and individuals always require way more education and ultimately want to
squeeze every cent out of you.
~~~
adamqureshi
You hit the nail on the head! exactly. not to mention the txt messages at
midnight. lol
------
matte_black
I was having a conversation with someone I vaguely knew about their startup
and what they were trying to get developed. He told me about his challenges
and deadlines, and how hard it was to find a good development agency overseas.
I told him he should hire me to get it done, but naturally like most guys like
this, he was blown away by my San Francisco rate.
He put a finger in my face and asked why would he hire me when he could hire
an agency from Russia or Pakistan for a fraction of the cost? No thanks, he
said. No thanks.
After a long time I asked a mutual acquaintance whatever became of this guy
and his startup. He told me that guy was a bit of a lunatic, but had
eventually spent about $250k with some _local_ agency and ended up with a
broken product that did not do what he asked, he had got a refund for $100k
but was suing to get the other $150k back. Don’t know if he ever did get it.
------
mkirklions
I try to work very closely with my contractors for this reason.
If I dont see results or competence I bail before its too late.
I think the lesson for your friend is that they need technical people with
ownership in the business. If your primary use is your App, you should be your
own expert.
IMO: Be a full stack developer at least once in your life. Maybe twice.
------
reitanqild
In my first job as a developer after a few months I removed a few kloc of
messy code/configuration written by consultants and replaced it with a few
hundred lines of easier-to-understand code in a more mainstream technology. No
features lost.
I also got the libraries upgraded (they were waiting for months for a release
for some support library that turned out to be unneccessary with newer
releases of the main libraries.)
------
rm_-rf_slash
I don’t have a horror story, more of a caveat emptor tale:
When I was a freshman in college and learning iOS, I contracted out a
developer team in Bangalore to write the backend software for an app I built,
so that I could focus on the front end.
I had not taken a software engineering course by that point and had little
experience writing clear and concise requirements, so that when the product
was done it was missing key features that were necessary for the app to
function but were not explicitly detailed in the contract.
I had to renegotiate for the missing features at an additional cost of $100.
Granted, it was not a lot of money, but it was more than 50% above my original
budget, and as a college student, that stung. Sometimes I still wonder if I
was screwed intentionally.
Not much of a horror story but I hope my tale can serve as a lesson to others
who may find themselves in the place I was then: learn the tech or be very
very clear about your requirements before you sign a contract.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why does sorting in computer science mean ordering rather than categorizing? - randomwalker
https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1036704758696960001
======
randomwalker
OP here. The number and variety of special-purpose computing devices that
existed before general purpose computers is astounding. The surprising (to me)
conclusion is that the main impediment to the development of computers wasn't
technology. After all, Babbage's machine could have been built in his time if
funding hadn't run out.
Rather, the limitation was that people didn't have the abstractions,
vocabulary, and mental tools to properly conceive of general purpose computers
as a concept and to understand their usefulness. They couldn't see that
devices as seemingly disparate as tide prediction machines[1], census
tabulation machines, and loom controllers were all instances of a single,
terrifyingly general idea.
From what I can tell, Babbage mostly understood this, but it was Ada Lovelace
who grasped it fully. But her writings weren't understood in her time and had
to be "rediscovered" a century later. For example, she wrote [2]:
_Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in
the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such
expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific
pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent._
This leads me to wonder: what abstractions are we missing today that will be
obvious to future generations?
BTW I have a follow-up thread on the optical telegraph, a form of networking
that long predates the Internet. [3] My long-term goal is to teach a course on
computing/networking/information processing before computers, with a view to
extracting lessons that are still applicable today.
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-
predicting_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-predicting_machine)
[2] [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/honouring-
computings...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/honouring-
computings-1843-visionary.html)
[3]
[https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1037031465735860224](https://twitter.com/random_walker/status/1037031465735860224)
~~~
garmaine
> After all, Babbage's machine could have been built in his time if funding
> hadn't run out.
Funding ran out in large part because of cost overruns due to the fact that
the technology of the time wasn’t capable of building the analytic engine
design.
~~~
randomwalker
That's possible, but an alternative explanation for the cost overruns that
I've read is that Babbage had terrible project management skills.
Wikipedia has this to say:
_In 1991, the London Science Museum built a complete and working specimen of
Babbage 's Difference Engine No. 2, a design that incorporated refinements
Babbage discovered during the development of the Analytical Engine. This
machine was built using materials and engineering tolerances that would have
been available to Babbage, quelling the suggestion that Babbage's designs
could not have been produced using the manufacturing technology of his time._
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine)
~~~
chubot
I just finished reading The Difference Engine yesterday, an entire book about
this project, by the project lead!
[https://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Charles-Babbage-
Com...](https://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Charles-Babbage-
Computer/dp/0142001449)
(unfortunately overshadowed in Google Search results by a William Gibson book
of the same name)
It gives a lot of color on Babbage, but yes the conclusion was that Babbage
design basically worked, and could have been built. There were errors in his
drawings that they had to correct, but nothing fundamental.
The group at the Science Museum spent over 6 years doing this! This is the
group that holds most of his papers, drafts, and unfinished machines.
Although there are a couple things I want to follow up on. They weren't that
specific about what computation they did. And does it still work today? It was
extraordinarily finicky. It produced a lot of bit errors, as did mechanical
computing devices that came later, which sort of defeated the purpose (it was
supposed to calculate tables of logarithms and such with higher accuracy than
humans.)
~~~
azernik
The examples built do indeed keep on working with non-prohibitive maintenance
- the 2nd #2-design engine (built in the 2000s for Nathan Myhrvold), was on
display at the CHM in Mountain View for 8 years with daily or twice-daily
demonstration runs. It sadly went off display in 2016 (probably to go to
Myhrvold's private collection) but I saw the demonstration a couple of times
and can answer some of your questions:
1\. The concrete computation performed was to use the Finite Difference Method
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_difference_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_difference_method)
\- hence the "Difference Engine" name) to calculate arbitrary polynomials of
degree up to IIRC 10. By using Taylor Series, this method could be used to
calculate arbitrary functions, like log and sine. This was in fact the same
method used to construct logarithmic tables by hand at the time, and had
similar nominal precision; the singular goal was to eliminate the bit errors
rampant in the old, manual process.
2\. The machine removed not just errors in calculation, but also in
typesetting; about half the part-count of the original design was in its
printer, which could be configured with all kinds of options for typesetting
the results. It would output a "print preview" onto paper locally (this was
not publicly demonstrated at the CHM because of the enormous mess of ink
spills, but the machinery _was_ run dry), and an identical wax mold ready for
use in mass printing. This was because many of the bit errors in the existing
log/sine/etc. tables were introduced not by the (human) computers, but by the
multiple copying steps involved in transforming calculated values into printed
pages.
3\. Computation was quite reliable - the machine worked in base 10, and
mechanisms were carefully designed to freeze up (and be easily resettable to a
known-good state, as demonstrations showed) before introducing errors. As far
as I know bit errors were unheard of in the demonstration runs. This
reliability, like in later electronic computation, was the motivation for
using digital rather than analog logic. (Finickiness was mostly limited to
those halting conditions - it proved quite sensitive to clock speed (rate of
crank turn), but only by the standards of the hand cranking used in
demonstrations; connected up to a steam engine with 19th-century rate
governors, input power could have been kept clean enough to run with long
MTTF.)
~~~
gugagore
Thanks for those details. I am glad to have seen the demonstration. I didn't
know they removed it in 2016.
I believe the better link is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_differences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_differences)
------
outsidetheparty
Maybe it's just because I've spent too long with computers, but I thought the
everyday meaning of "sorting" _was_ ordering, not categorizing.
(Though now that I think about it, it's both: if I handed a random non-coder a
deck of cards and asked them to sort them, I'd expect them to group by suit
and then order by value. I wouldn't expect four stacks by suit in random
order, or a deck of all the cards in numerical order regardless of suit...)
That nitpick aside, it was a good excuse to get into the interesting pre-
digital computing history stuff.
~~~
o_nate
I had the same initial reaction, but the dictionary supports the idea that the
everyday usage of sort means to group by category, not to order. I've probably
just been coding too long as well.
~~~
alanbernstein
Are you referring to a dictionary of word definitions? The kind that is
structured as a list of words, ordered lexicographically? Where is the
categorization in that?
~~~
mort96
What do you mean? I agree that dictionaries are ordered and not categorized,
but do dictionaries claim to be sorted?
~~~
alanbernstein
I thought parent was using "the sortedness of dictionaries" as his argument, I
now realize he meant "the dictionary definition of 'sort'".
------
wodenokoto
These "twitter stories" are horrible to read.
Someone else posted a much more readable version, but it is buried under a
downvoted post:
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1036704758696960001.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1036704758696960001.html)
------
johannes1234321
This is quite interesting. From my German background I associate "sortieren"
with alphabetic/numerical /calendaring order. Whereas "ordnen" ist more like
"putting in order"/"categorize" or "sorting". So maybe it's as easy as blaming
the Germans ;-)
~~~
jdmichal
Except that _-ieren_ ending on _sortieren_ is indicative of an import from
Romantic languages, typically French or Italian. [0] So it's likely that the
English and German word both share French _sortir_ as an imported root.
Etymonline lists it as 14th century English, so too late to have inherited it
through German. [1]
[0]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ieren#German](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ieren#German)
[1]
[https://www.etymonline.com/word/sort#etymonline_v_24299](https://www.etymonline.com/word/sort#etymonline_v_24299)
~~~
anticensor
> Except that -ieren ending on sortieren is indicative of an import from
> Romantic languages, typically French or Italian.
Except that it is Romance or Romanic languages, not Romantic languages.
~~~
em-bee
although french and italian are seen as romantic by some :-)
------
kazinator
Sorting is categorizing, just with an order imposed on the categories.
If the categories have a natural order, then people will exploit that when
they sort.
Suppose you had to put some cards with names on them into bins labeled by
first letter. You might go through the cards one by one and stick each in the
appropriate bin. It would help you if the bins are in alphabetic order, rather
than scrambled.
Sorting into categories involves a search to find the category for an item;
the search benefits from order.
~~~
hk__2
> Sorting is categorizing, just with an order imposed on the categories.
…and infinite categories.
~~~
jdmichal
Infinite, or recursive? Alphabetic, lexographic, and numeric sorts are
recursive over "significant digits", which is why we can write radix sorts.
(Scare quotes because that term doesn't necessarily directly translate to
alphabetic and lexographic sorting, but the basic prinicple is the same.)
~~~
solipsism
"recursively" is but one way to build a potentially infinite set. They're not
mutually exclusive.
------
adamzochowski
Soundex, the word similarity hashing algorithm, also predates computers. It
was developed in early 1900, to help perform census in USA. One of its goals
was to sort similar last names together.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundex)
------
Isamu
Knuth discusses this in Vol 3 Sorting and Searching ... we mean "collate" by
sorting. Unfortunately I don't have that volume at hand to quote. Anybody?
~~~
sp332
> 5.2.4 Sorting by Merging
> _Merging_ (or _collating_ ) means the combination of two or more ordered
> files into a single ordered file.
So it's not quite the same idea.
------
codazoda
I dunno... phonebooks we're sorted alphabetically before they were created
with computers. That's a single sorted list and not a set of categories. The
card sorting is interesting but it seems like the word is simply used in
multiple ways.
~~~
jwfxpr
Phonebooks are in alphabetical _order_. They are _sorted_ into residential and
business (white and yellow), then further _sorted_ into business categories
(or in some cases residential areas), and then _ordered_.
------
bagrow
If you decorate each item with a category tag and then sort using those tags,
you are categorizing. The power of decorate-sort-undecorate.
------
larrik
This is great stuff, too bad it's on Twitter instead of a real website or
platform.
~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
Regardless of if you like twitter or their practices they are a real website
and platform.
~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
I agree.
I hate to post anything longer than random thoughts on Twitter, but this is an
unfortunate consequence of the culture shift in past 10 years driven by the
social media giants. Like it or not, Twitter is now the center of gravity of
the entire Internet, and currently the most effective online platform to make
posts with high visibility is Twitter...
Other platforms like forums declined, even forums did nothing wrong by
themselves, and they are in fact much more suitable for real discussion. But
the culture is already changed, people got used to make random 20 words posts
on their mobile phones instead of reading a long threads of discussion,
microblog-like, social-media-like platforms would prevail in the shortterm
future. The only thing we can do is to promote a OStatus-based, open,
alternative social media implemented by GNU/Social, Mastodon, etc, to make the
situation less harmful.
I'm happy that we can still have real discussion on Hacker News.
~~~
marssaxman
_Twitter is now the center of gravity of the entire Internet_
Journalists and celebrities certainly seem to think so, and I'm glad they do,
because I can easily avoid them by simply ignoring Twitter.
~~~
mirimir
Same here. Maybe if there were decent tools for aggregating and filtering. But
there aren't.
------
billfruit
Some words do have different meaning in computer science, as is the case with
other fields as well.
Perhaps a more illustrative example is the word "or", in plain english it
normally means an "exclusive or", but in CS it means an "inclusive or".
------
dexen
Consider the following four combinations of {stable, unique}:
\- _stable sort of unique values_ is ordering
\- _stable sort of non-unique values_ is categorization + ordering; this is a
most general algorithm which could reasonably be used for either operation
\- _non-stable sort of non-unique values_ is categorization without ordering
\- _non-stable sort of unique values_ technically could be implemented as a
NOP.
Given that various strategies of ordering and categorizing have different
trade-offs between {memory,computational} complexity, and linear vs random
access patterns, it makes sense to consider them pluggable algorithms that can
be swapped depending on requirements.
------
anonytrary
"That sort of person would sort the blocks into buckets" uses "sort" twice
(differently) without implying some underlying metric for "people" or "blocks"
and it's pretty clear in context. I saw a few people in the comments say they
are surprised that "sort" would be used that way, but I'd bet money that they
understood my example correctly.
"The blocks were sorted by size" implies that there is some metric, and again,
it's pretty clear in context.
------
admax88q
Holy hell do I hate reading articles as a series of tweets.
~~~
icc97
The OP says it was just a random collection of thoughts rather than an
article. He's going to turn them into a proper blog post.
------
femto
> If the electric telegraph hadn’t been invented, would engineers have
> continued to optimize the optical telegraph?
Isn't that today's Free Space Optical Communications? Bandwidth is measured in
Gigabits per second.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
space_optical_communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
space_optical_communication)
------
jancsika
I'm not sure what the difference is in sorting by category vs. order.
For example, consider an array of one million arbitrary alpha-numeric strings.
If you were to sort them by category, would that mean simply making contiguous
regions of the array where each string begins with the same character?
------
olejorgenb
Assoc: Edge-notched cards - [https://kk.org/thetechnium/one-dead-
media/](https://kk.org/thetechnium/one-dead-media/)
------
jalayir
Ordering is just a special case of categorizing.
~~~
wyattpeak
I'd say it's arguably a degenerate case, but it's very arguable.
Few people would claim that each position in an order is a different category.
And if I asked someone to categorise a pile of papers and they handed me back
a single stack, I'd be unimpressed.
------
acct1771
Ordering is categorizing organized into a vertical grid.
------
rjurney
In MapReduce, they're the same thing.
------
nixpulvis
Yawn, words mean things in context... yada yada.
That said, the details about old school punch card sorting is pretty neat.
------
fiftyfifty
That's exactly what bucket sort is. Don't they teach that in Comp Sci anymore?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ubuntu Unity 8 and convergence projects canceled…finally - StedeBonnet
https://cd-rw.org/t/ubuntu-unity-8-and-convergence-projects-canceled-finally/642
======
shams93
Personally I've been using lubuntu and lxde for years now I never appreciated
unity for desktop but I do appreciate the fact that ubuntu gives me choices,
lubuntu is pretty awesome and stable and lets me use my system resources to
run apps instead of taking over most of my resources just to run a fancy
desktop.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I would like to outsource development but can't break the mental barrier - robomartin
I've outsourced all kinds of things. From accounting to graphics sound production for games. Code: Never. Why? I have a mental block preventing me from taking that step. How are you doing it.<p>I've hired many in-house programmers in the past. I've had the good, bad and ugly experience. As a coder myself, I recognize that in some of the bad cases I should have been more involved in the hiring process. Too busy running other aspects of a manufacturing business at the time.<p>I've also seen productivity issues first hand. Hell, I have productivity issues of my own. We are only human.<p>And, lastly, I've had work flat out stolen. After about six months I let go a marketing manager who had been in charge of developing our website. He went to work for a competitor and had them hire my (freelance) web developer to duplicate all of the internal and external functionality that we spent a year developing and fine-tuning.<p>I am no-longer in manufacturing. My new world is 100% software-based. And I have tons of projects I'd like to tackle. I can't do it all myself or in-house. But, when I think about the idea of outsourcing development I get images of my past experience that are keeping me from pulling the trigger.<p>I keep reading about people doing this here on HN and other sites. I can't, from my current vantage point, possibly imagine hiring someone clear across the world to, effectively, hand them my ideas and have them built. This isn't a case of American egocentrism at all. I am very well travelled, multi-cultural and speak a few languages. No issues there. I guess it boils down to trust.<p>How do you do it? Does one just jump in to it with a degree of innocence and hope for the best?
======
fbuilesv
You're a coder so you're already ahead in the outsourcing game, you can judge
a people technical skills before hiring them and they won't be able to
bullshit you with the typical "The RDBMS has no I/O QPS so the MVC can't
connect to the furblong lasers".
In the past I've helped a couple of people like yourself and some of the tips
I can think of right now are:
* Use something like oDesk to keep track of the worked hours (at least in the beginning). You'll see screencaps of what they were doing every 5-10 minutes so you know you're being billed for real work.
* Get his/her contact info. (Skype, IM, phone) and keep in touch during the beginning to make sure everything's going fine.
* Use something like Pivotal Tracker, Basecamp or any other PM tool so you know at every moment where the project stands at.
* Try to talk to the person more than once a week if possible, don't let them go rogue.
* Only hire reputable people (either through something like the oDesk reputation system or GitHub account).
* Set them up with small/test projects before giving them the full thing. A 1-2 week assignment will help you both get acquainted and you'll know if you want them to be working on your stuff. Pay them for this!
My email's on my profile, if I can be of any help just drop me a line.
~~~
robomartin
I might take you up on that. I am currently finishing up an iOS game. Once
done with that I might go through my outstanding projects and pick one to try
and outsource partially or in full.
------
aymeric
I suggest you start with outsourcing unimportant stuff: admin stuff, small
marketing stuff.
You need to get used to letting go.
This section of my website lists the virtual assistants I personally
recommend: <http://taskarmy.com/virtual-assistance-outsourcing>
------
sharemywin
I think on anything new you try you test the waters first. Try a couple of
different vendors with small projects and see what/who works and what/who
doesn't. Don't scale what don't work. Plus look at breaking the work into
peices like an API and front-end don't put all your code in one group.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I'm sick of watching junk software outsell mine. - fbliss
How did you overcome the engineer mindset to get your marketing/branding together early on for your product? I'm sick of sitting around watching crappy, expensive tools outsell my work that I know is better, but I have no budget at the moment to invest in marketing/site/sales team. Another one or two sales would float a true effort for a month or two, but I'm not there yet. Help!<p>BACKGROUND: I'm a very ambitious engineer, I'm confident in what I can do with a little push in the right direction, and I have this toolset that I just got to a "MVP" stage (and was paid decently for) - my client is doing everything they can to help me resell this to others because they are <i>that</i> happy with it and want me to stop struggling as a developer.<p>I just want some good, solid advice from successful engineers who had to cross over to marketing as well. Thanks!
======
ajiang
Two things you need at the beginning of starting a business: the ability to
have a product/service and the ability to sell. The better your product, the
less skilled you need to be at selling and vice versa. If you're doing it
alone, don't underestimate the effort and skill needed to market and sell a
product -- it is extremely challenging and is a big commitment either in terms
of time and/or resources. You've made it easier on yourself by making the
better product, but sales (especially B2B products) will never magically
appear even with a superior product.
Don't view your competitors as people peddling 'crappy tools' or 'junk', view
them as expert sellers, business people. Learn from them, figure out what
channels they're using to sell. Are they reaching out to CTOs via LinkedIn?
Are they calling directly? Are they doing targeted ads in the right
publications? Pursue those routes and get your numbers up - at the end of the
day, sales is very much a numbers game. Reach out to 100, speak with 10, sell
to 3.
Similarly to how often Business guys underestimate the difficulty in the work
of the Technical guys, it's really important to have respect for how truly
challenging the marketing and selling is.
EDIT: I know OP is asking for specific steps he/she can take, but my view is
that the first step is to have the right perspective on the problem and have a
healthy appreciation for the competition.
~~~
teni
Your comment just puts things in the right perspective. Once I came up with a
solution that I was pitching to some folks. It was clearly better than what
they had, BUT they didn't touch it. Lesson learned: Good product in the lab !=
Good product in market
~~~
fbliss
That's true, but don't forget, in the context of the product that I'm working
on right now - it was built at the request of a client, and their system
integrator saw the results and was seriously impressed, enough to suggest we
try to resell it and offered to help through referrals, though I'd much rather
have him on board in a more formal capacity to reach out to other integrators
he knows (he's got a good-paying gig and has no reason to move on quite yet
from it)
------
kkowalczyk
You can do marketing and sales yourself.
In fact, since you can't afford to pay anyone to do it for you, you have to do
marketing yourself.
Writing a decent product website isn't that hard.
For motivation, start by reading
[http://successfulsoftware.net/2013/10/16/marketing-
hacking-t...](http://successfulsoftware.net/2013/10/16/marketing-hacking-the-
human/)
Then learn the basics of marketing (it's not rocket science) and apply the
things you learn in practice.
~~~
fbliss
Thanks for weighing in. Its not a matter of whether I can do that, but rather,
how to break into an already heavily-marketed-to vertical full of crappy
vendors with aggressive marketing and sales staff, so that's what I'm hoping
to gain some insight on.
~~~
PeterisP
If the target customer group needs sales staff (such as B2B solutions for
decent size companies), then you will need direct boots-on-ground sales staff
anyway - it's not even a matter of competition, it's table stakes to be able
to participate.
If it's B2C / mass market B2B then sure, a website can do half of the job; but
there are huge markets where even they really like your product and they call
you, then 0 sales will be made unless you get a sales rep in their office.
~~~
fbliss
Absolutely. That's the dilemma right now. The way I see it, the solution is:
1) Sell 2+ or more of the toolset to get some working capital
2) Promptly hire inside sales on 1099 to get out there and get the business
with base salary. I've been assured the time & effort to find someone with
commission-only offers is futile.
------
mattwritescode
It really is a case of just getting the word out. I know on HN there is
sometimes the need to conceal identity but here is the perfect place to put a
link to your product (its free advertising).
What you need to do is spend no more time developing the application (unless
for support for the next few weeks). Use the time saved to identify how your
competitors market there tool, the techniques used etc.
Then you need to identify website where similar tools are discussed and go
there with the aim of helping people. Every so often mentioning a particular
product that you know very well.
It will mean that when people come to buy products if they see your softwares
name it will be in there thoughts.
Likewise try to connect with people and businesses on twitter and publicly
reply to them and there needs explaining how your software can help them. Its
amazing the number of companies who do in-depth analysis of competitors
conversations with clients and potential customers.
~~~
fbliss
Thanks Matt! That's very detailed advice, I greatly appreciate it!
------
jefflinwood
You need to leverage "the channel".
Basically, from what you described of your software (E-commerce for SAP ONE) -
it's not out of the box software.
You'll need someone to do integration, training, support, sales, etc.
You can either be a direct seller, and do all of those things inside your
company, or partner with consulting companies/agencies/system integrators that
will resell your software, and then add services and support contracts on top.
Don't try to sell directly to customers - you can't afford to reach them, and
you can't afford to be in sales cycles with them.
Instead, make it worthwhile for consulting companies who already have these
clients to resell your solution. They'll be your real customers!
~~~
fbliss
You hit the nail on the head here, I can't afford to (nor do I want to) reach
end users - that's why the system integrators are key, and I know they want a
good solid solution to offer.
Thanks for putting a unique angle on your point, that helps reinforce my
feeling on who I should be talking to. Its the same way I sell system
architecture and development services - through designers who need it. Keeps
me from dealing with end users who have no idea what I'm doing back there.
(during the sales process at least) ;D
------
southflorida
im no engineer but from a marketers stand point you may want to team up with
someone that evangelizes your product and is willing to push it themselves...
also if you are willing to pay a finders fee or commission on the sell there
are a ton of marketers that have an existing list to sell to, whether it be
webmasters, business owners or tech people in general. depending what it is
you may be able to find some cheap platforms to run ads on, again, a marketer
would point you in the right direction if you are willing to share the
profits, even if it is a single digit percent. good luck!
~~~
southflorida
also, i just found this... it may help, again, good luck
[http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/blog-promotion/99-ways-to-
pro...](http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/blog-promotion/99-ways-to-promote-your-
blog-for-free/)
~~~
fbliss
Thanks! I did a guest post for SixRevisions a couple years ago, that led me to
a designer that I've since done a few projects with. It works!
------
swalsh
I think the first task is to tell people about your product... why didn't you
post your product?
~~~
fbliss
The product is nearly greek to people except those who are
a) System Integrators (SAP BusinessOne and other possible systems)
b) E-commerce professionals
It's not an end-user thing, its not vertical market really either.
~~~
petervandijck
Notice that how, after being explicitly asked about your product, you still
won't even mention what it is? Give that some thought.
~~~
fbliss
Couldn't see the forest for the trees for a moment.
It is an E-commerce solution for SAP Business One clients. Like SAP, each
client's needs are base toolset + customization work. It is a vast step
forward over the current solutions available. We've enabled the systems to
work together and greatly reduce the order fulfillment cycle while leveraging
the SAP B1 tools.
More Detail:
The next steps are to add a CRM module (original client is funding this work)
so that their CSR staff can avoid using any of the POS system SAP comes with,
which is pretty terrible from the interface perspective and takes a long time
to process orders. The CSRs prefer to run through checkout with phone orders
due to these improvements. The client is a 5-10-mil/year client, and we will
have replaced their in-house order intake process entirely by leveraging the
web tools. Phase 2 also included broker/outside sales staff order processing
tools.
~~~
petervandijck
Great. Do you have a website that showcases your product and gets you new
clients?
~~~
fbliss
Not yet. I have a name picked out, but I haven't had the ability to hire the
creative talent to start working on a decent identity for it, and that's not
where my time is best spent right now. The plan is to sell another and then
put aside some of that for the branding and website.
The first working version was just wrapped and went live in the past couple of
weeks, to clarify the timeline - we've just begun, but this is something I
could turn around and sell, I just need to start spreading the word.
~~~
petervandijck
You don't need an "identity" etc. You just need a landing page to capture
emails of potential clients. Buy a landing page template, or throw one
together. Shouldn't take more than a few hours.
Ping me if you need some help :)
~~~
fbliss
Thanks Peter! You're right, I really have nothing to lose to risk a few hours
making a landing page.
Thanks!
------
benologist
Talk to people you think would be your ideal user. Worst case scenario they
say no.
~~~
fbliss
Thanks for weighing in, Ben.
I built it for the ideal user, I have a second one that is a luke-warm lead in
the pipeline but currently getting screwed by a vendor who shall remain
nameless. The problem is, these sub-par vendors have been around and have
strong marketing, I have no marketing, and we both know marketing is what gets
people's attention first.
I actually have one system integrator for the product this connects to
interested, and I'd love to get more of them on board with it and selling it
to their customers as well.
~~~
benologist
Waiting for this silver bullet you call "marketing" to which attribute all
success will kill your idea before it can become a business. It's a defeatist
attitude.
Proactively looking for and contacting possible customers and building a
feedback cycle and improving your product and how you pitch it will give you a
chance to turn it into a business or company or whatever your ambitions are.
~~~
fbliss
Agreed, my attitude did smack of defeat.
My plan however is to get on some focused groups, for example, LinkedIn SAP
groups and try to find some system integrators to talk to there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Work on toy projects with someone - zewaldo
http://tinykernel.com
======
zxcvcxz
Like the idea but I don't want to have to sign up before seeing what all the
site has to offer. I'd also like to see a bit less generic design.
~~~
zewaldo
Hey, I am thinking the website should offer project hosting (like github?)
plus network connection for programmers. Most likely I am going to have to cut
some corners with regard to which feature I should release first. Which
features would you like to see released first?
~~~
RaitoBezarius
In my opinion, project hosting is not the most important. But, a network
connection for developers, around keywords or ideas are the best. Maybe, a
platform to brainstorm, discuss ideas, implementation would be awesome.
Project hosting is maybe reinventing the wheel: GitLab, GitHub, BitBucket,
there are too many providers which do this job perfectly.
Let developers do their stuff on those ones. And let them come back to find
new contributors / friends.
~~~
zewaldo
that sounds like the right direction for this project. I have already started
coding hopefully will have a beta version soon. Have you signed up yet?
~~~
RaitoBezarius
Yeah, sent you a mail also about your mail confirmation process !
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What YC winter 2011 aspirants should not be doing right now? - skbohra123
We are hacking on code, adding features, everything we were doing as usual. What else we should be doing ?
======
webwright
Be talking to customers and building a list of interested people to launch to.
You remove a lot of risk for YC if you walk into the interview room and say,
"We have 25,000 email addresses for people who want our product". (aside, if
you launch successfully that also reduces risk!).
Learn about the market. How do your competitors find users/customers
affordably?
Learn about the competition. What are they doing well? What do people hate
about their offering?
Learn about your users! Surveys, lunches, etc. If your product isn't something
that you yourselves would use, you should spend a lot of time with potential
customers.
Learn how to talk about your product. Test headlines, stumbleupon landing
pages, adwords ads-- whatever it takes to learn that people respond more to
"Nice juicy steak" more than they respond to "Muscle tissue sample of a
castrated bull" (hat tip to Robert Heinlein).
In other words, pre-launch marketing (research, understanding, outreach)!
~~~
mr_luc
I remember hearing that The Simpsons TV show used to have a writer's retreat.
The goal was to have a place and time where the show runner and the writers
would spend a few days mulling over script ideas by their writers. They'd get
away from the grind, away from distractions, away from the studio, so they
could consider ideas on their merits and hear their young writers sketch out
hazy early-stage story visions.
They say it worked well for them initially. They identified good ideas really
early, and because they got involved early, while the ideas were still
malleable, they could give guidance on what the valuable parts of the story
were, and what to focus on; that helped the writer when he went away to work
on the idea to turn it into a real script.
However, they stopped doing the story retreats. Why?
The reason a show runner gave was that eventually, the retreat became a
formality.
People were coming in with a nearly-finished product. They were practicing
their presentations to the show runners, pitching them. Sometimes they came in
with whole scripts ready, or nearly-complete outlines or A stories.
Which is great. But now you don't need a retreat. If you're going to prepare
all of that stuff on your own time anyway, okay ... just do that. If the idea
looks like it merits a slot at all, and you have episode slots to fill, how do
you turn down polished work? Of course, the beneficial effects of experienced
and talented writers guiding a writer's promising first take disappeared.
There was nothing to guide. Again, no reason to have the retreat.
It sounds like pitches to YC have become more polished, and that makes me
wonder. (Of course, the parallels are pretty tenuous, it just got me
thinking).
Clearly, PG and Company are going to enjoy that. It's hard to turn down done
work. It's a good thing if you can pitch. I just hope, for the sake of the
little future Reddits and Social Calendars out there, that pg, jessica and the
gang are protected from the glare coming off that polish.
~~~
philwelch
Brian Chesky's talk at Startup School covered a lot of this--Airbnb had
launched more than once and made a couple of successful PR stunts before
applying to YC, but YC was still a crucial ingredient in carrying them on to
success.
Also, everyone who's gone through the YC interview process and written about
it says that, if they had any intentions to pitch at all, they were quickly
derailed by questions.
------
endlessvoid94
YC would be nice, but it certainly isn't the end of the world. Keep hacking,
keep working, etc.
Too many startups equate being rejected from YC with failure. That's stupid.
~~~
edanm
Do many startups really do that? I haven't seen much evidence of that,
actually.
~~~
csallen
In the chat room someone posted a few nights ago, there were more than a few
people who hinted at that being the case for them and their companies. I'd
consider any number > 0 to be "too many".
I guess they see validation from YC as an absolute guarantee that they'll
reach their end goal, or even as the end goal itself. Really, it's neither.
There's a mountain of evidence showing that startups face cold, dark, and
lonely times whether they're big or small, YC-validated or obscure, well-
funded or strapped for cash. If you can't survive without YC, you probably
can't survive _with_ YC.
I've been rejected 2 or 3 times now, and I'm still going at it.
~~~
fredex
Any lessons you can share after your 2nd or 3rd time? What would you have done
differently?
~~~
csallen
Don't apply while you're still in school, and don't apply late haha. Sorry,
nothing too insightful.
------
dpapathanasiou
Not worrying about whether or not you get accepted.
~~~
dzlobin
Looks like you're the only person who caught the _not_ in the title
------
bl4k
Have a plan B, C and D
ie. you should still be out raising money and doing everything else you need
to do to grow your company.
------
leftnode
I'm continuing my everyday routine of hacking away. Trying to out it out of my
mind, honestly. If I get in, I get in. If I don't, then I don't. Won't stop my
determination to build my product and company.
------
benologist
A tiny % of applicants are going to get in and they've probably already
reached out to the 5 or 10% they're considering.
So we should just be working away on our startups - YC would be great to have
_but_ there's plenty of other paths to success.
~~~
dzlobin
Any actual information re: whether or not that's true?
~~~
StavrosK
It's not true, I haven't gotten an email yet!
------
zbruhnke
Sounds like you guys are doing the right thing ... I am doing the same
personally, living and breathing my idea just like I was before YC and just
like I will be after YC. Whether or not I am chosen I will continue to do just
as I am today. Even if I get an interview I certainly will not change my
routine simply for the sake of YC ... I should have a demo by the time the
interviews come around and I will be happy to show it to the team if selected
to do so.
So many people seem to look at YC as a do or die ordeal. Simply put, it is not
... It is a wonderful program for a number of great minds and startups, they
will likely pass on more good applicants than they will accept, that is not to
say the YC guys do not know what they are doing, they have presumably well
over 1,000 applicants and only accept around 40 companies. If you get rejected
and decide not to continue on your project you were probably not the kind of
founder they were looking for in the first place.
Use YC as motivation for your project, not as a gauge for your company's
success, that is not what is what meant to be.
Zach
------
Zev
Don't sweat things that are out of your control. Unless and/or until you're
invited to an interview, the YC process is out of your control. Just focus on
your stuff, what you can have an effect on. Otherwise you're just creating
stress that you don't need for yourself.
------
skbohra123
would be interesting to know what pg would say ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1969) - helloworld
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html
======
pmoriarty
If you enjoyed this you should watch _Stanley Kubrick 's Boxes_:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick%27s_Boxes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick%27s_Boxes)
~~~
minusf
this is a very recent superbly made documentary: Kubrick Remembered
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhn-
nXwpHuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhn-nXwpHuc))
------
valuearb
“If you were nineteen and starting out again, would you go to film school?
The best education in film is to make one. I would advise any neophyte
director to try to make a film by himself”
I give same advice to aspiring developers.
------
cooper12
If anyone else was wondering, the film they're talking about in the beginning
of the interview, _Napoleon_ , was never made:
> _Napoleon_ was eventually canceled due to the prohibitive cost of location
> filming, the Western release of Sergei Bondarchuk's epic film version of Leo
> Tolstoy's novel _War and Peace_ (1968), and the commercial failure of
> Bondarchuk's Napoleon-themed film _Waterloo_ (1970).
> ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick%27s_unrealized...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick%27s_unrealized_projects#Napoleon))
~~~
loevborg
By the way, if you get a chance to see Bondarchuk's 6 hour version of _War and
Peace_ , don't miss it. It's epic, beautiful and highly experimental. It's
worth seeing just for the aerial shots during the war scenes.
~~~
crdb
Also _Waterloo_ for that matter. No CGI in 1970.
From Wikipedia [1]:
"To recreate the battlefield authentically, the Soviets bulldozed away two
hills, laid five miles of roads, transplanted 5,000 trees, sowed fields of
rye, barley and wildflowers and reconstructed four historic buildings. To
create the mud, more than six miles of underground irrigation piping was
specially laid. [...]
The battle sequences of the film include about 15,000 Soviet foot soldiers and
2,000 cavalrymen as extras and 50 circus stunt riders were used to perform the
dangerous horse falls. It has been joked that Sergei Bondarchuk was in command
of the seventh-largest army in the world. [...] A selected 2,000 additional
men were also taught to load and fire muskets."
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_(1970_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_\(1970_film\))
------
ebcode
Room 237 has some compelling evidence pointing to what might have become of
Stanley. Anyway, connecting with great souls through their works is one
treasure this baleful world of ours can still offer. Thanks for posting this.
------
caf
It's disappointing to find out that _The Killing_ didn't turn a profit. It's a
great film.
------
sosa2k
2001: A Space Odyssey is the greatest movie ever IMO.
~~~
tom_wilde
+1 See it in 70mm if you can. :>
~~~
garyrob
I'm hoping there will be some opportunities around the 50th anniversary of its
release, April 3, 2018. I've actually been waiting for that for years. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How about a limit on the number of links you can post per day ? - jacquesm
5 Links per day that are of interest ok. 10 still fine. 15, pushing it. but 30 or more is clearly contrary to the guidelines. So how about some sane upper limit ?<p>And/Or charge you X karma points for each link you post ? That would cut down tremendously on the spam as well.
======
tokenadult
Already in the guidelines
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
is "Please don't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated
by your submissions."
I think reader ennui resulting in a more rapid response of ignoring
submissions (or downvoting comments) is the best control on this, rather than
any automated solution. In other words, I think current community standards of
behavior are working well enough on this issue. Automated deduction of karma
may not do much to stop spammers, but readers actively flagging spam posts
helps, because a sufficient number of flags autokills a post.
~~~
chanux
readers actively flagging spam posts helps
I agree with this. Maybe some karma encouragement for being on new page might
help (Maybe badges like stackoverflow ;)). And also, If there's a flag link on
new page itself (not discussion page for each submission) would make things
easy in my opinion.
Too much submission hurt the quality as I mentioned in an early ASK HN (which
was deleted). So I think it's ok to take some steps, at least for a short
period of time.
~~~
jacquesm
> And also, If there's a flag link on new page itself (not discussion page for
> each submission) would make things easy in my opinion.
Yes, that would help a lot. Especially because HN can be quite slow which
makes flagging stuff a lot more time consuming than it has to be.
------
makecheck
It seems a lot of over-posting comes from the famous "karma: 1, created: 30
seconds ago" accounts, so it may make sense to impose limits based on time as
a user. (Karma may not work as well, as I could imagine a spammer creating 100
accounts and using them all to upvote one another's submissions.)
~~~
chanux
How about a karma threshold for posting?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Back door competition for TrueCrypt fork? - pera
http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2014-June/021676.html
======
xarball
This is a horrific idea.
What we need is zero-tolerance for this kind of quality and architecture, from
high to low. Security software CAN be understandable. You just have to focus
on perfecting the expression and interactions.
Think high-level APIs where you can't screw up, because the constituents are
so easy, trivial, and understood, that writing correct implementation becomes
both Child's Play, and Natural.
There's nothing inherently difficult about making logic easy to interact with
-- most of it just means breaking down more complex elements into grade-school
principles.
(In doing so, you remove the need to look at suicidal Garbage!)
~~~
phazmatis
Yep. It seems like crypto devs have never heard of abstraction layers. That's
what we get for letting a bunch of c programmers write this stuff ;p
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Plans to Buy $75B More of Its Own Stock - arunbahl
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/technology/apple-stock-buyback-quarterly-results.html
======
msie
Such a mind-boggling figure. Maybe spend some of that cash on better laptop
keyboards, eh?
~~~
Joyfield
Nah. Think different.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Inner Bezos (1999) - byrneseyeview
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/bezos_pr.html
======
rthomas6
I think Bezos was right in most of his predictions, except for food staples
being ordered online. As the demand for locally grown and organic foods
increases, I doubt we'll see the majority of people turning to the internet to
have food delivered. I could be wrong, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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