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Hunting the Hidden Dimension - bootload
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/hunting-hidden-dimension.html
======
bootload
click on the "Transcript" link to read the article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wikipedia Wales says Apple's App Store is a threat to openness online - Mithrandir
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2011/1/15/wikipedia-wales-apple-could-ruin-internet/
======
ghshephard
There might be something to this if Apple had a monopoly on the "Mobile
Internet" (the portion that Wales is referring to) AND forced everyone to
interact with the "Mobile Internet" through applications acquired through the
AppStore - two problems with this thesis:
o Apple does not have a monopoly on the Mobile Internet.
o Apple's support for open HTML 5 protocols is stronger
than any previous generation of Mobile Platforms that
connected to the internet.
We can critique Apple in a lot of places with regards to their AppStore
(though, it's gotten much better lately) - but, ruining the Mobile Internet is
not one of them.
I seem to recall that the iPhone was actually the _first_ really decent phone
browser that you could use to connect to the internet - if anything, Apple
spawned the "Open" Mobile Internet.
~~~
stcredzero
Also, compare Apple's impact through the app store with the potential of:
- Mobile providers throttling particular apps
- Mobile providers and bandwidth caps
- The balkanization of networking (Facebook)
- Pushing a patent-encumbered standard for video
(Apple is involved here, but is only one player of several.)
EDIT: Technically h.264 is "open"
~~~
ItsBilly
It can't be "technically" open because there's no technical definition of
open. Under one side's definition, just having a lot of industry players
collaborate on it in public makes it open (the definition you're using)
whereas the other side says if its freedom is encumbered by patents then it's
not open.
Open is a horribly diluted word and there's no way imaginable you can say
anything is "technically" or "not technically" open.
~~~
stcredzero
This is the reason for the scare quotes.
------
ghshephard
Compare Apple's impact to openness online to Microsoft's back in early 2000.
There were a lot of banking and corporate websites that only worked with IE
and Active-X. As a result, every corporate machine (and many users of these
banking sites) - had to have a copy of IE floating around to fully access the
Internet - and good portions of the internet just weren't usable for many
Linux/BSD users.
Now - how much of the Mobile Internet requires that you use an Apple product?
Apple just doesn't have enough market dominance to result in more than a
trivial portion of the Mobile Internet to be written _specifically_ for
Safari/IOS Browers.
Wales is completely off his rocker here. As long as Firefox, Opera, Chrome,
and yes, IE, continue to have a strong presence as browsers (and I don't see
that changing anytime soon), and as long as Anddroid, WP7, and others start
rolling out first class smart phones, Apple will not be a threat to the Mobile
Internet.
This is one of those cases where lack of a market leader actually results in a
better adherence to standards. As long as the focus is "Build an ACID3
Compliance Browser" for the vendors, and developers write "ACID3 Compliant
Websites" - we'll be in fine shape (modulo the recent Video controversy)
------
zdw
Title is linkbait.
He doesn't like that Apple is the gatekeeper on their App Stores, as if the
consumer doesn't have any other hardware options out there...
~~~
Mithrandir
Fixed. Sorry about that. Didn't see it until it was too late. :)
------
cletus
If Wales had his way, the Apple Inc Wikipedia entry would read:
> Founders: Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne and DEFINITELY NOT Larry Sanger
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You know you're a startup founder when... - DanielRibeiro
http://youknowyoureastartupfounderwhen.com/
======
mindcrime
_Getting the 1st working version out is the #1 priority in your life,
everything else a distraction._
Check.
_You'd rather stay in coding on a Saturday night than going out._
It's Saturday night, and (the occasional HN break aside) I'm home coding. So
yeah, definitely relate to this one...
_You don't give a shit if you get funded or not, you're gonna launch no
matter what!_
Absolutely.
------
partywithalocal
An 'Angel' delivers you cash rather than salvation.
The word 'Heroku' doesn't conjure images of a Japanese Superhero.
You get as excited, passionate & loud about your idea as Gary Vaynerchuk!
Running Lean doesn't mean jogging to lose weight.
You quit your job the day after attending a Startup Weekend.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
/usr/bin/true - renlinx
https://twitter.com/rob_pike/status/966896123548872705
======
eesmith
dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444916](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444916)
wherein I links to more details about the history of /usr/bin/true being an
empty file.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Inside Story of Moto X: The Phone That Reveals Why GOOG Bought MOTO - coloneltcb
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/inside-story-of-moto-x/
======
Zigurd
What does it mean to be "A Google Company? _" Woodside would prefer that
people not call it the Google Phone: “People don’t associate Google with
phones,” he says. “Motorola’s the brand that resonates to consumers.”_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is [email protected] a good idea? - gaiusparx
Is it good idea to have a public email address for the ceo of your startup for customer to reach, such as Steve Jobs?
======
ScottWhigham
Ugh. Questions like this are unanswerable or, at the very least, generally
result in odd/strange answers (like MikeTaylor's single word "Yes" response).
We'll give you as much info as you give us, OP. Asking a generic question
results in a generic answer.
Suggestion: be more specific in your questions and you're likely to get more
specific answers.
------
MikeTaylor
Yes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Osaka University professor: “The prince from Snow White is a sex offender” - thg
https://en.rocketnews24.com/2017/12/14/osaka-university-professor-the-prince-from-snow-white-is-a-sex-offender/
======
HarryHirsch
Why not discuss Parzival instead? The interactions between Jeschute, Parzival
and Orilus provide plenty of material for discussion, and _it isn 't
straightforward_.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Where to market/sell partially developed software? - ermterm
Does such a thing exist?<p>I have a partially developed online betting platform. It's reached a scale which I can no longer develop as a side project, and I'm interested in selling. Other than reaching out to existing online betting platforms, does anyone have recommendations on how to market partially developed software?
======
michaelpinto
You need to understand that for another coder to finish your project that
they'd have waste time to reverse engineer your code, and even then they may
not be happy with the way you coded it.
Of course this doesn't even account for the time spent doing bug testing, and
then maybe cleaning up your code. And this of course assumes that your spec
for the project was able to provide say 80% of the features that someone else
is looking for to use.
So yes if you're looking for a cash exit you just wasted 1.5 years of your
life.
On the flip side you can look at this as a learning experience and maybe draw
the following lessons:
\- Start with a small side project, and once you figure out what that is make
it smaller.
\- Real artists ship.
\- Don't reinvent the wheel and do something that's already out there.
~~~
ermterm
Fair point. However, as someone who has (professionally) jumped from many
different projects, on completely different platforms, I can attest to the
fact that it is often quicker to pick up a system, than to develop it from
scratch. That would certainly be the case here.
Of course the code might not match their quality expectation, nor feature set,
but the sell price would reflect that (I would assume).
Perhaps I'm trying too hard to argue for something, that just doesn't exist
:)?
Oh, and I personally don't agree much with the "don't re-invent the wheel"
adage. In software, re-inventing the wheel has made many people, many riches.
~~~
michaelpinto
I've been working with coders for over 20+ years and yes there are exceptions
but on the whole they're a picky lot. And even if they want to re-use code
they tend to want something finished that's been well documented and field
tested.
Also the ones who re-invent the wheel and make money are the ones who have a
design concept that is different, so just re-writng code for its own sake is a
hobby. If you want examples from the field Bill Gates purchased what would
become MS-DOS. Or another example might be Steve Jobs basing NeXT on an open
version of Unix rather than re-writing an OS from scratch.
But I think the key missing thing is having a finished product. This isn't to
say that you can't ship with bugs (think of any Bill gates release) or ship
with missing features (think of the MVP model) but ya gotta ship.
------
AznHisoka
To be realistic, the chances of selling something like this practically nil.
Nobody wants to own software that they have no clue how it works, with the
owner gone. That's a bad investment.
~~~
ermterm
Well, I would expect that as part of the deal, I (the developer) would be kept
on to help get their team up to speed. That would be worked into the sell
cost, of course.
But I get your point. I'm not even sure if this is feasible either, I just
don't want to see my project of 1.5 years go to waste!
~~~
AznHisoka
The problem is nobody is willing to invest the time/resources to do the due
diligence and consider this deal, when the outcome will still a mess for them
to maintain, and isn't a finished product (let alone have any customers).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dan from Stanford talks about their Facebook course (with links to student projects) - cyberhill
http://www.hatchthat.com/dan-ackerman-greenberg/
======
corentin
What kind of university has a whole course dedicated to the study of a
corporation's proprietary technology?
~~~
aston
Lots. There are a number of courses at MIT that come down to learning MATLAB.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
182,901 Ads, 26 Clicks: My Short Life as a Facebook Advertiser - pratster
http://go.bloomberg.com/facebook-unleashed/2012-02-02/182901-ads-26-clicks-my-short-life-as-a-facebook-advertiser/
======
pork
You made rookie mistakes, please don't write your experience up as panacea.
Most people who are interested in art will not "like" the facebook art page.
They might not even like any pages at all. Connection targeting is spotty
unless you know your demographic actively "likes" relevant pages, like
Twilight or Justin Bieber. Finally, perhaps your ad just is not that
interesting. That is more likely than not, given that people come up with
really good ads. Far be it for me to defend a rival's product, but you don't
build the revenue facebook has if your product is useless.
It's great that you're sharing your experience, but your lack of experience
and sensationalisitic headline strike me as cynically timed linkbait.
------
paulgb
Facebook lets you bid based on CPC or CPM. Sounds like he was using CPM when
he should have used CPC. Either that or his CPC bid was really high.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My Project: Qotr, a quote board for your friends - ajacksified
http://qotr.net/
======
ajacksified
Many of us are familiar with <http://bash.org>, or have our own Google doc
full of funny things people have said in IRC, Campfire, et. al; my friend and
I put together a free service where you can create your own quote board.
Boards are public by default; you can set up a whitelist to keep things
private, and set mods and admins who can administer quotes and board settings.
You can also set up sub-boards, such as "x.qotr.net" and "z.y.x.qotr.net";
permissions and quotes are inherited.
It has an API built in as well; you can make requests with a token you are
assigned on your account page after sign up. It's a RESTful interface, so you
can get/post/put/delete quotes to boards.
It uses PHP and MongoDB, hosted on EC2. We built this mostly in a weekend, and
open-sourced a PHP framework that came out of it at
<http://github.com/Olivine-Labs/Mint> (although we need to, um, build
documentation and examples.) We're working on rebuilding and vastly
simplifying Mint as well, over the coming months.
~~~
yaz
The website looks very good in spite of the distracting ads. Good luck! Did
you use a design library like bootstrap?
~~~
ajacksified
Thanks; we had an internal debate on wether or not to use ads, and we decided
to see what happened if we included them. It is backed by bootstrap.
------
mappu
You've done very well to find a four-letter domain name for a 'weekend
project', let alone a relevant one. My circle uses a self-hosted homegrown
wiki for this sort of thing, so we don't have searching or sorting, but
content is malleable, organisable and totally free-form.
A point to make about our system, is that everyone is trusted enough for us to
not employ any sort of account system. We do however publically log IPs with a
hash of the user-agent, so people can at least see if the same person was
responsible for multiple edits. Since this sort of information can be gathered
by any website, i like to think making it public gives our non-technical users
a more solid understanding of how their actions online can be traced.
~~~
ajacksified
Thanks; we were both pretty surprised that it was available. We kind of named
the site based on the domain, rather than the other way around.
I like the idea of making edits public - kind of Stack-Overflow-like in a way,
so that if someone with mod access edits your post, you can see who. We could
also put in an option to allow everyone mod access, more wiki-like; if you
have a trusted whitelist that could access your board, only those people would
be allowed to read, and therefore edit.
Cool ideas. Thanks!
------
rollypolly
Who owns the commented we post? Do they automatically become the property of
Olivine Labs LLC? The ToS makes no mention of this.
~~~
ajacksified
Updated; you own the content, and grant us a license to use. IANAL; I modeled
it after several other sites.
------
paulovsk
Here <http://qotr.net/Quotes/> the quotes draw less attention than the buttons
themselves. You could make the font bigger or more attractive, I guess.
What language did you guys use in this project?
~~~
ajacksified
Yeah, that's a good point. We should tone down the buttons a bit; maybe use
colored arrows (a la Reddit) instead of bright buttons.
We used PHP and MongoDB with our homegrown framework
(<https://github.com/Olivine-Labs/Mint>); we're working on solidifying the
framework and getting documentation and examples together.
------
BrokenWits
For those not reading the title, link is <http://qotr.net>
------
iRobot
Good luck
A Lot of developers have a MOTD file in their applications, before I compiled
my motd file I looked everywhere for a simple motd feed but gave up as it was
all too much time and trouble and quicker to compile my own off the various
text files out there. Maybe a future market but I doubt it (there again porn
sites do quite well and you can get it for free)
You _seriously_ need some sort of moderation, no-ones going to stay on a page
where on the first page one of the quotes is "does this work"
~~~
ajacksified
We do have moderation, and you can set admins and mods on your own board, but
I'm trying to refrain from using it too much. I hope that downvotes / new
quotes drown out the 'does this work' kind of 'quotes'. I prefer a more open
form of governance than heavily moderated, but maybe I need to prune some of
the bad quotes?
------
pierreten
Ugh, seriously? Is this what modern web application development has come to?
~~~
ajacksified
It's a weekend project that a friend and I put together. If you have any
constructive criticism, I'd love to hear it.
It's a fun project that we built for ourselves, then opened it up to whoever
else wants to use it for free. Thanks for calling it "modern web development",
though; we're proud of the framework and our implementation. Even if you were
being sarcastic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Modern C is now feature complete - k4rtik
https://gustedt.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/modern-c-is-now-feature-complete/
======
sctb
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13054705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13054705).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Play (A Lot) More - mooreds
https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/04/20/you-should-play-a-lot-more/
======
ksaj
What I like about programming in Common Lisp is that it is easy to
occasionally go off on tangents "playing" \-- sometimes you end up improving
something you've written before, but even if you don't, you end up not only
enjoying the experience, you also solidify what you have learned.
To me, it's a lot like jamming out on the guitar. Sometimes a new song comes
out. Sometimes a new riff or maybe an improved skill. More often, it's just a
satisfying time spent on my gear of choice.
------
msie
Very good advice to old developers too. Devote more time to playing and don't
worry if you accomplish/complete something or not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Your zipcode is more important than your genes in determining your health - throughnothing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6dJ4O4sZQ
======
paulhauggis
Yeah, well, if your area has high amounts of crime, violence, and poor
drivers, of course it will.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
"Time-saving" Generators for Designers - macos
http://www.awcore.com/html/news/14/25-Time-saving-Generators_en
======
mrspeaker
Do the quotes indicate that they think these are really not time savers?
~~~
haldean
Yeah, that was my first thought as well. They seem really "useful".
~~~
nitrogen
Note to sibling comment by ibisum: it looks like your post on _Easter Island
heads have bodies_ got your account algo-killed.
------
mikeleeorg
I love ColourLovers because I'm not always the best at selecting a color
palette. So Pictaculous looks pretty neat too. I thought it was only going to
give me the top few color averages of the photo I submitted, but it appears to
be giving me more than that. Nice.
------
kellishaver
I was bored/tinkering a while back and wrote a couple little generators for
creating favicons and/or 16x16px PNG icons, and one for creating CSS sprites
from multiple images. They're nowhere near as polished, but functional.
PNG/Favicon maker: <http://ico.orng.us/>
CSS sprite generator: <http://spritebuilder.orng.us/>
------
sgdesign
I'm the guy who did Patternify, in case you have any questions/feedback.
~~~
macos
where can i send you feed back
~~~
sgdesign
You can use the contact form on my site: <http://sachagreif.com> or do it via
twitter: <http://twitter.com/SachaGreif>
------
DTrejo
Please change the title to
"Time-saving" Generators for Designers
as per the guidelines: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>
------
JonnieCache
Another background pattern generator at <http://www.patterncooler.com/>
It has a built in pattern editor, I think it uses some svg madness. It's very
impressive.
------
antichaos
Shameless plug: <http://www.neatgrid.com> for creating pixel-perfect grid
layouts.
------
mwsherman
These are pretty helpful, especially for those of us who aren’t designers or
don’t have them at beck and call. Favicons are a good example, as well as the
little progress spinners.
------
jjets718
What about Twitter Bootstrap? That's pretty useful.
------
MaxGabriel
While on this topic, anyone have a tool like this for creating iOS buttons?
I've found a few but they've not worked
------
jongalloway2
Fail for missing Cosby: <http://cosby.secretgeek.net/>
------
brador
These are great, but I'd like more things like Twitter bootstrap. Anyone know
any?
~~~
mindhunter
zurb released a comparable and quite beautiful framework called 'foundation'
<http://foundation.zurb.com/>
~~~
brador
Not seen that one before, thanks!
I've also found skeleton: <http://www.getskeleton.com/>
------
swombat
These are actually pretty neat. Bookmarked.
------
maeon3
I try so hard not to be bothered by his "pstck" slurping sound after every
period of every sentence, but I can't quite do it. Pstck.
Was going to upvote, but I'm not going to. tslsck. The lip smacking seems to
get into my subconscious and makes my skin crawl. pslk.
~~~
MagicClam
Huh?
~~~
maeon3
The pslick sound, at the end of every sentence. If you are hard of hearing I
can run it through a speech to text program and have it report that "pslick"
is not a valid sentence.
It bugs the hell out of me and lots of people do it. Stop it. Its like farting
on stage so the mic picks it up. The audience shouldent have to tell others
that it is aggrevating.
~~~
callahad
I think you may be accidentally commenting on the wrong post. I don't see any
video or audio on this post's link.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Perfect budget PC for software developers - Murkin
Its that time of the year. I need to buy a new PC for my programming needs. And the same questions pop up again, what is the perfect setup.<p>Trying to push it all into 500$, what would you suggest ?<p>Quad CPU / Dual ?
SSD for caching ?
SSD for system volume ?
Amount of RAM ?
etc'
======
riobard
I guess that depends on what kind of programming you are planning to do on the
machine -- coding some web apps has quite different requirements than coding
some 3D games.
But in any case, GET AS MUCH SCREEN ASSETS AS YOU CAN AFFORD! :)
~~~
jacquesm
24" is very affordable right now, E 199 a piece, not sure what they go for in
the states, but I'd expect comparable or lower.
------
aw3c2
You need to be more specific. What OS, what programming, what other hobbies?
If you want to use virtualisation make sure to get a CPU that supports Intel
VT-x or AMD-V.
I would suggest an Athlon II X2 240. It is very cheap and has a lot of power.
If you want to go into CUDA or OpenCL get an NVIDIA GTS or GTX.
SSD is overkill in my opinion. Rather get 4GB RAM and use a ramdisk when you
need fast IO (is that IO, I have no idea).
~~~
Murkin
I am mainly developing in C for embedded platforms (i.e. use different
compilers). So compilation speed is crucial.
And the PC is used for references, so lots of open PDFs/Webpages.
Virtualization is a good point, Ill keep that in mind. Thanks !
~~~
TeHCrAzY
Essentially, you want a dev machine set up so you never break your
flow/mindset/focus because you're waiting for the PC to respond.
Lots of RAM. Once you go 4GB++, you wont go back. The amount of time you spent
waiting for a pc with 2gb of ram when developing is more significant that it
seems. ON that note, grab two of the best gb per $ drives, raid mirror them,
and enjoy similar speed enhancements.
Re. The CPU, a Quad core might be a good investment for the future, as it
seems muti-core programming is going to become more and more important as time
goes on. I don't know if your compiler can use multiple cores, so assess that
benefit there. If not, dual core may be a better option, as they tend to have
higher performance for each single core compared to the quad cores (IE. Core1
on a dual vs Core1 on the quad, the dual will tend to be faster given similar
clock speeds).
------
gtani
Laptops: you can find plastic case Macbooks for $600 or so on craiglist.
Generally, we're talking 2G RAM, no option to purchase additional 2 years of
appleCare.
I would try to get one that's expandable to 4G RAM and was purchased new last
year, or this year. If i were going to buy a used laptop, I would insist that
the seller be the original buyer and give you a copy of their purchase
receipt, so you know it's legit.
------
matttah
we picked up Dell Poweredge 840 boxes earlier this year for around $600. we're
running 2.4ghz quad core xeons, 4gb of ram, and two 150gb seagate drives. I
think the only thing I would change is maybe drop in a SSD or a 15k drive to
make the system a bit more snappy.
------
yan
Whatever you end up getting, make sure to maximize your RAM and your display
real estate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
100% social search - josephwesley
Does anyone know if a search engine is being developed that relies 100% to curate content. And if not 100%, then largely relying on user-curation. Google is doing this, but they don't seem to be leaning that heavily on users. There approach is more like suggestions and total curation. Any thoughts on this?
======
maxbrown
Aardvark is a good example of this - <http://vark.com/>
~~~
josephwesley
I'm picturing something where the engine produces regular search results but
then users vote the results up, down, or out. Every vote would be incorporated
into the search algorithm. I'm also picturing something at a higher level
since Google gives you the microscopic word on a page level.
------
erik_p
I'm currently working on something like this. It's non-functional / not
launched...
~~~
josephwesley
I've got some ideas if you even want to chat.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Schedule up for Startup School -- includes a recent founders panel - vegashacker
http://startupschool.org/schedule.html
======
zach
Wow, awesome. Great lineup.
------
zkinion
Looks great. I can't wait.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Pensqr – A new visualized content sharing platform - Mbalkini
http://www.pensqr.com
======
Mbalkini
Talk about everything related to entrepreneurship and technology
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ActivPass: Your Daily Activity Is Your Password [pdf] - jonbaer
http://synrg.csl.illinois.edu/papers/activpass.pdf
======
marvel_boy
Newbie here. There is a prototype or probe of concept of ActivPass available?
~~~
jonbaer
Don't think so, at least nothing explored commercially outside of the paper,
the original article @ TechnologyReview ...
[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536921/smartphone-
secre...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536921/smartphone-secrets-may-
be-better-than-a-password/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cloud Native Application Interfaces - xkarga00
http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/09/cloud-native-application-interfaces.html
======
dkarapetyan
Reactive and evented models are much harder to reason about and design
properly. When you're just doing things sequentially in a fabric script it is
much easier to make sense of what is going on. As soon as you make things
reactive and evented to support dynamic cloud topologies you are basically on
another planet and none of the old rules apply. This is why it is hard to
design "cloud native" systems. I don't think it is the lack of interfaces and
standards but the model being inherently non-sequential. In many cases it is
also non-transactional and barely eventually consistent.
------
drieddust
> Let’s go back to first principles. To describe Cloud Native in one word,
> we'd choose "automatable". Most existing applications are not.
This is doubly true for Enterprise Customers. Most of them are cloud minded
without understanding their applications which aren't cloud conditioned.
~~~
user5994461
Existing applications will work in the cloud. There is no need to use the
fancy cloud stuff (multi region, auto scaling...) if it's not needed [or not
possible].
At the minimum, renting an instance in AWS or GCE is equivalent to renting a
physical server. Applications don't care what's the brand of the server
they're running on.
~~~
AlexB138
>Existing applications will work in the cloud. There is no need to use the
fancy cloud stuff (multi region, auto scaling...) if it's not needed [or not
possible].
I'd like to unpack this.
>Existing applications will work in the cloud.
They may work, but there's a good chance they will not work well. Doing a
direct lift and drop of an application onto AWS can be catastrophic if you
don't understand storage persistence, or VM availability. An EC2 VM is not
like a physical server in that it will not continue to run indefinitely until
something breaks. I would say that existing applications will likely not work
well without a shift in the way you treat underlying infrastructure. There are
a lot of considerations around IO and locality as well.
>There is no need to use the fancy cloud stuff (multi region, auto scaling...)
if it's not needed
You've just said "There is no need... if it's not needed.
>[or not possible]
If it is not possible to use the surrounding services your application is
probably a poor fit for a cloud platform. It can become prohibitively
expensive to try to directly replicate your physical datacenter architecture
on a cloud platform.
Is it possible to just drop your existing application onto some VMs? Sure, but
it's probably a bad idea.
~~~
user5994461
> An EC2 VM is not like a physical server in that it will not continue to run
> indefinitely until something breaks.
Sorry to contradict but an EC2 VM does run indefinitely until something breaks
;)
There are differences in physical storage between local disks, SAN, NAS,
Network Storage, NFS, EBS volumes and Google Volume. A sysadmin should know
the characteristics of these, doesn't matter whether it's cloud tech or own
tech or homelab tech.
People with all this knowledge are rare and expensive, yet critical for major
migrations to go well. I can understand that this is an obstacle for major
migrations to the cloud (and a benefit for my payroll).
> You've just said "There is no need... if it's not needed".
I think it's VERY important for legacy migrations. A migration should be done
starting with the fundamentals, progressing in stages.
All articles and talks focus on shiny bleeding edge stuff, which is only the
latest stage(s). Depending on the applications and organization, this stage
may or may not be worthwhile, it should or should NOT be a goal in the first
place.
> If it is not possible to use the surrounding services your application is
> probably a poor fit for a cloud platform. It can become prohibitively
> expensive to try to directly replicate your physical datacenter architecture
> on a cloud platform.
I'm talking to clients who have to run their own datacenter right now and want
to migrate. It is prohibitively expensive.
------
jondubois
I understand the benefit of designing software components (and stacks) to run
and autoscale on Kubernetes - I actually did that with my open source project
SocketCluster. See
[https://github.com/SocketCluster/socketcluster/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/SocketCluster/socketcluster/blob/master/scc-
guide.md)
I think that standardisation should happen at the level of the stack/component
(not at the application level). Most application developers don't know enough
about specific components like app servers, databases, message queues, in-
memory data stores... to be able to effectively configure them to run and
scale on K8s (it's difficult and requires deep knowledge of each component).
I think it should be the responsibility of open source project owners to
standardize their components to run and autoscale on K8s. It's not practical
to delegate this responsibility to application developers (whose primary focus
is business logic).
Application developers should be able to use an OSS stack/component at scale
on K8s without having to understand the details of how that stack/component
scales itself.
So for example, if I wanted to run Redis as a cluster on K8s, I should be able
to just upload some .yaml files (provided in the Redis repo) and it should all
just work - Then I can start storing data inside Redis cluster straight away
(without having to understand how the sharding works behind the scenes).
Rancher has the concept of a 'Catalog' which pretty much embodies this idea.
~~~
thorgaardian
> I think that standardisation should happen at the level of the
> stack/component (not at the application level). Most application developers
> don't know enough about specific components like app servers, databases,
> message queues, in-memory data stores... to be able to effectively configure
> them to run and scale on K8s (it's difficult and requires deep knowledge of
> each component).
Can't agree more with this, but I would add that its not limited to the
specific components listed like databases, message queues, and others. Getting
any component or service configured to autoscale on K8s and work its way into
a larger infrastructure can often require far more working knowledge than
should be necessary. Standardizing the interface these components use to
publish themselves would help K8s take on this responsibility more fully. I
can only speak for myself, but I for one would happily adopt an interface like
this if it meant seamless distribution, autoscaling, and consumption for peer
components.
The last part about consumption for peers is important as well. Though the
standardized interface would empower a higher level of scale automation, the
standardization of this automation could be translated to interface
assumptions for external components as well. In the Redis example above, a
standardized interface for the service would mean that K8s can deploy it
automatically, but also that other services can make similar assumptions about
it's location in a deployed environment.
------
jdc
Would be cool if this were a thing nowadays:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twilight Of The Terminal: The Disruption Of Bloomberg L.P - anonu
https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/bloomberg-terminal-disruption/
======
rdlecler1
Definetly a self serving piece as CB Insights seed themeselves as one of those
long tail disrupters, but ironically they’re also struggling with the long
tail. Their domain specific data on at least foodtech and agtech is poor at
best and corp executives have told me they were burned by their subscription
services which over promised and under delivered. BT May be expensive but it’s
a religion for many in finance—-like google or a second internet. It’s not
easy to replace.
~~~
mlevental
I don't understand why transparent "content marketing" like this gets upvoted
on hn. isn't the audience here savvy enough to recognize it for what it is? a
company trying to exaggerate its value prop.
~~~
anonu
Generally, I'm in agreement with you guys on your views on CB Insights. But
did you actually read this piece? This one happens to be well written:
provides decent historical context and lays out the current landscape pretty
well. I do think the author overhypes the disruption thesis. Bbg is still a
fortress and it will take a decade or more to create viable alternatives to
the terminal...
------
dm3
I think the reason for the decline is simple - the number of professional
users is shrinking. Large banks have shrunk their trading desks and the number
of independent shops is shrinking too [1]. Couple that with the increased
weight of quantitative strategies, which need a market data provider rather
than a terminal, and you can see why the Bloomberg Terminal is in decline.
[1]: [https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/Biggest...](https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/Biggest-Hedge-Fund-Launches-Of-2018-2.jpg)
~~~
apaprocki
Bloomberg is a market data provider, so it doesn’t really matter if someone
wants the Terminal vs a data feed — we can sell them either.
------
nodesocket
UCF has a really nice one hour intro video tutorial[1] on using the Bloomberg
Terminal. It really is crazy powerful, but has a high learning curve. It is
however the defacto standard for professional traders and finance. I'd often
thought would it be feasible to come out with a competing product that is iPad
native and offered as SaaS ($99/mo per user) with no special hardware, annual
contracts, and high costs.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8HiHZcgEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE8HiHZcgEE)
~~~
a_imho
_defacto standard for professional traders and finance_
What do professional traders do nowadays? My impression was it is already bots
talking to bots and/or index funds outperforming/on par with actively managed
funds.
~~~
MagnumOpus
True-ish in the small parts of the markets that are extremely liquid (top 500
global stocks, us treasury bond futures).
Very untrue for the vast amounts that aren't -- ten thousands of different
corporate and government bonds, thousands of leveraged loans, more fancy
securities like convertible bonds, credit default swaps or contingent-
convertible bank bonds get traded over Bloomberg chatrooms (think Whatsapp
groups with lots of additional features but lots of regulatory red tape).
In these markets passive funds underperform active funds by vastly more than
the fee differential - and that is not coincidental.
------
nikanj
When you go to a construction site, the workers are not carrying around tools
from the Fisher Price My First Hammer kit.
Professional tools are unwieldy, hard to use correctly, and ridiculously
efficient compared to the beginner-friendly versions.
~~~
jdavis703
This is about pros realizing they don't need hammers anymore. To extend the
construction analogy, it's as if the construction workers started building
pre-fabricated components in factories and only snapped together the pieces on
site.
According to the article sophisticated algorithms, rising use of quants and
high frequency trading are leveraging data sources directly -- there's no need
for a professional at a terminal anymore when you can essentially leverage IT
to do the day-to-day trading.
------
ardy42
> Very few Bloomberg Terminal users use more than a “small percentage” of the
> thousands of functions available through it, according to Fortune.
This is proof that the Bloomberg Terminal is a power user system.
~~~
golergka
I've seen similar statements about many pieces of professional software. The
key point they forget to mention is that these small percentages are different
for every user.
~~~
piokoch
Yup, second that, this was pointed out by Joel Spolsky in the context of MS
Office having so many options that are almost not used, so it should be easy
to create competing product that would cover the most popular once. The crux
of the matter is here that for each user the most popular feature set is
different.
Bloomberg has also one more advantage: tones of historical data that are
potentially difficult to find and aggregate.
------
FundThrowaway
Our Bloomberg usage these days is pretty much entirely the chat. I think the
only other feature that gets regular use is the excel plugins.
------
stubborn_d0nkey
> More than 320,000 people around the world — mainly traders, analysts, and
> brokers — pay about $24,000 a year each to use the Bloomberg Terminal to
> access real-time market data, communicate with other users, get the latest
> news, pull company data, and more.
> Assuming minimal discounting, that would make the terminal a more than $7B
> business alone.
The numbers do not fit 320,000 * 24,000 is over 700B.
~~~
romwell
>The numbers do not fit 320,000 * 24,000 is . . .
Here's a mental math flow for this estimate:
320,000 * 24,000
=(320 * 24) million (let's deal with the easy zeros first)
~=(300 * 20) million (underestimate)
=(600 * 10) million
= 6 billion (very roughly).
Another flow:
(320 * 24) million
~=(320 * 25) million (overestimate)
=(80 * 100) million
=8 billion.
So we have a number between 6 and 8 billion, 7 sounds about right.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bacon: Rebasing Ubuntu on Android? - edward
http://lwn.net/Articles/648722/rss
======
mschuster91
I'm not too experienced with Android development, but wouldn't it be possible
to use the Android kernel and driver stack with Ubuntu or whatever other OS?
This would allow Android alternatives compatible with lots of existing
devices.
------
vmorgulis
Gonk FirefoxOS linux kernel is based on Android
([https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/B2G#linux](https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/B2G#linux)).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
'The Hobbit' at 48fps: Frame Rates Explained - memoryfailure
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403746,00.asp
======
josephlord
High framerates give the appearance of and in some cases substantially better
images reducing significantly various temporal aliasing effects. They are
without doubt better in every way from a technical point of view.
There is however a cultural issue that is worst amongst the film creators that
"film" is regarded as expensive, high-end and good so that things that don't
have the artefacts (low frame rate, film grain and colour) are regarded with
at least suspicion. This will probably pass with time especially as the number
of high budget, high quality TV series increases.
~~~
mikeash
I feel like I'll go mental if I hear one more film buff talk about the
essential nature of various imperfections in traditional film. It's so obvious
that nobody would have chosen to go with film grain, low frame rates, or any
of the other limitations that were foist upon them if they had had a choice.
But now these technical limitations get enshrined as the medium's supposed
true nature, at least by some....
~~~
scrumper
As in so many creative endeavours it's the limitations which make the art.
It's not always about going for perfection, but it always has to be emotional.
Which is a more powerful statement? This:
[http://virgo.bibl.u-szeged.hu/wm/paint/auth/monet/parliament...](http://virgo.bibl.u-szeged.hu/wm/paint/auth/monet/parliament/1905.jpg)
or this: [http://isitthattime.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/fog-over-
the...](http://isitthattime.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/fog-over-the-houses-
of-parliament.jpg?w=610&h=406)
There's no question that the latter is more technically accurate, more
lifelike, more realistic, but it lacks the guttural punch of the Monet. Monet
was a master, but only by exploiting the limitations of his medium could he
attain that mastery.
So it goes with film. A decent cinematographer uses the inherent faults of
film to convey emotion. Without the low dynamic range of film, the dark
corners of the Nostromo in Alien would have looked like a plywood movie set.
Without lens flare and blown highlights then the plight of a dehydrated hero
in the desert would be much harder to get across. Those things - 24fps, lens
flare, low range, depth of field - have become part of our shared culture now.
So much so that even media which aim for perfect realism (eg video games)
mimic some of them to aid immersion and, once again, heighten the emotional
response.
~~~
luser001
Disclaimer: I am not an art expert.
You point is well taken, but just as a minor nit, I wanted to add that artists
_did_ achieve photorealism first and then move on to abstractness. Arguably,
that was driven by the advent of photography which commoditized photorealism.
~~~
scrumper
Fair point. Impressionism was in no small part a reaction to the overly stuffy
and formal schools of realistic painting of the time. You've made me think: I
wonder how much photography contributed to their frustration with that
academic painting style?
But still, painting is painting. Take the Dutch Old Masters: incredibly
realistic, lifelike pictures, but also extraordinarily powerful. One doesn't
preclude the other, but in every case something about the medium contributes
to its power. It might be the fact that a sitter for one of Caravaggio's
Christs was actually suffering due to holding his body in place for so long;
it could be a need to invent some aspect of light in a scene which ends up
illuminating a girl's face in a particularly lovely way.
There's plenty of emotion in photography, too, but it tends to come as a
result of skilful use of that medium's own characteristics: spontaneity,
completeness, and presence. Press photographs are a great example, exploiting
the medium's immediacy to steal a few, shocking milliseconds of reality. That
applies even to powerful landscape photographs, in the opposite way: They are
very carefully staged, manipulated and contrived, all simply a way to align
the limitations of the medium (only 1/500th of a second to make an image) with
a particularly beautiful instant of passing space-time.
------
laserDinosaur
Someone in the industry told me it felt like they were watching actors in a
stage show, and not in a good way. All sense of immersion and suspension of
belief was eroded away into watching people in costumes fight on fake sets
against CG monsters. He said with such a high frame rate it's almost like live
footage has reached the uncanny-valley. It seems quite on par with the
statement from Entertainment Weekly.
~~~
shock-value
This is exactly right. I don't understand why some people are jumping up and
down as though this is some massive technological and artistic advance. TV has
been able to do 60fps for decades (and HD, digital 60fps for at least one
decade) and yet no television dramas (and even most comedies) are
filmed/broadcasted at that rate. Why? Exactly the reasons you describe.
High framerates are great for live events and reality-based programming.
24-30fps is suited to taking the viewer "out of reality" into an artistically
constructed world. This is not going to change because some movie theaters get
48fps projectors.
~~~
robterrell
Indeed, Douglas Trumbull invented Showscan in the early 80's. It was a high
FPS 65mm film process, and it resulted in a overly "real" subjective effect
very much this article is complaining about. Showscan was demoed at some
conferences and some critics (Ebert?) were big fans but it was never used for
a feature film (although he tried to get the studio to use for his film
Brainstorm). It was positioned against IMAX and lost (although to my eye, IMAX
suffers greatly from strobing and could use a frame rate boost).
But there's something else going on with the Hobbit. I watched the trailer,
which is definitely not 48 fps, and more than once I got the feeling of
watching an actor-on-a-stage-on-video. This might be more related to the use
of RED cameras than the framerate.
Using my film degree about once a year here on HN!
------
Schlaefer
It's redirecting me to google.com (from Germany)
ZDXI.OnCountryRedirect("DE", "http://www.google.com");
and <http://static.ziffdavis.com/js/zdcc/1.0.0/zdcc.js>
Deactivate JS or googlecache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iZmzpFT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iZmzpFT7cIkJ:www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403746,00.asp&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)
~~~
jabiko
It seems like you can override the IP check by using a GET parameter.
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403746,00.asp?ip=this-...](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403746,00.asp?ip=this-
is-idiotic)
~~~
lucaspiller
Careful, you might be arrested.
------
philmcc
Just a personal 48FPS testimonial here...
For some reason I found myself at an IATSE event. IATSE is a union for motion
picture professionals. At the end, they projected a scene, once in 24fps, the
second time in 48fps.
48fps looked "real" to my eyes, insomuch as it looked how I imagine it
would've looked to have been in the room.
Unfortunately, that's not the look I like in films and movies. It truly looked
like a soap opera.
There's a chance that 30 minutes into the Hobbit, peoples eyes will acclimate,
and you'll forget, but I think those initial scenes are going to be a bit of a
disappointment.
~~~
__david__
My friend saw the 10 minute Hobbit footage and said the exact same thing.
He felt like he was looking at a play of the Hobbit--watching costumed people
walk around a set. He couldn't get it to shift into that "watching a movie"
place in his mind.
But you're right--it might be that 10 minutes is just not long enough to
adjust. I'm skeptical but I do want to try it.
~~~
philmcc
I half wonder if PJ has just spent so much time seeing his movies as they are
being made,that he's frustrated that audiences don't see them -that way-...
maybe on set is normal for him, and in order to get the audience to see
"normally"...
...48FPS would nail it right on the head.
------
astrodust
48p and 60p can't come too soon. I'm with Ebert on this one. The biggest
problem with film is we're stuck with 1920s frame rates that end up destroying
a lot of otherwise impressive shots. It's just too jerky under a variety of
common circumstances.
~~~
Zenst
I agree, I'd take framerate over resolution and beyond a doubt I'd take
framerate over 3D (though when I tried 3D It in all effect just looked like 3
layers paralexing).
~~~
astrodust
A lot of "3D" films are basically parallax because they add in the 3D after
the fact, painting it on in a special compositing tool. Only a few live action
films are genuinely shot in 3D from the start, like Avatar.
I've found that computer animated films often translate better to 3D since,
obviously, it doesn't require any fancy cameras.
------
mih
How does a high frame rate movie actually look like? Some good samples for
those interested here - <http://www.48fpsmovies.com/high-frame-rate-example-
videos/>
------
barrkel
60fps isn't even that good in video games, but so many gamers these days have
been raised on 60Hz consoles and PC monitors. They don't remember the old days
of CRTs, where 60Hz was painfully flickery, and you wanted at least 75Hz to
relieve eye strain. 75 or 85Hz with corresponding fps was much slicker than
60Hz.
IMO the purists complaining about 48Hz are complaining about a subconscious
association, perhaps a bit like the smell of popcorn in the lobby. It's not an
objective complaint, but as a subjective one it may be shared by a large
proportion of the audience. Hard to tell until someone takes the risk with a
broad audience, like Jackson is doing here.
~~~
efraim
The reason a CRT seems to flicker with low refresh rates is because the screen
goes dark in between beam traces, a LCD does not. So a static image on a LCD
with 60 Hz refresh rate is stable whereas a CRT would flicker at that rate.
~~~
philwelch
60Hz also synchronizes with the 60Hz flicker of fluorescent lights, which is
especially bothersome.
~~~
ars
Just how old are your lights? Fluorescent lights haven't flickered at line
frequency in at least a decade.
Well, obviously old fixtures still exist, but if you have one in your office
it's time to get rid of it. The new ones are much more energy efficient, but
more importantly they are more pleasing to the eye.
(Specifically get a T8 fixture, not a T12.)
~~~
philwelch
It's been almost a decade since I used a CRT, either.
------
jfb
I'll reserve judgement. Technical advances are of course an integral part of
film history, but the idea that absolute fidelity to some Platonic ideal of an
image is an end in and of itself is purest bafflegab. You don't get to throw
away the existing language of film just because some consumer electronics
consortium wants to sell new TV sets (see: stereo projection).
It doesn't help the case that the last time this subject came up with a big
tentpole release it was _Dinosaurs Fighting Helicopters_.
~~~
roc
> _"the idea that absolute fidelity to some Platonic ideal of an image is an
> end in and of itself is purest bafflegab"_
Particularly in artistic media, where emotion and tone are regularly conveyed
through distortions.
48/60p may be great for some projects. Their technical advantages may enable
shots that simply can't be done well at 24fps. But even that does not make
them inherently "better". Merely the right tool for a given job.
As there's no technological requirement for us to use either one format or the
other, I see absolutely no reason we can't go forward allowing people to
choose technology on an as-appropriate basis without slandering particular
choices as illegitimate in all cases.
------
agildehaus
I'll be seeing The Hobbit at a theatre that doesn't feature 48fps first,
because I know I'll enjoy it.
My experience with 48fps is exactly the same as my experience with those 120Hz
televisions -- any significant motion looks like it's been artificially sped
up. Anyone know why this is?
~~~
stephengillie
This effect is often called the "Soap-opera effect" because so many of us
first noticed it on 1980s dramatic afternoon television shows. Weren't they
also filmed at 24fps like everything else?
~~~
illuminate
60i video, because it was much cheaper than film and no processing delays.
------
fosap
I have a way higher hopes for higher framerates than for higher resolutions.
I'm more excited about 48 Hz or 60 Hz than about 4K or 8K.
But I can't read the article. It redirects to google.
~~~
ImprovedSilence
Really? I'm still in love with the higher definition. I'm a big sports fan,
and I could never go back to a lower resolution. Especially for hockey, my
goodness does HD make it look soo much better. Higher frame rates would be
nice too, don't get me wrong, but I think resolution is more important to me.
(I could be wrong, I'll let you know when they start shooting airing sports at
60fps)
~~~
MichaelGG
I think he's referring to even higher resolutions, above 1080p (approximately
2K in resolution, since it's 1080 x1 920). At the moment, there's no consumer
(as in, under a few $K) displays that'll even show 4K (3840 x 2160), so going
even higher to 8K is not really helping anyone out, any time soon. Whereas all
these systems are capable of running at 60fps, so that's an improvement you
can actually use.
Apart from that, we've been stuck at 24fps for a long time. It's very
noticeable on any film that has any action in: jarring, blurred, choppy
sequences.
------
protomyth
There is a bit of a flaw in this article. A 24 fps film projector displays 1
full frame at a time, there is no scan line. This is very different from TV
and the CRT originated scan line. Comparing frame rates between TV broadcast
and Film projection is flawed.
~~~
shardling
The article discusses exactly this, so I'm not sure what your issue is.
~~~
protomyth
It talks about scan lines and 3:2 pull down but does not mention an actual
film projector displays the whole frame at once where TV's have scan lines.
~~~
zaphar
He discusses the difference between 1080i and 1080p which is exactly the
difference you are talking about. Interlaced vs whole frame.
Not all TV's have scan lines. Any that are 1080p do not interlace.
~~~
protomyth
You and the person voting me down seem to be missing the point of what I'm
saying.
A piece of film is illuminated and shown fully on the screen. There is no scan
line.
A TV is drawn one line at a time. There is a scan line.
Interlaced vs Non-Interlaced has nothing to do with what I am talking about as
both draw one line at a time. Interlaced just means it draws half the first
tick and half the second tick. Non-interlaced draws the full frame each tick.
Both draw a line at a time.
~~~
__david__
No, NTSC on a CRT is drawn one line at a time (it is physically scanned by the
electron gun). But TV is not NTSC any more and CRTs are dead/dying.
Your HD flatscreen (plasma or LCD) does not draw one line at a time. HD is
decoded into a framebuffer and that framebuffer is drawn on the screen in some
hardware specific way. It may be rectangles, or the whole screen, or different
vertical/horizontal slices (with very high refresh rates so you don't see
flicker).
Edit: Moveover, "film" is almost always digital nowadays (I don't think I've
seen a non-digital projection in the last 5 years) which means that the
picture gets to the screen via some form of LCD projection. So your home TV
and film are basically the same at this point. You would've been right 10
years ago, though.
------
jerf
Seems like we have this debate every time someone takes a step forward. It was
amusing the first couple of times, but really, we're still arguing that the
particular technical limitations of the _last_ generation really were The One
True Cinema Format? That time, we got it for sure, not like all the previous
iterations where we thought that, this time for sure.
Pfooui. Can't believe we're even having this discussion. You'll take your
higher resolution and higher frame rates and in five years you'll have
carefully edited your memory so that you knew all along that it was a great
idea and you sure were telling everybody about how awesome it was going to be
against all the naysayers.
------
Keyframe
I have experimented a bit with this, and this is what I can tell you about it.
As soon as DPs get a hang of it, there will be no more talk about it except in
"hipster" circles like vinyl or celluloid. Getting lighting and motion blur
(especially motion blur) to look and feel the same is something DPs will need
to adjust to. Only thing I am worried about now are render times. There are
now 48 frames per second and twice as that if in 3D.
------
justjimmy
"Blurring simulates fluidity, sharpness simulates stuttering."
With a high FPS (in movies), each frame is less blurry, everything becomes
sharper hence the 'uncanny' feeling.
And you can't compare video games and motion pictures - there's no blurring in
video games at all. (Take a screenshot in them, compare and you'll see why)
~~~
HeXetic
> there's no blurring in video games at all.
Most video games since a few years ago render frames with a degree of
artificial motion blur to simulate speed. This is particularly the case with
racing games but also exists in first-person shooters (moreso on the PC than
on consoles, since rapid mouse movements translate to rapid screen motion).
~~~
justjimmy
Are you think of in situations (shooters) where you get like hit by a
flashbang and your screen goes all blurry and shaky? That kind of blur? Or is
the blur happening during just 'normal' firefight/gameplay all the time?
~~~
HeXetic
No, not that kind of effect; there is genuine "motion" motion blur available
in games in response to rapid movement (e.g., sprinting in Battlefield or Mass
Effect - the scenery closest to the player [and therefore moving most rapidly
relative to them] blurs in the appropriate direction) or rapid orientation
change (Portal 2 does this; I think Mirror's Edge did so also).
------
LinaLauneBaer
Strange: When I click on the link I am automatically redirected to google.com.
Is this only me?
~~~
livebeef
Same here, I found this line in the html source:
ZDXI.OnCountryRedirect("DE", "http://www.google.com");
~~~
fosap
Why the hell? Why?
------
spyder
Here is the 48fps and 24fps sample for comparison:
<http://www.mediafire.com/?bpg35wg93vusryu>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Snake Dots[Android]-I made a game(even too hard for me) - theoneone
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.delis.sdots
======
crank4
How does it plays? I was not able to do any progress and the "tutorial" didn't
teach the rules of the game. I even uninstall it in order to take a second
look at the "tutorial" screen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Messenger protocol in Pidgin - probinso
https://github.com/jgeboski/purple-facebook
======
wooptoo
It's a shame that Facebook removed support for XMPP in the first place. I
guess it's part of their strategy to make the world more "open" and connected.
~~~
JustSomeNobody
Not just FB. Everyone is moving (have moved) to proprietary protocols.
~~~
tracker1
XMPP wasn't a great protocol though... I'm not aware of a better option
though. I know that something over WebRTC may not be much better, but may be
the best chance of seeing something more open in the next decade again.
Every company wants their walled garden though... though there's moats stocked
with alligators and piranha around them..
~~~
stinkytaco
Do you think it's strictly that they want walled gardens? I have a feeling
more large companies would support open protocols if they provided the
features they needed with the efficiency to provide those services cost (and
battery) effectively. It seems all the many open protocols (XMPP, Web and
CalDav, etc.) are simply not efficient or feature rich enough for companies
that are in a constant features escalation war with competitors.
~~~
gh02t
I imagine it's that, but amplified by NIH syndrome. Something like "oh yeah we
_could_ do it with XMPP, but it's all complicated and stuff and if we just
built our own protocol we'd be able to do everything we'd ever want exactly
how we want it! It'll be the future!"
I've fallen victim to something similar myself many times. "Oh yeah, I could
do <this> with <tool x>, but it's ugly and not how <tool x> is meant to be
used! I'll just design and implement <tool y> myself to do exactly <this> and
it'll be the future!" It's the temptation to make something customized for
yourself and it's hard to resist. Particularly when the existing solution has
some flaws, which makes the relative cost/effort of rolling your own solution
seem lower (even when it inevitably turns out to still be quite high).
~~~
pmlnr
[https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-
engineering/building...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-
engineering/building-facebook-messenger/10150259350998920/)
------
xg15
What I'm worried about: The protocol is proprietary, not a public API and all
official clients can be updated by Facebook almost instantly. This means they
can make arbitrary changes to the protocol at any time without bothering the
users of official clients very much.
This library would have to keep up with all the changes or clients would
quickly stop working. So is the manpower there to do this?
~~~
strathmeyer
Well there used to be this thing called AOL instant messenger. Then people
cloned the protocol. So AOL would just start causing purposeful buffer
overflows that would take them to specific parts in their code but mess up the
people trying to imitate it. But they figured it out, and now they teach
students in class how to overcome it. The other illegal thing they taught us
was decrypting a DVD.
~~~
JustSomeNobody
This in NO way addresses "proprietary protocol".
------
apetresc
Is there any part of this plugin that is specific to Pidgin? If it's just a
libpurple plugin, it should work with Adium too, right?
~~~
ultramancool
Yeah, as well as minbif and others.
------
probinso
Appreciation to this project. When facebook updated their protocol, my
workflow and screen `real estate` were impacted in very distracting ways.
[edited to address comment]
~~~
saurik
> I wanted to appreciate this project.
You wanted to, but you don't, because...?
~~~
padraic7a
I think it's 'he wanted to' so he posted it to HN.
------
raverbashing
Is it just me or there is no actual source code there?
~~~
kaio
Wiki-Entry:
"The purple-facebook project simply back-ports the purple3 plugin to purple2
[..]"
So i guess you won't see the actual protocol implementation in this repo but
only the necessary patches.
~~~
raverbashing
Ah this makes sense, so it has only some glue code (in the .h files I guess)
------
upofadown
Awesome. Now we will be able to have a XMPP/Jabber transport that works with
Facebook. Great for sort of keeping in touch with the relatives without the
horror of actual Facebook.
~~~
lazzlazzlazz
messenger.com is a great alternative to use Messenger without the distraction
of Facebook in the background.
------
randomchars
Is the protocol documented somewhere?
~~~
pmlnr
[http://mqtt.org/](http://mqtt.org/)
~~~
drdaeman
If I get it right, MQTT is just a PubSub protocol, i.e. it essentially carries
the messages, but doesn't care about their contents.
Is there a standard on how chat layer (the content of published messages) is
implemented? (I haven't looked into source code, but guess it's not just a
plain text, but it has some structure to it.)
~~~
pmlnr
C implementation of Facebook MQTT for bitlbee:
[https://github.com/jgeboski/bitlbee-
facebook](https://github.com/jgeboski/bitlbee-facebook)
~~~
randomchars
So that's a no, as it appears there's no documentation in the repository
beyond the comments.
------
kevinSuttle
Wait a minute. I thought "Facebook Messenger" protocol was just MQTT?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Free domain names? - steeples
Hi. Does anyone know if there are more services similar to the likes of DotTK that offer free domain names without having to pay for them? (http://www.dot.tk/en/index.html?lang=en). Google yielded nothing, but then Google also yielded any number of coupon-code sites where affil marketers drowned any such hope of getting a domain for free. Don't get me wrong, I own my own domain portfolio, but have made a conscious effort to not buy any more domains. In the true spirit of the web, you would think there would be more alternatives to the likes of DotTK...Anyone?
======
arihant
If you click through the parent company, you get .tk, .ml, .ga, .gq, and .cf
as free options. All their websites look identical. The most famous free
domain out there is .ml, the Malay extension because of it's use in machine
learning.
Other free options this year were .party and .xyz, but those offers are mostly
dead with most registrars, I think.
~~~
steeples
Oh nice. Thanks for this.
------
bulte-rs
Check out freenom.com; is seems .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf and .gq are free/gratis?
~~~
steeples
Thanks. Upvoted
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The entropy of code - mixmax
http://www.maximise.dk/blog/2008/12/entropy-of-code.html
======
khafra
When I saw the title, I thought it would be about the information theoretic
application of entropy, and talk about the maximum densities of useful work
that can be expressed in a given number of characters. I further imagined the
article talking about how abstractions are often good, and the move toward
more expressive languages is in the large positive, but then exploring how it
can be overdone like in the "Perl golf" exercise; and perhaps attempting to
find a function or algorithm defining the optimal density for a balance
between compactness and readability.
That'd be an interesting article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are you teaching kids during vacations? - pknerd
Hi HNers,<p>Like many countries, schools are closed in my country too for 2+ months. Kids will be at home and we will not be able to go for outing due to coronavirus. I want to utilize this time to improve their shortcomings. My elder one is 10y old and the younger one is 5. I am not interested in what they are taught in schools. A rough plan I have prepared yey(incomplete though as yet) is given below(For my 10y olds)<p>- Physical Health:<p>- Running between rooms for 15 mins initially.
- Diet plan
- Breathing Exercise.<p>- English
- Improve his English Vocab(We are from Asia).
- Writing.<p>- Maths
- Intro of Algebra
- Teaching applications of Math and how to use it(Not sure yet, I bought "What is MAthematics?" and "How to Solve it" so might use it.<p>- Science
- Home-based science experiment.
- Teaching basics of different natural phenomenon(How clouds are formed etc)<p>- Logic
- How to use FlowChart to make Algos.<p>What will you suggest or how are you planning to make your kids' vacations productive?
======
matt_the_bass
Yesterday I took my kids (4 and ~7) to an old WWI/WWII fort along the coast.
We had a nice picnic and discussed WWI/II briefly. We also discussed sea
currents and geology (the fort is in some cliffs overlooking the sea and there
is lots of quartz). We were able to go outside, keep away from other people
and learn a bit. Social distancing doesn’t need to mean stay in your house.
Today they will be drawing pictures of the seedlings they just planeted last
weekend. Some are just starting to poke through.
Tomorrow, maybe we make some CNC projects (like making stamps from their
drawings).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Generals.io mobile: swipe to capture other generals - vzhou842
http://mobile.generals.io
======
cjbprime
Tried it (am a big generals fan on desktop), swiping was way too laggy though.
Takes 1-2 seconds for each action to go through on Android.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: big data sets to play around with? - zxcvvcxz
I want to gain some experience programming some machine learning techniques with large data sets. Something for fun like trying to predict the stock market, etc.<p>Does anyone know of some relatively accessible sets of large data that one could get a hold of for free? Anything like past financial history, to tweets or facebook posts, whatever.<p>Cheers
======
byoung2
<http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/> is a good place to start
------
mindcrime
Just go to this Quora question, you'll find tons of answers to this question:
[http://www.quora.com/Data/Where-can-I-get-large-datasets-
ope...](http://www.quora.com/Data/Where-can-I-get-large-datasets-open-to-the-
public)
And don't forget <http://commoncrawl.org>
------
fendrak
Infochimps hosts lots of free data sets:
[http://www.infochimps.com/search?view=list&price_categor...](http://www.infochimps.com/search?view=list&price_category=free&has_categories=&dataset_type=&order=balanced&tags=&query=)
------
ch00ey
<http://buzzdata.com/content/>
They have TONS of free open data sets that you can play aound with.
------
Pyrodogg
Why not try joining in a competition while you're learning?
<http://www.kaggle.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla live pack swap demo Thurs 8pm - sounds
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/statuses/346895679471357952
======
sounds
Some news sources that confirm the tweet:
[http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hB6AvF6XQ...](http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hB6AvF6XQSsiGj0otUjmmzSTxLFg?docId=CNG.dbfacc70b6be89fc530bbe08dc37d9c3.841)
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-18/tesla-plans-
model-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-18/tesla-plans-model-s-
battery-swap-as-fast-refueling-option.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Vecturia - pixeledDanny
http://vecturia.com
======
pixeledDanny
Simple startpage
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The art of destroying software (2014) - Tomte
https://vimeo.com/108441214
======
kashfi
SHOTS every time this guy asks, "How many of you . . ."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tech Unicorns: Gored - nopinsight
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21679194-correction-startup-valuations-would-be-good-news-technology-sector-gored
======
myth_buster
The Silicon Rally Real data chart gives an interesting trend.
------
untothebreach
Is there a paywall-less link?
~~~
adenadel
Click on "web" and then click on the first google result
~~~
untothebreach
There is no "web" on the page I'm seeing, but I just googled the article title
and got it. Thanks.
EDIT: Ah, I see, I misunderstood. Thanks!
~~~
kornish
To clarify, the "web" button is under the title on the Hacker News page, not
the Economist page.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SW-delta: an incremental cache for the web - instakill
https://github.com/gmetais/sw-delta
======
Scaevolus
This might make be better as an RFC3229[1] (Delta encoding in HTTP)
implementation-- putting the cache information in the querystring is strange
when HTTP has a bunch of headers dedicated to it.
Cloudflare has a similar solution called Railgun[2] for updating dynamically
generated pages. "reddit.com changes by about 2.15% over five minutes and
3.16% over an hour. The New York Times home page changes by about 0.6% over
five minutes and 3% over an hour. BBC News changes by about 0.4% over five
minutes and 2% over an hour."
[1]:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3229](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3229)
[2]: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/efficiently-compressing-
dynamica...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/efficiently-compressing-dynamically-
generated-53805/)
~~~
niftich
This was actually recently discussed on the github issues:
[https://github.com/gmetais/sw-delta/issues/1](https://github.com/gmetais/sw-
delta/issues/1)
------
eknkc
Out of curiosity, I went ahead and calculated deltas between jQuery 2.2.3 ->
2.2.4 minified versions.
It generated a 512 byte delta string, instead of downloading the new version
of 83KB, 512 bytes seems like a pretty significant optimisation. Also, 2300
bytes for 2.2.0 -> 2.2.4.
I haven't seen a lot of great service worker uses so far but this seems
plausible. Good job.
Delta if you wonder what it looks like:
[https://gist.github.com/eknkc/fb27cfaee871a007c3cabfda5df03a...](https://gist.github.com/eknkc/fb27cfaee871a007c3cabfda5df03ab0)
~~~
JoshTriplett
Nice!
I wonder how the delta size compares to something like rsync or bsdiff?
~~~
deno
376 bytes for bsdiff(utf8, utf8), which is of course worse than
brotli/gzip(utf8(text delta)) (267/305 respectively).
~~~
JoshTriplett
Interesting!
I looked into bsdiff, and apparently it internally uses bzip2 for compression
of several components independently. As a quick hack, I modified it to output
all those pieces uncompressed (producing a large file of mostly 0s), and then
tried compressing the result with various compressors, both to test other
compressors, and to compress the entire file as one unit rather than as
separate components.
The result ("ubsdiff" is bsdiff without compression):
85659 jquery-2.2.3.min.js
85578 jquery-2.2.4.min.js
376 jquery.bsdiff
85994 jquery.ubsdiff
264 jquery.ubsdiff.brotli
252 jquery.ubsdiff.brotli9
309 jquery.ubsdiff.bz2
403 jquery.ubsdiff.gz
360 jquery.ubsdiff.xz
So, 376 bytes for unmodified bsdiff, 309 bytes by compressing the whole
uncompressed bsdiff file with bzip2, 264 bytes by compressing the whole
uncompressed bsdiff file with brotli, and (strangely) 252 bytes with quality 9
brotli (the default is 11).
~~~
JoshTriplett
Trying the same thing with a larger delta (jquery-2.2.4.min.js to
jquery-3.1.0.min.js) produced different compressor rankings, though:
85578 jquery-2.2.4.min.js
86351 jquery-3.1.0.min.js
8663 jquery.bsdiff
101359 jquery.ubsdiff
8380 jquery.ubsdiff.brotli
9209 jquery.ubsdiff.brotli9
8853 jquery.ubsdiff.bz2
9550 jquery.ubsdiff.gz
8360 jquery.ubsdiff.xz
In this case, bzip2 of the whole file did noticeably worse than bsdiff's
compression of three separate components. brotli of the whole file still won,
though. Which made me wonder if brotli of the individual components would do
better than brotli of the whole file. Turns out it does: 8006 bytes.
------
stephen
Nice!
I've heard that Google's Inbox (and likely other websites) uses this
technique, although the implementation AFAIU is not open source.
...actually, I think their's is different, in that it doesn't depend on
service workers; AFAIU the approach is:
if you move from js-lib-v1.js to js-lib-v2.js, they'll go ahead and source js-
lib-v1.js in the browser, and then also load js-lib-v1-to-v2.js, which is a
server-side generated JS file that redeclares/redefines only the JS
functions/modules/whatever that have changed from v1 to v2.
So, I believe their approach is much more intricate, because I believe it
diffs the JS at a semantic level to generate the "patch the already-loaded JS
by doing another JS load", vs. AFAICT your approach of just doing a textual
diff.
Assuming my assumptions about both approaches are right, I definitely prefer
yours in terms of simplicity; albeit the Google approach is (or was?)
necessary to benefit most users.
~~~
lstamour
I'm reminded of [https://github.com/google/module-
server/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/google/module-
server/blob/master/README.md) from a (linked) 2012 presentation. I believe I
found it in 2013, there might be other more recent talks. If I recall, the
unique feature of the proposed Google loader was that it would dynamically
take into consideration a dependency graph of the next JS to load and serve up
just enough to show whatever page you needed, and if the next page in the
graph had different dependencies, it would load just the ones you didn't
already have. Can't remember the details right now, it's been a few years.
Made tremendous sense at the time, but the implementation might need to be
improved a bit given HTTP/2 and more modern JS loaders, including a WhatWG
spec.
------
daemonk
I often see packages or solutions to problems related to browsers/servers on
hackernews. Why don't people who make browsers or servers implement these
things as a standard? IE. There seems to be so many people using jquery/react.
Why not just implement some of their functionalities natively into the
browser?
There seems to be a trend of making un-opinionated software that acts as more
of a sandbox for down-stream developers. I think that's great because we are
now seeing the great solutions coming out of that sandbox. But at what point
do we start to have a general consensus and implement some of these great
solutions natively to remove the resource overhead?
~~~
dexterdog
Do you really have to make them standard? There are not that many versions of
most of these. Caching every common version of jQuery is pretty trival. The
problem is that many people host it themselves or use one of many CDNs to
serve it up and then expose users to the potential tracking that CDNs can do.
Why don't the browsers just cache based on the integrity hash of the css and
js links when it is there instead of the url? Then everybody can host his own
copies for the cases where the user doesn't have it and cache hits will be
much more common.
~~~
dexterdog
Concept covered in more depth here: [https://mntr.dk/2016/content-addressable-
browser-caching/](https://mntr.dk/2016/content-addressable-browser-caching/)
------
ricardobeat
Chrome has had native support for SDCH[1] for years - I wonder why it hasn't
been widely adopted.
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDCH](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDCH)
------
nateguchi
Excellent use of service workers - are there any production sites around
actively using service workers in production? Or are we yet to see the
application of these mainstream?
~~~
mbrock
I used Service Workers in production for a client to do offline mode and also
to get truly instant page reload times for their SPA, which was important for
kind of obscure reasons.
The Service Worker saved a complete HTML rendering of the current state of the
React app, which was then served on reload, so that the correct view showed up
even before any JavaScript was loaded.
Then in the next "requestIdleCallback", the React app was initialized with
store data that was also cached.
It only works on Firefox and Chrome, so it's great for performance
improvements or if you control the client's browser setup.
Other than that, try looking at your browser's debug pane for service workers
and you'll see if any site has installed them. In my experience there are
quite a few.
ProductHunt uses them to send notifications when you're off the site, which is
a bit annoying, but maybe I said yes to it at some point...
~~~
nathancahill
That sounds like a great structure for instant page reloads. Any writeups on
that?
~~~
mbrock
I didn't, but I might soon... I'll email you if I do.
------
niftich
How does this interact with the browser's cache? For each potentially-
cacheable request, the browser goes to its cache and looks up the entry by
method and URI. When no hit is found, it forwards the request to the server,
then depending on properties of the response, it may cache that response. At
what point in the flow does the sw-delta-client code intercept the request?
(Before the browser cache, or after the browser cache but before the web
request?)
The sw-delta-client rewrites the URL, and the altered request is sent to the
server. The server responds -- let's assume with a cacheable respone -- and
the browser's cache gets updated.
Next time, we request the same URI but it's already cached and not stale, so
it can be served right away from cache without having to go to the server.
Does sw-delta-client intercept such a get-from-cache request? What if the
cached entry is stale and needs to be revalidated by making a conditional GET
to the server. Does it intercept revalidation requests?
Depending on some of these answers, the addition of query strings to the
browser-perceived URI may influence whether browser caching is performed
(properly, or at all). See: [1]
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24354119/](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24354119/)
[2]
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3131518/](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3131518/)
[3] [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-
us/articles/200168256-W...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-
us/articles/200168256-What-are-CloudFlare-s-caching-levels-) [4]
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23603023/](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23603023/)
~~~
rictic
I haven't looked into the code yet, but the service worker has almost complete
control over network requests and caching. It can calculate the correct
response for a url (e.g. based on this delta encoding system), cache it, and
use it in place of or alongside network requests in order to respond to a
browser request.
------
alexcasalboni
Here is a Python serverside implementation:
[https://github.com/alexcasalboni/sw-delta-
python](https://github.com/alexcasalboni/sw-delta-python)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Breaking Hard-Disk Encryption - buffer
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/breaking_hard-d.html
======
venomsnake
If we have memory dump it is easy to find the key. Nothing new.
Defenses are - never sleep the damn thing or hibernate just power off. And
make sure you do not have any DMA ports on the PC. And finally - hope you live
in a country where the cops are not proficient in thermorectal cryptoanalisys.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: EmotiClean – A Chrome extension to replace bad words with emoji - catskull
https://github.com/catskull/EmotiClean
======
greggman
Haha.
There was a time there was talk of trying to ban bad words on the internet.
Someone made a program that replaced all the bad words with names of
politicians and could translate them back later :P
------
braveman
Nice! Way more powerful and fun than using something as boring as
websensor.com or silly dashes. Maybe I should'a had kids. F--k!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You Can’t Put A Price Tag On A TechCrunch Post - rjvir
http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/08/we-are-worth-at-least-3k/
======
neya
This is irony at best. Techcrunch talking about journalistic integrity. Do you
know Apple sponsors them to write in favor of them? Even Matt himself admitted
this once on the comments. Techcrunch is one of the shittiest organizations
there exists ever. They include so much bias in their posts, that they are a
shame to the fair Journalism community.
~~~
michael_miller
I'm curious about the example of Apple sponsoring TechCrunch. Do you have a
link to the comment?
~~~
s_henry_paulson
I googled it, and the top results are neya saying the same thing in multiple
other HN comments.
~~~
neya
Thanks :) So Henry, do you still work for Techcrunch?
~~~
s_henry_paulson
Actually I run a data center in Iceland.
~~~
neya
Nice..Consider giving my start-up a discount please :)
------
andycroll
Amusing url for the story... <http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/08/we-are-worth-
at-least-3k/>
~~~
fmax30
I was about to mention the same, kind of ironic isn't it. Saying You can't put
a price tag while their Url is saying give us more than 3K and we will think
about it.
~~~
chad_oliver
I think it's reasonable to just interpret it as a joke.
------
peteretep
> "Imagine somebody doing this to The Wall Street Journal or The New York
> Times."
You mean like every major PR agency ever?
------
gozmike
My startup was on TechCrunch ([http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/11/appifier-
launches-new-servi...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/11/appifier-launches-new-
service-that-turns-wordpress-sites-into-mobile-apps/)) and I'm happy to say
that we didn't spend a dime for news coverage. Never have, and really never
will.
Like pretty much everyone here, I have big issues with paid placement in the
press because it makes reading news that much more boring and really takes
away from all the people working hard to do cool things that actually matter.
If you're even considering paying for press, know this: press will not turn
your company into an instant success story. Only customer development,
understanding your pain points and solving them exceptionally will. PR is not
a sustainable and effective customer acquisition strategy in the majority of
cases (however it does feel really, really good)
Liesl Barrel, a trained actress is one of my friends and advisors. She's a
natural at attracting attention to what she's involved in. She gave me one
solid piece of advice that sums up our entire PR strategy: "Do something
interesting, tell somebody abou it."
If you're doing anything more than that, whether it's kickbacks to a blogger
or paying a PR firm to put you on the newswire, you might need to seriously
rethink why you're even chasing the press.
------
c1sc0
Which raises the bigger question: is a Techcrunch post worth $750?
~~~
Peroni
I consider that to be insanely cheap. It would cost you almost double that to
sponsor one high profile tech meet-up in London and a techcrunch piece would
drive infinitely more traffic as well as more credibility.
~~~
aethr
Yes it would drive credibility. It would drive it away.
------
qthrul
FTA: $750 = TechCrunch pay-for-pitch targeting vs. $400 = any other blog pay-
for-pitch targeting
A percentage cliff that steep seem like an indication of content saturation
and price competition by amateur entrants vs. a calculation of value with
backing metrics.
------
001sky
_We’ve since proved that this is in fact true, and that a couple of our
writers were on the receiving ends of these “pay for play” sorts of pitches._
\-- Unfortunate wording; without an explicit denial.
~~~
h2s
Also note that the article never states that those caught taking money for
writing articles will face any consequences. Sleazy stuff, but who expects any
better from TC?
~~~
Indyan
Err..what I understood from this article is that the PR firms were getting
paid to get their clients into TC. They probably did this by cultivating
relationships with the writers. It doesn't say that any of the writers were
bribed.
------
dutchbrit
PRServe posted a response on their website, <http://www.prserve.com>
~~~
Ntrails
That is a terrible terrible front (only?) page
~~~
Dystopian
It is a terrible front-page ( minus marks for also having a apology / hostile
article as the first bit of copy vs. copy of what the company actually does)
--(double minus marks for writing it in copy that's barley legible because of
color).
As for the issue at hand though, I've talked to a lot of marketers and PR
people who specialize in getting up and coming businesses covered - many of
them get the job done - they also charge monthly fees and bonuses for landing
the top ten blogs in specific niches.
These guys are a relatively new firm - the pay-per-results model is definitely
welcome though in an industry that doesn't always show results for the expense
put out (and therefore isn't used by most startups).
------
OoTheNigerian
Interesting coincidence especially I read this post a few days ago. Kinda deep
towards the end.
"TechCrunch, Facebook, and journalistic bias:
<http://www.numair.com/2012_09_tc.html> "
~~~
mvkel
I've only met Numair once, but he's repeatedly seen patterns in the world that
don't come to fruition for several years.
He's well ahead of his time; a visionary.
Really cool to see he's writing again!
~~~
Tipzntrix
I'm not so sure; it says he's writing regularly, but that's his last post on
the website.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: The Most Influential Developers on GitHub - floydsoft
https://github.com/floydsoft/the-most-influential-developers-on-github
======
stevekemp
I wonder how many people upvoted this solely because their name was on one of
the lists? I know I did.
~~~
hashtree
Ha, I didn't and I am on it (though I don't deserve to be, IMO).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pay to Have Your Logo on Google Maps - markbnine
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2010/03/pay-to-have-your-logo-on-google-maps.html
======
TrevorBurnham
I'd much rather see logos on a map than generic placeholder graphics. Which
are you going to recognize faster: Some tiny text, or the golden arches? I
think it's fair to call this a win for Google Maps users as well as a nice
revenue stream for Google.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump fires CEO of TVA over replacing US tech workers with H1B workers - rsj_hn
https://fox17.com/news/local/trump-fires-tennessee-valley-authority-chair-citing-hiring-of-foreign-workers
======
jedberg
I think the administration is solving the wrong problem here. If the TVA is
using H1B just to save money, then they are violating the H1B program.
The administration should be cracking down on H1B violations.
~~~
GenerocUsername
By firing violators are they not 'cracking down on abuse'?
~~~
jedberg
No, the CEO didn’t violate any rules. The American contractors he hired did.
~~~
one2know
I would think they are going to go after the contractors as well. Criminal
charges take more time. For example:
[https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/26/h-1b-prison-for-
visa-...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/26/h-1b-prison-for-visa-fraud-
in-case-involving-bay-area-workers/)
------
omarhaneef
Not going to take a side on the politics but I think every CEO would like
clarity on what the rules are. Is the policy not to higher H1B workers for
public entities? Let the government issue a clear policy and then hold people
accountable. It would be tough to run an organization and have to guess at
what is not countenanced.
~~~
bilbo0s
Is the problem not knowing the policy?
Or is the policy different depending on the political winds?
Two very different issues. If the policy is one way for one administration,
and different for another, you're still in trouble. In fact, the policy can be
one way for an administration, and then an election comes up and that
administration needs some political points.
~~~
omarhaneef
Well, if and when a new administration comes in, they can announce the new
policy and then you have to abide by it. The new administration ought not to
be able to punish you for the old policy.
My whole argument is premised on what ought to be. I don't disagree with you
on what the case may actually be.
------
gerbal
This is off the AP Newswire, here's the AP original with a bit more detail:
[https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc](https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc)
~~~
Whinner
According to the article linked, Trump wants the new CEO to make less than
$500k/year. Yet, according to this article from 2019, the CFO, COO, general
council & chief nuclear officer are all making well over that. Who the hell is
going to take the CEO job?
[https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2019/nov/15/...](https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2019/nov/15/tva-
pays-record-amounts-top-executives/508316/)
~~~
one2know
Are you kidding? Most people make $50k not $500k. Lots of existing CEO's don't
even make $500k.
~~~
learc83
They mean what qualified person is going to take that job. If you're qualified
to run a company that size, you can make much more than $500k.
~~~
true_religion
It is likely they will hire people who will only use the jobs as a stepping
stone to private industry. They will take the low pay of government to prove
their abilities, then jump to the private sector.
So long as it doesn’t become a revolving door project with workers influenced
by private companies by promises of future employment, then I think the whole
practice is fine.
~~~
learc83
>They will take the low pay of government to prove their abilities, then jump
to the private sector.
So the job of running a $10 billion dollar per year company that manages
nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, and supplies power to millions of
people is done by someone who hasn't yet proven they likely have the
capability to do so?
This isn't a summer internship at the State Department.
------
jeffreyrogers
Good. The TVA was created during the Great Depression to help the Tennessee
Valley region develop (at the time one of the poorest parts of the US).
Changes like this will help it get back to that original mission.
------
jariel
It's always interesting when unsavoury politics is mixed with the difficult
realities of such programs.
The neoliberal benefits of H1's make sense, but the context has to be clear.
I think it would also make sense if at least public agencies should be
required to employ Americans, because the H1 program is not supposed to be for
the purposes of 'saving money' and it's hard to fathom what kind of 'highly
specialised expertise' is needed in governmental IT operations. Perhaps on a
consultative basis.
If there are legit R&D needs, i.e. if they were designing new chips for NASA
or whatever, fair enough ... but most of this is pretty squarely in the domain
of 'off the shelf' IT work. Again - even then the benefits are possibly
positive 'on the whole' for the economy, if not for the workers who otherwise
did not get a job ... but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire
locally and I don't think for a second Americans would have a problem with
that.
Of all the things everyone likes to argue about (i.e. taxes, unemployment
benefits) - I suggest there would be at least some easy consensus here.
~~~
cosmie
> but it's public money ... I think it makes sense to hire locally and I don't
> think for a second Americans would have a problem with that.
TVA is a government owned corporation, but it's fully self funded. So they're
not spending public money other than insofar as TVA costs get passed to the
electric bills of anyone whose local electric utility is purchasing
electricity from TVA.
TVA has over 10k active employees and has only ever had 10 H1B employees (all
hired between 2001 - 2008)[1]. And all of their H1B hires fell into either
electrical engineering or product/financial risk analysis, and all located
within Nashville, TN or Chattanooga, TN. Their usage of H1B employees seems
far more indicative of localized hiring difficulty, rather than some pattern
of H1B abuse. I've lived in both of those places, and they both have risen in
popularity and desirability throughout the last decade. Having hired in
Nashville before, people have become far more willing to relocate to Tennessee
over the last few years. But that doesn't mean their was similar interest in
relocating to TN for work 12-19 years ago when they filled these roles with
H1B hires.
[1]
[https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALL...](https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALLEY+AUTHORITY&year=&minsalary=&state=&worksite_city=&job_title=)
~~~
jariel
So that's a great point, it seems this is a bad application of crude politics,
that said, in general I still believe my points stand. It would be nice to
have more specificity and clarity on the issues as opposed to the arbitrary
attention of the Tweeter in Chief on the campaign trail.
~~~
cosmie
For sure! H1B as a whole tends to be abused, and your points are completely
valid ones in general.
And my comment was about TVA's direct use of the H1B program - not use of an
IT contractor that is _likely_ to be (ab)using the H1B program to staff the
roles. That said, the IT contractors TVA is using for their IT outsourcing are
used all over the federal government, even if through layers of
subcontracting. So it's a bit frustrating that a TV ad triggered such a
reactionary response from Trump in this isolated case but not in any other.
------
whoisjuan
All this bullshit over 10 positions, the last one filed on 2008 (12 years ago)
and the first one filed on 2001? And for specialized jobs nonetheless.
[https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=Tennessee+Vall...](https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=Tennessee+Valley+Authority&year=&minsalary=&state=&worksite_city=&job_title=)
He fired the first poor bastard he found to rile up his base on the idea that
he is protecting American jobs. This is not only absolutely stupid and
unjustified. It also shows how petty are politics in this country.
~~~
mc32
Even if it’s only ten. SFSU fired it’s IT team and contracted out the whole
lot a few years back. The IT team consisted of a variety of backgrounds in SF.
Little moves like that are the cracks that bring down the quality of life for
locals —the main beneficiaries being the uni administration team.
I am glad for every move that makes sense that doesn’t undermine the stability
of jobs for local workers who pay their fair share of taxes and add vitality
to the local economy.
~~~
belltaco
H1B workers and their employers pay all taxes, including things like SSA and
Medicare FICA taxes that they may never get to use. They also pay a lot of
extra fees that US employees don't, some of which are allocated to training US
workers.
~~~
mc32
But why should US workers suffer this? Should Ford Mexico import Salvadoran
workers to displace Mexican workers if it’s cheaper?
~~~
belltaco
Because this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)
------
kevin_thibedeau
Somebody needs to tell him about the shit Disney tried to pull.
~~~
chrisco255
The TVA is federally owned. Disney is not.
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Wannabe dictators won't let these small details get in the way.
~~~
chrisco255
Was it dictatorial when FDR set up the TVA in the first place, placing a huge
chunk of the South's power grid under federal control?
------
leetrout
Wow look at the misdirection in TVAs statement:
All TVA employees are U.S. based citizens. All jobs related to TVA’s
Information Technology department must be performed in the U.S. by individuals
who may legally work in this country.
So all _employees_ are citizens. All _jobs_ (hello contractors) are by
authorized individuals in the US.
------
I90Runner
[https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALL...](https://h1bsalary.online/index.php?searchtext=TENNESSEE+VALLEY+AUTHORITY)
.. Looks like they don't have any latest hiring on H1B.
------
tibbydudeza
It is easier to fire people of some federal agency that nobody knew about than
tackling a serious health crisis.
------
ianlevesque
Well, that was the easy part. Where's the funding going to come from to pay
domestic workers?
~~~
zaroth
It’s illegal to pay H1Bs less than the prevailing wage.
~~~
phnofive
Loopholes aside, what possible motivation could an employer have for bringing
in an H1B than lower cost? The H1B worker is beholden to the employer and the
increased supply of labor would necessarily decrease scarcity of that skill.
~~~
amf12
> what possible motivation could an employer have for bringing in an H1B than
> lower cost
Skills for one. The way H1B was really meant to be used. I am not arguing TVA
did this. But there ARE reasons to hire H1B workers other than cost. Case in
point Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.
~~~
zaroth
This is exactly the stated purpose--and indeed the legal requirement--of H1B
visas, to gain access to uniquely skilled workers that are not available
through the local workforce.
It's supposed to be an essentially merit-based path to immigration, and if
true, that would make it exactly the kind of program that Trump should 100%
support.
To the extent that H1B accomplishes this objective of highly skilled labor at
prevailing market wages, I think it's a useful program that has a place in the
overall immigration system.
From a macroeconomic view, even when limited to bringing in skilled labor to
fulfill a specific market shortage, this will still depress the prevailing
wage in that market, which theoretically prevents the market from correcting
when rising wages induce increased local supply.
Fundamentally something is broken with the wage market when real wages have
not grown in decades. Partially this is a problem with the measurement not
correctly accounting for significantly increased cost of [healthcare] benefits
covered by the employer share. But I believe even when accounting for the full
employer-side cost of wages, this number has not grown as expected, and low-
wage work visas are part of the problem.
------
I90Runner
you can do research on companies hiring h1b employees and salaries here. You
can see some of the outsourcing companies paying very low.
[https://h1bsalary.online/](https://h1bsalary.online/)
------
ascales
While getting some US developers back on the job might be a good thing, taking
steps to dismantle a government chartered public utility is not. This isn't
about the 10 H1-B visas, this is low hanging political fruit that Trump will
use to attempt privatization of the TVA.
~~~
dpoochieni
Thanks for sharing the President's thoughts.
------
moomin
Now make it unprofitable for the Trump Organisation to do the same thing and
we’ll talk.
~~~
yesplorer
Trump Organization is private, the TVA isn't.
~~~
moomin
So government workers are more important than people working for private
companies?
~~~
Alupis
US Government workers receiving a salary paid for by US Citizen's Tax
Dollars...
~~~
moomin
So the H1B deal saved the US taxpayer money and that’s a bad thing?
~~~
Alupis
At the cost of laying off US Taxpayers who had the job previously.
Yes, that's a bad thing when the business owner is the United States Federal
Government.
~~~
moomin
The H1B people pay US tax as well, though, right? So there's still savings.
------
imglorp
It's okay to hire illegals though, so you don't have that pesky H1B paperwork.
Trump properties are doing this now, not a decade ago.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/undocumented-
housekeep...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/us/undocumented-housekeeper-
trump-golf-bedminster.html)
__ edit__ if someone's downvoting, maybe they could come out and indicate if
(a) you can't detect sarcasm, (b) you approve of hiring illegals, or (c) you
think Trump should be allowed to break the law while grandstanding on an old
H1 question?
------
fabian2k
From the AP report on this
([https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc](https://apnews.com/0336437987fec77627c17ca9a4c781bc))
> Trump acknowledged that he was made aware of the issue after seeing a
> television ad produced by U.S. Tech Workers, a nonprofit that wants to limit
> visas given to foreign technology workers, that aired in prime time on Fox
> News.
It does seem truly scary that by far the easiest way to get the US president
to do something is to put an ad on Fox News. If you can package your cause
into one of his pet topics, you have a good chance of something getting done.
A US president that is so easily manipulated is terrifying.
~~~
jaywalk
Yes, of course. Obviously the President of the US should have already been
aware of the hiring practices of contractors at some regional utility
provider.
~~~
hundchenkatze
I don't think the person you're replying to was implying the President should
already be aware of the issues. Rather, that it's concerning that the best way
to convince him to do anything is through a TV ad instead of a more
appropriate means of communication.
~~~
jaywalk
Who cares how he learned about it? The President has hundreds, probably
thousands of people asking him for stuff every day. He has teams of people who
filter requests through the "appropriate means of communication."
Seriously, it's irrelevant. When he learned of a federally-controlled entity
working against the best interests of Americans, he took action. That's really
all that matters. I don't care if he saw a TV ad, a billboard, or any other
unconventional means of communication with the US President.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does anyone WANT to build client software anymore? - webwright
We've been hiring for RescueTime (a funded YC company) for about a month now. We found our first hire right away (a rails guy) - a classic YC-style hacker-- passionate, crazy-smart, seeking a small team with a clean slate, etc.<p>At the same time, we've been looking for a hacker to help us with the (installable Mac, PC, and hopefully Linux) RescueTime client (as well as other startup duties, ranging from our API to helping with product strategy). We've looking at local Seattle folks as well as remote people in nearby timezones.<p>We have some good candidates, but I've been struck by how FEW fit the YC hacker mold...<p>So, out of curiosity-- does the idea of writing client software appeal to anyone in the Hacker News demographic? This isn't a plea for candidates-- I'm more curious if people find the idea of writing client software appealing anymore.
======
rcoder
The problem with finding really great hackers who want to do client-side
coding is that a huge percentage of the work required to implement such apps
is boring crap: compatibility testing, look-and-feel review, installer
authoring, and collection of client configurations from issue reports. You can
implement more features in less time when you deliver thin-client solutions.
Also, the knowledge required to deploy apps to each of your target platforms
are fairly different, and tend to be developed to the exclusion of each other.
A great Mac OS software engineer is unlikely to know Windows inside and out,
and a Windows guru isn't likely to know or care much about Linux. Linux folks
are, well, an altogether different bunch.
~~~
wheels
A huge percentage of the work required to implement _web_ apps is boring crap:
browser testing, working around bugs for quirks in different browsers, look
and feel review, screwing around with stuff in five different languages /
formats just to do something trivial (i.e. Javascript, CSS, HTML, Python, SQL)
...
I really don't think there are many web developers that can pound out an
interactive web GUI with the speed that I can bang out a cross-platform
desktop app with a reasonable toolkit. There's a natural bias here towards web
apps since this is a web-app community, but there are a lot of great
developers out there that like working on desktop stuff.
@webwright -- feel free to contact me. I know a lot of people from the KDE
world that do cross-platform apps; I could try to put you in touch with some
people.
~~~
rcoder
You're right, of course; doing full-stack development, no matter the target
platform, involves a lot of unsexy busywork. Browser incompatibilities are an
issue as well, and there are certainly a number of layers of technology
beneath any finished application.
That being said, I don't think it's fair to argue that desktop apps are easier
to develop, test, and deploy than their online counterparts. Furthermore,
information-sharing features that are trivial to implement via the web can be
rather more complicated to build into a desktop tool.
~~~
wheels
Both metaphors definitely have their advantages. There are things that are
trivial in one setting that are painful in the other. I'm not trying to argue
for one or the other being altogether better; I think that's really context
and user specific and as I've said before, I definitely think it's easier to
build a business around web technologies.
To tie this back to the original topic: great desktop hackers can throw
together desktop apps quickly, and know the quirks for developing cross
platform (just like great web hackers know browser quirks). In contrast to
most of the crowd here, I'm pretty darn good at desktop (and server / systems)
programming, and mediocre at web programming, so I just see the other side of
the coin.
------
bayareaguy
The _idea_ often appeals to me but I quickly get turned off by the practical
realities involved, particularly when getting the app to both look reasonable
and work on several platforms.
That said, I've been thinking about XUL/Firefox addons for some simple
configuration things.
~~~
rcoder
> I've been thinking about XUL/Firefox addons
If you value your sanity, put the XUL handbook down and step away slowly. Of
the handful of completely failed software projects I've worked on, _most_ have
involved XUL and the Mozilla runtime stack in some major way.
The complexity of XUL isn't worth it for the payoff, IMHO. Stick with
something simple like Shoes or Tk, or go for Qt or WxWindows if you need a
rich widget set. Don't let the fact that XUL looks kind of like HTML mislead
you into thinking it'll be easy to build on and deploy.
------
pmjordan
I got into programming via the games route, and until pretty recently, that
meant to-the-metal C, C++ and the libraries close to the system. (and when I
started to teach myself to program, I hadn't heard of the internet) I've
always tried to stay on top with other tech as well though, including the web,
and now that I've given up game programming, my consulting work is about 50%
client-side (C/Win32, C/UNIX, C++/MFC, .NET, Java - you name it) and 50% web-
based. I enjoy both.
I guess the web is what's hot right now (and that's hardly going to change so
quickly) so it's what attracts the freshest talent. I don't think there's
anything fundamental about web technology that will attract "YC style
hackers". I also don't think the desktop is dead just yet.
I suppose it's therefore no surprise that my own pet project is a kind of
web/client hybrid that you'll be able to use either via a browser or run
locally. (although some of the more complex graphical UI is pretty tricky to
do in a browser, so we'll have to see what happens)
I'm probably in the wrong country to help you out directly, but I suspect
there are plenty of people out there that fit your requirements. I don't hang
out there, but you could check the Joel on Software boards/jobs, I understand
that's frequented by Windows folk.
EDIT: this post seems to make me sound old. I'm 24, so typical YCer age, as
far as I can tell.
~~~
dhuck
i come from a somewhat similar background (i'm 23).
to add on: this is why i'm very happy with .NET. the overlap between web apps
in ASP.NET and client based apps is large. no mac or linux, obviously.
recently i've started building a small windows app again, and i've been so
pleased by how quickly and smoothly it's been - even though it's been years
since i've worked on a windows app.
when i first saw this post title - i instantly thought in my head, hey -
doesn't rescuetime do that?! i absolutely love their product. i'd work for
them in a heartbeat if my skillz were better.
i don't think client-based apps are dying, at all. if anything, rescuetime is
showing that they are on the rebound. good work, guys.
------
jgrahamc
I think you're suffering from a virtuous circle or Catch-22 depending on your
viewpoint. This site (and others) have made out that everything is going to be
a web app, so lots of people want to work on web apps and then if all the
smart are working on web apps then web apps look like the place to be.
------
comatose_kid
I'd like it as long as it was Mac.
To elaborate, the pool of people willing to pay for Linux client software
isn't large enough. The pool of people willing to pay for Windows software is
large enough, but I don't enjoy writing C#/.NET or MFC. And as importantly, it
is hard to stick out as an indie in that environment.
So, the time invested to learn these technologies isn't worthwhile.
On the mac, you have a user base which is used to paying for software, and it
is growing. And although no environment is perfect, I do enjoy writing
Objective C and Cocoa.
------
maxklein
Personally, I love client stuff way more than web stuff. Web stuff is just so
limited in what can be done, and client stuff totally gives you freedom...
But that's not the truth. I've been doing desktop stuff for years so it comes
naturally to me, whereas web stuff is new. The people you are meeting here
grew up with web stuff, not with desktop stuff.
------
DanielBMarkham
Sure.
It's just another marketing/sales numbers-based decision. If I had an app that
targeted MS Office apps, for instance, I wouldn't have a bit of a problem
writing it on the client.
I'd take it a step further. If I had an app that took a minute to load the
first time over the web, I'd seriously consider just targeting the client and
getting more bang for the buck.
The reason some folks stay on the web is that people don't want to wait to use
anything. If you can show them a working app they can play with in under 5
seconds, your click-through and sales go up. You can't do that with client
apps.
Nothing special about web or client, it's all just a numbers decision (or at
least, it should be)
------
davidw
I have a number of years experience working with Tcl, and also a bit of Tk,
which fits the bill nicely for that kind of thing.
However... yeah, doing client apps is not "where it's at" compared to web
apps. I _never_ thought I would say that. Web apps were, once upon a time,
sort of ugly and boring compared to all the cool stuff you could do with
'real' apps. But with things like Rails, and the ability to easily deploy new
versions, the world has changed, and web apps are "where it's at", in a lot of
ways.
If you're interested in using Tcl and Tk, I could send out a few feelers to
that community. Lots of them aren't really in the YC 'demographic' (older,
families, etc...), but some of them are pretty sharp coders.
~~~
orib
GUIs just aren't interesting to create -- there's nothing challenging about
creating them. For desktop apps, the normal thing to do these days isn't even
to code them -- you drag and drop together a UI in something like Glade,
Interface Builder, or whatever Visual Studio packages, and hook up handlers to
talk to the core logic. It's mostly grunt work.
The same is true about web interfaces, of course, but they at least have hype
behind them, and therefore they're picked up by trendy young coders. Plus,
there's the challenge -- or, IMO, endless pain -- of actually making it work
across multiple browsers.
There is certainly an art to making a good, usable interface, but it's not a
typical programmer's challenge, and writing a UI by hand is simply a pain in
the ass. It sucks to do the stupid connections and packing if you don't have a
drag and drop layout tool. And once you have that, you start leaving the
programmer's domain, and into the designer's domain.
Note, I'm only talking about interfaces. The logic behind them can be
anything, but it's the same logic with a web or desktop frontend.
I think it's just that once the shine wore off of the "hey, I can make
buttons!" thing, the highly motivated programmers realized that UI design
wasn't something that they wanted to focus on -- it's better left to designers
(in theory at least -- im reality it's probably left to lowly grunt
programmers) who can make the UI with drag and drop GUI builders, leaving them
to work on _interesting_ technical challenges. Making a GUI tends to be
incidental to the core of the problem. I suspect that if it wasn't for the
shine factor in web apps, it would have the exact same sort of apathy that you
see in most programmers about desktop GUIs.
~~~
jamesbritt
"GUIs just aren't interesting to create -- there's nothing challenging about
creating them. For desktop apps, the normal thing to do these days isn't even
to code them -- you drag and drop together a UI in something like Glade,
Interface Builder, or whatever Visual Studio packages, and hook up handlers to
talk to the core logic. It's mostly grunt work."
Oh, so very wrong. Yes, _technically_ , the mechanics of making a GUI are not
hard, but it's much like good technical writing. Deciding what goes where,
what goes in, what stays, out; these are hard choices. Just look at almost any
random shareware VB app. Fugly.
~~~
potatolicious
Agreed. My secret shame is that I love tinkering with GUI and trying new
things. I have a deep dissatisfaction for most GUI apps out there, and I take
a lot of time when I write my apps to try and get it right.
Most coders simply aren't meticulous enough when it comes to interfaces. "Slap
a button on the window" or "just throw an item in the menu" without thought
are not usable solutions.
This is especially problematic in client-side software where marketing is only
interested in bullet-point features. The accessibility and workflow behind
these features tend to be suspect at best, downright unusable at worst.
I wish more coders would be interested in these things. The people I talk to
about interfaces are either disinterested hackers who'd rather work on backend
code, or artists with no conceptual grasp of the technical underpinnings of
GUI. Ugh.
------
noodle
i've done both (although my client-based experience is now a little old-ish).
i've worked on client-based stuff (c++ mostly) and done your standard web app
dev work (rails, php, java, etc.).
the turning point for me, where i decided that i wanted to focus more on web
dev type things, was in a UI and software engineering class i took in college.
we had to build a c/c++ program to process and display some data graphically,
with a nice gui interface.
learning about, creating, and working with a modest GUI was painful and time
consuming, to say the least. everyone struggled, and what took my group (4ish
people) weeks in c/c++ and MFC would've taken me hours with html/javascript.
the productivity difference and learning curve totally turned me off of
client-based app work.
having said all of that, i acknowledge that i didn't do work in .net or in a
java framework, and i know that the situation is currently much better than it
used to be. i'm not claiming that one is better than the other, just
explaining why i turned my focus away from client-based apps. i'd love to
return to them, just haven't had the need or time to do so.
also, full disclosure, i dropped rescuetime an email about employment a while
ago :)
------
zach
My advice: hire a sharp game programmer, specifically one who has worked on
tools and has 1-5 years in the game industry. The pay is not that great for
game programmers in that range of experience, so they can handle a startup
salary. And they are typically enthusiastic and experienced in the right areas
you want.
Many such programmers are burned out or just laid off, so they will consider
working outside of games, but you have to bait them a little so they know
you're not a corporate dullard. I would suggest a job listing with some game-
programmer keywords or even sneaking onto CreativeHeads or Gamasutra.
I say this not in an exploitative mode, but because that was my profile when I
jumped from games into a job as a 2000-era dot-com client software programmer.
They specifically mentioned that they were looking for console programming
experience because there were several former game programmers there who
understood this dynamic. And I was quite happy with the time I spent there.
------
jncraton
I personally don't mind writing client software. I'm still in school, and I
honestly don't have a huge amount of experience, but efficiency is really
appealing to me. Web programming is fun when using Django or Rails. The code
is beautiful, and it provides a great way to innovate. However, when I sit
back and think about all the extra nonsense that is going on under the hood of
a web app I start to get slightly frustrated. I'm not saying that I can fix
this or even that it isn't the best way for the web to be built. It's just
that there is something cool to me about building a brilliantly efficient
client side app. I'm not going to say that I enjoy optimizing assembly, but
there is definitely something satisfying to me about creating a really
efficient and secure application.
I'm not planning on making a career out of client software, but I do enjoy it
at times. I strongly prefer writing web apps, but I also hack away at OpenGL
and C++ occasionally in my spare time.
------
pm
Writing clients is fun; writing cross-platform clients even moreso. Each
platform has its own design philosophy, and I find it engaging learning each
platform's intricacies, and coming to understand the psychology behind each
platform's demographic.
I believe the greatest measure of an application is the user's productivity,
and I believe most of that productivity is inherent in the design of the user
interface. The users of each platform have different expectations of their
user interface, however, so I believe it's my duty when developing cross-
platform applications to be mindful of these expectations.
The work may seem unglamorous to most programmers, but if you can't get the
human half of the interface right, any gains on the computer half of the
interface are moot. That being said, I think most YC hackers do have an
appreciation for this logic, it's just that client software is overkill for
their requirements.
------
kapitti
I wrote one for AT&T that got deployed to ~1M PCs and lost my luster for
client apps when Microsoft released Vista & XP SP2, both of which resulted in
months of patch work just to get things working again before we could focus on
newness again.
I'm sure some day I'll love Client Apps again, maybe when Microsoft isn't
killing the little guy.
------
jamesbritt
My company, Happy Camper Studios, builds cross-platform client apps using
JRuby, Swing, and Monkeybars. We like it. :)
------
nickb
Try doing few usability studies with client-side software (I'm really talking
Windows apps) and you'll see how much pushback you'll get. Consumers just
__hate __installing apps. They absolutely loathe it. Everyone seems to be
afraid of viruses and software. Now, this can be overcome to a degree if
you're a huge company and have a well-known brand name that people trust and
you can also overcome it by targeting a specific segment of the market that
are computer knowledgeable and are willing to trust you. I'm not sure but I
think that Firefox addons have less push-back than regular apps (just a guess,
have no data).
So in short, make sure you do several usability studies with people who fit
your market segment.
------
jcromartie
I currently work on a project that has some similar technical goals to
RescueTime. The OS-level work is what sucks. I don't mind working on GUIs,
especially when it means applying the polish that really makes an app shine
for users. That sort of stuff I can get into...
As a matter of fact, I fixed the Status Item icons for RescueTime (to match
the standard icon style) just the other day because the ones that came with it
bugged me!
Here you go!
<http://djork.net/rescue/RescueTimeMenu_off.png>
<http://djork.net/rescue/RescueTimeMenu_on.png>
------
vlad
I've written a shareware app with a good GUI. I am not interested in working
on it or any desktop app. Xobni is the only YC company I've heard of where the
primary product or solution is a desktop app, so I think YCombinator also
prefers web based apps.
By the way, I've always wondered--is there a feature in your product that
monitors how often you mention RescueTime on news.YC and elsewhere? If there's
not, or if it's not automated, you should add it. That way at the end of the
day, you could see how often you've namedropped your product (as a measure of
success). I'm only half-kidding. :)
~~~
webwright
[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+%22by+webwright%22+rescuetime&btnG=Search)
[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+r...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+rescuetime)
Looks like 66 of the 481 pages with the word RescueTime somewhere on them have
my username somewhere on the page. I imagine many of those are assorted
duplicate views of the same comment and many more are threads where one person
mentioned RT and I responded.
Feel free to sort thru the times that I've mentioned RescueTime to see if I
meet your obviously high standards for contributing to the community.
Being a troll and finishing with a ":)" doesn't really make it okay.
:)
~~~
vlad
Respectfully, I'm not going to go through your comments; I'm just going by
what I remember reading over the past year. (By the way, I don't think that
mentioning your company as often as possible is necessarily a bad thing, as I
had alluded to in the parent post.) If you think that's a reasonable measure,
though, go through my comments and find where I have ever been a troll before
calling me that. I'd expected more from long time posters. Maybe you'll even
find a congratulations post to some of your company's announcements (I'm not
sure if I did in this case, but that's what I typically write.) To rephrase my
question, have you ever considered having the app track how often one mention
a certain keyword in their posts, as you are already tracking their browsing
history? That way, you could say at the end of the week--"I mentioned
RescueTime 20% more than last week." Of course, it wouldn't necessarily all be
in one post in one day on News.YC--maybe in blogs, or gmail, and maybe once on
average per html form post. Isn't that a cool idea? Thanks.
~~~
webwright
Hrm-- seemed and felt mean-spirited to me (your comment)-- I guess my sarcasm
detector went off when it shouldn't. I apologize!
------
oldgregg
I think YC tends to attract people who want to innovate... but who associates
desktop software with innovation anymore? That's so 1983. Younger guys have
never "wasted" the time to develop the requisite skill-set and older guys
haven't bothered to keep up their chops.
Besides, anybody who actually goes to MSDN conferences and hacks the windows
API is probably on the corporate dole and would never be so dumb as to try
starving/start-up.
On the upside, if everyone around here was still obsessing over client
software, somebody might have beat RescueTime to the punch! :)
~~~
webwright
Heh- true 'nuff! If we could do what we do using only web software, we would.
It seems that apps like Quicksilver (Mac), Enso (Windows), Firefox, etc., are
still pretty darn innovative. But the agility that the web affords is pretty
darn addictive.
~~~
arockwell
I think within your post right here lies a lot of the problem. There needs to
be a _really_ compelling to write something as desktop software instead of as
a web app, so most people don't even bother to learn how to write desktop
software in the first place.
~~~
toni
Absolutely, the paradigm of 'client-software' is becoming ambiguous for most
of the web people. 'Porting' an existing web app to a 'client software' is a
very trivial work, thanks to stuff like XULRunner.
------
umjames
Are you looking for one person to do the Mac, PC, and Linux desktop clients?
That would explain why you haven't found anyone yet. People tend to become
good at developing for only one of those platforms.
I can (and do) both web and Mac programming, but don't live near Seattle. Of
the 2, I prefer Mac programming.
I can't speak for Windows or Linux client development, but most of the Mac
developers I know are running (or want to start running) their own indie Mac
software shops. So you might want to find some quality Mac software
contractors (I know a few).
------
shimi
I'll try throw something in the mix, there is a matter of fashion. Back in the
90's C++ win32/MFC development was the highly regraded, I guess I should note
that VB6.0 was very in demand as well, The technology and the market trends
have changes so also the developers.
I for one don't like to write web applications (mainly because the technology
fragmentation), and I prefer to use client application whenever I can.
Having say that I can't see myself writing Win32 API as a day job in the near
future, for all the reasons mentioned above.
------
scumola
I still write C code and GUIs for stuff, but doing it in PHP,SQL,Perl is just
so much quicker and easier for things that my C programming is not as frequent
as it used to be and my C skills are getting stale. I'm not in need of a
client-side app as much anymore nowadays, the browsers are so capable that
it's not as necessary to do heavy client-side apps much. I'm not discrediting
client-side apps, it's just that the demand isn't as high anymore.
------
131072
I'd rather code web-apps than Win-API apps. I'd rather code OSX apps than web
apps. But mostly, I'd rather live in a tent than become a multi platform
installer/GUI porting expert. There are enough more interesting (or less
painful) jobs around for the people who are good enough to do a good job of
that. But you might be able to pick up a former banking coder now, and those
guys are mostly pre-demoralized :)
------
rodmaz
I think client software is seeing a revival with mobile platforms like the
iPhone OSX and Android. Right now the best experience in those devices is
delivered by native client apps. Script languages like Flash and a browser
with a larger screen enables rich web applications and thus reduces the need
to write a native app for platforms like Windows.
------
AlexTheFounder
webwright, haven't seen your job ad, but I guess its not that challenging for
a real "client" hacker to become attracted. Personally, I wouldn't bother
applying because I see no future for myself as a "desktop" fanatic at your
company - don't take it seriously, I do and love web apps too!
------
Shorel
I was looking for a job a couple of years ago, doing precisely that, in
wxWidgets. And everybody seemed to hate C++ and love Java and related 'new'
languages.
Right now, I'm working full time doing PHP and I want to keep the job
stability even with that slow language, so sorry, too late.
------
thorax
I actually really like building client software. And web software. And
services. And agents/bots. And scripting engines.
Yes, those people exist, it's just not trendy to write lower-level OS-specific
software these days. Maybe it never will be again.
------
tlrobinson
Compiled, non cross platform, download-only, "client software"... no.
Cross platform, deployable on the web or any OS desktop, or mobile phones
(with new generation browsers)... yes.
But we had to write an entire framework first ;)
~~~
Shorel
in Lisp?
------
dgabriel
Just out of curiosity, what do you see as "the YC hacker mold"?
------
kingkongrevenge
If you want to write to MFC, which I'm sure would make the most sense, then
that's probably your problem.
~~~
maxklein
You actually have something against MFC? You realise that MFC is a pretty thin
wrapper around the Windows API, right?
~~~
Shorel
Well, I do actually hate the WORD/DWORD stuff in MFC/Win32.
And I like wxWidgets. So, sue me.
~~~
maxklein
WORD, DWORD has little to do with MFC. It has a lot more to do with Win32. You
know that one of the main criteria of MFC is backwards compatibility - what's
your idea as to how to solve that problem?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Prism Break - SkyMarshal
https://prism-break.org/
======
h2s
While I understand and sympathise with the compulsion to resist surveillance
in this practical, technological way, I think it might be the wrong reaction
to the information. It's typical of techie people to seek technical solutions
to social problems, and this is one such case.
It may well be possible to mitigate their ability to watch you by wearing
enough tin-foil hats. Even if you succeed, all you've achieved is to protect
one solitary person at the cost of considerable personal inconvenience. Worse,
once you consider yourself "safe enough" from prying eyes, your incentive to
actually _act_ on what they're doing will be diminished.
I think that we should try not to be meek about this issue, passively hiding
ourselves and then getting on with our lives saying "Fuck you, got mine". Why
should the tech community flee the very Internet that it has played such a
crucial role in building? Is the idea that our democracies could eventually
fix this situation really beyond all hope?
If you live in the UK, write to your MP
([http://www.writetothem.com/](http://www.writetothem.com/)). Support PPUK
([http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/](http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/)) if you feel
strongly enough, as they're seemingly the only political group treating this
matter with the seriousness it deserves.
~~~
Homunculiheaded
I'm starting to think people should begin to create "crypto-selves". I've seen
a lot of talk saying essentially "get off facebook! get off gmail!" But that's
a lot of persistent effort even for fairly technical people. Plus even in
secure, anonymous environment interacting with your real life friends,
purchasing your favorite books on amazon etc will reveal who you are anyway.
In non-web life we have private and public spaces and there's plenty of study
on how these two play together and how important they are. Most people have
erroneously thought that because your computer is in your private physical
space that it's also 'private', but that's clearly not the case.
What people need is the education to create the technological equivalent of
locking yourself in your bedroom for the afternoon to clear your head.
Gmail is like sending a postcard, facebook like chatting with friends at the
mall or park. Tor/truecrypte/pgp etc for parts of your life you want private.
Separate usernames, interests, tones of voice, etc in this private space.
Trying to hide your real (ie public) self is silly as should you become a
target of the nsa & co. they'll find a way to dig up something even if you've
been completely hidden from july 2013 on. What people need is a reasonably
benign public self and a hidden crypto-self.
Also I'm all for fighting the surveillance state, but I'm extremely cynical of
it's success. I see no feasible way to reduce the power and authority of the
militarized aspects of our government(s). I can't think of a single example of
where public knowledge and outcry has changed anything other than getting a
few puppets punished anywhere except the non-militarized parts of government.
~~~
AnthonyMouse
>I see no feasible way to reduce the power and authority of the militarized
aspects of our government(s).
I partly think it's because people are asking for the wrong things. People say
things like "stop NSA surveillance" which is vague and impractical. What needs
to happen is to hit them where it hurts: Reduce total defense spending to 50%
of what it is now. That should be the demand from everyone. Money is power. If
you want them to have less power, stop giving them so damn much money. And
besides, who can't get behind massively lower taxes?
~~~
MisterWebz
If you want them to have less power, you need other powerful entities to tell
them to stop abusing their powers. Boycott the tech giants and you'll see it
happen. it's way more effective than any protest or online petition.
~~~
hosh
Isn't that another way of saying, "rule of the strong" instead of "rule of
law"?
------
comex
Several of these suggestions seem somewhat disingenuous - e.g. many of them to
be about free software more than actual concerns about tracking, as reflected
in the labels "Proprietary" and "Free alternatives". In particular:
\- None of the proprietary browsers will track you - well, beyond what's
specified in the privacy policy. Two of the alternatives are Tor applications,
but the other two are Firefox (which provides no additional protection) and
GNUzilla IceCat (which has little reason to exist other than free software
politics).
\- Most of the browser add-ons are mostly about third-party tracking; these
could be subject to PRISM, but the notes suggest that the concern is more
about the third-party tracking itself and non-free software (in the case of
Ghostery).
\- Ditto with the notes in cloud storage, which discount three storage systems
with client-side encryption (i.e. equal protection) because they are
proprietary.
\- The media publishing section promotes third-party blog publishing services
for "privacy and security", even though most blogs are public and thus have no
need for either.
\- Ditto above with Icedove vs. Thunderbird in the email desktop clients
section.
\- iOS is advised against with a misleading claim that "iOS devices contain
hardware tracking" due to an long-patched bug. The claim about it being
impossible to verify whether an iOS app was compiled from the original source
is disingenuous, as this is rarely done on any platform, but would certainly
be possible to do on iOS if the developer cared.
\- OS X and Windows won't track you. (Chrome OS won't either, but it strongly
encourages using cloud services which will, so I'll concede that.)
In the claims that proprietary software won't track you, I am assuming that
the NSA will not compel (or has not compelled) these companies to modify their
software to include secret tracking. This claim is made explicitly under the
operating system section: "Apple, Google, and Microsoft are a part of PRISM.
Their proprietary operating systems cannot be trusted to safeguard your
personal information from the NSA." But even considering all that we have
heard about the NSA, this seems absurd, far beyond what they are willing to
do, and even if it were true, using free software would not necessarily
prevent the US-based host of the download from being similarly compelled.
Moreover, someone would probably notice (unless it were an intentionally
introduced but otherwise unremarkable security bug, but it's sure easy enough
to find real zero-days in software, free or not, without having to resort to
that! - not that that should necessarily make you feel better.)
~~~
snitko
_> None of the proprietary browsers will track you._
Can you elaborate a bit on this, how do you know they won't? My default
assumption is that anything I can't see the source code of and compile myself
is compromised.
~~~
throwit1979
Sociologically: there is a surprisingly large contingent of people who believe
that if a company makes a claim, it's the God's honest Truth. The OP may not
necessarily fall into this camp.
Technically: if the browsers were somehow phoning home, even if the data were
highly fuzzed, I'm sure there would be guys like tpatcek who would manage to
detail, if not the content of the tracking, at least the amount of data sent
and the targets. I don't recall there being such a scandal in recent memory.
~~~
snitko
It is possible to send data along with other data so that it's reaaally hard
to find. Also, they don't need to send data all the time, but rather activate
this mode on request, say when a person using this browser is a suspect for
some reason and govt needs to track his every move on the internet. This would
make detecting of such a functionality virtually impossible, because it'd be
turned off most of the time for most people.
~~~
comex
It is possible. However, considering that it would only take one person being
exceptionally curious with IDA, one employee to blow the whistle (the source
is still "open" to a fairly large number of people, and a backdoor is far
harder to hide than passive collection of existing data), or one slipup to
cause a massive amount of PR damage, and this has never occurred, nor does the
Snowden leak suggest this is happening, I personally consider this claim
extremely improbable. YMMV.
------
tptacek
If you're going to continue using Google Mail, it's a dumb idea to
deliberately switch away from Chrome. The connection between Gmail and Chrome
is among the more carefully guarded TLS connections on the Internet.
~~~
jevinskie
How does Google create one of the most carefully guarded TLS connections?
Should other sites model their implementation?
~~~
mortehu
When Google.com's certificate was faked, it was discovered because Chrome
restricts what CAs are allowed to sign Google's certificates, if I recall
correctly.
~~~
tptacek
Google does that for a number of other non-Google sites, too.
~~~
aray
Pretty sure its just google sites, because otherwise you might get false
positives as other sites change servers/ips/certificates/etc
~~~
dfc
[https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/http/tr...](https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/http/transport_security_state_static.json?view=markup)
~~~
_delirium
Interesting. Kind of an eclectic small list: Google, Twitter, Tor, CryptoCat.
------
wyck
Let's pretend I'm the NSA. I don't care right now about what your saying, I
just care about who you associate with and where you are hanging out. If those
raise my suspicions then I will also track the where/who connections and
create a map of activity. Those dots might start to line up and create further
interest.
If suspicions are founded as actual threats I will do anyone of the following
and probably more.
FISA request
Look into your credit card records and bank transactions
Serve your host/ISP with a request and also get your SSL private keys
Listen in on your cell phone/home phone/sat phone
Use traditional listening devices (these are great btw..)
Find an exploit in something you use (I'm pretty sure I have some zero days
lying around).
Listen in on your girlfriend/wife/husband/boyfriend/friends and family.
Create lots of tor exit nodes and track your patterns
Ask some actual spy's/moles for some intel
Use satellites and tracking devices, maybe even some drones
Torture
Wait for you to mess up..people are lazy.
I made this to point out some real tactics that are actually used and why the
vast majority of PRISM related posts like these are a bit silly...aka..you're
probably not a terrorist. The NSA tracked bin Laden's courier Abu Ahmed al-
Kuwaiti's cell phone which eventually led them to Bin Laden. Does that sound
like anything you're doing?
The NSA is not above the law and I generally support Snowden, William Binney,
etc .. I just think people need to get grip on reality here. The only people
tracking you are ad trackers.
ps. Don't fret too much about the NSA, Google Glass will have citizens spying
on each other in no time flat.
~~~
SmokyBorbon
You completely missed the point. The NSA is tracking everyone. They're
building a database of everyone's activities. Nobody knows who the
"terrorists" are going to be 20 years from now. The moment you become a
suspect, they can bring up everything they've recorded you saying or doing and
use it against you.
The NSA is above the law and the rules they follow are set by a secret court
appointed by a single man who has his position for life.
~~~
rahoulb
Also extremely likely - the NSA/GCHQ/Whoever siphon off all "metadata".
At the next Boston bombing, or whatever, they analyse that metadata for the
perpetrator. And the next one. And the next one. And build a profile of what a
"terrorist's" communication patterns look like.
And then they single out everyone matching that profile and stick watches on
them, or bring them in.
It's Minority Report without the psychics. Google Now for Homeland Security.
~~~
skore
> It's Minority Report without the psychics.
Wow, that never occurred to me. Analyzing Metadata really _is_ a lot like
"pre-crime".
Sure, in a sense all police or intelligence work can be looked at in a way
that makes it seem "like pre-crime" \- after all, crime prevention does have
its merits. But putting every single citizen on the list is something
different entirely and really does smack of "psychics".
~~~
mr_spothawk
>Wow, that never occurred to me. Analyzing Metadata really is a lot like "pre-
crime".
I thought that's why everybody's freaking out. I mean... that's why I'm
freaking out. I haven't even seen the movie.
------
dmix
Surprised Arch Linux [1] isn't listed. It's probably one of the most secure
distros by limiting the installed packages to a bare minimum. Combine that
with App Armour (or SELinux designed by the NSA) with a firewall and basic
network monitoring to protect against rootkits. Plus always-on VPN, dm-crypted
harddrive, noscript etc.
NSA also released SEAndroid [2] which hardens Android significantly. It's
included preinstalled w/ Samsung S4. Although still not very popular and I'm
sure not heavily code-reviewed.
[1]
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way)
[2]
[http://selinuxproject.org/page/SEAndroid](http://selinuxproject.org/page/SEAndroid)
~~~
ineedtosleep
I'm more surprised that Mint is being suggested at all in this. Considering
how ridiculous this list is in the first place, the 'curator' should have
noted that Mint, by default, installs search engines that are partnered with
Mint[1].
Even more surprising is that BSD just got a cursory mention. You may as well
switch to OpenBSD if you're going to switch to a majority of these
alternatives.
[1]
[http://www.linuxmint.com/searchengines.php](http://www.linuxmint.com/searchengines.php)
~~~
peng
I've added a note about Mint's search engine policy, thanks.
Also, BSDs will get greater emphasis in future updates. I'm working on a way
to promote more operating systems without the page getting even more
overwhelming than it already is.
------
cookiecaper
Tor should NOT be on here. It has little to do with "breaking" PRISM. PRISM is
a voluntary program wherein a handful of endpoints have chosen to submit
copies of their database to the NSA. Regardless of the mechanism or browser
used to access Facebook, the reality is that all of that data gets uploaded to
the NSA anyway, so who cares? People aren't interested in the real solution to
PRISM, which is "Don't use services provided by PRISM participants".
Furthermore, Tor's outproxy network (i.e., accessing normal internet sites
through Tor) is heavily compromised, rife with honeypots run by both non-
governmental and governmental operatives, and nothing stops anyone from
injecting more honeypots. New exit nodes are automatically registered and used
by the network as soon as the client flips his/her bit. While ostensibly exit
nodes are not supposed to be sniffing these packets, since it likely violates
wiretapping laws in their jurisdiction (unless it's an NSA-owned exit node, of
course), one would be very naive to presume such sniffing is not occurring.
This means that any data that eventually hits the exit node should be
considered, for all intents and purposes, public (correctly-implemented SSL
may mitigate this risk where employed). This is fine if you're just trying to
circumvent a firewall (remember, Tor was originally designed as a firewall-
circumventer so that dissidents in China et al could convey their traffic to
blocked sites; the goal was simply "get this public blog post out of China and
to the rest of the world", not "hide all data from the NSA", hence the design
of the exit node network) so you can use IRC, where your conversations are
public anyway, but it's not fine for all kinds of browsing applications, so
"try using Tor for everything" is actually horrendous advice.
The upshot of that is that like most other privacy software, you really need
to understand the software well to a) actually obtain any meaningful privacy
from its usage and b) not accidentally seriously harm yourself.
On top of all that, Tor traffic is easily distinguished and most likely
automatically flags your NSA profile for additional attention.
~~~
Joeboy
> On top of all that, Tor traffic is easily distinguished and most likely
> automatically flags your NSA profile for additional attention.
As a fairly boring non-dissident who's just trying to be a good citizen on the
internet, I think I actually consider that to be a feature.
------
aray
Cyanogenmod should have a big asterisk beside it noting that it's system is
signed with PUBLICLY AVAILABLE KEYS. Also they have just the same proprietary
blobs (most of them) that other android devices have (radio firmware, camera
drivers, etc) that have just been pulled out of shipping factory android
images. The description (without these) is playing people false IMO
~~~
zwegner
Ugh, really? So is there no smartphone OS that you can be at-least-sort-of
certain doesn't have a backdoor (leaving aside unintentional exploits)? My
understanding was that even FFOS was built on top of an Android kernel...
~~~
phaer
No, not really. I guess your best bets are
[http://replicant.us/](http://replicant.us/) and the openmoko freerunner.
------
dfc
I really do not understand the thought process behind this page:
Why is chromium not listed as a free alternative to Chrome/IE/Safari?
What components of DDG are partly proprietary and which are not? (not a
criticism of DDG just this page) What is a "free search engine" anyway?
Why are Firefox and Thunderbird listed alongside Iceweasel and Icedove?
How do you list OpenNIC if they have not adopted an official
privacy/anonymization policy?
Speaking of official privacy policies; I see that you tried to load
/analytics/piwik.js. Where is the privacy policy for prism-break?
~~~
peng
> What components of DDG are partly proprietary and which are not? (not a
> criticism of DDG just this page) What is a "free search engine" anyway?
These parts are open source:
[https://github.com/duckduckgo](https://github.com/duckduckgo). I've added
this note to PRISM Break. A free search engine would be a search engine where
users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the
software. YaCy fits this description, but there are currently not a lot of
people using YaCy at the moment.
> Why is chromium not listed as a free alternative to Chrome/IE/Safari?
Chromium will be added once I get a list of good Chromium extensions that
rival the Firefox addons.
> Why are Firefox and Thunderbird listed alongside Iceweasel and Icedove?
Iceweasel and Icedove are difficult to install on Windows and OS X. If users
are unable to switch to Linux, Firefox and Thunderbird are still really good
options.
> How do you list OpenNIC if they have not adopted an official
> privacy/anonymization policy?
Good point. OpenNIC will be removed for the time being.
>Speaking of official privacy policies; I see that you tried to load
/analytics/piwik.js. Where is the privacy policy for prism-break?
PRISM Break does not track the last 2 bytes of your IP - e.g. 192.168.xxx.xxx.
A Privacy Policy is on the todo list.
EDIT: [https://prism-break.org/privacy.html](https://prism-
break.org/privacy.html)
~~~
rsync
Would you please add rsync.net to the "cloud storage" section ?
If you're not familiar:
[http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)
We explicitly support duplicity and git-annex which makes us very versatile
for secure cloud storage.
------
randomGringoGuy
New poster here, but someone needs to say this. Tor is amazing and great, but
if you don't think the US/NSA don't know how to run their own Tor hops and
cache the very same traffic that you think is on "anonymous" servers. . . then
you have a more serious problem of understanding how this works. It's easy to
run Tor servers. Even easier when you have an NSA budget. Also, ask yourself
why wouldn't they be running thousands to tens of thousands of them knowing
that most of that traffic is "suspicious".
Be safe. Not ignorant.
~~~
hobs
Welcome! Don't worry, most of us know this, and those that don't are
constantly being shouted at by everyone else.
------
hinting
This is great for us. We understand these tools and can use them. But most
people don't. So if all geeks switch to the things on this list, we've left
most of society just as susceptible as before.
Other, possibly better, solutions:
1) If you work for one of the companies listed as "proprietary", you can do
the most. Stand up and say you care in company meetings. Tell managers and
executives that it's worth finding better ways to secure, anonymize, or not
collect information in the first place. Even if it comes at the cost of
profitably or usability.
2) Authors of lists like these: Instead of saying all commercial software is
lousy, compare them to each other! Make having secure, private software an
actual selling point that people can understand.
3) Developers, designers: make beautiful, usable software that is secure and
anonymous by default. Don't have privacy as your ONLY selling point. We can
only win if we're private and amazing.
------
tzury
It is important to mention that "self-hosted" by itself, does not make one
Prism-Free.
In most cases, if the hosting platform provider will be asked to provide
access to the infrastructure, it is most likely that SSL private keys that
stored on the virtual machine will be taken along with other data.
~~~
lifeguard
Sorry, this is a fallacy of false equivocation. Not all hosting platforms are
the same, especially in terms of jurisdiction.
Switzerland and China do not respond to Secret Service or FBI orders.
~~~
tzury
China?
What makes you think this is not the case there by default?
I am talking about local authorities ofcurse.
------
znowi
I praise this effort. Whatever the criticism may be, it's a useful site and it
educates people. Folks like them do a lot more than us ranting here in the
comments :)
~~~
rimantas
I am not sure what kind of education does it provide. If NSA has access to
GMail, it does not matter what email client you use, open-source or
proprietary. If your ISP logs all your activity, it does not really matter
what browser do you use. And in general it is simpler and more revarding to
target services providers instead of client apps for those services.
------
_delirium
Interesting, I learned about the Autistici/Inventati collective only from this
link, even though they seem to already be a large (>1k users) organization and
in existence for a decade now. Useful info.
~~~
mknits
I've signed up for their email service and will now use it as my primary email
id.
------
rhizome
Is there any indication that this isn't disinformation geared toward a false
sense of security? Call your government representatives instead, it'll have a
greater effect.
------
enobrev
What about obscuring rather than hiding? For instance, a script that emails
hundreds of random addresses, tweets on hundreds of different accounts, visits
thousands of different urls, texts and voice calls hundreds of numbers (for
those with "unlimited" mobile plans), etc. every hour or every minute or what-
have-you.
It seems that would be the digital equivalent of a paper shredder - imperfect
but not necessarily easy to pick up and read. Just as well, all these
collection operations that seem to be in place would fill up with mountains of
useless data.
------
tommis
With systems like Tempora
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora)
in place and the main goal of intelligence organizations (probably around the
whole world) being to "know all information", the only way to be safe from
losing your secrets is not to disclose them in any electronic form on the net.
Simple as that.
And with your "secrets", I mean any piece of information you don't want them
to know: email, websites you visit, mobile phone calls (and locations)...
Since Echelon/PRISM/Tempora/etc is practically public knowledge at this point,
I would imagine that most "real terrorists" have also deduced the above facts
and are living by them, making the whole exercise a fishing expedition paid
with regular Joe's privacy and tax money...
------
glogla
The listed software is usually a good idea, but there should be a bit more
explanation. Using TOR to access non-SSL website for example, might be bad
idea.
Also, noticing TextSecure, it's great, but I have personal gripe with it --
you can't use it without using Google play, and that means irrevocably pairing
your phone with Google account and therefore some identity. Would it be that
much of a hassle to put APK on f-droid? Software that's supposed to be secure
but requires you to have Google account is a sad view.
EDIT: of course, after the (de)cryptocat debacle, using TextSecure without
reading the source code might not be a good idea. Homepage of "security"
software like that should always include page about security: what algorithms
it uses, stuff like that.
------
jalada
Politics aside, this is a really interesting list of tools I haven't heard of
before. Thanks!
------
logn
Very nice. Didn't think we'd be seriously discussing alternatives to the
Internet in 2013 =)
([https://projectmeshnet.org/](https://projectmeshnet.org/)) ... maybe this
will spur innovation! Cheers.
------
nimbusvid
Although it relies on Mega and Chrome, neither of which is recommended in the
article, [http://www.nimbusvid.com](http://www.nimbusvid.com) streams
encrypted videos from your private cloud storage in your browser.
No other service does this and it allows you to have the convenience of the
cloud and video streaming while maintaining the privacy that you would get by
viewing videos on your local computer.
As far as I know it is one of the few examples of a (client-side) web app
based on encrypted cloud storage. (I would like to know other examples, I
don't know any).
(I am the author)
------
alan_cx
Just a bit of site feed back:
Maybe its me, not completely unlikely, but when I open the left hand nav menu,
with the button at the top left, the whole site shifts to the right to show
the menu, but that cuts off the text in the last column. As well as that, no
bottom scroll bar appears. Maximizing or resizing the browser window makes no
difference. This is in Chrome, Iron(which you don't list and I reckon should),
and firefox. Tried in IE, but the menu button at the top left doesn't work at
all.
On the up side, the site name gave me a welcome chuckle!!!
------
sequoia
I want to like this page but there are many problems...
* Who is the target demographic for this page? If it's lay-users, many of the suggestions are inappropriate: no-script, arch linux, "host-your-own cloud provider"... these are useless if you're not a programmer.
* Many of the suggestions don't do anything to improve your privacy. As tptacek noted, host-your-own may protect you from gmail handing your emails over en masse, but it doesn't protect you from yourself (you eliminate one attack surface but add many many new ones). Switching your email client... again, if the gov't can just ask your provider for all your mails, your client is irrelevant (excepting gpg which is a different question). It seems like many of these will create a _false_ sense of security, which is even worse than no sense: "Yay I switched from outlook to icedove, take that NSA."
* There are _way too many alternatives listed_. What is the point of listing six different linux distributions? Pros are aware of the fact that there are many distros, newbs need a _recommendation_ , not a dizzying list of alternatives with no guide to how to pick one. (I see mint is listed as newb choice; why are qubes, trisquel, etc. listed at all?). Ditto mail clients, browsers, and especially social networks. It seems little care was taken to ensure that the software on this list has any merit beyond being "free." Hey I made a free [barely functional, never updated] chat client, why isn't it on your list??
* The list reeks of politics over practicality. Seriously, IceDove? Trisquel? I'm a linux user at home, have used tbird, pidgin (& finch), adium, OTR, debian, ubuntu, mint, etc. etc. and I've never even heard of these tools. I suspect they are being listed because they are "FSF Endorsed" _not because they are actually more useful._ This is an AWESOME way to alienate new users: steer them toward ideologically pure but hard-to-use or nonfunctional software.
My suggestions: * pare down the list (only list 1 or 2 of the best
alternatives, maybe with a "more options" link for IceDonkey or whatever);
* Indicate how much technical expertise is needed for different tools. NoScript is USELESS for lay-users, disconnect.me (if it's like ghostery) & adblock are set&forget, very low friction options for new users. Ditto arch linux &c.
* _Don 't include things just because it meets the requirements of being "free"!!_ You don't need every half-functional email client in the world because it's "free"\- this makes the list _worse_ , not better.
* Make clear what tools do and don't do!! Merely switching to pidgin to connect to your does nothing for you, your list suggests it does. Blocking google analytics does not stop the NSA or whomever from requesting information from your ISP about your browsing habits!!! This _needs_ to be more clear on your list.
* Don't make outlandish, inaccurate, unrealistic claims! "Stop the American government from spying on you by encrypting your communications and ending your reliance on proprietary services." 90% of these tools have nothing to do with encryption and/or aren't any more secure by default. You can't "opt out of prism." You're not "stop[ping] the American government from spying on you" by hosting your own wordpress. This claim is horsefeathers and it needs to be removed.
Oh well... at this point I'm feeling that in its current state your list does
more harm than good, overwhelming users with too many (shitty) choices,
creating a false sense of security, and muddying the waters about online
privacy like crazy. These tools require attendant tech education: you can't
just dump Adium in someone's lap and say "now you're protected from spying."
------
rfatnabayeff
It's interesting that none of the BitTorent software was mentioned, at least
BitTorrent Sync as an alternative to proprietary cloud storage.
~~~
hbbio
Closed source afaik.
------
SODaniel
Spideroak.com - online backup and sync with zero-knowledge client side
encryption should be represented in cloud services in my opinion, though since
we are not yet 100% open source I understand the arguments against it.
We are however very close to opening nimbus.io and crypton.io open-source
secure and private storage APIs based on our storage infrastructure.
------
csense
Quite aside from protecting your data from the NSA, this site has a lot of
software it's good to be aware of -- Jitsi, git-annex, Etherpad [1], and Piwik
seem particularly interesting.
[1] I've seen Etherpad mentioned multiple times on HN, but I somehow never
realized that it's self-hosted FOSS.
------
ohwp
Aren't these all false suggestions? (Except for Tor like software maybe)
For example: DuckDuckGo might hide your search but when you click on a link in
the result list the request to that link is still monitored by your Internet
provider.
~~~
bigiain
For the sufficiently paranoid, DuckDuckGo is available as a Tor hidden
service: 3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion
They also run a Tor exit enclave for DDG searches, so using https over tor for
DuckDuckGo searches should provide about as much anonymity as you can get
doing search engine queries.
------
jayfuerstenberg
Switched to DuckDuckGo a couple weeks ago. It's surprisingly pleasant to use.
~~~
eliben
I was wondering the other way. If you just open Chrome in incognito mode and
search Google without logging in, is it very much different from DDG? Except
for the results quality, of course.
Is the big difference being your IP tracked with the searches by Google?
~~~
Raticide
Google will track your IP and probably store the searches you made alongside
it. These can easily be linked back to your google accounts.
Duckduckgo claim not to log your searches.
~~~
chrischen
Yes but how much is a claim worth? Anything centralized is at risk to be
tracked by the government. It's not as if Google put in the TOS that the NSA
is monitoring their data.
~~~
jayfuerstenberg
I wonder if there is a decentralized P2P crawler system that shares IP
addresses of at least major domains/hosts.
With that you could run a node and search locally against your machine without
anybody knowing.
~~~
qznc
Yacy is mentioned in the article.
[http://yacy.net/de/index.html](http://yacy.net/de/index.html)
------
zobzu
Its kinda nice of a list thanks :) I'd add here.com as proprietary maps. Its
actually pretty good. yes its proprietary - but even having proprietary
alternatives is good.
oh also gallery3 should probably be in there.
------
Kekeli
Nobody seems to be talking about whonix added layer of anonymity
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/whonix/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/whonix/)
------
MarkHarmon
Nice resource, thanks for posting. It would be really cool to have some kind
of ratings and reviews for each service/app listed. Maybe an official
review/rating and then user contributed.
------
alttab
The only way you can truly guarantee you haven't been rooted is to at _least_
trust your compiler. Even if you have the compiler's source code, how are you
compiling it...?
------
jimworm
Needs more emphasis that the left column is the one to avoid.
~~~
finnn
Seems like the lack of links in that column makes it pretty obvious
------
antihero
Surviving in the current situation, will require a radical change in attitude
and education - you know, effort - not just switching out bits of software.
------
Joeboy
I'd be interested to hear about the state of encryption (particularly end-to-
end encryption) in the listed Social Networking projects.
------
shacharz
sharefest.me is another alternative to secured file sharing. The main
advantage is browser only - sandbox security. And p2p - files don't touch the
server. Although not _yet_ as secured as the other, we're working to improve
it. Would love any security feedback on github.com/peer5/sharefest/issues
------
muxxa
Would like to see a mention of alternatives to commercial mobile networks.
~~~
wxspll
OpenBTS :)
------
davidbrent
I still prefer IRC over all of those Instant Messaging options.
------
oellegaard
I think its fair to say that this is a highly opinionated list.
------
CalinBalauru
On Social networks, we have Diaspora*
What's with the '*'?
------
fireboi
how about app.net
~~~
jrn
american;
edit subject to the rulings of the fisa court etc.
------
julien421
prism
------
julien421
nice!
------
antocv
There is no easy secure way of having audio and/or video chats? Like we had
with skype before microsoft stepped in.
XMPP is here, and we have no real good clients either for desktop and for
Android we got basically none that supports Jingle.
~~~
sdfjkl
Jitsi supports ZRTP and Jingle (experimental).
~~~
antocv
Ive tried it, it sucks and crashed too many times, bugs reported, but gave up.
Jitsi also doesnt run on our phones last time I checked.
Basically we have these smart-phones, awesome hardware, good devices, but we
cant use them to talk confidentially with our friends.
~~~
shmerl
Lot's of clients are stuck because they use Telepathy:
[https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16891](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16891)
[https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29904](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29904)
Libpurple doesn't seem to move either:
[https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/11221](https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/11221)
Those are major libraries which are used on the desktop and mobile, and that's
probably the reason why you don't see actual clients with ZRTP support.
------
Torkild
For cloud storage I also recommend
[https://mega.co.nz/#fm](https://mega.co.nz/#fm)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[Ask HN] Is clojure really a modern lisp? - morphir
It usually ends up being the lisp we point newbies towards. Wouldn't a scheme implementation like PLT-scheme or Chicken be just as good, if not even better? Clojure is too much of a moving animal to be considered newbie friendly in my opinion.<p>So why is Clojure considered to be a modern lisp?
======
crc
Clojure was the first lisp that I could seriously get into. I have a java
background and the familiarity of JVM was partly helpful when I was learning
it. I guess for people who are new to both java and lisp, it may be bit
harder.
The language changing fast wasn't a concern to me then, and I was putting lot
of time to keeping up with the changes by lurking in the mailing list and irc.
It was fascinating to watch language design happen in front of my eyes. I
think newbies would do fine with clojure (particularly at its current
relatively stable state). I guess it just takes a bit of an effort.
------
stonemetal
Perhaps because it is a modern lisp. I am not sure why anyone would direct
newbs towards it since it is as you mention in flux. Though it seems like it
should settle down some since it had its 1.0 release.
------
zaphar
1\. It's backed by the entire Java library ecosystem. 2\. It's syntax is a
little bit improved but still maintains the code as data that makes lisp lisp.
3\. defprotocol and deftype (they promise to be awesome)
------
startupgrrl
Clojure has all the properties of a modern lisp. It compiles into java
bytecode and keeps data and code separate. This is not possible to do with the
.NET CLR bytecode representation because of the way it handles unsafe
pointers, but it should be corrected in the next edition of LLVM.
~~~
paddy_m
could you explain more about how the .NET CLR treats unsafe pointers
differently. Any links?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I don't use Gnome Shell - AndrewDucker
http://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/52807.html
======
rstuart4133
I'm not sure why these rants end up listing trivialities. Who cares whether
it's called Activities, Menu, foobar or is a hamburger icon? It's what it does
that matters, and what it does is pretty neat. Definitely better than Windows
10 attempt at the same thing.
That said, I don't use Gnome3 either. I use the task bar, AFAICT there is no
way to have one in Gnome3 so it's a non-starter for me. Given they have a
mostly empty bar at the top, I am buggered if I know why they don't provide
some taskbar widget. It's worst reason I guess - religious objections.
The other thing I that causes me to curse it very time I use it its insane
desire to maximise everything. Maximised everything is exactly what you need
on a 6" phone, but gnome3 doesn't work well there. It clearly targeted at
desktops. I use a 43" 4K screen. I paid for those pixels - and I want to put
every one of them to good use. Maximising a single web page is _not_ a good
use.
Which means unlike a conventional window manager which remembers and respects
where I put things, I have to reposition everything every fucking time I
reboot. And if a window is hidden I can't just click on the task bar, either I
have to move to top left corner then click or press a key.
This isn't "getting out of the way". This is shoving the designers idea of
good work flow down my throat. If their goal was to get of out of the way of a
"power user" (an archaic term, but it accurately described most Linux users)
this is vision of an ideal work flow would be the default and they provide the
tools to change it.
But those tools are completely absent. That arrogant omission is, gnome3 devs,
why half the Linux world view you as mad control freaks.
~~~
ssivark
Gnome-shell extensions recover a lot of the functionality that was removed
from the defaults. Eg,
\- For a taskbar:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/584/taskbar/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/584/taskbar/)
\- An applications menu:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-
menu/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/6/applications-menu/)
Agree with all your opinions otherwise.
~~~
rstuart4133
> For a taskbar
Thanks, my google foo failed me. So it was there all along.
If they've provided some way for me to say what a window's size and position
should be rather than having their "everything shall be maximised" shoved down
my throat it's worth trying again.
When I use Gnome3 now I am struck by how well everything works, albeit for
their definition of works. Random things tend to break under other WM's from
time to time which is irritating. From what I can tell this is because they
depend on gnome's applets to fill in the bits they don't have time to do, but
gnome is a moving target.
Random breakage is probably going to get worse as the move to Wayland
accelerates. Sigh. We do live in interesting times.
------
lukaslalinsky
I think GNOME 3 is the best desktop environment out there. I didn't like it
when it came out, but over the years I changed my mind. I feel very
constrained whenever I use Windows or OS X for a short time.
For example, I don't think I ever clicked on Activities. You just hit the
"Windows" key and type what you want. That is faster than any clicking.
~~~
harrygeez
Windows can do that too. On macOS cmd+space brings up spotlight. I don't see
your point. In fact I feel the total opposite.
~~~
pksadiq
You can use it as a nice calculator too. say, search for '1m in inch', or
simple calculations like '2+5*23' etc.
Can windows do that? I don't know
~~~
mikewhy
Spotlight on macOS has been able to do both of those for a while. Windows,
however, you'll still be crossing your fingers hoping the query "device
manager" brings up Device Manager, not a web search.
------
wallacoloo
I hope I don't come off as too insulting, but I don't see anything noteworthy
about this rant that's worth sharing. It's not particularly insightful, nor
notably well-written (the author rambles, but that's typical for rants like
these). Not to mention that he contradicts himself when he mentions how
Windows is rearranging all the menus from where they used to be, but concludes
by saying that gnome shell is the _only_ desktop forcing him to change.
The author's opinion has been shared countless times, as has its refutations.
There's nothing new or interesting here.
~~~
lproven
It's a fair comment.
Actually, I mostly use that blog as a place to post comments from online
discussions elsewhere, often as much for my own later reference as anything
else. I am taken aback to find that a friend has linked to it on HN and it's
attracted so much discussion!
If I had meant it to be widely-read, it would have been rather different and
submitted for professional publication -- probably on the Register.
The only point of yours that I'd disagree with is that I contradict myself
inasmuch as Win10 is different from earlier versions. Yes, it is; but it is
not _completely_ different. It retains many major UI elements, such as the
taskbar, which function very much as they did before. There is something
called a Start Menu again, but this works significantly differently from in
earlier versions -- but then, it has been substantially reworked in previous
revisions of Windows, as well.
I don't generally use Windows much and have not done for many years. However,
sometimes paid office jobs require me to, and I like to keep my hand in. As
I'm used to launching apps with a search command in both OS X and Unity, I
simply did so in Win8. I was not discommoded by the disappearance of the Start
Menu. However, having one back again that's only superficially like the old
one actually requires rather more adjustment, I have found.
Win10 is quite similar to Win8.1 except that the Start Screen has been
reframed as a menu, and the Charms bar has gone. Win8.1 was of course very
similar to Win8. Win8 was different to Win7, but not massively; and so on.
GNOME 3 is _very_ unlike GNOME 2. There is little commonality in the UI. I'd
say GNOME 2 bore a closer resemblance to KDE, Xfce and LXDE than it does to
GNOME 3.
Of course, new versions of major Linux desktops have often prompted people to
fork and continue the previous version. KDE 3 begat Trinity, GNOME Classic
Mode begat Consort, and so on. Generally, these forks have languished --
remained obscure or died.
The fact that GNOME 3 begot both Cinnamon and Maté, and that both of these
have proved, relatively speaking, very popular and successful and seem to be
in relatively rapid, active development speaks volumes, I think.
Some years ago, I published an article about the factionation that GNOME 3 had
caused:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsof...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/)
At that time, I saw it as a very negative thing: a loss of, er, unity.
Now, I see it as more positive. GNOME 3 did re-enliven things and has brought
us more diversity and innovation.
Just possibly inadvertently. :-)
------
unsignedint
Used to use Gnome Shell. Left it for XFCE for two reasons... somewhat randomly
occurring fallback to LLVM pipe mode where software rendering is used instead
of graphic card acceleraion. (I had to put in some sleep in launch script to
prevent it, but wasn't perfect either.)
Anther one is its behavior of treating IPv6 address as IPv4, so for example if
I type in IPv6 address in network setting, it tells me it's an invalid
address. Previously entered IPv6 address would be converted to some random
IPv4 address...
------
Epskampie
It's true you need a few extensions to make gnome shell usable, of which "dash
to dock" is the most essential:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-
dock/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/)
With these, I enjoy gnome very much. It's simple, vsynced, works well and
looks very nice.
~~~
vondur
Vsynced?
~~~
digi_owl
Likely yet another "tearing" complaint, that i am starting to suspect has more
to do with nvidia proprietary drivers than anything else...
------
sullyj3
Is the author unaware that you don't need to click activities, you can just
mouse to the top left corner of the screen? This is Linux, it doesn't have to
say activities if you don't want it to. You can get themes with OS logos and
such, if you want.
~~~
lproven
Honestly, yes, I was unaware of that.
But also being honest, I dislike hot-corner activation, which Unity also does.
Screen edges are much bigger and easier to hit, as per Fitt's Law.
------
merb
I actually agree with him on many topics.
Also Gnome has extensions, but actually most time a Extension feature is
actually used as an excuse for not shipping features.
~~~
digi_owl
And various people with a strong voice within Gnome development would love to
extensions dead and buried, as they mess up the UX and brand of Gnome...
------
pvaldes
Gnome user here from 15 years, after trying practically all available
desktops. Currently in Cinnamon.
------
qplex
>OS X and Unity and Windows Vista/7/8/10 all give me app searching as a
primary launch mechanism; it’s not a selling point of GNOME 3.
This is just false; "app searching" as a "primary launch mechanism" works
perfectly well in GNOME 3.
Perhaps you should ask you money back.
~~~
JadeNB
> > OS X and Unity and Windows Vista/7/8/10 all give me app searching as a
> primary launch mechanism; it’s not a selling point of GNOME 3.
> This is just false; "app searching" as a "primary launch mechanism" works
> perfectly well in GNOME 3.
I think your parent's point which you quote was not that GNOME 3 doesn't do
this, but rather that it's not _unique_ in doing it—which is why it's not a
selling point. (Just as, for example, one wouldn't mention, say, multi-tasking
as a selling point of a modern OS, even though it is surely crucial.)
~~~
qplex
Ah, Thanks. I didn't read carefully enough.
To comment more on the article: In my opinion, Unity wastes a ridiculous
amount of screenspace showing that fancy iconbar.
~~~
lproven
That's fair enough.
I set it to autohide on smaller screens, such as sub-14" notebooks. I do miss
the old "dodge windows" config option, though -- that was very handy. A sort
of auto-autohide that only triggered when you needed it.
------
KerrickStaley
I added a comment on LiveJournal, but it apparently got marked as spam. [1]
Reposting here:
Like most software, GNOME 3 requires a bit of learning before you can use it
most effectively, but it's actually a really easy learning curve because GNOME
is designed to be intuitive.
The biggest thing I'd recommend is learning the keyboard shortcuts. Pressing
the Super (aka Windows) key will open the Activities overview. Pressing the
Super key and then typing the name of an app then Enter will launch that app
(I never use the mouse to launch an app). Super + Tab switches between running
apps. There are a few more here: [https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-
help/stable/shell-keyboar...](https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-
help/stable/shell-keyboard-shortcuts.html.en). It's actually shorter and
easier to remember than the man page of even a simple command line tool like
"ls"—and you probably have dozens of command line tools memorized, including
complex tools like find, sed, and curl.
This may sound preachy, but life is a lot better when you stop worrying about
customization. Learn how the software works and adapt yourself to it. Think of
how many places you have to do this in the real world: bicycles, cars,
election ballots, transit systems, and grocery stores all have "UI"s that can
be counterintuitive or slow, which you don't have much control over. But you
don't complain because you can't change their UIs. GNOME is far easier to use
than any of these, but because other desktops offer more customization, users
can feel like GNOME is lacking. But if you accept that GNOME is not really
intended to be heavily customized and just try to get used to the vanilla
experience, you may actually be really happy using it.
Caveat: if there's something that makes your workflow 3x faster, definitely
spend a few minutes setting that up. But things like the position of the app
title vs the position of the clock are not worth splitting hairs over. The
GNOME team actually cares deeply abut usability and although some design
decisions may seem quirky, every feature is scrutinized through the lens of
ease-of-use. GNOME's UI Design Principles talk more about this and are a good,
short read: [https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/design-
principles.htm...](https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/design-
principles.html.en)
[1] LiveJournal gave me the following message after posting:
Your anonymous comment has been added. According to this journal's settings,
it was marked as spam.
It gave a similar message when I tried authenticating with Google. Not sure
what's up with this.
~~~
lproven
Thanks for that. JOOI, I was not notified of any such comment. I did get and
unscreen a single comment, but it's a different (anonymous) one – visible
there now.
You should be able to sign-in to LJ to comment using any OpenID. In fact
OpenID itself actually originated as an LJ-affiliated project by one of LJ's
developers.
I _do_ learn to adapt to the provided UI on many devices and OSes /where I
don't have a choice./ But on Linux, I _do_ have a choice, so why should I
spend the effort adapt to something that doesn't work the way I'm used to or
in a way that I like, when I could just switch environments to something that
I find more comfortable?
When I worked at Red Hat, I switched from GNOME 3 to Xfce. Yes, it's old
fashioned, but I can, with some effort, set it up to work much like Windows
with a vertical taskbar – a layout I find convenient and flexible.
As I said in the blogpost, on Windows I use a vertical taskbar on the left
screen edge. On Mac OS X, I move the Dock there. On Unity, well, that's just
where it is and it's hard to move, but I don't want to, so I'm fine with that.
On GNOME 3, I get that too, but in a limited, rather inflexible and unhelpful,
form.
The primary question is: is there a benefit to me in switching and re-adapting
to working in a system that's significantly unlike any of the others that I
use? And the answer, _for me_, is no. I don't get enough reward to justify it,
so I don't adapt - I switch to a desktop that works in something approximating
the way I like.
Although I've used Windows since v2.01 in 1989, I switched away from it at the
turn of the century. Now, OS X and Unity give me a fairly consistent desktop.
With tweaking, Windows and Xfce give something very broadly comparable. GNOME
Shell is left as something of an odd-man-out.
But that's just me. I am very happy to see its increasing polish and that it's
winning people back.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Honda Has Developed a Hybrid Battery Without Chinese Rare Earths - protomyth
http://fortune.com/2016/07/12/honda-rare-earth-battery-hybrid/
======
ridgeguy
It's a new motor, not a battery.
They've eliminated dysprosium and terbium from the motor magnets, freeing them
from a dependency on China, which is the go-to producer for those particular
rare earth elements.
------
georgeecollins
I hate that this title makes it sound like rare earths only come from China.
Rare earths could be mined from other places if the price were higher.
~~~
xenihn
I don't really know anything about this topic, but to me, the implication is
that China controls access to the market. That means that the earths could be
mined in Africa, but they're ending up in China, and that's who you have to
buy them from.
~~~
woodandsteel
No, the problem is that the ores that have them concentrated enough to mine
economically are only found in China, at least for a number of key rare earth
elements.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: The Open Source Interview? - zaroth
The total spend on hiring is massive. A small part of that is the cost of interviewing, or more generally, selecting candidates.<p>Does any company out there test a new-hire candidate by offering to pay them a fixed amount to contribute to an open source project, and write about the contributions as they are done and when they complete them?<p>I haven't heard of this, but I would love to do it. I am thinking you would ask for 1 week of well paid work as an interview process. That's barely enough time to gain some traction, so in reality a dedicated candidate would spend much more time, effectively setting their own rate.<p>Then the company looks at what got done over the pay and the time. From that you calculate the salary and equity split.<p>The initial "interview" period, would often cover a longer period of time, based on both parties agreement.<p>What ground rules, if any, would you set? How much would you offer to pay?<p>It's fully tax deductible. It buys a lot of positive externality and even direct benefit in the form of evaluating a hire. This would be done near the final stage of the process.<p>As a percentage of the total time and costs it takes to make a major hire, an "interview" like this would be a minor component. But if adopted widely in practice it could be beautiful to watch.
======
onion2k
The idea of paying someone to contribute a week of their time to an open
source project is commendable, but a couple of issues spring to mind;
1\. The problem with any "pay someone to do some test work" solution to hiring
ignores the fact that most people already have a job. They will need to either
take time off to do the test, which is effectively asking someone to give up
vacation time to speculatively spend time working for a new job, or for them
to do the test work outside of hours and be consequentially less effective in
both the test and their existing job. Neither option is reasonable. There
might also be contractual obligations with their current role that prohibit
them working on paid outside development.
2\. Having someone contributing to an open source project for a week and then
vanishing means lots of open projects would get tiny bits of unmaintained code
pushed to them making the maintainers lives harder. That's fine if it's a
trivial big fix, but if you wanted to test someone's ability to add a feature
to a project you're essentially asking the project maintainers to take on a
feature that won't be supported afterwards. Again, that's not reasonable. This
could be mitigated by giving the employee time to carry on supporting the
feature once they're hired, or for an existing employee to maintain code
that's added if the hire is rejected.
I like the idea, but really, why not just make it known that your company
prefers to hire people with an existing profile in an open source project?
That would encourage people to contribute in the long term rather than just
popping in for a week.
~~~
zaroth
I think looking for a new job should take some time. It's definitely going to
take time out of the work day. That's a fact of capitalism, and it's unfair
for the current company to feel cheated when employees take time to find a new
place to work. That might have to occur during normal business hours, and
ultimately paying for that is part and parcel of being "exempt". If they are
hourly, certainly they would exclude that time.
It's a great point dumping a bit of un-maintained code. Better to dump a bit
of un-maintained documentation perhaps, or close obvious bugs. I don't think
there'll be much of it, but all significant code should have backwards
compatibility and documentation. But more likely, the contributions are small
things.
Very good points to consider carefully if doing this. I do think the
information value is reasonable. It does take a time commitment to review what
was done.
Changing jobs is a rare opportunity to take some time to work on something
"else". Once you're in the new job it can just expand to take up every
available moment.
~~~
dalke
Did you really just combine "fact of capitalism" and "it's unfair for the
current company to feel cheated" in the same sentence?
Where in the facts of capitalism does it say that companies will be fair in
how they treat their employees, and that time off to seek employment elsewhere
is part of being fair?
In fact, I thought it was the other way around. When someone changes a job,
they get a revaluation of what their job is worth. Often the job change comes
with a salary increase and higher status in the new company. This serves to
raise the price of a worker. By discouraging workers from leaving, a company
can keep its wages lower because the workers are not as coupled to the market
rate.
~~~
zaroth
Hmm... I guess I did! I am thinking the market for workers required the
reasonably free flow of workers between companies. Obviously there are issues
with our labor market, but I don't think it's so bad that employers are able
to actively prevent employees from spending even significant amounts of time
job searching.
Of course I'm not saying employers should _pay_ for the employee to search for
a new job (although in practice that often happens to some extent). Just that
they can't stop them, and shouldn't be able to retaliate against employees who
spend time off the clock interviewing.
To your point, I couldn't find any particular CA or Fed statues that guarantee
this. If CA doesn't offer it, then I guess it must be far-fetched on my part.
------
phatak-dev
[http://24pullrequests.com/](http://24pullrequests.com/) is one of the such
initiative though it's not directly related to hiring.
~~~
zaroth
So this is great as a resource for discovering projects which are looking for
this kind of temporary help. That's a great solution!
------
zaroth
Found a relevant HBR article written by Matt Mullenweg Founder of Automattic
(Wordpress); Hire By Auditions, not Resumes
[https://hbr.org/2014/01/hire-by-auditions-not-
resumes/](https://hbr.org/2014/01/hire-by-auditions-not-resumes/)
------
MalcolmDiggs
I really really like this idea. For those of us who don't understand taxes at
all, can you elaborate how it would be tax deductible? Would the open-source
project need to be a formally structured non-profit organization? Or would any
open github repo qualify?
~~~
zaroth
Almost any business expense which is "ordinary, necessary, and reasonable"
counts as a deduction against business income. Hiring expenses are part of
that, and paying for completion of a pre-hiring assessment would be considered
ordinary, necessary, and reasonable.
Depending on how far you go with this 'assessment' you may cross into 1099
territory where it's taxable income to the candidate (versus expense
reimbursement or per diem). It would still be a tax deduction for the
business, but more hassle for the candidate at tax time.
I think if you took it past the point of a hiring evaluation, and for example,
tried to make it into long term open source coding project, then they would
probably be at least 1099 contractors and need be paying income tax on those
dollars.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA Opens Mars Downlink JSON Pipeline - rwitoff
http://json.jpl.nasa.gov
======
andrewfhart
This is amazing. Dead simple, programmable access to absolutely piles of NASA
Mars imagery. Everything from the first photos Spirit and Opportunity took on
the surface to the latest vistas from the Curiosity rover.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Improving DataView performance in V8 - feross
https://v8project.blogspot.com/2018/09/dataview.html
======
agnivade
Awesome ! The Go wasm js shim uses DataView to access the linear memory. Any
idea in which release of Google Chrome this is going to land ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Patent Troll sues Facebook, Amazon and others for using Hadoop - ukdm
http://gigaom.com/2012/07/13/troll-sues-facebook-amazon-and-others-for-using-hadoop/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom
======
mindstab
What if (somewhat borrowing an idea from PG actually, but I think this might
be a bit more feasible) big tech companies started retaliating against trolls
and lawyers who support them by banning them from their services. These guys
(lawyer's site) have a linkedin link on the front page. What if they were
banned from that.
Do they use gmail or other google services? Banned Facebook? Banned
Obviously it's actually probably excitingly hard to maintain this list with an
accuracy but it's an entertaining thought experiment.
Do you support and supply service to patent trolls and their lawyers who harm
the community and may one day actually sue you?
~~~
edouard1234567
This reminds me of the cold war. Big powerful countries growing their arsenal
of WOMD to dissuade each other from attacking. Using them against the other
side would mean self destruction, so instead they agree they won't let any
other country get them : non proliferation treaties... . But this only works
when you have something to loose that's why we are so afraid of fanatics
getting their hands on WOMDs, they can't be dissuaded and these treaties have
no effect on them. Today big tech companies amass patents of mass destruction
(POMD) to dissuade each other from suing. Unfortunately this doesn't work
against patent trolls because they have nothing to lose. So what you are
suggesting is a kind of patriot act against the "technology terrorists" and
start a war against patent trolling! :)
~~~
firebones
I think you're describing asymmetric warfare. Study of countermeasures for
asymmetric warfare would be fertile ground for learning how to counteract the
trolls.
I'm not a real student of this, but off the top of my head the techniques used
in real asymmetric warfare include:
* Buying off the enemy (pallets of $100 bills to Afghanistan)
* Drone strikes (perhaps not quite yet feasible, although domestic drone usage is increasing and no doubt gives corporate legal teams hope)
* Win the hearts and minds of the locals (equivalent: raise awareness in the judiciary so they no longer give aid and comfort to trolls)
* Supply them with arms (have them do your bidding by harassing competitors in exchange for not harassing you further)
* Legalize it (stop drug cartels by taking the economic incentive away from their profit center--in this case, change law to strip away their incentives)
What else?
------
georgemcbay
I'm curious why Google isn't on the list?
Hadoop is basically a clean room implementation of MapReduce and GFS anyway,
to the point where Google graciously offered Apache a liberal patent license
just to make sure Hadoop users didn't worry about Google coming after them
when their patents came through on this stuff.
~~~
rit
Probably because Google clearly has prior art.
The initial white papers about Google Filesystem were presented in 2003:
<http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=945450>
~~~
tzs
One of the patents was filed in 2002, so 2003 is not early enough to be prior
art.
------
Zenst
The way those patents are worded, they could equaly apply to TCP/IP,
switch's/routers, any HA system and many more previously used technologies out
there predating this drivil. There a load of bollocks and how they got
allocated patents is in itself a case for the aformentioned companies havinga
right to sue the patent office for incompetance.
~~~
monochromatic
I'm guessing you haven't read the claims?
~~~
gergles
Why is this bullshit platitude always a response to anyone complaining about a
patent? The claims for software patents almost never provide anything more
than the abstract, just in a few hundred more words.
As an example, let's take the first independent claim from the '662 patent:
" A storage system, comprising:
one or more memory sections, including one or more memory devices having
storage locations for storing data, and a memory section controller capable of
detecting faults in the memory section and transmitting a fault message in
response to the detected faults; and one or more switches, including one or
more interfaces for connecting to one or more external devices; and a switch
fabric connected to one or more memory sections and the external device
interfaces and interconnecting the memory sections and the external device
interfaces based on an algorithm; and a management system capable of receiving
fault messages from the memory section controllers and removing from service
the memory section from which the fault message was received, and wherein the
management system is further capable of determining an algorithm for use by a
switch fabric in interconnecting the memory sections and the external device
interfaces, and instructing the switch to execute the determined algorithm,
wherein an interface of the switch is connected to a non-volatile storage
device, and wherein the management system is further capable of instructing
the non-volatile storage device to load data into one or more of the memory
sections via the switch."
So... any HA system ever invented? Like the summary said. Great, thanks. Glad
that you won a point on "you didn't read the claims!!!!1111" which are
content-free garbage, like every other software patent.
~~~
Zenst
In all fairness he is right I hadn't read the claims in full so I gave him a
+1 for that. But as I explained I read the patents which are the basis for the
claims.
Your right though that they do word these things so losely that my mother
giving birth to me many years ago probably violated some routing patent and in
that I agree fully with you in that it is just wrong.
Your both right :)
Though all of us agree trolls are bad in any form, and in that I look forward
to these trolls getting educated at there own expence when they lose.
------
fpp
Enough ranting lets get constructive before those xxx have ruined our industry
completely.
Step 1: It's election times soon so all politicians will normally be
supportive to the one killer argument - patent trolls kill jobs in the US:
(a) start tracing where the money paid within these "successful extortions"
goes to - I'm confident a line to drug fused parties with Brazilian hookers,
private jets & yachts, endless squandering lifestyles of some of the
beneficiaries or their children can easily be established and generously
visualized.
(b) start large scale advertising campaigns together with these documentaries
along the line "... our companies would have established xxx thousand jobs in
the US if we would have not been forced by lobbying to finance the squandering
lifestyles of the very few that are abusing the patent system..."
/* call that throwing around dirt - well that seems to be the language our
politicians e.a. immediately understand */
Step 2: Patent laws can already be rendered nil today based on national
security concerns - we need something similar in the interest of the (real)
economy:
(a) all profits / royalties / fees from patent licensing are taxed at the
double or at least maximum income rate due immediately when the money flows -
all offshore entities are barred from receiving any funds before these taxes
are paid - this is to insure that patents are used defensively and not to
monopolize complete business sectors or extort huge sums from those actually
creating products by NPEs.
(b) all additionally collected taxes from this are earmarked to support
startups / SMEs in defending against patent litigations or generally as start-
up funding
Step 3: The patent system is being reformed and all previously granted
software, plants / DNA patents reviewed. Patent reviews might be prioritized
e.g. by large number of requests, overwhelming prior art, clear obviousness of
the invention etc.
(a) all software patents have to be demonstrated with a functional model /
prototype - the application of the prototype defines the application of the
patent.
(b) While these reviews or changes to the patent system are ongoing, patents
claims are evaluated in all litigations in the strictest sense of the actual
application / apparatus described and no (overly) broad adaption are allowed
like today e.g. patents for doing xxx in telephone switching solutions
blocking the same things 15 years later on the web.
In an optimal implementation these changes are coordinated / also implemented
in other leading economies rendering the possibilities to circumvent or block
these measures unprofitable.
A historical side-note: In times of dire economies whenever the "rulers" of
countries have seen benefit from innovation, creating of new industries and
companies, they have relaxed the patent laws that overall in history almost
all the time have been used merely to create monopolies or protect existing
monopolies from competition. My best example for this is the rise of Prussia
to one of the globally leading industrial nations from a farm based economy
and the parallel downfall of the UK from leading the first industrial /
technology revolution.
Now I'm almost certain that most of the above will never happen due to the
vested interests / special interest groups involved or benefiting
substantially from the current situation, but it would be nice to at least see
some reason in the use of patent law again.
------
abhaga
Who are the four people who were originally granted the patent? I tried
searching for them but all I got were either patent grants or the news about
them suing other companies. I am interested in finding out the technical
credentials of these inventors.
------
alttab
Hopefully enough of these get thrown out so the trolling will stop. Then we
just have to worry about people stealing your technology overnight and turning
every new innovation into a perfectly competitive market. I'm not being
snarky, I think it's a tough problem to solve.
Of course, the "toughness" is in trying to preserve financial incentives and
profit, when maybe we should all just be motivated for the better of humanity
and to make the world a better place? But maybe that's the folly of man and we
are asking too much. In which case as a species we get what comes to us.
I think that's enough existentialism for one night.
*silly iPad autocorrecT
~~~
ljd
Taking the position that non-patented work could be stolen overnight is an
irrational, yet strangely a pervasive fear in software. It's why new
entrepreneurs push NDA's on their initial contacts. It's been my experience
that there is a tremendous amount of work that goes into building a successful
tech company.
Anything that is truly new technology is often kept as a trade secret. In
software, patents are only great for defense.
------
emperorcezar
Sometimes I fantasize about a company with a lot of buying power, like Amazon,
retaliating by hiring some mob thugs to break a few legs.
Hey, respond to scum with scum. Of course it's just a fantasy.
Edit: Company, not Computer.
~~~
timaelliott
I fantasize about computers too. I tried to picture clusters of information as
they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles?
Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd
never see.
------
rhizome
Charles Carreon is selling an ebook of his experiences for $5MM a copy.
------
keymone
sometimes i think patent laws should be a bit more strict. like execute patent
trolls and their families just to keep human genome a bit cleaner..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
64% of all federal arrests last year were of non-U.S. citizens - RickJWagner
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdwv/pr/statement-united-states-attorney-mike-stuart-bureau-justice-statistics-report-1
======
tvchurch
Here's Alex Nowrasteh on this topic:
[https://twitter.com/AlexNowrasteh/status/1164862732102963200](https://twitter.com/AlexNowrasteh/status/1164862732102963200)
1.4% of all arrests in 2014 were federal.
Most law enforcement is by local or state governments.
This headline makes it seem like 64% of all arrests were for non-citizens. Not
at all the case.
------
pyzon
This includes a huge number of arrests for crossing the border.
If you ignore immigration crimes, non-U.S. citizens are less likely to commit
crimes than U.S. citizens.
Without context, this is a textbook case of lying with statistics.
~~~
pduff3
Why would you ignore a subset of crimes?
~~~
evancox100
If you just read the headline, you think "gee, immigrants sure are committing
a lot of crimes here", when actually the increase is due to prosecuting the
act of them coming here in the first place. That doesn't completely negate the
point vis a vis use of law enforcement resources, but it's very different from
"immigrants are stealing, raping, and murdering everyone."
~~~
masonic
prosecuting the act of them coming here in the first place.
That's false. Only _re-entry after deportation_ counts as a crime in these
statistics.
------
zucker42
Here is the original source
[https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/icfjs9818.pdf](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/icfjs9818.pdf)
Note these statistics from the highlights.
> The five crime types for which non-U.S. citizens were most likely to be
> prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were illegal reentry (72% of
> prosecutions), drugs (13%), fraud (4.5%), alien smuggling (4%), and misuse
> of visas (2%)
> The five crime types for which U.S. citizens were most likely to be
> prosecuted in U.S. district court in 2018 were drugs (38% of prosecutions),
> weapons (21%), fraud (12%), public order (12%), and alien smuggling (6%)
> Non-U.S. citizens, who make up 7% of the U.S. population (per the U.S.
> Census Bureau for 2017), accounted for 15% of all federal immigration crimes
> and 15% of prosecutions in U.S. district court for non-immigration crimes in
> 2018 (tables 7a and 13).
With regards to the last stat I recommend you look at Table 7a, because that
shows most of the discrepancy is drugs.
It's unfortunate that the press release makes it sound like increased
enforcement is what this report warrants. My opinion is the opposite. If we
are arresting people for solely immigration offenses, then maybe the way that
we should address the "significant drain of federal taxpayer funds to [used]
prosecute those that are not taxpayers" is by decreasing enforcement.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How a workflow management system can transform you into a model worker - PeOe
https://blog.zenkit.com/how-a-workflow-management-system-can-transform-you-into-a-model-worker-7777853a0a19
======
PaulHoule
If I'd written this one, my marketing friends would ask me "Where is the call
to action?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Xiaomi unveils concept phone with near bezel-less display - zhangshine
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/25/xiaomi-unveils-concept-phone-with-near-bezel-less-display/
======
LeifCarrotson
Things I don't particularly care about in a phone:
\- Bezel size
\- Weight
\- Thickness
\- Manufacturer-specific apps and skins
\- Screen resolution beyond that of my eyes
\- Fastest possible processor
Things I care about in a phone:
\- Ability to make calls
\- Battery life
\- Replaceable battery
\- Fits in my pocket
\- Expandable storage
\- Durable
\- Decent camera
\- Inexpensive
\- Gets security updates
And what do the latest phones feature? Super-thin, super-light phones with
consequently small batteries that are overburdened by enormous screens and
processors that could run a laptop, and screens that would also fit a laptop.
They cost $600 and more, when nearly-equivalent technology can bring the cost
down to less than half that.
At least we're getting better cameras (though this would be easier with
thicker phones) and waterproofing for durability. Wireless charging also seems
to help with the longevity of the ports.
~~~
justinhj
Sounds like you'd be fine with a flip phone from 10 years ago and a small high
quality camera. You don't seem to be the target audience for the latest
smartphones.
~~~
Leynos
About 4 years ago, Sony Ericsson made an Android 2.3 phone called the Xperia
Ray. It had a 3.7" 960x480 screen. I used it for 2 years (and again for
another year after I broke the Huawei P6 I replaced it with). By the end of
that time, it was really past its useable life. Not on account of build
quality, battery life, or screen realestate. In all those respects it was
fantastic, and still perfectly functional as a feature phone.
It started life as a perfectly servicable Android phone. A little on the slow
side, but not drastically so. The main problem was its 384MB of backing store.
By 2015, very few Android apps supported installing to the SD card, and Google
Play Services managed to eat almost all of the available storage.
Ideally, I'd like a modern phone with the same size and build quality of the
Xperia Ray, the phone that fits unnoticably into my pocket and survived
countless falls onto hard floors. I don't think it even needs to be super
fast. Just with enough backing store to function as a modern Android device.
And knowing that such devices are possible is the reason I don't agree with
the "you'd probably be fine with a feature phone" answer.
At the moment, I'm using a Z5 Compact. It's a great phone with solid build
quality, but it's still too big IMO.
~~~
GFischer
Quite a lot of people have asked me about a small but powerful Android phone,
and there are none!
It's incredible, but all companies go in the same direction. In the very few
instances when they do innovate, they go in really odd directions (curve
displays, in-built projectors), but they don't address basic stuff like size
or physical keyboard.
~~~
khedoros1
I'm considering buying an Xperia X Compact. It's about the size I think I'd be
happy with, Sony devices tend to have great development communities, and Sony
itself provides a means to unlock the phone's bootloader, and to compile AOSP
for the device.
Of course, it fails in the "cheap" dimension, and also on "size" and
"replaceable battery" ones. Still, as far as things that would be considered
compact in the current smartphone market, it looks like close to the only
option.
~~~
GFischer
I recommended the Xperia Compact line to a coworker, and she says it's still
too big. She wants it to fit comfortably on a woman's pocket. Something
Motorola Razr-sized (about 20% smaller than the Xperia compact).
~~~
khedoros1
I can see that being a problem. Anyone that has tiny pockets and doesn't want
to carry around a separate bag is mostly up a creek these days, even with
phones that the market considers tiny.
------
idanb
I recently bought a Samsung Edge for Samsung Gear development, and went abroad
for a few weeks so ended up using it with the SIM card for that country while
still keeping my phone alive.
Apart from the benefits of the edge "design" not being too relevant for me,
the biggest issue I had was accidentally hitting notifications when I pulled
the phone out of my pocket. At one point I somehow accidentally deleted an
app, or something that resulted in the app being removed from the phone
entirely. Granted I was travelling, doing a lot of hiking and so perhaps it
was more aggressive handling than normal - but in general I found that not
having an edge on the phone really hindered my ability to use it, and forced
me to be extra careful in handling of the phone in regular use as well as when
I pulled it out of my pocket or back in.
I've been seeing a lot of these "edge less" screens and a lot of other
features that people don't really care about, with a move away from what
customers actually want. Like removing the headphone port in the iPhone 7 or
going in this direction with edge to edge screens and making the phone thinner
and thinner but faster and faster (meaning less battery life, and spottier
performance since the CPU needs to be throttled).
Smart phones have been a commodity for a bit now - and the important things
are the incremental improvements in battery life, performance, screen
resolutions and graphics, networking efficiency and most importantly the
services that power the phone which is effectively a way to access the
internet.
~~~
matt_wulfeck
I had a similar issue with places Android phones typically place a standalone
"back" button, the bottom right of a phone. When reaching across the phone
with my thumb I would constantly bump this back button. The experience was so
frustrating on a Galaxy S3 that I change to an iPhone.
I wondered if they have done enough user experience researching how people use
the phone. I can't believe I'm the only person who ran into this issue. It's
something I've come to admire with Apple products. They're very polished and I
rarely run into experiences like what I had bumping the back button on my old
S3.
~~~
idanb
That drove me crazy too - cap-sense buttons have been largely a customer
experience fail, so not sure why it's gone on this long. I'm a big fan of the
tactile "bump" feedback, and it's way too easy to do something by accident for
even the most careful user.
It's funny how Apple did the "no buttons thing" because they were responding
to a tech ecosystem that had a button for everything at the cost of the user
getting overwhelmed. However, now there's no sanity in the other direction -
with people avoiding buttons and making things so streamlined that they're
harder to use.
In every age there's an innovate response to a cliche, but ultimately this
becomes a cliche in of itself :)
------
neals
Without the bezels, all our phones will look the same. We'll be holding a slab
of pixels with some OS, with some voice-activated assistent, with some apps.
More or less the same. Even more so than now.
~~~
kbody
Personally, I'm more function over form so and I can't imagine having a bezel-
less phone that won't be a nightmare to use (using one hand).
~~~
serg_chernata
I'm not a fan either but Galaxy S Edge is quite popular and I think it has
sides that are far more prone to unintended interactions. Yet, I never hear of
anyone having that issue.
~~~
romanhn
I have the Edge and frankly i hate this gimmick precisely for that reason.
Never used cases on my previous phones, but will be looking for one this time.
Love the extra large battery though, so it's not all bad.
------
mtw
I really like the design (better imho than Google Pixel). Hope they get some
success and Apple/Google/Samsung take note to refresh with newer designs
~~~
dingo_bat
> better imho than Google Pixel
That's not saying much at all.
~~~
cbr
I had thought people we're pretty excited about the new Pixel phone? Like
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-
pho...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-phone-review-
pixel-xl) etc.
Or am I just in a bubble as a Google employee, where I hear disproportionately
good responses to our stuff?
~~~
tdkl
Perhaps excited before it came out and the price was announced. Also The Verge
!= people.
It's a great Android phone, but since iPhone costs the same and they've upped
the ante with i7 this year (stereo speakers, waterproofness), there's not much
pro points toward the Pixel. Support stays the same, two years of update, one
extra for security and then you're dead in the water, compared to 4-5 years
with iPhone.
Unless you really love the Google bubble with AI and data collection.
~~~
rifung
> Unless you really love the Google bubble with AI and data collection.
I know this might come as a surprise but some people prefer Android to iOS.
The Pixel seems to fare well compared to other Android phones, especially when
you don't want any skins.
------
Tepix
This gorgeous phone has a 2040x1080 17:9 6.4" 360ppi display. That's a new
form factor I haven't seen anywhere else. As long as the phone is not used for
VR, 360ppi is plenty.
Regarding the front camera placement, that's somewhat inconvenient, on the
other hand I don't use the front camera that much.
If Apple manages to integrate the home button into the display (as rumored)
they could make the usable area even larger than 91.3%.
~~~
tromp
To see how impressive 91.3% is, just look at this table
[https://08-08-08.com/2016/06/12/screen_to_bezel_mid_2016/](https://08-08-08.com/2016/06/12/screen_to_bezel_mid_2016/)
where phones are absolutely struggling to reach a mere 79%...
------
wh0rth
I've been wondering when the bezel would disappear for good. I don't doubt
that it adds the the appeal of the phone, but I also wonder if it has any
downsides from a usability standpoint.
~~~
in_the_sticks
I've got a Sharp Aquos Crystal. If I use it without a case, it will frequently
register touch events on the edges of the screen just from holding it. There's
no way to hold it that will prevent this.
~~~
papa_bear
I have the same issue with my galaxy s7 edge. It's incredibly frustrating to
use without a case.
~~~
StRoy
That's all really a software issue. The iPad Mini allows you to hold it even
with your thumb touching the screen and it works perfectly fine, for example.
[http://www.slashgear.com/ipad-mini-thumb-rejection-
technolog...](http://www.slashgear.com/ipad-mini-thumb-rejection-technology-
revealed-23253576/)
If google integrated that kind of thumb/holding hand rejetection to android
(since most android manufacturers seem too incompetent to do it themselves) we
could absolutely see an era of bezel-less devices that works fine.
~~~
rawTruthHurts
Well, that sounds like "we'll fix it in post"
------
alexc05
I don't know, how "tightly coupled" is the glass of that screen with the rest
of the device?
I have an iPad pro. When the screen grew a crack, I called to inquire about
the cost of a replacement screen and was quoted at roughly 2/3 the price of a
new device.
god bless the woman at Apple support who "pulled a string for me" and issued
an RMA.
the replacement has also grown a hairline fracture despite what I would
consider "careful use" (which I am fully aware makes it look like a PEBCAK
issue, but I'm standing by my claim that I knew how lucky I was and have in no
way tempted fate)
I'd happily trade a bezel-less design for one where the screen could be
swapped for a fiver. (Or one that doesn't crack at all I guess!)
~~~
adventurer
I'm curious to know if any phone is made like this. The Surface is also almost
impossible to replace on your own and about the same cost as you mention.
------
martin_henk
It is probably the same tech as Sharp Crystal phone for Sprint. Foxconn bought
Sharp and starts peddling its tech?
~~~
semi-extrinsic
No, a friend of mine works in the startup Elliptic Labs that is working with
Xiaomi on this. Their tech replaces the usual IR sensor package above the
phone screen with an ultrasound based sensor that can sit behind the display.
~~~
martin_henk
I see... Would like to know how they do the bezel less part construction wise.
Sharp uses the topglass as a kind of lens. That lenseffect 'covers' the actual
bezel beneath...
------
dmix
What a beautiful phone. I've wanted to get a Xiaomi phone to play around with
for a long time. It's a shame they're so hard to get a hold of in North
America. Need more friends in China...
~~~
totalZero
You can get Chinese phones in the States, but American 4G LTE doesn't work on
the radio channels they support.
------
pault
I want a _monitor_ with a bezel-less display. Do they exist?
~~~
redwards510
I've read forums about hardcore gamers who remove the bezels on certain
monitors in order to group them together for seamless FPS displays. You can
probably find it by searching.
~~~
pault
Yeah, this is my use case. I've seen a few of those setups and they're not
bad. I want to max out the resolution on a single geforce 1080 (7680 x 4320)
with 3 4k monitors in portrait mode.
------
slacka
As long as the touch sensor is extents past the display, the bezel can be a
very useful feature for touch-screen based devices. Having swipes that begin
off screen for OS-level commands like pulling down the notification bar or
switching apps is a very intuitive and logical gesture. Without a bezel, you
have to go back to needing off-screen buttons for these actions.
------
hawski
I hope that bezel-less-ness race will result in irrelevance of hardware form.
What I care the most is the software. Hardware now is mostly good enough. Than
maybe they would go die and it would be just like PC-s. I just want to have
something good enough with reasonably supported software.
Is it wishful thinking? Or are we close?
I know that they still can push crapware.
------
nicolewhite
Interesting that they're sticking with the Note brand. You'd think they'd want
to distance themselves from that as people have already associated Note with
phones that catch on fire. But perhaps their target market is focused enough
that misinformation won't be an issue.
~~~
djrogers
Given that this is a company who's product line is largely based on stealing
stuff rather than native innovation, it's not surprising that they are still
using the Note branding they stole from Samsung. Let's just hope hey don't
steal the 'burst in to flames' feature too.
------
ruipgil
Sharp had a similar phone. Samsung had the Edge, which is near bezel-less from
the sides. And those are not concept phones, at least the edge is not.
Sarcastically, the success of these phones are dictated by how reliably they
can be used, not by the size of their bezel.
------
deadfish
I once owned Xiaomi mi2 (their second phone) and the usb socket melted when
charging. After I posted it on Chinese twitter they were quick to offer a
refund.
I hope their quality has improved since then. I guess at least the battery
didn't explode :D
------
Karunamon
I can't possibly be the only one that laments the fact that all smartphones
look basically the same after the iPhone took off. Candybar slates with
massive screens and questionable batteries and life. No sliders, no flips,
nothing new or interesting in hardware. Now, only featureless slabs with
barely a physical button in sight, differentiated more by the images they
display on screen and less their components.
Eventually we'll wind up with a phone that's all screen and no bezel, and then
where do we go?
It feels like we lost something.
~~~
GFischer
You're not the only one. But most diversions from the norm failed :( and large
companies are afraid to innovate. LG's attempts are weird.
My hope is now on Chinese companies like Xiaomi to do something different :)
Also, Google hinders innovation by preventing hardware buttons. I miss the
Photo button from my old Nokias the most, but also to answer the phone and
other functions.
~~~
morsch
How is Google preventing hardware buttons? Sony's most recent phones (Xperia
X) have dedicated photo buttons; and that's a longstanding Xperia feature. I
doubt they're the only ones.
Android defaults to on-screen bottom-row buttons (to reduce bezel size), but
the OS supports off-screen buttons just fine, and phones with dedicated
buttons exist.
~~~
GFischer
I'm obviously mistaken then, sorry. I believe I read that at one time there
were some rules or guidelines for hardware manufacturers that wanted to be
Google certified (and have Play Store and all that). I'm trying to google that
and coming up short, so I must have been confused.
------
xHopen
It's a horrible design
------
tdkl
Video of the phone in action :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXjklyo5Is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXjklyo5Is)
Not exactly bezel-less like on the photos, but still interesting.
~~~
tdkl
Even better look by MKBHD:
[https://youtu.be/m7plA1ALkQw](https://youtu.be/m7plA1ALkQw)
Seems they went all in and sent the phone to some prominent YouTube reviewers
as well.
------
imaginenore
Sharp did it 2 years ago with their Aquos Crystal
Image:
[http://resize.indiatvnews.com/en/centered/oldbucket/750_533/...](http://resize.indiatvnews.com/en/centered/oldbucket/750_533/businessindia/Sharp-
launches-13937.jpg)
~~~
OverThere
Did anyone actually use this phone? If so, what are your thoughts?
~~~
in_the_sticks
It was fine if you kept it in a case. That protects from the errant touch
events I mentioned in another comment here, as well as making it so I don't
have to look at the back cover.
Maybe unrelated, I've had the phone for probably two years (it supposedly came
out two years ago as well - didn't think I bought a brand new phone but I
guess I did). Recently (past month or so), it's started rebooting at random
throughout the day. I'd do a factory reset if I didn't dread the thought of
dealing with all of my 2FA stuff.
~~~
tdkl
> didn't dread the thought of dealing with all of my 2FA stuff
That's where Authy backup is gold.
------
ungzd
No bezel and no security updates.
~~~
jacek
You are probably wrong. Although most Chinese manufacturers do not provide
updates, Xiaomi's record has been stellar in this respect.
------
joshmn
Sigh.
My dream phone:
Palm Pre, an upgraded display (5" would be perfect), the Play Store (but on
WebOS), an extended battery, and no keyboard.
Please, hardware Gods, hear me.
------
curiousgal
The problem with most chinese brands (Xiaomi, Mijue, etc.) is the non-existing
software updates.
~~~
devereaux
You have a very biased view.
The real problem with phones made for China is that they don't support LTE
bands from North America.
That's bad because I would love to have such a nice phone, but not at the
expense of going back to 3G.
~~~
tdkl
This might change in the future, the upcoming Xiaomi phones will have much
more bands supported.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Aren't Millennials Spending? They're Poorer Than Previous Generations - auxym
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/30/672103209/why-arent-millennials-spending-more-they-re-poorer-than-their-parents-fed-says
======
throwaway2016a
> The study also noted newer financial obstacles for millennials. Broad
> economic trends depict a rise in health care expenditures, as well as a rise
> in college tuition that has outpaced general inflation that previous
> generations avoided in their young adulthood.
They forgot:
\- Housing cost: previous generations were often able to pay off a house in 15
years. For millennial a 15 year mortgage is either a pipe dream or will
require you to have a worse house in a worse location and still be more
expensive than your parents may have paid for a nice house in a nice location.
And the down payments were lower percentage of income.
\- Lack of retirement options: a lot of people I know (myself included) don't
have an option at work for a 401k and forget a pension, unless you have a
government job it doesn't exist and if it does you probably won't last long
enough without getting laid off to use it.
\- Child care costs: my wife and I both work and we spend $19k (as in
thousands) a year to send our 2 year old to daycare so we can both work. And
we're not sending our kid to a fancy place either.
My wife graduated college in 2008 with $150k in student loan and it took over
a year (with an biomedical engineering degree) to find a job. During which
time I was the sole source of income and at one point we had no income because
I got laid off. And we're two very well educated people with a middle class
upbringing and every advantage. I can't even imagine what people with less
advantage and non-engineer salaries.
~~~
RickJWagner
A worse house? No, I don't think so.
The best house of the 70s would be laughably bad today. Poor climate control,
sub-standard insulation, smaller rooms, etc. Going back even further (to 'the
greatest generation' for example) housing is even more primitive.
Housing, like cars, phones, and almost everything else, gets better as we go
along. The best cars of the 80s are terrible compared to the lowest price of
today's cars. Phones? Not even worth talking about.
Young adults of today do have some disadvantages, that's true. But the goods
they can acquire are better than ever before (but not as good as tomorrow's).
~~~
notacoward
Today's products might be better than yesterday's in some objective way, but
do they create better _quality of life_ either absolutely or per dollar? Does
the modern barely-affordable house make its residents happier than its
"laughably bad" predecessor? Does the modern phone with all of its bells and
whistles make people happier than a more basic one, even before we consider
things like app addiction and the 24/7 "virtual leash" aspect?
People today are paying more and going into debt for things that aren't
_functionally_ any better than what went before, and might even be worse. The
reasons why are worth considering. Alternatives are worth considering.
"Products are better" doesn't really get us anywhere.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coderwall Source code is now public and open source - coderhs
http://mdeiters.svbtle.com/all-our-coderwall-are-belong-to-you
======
coderhs
Is this a good business model?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You are not a software engineer (2011) - llambda
http://www.chrisaitchison.com/2011/05/03/you-are-not-a-software-engineer/
======
trimbo
> If you were building a bridge or a skyscraper and you told me, before you
> began, that you knew exactly how it would look when it was finished – I
> would believe you. If you told me that you knew to some insane degree of
> accuracy how long it would take to get to ‘finished’ – I would believe you
> again. That’s how Engineers roll
Oh neat, maybe he can explain why the new Bay Bridge was practically a decade
over schedule and billions over budget.
Or the Burj Khalifa was about 2 years overdue?
Or the California High Speed rail is projected to be twice the budget they
thought, and they've barely broken ground on it?
So the idea that "Real Engineers" building bridges and railroads and
skyscrapers get it right in plans and schedule is total bullshit. We've seen
larger software projects, with more people working on them than these
examples, hit their deadlines (Windows comes to mind -- except Vista).
And by the way, those "Engineering" disciplines have only been around for,
what, hundreds, if not thousands of years. What they do for a living is mostly
explored territory. Software, at least at a scale to be considered engineering
at all, has been around for about 3-4 decades... maybe. And we're still
hitting up against major unknowns all the time at every level of the practice,
big and small.
edit: grammar
~~~
timr
_" And we're still hitting up against major unknowns all the time at every
level of the practice, big and small."_
I was with you until you got to this line. Let's be brutally honest: the
limiting factor for most of today's software projects (i.e. CRUD websites and
iPhone apps) is not technology. It's developer competency, experience and
self-discipline. I'd go so far to say that most working software developers
don't even _understand_ the fundamentals of the technologies they're using --
it's why you see people replacing their relational databases for key-value
stores, then trying to re-invent database join algorithms from scratch in the
application layer. Or why every new generation of "engineers" re-discovers
asynchronous programming in a new language (then promptly writes a framework
in Blub...because Blub is _so much better_ than last year's Blub.)
Truthfully, it's pretty damned hard to find gigs working on the frontier of
technology. Most projects are predictable, tedious slogs to fit together well-
understood technologies without shooting yourself in the foot. And yes,
requirements shift and clients get fussy, but that's true of any engineering
discipline. You learn to pad the schedule to compensate for the shifts. It's
part of being a professional.
As far as I can see, commercial software isn't limited by "major unknowns", so
much as an industry-wide unwillingness to learn from experience. But
hey...that tends to happen in industries when you're considered "old" at
30....
~~~
Widdershin
Ah man, this hit slightly hard as someone who just moved from Postgres to
MongoDB to avoid database migrations only to realize that I've now lost the
power of a many to many relationship.
~~~
yen223
How would one avoid database migrations by switching databases?
~~~
Widdershin
MongoDB is schemaless, so you don't have to do traditional migrations. Unless
you're making a joke about me migrating to a different database to avoid
migrations, in which case, good joke.
~~~
gaius
An undocumented and unvalidated schema, you mean. A database without a schema
is a contradiction in terms.
~~~
Widdershin
My apologies, the official documentation referred to MongoDB as "schemaless"
so I figured it was a real thing.
~~~
yen223
You aren't wrong, MongoDB _is_ schemaless in the sense that you don't need to
define a schema to use Mongo. But to use any datastore, you'll be defining a
schema somewhere - generally, in your app itself.
------
polemic
It's a slightly flowery (haha) way of putting it, but I agree whole-heartedly.
I recently held a talk at a Python conference and I asked the question:
degrees and job titles aside, are we scientists, engineers, artists or a
combination of all of these. The overwhelming response was "all of the above".
My preferred term is "artisan". A software developer is applying techniques
acquired primarily through experience, supplemented by training and outside
knowledge. The artisan has a clear vision of the end result in high-level
strokes, but the actual process and implementation is strongly dictated by
experience and intuition.
Obviously there are different branches of software developer that have more
characteristics of engineering, others of science, but I would hazard to guess
that 80% of software development is essentially a guided artistic process.
~~~
sz4kerto
You should have said to them: 'you're only f* programmers'. Just as a joke. As
a software engineer (?), I am quite fed up with people in their early 20s
calling themselves 'architects', 'artist', etc.
You're not a scientist, and not an artist. Being a scientist and a programmer
is extremely different because of a simple, seemingly minor thing: the lenght
of the feedback loop. As a programmer, your feedback loop is sometimes an
hour, sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a second (IntelliSense/other IDE
help), sometimes weeks. But for scientist, it's sometimes forever. So it's for
very different personalities.
~~~
polemic
Heh, well I _actually_ say "developer", because "artisan" sounds douchey,
"engineer" is (imo) incorrect and "programmer" tends to be a very narrowly
defined role. Design and operational sides of a "developer" are not really
adequately covered by "programmer".
But that's semantics really. We're talking about what _sort_ of techniques do
you employ. It doesn't really help to say that programmers use "programming"
techniques because it says nothing about the common attributes with other
industries / professions.
Which is where "artisan" comes in. A good developer is, IMO, more like an
great chef - excellent technique, a wealth of experience across many
disciplines and the best tools are the (ahem) recipe for success, not "good
process".
~~~
cconroy
I think "Process Implementer" is best. I can see both a mathematics and
engineering of processes. Processes instead of computer, because it is more
general and applicable to fields like biology.
Also computer science might be the worst -- there is zero science in CS.
Science has to do with nature![0]
[0] R. Feyman:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4wg6ZAFIM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4wg6ZAFIM)
~~~
yohanatan
There is a lot of overlap between CS and Physics. For one example:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics)
------
jarrett
I disagree for two reasons:
First, software engineers exist in a broader culture. The connotations of the
various words in our respective languages are not in our control. "Engineer"
and "gardener" have very different connotations. In a profession that
sometimes struggles to gain respect, it would not behoove us to use a term
that (wrongly in my opinion) is associated with lower social and professional
status. If we could rewrite the English language and define "gardener" as a
person with rare, hard-to-learn, and highly valuable skills, then perhaps we
would do well to embrace the term "software gardener." But we can't.[1]
Second, software _is_ engineering. This article seems to define engineering as
Big Design Up Front. While that may describe _part_ of what engineering _can_
entail, it's not a complete or general description. If I had to describe
engineering generally, I'd say it has to do with understanding and
manipulating complex systems, analyzing and fulfilling requirements,
distilling vague notions to concrete implementations, and building things that
work. Software fits all of that.
[1] As I hinted above, I don't think it's fair, right, or accurate to
denigrate actual gardeners as compared to software engineers. I'm stating the
way most people perceive social status, not the way I'd _like_ them to.
------
brudgers
In August 1991 during the S&L recession and fresh out of Vocational School, I
landed my first CAD jockey job drawing fabrication plans for a precast
prestressed concrete manufacturer. The first task, after running Diazos and
learning that neckties would become caught in the feed and where the reverse
button was by feel as my face was pressed to the top of the machine and my air
supply was rapidly constricting was drawing plans for a series of double tee
members [TT]. It took a couple of weeks to generate the 100 odd variations and
get them through the QA process, but then I moved on to other things.
But come October, they started to roll off the line...20+ kips of concrete a
pop and then stacked three high. To this day, the sensation is fresh; "So
that's what the fuck it really looks like."
The reason it's fresh is because it returns every time I am in the presence of
some lines I put on paper manifested.
The picture of the bridge is not the bridge. The engineer, like the hacker,
has better intuitions regarding the way in which the picture will correspond
to its instantiation - but it is still no more than a [hopefully] informed
intuition.[1]
[1] The idea that there is an Engineer rather than a thousand authors of a
successful bridge tends to be a bit absurd in modern construction practice.
Such heroics are still far more likely in software development.
------
btilly
I was hoping that a more substantial point was going to be made than this
piece of fluff. Here is the substantial point.
If you're building a skyscraper or a bridge, an engineer has to sign off on
the design. If the design subsequently proves to be defective, said engineer
is personally liable. In many places, calling yourself an engineer when you
are not licensed to sign off on designs and be liable in this way is against
the law.
We can debate whether or not extending this principle to software development
is a good idea. What we can't debate is that software development does not
currently work this way. You, the software developer, are not an engineer. If
you think a design is bad, you do not have both the legal authority and
responsibility to stand up, declare it so, and force the design to be changed
to something saner.
But saying you're not an engineer because software projects don't succeed like
projects done by real engineers - that's both silly and wrong.
~~~
lttlrck
It has already been extended into software development. Plenty of software
projects have to be signed off in aerospace, automotive, telecoms, energy and
defense. In fact I'd be amazed if it did not extend into consumer electronics
in large companies, e.g. Apple et al cannot risk bricking millions of phones
with a bad update. The point might be that there are thousands of badly run
projects, just as there are in construction.
------
PaulHoule
Ugh.
I wish we took the engineering metaphor more seriously. In particular, I'd
like to see some real consequences for malpractice on the part of
practitioners -- this would help us in our struggles with management to get
projects done successfully.
I've seen so many cases, for instance, where people screw up simple things,
such as generating primary keys, and keep making the same mistakes over and
over again. This has got to stop.
~~~
martininmelb
> In particular, I'd like to see some real consequences for malpractice on the
> part of practitioners
I agree as long as we also see some of the benefits - required registration
with a professional body - along with a requirement that certain projects
cannot use uncertified practitioners (in other words, better pay for Software
Engineers).
~~~
yetanotherphd
And worse pay for people who can't get certified for some reason.
------
nilkn
As someone who lives in the mecca of the oil and gas industry and is thus
around a lot of engineers--chemical engineers, civil engineers, mechanical
engineers, and more--I can tell you that trying to argue too passionately
about what constitutes an "engineer" is futile at this point. Engineers do
everything from physically working on an oil rig to somewhat abstract economic
analysis at a desk all day.
The only legitimate argument I can find regarding the use of the word
"engineer" is that there are actual engineering licenses that can be obtained.
But if we said that you had to have such a license to be called an engineer,
that would screw up the naming conventions in a ton of industries.
------
matthewmacleod
The fact that the feedback loop of a software engineering process is much
tighter and cheaper than that of civil engineering does not mean that it is
not engineering - that's a fallacy.
Perhaps it's less applicable to civil engineers, because of the scale and
safety requirements of their profession, but let's look at electrical
engineering. An electrical engineer will build prototypes; they will build
models; they will use computer simulations to predict how systems will behave;
they will build testing and QA infrastructure. It's definitely harder to
iterate—once you've built a million widgets, shifting circuits around is going
to be expensive—but it's not qualitatively different to developing a software
product.
As in any engineering discipline, software engineers must optimise for a
system's required qualities. In some cases, reliability might not be that high
up the list. In others—let's say medical systems, or those used in space
travel—software engineers have rigorous systems in place to ensure quality,
and in many cases substantial up-front planning and certification will be
involved.
Ultimately this seems to say that software engineering is different from
(specifically) civil engineering. I think that's broadly rather true – the
nature of civil is such that generally there are stringent safety
requirements, and indeed massive costs involved in making subsequent changes.
The majority of software does not have the same requirements, and so it's no
surprise that the process is somewhat different. And I agree that not all
development is engineering, of course, but to dismiss the entire field is a
bit of a shallow argument.
------
mrottenkolber
I disagree. When I code for my own amusement I might see myself as an artist
but when I do professional work I definitely want to see myself as an engineer
as well as a craftsman.
To me it feels as if we are just at a very early stage. It takes huge amounts
of time to learn software engineering, putting aside mastering it and humans
haven't been practicing for very long. So I'd guess that we're just clueless
enough to not be able to feel like engineers yet. We learn most of our
practical abilities from experience so thats an argument for craft, but once
we get a better understanding of what we are actually doing, and formalize it,
our job will probably be very engineery. There is just millions of problem
domains and no formal education on the domain of writing software yet (no a CS
degree is not it). And I think there is a class of applications that are
already so well understood that they do get developed in an engineering
fashion already.
------
justin_oaks
I grow tired of the endless comparisons of software development with some
other practice, profession, or physical process.
All analogies eventually break down if you take them too far. (If they didn't
then you wouldn't be comparing something to something else; you'd be comparing
something with itself.) But software development is so different from so many
other practices and processes that most comparisons to gardening, building,
finances, etc. don't provide much real value.
Its especially tiresome when it's claimed that "sofware isn't like that, it's
like THIS". In the article, I find that neither gardening nor engineering is
an especially enlightning analogy to software development.
------
Avalaxy
I just checked my diploma, it says my title is 'Engineer' (studied computer
science).
~~~
SethMurphy
I have to agree strongly with this. It's like a professional trainer calling
themselves a professor just because they teach. You are an engineer if your
diploma says so. It is an earned title, not a job description. I say this as a
CS dropout that never calls myself an engineer.
~~~
USNetizen
Engineering is about process, not about degrees. My CS degree did not at ALL
prepare me to be a software engineer. It taught be to be a programmer.
Engineering is more about the process than the technology. CS teaches theory
and technology.
~~~
SethMurphy
100% agrees, I didn't say I didn't do engineering, I just don't call myself an
engineer. Ironically, I do call myself a programmer though, and I don't need a
degree to do that. The state of CS degrees is a whole other topic, which from
the sound of it we agree upon so far. Maybe I just can't call myself a
scientist ;)
------
jwilliams
Engineering is a philosophy. First principles applied to real-world problems.
I'm not a Civil Engineer. So what? What does a Civil Engineer have in common
with an Electrical Engineer or a Chemical Engineer? Very little day-to-day.
Or an Engineer on an oil rig? They'd laugh that Engineering means getting it
right every time.
I can also tell you a Civil Engineer has very different problems if you're
building a skyscraper in Asia, somewhere waterlogged, as opposed to somewhere
geotechnically active. If you picked up your average skyscraper and dropped it
in New Zealand, you'll have problems. Saying the techniques are the same is a
gross generalisation.
------
andmarios
I would like to see him “growing” a database or a compiler, perhaps a firmware
for a car or the CAD software used by the architect to design a skyscraper.
------
zb
This is basically wrong, because it compares designing software with
constructing skyscrapers. But engineers don't construct skyscrapers, they
design them. And designing software shares many, many similarities with
designing skyscrapers.
I agree with the author though, that part of the problem is using engineering
as a metaphor (at least, I agree up to the point where he just replaces it
with his own, equally bad, metaphor). Software development is not _like_
engineering, it _is_ engineering, and the actual practice of it is as
different from civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical
engineering, chemical engineering or any other branch of engineering as those
fields are from each other. None of those, by the way, bear even a passing
resemblance to the description of 'engineering' contained in the post.
So yes, let's quit with the metaphors. Instead, let's talk about what
engineers actually do, which is design:
[http://www.zerobanana.com/essays/reclaiming-software-
enginee...](http://www.zerobanana.com/essays/reclaiming-software-engineering/)
~~~
kabouseng
That is actually also wrong.
Its rather a case of each engineering profession is a regulated industry with
an accreditation body, that certifies you as an engineer. Mechanical,
electrical, electronic, chemical, industrial, civil, all have standards
organisations, usually different ones in each country.
See IEEE for instance...
Also the engineer term is a protected designation in many countries, just as
doctor and laywer is...
So no. engineers aren't guys that design stuff, and until the software
industry is as regulated as the rest of the engineering industries are,
software engineer is the wrong term. The only people who can call themselves
software engineers perhaps is working in the medical device, avionics software
etc. industries.
~~~
TheCoelacanth
At least in the US (which has the largest software industry of anywhere in the
world), the title of engineer is not regulated. Only the title "Professional
Engineer" is regulated. Accreditation for engineers only applies to areas that
have an impact on public safety. This means that civil engineers usually are
accredited, but mechanical and electrical engineers usually aren't. So for
people located in the US, it is perfectly appropriate to refer to someone as a
software engineer.
~~~
kabouseng
Please don't find this reply condescending :D But Americans also call their
train operators "engineers"...
~~~
TheCoelacanth
I don't find that condescending. What I do find condescending is attempting to
apply the laws of certain countries to the world as a whole. There are, in
fact, many jurisdictions where being an engineer does not require any form of
accreditation. The fact that some jurisdictions do require accreditation does
not give engineers in other jurisdictions any less claim to the title.
~~~
kabouseng
Where did I do that? You were the one highlighting America as having the
biggest software industry...
~~~
TheCoelacanth
The part where you claimed that only people who are officially accredited are
engineers. People who live and work somewhere without such accreditation are
completely justified in calling themselves engineers without being accredited.
~~~
kabouseng
My apologies then, I was not trying to force my viewpoint, I only shared it.
Just as I don't believe anyone who's read Gray's anatomy (the book) can or
should call themselves a doctor, just the same I don't believe anyone writing
code should call themselves an engineer...
~~~
TheCoelacanth
So, according to your viewpoint, there were no doctor's in the US until the
late 1800's?
~~~
kabouseng
You'll have to provide a bit more context for me.
But again comparing modern day professions to the 19th century equivalent does
not bode well for your argument. If you'd prefer the medical industry return
to its standards and practices of the 19th century, your welcome to visit such
a doctor.
I prefer my modern day certified medical professional.
~~~
TheCoelacanth
The late 1800's is when doctors were first licensed in the US. Before that
doctors practiced medicine but were not licensed, yet they were still doctors.
Official licensing undoubtedly raises the quality of doctor's practicing
medicine, but it is not an inherent quality of being a doctor. In most places,
someone is not allowed to practice medicine without a license, but in places
without medical licensing, someone who practices medicine without a license is
still a doctor.
Engineering is the same. Licensing most likely raises the quality of
engineers, but that does not mean an unlicensed person who does the job of an
engineer is not an engineer.
~~~
kabouseng
Pray do tell where in the world is an unlicensed medical practitioner called a
docter?
My point being, in this day and age, to call yourself a docter, you must be
licensed. Bringing up history does nothing to change that fact. I would state
that should also apply for engineers, and already does in most countries.
Merely the fact that train drivers are called engineers in the US proves my
point. It dilutes the term to be basically meaningless.
~~~
TheCoelacanth
Train drivers being called engineers has nothing to do with this. It is simply
a coincidence that they happen to have the same name. They are sometimes
called "engineers" but what they do is never called "engineering". No one
thinks that the two jobs are the same thing any more than they think that an
academic doctor is the same thing as a medical doctor. With software
engineers, that is not the case. There is a great deal of academic study in
the field of "software engineering".
There are, in fact, many places where engineer is not a protected title and to
claim otherwise is just wrong. Many large countries like the US, UK and France
do not restrict the use of the title engineer. They only restrict something
like "Professional Engineer" or "Chartered Engineer".
~~~
kabouseng
It has everything to do with it. Just as much as you are saying what train
drivers does has nothing to do with engineering, just the same I am saying
writing javascript also has nothing to do with engineering...
There is a great deal of academic study in the field of "software
engineering". That I agree with, but that academic research is being done by
degree'd people, either with computer science or computer engineering degrees.
Even still they don't practice engineering, they are researchers or scientist.
Much like in the other engineering professions, scientists study and advance
the engineering fields.
They only restrict something like "Professional Engineer" or "Chartered
Engineer". Ok that I agree with, but I restate, writing code does not make you
an engineer, anymore than performing an operation makes me a doctor. Being
board certified, makes you a docter. Same with engineering.
------
yetanotherphd
I admit that I like the cachet that goes with the title "Engineer".
I have no interest in worshiping the "real" engineers with their protocols and
whatever. An engineer is qualified to build a bridge because they know how to
build a bridge. Their professional ethics and protocols are secondary. And we
certainly have ethics of our own, even if it isn't codified and we don't wear
special rings.
------
jaegerpicker
Bleh... Can we just stop with the metaphors already? Maybe I'm not an engineer
or a gardner or a scientist but maybe I am. I can be all of those things or
none of them. I know how to make software of varying types and that's enough,
how I apply those skills is a completely different thing. Maybe I'm a
biologist using python to help see the migration patterns of fish better.
Maybe I'm a web developer building highly scalable web systems in java. Maybe
I'm writing drivers at a kernel level. It doesn't matter, programming is a
skill set not a job definition. Engineers aren't just Engineers. They are
Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, etc.. Scientists are just
Scientists, they are Biologists, Chemists, and Computer Scientists. When we
want programming/software development to have that same level of social
standing we will use programming as a skill set not a job title.
------
clienthunter
Changing requirements and development landscape do not an analogy to a
gardener make.
I do not 'grow' nor 'tend' code, trusting some unknown universal force to keep
me on the right path.
I engineer buildings, bridges, roads, tunnels - all sorts. Sometimes they're
very small and sometimes they're very large but they're all subject to the
forces pushing and pulling on them - my job is to build them and keep them
upright as well as I can subject to the laws and constraints of the
environment.
I am not a gardener. I am an engineer building, modifying, and destroying
complex structures daily in a controlled dance so as to keep their
superstructure useful and safe.
Only to the naive eye could such complexity be reduced to such apparent
simplicity.
------
Systemic33
To me, engineering is about solving problems, it's about taking systematic
analytical approach to whatever problem arise. It is a state of mind, and that
is why engineering now covers everything from software to biochemistry.
------
wfraser
The part of this metaphor that I really like is how a garden is always
changing. Unlike a bridge or a building, software doesn't stand in isolation;
it's always relying on other software for something. These other pieces of the
system are in constant churn, and your software must change with it. This is
even disregarding other factors like changing customer demands. You have to
continuously prune and maintain your garden, or the weeds (continuously
changing software/hardware/services/etc. environments) will choke out your
plants. Software is never "done".
------
stephen_g
I think the largest error in this analogy is that coding is closer to what the
engineer does when designing something - not when building something. I guess
construction in software is more like compilation.
Can a civil engineer say exactly how long it will take to design a bridge? No.
Might putting more engineers on that project speed it up? Perhaps!
Coding is not so much constructing a program, but more creating detailed
descriptions of every aspect of the system's operation for someone else (an
interpreter, compiler etc.) to follow, and that is very similar to engineering
design.
------
fleitz
"Real" projects also know what they want in a year and don't expect the
engineer to double the lanes on the bridge because the bridge went viral on
social media and now needs to handle twice the traffic.
I'm not going to get into a who has bigger stones pissing contest, but lets
just say the expectations and requirements for skyscapers are different than
software.
You'd do just as well to call engineers "traffic gardners" who don't know how
to make a bridge scale.
~~~
desas
Software is more malleable than concrete though.
------
wilsonfiifi
Engineering is about following best practices based on empirical
data/knowledge as much as possible and "winging it" when faced with the
unforeseen. Although "winging it" is a bit of a loose statement because
generally unforeseen challenges are usually solved based on past experience
and quite a bit of lateral thinking.
Therefor in my opinion software development "done properly" has more in common
with engineering than gardening. :-)
------
joseph_cooney
My take on this. Not to say some people don't 'do' software engineering....but
it is still nascent. [http://jcooney.net/post/2012/02/27/What-Other-
Engineering-Di...](http://jcooney.net/post/2012/02/27/What-Other-Engineering-
Disciplines-can-Learn-from-Software-Development.aspx)
------
firegrind
Quite a few people really are software engineers, by qualification and by
profession.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineer)
That said, Chris has a good point that calling what you do engineering doesn't
make you an engineer.
------
throwaway0094
Dismissing all other organizations as worse at "gardening" than Google was a
bit offensive.
And the lowest bidder for contracted work often sucks, or finds ways to bill
more than the original bid. :)
~~~
cmaitchison
I said they didn't have the same soil. That would include the multitude of
internal tools they use to facilitate their software development, most of
which are not publicly available, their culture, and the aptitude of their
people.
------
lettergram
I personally prefer the term programmer. What I do is program machines to do
as I wish.
Gardener fits, but we design the plants in essence....
To me Programmer, developer, even software architect seems closer than
gardener.
------
tildeslashblog
Op clearly doesn't understand software engineering and automation. Op may be a
"software gardener" but some of us build proverbial skyscrapers.
------
coldcode
A friend's mother once gave him a handwoven little sign that said "Engineer:
faultless, accurate". As programmers we thought it was funny.
------
adamnemecek
So what exactly is the take-away of this piece?
~~~
sz4kerto
That you should not believe that classic engineering techniques work in
software. Also, do not believe that you, as a software developer, know how
engineering works in real world. You don't.
~~~
yeukhon
1\. We don't need to know how engineering works in real world. You need to be
in a domain and work in that domain to acquire that knowledge. Knowing how to
calculate stress in civil/structural engineering doesn't mean you are an
engineer. You need a job. You need an internship if you were a student.
2\. It is quite dumb to assume we build software in the same way that bridge
is built. That's essentially what Water Fall method would do. You build the
blueprint precisely, build a prototype and then build the actual bridge. I
don't see why the author would assume we think we were classical engineer. I
never assumed we would be using the same technique all the time.
~~~
sz4kerto
1\. Well, you don't need to, but it's certainly interesting. 2\. People assume
all the time that software development is engineering. That's what leads to
clashes between management and developers; clients not understanding why you
can't estimate precisely; neverending projects; etc.
It's a very important thing to understand and explain that software
development is _not_ an engineering discipline -- at least not yet. We strive
to make it another branch of engineering, that's why we have design patters,
methodologies, etc. Engineering is usually boring, but predictable, and that's
a very important property software lacks at the moment.
------
antonio0
Software Engineering is an oxymoron.
------
dogweather
This is why I became an attorney.
------
thenerdfiles
I'm a software hacker that gets paid an engineer's salary.
I use old tools (vim, terminals), like engineers use old tools (protractor,
pencil), to make comparatively much larger artifacts (search products,
management tools), like engineers (buildings, bridges).
You're not judiciously applying the metaphor. You've only rephrased what it
means to be "self-taught"; it goes without saying that we don't allow
unlicensed people to engineer things. It also goes without saying that no one
lives or dies by a faulty HTTP request header.
------
benched
I think this [silly] argument is nothing more than a special case of the
argument over whether words have inherent meaning, or derive meaning from
usage. I don't think 'software engineer' was ever meant to denote a new
subtype of engineer. I think 'software engineer' is a compound word that means
whatever it is we do. At work, whenever someone says 'get an engineer to look
at that', absolutely nobody thinks that means to call one of the 'real' kinds
of engineers on the phone. They know it means to get a software
developer/programmer/code monkey/dev or whatever you want to call people who
make software out of computer code.
~~~
USNetizen
It is far more than semantics, the term engineering denotes a rigid adherence
to processes and protocols, whereas 90% of people that call themselves
"software engineers" are just developers at best - they write code to do what
they are told it should do with very little concern for the overall processes
involved in an engineering discipline.
~~~
Brakenshire
It's closer to the British use of the word engineer, which can mean anything
from the civil engineer who designed the Channel Tunnel, to the mechanic who
repairs the trains. I think I prefer the prescriptive definition, though, it's
useful to have a word for someone expected to work with that level of planning
and rigour.
------
goldvine
I enjoyed the fresh perspective :-) Thanks for sharing
~~~
cmaitchison
You're welcome. Thanks!
~~~
j1z0
I for one really like the article. Yes it's true engineering projects aren't
anywhere near as perfect or on-time as people often given them credit for, but
that's exactly the point. People often expect engineering project to fit a agh
exile exactly. The article is about changing that perception and dealing with
the reality that as an industry we don't estimate very well at all. So we need
to change the metaphors to get people to understand more clearly what is I we
are doing. And the Gardner metaphors is apt. Great Article!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: what is the site of a guy that gave away free stock photos? - glundgren
i remember reading here about a site of a guy that made available for free some beautiful stock photos of smartphones and macs, the photos looked like 'landing page' photos, there was a photo of a mac in a wooden table with a cup of coffee. someone remember what site was that?
======
glundgren
found it!
[http://unsplash.com/](http://unsplash.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ruby editor? - mindfulbee
I'm looking for a text editor to save ".rb" files, but I can't find any programs out there that are free... Most are 30 day trials.<p>Is ruby installer suppose to come with a text editor program?<p>Apologies I'm just starting to code and a bit unfamiliar with how to go about this.
======
phren0logy
From Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way":
>If a programmer tells you to use vim or emacs, tell them no. These editors
are for when you are a better programmer. All you need right now is an editor
that lets you put text into a file. We will use gedit because it is simple and
the same on all computers. Professional programmers use gedit so it's good
enough for you starting out.
~~~
SingAlong
gedit with this <https://github.com/gmate/gmate>
Been suggesting Ubuntu+gedit+gmate to my friends who are starting with
programming. It's better than the editor that ships with Windows (most in my
geographic region use windows... like 99%).
------
csarva
Any text editor will be able to save .rb files; they're just plain text files.
Also, you didn't say which OS you're on, but assuming you're on Windows,
notepad++ is a good free editor.
<http://notepad-plus-plus.org/>
------
simplify
You should try <http://sublimetext.com>
It's sort of like textmate but also cross-platform, so in theory you won't
have to learn another editor. I'd learn it myself if I wasn't already used to
textmate.
~~~
robflynn
I like this editor a lot also. Sublime Text 2 is quite nice. Enables me to use
a nice editor across all of the platforms on which I have to develop.
------
davidw
You might as well skip past all the toys and get Emacs and start on the
lifelong journey of understanding it. Vim might be worth looking at too, but
it's not my cup of tea.
------
wewyor
Since you said installer I might assume use of windows, take a look at
notepad++ (<http://notepad-plus-plus.org/>)
OS x or linux check out gedit. (<http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/> Downloads
on right side of front page.) Also available for windows, but notepad++ is a
little easier to use if you are used to windows programs.
------
vinodkd
it looks like you could use most any text editor. most os's have a default
text editor.
if you want a ruby IDE, try redcar - <http://www.redcareditor.com>.
------
th0ma5
On my Ubuntu netbook, I love GEdit
<http://grigio.org/pimp_my_gedit_was_textmate_linux>
------
jakkinabox
My setup on Ubuntu is as follows. I use a drop down terminal called Yakuake.
It drops down from the top of my screen when I press F12. From there I can
create a ruby document by typing
vim example.rb
You don't have to use or learn all of vims features straight away. I probably
use 1% of it but I like it. :w to save, :wq to save and quit.
------
gharbad
Vim has good coloring and you can add completion to it.
Do you need anything else in an editor?
~~~
mindfulbee
Thank you, Vim is definitely helpful!
------
mark_l_watson
I mostly use TextMate (OS X) and GEdit (on Linux), but perhaps 1/4 of the time
I use RubyMine because autocompletion and immediate flagging of syntax errors
can help.
------
nwmcsween
komodoedit is very nice <http://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit>
------
jsavimbi
I've used Textmate for about four years now and I'm really happy with it. But
if it's not for you, just use iTerm2 and learn the Vim.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carousels examined pt1 - description and html - onderhond
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/carousel-pattern-html
Corrected link: http://www.onderhond.com/blog/onderhond/carousel-pattern-pt1-html
======
devmonk
I personally think that while carousels are eye candy, they are just a fad. At
my place of work, the designers have standardized on using them for many sites
for a year or so now, and we have been sick of them for about that long. There
was a study a few years ago that showed that people are fascinated with faces
and like photos on sites. But when the site designer can't decide on a single
photo to best convey the myriad of ideas they are trying to relate on the
page, they rotate them with a way to navigate between them using the same
"carousel" pattern.
Interaction on a page is good, but when you start making decisions about what
they user should see next (e.g. like the the fading in and out of news
headlines that used to be on news sites in the early 2000s), you may as well
just show video or some fancy animation, because the user is getting
distracted rather than seeing the static content they typically want to see.
Slideshows that can be set to automate via "play slideshow" are just fine,
though.
------
devmonk
Corrected link: <http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/carousel-pattern-pt1-html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mocking External APIs in Python - mjhea0
https://realpython.com/blog/python/testing-third-party-apis-with-mocks#.V3EuqqGwQYw.hackernews
======
nathan_long
Like this?
# Oh look, I'm the Twitter API, I just can't make up my mind what features I
provide!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intel 48-core Single-Chip Cloud [pdf] - yu
http://download.intel.com/pressroom/pdf/rockcreek/SCC_Announcement_JustinRattner.pdf
======
yu
* 24 "tiles" with two IA cores per tile
* A 24-router mesh network with 256 GB/s bisection bandwidth
* 4 integrated DDR3 memory controllers
* Hardware support for message-passing
IA x86 compatible. Availability not announced. Experimental.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
$100M Was Once Big Money for a Startup. Now, It’s Common - prostoalex
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/technology/venture-capital-mega-round.html
======
usrusr
From my consumer's perspective, the most annoying part is when a company
provides a service I like, they look like they could be reasonably profitable
for an investment of x but not for 10x, and then they suddenly raise to 10x or
more. It's inevitable then that they will eventually ruin the existing service
in search (usually futile) for some mythical product/market fit that was
somehow projected be appropriately profitable for that 10x investment.
It's particularly irritating with paid services, where all of a sudden paying
customers turn from highly valued into a legacy nuisance.
~~~
ditonal
I worked for a startup with a well liked paid product built through iteration
(test prep product). Then it was dropped on the ground and discontinued cause
they raised a hundred million and now needed to build the founders vision, a
free consumer project designed and built for years without showing it to
potential users. Didn’t work out. So I’ve seen that happen.
~~~
mo1ok
Shit, this sounds like a previous startup I left. Product-market fit acquired,
growing steadily, near-profitability. Then Series C, and sudden pivot to more
ambitious product. A few months/years later (I left before this, seeing the
danger) most of the staff gets laid off. :\
------
nostrademons
Many of these rounds are replacements for what would otherwise be IPOs or
other public financing rounds.
Flywire was founded in 2009 and in 2017 processed over $2B in payments. [1]
Gusto was founded in 2011 with a rumored valuation of over a billion and
$100M+ in revenues. Convene was founded in 2009 and was doing $18.6M in
revenue in 2015 [2]. All of them have acquired other companies.
Before 2000 these would be public companies; hell, before 2000 there were
public companies that were barely 2 years old and had virtually no revenue.
The investors for these rounds are largely the same firms who would be playing
in the public markets.
[1] [https://www.flywire.com/pT/articles/how-two-boston-
startups-...](https://www.flywire.com/pT/articles/how-two-boston-startups-are-
shaking-up-the-payments-industry)
[2]
[https://www.forbes.com/companies/convene/](https://www.forbes.com/companies/convene/)
~~~
Ologn
> what would otherwise be IPOs or other public financing rounds
The NYSE and Nasdaq do a lot of hype about how much money they raise for
companies in IPOs and secondary offerings. But if you look at the numbers
since World War II (and even before), very little of the money corporate
America raises comes from the stock market. US corporations raise money via
bonds, term loans, credit lines and so on. The stock markets facilitate stocks
moving from one shareholder to another, but have (relatively) little
involvement in raising cash.
As you note, companies are staying private much longer nowadays. Facebook
didn't go public until it was worth $100 billion.
~~~
another-cuppa
Indeed. It's a complete joke and a big reason why "the rich get richer". I,
for example, believe that artificial meat will be one of the biggest
industries in the world once governments outlaw the cruel and barbaric
practice of producing the "real thing". I also want to support the beginning
of that industry. But is there any way for me to do that? No. The deals are
done in private with a few very rich individuals. If those companies ever go
public it's just a way to cash out because they are already turning a profit.
------
fipple
50% of all this money is being captured by Bay Area landowners.
~~~
user5994461
More than that.
Companies spend the the majority of their costs on office space, then
employees spend the majority of their salaries on a home.
~~~
brownkonas
I disagree. Office space is relatively cheap compared to employee salaries.
For a 25 person startup in SF, office space pencils out to the cost of 1-2
employees depending on the quality of the office. We have capacity to cram in
up to 35.
~~~
cbhl
Market rate rent in SF is something like $3k for a studio, which is like
50-75% of those employees' take-home pay if they're making low six figures.
~~~
ouid
isn't mid 6 figures 550k?
~~~
cbhl
Oops, you're right.
I was thinking 100k-200k for some reason :/
~~~
logfromblammo
On a logarithmic scale, mid-6-figures is 10^5.5 = $316228 . Maybe your brain
prefers to deal with larger numbers in terms of orders of magnitude?
------
aaavl2821
In biotech (by which I mean therapeutics), out of ~150 "major"* VC investments
from 1/2018 to 7/2018, 14% of deals have been over $100M. Many of these have
been Series A deals [0].
Many of these rounds are tranched (ie you only get a certain amount upfront,
then get the rest if you hit milestones), but I think I saw data suggesting
only 30-40% were tranched.
I think this phenomenon is largely due to 1) more money going into biotech VC
but 2) very little increase in the number of good startups. Many startups are
created in house by 5-10 VCs (though this is changing, especially with
increasing number of well funded Chinese startups), so there's limited
bandwidth. Therapeutics is so different from any other type of startup that
pretty much all the incubators / educational materials don't apply, and the
only ppl who know how to start startups are those who've developed drugs at
big companies or have started successful companies before
* Announced Series A through later deals, and some large seed deals ($5m+)
[0] source is a website where i've been tracking major biotech VC investments.
i'm a hobbyist programmer and its on a free heroku plan, and i'm in the early
stages of turning what was a personal project into a product so expect bugs
and not-ideal performance. but deal coverage is comparable to other biotech
databases.
[https://bio-vc-tracker.herokuapp.com/](https://bio-vc-tracker.herokuapp.com/)
~~~
refurb
Biotech investment has been accelerating significantly over the past year.
A few years ago, you’d see a handful of rounds over $100M. There have been
several in the past couple of months.
And you make a good point about Asian investments in biotech. The Hong Kong
exchange had its first biotech IPO and there have been several big rounds in
Asian as well!
------
bertil
I am surprised that the NYTimes doesn’t see it as a positive sign: the
structures around start-up (accelerators, investors, hosting, third party
tools, etc.) have grown in maturity and relevance quite considerably. I
certainly expect people familiar with YCombinator to agree.
More funding like that means more companies trusted to spend that money into
creating something profitable. If this goes into people who have grown
companies into a unicorn a couple of times; scaling faster local operations
lead by managers with relevant experience; AWS, GCP, Twilio & Square bills,
it’s certainly expensive but overall sensical.
I don’t know of an investor who, since 2000 has said: “This is silly, I can’t
invest anymore.” and left, so I don’t think the game got non-sensical overall.
Real-estate in SF certainly has, but high valuations proved when they made
sense and gave investors confidence. There certainly has been cases where the
value wasn’t justified, but very few at that level of money raised. Certainly
less in proportion than the rounds with crazy valuations in 2000
~~~
timr
_" More funding like that means more companies trusted to spend that money
into creating something profitable. If this goes into people who have grown
companies into a unicorn a couple of times; scaling faster local operations
lead by managers with relevant experience; AWS, GCP, Twilio & Square bills,
it’s certainly expensive but overall sensical."_
Who are these founders who have grown "a couple" of unicorns? There are huge
numbers of them walking around now? More importantly: who are these mythical
founders who have experience growing/managing a company by hundreds of percent
in a single year? They're pretty thin on the ground. This money is going to
inexperienced people. Save for (maybe) a few founders who lived through the
late 90s, _nobody_ has experience with this. It's new territory.
Also, Let's not kid ourselves: this money isn't going to AWS and Twilio. It's
going to salaries, and it's going to marketing. And that's why it's risky.
When you have to hire insanely quickly and buy revenue with marketing spend,
it's essentially impossible to manage the growth. Overfunding is a real thing,
and unless you've seen it firsthand, it's hard to internalize the perverse
incentives it creates.
~~~
bertil
Google has 88k employees today, almost 20 years of existence, and an average
tenure of about two years. I would estimate that people who have worked at
Google and learned valuable lessons, and able to secure director-level roles
in start-ups to be in the thousands; many have gone to Facebook (25k
employees, 14 years, similar retention). There are hundreds of people who
similarly left Facebook for Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Booking, Coinbase, etc. I
personally know at least a dozen who made that move before their new employer
raised more money, and can name three friends who went from Google to Facebook
and to a third now-10B$ company, moving to pre-IPO company each time. And I
don’t even live in the US.
If you include probably several dozen people from PayPal (not just the six
founders but the people who reported to them); hundreds of YCombinator alumni,
who learned from their own failed company but leveraged the success of the
friends they made in YC, and probably ended up working with; if you include
people who have done their four years at DropBox, Zynga, SurveyMonkey, Twilio,
etc. overall, yes, I expect to find several people with relevant experience at
key positions in hundreds of companies. Some might have gone to investing full
time, but they are if anything more likely to trust and advise appropriately
their former colleagues.
A lot of them are “anonymous” in the sense that TechCrunch wouldn’t name-drop
them, but they would be familiar with, say, SQLite, AirFlow, or know from
experience whether RedShift is the right solution at scale; they would know
how to setup a Salesforce cluster; who to ask about address format in South-
East Asia; they know about bugs in Samsung’s Android video codecs; they would
have coordinated a launch in Arab-speaking countries before, know that React
works well with Big5, or know that VAT is processed differently in Islamic
finance.
I expect those people to be asking for, and justifying convincingly
compensations several times higher than what people could justify in 2000.
You are certainly right about marketing: I should have mentioned far better
targeting and control tools. CPA probably went up overall, but more
importantly: the ability to measure it, to optimise campaign, interrupt
ridiculous PR stunts before they cost too much, leverage them, etc. all that
has become better. Analysts measure LTV with less ridiculous estimations now.
That justifies trusting people with more money because when you hit the
product-market fit, you know that this money will make more.
~~~
timr
_" Google has 88k employees today, almost 20 years of existence, and an
average tenure of about two years. I would estimate that people who have
worked at Google and learned valuable lessons, and able to secure director-
level roles in start-ups to be in the thousands; many have gone to Facebook
(25k employees, 14 years, similar retention). There are hundreds of people who
similarly left Facebook for Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Booking, Coinbase, etc. I
personally know at least a dozen who made that move before their new employer
raised more money, and can name three friends who went from Google to Facebook
and to a third now-10B$ company, moving to pre-IPO company each time."_
So basically, you're counting almost anyone who worked at a big company or a
successful startup in the last 20 years, even though virtually none of these
people have any experience founding or building a company.
~~~
AndrewKemendo
And this is exactly the story that works for VC.
Ex-FAMGA [SWE/PM] builds a new CRM for X, or stack management library. Leaves
FAMGA with a nice $300,000 cushion in the bank and goes to a scout Angel group
for Sequoia and raises $5M to build and launch their product, product gets
some traction, they sell it Google for $40M...and the cycle continues.
~~~
timr
_" And this is exactly the story that works for VC."_
LOL, well...clearly, a lot of things "work for VC" that doesn't actually work.
I don't think a VC would tell you otherwise, either. They're throwing mud at
the wall, and seeing what sticks.
------
meritt
Rand Fishkin (founder of Moz) commented on this phenomenon the other day [1]
by saying: "Make $10mm. Crickets. Raise $10mm. Everyone writes about you." and
"This is how we get a culture that trains founders to raise $$ > make $$."
Might I suggest to some budding founders that you try the revenue-funded
approach. It's not as fast or as glamorous but the payout when you're
successful is so much more significant.
[1]
[https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1028863855353417728](https://twitter.com/randfish/status/1028863855353417728)
~~~
dminor
Sure, but if you've raised $10mm it means that someone has the
expectation/hope that you'll be able to make much more than $10mm in the
future.
------
cft
The inflation due to quantitative easing has already happened at the higher
economic levels. It just has not reached the main street yet.
~~~
rebuilder
I'm wondering as well, how much of this is due to monetary policy pushing
investors into higher-risk investments. That's been the point of QE and
negative interest rates, right, although I don't recall hearing it framed as
an attempt to push investors into taking on more risk?
~~~
jahewson
No that’s not the point of QE. The point of QE is to allow the government to
continue deficit spending without running out of money. The treasury lowers
the interest rate and then creates new money to buy cheap debt from the
government when there would otherwise be no takers.
The interest rate affects everybody, which allowed troubled banks to lend
cheaply to each other in the wake of the financial crisis (good) but also
means that low-risk investments generate very little return (bad). It’s the
later that has pushed investors into riskier assets - whether or not that’s
beneficial depends upon how much systemic risk there now is... which is not
obvious, after all mortgage-backed securities were supposed to be safe but we
all know how that worked out.
The treasury would like to raise interest rates but this means that consumer
debt will cost more each month and is painful for homeowners especially. So
it’s a slow process. We may already have trapped ourselves in unstainably
cheap consumer debt - much like those 2005-vintage mortgage “teaser rates”.
~~~
rebuilder
I admit I'm not very familiar with the discussion around QE in the USA, but in
the EU, a lot of the reporting about interest rates has specifically quoted an
increase in investments as a desired result of low interest rates; pushing
money out of cash and bonds into "useful" investments.
------
Brushfire
Yeah, this is insanity. It's not common. Its still the 1% of startups, at
best.
------
RestlessMind
At a personal level - being a millionaire was a big deal once. Apparently not,
anymore.
------
infinity0
Pretty ironic that a couple days ago there was some article claiming that
China was about to collapse because it was going through "an orgy of
investment" in an attempt to grow whilst its recent projects did not generate
any actual revenue.
------
golergka
So much money, and yet, the same horrible open office plans and transparent
meeting rooms. Does office space in SF really cost that much?
~~~
madamelic
>So much money, and yet, the same horrible open office plans and transparent
meeting rooms. Does office space in SF really cost that much?
Personally I don't think it is about actually needing the money. It is about
wanting it. Thinking that if you have enough cash to burn, you'll be the next
Google.
In reality, 99.99% (if not 100%) of them are going to burn through their bank
and fly off a cliff in 3 years.
~~~
parthdesai
Yup, i don't remember if i heard this quote by DHH in one of his interviews or
was in his book, but it struck to me and honestly if i ever have my own
company, i'm going to try to follow Basecamp's model.
I'm paraphrasing the quote but it was something like "Not everyone needs to be
next Google, Fb, Amazon. There is ton's of space for medium size $50
million/year businesses."
~~~
nikanj
But no investor wants to put their money in those.
~~~
parthdesai
It's definitely more difficult but you can always try to bootstrap or take
small investments and try to grow organically instead of going for 10x growth.
~~~
brendanmc6
This just seems so much more attractive to me on a personal level. I invested
a stupid amount of my time to build a webapp just on a unproven hunch that a
market exists for it (i.e. if it did, I would have been a customer). Now that
I'm switching to founder mode and exploring paths forward, the thought of
taking a sum just a fraction as big as some of these companies is horrifying
to me.
I don't want to spend my time and energy selling, and then later defending, a
fantasy to investors. Nor the crushing anxiety that must come with that. I
just want to build something that the economy values for it's utility, and pay
my rent in the process.
Though I guess after acheiving that, I'd probably start looking up...
~~~
parthdesai
Definitely, i would rather earn little less and work for myself or someone
sane rather than working for someone who is looking to make 10x return anyhow.
------
pascalxus
These trends and actions aren't arbitrary. It's a reaction to the fact that
the world is becoming increasingly "Winner take All". VCs, having enough
information to recognize this fact, are now shoveling more and more money into
fewer and fewer investments.
On the plus side, I hope that means we'll get more companies that are truely
taking on Moon Shot problems and not just building another useless app we
don't need.
The danger on the other side, is companies that use those large funds for rent
seeking behaviors that hurt consumers in the long run.
------
weka
In some states, yes. Here in the South, KS, TN, FL (maybe), AL and GA. A lot
of these startups... 100M would be a godsend.
------
Xcelerate
Is there a website/newsletter of these companies that receive funding each
month? I would be curious to learn more about them.
~~~
ylere
[http://fortune.com/newsletter/termsheet/](http://fortune.com/newsletter/termsheet/)
------
setgree
A professor friend notes a similar dynamic in grant applications. Certain big
philanthropic groups only have bandwidth to look at grants that are >=$1M --
with predictable effects (grants balloon, the amount of time spent thinking
about how to spend each marginal dollar asymptotes to zero, etc.).
------
gumby
An important point: I looked up the deals mentioned the article and they were
all late stage, where such numbers are unsurprising. One company was a bit
over 2 years old (and then did a Softbank deal); the others were 6-9 years
old.
The article makes it sound like enormous A round deals are being done in
commerce and tech.
------
bwestergard
Does anyone care to guess how many of these will return the principal? How
many will turn a profit? Of those that turn a profit, how many will be
engaging in some form of regulatory arbitrage (i.e. Uber and labor/taxi
regulation)?
~~~
dmritard96
lots of literature is available on this (granted, not always clear what their
source of info is).
In general, many funds at that stage are playing the unicorn game (and many
raising 100M are already a unicorn or at least not too far away). Unicorn
economics is basically, 1/10 will hit >1B in value while X% will be mediocre
outcomes and Y% will fail. The 1 unicorn will return the fund generally
speaking, after accounting for X, Y, opportunity costs (this is high given the
strength of the markets lately) and interest.
------
FlyingSideKick
As an entrepreneur I’ve never understood how closing a round of funding is
somehow a badge of success. In fact it is quite the opposite. The ultimate
businesses are those that are highly profitable and can scale using their own
funding. Successful bootstrappers are the best entrepreneurs.
~~~
tomnipotent
> The ultimate businesses are those that are highly profitable and can scale
> using their own funding
I'd like to fly across the sky on a unicorn while drinking whiskey with a
leprechaun, but it's not really in the cards.
How many bootstrapped businesses can you think of in the Fortune 100/500? It's
very rare to get to that size without the capital to make mistakes.
Bootstrapped businesses generally have very little room for risk, and the ones
with business models that can both be executed on and monetized profitably to
> $100MM revenue/yr can probably be counted on two hands (e.g. GitHub, Plenty
Of Fish, Braintree, GoPro).
~~~
madamelic
>the ones with business models that can both be executed on and monetized
profitably to > $100MM revenue/yr can probably be counted on two hands (e.g.
GitHub, Plenty Of Fish, Braintree, GoPro).
If you or even a small handful of people own 100% of a company, you don't need
$100MM ARR to get rich beyond need.
You won't become Bezos but bootstrapped companies don't need to become
unicorns to make everyone there be filthy rich. There are tons of people who
bootstrapped companies and are very well-off from it.
~~~
graycat
On every major body of water in or on the boundary of the US, there are
yachts. The yacht owners are overwhelming full or part owners of a successful
business. Except maybe for near San Francisco or Boston, nearly none of the
owners took venture capital.
Lesson: The people in the US quite comfortable financially rarely took venture
capital.
------
scranglis
$100M is still big money.
~~~
tim333
I guess if you are looking to serve the world population it's only like a
couple of cents per head.
------
izzydata
It seems like you should still be able to accomplish a lot with 100 million.
Maybe the problem is that startups are wasting too much money and not being
productive and / or efficient enough with finances. Now it takes the average
startup more money to accomplish the same amount of progress.
~~~
madamelic
>Maybe the problem is that startups are wasting too much money and not being
productive and / or efficient enough with finances.
Definitely. I was talking to one startup and they were on the 5th round and
they started in ~2016. They bragged that they had raised $100MM, but no
mention of profitability or why they were raising so much.
Tons of people think "we raised $100MM" is impressive, what's more impressive
is not blowing out your cap table and diluting everyone except investors.
~~~
adventured
I've been at the start-up game non-stop since the mid 1990s. You know what's
really amazing today? What would have cost me $30,000 per year in
infrastructure in 1999 or 2003, plus the obnoxious management of it all, is
now $2k or $3k at DigitalOcean (and others) and rather easy to script and
manage. After you adjust for the better hardware vs increased total Internet
users scale and often increased resource demands, I also think that value
proposition heavily tilts toward a greater than 10x gain versus eg 15 years
ago.
Most everyone here will fully understand that effect. I'm skeptical the
NYTimes et al. understands what it has done to the start-up vs capital
equation however.
When Excite got started, you know what they needed? A $10,000, 10gb drive.
Vinod Khosla had to provide it just so they could properly test out their
search engine. Adjusting to today's scale, the equivalent might be three dozen
virtual servers for tens of hours per month at a cost of $100.
I don't _need_ venture capital to scale to a large size. It's beautiful, the
VC aspect has almost entirely become optional outside of a few niche
scenarios. That has provided the large capital raising start-ups with a lot of
sustained bargaining power that they have never had before. If nothing else,
you can simply wait longer to deal with VCs, boosting your position. That's
not going away with the next crash (it will deflate some of course), that cost
edge is here to stay. The leverage point is: can you actually build the thing,
can you execute, do you have the ability / persistence / etc to get it done.
It really wasn't that long ago that infrastructure was the biggest cost in
being able to prove out an Internet business and scale. Just to put on a good
test of a product meant for scale you had to sink large sums of money in
upfront. Today the people - their time - have become the biggest cost (unless
you're in SF etc., then it's that and real-estate). If I want to start
something today, my time is the (personal) red ink risk, rather than very
large amounts of capital plowed into infrastructure.
------
bitL
Bootstrapping is the way to go; borrow/raise money only if you are already in
the exponential growth phase and need cashflow for expansion.
------
arisAlexis
then they say crypto is overvalued
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sony and Panasonic announce the Archival Disc format - jhack
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201403/14-0310E/index.html
======
dsr_
Important information that will drastically affect actual usage not provided:
\- expected and guaranteed lifetime of discs \- minimum undamaged read/write
speeds \- recoverable-error read speeds \- bit error rate for writing and
reading
Let's take a typical small business system's requirements. We have a 2U
database with 12 3.5" hot-swap disks, 2 200GB SSDs for caching and 10 3TB
disks in a RAID10. We have up to 15TB that we want to archive.
Optimism: we get 100MB/s write speed and a write BER of 10^-15. We swap 30
500GB disks, each taking about an hour and a half to write, and about one in a
thousand disks has an unrecoverable error.
More likely: we get 75MB/s sustained write speed and a write BER of 10^-14. We
swap 30 500GB disks, each taking close to two hours, and we can expect one in
three complete sets to have an unrecoverable error.
Press releases: not quite useful.
~~~
wazoox
In the meanwhile, you could grab an existing LTO-6 drive, and archive
everything on 6 uncompressed tapes in about 30 hours (much less if your data
is prone to compression).
~~~
beagle3
Or 4x 4TB drives (at ~$180-$250 each from a quick newegg search), at ~15 hours
if you can connect all of them at the same time, or ~60 hours if you need to
do that serially (assuming 75MB/sec, which I often get - are you sure you're
actually getting 150MB/sec on your LTO-6 tapes?)
At about a quarter of the price of the LTO tape drive alone -- data can be
recovered anywhere for the next 20 years or so (I have tapes from 2002 that I
was unable to find a tape drive for in 2007, but I have a pair of 15GB IDE
disks from 2000 that I checked last month and are still readable).
At $60-$80/2.5TB, ($24/TB) LTO6 does have an advantage to disk ($40/TB) if you
have hundreds of TBs to backup. However, because of the cost of the drive
itself ($3000), you only break even after 200TB or so. And if your drive
breaks (or you need to backup in one place and recover in another, as is often
the case with DR plans), you break even only after 400TB or so.
Since approximately 1998, hard drives for backup beat tapes on capacity,
price, access speed (drives are random access!) accessibility (an external
universal SATA/IDE can be bought for $30 or so, but you already have the
connections on your motherboard so you don't even need it). I haven't been
able to find anyone with a convincing argument for tapes - maybe you have one?
~~~
wazoox
Well I've recently restored 150 LTO-2 tapes from 2002/2003 using a perfectly
current LTO-4 drive, and I'm pretty sure you'd have a heck of a hard time
successfully reading all of a bunch of 150 hard drives of the same vintage
without losing a single file.
Hard drives are much less reliable than tapes; hard drives aren't made to be
stored on shelves; and when a hard drive fails, you most of the time lose most
or all of its data, while a tape failure generally affects only one file (if
it's a reasonably large file and you aren't using compression).
As soon as your storage and archival needs are more than a few disk drives, do
yourself a service and switch either to RDX or to tape. Storing basic HDD on
shelves is a recipe for data loss. I know it because we sell backup solutions
to people doing it and losing data all the time :)
~~~
beagle3
Disclaimer: my experience with tapes is dated. I used IBM tapes with a
mainframe (System 390, library robot and all) until 1995, and then only used
consumer level myself, but had witnessed the occasional horror story at a
client's.
> Well I've recently restored 150 LTO-2 tapes from 2002/2003 using a perfectly
> current LTO-4 drive, and I'm pretty sure you'd have a heck of a hard time
> successfully reading all of a bunch of 150 hard drives of the same vintage
> without losing a single file.
That might be true. However, I have so far had perfect success with about 50
or so drives that I've restored from (across 10 years or so), and abysmal
success with tapes (about 1/10 in the mainframe days would not restore).
> Hard drives are much less reliable than tapes; hard drives aren't made to be
> stored on shelves;
That's true, but neither are tapes. Hard drives are less tolerant to
environmental conditions than tapes, they survive better when exposed to heat,
and get damaged more quickly when exposed to cold (oils used to keep it
running smooth tend to congeal irreversibly when exposed to cold for long).
Also, at least in the past, even weak magnetic fields wreaked havoc on tapes,
and even strong ones spared drives.
> As soon as your storage and archival needs are more than a few disk drives,
> do yourself a service and switch either to RDX or to tape. Storing basic HDD
> on shelves is a recipe for data loss. I know it because we sell backup
> solutions to people doing it and losing data all the time :)
In my current top-secret venture, I need to keep everything (~20TB/customer)
randomly accessible for 3 years, and cold-store accessible or 7. So far, we
just keep multiple copies (some online and some offline), and keep refershing
to newer larger drives every couple of years. When I specced it 3 years ago,
tapes were twice as expensive (I need a tape drive at every customer location
+ at least two at my office) and didn't properly address the random access
aspect.
But I keep re-evaluating. So far, the next step seems to be going to a
BackBlaze style pod - which would also address the valid drive-fails-
completely concern you raised.
p.s., I find the "compressed" statistics really misleading. Every kind of
backup software can compress - if I saw a hard drive manufacturer sell a ("2TB
drive (1TB uncompressed)" I would consider it fraudulent, but that's the
standard for tapes. For the record, my data is (as far as tape drives are
concerned) not compressible at all -- think audio, video, jpegs, and other
analog recordings.
EDIT: p.p.s: Of course, don't keep hard drives on shelves. Nor tapes. Humidity
and temperature need to be controlled, and the environment needs to be anti-
static. For archival purposes, the 5400-RPM usb self-powered disks are a
little slow, but keep very well, in my experience, with reasonable
temp/humidity.
EDIT2: (bad) memories are coming back. The biggest problem I recall with tapes
in the mainframe days, were that some tapes (the daily and weekly backup sets)
were continuously reused, to the point that mechanical wear and tear was a
bigger problem than magnetic wear. And the even bigger problem was that you
only found that out when trying to restore. One advantage of disks is that you
keep reading them while writing them - wear is apparent much more quickly. If
you're only doing archives and never rewrite tapes, that doesn't matter. If
you keep reusing the same tapes/disks, it makes a huge difference in
reliability.
~~~
wazoox
Yes modern use case for tapes is archive, not backup. In fact, LTO-7 should be
back-compatible from LTO-4 onwards to reflect this. Most people do backup
disk-to-disk, with a remote copy on tape for instance.
------
Tepix
What about M-Disc? The DVD-writers that can write them are just as cheap as
normal ones and I think $4 for a DVD-R is acceptable for long term storage.
They announced that they would offer Blu-Ray media soon but I haven't seen
them for sale.
~~~
mashmac2
[http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/](http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/) for
those curious - it appears to be a stronger archival DVD/blu-ray that is
already burn-able on certain drives that are on the market.
~~~
cgore
Has anybody used these? A 1,000-year DVD/Blu-Ray sounds good. I would use it
if it is actually reliable. (Actually just want decades, but centuries is
better.)
~~~
post_break
Non LTH BD-R has an estimated lifetime of 50 years if stored properly. 40
cents a disk. In a cd case, in your closet.
M-Disk 1000 years, same storage idea. $5 a disc.
------
Pitarou
This makes perfect sense.
Sony and Panasonic need to do _something_ with their lead in optical disk
technology, but there's no demand for a Blu-ray successor. Heck, there isn't
even much demand for Blu-ray. So archiving is the way to go.
I just hope they make those things to last.
~~~
sliverstorm
Demand for Blu-ray is there. Perhaps not as great or immediate as the demand
for DVD after VHS was (thanks to great backwards compatibility), but at least
everyone I know or have met has switched to Blu-ray for their new movie buys.
If there's any repression in the movie market, I would blame prices/multi-
format bundling. I don't want to buy a six-version pack with two different
digital versions, a Blu-ray copy, a DVD copy, a 4:3 DVD copy, and a VHS copy
for $40. I want ONE DISC, Blu-ray, for $8-10
~~~
wernercd
Name a bundle that included BR, DVD and... Widescreen/4:3 copies? Much less
VHS?
I'll pay a couple extra dollars for the BR + DVD bundles (Although, all my
stuff plays BR these days)... I think it's fairly standard to get Widescreen
these days as well. I don't remember any recent 4:3 releases for newer titles.
The main issue I have is "release day" discounts of $~10-15... followed by
months of $~20-25. I hate missing a "must have" and then waiting until the
price is reasonable again.
~~~
sliverstorm
I was mildly exaggerating, but I mean stuff like this:
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CTSDDVO/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CTSDDVO/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2TO0N2MFVR7LV&coliid=I2HH5BUT7XKQR9)
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00867GHS8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00867GHS8/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2TO0N2MFVR7LV&coliid=I1FWD427HL83LU)
I don't _mind_ the 2-disc BR/DVD bundles, I just wish I had the option to buy
a 1-disc BR instead. It gets even harder when you want a 1-disc 3D BR.
~~~
hga
What these bundles are telling us---and they're fairly common in US market
anime---is that the price of pressing a DVD is so cheap it's better to make
one SKU with both. Probably also encourages people to buy a Blu-Ray player as
well if they still haven't.
~~~
sliverstorm
And that's fine, but the bundle seems to be used to justify higher prices.
"Oh, well it _would_ be $10, but you get both a Blu-ray and a DVD, so we have
to charge you $20"
~~~
hga
Bleah. I haven't noticed that in the US anime market, but prices are all over
the map as companies seek better/sustainable business models. Anime suffered
from the general decline in DVD sales, and the decrease in retail outlets,
like The Musicland Group (Musicland, Sam Goody, Suncoast Motion Picture
Company, On Cue, and Media Play superstores) going poof after Best Buy bought
them.
------
jackgavigan
I expect this will be the same form-factor as existing 5.25" magneto-optical
and Ultra Density Optical disks, which have been around for quite a while.
Back in 1998, I dealt with HP jukeboxes the size of a wardrobe with robotic
arms to pluck 9.1GB magneto-optical disks out of the racks and stick them into
drives. IIRC, HP guaranteed their disks for 100 years.
~~~
ChuckFrank
I get a kick out of the idea that someone would guarantee something beyond
their lifespan, and possibly that of the institution. 100 years is still a
pretty long time, and lots of things can happen, so I'm not sure who would be
there at the 80 year mark if something were to go wrong with the disks.
~~~
unethical_ban
I guarantee my stone tablets will last 100 years if they are cared for as
specified in the user manual.
Am I crazy?
~~~
err4nt
Yes stone is great, but how many bytes/tablet do you get on average?
~~~
eropple
Are you chiseling in UTF-8 or UTF-16?
------
gggggggg
From the 2013 release: "they intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable
data for future generations".
No mention in the new release how long they are meant to last though. This
seems like a pretty key point to me.
~~~
ekianjo
Even if they are not meant to last, say, more than 10 years, you could back
them up with fresh disks in 8-9 years timeframe and be good to go for another
decade, What's important after is that the disk can still be read by newer
drives later on.
------
blue1
This does not appear to be a consumer-oriented format like CDs and DVDs, but
rather a niche product. Meaning that it will probably be not cheap. How is it
supposed to be competitive with tape? 1TB is not that much.
~~~
jackgavigan
Tape is less reliable than optical disks.
~~~
stonith
It's also so slow to retrieve the content that as a DR strategy it's not very
good, since you could be waiting months to recover all your data.
I would imagine that a silo with multiple robots to place disks in many
readers would be significantly better than tape in most ways, and would retain
the low power advantage that tape enjoys over powered systems.
~~~
welterde
The time to read the complete tape might be longer than the time to read a
blu-ray, but in terms of data rates modern tapes are still about a factor of 3
ahead of optical disks (160MB/s for Ultrium 6 vs 54MB/s for Blu-ray 12x).
~~~
kalleboo
I wonder what happened to the idea of multiple optical read heads. When CD-ROM
drives were trying to maintain 52x read rates, I think Pioneer or someone made
a drive that read at twice the rate using 2 separate optical assemblies.
~~~
sp332
Kenwood had a 72x drive that used 7 lasers!
[http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2](http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2)
------
roeme
Very interesting, though I'm really missing information on what kind of
material they are using. While it's true that CD's can take a bit of the kind
of environmental abuse they describe (you scratching your game's CD doesn't
fall into this category), we all know that in reality they weren't that
durable – though I suppose that stemmed more from the fact that most CD's were
produced cheaply, corners cut, a lot of abuse by the end user and whatnot. Did
you know that there's even a fungus that really likes to eat CD's? (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotrichum_candidum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotrichum_candidum)
– Not so much for damp archive cellars, then! ).
In conclusion; I think that just enforcing high manufacturing standards won't
suffice, there must be some material definition as well. Looking forward for
more information on this.
~~~
nodata
Wasn't the problem with CDs that they had a plastic layer, and a scratchable
metal data layer with no protection on top?
~~~
ars
Yah, everyone assumed that the clear side was the fragile side and protected
it, but actually the label side is much more fragile - and unlike the clear
side, unfixable if it gets damaged.
But what happened to the promised sapphire (alumina) coating on disks that
makes them scratch proof?
------
rlpb
1TB doesn't take so long to upload nowadays. Isn't this product going to have
battle with a new era where we just upload to a storage provider, the provider
aggregates customers' stored data on a massive scale and so the underlying
storage technology no longer matters?
I'm thinking about services like Amazon S3 and Glacier here, together with
whatever competition appears. I presume that at this level, what matters is
exabyte level storage hardware (perhaps a robot-managed room of archival discs
or tapes). One where the provider can switch technology every few years, and
customers never have to notice.
At capacities on the level of terabytes, we're getting to the point where
upload bandwidth isn't so much of a bottleneck any more, aren't we?
~~~
Spittie
What? I don't know where you live, but I assure you that there are plenty of
places where uploading a TB takes a lot of times (for example, it would take
about 3 months with my home connection). Even using the average global upload
speed (7.6Mbps[1]) it would take 12 days.
So no, I don't think this is going to battle storage providers.
[1] [http://www.netindex.com/](http://www.netindex.com/)
~~~
rlpb
I claim that people who have the speed of your home connection is not the
target market. You may want one of these, but this kind of demand will not be
enough to support the existence of this product.
Businesses have a choice: they can invest in buying storage hardware for a
bunch of their computers every few years, or they can invest in a fast-enough
Internet connection and outsource the storage. That Internet connection will
bring them additional benefits over just storage.
I claim that the economics are switching in favor of the Internet option, and
will continue to do so over the next decade.
~~~
Spittie
The problem is that businesses don't always have a choice. Maybe big
corporations do, but for small companies, you have to deal with that the
locals ISPs give you. Where I live (Italy), unless you happen to live in a
major city (and even there, the coverage is small and the best speed you can
get is 10mb/s) the best you can get is a SHDSL line, which gives you at most
8mb/s for about 300-400€/month. And that's if you're lucky to have a central
nearby that supports it, otherwise ADSL2+ it is (1mb/s). I'm sure this is the
situation in most of the world.
There's is also the "political" problem (as outlined by everyone else), I
can't see every company wanting to outsource the storage of their secret data.
Then you're also at the mercy of Amazon, that for whatever reason can stop
providing you service (It's a tiny possibility, but it's still there).
~~~
mseebach
For the "Archive Disc" to be viable, it needs to still be viable several years
from now. Despite areas with poor connectivity, connection bandwidth will only
ever go up (and prices down), and it does so very quickly.
------
jrochkind1
It seems this is mainly just a larger capacity (1TB) optical disc, and the
'archival' is just marketing?
For that matter, if they were really marketing at those who are professionally
concerned with long-term reliable storage (archivists), even the marketing
would include some information on what makes this new media any more reliable
over the long-term than existing optical media. The press release includes
_nothing_ on this, odd for something branded as 'archival'.
It looks like it's just a larger capacity optical disc (which I'm sure there's
a market for), with the 'archival' part just being marketting (odd; apparently
they think there's a market for this too, even when it's just spin).
~~~
keeperofdakeys
CD's don't last forever
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Lifespan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Lifespan)),
so you can't use them for archival purposes. For now, there is no way to tell
whether these will be any better.
~~~
hga
I believe you can use them for archival purposes _if you buy quality discs_.
Which for me means Made in Japan Taiyo Yuden, although perhaps Mitsui/MAM-A
are good. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=7372810](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=7372810)
for my most recent experiences with these discs.
~~~
acdha
This is really, really, dangerous advice unless you're following proper
archival practice and have made multiple copies which are regularly checked
for bit errors. For all media, but particularly for CD-Rs, you have to be very
careful about environmental conditions – a few degrees temperature difference
makes a difference for how fast the dye degrades and unless you actually
monitor this, it's easy to have that problem without noticing it until things
start failing.
For a small user, you have the extra concern of betting large on a single
production run from a single vendor. If you care about archival, you'd really
want to burn multiple copies using discs from different production runs and,
preferably, different manufacturers.
(This is, of course, why I'd really recommend using CD-Rs only in conjunction
with a different technology such as AWS Glacier which has a completely
different set of failure modes)
~~~
hga
There's actually a lot less commonality in a single production run than you'd
think, or so I believe having analyzed Taiyo Yuden disc hub numbers. Different
physical machines, I suspect. But of course the "chemistry" will be roughly
the same, and thus a whole batch or more could go bad early. Although one
might hope they do accelerated aging tests on their production.
You are of course correct about the precautions that have to be used, but
there's screw cases for everything you can use to back up your data. I was
merely responding to the assertion that CD-Rs are entirely unsuited for
archival purposes, and backed it up with my own experiences over a decade and
a half.
Me, I live a hair's breath from Tornado Alley, and use multiple means to
backup my data, local discs, disks in another room (which got trashed enough
to be unreliable in a tornado [http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/](http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/)) which I've switched to LTO-4 tape,
some of which live in a safe deposit box, and the really important stuff
offsite to rsync.net (which saved the only important data totally lost locally
from the tornado, or at least without $$$ to a data recovery firm). And of
course the CD-Rs, which at some point I'll start putting into the disk and LTO
bases system.
~~~
acdha
> Although one might hope they do accelerated aging tests on their production
The experienced storage admins I know share that hope but don't trust vendors
not to get it wrong. It's just too easy to miss a factor which turns out to
matter.
> I was merely responding to the assertion that CD-Rs are entirely unsuited
> for archival purposes, and backed it up with my own experiences over a
> decade and a half.
Question: have you done bit-level checksum validation on that old media or is
that just the ability to read without errors? There's a little bit of error
correction built into the format but I wouldn't trust it for anything
important.
~~~
hga
Bit level CRC-32 checksum validation, absolutely. (Which is actually probably
marginal for the file sizes concerned, but that's the standard everyone uses.)
However my words are coming across in this discussion, I'm really not a very
trusting guy! Many of my early computer experiences were in the early '80s
with surplus hardware from the '70s, including a PDP-11/45 that was a bit
beyond the 300th DEC manufactured. Of course everyone used magtape back then
for backups, and those were quite reliable (originally intended to be reliable
off-line storage).
ADDED: and there are other precautions to take. E.g. I only bought my optical
media in April and October, to minimize the environmental stress during
shipping.
~~~
acdha
> Bit level CRC-32 checksum validation, absolutely. (Which is actually
> probably marginal for the file sizes concerned, but that's the standard
> everyone uses.)
In the digital preservation community, the standard is at least MD-5 / SHA-1
and most people are moving to SHA-256/512\. With a CRC-32 check you're likely
to get false-negatives for modern data volumes and there are disturbing
reports of CRC failures at higher than expected rates[1] which suggest that
the best answer is using multiple, cryptographic hashes particularly since the
computation has effectively been free for a least a decade except on unusually
CPU-starved storage hosts.
1\. I don't recall the paper but I believe it was a followup to
[http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2000/conf/paper/sigco...](http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2000/conf/paper/sigcomm2000-9-1.pdf)
------
nemasu
Sounds interesting. Hopefully they will release more technical information
about what makes it "archival" quality. Seems like a normal Blu-ray at first
glance.
~~~
fur0n
like it says, higher capacity (300GB, 500GB, and 1TB) along with higher
redundancy.
~~~
deletes
But they don't say how well it does, compared to the problem of cd/dvd, that
fail to work after 10 years for no apparent reason( no visible physical damage
).
------
hrktb
>development of a standard for professional-use next-generation optical discs
\-- > dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in
temperature and humidity when stored.
So it's a new standard with tougher physical requirements. Actually in a
japanese press release [1] they present at the end the current archival
solution offered by Sony, which consist of a set of 12 optical discs in a
cartridge. I'd image this new disc standard could be sealed as well for better
protection.
[1]
[http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/Press/201307/13-0729/](http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/Press/201307/13-0729/)
------
jmnicolas
I, for one, am glad that disc is not dead.
------
egeozcan
I'd bet this will take years to produce in reasonable price levels and by then
the capacity will have been made irrelevant by the market.
------
anon4
If these still come as flimsy plastic fully exposed to the elements and can't
be touched on the face, lest the data be destroyed, I'll be sorely
disappointed.
Seriously, why hasn't anyone made diskette-style discs a common standard? I
have never seen a cd last more than a few years, or one single touch with a
finger on the shiny side.
~~~
rwallace
Well, if you're going to go to a cartridge style format, the competition is
hard disks, which can store three or four terabytes each in a highly reliable
form; sure, they cost more per disc, but the upfront costs are very low; I
suspect the volume at which cartridges would become cheaper is larger than the
market would support.
~~~
sspiff
Hard disks are also not very good at long term storage, I believe most aren't
designed to hold their magnetic charge for decades without being powered and
rewritten.
~~~
rwallace
Sure, but the same is true of every high-density medium. You have to either
accept data storage is a dynamic process of repeated copying, or else do it
the old-fashioned way and store your data on acid-free paper.
(Well, unless you want to use one of the exotic technologies that etch your
data on metal plates or whatever; but in practice, paper is a lot cheaper.)
------
lampe3
And why not save it on a External HDD ? I thought that CDs/DVDs are bad for
backup because they crumble.
~~~
sspiff
Hard disks are also bad for backup because they rely on a magnetic charge
being retained on the platters. Eventually, this charge becomes to weak to be
read reliably, so it is unsuitable for long-term storage. Pressed disks (as
in, those not burnt with a consumer drive) can last a lifetime if you take
proper care of them, and are not as vulnerable to light, heat or humidity as
the typical DVD-R.
~~~
lampe3
Thanks for the information.
If i cant afford to press the disks how should i backup my data?
Right now we are using nas systems with a raid setup
~~~
sspiff
To be honest, I haven't got a clue. Affordable, multi-decade storage is still
an unsolved problem as far as I know.
A RAID NAS is a good medium-term solution, and perhaps creating offline
backups on disconnected drives every 5 years or so can solve long term
storage, though it does require maintenance over time (refreshing the drives).
If you are not afraid to use cloud storage, you might use those services, but
I don't know how long those will be around.
~~~
hga
Note that if you're using cheap, big consumer quality disks and RAID 5, if you
lose one you're likely to lose the whole array because at least one of the
other disks will have unrecoverable read errors during the rebuild. RAID 6
helps, but the math is still frightening.
Granted, I haven't looked for years at what's been done to address this, but
based on the state of the art back then I'd only try this with ZFS, which
checksums everything it puts to disk, which among other things catches the
incredible screw case of the very complicated firmware writing the right data
correctly to the wrong location on the disk (!).
------
mrmondo
I'm almost certain that 1TB isn't large enough for 2014, let alone the next
3-5 years.
~~~
aunty_helen
I'm sure they would sell you more than one ;)
------
bebopsbraunbaer
is there any information about the lifespan the disc? how long cant he data be
read before the discs start to lose data because of age? 5 years?
------
pasbesoin
Is there a "plug and chug" way to do PAR (PAR2, etc.) segmentation and error
correction if one is not using WinRAR?
------
al2o3cr
Ah yes, this must be targeting the ever-popular "people who didn't pay
attention to any of Sony's OTHER proprietary formats that have now been
utterly abandoned" market.
~~~
hga
I've not heard of Sony doing this in the "professional" market, e.g. while
AIT/SAIT has been abandoned, Amazon indicates you can still buy tape
cartridges. But, yeah, if you went with them right now you're wishing you went
with LTO, or have already switched or started.
On the other hand,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372595](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372595)
indicates Panasonic is not trustworthy in this area.
Maybe give this 5-10 years and see if has staying power, adoption by others,
etc. The LTO ecosystem shows this sort of thing can be done.
------
slacka
The Holographic Versatile Disc format has existed since 2004 and can store up
to 6 TB vs Archival Disc format capacity of only 300 GB - 1 TB. Any idea what
advantage ADs have over HVDs?
~~~
taspeotis
I think the main advantage is that ADs are relatively less vaporware than HVDs
[1].
> Standards for 100 GB read-only holographic discs and 200 GB recordable
> cartridges were published by ECMA in 2007, but no holographic disc product
> has appeared in the market.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc)
------
dannyvanhooy
Mitsubishi ARLEDIA, long-term DVD-R optical media storage are using this
longer. I think they started in 2008.
------
dannyvanhooy
Mitsubishi ARLEDIA, long-term DVD-R optical media storage has this a few years
ago. I think they started in 2008. Archival Disc format is not a great news.
~~~
roeme
How are we today, little sockpuppet?
(Can somebody with more karma please flay, er, flag'im?)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I am a MUMPS programmer – Ask me anything - quink
The vast majority of my work involves maintaining a system written in MUMPS, running on InterSystems Caché.<p>This may be the Stockholm syndrome speaking, but it's pretty alright. And I say this working with extensively with, among other things, Python and JavaScript also. My educational background is an MSc in Physics, so I'm also familiar with everything from MATLAB to LabVIEW to Assembler to PHP.<p>Ask me anything!
======
quink
Just to give everyone here a rough idea, the most annoying thing I found
recently is that the function:
$ZCONVERT(stringVar, "O", "JS")
Which escapes stringVar into a valid JavaScript string without quotation marks
doesn't escape line separator or paragraph separator (U+2028 and U+2029), when
it should.
This was also a bit of a problem in browsers, JSONP and the JSON spec a while
ago. Life in the MUMPS world isn't as bad as you'd think. Except for a lack of
nice libraries. You _do_ _not_ want to know when regexes made it into the
language. Last year. But there has been something similar - pattern matching -
which alleviated the need for them a bit. And calling out to DLLs is fairly
easy. It's really driven more by the healthcare industry than anything else.
Also, here's a short FizzBuzz I wrote:
f i=1:1:100 w ! w:'(i#3) "Fizz" w:'(i#5) "Buzz" w:'$x i
Written in pseudocode:
for i=1:1:100 {
write newline
write if not i%3 "Fizz"
write if not i%5 "Buzz"
write if not cursorposx i
}
Shorter than any other FizzBuzz I've seen other than Perl, yet probably more
readable.
~~~
plaguuuuuu
CoffeeScript is pretty cool
for i in [1..100] console.log(['Fizz' if i % 3 is 0] + ['Buzz' if i % 5 is 0]
or i)
~~~
quink
MUMPS is pretty cool:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4151554/need-mumps-
sample...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4151554/need-mumps-sample-
code/6365068#6365068)
I've actually decoded it. Turns out that the thing most useful for this, by
far, is an ASCII table :P
------
fennecfoxen
"everything from MATLAB to LabVIEW to Assembler to PHP."
This is kind of a litany of relatively-unstructured programming languages and
sounds like a relatively one-dimensional view of computer program organization
techniques. Of those listed, PHP is the one with the most advanced code-
organization and object model, but its object model is hardly renowned.
Have you ever considered learning something like Ruby in depth and messing
around with intensive object-oriented techniques and write-your-own-DSL
metaprogramming and the like, so you can know how the other half of the world
gets to program?
(ed) oh, and here's me getting -1'd. wonder what that's about. probably
someone with thin skin thinking that asking about highly structured
programming implies a put-down on the other kind. maybe I could put in some
words of praise for Matlab's awesome matrix handling and it'd help? :P
~~~
quink
My languages of choice are JavaScript, SQL and Python and I've gone quite deep
in all of them. I'd consider ObjectScript compiling down to efficiently work
through SQL queries or to form objects and other things a metalanguage, so
Caché isn't as one-dimensionally pure imperative as you'd think.
I don't have any formal background in computer science, so thank you for
pointing this out, and it's true. In a nutshell, you're telling me to work
through SICP, right? :P
Edit: Yes, you need to mention MATLAB's matrix handling. Probably also say
something about NumPy and PyPy, I'm sure that'd help too.
~~~
fennecfoxen
Okay! Since you HAVE done something like Python that's good to know; knowledge
of your experience colors my interpretation of your interpretations. :)
------
mcherm
Are you looking for work? Because my company is hiring good MUMPS programmers
-- we are nearly always on the lookout for qualified people.
I bring it up, not because I think you're likely to be looking for work, but
because I thought the others reading this discussion thread might be
interested in the fact that it is difficult to hire qualified MUMPS
programmers.
I work at a bank, and our banking system (the system that keeps track of the
balances in the accounts) is written in MUMPS -- probably because it dates
back to the time when that was the shiny new programming language.
~~~
mumpster
Yikes. I've not done mumps in a long while, but I've heard from old co-workers
that Cache has had a number of significant security vunerabilities in recent
years.
~~~
quink
There was a thing a little while ago, but haven't seen anything big in many
years apart from that. Mostly something about database corruption on VMS or
ECP or similarly obscure things not really relevant to us.
------
DrJokepu
The first thing I would do if I had to work with something like MUMPS is to
write like, a MUMPS LLVM backed or something takes takes a saner language and
emits MUMPS, therefore abstracting away the crazy. Why don't you guys do that?
Or maybe it's already been done?
~~~
quink
It has been done. The most popular form of MUMPS out there, Caché ObjectScript
is a superset of MUMPS, so all existing MUMPS code will run on Caché.
But it adds a big bunch of things from error handling to better variable scope
to classes to, I wish I was kidding, proper 'if'.
Something that's also been added (to GT.M as well, afaik), because it is so
tightly integrated with its database, are tcommit, trollback and tstart as
commands, which are strictly speaking database commands and not the kind of
thing you'd expect to find in a programming language.
~~~
kd0amg
_proper 'if'_
What (if anything) does MUMPS proper have for 'if'?
~~~
quink
'if'.
There's two different types of if constructs, and it's awful, the older one is
with a dot syntax.
What's a dot syntax, you may ask? Well, for each level of the if you just
prefix a dot:
[http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20131/csp/docbook/DocBook....](http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20131/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=RCOS_cdo_legacy)
Makes you want to stab your eyes out. Note also that the comments need to have
a dot prefixed as well. That bit me before.
~~~
iSnow
>This may be the Stockholm syndrome speaking, but it's pretty alright.
>Makes you want to stab your eyes out.
I dunno...
------
seanwoods
Came here to plug the GT.M version of MUMPS, which is really great. It uses
the underlying UNIX system as much as possible (so, for example, your routines
are not stored in the database!)
[http://tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/](http://tinco.pair.com/bhaskar/gtm/doc/books/)
It's easy to put a CGI interface on top of GT.M - performance is quite good.
[http://71.174.62.16/demo/TestCGI.htm](http://71.174.62.16/demo/TestCGI.htm)
Personally I am working on a utility that wraps GT.M in an "environment"
similar to a Python virtualenv, but I'm not sure I'm ready to show my baby to
the world yet...
~~~
quink
Ewww, CGI.
InterSystems Caché ships with Apache as an administrative web server for its
Management Portal, through which you can also run all applications.
It ships with modules for Apache and IIS (ISAPI), and probably others. These
come with a little ini file that's meant to sit in the same directory.
------
perturbation
I appear to be an inferior version of you; you've described my job, I'm also
familiar w/ MATLAB (loved the absolute pants off that language in class),
python, and javascript, but I only have a B.S. in Physics. I also think that
MUMPS is unfairly maligned.
Do you live in a place that rhymes with 'Radisson'?
~~~
quink
Nope, there are in fact MUMPS programmers overseas too - I'm in Australia.
Also, if it wasn't for the sheer number of libraries PHP ships with, I'd
without a moment's hesitation say Caché + Caché ObjectScript >>> PHP + MySQL.
~~~
flylib
is it possible to use Cache ObjectScript on GTM?
~~~
quink
The only experience I've had with GT.M is playing with it a little bit on
Debian - it's only an apt-get away.
As far as I know, no, apart from the shared ANSI M featureset. They're pretty
divergent.
~~~
flylib
what type of job do you have? something in the medical field?
~~~
quink
Nope, not in the medical field.
------
laurenstill
Non-tech question, but with your background, you could have migrated to any
field. Anything stand out as a motivation to move in the direction you did?
LabVIEW/MATLAB were my early intros into CS. I haven't really touched MUMPS
yet, and I should. Thanks for the recommendations.
~~~
quink
After hundreds of applications sent out - in a vast variety of fields,
considering that degree - and an interview with Red Hat I didn't succeed in
ultimately, this was the next best thing. In retrospect, probably better. The
employment market for scientists here in Australia is pretty much complete
crapness unless you do a PhD, which I didn't go for. Plus, I've had the IT
experience and interest and our system is a domain I'm really interested in.
And the company is pretty awesome too, especially my coworkers who are all
equally enthusiastic about both the product and our customers.
Sorry if I'm not going into that much detail :P
~~~
laurenstill
Yeh, did not expect much work detail, but that makes sense. Most of my fellows
voice op-eds of frustration, so it's nice to see someone defend it a bit ;-)
------
JulianMorrison
How does it feel to be using NoSQL so old it came back into fashion? :-P
~~~
quink
We have dozens if not in the low hundreds of SQL tables.
So, while we do have a huge pile of legacy code not using SQL you can map your
NoSQL data structures to SQL tables and you can also later on convert to a
more efficient format that gives you bitmap indices and so on, while still
using the global storage backend.
So, it may have been NoSQL until some point in the nineties and after that it
was really NotOnlySQL.
There's something a bit therapeutic about seeing the indices, including bitmap
indices, and all the data on disk in a format that's intuitive and usable for
humans that you can use without going through SQL, but either by accessing it
directly or through the built-in ORM system. You don't get that with
PostgreSQL or MySQL, or conversely, MongoDB or CouchDB. It's both worlds.
Sure, there's a lot of stuff from PostgreSQL that I would kill for - any
volunteers? - but as a compromise between the two worlds it works quite well
indeed.
Edit: Here's more info:
[http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20131/csp/docbook/DocBook....](http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20131/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=GSQL)
The awesomest points are the %ID pseudo-column, implicit joins, embedded SQL
(which compiles SQL down to native MUMPS code, including cursors and all),
near enough complete SQL-92 and DDL compliance. And the ORM stuff.
------
hnriot
The obvious question would be why? I don't know Caché except what I read on
wikipedia, but having worked with plenty of languages over the years it
doesn't sound like anything you couldn't easily do in python with 100x
readability improvement. I see little reason to go backwards with languages
when we (the CS field) have made such awesome improvements over the years.
Now, rather than worry about the bs stuff we can focus on algorithms and
whether or not an idea is actually useful when working. I build things in
Python all the time, throw away most, but the ones that look promising are
productized.
~~~
atombender
A lot of systems — legacy and current — are written in MUMPS. Historically
MUMPS has been very popular in health care systems (where it originated), and
I believe it's still huge there; it is used and supported by a number of niche
companies for things like patient data.
In other words, MUMPS is a platform and an ecosystem as much as a language.
Think of Java or Ruby — for a lot of companies, including MUMPS shops, staying
with a specific "sub-ecosystem" is simply the most rational choice because
they have so much invested it already.
If you look beyond tech that is currently considered "bleeding edge" — Go,
JavaScript, Ruby and so forth — you will find a lot of companies who rely on
what you may consider weird or even legacy software. For example, Delphi (a
descendant of Borland's Turbo Pascal which is still based on ObjectPascal) is
still very popular. In finance, languages like K are still popular. I believe
finance still has a ton of stuff based on object databases such as
Objectivity/DB, Versant, Matisse and GemStone (Smalltalk), which actually look
a lot like today's document-oriented databases. InterSystems Caché, which is
based on MUMPS, is a hybrid SQL/OODBMS. In other words, the software market
has a lot of aging technology that is still working superbly for the parties
involved. Old code is usually proven code.
~~~
quink
InterSystems Caché is more like UNIX than it is like, let's say, MongoDB. Make
the bottom of it efficient - that's where the runtime and the B-tree storage
operate - and you can build a world on top. SQL from tables to views to
indices, all the ORM and things like classes and MVC are implemented mostly as
macros. And it works pretty well.
~~~
lobster_johnson
Sure. I didn't mean to include Caché when I referred to newer document-
oriented databases. Caché has a different architecture. It's more similar in
design to K and Kdb [1], I suppose, which is also heavily based around vector
operations on persistent arrays.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_\(programming_language\))
------
lowmagnet
Don't really have anything to ask, just wanted to say MUMPS was always neat
when I worked for a medical software company and did conversions from and
older versions of MUMPS to a Caché server.
I liked the one-letter verb abbreviations, even if it made the code feel
somewhat write-only. Data right next to your front-end language was neat too.
~~~
quink
The one letter abbreviations are neat.
There's no substantial change in readability in going from:
if condition: print "Hello World"
Or: if (condition) { console.log("Hello, World\n"); };
To:
w:condition "Hello, World",!
I never type 'write', but just 'w' instead. Here's a list of commands:
[http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20131/csp/docbook/DocBook....](http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20131/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=RCOS)
> Data right next to your front-end language was neat too.
Don't know about neat, it made it very hard to separate your model from your
logic and while convenient at the time that's also quite a bit of a pain.
~~~
lowmagnet
I guess to me the data thing was neat because you didn't have to bust into
another shell just to get at data.
~~~
quink
Here's how to get a string from your persistent on disk configuration,
completely from scratch:
set foo=^config("foo")
The '^' means it's a persistent variable.
Now do this with in the same number of characters either by reading in a flat
file or doing an SQL query in any language. I don't think you'll succeed.
And, yes, it is possible to parameterise this ^config, like so:
set location="^config"
set foo=@location@("foo")
~~~
MichaelGG
I don't get it. That seems like a rather trivial library thing to add in most
languages, at least ones that let you define operators. Otherwise you'd just
fine top-level functions "configp" or whatnot.
Just like "one letter abbreviations". Again, just "let w = printf" if that's
what you're into. I do that kind of stuff all the time, with limited scope.
~~~
quink
The fact that easy persistent on-disk storage other than through file streams
or sqlite and the like is still not a built-in feature or a commonly used
library in languages in 2013 when MUMPS did this in 1960-something then that's
more a commentary on the state of things not MUMPS than the other way round.
Sure, you can do import json; json.load(open('config.json')); json['foo'] and
I have code like that in production right now, but put pickle in comparison to
the above and I'd know which one seems nicer, and not least of all changing
^config("foo") is fully concurrent, caching, network transversable, auditable,
with Caché supporting these things like an operating system should, but in a
built-in way.
------
JustARandomGuy
Do you have any recommendations for books/learning materials/websites for
people who want to learn MUMPs?
~~~
mumpster
I've worked with this ... MUMPS is a dead language. Cache is a proprietary
implementation of mumps that costs _big_ bucks; cache is interpreted and
pretty slow compared to any other language since 1989.
I wouldn't bother.
~~~
quink
I think the most relevant bit is that it's much cheaper than Oracle. And I've
seen Caché do quite complex things quite quickly, like with all database
systems it's up to your indices more than anything else.
------
adamnemecek
How well are you paid? You don't have to give specific numbers, just like in
comparison with the average. I've heard rumors of people getting paid a shit
ton of money to maintain these sorts of systems but those might be just
rumors.
~~~
quink
Sorry to disappoint you, but my job isn't as such the maintenance of a legacy
system. We write new code in Caché, which includes things used by a wider
world like JavaScript and SQL as well.
Ask me again in two or three decades, but our codebase is continuously being
touched in all places and there is an ongoing drive to weed out legacy code
all the time. But just on the side I've been able to get rid of about 30% of
all the legacy code here without spending that much time on it at all mostly
with the help of grep, in part because our system has now moved to being 100%
web from a desktop client.
As for salary, never enough :P, but considering my age, the economy, and my
lifestyle I'm pretty happy.
------
bonzo
Kind of off-topic question but: Could you provide any option to contact you? I
have a couple of questions with regards to MUMPS and I'd like to - if possible
- drop you an e-mail.
~~~
quink
Sure, PM me on reddit - same username.
------
gummydude
I was a key-programmer for distributor in some countries for MSM database,
before they were bought by Intersystem. From my personal experience, mumps
better suited to DB related systems only not fancy stuffs.
------
zrail
Do you work for Epic Systems?
~~~
quink
Nope, not in the healthcare industry at all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Windows Phone app that shows you “best tweets” of Your Twitter stream - rockcoder
http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=d727263c-3a2b-4996-b109-5a6bb572da2b
======
rockcoder
Just a little more info: If You follow many users, sometimes You don't want to
scroll through all unread tweets in your Twitter stream and just want a quick
look at the most "relevant" stuff tailored just for You. So I created a little
app for that
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the driving force behind DirectX got fired - cek
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/06/getting-fired-from-microsoft/
======
Centigonal
This is really interesting. Before now, I'd always viewed DX as this
monolithic _thing_ from Microsoft, and reading about the people behind it,
especially in a moment of weakness, really helps humanize such a faceless
piece of software.
------
antonyme
A very interesting read, especially some of the linked articles and posts.
Interesting additions to the history of the 3D graphics "wars".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Popular Google Play store apps are abusing permissions and committing ad fraud - mzs
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/google-play-store-ad-fraud-du-group-baidu
======
rayraegah
It's not just ad fraud, they've been copying information like whatsapp phone
number, reddit username, telegram username etc.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/miband/comments/8eqtve/why_did_mifi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/miband/comments/8eqtve/why_did_mifit_copy_my_reddit_account_information/)
~~~
DarwinMailApp
I actually can't believe this. How in the name of all the is holy are we
letting them get away with this.
Sure, we talk about the problem a lot. But we need to take action. It seems
every big corporation are abusing the trust we give them in some form or
another.
Please, for the love of God, can anybody prove me wrong. Are there any
companies than don't abuse our trust?
~~~
tremon
Microsoft, for all their other flaws, usually keeps out of the business of
selling their consumers. Perhaps it's because they have better (internal)
monetization possibilities.
~~~
lotsofpulp
Last time I used a Windows computer, there were tons of advertisements in the
start menu.
~~~
deadbunny
And on the lock screen.
------
blantonl
One of the things that is really troubling about the Google Android Play store
is the ease that an app developer can develop an app and remain totally
anonymous unless you are forced to file a lawsuit or subpoena to Google to
reveal information.
I own and operate a fairly popular audio streaming platform, and I've had to
deal with numerous instances of unscrupulous app developers who steal API keys
from our licensed developers, release apps wrapped in tons of ads, and are
able to remain totally anonymous by:
1) Setting up what is presumably a fictitious company
2) Privacy policy link that directs to pastebin
3) Email address for support where nobody responds
These apps steal tens of thousands of dollars of ad revenue from my business
monthly, and I have absolutely zero recourse. Filing DCMA and other complaints
with Google typically goes into a black hole, and when they do respond or
address the issue its typically "we don't see the need to take any action
here" \- presumably because these apps are generating enough revenue for AdMob
and the Play Store that Google has zero incentive to take action.
How often does this happen in the Apple App Store, almost never.
It's absolutely infuriating.
~~~
076ae80a-3c97-4
Time to cycle API keys?
~~~
lima
App update cycles are slow so this would break old versions of his apps.
~~~
blantonl
That, and they can steal the new API keys just as fast as we rotate them. And
since these API keys are licensed to third-party developers we've got to
manage business impact for that third-party.
The problem is Google has no incentive to address these issues, because they
prioritize their own platform growth revenue over user and partner experience.
With all the frustration one can have with the Apple App Store, including huge
wait times for new releases, arbitrary reasonings for declining apps etc, it's
almost worth it vs the wild-west of the Google Play Store.
------
gameswithgo
the locked in store model has completely failed. both for ios and android it
is a terrible experience compared to PC. you are stuck with only the search
tools the hardware maker gives you, often designed in a user hostile way (ios
brings up ads) and no way to bail out to a different store. as well the
monoculture leads to a race to the bottom with garbage programs shoving their
way to the top via misleading a dishonest means, and by sheer numbers.
i want no part of it. when a phone maker comes to the market without this
locked down model i will buy it, and if windows goes this route i will drop it
for linux.
and yea i know you can sideload on android, but the unwashed masses don’t know
that so it doesn’t matter.
~~~
nemothekid
> _and yea i know you can sideload on android, but the unwashed masses don’t
> know that so it doesn’t matter._
Then what is your solution? The unwashed masses _tried_ the wild wild west of
digital software delivery back in the 2000s. It ended with tears, viruses, UAC
and SaaS. Even today, most sideloading, for general consumers, begins with
trying to pirate apps and ends with even more invasive spyware.
The locked in store model is better than than what we had before for the
general consumer (at least iOS's, unequivocally is, IMO). The App Store might
be bad for developers, but it's way better for consumers.
~~~
Yetanfou
The solution is what has been suggested earlier: allow users to choose their
own 'store', don't lock them to a single vendor. This is already possible with
Android where F-Droid is a good example of a 'store' where the chance of being
exposed to these shenanigans is close to zero.
Currently iOS users lack this option so for them the only way out is to change
platform.
~~~
acdha
That doesn’t seem like much of an improvement: if it became popular, you’d see
the same social attacks switch from getting people to install apps to enabling
a new store. F-Droid is safer because it’s much smaller and mostly free
software: that’s good for people who don’t want anything else but it seems
unlikely to satisfy mainstream demand or survive a motivated attack.
~~~
Yetanfou
Linux survived these attacks. Debian survived them. Ubuntu did. More or less
all Linux distributions have been attacked but survived, many of them thrive.
Yes, this is free software. Being less susceptible to these problems has been
one of the stated advantages of using such for a long time. Alternative
'stores' carrying 'pirated' non-free software do not have this advantage and
can easily turn into dark places so the solution does not lie there.
Will people choose a 'boring' free software 'store' over a 'cool pirate store'
(Arrrrr!)? Some will, some won't. Those who will will end up being mostly
silent as the thing just works. Those who won't will be susceptible to the
whims of those who put up those 'stores' and are likely to come home with a
bit more than they asked for.
Some 'stores' will get a good reputation along the lines of that of F-Droid,
some will get the reputation of being the place to go to get the latest craze
but also the latest infection. Users will start making conscious decisions
based on those reputations, just like they already do elsewhere.
Will opening up closed platforms like iOS for third-party software
repositories get rid of these problems? No, it won't, it will even raise the
average level of problematic software on that platform. The difference between
closed systems and more open ones is not that the closed ones are inferior, it
is that they limit the user's choice to get something which is _better_ as
well as _worse_ than what the walled garden offers. In this context _better_
can mean software which does not come with tracking, analytics, profiling and
other such privacy-invading nonsense. I can get the source code and build it
myself, I can host my own repository, only time limits where I can go. This is
not true for the Google Play Store or the Apple Appstore, nor is it true for
the Amazon equivalent or any of those Chinese alternatives. That is why I
chose to use something like F-Droid.
By the way, there is nothing keeping e.g. Facebook or Twitter from releasing a
free software version of their apps. Their value - and most of their profiling
proficiency - lies in their platforms, not in the apps used to access them.
They might lose any additional venues for leaching the user of data but they
would gain some believability when they state that they're not up to no good.
Of course there are plenty of alternative apps for these services so they
don't really _need_ to but they _could_ if they wanted to.
~~~
acdha
> Linux survived these attacks. Debian survived them. Ubuntu did. More or less
> all Linux distributions have been attacked but survived, many of them
> thrive.
Really? Is there a huge market of mainstream consumer Linux software which
I've missed in the past 3 decades of using it?
The answer is, of course, no. Linux distributions have mostly been used by
developers and other IT people and there's never been the equivalent of the
mainstream mobile app ecosystem used by people who are asked to make critical
security decisions which they don't know how to answer. If there was an
equivalent, there would be the same sleazy sites pushing free porn, games,
taking successful apps and repackaging them, etc. that we see in the
mobile/Windows desktop world, and normal people would routinely be socially-
engineered to get access to free stuff, just as Linux users have for years
been fooled into running binaries or installing packages. This isn't more
widespread because there's not much money in it but if that were to change it
would immediately require the same kind of hardening which every other
consumer OS has had to make.
~~~
Yetanfou
Well, there is Android, that uses Linux and is as mainstream consumer as it
gets. Do mind that I specifically said 'Linux survived' as in 'the Linux
kernel project', followed by a number of Linux distributions.
Also, where are those _Linux users [who] have for years been fooled into
running binaries or installing packages_? The majority of Linux users get
their software from repositories maintained by whichever distribution they
use. This fact is one of the reasons why Linux users are far less likely to
install 'random' software. It is that aspect of Linux distributions which
'stores' like F-Droid bring to Android.
Last, what kind of 'hardening' do you deem _every other consumer OS has had to
make_ which Linux distributions have yet to accomplish? I'd go so far as
saying that the likes of Windows and MacOS are playing catch-up here in
finally getting around to implementing a sane repository infrastructure from
which users can install and update software instead of having them hunting
around the web for some _SETUP.EXE_ to download and click on - which then
proceeds to install not only the requested program but also a host of toolbars
and 'shopping assistants'.
That both Apple as well as Microsoft took one step further in making these
software repositories single-source to the detriment of their user's freedom
of choice is what started this discussion in the first place.
------
kenoph
I did my Master Thesis on this kind of stuff. There are many Apps among the
top 100 free ones that ask permissions completely unrelated to their
functionality. Yeah I know, not surprising. What surprised me at the time was
that Android gives away much information "for free". For example, if I recall
correctly, GET_ACCOUNTS was granted automatically and it allowed to get the
"title" of every account on the phone as shown in the Android UI. Most Apps
use the actual username as the title, google included (aka, every App could
read your email address). Nice exceptions are Signal and WhatsApp.
~~~
cjsilver
I'm the author of this article and I'd love to learn more about what you found
in your research. You can reach me at craig dot silverman at buzzfeed.com.
~~~
snaky
This review from USENIX Enigma 2019 might be interesting for you. They tested
over 80,000 of the most popular Android apps to examine what data they access
and with whom they share it, how mobile apps are tracking and profiling users,
how these practices are often against users' expectations and public
disclosures, and how app developers may be violating various privacy
regulations.
Some numbers from the presentation
- the "GPS icon" is visible for only 0.04% of actual accesses to location data
- of 42000 apps transmitting personal information, 21000 (50%) don't use TLS and send data unencrypted
- 1,325 apps that don't have location permission, actually obtain street-level location data and transmit it home
[https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2019/presentation/eg...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2019/presentation/egelman)
~~~
cjsilver
Thanks!
------
mzs
> As noted earlier in this thread, I didn't go looking for Chinese developers
> for this story. But if you go hunting for permissions-abusing apps, this is
> where you might end up. …
[https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/111862075124903936...](https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/1118620751249039360)
~~~
nine_k
Cheaper labor, I suppose.
I bet Eastern Europe is also represented.
~~~
shard972
Are chinese really cheap labor though? Their tech companies are quickly
eclipsing that of western companies.
I don't think it's fair to say it's just a cheap labor thing.
~~~
nine_k
Not utterly cheap, but likely not as expensive as Silicon Valley.
Also, I suspect that those who concentrate on adding spyware and ad fraud,
repackaging, etc are not the top talent.
------
codedokode
The article puts blame on specific apps of Chinese origin, but lot of said in
the article can be applied to other apps too, for example:
> Kaltheuner, of Privacy International, told BuzzFeed News the policies are
> vague about how third parties, including potentially the Chinese government
> or other authorities, can gain access to the data being collected.
Google's privacy policy [1] is also very vague. Instead of clearly writing
technical details, what data they collect and when, they just give a general
description. Take this phrase, for example:
> We may also collect information about you from trusted partners, including
> marketing partners who provide us with information about potential customers
> of our business services, and security partners who provide us with
> information to protect against abuse.
Or this:
> We provide personal information to our affiliates and other trusted
> businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions and in
> compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate confidentiality
> and security measures.
Absolutely no details. I don't see how Google hiding its "partners" identity
is different from Chinese companies hiding their identity.
The article says that Chinese company can share the data with their government
(without any proofs), but doesn't Google share the data too when required by
the law?
Also, there is an interesting note hidden in Chrome's policy [2]:
> Chrome won't allow a site to access your location without your permission;
> however, on mobile devices, Chrome automatically shares your location with
> your default search engine if the Chrome app has permission to access your
> location and you haven’t blocked geolocation for the associated web site.
So instead of singling out a Chinese company, we should pay attention to all
of the mobile apps and their practices.
Regarding excessive permissions, I think Google could improve the situation by
promoting apps with few required permissions in the search results and making
permission list more noticeable. For example, currently, if you browse Google
Play, permission list is hidden behind a tiny link.
[1] [https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-
US](https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en-US)
[2]
[https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/](https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/)
------
doublepg23
It's amazing how poor the filtering is. There are plenty of developer horror
stories of legitimate apps being taken down by some broken, automated process
- sometimes taking peoples' entire Google accounts with them. Then you're
stuck dealing with more automated systems for support.
Of course these garbage apps make it through somehow. My favorite is an SNES
emulator that's full of ROMs. Clearly a copyright violation, but somehow made
it through state-of-the-art AI...
~~~
userbinator
_My favorite is an SNES emulator that 's full of ROMs. Clearly a copyright
violation, but somehow made it through state-of-the-art AI_
I'd actually be fine with it letting stuff like that through, but filter out
actual _malicious to the user_ apps.
------
keerthiko
In an ideal world, OS maintainers, instead of running a software store with a
client-end on consumer devices, would run just a repository, with version
control, metadata and downloadable packages for apps submitted to and
supported on their platform, but allowed any third party to link to their
repositories for fetching information or downloads. This would allow external
review hosting, discovery, competing marketplaces, or even users directly
fetching the application without navigating marketplaces if they knew what
they wanted.
Of course, there's nothing in this approach financially for the maintaining
company, so this was not going to happen.
~~~
scarface74
What could possibly go wrong? Viruses, malware, ransomware, toolbars, etc.
------
comradesmith
Installing f-droid and using more simple and open source apps is one of the
best things I've done lately.
~~~
ac29
Its too bad its still flakey at updating apps. I've been using it for a few
apps for many years, and I'd say easily half of app updates simply fail for
non-obvious reasons. Its been this way across multiple devices and countless
versions of Android, so I'm left to believe the problem is with F-droid
itself.
~~~
Avamander
I also heavily heavily hate the idea that they sign everything, the app stores
must not be trusted. They should _only_ be signing over packages already
reproducibly compiled.
~~~
ubercow13
Why? Isn't that how signatures of any Linux distro work too? The packager
signs the package not the developer.
~~~
Avamander
Because they force users to trust them unnecessarily.
------
yccheok
There are several app categories which become breeding ground for malware.
\- battery booster \- phone cleaner \- anti virus \- note taking app \- file
manager \- ···
For risk management from getting banned, those adware companies, will usually
register multiple accounts, with offshore address in Hong Kong or Singapore.
This is a good starting move by Google, but not enough still. We still see
companies like Cheetah mobile, Du group being active in Google Play Store.
Those companies (and their associated accounts which distributes malware) who
caught red-handed, should be banned permanently.
------
shittyadmin
Good. This is what advertising agencies asked for and what they deserve.
Implement a "click button to get money" system means of course people are
going to try to beat that any way they can. I'm surprised any web advertising
firm manages to stay afloat.
~~~
userbinator
In fact, there's a browser extension which users willingly install that can
help you "commit ad fraud":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19278936)
It might actually be beneficial for privacy, since trying to "poison the well"
of tracking data gets detected by the adtech companies and they'll likely
start ignoring you. In that sense, affecting their bottom line is the only way
to make advertisers leave you alone...
~~~
touristtam
I would rather not being subjected to the adverts and the associated data
mining in the first place. Nothing more creepy than the feeling you are being
stalked through your internet journey to sell you yet another useless product
you don't want or need.
Creepy and deceitful.
------
gyaniv
I'm not entirely sure I have that much of a problem with ad fraud, doesn't it
only hurt the ad companies and companies like google (which I have a problem
with anyway), by basically scamming them into believing that I interacted so
that company should be compensated.
I do object to collecting and sending my personal information, but I feel they
just mixed it, as that probably relates to more then just these Chinese apps.
And I really don't like the fact that it seems that Google only cares about
abusing the users, and breaches of trust and privacy when it hurts the
advertisers (and themselves), and not when the normal user gets hurt.
Not surprising though, but still annoying.
~~~
pergadad
It hurts mostly the companies paying for ads, and probably mostly smaller ones
that can't detect the issue. Think your local car dealer.
~~~
lostgame
I’ve never seen an ad for my local car dealer, or similar, in an iOS app, for
instance. Just saying.
------
thinkloop
They're mixing so many issues and confusing the matter. They have discovered
ad fraud, which is interesting, but doesn't actually directly harm the user
(right?), just the advertisers and Google. But then to make sure they are
propagating fear, they bring in the completely unrelated issue of data being
sent to China. And there is some confusion there too - is it only through the
(unnecessary) permissions that users _approve_ (a much different problem) or
are they able to send unexpected data also without the permissions? I wish the
world didn't have this sensationalism arms race to get their articles read.
~~~
comex
If the ad fraud runs in the background as claimed, it harms the user by
wasting their battery.
------
yeahitslikethat
People think I'm weird for not installing whatsapp because it downloads all my
contacts and I can't prevent that in this version of android which I can't
update because I can only do that through at&t while on their network but I
get service through someone else because at&t doesn't cover my area.
It's absurd.
~~~
Sylos
Just get a written permission from all of your contacts that you're allowed to
upload their data to WhatsApp, like the rest of us clearly have.
Or make it so that no one has anything against you ever. Because people have
been sued already for uploading their contacts' information to WhatsApp
without permission.
I really don't want to encourage you to use WhatsApp, but one possible
solution would be to use this app:
[https://f-droid.org/app/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts](https://f-droid.org/app/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts)
It's a separate store for your contacts, so that you don't have to use the
Android contacts implementation where every app and their mum wants access to.
However, mind that WhatsApp is not going to be particularly user-friendly
whether you do this or block access to the contacts in newer Android versions.
It won't display people's names until they've chatted to you (and then only in
a shitty secondary GUI), so you will often have to guess from their picture
who they might be.
And worse still, there's no way to initiate a chat from within WhatsApp to
someone who's not in your contacts.
Thankfully, there's an app for that nowadays, too:
[https://f-droid.org/app/io.github.subhamtyagi.openinwhatsapp](https://f-droid.org/app/io.github.subhamtyagi.openinwhatsapp)
~~~
codedokode
Isn't exporting a contact list a violation under GDPR? Contact names and their
phone numbers are a personal information and the app must get that person's
consent to process their data.
~~~
Sylos
Let me put it like this: I consider it only a matter of time before a lawsuit
for this completes and Facebook has to pay a multi-million dollar fine. A
lawsuit against WhatsApp was filed in the night that the GDPR became active:
[https://noyb.eu/4complaints/](https://noyb.eu/4complaints/)
The lawsuit is not just for this matter, it's rather because users were forced
to consent to the privacy policy in order to continue using the services,
which is very hard to justify under the GDPR, but I presume/hope, they will
also look into what WhatsApp wanted users to consent to and how they presented
it (89 screens full of legalese).
In theory, there is some clause in WhatsApp's terms of service which requires
every user to get that written permission from all their contacts that I joked
about.
One actual thing that WhatsApp will be able to cling to, is that they do have
a 'legitimate interest'. Without uploading these contacts, their service would
not anymore grow at even just half the pace.
------
Walf
>“If an app violates our policies, we take action
Bullshit, Google. Bullshit. Only a very small proportion of the apps on Play
ask only for the permissions that are needed to perform their task, and
Internet access is not a deniable permission, leaving a nice little back door
for them to siphon off your data. The example of the flashlight app is not an
edge case, it's the norm. Google does not care because they'd rather earn more
ad revenue than have quality apps, and the number of apps with the ability to
seriously spy on you is staggering.
------
circular_logic
> BuzzFeed News manually identified apps that requested a high number of
> permissions, including those assigned as “dangerous,”
A useful automated tool for this is 'Exodus' it will scan APKs for trackers
and permissions and provide a web report.
Here is a report for one of the apps mentioned. [https://reports.exodus-
privacy.eu.org/en/reports/15627/](https://reports.exodus-
privacy.eu.org/en/reports/15627/)
------
Kiro
> Ad fraud is simply the norm in China
Why is that? I can't even imagine what's going on at the meetings leading up
to implementing ad fraud in what I presume is a normal company otherwise and
not a bunch of gangsters. Is it morally OK to do this in China for some
reason?
~~~
snaky
> While on my most recent flight to Beijing, I sat next to an chatty elderly
> Chinese woman. We started discussing the topic, and she said that Chinese
> society lacks su zhi 素质, which translates roughly to manners or etiquette.
> Before the Cultural Revolution, she explained, Chinese society was guided by
> the moral lessons of Confucianism, with its emphasis on being a gentleman,
> respecting one’s elders, and obeying one’s leaders. But during the Cultural
> Revolution, Mao Zedong put Confucian principles on its head, pitting the Red
> Guard youth against their parents, the less educated against the educated
> elite. This chaos tore the social fabric and transformed the society into a
> survivalist one, a dog-eat-dog world, the vestiges of which are still felt
> today.
> When Deng Xiaoping implemented the Reform and Opening Up policy in 1978,
> capitalism was added to the mix of the survivalist culture; in order to get
> rich, you had to compete fiercely, fend for yourself and take care of your
> own with no regard for rules. This would also explain the rampant corruption
> among government officials, who use their position to amass wealth for
> themselves and their family. And nowadays, a third phenomenon has also added
> itself to the dangerous cocktail of selfishness and competition: the digital
> age. Many Chinese young people spend the majority of their days glued to
> WeChat, or taking selfies everywhere, or shopping at the ubiquitous malls
> around the country. This “me” culture is certainly not unique to China;
> indeed, we see the same thing happening to the youth in New York to Buenos
> Aires to London to Brussels to Moscow. But in China it exacerbates the
> already self-centeredness brought on by the cruelty of the cultural
> revolution and the competitiveness of capitalism with Chinese
> characteristics.
> In other words, China doesn’t just lack common etiquette and basic manners;
> it lacks a moral compass altogether.
[https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/chinas-quest-for-a-moral-
com...](https://thediplomat.com/2016/09/chinas-quest-for-a-moral-compass/)
------
qmanjamz
> Google confirmed it found fake ad clicking on all 6 apps, and said ad fraud
> was against Play store policy. So why aren't you removing the apps, I asked.
> They said they banned them from ad products and were still investigating.
> Really? Finally, not long ago, Google removed them.
What's wrong with this guy? Does he not understand what investigating means?
God forbid Google actually investigates claims of malfeasance.
~~~
shittyadmin
BuzzFeed News is a trash rag, what are you expecting?
~~~
freehunter
BuzzFeed yes. But this is BuzzFeed News, featuring their Pulitzer Prize
winning editorial staff. Very different from BuzzFeed.com.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuzzFeed_News)
~~~
busymom0
> Pulitzer Prize winning editorial staff
That's no longer a reliable way of trusting the credibility. There's been many
Pulitzer Prize news reporting which have come out to be completely false.
~~~
lucasmullens
Maybe, but it helps make them less of a "trash rag"
------
HillaryBriss
google play store and android have consistently shown that the first priority
is gaining market share. user safety and security, app quality, data privacy
and positive developer experience are far, far lower priorities.
------
craftinator
Here is a solution for this problem: let's devalue mobile advertisements. How?
Simple: every time you see an ad, add the product advertised to a blacklist.
Refuse to download any app that advertises to you. I've been doing this for a
few years, and have felt no negative effects; in fact I have way less app
clutter on my phone, and I still find all of the apps that I look for.
Advertising has changed in nature; it used to be about increasing visibility
of your products. Now it is about compelling people who don't want or need
your product into buying it, by using deception and psychological
manipulation. So how do we kill the beast that the ad industry has become?
Don't feed it.
~~~
Sylos
I appreciate the vigour, but it's probably easier to just use an ad blocker:
[https://f-droid.org/app/org.blokada.alarm](https://f-droid.org/app/org.blokada.alarm)
~~~
craftinator
An adblocker keeps you from being exposed to an advertisement. This means
you'll be adding zero value to the ad. What I'm talking about is a boycott,
and you'll add negative value to it. I find this much more effective, and
again, it has had no discernable negative effect on my life. I research to
find the things I need. Word of mouth is more powerful, and gives more value
to people's opinions.
------
paulcarroty
> This means they can no longer use any of Google’s ad products to earn money.
Really? Guess it can be easily done with new virtual firm and new contact
data.
------
rezeroed
This is as surprising as the facebook story.
------
AFascistWorld
To consider the versions of Chinese apps uploaded to Play is already much
cleaner and toned-down than their China versions.
DU Group is an affiliate of Baidu, which has been using ads like "Click a
button to boost your signal 5X stronger" to harvest users. It's common and
unfettered in China, since they are all watchdogs of the party.
------
eriktrautman
Has anyone ever gone to jail for this? Oh, you committed massive fraud and
stole millions of dollars? We’re just going to tell you not to do that
anymore... in what world would they NOT incessantly scam the system with these
completely asymmetric incentives?
------
tmalsburg2
I'm using a non-Google version of Android (provided for the Fairphone 2) and
install apps from the F-Droid store (exception is WhatsApp which is a
dirctinstalll). Can I consider myself safe?
------
dcdevito
THIS, among many other reasons, is why I (and my wife), switched to the
iPhone.
~~~
mellow-lake-day
That is a not a cure-all solution. It may be better as Apple has a higher
barrier of entry into their store but those apps still exist. And Apple
doesn't remove these apps right away either, for instance it took Apple one
month to remove the app that was sending browser data to China.
[https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/07/adware-doctor-
stealing-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/07/adware-doctor-stealing-
history/)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/10/20/data-
thi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/10/20/data-thieving-
apps-banned-from-apples-app-store/#4440859cb89f)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How can a self taught programmer get a SWE job in the bay area? - wpmoradi
Hi guys,<p>I took some online courses in python/Javascript/ and Databases, build some projects, but am totally clueless as to how I can compete with kids that graduated with a CS degree in the bay area. I was wondering if you could advise on what to focus on when applying for an entry level role in SWE. Thanks!<p>Cheers,
-W
======
tylerhou
I'm self taught and went through Triplebyte. They make you take a small quiz
and technical screen anonymously, and then they pair you up with around 8
startups (mostly YC).
Here's my referral link, should you want to use it (we each get $1500):
[https://triplebyte.com/iv/YY8SRsU/cp](https://triplebyte.com/iv/YY8SRsU/cp).
If you need any help, my email is `<my username>[email protected]`.
~~~
wpmoradi
Thanks man! Greatly appreciate it!
------
itamarst
One option: compete on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
E.g. you probably have some prior job experience, job experience that someone
straight out of school doesn't have. That job experience likely taught you
some valuable skills, which you should highlight - skills you need as a
programmer go far beyond Javascript or datastructures.
~~~
wpmoradi
This is great advice thanks!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Distill: a modern machine learning journal - jasikpark
http://distill.pub/about/
======
j2kun
I sure hope this catches on, but we should all be aware of the hurdles:
\- Little incentive for researchers to do this beyond their own good will.
\- Most ML researchers are bad writers, and it's unlikely that the editing
team will do the work needed (which is often a larger reorganization of a
paper and ideas) to improve clarity.
\- Producing great writing and clear, interactive figures, and managing an
ongoing github repo require nontrivial amounts of extra time, and researchers
already have strained time budgets.
\- It requires you to learn git, front-end web design, random javascript
libraries (I for one think d3 is a nuisance), exacerbating the time suck on
tangents to research.
Maybe you could convince researchers to contribute with prizes that aligned
with their university's goals. Just spitballing here, but maybe for each "top
paper" award, get a team together to further clarify the ideas for a public
audience, collaborate with the university and their department and some pop-
science writers, and get some serious publicity beyond academic circles. If
that doesn't convince a university administration that the work is worth the
lower publication count, what will?
In the worst case it'll be the miserable graduate students' jobs to implement
all these publication efforts, and they won't be able to spend time learning
how to do research.
~~~
colah3
You're absolutely right that this is a lot of work, and not many ML
researchers have all the skills needed for it.
In the short term, Distill's editorial assistance will help authors produce
outstanding papers, although they need to be willing to work as well.
In the longer-term, I'd like to explore match making between data
visualization people who would like to get into machine learning and machine
learning researchers publishing papers.
And in the very long term, I think the right solution is to add a new
component to the research ecosystem. Just like we we have people who
specialize as research engineers, theoreticians, and experimentalists, I'd
like to have a respected "research distiller" specialization. Eventually, I'd
like to try and start special grants for research groups to have someone
focused on this.
~~~
kowdermeister
I already know a guy who's doing this. Although he chose to publish very short
videos on various research (including many AI/ML), the concept and goal is
more or less the same.
Two Minute Papers on YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz/videos)
~~~
colah3
Karoly does lovely work! :)
------
colah3
Various announcements:
Google Research: [https://research.googleblog.com/2017/03/distill-
supporting-c...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/03/distill-supporting-
clarity-in-machine.html)
DeepMind: [https://deepmind.com/blog/distill-communicating-science-
mach...](https://deepmind.com/blog/distill-communicating-science-machine-
learning/)
OpenAI: [https://openai.com/blog/Distill/](https://openai.com/blog/Distill/)
YC Research: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/distill-an-interactive-visual-
jo...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/distill-an-interactive-visual-journal-for-
machine-learning-research/)
Chris Olah:
[http://colah.github.io/posts/2017-03-Distill/](http://colah.github.io/posts/2017-03-Distill/)
~~~
curuinor
As I said in Rob's thingy, I hope you get the tenure committees and job
committees, because they don't have to respect it but they're the ones you
have to get to respect
~~~
colah3
All we can do is work hard to build academic support:
* In the last three weeks, we've had 80 outreach conversations with various stakeholders for Distill. The majority of these have been academic researchers. The response has been extremely positive.
* A number of ML faculty at Stanford / Berkeley / Toronto / Montreal are very excited and supportive of Distill.
* Distill's steering committee consists of recognized leaders in ML and data visualization.
* We've registered with the library of congres / CrossRef, dotting our "i"s and crossing our "t"s to be a serious journal. In some senses, we're more legitimate than some notable venues.
* The largest industry research groups institutionally support Distill.
My sense is that the academic community really wants to have something like
this, if it can be done well. At the end of the day, we need to publish
outstanding content and demonstrate that we're a high-quality venue.
~~~
arjunnarayan
Can you share a "behind the scenes" of what it took to get Distill off the
ground? You hint at dotting your "i"s and crossing your "t"s, but an explicit
manual would be useful. Other communities than just machine learning could
benefit from something like this, and if Distill succeeds in being taken
seriously by your research community, it would help to have a playbook in
which to replicate that success in other research communities as well.
------
choxi
I've been trying to read more primary source information, sort of as my own
way of combatting "fake news" but before that term was coined. There's a
learning curve to it, but I've found that reading S1 filings and Quarterly
Earnings Reports can be more enlightening than reading a news article on any
given company. Likewise, reading research papers on biology and deep learning
is _significantly_ more valuable than reading articles or educational content
on those topics.
As you'd imagine though, it's really hard. Reading a two page research paper
is a very different experience from reading a NYTimes or WSJ article. The
information density is enormous, the vocabulary is very domain specific, and
it can take days or weeks of re-reading and looking up terms to finally
understand a paper.
I'm really excited about Distill, there's a lot of value in making research
papers more accessible and interesting. I've noticed that the ML/AI field has
been very pioneering about research publication process, some papers are now
published with source code on GitHub and the authors answering questions on
r/machinelearning. This seems like a really great next step, I hope other
fields of science will break away from traditional journals and do the same.
------
TuringNYC
I don't want to undermine visualizations, they are awesome, but one of the big
problems I see with ML research is the lack of re-produceability. I know that
Google, Facebook and some others already share associated source repos, but it
should almost be mandatory when working with public benchmark datasets. Source
+ Docker Images would be even better.
I worked in clinical research in a past life and studies would be highly
discounted if they couldn't be reproduced. A highly detailed methods section
was key. Many ML papers I see tend to have incredibly formalized LaTeX+Greek
obsessed methods section, but far short of anything to allow reproduction.
Some ML papers, _i swear_ must have run their parameter searches a 1000 times
to overfit and magically achieve 99% AUC.
Worse, I actually have tons of spare GPU farm capacity i'd love to devote to
re-producing research, tweaking, trying it on adjacent datasets, etc. But the
effort to re-produce is too high for most papers.
It is also disappointing to see various input datasets strewn about
individuals' personal homepages, and sometimes end up broken. Sometimes the
"original" dataset is in a pickled form after having already gone through
multiple upstream transformations. I hope Distill can _instill_ some good best
practices to the community.
~~~
colah3
I think that having a venue that can publish non-traditional academic
artifacts is an important step for reproducibility, even if it isn't our
focus.
It seems clear to me that the future will involve some kind of linking
reproducibility to papers. If we want to find that future, we need a way for
people to experiment with what a publication is.
~~~
bpicolo
Jupyter notebooks are a big piece of solving ML reproducability, it feels
like.
~~~
IanCal
I see this a lot, but I disagree, at least in their current form. They miss a
variety of very key parts for reproducibility (which, to be fair, was not
their original goal).
* Dependencies like libraries are not specified anywhere.
* Dependencies on local code are not bundled.
* Dependencies on local _data_ are not bundled.
* Underlying requirements like LLVM (which needs to be specifically 3.9.X for llvmlite in python as I discovered recently).
* Perhaps most dangerously, you can run the code sections out of order, and deleted sections will leave their variables around which can interfere with the run. I've been caught out by this in my own notebooks.
I really like jupyter notebooks, but I think some of the design decisions
(correct for some ways of working) actively work against reproducible reports.
There was a recent writeup here:
> we were able to successfully execute only one of the ~25 notebooks that we
> downloaded.
[https://markwoodbridge.com/2017/03/05/jupyter-
reproducible-s...](https://markwoodbridge.com/2017/03/05/jupyter-reproducible-
science.html)
~~~
bpicolo
Right, "a part" was important. Looks like the authors of that writeup agree.
> Technologies such as Jupyter and Docker present great opportunities to make
> digital research more reproducible, and authors who adopt them should be
> applauded.
~~~
IanCal
I somewhat disagree that it's a big part or even really should be _a_ part of
the solution, I'm really not sure that these notebooks are the right approach
to making reproducible research. The conclusion there doesn't seem supported
by their findings, to me.
I think they solve a different use case well, and forcing them into a workflow
they weren't designed for may just result in both less useful workbooks and a
poor experience.
Edit - To expand a little, jupyter notebooks are nice to mix code and
descriptions, and in essence _force_ people to release a certain amount of
their code. But other than that they actually provide fewer of the guarantees
that you want from things for reproducibility. And since the goals for
reproducibility generally force more restrictions on how you work, I can see
there being more issues for trying to match these different ways of working.
I don't see how there are any features which are useful for the goal of making
things reproducible, and as such why people keep bringing them up as a
solution.
The main steps would seem to be
1\. Make sure the results used are not generated on "my machine" but on a
specified base run somewhere else. Just like we don't take the unit test
results I run locally as gospel.
2\. Unique and versioned identifiers for code, base system and data.
3\. Archived code and data.
4\. An agreed on format in the output data to say where it came from (which
references the identifier(s) for the code, base system used and input data)
Your output might be a rendered notebook, but the notebook itself is entirely
orthogonal to the process, as what a notebook provides is:
* A nice interface for entering the code
* A nice output format
* A neat way of mixing nicely written documentation along with the code
------
minimaxir
The announcements and About page indicate an emphasis on visuals and
presentation, which I apprI've. But when I think of "modern machine learning,"
I think of open-source and reproducibility (e.g. Jupyter notebooks).
Will the papers published on Distill maintain transparency of the statistical
process?
I see in the submission notes that articles are required to be a public GitHub
repo, which is a positive indicator. Although the actual code itself does not
seem to be a requirement.
~~~
shancarter
I totally agree that this is very important. While it isn't currently our
primary focus, having a publishing platform that can accommodate a variety of
content types (including code and data) feels like a step in the right
direction.
------
Xeoncross
As a developer with a weaker background in mathematics, I face a language
barrier with many modern algorithms. After lots of research I can understand
and explain them in code, but I have no idea what your artistic-looking
MathXML means.
Visualizations or algorithms described using code are much, much easier for me
to understand and serve as a great starting point for unpacking the math
explanations.
~~~
runemopar
I understand where you're coming from and you raise a valid point, but the
ML/AI is heavily academic and oriented around research. The target audience is
people with a very strong math background and the necessary context.
I would recommend picking up a book on Comp Sci or algorithms, even just a
cursory reading helps a lot. CS is very much not just programming and it is
heavily restricted by descriptions through code.
------
blinry
Shameless self-plug: If you like interactive explanations, check out
[http://explorableexplanations.com/](http://explorableexplanations.com/) and
the explorables subreddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explorables/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explorables/)
------
cing
Is there any concern about a web-native journal being less "future-proof"?
I've come across quite a few interactive learning demonstrations in Flash/Java
that no longer work.
~~~
shancarter
This is a high-priority for us. By focusing on web-standards and avoiding
proprietary plugins we're pretty confident that the content will be future-
proof.
~~~
IanCal
Something that could help is perhaps a choice that examples should work in
(e.g.) Firefox recent.x on ubuntu, then provide a VM and archived version of
firefox. Put it on a platform that archives things with C/LOCKSS and get a
doi, then although you're not expecting people to use it on a daily basis,
it'd cover several "worst case" kind of scenarios.
Of course that's not completely permanent, but would perhaps provide some more
safety.
------
dang
YC Research's (and longtime HNer!) michael_nielsen wrote an announcement here:
[http://blog.ycombinator.com/distill-an-interactive-visual-
jo...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/distill-an-interactive-visual-journal-for-
machine-learning-research/). Hopefully he'll participate in the discussion
too.
------
rememberlenny
I wish there was a way to subscribe to a weekly email related to this.
~~~
blackRust
There does seem to be an RSS feed:
[http://distill.pub/rss.xml](http://distill.pub/rss.xml) Although it is not
advertised on the website (I did view-source to find it).
Should you plug that in to IFTTT, Zapier, or something to that extent, you
hopefully then have a weekly feed.
Though I do agree, an option to signup to updates directly on the website
would be much better ;)
------
sytelus
This is great but it would have been even better if Distill was designed to
play well with the current system. Vast majority of researchers are focused on
publishing at various conferences with strict deadlines. Even if they had all
the skillsets and time to produce these beautiful illustrations, I highly
doubt this will change.
Also, it is very likely that veterans in the field might think of this format
as too verbose and too sugar coated, more appropriate for less math-savvy
users and therefore not mainstream. Furthermore, I really feel TeX is
irreplaceable unless you got all of its feature covered. All of the historic
effort to replace TeX - even with bells and whistles of WYSIWYG editors - in
research has failed and its important to learn from those failures. You will
be surprised how many researchers insist on printing out the paper for reading
even when they have access to tablets and PC.
Instead of being another peer reviewed journal, Distill could act as the
following:
\- platform to publish supplemental material and code
\- platform to manage communication/issues post publication
\- platform for readers to invite other readers for peer review and generate
"front page" based on some sort of reviewer trust relationship.
\- platform to host Python and MatLab code with web frontends without
researchers having to learn new developer skills
\- support pdf submissions but without all the eliteness of arxiv and using
algorithms to create the "front page" based on some sort of peer reviewer
rankings.
Above features are indeed sorely missing and Distill has good opportunity to
become an "add-on" to current academic publishing systems as opposed to
another peer reviewed journal.
------
transcranial
This is really exciting! Chris et al: have you guys seen Keras.js
([https://github.com/transcranial/keras-
js](https://github.com/transcranial/keras-js))? It could probably be useful
for certain interactive visualizations or papers.
------
fnl
How does this provide IF ratings? Probably irrelevant for industry, but
publishing in academia is all about IF, no matter how bad and corrupt one
might think it is.
And what about long-term stability/presence. Most top journals and their
publishing houses (NPG, Elsevier, Springer) are likely to hang around for
another decade (or two...), while I don't feel so sure about that for a
product like GitHub. Maybe Distill is/will be officially backed (financially)
by the industry names supporting it?
That being said, I'd love seeing this succeed, but there seems much to be done
to get this really "off the ground" beyond being a (much?!) nicer GitXiv.
~~~
colah3
Our present JIF is undefined because we haven't existed for two years yet.
If you just apply the formulas anyways, you'll get an JIF of (6 citations)/(4
publications) = 1.5. Again, this number is really pessimistic because those
publications are only a few months old and haven't had time to accumulate
citations.
> And what about long-term stability/presence.
We aren't particularly tied to github besides it being convenient. Even if the
journal died, keeping it up indefinitely would be very cheap.
More than that, we're looking into joining projects like LOCKSS to ensure
preservation of the academic record.
> but there seems much to be done to get this really "off the ground" beyond
> being a (much?!) nicer GitXiv.
We've actually done a lot of the logistics needed to legitimize a journal.
We've registered as a journal with the library of congress, joined CrossRef,
and built infrastructure to integrate our metadata with the library system.
Of course, there's a lot more to do. But the biggest thing is to just publish
great content and run Distill as a serious, high-quality venue.
~~~
fnl
I for one am not so convinced GitHub is likely to be around for another decade
or two. But whatever, let's just pretend that Distill can always find a _free_
hosting solution, that is not so unlikely. Maybe that's good enough?
Re. IF, sorry if my first post wasn't as as obvious as I thought it would be.
I wasn't referring to how IF is calculated, much less to Distill's current IF.
Rather, there are two big problems related to IF that Distill needs to
"solve"; Not the _how_ , but rather then _when_ and _who_ of IF:
Ad _when_ : The egg and the hen problem. As colah3 wrote, Distill's IF will
only become meaningful in two years. But if you have exciting research, you
want that to be in an high-impact journal/venue _now_. So attracting good
research as a new journal/venue is extremely difficult, and probably the one
main reason why new journals fail (c.f. the number of new journals/venues and
the mostly non-existent change in impact rankings of the "best" places to
publish). However, if you can get private researchers in industry to publish
in Distill, because they are not [so] "dependent" on IF, you might accumulate
sufficient impact in the first two years to get to a nice score, that later
makes Distill competitive to the various IEEE journals or JMLR.
Ad _who_ : The even worse problem that (at least European, not sure about US)
universities evaluate their researchers by looking up their Web of Science
ranking/score. WoS in turn is controlled by Thomson Reuters (TR), who also
decide _which_ journals get ranked in WoS (and sell access to WoS to
universities and governments - n/c...). If a journal is not "recognized" by
WoS, the publication or its citations do not get counted by TR. Ergo, as a
public researcher, your funding dries up and/or you don't get the promotions
you need. For that reason alone, no researcher in public research will allow
her/his students and postdocs to publish in a journal that is not indexed by
TR/WoS. But again, you might get around that by behaving "like" arXiv at
first, at least: Most journals now grudgingly accept that the work was first
on arXiv before it got published in some high-impact journal or venue. And
maybe there is even a chance that the publishing industry will have to accept
Distill in their midst (i.e., index it in WoS) if some other industrial
backers create enough pressure...
As might be clear from the above, I (and many researchers) am (are) fed up
with the current publishing system, so I certainly hope a "self-hosted", free
solution controlled by the public [researchers] one day will break the iron
first the current (private) publishing houses exert over how research is
managed and evaluated today. If Distill manages to keep itself independent
from industry, but at the same time can use the political weight its current
backing could bring, maybe this is a way to break this vicious cycle?
------
radarsat1
While this is very nice, I'm a bit confused about the target. What kind of
material is intended to be published here in the future?
Because the blog post and title seems to be describing it as a "journal"
intended to replace PDF publications, but the actual content appears to be
more in the tutorial/survey category, e.g. "how to use t-SNE," etc. Is this
intended to be a place to publish _new_ research in the future, or is it meant
more for enhanced "medium"-style blog posts?
Both are fine, I just find the dissonance between the announcement and the
actual content a bit confusing.
------
chairmanwow
I feel like science publication in general could benefit from disruption of
the publishing model. I'm not sure that the toolkit that Distill has provided
is quite enough to totally change the paradigm, and it currently restricted to
only one field.
I like the idea of having research being approachable for the non-scientist,
and the more important question of whether there is a more efficient form (in
terms of communicating new science between scientists) for research papers to
take.
Is there any relevant work along this vector of thought that I should check
out? Because I would really love to do some work on this.
~~~
sp4ke
Yes, check everything made by Bret Victor and his explorable explanations.
I made an awesome list recently just for this topic: github.com/sp4ke/awesome-
explorables
------
ycHammer
Would saving jupyter notebooks as .html work? PS: I have published in all of
top-4 tier ML conferences but s __k at html /css/js. What is my pathway to
distill now? I, like every other researcher worth her/his name in salt is
always running behind clock when it comes to deadlines and lit to review. So,
yeah? Coaxing myself into investing time for css/html/js in lieu of picking up
more math tools seems criminal to me. Am I alone in this ?
------
mysore
Wow this comes with great timing!
I am a UI-developer who has been wanting to learn ML forever. I started
working on
1\. fast.ai 2\. think bayes 3\. UW data science @ scale w/ coursera 4\.
udacity car nano degree
I'm going to write some articles about what I learn and hopefully move into
the ML field as a data engineer in 6 months. I figure I got into my current
job with a visual portfolio of nicely designed css/js demos, maybe the same
thing will work for AI.
------
Old_Thrashbarg
I don't see it written explicitly; can anyone confirm that this journal is
fully open-access?
~~~
colah3
Yes. Everything is published under Creative Commons Attribution.
(One of the members of our steering committee, Michael Nielsen, has a
significant history advocating for open science. I think there's about a
snowball's chance in hell he'd be involved if we weren't. :P )
~~~
auvrw
> Everything is published under Creative Commons Attribution.
this is tres bien.
same for data sets?
~~~
rspeer
That would preclude most research data.
If you use Wikipedia as an input, for example, your data is CC-By-SA, not CC-
By.
------
JorgeGT
You should definitely assign a DOI to each article.
~~~
allenz
Distill does assign DOIs. There is a citation_doi meta tag in the page source,
and you can also find a complete list here:
[https://search.crossref.org/?q=Distill&publication=Distill](https://search.crossref.org/?q=Distill&publication=Distill)
I agree that the DOI should be included in the BibTeX citation.
~~~
JorgeGT
I see! Yes, this is something I miss a lot on Google Scholar (I have to go to
the article page to search for the DOI field). It would be nice to also
display the DOI link somewhere near the author list since it seems standard
practice, but in the citation section would be good as well.
------
EternalData
Looks very good (especially the team behind it!), but I wonder if there's a
discrete step down to where you make machine learning materials accessible to
the general public beyond data visualizations and clear writing. This will
certainly be a more interactive experience, but it seems to cater to those who
are "in-the-know" and require a bit more interactivity/clarity. It'd be nice
to discuss the format changes or the "TLDR" bot of machine learning that makes
machine learning research truly accessible to the general public.
------
fwx
This is amazing! My burning question - as has been pointed out in the thread,
the effort to produce a great article on Distill - generating interactive
figures, doing front end web dev etc. would require a lot of time and
resources on the part of the researchers. Is it possible to include within
Distill an option to connect researchers to willing-and-able developers in
those domains (for example, me) to help them get it done?
------
aabajian
I already have a nomination. The guy who wrote this blog post:
[http://adilmoujahid.com/posts/2016/06/introduction-deep-
lear...](http://adilmoujahid.com/posts/2016/06/introduction-deep-learning-
python-caffe/)
It's the only way I could get a working model of Caffe while understanding the
data preparation steps. I've already retrofitted it to classify tumors.
------
taliesinb
Great stuff! I'm a fan of what's gone up on distill so far. Question for colah
and co if they're still around: When does the first issue of the journal come
out (edit: looks like individual articles just get published when they get
published, n/m). Also, that "before/after" visualization of the gradient
descent convergence is intriguing -- where's it from?
~~~
gabrielgoh
Find out in a week!
------
blunte
I don't know jack about machine learning, but these illustrations are gorgeous
- simple, elegant, and aesthetically very pleasing.
------
wodenokoto
Looking at the how-to section[1] for creating distil articles, I fail to find
how to write math and some notes on how best to reference sections of the
document.
Other than that, this looks, much, much easier to write than LaTex.
[1] [http://distill.pub/guide/](http://distill.pub/guide/)
------
djabatt
It would be cool to see greater diversity of thinking on the about page.
perhaps the pub is designed for insiders.
Having more research transparency is great for community of likes minds to
learn from. A suggested addition is an section and team to lead a discussion
ML ethics.
------
good_vibes
I will definitely submit my first paper to Distill. It draws upon a few
different fields but the foundation is definitely machine learning.
What a time to be alive!
------
mastazi
r/MachineLearning discussion:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/60hy0t/the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/60hy0t/the_journal_distill_launches_today_in_a_nutshell/)
------
ycHammer
Anyone here has any idea if Jupyter notebook -> save as .html would do the
trick?
------
skynode
Hopefully this won't be another ResearchGate dressed in open source clothing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Make the ocean of your dream then dive - sazers
http://virtocean.com/?subwater
======
sazers
Dive to hear the ocean sounds
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Hubble Space Telescope Is Falling - breadbox
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/the-hubble-space-telescope-is-falling-96951f3e50e1
======
pinewurst
"The only planned apparatus capable of servicing or boosting Hubble, NASA’s
Space Launch System, has already seen its first planned flight slip behind
schedule."
I hardly think that a rendezvous demands the capabilities of SLS (or the
Senate Launch System as I choose to think of it). Really any booster that can
get to a ~300mi orbit with a reasonable payload could do the job.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Protecting vs. pissing off early adopters - ciaranoleary
http://berlinvc.com/2014/12/29/protecting-what-you-dont-have/
======
jondubois
It's important to try to understand why your users are using your product and
see if that matches your expectations - If it doesn't then you're doing
something wrong and it needs to change.
------
AlanG2015Zar
Good point Ciaran - data set is also small but the tendency not to want to
piss off early adopters is also driven by the desire not to turn off any
revenue streams (no matter how small)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Taking Away The Magic - ditados
http://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2011/10/13/0843
======
ditados
Apple can be pretty irritating at times. I wonder what surprises I'll have a
year or so down the road with my iPhone 4 (not, erm... "ass").
------
bad_user
Off-topic: I skimmed over the article and all I could see was iPad, iPhone,
iPad, iPad, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPhone, Apple.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YC W17 Launch: Lively, Scaphold, Marketfox, Floyd, ServX, Fibo, and Wifi Dabba - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-w17-launch-lively-scaphold-marketfox-floyd-servx-fibo-and-wifi-dabba/
======
cmollis
..and how is lively different again? Mind you, I think that HSA's are great..
and most likely, with the Trump administration, you'll be able to put even
more pre-tax money into them... I have an HSA (with a branded card).. and it's
ok..but the investment options suck. How is this different?
~~~
cmollis
oh, and I seem to get charged 3.75 per month... with no interest.. and I have
to get to a certain amount before I can invest it... which is stupid.
------
techmohib
with every large telecom player slashing internet rates in india..why would
people use wifi dabba. This is like creating an awesome credit card holder
when we are moving towards e-payment and bio metric identification. But am
sure YC must have seen something in it. I wonder what.
~~~
Emc2fma
Because every one of those large telecom players in India are absolutely
awful. Trust me, I've had firsthand experience dealing with them and they make
Comcast look like saints.
I think this will actually be very successful if they manage to execute it
well.
~~~
techmohib
I hope they succeed. Wish them good luck
~~~
mildlyclassic
I'm the cofounder of wifi dabba. It's fairly simple why people use our service
and we're able to run profitably. 3G/4G is too damned expensive for the
average Indian. It's fine for the middle class in our country, but for the
vast majority of the population, mobile data eats into their daily expenses
rather heavily.
~~~
ganesharul
What is the range of the wifi? Will I be asked to stand around bakery and tea
shop to use it or it is available everywhere at all time? Already data rates
are being slashed in big way in India by Jio. We can use 4G internet at the
price of Rs.10 per day. They may slash further also. They can deliver the same
service anywhere or everywhere straight to the smartphone without relying on
other shops around. Your website do not have clarity on range and speed u
support.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Prominent Scientists Sign Declaration that Animals have Conscious Awareness - bra-ket
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky201208251
======
ggreer
If I had to wager money on what future societies would condemn us for, I'd bet
a lot on our treatment of animals.
Even if other highly-encephalized animals aren't conscious, they are still
open to a wide range of experiences that we can empathize with. They can learn
and play. They feel hunger and pain. Some species can even form friendships
and mourn the passing of their kin.
Despite all indications that our treatment of these creatures is
reprehensible, cultural inertia and the tastiness of meat are enough to
prevent us from changing our behavior. To treat even 1% of humans the way we
treat animals would be to perpetuate the greatest war crime in history. But do
the same thing to some funny-looking microencephalitic relatives of humans and
hardly anyone bats an eye.
~~~
sethbannon
Couldn't agree with you more. Upwards of 60 billion animals are slaughtered
for human consumption each year[1]. The scale of it is mind-boggling. We just
recently agreed on vegetarian team lunches at my startup to do our small part.
[1] according to [http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-
Directio...](http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-
Directions/dp/0195305108/)
~~~
diminoten
There is almost nothing that could happen which would make me feel poorly for
eating cows, chickens, pigs, and fish.
The assumption here is that simply because a being is conscious, it is
therefore special. Let's take away that assumption, and then work forwards. Of
what significance is consciousness?
~~~
bornhuetter
I think that there is a difference between entities with consciousness and
those without, in that you can't cause pain and suffering to an entity without
consciousness. In that sense, they are "special". But that doesn't mean we
shouldn't eat them, just that we shouldn't be cruel to them.
------
gnoway
This is great news. Now that we've proven the animals are conscious, we can
put more resources into communicating and reasoning with them, and convince
them to stop maiming, killing and eating each other. Peace on Earth, maybe
within our lifetimes!
Edit: </sarcasm>
~~~
i_cannot_hack
Are you equating consciousness with rationality and intelligence?
~~~
mtowle
Literally nobody has ever done that. Try understanding his comment a different
way. Like, say, that the human protections against violence preclude humans
who chose to act violently, ergo if we extend that protection to animals, many
of them would lose that protection as soon as it was extended to them.
~~~
gnoway
To clarify, mtowle means 'them' as in 'the humans,' i.e. omnis will go to
prison, be killed or endure some other form of violent punishment if caught
eating meat.
Good luck with that. Maybe it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
~~~
mtowle
No I don't. I mean there's no point in extending a protection if you're just
going to take it right back.
> To clarify...
I recommend not doing this again.
~~~
gnoway
I agree. Don't try to help anyone understand my comments either.
------
RivieraKid
Well, that's interesting, because there's no good scientific definition of
consciousness.
~~~
stiff
There is no _philosophical_ definition of consciousness, but there is none of
gravity either, in the sense of "what gravity really is". Science doesn't
examine what things "really are", but tries to make useful predictions and the
definitions employed are only means to this end. In fact there are operational
definitions of consciousness and I think they certainly deserve to be called
"scientific", see for example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlate...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlates)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_conscio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Defining_consciousness)
~~~
smosher
The problem is without any philosophical backup the neural correlate is
entirely uncompelling—it's merely a clinical definition of a measure of...
nothing meaningful. One that can be just as easily applied to a recording
device, modulo the explicit mention of neurons.
It gets worse. When you look at it closely there's no useful reason to
restrict any of these measures with arbitrary criteria to the things we
consider candidates for consciousness, other than to reaffirm our prejudices.
In other words, there's no such thing as a _good_ scientific definition
without the philosophical context. You can have as accurate an arbitrary
measure as you like, but that doesn't imbue it equally arbitrarily with your
desired meaning.
~~~
stiff
The problem is that multiple times in the history of science the search for
somehow philosophically sound underpinnings led to stagnation and not to
progress, that was in fact what Aristotle did to a large extent and was the
main obstacle to development of science altogether. The recent example of this
is the search of aether. In the end the way that science has progressed is by
dropping too much "whys" and sticking to "hows".
There might never be a philosophically satisfactory definition of
consciousness. Our subjective experience that we call consciousness might be
an amalgamate of very different things happening at the brain level and a
single definition might just not do. Meanwhile the operational definitions
like the ones I mentioned allow us to make useful predictions and draw
conclusions, for example that the brain activity that happens when we
experience states most people would describe as consciousness also happens in
certain animals. It is not perfect philosophically, but again, you could also
have a long philosophical debate about what gravity is and you would never go
anywhere scientifically - that's precisely what people did before the
scientific revolution.
~~~
smosher
I think you're confused. I'm not asking for philosophical proofs end-to-end,
I'm asking for the framing.
If you look at the formulation it starts out as a magical-seeming property,
yet the definitions and processes do nothing to demystify that property. If
you look at that process carefully you'll find the deceit: this is not an
answer to the question of consciousness as asked. With the right philosophical
treatment there _might_ be hope of reconciliation, but without it the concept
is just going to remain magical, without meaningful conclusions.
Aether is a great example, one I had in mind. Consciousness is very much like
aether in some ways. It may well be that the only useful scientific thing to
say about it at the end of the day is: it is not a useful concept to science.
Much better than the contrivances offered up with no compelling connection to
the subject.
The last word in TFA is 'qualia'. This is the problem. Canonical definitions
of _that_ term describe it as impossible to measure, or simply ineffable,
which effectively puts it off the table for a scientific treatment. Regardless
of what you think of what should constitute a scientific concept, the
implication that these measurements alone elucidate an ineffable phenomenon is
exactly the kind of thing that stinks of bullshit.
~~~
stiff
The problem is that the answers you are looking for are of philosophical
nature and not of scientific one (you talk about "demystifying" consciousness,
"elucidating it"). The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness
is, but they might yield answers to precise scientific questions, such as:
what brain activity is necessary and sufficient for a person to be able
demonstrate self- or world- awareness. We might need to first answer to such
questions _before_ we gain any new insights of more philosophical nature. I am
not saying this method is the silver bullet, but certainly I cannot agree the
results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our prejudices".
My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness
doesn't diminish the value of research like the one cited here.
~~~
smosher
_The neural correlates might not clarify what consciousness is, but they might
yield answers to precise scientific questions_
I don't deny that at all, in fact it is quite precisely what I endorse. Notice
that the term consciousness lies on the left side, the excluded part. On the
right side, you use the better-defined term, awareness. A definition that
comes with better philosophical understanding. TFA, however, talks of qualia.
_We might need to first answer to such questions before we gain any new
insights of more philosophical nature._
I would say "different" rather than "more." Philosophy doesn't mean "weird
stuff we don't really understand" and it can often be as boring as the
implications of simple arithmetic or even the logic used in scientific
endeavors. I wouldn't want to throw that out in the name of progress either.
_I cannot agree the results are meaningless or "only reaffirm our
prejudices"._
The results described by the article and supported here are of the form
"consciousness is X" where no question was asked that is answerable directly
in terms of X, and no reconciliation has been made. That is the sense of
meaninglessness I'm talking about. If you're still in doubt, or think that's
somehow unimportant, grab the bull by the horns and deal with the implication
that this is somehow ultimately a measure of qualia.
_My only point is really that the lack of a great definition of consciousness
doesn 't diminish the value of research like the one cited here._
In that phrasing I am almost in agreement, if it wasn't for some of the claims
made. Some very interesting things are being measured, but to go from these
measurements to things like qualia is a leap I can't justify. A correlation
between these measures and alertness, intelligence and kinds of awareness are
easy to establish or contradict, and better yet: given those connections who
is going to say "yeah but what are these results over here? it looks like
_manifest experience!_ "—?
------
mseebach
That's nice.
But too many people can't tell the difference between supporting an idea and
publishing a repeatable experiment to test a falsifiable hypothesis in a peer
reviewed journal.
~~~
regal
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test)
~~~
RivieraKid
It should be possible with current technology to create a robot, that would
react positively to mirror test.
~~~
mseebach
The experiment should be blind, which would be quite hard to design. At least,
the robot designers wouldn't know that the mirror test would be the test, but
ideally they would never have heard of the mirror test, indeed, they should
have no good grasp of what a mirror even is.
------
stephengillie
There's nothing sacred about machine learning, machine vision & feedback
loops, assembled into robots. This is what we are.
~~~
michaelgrafl
No, that's a crass abstraction of what we are.
To a philistine the Mona Lisa is nothing but a bunch of pigments applied to a
surface. That's what makes him a philistine, after all.
~~~
kryten
It's an apt description of what we are.
Only we think we are more.
Perhaps we're not and the thought is just part of that feedback loop.
Art, wine, music, maths. It's all just more inputs...
~~~
michaelgrafl
It's a marginal description of what we are.
It takes a true nerd living in a nerd bubble to interpret a human being as a
data processing device.
~~~
kryten
I think you mean your perception is that my description is marginal, which is
my point.
We're just maths if you go far enough down. So are machines.
------
contingencies
_What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any
creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious.
You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question?
I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as
meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life._
\- Einstein (as quoted in _Mein Weltbild_ , Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934)
------
scotty79
I think we are fairly close to achieving consciousness in silicon (graphene or
whatever). We will improve algorithms, increase computing power and achieve
system of consciousness of a mouse, then just by tossing in more computing
power and optimizing speed of algorithms one of consciousness of a dog, then
monkey, then human and then we'll be surprised that when we toss in even more
computing power we'll get even more conscious system because there's no reason
to believe that evolution that gave us consciousness we recognize is capped in
any way by some objective limit. It's more likely that our level of
consciousness is just accidental value nowhere near theoretical upper limits.
~~~
alokm
Consciousness is not solely a matter of computation. Even if we are able to
simulate the brains of lesser beings, doesnt necessarily mean that there will
be self awareness in the simulation. I think this is one area where we still
have a lot of catching up to do.
~~~
brotchie
12 months ago I would have strongly disagreed with your first sentence, but
after a load of reading on Physics, Philosophy, and Neuroscience, my views
have changed.
I am still unable to reconcile my "internal" conscious experience with our
current understanding of Physics. I'm a materialist, however I'm trending
towards the believe that consciousness is an emergent _physical_ property of
massively interconnected systems; that is, our "internal" conscious experience
is part of the "fabric of reality" and simply comes into being once matter is
of a certain level of interconnectedness.
In essence, all matter has some degree of internal conscious experience.
However, only groupings of matter that have massive interconnectedness (i.e.
animal brains) experience what we would typically describe as consciousness.
Perhaps, at a global scale, the internet is weakly "conscious". Perhaps, once
we forge ahead with bio-mimetic arrays of neural networks, we'll start to
induce artificial conscious experience in "dumb" matter.
Christof Koch has an excellent book "Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic
Reductionist" along these lines.
~~~
alokm
I also concur that "consciousness is an emergent physical property of
massively interconnected systems". But "all matter has some degree of internal
conscious experience" is really a philosophical question. Internet can be
considered as a living being with different people acting as different
components and communicating with each other the way neurons do. But is the
internet as a whole, not its participants, conscious as a whole? That is a
tough question.
I will try and read up the book you suggested. And I will point towards a very
interesting theory I happened to have worked on (as a software developer)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Information_Theory)
which tries to quantify consciousnesses based on this interconnectedness.
~~~
brotchie
I just looked back through parts of Koch's book. He was indeed talking about
IIT. The wiki article on IIT is interesting, I didn't realise IIT had such a
rigorous mathematical definition! I'll read further.
------
Nux
The day we stop hurting other creatures is likely to be the day we stop
hurting each other; wondering whether this day will ever come.
~~~
cristianpascu
It will not. "Hurting" is such a meaningless word nowadays.
~~~
lifeisstillgood
The day we stop kidnapping, murdering and eating animals will be the day we
stop kidnapping and murdering each other?
I honestly don't think the "animals have conscious thought" is the most
effective way to change agriculture, but I will struggle to deny that gorilla
whose eyes I looked into at Aspinalls was not looking back at me with the same
understanding and knowledge.
Yes they are as conscious and thoughtful as humans, but humans are as
unthinking and hard-wired as animals
~~~
EthanHeilman
We are animals certainly but there is strong evidence that complex vertebrates
(humans, big cats, etc) can adapt behavior from prior experience. It's a
pretty big stretch to claim that we are unthinking and hard-wired.
------
IanDrake
When these "scientists" can get lions to stop eating gazelles, I'll stop
eating cows, chickens, and fish.
That being said, I am concerned about how animals are treated during their
lifetime.
~~~
dharmach
When consuming resources and producing pollution, you do not remember this
comparison. Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.
~~~
IanDrake
>Besides, animals kill to eat, not to sell.
I don't understand. Ultimately it ends up in someone's stomach and provides
sustenance. How is it any different?
------
nickmain
This recent HN comment about Julian Jaynes's _The Origin of Consciousness in
the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_ is worth following up on:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866404)
As I understand it the theory posits that consciousness is only a very recent
development in humans.
How can we ascribe consciousness to any other form of life when we do not even
understand what it means for ourselves ?
~~~
blueprint
Well put.
However, please note that there have been a few individuals in human history
who did have complete understanding of consciousness. The story of this world
is that nobody wanted to learn from those people when they were alive.
The reasons that modern scientists do not understand consciousness is that
1\. they do not apply a specific principle to their research (In math, when we
want to solve a question, we apply the equality to operate the question.) and
because
2\. their research only investigates half of the set of existent relevant
phenomena - that which can be seen with the naked eye.
Once a human recognizes the simple law that governs natural phenomena it is
simple to recognize what consciousness is.
------
cdooh
Does this mean they know right from wrong? The article isn't very clear on
what conscious awareness means.
~~~
cpa
How does consciousness imply morality?
~~~
mseebach
That is of course a big philosophical question. But in lieu of diving into
that, because Wikipedia says so:
_Conscience is an aptitude, faculty, intuition or judgment of the intellect
that distinguishes right from wrong. Moral judgment may derive from values or
norms (principles and rules). In psychological terms conscience is often
described as leading to feelings of remorse when a human commits actions that
go against his /her moral values and to feelings of rectitude or integrity
when actions conform to such norms.[1] The extent to which conscience informs
moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments are or should
be based in reason has occasioned debate through much of the history of
Western philosophy.[2]_
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience)
~~~
gregsq
Wrong word. Consciousness, not conscience.
~~~
mseebach
D'oh. Of course.
~~~
gregsq
Yeah. Simple single sentence from me which doesn't do your comment justice.
The connection between consciousness as an idea expressed by this declaration,
and general extant environment is an interesting philosophical pursuit. I
didn't think conscience so much, as an anterior attribute. But apologies if I
appeared curt. I need practice.
~~~
mseebach
No offence taken. Sometimes someone (me) is just wrong, and it shouldn't be
unacceptable to point that out in so many words. Conscience and consciousness,
despite the common root, just doesn't mean the same thing.
------
ekianjo
Old. July 2012...
EDIT: to clarify, the title is very confusing because it makes you think they
just signed it. It should be completed by a "2012" in the end. That's why I
was disappointed when following the link. Nothing new.
~~~
gwgarry
I guess it is no longer relevant.
~~~
ekianjo
No, it is, but I am just wondering why it pops up here in a sudden while
there's no specific news attached to it.
~~~
gwgarry
Fuck the news, acquire knowledge. :D The reason it pops up is someone noticed
it, posted it online, and it grew viral because it's something people like to
hear.
~~~
ekianjo
AGain, why not mention its from 2012 in the title then? That's what people do
on HN for older contents. and if you f __* the news then why do you come on a
website that has NEWS in its title?
~~~
nitrogen
Hacker News is called Hacker _News_ because it used to be called Startup
_News_. The only mention of the word "news" in the Hacker News guidelines is
in the line stating that "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic."
------
blueprint
> Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly
> indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological
> substrates that generate consciousness.
That's because neurological substrates don't generate consciousness. There is
no evidence to the effect that they do. However, when we understand the
structure of the system of consciousness it's very easy to see how
consciousness is generated and maintained.
The role of all neural systems is
1\. to transmit to the consciousness what the body sees, hears, learns, etc.,
and
2\. to express what is in consciousness through the body.
~~~
jessedhillon
<citation needed>
~~~
blueprint
Factual authority does not derive from socially validated papers. The law of
nature and all the facts exist in nature itself. The problem is that if you
don't try to confirm my words through 'what is' you can not recognize the
evidence in front of you.
------
bencollier49
That is actually the best summary of the current state of consciousness
research that I've ever read.
That said, they don't talk much about whether they can prove degrees of
conscious awareness. There may be homologous structures, but are they as large
as in humans? If they're not, then perhaps you'd expect the animal to have a
comparable and yet less-detailed experience.
~~~
frobbin
Agree with them that it is very likely that animals have conscious experience,
I believe it to most likely be the case as well.
But it seems irresponsible, and possibly self-serving for the NCC research
crowd, to escalate this evidence to the level of proof on consciousness in
animals. There is just no way to know what it is like to be any creature other
than yourself. It seems reasonable to assume other humans with the same
anatomy and physiology, with whom we can communicate extensively, are also
likely conscious. But we just can't ever tell what the experience is like to
be any other creature.
Signing a such a statement smacks of an attempt at bullying policy with
scientific credentials. This is bad because then in other areas, such as
global warming, it gives opponents with ulterior motives fodder for claiming
scientists shouldn't be trusted since they are prone to the same irrational
belief systems as other people.
It would be better to present their story for mainstream consumption with an
attitude of Isn't this a compelling story? Maybe even educate people and
attract people to the field of neuroscience in the process. But claiming
they've figured it out and we all need to get on board will only have negative
repercussions.
------
scotty79
How could you have dreams without consciousness? Every cat or dog owner knows
that animals obviously dream.
------
weavie
So no turning cockroaches into cybernetic devices you can control with your
iPhone then?
~~~
agravier
No, but spraying them with neurotoxins is fair game.
------
fatjokes
Do they recommend a sauce for conscious awareness?
------
sneak
Prominent Humans Sign Declaration that They're Still Tasty
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Status.im partners with the team behind the programming language Nim - mratsim
https://our.status.im/status-partners-with-the-team-behind-the-programming-language-nim/
======
talloaktrees
this is great for nim, really cool language that could use the support.
------
jaco8
Excellent news.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Needleless Vaccinations a Huge Step Toward Eradicating Infectious Disease - bane
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/needleless-vaccinations-could-help-end-diseases-020713
======
muriithi
This is a good move.
Unfortunately this may not end polio just yet.
Here in Kenya there has been several polio cases all which have been traced to
unstable countries like Somalia where there is no effective government. This
will however make it easier to carry out vaccinations even in unstable
countries.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook is testing a LinkedIn-like ‘Professional Skills’ section - joeyespo
http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/09/08/facebook-has-quietly-added-a-linkedin-like-professional-skills-section-to-user-profiles/
======
codecrusade
interesting-Focus versus UX game
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter's Building a Subscription Platform - PatrolX
https://twitter.com/asculthorpe/status/1280991619509092353
======
PatrolX
Anyone at Twitter care to share more?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Creating a Virtual jQuery Keyboard - mixmax
http://designshack.co.uk/tutorials/creating-a-virtual-jquery-keyboard
======
DanHulton
Ugh. Sure it stops keyloggers, but it's awful for over-the-shoulder security.
I hate it when banks use these things for password entry because then I have
to get all paranoid about who is watching me just then.
------
callmeed
Pretty cool. TradeKing.com uses a browser-based keyboard for sign-in now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Silicon Valley Discriminating Against Men and Asians? - teklaperry
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/tech-careers/is-silicon-valley-discriminating-against-men-and-asians
======
xacaxulu
Asians have been shown repeatedly to be penalized in college admissions
([http://observer.com/2015/06/asian-americans-are-indeed-
getti...](http://observer.com/2015/06/asian-americans-are-indeed-getting-
screwed-by-harvard-but-not-how-they-think/)) and in some cases are given
handicaps in SAT/ACT scores. Asians have been shown to be the highest earnings
among minority groups in America, and perhaps there's a concerted effort by
other groups to redistribute the wealth in a way that favors them over Asians.
[http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-
america/2015/05/08/this-u...](http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-
america/2015/05/08/this-us-ethnic-group-makes-the-most-money/)
Men are certainly the beneficiaries of the least amount of "Learn to code"
largesse, STEM hiring initiatives, quotas for board members (especially before
going public), etc. There are numerous social, governmental and academic
programs targeted towards women so while we can't say men are discriminated
against, we can say the aid programs that are available for women are
nonexistent for men.
------
ignasl
People always wants to better their lives. No one is pushing for diversity for
coal mining jobs. It's just that Silicon Valley is this hot place where you
can make a lot of money so everyone just wants a piece of that. And that
includes the most entitled, spoiled and loud peace of shits who instead of
thinking how to provide value are pushing for affirmative action. It's not
hackers' and geeks' only world anymore. Leeches are here.
------
jimmywanger
FTA:
> We know Silicon Valley has a diversity problem.
That's just making an assumption. Based on undergraduate enrollment rates in
computer science and other technical degrees, the probability distribution
based on ethnicity and gender seem very plausible.
Also FTA,
> Are lawsuits like these a good thing, or are they going to stall efforts to
> move towards more diversity in Silicon Valley?
Why are we trying to move towards more diversity? Why is that inherently a
good thing?
~~~
yellowapple
> Why are we trying to move towards more diversity? Why is that inherently a
> good thing?
For the same reason why genetic bottlenecks are a bad thing.
~~~
throwow3439
> For the same reason why genetic bottlenecks are a bad thing.
What is that "genetic bottleneck" ? it's a pretty racist expression if you ask
me , it sounds like it leads to "degeneration" or something like that, it
really sounds like nazi rhetoric but reversed, instead of the "purity of the
race" that must be preserved, it is now mandatory to diversify "white people's
genes" to avoid genetic defects ?
You take a Slovenian and an Irish, they are both "white" , does that
constitute a "genetic bottleneck" because of a superficial trait ( color of
the skin ) ? I mean only racialists speak about genetics when it comes to
race. Just because now a specific racial narrative is pushed by the left
doesn't make racialism less obnoxious. And white women despite being women are
still white , does it also constitute a "genetic bottleneck" too ? people
pushing for all that should take a step back and think about what they say,
for a second. "Diversity" AKA affirmative action AKA "positive discrimination"
isn't inherently good or bad, from a productivity or a financial perspective
for businesses that engage into all these diversity policies. If they see
value in it, good for them, now let's see if they perform better on the long
run just because they replaced a good white candidate with an average non
white one.
I'm not american, but I'm puzzled by all this which mostly looks like feelgood
PR, seen from abroad, especially at a time US finds more and more difficult to
hide its racial tensions to the rest of the world.
~~~
yellowapple
The point wasn't to take genetics literally.
The point was that - much like how a homogeneous genetic population will tend
to amplify its defects compared to a heterogeneous one - so will a homogeneous
ideological population. The diversity is what brings in new ideas and
viewpoints.
The very idea of the American "melting pot" is rooted in this philosophy;
immigrants both adapt to existing customs and introduce new ones, thus making
the America as a whole (lots of us Americans seem to forget this, including at
least one of our presidential candidates, but such is life). This can be and
has been applied on smaller scales to various organizations with much success.
This isn't _only_ about race or _only_ about gender or _only_ about sexual
orientation or _only_ about political affiliation or _only_ about
socioeconomic class; it's about _all_ of these things influencing an
individual's background in a way that is different from the group as a whole.
~~~
internaut
> much like how a homogeneous genetic population will tend to amplify its
> defects compared to a heterogeneous one - so will a homogeneous ideological
> population. The diversity is what brings in new ideas and viewpoints.
Ahhhh! But we _don 't_ know that. Memetics is not genetics.
It's like assuming that a larger population has a larger number of ideas than
a smaller population.
But what if I told you my smaller population sample was from a university and
the larger one was from a prison.
I believe Dense networks is what causes a flowering of intellectual diversity.
There are heuristics we can use. It is associated with wealthy areas and
cities.
I suspect myself that intellectual diversity is orthogonal to the physical
phenotype of diversity. However this, like your statement, remains to be
shown. There is a lot of contradictory information out there, probably due to
confounding factors and gloming unrelated factors together.
In my previous post in a different thread I wrote something related to this
subject which is that Facebook (users) has a lot of genetic diversity in its
population but it's a sterile wasteland. Facebook and Twitter are tourists on
the Internet, but 4chan, reddit and HN are like natives.
~~~
yellowapple
"Ahhhh! But we don't know that. Memetics is not genetics."
No, but it's a perfectly good starting point for a hypothesis. Memetics may
not be genetics, just like how ducks might not be crows. But, like how ducks
and crows are both birds, memetics and genetics are both means of
conveying/replicating/mutating information.
"But what if I told you my smaller population sample was from a university and
the larger one was from a prison."
What _if_ you told me such a thing? Would you be implying that prisoners come
up with fewer ideas than universities? From what do you derive such an
implication?
"I suspect myself that intellectual diversity is orthogonal to the physical
phenotype of diversity."
On paper, it is.
In practice, intellectual characteristics correlate strongly to educational
background, which correlates strongly to socioeconomic class, which (at least
here in the United States) correlates strongly to - you guessed it - physical
phenotype. Some people break out of those correlations, but they're (last I
checked) the exception, not the norm.
This is by no means anything inherent in those phenotypes, of course. You
already know that. Rather, it's a systemic issue: one of social norms and
preconceived notions. We can pretend that everyone's equal, but it ignores the
core of the issue: that the segregation of viewpoints still exists, and thus
still requires conscious effort to correct that segregation.
Intellectual diversity, in short, correlates with phenotypical diversity,
since viewpoints correlate with phenotypes thanks in no small part to our
world's rich xenophobic history.
"In my previous post in a different thread I wrote something related to this
subject which is that Facebook (users) has a lot of genetic diversity in its
population but it's a sterile wasteland."
I'd argue that has far less to do with the users than it does Facebook itself.
"Facebook and Twitter are tourists on the Internet, but 4chan, reddit and HN
are like natives."
I don't blame you for believing that; it's natural to believe that we're
somehow "special" because we happen to be chatting on some forum run by some
venture capital firm. Never mind that even HN's users, let alone reddit's (and
possibly 4chan's, but I don't really venture over there all too often), have
no problem with posting links to Twitter posts for "karma", or that Medium (a
favorite among HNers, so it seems) required logins using either Facebook or
Twitter until only very recently.
The flow of thoughts between the "tourists" and the "natives" is very
bidirectional in reality, and Facebook and Twitter (and Instagram and $DEITY-
knows-what-else) might as well be natives at this point, too.
------
autognosis
IMO, the idea that anyone could know the optimal level of diversity where
human choice is concerned is full of hubris.
Also, "discrimination" is inseparable from choice. That there are laws
regulating these things is destructive and arrogant. It turns everyone into
racists/sexists/whatever.
~~~
solipsism
_the idea that anyone could know the optimal level of diversity where human
choice is concerned is full of hubris._
It's completely subjective (how you define "optimal"), so why would it require
hubris to have an opinion?
~~~
prasadjoglekar
If it's only an opinion about diversity at the dinner table, then it's not
hubris. But if the search for an optimal mix comes from a govt. or quasi-govt.
institution then it's no longer an opinion, is it?
------
scarmig
As far as Palantir discriminating against Asian Americans goes, my
understanding is that most of their "engineering" positions aren't really that
technical--they tend to be customer facing. Old timers in government don't
really like Asians, and so it "makes sense" to not have them represent the
company. (Descriptive of what's happening here, not prescriptive--even if that
hypothesis is true, I'm the type to say screw it, hire on capabilities and
work ethic.)
There's also the tendency for Asians to be conveniently bucketed into the
"white" bucket, which makes them easier targets and also is a reason this
lawsuit won't go viral on social media.
~~~
vinay427
> Old timers in government don't really like Asians
Sorry, but I don't believe it's appropriate to make generalizations like this
without any evidence. We don't need more blind divisiveness in this (or any)
country.
------
woah
According to the diversity reports from linkedin, Facebook, and Google, Asian-
Americans are greatly overrepresented in the tech industry. I don't remember
the exact numbers, but it's something like 30-40% vs under 10% in the general
population.
I don't really know, it may be because Asian American parents are more likely
to encourage their children to go into technical careers. Still, a purely
numerical statistic is nothing to allege discrimination over, no matter which
groups are involved.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Oracle laid off all Solaris tech staff in a classic silent EOL of the product” - sengork
https://twitter.com/webmink/status/904081073256243201?s=15
======
lokedhs
I'm very saddened by what happens with what is left of Sun.
I used to work at Sun, and the Solaris codebase is the most amazing C code
I've ever worked with. I'm probably going to be accused of bias, but the Linux
code is really messy compared to Solaris.
Sun was already on the way down by the time I left many years ago, but what
had happened since Oracle bought them has been nothing but depressing.
~~~
peoplewindow
Would it have been different if any other company had bought Sun?
Solaris was competing against free, without much to justify the large added
cost. It's been a very long time since I heard of anyone buying new Solaris
installations.
~~~
acdha
I think that would very much depend on when: Sun's primary problem was bad
management so an early 2000s change might have enabled them to compete against
Red Hat — treat usability as a concern, wrap all of those cool kernel features
in a non-joke userland, sell support, etc. Sitting out package management for
a couple decades really hurt them and that's a relatively cheap engineering
commitment. It's interesting to imagine ZFS and zones bringing
containerization a decade earlier, but every time they came up the reaction
from most of the sysadmins I knew was roughly “call me back when they have
apt/yum”.
A coworker who used to work at Sun maintains that they really needed to go
private to avoid years of chaos from waves of layoffs when they were
profitable but not enough to satisfy Wall Street.
~~~
davidgerard
Zones were way cool. Solaris 10 was _on the right path_ and I actually quite
liked it. (Ran it in earnest on various SPARC and x64 kit.)
~~~
Annatar
Zones are still cool, and they live on in illumos and especially SmartOS.
~~~
ece
Joyent was definitely ahead of the game, hopefully Samsung is better at
acquisitions than Oracle.
------
Joeri
That's a lot of very highly skilled staff which they won't be able to
reassemble for another product or project for years. Those people will scatter
to the winds now. It's a shame they lacked the imagination to make them do
something new.
But then Oracle doesn't seem to have the organizational capability to start
major new successful product lines anymore. They grow through acquisition.
~~~
ptero
I think most of the folks able to work on something different left a while
ago. I am sure working on Solaris support at Oracle they saw the writing on
the wall.
Also, some of those "firings" come with a decent chunk of money; maybe some of
the folks who stayed made a rational choice of waiting until fired, then will
move to a prearranged job somewhere else.
~~~
fred_is_fred
Anyone still left is likely far too comfortable working on Solaris, not really
interested in working on something different or like you said they would have
left.
------
xenadu02
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if Oracle acquires your company GET
OUT. Do not wait, bail out immediately.
Oracle is expert at slowly bleeding teams while suppressing pay to milk
products for all they’re worth. They are developer-hostile (including to
employees). It is career death.
If Oracle acquires a partner you depend on, you have 12-24 months to find an
alternative before they cut your legs out from under you and steal every last
drop of profit from the relationship you have with your customers.
Don’t believe any promises to the contrary. Oracle promised ours would be
different. They gave us pay raises to stick through the transition. It was all
a ruse. Once we were in the jaws of the machine stack ranking took over,
raises and bonuses were crap, and a lot of architecture astronaut garbage was
rained down from above. They increased the price of our product by two orders
of magnitude which lead to massive revenue gains. They simultaneously shrunk
the team and claimed there was no money for bonuses or equipment. Developers
have a 5-year laptop replacement policy.
I repeat: get out!
~~~
soloracle
I call FUD. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 - that's seven years, and it wasn't
until this past January and August that major project changes were made and
large number of staff laid off. "Get out now" seems unnecessarily alarming.
Also, this may vary from org to org, but our (sparc/solaris dev) laptop
replacement was every three years.
I'll admit that the way they've handled the recent layoffs is atrocious, with
most employees finding out via FedEx notification and a pre-recorded concall
message. Rumors of this major cut have been circulating for months. I've lost
many good friends with 10,20,30+ years in Sun/Oracle. But I think Oracle gave
hardware a fair shake.
Full disclosure: I worked in a Solaris dev/sustaining group until this past
week.
~~~
bcantrill
I think that Solaris and SPARC had different fates in this regard: Solaris was
dead the moment they (re)closed it in 2010 -- there was simply no way that
Solaris was going to survive as a proprietary operating system (the era for
which had passed half a decade before).
As for SPARC, Oracle does seem to have invested heavily, in part because of
the elaborate self-delusion that Ellison seemed to have that he could develop
magical database hardware that would somehow repeal the laws of physics.
As for the warning, it is indeed apt; Oracle is a mechanized and myopic
profit-maximizer -- a remorseless and shameless corporate sociopath that lacks
the ability to feel anything at all for its customers. Yes, your products will
die of asphyxiation and incompetence and so on, but the much more acute damage
will be to one's sense of purpose in the world: working for Oracle is a
nonstop trip to either an existential crisis or a mercenary's existence (or
both). And as many discovered on Friday, working for such an entity out of a
noble (if misplaced) sense of duty or loyalty is pointless; Oracle feels
nothing for you, its employees, for the same reason it feels nothing for its
customers or its partners or the domain or the industry or society writ large:
because it feels nothing at all.
~~~
alexvoda
"Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison [or Oracle] " \-
Bryan Cantrill
~~~
pgeorgi
> ... - Bryan Cantrill
Guess who that "bcantrill" person is that you replied to :-)
------
znpy
Just FOUR DAYS AGO, someone posted:
>>... most of the recent innovations in Solaris's core technologies (DTrace,
ZFS, Zones, etc) have all happened in illumos.
> As a core Solaris dev at Oracle, I can tell you that's not true. I just
> can't prove it to you. :-(
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15125355)
~~~
spankweasel
Yeah, this has been a SUPER week let me tell you....
~~~
cyphar
I was just remembering that we discussed this a few days ago. This really does
suck, and I hope you can find some work at Nexenta or Joyent/Samsung or one of
the other businesses that help develop illumos. There's a page on the illumos
wiki with links to job listings:
[https://wiki.illumos.org/display/illumos/illumos+Jobs](https://wiki.illumos.org/display/illumos/illumos+Jobs).
------
pgaddict
Take this as a positive thing. A large number of talented engineers are no
longer trapped in Oracle.
------
aquamo
_sigh_
Sad to see the loss of diversity in the operating system space. Thank you
SunOS & Solaris for all the goodies over the years - Zones, ZFS, NFS, AutoFS,
dtrace, etc.
~~~
Jach
All of that lives on with Illumos and SmartOS and companies like Joyent. You
can even run Ubuntu inside a zone.
But such reactions happening now seem to indicate that people missed the
attempted reproprietarization of OpenSolaris or at least missed out on
marketing for the successors? Well here's what I see as kind of the canonical
video detailing everything up to that drama point:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc)
As far as I understand it Oracle has been pretty irrelevant for things to do
with Solaris since then.
------
kim0
@Oracle, please do the right thing and open-source Solaris. At least that's a
proper way to die!
~~~
foo101
It is very unlikely that Oracle will do the right thing. Oracle, as a company,
is known to be ethically challenged. A company like Oracle that is known for
its apathy towards its own developers cannot be expected to make careful
consideration towards the software it is killing.
For those, who have not worked in Oracle or have little understanding of
Oracle's internal culture, I recommend this nice article about why James
Gosling, the creator of Java, quit Oracle:
[http://www.eweek.com/development/java-creator-james-
gosling-...](http://www.eweek.com/development/java-creator-james-gosling-why-
i-quit-oracle)
~~~
johan_larson
Is open-sourcing a codebase for an abandoned product somehow expensive or
complicated? Are there legal or accounting issues? If not, it seems like
buying a bit of good-will for the price of a bit of paperwork would be a
useful investment.
~~~
hu88
I was at Intel once upon a time when they open sourced some telecom stuff they
wanted to get out off. The issues were crazy because of the size of the code
base that had accumulated from multiple acquisitions spanning many different
divisions in different countries over many years. We couldn't even find people
who could tell us what large chunks of the code did or whether they contained
anything under patent, trademark etc. It's can be quite expensive and the only
reason we did it was there were customers who were willing to pay for the
effort.
~~~
johannes1234321
Sun did that a few years back, Oracle only has to reevaluate what was added
since they acquired Sun ...
~~~
tw04
It's entirely possible everything added since it was acquired by Sun is
_STILL_ under an open source license. Just because they haven't released the
code or provided it to end-users under that license says nothing about how
it's structured internally.
------
Keyframe
SGI, Sun, DEC... I really miss those days a lot. Sure, they were daylight
robbery (SGI especially so), but computing was far more heterogeneous.
~~~
shagie
Ahh yes... the days of the Software Wars. [http://mshiltonj.com/software-
wars/](http://mshiltonj.com/software-wars/) (last update 2003) - it might be
interesting to reimagine that in today's world. From the 2006 map, Oracle's
assimilation of the lion's share of the "south" (MySQL, Sun, Java) and the
battle between Apple and Google in the "north west".
That said, consider the flip side of the heterogeneous aspect. You were
unlikely to be able to run software on two different platforms that could
communicate in a meaningful way. It was duct tape everywhere. There was no
"cloud" that one could get significant computing resources on. You could pay
(much more) for time on a shell at uunet or another isp... or buy your own for
$$$.
A 250MHz Octane MXE with 128MB RAM and 4GB disk has a US list price of $47,995
in 1998. That's $72k in 2017 money. Making consistent technology stacks has
reduced the cost to the point were we think very little about the hardware
anymore - and by making those decisions unnecessary it has allowed for
improved portability of skills and not worrying about the abstraction of the
hardware (until it leaks).
~~~
Keyframe
Good points and I'm not arguing them. Things are now extremely more convenient
then they were. What's missing is differences in approach to solving, well,
everything. Everything was different from system to system (esp. mid 80's to
mid 90's). People were still figuring out what to settle on. From a
perspective of someone who likes to tinker with stuff, it was a blast. From a
business and maybe usability perspective - it was a nightmare.
Now, when most stuff is settled-upon, it's like cars. There are differences,
but not really. Turn lights to your left, wipers to your right, wheel turns
left and right, there's a manual stick or automatic, pedals... it's all there,
where you expect them to be. And that's good! Times were a bit more pioneering
back then, naturally.
~~~
iso-8859-1
The industry has grown. Linux was niche in 1992. E.g. Genode is niche today.
UNIX beards don't see the pioneering because they just want UNIX.
Sounds like you can't see the wood for the trees. :P
~~~
Keyframe
Maybe! :) But, when I try to look at it objectively, as far as I can, I can
see there aren't any big paradigm shifts / explorations in OS' and computer
architectures anymore. With a reason, industry has matured and moved from
tectonic shifts to iteration.
------
DonHopkins
I wonder if the poor guy from Sun with the Worst Job in the World was hired by
Oracle and still has his terrible job?
[http://eng.umd.edu/~blj/funny/worst-
job.html](http://eng.umd.edu/~blj/funny/worst-job.html)
~~~
smarks
Ha, that's funny. I had almost forgotten about the SunOS-vs-Solaris wars.
Everybody wanted to hang onto SunOS as long as possible. Seems ironic that
(many) people feel this way about Solaris now.
~~~
DonHopkins
Remember the poster they were giving out at Usenix with a picture of the BSD
Tie Fighter blowing up the AT&T Death Star, and the mathematical formulation
"4.x > V for all values of x from zero to infinity"?
It just didn't make sense that Sun kicked AT&T's ass with BSD Unix, and then
capitulated to them by switching over to SVR4.
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there was some business reason, but it was a bitter pill
to swallow.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars)
~~~
amacbride
Remember when you had to boot it into kadb and fiddle around with symbols to
get it to run at all? (IDR3.2 or so)
Good times, good times...
------
shmerl
Will some illumos related projects be interested in those people?
And on related note, I suppose Oracle won't open their diverged Solaris even
if they plan to shut it down? In the past, Sun also planned to open their Sun
studio and C/C++ compiler. That never happened because of Oracle.
~~~
bcantrill
Yes, absolutely. Based on the number of conversations I have had in the last
72 hours, I can assure you that the illumos community will be gaining some
terrific talent over the coming weeks and months!
------
pkaye
I remember my college days having to use various Sun/Unix machines and the
delete key was invariably misconfigured particularly with vi or some other
editor. I had to figure it out myself how to fix this. I thought it was part
of some hazing ritual until I saw the same shit on a machine at my new job.
Thankfully with the advent of free software distributions, these little
details things started working out of the box.
~~~
mmagin
Ha. The defaults on Sun workstations (at least mid-late 90s) weren't that bad.
HPUX seemed to default to making delete the interrupt character, at least in a
shell when I telneted into them remotely.
------
sunsu
Does this mean VirtualBox is dead soon as well?
------
holydude
You need billions and billions of dollars to keep such project alive. And even
then if you cant attract the right amount of interest you are doomed. It is
bloody expensive to keep these people employed and i guess oracle is not
competent enough to manage these resources. It is sad to see solaris go but
this is what was about to happen with any proprietary technology with a
limited stream of revenue. I mean i do not think customers cared that much
about what they run on as long as their apps and dbs were fine. Since windows
and linux are way cheaper it was a matter of time.
~~~
jacquesm
> You need billions and billions of dollars to keep such project alive.
Makes you wonder where Linus stores his old socks.
~~~
holydude
Oh you seriously believe linux is not where it is due to huge sums from
intel,samsung,red hat and countless of others ? Please...
~~~
jacquesm
> Oh you seriously believe linux is not where it is due to huge sums from
> intel,samsung,red hat and countless of others ?
With the exception of Red Hat I totally concur that Linux has moved very far
because of financial infusions from industry. But at the same time that 'toy
operating system' was already quite usable before any of that happened.
As for Red Hat, they exist because of Linux, not the other way around.
~~~
tw04
We can agree to disagree on that point. Redhat is basically the universally
supported platform in the enterprise. You want to call inf or a support case
on that SAS HBA? You need to be running Redhat. You have a flaky NIC? Redhat.
New Fibre Channel HBA? Redhat.
And rightly so, the vendor on the other end needs to know they've got an
actual live person to work with on troubleshooting. Without Redhat I have no
doubt Linux would still be alive and well, but it would NEVER have gotten the
foothold it has in the enterprise today (coming from someone who worked at one
of those hardware vendors back in the day and tried to push for support of
other distributions).
------
yebyen
Honestly the fact that this can happen seems like a better reason to stay away
from proprietary software than any other reason. Even software that is open
source but owned by some company.
On a not completely unrelated note, there was something I read in the
Kubernetes Steering Committee bootstrapping process that sounds really logical
in the context of this news.
In Kubernetes Steering Committee, there will be no more than 33% membership
from any given company. So if Docker, and CoreOS, and Weave, and Google, and
Microsoft, and Amazon all come to the table and somehow get equal
representation, which seems possible given how I understand the voting
process, ... that's great, and no one company can "silent EOL" the product of
Kubernetes.
And even if one of those companies is significantly over-represented within
the list of members of standing that will vote for the Steering Committee
members, and the second of those companies significantly eclipses any of the
remaining nominees, the steering committee will _still_ probably be in the
hands of at least 4 companies.
I'm really quite miffed about a few well-liked community driven things,
suddenly getting shut down by ownership lately. Not going to name any names,
but in meetings to determine our organization's future direction in software,
it's going to have to come to everyone's attention that in general overall
momentum is a whole lot more important than corporate backing.
------
technofiend
As the only other major vendor of Sparc-based systems, I wonder if Fujitsu is
picking up anyone out of this. I certainly hope so.
~~~
dom0
As far as I know Oracle stopped developing SPARC systems, it is all Fujitsu
now, including the chips.
~~~
protomyth
Fujitsu went with ARM for their latest performance machine.
~~~
dom0
So far they only announced to go with a heavily modified ARM ISA for their
next-gen supercomputer (forgot the name), while saying _yadda yadda remain
committed to SPARC yadda yadda_. At least as far as I know. Probably still
means life-support-only for SPARC.
------
Animats
When will Oracle turn off the marketing for Solaris.[1]
[1]
[https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/index.html](https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/index.html)
------
acd
RIP Solaris.
We shall remember Solaris for all the good things that came out of it!
Highlights ZFS one of the best file systems including copy on write snapshot
functionality.
Solaris zones. Proper containers before Linux and LXC/Docker existed.
Dtrace for application and kernel performance.
And the SUN hardware workstations and servers that Solaris powered. Still
remembers watching 4th of July fireworks being live streamed remotely on a Sun
workstation using Solaris.
------
Friedduck
@xenadu02,
I feel the same way as a client. Everything I've used that they've purchased
has turned out for the worse. Be it neglect or price increases the promises
always exceed what's actually delivered.
Moreover they're transparent about their desire to lock you in and then press
that to their advantage.
I actively avoid few companies but they're at the top of the list.
I came her to reminisce about the beauty of Solaris from a long time ago and
your comment struck a nerve.
------
binaryapparatus
Sad news all over industry. Red Hat creating huge mess throughout linux with
systemd for years. Solaris killed. Thankfully zfs continues living trough
FreeBSD. MariaDB is forked at the last moment. Some of my work depends on
VirtualBox.
Quote from American Gods: “A single product manufactured by a single company
for a single global market. Spicy, medium, or chunky! They get a choice, of
course! OF COURSE! But they are buying salsa.”
~~~
nailer
Every major Linux distro uses systemd. I know its opponents are vocal but a
bunch of us are silently enjoying the simplicity of .service files and systemd
timers.
~~~
pjmlp
I guess many that are against it, would rather have a pure UNIX V
installation, eventually running twm.
~~~
AnonymousPlanet
I don't. I just want the core components of Linux to be 1.) done by people who
have enough experience to know the perils of overengineering and have done
some serious software maintenance and debugging themselves 2.) done by project
leads who don't think that changes that break things in a major way can be
buried somewhere down in the changelogs 3.) done by people who don't react in
a jaded way to every piece of criticism, regardless of the tone.
I don't think Linux would have gotten this far if its core wouldn't be
influenced by the design principles of Unix and the kernel project wouldn't be
run by a person who takes care regarding incompatible changes. Look at ReactOS
or Wine. I'm worried that systemd might prove to be a major headache in the
future.
------
yuhong
I have been thinking of a server vendor for startups company like Sun was
trying to do with Schwartz as CEO. Ideally it would use local server
manufacturing instead of Chinese ODMs. Of course, not every startup is
interested, but 1TB+ RAM and fast SSDs might be attractive to some of them
like GitLab.
------
kingmanaz
I was present for training at Informix headquarters in Menlo Park when it was
announced that IBM purchased the company (I believe around 1999 and 2000). I
can still recall the deathly pallor of the trainer as well as the shocked
silence of the employees. A couple months later I barely located the new
Informix webpage on IBM.com; it advertised for DB2.
------
chhum
More details on this here: [https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/09/solaris-
sunsets](https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/09/solaris-sunsets)
------
et2o
For a curious novice, can anyone point out why one would use Solaris/Illumos
over Linux?
~~~
hedora
After evaluating various Linux solutions, then FreeNAS, I went with SmartOS
(an Illumnos variant) at home because it was the only one with rock solid
secure containers, virtualization and zfs.
Unfortunately, I never managed to get single node docker compatibility to
work, and then there was a design flaw in the inexpensive atom server
processors that it runs well on that leads to failure after a year or so.
Faced with a >>$1000 hardware expenditure to get a reliable replacement NAS
that's compatible with SmartOS, I jumped ship to Synology and haven't looked
back.
My Synology box is way more available than my ISP or Amazon Cloud Drive, and I
reproduced months of setup work from SmartOS in an afternoon with the
Synology.
------
ausjke
All Ultrasparc silicon engineers were already laid off, this is seldom a big
news per se.
I just wish google bought Sun for its Java and mysql, personally I do not want
to have anything to do with Oracle as much as tech goes.
------
trollied
I used to love working with E10k/E15k boxes back in the day. X86 just couldn’t
compete with 128 CPU SPARC systems. It was amazing! Sad to see Solaris go.
<3 ZFS <3 dtrace
------
auvi
Does anybody know how many people were laid off? I am interested to know to
figure out how many people you need to make a modern operating system these
days.
------
agumonkey
Anyone looking for a bunch of quality employees ?
------
sunstone
I can recall a list of things Oracle killed/lost since it bought Sun, but is
there anything left of it at this point?
~~~
_delirium
Java and the JDK are the main ex-Sun products that're still being actively
developed, I think.
------
yeukhon
Anyone run Solaris on recent projects? Why? There are other options. Very
curious.
------
skyde
This is very sad, I really hope open Solaris can keep alive without Oracle.
------
gigatexal
Crap. What does this mean for the fate of ZFS?!?
~~~
nosequel
Nothing, ZFS is alive and strong in Illumos and FreeBSD.
~~~
seabrookmx
And Linux. OpenZFS shares code across them all which is pretty swell.
------
ryanqian
Sad to see that happen, what a great OS.
------
consultSKI
Sad.
------
bradleyjg
I think that just leaves AIX and HP-UX of the old commercial unicies.
~~~
pjmlp
There is still macOS as NeXTSTEP derivative.
~~~
0x4a42
Mac OS X wasn't there at this time - the classic Mac OS wasn't an Unix
like/derivative during the nineties.
~~~
pjmlp
I wrote NeXTSTEP.
------
known
Oracle ignored/underestimated China's role in hardware business before buying
Sun
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PayPal denies teenager reward for finding website bug - uladzislau
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039940/paypal-denies-teenager-reward-for-finding-website-bug.html
======
300bps
If Dwolla, Skrill or another PayPal competitor is paying attention they might
be wise to pay the kid a bounty in the interest of "improving the integrity of
transactions on the web" even if it improved the security of their main
competitor.
Would do right by the kid and would tremendous free publicity for the
companies looking to supplant PayPal.
~~~
will_brown
You clearly understand the value of good PR more than most, certainly more
than PayPal...Something like that might make me consider closing my PP account
for a competitor.
------
gngeal
TL;DR: If you find an exploitable bug in a high-profile web site and discover
that you're ineligible for a bug bounty, sell it to the bad guys instead. They
won't treat you like s##t. ;-)
~~~
JimJames
Out of curiosity, would it be illegal to do that? I mean ethically it's
definitely wrong, and I'm sure it's illegal to sell it to someone if you know
they are going to try and exploit it for profit, is there a technical loophole
to hide behind?
Say, you sell it to someone and to the best of your knowledge they want to
claim the reward for themselves. To justify the increased price you received
by selling it to a third party instead of submitting it for the bug reward you
could say that the third party intends to claim the bug as his own work and
the professional cred they'll receive justifies the increased price.
~~~
afreak
Companies like Vupen exist solely based on the development of exploits for
profit.
~~~
nathan_long
Wow, I didn't realize they could openly advertise that!
------
driverdan
PayPal's bounty system is a joke. Someone told me that he found a PP admin
login page that was vulnerable to SQLi. He notified PP but wasn't rewarded and
the bug hadn't been fixed when he checked it a month later. This was last
year.
~~~
batgaijin
What about that bullshit regulation that credit processors have to pass?
Doesn't that have a clause about timely response/mitigations of reported
bugs/flaws?
~~~
orphz
From what I heard, PayPal exists in the gray area between merchants and banks.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that have to do... well,
anything. They could shut down tomorrow and take all the money and it would be
perfectly legal.
~~~
brazzy
PayPal Europe is actually licensed as a Bank in Luxembourg.
~~~
herge
Being licensed as a Bank in Luxembourg sounds a lot like getting a degree from
the University of Phoenix.
~~~
DanBC
It's a real bank. Luxembourg has cheap corporate tax rates, so all Paypal's
Europe stuff goes through Luxembourg and thus they get cheaper taxes.
~~~
herge
Just because it is called a bank does not mean you'd would want to rely on it.
If Paypal suddenly decided to pull up it's stakes and take all it's customers
money, I would not imagine that Luxembourgois banking law would help a lot of
customers.
~~~
koyote
Do you have any sources confirming that the Luxembourgish banking laws would
allow Paypal (and all the other countless international banks stationed there)
to get away with this?
------
meritt
They'd just lock down his account for suspicious activity as soon as they paid
him, anyway.
------
ionforce
I love the fact that he wanted at least a letter of verification for future
job prospects. Future thinking kid! And, he has a history with Microsoft and
Mozilla, and he's only 17!
I love it.
------
JimmaDaRustla
You need a PayPal account to be eligible for a bounty, which he does not
because you must be 18 to own a PayPal account.
I have a few friends who work for PayPal support; apparently under 18
customers who put in a fake date of birth call all the time because they can't
setup a bank account to receive their money (usually from minecraft server
donations).
~~~
tantalor
When he turns 18 and create a legit account, can he claim the bounty?
~~~
JimmaDaRustla
I would hope so! Or they're just complete bastards.
I'm agreeing with everyone else - the work done is not dependent on age, nor
is the payment of the gratuity, so give him the dough he deserves and quit
embarrassing yourself PayPal!
------
mikerastiello
This is a good example of how to turn a good hacker into a bad hacker.
------
alt_
Original seclist discussion from yesterday:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5771647>
------
wladimir
Yet another Paypal PR disaster, they're good at spinning everything in the
worst possible way. What are they trying to do, get some award for world's
least popular company?
------
theboss
No surprise here. I posted my thoughts about this on reddit, as someone who
has dealt with paypal and their bug bounty program.
They will do anything they can to say the vulnerability is out of scope. Even
some heinous vulnerabilities.
It's quite tragic paypal wants to discourage responsible disclosure when one
incident will cost them their reputation.
~~~
6d0debc071
What reputation? As far as I can tell they only manage to stay in business
because banking laws are really perverse so competition's effectively non-
existent if you want to do business with the US.
------
ck2
As previous seen: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5771647>
(but good to see again)
------
ssharp
I'd imagine before someone reports a vulnerability, they're likely to research
the company's history in dealing with reports. You don't want to openly reduce
the incentives you give to people to report exploits instead of selling them.
So PayPal deals with this exploit without it affecting their users, but their
users now prone to be exploited in the future.
------
dspillett
Facebook to all those under 18: if you find a flaw in our site, sell the
information to the black-hats as you mean nothing to us.
Of course there might be legal reasons for excluding those below a certain age
(though 18 seems high for this boundary) as they don't want their offer to be
seen as employing minors.
~~~
objclxt
Facebook? We're talking about PayPal here. Facebook's vulnerability program
requires you just not be in a country subject to US sanctions (and presumably
be over 13, the age you need to be to have a Facebook account in the first
place).
~~~
dspillett
Sorry, I've been commenting on both companies in another forum and my brain
skipped track there.
For any company that offers bounties, my points are still relevant: not
handing the out to a subset could encourage that subset to look for reward
elsewhere, and the perception of labour use could be an important
consideration.
------
chris_wot
Emailing the link <http://paypal.com> is NOT something you'd generally give a
bug reward for. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
~~~
twistedpair
Hmmm... which they redirect to the <https://> site. How do you hack this
exactly? MITM before the redirect?
~~~
chris_wot
The bug is actually the man himself, who uses PayPal.
------
benawabe896
Looks like PayPal is trying hard to take EA's crown.
~~~
chris_wot
They took it some time ago.
------
denzil_correa
PayPal seriously?!! I think you can pay him after he turns 18 and keep holding
the amount (with interest of course) by that time.
------
Kiro
Off-topic but I thought XSS was about injecting JS which other users can see.
Is this really a vulnerability and not just a bug?
~~~
1SaltwaterC
How many actual users suspect that something is wrong with the input, even
without URL obfuscation? OTOH, with a permanent XSS it is pretty much game
over, even though I doubt that's the case. XSS can do a lot of damage if used
properly.
------
auctiontheory
No one seems to like PayPal. I'm surprised Amazon Payments and Google Checkout
haven't made more headway.
~~~
afreak
[https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449?hl=e...](https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449?hl=en)
Considering Google is retiring checkout, there are not many players out there.
~~~
TheCraiggers
That's not that big a deal. They're basically just retiring the name- Google
Wallet will be taking over and merchants can use it in much the same way.
------
yoster
They could have at least given him Paypal credit or a giftcard. This company
is fucking bullshit. Give the kid a donation to his college fund.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GlobalSign screw-up cancels top websites' HTTPS certificates - dboreham
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/globalsigned_off/
======
Corrado
I just tried to go to The Guardian and Chrome threw a NET::ERR_CERT_REVOKED
error and wouldn't let me on the site. Safari complained but gave me the
option to continue. I think I like Chrome's behavior more but Safari at least
let me see the certificate and understand what was wrong. Chrome completely
shut me out and refused to tell me anything about the site. :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Oral History of Unix: Interviews with the Founding Fathers of Unix - yarapavan
https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/unixhistory
======
yarapavan
Start with the final history page at
[http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/finalhis.htm](http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/finalhis.htm)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Modelling explains why blues and greens are nature's brightest colors - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-blues-greens-brightest-colous-nature.html
======
cmehdy
Am I misunderstanding the title there or is it simply made to be catchy but
wrong?
The actual beginning of the article says this:
"Researchers have shown why intense, pure red colors in nature are mainly
produced by pigments, instead of the structural color that produces bright
blue and green hues."
So the research has to do with the origin of different colors in animals, not
"why blue and green are nature's brightest colors". A quick look at a Scarlet
Ibis or a Poison Frog should make it clear that opposing red to blue in a
battle for "nature's brightest colors" would be an irrelevant endeavour
anyway, and that isn't what the researchers have been doing in the first
place.
~~~
herf
Yes agreed, they say "structural color" (film interference) only works for
blues and greens, and you need pigments for oranges and reds. Title should be
changed.
------
Syzygies
Digital photography still uses my father's filter
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter)).
How did it survive? He made an inevitable choice, this is bit like asking why
the number two is so prevalent. Frame the question right (as he did, preparing
twenty years for what looks like ten minutes of work), and this grid is the
unique answer:
"Checkerboard half the squares green, turn your head, and checkerboard what's
left red and blue."
What's most striking here is the prevalence of green squares. With a honeycomb
pattern, one could equally distribute RGB cells. However, this would be less
efficient in hardware and software. John von Neumann considered base 3
computing, but settled on binary, for a similar efficiency advantage.
From what my Dad understood of the human eye, he decided that green was the
best proxy for black and white detail, so he favored green. Digital
photography evolved in harmony with the human eye, just as eyes evolved in
harmony with the objects of our vision. None of us take in FM radio with our
eyes, and few animals see red. Some speculate that our corner of the mammal
world sees red to spot ripe fruit, nature's pigment playground.
~~~
jsjohnst
> Digital photography still uses my father's filter
Are you David by chance? If so, I’ve read several of your papers and just
wanted to say thanks!
~~~
Syzygies
Yup. I owe any sense of simplicity in my work to my Dad.
------
Someone
_“The researchers modeled the optical response and color appearance of
nanostructures, as found in the natural world. They found that saturated, matt
structural colors cannot be recreated in the red region of the visible
spectrum, which might explain the absence of these hues in natural systems.”_
Sounds like circular reasoning to me: “Red colors cannot be recreated in
nature because (according to our modeling) nano structures found in nature
cannot produce them”. What do I overlook?
~~~
srtjstjsj
What do you mean? They found that red is impossible, which explains it's
absence.
If red were possible, you'd have a different answer, possibly related to
vision systems.
~~~
Someone
That red isn’t possible with the nanostructures found in nature doesn’t imply
no such nanostructures could have evolved.
_If_ structures that produce red can be made, the question to answer would be
why they haven’t evolved.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers - chrismealy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/11/wikileaks-backlash-cyber-war
======
nhangen
Commenter vercol has it right:
"So democracy now consists of a group of geeks who speak for us all. They
appointed themselves and are accountable to no one. Anyone who questions them
is denounced as a moron, an American, a fascist and a friend of Sarah
Palin..."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Analysis: Nvidia chief pledges ‘legally binding’ commitments to UK for Arm - woliveirajr
https://mobile.twitter.com/chiakokhua/status/1307134114303283202
======
MichaelZuo
So the UK has a ‘Takeover Panel’ and apparently all the major players take it
seriously. It seems the WTO is toothless here.
Irregardless of Nvidia’s motivations it seems that any sizable business if
headquartered and listed in the UK can attract ‘national security interests’
that effectively gives the government a veto over the company. Well at least
their upfront about it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How incubators hurt startups - paulsilver
http://swombat.com/2012/6/29/incubators
======
Jun8
Hough's article that's linked in the OP seems to be the classical definition
of linkbait to me: outrageous claim backed up with little than simplistic
reasoning. It does not even have anecdotal evidence, e.g. I talked to X's
founder and he told me that YC or Techstars hurt their startup in so and so
way.
Some particular points:
* "Startup incubators don’t guarantee that your startup will be successful when you leave the program after three months — although the big profile programs do hint at success through association." If you get involved with an incubator thinking it's a guarantee for success you are naive indeed. And where exactly does, say, YC "hint at success".
* "Since 2005, Y Combinator has funded 460 startups with only a handful of big wins." This is the meat of the article. Since so few YC companies are successful, the YC experience _must_ be hurting the applicants. The ratio "handful" to 460 must be compared to successful startup which didn't participate in an incubator to _all_ start ups founded since 2005. BTW, for an analysis of "handful" see this discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2608440>. Big hands indeed!
* The only two points that are of importance, I think, are the uncontrolled publicity and relocation stress. Relocation is absolutely necessary, to cut you off from you usual surroundings. It's similar to the monks's shaving off their hair when they start their new life: a big step to show, especially to yourself, that you are starting something new. The uncontrolled publicity _is_ a problem, but this dogs many a Kickstarter company, too.
I've never done a YC round and am not a YC fanboy (in particular I'm worried
about the uncontrolled publicity that YC itself is getting and its increased
class size may dilute it.) but from what I read from HN over the years it
seems to be a seminal experience.
~~~
phamilton
I also found his claim that the non big win YC companies were either acquired,
failed, or in a zombie state.
The first two make sense, but I have no idea what a zombie startup is. The
only real example of something like that would be Color. Those in Palo Alto
have seen their giant office space with nobody in it, but whenever I walk by I
get the feeling its a bit more like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory than a
ghost town. These startups are churning away in a quasi stealth mode and who
knows what they might produce.
------
startupfactory
I am an accelerator "fanboy" having run LaunchBox Digital in Durham, NC and
recently launched Triangle Startup Factory in January.
Here is the meat of the issue - - They are not for everyone. But, it is a
perfect model for many. There is a Darwinian aspect that does weed out many
who are not ready for that particular startup path. But there are many paths
to success.
Like most endeavors - approach with eyes wide open. Understand the
expectations and value delivered and if it matches up with your goals -
welcome. Sounds like taking on VC investors.
But accelerators don't hurt startups.
------
grammaton
"Who knows how many of these companies could grow into something bigger
without the pressure of generating a return for early investors in just a few
short years."
It seems to me like this is part of a more general trend - namely that a lot
of startups might do well to figure out how they can make a profit first,
instead of going the venture/acquire/cash out route. It's not incubators that
are hurting startups - it's that a lot of startups should probably figure out
how to be profitable first.
~~~
phamilton
Or those providing valuable exits for companies that don't make money should
stop doing so.
------
alexro
The OP doesn't really say how startups get hurt. I didn't went through any
incubator but I'm planning to.
From my point of view there are definitely bad incubators out there - the ones
that get started by random people which the OP mentions - but these are no
brainer: if you part with your equity for their pitch you don't deserve to be
an entrepreneur anyway.
There are also top-notch ones - YC the hottest one - these are no brainer too.
And finally there are about a dozen of in-between. And that's where it stops
being black-n-white. There might be some benefits in going through their
programme, it just all unpredictable. You get different experience being in a
different bunch, but still, I have no idea how it could "hurt" a startup if
they get 3 month pay and advance their idea.
~~~
swombat
A few ways:
1) The "pay" might slow down the founders' progress into a proper founder
mindset, i.e. "we need to make revenues, dammit". In that way, it would hurt.
2) Many incubators I've encountered think they're adding value by imposing
some kind of structure... requiring milestones, etc. For some startups, this
may be suitable, but for others, it's completely wrong and will slow them
down, discourage them, or even lead them in the wrong direction.
3) Good advice is worth its weight - bad advice can be the opposite. Get some
convincing advice by someone who has no idea what they're talking about, and
it could be very costly.
~~~
ragincajun
Agree completely. It really all depends on the startup and the founders, but I
wouldn't consider anything other than a top 10 incubator.
For less than top 10 incubators, I think they could be great for inexperienced
founders or someone looking for some help. Building connections are a big part
of the incubator experience as well.
------
toddmorey
I think the implication in Kate Hough's article that incubators encourage you
to lie on stage is more than ridiculous; it's irresponsible. I knew a guy who
lied once in college. It had nothing to do with his own weak backbone: the
pressure of college forced him into it and the whole institution is on trial.
Look, an incubator may or may not be good for your startup. I don't know for
your own situation. But I do know this: articles like this one are certainly
not good for honest discussion, information, or the image of tech journalism.
------
adjwilli
That is a well balanced critique of accelerators.
One possible defense of incubators could be that their value increases with
time.
The first class of companies may not benefit much, but as time goes on, some
of those companies will certainly succeed. And those those successful
companies will offer value to the current/future batches.
Of course, YC has the advantage of already having several successful alumni.
And like the Matthew Principle says, those who have will be given more.
------
tlogan
Are there any Dropboxes, Herokus, or similar startups from other incubators? I
have felling that there are only a couple incubators worth applying for.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ruby gem that adds support for Java syntax - chancancode
https://github.com/vanruby/java
======
ttronicm
This is the worst thing to happen to Ruby in a long long time.
Why would one choose to develop in Ruby if they didn't want a dynamic language
to start with? Why not just develop your application in Objective-C which
gives you the option to be dynamic or static?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are Git and Mercurial Anti-Agile? - taylorbuley
http://www.grahamlea.com/2013/11/git-mercurial-anti-agile-continuous-integration/
======
misnome
DCVS is good because you can have tracked local changes. Sometimes you are
doing a larger change to the software that takes a while and may require some
thought, without stacking up hundreds of minor changes sitting in the source
folder uncomitted that get applied simultaneously (a la CVS and SVN) and
merges happen into that working folder, with no reversability.
You could make the same argument all the way down to requiring that every
single line changed is committed at the instant of writing (otherwise they are
hiding their code!).
Without tools like Git and Mercurial, people are still doing exactly the same
behaviour, just it isn't being source controlled.
------
tunesmith
Something about this seems orthogonal to me. There's nothing about dvcs itself
that implies a lack of fluidity in a codebase, is there?
In a rough attempt to get down to first principles, CI means you need to be
able to deploy a codebase at anytime. Feature development means that codebase
needs to be ever-changing. Successful deployment means the codebase needs to
be at a level of guaranteed quality.
This means that the quality of a "change" needs to be guaranteed to some level
_before_ it is merged to the deployment branch.
So right there, that implies the need for "changes" to be developed and
quality-checked somewhere other than on the deployment branch.
I think that takes us pretty inexorably to the practice of branching the
codebase, developing there, quality-checking there, and also merging _from_
the deployment branch into the feature branch as the deployment branch
changes.
So what's left is qualifying what is meant by "change". Is it one feature? A
story? A functionality layer? That can be harder to decide on. Agile says it
should be a ui-focused story, but sometimes stories are epics (like a simple
form submission that somehow implies several SOA services be set up to make it
work). So I think that means we can still do functional dependency analysis
and shrink stories down to smaller functional steps, sometimes.
The key is to keep stories/features small enough so that they aren't in
progress for weeks at a time. When you're working on a feature and then are
faced with a _massive_ merge _from_ the deployment branch, that's where things
get messed up.
------
Arzh
" Dave Farley (co-author of ‘Continuous Delivery’) describes Continuous
Integration as the process of automatically creating a potential release
candidate after every commit. Are feature branches going to help you do that?
"
I think so, if you build a feature outside of the main branch, test it fully
and prepare it correctly, the commit to the main branch will be a potential
release candidate. You can't say that if you are integrating a potentially
broken feature into the main branch everyday.
I've never seen a git crew work in isolation before. If two teams or people
are working on two different modules that need to work together they are still
integrating between themselves on a regular basis. It's just that those
changes do not get pushed up to main until they are finished.
------
awkward
The issue is that the C in CI is a convenient fiction. Someone on your team is
always going to be changing the code, which means that they will have it, at
some point, in a state that fails validation. Requiring that they get it to a
point where it's fully passing is fine, but in many cases that just means a
longer time before checkins.
DVCSes, on the other hand, bring to the surface and keep in the record that
the code is always branched to some degree. It's not that it's incompatible,
it's that it's giving more granular information than the CI process can work
with or needs.
------
w_t_payne
I strongly agree with the fundamental point that the author is making.
However, there are nuances. A lot of this depends on the type of development
that you are doing.
For example, most of my day-to-day work is done in very small increments.
Minor bug-fixes, incremental classifier performance improvements, parameter
changes, and so on. Only rarely will I work on a feature that is so
significant in its' impact that the work-in-progress causes the branch to
spend several days in a broken / non-working state. I also work in fairly
small teams, so the rate of pushes to Gerrit is quite low: only around a dozen
pushes per day or so. This means that integration is pretty easy, and that our
CI server gives us value & helps with our quality gating. We can follow a
single-branch development path with little to no pain, and because both our
software and the division of labour in the team are fairly well organised,
conflicts very very seldom occur when merging (even when using suboptimal
tools to perform the merges).
This state of affairs probably does not hold for all developers, but it holds
for me, and for most of the people that I work with. As a result, we can
happily work without feature branches (most of the time), and lean on the CI
process to keep ourselves in sync & to measure the performance of our
classifiers & other algorithms.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think that Git is great. I am the nominated Git
expert in my team, and spend a lot of time helping other team members navigate
the nuances of using Git with Gerrit, but for most people it is yet another
tool to learn in an already over-complex development environment. Git gives us
the flexibility to do what we need to in the environment that we have; but it
is anything but effortless and transparent, which is what it really needs to
be.
Software development is about developing software. Making systems that work.
Not wrangling branches in Git.
My ideal tool would be the bastard son of Git and a real-time collaborative
editor. My unit tests should be able to report when my local working copy is
in a good state. Likewise, my unit tests should be able to report whether a
merge or rebase has succeeded or failed. Why can I not then fully automate the
process of integrating my work with that of my colleagues? Indeed, my work
should be integrated & shared whenever the following two conditions are met:
1) My unit tests pass on my local working copy, and 2) My unit tests pass on
the fully integrated copy. These are the same criteria that I would use when
doing the process manually ... so why do it manually? Why not automate it?
Triggered by every save, the resulting process would create the appearance of
an almost-real-time collaborative working environment, opening up the
possibility for new forms of close collaboration and team-working that are
simply not possible with current tools. A source file would be a shared
document that updates almost in real time. (If it is only comments that are
being edited, then there is no reason why the updating could not actually be
in real time). This means that you could discuss a change with a colleague,
IRC-style, in the comments of a source document, and make the change in the
source file _at the same time_ , keeping a record not only of the logic
change, but also of the reasoning that led to it. (OK, this might cause too
much noise, but with comment-folding, that might not matter too much).
Having said all of that, branches are still useful, as are commit messages, so
we would still want something like Git to keep a record of significant
changes, and to isolate incompatible works-in-progress in separate branches;
but there is no reason why we cannot separate out the "integration" use case
and the "collaboration" use case from the "version control" and "record
keeping" use cases.
------
voidr
I strongly disagree with this whole notion, I think in fact that the opposite
is true.
With Git you can make sure that you merge when your story is actually done,
with Subversion you need to worry about other's changes if you commit all the
time.
With feature branches you only have to worry about integration into the
mainline once, when your task is complete, which makes continuous integration
far easier than with the SVN model.
If we would need to call a VCS anti-agile, I think that would actually be SVN,
which makes continuos delivery a lot harder.
------
w_t_payne
Git and Mercurial make CI harder. CI is an important part of the discipline
needed to make Agile work. (CI is an important part of making anything work).
You can still do CI with Git and Mercurial. (If I can, anyone can). But you
need to fight the tools (a little bit). Fortunately, Git is super-flexible,
and you can make it do (almost) anything.
------
programminggeek
We use gitflow and it works well for us. We run tests before integrating. git
isn't anti-agile at all. I don't understand the article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rolling Haiku Style At CPAP.com - johnnyg
http://grab.by/gf8E
======
bendauphinee
hah That was fun to write. Didn't think it'd actually get posted here, but
hey, what's life without a little whimsy?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Little Known SQL Feature: Use Logical Windowing to Aggregate Sliding Ranges - mariuz
https://blog.jooq.org/2016/10/31/a-little-known-sql-feature-use-logical-windowing-to-aggregate-sliding-ranges/
======
datahead
This technique applies to many RDBMS, not just Oracle (as others have noted).
Teradata, PostgreSQL, MS SQL all have 'analytical' functions like this.
Analytical functions (over, partition by, etc) are extremely powerful and can
help simplify architecture/design for the data science/analytical communities.
One of the persistent issues on my team is the reliance upon a dataframe
representation w/ R or python to do this type of aggregation and windowing.
Most people will eschew learning the 'advanced' SQL and instead bring data
locally to do imperative style munging on it.
This creates a few issues, mainly adding complexity to the analytical stack:
\- Instead of querying the data and doing ETL/feature engineering in the db-
you are moving data around (usually to less powerful machines, such as a
laptop) for simple exploration.
\- This wastes time and usually results in more dependencies (dplyr for
example- no hate Hadley), sometimes even limiting you to single threaded
operations. Teradata, for example, is massively parallel and will perform
these operations in short order. I've seen Data Scientists wait 6hr for R to
do the same thing a SQL query against a prod system returns in 3min.
\- Code is not portable. A query can be executed and results retrieved through
ODBC, JDBC or native connections. Without these, data engineers are often
asked to install R (including libs) on some intermediate machine just to do
munging/ETL/feature engineering. If SQL driven, moving from quantitative
exploration to operational is quite easy (maybe just a query tune).
All that to say, I'm glad this post is highlighting some of the advanced SQL
that I hope more people rely upon. All of these ideas are better articulated
in MAD Skills [0]
[0]
[http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/vldb09-madskills.pdf](http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/vldb09-madskills.pdf)
~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
One minor nit - normally a prod db is subject to availability restrictions
that limit your ability to run 3 minute-long queries on them that suck up a
bunch of resources. Nightly mirror to a staging/analysis db of sorts is a bit
better practice.
Window functions are extraordinarily powerful, as are Common Table Expressions
(CTE's). I encourage anyone who uses SQL with any regularity to learn them
immediately once they are comfortable with the more straightforward queries
and clauses SQL offers. Once you've mastered windowing and CTE's, you'll
wonder how you functioned without them.
~~~
bigger_cheese
The admins at my work have always told us (i.e. people wanting to run data
analysis) to avoid executing complex queries on production servers.
The workflow I use is to run simple select queries on prod databases. To bring
the subset of data I'm interested in down locally Once I have the "extracts"
I'm interested in I'll transform the data locally using SAS.
SAS has pretty powerful time interval routines which is what I'd typically use
to compute something like the example in the article.
My work has just started looking at "big data" we have a new hadoop databases
which is supposed to be used for that so I assume if I ever need to start
looking into data stored there it will make more sense to run the SQL "on the
database". So the article has some useful info there.
~~~
tomlock
One thing to note here might be that if network is the bottleneck you'd likely
be asked the opposite. In my experience if people pay attention to
indexes/partitioning they can win dba's hearts, but dbas often don't explain
these things because most people don't listen. So to them its easier to say
"don't run complex queries".
~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Part of the problem with people paying attention to indexes/partitioning is
that there's no very easy way to display that to the end user. A person
knowledgeable in SQL can query the right tables to determine this but at that
point you're pretty much thinking like a DBA in the first place. If major
vendors had a nice visualization of such a thing built into the interaction
tools like SSMS/SQL Developer/PGAdmin3 etc. then it might be easier (these
might exist, I'm just not aware of them).
So yeah, the end result is DBA's give the generic "don't run SELECT * and use
a WHERE clause when you're querying large tables"
------
teilo
I have made a lot of window function converts. It's amazing how many devs
don't know about them. When I see a whole series of CASE statements +
subqueries, it is almost always possible to dramatically simplify the query
with one or more window functions.
------
eranation
This (in perhaps a slightly different syntax flavor) works on
Hive/Presto/SparkSQL as well by the way. Also in Apache drill.
[https://drill.apache.org/docs/sql-window-functions-
introduct...](https://drill.apache.org/docs/sql-window-functions-
introduction/)
~~~
electrum
Presto implements the SQL standard, so the syntax is identical:
[https://prestodb.io/docs/current/functions/window.html](https://prestodb.io/docs/current/functions/window.html)
------
RyanHamilton
Windowing functions in standard SQL databases are like putting lipstick on a
pig. You created a design based on sets then later tried to slap on the idea
of order to sets. kdb is based on the concept of ordered lists, not sets and
makes windowing functions on time and order based queries ridiculously easy.
If this kind of thing interests you I recommend checking it out these
comparison queries between kdb and standard SQL:
[http://www.timestored.com/b/kdb-qsql-query-vs-
sql/](http://www.timestored.com/b/kdb-qsql-query-vs-sql/)
Unfortunately kdb is very expensive.
~~~
gshulegaard
> Windowing functions in standard SQL databases are like putting lipstick on a
> pig.
I have always thought the underlying Relational Algebra of SQL databases to be
quite beautiful
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra)).
This doesn't make it the right tool for every job, but let's try to shy away
from calling it a, "pig".
> You created a design based on sets then later tried to slap on the idea of
> order to sets.
I have some questions here.
It sounds like you are implying that sets and order are mutually exclusive,
but this is not my understanding of the math. Could you elaborate?
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partially_ordered_set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partially_ordered_set)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order)
From the second reference on Total Order:
> "The lexicographical order on the Cartesian product of a family of totally
> ordered sets, indexed by a well ordered set, is itself a total order."
This quote seems to actually contradict this implication...especially in
respect to Relational Algebra which relies heavily on Cartesian Product.
Thanks in advance for your response! I enjoy improving my own understanding of
the underlying Computer Science/Mathematics whenever I can.
~~~
RyanHamilton
>>It sounds like you are implying that sets and order are mutually exclusive,
but this is not my understanding of the math. Could you elaborate?
The concept of sets and order may not be mutually exclusive in the
mathematical theory but in terms of how actual databases were conceived and
implemented they were very far apart. Early on many databases actually took
advantage of the fact the operations were set based and that order was not
guaranteed to achieve a number of speed optimizations. How long did many
databases take to get row number support? "partition by" support?
Take a look at this SO post for doing a running sums calculation:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14953294/how-to-get-
runni...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14953294/how-to-get-running-sum-
of-a-column-in-sql-server)
This is the same kdb code: update runningSumB:sums b by a from t
Instead many people ended up turning to cursors to allow ordered calculations.
~~~
gshulegaard
> The concept of sets and order may not be mutually exclusive in the
> mathematical theory but in terms of how actual databases were conceived and
> implemented they were very far apart.
I may be wrong, but it was my understanding the original Relational Databases
were very much based on the Relational Algebra originally pioneered by E.F.
Codd[1]. So I think it is a stretch to say that they were "conceived" separate
from the mathematics.
Further, it was my understanding that E.F. Codd took his relational algebra
which he developed while working as a researcher at IBM and applied it to an
implementation of an RDBMS also at IBM (now known as IBM DB2)[2]. So
similarly, I think it is a stretch to claim that databases were originally
implemented "far apart" from the mathematics.
I think there is a valid point that actual DB implementations may be lacking,
but isn't that a reason not to use that particular implementation rather than
a knock against Relational models?
I may be wrong, but it seems like your problems aren't with the Relational
Model but rather with potentially lacking/incomplete implementations of it.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2)
------
epalmer
I don't use SQL that much in my day to day work but I have a need that
Windowing will satisfy. Thanks to @mariuz for submitting this.
I use Oracle mostly so I don't even have to worry about syntax differences.
------
garyclarke27
Itzik Ben-Gan wrote a whole book just on SQL windows functions and it's
brilliant. He writes for SQL server usually, but he made this one more
generic, he had to because at the time SQL server 2012 was missing much of the
functionality he described, unlike Postgres or Oracle. Postgres has incredible
capability here - Window AND Frame partitions/ordering, also row based ranges
or value based ranges. And as a huge bonus unique to Postgres, the wondeful -
Filter by clause - so much more elegant than sub queries.
~~~
j_s
This one?
_Microsoft SQL Server 2012 High-Performance T-SQL Using Window Functions
(Developer Reference)_
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPHKY](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JDMPHKY)
------
contingencies
_How many payments were there in the same hour as any given payment?
How many payments were there in the same hour before any given payment?
How many payments were there within one hour before any given payment?_
I have two serious questions.
(1) In which realistic scenario would you ever need to ask such questions in
the first place?
(2) Even if you did need to do so, for example for risk management, occasional
reporting or some kind of adaptive scaling supposition, then surely you would
be calculating once per time unit (eg. hour/day) or recomputing a sliding-
total?
As I have actually personally written a number of relatively high profile,
large scale, publicly deployed, major brand digital entertainment content
rental and purchase systems (including complexities resulting from things like
multi-device, multi-DRM cryptography) for brands like LG, Nokia, Samsung, etc.
- these are not flippant questions.
Looking further... uh-oh... author uses Java.
_Sakila example database was originally developed by Mike Hillyer of the
MySQL AB documentation team. This project is designed to help database
administrators to decide which database to use for development of new
products. The user can run the same SQL against different kind of databases
and compare the performance._
So the Sakila project referenced is not supposed to be a real project, it's a
personal re-interpretation of a test project designed specifically by a
database nerd with zero domain knowledge to show off database features...
_jOOQ is an innovative solution for a better integration of Java applications
with popular databases_
... and this is what the author is working on, the world's billionth RDBMS ORM
layer.
IMHO readability is far more important than efficiency. Programmers should
generally avoid using these types of obscure, frequently partly platform-
linked techniques and consider their drawbacks against other potential
solutions.
Five minutes of life wasted.
~~~
infinite8s
Huh? Windowing functions are part of the SQL standard (as of SQL2003).
Also, these types of queries are the bread and butter of analytical queries
(not really as useful for transactional purposes).
~~~
contingencies
There is 'standard' and there is 'reality'.
If it doesn't work everywhere (eg. on sqlite) then it's not 'standard' in that
it's not familiar to all developers (minimum subset).
The further you go from that subset, the higher price your developers pay to
grok your code. Yes, that includes stuff as simple as foreign keys, indices,
etc.
Contrary to your bread and butter assertions, in my experience this stuff is
end-of-the-branch, end-of-the-twig, end-of-the-leaf, only-present-at-winter-
solstice level common in web and CRUD applications.
~~~
smallnamespace
I've worked on multiple true relational SQL and 'analytics' backends and they
have all supported analytic functions of varying complexity. Everyone around
me was using them as well because the queries were orders of magnitude faster,
and smaller and _more readable_ than using nested SELECT ... GROUP BY
statements to achieve the same result.
Note that for reporting and analytics workloads, 1) even batch queries can be
much faster using analytics functions because the optimizer can do many of
them for essentially free as part of the scan rather than requiring a subquery
and 2) interactive workflows become much, much quicker in my experience. Data
exploration is much less useful if running a query takes 5 hours rather than
30 seconds.
Defining sqlite as the 'standard' SQL and refusing to use any other features
available on your platform out of fear of confusing new developers is
misguided. Sometimes analytics functions are the best tool for the task, and
good engineers should judiciously weigh their utility against the risk of
losing access to that tool.
Keep in mind though that the cost of migrating your db backend is generally so
high that if you _are_ forced to do so, rewriting queries that depended on
analytics functions will likely be a small rounding error within the total
migration cost.
------
est
tl;dr Oracle.
~~~
samch
The article highlights the Oracle flavor of this functionality, but similar
windowing operations are available in PostgreSQL[1] and SQL Server[2]. Edit to
add that I have no idea if JOOQ supports windowing functions in non-Oracle
systems.
1: [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-
win...](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-window.html)
2: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms189461.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms189461.aspx)
~~~
lukaseder
_Logical_ windowing is not available in those other databases, i.e. only
Oracle can specify a window whose size depends on the content of the current
row, rather than a fixed number of rows.
~~~
samch
I'm not sure that's entirely correct. This is from the SQL Server MSDN docs,
"Alternatively, the RANGE clause logically limits the rows within a partition
by specifying a range of values with respect to the value in the current row."
Source: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms189461.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms189461.aspx)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Looking for a web developer - Tzeentch99
Hi,<p>I'm looking for a professional web developer freelancer to create a site for an idea I had. They would need to be in San Francisco or South Bay. Shoot me an email if you are interested with work sample and all the necessaries and we can have a consultation about prices and such.<p>Drop me a line at [email protected].
======
sidmitra
If you're interested in working remotely, and outside of the US. Feel free to
ping me
\- <http://sidmitra.com> \- <http://cloudshuffle.com>
------
briandear
Hashrocket.com -- the best guys around and they can work via video conference.
They're in Jacksonville not San Fran, but it's worth the logistical
accommodation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Capsule Networks Explained - kendrick__
https://kndrck.co/posts/capsule_networks_explained/
======
asavinov
Here are some other posts explaining the nature of capsule networks, their
goals and how they work:
\- [https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/understanding-hintons-
capsule...](https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/understanding-hintons-capsule-
networks-part-i-intuition-b4b559d1159b)
\- [https://hackernoon.com/what-is-a-capsnet-or-capsule-
network-...](https://hackernoon.com/what-is-a-capsnet-or-capsule-
network-2bfbe48769cc)
~~~
ktta
Here's a fluffy short piece about Geoffrey Hinton + Capsule Networks.
[1]: [https://www.wired.com/story/googles-ai-wizard-unveils-a-
new-...](https://www.wired.com/story/googles-ai-wizard-unveils-a-new-twist-on-
neural-networks/)
------
sheerun
When it comes to translation/rotation invariance, this is similar idea to
"Harmonic Networks: Deep Translation and Rotation Equivariance" paper:
\-
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.04642.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.04642.pdf)
\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoWAFBYOtoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoWAFBYOtoU)
Maybe they can be combined?
~~~
icc97
Interesting links. That paper indicates that it's primary benefit is with
rotations rather than translations. Regular CNNs are perfectly capable of
dealing with translations.
------
alde
Looks like the part about translational invariance is wrong. Translational
invariance is an invariance to translations, not rotations. If a model detects
a rotated cat as a cat, then it is rotationally invariant.
~~~
tomxor
I suspect transform invariance is what is meant, although we find some
transforms much harder than others which may hint at a more descrete process
than a transform matrix in human visual systems.
~~~
icc97
I'd say transformations are more important than rotations, as in a 3D world
we'll almost never see an object from a perpendicular view point, but most of
the time we'll see objects that are the right way up.
~~~
tomxor
> in a 3D world we'll almost never see an object from a perpendicular view
> point
True, however transforms would be more useful as an umbrella term in this
context for the subset of transforms that include perspective + orientation of
a fixed geometry. Visual systems only need to care about this subset in almost
all cases...
In which case it's conceivable that we infer geometry through a set of
discrete transforms somewhat like rotations, translations and scaling, or
perhaps there is a component that did happen to converge on something more
unified resembling an arbitrary transform matrix. If only we could simply
identify these pieces in biological systems.
------
tycho01
If the point is to easily reconstruct geometry, then mimicking humans should
mean using 3D imagery (same object seen from two eyes) to get a better idea of
its shape. Wonder if that might some day become part of best practice in
computer vision too.
~~~
taneq
In the same vein, I've always thought that operating on short (< 1s) video
clips would help a lot with overfitting and object differentiation.
------
NHQ
There one thing in the paper that has me stumped
> Each primary capsule output[sic] sees the outputs of all 256 × 81 Conv1
> units whose receptive fields overlap with the location of the center of the
> capsule.
What does that mean? The capsules are bundles of convolutions, and the output
of the "256 * 81 conv1" is a 1D manifold. What does it mean "overlap" and what
is the center of the capsule?
Note on [sic] - seems like it should read "input"
~~~
eref
I think it is a pretty unnecessary sentence. 81 comes from the 9x9 kernel
size. It is obvious that those will overlap despite of the stride of 2. Maybe
they mean the projective field.
~~~
NHQ
Thanks. So maybe it is saying that the field overlap with capsules is implicit
in network, not a step in the calculation? That's my conclusion.
------
dnautics
I feel like capsule network are one step closer to a hybrid between standard
deep learning tools and hofstadter conceptual slippage networks
~~~
shpx
[https://mindmodeling.org/cogscihistorical/cogsci_10.pdf](https://mindmodeling.org/cogscihistorical/cogsci_10.pdf)
page 601
[http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/conference/](http://www.cognitivesciencesociety.org/conference/)
is an intimidating amount of information
------
m3kw9
I thought CNN was also translational invariant, why are they saying it’s not?
------
m3kw9
These guys doesn’t seem to understand capsule network all the much, they had a
translational image showing a rotated cat, now modified to properly show it
translated
------
catern
Aw... I thought this was a post explaining active networking using capsules.
~~~
yeukhon
The startup? Is that what you are referring to?
~~~
catern
No,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_networking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_networking)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smart bag can charge phones, weigh itself and nearly got me kicked off a flight - peterkelly
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2016/01/30/welp/
======
jfries
How could the swipe test come back positive? What is it actually testing for?
~~~
mesozoic
That test is highly unreliable as it detects glycerine which is also a common
ingredient in soap, lotion, baby wipes, etc.
[http://consumertraveler.com/columns/getting-there/tsas-
explo...](http://consumertraveler.com/columns/getting-there/tsas-explosive-
trace-detection-needs-a-dramatic-overhaul/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do I have any chances to get into YC if I submitted late application? - harisb2012
I submitted my application few days ago. I was really late. I didn't know for this session. Do I have any chances to get my application reviewed?
======
lettergram
They may review the applications, but if you submit it very late, they
probably will look for absolutely ANYTHING that they could decline you for.
I submitted a late application for S14, here was the response:
"We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your late application for funding.
Please don't take it personally. The chances of a late application being
accepted are much lower than for an application submitted by the deadline.
If you want to apply again for the Winter 2015 cycle, the application will
probably be online within the next couple of months.
Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots
of mistakes. We have good statistical evidence that we fail to interview a
significant number of startups that we'd accept if we did."
From the reading, it seems that they probably briefly reviewed it.
------
namenotrequired
I can't really answer the question, I only know that Instacart got in on a
really late application, but the founder did more than just submit an
application. He also contacted one of the partners and showed him his
application by sending him a beer with it.
------
efbaum
Do you know if anyone who submitted a late app has heard back yet?
------
dejv_cz1
I guess so, otherwise, there wouldn't be the option to send it after the
deadline. But ynk.
------
dfmarulanda
and if. Late Applications Interview call its the same ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Welcome to Mongolia's New Postal System: An Atlas of Random Words - wainstead
http://www.npr.org/2016/06/19/482514949/welcome-to-mongolias-new-postal-system-an-atlas-of-random-words
======
04rob
It seems like a major drawback to this approach is that the address for nearby
locations have nothing in common. That makes it harder to get a sense of where
something is based on the address alone.
------
rakoo
Previous discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11894368)
I'll repeat my opinion: this is a really dangerous move for Mongolia, and one
I hope will not be emulated by other states.
------
yuningalexliu
Very cool idea! Just wondering if it's feasible to do something similar with
two words?
~~~
andyjdavis
Sure but the area covered by each pair would be much larger due to the
drastically smaller number of combinations available.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Bringing HTML5 and JavaScript to Office 15 - jalbertbowden
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/08/microsoft-bringing-html5-and-j.php#.TvLxNtJsCZY.hackernews
======
hrabago
I wonder about the JS#/vendor lock in responses here in HN. We're talking
about a _macro language in MS Office_ , where your development and runtime
environment is very well known (MS Office). I don't know how much portability
demands you expect from code you're writing to format your Excel cells.
function mergeAndHideGridlines() {
getRange("H15:I16").merge();
activeWindow.displayGridlines = false;
}
Sure I can picture someone pasting in code from his/her JS library to reuse in
a macro, but I don't foresee people commonly doing the other way and having
issues because the Excel function that they worked on for several days doesn't
work for webpages.
~~~
Hominem
Right, they are talking about exposing the existing Office API to Javascript.
Not having Office generate Javascript or some abomination.
------
Hominem
Sounds good if it works. Writing plugins, or automating Office through COM is
an exercise in frustration right now. I've had to automate office to do some
ridiculous stuff with word docs by invoking the COM objects half a dozen times
now, and each time I do it pushes me one step closer to learning rails.
~~~
rrreese
Is there any reason you aren't using Open XML rather then COM?
<http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5124>
For files <100MB I found it much nicer to use then interop.
~~~
Hominem
Need to support legacy files. The last (and biggest) was to import word docs
into a commercial typesetting system. We need to keep the barriers for our
clients as low as possible so couldn't require they give us .docx.
------
rbanffy
If that reduces vendor lock-in, I'm for it. But knowing Microsoft since the
Altair BASIC days, I _have_ to wonder what they are trying to accomplish.
~~~
MichaelGG
Why would anyone think this is to avoid lock-in? If you're writing something
to manipulate the Word document model using the Word API, it's unlikely you're
going to be able to retarget that code to some other system. Just like if you
use the Java libraries, it doesn't matter if the language is portable - you're
still going to need Java to run the code against.
What they are trying to accomplish is simple: Keep more people using Office.
JavaScript and HTML seem to be gaining more traction, so it makes perfect
sense Microsoft would want their products accessible for such developers. What
other reason would there be?
~~~
rbanffy
This is obviously not to avoid lock-in. This is Microsoft, remember?
But, if JavaScript becomes the de facto extension language for Office, at
least we have a smaller problem to deal with than with VBScript.
------
philjackson
Why does Office need to be quite so complicated? It it purely to sell upgrades
or are there people out there who look forward to this stuff?
~~~
AndrewDucker
There are lots of business uses to being able to automate documents. Being
able to do so in JS rather than VBA would be a bonus for companies that have a
need to do so, but don't want to train people in a language that's not used
anywhere else.
It might also allow MS to do nifty online things.
~~~
noamsml
Agreed. Having used VBA in Access back in the day, I can attest that JS would
be a godsend.
------
ropman76
I like this idea. One of my first "hacks" in the workplace was using VBA to
make an Excel worksheet automate some processes my co-workers hated.
Incorporating JavaScript and HTML 5 means more programmers can make coworkers
happy with less investment in programming infrastructure and not being able to
use those skills elsewhere outside of spreadsheets.
------
mbq
I remember older versions of Office making HTML; two pages of some cryptic
stuff after exporting Hello World doc...
------
joelthelion
I wonder if it's going to be HTML5/Javascript or H5++/Microsoft JS#
Professional...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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