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Steve Jobs explains ban on Flash - inovica
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10092298
======
chris_j
This article is pretty old (April 2010). Apple has loosened some of its
restrictions in the meantime:
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20015954-264.html>
------
moomba
Wow. This is pretty funny considering how old the news is that this article is
about.
------
CervezaPorFavor
This is almost one year old. Why does it suddenly re-appear?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google tests scripting feature for online apps - abennett
http://itworld.com/development/68497/google-tests-scripting-feature-online-apps
======
mcav
Direct link from Google: [http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/05/old-
tool-new-tr...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/05/old-tool-new-
tricks.html)
------
euroclydon
GBA? I don't think a real hacker would want to mess with this. I was excited
for a while about ZoHo's scripting, but found using a proprietary scripting
language in a webpage to be like pulling teeth.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Weird Is Good: What Portland's Economy Can Teach Every City in the World - hawkw
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/weird-is-good-what-portlands-economy-can-teach-every-city-in-the-world/277477/
======
joshuaellinger
Hey Austin is weird too....
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are there any good alternatives to Mozilla Thunderbird? - gsivil
======
atgm
Not being snarky here, but how about gmail? If you want pop3 or IMAP, you can
do that in gmail. You can also tag/color e-mails based on which address
they're coming from, set up reply-to, have a huge amount of space for
archiving, Google searching for your e-mails...
~~~
gsivil
Thanks.I am currently using gmail but I never set up my external accounts. The
only limitation that I see on that is that at the moment we cannot use it
offline. I am reading that this will be coming with HTML5. But I am not sure.
------
maguay
Postbox is a nice alternative, though it is made from Thunderbird code by many
of the people from the Thunderbird team. Still, they made the user experience
much better...
Check it out at <http://www.postbox-inc.com/>, and there's a free, Express
version available too.
~~~
gsivil
Thanks but it seems that it is available only for Windows and Mac.
~~~
maguay
Ah, true. Sorry ... I guess I just assumed you were using one of those two.
But this is _Hacker_ News, after all ;)
So which is it: Linux, BSD, or your own hand coded OS?
------
krakensden
You should mention your platform, but in general, no. Email clients are in a
perfect storm of unsexy, mostly solved, and difficult to make money from.
~~~
gsivil
I am sorry for my brief post. I am talking from the perspective of the user.
Of course hearing the view of the developers would be very interesting.
I am on ubuntu and I would like a lighter alternative to Thunderbird for my
netbook.
I think that a google product along the lines of TB wold be interesting, but I
am not sure if they see that as a competition to Gmail that is Ad-compatible.
~~~
krakensden
You could check out KMail, it's fast and the most complete replacement.
Other options include Evolution (even slower than TBird), mutt, sup, claws,
and alpine.
Or you could be like everyone else, and just use gmail.
~~~
gsivil
Thanks for your suggestions. Maybe the most common solution is the best in
that case.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Runtime Data Mapper for MongoDB - Amiga64
https://www.syssurge.com/Products/Slazure/Home.aspx
======
dulcinea
Very nice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bret Victor to join Microsoft as CEO - GuiA
https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/371050632309796864
======
JacksonGariety
This tweet was a joke, why did this get up voted?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Routine Checklists for iOS - mdrachuk
https://drach.uk/everyplan/
======
mdrachuk
Hi HN!
I wanted to thank the community for everything you‘ve taught me over the
years. If you want to try the apps, but are hesitant to pay — send me an email
(mention Show HN) and I’ll give you a free App Store promo code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump Administration Releases Transparency Rule in Hospital Pricing - siberianbear
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-releases-transparency-rule-in-hospital-pricing-11573825649?mod=rsswn
======
jakeogh
HHS Press release: [https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2018/08/01/trump-
administrati...](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2018/08/01/trump-
administration-delivers-on-promise-of-more-affordable-health-insurance-
options.html)
The rule: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-
inspection.federalregister.g...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-
inspection.federalregister.gov/2018-16568.pdf)
Giving the people more information is unambigiously a good thing.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/trump-releases-rule-
requirin...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/trump-releases-rule-requiring-
hospitals-and-insurers-to-disclose-negotiated-rates.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Commons Clause Is a Legal Minefield and a Very Bad Idea - vmbrasseur
http://anonymoushash.vmbrasseur.com/2018/09/10/commons-clause-is-a-legal-minefield-and-a-very-bad-idea/
======
the_xenu_story
I think we still need to see how it plays out in the real world. But just like
a new software release, it is possible that the first version may have some
"bugs".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump’s Latest Pick for the Fed Is No Fan of Paper Money - euvitudo
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/trump-s-latest-pick-for-the-fed-is-no-fan-of-paper-money
======
mindcrime
Wow. I just suddenly become a _lot_ more interested in Bitcoin and other
crypto-currencies. Sorry, but I am _not_ interested in the government having
the power to impose a negative interest rate on my money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Snapchat Snaps Up $80M From IVP At An $800M Valuation - chucknthem
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/22/source-snapchat-snaps-up-80m-from-ivp-at-a-800m-valuation/
======
maneesh
Does anyone here have any idea how snapchat intends to make money? Or will it
try to sell itself to Facebook/Google eventually a la Instagram?
~~~
onedev
Unfortunately they are not and will not be the "next Instagram" with their
current product offering (in my humble opinion). They don't even come close to
having the same kind of value or value potential that Instagram (the product)
did when it was bought. It's also very difficult to monetize a product like
Snapchat just by its very nature (of destructible media). Now of course I
could be wrong about all of this, and if so, feel free to enlighten me.
I think what's more plausible is the possibility that the extra money is going
towards more long term plans and product expansions.
~~~
lobotryas
You don't have to create a monetization strategy and show profitability in
order to be acquired. If you build a large enough audience (ex: 10m registered
users, 1m dailies) then someone is likely to buy you just to get access to
this tasty slice of pie.
~~~
onedev
Right, I agree with you. Instagram didn't do that, but again there were a
number of things someone can do with Instagram to monetize it and that much
was clear from the beginning. With Snapchat, it's less clear how someone could
monetize it's userbase.
------
bobbles
See all snapchats ever sent to you for only $4.99! Monetization in the bag
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A giant 360 LED clock - mathieupassenau
https://www.mathieupassenaud.fr/ledclock/
======
elFarto
I really like the Equinox Clock[1], which was made before easily available
addressable RGB LED strips, so each LED is individually placed.
[1] [http://www.bramknaapen.com/equinox-
clock/](http://www.bramknaapen.com/equinox-clock/)
------
jimmies
I noticed that the you made a config front-end using a web page and claimed
that you're not up to date with web development. Indeed, I do find that it's
unsatisfying to configure IoT devices over the web, although the web is one of
the most compatible solutions. The drawbacks include the fact that if you want
to configure it you always have to be on the same LAN and figure out its IP or
port-forward, but if you port-forward, it will be not very secure due to the
attack surface of the mini web server. Moreover, it's not very elegant for you
or others to programmatically control it.
My interest recently has been on the mqtt protocol, it's like microservices
for IoT. You will need to connect to a middleman mqtt server and hold that
connection. When you want to change something you push the changes to the
middleman mqtt server. It can be local or on the internet, but since the mqtt
server is maintained and updated, it's much easier to secure the mqtt server.
Or you can use someone else's mqtt server as a commodity. The app called "mqtt
dashboard" acts as a client and allows you to draw a number of controls to the
client if you answer a specific request. I think it's suitable for
applications like this. Hackaday has a detailed article about it. I think mqtt
is a great example of a great protocol for the purpose of
controlling/configuring IoT devices.
[https://hackaday.com/2016/05/27/minimal-mqtt-control-and-
cli...](https://hackaday.com/2016/05/27/minimal-mqtt-control-and-clients/)
~~~
deathanatos
> _The drawbacks include the fact that if you want to configure it you always
> have to be on the same LAN and figure out its IP or port-forward, but if you
> port-forward, it will be not very secure due to the attack surface of the
> mini web server._
But MQTT suffers from all of these same drawbacks, does it not? (MQTT is a TCP
based protocol, and will thus suffer the same issues w/ NAT, and has no
security aside from "can be run over TLS" (which I frankly think is okay / the
point of layers of abstraction / I would not encourage re-inventing the TLS
wheel; my point is only that MQTT and HTTP are in the same boat, AFAICT.))
> _Moreover, it 's not very elegant for you or others to programmatically
> control it._
I would think the ecosystem for HTTP vastly outstrips that of MQTT's…
~~~
Scaevolus
No. With MQTT, the client device makes a connection to some _external_ MQTT
server-- AWS, GCP, and Azure all have IoT bridges that speak MQTT.
There's often an equivalent service over HTTP/1.1, where devices occasionally
poll a remote endpoint for commands and to update state-- but without the
persistent connection, you can't do realtime commands.
~~~
gh02t
> AWS, GCP, and Azure all have IoT bridges that speak MQTT.
Also worth noting for the curious that it's very easy to host your own, e.g.
via Mosquitto.
------
ebspelman
very awesome! for further inspiration, you might like the work of Craig
Dorety:
[http://craigdorety.com/objects.html](http://craigdorety.com/objects.html)
Once upon a time I made a project with a similar aesthetic, but not quite as
much function (ie it wasn’t a clock):
[http://www.ebspelman.com/#/james-turrell-
turrellevision/](http://www.ebspelman.com/#/james-turrell-turrellevision/)
------
dirkc
Love your clock! I'm working on a similar project, mine is currently being
called a disco donut:
[https://www.instagram.com/p/BgZeIDQlA9z/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BgZeIDQlA9z/)
Do you power your LEDs and Raspberry Pi separately, or do you use the same
power supply?
------
nomadtwin
We did this a while ago: [https://github.com/thinking-twins/vjo-
dmx/blob/master/README...](https://github.com/thinking-twins/vjo-
dmx/blob/master/README.md)
Might be a good start for creatives without coding background as it is a
Visualjockey Gold plugin.
------
bootmagic
This project reminds me of
[https://www.thelightclock.com/](https://www.thelightclock.com/) where the
time is displayed by blended colors. Maybe this project could have a similar
setting?
------
spdustin
I’ve had several strips of these just waiting for the perfect project. Anyone
else have any interesting ideas for weekend projects using addressable LEDs?
~~~
anfractuosity
[https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/painting-a-
christmas-...](https://www.anfractuosity.com/projects/painting-a-christmas-
tree/) \- I created a little system to 'paint' my Christmas tree using these
addressable LEDs.
The tree could be wrapped with the LED strips then the position of the LEDs
was obtained using a camera (as they pulse out an ID).
I then created a little Flask app, that ran on the same Raspberry Pi which
controlled the LED strips, which let people paint the tree via a website.
~~~
abecedarius
That's cool! And reminds me I'd like to see something like
[http://wry.me/hacking/moirexmas.html](http://wry.me/hacking/moirexmas.html)
on a real Christmas tree.
------
acobster
Very cool!
One small quibble: why is the /bright endpoint a GET? GET should never have
side effects. :)
------
olskool
Beautiful!
I had not heard about this kind of addressable LEDs but now I'm inspired to
think of my own projects.
------
proee
Here's a similar IoT LED clock my friend is working on.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1926284625/96766872](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1926284625/96766872)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is there a demand for a start-up technical assistant? - sgibson12
Are you looking for a quality technical person to help get your start-up going? I'd like to introduce myself. I've been working with a couple business partners in an attempt to launch a successful web based application. We made some progress but never completed a finished, marketable product. This has left me in the place where I can either return to the workforce and suffer through the misery of corporate life, or find something different. I'm opting for something different. What I'm looking for is a start-up that has competent Sr. Developers who have more work on their hands than they can handle. I am a competent "hey can you fix this" person. I can build fully functional websites including the html/css/javascript/python/django/Postgresql/Apache/Linux with all the associated sysadmin setup. I'm not an expert at any of it though. Hence I'm looking to work with someone who already has a better handle on everything and could benefit from having someone to help out. My ideal fit is a project that's within 3-6 months of go live. Working on something that just went live and isn't profitable yet might be a good fit too, since you might need more people but lack the funds to pay for them. I'm comfortable working with other languages as well, those were just our choices for our projects.<p>I'm interested in all inquiries, including those of the pro bono, equity sharing nature. My main goal is to shadow and learn, so that your project succeeds and I get closer to being able to build my own. Email for questions and samples of work. I'd love to talk with you and learn more about how you're going about launching your start-up. Thanks!<p>gmail: sgibson12
======
foo23
This certainly isn't what you want to hear, but here is some raw feedback:
You need to seriously work on your personal pitch. It sounds like the projects
you've been involved in haven't gotten off the ground, and it comes through
that you don't really have valuable expertise that you bring to the table.
Either 1. become an expert at something 2. start coding or 3. get a job that
most companies/startups have a need for:
\- find an IT job at a startup, often these help out with engineering or
writing internal applications
\- Move into operations (i.e. setting up machines, systems, administering
backend systems and applications) for a company that has a massive number of
servers (like facebook, google, rackspace) or is in the process of scaling
(twitter?, digg, etc).
Those two positions can be used as a springboard into dev jobs, but if you can
get your projects to launch, you're going to learn far more from those
experiences.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intel’s Tiger Lake 11th Gen Core I7-1185G7 Review and Deep Dive - rbanffy
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16084/intel-tiger-lake-review-deep-dive-core-11th-gen
======
jeffbee
Some pretty spectacular performance on important single-threaded workloads.
With a Speedometer 2 score of 113, this laptop is the fastest machine they've
ever tested, including all high-end desktop CPUs save the Core i9-10900K which
is basically a factory overclock that costs $750 just for the chip. If you
could buy these, they'd be the fastest web machine you could buy.
~~~
dixon395
Yeah, single core scores in Geekbench also look pretty sweet.
[https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-
core-i7-1185g7-v...](https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/intel-
core-i7-1185g7-vs-intel-core-i7-1065g7)
Finally Intel made something new, that can compete with AMD) I mean for the
last 3-4 years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are you still employable after being a founder? - dear
Starting a business is risky. Most people would rather choose to have a comfortable life by working for an established company, taking a salary and enjoying life after work hours. For entrepreneurs who make no salary, do all the work ourselves and live in uncertainty everyday, do you regret what you have been doing? Would you rather now quit and apply for a job somewhere and be done with it? Do you think have been an entrepreneur makes you unemployable?
======
b0ttler0cket
(b0ttler0cket):
I think this question has a lot to do with risk and reward. Graham addresses
this (at this point, it's a bit of a blur. Whenever I hear something like
this, I just randomly pull out some of this reasoning).
I may not be able to paraphrase exactly, but in regards to your question about
regret and risk, the reasoning may have gone something like this:
1\. Age is important. Younger people can afford to take more risks for the
simple reason that they seem to have more time to mitigate any damage from the
mistakes should they fail. Also, younger people are less likely to be parents
already or have a family.
2\. Attitude is important too. Some of this comes down to what you can better
tolerate. Startups are like sprints. Employment is like long distance running.
Do you want to cram the bulk of your expendable energy into a few years of
intensely hard work (and stress) with an uncertain payoff, or do you want to
work moderately with a very decent payoff and still have the time to enjoy
family, a relationship, long walks in the park, jogging after work for as long
as you want, weekend-long trips to the beach. I feel like a lot of people in
HN, if given the choice between startup and employment, would say startup
hands-down. But if you look at it this way, I believe the decision is a little
harder for many people.
3\. Maybe the most important. You have to believe in yourself, your product,
and your ability to come up with ideas if you want to do this. I cannot
picture a scarier situation (in regards to startups) than starting one full of
doubt, anxiety, and overall insecurity. If you do this, you have put all your
chips in the pot, keeping in mind that there's no bluffing and no turning back
(well there might be turning back, but you definitely shouldn't be planning
to). You have to have the cards to back up your all-in. Having the cards means
having the guts to stick it through, having some level of smart, being adept
at troubleshooting problems, and having a fairly good idea from the start even
though it's subject to change in various degrees.
I believe (1-3) addresses your concerns about regret to commission of a
startup. In terms of whether a startup makes you unemployable, I do not see
why a startup would bar you from further employment. Potential employers could
point to the fact that there may be a hole in your CV where you weren't
employed for a year or two, but you can easily describe your startup
experiences and couple that explanation with why that experience makes you
more valuable as an employee. Remember, you still have to be able to speak on
your good points with ease and decisiveness whether or not you've engaged in a
startup.
------
nostrademons
I ended up with a job at Google about 4 months after folding up my startup, so
no, I don't think it makes you unemployable. As long as you keep your skills
current and don't just sit on your ass, the skills you learn as an
entrepreneur are valuable at a lot of firms.
------
danieljeff
Being employable is generally more about who you know then what you know. If
you are just decent at being a founder then the activity of building your
business will increase who you know exponentially.
Based on that rational I would say that founders generally become more
employable.
------
narayankpl
No I do not think have been an entrepreneur makes you unemployable. You could
be unemployable for a lot of other reasons. But it is likely that some
entrepreneurs may not be happy in this situation and should an opportunity
arise, they might go for it again.
~~~
dear
Isn't it the point? Unless the prospective employer is very open minded, an
entrepreneur could be viewed as unwilling to work under a boss, and likely not
a long term employee.
------
JT123
Most of the time companies appreciate the fact that you have experience
running something, even if you to close your startup eventually.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In case you haven't seen it before: Star Trek's PADD - swernli
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/PADD
======
philwelch
My girlfriend and I watch Deep Space Nine DVD's from Netflix with dinner every
night. Wednesday, after the iPad announcement, I remember watching them use
their PADD's on DS9 and thinking, "yes, I get it now".
What I really want is for the iPad to get cheap enough that you can leave
three or four laying around the house or carry them around with you. You can
leave one in the kitchen and use it for recipes, browse on the couch, and so
forth.
Also, a long forgotten comment of mine becomes suddenly relevant!
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=726950>
------
rgrieselhuber
The cool thing is that the real ones now look better than the fictional ones
ever did.
~~~
electromagnetic
Oh come on now, it's Star Trek. Besides the low budgets, the fans expected it
to be cheesy!
------
arturventura
Why the hell do you think i want one so badly?
~~~
swernli
Ditto. I posted this mostly because I was suprised the comparison hasn't come
up more in discussion, so I figured maybe not as many people were familiar
with it as I assumed. Discussion of the various benefits and short-comings
aside, I am so ready to pretend like I'm on the bridge of the Enterprise...
~~~
noonespecial
It wasn't lost on me. I did, however get some quizzical glaces when I brought
it up in less geeky settings.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081099>
------
tl
This just enforces that I'm going to wait for an "iPad Mini", (7"-ish screen
possibly smaller when you factor in the border used on the iPad). Star Trek
didn't really have to think about user interface, but they needed actors to be
able comfortable holding and operating the devices.
Offtopic: Look at the rectangle shown here <http://tinyurl.com/yduybaf> The
size shown is an iPod Touch; I wanted to add one of the smaller newtons and
the iPad. When you add multiple sets of measurements it drops the rectangles
and just compares areas. Anyone know how to fix this?
------
ratsbane
I'd like to see a real-word implementation of a sonic screwdriver:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_screwdriver>
~~~
swernli
Or the digital multi-tool, from the old show ReBoot:
<http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Glitch>
------
Mystitat
The best part of that page is definitely the appropriate advertisers.
<http://imgur.com/EdH8L.png>
------
zyb09
Does it have multitasking?
~~~
jsz0
I don't think so. We always see the PAD running the same application/GUI which
seems to be an all-in-one reader supporting video, photos, and text. I can't
remember any instances of the PAD being used for much more. Not even
audio/video chat which was reserved for the personal communicators and
wall/desk consoles. At one point we see Picard's desk covered with multiple
pads further suggesting they were uni-taskers. Multi-tasking certainly existed
in the 80's so the vision of future technology in Star Trek TNG seems to be
one of mainframe computing, data in the cloud, and multiple specialized task-
centric devices (personal communicator, tricorder, PADS) and good ole' fashion
desktops (consoles) being used for more advanced tasks.
------
thechangelog
No Flash? Phht...
~~~
electromagnetic
No, but it was easy to jail brake!
<http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Borderland_(episode)>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Missing (from) Links: great idea for the expansion of HTML syntax - gabrielroth
http://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=273
======
gojomo
In addition to a search string, XPath or CSS selector syntax could be nice.
(Think: JQuery.)
Should be easy to implement as a Greasemonkey script or FF add-on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Parallelism as a First Class Citizen in C and C++ - fogus
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2011/08/09/parallelism-as-a-first-class-citizen-in-c-and-c-the-time-has-come/
======
cabacon
He's totally right, but people have wanted this, and tried to implement it,
several times. There's UPC (<http://upc.lbl.gov/>), Co-Array Fortran
(<http://www.co-array.org/>), OpenMP (<http://openmp.org/wp/>), TBB
(<http://threadingbuildingblocks.org/>), Cilk from MIT per scott_s, then there
are the CUDA/OpenCL accelerator extensions ...
We don't need a call to arms without a pretty good idea of how to do it, and
why it is different/better than the existing shots at parallelism. Jamming it
into C/C++ is one idea, and making a new language like Fortress
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(programming_language)> ) is another.
And those are all just the languages / language extensions. There's also the
message-passing (MPI, PVM) vs. remote put-get (ARMCI/Global Arrays/...) It's
clearly a hot topic with how multi-core chips are coming along. I didn't see
much here that adds to the existing attempts, other than perhaps bemoaning
that they are currently proprietary. That seems natural, though. With so many
competing ideas, you see which one gains traction first, then work on
incorporating it into the standards.
~~~
scott_s
_With so many competing ideas, you see which one gains traction first, then
work on incorporating it into the standards._
But that's what he's promoting. Cilk has been around for a long time, since
before the current multicore era.
~~~
cabacon
I'd argue that compared to OpenMP and CUDA, Cilk has very little traction. My
frame of reference is the current set of HPC platforms, though. We had one
customer who wanted to build Cilk, and it was really just for R&D, not
production.
~~~
scott_s
I don't consider CUDA in the mix because it's designed specifically for GPUs.
But, yes, OpenMP has much more traction in the HPC community, because it was
designed by and for them. Its task parallelism, though, is rather ugly. I
don't know what Cilk's data parallel abstractions look like, but I suspect
they're better than OpenMP's task parallel abstractions. (Just because, well,
I think OpenMP's are that bad.)
But, fundamentally, OpenMP is _not_ integrated into the language. It's tacked
onto the language through pragmas. I think that was a hack, not a long-term
solution. And I say this as someone who did the exact same hack:
[http://people.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/papers/scott_dissertation....](http://people.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/papers/scott_dissertation.pdf)
~~~
cabacon
Agreed re: pragmas as a hack, but that's just the kind of thing you'd expect
to get to gain traction, before folding into a language standard.
And re: data parallelism, I don't see that anyone has made a terribly popular
implementations. The niche languages like UPC, CAF, and HPF all seem to have
withered on the vine. So far, the only thing people seem to buy into is that
openmp-based task parallelism is easier than managing threads by yourself.
------
scott_s
Integrating parallelism into a language is an easy sell for me. And, I like
his points, but what what is the biggest news to me is that they are
integrating Cilk Plus into g++: <http://software.intel.com/en-
us/articles/intel-cilk-plus/> At first I thought they were open-sourcing the
current Cilk implementation that is a part of Intel's C/C++ compiler, but I
think that is still proprietary.
Intel, as company, still has a mixed message when it comes to shared-memory
parallel programming, as evidence by their Parallel Building Blocks:
[http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-parallel-
buil...](http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-parallel-building-
blocks/)
Thread Building Blocks was an internal thing - which it appears that the
author was a part of. He literally wrote a book on it:
[http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Threading-Building-Blocks-
Parall...](http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Threading-Building-Blocks-
Parallelism/dp/0596514808) The solution he's championing is from Cilk Arts,
who Intel purchased back in 2008. But this article makes no mention of Array
Building Blocks, which is the rebranding of Rapid Mind, which Intel also
purchased in either 2008 or 2009.
If you want to read papers on multithreaded programming that were almost
before their time, read about the Cilk project back when it was pure research,
before it was spun off into a company which Intel bought. Google Scholar can
help: <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cilk> "The implementation of the
Cilk-5 multithreaded language" is a particularly good paper.
~~~
jamesreinders
Good questions... We _are_ open sourcing the entire runtime we use, and
contributing to open source. We have created an open source runtime project
for use by any compiler, including gcc, and we will be using it ourselves (or
we already do).
TBB is the most widely used abstraction (not OS threads like pthreads) for C++
parallelism (several developer surveys confirm this). OpenMP is used by less
developers in the U.S. surveys, but OpenMP and TBB don't really compete for
developers because TBB is _very_ C++, and OpenMP is not. TBB was contributed
to open source in 2007 by Intel, and is a very active project - with lots of
users and ports virtually everywhere. Users include well known names like
Dreamworks, Adobe, Autodesk, and EA in their key applications. It's new enough
(5 years) that many people have not yet heard of it... but it has a very
substantial user base.
I'm biased a bit - but I wrote the book about TBB after learning of the
project and loving it, not because I was on the project.
We believe in "library first" then (when you know what you are doing) put it
in the language.
TBB was the library. Cilk Plus is the language equivalent.
ArBB (Array Building Block) is the library. It needs to bake still from what I
see. It's worth a look - but it is new and rougher... despite the RapidMind
experience with product. These things take time. I'd suggest it lives as a
library for at least 5 years before we get too excited about trying to learn
from it and change a language.
Cilk's been at this since the mid-90s. TBB was our strongest way to say "we
believe in Cilk and we want the experience in product"... so we added 5 years
of that to Cilk's experience, and I think we are very ready to show the
results and argue we can be ready for standarizing.
~~~
scott_s
_TBB is the most widely used abstraction (not OS threads like pthreads) for
C++ parallelism (several developer surveys confirm this)._
I come from the HPC community, where this is not the case. OpenMP or just
plain ol' pthreads are dominant for shared-memory parallelism. That's partly
because in the HPC community, data parallelism dominates, not task
parallelism. Can you point to the study? I'd like to see who they surveyed,
what they asked and just what their general methodology was.
Also, from what I was able to find out about RapidMind, their product was a
combination of library and compiler support - but I was never able to get a
good grasp of what exactly they did. They were rather secretive. But my
understanding is that it's not accurate to describe ArBB as a "library." That
is what I've always found curious about making Cilk and RapidMind live
together in one product; as I understand it, they both require compiler
changes, and they do have some overlap in functionality.
Also also, welcome to Hacker News!
------
Maro
The OP mentions spawn/sync, so I looked it up, here's a snippet from Cilk's
wikipedia page [1]:
01 cilk int fib (int n)
02 {
03 if (n < 2) return n;
04 else
05 {
06 int x, y;
07
08 x = spawn fib (n-1);
09 y = spawn fib (n-2);
10
11 sync;
12
13 return (x+y);
14 }
15 }
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilk>
------
16s
The new C++ standard has std::thread (came from boost::thread) and most
compilers already support it. So threads in C++ are no longer provided by a
library, right? Am I missing something, is std::thread not good enough?
Edit: I meant to write, "provided by an external library".
~~~
scott_s
std::thread is a library - in fact, all of std:: are libraries. The new C++
standard has an actual memory model and a thread interface but that's not the
same as parallelism being integrated into the language.
Hans Boehm's paper, Threads Should Cannot be Implemented as a Library:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.90....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.90.2412&rep=rep1&type=pdf),
brought this up a while back. The new memory model in C++
(<http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/c++mm/>) helps solve the problems
he brought up in that paper. The new C++ standard now has a memory model, and
(if I understand the implications correctly), there is well-defined behavior
when using threads in C++.
But the author's point is deeper. Providing an interface to threads, and a
well-defined memory model, is a good step. But threads are a primitive for
implementing parallelism. They are a very thin abstraction. The author of this
article is arguing for richer abstractions that are integrated into the
language. If you want to write parallel programs, and you have to use threads,
mutexes and condition variables to do it, your code is going to be harder to
write, debug and reason about than if you had used higher level abstractions.
(And you will probably end up reimplementing some parts of those higher level
abstractions.) In this regard, C++ is behind. So, kudos to the Cilk team for
integrating their work into g++.
~~~
16s
Yes, you are right std::thread is a library. I meant to write "provided by an
external library". But I won't edit my original comment as doing so would
take-away from your response.
I see std::thread as a great first step. The richer abstractions will come
later, but I think discounting std::thread is unwise. It's a great advance for
C++.
~~~
scott_s
Libraries are the same no matter what namespace they live in [1]. The C++
compiler does not give special treatment to the libraries in std::. So there's
no different between "external" libraries and libraries specified by the
standard.
[1] I suspect that most of the compilers will make the std::atomic_* interface
([http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n242...](http://www.open-
std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2427.html)) compile down to compiler
intrinsics, but the interface will still be just a template library.
------
snorkel
For C I'd rather see parallel capabilities added to the stdlib rather than
messing with C's syntax. Syntax creep has rendered C++ practically
incomprehensible for mere mortals and it'd be a shame to see C get pushed down
the same path to madness.
~~~
scott_s
I don't think C has a well-defined memory model. So it still has the problems
Hans Boehm talked about in his Threads Cannot be Implemented as a Library
paper:
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.90....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.90.2412&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
~~~
snorkel
Yes, C's memory model is fraught with concurrency race conditions, but it's
fast, direct, and dangerous and that's part of it's appeal. It'd be a shame to
see C be tamed and muddled to look more like its caged derivatives.
~~~
scott_s
C does not have a memory model. Its "memory model" is whatever is provided by
the underlying hardware.
------
numeromancer
How does one keep serial semantics while making parallelism explicit? Those
two goals seem to be in conflict, one with the other.
~~~
scott_s
Out of order processors do it all the time: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-
of-order_execution> Most modern processors execute instructions out of order.
They have hardware logic specifically designed to keep track of dependencies
among the instructions, ensuring that even though instructions are executed
out of order, instructions are _committed_ in order, and if instruction A
depends on the result of B, A does not execute until B finishes.
And therein lies your answer: many operations "don't care" what order they are
executed in. Consider the algebraic expression A + B + C + D + E. You can
"execute" that expression in any way, even doing some in "parallel" and still
end up with the same answer that you would if you did it the intuitive way,
from left to right. That's trivial. If you have A + B * C + D * E, then it's a
little more complicated because you have to ensure that B * C happens before
the additions that involve B and C, and same with D * E. But surely it's not
hard to imagine a static analysis that recognizes such dependencies, and a
runtime that enforces their order. So no matter what order the expressions
were actually executed in, you can pretend they happend in the serial one you
expected.
~~~
numeromancer
Thank you. What you say is correct, but not to the point. The expression you
gave is not _explicitly_ parallel. And more to the point, if I can expect
expressions to be executed in a serial order, than I don't see how I can make
them explicitly parallel.
~~~
scott_s
Think of it as an explicit _request_ for parallelism. So I may say something
like:
parallel_sum(array);
And it would do a data-parallel summation of my array. In fact, OpenMP
(<http://openmp.org/wp/>) is a great example of what you're asking about.
#pragma omp for
for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i) {
dest[i] = a[i] + b[i] * c[i];
}
That is explicitly requested parallelism with serial semantics. The serial
semantics are what you would expect without the omp pragma. But at runtime, it
will execute in parallel. The compiler ensures that I did not do anything
which will violate serial semantics, and the runtime system does the work of
farming the work off to threads, and then synchronizing them.
~~~
numeromancer
This may be pedantic, but the #pragma seems more to be _overriding_ the serial
semantics, rather than complementing it.
BTW: what do you think of OpenMP? What are its conveniences and frustrations?
I may be looking into ways of doing embedded parallel development soon, and
OpenMP looks convenient, since it's implemented in gcc.
~~~
scott_s
No, _semantics_ are what something _means_. The results of executing the code
- it's _semantics_ \- are the same with and without the pragma. If that
distinction bothers you, consider that compilers perform all sort of dirty
tricks when optimizations are turned on, sorts of things that you didn't ask
it to do, but it is allowed to do because it preserves semantics.
If you have data parallel code and you're working in C, C++ or Fortran, OpenMP
is an excellent solution to gain performance from shared memory parallel
machines. While I say above that it's a hack, it's a hack in terms of language
design, it works. It's a very well defined standard, and any problem that you
have will have been encountered by thousands of people before you, so you
should be able to find solutions online easily. It's super convenient for data
parallel code like the above. It's frustrating when you want to do task
parallelism.
I'm unfamiliar with OpenMP in the embedded world, though. OpenMP in gcc relies
on Pthreads, and I don't know if that will be supported on your platform.
------
Maro
The existing C++ standard, ISO/IEC 14882, was published in 1998 and updated in
2003. The new standard has just been approved, and will hopefully come out in
2011 and will be called C++11. So, a new C++ standard takes about 10 years.
For the foreseeable feature, we'll be stuck with libraries and compiler
specific features for parallelism.
------
zeratul
Totally agree with: "Maintaining serial semantics is important. A program
should be able to be understood as a serial program."
So far I used "fork", "MPI" and "CUDA" but none of them make code easy to
read.
------
Meai
Is there any reason not to use it? Basically every computer nowadays has
multiple cores.
------
baltcode
Does Cilk work for GPUs?
~~~
wmf
Not really; IIRC it assumes MIMD hardware. I think of Cilk as useful for
programs that can't be written in OpenCL.
~~~
scott_s
GPUs are data parallel machines. Cilk has support for both task and data
parallelism. The task parallel constructs in Cilk wouldn't make much sense on
GPUs.
~~~
baltcode
So data parallel constructs like parallel for loops can work with GPUs? I mean
not just in theory but can the current implementations program GPUs?
~~~
scott_s
Current implementations of Cilk, no, not as far as I know. There's also the
fact that you need to transfer the data to the GPU. The transfer costs may
kill any benefits from parallelism.
------
kennystone
ZeroMQ is pretty good at making them parallel. Erlang nifs can get the job
done too if you want a more exotic solution. Ship has sailed for putting
something directly in the language.
~~~
leif
This is a discussion about much lower-level parallelism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
"Learn To Code, Get a Job" According To CNN - pauljonas
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/01/12/2339202/learn-to-code-get-a-job-according-to-cnn
======
gamechangr
Catch 22
We want and need innovative programs to train the technically illiterate. Yet
we're critical of any "learn to code in 30 days". There is plenty of low end
javascript work out there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Google Search spam solutions - Trindaz
After reading http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/12/search-still-sucks/ I couldn't help think up a quick fix Google could try, so I'm interested in why this wouldn't work / hasn't been tried yet:<p>GMail has a 'Report Spam' button, why shouldn't Google search? I'd be happy to log in using my google account before being able to use the spam button, as I'm guessing this would be required to prevent misuse (e.g. has to be reported as spam by n people before affecting a result's rank).<p>Am I missing something as to why that wouldn't work?
======
benologist
They have an extension that gives you a report spam option in search results.
Matt Cutts said somewhere that these _do_ go to people.
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhja...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/efinmbicabejjhjafeidhfbojhnfiepj)
------
Jsarokin
Because people would make a macro that would "report to spam" their
competition from different IP's. It would be a cluster F __*.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On-Chip Network Topology for High Energy Efficiency and Scalability [pdf] - Katydid
http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~rausavar/pubs/sn-asplos18.pdf
======
godelmachine
@Katydid - Don't know if this is the right place to say, but I like all of
your submissions related to hardware architectures. Are you on LinkedIn/
Quora/ personal website where I can follow you on a regular basis?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Born to Build, Not to Play: an Entrepreneur's 'Curse' - garbowza
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/business/28invent-side.html?ref=business
======
pg
Build = play.
------
nextmoveone
I hope I am 'cursed' with Entrepreneurship.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What should I do if I don't get a summer internship? - nargawharg
Next year I'll be a senior (majoring in CS). I am currently studying abroad, so unfortunately I won't even be back in the US until mid June (and then have about two months left until uni starts again). I have a meh GPA (3.0) but a couple of side projects that I've put some time into as well as brief, crude work experience doing web dev for two university organizations through the university. Essentially, I'm looking at graduating without a whole lot of formal experience, so how should I look at spending the rest of my time (2 months of summer + 2 semesters) in preparation for getting a job? I'm quite concerned about getting a job doing something interesting where I feel like I have some sort of positive impact on the world, and I'm worried that with my current situation my options will be limited.
======
a3n
> I'm quite concerned about getting a job doing something interesting where I
> feel like I have some sort of positive impact on the world,
It's great if you get some sort of shiny job like that right out of the gate.
But for most people, their job-related positive impact on the world comes on
top of some years of experience.
If you don't get the shiny job right off, enjoy the normal job, learn about
your field, the world and yourself. Take the long view, and enjoy the days.
Eventually you'll focus on what _you_ want to contribute, rather than the
needs of some particular early employer.
It'll be fine.
------
johan_larson
If you don't get a formal internship for the summer, I suggest you try to
build something useful that you could show a prospective employer. Given your
background, this will probably be a web site. Two and a half months is enough
to build something real.
Does either of your side projects solve a real problem that people have?
If not, look for some sort of frustrating inefficiency that you or your
friends at school run into all the time. Then build a solution.
~~~
nargawharg
This is my tentative life plan...assuming I can convince my parents that this
is, in the long run, the best use of my time for the summer instead of working
somewhere else. This brings into question though how big of a project are we
talking? I always hear this advice tossed around, yet never with any specifics
regarding time spent/users/LOC/metric of choice.
------
djb_hackernews
> I'm quite concerned about getting a job doing something interesting where I
> feel like I have some sort of positive impact on the world, and I'm worried
> that with my current situation my options will be limited.
The first thing right here is to realize you are putting yourself under way
too much pressure. The world doesn't work like that.
Enjoy your summer. Go on lots of hikes and enjoy every moment you can.
------
koberstein
If you want to make a positive impact on the world, I would go out and see the
world. People like to live in fear of not following the right path - but
diverging from the norm is what makes new possibilities happen. Take some time
to relax, recharge, and think about what it is you want to accomplish.
------
vassilevsky
Have a really good rest. Because after that you'll be working your ass off for
the rest of your life.
------
user_rob
Go and help/work for/talk to/ random people who need it. It will make a
difference.
------
andrenvq
4th year CE major based in bay area also looking for internship here
------
seekingcharlie
Where are you based right now?
~~~
nargawharg
Do you mean where am I abroad? Istanbul. In the US I go to school in Montana.
~~~
donerbey
Which university in Istanbul ? Are you Turkish ?
~~~
nargawharg
Kadir Has Üniversitesi / No, I'm just on exchange
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Strava fitness tracker reveals military base - ksajadi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42853072
======
baxtr
This was already discussed yesterday
~~~
mici
Here is the post from yesterday if someone (like me) missed it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16249955](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16249955)
------
Smushman
tl;dr Fitness trackers on us military personnel, CIA, and similar operatives
have left trails on the world map where they run. Sometimes, these is in
locations that the military would not want disclosed.
OPSEC (Operational Security) should have included training personnel that
fitness trackers are not to be worn when on location in secured areas, or some
other solution that meets the same goal.
~~~
sitkack
People under clearance should only use government supplied devices and
software. This is a really embarrassing mistake, it shows a pretty poor lack
of security culture. It puts installations and people at risk. I can think of
many other scenarios that I will not enumerate, Strava should have absolutely
not released this. And if they were to release it, they should have consulted
some data privacy experts in how to better scrub the data.
------
JustSomeNobody
But, the cloud!
People are so used to giving up their data, even the ones who know better are
complacent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: The Definitive Guide to GTFS-Realtime - qzervaas
http://gumroad.com/l/gtfsrt
======
qzervaas
Author here. I self-published this book as a sequel to my previous book, The
Definitive Guide to GTFS.
The first one is all about public transit schedules in GTFS format (used by
Google, Apple and most public transit apps).
This one is about real-time data that complements the scheduled data (data
such as vehicle positions, trip cancellations, etc...)
If you have any questions about transit, GTFS, or self-publishing, I'll be
here all day!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Y Combinator Diaries Week 5 - dkasper
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080609.wgtYcombo_1_0606/BNStory/Technology/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080609.wgtYcombo_1_0606
======
ph0rque
> In that time-span we've been able to create the core product in terms of
> basic functionality: this includes the functionality that any iteration of
> our final offering will need. It's a pretty well-oiled machine of planning,
> building wireframes, development, final design/interface decisions, and
> user-flow integration.
Can anyone with experience post quick step-by-step instructions on this type
of product development? I.e. if I just got an idea for a web app, what would
be the quickest way to flesh it out?
------
billroberts
I'm not picking on these guys in particular, because it's a widely used
phrase, but does the English language really deserve "liquidity event" instead
of, say, "selling the company"?
~~~
parker
What about IPOs, or a leveraged management buyout? Just because acquisitions
are the 'en vogue' liquidity event doesn't mean it's the only kind.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
I agree that liquidity event is a more accurate term than "selling the
company". If you are looking for something less formal, you can use "cashing
out".
While we're on the topic of language: Parker, you may want to read
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallelism_>(grammar) -- the incongruity
between "are" and "it's" in your sentence ain't right.
------
sanj
I love the obligatory photo in front of MIT! I'm guessing it is from the day
before convocation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TOXIC STARTUP CREDITS – AZURE/RACKSPACE - movielala
======
movielala
In Turkish, we have two sayings about free. "Free vinegar is sweeter then
expensive honey." "I'm Not Rich Enough to Buy Cheap Things" (prob global)
We were lucky and got a lot credits from rackspace and azure and we used them
for our services and servers.
Result: We had insane number of bugs, weird things, unstable behaviour and
things that even phone support found it weird. I checked my inbox, I had over
270 email exchange with most horrible support I have use Microsoft support (
we use around 50+ SASS services)
For over a month, we are in amazon AWS, just works, just amazing and we had
zero problems..
For anyone out there,
please dont take the toxic credits from azure or rackspace, directly pay for
amazon. It will save u time, sanity, and money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Finally: Street View in Canada - ekarisor
http://maps.google.ca/intl/en_ca/help/maps/streetview/#utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=hpp&utm_source=en-hpp-na-ca-gns-svn
======
eswat
They've updated Halifax, but not Winnipeg? :(
------
cb33
Finally! I can see ice!
------
pwmanagerdied
Finally! I can see my house!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bezos shares profanity-laced email from customer angry about Black Lives Matter - tech-historian
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-instagram-angry-customer-email-black-lives-matter-support-2020-6
======
Bostonian
The customer is a bigot, as evidenced by his use of racial epithets, but BLM
has likely cost black lives by reducing enforcement, as explained in
[https://www.city-journal.org/html/ferguson-effect-
lives-1491...](https://www.city-journal.org/html/ferguson-effect-
lives-14919.html) .
------
nightpaws
As controversial and problematic as Bezos can be. This is a good take on a bad
customer.
They can’t always be right and sometimes need to be told how wrong they are
before they hurt themselves.
I do hope there was a formal response from Amazon too, preferably one the form
of confirming their intent to no longer use the service.
------
raxxorrax
Bezos might also want to defund the police to provide Amazon security
services. If I had a corporate conglomerate that would be top priority.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006) - panic
http://www.ronpatrickstuff.com
======
stergios
Ron is an old friend. He's a very sharp and funny guy too. Ron was on the
David Letterman show and Dave was cracking up while interviewing Ron right
before he ran his bug down the track at the old Altamont Dragstip
[https://youtu.be/XTzxptdvt3c](https://youtu.be/XTzxptdvt3c)
I always enjoyed visiting Ron's lab at Stanford and chatting him up. Between
talking with him and Fritz Rinehart at the other engine lab down the hall in
bldg 500 I always felt I learned something new about combustion.
Personally, I preferred his 572 hemi mid sixties Chrysler. Now that was a
scary car!
edit: spelling.
~~~
jgable
During my undergrad and masters, I worked for Chris Edwards, who took over the
IC engine lab from Fritz. It was a fun place to be -- running a single-
cylinder research engine and a chevy LS1 on the dynos, setting up a miniature
turbine engine and a hybrid rocket motor stand for the advanced undergrad
thermo class. I arrived too late to meet Fritz, and I never had the pleasure
of meeting Ron. I wish I had.
~~~
stergios
Hey jgable, nice to meet you. We must have missed paths in Fritz's lab. I
wrote the control software for that LS1!
~~~
oneiric
Hey stergios, I replaced your (DOS?) code with a modern aftermarket ECU.
~~~
stergios
Nice oneiric! Here's a screen grab from 1990 when we were breaking in the
supercharger.
[http://www.marinopoulos.net/gallery2/d/15735-2/DUMP0000.gif](http://www.marinopoulos.net/gallery2/d/15735-2/DUMP0000.gif)
It was a DOS program, written in C. Fritz asked me to write it for Windows
2.1, but I said: "no thanks, all I need is a frame buffer and a GPIB IO Card".
I made my own simple little graphics subsystem with fonts borrowed from X11.
Here's a little picture gallery I have of the ICE lab from 1990:
[http://www.marinopoulos.net/gallery2/v/Cars/StanfordEngineLa...](http://www.marinopoulos.net/gallery2/v/Cars/StanfordEngineLab/)
Enjoy!
~~~
jgable
Wow, what a blast from the past. When I first took the IC engines class, it
was in that lab from your pictures. During grad school I helped move it over
to the fancy new MERL building. I remember doing a project in undergrad to add
closed-loop control of equivalence ratio via O2 sensors to the LS1.
~~~
oneiric
I remember getting a wide band oxygen sensor and tuning the gain in the new
ECU (and by tuning I mean eventually realizing turning it all the way up
minimizes steady state error). When I worked with the setup, it had no
supercharger and was a lab demo for the newly reintroduced engines class.
(getting to be almost a decade ago, I should go visit) Did you guys do
research with it?
Speaking of engine research, kind of crazy what production engines do these
days: [http://www2.mazda.com/en/next-
generation/technology/](http://www2.mazda.com/en/next-generation/technology/)
[https://www.infinitiusa.com/now/technology/vc-turbo-
engine](https://www.infinitiusa.com/now/technology/vc-turbo-engine)
[http://www.etagen.com/technology/](http://www.etagen.com/technology/)
~~~
jgable
No, I didn't do any research with the LS1. That was just an undergrad project
for me, as a lab experiment for the engine class students to run.
Speaking of EtaGen (your third link), two of the founders, Shannon Miller and
Matt Svrcek, are from Chris Edwards's group at Stanford. I worked with Matt
quite a bit during undergrad. I knew Shannon but didn't work with her much
directly. They are doing some very cool stuff. Their generator been in
development a long time -- I hope it can go to production soon.
------
ebrewste
What a blast from the past. I actually worked in the same office park they
did. Hearing an afterburner blast when working late one night was quite a
suprise! I must say that it made my day to wonder out investigating only to
find a Beetle with a jet engine doing afterburner blasts :)
~~~
test6554
Did they ever get that baby up to 88 mph?
------
narag
Jealousy. Not for the jet engine, YMMV I guess, but for living in a country
where you can do that. I've been doing some research for converting my old car
_to electric_. Bureaucracy costs more than double what parts+work do...
assuming it's possible at all.
~~~
radiorental
Reading between the lines, I don't get the impression he filled out any
paperwork for the ability to transport a fully functional jet engine on the
back of his otherwise totally normal 4 cylinder production VW beetle.
The fact it turns on, is bolted to the vdub and so forth... mere details.
Converting a car is a completely different kettle of fish. As someone who's
built a couple of personal electric vehicles I can attest, the US has plenty
of regulations of what you can do on the highways and byways.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
> As someone who's built a couple of personal electric vehicles I can attest,
> the US has plenty of regulations of what you can do on the highways and
> byways.
It depends. If you're starting with a rolling chassis that's already road
legal 99% of the work is done for you.
In CA you can drive a death trap as long as it doesn't pollute.
In MI you can drive a vehicle that burns tires and is lubricated with whale
oil as long as it has mud flaps.
It's not like some places in Europe where applying for a mortgage has less
paperwork than installing aftermarket control arms.
I mean, I'm all for less regulation for DIYers but we do have it pretty good
here.
~~~
lb1lf
-I happen to live in Norway. (Which is a very nice place to live overall, but can be somewhat challenging at times if you like to tinker with cars, for instance.)
I can apply for a mortgage online in thirty seconds. This is not an
exaggeration.
If I wish to replace the original control arms on my Land Cruiser with
something - anything - differing from OEM spec, I need to obtain paperwork
from the control arm manufacturer as well as from Toyota stating that this
will be fine, said papers will have to be brought to a control station where
the vehicle will be inspected, documentation perused and the change hopefully
being approved.
This process takes more than thirty seconds.
------
zaroth
Saw this linked in the comments yesterday, not surprised at all to see it hit
the front page today :-)
Love the pic of the cop scratching his nose wondering what to charge them
with!
The way this guy fucks around with jet engines really puts a B.S. CompSci
degree in perspective (and not in a good way!). Admittedly he did get a PhD
from Stanford.
Did he ever build his wife that jet-powered scooter?!
~~~
yitchelle
He sure did. Go back in and scroll right down to the bottom. There's an
awesome picture of it.
~~~
codezero
I didn't downvote you :( but I am guessing the reason people did (ugh) is that
the last picture is just the initial setup, and they want "real" finished
products, anyways, thanks for trying!
------
ada1981
"We get this a lot. A police officer picking at his nose while trying to
figure out what to charge me with. Notice the hopeful anticipation of us on
the right. We're rooting for him and offer suggestions but unfortunately, the
California Department of Motor Vehicles did not anticipate such a vehicle so
he's out of luck. Hmmm, the car has two engines making the car a hybrid so
maybe we can drive in the commuter lanes along with the Toyota Priuses. "
------
teeray
So the 11,000 CFM that it draws comes through the windows and the sunroof? I'm
sure they did the math, but it amazes me they didn't have to remove the
windshield to keep it running.
------
skookumchuck
> I have a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University
I should refer to this article the next time there's a thread on HN insisting
that a college degree imparts useless knowledge.
~~~
stergios
Here's Ron's company: [http://ecm-co.com/](http://ecm-co.com/) He makes state
of the art ECM systems used primarily by the big auto makers.
~~~
senatorobama
Is he rich?
------
thomasjudge
Have to pick a small nit, not entirely correct to say that no one else has put
a jet engine in a street legal car, there was in fact a "production" jet-
engine based car 1962-64, the short-lived Chrysler Turbine (seen on "Jay
Leno's Garage", CNBC)
~~~
mr_toad
To nitpick a bit more, these engines would have had a secondary power turbine
added to produce mechanical power. This would have reduced the exhaust
pressure, so they wouldn’t have used a jet for propulsion.
Rover actually produced the first car turbine engines back in the 40’s.
[http://www.rover.org.nz/pages/jet/jet5.htm](http://www.rover.org.nz/pages/jet/jet5.htm)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover-
BRM](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover-BRM)
------
tyingq
Doesn't mention anything like 0-60 or 1/4 mile times. I can't tell how well
the 1300+ hp translates into real world stats.
Impressive for sure though. Being reported to Homeland Security is funny.
~~~
stephencanon
Interview here: [https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/When-bugs-fly-Auto-
ge...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/When-bugs-fly-Auto-geek-hits-
highway-for-2498201.php)
Of particular note "you drive the car up to about 90 miles an hour and you
spool up the jet"\--it will just slide at lower speeds, and you will have no
control. So the 0-60 and 1/4 mile times are just whatever you get in a stock
beetle carrying an extra 300 lbs.
~~~
tyingq
Ahh, so this bit of an add on only helps after 90mph?
Guessing he is single, close to it, or coupled with someone just as adrenaline
powered :)
~~~
stephencanon
The end of the article we're commenting on is literally: "here's my wife's
Honda Metropolitan scooter. She wants it to go faster than 40 mph. So I have
these two little JFS 100 jet engines and I am thinking how to put them on the
scooter."
~~~
tyingq
Good point. Guess he chose someone matched to his risk tolerance.
------
smoyer
I have a '71 Super Beetle (and aa '71 Karmen Ghia). Doubling the horsepower in
the car from the factory's original 38HP makes the car a bit scary ... I can't
even imagine that extra push in the back!
~~~
maksimum
You'd probably be fine, scariness overflow.
------
dangerboysteve
Forget the Beetle, his plans for his wife's Honda scooter sound way better.
~~~
lb1lf
-Agreed; there was something about the aesthetics of the scooter which just looked... ...right, with those twin turbines attached.
Looks like a Jetsons prop. Absolutely, positively beautiful.
Here in Scandinavia, some people have taken a more redneckesque approach -
pulse-jet powered sleds. These Swedish blokes look promising:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O-JWddgagk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O-JWddgagk)
------
userbinator
_The engine spins up to 26,000 RPM (idle is 13,000 RPM), draws air at 11,000
CFM, and is rated at 1350 hp. It weighs only 300 lbm._
This is a great example of why jet engines are used on planes - the power-to-
weight ratio is far higher. The original flat-4 VW engine used in the "old"
Beetle is already > 200lbs, and including the rest of the drivetrain is well
over 300.
------
Synaesthesia
“Air for the jet enters the car through the two side windows and the sunroof.
It's a little windy inside but not unbearable.”
------
pasbesoin
Nothing like the same scale, but for a chuckle, this reminds me of the New
Zealand fellow who build a small jet engine in his shed to cool his beer (or,
that's how I remember it...).
Um...
[http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/](http://www.asciimation.co.nz/beer/)
------
aeontech
Video link from previous thread:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJyAA0oPAwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJyAA0oPAwE)
~~~
zaroth
“How fast can you go when you turn that baby on?”
“It’s hard to say, because I just pin the speedo at 140 miles and hour, laugh
hysterically, and then hope the cops don’t nail me.”
“Now, can you drive around the surface streets of California with that jet
engine activated?”
“You could do it, but I don’t know what would happen. My runs are at night.
I’ll leave the office late at night, and I’ll spool it up and nail it on a
highway, and then sorta drive back on the gasoline engine and... go to bed.”
A fine engineer, for sure!
~~~
mirimir
I wonder if some control surfaces would help.
------
devenson
That screen on the intake doesn't look like it can handle the 11,000 CFM that
engine is rated for.
------
joshu
I met Ron at a track day once! Very cool guy.
------
chivas
Wow, GTA V IRL.
------
dang
Discussed in 2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=831185).
~~~
Ivoah
As of right now this post has the same number of points as the 2009 post.
~~~
dang
But much better comments!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Attention, Startups: Move to New England. Your Gay Employees Will Thank You. - bbuderi
http://www.xconomy.com/national/2008/11/14/attention-startups-move-to-new-england-your-gay-employees-will-thank-you/
======
parenthesis
I think there ought to be a clear separation made between religious/cultural
marriage (marriage1) and state-recognised unions (marriage2).
Then:
The Catholic Church can allow itself only to marry1 heterosexual,
undivorced1(and maybe 2 too?) couples.
Some weird cult (so long as no laws are broken) can marry1 several people
together into one union.
Gay couples can marry2 regardless of what any religion or cultural group
thinks, and can also marry1 in a liberal church, if they so wish.
etc. etc.
And the state can allow any two consenting (unmarried2) adults to marry2. And
this doesn't mean much more than that they become each others' next-of-kin,
they automatically inherit upon the death of the other, have certain housing /
visiting in hospital rights etc.. So even, e.g. two pensioner friends with no
family could marry2 for companionship and security (even if they are e.g. both
female and heterosexual).
~~~
yters
I don't get the deal with gay marriage. Marriage is only meaningful because of
the function it fulfills: provide a hospitable environment for reproduction.
Take this away, a la gay marriage, then no one cares about it.
For evidence, just look at how many people get married when they think it's
just about sticking around with another person. Pretty much zilch, i.e. the
number of people co-habitating vs marrying in England.
So, if gay people want an official marriage because marriage is special, they
are undermining themselves by helping to destroy the institution they value.
It's like: because I think the Olympics are special I think they should allow
me to compete for the US. If they did this, no one would like the Olympics and
they would cease to be special.
I don't get it.
~~~
ingenium
It's not about having a hospitable environment for reproduction (though gay
couples would obviously like to get married before adopting), it's about being
able to have the other legal rights that straight married people do, such as
hospital visitation and decision rights, health insurance, tax benefits, etc.
Civil unions only offer about 1/6 of the legal rights that marriage does.
As a gay man, I don't really care what it's called, but the reason we push for
"marriage" over "civil unions" is because of these legal rights. The laws are
written for marriage, not civil unions.
It's also about the promise of marriage. Where in the typical marriage vows is
reproduction mentioned? "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for
better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love
and to cherish, till death us do part." That is what it's about...that
promise. That commitment with the one you love.
~~~
mattmaroon
Civil unions also just sound a little too "separate but equal" to me. Despite
not really having a dog in this race (I have one gay couple that I'm friends
with, and the one I know best is glad there's no marriage here because
otherwise her partner would want to and she doesn't) I just can't be happy
with civil unions. It's better than nothing, I suppose, but it's not good
enough.
~~~
ingenium
Yeah you're right. What I was getting at is that they should be equal,
regardless of the name. I was thinking more along the lines of what rms said
his comment on here, where he thinks there shouldn't even be marriage but just
be civil unions for all. I don't really care what that thing is called,
marriage or civil union or some other term, as long as it's the same for gay
and straight couples.
------
nostrademons
Wouldn't it be better, long term, to stay in California and work towards
changing cultural values so that gay marriage is no longer a controversial
issue?
I'm from Massachusetts. I'm exceptionally proud that my state was the first to
legalize gay marriage. But I'm worried that it'll just make us into an enclave
while the rest of the country says, "Oh, those crazy New Englanders, it's just
gays and hippie liberals up there. Don't bother listening to a word they say."
Prop 8 failed by 5% of the electorate. If you could convince 5% of California
voters that the sky does not fall when gay people get married, you could win
rights for all 36 million of California's citizens. That's 6 times bigger than
Massachusetts, and close to 3 times bigger than the total population of New
England. And it'd provide an example that's impossible to marginalize for the
rest of the nation.
------
geebee
On a side note - Prop 8 raises a very interesting constitutional question for
California. The first initiative to ban gay marriage passed by a wide margin,
then was struck down by the courts. The next initiative was framed as a
constitutional amendment, and passed narrowly.
If the initiative process can be used trivially in a "%50 + 1" way to deny
civil rights to a minority group, then does California have a meaningful
constitution? If an initiative appears to violate the constitution, and it's
fairly trivial to get it on the ballot as an amendment to the constitution,
then the notion that an initiative could be unconstitutional becomes
meaningless, right?
So I actually do hope that the courts strike this one down. Partly because I'm
opposed to prop 8, of course, but also because I don't want a state
constitution that can be changed in such a meaningful way by a "fifty plus
one" majority.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
" I don't want a state constitution that can be changed in such a meaningful
way by a "fifty plus one" majority."
Then amend the constitution, if it is so "trivial."
$25M from LDS really helped the pro-Prop 8 lobby. The amount of dramatic fear
mongering that went on was staggering (Teachers will be forced to make your
kids queer! If gays get married, your marriage is worthless!)
Fundamentally, there is no argument against gay marriage that does not involve
religion. Separation of church and state and equal protection under the law
together will make this a SCOTUS issue, IMHO. IANAL.
~~~
geebee
"Then amend the constitution, if it is so 'trivial'"...
I should probably clarify what I mean by "trivial" - I mean this relative to
the usual process of amending the constitution. In a purely political sense,
it was not "trivial" for the pro prop-8 even to get a 52% majority on this
issue from a political point of view - it took a tremendous amount of money
and effort.
What I mean is that the difference between getting prop 8 passed as a
constitutional amendment and as a standard statute seems fairly "trivial" when
you consider how profoundly different these types of legislation are... one is
essentially beyond the reach of the courts.
I've read something similar to what jorgeortiz85 wrote - that a true
structural change in the constitution can't be enacted with the "%50 + 1"
initiative process.
But what I saw here was that prop 22 was passed by the voters, struck down by
the courts as unconstitutional, and then resubmitted as an amendment. If it's
not much harder to submit it as an amendment, then every initiative that could
be deemed unconstitutional would just automatically be submitted as an
amendment - and if the courts are lenient about allowing major changes to be
submitted as amendments, then it would be "trivial" to use the "%50+1"
majority to put minorities at a legal disadvantage, outside constitutional
review.
As for what it takes... shoot, I'm really pretty ignorant here. I think it's
just a matter of getting more signatures... I think it's about 50% more, but I
really don't know, and I'm not sure how to look this up... if anyone does
know, please post!)
~~~
aaronblohowiak
Right, it is much easier to change the california constitution than most other
states.. which has led to its current 110+ pages and 500+ amendments.
As for what it takes, you can see that right here:
<http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_h.htm>
I fundamentally agree with you that 50%+1vote is flawed and puts minorities at
a disadvantage.
------
swombat
Oh come on.
I'm all for gay rights, but this article's premise is completely ridiculous.
~~~
michael_dorfman
Why do sentences that start with "I'm all for gay rights, but..." make me feel
all skeevy?
~~~
LPTS
Some of my best friends start there sentences with "I'm all for gay rights,
but...", but...
------
sanj
I was talking to my wife this morning about this discussion, and the notion
that having one of each sex as parents being important. She's got (among other
degrees and years of relevant experience) a Masters in this from Harvard.
It turns out that the literature about child development finds that much more
important than "one of each" parent is having multiple available adult figures
around that a kid feels comfortable talking to.
This is for at least three reasons:
1\. The kid can get multiple viewpoints.
2\. The kid, during adolescence goes through the process of distancing
themselves from their parents and during that time needs other sources of
adult guidance.
3\. The kid can compartmentalize what they talk to different adults about (one
about sex, one about drugs, hopefully me about rock and roll.)
Lacking that, a kid will get information from other kids. That's a dangerous
road.
------
DaniFong
Unfortunately for those of us without American citizenship, or with spouses of
the same-sex who are non-citizens, at the federal level the country refuses to
recognize same-sex marriages for the purposes of immigration. In other words,
our families are not given the same rights to be here. People in such a
situation are given no respite through Massachusetts, though they are able to
move to, for example Canada (which has much simpler immigration policies for
skilled workers).
------
axod
Equal rights? sure. But is it _really_ that much of a big deal to just call it
something other than 'marriage'?
~~~
ivankirigin
The way to phrase your suggestion: marriage is a cultural institution, not
civic. There shouldn't be laws about cultural institutions.
People should just do whatever they want.
~~~
axod
Yeah it's all well and good to say you should be able to do what you want, but
you have to take responsibility for society as a whole. Is poligamy valid in
law? not here and rightly so I'd say. Also, it's just not very nice to hijack
words.
It's like people who call HTML a programming language.
~~~
Retric
What's wrong with poligamy? I am all for protecting the young, but WTF do you
care what three forty year old people do in their own home?
~~~
kingkongrevenge
> WTF do you care what three forty year old people do in their own home
Have you read ANYTHING about these polygamous communities? They produce cast
off boys and a trickle of 15 year old girls fleeing rape by 50 year old men. I
would argue these are long term consequences of polygamy itself, not features
of communities that happen to practice it.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
I read your argument as: insular religious extremists do bad things!
Therefore, we should also deny thinking and responsible adults freedom to live
as they please.
If anything, the lesson is that making something illegal pushes it
underground, which makes it harder to protect those that may suffer from it in
addition to punishing those that would gain from it. This is a lesson
demonstrated over and over again -- there are even comments about it in the
Tao Te Ching.
~~~
kingkongrevenge
There are of course non-isolated societies in the world that allow polygamy.
You wouldn't want to live in any of them.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
I'd like you to a cite a source about where I would and would not want to
live.
------
psyklic
Gay culture in CA, especially in San Francisco and West Hollywood, is
unparalleled. CA is very liberal in terms of gay rights and civil unions. The
tech companies in CA are also very liberal -- both Google and Apple broke
their informal policies to condemn the amendment. Hence, CA is still a great
place to live for gay people.
In only a few years since prop 22, an amazing additional ~5% of voters
switched their vote. It's only a matter of time before the amendment is
repealed by voters, if the courts do not remove it first!
------
Alex3917
"But now there’s a reason to rethink going to California. If you do, you’ll be
sending your employees to a state where a majority of the voting population
says gay people aren’t entitled to equal rights under the law."
How is this any different than Connecticut? If the majority of the voting
population supported same-sex marriage then it wouldn't have had to be done by
the courts.
As bad as prop 8 is, at least it will be overturned in a couple years. Whereas
if they hadn't passed the prop to fund a high speed train it could have taken
another thirty years. So yeah, the people of California are bigoted, but New
England is no better, and in another two years your state is going to have
both equal rights and the beginning of a functional mass transit system, so
really you're going to be even better off than you were before.
------
josefresco
By that logic, moving from Boston to Cape Cod would be even wiser, as
Provincetown is pretty much the Northeast Gay capital of the United States
(and as a bonus you get beaches and quiet time in the Winter when all the
tourists leave)
/lives on Cape Cod ... not gay ... not that there's anything wrong with that
~~~
fallentimes
And there's much better ganja anyway
~~~
sethg
Massachusetts: Come for the gay marriage; stay for the weed!
~~~
fallentimes
Cape Cod specifically.
------
Allocator2008
Being gay myself, I concur with the sentiments expressed in this article
generally. Though I must say that I have read enough H.P. Lovecraft to give me
pause about wanting to work in New England! Too many eldritch secrets there!
(OK, just had to go there.) :-)
~~~
ivankirigin
That's hilarious. Since Tipjoy has moved back to Boston, I can assure you we
have not yet been attacked by Cthulhu - though our daily prayers to Him have
probably helped.
~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Doesn't that mean you're just first to go?
Oh well, at least the rest of us will get a little more time.
------
RobertL
Good idea... maybe all the gays will move to NE.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Staggering, Heartless Cruelty Toward the Elderly - laurex
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/respect-old/607864/
======
0xfaded
I'd love to see a counter opinion about the elderly being cruel to the young
by saddling them with debt, the climate crisis, social security, tax breaks
for the retired, etc. What's interesting is this article notes that these
young people are "not caring" about a generation, but probably do care for
individuals in the generation (e.g. their wlown grand parents). This somewhat
amusingly reflects the case where individual grand parents are often very
generous to particular youth, but not to the generation as a whole.
People should absolutely be taking the outbreak seriously, and I agree these
young people are downplaying the severity. I just feel this article sets the
stage so perfectly for a counter.
~~~
leftyted
The article provides an example of what you're asking for:
> "To be perfectly honest, and this is awful, but to the young, watching as
> the elderly over and over and over choose their own interests ahead of
> Climate policy kind of feels like they’re wishing us to a death they won’t
> have to experience. It’s a sad bit of fair play."
I find the whole generational conflict bewildering. To me, blaming "the
elderly" for "the climate crisis" and "saddling us with debt" seems stupid
beyond words.
~~~
pasabagi
They do tend to vote for tire-burning candidates, on the whole.
I personally feel there's a sort of vicious circle going on between the social
isolation of the elderly, the elderly consequently watching too much TV, then
(on the whole) developing rather unfortunate political views.
------
micky_25
What does it say about society in general when younger generations
collectively despise older generations to the point were they don't care, even
find it funny that they are under threat from a deadly virus. For too long old
men haven't planted any trees they wont sit under, instead they've harvested
the trees for short term profits to invest in their property portfolios.
~~~
Mr00_Oldie
Sure. That's why I see hordes of young people trying to reverse the "damage"
the old generation has infliced upon the world. What I see is that most young
people are self-centered A##oles.
~~~
micky_25
Young people shut down numerous cities protesting for action on climate change
last year. Individually you have people like Boyan Slat. Young people do not
have the political clout that the boomer generation has yet but they will in
the next 20 or so years. That is why I'm hopeful for the future.
------
Buldak
Even setting aside the possibility that some generational resentments should
perhaps be taken seriously, this op-ed is really thin. The author's evidence
for "a degree of cruelty that is truly staggering" is two social media posts.
To this point I haven't seen much reason to think that the elderly are really
being shunned in the current climate.
~~~
gremlinsinc
I think a lot could also be aimed not at seniors in rest homes, but seniors in
congress, even on both sides of the aisle. Corona Virus and death in general
doesn't differentiate by wealth or class, it comes for all equally if given a
chance.
Many younger people and people on the left probably feel that this is the only
chance to maybe even out some justice on capital hill, and in the elite
structures of the world. Nobody wants people's grandma's to die...
Unless they are part of the gridlock problem in D.C., then maybe they could
use at least an early retirement, we could definitely use less geriatrics
running this country. Maybe we can be a better society if we set an age limit
of 70 in public office.
------
Nevermark
I think part of this is normal coping humor.
A young person can feel conflicted between feelings of (a) relief that they
are not in an endangered demographic, and (b) anxiety for people who are
endangered and remaining self concern as they do not truly feel safe.
Oversimplifying the situation with humor (only older people need to worry, I
am not old) temporarily releases some anxiety.
Dark humor does not necessarily reflect dark motives or values.
Taken too far it can become callous denial, also likely as a anxiety numbing
strategy.
But most people just need a break from worry in a way that doesn’t harm
anyone.
------
catalogia
Treating the death of a young adult as several times more tragic than the
death of an elderly adult is not a new phenomenon, nor is it irrational.
Now, laughing in an elderly person's face is obviously rude and unnecessary
(although I won't necessary begrudge gallows humor as a coping mechanism.) But
expecting people to treat the death of elderly people as seriously as the
death of young people is unreasonable.
------
drewcoo
You know who else is anecdotally mistreated? Anyone. The brief piece builds
its case on two anecdotes to claim general problems for a class of people.
------
mikestew
What a crap premise. Had I a FB account, how long would it take for me to
dredge up an anecdote or two like the author’s? Because that’s all the article
is based on: two anecdotes, and then we’re off to the races of blame-placing
and guilt. Ergo, I don’t have much of a response to the rest of the article. I
mean, people can be assholes, don’t have to look far, nor across generational
boundaries. No news there.
—
Not-Quite-Elderly
------
jshaqaw
I suspect the author overheard gallows humor as a coping mechanism in a
conversation he wasn’t a part of so he had no context. Or maybe he overheard a
couple of jerks. Some percent of jerks exist in every generation. That said
much of the lack of empathy in this comment section depresses me more than the
two guys walking down the Upper West Side. I sincerely hope this young
generation radically changes the world. All of you castigating an entire
generation facing down an imminent threat to their lives - well you may find
as you age that it’s not as easy as life goes on to break out of a system from
within as it may appear.
------
wool_gather
Contrast this with reports like this one: _" Frustrated millennials say they
can’t get their aging parents to [...] take coronavirus seriously"_
[https://www.businessinsider.sg/millennials-say-parents-
wont-...](https://www.businessinsider.sg/millennials-say-parents-wont-take-
coronavirus-precautions-2020-3)
Like most things, it's probably over-reduction to attribute any given state of
mind to every person born in a particular 20-year span.
------
ralph84
If the author thinks overhearing some people saying old people will die soon
in any case is “staggering, heartless cruelty”, he really needs to get out
more.
------
Ghjklov
I think millenials/gen z would love to have sympathy for the elderly or others
in general, but they are caught up trying to _have any future at all_ in
today's world. It seems cruel, but nihilism and dark humor are great coping
methods to avoid being overburdened by all the bad things we can do nothing
about. Yes, the elderly may die a little sooner than they would've liked after
living long and fulfilled lives. But the young people making these jokes are
probably struggling with the idea that they may not even live half as long as
"those boomers".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Available: Seamlessly share your calendar availability inside of Gmail - shahed
http://availableforgmail.com
======
shahed
Available is a Chrome Extension that allows you to easily share your calendar
availability inside of your Gmail compose/reply view. The best part––it pastes
the times as plain text.
I've been a user of various calendar scheduling tools in the past, but always
felt awkward sending a branded widget or URL to my recipient asking them to
book time on _my_ calendar. Especially if I was the one asking for their time.
I've been using this extension for a few weeks and it has saved me quite a bit
of time by not having to switch between Gmail and my calendar tabs every time
I'm coordinating a meeting request!
Excited to share this with y'all. If you have any questions/run into bugs,
feel free to DM me on Twitter (@_shahedk) or email me [email protected]
:-)
~~~
tusharsoni
Can't load the page, getting too many redirects: ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Forget about the "1%." Top "0.1% pulling ahead more - bokglobule
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2014/03/31/1-on-percent-rich/7108767/
======
api
Who are the top 0.1%? More importantly: what is it that they do that is that
valuable?
~~~
caidan
From paragraph 4 of the article:
"Nearly a quarter of these uber-weathy work in the financial industry. And 40%
are executives, managers and supervisors, Sadoff says. A vast majority of the
0.1% live in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C. or
Houston."
Side note, it is never surprising that the guy with the keys to the pantry is
the fattest one of all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Solar storms expected to shake Earth in 2013 - wiradikusuma
http://www.frontsidebus.net/2011/09/01/nasa-warns-solar-storms-expected-to-shake-earth-in-2013/
======
sandroyong
Since we are all wired and connected, this would wreak havoc to our overall
communication systems and power grids. Solar storms cycle from Max to Min
intensities every 11 years - the last "big" one recorded in 1859 -> burning
down telegraph lines and transformers. Imagine what would happen today
('shudder'). I also understand that solar flares and the impending energy
clouds take a few hours to reach earth's atmosphere. Couldn't we just 'turn'
things off/down within that time window to prevent electrical overloads? I
guess the problem is detected/predicting them early enough - just like
hurricanes and tornadoes...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I joined Microsoft - sharjeelsayed
https://hackernoon.com/the-best-career-advice-ive-received-so-far-is-never-turn-down-an-interview-7586ca5b7ef8
======
gaius
_though I was getting daily emails from Microsoft recruiters_
Really? They were emailing every day? I call shenanigans, no-one wants to hire
ANYONE that badly...
_I sat there with my jaw on the floor–for those of you who don’t know what
Cosmos DB is, it’s the first globally distributed, multi-model database
service for building planet scale apps_
Started doing the evangelism already I see! This whole blog post is just a PR
puff piece! That line is pretty much taken verbatim from the CosmosDB website
- "planet scale apps" indeed.
For those that were wondering what Developer Advocates do it's exactly this:
write blog posts as if they're just engineers like you, but rave about how
amazing their employers are.
FWIW I even like Microsoft, Azure is my cloud of choice, but this kind of
marketing activity is pretty condescending in my personal opinion. I like to
keep things on a pure engineering level, technical merits only, warts and all.
~~~
ensiferum
Yup exactly. The contents of the article can be summed:
"Look at me I'm so amazing that ppl want to recruit me daily! Look at
Microsoft it's so amazing! Our tech is amazing! We're so amazing."
~~~
gaius
In politics it's called astroturfing, i.e. fake grassroots.
------
VengefulCynic
“There is no loyalty in business, Ashley.
You’re a single mom. You have a family and you owe it to them to see this Microsoft interview through.”
A truth that is not repeated nearly often enough by employees.
~~~
analyst74
A company has no loyalty, but people you work with do.
~~~
matt_wulfeck
And that's often one of the biggest considerations you should make when
switching jobs. Your current coworkers will be by far your best job
connections in he future, so do them well by leaving gracefully.
------
nickpsecurity
Microsoft is such a huge corporation that it has many teams that act totally
opposite one another. Being in or dealing with any one can blind you to what
the overall company is like. It seems she's in one of the better groups.
Personally, I've always loved Microsoft Research specifically since they do
great stuff. Practical example: their driver, verification tool is the reason
it doesn't blue screen so much anymore. They did another OS (VerveOS) proven
safe down to assembly. Neat stuff. Then, there's the groups pushing garbage on
enterprises with plenty of lock-in. Then, there's also what I read where the
workers in many parts have a pretty stable job whose environment and structure
works out better than usual for women, people with families, or just those
wanting work/life balance Silicon Valley usually won't give them. The bigger
tech companies often rate better than startups and such on those points.
Overall, though, I think she's wrong about Microsoft changing. They're not.
They have patents, copyrights, and data/protocol lock-in guaranteeing billions
a year in profits for them. Changing would cost them much of that which will
_never happen_. Far as open-source, they've gotten over a billion dollars off
Android alone in patent royalties from their legal team despite doing
everything they could to eliminate Android in favor of Windows Phone.
Royalties not earned for sure. They did some Linux contributions to support
running it on their own hypervisor pursuing more lock-in at other levels. Even
many of the MS Research inventions are patented with who knows what risk. They
continue to pay off politicians to make things worse for the rest of us like
in U.S. w/ patent/copyright laws or Munich trying to uproot the FOSS
conversion. They're the same, evil company that's trying to adjust to a FOSS-
friendly world in a way that lets them suck money out of that too at
everyone's expense.
All that said, you can make an impact if you work at Microsoft on improving
one of their huge, legacy products. Or even a new one with a high-chance of
adoption. It might be a decent choice if aiming for the greater good. An easy
example would be anything stopping code injection in Windows systems would be
_great_ in terms of damage prevented for that user and anyone their box
DDOS'd. Reliability or integrity of data, too, as who wants to loose their
most critical files at the worst time. Definitely good to be done even if
they're evil. Just gotta determine if you want to do good for Microsoft's
customers or improve things that will keep people away from them.
------
atdt
It turns out that Microsoft has the largest number of the top 500 Open Source projects for any one entity.
Top 500 according to whom / what?
~~~
dankohn1
In my measurement of the 30 highest velocity open source projects [0],
Microsoft has VS Code, .NET and Office Developer.
[0] [https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/06/05/30-highest-velocity-
open...](https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/06/05/30-highest-velocity-open-source-
projects/)
~~~
pjmlp
A few Haskell and OCaml researchers are also on MSR payroll.
They are also contribuing for Go on Windows and the main contributors for Go
tooling on VSCode.
------
RandyRanderson
Tl;DR Is one of the reasons job security? I bet it isn't.
2014 18k jobs - [https://www.wired.com/2014/07/microsoft-
layoffs/](https://www.wired.com/2014/07/microsoft-layoffs/)
2015 8k layoffs - [http://fortune.com/2015/07/08/microsoft-
layoffs/](http://fortune.com/2015/07/08/microsoft-layoffs/)
2016 3k - [http://fortune.com/2016/07/28/microsoft-layoffs-thousands-
ph...](http://fortune.com/2016/07/28/microsoft-layoffs-thousands-phone/)
2017 Q1 700 - [http://www.businessinsider.com/about-700-microsoft-
employees...](http://www.businessinsider.com/about-700-microsoft-employees-to-
be-laid-off-sources-say-2017-1)
2017 Q3 3k-5k [https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/microsoft-confirms-
layoff-...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/microsoft-confirms-layoff-
reports-reorganization-expected-to-impact-thousands/)
It's hard to tell if the numbers overlap. For context MS has about 100k
employees.
~~~
Markoff
yeah and those are only direct employees, i worked for Microsoft vendor and we
had ratio 1 Microsoft employee to 150 outsourced workers
project on our site shrinked from 150-200 at peak to 25-30 in the end
------
vosper
> Proud thinker. Avid creator. Devoted explorer. Incurable student. Humble
> Gopher. Principal Developer Advocate @Microsoft.
TL;DR, she's really taking the advocacy thing seriously: apparently Microsoft
is amazing (and there's a subtle digestion that Pivotal doesn't pay as well,
and maybe isn't a interesting)
~~~
haskellandchill
Pivotal doesn't pay well but it can be plenty interesting.
------
43224gg252
"Because they hired me".
------
rdtsc
> As a Developer Advocate, you’re spreading awareness and enabling developers
> to do what they love; write, code, and learn.
Can someone explain that some more how that position is supposed to work.
Maybe an example where DA made an impact for them personally. Otherwise that
description sounds a bit like a rename of the traditional HR department.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
I don't understand how you view Developer Advocates like HR. Developer
Advocates work with external developers using and building on your platforms.
Wholly different skill set, nothing to do with employee management.
~~~
vxNsr
The confusion stems around the word "developer" OP is thinking of internal
devs, while the role is actually about interfacing with outside devs who will
be using/extending products and services the org makes. It's an easy mistake
to make if you don't give it too much thought because there's no inherent
explanation in "Developer Advocate" that would indicate we're talking about
outside devs.
------
mwerty
Reminds me of [http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/11/hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-
bo...](http://www.fakesteve.net/2009/11/hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-borgocrat-
scorned.html)
------
sheraz
The no-so-subtle cosmosDB pitch missed the real killer feature: mongodb
compatibility And hipaa compliant.
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/mongodb-
int...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cosmos-db/mongodb-introduction)
I'm not shilling just a happy azure user.
------
bmsleight_
TIL - Microsoft now uses git for the Windows code base. The blogs.msdn artcles
linked by hackernoon was terrible, but hackernoon one line summary was good.
Maybe there have changed ?
Being able not to use windows at Microsoft is a surprise.
------
AJRF
> ashleymcnamara Proud thinker. Avid creator. Devoted explorer. Incurable
> student. Humble Gopher. Principal Developer Advocate @Microsoft. Creator of
> gopherize.me
"Principal Developer Advocate"
I see
------
type0
MS has gone full circle now and they are on "Embrace" stage now. Just wait for
"Extend" and then it will be on "Extinguish" all over again.
------
jaclaz
>The impact I’ll have at a company like Microsoft will be huge and at the end
of the day, that’s what it’s about, right?
Hmmm. Modest, not all over, but in spots.
------
bsaul
ms still has a long way to go imho.
i recently thought about developping my backend on fsharp with dotnet core, on
a mac. Well, let me just say that the commitment of ms to some of their open
source projects leave to be desired. documentation is painfully hard to find (
compare to apple or even java main web frameworks, where everything is neatly
organized in one place), community is inexistant, the main "getting started"
videos on youtube is obsolete ( project file format changed in the
meantine)... And the only fsharp plugin for vscode is developped by a third
company and requires _mono_ to be installed, for some reason.
Maybe it's just that nobody uses fsharp though. So then i tried to find some
general architectural overview of asp.net core, and i didn't even know where
to start looking. Ms documentation site is a maze, and you can only find short
articles on very detailled subject, but nothing really top down.
Now the reason for all that is of course that the MS users ecosystem is made
of consulting companies selling "experts", and training companies selling
training. Nobody there has any interest in good, free, online resources.
~~~
oblio
They truly have a long way to go, especially concerning awareness.
But I feel that things will pick up once they release dotnet core 2.0, which
will support dotnet standard 2.0, basically the equivalent to the Java base
libraries. Up to now things were still in flux and nobody serious wanted to
touch the stuff. Now they've mostly settled down.
------
francesca
Looks like this article was sponsored by MSFT.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Everything you need to know about Twitter. In one tweet. - jv2222
http://twitter.com/justinvincent/status/2155414693
======
tdm911
@tdm911's guide to twitter: Use it as you wish. There is no right, wrong or
otherwise. This is the best thing about twitter!
Please note: This doesn't mean I will enjoy you spamming non-stop or endlessly
RTing celebs. Your choice though and my choice not to follow.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Baller Inc. - An Arc-based Sports News Aggregator - soundsop
http://ballerinc.com/
======
antiismist
Hey that's my site!
A while back I made pageonetimes.com, which was sort of a reddit for sports. I
found out that it is hard to get people to submit sports stories. So I redid
it as a Drudge Report for sports news.
Behind the scenes, the site checks ~100 sports feeds, and using classifier.arc
and some other things, puts it into a league and judges the story for
interestingness. Interesting and timely sports stories are put on the page,
sorted by league (or by topic if the topic overwhelms the league, e.g. the
Brett Favre unretirement or A-Rod divorce stories).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hand Coded Assembly Beats Intrinsics in Speed and Simplicity - nkurz
http://danluu.com/assembly-intrinsics/
======
pandaman
I wonder if it's already the time to put to rest the myth that the human-coded
assembly for a modern CPU is slower than what a compiler generates?
As far as I know it's been semi-true around Pentium time. On that asymetrical
dual pipeline architecture with many parring exceptions and some microcoded
instructions in the mix the typical hand-optimized code for the previous
generation CPUs would likely under-utilize the second pipe and hit some
microcode for a good measure. However, even the Pentium Pro already had a very
robust front end that did not require non-intuitive op rearrangement to
utilize multiple exec units.
Saying that you cannot hand code better than the compiler for a non-Pentium
CPU nowadays sounds similar to saying that if you use too many set bits in
your data then the punch cards will warp and tear apart from too many holes.
~~~
userbinator
Speaking from experience, this myth was never true from 8086 up through the
486; the Pentium (P5) might've been slightly harder to optimise for, but a
human could still easily beat the compilers of the time. And of course, it is
not true today either.
Around the time of the P6 (Pentium Pro/II/III) was when I think things really
improved - out-of-order execution/speculation/wide decoders meant instruction
ordering had little significance, and so getting more performance was more
about reducing the number of instructions needed - something compilers tended
to not do well at.
I believe the myth came from the early days of the RISC fad, where CPUs were
designed specifically so that compilers could easily generate code for them
and make human-coded Asm "obsolete"; although to me this appears to be more of
a "take all the advantage away from humans, making it just as hard for them to
optimise the code as the compiler"... I have only a little experience with
writing Asm for MIPS and ARM, but even from that I can see they do not have
anywhere near the sort of "room for optimisation" that x86 provides.
Another myth that probably needs to die now is "microcoded instructions are
slow"; in a recent article on HN about using the old BCD instructions which
were commonly thought to be much slower than an equivalent sequence of simpler
instructions
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8477254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8477254)
), I did a quick benchmark and found they were basically the same speed, but
much shorter. The one caveat is that currently these complex instructions can
only be decoded by one of the decoders, so having too many of them close
together can slow things down if the other decoders can't find a simpler non-
dependent instruction to decode; but using them sparingly could be good for
making code smaller (and thus consume less cache) without any speed penalty,
or possibly increase speed overall due to reduced cache misses.
------
sharpneli
"Well, at least in clang (3.4). Gcc (4.8.2) is too smart to fall for this
separate destination thing and “optimizes” the code back to something like our
original version."
This resonated quite heavily with me. I've spent rather large amount of time
figuring out how to trick various compilers. This is especially critical in
cases where there is no inline assembly, such as shaders. It's really sad how
in some cases you can 'optimize' code by hiding information. In what sane
world code runs faster if you make something not a compile time constant as an
example?
I really wish that every compiler would have "Shut up! I know what I'm doing!"
mode where it would basically do what you say as close as possible. 1:1
mapping on registers to certain variables and the few temp regs required for
evaluating expressions.
This is not needed often but it's absolutely mandatory for going from 40-50%
of theoretical speed to >90%. And in games and other soft real time
applications this can spell the difference between 30 and 60 fps.
~~~
stephencanon
That mode is called "assembly". I use it all the time.
~~~
nkurz
It's a very useful mode, but assuming you don't write the entire program in
assembly, what's the best way you've found to integrate the assembly with the
non-assembly code? Is there any Windows/Mac/Linux portable and self-contained
way of doing it short of writing assembly functions in separate files and
distributing NASM along with the source? Does even that work?
~~~
J_Darnley
Why would you distribute NASM, or any other assembler, with your own code? You
list it as a requirement to build your code. Would you also distribute GCC?
~~~
nkurz
Logically this makes fine sense, but for whatever reason, I don't think I've
ever encountered a popular open source program that required a specific
assembler other than 'gas' unless the entire codebase was written for that
assembler. I don't think I've encountered it in academic code either.
But for whatever reason I've encountered a few that distribute NASM or another
assembler. I don't know exactly why this would be. I'm trying to find out. Do
you have examples where requiring NASM (or another assembler) as an external
dependency has worked for projects in the past? I'm sure they must exist --- I
just don't know of any.
~~~
J_Darnley
FFmpeg. It requires NASM or YASM if you don't want to cripple it by disabling
the external assembly.
------
nkurz
I feel like the problem isn't really with intrinsics. Rather, the problem is
that compilers just aren't very good at optimizing for the last 30-50% of
performance. One notices this when using intrinsics because if you are using
them you probably are concentrating on performance. But if you were to look
closely at the non-intrinsic code, I think you'd see a lot of the same
problems: bad register allocation leading to unnecessary moves and spills,
failure to take advantage of flags already set by arithmetic and logic
operations, and awkward code layout leading to unnecessary jumps and branches.
Obviously, this isn't because compiler writers are stupid or ignorant.
Instead, it's just a really difficult problem to optimize for one target in a
way that doesn't hurt performance on another. Still, I think there's a lot of
room for improvement, if only because comparing the output from GCC, CLang,
and ICC often shows that one compiler does a much better job than the
others[1]. But even once you know (definitively) that the code could be
faster, it's often really tough to convince a given compiler to generate the
code that you want. And coming up with a single construct that works well for
multiple compilers and remains readable is often impossible.
I'd love it if there was a good way to "lock down" the output for a given
function, without needing to depend on the whims of individual compilers.
Other than distributing only pre-compiled binaries, there doesn't seem to be a
great way to do this. Looking at Dan's example code, he has a solution that's
twice as fast as the non-inline-ASM alternatives. But it's still depending on
the compiler to do register allocation, and adding a global variable somewhere
else in the program might well cause the whole thing to blow up, spilling to
stack and triggering the popcnt false dependency that he's working hard to
avoid.
What's the best way to do this --- to keep optimized code optimized across the
mix of compilers in the current ecosystem?
[1] I'm Linux based, but I probably should start adding MSVC to the mix. I'm
sure there are cases where it does something better than the others. Is there
a good way to do this? Perhaps an equivalent to
[http://gcc.godbolt.org/](http://gcc.godbolt.org/) for MSVC?
~~~
WalterBright
Generating optimal code is much like the travelling salesman problem.
Optimization algorithms will lead the result to a local minima, while missing
a global minima.
~~~
userbinator
_Optimization algorithms will lead the result to a local minima, while missing
a global minima._
I think this is the one of the huge differences between humans and compilers
that leads to suboptimal code - the compiler is completely unaware of what the
programmer _intended_ in the HLL source, so the best it can do is to generate
code which it "knows" is the fastest way to implement exactly those
statements; on the other hand, if you are a human writing an algorithm in Asm,
you probably have things like instruction selection and register allocation
already in mind and are willing to slightly change the "semantics" of your
algorithm if it results in e.g. a better use of registers or the possibility
to use a faster/smaller instruction.
In other words, the compiler starts with something horribly unoptimised but
following the semantics of the source language, and tries to make that as
fast/small as it can while still maintaining the same semantics - and so this
is the "local minima" it can reach. The human starts with a concept of an
algorithm and its intended result, and everything in-between is flexible, so
this is a more "global" view of the problem of code generation. The human
isn't restricted by the semantics of the HLL, but can fully express the
intended algorithm by exploiting the full capabilities of the processor.
~~~
WalterBright
The human also knows things that the compiler doesn't - such as which branches
of the code are speed critical and which aren't. This matters for things like
where precious registers get allocated.
------
dalke
> "For example, as of this writing, the first two google hits for popcnt
> benchmark (and 2 out of the top 3 bing hits) claim that Intel’s hardware
> popcnt instruction is slower than a sofware implementation that counts the
> number of bits set in a buffer, via a table lookup using the SSSE3 pshufb
> instruction."
I believe that my benchmark is one of those top hits. My description is at
[http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/diary/archive/2011/1...](http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/diary/archive/2011/11/02/faster_popcount_update.html)
. I wrote "My answer is that _if you have a chip with the POPCNT instruction
built-in then use it_. I still don't have one of those chips, but I know
someone who does, who has given me some numbers. "
My own code's logic is "if POPCNT exists then use it, otherwise test one of a
few possibilities to find the fastest, since the best choice depends on the
hardware."
I now have a machine with a hardware POPCNT, and a version with inline
assembly. I should rerun the numbers...
------
Alupis
I seem to recall that Clang consistently produces slower executable binaries
than gcc does, although Clang compiles quicker. (The reason a lot of people
use Clang for development but use gcc for the final production build)
Perhaps the assembly it's producing isn't quite as optimized as it could be if
it were carefully hand crafted.
~~~
stephencanon
That may have been true in the past. All the data I've seen in the past few
years has GCC generating faster code for some benchmarks, and clang generating
faster code for others, with no really consistent pattern (this is by no means
an exhaustive sample, but it is certainly large enough to be vaguely
representative).
Interestingly (to me), I am seeing more and more examples where clang and gcc
are beating icc in performance.
~~~
Alupis
> Interestingly (to me), I am seeing more and more examples where clang and
> gcc are beating icc in performance.
Intel has finite resources (as much as Intel can realistically dedicate to the
project), where-as both Clang and GCC projects have theoretically unlimited
resources (as much as companies the world-over can dedicate to the project).
Doesn't surprise me actually. Most say gcc version 4.7.1 overtook icc in
performance by about 15% (and 4.7.1 is ancient now).
------
alexdowad
Interesting to see this on HN, just a couple months after I ran into the same
problem with GCC's intrinsic popcount myself on a project! I found that I
needed to use an "-march" argument for GCC to actually emit POPCNT
instructions.
~~~
wolf550e
Isn't gcc's default march=native so it would emit popcount if the host
supports it?
~~~
gsg
No, the default produces binaries that are compatible with as many machines as
possible.
~~~
wolf550e
You're right [0], but I couldn't find which march value [1] corresponds to the
settings used for "x86_64-linux-gnu".
EDIT: running "echo | gcc -v -E - 2>&1 | grep cc1" shows the command line,
which says "-mtune=generic -march=x86-64". I do not know what "-march=x86-64"
implies, except SSE2.
0 - [https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-
help/2012-12/msg00074.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-
help/2012-12/msg00074.html)
1 -
[https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/i386-and-x86-64-Options.h...](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/i386-and-x86-64-Options.html)
------
throwawayaway
finally i think this article and comment thread will settle this contentious
debate - definitively, and we can all move on - with the decision made once
and for all future possible cases and desired outcomes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Non-coder Hacker News - desaiguddu
http://hubski.com/
======
GrooveStomp
Alright, that's done, now where's the all-code Hacker News? :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: My former employer is harassing me for meeting with competitors - bonjour314
I quit my job. I grabbed coffee with founders of competing startups in our space to explore job opportunities with them. The former employer's lawyers wrote letters to me, as well as to the competitors, threatening that I am violating my IP agreements.<p>Should I find a lawyer? Any recommendations for specific ones?<p>Also, the CEO and I negotiated my return to the company after I quit. He gave me a verbal agreement to bring me back under certain terms. On the day I was supposed to be onboarded back, he called me and told me they won't be brining me back, and denied that we ever reached any agreement to bring me back.<p>Fwiw, I created a critical part of their proprietary technology.
======
greenyoda
Yes, I think you should find a lawyer to review whatever contracts you may
have signed with your former employer. The lawyer can tell you which
provisions of these contracts (if any) are enforceable in your state, and
possibly write a letter to your ex-employer's lawyers telling them to back
off.
But how did they find out that you had met with a competitor? And how could
they know that you're violating any agreement if they don't know what you
discussed with the competitor?
> Also, the CEO and I negotiated my return to the company after I quit. He
> gave me a verbal agreement to bring me back under certain terms. On the day
> I was supposed to be onboarded back, he called me and told me they won't be
> brining me back, and denied that we ever reached any agreement to bring me
> back.
You could also ask your lawyer about this. But why would you want to go back
to work for an employer who is currently threatening you with legal action?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In-app rewards gaming network (Startup Weekend product - need feedback) - HectorRamos
http://www.gameboost.me/
======
patio11
I am confused by the choice to feature the number of devs you had and the
abbreviated schedule as opposed to a vision for how you're going to make app
developers more money.
Aren't the key details something along the lines of "You implement an in-game
currency, we give you a widget which lets users select from various offers to
earn currency by taking actions which have high CPA affiliate payouts, we
insulate you from the metric truckload of customer support requests this will
generate, and you get paid on a fairly regular schedule"? Or maybe two steps
beyond this, "Yeah we know you've heard this before but a) we have higher
quality offers, b) we police the feed religiously to ensure your users don't
get scammed, c) our CS is really top-notch to get users instant credit for
things even when the actual CPA is delayed by days, and d) we're experts at
dealing with the pathologies of poor people and promise to keep you far, far
away from the seedy underbelly of our business."
------
powertower
1\. Get an idea.
2\. Do zero work on it.
3\. Set up a landing page.
4\. Submit link to HN.
5\. Gauge the response.
This new trend really pisses me off...
If someone puts the work into it I have no problem with it, but I know that
there is a 99% chance that this thing has no substance.
Note: to offset the rant, I'm upvoting your submit.
~~~
untog
Welcome to the Startup Weekend effect.
Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of the events, and have had good
experiences at some I've attended. But there is often a huge inequality
between the number of devs and the number of business guys- if you're not
careful you end up in a group full of business, but with little ability to
execute over the space of a weekend.
So you end up with a weekend spent arguing over a domain name, setting up a
LaunchRock page and sending out Google Spreadsheet surveys.
------
twog
Im at startup weekend puerto rico right now (Im one of the judges) so its cool
to see this on HN. Overall, I have been insanely impressed with whats
happening in the startup community here. I have been to a number of these
events in the US, but I think this one might take the cake in terms of
quality.
------
carlostg
Good idea, if game users don't see ads and I can monetize, I want to know more
about it.
~~~
andypants
The site says it's bringing back the 'arcade model', so I'm guessing the way
they'll monetize users is... to make them pay for your game??
At the same time, their video looks like it's the same premium currency model
as every other game microtransaction service out there.
It would really help if they could show something more, or at least write more
about their service.
------
thedufer
I would look into this if there was any info about how its going to work, but
that is the least helpful landing page I've ever seen. Not even worth giving
away my email address.
------
elfaraon
Sound Very Interesting, i want more info..
------
jblow
My feedback is, please stop doing junk like this and go pursue some idea that
has some kind of social value.
~~~
Mz
I'm curious what you think _has some kind of social value_. Would you mind
expounding on that?
Thanks.
~~~
jblow
It's like pornography...
~~~
Mz
I'm sorry. It's a sincere question and I simply don't understand. Does
pornography also lack social value in your eyes?
~~~
jblow
I guess there is a max reply depth? So I am replying here...
I am a game developer, actually, and I believe games can have great social
value. So I support you in pursuing your idea.
"Rewards" systems like the one described here, though, are not about giving
anything to the audience. They are purely about taking money away from people,
and doing it as manipulatively and sneakily as possible. I believe the net
social value for things like this is deeply negative.
~~~
Mz
There's not a max reply length. The reply button takes a bit of time to show
up sometimes. I'm not clear on how long that is supposed to be or what factors
influence it. When I first joined, I did the exact same thing as you are doing
here: Replied higher up in the thread on occasions when I couldn't find the
"reply" link/button/option.
Thanks so much for taking me seriously. Sometimes people think I'm just being
snarky. What do you think _does_ work for trying to monetize a game? I'm not
sure there will ever be any money in my plans to make a game (in part because
the target audience has no money, only debts from large medical expenses), but
my sons also want to make games. Somewhere in there, someone needs to make
actual money. Any thoughts?
------
startupcto
Kudos for working on Gameboost over Startup Weekend but the ideas is not new.
Google in-app game rewards and you'll find out
[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&biw...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&biw=320&bih=356&q=in-
app+game+rewards&oq=in-&aq=0p&aqi=s2g3&aql=1&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3862l7920l0l10119l5l5l0l1l1l0l444l1237l3-1.2l3l0&mvs=0)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Hackers can steal your AppleID in 10 seconds - emilisto
http://www.shootitlive.com/2012/10/hackers-can-steal-your-appleid-in-10-s/
======
hetaali
This is a huge security issue. I imagine that someone post this on Facebook
and encourage others in the same school (on same wifi) to log in to their
AppleID. In this way you can access other people's accounts directly. Buying
things at store.apple.com, AppStore, iTunes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Daily WTF goes white to "support" SOPA - anthuswilliams
http://thedailywtf.com/
======
sp332
Then write down the IPs, take a photo of the page on a wooden table, and share
the photo on 68.142.214.24 (flickr.com)!
~~~
randomdata
Being a non-American, maybe I'm just a little out of the loop, but what is
blocking domains supposed to solve, exactly? Pirates will just jump on an
alternate name resolution services in minutes, as will the rest of the people
in time, as word spreads.
It's like applying a bandaid to a severed head and then suing Band-Aid brand
because their product didn't save the life.
~~~
nextparadigms
It's worse than that. Under SOPA they can only go after .com, .org and .net
sites. So ALL those foreign "rogue" websites that use other domains and aren't
hosted in US will be able to work merrily and be unaffected by SOPA, at least
according to the bill itself. Plus, if it does pass, all those rogue sites
will be redirecting immediately to a new domain name, and make sure all of
their users remember the new domain name by the time SOPA gets enforced
against them.
That's how much of a joke this bill is, which implies that the bill creators
are either this clueless, or SOPA is really just "Anti-piracy Bill v0.1" to
make people accept it, with more "improvements" planned for later.
The only people it will actually affect, are actual American sites and
companies that will have to enforce this bill, like the search engines, the
ISP's, and the financial services. So the "bad actors" will be almost
unaffected by it, while in the same time it will put many burdens on the
American companies.
~~~
skymt
> Under SOPA they can only go after .com, .org and .net sites.
I'm afraid you've got that backwards. SOPA's DNS-blocking domain-seizure
provisions apply to all domains _except_ US-based ones like .com, .org and
.net. (Those are considered to be under US jurisdiction and can already be
seized under current law [0].) Hence the talking-point that it will only
affect "rogue foreign sites".
[0] [http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-
valley/technology/130763-h...](http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-
valley/technology/130763-homeland-security-dept-seizes-domain-names-)
~~~
rmc
Wow that even more crazy, because if they make an order blocking a .fr domain
then that only applies in USA, so that domain will probably still resolve in
France and other places. But the isps could never block all .fr domains. It
would be a pain in the hole to implement.
------
wisty
Note, if you just go to their IP, you don't get the white-out.
~~~
sukuriant
... that's suddenly so much more brilliant. Thanks for sharing :D
------
sdoering
I love great satire. This just made my day.
~~~
phalasz
Really good. They just take the piss out of this whole thing.
Nicely done :)
------
detay
LOL bringing back the Gopher... Brilliant protest.
------
mmmooo
tsk-tsk for using the host header value to calculate links in the left side
bar to the forums..
e.g. <http://forums.110.120/forums/thread/277238.aspx>
------
catfish
Wildcat BBS - I ran 8, 1200 baud modems - 9 phone lines - Earth Station 1
BBS...
Simpler days indeed. Anyone else attend the 1BBSConn in Denver hosted by
Boardwatch magazine? Those were the days, oh yeah baby!
And of course I did this on a 40mb ST251- RLL encoded seagate hard drive, on 2
Tandy 286's running 1 full mb of memory using QEMM to get that pesky extra
384k of memory to load instances of Wildcat.
Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. Thank you DWTF for a lovely
memory lane flashback!
------
bdg
Still waiting for one site to go to plaid.
------
siculars
They should have linked to gopher...
<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29>
~~~
mkopinsky
Wikipedia link doesn't work today... those crazy hackers who opposed SOPA have
already taken it down. ;-)
~~~
inexplicable
To thats more of a reason to link to have more and more people go to Wikipedia
today. Wouldn't change anything by linking here though as most of HN traffic
is already aware of this.
------
chernevik
I bet a bill to this effect would get more than a few sponsors in Congress,
and probably an MPAA endorsement.
------
kruhft
I started filling out my hosts file with my most common sites a while
ago...just in case.
~~~
dpcan
Why?
If it does happen where everything is based on an IP, the web, ecommerce, all
of it, will die. You can't advertise a business as an IP address. In a couple
days millions won't be able to find any websites anywhere.
Ad revenue will be GONE, nobody will be paying for ANYTHING online and every
one of the sites you've written down will surely close their doors because
there is no way for them to stay in business.
Small businesses everywhere will fail. Websites like Reddit, HN, Digg, etc,
will not be able to survive.
Google will become useless. Since their search results can only return a
handful of sites, you might as well go right to them, bypass Google.
Hosting companies will fail left and right as their sites are slowly shut down
and their customers leave. There won't even be anywhere to keep websites
online anymore, IP or not.
And so on.
~~~
kmm
Mine contains 194.71.107.15 (thepiratebay.org) because a judge had it blocked
here in Belgium. I could just as well use depiraatbaai.be but it's a matter of
principle, I like my world wide web to be "complete".
I think the people of the USA should be happy there needs to be a law around
it at least. Here it was blocked with no legislative backing, only because a
judge deemed it illegal. It's interesting to see you at least have a semblance
of democratic process.
------
vlasta2
Actually, part of me wishes that SOPA or another similar bill gets approved.
That may be the push I need to actually join and contribute to one of the
movements that aim to make the internet less controllable, like freenet...
------
jameskilton
BRILLANT!
~~~
resnamen
Paula Bean approves of this post.
------
rickyconnolly
Not sure if troll...
------
milurally
I am happy to see that most of the giants of the web protest to this censors
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Does Linux Start Up - ristem
https://www.tutorialdocs.com/article/how-linux-start-up.html
======
devnonymous
I upvoted this because I think these sort of tutorials are a good thing. I've
learned many things with tutorials like this, which are a great starting point
(I used to spend ages reading through tldp howtos etc).
That said, I'd like to see more such descriptive docs about the modern Linux
system. I confess, I know very little about how Systemd, dbus, whatever does
device management and filesystem mounting, switching of networks in network-
manager etc work. I use these daily and I have a vague idea but I would like
to read a doc that just opens the boot, points at things and describes them,
so to speak. Any recommendations?
~~~
JdeBP
Not the thing that you have upvoted, certainly. (-:
It's significantly wrong for a systemd operating system from step #3 onwards.
* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394238/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394238/5132)
* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/196014/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/196014/5132)
* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/236968/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/236968/5132)
* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233855/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233855/5132)
* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/194218/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/194218/5132)
* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/333922/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/333922/5132)
It is important to also look at the further reading, which points to quite a
lot of stuff.
Of course, there are other systems, for which the headlined article is also
quite wrong.
* [http://smarden.org/runit/runit.8.html](http://smarden.org/runit/runit.8.html)
* [http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/quickstart.html](http://skarnet.org/software/s6-linux-init/quickstart.html) / [http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/why.html](http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/why.html) / [http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/overview.html](http://skarnet.org/software/s6-rc/overview.html)
* [http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#system-phases](http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#system-phases)
* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide.html) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/gazetteer.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/gazetteer.html) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/startup-and-shutdown.h...](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/startup-and-shutdown.html) / [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/networking.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/networking.html) ... and so forth.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Code Coverage Best Practices - zdw
https://testing.googleblog.com/2020/08/code-coverage-best-practices.html
======
just-juan-post
Is it just me or are there no best practices listed here?
I'm not seeing much substance in this paper.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Company with the “World’s Least Powerful CEO” Makes $2.5 Million Every Day - smalter
http://blog.idonethis.com/post/48277151394/least-powerful-ceo
======
Irregardless
I'm not sure if this is more of a testament to their corporate strategy or the
effectiveness of the freemium model for mobile games.
It's amazing how difficult it is to sell an iOS game for anything more than
$1.99. But, if you give them the game for free and let them exchange real
money for strategic advantages in-game, they'll fork over a small fortune.
Supercell is essentially selling $2.5 million/day in "gems" for only 2 games,
gems that people then trade for resources or the ability to do things faster
(like building units or structures).
A user named 'Panda' on the Supercell forums claims to have spent over $6,000
on gems in Clash of Clans[1]. Based on the responses regarding how quickly he
was able to reach the top of the rankings, it seems to be true. Many other
players in the thread report having spent $20-$40 on gems.
[1] [http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/827-How-much-
money...](http://forum.supercell.net/showthread.php/827-How-much-money-have-
you-spent-on-this-game?p=5370&viewfull=1#post5370)
~~~
teej
Supercell is one of hundreds of developers on the App Store trying to make
freemium mobile games.
They're doing well because they picked a winning business model for their
games and then they went on to make _great games_. Clash of Clans was a breath
of fresh air in an environment with tons of clones and uninspired crap. Also,
entertainment is a hits driven business where if a product starts winning, it
tends to dominate.
Picking a business model is crucial, but not sufficient, to be successful.
~~~
greggman
What's your thinking on this opinion that Clash of Clans is actually not a
game
"Yet I look at these products and I don't see games. I see payment machines,
made to look like entertainment."
[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-13-saturday-
soapbo...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-13-saturday-soapbox-the-
high-cost-of-free-to-play)
------
jcampbell1
For those that don't know, SuperCell makes the top grossing iOS game called
'Clash of Clans'. It is like Farmville meets Warcraft II. Rather the just
growing crops to make your farm better, you grow armies to trash other
people's towns.
Also to put things in perspective, SuperCell makes 10x more money per employee
than Goldman Sachs.
~~~
iskander
>Also to put things in perspective, SuperCell makes 10x more money per
employee than Goldman Sachs.
I'm not sure that the two are comparable, it might be akin to comparing the
metabolic efficiency of yeast vs. an elephant. Could SuperCell scale to make
~$50 billion a year?
~~~
ghotli
Great analogy. Thanks for that.
------
msandford
How long before we see a bunch of startups or consultants trying to cargo cult
their success by simply organizing into teams and wondering why it didn't
work. There's more to this company than simply "we have small cells that are
independent" there was a lot of thought as to who owns what and how they own
it.
~~~
mindcrime
You're probably right, but FWIW, there actually exists some somewhat scholarly
work on this topic. Stephen Haeckel[1] - formerly at IBM Research - wrote a
lot about something he called the "Adaptive Enterprise"[2] and suggested
something along the lines of more autonomous operating units, bound together
using a "commitment management protocol".[3]
And while I haven't explored this in any real depth (yet), my guess is that
some of the research into Multi-Agent Systems[4] and Agent-Based Modeling[5]
may prove relevant to this aspect of organizational design as well.
Another interesting discussion around commitment management:
[http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-...](http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/conversations-
for-action-commitment-management-protocol/)
[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephan_H._Haeckel>
[2]:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=pkrFugJBAn4C&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=pkrFugJBAn4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)
[3]: <http://www.senseandrespond.com/downloads/Comitmn2.pdf>
[4]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-agent_system>
[5]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent-based_model>
~~~
leashless
Extremely interesting links, thank you. Was anything significant ever built on
this model?
~~~
mindcrime
I don't know if any firms specifically _identify_ themselves as being
"Adaptive Enterprises" or not, but I think there are examples of some
companies which appear to use at least some of the ideas. The firm mentioned
in TFA may well be one. W.L. Gore[1] and Valve[2] are other firms that come to
mind that, while they don't use the term, appear to have structures which bear
at least some similarity to what Haeckel describes.
Back in 1999 when Haecke wrote "The Adaptive Enterprise" he said there were no
full-fledged examples of a firm which was totally based on the idea. Whether
or not there are any today, I can't say for sure.
What I will say, is that I think there is a lot of reason to think that this
approach might be a good idea, and to think that it's still an emerging trend.
[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._Gore_and_Associates>
[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation>
------
mhartl
Ilkka Paananen is a good example of a _very_ powerful CEO. Delegation of
authority is a sign of strength, not weakness.
~~~
ritchiea
Definitely, the article is conflating micro-managing and power. I'm sure there
are ways Ilkka profoundly shapes the company and that kind of CEO influence is
likely why he is able to delegate effectively.
------
turtlebits
FYI, They make the top grossing game on iOS, 'Clash of Clans'.
And it's the company not the CEO- the first time I read the headline I thought
the CEO was making 2.5 mil per day.
------
alput
These guys are peddlers of iOS pay-to-win shit games.
Their success is mostly due to the proverbial suckers that are born every day.
~~~
JabavuAdams
I wouldn't describe it as a "shit" game as the production values and
craftsmanship are quite high. On the other hand, it is clearly exploiting a
bug in my wiring.
I've spent over $400 on Clash of Clans. I can afford to, but I don't feel that
it's a good use of my money. This game design is definitely on the intrusive /
addictive end of the spectrum. The obviously wouldn't be making so much money
if it were a flat-rate game like Minecraft.
~~~
jordan0day
I guess we've known for a while (at least since EverQuest or World of Warcraft
at the very latest) that when you combine "polish" with content designed to
scratch some addiction-seeking itch in our brains, bad things can happen. At
least with those you know the flat rate you're going to be paying over the
course of the coming year? I'm sure there's an argument that can be made about
you getting "your money's worth" for that $400 of entertainment... but jeez...
$400? That's an awful lot of money for a video game. If you knew back when you
first installed the game that you'd end up spending so much money on it again,
do you think you'd still go ahead and install it?
~~~
GFischer
I've spent thousands of dollars on Magic: the Gathering cards and stuff
(across 15 years).
I think it's way more than I should have, and I'll never get it back. It does
have the addicting part (packs and drafts are addictive as hell), and a
"collectible" part for rationalization.
I have some kind of personal problem that leads me into these time sinks,
because I've mostly quit, only to replace it with other time wasters (League
of Legends and others).
edit: omonra, your post is dead.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _I have some kind of personal problem that leads me into these time sinks_
Your personal problem is that you're a higher animal. Out of the reinforcement
schedule patterns that maximise conditioning, the "Variable Interval
Reinforcement Ratio" or VIRR is the most powerful.
That is: systems with random payoff schedules are the most addictive to higher
animals. Pigeons, rats, humans: if good stuff happens at random we quickly
become shackled to whatever it was we were doing.
Gambling: random payoffs. Addictive.
Buying MtG booster packs: random payoffs. Addictive.
Many, many computer games: random payoffs. Addictive.
------
bsbechtel
Interesting that the author uses the US as a comparison....especially when
over the past ~30 years, the power of the executive branch has expanded
significantly. At the same time, the US's global influence has been waning...
~~~
richardjordan
Thought the same thing - that the US is falling apart due to structural
failings in its construction. Not sure the analogy of president is right
though. The presidency may have strengthened its role in some ways but it is
still hamstrung by congress and as a whole US government has got less powerful
in recent decades not more, but to the gain of corporations and a small wealth
elected not the people as a whole. Precisely because no branch of government
is particularly powerful it has no effective remedy once corporations and
individuals gain sufficient wealth and influence that they are able to
demonstrate regulatory capture and wield power against any individual branch
which causes problems to their interests.
------
hkmurakami
_> As its name implies, Supercell is organized as a collection of small,
independent teams called cells tasked with developing new games or building
new deep features for existing games. Cells are given complete autonomy in
terms of how they organize themselves, prioritize ideas, distribute work and
determine what they ultimately produce._
Correct me if I am wrong, but this is effectively how Valve organizes itself
right? :)
~~~
no_more_death
Valve doesn't have a CEO. It's an undifferentiated mass of people, at least as
far as power structure goes -- sort of like a slime mold. I think that's a lot
different than having a CEO who prides himself on being an inspirer instead of
a controller (if I'm reading the article correctly). In other words, it sounds
like he is a constitutional monarch. (Of course, that bursts the whole
"American miracle" thing about him being like the president.)
~~~
sopooneo
However, is there an underlying truth at Valve, that if he wanted to, Newell
could fire everyone on the spot? I have no idea if that is true, and if so,
don't necessary think such an arrangement is bad. But if that is the case, it
needs to be acknowledged that authority, even if unstated and unexercised,
still has an effect.
~~~
hkmurakami
Gabe Newell apparently owns more than 50% of Valve's equity so yes, he can do
whatever he pleases with the company.
[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-08-gabe-newell-
is-...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-08-gabe-newell-is-worth-
USD1-5-billion)
------
seivan
Good games and low cost operations ALWAYS make money.
Just hire developers,graphics artist and/or sound guys. No suits, no hr, no
nothing else other then content creators. If you _HAVE_ to hire non content
creators, make it count.
~~~
coryl
No they don't. You know how many smaller indie devs are out there trying to be
the next Supercell?
A lot of them have great games but lose money for any number of reasons.
------
adaml_623
So the obvious question is where is that money going?
How much are they paying the developers and designers?
~~~
jakerocheleau
I'd be interested in this too but I doubt the information is public. They must
be doing something right for such a small operation.
~~~
enra
Actually the company is registered in Finland where everyone's tax records are
public, but you need to wait for the next tax year.
I guess that like usually in Finland, salaries are rather modest compared to
Bay / US in general (around 40-100k eur), but because of the functioning
society, many things are free and taken care of (education, healthcare,
daycare), your standard of living can end up higher.
Equity/stock options for employees are almost unheard of and I wish more
startups would pick it up. Supercell is also an exception in this regard, that
they now offer stock options for everyone (they started it after the last 100M
round).
~~~
geon
> but because of the functioning society, many things are free and taken care
> of (education, healthcare, daycare), your standard of living can end up
> higher.
If it works anything like in Sweden (i suspect it does), the employer pays a
high tax too. The employer pays about twice of what ends up in the pocket of
the employee.
So I guess the salary levels are comparable.
------
trcollinson
I have noticed that in big businesses (at least the many that I have been
associated with) management sees agile methodologies as a "gimmick" used to
keep the masses happy. Rarely have I seen it work from the bottom up (or top
down, however you'd like to look at it). Although the article didn't
specifically call what they are doing "agile" it seems like the spirit of the
methodology. It's really nice to see a company that embraces that sort of
working methodology and uses it to be successful. I would be interested to see
if they find their environment to be less stressful as well. I wonder what it
would be like if every company trusted their employees to do what was best for
their company and then empowered them to actually fulfil their vision.
------
ktr
I'm really interested in how organizations are organized. Does anyone have any
suggested reading material for things like this? I've only ever heard the term
"cells" before as it relates to terrorist groups, but I'm not sure if this is
a similar concept. But I often wonder if organizing a business more like a
democracy would yield better results in the long run ...
------
jacobquick
Isn't "a game company that empowers its employees" the same story as Gabe
Newell and Valve? It's cool that there's another company doing it but that
management style has plenty of previous examples, some basic research would've
made for a better article.
------
desireco42
I think their secret sauce, aside from obviously being attentative to
customers, is to have small teams, 6-7 is considere ideal team for development
of games and I would project that to pretty much anything. Just enough
talented people to get the job done and nobody to interfere.
------
waylandsmithers
Definitely an interesting story, but I hate the "$2.5 Mil per Day" framing of
the headline. This isn't anything noteworthy-- lots of companies have annual
revenues of over $900 million.
~~~
no_more_death
They don't want to report daily revenue because it would average out to a lot
less than $900 million a year, I think. Two weeks ago they were making over 1
million a day, now it's over 2 million a day.[1] To me, that growth rate at
this kind of scale is more meaningful than a yearly figure (or a daily figure,
to be honest).
Of course, the reason they use "2.5 million per day" is to give you a classic
Scrooge McDuck kind of visual, with a big semi trailer packed with money
entering your palace every day.
[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/28/supercell-2/>
------
Geee
Damn, interesting article suddenly turned into American propaganda.
------
rawrly
I'm surprised no one has attempted to connect servant leadership practices to
tech companies. It seems like it would work well.
------
DustinCalim
I love the top voted comment at the end of the article.
------
wilfra
When I saw the title I assumed it was Valve. Interesting that it's also a
gaming company. There must be something about this kind of corporate structure
and gaming that go really well together.
~~~
msandford
It's more about the freedom necessary to make good art. Movies are done in a
very similar fashion. No director runs around telling grips how to tape things
or how to run wires. Doesn't happen. Micromanaging kills (or slows) creative
processes.
~~~
wittyphrasehere
Considering that a large part of software creation is, well, creative, I'd
love to see more of this in the tech industry—like Github, for example.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A look at the 2014 Mac mini - mwexler
http://blog.macminicolo.net/post/100240431773/a-look-at-the-2014-mac-mini
======
koralatov
In the various laptops, soldered-on RAM is a trade-off for the increasing
thinness of the machines. Whether it's worth it will depend on the
individual's needs.
In this case, the Mac mini is the same size as the previous generation, which
had had user-replaceable RAM. Soldering it on the RAM in this new generation
is just a dick move on Apple's part. It's hard to think of a legitimate reason
for them to do this except to make more money from you.
~~~
computerjunkie
I agree. I was really looking forward to what apple would do with the Mac Mini
as I wanted it to be my first apple purchase. To be fair,the update seems like
a _downgrade_. Even on the keynote, the product seemed neglected.
It looks like I am going look for small form factor cases and stick Linux on
them and probably get a Mac book Pro when I save up enough money.
~~~
cdr
Intel NUCs are really interesting small form factor PC kits - a nice medium
between completely from scratch (which can be a real pain in SFF) and
completely prebuilt. i3/i5 Broadwell NUCs are announced for early 2015.
~~~
dragontamer
NUC sucks however. Its way too small.
I think I prefer the slightly larger mini-PCs from Zotec. If I build from
scratch, the AMD-based AM1 platforms are superb. $30 socketed miniITX
motherboards and $20 chips are great.
------
ddod
I can't help but think this offering is designed to make people not miss the
Mini when it's discontinued in a year or two.
This article read really positive despite basically saying the Mini is a
terrible purchase. If you want a toy Mac with no concern for performance, most
models from the past few years will suit you if you can find a good deal on
Craigslist.
I was on the fence because I really wanted a Mini and the new $700 version
didn't seem terrible, but now with the knowledge that they put tamper-proof
screws on it and bundled it with a 5400rpm HDD ($200 minimum to get an
upgrade), I feel like they're not interested in customers like me.
I found an Asus form factor prefab ([http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VivoPC-
VM40B-02-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VivoPC-
VM40B-02-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B00KU54KPQ)) that should handle the
HTPC/Plex/quiet/price/value minimum requirements I have in case anyone else
was looking for alternatives.
------
JohnBooty
The news about the non-upgradable RAM is tough to swallow.
About the only remotely positive spin I can put on it is that, relative to the
2012 Mac Mini, the "Apple tax" you pay for 16GB of RAM on the 2014 Mac Mini is
somewhat offset by the reduction in the price of the base hardware.
The Mac Mini matters to me, because they make nice servers - companies like
MacMiniColo and MacMiniVault will host your Mac Mini for $50 a month or less.
From a pure "computing horsepower per dollar" perspective, it's superior to
virtual hosting - try hosting a 200GB database on a virtual host with 16GB of
RAM and virtual CPUs anywhere near the performance of those in the Mac Mini.
It gets real expensive real fast.
Obviously, virtual hosting has a boatload of other advantages, and it's the
right solution for most situations. But Mac Mini hosting fills a niche for
small companies with data < 1TB.
~~~
MoOmer
For $50/month you can get a Xeon E3 1225v2 with 32GB ram and 3-120GB ssds and
300mbps pipe nowadays.
~~~
zaroth
I doubt that in the US you could get 1U, 300mbps unmetered, and 2amps for
$50/mo. Forget about it if you throw in the hardware as well.
Now if you said 1U, 1amp, and 10TB of metered bandwidth, then $50/mo sounds
more like it.
[1] -
[http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=131](http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=131)
~~~
STRiDEX
[http://www.soyoustart.com/us/essential-
servers/](http://www.soyoustart.com/us/essential-servers/)
OVH pricing gets you pretty close.
------
monstermonster
No sale. This has to stop somewhere. They're not smartphones.
------
walterbell
For a home server, consider the Dell T20 instead. $299 for low-power version,
$499 for quad-core Xeon & 4GB ECC, officially supports Linux, no OS bundled.
[http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-
mac/peripherals/serve...](http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-
mac/peripherals/servers/dell-poweredge-t20-mini-tower-server-1257381/review)
As for size, unless you're living in an RV, put it under a desk. Just Say No
to being hypnotized by shiny rectangles.
Consumers and small businesses can have an affordable server with incremental
upgrade to many TBs of storage and 32GB RAM, plus OSS software to take low-
latency, surveillance-free advantage of all that computing power and local
storage/cache. HP and Lenovo sell similar models. With virtualization, it can
run more than one operating system, replacing several boxes.
Why settle for a neutered and overpriced shiny rectangle?
~~~
JohnBooty
Those Dells would be better than Mac Minis for a lot of things, but not
others.
Clearly the Dell is more expandable and potentially more powerful depending on
config. 32GB RAM ceiling is fantastic too, especially for virtualization.
Physical size is an issue for some applications but not others. Either one of
these would be fine as a workstation, but I know which one of these boxes I'd
want in my living room. Size also matters if you're racking these things up,
or having one colo'd somewhere.
The Mac Mini kills the Dell in terms of performance/watt, especially when you
move past the base CPU models of either the Mini or the T20. That _alone_ can
erase the price advantage of the Dell (over several years of ownership) if
you're using them as always-on servers and you factor in the cost of providing
cooling for them as well. Again, this is an issue in some scenarios but not
others.
~~~
walterbell
If the priority is performance-per-watt, then an Intel NUC offers user-
upgradeable disk and RAM, plus a range of processors from low-power Bay Trail
Atoms to i7 vPro, at a smaller size than the Mac Mini.
The next version of the NUc will support Broadwell (Core) and Braswell (Atom)
with a much-reduced power envelope that beats the Haswell processors in this
"new" Mac Mini. And it will support 4K graphics with integrated GPU.
[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/188533-intels-
nuc-2-0-l...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/188533-intels-
nuc-2-0-leaks-the-next-unit-of-steam-machines-and-home-theater-pcs)
------
gumby
Non-flame question here: what does running Mac OS as a server buy you?
I love my apple hardware and depend on my mbp as my primary computing device,
but don't see the appeal of mac os X as a server environment. The things that
make the mac great (for me) don't add value -- and in fact get in the way. I'm
much much happier using Linux on my servers and much much happier NOT using it
on my day-to-day machine.
I can imagine there could be some specialized cases in which running services
on the mac make sense but I am astonished there are enough that macminicolo
can make a business of it (and congrats to them for this by the way!). I
assume this is a failure of imagination on my part, thus my question
~~~
rcchen
My assumption was that these Macs were primarily used for automated headless
testing of iOS applications; as a (relatively) cheap Mac that is able to run
the simulator and whatnot, this could make sense.
------
adolph
In comparing the low and medium end minis, I'm reminded of the below
Arstechica article about the then-new low end iMac. It seems as if it's
primary purpose was to meet a price point and make the next jump up look good.
It'll be interesting to see how the various benchmarks turn out.
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/07/1099-imac-review-
lose-5...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/07/1099-imac-review-lose-50-of-
your-performance-to-save-18-of-the-money/)
~~~
JohnBooty
Anecdotal, but the original $499 G4 Mac Mini -- along with iPods -- was my
"gateway drug" when it came to switching from Windows to Macs.
~~~
Joeri
Same for me. Bought the entry-level g4 mac mini, and it led to another mini,
two macbooks, and ipod, iphone, and 3 ipads.
------
emsy
I've always considered using Mac only software a risk, because I have to
depend on a single company. That's why I've mainly used software that is
either free or available on cross platforms (Except of course software like
XCode). What if my Mac suddenly stops working? I need to get another Mac to
continue working. With non-Mac Computers, I can at least get a cheap temporary
replacement to continue working. This move makes me even more dependend not
only on their software, but now also much more on their price policy. For
instance, say I need at least 16 gig of RAM for serious web development with
VMs. Now I can't simply replace my broken MBP with an Mac Mini and upgrade
with cheap RAM but I have to completely buy in. What if they suddenly hard
solder HDDs as well? I can't even replace my broken hard drive quickly. As a
freelancer, this dependency is too dangerous and I really hope that this move
leads other customers to consider their dependency on a single vendor.
~~~
computerjunkie
_What if they suddenly hard solder HDDs as well?_
I have a somewhat weird feeling that this is going to happen in a couple of
years.
~~~
rcarmo
It already has, in a way. The Air's SSD already fits that description.
~~~
jdboyd
All versions of the MacBook Air appear to have upgradable storage, even though
none of them have upgradable RAM.
I base that on MacSales.com offering storage upgrades for all 5 generations of
MBA.
------
pionar
I have a 2012 mini with 16GB RAM (I play some games on it). I won't be buying
one of the new ones because of this.
------
austinz
I like Apple a lot, but I find it more and more tiresome the fact that, if I
want an OS X desktop that doesn't try to squeeze underpowered, overpriced
laptop components into a tiny chassis, I would have to buy a Mac Pro. The fact
that you can't even replace the RAM on these newest models is pretty
grotesque.
------
kylec
I can live with soldered-on RAM - there is a bit of an Apple premium to the
RAM they sell, but at least you can get the configuration you want. I'm much
more disappointed by the lack of a quad-core option. I was planning on picking
up a high-end quad-core Mac mini when they updated the line, but after the
announcement on Thursday I ran down to the nearest Apple Store and bought a
2012 quad-core Mac mini instead.
I wish I could have bought the 2.6GHz quad-core as opposed to the 2.3GHz, but
that was a build-to-order option only. Still, the 2.3GHz is much faster than
the top end 2014 Mac mini when it comes to multithreaded performance:
[http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/19/mac-
mini-2014-benchmark/](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/19/mac-
mini-2014-benchmark/)
~~~
LordIllidan
The problem with the current Apple approach is that it forces you to make the
decision about how much RAM you may need beforehand, and charges you extra for
the privilege. Making the RAM on a desktop machine non configurable is a
greedy move, and allows them to announce that their machines are affordable,
while disguising the fact that most people have to buy the more expensive
options.
~~~
koralatov
That's exactly my problem with it. Every machine I've ever bought, I've
upgraded the RAM later in life when I genuinely needed the upgrade and
benefitted from much lower pricing. Now, that cost is needlessly frontloaded;
either I pay much more for the RAM I won't need for at least a year or two, or
I live without it and potentially have to upgrade sooner. It's definitely a
greedy move on Apple's part.
------
thrownaway2424
What kinds of workloads are out there that people are willing to run on
machines without ECC?
~~~
krzyk
You mean RAM with error correction? If so, I don't think many home users have
such memory, it is mostly used on servers.
~~~
monstermonster
* and workstations.
It's one of the reasons I do a lot of my work on a proper machine with ECC and
SAS disks.
Due to some duff RAM a few years ago I lost a week of work. It silently
corrupted filesystem buffers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks - etix
https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2015-November/105002.html
======
iamthepieman
I work with a Muslim and I'm a Christian. Since we are both very conservative,
I actually have more in common with him than with my secular coworkers and
friends. Unfortunately we both work remotely and live several hundred miles
from each other. I think we could be good friends if we lived closer.
One thing I have learned talking with my Muslim coworker is that, just like in
Christianity, there are many divisions and sects within the religion. I am
Atlantean and go to an Atlantean church. I would not want to be called a
Phoenician or Liliputian christian (made up names cause I don't want to offend
anyone this early in the morning).
Just as with anything else, the closer and more involved you are with
something the more you see distinctions between different categories of that
thing. As a total outsider your categories tend to be large, all encompassing
and dominated by the loudest, most visible or most discussed sub category. For
most westerners I think that sub category is, unfortunately radicalised
Muslims.
I'm fortunate that my coworker has given me a different perspective. I never
believed all Muslims were radicalised but the true revelation for me was that
my Muslim coworker was more like me than most non-muslims. It saddens me to
see states in my country rejecting refugees from Syria. They are depriving
their residents of potential friends and coworkers, potential spouses,
neighbors or playmates that can give them a new perspective and help make
their world a little larger and more interesting.
Edit: I'd love to have a discussion with anyone who disagrees with me. (Not
really making an argument but whatever) if you're down voting at least make a
comment please.
~~~
cygx
Of course it's not "all Muslisms". But those who claim "it's only the
terrorists" or "it's all politics" do not grasp the scope of the problem, ie
that globally speaking, a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas
that are incompatible with an open society.
If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll _The World’s Muslims:
Religion, Politics and Society_ (which in principle represents nations with a
total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be
killed for leaving Islam.
To me, that's a scary number.
~~~
jacquesm
> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible
> with an open society.
Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible
with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common:
they would like to change society to suit their ends.
And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those
fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes
them just about as bad.
~~~
crusso
_Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible
with an open society too_
If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist
attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.
~~~
steveklabnik
Not Jacques, but from a few months back: "White Supremacists More Dangerous To
America Than Foreign Terrorists, Study Says"
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/domestic-
terrorism-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/domestic-terrorism-
charleston_n_7654720.html)
> At least 48 people have been killed stateside by right-wing
> extremists in the 14 years since since the September 11
> attacks -- almost twice as many as were killed by
> self-identified jihadists in that time.
As Jacques says, "terrorist" attacks are only committed by a Muslim majority
because we re-define any attack committed by a non-Muslim as "not terrorism."
~~~
crusso
Are you actually going to put some lone nut jobs here and there on the same
level as organized and determined jihadists? If so, you need to include the
tens of thousands of murdered people that ISIS has been responsible for.
You'll need to include the Russian jet that was blown up, the attack in Paris,
and all those killed by al-qaeda on 9/11, etc.
You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show that the
government has a similar concern for white supremacists.
[https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists](https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists)
~~~
NotSammyHagar
We define away the problem. White people shooting others is not usually
considered terrorism (such as a mass shooting committed by a white person).
Terrorism is used to label actions by people you don't like. Some politicians
even make statements calling the president a terrorist because he does
something they don't like. We don't call it terrorism when the American
government kidnapped people, took them to other countries, and let them be
tortured (rendition); I do think that was not only wrong but was something you
could use the T word for.
~~~
crusso
_White people shooting others is not usually considered terrorism_
If those white people were part of a religious movement indiscriminately
targeting the larger society, then of course they would be labeled
"terrorists". Do you have an example of where I'm wrong?
_calling the president a terrorist_
If you'll recall, the White House referred to the GOP as suicide bombers over
debt ceiling negotiations. That's political posturing when either side does it
and has little to do with legitimate use of the word "terrorists" in the
context of labeling organizations seeking to maximize loss of life and
destruction through surprise attacks on civilians.
~~~
tareqak
The Charleston shooting of 2015 comes to mind as the perfect example [0].
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controversy#Reactions_to_2015_Charleston_church_shooting)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controversy#Recent_public_opinion)
Edit: spacing
------
omginternets
I'm living in Paris. I heard gunfire from my apartment. My heart goes out to
Salah-Eddin, and all people living in the shadow of unspeakable abominations.
It saddens me to imagine that simply hearing gunfire in the distance is
nothing compared to what my fellow man has witnessed elsewhere.
Salah-Eddin's condolences mean a lot to me and I wish him all the best. It's
my sincerest hope that French troops will be deployed to Syria in the near
future, and that such an action will prove useful in protecting him, his
family, his neighbors and his culture.
For what it's worth, I've submitted an application to be a reservist in the
French army. It's one month of training and 30 days of active duty per year. I
sincerely hope my small effort will be helpful not only because it puts
another man in the Parisian battlefield (yes... that's sadly what it has
become), but also because it allows a better-qualified soldier to (hopefully)
deploy to the Middle East.
I don't presume to know whether or not my action is helpful, but I sincerely
hope it is. I'm already quite busy with my dissertation defense coming up in a
few short months, but this can do, so I will.
I suppose I needed to get that off my chest as well...
~~~
utku_karatas2
> It's my sincerest hope that French troops will be deployed to Syria in the
> near future
This kind of thinking is exactly why Mid-east is in its current state and that
is exactly the reason why ISIS was born.
ISIS high command mainly consists of Iraqi ex-officers, who were rendered
jobless and aimless by USA's 'liberation' attempt. Al-Qaida was a result of a
'liberation' attempt by Soviets and then consequently another 'liberation'
attempt by USA. Guess how the French 'liberation' will result at the end.
~~~
omginternets
I respectfully (and partially) disagree.
The invasion of Iraq was stupid, reckless and selfish. It was a for-profit war
that destabilized the region and allowed ISIS to take on its present form.
I'll have you remember that France staunchly opposed this war.
Now the US and the brits have left us with a veritable cesspool, and we're
bearing the brunt of the consequences.
This isn't a liberation attempt or a preemptive strike. This is responding to
an immediate threat. And again, it would be foolish and disastrous to _only_
respond militarily, but it's just as foolish not to protect ourselves from
immediate threats while we counter persistent threats through non-military
action.
Yours is a false dichotomy.
~~~
0xFFC
Am pretty angry about what is going on in world , so if you felt insulted , I
am so sorry , and You should understand I don't want to insult you or any
other person specifically,But I want insult Ideologies pretty badly.
As person who _LIVES_ in heart of middle east (Iran) and I have seen shia
militant from very close(I know people who works in IRGC),You are completely
and pure wrong , do you know what would generate another generation of
terrorist ? another invasion. I am atheist and liberal with a little being
gay,I am not gay , but sometime things go wrong - and believe me these are
pretty dangerous thing to be in Iran and would get me killed, without doubt -
but I can realize the only thing will give terrorist another opportunity is
invasion of a country in middle east. This is not your fucking war.This was
not west fucking war at all. They shouldn't come here in any circumstance.You
know what ? because Paris like terrorism act will happen again and again and
again. West should understand they were wrong all the time. What the fuck are
you doing in middle east ? You know what ? no body more than me would be glad
to live in secular community with secular government, but it seems politician
in west do not realize , being in middle east is equal to raising radical
movement against them. YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND , MIDDLE EAST SHOULD FIGHT FOR
ITSELF, EVEN IF ISIS KILL ALL OF US, this is not your fucking war.I do not
remember reading if any alien did help west during the renaissance. Society
should grow.
PLEASE , do for humanity a favor , understand militarism is equal to
terrorism. I was talking with one idiot yesterday , and he mentioned I do not
believe France invade Iraq. Yes your are right idiot . France did not . but
west did . These fucking killers in middle east , do not see countries , they
see Islam against West.
Do you know who fights in Iran against mullah's ? Christians ? Are you kidding
me, mojahidin ? Those fucking traitors, no way.
Academia fights against mullah's, science fights, liberal people fighting
against mullah's more effective than any other person in whole revolution
history.This regime is almost unbeatable in political sense- because they have
money and manpower and oil- but do you know they are seeing liberals in their
nightmare. They even don't care about West invasion against Iran(some stupid
person like G.W Bush may even consider that option).Because at the end they
know the can manage harm West military pretty badly. Worse than maybe Vietnam
war.BUT THEY CANNOT FIGHT WITH INTERNET, WITH TOR, WITH STUDENTS who USE TOR.
Give them internet , provide them satellite , facebook/twitter/youtube/porn ,
Show them fucking beautiful women in Texas(with respect to women, I just want
show sexual incentives), show them there is no need to kill so many people to
get those woman , you can fuck like heaven in earth without killing people.
And BOOOOOM this is the sound of explosion of foundation of religion.
Ruin their stupid culture , and then you are going to see middle is will
revive. and turn to into secular place.
and Do you know who is supporting ISIS ? Which countries? I would suspect
Saudi Arabia ( the US closest ally after Israel in middle east).Can you
fucking believe it ? This is not double standard. This is fucking fraud
against humanity.At the end we all know , non of the west's politician's give
fucking flying shit about terrorism in middle east. If they did , They weren't
this double standard'ed against corrupted (I would say most corrupted regime
in whole world) regime in Saudi Arabia.What was last time you checked women
condition in Saudi Arabia.And why the hell us have this much relation ship
with country which behead people like candy. This is what I mean when I am
saying double standard.
p.s. if you felt I insult you , I am so sorry , I was talking broadly than
talking with you.I hope respectively, you understand there was something
_HUGE_ wrong with west policy in middle east.
~~~
return0
The middle east is politically undeveloped and unstable so wars would be
inevitable, with or without western involvement. It is unfortunate, but "great
powers" were involved in the nation building of many many different countries.
They seem to fail in middle east - so far. But that doesn't mean that it would
all be peaceful of the westerners stopped being involved.
The problem is, as your comment shows, the idea of a nation is far less
appealing than the idea of religion in middleeastern countries. You need to
first have people willing to fight for their _country_ more than they are for
their religion.
~~~
0xFFC
About first part of your comment that is a simple false, that is simple lie
western politician's they keep telling you . I can see personally what it will
turns when it implemented in real world.Personally ,in my personal life.But
about involvement , You should read my comment again carefully, I did say west
should involve vigorously , but with what? with changing mindset of people,
providing them Internet, free flow of information.It is so funny for me , USA
keeps spending unlimited amount of money for fighting Iran , the one of the
most important thing they should do is to figure out a way for providing free
internet and better proxies and these kind of things(Generally free flow of
information), they are not working on that . You may haven't seen what
internet do with people life in middle east, I have seen it , personally ,
with my own eye. It turn fundamental religious idiots to people's who spend
life time behind the desk reading/watching in internet.
p.s. about the part about country and religious.That was my whole point. YOU
simply should show them your religion is wrong, people can fuck and have sex
like haven (maybe better than that) in L.A. Without killing people.
Believe me , does not matter how much you are going to try and push. I will
guarantee you , there will not any nation in middle east with these
people.maybe a nation will be stabilize , but it will not democracy , it will
be Saddam Hussein like leader and guess what , there is another generation of
terrorist who will grow in Hussein like dictatorship.
Do you want nation. like you have in Scandinavia (in long term) ? keep working
on their mind with free information flow.
------
jacquesm
> They control large areas of land, have their own oil fields, and receive
> direct support from many countries in the region. Namely from rich oil-
> producing countries.
That's one of those things where we could make a fairly immediate change in
policy, it would come at a cost, definitely but it would change the situation
for IS for the worse far more effectively than any number of bombs dropped
would do.
~~~
rihegher
I don't see media speaking much about these countries that allows financing of
ISIS. But if we want to eradicate ISIS, I too think we should deal with its
financial sources first. Maybe because these countries are the same countries
that western companies want to sell weapons to.
~~~
sbarre
Isn't it naive to think of these countries as one entity? Is the US, or any
Western country, one unified allied voice where everyone has the same policies
or supports the same causes?
It's very likely that these "rich oil-producing countries" are made up of
fragmented power centres and viewpoints, just like everywhere else in the
world.
Painting these countries all with one brush is about as foolish as painting
Christianity (or Islam) with one brush too.
~~~
cm2187
But the fact is that they are a safe-heaven from the US anti-terror campaign.
After 9/11, pretty much in any other country of the world the financiers of Al
Qaeda would have been imprisoned or assassinated by the US and its allies. In
Saudi Arabia or Qatar, not only they have not, but they are still heavily
financing ISIS. Whether the monarchies are complicit or not, they are
certainly not doing anything against this financing.
~~~
jacquesm
This is a slightly dated but pretty good primer on how ISIS manages to pay the
bills to keep the lights on:
[http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/14/how-does-isis-fund-its-
re...](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/14/how-does-isis-fund-its-reign-
terror-282607.html)
------
StavrosK
Isn't it sad that this has to be said at all? "Hey, not every adherent of a
religion supports killing innocent people of a different religion". It'd be
like us having to apologize for the Crusades.
Besides, the hits were driven by politics, religion is just a facade.
~~~
rmc
> _It 'd be like us having to apologize for the Crusades._
Or like Americans having to apologise for drone stikes, for Iraq and
Afghanistan, and specific attacks like the MSF hospital in Kunduz.
~~~
StavrosK
Well, those were done by the US government, which the US populace elects, so
there is a measure of responsibility.
~~~
TeMPOraL
Also, since US is a democracy, it means that the people should be able to
influence this behaviour of the government, so there's some responsibility in
that it did not happen.
------
MrPatan
Religion is a smoke screen. Does it matter if you chop bits off your kids
"because a book told me to" or "because my mom told me to"? All religions are
silly ridiculous relics. Let's stop talking about them.
The problem is the culture as a whole. Does it work? Or does it not work?
The way to know if a culture works is to look at migration patterns. People
leave cultures that don't work and go to better cultures.
But people from shitty cultures are still people, so this obvious enormous
fact goes completely unnoticed. They are not going to accept so easily that
their culture is not good. It takes generations.
Or it _took_ generations. Now it may not happen at all, because some people
pride themselves on respecting and _preserving_ other people's silly cultures,
instead of just respecting the people.
~~~
ue_
>All religions are silly ridiculous relics. Let's stop talking about them.
You can't actually reliably say this without first going through every
religion and telling us how ridiculous you find it.
But I'm not really bothered about every religion. Out of interest, what's
ridiculous about Buddhism, and how are you going to quantify the
ridiculousness?
Your argument doesn't work as well with Buddhism. It works to an extent (there
are repressive Buddhist monks etc.) If I lived near a Buddhist (or Christian)
monastery, chances are that I'd respect it, and I would wish to preserve it.
I'd even offer up for an alms round. After all, they do no harm to me.
Note that I'm only picking Buddhism because it's a religion I'm relatively
familiar with. I don't know enough about Christianity (the largest religion in
the world, which doesn't even advocate circumcision) to argue the point on
Christianity.
~~~
jordanpg
Litmus test: does it make any supernatural claims? Yes? Silly, ridiculous
relic.
Buddhism? Yes. Silly, ridiculous relic.
Please don't bore us with the usual equivocating about how Buddhism is
different, and complex, highly personal, etc.
Are there helpful aspects to Buddhist beliefs? Maybe. But it's still Bronze
Age philosophy with _plenty_ of supernatural claptrap mixed in. I'm not aware
of any useful aspects of Buddhism that don't have a purely secular equivalent.
~~~
ue_
>does it make any supernatural claims? Yes? Silly, ridiculous relic.
Not everyone views the world from an empiricist or materialist atheistic
viewpoint. I don't think it's nice to say something is ridiculous simply
because you don't see it that way. Further, many followers of religion
wouldn't say it's supernatural at all - it's part of nature that hasn't been
uncovered, or it can't be uncovered.
>Please don't bore us with the usual equivocating about how Buddhism is
different, and complex, highly personal, etc.
Buddhism is largely different from other religions, first and foremost that it
doesn't mandate the worship of a god, and further can be interpreted in such a
way that can dispense with _most of_ what you see as supernatural. Secondly,
for it's "find out yourself" nature that encourages questioning and going
beyond the realm of logical thinking.
And it is highly personal - it's got the idea that you have to be the one to
set yourself on the path. You can't be saved by someone simply by praying etc.
>I'm not aware of any useful aspects of Buddhism that don't have a purely
secular equivalent.
Buddhists are aware of one - it's called Nibbana - and it can only be realized
by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which I will say relies heavily on the
idea of kamma and "supernatural" ideas.
Please do not be so dismissive.
~~~
jordanpg
I don't really care if anyone's feelings get hurt by me pointing out that
something is very obviously false. Only religion gets that kind of treatment.
Moreover, I think that the fact that grownups can talk about supernatural
religious claims as if they are reasonable and true things about the world is
one of the root causes of what happened in Paris.
As for Buddhism, yes, I agree it has less supernatural nonsense than some of
the other major belief systems. And the supernatural aspects are sort of
optional.
But you've admitted (and I know full well) that there is a great deal of
supernatural nonsense tied up with it, for most real-world practitioners. So,
I dismiss it out of hand. Just like Mormonism, Scientology, Santa Claus, and
the virgin birth.
If there are useful aspects to it, let's tag them with secular labels and move
on with our modern lives. Shrouding it in important-sounding, mystical East
Asian language and symbols is just silly. Like people who have "katanas"
hanging over their mantles.
~~~
ue_
>Moreover, I think that the fact that grownups can talk about supernatural
religious claims as if they are reasonable and true things about the world is
one of the root causes of what happened in Paris.
I don't disagree with this. However I think another root cause is that you can
influence people to do terrible things when you convince them it's in the name
of peace or freedom etc. Humans have no problem getting the ideas of
nationalism into the heads of Neo-Nazis; no supernatural claims are needed
here. Religion can be used as a tool, and a tool can be used in multiple ways.
>But you've admitted (and I know full well) that there is a great deal of
supernatural nonsense tied up with it, for most real-world practitioners.
Whether you think it's nonsense is dependent on whether you believe the Buddha
was enlightened or not. I have faith that he was, and that the things he
related to people are a path to become enlightened ourselves. When I accept
this, it leads to the acceptance of the "nonsense" \- the things that you must
take purely on faith until doubt has been eliminated - and doubt is eliminated
through mindfulness (concentration and insight) meditation. I have faith until
I get there. If I don't get there and I still have faith, I'm not unhappy
about it.
I can spend my time practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, the practice of which
results in happy outcomes for myself (real or not) and being nice to other
people, causing no suffering or death or ill will nor bad feelings et cetera.
If I can accomplish that, then I'll be happy.
I don't even need Buddhism for this; I could go out and follow the principles,
but I will say it will feel _incomplete_. There are various things that may
stand in the way. For example, if I view there being no consequences to
clinging and attachment (if I didn't believe in karma), what reason would I
have to eliminate clinging? With clinging, I'm still unhappy etc. and my own
unhappiness means I will have very little happiness left to give for others.
The belief is a net benefit to me, and I think to the people around me.
>Shrouding it in important-sounding, mystical East Asian language and symbols
is just silly. Like people who have "katanas" hanging over their mantles.
I don't know of any alternative terms to _nibbana_ and _kamma_ aside from
"nirvana" and "karma". I write them like this only because this is how they
are written in the romanisation of the Pali language, the language in which
the Buddha's discourses are written in. To say "karma" leaves the
interpretation slightly more open to the meaning in Hinduism, which I believe
is a little different.
Kamma can, as far as I know, best be described as "cause and effect" on a very
large scale. The idea that actions have consequences; the idea of "bad karma"
and "good karma" is tied up really in interpretation. You can see the
consequences as good or bad. From the Buddhist perspective, it's a "law" of
the universe, not dissimilar to the laws inside physics that model the
universe. I suppose you can use "cause and effect" as a secular term for this,
but if you dismiss the concept of other worlds then using it as "cause and
effect" would be fine.
Nibbana is more difficult to describe in a "secular" way, as there's no way of
knowing that it actually exists unless someone tells you. You need to have
faith in it, or actually experience it in order to see the reality of it. In
fact, it's said that nibbana is beyond words, so any words one uses to
describe it are approximations; e.g, from Samyutta Nikaya 43:
The unfabricated, the uninclined, the truth, the far shore, the subtle, the
very difficult to see, the unaging, the stable, the unintegrating, the
unmanifest, the unproliferated (nippapancan), the peaceful, the deathless, the
sublime, the auspicious, the secure, the destruction of craving, the
wonderful, the amazing, the unailing, the unailing state, Nibbana, the
unafflicted, dispassion, purity, freedom, the unadhesive, the island, the
shelter, the asylum, the refuge, the destination
------
amake
> we are against their so called Islamic state, and against their retarded,
> barbaric version of Islam.
The problem with irrational belief systems is that you have no rational basis
for calling one version legit and one version "barbaric". Who's to say your
interpretation is correct? Maybe theirs is.
Better to recognize irrational beliefs for what they are and discard them
entirely (to the degree that's possible).
~~~
jacquesm
I think with barbaric he means to indicate they are willing to slaughter
innocents. Just like the IRA was nominally Catholic and the
Unionists/Loyalists were nominally protestant but in the meantime were happily
bombing each others schools. Anybody serious about either religion would not
bomb children, they'd be practicing a retarded barbaric version of
Christianity.
~~~
amake
If you accept all of the other irrational tenets of the religion, then why not
accept the idea that god wants you to bomb children? And if you believe that's
really what god wants, then who are you to refuse?
~~~
jacquesm
People will believe whatever it is that they want to believe, religious texts
can be twisted to support just about any position, or the opposite to that
position.
~~~
echaozh
I think the outermost comment made a great point that religion is basically a
tool to manipulate people, to make them make irrational moves. After all, if
you want people to move rationally, you make rational suggestions, otherwise
even if people are doing the right thing, they're doing it due to irrational
reasons.
When people are made to do good things due to irrational reasons, they may be
made to do bad things due to the same or similar reasons the next day. A
religion can teach to love and it can teach to hate. Why not discard such a
tool and let people make their own decisions with better reasoning other than
fear/love of God or wanting to have a better afterlife?
~~~
cookiecaper
There are several elements here. First, most people are not rational, and they
can't be motivated by rational deduction. Most people simply do not have the
intellectual horsepower to overcome their emotional perspectives and
rationalize themselves into good decisions, even when the essential data is
present. This invalidates "just be rational" as a practical solution to social
welfare.
Second, the essential data is rarely objective or complete. There are very few
datasets where a subjective value judgment on some information can be avoided;
if you incorrectly devalue some data, your "rational decision" can turn out to
be very problematic indeed. So not only are most humans incapable of
performing basic rational deduction, they also often lack the perspective
necessary to adequately value a subjective dataset, where "adequate" means
interpreting it to be compatible with general social cohesion and happiness.
The tried and true traditions of the previous generations of a successful
society may err in some smaller things, but in most things, they will be
reliable. Young adults (< 50) often lack the maturity and perspective to
properly understand the decisions they're making. They'd do well to listen to
their elders and try to learn from them.
All of this culminates in "religion" or something very close to it, and it's
essential to social stability. If you don't provide one, a replacement will
automatically generate. People _will_ find and adopt a belief system as
absolutes. You can see this in the "secularist" society of today, that adopts
what they perceive to be "scientific consensus" as effective religious tenets,
or in the "social equality" segment that adopts their interpretation of
"diversity and equality" as effective religious tenets.
------
Steve44
Reading that brought a tear to my eyes, he and many others live with this on a
daily basis. The subject is long and complex and I think his sentence "This is
a war of civilisations and way of life. and trust me. the peaceful one, the
one that always say sorry for everything is not going to win." is striking in
its truth, simplicity and horror.
Stay safe Salah-Eddin and thank you for your words.
------
prodmerc
With the immigration crisis and the Paris attacks, it seems that people
completely forgot the atrocities that these nutjobs commit in their own home
countries.
Perhaps it doesn't really matter to most westerners, but we shouldn't blame a
billion people for the insanity of a small part of them.
It's a crazy situation, for sure...
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
People intentionally forget. Terrorist attacks are a convenient excuse to not
allow refugees fleeing from the full terror of ISIS. We get one Paris. They
get Paris every single day.
------
justboxing
Gaeme Wood over at the Atlantic has a riveting piece on "What ISIS really
wants". Best long form investigative journalism I've read in nearly a decade.
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-
isi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-
wants/384980/)
(Warning: It's really long, but answers a whole lot of questions that a whole
lot of westerners, outsiders have about that group, the region, their funding,
recruiting, idealogy and why they still haven't been defeated. Well worth a
read.)
~~~
marnett
thank you for sharing this. i have been listening to it for the past hour and
it really is a brilliant piece.
~~~
eneveu
How did you listen to it? Are you using some text-to-speech software? I didn't
find a link to download an audio version of the article.
------
msoad
I born Muslim but quit religion as soon as I understood how everything works.
I'm against every single organized religion. It's just a device for
dictatorship in my opinion. But Islam is just like Christianity and other
religions you might know. It's a old school of thought with super vague
sources. Anyone can have their own take. I can read the Bible and say
according to it I should kill and rape, same for Quran. They are all the same
and they are all stupid. Don't discriminate between stupid religions!
------
carlosrg
I'm not sure if he's going to read this, but anyway: be strong. I think
Western countries have finally understood that Daesh is a problem that can't
be "contained", that the only way is to completely eradicate them, even if
this means collaborating with governments that they don't like. This won't
make terrorism disappear of course, but at least a lot of evil people, the
same people trying to seduce young and naive muslims all around the world to
join them, will cease to exist.
------
Wintamute
This is why the response you often hear from some quarters: "these attacks
have nothing to do with religion/Islam" is so objectionable. It silences all
of the majority, ordinary, moderate Muslims that wish to reform their
religion.
[https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/666305480369831936](https://twitter.com/MaajidNawaz/status/666305480369831936)
------
Grue3
Isn't current Syrian government also guilty of perpetrating acts of genocide
against its own populace? This person is quick to denounce the other side, but
Assad's forces have killed thousands of civilians as well. [1]
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Syria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Syria)
~~~
pluma
Better the devil you know.
The reason we (i.e. "The West") left Saddam in place until the US needed an
easy target after 9/11 is that despite being a dictator and mass-murderer, his
reign kept Iraq relatively stable. As soon as he was taken out of the equation
other forces began to fight for dominance and now we have a huge mess on our
hands that's arguably worse than where we started.
The same is true for most of the dictatorships toppled during the "Arab
Spring". This is partially why Russia was against intervening in Syria from
day one and why nobody seems to think Saudi Arabia or Qatar or any of the
other bloody dictatorships in that region are worth disrupting.
In many cases the actual borders of these countries are pretty arbitrary and
split up various ethno-religious groups (that often historically hate each
others' guts) in weird ways. As soon as you tell them to self-govern and
dispose of the dictators you end up with all these directly opposing interest
groups suddenly being able to get at each others' throats.
It's not that Assad is a nice person or that it's more ethical to leave an
evil person in place than to dispose of him, it's just that mindlessly handing
out guns and expecting an oppressed people to be rational is pretty much the
worst thing you can do.
Look at WW2 Germany. Sure, we got rid of Hitler, but in order to prevent
Germany from blowing up again (exactly what had happened after WW1) the Allies
actually had to work out long-term plans for the occupation of Germany to make
sure the citizens were educated enough to understand how messed up their world
view used to be and that the country was re-integrated into world economy and
politics.
We need a Marshall Plan for Syria with buy-in from several major influencers.
THEN we can talk about disposing of Assad.
~~~
seren
The problem with supporting dictators is that this is a powerful recruiting
argument for Isis.
"Look at the West, they claim to be democracies and defend human rights, but
they are supporting mass-murders here"
...which makes the West looks like a bunch of hypocrites. And this is an
argument that is factually hard to counter.
Frankly, I don't know what we should be doing. I don't see a solution without
a long political roadmap with likely a partition of Syria & Irak, to have an
Alawite state, next to a Sunni state, next to a Shia Iraq.
~~~
pluma
Except we're already hypocrites. We support all kinds of dictators and
terrorist groups. Though a lot of it has to do with preventing wars with
Israel.
------
downandout
I simply do not understand why we don't bomb every last one of the oil wells
they control. We could issue arrest warrants for the heads of every company
that buys their oil for providing material support to terrorists, and freeze
all assets of these companies in any country where the US has treaties that
allow it. We don't have to shoot them; we can starve them.
~~~
dtf
They've already done a pretty good job.
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/isis-
caliphate-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/isis-caliphate-
setbacks-islamic-state-attacks-paris-tripoli)
------
tim333
An interesting video summary of the history of the Syria war/mess (5 mins).
You don't know who to blame really. It's a shame both Russia and Turkey said
they were sending bombers to attack ISIS and then went after other targets
instead (the anti Assad forces, Kurds respectively).
[http://www.vox.com/2015/11/14/9735102/syria-isis-history-
vid...](http://www.vox.com/2015/11/14/9735102/syria-isis-history-video)
~~~
mildweed
I've learned more about Islam, ISIS, and the state of affairs in Syria from
this article than anywhere else. I wish I could TL;DR this one, but I can't.
It's so full of details and context I wouldn't do it justice. It's a long one,
but absolutely worth it.
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-
isi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-
wants/384980/)
------
ausjke
I'm agnostic so really no prejudice on either side. I see so many
religions/gods on earth and I feel Muslim is the one that stays with their
stone age laws/rules without updating/revising the original released versions.
Other religions seem evolving over time, but Muslim is different and I feel
they are just so out, thus all these tragedies. Anything that has no ability
to upgrade/evolve overtime is doomed to be losers, and losers will go crazy
easily to blame others for their own failures.
Democracy or staying-politically-correct or show-mercy-to-the-murder are all
useless to combat this level of violence, the only way to really fix it, is
either they evolve and modernize quickly, or get erased by a war at a large
scale. It seems more likely the latter will be the case as they're turning
everyone against them quickly.
There are no good Muslim or bad Muslim, Muslim itself indeed is the root cause
here.
~~~
robwilliams
>Democracy or staying-politically-correct or show-mercy-to-the-murder are all
useless to combat this level of violence, the only way to really fix it, is
either they evolve and modernize quickly, or get erased by a war at a large
scale. It seems more likely the latter will be the case as they're turning
everyone against them quickly.
Who is "them"? ISIS or Muslims in general? It's absurd to think that there
aren't "modernized" Muslims in the US.
------
pomfia
I am not advocating blissful ignorance or anything, but I'd be really bothered
if religious and political talk become commonplace here. I mean we are
inundated with apologies, cynicism and hyperbole from facebook/twitter/reddit
already.
I will add something though. Why the apologies? The people apologizing have
nothing to do with these acts and are pointless. Plus, why did all these
barbarians start all this crap so recently ? Like after the 90's ?
------
kushti
It is time to stop terrorist states: ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and USA.
~~~
ifdefdebug
I can't downvote, so here you got my -1 personally.
edit: ok, let me explain: putting the USA and ISIS into the same bucket
"terrorist states" is just moronic, that's why. happy downvoting.
~~~
zerr
A terrorist act approved with a stamp is still a terrorist act.
------
alvarosm
It never ceases to amaze me to what lengths people go to stay in the land
they're attached to. I'd have fled my country a very long time ago if I had
ISIS that close.
~~~
1_player
I'm afraid it's not as easy as booking a flight and taking a cab to the
airport.
~~~
alvarosm
It could be, depends on the circumstances. Of course you have a point, there
are always family ties and so on. But even without leaving Syria I guess you
could be at safer places than Aleppo.
~~~
scrollaway
That's one hell of a bubble. You do know that for a _lot_ of people, it's
simply impossible to move out of their city, especially in countries like
Syria and Pakistan? Family ties are the least of their problems. Most people
simply don't have a wad of cash to do this with.
~~~
bluehex
I always wonder about this myself. If my situation were that extreme I think I
would try to flee by any means even if I had next to no money. I would put a
backpack on packed with non perishable food and as much water as I could carry
and I would start marching towards a border.
I'm very ignorant to the viability of this plan though. Would it be possible
to escape on foot? Would you be stopped for trying? Killed? Maybe that's why
people don't "just flee".
~~~
jacquesm
It gets a lot harder to flee if you're not a young male. Women, children,
elderly, disabled, people you care about and people you care for.
------
cs702
By writing that message, he's making himself a potential target of terror,
especially now that this is on the front page of HN and could be picked up by
mainstream media. For safety's sake, I hope he contributes to VLC under a
pseudonym and not under his real name.
~~~
bduerst
What you're communicating is essentially what "terrorists" are aiming to
achieve and draw power from. Their attacks are targeted to maximize disruption
of daily life and make people afraid of some unknown terror.
Better to continue life as you normally would, be alert, and to not give in to
fear.
~~~
jacquesm
That's fairly easy to write in an air conditioned office somewhere in the
west, but it was a pretty brave thing to do this right in the middle of the
action.
~~~
bduerst
Nobody said it's easy. I'm sitting in Paris right now, and it reflects the
attitude of many of the citizens here. I know shop owners that stayed open
over the weekend in defiance of what the terrorists were aiming to achieve.
~~~
jacquesm
I would expect no less from the French, they've always been remarkably
steadfast in their convictions, both on the political stage and in their
internal politics. Here's to hoping that they will be able to maintain this
level of resolve for the future.
------
awjr
So we need to drop a metaphorical bomb on the financial institutions that
support these regimes?
~~~
Hytosys
Why do you think that these financial institutions exist in the first place?
Another piece of the puzzle: [https://theintercept.com/2015/11/16/stock-
prices-of-weapons-...](https://theintercept.com/2015/11/16/stock-prices-of-
weapons-manufacturers-soaring-since-paris-attack/)
------
chappi42
Wow, how brave he is. Once a long time a go I was in Aleppo. Such a nice town.
Terrible how much destruction has happened.
'Normal countries' should help. I.e. fight a war against ISIS, kill them and
rebuild Syria. Including new government (under UN stewardship).
~~~
mtanski
> kill them and rebuild Syria. Including new government (under UN
> stewardship).
Because that has worked so well in the (recent) past?
~~~
chappi42
This hasn't been tried yet afaik. Sure, I don't know how UN stewardship could
be possible atm. But in a smaller better connected world, I think, we
increasingly need a way to police failed/bad-behaving/suffering states. (Or
better said, to help the people living in such states).
The millions of refugees, spread of lunatic but well funded fundamentalism and
the scope of terrorizing local neighborhoods hasn't been happened in the
(recent) past.
What else do you propose?
~~~
mtanski
> What else do you propose?
I don't agree to the We Must Do Something, This Is Something sentiment.
Clearly we have to get our arms around the situation. We UN should actually
coordinate a plan to figure what we can do. Rushing to put soldiers on the
ground always ends up complicating the situation further and it's a choice you
cannot take back (seeing how we're still stuck in many places) years after.
------
wangii
the thing I never understand: why God/Allah even care if I believe in him or
not?
~~~
TheCoelacanth
Because a meme involving a god that doesn't care if you believe in him has low
evolutionary fitness because believers have no reason to spread their belief.
------
crishoj
> [They] receive direct support from many countries in the region. Namely from
> rich oil-producing countries.
I assume the author is alluding to Saudi Arabia here.
How absurd is it not of the West to
* on one hand is claim to oppose Islamic terrorism, while
* on the other hand having among the closest allies in the region what probably amounts to the most radical, fundamentalist, human-rights abusing and not the least culturally and religiously influential states there, preaching religious intolerance to a world-wide audience of susceptible followers.
Recently, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of Black Swan, wrote[1] a thoughtful
commentary on the situation:
> Since 2001 our policy for fighting Islamic terrorists has been, to put it
> politely, missing the elephant in the room, sort of like treating symptoms
> and completely missing the disease.
> Policymakers and slow-thinking bureaucrats stupidly let terrorism grow by
> ignoring the roots. So we lost a generation: Someone who went to grammar
> school in Saudi Arabia (our “ally”) after September 11 is now an adult,
> indoctrinated into believing and supporting Salafi violence, hence
> encouraged to finance it — while we got distracted by the use of complicated
> weapons and machinery.
> Even worse, the Wahhabis have accelerated their brainwashing of East and
> West Asians with their madrassas, thanks to high oil revenues.
> * * *
> So instead of invading Iraq, blowing up Jihadi John and individual
> terrorists, thus causing a multiplication of these agents, it would have
> been be easier to focus on the source of all problems: the Wahhabi/Salafi
> education and the promotion of intolerance by which a Shiite or a Yazidi or
> a Christian are deviant people.
> If we absolutely need to put people in Guantanamo, it would be far more
> effective to ship the Salafi preachers and Wahhabi clerics over there, not
> just the people swayed by their teaching. And if we need to correct the
> profound Saudi problem, we need to start by sending to them our preachers,
> educating them into tolerance, explaining the very concept of the separation
> of church and state. Or, better even, encourage Muslim preachers who promote
> religious tolerance (“laka dinak wa li dini“) — instead of seeing them
> ostracized.
> And if you find violence unavoidable, it should be directed at the Saudi and
> Qatari funders of violence, as well as the Salafi theorists, rather than the
> young performers.
> P.S. Beware the usual ISIL crypto-sympathizer who sort of “explains” (that
> is, justifies) what happened (the intentional targeting of civilians) with
> some other Western event that can hark all the way to the Crusades…
> Otherwise it is presented as “biased.” You can spot such people from a mile
> away. For them, you cannot condemn ISIL without at the same time trying to
> be “balanced.” Who are they fooling? This is the technique of bundling
> together problems that should be treated independently, and you need to
> learn to deal with such people by forcing them to discuss the problem of
> ISIL on its own.
[1] [http://www.politico.eu/article/the-saudi-wahhabis-are-the-
re...](http://www.politico.eu/article/the-saudi-wahhabis-are-the-real-foe-
islamic-terrorists-salafi-violence/)
(edited for formatting)
------
ps4fanboy
[http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/int/long.html](http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/int/long.html)
I am not sure how valid these translations are, but there seem to be a lot of
incendiary passages in the Quran, how do we reconcile these view points with
modern society.
I also understand that old testament (I am not christian) is just as bad but I
was under assumption that the old testament was a carry over from
Christianities Jewish roots, and the new testament supersedes it?
~~~
dragonwriter
> I also understand that old testament (I am not christian) is just as bad but
> I was under assumption that the old testament was a carry over from
> Christianities Jewish roots, and the new testament supersedes it?
Christian differ on the effect of the NT on the OT, since the NT contains both
material that seems on the simplest reading to endorse the OT law in full,
material which seems on the simplest reading to provide different and simpler
rules than those in the OT law, and material which seems on the simplest
reading to explicitly limit the application of most OT laws.
In practice, you end up with a whole spectrum of ideologies among Christians
(and the same is true of Muslims.)
------
galfarragem
The mistake, maybe an historical one, is that Europe, or better, the media
insist in treating the symptoms instead of treating the causes.
------
yeonJune
It really makes us angry, but we should also know there are good Muslims who
hope for the world of peace.
------
nononononono
"It's only through God's mercy that we are not under their rule now."
Great way of robbing the people who put their lives to save you of their
contribution.
Thanking god for a series of events is nothing more than ignoring reality. A
series of events happened, and that's that.
------
mtw
Is it possible to donate to a specific VLC contributor?
------
NicoJuicy
This text could be kinda direct, but it's what i think could help to get a
"solution" or more efficient approach to eliminate IS.
\- Bomb the oil fields, forget about politics/economics , don't let IS grow.
Just take away their primary income so they'll internally bleed out... The
people who come from Europe woudn't like it there if they don't receive any
money.
\- Track down the big import behaviour of Western Products ( Red Bull,
Nutella, Hummers, ... ) that IS terrorists love. Elimnate the import of it.
They don't want Western products, no problem. Cut them off the economy and
black market as quick as possible.
\- Make it illegal to buy black market oil from IS, track down people who want
to have some quick money.
\- Invest in rebels that attack IS on the ground ( some people from France and
the UK voluntarely go there)
\- If there is any proof of Middle East supports IS. Then take economic
sanctions. Work together with Russia, America, Europe and China. Invest in oil
alternatives FAST
\- Put a website online www.worldagainstterrorisme.com where there are a
couple of big sections:
\- SnitchTerrrorists, to report abnormal behaviour. Make it so that you can
see which ethicity/religion has reported them. So people would realize that
muslims don't support extremist behaviour
\- LiveTarget, witch the cooperation of America, an online live sattelite map
that limits to Syria and the part that IS controls. Limit the visibility of
known friendly groups ( eg. masking / using older images when a friendly plane
crosses the land). So people in the world can unite and track down extremist
behaviour in the IS country. Make it easy to report suspicious behaviour and
you can bomb the hell out of them as soon as they get out of their building
with the help of the community.
\- The media should make fun with IS instead of addressing them as the big
enemy. Make fun with the people who go there, target them as dumb ( if they
had bad grades, ...) and change the public perspective for people who are
compelled to go there because they hate where they live / feel discriminated
because of social community problems
\- I have another idea, but that is morely to protect western nations. That
should be hidden from public eye ;) - contact me if you would like to know :P
Edit: If you're down voting at least make a comment please, Eg. how you think
states/nations can handle it "better"
My proposition are for the following intentions: less generalisation and less
racisme ( not every muslim is IS! ), more public effort to help ( snitching
extremists, finding IS members in their home country, ...), lessen the media
appeal of IS for people with non-western feelings - living in Europe because
of social problems in a country / community / city, ...
------
yeonJune
It makes me sad that all I can do is just praying for Paris.
------
finnjohnsen2
Powerful stuff.
------
joelgarciajr84
I think we are tech people, whe should do something!
------
zanethomas
i hope he has security
------
enesunal
I'm Muslim and the problem is not about Islam. Problem is all about the people
who want to gain money for themselves. I know a truth that makes sense anytime
I remember; everything is related to money or sex in this world. Nothing else
matters. Religion is just a tool to manage the money.
~~~
sumedh
> I'm Muslim and the problem is not about Islam.
Its time to get our heads out of the sand. Religion is part of the problem
whether its Islam or Christianity etc. I agree other factors play a role too.
Religion is the best tool to brainwash people.
~~~
DanBC
Animal rights extremists don't use religion.
Right wing extremists don't use religion.
Left wing extremists didn't use religion.
Radicalisation does not need religion.
~~~
kriztw
All of those are ideologies with certain views on how the world is and how it
should be, which can also said of religions.
If religions where purely spiritual and said nothing about the world then I
would agree with you, but then I guess there wouldn't be any problems either.
~~~
DanBC
Sure, they're like religion.
But the claim wasn't religion or things like religion lead to extremism.
It's wrong to say that only religion leads to extremism, and it's even more
wrong to say that only Islam leads to radicalisation.
~~~
redial
Nobody is saying only religion leads to extremism.
When you recognize that I hope you also recognize that religion is the main
cause (or tool) of extremism in the world right now, and that Islam plays the
biggest role there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Just Scroll - koichi
http://www2.nissan.co.jp/SP/NOTE/SPECIAL/
======
se85
Interesting design concept - but a horrible implementation of it.
You can't just go and load a thousand divs and not expect a wide variety of
performance issues across all the different platforms.
You need to have a tile manager or something behind the scenes the same way
that Google maps does, especially when targetting smaller consumer devices
with limited hardware specs like tablets and phones.
* iOS5 - with an iphone 3gs (laggy to the point of being unusable)
* iOS5 - with an iphone 4 (laggy to be the point of being unusable, unless your patient). I don't have an iphone 4gs to test on, but I suspect it might be more on par with ipad 2 performance. The differences could be to do with retina display vs non retina display as well I suppose.
* iOS5 - with an iPad 1 - roughly same performance as an iphone 3gs - crappy
* iOS5 - with an iPad 2 - not too bad (but thats because of the gpu tile rendering in safari going on behind the scenes i suspect.
* Firefox 15 on a quad core i7 imac - massive ram spike, and crazy lag with the scrolling
* Chrome on a quad core i7 imac - no problem.
I'm not even going to bother trying this out in IE!
edit: Latest version of Opera has provided the poorest results yet, it keeps
lagging and pausing and reloading the images after they have already been
loaded (didn't check to see if it was actually downloading them again though)
~~~
ralfd
I presume Safari was the same as Chrome?
~~~
human_error
Safari 5.1 here. I viewed the site without any problems.
------
graue
I might just ditch Firefox because of this webpage. A fresh session of Ffx15
goes up to 1.5 GB memory usage, pushes everything into swap and brings my
whole OS to a grinding halt until I kill it. In other words this link is
basically a very effective DoS. In Chromium it works fine. Am I the only one
having this problem?
(Edit: I have several Ffx addons running and no Chromium addons, so the
comparison was unfair. Maybe I'll just ditch some of those addons...)
~~~
dbcooper
With today's Firefox nightly build I see a peak of 337MB with it. Image
discarding has improved recently.
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683290>
~~~
Erunno
I doubt that the patch helps in this particular case as all images are present
in the DOM, so Firefox will merrily load all of the images, independent of
whether they are visible or not. This has been a longstanding architectural
problem.
------
001sky
Amazing visuals. I have no idea if the idea scales. Technically might be a bit
PITA. The sensation of time. Passing. Wait, what? The modular decomposition.
Birdseye flight sequnece. Functional redundancy. An innovation communication
language? Dunno. Pity about the ad-part =D
Edit: pls, though. not in the wrong hands.
~~~
bruceboughton
>> The modular decomposition.
>> Functional redundancy.
What?
~~~
lmm
I'm assuming the grandparent post has been machine-translated from Japanese
------
Kluny
People complaining about the scaffolding - oh well. It was probably built by
someone who had a bright idea but knows nothing about webdesign and learned it
on the fly. But the idea was great! I was delighted - I scrolled through the
whole thing, shared it on facebook, then looked up the wiki for the car since
the ad was Japanese. I had no performance issues, as I am using chrome on a
fast ethernet connection. For someone who doesn't know web design, they did a
great job!
------
DigitalSea
Wow, this is atrocious on so many levels. 30mb of jpg files? The inner web
development nerd in me believes there is a better more efficient way to do
this. The length of the page is ridiculously long to scroll and unless you
have a Mac with a Magic Mouse and smooth scrolling and not a Windows machine
(like I use) the scrolling is super jerky.
~~~
icebraining
_The inner web development nerd in me believes there is a better more
efficient way to do this._
Sure there is, it's called a video.
------
shuw
I don't think there is anything special about this "video" ad that lends
itself to scrolling. You can take any video (infographic, music video,
advertisement) and conceptually scroll through it using a mouse, but what does
that gain you?
If you could interact with the elements and there was more than 1 dimension of
scroll.. then that'd be going beyond.
~~~
Kluny
The thing is, I, and lots of other people, NEVER click on videos, and always
click on pictures. It's a weird thing, but it's true.
------
kevincennis
For anyone wondering, that's about 135 jpgs at ~100KB on average.
~~~
ars
It's 29.3MB according to firebug.
Which, in the age of video, isn't really that much.
~~~
potatolicious
A 29.3MB video runs multiple minutes - so long as your available bandwidth is
above a relatively generous minimum, the experience will be smooth and
uninterrupted.
I'd wager that the average person would burn through this 29.3MB faster than
it can be downloaded, considering how fast you'd be scrolling.
------
marginalboy
Classic case of "just because you can doesn't mean you should"...
------
fungi
save yourself the scrolly effort:
run:
setInterval(function(){$(window).scrollTop($(window).scrollTop()+10)},10);
in your console (f12 in chrome/firebug, crtl+shift+k in firefox)
~~~
edave01
Or you can click one of the links at the top to auto-scroll to a section.
~~~
fersho311
nope, the hacker in me likes the javascript better.
------
hcarvalhoalves
Now multiply by 120 million... and that's why download rates from .jp are so
damn low.
~~~
acgourley
would anything that popular be cached between me and japan?
~~~
syaramak
It's on Limelight's CDN
www2.nissan.co.jp is an alias for nissan.vo.llnwd.net.
------
manuscreationis
Inefficient? Sure
Cool to look at? You betcha
Not everything needs to be a technological marvel
~~~
gavingmiller
+1 it's playing like this that inspires ideas in others - should it be so
prominent, maybe not. Furthermore, it's going to get linked a ton which is
great for Nissan's brand.
------
saxamaphone69
Reminds me of that advertisement someone did on Pinterest, where you had to
scroll down quickly as well.
edit: Uniqlo, that was it. not on their Pinterest anymore. Video for same
effect - <http://youtu.be/e5FM-VcE7UA>
------
splatzone
Anyone care to explain how this works? It can't just be an endless array of
divs, can it?
~~~
calvinlough
It's not just an endless array of divs because then the grid lines would
constantly be shifting (that is, unless your browser happens to scroll in
increments that are exactly equal to the height of one of the cells).
~~~
recursive
They were constantly shifting to me. I was able to get it so that they were
barely shifting, but the best I could do made it look like the images were
ever so gradually drifting upwards due to a slight mismatch.
------
nu2ycombinator
You do not have to scroll down. Press on Menu buttons 1, 2, 3, 4 one after
another
------
eckyptang
This works pretty well in IE9 with no noticeable performance problems on a 5
year old machine.
Rather scarily, it also works fine on a Lumia 710 as well!
I don't care what anyone says - IE is not a stinking heap of poop.
~~~
m72
That's because it's been baking out in the sun to the point where the poop is
just dried and doesn't really stink anymore.
~~~
eckyptang
You can still make houses out of baked poop :)
I'm not sure of the relevance of that point though :(
------
LancerSykera
Best use of my freewheel Logitech "Marathon Mouse" M705 yet.
~~~
Splines
Probably the only time I clicked the "no detent" button on my Logitech mouse
as well.
------
yuliyp
I hope nobody ever thinks this is a good idea.
~~~
Dramatize
Why? I thought it was interesting.
~~~
potatolicious
An interesting exercise, but maybe not practical, considering how slow your
average home internet connection is, and how much data you're trying to stuff
through that pipe. It's IMO likely that most people will end up scrolling
faster than the page can load.
Not to mention, this will murder any mobile device or weaker laptops.
Cool piece of marketing, but ultimately if the goal is to deliver a cool
experience to as many people as possible, this implementation may not be
ideal.
~~~
harisenbon
Note the .jp.
As I mentioned above, our internet speeds are crazy fast. I downloaded the
whole thing in about 3 seconds on my home internet, 10 on my 3g ipad.
The only issue with the ipad was that you couldn't flick and have it just
scroll down.
~~~
m72
It's because of the way iOS captures scroll events. These scrolling sites
never look right on iOS.
------
madmax108
This is an interesting design concept indeed...
If I remember right, some apparel company used Pinterest's "revolutionary"
display (Masonry right?) to a similar effect. Perhaps a HN Search is in order!
:)
Memory issues apart,This is pretty cool!
------
madmikey
In countries like INDIA, the site takes about more than ten minutes to load on
an average indian internet connection.
~~~
sundarurfriend
I guess if you include dialup connections in the average? The page load seemed
pretty much instantaneous to me on a standard 2Mbps Tata Indicom connection.
At worst, I believe the average broadband connection these days would be 512
Kbps, and "more than ten minutes" is still too much of a stretch.
Edit: Akamai reports that the average Internet speed in India is 0.9 Mbps:
[http://www.businesswireindia.com/PressRelease.asp?b2mid=3042...](http://www.businesswireindia.com/PressRelease.asp?b2mid=30428).
~~~
Achshar
512 here, ten minutes just about fits the bill. I have been reading all these
comments but have _no_ idea what it is because it wont load for me at all. i
cant load 30 mb. It's bsnl and it wont even give complete 512. more like 400.
------
suyash
How does it perform on touch devices? This is a great use case for just
flicking thru on mobile and tablets.
------
manojlds
Of my latest versions of Opera, Firefox, Chrome and IE, only IE handled this
to perfection! (it was IE10)
------
ch
Try reverse!
~~~
snprbob86
Yeah, clicking that worked way smoother than me scrolling down myself.
------
sageikosa
Perhaps someone can patent this and save the rest of us from copycats.
------
Bjoern
Having open quite a few tabs before it killed my Firefox.
------
egze
The page could use some infinity.js
------
mp99e99
Really cool, thanks for sharing.
------
tomkit
The irregular intervals at which you scroll your mouse produces a stop-motion
type effect :).
------
gdubya
wtf!
tl;dr
;)
------
WagnerVaz
Sorry but the driving wheel is in the opposite side.
~~~
harisenbon
It's on the correct side when you're in Japan. Our steering wheels are on the
right, and we drive on the left, just like England.
~~~
robotmay
And we, the English, thank you for putting the indicator stalk on the right of
the steering wheel. Seriously; that's a major factor in me buying a car.
------
w0utert
Nice, but Volkswagen has had the exact same thing for months, but done a lot
better:
<http://beetle.de/>
~~~
kyberias
I don't see how that is "better", it's just totally different. I think this VW
version looks a total mess when scrolled. Nissan is much much simpler and
smoother.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Munich City Government to Dump Linux Desktop - eumoria
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Munich-City-Government-to-Dump-Linux-Desktop-84307.html
======
ncomputersorg
why do they want to spend money on spyware?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Moody's downgrades Tesla's corporate family rating to B3. Outlook is negative - ColinFCodeChef
https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-Teslas-corporate-family-rating-to-B3-senior-notes--PR_381481
======
terragon
This is the same Moody's that was fined $864 million for handing out
fraudulent ratings for its own benefit; so I would take their ratings with a
rather large pinch of salt.
------
aiCeivi9
EULA to read an an article? Well that is something new.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bombing Hasn’t Worked. Bombing Won’t Work. And Yet, We Will Bomb - mrzool
http://www.thenation.com/article/bombs-over-brains/
======
islandtech
Actually, the right kind of bombing does work to great effect. Namely fuel/air
bombing. It's also cheaper than conventional bombing.
The bomb detonates at an altitude over the target area and literally blankets
it in fire, not necessarily destroying all the infrastructure. Couple this
with perimeter napalm runs for a couple of hours and if the heat doesn't kill
the enemy, suffocation most certainly will. Less ground troops to mop up the
stragglers. Time these bombings for maximum effect. Saw these used whilst in
the military. They do work and they work well. Does the West have the mettle
and will to deploy them, though?
~~~
DanBC
To bomb the homes of terrorists? In San Barnardino or Belgium?
------
nikolay
Bombing does work well - for the arms industry though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Retrospection and Full PCAP Reveal Instances of XcodeGhost Dating Back to April - wslh
https://www.protectwise.com/blog/retrospection-and-full-pcap-reveal-instances-of-xcodeghost-dating-back-to-april-2015/
======
tlb
It's an amusing trick to have the encryption key be "stringWithFormat", a
common ObjC symbol that wouldn't look like a key if you found it in a strings
table.
~~~
mikeash
Hilarious! They really should have added a colon on the end to be fully
accurate, but few people would pick up on that.
------
moyix
I continue to be somewhat baffled as to why malware authors don't use public
key crypto for these things. Maybe commonly available libraries don't make it
easy enough?
Also, single DES in 2015 -- amazing.
~~~
wyldfire
I think they just want the bar to be high enough to avoid arousing the
suspicion of casual snoopers. Single DES is enough to do that.
~~~
apetresc
But it's not really any harder to do it properly. So many good libraries
exist. You kinda have to go out of your way to use the wrong thing here.
~~~
kjs3
Pure speculation, but perhaps they thought they were making a compromise
between obfuscation and performance. I've heard this argument made in similar
contexts on the theory that software implementations of 1DES should be faster
than software AES-128 or other alternative algorithms. In practice, however,
the performance between 1DES and AES-128 is not that large, and probably not
large enough to matter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to build a full-scale quantum computer in silicon - jonbaer
http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-build-a-full-scale-quantum-computer-in-silicon
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10336675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10336675)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Visualizing 'Silhouettes' of Programming Languages - lelandbatey
http://lelandbatey.com/projects/code_silhouette/
======
timpark
Neat. I saw something like this recently in game form: Codeshapes
[http://teropa.info/codeshapes/](http://teropa.info/codeshapes/)
~~~
runeks
I'm getting the shape of a lot of license headers, from which I'm supposed to
guess the language.
------
otto_ortega
Interesting project, but these silhouettes reflect the programmer's coding
style not anything specific to the languages themselves.
~~~
justinian
The interesting thing here would be seeing some form of aggregation of various
projects to see what effects the language does have on style. Would love to
see something that shows the effect of e.g. Python's whitespace or Go's
boilerplate.
------
kevlar1818
What immediately strikes me is Python's consistently high density compared to
the other languages. This is something I've noticed before with well-written
Python code; one can write powerful code in very compact
blocks/paragraphs/stanzas/insert-metaphor-of-your-choosing.
Of course, take this with a grain of salt. This is a bit of an apples to
oranges comparison, given it's just one file from one repo for each language.
------
sillysaurus3
It's striking how easily you can see the repetition most languages force on
you. PHP's sawtooth silhouette is especially interesting.
~~~
otto_ortega
These silhouettes reflect the programmer's coding style not anything specific
to the languages themselves...
------
Stratoscope
This is fun and interesting, but I don't think it says much about the various
_languages_. Each of these languages can be formatted in a variety of styles.
As one example, Rust, and especially Servo, began with a recommended (or
mandated) style with a heavy use of column alignment for things like function
arguments. Like this code from rustfmt:
let mut rewrites = try_opt!(subexpr_list.iter()
.rev()
.map(|e| {
rewrite_chain_expr(e,
total_span,
context,
max_width,
indent)
})
.collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>());
But the Rust example in the silhouette page doesn't follow this style at all.
Instead, it uses a purely indentation-based style with little or no use of
column alignment. From looking at the latest Rust coding style document, it
seems that the Rust community may be moving away from this aligned style to an
indented style. (Anyone who is more tuned into Rust style, feel free to set me
straight.)
If the code above were written in an indented style it might look more like
this:
let mut rewrites = try_opt!(
subexpr_list
.iter()
.rev()
.map( |e| {
rewrite_chain_expr( e, total_span, context, max_width, indent )
})
.collect::<Option<Vec<_>>>()
);
Same language, same code, but a very different silhouette.
Similarly, the last time I looked at the Oculus SDK, its C++ and C# code used
a column alignment style, and I think some other projects like OpenCV use
column alignment too.
Many other C++ and C# projects eschew alignment in favor of indentation,
though.
This kind of choice in styles is available in all the languages being
compared. Yes, even in Python. The Python example uses column alignment here
and there, but it would be just as "Pythonic" to use indentation in those
places.
So I don't think this is really comparing programming languages, it's just
taking a single example for each language, where other projects in the same
language may have very different silhouettes.
~~~
z3t4
im working on a auto formatting tool ... is there anyone here that enforce
column alignment or have it in their style guide ?
~~~
OJFord
For Rust? Are you aware of rustfmt?
------
jMyles
I think this might be more effective if there was some kind of emphasis on
lines which contain nothing but tokens used to end control structures, such as
} or });
Frankly, as is, I think that javascript looks more crisp and sane than it
really is (although, as another commenter points out, jQuery might not be the
best choice for the current style norms).
Also, the Python choice, while a very cool project, is very atypical of Python
style. I suggest using one of the more complex modules from Twisted.
------
e0m
When I looked at this, my immediate reaction was how awful long the files are.
A programming language's community should encourage smaller files that do one
thing.
~~~
z3t4
i like large files, it makes it so much easier to read the code, figure out
what it does, find stuff, and refactor. i like it when the entire program is
just one file, except for the modules source. i hate when there are 10000
files all containing 5-10 imports and then just one or two lines of logic. or
worse; include files within include files several levels deep that all touch
global variables. my idea of good abstractions is to only lift out code that
has no couplings and no shared logic with the program, like modules that can
be reused by other people in other programs.
------
frou_dh
Something that bugs me is, in languages that have a wrapping `namespace foo {
... }` sort of construct, the contents of that block being indented.
If, in a typical file, after the preamble at the top, you're giving _ALL_ of
the subsequent lines a minimum of 1 indent to the right... then what's the
point of that 1 leading indent?
Just hug the left side. You don't need a constant visual reinforcement that
you're a good kid who namespaces their declarations.
------
forinti
The fractal dimension of each one would be nice.
~~~
codefined
For people who don't know about fractal dimensions, might I suggest this[0]
video
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4)
------
d--b
What's most striking is that there is not a lot of differences between the
languages. C and Python are somewhat denser and php tends to be more spread
out. But that's about it.
I guess that reflects that humans break code in a way that looks the way
they're used to.
Purely functional languages probably diverge significantly from these shapes.
~~~
azeirah
It's a _very_ selective dataset, this doesn't show much. The idea's cool
though
------
klez
I would be curious to see some functional languages examples, like scheme,
Haskell and OCaml, for example.
~~~
im_down_w_otp
Yeah, was thinking the same for Erlang since it incentivizes terse sections of
hoisted functions.
------
dpc_pw
Shameless plug: a "Silhouette" (minimap) generator for command line:
[https://github.com/dpc/text-minimap](https://github.com/dpc/text-minimap)
------
philsnow
@lelandbatey: to see a difference that really pops, I suggest adding a common
lisp or scheme silhouette, and a prolog one. Hell, if you can find a copy of
gorilla.bas, do that too.
------
abakus
Wait，Java has actually the shortest silhouette?
~~~
shawncplus
It's not as if they generated some "average" code to make an apples to apples
comparison, they arbitrarily grabbed files with very different purposes based
on length.
So really all this does is show that different code with different purposes
has different shapes. AKA, pointless. You would have to do this across huge
numbers of files and average them out to have anything actually interesting to
look at.
------
ricardobeat
jQuery is hardly a good benchmark for current js style. You'll find completely
different shapes in other libraries.
~~~
sillysaurus3
JS is the new C++. It's several different languages depending on which subset
you use: jQuery style, pyramid callbacks, promises, async/await, etc.
~~~
z3t4
always _name your anonymous functions_. that way it will be easier to break
them out of the pyramid, make them testable, and easier to debug.
~~~
OJFord
... and it will also make them not anonymous functions :)
~~~
z3t4
A named "anonymous" function (lets call it lamda function to make it less
confusing) is still a lamda function, but with a name ... It can not be called
from elsewhere. So you get all the benefits from lamda functions! There's no
advantage to _not_ naming variables.
var fs = require("fs");
fs.readFile("somefile.txt", function readSomeFile(err, text) {
if(err) throw err;
else console.log(data);
}
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla Roadster - franl
https://www.tesla.com/roadster/
======
wintermute2001
Am I the only one who's worried that Tesla is really starting to bite off more
than they can chew? Right now their finances are a mess, they are publicly
struggling to produce their most important car ever, their CEO is spending
time figuring out how to dig holes underneath LA...and now they're announcing
a semi truck and a roaster in the same day? Don't get me wrong, Teslas are
incredible cars. But this seems like an overreach considering they are
struggling to figure out how to meet demand on the Model 3. It's also insane
to announce this car with what boils down to a bunch of CGI! These are some
very bold announcements and there isn't much explanation for how these goals
will be met. I hope this all turns out as advertised, but I'm very skeptical.
~~~
dkhenry
You have been reading too many finance blogs. Their finances are far from a
mess, they are just not what finance people like to see. They have cash on
hand and a roadmap to execute on. If they don't execute they will go out of
business, and they will take my money as an investor with them. I'm OK with
that and as long as they continue to have a path to profitability I am all on
board. I want to see them burning money to get market share, especially as
they do something new. The idea that companies must always operate within a
specific set of financial metrics is why GE is going out of business
~~~
PunchTornado
Exactly. As a small investor in them I fully support them. Even if I lose all
my money I know it went to cool research that has benefit the progress of
science in a cool way.
~~~
zymhan
I mean, that's fine and dandy, but then you're really just donating your money
to "science" and not investing it. Which goes back to the original claim that
their finances are a mess.
------
Unklejoe
Has the 8 second quarter mile been confirmed to be done in stock trim (i.e.,
no special tires or other modifications)?
The reason I ask is because that is EXTREMELY impressive. I tune EFI systems
on race cars as a hobby, and any car in the 8 second range usually needs to
run slicks or drag radials to have enough traction.
Even all wheel drive cars (GTRs, DSMs, EVOs, etc.) usually run 4 slicks once
they get to that speed.
It seems very hard to make a pass like that on regular street tires, even with
AWD.
EDIT: To add, I'm not knocking Tesla here, as there are very few cars that can
actually run an 8 second pass off the showroom floor without any modifications
at all. Even if they had to put slicks on the car to reach that time, that
still puts it on par with 1000 HP dedicated drag cars.
~~~
neom
I'll be amazed, _amazzzzed_ , if that car, stock, can create enough down force
to keep itself on the road with stock tires, I don't care how good your TC is.
Look at the size of the wing on the new Zr1 [https://youtu.be/O_adY_b-
aLQ?t=3m14s](https://youtu.be/O_adY_b-aLQ?t=3m14s)
~~~
wallace_f
Downforce is more than the wing. You see those giant diffusers in the back?
Those work as venturi tunnels, creating a sucking force, sticking the car
down.
As a matter of fact, F1 cars in the 70s-80s were using venturi tunnels that
extended the entire length of the vehicle. This is impractical in a modern
gasoline-powered car.
Theu were even getting so good with their aerodynamics that they were rumoured
to be generating more downforce with ground effects than from wings.
In an electric car, you could do what they were doing back then.
~~~
mallaidh
And the Roadster doesn't have real side skirts to seal up the tunnel, which
significantly degrades any diffuser downforce.
~~~
wallace_f
Just pretend, the same way they do with the claims about the GTR's ~0-degree
wing, and most all aero claims on street-legal cars.
Aero at street legal speeds is basically worthless and range-destroying. Many
supercars don't have more aero than the Roadster, just go look at them, they
usually either have no wing, like the Lambo Huracan, or a wing with virtually
no angle of attack.
------
ardit33
The Tesla roadster specs are insane! No exotic carmaker will be able to match
it (taking price as a consideration). (no Ferrari, or Lambo, can get that
close. This is Formula 1 acceleration speeds).
Plus 620 miles of range, and it is a 4 seater. Expensive as hell, but this is
exotic car territory.
Base Specs
Acceleration 0-60 mph1.9 sec
Acceleration 0-100 mph4.2 sec
Acceleration 1/4 mile8.8 sec
Top SpeedOver 250 mph
Wheel Torque 10,000 Nm
Mile Range 620 miles
Seating 4
Drive All-Wheel Drive
Base Price $200,000
Base Reservation $50,000
Founders Series Price $250,000
Founders Series Reservation
(1,000 reservations available)$250,000
~~~
Jdam
> No exotic carmaker will be able to match it.
Did you fact check that? Actually, Bugatti is pretty close and partially
outperforms, although at a way higher price point.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Chiron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Chiron)
~~~
ardit33
Yes. The Chiron matches it in speed, but not acceleration. 1.9s vs 2.4s to
60mph. Since the roadster has a 250+ mph figure, the tires are probably going
to be one of the limiting factors. (same with the Chiron).
" The Chiron can accelerate from 0–97 km/h (60 mph) in 2.4 seconds according
to the manufacturer,[4] 0–200 km/h (120 mph) in 6.5 seconds and 0–300 km/h
(190 mph) in 13.6 seconds. In a world-record-setting test, Chiron reached 400
km/h (250 mph) in 32.6 seconds, after which it needed 9.4 seconds to brake to
standstill.[14]
The Chiron's top speed is electronically limited to 420 km/h (261 mph) for
safety reasons.[2] The anticipated full top speed of the Bugatti Chiron is
believed to be around 463 km/h (288 mph)."
~~~
gsnedders
Chiron is traction limited for most of its run; I presume to beat the Chiron's
time the Tesla Roadster has better tyres for initial grip.
~~~
usrusr
Very unlikely. With power you weight beyond useful (this has basically been
"solved" since the day someone built a cat around a ww2 military aircraft
piston engine), acceleration is determined by aerodynamics (drag and
downpressure), tires _and the time spent shifting gears_. It's pretty evident
where Tesla has the advantage.
~~~
thinkloop
Shifting gears? Why does it have an advantage?
~~~
cheeze
Teslas don't need gears since they use electric motors. So there is literally
no time spent shifting gears.
See [https://www.quora.com/Why-don%E2%80%99t-Tesla-cars-need-a-
ge...](https://www.quora.com/Why-don%E2%80%99t-Tesla-cars-need-a-gear-system-
Why-does-a-gear-system-make-sense-only-for-combustion-engines)
~~~
gsnedders
The original Veyron could change gears in 8ms, and will, IIRC hit 60 in 2nd.
Changing gear isn't going to be a considerable part of the time here.
~~~
PeterisP
Wikipedia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron)
states that the original Veyron gearbox could change gears in 150ms, so it is
a considerable part of the time.
------
speeq
Close up video of Tesla Roadster launching from zero:
[https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984](https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984)
~~~
davidwhodge
Hey folks. I was the one that took that video. let me know if you have any
questions.
~~~
usaphp
Why did you sped up the video instead of posting the original? You can see it
by the movement of people around the car at the moment of acceleration.
~~~
GijsjanB
Probably not sped up. What you're seeing is a sudden acceleration of the
camera's viewpoint when panning to the left in order to keep up with the 1.9s
to get to 60mph.
------
nodesocket
200K is actually good value, seeing as gas supercars that are near it in terms
of performance (except slower) often cost over $1M.
EDIT: Tesla probably should fix their homepage going to a what appears to be
the live stream page. I'd have to imagine they are losing valuable pageviews
and sales. Tesla.com should be redirecting to either the Semi or Roadster
landing pages.
Screenshot: [https://imgur.com/a/L9oN5](https://imgur.com/a/L9oN5)
~~~
lafar6502
I dunno. check the value of previous model of tesla roadsters and if their
owners want to keep them
~~~
Sohcahtoa82
Yes, we should totally judge the next gen Roadster based on the first gen one.
Ignore the advancements in battery tech and other lessons Tesla has learned in
the nearly 10 years since the first Roadster.
~~~
lafar6502
They haven’t learned how to produce cars, that’s sure. And judging by the
past, your car will become outdated and obsolete in 5 years.
------
Animats
Does this mean that Tesla is pivoting from their attempt to produce a medium-
priced car in quantity and going back to hand-building high-end cars?
Tesla is good at high-end, low volume products. But the Model 3 production
fiasco shows they don't know how to do what Detroit and Wolfsburg and Toyota
City do. This is in a way a step backwards. Tesla is going back to targeting
the 1%.
There are lots of little supercar companies. It's not that hard to build an
electric supercar in tiny volume. I know some people who've done it. It's fun,
and there are idiots with too much money who'll buy the thing. But it's a
waste of engineering talent which should be getting the volume product out the
door.
~~~
samhunta
Toyota owns Lexus, Ford had Jaguar and Land Rover, Hyundai owns Genesis,
Volkswagon has Bentley, Fiat owns Ferrari. Just like other car manufacturers,
Tesla does it all.
edit: Ford didn't start Jaguar.
~~~
Animats
Tesla doesn't run a volume production line. All the major players have
production lines that make about one car a minute. Tesla isn't able to play in
the big leagues until they can do that.
~~~
samhunta
Fair enough, but how will they ever achieve that without first trying to
compete in this outrageously competitive industry?
~~~
fma
By solving their biggest problems first, rather than create new distractions?
Kinda the same thing any company would do.
------
jsight
I would really love to know how they are getting such a large battery capacity
in a vehicle of this size.
Is this a generational leap in energy density? What kind of materials are
being used here?
~~~
thebluehawk
My brother pointed out that other Tesla cars (even the semi they announced)
have a "front trunk". This one's hood is seamless. Our theory is that under
the entire front hood is batteries.
~~~
kijin
I wonder what happens when one of these cars crashes head-on into something.
The front of a car is supposed to act as a crumple zone. Batteries aren't very
good at crumpling.
~~~
ygra
Neither are internal combustion engines. What crumples are structural
supports, not all the components within. And if they go that route I guess
they'll go with slightly different battery chemistry as well to avoid a fire.
They might have to do so anyway to sustain power output.
~~~
jsight
Yeah, and Tesla has talked about this extensively in the past. It would be
pretty surprising if they switch to using this area for battery, but it is
possible.
------
bwang29
I'm thinking what this means to gas car makers.
Wave 1: "It's all about legacy and prestige, not speed/acceleration".
Wave 2: "The track handling isn't all that good, how can drivers take that
corner at full power without losing traction".
Wave 3: "Alright, we will go electric too".
~~~
kirse
Gas will always have sound. The growl of an Aston Martin V12 on startup, or a
Lexus LFA screaming through a tunnel, or the flat-plane V8 burble from a
Mustang GT350. EM cars only have a dull whine the faster they go. Motorheads
are secretly all musicians who happen to love driving.
The best combination is ultimately both though, hybrid systems are already
used quite frequently in everything from LMP1 WEC racers to modern hypercars.
~~~
audunw
The thing is that sound is associated with speed because a bigger/stronger
engine is usually louder.
Electrics will break that association. Or it will create a new expectation
about what a fast car sounds like. Because from now on, they will always be
faster than ICE vehicles.
I think there will be a niche of people buying ICE cars for their loud sound,
just as there are people who buy the loudest possible motorcycles even though
they're not very fast. But I think this will be a niche, and they will
probably be considered obnoxious people.
I think we'll also see more sound engineering in EVs. They'll perhaps get a
more satisfying sound, but will still be quiet.
~~~
rkangel
The sound is satisfying for reasons that are entirely separate with its
association.
~~~
dEnigma
Do you have any sources for that? Personally, I don't find sports car sounds
satisfying at all, so I guess those reasons don't apply to everybody.
~~~
fma
It's kinda why someone would buy a Harley Davidson...they have a distinctive
sound associated with power.
~~~
dEnigma
Yes, but this might just be a cultural phenomenon, not a universal quality of
the sound itself.
------
DenverR
They clearly learned the power of the preorder with the Model 3! This is a
great way to raise funding without going back to the equity markets.
Say they can fill up all the founder series slots along with 5,000 regular
slots, that’s $500,000,000. Smart :)
~~~
scott_karana
The S and the original Roadster had highly publicized pre-orders too...
nothing new for them. ;)
------
yoda_sl
Stumble on this video from last night where a few lucky invitees could feel
the experience of riding in the new Roadster. [https://youtu.be/C6nN-
GlghAc](https://youtu.be/C6nN-GlghAc)
------
gok
Love it. Perfect showmanship to hype up the truck then announce this.
Hope they stay solvent long enough to ship it.
------
sxates
Taking reservations for 1000 founder series cars at $250k each up front means
they're pre-selling $250,000,000 worth of product at least 2 years out. Kind
of smart.
~~~
rottyguy
I thought the same. These consumer "loans" along the way are a brilliant
marketing tactics. Anyone know if this is refundable?
~~~
zionic
With the M3 all deposits were refundable.
------
tdiggity
I wonder what the handling will be like. Teslas on the track have had over
heating issues, and cornering performance has been just average at best.
Not every exotic car owner (Ferrari, Lambo, Mclaren) brings their car to the
track, but I feel like a good % do. When you own a 200k car, you don't drive
it to the grocery store because it attracts too much attention, and you worry
something bad will happen to it.
Edit: For more clarification on the grocery getter comment: As an owner of an
older exotic car, I've seen that most do not drive their exotics that much.
1-5k miles max/year. The cheapest insurance policies won't let you drive it to
any public parking lots. And policies from the normal companies will cost
$3-8k in large metropolitan areas for 40-50 year olds. So where do you go? You
make excuses to drive it. Cruise to a friends house, drive in the mountains,
or to the track if you have time. Daily errands are for your other car. Why
risk it. Elon's a pretty good showman, and he makes me feel like I could do
anything with this car! But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even
used in 5 years @ 130-150k.
~~~
smitherfield
_> But, alas, 200k, I want it to be perfect forever. Even used in 5 years @
130-150k._
The good/bad thing about electric cars is that they're sort of like computers
right now (they're getting twice as good every 1-2 years), so I expect they'll
depreciate more along the lines of used smartphones than (the existing market
in) used cars.
~~~
Already__Taken
Something like this I bet the value evaporates just like the manufacture
warranty on the battery.
------
dmode
Bold prediction: if they manage to produce a battery capable of 620 mile range
promised, it will essentially be game over for ICE cars. My bet is that next
generation of Model S and X will easily be in the 400-500 mile rsnge.
~~~
chrismcb
When the battery can be refilled in minutes, it will be game over. Until
then...
~~~
thebluehawk
As a Tesla Model S owner, you really don't need to fill your car in minutes.
It's a totally different (but not bad) mindset.
Every morning my car is full, because I plug it in in my garage. So if I don't
go more than 260 miles that day, it's plugged in the next night. It doesn't
matter that it takes a few hours. My gas car was just sitting in the garage
each night anyway doing nothing. How many hours does your car sit idle per
day? Probably way more than enough to charge it for your daily driving.
For road trips, there are super chargers.
I was a bit worried, after hearing all the fuss about range anxiety and all
that. Overall, charging has just been such a non issue.
~~~
erik_seaberg
I've never had a private garage, much less a locked one I could rewire. If
Tesla wants to go mainstream they need to handle apartment parking.
~~~
tazjin
Here in Norway it's common for apartment buildings that have parking spots to
have electric chargers outside and that seems to be working fine.
~~~
oblio
Your population density is minimal, though.
~~~
Robotbeat
Not relevant. In fact, electric infrastructure is cheaper to deploy at high
density than low.
------
hu3
0-60 mph in 1.9 sec
This might sound really stupid. But isn't performing such acceleration on a
daily basis close to the limit of harming one's health? I mean micro
concussions for example.
Really curious because that acceleration is amazing!
~~~
shaneos
Yes, that's a real problem. I took my Model S P85D to the track (fun, but felt
really heavy in corners) and had a concussion for 3 weeks afterwards. And that
was just Insane mode, not even Ludicrous.
The Roadster should come with a health advisory
~~~
Devthrowaway80
F1 cars accelerate faster than the Roadster's advertised numbers and the
drivers don't wander around constantly concussed.
I am curious how you managed to get a concussion in a heavy sedan that can
only maintain 0.87g of lateral grip. Were you in a collision?
------
pwaai
1.9 seconds
That's what caught my attention the most. This is unheard of in a production
car. I'm also generally very excited that Lamborghini is also experimenting
with electric power.
We might be entering a new breed of electric supercars. the 3 second line used
to be the gold standard but it seems like electric cars are aiming for sub 1.5
second range....that is insane acceleration.
~~~
DKnoll
The production Dodge Demon can do 0-60 in 2.1-2.3s. Good, yes, but not unheard
of.
------
the_rosentotter
There has _got_ to be an astroturfing campaign going on here, or the HN crowd
is a lot more naive than I thought. Seriously, no one is concerned that Tesla
is announcing, not one, but _two_ new products, while they are failing to
deliver on all three they are currently producing (in terms of production
ramp-up)? What matters more than anything to Tesla is production at scale, but
they are busy promising ever more fantastic new products that will distract
even more from hitting core goals. Every announcement from Tesla seems more
like flimflam at this point, hardly better than an ICO (with preordering and
everything).
That's not even getting into Elon Musk's ever expanding personal commitments
with Tesla, SpaceX, Boring company, Solar City and what have you, _each_
making bold new announcements every other week, like saving Puerto Rico (and
Australia too, while we're at it).
~~~
AndrewDucker
Tesla seem to be doing ok in Puerto Rico:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-
puert...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-puerto-rico-
electricity-childrens-hospital-san-juan-solar-power-restored-elon-musk-
project-a8021716.html)
Australia work is 80% complete: [http://reneweconomy.com.au/musk-says-tesla-
big-battery-now-8...](http://reneweconomy.com.au/musk-says-tesla-big-battery-
now-80-complete-20896/)
There are definitely issues with the Model 3 - but I'd imagine that the
production line for the Semi will ramp up significantly after the Model 3 is
working, and will involve an entirely separate team.
[https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/11/teslas-hell-threatens-
its...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/11/teslas-hell-threatens-its-future/)
~~~
icc97
Elon Musk said it himself with the Model 3:
> Assume the worst [0]
So sure we should be skeptical about the actual deadlines. But they're trying
to compete against BMW & Mercedes (plus numerous other brands, but it seems
like those two are their main competition). It's not like those are terrible
companies, they've produced cars and engineering discipline of the highest
quality for nearly a century.
I'd be more worried if there's some major flaw in the car, like if it's got
the reliability of an 80s Jaguar (of which the stories about breakdowns in the
gizmodo article are the biggest concern). The issues coming out about panel
misalignment are bad (but I noted that my VW Golf I'm just buying wasn't
perfect either), but not end of the world.
Still though my inner child doesn't care, it still gets very excited when car
manufacturers show unrealistic made up cars [1]. But it seems like the
Roadster might actually happen and it's nice to see the Roadster getting some
love after being the car that started it all.
[0]:
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/916407361899708416](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/916407361899708416)
[1]:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-07/lamborghi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-07/lamborghini-
terzo-millennio-concept-self-healing-electric-supercar)
------
microtheo
Those acceleration figures are meaningless. The Chiron isn't the best car on a
circuit for example. I would be interested to see this car compete against say
a gt3 on a track like Nürburgring :)
~~~
StavrosK
Circuit performance is meaningless. I'd like to see the gt3 accelerate to
100km/h under 2" for example :)
~~~
microtheo
I mean what's interesting is handling, behavior in curves, power consistency,
steering accuracy. Weight could be a drawback. Acceleration isn't the only
metrics. Those are some reasons Porsche is considered to be making good cars.
------
gargravarr
The specs are astonishing, and I believe they can deliver. The original
Roadster is the iconic car that made electric vehicles cool.
Would be nice if they could get production of the Model 3 properly ramped up
so us peasants who've been drooling over performance electric cars since
before we had our driver's licenses can actually get our hands on them...
------
ukulele
0-60 in 1.9 seconds is ABSURD
~~~
cperciva
To be precise, 1.44 g.
For comparison, a Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket -- without payload -- at takeoff mass
has 1.19 g of thrust.
~~~
avar
For those that are unaware, all rockets then rapidly increase their G. For
example the Saturn V had 1.20 g at takeoff but climed up to 4-ish:
[http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/saturnV.htm](http://www.braeunig.us/apollo/saturnV.htm)
Someone on the Saturn V started experiencing more G than the Roadster about a
minute into the launch.
When you move a building-sized fuel tank under its own thrust it's going to
start off slow, but accelerate as more fuel is burned.
~~~
saagarjha
Plus I'd expect thrust to be kept low until clearing the lower atmosphere so
it's not all lost on drag.
------
mschaef
It'll be interesting to see if they can keep the battery power output up for a
sustained length of time. Acceleration numbers are all well and good, but
racetrack performance is about sustained high-load operation, and Tesla has
had some trouble there:
[http://www.thedrive.com/news/5207/this-video-reminds-us-
that...](http://www.thedrive.com/news/5207/this-video-reminds-us-that-the-
tesla-model-s-is-an-awful-track-car)
[https://insideevs.com/expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-
nurbu...](https://insideevs.com/expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurburgring-
full-power-video/)
Then again, how many people actually care? I don't think they'll have trouble
finding buyers.
~~~
crispyambulance
> Then again, how many people actually care? I don't think they'll have trouble finding buyers.
You're right, the actual performance doesn't matter for the buyers of such
cars. All supercars are playthings for folks with money burning holes in their
pockets. Pure luxury, thrill and ostentation. The vast majority of these cars
will be slogging it out in mind-numbing stop-and-go traffic just like the rest
of us. Sure, there may be an occasional opportunity to make a dramatic passing
maneuver on a pristine highway against a driver that doesn't think he's
racing-- big whoop.
------
agumonkey
So basically Musk unveils future products of lesser demand but probably higher
profit so he can raise Tesla stock value a bit and also grab some preorder
cash flow and help Model 3 while it's stuttering ?
~~~
le-mark
Seems obvious now, I wonder why he didn't do this sooner. The first Tesla was
a high end sports car after all.
------
kibwen
_> 0-60 MPH in 1.9 seconds_
For comparison, a top fuel dragster does 0-60 in 0.5 seconds.
~~~
robotresearcher
And then needs its engine rebuilt. Also, the tires are lit on fire before
launch...
------
bigboy678
While the specs of this car are no doubt impressive i wouldnt say no one can
compete with them. Porsche is/has been working on a high end electric car for
quite a bit and they have specifically said they would challenge Tesla with
it. Porsche also is someone who knows how to build high end cars and with
their racing heritage i wouldnt be suprised if in 2020 they take some wind out
of Teslas sail
------
Gravityloss
Anybody know why Tesla didn't solve model 3 production scaling issues by
subcontracting to someone who could do a "running start"? I would imagine a
large portion of the car is relatively standard, being made of steel, mass
produced components etc.
~~~
Robotbeat
Because Tesla's real value is production scaling innovation itself.
------
dmcginty
I'd really like to see a clearer shot of the steering wheel (steering device?)
I'm curious why they decided to go with something that looks more like a
plane's yoke than a normal wheel. Is this something that's common with
supercars?
------
pilingual
It would seem over 200 mph isn't useful, except the Boring company could
change that. A private tunnel could enable such leisurely travel for only cars
that had level 3+ autonomy safety features.
~~~
kayoone
200mph top speed is just a consequence of the base abilities of the car, it
does not really matter in practice, but the fact that the car is capable of
doing it shows that it is really powerful and very aerodynamic. Besides far
away niche uses like tunnels under LA and autonomy, in Germany you could drive
200mph if you find a good stretch in the early morning ;)
------
dsfyu404ed
A lot of people seem to have an electric car fetish that is blinding them to
the amount of work that went into the chassis and suspension design which is
the real achievement here.
If you have 1000hp available at any speed not going at least reasonably fast
would be an achievement.
Putting 1000hp to the ground at really low wheel speeds in a semi-production
ready (let's not kid ourselves, nobody is going to be sending a $200k+ car off
the line in high volumes) chassis is the interesting thing here.
------
ascari
Electric motors are absolutely better compared to combastion engines. But
Guys, please don't compare apple to oranges. Tesla is no match to Ferrari nor
McLaren. Ferrari's main intention is to build a car that has a good cornering
on track. 0-60 is for muscle cars which you can compare to SRT Demon. All
these Bugattis, Koenigseggs are a bunch of unsteerable rockets on tracks. Last
but not least you know how Koenigsegg ended up in Nordschleife.
------
bigboy678
While this cars specs are no doubt impressive I wouldnt say no one will be
able to challenge them. Porsche has been working on a high end electric car
for a while and they specifically said they would challenge Tesla. Porsche can
build some nice high end cars, and with their racing/electric technology i
wouldnt be surprised if in 2020 they take some wind out of teslas sail
~~~
dalbasal
I guess that kind of language is always going to represent some hyperbole.
People _like_ porsches.
That said, the stats posted here are faster than any car you can currently
buy. Porsche _have_ a very fast supercar at the top of that list now, but it's
not as fast as this roadster (again based on the table in this link) and costs
3-4 times as much.
The kind of cars that approach the performance suggested here are generally
very expensive, very low volume "Sheikh" cars. Tesla is claiming that they
beat all of them, for a lot cheaper. If so... I wouldn't want to be a Porsche
dealer in 2021
------
macns
I'd like to see this kind of battery tech on a lowest-end, lowest-cost mass
production car with a 2-3k mile range on a single overnight charge. For my
usage in the city, this would mean I'd charge every other week.
How far are we from such a feat I wonder, and, can't help but speculate as to
why we're not.
~~~
sjwright
Because nobody wants a car that doesn't have enough range to drive to the
nearest hospital?
~~~
maxymoos
2-3k miles. Not 2-3 miles.
------
wpdev_63
It's a bit unbelievable they were able to double the range of the already
highly efficient model S...
Maybe a significant reduction of weight + increase in battery? Whatever it is,
it's amazing that they were able to pull it off.
------
ccozan
All nice and good. We see the EV revolution in front of our eyes.
But nobody speaks about the EV infrastructure.
~~~
zerostar07
At least for the roadster, it doesnt seem to matter that much. The people who
will buy this will do it for the flashy logo and the ridiculous (And
dangerous) speed of course.
~~~
ccozan
True.
But the revolution is simply the battery. They claim ~1000km on one charge.
This is impressive and might do something about the missing infratructure.
------
convery
I'm curious about the claim that it fits 4. Because my friend has a late 90's
firebird that while having 4 seats, it's clearly made for children / teens. So
any information if the backseats in this model is made for adults?
~~~
ZeroGravitas
He was relatively clear that it will be 2+2 rather than four full size seats:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B2_(car_body_style)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B2_\(car_body_style\))
So, it'll be cramped back there for larger adults.
------
averagewall
Oh no, they're doing what all the other carmakers do and reuse the same name
for completely different cars whose only thing in common is to target the same
market segment. We'll have to call this the 2020 Roadster.
------
nepotism2018
I'm hoping they actually tested that 250mph+...I'm no expert but that car
looks bit too light and short to do that speed...can't see how it will stick
to the road...unlessssss...they want it to fly away :)
~~~
puranjay
I'm no engineer, but if you generate enough lift with some add-on wings, will
this thing go airborn?
~~~
mnw21cam
Mostly, you want to generate a load of lift _downwards_ to keep the thing
attached to the ground.
But to answer your question, if you define "enough" as "enough to make it go
airborne", then yes. You would then have to be very careful to make sure it is
actually stable in the air, or the results could be very non-pretty. And then
you also have the problem of keeping it going fast in the air, when previously
your only forwards force was provided by the wheel contact with the ground.
------
evo_9
Great another car for the super wealthy. I thought Tesla's mission was to take
on the GM's and Toyota's of the world. I'd personally be more excited if they
announced an affordable Tesla SUV.
~~~
zionic
Oh wow, I had no idea a company Tesla's size can only focus on one thing at a
time!
Meanwhile in reality they're ramping their most affordable car ever.
------
maxxxxx
This doesn't really makes sense as a sports car if you want to do anything but
go straight. If they had wanted good handling they should have gone for half
the range and saved the weight.
------
fivesigma
3 motors.
Some kind of torque vectoring deal in the rear wheels? Like the Electric AMG
SLS.
~~~
robotresearcher
Musk says so, yes.
------
csomar
0-60 in 1.9s for $200k that is affordable by a good range of people. I can see
disasters happening with this car as young dudes lose control when they
accelerate.
There has to be some serious A.I to prevent this.
~~~
largote
You don't use AI for that, you use a bunch of sensors and adaptive power or
braking vectoring. Calling some heuristics "AI" is a massive stretch.
~~~
alkonaut
It could use some image recognition perhaps. "Detected male driver 18-25".
------
grkvlt
It's interesting that people are so quick to dismiss this as merely a
rendering, with the videos being CGI. Is that because the videos are 'too
good' perhaps, or it just looks too much like a racing game car on the X-box?
You'd have to deliberately ignore the fact that there were real cars presented
at the announcement, for instance. Also interesting is that because the
acceleration is so fast, there were accusations of the video being sped up at
that point - people couldn't believe it was real. Are HN readers getting more
skeptical of TSLA because of its recent financial and production issues, and
this is showing in the cynical comments here?
~~~
bllguo
Oh please. I should hope that people aren't so intoxicated on the Kool-Aid
that when Tesla claims the Roadster outperforms the fastest production cars in
the world, people want to dig deeper.
You're seriously implying that blindly accepting what they say is better?
~~~
grkvlt
No, no - it's just the 'only exists in CGI' I have an issue with, since people
are arguing against factual evidence. But, this is a prototype, so of course I
expect the performance figures are going to change, and speculation about
_that_ aspect is par for the course and I have no problem with that.
~~~
bllguo
Ah, fair enough. Apologies for an unintentionally hostile tone.
------
hsnewman
In my humble opinion, the 1st roadster was much, much better looking.
------
sergers
I'm a Tesla skeptic for model 3 success, but this is badass.
If I was in the market for a car that I couldn't take advantage of driving
legally, and had 200k laying around, would definitely buy lol
------
jesusthatsgreat
Why is it that concept car designers insist on _not_ adding wing mirrors or
else tiny little stalks that are significantly smaller than production wing
mirrors? Every damn time...
~~~
JohnGB
In this case, it's probably due to aerodynamic considerations.
------
gist
Multiple Porsche owner here. The acceleration on the Roadster is great
obviously, however the sound of a car (or in this case lack of it) is
definitely a factor in the experience.
------
jxramos
I was wondering recently what happened to all the first generation roadsters?
I used to see them frequently enough but they've been hiding from the road a
long time it feels.
------
wybiral
"quickest car in the world" is an interesting choice of word.
Is that to stand out from the slogan tropes like "fastest car in the world" /
"fastest in its class"?
~~~
delish
“Quickest” in auto-journalism typically refers to acceleration. So 0-60.
“Fastest” typically refers to top speed. So e.g. 250mph.
~~~
wybiral
Thanks. I didn't know that distinction.
------
badloginagain
At what speed/acceleration can you put wings on the thing and be able to fly?
I wouldn't put it past Elon for his master plan to include flying cars.
------
jfoster
I don't see autopilot or any sort of autonomy mentioned for the new Roadster.
That sort of makes sense, but I'm also a bit disappointed about it.
~~~
grkvlt
Today, the fastest lap time of the Nurburgring by an electric car was set by a
Tesla Roadster driving itself round the track in 8m30s. The autopilot software
developers are said to be 'very proud' of the achievement.
------
jsoltren
No side view mirrors! That helps tremendously with aerodynamics. I wonder if
they used cameras and displays. Even the new Ford GT has mirrors.
~~~
jabretti
Let's see if that makes it from prototype to production, though; if you could
meet the legal requirements with cameras and displays I think someone else
would have done it by now.
Concept cars often lack mirrors, or have ridiculously small mirrors that
wouldn't be legal. Apparently car designers really just don't like adding
them.
------
hw
Would ludicrous mode for the roadster go 0-60 in 1 second?
the 620 mile range is super impressive. How??? Or is it just that the roadster
is super light?
~~~
jabretti
You'd think that the ability for the wheels to deliver power to the ground has
to be the limiting factor at some point.
~~~
travisjungroth
Most sports cars are at that point at low speeds and either need a skillful
foot or an electronic system to prevent burning out. A 1.9 second 0-60 is
pretty much the limit on street tires (and requires AWD). Someone will take it
even further by putting drag slicks on there.
------
Hurtak
Are people just not testing their websites on non Apple devices or why are
there 2 vertical scrollbars next to each other?
------
lafar6502
Hey, how do you call a guy who takes people money for future orders without
delivering on the ones already taken?
------
urda
Tesla can barely ship the Model 3, and now they're adding yet another consumer
vehicle to the lineup?
Tesla's vision is completely scattered. I have little faith in them at this
time since they can't deliver the "economy" Model 3, but now suddenly have the
bandwidth to develop, engineer, ship, and maintain yet another car?
Tesla, ship the Model 3 at scale and then we'll talk.
~~~
jsolson
That was my initial reaction, but it leads to a question: do you stop doing
R&D (and shed talent as a result) because production in another part of the
company is blocked by some (hopefully transient) supply chain issue?
~~~
urda
Preface: I don't have any stake in Tesla's success or products.
If I was a consumer sitting on a Model 3 reservation I would be _pissed_ that
they are taking yet more money for yet another car they can't seem to ship at
scale.
This makes Tesla look like they care little, because after all they already
have your Model 3 money.
~~~
ktta
>If I was a consumer sitting on a Model 3 reservation I would be pissed that
they are taking yet more money for yet another car they can't seem to ship at
scale.
I mean, by the same reasoning, Model S owners should be pissed, Model X owners
should be pissed too. But the money from both seems to have made Model 3
possible.
~~~
urda
True I haven't even touched on them either! Tesla has yet to prove they can
build cars at scale, they are nothing compared to current auto manufacturers.
I think they are biting off more than they can chew.
~~~
ktta
>I think they are biting off more than they can chew.
I don't think anyone will disagree with you about that. But we sure as hell
want to see them succeed.
~~~
urda
Same here! I love their tech and I can't wait to see Model 3 after Model 3.
... but damn it Tesla ship it!
------
api
Well here's my "exit event" car, should such a thing ever happen. :)
------
amelius
4 seats, but somehow I doubt it has more legspace than the average budget
airliner.
------
ender89
Putting a license plate on that would be like putting braces on the mona lisa.
------
_pmf_
I wonder how long the trick of masking problems with announcements will work.
------
danappelxx
Sorry, 10,000 nm of torque? This can't be real. edit: misunderstood
~~~
oppositelock
That's wheel torque, not engine torque. Existing high power cars, like the
Hellcat, exceed that number, at least in first gear. Hellcat makes 10875 Nm
(8021 ft-lb). That's 650 engine torque at peak, * 4.71:1 first gear ratio *
2.62:1 rear axle ratio.
Of course, electric engines have much flatter torque curve, so they'll be at
torque peak all the time until they exceed pack wattage limts.
~~~
danappelxx
Ahh, that makes more sense, then. Thanks for clarifying!
------
rkowalick
An 8.8 second 1/4 mile is crazy for any car, let alone a stock one.
------
namlem
Tesla should make a Formula E car. Clearly they have the tech.
------
petsagouris
No rear view mirrors ?
~~~
ZeroGravitas
Tesla has been trying to get laws changed to allow them to replace side
mirrors with cameras, as it's a major pain point for aerodynamics.
------
ChicagoDave
I thought this was hacker news. Not gearhead news. (:
------
anonytrary
This is half the top speed of a plane. Insane.
~~~
Robotbeat
Higher top speed than a Cessna.
------
johnwheeler
0-60 in less than 2 seconds. that’s insane.
------
mcs_
0-60 1.9 Why is this still a thing?
------
lost953
This feels like slide ware to me, and I know Tesla has achieved its goals in
the past, but color me at least a little skeptical.
------
largote
Still to see if it can do it over and over again like the sports cars it's
billed to compete against.
------
gigatexal
Want! Man. This is so cool!
------
erikb
Why are they introducing a new car? Have they solved the model 3 deployment
problems already?
------
zabana
That front-end tho
------
romanovcode
Wow, 200k for a car is pretty expensive.
~~~
oblio
The cars this model competes with are at least as expensive, if not more.
~~~
romanovcode
Gotta be honest here, if I would won a lottery to pick a car for 200k I would
choose between Porche GT, Mercedes AMG or BMW M3 any day over this tesla.
------
tomcam
What would be even cooler is if they could build the cars they’ve already
taken money for, and service the ones they have already sold.
------
mali9
How are they going to keep up with production on Roadster when Model 3
production itself is slow and low ?
~~~
steego
Are you asking how they're going to prioritize manufacturing a car with huge
margins over the low margin car?
I guess we'll never know.
------
Beltiras
I don't need to live in a house when I have a car like this do I? Think the
wife will buy that argument for selling the house and buying this car?
~~~
walru
Sell the wife. Buy the car. Best of both worlds.
~~~
Fraterkes
Funniest people on reddit right here
------
shmerl
_> 250mph_
Metric system, where are you?-)
~~~
perilunar
Everywhere but the US, apparently.
~~~
shmerl
It's supposedly "in progress", but there is no end in sight:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States)
------
gersh
Are they selling the reservations now? Is this about getting more cash to keep
funding their operations?
------
gt2
Off topic, but really nice website.
------
azifali
The specs are insane but it would be better if Tesla focuses on getting its
mass market car out in the market, in the hands of consumers.
------
ssijak
Is today 1. April?
~~~
acchow
I didn't hear any rumors about this at all. Is Tesla more secretive than
Apple?
~~~
kondro
Not hard to keep a secret when all you have are 3D renders.
~~~
samhunta
Also, an actual video of the Roadster in all of it's glory.
[https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984](https://twitter.com/DavidHodge/status/931391188065705984)
------
staunch
Apple needs to buy Tesla and run it better than Elon Musk can right now. He's
overloaded himself with responsibilities.
Apple could do a lot of good by applying their skills to such an important
problem. And Tesla's have been called "laptops on wheels" which has some truth
it. They have the money, people, and management skill to do it well. Tesla has
the industry lead that Apple needs to get in the race.
First thing Tim Cook would do is cancel the semi project, I'd guess. But maybe
not.
~~~
doug3465
> First thing Tim Cook would do is cancel the semi project, I'd guess.
Why?
~~~
johansch
It's too utilitarian and not aspirational enough.
------
evanlivingston
solving the world's important problems.
------
beedogs
$250k and it looks like a Nissan Z. Honestly, the old model roadster looked
much more distinctive.
~~~
pasta
Distinctive like a Lotus?
------
didess
Tesla is true leader in car.I just love it.
------
RickJWagner
Hmmmmm. Tesla seems on the edge of imploding, financially.
Then they announce this. (With reservations starting at $200k.)
I wouldn't put retirement money on that one.
------
kwhitefoot
But you have to get out of the car and remove the roof to use it as a
convertible. Then I think I'd stick with a BMW 438i convertible which takes
the entire roof down at the push of a button in about 20 seconds. Driving
isn't all about acceleration.
~~~
scott_karana
Modern Corvettes, and classic Porsche 911 Targas all have similar roofs. They
are less practical, but lighter, and sell well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JavaScript stack for startups, good idea? - omorhefere
What are you thought on building a startup using just javascript: Node Js backend; React Website; React Native + Expo for mobile apps.<p>Is a maerketplace
======
x0hm
There are plenty of products that are built using a similar stack. There's
nothing wrong with it.
Use the tools that make sense to you.
------
k0t0n0
from past few months i have been working on similar app.
in my experience libraries/framework are awesome. but js as language require
more care compare to php/python.
~~~
omorhefere
Because it doesn't have types? Have you used flow?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China is mining data directly from workers’ brains on an industrial scale - sverige
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2143899/forget-facebook-leak-china-mining-data-directly-workers-brains
======
ggm
How do people feel about 'dead mans switch' and AWS gear fitted in Locomotives
since the 1920s?
Because from where I'm sitting, the only real difference here is the physical
engagement on the part of the employee in confirming alterness.
The Japanes 'signal intent' methodology appears relevant here too.
Consent to be brainwaved? Sure, thats a thing. But if we put this into the
realm of consented use, Is this really worse than mechanical checks? If so,
why?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I changed my mind about #DeleteUber - tuxxy
https://medium.com/@__Tux/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-deleteuber-3640c105ce45#.lt15vanjk
======
tiemand
> The era of Union is over
Maybe in the US, this is not the case in Europe.
~~~
tuxxy
Ah, I meant to include "(at least in the US)".
Thanks for catching that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shazam is always listening – even when it's been switched 'off' - nitin_flanker
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/15/shazam_listening/
======
chrisbolt
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12953368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12953368)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Practice Happiness with Yale University - jantomes
https://sfree.life/happiness-course-positivity-free/?ref=google
======
throwawaylolx
No wonder universities have no money if they spend their funding elevating
self-help books to the status of science courses. Also the OP link has a ref
parameter.
~~~
dntbnmpls
That may apply to many universities in the US, but not to Yale. They have the
2nd largest endowment ( $30 billion ).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment)
In Yale's case, they probably have too much money. Enough to waste money on
nonsense and not care.
~~~
singerislonely
Another theory: The course might be relevant, timely, and thoughtful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Beautiful, free, and simple resume/cover letter creator - mitchas
http://ineedaresu.me/#/
======
mitchas
Back in March I made version 1 of ineedaresu.me in about 5 hours between class
(v1 can be seen at ineedaresu.me/old). I didn't even intend on posting it
online until some people on Reddit encouraged me to. After that it got pretty
popular!
After 8 months I decided it needed a refresh. I built it from the ground up
while learning some AngularJS. It's now much faster, has much more
customization options, and is much better looking (in my opinion)...
I put the site up ~10 minutes ago after a short beta test with some users -
now I'm looking from feedback from some pros!
Let me know what you think!
(I know some of you will dive in and judge my Angular Skills.. just a warning
they aren't super good yet).
------
neduma
Just saw this in proggit - [http://makerslate.io/](http://makerslate.io/)
~~~
mitchas
I've seen a bunch of online resume sites like that popping up. Mine is aimed
more at non-designer/developers - people applying for lower-level jobs, or
even students applying for their first job. I wanted it to be something that
could be used by the people who need it most. I've been working with a few
non-profit job placement organizations to make them their own similar
generators!
------
neduma
Looks pretty cool. thanks for doing this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review my web app - mootothemax
Hi everyone :-)<p>I've had my Twitter webapp on the backburner for ages, but after taking a friend's advice, I've finally bought a couple of themes and redesigned the service around them.<p>It would be awesome to get your feedback:<p>-What other features would you like to see?<p>-What do you think of the UI and design?<p>- If you use Twitter, would you use this webapp? If not, why not?<p>Thanks!
Tom.<p>Link: http://tweetingmachine.com
======
SHOwnsYou
I don't use twitter, but I have a few things to say about the site in general.
It looks great. Looks like a very nice interface and design.
Provides a great presentation layer to the API functionality.
One thing though -- your *Tweeting Machine image in the upper left corner
links to /public/index.php instead of /public/index and throws and error
because of it.
~~~
mootothemax
Thanks, I'm really pleased you like how it looks :)
Grr about the link, I thought I'd caught all them! Thanks for letting me know
about it, now fixed :)
------
Caligula
The image rotater on the front page goes way too fast. I was unable to read
the text before it switched.
~~~
mootothemax
Thanks, now that I've sat down and give it a cold hard look I think you're
right. Time to play with some settings :)
------
mootothemax
Clickable: <http://tweetingmachine.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mach7: Pattern Matching for C++ - adamnemecek
https://github.com/solodon4/Mach7
======
haberman
Reading about this, I followed a link to this talk advocating pattern matching
(using Mach7) over the Visitor pattern:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhJguzpZOrk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhJguzpZOrk)
This was really interesting to me, because I had never thought of pattern
matching and the Visitor pattern as being "competitors", so-to-speak. I guess
this would mainly apply in the case that your pattern matching is based on
type.
I was further intrigued because this argument (pattern matching is better than
Visitor) seems to be the opposite argument made in the Google C++ Style Guide,
which I usually agree with. The Google C++ Style Guide argues against using
RTTI to do type-based dispatch ([https://google-
styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide....](https://google-
styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.html#Run-
Time_Type_Information__RTTI_)):
"Decision trees based on type are a strong indication that your code is on the
wrong track. Code such as this usually breaks when additional subclasses are
added to the class hierarchy. Moreover, when properties of a subclass change,
it is difficult to find and modify all the affected code segments."
It's very interesting to me that there is such wide disagreement here on which
of these two patterns represents better design.
~~~
jeremyjh
Yeah, its cute but it doesn't provide exhaustiveness testing which is what the
Google guide is concerned about. I think Scala came up with a neat way to work
that into an OO model with its sealed attribute. A sealed case class can't be
extended past its original source file, so its inheritance hierarchy is fixed.
Pattern matches on a sealed case class will warn for lack of exhaustiveness
just like matches on ADTs do in Haskell, Rust etc.
~~~
Someone
For the language history buffs: sealed classes aren't a Scala invention. Dylan
had them, too (at the library, rather than the source level.
[http://opendylan.org/books/dpg/perform.html](http://opendylan.org/books/dpg/perform.html))
(Better language history buffs than me, feel free to show prior art)
------
mafribe
Python 3 gets type hints, Javascript gets types (via Facebook's Flow), now C++
gets pattern matching. Seems like every successful programming language will
eventually try and become ML (with meta-programming).
Robin Milner, you had it all sussed out in the early 1970s, it took the rest
of the world about 40 years to catch up!
~~~
quchen
I don't think type hints do Hindley/Milner/Damas justice. This type system has
two parts, none of which are present in most popular languages:
1\. A program that typechecks cannot have type errors during runtime. Dynamic
type (i.e. runtime tag) based functions like instanceof break this, and most
(all?) OOP languages have it in some form.
2\. Type inference: the types of expressions can be unified to the most
general type that works for all of them. I don't know any popular language
that is able to do this.
Most typing I see added to languages these days are cherry-picking
consequences of the HM algorithm. C++'s auto keyword for example is a very
simple version of type inference, type hints in dynamic languages aren't
checked (or checkable) statically, and when runtime tags are involved it's
hard to speak of static type inference.
~~~
MrBuddyCasino
I don't know any popular language that is able to do this.
Wikipedia lists ML and Haskell - are they missing some detail?
~~~
quchen
I wouldn't call ML popular, and in Haskell you have type classes, which have
undecidable type inference. You can write `show (read str)` in Haskell for
example, which parses `str` and then converts it back to `String` again. But
the compiler cannot infer which type you want to parse to: is the input an
Int, a Double, a JSON object, any other read/showable format? In these (rare)
cases, you need explicit type annotations.
(Without type classes, type inference is decidable in Haskell.)
~~~
mafribe
As an aside, Hindley–Milner is DEXPTIME-complete, and indeed you can write 5
line programs that exhibit the worst-case behaviour. That's as bad a _worst-
case_ behaviour as undecidability for all practical purposes.
That said, in practise, HM type inference tends to be very fast, because the
worst-case behaviour only shows up in rather artificial programs that human
programmers would normally not write. If you bound the depth of let-nesting,
HM is polynomial.
~~~
quchen
You're correct on the theoretical side, and writing a value whose type makes
GHC crash is fairly easy. But in multiple years of Haskell, I did not
encounter nor have I heard of a practical case in which type inference time
was a performance issue, let alone a bottleneck or problem.
------
ndesaulniers
Neat to see; I think Rust shines here, since the use of pattern matching is
tighly coupled with error handling of value that may be null; since pattern
matching in Rust is exhaustive. [0] "But, the C++ compiler let me get away
with not handling the case where the pointer was invalid (even if doing
nothing in the case of “handling” it). ... Not only did the [Rust] compiler
prevent me from generating an executable, it told me that a pattern was not
exhaustive, explicitly which one, and what case that was not covered."
[0] [http://nickdesaulniers.github.io/blog/2013/05/07/rust-
patter...](http://nickdesaulniers.github.io/blog/2013/05/07/rust-pattern-
matching-and-the-option-type/)
------
inglor
For people who care about how this is implemented: here are the two relevant
articles
[https://parasol.tamu.edu/~yuriys/papers/OPM13EA.pdf](https://parasol.tamu.edu/~yuriys/papers/OPM13EA.pdf)
[https://parasol.tamu.edu/~yuriys/papers/TS12.pdf](https://parasol.tamu.edu/~yuriys/papers/TS12.pdf)
they're from 2013 and 2012, I recommend starting with the second one as it
gives an overview of the problem.
------
moogly
Impressive effort, but pretty chthonian syntax. And that's with using macros.
Main take away from this for me is that pattern matching needs to be a
language feature to see pervasive use.
~~~
plorkyeran
Stroustrup's pretty opposed to the idea that anything that can be done as a
library without any language extensions automatically should be, so I think
it's safe to say that by the time this is ready for standardization it will
not be a mess of macros that beats the language into submission. It's just a
lot easier to get people to try out your prototype when it doesn't require
first building the compile from some branch.
~~~
kryptiskt
That seems right, in the paper he is pretty open to the idea of extending the
language if the solution is general enough:
"In the future, we would like to implement an actual language extension that
will be capable of working with open patterns. Given such an extension and its
implementation, we would like to look into how code for such patterns can be
optimized without hardcoding the knowledge of the semantics of the patterns
into the compiler. We would also like to experiment with other kinds of
patterns (including those defined by the user), look at the interaction of
patterns with both the standard library and other facilities in the language,
and make views less ad-hoc."
[http://www.stroustrup.com/OpenPatternMatching.pdf](http://www.stroustrup.com/OpenPatternMatching.pdf)
------
nly
I tried Mach7 and couldn't get the thing to work reliably. Compile errors were
horrific. I've had a lot of success with Yomm11[0] though
[0] [https://github.com/jll63/yomm11](https://github.com/jll63/yomm11)
~~~
solodon
Was the problem when you tried to build existing tests or when you tried to
write your own code using the library? In any case I'd be happy to help.
------
Rexxar
Is the long term goal to create a new library (why not in boost) or to test
new ideas to extend the language ?
~~~
herewego
From the presentation materials included in the repo, it looks like it's
intended to be a library example of what they'd like to be a language
extension.
------
solodon
We are looking for contributors to this work, there is still a lot that needs
to be done before we can get a language proposal. Of particular interest are
more uses of the library in various contexts and applications, so if you are a
student working on a language or some tree-rewriting system for a class,
research project etc. we would love to help you try the library solution. Also
if you are a lock-free guru, we'd love some help with making vtbl-map lock-
free. Also, don't hesitate to write me an email with any questions regarding
Mach7.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Musk says Tesla two-factor authentication “embarrassingly late” but coming soon - theBashShell
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/15/21370140/musk-tesla-2fa-security-cars
======
toomuchtodo
Please let them deploy OAuth tokens and permission scopes as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Contactless cards fail to recognise foreign currency - eksith
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/contactless-cards-fail-to-recognise-foreign-currency
======
Someone1234
Contactless card transactions always struck me as bonkers. By the very nature
of the system, there is nothing stopping an individual walking down the street
and stealing whatever the cap is out of everyone's card.
You then immediately use this "money" to buy gift cards, which you then sell
on, turning the dirty money into clean money. By the time they have traced
back the money to the gift card, you're long gone (you can also cross
international borders a couple of times to make things difficult/slow).
The fact banks shut down the Mythbusters' investigation into just how insecure
contactless cards are really tells you everything you need to know. They know
full well they are completely insecure, and they want to keep it hush hush.
Now contactless phone transactions are secure, but contactless phone
transactions require action from the user to confirm the transaction. If the
plastic cards had you press a button to activate contactless-mode they would
be fine too, but they don't...
NFC is great technology that has a lot of uses. This is just a mis-use.
~~~
smackfu
The limited scan range is the main security. 2-6 cm is what I see quoted.
~~~
Someone1234
Hmmm:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24743920](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-24743920)
~~~
jp555
That is eavesdropping a transaction, not soliciting one. Plus every NFC
transaction generates a new token. Even if you record it as the transaction
takes place, that information cannot be used again.
------
sjwright
This doesn't make sense. Why would any transaction occur in a foreign
currency? If I use my Australian credit card to purchase a cup of coffee in
the UK, the transaction occurs in pounds, not Australian dollars.
The terminal never sees "foreign currency". It is the responsibility of
Visa/MasterCard to perform currency conversion.
~~~
cmsj
This isn't about the terminal.
Your card, which sees itself as a payer of AUD, gets a request for a
transaction in GBP. This research suggests it will authorize the transaction
even if it is above whatever normal local limit you have on AUD transactions.
Whether that's actually true or not, is unknown at this stage - this was a
test on a UK contactless card, so maybe we have a slightly different
arrangement than your Australian contactless card would.
It's also fairly unlikely that the payment processors would accept a
transaction higher than the contactless cap, just because it's in a foreign
currency.
It's also entirely possible that they don't bother enforcing a limit because
the UK banks involved won't accept _any_ foreign currency contactless
transactions. I've never tried to use my UK contactless cards abroad.
------
lxgr
The research paper seems to grossly oversimplify the matter of "cashing in"
the fraudulent transactions.
While the authors claim to "appreciate that banks will have a number of
security systems in place to prevent fraud", they seem to neglect that those
systems should effectively render the attack impossible:
\- There are limits for CVM-less transactions; not only in the application
running on the chip, but also for terminals. I think that there is one limit
above which a CVM (e.g. PIN or signature) is required, and another limit for
offline authorizations. CVM-less high-vale transactions would not only be
suspicious, but even non-compliant for most card schemes.
\- It is not trivial to apply for a merchant account, and I guess that a new
account would not be allowed to immediately withdraw recently acquired funds.
(If it were that simple, magnetic stripe card skimmers could simply apply for
a merchant account and avoid all the hassle with PIN skimming, finding
vulnerable merchants or ATMs etc.)
\- A merchant with a higher than average rate of transactions challenged by
cardholders will surely be scrutinized even more closely.
All in all, the implemented failure mode of offline-authorizing all
transactions in unknown currencies seems like a really bad idea and should be
improved. The rest of the paper seems like speculation, though.
(Compare e.g. to Steven J Murdoch's work ("Chip and PIN is broken" etc.),
where the claims have been verified with an actual payment terminal.)
------
mcv
First time I heard about contactless transactions I wondered if people never
learned. Apparently they don't.
Allowing anyone to take my money without my explicit approval, even if it's
only up to 20 pounds at a time, is simply begging to be abused. I don't
understand how anyone could possibly have thought this was a good idea.
------
Guvante
How is the card supposed to know the limit in a foreign currency?
The real question is whether the banks will accept the transaction.
~~~
mey
It could simply deny transaction requests in foreign currency.
~~~
tormeh
That doesn't sound like something the EU would be glad to hear...
~~~
dwild
Set a limit for each currency and if it's not on that list, deny it.
~~~
Guvante
What about currency's that fluctuate? The rate can change a lot in the several
years a card is in consumer hands.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Top 100 most popular Google+ users - tilt
http://socialstatistics.com/
======
mpk
What always surprises me about lists like this is that there are people who
_follow_ thousands of others and they still get taken seriously.
~~~
ipince
Why is that surprising? What's wrong about following thousands of people?
~~~
mpk
Following people implies at least a very basic interest in what they have to
say. You can't follow more than a few hundred people and still keep track of
what they're saying (and that's with a low average post count). If you're
following thousands you're either a bot or just racking up numbers in which
case the follow relationship is totally meaningless.
~~~
petercooper
I would have agreed with you once but now I think that, to a certain extent,
maintaining social connections can be a bit like _physical fitness_. I could
say you can't run under a 4 minute mile or a single race of > 100 miles, yet
people have and do while almost none of us on HN ever will.
My change of heart has come after 5 years of using Twitter. I could only
follow 100 people well at first but somehow it crept up and up. I've had quite
a few culls and now I'm at 1000 people I follow and whenever I go through the
list _I recognize almost every name_. It's not quite a 4 minute mile but I've
been able to get at least a feel for those 1000 folks and know they're ones I
appreciate following.
------
joejohnson
I still find it ironic that Mark Zuckerberg is on G+
~~~
albertzeyer
I thought/think this is a face account. Is there any evidence that this is
real?
~~~
michaelschade
Robert Scoble texted Zuck to verify, which he did.
Source: <https://twitter.com/#!/Scobleizer/status/87321128783192064> (note: he
meant "Google account" specifically in reference to "Google Plus account",
verified elsewhere).
------
joshu
Ha, I'm #60 on the list. I've said two things so far.
------
jpdelatorre
Will be very surprised if Bill Gates is on G+ although he's on Twitter. One
thing for sure, Steve Jobs will never be there.
~~~
jrockway
Is he on any social networks?
For all the imagined rivalry between Jobs and Google, doesn't the iPhone still
use Google Maps?
~~~
basugasubaku
He had a personal Facebook account but quit after being unable to keep up with
all the friend requests. Now he has a Facebook fan page.
------
flocial
I think this perfectly illustrates the trade off of leveraging existing
connections. I'm sure this list would be similar for any other "social
network" that doesn't launch from scratch and build their user base
exclusively by word of mouth.
------
jpdelatorre
Interesting... Mark Z. has more followers than Larry and Sergey.
~~~
tilt
That's about the "surprise"-buzz of seeing him registered
~~~
waterlesscloud
Also, Larry and Sergey don't have a movie about them.
------
akavi
Interesting that the only non-Anglophones seem to Chinese, and that many of
those names appear to be pseudonyms.
------
Niksko
That's it. Twist the knife a little more for us suckers who don't have Google+
invites.
~~~
gwern
Here, let me twist it a little more.
I got sent an invite today. Curious, I followed the link to see what it was
like. It told me I wasn't allowed in because my browser was unsupported
although of course Firefox was supported. My browser is Debian unstable's
Iceweasel. So I gave up and did something else.
------
mashmac2
Only one of the top 50 who can't/don't capitalize their name: Michael
Arrington.
------
tracert
Do these appear to be Google buzz stats to anyone else? Why did it redirect to
zuck's buzz?
------
re
What's with all the 0-friend Google employees?
~~~
tilt
Haven't played with settings that much yet but it could easily be they're
"hiding" people in their circles.
~~~
spullara
That is correct. Apparently that feature was made for them since few others on
that list do the same.
~~~
tonfa
Why would you do a social network with a focus on privacy and not use those
settings? ;)
------
enterneo
I want researchers to come on G+
------
bonch
Half the HN front page, as of this writing, is Google links.
~~~
derwiki
It's been like that all week. Say what you want about g+, being that
consistently on HN is remarkable.
------
thret
I'm quite happy to see Felicia Day #43. She's the hot gamer/geek from The
Guild webshow.
------
DrCatbox
I cant find myself on the list, when was it made?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shum or will the short audios replace text posts? - eye_dle
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.voicerproject.myvoicer&hl=ru&ah=F8sEjvSULBeWxbCavshZe8Ihz7Q
======
eye_dle
Hello, I'm co-founder of Shum, app to record and post 1-minute audio notes
(Twitter for audio) We have MVP available, but there are few users yet.
So, I want to talk about perspectives of audio sharing in future. Will it be
the most proliferated format to express thoughts and share news in your
opinion? Or will such format be short videos(Tik-tok) / smth more advanced
(like 3D models, short animations, whatever)?
I think audio notes will definitely step up. Reasons: 1) People in big cities
spend a lot of time to commute to work from home and back. And cities grow
faster than travel speed. The most convenient ways to interact with
information on the road - audio, as far as hands in public transport, bike,
car are usually occupied. I performed a review among technopark residents,
which showed that 8/10 people consume audio content on the road. 2) Voice
processing methods are close to advance. People tend to use audio messaging
more(from reviews) along with voice assistants. 3) Music streaming services,
of course. There is already popular and working business model of consuming
audio content on freemium base.
What do you think, what are the obstacles in the way for services which allow
to share short audios?
~~~
brudgers
Text is information dense but allows skimming. Audio (and video) are linear.
One minute is a short audio or video message. It's a very very very long text.
Good luck.
~~~
eye_dle
Thank you, think about possible introduction of speech -> text transcription
under each voice. It might not be perfect but useful for rapid communication.
On the contrary, majority of audio content could be conceived as a background.
Text or video require more attention.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I measured hundreds of Levi's jeans and compared how every pair fits - cmogni1
https://www.tryfitfirst.com/home/every-levis-fit-number-compared
======
cehrlich
Interesting article and a large amount of research into something that is
often way more opaque than it should be.
However I’d also like to point out that with large companies like Levi’s there
are often fit discrepancies as large as an inch between ‘identical’ items of
the same style, size, color, etc. This is why I would advise most people to
buy clothes in a retail shop if at all possible.
This comes down to two things.
1\. Making clothes at such large scale and at a low cost means there are many
corners cut in terms of precision, in both cutting and sewing. See this short
video [1] to get an idea of how this process works.
2\. Levi’s and other large companies don’t own their production. Instead they
contract (and then subcontract) to large numbers of both ‘conventional’
factories and piece-work workshops often as small as just some machines in
someone’s living room. These companies make such large orders that no single
factory could ever cover them, so batches of ‘identical’ products are sourced
from a large number of producers, even multiple countries at times. Of course
there are SLAs about the spec that must be met for each garment but the
reality is that it diverges enormously.
[1] [https://youtu.be/BNN3oY9oGPU](https://youtu.be/BNN3oY9oGPU)
~~~
cmogni1
Thanks for checking out the article and writing a thoughtful follow-up
comment. I knew Levi's didn't own their own production, but I wasn't aware
that they outsourced to tiny manufacturing operations (ie piece-work
workshops) as well as conventional factories.
On the subject of manufacturing/fit discrepancies, it might be interesting for
me to write a follow-up piece on my measuring process and what I learned about
garment manufacturing from measuring. Here's a little preview of my process
and of what I learned about Levi's specifically.
The measurements that I used to write the article are my best estimate for the
intended jean specs, rather than an average across measurements taken from
multiple jeans in the same size or from a sample of one jean per line. What I
did was measure jeans in multiple sizes and colorways from each line. The goal
was to get an idea for what Levi's grading rules are (how each pant
measurement, like the thighs, changed from size-to-size), as well as how often
there were deviations from the grading rules (due to manufacturing tolerance)
and if there are any noticeable variations in measurements by colorway or
manufacturing location.
Compared to most other brands, Levi's rarely had egregious manufacturing
problems. That is, every measurement I took was within a 1" margin of error
from the measurement specs I tried to reverse engineer. Moreover, out of the
eight measurements I took per pant, I found that on average only one of those
measurements was off-spec and even then on average it was never off by more
than 1". On the other hand, brands like Goodfellow & Co from Target were way
worse (I basically had to give up on some of the pant lines).
The most surprising thing I found is that Levi's does not seem to
intentionally change their measurements color-by-color (so dark blue jeans
have the same intended measurements as light ones). This might be an even
bigger issue for perceived garment fit than having a 1" manufacturing
tolerance. Dyes affect how people perceive fit because the dying process
affects the feel of the garment, so on average darker clothes feel lighter
than lighter clothes made from the same materials with the same measurements.
After doing all this measuring, my big takeaway about the challenges with
clothing fit is that it's fundamentally a communication problem, not precision
problem. Take manufacturing tolerance, for example. An inch off in some places
can be a real problem, like for the waistband of jeans, but for the most part
it's not too much of an issue. For example, the difference between every
measurement on the leg of the Levi's Skinny and Slim jeans is 1.75". An inch
difference in one part of the leg won't completely transform the fit. The real
problem with how apparel is sold is that all these details, like manufacturing
tolerance, are opaque and swept under the rug. If consumers better information
about things like fit, they could at least more confidently make a purchase
(or choose not to make one).
Anyway, that's my rant! I'll probably write a follow-up that more coherently
pieces some of those points together :-)
~~~
j88439h84
Wow, I'm impressed at the work you put into this!
I wonder if you'd be willing to open source your measurements. As a stats nerd
I'd love to build some models with that data, just for fun.
------
def8cefe
I wish I could try some of these but as far as I can tell Levis only makes
501s in my size (32x36). Tall and lanky problems.
~~~
cmogni1
Just a heads up: I'll be adding the 501's to the post soon.
I didn't even think about adding something on available sizes (which fit
numbers come in short/long lengths or smaller/bigger waists). I should add
that!
In the meantime, I checked to see which Levi's I've measured do come in length
36 for a size 32, and there are a handful of them: * Levi's 505 Regular Fit *
Levi's 514 Straight Fit * Levi's 527 Boot Cut Fit * Levi's 541 Athletic Fit
Unfortunately there isn't too much variety, given that the 501's are also a
regular seat/straight leg, but the 505/514's should fit a bit different and
come in 32x36, so they might be worth a try!
~~~
def8cefe
Wow, thanks man. Really appreciate that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YC Jobs - ycjobs
https://ycjobs.org
======
devins
I love the idea. Pretty tedious without the ability to search.
------
sharemywin
could you build a map view?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Helvetitee: Custom tee. No bullshit. (Our four-day startup) - tomcavill
http://helvetitee.com/tee/%23HackerNews
======
antihero
So £25 (fairly expensive) for a t-shirt based on a fairly dead meme that is
available in one colour and can have no other details? Apple fans are going to
_love_ it.
In all serious, I'd be tempted if this was sub ten quid but for £25 you can
get so so so much more for your money, and if you're willing to pay that for a
white t-shirt with a word on it you have far too much money.
~~~
tomcavill
Fair point. We'll come up with a better price as everyone seems to agree it's
too high.
~~~
rhizome
How did you come up with the current price?
~~~
tomcavill
We wanted to ensure we could post anywhere in the world and not lose money or
have to charge extra. I think at this price orders will be slow though, so
we've slashed it to $25 to see what happens. Should still make a profit unless
the order is in very far-flung lands.
------
courtewing
I really dig the simplicity of the process. I love that the entire top of the
homepage not only shows exactly what you offer, but it is, essentially, your
entire user-facing product. The price point is a little high compared to
normal custom t-shirt offerings, but if you're offering higher quality shirts
and a better user experience, then that isn't a bad thing.
A couple of suggestions:
1\. The person/model used for the primary image/ordering system looks
_miserable_. "Look, you can get your own custom shirt, but it isn't going to
make you happy" doesn't exactly seem like the message you're trying to send
here! A smile would go a really long way. Also, the cropping around the hair
makes it look a little less professional. I'm not a designer, and I'm sure it
is difficult to get something like that perfect, but I think it is worth the
effort given how prominent the photo is.
2\. The photos of the t-shirts themselves make the t-shirts look like they're
low quality (specifically, really thin). I'm not a huge fan of white shirts in
general, but I definitely don't want _any_ t-shirt that I can actively see
through. Sure, your "gallery" model may be attractive, but it doesn't look
very professional (nor does it speak highly of your shirts) if you can see her
bra through the product.
3\. I feel like the "About, delivery & more" link should really link to the
"About" section. I was a little confused when it jumped down the page and I
was just staring at some random "suggestions" which, in my case, were not
interesting. There's nothing wrong with the suggestions, I just don't think
they should be more prominent than "About".
4\. I'm on a 27" thunderbolt display, and the marketing material in your
bottom tabs is taking up less than half of the bottom of my screen when I am
scrolled down as far as I can go. That's not the worst thing in the world, but
I would rather scroll down than just change the bottom 40% of my screen when I
click "tabs".
5\. I'd want more information about the product, the company, and possibly you
before I order anything. If you're trying to sell quality, then a full page
talking about how damn awesome your shirts are would go a long way to
converting me to a customer. And after you sold me on the product itself, I
still wouldn't feel safe ordering anything from an unestablished company with
no business address, almost no information about the people behind it, and no
contact means other than email/twitter.
All in all though, it is cool to see what you can accomplish in only four
days. Best of luck.
~~~
tomcavill
Thanks for the really comprehensive feedback.
I actually agree with every point you raise. We've got a great deal to improve
upon but like you say at the end, it has only been a quick project thus far.
I hope you'll take a look back (or follow one of us on twitter - @tomcavill /
@helvetitee / @ccharlesworth) so you can see the site improve over the next
few weeks.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment.
~~~
ljd
I think the site is pretty awesome but I had the same exact feeling about the
price. If you're interested, I don't mind helping out with that.
We have an API that you can use to maximize profit over time. You send us
order information, we build a pricing model, then you make calls out to the
model to either update it with a new order or get a price.
For more info (we actually use tshirts as an example):
<https://ventata.com/Ecommerce/Home> && <https://github.com/Ventata/API>
Send me an email and I'll give you an API key.
(Don't go through my normal site, you'll have to pay that way)
------
citricsquid
I like that you included photos of the printed t-shirts, also I like that
you're using a printer with no web presence so we can't go straight to the
supplier, hah.
A cute idea that might help people to spread their shirts: If someone creates
a shirt (let's say I'm miley cyrus and I make one for my fans, "I <3
@mileycyrus") and it gets x (5?) sales they get a free copy of the t-shirt.
That would give users an incentive to share their creation with their Facebook
friends and Twitter followers.
The way you described the t-shirts makes them sound quite appealing so I
figure I'll order one, no idea what to put on it though... :( maybe "I just
wanted a t-shirt".
oh also I assume "handmade in London" refers to the business; but with
t-shirts it would read as if you're saying the t-shirts are handmade in
London, which isn't true.
~~~
tomcavill
That's a great idea, and something close to what we're thinking a few versions
down the line. The free shirt after 5 purchases is very clever, and probably a
better model than standard affiliate stuff.
I've changed the footer based on hearing this suggestion a couple of times :)
------
emelski
There are literally dozens of "make your own t-shirt" offerings online, most
with a wider array of shirt colors and the ability to include your own
graphics in addition to text, at a price comparable or cheaper than you are
offering (cafepress.com, inktastic.com, etc). I've used these services myself
and found them easy, not at all "cumbersome" as you state on helvetitee.com.
What value does your offering have in comparison to your competition?
~~~
tomcavill
We view our simplicity as a benefit. Sure SpreadShirt and their ilk offer
thousands of options, but when you _just_ want a message printed clearly on a
tshirt, we provide a solution that you can take advantage of in seconds. It's
very easy to make a pig's ear of your shirt with those other services. With
Helvetitee, it's actually hard to make something ugly.
Your point on the pricing is fair, it's something we'll have to monitor and
find out what people are comfortable with.
Thanks for the feedback.
------
bbee
Can't help but call out that the homepage uses a image ripped off America
Apparel
([http://store.americanapparel.net/bb401.html?cid=198-313&...](http://store.americanapparel.net/bb401.html?cid=198-313&c=White))
and they sell Gildan shirts. Still, more of a side project than I've ever
done.
~~~
tomcavill
Guilty. We took a few shortcuts to get it done in our timeframe (4 days). We
will of course be replacing this ASAP (we were originally going to use AA
hence this image).
Just wanted to get the first version out there and pick up feedback.
~~~
bbee
Sorry, couldn't help myself ;) I really like how straightforward the
UI/ordering process is. Very impressive for only 4 days work.
------
MojoJolo
I like it. One comment though, I thought the "Type to edit your text" is a
textbox. It's because I clicked somewhere in the website and the cursor focus
is not in the shirt. :)
~~~
tomcavill
Changed the helper text, hopefully this fixes.
~~~
MojoJolo
That might do the trick.
------
lifeguard
This is a fail:
No XXL sizes in a store for hackers?!?
Nice design, though!
~~~
tomcavill
Haha, we will react to demand on that front.
Thanks re: design. Nice to hear.
------
noonespecial
Nice. Very nice. The simplicity is extremely appealing. I'm going to jump on
the "price too high" bandwagon as well. Unless you really need that price to
cover costs and make any profit at all, I'm going to suggest that you can make
_more_ money selling them for just a little less.
You're sitting right at that point where a slight ease in price is going to
result in a significant increase in quantity sold. Unless your production
capacity is constrained or you're already very near your break-even point on
cost/price, charge less and sell more.
~~~
tomcavill
Thanks. You're right. We've changed the price down to $25 based on so much
feedback suggesting it.
------
bluetidepro
For ~$40(USD) I want a much higher quality shirt than Gildan. That seems
ridiculously over priced. With a quick Google search "Gildan's 100% cotton,
ringspun, pre-shrunk sofstyle tshirts" (what the about page says you use), the
shirts cost less than $3.00(USD) to buy in bulk.
_Suggestion:_ Why not lower your profit margin a little bit (you have to be
making at least $30+ USD on each order right now) to make it more affordable?
I just imagine this could probably go much more viral at a more affordable
price.
~~~
tomcavill
All the feedback so far indicates our pricing is too high. That'll definitely
be the first thing we'll fix.
------
tomcavill
Thanks for all the feedback so far. We've changed the price to $25 (formerly
£25) as almost everyone said the price was too (damn) high. Margins will be
cut significantly, but it was definitely too high before, and we'll still make
a small profit with the new price.
We're probably going to put it up to $30 after the opening two weeks, so
consider this an 'early adopter' discount...
Here's a humble suggestion for fellow HNers:
<http://helevetitee.com/tee/Founder>
~~~
alexchamberlain
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YOU ARE BRITISH; DON'T PRICE IN DOLLARS.
~~~
tomcavill
We'll intro geo-based pricing asap :)
~~~
alexchamberlain
I know the GP wasn't very well reasoned, but it really frustrates me that
British startups think it is ok it's OK to price in dollars. You are
alienating your home market and Europe in order to sell to another. Tackle
your home market first; if people in the US really want your product, they can
put up with fluctuating prices and crappy exchange rates for once.
------
marknutter
I was really hoping this was going to be a way to get a t-shirt that has the
perfect cut and fit, which is difficult to do. I'd pay real money for a site
that guided me on how to get accurate measurements of all the key areas which
then enabled them to create perfect, custom-fit basic t-shirts in a wide
variety of colors and styles. Heck.. even just white crew-necks.
------
davidtyleryork
I think this site is going after a good initial target market: hackers. Making
it dead fucking simple is a nice touch
BUT 25 British Pounds for a tshirt basically makes you ridiculously expensive
to any American. Why would I pay $40 for a t-shirt ever? It doesn't matter how
"hacker cool" it is :)
If you localized, you would significantly improve your prospects in the US.
------
highace
My input: more colours, and a better cut t-shirt. No one I know wears plain
white round-neck cotton t-shirts.
How about something like this:
[http://images.asos.com/inv/media/9/3/6/7/2477639/greymarl/im...](http://images.asos.com/inv/media/9/3/6/7/2477639/greymarl/image1xl.jpg)
Taken from here: [http://www.asos.com/ASOS/ASOS-V-Neck-T-
Shirt/Prod/pgeproduct...](http://www.asos.com/ASOS/ASOS-V-Neck-T-
Shirt/Prod/pgeproduct.aspx?iid=2477639&SearchQuery=asos%20v%20neck&Rf-800=-1,9&sh=0&pge=0&pgesize=20&sort=-1&clr=Greymarl)
If they can sell them for 6 quid, surely you could pick up something similar
for just a few pounds.
~~~
tomcavill
Yeah I like v-necks too. It's definitely something we'll consider, but it has
to balance with not having too many options (simplicity being the by-word for
this project).
------
cpher
I like the concept, but the photos make it look like the fabric is "less than
stellar." Can you provide a hardy/hearty fabric that doesn't show the skin
beneath the models? I created a rather expensive t-shirt here in Chicago and
the fabric was pathetic....I felt sorry for my friend who was the recipient,
even though my "logo" was clever. No one wants a t-shirt that shows the
underlying chest hair or nipples of the people.
~~~
tomcavill
I know the fabric does appear a little thin in the photos, but honestly,
they're really high quality tees. We consulted with our printer and they
assured us they are the best available at a reasonable price point. I think
the see-throughness is exacerbated by the harsh flash from the camera. In
reality they are a good weight and made from high quality cotton.
------
Wintamute
Liked it! Although the image of the model is horribly cut out, especially on
the left of his head. Its the very first thing I saw and it screams
"amateurish" at me. Not that the site as a whole is amateurish, just that bit!
Also the photo looks washed out and a bit fuzzy. His expression is a bit bored
and/or confrontational too.
~~~
tomcavill
Accept that. It looks a damn sight better on a light background, but we
changed it to dark gray hours before launch. The image will be replaced
shortly so I'll sort out my cutting skills then ;)
------
ethan_t
Congrats to you guys. Loving the dead simple process and clean UI design. I
will definitely put in an order for the support of hacker's spirit.
Btw, how do you plan to do marketing on this? (Besides posting it on Hacker
News - which probably brought you a ton of traffic already)
~~~
tomcavill
Thanks, very kind.
We're going to try and utilise the fact you can 'create' a tshirt with just a
link, i.e. <http://helvetitee.com/tee/foo-bar>. It's so quick to react to
trends and happenings, or suggest a tee to someone based on their actions,
that we feel the product can benefit from virality and p2p sharing. Plus a
healthy mix of the usual Google ads etc.
~~~
shanecleveland
That's an excellent idea. Love the simplicity.
------
ruswick
I don't see any value in this as a product. $25 for a shirt is incredibly
expensive, especially printing is limited to text in one typeface on one side
of one type of shirt. It's pricey and limited. I just don't see why I would
want to use it.
------
aw3c2
Random feedback: I tried removing the "type to edit your text" text and enter
my text there.
Your model looks very negative in expression. Also you have some left-over
glow around the head.
------
eth
Dynamic volume/quantity pricing would be cool.
Tees are light enough that whether I order 1 or 3 any increase in weight (and
thus shipping costs) will be nominal.
~~~
tomcavill
Definitely on the roadmap
------
logn
The domain name needs some serious improvement. I think I'd need flashcards to
remember how to spell it or even try to google it.
~~~
mark-r
The site name implies Helvetica, but uses Arial in the examples. Anybody who
knows the difference will never come back.
~~~
tomcavill
We are using Helvetica Neue with Helvetica as a fall-back, and a Helvetica
clone (Nimbus sans) after those two in the font stack. You'd have to have some
funny configuration not to see Helvetica. What's your setup?
~~~
seekely
On a Windows box, Helvetica is aliased to Arial as true Helvetica is not
installed.
~~~
tomcavill
Didn't realise that. Looking for ways to ensure that doesn't happen. Do you
have any ideas?
------
gadders
Good effort for making a bootstrap site not too bootstrappy. Also, how many
people pronounce it Helv-Titty?
~~~
tomcavill
Ha. Maybe too many. We're not closed to the idea of changing the name if we
think of a good one. Suggestions?
Thanks re: bootstrap.
~~~
logn
shirts.io
~~~
tomcavill
That's very cool. I wonder if .io domains are too geek-centric, though?
It's very memorable.
------
slantyyz
It would be cool if they included Cooper Black for those of us who grew up in
the 70s and 80s.
------
superchink
It looks like they've already dropped the price from $45 to $25. Huge
difference…
------
rorrr
$40 for a shirt with a word on it? That's bullshit.
I can have a custom Gildan shirt for $16:
<http://www.customizedgirl.com/category/menstops.htm>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Federated Learning - epsilon-greedy
https://florian.github.io/federated-learning/
======
ur-whale
TL;DR :
Compute the gradient of the error on the user's device and ship that to a
server-side centralized model to update its weights.
It's a very cool idea that has a lot of interesting applications (among which:
learning large statistical user behaviors without "spying" on them).
However, there is an unspoken claim that the gradient update doesn't carry
enough information about the user data to reconstruct any of it server-side.
I'm still waiting to see a formal proof of that, and my gut says, if the
servers sees enough gradient updates from a given user, it's likely possible
to rebuild the original data.
~~~
marten-de-vries
> However, there is an unspoken claim that the gradient update doesn't carry
> enough information about the user data to reconstruct any of it server-side.
This was a concern for me as well, but the 'Privacy' section of the post
addresses this. In short, the algorithm is adapted such that the influence of
a single user on the model is limited, and noise is added. I'm not
knowledgable enough on differential privacy to know if that covers all
possible privacy attacks, but it looks like a good start.
Personally, I'm now more worried about adversaries trying to mess up the
model. How many clients need to submit fake updates for the training process
to never converge? If it's 50% that's probably fine, but I'm afraid a much
smaller amount of users could derail the process already.
~~~
LeanderK
VERY interesting questions! Unfortunatly I can't answer the questions, since I
don't know enough about them.
To make the literature search easier: Your second cocern is called "poisioning
attacks" and is one of the problems "adversarial machine learning" is
concerned with.
------
ddtaylor
What do people think of OpenMined related to "Federated Learning" ?
[https://www.openmined.org/](https://www.openmined.org/)
------
roystonvassey
Cool idea! I see the iOS keyboard already do this to an extent. I often type
words in my native language in English. I see that over time it learns these
and predicts a bit better when I need to type it again. Of course, if it
collected a larger corpus from many such users, allowing us to tag this as,
say a corpus of Kannada words, I can see a cool application of this kind of
learning
------
milkey_mouse
Has anybody tried applying this to a blockchain by having the PoW be
improvements to models in previous blocks or something? This seems like such
an obvious idea (especially with all the hype around blockchain nowadays) that
either this exists or I'm missing something crucial about the technique.
~~~
edhu2017
definitely has been done before.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How safe is Google / Facebook sign in the long term? - quietthrow
Given that almost every useful websites allows you to sign on using Google Plus or facebook its easy to sign up for various sites. But what happens to your data once you stop using the third party site and revoke access from Google plus or facebook?<p>Looking to understand how safe is using Google/Facebook single sign on on site from a LONG TERM privacy perspective.<p>What are the advantages and disadvantages of using single sign on in the long term on a users privacy.
======
MichaelCrawford
I wouldn't know I never use that kind of login.
That is, if a site doesn't permit me to log in on just that one site then I
don't sign in at all. It is for that reason that I never comment on Medium, as
it only permits Twitter or Facebook sign in.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FizzBuzz with Matlab and CVX. TensorFlow Version Had Bad Feature Engineering - siilats
https://www.facebook.com/siilats/posts/10104962964136889
======
siilats
I made an actual solution
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google performed the first quantum simulation of a chemical reaction - cyrc
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2253089-google-performed-the-first-quantum-simulation-of-a-chemical-reaction/
======
alpineidyll3
The levels of hype in this announcement are astounding. The type of
calculation they ran was literally run by hand at the dawn of the last
century. It was a mean field calculation, meaning the actual quantum nature of
the device wasn't really used, the inputs and outputs were essentially
classical degrees of freedom. A more accurate title would be: Google twiddles
with 72 unitary rotations, makes ludicrous argument they are at the cutting
edge to keep lab open.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Curl Wttr.in - old-gregg
https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in
======
rsapkf
I use this all the time. I find this option pretty neat:
curl wttr.in/Moon
Shows current lunar phase.
I use Termux[0] on my phone with curl installed. Pretty handy.
Also, check out rate.sx[1] from the same author:
curl rate.sx
Shows information about current exchange rates of cryptocoins.
More similar console services: [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-
services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)
[0]: [https://termux.com/](https://termux.com/)
[1]: [https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx](https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx)
~~~
matt_LLVW
shameless plug: [https://e.xec.sh](https://e.xec.sh)
~~~
irs
another shameless plug:
curl ipaddress.sh
~~~
notRobot
also
curl findip.win
------
ikornaselur
This is one of those services that I love when I find them, use extensively
for the next 30 minutes and forget about. But I keep coming back to it!
I even spent a time to make a simple function in my shell to cut off the
output after today and accept a location name
w () {
curl -s "wttr.in/$1?M1q" | head -17
}
and then I can just do
w london
to get the weather for London today.
But, like most of the functions/aliases I create, I can't remember the last
time I used it (except couple of times when I see someone talking about it and
I remember about it)
~~~
igor_chubin
Just add `F` to the options, and you don't need `| head -17` then
~~~
ikornaselur
Oh, awesome! I don't know if they added this after I created the function or
if I just didn't notice it.
EDIT: I just realised that "they" is actually you!
------
mintplant
A while back I made something along similar lines, though not quite as useful.
curl https://poptart.spinda.net
~~~
peterburkimsher
When I type "cat" in the terminal, this is what I expect to see.
~~~
DarkWiiPlayer
alias cat='curl [https://poptart.spinda.net'](https://poptart.spinda.net')
------
jtokoph
This scared me the first time I tried it because the output was perfectly
sized to my terminal. I couldn't fathom how it was possible for the server to
know my terminal width.
It turns out my terminal was set at 125 characters wide and wttr.in outputs a
125 character width display.
~~~
Drdrdrq
Curious - wouldn't it be possible to output terminal escape characters to
perform some "magic" like moving at the end of the line? Or does curl protect
users by not outputting them? (I think not, because fetching a binary file by
mistake sometimes garbles the output)
~~~
igor_chubin
It is possible, but it brings nothing, because you don't only need to move to
the end of the line but print something in between, and for that the server
mush know the width of your terminal
------
teddyh
I will take this opportunity to offer some caution:
From what I understand, “curl example.com” is almost exactly as risky as “curl
example.com | bash”, since curl does not escape terminal command sequences,
and those can include key rebindings; e.g. your Enter key can be rebound to
“rm -rf ∗” or “sendfile ∗ [email protected]”.
~~~
progval
> those can include key rebindings; e.g. your Enter key can be rebound to “rm
> -rf ∗” or “sendfile ∗ [email protected]”.
oh my god. From
[http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm](http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm)
:
> Set Key Definition <ESC>[{key};"{string}"p
> Associates a string of text to a keyboard key. {key} indicates the key by
> its ASCII value in decimal.
But I can't reproduce it; in my terminal (gnome-terminal),
`print('\x1b[97;"echo foo"p')` just shows `cho foo"p`.
So it looks like not all terminals implement it, if any?
~~~
JoshTriplett
No modern terminal implements any of the dangerous escape sequences.
------
mbreese
I also like how you can add zipcodes or location names as a path and it
returns that. At least it works with zipcodes, cities, airport codes,
landmarks. Not sure what else.
Using this, I found out it was currently raining in Paris. And then saw that
the thunder was rendered as emojis.
I wonder what other options there are... for example, I'm in the US, so it
returns temperature in Fahrenheit even if I requested information about
France. Are there options to change this?
But, all in all, this is really nice and polished.
~~~
jamesponddotco
There are quite a few options, it is pretty cool. You can check them out by
hitting the :help endpoint[1].
I usually call it with a few of them to make the output cleaner, and without
colors[2].
curl --compressed
[https://wttr.in/"$location"?QTAF](https://wttr.in/"$location"?QTAF)
Where `$location` is either the location you want the weather for, or an IP
address.
[1] [https://wttr.in/:help](https://wttr.in/:help)
[2]
[https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.loca...](https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.local/bin/weather)
------
seanlaff
I’ve been curling this for years but was not aware of the new v2 api that
shows hourly ascii charts. Looks sweet!
------
jstarks
A good opportunity to remind everyone that we finally inboxed curl into
Windows 10, so this works (with color output) from a stock Windows command
prompt.
Better late than never, I hope.
~~~
fortran77
No need for that. You can do this:
(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri wttr.in).content
from Powershell. Why not use the happy path?
~~~
sonofhans
Serious question -- not a flame war :)
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. I've been typing `curl -O
http: ...` into command prompts for decades, and that Powershell incantation
looks awfully unwieldy.
In what way is it the happy path?
~~~
fortran77
Because it's the native Windows answer. There's no need to make Windows look
like Unix. It's great (really!) the way it was designed.
~~~
feteru
Any good resources for using Powershell? Is there ever a reason not to use
powershell? Coming from OSX it doesn't really make sense to me that there are
two terminals installed by default, and I end up just using WSL ubuntu. Also I
don't really know the commands so it feels crippled to me (no ssh (still?
idk), not many tools, etc)
~~~
majkinetor
> Is there ever a reason not to use powershell?
No, you should always use it.
Its maybe a problem when ultimate performance is in question, but you can go
long way with Powershell - I recently had a web service SOAP client
implemented in it that did millions of requests in an hour using threads in
less then 50 lines of code consuming less then 3% of server resources (running
entire country in single day actually)
> I end up just using WSL ubuntu
You can have basiclly anthing working without WSL (except maybe docker
correctly).
> Also I don't really know the commands so it feels crippled to me (no ssh
> (still? idk),
SSH is there. Learn commands along the way. You should def take a book like
this one: [https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-
in-a-...](https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-in-a-month-
of-lunches-second-edition)
> not many tools,
All usual tools, linux and windows, can be used. You have majority of them
hosted on chocolatey.
------
nergal
It's really nice but I started to use this a year ago and had to stop because
they always ran out of resources. Hopefully this is fixed since it's such a
nice and easy service!
------
KitDuncan
Has nobody mentioned, that this is just wego as a service?
~~~
szszrk
Their github page explains this early in project page, so no harm done, I
guess?
~~~
KitDuncan
Oops, don't know how I missed that. Sorry!
~~~
igor_chubin
To say truth, it is not just a wego as a service since many years, but is
started like that indeed
Now it has a lot of additional features:
* one-line output for status lines
* astronomical information
* translation to 70+ languages
* geolocation
* full fledged multilingual location search
* HTML frontend
* PNG frontend
* Slack support
* scalable architecture (it handles 10M+ queries daily for the moment of writing, with avg processing time under 30 msec)
It took one weak for the initial wego-as-a-service wrapper implementation, and
more than 4 years (and 99 contributors) for the rest.
But we of course honor wego, and mention it in the README, and on each HTML
page in browser
~~~
elcomet
Nice ! Did you contribute back your improvements to wego ?
~~~
igor_chubin
No, because they are not implemented as a part of wego; wego is used just for
visualization of one of the views (v1). The rest is implemented outside of it
------
tomjakubowski
Rendering a richer UI for curl users with terminal escapes is brilliant! Has
this been done elsewhere?
~~~
progval
[https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-
services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)
------
hn3333
Very cool, if i could suggest improvements it would be another view that shows
some sort of line graph of temperature and rain and sunshine hours. Also
thanks for the T option - useful if your terminal has a white background( like
Apple's default).
~~~
igor_chubin
curl v2.wttr.in
and for the white background:
curl wttr.in/?I
------
runxel
What I am most amazed of is how they manage to get my actual location always
right...
I mean, we all now those "geolocate me" things on websites, but I've never
encountered a _single_ page where it worked; it's always hilariously all over
the place (shows the headquarter of my provider, or just locates me in
Frankfurt at the DE-CIX).
But wttr.in is different. I wonder what the magic ingredient is and why no one
else seemingly has it.
~~~
nvarsj
It depends entirely on the geolocation database being used to map your IP
address to location. wttr.in seems to use
[https://www.ip2location.com/](https://www.ip2location.com/) so maybe they
have better mappings for your ISP. Bigger providers tend to use Akamai or
similar.
------
Awelton
I use this so much that if I start to curl something else I type wttr after it
from muscle memory and have to delete it.
------
lazyjones
Would be nice to have Sixel/iTerm output, but almost 40 years after most
computers could do split text/graphics modes, nobody uses these and we're
looking at ASCII graphics instead... Might want to look at using ℃ and Emoji
though for people with modern terminals.
------
SifJar
Looks like lightning breaks the formatting a little, at least for me.
Otherwise, very cool. Guessing lighting is a unicode char & not being counted
"correctly", which I believe is a challenging thing
~~~
igor_chubin
The problem is that it depends on the terminal, and you can render this
character properly for all 100% of the terminals on the server side
------
beilabs
Welcome to my alias list. This provides better weather information than local
news websites who have dedicated pages. That said, I'm in a developing country
where it's just monsoon all the damm time :D
~~~
I_complete_me
Been using it for years here in Ireland. I have the following: alias
wett='curl wttr.in/limerick'. :-)
~~~
igor_chubin
Try this:
curl ga.wttr.in/limerick
------
antpls
It would be cool to have a curl-able service directory of those services on
the web, and also a standard way to know the quota of refresh, and some
standard /help URL to know more about the options
~~~
igor_chubin
curl wttr.in/:help
and the curlable directory is almost there
As an interim solution, you can use this:
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chubin/awesome-console-services/master/README.md
------
justaj
One of the downsides is that if you have curl set to not use a user agent, it
(along with many such services) won't work.
So
curl --user-agent "" wttr.in
just serves you unformatted HTML.
~~~
igor_chubin
Just use
curl --user-agant "" wttr.in?A
for that.
The `A` option enforces ANSI output (curl wttr.in/:help for more)
~~~
justaj
Oh nice, thanks! I wish more services would do that.
(btw there's a typo, should be --user-agent)
------
DNied
Another cool command-line weather service:
finger [email protected]
also includes forecasts (try city+24).
------
herjazz
Any other similar services for the terminal out there?
~~~
igor_chubin
curl cheat.sh
curl rate.sx
curl qrenco.de
and the rest from [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-
services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)
------
Jaruzel
I love this on Linux, but it is also a good example of how awful the standard
Windows command prompt is at formatting :(
~~~
svnpenn
Works fine for me (Windows 10 1909 with Windows Terminal)
~~~
jevogel
That's because Windows Terminal is not the standard Windows console. :P
------
hirundo
It'd be nice to be able to point to be able to point this to my backyard
weather station, via wunderground or such.
------
vmurthy
Neat script! On a related note and something I use more frequently : curl
ifconfig.me
Easy way to find the public IP :)
~~~
oedmarap
Shameless plug: curl ipaddy.net
Returns public IP address, ISO country code, User-Agent string, and a new line
(to ensure the terminal prompt doesn't get shifted after displaying the
response).[0][1]
\- [0] [https://use.ipaddy.net](https://use.ipaddy.net) \- [1]
[https://github.com/oedmarap/ipaddy](https://github.com/oedmarap/ipaddy)
~~~
igor_chubin
I hoe it is listed at [https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-
services](https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services)
------
noahmasur
Love this! Every day I find fewer reasons to ever leave my terminal.
------
fredfsh
Awesome! Resolves ambiguity pretty well.
------
vmception
okay, thats pretty cool. this art and utility shouldn't have fallen by the way
side
------
narven
perfect command for a bash alias
alias godstatus='curl wttr.in'
~~~
dredmorbius
Make it a shell function and you can parameterise invocation.
weather ()
{
curl http://wttr.in/${1:-LAX}
}
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Sparser – A Multilanguage Parser - austincheney
* <a href="https://sparser.io" rel="nofollow">https://sparser.io</a><p>* <a href="https://github.com/Unibeautify/sparser" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Unibeautify/sparser</a><p>This is my attempt at creating a universal language parser. It attempts to solve a couple of problems:<p>* Support multiple languages<p>* Recursively extend support to languages embedded within other languages<p>* Output a uniform format for all supported languages<p>This is a personal project so any feedback would be helpful. Something interesting I found after I built it is that this parser is not as fast to write output as many other JavaScript parsers, but its output is much faster to read from due to the simplicity and predictability of the format.
======
jhpriestley
I think the emphasis on embedded languages is interesting. A lot of modern
code is stuff like js-in-jsx-in-html-in-yaml etc., a fact which isn't really
addressed by most tooling.
It seems like you're aiming to make a more flexible lexer, with support for
nested contexts. My immediate question is how this differs from a grammar-
driven parser. Does it handle types of embedding that can not easily be
encoded as CFGs? Or is it faster or simpler than e.g. an Earley or LR parser?
I couldn't find an answer to these questions on a casual read of the docs.
~~~
austincheney
The biggest short-coming I have found with my approach is that I have not
systematically mapped out the language nesting identity. At the moment I am
utterly reliant upon rules in a given language to identify the thing that is
nested. For example I know that stuff in an HTML style tag will be CSS,
because the rules of HTML say so.
This approach has limitations where the relationship between an embedded
grammar is not clear. Is a markup grammar that contains something like Liquid
template tags HTML or XML? How do you specify the code by language name,
because the embedded grammar is the Liquid tags but you want to identify the
grammar of the template tags apart from other template languages. What if a
markup language instance contains template tags from unrelated grammars?
I could auto detect the language each time the grammar changes, but that would
be slow and introduce unexpected results. The precise solution would be to
allow users a means to define nesting based upon syntax or structure and I
have not thought through this yet.
------
indentit
I like the uniform output, nice work!
I personally think its easier to use something like the `sublime-syntax`
grammar format to define a lexer (with a project like syntect[1]), rather than
implementing each language's lexer as code, but that would need some extra
annotation to get such a nice structured output. The bonus, however, if
someone where to work on such an addition, would be that syntax highlighting
will use the same engine and deal with incomplete/incorrect code consistently
[1]:
[https://github.com/trishume/syntect](https://github.com/trishume/syntect)
------
nemoniac
It would be helpful if you say that your focus is markup, scripting and
styling languages and not programming languages in general or even natural
languages.
This is far from a "universal language parser".
~~~
austincheney
I have intention to extend support to other languages, such as PHP or Python.
I just haven't written that code yet. It mostly seems to work with Java and C#
right now, but I lack the tests necessary to guarantee such support.
------
qeyefre6
> [https://sparser.io](https://sparser.io)
Your home page eats my CPU and makes my notebook hot enough to boil water.
Whatever you're doing on that page, please stop it.
~~~
austincheney
The cpu burn is actually gpu burn. It is caused by a subtle animated effect in
the background and impacts Chrome more than all other modern browsers
combined. I will be turning this off in the next release.
~~~
qeyefre6
Thank-you
------
samanator
why is it that when the input is (excluding all quotation marks)
"obj = {};" the last token is ";"
but when the input is "obj = {}" the last token is "x;"
does "x;" mean an implicit ";"?
~~~
austincheney
I introduce pseudo tokens in place of missing syntax. Using the option
_correct_ converts the pseudo tokens into actual tokens. The pseudo tokens
always start with _x_ and can be easily ignored or discarded by any consuming
application.
I include the pseudo tokens for two reasons. The first reason is that they
allow the parser to reason about the code more closely to the language
specification. For example the specification says statements MUST be
terminated by a semicolon and if a semicolon is not provided one will be
inserted automatically (ASI). The second reason is that the pseudo tokens are
necessary to eliminate certain ambiguity necessary for some advanced features.
------
otabdeveloper2
> The Universal Parser
> Doesn't actually parse, it's a lexer.
Good lord!
~~~
austincheney
A lexer is a scanner that creates a token list. A parser may contain lexers
and outputs a data structure.
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_analysis)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing#Parser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing#Parser)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Parse for IoT to Create an Order Button - mattieuga
http://blog.parse.com/2015/04/01/using-parse-for-iot-to-create-an-order-button/
======
joezydeco
Spark has some interesting stuff in this area.
$19 for the upcoming Photon board, and $39 for the cellular-connected
Electron.
[https://store.spark.io/](https://store.spark.io/)
Arduino seems like overkill here.
------
PanMan
The interesting part of the Dash isn't the backend (something that can handle
API calls), but the hardware, and how cheap they can make it.
~~~
icebraining
As I mentioned in the other thread, the ESP8266 is a Wifi chip that you can
buy for $5/each on an order of 1, and can run custom code, so you'd only need
one of those plus a case, battery and button. You could probably build a
button for less than $10, without even ordering large quantities.
~~~
oasisbob
Don't forget your power regulation.
------
aikah
Does anyone knows the tech behind cloud code? how do they execute javascript
safely on the server ?
------
doomspork
The title led me to believe that Amazon had teamed up with Parse for this
which I would have found surprising.
This has nothing to do with Amazon Dash other than using a button trigger an
HTTP request.
~~~
chatmasta
I think dash announcement is why facebook is releasing this blog post now.
~~~
doomspork
The title has changed and it is now clearer, the title was originally "Amazon
Dash built on Parse".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Signs point to Apple abandoning OS X branding in favor of “MacOS” - OberstKrueger
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/04/signs-point-to-apple-abandoning-os-x-branding-in-favor-of-macos/
======
dv_dt
So soon we might be able to say MacOS goes to 11?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Strangeness of Black Holes - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/68/context/the-strangeness-of-black-holes
======
ithkuil
I found these lectures by Leonard Susskind very insightful:
\- Leonard Susskind on The World As Hologram
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9t))
\- Leonard Susskind | "ER = EPR" or "What's Behind the Horizons of Black
Holes?"
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBPpRqxY8Uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBPpRqxY8Uw))
\- Entanglement and Complexity: Gravity and Quantum Mechanics
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9crggox5rbc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9crggox5rbc))
~~~
consp
As a note to the poster: The first video is not available where I live
(Netherlands), maybe the link is wrong, the others are however.
~~~
arunix
This one works for me (UK):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY)
(Leonard Susskind on The World As Hologram)
------
bawana
I find it strange that no one has characterized that boundary layer where
light orbits the black hole. We know that massive objects distort space and as
a result alter the path of light. At sufficiently close distances, space is so
distorted that 'not even light can escape'. Everyone assumes that light 'falls
into' a black hole. But for light to do that, it would need a velocity greater
than light itself if it is in orbit around the black hole. Thus, any light
that is captured by tangential approach to the black hole and goes into orbit
around the black hole, has to stay in orbit. Any acceleration that is needed
to change the path of light would add to the velocity of light and that should
not be possible.
Over time, the only light that is not absorbed by virtue of collision with the
singularity at the center of the black hole is the light in orbit around it.
This is distinct and different from the light resulting from nuclear fusion of
material in the accretion disc which is just outside.
~~~
l33tman
The perfect orbit geodesic is infinitely thin and therefore unstable due to
quantum mechanics. So even if a photon is injected at the perfect orbit it
would not stay there, it would fall in or eject. Besides, even without
invoking QM, any other matter that actually falls into the hole afterwards
would inflate the event horizon, causing those photons caught in the perfect
orbit to now exist just infinitesimally within the orbit and fall in.
~~~
soVeryTired
Do you need quantum mechanics to see that a photon would fall in or eject?
Presumably a little movement from the black hole would do the trick too.
~~~
Pharmakon
Right, but the QM view tells us that even a perfectly stationary chargeless
black hole in a perfect vacuum alone in a perfectly smooth universe would
_still_ experience fluctuations in its event horizon. Unlike the Classical
view, QM reveals that even in principle there exists a degree of instability
in the horizon.
------
dpark
I’ve never understood how infinite time dilation jives with black hole
evaporation:
> _If we take for example the latter observation of unbounded time dilation
> seriously, we come to the conclusion that in the moment that we spend on the
> horizon all time passes for anything outside the black hole. The end of all
> things happens in the rest of the universe, and in fact after the moment in
> which we enter the black hole, there is no way back._
> _However, if we consider a black hole of the same mass, things look rather
> different. As a (partially) quantum object it radiates and evaporates within
> a tiny fraction of a second. All its mass converts into energy, which
> results in an explosion three times stronger than the bomb dropped on
> Hiroshima._
How do these two things mix? A particle experiences asymptotic time dilation
when it crosses the event horizon and the rest of the universe ends in that
moment. Then the black hole evaporates and lo and behold the universe is not
ended.
Yeah, the particle that went in got annihilated and never actually came back
out. Sure. But if the black hole does not survive until the end of the
universe, then it seems fundamentally impossible that the particle in question
experienced unbounded/infinite/asymptotic time dilation. The particle’s
annihilation must have happened by the time the black hole evaporated. And
yes, time is relative, but it doesn’t run in reverse.
~~~
speakeron
> How do these two things mix? A particle experiences asymptotic time dilation
> when it crosses the event horizon and the rest of the universe ends in that
> moment. Then the black hole evaporates and lo and behold the universe is not
> ended.
I don't know if that's necessarily correct. From the point of view of an
object falling through the event horizon, nothing special happens and they can
look outwards normally; whereas an observer some distance from the black hole
(and maintaining that distance) sees the falling object fall slower and slower
and becoming more redshifted. The falling object also become shorter in the
direction of travel (according to the external observer) and end up 'smeared'
on the horizon.
Leonard Susskind shows this using a Penrose diagram in lecture 5 or 6 (I
think, but they're all worth watching) of the Stanford Topics in String Theory
lectures[1]
[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ-
ElsvYKyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ-ElsvYKyo)
~~~
zwkrt
Suskind actually has a whole lecture on Youtube devoted to addressing the
paradox of falling into a black hole from the perspective of the person
falling in versus an outside observer. The outside observer sees the falling
observer catastrophically turned into high-entropy soup smeared across the
horizon, while the one falling feels nothing particularly special as they
cross the event horizon.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIl3Hfh9tY)
~~~
Pharmakon
Just a note, that’s the case for a very high mass black hole. A “smaller”
black hole would shred the astronaut before they even reached the event
horizon.
------
dr_dshiv
I'm curious about the description of a black hole as a singularity. I'm going
to resort to Neoplatonist philosophy to try to understand this.
In the formation of the universe, the notion of a singularity points at an old
idea, argued by Plotinus, that everything started with "The One". This is
commensurable with the statement that the boltzmann entropy of the start of
the universe, prior to inflation, would be equal to "1" \-- because that is
the total volume of possible phase space. That, to me, is very elegant --
although it is unclear whether there are predictions about how the 1 becomes 2
("the indefinite dyad"), 3 and then the inflationary myriad. But still, I'm
impressed that the logic of ancient philosophy could correspond reasonably
with modern physics.
From this perspective, I'm interpreting big bang's "singularity" as =1. What
is the nature of the singularity of a blackhole? Is the event horizon itself
the singularity, or does it just an effect of a singularity at the center of
the blackhole? Is there a "One" at the center of the blackhole?
~~~
whatshisface
If one doesn't understand a scientific theory then their understanding of it
contains no information. Ancient philosophy rarely contains information. As a
result the two often appear to line up.
~~~
yesenadam
>Ancient philosophy rarely contains information.
Sounds like you haven't read much, gee. What a strange comment. It has a far
higher signal/noise ratio than modern philosophy, I'd say, maybe because
usually only the best has survived.
~~~
whatshisface
> _It has a far higher signal /noise ratio than modern philosophy_
You can look at it this way: every possible statement seems to have been made
by at least one ancient philosopher, especially once you include the non-
western traditions. There were atom-ists, and continuum-ists, and so on. If
you view ancient philosophy as one big bucket of sentences, it will fill up
sentence space fairly uniformly. You could reconstruct ancient philosophy just
by coming up with reasonable-sounding claims about things they were aware of
back then until you ran out of possibilities, although that wouldn't produce
the historical association of certain views with certain people.
A distribution that uniformly fills space is, in the technical sense of the
word, "no information." If you trim it down (for example by doing experiments
and discarding whatever doesn't match your newfound knowledge of reality), you
get a distribution that "has information."
To put it concretely, finding out that an ancient philosopher said something
doesn't help, because ancient philosophers said everything they could think
of. Whether that is better or worse than what philosophers are doing now is up
to philosophers to decide, I guess.
~~~
teolandon
I haven't actually taken every single statement said by ancient philosophers
(if you can even clearly classify philosophers as 'ancient' \-- what's the
date cutoff?), and put them in a bucket, and checked that the sentence space
in that bucket is filled up uniformly.
However, new sentences are made every day, new words made very often. Nobody
cares about the technical sense of the words "no information". If your
argument was extended from 'ancient philosophy' to 'anything ever said by
humans', then anything ever said by humans would fill the sentence space
fairly uniformly, so finding out that anyone has said anything doesn't help.
A single human has not considered and thought about every sentence possible.
They have their own beliefs and knowledges, and by reading ancient philosophy,
they can expand that knowledge base, change those beliefs. Ancient philosophy
is not inconsequential, and it certainly contains "information".
~~~
dpark
I think whatshisface is being overly dismissive of the value/information in
ancient philosophy. But the heart of his comment is that you can cherry pick
pretty much whatever you want from ancient philosophy because the corpus is so
large. If you, e.g., selectively choose statements that vaguely line up with
quantum mechanics, you haven’t proven that Ancient Greeks knew quantum
mechanics or had some unexpectedly deep understanding of the universe. You did
something equivalent to P-hacking to dig meaningless correlations out of the
noise.
~~~
dr_dshiv
Right, it would be inappropriate to claim that Plato predicted the big bang!
He did arguably explicitly predict that basic mathematical/geometric forms
underlie the structure of the universe. E.g., that atoms would be composed of
pyramids, cubes, dodecahedrons and that the behaviour of atoms would be based
upon the different geometric properties of basic forms.
That idea is only partially correct, however. Atoms are based on the basic
mathematical forms -- but on the spherical harmonics of electron clouds, not
point geometries. Whoops! Otherwise, the idea is commensurable with modern
atomic understanding.
Earth, water, air and fire correspond not to elements (ice can melt,
obviously) but to phases of matter. (Solid, liquid, gas, plasma).
There is a reason Classical Greek philosophy underlies western civilization.
They were not dummies and there is still a lot we can learn from them. It's
not like all their ideas were examined in the 1800s and we took all the good
ones, leaving the classics as a sort of intellectual skin worth shedding.
Instead, it is the core we build on. It's worth understanding the core -- and
giving them the benefit of the doubt to identify interesting ideas.
Like that the universe begins with "the one" :)
~~~
dpark
That is some impressively hand-wavy equivalency. Plato predicted something
pretty much entirely wrong and you're pretending he was generally correct.
Plato believed, without evidence, that there were some indivisible units of
matter. That's all he got right (and even that was arguably incorrect given
subatomic particles).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Translation from VC-Backed PR Jargon to English of Magic Leap CEO Statement - docdeek
https://daringfireball.net/2020/05/abovitz_magic_leap_translation
======
ObsoleteNerd
$2.4B wasted on this.
They weren't smashing atoms together to discover world-changing new physics.
They didn't send people to space or develop some new revolutionary type of
transport that could transform society.
They made some really average AR glasses.
Two point four BILLION dollars.
The Tesla Model S cost ~500M to develop from start to finish[0], so Magic Leap
has spent 5 times that amount.
The ENTIRE Starlink satellite network will cost ~$10B total to develop, build,
and deploy [1]. So Magic Leap spent a quarter of that.
Apple developed and released the original iPhone on a budget of $150M. Magic
Leap has spent 16 times that.
These aren't apples to apples, of course. But I think it puts in perspective
just how much of a scam Magic Leap is in general.
[0] [https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-s-
development-...](https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-s-development-
costs-so-far.7294/)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_\(1st_generation\))
~~~
walkingolof
You could say that none of it was "wasted", people earned their salary there
(I assume) and learned something, that led to consumption and investments
elsewhere.
Unless someone literally burnt the money, it did some good.
Then again, yea, $2.4B is just ridiculous, wonder what Jeri Ellsworth and
Tilt5 ([https://www.tiltfive.com](https://www.tiltfive.com)) could have done
with those resources...
~~~
nadavlidor
"people earned their salary" and "learned something" aren't great arguments.
Building a bridge that collapses minutes after construction also entails
workers earning salaries, and perhaps learning something. that still doesn't
mean it's a good use of funds, it's waste. you want the investment to create
actual value for someone.
~~~
nabla9
People have tendency to abandon this line argumentation immediately when it's
applied to something they admire and have been hyped up. Wasted money was
actually R&D.
Example that gets almost everyone: Space Shuttle.
It was supposed to be reusable space truck that reduces cost. It was several
times more expensive than conventional approach with non-reusable rockets and
shuttle. It was infrequently used. It drained NASA budged from anything
productive. Even those combined manned+cargo missions could have been achieved
cheaper with double launch. It was objectively failure based on the goals and
purpose of the project.
They developed so much new technology and inspired people. It was simply great
piece of engineering and PR. We learned a lot.
~~~
raverbashing
That being said, I believe the SLS gave many more spin-offs than the Magic
Leap
I wonder if there were missions that would not be possible without it (maybe
the Hubble launch and the AMS launch and installation) though most likely they
would be adapted to work without it.
~~~
nabla9
Are you satirizing? Because you make exactly the two invalid arguments I
mentioned.
~~~
raverbashing
I am not, I'm referring to missions where the Shuttle arm was used
Yeah, maybe they could be a double launch or worked in some other way.
------
fermienrico
How come VCs are not learning from examples like this? Perhaps get engineering
consultants take a look at the tech, provide their independent assessment of
the tech and guide them to not make these mistakes again?
Hindsight is always 20/20 except when you also have foresight which is maybe
20/40? Surely, Juicero with foresight was a bad idea.
Or ostensibly, these things are not that straightforward as they seem to be?
~~~
Traster
People act like Juicero was claiming they had some crazy proprietary way of
squeezing bags, and when it turned out you could squeeze them by hand the game
was up, but that's just not true. Nespresso hasn't collapsed because some
plucky journalist ripped open the little capsules and stuck them in a
Cafetière. We all know nespresso is just coffee in little pods.
Juicero was selling a lifestyle product to people who wanted super premium
juices. It was for the sort of person who buys stuff from Gwyneth Paltrow, has
a siphon coffee machine and gets teenagers blood injected into their face to
stop aging. While that's not the vast majority of us, it doesn't mean there
isn't a market for it.
~~~
gruturo
Nespresso does not come with an insanely steep price, you can't squeeze the
little capsules by hand :) and it has actual use cases:
* I would never drink the stuff some of my colleagues like, and vice versa, so we all buy our preferred capsules and are all happy.
* I have 3 variations depending on time of day or how I feel, and my favorite is (to my own surprise) a really cheap supermarket brand with compostable capsules which is not actually even from Nespresso
* I don't have to deal with the dirt and messes with loading and emptying the machine.
* Even my most clueless colleagues and guests can put a capsule in, push a button and obtain coffee. I assure you some of them couldn't operate anything much more complex than that.
* Capsules are sealed so they retain taste for longer. I don't drink enough to go through a bag of raw coffee before it loses its taste.
~~~
fermienrico
I think Nespresso makes the best espresso shot, even better than a coffee
shop. Nespresso is exactly the same everytime.
Also their pods are manufactured in Switzerland with extreme care for quality
and precision.
------
itronitron
'spatial computing in enterprise' << for some reason I expect this to be the
result of a summer intern's project
------
JumpCrisscross
Do we have any evidence of the $350mm raised? Might the e-mail have gone out
on a term sheet, as opposed to anything binding having been signed?
On a whim, I tried to see if the SEC’s EDGAR [1] showed any recent Forms D by
Magic Leap. Not that surprisingly, it looks like they haven’t ever bothered
filing one.
[1] [https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml](https://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml)
------
danielscrubs
For anyone wondering about how much Google invested in them, it was at least
$542 million [1].
[1]: [https://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-google-
investment...](https://www.businessinsider.com/magic-leap-google-
investment-2014-10?op=1&r=US&IR=T)
------
trollied
Wow, they managed to raise another $350m.
What a strange world we live in.
~~~
chrisco255
VC money printer go brrrrr.
------
oftenwrong
This is my first time hearing about Magic Leap, and it is quite a story.
Reminiscent of Theranos. Was the retinal projection tech ever real, even in an
imperfect, non-miniaturised form?
Also, I stumbled upon a _Variety_ piece [1] about a Magic Leap conference that
sounds straight out of HBO's _Silicon Valley_ :
>However, Magic Leap decided to go a different route. When its CEO Rony
Abovitz took the stage at the beginning of the conference’s opening keynote,
he vaguely framed the company’s technology as a remedy to political and other
divisions plaguing today’s world, postulating: “Our new medium of spatial
computing is fresh. It doesn’t carry the baggage and negative headlines that
are dominating the news today.”
...
>“The conversation that we are starting here goes on for decades,” proclaimed
Abovitz. He went on to talk about Magic Leap’s idea to build city-wide AR
information layers — an interesting idea, but not anything we should expect to
materialize any time soon, as he freely admitted, while inexplicably bringing
up the spectre of fascism:
>“There is gonna be other companies proposing alternate x-verses. There will
be all these competing universes and systems, like there is competing
governments. There is monarchy, there is democracy, there is fascism, and
there is progressive, liberal thought. And these holistic systems will be how
governance might happen. How many people live their life. And this is not
tomorrow, this might be a few years from now. But you set the stage for that
right now.”
>Abovitz seemed to sense that there was still some work to be done before
Magic Leap could defeat fascism in the Magicverse — and he promptly proposed
to host a Burning Man-style gathering to get it done:
>“In order to continue this conversation, we probably kind of need a Burning
Man in the desert. Like a kind of Magicverse event where we hang out for a few
days, do a vision quest, build weird things. So more on that later, can’t
commit to it 100%, but we think it’d be cool.”
>There were some other odd moments that morning. A third-party developer read
a poem to the audience. Science fiction author and Magic Leap chief futurist
Neal Stephenson talked close to 10 minutes about virtual goats. The three-hour
keynote didn’t feature a single live demo.
[1] [https://variety.com/2018/digital/opinion/magic-leap-
leapcon-...](https://variety.com/2018/digital/opinion/magic-leap-
leapcon-1202978949/)
~~~
itronitron
retinal projection tech is pretty old actually, from the HIT lab at UW
([http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd/](http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/vrd/))
"The VRD, based on the concept of scanning an image directly on the retina of
the vi ewer's eye, was invented at the HIT Lab in 1991."
------
MangoCoffee
"Magic Leap: Spatial Computing for Enterprise"
you gotta love whoever come up with "Spatial Computing for Enterprise".
------
Animats
Who put in $350 million more? Did anybody? So far there's just an internal
email from Magic Leap management.
~~~
rapsey
Someone suffering from sunk cost fallacy maybe
------
karmakaze
An entertaining read, but I don't believe for one second that this is how it
was for most of the life of the company. Perhaps toward the end this became
their reality.
It's really more of a case of drinking too much of your own kool-aid and
biting off more than you can chew.
I believe that everyone from the top down really did believe they were
creating an amazing future. It reminds me of the similarly named company
General Magic from the 90's. I tried it out in the day and the documentary is
simultaneously sad and joyous. Hats off to Magic Leap for trying. But.. they
should have released sooner and often rather than trying to create an entire
medium and ecosystem behind a curtain for v1.
------
stephc_int13
Predicting the future is notoriously hard.
I think plenty of successful products were once in a shaky/buggy/bulky state.
The hype was high on AR and only a few experts had a good understanding of the
constraints, especially about optics, physics, and sensors.
------
sdan
Realistically, which "enterprise" would buy this?
~~~
nickflood
Given that HoloLens already exists, I guess, they're looking to leverage their
investor selling skills on some enterprise execs that don't need this stuff...
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Who will then force it on to their subordinates who have no use for it.
~~~
xabotage
This. I have worked and developed on the HoloLens; it is 20% cool tech demo
and 80% cardboard propped up by Microsoft's over-eager marketing (think Xbox
Kinect). Only difference between them and Magic Leap is that Microsoft has a
large swath of existing gullible enterprise customers who will happily buy
whatever superfluous products they can be talked into buying, whereas I guess
Magic Leap's core competencies are on the opposite end, selling to gullible
VCs.
------
pfortuny
“We have closed significant new funding and have very positive momentum
towards closing key strategic enterprise partnerships”
So meaningful...
~~~
BigJono
Rofl. The last startup I worked for had "very positive momentum towards
closing key strategic enterprise partnerships" from the day I joined to the
day we went down like the Hindenburg.
------
seemslegit
Very smart people might have been duped into investing alright, but it's not
because they were duped to believe in the tech or the product, rather it was
because they were duped to believe that a bigger sucker will come along as
from their previous experience one usually did eventually.
------
xarope
ELI5 what constitutes spatial computing platform for the enterprise? $500
measuring devices (aka rulers)?!?
------
IngoBlechschmid
When I visit [https://www.magicleap.com/](https://www.magicleap.com/) without
cookies enabled, I'm redirected to a non-existent page.
------
kulor
Don't hate the player, hate the game
------
person_of_color
I think this is harsh. The CEO surely must be acting in good faith to his
investors?
~~~
trollied
The CEO has actually stepped down:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/29/magic_leap_ceo_rony...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/29/magic_leap_ceo_rony_abovitz_steps_down/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Chattur. Wherever you are - rossmartin
http://chattur.co
======
artiparty
Why?
~~~
jaywunder
Exactly what I'm thinking. There's no reason to have _another_ chatting app.
Also, with so many competitors, their website lacks any description, making
their product even more foreign.
~~~
rossmartin
Thank you for your opinion and comment.
There is only one developer behind Chattur.
Do you complain about how simple Yo's website is?
[http://www.justyo.co/](http://www.justyo.co/)
I feel that if you would like to learn about the app you can check it out on
the App Store / Play Store.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Who is being paid for work on the night? - dotborg
I work from 9am to 5pm, but in "good old days" I used to code on the night. 9pm-5am used to be my best time - it's difficult to explain, but I love to work at midnight and early morning - family sleeping, neighbourhood sleeping, city sleeping, addictive silence. During the day I do all non-programming stuff<p>I know it can be true for freelancers, but is there some company rewarding their employees for working on the night? Specifically I mean programmers, designers and other creative people.<p>thanks
======
codegeek
"but is there some company rewarding their employees for working on the night?
Specifically I mean programmers, designers and other creative people."
Very unlikely if at all in 2012.
------
eshvk
There are people who give you one free meal per day which is dinner at 7 PM.
Does that count?
------
staunch
1\. Move to asia 2. Work remotely for a US company.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WeddingInviteLove: A Comprehensive Wedding Invitation Designer Directory - limedaring
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/04/15/weddinginvitelove-a-comprehensive-wedding-invitation-designer-directory/
======
iseff
Looks nice.
There's also OneWed (<http://www.onewed.com>) which has a directory of all
types of wedding vendors as well as their sister site, Nearlyweds
(<http://www.nearlyweds.com>), which makes beautiful wedding web sites. I
highly recommend them (disclaimer: I'm also friends with them. :)).
~~~
gadders
But are those created by Hacker News posters?
[http://www.limedaring.com/im-a-designer-who-learned-
django-a...](http://www.limedaring.com/im-a-designer-who-learned-django-and-
launched-her-first-webapp-in-6-weeks/)
I definitely intend to use that service for my next few marriages.
~~~
limedaring
:) Thanks!
------
terrichan
Congrats! I've been following WIL's progress as a designer co-founder myself.
Proud of ya that you learnt to program urself.
~~~
limedaring
Thanks! Still got a ton to learn, but working for yourself makes it fun and
definitely worth it.
------
sushumna
hey Tracy, I've been following WIL's progress for quite sometime. Very
impressive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Music Hijacks Our Perception - JumpCrisscross
http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/how-music-hijacks-our-perception-of-time?ftcamp=crm/email/201424/nbe/AlphavilleHongKong/product
======
jamesbritt
Recently posted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166908)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zo from Ameelio.org is doing an AMA on Reddit - jessehorne
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hy70st/i_am_zo_orchingwa_a_yale_law_student_and/
======
kruzerkc
bump
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Raspberry "High" - rpi-powered vape - nvr219
http://raspberryhigh.wikia.com/wiki/Raspberryhigh_Wiki
======
bheklilr
Well, that's certainly a use for an R-Pi I hadn't thought of.
------
tubbzor
Takes the "MacGyver bong" game to a new and creative level.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you use to digitize your paper records? - narak
I'm looking at digitizing most of my personal paper records like tax files, large value receipts, important letters, legal documents etc. The plan is to scan them to PDF or TIFF using a feed scanner. I want a solution that encrypts and backs up to the cloud. Anyone doing this? Suggestions for a good system and tools for this requested. Thanks!<p>Edit: So far I've found Cryptomator (https://cryptomator.org/) which seems like a good open source secure vault on top of my existing Dropbox/Google Drive storage.
======
afarrell
I had to do this when my wife and I moved from Austin, TX to London. My wife
and I turned 2 filing cabinets worth of files into a dropbox directory tree.
For the actual scanning, I followed the wirecutter's advice and found that the
Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i Mobile Document Scanner worked well. It seems they are
now recommending[1] a different scanner though.
For the actual organization, we had a naming scheme of "$(source of document)
$(title) $(date %F).pdf". For example: "Texas DMV Toyota Sienna Registration
Receipt 2015-05-16.pdf
[1] [http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-portable-document-
scan...](http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-portable-document-scanner/)
~~~
narak
Thanks. Did you bother with OCR and encryption?
------
tedmiston
I'm currently using a camera scanner app for iOS called TurboScan. I move
scanned documents onto my MacBook and back them up with the rest of my files.
In the past, I've kept security conscious information inside encrypted disk
images with a local and remote backup just like everything else.
------
ishbits
I also use a ScanSnap. An S300 I got back in 2009. Completely worth it if you
scan then shred all your documents.
Ever few months I'd pull out some old files and put a podcast or something and
scan a few hundred sheets.
------
bbcbasic
I don't. I generally keep them or shred them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Automated config tool for Apache2, NGINX etc. - WilliamWonka
Hello community.<p>As we all know spending time configuring apache2 for our favorite framework can be time consuming and tedious.<p>We are currently developing a basic web based configurator to speed up the set up of apache2 with mod_wsgi to serve python apps, apache2 with passenger for ruby on rails, and apache2 with mod_php for your favorite php framework. Our configurator will also enable you to add SSL, or even make your dev environment SSL only.<p>I'd love any feedback on UI/X, tech, design, anything. We're actively developing the product and adding platforms, distributions, features etc. I'd be interested in hearing your problems and how Qonfigure could solve them. If you'd like to try Qonfigure, I'm happy to set up a trial. Email me at [email protected]
======
thenomad
You might want to modify the title of this post. I saw you mention configuring
NGINX and got very interested - but if it's Apache only I don't care nearly as
much...
Having said that - will the configurator also handle optimisation of the
Apache setup for your particular server? That'd be a great feature to save
tedious manual optimisation.
------
a_lifters_life
This exists already. [https://github.com/c0deTalk/flask-
deploy](https://github.com/c0deTalk/flask-deploy)
~~~
WilliamWonka
but that is for flask. Our service is for Apache2
~~~
a_lifters_life
Nope, it automates nginx too!
------
tomwaits
What your pointing to is a flask deployment not apache2 + mod_wsgi which
people use to serve python app on apache2. Two different things.
------
WilliamWonka
BTW - site is www.qonfigure.com
~~~
mtmail
Your post shows up in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/ask](https://news.ycombinator.com/ask) that's
why some commenters understand the headline as question and try to point to
other existing tools.
Try a
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
style post.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
For $100 I Explain Why I Do Open Source (RailsApps Project) - DanielKehoe
http://blog.railsapps.org/post/18499961991/for-100-i-explain-why-i-do-open-source
======
DanielKehoe
Does this resonate for you? How much does appreciation play a role in
motivating you to develop open source projects?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Determining hot items with exponentially decaying likes - jules
http://julesjacobs.github.io/2015/05/06/exponentially-decaying-likes.html
======
karmakaze
This can also be achieved by giving newer likes more value than older ones.
Equivalent with opportunity for efficiencies in precomputing older sums. Is it
HN or reddit ranking algo that does this?
~~~
jules
Yes, that's exactly what this is doing :) But it's doing that in a specific
way to keep the sort order equal to exponential decay, and make sure that the
numbers don't cause floating point overflow and rounding errors.
Reddit does boost the score of newer posts. It doesn't do that for the value
of votes though. Reddit simply adds the (scaled) timestamp when the post was
created to the score of a post. This way newer posts get a higher score than
old ones. Reference: [http://www.outofscope.com/reddits-empire-no-longer-
founded-o...](http://www.outofscope.com/reddits-empire-no-longer-founded-on-a-
flawed-algorithm/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wavii - Not stealth enough - zemaj
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/21/time-to-meet-wavii-the-super-stealth-super-awesome-startup-based-in-seattle/#comment-1168811
======
mark_l_watson
Automatic generation of interesting thing to read?
While I believe in the tech of statistical NLP, I question whether the quality
of news articles automatically generated from other news and social media will
be all that interesting.
I spend about 3 to 4 hours a week reading through Twitter, HN, and Reddit:
half is to waste time in an enjoyable way and half is to find interesting
articles to read, new useful projects, etc.
For me, Twitter is the most targeted because I follow people into the same
tech that I am into. I also have several blogs I follow closely. A big part of
it is enjoying authors' online personalities and having occasional email
dialogs.
Can an automated system replace part of this experience? I don't think so.
What automated systems can do is cluster reading material and make good
recommendations - but this is different than what (it sounds like) Wavii is
trying to do.
~~~
drivebyacct2
Imagine if all your twitter data was tagged by content and author and there
was an easy, even automatic way to find new followers based on those tags.
Seems like it could add value on top of twitter, given the right number of
users.
~~~
mark_l_watson
You may be right about that.
------
languagehacker
The real power of an application like this would be aggregating real-time news
events as they unfold and creating news stories from real-time tweets, blog
posts, and other social media. Instead of just clustering together topics,
being able to "read" a large amount of sources and generate a summary would
actually be very useful. Unfortunately, I think that it ignores a lot of very
difficult problems in natural language processing and computational
linguistics. It will likely have a few homeruns, but peter out as it hits an
accuracy wall.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Million dollar gas hack. - humanlever
http://greenwala.com/?p=83
======
anthonyrubin
I wonder how much fuel could be saved by avoiding unnecessary residential
deliveries. How many delivery attempt notices does UPS leave every day?
If shippers provided UPS with an email address for the recipient a notice
could be sent by email the day before a package is to be delivered. This
notice could provide options to let UPS know to wait a day or two to attempt
delivery when someone will be there or redirect the package to a commercial
address (e.g. the recipient's place of employment).
I recently had a package delivered that required a signature. After the first
attempt I called UPS and had it redirected to my work address. Unfortunately
they already had it on the truck so I was told they would attempt delivery to
my home address the next day before redirecting it.
~~~
silencio
I was waiting on the front lawn for a UPS delivery to show up while surfing on
my laptop one day since it was a nice day. I occasionally took a look at the
online tracking page and flipped out when it went from "out for delivery" to a
failed delivery notice because the recipient wasn't there. Since I saw no UPS
truck driving past my house, and the front door is the only way to make a
delivery short of climbing over walls of other houses, you can probably
understand why. Called up UPS customer support, asked them to please redeliver
the next day because I would be leaving home soon and I didn't want to wait
for the delivery, wherever the guy was, so he could save himself some time and
effort.
The UPS delivery guy actually came over 4 hours later when I was definitely
away from home to put up a delivery attempt notice saying I wasn't there.
After I explicitly told two separate customer support folks NOT to deliver the
package after I talked to them because I will not be there to pick up - and
those two were separate from the initial call I made. This guy seemed to have
an absurd sense of humor, because he marked the one and only notice I received
that I didn't want as a second delivery attempt.
Your idea will only make sense if UPS actually did their job. They failed
catastrophically for me in that incident. Since I seem to get delivery attempt
notices quite often, I wonder just how many times they actually stopped by
(unfortunately I usually take the car out when I'm going, and that's a
different exit..).
------
dandelany
Presumably, the most efficient delivery path to take must include left
turns... right? I wonder if the efficiency gained by only turning right is
greater than the efficiency lost by taking a less efficient route?
~~~
jacobbijani
What makes you think it's less efficient? They are driving all around the
city. The system organizes the deliveries into an efficient route that favors
right turns.
I'm sure the system is smart enough to not have them go all the way around the
block to backtrack. It just has them hit that location before advancing. I
would love to see an illustration of the type of route it outputs.
~~~
dandelany
> The system organizes the deliveries into an efficient route that favors
> right turns.
Yes, I just wonder how much less efficient "the most efficient route with only
right turns" is than the true optimal route. Based on my limited experience
with optimal TSP problems, I bet they're fairly close.
I'm imagining a route which gives each driver a chunk of several blocks, then
has them hit all locations within the chunk with a right-hand spiral
inwards... But I'd love to see the actual routes.
~~~
hugh
According to the article, the system doesn't really plot an only-right-turns
route, it's more like an 80%-right-turns route. But the fact that the software
knows enough to know that left turns are worth avoiding is a pretty good piece
of work.
------
patrickg-zill
I dunno, I did this (right hand turns whenever possible) like 20 years ago in
my first job, when I had to drive around Toronto. So I doubt I am the only one
who thought of this before ...
~~~
easyfrag
No doubt, I've been doing it too for a while (although my reasons are safety-
based). But not everyone has access to a modeling tool (and the data) to
create a business case that convinces a big multinational to make it into
corporate policy.
------
gojomo
Unmentioned but also significant: avoiding left turns means fewer accidents.
~~~
silencio
UPS trucks in particular would be in a position (at least in the United
States, where we drive on the right side of the road) to make less lane
changes since stopping for a delivery usually means stopping on the right side
of the road. Possibly safer as a result of that as well.
------
rms
>You see it seems that some analyst at UPS got some modeling software and came
up with this plan.
This was a little beyond "some analyst"... even if it was originally the idea
of one person, the actual plan took many, many people to implement. Solving
real versions of the traveling salesman problem takes a lot of manpower. UPS
hires more Industrial Engineers than anyone else.
------
goodkarma
I'm curious how they optimized for this. Perhaps some sort of linear
programming or variation of the "traveling salesman" problem?
~~~
rms
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research>
This is one of the things that Industrial Engineers actually do. In my opinion
the pay is much too low for how hard the math is. Lots of linear/dynamic
programming + statistics and all sorts of fun algorithms.
~~~
goodkarma
I know, I have a degree in it. :)
------
samwise
without putting too much thought into it. i would assume that the most common
route looks like a inward decaying clockwise spiral.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dine Market Lays Off Staff - esgourmet
Dine Market, a food tech start up in NYC, has run out of money and laid off virtually all its employees. Support for existing customers continues for the time being. Glassdoor reviews show issues across the board, but inability to raise money and crazy burn rate seems to have done Dine Market in.
======
leostrat
Link?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, Gaming's Most Destructive Battle Ever - teh_klev
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-bloodbath-of-b-r5rb/
======
kjs3
So many spreadsheets, crumpled and thrown in the trash.
------
teh_klev
Quote:
_The Economic Impact
11 TRILLION ISK.
According to some PLEX conversions that could equate to approximately
$300,000-$330,000 USD_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
First thoughts on Node.js - MicahWedemeyer
http://peachshake.com/2011/05/13/first-thoughts-on-node-js/
======
MicahWedemeyer
A few of the links use our new project, OilyApe. Click and enjoy ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Betting Against Tesla? Be Prepared to Lose - flavmartins
http://allthingsd.com/20130913/dont-bet-against-tesla-says-musk/
======
lutusp
I'm amazed when an article describes an odd price/earnings ratio without even
suggesting the possibility that that might allow the company to expand rapidly
with the resulting capital, which would eventually make the P/E radio more
reasonable, and ultimately benefit those who trusted that it all made sense
long-term. Obviously that outcome isn't guaranteed, but it should be
mentioned.
Tesla has significant room for expansion right now, but to do that, it needs
operating capital. A high P/E ratio provides it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A breakdown of a GIF decoder (2012) - userbinator
http://commandlinefanatic.com/cgi-bin/showarticle.cgi?article=art011
======
nineteen999
The first "serious" C program I wrote was a GIF87a decoder on Linux, using
SVGAlib, back in 1998 or 1999. The reference implementation I had was written
by somebody else, in QBASIC of all things. So I just translated it into C
line-by-line until it worked. Of course the resulting program was not pretty
at all, and I don't really think I understood how it worked, but I learned a
lot. It was my first experience learning how to not write good C programs,
something I am still trying to avoid today.
------
nayuki
For anyone interested in implementing low-level code to read/write GIF files,
here is the reference spec reformatted from plain text to HTML:
[https://www.nayuki.io/page/gif89a-specification-
html](https://www.nayuki.io/page/gif89a-specification-html)
------
xvilka
If not Mozilla Internet would have migrated to animated WebP already. But due
to their unreasonable policy they ignore users' voice for eight years:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600919)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A listing website fighting cutthroat prices for masks - breytex
https://need-mask.com
======
breytex
Author here. We have created this platform in 4 days during our Easter bank
holidays. The main stack is React, NextJS, Hasura, Vercel now, Cloudflare
Workers and Digital Ocean. We are positive that we can scale to 100.000
concurrent users with this setup on infrastructure for $40/month.
We are a non-profit and our main goal is to make pricing of masks and other
protective gear more transparent.
Looking forward to reading your feedback :)
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