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We work for the Internet - ChrisArchitect
http://iworkfortheinternet.org/
======
pdx
It's not immediately clear what this page is for.
For me, I began to read the paragraph, but my eyes were quickly distracted to
the loading pictures. I assumed this was an anti SOPA page, but had to reread
it to make sure.
Please make the premise of the page, big, bold, and in the first line of text,
so distracted congressmen don't miss what it is they're being told.
~~~
orborde
I'm on my phone, and the mobile site only has the pictures. I have no idea
what this is supposed to be about.
~~~
davidkarp01
Fixed. Thanks for catching.
~~~
pinwale
What about the senate version: [Protect-
IP](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act>)?
And any news about the new rewritten version of SOPA, the [OPEN
Act](<http://arst.ch/ru6>)?
------
uptown
Cool idea. After SOPA passes or fails (hopefully the latter), the site could
totally pivot into a dating website for techies.
------
civilian
Hah, there's a lot of duplicates on this page. Someone has an off-by-one error
in the AJAX loading.
~~~
davidkarp01
Sorry! It's because there are so many being added. We're adding de-duping now.
This was my crappy code.
~~~
agentultra
It would probably be easier/better if /page/<integer> returned a JSON object.
Would also make scraping the site a little easier and reduce load on your
systems... (I'm interested in the titles "web workers" are giving themselves,
making this a rather nice data source).
PS: I play nice and won't "leech," promise. ;)
------
slowpoke
_> We know first-hand that the Internet powers the American dream._
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it[1].
Wake the fuck up. There is no American Dream, exceptions prove the rule. It's
a convenient self-delusion that keeps most people in line. If you want to
fight legislation like this, the first thing you have to realize that all
these values on the constitution don't mean shit, especially to the
politicians pushing these bills. I'm really sorry to be so blunt, but this is
something that people need to have pounded into their heads, or else there
will never be any change. You can't fight this system of corruption while
believing in its lies at the same time.
[1] quoting George Carlin here.
------
yangez
It's a great emotional tool to bring tangible people into the discussion.
Although having powerful statistics and logic is nice, it's appealing to see
the faces of real people that would be affected by this bill.
I can't find it now, but there was some interesting research done a while back
on charities. Turns out that people would donate more to a charity that helps
a single child rather than one that helps a million children, simply because
the former has a more tangible benefit.
~~~
spontaneus
I believe they hit on this in Made to Stick.
~~~
yangez
Thanks - I think that was it. Phenomenal book.
------
jamalkhan
No option for people outside US to add themselves!
~~~
rubinelli
The point is, we can't elect American congressmen, so they aren't necessarily
supposed to care if we have jobs or not.
------
seanstickle
Am I to understand that people who live in Washington DC do not, in fact,
matter? The state drop down has no provision for DC.
~~~
davidkarp01
Fixing.
~~~
seanstickle
Quick work. Thanks.
------
fiatpandas
The submit page is messed up in FF 8.0 for me: <http://i.imgur.com/Htp3H.png>
------
lpnotes
I really like the idea! Could you put in a count of the # of people who have
submitted pictures so far on the top?
------
patdryburgh
Wasn't aware that producing work on the internet was limited to American
citizens. McDonald's, here I come.
~~~
dallasmarlow
the site is in reference to sopa, which is (unfortunately) an american bill. i
promise you don't have to work for McDonald's.
~~~
cf0ed2aa-bdf5
Even though SOPA is an American bill it still has a very big impact on the
internet for citizens in every other country.
That being said I think it still makes sense for the site to just list
American entrepreneurs/developers/designers/etc.
~~~
davidkarp01
Agreed. This is intended to make SOPA's impact on American jobs clear to our
politicians.
------
nrbafna
add a counter to show no. of people added?
------
alpb
Would be great if it works on iPad. However I think there's no way to upload
photos or files on iOS Safari.
~~~
SoftwareMaven
iCabMobile let's you fill file inputs with photos and other downloaded
content. I really prefer it over Safari most of the time.
------
dallasmarlow
stop sopa, or find new jobs!
------
necenzurat
no international support?
~~~
akcreek
That's available at McDonalds.
------
kennywinker
Whoa, babe city. Scrolled down through a few dozen photos. All the girls are
babes, and about 60% of the dudes (which, being heterosexual, is a pretty good
percentage). The internet is more attractive than expected. ;)
------
zhwang
I'm scrolling down and I find people making funny poses and trying to look
cool.
If you're trying to make a political message clear, is this how you want to
represent yourself?
~~~
sliverstorm
It's pretty clear the goal of the website is to add a "human element" to the
impact of the bill. Prison mug shots do not add a human element.
~~~
zhwang
Yes, I completely agree. But perhaps you could be smiling, at a nice sunny
location. The human element would be there. That's not a "prison mug shot".
Plenty of the photos on the site are like that.
But if you're trying to say "Look, you're going to put all these _people_ out
of work if this thing passes", i.e. you're pointing out the _human element_ of
what the bill could cause, what is an average, uninformed person ("the world",
as the website says) going to think when they see a bunch of people making
ridiculous poses?
[http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4cbpmNsM1r8635ko1_250.jp...](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4cbpmNsM1r8635ko1_250.jpg)
[http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4es2F2II1r8635ko1_250.jp...](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw4es2F2II1r8635ko1_250.jpg)
[http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw45rnSi8N1r8635ko1_250.jp...](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw45rnSi8N1r8635ko1_250.jpg)
I very much doubt they'd emphasise.
And it takes nothing more than the mainstream media selectively ignoring the
majority to make the whole industry look like asshats.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alan Kay on Lisp - shakes
https://www.quora.com/What-did-Alan-Kay-mean-by-Lisp-is-the-greatest-single-programming-language-ever-designed/answer/Alan-Kay-11?share=1
======
JepZ
Actually, I am missing the simplicity of Lisp and Smalltalk in todays
languages. From what I remember, they both have a fairly simple but universal
syntax, which can be written for Lisp as
([operator] [argument1] [argument2] [argumentN])
and for Smalltalk as
[object] [message]
So far I haven't seen anything like that for languages with the C-like syntax.
Don't get me wrong. For example I love Go, but sometimes I miss the beauty of
Lisp and Smalltalk.
~~~
jcrites
Lisp, Scheme, and Racket and related languages have many distinct syntax
forms, just like other languages. The syntax forms appear visually similar due
to the use of parentheses, but the forms themselves are distinct.
For example, here are some of the distinct syntax forms in Racket (Scheme):
(+ 3 4) # Procedure call
(lambda (x) (+ x x)) # Lambda expression
# See also case-lambda
(let ((x 23) (y 42)) # Variable binding
(+ x y)) # And also:
# let*, letrec, letrec*, let-values,
# let*-values, let-syntax, letrec-syntax, local
(set! x 4) # Assignment (mutating)
(define x 23) # Defined value
(define (f x) # Defined procedure
(+ x 42))
(quote a) # Quotation
(#%datum . 10) # Quotation (keywords prohibited)
# Conditionals
(if (> 2 3) 'yes 'no)
(cond ((> 3 2) 'greater)
((< 3 2) 'less))
(and a b)
(or a b)
(cond ('(1 2 3) => cadr) # Test clause
(else #f)) # Else clause
# Guarded evaluation
(when (positive? -5)
(display "hi"))
(unless (positive? 5)
(display "hi"))
# Dispatch
(case (+ 7 5)
[(1 2 3) 'small]
[(10 11 12) 'big])
# Sequencing
(define x 0)
(begin (set! x 5)
(+ x 1))
# See also: begin0, begin-for-syntax
# Iterations and Comprehensions
# for, for/and, for/or, for/vector, for/hash, for/hasheq ...
# Modules and imports
(module id module-path form ...)
(require ...)
(provide ...)
As you can see, although the language consistently uses parentheses, it has
similar syntax structure to other languages: assignments, definitions,
functions, switch/case, etc. Some of the syntax forms above have multiple
variations, as well.
See: [https://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/syntax.html](https://docs.racket-
lang.org/reference/syntax.html)
~~~
merlincorey
I think your examples underscore the GP's point.
Every single one of your examples is an S-Expression where the first element
of the list is an operator/function followed by N arguments, from an abstract
context-less view, anyway.
In lisp there are atoms, lists, and expressions. They have uniform expression
but not uniform meaning.
~~~
jcrites
The notation uses S-expressions, that’s true, but the point that I was trying
to make is that you can’t understand anything about the meaning of those
S-expressions without parsing them in a context-aware way.
It’s not as if there is just one form `(<op> <arg1> ... <argN>)` where the
expression means invoking `op` with some arguments.
A human or machine interpreting the code needs to be aware of these forms and
the meaning/semantics of each one. Consider the following S-exps:
(if a b)
(set! a b)
(define a b)
They’re all three-term S-expressions, but you can’t understand their meaning
without contextually interpreting the first term. There is a second layer of
contextual syntax. Similarly:
((lambda (x y) (list y x)) 1 2)
Consider the term `(x y)` in that expression. Without context, it looks like a
call to the procedure `x` with `y` as input. With context, it’s a list of
argument names for the lambda function.
In languages like C# and Java there is just one meaning of:
f(a, b);
You know this is actually a procedure invocation with some arguments.
There are trade offs to each approach. I’m not saying that one is better, just
that there’s more to Scheme syntax than S-exps. Concatenative languages like
Forth and Factor have even less syntax than Scheme.
~~~
taeric
Strictly, this isn't true. In f(a, b), if f is while, it is not a procedure
call. Or if it is a declaration.
Then, of course, there is the specifics of the call. Is it single dispatch?
Where is it dispatched? Etc.
Which isn't really to argue against the point. Yes, you need context. Pretty
much always. Having gotten used to lisp, I find it much easier to understand.
I realize familiarity helps, though.
------
dpeck
that this has an unbalanced paren has me laughing a lot more than it probably
should
------
jf
Posting Alan's reply as a comment below for posterity, since Quora appears to
forbid archive.org from making a copy.
\---
First, let me clear up a few misconceptions from the previous answers. One of
them said “Try writing an operating system with Lisp”, as though this would be
somehow harder. In fact, one of the nicest operating systems ever done was on
“The Lisp Machines” (in Zeta-Lisp), the hardware and software following the
lead of “The Parc Machines” and Smalltalk (and we in turn had been very
influenced by the Lisp model of programming and implementation. (And these
operating systems in both Smalltalk and Lisp were both better and easier to
write than the standard ones of today.)
Another interesting answer assumed that “the test of time” is somehow a cosmic
optimization. But as every biologist knows, Darwinian processes “find fits” to
an environment, and if the environment is lacking, then the fits will be
lacking. Similarly, if most computer people lack understanding and knowledge,
then what they will select will also be lacking. There is abundant evidence
today that this is just what has happened.
But neither of these has anything to do with my praise of Lisp (and I did
explain what I meant in more detail in “[The Early History of
Smalltalk]([http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/)”](http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/\)”)).
To start with an analogy, let’s notice that a person who has learned calculus
fluently can in many areas out-think the greatest geniuses in history.
Scientists after Newton were _qualitatively_ more able than before, etc. My
slogan for this is “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points” (you can use
“context” or “perspective” etc.). A poor one might subtract 80 IQ points! (See
above). A new more powerful one makes some thinking possible that was too
difficult before.
One of our many problems with thinking is “cognitive load”: the number of
things we can pay attention to at once. The cliche is 7±2, but for many things
it is even less. We make progress by making those few things be more powerful.
This is one of the reasons mathematicians like compact notation. The downside
is the extra layers of abstraction and new cryptic things to learn — this is
the practice part of violin playing — but once you can do this, what you can
think about at once has been vastly magnified. There were 20 Maxwell’s
Equations in their original form (in terms of partial differentials and
cartesian coordinates). Today the four equations we can think about all at
once are primarily due to their reformulation by Heaviside to emphasize what
is really important about them (and what is likely to be problematic — e.g.
the electric and magnetic fields should probably be symmetric with respect to
movement, etc).
Modern science is about experiencing phenomena and devising models whose
relationships with the phenomena can be “negotiated”. The “negotiation” is
necessary because what’s inside our heads, and our representations systems etc
have no necessary connection to “[what’s out
there?]([http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf)”](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf\)”).
Taking this point of view, we can see there can be a “bridge science” and
“bridge scientists” because engineers build bridges and these furnish
phenomena for scientists to make models of.
Similarly, there can be a “computer science” and “computer scientists” because
engineers build hardware and software and these furnish phenomena for
scientists to make models of. (In fact, this was a large part of what was
meant by “computer science” in the early 60s — and it was an aspiration —
still is — not an accomplished fact).
The story behind Lisp is fun (you can read John McCarthy’s account in the
first History of Programming Languages). One of the motivations was that he
wanted something like “Mathematical Physics” — he called it a “Mathematical
Theory of Computation”. Another was that he needed a very general kind of
language to make a user interface AI — called “The Advice Taker” — that he had
thought up in the late 50s.
He could program — most programs were then in machine code, Fortran existed,
and there was a language that had linked lists.
John made something that could do what any programming language could do
(relatively easy), but did it in such a way so that it could express the
_essence_ of what it was about (this was the math part or the meta part or the
modern Maxwell’s Equations part, however you might like to think of it). He
partly did this — he says — to show that this way to do things was “neater
than a Turing Machine”.
Another observation about this is that the “slope” from the simplest machine
structures to the highest level language was the steepest ever — meaning that
the journey from recognizable hardware to cosmic expression is a rocket jump!
As is often the case — especially in engineering — a great scientific model is
often superior to what exists, and can lead to much better artifacts. This was
certainly true here. Steve Russell (later famous for being the main inventor
and programmer of “SpaceWar”) looked at what John had done, and said: “That’s
a program. If I coded it up we’d have a running version”. As John remarked:
“He did, and we did”!
The result was “unlimited programming in an eyeful” (the bottom half of page
13 in the Lisp 1.5 manual). The key was not so much “Lisp” but the kinds of
thinking that this kind of representational approach allowed and opened up
regarding all kinds of programming language schemes.
A fun thing about it this is that once you’ve grokked it, you can think right
away of better programming languages than Lisp, and you can think right away
of better ways to write the meta descriptions than John did. This is the “POV
= 80 IQ points” part.
But this is like saying that once you’ve seen Newton, it becomes possible to
do electrodynamics and relativity. The biggest feat in science was Newton’s!
This is why “Lisp is the greatest!”
~~~
xenophonf
_And these operating systems in both Smalltalk and Lisp were both better and
easier to write than the standard ones of today._
Look, I love Lisp as much as the next hacker, but is Alan Kay for real?
Where's the Lisp equivalent to this C code?
[https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi/tree/master/blinker0...](https://github.com/dwelch67/raspberrypi/tree/master/blinker01)
More importantly, where's the accompanying toolchain? Seriously, I really want
to know because I'd love, Love, LOVE to play around with it.
~~~
tonyg
For example, [https://github.com/tonyg/pi-
nothing/blob/master/kernel.nothi...](https://github.com/tonyg/pi-
nothing/blob/master/kernel.nothing#L203-L221) does something similar to that
blinker. It might not be quite what you're after, because it's only
superficially a lisp; more an S-expression veneer over something C-like.
Toolchain is the rest of the repo. Currently written in Racket. (BTW this is
feasibility-study-level stuff, not production stuff. It's messy as hell
because I haven't done even the most rudimentary tidying-up of it for public
view. Caveat lector.)
But hardware access - replacing C - is the really easy part. The real power of
a lisp/Smalltalk OS is getting away from the hardware in one "rocket jump", as
Alan put it. Once you can start using integrated high-level language
constructs spanning the whole of the abstraction tower from hardware through
user interface, that's when it starts to get fun. The really good stuff is the
new abstractions you can unlock. Smalltalk is a far better Unix than Unix,
from that point of view.
~~~
scroot
The way things stand now, the only required piece of application software that
a new personal computer needs in order to be viable is a web browser. But once
you have that, and the system of your machine is sufficiently compelling, it
would work for a great many people.
This is why I think someone is going to build something like an actual top to
bottom Lisp/Smalltalk/Whatever machine sooner than we think.
If Smalltalk machines existed, I would buy one today.
~~~
mbrock
Well, wouldn't that just be a JavaScript machine implemented in Smalltalk?
~~~
scroot
All I meant by bringing up the web browser is that for a personal computer to
be usable in reality by a lot of people they'll need a web browser. But just
that user application alone gets them really far: email, office productivity,
etc. It's a good first application to have in any system.
Therefore we could have all kinds of exotic, bespoke personal computers again,
except that unlike the 80s and 90s we now have fairly standardized formats
across systems. This gives us the freedom to make whatever kinds of
architectures and OSes we want. In this case, that could even include a
machine whose board is designed from the ground up to run Lisp or Smalltalk or
something we evolve out of those as its operating system.
The web browser that would come with such a default system would be written in
one of those languages. Yes, I know making a web browser is an enormous
undertaking, but at least some totally new personal computing system wouldn't
have to then also implement office productivity etc.
~~~
mbrock
Agreed. I think the best way would be to use Linux as the kernel, maybe with
Wayland for display, and Chromium/Firefox in a sandbox, and then the custom OS
system running alongside this. Emacs with the Elisp window manager is an
example.
~~~
scroot
I don't think we're on the same page here. You don't need Linux for the
kernel. Insofar as there's a kernel, it's the programming environment itself
(like Smalltalk) or a set of primitive programs written in that environment
(like Lisp).
For graphics you don't need X or Wayland or any of that stuff. BitBlt was able
to handle graphics in Smalltalk, because the hardware of the Alto (via
microcode) was setup to allow Smalltalk to handle all graphics. If you truly
wanted something optimized, something like Nile/Gezira and DSLs written in the
environment could work too.
The whole point is that such a system would need to be redesigned and rebuilt
from the hardware level on up. A difficult task, to be sure, but the reward is
invaluable: the ability to reason about the entire system through the system
itself.
~~~
mbrock
Oh. For me it's just pointless drudgery to remake everything like that. I want
a new fully coherent and portable system using an existing kernel and graphics
layer for bootstrapping. I mean, Emacs or Squeak are already almost there as
far as I'm concerned.
------
signa11
it is the man himself :), and ofcourse, this p.o.v is worth 80 IQ points. this
insight is
'One of our many problems with thinking is “cognitive load”: the number of
things we can pay attention to at once. The cliche is 7±2, but for many things
it is even less. We make progress by making those few things be more
powerful.'
just beautiful
~~~
wahern
It's probably more literally true than he intended. And 7 isn't really a
cliche; it's not an opinion but a thoroughly proven, universal limitation of
human working memory.
Before the advent of cheap writing instruments, and especially cheap printing,
we used poetry to almost effortlessly recall and communicate large working
sets of data, privately or in discourse. With poetry and similar mnemonic
devices people memorized volumes of information. A student or scholar in
ancient Greece would have literally memorized all the classics. Someone like
Cicero would write a speech of 5,000 to 10,000 words and then, a few days
later, deliver it nearly verbatim from memory. The dominate form of mass
communication was through open speeches, and this is why most of the great
speeches came from the ancient world. But it was limited; recalling and
sharing was easy, but memorizing was still laborious, notwithstanding the fact
that ancient scholars' memorization faculties seem like super powers to modern
humans.
With the advent of cheap writing and printing, we were able to archive,
recall, and disseminate magnitudes more information at a more rapid pace. And
while slower to recall, speed of creation and dissemination, and sheer volume
more than made up for that limitation. Moreover, mass communication proved far
more efficient in written form.
Today computers are killing writing just as writing killed poetry. But it's
not really computers, per se. With writing it was the system of creating and
using written works (alphabets, printing presses, libraries) that actually
realized the efficiency gain. In Alan Kay's view, Lisp is what made the
promise of computers realizable, capable of supplanting the dominant form of
"thinking" and of opening up new frontiers. Computers are like papyrus; it's
learning how to use them that matters, and Lisp was that great leap. It's one
thing to laboriously write a program using machine code; it's something else
entirely to do this using an elegant, higher-order programming language.
Indeed, once you use that higher-order language you can't go back; it changes
how you think about programming, including how you structure programs written
in machine code. Like with poetry and writing the utilitarian leap in
productivity is forgotten because it becomes so effortless and seemingly
obvious; instead all you see are the limitations and faults.
~~~
alankay1
The 7±2 was thoroughly proven for sequences of numbers, letters, words, etc.
by George Miller and followers. Much has been done since, and this shows that
for many things we can handle fewer chunks. That "7±2" is still used for the
larger idea of "cognitive load" makes it a cliche and a metaphor.
So it is just as true as I intended. We live in a world of unsupported
opinion. I'm 77 and from a world in which one was supposed to have
considerable support for an opinion before voicing it. I realize that this is
out of step these days, and especially with web fora.
~~~
wahern
To my mind a cliche refers to an archaic metaphor. Archaic because it out-
lives the discarded conceptual framework it describes, and therefore no longer
communicates anything of substance. Worse, such cliches often perpetuates err
in conceptualizing an issue.
Qualitatively and quantitatively, working memory capacity strongly reflects
limitations of so-called executive attention and, more generally, executive
function. See, e.g.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2852635/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2852635/)
("Based on the finding that WMC and EF tasks shared substantial common
variance, we argue that the current data provide evidence for reciprocal
validity for both of those constructs. Reciprocal validity can be defined as a
particularly strong form of construct validity, such that two constructs that
are strongly empirically related to one another lend support to the
theoretical reality of each other.").
AFAIU, the 7±2 quantity is still both valid in its original context and in
communicating something substantive about more complex phenomena. Of course,
depending on how you "chunk" a "concept" the number quickly becomes
meaningless, but that's a game of semantics. The more sophisticated
definitions of chunking that one would use to invalidate 7±2 necessarily
invoke broader, more speculative models, given that so much about cognition is
still unknown. I can't see how one could fairly use such models to invalidate
the 7±2 rule, which remains literally and meaningfully true for "chunks" as
originally defined. 7±2 communicates something both qualitatively and
quantitatively true about something very specific--words, letters, numbers,
etc--and about larger phenomena in cognition--constraints on higher-order
cognitive processes are reflected by a phenomenon which has a fixed absolute
limit, 7±2, in relation to these easily identifiable and measurable inputs--
words, letter, etc.
In other words, referring to 7±2 is saying something both concrete and
meaningful. Moreover, the conceptual model it invokes is still the dominant
framework, if only because the rule circumscribes what it purports to
describe, even in common usage. Nobody mistakes a heuristic for determining
the length of a phone number (a derivative "rule" which is far more
susceptible to the monicker, cliche) with a limit on our innate capacity for
conceptualizing Relativity. Examples which invalidate the rule actually muddy
the waters by drawing in more incomplete and uncertain premises, exemplifying
what the 7±2 rule gets right about how best to communicate something of
substance about such a complex and incomplete field of study. Of course, there
are limitations to what you can extrapolate from 7±2, but that would be
understood.
That's why I think it unfair to disparage application of the "7±2" phenomenon
as cliche. Whatever one's specific definition of cliche, I think it's fair to
say that labeling such usage "cliche" is to disparage it. I think such
disparagement is unfair. It's rare for a simplified anchor to a complex field
to retain such validity and power. But ultimately I guess my point rests on
what might be an idiosyncratic definition of cliche.
------
dang
A similar recent answer on Smalltalk:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15518746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15518746).
~~~
JepZ
Well, there are surprisingly few CS graduates who actually understand Object
Oriented Programming as Alan Kay designed it for Smalltalk, which in turn
lowers the probabilty that any of them will build a qualitatively better
language.
I mean there are a lot of other skills a programmer needs to have than to
understand what OOP is, but sometimes I think it would be better if more young
students would learn Smalltalk to understand what OOP is about and why the
simple existence of classes doesn't make a language an OO language...
~~~
seanmcdirmid
OOP was taught to me using Smalltalk (VisualWorks actually). It was a PL
class, so it didn’t go deep, including also Lisp, Prolog, and SML.
I wonder, though, how my OOP thinking would differ if my first exposure was
through BETA or Eiffel.
~~~
lispm
It could be different, but might not be. Exposure to different languages can
later broaden your horizon. I started with programming with a programmable
calculator, then BASIC, Assembler, Pascal, Modula 2, ... which then typically
leads with Wirth moving into OO with Clascal, Oberon, Object Pascal, ...
------
etruong42
I like how Alan Kay still ends up using nested parentheses when discussing
Lisp:
> (These operating systems in both Smalltalk and Lisp were both better (claim)
> and easier to write (simpler to demonstrate) than the standard ones of
> today.)
------
timonoko
Operating system written in lisp:
[https://github.com/timonoko/Nokolisp_On_Nokia_phone](https://github.com/timonoko/Nokolisp_On_Nokia_phone)
------
kazinator
I disagree with the "single ... language" right off the bat before any deeper
considerations.
Lisp is a great collection of design patterns for making languages.
_> The key was not so much “Lisp” but the kinds of thinking that this kind of
representational approach allowed and opened up regarding all kinds of
programming language schemes.
> A fun thing about it this is that once you’ve grokked it, you can think
> right away of better programming languages than Lisp, and you can think
> right away of better ways to write the meta descriptions than John did._
Once you've grokked it, those programming languages are more advanced dialects
of Lisp.
Or else, you didn't really grok it.
~~~
coldtea
> _Or else, you didn 't really grok it._
Only if you believe that the only good thing one should grok is the data/code
parity part.
For me Smalltalk is even better and more concise than Lisp is.
~~~
kazinator
It seems like it wouldn't be hard to make a Smalltalk-like sub-language inside
a Lisp dialect like Common Lisp or Racket. It could be programmed using
S-exps, or custom read syntax to make it look like actual Smalltalk.
~~~
blihp
Might be interesting as an academic exercise but doesn't seem like a terribly
useful thing to actually do. I like both languages but using Smalltalk syntax
in Lisp isn't something I'd want. Besides, Lisp has (IMO) nice optional
keyword parameter syntax which fits better in the Lisp world than the
Smalltalk message/block syntax ever would.
~~~
kazinator
You and I might not want a Smalltalk syntax in Lisp, but someone who favors
Smalltalk (like user coldtea to whom I was responding, who finds that
Smalltalk is "better and more concise") might want that.
~~~
blihp
Fair enough. I was reacting more to what I interpreted as you advocating the
approach as opposed to just trying to offer a solution based on coldtea's
comment. (I likely had a visceral reaction because I've actually implemented a
toy Lisp in Smalltalk and it wasn't something I'd want to do much more than
play with)
~~~
scroot
Have you looked at Ian Piumarta's work with COLAs? Curiously it's a mix of a
Smalltalkish higher level object language with a lower-level lisp like
language. I never quite understood how they worked together, but maybe you can
understand the papers over at vpri.org better than I.
~~~
blihp
I'm somewhat familiar with Ian's COLA work but am much more familiar with the
Smalltalk related portions of the project since I'm currently working with
some of those pieces of it. As I understand it, the original intention was to
prototype the system in a Smalltalk image and eventually re-target the work to
his COLA architecture via OMeta (which the higher-level stuff was written in
so retargeting would be done via OMeta parsers and not require many (any?)
higher level changes) I _think_ they got some of the lower level things
running that way (i.e. I think I recall seeing a demo of at least part of the
Nile/Gezira work running as 'native' code but could be remembering it wrong)
but due to time/money constraints I don't think they ever got completely there
with it as their final demonstration artifact (FRANK) was Smalltalk image-
based (plus a couple of plugins for performance). Take this explanation with a
grain of salt as I admit to being a bit fuzzy as to how far they got with
Ian's lower-level work...
What they were trying to do was demonstrate that they could build the entire
system from highest level languages (i.e. the OMeta-based languages they wrote
the system in) down to machine code (i.e. what the COLA stuff generated and
runtime it provided which would replace the Smalltalk environment) in 20kloc
_and_ preserve linkages (i.e. chain-of-meaning) from the top to the bottom.
While they may not have technically achieved everything they set out to, I'm
sold that they were successful in proving the concept and that they could have
gotten there (i.e. the parts they did deliver were impressive) at that order
of magnitude in terms of lines of code.
------
ohazi
There seem to be two big camps that preach a "learn this weird new programming
paradigm because it'll help you see things from a new perspective and will
make you a better engineer" message: the lispy languages, and the ML-like
languages. Both of these languages categories give you functional programming
as well as metaprogramming, which is great. Having tried both, I've found that
the ML-derived languages tend to have a stronger type system that's more
rigorously enforced at compile time. I personally find this much more valuable
in practice than some of the dynamic magic that you can do with lisp.
There are some notable exceptions, of course, but part of this is just
inherent to the design of lisp, and I think it's easy to end up with a type
safety system that feels more like it's bolted on than part of the language.
~~~
davexunit
There are also plenty of Lisp programmers that think that it's a real tool to
solve real problems, not just an educational oddity. There are a bunch of
Lisps out there, and plenty of them are by no means toys. My laptop's initial
RAM disk and init system are Scheme programs.
~~~
krapp
And it's not a Lisp per se, but WebAssembly's text format uses
s-expressions[0]. It's likely that the "oddity" of Lisps will seem less odd as
adoption increases if they stick with that.
[0][https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/WebAssembly/Underst...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/WebAssembly/Understanding_the_text_format)
~~~
tomjakubowski
gcc’s IR, “GIMPLE”, is also commonly printed in s-expression form.
~~~
Mikeb85
As is LLVM's. I think JVM's might be too, but not 100% sure.
Haskell is also pretty much just a lisp with a whole lot of sugar added on.
~~~
eropple
How is Haskell a Lisp?
To me, a Lisp pretty necessarily needs to treat the structure of its code as
mutable data, which seems kind of incompatible?
~~~
mattgreenrocks
The evaluation model of both is quite similar though (reduction), and you can
see it in the similarities between Core Haskell and Core Scheme.
AFAIK, there are very few truly built in types in Haskell. Most everything can
be built out of data constructors and functions. That idea of many things
being in language user space is pretty Lisp-y IMO.
~~~
lispm
The evaluation model is different. Lisp is using strict evaluation and Haskell
is using lazy evaluation.
Haskell is statically typed, Lisp is not.
Lisp uses s-expressions for writing programs, Haskell does not.
Generally Haskell and Lisp are very different languages: in syntax, semantics
and pragmatics (how the language is used).
------
ahmedalsudani
“I am the Alan Kay in question”
Hah. Not everyone can be that cool.
------
eternalban
It's funny, he can't even balance his parens in the first para.
------
CyberDildonics
Citizen Kaine is often called 'the best movie ever made'. If you watch it, it
is arguable whether it is even minimally entertaining. I would say it is one
of the most influential movies created along with Kurosawa movies. If I'm
stuck on a plane I would rather watch the latest Transformers or sit in
silence (given only those three options).
Lisp is arguably the most influential programming language, that doesn't mean
it is objectively 'the best'.
~~~
nickik
You would rather watch Transformers then Citizen Kaine? Wat?
~~~
thedaemon
Attention spans are different now.
~~~
vixen99
Whose and where?
------
azag0
I'm always blown away by how crisply is Alan Kay able to put complex thoughts
into words. I feel that the level of clarity I can achieve on the scale of a
sentence or two he can achieve on the scale of several paragraphs.
~~~
jackmott
Counterpoint:
The words he says are nice, and his depth of knowledge is profound, but he
hasn't actually provided any evidence making the case that lisp is better
and/or in what scenarios it is better.
That this sort of rhetoric is the way almost all programmers and language
designers try to find truth and communicate ideas is probably why we ended up
all programming in javascript. We have no rigor, we are like Freud era
psychology with flowering and impressive sounding prose but no real data. And
while psychology still has a long way to go, we have even further.
~~~
borplk
Like Steve Jobs he is amongst the group of people who could say anything
anyway they like and some people will find a way to glorify it by a factor of
a million.
If you remove their name from the things they have said or written, at least
many of them seem fairly average sensible statements, like something you would
read here from a random member.
I'd be interested to see a "blind test" for these things. I bet the bias would
show.
As in, display something from Alan Kay but post it on a random internet forum
as JoeSchmo11, and you will have lots of people disagreeing with it and
tearing it apart without hesitation.
But oh look if Steve Jobs or Alan Kay or Elon Musk's name is attached to it
suddenly becomes a unique gem of knowledge to be cherished by the humanity for
the rest of time and surely the fault lies with anyone not agreeing with it
right? Because after all they could not possibly be more right than those
authority figures?
I'm not making a judgement about this, neither am I surprised by it. Just
saying that you should ask yourself exactly how much of your own brain power
and judgement do you use to judge the quality of an idea and how much of your
conclusion is conveniently borrowed from your image of the author?
It reminds me of when Elon Musk talked about the probability of our universe
being a simulation.
I'm not saying he is right or wrong, just using that as an example. But if
JoeSchmo11 said exactly the same thing people would just dismiss it.
But when Elon Musk says it all the newspapers go mad and write stories about
it.
Again I'm not saying it shouldn't be like this, reputation matters, I get it.
But my point is that the fact that this happens to the degree that it does is
in some ways a sad admission that we are incapable of evaluating thoughts and
ideas independently of their originators and on their own merits. Instead we
borrow from the past credibility and the authority of the people they are
attached to.
~~~
mquander
What is the sad admission here? That not everyone establishes 100% of their
belief system from first principles, and instead adopts some of it empirically
based on other reasoners' beliefs? I don't consider that a bug.
If I don't know anything about X, and the Alan Kay of X comes and tells me
something about X, it's pretty likely to be true. If equally-ignorant-as-me-
person tells me something about X, it's not as likely to be true. That's the
meaning of knowledge and ignorance.
None of this precludes thinking for yourself about anything. It's just the
thing you do in addition to thinking for yourself about it, if you want to
have true beliefs.
------
kmicklas
This is really well written and seems to agree with the traditional FP lore.
I'm curious what led Alan Kay then to OOP in Smalltalk.
~~~
jackmott
Whatever Alan Kay thinks OOP is, it isn't what we think it is.
~~~
DigitalJack
just fyi, Alan Kay coined the phrase Object Oriented Programming. So your
statement, while true, should probably say what we call object oreinted
programming should have a different name.
~~~
aryehof
He did popularly _name_ what others (Nygaard and Dahl) invented, and for which
they won ACM Turing Awards.
To quote Alan Kay:- "I don't think I invented 'Object-oriented' but more or
less 'noticed' what was really powerful about just making everything from
complete computers communicating with non-command messages. This was all
chronicled in the HOPL II chapter I wrote 'The Early History of Smalltalk'."
~~~
alankay1
Simula can't be praised too highly, and it was a huge influence. But if you
take the care to check, you will find out that what I termed "Object Oriented"
was quite different from Simula in (what I thought were) important ways. And
if you are looking for the earliest inventions of ideas like these, there are
several that predate Simula (take a look at that HOPL II chapter mentioned
above)
~~~
aryehof
I certainly don't want to underemphasise the huge contribution of Smalltalk.
Nevertheless, consider a couple of modern widely-used languages. C++ in terms
of object-orientation, is based on Simula, and Java's object model is entirely
based on Simula.
I argue that it was Nygaard and Dahl who first introduced those language's key
concepts (objects, classes, sub-classing and virtual functions) in a coherent
and programmable form. This is why Nygaard's Turing Award page states "Kristen
Nygaard is internationally acknowledged as the co-inventor with Ole-Johan Dahl
of object-oriented programming and the programming language SIMULA", and why I
stated in my parent response that you named the term others invented,
notwithstanding that today's common use isn't necessarily consistent with your
coining of the term.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unexpected places you can and can’t use null bytes - ammmir
https://eklitzke.org/unexpected-places-you-can-and-cant-use-null-bytes
======
kstenerud
It seems a bit odd to call it "unexpected" when any C API that accepts a char*
and doesn't include a length parameter is commonly understood to expect a null
terminated string, and any API that has a length parameter likely won't have
this restriction.
~~~
ferzul
you missed the point. it's not that this specific api call can't take embedded
\0; it's that there is no alternative api that allows embedded null. there's
no way to open a file by using a string containing \0, no matter what api you
pick, but you can write data to a file which contains null if you pick the
right function. there's no apriori way to know which apis have this
duplication and which don't.
~~~
kstenerud
I don't follow what you're getting at. If there's no length field, it's going
to stop scanning on the first null. If there is a length field, it will keep
reading until the length is reached. That's the general contract with C APIs.
If you actually NEED strings with nulls in them (although I couldn't think of
a reason why), you'll need to use/find/create APIs with length fields.
~~~
taneq
> If there is a length field, it will keep reading until the length is
> reached.
Well, it _might_. If it ever uses that string internally with some function
that expects a null termination then it'll probably still get truncated.
~~~
kstenerud
Possibly, depending on the API. But then again, strings should not have
embedded NUL characters. There's no good reason for it. You have 32 other
control characters to choose from.
------
cpeterso
Pedantic nit: the ASCII '\0' character is called NUL, not null or NULL. C
strings are NUL-terminated or zero-terminated, not null-terminated.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII)
~~~
jfk13
IMO, you're being a bit _too_ pedantic here; it's perfectly reasonable to
refer to a "null byte" or "null character".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_character](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_character)
It's true that "NUL" is the usual abbreviation for this value in character
code charts/standards.
~~~
DonHopkins
I am disappointed this URL does not redirect to that page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%00](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%00)
But what the hell does it do??? In Safari and Firefox, I get an nginx 400 Bad
Request page from en.wikipedia.org. But in Chrome, it seems to be redirecting
to a google search for the same url, when I type it into the address bar.
Well, that's meta. Chrome won't even let me drag-and-drop that icky %00
terminated url from one page into another page to navigate there -- it angrily
rejects it and sadly animates the evil url back to where it came from (though
dragging it into an existing or new tab mysteriously works). But actually
clicking on that link immediately goes to a blank purgatory page with the url
"about:blank#blocked". Those are Chrome's stories, and it's sticking with
them.
At least this works:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%01](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%01)
>Special Page
>Bad title
>The requested page title contains an invalid UTF-8 sequence.
>Return to Main Page.
Oh, yeah -- PHP:
[https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/84008/url-
enc...](https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/84008/url-encoded-
query-string-with-embedded-null-00-breaks-on-some-servers)
If not the actual NUL character, then at least the Unicode Symbol for NUL
redirects to the page on the Null character.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/␀](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/␀)
>Null character
>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
>(Redirected from ␀)
>For other uses, see Null symbol.
...But then again, shouldn't the Null symbol ␀ redirect to the page on the
Null symbol, which it actually is, not the page on the Null character, which
it only symbolizes?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_symbol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_symbol)
~~~
missblit
> But what the hell does it do??? In Safari and Firefox, I get an nginx 400
> Bad Request page from en.wikipedia.org. But in Chrome, it seems to be
> redirecting to a google search for the same url, when I type it into the
> address bar.
Firefox makes a GET request to
"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%00"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%00"), the
server returns an HTTP/2 400 Bad Request. Presumably because the web-server
considered the URL invalid.
Chrome decides the string isn't a valid URL up front. So it does what it
normally does when you enter random junk in the address bar; it searches for
it.
The dirty secret of URLs is that no one can quite agree on which ones are
valid or how they should be canonicalized.
We can take WHATWG's spec as a modern way to handle URLs [1]. If I'm reading
it right (50/50 chance!) the URL would be considered valid by that spec.
See also this article from the developer of curl:
[https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/05/11/my-url-isnt-your-
url/](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/05/11/my-url-isnt-your-url/)
[1] [https://url.spec.whatwg.org/](https://url.spec.whatwg.org/)
~~~
kccqzy
> The dirty secret of URLs is that no one can quite agree on which ones are
> valid or how they should be canonicalized.
Fun story. An engineer was working to migrate an old system from Python 2 to 3
before the Python 2 EOL deadline. The engineer decided to use the str type to
represent URLs. Chaos ensued when suddenly non-UTF-8 URLs don't work any more.
Turns out back when that system was designed, people were directly URL-
encoding binary data into URLs.
------
nneonneo
Unexpected places where you _can_ use null bytes: gets, fgets and scanf("%s").
All three will read and store null bytes into your string from the input, and
keep going: gets and fgets only terminate at a newline character and scanf
only terminates at whitespace (which doesn't include the null byte).
gets and scanf("%s") are also horrifically unsafe. gets is well-known to be
unsafe (to the point where you'll almost certainly get a compiler warning for
using it). However, scanf("%s") is unsafe for exactly the same reason (no
bound on the buffer length) yet will not produce a compiler warning. Add to
the fact that these functions will accept null bytes, and you have a very
dangerous buffer overflow waiting to happen.
~~~
fao_
This is why you _always_ write:
if (*s && *s != '\n' ...)
and never:
if (*s != '\n' ...)
------
msarnoff
One unexpected place where null bytes are acceptable: Wi-Fi SSIDs. That’s one
way to keep people off your network, I suppose.
------
ChrisSD
> While we’re on the topic, it’s worth noting that the only other restriction
> on filenames is that that they cannot contain a /, which is the character
> used to denote directories. Filenames can contain arbitrary other binary
> data, including spaces and newlines, and there’s no defined character
> encoding.
I've seen this _byte_ people when junk gets written to a filename (either
accidentally or maliciously). Especially in shells but also in other
programming languages. Issues that aren't always handled well include file
names that:
* include a newline or some other control characters
* start with a `-`
* aren't valid UTF-8
~~~
heavenlyblue
I have recently accidentally created a folder named “~”. Then I tried deleting
it through shell.
~~~
smichel17
I did similar, once. I had a script where I misquoted and ended up with a
directory starting with ~
It was the only directory starting that way, so I typed "rm -rf ~<TAB><ENTER>"
Hit control-C a half second later, but the damage was done. Fortunately most
of my important files are backed up.
Lesson: when deleting files with tricky names, write the command without flags
first, then add "-rf" after the path is confirmed correct.
~~~
heavenlyblue
I’ve got lucky with some directory that is called .asound or similar. It was
the first one in the home directory and it didn’t manage to go beyond that.
------
cdcarter
Neat article, but the author doesn't provide an actual reason you'd _need_ to
pass a NUL byte into something like a socket address, or command arg.
Is there an (perhaps obvious, or not) common usage of NUL byte literals being
passed around, not for the purpose of terminating strings? Just terrible ye-
olde file formats?
~~~
singron
All kinds of binary data might have a NUL byte. E.g. if you want to write a
NUL byte to a file in the shell, you might try something like
echo -n $'\0' > nul
This doesn't work for the reason stated in the article. The argument is
instead interpreted as a string ended at the NUL byte and the file will be
empty. BTW you can get around this with printf since it processes escape
sequences internally.
printf '\0' > nul
~~~
nneonneo
There's also `echo -ne '\0'`, which works similarly (it tells echo to
interpret the escape sequences).
------
fwsgonzo
You can printf a null byte just fine, you just need to provide the length,
just like with fwrite:
printf("%.*s", (int) nbytes, str);
------
skrebbel
PostgreSQL TEXT fields
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google calls bullshit on newspapers who say they don't want to be indexed - peter123
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2009/07/working-with-news-publishers.html
======
wmf
This headline and blog post strike me as disingenuous. The newspapers know how
to use robots.txt. Clearly they want to be indexed; they just want to
micromanage exactly how their content is presented by search engines. Let's
criticize the newspapers' _actual_ position, not a strawman.
------
anamax
> they just want to micromanage exactly how their content is presented by
> search engines.
They also want to be paid for ads on google's SERP. In some versions of this
demand, they want revenue whenever their site is a result on said SERP. (The
theory is that said ads are valuable because their site is a result on said
SERP.) In others, they also want a revenue share from SERP pages that don't
mention their site. (In that case, the theory is something like "the
possibility of finding our content is why folks use Google".)
------
gus_massa
Please, change the title.
_You can make up a new title if you want, but if you put gratuitous editorial
spin on it, the editors may rewrite it._
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Science and the Rise of the Co-Authors (2015) - Hooke
https://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2015/11/25/science-and-the-rise-of-the-co-authors/
======
galuggus
In China academics get bonuses for authoring papers.
There is an informal market for buying selling authorship.
I wonder if this contributes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Recruiters guide for new Coders - veganarchocap
http://www.ewanvalentine.co.uk/recruiters-new-coders/
======
veganarchocap
My first own post to HN, go easy on me! Thought I'd try to give a bit of
balanced advice for juniors :)
~~~
pedalpete
I found your writing a bit hard to follow, and therefore didn't get all the
way through.
This probably could have been 3 or four posts. I think that you should try to
stick to only a few ideas at a time. Maximum of 3, and they should all be
related directly to your title.
Which leads me to my next bit of advice. Titles and subtitles. "Recruiters
Guide for new Coders". Is that a guide for coders to get recruited? or a guide
for recruiters? Seems a bit confusing.
"By this point you notice a few problems with some recruiters:" is a very
awkward heading, it is far from concise and far from strong. A heading should
be punchy, even with your conversational style writing, keep your sections
punchy and then elaborate in the text.
Hope this helps you out with future posts. I do like your conversational
style, and with a bit more editing and focus, I think you could make massive
strides in your writing.
~~~
veganarchocap
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Find out where your time went this year - quasiconvex
https://www.skej.us/mycal.html
======
jflatow
The permissions are a lot to ask, but I found it worth the price.
~~~
quasiconvex
Unfortunately there's no way around it to show you the personalized report.
But we certainly take privacy very seriously.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anonymous hacks Australian Government in response to Internet censorship - go37pi
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/operation-titstorm-hackers-bring-down-government-websites-20100210-nqku.html
======
esonica
I thinks its only a matter of time before Anonymous gets labelled a terrorist
organisation to increase the counter measures / invasive laws that can be used
against them.
Disrupting Goverment sites and services would be considered as an attack as
per the Australian Terrorism definition:
(e) seriously interferes with, seriously disrupts, or destroys, an electronic
system including, but not limited to
(i) an information system; or
(ii) a telecommunications system; or
(iii) a financial system; or
(iv) a system used for the delivery of essential government services; or
(v) a system used for, or by, an essential public utility; or
(vi) a system used for, or by, a transport system.
[http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/slaa200245...](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/slaa2002451/sch1.html)
~~~
sorbus
It would be like punching mist. Hell, if someone gets in jail for being part
of anonymous (or, more accurately, for participating in a DDoS advocated by
people under the banner of anonymous, or even more likely for having their
wifi used by someone to participate in such a DDoS), it will just make all the
others more angry. Fighting them would be like fighting tor, or bittorrent;
highly distributed, highly decentralized, with no real command structure, and
no allegiance to any single website (if one goes down or is monitored, they
can always move elsewhere). It's not even an organization, in the old sense;
you might as well say that slashdot or HN are organizations[1]. On the upside?
Most of them, most of the time, don't care - except when someone makes them
angry, they seem fairly passive, more interested in their own amusement than
anything else (yes, I occasionally lurk on 4chan) - and even then, there are
probably only a few thousand who actually participate in things like this [not
that I have actual numbers to support this, but still - someone who's more
interested could start lurking on IRC channels mentioned in image macros (such
as the one in the article) and keep track of how many unique individuals show
up].
Or you could always kill them off by destroying anonymity in the internet -
force everyone to use their real names everywhere, to provide concrete
linkages to real personalities. That's the only way to stop people from taking
advantage of anonymity.
I'm sorry that this turned into a rant; it was originally going to be a lot
shorter. I just kept on thinking of things to add, you see ... and I haven't
ranted for a while.
[1] Lots of like-minded people, who read content on sites, post content, and
occasionally take action/respond to that content, when it means something to
them, or is so easy that there's no reason not to.
~~~
jonny_noog
I'm not wishing to argue that labeling Anonymous as a terrorist orgainsation
would be a good thing (it would be monumentally retarded, which is why I also
think there's a good chance it will happen at some point, I have little faith
in government common sense these days) but this problem of how to handle these
distributed non-orgnaisations that we see today is quite relevant to the way
governments were/are trying to handle terrorism. I remember watching a
documentary - I think it was called _The Power of Nightmares_ \- that stated
amongst other things that after 9/11 the US Government basically began using
laws originally designed to combat organised crime (Mafia et al) and applying
them to these new, relatively flat, loosely organised and decentralised groups
with very little success, primarily because there was no command structure
similar what they had been used to dealing with.
Governments are still wrestling with what to do about this issue I think. It
seems that the best solution they have so far come up with is reducing civil
liberty and surveilling everyone. Not ideal from my POV.
Not to mention that as the saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's
freedom fighter.
~~~
ytinas
Kudos for watching _The Power of Nightmares_ , but did you miss the part where
they pointed out [b]that these organizations are largely fictional and used as
a tool by governments to appear more necessary than they are[/b]? The
government isn't working on how to deal with fictional "flat, loosely
organized and decentralized groups", it's working on how to make it look like
we need government protection from the ultimate boogie man.
~~~
jonny_noog
No, I watched it all, just a long time ago and had forgotten most of it, to be
honest. But I had not forgotten the overall thrust of the programme.
To try and clarify my view a bit, IMO the terrorist "groups" we hear about
today are more like Anonymous than they are like the fictional villainous
organisations one might see in a James Bond movie, i.e. they're not even
really organisations at all, they're just individuals or tiny groups, barely
associated with each other at best, who happen to have similar positions on
certain issues. But I wanted to make this point without sounding like I
thought Anonymous should be branded as terrorists, because I don't.
I get that after 9/11, the entire western world's governments went well
overboard, amazingly allowing the military industrial complex to write their
own cheques, using scare tactics to allow this to continue. I knew this full
well long before I saw _The Power of Nightmares_. Before I say what else I
have to say, I again don't wish my position to be misconstrued, I'm not
advocating for the usual government policies, I'm aware of how insignificant
the threat of terrorism is when compared to other threats of the day that face
our society and I usually find myself pretty firmly on the social-libertarian
side of just about any debate. As you say: "these organizations are _largely_
fictional" (emphasis added) and I totally agree. I cannot reconcile any view
that we do not need _some_ degree of vigilance when it comes to (the no doubt
few and far between) individuals and small groups that are out there and do
wish to perpetrate terrorist acts.
So following on from this, yes, terrorism is an overinflated menace and it
continues to be overinflated for numerous reasons, most of which revolve
around certain areas of government and private industry partners who have
vested interests in keeping the public scared in order to maintain power and
profit. But some part of the overreaction to terrorism does come from a place
of honestly thinking they're doing the right thing, misguided though they may
be. Some _very small_ part of the usual government reaction to terrorism is -
in my mind - sanctioned and required because terrorism while a largely
overinflated boogie man, does none the less still exist. I don't wish to throw
the baby out with the bathwater.
------
monkeygrinder
As an expat Aussie, the direction the government has taken has saddened, but
not shocked me. This is a country famous for having what the Register used to
call 'The world's biggest Luddite' Richard Alston appointed as Minister of the
Digital Economy. There has been a change of government since those times, but
not much seems to have changed.
While the idea of censoring certain content types like child porn may be seen
as a good things, the issue is that the Net could become a tool of the
government. The laws could extend to discrimination of minority groups - and
Australia would become like China.
[http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2008/gb2008...](http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2008/gb2008026_169365.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business)
This article points out that questions remain: there is a lack of detail on
what will constitute illegal content, how decisions will be made, and how the
filtering technology itself will work. It also said Australia is not the only
Western democratic country to look at web filtering - Scandinavia and UK have
web filtering. The Oz govt just failed to stem the tide of outrage and bad
press.
I'm also against getting rid of anonymity on the net, ie forcing everyone to
use their full name, for the simple reason that some rogue governments in some
countries are persecuting groups and the internet can be a powerful tool for
them. Imagine if Mandela and the ANC had the net in the 50s.
It's a hugely sticky issue though.
------
njharman
This is so awesome. It's like I'm living in near future cyberpunk novel. With
vigilante hacker groups fighting the evil and oppressive
corpora^H^H^H^H^H^Hgovernment.
~~~
joeyo
William Gibson's prescience continues to frighten me. Unless the causality
goes the other way, then it frightens me even more.
_"Chaos, Mr. Who," Lupus Yonderboy said. "That is our mode and modus. That is
our central kick."_
Or, in the parlance of our times, they do it for the lulz.
------
chaosmachine
<http://www.aph.gov.au/>
The Parliament of Australia site is down.
------
teej
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John
Gilmore
------
tdm911
whilst i agree with their protesting of our governments unnecessary proposals
on censoring australia, their methods are not helping.
a ddos attack on the government only gives the government more ammunition to
paint the average protester as a criminal or someone who is trying to harm the
government. a peaceful protest is far more effective.
~~~
nzmsv
Is there anyone on the net who thinks this filter is a good idea? Pretty much
the only people who do are the ones who don't even use the Web, and just keep
shouting that it's inherently evil. Oh, and the ones with the government
contract to implement the filter.
When no one will listen to the people who will actually be affected by this,
what other options are left?
~~~
jstevens85
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/01/2433845.htm?si...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/01/2433845.htm?site=news)
This is probably the only article I've read that is pro-filter.
"Oh, and the ones with the government contract to implement the filter."
The government body ACMA will maintain a list of blacklisted websites (which
already occurs, although pointless at this stage). I understand it will be the
responsibility of the individual ISPs to choose how to block those websites.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I love SF but I needed a break. Photos from my coast-to-coast motorcycle trip - samp615
http://imgur.com/a/euaD5
======
samp615
I also did a write up about my packing list and other details, in case anyone
is interested in taking a similar trip but isn't sure what to do:
[http://www.theantimba.com/america-youre-one-beautiful-
bitch-...](http://www.theantimba.com/america-youre-one-beautiful-
bitch-9000-mile-47-day-motorcycle-journey/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We cut our Flask page load times by 60% with one line of code - shreyans
https://medium.com/@5hreyans/the-one-weird-trick-that-cut-our-flask-page-load-time-by-70-87145335f679
======
peterlada
Seems like this could possibly lead to memory leak? No upper bound on the
memory usage?
~~~
Walkman
I'm not familiar with Jinja caching but I think it only caches the number of
templates you got, so it grows to a fixed size.
------
kellros
Well done!
------
notastartup
I added this, hope it improves things.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing Confluent, a Company for Apache Kafka and Realtime Data - LiveTheDream
http://blog.confluent.io/2014/11/06/announcing-confluent-a-company-for-apache-kafka-and-real-time-data/
======
dantiberian
This is really good news for the Apache Kafka project. Having a corporate
sponsor behind it will ensure that it gets the attention it deserves, and has
a long term future ahead. Congratulations to the team, Kafka is an awesome
piece of software.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This is what happens when you work yourself almost to death. - k33n
http://blog.outernet.io/article/329/one-step-too-far
======
anigbrowl
Yikes! A cautionary tale, to be sure. Glad to hear you're back on an even
keel; a bit of time to recharge your batteries and reconnect with the basics
of life sounds ideal. This is also a good time to read that Serious Book you
always meant to get around to, so as to keep your mind exercised without
falling back into its habitual grooves.
I think that looking after ourselves is a problem for a lot of 'knowledge
workers'. William gibson said it best, in _Neuromancer:_
_For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the
Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance
involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case
fell into the prison of his own flesh._
~~~
k33n
I really like that quote.
------
ryandvm
I thought it was pretty much settled that the old "stress causes ulcers"
theory was a myth and that current medical knowledge is that ulcers are
usually caused by the H. Pylori bacteria.
I always felt sorry for the poor guys that would get ulcers and then everyone
piles on about how they need to relax. No, it turns out they just needed
antibiotic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Material Design , Learning the Rules and Breaking Them - Danafrid
https://medium.com/@creatrixx/material-design-learning-the-rules-and-breaking-them-1787ee364094
======
ulber
Can't agree more about the importance of breaking the rules. In my foray to
Windows Phone development, I spent a lot of time customizing components to
implement the design language well in Reitit [1]. The early Metro/Modern
design language had next to no UI chrome, so many apps that didn't do their
app specific design work ended up feeling very empty.
[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/store/p/reitit/9nblggh093vj](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/store/p/reitit/9nblggh093vj)
------
songzme
Really enjoyed this article, thank you for sharing. I've seen time and time
again engineers arguing to use a certain technology just because it is 'the
standard' or 'everybody else is doing it'. As you pointed out, the most
important skill is to first understand the problem you are trying to solve and
then come up with a solution that solves it.
A blanket solution "just do x" is never a solution.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Real-time raytracing as web page background - c3d
http://www.taodyne.com/presentation/index-reveal.html#/references
======
c3d
This page uses a specific shader courtesy ShaderToy that does real-time ray-
tracing in the background. You can verify that it's real-time by moving the
mouse. Moving left and right changes the amount of "frosting" on the cakes.
Moving up and down changes the zooming factor. Enjoy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twine: a social network with brains - bootload
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/10/twine_a_social_6.php
======
bootload
_"... Twine provides one place to tie everything together: emails, bookmarks,
documents, RSS feeds, contacts, photos, videos, product info, data records,
and more ..."_
Danger Will Robinson, danger. Gushing quote ~ <http://www.twine.com/about>
Listen to Eben Moglen to understand (more) why. _ITConversations, "Eben
Moglen, 'Freedom Businesses Protect Privacy', mp3, 18Mb, 40min"_ ~
<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail1897.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Is The World Run By Bean Counters? - sunjain
http://blogs.forbes.com/stevedenning/2011/07/16/why-is-the-world-run-by-bean-counters/?partner=yahootix
======
glimcat
The abuse of survivor bias in this article pisses me off.
There are much more valuable lessons to take away from Amazon et al. than "be
radical, be new, run the world differently." For starters, the companies he
uses as positive examples all spend an enormous amount of their attention on
optimizing the user experience. Wouldn't that be more valuable to emulate?
------
1010011010
Accountants and MBAs should not run anything, except a calculator. Lutz was
right to say that car guys should make cars, software guys should make
software, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MIT's Building 20: “The Magical Incubator” (1998) - li4ick
https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/video/mits-building-20-magical-incubator
======
tpmx
Note the transcript PDF:
(It's very nicely formatted for readability.)
[https://static.3playmedia.com/files/2O_NhKHa13A/transcript.p...](https://static.3playmedia.com/files/2O_NhKHa13A/transcript.pdf?apikey=ao5gTyMg4ZKNd8YWQ72wKS8YZyGhiXv1&dl=1&usevideoid=1)
(Let's hope it doesn't expire. If it does, get a fresh link from the actual
web page.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Conversational insurance quote system for freelancers - iamashley
https://withjack.co.uk/quote/
======
mijustin
Love this. My first thought was: "this doesn't feel like a chat bot." I think
it's largely because of the design. Well done!
~~~
iamashley
Thanks, Justin. Can't wait to develop it into an instant platform that
delivers quotes and cover on demand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fixing our social sharing tools - tensafefrogs
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/c4c4074591ba
======
pthor
There really should be a better way to subscribe to people. I don't want to
miss out on major life events of old friends, but don't want to hear about
their political views all the times.
------
Pingit
This is exactly what Ping.it fixes. Read this for a quick intro:
<http://ping.it/press>
------
webwanderings
You provide two examples of a promising change: Pinterest and Medium (I don't
use either of them) but their solution appears to be as same as what Reddit
provides, i.e, the sub-categories. So what is the difference?
Also, why ask for Facebook connect for Personify?
~~~
tensafefrogs
The difference is that reddit crams everyone into a category, where Pinterest
uses a follow model to curate your stream.
Imagine if the reddit homepage filled up with posts only from categories you
explicitly followed and you might get something similar. There's still the
problem of hundreds of people trying to have a discussion in one place,
though.
Facebook connect is for simplicity during signup, and so you can post shared
things to your Facebook timeline.
~~~
webwanderings
>>Imagine if the reddit homepage filled up with posts only from categories you
explicitly followed and you might get something similar. <<
That's exactly how I use Reddit, and I was under the impression that pretty
much all of the typical Reddit crowd does the same, no?
Reddit wasn't attractive to me unless I spent some time upfront to subscribe
to bunch of sub-reddits and now I see only the categories I want to see (other
than the top entry which is sort of what Reddit pushes as an Ad-posting).
Discussion at Reddit is indeed a problem, particularly for popular sub-reddit.
I believe Branch is working on resolving some of the discussion issues
apparent across the web.
Facebook connect for a new social service is counter intuitive. I will never
sign up for a new service via FB or anything else.
------
sreenivas
Facebook news feed is a pain nowadays with all the useless stuff my friends
are sharing..
------
jerrystearns
very good
| {
"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"
} |
[Ask HN]: Where do you read most articles? - mpcadosch
Where do you read most articles? On your phone? Tablet? Desktop ?<p>A16Z Benedict Evans says phone is killing both desktop and tablet, and I am just trying to get an idea of relative percentages to see if this is true.
======
stonogo
This place is like the worst possible demographic for asking this question.
The technology habits of the hacker news readership are almost completely
unlike the vast majority of America, much less the rest of the world.
------
valarauca1
The rise of the smart phone and tablet happened in the same decade as when
desktops and laptops reached their saturation point. Where most people are no
longer buying a desktop for the first time, but replacing their old desktops.
Thus slowing sales.
The Smart Phone isn't _killing_ the desktop, and more then the desktop
_killed_ the main frame, we still use powerful dedicated computer clusters for
computing, just like we did in the 60's and 70's before the desktop. The
desktop just expanded the market of people who own computers, much like the
smart phone is doing now.
That being said I do most my reading on a desktop.
~~~
mpcadosch
Thanks! So you think that desktop sales are just slower because people don't
replace desktops as often as they replace smartphones? Just trying to better
understand your argument.
------
gatehouse
My phone is my primary device for reading, but I find typing a hassle, so it
is basically consumption only.
Around Jan-Feb 2013 I read the whole ASOIAF (i.e. Game Of Thrones) series on
an iPhone 4, since then I prefer it to laptop or paper, I probably average a
book a week. IMO if you're willing to spend money on apps the only real
limitation of mobile is input. Output if fine if you have good eyesight.
------
bluerail
Mobile during commute,and desktop in office and my Laptop in home.. I usually
save the articles in Pocket from my computer and will later read it on
whenever I have time and in whichever I have access to..
------
shervinshaikh
If I'm going to bed it's my phone. I usually prefer to read on my laptop or
tablet due to the larger screen.
~~~
mpcadosch
Thanks! Follow-up question: between laptop and tablet, which one do you use
most?
I am just intrigued about this whole "tablets replacing desktops" thing, and I
am trying to get a sense of what other people use.
For developers like me (and you?), a tablet could never replace a powerful
computer. But for average users, the tables can do most of what a desktop does
(email, netflix, facebook, etc.)
------
neduma
Mobile(Gym, bathroom), Desktop (Office Desk, Couch, Bed) - I do not use
tablets. To me, they are useless..
------
kinj28
reading depends on where do you discover articles - i discover them on
twitter/zite/teamgum (mobile). While at work, i mostly discover articles which
are related to my current work or helping to solve some problem i am stuck at
- use laptop/desktop for this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Building a Distributed Log from Scratch: Scaling Message Delivery - tylertreat
https://bravenewgeek.com/building-a-distributed-log-from-scratch-part-3-scaling-message-delivery/
======
majidazimi
> In Kafka and NATS Streaming, reads (and writes) are only served by the
> leader. Similarly, Amazon Kinesis supports up to only five reads per second
> per shard (a shard is Kinesis’ equivalent of a partition). Thus, if we have
> five consumers reading from the same shard, we’ve already hit our fan-out
> limit.
Long live DistributedLog. One of the great aspects of DistributedLog is the
read scaling. Start reading from any replica. Even read proxy node caches
records for all consumers. Launch as many read proxies as you need, since read
proxies are stateless.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Couple Pays $155,000 To Clone Dog In Korea - Pup Now Delivered - keltecp11
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/01/28/parker.fl.cloned.puppy.wpbf
======
jm4
This links directly to a video. Can you put [video] or something in the
headline next time?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paul Buchheit: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain - paul
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/03/ideas-vs-judgment-and-execution_9197.html
======
nostrademons
The way I see it, ideas are important. It's just that you need _hundreds_ of
good ideas in order to get to the top. And they all have to build on each
other, and you'll find that you have thousands of bad ideas that seem like
good ideas at first and only turn out to be dead ends when you try them.
Really, what's execution other than all the ideas that you have _after_ you've
picked a direction?
That's why I'm skeptical of self-proclaimed "idea people". They tend to have
one great idea and fixate upon it, not realizing that they've gotten maybe 1%
of the way there, and need to think up 99 other great ideas before their one
great idea is worthwhile.
~~~
Tichy
I think an "idea person" would by definition have more than one good idea. If
as you say 99 great ideas are necessary to make it to the top, an idea person
might be the right person for the project?
Many people don't seem to have any ideas at all, their whole inspiration for
life comes from TV and magazines. I prefer idea people. Execution would be
even better, of course. But why not talk to the idea people you know and help
them execute?
------
webwright
I've always had trouble with PG's "proof" that ideas are worthless. Selling
ideas doesn't work because to demonstrate that they are worth selling, you
have to give them away.
There are plenty of people who get paid a ton of money for ideas-- simply by
having demonstrated a good track record of ideas in the past. Authors and
speakers (Seth Godin, for example) get paid piles of money for ideas that come
with zero execution.
------
Sam_Odio
This reminds me of the lemon problem in economics:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>
It's not that ideas are worthless, just like my car isn't worthless. But it's
hard to know what a car's worth until it's driven, and it's even harder to
know what an idea's worth until it's executed on.
Therefore, no market for ideas develops. Nobody buys ideas, since unlike cars,
you can't exactly take them out for a "test-drive."
In the few places you do see a market, it's usually because information exists
about the value of the idea. For example, patent trolls buy patents(ideas) to
sue companies that are already infringing(executing) them.
------
emmett
I think the most interesting consequence of this idea is the realization that
the origin of the idea alters its value.
Evidence that an idea is good can come in many forms, but it's rare that
external evidence changes your mind unless it comes from someone you respect.
~~~
yariv
I don't think this is always the case. I think that many good ideas are
obviously good regardless of their origin and even in the absence of external
evidence. You can tell those ideas are good because they solve real problems
in people's lives (Ebay, Yahoo, Craigslist, Amazon, Hotmail, etc, are all
based on obviously good ideas).
To use Paul's analogy, some pots of gold are at the top of mountains, but
others are visible on the flatlands, and only speed of execution determines
who will win them.
~~~
paul
Those ideas are obviously good in hindsight, but at the time a lot people
thought that they were bad ideas or businesses. (what "idea" is Yahoo btw?)
~~~
yariv
Indeed it's often impossible to know if a new idea could lead to a profitable
business (or how profitable that business would be), but at least you can have
a good hunch that the idea would be something people want.
The original Yahoo idea was a centralized directory of web pages, wasn't it?
------
musiciangames
I just read this, and wondered what would have happened if Babbage had 'picked
one mountain to climb', and focused on that. [http://www.nabble.com/-squeak-
dev--The-Old-Man-td16386810.ht...](http://www.nabble.com/-squeak-dev--The-Old-
Man-td16386810.html)
Babbage had lots of ideas that appear spot-on, but seems to have lacked in the
execution side.
------
antirez
A way to make both the theories valid is that the good team eventually will
find a good idea, and the reality is that to define how this good team is
composed is very hard. For example hard-core technicians may not be what you
want to write web applications: you need smart programmers but also in your
team you need people that are themselves __web users __and able to understand
how other people interact with the web and what is cool about it. A lot of
high profile programmers have some kind of reject for the web that will not be
helpful trying to come with a great idea and to realize it well (because the
web is not a lot about great code but a mix of great code, great UI, great way
to talk to your users, great ability to do the right selection of features,
...).
So simply there is not a recipe :) but this is what it makes this startup
world cool and less deterministic than a Windows kernel.
------
prakash
I agree with you, judgement i.e. decision making is very very important. One
needs to understand the art & science of decision making in general and from
an individual perspective how that individual (you) makes decisions and then
apply that to any decision making, be it startups or buying a car.
This is why it's important to read, understand and internalize essay's and
books from folks like Charlie Munger, Robert Cialdini, Scott Plous from a
decision making perspective, and folks like PG, Marc Andreessen and yourself
from a startup perspective.
_Re: There are also people wandering around in the flat lands near the
mountains._
Most of these folks suffer from cognitive dissonance :-)
------
stener
I was thinking about music band metaphor. Like, they compose songs- what is
for them better- great skills or great melody/text? I prefer great melody/text
even mediocre played. And btw music bands often play in garages too :)
~~~
Tichy
And there is the weird phenomenon of studio musicians - great skills, but no
ideas?
~~~
stener
yes and that brings me to other professions as in the film industry. E.g. this
year the Academy Award for best Music (Song) was won by movie Once, which on
technical and execution side looks amateurish compared to Hollywood
blockbusters. In this case, the idea won Oscar.
I think to compare different kind of artist and their craft among themselves
is valid.
~~~
pius
To be fair though, the execution in the category Once won for was superb. Note
that they did not win for, say, cinematography.
------
johnrob
I'm glad you pointed out that contradiction. I've been aware of it for a
while, but I couldn't really express it. I think you present a good
'unification' theory.
------
iamelgringo
I think that part of the problem with the whole idea vs execution debate is
that it's an artificial consequence of our patent and copyright system.
Patent/copyright law is based on the premise that if you have an idea,
document it and someone else uses that idea later, you "own" the idea and they
might have to pay you. Those are really artificial constraints.
In any other creative endeavor: painting, sculpture, music it's the idea +
execution that truly matters. If either one fails, your creation gets
forgotten. I'd venture that any creator of Art, Science, Music, etc... knows
the absurdity of "owning" the idea of of their creation. To the painter, the
idea is simple a picture in your head. To anyone else, the idea of a melting
clock sliding off a table is just an acid trip. After Salvadore Dali committed
it to canvas, it was art. To anyone else, images of people and things as
geometric blocks is just a little weird. After being executed by Picasso, it
changed the world of art.
It's the idea + execution that matters.
~~~
brlewis
That has never been the premise of copyright, and patent law did not work that
way up until about 20 years ago.
In theory, ideas were never supposed to be patentable. A patent had to show
both an idea and a specific implementation of it. Only with the increase of
legally-questionable patents on software and business methods have ideas been
patented.
------
aston
"I've thought about this for a bit and realized that both camps ... are wrong,
at least when stated so simply."
Applies to basically every pair of controversial and/or reasonably substantial
claims on the web. Obviously the right answer is always "it depends." But I
already knew that, having read two opposing viewpoints and synthesized their
conclusions.
In summary: C'mon, pick a side!
~~~
mixmax
Sometimes one side is just plainly wrong.
The debate about evolution versus Intelligent design is an example.
~~~
dbreunig
Natural selection is a great example for more than one reason: Darwin wasn't
the very first to think it, but Origin of the Species is perhaps the most
beautiful science ever written.
~~~
mixmax
Darwin actually held back Origin species for more than ten years because it
clashed with his religious beliefs. He only released it when Alfred Russell
Wallace sent him a letter asking him to look through a new theory on
evolution, which of course was the exact same one that Darwin had come up with
many years before.
And yes I agree with you - the implications of this theory are so broad that
with a bit of stretching it can probably explain the whole field of
psychology. An amazing insight.
------
god
Grahams proof for "ideas are worthless" is that there is no market for ideas.
No market means no demand. No demand means no value.
Buchheit says that there is a market for ideas - the VC market: "If someone
with a history of being right also has a capable team of climbers who have
demonstrated the technical skill and judgment to climb other mountains, then
that is very valuable, and they will have no trouble getting their idea
funded."
I tend to think that Buchheit is wrong an Graham is right. Buchheits VC market
is not a market of ideas. "Funding" doesnt mean buying ideas.
------
danielrhodes
Isn't exercising good judgment also part of the execution? I don't see a huge
difference.
In the end, everything effects everything, and you are forced to come to the
realization that you can't do anything...which is why you should do whatever
you want and not look back.
If you think you have a good idea, give it a shot. See how sticky it is in
your own mind, and those who you talk to. If things don't work out, pick
yourself back up, and try again. Hopefully you will have learned something.
------
Alex3917
"Idea * Judgment * Ability * Determination * Luck = $$$"
FYI, there is a preexisting model from organizational behavior saying that
success = ability * motivation * opportunity. I only mention it because there
is some interesting OB research into the different components of the AMO
framework, although I don't really know the names of any particularly
insightful papers offhand.
------
morbidkk
I would say you would forced to change your idea if you are not providing what
market wants. Either you loose or you change the course of pursuit. Or as
Apple did; you toil long and hard to create a market which wasnt existing
apparently. In the later case you convince your idea to market.
------
brlewis
Paul, is there something in this essay that people who are already attempting
good judgment and execution can take away from it? On first reading it looks
like the audience is (1) idea guys or (2) people who execute, but
underestimate the value of judgment.
~~~
paul
I was mainly just trying to resolve an apparent contradiction and find a good
metaphor to structure my thoughts. It's not advice, so much as understanding.
Ultimately, understanding is better than advice anyway.
~~~
brlewis
I use another metaphor: air
Air is worthless. Air has no market value. But nobody can say air is
unimportant.
If you have clean air and want to make money, you need the right execution:
You need to combine your clean air with things that people can enjoy along
with it. If you build and run a great resort, lots of people will come.
They'll say it's the air that keeps them coming back. Hearing that, the idea
guys who always talked about selling air will feel vindicated. They'll
underestimate the importance of you getting the details right on your resort.
~~~
apexauk
is air worthless, or _price_less?
------
jyu
Idea * Judgment * Ability * Determination * Luck = $$$
Four of the five are qualities of the team.
------
andreyf
The idea-mountain metaphor seems to lose the plasticity of ideas. From my
understanding, more often than not, ideas change during execution.
Mathematically speaking, the space of ideas is continuous (in many
dimensions).
~~~
paul
Yes, the metaphor is imperfect. Perhaps you can imagine that the top of the
mountain is in the clouds, so although the initial idea is to "go that way",
you don't really know exactly where you are going until you've arrive.
~~~
andreyf
I'm not sure what the point is of drawing any of these metaphors - a market is
important because you want to make something useful, and execution is
important because you want to beat your competition. If you don't have a
market, you lose in the start, if you don't have proper execution, you lose to
competition. So do both.
So ideas without execution _are_ worthless. And good execution of a market-
less idea is also worthless.
------
mynameishere
Once you've settled upon an idea, it's maybe best to really believe "Ideas are
worthless" in order to stay monomaniacal about the one at hand.
------
edw519
Nice metaphor: mountain climbing - startups.
Wish it were my idea.
------
sanj
"apparently the gold flows intermittently in this analogy"
It's nice to see commentary from someone that worked during the last dotcom
crash.
------
hs
i read somewhere about kasparov vs deep blue, paraphrasing "kasparov didn't
win by exploring every moves (he won't have time), he won by ignoring the ones
which don't work"
so maybe if ideas are treated as "spam", one needs to develop good filter
around it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chrome bookmark extension that saves your reading position - yongli92
https://github.com/NeilLi1992/LightMarker2
======
yongli92
This simple chrome bookmark extention saves your scrollbar position in order
to save your reading position on a long page (dev doc, tutorals etc).
Next time you open the page it automatically jumps back to where you left.
Works seamlessly with the default bookmark.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Servo – A parallel browser engine in Rust by Mozilla - snird
https://github.com/mozilla/servo
======
agumonkey
Just recently passed Acid 1
[https://twitter.com/metajack/status/371041675633647616](https://twitter.com/metajack/status/371041675633647616)
~~~
dbaupp
Note that the master branch is actually still 1 patch from passing:
[https://github.com/mozilla/servo/pull/764](https://github.com/mozilla/servo/pull/764).
------
doe88
I would be interested in knowing how they accomplish such a huge undertaking
given the fact Rust seems [1] to be a language in constant evolution right
now. Do they target a fixed subset of Rust (is it even possible) or do they
make continual updates to their code? (disclaimer I know nothing about Rust
other than having read some of the previous posts linked from HN)
[1] as others HN readers have commented in related threads about Rust
~~~
Cowen
Servo right now is more of a Rust reference project than a serious engine.
They use the most up-to-date features of Rust and don't worry about having to
rewrite the code with the next version because they know they're working with
a somewhat unstable language spec.
The real value of Servo right now isn't really as a browser engine, but
instead its value as the largest software project currently written in Rust.
When you're creating a programming language, you always want to know what it
will be like to build large projects in that language, and that's exactly the
experience being gained right now with Servo.
~~~
tbe
Knowing what it's like to write an HTML rendering engine in Rust is especially
useful since the purpose of this language in the first place is to write the
next generation Mozilla engine.
------
illektr1k
I will be the first to admit to having a soft-spot for any program that will
quote H.P. Lovecraft on abort/error.
[https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/libstd/rt/ut...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/libstd/rt/util.rs)
~~~
bjz_
brson likes scatter those around. Rust's new runtime has gave me a few of when
it first landed. Unfortunately I haven't seen any in quite a while. :(
(I really hope some spoil-sport doesn't get rid of them)
------
erikpukinskis
It's funny to take a moment and notice that a cutting edge new project comes
with build instructions for _Mac_ first and then _Debian_. It wasn't so long
ago that if you weren't on Windows or RedHat you were going have to figure it
out yourself.
~~~
bjz_
And unfortunately Windows support is one of Rust's weak spots. Which will be
sorted in the future of course, but it needs some tenacious souls to donate
some time if it's going to happen any sooner. Game devs will need this in
particular, and they are probably going to be one of Rust's primary groups of
users. (in fact, anecdotally it feels like they already are)
~~~
weavie
How is it weaker? I've just started running it on windows this week. Needs to
run under MinGw, but other than that I'm not aware of any probs. Am just
starting on it though, so it would be interesting to know.
~~~
eslaught
I don't know if this is still true, but at one point in time you needed to
have installed the exact same version of MinGW that Rust itself was compiled
with. That meant, for example, that you couldn't rebuild Rust with a newer
version of MinGW.
Also, and this isn't really a Rust problem so much as an LLVM one, I believe
exception handling was broken on Windows for some time. Presumably this is
fixed now, but I haven't actually checked recently.
------
Avshalom
Is there a good high level post any where about the architecture of servo
(particularly compared to gecko)? All I ever hear is "parallel-er" with out
any detail about which bits can/can't/aren't-but-could-be or anything.
~~~
bjz_
[https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Design](https://github.com/mozilla/servo/wiki/Design)
------
ciupicri
> Servo builds its own copy of Rust, so there is no need to provide a Rust
> compiler.
That's because it downloads and compiles it when compiling Servo. I wish
they'd mention this.
~~~
ics
I was a little surprised when I caught that in my terminal as well. About to
enter hour two of building...
------
santialbo
Is this supposed to replace Gecko in the future? or is it just a "toy"
project?
~~~
pcwalton
It's a research project. There are no product plans at this time.
------
nawitus
What is specifically a "browser engine"?
~~~
agumonkey
AFAIK Servo is mostly a DOM layout parallel renderer. I mistook it for a full
browser but the dev corrected me saying it's "just" rendering engine. Right
now they're using separate css lib, js interpreter, etc. Servo deals with the
layout.
~~~
sanxiyn
There is a plan to replace the separate CSS library with its own.
~~~
agumonkey
Yeah they were saying it was probably causing performance issues, so the
sooner the better.
~~~
lillycat
It is a (long, hard) work in progress. One dev started this huge task about 3
weeks ago :-)
~~~
agumonkey
I hope this didn't come across like an impatient rant. I just wish them a
quick path toward advancing state of the art ideas about DOM rendering and
parallelism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ontology-Oriented Design and Programming [pdf] - kleevr
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=1B0BB3191D021A46DD03E24407449B53?doi=10.1.1.18.6062&rep=rep1&type=pdf
======
kleevr
Sorry, their site went down for maintenance shortly after I submitted...
I found another copy here:
[http://www.mindswap.org/~aditkal/research/papers/ontoSW/ont-...](http://www.mindswap.org/~aditkal/research/papers/ontoSW/ont-
oriented-design-prog.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Time Has No Meaning at the North Pole - Balgair
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/time-has-no-meaning-at-the-north-pole/
======
Lambdanaut
That was a superb article. Really sublime stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Netflix needs to grow, but it’s sacrificing great original series to do so - jmsflknr
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/12/20791602/netflix-canceled-shows-originals-tuca-bertie-oa-streaming-wars-disney
======
WebScorpion
Their formula for picking which shows to renew needs some work from my
perspective. Shows I watched that have been cancelled = 5; Shows I'm looking
forward to watching = 1. The OA was almost the last straw for me...if they
don't bring back Altered Carbon I will become a former subscriber.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I’m a Black Police Officer. Here’s How to Change the System - js2
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/opinion/police-funding-defund.html
======
peter_d_sherman
>"Police academies must change, too. Police are taught that the enemy is “out
there.” When they arrive at work with that mind-set, they don’t know who wants
them in the community, and who wants to kill them. It’s no different than
troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. We are patrolling the streets of our own cities
as an occupying force.
Our training also focuses on worst-case scenarios: how to arrest someone, how
to fight, how to use a weapon. Instead, it should emphasize preventing
escalation. Once you get to the point where you are having to fight, you’ve
already lost. The question after a shooting by the police should not be “Was
it legal?” but rather “Was it necessary?”"
Opinion: Promote this man (David Hughes) to Chief Of Police.
He is very, _very_ wise!
He totally understands the tremendous, tremendous responsibility of what it is
to be a Police Officer!
He _gets it_!
Article favorited.
~~~
js2
Read about Daytona Beach police chief Mike Chitwood in this piece:
[https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/f...](https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2017/investigations/florida-
police-shootings/why-cops-shoot/)
------
mariuolo
Paywall.
~~~
lioeters
[https://outline.com/ZEkhYF](https://outline.com/ZEkhYF)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LegoBlocks – A block based Rich Text editor made using React - brijeshb42
http://bitwiser.in/legoblocks/
======
jacquesm
Suggest you change your name _before_ you gain traction and get sued.
~~~
brijeshb42
Can that really happen?
~~~
jacquesm
It _will_ happen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SmartAsset (YCS12) Raises Money to Provide Financial Advice - mcarvin
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/30/smartasset-funding/
======
ianferrel
I'm definitely interested in this product, and tried them out a little while
ago when I first saw them mentioned on HN. I was very confused then. The math
didn't seem to work out, and I couldn't understand what calculations they were
making at all.
I just tried it again. It continues to be a mess. I tried the "better to rent
or buy" comparison. I input information about my income, my rent, and my
available cash.
I get a chart that says the two are almost equal over a long period, given a
house value of $393k. I click on the "change" link by the house value to try
playing with it. I get a popup that has the value (which I can't seem to
change), a slider below for the down payment, which says $14k above and "10%
of home value" below. Note that 10% of $393k is not $14k. Below that, another
slider that says mortgage value, and has $379k above it and "30 year mortgage
at 2.75%" below. As soon as I adjust the down payment slider, the percentage
corrects to where it actually should be. But changing the slider changes the
value of the house! Apparently the way to adjust the price of the house is to
fiddle with both the mortgage amount slider and the down payment slider. Also,
the numbers change colors. I assume red is bad and green is good, but I'm not
sure what exactly the color signifies.
I get things to something reasonable and go to check the chart. Here's what I
see off to the side for the 30 year summary
If you rent Income $5,989,000 Rent $555,000 Expenses $533,000 Income Tax
$1,942,000 Net Wealth $2,997,000
If you buy Income $5,802,000 Home Equity $464,000 Home Payments $378,000
Expenses $946,000 Income Tax $1,841,000 Net Wealth $3,140,000
Why is my income $187k more when I rent? Did I get a side job instead of
mowing the lawn at my hypothetical house? What about other investments? Maybe
that's why my income is higher when renting? None of this is explained.
I read down below, and it seems to think I live in Littleton, CO. I guess
that's the default? Since tax rates vary so widely, it seems weird to have a
default location rather than ask me that at the beginning. Oh well, I click on
the location bar and enter my zip code. The first time, it pops up with the
city name, and I click Done. The city name goes away and the text telling me
to enter zip code or city name stands out in red. I try the zip code again. No
dice. There's a "where do you live" field, and a "where do you want to live"
field. Not sure why we need two of those. Which one will show up in the
results? Ah, apparently, the first one is where you're renting, the second is
where you might buy. I guess that's useful. Why aren't the two boxes called
"Rental location" and "Purchase location"?
Overall, it seems like a complete mess.
I submitted this feedback via their website as well. I hope they make this
awesome, since I definitely like the idea.
~~~
mcarvin
Ian, thanks for the feedback. We do a lot of user testing and the problems you
are experiencing are new to us. We pay $30 for a user test session, can you
email me at info at smartasset dot com, so we can get something lined up.
Thank you.
On the change in your income. When you buy a property there is an opportunity
cost associated with the cash that you use to purchase the property (down
payment + closing costs). This money would have accrued interest income had
you continued to rent, hence the larger value for income in the rent scenario.
------
greattypo
I would bet that most of my friends have their assets sitting in a checking
account, so I think this is a huge problem. Glad some big investors agree!
------
dmmalam
awesome work guys!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
C++98 Support Costs Extra (or why we should switch to C++11 now) - zeugma
http://marcmutz.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/c98-support-costs-extra/
======
HardyLeung
I used C++ for years, and then switched to C#, and recently switched back to
C++ in my new company (choice of language reflects only the nature of the
software we develop, not language superiority). Just yesterday I was
evaluating the new features of C++11, and I was pleasantly surprised by (1)
the new language features, and (2) the extent of support already by existing
compilers (gcc 4.4 and VC++ 2010).
I can see that we'll immediately benefit from a few improvements, such as auto
variable, lambda support, standard support for unique/shared/weak_ptr. Even
old school C++ users who have no interest in fancy new idioms would benefit
from these "syntactic sugar" features found in other modern languages. There
are a lot more that I'm still exploring, but so far I like what I saw.
Also these new features just work on the compilers. Given how long the
standard process has been, a lot of the features were already baked in. Modern
g++ and VC++2010 both have very good support. I listened to a BUILD
presentation on C++ and the Microsoft folks are very committed to full C++11
compliance in VS11 (next version of Visual Studio), but AFAIK, VS2010 is
already quite capable.
So, I agree, if you have a choice, switch NOW.
------
colomon
And in the (rather depressing) real world, I have gotten flack in the past
year for making changes to my source code that required C++98 compatibility,
which made said code no longer compile on Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0.
~~~
wazoox
Do they still run Windows NT4 on their dev systems, too? This is quite
surprising.
~~~
colomon
No idea, and I'm kind of scared to ask.
------
p9idf
"How many Mac applications still support OS X 10.2? 10.3? 10.4? Half of the
web doesn’t work anymore on KDE 3.5′s Konqueror."
I'm not familiar with the author's product and can't say whether C++11 is the
right choice for him, but I wouldn't consider the constant API churn of OS X
or the constant web standard and web standard extension churn to be a good
argument in favor of anything.
~~~
jacobolus
For existing large applications (in particular, Adobe’s and Microsoft’s) OS
X’s relatively quick change has been somewhat frustrating, and for any
application there’s no need to replacing working code with newer different
code just for the sake of it... but for new projects, OS X’s API “churn” has
been great news, letting smaller teams tackle harder projects and create
richer user interactions in less time.
I think it’s pretty reasonable to argue in favor of using new language
features and APIs for new projects, assuming enough of the target audience is
using platforms which support them.
------
calloc
GCC, Clang, Visual C++ 11 provide charts where they show how far they have
completed c++0x support (renamed to c++11):
GCC: <http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html>
Clang: <http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html>
Visual C++:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/09/12/10209291.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2011/09/12/10209291.aspx)
~~~
greyfade
Apache also maintains a list:
<http://wiki.apache.org/stdcxx/C++0xCompilerSupport>
And IBM:
[https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/58...](https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/5894415f-be62-4bc0-81c5-3956e82276f3/entry/xlc_compiler_s_c_11_support50?lang=en)
And Digital Mars: [http://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/CPP0x-Language-
Implementation...](http://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/CPP0x-Language-
Implementation.html)
~~~
calloc
That Apache one looks like it is a comparison matrix, which is extremely
handy.
------
xsmasher
This is analogous to the "let's drop IE6!" movements. If your client doesn't
need backward compatibility, great for you. If they do, then good luck
charging them for a new version that's _worse_ (no longer works/compiles) in
their environment.
------
iam
I want to completely agree with this guy, I really do. But Visual Studio 2010
supported more of C++11 then most other major compilers (except I think for
Comeau and GCC) when it was released.
Apple didn't choose Clang over GCC for political reasons, a lot of Clang devs
are actually on the Apple payroll.. and Clang is just a far superior compiler
to GCC architecture-wise -- it just needs a few more years to catch up to full
C++11 support.
The fact of the matter is that unless you're starting a new project you're
probably tied to your old version of the compiler, to upgrade to something
newer would require weeks of updating the toolchain.
~~~
beagle3
> Apple didn't choose Clang over GCC for political reasons, a lot of Clang
> devs are actually on the Apple payroll.. and Clang is just a far superior
> compiler to GCC architecture-wise -- it just needs a few more years to catch
> up to full C++11 support.
Do you have any insider knowledge of this? Because the prevailing wisdom
around the net is that Apple didn't like to be dependent on a GPL3'd product
(which gcc became at some point), so they propped up the only viable
alternative at the time, which was LLVM.
~~~
iam
That may be so (and I'm not an Apple insider, although I do know a few LLVM
devs). I guess you could say a driving motivator to find an alternative
solution to GCC was to not be reliant on a GPLv3 license. Traditionally I
don't think the license has stopped Apple from contributing a lot back to the
OSS community (just look at WebKit).
Besides, a compiler is just a compiler. Maybe someday down the road they will
start producing their own ISA, but until then even if they're making their own
ARM chips it's really hard to get it to do special Mac/iPad-only magic.
What I do know is that Clang was funded by Apple almost from the start, it was
engineered right from the start to be more than just a compiler but something
you could plug into the IDE as well (as the latest XCode demonstrates, it has
completely unbeatable C insight).
LLVM itself is also far more extensible than GCC, just look at the slew of
new-ish (last 3-4 years) of projects that have launched using LLVM. Have you
heard of any such projects being launched with GCC? I can't think of any
(maybe if they did, they weren't proud of it).
~~~
beagle3
> Traditionally I don't think the license has stopped Apple from contributing
> a lot back to the OSS community (just look at WebKit).
GPL3 makes a world of difference (KHTML/WebKit is GPL2 if I'm not mistaken);
e.g., it may interfere with Apple's executable signing policy
> Have you heard of any such projects being launched with GCC?
Not as many as LLVM, but ... GCCXML, GCC Go frontend, GCC D frontend. Things
still happen in GCC world.
------
blub
C++11 would be nice, but I think it will be a while before I can use it. I
don't think any of the mobile platforms support it...
I am now using GCC 4.4 and haven't used MSVC in a while.
------
Animus7
Our company's been C++0x-heavy since the first bits rolled out in GCC. We're
lucky enough not to have any legacy, so we can afford this.
The other day I was stuck on a system with only a C++ (03) compiler, and it
was a truly crippling experience without lambdas and the new STL.
Anecdotes aren't worth much, sure, but I find it difficult to disagree with
this article.
------
angersock
Some entertaining bits from the article:
"How many Mac applications still support OS X 10.2? 10.3? 10.4?"
"Then why should we be so conservative when it comes to C++, the very core of
what we work with?"
"C++11 is a much more productive language than C++98. We as an industry can,
however, only reap that productivity gain if we stop throwing C++ productivity
out of the window by the bucket-load in the hopeless pursuit of compatibility
with non-standard implementations."
I'm as much for iconoclasm as the next person, but this whole C++ madness is
starting to make me worry. While the rest of us have been off in the trenches
of maintenance and production, some cabal of academics and chuckleheads has
been cooking up this monstrosity of a language, and now it is finally coming
to a head.
Folks, conservatism in software design is appreciated--in language design,
essential. Python 3 is still not support by many useful libraries. Perl 5,
over ten years later, is still in production and use. ECMA/Javascript is only
now really taking off, after 15 years.
And on the darker, even more depressing side of things, you've still F77 codes
in "production" and _active maintenance_ \--a friend of mine who is a graduate
student is dealing with this right now. These are souls being fed to the
gaping maw of legacy code.
I'm sure C++ has some interesting features. I understand, for example, why the
"auto" keyword is being given new meaning (because the syntax of the STL,
classes, and templates is so mindnumbingly awful!). I understand why explicit
defaulting and deleting of function might lead to cleaner code (regardless of,
say, an explicit that already exists). I understand why I might want 3
different declensions of 'u' in front of a string to support various forms of
Unicode (where is your liberalism about forcing everyone to using UTF-8 and
being done with it?).
I also understand that D probably has a better execution on these ideas than
C++.
And that Javascript and C# have a better implementation of lambdas and
closures.
And that for raw power and readability, C with embedded assembly (still!) can
probably eat the lunch of any C++. (for an example of rational language
evolution, see C1X: <http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/> )
And that C++ still doesn't have anything other than a crackheaded set of half-
idioms for exporting classes for dynamic linking in a crossplatform way, or
even for binding to another language! Go ask the poor bastard who wrote SWIG's
comments on the same--he quit programming for several years to stop dealing
with C++'s increasing garbage.
I feel reasonable in saying this: C++ is not going away soon. One day (even
sooner if you are in academic circles and dealing with libraries) we
maintenance programmers are going to have to start dealing with code written
to take advantage of the new features in C++11.
And on that day, all of us will be wondering why the hell we are still using
that katamari of language features, instead of something less baroque--perhaps
Perl.
~~~
marshray
I think your missing a key point: C++11 is a better, cleaner language. It's
not C++98 with a bunch more not-fully-baked and overly complex stuff thrown
in. Much of the new stuff that's added is there to make the old complexity go
away.
Most of the old mile-long redundant type definitions can go away now, being
replaced with just the 'auto' keyword.
The old std:: argument binders were like poor man's lambdas. Now we have real
lambdas and don't need them.
The old practice of defining tons of template overloads is no longer required
because we have proper variadic templates now. To unfairly pick one example at
random of what should no longer be necessary:
[http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/boost/type_traits/detai...](http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/trunk/boost/type_traits/detail/is_function_ptr_helper.hpp)
Of course this is special purpose-library code that isn't the kind of things
most applications would need to write, but it could easily end up in a
compiler warning or error message.
Sure, of the people who really didn't like C++ before then C++11 might not
change all their minds. But for those of us who used and liked C++ already,
these new features represent great _simplifying_ improvements that are only
going to help with ongoing maintenance.
~~~
angersock
The issue is that there are already many better, cleaner languages than
C++98/03.
C++ is a good language, with some clunk to it. The best parts of it are
arguably the bits inherited from C (which C++11 looks like it might break
with). The OOPy parts (classes, polymorphism, etc.) have been done better by
languages like Java, Javascript, and Smalltalk. Templates exist to get around
grossness of the rest of the language, and were done better by Java's generics
anyways. Multiple inheritance was done better by Java in the form of
interfaces.
The rhetoric is that these changes somehow simplify the language--that's cool
and all, and may even be true for the most trivial of examples or the most
basic of beginners. The problem is that these new features are going to be
released in the wild alongside many libraries who don't use them, being old,
and who won't be updated, being cumbersome or trusted. And so, the burden of
making the ends meet is going to fall on the rest of us who now have to
support, in effect, two languages.
If the improvements are incremental, then this wasn't worth doing, If the
improvements are such a new, cleaner, simpler language, why the hell call it
C++? Again, see D.
Lastly, most of the fixes are syntactic sugar which do nothing to help fix
some very real issues with the deployment of the language.
How do I bind these things to other languages cleanly? In C this is trivial--
why isn't this fixed in C++11?
How do I load libraries of classes dynamically at runtime? From C wrappers?
When interfacing with old libraries (which actually do exist), how often am I
going to have to write some kind of NULL-nullptr glue code?
Why do we not have variable length arrays (they're in C99)?
~~~
marshray
I'm nothing like an official C++ spokesperson, but I'll take a shot at these
questions.
_If the improvements are incremental, then this wasn't worth doing_
Well maybe C++ is not your cup of tea, but I find the improvements worthwhile.
_If the improvements are such a new, cleaner, simpler language, why the hell
call it C++? Again, see D._
Yeah, I think it's a better C++ not an entirely new language.
_Lastly, most of the fixes are syntactic sugar which do nothing to help fix
some very real issues with the deployment of the language._
Systems languages _are_ syntactic sugar for the underlying runtime model. I
consider C++ to be a systems language (the ISO spec explicitly defines a
minimal profile suitable for embedded systems for example). But C is probably
a slightly more "systems" of a language (in no small part because it's the
language which defines most system's APIs).
_How do I bind these things to other languages cleanly? In C this is trivial
--why isn't this fixed in C++11?_
If you think this is trivial in C I suspect it's because you have so much
familiarity with it and/or these other languages are implemented in C and
define their external APIs directly in C. C has an unfair advantage in this
regard, but it's just not that hard to integrate C++ and C.
Sometimes C++ has advantages too, some people swear by Boost.Python for
example. Looks much simpler than C to me.
_How do I load libraries of classes dynamically at runtime? From C wrappers?_
That's one way. The main reason dynamic loading works in C is because the
types are all so primitive (and it doesn't have "classes"). You can use those
primitive types for your APIs and in C too.
Another way is to define the classes interfaces in terms of something binary
stable over the scope you wish to separately compile these libraries. This
requires some understanding of the guarantees of the platform and
complier/linker. MS-COM for example gets a lot of mileage out of some
relatively minimal abstract class layout conventions.
_When interfacing with old libraries (which actually do exist), how often am
I going to have to write some kind of NULL-nullptr glue code?_
I've been writing some C++11 with C++4.6.0 and a bunch of old libraries and
haven't run into that. I don't use pointers in my code very much, so I don't
think I've even had to use nullptr yet.
So I would think "not very often", at least if your coding style is similar to
mine.
_Why do we not have variable length arrays (they're in C99)?_
I don't know why the decision was made in the language committee, but
std::vector with the new initializer syntax works well for me for that
purpose. Perhaps the C99 construct could be a little more efficient, but I
don't see a reason that an alert compiler couldn't also allocate the storage
on the stack.
~~~
angersock
Thank you for your helpful response!
_C has an unfair advantage in this regard, but it's just not that hard to
integrate C++ and C._
This is very true... as you pointed out C is very primitive in a lot of
respects, and this doubtless simplifies working with it from other languages.
The question is, how do I easily call the new C++11 code from something like
Lua, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.? How weird will my wrapping code end up looking?
I'm sorry to harp on this, but I'm in the middle of a medium-size engine
codebase written in C++, and even with our restraint so far on the use of some
of the more advanced language features, things like smart pointers and whatnot
are so useful that they become a concern (multithreaded code without smart
pointers is a recipe for madness).
_I've been writing some C++11 with C++4.6.0 and a bunch of old libraries and
haven't run into that. I don't use pointers in my code very much, so I don't
think I've even had to use nullptr yet._
Out of curiosity, how much have you done with OpenGL/OpenAL/OpenCL, etc.? Have
you had any issues there yet? I'd like to know if that stuff fits okay with
C++11.
~~~
marshray
_The question is, how do I easily call the new C++11 code from something like
Lua, Java, Python, Ruby, etc.? How weird will my wrapping code end up
looking?_
Well, no weirder at least than the older C++. Which is certainly a matter of
perspective! :-)
In the ideal case, someone will write a C++ binding to your language that's
even easier than C. Like I said, some people love Boost.Python but I haven't
tried it.
I did play with Lua and C++ recently. The Lua interpreter itself can be
compiled as C++! It will then throw C++ exceptions instead of using
setjmp/longjmp, which is much saner IMHO. (I am really impressed with Lua.)
Just a feeling, but I bet that sooner or later somebody is going to come along
and do something really cool with C++11 lambdas and that multi-language
bindings problem.
_I'm sorry to harp on this, but I'm in the middle of a medium-size engine
codebase written in C++, and even with our restraint so far on the use of some
of the more advanced language features, things like smart pointers and whatnot
are so useful that they become a concern (multithreaded code without smart
pointers is a recipe for madness)._
Yeah. How does one code without smart pointers in their toolkit? I couldn't go
back..(except when I have to thunk back to C for something).
Also, for multithreaded stuff, I'm getting addicted to the new std::atomics in
C++11!
Not new with C++11, but have you tried Boost.ASIO for multithreaded IO? It is
awesome.
_Out of curiosity, how much have you done with OpenGL/OpenAL/OpenCL, etc.?
Have you had any issues there yet? I'd like to know if that stuff fits okay
with C++11._
I have, in fact, been doing some experiments with C++ and OpenGL in my spare
time. Made some wrapper classes for compiled shaders and buffer objects and
the like.
I had much of that code running before I switched to G++4.6.0 and starting
allowing myself to depend on C++11 features, but I know I've extended it some
since. I really don't recall noticing any difference in the switch.
One of the biggest advantages of C++ is something that many people miss. Much
of that "ugly" complexity is in support of some design principles that are
critical for large-scale software development: backwards compatibility (often
back to C), and you don't pay for new features you don't use.
------
cheez
If your supported platform list looks like this:
Windows
Switch to C++11 NOW. You will kick yourself for not doing it earlier.
~~~
acqq
If you want your application to run on Windows 2000, you can't. VS 2008
doesn't have "auto" etc but it can produce binaries which run on Windows 2000.
The libraries for VS 2010 simply removed the code that allowed them to run on
Windows 2000. I can imagine you'll ask "who uses Windows 2000," well, if home
users don't, the companies still do.
~~~
cheez
I know which companies do. I chose not to support them for my software. There
are enough other companies to make money without it.
~~~
daemin
You could do that, or based on what the author of the article was saying, you
could just charge more for anyone that wanted Windows 2000 support.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mark Zuckerberg Is Rethinking Deepfakes - bookofjoe
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/zuckerberg-very-good-case-deepfakes-are-completely-different-from-misinformation/592681/
======
luxuryballs
I really don’t even like this conversation, make the platform better, stop
worrying about the content, if someone lies in my house does it become my lie?
Since everything is so far from black and white I think they shouldn’t be so
caught up in moderating truth, they just end up using the controls to censor
valid ideas that they don’t agree with.
If someone is full of shit it will work itself out eventually and people will
stop following them.
~~~
jjeaff
>If someone is full of shit it will work itself out eventually
I think our current president is proof positive that this is not true.
How long is it supposed to take before it works itself out? How much damage
can they do before they are found out?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why aren't brain computer interfaces consumer products yet? - julienreszka
At least as input devices to replace or complement keyboard and mouse/touch?<p>When do you think they will be ready to be consumer products?<p>How much would you spend to buy one?<p>What kind of design would you like?<p>What would be a friendly process to calibrate and train the device to recognize your intents?<p>Who would benefit most from those devices?<p>Who would create most wealth from those devices?
======
ClassyJacket
Because all the current technology which doesn't require surgery provides only
a one-dimensional interface (the same amount of options as a keyboard with
just one button) and requires too much time to modulate\activate (in the tens
of seconds). It just isn't practical.
------
fundamental
Higher speed BCI applications involve risky invasive procedures. They're
complex, not without somewhat complex external hardware and have a tendency to
drift over time (i.e. performance can get much worse over weeks/months). You
generally want to avoid introducing risks for any infection or other
complication in your brain.
------
ArtWomb
I was searching for fun science projects for kids last weekend. And did
stumble on Backyard Brains DIY neuroscience (EEG) kits ;)
[https://backyardbrains.com/products/](https://backyardbrains.com/products/)
------
0_gravitas
There was a great article released a while ago when Elon Musk announced
Neuralink. It was a lot about the technical obstacles to overcome, and they
are impressive to say the least, I'll try and find the article.
~~~
julienreszka
Yes please I would like to read it :)
~~~
0_gravitas
Can't seem to figure out how to edit my comment on mobile, here's the link:
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)
~~~
julienreszka
Thank you, I enjoyed reading this very much. Yes there are challenges,
definitely.
------
lizardwalk5
a few years ago, a company called Emotiv got a lot of press (I believe through
a TED talk). although I haven't followed them recently, it appeared that they
were trying to figure out the killer app (no pun intended) for their tech. it
seemed like they were leaning in the gaming area back then.
it seems on a practical level that people who have some neuromuscular
disability would benefit immediately from BCI's. but maybe that is not a huge
market for a startup/VC's?
------
gshdg
Would you want to undergo invasive and high risk surgery for an interface that
doesn’t do much or work efficiently because we don’t yet know quite nough
about the brain, and that will probably be obsolete in 10 years?
~~~
julienreszka
there are non invasive devices are you aware of that?
~~~
gshdg
Sure, but are they at all useful?
------
artemisyna
Ditto to the other comments. It's waayyyyyyyy too early. Just because articles
exist about "brain-computer interfaces" doesn't mean it isn't hype.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unusual Business Card Designs - hiralove
http://oddstuffmagazine.com/90-most-unusual-business-card-designs-of-all-time.html?sms_ss=hackernews
======
swombat
I think there must be about a hundred websites listing the same "unusual
business card designs". Once you've seen one, you've seen them all.
~~~
hiralove
ya you right bro .. there are many lists around ...
------
Groxx
Overall a decent list. But any such list is incomplete without Adafruit's
spirograph card: [http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/25/adafruit-business-
ca...](http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/25/adafruit-business-cards-laser-
cut-spirograph-cards/)
~~~
hiralove
nice video .. its really inspiring to see that work in video
------
kgermino
One thing to keep in mind for people using creative business cards is who your
selling to. A creative business card may help get you in the door but
businessmen will likely want at least the option of one that fits with their
others in a rolodex.
~~~
hiralove
quite right .. its like a first impression, so it should be creative enough to
capture attention
------
dthakur
A spotted a few from this large collection:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailypoetics/sets/7205759410438...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/dailypoetics/sets/72057594104389710/)
~~~
hiralove
ya right dude .. many are from there.. but i choose .. that i liked from there
and other places .. check out other sources as well
------
pchristensen
Can't forget the business card catapult:
[http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardapult-the-Business-
Card-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Cardapult-the-Business-Card-
Catapult/)
~~~
hiralove
really impressive .. like the creativity in this :)
------
nishantgauttam
good listing
nishant
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Our security auditor is an idiot. How do I give him the information he wants? - ashwin_kumar
http://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-auditor-is-an-idiot-how-do-i-give-him-the-information-he-wants
======
rdl
The last time this got discussed, I thought the consensus was he was trolling
-- the point being the correct answer is to explain why you don't have these
(technical controls, hashing of passwords, etc.).
The other reason would have been if he wanted login access to servers to
validate configs himself, but there are much better ways to accomplish that
(I'd be very reluctant to give an auditor anything but read-only access to any
production infrastructure, but it is valid to want to know that what is being
given to you matches production; there are ways to accomplish both).
~~~
wernercd
From the follow ups that were posted, it sounds like the "Auditor" wasn't
trolling. (Assuming the OP is/was on the up-and-up)
And this is a blast from the past... July 2011. Almost 3 years ago.
------
Zenst
WOW, "A security auditor for our servers has demanded the following within two
weeks: •A list of current usernames and plain-text passwords for all user
accounts on all servers •A list of all password changes for the past six
months, again in plain-text"
That right there would be a security breach/issue and for it to be created as
part of an audit is unbelievable.
I have never met any security auditor who has done that or ever would and
having done audits myself for FTSE 100 companies, well if I did that I'd be
out of a job. Certainly audit the passwords, though there should be rules to
prevent silly passwords and that is what should be audited.
In such a situation I would not panda to such a auditor and would approach a
director about the security risk the auditor was and good night veanna for
them. Such people should not be doing audits, ever and clearly not qualified
in the role/task they have been given.
It would be a security issue too carry on supporting or allowing such a person
to carry on auditing as they are clearly a security risk without a doubt.
~~~
auxbuss
That'll be "Goodnight, Vienna".
------
avaku
This is a trick. The correct thing to say to them - we don't have passwords
because they are hashed and salted. Then you successfully pass the security
audit :)
------
DigitalSea
This cannot be real, but sadly it appears as though it is. A "professional"
security auditor request plain text passwords? A security auditor that thinks
PCI is something you install onto your server? Wow. I am literally speechless.
Can we please get the name of this company somehow? This company should not be
allowed to give anyone security advice whatsoever, they quite clearly do not
know what they are talking about. I'd hate to think how many businesses have
been affected and or are vulnerable as a result of their auditing practices
and guidelines.
~~~
pmorici
This sounds like a plausible situation to find oneself in in a large corporate
or government environment.
------
ChuckMcM
I read that and it read like a troll, or that the 'auditor' was socially
engineering the firm (also possible). It is useful to have passwords
explicitly unknown by anyone except their owners and run password cracking
software on the password database continuously to weed out 'weak' passwords.
------
mkonecny
My heart sank as I read that. There are too many people in our field that
don't have a basic grasp on the most fundamental concepts, and yet are in the
position to direct those that have a clue.
~~~
yulaow
It is worse than that. These people not only don't know shit about what they
are doing, but do not even try to learn or recognize their errors, even when
they are THAT big.
This is really depressing.
------
ppierald
I hope this is a troll and if it is not, you should read through your
contract, look for a breach clause, and exercise that clause. Otherwise, you
should eat the cost of getting a new security auditor. A good relationship
with a qualified auditor can be really beneficial to your organization. If you
don't have that, you are not getting any value out of the dollars spent.
------
aaron695
This is either made up or the auditor has a mental health issue.
Either way nothing to see here unless you want to discuss mental health issues
or truthfulness on the Internet and how to improve it.
~~~
Nizumzen
Just because a person may have a mental health condition that has no bearing
on their intelligence. You'd know that if you actually knew what the fuck you
were talking about.
It's a bit like saying "This is either made up or the auditor has AIDS".
Implying that people with AIDS are retards which as we all know is completely
untrue (well they might be but this has no relation to them having AIDS).
Please get a clue before posting shit on the web.
------
autodidakto
An idiot... like a fox. He was up to something, using bullying tactics to
social engineer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chrome's Most Important Feature - Garbage
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/08/chromes-most-important-feature.html
======
eps
This will probably get downvoted quickly, but Chrome's updater is one of few
things I quarantine on my machine. I just don't trust Google enough to let it
run stuff that "works quietly in the background, never notifying you." The
technology is interesting (though not exactly a rocket science and certainly
not _magical_ ... which it would've been if it could update a running instance
of Chrome without restarting it), but I am wee bit uncomfortable letting a
company who is in business of collecting data and tracking people to run
anything in my background.
~~~
melling
I just run the Canary build and get auto-updated nightly. Until Google does
something egregious, why not just help them build a great browser as quickly
as possible?
Google, and now Mozilla too, is essentially crowd-sourcing, hopefully throwing
a few million extra eyes on the problem.
~~~
sixcorners
I have an idea what all the different channels that the different browsers
have but I am uncertain if I have them all. What does everyone here think?
There are the four Chrome channels: <http://www.chromium.org/getting-
involved/dev-channel>
Chromium snapshots can be pulled from the buildserver:
<https://factor.cc/chromium.php>
Firefox has the Stable, Beta, and Aurora channels: <http://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/channel/>
Then there is the Firefox Nightly channel: <http://nightly.mozilla.org/>
Opera and Opera Next: <http://www.opera.com/browser/next/>
Safari and Webkit: <http://www.webkit.org/>
I guess IE is here:
[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Info/Downloads/Default.htm...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Info/Downloads/Default.html)
Is that all of them? I keep finding more.
------
pornel
Whenever I start Firefox it tells me:
"Stop! Whatever you were going to do, it couldn't possibly be more important
than checking if fart-button-xpi has been updated from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5! Now
just five more clicks and I'll restart"
~~~
sid0
You must be running Firefox 3.6 then.
~~~
kalid
But that's exactly the point -- just manually update to firefox 4 and your
problems will go away! Firefox 4 is only a few months old. Compared to
previous firefox releases it's brand-new.
~~~
sid0
Define "manually update".
~~~
kalid
Having to complete something like this: [http://www.newsmild.com/wp-
content/uploads/upgrade-offer-boo...](http://www.newsmild.com/wp-
content/uploads/upgrade-offer-boosts-firefox-4-share-by-30.jpg)
Unfortunately, I think years of popup dialog fatigue leads lots of people to
just close the window.
------
DanielBMarkham
I agree with this. Chrome has effectively changed the entire nature of client-
side computing with this feature. If you want to run stuff client-side any
more (hello Windows? Anybody listening?), you're going to need to implement
this.
In general, the user should _extremely_ rarely be interrupted for anything,
especially not anything program-related. Each program having a tray icon, an
update alert, update restarts, and flow interruption because it thinks
something is important is what has turned windows from a productive computing
platform to some kind of cross between a Kafkaesque X-box and a slot machine.
~~~
Hawramani
After getting used to Chrome's silent updates, I started to find it
breathtakingly ridiculous the way Firefox kept interrupting its startup asking
about updates. When I start Firefox, it is because I want to go to a website.
Giving attention to updates is _not_ what I want to do.
------
MarkMc
Google have open-sourced their auto-update mechanism to a project called
'Omaha'. But it's so complicated an google-specific that nobody else seems to
use it:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3711435/has-anybody-
used-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3711435/has-anybody-used-google-
omaha-their-auto-update-engine-for-chrome)
~~~
bjc
We use it. The server isn't open source, but it wasn't difficult to follow the
protocol and create a Google App Engine app.
------
mrspeaker
"It is magical because it continuously updates an entire development platform
invisibly, frequently"
That "frequently" is every 30 minutes, by the way... I accidentally removed
the goog updater from my Lil Snitch rules and noticed that it then started
asking permission every 30 minutes, on the dot (I started recording the times
for a while).
I don't know why it needs to check so often - except that that kind of data
would be very useful for noting how often your users were on 'puters, and if
they moved around etc.
~~~
rmc
A hyper short time could be massively benefitial to security. Imagine a
security bug fix that's installed on every browser within the hour.
~~~
duck
That is true... but it can go the other way to: Imagine a security bug that is
_introduced_ on every browser within the hour.
~~~
T-hawk
Even worse: imagine a poisoned update that gets installed on every browser
within the hour.
Or just an update with a non-malicious bug that breaks the updating mechanism.
(This last has happened to companies the size of McAfee and Skype.)
------
bmj
My group is currently having discussions about the new paradigm of browsers
updating frequently and silently. We currently have to support a wide array of
browsers and versions for our apps (due to the nature of the product), and our
QC group is grappling with how to manage this.
Personally, I don't think we need to worry about a Chrome or FF update
suddenly breaking our apps--they don't use cutting edge HTML5/CSS3 features,
and I don't suspect that either browser will suddenly change an HTML4
implementation.
Anybody else dealing with this same issue?
~~~
maratd
While I've never seen an update cripple our software. I have noticed changes
in rendering engines that change how things appear slightly. Minor stuff, only
a few pixels here and there.
Also, I was forced to change our browser checking software to only do lower
bound checking. Before, I would explicitly specify which versions were
allowed. Now it's more like Firefox 4+, etc.
------
larrik
I notice on Ubuntu auto-update doesn't work. I wonder if this is a
technological issue (they can't or haven't bothered to get it working) or a
cultural one (like if Ubuntu programs shouldn't auto-update ever).
~~~
bdonlan
On Linux, the chrome team chose to integrate with system package managers
instead of using their native updater - arguably the native updater would have
worked better (many Linux distros still don't support delta updates!), but
they wanted to buy goodwill with the Linux community.
~~~
adbge
This is also the reason why there is no canary version of Chrome available on
Linux: since packaging is so involved, it's not worth the effort.
~~~
ramidarigaz
Um. Chrome is offered in both .deb and .rpm (each 32bit and 64 bit).
~~~
seabee
I don't see any such thing on their download page, only for stable and beta. I
think linux users are better equipped than most to build it from source,
however...
~~~
ramidarigaz
Oops. I missed the canary part. You're right.
------
bitslayer
Good thing they are still not evil. Seriously, this is a very powerful way to
run software, but what if they, or some other company who emulated this idea,
took that great power we have granted them and used it for evil? They could
suddenly 0wn millions of computers.
~~~
exDM69
Or if a company, maybe even Google, gets hacked and their distribution
channels are used to send out poisoned software? That would be bad.
~~~
moheeb
I could see Google being taken by force (read guns) and millions of computers
sent the launch codes.
Joshua
------
ominous_prime
I _really_ want a Linux version of the binary with the updater. There's an
open feature request for it, but no activity on it.
Flash is unfortunately still a requirement for a lot of websites. The 32bit
binary chrome has flash bundled, so updates are received as quickly as
possible (I know, I should run some flash-blocking plugin, but I don't right
now). On 64bit Linux (which is what I need most of the time), you have to
maintain the flash plugin separately, and run it through nspluginwrapper,
which makes it much less stable in my experience.
You used to be able to run the 32 bit debs on 64bit Ubuntu, but that broke a
couple versions ago, and I never had time to see if it could be fixed. You
also lose the package manager updates when you do this, since apt isn't multi-
arch aware.
~~~
abraham
Chrome has a built in "click to play" feature for plugins.
~~~
ominous_prime
D'oh, you're right. I completely forgot about that (it's still in the hidden
flags setting though)
------
bonaldi
"you can no longer decide that it's a bad idea to upgrade to the new version
because of an annoying change."
Exactly what I dislike about the web app model; I want it even less in my
client apps.
~~~
sixcorners
How much power do you have over updates now? When Skype destroys everything
good about their UI aren't you still going to have to update eventually?
------
wgx
Nice, except Chrome doesn't update _at all_ for a lot of Mac users (myself
included)...
[http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=update+server+not+available...](http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=update+server+not+available+error+12)
So, hilariously, I have to totally remove the app and re-install to update.
~~~
abraham
Reading the bug reports makes it seem to be mostly caused by third party
applications screwing with the Chrome install.
------
saturdaysaint
It's nice, but I really don't find it vastly preferable to a friendly update
notification and a quick application restart - especially now that most
applications open in the state they were closed in, and with an SSD the
restart is barely a blink. In fact, I like to know the feature additions or
design adjustments happening to an app, so I enjoy the notifications - it's
like I'm getting something for free (which I am, actually).
I don't think it's a huge advantage for average users, either - %90-percent of
iPhone users are on the latest available major OS version, and that (until
5.0) involved a huge non-delta download, physically docking your phone and an
onerous, lengthy (well over 30 minute) process, during which you had limited
use of your phone.
------
grandalf
The only issue with this otherwise wonderful feature is that often when chrome
starts doing something weird/broken it turns out it installed an update and is
ready to be restarted.
So it appears there is a bug where the update messes up currently running
processes.
------
yarone
On a related note, for a side project that requires a windows download
(<http://www.getbugcam.com>), I've been experimenting with Microsoft's
"ClickOnce" installer + autoupdate technology. Obviously (per the name and
Microsoft reputation), it's not quite as simple and straightforward as
Chrome's autoupdate process, but it is pretty good.
For those interested in some of the available options for Windows apps, see
here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37030/how-to-best-
impleme...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37030/how-to-best-implement-
software-updates-on-windows)
------
adthrelfall
Although it is a nice feature, for me the most important Chrome feature is
unifying the address and search box. Even non-technical people know to respond
to a software update prompts, but the number of people I see (including
normally quite tech savvy people) that still search for a url, or enter a
search in the address field surprises me. OK, you could argue it is bowing
down the lowest common denominator, but I believe it's a great feature that
saves the frustration of people that just want to do go somewhere or find
something on the web quickly.
------
yalogin
Users in countries with slow/expensive internet connections will hate the
feature. It might not even work as the machine is not connected to the network
24/7. And when its connected they do not want Google to use bandwidth for
updating software. I know many people in India turn off autoupdate on their
windows machines because it eats bandwidth (of course I try to talk them out
of it).
------
covariance
Only those running admin accounts benefit from this feature. If you run Chrome
in a limited user account on Windows 7, or a Standard User account on OS X
10.7, Chrome may or may not prompt you for an admin password (depending on the
configuration). I've always had to quit all my applications, log out of my
everyday account, login as admin, update, logout, then login again.
~~~
thatjoshguy
From my experience Chrome installs itself into %appdata% to avoid requiring
admin permissions. And not once has Chrome asked for my admin password on OS
X.
~~~
covariance
Right, that's one way of installing Chrome on Windows. However if you install
Chrome for all users, then you pretty much have to start Chrome with an admin
user's UID. I get prompted for my admin password on OS X, as I work in a
standard user account.
~~~
mapgrep
Do you mean your Mac user account does not have admin privileges?
In that case have you tried just installing Chrome into ~/Applications
instead?
~~~
covariance
I maintain two accounts on OS X: one for software installation & updates, and
the other being my primary account with limited credentials. That way, if I
were to accidentally run some malicious code, it wouldn't hose the entire
system.
So Google Chrome.app resides in /Applications, but it's installed by the
account that gets created when you reinstall OS X (which is by default an
account with full privileges). Standard users can read /Applications, so they
can launch Google Chrome.app, but the process can't write to /Applications
because of its effective UUID. That's why it prompts for an admin password.
------
mberning
I would have thought it's best features are that it's fast and clutter free
compared to other browsers. Whether chrome updated every 5 minutes silently in
the background or never updated at all would not make a difference to me.
------
hammock
_Chrome's Most Important Feature is autoupdate_
In that case, the latest incarnations of Microsoft Windows ought to be doing
pretty well for themselves.
------
Supermighty
Is the updater part of the Chromium open source package?
It would be pretty neat if someone use only the updater as part of other
desktop software packages.
~~~
fbuilesv
They have releases their updated as open source under the name Omaha:
<http://code.google.com/p/omaha/> Several of their products use it but afaik
no other product is making use of it yet.
------
lean
So why hasn't Firefox implemented this yet? They've already said they are
moving away from version numbers, but I still get the "You need to update, do
you want to?" and "You've updated, now stop what you're doing and restart".
Chrome has eliminated both of these dialogs (that used to be browser
standards), and the FF dev team is usually responsive enough to adopt new,
good ideas quickly. So what gives?
~~~
alttag
Because Firefox is very plugin driven, and its current design disables plugins
that aren't compatible.
It is not in the best interest of users to have their plugins disabled
automatically as a "feature".
~~~
thatjoshguy
Can't they just stop making changes that cause plugins and extensions to
break?
I know that would be easier said than done, but Chrome seems to do a good job
of it.
~~~
starwed
Firefox addons are traditionally written using the same API the browser itself
uses. That's what makes them much more powerful than Chrome extensions, but
clearly more fragile to breakage.
They're starting to offer a separate extension SDK (formerly called Jetpack)
that allows extensions to ignore the internal API and build against something
more stable. Such add-ons can be installed without requiring a restart, and
should be much easier to update, but many important extensions need more power
than currently provided. (Ad block is a good example.)
~~~
SkyMarshal
As is vimperator and pentadactyl.
------
peteretep
They may well be right, but boy does it /feel/ wrong.
What if it sucks down bandwidth when I'm on 3G? What if an update breaks
something, and I'm in the middle of something that can't be updated? What if
an update silently breaks the update process? Hrm!
~~~
generalk
It's like you've never actually experienced the autoupdater and are only
responding to a rough description of the process. It's a HUGE win.
> What if it sucks down bandwidth when I'm on 3G?
That might happen. What if it does?
> What if an update breaks something, and I'm in the middle
> of something that can't be updated?
As per TFA (and experience): The autoupdater never interrupts you. The only UI
change is one of the toolbar buttons changes subtly. Most of the time you
don't notice that an update is ready to install. More to the point, after the
update you usually _don't even notice anything different._
> What if an update silently breaks the update process?
There's absolutely no precedent for this, but honestly, who cares? This is
hardly reason to shun the entire system.
Bottom line: The autoupdater makes sure I never care about the version of
Chrome I'm running, just like a web app.
~~~
unwind
_That might happen. What if it does?_
Then it risks costing me money, for doing something I've not chosen to do. For
a feature described as "not worrying", that can be potentially very worrying.
~~~
dmbass
Do you choose what version of a web site you use? Generally no. You trust that
whoever is running it cares enough to not break it for you, just like Chrome
users trust Google to not break their web browser.
~~~
Splines
Exactly. I can only buy this line of thinking if you're in charge of mission
critical machines (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).
For the vast majority of people, heading down this rabbit hole isn't worth the
effort.
(On the flip-side, it would be nice if there was a magical "undo those updates
to point in time X" feature in case something went wrong and you wanted to see
if it was because of an update).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Long Could You Endure the World's Quietest Place? - larkinrichards
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/05/05/orfield_laboratories_in_minneapolis_is_the_world_s_quietest_place.html
======
ColinWright
Here's the previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6827243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6827243)
Here are some previous submissions, although most have no discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=161333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=161333)
The Quietest Place on Earth - Orfield Labs (audiojunkies.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3781040](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3781040)
The Quietest Room in the World (tcbmag.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783478)
The quietest room in the world (tcbmag.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3798283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3798283)
The World's Quietest Room: Nobody Has Lasted More Than 45 Minutes In It
(dailymail.co.uk)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802268)
Quietest place on earth messes with the head. (yahoo.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3821238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3821238)
The quietest place on earth (neatorama.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875948](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875948)
The longest anyone can bear Earth's quietest place is 45 minutes
(dailymail.co.uk)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053296)
A room so quiet, no one can spend more than 45 minutes in it (timesherald.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4219266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4219266)
This Is The Quietest Place On Earth (bitrebels.com)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4565325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4565325)
World’s Quietest Place Lets You Hear Your Internal Organs (odditycentral.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Patent Case That Affects Everyone - wallflower
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-21/a-patent-case-that-affects-everyone
======
dang
Looks like the story was discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13929992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13929992).
------
officelineback
That is crazy. I thought that rooting your Android is totally legal. How can
that be legal, but refilling ink cartridges isn't?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Kindle Fire review - esutton
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/14/amazon-kindle-fire-review/
======
esutton
just throwing this out there, the silk browser takes advantage of caching
content. when you have only a dozen reviewers using it is not really
indicative of how it will preform with a million users using it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I don't code. Here's my project: Notepeep.com - mathewsi
Site Link: http://www.notepeep.com<p>Site Description: A place where you can anonymously write about, rate, and comment on people, places, and things.<p>Hello everyone,<p>I don't really code. I have an extremely limited understanding of PHP and I get the basics of HTML/CSS. But, I've come up with Notepeep.com entirely on my own given my resources. I tried out a few popular CMS installations and eventually found that I could push WordPress and its plugins in a way that allowed my site operate like I wanted it to.<p>I know it's certainly not optimized/perfect. I'm sharing it now as I just want to show technical founders and those of us here not technical what a non-technical person can come up with given the amount of resources available to us.<p>Thanks for your time. I really appreciate your comments/feedback!
======
jaybobzin
Nice work mathewsi. This is exactly what I would want to see out of a
"business" guy with an idea. Do what you can, evangelize your idea.
Definitely one of the better ways to inspire a developer. And, as a developer,
we're also better able to understand what the site COULD be than the average
person you're showing it to. Bravo, keep at it!
------
mathewsi
Clickable Link: <http://www.notepeep.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Florence Nightingale: Social reformer, statistician, founder of modern nursing - happy-go-lucky
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
======
corny
A propos as today is International Nurses Day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Wouldn't Work for the Galactic Empire If It Were Against McKinsey's Values - sohamsankaran
https://honestyisbest.com/mckinsey
======
hos234
"Behind the cool mask lay a high-strung disposition; Canaris was agitated and
tormented by fear after each passing danger yet was still addicted to new
adventures. Like most cunning people, he hated violence. He was nimble in the
face of danger, witty, and sardonic. During one of his trips to Spain he would
spring to attention in his open car and raise his arm in the Hitler salute
every time he drove past a herd of sheep. You never know, he said, whether one
of the party bigwigs might be in the crowd. Some observers have deduced from
all the incongruities in Canaris that he was an unprincipled cynic who sought
only thrills from the resistance and who admired Hitler as an even greater
gamesman than himself. These interpretations miss the mark. In his last years
Canaris increasingly suffered from the conviction that he had served Hitler
far too long and far too submissively, and he regretted not having turned his
resources against the regime in a more determined fashion. It has been said
that he was a master of the art of obfuscation, and his skill has tended to
obscure his rigid adherence to a number of principles. He could not abide
treason whatever the pretext, as his break with Oster shows, but neither could
he bear the lack of basic humanity that made the Nazi regime so abhorrent in
his eyes"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jetbrains Developer Ecosystem Survey 2018 - kumaranvpl
https://surveys.jetbrains.com/s3/c2-DevEcosystem18
======
ruskimalooski
Note that the form only works properly in Chrome :/
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Emulate the “super” Keyword in C++ - joboccara
https://www.fluentcpp.com/2017/12/26/emulate-super-base/
======
cjensen
There was a proposal for a super/inherited keyword in C++. It was immediately
killed when Michael Tiemann demonstrated this technique of adding it manually
via typedef in the base class.
As others have pointed out, putting the keyword in the base class is Highly
Questionable.
~~~
stingraycharles
Doesn’t that imply that the typedef technique is not a good replacement for
super?
------
emmelaich
As an aside, isn't it silly to describe the same thing as both a _base_
(below) class and _super_ (above). I think I'd prefer parent/child.
I've also seen inconsistency in various inheritance diagrams; sometimes the
arrow points to the child, sometimes to the parent.
~~~
int_19h
Parent/child usually refers to ownership relationships between objects,
though, not classes. As in, an item is a child of a collection.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with "super", given that it stands
for "superclass", which has a well-defined meaning. For that matter, so does
"base class".
------
KonkeyDong69
I would caution against using this pattern. In particular, this does not scale
to:
class A {};
class B : public A {};
class C : public B {};
Using the convention of defining `base_type` in the base class means that C
will expect B to define `base_type`, which means that B will be cut off from
A's `base_type`. This then forces you to use different identifiers, which
brings you back to square one (you might as well just explicitly write out the
class in that case).
~~~
Koshkin
> _brings you back to square one_
Not exactly, since C's constructor does not call A's directly. (On the other
hand, base_class::base_class might just do the trick.)
------
evincarofautumn
“…for bases classes with a long name, repeating it in the body of the derived
class adds a lot of clutter to it.”
When you _write_ the code, it feels a bit cumbersome. When you _read_ it,
though, you know exactly what’s going on—which pays over and over again. These
days, for most code in any language, I’m more inclined to say to myself “suck
it up and be explicit” when it comes to these small decisions—as long as
“explicit” doesn’t get confused with “needlessly long-winded”, of course.
------
SeanBoocock
This is a good overview of the ways to deal with this in C++. However, I often
run into situations in large code bases with deep inheritance heirarchies
where calling Super::Foo() on virtual methods is necessary for correct
functionality and a frequent source of bugs.
To the extent that I have control over the architecture, I prefer flat
hierarchies with pure virtuals and final implementations, but what are good
approaches to solving this issue for deeper class hierarchies? Is there a good
alternative to the pseudo Super if Class A, B, C, and D each need to twiddle
some state when you call ::Foo() on an object of type E?
~~~
Waterluvian
Personally I have yet to find a real-world practical example of a deep
hierarchy that felt like an intuitive, natural approach to solving the given
problem. I'm not specifically skeptical of their existence, but I do question
if maybe the problem with deep hierarchies is addressed by not using them.
~~~
SeanBoocock
Oh I quite agree that in general having a deep inheritance hierarchy is not
ideal and that many problems can better be solved with compartmentalization or
other approaches. I was asking more in the context of you have a million+ line
code base and want to make things less error prone/cleaner without refactoring
large chunks of it.
~~~
sounds
Though this is not the only solution, a visitor pattern seems to match.
I can think of other possibilities; hopefully this sparks some good ideas for
you. I'll sketch up how I think the visitor pattern could work, sorry if it's
already obvious:
Base class A. Derived classes B, C, and D.
When A::Foo() is called run code from each class, in the order they are
initialized.
class A {
protected:
vector<function<void(int)>> visitFoo;
public:
void Foo(int bar) {
for (auto fn : visitFoo) {
fn(bar);
}
}
};
class B : public A {
protected:
// Do not override Foo in class B, C, or D.
void FooB(int bar) {
}
public:
B() {
// visitor pattern
visitFoo.emplace_back(FooB);
}
};
Repeat for C and D.
------
slokki
Didn't quite get this. Where is the emulation of super itself? Expected
something like auto super = static_cast<base_type*>(this)...
~~~
richardwhiuk
base_type::draw()
analogous to Java's super.draw()
------
biocomputation
This blog is always worth a read.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker News Kansai #5: January 25 in Kyoto - sgdesign
http://hnkansai.doorkeeper.jp/events/2295
======
sgdesign
By the way, we've been having a hard time attracting Japanese audiences to the
past meetups, in part because I'm not very familiar with the Japanese tech
ecosystem yet (and not speaking Japanese doesn't help…).
So if any of you Japan HNers have any suggestions to reach more locals (blogs
to contact, people to follow on Twitter, etc.) they'd be very welcome!
~~~
pwim
I did a write-up of my advice on the topic here:
[http://www.doorkeeperhq.com/event-planning/organizing-an-
int...](http://www.doorkeeperhq.com/event-planning/organizing-an-
international-event)
For a good overview of tech events going on in Japan, see
[https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fvijvohm91uifvd9hr...](https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fvijvohm91uifvd9hratehf65k%40group.calendar.google.com)
One thing you could do is try to support some local events. Some ideas:
* Give a presentation at a local event (English is fine; I can introduce you to event organizers in the design / Ruby community) * Serve as a mentor for a startup weekend - <http://startupweekend.jp/> * Participate in this event for event organizers: <http://devlove-kansai.doorkeeper.jp/events/2338> (I'll be presenting in [broken] Japanese)
Feel free to follow up with me if you have any more specific questions.
------
sgdesign
More info here on the HNKansai site: <http://hnkansai.org/>
------
sjm
Damn, I just came back from Japan, would've loved to go! Really bummed I
missed the Tokyo meetup too. I really fell in love with Japan on my trip and
would've loved to find out more about the tech scene over there.
------
onlab
We will also be doing an event with Github cofounders!
<http://github-onlab.peatix.com>
~~~
sgdesign
Very cool, I _might_ be able to come!
------
sterling312
I don't know what Japanese programmers use for social network, but try making
a mixi group for hackers and see if you attract any people.
------
lowglow
Hello from SFHN! We hope to see more from HN Kansai!
| {
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YC interview advice - apwalker
http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2009/04/advice-for-yc-interviewees_12.php
======
pg
"the answer probably shouldn't involve ads"
Actually we're not as down on ads as other investors seem to be. We liked
Heyzap, and they make money from ads.
"The last thing you want to do is argue with the partners."
That's an overstatement. We don't like people who supinely agree with
everything we say. That's as bad as refusing to listen to anything we say.
What we look for is a middle ground: people who respond intelligently to our
suggestions.
Some of the suggestions we make are stupid. If people agree with those, we
conclude they're stupid. (We don't do this on purpose to catch people. We just
don't understand very well yet what each group is doing.)
~~~
palish
What do you do when you realize you invested in a stupid team?
~~~
pg
I don't think it's happened yet. Between the application form and a 10 minute
conversation, we can usually tell roughly how smart people are. And being
super smart is not that critical anyway. Determination is more important.
The real problem is when a team turns out not to have enough determination to
see a startup through. Startups are hard; most people wouldn't be determined
enough.
When a group we've funded seems demoralized, we try to encourage them. It
takes a few iterations to tell whether a group is just suffering from a
temporary setback, or whether they intrinsically lack energy. If by Demo Day
they've gotten nowhere, we start to think it may be the latter. But we're
naturally optimistic. Usually groups give up before we give up on them.
------
danielrhodes
The YC interview is so quick you are going to be out of there before you
realize it has started. In other words, be on top of your game. Anticipate
questions, especially the ones that you don't want to answer about the
weakness of your product (they will come up). Don't be defensive. Have a demo
ready to go when you walk in the room which gives a quick and good first
impression. It's not going to be a lot of idle chit-chat, they are going to
dive right in.
------
sho
_"It has become clear that in this market you should have revenue by demo day.
Ideally you're ramen profitable. It'll be much harder to find investment if
you're not."_
If you're "ramen profitable", why do you need a VC at all? You're self-
sufficient by that time, you have proven your product - you should be talking
to a bank, not YC.
~~~
Sam_Odio
You're partially right, although this is outside the scope of my article. The
article is simply stating that it's easier to find _any_ investment (debt or
equity) when you have revenue. Ironically, its easiest raise money when you're
already making it.
Regardless, there are still good reasons to seek VC investment when
profitable. Several YC startups are going down that path. A bank might lend
you $10-50k if your net is $2k/month while a VC might invest $1-5 million.
~~~
sho
_"Regardless, there are still good reasons to seek VC investment when
profitable."_
Oh I agree of course. VC will be judging you on future potential; a bank will
be judging on current performance. If you need a million dollars to _really_
scale up, you need the VC. Facebook or Youtube come to mind, they could have
never achived what they have without VC.
But if you don't need the huge cash injection, if you just need to
incrementally ramp things up slowly, then VC is not your only option; that's
all I'm trying to say.
~~~
medianama
I am not convinced that Facebook needed all the money that they've spent to
reach this level.
What do they need money for?
~~~
sho
Early on they needed money, and a lot of it, for servers. They were highly
cashflow negative and realistically only VC or outright acquisition could have
paid for it.
A case could certainly be made that they took too much money, and I would
agree with that, but they did need money from somewhere.
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Show HN: A different way to follow xkcd – xkcd Filr stream - himangshuj
http://filr.io/channel/xkcd
======
thelonelygod
I actually really don't like this. I took a look at the source and the images
are being loaded from the original sites.
For the content creators that pay for hosting with ad revenue you're still
hitting their servers and depriving them of the way that they support
themselves.
------
salilpa
How is this different from feedly or any RSS reader?
~~~
Arnt
It has better fonts and whitespace than bazqux (to name one I like), and it's
better for reading a lot old comics. Most feed readers seem to be designed for
reading today's new postings quickly rather than binge-reading old xkcd.
~~~
pulkitanand
Glad you liked it! Here are some of the popular ones we've done:
[http://blog.filr.io/we-heart-webcomics/](http://blog.filr.io/we-heart-
webcomics/) If we've missed any of your favorites, let us know and we'll get
it done.
------
mkesper
Unusable for the data visualizations. There should be a link to the original
site.
~~~
loneranger_11x
The title of each post links to the original page
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"When dealing with RMS, keep the following things in mind" - fogus
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RichardStallman
======
sriramk
I know RMS is a special case but it annoys me when people say/act as if
they're too busy to properly respond.
One of my favorite people in Microsoft is Ray Ozzie. Every single time I've
mailed him, I've gotten a long, thoughtful reply. He is probably the best
email handler I've seen.
BillG is pretty good at email and sending you prompt replies.
~~~
jpablo
I'll say giving a thoughtful reply to every random person that emails you is
not really the best use of time.
Sure, it's great for you to get an answer and kudoz for the people who really
have the time to do that.
~~~
xenophanes
It depends on the type of email. In general, when I give people thoughtful
replies _I learn something_. But I can see this wouldn't be true for some
categories of email.
------
kleiba
I don't know how many of you guys have ever actually contacted RMS, but
whenever I did, his answers were quick, polite and to the point. Anecdotal, I
know...
~~~
pavel_lishin
I'm sure it depends on the topic of conversation, your stance on said topic,
etc., etc., too.
~~~
jerf
This is somehow different than other people?
------
mhd
Reminded me of this old Jamie Zawinski joke: [http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-
cooperation-with-rms-is-impossi...](http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-
with-rms-is-impossible.mp3)
(ObOld: I remember the time when it was why-cooperation-with-rms-is-
impossible.au, not .mp3)
~~~
luigi
The applause he gets at the end of that "song" makes listening to the whole
thing worth it.
------
krelian
_He has very very little time, so his answers may seem impolite at times._
I always hear this but what is it exactly that he is doing that keeps him so
busy?
~~~
jessriedel
This is such a bad excuse. Being polite requires extremely little time, and
it's a requirement for interacting with humans.
In my experience, autistic-ish people (often geeks or nerds) sometimes confuse
being polite with being social, which _does_ take time. They then seem to
think that if they don't have time (or really, the skill and desire) to be
social, then they don't have to be polite.
This is a minority of geeks and nerds, of course.
~~~
jemfinch
I think the statement that his answers may seem impolite is more a commentary
on many people's inability to distinguish terseness from impoliteness. It's
not saying that he's rude.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
_many people's inability to distinguish terseness from impoliteness_
That's exactly it, though. Politeness and terseness are often diametrically
opposed in our society, and since there is no standard of politeness outside
what society finds to be "polite", I'm not sure how you can say many people
have an inability to distinguish.
If you email a long question to someone and they respond with "No.", many
people would find this to be impolite or downright rude. It might be the most
efficient thing and the hacker-type might think it's OK, but if most people
think it's impolite, _it is_.
~~~
jessriedel
That's because if it's a long question it generally requires a longish reply
to _explain_ to the other person why the answer is "no". Saying simply "no"
strongly suggests that the other person's understanding is not worth your
time, or that they should accept your answer without understanding it because
you are higher status.
------
brendoncrawford
Keep in mind that RMS' email policy should not be confused with his face-to-
face conversational style.
I ran into him at a train station in Milan, and completely commandeered his
time and attention for a good 30 minutes, despite the fact that he had a train
to catch. He politely answered all of my questions, and he even responded to
my criticisms with civility and respect.
If you ever get him in a casual, face-to-face conversation, you will find that
he actually comes across as quite meek and restrained, rather than the
arrogant blow-hard that he is generally portrayed to be.
~~~
jff
It may also be that face-to-face, he realizes it's a lot easier for someone to
haul off and smack a hippie than it is via the Internet.
On the other hand, I think just about everyone comes across a lot friendlier
in person, merely because it's easier to portray interest and friendliness
than over email.
------
cromulent
He is a fascinating creature. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like
to be alive at the same time as various historical characters. With him, I
think I am. I believe history will treat him kindly, regardless of his
idiosyncrasies.
------
gaius
They forgot "his ideas about software economics only make sense if you have a
$1M grant from the MacArthur foundation and tenure at MIT".
~~~
m0th87
His ideas seem to be scaling pretty well. The GNU ecosystem is as big as ever.
~~~
gaius
... Thanks to IBM.
~~~
spinchange
Seems like you're having it both ways: Do his ideas only make economic sense
because he's an academic grant recipient or because one of the largest
commercial technology companies on earth has embraced the output of his work,
helping foster an ecosystem around it?
~~~
gaius
There's free as in speech, free as in beer, and free as in working for IBM
without getting paid.
------
atari
Has anyone else gotten unsolicited emails from RMS when you inadvertently use
one of his "words to avoid" on a mailing list or the like?
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html>
It's kinda fun.
------
bluesnowmonkey
Lots of famous and busy people manage to be approachable without needing you
to read a wiki page first. In fact it's really pompous to tell others they
need to follow special guidelines because you're so busy, as if the rest of us
sit around all day.
------
eru
RMS is a bunny ears laywer
(<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BunnyEarsLawyer>).
~~~
8ren
tvtropes is NSFWorking. Tangent: I disagree with Jack Sparrow being Crazy
Awesome. He succeeds by the Rule of Cool, but I can't think of an instance
where his craziness _made_ him succeed (though that may be just because I'm
very tired right now.) eg. at the start of PotC, he looks completely freaked
as he flies up to escape from the pier. Or is the fact that he even tried it
Crazy Awesome? Great movie, anyway.
~~~
eru
I guess it's the new rickrolling.
------
djacobs
He doesn't have web access? Really? I don't think I understand.
~~~
mhd
From a post from 2007[1]:
For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer.
(I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at
page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page
back to me.
It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
[1]: <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/134979>
~~~
djacobs
Interesting, I'd never come across that quote before today. Anyone have any
idea why he doesn't like the WWW? Is he still on Gopher?
~~~
mhd
That piece of news was widely circulated back then, if I remember correctly it
even spawned a few RMS == Chuck Norris posts.
In a more recent article[1], Stallman voices his opposition to web-based SaaS
applications, as they take away your basic ownership of the data stored there,
limiting your freedom etc.
I can understand him in this regard. I'm not that idealistic and love the
convenience of some web apps, so right now that wins in the end. I think
that's one of the reasons why a lot of people seem to be annoyed of RMS – we
never like to be shown that we maybe compromise a bit too much. But I digress…
So you don't like webapps. You do most of your discussions in usenet or email
lists (this might sound sacrilegious here, but we I don't think
reddit/HN/4chan is a step up from moderated newsgroups). You can just download
news, either via the above-mentioned wget trick or via RSS. That does
eliminate most of your web-browsing needs, or am I missing something really
important? Especially if you live in Emacs, an don't care too much about
rounded corners, gradients and typographical text.
He's basically like the guy you know who tells you that he doesn't watch TV
and rather reads a book. You tell him that there's quality programming and you
read enough books, too, but then you remember this conversation and feel kinda
guilty while watching Castle.
[1]: <http://bostonreview.net/BR35.2/stallman.php>
~~~
djacobs
I kindof get that. But SaaS != WWW. What's more, some SaaS supports data
portability--as of yesterday, even Facebook does this! So I can't really
understand the concern, at least framed this way.
The web as a timesuck is I guess a good argument, but limiting yourself to
checking e-mail surely won't harness any inclination people have to read news
or watch media. Right?
| {
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Show HN: React Native-powered forms generator - gcanti
https://github.com/gcanti/tcomb-form-native
======
hyuuu
it is awesome to see how fast react native is gaining third party plugins :)
the npm route surely will be a boom for them (though some packages wont work)
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Vue.js vs. React: what happened in 2017 - jetter
http://pixeljets.com/blog/vue-js-vs-react-what-to-expect-in-2018/
======
wjossey
I’m the founder writing code (but not the only technical person) for my three
person startup. In October I started migrating our MVP from server side
templates to Vue, given we had direction and traction on a product line that
justified the time investment. It’s turned out to be a great decision
(although likely one that could have been made with react as the choice as
well).
My “success story” is how Vue helped me to massively improve our user
experience in low bandwidth or high latency environments. Our startup is
trying to reinvent the ways that companies approach their review process, and
one of the things we do is run a workshop on delivering actionable feedback
during the review cycle. We have users log into our app during the workshop,
and this often happens in conference rooms over congested WiFi. Our MVP used
turbolinks, so it felt generally “snappy” during normal use, but could feel
sluggish if moderate latency was introduced (such as a congested router).
Since I completed the rewrite to Vue (which took only about two weeks because
of how simple it was to pick up, even for a non frontend person like myself),
we’ve had multiple launches that both would have likely bombed had we not done
the work to move to something less dependent on a tradition client -> server
-> client response cycle to render the next “page”.
Either way, I’ve become an advocate for vue. I love single file components,
love the documentation, and am very happy with the community libraries. All in
all, I’m very bullish for Vue in 2018 as a happy new users.
~~~
platz
What is a turbolink?
~~~
wjossey
Yes, sorry for just tossing this one in there. Our product is build on top of
rails 5.x, and rails has support for turbolinks. They make your server-side
rendered application 'Feel' more SPA, by only refreshing the parts of the page
that have actually changed upon server response.
It still requires a massive payload to be sent across the wire, as well as a
full render on the server, so it's not the "king of efficiency", but it
definitely improves the end user experience in many ways.
In my case, I wanted an even snappier experience, where a user clicking on a
button would trigger an immediate transition, with the "saving" happening
behind the scenes. Before, on a slow or bogged down connection, you could see
page transitions take second(s), which felt like an eternity when you had to
go through our 50+ screens during our workshop. Now, with heavier
backgrounding, those transitions are instantaneous, and the end-user doesn't
need to wait but a millisecond (draw time) for the next page.
~~~
shostack
When would you recommend using turbo links over Vue? Or, conversely, would you
recommend people not even bother with turbolinks?
I'm learning Rails and haven't gotten to that stuff yet, but I'm wondering
whether I should even waste my time learning them if something like Vue is
just superior and just as easy to implement.
~~~
pqdbr
You can have both at the same time. If you want to build a SPA, go for Vue
only. Build if you want to have a more traditional application and only use
Vue for some views, it will work with turbolinks, you just have to use a gem
to help you with the caching (turbolinks cachês the body tag to speed up the
back button, and the gem clears the Vue app before the caching happens making
it idempotent).
Turbolinks is amazing.
------
badbanana
Having used both React (with Typescript and Redux) and the latest Vue (with
es6 and Vuex) I prefer React, and I don't even use React Native.
Vue is better for onboarding people more in tune with "classic" html + js
development; and that's where the advantages end as far as I'm concerned. This
might be a big win for some people.
The way I reason about it is that React is simple, Vue is easy. When you take
into account Vue's templating language, React's api is small in comparison. A
beginner won't know how to do some common use cases reading React's docs, when
Vue might have a something built-in in its templating language (e.g. slots, or
the component tag for dynamic components).
Slightly annoyed with Vuex too because of its slightly leaky abstraction. You
have to remember to setup the properties you mutate so the reactivity will
detect a change; and also remember not use array indexes arrays cause it can't
detect changes otherwise. The array index thing will be fixed in the next
version when they drop support for some older IE. Using Typescript would
probably help a bit here, although Typescript being useless for checking Vue
templates really feels like a huge chunk of its value is wasted.
Typescript is not currently available in the official blessed boilerplate
which greatly affects its uptake in the Vue community.
Anyway, if you already know React, there is zero advantage in investing time
in Vue.
~~~
shard972
I have already moved to using React for my larger projects and Mithril for my
smaller ones instead of Vue because of the lack of typescript support.
That and when you add JSX to mithril, the api just feels so simple and i
rarely find myself checking the docs for something.
~~~
rsyring
Glad to see Mithril mentioned. I like it better than React when comparing the
APIs, It just seems simpler. But React obviously has the mind share. I'd love
to see Mithril gain momentum.
I especially like the fact that I can easily include it as a script, like Vue,
and don't have to have a build chain. That really decreases complexity for
smaller projects.
~~~
acemarke
FWIW, you can absolutely use React as just a pair of script tags - see the
"React Single-File Example" template [0].
It's certainly common to use React in a larger application that uses a build
chain, and that's the recommended approach, but it's not required.
[0]
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reactjs/reactjs.org/master...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/reactjs/reactjs.org/master/static/html/single-
file-example.html)
------
lsdafjklsd
I really don't get the love around vue... I always read the glowing sentiment
and go, "Ok, I'm missing something, let me go back to the vue.js docs and see
what's good"
Things that are a deal breaker for me:
Template language... You can call it 'separation of concerns' all you want,
but just let me generate templates using the language I already know, JSX is
great
State management... I cut my teeth with Ember professionally for a few years,
and really loved it up until I built a data intensive app. Having state spread
across different controllers is great when you have many different routes and
pages, but if one page turns in to a photoshop like app, controllers make a
terrible state management tool. It doesn't seem overly complicated to me to
use redux along with react-redux's connect function to connect regular
functions returning JSX to your state object. Looking at Vue.js, it seems like
I need to learn Ember-lite + Angular (custom directives).
~~~
nawitus
"Template language... You can call it 'separation of concerns' all you want,
but just let me generate templates using the language I already know, JSX is
great"
Not everyone knows JSX, so while that argument applies to you, it doesn't
apply in general.
~~~
jonreem
They mean javascript; jsx is a very small amount of new syntax and is embedded
in normal javascript. Learning a completely separate template language with
all of its own constructs for conditionals, iteration, etc. is significantly
more work.
~~~
bpicolo
There’s not any more to learn vs html than jsx. It’s like 5 relevant
constructs that all follow the same form, and the colon. Takes 20 minutes to
have it down pat.
v-if is actually a big reason I prefer Vue. Ternary operators in JSX are
pretty ugly. The other is that Vuex just feels so perfectly integrated. I've
never felt Redux blends in particularly cleanly, though I certainly don't
judge people that do prefer it.
~~~
dmitriid
Ternary operators in JSX are _valid javascript expressions_. As is anything
that goes into {}
All of the following is neither Javascript nor HTML:
v-for=”x in list”
v-if=”conditional”
v-on:click=“function”
v-bind:key=“something.id”
etc. etc. etc.
~~~
bpicolo
I'm aware of that bit, I just think they're an ugly piece of control flow
inside JSX, and they're also not a particularly versatile piece of control
flow.
Especially for the else-if case - you end up with repetitive conditionals to
replicate that.
------
git-pull
I think both of them are awesome and have great communities. Especially seeing
as webpack has stabilized.
If you're a startup, it's tempting for many founders to go in headfirst with a
Vue or React. In my opinion, it's rarely necessary, and in the end a lot of
the stuff has to be thrown out if underlying foundations change. I see it as
web development's version of premature optimization.
On the other hand, when I kept all my work in django templates, erb, blade,
etc. and just script JS by hand, there's less of a penalty when the data flow
changes. When I was using a JS framework, the refactoring was so painful I
seriously considered throwing the whole thing out and starting from scratch.
Heh, I'd have been better off not buying in so early on.
As a stop-gap, I'm using pjax. ([https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-
pjax](https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax))
My plan is after stuff is solid and in production and the
product/service/business is moving forward, taking an incremental approach to
moving to vue/react/etc.
P.S. kudos to react for removing the patent stuff in v16.
~~~
kortex
I disagree. Coming from python, my first foray into web frontend was a SPA for
mobile. Both my coworkers convinced me to go right to react + redux (after
some bumbling first with more "traditional" ajax). After a few weeks of utter
bewilderment, I have to say I really enjoy this stack. Some say it's overkill,
but the framework really helps me organize things into cognitive chunks, and
makes debugging so much easier.
Ever had a class in school which you hated at the time because it felt super
hard, but loved in hindsight because of how much you learned? same sort of
vibe. Fight through the pain.
------
dustingetz
I write ClojureScript
A good indicator of if a technology is going to explode, is if emerging
language users are excited about it, as good ideas tend to trickle down from
the more advanced/research-y ecosystems which aren't as constrained by legacy.
So for example React was built by a user of OCaml.
ClojureScript early adopted React.js through the Om project in 2013 and there
is a growing number of competing React adapters, Clojure rewrites etc. I first
saw virtual-dom in ClojureScript in 2012 (eight months before React came out).
Number of ClojureScript projects with traction that are based on vue? Zero,
that I am aware of.
~~~
moomin
Speaking as someone who writes ClojureScript themselves, ClojureScript is
definitely in the category of technologies that show no sign of explosion
whatsoever.
React and Vue are both great technologies, but with Teact the template syntax
is optional, and no lisp user wants another syntax...
~~~
wirrbel
I picked up ClojureScript at the end of 2013. I was a C++ developer then in a
small firm and was tasked to write a web frontend. Outsourcing that project
had failed before (2 times iirc), so my boss bet on me to do it. I knew HTML
and had written probably < 1000 lines of Javascript code in my life before.
Anyway, I needed to write an interactive single page app (basically it was a
visualization of simulation results), so I needed Javascript. But it was so
frustrating to write Javascript (also, tooling was mediocre back then or I
didn't know it). So at the same time, I stumbled over ClojureScript and had a
try (I new Scheme before and was especially outraged by JS syntax quirks, so I
hoped S-expressions would rescue me). With ClojureScript in 2013 I had a
module system that handled dependencies, an emerging library ecosystem that
had what I needed for that specific case, I was pretty happy. This was more
advanced than what I got with JS (I might not have found the viable options
for such stuff with JS, but at least information on them wasn't widely found
then).
Last year I had another look at ClojureScript and it felt like a ghost town.
This saddens me. There are a few inspiring talks now and then, but nothing I
found worth using in a project.
~~~
yogthos
I'm really surprised by this assessment. I've been working with ClojureScript
for the past three years, and I find the ecosystem is very vibrant.
ClojureScript itself has been evolving rapidly. Lately there's been a lot of
focus on Js ecosystem integration allowing you to do things such as consuming
NPM modules directly. The compiler itself is very efficient doing things like
dead code elimination and minification out of the box.
In terms of libraries, I haven't found anything that comes close to
reagent/re-frame for building complex UIs.
Meanwhile, hot code reloading with Figwheel works beautifully, and you have a
REPL for running code in the browser straight from the editor.
My team is very happy with the results of building ClojureScript based
applications. I'd be curious to hear why you feel that there's nothing that's
worth putting in a project.
------
santoriv
What I find most interesting in these results is the satisfaction percentage
i.e. (Used it before and would use again) / (Used it before and would use
again + Used before and would not use again).
\- In 2016:
React - 91% satisfaction
Vue - 91% satisfaction
Angular 2 - 65% satisfaction
No framework - 65% satisfaction
Ember - 50% satisfaction
Angular - 40% satisfaction
Backbone - 31% satisfaction
\- In 2017:
React - 93% satisfaction
Vue - 91% satisfaction
Angular 2 - 66% satisfaction
No framework - 65% satisfaction
Aurelia - 56% satisfaction
Polymer - 53% satisfaction
Ember - 41% satisfaction
Angular - 33% satisfaction
Backbone - 23% satisfaction
It's especially interesting that many of the frameworks have a lower
satisfaction percentage than using "no framework". Of course this could be
largely attributed to who is using no framework. I have encountered a minority
of developers (usually backend devs) who think front-end frameworks are
nonsense and prefer to just write a bunch of jQuery. Also, if you are working
on Wordpress sites, then frameworks are often not necessary.
I've written production code in some of these frameworks (Backbone, Angular 1,
Ember, and React) and I would have to say these results are more or less
consistent with my experience. I love React and don't feel the need to try
anything else.
~~~
philliphaydon
Angular 2 I would like to never use again. It’s caused far more problems than
it’s solved. It requires deep knowledge to build large applications or else it
will suffer performance problems.
------
platz
OP predicts with absolute certainty vue "will become dominant" next year many
times.
Also OP has skin in the game to justify to his team that vue was the correct
choice.
Nice as an opinion piece but too many red flags to be considered fair and
unbiased.
~~~
ec109685
Huh? OP said the power of the React ecosystem and change in license will keep
it on top in 2018 and that if they were starting from scratch they probably
would have used React for their website.
~~~
platz
> next year would be the year of Vue.js success
> Vue.js will be dominating only in the web
OP did not say they would've used React given the choice, they said it would
have made _some_ things simpler
Your reading and subtle re-wording of OPs comments misrepresent what OP
actually says.
> our stack would be simpler if we chose React.js for the web. We definitely
> do not regret choosing Vue.js for web, read more in my previous post why we
> did that, my expectations on Vue.js web domination are becoming the reality
~~~
ec109685
> Synergy, my friends, is the key to React upcoming monopoly.
------
dmitriid
The simple answer is in reading the chart. Look at "I've USED it before, and
WOULD use it again".
React isn't just popular. It also consistently provides good developer
experience. You have to compete not only against React's popularity, but also
against _that_.
React:
\- Used it, would use again: 14k
\- Used it, would _not_ use it again: 1k (7%)
Vue:
\- Used it, would use again: 4.6k
\- Used it, would _not_ use it again: 454 (9.8%)
That ~3% difference in people who tried it, and didn't like it could be the
difference between make it and break it when coming up against React. "I've
heard about it, and I'm _not_ interested" is another important metric.
\---
Personal take:
Things I personally don't like in Vue:
\- String-based programming so prevalent these days.
JSX is a thin layer on top of regular Javascript/Typescript. Where as Vue is
often this:
<li v-for="todo in todos">
Really?
\- It breaks Javascript and how it works:
var app5 = new Vue({
el: '#app-5',
data: {
message: 'Hello Vue.js!'
},
methods: {
reverseMessage: function () {
this.message = this.message.split('').reverse().join('')
}
}
})
There's no chance in hell that `this.message` exists on app5. And yet, there
it is. And then data becomes $data and a lot of other weird stuff such as
computed properties being also hoisted up to the top-level object etc. etc.
etc.
~~~
caseymarquis
It's not really fair to make a comparison between react with JSX and vue
without webpack. In practice you use webpack for making components with
separated js/html/css, so Vue ends up looking a lot better than the above.
That's actually the big draw for me, organization into single file components
which can be parsed as simple html. The js component structure is just another
piece of that. You're passing vue a template for creating components in an
organized/standard way. You can define your own render function if you want
the freedom, but you start out with something clean and well organized.
Vue is definitely doing things behind the scenes, but it's nothing all that
complicated.
I wouldn't say it's hoisting. It uses the data function to create component
instance objects which it then adds the template's computed
props/methods/watchers etc on to, and links with the life cycle hooks.
If you created the component object yourself instead of a definition for it,
there would be less magic going on for sure, but things would be much less
organized.
(Minor: I don't use vue without webpack, but I assume data should be a
function which returns a data instance, so what you've written won't work in
Vue unless it's different for the top level component?)
~~~
caseymarquis
Follow up, I was on my phone before, this is what working with Vue typically
looks like:
<template>
<p v-text="message" class="some-class">
</p>
<button v-on:click="reverseMessage">
</button>
</template>
<script>
export default {
data() {
return {
message: "Hello Vue.js!"
};
},
methods: {
reverseMessage(){
this.message = this.message.split('').reverse().join('');
},
},
}
</script>
<style>
.some-class{
color: black;
}
</style>
The thing to note is that there are other objects which can be added to the
component definition which add a lot of utility and keeps things standardized:
created, mounted, computed, watch, etc. There's a bit of magic behind the
scenes to make it work, but it's worth it for the standardization/organization
in my opinion.
------
chvid
React IMHO is good enough that I don't want to change framework/basic frontend
technology again.
~~~
rvanmil
Agreed, it’ll take another paradigm shift to switch to something else.
~~~
murukesh_s
Not necessarily.. I wonder had react not been backed by FB, it certainly would
have had a beating in its popularity given lighter and arguably faster
alternatives like vue. Remember, performance was one of the main argument
React had when compare to Angular. Now since performance is no more a
differentiating factor, developers might look into other aspects like better
ROI in short and long term..
~~~
Silhouette
Just as one anecdotal data point, we didn't choose React for its performance
when evaluating tools for our recent projects. (React can still be orders of
magnitude slower than localised direct DOM updates on demand, after all, and
in cases where performance really matters that might still be what you have to
fall back on.)
The game-changer with React is that it presents a declarative way to specify
your DOM content, which in turn can significantly reduce the number of cases
you have to consider in your rendering and state management code, and it's
_fast enough_ to make that work in a lot of real world situations.
~~~
murukesh_s
Could be for you, but have you wondered if React was say way slower than
Angular and heavier, the adoption would have been much much lower?. Agreed,
the model that React brought is superior but the catalyst was performance.
They even highlighted performance as the main selling point with introducing
the virtual dom, where the computation (dom querying) happens not in the dom
but in the javascript, which is arguably faster and only differential updates
are applied to the actual dom.
In my friend circle everyone wanted/were using Angular.js but it was too heavy
for actual production use while react showed much better performance in the
benchmarks (almost closer to Dom).
~~~
Silhouette
React and Angular are solutions to different problems. I don't think React
would have succeeded without adequate performance, but I also don't think it
is why React has been successful or the main reason it has displaced some of
Angular's "market share"; being fast enough is necessary but not sufficient to
do its job.
------
ng12
Do Vue templates play nicely with Typescript? That's something I love about
JSX -- "it's just JavaScript" is an incredibly sublime feature. I know you can
use JSX with Vue but I'm skeptical since it's a first-order feature with
React.
~~~
KitDuncan
Since October (I think) vue single file components work flawlessly with
typescript. Can't speak for jsx though.
~~~
tomonl
It works in the <script lang="ts"> part of your .vue file, but not the
<template> part.
~~~
ng12
Ah, that's a bummer. Vue Templates seem wildly regressive to me -- I can't
fathom going back to stringly-typed Handlebars wrangling after using JSX/TSX.
After looking into this further it seems like Vue Templates also differentiate
between values and components. In React I often write components which can
take in either: a good example is text which the consumer might want to
format. You can easily write the component so that they pass in a string or a
<span /> element.
Vue has a lot of good ideas but the templates are almost a non-starter for me.
~~~
CaveTech
You can use slots to pass HTML or Components into child components.
You can have vue render jsx or templates, but in practice you can make
interactive components very simply using templates which are foundationally
simpler and easier to grasp than JSX.
~~~
ng12
How so? In my mind templates and JSX are equally complex from a user
standpoint. In fact I'd argue that JSX is simpler because you don't have to
invent slots -- it's an obvious side effect of using JavaScript to generate
your structure.
Just reading about slot and slot-scope makes me think Vue's reputation for
simplicity is overblown.
~~~
ricardobeat
It may seem "obvious" to you after being in the water with JSX for a while,
but the free-style abstractions afforded by being 'just' JavaScript, like the
one you mention, look incredibly complex for someone approaching an unknown
codebase.
------
d357r0y3r
React + TypeScript is simply too good to not use for me. The idea of going
back to unsafe templates is just not acceptable.
------
hbhakhra
Good assessment. To summarize the argument, Vue.js is just as good and some
would argue better than React for web development, but the React ecosystem
really puts it over the top, especially React Native.
~~~
hakcermani
For those like me in the Vue camp, with the React-native dilemma, there is
Fuse tools for the interim till week matures. Very clean separation between UI
and JS logic.
------
sarahcross
React changing their license probably saved them. My web dev office was going
to transition from them until they changed it.
~~~
jjeaff
Same here. For us personally, the license made no difference. We know we will
never come across any patent issues with Facebook. But the fact that it
existed led us to believe that in the long run an alternative would emerge
since larger corps would avoid it because of the license.
Now that they got rid of it, I have no such concern investing time in react
for the short/mid term term.
------
throwaway0255
One thing I'm noticing about SPAs is that they're often slower to load, but
the slowness and loading animations gives me a higher perception of the
quality of the application.
The same application loading and doing things instantly as server-side
templates feels comparatively cheap and un-modern.
What is wrong with me?
------
jordache
Coming from Angular, I'm biased towards entities declared in the form of a
class. It's a style that is easy to manage and familiar to most programmers.
Vue currently seems to be a mix bag of styles. My take away from the little
that I dabbled: \- You need the vue-class-component dependency in order to
declare class based components, otherwise, you're stuck with the awkward
object literal notation \- For state management using Vuex. You are are
limited to the object literal style to declare your state store. Very awkward
to work with.
Yes to get some data bound to a template and rendered out, Vue takes very
little amount of code. However that is not a meaningful benefit to me. I feel
Angular's complete framework and class based convention is much more suitable
for a team environment.
~~~
philliphaydon
I couldn’t disagree more. Unless your team have Super in depth knowledge of
angular then it’s the wrong choice. It’s defaults to progagate changes cause
rendering perf issues that are so frustrating to fix. Out of the box react or
vue performs better than angular hands down. I hate that after learning
angular 2 I realise I should not followed tutorials and advice and just
switched all the defaults off on classes and manually propagate changes when
required cos it’s a painful task to do.
~~~
jordache
I don't know what convoluted patterns you where implementing, but out of the
box, the default change detection in angular is performant, esp if you start
to leverage observables and the async pipe (to eliminate the need for
component onDestroy maintenance tasks). It's a joy to use. Yes Angular
provides a lot more options than react or vue, and maybe confusing given the
scope of what's possible. However, after the initial learning curve, Angular
is a very efficient framework / pattern to work with in a team setting.
If you resort to manual change detection, then it's an obvious sign of needing
to refactor your design.
~~~
philliphaydon
The default change detection can cause the whole page to redraw. Especially if
you have a lot of data. It gets even worse.
~~~
jordache
it's pretty much the same change detection logic across all of these
frameworks. Immutable data is key to performant change detection. Angular
provides the ability to bind template to immutable state data so the framework
can provide the most performant change detection
~~~
philliphaydon
Except it's not the same across all these frameworks.
If I build a grid with 15 columns and 3500 rows (actual issue faced) which
contains 3 characters in a cell and a menu when clicking on the cell.
Out of the box Angular took ~8 seconds to make it appear on the screen.
Vue and React were both less than 1 second.
If I changed the value of a cell, then Angular would redraw the entire grid,
Vue and React just updated the cell.
You know what the Angular gitter room told me to do... turn off change
detection...
Changing it to 1 way binding resolved the rendering time and made it on par
with the other 2, but it's still frustrating, especially when the same example
in Angular 1 worked in less than 1s with 2 way binding.
~~~
jordache
>Changing it to 1 way binding resolved the rendering time and made it on par
with the other 2,
You have to explicitly enable 2 way data binding in Angular 2.x +. Angular
2.x+ is 1 way data binding by default. This is a key differentiation between
AngularJS 1.x and Angular 2.x+
The fact that you imply you had 2 way data binding initially means you were
using angularJS 1.x (not Angular 2.x +) Or if the latter, you had some very
poor design decisions to settle on a 2 way data binding solution. Vue and
React both are by default 1 way data binding.
~~~
philliphaydon
/facepalm
I WANT 2 way binding so I could achieve what I wanted to achieve.
The only way to get the performance out of angular 2 was to NOT use 2 way
binding and hack it together.
Vue / React examples didn't suffer from 8 seconds of render time using 2 way
binding on a large number of elements.
You can sit and defend angular 2 all you want, doesn't change the fact it's
terrible.
Let's not even get into the angular api 2 changing after they said it
wouldn't. And regressions of the angular cli, and breaking changes on minor
updates.
~~~
jordache
all performan comparisons out there have the three frameworks neck and neck.
Your anecdote is certainly interesting in terms of the diffference in
performance. I would chalk it up as poor implementation / understanding of
angular, rather than some special edge case that tested the limitation of
angular
------
simonhamp
I personally prefer Vue because it is approachable and easy to adopt. I
believe that if Vue embraces PWAs in a pragmatic way that performs and is
accessible, it will be top for a while.
At the moment, PWA is not a viable replacement for some cases, but it’s about
to explode to everyone.
------
fictionfuture
I see a lot of commits from the Vue team into the core repo that are meant to
support use in native.
Likely, we can expect something comprehensive for native this year.
I also believe it's a smart strategy to avoid Facebook codebases because they
are all meant to somehow benefit FB in some (usually dubious) way.
Also the Vue approach is 1000% cleaner in practice than React, just doesn't
have the bandwagon effect going for it
~~~
scardine
My typical use case doesn't need native apps - a PWA is good enough for me. I
will not comment on speculation about the compile-to-native feature because
personally it is irrelevant.
I can say that as you I prefer Vue over React and some of my personal reasons
are:
* I like opinionated frameworks
* I don't like to mix Javascript and HTML - I can handle a Vue template to any designer but I would not trust a JSX file to a non-programmer.
* Vue is easier for developer onboarding - with Vue the gap between a junior and a senior developer is way smaller.
React may be better, I don't care, Vue is easier for my development style.
~~~
marcosdumay
The one reason why I favor Vue more than React is:
* Vue downscales. If you have a single scripted component in a page, you will get a simple page, with a small amount of Vue added.
------
kumarvvr
I have spent quite a bit time into learning Angular (4/5). I am new to front-
end dev, and found that the structured approach of Angular more appealing than
React.
Should I continue with Angular or move on to React?
My goal is to create a data-driven website, with expressJS & PostgreSQL
backend. Not very complicated, but not simple either.
~~~
code_chimp
IMHO, keep on the path you are on until you are really comfortable with
Angular, then learn React as well.
I went the opposite direction - put up a large React/Redux codebase and now
have moved on to a position that requires Angular. There is no harm in knowing
more than one framework, I find that both will get the job done.
~~~
kumarvvr
Thanks. I am thinking in a similar way. I guess knowing concepts is more
important than any framework / library in particular.
I suppose Angular is more suited for me as it is semi-rigid in the way things
have to be done. Complaints about TS eco-system are unfounded in my view as
the basic building blocks for building any site, HTML templates, CSS
(SASS/SCSS/LESS etc), client side scripting, etc are built in.
------
apatheticonion
Having used all of the big three. Am I the only one who likes and prefers
Angular?
~~~
nikkwong
Curious—what makes you prefer angular?
~~~
apatheticonion
It's very well structured, easy to understand, batteries included, lends
itself well to maintainability and scale.
When working for a company with staff below me who had very basic
understanding of JS (having just done HTML/CSS/JQuery, had no idea what a
promise was), there was almost no learning curve with Angular. The hardest
part was understanding what a component was, then learning the folder
structure.
Angular's seamless use of templating, the built in support for CSS pre-
processing and simplicity of uni-directional databinding had the entire team
pick it up and be productive almost immediately.
Using decorators to declare inputs/outputs on dumb components is clear,
readable and easy to understand.
Class based components are also very clear.
Some say TS is annoying and all power to you, but using types is optional.
Personally, TS has allowed me to save on some test cases by virtue of the
compiler catching those issues. Plus there is a comfort in quality
intellisense.
Vue is cool, it's like a less opinionated Angular. In my opinion, it's
strength is its ability to be dropped into any project, giving you client side
components and databinding irrespective of your stack. However I have
experienced growing pains in larger projects as a result of people over
complicating simple solutions.
I am still relatively inexperienced though, and I intend to spend more time
with Vue to see if I can't like it more. I'm sure all of my concerns are
addressable. So far though, Angular has treated me very kindly, both in large
and small scale projects.
------
hypercluster
I like the simplicity of React though I don't mind the Vue templating language
that much either. Sometimes I actually prefer Vue templates because with React
you often see components where it's not so clear how the rendered output will
look like.
------
cyberferret
I evaluated both earlier in the year, and to me (spending the last 30 years
developing software), Vue just seemed to fit my mindset better. I just
couldn't "get" React, no matter how many times I tried.
I guess it is just how my "programming mind" thinks about problems. I am sure
developers who approach problems differently may enjoy React more, but for me,
I guess I am a lot more old fashioned and 'structured' in the way I see
things.
------
dbrgn
Elm would deserve a mention too. One of the very few sane frontend development
approaches.
------
guru4consulting
Any suggestion for the below use case? Whether to use Vue or React?
\- I develop APIs and plan to hire freelancers to do the web/mobile clients
(so, higher availability of skills in the market is important to me)
\- I have a web designer developing the UI with just plain html/css. And this
is going thru multiple iterations and the web-designer is able to make all the
changes (cheaper because this is just a web-designer, not a programmer).
\- Once, the UI is finalized (and fully designed with html/css), I plan to
hire a Javascript programmer to do the SPA front-end (so, being able to use
existing plain html/css templates with minimal change is a big benefit).
\- I do not plan to create native mobile client, just a hybrid app based on
webkit. If the web app was developed with React, then will it benefit the
mobile clients to be developed with React Native? or, does it matter at all?
If Vue.js was used for SPA webapp, what do the Vue programmers use for mobile
client? I assume React guys might naturally use React Native.
------
perlgeek
Isn't it funny how you can read different things into the same data?
> So, 1 year passed, and Vue.js is clearly the leader in "would like to learn"
> by a huge margin
For me, the main takeaway of the newer chart is "React is the clear winner in
the 'Happy Customer' category".
For the record, I never used any of the frameworks, though I think I will,
some day.
------
toddmorey
Just to set record clear, vue components can be written in pure JS or using
JSX, in addition to the template files.
~~~
Can_Not
And pug/jade.
------
diminish
I truly love Vue and hope it evolves and spreads everywhere.
------
vitro
The reason I am not even remotely considering React is the Facebook itself and
what this company represents - exploiting people's minds and emotions to
fulfill their business plan. I can't help it but if I would use react, I would
not be able to get this feeling out of my mind, so if there is viable
alternative - vue.js, I am definitely going that way.
Something similar like using cosmetics that have been tested on animals, if I
can choose, I choose something else.
I know this should be more of a technical discussion, just I can't help but
think of this aspect when it comes to React.
------
qdoop
Which is faster? Vue; Which is more modular? Vue; Which is simpler to grasp
and reason about? Vue; Build in CSS support? Vue;
P.S. Vue contains React. You could in principle write your components React
style.
------
ausjke
vuejs does gain strong interests from large companies such as alibaba,baidu
and tencent, the three are called BATs in China similar(or larger) to amazon,
google and facebook in US.
One of the BAT should acquire Vue.js to make it a strong player for the long
run, that may happen in 2018 I hope.
Both laravel and vue.js (vue.js is the default frontend choice and embedded in
Laravel) are from one core developer, I liked them, but am concerned about the
bus factor. I eventually choose nodejs+react because of that.
------
faitswulff
It's a shame there's no first party supported Vue native library, but I
suppose that's too much even for Evan.
~~~
benatkin
That might not matter that much. There's still a strong argument for
implementing native apps using their own SDKs. There are more developers with
experience with them, there is more boilerplate and examples, third party
integrations are typically designed for them, and more books and documentation
are for them. On the front page of HN today there was a stackshare post about
a startup with only three engineers that used a lot of cutting edge tools, but
React Native was not one of them.
------
homakov
I had trouble getting started with React but Vue was a breeze. Better for
newbies imo.
------
baybal2
I'm afraid React is eventually turning into Angular. At some point, I felt
that Angular is somebody's PhD work exploring arcane computer science
concepts, not a piece of software for practical use.
React gets closer to that with each year.
~~~
acemarke
Can you clarify that comment? What aspects of React's development are you
concerned with?
~~~
baybal2
First, probably was their approach to implicitly require use of Observable
objects everywhere.
Second, use of arcane CS lingo and authors writing 10 pages long pages on
every known MVC model, FLUX, SCHMUX and etc with weekly regularity.
Third, during transition to Fiber, they went on gigantic increase of
complexity by introducing a lot of what can be said to be heuristic rules, and
all for non-guaranteed, minor performance gain.
~~~
baybal2
There is no explicit dependency on RXJS or its analogs, but the whole
ecosystem is heavily tied to on them.
A question "how to do thing A when user changes thing B" on React forums is
usually dismissed with "just use MobX/Rxjs/Kefir/Bacon"
~~~
acemarke
Citation Needed, please.
The most basic approach for responding to a change in data is to compare the
previous and current props in the `componentWillReceiveProps` or
`componentDidUpdate` lifecycle methods.
Meanwhile, Redux is the most common state management library used with React
apps.
You certainly _can_ use MobX, RxJS, or some other FRP-type library with React,
but to claim that "the whole ecosystem is heavily tied to them" is simply
wrong, and shows a gross misunderstanding of the React world.
~~~
baybal2
>but to claim that "the whole ecosystem is heavily tied to them" is simply
wrong, and shows a gross misunderstanding of the React world.
May be, but this is how it looks from my part of the world, which is Russia or
China when I am doing term contracts there from time to time.
Here, the so called "software evangelists", apparently paid or hired by FB,
swarm tech events to lecture people on how to do "10 tricks to transform your
eCommerce business with Agile management, and FLUX pattern". And they get
pretty annoying. My experience with React ends with my interaction with them
and doing basic demos for recruitment interviews. I have not yet heard of a
FRP-framework-free React site being considered norm for a "serious project"
here.
Just like those FB "evangelists" do today, Angular proponents were doing the
same 5 years ago with their maxim: "the magic provider/factory/service pattern
is the new best thing since a sliced bread" without elaborating much why. That
lead to many mentally-infirm developers trying to shove it everywhere, making
usage of Angular ecosystem without zealous following of that pattern
impossible.
I have impression that the same is happening with FRP-everywhere crowd and
React.
If this isn't how it is, I am glad.
~~~
acemarke
I certainly don't claim to know everything that goes on in the React ecosystem
(especially outside the US), but I _am_ pretty tuned in with the major trends
and discussions that are going on, and I've seen plenty of real-world React
applications and codebases. None of that matches anything I've seen thus far.
I have never heard of Facebook paying "software evangelists". I suppose it's
possible, but it really doesn't match with what I know about how Facebook
develops and uses React.
------
buamaharami
Why in earth people would like to to use anything from facebook in they
business ? Why do you trust they licensing ?
I would choose riotjs or vuejs anyday before any facebook's code in my apps.
~~~
joobus
You apparently aren't keeping up with the latest about riotjs:
[https://github.com/riot/riot/issues/2283](https://github.com/riot/riot/issues/2283)
I wouldn't feel confident picking that as my company's future.
~~~
ricardobeat
Whoa. Thanks for the link, wasn't aware of that. A lesson on how not to run
OSS:
[https://github.com/riot/riot/issues/2512](https://github.com/riot/riot/issues/2512)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Design and Implementation of the Anykernel and Rump Kernels (2012) [pdf] - rutenspitz
http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2012/isbn9789526049175/isbn9789526049175.pdf
======
justincormack
There is more on github [1] and the wiki [2] including videos and articles [3]
[1] [https://github.com/rumpkernel](https://github.com/rumpkernel)
[2] [https://github.com/rumpkernel/wiki](https://github.com/rumpkernel/wiki)
[3]
[https://github.com/rumpkernel/wiki/wiki/Info%3A-Publications...](https://github.com/rumpkernel/wiki/wiki/Info%3A-Publications-
and-Talks)
------
pyvpx
anyone here on HN using rumpkernel? if so, care to share how?
~~~
justincormack
I am working on it, got quite a lot of plans but there is also quite a bit of
general usability work to do... will announce some stuff in a bit...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Phineas Fisher's account of how he took down HackingTeam - adamnemecek
https://ghostbin.com/paste/6kho7
======
sklivvz1971
> I want to dedicate this guide to the victims of the assault on the Armando
> Diaz school, and to all those whose blood has been spilled at the hands of
> Italian fascism.
For those who don't know, they are referring to the 2001 Armando Diaz school
attack [1] (warning: graphic), where hundreds of G8 pacific protesters were
brutalized and tortured by Italian police. Whilst the police has been found
guilty of this, none of the policemen is serving any jail time.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Raid_on_Armando_Diaz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Raid_on_Armando_Diaz)
~~~
nxzero
>> "hundreds of G8 pacific protesters were brutalized and tortured by Italian
police. Whilst the police has been found guilty of this, none of the policemen
is serving any jail time."
If police commit crimes, they must be held accountable.
~~~
pteredactyl
Or America
~~~
nickpsecurity
Plenty of police in jail in America. They're just harder to convict. Easier to
get them fired. Italy is exponentially worse than America on this issue.
And I say that as an activist against police corruption here who also lives in
a murder capital. Police pulling shit that bad here is rare outside the
"hoods" where it's thugs and low income people nobody cares about. Still
usually just a ticket, thrown on a car, or a brief taser. The worst plant shit
on people but they're very rare.
------
mmaunder
For anyone who doesn't follow infosec: This guy is responsible for two of the
most impressive hacks recently and still hasn't been doxed or arrested. And so
the linked doc is awesome if only for the opsec tips it provides. And it
provides much more than that. It really gives you some perspective on how much
work an attacker will put into breaking into your network and the kind of
structured approach they're taking. Plus it's very hands on and is educational
and current whether you're black or white hat. If you read nothing else in
infosec this month, read this.
~~~
nerdy
He's likely to be identified as he gets more brazen. Even authoring this
volume of text is risky, and there are other notes from the same author linked
within. Spelling can be used to approximate region and phrases or errors such
as "the hard of the business" ("heart of") and "passtime" ("pastime") are even
stronger markers. Of course there's no way to tell if these are unintentional
or planted errata.
I'm grateful for the information. It's incredibly interesting, but it might
come at great expense to the author.
~~~
espadrine
This text is a translation. The original is in Spanish. It might have its own
mistakes and traces, although I am not knowledgeable to detect country-
specific patterns.
[http://pastebin.com/raw/GPSHF04A](http://pastebin.com/raw/GPSHF04A)
Presumably, given that they talk about EU culture^W^W^W^W (see comment below)
have a [https://securityinabox.org/es/…](https://securityinabox.org/es/…)
link, the author is from Spain, which would make it easier to pinpoint an
origin, as Spain has a wider spectrum of language differences than in most
other Spanish-speaking countries.
Since there is a link to [http://madrid.cnt.es/](http://madrid.cnt.es/), they
maybe live in the capital, which weighs 3 million inhabitants.
~~~
josemrb
After reading the original doc, by the style used and some slang (although it
could be on purpose), I would say the author is from Chile.
I'm glad to find people that still fight the system in this side of the world.
~~~
peeb
I would be willing to bet they are from Italy. I am Italian and they wrote
about some stuff that you would know only if you followed Italian news.
They could be dropping some contradictory clues, BTW. I could definitely see
that.
~~~
21
Did you verify that the stuff you refereed to as only being known if you
follows Italian news is not on the net? Don't those Italian news outlets have
websites?
This guy seems to be pretty good at googling around for stuff.
------
e12e
Wow, this is great. Feels like reading phrack in the 90s. Anyone know of
similar, contemporary resources on hacking?
This stuff is gold:
> NoSQL, or rather NoAuthentication, has been a great gift to the hacker
> community [1]. Just when I was worrying that all MySQL's sins of omission
> had finally been patched [2][3][4][5], these new databases appear, lacking
> authentication by design. Nmap found a few in Hacking Team's internal
> network:
Not to mention: > As fun as it was to listen to captures and watch webcam
images of Hacking Team developing its malware, it wasn't very useful. Their
insecure security backups were the vulnerability that threw the doors open.
According to the documentation [1], their iSCSI systems should have been on a
separate network, but nmap count a few of them in their 192.168.1.200/24
subnet:
I can just hear some one saying to themselves, four years ago, "This backup
stuff should be on a separate subnet, but for now this appears to be working.
Make a note-to-self to secure it later." ....
~~~
celticninja
There was another one on the finisher attack, also on paste bin that is Worth
a read.
~~~
Kristine1975
Namely this one:
[http://pastebin.com/raw/cRYvK4jb](http://pastebin.com/raw/cRYvK4jb) (also
linked in the OP's link).
------
andretti1977
The border between what is "right" and what is "wrong" is very thin. What he
did is illegal but it was right.
I think people should be grateful to the ones that as he did, fight against
what is legal but definitely wrong.
~~~
wzy
Did you get a chance to vote on the law that made what he did illegal?
Better yet, when was the lat time you got to vote on a law that was passed in
your country?
~~~
andretti1977
I can't understand what you really meant with your questions, but no, usually
you don't get the chance to vote law. As a citizen (at least an italian one)
you are allowed to vote for parties which in the end vote for the laws. So i
don't have the right to directly vote for a law. I can only delegate someone
to decide laws for me and this is a broken system at least in 2016 when i
think we have all the technology to allow individual votes or at least a
better delegation mechanism.
------
mintplant
> As far as I know, there's no free way of making inverse whois queries
Whoisology [1] is good for this, though they've been more aggressively pushing
their paid options as of late. Also WhoisMind [2], to some extent.
[1] [https://whoisology.com/](https://whoisology.com/)
[2] [http://www.whoismind.com/](http://www.whoismind.com/)
~~~
nikcub
Free alternative for anonymous requests is to hit the google caches, ex.
site:whois.domaintools.com "Y Combinator"
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Awhois.domaintoo...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Awhois.domaintools.com+"Y+Combinator")
------
moyix
Oh wow, he used some tools I wrote (and that someone later updated to work
with Vista & above):
[https://github.com/Neohapsis/creddump7](https://github.com/Neohapsis/creddump7)
------
enjoy-your-stay
Wow, this was a real eye-opener.
>Thanks to the hardworking Russians and their exploit kits... many businesses
already have compromised machines in their network. Almost all of the Fortune
500, with their enormous networks, have a few bots on the inside
I could definitely believe that, having worked at a few, they have massive
infrastructure and many users that are extremely relaxed about security in
general.
What then struck me was the way he casually decided to hack a VPN (!) is it
really so straightforward? And the way he seemed confident about testing his
exploit on other compromised machines without detection.
I'm always paranoid every time I type 'last' on my Linux box, wondering if the
thing is really compromised and totally lying to me - now I'm even more so!
~~~
klapinat0r
> _What then struck me was the way he casually decided to hack a VPN_
He's intentionally vague, but given he mentions two routers and two vpn
systems, it's highly probable that he's referring to one of the two routers
(which is embedded, and has firmware). Furthermore, he refers to a website[1]
which predominately deals with routers.
> _is it really so straightforward?_
Routers, yes[2], VPN daemons, not as much.
[1]: [http://www.devttys0.com/training/](http://www.devttys0.com/training/) \-
which can also contain a vpn daemon of course.
[2]:
[https://github.com/darkarnium/secpub/tree/master/Multivendor...](https://github.com/darkarnium/secpub/tree/master/Multivendor/ncc2)
------
nexar
He is active on reddit answering questions -
[https://www.reddit.com/user/PhineasFisher](https://www.reddit.com/user/PhineasFisher)
------
mercurial
> Hacking Team was a company that [...]
AFAIK, they are still operating and still doing exactly the same thing.
~~~
chinathrow
They just lost their export license.
~~~
mintplant
More information:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacking-team-has-lost-
its-l...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacking-team-has-lost-its-license-
to-export-spyware)
Quote:
"We can sell everywhere in Europe without a license. We can sell everywhere in
the world but we have to ask for a license every time we sell."
~~~
mercurial
My heart bleeds. The question is, how hard is it for a company like that to
get an individual license if they have a cozy relationship with law
enforcement, which wouldn't be very surprising in their case?
------
MatthiasP
Original text in spanish:
[http://pastebin.com/raw/GPSHF04A](http://pastebin.com/raw/GPSHF04A)
------
0xdeba5e12
i'm really happy to see the translation getting around this far. it's an
amazing text, & i'm glad my quick & dirty translation job got it out there
mostly intact. i never really gave it a proper proofread, so thanks for
catching those mistakes. more importantly, though, Phineas Fisher himself has
just released his own translation. and, having just discovered that ghostbins
are editable, i added a url to his version at the top of the text. here it is
again: [http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ](http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ)
------
noobie
I was curious why he was using domain names instead of tor hidden service or
other p2p networks. Turns out that using domain names provides a backup
communications channel (DNS) that gets through pretty much any firewall.
~~~
acdha
The other thing to remember is that Tor traffic is generally rare and few
places have a business case for it so it's more likely to be monitored, just
as in the past many places used to watch for IRC connections since it was
infinitely more likely to be a botnet control channel than Fred in accounting
seeing whether #quickbooks existed.
DNS, HTTPS to some random AWS/Azure/etc. endpoint, etc. are common as dirt and
enough harder to monitor that many places either don't try or struggle to do
do effectively.
------
csmajorfive
How did he record these step-by-step instructions with such high detail? Is
this common practice?
~~~
voltagex_
This is pretty normal for a paid penetration test - but it's got far more
technical detail than you'd normally see. I don't think the person behind this
has revealed anything particularly new, they just know their tools _really_
well.
~~~
amjo324
Agreed. However, in a formal penetration testing engagement, the tester will
usually only record and document their exact steps because they have to
provide a detailed report to their client. This hacker didn't have that same
obligation. I'm speculating that he is probably a habitual note taker. In this
way, if he ever comes across similar challenges when attacking a new target,
he has his notes to refer to.
I was curious to read this piece to see how closely the approach, techniques
and tools he uses compare to how penetration testers are formally trained in
the info sec industry. For what it's worth, the methodology in terms of
reconnaissance, privilege escalation and lateral movement within the network
are typical. Also, most of the tool set he uses (e.g. mimikatz, responder,
meterpreter, powersploit, psexec) are part of any good penetration tester's
arsenal.
I'm not trying to down play the achievement though. He is clearly very skilled
and knowledgeable. Of particular note, it seems that the initial intrusion was
only possible because 'after about two weeks of reverse engineering, I
discovered a remote root exploit' in an embedded system. He doesn't provide
technical details of the exploit but finding a 0-day in an embedded system is
usually far from child's play.
------
kumarski
I am non-technical and I love this post for its exhaustive documentation and
citations.
------
nxzero
Is there any reason to believe this doc was (or was not) produced by a state-
level actor?
~~~
Mendenhall
That is my thought as well, for a few reasons.
~~~
kenshaw
Well, the author's day job might be as a "whitehat" for a state sponsored
entity -- its even possible/plausible the author could be one of the
HackingTeam -- perhaps motivated by company politics to expose them.
------
djvdorp
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11509950)
------
kombucha2
can anyone suggest good infosec reads or periodicals?
~~~
timothyschmidt
[https://archive.org/details/International_Journal_of_PoC_201...](https://archive.org/details/International_Journal_of_PoC_2013_08_05)
------
bluesilver07
The link doesn't work anymore - getting a 404. Are there any other links?
~~~
bluesilver07
Found this -
[http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ](http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ)
------
SCHiM
Wow this person is impressive, the details of the attack and the preparation
almost make it read like a Hollywood hacker movie script (if they made good
movies about hacking that is...).
------
DyslexicAtheist
the English article now returns a 404. any alternative places it is still
visible at?
~~~
millzlane
[http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ](http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ)
------
m00dy
One of the most sophisticated story i have read so far.
------
simula67
> with just one hundred hours of work
Yeah, right. Most of the tools and knowledge he used would have taken much
longer than that to acquire.
~~~
tomlong
I think they're saying that's how much time it took them from the position
they started from. Obviously if you have to learn it all and study its going
to take an order of magnitude or two longer.
------
cinquemb
So, who's next? :P
------
uberweb
got mirror?
------
steckerbrett
> Obviously you have pay anonymously, with bitcoin, for exaple (if youuse it
> carefully)
Bitcoin is anonymous? Time to go to jail.
~~~
TACIXAT
Could you expand on your comment? My understanding is that if a party can't
tie a wallet to an identity then it is anonymous. So if you can acquire
bitcoins (eg. mining) and purchase something (eg. VPS) without giving up your
identity then you are solid.
~~~
Karunamon
I've heard conflicting information as far as this goes.
Thinking this through- an adversary who's watching the block chain probably
knows some inputs and some outputs. As in, these addresses belong to an
exchange, these addresses belong to a hosting company.
Okay, fine. Now remember than any user can literally create wallets out of
thin air, and in fact doing so is considered basic security hygiene. Let's say
Joe User transfers one coin from one wallet to another wallet under their
control. Let's say they do this 20 times, sometimes with the full amount,
sometimes less.
How does the adversary attach an identity to those transactions?
~~~
reqctomaniac
You have to use your bitcoins someday. Either to buy real currency or real
goods. Then you know where the money went TO. Tracing the transactions back
(where the money came FROM) is then not a big deal - full history is in the
blockchain.
So as long as you don't do a transaction that connects your identity to any
bitcoin address, you are fine. but to use bitcoins you are almost always
required to do it (its an electronic financial transaction, they are governed
by law to have an identity, but of course you can find entities who do not
follow these laws).
~~~
aaronbasssett
Only as you say if you convert them into a "real" currency. If they only used
their Bitcoin to purchase goods (such as VPS) which was not tied to a physical
address, then they could still remain anonymous.
As for where the Bitcoins came from, I'm sure the author of this document
would have some digital assets they could sell on the darknet to acquire some
Bitcoin. Where those Bitcoin originated then would not be their problem.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Web Language + Framework Most "Comfortable" for Desktop Coders? - ComputerGuru
Hi All,<p>First some background. I've been a developer for 11 years and have dabbled with pretty much everything, though my forte is system programming in C/C++ on Windows and *nix. For the past 5 years, I've been doing some light web programming on the side in the form of small- to mid-size projects in PHP, Perl, and ASP.NET.<p>I'm currently contemplating signing on as a cofounder for a foreign startup that I feel has a chance of really making it big, but I won't bore you with my justifications. Point is, I'm going to be the developer for this project (the other cofounders are a businessman and marketing guy).... and I need some help picking a platform.<p>I'm in love with C, C++, and C#. The former two for the control they give me and the latter for its clean abstractions and well-designed high-level interface. However, I can't find a web language/platform that fits with the software developer mentality.<p>JSP is a mess from a deployment/compatibility/maintenance perspective and totally out of the question. Most of my previous web projects have been in PHP and IMHO there's no way to maintain it past a certain point and the language itself is a nightmare, regardless of how you design the project. Besides these two, I'm open to pretty much any and all suggestions.<p>I've dabbled with both Python and Perl though I'd be lying to myself if I claim to be well-enough versed in either to come to a conclusion regarding their use. ASP.NET is just beautiful... except I feel it tries to apply the desktop programming paradigm too literally onto web development, and you end up with an awkward templating system with a slightly-perverted MVC model.<p>Basically, I want to code the system right and make it future-maintainable. From years of coding experience, I know it's not possible to make anything perfect, but you can at least make something comfortable to maintain and fun to write.. so long as you have the right tools in hand.<p>Can anyone recommend a Python, Perl, C#, or even C++ web development framework that works well for developers coming from the desktop (with our OOP obsession, pointer-fiddling, and OCD optimization compulsions)? I've downloaded a couple of the more popular frameworks, but if I want to do it right, it'll way too long to try them all out and do them justice without rushing to conclusions... and I'm hoping someone here has had a similar experience of coming to the web development scene from desktop programming and has some tips to offer.<p>Thanks!
======
russell
I make my living in the Java based web world and I would not recommend it
because it is not nearly so programmer productive as other frameworks like
Django. I would expect the same would also be true of C#. You really want
something that you can use to get a site out quickly and revise just as
quickly.
If you go at it from a desktop C# point of view, you are probably going to
make a number of fatal mistakes. I did some job hunting recently in CA and I
came away with the feeling that the companies developing in that environment
are really not doing anything interesting. think there is a mindset in that
world that will hold you back.
My best advice is to pick Django or Pylons or Rails and do a 2 week code
sprint to implement a prototype of your idea. I think that will answer a lot
of your questions.
------
jawngee
You're thinking about the problem wrong.
You want the best language/framework for the job. If you think this idea is
going to be "big", then you need to think about what tools are going to
support this "big" idea best, not what is going to make you more comfortable.
Satisfying your laziness(comfort) is not necessarily going to satisfy getting
the problem solved in the quickest and most scalable way possible (scalable in
terms of cost outlay as well as potential performance).
The fact that you think ASP.NET is beautiful is worrisome, I have to say. That
you think it is MVC in some way is troublesome as well.
~~~
ComputerGuru
The "beautiful" part of ASP.NET is the C# and the .NET framework itself...
what I meant to say is I love the language and abhor the webforms :)
I don't think it's lazy to look for the hammer that fits best in your hand....
after all, if the hammer is too big for you to carry or too small for you to
handle, it doesn't matter how well-fit for the job it is because to the holder
it's quite useless :)
------
jccovey
If you like the syntax of C# and you're familiar with the .NET framework, you
should try out ASP.NET MVC. The MVC variant is a separate project from
traditional ASP.NET "webforms" and doesn't come with the latter's baggage.
<http://www.asp.net/mvc/>
------
ismarc
Considering you're looking at potentially big, and have systems development
experience, I'd suggest taking a look at Catalyst (it's perl,
<http://www.catalystframework.org/>). The way it's designed, you can use any
templating system you want (template toolkit, mason, etc.) and any DB backend
you want. I've used it for some small projects and for some large projects,
all with moderate success. Probably the best fit about it is that it doesn't
force your app into being written a specific way. Once you have your
foundation down, it's lightning quick for prototyping as well (and turning
those prototypes into the fully functional, scalable system).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jan 13th (Sunday) 1pm, Oakland Sudoroom: Aaron Swartz and Kopimism - jaekwon
http://kopimism.org
======
jaekwon
Yes, this is against "social norms". Fuck social norms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The World's First Floating Dairy Farm - elorant
https://www.freethink.com/articles/the-world-s-first-floating-dairy-farm
======
mdorazio
As cool of a design as this is, I can't help but think "wtf?" We're running
out of land needed to feed populations and instead of asking something like,
"can we maybe reduce demand for horribly inefficient, environmentally
unfriendly, and probably unhealthy animal-based food production?" the response
here is "how can we make more animal land?"
Disclaimer: I'm lactose intolerant and thus biased on this issue since the
massive reach of the dairy industry in general makes me and my stomach sad.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ASK: Slack Stats DM vs. Public vs. Private – Whats It Mean? - social_quotient
I started doing a bit of analysis on how we are using slack and found that we have the following usage<p>Total Messages
80% public channels, 4% private channels, 17% DMs<p>I compared this to a client team we also have access to and noticed they have<p>Total Messages
12% public channels, 11% private channels, 77% DMs<p>While I'm sure there are a ton of ways to use and think about using slack , we all took notice that the DM ratio is so high meaning that most of the conversation is private between team members.<p>Since this is a metric I don't know what to do with I thought I would ask what sort of numbers other people have.
======
social_quotient
I sent this same message to SLACK directly and got back an interesting reply.
"Very interesting indeed! While I don't have specific numbers to provide to
you, I can say with confidence that the way your team is using Slack is how we
intended it to be used. Because one of the benefits of Slack involves being
able to access the team's conversations, we recommend keeping conversations in
public channels as much as possible."
Still really curious what some of you in the wild are seeing. Thx!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fixing the 949 problem with Fipes - tOkeshu
http://monkeypatch.me/blog/fixing-the-949-problem-with-fipes.html
======
alexchamberlain
Does `priv` stand for `private`?
<https://github.com/tOkeshu/fipes/tree/master/fipes/priv/ssl>
~~~
tOkeshu
Theses files are examples files. You can find the same in the cowboy_examples
repository[1] (Cowboy is the erlang server I use to build the application).
I should remove these files as the application do not use them.
For your information, there is no https available yet for
<http://fipelines.org> as described in the blog post and the README. You have
been warned ;)
[1]
[https://github.com/extend/cowboy_examples/tree/master/priv/s...](https://github.com/extend/cowboy_examples/tree/master/priv/ssl)
------
alexchamberlain
You should consider using Fountain Codes as an easy way to resume file
downloads and send to multiple downloaders.
~~~
tOkeshu
Yes Fountain Codes are definitively something I have to look at. Improving
bandwidth usage and resuming downloads are part of the next improvements with
https.
For now Erlang have been an excellent fellow to deal with these things :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How did software get so reliable without proof? - azhenley
https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2020/03/02/how-did-software-get-so-reliable-without-proof/
======
pjscott
How does software get reliable at all, ever? In my experience there are two
ways:
1\. You write reliable software from the start. It feels a lot like writing a
mathematical proof, or at least sketching one. After a few dumb bugs are fixed
the code continues to work without issue, year after year, and nobody ever
looks at it again. (This isn't as hard as it sounds! It's not the right
approach for everything, but it should be more widely used than it is.)
2\. You write normal software, i.e. unreliable crap, but you look at the ways
that it goes wrong and fix them. This requires that you put some work into
detecting that things have gone wrong. A lot of software companies will trace
all crashes, and aggregate stack traces and logs from them. In this kind of
environment, you can improve software reliability by sticking a paranoid
number of assertions in your code and obsessively checking to see what
triggered them. After a while all the common problems will have been removed,
and the remaining bugs will be less prevalent than hardware failures -- and
then you can declare victory.
~~~
moksly
In my experience the majority of enterprise service applications and smaller
few-purpose systems are build following 1.
We’ve have an ASP Web Forms food ordering system that’s basically four forms
and a simple CRUD admin system page that’s been running flawless for half a
decade. It’s only needed upgrades to its .NET system as we moved up the TLS
version ladder, and it has thousands of daily users. There are no tests, no
real monitoring outside of “is it still up?” and no complaints.
Eventually we’ll have to clean up the database, eventually. But chances are
someone will have build something new by then.
~~~
bluecmd
I doubt that would be 1 and not developed using 2 followed by a "don't touch"
policy, tbh
~~~
imtringued
We have one project under a don't touch policy. Sure it is probably the most
stable project because no features are getting added but it is also becoming a
maintenance nightmare the longer we accumulate interest on our technical debt.
There is a version 2 planned that will add a lot more features and I'm sure we
will spend the first weeks on upgrading the libraries it is using because they
are a major version or two behind.
------
ssivark
> _How did software get so reliable without proof?_
Simple, software started shipping with more bugs in backlogs :-P
— More seriously, software today is endemically crappy, and often poorly
designed. I dunno why Hoare thought it was any better. The only saving grace
is that (modern) software largely stays away from _serious_ stuff. Eg: The
airline industry is reluctant to upgrade software from decades ago, but happy
to incrementally upgrade other pieces of the system on shorter cycles. Then of
course, we have systems like the Boeing 737Max MCAS where the software did
what it was supposed to (taken literally) but the software system was poorly
designed.
EDIT: Just remembered this fantastic talk by Joe Armstrong
[https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4](https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4)
The smooth running of _every_ abstract system depends crucially on the (human)
operator handling the point of contact with reality, in practice, often
bending reality to make it tractable for the system. Any bureaucracy would
grind to a halt if it wasn’t intelligent humans carrying out the processes!
Software is no different.
Just like it’s hard to take a technology from “zero to one”, it is hard to
take the amount of necessary human oversight from one to zero. For this
reason, I would much rather think of software as amplifying the capabilities
of that human, rather than automating away other humans. In practice, these
systems will end up needing a highly skilled and trustworthy human operator to
shepherd them — might as well design the system to make it maximally easy for
those operators to understand/debug/tweak.
~~~
WalterBright
> software today is endemically crappy, and often poorly designed
So is every other engineering product that hasn't gone through years (decades)
of evolutionary refinement.
~~~
machawinka
I doubt software engineering is engineering discipline. At least not the way
we are doing it now. We are not engineers, we are craftsmen. It is a miracle
that the software that drives the world more or less works. So far there
hasn't been any major catastrophe due to software but it will happen. Software
sucks.
~~~
ci5er
Over time, I think I am coming to agree with you.
I went to an engineering school. People who designed bridges had a wide, but
constrained parameter space, and well-accepted design patterns.
I started out in semiconductor (MCU) systems and sometimes circuit design, and
we had a broader (but not yuuuge!) parameter space, but it was growing as
transistors got cheaper. Less well-accepted design patterns, because what you
do with 50K transistors and 500K transistors and 5M transistors and 50M
transistors - to use effectively - you need different patterns - and that
changed so _fast_!
I did software-ish things with my h/w teams, and they would mock me because
"software is easy". "You can do anything". And to do a rev, you didn't need to
burn a $50K and 6 weeks (or whatever it is now) at the fab for each turn.
The problem with software is that it is SO unconstrained. You truly CAN do
anything - except engineer in an unconstrained environment. I guess this
realization (and Python blowing up on me in run-time environments) have taught
me that: Constraints suck. But they are good. Software could use more of them,
because they force discipline at dev time, at compile time, which reduces
blow-ups at run-time.
~~~
WalterBright
> I went to an engineering school.
My father attended MIT in the 1940s. He said that the engineers at MIT
designed the new chemistry building, with all the latest features to support
laboratories. Only when the building was completed and scientists were moving
in did anyone realize that there were no toilets.
~~~
redis_mlc
Rumor has it that the U. of Waterloo was designed without including the weight
of ... books. So the building is sinking.
~~~
sachdevap
This rumor also exists for the Robarts Library at UofT, and in both cases, I
am quite certain, it is just that - a rumor.
------
dekhn
I've worked on software for some time and have seen a wide range of
interesting failure modes. All of the interesting failures (some of which have
had large monetary or visible outage impact) involved systems that broke in
ways that aren't well-addressed by proof systems. Instead, they've been about
things like statistical binning of parts, rare errors that escaped through
middling checksums, and complex distributed systems. In most of these cases,
there is some physical component, such as corrupted packets which pass CRC
checksum, or a chip that occasionally miscomputes the hash of a string. Not
sure how proof systems handle this, but in practice, those have been some of
the most impactful errors, and they are typically dealt with using heavy but
not comprehensive software testing.
~~~
lmm
In my experience the interesting failures are a tiny fraction of the failures;
your mind just glosses over the vast sea of boring failures. The most
impactful software flaws have not been subtle logic misalignments, they've
been utterly basic errors like Cloudbleed or the Arianne 5 overflow. Maybe
proof systems can only address 99% of software failures; my guess is that with
experience we'll find ways to cover the rarer cases as well, but even if we
don't, they're still worth using.
~~~
jwhitlark
Well, maybe. Additional costs with these approaches are often ignored. I
wouldn't want to give up proof systems as a tool, but too many treat them as a
zero cost panacea. A proof system or type checker is not an excuse to not give
a f __k about your craft, but I 've seen it that way more frequently than I'd
like to admit.
Personally and honestly, outside of already well understood or defined
systems, I'd say that people should invest their time in understanding their
_business_ domain, before they dig deep into proofs and related techniques.
~~~
lmm
> Well, maybe. Additional costs with these approaches are often ignored. I
> wouldn't want to give up proof systems as a tool, but too many treat them as
> a zero cost panacea. A proof system or type checker is not an excuse to not
> give a fk about your craft, but I've seen it that way more frequently than
> I'd like to admit.
The acceptable defect rate to the business is presumably fixed, so if a proof
system or type system reduces you defect rate below that then that _should_ be
an "excuse" to write fewer tests and move faster, as icky as it feels to do
that. I find the maintenance burden of tests is often underestimated; types in
particular may not be free, but they get you more bang for your buck than any
alternative, in my experience.
> Personally and honestly, outside of already well understood or defined
> systems, I'd say that people should invest their time in understanding their
> business domain, before they dig deep into proofs and related techniques.
Isn't it the same thing though? Encoding your business domain into the system
you're using is the hardest part of using any formal system, but it's also an
excellent way of forcing you to really understand the domain.
~~~
jwhitlark
In my experience, people either truely care about the business domain, and are
willing to be uncomfortable to delve into it, or not. Types and proofs seem to
be orthogonal.
Some domains are worth it, some are not. Sometimes it fits well, sometimes it
doesn't.
Just don't be the one sinking into the muck saying, "...but the math worked".
The math will be far more reliable than your understanding of the domain.
------
stared
Isn't it evolution and Darwinian selection?
Bad pieces tend to die out, good pieces get replicated, "breed", mutated and
incorporated[1]. Biological systems are not fault-tolerant. They are resilient
_on the average_ , under typical conditions.
[1] Among species, we get vertical transfer of genes (parent(s) to
offsprings), horizontal (e.g. plasmids between bacteria). Getting as a piece
of DNA as a submodule (this element-of relationship) is rare... but happens
(e.g the mitochondrium). In software, it is one of the most common
relationships.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Not quite? Life is resilient under the worst case. If it weren't, the first
time the worst case came around (drought year/early freeze/whatever) that form
would become extinct.
Sure there's a distribution (gene pool) and some is merely resistant under
normal conditions. That kind prospers, but keeps the 'worst case' genes handy.
A few members of the population are the 'prepper' members, and if this year is
the worst case then the species survives.
Anyway something like that.
~~~
stared
Drought is still a "typical" condition. (I.e. one from its environment, from
the last hundreds of thousands of years or so.) Selection pressure worked on
that. Yes, it may be a condition that makes 10%, 50% or 90% percent of the
population to die - and it is not a problem, in the grand scheme of things.
Not normal conditions are things that were never tested, or never tested to
that extend. E.g. an invasive species from a different continent, a chemical
compound, different pH of water, etc. Consequently, many species die out
completely - as there is not enough time for the selection of better-fitted
genes for this setting.
Also: compare with machine learning, and giving a sample out of the training
dataset distribution (all photos are shot in good light, give one in the
dark). Usually, the answer is meaningless.
------
panic
How did proof itself get so reliable? The process of convincing yourself that
a proof is correct isn't so different from the process of convincing yourself
that a program is correct.
~~~
garmaine
Yes, it is. This can be shown with theory: proving a program is correct is NP-
hard, but verifying the proof is in P-space. It is way easier to show a proof
is correct than to generate the proof in the first place.
~~~
panic
True, at least for formal proofs. I was thinking more of traditional
mathematical proofs, which are often as hard to formalize as programs are to
prove correct. In both cases, convincing yourself that the proof or program is
correct involves reading it and seeing whether each of its parts follows from
or fits into the other parts to make a coherent whole.
Of course, there are ways to fool the reader, but I think people learn to
avoid writing in ways that are likely to mask errors (e.g., not reusing the
same symbol to mean completely different things, both in proofs and in
programs).
------
jerf
Every piece of software defines an input space of all possible inputs for that
software. This space is staggeringly, exponentially enormous. However, the
space of inputs that are actually given to the software are generally an
exponentially small subset of the possible inputs. Making this often very
stereotypical and "friendly" space of inputs do mostly sensible things is at
least polynomially, if not exponentially, simpler than making the software be
entirely correct.
It is both true that software is a streaming pile of bugs, where the vast,
vast majority of responses to possible inputs is somehow wrong, yet the vast,
vast majority of inputs actually processed by the software are mostly correct
(not entirely, but mostly) because they are in the generally polynomial
subsets of the exponentially complicated space that the developers made
correct... ish.
~~~
sansnomme
To expand on this, floating point works for 95% of programs. It is the 5% that
needs exact accuracy/precision offered by arbitrary precision libraries. Most
programs hardly exhaust the entire range of your typical floating point usage
range. For example in a GUI you won't be able to easily tell the difference
between 100% and 99.9999999% by eyeballing.
------
temac
Except that we continue to slowly automate away human intervention (must be
done reasonably; it must still be _possible_ , it is just less current in
practice). Just look at the state of the art in field X at date T, then 10 or
20 years after.
We are getting better at some software, and why would we not? Not all SW, but
some, and even probably a lot of. Likewise for VLSI (which in some aspects is
quite similar to SW); there are some quirks, but it basically works despite
the modern designs being of unprecedented complexity. With a reliability way
higher that tons of high ends mechanical devices. Same story for off the shelf
standard operating systems even for absolutely not critical software: given
the application are somehow tolerant to crashes (the user just restart), it is
remarkable that we get so few.
I'm a firm believer that there is no SW crisis. There are people or companies
refusing to apply best practices here and there, or even not knowing they
exist, but that is another story.
------
m463
As a software person, I found Richard Feynman's paper "Personal Observations
on Reliability of Shuttle" quite interesting.
[https://www.history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm](https://www.history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm)
The part about software reliability stuck in my head, because he quickly came
to the conclusion it was fine.
Now shuttle software is probably the most special type of software on the
planet, but it made me think how reliable software is... compared to hardware
(and possibly people).
~~~
perl4ever
Physical things tend to not yield to abstractions as much. While people talk
about how difficult software debugging is when the illusion of a high level
abstraction is broken, still it's more of an exception.
------
tschmidleithner
> The ultimate and very necessary defence of a real time system against
> arbitrary hardware error or operator error is the organisation of a rapid
> procedure for restarting the entire system.
"Just putting out the plug and stick it back in" is one common way nowadays of
how to get out of an unforeseen state. It has quite some history and goes at
least back to the "let it crash" philosophy of Erlang. Of course this still
does not work for all kind of domains, especially when one is closer to the
metal. But still, we may have found a sufficiency compromise between formal
verified software (and thus, higher costs) and some kind of fault-tolerant
software (increased productivity).
~~~
beetwenty
Or, in another word, "disposability". We have a lot of systems that aren't
repairable, don't get debugged, don't have things fixed mid-flight.
And...it works, with respect to most existing challenges. Restarting and
replacing is easy to scale up and produces clear interface boundaries.
One way in which it doesn't work, and which we still fail, is security.
Security doesn't appear in most systems as a legible crash or a data loss or
corruption, but as an intangible loss of trust, loss of identity, of privacy,
of service quality. We don't know who ultimately uses the data we create, and
the business response generally is, "why should you care?" The premise of so
many of them, ever since we became highly connected, is to find profitable
ways of ignoring and taking risks with security and to foster platforms that
unilaterally determine one's identity and privileges, ensuring them a position
as ultimate gatekeepers.
------
pshc
Simply an absurd amount of hard work. Millions upon millions of person-hours
spent banging foreheads against C++ and the like. Billions of gray hairs. But
that’s progress for you.
------
hcarvalhoalves
The most trivial software system you can think of nowadays is already so large
in scope and/or complex that you can’t prove it _doesn’t_ work either, because
there’s no complete specification on how it’s supposed to work - if it
existed, it would be the bug-free software itself, because all software is
specification.
In the end all that matters is whether the system is useful, in an economical
sense (value delivered > defects over time).
So I would argue software did _not_ get reliable, our bar for defects remained
low, but the relative value delivered increased a lot because software has
amazing leverage.
~~~
hcs
Moreover, when you get an existence proof of a bug, it's usually easy to
change such a system to seem ok.
As Hoare also said, "There are two methods in software design. One is to make
the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it
so complicated, there are no obvious errors."
------
diroussel
So I guess the answer is: because of the feedback loops that exist around the
software systems.
~~~
perrygeo
Exactly. Software systems are reliable because they have economic value. We're
incentivized to make them work, regardless of how much technical debt and duct
tape lies under the hood.
------
kazinator
> _How did software get so reliable without proof?_
Two words: survivorship bias!
The software field exploded in the past half a century, producing a huge
volume of activity producing a huge amount of cruft. A lot of the unreliable
stuff gets shaken out; so what we see is a biased sample consisting of the
successes that remain. Software that is halfway successful gets to be
maintained, and over many years or decades, the reliability improves.
------
wanderr
Human operators surely play a part sometimes, but there are systems which
eliminate or minimize that and are still surprisingly reliable. I think people
have learned to build resilience into their systems, which expect and
anticipate failures. These systems still fail and when they do it's often in
very complex and surprising ways, but those failures are rare.
~~~
abraxas
Interesting. I wonder if there is a point beyond which multiplying these
abstractions doesn't really do anything to boost either performance or
reliability i.e. will someone come up with a way to wrap and package
kubernetes clusters into yet another russian doll abstraction?
~~~
wanderr
I actually wasn't thinking in terms of abstractions although those can help
too. Simple things like always validating your inputs, adding sanity checks
and safety limits to your code, building in isolation, can go a long way
towards catching a lot of errors and/or limiting the blast radius of failures.
------
gelo
Most of the software I have written for work has no near on no functional /
unit tests. It is industrial process monitoring software that runs 247 on
remote machines thousands of miles away. Simple fact is it has to work, no
if's but's, even when there are faults in its environment.
This does not mean to say that the software has not been tested.
Testing is subjective to a softwares use. You could have 10000 tests and still
have a series of bugs.
Testing for my work comes as two categories, "Tested by design" and
"Environmental Testing". "Tested by design" involves developing your software
by which the designing and writing the software inherits the tests as you go.
When I go about designing a feature, I expand on a chosen solution of that
feature and then methodically branch out on the uses of that feature, build a
map of dependancies, scenarios, outcomes, consequences etc for that feature.
These become the basis of how I write the code for that feature because I have
inherantly put in mitigations for everything I have considered before hand.
There is no point in testing something excessively if you can and/or have
garanteed by code that it will perform exactly as designed. That may seam a
contraversial thing to say.
With "Environmental Testing" we simulate the environment which the software is
put into with real external factors. This is particular for the software I
write. This is not always the best for another software project.
I've written my works software from scratch 3 years ago and it has had various
incremental additions and changes. Yes there have been bugs. I will admit that
entirely. However the key thing with work's software is that is has rarely
crashed or rarely faulted while containing those bugs. Most faults that have
been found have been configuration errors/issues.
I would be interested in how others approach testing strategies for the
software they have written.
------
aprdm
Having worked in some places that aren't software companies it is pretty
incredible how something a developer who is no longer in the company set in
the last decade is still kicking ass with no monitoring or documentation.
It's truly remarkable! All those databases that software depend on and go
without people even realizing they exist until someone literally decomissions
a datacenter only then to figure out lots of apps require that particular
machine to be running... they're day in and day out working with 0 maintenance
for years... impressive.
Postgres, mysql and mongodb are examples of databases I've seen like that! As
well as inhouse apps that depend on those databases... at most they have a
cron job for backing up and keeping at most the last X backups.
------
jacquesm
I don't think software is all that reliable. Almost every piece of major
software that I use has one or more bugs and periodically locks up or crashes.
We as users have been conditioned to accept this with the situation getting
worse rather than better over the years.
The main reason software _seems_ more reliable than in the past is because in
a SaaS environment the crash doesn't happen on your computer anymore. But the
effect is the same unless extreme care was taken on the server side to ensure
that no data was lost. In most cases we perform the equivalent of a reboot or
retry: we reload the page.
------
speedplane
This article misses the elephant in the room: how to define "reliability".
Most software perceived to be reliable (eg, MS Paint, bash) have numerous
bugs, it's just that no one comes across them. Software that is perceived to
be "reliable enough" (eg, MS Word, Chrome), have bugs that pop up regularly.
Here are some vague uptime reliability measures and what you need to get
there:
\- 70% reliability: you can often just free-code it and pray.
\- 95% reliability: you better have a bunch of tests.
\- 99.5%: you need automated testing, coverage tools, documentation, team
coordination tools, and and solid merge/deployment process.
\- 99.99%: all-of-the-above plus tests that aggressively attack and analyze
production systems (eg, Netflix Chaos Monkey), coverage tests that do branch
coverage and not just line coverage, simulating network failures, and/or test
on a variety of hardware and user-configurations.
\- 100%: The only way to be absolutely certain, is to convert each line of
code into a mathematical operator and solve for a formal proof of correctness.
The 100% reliability standard is not just theoretical. The U.S. government
issues software standards for safety critical devices (military, aviation,
healthcare), and some of them do indeed require mathematical proof of
correctness (EAL6+ being a key standard). They generally do not require 100%
bug-free code, but just that some particular features are 100% bug free (e.g.,
the OS/scheduler will never deadlock).
~~~
yaantc
> and some of them do indeed require mathematical proof of correctness >
> (EAL6+ being a key standard)
Nitpick: EAL6 is still semi-formal, EAL7 is formally verified design and
tested. EAL7 is very rare, on the CC certified products page [1] there are
only 2 EAL7 certified products: a hardware diode, and a virtual machine OS.
[1]
[https://www.commoncriteriaportal.org/products/](https://www.commoncriteriaportal.org/products/)
~~~
speedplane
> Nitpick: EAL6 is still semi-formal, EAL7 is formally verified design and
> tested. EAL7 is very rare, on the CC certified products page [1] there are
> only 2 EAL7 certified products: a hardware diode, and a virtual machine OS.
You are definitely correct. Also, disclosure... I worked on that EAL7 Virtual
OS. When I left it was only EAL6+, likely leading to my bias towards it.
------
AnimalMuppet
1\. Proof costs. Like, a _lot_. If you don't _need_ the reliability, why would
you pay for it?
2\. How much reliability is needed? Not 100% (usually). If my OS crashes, I'm
unhappy. If the OS on my company's production server crashes, that's a lot
worse. But our production server is actually a redundant cluster, so if one
machine crashes, people are unhappy, but nothing horrible happens. (In point
1, I talked about the cost of proven-to-be-perfect software. Needing to have a
redundant cluster is part of the cost of _not_ having perfect software, which
also must be considered. But because the hardware isn't 100% reliable either,
we needed a redundant cluster anyway...)
3\. Formal methods are often playing catch-up. Now we have to worry about
timing side-channel attacks through the cache. There may now be formal methods
to prove that such things are not possible in a piece of software; I'm pretty
sure there were not such formal methods five years ago. We keep finding new
areas that can fail. (One advocate of formal methods replied to me some weeks
ago that formal methods proved that the software would never do anything that
it wasn't specified to do. I doubt that claim with respect to something like
side-channel attacks. Even if it's true, though, I suspect that often the
_specification_ didn't include "no side channel attacks" until certain recent
events brought it to more popular attention.)
Proofs are therefore suffering from a double whammy: Not only are they
painfully difficult and expensive, but they're incomplete. When something
comes up that wasn't covered by the proof of correctness, you now need to fix
it. _And then you have to re-run all the proofs all over again, because your
fix may have invalidated them._
4\. All proofs have to start somewhere, usually with a formal specification.
If the specification is wrong (looking at you, MCAS), all the formal proofs in
the world won't save you. (Well... a _system-_ level formal proof might. But
that's even harder and more expensive. And even that fails if the _system_
spec is flawed.)
TL;DR: Real proofs are too expensive for the benefit they provide, in almost
all cases. The cost-benefit just isn't there. Hope lies in making them easier
and more automated to use (better type systems, for example).
------
agentultra
Maybe it has something to do with most software not only being not right but
not being wrong either (I’m paraphrasing Wolfgang Paul).
We do put a lot of effort into writing correct programs for some definition of
correct. But a lot of our specifications don’t include things that aren’t
obviously wrong like, “not leaking secrets,” wrong.
I share the enthusiasm of SPJ who said, “it’s amazing that it works at all let
alone so well.” It’s easy to forget that that little white box you type a few
words into is more impressive in scope and complexity than the tallest
buildings humans have built. And yet it is so largely invisible!
I think the more important question is how much longer have we got left before
regulators and insurers demand we assume more liability for things when they
do go wrong.
~~~
gonzo41
I actually think that the FOSS movement and licensing is really progressive in
this space. This thing comes with NO Warranty etc is really great because you
own the risk of the systems you build. If only that got surfaced more to the
users so they realized that a T&C page isn't really protection for anything.
Rather than force devs to use formal methods, I'd really like it if software
got to the point where regulators and insurers demand that we treat personal
information like radioactive waste and try and handle the least amount
possible.
~~~
agentultra
> Rather than force devs to use formal methods
I don't think professional liability would _require_ all developers to use
formal methods any more than it would require all practicing software
developers to become licensed engineers.
It may require companies to hire a licensed engineer to sign off on projects
and it could require those engineers to be insured so they may want to use
formal methods on a risky project to keep their rates down.
The end result, I think, is the same: pressure to do better by the standards
of the state of the art and not skimp on privacy and security.
------
otabdeveloper4
If you compare K&R C and C++17, everything that has been added is some form or
another of 'proofs'.
So I take issue with the 'without proof' part; even if they're not proofs that
adhere to strict mathematical forms, they're still there.
------
wisnesky
In 2020, software is reliable?
------
LoSboccacc
most software today is a mess. only when you include the user in the loop with
his version-3-new-final backups and willingness/need to retry in the event of
error you get something that's workable.
we've effectively shifted partial blame on the users, the famous "operator
error" class of bugs, made sure to help then save often and substituted
reliability with resilience
but it doesn't mean software is reliable. the whole system as a whole and
including users corrective actions is somewhat resilient enough for productive
work
------
hannob
I think the answer to the question posed may just be "it's like natural
selection".
A lot of software is horrifically bad. But not all flaws are created equal. A
software that runs an online shop, but crashes 50% of the time during checkout
will probably not create a successful company and thus won't survive long.
However a software that has comparably many flaws and fails in all kinds of
rare corner cases, but still gets the job done in most average cases, may just
survive, even though it's equally bad.
------
p0nce
How did people get the impression software was so reliable?
------
qubex
What strikes me in both the original article and the post is the failure to
recognise that a strong form of selective pressure is being applied upon
software, and that adaptive processes (of which evolution is but a single
example) tend to optimise for the criterion that is being selected for even in
absence of an overarching design (‘proof’). I recommend reading _Darwin Among
the Machines_ for comparison to hardware.
------
cjfd
By fixing everything that goes wrong noticeably and by having no idea that
many features are currently actually not working as they are supposed to?
To actually create reliable software currently the best bet is to have
automated tests for as many things as possible and exploratory manual testing
around any feature that changes.
------
zwieback
By focusing on the critical path through the call tree. It's shocking how many
fatal errors static analysis finds in my typical C/C++/C# code but the call
graph that those errors are on simply never gets exercised. The mathematical
proof would include all those unused paths.
------
super_trooper
Probably money? If there is money to be made somebody is going to find a
solution that mostly works
------
shekharshan
When it comes to writing reliable software the best paper I have read is
“Design By Contract”. That one paper combined with proper usage of exceptions
will go a long way in preventing bugs. Of course there is also a need for more
rigor in requirements.
------
_bxg1
Fascinating how perception has changed since then; I think most people today
would have the opposite sentiment: "How did software get so _unreliable_?"
My guess is: software creation and distribution became exponentially more
accessible around that time (1996) with the advent of the web. Not only were
many less-qualified individuals creating software (which isn't intrinsically a
bad thing!), many more people were _consuming_ software (making consumer
software a much more lucrative market), and technology changes allowed
companies to "move [much] fast[er] and break [more] things".
Businesses were always optimizing for profits, and the dot com boom simply
changed the equation to where reliability was no longer profitable in the
majority of the field.
------
egberts1
Richard Feynman said it best:
1\. Write down the problem
2\. Think real hard
3\. Write down the solution
[http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm](http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm)
------
gandalfgeek
Short explainer video covering Hoare's original paper:
[https://youtu.be/eY8AyCZ5uUg](https://youtu.be/eY8AyCZ5uUg)
------
wyager
> How did software get so reliable
Talk about begging the question!
~~~
pjscott
How many HTTP request does nginx usually serve before crashing? How long can a
Linux kernel stay up before panicking? Some complex software _is_ startlingly
reliable.
------
tus88
Fixed a ton of bugs. And it's not that reliable, and super reliable software
in airplanes is proved.
------
sitkack
By begging the question!
------
amelius
> How did software get so reliable without proof?
Because most software is just moving data from one place to another, combined
with some very simple business logic.
------
rkagerer
It didn't.
------
dimes
The proof is in the pudding.
------
waynesonfire
See Betteridge's law of headlines.
------
buzzkillington
The main reason I've found for programs being 'correct' is that the range of
actual inputs for programs is severely limited.
Most programs see inputs that are similar enough to previous inputs that the
latent bugs are never triggered, or at worst triggered one at a time.
Running programs far outside their expected parameters on the other hand has
nearly always lead to disaster.
~~~
amelius
Would you say that a typical web-browser (a complicated piece of software)
always sees the same kind of input?
~~~
buzzkillington
Pretty much.
Throwing [0] to chrome and firefox has made made them hang for 5 minutes so
far. Generating the HTML took under a second and 13MB, large, but not larger
than the fatter webpages out there.
In terms of input browsers don't see but should be able to parse you can't get
much simpler than this.
[0] In Guile2.x:
(define print
(lambda (x)
(display x)
(newline)))
(define div-hell
(lambda (n)
(cond
((eq? n 0) (print "TEXT"))
(else
(print "<div>")
(div-hell (- n 1))
(print "</div>")))))
(print "<html><header><title>DIV HELL</title></header><body>")
(div-hell 1000000)
(print "</body></html>")
------
crimsonalucard
>The problem with the question “How did software get so reliable without
proof?” is that it’s asking the wrong question. It’s not that software got so
reliable without proof: it’s that systems that include software got so
reliable without proof.
No. This person isn't sounding smart enough. The real question isn't how
systems that include software got reliable without proof but instead the
reverse: how did software that includes _systems_ get so reliable without
proof? That's how you should conclude an article with some hand wavy technical
jargon.
------
justlexi93
The same way bridges, aeroplanes and medicine happened. What makes software so
special?
------
tboyd47
Brilliant analysis.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Game Theory – Prison Breakthrough - johnwheeler
http://www.economist.com/news/economics-brief/21705308-fifth-our-series-seminal-economic-ideas-looks-nash-equilibrium-prison
======
oli5679
This article presents the reflections of Game Theorist, Ariel Rubenstien,
about the practical uses of his discipline.
[http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/game-
theory-h...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/game-theory-how-
game-theory-will-solve-the-problems-of-the-euro-bloc-and-stop-iranian-
nukes-12130407.html)
It's worth reading the whole article, but he cautious about the predictive
power of many of Game-theory's most elegant models:
"In my view, game theory is a collection of fables and proverbs. Implementing
a model from game theory is just as likely as implementing a fable. A good
fable enables us to see a situation in life from a new angle and perhaps
influence our action or judgment one day. But it would be absurd to say that
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” predicts the path of Berlusconi"
To give some context, he is one the 100 most cited economists in the world,
coauthor of the most popular graduate Game Theory textbook and has a
reasonable chance of winning a Nobel over the next couple of decades for his
work on game-theoretic bargaining models.
~~~
adrianratnapala
Though now that he points it out, it seems like the path of Berlusconi is
rather well explained by the "Emperor's New Clothes".
------
ucarion
The article describes _interpersonal_ Prisoner's Dilemmas, where if every
person optimizes for themselves, the final result will be worse for each and
every person (than if they had all shown restraint). As the article points
out, this may explain pollution and overfishing.
There are also _intertemporal_ Prisoner's Dilemmas, where each if person-at-
time-T optimizes for their immediate goals, the final result will be worse for
each and every moment in that person's life. This may explain why we overeat:
any given moment is made better with a Big Mac, but if you ate a Big Mac all
the time every moment your life would be made much worse than if you led a
restrained, healthy life.
~~~
andrewflnr
If only there was some way for versions of yourself at different times to
coordinate. Oh, right...
~~~
nitrogen
It seems the act of coordination itself can be modeled similarly to not eating
a big mac.
------
chapium
I came here thinking this was a recent breakthrough, but this appears to just
be an overview of the 1948 Prisoners Dillemma and an update from 1994...
------
j2kun
For another view on how the Prisoner's Dilemma should affect your worldview
beyond academia, see this recent article by Tim Gowers on the Brexit:
[https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/6172/](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/6172/)
~~~
Kenji
I skimmed the article and I have to say, I am not convinced at all.
Decentralization can be achieved without causing situations like prisoner's
dilemma. Look at Torrent for example, it works without a central authority
enforcing things. While total decentralization is ineffective, centralization
is authoritarian and destructive. We have to construct a system where it pays
off to be honest and fair, such that force and subjugation is not necessary.
This is the only way forward. And frankly, I do not see the EU play a positive
role in any of this.
~~~
natermer
centralization also results in severely less optimal results because the
information and experience available to central planners is substantially less
then information available to individual actors.
Not only is the information of poorer quality prior to making the decisions
the quality of feedback is poor. It becomes very difficult to understand the
consequences of decisions when you have nothing to compare it to.
In a decentralized system the individual actors can see the results of
decisions made by other actors and change accordingly. In a centralized system
there is no other 'center' to compare it against. They could be making good
decisions or they could possibly be not.
In the real-world the amount of unknown variables is so high that even
decisions made with the best intentions, most rational approach, and most
perfect knowledge possible can fail miserably. It wouldn't be the fault of the
central planners, per say, but it will still be a negative outcome.
Also a decentralized system the consequences to negative decisions is
dampened. Even if the bad decision was done out of perfect rationality there
is enough irrational actors that somebody else will likely stumble across a
superior decision and thus guide a more positive outcome. A bad decision by a
individual actor will potentially be devastating to that actor, but the
effects of that decision will be limited to that actor and those around him
that may be negatively impacted.. it won't impact the entire group and his
example will lead to better decision making in the near future.
With centralized planning the bad decisions affect the entire group and it can
take much much longer for the bad decision to be recognized as bad and even
longer to change. By that time you can fix the problem have the group adjusted
to work around the bad decisions and undoing the bad will just create new
issues.
~~~
j2kun
> Also a decentralized system the consequences to negative decisions is
> dampened. Even if the bad decision was done out of perfect rationality there
> is enough irrational actors that somebody else will likely stumble across a
> superior decision and thus guide a more positive outcome.
Or, alternatively, it will be a race to the bottom until the housing market
crashes.
> A bad decision by a individual actor will potentially be devastating to that
> actor, but the effects of that decision will be limited to that actor and
> those around him that may be negatively impacted
Unless that actor has nuclear weapons, poisons a water supply, destroys the
source of some resource the rest of the world depends on...
~~~
natermer
> Or, alternatively, it will be a race to the bottom until the housing market
> crashes.
The housing market crash was due to central planning. Hardly a counter point.
> Unless that actor has nuclear weapons, poisons a water supply, destroys the
> source of some resource the rest of the world depends on...
Central planners are humans.
When comparing human systems of central vs decentralized management you have
to understand that the central planners are just as prone to irrationality as
individual actors.
Pointing out that individual choices can lead to bad outcomes does not mean
that central planning choices will not lead to bad outcomes.
The problem is one of dealing with complex mulch-facteded world were
historical information will very often lead to poor decision making in the
face of change.
The lack of good information, lack of good feedback mechanisms, and inability
to gain enough experience are all severely limiting to the chances of quality
outcomes as a result of central planning.
~~~
five3
>The housing market crash was due to central planning. Hardly a counter point.
Citation needed on how central planning led to MBS and CDS exploding.
~~~
hedonistbot
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ->
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac)
Admittedly not the only factor but a huge contributor.
------
LeifCarrotson
Their graphic and dilemma are nonstandard and do not match, for anyone
confused by the graphic. The normal formulation of the problem is:
\- If A and B each betray ('snitch' in the article) the other, each of them
serves 10 years in prison.
\- If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve
life in prison (and vice versa).
\- If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in
prison (on the lesser charge).
In the article, the prisoners are given three choices: Silence, Betrayal, and
Confession, which confuses the issue, and the graphic provides only Silence
and Confession, which further produces confusion.
Perhaps the modern formulation is too indoctrinated with plea bargaining?
~~~
slavik81
There is no third choice. They're using both 'confess' and 'snitch' as meaning
'telling the truth about what happened'. The description in the article may be
confusing, but it does match the diagram and it's fundamentally the same as
yours.
------
formula1
For those of you thinking this is at all related to the recent de-
privitization movenent in the US prison system, it is not. This is more of a
breif history and overview.
~~~
SilasX
Yeah, the "breakthrough" in the title was very misleading. It should be
renamed to something like "the [early] history of the Prisoner's Dilemma".
~~~
mprimeaux
Agreed. After reading the article and related comment threads, my perception
is one that aligns with this view.
------
ihaveahadron
The prisoners dillema fails to take into account that both prisoners know each
other, and one of the prisoners may not make a rational decision. Say there is
prisoner a and b. Prisoner a is a drooling moron who will act again his self
interest. Prisoner b knows this. Prisoner b will do the thing that will make
him get out of jail for good. Essentially I'm not playing along with this
"riddle" because its flawed in the first place because it fails to understand
elementary consciousness.
~~~
pmontra
A friend working with inmates says that they laugh at the idea of the prisoner
dilemma. They say there is no dilemma: everybody knows that one must never
confess or there will be consequences.
These are not occasional criminals but people for which crime is a career
path, exactly the mobsters of the example in the article. They have rules to
follow which affect all their professional life in the same way we have
contracts with our customers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows 10 Mobile: Why Windows phones still have potential - ilmiont
http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/op-ed-one-year-on-why-i-m-still-using-windows-10-mobile/article/489772
======
ilmiont
Disclaimer - I am the author of this article. While Hacker News and W10M
aren't necessarily regularly associated, I thought it'd to be interesting to
put together some thoughts on how the third mobile platform is faring in 2017.
I'm not trying to blatantly self-promote; if you are also still on the W10M
bandwagon, why are you still using it? And if you're not - which is probably
more likely - what's your perception of W10M today?
~~~
brudgers
I use WP10 because I don't want to be a part of Apple's ecosystem and Google's
interests in Android security do not align with mine...it's Windows 95 but
Google can (and does) say it is the manufacturer's responsibility.
I also use WP10 because the user interface is not a rehash of the Xerox Alto
from 1977. It's really good and has been since WP7. OLED displays are part of
it. Live tiles are part of it. A willingness to use text as an interface is
part of it.
The lack of apps is not such a big deal for me because, you know, the web.
What I miss from Android is having Forth and Ruby and Clojure and J and Python
and Octave running on my phone.
~~~
ilmiont
Agree - lack of apps is of no concern to me, I have barely anything installed.
Big part of reason I'm still here, Start still makes the experience for me too
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Don't Sell Saddles Here - mcfunley
https://medium.com/p/4c59524d650d
======
205guy
Crickets...
I'll bite: I'm still not sure what Slack does, and more critically, how it
does it. The wall of text that was linked was aimed at employee motivation (or
maybe VC presentations), so it is not good at communicating with potential
customers (what I assume is the goal now that there is a full launch). There
were a lot of talking points, from revolutionizing company organization to
telling companies that they don't know what their business is (based on the
single example of Lululemon, everyone should sell horseback riding instead of
just saddles). Maybe I'm being unfair because I didn't read the whole thing,
but frankly, scanning it didn't find what I was looking for.
I am very interested in communication models. My company uses email, wiki,
skype (IM&voice), and a virtual meeting service for internal communication. I
would love to understand how and why Slack is such a revolution. Granted, I am
not a manager or purchasing agent, so this is just intellectual interest. But
I could find nothing about the actual product in the linked article or the
slack website with a few clicks.
What I expected to see: a) a semi-technical explanation of what slack does,
and b) a screenshot or 3.
~~~
mygrant
There are plenty of screenshots all over the tour:
[https://slack.com/is](https://slack.com/is)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Here’s Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They’re Banned - rms
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/16/heres-our-new-policy-on-ap-stories-theyre-banned/
======
babul
This is essentially the same as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218496>
(without the login needed for those who don't want to sign-up with _another_
site)
...and some reasoning is explained at
[http://broadstuff.com/archives/1031-Why-would-Associated-
Pre...](http://broadstuff.com/archives/1031-Why-would-Associated-Press-wish-
to-redefine-Fair-Usage.html).
------
krschultz
Well I don't like the TC stories, but upvote for wanting other people to avoid
using AP. The problem for me with AP started long before the last week, if you
read a lot of news you realize that most of it comes from the AP so there are
no differing view points. You get one side of the story, whatever the AP
reporter writes is what you get.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oliver's simple fluid dynamics simulator in Javascript - nickb
http://nerget.com/fluidSim/
======
TrevorJ
Wow, that's mesmerizing.
I would love to see this on a multi-touch display. I wonder if you could make
an iphone app like this. Maybe have a little paper boat that floats on the
surface which you can't interact with directly but you have to use your
fingers to change the flow of the water to shepherd the boat through certain
obstacles?
If anybody wants to do this I'll donate my time to make the art :-P
~~~
whughes
<http://memo.tv/msafluid_for_processing>
Also ported to Flash:
<http://blog.inspirit.ru/?p=248>
I've tried it on a multi-touch display, and it is a lot of fun even without
any additional things to play with. Pretty heavy on the processor with a lot
of people, though.
------
baddox
It works much faster in Chrome than Firefox.
~~~
tlrobinson
It's even faster on recent WebKit builds (the "official" editions with
SquirrelFish).
Not too surprising, considering Oliver works on SquirrelFish ;)
~~~
roblocop
more specifically still faster in chrome beta than firefox 3.5 beta on leopard
------
sp332
Definitely something that would benefit from the new Javascript "web workers"
(worker threads). <http://blog.mozbox.org/post/2009/04/10/Web-Workers-in-
action>
~~~
kingsley_20
web workers don't have DOM access.
~~~
sp332
I doubt updating the UI is real processor-intensive. The worker threads would
do the math without blocking the UI.
------
sdp
I recommend that you don't turn it up to 512 resolution on a macbook in
firefox. =(
~~~
solutionyogi
That's why you use Google Chrome. I turned it up to 512 and that particular
tab got hosed but I could easily kill it. :)
------
palish
Broken in Chrome on Vista Ultimate 32-bit.
~~~
prospero
Working in Chrome on Windows 7 32-bit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The envelope paradox (2006) - olalonde
http://blog.plover.com/math/envelope.html
======
landryraccoon
Can the author prove that case (3): one is less than R and one is greater than
R occurs with greater than zero probability?
Consider a special case of the experiment: One in which the number picker
always picks numbers within a finite interval; i.e., for numbers E1 and E2
inside the envelopes |E1 - E2| < X for some X. In this case, case 3 occurs
with zero probability. There is an infinite interval over which both E1 and E2
are greater than any random number R. Similarly, there is an infinite interval
over which both E1 and E2 are less than any given random number R. But there
is only a finite interval over which it is possible for E1 and E2 to be on
opposite sides of R.
Here's another way to think of it: You have an infinitely large dartboard. The
author wants to paint a finite sized bullseye on the dartboard. The size of
the dartboard is the distance between E1 and E2 (the two numbers in the
envelopes). He throws a random dart at the dartboard and if he hits the
bullsye he wins. The size of that bullseye is the "advantage" over random
chance. But it doesn't matter how large you paint the bullseye, if it's a
finite size then there's a zero probability that a random (finite sized) dart
will hit the bullseye. The ratio of the area outside the bullseye to the ratio
inside the bullseye is infinity.
~~~
fenomas
The puzzle doesn't specify how your opponent chooses their numbers. Both your
analogies implicitly assume that they are somehow choosing from an infinite
uniform distribution (is that even a thing?) but all the puzzle states is that
there aren't any restrictions on how they choose.
So the idea here is that the author's strategy is guaranteed not to lose, and
may possibly win depending on factors that are not specified.
~~~
JackFr
The authors strategy guarantees that you can't do worse than 50%, and you
might do better.
Of course you that could sacrifice a goat and examine the entrails and
guarantee that you won't do worse than 50% and might do better.
If that R, A, and B are elements of the real line with A < B, What is the
probability that A < R < B? It looks to me like the probability would be
(B-A)/Inf = 0.
~~~
fenomas
> sacrifice a goat and examine the entrails and guarantee that you won't do
> worse than 50% and might do better.
Huh? Sacrificing a goat (i.e. choosing randomly) will not do better than break
even.
> If that R, A, and B are elements of the real line...
This makes assumptions about A and B that aren't in the puzzle. The fact that
they're unknown doesn't imply that they're chosen from an infinite uniform
distribution. It just means we have no information about them.
~~~
JackFr
I don't think I make any assumptions about A,B other than that they're on the
real line. Regardless, as the puzzle stands, there is no way to show that P[A
< R < B] > 0\. Since you can't show that, you can't claim that the strategy
ever yields performance > 50%.
~~~
fenomas
> there is no way to show that P[A < R < B] > 0
As the puzzle and strategy are stated, the methods for choosing A/B/R are all
left unspecified. If we don't know how they're chosen, it stands to reason
that we can't rule out the possibility of R falling between A and B, hence
there's a nonzero chance of it happening. If you want a rigorous way to show
this even for any given opponent strategy, the player can choose R from an
unbounded distribution - which is nonzero everywhere, and therefore nonzero
between A and B, for any choices of A!=B.
~~~
umanwizard
"Can't rule out the possibility" isn't the same thing as "nonzero
probability".
E.g. pick a number uniformly at random between 0 and 1. It might be rational,
but the probability of that is 0.
~~~
fenomas
You're moving the goalposts from what the article claims.
The opponent's strategy is unknown and unspecified, per the puzzle. The point
of the article is that there is a strategy that never does worse than chance,
and may do better, depending on the opponent's choice of numbers. Sure, the
opponent can make your advantage arbitrarily small - the article says that
directly. But the notion that they are trying to do so is not part of the
puzzle, and finding a strategy that prevents them from doing so is not what
the author claims to have done.
------
StefanKarpinski
I think the analysis of the strategy's chances of winning is faulty. We can
assume that the adversary chooses A and B such that P(A < B) = ½, since
otherwise the optimal strategy is to always guess A < B or B > A depending on
if P(A < B) > ½ or P(A < B) < ½.
Now, analyze the game using the standard approach of breaking it down into
simple, non-overlapping cases:
R < A < B: lose
A < R < B: win
A < B < R: win
R < B < A: win
B < R < A: win
B < A < R: lose
Thus the probability of losing is
P(R < A < B) + P(B < A < R)
= P(R < A ∧ A < B) + P(B < A ∧ A < R)
= P(R < A)*P(A < B) + P(B < A)*P(A < R)
= P(R < A)/2 + P(A < R)/2
= 1/2
There is no paradox: no matter how you choose R, you have exactly a ½ chance
of winning.
~~~
pzone
That sounds right to me. The first few sentences of the article, talking about
"picking numbers at random" without fixing any sort of probability
distributions for those numbers, or even labeling those distributions as P1 P2
and so on, raised enough red flags that I stopped reading.
Whether or not the the conclusion of this article is correct (and my intuition
still screams "not a chance"), the argument is hand-wavey enough that it
doesn't reply to the objection raised here.
~~~
pzone
Update: I read one of the comments below and now I'm convinced by the
argument. Here's the intuition for what's happening. (I wish the article had
spelled this out sooner)
As long as A does not equal B with some positive probability, and as long as
you choose a separator R with full support, then there is some probability
that R lands between A and B. When that happens, you always win the game.
Otherwise, if picking A or B randomly doesn't hurt you, then R landing
somewhere else not between A and B doesn't hurt you either. So you've gotten a
strategy that, once in a while, helps you separate A and B, and doesn't hurt
you otherwise.
~~~
StefanKarpinski
Yeah, I'm not convinced anymore either. Specifically, I think that the
assumption that R < A and A < B are independent events is incorrect, which
means that P(R < A < B) = P(R < A)*P(A < B) is not necessarily true. I'll have
to think on it more and maybe email Mark about it.
------
idlewords
"Here's your winning strategy. Before you see A, choose a random number R"
Isn't it true that there's no uniform distribution over the reals? That seems
to be what the whole apparent paradox hinges on.
~~~
fenomas
It doesn't have to be a random number from any particular distribution - you
can roll 1d20, or use your age, or anything else you like.
The point of the paradox is that picking a value and trading anything below it
is _always_ a non-losing strategy, and may also be a winning strategy,
depending on factors that are not defined in the puzzle (i.e. whether your
opponent's choices are anywhere close to the number you chose).
~~~
mjd
Rolling 1d20 doesn't work, because if the first player always chooses numbers
bigger than 20 or smaller than 1, the second player wins with only probability
½.
To get a winning probability greater than ½ the second player needs to choose
from a distribution that is everywhere positive, which means that a discrete
distribution won't do.
~~~
fenomas
Ah, I see what you mean - I meant that any old number will suffice for having
a _non-losing_ strategy, assuming that the opponent's strategy is unknown and
undefined.
------
dools
I was incredulous that this was as simple as I first thought[1], but had my
suspicions later confirmed when I read about it on lesswrong
[1] [http://iaindooley.com/post/61292324101/the-two-envelopes-
pro...](http://iaindooley.com/post/61292324101/the-two-envelopes-problem-the-
most-boring-paradox)
~~~
dllthomas
I don't think it's as simple as you thought. Or at least, the problem you
identified is not a problem. The actual problem is still pretty simple.
[for those dropping into this thread without having followed the link, we seem
to have restricted our discussion to the (x, 2x) problem, which is mentioned
in the plover.com article but is not where it starts]
Probability is a means of dealing with uncertainty. When you open the envelope
you were handed and see $10, what you've learned is that the other envelope
contains either $5 or $20. This is not postulating existence of both of those
envelopes - this is your uncertainty about which world you inhabit, one with
two envelopes ($5, $10) or one with two envelopes ($10, $20). It's true that
you only inhabit one of those worlds, but you don't know which and probability
is how you get a handle on your lack of knowledge.
As I understand it, the problem is that a natural - but errant! - next step is
to say, "I don't know how likely it is that the envelopes were stuffed with $5
and $10 vs $10 and $20, so I'm going to assume both are equally likely."
Around $10, this is probably a good approximation. But if you're saying this
_before looking at the envelopes_ , then it amounts to saying "the
probabilities are equal for any choice of value" (for all x, P(x)=P(2x)). I'm
actually not sure what distribution should be chosen to reflect zero knowledge
of a rational number, but it should be _a distribution_ \- the likelihood of
all possible outcomes should sum to certainty (1). That is incompatible with
"for all x, P(x)=P(2x)".
------
ars
Doesn't this paradox hinge on both of you having the same definition of
"random" (i.e. using similar range of numbers)?
That seems to be extra information given to you, above and beyond simply an
envelope with a number.
So there is no real paradox, the solution is based on a hidden assumption not
directly spelled out.
~~~
fenomas
The idea here is that any choice by the player yields a strategy which will
not lose money, and may make money, depending on factors that are left
undefined (i.e. whether or not the player and opponent choose similar
numbers).
The fact that the author calls this state of affairs "a winning strategy"
seems to be confusing a lot of commenters here. In practice you only benefit
if your number sometimes falls between your opponent's choices, and your
opponent can make the chances of that happening arbitrarily small. But suffice
to say, if you actually play this game with a real opponent then the author's
strategy will indeed let you win "at least as often" as choosing randomly, and
possibly more often depending on how your opponent plays.
~~~
ars
> In practice you only benefit if your number sometimes falls between your
> opponent's choices
Or in other words if your range for random numbers is similar to the opponents
range.
Or in other words there is more information being transmitted here than just
an envelope - you also need to know the range, making this paradox not
actually a paradox.
~~~
fenomas
> Or in other words if your range for random numbers is similar to the
> opponents range.
There's no such animal as "the opponent's range" here. The problem doesn't
specify that the opponent chooses their numbers from a range, or anything else
- all that's given is that there are two numbers and we know nothing about
them. And if that's the case then it follows that any random number we choose
might be between them, in which case our strategy beats chance. Note that
nobody's claiming our choice is _likely_ to be between the opponent's choices,
just that the possibility hasn't ruled out. None of this makes any assumptions
about their numbers.
If you're hung up on the possibility that the opponent chooses numbers so as
to counter this strategy, the author points out elsewhere that if you pick a
number from an unbounded range (like a normal distribution) then you'll have a
nonzero (though vanishingly small) chance of falling between _any_ two numbers
the opponent chooses.
------
jdmichal
I'm not entirely convinced that cases (1) and (2) have the 50% probability
stated.
We have X, the number revealed to us; Y, the hidden number; and our random
number, R. Let's assume we have case (2), so X > R and Y > R, but the
relationship between X and Y is not defined. So, X and Y lie somewhere in the
range (+∞, R). We then partition that range with X: (+∞, X) and (X, R). Y lies
in one of these two ranges. By the rules defined, we state that we expect Y to
be less than X. But the interval less than X is finite, while the interval
above X is infinite. I doubt that this range distribution results in a 50%
chance.
I think that by picking R, we are modifying the probability that Y is less
than or greater than X in cases (1) and (2). However, since we cannot
distinguish between those cases and case (3), all the winnings gained in (3)
are actually lost to in cases (1) and (2).
EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is that X and Y are no longer independent in
cases (1) and (2), but are conditioned by R. That conditioning means we can no
longer claim a 50% probability for those cases as if we had never picked R.
~~~
alister
You have an interesting thought and I was wondering the same thing.
OP says that the probability of winning in the 3 cases are:
(1) 50% win, (2) 50% win, (3) always win
If I understand correctly, you're saying that the probabilities might perhaps
be:
(1) 50% win _minus_ some probability of case 3 happening, (2) 50% win _minus_
some probability of case 3 happening, (3) always win
Then the three cases even out to 50% and there is no winning strategy.
But wouldn't your argument break down where you write, " _But the interval
less than X is finite, while the interval above X is infinite. "_? Since we're
dealing with reals, then both (+∞, X) and (X, R) have an equally large and
infinite set of numbers (i.e., the latter is not a finite set)[1]. So, Y is as
likely to be found in (+∞, X) as in (X, R).
I'm still wondering if there's a way to make your argument work.
[1]
[https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Closed_Interval_in_Reals_is_Uncou...](https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Closed_Interval_in_Reals_is_Uncountable)
~~~
jdmichal
> But wouldn't your argument break down where you write, "But the interval
> less than X is finite, while the interval above X is infinite."? Since we're
> dealing with reals, then both (+∞, X) and (X, R) have an equally large and
> infinite set of numbers (i.e., the latter is not a finite set)[1]. So, Y is
> as likely to be found in (+∞, X) as in (X, R).
Yes, of course. I realized this about 5 minutes ago in the shower and was
hoping no one had called me out on it yet!
I think the real argument is actually a combination of this and
landryraccoon's post, depending on the problem definition. [1] The problem is
either defined in such a way that the (X, R) interval is finite, and therefore
falls under my argument. -OR- the problem defines (X, R) to be infinite, and
P(case 3) is zero.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10647331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10647331)
------
leephillips
This might be a bit clearer when presented as here:
[http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/02/09/math-puzzle/comment-
page-1/](http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/02/09/math-puzzle/comment-page-1/)
where using a particular strategy for choosing R lets the probabilities of
winning be calculated explicitly.
------
mjd
A more detailed (and formal) analysis is on math.se, here:
[http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/655972/help-rules-
of...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/655972/help-rules-of-a-game-
whose-details-i-dont-remember/656426#656426)
All the people saying that the strategy described doesn't work are mistaken;
the paradox is discussed in the literature in Thomas M. Cover “Pick the
largest number” Open Problems in Communication and Computation Springer-
Verlag, 1987, p152.
------
fenomas
Regarding the "money in envelopes" version in the second half of the post:
When I first encountered this, I came up with the author's answer (about how
the "always switch" strategy implicitly assumes they come from an infinite
distribution).
But over the years I've come to believe that it confuses things to arbitrarily
claim that the opponent is choosing their numbers from a distribution, and
then talking about what kind of a distribution it was. I think it's much
clearer to examine things in Bayesian terms, by noting that before opening an
envelope the player expects it's 50% likely that they chose low, and after
opening it they can update their expectations. (The math works out the same
either way, it just seems weird to me to impose rules on the opponent that
weren't part of the puzzle.)
(Also: the fact that people always seem to examine this puzzle by imagining
what kind of distribution the opponent chooses from seems, to me, an artifact
of just how accustomed we are to standard statistics, and how uncomfortable we
are with probability puzzles that don't involve values being chosen from
predefined distributions.)
~~~
dllthomas
It's not that the opponent is "choosing their numbers from a distribution", so
much as that we need to model them that way, and that running probability
calculations when violating probability axioms (of course) fails.
I think that's roughly as true whether we're talking frequentist or Bayesian.
~~~
fenomas
> It's not that the opponent is "choosing their numbers from a distribution",
> so much as that we need to model them that way,
That's what I mean - the statistics we're mostly taught can only deal with
distributions, so we wind up inventing them even when none is specified.
Which would be fine if it made the math easier, but it seems to me that it
makes it worse. Consider a concrete question, like "if I open the envelope and
find $10, how confident would I need to be that it's the low envelope before I
switch?". In Bayesian terms that's easy to answer, but with the frequentist
version one is left asking "how likely is it that my opponent used a
distribution which when sampled once yielded $10, as opposed to a distribution
which.." or some such thing.
I mean, the envelopes puzzle basically says, "you start out expecting two
things to be equally likely, then you learn a piece of information, now how
does that change your expectations?" It's as Bayesian a question as ever there
was.
~~~
dllthomas
The question of how you change your expectations, though, boils down to asking
"how do I think the person chose?"
Interestingly, I think that given any particular choice of maximum entropy
distribution, the recommendations boil down to "there is a value above which
you should stick and below which you should switch." Since I don't think -
from the question alone - there is any particular reason to favor a specific
distribution, I think it amounts to a free choice of that number. If you have
some idea of, say, the bankroll of the game runners (or, at worst, the total
amount of money in circulation) you should be able to do better, of course.
~~~
fenomas
> boils down to asking "how do I think the person chose?"
I agree, but the operative word is "think". We can't talk about how the
opponent chose, only about the player's expectations of how they chose. And
talking about how evidence affects expectations is the problem Bayes exists to
solve, is my reasoning.
For your second point, that sounds right but assuming a well-formed high-
entropy distribution seems like a very arbitrary thing to do. The player might
very naturally, say, consider round numbers more or less likely, or at any
rate believe that $50 is a more likely value than $50.01, etc, right?
And actually, this point highlights why I think this should be considered as a
Bayesian problem. In frequentist terms, one talks about the opponent choosing
numbers from some distribution, then the player choosing a strategy based on
their expectations about the distribution, then they open their envelope and
apply the strategy. If nothing else this approach greatly obscures the most
important feature of the puzzle, which is that the player gains new
information when they open their envelope. More, it seems somewhat bonkers
when considered - if the player chooses a switch value of $10, then opens
their envelope and finds $50,000, should they really just apply the strategy
they chose based on expectations they now know to have been wildly incorrect?
Effectively the player winds up deciding whether to switch based on the fact
that they thought $10 was more likely than $20, when one would expect them to
reconsider their expectations that they now know to have been wildly off-base.
In contrast, the Bayesian version is straightforward, and we can completely
describe the player's strategy without making any assumptions on how it's
formed. Specifically, suppose the player starts off with some expectation P(T)
that that the total value of both envelopes would be T. Then they open their
envelope, find a value of x, and _and update their expectations_. Then, their
strategy depends solely on the ratio between P(1.5x) and P(3x). And we can say
all this without even considering whether P is continuous/discrete/etc, or
what factors it's based on. All we assume is that it's defined at the two
points that are relevant to a given instance of the puzzle - i.e. that the
player can form some expectation of how likely one value is compared to twice
as much.
I fear I can't describe this very well, but does that make any sense?
------
hackaflocka
This is similar to another, well-known, paradox. Something about a game show,
and there are 3 stalls, and one of them contains a car. The game show host
opens up one of the empty stalls to show there's no car behind it. You have to
guess which one of the other 2 has the car behind it. And there's a way to
play it that makes your chances better than 50%.
Anyone got a link to this paradox?
Update: it's called the Monty Hall Problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem)
~~~
larrymcp
The Mythbusters guys did a segment on the Monty Hall Paradox.
[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mykzd](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mykzd)
Cool...
~~~
hackaflocka
Thanks for the link.
------
dstyrb
My solution was R=0 always.
So if A is positive, always guess B < A. If A is negative, guess B > A.
Does this not work?
import numpy as np
import random as rnd
trials, correct = 100000000, 0
for i in range(trials):
a = rnd.random()-0.5
b = rnd.random()-0.5
if a >= 0. and b < a:
correct+=1
if a < 0. and b > a:
correct+=1
if correct > trials/2.:
print 'winner: '+str(correct)
~~~
idlewords
You're picking a number over the unit interval, not an 'arbitrary number'.
~~~
dstyrb
how can I generalize? edit: Oh I see that's what the whole discussion here is
about -_-
------
kazinator
This seems like nonsense. Here is one reason why: let's examine this:
> _Before you see A, choose a random number R_
This is underspecified. Pick a random number in what range?
Suppose we programming in a language which has arbitrary precision integers
and floats, and we are given a requirement, "write a function which chooses a
random number". What the heck do we implement?
I think this relies on having the _same_ random number generation method as
the adversary who prepares the envelope. But if that's the case, we can just
reason about that directly.
If we know that the opponent is, say, using a function that generates a random
IEEE 64 bit double, then by looking at the A value, we know the odds that this
method will produce a higher or lower value.
~~~
logicallee
I have an analogy, it might be wrong or hard to follow. However, I believe it
shows why the article's argument is pretty nonsensical.
Suppose there were two possible universes - God had a choice when creating the
world - and we're living in one of them. We have no idea about His choice, or
what other possible universe there might be. How could we learn anything about
another universe? Obviously we can't.
Can we have a better than even chance of guessing whether we're living in the
better or the worse of the two possible universes? Per the article, we can!
Mimicking the protocol described in the article:
* Step 1: We choose a random number, setting this aside. I don't specify how we choose this.
* Step 2: _Then_ we evaluate the universe we're living in, which we _do_ have access to, via whatever fitness function we want, as to how good it is. We arrive at a numerical score. Edit: This corresponds to opening the envelope to see what number is inside. Note that we don't have any information about the number in the other envelope! (The other possible universe.) None whatsoever.
If the numerical score is higher than the random number we had guessed,
congratulations, we're probably living in the better of the possible
universes!
if the numerical score is lower than the random number we had chosen, odds are
we're not living in the better possible universe!
But this method of gaining a bit of information is just so patently absurd on
its face. Obviously we haven't actually learned anything at all.
I hope this little exercise shows how ridiculous the steps outlined are.
It is clear we cannot actually gain any insight whatsoever into the
philosophical question proposed, through this method. we don't actually learn
whether we're probably living in the better of two possible universes, where
we have absolutely no idea as to what the two might differ in (what number the
other universe might have.)
~~~
dllthomas
_" Can we decide if we're living in the better or the worse of the two
possible universes? Per the article, we can!"_
No, per the article you'll have a marginally better chance than picking
without assessing at all. I don't think your framing shows anything at all
about whether that's sense or nonsense.
~~~
logicallee
(edited) In my analogy, assessing the universe numerically = opening the
envelope to see what number is inside. I think it's a pretty close analogy,
and obviously leads to an absurd, nonsensical result: that we can learn
something about whether we 'probably' (>50%) are in the better universe,
without knowing anything about the value of the other one.
~~~
dllthomas
I still don't see why your analogy does anything but introduce additional
complication. To me, the result appears no more nonsensical than in the
original formulation - where it appears correct. So long as X and Y are chosen
in advance - and independently - of my guessing, if I draw my reference R from
any continuous distribution, there is some nonzero chance that it will fall
between X and Y, letting me distinguish them in that case.
~~~
logicallee
you have no idea what possible values X and Y can have. It's like an
alternative universe, or guessing a number first and then finding a function
to numerically evaluate the universe whose range you don't know in advance. I
find it nonsensical that this can yield any information.
------
throwaway_bob
when he says "probability", what space does he mean? This analysis does not
seem very careful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Serenity: x86 Unix-like operating system for IBM PC-compatibles - ingve
https://github.com/awesomekling/serenity
======
akling
Hey guys, I'm the author of this project. Surprising to see it on HN but life
is surprising sometimes!
I actually made a little demo video about this system just yesterday if you'd
like to see it running:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE52D-zbX3g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE52D-zbX3g)
~~~
disillusion
Can I share some observations? There are a few things I really love about
this:
\- You kept the end user in mind: You. The GUI looks like a mashup, in a good
way: A Mac OS menu bar, Windows GUI feel and a NextSTEP launcher on top of a
Unix like system. It shows that for every element, instead of simply
recreating whatever system you decided to emulate, you took the parts you
liked best from whatever system and simply recreated that. I haven't looked at
the code too thoroughly, but I can probably find the same mindset there.
\- You kept the scope tight. It's easy to lose sight of the bare minimum MVP,
especially when working on a hobby project. The functionality showcased here
tells me that whenever you started implementation of a feature, you built
exactly what you needed, nothing less, nothing more.
\- You also didn't get bogged down with premature optimizations. Yes, the PNG
renderer is slow. But it does the bare minimum it's supposed to.
But most of all, this takes a crazy amount of time, skills and dedication.
You've probably encountered quite some frustrating moments you had to chew
through, but now you're here, presenting your work. And it's awesome!
~~~
akling
Thank you for these observations, you've just distilled my personal
programming philosophy into three concise points!
If you looked at the code, you would indeed find a similar "take what you like
and leave the rest" style mashup. I spent many years working on WebKit, so you
find a lot of WebKit-style patterns, containers and templates. I also spent
some years working on Qt, so there's a huge bit of that in the GUI library. :)
~~~
ianai
But you rewrote it all from scratch in a “clean room” so as to not incur any
license issues ;)
------
fernly
The README here is a model (or perhaps a superfluity) of modesty. This person
has, apparently, written a complete OS from the metal up to a usable GUI,
single-handed, AND done it in about 6 months -- at least, the oldest commit in
the Kernel branch is October 2018. Well, I'm impressed, anyway.
~~~
shric
Modesty in the comments too :)
[https://github.com/awesomekling/serenity/blob/master/Kernel/...](https://github.com/awesomekling/serenity/blob/master/Kernel/kmalloc.cpp#L1-L4)
/* * Really really _really_ Q&D malloc() and free() implementations * just to
get going. Don't ever let anyone see this shit. :^) */
~~~
tntn
Sorry, what is "Q&D?"
~~~
filmfact
Quick and dirty
------
mysterydip
This is excellent. I was expecting to see a screenshot of a command prompt and
was pleasantly surprised to see GUI and applications.
"the goal here is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity
software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix" That sounds
right up my alley. Will give this a try!
------
pushpop
I remember when home computing was full of neat hobby OSs. It was fun. Then
somewhere around the last 20 years everyone stopped writing kernels and just
built Linux distros instead (and these days you don’t even see that much
variety in Linux any more either).
Anyhow, this project looks really inspiring. At least from a quick cursory
glance. Looking forward to digging a little deeper tonight.
~~~
fooblat
> (and these days you don’t even see that much variety in Linux any more
> either)
I beg to differ! While I do see that there are a a handful of very popular
distros, there are tons more out there!
Spend a few minutes poking around DistroWatch[0] and see if you don't agree.
0\. [https://distrowatch.com/](https://distrowatch.com/)
~~~
pushpop
I'm not on about quantity of distros, I'm on about _variety_. A thousand
Ubuntu derivatives doesn't add much variation. systemd hasn't helped much here
either because there used to be a lot of variety in how distro's would
implement sysv. There even used to be distros that rolled their own file
system hierarchy.
Some might see the grand unification a good thing for interoperability and
developers - and I don't disagree with them. But it was fun looking at the
different ways different distros would solve the same problem. Whereas now the
biggest difference between a lot of distros is a great deal more superficial.
~~~
fooblat
I agree that the majority of distros are based on debian/ubuntu/fedora but
there are still some significantly different ones out there. The most
interesting/useful of these for me lately has been void linux[0]. It is based
around runit (instead of systemd) and has a very nice native package manager
as well.
0\. [https://voidlinux.org/](https://voidlinux.org/)
~~~
pushpop
I'm not saying there isn't still some distinct ones out there. I'm saying in
there is less variety than there used to be.
_variety_ is the key description I used. Sure there are few outliers still
but the rest are just systemd + (apt|rpm) and there this really the same as
what Linux was like 20 years ago where even Debian and Redhat were distinctly
different from one another. Even Arch has come into the fold somewhat over the
years.
------
eismcc
Having worked on the Windows kernel team, I can say this impressive stuff. It
seems early enough to pick a specialty for this OS that it could do well that
others may not.
------
snvzz
The author has discussed his system for months in 4chan.
~~~
enthdegree
what board/generals?
~~~
patrickmcnamara
The /g/ daily programming threads.
------
nn3
It appears to be extremely bare bone. For example the TCP socket is like UDP
with hard coded IP addresses. It won't handle any packet reordering or lost
packets.
I haven't checked other parts, but if they are like that it would be more a
very elaborate demo than something actually usable.
Still impressive even for a demo.
~~~
akling
Your observations are of course accurate: many parts of the system are indeed
quite bare-bones. I've been trying to bring up a huge number of subsystems in
parallel by building enough of the scaffolding and infrastructure in each area
for a larger system to grow around.
Now for the rest of my life, I will always have something to hack on. :)
~~~
arbie
> Now for the rest of my life, I will always have something to hack on. :)
This is such an inspiring and humbling sentiment!
Thank you for all your hard work on this impressive project.
~~~
ngcc_hk
Totally agree. Hat off.
------
novocaine
This seems pretty incredible as a learning resource just as it is. I can't
quite believe how much is here and how concise it seems - has anyone gotten it
to run?
I really hope the author or someone else writes sone high level documentation!
Just knowing the design decisions would be great!
~~~
akling
Thanks. The design is mostly "discovered" through iteration. I tried making a
few diagrams at one point but in a week they were already outdated, so I've
given up on trying to document until things slow down.
------
tcbawo
Also of note, it appears to be a mostly (if not entirely) C++ codebase.
~~~
0815test
That's too bad. Needs more HolyC! (Rust would also do, in a pinch.)
------
ianai
Very awesome. Love that it’s a new take on a modern OS - including a GUI. I
didn’t think I’d see even an entrant into that sphere from a non-corporate
entity again.
------
hrvach
Respect! This is a very impressive achievement for a single person and
requires a lot of knowledge about operating systems.
------
rambojazz
If, like other people said, this was done in merely 6 months by a single
person, let me bring some skepticism into the thread here. From writing a
bootloader up to a functional UI with various functional user programs is not
a 6-months job, unless you take many shortcuts.
~~~
andyjpb
I've seen it done (multiple times).
I worked for a set top box manufacturer where the lead engineer wrote an OS
and a GUI system, from scratch, for our platform in less than a year. It had a
bunch of syscall personalities. One for vxworks so we could port stuff from
our existing platform and one for Linux so that people could write drivers for
it based on the O'Reilly Linux device drivers book (which was current at the
time). It also had a couple of others for odd things that we needed. It was
_incredibly_ well written. It only took me a couple of weeks to port it to
PowerPC and the first week of that was just phaffing getting my cross compiler
working properly.
In contrast, we had another couple of programmers trying to write a web
browser for that platform. After a year they had something that could render
primitive web pages but there was still a good chunk of the web that didn't
work "quite right". After two years they were still in a similar position.
Operating systems are a dark art, and the person who wrote Serenity is very
talented, but OSes are, at least, a tractable and well defined problem.
------
rubyfan
Serenity Now!
~~~
Nux
Insanity later
------
chaoticmass
Are there any pre-built distributions I can just plug into QEMU?
~~~
akling
Here's what I can offer right now: unpack this in serenity/Kernel/ and then
run "./run" in the same directory. Or just start QEMU manually with qemu-
system-i386 -kernel kernel -hda _fs_contents
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1954ki8wzHT6axoj9vbFKj8XxFK5...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1954ki8wzHT6axoj9vbFKj8XxFK5DdE4z/view)
~~~
chaoticmass
sweet, thanks!
and it works! Boots in like .1 seconds. Very neat.
One strange thing, in QEMU, the mouse is all crazy and I can't control it in a
usable way. Jumps around.
~~~
akling
That's weird! Maybe it's some confusion between the PS/2 mouse and the PS/2
keyboard both using the same I/O port.. Does it help if you give it a little
keyboard input before the mouse input? What OS are you running QEMU on?
~~~
chaoticmass
I tried giving some keyboard input before using the mouse, no change. I am
using Debian Stretch. If there is a more appropriate venue where you'd prefer
continue this conversation, let me know.
------
simonsays2
This would be quite an accomplishment for one person in six months.
I am skeptical.
------
Narishma
Weird title. Made me think this was for the original IBM PC and its clones but
it seems to require at least a 686 (Pentium Pro). By that time the term IBM PC
compatibles was already obsolete.
~~~
DC-3
This person has made their own fully fledged OS. Discuss that instead of
bikeshedding about terminology.
~~~
jchw
That would be nitpicking not bikeshedding :)
(They do have a point though; IBM PC compatible implies it would run on an IBM
PC...)
~~~
DC-3
It's a form of bikeshedding, in that it involves discussing the superficial
details that are easy to form an opinion about.
~~~
TallGuyShort
Oh my God they're literally bike shedding bike shedding.
~~~
DC-3
I'm obviously gunning for inclusion in webshit weekly :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft launches Outlook.com, a clean, fresh take on webmail - akshxy
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/07/31/microsoft-launches-outlook-com-a-clean-fresh-take-on-webmail-that-puts-it-back-in-the-game/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=share+button&utm_content=Microsoft+launches+Outlook.com%2C+a+clean%2C+fresh+take+on+webmail+that+puts+it+back+in+the+game&utm_campaign=social+media
======
ditoa
It isn't really a new approach to [web]mail it is just a redesigned Hotmail
that looks like Office 2013 and works better with touch devices.
Also I wish Microsoft would ditch the whole folder approach to mail. Labels
can work just like folders if you wish but are so much more flexible and just
makes so much more sense IMHO.
~~~
IanDrake
I'm pretty sure "categories" == "labels".
~~~
ditoa
Yeah the categories are labels however they still have the folder system as
the primary way of sorting your mail. I would like the option to totally
remove folders from the equation and just use labels.
------
debacle
Wow. Very interesting. At first glance, the interface looks very mobile
friendly and also very simple.
I'm incredibly impressed. The only feedback I would give is that the buttons
in the top bar could stand out a bit - maybe a different shade of blue or a
slight border. It wasn't immediately clear to me where 'send' was.
The ads are a bit more obtrusive than Google Mail ads, though I think that
would just take a bit of getting used to.
I'm impressed as fuck, though. I can't explain how impressed I am.
~~~
crescentfresh
> the interface looks very mobile friendly
How did you get to that conclusion? I'm looking at this main screenshot:
[http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/...](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/07/2012-07-30_16h56_09-520x239.jpg)
~~~
sp332
That's not what the site actually looks like for me. I just get the first 2
columns, and the second column changes to look like the 3rd one in the
screenshot, when I click on a message to read.
------
gulbrandr
In the HTTP headers, I see:
X-We-Are-Hiring: [email protected]
~~~
Shorel
There is also:
X-We-Are-Hiring: [email protected]
------
jdelsman
Horrible. They don't sprite their icons, and it takes forever to load. This is
Microsoft's idea on a "clean, fresh take on webmail?" _close_
~~~
rorrr
They definitely do sprite some of the icons:
[https://secure.wlxrs.com/$live.controls.images/h/command2.pn...](https://secure.wlxrs.com/$live.controls.images/h/command2.png)
~~~
jdelsman
Oh wow, four icons. Give me a break. Look at the Google Page Speed score for
that site, then tell me I'm wrong.
------
kalleboo
"As you expected, given Microsoft’s criticism of Gmail’s ad policy, the
product doesn’t scan the bodies of your emails. However, it does tailor ads
based on the email address of the sender, and the subject line of the email"
What kind of advertising-friendly info can they glean from the sender address?
Ads for competitors when you get newsletters/signup email?
~~~
bbbpept
Maybe they tailor the advertisement based on whatever information they already
have on the sender. Maybe if the subject line indicates the the sender and
receiver are friends, it is assumed that they have similar interests?
------
laacz
Does anyone know anything about storage limits? Is it counting towards
Skydrive bytes, or this is very first large scale webmail for free and without
any space limitations?
Edit
Found on [http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/31/outlook-preview-email-
ser...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/31/outlook-preview-email-service-
microsoft/):
The service is open to the public as of today and _you get virtually unlimited
storage_ , along with 7GB of SkyDrive space if you create a new Microsoft
account. ((Microsoft uses the word "virtually" to hedge itself against
spammers who might otherwise use limitless storage to game the system.*)
------
erickhill
You may run into problems if you log in via your Xbox account (which uses,
let's say, your Gmail address). Try sending your Gmail account, via
Outlook.com, a message and let the authentication fun begin.
------
HarshaThota
More discussion going on here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4317923>
------
sek
It obviously is a remake with the new design philosophy which i like, i think
the calendar and other live products will follow soon.
------
erickhill
Looks quite fresh at first glance. Although I did have a momentary dip in
enthusiasm when, after clicking "New" I discovered it was somehow leveraging
Silverlight. But the cleanliness of the UI is encouraging.
------
clwen
Redesign? Maybe. Just 8 years later than GMail.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What bug(s) make “LPRINT 0.00001” output “0.0XYZ1”? - Someone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000#Bugs states:<p><pre><code> On the TS1000 and ZX81, the command:
LPRINT 0.00001
results in the Timex printer outputting 0.0XYZ1.
</code></pre>
I find that a curious bug (my best guess is that the “XYZ1” part is uninitialized memory, but even if that’s true, why would 0.00001 be special?), so I tried to track it down. to my surprise, I found very little. The best I found is https://www.tablix.org/~avian/spectrum/rom/zx81.htm, but that’s incomplete, and of the “Improved” ROM, which, presumably, doesn’t have that bug.<p>So, does anybody know how that bug came to be?
======
avian
The bug happens because a loop that prints zeros after the decimal point [1]
doesn't reset the character to be printed after each iteration.
The buggy code stores the character '0' to be printed in register A and then
calls PRINT-A in a loop. PRINT-A uses the alternate register set of the Z80
via an EXX instruction, hence it doesn't cobble the BC, DE and HL registers.
However, it does alter the contents of register A. Since the content of A
isn't reset to character '0' after the call, only the first 0 after the
decimal point is printed correctly. Subsequent calls print out garbage left in
A by PRINT-A.
The is further complicated by the fact the PRINT-A does conserve the contents
of register A when printing to screen (in contrast to printing to the
printer), hence why "PRINT 0.00001" works correctly. Based on the code, it
might be that conservation of A in this case is purely a coincidence.
The fix for the bug is to reset the contents of the A register on each
iteration [2]. This is achieved by simply changing the argument of the DJNZ
jump at the end of the loop.
It seems this fix only exists in custom ROMs and wasn't shipped in official
Sinclair ZX81 ROMs [3]. Hence even though [1] lists the "improved" Sinclair
ROM, it still contains the bug. However TS1500 ROM does contain the fix [4]
(line 3835).
[1]
[https://www.tablix.org/~avian/spectrum/rom/zx81.htm#L16B2](https://www.tablix.org/~avian/spectrum/rom/zx81.htm#L16B2)
[2]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120213193703/http://www.wearmo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120213193703/http://www.wearmouth.demon.co.uk/sg.htm#PF_ZEROS)
[3]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190913081210/www.fruitcake.plu...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190913081210/www.fruitcake.plus.com/Sinclair/Interface2/Cartridges/Interface2_RC_New_ZX81.htm#ZX81bugs)
[4]
[http://www.user.dccnet.com/wrigter/TS1500vsZX81.htm](http://www.user.dccnet.com/wrigter/TS1500vsZX81.htm)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: How do you explain what you do to your relatives? - davo11
I'm guessing others have this experience, the uncle who's the hardware salesman who thinks your sitting at home for the last 12 months and is loud about it, the relative who just nods and looks a bit sad when you tell them what you're doing. All folk who know nothing about startups, IT and what the process is, and with christmas coming I'm dreading it.<p>Has anyone hit on a magic formula to explain what you're doing in your startup so they'll leave you alone and stop suggesting maybe you can get a job in uncle bob's shop? / you did so well at school / and so on.
======
fallentimes
Just had this happen to me over Thanksgiving and it went something like
this...
_Grandma:_ What the heck is a TicketStumbler? Are you still just playing at
the computer all day?
_Me:_ Oh, have you been to our site Grandma?
_Grandma:_ No.
_Me:_ Well Grandma, have you ever heard of Expedia, Kayak or Orbitz?
_Grandma:_ No.
_Me:_ What about Bizrate or Pricegrabber?
_Grandma:_ No.
_Me:_ Hmm...well essentially what we do is take sports & concert tickets from
all over the internet and put them on one website. So instead of going to
multiple websites you can just go to one. You know how you put all your recipe
cards in one place? Well we do that, but with tickets.
_Grandma:_ Oh I see. Well, that's nice dear; would you like a beer while you
work? Or how about some more candy?
_Me:_ I love you Grandma.
~~~
loire280
Ha, you're lucky. My grandpa managed a few programming projects in the
accounting industry during the 70's/80's. Every time I tell him about
something I'm working on, he tells a long story about how he either invented
or pioneered the concepts behind that project.
------
mattmaroon
Just do what I did, play poker for a living for 5 or 6 years first. Then
compared to that, a startup is "doing something with your life".
~~~
snowbird122
Speaking of poker, I was once playing poker in vegas when the guy sitting
beside me asked me what I did. I replied that I was a "technology consultant".
He looked confused. I tried to explain that I wrote software to solve problems
in the home automation industry. He thought hard for a moment and a light bulb
went off in his head and he sat up and said, "oh computers!". I resigned that
I did "computers", and the moment was over.
Just goes to show how the whole world isn't technical.
~~~
mattmaroon
The people you meet at mid-limit poker tables are the most genuinely
reflective sample of the middle-class and up segment of our country that
you'll ever find. It's weighted male (though less heavily than it use to be)
but you definitely run into all types.
There's a huge digital divide among poker pros. Most tend to either be younger
guys like me who use computers as a tool to improve our game (ICM Calculators,
equity calcs, stat tracking, etc.) and the old road-gambler types who still
think poker is just about reading people. Of course poker is such a
mathematical game that the second group is at a tremendous disadvantage,
except for the few who've adapted.
------
answerly
Two techniques I've used in the past:
1) Figure out the "regular" job that is most directly related to what your
startup does and say you do that. For example, I have largely been involved
with ad supported startups, so most of my relatives think I work at an ad
agency.
2) If you have big clients, partners or vendors that you think your relatives
have heard of you can say something like, "I work with company X". The fact
that you have some relationship with a company they have heard of is typically
good enough for them to think you are doing something right.
That being said, your non-technical family members are also a great audience
on which to practice refining your pitch. If you can figure out how to explain
what your startup does to your family, then you can surely explain it to
users, clients, investors, etc.
------
gills
I tell them I'm starting a business. I explain in fairly vague terms what pain
I'm trying to alleviate.
Family and friends usually get it and they are very excited and supportive (of
course, some family members are artists and independent contractors so
'startup' probably sounds less risky than it should).
Not surprisingly, it's the bigco lifers we run into at holiday parties, who
were always too afraid to take the plunge, that say 'I know a guy who's hiring
if you want a job.' I tell them something like 'thank you for letting me know,
but my plate is full with my business'...what I really want to say is 'I'm not
__*ing unemployed, you jackass, and I'm working harder than you ever have or
will!"
------
callmeed
Generally it's just "I write web software for X industry"
Funny story: I was on plane and got to talking to the guy next to me. He asked
what I did and I told him (the above line basically). He was thoroughly
enthusiastic and kept asking all sorts of questions. I finally got around to
asking what he did. He said "Oh, I'm a test pilot for Lockheed Martin" ...
Never could figure why he thought my job was cool.
~~~
run4yourlives
Most likely a geek at heart. Test Pilots are basically hackers anyway.
~~~
quantumhobbit
In mindset and curiosity yes, but to a woman in a bar the equality operator
returns a 0.
~~~
beastman82
And you wonder why
------
tlb
The reaction you get has nothing to do with what you say, and everything to do
with the way you say it. If you act apologetic, they'll be sad for you. If
you're enthusiastic they'll be happy for you.
A fellow I know is a financial planner. Yawn. But I watched him explain what
he did to a woman he was trying to pick up and, damn, it sounded exciting and
noble. He helped people achieve their long term dreams and become independent.
So be kind to your family. Give them a Christmas present and make them all
happy by telling them how you've got the greatest gig in the world writing
software to make the world a better place. You might be surprised how much it
changes things.
~~~
davo11
I dunno, it's more like I've fallen off the end of the world. Previously I was
a corporate consultant, so I did incomprehensible things but I worked for a
large company so it must make sense. Now I do incomprehensible things but not
only that I do them in an incomprehensible way, and I'm enjoying it, it must
be evil somehow (irish catholic background), but I'll take on the many
suggestions here and try them out.
------
Anon84
_You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your
grandmother._
\-- Albert Einstein
~~~
mixmax
A. Einstein must have had an unusually insightful grandmother, or else his
ability to explain relativity theory must have been unsurpassed.
And erwin Schrodinger's grandmother must really have been something. It took
me two wellwritten books just to get a general grasp of what he was doing.
~~~
cperciva
I think if you asked Einstein, he would probably have told you that he didn't
really understand relativity.
~~~
Herring
Well lucky for us all he wasn't publishing in his grandmother's journal. If
having powerful expressive models isn't "understanding" then maybe it's best
we leave this concept to message boards.
------
auston
I usually just roll with "Im a computer programmer". That seems to work.
~~~
silencio
Recently I've tried not to say any variant of programming or development or
engineering on anything (web, mobile, desktop), nor that I've majored in
computer science from the moment I started college. What inevitably happens if
I do say so is family and friends of family end up asking me to work on their
website|fix their computers|help them with something barely tech-related like
their car's satellite radio, and usually for too little money. I never
understood why, since I never ask for favors from them, but shrug.
I'd be glad to help some of them out when I have the time and interest, but
there is no way in hell I want to churn out a full out custom inventory system
for their business for $200. And yes, someone has actually asked me for that
at that price before. My jaw just dropped.
~~~
jwilliams
> _I never understood why, since I never ask for favors from them, but shrug._
This happens to practically everyone - Doesn't matter if you're a Doctor,
Laywer, Mechanic, Banker...
~~~
silencio
Oh I'm fully aware people do do this all the time and it happens to pretty
much anyone with any kind of job. I'm wondering why people believe their
relatives would be willing to do a favor in the first place purely based on
relation and even sometimes with the assumption they wouldn't mind doing it at
a discounted rate because of that. I'm sure anyone who's spent enough time
with family talking about what they do have encountered that before.
~~~
staunch
My Mom's computer was acting up recently. She called me thinking I'd help her.
I told her how rude it was to just call me up expecting instant support. Then
I sent her my rate card, a simple NDA, and a standard short-term contract.
Really man, I'm with you, some people have such nerve!
~~~
silencio
aww I'm not that mean ;) my parents are entitled to all the free support they
want from me, and the same goes to close friends. however, a third cousin
twice removed that I didn't even know existed until recently shouldn't expect
the same :p
------
tdavis
I've basically given up trying to really explain it. I just say I own a
business that operates "on the Internet" and hope they stop asking questions
after that. My favorite quotes:
_Dad:_ When you told me you were quitting school and moving to Boston to
start some Internet company I thought it was just a pipe dream. But, you made
me really proud.
_Grandma 2_ : I heard your business is doing well. Of course I don't
understand what it is you do, but I'm proud of you!
No good quotes from my other Grandma; she can barely remember who I am anymore
:(
~~~
ahoyhere
Don't whine, you're lucky. My grandmothers didn't like me to start with and
now they're all dead.
~~~
tdavis
I wasn't exactly whining, but in the spirit of this idiotic argument, I'd say
you got lucky. They didn't like you, so no need to like them. Now they're
dead. You won.
------
timcederman
Better than trying to explain what you're doing with a PhD.
------
ejs
I tell people I watch jerry springer and wait for the mail for the part of the
day I am not asleep.
------
thomasmallen
What's so hard? You're a business owner and an entrepeneur. I always thought
people admired that, especially here in America.
~~~
davo11
I'm not in America - I'm in Australia, There are entrepenuers here but it's
not an accepted way of life like it seems to be in the US. If you have a shop
front / product it seems acceptable, but people seem to have a hard time
accepting that you sit at home writing software is work - and hard work, and
that you can make money from it.
It actually scares a lot of people it seems, maybe it's just my family.
~~~
ojbyrne
It's not just your family. In much of the world, people (most especially your
parents) will equate entrepreneurship with not having a job, scamming, all
sorts of negative associations. But it's your family, so they will be somewhat
forgiving. Show them what you're doing, point to the people in the world who
have done well (de-emphasize the billionaires, and emphasize the people who
created jobs for themselves). Be passionate. Like everything you do, you have
to sell it to them.
~~~
fallentimes
I think the word "entrepreneur" has so many negative connotations because it's
overused (at least in the States). Jobs are called entrepreneurial, employers
are looking for entrepreneurs and MLMs like Cutco & Mary Kay consider their
sales people entrepreneurs. It's sad.
I really like & use the titles cofounder or founder.
~~~
thomasmallen
I just say "I run a small web design business," although it lacks the edge now
that I'm employed as well :^)
I do think that it sounds a little off-base to call oneself an entrepeneur at
least in the DC area...very self-important.
~~~
fallentimes
I used to live in DC. Entrepreneurs were few & far between; paper shufflers
abound.
------
iamdave
As vaguely as possible.
"What do you do?" "I build things" "Like what?" "Things that no one really
needs but are willing to pay for" "Oh"
Versus
"What do you do?" "I work with computers" invariably "Oh great, I downloaded a
bunch of stuff that I really didn't even need just because the button told me
to and now I have a virus, can you fix it?"
to which my answer will be
"No because I'm out of your pay grade".
~~~
ssanders82
Why oh why did I read that last sentence as "No because I'm out of your gay
parade".
Why.
------
mixmax
I usually just avoid the subject - my dad is the only one who understands what
I'm doing and why, so I'll talk to him about it but usually noone else.
Bu don't worry I'm sure Einstein had some pretty tough times explaining to his
family what he did :-)
~~~
davo11
You're probably right. You'd think with all the marketing brains and intellect
here someone would have come up with an incantation.
------
dustineichler
This is a tough one to be honest, my parents are more impressed by the kid
down the street who repairs ipods etc... than me working as an sw engineer.
Most if they're anything like my family won't understand what they can't
see... that is until it makes the 'print media', where at least it's tangible.
------
jmtame
I usually just say I'm a drug dealer.
~~~
jcl
Do they then ask you for help with their drug problems?
~~~
jmtame
They ask me for a prescription.
------
sheriff
don't talk about whats. talk about why's.
it's good practice for your marketing. you need to talk to your market in
terms of how you're going to help them kick more ass. if you talk to your
relatives in terms of whom you help kick more ass, they are more likely to
give a shit.
~~~
t0pj
I'm gonna use that!
"I help $these_kind_of_people kick more ass!"
------
donw
Obligatory Penny Arcade (third panel):
<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/12/31/>
------
bootload
_"... How do you explain what you do to Foo? ..."_
not something I've really thought of much... but at the supermarket early this
morning it went something like this:
ME _"Everyone is very cheery here?"_ (referring to singing employee - who
sings at 7?)
CHECKOUT _"Yes, she is quite happy always smiling."_
ME _"So they don't employ grumpy people? or are they just all cheery?"_
CHECKOUT _"No, they are all pretty happy?"_
ME _"Oh, I thought they would be tired (just after 7am and I'm dead tired) and
grumpy"_ (I'm tired, I'd be grumpy)
CHECKOUT _"So what do you do?"_
ME _"I write ...."_
CHECKOUT _"Ohhh (surprised)"_
ME _"... software."_
CHECKOUT _"Ah you're one of those 'computer nerds'?"_
ME _"Yeah... something like that."_
CHECKOUT _"That's a compliment you know."_
I should have just left it at writing.
------
mdakin
I think delivery is important. If you are showing enthusiasm while explaining
the different concepts and possibilities it's often infectious. If you can do
a demo-- awesome!
When dealing with money-focused people it helps to reassure them that you can
support yourself by consulting when needed.
Some people are very fearful and often think everything will always go wrong.
Those are the most difficult people to reach. I often give up once I detect
someone has that characteristic. Just sort of change subjects and find common
ground somewhere else that does not involve talking about risk, success and
failure.
------
netcan
Say you're starting a business or have a descriptive one line: 'making a ___
site'.
"Startup," "Entrepreneur" etc. is a loaded term. I think Australia & The
States are almost opposites in their reaction to these terms. I'm not born
Australian (5th year), & the term doesn't describe me, so maybe I'm not the
ideal person to advise here.
But I wouldn't venture further then 'starting a business.' I certainly
wouldn't describe myself as an entrepreneur. Australians like to tear the tall
trees to shreds. & that'd be like calling yourself a revolutionary poet.
------
zacharydanger
" _I push buttons all day._ " I break down programming into its most basic
physical function.
~~~
eru
Don't forget the coffee drinking!
------
psnajder
The things I do to my relatives are so awful, I can't ever explain, no matter
how many times you ask.
------
khafra
What I do to my relatives is difficult to explain.
My explanations of my work, though, vary with the comprehension I expect from
the listener. For my uncle, an engineer with more patents than I've had
drunken inspirations, I go in-depth into whatever has me most excited at the
moment. For my cousin, the horse trader and Counterstrike fan, I give a
general description of CND, bowdlerizing it of anything glamorous so I don't
get asked to teach him how to hack.
The more difficult query comes when I don't know the questor quite as well.
Unless the truth matters, and it usually doesn't, I'll take a peripheral
aspect of my work and practice my story-telling abilities.
------
delano
Try to think a level above what you're doing.
------
viggity
"I write computer programs. No I can't fix your computer"
------
azharcs
I really wish all my relatives read "Founders at Work" and understand the
people who start-up better. I get ridiculed for working in the night and
sleeping till noon and i get compared with owls and dogs for that but i always
think of myself as Batman when i work all night.
------
Jem
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a lady at the bank once.
Lady: "What do you do, then?"
Me: "I'm a web developer"
Lady: "Oh, so a web designer!"
Me: "Er, close, I'm a web developer - I make designs work"
Lady: "Oh, I get it! So like in Microsoft Word?"
Me: "..."
Thankfully, the majority of my family are computer literate and don't require
babying over the subject.
------
catone
It's amazing what drawing a paycheck can do. Once I started making a
respectable living as a blogger, my family stopped pestering me about getting
a real job or going back to school.
Of course, next up might be the startup thing... that'll be a whole new
battle.
------
flashgordon
I tell them I am in "Income Redistribution" - Gambling related software.
------
scott_s
"I make computers go fast."
(I'm a PhD student in high performance systems.)
~~~
t0pj
Sounds like you're a salesman. :)
~~~
scott_s
You might be surprised how much salesmanship has to go into writing academic
papers.
------
jjs
I shuffle bits... the customer shuffles bits... the banks shuffle bits... and
everybody's happy, as long as everyone's put the right bits in the right bins.
------
toddcw
Someone once gave me this bit of advice that usually seems to work for me:
"Sometimes a little inaccuracy can save a whole lot of explanation."
------
bayareaguy
I tell them what I hope to be the truth - I write software which helps
businesses run their business better.
------
icey
I just go with "I work in software". Nobody really cares to ask more than that
usually.
------
andrewhyde
I used to say "I draw things." Now it is "I make things."
------
noodle
fill it with commonly understandable phrases: i work in a new "small business"
as a "computer programmer" who does some "other stuff" too
------
thingsilearned
Move away from home to the bay area.
------
iheartrms
"I work with computers."
------
time_management
While not pertaining to relatives or holidays, here's my experience as
pertains to the social pull of various careers.
Graduate student.
0: "I'm a grad student." 1: (Deadpan/barely impressed.) "Oh. You must be
really smart." 0: "Don't worry. I'm not."
Analyst at a pharmaceutical consulting company.
0: "I'm a consultant." 1: "Oh." (Isn't everyone?)
Quantitative trader/developer at a hedge fund.
0: "I'm a trader." 2: "Oh." ++
Unemployed.
0: "I'm a treasure hunter." 1: _WTF?_ OR "I'm asking what you do for a job,
not..."
Working for a startup.
0: "I'm starting a tech company." 1: "Oh, cool!" 0: (Excited.) "Yeah, it's
fun. I'm using a ridiculously powerful programming language called Lisp. It
looks like this." (Points to some monstrosity of a macro such as ONCE-ONLY.)
1: "Uh, yeah..."
++ The use of 2 here is not a typo. Finance is not nearly as "sexy" as I
thought it would be before going in, and the standard-error descriptor is, in
fact, appropriate.
~~~
Tichy
I thought it is having lots of money that is sexy, not "finance".
~~~
time_management
Fair, but a talented young person in finance will, at least, have the
opportunity to make lots of money in the future. This means that a 23-year-old
trader ought to be especially a catch: buy cheap, sell dear.
------
safetytrick
I lay the bodies of my relatives in shallow graves.
I laid my relatives to rest years ago.
I don't have relatives.
My story changes from year to year.
I enjoy telling my story and explaining my business model to my family,
whatever I am excited about at the time is normally easy enough to relate to
something they do or understand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bill Gates sides with FBI on demand for Apple backdoor to shooter's iPhone - cseelus
http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-sides-with-fbi-on-demand-for-backdoor-to-shooters-iphone-massacre-san-bernardino/
======
freddealmeida
I can't help but think this clearly demarks the largest difference between
apple and microsoft. MS will sell your security and privacy and rights for
some temporary safety.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SpotOver app for tracking friends on trip - critiq
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sahajsoft.spotover&hl=en
======
jayeshpr
Its only in India?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is everything Johann Hari knows about depression wrong? - satai
https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2018/jan/08/is-everything-johann-hari-knows-about-depression-wrong-lost-connections
======
Lerc
Original HN Post and discussion.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092975)
| {
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Salesforce Buys Social Media Monitoring Company Radian6 For $326 Million - joetek
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/salesforce-buys-social-media-monitoring-company-radian6-for-326-million/
======
sucuri2
Good for them! What most people doesn't know is that Radian6 founder, C.
Newton, also founded Q1 Labs ( a successful security company ) and was kicked
out of it a few years ago by the "board"...
Instead of giving up, he formed a new company and did very well for the second
time.
~~~
Zakuzaa
Steve Jobs all over again? :)
------
nikcub
some gems from the TC comment thread:
_"SCRM comes of age in a big way by connecting inbound social media activity
to customer acquisition and retention strategies... Congrats!"_
_"sf.com validates and values that businesses need to deploy a "listening
platform" to monitor all forms of customer conversation."_
marketing people are so cute
~~~
numlocked
The first comment is fairly legitimate, if phrased vapidly. Social CRM is a
real topic of discussion for anyone playing in the CRM space. If you look at
classic customer acquisition and retention strategies, they are based on the
data we were able to capture 5-10 years ago. It takes a while for "new" data
(social media activity, in-depth demographic and financial information) to
work its way into the practices of CRM users. There is a lot of opportunity to
improve acquisition strategies by targeting the friends and influencers of
customers (ie. Social CRM), but most of the major players have had trouble
delivering on that promise in their products. The acquisition is a big deal
and other CRM vendors will have to respond. The second quote you posted is
indeed meaningless.
------
zacharycohn
As someone who has used Radian6 before: Good luck, Salesforce... you'll need
it.
------
nikcub
Interesting earnout structure for the founders, considering the company raised
so little. I don't know how $14M over three years on top of $326M creates much
incentive to hang around.
------
jmacd
I wrote some thoughts,. one of the important things from a CDN perspective is
that Radian6 was not just built in Canada but funded here as well.
[http://startupnorth.ca/2011/03/30/salesforce-acquires-
radian...](http://startupnorth.ca/2011/03/30/salesforce-acquires-
radian6-for-326-million/)
~~~
lovskogen
CDN or canadian?
~~~
davidu
Not content delivery, but CDN as in Canadian.
People use CDN to refer in shorthand to Canada, even though it's not part of
any official shortening or abbreviation. The Canadian currency is officially
abbreviated as CAD although many folks incorrectly think it's CDN. :-)
------
adammcnamara
I'm excited to see if any of this money makes it back into the Maritime
startup community.
This is an area where Ottawa does extremely poorly. Very little mentorship and
money made it from the telecom generation of founders to today's generation.
------
kosmonaut
I've often found Salesforce software janky and frankenstein-ish. Radian6 is a
great acquisition but hopefully they won't try and marry it into some of their
other software.
~~~
lovskogen
Don't you think they'll merge in alot of the functions for social monitoring?
Seems inevitable.
------
horatiumocian
I wonder if there will be any more acquisitions in the social media
monitoring. I think the best candidate is Visible Technologies.
------
cal5k
It's a good day for New Brunswick!
~~~
gyardley
It's a great day for New Brunswick! May it inspire a new generation of
Maritime startups.
~~~
sucuri2
You guys from NB?
~~~
hubb
i live in fredericton. i was amused and delighted to see my hometown mentioned
in a tech crunch article. a disconnect i never thought i'd see.
congrats to the radian6 guys, and here's to hoping q1 labs is the next big
canadian tech success!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are you plan to work on this weekend? - shahocean
======
starlord97
Starting on some beginner kaggle competitions
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Resource time allocation / overview tools? - _s
Is there a tool / service that can be used to track development capacity?<p>Something along the lines of Developers A,B,C each have ~30hrs of week available; A has taken up tasks X,Y,Z (already time estimated) for this sprint thus leaving free only 5 hrs, plus the addition ~60hrs still available from devs B & C? Most boards I've come across allow estimates for "cards" and a sprint capacity, but I can't see to find any that allow [at a quick glance] to see if someone has available time.
======
welder
You could possibly use [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com) for that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Beat my tank through strategy and programming - huangyz0918
https://github.com/huangyz0918/TankLogo
======
sclangdon
I get that the idea is to have an ever-improving champion, and I like the
idea, but it's not going to work out that way in practice. The best way to
defeat the current champion will be to exploit it in some way, which will
usually lead to irregular, but very specific, behaviour of the challenger.
Then, when challenger becomes the champion it's behaviour will be useless and
the next challenger will either beat it easily, or will do the same and the
cycle will repeat.
To protect against this, the challenger should have to beat all previous
champions, not just the current champion.
~~~
dyarosla
I’ve never actually seen such a competition where all previous champions must
be defeated. Sounds like a much more robust system- any examples of such?
~~~
lixtra
Algorithm selection in computer science. Current champion in sorting seems to
be Timsort[1].
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timsort)
------
jjuhl
Brings back fond memories of Core War
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War)).
------
bencollier49
This reminds me of AI Wars, which I fellow I knew 20 years ago used to play.
[http://www.tacticalneuronics.com/content/aiw3dnew.asp](http://www.tacticalneuronics.com/content/aiw3dnew.asp)
------
JoeDaDude
To name one more nostalgic programming game: RoboWar on the Mac (later
ported):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboWar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboWar)
Corewar is still the granddaddy of them all though, as has already been
pointed out here.
At one time, there was a huge list of programming games posted on the 'net.
This was a good idea and should be revived.
------
snovv_crash
The game physics look very inspired by Robocode[1]. Great work! I wonder if
months of work could yield similar results to what was seen there, with neural
networks and dodging and prediction of enemies.
1\. [https://robocode.sf.net](https://robocode.sf.net)
------
mschwaig
If you are viewing this on mobile you can go to the README.md file to see some
text with pictures:
[https://github.com/huangyz0918/TankLogo/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/huangyz0918/TankLogo/blob/master/README.md)
------
knicholes
I need to figure out how to turn this into an openAI gym so I can train my DQN
on it. I just finished running the code from Deep Reinforcement Learning -
Hands on for Pong, and it's pretty cool...
------
bigredhdl
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of
chess?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why drug prices in America are so high (2016) - ThomPete
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/09/economist-explains-2?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/whydrugpricesinamericaaresohigh
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
This has a very simple fix, and is a fix that would appeal to Donald Trump:
Require that pharmaceutical companies do not charge Americans any more for
their drugs than what they charge any developed country.
This lets other countries do the dirty work of negotiating prices while
reaping the benefits for the US. In addition, it goes along with his whole
America is getting screwed narrative - ie that other companies are taking
advantage of the fact that American markets pay for the drug developments, and
other countries reap benefits of cheap drugs and that he would put America
back on equal footing.
EDIT: Thanks for the great comments. To ease with the concern about hurting
the very poor countries, we could substitute "developed country" with "OECD
country" ([http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/list-oecd-
membe...](http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/list-oecd-member-
countries.htm) which are relatively rich countries).
~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Why would that appeal to Donald Trump? It would hurt the profits of the drug
industry in America which will cost jobs, pharma execs will tell him how bad
this is for America and how harmful it is to drug R&D, etc etc. Donald Trump
may have campaigned as a negotiator for the common man but he identifies with
CEOs, anything that hurts them is not something that appeals to him.
~~~
dv_dt
The high price of medical care costs lives as well as jobs in other
industries...
~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
That didn't stop him from trying to repeal Obamacare. I personally think we
should institute drug price controls for many reasons including that one but
I'm not sure why we are thinking that Donald Trump is going to do it.
~~~
dv_dt
I don't know why Donald Trump does anything. But, I do think he's is of an
unknown position in this particular area - so given that we have a problem in
the US, and that Trump maybe doesn't have a defined position on the issue, it
doesn't hurt to chase the possibility. (On the other hand if I'm just guessing
with low-data: the chance does seems low).
------
doktrin
> These high prices support innovation, they argue—not just for America, but
> for the world.
I suspect this is in fact somewhat true, but how is it a coherent argument in
favor of higher prices? The American people / American _elderly_ (obviously)
don't have some unspoken moral obligation to subsidize pharmaceutical R&D for
the whole world.
Governments around the world are able to negotiate affordable rates for their
citizens, yet in the US we have to listen to these completely insane
justifications?
IMO if the US government (who presumably agree with the drug companies on
this) feels this strongly about subsidizing research they could always expand
federal research grants and/or NIH funding. Yet I suspect that's a non starter
for political reasons.
~~~
ferentchak
This. Do we need to subsidize Sweden and Germany?
I have wondered for a while why we don't make a law saying the highest price
you can sell a drug for in the US is no higher than the lowest negotiated
price that drug is sold to in other rich countries.
So if Canada negotiates a drug for $10 then that is the highest price you can
sell it for here etc. That way they can set the prices however they want but
collective buying agreements that are a part of socialized healthcare don't
end up shifting the burden of cost to the US.
~~~
chimeracoder
> I have wondered for a while why we don't make a law saying the highest price
> you can sell a drug for in the US is no higher than the lowest negotiated
> price that drug is sold to in other rich countries.
You don't need a rule to enforce that. You just need to allow the US to
reimport prescription drugs that were originally exported from the US. It
would be far and away the simplest solution and would have the same end
result[0].
Unfortunately, Congress has voted against that, so we're stuck with the status
quo.
[0] The difference between the prices charged in the US and the prices charged
in any other country could be no greater than the costs of reimporting the
drugs from that country - or else people would just buy the reimported
versions instead of the domestic ones[1]. This has the desired outcome of
equalizing the prices
[1] Which, remember, are literally the same drugs manufactured at the same
plants by the same company.
~~~
ferentchak
It's a nit pick but those prices would always be a bit higher after the effort
to import them and source them etc. Of course this will never happen. No
politician wants to have her name tied to the bill that allowed all those
dangerous drugs into the country that killed kids. One mistaken import or a
badly made counterfeit being imported would be a media frenzy.
~~~
chimeracoder
> It's a nit pick but those prices would always be a bit higher after the
> effort to import them and source them etc.
That's what I said:
> The difference between the prices charged in the US and the prices charged
> in any other country could be no greater than the costs of reimporting the
> drugs from that country
As for:
> Of course this will never happen. No politician wants to have her name tied
> to the bill that allowed all those dangerous drugs into the country that
> killed kids.
That's not true at all. The Senate voted on this exact proposal on Jan 17th
(not for the first time). The measure failed, but only by a few votes[0].
> One mistaken import or a badly made counterfeit being imported would be a
> media frenzy.
We're talking about importing drugs only from countries which recognize US
patent laws, such as Canada. The risk of counterfeit drugs entering the supply
from reimporting is no greater than the risk of counterfeit drugs entering the
supply domestically in either US or Canada.
Besides, this is already done for other drugs, just not prescription drugs
that are on patent.
[0]
[https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00020)
------
calvinbhai
Drug prices in US go up because of collusion between Insurance Companies and
Drug manufacturers.
Would I buy expensive health insurance if drugs cost me $100 a month? Most
probably never.
What if the sticker price for my monthly dose of drugs was $10,000 or $50,000?
You bet I'd go get an insurance that'd cost $500 a month.
With such sticker shock, manufacturer reaps in profits. Insurance companies
get to charge higher premiums.
Solution: Fix IP laws for drugs in US. If the drug costs beyond the 2x or 5X
of what it costs in India, or than the average of drug prices in a few
countries, then that drug loses all its IP protections in US. Manufacturer is
still free to charge zillions for that product, but there'll be no
restrictions on copycats or generic versions from outside US taking over the
market.
It'll help in keeping a sensible profit margin for manufacturers without
ripping off Americans.
Most problems in healthcare costs in US, are due to insurance companies
dictating terms.
~~~
allenz
> Drug prices in US go up because of collusion between Insurance Companies and
> Drug manufacturers.
It's great that you're interested in healthcare policy, but you should be
careful about making blanket statements without the evidence. Drugs are 9% of
healthcare costs[1] and 14% of insurance costs[2]--hardly the decisive factor
in your choice of health insurance. And expensive drugs are expensive
primarily because it really does cost $1B+ to develop a new drug.[3] Even if
you wipe out drug company profits (which we really don't want to do), you'll
save at most 3% on your insurance.[4]
Like other types of insurance, cheap health insurance is cheap primarily
because it limits your coverage. The biggest impact is that you pay more to
see fewer specialists and undergo fewer procedures. It also results in
situations in which you're denied a cure for liver disease until you have
severe liver damage.[5]
Your solution doesn't solve collusion so much as make a major tradeoff: we can
have a world in which drugs cost $1000/year, if we stop researching drugs that
cure liver disease. We can have cheap health insurance, if we give up most of
the coverage. You probably didn't know you were making that tradeoff, and
that's probably not a tradeoff you want to make.
[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/health-care-
spendin...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/health-care-
spending_n_6256166.html)
[2] PwC report, page 12
[http://www.amcp.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=12727](http://www.amcp.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=12727)
[3]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/18/does-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/18/does-
it-really-cost-2-6-billion-to-develop-a-new-drug/)
[4] Profit margins are less than 20%
[http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223)
[5]
[http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/16/insurance-p...](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/16/insurance-
providers-deny-hepatitis-drugs.html)
~~~
rlpb
> And expensive drugs are expensive primarily because it really does cost $1B+
> to develop a new drug.
Nope. More of the cost of a drug goes to marketing than development:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-
pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/)
~~~
allenz
Nope. Development costs $1B+ by itself, as you can see from my source or your
link. Marketing spend is on top of the R&D cost.
I agree that we should limit drug advertising, but that Global Data report is
off by an order of magnitude. Total advertising for Rx drugs is $15B to
physicians and $5.2B to consumers.[1,2] The discrepancy is due to several
factors.
First, the Global Data report lists combined sales and marketing. Sales
includes essential logistics needed for us to get our drugs, so you can't
really say that marketing alone costs more than R&D.
Second, most marketing is for over-the-counter drugs, for obvious reasons.
Tylenol, sold by Johnson & Johnson, has an enormous marketing budget, but it's
not exactly the kind of drug that forces people to buy insurance.
Third, drugs only account for 40% of J&J sales--their scary marketing budget
includes lots of advertising for non-pharmaceutical products.
[1] [http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-
sheet...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-
sheets/2013/11/11/persuading-the-prescribers-pharmaceutical-industry-
marketing-and-its-influence-on-physicians-and-patients)
[2] [https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/09/drug-industry-
advertisin...](https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/09/drug-industry-advertising/)
~~~
rlpb
> Nope. Development costs $1B+ by itself, as you can see from my source or
> your link. Marketing spend is on top of the R&D cost.
Irrelevant. You said: "And expensive drugs are expensive _primarily_ because
it really does cost $1B+ to develop a new drug" [emphasis mine] and I
demonstrated this to be untrue. The data shows that the primary cost is not in
R&D.
It doesn't matter what you say about the necessity of that sales and
marketing. I didn't comment on that. The _primary cost_ is still not in R&D.
> Third, drugs only account for 40% of J&J sales--their scary marketing budget
> includes lots of advertising for non-pharmaceutical products.
This may be true and perhaps more data is needed, but I haven't seen any
evidence that demonstrates unequivocally that the primary cost of drugs in the
US is due to R&D.
------
danans
Friends in the pharma and medical device development industry have told me
that the business case for any drug or medical device is built on top of US
sales at currently inflated US prices.
According to them, the other developed countries that have negotiated lower
rates for drugs serve a different purpose. Those countries have lower
requirements around testing of drugs and medical devices, and they are able to
move to human trials and market sooner there. The trade-off for those
countries is slightly higher risk of sub-optimal outcomes, but this appears to
be more accepted by the populations of those countries than it is by
Americans.
I'm not writing this to vouch for this setup - it seems like it is pretty
unbalanced and ultimately does a lot of harm to people in the US due to drug
inaccessibility - but I thought I'd share it for another perspective.
~~~
_acme
Do you have support for the claim that US-developed drugs are generally
available sooner in non-US markets? My understanding was that these drugs are
generally available first in the US market, but that the developers may use
FDA approval to help with EU approval, etc.
~~~
danans
In the case of the medical device company in question, the trials took place
in Europe due to an easier regulatory process around testing. As I said, it's
their personal story, but here is an article that describes the differences
between the systems:
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhle1113918#t=articl...](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhle1113918#t=article)
I didn't mean to imply that US drug prices necessarily have anything to do
with its regulatory structure, or that the European regulatory structure had
anything to do with their prices, only that the companies have probably
optimized their development and pricing strategies for the economic and
political situations in the local markets.
------
ThomPete
_" The simple answer is because they can. European governments control prices
in various ways—Britain has the strictest system, refusing to pay for
medicines that fail to meet a threshold of cost-effectiveness. But in America
companies set whatever official price they like."_
~~~
Apfel
If anyone's interested, England's system of health technology assessment (HTA)
for the NHS is extremely transparent and world-leading.
It's one of the things that we Brits should be extremely proud of (although
pharma-sponsored sob story campaigns in tabloid newspapers may suggest
otherwise).
All new technologies are investigated in terms of incremental quality of life
gain (vs current treatment norms) and changes in costs.
Furthermore, they consider everything in a wider context of opportunity cost
of adopting a new treatment and budget constraints.
For a lot more detail, have a look at the NICE reference case here:
[https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg9/chapter/the-
reference-c...](https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg9/chapter/the-reference-
case)
~~~
refurb
I would argue HTA is not without it's problems. That's why the UK has a cancer
drug fund. NICE has said "no" to those drugs, yet the public still clammers
for them. So a separate funding mechanism was created to pay for them.[1]
[1][https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/cdf/](https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/cdf/)
~~~
chimeracoder
> I would argue HTA is not without it's problems. That's why the UK has a
> cancer drug fund. NICE has said "no" to those drugs, yet the public still
> clammers for them. So a separate funding mechanism was created to pay for
> them.
See also: PrEP. PrEP is available in the US (and covered by almost every
private insurer[0] with drug co-pays covered by the manufacturer[1]). And
while it's less convenient, there are public clinics where you can get
prescriptions to avoid paying the co-pay to a GP. In other words, absent the
cost of your time, you can get it in the US for _free_.
In the UK, PrEP is not covered by the NHS. The National AIDS Trust had to sue
the NHS just to get them to _announce_ their decision not to cover it - before
that, they refused to make a statement one way or the other, and kept kicking
the can down the road. Now, you can only get it by paying a private doctor
(out-of-pocket) for a prescription, and then fill that prescription privately,
which can cost up to $13/pill.
(This is technically not HTA, but for the purposes of this discussion that
distinction isn't relevant.)
[0] And, as an aside, on the rare case that your insurer does _not_ cover it,
Gilead (the manufacuter) offers assistance programs that provide it
essentially for free.
[1] This is a separate program to enroll in; Gilead basically reimburses the
co-pays that the insurers charge
~~~
DanBC
Sexual health is part of public health, and thus we'd expect PrEP to be funded
by Public Health England, not the NHS.
The target of your anger here should be local authorities (who hold
responsibility for Public Health), not the NHS.
[https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/11/update-on-
prep/](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/11/update-on-prep/)
~~~
chimeracoder
> Sexual health is part of public health, and thus we'd expect PrEP to be
> funded by Public Health England, not the NHS.. The target of your anger here
> should be local authorities (who hold responsibility for Public Health), not
> the NHS.
First, PHE and NHS are both part of the DH, as is NICE.
Second, sexual health is one aspect of PrEP, but it's not the full picture
(though of course, that's how the NHS press release you linked would be
inclined to portray it. The lower court disagreed with that portrayal, even if
the appeals court did not.)
Finally, the arbitrary delineation of responsibilities in which the NHS is
free to wash its hands off of the matter and NICE has no incentive to hold the
NHS accountable - leaving patients with no choice but to pay out-of-pocket -
is exactly the problem. Meanwhile, PrEP has been generally available (and
essentially free) in the US for four years, thanks (ironically) to the
federation of power which forces insurers to remain somewhat competitive with
each other, and which permits the pharmaceutical companies to pick up the
slack when that fails.
If you want to point out that this approach has its shortcomings as well, then
yes, I'm right there with you. But it's wrong to imply that what NICE and the
NHS are doing is fundamentally different from the cost-benefit analyses done
in the US, and it's also wrong to ignore the problems with the DH.
------
rayiner
The idea that you can point to even one or two "whys" is patently ridiculous.
The goal is easy to state: how do you set drug prices at the level that
optimally balances consumer welfare (benefit realized minus money spent)?
Simply setting prices as low as possible is of course not the answer--a big
part of maximizing the benefit realized involves creating adequate incentives
for drug companies to create new medicines. But there are a dizzying array of
factors that make it hard to even understand what that optimal price should
be:
1) The potential free rider effect is huge. Drug companies would not invest
billions into creating new drugs if after six months on the market they could
be duplicated by a competitor and sold for a far lower price.
2) To avoid (1), we give drug companies a patent. But in the process, we make
it much harder to use market mechanisms to regulate drug pricing, since
patents inherently give drug companies monopoly power.
3) Moreover, in most of the developed world, we want to make a certain level
of medical care accessible to everyone. That results in systems like Medicare,
the U.K. NHS, etc. That too stymies market mechanisms, except in the other
direction. Single-buyer markets are monopsonies, and unchecked result in
driving prices _below efficient level._ (That is likely what has happened in
Europe, and is the reason why Medicare is prohibited from negotiating drug
prices.)
4) The pharmaceutical market is international, and thus rich in arbitrage
opportunities for national governments. So long as the American market is
willing to foot the R&D bill, other countries have enormous incentives to
drive prices local below the efficient level for their own citizens.
5) Conceptions of morality also complicate things. We ordinarily accept the
idea that companies are permitted to charge based on the value they create for
their customers. We accept Apple charging $2,400 for a Macbook Pro and
understand that people only buy it because they think they will get more than
$2,400 of utility from it. What's the value to the customer of HIV anti-
retrovirals? How much would you pay to extend your life by decades? Almost
certainly more than what those drugs cost. There is an impulse to try and say
"well, it's okay for Apple to charge based on value created, but not drug
companies." That impulse is surely well-intentioned, but is counter-
productive. It has the effect of driving talent and capital _out of areas_
that have the greatest positive impact on humanity.
~~~
maxerickson
The US seems to need better regulation. How did it take so long for
esomeprazole to be revealed as a marketing sham?
[https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-significant-difference-
in-e...](https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-significant-difference-in-
effectiveness-between-Nexium-esomeprazole-and-OTC-omeprazole-brand-name-
Prilosec-when-treating-GERD)
Not necessarily more regulation or less regulation, but better. I guess that
falls into easy to say hard to do.
I also wonder about things like the significance of the improvements made to
the Epipen (the related patents allowed Milan to push generics off the
market).
------
sigil
"Why can't we just control prices?" wonders a publication called The Economist
in the second graf.
This article doesn't meet the Hacker News bar for me. Why read a shallow,
dataless, meandering, "could the grass be greener" thinkpiece when you could
be reading and discussing a deep statistical analysis like:
_High US health care spending is quite well explained by its high material
standard of living_
[https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/high...](https://randomcriticalanalysis.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/high-
us-health-care-spending-is-quite-well-explained-by-its-high-material-standard-
of-living/)
The two follow up posts on that blog (Random Critical Analysis) are also quite
good. So many surprising discoveries await us _in the actual data_ , but I
guess opining and confirming bias is more fun? If real journalism is going to
require active philanthropy to survive, I'm funding the kind of critical
analysis on open data sets that makes me think & rethink, not the kind of
stuff that makes me go "that's just, like, your opinion, man." This article
was the latter.
------
marcgcombi
The key challenge is that the government has so grossly distorted the market,
on multiple dimensions, that the actual levers within the pharma vertical are
opaque to all but the most embedded incumbents. (economists refer to these as
hidden externalities).
These market-distortions have all but eliminated the natural cost-competition
that one would observe in other sectors, such as commodities or manufacturing.
The best thing the government can do is back off completely and make those
pharma companies REALLY sharpen their pencils.
For those of you who believe MORE regulation is the way out, that's called
"trying to dig your way out of a hole" or "repeating the same nonsense and
expecting a different outcome." Please challenge your beliefs.
------
vowelless
> And it is illegal for Medicare to negotiate with drug companies
Why is this the case ?
Also, this is from September 2016.
~~~
whafro
It was politics from a couple decades ago. Medicare historically didn't cover
prescription drugs, until Part D was enacted during the Clinton
administration.
A tactic to get Republicans to support the measure was to pledge that Medicare
wouldn't interfere in the drug market by developing its own formulary –
Medicare Part D plan providers would compete for members and negotiate with
pharmaceutical companies themselves.
There has been a bunch of talk over the last decade about repealing that
particular restriction, but it's never made it over the finish line.
~~~
cowsandmilk
> until Part D was enacted during the Clinton administration.
???? Medicare Part D came into being in 2003, well into Bush's administration.
The whole rest of your post is based around the notion that it was proposed by
Clinton, when it was Bush....
~~~
whafro
Totally, and thanks. I was quick to write and submit my answer and was
remembering some debate during the Clinton era.
But the noninterference provision was indeed targeted at market-oriented
Republicans to get them on board. There were plenty who wanted to ensure that
Medicare wasn't going to be eroding the businesses of established payers.
------
abfabry
I work at Blink Health (www.blinkhealth.com) and we're working to solve this
problem and offer patients a fair price for their medication, often saving
patients up to 90% of list price. We negotiate with pharmacies and
pharmaceutical manufacturers to get the lowest rates and improve price
transparency in an opaque market. We have a kick-ass engineering team -- if
you're interested in these problems and want to help us fix healthcare shoot
me an email at alexander [at] blinkhealth [dot] com
~~~
maxerickson
Why is an account with you better than no account at GoodRx?
I assume you are pretty much just a PBM?
------
MrFantastic
The reason is that private health insurance companies suffer from the Classic
Agency Problem.
They want their costs to increase at a sustainable rate so that they can keep
growing their Net Income.
Historically, private health insurance companies earn ~ 6% of their total
revenue as profit. To justify an increase in their premiums they have to
"miss" their payout ratio slightly every year.
Drugs that patients will take for life are a great way off locking in that
increased cost in a "controlled" way.
------
WallWextra
My father recently passed, and a month or so afterwards we got a bill from the
nursing home pharmacy who, apparently, couldn't figure out how to bill his
insurance.
The price for 30 atorvastatin, whose out-of-pocket cost is about $20, was
$160. The same with other cheap generic heart medications.
Complaining about high drug costs is a red herring. Drug prices are a small
fraction of healthcare costs, and even if new drugs were made cheap,
healthcare providers would still overcharge for them.
------
faragon
In most European countries drug prices are negotiated at scale, because of
public institution negotiating directly with pharmaceutical companies (most
expensive drugs are the ones in international shortage, e.g. hepatitis C
drugs, etc.). So what happens in the US is that pharmaceutical companies apply
the "divide an conquer" rule, having a de facto monopoly.
------
AngeloAnolin
Answered practically in the first two paragraph of the article:
Despite the furor, drug companies continue to charge exorbitant prices in
America. Why?
THE SIMPLE ANSWER IS BECAUSE THEY CAN
There's no _quick_ fix to the insatiable greed on all the parties involved.
Profit over people's well-being.
~~~
mgrennan
I have never understood for profit medicine. There is a very fine moral line
between, selling a blue pill that gives someone a "fun time" and selling
cocaine for the same resin? Drug companies are making dugs and machines to
"extend life" to drain the saving of the elderly. I've seen who could not pay
for a "live saving" drug, give away everything they own so they can go on
medicaid to be "saved".
------
WalterBright
Sam Peltzman in "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" shows with
statistics how the 1962 FDA Amendments resulted in massive drug price
increases and a halving of new drugs being developed, with no net increase in
efficacy.
------
andrewla
> Private insurers do so instead, but the government binds their hands, for
> example by requiring them to pay for six broad categories of drugs, without
> exception
I'd like to understand more of this -- it seems like there is hand-tying at
multiple levels. In addition to insurance companies, why isn't it possible for
pharmacies, for example, to compete on price directly -- CVS, or Walgreens, or
potentially even Walmart, seem like they would have sufficient market share to
negotiate prices as well.
~~~
refurb
The largest pharmacies do compete on price. It's common for CVS or Walgreens
to get an additional discount on products.
------
caseysoftware
Negotiation is only effective if you can walk away from the deal.
The drug companies can't afford to lose their biggest customer. But since the
customer can't go anywhere else, it's not like they would. It's a detente
where neither side can really make a move because the other just says "Nope."
I think transparency - as in publicly available pricing - would be the only
thing to change the balance here. Even then, it's not a fix..
------
narrowrail
I searched all the comments and saw no mention of hospitals. I believe
hospitals[0], pharma companies, and insurance companies have colluded to set
prices for all healthcare which prevents the actual 'users' from price
discovery.
[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Hospital_Association](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Hospital_Association)
------
uptown
1\. Drug companies donate to politicians.
2\. Politicians promote drug-company-friendly policies.
3\. Drug companies earn outsized profits.
4\. Repeat
------
shakencrew
Previous discussion on Hacker News:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12494927)
------
pc2g4d
To me this is why single-payer is unwise. The distortions of having a single
massive customer with various mandates are bound to cause distortions like
this. Government-subsidized HSAs for everybody is my pet alternative.
------
Overtonwindow
Please add (2016) to the title.
~~~
ThomPete
Done
------
known
Make in China?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paper Planes - reimertz
http://paperplanes.world
======
cyberferret
My first thoughts when I visited the site was "This all looks very silly. Who
would even do this?"
15 minutes later, having launched and caught a bevy of paper planes, I am
rocking in my seat with delight like a schoolboy again.
Thank you for making me remember the simple delights of making, discovering
and connecting. Activities that filled my childhood days...
~~~
zodPod
Same exact experience here! I was like "What is the point?" but I've caught
and released 5 so far and I'm excited to keep going!
~~~
omginternets
>What is the point?
I know right? I'm playing. I'm a few months shy of 30, and I'm literally just
_playing_.
Just when I thought I was getting jaded. Well played Active Theory, LLC. Hats
off.
~~~
danvideo
Super simple, really like it.
Reminded me of thatgamecompany's games (Flower, Journey) and how they make a
simple experience/world you join for imaginative moments.
------
Yhippa
Incredible that this is all done in the browser. I much prefer this to
downloading yet another app for my phone. Good clean fun.
~~~
speg
And it works fully on mobile!
~~~
ubernostrum
I haven't tried it on mobile, but...
Chrome (latest) on Mac (Sierra): blank page, dev console shows it tried to
write to local storage and never caught the exception when that failed (I
restrict local storage and cookies based on whitelists; unsure why this would
need local storage).
Safari (latest): partial load followed by a message telling me to "get a
modern browser" and a redirect to download Chrome.
Firefox (latest dev edition): page actually loads, but doesn't seem to do
anything and tells me to use my phone to throw planes.
At that point I gave up trying.
~~~
cr3ative
> I restrict local storage and cookies based on whitelists
Similar to people who block all Javascript, you should expect things to break
if you do this.
~~~
ubernostrum
Thing is, I can understand how something might just not work without
JavaScript. And cookies I'm prepared to accept the tradeoff with.
But local storage? It consistently _astonishes_ me to find sites which
completely refuse to even load any visible content unless they get access to
local storage, when there's no reason whatsoever to need it. And I don't just
mean sites that use it as a proxy for detecting incognito/private windows (who
are, obviously, trying to force acceptance of tracking in order to view
anything), I mean JavaScript demos which should run perfectly fine without
needing to store anything client-side but still get built to use local
storage, and to fail not at all gracefully when it isn't available.
~~~
jazoom
I prefer to use localStorage over cookies. I'm not sure why you'd prefer to
have cookies in your browser.
------
danso
Smart design choice to not allow arbitrary user input, just
location/timestamps. Reminds me of the Smule apps (such as the Glee branded
app [0]) in the early iOS days. The real-time component could be mostly an
illusion, but there was something really charming in the idea that you could
"pluck" something created by someone else in the world and view/listen to it.
[0] [http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/glee-
iphone/#lm4kDm3YDmqG](http://mashable.com/2010/04/15/glee-
iphone/#lm4kDm3YDmqG)
~~~
macandcheese
Ahhh Smule. Ocarina is still installed on my phone
[http://www.smule.com/ocarina/original](http://www.smule.com/ocarina/original)
------
WildGreenLeave
Does anyone know a nice guide about how these things are made? Real code
examples aren't really necessary, I'm more interested in the setup and choices
made. (Like, how is the world made, how are the planes flying, what is the
server side technology behind it, how is the 3d effect created, library or all
plain webgl stuff, and so on)
~~~
mattdesl
I've written a few blog posts and articles on WebGL. Not the same sort of
projects, but some similarities in the rendering techniques.
[https://mattdesl.svbtle.com](https://mattdesl.svbtle.com)
[https://github.com/Jam3/jam3-lesson-webgl-shader-
intro](https://github.com/Jam3/jam3-lesson-webgl-shader-intro)
~~~
hurricaneSlider
You've got some awesome tutorials Matt, they were some of my first exposure to
the graphics pipeline
------
greenpizza13
This is very very similar to an app my Cousin made a few years back called
Airendipity ([https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/airendipity-the-app-
that...](https://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/airendipity-the-app-that-
took-10-days-to-win-my-heart/)).
Looks like it's no longer on the app store. It was, and still is, a fun idea.
~~~
kevboh
lol hi aaron
------
phsource
Some of these planes are just filled with stamps! Got this one:
[http://i.imgur.com/zTN5ERk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/zTN5ERk.jpg)
~~~
m-app
I caught this one, which is almost completely filled:
[http://imgur.com/a/H58J4](http://imgur.com/a/H58J4)
~~~
vpresident
Not completely.. I can see from here a few sweet spots^^ Nice one!
------
nbrempel
The best feature of this site is that the music pauses automatically when you
switch to a different browser tab.
~~~
wamatt
That's a nice touch and yet it takes additional attention detail and time to
implement. Which sort of makes one wonder what it would be like if browser
defaults were inverted.
IOW tabs, by default, would become muted if they lose focus. With an optional
flag to keep background audio playing, settable through JS.
------
lucb1e
Don't have a phone handy. Can anyone fill me in on what this is supposed to be
beyond an animation?
~~~
Blaaguuu
Basically, you just put a 'stamp' on a piece of digital paper, which shows
what city you are in - then you 'fold' the paper into an airplane and make a
little 'throwing' motion with your phone, being careful not to let go and
fling your phone across the room, and the plane flies off. Then everyone can
make a sweeping motion with your phone to catch other people's planes
(seemingly random) to view the stamps, and add your own, then throw it back.
~~~
paulirish
Ayup. Here's a video teaser where you can see it in action:
[https://twitter.com/active_theory/status/778646571206385664](https://twitter.com/active_theory/status/778646571206385664)
I sent out a few planes on Thursday and they've already been stamped in
Thailand, Italy and Massachusetts. So cool. :)
------
reimertz
made by [http://activetheory.net](http://activetheory.net)
paid by google.
~~~
sotojuan
How does one learn to make sites like these (particularly the "see work"
link)?
~~~
franciscop
The "See work" link it's trivial for anyone with their fair share of CSS. The
projects inside their works are what look really awesome and complex.
To see more demos like that button, I highly recommend Tympanus/Codrops:
[http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CSSMaskTransition/](http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CSSMaskTransition/)
(keep clicking on the arrow to see them all).
~~~
scottydelta
Tympanus/Codrops is such an amazing resource to learn and use stuff from
there. Glad to know people know about this site.
~~~
franciscop
I have a small facebook group with a couple of friends where we used to post
css stuff and half of the links are from there. I/we just love that site
------
andrepd
Obligatory comment on how rendering a couple thousand polygons in HTML5 maxes
my high-end CPU and GPU usage, for a measly 8fps.
~~~
throwanem
Much to my delighted surprise, it renders very smoothly in Firefox 45 on this
rather resource-constrained machine, in a way that stuff like this almost
never does.
~~~
tehwebguy
I was also surprised at how it appeared to run at full frame rate on my aging
iPhone 6
~~~
dwaltrip
iPhone 6's are considered old these days? Yeesh. I thought they were still
fairly powerful for a mobile device.
~~~
rtkwe
If they got it when it was originally released it's 2 years old now which is
pretty old for any electronics in terms of where it'd sit on the performance
curve.
~~~
andrepd
It's in the top end of the performance spectrum still.
------
JoeDaDude
Strange... I keep catching airplanes from Mountain View, CA, over and over
again.
~~~
mattybrennan
+1 =/
~~~
vwcx
I'm in DC and am catching planes with stamps from all over. Cairo, Copenhagen,
Tokyo.
------
qwertyuiop924
Apparently it's buggy, but it's one of those especially whimsical web things
that shows up every once in a while, that makes me happy.
~~~
qguv
/r/InternetIsBeautiful
------
alexrigler
This just brought a huge smile to my face! Reminded me how connected we all
are in this world. Curious to know how many of the 260K + users that were on
as I was came from HN. Perhaps incorporate a visualisation of where users are
from.
------
unknownzero
I'm sure this is really cool, but autoplay music with no visible volume
control, not cool.
~~~
milesf
You don't have volume control on your phone?
------
dEnigma
It keeps saying "You've made 0 planes" no matter how many I make. Apart from
that it's a nice little project, it's fun looking at all the stamps and
thinking about our connected world.
edit: Ok, after reloading the site it shows some of my planes. Might be a bit
overcrowded and slow at the moment.
------
nverba
This would have been fun if I was able to catch more than MountainView
California stamps. I was going to share this with the kids, but as it is,
there's very little return on investment. Also, using the view my planes
showed me nothing. :( Nice concept, with some rough edges.
~~~
eric-hu
I made three planes in Singapore but it keeps saying I've made zero.
~~~
kbeckmann
Same here, no matter how many planes i make, it always says 0 planes.
------
kpwagner
Beautiful magic, wondrous to behold...
"It was a student who gave me Francis. One Spring afternoon I discovered a
bowl on my desk, just a few inches of clear water in it. Floating on the
surface was a flower petal. As I washed, it sank. Just when it reached the
bottom, it transformed into a wee fish. It was beautiful magic, wondrous to
the behold. The flower petal had come from a lily, your mother. The day I came
downstairs, the day the bowl was empty, was the day your mother..." ~Horace
Slughorn, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
~~~
brennebeck
Are you trying to make people cry?
------
deepakkarki
In case anyone is interested, there is an app version of the same website.
Yes, it's open source!
[https://www.androidexperiments.com/experiment/paper-
planes](https://www.androidexperiments.com/experiment/paper-planes)
------
capote
I'm being told I need a modern browser for this, then redirected to the Chrome
download page.
I'm using the latest version of Chrome.
~~~
luc4sdreyer
Same here, version 53.0.2785.143 m (64-bit), which is the latest according to
Wikipedia. Also my webGL is enabled according to chrome://gpu. Running on
Windows 8, no other GFX issues. Firefox works though. :/
~~~
annnnd
Same here, FF on Linux, with WebGL enabled (at least I couldn't find an
invalid setting in about:config). Weird.
------
djrogers
Very cool, but here's a tip - if you're going to use Geolocation based on IP,
don't be more precise than your dataset is accurate. My stamp shows me as
being in a city ~1hr and bridge and county away from me. Something less
precise like Northern California would be much more useful than presenting
that everyone who's on a Comcast Business line lives in South SF.
~~~
yincrash
According to the MaxMind dataset[1], I'm correctly in WY according to my IP.
I'm not sure how the Paper Planes geolocation could be so wrong, but it places
me in Seattle, WA.
[1][https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo](https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-
demo)
------
lucideer
Seems to repeatedly show a plane with one stamp from Mountain View...
~~~
paulirish
The four planes I threw aren't helping. Sorry :)
~~~
lucideer
oh hi paul
~~~
paulirish
hey buddy. good to see you. :)
------
ChuckMcM
I visited on my macbook on chrome and just see a globe with airplanes flying
around and no way to interact with it.
~~~
crobertsbmw
I think you need to be on mobile.
~~~
sluggg
you are right, you need to be on mobile
~~~
Anasufovic
Chrome developer tools can help with that.
------
120bits
This is incredible!! Great work!
Don't know why the stamp was showing Los Angeles, CA when I'm in Salt Lake
City, UT. Switching to wifi was much accurate.
Edit: Will it be a good feature to add, where user can randomly pick paper
planes on desktop browser as well? Just to see what's going on.
------
daveheq
I made a plane and threw it, then tried to catch some and the net wouldn't
catch anything, then I tapped See Your Planes and it said I've made 0 planes.
I'd say this was a resounding success.
~~~
crottypeter
You have to make a sharp jerk motion with the phone to catch (same as that
used to throw - as far as I can tell).
------
dEnigma
When you click on the small info button the second paragraph says "Visit
paperplanes.world on your computer to throw planes into your screen". Is this
actually a working feature? I did try it and it actually seems like a plane
with the same colour appeared shortly after I launched it with my phone. That
might still be coincidence though since there are a lot of planes.
edit: I've tried it about 20 times or more now, and I'm pretty certain that it
actually works. I'm guessing all planes that are being launched at the moment
are displayed live with their correct colour?
------
saganus
Wow. This is stupidly beautiful.
Can't believe the amount of time I've spent here. I even found a stamp from a
small city in Mexico! (anyone in Chilpancingo right now?) Never thought
someone would be using this there.
Very nice.
------
samfisher83
In case anyone is wondering I think this was made by google since all the
assets seem to be on google servers:
[https://storage.googleapis.com/at-
paperplanes/assets/meta/ic...](https://storage.googleapis.com/at-
paperplanes/assets/meta/icon-192.png)
------
skc
I keep catching planes from MountainView California
~~~
f137
so do I
------
bobajeff
This is definitely going to break at least one phone
------
knowaveragejoe
This is really neat. I wonder who is behind this?
~~~
settsu
[https://activetheory.net/work/paper-planes-
io](https://activetheory.net/work/paper-planes-io) for Google I/O 2016.
It featured prominently at the beginning of the video stream.
~~~
Strilanc
That is some impressively terrible UX for a website.
~~~
sotojuan
Disagree. It's not a website, but a portfolio. Agencies and designers have to
show off what they can do and a static site with screenshots won't cut it. I'm
personally very impressed.
~~~
andrewguenther
All the more reason to have a good user experience. How likely am I to work
with an agency that can't even show me their work in a functional way? Scroll
is broken, navigations are broken, weird looping behavior. It feels like an
old Dreamweaver site.
------
plan6
Flew two planes on my phone. Both normal designs. Didn't see the point.
Caught one and then put my stamp on it, too. That was neat.
Still, I think there is a missed opportunity here. If I could design the plane
however I wanted and compete with others, that would've been fun. But, I have
no reason to go back and do it again, because there is no challenge.
~~~
r-w
Not all games are about competition. Some games are simply about connection.
~~~
Anasufovic
Yeah, this is really just about leaving your mark on the world. No frills.
------
r-w
Interesting to see that none of my planes have been stamped yet, and yet most
of the ones I catch have been stamped multiple times before. Are more people
joining the site / creating new planes than catching and stamping existing
ones? Is there a higher chance of catching a plane that’s been stamped more
times?
------
xapata
Amazing. I caught one that had been thrown 10 days ago from the same
nowheresville town I happen to be passing through.
------
coob
Designing passport style stamps is so much fun! Put some together a while back
for a iOS 6 era language learning app of mine:
[http://image2.aving.net/2013/06/10/201306100944542610.jpg](http://image2.aving.net/2013/06/10/201306100944542610.jpg)
------
markingram
Just made a FPS mini-game for Hololens with a lightning spell, but I must
admit, it's nowhere near the paperplanes' coolness:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wp_LukLn3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wp_LukLn3c)
------
morinted
If you open it on your computer and your phone, you get to see your plane fly
out onto your computer screen after you throw it from the phone.
I wonder how they are doing that, must be by IP?
Or maybe the planes coming from the bottom of the screen are a realtime feed
of new planes world wide.
~~~
scottmf
Sounds like coincidence. My window has planes continually flying from my
direction, and throwing one from my phone doesn't seem to change anything.
------
nickysielicki
I keep getting stuck at "Tap to choose your location stamp". I tap, it stamps,
then nothing. Can't tap again to add a new stamp, and I don't get the prompt
to start folding.
Chrome Dev on a Nexus 5X running stock android N.
------
jaredandrews
Very cool. Does anyone know if the way you "throw" the plane actually affects
it's trajectory? I'm curious what level of detail they are using behind the
scenes for sending the planes around the world.
~~~
Blaaguuu
I suspect not... The first plane I threw pretty softy, because I wasn't sure
how much force was necessary, and in a couple minutes it traveled from
Washington State to Serbia.
------
pcl
I wonder if the direction or speed that I throw it with is used at all... I
guess I know what source I'll be reading through over lunch today!
------
lewi
Im thoroughly impressed that when you throw a plane on your phone you can see
it begin flying on the web browser (Same colored tail).
Really nice little touch.
~~~
statictype
How does that work? I assume anyone that resolves to the same geo ip will see
the plane?
------
deepGem
Nice! I almost threw the phone, despite the warning.
------
meej
I can't figure out why it seems to think I'm in SF when I'm actually in PDX.
Is there a way to force it to update location?
------
markingram
So cool!!! love it. the idea is so simple but so brilliant. This can be the
next dating site ? :) all random encounters?
------
volent
Wow it's blinking like crazy on my Android phone using Chrome. Impossible to
use. It looks neat on a computer though.
------
hayksaakian
Stuck here
[http://i.imgur.com/xMVXDUv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/xMVXDUv.jpg)
------
jfreeman7
browser version doesn't do anything except animation. Once installed the phone
app, you can follow prompt to create an plane and send it away. Or shake your
phone to catch one, and click to open, to see the list of cities where it had
been caught. that's all it does.
------
jerkstate
Can this game be made to work left-handedly? You're losing out on the best 10%
of users :)
~~~
ankey1
Yep, once the airplane is folded, a rotate button appears and then you can
throw the airplane with your left hand.
------
PudgePacket
Doesn't seem to work on firefox mobile even after giving plenty of time to
load.
------
colept
Reminds me of those dollar bills that are stamped with codes to see where
they've been.
Very cool.
------
libeclipse
Love the cute "don't let go of your phone" message.
------
dingo_bat
Autoplay sound warning. It was quite loud.
------
wehadfun
What does it do?
~~~
dEnigma
To quote Blaaguuu[1]:
_Basically, you just put a 'stamp' on a piece of digital paper, which shows
what city you are in - then you 'fold' the paper into an airplane and make a
little 'throwing' motion with your phone, being careful not to let go and
fling your phone across the room, and the plane flies off. Then everyone can
make a sweeping motion with your phone to catch other people's planes
(seemingly random) to view the stamps, and add your own, then throw it back._
[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12630637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12630637)
------
cloudjacker
and sitting right next to you is somebody that will argue tooth and nail about
why a .com tld is important
------
simplemath
This is so cool.
What a nicely done little project!
------
aslammuet
So it's all about WebGL?
------
throwanem
How utterly adorable!
------
trymas
That's what I call useless, but impressive.
------
enterx
great idea!
please add a message feature.
------
Blaaguuu
Maybe it's just because the site is getting hammered, but whether I view it on
my phone or computer, I just see a cool visualization of paper planes flying
around the world, but I see no way to interact with it at all... Nor is there
any explanation of what I am looking at. It looks pretty, but is rather
confusing.
~~~
exolymph
It's very silly that they didn't include a desktop experience or at LEAST an
explanation that you can only use it on your phone.
~~~
Zelmor
Bottom right corner says, join on your phone.
~~~
apple_fritter
Ehh, I don't know if that counts. Lots of sites want me to join on my phone or
download an app, even though they are desktop compatible.
I'm irked when companies go for this form of anti-documentation. It 1) makes
me feel dumb 2) wastes my time 3) I'll eventually figure out what you're not
telling me, so you might as well cut to the chase.
------
Capira
1
~~~
Capira
2
------
1337biz
STOP THE MUSIC. Please.
------
J5892
Cool
------
dleslie
Yet another reason to replace my BB Classic.
Er, no, forget it, I don't need a spyphone.
~~~
chrisbennet
You mean, _another_ spyphone?
Teasing yah, but the blackberry was _the_ government phone. I would imagine it
was among the very first phones hacked by NSA.
~~~
dleslie
Almost certainly!
But given that the NSA is recording _everything_, I am unlikely to be able to
avoid them. What I can avoid is the commercial sale of my private identity;
and to do that, I need to not sell myself to Google or Apple.
------
tychuz
Open the tab - sounds starts playing, take a quick glance over page - no clear
mute button, close tab. 1/10
------
TheAceOfHearts
I saw Paul Irish tweet this [0] a few days back. Hopefully this doesn't come
off as too negative, but I disagree with it being a "beautiful web
experience". I tried it on my Nexus 5X and it's not a smooth experience, and
that's with Chrome on a high-tier phone that isn't even a year old. With
Firefox for Android, my default mobile browser, it seems to struggle even
more.
With that said, I think it's an impressive demo. I'd love to look over the
unminified source.
It's worth noting that it doesn't appear to load properly if you're using
uBlock Origin; I had to toggle it off for the demo to work.
[0]
[https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/781895377737756672](https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/781895377737756672)
~~~
carc1n0gen
Nexus 5x is not a high tier phone, but an entry level phone. Mine constantly
lagged just using Facebook, fb messenger, and Snapchat.
The 6p is the high tier one.
~~~
troebr
I'm running it on a 5X and it ran just fine.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: BestRuby – Ruby Tricks, Idioms, Refactorings and Best Practices - franzunix
http://www.best-ruby.com
======
joshmn
There is also fast-ruby: [https://github.com/JuanitoFatas/fast-
ruby](https://github.com/JuanitoFatas/fast-ruby)
------
brandoncordell
Just wanted to let you know clicking on section headings[1] in the sidebar
doesn't show all the subitems on the landing page. I'm not sure whether this
was intended behavior or not. Either way, awesome collection. Thanks for
sharing!
[1] [http://best-ruby.com/idiomatic_ruby.html](http://best-
ruby.com/idiomatic_ruby.html)
------
mathgeek
Getting 404 errors on some of the files. Just FYI. The "refactoring to hashes"
one specifically did that for me.
------
sharps
Under 2.8 FixNum#times, the 'use' and the 'rather than' should be swapped.
~~~
gechr
While this is a constructive comment, why not just raise a PR?
[https://github.com/franzejr/best-
ruby/pull/35](https://github.com/franzejr/best-ruby/pull/35)
------
goofed
AWESOMENESS
~~~
franzunix
(Y)
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Boy Genius Report Reviews MacBook Air - mitchdev
http://mitchj.info/blog/2010/10/boy-genius-report-reviews-macbook-air/
======
towndrunk
Direct link to article.
[http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/10/29/apple-macbook-
air-...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/10/29/apple-macbook-air-review/)
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Ask HN: What do you use for file backups? - null_ptr
======
mrlyc
I classify my files into ordinary, important and vital. Once a week,
everything gets backed up onto one of my two external drives. The important
and vital stuff gets backed up onto a USB I always carry with me and the vital
stuff also gets backed up onto Dropbox.
------
akg_67
I am using Time Machine and Windows Backup to Time Capsule and Drobo. A friend
recently hooked me up with a 1 year trial license so I am also currently
testing CrashPlan from Code42 on Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines.
------
__DarkBlue
TimeMachine to a Btrfs RAID 1+0 NAS (hourly), BackBlaze (continous) and AWS
Glacier fortnightly. I also use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable backup
about once/month (when I remember).
------
cpr
Backblaze.com continuously, and a nightly SuperDuper! image backup so I could
get recover immediately after a disk crash.
(Belt and suspenders. ;-)
------
beliu
[http://camlistore.org/](http://camlistore.org/)
------
helloanand
Rsync (cron) to a home NAS daily. SVN for code and work documents.
------
dClauzel
TimeMachine, on btrfs-RAID1 hosted by a HP microserver
------
pwg
rsnapshot to an old machine hosting a Linux software raid-5 array.
------
mknits
Mega.co.nz and Dropbox.
------
LocalMan
Jungle Disk/AWS
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Using Trello for Agile Software Development: The Complete Guide - nhance
http://buildbettersoftware.com/with-trello/
======
bkmartin
We are already using Trello to track our projects, but this process is going
to make things even easier. This will work great for my small team of just a
handful of developers, plus my own solo side projects. If you use something
like this from a solo project you can easily bring on new dev or other people
at any time with much less effort and will help keep multiple projects very
organized.
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Ask HN: Going to Startup School After-Party and want a free dinner? - nopassrecover
Hey,<p>I'm Matt, an Aussie flying over for Startup School 2012 who unfortunately missed a ticket to the After-Party (timezone difference).<p>I'm obviously pretty keen to go and catch up with everyone after, so if you have a ticket and haven't allocated your "+1" I'd love to shout you a meal for it - your choice where (anywhere in SF/bay area) and when as long as the cost is somewhat sane :-)<p>Includes free conversation (I'm working on a travel idea, and am interested in tech, startups, philosophy etc).<p>If you're interested (or just want to say hi) please get in touch at [email protected]
======
nopassrecover
And I have a ticket. I love awesome people.
~~~
tonster
How'd you come across one? I am also attending startup school and am
interested in going to the afterparty.
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Why Net Negative Producing Programmers are Here to Stay-- Despite the Cost - nsoonhui
http://itscommonsensestupid.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-net-negative-producing-programmers.html
======
nihilocrat
_Finally, the hiring process, as employed by most IT companies, are not
exactly encouraging programmers to self-improve._
Probably the best insight from the article. It's saying what we already know,
but it's comforting to see another person think that most programming job ads
are completely bogus. A given language can be picked up fairly quickly
compared to the amount of time required to get really good at programming
itself. I am actually more intimidated by the ads that don't enumerate a bunch
of techonologies; this means that they are probably going to be asking for a
lot of sheer badassery on your part.
~~~
dcminter
This is an argument that I often hear and which I think is pretty much
completely bogus.
Learning the _syntax_ of a language can be achieved fairly quickly for most
languages.
Learning the implications of that syntax takes a lot longer (C++ is a good
example here, otherwise "Effective C++" and "More Effective C++" would have
been unnecessary).
Learning the libraries and tools associated with a language can be an
effectively unlimited task.
So I don't agree. It's better to hire a good programmer than a mediocre one,
sure, but given two programmers of somewhat comparable _quality_ the one with
more _experience_ often proves to be considerably more valuable than the
other. This is doubly true if one of them has experience in the specific tools
that you will be using on the project.
The closer fitting user will have been through a lot of the
debugging/learning/understanding processes that the other has still to
encounter. Even the finest programmer has to learn to work with the occasional
WTFs of libraries.
------
sh1mmer
Vaguely interesting article to me. It's basically a reality check for this:
[http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-
produ...](http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-
producing.html)
In short the reasons why you a good programmer can't remove all the "bad
programmers"
1\. Working out who is good and bad is hard 2\. It would involve too much
politics that you may not be good at 3\. You look like a jerk if you besmirch
your co-workers 4\. It's easiest for companies to hire based on "years of
experience"
------
MaysonL
Of course, this totally ignores the problem (a larger one, IMHO) of negative
producing management.
It is also possible to teach many net negative programmeres to become net
positive, through code review, mentoring, and pair programming.
------
KevBurnsJr
Funny, the last 3 jobs I've had have mostly revolved around cleaning up
monstrous piles of poorly structured code.
Don't forget to throw away your prototype.
~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
My current job involves papering over poorly structured code.
I call it "design by accretion."
------
LogicHoleFlaw
_Yes, of course you can target those companies that are geeky and cool, but I
am sure those companies won't have enough space for all the good developers._
Duh, if there aren't enough companies for good programmers, there are surely
enough programmers to start more companies. There's not a fixed limit to the
number of corporate charters available...
------
mattmcknight
We've actually had some success getting managers to get rid of bad
programmers. It's a matter of building their trust in you first, and then
letting a programmer call the shots and do real interviews, etc.
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Forget AT&T. The Real Monopolies Are Google and Facebook - arunbahl
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/opinion/forget-att-the-real-monopolies-are-google-and-facebook.html?ref=opinion
======
Nomentatus
Why can't anyone use the words "public utility?" These are public utilities,
if any public utilities ever existed.
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Ask HN: The best way to find remote job - shtpavel
What is the best way to find remote job?
Actually i'm tryin' to find 20hours\week job to upgrade my Node.js(for now i'm .NET developer) skill and learn something new with real life project..
But I want to get some small salary, 5-15\hour will be okey.
So where I can find such jobs?
======
tzaman
5-15/hour? You're doing yourself and the industry a huge disservice,
regardless what currency this is in. If you're a .NET developer, I take it you
know what you're doing and even if you want to learn Node.js along the way,
that's not a way to go. Once you're set on a small amount (and charge by the
hour, another big sin we're all guilty of) it's really hard to get more, and
you'll end up doing crappy work for crappy clients. Don't do that.
~~~
shtpavel
Currency - dollar. hm... what is the right pricing?
~~~
drcoopster
I'd multiply that by at least 5 if you're in the US and you're any good.
~~~
shtpavel
Nope, i'm from Eastern Europe.
~~~
hackerboos
Multiply it by 3 then.
Edit: Let me clarify - not saying that Eastern European programmers are better
or worse but the living costs are obviously lower in Eastern Europe than say
Western Europe.
~~~
zura
Not necessary. I'm from Georgia, eastern Europe. I was astonished during my
recent visit in Berlin of how cheap it is, especially groceries/food, clothes,
toys, etc...
I was also comparing prices in San Diego, California, and it was quite on par
with Georgia.
The main reason eastern Europe appears cheap is the human labour - people are
just used to low income...
~~~
insuffi
Can't agree more.
US west coast prices are terrifyingly similar to prices in the Baltic
States(unless you're living in a metropolis such as NYC).
Something to remember: It doesn't matter that you're from Ukraine. It matters
where the company you work remotely for is stationed. If you find a company in
the US or western EU willing to hire you, you can probably ask for their
domestic market rates :)
Good luck.
~~~
zura
Yes. Actually, some companies have policies that they research local salaries
and offer accordingly. Needless to say, I don't work for such companies.
------
jburwell
weworkremotely.com (run by the 37signals/Basecamp folks) and
jobs.joelonsoftware.com (shortcut to Stackoverflow jobs) are two sources of
remote job listings. I am sure there are more -- these are just two with which
I happen to be familiar. I have also found that both of these sites have a
fairly high quality of job listings.
Another approach to consider is seeking freelance work. You may be able to
find work porting .NET applications to node.js which would allow you to
leverage you current skill set to learn a new one. The challenge with this
approach is that freelance rates can be pretty cut throat. Therefore, it would
likely best to view these types of jobs as an opportunity to build
experience/portfolio more than money making.
~~~
tzaman
We hired two developers through WeWorkRemotely (gotten about 100 applicants),
and couldn't be happier. Highly recommended.
~~~
warp
I got hired through WeWorkRemotely fairly recently, I didn't know the
competition could be that fierce! :)
~~~
fecak
Competition for remote work is fierce, and is only going to get more fierce
for as long as it remains rare. For most people that are applying for remote
work, they are applying not because of the work itself or a strong belief in
the company. Their #1 search criterion is for remote work and all other
details are probably a somewhat distant second, and until remote jobs are more
available you will find it a competitive market.
~~~
mrfusion
But on the flip side, companies can get quality talent for cheap salaries, no?
~~~
collyw
They would get a whole lot more productivity out of me. Not being asked to fix
users excel errors and being bugged every 5 minutes. (I know this is true, as
the organization was a lot smaller 3 years ago when I started, and for the
first year I was incredibly productive).
------
danielweber
For remote jobs, clarity of communication is essential.
I hope this doesn't read as mean, since I suspect English is not your first
language, but if you are trying to get hired by an English speaking company,
you need to use proper grammar and spelling.
If you are looking for job in your native language, and just raising the topic
here on HN as the best place to discuss it, then please only read the first
paragraph of this comment. I don't mean to exclude you from discussing things
here.
~~~
mapleoin
Hi, I'm just here to confirm Muphry's law[1].
You missed an indefinite article here: _If you are looking for job in your
native language, ..._
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law)
~~~
lyyons
Muphry's [sic] law, indeed.
~~~
justizin
click the link, it's not [sic] so much as Muphry's law is not to be confused
with Murphy's.
"Muphry's law is an adage that states that when a person criticises another's
editing or proofreading, there will be a mistake of a similar kind in that
criticism. The name is a deliberate misspelling of Murphy's law."
------
stevoo
This is a very hard to question to answer you and there is no actual solution
to give you.
It all comes down to how good you really are. I have been looking for the past
3 - 4 months for a remote job, but since the competition out there is huge and
there are definitely better programmers than me I haven't manage to land
anything yet.
Make a great CV, a personal page, work on github to show your work. This will
help you dramatically since you will be displaying your work and who you are.
( I have all except github as all I do is actually on my own repos )
As for the hours you are willing to put in, then that is more like freelancing
than a full time job. Perhaps try Elance for some freelancing and work on your
own to learn node.
~~~
Touche
> It all comes down to how good you really are. I have been looking for the
> past 3 - 4 months for a remote job, but since the competition out there is
> huge and there are definitely better programmers than me I haven't manage to
> land anything yet.
Not trying to be harsh, but if you honestly believe this, you should give up
right now. There will always be people smarter than you, this is a given. But
you will never land a job with the attitude of "I'm not good enough to work
here".
~~~
chrisdevereux
> but if you honestly believe this, you should give up right now
That sounds a bit dramatic, I'd advise changing what you believe.
There will always be things you believe that hold you back, but you will never
overcome them with an attitude of "I should just give up now"...
------
bentcorner
Can people who are working remotely share their experience? What works, what
doesn't?
Some things I've heard about that I wouldn't mind reading about again:
\- Making an office space in the home (I've seen workspaces designed [I think]
for remote workers - do people use these and find they offer value?)
\- Setting up boundaries with family members
\- Communication habits - do you scrum over text chat, or daily video
conferencing? What about large team meetings? Do you share daily status over
email, or is that too much overhead?
\- Working hours - do all-remote teams encourage syncing up time that the team
is online? If you're remote and most of the team is together, do you work
hours that are local to the rest of the team? I've heard it can be hard in
this situation making sure that the rest of the team remembers you in hallway
conversations, since it's easy to forget the one guy who is remote.
Some stuff I haven't seen written about:
\- Logistics - do you need to be the admin for your PC? Do you get a hardware
budget, or is it entirely BYOB?
I'm also interested in how the remote dynamic changes going from small teams
to companies with thousands of employees.
~~~
swah
Also I'm curious if people from "3rd world countries" are also able to find
remote work and where (I'm from Brazil).
~~~
poulsbohemian
My contact info is in my profile and I'm hiring. Have hired several
contractors in Brazil in the past.
~~~
shubhamjain
Any chance of hiring from India? :)
------
tommoor
We wrote an article with some ideas here: [http://blog.sqwiggle.com/best-
places-find-telecommuting-job-...](http://blog.sqwiggle.com/best-places-find-
telecommuting-job-craigslist/)
EG: The AngelList search is very good and you can filter by allows remote :-)
------
j45
I'm really surprised oDesk has not been mentioned. They have merged with
elance, and the type of work you are looking for at the rates you are seeking
(and higher) are routinely listed there.
I would create a profile on that site, most new freelancers there start with a
lower rate to build experience and feedback and in a few months look to raise
the rate.
Feel free to contact me by email and I can tell you what my experience has
been from the hiring side.
~~~
zura
Not sure about hiring side (about quality...), but from the contractor side -
stay away from these sites. It is the race to the bottom...
~~~
artmageddon
While I've heard good things about oDesk(I think there was another one,
eLance?), I have to agree with the sentiment of this. I spent several weeks
trying to get some simple work on freelancer.com so I could build up some
credibility, and every project was either not worth your time("please create a
site just like Facebook, I will pay $100"), or someone who had more projects
completed will come in with a modest offering and be the one who gets approval
for the work. It was pretty irritating. I tried to take an exam for C# that
was offered by the site, but the payment system kept crapping out on me, and
I'm pretty sure I got charged for it without being allowed to take the test.
I want to do remote work, but going through these sites makes me grateful that
I'm actually part of a company that pays me a salary.
~~~
j45
Rentacoder, freelancer, etc are definitely bottom of the barrel in terms of
income and quality of projects.
I've always found the quality and cost of eLance and oDesk to be higher. Now
that they've merged, I think there is something there, the development talent
in Eastern Europe is excellent.
------
city41
It might be tough to get hired in that scenario. You might want to bootstrap
this idea by first doing some of your own Node projects.
~~~
KB1JWQ
Quite; "pay me to learn technology X" is always going to be a tough sell
unless you're bringing another skillset to a problem.
~~~
shtpavel
I think you don't understand me right... Simply: i want to find trainee aor
junior remote job.
------
Touche
Specifically for Node it's nice to have some notoriety, no matter how small.
So create a cool Node module that does something original and email the guys
at dailyjs.com about it. If it gets posted there put that in your resume and
you'll land a job.
But not a lot of companies are looking for part-time programmers, why do you
not want a full-time job?
~~~
shtpavel
Full time job is OK, but if it'll suit my salary requirements. For now i'm, ok
with my current job. But want to move forward. I mean, I want to learn new
techs by part-time job, and then move to full-time.
------
NDizzle
I would set some alerts for craigslist job listings in the larger craigslist
markets.
[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=node.js&is_tele...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof?query=node.js&is_telecommuting=1&is_parttime=1)
Replace 'sfbay' with various cities and see what you get.
~~~
dobbsbob
Indeed
[http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/van/sof/4451591937.html](http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/van/sof/4451591937.html)
------
thibaut_barrere
What I do is "plant small seeds" on the web (like: articles, video talks),
which acts as "ads" for my skills. Then I make sure I can be found online
(twitter, site, forums). It's a midterm strategy but works very well (I've
worked 100% remotely during the last 3 years).
~~~
infinitone
I don't get it- can you give an example of a 'seed'?
Sounds interesting.
~~~
thibaut_barrere
Sure - here are concrete example of seeds.
I call them seeds because you have to realize that they will take time to give
fruits. This is not an emergency technique.
Blog posts: from time to time, I was writing an article on my (now defunct but
soon restarted) technical blog. It is currently offline but you can have a
look here [1]. I created linkable content that got some coverage, and some of
my former customers saw the blog and it created credibility to them.
Videos: similarly, I've tried since I think 2009 to give at least one talk per
year. It has to be recorded and available on the web afterwards. Even on small
topics, in small events to get started.
Some video examples:
\- [https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/transforming-data-with-ruby-
an...](https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/transforming-data-with-ruby-and-
activewarehouse-etl) (video at
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW863DOXqZQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW863DOXqZQ))
=> people contacted me afterwards to do ETL work
\- on bootstrapping [https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/retour-dexperience-sur-le-
boot...](https://speakerdeck.com/thbar/retour-dexperience-sur-le-
bootstrapping-de-wisecash-produit-saas) (video at vimeo.com/85490636) =>
people asked me to help them build SaaS afterwards
You can also just tweet useful, non opinion-oriented tweets and links, and
grow an audience this way (I have around 1460 followers
[http://twitter.com/thibaut_barrere](http://twitter.com/thibaut_barrere) but
started much lower). People looking for skills will find you this way etc.
Hope this helps!
[1]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20121031083446/http://blog.logeek...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121031083446/http://blog.logeek.fr/)
~~~
collyw
Does anyone know a good blogging platform to include code examples (without
messing around with Javascript)? I tried google blogger, but code did not come
out nicely, and it tries to do its own formatting when you save.
~~~
thibaut_barrere
I've settled with Jekyll (static), hosted on S3. I'm using prism.js at the
moment but will probably move the code examples to embedded github gists.
------
keslert
Have you considered picking up freelance node.js work? I run a website called
FreelanceInbox.com that is designed to help freelancers find quality leads
without having to spend time a lot of time searching. You could probably
handle small projects and develop your skills that way.
~~~
mrfusion
Cool site, neat idea. Any chance I could get a week's trial before I sign up?
I'd be more interested in data science, and/or Python/Django work. I can't
tell if you have that.
~~~
keslert
There is currently not a trial option, but it is a 30-day money back
guarantee, so if the service doesn't work, you can just let us know and you'll
get a full refund. Python/Django work yes, but currently no on the data
science.
~~~
mrfusion
I don't see Python/Django on the set of checkboxes, any advice?
~~~
keslert
sent you an email
------
sjclemmy
I would suggest you make yourself easily contactable. Posting this question on
HN might interest a possible employer who would offer you some work. However
they will have a hard time doing so, if your contact details are not mentioned
in your profile.
Update: You have added contact details. :)
~~~
shtpavel
You are right :)
------
ksakhuj
I'm thinking of finding a remote job too. I am an experienced Nodejs
developer/architect. My current gig, I am nodejs lead & initial team member,
in a very popular app. So I have scaled the app to millions.
------
adamzerner
I'm thinking of finding a remote job too. However, I'm inexperienced and a
friend of mine said that people don't tend to hire remotely for junior level
positions. Is this true?
~~~
keslert
Same thing as I mentioned in my other comment. Freelancing is sometimes a good
fit for people in your position. To help you get on your feet, I created a
website called FreelanceInbox.com that is designed to help freelancers find
quality leads without having to spend time a lot of time searching.
------
andys627
Meet other developers (at meetups or coworking spaces) and ask them if they
know someone who's hiring.
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Ask HN: How to make the area "around" a site clickable? - brandnewlow
Check out http://www.collegehumor.com/ and hover over the empty space in the gutters to the side of the main content. That whole space is clickable sending you off to the advertiser for that day. What are some good ways of making the entire area _around_ a site clickable? I'm playing around with a few but not seeing any one standout approach.
======
jacquesm
I've made you a little demo, I think this is the most universal way to do it:
<http://ww.com/mousedown.html>
good luck!
Btw, such 'garbage clicks' are an excellent way to get rid of your
advertisers.
~~~
brandnewlow
Ha. Duly noted. Thanks for posting this, too. How would I set this js to apply
only to the regions outside a site?
~~~
jacquesm
By checking if any object is located under the mouse pointer in the event
handler.
------
flooha
This practice seriously pisses me off. I really hope it doesn't catch on...
| {
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Deaf moths use noise-cancelling scales as protection against bat biosonar - bookofjoe
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2019.0692
======
bookofjoe
[https://phys.org/news/2020-02-deaf-moths-evolved-noise-
cance...](https://phys.org/news/2020-02-deaf-moths-evolved-noise-cancelling-
scales.html)
| {
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HTML to PDF converter with custom resolutions for presentations and screenshots - gfmio
https://github.com/gfmio/html2pdf
======
hlidotbe
I may have missed something but isn't this just a (very small) wkhtmltopdf
wrapper?
~~~
gfmio
It is at the moment, but it provides the right config ;) Plus, I'm planning to
expand it to provide more general document layouts, so you can create "print"
documents of different kinds in HTML and simply export it.
I just needed this for myself and wanted to share it with people :)
------
asimjalis
Nice. I've been looking for a way to turn Pandoc HTML into PDF without going
the LaTeX route.
| {
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Babson Burnbook gets 1200 visits in two days and then gets shut down by school - jhuang16888
http://www.babsonfreep.com/2011/11/burnbook-me-smolders/
======
autoreverse
Off topic but perhaps someone could tell Babson Freep their WordPress has been
hacked and displays spam content and links when visited by Google. Check
Google's cache of the page linked to in this article for example.
Apologies for putting this as a reply on HN but I emailed their contact
address twice and got bounced both times.
~~~
jhuang16888
looks like they fixed it
~~~
autoreverse
Nope.
Set your browser's user agent to "Google" to see. This is a common exploit to
lift scam sites in SERPs.
Screen shot:
[http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/2011110_Babson_Freep_hac...](http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/2011110_Babson_Freep_hacked.jpg)
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JIadb7r...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JIadb7rPPiEJ:www.babsonfreep.com/2011/11/burnbook-
me-smolders/)
------
alexlin
though I myself hail from babson, sad to see the top entrepreneurial school
discouraging entrepreneurial endeavors.
| {
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} |
App unveiled that checks for adults posing as children - wybo
http://www.itproportal.com/2011/01/24/researchers-unveil-anti-child-grooming-app/#ixzz1BxZqEPW4
======
wybo
I wonder how this impacts very intelligent / early of age children, that might
be flagged as adults by it...
~~~
bryanlarsen
Actually, I doubt that correct spelling and punctuation is much of an
indicator in the algorithm. Adults posing as children will try to talk like
children, so they'll be dumbing down their conversation too. In fact, I
suspect they may overcompensate.
I imagine it's looking more for incorrect usage of slang, usage of slang
that's no longer current, et cetera.
~~~
jhamburger
Exactly...When "to catch a predator" was on, they'd show the conversations and
even the dumbest guys figured out which words to misspell and all of that.
On another note, do kids really still chat with strangers, ala AOL chat rooms
circa 1995? The whole thing seems anachronistic.
------
praptak
Looks like a double edged sword. Does it work on law enforcement officers too?
~~~
klync
My thoughts exactly. But, then again, I'd have to think that the people law
enforcement is seeking aren't all that bright to begin with. Even if they used
the software, they'd likely ignore its warnings in favour of satisfying their
sick cravings.
------
robotron
Interesting, although I'm skeptical about it working in reality. Won't this be
foiled by someone just dumbing down their language skills?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: Skype employee fakes "One month free calls promo" - preek
20 minutes ago there was tweet saying they would issue a one month of free Skype calls[1].<p>5 minutes later they deleted the tweet, issuing a new one[2] that says: "Sorry – the last tweet was posted in error. We’re 100% focused on getting Skype back in action. Stay tuned for more information."<p>1. https://twitter.com/#!/Skype/status/17976224630444033<p>2. http://twitter.com/#!/Skype/status/17979814220660737
======
Travis
Your title is misleading. How is what they did "faking" a promo? That implies
some sort of fraud. What evidence do you have that they attempted to
intentionally misinform, or defraud, customers? Cuz I sure don't see it in
your post.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mbed: 32 bit micro with cloud based toolchain - joe_bleau
http://hackaday.com/2009/11/21/review-mbed-nxp-lpc1768-microcontroller/
For some time I've thought that a web based toolchain might be advantageous for these simple embedded boards, so I'm glad to see someone trying it out.
======
joe_bleau
To me, the interesting angle on this device is that the C/C++ toolchain is all
web based, so there's no software installation required to get started. (I had
a similar idea some time ago for another embedded board, but couldn't convince
the company to try it out.) Seems like the zero installation toolchain would
make it easier for people to get started, especially if they are on a locked
down OS.
I also like their idea of having the board appear as a USB drive with FAT
filesystem; copy the new firmware over and it will automatically reflash the
microcontroller.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best API / tools for finding local attractions - chunkyslink
Hi<p>Are there any decent tools / API's out there (paid or free) that will allow me to provide either a postcode/zip OR lat/lng and get back a list of local businesses / attractions.<p>I would like to say. Get me a list of all cinemas within 5 miles of xxxxxx.<p>Is there such a service?
======
podman
You probably should to check out
<http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/places/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Getting Over Uber - kostyk
https://medium.com/backchannel/getting-over-uber-fdf75faf7f6e
======
GeorgeOrr
Very Interesting response to this from Tim O'reilly:
[https://medium.com/@timoreilly/getting-over-
taxis-79849b3a42...](https://medium.com/@timoreilly/getting-over-
taxis-79849b3a4282)
~~~
basseq
I very much agree with Tim's points here. Susan's points in the original
article seems to boil down to some kind of... nostalgia... for what taxis once
were or could be.
The fact of the matter is that taxis tend to suck. Bad cars, poor technology,
expensive fares, rude drivers. It's only recently that I _haven 't_ been
routinely hassled for cash because of a "broken meter". The only benefit to
traditional taxis is that I can hail them on the street or find them at a taxi
stand (downtown).
We as a country and a people need to crack the "gig" economy for other
reasons, but there's no denying that Uber is a breath of fresh air.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: CryptoHack – a fun platform for learning cryptography - hyper_reality
https://cryptohack.org/
======
mpeg
This is really cool, I discovered hackthebox last year and love the gamified
nature of it and how well it resonates with younger people.
I got to the top 10 in HTB for a while and was pretty surprised that I was
probably one of the oldest people in the rankings, lots of high school and uni
students.
Have you thought about potential ways to monetise this through classroom
"ladders" for students to attempt alone and then walk through in class?
Company trainings would probably be another route
~~~
hyper_reality
We haven't really considered monetisation yet but you've given some
interesting food for thought, thank you!
------
hyper_reality
Hey all, I would like to present a side project which I have been building
with a friend.
We bonded over our shared passion for solving crypto CTF challenges, and found
that infosec people are often curious about crypto - but see it as an
intimidating topic. We wanted to build a "HackTheBox of crypto", where users
are encouraged to learn about how crypto works, and how to break it on a fun
gamified platform.
We have categories on RSA, block ciphers, ECC, mathematics and other schemes,
and will be continuing to release new challenges to stay up-to-date with the
latest attacks and techniques.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: an intro to P=NP - ErrantX
Im one of these annoying people that likes to absorb information by reading it (I find it is more sticky that way).<p>So, yes, the P=NP problem. It's always piqued my interest but a lot of the online material is a bit too mathematical for me to handle without some serious revision :) for stuff like this I also prefer book form. But recently I got much more to grips with the idea and it's the kind of thing I'd love to consider properly in idle moments :)<p>Can anyone recommend a really good book on the problem (I'm struggling to find any good recommendations). Something that isn't too math's heavy (or at least reminds you of the basics as necessary) that can walk you through the problem and set out some (non-too-mathematical) examples.<p>Preferably something a bit light-hearted :)
======
michael_dorfman
"The New Turing Omnibus" has a chapter on P=NP, and is a "light hearted, not
too maths-heavy" introduction to about 50 other basic problems in CS.
~~~
ErrantX
thanks - exactly what I was after :D
------
RiderOfGiraffes
> _recently I got much more to grips with the idea ... Something that isn't
> too math's heavy ..._
You're asking for contradictory advice. If you're starting to get to grips
with the idea then you want something that goes beyond the basic concepts.
OTOH, you're asking not to get into the math.
Tricky.
Let's start here.
Do you know the difference between an instance and a problem? Do you know what
it means for a problem to be in P? In NP? Do you know the difference between
NP and NPC? Do you know a proof that a problem - any problem - is in NPC? Do
you know how you would go about that?
~~~
ErrantX
well ok perhaps I phrased it badly: I have a bit-part overview but now I would
like to read about the "problem" in full with not too much maths. As far as I
have seen you dont need an awful lot of maths to describe the problem
As to the latter set of questions: the answer to most is "vaguely" :) hence
needing the reading material :)
~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
There's quite a good "layman's" explanation of the problem, including some of
its history, in Keith Devlin's book _"The Millennium Problems."_ The problem
description starts on page 112.
In that book he also refers to the official Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI)
book that gives a summary, and then the problem in detail. He also references
a short film that gives a similar outline summary. The film can apparently be
found at <http://www.claymath.org>
I'm sure there are dozens of descriptions of the "Does P=NP?" question on the
'net. Which ones have you read? What was unsatisfactory about them? Name
three, tell me what you didn't like, and I'll try to find another for you, or
write one myself.
Note: I'm not an expert, but if my knowledge is different from yours, perhaps
I can help. I have proved directly that graph 3-vertex coloring is in NPC. An
outline of the proof is actually here on HN if you'd care to go find it.
You still haven't answered my original questions, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Handy online OAuth explorer - stevejalim
http://sevengoslings.net/~fangel/oauth-explorer/
======
sanj
How is this superior to (or different than) Google's opensourced OAuth
Playground?
<http://googlecodesamples.com/oauth_playground/>
~~~
fangel
Google's Playground in it's current online form only supports Google's own
OAuth end-points. My (disclosure: yes, I made the tool in question) tool
supports arbitrary end-points.
If anyone can come up with improvements, please do say so.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bite-Sized Metrics Email Course - jkulmala
http://blog.firstofficer.io/bite-sized-metrics/
======
saturnflyer
Interesting. What kind of stuff does this course have?
~~~
jkulmala
Do you subscribe to Seth Godin's or Simon Sinek's posts?
This is a series of similar very small posts, but instead of being
inspirational, they talk about SaaS metrics and how to use them.
Here's an example:
"At Growth Ceiling MRR your current marketing spend is required just to
prevent your SaaS from shrinking.
As your business grows, eventually the back door will have as much traffic as
the front door. Aim to be profitable at that point. Try to keep the Growth
Ceiling MRR 20-50% higher than your MRR goal".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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