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A eulogy for Twitter - zabramow
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/04/a-eulogy-for-twitter/361339/?single_page=true
======
teaneedz
I'm one of those exploring elsewhere. Twitter today feels even more
dysfunctional as a company. The pursuit to become algo driven and Facebooky
reached its limit for me with the new link previews which fundamentally
transform the Twitter experience from being text based to visual. The problem
though is that the entire timeline is now visual with a spammy marketing vibe
because most people today use Twitter for sharing links, not specifically for
photos. The resulting photos from link previews are not interesting for the
most part and certainly don't convey the fun that a visual experience such as
Ello conveys. Because Ello supports Markdown and text can live just fine
there, I've personally made it my place to play and relax. I updated my
Twitter bio to indicate that my tweets will become stale. I will still tweet
now and then, minus my personality. Ello has been a relaxing experience for
me, but I miss the in-the-now vibe of Twitter. I'll miss Twitter, but never
really forget it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Steve Jobs' old resume from his mac.com page - nikcub
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090204025538/http://homepage.mac.com/steve/Resume.html
======
yoda_sl
Folks it was just a marketing page just to show what you could publish with
the web app HomePage which was part of the iTools suite. Don't take it
seriously ! I know a few folks that used to work in iTools and .Mac and it was
well known that Steve's web pages where just for demo purpose.
~~~
benatkin
Got a reference? I think it could have been made by a fan. It doesn't have any
information that isn't available publicly. With the same phone number
appearing in four places, it doesn't seem particularly like Jobs.
~~~
yoda_sl
When Apple released iTools / .Mac and so on, even recently with Ping they
usually reserve a bunch of name for either marketing pages or of their own
usage. Many exec have usually their accounts created way ahead before the
services goes live, and often Apple product name are reserved or unavailable.
When Apple did introduce iTools at MacWorld January 2000, a few days afterward
every employee at Apple got a mac.com/iTools account based on their existing
apple.com email address.
------
alexobenauer
On the first Apple employment: "Learned many things, including do's and don'ts
for building executive teams."
Snide remark of the year?
~~~
edo
Wish he wrote those do's and don'ts down.
~~~
nikcub
not sure how it can apply to a startup, but it would be 'do not hire John
Sculley to run your company'
~~~
jarin
Unless your company is PepsiCo, that is.
------
jamesrom
I don't know if this is supposed to be some tongue in cheek demo of Apple
iTools, but I get the feeling after reading that résumé, that if Jobs had to
start from nothing again, he could.
~~~
oscardelben
Success is a habit. I bet that most successful individuals who started from
scratch, if sent in a foreign country with no connections or resources at all,
would recreate their level of success given enough time.
~~~
zrgiu
I actually know someone from Somalia who got successful there, got screwed and
left to Holland. Got successful there again, and again got screwed and left to
Romania. He has a successful business here, and he probably won't get screwed
again :P After the first "failure", his connections helped him rise again.
~~~
jergason
Can you say that "getting screwed" is a habit too then?
------
alexobenauer
More interestingly, this site first was noticed by Wayback on September 25,
2000. (Presumably about the time it was first published).
Apple's homepage at that time:
[http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20001008232304/http://apple...](http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20001008232304/http://apple.com/)
~~~
p0ppe
It's fascinating how little the homepage has changed over the years.
------
Evgeny
_"Discovered a little animation company that needed a vision."_
That's so amazing - or amusing - I absolutely can not tell if this is
humbleness, irony, some bragging disguised as humbleness or something totally
else ...
~~~
monopede
Actually he bought Pixar to turn it into a hardware company. John Lasseter is
probably the bigger reason why it became such a successful animation company.
Of course, thanks to Steve the company survived long enough to discover its
true purpose and thanks to Steve got such a great deal with Disney for
marketing the initial movies.
~~~
jakarta
Yeah, if you read "The Pixar Touch" you get a good picture of what Jobs hoped
to achieve with Pixar (focusing on selling the hardware to consumers). His
main contribution was money. I think it was only after Toy Story did he truly
"get" how good the computer animated films could be.
It's funny because in the book they describe the brief period where Pixar was
owned by George Lucas, and he too did not have faith in computer animated
films.
~~~
nikcub
I remember reading something along the lines of 'Jobs saw Pixar as the next
SGI' - which matches a lot of what has been said in Pixar biographies
------
allenbrunson
This can't be real. What type of employer would say "Oh, Steve Jobs. Yes, I
think I may have heard of you, but let's have a look at your resume before we
get serious." And would Steve really write that one of his skills was "That
'vision thing?'"
~~~
alexobenauer
I think he's being modest for the asset that most clearly has. Being a
visionary is his greatest strength, I think he humbles it down by saying it
like that.
~~~
allenbrunson
I'm not contesting Steve's vision. This just seems too cutesy to be serious,
by several orders of magnitude. If this was really Steve's home page, I bet he
put this up as a joke.
~~~
rahoulb
It used to be the marketing page for iTools (which became mac.com which became
MobileMe).
I used to think it was a nice (slightly tongue in cheek) way of promoting the
service.
------
bluehat
That's a remarkably informal tone of writing for a resume. Is Steve Jobs just
casual or have resumes gotten more formal?
------
elvirs
I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that "vision thing"
Yeah, just a bit of vision thing :)
------
dustingetz
its likely fake. homepage.mac.com was for public content, kinda like
geocities.
------
reason
This résumé looks far better than many I come across today, aesthetically.
------
rbanffy
Wow! Rounded corners!
------
razin
Curious as to why he wrote "Left in 1986 to decide which step to take NeXT"
under his first stint at Apple. I thought he was fired by John Sculley.
~~~
willifred
The Apple board reduced Steve Jobs's role at Apple to ceremonial/figurehead.
Steve Jobs actually resigned from Apple.
[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=The_End_Of_An_Era.txt)
------
ammarkalim
"references: available on request"
I wonder who will Steve Jobs ask for references...woz? Bill gates?...oh yes i
think it would be Mark Zuckerberg..haha
------
ammarkalim
guys..seriously is thing real? i always thought it was made by some fan boy
------
alexobenauer
What's interesting to me is I can't imagine why he would need this unless he
was looking to move on to his next thing after apple. This isn't a list of
accomplishments - it's a resume, geared to sell someone on why this guy should
be hired.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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YC Demo Day: Why I Pitched BARE Foot + Tips for Being Relaxed on Stage - jkresner
http://hackerpreneurialism.com/post/81222695099/pitching-airpair-bare-foot-tips-for-relaxed-on-demo-day
======
swederik
This looks incredibly useful for researchers, though you'll need to offer a
lower price.
e.g. I'm a neuroscientist. Say I have a question about whether or not to
perform fiber tractography through brain regions that show hypointense
lesions, like in multiple sclerosis. There are probably a few thousand people
that could give decent answers to solve the problem, and less than a hundred
that could directly answer it more-or-less definitively (since they are likely
to be the eventual paper's reviewers).
I'd certainly be willing to pay to get that answer up front. Especially when
the alternative is doing your best and having to redo the analysis and rewrite
the paper later.
------
aerosmile
While pitching barefoot might not work for everyone, watching the referenced
TED talk and the Tropical Thunder scene are highly recommended!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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NYC landlord obliterated dozens of graffiti murals – owes artists $6.75M - jnordwick
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/13/a-landlord-obliterated-dozens-of-graffiti-murals-now-he-owes-the-artists-6-7-million/
======
joeblow9999
Insanity
~~~
jnordwick
I actually a little sad this didn't make it to the font page or at least get a
little more exposure. The story and legal precedent are very interesting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Crafty POSTBOX Jump On Sparrow Opportunity - oscar-the-horse
http://www.horsesaysinternet.com/marketing/postbox-jump-on-sparrow-opportunity/
======
oscar-the-horse
TheNextWeb have also featured this story, with my image (giving me
attribution):
[http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/07/21/email-app-
creator-p...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/07/21/email-app-creator-
postbox-buys-a-promoted-tweet-to-attract-sparrow-users/)
| {
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Show HN: Make Me Work – a solution to procrastination - sixhobbits
https://make-me-work.com
======
sixhobbits
Hey HN, creator here. I've been thinking about remote personal assistants for
a while, but it's quite a bit to get off the ground. After publishing a book
recently and realising how important the role of my editor was, mainly just in
her role of checking that I was writing, and helping me set short-term
deadlines, I decided on productivity assistants instead.
I hope to grow the idea into a full-blown PA service (people who can organize
phonecalls and other admin tasks for you), but for now these people will be
around to talk to you and help keep you productive.
Feedback on the idea, site, or anything else would be highly appreciated.
Specifically:
\- Do you see the need for a service like this?
\- Do _you_ need a service like this?
\- How much would you be willing to pay for a service like this?
As mentioned in the pricing page, I'm giving a trial of the service free for
the first 5 members (1 month each), so feel free to be one of those five if
you're working on a project at the moment and battling to find motivation to
put in the hours.
~~~
magic_beans
The site's design is very lovely EXCEPT for the drawer menu. I spent a couple
minutes looking for more information before I finally realized I ought to
click the menu drawer. It was frustrating after committing the time to read
through the front page.
Design suggestion: put your 4 drawer items into the main nav so a user can
immediately find more detail after reading the intro page.
~~~
novium
Possibly a call-to-action-like button or something similar would be nice as
well.
Otherwise I certainly like the idea
~~~
brudgers
I would say a call-to-action button is a necessary change if a high priority
goal is to be a business.
~~~
sixhobbits
Thanks for the feedback! As I'm running this solo and on the side for now, the
priority for me is experimentation and to see if I can find even 5 people who
would be keen on the idea. If it goes well I'll definitely completely change
the pricing page and add a call-to-action on the main page.
~~~
geoelectric
Just make sure you know what you're getting into. The type of coaching you
describe is something people typically get training for. It goes past simple
project management skills since you're dealing 1:1 with their personalities
and other life considerations as well.
Even if you don't bring those into the conversation they'll play hell with the
results--that may mean it's unavoidable to bring them into the conversation as
"blockers" or "risks" and that potentially opens a can of worms.
One suggestion I'd throw out is to do the market research to figure out how
many people have severe enough procrastination issues to benefit from your
services, but who are otherwise sufficiently well-adjusted to not be more than
you could handle. How many people out there really do just need another pair
of eyes and a nudge, but are sufficiently isolated that they would have to
turn to this kind of service to get them?
Otherwise you might find yourself in a non-existent niche between people who
just needed a todo program and people who actually need serious help. If you
don't screen out that second type somehow, assuming you're not set up to
handle them, they'll potentially confound your scaling calculations by being
exceedingly high maintenance and they'll have a bad experience as well.
~~~
sixhobbits
Very good point. I definitely don't want (in the extreme case) suicidal
customers who expect me to fix their problems! The "market research" I've done
has been extremely informal and involved me describing the idea to some
academics (mainly master's/PhD candidates and a couple of freelancers). I've
had mainly positive feedback on the idea -- from people who lean more towards
your "just need a todo program" than "need serious help". I'll definitely put
some thought into screening out the latter group, as neither I nor the PAs
will be qualified to deal with them.
------
andrewfromx
why use a dot com domain and dashes? There are so many new top level domain
options now. What about dowork.club or procrast.stopper just anything other
than .com and dashes in the domain! You might as well have a "the" in there
too :)
~~~
sixhobbits
A few other people (outside of hn) have complained about the dashes :) I'm
considering alternatives!
I do still think that .com is preferable, both because it's the first thing a
lot of people try if they only remember the name and not the TLD, and because
a lot of the new TLDs (especially .club and others that you can get on
namecheap's 88c deal) are being used for pretty crummy businesses. Obviously
if I can get to top of Google results for a couple of decent queries, neither
problem matters too much.
~~~
andrewfromx
i really like the people running [http://get.club](http://get.club) they are
helping us at every step. Lot of professional sports people moving to dot
club.
------
rmasis
I think it is definitely a neat idea! I would use this-- but not right now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Update on Taking Tesla Private - chollida1
https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-taking-tesla-private?redirect=no
======
hn_throwaway_99
> I left the July 31st meeting with no question that a deal with the Saudi
> sovereign fund could be closed, and that it was just a matter of getting the
> process moving. This is why I referred to “funding secured” in the August
> 7th announcement.
He has a waaaaaayyy different definition of "secured" than I (and I think the
SEC) do. That tweet is going to cost Tesla and Musk big time.
~~~
garmaine
I don't know, that sounds like a handshake agreement, right? I wouldn't balk
at calling a handshake agreement "secured" given the context.
~~~
gamblor956
Between businesses, a handshake agreement means nothing. If the agreement is
not committed to paper it doesn't exist.
However, a handshake agreement could be valid between individuals depending on
the context.
~~~
tpetry
It‘s funny. In Germany a handshake agreement between individuals is worth
nothing but between businesses it‘s enforcable like a written contract.
~~~
gamblor956
We're not in Germany. Contract laws vary by country and by state.
In the US, the general law is that verbal contracts are worth the paper they
are written on, which is to say, not at all unless other facts/circumstances
support the existence of the verbal agreement _and its specific terms._
Otherwise anyone could claim to have a contract with anyone else.
For example, I claim to have had a verbal agreement with Mark Z for the
development of a social networking site owned by me but built by him. In the
absence of any other facts, no court would agree that such a contract exists.
However, maybe I show copies of emails where we discussed the idea for a
social networking site before it launched. That's some evidence that a verbal
agreement might have existed, but not as to what the terms were. Most likely,
the parties would settle without going to trial, simply because Mark wants to
proceed with the IPO without the sword of litigation hanging over his head--
even though he would very likely win. The marginal cost of winning at trial is
not worth the much larger cost of the harm to the IPO. (This is very loosely
based on the Winklevoss saga.)
~~~
checkyoursudo
Your generalization is backwards. In general, US contracts do not need paper
memorializing. The majority of transactions are not memorialized.
Specific types of transaction and certain value thresholds require
memorializing.
Facts and circumstances are required to support verbal contracts, but _in
general_ verbal contracts very much are enforceable.
~~~
gamblor956
Yes, of course. I'll ignore the law that I actually learned in law school and
in the actual practice of litigating contracts for what some guy said on the
internet...
There's a reason I brought up the falling apple example. Verbal contracts are
enforceable--if they satisfy the same requirements as written contracts. On
top of that, the terms of a verbal agreement must be corroborated by other
evidence outside of the verbal agreement itself in order to survive litigation
--and the trend in the US legal system is to require _more_ supporting
evidence.
------
Nokinside
Private companies are allowed to have up to 2,000 shareholders under they fall
under the same SEC reporting requirements as public companies. Tesla could
keep big investors and smallish investors with over $1 million in investable
assets or yearly income above $200k if they accredited themselves.
Other issue is what kind of owner PIM is. In principle it's long term patient
investor.
KSA has a new active prince/ruler that is self assured and proud. He is really
sovereign and relationship to him must be well managed. We all know that Musk
not a diplomat in his public or private communications.
Saudis have had little bit of cash flow problems because they have constant
budget deficit is typically 10-15 percent of their GDP or ~$50B/year and it
probably just grows in the future . On paper PIM has $2 trillion in assets,
but most of it is Saudi Aramco. Aramco IPO would generate cash flow but it's
delayed, probably because there is fair amount of air in the valuation. Saudi
Arabia has previously inflated it's oil reserves as a political decision to
match some OPEC agreements and real production capacity potential is top
secret.
If KSA continues to have cash flow problems and Tesla is disappoints somehow,
Tesla may end up at the hands of corporate raiders like Carl Icahn.
------
csomar
$358 is what TSLA is trading at right now (30minutes after this blog post hit
HN). I'm guessing the traders are calling BS on whatever Musk has in hands.
Imo, this looks like a stage to liquidate shorters (which Musk hates). Musk
could have mentioned here that S.A. had "committed" in some way to a private
deal. He didn't. They are still negotiating.
There is literally 0 reasons why the stock will trade below $420 if the
funding was "secured" let alone trade 15% below that.
~~~
freerobby
There's more to a buyout than the funding though; lack of board approval or
any agreement on terms (i.e. not just financial terms) are obviously deal-
breakers.
Certainly the market doubts whether this deal will go through, but it's not
clear to me that it's all about Tesla's access to capital.
~~~
csomar
I'd like to be convinced otherwise (both because I like what Tesla is doing
and I think Musk is a great executer) but I don't find anything on that blog
post that suggest that "funding is secured".
~~~
freerobby
Oh, I agree about that. I'm just saying that even if everybody felt that
funding was secured, the price would still not be at $420, because there are
other risks of a deal like this falling through.
~~~
csomar
Sure but this means that interested investors are willing to put $420 for
Tesla. Which means its' price should be higher.
------
noir_lord
That sounds like a retroactive arse covering exercise.
~~~
mikedouglas
Specifically the section on "funding secured". Any reasonable person would
interpret that as Musk having a term sheet in hand. This sounds more like
"funding potentially interested".
~~~
dwighttk
Especially since he later claimed: "Only reason why this is not certain is
that it’s contingent on a shareholder vote."
------
abhiminator
> Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has approached me multiple times about
> taking Tesla private.
Interesting to see countries most dependent economically on fossil fuels
heavily investing in their energy nemesis.
Curious about the ramifications that might emanate out of partly giving away
control of a large American automobile manufacturer to a foreign entity -- a
potentially hostile one no less -- given how sensitive Tesla vehicles'
proprietary technologies are from a safety/security standpoint.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Interesting to see countries most dependent on fossil fuels heavily
> investing in their energy nemesis.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have been hedging against fossil fuels massively for
many decades. It's been a driving force behind major regional conflicts with
global participation, so it's kind of one of those things that people should
generally be aware of.
> Curious about the ramifications that might emanate out of partly giving away
> control of a large American automobile manufacturer to a foreign entity
You mean like when Chrysler got taken over by Fiat?
~~~
toyg
To be fair, FIAT was hardly ever under the sort of nation-state influence that
a sovereign fund is. They occasionally made business that "pleased", let's
say, the Italian government, but it was decades before the Chrysler deal, and
it was pretty rare anyway. Usually the relationship was the other way around,
with the state making moves for the company to profit from, which is expected
for any company.
Sovereign funds are direct emanations of nation-states, which is different.
When they buy a somewhat-strategic industrial asset, it is significant. The
question is whether the US (and particularly this fossil-fuel-friendly
administration) actually see Tesla as strategic at all - my guess is that the
guys currently in charge wouldn't care one bit.
------
jaaames
It's disconcerting this is written in the first person from Musk and not from
a communications team as a public statement from the company.
I think it's rather Freudian about his world view and behavior. He seems to
have an opinion on everything and disregard experts left and right.
I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with this personality running a company
this size. Some CTO/engineering role, sure, CEO and board member with
everything that entails is a time bomb.
~~~
mergejoin
Have you considered the possibility that this blog article was reviewed by
legal experts before being posted? I don't know of course but that's a
possibility.
------
AlexandrB
How is Tesla going private if the goal is for potentially _all_ its current
shareholders to remain? Isn't there a limit on the number of investors a
private company can have[1]? What if I own Tesla stock? Do I become a private
shareholder afterwards? Does this just mean I don't get quarterly reports
anymore? What if I still want to get quarterly reports? If I _am_ still
getting the same reporting as before, in what meaningful way is Tesla private?
None of this makes a lick of sense.
[1] [https://blog.gust.com/limiting-the-number-of-shareholders-
in...](https://blog.gust.com/limiting-the-number-of-shareholders-in-private-
companies/)
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _if the goal is for potentially all its current shareholders to remain?_
Revise "all current shareholders" to "all current material shareholders" and
Elon's tweets make more sense.
> _Isn 't there a limit on the number of investors a private company can
> have?_
Not technically. But you have to do all the expensive things a public company
does if your "securities are 'held of record' by either 2,000 persons, or 500
persons who are not accredited investors" [1]. Practically speaking, those are
the limits.
[1] [https://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/secg/jobs-act-
section-12g-...](https://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/secg/jobs-act-
section-12g-small-business-compliance-guide.htm)}
~~~
berberous
A tweet from him: "My hope is _all_ current investors remain with Tesla even
if we’re private. Would create special purpose fund enabling anyone to stay
with Tesla. Already do this with Fidelity’s SpaceX investment."
Still doesn't really make sense to me though. Not sure how that would work.
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _A tweet from [Musk]: "My hope..._
Elon expressed a hope, not a goal.
Fidelity's SpaceX SPV is restricted to a small number of accredited investors.
Goldman tried the "put investors in a box, put the box on the cap table, and
call the box 1 investor" schtick when Facebook was private [1]. While Facebook
went public before they fell afoul of the law, the authorities clearly
expressed their views on such structures [2].
[1] [https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/facebook-and-
the-500...](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/facebook-and-
the-500-person-threshold/)
[2]
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704723104576062...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704723104576062280540485652)
------
mabbo
Musk needs to step out of the limelight. It's obvious that he loves it, but
half the news about him is the stupid things he's done or said on Twitter or
on blog posts. It does him no favors and makes him look like a child who has
just figured out he can scream, and that the world will react when he does[0].
Elon, go back to what you're best at: inventing, being in the lab, running the
factory, making the world better with your mind. Stop trying to be famous
because it does you more harm than good.
The biggest danger to Tesla today is an over-inflated ego.
[0](I wonder if any politicians have figured this out?)
~~~
knight-of-lambd
I disagree from a practical standpoint. Personal infamy is essentially free
advertisement, up to a certain limit. As long as Elon isn't perceived as
running the company into the ground.
He spends a few seconds tweeting and suddenly his name and Tesla is plastered
over the next news cycle. Great ROI.
------
uhnuhnuhn
A Saudi government owned Tesla will lose me as a customer. If you're eager to
do business with the Saudi government your moral compass is seriously out of
whack.
~~~
berberous
Greater good? For all the advantages and potential success of TSLA, it is in a
precarious financial position and could fail. If the Saudis want to dump money
into it and accelerate the world's transition to solar and electric cars,
seems like a net win to me.
~~~
rsynnott
If Tesla collapsed tomorrow, I don't see that that'd make a huge difference to
adoption of electric cars in the long-term. Arguably, Nissan collapsing would
be worse. The Leaf is a much better model for widespread adoption than Tesla's
stuff.
~~~
MrEfficiency
I was going to say GM's Bolt/Volt since it was one of those 'best cars of the
year'. If that fails + is electric, thats a bad indicator for the future.
Tesla gets a pat on the back for trying to be new/different. The quality of
Tesla is nothing like established companies. You cant even blame Tesla, they
dont have data like a company thats been around for decades.
~~~
rsynnott
> I was going to say GM's Bolt/Volt since it was one of those 'best cars of
> the year'.
Barely available outside the US. There's the Opel Ampera, which is mostly a GM
Volt, but it's weirdly expensive so no-one buys it. The Leaf is the world's
best-selling electric car, for now (especially if you include its very close
relatives like the Renault Zoe; I don't think that's precisely the same
platform, but it's close).
~~~
greglindahl
GM doesn't get California credits for selling Bolts outside of California and
the other states that follow the California standard.
Isn't the Leaf about to stop being the world's best-selling electric car?
~~~
rsynnott
It's possibly been replaced by the BAIC EC, at least for the first part of
this year. That's unlikely to last, though; the Chinese market is too
fragmented for that. The BAIC EC is also of very limited relevance worldwide.
------
liaukovv
To me it seems that the deal relies on 2/3 of current investors being willing
to keep their money in the company while losing any leverage they have to
control Elon at least in some way. I wonder if these estimations are correct,
especially for bigger funds.
~~~
martin_bech
Not at all true. if you have 20% of the stock of a private or public company
is exactly the same voting wise etc. The only difference, is thats its
publicly traded, and the pros and cons of that (very liquid, quarterly reports
etc.).
------
haaen
I'm wondering how Musk's compensation scheme will change when Tesla becomes
private again. It was approved a few months ago by Tesla shareholders. It
gives Elon Musk no salary, only restricted stock awards. They can reach a
value of tens of billions of dollars. Restrictions for the full package: Tesla
has to reach annual sales of 175 billion and the stock market has to give TSLA
a market cap of 650 billion.
------
paulus_magnus2
__capital required for going private would be funded by equity rather than
debt,
__approximately two-thirds of shares owned by all current investors would
roll over into a private Tesla.
Musk needs to find 23 friends willing to put $1b into a retirement-fund. The
fund takes over the existing shares and buys whoever wants to exit at $420.
------
JumpCrisscross
> _the Managing Director of the [Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth] fund_
Does anyone know to whom this refers?
~~~
whatok
[https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp...](https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=241125061&privcapId=12455701)
that's what "PIF managing director" on google gives me.
------
panarky
This is strategic for the Saudis.
Other strategic investors and sovereign wealth funds that will not want to see
Tesla controlled by a competitor for 10% over today's price.
Norway, China and Abu Dhabi each have SWFs larger than Saudi Arabia [1], and
the energy implications of letting Tesla go would be strategic for each of
them.
Tesla's market cap is only 6% of Apple's, and Apple isn't geopolitically
strategic. We may see a bidding war for Tesla before they go private.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund#Largest_sovereign_wealth_funds)
------
shriver
> To be clear, when I made the public announcement, just as with this blog
> post and all other discussions I have had on this topic, I am speaking for
> myself as a potential bidder for Tesla.
Elon Musk sent an e-mail to all his employees on August 7th, and published the
e-mail to the world. In the e-mail he made a number of quite worrying
statements as the CEO of the company and some outlandish claims. One week
later on August 13th, Elon Musk rips off his mask and cackles manically:
Behold! It was me all along! Not the mild mannered CEO of your heart, but I
have been secretly talking as a potential bidder for your company! Moohahaha.
------
WhompingWindows
I'd be interested to know who besides the Saudis are interested. Who are the
biggest players? I'm guessing Elon has many, many wealthy friends with huge
numbers of Tesla shares that are interested in this plan.
~~~
jbergens
Maybe he could contact the Norwegian Oil Fund also. They should also be
interested in something else than oil and Tesla sells a lot of cars there.
[https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/](https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/)
~~~
agnsaft
I cannot possibly imagine that Norway would gamble with such a large stake in
a single company. Such funds usually have some strategies to reduce risk and
thereby protect the wealth of their citizens.
------
_Codemonkeyism
Sounds like trying to get the SEC away.
------
runamok
I'm confused why elon says 2/3rds of shareholders would keep invested in a
private Tesla. How would they ever get their money back out? Only if they went
public in future or if they sold to another party? Based in their market cap
compared to GM, Toyota, etc. that seems a bit crazy.
~~~
nickik
You can still trade stocks and there are events to do that.
------
MrEfficiency
Any idea why the Saudi (government) wants to buy Tesla?
Is it part of the oil conspiracy to kill electric vehicles?
Given how GM, Nissan, and others have electric vehicles, I dont think this
could stop the new wave of buyers.
Anyone want to take a stab at why this is happening?
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Any idea why the Saudi (government) wants to buy Tesla?_
They believe it to be a good investment and think (a) Tesla's management will
do better without the public market's constant scrutiny and/or (b) their own
books could benefit from less apparent volatility.
> _Is it part of the oil conspiracy to kill electric vehicles?_
Probably not. The Saudi sovereign wealth fund has been set up as a hedge
against their oil-based economy.
------
memossy
Musk betting the farm on the Saudis basically saying 'Insh'Allah'
------
jasonmaydie
Saudi Arabia? I know they have money but it's like selling your chicken coop
to a snake
~~~
WhompingWindows
No, it's Saudi Arabia attempting to diversify its holdings. If they've seen
oil-rich countries fall again and again to low oil prices, it makes a lot of
sense for them to hedge their bets and protect against the future where solar
(they're investing a ton in this) and EVs may remain supreme. If these
investments don't pan out, they still have a massive amount of very cheap oil
reserves and will keep those longer than most other oil producers.
~~~
InitialLastName
>If they've seen oil-rich countries fall again and again to low oil prices
... especially in context of how successful they've been at lowering oil
prices to hurt their rivals.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
85% of Smartphone Users Would Rather Give up Water Than Mobile Apps - the_watcher
http://mashable.com/2013/02/26/smartphone-users-giving-up-mobile-apps/
======
stackcollision
The people who answered this way have clearly never had to go a day without
water.
~~~
rhizome
It's possible there are problems with the survey's methodology.
------
diminoten
If proposed with the actual dilemma, I would at least like to think that the
numbers would be skewed a little more favorably towards survival.
I'm not exactly sure what this specific question even means, other than a
reinforcement of the adage, "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid response."
------
casca
TL;DR: A company that sells API services for mobile apps finds that mobile
apps are more important than water.
The 85% number is reported by Mashable, the infographic which claims to come
from Apigee (who did the research) does not show this. Also, no link to the
actual report or any methodology is provided or evident on the Apigee website.
------
vanderZwan
The picture says coffee, not water.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Artificial Intelligence Enables the Economics of Abundance - gooseus
https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/artificial-intelligence-and-the-economics-of-abundance-92bd1626ee94
======
gooseus
OP disclaimer - I did not write this and do not endorse the claims personally.
I'm hoping to aggregate some expert responses for the person who sent it to
me, but if it's not worth the time/energy of the HN community then I totally
understand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Counters – GUI for those who don't do GUI - okaleniuk
https://github.com/akalenuk/16counters
======
Evidlo
Cool idea. Here's how to do it in Linux with files:
# create the "counters"
touch {01..16}
# use multitail to show all counters in a grid, 4 columns
multitail -s 4 *
Now you can write to any of these files
echo hello > 01
echo world > 16
The result looks like this:
[https://i.imgur.com/yVWWMfr.png](https://i.imgur.com/yVWWMfr.png)
You can also tell multitail to automatically rescan the directory and display
new files
# check current directory for new files once/sec. match any file
multitail -s 4 -q 1 "*"
~~~
Phrodo_00
You can also have nice dialogs by using dialog/xdialog/zenity. For example,
you can use named pipes and get a nice progress bar:
mkfifo progress
cat progress | zenity --progress --text='progress' --percentage=0 &
echo 10 > progress
sleep 10
echo '# Done!' > progress
echo 100 > progress
[https://help.gnome.org/users/zenity/3.32/progress.html.en](https://help.gnome.org/users/zenity/3.32/progress.html.en)
[http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_dialog.php](http://linuxcommand.org/lc3_adv_dialog.php)
~~~
brbsix
I always use YAD, a much more feature-filled fork of zenity.
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/yad-
dialog/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/yad-dialog/)
------
saagarjha
> The buttons seem misaligned but there is logic in it. The buttons that has
> to do with the coutners are closer to the counters. And the buttons that
> expose the window handler are closer to the window handler. And yes, the
> number on top is the window handler.
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this, since I can't see how this
works. How does [C], which "copies a C-style SendMessage template to the
clipboard", have anything to do with exposing the window handler?
~~~
tastroder
If you look at the SendMessage code examples, they contain the window handle
as the first parameter. Looks like that's a convenience feature to reduce the
amount of typing required to get data into the target. It basically generates
code to communicate with the instance you pressed the button on I believe.
------
weinzierl
I've heard from game dev circles that some use _Dear ImGui_ in the same spirit
- as quick ad-hoc sort of GUI. A printf on steroids, if you will.
~~~
akx
That + this post gives me an interesting idea... a local network interface for
ImGui for environments where you don't have a native window, or there are no
convenient bindings for ImGui.
~~~
tom_
See also imdebug:
[http://www.billbaxter.com/projects/imdebug/](http://www.billbaxter.com/projects/imdebug/)
~~~
codetrotter
From the name and context I was expecting something directly releated to
ImGui, but imdebug is not directly related to ImGui nor to immediate mode GUIs
in general in any way. Still interesting however, even though it wasn't what I
was expecting.
~~~
tom_
It was the network interface aspect that made me think of it.
------
tastroder
I wouldn't personally use this since my preference usually goes towards
terminal UIs but I love seeing these personal productivity tools that people
come up with. Nice work (and kudos on actually maintaining readable assembly
code)!
Isn't it annoying to have to change out window handles manually all the time?
Or did that just become muscle memory after using the concept for that long?
~~~
okaleniuk
I try not to keep the SendMessages for too long. We actually have a Linux
gate-build at work so they only live on local machines.
But every once in a while I spawn them all across the code to hunt some bug,
and then I think I got it, and I do the victorious "Aha!" and close the
window. And, of course, it's not it and then yes it gets annoying to update
the handlers.
~~~
mst
A thought sprung to mind: In *n?x environments, if I were implementing
something like this I think I'd do it using an env var for sync. Think
something like:
$ eval $(start_counters); # start process, print 'COUNTERS_ID=...'
$ ./myapp
i.e. "stealing the way ssh-agent works for fun and profit"
I'm suspecting you already thought of this sort of trick and rejected it as
not worth the extra complication for the rare annoyance, but since it didn't
pop into my head until hours after originally reading this comment I figure it
was worth noting just in case.
------
pjc50
The ""deluxe"" (ie far more complicated) version of this might be to use ETW,
which is one of those extremely Microsoft APIs that's both powerful but obtuse
and can only really be learned from the one blogger providing examples. Which
in this case is the amazing series of posts from
[https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/etw-
central/](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/etw-central/)
ETW would also work in those rare situations where SendMessage() doesn't, such
as from a device driver, and can more easily be logged.
------
hanniabu
From the title I thought it would be some type of data dashboard with a simple
conf file to grab all the data. The conf file could have options like
"endpoint" for the API endpoint, "type" for the chart type (bar, plot, pie,
etc), "target" for how to target the data in the response (res["someData"]),
or "targetx" and "targety" for graphs, "labels" and "axis" for assigning
labels to the data, and "style" for selecting different variations for the
graphs/chart such as solid/dotted/dashed for line types.
------
rs23296008n1
This reminds me of those old carpenter tools and worn workbenches. Deceptively
simple and specific but its really a complex multitool full of subtleties
embedded mostly in _how you use it_ rather than in another GUI or command line
option.
In assembly language _and_ targeting windows as well. Novelty++.
------
stiray
Ehm, this just how windows work, you are having a hwnd (window handle) and
message with optional parameters. There are hundreds of messages and WM_USER
just defines start of custom defined messages. Typically you define your
custome message as WM_USER + arbitrary number. And you also have PostMessage.
~~~
okaleniuk
You're right, it is generally a good idea to use messages for this. It is also
better performance wise to keep all the dispatching in one place.
But I tried that at the very beginning and it was rather inconvenient since I
had to drag defines to every place I want to send a message from. "WM_USER +
'R'" might have worked but it's worse than "WM_USER, 'R'" aesthetically. And
there is an extra parameter anyway.
PostMessage is also better for writing things to the counters since it's
asynchronous. But it doesn't work for reading. It's just more convenient to
have one function do both but of course you can post messages too.
It's a silly tool anyway. Basically made of compromises.
------
vorpalhex
Given that this is <500 lines of assembly this is frankly amazing given the
overall complexity of the layout. Very clever.
------
29athrowaway
gnuplot, graphviz, ministat can help you visualize stuff fast.
For interactive stuff, you can create a HTTP server and send requests to it
from a web UI. For example, using this: [https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-
httplib](https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib)
~~~
weinzierl
gnuplot and graphviz both are a staple but I've never heard of ministat so far
- looks really useful though.
------
janci
This is neat. From time to time I use a thing I call livedisplay. It is a http
endpoint that you can send json message to an it will forward it to web
interface via websocket. Obviously much more overhead than 16 Counters, but
works on network and cross platform.
------
fareesh
I can't relate to this environment or workflow but off the top of my head if I
wanted to do something like this I'd use some kind of pub-sub and publish to
it from one place and read from another - is that what this is ? Or am I
missing something?
~~~
0xffff2
Yes, except there isn't really a subscribe step so it's really just "pub". You
are manually publishing messages to a static window handle.
~~~
fareesh
Got it
Is it not possible to just use redis or some windows equivalent for this kind
of requirement?
------
bmn__
Oleksandr, I can't help but be reminded of
[http://okcancel.com/strips/okcancel20031010.gif](http://okcancel.com/strips/okcancel20031010.gif)
:)
To be fair, your software probably was not intended to be used by anyone else
and publishing it to Github is just for sharing the underlying idea.
------
momofarm
MFC, still alive? In this “web” world, who still code use MFC framework?
~~~
FpUser
Yours truly and many, many others. I do not actually use MFC as I only use C++
for servers. GUI things in my case go to Delphi/Lazarus. There is a whole
world outside of that web juggernaut.
~~~
momofarm
Delphi! Whaaaaat a surprise !
I still miss MFC/windows programming a lot, I think in many ways it's quite
efficient.
But for job seeking it's not a good idea, opening for windows gui is quite
rare.
Maybe I should setup a web(!!) For lonely job seeker on windows programming /
and Delphi/lisp/scheme / all other good oldies forgotten by rest of the world.
~~~
FpUser
Delphi is quite popular still in Europe. Also it is not just Windows.
Delphi/Lazarus produce exe for all the major platforms. I was doing some GUI
app for Raspberry Pi and I had Lazarus IDE running right there, along with
debugging and all other goodies. Also I mostly develop products and are on my
own since 2000. Not much concern on my side about what all those big cloudy
companies think. Eff them ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Good Are UW Students in Math? - slackerIII
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-good-are-uw-students-in-math.html
======
lunchbox
As shown on the scanned answer key, this was an anonymous quiz. College
students have a tendency to put in pathetically minimal effort on things
they're not being directly graded on. Also, the quiz's stated purpose was to
help the teacher calibrate the assignments; maybe some students purposely
answered questions wrong in hopes of dumbing down the class. (Though I don't
dispute the author's central point.)
------
swolchok
The author says that UW students taking Atmospheric Sciences s101 "should be
the creme of the crop of our high school graduates with high GPAs".
1) Atmospheric Sciences 101 sounds like a "blowoff" class that liberal arts
students would take only to fulfill a science requirement. In other words, the
students are likely self-selected for lack of math/science ability.
2) UW is a public university. It may very well be the best public university
in Washington, but I'd bet the best students have a nontrivial rate of private
school attendance. (So as to dispel any illusions of elitism, I attended the
University of Michigan, which is also a public research university.)
~~~
timr
_"UW is a public university. It may very well be the best public university in
Washington, but I'd bet the best students have a nontrivial rate of private
school attendance."_
Don't kid yourself. This is an epidemic problem at _all_ schools, public and
private. I have friends who teach at both public and private universities, and
they all have the same horror stories. My own personal experience (private
undergrad / PhD at UW) bears out their anecdotes. With certain institutional
exceptions, private school kids are richer, not smarter.
Also, the GPA and SAT scores of incoming UW freshman are _astonishingly_ high
right now (IQR of 3.60-3.91 GPA, 570-680 SAT math, according to
<http://admit.washington.edu/Numbers>). Admittedly, those aren't Harvard
numbers, but one would still expect a 600 math SAT student to be able to do
well on a basic high-school algebra quiz.
~~~
swolchok
I did not disagree with the author's main point, merely the assertion I
singled out.
~~~
timr
Perhaps, but your argument was a challenge to the statement that the students
represent the best and brightest of the state, and that's what I was
addressing. When the test is as easy as this one, the argument that these
students aren't elite isn't important.
------
chancho
I'm just as upset with the state of math education in the US as anybody, but
if UW is anything like my alma mater, then "Atmospheric Science 101" is a
class that liberal arts majors take to satisfy their math & science general
education requirements. A lot of these students (my wife, for example) have
serious math anxiety. She could probably get a 70% on this test, even today,
so many years after school, but throw it at her without warning on the first
day of a non-math class and she'd literally cry.
Now there's a case to be made that a good high school math curriculum should
not leave anyone anxious about math, but I still think it's a bit of a leap to
take this test and extrapolate to all students.
~~~
dschobel
Same experience with my girlfriend. She has a good analytical mind (she
graduated near the top of her law class) but she's just terrified of math.
The weirdest aspects of this phenomenon are that: a) there's a very real fear
of math unlike any other subject and b) there's no stigma against being
mathematically illiterate as there is for other subjects (most likely because
so many people just accept that "math is hard" and not for them).
~~~
spamizbad
Is it any surprise, though? Math is taught in a manner that focuses very much
on the _how_ but rarely ever the _why_. And while Discovery Math/Reform
Math/etc are lambasted for not teaching kids to memorize certain algorithms,
they do something else that's very important: encourage students to use
creative problem solving skills to develop their own solution algorithms.
I'm not going to advocate reform math in its current form, but I have to
question traditional "drill and kill" teaching methods in today's modern
world. If I can't remember how to find the area of a triangle, I just Google
it. Drilling it into my brain would have made sense in the 1920's when there
was no internet, no assurances my peers had the appropriate level of education
to know such a thing, and possibly no ability to reach an "expert" via
telephone to tell me the algorithm. I'd be completely reliant on my memory and
(possibly) a math book if I was fortunate enough to have one with me. For all
practical purposes, memorizing one half times base time height would have been
the way to go in a pre-Internet era. Today, it seems like it's far more
worthwhile to develop students who are solid problem solvers with strong
information retrieval skills, as opposed to wasting precious time memorizing
trivial algorithms that are readily available.
~~~
maximilian
_Is it any surprise, though? Math is taught in a manner that focuses very much
on the how but rarely ever the why. And while Discovery Math/Reform Math/etc
are lambasted for not teaching kids to memorize certain algorithms, they do
something else that's very important: encourage students to use creative
problem solving skills to develop their own solution algorithms._
The idea sounds really great, but everything i've ever seen is that the
students just end up terrible at everything. I even tried to teach it some,
and the material seemed great to me as a teacher, but the students just never
got it. I feel like the discovery idea makes a lot more sense in hindsight,
but when learning that way, doesn't work out like hoped.
However, I study applied math and I would say i learn in a more discovery
way... But thats at the graduate level.
~~~
spamizbad
If students are ending up terrible at everything, then the problem is deeper
than just tradition vs reform. What's likely occurring is we are much better
at teaching plug-and-chug than we are at developing problem solving. That's to
be expected, as it's significantly harder to develop problem solving skills
than it is to simply memorize steps, grade, correct, and repeat until perfect.
This is especially true when you consider most math teachers really aren't
trained in the art of problem solving, and were likely taught in a traditional
manner themselves. As such they have no real frame of reference to go off of
when attempting to foster problem solving skills in their students.
------
gommm
And I remember in France how my university professors used to complain that
high school students became weak in set theory...
I didn't know that the level in the US had fallen that far... but it's true
that I remember helping a girl in the nearby community college on her math
classes and the level of the exercises she had was about the french 7-8th
grade math.
But of course, I think the emphasis on math in europeans countries is maybe
different than in the us. In France, for example, ability in math is the main
selection criteria and students who took the scientific curriculum in
highschool had 6-8 hours/week of mathematics and for calculating the gpa,
mathematics had a coefficient of 7-9 (compared to 3 for english for example).
And because the scientific curriculum is considered the most prestigious a lot
of students who intend to later study non-scientific specialities like law or
business take it.
------
Dilpil
Interesting premise, questionable conclusion. Kids can't do simple concept
problems, so they need more drilling? Failure to calculate 1/.1 is not due to
lack of practice, it is due to fundamental lack of understanding of fraction
division. This is not a problem you fix via repeated long division of 4 digit
numbers. This is a problem stemming from the fact that these students were
never given a good idea of what the symbols they are being forced to move
around really mean.
And who cares that they don't know the definition of cosine, or the formula
for the area of a circle? These are not fundamental ideas for non engineers.
~~~
mquander
In my opinion, those are fundamental ideas for human beings in the year 2010;
obviously we have to lower our expectations to match reality, but we shouldn't
pretend they are unreasonable. Really, how difficult is the idea of a cosine?
That's not exactly an unapproachable level of abstraction.
Remember, these are people who have had _12 years_ of full-time mandatory
schooling, and have signed up for a few more years on top of that. If anyone
with an average IQ cared even a tiny bit about such things, they could learn
all of it in half that time; and if they don't care at all, parents and
teachers didn't do their job.
Of course, I agree with the main thrust of your post. Somehow, you have to
actually encourage (and allow) the students to understand what they're dealing
with, instead of giving up, moving numbers and letters on paper, and passing
to the next class. If that doesn't happen, there's no surprise that they've
forgotten it six weeks after the course.
~~~
roundsquare
I agree that just drilling on the mechanics of long division doesn't help.
But, drilling the concepts can help. The point of the article is that instead
of letting kids discover everything on their own and then feeling happy,
teachers should direct their learning. In doing so, I would say they should
drill the same concept repeatedly and ask questions that test both the ability
to do the procedure and understand the concept.
Anecdotally, this is how I taught my sister multiplication and how my friend
tutored someone in calculus.
------
shalmanese
In UW's defense, "Weather 101" is pretty commonly known as an easy class to
fill up General Education requirements.
------
lutorm
Another lament of what's wrong with mathematics, by mathematician Paul
Lockhart:
<http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html>
He doesn't quite agree with this article.
------
tigerthink
Actually, I'm pretty sure this problem is exclusive to Washington. Go here
<http://www.wheresthemath.com/>
and scroll down to 'Washington State Facts'. Anecdote: I attend a community
college in California, found the problems laughably easy, and have met tons of
people in my classes who would feel much the same way.
------
tkahn6
I would bet these students got excellent grades in math.
EDIT: As in, I'm sure that during high school they got high marks in math
class without actually understanding the fundamentals of what they were
'learning'.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you use code to solve everyday (non business) challenges? - verumnoslib
I've been working professionally as a developer for some years and I've been wondering If/How do you use programming in your everyday life and solve challenges? Or to improve your routine?<p>Looking for ideas to use knowledge for improving life quality with programming.
======
telebone_man
I remember reading about a guy who had a scheduled task run at 5 pm. It would
check if he was still logged on, and if he was, it would automatically send an
SMS to his wife to explain he would be home a little bit late. It would also
check if he had logged in by 8am, and if he hadn't it would automatically send
an e-mail to relevant parties saying he was running late.
~~~
Nnubes256
You may be talking about [https://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/249-now-thats-what-
i-call-a-...](https://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/249-now-thats-what-i-call-a-
hacker/)
There's a repository with implementations of those scripts in multiple
languages at [https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-
scripts](https://github.com/NARKOZ/hacker-scripts)
~~~
wreath
The comments on the article is something out of this world.
------
wingerlang
Various implementations (or re-implementations) of tools I use to become
productive comes to mind.
Some scripts that keeps my laptop clean/manageable.
For me these are "everyday life" as I spend so much time on my laptop.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Luna Display turns your iPad into a second Mac display - helloworld
https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/10/luna-display-second-display-ipad-mac/
======
helloworld
While Apple continues to resist integrating macOS and iOS, it's fun to see
this mashup, which gives a touch experience to a Mac.
Isn't it only a matter of time before Apple unites its desktop and tablet
experiences? (I'm not a Windows 10/Surface user, so I don't know how well it
actually works, but hat's off to Microsoft for at least trying.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google drops three OS X 0days on Apple - snake_case
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/google-drops-three-os-x-0days-on-apple/
======
cheald
Apparently Ars (or at least Mr. Goodin and his editor) don't know what a
"0-day" actually is. But hey, it sounds scary and gets traffic, so let's go
with it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Building Android first could make it harder to raise money - a4agarwal
http://sachin.posterous.com/android-gap
======
pedalpete
This is another good reason to build web/mobile-web/phonegap first if your
product can be done (and almost everything can) with these technologies.
Not stirring the native/web pot, but web allows quicker iterations, no app
store approval proceses, etc. etc.
At an introduction, does every investor even want to install another app? Do
they install the app of every business that contacts them? I doubt it.
Lower the barrier to entry. I just built a demo app for a start-up who is
looking for investment, and we had both camera/photo and location services in
the browser without even needing phonegap. It's been viewed on iPhone, Android
on both phones and tablets.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Let's make visualization in markdown - geekplux
https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/6mxj6z/lets_make_visualization_in_markdown/
======
geekplux
So excited to share a markdown-it plugin which let you generate a
visualization chart using several lines code.
The project homepage: [https://markvis.js.org/](https://markvis.js.org/) You
can have a try online: [https://markvis-editor.js.org/](https://markvis-
editor.js.org/) Source code:
[https://github.com/geekplux/markvis](https://github.com/geekplux/markvis)
Motivation
Very often we need to insert some data into our articles to make them more
convincing, and since we are more sensible of information in charts than
statistics, how to easily and conveniently embed a chart in an article is
important. However, common method is to export a chart as an image, then
upload it to an Image Hosting and get a url, finally paste the url to editor,
which is a tedious process from writer's perspective. Also, it makes the image
loading time become much longer than that of the DOM elements, which may be/is
a bad experience from reader's perspective.
Present situation
The current version is made in my spare time, It provides you with three most-
commonly-used charts: bar charts, line charts and pie charts. But you can use
the API to customize the new chart layout which is easy for you who know about
d3. Welcome any improvement to the current version and other charts you think
useful.
~~~
DrScump
The submitted article just quotes the above. Why not make the main link
[https://markvis-editor.js.org/](https://markvis-editor.js.org/) ?
~~~
geekplux
Thanks reminder, this is my first time to submit, so I don't know what's the
best practice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Speed or quality? With Test and Delivery you don’t have to choose - thjmay
https://thread.engineering/speed-or-quality-with-test-delivery-you-dont-have-to-choose-a562dc2597c1
======
danpalmer
I’m a little biased, but this process and the clarity it has brought to our
process at Thread has been pretty transformational. It’s a relatively simple
concept, but has had much more of an impact than I thought it would.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Docs got tweets - gritzko
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/great-documents-come-from-great.html?m=1
======
johnyqi
Google still rocks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Top C++ header file mistakes and how to fix them - debh
http://www.acodersjourney.com/2016/05/top-10-c-header-file-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them/
======
vikram_12
Excellent article. I feel there is a gap of good C++ physical layout
guidelines.
You might also want to look at :
[https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppC...](https://github.com/isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines/blob/master/CppCoreGuidelines.md)
------
sneha87
I think 5.b is mostly applicable when you're packaging DLLs. I don't see much
use for it in internal projects (Eg. If I'm building a end user solution and
not developer solution).
~~~
debh
Yes - it's mostly applicable when you're creating APIs and developer
solutions. But even in case of internal tools/ exes, you might need to share
functionality with a internal partner team and it's helpful if they don't have
to read code they don't need to use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DeepMind Achieves Human Level Performance in Quake III Arena Capture the Flag - replax
https://deepmind.com/blog/capture-the-flag-science/
======
programmarchy
This is pretty amazing. One thing I wondered is if this is a glorified aim
bot, but it’s a “tag” version of CTF so that’s less of a factor plus they
reduced the reaction time of bots. It also takes raw pixel input so it’s not
gaining an advantage by having an altered game model. However, sounds like the
bots didn’t receive sound input, which could be a human advantage (e.g.
hearing footsteps of a non-visible player behind a wall).
------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20054150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20054150)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[deleted] - yasoob
[deleted]
======
simonblack
I always found [edited] [deleted]
------
npv789
[deleted]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wildstar and the Case of the Too Pretty Alien Females - Mz
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/wildstar-and-the-case-of-the-too-pretty-alien-females
======
Mz
Excerpt:
_There is a frustrating absence of weight to their characterization. Like
every woman in this universe, they stand wide-hipped and wasp-waisted. Their
faces are as rounded as their mammaries, framed with either a halo of leaves
or what resembles real, fibrous hair cast in plaster. And where their
Y-chromosomal counterparts might bear chunks of inscribed facial granite, the
female Granoks are restricted to woefully mundane-looking earrings. Earrings.
Why the Holy Carpfish of Good Taste would they want to wear ornamentation of
such a manner? Big, bold jewelry clipped to the ears seem a ludicrous
decoration on a race built on combat, don 't they? What if they get ripped
out? What if they catch a glint of dying firelight and divulge the Granok's
location to hypothetical quarry? Why can't I make my bold, boulder-y lady not
pretty?!_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When CONSTants vary (critique of 'const' in C++) - samstokes
http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2010/07/when-constants-vary.html
======
samstokes
I've argued in the past for 'const' being a feature of C++ that would add
value to other languages, but this article shows it's a more subtle and
confusing abstraction than it appears. I'm not convinced the abstraction
actually leaks - both the author's complaints are examples of "things you
thought const guarantees when it doesn't" rather than "ways to circumvent what
const guarantees" - but it doesn't mean what you'd instinctively hope it
means. (I feel this oblique Princess Bride reference is justified given that,
if you say 'const' in any part of your program, you really do have to keep
using that word.)
With all the talk of "support for immutable datatypes" I hoped Scala would do
more to support this sort of programming - e.g. statically guarantee a
function didn't mutate its arguments - but it actually offers less than C++
did. Forcing you to make the val/var choice for each variable is a nice
improvement over Java's "mutable unless you go out of your way", and having
performant immutable collections solves a common case (final reference to a
mutable HashMap); but you're still basically relying on code inspection or
documentation to tell you whether a given class is immutable. Having the type
system able to tell you that would help both the authors of a class and its
consumers.
~~~
gtani
Mutations inplace are often done /necessary to make things performant with the
JVM, viz clojure transients. For those playing along at home, the tapir book
("Purity Inside vs. Outside) and staircase book ("What makes an object
stateful? p 357) are good little summaries.
[http://programming-
scala.labs.oreilly.com/ch08.html#PurityIn...](http://programming-
scala.labs.oreilly.com/ch08.html#PurityInsideVsOutside)
~~~
samstokes
I'm not claiming that all data should be immutable, or even that all data in
Scala should be immutable; just that when you _are_ using immutable data, the
compiler should help you do that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to learn through freelancing? - vermasque
I want to become a full-time Ruby on Rails developer. I've read things like this (http://www.quora.com/Ruby-on-Rails/What-are-the-minimum-level-of-skills-for-an-entry-level-RoR-job#) that range from as little as throwing a few sample apps on GitHub to joining a programmer school. However, it may be hard to be motivated to build a few sample apps that have no users, and I don't want to move far away to attend one of these schools. Another option I've thought about is freelancing on sites like oDesk or elance to learn through experience. I'll have real problems to solve, and I can do it from my current location. I could do freelancing for 6-9 months to prepare a portfolio to get the full-time gig. The freelancing only is needed to provide significant experience; I'm not expecting much money out of this. I've got the savings to cover the living expenses. If you've attempted to learn via freelancing, did it work? What were the pitfalls? I can see one issue being that a lot of these online freelancing websites have a lot of people applying for the jobs so it may be hard to get them as a beginner even with some sample apps
======
timmm
Build your own projects and do freelancing on the side. Doing this will make
you a better programmer, allow you to compile a portfolio, and earn you some
cash.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Stuff for dads and sons to build together? - marcamillion
I have a 2.5 year old son, and one of my dreams has been to build things with him. Preferably things that he would like to be able to use after we build it.<p>Any suggestions?<p>A variety of complexity, cost and time commitment would be appreciated.<p>Every day, around-the-house material, would be best. However, I am not opposed to having to buy a few stuff.<p>Thanks.
======
SwellJoe
Stuff my dad and I made:
Downhill racer painted to look like the General Lee. The go cart idea
famousactress suggested is great, but costly. A downhill racer costs maybe 50
bucks, or a trip to the dump or polling your friends and family for parts (old
lawn mower or bikes for wheels, for example).
Tree house in the woods behind our house.
A boat. Sort of. It wouldn't float, because my friend Steven and I put
thousands of nails in it...Some sort of decoration or something.
Wooden deck (this was for my mom, but it was a useful learning experience, and
kids don't mind doing work, if it's kept light-hearted and easy going and they
get to hang out with their dad while he's being awesome)
Numerous electronics projects using various kits from Radio Shack. Eventually
ended up with a 200-in-1 kit, that I saw on reddit a few weeks ago is still in
production. The radio transmitters were always the most exciting for me,
though extremely complex, especially if you want to be able to hear it all
over the neighborhood (you need an amp and an antenna to really break federal
law properly).
Numerous computer projects. Mostly repairing old ones that we'd bought at
garage sales and then reselling them.
Numerous car projects, including fixing and doing oil changes and such on my
own car when I got old enough to have one.
All of these things led to me having a pretty severe DIY attitude...maybe too
much so. I try to fix and build just about everything myself. This week, for
example, I specced out what it would cost to take a box truck and turn it into
the perfect motorhome ($29000, including a late model 17' medium duty diesel
box truck with attic, and mostly new interior parts; about $9k less if most of
the RV parts can be obtained through salvage sources, in case anyone is
wondering).
------
famousactress
Go Cart!!! Sorry. Lost opportunity from my childhood. Still pretty
enthusiastic about turning a lawn mower into a race car, apparently.
~~~
SwellJoe
You could make it an electric project these days, and teach environmental
friendliness from an early age.
All of the big problems with electric cars (range, battery weight/cost, lack
of charging stations, charging time, etc.) aren't present in a go-cart, so
solving the technical problems is much easier.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why the US can beat China: The Facts about SpaceX Costs - cwan
http://www.spacex.com/updates.php
======
mixmax
Although it's a bit of an apple to oranges comparison Copenhagen suborbitals
are on the trajectory to launching a human into space in around three years
time. In a months time they'll have their first testflight from Bornholm in
the baltic sea. They're doing this whole thing based on nothing but sponsors
and goodwill. Their budget is around $8000 a month - orders of magnitude lower
than spacex. They also built the worlds largest homemade submarine btw.
Until now they've developed solid rocket boosters, parachutes, recovery
programs, astrouanut survival and cockpit, etc. etc. and have not run into
major problems yet.
Some links:
Website: <http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com>
Static test of solid rocket booster (110.000 HP):
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g_xjGOJRws&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g_xjGOJRws&feature=related)
TEDx talk by Christian Von Bengtson:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua9oGxNNGd0>
All their technology is open source by the way.
_Shameless plug:_ These guys survive on donations, and a few months ago I
helped start a support organization to help them survive economicvally. It's
$20 a month to be a member, and we really need more members so we can get
these guys into space. If you feel this is a worthy cause and want to join
send me an e-mail (it's in my profile). Our website is
<http://raketvenner.dk/> (currently only in Danish...)
~~~
pdelgallego
Are you guys developing any kind of software?
I am a web developer, so I don't know much about C, but I am sure a lot of
people here can help if you put a repository.
~~~
sukuriant
Just a head's up. If there are human lives involved and at risk based on
software development, it is incredibly, incredibly important that the software
go through the highest possible level of testing, including every possible
codepath, every input partition, everything. If it crashes midflight due to a
bug, there's about nothing you can do about it. And people will die.
Remember that when you're considering developing mission critical software. It
is the most dangerous sort of software to write, and needs aggressively
comprehensive testing.
~~~
count
I mean this in the most positive fashion possbile, so please don't take it as
just snarky assholism:
It's that kind of thinking that would have prevented most of human achievement
in the last few hundred years. If the people signing up to ride this open
source rocket into space are aware of the risks, then let them take them. That
doesn't mean don't put any care and testing into things, but don't turn into
NASA when trying to innovate.
~~~
potatolicious
There's a difference between a risk-taking pioneering spirit, and needless
stupidity.
There's also a difference between accepting the inherent dangers of primitive
spaceflight, and being cavalier with people's lives.
------
Symmetry
An illuminating anecdote:
A while ago my friend from work was at an base where SpaceX would be launching
from. However, during the launch an anomaly was discovered and the countdown
was suspended. At this point all the Air Force people went home, since they
were used to this sort of thing taking a week to sort out, but the SpaceX
people quickly isolated the problem and the launch only ended up being delayed
an hour.
------
protomyth
I'm glad that SpaceX is so concerned with cost. It is sometimes hard for a
company to stay focused on that when they get a government contract.
As for the rest, I would imagine when robots get good enough, then the
incentive to use cheap labor in China drops and factories in the US become
more economically viable.
~~~
pradocchia
I have often wondered whether free trade of goods has retarded the development
of more sophisticated automation & robotics. What technology advancements have
we missed out on when it's been cheaper to move manufacturing to China, rather
than make capital investments at home?
Note that any decision to off-shore is distorted by a) limits to the free
movement of labor and b) currency manipulation. So at the margin, you might
replace an efficient domestic operation w/ an inefficient foreign process, and
make up the difference in currency and labor cost arbitrage. In such cases,
free trade of goods alone has a detrimental effect on technological progress.
Or at least that's the speculation.
~~~
Dove
I don't mind. Sending manufacturing jobs overseas raises the standard of
living there and introduces technology and industry to the region. The folks
doing those jobs won't be stuck at that income level forever.
I think my standard of living is pretty good. If I could have super robots
next decade, or I could have them in three decades after conditions around the
globe have equalized a bit . . . well, I don't mind the wait.
~~~
pradocchia
True, it's probably better to forgo a degree of technological progress in some
areas while the rest of the world catches up. And as it does, technological
progress will still occur, just in different areas, like energy,
transportation and computers. Health too, maybe.
Actually, I have no idea what industries will respond to growing prosperity w/
higher capital investment in technology--at the moment it seems to be
computers, but I don't know how far to project that into the future. I know
some people project it off to a singularity. Time will tell!
~~~
JoeAltmaier
I imagine the responders here are not blue-collar. So its easy to say "I don't
mind that guy's job going overseas, it appeals to my liberal philosophy".
While they lose their house, we feel warm inside.
~~~
Dove
Yeah, nobody _ever_ outsources technical work. ;)
I don't think anyone is ever entitled to work, whatever the industry.
Especially if someone else wants to do the same work for cheaper -- be it with
a machine or in another country.
If you tell me someone lost their job and is having a hard time supporting
their family, I do feel compassion. But the tool I reach for is charity, not a
free job.
It's not like there's a shortage of opportunity. If your skillset doesn't
support your desired income -- especially if you find yourself unemployed --
go get some new skills. Whether it's reading a book about PHP or learning to
repair refrigerators at the local community college, someone can pivot in a
few months' time. (I wish this were more of an expected fallback; it seems
like simple common sense to me.)
In the mean time, the rest of us have cheaper products, and are that much
richer.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
It might be possible to reach that goal without rapid destabilizing change.
Some folks don't retrain as easy as us, and have a real hard time when we
change society as fast and often as we do.
~~~
Dove
You know, I would normally let this sort of argument go, but you've stepped on
a pet peeve of mine and it's been a while since it got some fresh air.
I dislike arguments that focus on a particular consequence producing a
particular strain of human misery, and dare the reader to disagree at the risk
of being cold-hearted. I find the argument inappropriately personal --
focusing as it does on the virtue and piety of the person. But mainly I find
it . . . well, myopic. Near-sighted.
Take the outsourcing we're discussing. The suffering of the fellow who loses
his job and maybe his house and has to move back in with his parents is one
piece of the equation. The other piece is his counterpart in China who lives
in worse conditions, and wants to work hard to improve life for him and his
family, but lacks the opportunity.
And then there's the cheaper product itself. There's the company that makes
more money, which affects its shareholders and stock prices, which in
aggregate affects people's retirement accounts. Perhaps one of _them_ is in
danger of losing a house? And then there are the customers, who can now afford
the cheaper product, or who can afford more other things because it _is_
cheaper. Perhaps one of _them_ is in a tight situation, too?
And that doesn't even include tertiary effects. Perhaps this cheaper product
is used as a component for something else new. Perhaps a whole new technology
becomes feasible now. Perhaps it changes the _world_. Where does _that_ fit in
the equation?
That's why the argument strikes me as myopic. Our notional blue collar worker
may indeed _be_ miserable, but who is to say his misery outweighs everyone
else's? Why is he special? In fact, I find the reasoning to be kind of . . .
maybe not exactly racist, but kind of people-ist in some way or another. I'm
sorry for the guy, but I don't feel his concerns ought to trump anyone else's.
I'm not saying you shouldn't try to figure out the impact of decisions on
people at large. But I am definitely saying to have respect for how
incalculable it can be, and to at least think in terms of all the people you
can see right off will be affected -- and not just one class of them.
I'm also saying to use the right tool for the job. As a rule of thumb, I like
industry to make _progress_ , and charity to _relieve suffering_. Not that
there aren't exceptions -- I myself am advocating the establishment of
industry in a region as a way to improve conditions, and I certainly see the
value of non-profit research.
But usually I don't want the wires crossed. If you're worried about the
suffering of folks who have lost jobs and are having trouble making ends meet,
the right approach seems to me to start or assist a foundation that helps
those sorts of folks financially and educationally (or whatever). Limiting the
help to, say, textile manufacturing workers, and having the help come in the
form of keeping their jobs at the expense of jobs for folks in other regions,
and ignoring an economic opportunity and possibly retarding progress in
general . . .
. . . well, that seems to me really inefficient. And kind of morally dubious,
too.
------
erikpukinskis
_COTS has proven that under the right conditions, a properly incentivized
contractor — even an all-American one — can develop extremely complex systems
on rapid timelines and a fixed-price basis, significantly beating historical
industry-standard costs._
If the "right conditions" include having Elon Musk as CEO, then "proven" is
probably a reasonable word.
~~~
Alex3917
Exactly. Don't get me wrong, this article is extremely inspirational. But I
doubt if there are more than a couple dozen people in America talented enough
to pull this off. And, similarly, the vast majority of people in the
government aren't capable of recognizing who the people this talented are, or
if they are then they are unable to act on it.
------
bcl
SpaceX gives me hope that we can become a space-faring nation once again. The
added bonus is that it is private industry doing it, not the behemoth
bureaucracy that NASA has become.
------
olalonde
I don't want to sound too pessimistic but the trend in China is towards more
free market capitalism whereas the opposite is happening in the US. Of course,
trends can change and China is still far behind in terms of economic liberty.
------
burgerbrain
That 300Million figure to develop Falcon 9 seems stunningly low. Fascinating
stuff.
~~~
hugh3
I've always wondered why rocket development _should_ be nearly as expensive as
NASA makes it sound. It's mostly a plumbing problem, surely -- pump the fuel
to the right place and let it burn. I'm sure there are a few added
complexities, but the tricky bits were all figured out decades ago.
~~~
dman
Winning the world 100m is just about running faster. A Nobel prize is won if
you think just a little bit harder... Pushing the envelope has always been
heroically hard and always will be.
~~~
rwmj
SpaceX aren't pushing any envelopes. They're just doing what has already been
done for decades, but for a lower price.
Edit: Instead of downvoting, how about replying? There are only 3 clauses
above, so you can just say which one of those clauses is wrong and why.
~~~
dman
Do you consider the IBM PC something that pushed the envelope? Sometimes
disrupting an industry by making its products available at a dramatically
lower cost is just as much a push to the envelope in the real world as a new
discovery. (Other examples include firms like 23andme etc)
~~~
rwmj
Look at the comment I was replying to[1]. The author of that comment was using
"pushing the envelope" to mean running faster in the 100m dash or winning a
Nobel prize. Disrupting an industry, as SpaceX are doing, is extremely
worthwhile, but no one has ever argued that the IBM PC was some sort of
breakthrough in computing, or represented progress in programming techniques
(quite the opposite in fact, it was cheap and took many shortcuts, resulting
in the horrible situation we have in computing today).
[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2523927>
~~~
pg
At the time, the IBM PC was very impressive compared to the other
microcomputers available.
~~~
Someone
The way I remember it, the main thing it had going for it was that 'IBM' tag.
Its graphics were worse than that of the 4 year old Apple II, its speed was
only a little higher (certainly way of from what the 1:4.77 clock speed ratio
would make you think; both ran at around 1 MIPS).
Yes, it handled more than 64k RAM and was 16 bit-ish, but very impressive? Not
in my memory.
~~~
maxharris
The original 5150 PC had a wonderful keyboard. We'd consider it very heavy and
loud today (each key had a spring beneath it, and made a very audible click
when pressed), but compared to the other keyboards at the time, it was easily
the best.
------
adnam
It's funny, but this is the _opposite_ of what happened during the 1950s space
race. Russia, having less cash to spend, contracted work out various bidders,
whereas america established the massively centralized NASA.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
And Russia killed and maimed hundreds in their pell-mell race to the moon. So
it was cost-effective and politically expedient, sure. But there are towns
still expunged from Russian maps that were blighted by that irresponsible
program.
------
spartanfan10
Though I really don't like the idea of an "Us vs. Them" mentality in global
development (it's been commented many times that this is not a zero sum game,
there doesn't have to be winners and losers like in football), this article is
inspiring. Congrats to Elon and SpaceX on their wonderful innovation.
------
jmarbach
This is an inspiring mark of American spirit that has seemed to escape our
minds amidst international business pressures. I'm grateful that we have
hardworking leaders such as Elon who take risks when others won't, and are
dedicated to living their dreams.
------
jmtame
I didn't see this before, but the SpaceX office tour is pretty awesome:
<http://spacex.com/multimedia/videos.php?id=26>
------
breathesalt
"Beat" China? Why not work together?
~~~
timsally
Because as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise, there are significant
ideological differences between the US and China. China just enacted a 3 month
ban on all spy dramas on TV [1] and I'm about go home and watch Casino Royal
with a bottle of scotch [2]. And as JFK says, _our leadership in science and
in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as
well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries,
to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading
space-faring nation._ [3]. This may seem nationalistic to you, but I think JFK
is right.
[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/asia/06briefs-
China....](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/asia/06briefs-
China.html?_r=1&ref=china)
[2] Citation not needed.
[3] <http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm>
------
lostbit
Fine. This is definitely good news. It proves a company is doing a great job,
it gives hope and inspiration to other business try to be innovative and bring
back the American spirit. But what will happen to space programs if American
economy goes into a harder crisis? People will probably vote not to launch
anything, not to look at the sky, but to spend money on land issues instead.
My big concern is regarding the end of the dollar as the world's reserve
currency. That could bring many succesfull companies down, specially those on
American markets only. China can be a big issue to America if it starts no to
believe in dollar currency anymore. In this context, beating China on
innovation at Space programs might not mean Americans won.
------
VB6_Foreverr
That blog post is written in such an unpretentious way. Space travel with feet
firmly planted on the ground
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: To kill or not to kill an Adsense account - maguay
I've got an Adsense account with a modest amount of money in it from when my site was using Adsense. Now my site is part of the Yoggrt network, so I'm not using Adsense on any part of my site, and I don't have any plans to use it in the near future on any other sites. Unfortunately, my Adsense account doesn't have enough to cash out (<$100), but I can get the money out if I close the account.<p>What would you do in this situation? Would you close the account to get the money out, or just leave the account open in case I want to run Adsense again? If I close the account, does anyone know if you can get a new Adsense account in the future?
======
endlessvoid94
I had this thought 2 years ago with a blog that had very little traffic. Over
the course of a year I probably made $5, obviously far below the $100 payout
limit.
I kept it open and now that I DO have a site that makes money, I eventually
got that money from Google.
In other words: keep the account open if you care about what happens to the
money advertisers pay google?
------
RobGR
I doubt an Adsense account has much value by it's age. I would close it.
Another option would be to run it on some site, or rotate it on your current
one, until it breaks $100, then cash it out and stop using it.
------
maguay
Here's one idea: Does anyone know if you can directly fund an Adsense campaign
from money in an Adsense account? If so, I could save it for an ad promotion
for future products, and keep the account for now...
------
petervandijck
Just let it sit there. There's no reason to close it that I can think of.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WWIV 5.0 released - bane
https://github.com/wwivbbs/docs/blob/master/docs/WWIVNews_2015_12.md
======
alrs
I'm psyched. I'd be even more psyched if it was Telegard. :)
------
lamontcg
last time i logged into a WWIVnet BBS must have been around 1991...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter sets max user caps for 3rd party clients and limits rates - rkudeshi
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/17/twitter-4/
======
danilocampos
Basic truth: New technology is driven by early adopters, who then influence
their less tech-savvy pals. Happened with Google, happened with the iPhone,
and it happened with Twitter.
So now that the obvious is out of the way – we'll look back one day and see
this as the day Twitter fucked the dog.
They've made a decision that motivates the very core of early adopters who
embraced Twitter to move on.
Yeah, they have to make money. They've convinced themselves the experience
must be entirely under their control to do it. Okay. And maybe that's so.
And maybe they'll squeeze some pennies out for awhile.
In the meantime, there's a group of folks who first jumped into Twitter during
the days where you weren't chained to their mediocre user products. They'll
start the move to a better network.
And one day, everyone will look around and see all that's left on Twitter is
the glitter gif morons and big brands with more money than sense, just as
happened with MySpace.
~~~
pkulak
MySpace didn't die because they pissed off the early adopter geeks. They
pissed off everyone. And everyone left. If Twitter just becomes the place
where hundreds of millions of people follow hundreds of celebrities while also
looking at ads, I think they're okay with that.
~~~
citricsquid
I don't think Myspace pissed anyone off, it was more that their product didn't
make any sense. In my experience people didn't leave Myspace for Facebook
because they "hated Myspace", they left because Facebook was a better product
that met their needs.
I don't think Twitter should be concerned unless someone builds a better
product.
~~~
danilocampos
> I don't think Twitter should be concerned unless someone builds a better
> product.
Which is inevitable. Their clients are crappy, otherwise there wouldn't be a
third-party ecosystem to piss off in the first place.
Which means their only defense is network effects.
Which means it's probably a bad idea to motivate all your early adopters to
find and grow the network that unseats you.
~~~
citricsquid
I think you're really underestimating the value that "normal people" provide
to Twitter, I would bet that the majority of Twitter users (that are active)
are not "early adopters", but "normal people" that follow celebrities and talk
to their friends. I left high school a few years back and the majority of my
Facebook friends are ~19-20, almost all of them use Twitter and not a single
one could write a line of code in any programming language, nor could they
give a damn about whether or not Twitter is open to developers.
Take a look at the Twitter trends list if you want proof that Twitter caters
more to "normal people" than it does "technology" people, here's the #1 trend
as I type this: <http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23NameATurnOn>
Yes, their only defense is their network (which is, in my opinion, their
"product"), but the majority of their network is not going to leave because of
their developer relations. Twitter are safe as long as an alternative doesn't
exist and they provide value to their users.
Twitter aren't stupid, they're not going to be enacting this plan if the
majority of their users use third party clients. I suspect the majority of
people that do use third party clients are those using "value adding" third
party clients, like Hootsuite, and those that use Hootsuite are the people
that get value from Twitter's network (for example marketing people) so if
Hootsuite shuts down they're not going to quit Twitter, they're going to move
to an official client.
~~~
w1ntermute
If the percentage of 3rd party client users are small, then why would they
even bother enacting this change in the first place?
> Twitter aren't stupid
Oh come on, that's not an argument. There have been countless examples
throughout history of companies (in tech and otherwise) that have done stupid
things that have directly contributed to their demise. There's no reason to
assume that Twitter won't end up like them.
~~~
citricsquid
Small as a percentage is still millions and millions of people and tens of
millions of requests.
------
aaronbrethorst
Wow, fuck you very much, Twitter. I really wish this had happened when App.net
was still raising their $500k. Even though I still don't think App.net will
work out, I would've still chipped in out of spite towards Twitter.
This is ridiculous, and I'm going to figure out how to get out as soon as
possible.
edit: I put my money where my mouth is, as it were:
Success!
Thank you for joining App.net!
You will receive an email confirmation to complete the signup process.
Your plan is Developer Tier for $100 per year.
You're in line to join the alpha with username: @aaronbrethorst.
~~~
abraham
App.net got over $800k in funding and still has a large amount left from
picplz. As Dalton put it at last nights AirBnB tech talk, they have an
"infinite amount of time" for a startup. As in several years at their current
burn rate.
~~~
illicium
1 week to write a Twitter clone, several years to blog about it.
~~~
jordanthoms
They can just use the rails tutorial, right? :-)
------
ctide
Congratulations Dalton Caldwell!
Who could have known that Twitter would just hand you the entire game with one
stupid maneuver.
~~~
dm8
It makes things harder for developers. But it doesn't affect end-user at all.
Twitter already has eye balls, celebrity users. Average joe doesn't care if
Twitter has 100k user cap for third party client. End-user experience is
getting better day by day. Ask someone who is not tech savvy is on Twitter.
~~~
jonursenbach
Users will care then their favorite application no longer works.
~~~
dm8
They will curse the application developer and choose the next best
application. In this case, it will be Twitter.
------
pavel_lishin
Please read the original article. This very unfairly summarizes the actual
blogpost.
The limit isn't 60 hits per hour. It's 60 hits per hour per endpoint, and only
for some endpoints.
The user limit is 1 million users for certain api endpoints, and 100k for
others - and if you need more than that, they would like you to reach out to
them.
Oh, and also, all current clients are grandfathered into the old terms.
Please examine the bandwagon carefully before jumping on it.
~~~
aaronbrethorst
From <https://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api>:
"If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens,
you'll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you
reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) — as long as you
comply with our Rules of the Road. Once you reach 200% of your current user
token count, you'll be able to maintain your application to serve your users,
but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission."
Translation: 'Fuck you, 3rd party Twitter clients.' They'll still cut them off
at the knees when they hit _at most_ 200,000 users.
Edit: I kept reading the blog post and it got better:
_That upper-right quadrant also includes, of course, "traditional" Twitter
clients like Tweetbot and Echofon. Nearly eighteen months ago, we gave
developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or
reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience." And to reiterate
what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today._
In other words, 3rd party Twitter clients are dead. Not today, but next year
they're dead as a doorknob.
Edit 2: Thanks for the clarification on the '200%' thing. I think the net
result is still about the same for Twitter clients in the end. They'll be
EOL'd by their developers and increasingly ignored by users.
~~~
rlivsey
Translation: 'Fuck you, 3rd party Twitter clients.'
They'll still cut them off at the knees when they hit
at most 200,000 users.
Nitpick - it's 200% of what they're at now, so if they currently have a
million users they're good for up to 2 million.
------
zethraeus
It's rather frightening that the _only_ example that they give of a user
facing service in the appropriate 'quadrant' is Klout.
~~~
ceejayoz
Good: Klout
Bad: Tweetbot, Storify
What is this, Opposite Day? That stopped being fun in kindergarten.
------
rksprst
In the tweet display guidelines: "No other social or 3rd party actions may be
attached to a Tweet." <https://dev.twitter.com/terms/display-guidelines>
Wonder if that means 3rd party apps can't add actions to tweets like "assign
to a user", "translate", "schedule a reply", etc. That might just kill major
functionality for apps like HootSuite, CoTweet, Radian6's Engagement Console.
Or, since it's under the guidelines for individual tweets, are tweets in the
timeline excluded from that limitation?
~~~
whamill
Tweets in a timeline, on the Twitter feed in the web client, all have the
retweet/quote/reply/favourite actions per-tweet so I would expect that they
mean each and every tweet displayed anywhere.
------
ljd
"It is also limiting the rate on its API per end-point, meaning that most
individual clients will be limited to 60 calls per hour instead of 350 calls
per hour. "
If you can't raise revenue, reduce expenses. That cut is significant enough to
reduce their rate of growth of monthly expenses but probably not enough to
reduce their rate of user growth. Probably not a bad move for them.
With press releases like this Twitter is App.net's new best friend.
~~~
gjulianm
<i>Most individual API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour
per-endpoint. Based on analysis of current use of our API, this rate limit
will be well above the needs of most applications built against the Twitter
API, while protecting our systems from abusive applications.
There will be a set of high-volume endpoints related to Tweet display, profile
display, user lookup and user search where applications will be able to make
up to 720 calls per hour per endpoint.</i>
60 calls per hour are only for certain endpoints, probably creating lists,
tweeting... It's really rare that an user uses so much of this kind of
resources. The endpoints that are used the more (viewing tweets, look up an
user, etc) are actually less limited than before.
~~~
kmfrk
Maybe they just hate the crazed Bieber, Glee, and Twilight fans out there with
over 20k tweets to their name like the rest of us. :)
It could suck for live-tweeting events, though.
------
waterlesscloud
Remember the Great Twitter Strategy Document Leak of 2009?
[http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-
strategy-...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-
laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet-2/)
What happened to those plans? They seemed so smart...
~~~
aaronbrethorst
New management, new strategy.
------
_lex
Twitter is making it very unappealing to build on their platform, since
developers have to effectively give up a large chunk of autonomy and trust
that Twitter's business model won't change again, and that Twitter won't
suddenly start competing with them. And anyone who's paying attention knows
that that's exactly what Twitter will do, since they don't have a clear,
believable business model, and they've done it(destroyed their 'developers')
before.
------
guelo
I use Twitter via their official apps, I have tried some of the third party
apps but haven't really been impressed. After all this time it didn't seem
like the app ecosystem was coming up with anything really innovative besides
slightly different ways of organizing the feeds.
~~~
dustyreagan
That's because they bought the cool third party apps like the TweetDeck and
Tweetie, and have since begun shunning third party developers. In short, the
official apps were third party apps, and now no one wants to make any
additional Twitter apps because Twitter has become hostile to developers.
They've closed the door on third party inovation for their platform.
~~~
masklinn
> like the TweetDeck and Tweetie
Don't you mean Tweetbot or something? Tweetie was bought by Twitter, rebranded
to be the official Twitter client, and in no small part gutted and left to rot
(gutted for the mobile version, left to rot for the desktop one).
~~~
RKearney
>> That's because they bought the cool third party apps like the TweetDeck and
Tweetie
>Tweetie was bought by Twitter
That's what they said. I think you misread that post.
------
fudged71
I finally got really into Twitter this year. Sad to see them being so
restrictive with their platform. Maybe App.Net isn't such a bad idea after
all.
It's amazing how poor the first party clients for Facebook and Twitter are
compared to the functionality and rate of development on 3rd party apps. Maybe
paying to be a part of a less restrictive network will be worth it in the end.
I just hope they can get a big following with a bunch of apps integrated with
it.
------
px1999
I'm having trouble trying to figure out who Twitter's trying to target with
these changes - and can't figure out if:
1\. They want to corner the advertiser & business market - ie it's an attack
on Hootsuite etc
2\. They want to lock out competitors from pwning them on search (Google/Bing
incorporating [good] twitter results into their searches would IMO be
devastating to twitter - particularly if they didn't embed intents / hueg
links to twitter everywhere)
3\. They want to own the ecosystem so that twitter clients don't cross-post to
Facebook/G+/app.net/favourite social network here
4\. (I don't think this is likely) - Twitter thinking that they can somehow
squeeze an extra couple of bucks out of each user if they're on an official
client via advertising or something similar.
.
Each of these seems plausible to me, but all of them essentially involve
twitter holding customers/data/users hostage which doesn't seem like a great
strategy.
Is there some angle I'm missing here / reading too much into?
~~~
jchung
I was also trying to figure out the business rationale for this move. Their
2x2 chart gets us relatively close to understanding their strategy. Here's
what it looks like:
\- Twitter doesn't want to own analytics for business or consumer players. \-
Twitter doesn't want to own engagement for businesses. \- Twitter DOES want to
own engagement for consumers.
This seems pretty counter-intuitive to me. Since businesses are the ones who
actually pay twitter cash, I would have expected them to try to own the whole
left side of their chart, and leave developers to create new innovations for
the whole right side of the chart. What would you have to believe in order for
this to be a good idea? Some possibilities: \- Twitter thinks that developers
will ruin the consumer experience, slowing their growth. \- Twitter thinks
that businesses won't pay them unless consumers are tweeting on twitter.com \-
Twitter doesn't think that analytics or business engagement services will be
lucrative enough for them to invest directly in. \- Twitter thinks that if the
developer community spends its effort in the top-right, it will distract the
community from innovating in the other three quadrants, where Twitter wants to
see more development to unlock more business-driven revenues (This one is a
_real_ longshot, but I'm trying to be comprehensive) \- Twitter doesn't care
about users tweeting or consuming tweets if they aren't on twitter.com (I'm
still struggling to figure out why this is bad for twitter -- any thoughts,
HN?)
------
jot
How would you feel if Google announced that you could only access their
services using Chrome? What does it take to activate the antitrust lawyers?
~~~
SoftwareMaven
I wonder if "antitrust" and "monopoly" talk are HN forms of Godwin's Law.
Before Twitter would be remotely concerned about antitrust, there would have
to not be a place with more users that you can talk about your cat's lunch to
your heart's content. Facebook has more to fear than Twitter does.
------
mhartl
This is the kind of thing that happens when you don't have a business model.
------
dave_sullivan
I wonder if a p2p twitter would be possible. I guess there would be real
storage/timeliness issues, but twitter always struck me as more rss
replacement than anything else, and I'm not sure it makes sense to have
something like that run by one company.
I think twitter is a cool concept/application, but I'm not sure it will ever
be a great _business_.
~~~
runn1ng
I have a genius idea how to make a p2p pseudo-twitter which I have shared with
only one person yet, but why not share it now on HN (maybe someone can build
it instead of me, since I don't have the time at the moment because of school
stuff).
Basically, what you need to solve in something like p2p twitter is: how to
authentificate the user, how to send the message around, how to archive the
message that it is not lost.
Now the genius idea: all of this is _exactly_ what bitcoin solves.
Bitcoin already has mechanisms for authenticating. Bitcoin already has
mechanisms for sharing messages (altough it is called "transactions"). Bitcoin
has a mechanism for archiving those messages (it's called "blockchain").
And the kicker - bitcoin already has an ability to enter arbitrary data into
the transaction. (sure, not much, but about the 160 letters tweets have.) You
just add it into the script and add OP_DROP; since the transaction including
script is signed, noone can just remove it.
My idea was to hijack the already existing bitcoin infrastructure and hack
Twitter-like P2P messaging thing on top of it; let's call it "bitmessage".
How would sending a "bitmessage" look like? Well, you can, for example, send
money from your address to the same address (send money to yourself) and add
the wanted string into the script.
You can then look for a message of a given user (if you take bitcoin address
as an ID of the user).
Now of course, this wouldn't be free for long (if it catched up). Right now,
bitcoin miners take just anything the P2P network throws at them, but if the
network was flooded with people sending money to themselves with a message in
script, they would just throw these away so it doesn't enlarge the already
giant blockchain. However, you can add fees to any transaction. If you add
fees high enough, some block miner will eventually take your "bitmessage" and
add it to the blockchain.
Would the resulting thing be equivalent of twitter? No, it would be slow (it
takes about 10 minutes to get transaction to blockchain) and it would most
likely not be for free (if it catches on, miners will throw away the messages
with low fees). On the other hand, every message would be recorded _forever_ ,
without _any_ chance of anyone deleting it, censoring it or getting your IP
address. Also, the Bitcoin seems to be going strong and doesn't seem like it
will go away any time soon, and the infrastructure is super-strong.
I want to hack a prototype... maybe... one day.
~~~
lukeholder
Just a tip. When you start a sentence with "I have a genius idea" people will
not think it's a genius idea; or at least judge your comments to an
unreasonably high standard of your own creation.
~~~
runn1ng
well, I didn't mean it _that_ seriously, but thanks
------
state
It seems to me that the kinds of applications they are trying to prevent from
existing are precisely the ones that they could learn the most from and could
provide them with the most new users.
I also don't see how this action actually wins them that many more eyes. Are
there really that many third party Twitter apps out there?
------
jmathai
I anticipate a flurry of parodies on their use of the term "flock" except away
from Twitter and not towards.
------
WALoeIII
There could be a revenue stream in here. They're limiting how many free users
an application may have, but I would expect they could charge Tweetbot to have
more users. Tweetbot could simply build this cost into the software.
------
jonknee
I have seen a lot more pushes trying to get me to advertise lately (tons of
sponsored tweets). I wonder if this is related to their revenue push--knock
out their competitors and lower API costs.
------
DigitalSea
Can you smell that? It's the smell of victory, the smell of Dalton Caldwell
lighting a Cuban cigar in celebration of Twitter driving basically every
single 3rd party developer over to App.net.
------
fufulabs
This removes their duality of being a media / service play. This is highly
beneficial to Twitter itself as well as to a new service/platform aiming to be
a pure microblogging piping service. The only loser here are the Twitter app
developers and startups which are faced with a now limited channel to promote
their apps.
~~~
dannygarcia
I don't see how this benefits Twitter.
A large amount of users rely solely on a dedicated third party client. If
those apps lose the ability to provide the same reliable service, then Twitter
(as a platform) will also be affected.
~~~
danilocampos
"Only" 23% of users.
Still, I could see the argument that some users are better than others and the
most engaged ones are more likely to get a third party client.
Which means either Twitter loses those users eventually or coerces them into
using their first-party offerings.
------
imrehg
I really want to like Twitter, I really do. So many possibilities, so many
interesting services built on top of them, it would be a great centre for
"online identity", a main front to communicate with friends and audience.
Except when they do these kinds of things, and I wonder how on Earth it makes
any sense besides "because we can"?
------
ashbrahma
Anyone know how to check the number of users that have authenticated the apps
on the twitter dev portal?
~~~
abraham
Currently you can't. They used to show those numbers but dropped it, I think,
for scaling issues a long while ago. Maybe Twitter will bring it back.
------
bane
So why are they doing this? My guess is to drive users to their clients, so
that they can start displaying ads and gather revenue. 3rd party clients won't
display Twitter's own ads so there's no way for the service to collect on
that.
------
mehulkar
Winter is coming.
~~~
dm8
Which winter are you talking about? Twitter has been tightening the strings
for a while now.
------
moe
R.I.P. Twitter
*06/2006 †08/2012
------
galactus
I guess twitter thinks it is big enough to stop worrying about pissing third
party developers off. In the short term it probably won't hurt them much.
------
chj
If you are develop!ng for every s!ngle platform on th!s planet today, you are
e!ther f!!ked or wa!t!ng to be f!!ked. Un!ted, developers!
------
mikecane
With the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini coming up, I wonder if the projections of new
users from those influenced this decision?
------
Tichy
Well I am out of there first chance I see...
~~~
jcoder
What's stopping you now?
~~~
Tichy
Where should I go to? Status.net somehow didn't deliver, although I guess I
could reevaluate. I think what was missing back then was mirroring Twitter -
my tweets were sent to Twitter, but I didn't get the Tweets from the people I
followed on Twitter.
------
ukd1
Hello App.net.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Was Snapchat the first app of its kind? - Xcelerate
One of my problems in developing apps is that for every idea I think of, I do a Google search and almost always find an app that already exists for such a thing. Sure, there's always the potential to create a better app that does the same thing, but at least for me, coming up with a novel ideal seems to be difficult.<p>So I am kind of surprised that Snapchat has taken off in the way that it has considering such an idea probably crossed my and many others' minds.<p>I can think of three possibilities: Snapchat was an original idea; Snapchat developed the concept of temporary photo sharing much better than any competitor; this current period in time is simply the point at which an app like this acquires popularity.<p>Thoughts?
======
vitovito
It sort of depends on what you think Snapchat does. If you think it's
_temporary_ photo sharing, who knows. If you think it's _expiring_ content
sharing, there's been imageboards and textboards forever. Given that Twitter
"expires" content off your stream and off your own profile after 3200 tweets,
Twitter could be considered that sort of model. You can probably imagine how
you could make a custom Twitter client that works like Snapchat but uses
Twitter as its platform. You might wonder if there'd be a market for that.
But all of these over-simplify and over-generalize what Snapchat does. The
correct answer is #4, the one you couldn't envision.
If you were surprised, it means you don't understand why people use it, which
means you're not thinking of it in terms of the _problem it solves for them,_
but only as an idea with an arbitrary, coincidental implementation.
Snapchat solves a problem for a segment of users and solves it very well. It
is both a _solution_ and has a _well-executed design._ You need both, and then
you also need marketing and network effects and traction and luck.
To better understand why Snapchat is the current communications darling, you
might look into danah boyd's research into how teens use social networks, or
this recent anecdotal exploration of one US 10th grader:
<https://medium.com/product-design/d8d4f2300cf3>
Don't start with an idea, start with a problem that you have evidence exists,
then develop a solution.
~~~
Xcelerate
Great explanation.
> means you don't understand why people use it
I think this is a problem for app developers in general. I can't predict what
a typical app user will really like because I'm not one of them. It's kind of
funny because even though I really love developing new technology, I find that
I don't use any of the really popular things (Twitter, Instagram, etc.). So
instead I have to imagine "if I was a normal person... what problem would I be
trying to solve?" A lot of times I guess wrong. (I remember how happy I was
when I developed an icon editor when I was young. The feedback I got was very
positive but I got very little of it.) Solving my own technical problems isn't
going to get me any business at all.
~~~
vitovito
I should be clear: I've never used Snapchat, and I am not a 10th grader, and
the world current 10th graders live in is not the world I grew up in.
But I understand the problem it solves. I'm not "imagining" it's a viable
solution for a hypothetical problem: I've read the research that explains the
problem teens have and their mental models of their social interactions and
can see where Snapchat fits in appropriately.
That's what research is _for._ It's why Steve Blank says to get out of the
building. You don't have to imagine. Leave your office, get away from your
laptop, spend time in other places and discover problems that people have, and
then see if there's a market for a solution.
Incidentally, the work a founder does in developing a product through customer
development is most of the same work a product designer, user experience
designer, or interaction designer has to do. If your product already makes
sense, it saves us a lot of time and effort.
This other link from HN earlier today, about what Amy Hoy taught this person
about starting a business, which sums it up pretty well:
<http://justinjackson.ca/amy-hoy/>
Good luck with your apps in the future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to create Facebook fake login page for steal passwords - danishfareed
http://prohackersden.blogspot.in/2012/02/how-to-create-facebook-fake-login-page.html
======
danishfareed
nice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CDC employs social networking sites to educate people abut H1N1 (aka swine flu) - anigbrowl
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE57Q5T320090827
======
anigbrowl
Also, an interesting Economist article on mathematical models, epidemiology,
and policy, which sheds some light on the CDCs vaccination policy:
[http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?...](http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14257705)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Truth About Facebook Revenues, User Numbers, And Its IPO - icey
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-truth-about-facebook-revenues-user-numbers-and-its-ipo-2010-7
======
jjantzen
Wow--had no idea they were generating those kinds of numbers--no wonder
Google's concerned.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We're Headed For A Disaster Of Biblical Proportions - brandoncor
http://www.businessinsider.com/were-headed-for-a-disaster-of-biblical-proportions-2012-11?op=1
======
stephengillie
Articles like this ignore the reductions in birth rates in recent years. This
type of article makes me think less of businessinsider.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eatsa, a fully automated restaurant, opens today - robbyking
http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/08/31/fast-food-reinvented-eatsa-a-fully-automated-restaurant-opens-today/
======
nfoz
> there is a team of about five or six back-of-house kitchen staff (or as I
> like to imagine, magical elves) who are hidden from view and prepare the
> food. There’s also one attendant on hand to help the tech challenged.
So no, it isn't fully automated. Just the front staff. That's not nearly as
interesting, and the headline is intentionally misleading.
~~~
kagamine
It's essentially a drive-thru that you walk through and there is only one
person to complain to when you find a bug in your salad. I don't see how this
is anything "new" at all.
------
todd8
In 1964 my parents took me to a restaurant in New York called an Automat (see
[http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/revisiting-
the-...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/revisiting-the-era-of-
automatic-dining/)). It had a wall with little windowed doors that would open
for a few coins. Inside were dishes of food that one could take to your own
table.
Off topic aside: we were in New York to go to the 1964 World's Fair. All I
remember of that was the IBM pavilion. There I wrote handwritten digits on a
card (in little boxes) that a machine read and printed out. Even then I was
fascinated with computers.
------
vinay427
>As it’s all automated, be aware that the restaurant only accepts credit
cards. No cash.
I understand the allure of credit cards for their target marker, but has the
author not heard of vending machines, ATMs, and other automated cash handling
systems already in place? Those need regular maintenance, to be fair, but
considering there's a regular staff of cooks that wouldn't be a problem.
------
crdoconnor
Not exactly a new concept:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart)
------
bullsbarry
So for those of us on the east coast, this is what Wawa has been doing for
years now. Except now you can't mill around watching them prepare your food.
------
michaelmior
This vaguely reminds me of a "restaurant" I ended up at in an industrial area
in France while staying near the airport for a flight the next day. The entire
place consisted of one wall of frozen foods and another wall of microwaves.
Not completely automated but pretty minimal human involvement since you had to
microwave your own food.
------
JoeAltmaier
So 'fully automated' means 'partially automated', i.e. just the order-takers
are missing. Still a kitchen; still busboys; still hand-made food delivered to
a cubby with your name on it.
I guess 'fully automated' means 'lousy service' now.
------
sdm
This is a pretty common thing -- except the glass door cubby hole thing that
your food gets put in. You find in a lot of Taiwanese restaurants machines at
your table for ordering, requesting things like water and utensils, etc. Yes
they have people who bring these things out to you, but otherwise it doesn't
sound too different. What's new here? If it was machines preparing the food
the title might be more deserved.
------
Pinatubo
San Francisco plans to raise its minimum wage to $15 in a couple of years.
Expect to see more businesses that follow this model.
------
technofiend
Considering the recent troubles with Listeria Blue Bell had I would be very
worried if all the food was automatically prepared. I don't think we're there
yet food-safety-wise; can a machine detect and clean foreign object
contamination, yet? Probably not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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List of company name etymologies - bjonathan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_name_etymologies
======
Nate75Sanders
Wow, no mention of Iomega, one of the most aptly named companies in history,
in my opinion. They were the makers of the Zip and Jaz drives, among other
things.
I/O Mega (input/output...mega)
Iω (I-omega -- the product of the moment of inertia with angular velocity --
resulting in angular momentum)
~~~
ubasu
Well, it's Wikipedia - feel free to put it in. ;-)
------
simonsarris
They are missing the car brand Lexus, which stands for Luxury Export to US.
(how spartan a name for a luxury brand!)
edit: Ah nevermind, re-reading the lexus wiki page states that:
_The etymology of the Lexus name has been attributed to the combination of
the words "luxury" and "elegance," and another theory claims it is an acronym
for "luxury exports to the U.S." According to Team One interviews, the brand
name has no specific meaning and simply denotes a luxurious and technological
image._
------
kia
This is nice
_Six Apart – company co-founders Ben and Mena Trott were born six days apart_
------
TeMPOraL
It's interesting how many companies were named after founders. I get the
feeling that today it's no longer the case for technology companies.
~~~
saraid216
I honestly have trouble deciding if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Good: It's less ego-centric. Bad: It's more idea-centric.
I mean, the YC mantra is that founders matter most, no?
~~~
dredmorbius
I think on balance it's bad.
Naming an enterprise for the founder/founders helps wire in more of the
critical DNA, but in a way which _doesn't_ tie you to a specific product or
service. It's tricky to do this with a more generic name. This gives both an
anchoring identity and flexibility to grow. It tends to imply a long-term view
by the founders as well: why attach your name to something for which you've
got an explicit exit strategy?
By way of counter-examples, "IBM" (International Business Machines) turns out
to be a really good, generic, but still applicable and adaptable, name.
"Apple" has worked fairly well. "Xerox" is tied to a specific duplication
method. "Polaroid" grew and died with a specific photographic process (though
"Land" doesn't seem to have helped much in this case).
From recent tech memory, "VA Research" (later "VA Linux") was named for its
cofounders.
------
libria
So Wendy's is named after Dave Thomas's daughter Melinda. That seems to raise
more questions than it answers.
~~~
jewel
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Thomas#Importance_to_Wend...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Thomas#Importance_to_Wendy.27s)
------
DanBC
Was pyrex a company name?
Pyrex == latin pyro + rex == fire king.
~~~
aashay
Pyrex is a Corning brand: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Bootstraps vs. VC Funded — Who’s most likely to make the most money? - hillel
http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2008/07/29/bootstraps-vs-vc-funded-whos-most-likely-to-make-the-most-money/
======
vaksel
VC funded will probably succeed more because they get more coverage. And if
you are in a niche that will only have 1-2 big players, it kinda helps getting
that initial coverage to grow fast.
Honestly I don't think I can come up with 1 big player(100mm/yr revenue) of
the top of my head, that never took any funding.
------
angstrom
That's pretty straight forward. It goes without saying that the more ownership
of the company you can retain via self funding the larger the potential return
is going to be. I would suggest looking at VC money as diluting risk rather
than relinquishing unrealized wealth.
------
hillel
But that's not the question. The question is: where is your best bet as a
founder to make the most money over the long haul factoring in the relative
odds of any success at all (which are likely different).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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China puts final touches to world's largest telescope - yexponential
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/china-puts-final-touches-world-largest-telescope-160703080236077.html
======
gjkood
Can someone explain the following to a relative layman to the science of radio
astronomy?
a) How much more can this accomplish in comparison to the well known Arecibo
Radio Telescope?
b) How is a fixed parabolic dish radio telescope different from a radio
telescope array like Karl. G. Jansky Very Large Array? What are the relative
pros and cons of one over the other?
c) How do you 'steer' the telescope to look at different parts of the sky? I
understand the dish is fixed, but the feed horns can be repositioned, but I
don't really understand the physics/math behind it, other than the focus is
changed.
I also assume there may be some massive supercomputers doing the data analysis
of the vast amounts of data collected. Any details of the back end computing
infrastructure dedicated to this effort?
~~~
amluto
> a) How much more can this accomplish in comparison to the well known Arecibo
> Radio Telescope?
It's bigger and therefore collects more light. This lets users see dimmer
targets. It could also have a different field of view, different wavelength
sensitivity, and/or different instrumentation. I don't know details of this
new telescope. FWIW, Arecibo is also a radar (it can transmit pulses and look
for reflections). I don't know whether the new telescope can do that.
> b) How is a fixed parabolic dish radio telescope different from a radio
> telescope array like Karl. G. Jansky Very Large Array? What are the relative
> pros and cons of one over the other?
Very generally, single dishes will have much nicer point spread functions, so
the images are more like camera pictures. Aperture synthesis images can have
weird artifacts. Huge dishes like this are also huge and this have more
collecting area than many small dishes combined, anthough the big arrays, in
contrast, have much, much better angular resolution.
> c) How do you 'steer' the telescope to look at different parts of the sky? I
> understand the dish is fixed, but the feed horns can be repositioned, but I
> don't really understand the physics/math behind it, other than the focus is
> changed.
Imagine a big mirror on a wall. If you stand in a different place relative to
the mirror, you see a different image in the mirror.
~~~
saboot
Could you clarify on the difference between a single radio telescope having a
better PSF, and an array having better angular resolution? What's the
difference between those two qualities?
~~~
amluto
There are a few ways to have good angular resolution with a weird PSF. Even
with just optics, you could build an instrument with a PSF that has a narrow
central peak with a big ring around it. This would be great for separately
resolving nearby objects but bad for resolving a single object against a
background of many nearby objects.
For aperture synthesis, particularly strange things happen. If you take a
quick (no rotational synthesis) exposure with a huge 3-antenna array, for
example, you only get 3 choose 2 = 6 degrees of spatial freedom, but you get
very fine angular resolution. In practice, you do "map making", in which you
try to extract specifically the parameters you care about, but if you try to
make an actual picture, you certainly can't fill in your whole field of view
with tiny pixels, since you can't get past the small number of degrees of
freedom.
My personal favorite example of aperture synthesis is the images of
Saggitarius A*. You can get incredible detail, but the "images" are made under
certain assumptions and don't represent actual individual pixels with
reasonable PSFs.
------
Trombone12
Telescope without qualifier implies optical telescope, title should be changed
to clarify that it is a radio telescope.
------
ourmandave
_The "Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope", or FAST, is the size
of 30 football fields..._
This thing will look adorable when the Square Kilometre Array comes on line in
2020 and starts pumping many Petabits of data per second.
[https://www.skatelescope.org/signal-
processing/](https://www.skatelescope.org/signal-processing/)
Oh look! They're hiring...
[https://www.skatelescope.org/people-
contacts/vacancies/](https://www.skatelescope.org/people-contacts/vacancies/)
~~~
watersb
Single-dish of this size has great sensitivity: it's a huge photon bucket. It
doesn't need a long time on-source to make an image. So it is "FAST".
A telescope array is basically a huge structure with _lots_ of holes in it. As
the Earth rotates, the elements of the array sweep out arcs. That fills in
some gaps. So even with a relatively bright source, you might need to wait a
while before you fill in enough to be able to discern the details. So a big,
single dish is "FAST".
Array elements are spread over thousands of meters. You get great _resolution_
, like a microscope on the sky. But you also get all these diffraction
patterns. Since you know the shape of your array, you can mostly solve for
this, but it's a pain in the ass.
------
copperx
Someone ought to make a shouldwelearnchineseyet.com page.
------
wollstonecraft
Please do not call the Trisolarians.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RESTful considered harmful - indy
http://www.nurkiewicz.com/2015/07/restful-considered-harmful.html?m=1
======
herge
My 16 word rebuttal is: Shitty APIs are shitty, but shitty RESTful APIs are
better than shitty SOAP/CORBA/etc apis.
~~~
bakhy
well, next time i plan to write a shitty API, i know what to go with. thanks
;)
~~~
herge
Man, if I could plan on writing shitty and non-shitty apis, I could just skip
the shit ones and be a lot more successful in my work!
~~~
bakhy
i know, right! ;)
but seriously, who would make technology choices based on that reasoning? the
thing should have it's merits, preferably for non-shitty software too. so it's
not that i agree with everything the author said, i just think your rebuttal
is not very good. where were your arguments anyway?
to me, if it's shit, it's shit. but i do prefer shit of the "strongly typed"
flavour. when dealing with shit, i'll take any automated help i can get. but
even there, of course, we can talk about trade-offs, and not absolute truths.
------
Propen
Considered harmful considered harmful. Everything considered harmful. Harmful
considered RESTful.
~~~
bitwarrior
Pretty much at a point where I immediately disregard "considered harmful"
posts. Majority of the time its hyperbole and clickbait.
~~~
myderpyaccount
I often wonder half amused, "What Would Dijkstra Do?", every time I see the
phrase referenced. It's almost like harmful has lost meaning because of the
complexity of the systems of which to it refers.
Everything modern is ridiculously complex, even if it looks simple. You can't
state that a single thing in a complex system is harmful without forcing
yourself to re-evaluate the entire construction of the rest of the system, in
which case you can either (A) determine that there is no alternative solution,
or (B) the system must be altered in some other way (in which case now
multiple things are equivalently harmful. Since (B) happens so frequently,
this means many parts of every system are harmful precisely because the system
isn't perfect yet (and every part can be minorly adjusted so long as other
parts of the system are adjusted - and this latter part is never discussed
(probably because the complexity involved is actually complex and someone else
would be like 'dude, that's also harmful - your solution has side effects'))).
If it was easy to implement new things people would do that instead of
complaining. There's a good reason things are the way they are and not some
other way.
------
jflatow
I stopped drinking the REST cool aid years ago, for pretty much the same
reasons.
It's not that HTTP APIs aren't useful - of course they are - it's the
religious adherence to REST doctrine that is harmful. I take the author's
point to basically be, "do the simplest thing that makes sense for your use
case, don't worry about how RESTful it is", which I totally agree with.
------
merb
RESTful doesn't mean "JSON" only. It never did and never will. People using
RESTful APIs with XML.
Also i don't get many things he is saying like:
> multiple parameters for each criteria, e.g. age=10&name=John&company=Foo
> (but how to implement OR operator?)
I mean seriously? How would one represent a filter in a GET URL... there
aren't many solutions. Also CRUD by Design? What are you talking? REST is not
a fucking standard, it's just a way to create your API, you are totally free,
to use CRUD or not, your API's could still be within REST if you not use CRUD
at all. You could even make REST APIs with GET and POST.
Everything he writes has nothing todo with REST. It's just a design decision.
~~~
andrewstuart2
RESTful also never meant HTTP. REST is literally just transferring resource
state explicitly, via some mutually-understood representation of a resource.
JSON just happens to be much more readable as well as pretty familiar for
anybody who's written code in a C-like language, and especially familiar for
JavaScript developers.
~~~
jazzyk
>RESTful also never meant HTTP
NOt in its original spirit, but it was developed in parallel with HTTP 1.1
(see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer))
and uses the same verbs (GET, POST, ..) as web browsers to transfer data.
I agree with the posters who say that just using 4 verbs is CRUD-oriented and
semantically just not rich enough to support often complex business
operations.
------
akoumjian
This is such a non-issue. All you have to do is look at how successful RESTful
APIs have been this decade. It's easy to consume, which is really the number
one priority if you actually want anyone to use your API. Anyone who has built
an API will tell you that REST gets you 80% of the way, and if you need some
transactional business logic the world will not end if you add a few non-REST
custom endpoints.
------
strictnein
> "By building all these levels of abstractions we forgot that web is really
> asynchronous"
Uhh... nope. No one forgot that. Least of all the people he's chiding. Any
decent Javascript / Front End Dev is acutely aware of this.
Overall, this is perhaps the most unpersuasive clickbait I've read in a long
time. It is amusing, though, to see a Java dev complain that REST isn't
enterprisey enough. That's not a negative, good sir, that's a selling point.
------
skazka16
Our team is currently working on building a pretty big internal API from
scratch. I took a look at some popular APIs (twitter, facebook, twilio, etc.)
as a starting point. All of them has its own structure of the response, as
well as the way you interact with those APIs, i.e. one may use `order` field
to sort the resultset, while the other one prefers `sort_by` instead. There is
definitely nothing wrong about that. But most of us like standards. We try to
follow specifications as much as possible, at least to make things more
predictable.
Long story short - we ended up with [http://jsonapi.org/](http://jsonapi.org/)
\- a complete specification for building JSON-based APIs. It supports such
things as pagination, filtering, sorting, relationships, etc. All of us could
implement it all very easily, but only God knows what is on the mind of an
engineer, i.e. whether he likes /endpoint.json vs /endpoint?format=json.
------
moistgorilla
Can articles with the words "considered harmful" in the title (or the article
itself for that matter) be banned? It's almost always a low effort way to get
votes by taking a popular technology and finding some flaws to write an
article on.
~~~
andybak
Ignore the title and take each post on it's merits. Personally people
complaining about 'considered harmful' irritates me more than said articles.
I thought this article was OK - certainly good enough to skim read for 5
minutes. Neither an upvote nor a downvote from me.
~~~
moistgorilla
The problem with considered harmful I'm having is that so many low quality
articles are using it in their titles and it really says nothing about the
content other than somebody thinks some technology is bad.
------
nine_k
A nice article, the key ideas can be scooped by reading headlines.
REST has its limitations, but it has one nice advantage: it uses a very well-
understood, totally ubiquitous, firewall-piercing protocol. I suppose it's
still a huge win for any public-facing, moderate-load service. One can use
compact (non-JSON) data representation and even compress headers to save
bandwidth.
~~~
slantyyz
I found this headline odd: "Bloated, human readable format that demands extra
compression"
Is human readability a main reason for using JSON or is it a beneficial side
effect?
I always assumed (rightly? wrongly?) that the reason for using JSON was that
it uses Javascript's native object format and therefore much easier to
serialize/deserialize and debug at the browser level.
~~~
nine_k
Human-readability means low density: ASCII only uses 7 bit of 8, and most
characters, like letters or digits, use only 6.
Nobody in their sane mind would `eval()` a JSON received from network, so
parsing is required in any case, JS or not. A combination of lists and maps
(maps being just a special-form list of pairs) can be represented in a much
more compact way, especially numbers. Thrift and Cap'n Proto are definitely
more compact _and_ as fast, or faster, to parse.
I still suspect that in many cases, HTTP headers can be comparable to the
message in size. A high-efficiency protocol would create a connection and
avoid re-sending this information with every request — but good luck taking it
through certain corporate firewalls.
~~~
slantyyz
I totally get that there are better ways and security pitfalls with JSON.
My assumption was more related to the intent behind choosing JSON for REST,
not so much related to the actual implementation(s).
~~~
nine_k
Sure, JSON is easy and intuitive.
------
clavalle
This just in: one particular technique is not good for every use case!
Most of these complaints boil down to REST is not complex enough to capture
more complex interactions. But that is its strength -- yeah, there might be
some tweaks to make but if you run into a RESTful interface it is easy to get
your bearings.
If you need something with more meat, pick something else.
That said, shoehorning problems into a limited number of return codes with
pre-existing specific meanings is an inherent problem with the whole REST
approach, I'll give the author that. It is almost never a good fit.
------
josephscott
<blockquote> Of course JSON has one (literally, one) tremendous advantage -
it's human readable. </blockquote>
I was surprised he didn't mention ease of use inside JavaScript.
~~~
jpollock
You're not supposed to eval the strings, that way leads to xss. Since you're
supposed to parse it no matter what, there's no difference between JSON and
any other format.
~~~
bwy
Umm. I have no clue how you can say this. In JavaScript, JSON is
unquestionably the easiest format to use.
It may or may not be the same to parse, say, JSON and XML.
But how is
xmlDoc=new DOMParser().parseFromString(booksXml);
newatt=xmlDoc.createAttribute("edition");
newatt.nodeValue="first";
x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title");
x[0].setAttributeNode(newatt);
as easy to use as
JSON.parse(booksJson).title.edition = 'first'
?
------
Yhippa
Short of the service provider giving you a library to access their code I
prefer REST over SOAP for integration work I've done. REST in my experience
forces better documentation and interaction between the service provider and
client. I've worked with way too many SOAP services where some dev from 8
years ago wrote the service and nobody at the company wants to go anywhere
near it to modify it. On top of that there is nearly zero documentation or if
it exists it's very poorly done. With REST I feel I'm forced to interact with
the creator which in my experience also drives better documentation. Because
who wants to answer all of my usage questions :-)
I have never run into HATEOAS in the wild but it sounds pretty cool. I hope to
get to try out a service that implements that one day.
------
maxehmookau
Harmful to whom? You don't like REST. That's cool. REST has actually been very
useful.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
This is kind of a thought-terminating cliche, though. Not that a lot of
"considered harmful" essays necessarily have much substance, but actually
pointing out that a lot of popular software is architected in a harmful manner
and reinforces negative feedback loops, antipatterns and wrong conceptual
frameworks is a legitimate thing to say in general.
Dismissing such criticisms with "It works for me," "If you don't like it,
don't use it," or "Who cares about X? I just want my Y to work!" is annoying
and by definition anathema to any _technical_ discourse. They're vapid
emotional arguments.
~~~
cholantesh
I would rather see a discussion of how a potentially destructive mechanism
could be improved, particularly one as ubiquitous as REST. But I imagine a lot
of these essays are not particularly well thought out; they're just an
expression of momentary frustration that the author won't hold a month or even
a week after publishing.
------
sneak
I frequently wonder why json-rpc isn't more of a thing. I've always rather
loved it.
~~~
mands
I agree - JSON-RPC is simple to use, parse and understand. Plus I feel it
makes more sense when you are triggering computations remotely rather than
querying.
At StackHut ([http://www.stackhut.com](http://www.stackhut.com)) we're hacking
on a platform that takes code you've written and hosts the API in the cloud
over JSON-RPC. We think it's pretty cool and would love to hear from others
doing interesting stuff with JSON-RPC.
------
mcguire
" _There are plenty of well-established binary protocols that are both easy to
parse and use little memory, e.g. Protocol buffers, Avro or Thrift._ "
I'd just like to point out that none of JSON, Protocol Buffers, Avro, or
Thrift are _protocols_. They're serialization/unserialization
formats/libraries/frameworks of greater or lesser tonnage. Whether they suck
or not largely depends on how they're used; if you're tunnelling all of your
communications over HTTP, you might want to do something HTTP-friendly.
" _Not to mention Swagger, the de facto standard for REST documentation,
officially claims such approach is "not per design" \- and sticks to fixed
URIs._"
What? (One of the great downsides of REST is that most of the tools that claim
to support RESTful designs, including JSR311 and apparently Swagger (I've
never used it) simply _don 't_.)
------
muaddirac
> Talking about documentation, purists claim that the only piece of
> information API should expose is the root URI, e.g. www.example.com/api.
> Everything else, including allowed methods, resources, content types and
> documents should be discovered via HATEOAS. And if URIs are not officially
> documented but instead should be discovered, it implies we should not rely
> on hard-coded URIs in our code but instead traverse the resource tree every
> time we use such API.
discoverable != must be discovered
This is a misconception and criticism I used to have. However, it's a
misunderstanding of the point of HATEOAS - the point isn't that you can't use
hard-coded URIs, but that any given URI should be reachable by traversal from
the root URI.
In other words, it's fine to keep a bookmark to your favorite article, just
make sure you can get to that article from the homepage, too.
(I guess I would say modulo redirects as well)
------
richmarr
I belong to the static typing camp...
REST, static/dynamic typing... all decisions like this are a cost trade-off.
There aren't really two 'camps', there are just comfortable positions on a
scale, places where people are acclimatised to the trade-offs by their
experience.
------
batou
I agree with this to a point.
I just built an API over HTTP, ignored all the REST rules and separated
everything into commands and queries. Commands are POST and do something.
Queries are GET and get something. I need to write this up.
Schema is hell with JSON etc. I don't get how you can enforce something like
this cleanly in a language like JavaScript under node.js or something without
piles of assertions or some weird meta-format. I'm barely managing with an
informal
Also JSON is a crapfest for transferring data. Need something better than that
over HTTP that is strongly typed with strong schema and has flexible binary
formats other than whacking a base64 encoded string in an object or using
multi-part mime.
And then you're back at RPC and protobufs or something similar. Perhaps that's
the answer.
~~~
robinhowlett
Are you describing CQRS?
[http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CQRS.html](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CQRS.html)
~~~
batou
No, CQS. CQRS is slightly more complicated and decouples everything via a
service bus model along with a massive software ghetto lead by Udi Dahan who I
personally despise. An excellent marketer but a poor engineer. I've cleaned up
two companies who bought into that idea (event sourcing, service bus etc).
Simply a command is something mutative. A query is something not mutative that
returns information. There is no further specification other than that.
It doesn't mandate a bus or event queue or publishing model nor whether or not
the commands are synchronous or asynchronous.
~~~
gregyoung4321
CQRS does not involve a service bus (though people like to sell them). This
sounds like some people were led down very bad paths. Using event sourcing and
a service bus together is frankly retarded.
Greg
------
danpalmer
The benefits of REST come when making public APIs that can be discovered with
HATEOAS. People aren't doing that much yet, but I do hope it catches on,
because we're not going to reach the next level of interaction between
services until it (or something similar does).
I think the title misses the point a little, or at least generalises too much.
REST is not harmful, it's incredibly powerful when used for the right thing.
However, REST is not the correct technology choice for internal or high
performance APIs.
------
reklis
I actually agree with you on static-typing and am a huge fan of binary
protocols but using "no standards" around anything is a weak argument that
everybody needs to just stop. If you don't like the fact that there are no
standards with a particular tech, go out there and MAKE SOME. Show people how
to do it right, document it and propose it. Get some buy in. Don't just sit
around going "oh woe is me, no standards"
------
dpweb
Is HATEOAS generally considered good? I recently had to integrate to two
corporate systems.
One, the API used typical GET, POST, PUT, etc.. The second (before I knew the
term applied to this) provided a single URL whose response was needed to
describe the other operations. I remember instinctively hating the second. Now
MY code has the burden of translating these into the specific calls. However,
now we are version proofed.
------
sigsergv
Not all business/domain logic is document-oriented. You can map any api to
“documents” but result will be horrible usually. There is an excellent book —
“RESTful Web Services Cookbook” by Subbu Allamaraju, it covers all aspects of
practical REST API and trains very useful sense of REST applicability.
------
justizin
Since nobody can agree what RESTful is, and RESTful services tend not to
follow any particular set of rules, indeed to the extent that most RESTful
services aren't really RESTful, it's hard to get past the section titles in
this as being anything other than an exhausted straw man.
------
mmilano
I was expecting to see an alternate suggestion for communication via client-
side browser based JS apps.
~~~
mands
JSON-RPC always works well and is quite simple. I often find it easier to just
use JSON-RPC and clearly mark which methods are remote than to try and fit my
remote semantics into correct HTTP verbs and status codes.
------
clessg
Ugh, can't read it because of the scrolling. Not sure what that's about.
------
xwintermutex
I agree with his problems with status codes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cameras are about to get a lot smaller - spuz
https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21724796-future-photography-flat-cameras-are-about-get-lot-smaller
======
wallflower
> He was holding a small device in his hand, the size and shape of a lollipop.
"This is a video camera, and this is the precise model that's getting this
incredible image quality. Image quality that holds up to this kind of
magnification. So that's the first great thing. We can now get high-def-
quality resolution in a camera the size of a thumb."
...
"But for now, let's go back to the places in the world where we most need
transparency and so rarely have it. Here's a medley of locations around the
world where we've placed cameras. Now imagine the impact these cameras would
have had in the past, and will have in the future, if similar events
transpire. Here's fifty cameras in Tiananmen Square."
...
"There needs to be accountability. Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to
be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear
witness."
...
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN
-From "The Circle" by David Eggers
~~~
mirimir
What good is video evidence, if it can be faked? Having numerous independent
feeds helps, I suppose. But once you have enough perspectives to create a
decent 3D model, you can generate as many fake perspectives as you like.
Also, there are obvious downsides to panopticons.
But none of that matters, I guess. We will have the cameras _and_ the fakes.
~~~
coldtea
> _What good is video evidence, if it can be faked?_
Even better: what good is video evidence if few care?
Consider officers shooting black people. There are several videos of that, but
does it show any sign of stopping? They even walk off without any
repercussions at trial...
And, conversely, when people do care, no extra evidence is needed.
~~~
Shivetya
Actually people do care, especially since there is video. what they still
don't care about that would probably need video as well is the staggering
amount of black on black shooting.
however as a society are we willing to give up that much privacy the moment we
step out the door, where anything and everything could be a recording device.
then again if we are drowning in being observed do we in turn find more
freedom?
~~~
mirimir
With as many cameras as we already have, there isn't much privacy anywhere,
unless we live alone.
I just reread _The Light of Other Days_ by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen
Baxter. Basically, they argue that group consciousness is the best option
where there is no privacy.
------
ninjakeyboard
Cached text-only copy
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NzxuClC...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NzxuClCIlfEJ:https://www.economist.com/news/science-
and-technology/21724796-future-photography-flat-cameras-are-about-get-lot-
smaller&num=1&hl=en&gl=ca&strip=1&vwsrc=0)
------
kogepathic
> Cameras are about to get a lot smaller
No, scientists have developed a prototype which can take fuzzy photos of
barcodes.
They then go on to tell you what would be necessary to have their device equal
a present day sensor in a phone, but they haven't made one yet.
In fact, no estimate is given for when this technology might be competitive
with CMOS sensors. The article just points to his previous work as proof he
can get some of his ideas to market.
Relevant XKCD: [https://www.xkcd.com/678/](https://www.xkcd.com/678/)
I am excited by advances in camera technology, but this headline is peddling
research as a pending disruption to the industry, and I don't see any evidence
of that in the article.
~~~
regularfry
He's saying he can make a commercial sensor in 5 years. Now, that's admittedly
not saying it'll be in phones in that time, but when it works it won't just be
competitive with CMOS sensors, it'll do things they aren't capable of.
~~~
orbital-decay
There are planar Fourier capture arrays, which are also lensless, can be
implemented with existing CMOS process and seem to be better by every metric
than this. AFAIK they are currently being evaluated for eye tracking sensors
which aren't sensitive to resolution (128x128 is enough) but need to be flat.
There are also single-pixel compressed sensing cameras, which can be made
lensless as well and are limited by the optical modulator specs.
The problem with lensless sensors is always the computing power required to
reconstruct the final image.
~~~
regularfry
Admittedly I'm reading between the lines here, but I suspect that these don't
need computationally expensive reconstruction. The reconstruction is done
entirely by setting up the delays correctly on the input sensors, then the
image is formed by simple interference. You'd read the image off just like an
ordinary ccd.
~~~
vel0city
From the article:
"He concedes that there are challenges: improving the optical performance of
the elements; suppressing spillover effects between different signals in the
device; and honing the algorithms that calibrate the camera’s performance."
The line of "honing the algorithms" is the complexity orbital-decay is
referencing. These types of sensors do need computationally expensive
reconstruction to generate images we're used to seeing with traditional optics
and sensors currently found in many consumer devices. The filtering and
focusing work the lenses do still needs to happen. These sensors essentially
rely on complex math to replace the finely ground glass.
~~~
regularfry
Those algorithms are already very well understood from radar and sonar,
though. It's not like he's starting from scratch.
And I'd take issue with the characterisation that they need "complex math to
replace the finely ground glass" \- what replaces the glass is the analogue
photon detection, delay, and amplification channel on the front end. My
suspicion is that the only "complex math" is done calculating the delays
before capturing the image, not doing the reconstruction (again, unless I've
missed something unique about moving from GHz to THz).
------
ChuckMcM
This is very much on the path I've seen in software defined radio (SDR). I am
particularly interested to see when they invert atmospheric interference in
real time. A telescope or spotting scope with a co-linear laser visible to the
circuit should be sufficient. Then no shimmering heatwaves in the distance,
just a clear picture.
------
leke
Some ingredients for a always recording society...
\- Super cheap and gigantic capacity storage.
\- Wireless network like 5G.
\- Wireless charging.
\- Nano cameras.
I think there was a Black Mirror episode about this.
~~~
stefanpie
Well there was white bear which was more of a philosophical debate and then
there was Most Hated in the Nation which I think really hits home the
development of small new technologies such as cameras and the consequences of
keeping their power and security unchecked.
~~~
swashbuck1r
There was also The Entire History of You - where everything you see is
recorded and can be played back at any time - leading us to hyper-focus on
details from the past rather than experiencing the present.
------
amelius
Could this enable a light-field camera? [1]
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-
field_camera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-field_camera)
------
astrostl
Sensor SIZE is still the primary determination of quality. Not seeing how this
changed that.
------
anta40
When will this ready to replace my 35mm, full frame camera?
:D
~~~
regularfry
He's talking about an optical phased array system. Once it's working,
competing with a 35mm system "should" (famous last words) be a matter of
scaling up the number of elements to match the lens size. The thing is, once
that happens, it's got a huge advantage: it doesn't need any other lenses. At
all. Any "lens" you could want is a software configuration away.
~~~
leemailll
is there already a model on sale? Like lytro?
~~~
spuz
No, the technology demonstrated is only capable of imaging 8x8 pixels. Here's
a link to the actual research: [http://www.caltech.edu/news/ultra-thin-camera-
creates-images...](http://www.caltech.edu/news/ultra-thin-camera-creates-
images-without-lenses-78731)
------
taw55
I don't think I fully grasped the explanation, it's like some sort of slit-
scan pinhole camera? Aren't those images going to be super noisy compared to
lensed cameras with larger sensors?
------
roryisok
On mobile, for me at least, the text content of this article disappears when
the page has fully loaded. Anyone else? This isn't the first time I've seen
this sort of thing happen
~~~
stevenh
economist.com brilliantly bans you from accessing their site after you've
clicked a few of their links. The text vanishes because they've sloppily
hacked this limitation in client-side by checking a cookie after the page
finishes loading. This leaves 99% of visitors thinking that the site is
broken, so they leave without ever noticing the message about how they need to
pay a ransom to unban themselves.
For sites like this, you can sometimes archive the URL to evade the ban.
[http://archive.is/Ni7Lo](http://archive.is/Ni7Lo)
~~~
wj
OT: I think it is a bit of a jump to equate subscribing to paying a ransom.
~~~
laser
It's a bit like a ransom when they load the article at first, you start
reading, and then the text disappears asking for payment. Fortunately, The
Economist seems to just use cookies so you can still view the articles
incognito.
------
mproud
Escape the article limit garbage by using Private Browsing and the like.
------
Hydraulix989
RIP Privacy
------
bwang29
It seems like economist uses Javascript to create the "You've reached your
article limit" dialogue. Simple press ESC key to stop JS from executing on
Chrome so that you can read the article.
Also here is my TL:DR summary of it if you're still trying to fight through
the pay wall:
There is a thing called grating coupler that works like little high frequency
antennas that receives light signals. When you put a whole array of them you
will be able to do various scans of light signals to simulate the camera
pointing at different direction, or fisheye, telephoto effects without the
need of tilting or moving the surface of the array. The underlying computation
relies on the ability to calculate and control the timing of signal travelled
from each antennas, plus some classic signal interference and phasing issues.
An 1cm x 1cm array will contain 1 million such couplers which would create a
similar sized image as an iPhone 7 rear camera, but since there is no lens
involved, the camera can be made a lot thinner.
~~~
mtgx
Using the Brave browser with the block scripts option enabled seems to work,
too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition (Linux) Review - Lio
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/01/dell-xps-13-ubuntu-review-2017/
======
overcast
These are definitely the awesome laptops Apple should have made. I just really
don't want to give up macOS. I've literally put this thing back and forth into
my cart, twenty times by now. But there is just too much I'm giving up
environment wise. Either I go with Windows, and lose unix, or I go Linux, and
lose everything but unix. That's why MacOS works for me, and I'm sure others.
It's what Linux should have been by now, a hybrid Windows/Unix experience.
Apple is really pissing me off, forcing me even to contemplate this.
I KNOW Linux isn't Unix.
~~~
passivepinetree
What's getting in the way of buying the XPS 13 and dual-booting it in order to
have it both ways?
Sure, you couldn't use both at the same time, but that seems like it'd take
care of most (of at least my) use cases.
~~~
aceperry
You'll probably need a larger hard disk to accommodate both operating systems
if you dual boot. I prefer to run virtualbox/vmware and have both running side
by side while using the best tools/software on each platform.
------
kag0
Does anyone know if the XPS 13 with linux suffers the issue where you can't
rest your thumb on the bottom of the touchpad like a button
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-
input...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-
synaptics/+bug/1026046) ?
This issue has been my bane, and the biggest reason I haven't upgraded from my
old thinkpad (has dedicated mechanical buttons). I would have thought there
would be a resolution by now since more and more laptops do away with the
dedicated buttons, but I've never found one.
~~~
kminehart
I'm on my XPS 13 right now, on Arch Linux using xf86-libinput, thumb rested on
the bottom left of the trackpad ready to click. Moving my finger on the
trackpad towards the top moves the cursor. Using two fingers (with my thumb
rested) scrolls the page.
However, if I use my thumb to move the cursor first, this doesn't work and
instead scrolls the page.
Hope that answers your question.
------
jvehent
An interesting review would be to compare this XPS13 with the upcoming Lenovo
Carbon X1 as a Linux laptop.
------
evacchi
I'll bite the bullet and be that guy. What about dual monitor support? What
about suspend/resume? Do WiFi and Bluetooth work without issues?
~~~
CityWanderer
I've run it with one monitor, two would be hard since it only has a single USB
C and I don't have any monitors that can daisy chain.. if that's even a thing.
The issue is that Linux doesn't play nicely with having different pixel
densities on each monitor. You can try to make it scale, but then apps appear
in different sizes depending on which screen you open them on. It's pretty
horrible, so I run the laptop at half-res (1600x900) so that it matches the
monitor and everything is the same size.
Suspend/resume works fine.
I've had to restart the network-manager service just once to get WiFi to
refresh. Otherwise it's fine reconnecting when you come in/out of suspend.
Other things: battery isn't great but I don't use it away from a desk. On the
first couple of days the Ubuntu Software Centre kept crashing; I think it's
fine now but I don't tend to use it anyway. I disabled the Dell apt source
because it was failing - I don't know if that was a one-off problem or it's
just broken.
But, I'm running Linux as my primary development environment again and it just
feels _so good_ after a few painful months on OS X.
~~~
bardworx
> But, I'm running Linux as my primary development environment again and it
> just feels _so good_ after a few painful months on OS X.
Can you expand on that, please. Why were you months on OS X painful? Just
curious to hear the use case that caused this.
~~~
CityWanderer
I've been using Linux of some flavour at home for the last 15 years, only
straying onto Windows for gaming. I've been lucky to use Ubuntu at work for
most of my professional career too (6-7 years?) - so it's what I know and what
I'm used to.
I started a new role a few months ago that forced me onto OS X and found
physical and software issues. Physically OS X does not let you configure mice
properly without installing third party drivers. Of course I ditched the
"magic" mouse pretty quickly after my hand started hurting after a couple of
days, but even with a normal mouse you simply cannot configure mouse
sensitivity and acceleration properly - it cannot treat a mouse on par with
what Linux or Windows will. You need extra drivers to even enable mouse
buttons 3,4 and 5.
The keyboard shortcuts hurt too, sometimes using Ctrl, sometimes using Cmd,
but that could be just fighting 15 years of muscle memory - so take that with
a grain of salt (but it indirectly caused more physical finger pain).
Software-wise I don't know how objective I can be, but it feels faster/simpler
to install software and things like the terminal are much better integrated -
I can auto-complete git branch names on the command line for instance. Maybe
OS X can do that kind of thing, but certainly not out of the box. To me, OS X
feels like a 95% emulation of Linux, just that slightly bit lacking.
Then there are the embarrassing things like I couldn't find the shortcut to go
to the end of the current line. On Linux it's the End key - on Mac I assume
it's some combination somewhere.
~~~
sakabaro
> Then there are the embarrassing things like I couldn't find the shortcut to
> go to the end of the current line. On Linux it's the End key - on Mac I
> assume it's some combination somewhere.
Crt+a. Every emacs shortcuts work everywhere in MacOS.
~~~
RallionRl
The canonical way for the End key is fn + right arrow, fn + left arrow for
Home, and fn + up/down arrow for Page Up/Down. And you can even use Del with
fn + Backspace! But me too, I prefer the emacs shortcuts.
------
arca_vorago
After having actually read the EULA/TOS shipped with Dell ubuntu versions, I
would rather order the hardware with no OS and install my own if possible.
~~~
edvinbesic
Can you elaborate a bit for those of us that haven't read it? What stood out
as particularly bad for you? I am asking since I am considering one of these
machines.
~~~
arca_vorago
Here it is or at least a variation in the past:
[http://sprunge.us/DQhC](http://sprunge.us/DQhC)
"By placing your order for Product, you accept and are bound to the terms of
this Agreement."
"12\. Governing Law. THE PARTIES AGREE THAT THIS AGREEMENT, ANY SALES THERE
UNDER, OR ANY CLAIM, DISPUTE OR CONTROVERSY (WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT, OR
OTHERWISE, WHETHER PRE-EXISTING, PRESENT OR FUTURE, AND INCLUDING STATUTORY,
CONSUMER PROTECTION, COMMON LAW, AND EQUITABLE CLAIMS) BETWEEN CUSTOMER AND
DELL arising from or relating to this Agreement, its interpretation, or the
breach, termination or validity thereof, the relationships which result from
this agreement, Dell's advertising, or any related purchase SHALL BE GOVERNED
BY THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF TEXAS, WITHOUT REGARD TO CONFLICTS OF LAW. 13\.
Dispute Resolution and Binding Arbitration. YOU AND DELL ARE AGREEING TO GIVE
UP ANY RIGHTS TO LITIGATE CLAIMS IN A COURT OR BEFORE A JURY OR TO PARTICIPATE
IN A CLASS ACTION OR REPRESENTATIVE ACTION WITH RESPECT TO A CLAIM. OTHER
RIGHTS THAT YOU WOULD HAVE IF YOU WENT TO COURT MAY ALSO BE UNAVAILABLE OR MAY
BE LIMITED IN ARBITRATION. ANY CLAIM, DISPUTE, OR CONTROVERSY (WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, TORT, OR OTHERWISE, WHETHER PRE-EXISTING, PRESENT OR FUTURE, AND
INCLUDING STATUTORY, CONSUMER PROTECTION, COMMON LAW, INTENTIONAL TORT,
INJUNCTIVE AND EQUITABLE CLAIMS) BETWEEN CUSTOMER AND DELL, its agents,
employees, principals, successors, assigns, affiliates, subsidiaries
(collectively "Dell") arising from or relating in any way to your purchase of
Product, this Agreement, its interpretation, or the breach, termination or
validity thereof, the relationships which result from this Agreement
(including relationships with third parties who are not signatories to this
Agreement), Dell's advertising, or any related purchase SHALL BE RESOLVED
EXCLUSIVELY AND FINALLY BY BINDING ARBITRATION.The arbitrator shall have
exclusive authority to resolve any dispute relating to arbitrability and/or
the enforceability of this arbitration provision including any
unconscionability challenge or any other challenge that the arbitration
provision or the Agreement is void, voidable, or otherwise invalid."
"This Retail Purchaser End User Agreement ("Agreement") governs your retail
purchase and use of products and/or services and support ("Product") sold in
the United States by Dell, including its affiliates or subsidiaries. BY
PURCHASING AND USING THE PRODUCT, YOU ("CUSTOMER") AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE
TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT USE THE PRODUCT, AND
RETURN THE PRODUCT TO YOUR PLACE OF PURCHASE (subject to its return policy)."
This is a legal agreement ("Agreement") between you, the user, and Dell
Products L.P., a Texas limited partnership, or Dell Global B.V. (Singapore
Branch), a Singapore branch of a company incorporated in The Netherlands with
limited liability, on behalf of itself, Dell Inc., and Dell Inc.'s other
subsidiaries and affiliates (together "Dell"). This Agreement covers all
software (“Software”) and any upgrades, updates, patches, hotfixes, modules,
routines, feature enhancements and additional versions of the Software that
replace or supplement the original Software (collectively “Updates”)
distributed by Dell unless there is a separate license agreement between you
and the manufacturer or owner of the Software or Update."
Pretty standard overzealous boilerplate that companies get away with these
days, but I don't like it so I don't agree to it.
------
chpmrc
As usual "battery" is repeated multiple times in the article but without any
number. When will reviewers understand that "battery life is not great" means
absolutely nothing and replace it with something like "battery lasts 3 hours
and 4 minutes while repeatedly streaming a youtube video in 4K on Chrome 52"?
Notebookcheck is the only consumer tech website worth reading for the reviews
(if you know others please share them) because of their precise, standardized
tests from the display to the noise and heat produced by the chassis.
~~~
chias
For what it's worth, my XPS 13 (with the 3200x1800 screen) lasts a good six
hours on battery. I typically don't bother bringing the charger with me. The
power brick on the charger is also very small and lightweight, making bring it
with you not a big deal either.
~~~
sliken
Despite the 22 hour number, dell only promises 12 on the 3200x1800 screen.
Rather frustrating that they limit the good cpu/ram configurations to the
3200x1800 touch screen. So if you want more ram you are forced to switch from
a matte screen that gives you 22 hours on battery to a shiny screeen that
lasts 12 hours.
------
to3m
Can anybody say whether the ANSI-style keyboard shown is the "Internal
US/International Qwerty Backlit Keyboard" option that's available on Dell's
shop on the website, or whether this place just got sent a US-spec laptop for
whatever reason?
The word "international" is rather worrying, suggesting it might have one of
those upside down L return keys...
~~~
moreentropy
US International keyboards have a AltGr key instead of right Alt and a €
symbol on the 5 key. Afaik there are no other differences.
------
StavrosK
This sounds like a great replacement for my aging MacBook Air, but, having
been bitten by its non-upgradeable 4 GB of RAM, I'm wondering whether I should
just get a 32 GB laptop.
I think I'll spring for the XPS 15 in the end, since it has a better graphics
card as well, and I could do some light gaming on it.
~~~
JamesMcMinn
I'll be going for the XPS 15 too. I've been using an XPS 13 9333 from 2014
with 8GB RAM and recently I've struggling to keep things under that limit.
The XPS 15 has the advantage that the RAM is user replaceable, and as I
understand it, the 16GB model comes with a single 16GB module, so should be
fairly cheap to upgrade to 32GB yourself if you'd like to save a few $
initially.
~~~
StavrosK
You mean it has two slots but only one module? That's great news if so, it
means I can just buy the 16 GB model and upgrade later, if/when I need the 32
GB (possibly replacing both modules).
~~~
DocG
Last year XP15 (8gb) model has two 4gb sticks inside. Still, two easily
accessible slots.
------
buckhx
Anyone know how the XPS 13 2 in 1 is w/ Linux support? I don't think they have
a DE for the 2 in 1, but thinking about snagging one for a light
work/entertainment laptop.
~~~
kminehart
The main difference in hardware between the DE and the non-DE is the wireless
card, which isn't impossible to get working but definitely a pain in the ass.
I can only imagine with the touch screen and tablet-mode combined it would be
a tall order for out-of-the-box Linux compatibility.
~~~
szarecor
For the previous version, DE used a different wifi card (intel for DE,
otherwise Broadcomm), but I don't think that's true for this latest version. I
think DE and non-DE both ship with the same Qualcomm "Killer 1535"
------
Hydraulix989
The keyboard is shit according to the reviews. Every developer needs a good
keyboard. This is why I exclusively use ThinkPads, even if they aren't as good
under Lenovo as they were before.
------
ld00d
> What's more disappointing for some Linux fans is the fact Dell still uses
> the Windows logo on the super key.
It's the first thing I look for and most often the first source of
disappointment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lenovo Just Released a New Laptop That Beats the MacBook on Basically Everything - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/05/04/lenovo_s_13_inch_lavie_z_laptop_is_lighter_than_a_macbook_has_multiple_ports.html?wpisrc=obnetwork
======
akhalr
Bait and switch title. Most of the comparisons in the article are contrived
because the laptops being compared are very different types of machines. Even
so, the article itself lists quite a few areas where the new laptop doesn't
come close to beating the Macbook (e.g. battery life). All that is followed by
the admission "I also haven't tested the LaVie Z in person, so it could be a
crappy computer, who knows".
~~~
ratfacemcgee
it really is a terrible article. "To pack it all in, the Lenovo laptop is
thicker than the MacBook. Apple's offering is 0.52 inches at its thickest,
whereas the LaVie Z is 0.67 inches at its thickest point. _But still._ "
"The LaVie Z is currently shipping for $1,500 or $1,700 depending on which
model you get, compared with the MacBook, which is priced at $1,300 or
$1,600."
"Lenovo only estimates six hours of battery life for the LaVie Z...Apple
estimates nine hours for its new MacBooks."
"Even if the MacBook is a superior product, it's not way out in front like the
MacBook Air was."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Saudi Arabian Hackers Leak Credit Card Details of 400,000 Israeli Citizens - Ohadr
http://pastebay.com/150288
======
yuvadam
I just gave a talk last week at 28C3 [1,2] about how all the personal details
of Israeli citizens are up for grabs for anyone inclined enough to get them.
I'm ashamed to see that we've learned nothing in the past 10 years.
[1] - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow7cvZOzp6w>
[2] - [http://speakerdeck.com/u/yuvadm/p/28c3-data-mining-the-
israe...](http://speakerdeck.com/u/yuvadm/p/28c3-data-mining-the-israeli-
population-census)
EDIT: Israeli media now claims that 400K is an exaggerated number, and the
actual number of leaked CC is much smaller.
EDIT2: I'm gonna go ahead and publish a mirror list [3] for the leaked data
and for affected accounts by email [4]. I might be affected and I prefer to
know if I am ASAP, even if this means the data leaks more, which it will
anyway.
[3] - <http://pastebay.com/186092>
[4] - <http://pastebin.com/EnY7E0Hw>
~~~
maayank
what's the password of the rar inside the rar? the page referenced in the
"readme" file is unavailable
~~~
runn1ng
At least the file, hosted on hacked sites, called israeli.rar, is without a
password.
~~~
maayank
I downloaded one of the files yuvadam posted (not sure if it's the same one
there now - the post was edited) and it had a password protected rar in a rar
------
waffle_ss
I have a very hard time resolving how this type of attack could fall under the
umbrella of Anonymous. Saudis specifically attacking Israel implies a
nationalistic attitude, given their history. They also affiliate their hacker
group with Wahabbism, which is a strict branch of Islam that most would brand
as fundamentalist (and sometimes extreme).
I can't really see the ideals of Anonymous coexisting with nationalism and
religious fundamentalism.
~~~
pjscott
It's inspired by the Anonymous style: find someone you dislike, attack their
computers somehow (e.g. private information theft, DDoS, web site defacing),
and brag about it online. The ideals are very different, but the method is
pretty similar.
~~~
noduerme
The difference being that the people involved wouldn't be aware there was oil
under their feet if our country hadn't invented the market for it, told them
it was there and given them the equipment to drill it. Left to their own
devices, the only thing they'd be hacking right now would be the back end of a
camel. What do you think the chances are that their brute force method wasn't
one of a million snippets written by someone in the west? Or in Israel, for
that matter? How about the computers they used to get on the network they
benefit from, but didn't create? Reckon the intel chips were made in Israel?
After all the petty bullshit, Saudis like to party too. The problem is their
government and society is repressive as hell, and they're so scared to
confront it, they have to go into this whole make-believe world where they act
as heroes by attacking Israeli servers. It's pretty funny. I'm sure Israelis
will recover. The Saudis on the other hand still live in a medieval hellhole
where women can't drive a car... and this really doesn't do much to change
anything. Their time and energy would be better spent trying to bring
civilization to their own wasteland.
[Edit] I should add, the fact that if you did this in your own country, you'd
probably have your hands cut off, is a powerful motivation to go after
somebody with more liberal values.
~~~
agilo
Ironic how despite all this, the american government finds it fit to support
this repressive regime, while demonizing countries like Syria where citizens
(or at least women) enjoy greater freedoms. One could say it all depends on
your stance vis-a-vis Israel. The fact of the matter is that, countries like
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, old Egypt, North Korea etc. have normalized or at
least neutral relations with Israel (despite the hypocritical rhetoric to
appease the masses), and hence are supported or allowed to have their way
(even their bombs).
I think this hacking incident is a mere accident, and the ruling Saudis will
be quick to repress it and assure Israel none of this will happen again.
~~~
berntb
>>demonizing countries like Syria
How can you "demonize" that type of brutal regimes? What _more_ can you say
about them? That Assad eats children?
>>One could say it all depends on your stance vis-a-vis Israel.
>>the ruling Saudis will be quick to repress it and assure Israel none of this
will happen again
Sigh, so Saudi Arabia is pro Israel? :-)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world#Saudi_Arabia)
This is a model of what happens there without conspiracy theories:
Saudi Arabia is _needed_ as an ally by the US. It is called "realpolitik" --
all countries, including democracies, use it and lie about it. (The difference
with democracies is that they do support human rights, as long as it doesn't
cost too much.)
North Korea sells/sold nuclear tech to Syria/Iran; are you really claiming
they have "neutral" relations with Israel?
And so on... please don't write this kind of thing on HN.
~~~
rbanffy
I would say this whole thread took a wrong turn with noduerme's deeply rude,
ignorant, arrogant an plain racist post. We would all have gained something
had it never existed.
~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
"We would all have gained something had it never existed."
Fuck off, Mr. Wannabe Censor. Progress requires unfettered conversation of all
types, not just the ones of which you approve.
"... noduerme's deeply rude, ignorant, arrogant an[d] plain racist post."
It was none of those things. What he said is basically correct, and it
reminded me of 2005's Syriana, in which there was a conversation between Matt
Damon as Bryan Woodman, an energy analyst, and Alexander Siddig as Prince
Nasir Al-Subaai, successor to the Emir.
NASIR: An ancestor of mine owned this bird's [falcon's] ancestor before Christ
was born. Six more North Field blocks will be available for development. We
would like to offer your firm the right to represent them.
WOODMAN: If I were your economic advisor I'd tell you it's not the dumbest
thing you've ever done, but it'll probably be the dumbest thing you do today.
Probably. But why would you need an economic advisor? Twenty years ago you had
the highest GNP in the world and now you're tied with Paraguay. Your second
biggest export is second-hand goods. Followed by dates on which you lose five
cents a pound. You want to know what the business world thinks of you. They
think a hundred years ago you were chopping each other's heads off in the
desert and that's exactly where you'll be in another hundred. So, yes, on
behalf of my firm, I accept your money.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriana>
I included the first sentence, about the falcon, because it shows that Nasir
is proud of his people having been around for a long time, but that apparent
plus is effectively countered by Woodman's observation about their primitive
nature, and how the oil money is really the only thing keeping them from
regressing. Sure, the film is fictional, but there is a lot of truth to be
found in it.
~~~
rbanffy
> Fuck off, Mr. Wannabe Censor
I'm not one who wants to impose restraint on others. I merely suggest a little
bit of tact makes dialog possible. Or, more important, that its lack may make
dialog impossible.
> Progress requires unfettered conversation of all types, not just the ones of
> which you approve.
It also requires the conversation itself, which may be rendered unproductive
by the kind of comment made upstream.
> it reminded me of 2005's Syriana, in which there was a conversation between
> Matt Damon as Bryan Woodman, an energy analyst, and Alexander Siddig as
> Prince Nasir Al-Subaai
Is all your knowledge in Middle East affairs derived from a movie?
------
Ohadr
Anonymous just declared that they are not responsible for this:
<https://twitter.com/anonyops/status/153969476277248000>
"We have no love for Israeli gov't but targeting 1000s for being Israeli?
Sorry, you are not #Anonymous pastebay.com/148920"
~~~
runn1ng
Heh. I like how Anonymous keep on repeating how are they "decentralized" and
the only thing really needed to join is to call yourself Anonymous - and at
the same time keep on telling trough semi-official twitter accounts, how this
Wahhabi attack or that Stratfor attack was not official Anonymous and blah
blah blah.
Hypocrisy on hypocrisy.
~~~
pdeuchler
I would argue that the purpose of allowing anyone to call themselves
"Anonymous" places the group's identity on their actions, not who they say
they are. It's kind of the whole point of calling themselves "Anonymous" and
leads right into the "we are legion" bit. There is no individual, only the
movement.
However, by performing actions that are contrary to the Anonymous ideology the
Saudi attackers distanced themselves farther from Anonymous than any name
could
~~~
jonhendry
But what is "Anonymous' ideology" if anyone is part of Anonymous?
Maybe Anonymous should have chosen a different name. Other groups could then
remain anonymous, without being assumed to be Anonymous.
~~~
runn1ng
Well, actually, Anonymous didn't really chose the name - it was a joke made on
default "Anonymous" username on 4chan. And it really grew somehow organically
into this point.
That's what I don't like about people saying "You are not true Anonymous".
First hackers under the name "Anonymous" posted other people MySpace passwords
on 4chan and put blinking lights on epilepsy website. And the whole
scientology movement was first meant as a joke, as a reaction to the leaked
Tom Cruise video.
Really, people calling other people "not true Anonymous" are hypocritical. I
think.
------
asjd
This is the IP of the hacker: 188.75.86.66 (It's possible this is a bounce
server, but geo locating it suggests against this.)
I know because I was involved in cleaning up one of the hacks. (I have to stay
anonymous, but my main account has more than 7000 karma.)
In the one I dealt with they did not copy stored cards (because they
couldn't), but rather added extra code that would email a copy of the details
to the hacker as the order was placed.
(So even with PCI compliance credit card numbers can still be stolen.)
~~~
3pt14159
Right now, right this second edit this post. Get right of the karma count and
remove the rest of what you posted besides the IP of the hacker. Word
frequency analysis + knowledge of your karma count will easily identify you.
------
krembo
My CC was in the list that the hackers published. Just canceled it...
Does anyone have good arguments against leaving the files where they are now
and not deleting them from pastebin/megaupload/...? Since the beast is already
out of it's cage, there is no point in chasing it. It is even better to let
the public d/l the file and try to find themselves if their card and other
details like emails, passwords were stolen.
~~~
darklajid
Do you have any idea where your card was leaked from? Can you share what card
provider you used? I was already paranoid about credit cards before I came,
now it's really affecting my blood pressure..
(nice username btw, learned the word here..)
~~~
krembo
I'm not sure if they stole it directly from the sites (coupon site in my case)
or from the clearance company. In any case it seems that the site who store
the details broke the law by storing the CVV (not to mention that passwords
were not encrypted..)
~~~
ceejayoz
Broke the law, or broke the PCI standards?
~~~
krembo
i think in IL standing in the PCI standards is a must for clearance comapnies.
------
darklajid
I have an israeli credit card. I'd have liked to understand where this was
leaked from. And - well - make sure that mine is not among them.
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the file isn't available any more.
~~~
Ohadr
I also have three of them...
I think once that file was online even for a few minutes, the card numbers
mentioned in it are not safe anymore. It will be leaked again.
If it's not some kind of provocation (files with false data) then this is a
pretty big crisis. I'm going to have to monitor my credit card logs closely in
the next few weeks...
~~~
krembo
Since i found my CC details over there I assume this is not false data. Can we
call it a cyber terror attack?
~~~
HotKFreshSwag
I would call it black hat hacking, hacktivism or sabotage. I wouldn't call it
a terror attack unless you feel terror when you realize you have to call your
credit card provider.
Lets save the word terror for things that terrify people like say bodily harm
or death.
------
hack_edu
Curious to see how the general consensus of Anonymous falls in line with this.
Lets not forget the long history of black hats in Israel.
------
theunixbeard
Interesting. I wonder, have there been other examples of religiously-motivated
hacks on this scale?
~~~
nostromo
Religious or political? I suppose in the Middle East the two are conflated.
------
usaar333
When I went to Israel a few years back I could not believe my eyes when I
noticed that my entire CC number was printed on every receipt.
I don't imagine online CC security being much better..
~~~
eliben
That was mostly fixed, AFAIK. Now only the last 4 digits are printed on
receipts.
------
vsviridov
I thought Anonymous were against corrupt politicians et al, and not just
general populace :(
------
teyc
Don't VISA et al require some kind of PCI compliance for storing credit card
details?
~~~
jacquesm
PCI compliance is worth as much as the party that signs off on you being
compliant, in most cases that is you.
Audits are few and far between, lots of places have shoddy security but claim
they are Fort Knox.
PCI compliancy is quite meaningless unless the people that implement it take
their job seriously. That's very frequently not the case, it is just seen as a
small obstacle in the way of doing business.
~~~
teyc
Thanks. Odd that VISA would let the third party auditors get away with it,
until they don't... which I'd hope so in this case.
Related: [http://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-
auditor...](http://serverfault.com/questions/293217/our-security-auditor-is-
an-idiot-how-do-i-give-him-the-information-he-wants)
~~~
rdtsc
It is mostly to cover their behinds not really to protect your data. When it
comes to litigation they basically want to point to a piece of paper with your
signature on it and say "see they agreed to be compliant" it is not our fault,
we did all we could.
~~~
teyc
I saw an Australian company offering tokenising solutions for credit card
transactions. Glancing briefly, they talked about replacing credit card number
with "tokens" that can be stored on the customer's premises, while the actual
card numbers are securely stored on theirs. To me it seems to be a sensible
approach to reducing the attack surface or auditable surface. Is this what
Stripe does?
~~~
rdtsc
Visa has the "visa verify" and it is a web service that basically asks extra
security questions during authorization. That works online only. Relies on the
merchant to provide the extra security.
Another thing is temporary one-use credit card numbers. My Discover card as
that feature. Of course then it also relies on me to assess the risk of a
merchant and go through the steps of getting that number.
------
desireco42
Just because is easy, it doesn't mean you should do it. Stealing from ordinary
people even from nation that you feel so much hostility to, still it is wrong.
------
samstave
Faction warfare.
EDIT: I got downvoted, without a reply. So, explain how doing this sort of
thing is not faction warfare?
The details of israeli credit is leaked by anons from the house of Saud. This
is clearly a faction issue. It is not likely government sponsored (though
likely condoned) and as a religious rift exists between jews and muslims, the
word faction applies perfectly.
Jews, muslims, christians; all factions within religious zealotry.
~~~
jonhendry
I think the term is 'sectarian'.
~~~
samstave
A sectarian word for factions.
Tomato Potato
\--- Sectarian:
of, relating to, or characteristic of a sect or sectarian
limited in character or scope
\---
Faction
a party or group (as within a government) that is often contentious or self-
seeking : clique
party spirit especially when marked by dissension
\---
You would be a fool to claim that sectarian skirmishes are not also political,
given the widespread theocratic nature of governments under both muslim and
jewish rule.
In this case - this is an attack, while premised on the appearance of
religion, is actually a theocratic/political-religious attack.
------
saljam
I find it odd they call themselves “Wahhabis.” For starters, that term isn't
something a “Wahhabi” would call himself. I've never been able to trace when
it was first used. However, it's often used by western scholars to refer to
“the Saudi guys” when classifying Muslims.
Does anyone know more about this group?
------
gokhan
> We have posted this message in pastebin, but it seems they have deleted the
> file.
That Stratfor dump with 75.000 card details is still on Pastebin. Why this one
deleted and the other is still there? (I believe both should be deleted.)
------
pm90
Attacking the general (innocent) populace for the faults of their
government/military? That's the definition of terrorism... and not activism.
~~~
rdtsc
> Attacking the general (innocent) populace for the faults of their
> government/military?
Generally agree but with one exception -- in places were the government claims
it represents the people and most people agree with that. Then everyone who
votes basically shares the guilt of what the government does.
~~~
dvirsky
Most democracies I know are usually divided between conservatives of some sort
and liberals of some sort, who agree and nothing, and usually just over 50% of
the voters if not less, agree with their government's policies.
I totally disagree with the Israeli gov's policies and often protest them.
Guess what? My personal info was inside those files (deprecated credit card
and email though).
Attacking citizens of democracies because they are inseparable from their
government and responsible for its actions, is a common argument for
terrorism, btw.
~~~
rdtsc
Democracies (or just "advertised" democracies) can't have it both ways. They
get to tell the world about their superior system of government where citizens
have a say in how their government runs (sometimes they even invade others to
impose this "superior" system on them). And that's great. But then there is
the other side of the coin when the said govt. screws up, then citizens should
man up and take responsibility. I am responsible for US invading Iraq and
Afghanistan. If I am in those countries and I would be afraid for my safety
(and rightly so). I didn't vote for it, and I don't think realistically people
have the power and the voice in most advertised democracies. But then, one can
argue, they are also responsible for now changing the system (and therefor the
99% Occupy stuff is happening all over, it is not about economy it is about
who has the power, control and responsability).
------
shn
too much fuss for something you can not verify. a)are they really valid
identities. %100 of them? b) how do you know that these were done by Saudis?
------
billpg
I've set up a site to check if your card was on the list. Just go to my site
and type in your card number...
------
kingkilr
Stay classy...
------
noduerme
From what I can see, the real Anonymous at least has the balls to go after
their _own_ government. Sure it's easy to hate on Israel, and these douchebags
will no doubt get some props from fellow haters for their little hack, but if
they had a pair of testicles between the lot of 'em, they'd start leaking info
on the dictatorship they live in, rather than stealing credit cards from the
democracy next door.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
document.f.q.focus(); The Billion Dollar Line of JavaScript - jkush
http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/blog/billion-dollar-javascript/
======
vlad
The author confuses correlation and causation. Google has been setting the
cursor to the textfield since they were in beta and long before AdWords. I've
done the same.
It's funny the author neglected to consider that Google could have eliminated
the I'm Feeling Lucky Button (try it) if they really wanted to give users a
chance to make the "mistake."
Actually, it's just a side-effect of making life easy for users.
~~~
jkush
I totally agree with you vlad. I've always attributed the cursor focus as
being just good user interaction and not some ploy for more ad clicks.
~~~
vlad
Yeah! However, it is one of those great moments where one goes out of their
way to make life simple for their customers, and then notices a pattern they
couldn't have possibly deduced had they not implemented their idea.
------
Alex3917
There are actually a number of legitimate reasons for typing URLs into Google
instead of the address bar. For example, public computers in foreign countries
are often configured to redirect .com requests to the national TLD. So it's
much faster to type amazon.com into Google than it is to figure out how to
make Amazon.com stop resolving to Amazon.cn or whatever.
------
rwebb
"At an average cost of $5 per click this adds up to maybe $500 per day in
revenue for Google just for this one search. Multiply across 365 days and
taking a very conservative guess that this happens across 10,000 different
domains gives over $1.8 billion in yearly revenue for Google."
clearly!
------
henning
Google's revenues are largely dependent on the behaviors of inexperienced
users, especially ones who can't tell the difference between text ads and
actual content? No way!
~~~
rms
When I want to immediately engage in a financial transaction, I always click
on the Google ads because I know there I will find someone selling me
something rather than useful pure information
~~~
henning
Google's results for things often result in places to buy that thing rather
than information about it, so I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not.
~~~
rms
I was being serious, sometimes I do find the Google ads useful. I probably
should have phrased it in a way that sounded less sarcastic. :)
------
myoung8
Genius.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why does the apple watch exist? Who knows - joering2
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/apple-watch-exist-dont-know/
======
27182818284
Of the people I know with Android watches, most like it for the ability to
prioritize notifications. Every single one has said that. They can see if they
need to answer some reminder, meeting, etc with a more gentle glance.
With that, I'm smart enough to remember that I "didn't need a smartphone" when
they first came out and resisted them before they eventually became part of my
daily life.
More to that point, I think it is pretty easy to imagine really neat things in
generations II and III. Say, when you can use your watch to pay with a
biometric confirmation that it gets from being on me. Or 2-factor auth the
same way, or fixing the bugs the article mentions when calculating the harder
health metrics like stress. Imagine the generation V that measures insulin and
logs it. Etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The High-Flying Physics of a Plant’s Exploding Fruits - dnetesn
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/science/hairyflower-wild-petunia-seeds.html
======
gshubert17
Dwarf mistletoe, a parasite on various pine trees, use hydrostatic pressure to
expel seeds at speeds up to 60 mph. (Years ago I worked on computer models of
forest growth, health, and diseases—one of which is mistletoe.)
[http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/intropp/lessons/miscellaneous...](http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/intropp/lessons/miscellaneous/Pages/Dwarfmistletoes.aspx)
------
bbvnvlt
Reminds me of my favorite title for a scientific (engineering) paper ever:
Shooting Mechanisms in Nature: A Systematic Review
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0158277)
(disclosure: I work in the same department as the authors, although not at all
involved in this work)
------
analog31
Somewhat common in the eastern US is Wisteria, which also has an exploding
seed pod.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A simple note-taking and blogging platform - leafbomb
https://notepin.co
======
notheguyouthink
I like the UI. Wish it supported markdown, but I'm not really a blogger/writer
so my opinion prob doesn't matter :)
~~~
leafbomb
Thank you! :)
------
gitgud
Beautiful UI! I created a post in a few seconds, how does it stop someone else
from editing that post?
------
fiatjaf
Not bad. I like some things, don't like others, but this is not important.
What is important (beware, pessimistic comments):
1\. Too slow. Too many server-side steps with slow page reload for an app that
should be simple. Perhaps you should do more on the client without reloading,
or get a better server code. Write it in a compiled/faster language.
2\. I don't believe the world needs another note-taking app.
~~~
conradk
If we had to stop doing something every single time someone thought the world
didn't need it, we wouldn't be doing much.
------
surds
Very clean! If you don't mind sharing, what's the tech stack?
~~~
leafbomb
Thanks! The product was built in PHP with a lot of JS/jQuery for the frontend
:)
------
app4soft
"Hello, HN!"[0] parked ;-P
> Notebook already exists!
P.S.: I'm so sad, because "WTF"[0] and "TL;DR:"[1] notebooks already exists...
:-(
P.P.S.: "Hello, HN!" just archived[3]
P.P.P.S.: Okay[4]
[0] [https://notepin.co/hello-hn/](https://notepin.co/hello-hn/)
[1] [https://notepin.co/WTF](https://notepin.co/WTF)
[2] [https://notepin.co/TL;DR](https://notepin.co/TL;DR):
[3]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20180331011401/https://notepin.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20180331011401/https://notepin.co/hello-
hn/)
[4] [https://notepin.co/app4soft/](https://notepin.co/app4soft/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ajit Pai doubts Elon Musk’s SpaceX broadband-latency claims - ryan_j_naughton
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/elon-musks-promise-of-low-latency-broadband-meets-skepticism-at-fcc/
======
ipnon
Ajit Pai is irrelevant to technical arguments. He has a plausibly deniable
ulterior motive. "Ajit Pai is proposing limits on SpaceX's ability to apply
for funding from a $16 billion rural-broadband program."
I struggle to see how the American federal government is incentivizing
innovation in any capacity. American innovation today stems [p.i.] entirely
from the universities, startups and liberal society.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Maginot Line - devindotcom
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/25/the-maginot-line/
======
revelation
The image of the Maginot Line article in full resolution:
[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/maginotl...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/maginotlinearticle.jpg)
Its better reading than all of techcrunch, so..
~~~
Patient0
Interesting that they originally planned to have it cover Belgium too - if
they'd actually finished it Germany would not have been able to go through
Belgium after all. I wonder why they didn't finish it?
~~~
vonmoltke
As I recall there were a few reasons. The two biggest ones:
1) The Belgians threw a shitfit over the French wanting to build a wall to
seal in France with them on the wring side of it. They offered instead to
allow the French to connect French eastern border defenses to Belgium's
eastern border defenses, promising that if the Germans did decide to invade
Belgium again that their line would hold.
2) The portion that was completed cost over twice what was projected. The
Franco-Belgian border would have been harder to fortify than the Franco-German
border, and considering the cost overruns on the latter portion the former
started to look infeasible.
~~~
cstross
Also worth noting: Belgium was traditionally neutral, having been set up as
effectively a buffer state in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. The bloody
quagmire First World War was in no small part precipitated by Germany's
violation of Belgian neutrality, which brought Great Britain into the war on
the Franco-Russian side -- the UK had committed as a guarantor of Belgian
neutrality. So despite strong misgivings about German revanchism during the
1920s and 1930s, Belgium was also historically somewhat ambivalent about joint
defense projects with foreigners.
~~~
walshemj
But if they had allowed the British and French to advance to the defense line
before the Germans invaded ww2 would have turned out very different.
Part of the reason that the German blitzkrieg worked so well is the french and
British forces where out of position.
~~~
cstross
Yes, absolutely. And I note that these days Belgium is home to NATO's Supreme
Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). They might not have worked it out
after WW1, but after WW2 ...
------
ballard
Strawman recapitulation of PHKs thoughts. Unfortunately, the conclusions are
both wrong, and naïve at worst.
Crypto that gets used has to be easy-to-use, MySQL style. I think a project
like tcpcrypt is great example, in theory. Simple is good because the pain of
setup has to be least. (Tcpcrypt is opportunistic encryption that needs no
additional setup and is different from SSL.)
Crypto does work. Snowden admitted as such.
“Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the
few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so
terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.”
[http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/06/17/encrypting-your-email-
wor...](http://m.techcrunch.com/2013/06/17/encrypting-your-email-works-says-
nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden/)
(The last point is another form of the ancient security problem of taking
steps to minimize chances of plaintext disclosure.)
The cost to capture or recover plaintext should be much greater to the
proportion of the potential value of the PT over the time it could cause
damage.
Just giving up is defeatist and expects that some future government made of
fallible people would suddenly get enlightenment and act benignly. Never going
to happen, there is too much money and power at stake. (USG fears its citizens
but abuses power to crucify dissenters.)
Encrypting almost everything is one immediate way to forcibly remove the
possibility of abuse. Remember that even if (and that's a big "if") political
sands were shifted one way, they would certainly shift back to a culture of
secrecy and expedient Machevellianism. If you don't take reasonable measures
to protect yourself, you don't understand what's going on or what works. There
are no easy fixes, only defense-in- __depth __. Security is fundamentally an
unending competition of gambits and countermeasures that will continue so long
as people have secrets or desire freedom from intrusion.
~~~
eru
> Crypto that gets used has to be easy-to-use, MySQL style. I think a project
> like tcpcrypt is great example, in theory. Simple is good because the pain
> of setup has to be least. (Tcpcrypt is opportunistic encryption that needs
> no additional setup and is different from SSL.)
The off-the-record (OTR) plugins for various IM clients spring to mind as easy
to use.
~~~
Argorak
Except that a lot of people never care about validating the peers fingerprint.
"Hey, I am A, I am at another computer at the moment, hence then new keys."
(I know this is somehow mitigated by SMP in libotr, but some clients have not
implemented it yet, e.g.:
[https://trac.adium.im/ticket/9768](https://trac.adium.im/ticket/9768))
~~~
eru
I found OTR's handling of that via shared common knowledge (e.g. Socialist
Millionaire Protocol) quite pleasant.
~~~
Argorak
Hence the reference that not all clients provide an interface to SMP,
including very popular ones.
~~~
eru
Sorry, my reading comprehension failed.
------
fauigerzigerk
I think what we can achieve with cryptography is to force the government to
use proper courts and due process instead of mass surveillance.
I don't know why war metaphors are used for everything since 9/11\. The
Maginot Line is completely irrelevant, because this is not a war where one
party wins and one loses. It's a complex and ongoing political and social
process.
We can use technology to make long standing legal principles more effective
and their violation more visible.
------
gruseom
I read somewhere recently that the Maginot line has been unfairly maligned and
that it actually did its job pretty well.
Edit: this is the piece I was thinking of:
[http://ericmargolis.com/2013/06/on-ne-passe-pas-the-
unknown-...](http://ericmargolis.com/2013/06/on-ne-passe-pas-the-unknown-
victory-of-the-southern-maginot-line/)
~~~
PhasmaFelis
Yeah, my understanding is that the French knew very well that the Germans
would go around; the Line was only meant to force them to detour through rough
country and slow them down long enough for the French Army to mobilize. It
failed because the Nazis used unprecedented tactics and technology to storm
through Belgium and the Netherlands faster than anyone thought they could; the
French Army still knew they were coming, but weren't able to mobilize fast
enough to stop them.
~~~
rodgerd
Also, the British forces that were supposed to be guarding the Western route
into France folded quickly and retreated. "Blood, Tears, and Folly" contains
exceprts from contemporary sources noting that the British determination to
retreat was such that they prevented French troops from redeploying to their
Western flank so as to avoid the French defence impeding the British retreat.
~~~
vonmoltke
Additionally, the Belgian fortifications were not nearly up to the level of
the Maginot Line, nor the level the Belgians boasted. They proved to be little
more than a speedbump for the Wehrmacht.
~~~
pash
The Germans also devised novel tactics to overcome the Belgian fortifications.
In the initial attack on Eben-Emael [0], for example, commandos descended on
the fort in gliders in the black of night and used newly devised shaped
charges to destroy the heavily bunkered Belgian guns.
Blitzkrieg itself was a new tactic, but its success depended on surprise,
which the Germans achieved by sending their main mechanized force through the
rough, wooded terrain of the Ardennes while feinting an attack to the north,
through the plain of Flanders, where the Belgians and French expected them.
That was a hugely risky endeavor, and the offensive would probably have failed
if the German movements had been discovered during the several days it took to
cross the Ardennes Wood.
0\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Eben-
Emael](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Eben-Emael)
------
jpalomaki
The article mentions " I was told yesterday (by Bruce Schneier, so I trust it)
that the noise pattern from a device’s antenna can be used to fingerprint it,
a side effect of high-precision wireless transceivers."
My quick attempts with Google did not provide any good results. Does anybody
have pointers to research about how feasible this fingerprinting is for
example against modern cellphones?
~~~
AsymetricCom
Modern cellphones have many, many other ways to fingerprint them that are more
economic. I doubt what Schneier suggests would ever be used in anything other
than military applications for the next 10 years.
~~~
rdl
It's more of an issue for something like wifi, where you can trivially change
MAC (and do host-level stuff to change the fingerprint of the rest of the
stack).
------
Sagat
This is perhaps off topic but my cousin is a tour guide in one of the villages
close to the border with the Germans. Thanks to this I had the opportunity to
visit some of the Maginot bunkers where the French troops waited anxiously for
the invasion to come to their doorstep. A few rooms had their walls entirely
covered in miniature Mickeys, giving the place an eerie and deeply melancholic
atmosphere.
The point of my post is that it feels really great that France and Germany are
now allies, maybe even friends. You can criticize Europe a lot but at least we
aren't fighting each other and hopefully won't do so for another century.
Whenever I see Americans complaining about their country turning to shit I
want to tell them to focus on the fact that it could have been so much worse.
------
dangayle
I actually appreciate that article. Yes, it is written a little heavy
handedly, but the point is sound. Sure, there are some smart/informed people
who knew the actual power of the gov't to snoop, but by and large the "carbon
copy" metaphor is dead on.
Even here on Hacker News recently, there was an article about how the entire
US nuclear armament is run through ancient computers and we chuckle. "Ha ha,
you gov't people are stuck in the stone ages".
Of course, they let us laugh.
------
unhammer
"when a burglar comes through the window, do you put more locks on the door?
Better to just acknowledge that we chose to live in a dangerous neighborhood."
So they start keeping both the door _and_ the window unlocked? If that
happened to me, I would 1) get better at keeping my windows
closed/locked/barred 2) consider moving to a better neighbourhood.
"People can barely manage the privacy settings on Facebook" – Citation
Missing. [http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Where-Teens-Seek-
Pri...](http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Where-Teens-Seek-Privacy-
Advice.aspx) suggests the opposite.
"in violation of the 5th amendment, likely, but how long until a friendly
precedent on that account?" – so vote, speak out, do something instead of
accepting the status quo.
Who wrote this, Keith Alexander?
------
joseph_cooney
I was amused to learn the Germans had built a similar line on THEIR side of
the river, called the Siegfried line.
~~~
arethuza
Defence of their Western border was very important when the Wehrmacht was
active in the East - early in the war they really didn't have the men to
attack in the East _and_ defend in the West so having fixed defences there was
seen as very important.
~~~
joseph_cooney
By the time they were active in the east, their western border was "The
English Channel". This was the one they built before the outbreak of WWII.
------
snowwrestler
It's written to be over-the-top, but I agree with the sentiment that we cannot
fight government eavesdropping with "even better" technology.
The only thing that limits the law is the law; the solution to our problems,
at least in the U.S., must in the end be political not technological IMO.
~~~
unhammer
The fact that law must limit law does not make "privacy technology" pointless.
E.g. the dragnet would capture a whole lot more if no web sites used TLS at
all, and three-letter agencies would have a lot easier time of it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What can you recommend to Read for future startup founder? - genbit
I think it's good to read about some Tips&Tricks, before you start new company.<p>Business side, everything that can be useful to find partners, customers, raise funds.<p>Maybe you can suggest some books or read list.
======
mindcrime
Cribbed from an older answer of mine, to a different question[1], but pretty
much my "recommended reading list".
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591319#up_5591574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5591319#up_5591574)
0\. _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ \- it's not strictly about "marketing" in
and of itself, but it certainly touches on elements of marketing, and should
be required reading for any startup founder, IMO.
1\. _Crossing the Chasm_ by Geoffrey Moore (more marketing strategy / product
strategy than marketing tactics, but a valuable read)
2\. Lookup the current textbook for "Marketing 101" (or it's equivalent) at a
nearby college. Go buy the book and read it, even if you don't take the class.
If you have time and money, take the class.
3\. _The Ultimate Sales Machine_ by Chet Holmes. I'm deep into studying Chet's
approach now, and his book has some great stuff on it. If you can, get hold of
his videos from the program he did with Anthony Robbins titled "Ultimate
Business Mastery System." You can safely skip the Tony Robbins part, but Chet
delivers some good stuff.
4\. _In Search of Stupidity_ by Merrill Rick Chapman.
5\. _Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind_ by Al Ries, Jack Trout and Philip
Kotler
6\. _The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!_ by Al
Ries and Jack Trout
7\. _Re-Positioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis_ by
Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin
8\. _The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding_ by Al Ries and Laura Ries
9\. _Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition_ by Jack
Trout and Steve Rivkin
10\. _Successful Business Research: Straight to the Numbers You Need - Fast!_
by Rhonda Abrams. This is good for learning about how to find the numbers
you'll want to use to put together a first cut of a marketing plan. Think your
"target market" is "screw, nut and bolt manufacturers in the southeast with
more than 500 employees"? Then you need to know how many of those even exist,
before you know if the market is even theoretically worth pursuing. Think your
market is "adolescent girls in Massachusetts?" Then you might want population
demographics and birth rates, etc. This is a good basic, (and cheap) book with
some good pointers on how to get started on that kind of market research.
11\. _Marketing High Technology_ by William H. Davidow
12\. _How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and
Profit_ by Guy Kawasaki
13\. I'm a big Seth Godin fan, I'd say read anything and everything by him.
_The Purple Cow_ stands out in my memory as a particularly good one.
_Permission Marketing_ is good as well.
14\. _The Cluetrain Manifesto_
Also, I don't have any specific titles handy (I'm out of town consulting right
now, unfortunately, so I can't even walk into the other room and check), but
just go to a good used book store near you (if you have one) and find a couple
of cheap used textbooks on "marketing research" and "marketing strategy". The
exact title won't matter, you just want something you can read through and get
the high level stuff. You're not trying to become an MBA, just to learn the
language and the broad brush stroke overview of what goes on.
Some more suggestions in another old thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com:2227/item?id=7939794](https://news.ycombinator.com:2227/item?id=7939794)
~~~
genbit
thanks, good read and advices
------
JSeymourATL
It's useful for future founders to know there will be mountains of struggle,
pitfalls, tragedies, tons of errors. The James Dyson story has got it all>
[http://www.amazon.com/Against-Odds-Autobiography-Business-
Ic...](http://www.amazon.com/Against-Odds-Autobiography-Business-
Icons/product-
reviews/1587990148/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_4?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addFourStar&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending)
------
aespinoza
The Startup Manual - will get you started. ([http://www.amazon.com/The-
Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-By-Step...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Startup-
Owners-Manual-Step-By-
Step/dp/0984999302/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405628584&sr=8-1&keywords=the+startup+manual))
~~~
genbit
yes, were looking for something like that
------
rayalez
Here's my list: [http://digitalmind.io/post/best-startup-
books](http://digitalmind.io/post/best-startup-books)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How long can you actually work standing up? - Vivtek
Here's a question for people who are working at a standing-level desk - how long can you actually type while standing? Do your knees and feet get tired? I'm intrigued, but... I have to type a lot if I want to get paid.
======
ukdm
Last year a hurt my lower back and was forced to stand up as much as possible
to help the healing process for 6 months (sitting down puts 6x more pressure
on your lower back than standing according to my chiropractor).
I created a workstation that allowed my screen to be at eye height and
keyboard/mouse to be at the right height for my elbows to be at right-angles.
That was by far the most comfortable position to stand and type/mouse from.
Later on I found having the mouse higher actually helped too with arm ache.
As for how long I could stand for, the first week was not a problem. I was
doing 8am-1pm followed by 30 minutes sitting down, and then 1:30pm-6pm without
a break other than a walk to the toilet occasionally.
From week two my legs really started to ache from the kneee down, I found
myself leaning on the desk to take away the pressure. Investigating why this
was happening I found it is to do with keeping your legs stationary as the
muscles can cramp or just go stiff. The solution is to keep moving so a cheap
manual treadmill should do the trick. The alternative of taking frequent
breaks doesn't work as it breaks concentration.
If you have to do this for a couple of weeks then you should be able to cope,
if you want to make a "change for life" then come up with some way to keep
moving while working.
For those who do sit down all day and don't have back problems a word of
caution. Sitting all day makes your lower back very stiff, but you won't
notice this until you try to do something and hurt yourself. It may be a
lifting task that an unstiff back could cope with. Taking time to exercise and
stretch can save you such a disaster, I am healing well now, but still get
twinges and have to be carefull.
~~~
jnorthrop
"For those who do sit down all day and don't have back problems a word of
caution. Sitting all day makes your lower back very stiff, but you won't
notice this until you try to do something and hurt yourself. It may be a
lifting task that an unstiff back could cope with. Taking time to exercise and
stretch can save you such a disaster, I am healing well now, but still get
twinges and have to be carefull."
That is the right caution, but the wrong reason. A stiff lower back (lumbar)
is desirable. You want to be mobile at your hips, and upper back (thoracic)
and have the ability to keep the lumbar stable. When you lift something your
lumbar spine should be immobile.
You are correct that there are problems with sitting but it is that typically
your lumbar is rounded so that you are weakening and stretching it all day
long making it difficult to maintain proper posture when you lift something
from the ground.
A quick rule of thumb for mobility: Ankles (mobile), Knees (immobile), Hips
(mobile), Lumbar (immobile) and Thoracic (mobile). Stuart McGill is a great
resource for learning about proper back mechanics.
Oh, BTW, I use a stand up desk and love it.
------
artlogic
I recently (a week ago) converted my desk at my day job to a standing desk.
It's easily the most ergonomic position I've ever worked in. I have noticed
that just to keep my legs from getting stiff and my feet from getting sore I
move a lot more throughout the day. At first this was slowing down my typing a
bit, but I'm almost back up to speed. I also brought in a bar stool to lean on
(not sit on) when my legs get a bit tired. I'd say I'm standing now for about
80-85% of the work day. I have noticed a bit of residual pain in my heels, but
I just got a fatigue mat, and hopefully that will help. By and far the hardest
thing to get used to had been minor lower back pain - which, from my research,
is due to some core muscle weakness from - you guessed it - sitting too much.
One of the best things I've found about standing is that it keeps me more
alert and awake throughout the day. This is by far the most immediate plus,
for me.
The important thing to remember is to keep moving - change your position
often. I have considered the manual treadmill route, but I'm a little
concerned my co-workers wouldn't appreciate the noise. Walking in place seems
to work just fine - but does earn me some odd looks.
------
rarrrrrr
8 - 10 hr days are no problem. I built up to that over a few weeks.
Other possibly relevant factors: Switched to dvorak about 10 years ago. I'm in
athletic shape and maintain a healthfull diet.
I usually have a dead tree format book going, and take occasional breaks
during the day to read, cook, exercise, take a walk, etc.
Footwear makes a big difference. Minimal slippers were best. Anything with
arch support makes my feet hurt after a few hours.
------
kylecordes
I split my work about 40/60 between:
1) sitting down at my home office (nice wood furniture and decor the whole
works)
2) standing at my work office (ugly but very functional perma-temporary
standing desk)
... and don't have any problems at all. I type as long as needed, etc.
However, I never stand still for more than a few seconds. (This seems to be a
built-in feature of me, rather than anything I do intentionally.)
------
wbond
I recently did a week long stint on a temporary standing desk before ordering
new longer legs for my current desk.
For the first few days my feet hurt after standing for an hour or so, however
I did find that I felt more energetic throughout the day. I did have an odd
feeling of being unsettled the first day, but after that I found it easier to
focus, especially with the extra energy.
By the fifth day the pain in my feet was significantly reduced. This week I've
returned to my (fairly) ergonomic sitting desk setup and I've noticed posture
issues and some discomfort in my lower back.
My experience was that alternating short periods on a tall stool with standing
provided the most comfort. The paper, "The benefits of sitting and standing to
work"
([http://www.ergomotion.com.au/images/PDF/HFESA%20paper%202008...](http://www.ergomotion.com.au/images/PDF/HFESA%20paper%202008%20%20illustrated.pdf)),
references a study in which 30 full-time bank tellers came to the same
conclusion. Using a chef's mat can also provide some comfort for your feet.
------
johnyzee
I have a motorized sit/stand desk, as is the norm here in Denmark (and
Scandinavia in general probably). I have used these for five-six years.
I tend to stand around half the time at work, which comes to something like
three-four hours on the average day. If I have just done a long run or bike
ride I might sit for the entire day as my legs and back will already be
fatigued.
The thing that makes me sit is aching feet. I suppose standing for a long time
makes bodily fluids assemble in the lower legs, so after a while the feet
start to feel a bit swollen and the heels get sore from having all the weight
on them. This is alleviated by switching around from one leg to the other, but
after a couple of hours I need to sit for a while (this is the reason a desk
must be stand OR sit and not fixed to standing-only - you need the ability to
adjust according to the situation.)
~~~
TrevorBurnham
The norm? Really? Motorized desks are pretty rare here in the US.
------
imp
I set up a temporary standing desk at home for my work at night and on the
weekends. I didn't really have a problem typing for five hours at a time or
more. However, after about three weeks, I was getting aches in my ankles and
calves. I took down the standing desk soon after that. I felt like it was
sucking up my energy. I think standing about 20% of the time would be ideal.
------
oscardelben
I am now using an exercise ball <http://www.freestylemind.com/exercise-ball-
office-chair> . I don't have a standing-level desk but the ball reminds me to
stand up every once in a while. It's not exactly what you're looking for but
it could be a cheaper alternative
~~~
docgnome
I just started using one of these. Today is day 4. (The weekend was in the
way, so it's consecutive day 2) So far the only real change is my back is
hurting in a different place than with the cheap chair I had. (upper back
instead of lower) I'm giving it till Friday because I've heard that back pain
is normal at first mostly due to muscles being used that you weren't using
before.
~~~
oscardelben
I also recommend doing some back exercises if you can.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Swift Programming Playground in Browser - kjhitcher
http://bananaide.com/
======
croes
"Sorry! Something is wrong in the code. Will be back online shortly :("
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Motorola Droid hands on - alexandros
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/10/19/motorola-droid-hands-on/
======
fjabre
It really hope it does well and I love the direct marketing blitz attack on
the iPhone... It's about time Apple had some real competition and Google is
really the only company that can give them that..
I just feel bad for the established players.. They're going to have to watch
as their core markets erode even further.
------
dmpayton
A lot of the comments here seem to be about how ugly the device is. While I
agree that they could have done a better job to make it more aesthetically
pleasing, it's the hardware and software that are important. It could be a
bright pink Hello Kitty phone, and I'd still want it.
------
nimbix
Can you get a version that doesn't have 5 logos from 3 different companies on
it?
~~~
swombat
Yes, it's funny how the iPhone has no logo whatsoever on the front, and a
subtle, elegant one on the back.
If it's a great piece of design, you don't need to stick labels all over it.
~~~
sonofjanoh
It's on the back so everyone can see it.
It's a fashion statement to have an iSomething. Even here on HN you never (or
rarely) read I have booted up my Asus or Dell or whatever BUT there's always
"my Macbook" or similar.
I like the underdog companies and I appreciate their effort and technology and
I'm not buying into the iXXX hysteria. Apple was clever as it is being paid
for being advertised. People pay sh%%loads for their products and they never
ever forget to mention it in their discussions that they have one.
Geeks are a very small percentage of the market so unless the phone is not a
"fashion accessory" there won't be massive commercial success with it...but it
will be a great thing I hope.
~~~
gohnjanotis
I agree with your last point. It's too bad the Apple brand has been reduced to
that of a designer fashion by the masses, or some kind of status symbol.
It's like some people want a BMW just to impress the neighbors with a badge,
while others can appreciate the level of engineering and the minds that went
into the precision you can feel when you are driving it.
I like to make purchasing decisions based on the competency of the company in
making what they make, but unfortunately most people don't think that way so a
phone like this doesn't even get a chance.
~~~
ektimo
"while others can appreciate the level of engineering and the minds that went
into the precision you can feel when you are driving it."
I'd like to see a blind test for that. And who cares anyway if an expert can
detect a certain "feel", other than for status?
------
maxklein
I just need to look at this picture
([http://www.boygeniusreport.com/gallery/handsets/motorola-
dro...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/gallery/handsets/motorola-
droid/?pid=3582#picture_nav)) to know that it's going to be another flop. Two
things I believe someone should tell these companies:
1\. Don't save on your casing
2\. Girls don't like slide-out keyboards.
The killer android phone will look like the razr and be pretty expensive.
~~~
davidw
The thing about Android is that eventually, there will probably never be a
phone that is as beautiful as whatever iPhone's doing, but that there can
models for everyone's tastes. Something like this for the geeks, a slick, slim
clamshell like you say, and all kinds of others.
~~~
roc
Which is/was the same philosophy behind Symbian and Windows Mobile.
Suffice to say, that flexibility comes at non-trivial cost.
~~~
fpgeek
First, Android is _already_ light-years ahead of Windows Mobile.
Second, from what I've seen of the SDKs, Google is doing quite a bit (most
notably with their manifests) to maximize the reach of the platform (e.g.
netbooks, automotive systems, set-top boxes) without unduly burdening cross-
device portability.
------
zyb09
well it kinda looks ugly...
~~~
rbanffy
What's about that golden thing in the center of the cursor pad?
~~~
8plot
I believe it's the fingerprint scanner.
~~~
rbanffy
I imagined a blood-sampler for foolproof biometric authentication.
I had a couple HP desktops in the late 80's that required blood to be shed in
order for them to let a technician open their cases. Except for that, they
were really fine computers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IOS Apps: Identify when a user is driving easily and accurately with DriveGuard - bhonda
https://github.com/benhonda/DriveGuard
======
jrowley
Interesting product. Small nit, but in the screen shots, "your" should be
"you're" or "you are".
~~~
bhonda
Thanks for the feedback. Will make those changes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paul Buchheit Affiliated imo.im Seeks Hacker ($25k starting bonus) - staunch
http://www.crunchboard.com/item/18800419-imoim-software-engineer
======
bootload
unifying messaging. blog here ~ <http://imoim.blogspot.com/> pb is an advisor
~~~
aston
Paul shares an office with this guy. I assume they're similar ages, and seem
to be similarly experienced (both early Googlers, now retired). Is advisor
really the right word, here?
------
redrory
Is $25k starting bonus a usual thing? I now use this over meebo, so fast and
clean
~~~
alaskamiller
that bonus is your pay. the salary is just sweat equity. i've been tricked by
this before.
~~~
menloparkbum
It does sound like an old dot.com 1.0 scam: $25K starting bonus!!! And your
salary is... stock options!
If it is $25K bonus plus $100K salary plus 2-4% of the company, it is worth
considering.
The person they are looking for is hard to find and would be worth $95-$140K
STARTING at another startup.
------
alaskamiller
meebo?
~~~
eusman
it loads faster than meebo
~~~
thomasptacek
Does it load faster than RadiusIM?
Ebuddy?
The Google Talk Widget?
KoolIM?
Aren't these things a dime a dozen?
~~~
michaelr
It'll definitely be interesting to see if/how they try to distinguish
themselves from the others.
~~~
hello_moto
According to the blog, the group chat can span multiple networks (AIM, Yahoo!,
MSN etc)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's a good recent programming related movie you've watched? - mapierce
I've just watched Zero Days and it was awesome. Curious as to some other code/programming related movies out there.
======
geekodour
This is by far my best computer/programming related movie/doc
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internet%27s_Own_Boy)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Giving Away Our Recommendation Engine - kky
http://blog.mortardata.com/post/82195614895/giving-away-our-recommendation-engine-for-free
======
mck-
Fwiw, here are two light-weight feature-based recommendation engines I built
for Node.js (for situations where you have the cold-start problem and
therefore can't rely on user/item based collaborative filtering): Alike [1]
and Look-Alike [2]
[1] [https://github.com/axiomzen/Alike](https://github.com/axiomzen/Alike)
[2] [https://github.com/axiomzen/Look-Alike](https://github.com/axiomzen/Look-
Alike)
~~~
yblu
Thanks for sharing. What do you mean by the "cold-start" problem? Just want to
know exactly when I can use your engines.
~~~
elwell
Just speculating: not having a recommendation when you first begin because you
don't have any data.
~~~
mck-
Exactly right. I borrowed that term from Chapter 2 on Collective Intelligence
[1]
[1]
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596529321.do)
------
contingencies
So hang on, what exactly is a recommendation engine?
They give examples of LinkedIn ( _people you may know_ ) and Amazon
(presumably _other people who bought this_ , _so-and-so 's list of such-a-
subject books_).
That makes sense, though the segment of businesses that may actually benefit
seems limited. Social stuff, sure. Most of us? What's the minimum
recommendable-entity/category-or-user threshold that this makes sense for? Is
success with these sorts of engines merely a reflector of poor UI design in
your normal UX? (Of the above examples, the first seems very unidimensional -
in that it's basically a simple graph distance - and the latter also rather
rudimentary and often irrelevant).
So what exactly is this thing providing? Graph analysis? I think not. It reads
more like some kind of raw timestamped user behavioural event data processing
to infer relationships between users or products they interact with. Reading
through the docs it seems this is a layer on top of Apache Pig
([https://pig.apache.org/](https://pig.apache.org/)) - _a high-level language
for expressing data analysis programs, coupled with infrastructure for
evaluating these programs_. I think clarity in explaining this thing could be
improved, particularly selling clearly what a recommendation is and when its
useful. Using phrases like "award winning" doesn't help.
PS. Why all the downvotes? Sheesh.
~~~
icambron
I suspect you're being downvoted for having a dismissive tone in the same
breath as you admit to not understanding the problem space. My guess is that
the marketing copy on the site isn't targeted towards you, so it shouldn't
surprise you that you don't understand it, whereas their target customers know
all sorts of things about, say, Pig. That's fine, but then your comment should
read like, "Can someone explain to me what this is for?" Instead, your comment
is dripping with condescending snark, lecturing someone or another about how
this thing you don't understand probably isn't useful, and incredulous that
you don't understand something on the internet.
Imagine opening an advanced textbook on a subject you don't understand,
reading two paragraphs of it, and throwing up your hands in disgust because
_what does this even mean?_
~~~
contingencies
Apologies, condescending snark was not the intent (I can't even see where you
see that, actually!). In response to your more salient points, it could be
argued that a web+EC2 layer on top of existing software is hardly an _advanced
textbook_. Likewise, their announcement's stated intent is to gain customers,
so feedback on what's unclear should be well within an acceptable scope of
discussion. Finally, I doubt any of us are excluded from their intended market
as software people move frequently between problem domains.
~~~
erichmond
For the record, this reply seems as snarky and dismissive as the first.
Hopefully some constructive criticism.
~~~
contingencies
Thanks.
------
olidb2
FWIW we've been using the mortar platform to run large pig jobs without a fuss
at [http://datadog.com](http://datadog.com) and we've been very happy with it.
Glad to see them contribute their recommender code too.
~~~
alecsmart1
Can you please suggest why you need a recommendation engine for datadog?
~~~
olidb2
We don't use the recommendation engine but the underlying platform, which
makes it really simple to write and run pig jobs. Though the majority of our
business deals with real-time data processing, the ability to crunch numbers
in batch without dev or ops overhead is attractive and well worth the price to
us.
~~~
kldavenport
Is this better or similar to Hue?
------
pixelmade
I'm curious what the business case was for open sourcing the code. Maybe to
create an ecosystem?
~~~
showerst
From the "What you'll need" section of the first tutorial -
A Mortar account. You can sign up for a free Public account with Mortar here.
If you want to keep your customized recommendation engine code private, you
will need a Solo-level account ($99/month). Beyond that, you'll only pay for
your actual usage of AWS cloud services (we never add an upcharge).
Kudos for the open source, but it looks like to actually use this for business
you'll still need to pay. Unless i'm misreading it, "Open source but you'll
still have to go through our platform" is pretty disingenuous.
~~~
ethanbond
It reads like "open source but not free to make proprietary." First, it's
awesome just to see source as something to learn from. Second, it seems
reasonable they don't want people forking, modifying then profiting from their
work without contributing back to it - either by also releasing source or by
paying.
I think it's a nice model actually.
~~~
catern
It's called the GPL. If that's really the model they're trying to create, it
would be nice if they just used the GPL.
------
dsheth
Anyone know of any comparisons between this and Apache Mahout? I've used
Mahout's Item-Item recommender in the past, and it's worked well, just
wondering if there were advantages to this recommender.
------
ASquare
I'm sure plenty of good karma (even the non-HN kind) is headed your way -
kudos.
------
X4
WOW, Awesome Documentation and Product!! Kudos and Greetings from Germany 😊
Those who know what Hadoop, Pig and the whole "Data Science Stack" is, will
find this surely useful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 3 essentials to start up - moraitakis
http://manylogue.com/the-3-essentials-to-start-up/
======
ccarpenterg
Truism is the right word for this? English is not my first language so I'm not
sure.
The word in spanish is 'perogrullada'.
------
moe
Hmmm. Deja Vu.
Was this article copy/pasted from somewhere?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mexican Drug Gangs Kidnap Computer Hackers and Programmers - voodoochilo
http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/mexican-cartels-infosec/
======
dannyobrien
There's nothing in this article to confirm that headline, apart from the
sentence "Recent claims that computer programmers are being forcibly recruited
by Mexican drug gangs, if true, suggest that these groups are acquiring the
ability to reap the potential profits of cyber-crime", which has no citation.
I'd be very interested to hear of corroborated incidences of such kidnapping
or recruitment occurring. I was in Sinaloa, Mexico this month actively looking
for such evidence as part of my work. There's some indication that the cartel
have reasonable IT infrastructure (which isn't surprising, given their size),
and some growing involvement in physical piracy (counterfeit items in markets
have to be marked with a cartel symbol, which is purchasable). But I've yet to
see strong evidence that they are involved in "cybercrime" in any organized
fashion.
They certainly take discussion forum flamewars pretty seriously though:
[http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/03/online-news-sites-as-
bat...](http://www.cpj.org/internet/2012/03/online-news-sites-as-battleground-
for-mexican-drug.php)
~~~
sebastianavina
From what I understand, drug cartels need software for running their
bussiness, and because they can't take a call to SAP and have a representative
build a custom solution, they just kidnap programmers, extortion them and make
them build the software they need for bookeping and all the stuff made by
computers on this days.
~~~
adambyrtek
This doesn't seem very convincing. Simply paying programmers lots of money
would be a simpler and more effective solution. They could certainly afford
that, and bookkeeping is too critical to their business to risk. Would you
suggest that they kidnap lawyers and doctors as well?
~~~
sebastianavina
Well, they don't kidnap them... They just hire them, and when they want to
quit or resign the job, they just can't.
------
hef19898
Sounds too much like Password: Swordfish 2.0 to me. Unfortunately I can't
access the article right now. For me, one thin gis sure, the cartels aren't
stupid. At least the leaders and the heads, that is. Don't judge the
organization by the goons welding guns and that get killed. They are running a
multi-billion dollar business, and I'm pretty sure that they know that forced
labour only gets you so far in anything more important than packaging (even
thats not sure, given the budget they have and mexican salaries). So I think
they are rather hiring the best IT-guys they can get along with the best
intel-guys they can get. These hackers may not be of the "don't be evil"-type,
what after the cartels aren't in that kind of business neither.
~~~
hef19898
I'm quite new to HN, so I have a question. Was anything wrong on my comment
that I'm the only one to get down voted on this topic? I'm not going to bitch
around due to that, don't get me wrong, I only want to understand why, tht's
all. :-)
~~~
dagw
Random downvotes are a fact of life on HN, if for no other reason than the
close proximity of the vote buttons (I know I've accidentally down-voted more
than a couple of stories over the years). These things tend to correct
themselves if you're patient and wait a few hours.
~~~
hef19898
Ah, that could be a reason. Again, no offense taken, I just wondered. There is
no other thing like randomness to add some salt to life!
------
malandrew
Were I an activist involved with this, I think that providing a "dead man's
switch as a service" could be quite useful. Were I to engage in risky
journalism, while living in close proximity to these gang wars, I'd want a way
to spill additional information to the media were I to go missing.
~~~
there
<http://www.deadmansswitch.net/>
------
brianbreslin
I was told by some Mexicans that the cartel is already employing (as in paying
salaries to) numerous hackers and IT professionals. They have very high level
of banking access and technology that rivals government spy agencies.
Unlimited funds will do that for you though.
~~~
coopdog
Kidnap is funny though, they could kidnap someone and say comply with
everything we tell you. If either you or your family leave our control (they
could be in separate places) or signal for help we will kill you both. The
only escape would be to perfectly synchronize it.
Would work especially well if two or more kidnapped hackers were forced to
monitor each other, adding a prisoner's dilemma to the mix. If one failed to
catch the other's escape he/she and their family would be killed.
So it isn't impossible to enslave security professionals.
~~~
unimpressive
>Would work especially well if two or more kidnapped hackers were forced to
monitor each other, adding a prisoner's dilemma to the mix. If one failed to
catch the other's escape he/she and their family would be killed.
And you just described what would be an _amazing_ cyberpunk novel.
Two security professionals both try to escape and prevent the other from
escaping at the same time. If done right it could quickly become the best kind
of thriller; the one where you're actually speculating as to what happens
next.
------
alecdibble
The section on the feud between Anonymous and Los Zetas was fascinating. It's
very interesting that Anonymous has that kind of leverage against such
seemingly powerful people.
~~~
FreakLegion
No part of that story has _ever_ been corroborated. Barrett Brown isn't
exactly a trustworthy source.
------
kingpharoah
HN readers around the world should be able to do something to take heat off
the Mexican people.
------
ernirulez
This is a very good opportunity for governments to make public opinion even
worse against hackers and therefore make new laws to control us even more.
That will be very easy for them: Hackers -> Help drug gangs -> Hackers =
Criminals
------
user2459
Events like this are the main reason why The War on Drugs™ is so dangerous for
everybody. It's not the drugs or gangs killing gangs. It's the gangsters that
live through it sitting on piles of money who now have the resources to expand
into crimes that take more than a gun, friends with guns, and some luck.
Because of the prohibition they can now hire hackers to commit crimes for them
in any place in the world. It's going to get harder to implicate them in
crimes, and yet easier for them to make money off them.
Possibly the worst part is that this happened to us(and is still affecting us)
in almost exact detail during the prohibition of the 20s and yet we continue
to shrug our shoulders and keep giving them more money.
~~~
gregbair
Well, first of all, this article is complete BS with no corroboration or even
references.
Secondly, even if there weren't a war on drugs, the gangsters would find
something else to peddle, like people. Gangsters existed before prohibition
and existed after, they just moved into different rackets.
~~~
oinksoft
Oh, come on. Joe Blow wants to buy weed, blow, crank, and dope because his
life sucks, he's bored, or he just likes the stuff. Very few people like that
are in the market for a human being. You really can't compare the
profitability of an easily produced and smuggled commodity with something like
the trafficking of persons.
~~~
gregbair
I'm not, I was simply saying that if all those things were legal, criminals
(the cartels, not the users) would find something else illegal to peddle.
These people look for an easy buck, and right now, that happens to be in
illicit drugs. Take that profit away, and they'll just find something else.
~~~
mjallday
But some easy bucks are easier and less damaging than others. No doubt if
drugs are legalized they will move on to something else but the total market
they can address will be smaller.
~~~
DanBC
People trafficking is the second largest organised criminal activity. It's low
risk with bigger profit margins than drugs. Data is hard to get, partly
because there's little international agreement about what should be measured
as well as the difficulty of finding the victims.
Here's a UN document which is reasonably cautious.
(<http://www.ungift.org/docs/ungift/pdf/knowledge/ebook.pdf>)
Global profits are > $30billion USD.
> _the total market they can address will be smaller._
Bigger profits.
------
shareme
What is sad is that US citizens do not understand that this un-civil war has
been going on for the past 30 years and we as US citizens have done nothing
that has a statistical impact of reversing the damage.
Instead we invade Iraq and Afghanistan based on the political connections of a
former Haliburton employee and stockholder.
And if we do not wake up soon.. WWII will be on our doorstep.
~~~
armandososa
I've thought about it too. You guys catch Saddam and Osama, why can't you
launch some drones and put a missile trough capo's asses?
I guess our lives and peace are not worth the intervention.
~~~
dagw
Can you imagine the magnitude of the political shit storm on both sides of the
border the first time a US drone operating in Mexican airspace with the
blessing of the Mexican government blows up a few Mexican kids?
~~~
yummyfajitas
And unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, Mexico actually matters to the US. They are
our #3 trading partner (Canada and China are #1 and #2), even ignoring trade
in labor (and trade in drugs).
Messing that up would be foolish.
------
trotsky
bullshit
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Getting Eyeballs - kyro
Seems like Arrington's post has sparked some conversation about the community and founders' desperation for exposure. What's the problem? Are people not clever enough to come up with unique marketing plans? Or do most of them fail?<p>Coming from someone who hasn't been involved in a startup (yet!), I've never really understood this inability among founders to develop clever marketing campaigns. Everyone seems to think they need to score a blog post. And even if that's what it takes, there's huge frustration and difficulty with doing so.<p>During Startup School '08, Arrington said the best way to get on TC was to create a story. That seems pretty straightforward to me. So create one. That doesn't mean email him asking him to demo your product. It means to stir up some drama. Leak a screenshot, 'accidentally' post something on twitter, etc. I'm pretty sure that's the type of story he's talking about. In being creative with creating features, you also need to be master storytellers.<p>Instead of blog posts, there are myriad of things you could do for promotion and eyeballs. Make a bogus/cute little app that might not relate to your site like that 'Is Hillary Swank Hot?' app that was here a week ago. Make it a gag site and promote there. Here's an idea: Make weekly videos of a puppet version of your logo gruesomely killing the logos of your competitors or just popular sites in general. Be a sensationalist.<p>It really shouldn't be all that hard, guys, honestly. People these days will watch anything, and there are celebrities and fads in every corner of the internet waiting to find an audience. Making them stick to your service is another problem, but getting exposure shouldn't be difficult.
======
amichail
_Coming from someone who hasn't been involved in a startup (yet!), I've never
really understood this inability among founders to develop clever marketing
campaigns._
Why don't you try it and see whether it's that easy?
~~~
volida
he's got the positive mindset, and that's more important.
~~~
vaksel
there is a difference between being positive and ignorance.
~~~
volida
I link being positive with persistence.
Ignorance is a deliberate state and has nothing to do with it.
------
jwesley
Please don't use the term "eyeballs". It makes you sound like an aging
marketing exec.
The thinking behind "getting eyeballs" is the same as "Techcrunch is our
marketing plan". It's not about how many people see your product, its about
the right people seeing your product at the right time.
Pulling stunts might get you coverage in the tech blogs, but unless those
people are your ideal users, it won't be much help.
~~~
apgwoz
> its about the right people seeing your product at the right time.
_Or_ people remembering your product enough to think, "Hey, I think I
remember the guys who did that Is Swank Hot? had something like that," when
someone asks #lazyweb on twitter/identi.ca. You can't forget that
"crowdsourcing" is in.
------
jamesbritt
"Make a bogus/cute little app that might not relate to your site like that 'Is
Hillary Swank Hot?' app that was here a week ago."
Except that gave me a poor impression of the people behind it, since the
notion of it being an "app" struck me as disingenuous.
It's easy to get attention, less easy to get _good_ attention (begin debate
over "there's only one thing worse than being talked about ...")
------
mixmax
I actually quite like your puppet idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Disaster of Python 3 - pcr910303
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10053-the-incredible-disaster-of-python-3
======
nas
I suggest taking this article with a grain of salt. The assumption seems to be
that it's totally fine that Linux can have filenames that are arbitrary byte
strings and that don't convert to valid Unicode text. First, Python 3 has a
good way to deal with those. See PEP 383: Non-decodable Bytes in System
Character Interfaces.
Second, having filenames that are not valid Unicode text (even if Python 3 has
a way of handling them and round-tripping them) is going to cause you a lot of
pain. No one who has thought through all the issues thinks its a good idea.
The modern computing world uses Unicode text all over the place. Filenames are
manipulated by humans and we deal with them as text.
The idea that 8-bit byte strings are the ideal way to deal with text is a dead
end. I expect we are going to see more of these kinds of articles now that
Python 2's EOL is coming. In retrospect, you could argue that Python 3 should
store Unicode text in memory has UTF-8. However, at the times decisions were
made, UTF-8 was not dominate as it is now.
~~~
rini17
So just handwave it and it eventually goes away? Nope, as long as:
1\. Python standard library itself does not adhere to PEP 383. (Which is not
likely to be fixed if everyone has such dismissive attitude.)
and
2\. Operating systems do not enforce valid UTF-8 on filenames. (This is
unlikely to change sooner than in few decades, if at all.)
~~~
matheusmoreira
> Operating systems do not enforce valid UTF-8 on filenames.
Should they? There is no difference from a file system perspective. We'd still
run into problems even if they did: the line feed is a valid UTF-8 character
and is one of the characters with special meaning in many programs.
Dealing with file names properly is a chore even on bash.
[https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls](https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls)
~~~
skissane
> We'd still run into problems even if they did: the line feed is a valid
> UTF-8 character and is one of the characters with special meaning in many
> programs.
They could ban new line from file names too. See this proposal:
[http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251](http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=251)
------
hprotagonist
As always, the one true link is this:
[https://nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html](https://nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html)
Read, understand, and be glad that the interpreter isn't trying to "help" any
more!
~~~
pen2l
I just want to chime in and say that Ned Batchelder is one of the greatest
human beings alive.
Or, at least, to me he is. This man helps so many people with nothing in
return. He's a regular on some python IRC channels, he has personally helped
me so much. He makes difficult concepts easy to understand. I encourage
everyone to watch his pycon talks. Start with his talk on loops:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnSu9hHGq5o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnSu9hHGq5o)
~~~
stevenjohns
There's a few outstanding people that make me love the Python ecosystem,
Nedbat is definitely in that list.
FunkyBob (Curtis Maloney) is also a staple with Django, he's spent years and
years helping people and asking for nothing in return.
~~~
commandersaki
I'll throw in Raymond Hettinger & Jack Diederich -- excellent peeps.
------
oefrha
Okay, another flamebait article. I'll byte, uh no, bite.
> Inconsistencies in Types
There's just no such thing as a builtin character type in Python. No, that's
not new to Python 3. '/' is a str. b'/' is a bytes. Indexing str gives you a
str because there's no such thing as a character type, and introducing it
would be pointless. Indexing bytes gives you a byte (an int) instead of a
bytes because if you're working with a raw byte sequence you probably want to
access the bytes individually? If this wasn't the case people working with raw
byte sequences would probably be even more displeased during the transition
period.
"But I can't port the code by prepending b to every string literal!" Sorry,
that's not the correct way to port.
> Bugs in the standard library
Yeah, that might be Unicode-related bugs in PSL. They were users' problems in
Python 2 era, now Python core team shoulders the burden. Instead of every
single programmer making Unicode errors in their own code, if you find an
error in PSL you can fix it once and for all.
------
StefanKarpinski
This problem in Python 3 is not limited to OS file names, that’s just one way
to get invalid Unicode data. But invalid data happens all the time when
working with real data. The Python 3 string design requires that all strings
must be valid Unicode or Python will raise an error. This is a really
unfortunate property that has bitten every single data scientist I know who
uses Python 3. At some point, often hours or days into a long, expensive
computation, one of their programs has suddenly encountered just a single
invalid byte and crashed, costing them days of time and work. The only
recourse for writing robust programs that can gracefully and correctly handle
invalid data is not to use strings, which, frankly makes the string type seem
pretty useless.
The Python 3 string design also necessitates scanning and often transcoding
every piece of string data that it encounters, both on the way in and again on
the way out. That means that not only is the string type inappropriate for any
data that might not be valid Unicode, it is also inappropriate for any data
that might be large.
I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about how Julia handles strings, but
haven’t yet gotten around to it. Among other benefits:
\- You can process any data as strings and characters, whether it’s valid
Unicode or not.
\- If you read any data as strings or characters and write it back out, you
get the exact same data back, no matter what it is, valid or not.
\- Invalid characters are parsed according to the Unicode 10 spec.
\- You only get an error if you actually ask for the code point of an invalid
character, which is a fairly rare operation and must error since there is no
correct answer.
\- The standard library generally handles invalid Unicode gracefully.
\- You can use strings for large data: there’s no need to look at, let alone
transcode string data—if you don’t need to access something no work is
required.
------
Areading314
It's open source. If you are having so much trouble with your ultra niche
filename use case, just open a pr and clean up some of the code.
------
xpasky
This is a nostalgic article, as underlined in the closing section about
XON/XOFF and mainframe-compatible escape sequences.
The world is moving on, and while historic systems are beautiful (I still have
a 2.11 BSD emulator running - or rather runnable - somewhere), at some point
you need to weight the breakage for legacy users against the cost of
maintenance of the compatibility.
Indeed, POSIX is still mandating that filenames are arbitrary byte sequences.
But it is just becoming impractical, and in the end it's up to whoever has the
motivation to have it working to keep it working, and if there's not enough
people with this motivation it's just going to inevitably rot.
It's likely that 10 years from now, anything non-Unicode will be completely
broken on modern (desktop, at least) systems and perhaps Linux even gets an
opt-in mount option for enforcing filenames to be utf-8-compatible (which may
change to opt-out another 10 years on, just as POSIX is going to evolve too in
this regard).
Yes, it's a pity and I likely still have some ISO-8859-2 files from 1999 on my
filesystem. But I think it's unreasonable for anyone to waste time with that
support. And I wouldn't advise anyone wasting extra 20 hours of your developer
life on building things around ncurses instead of a more direct approach -
build a cool feature in that time instead!
------
mixmastamyk
Not a disaster, been loving it at least five years. Still, a few niche bugs
could be fixed, why not?
In the meantime as a workaround, make fs links with ascii names and/or
subclass ZipFile. I had to monkey patch a Py2 stdlib module once to fix it for
a year or so until it was fixed. Probably httplib if memory serves.
------
rcarmo
I just don’t see the problem here - most of the piece completely ignores
documented ways to deal with encodings.
For instance, I export PYTHONIOENCODING=UTF_8:replace in some machines where I
know the default locale and terminal settings might cause problems with
logging.
Edit: premature posting from mobile
------
3JPLW
The site seems to be having some trouble keeping up; here's an
archive/cache/mirror: [https://archive.is/efTT9](https://archive.is/efTT9)
------
mantap
The string encoding is actually the best part of python 3. There's a large
number of small feature regressions that really irritate me, like the removal
of comparators, and gratuitous changes like the removal of print statements
and moving shit around without providing aliases. But the bytes/str
distinction is actually really useful for anybody who uses unicode, which is
everybody.
If Python 3 had just made that change and no other breaking changes, the
transition would have been much faster and the value propositon much clearer.
------
drivingmenuts
I’m fascinated by the idea that someone is using an IBM 3151 terminal in 2019.
Other than for nostalgia, should not those have been retired about a decade
ago?
~~~
jgoerzen
I bought it off eBay a few weeks ago.
As to why - sitting in front of emacs with a clicky model M keyboard produces
a very different frame of mind. I am more focused and more deliberate in what
I type (one doesn't just type ls /usr/bin on such a thing). Although it's by
no means my primary computing device, I do find myself going down there for at
least a little while on most days. It is a pleasant break, a change of
scenery, a different mental state.
I got it, and my vt420 and vt510, after thinking about the bifurcated nature
of computing history. Although I started with computers in the 80s, it was the
PC side of things. The Unix/"big iron" simply wasn't accessible to many in
those days. I have spent decades doing work day in, day out in what amounts to
a fancy vt510 emulator (xterm). I wanted to use the real thing. Also it got my
son to play zork with me.
I wrote about it here:
[https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10013-connecting-
a-p...](https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10013-connecting-a-physical-
dec-vt420-to-linux)
and here:
[https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10031-resurrecting-a...](https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10031-resurrecting-
ancient-operating-systems-on-debian-raspberry-pi-and-docker)
------
fargle
Normally when I see a headline of this sort, I expect I will find another
over-enthusiastic bombastic smoke-and-mirrors hit-piece.
The fact that this article hits home and is right scares me a tiny bit. For
example:
"I should note that a simple open(b"foo\x7f.txt", "w") works. The lowest-level
calls are smart enough to handle this, but the ecosystem built atop them is
uneven at best."
Oh Crap...
------
enriquto
i do not understand why the unicode type is needed inside the program. Why
can't you treat everything as bytes? It's not like you can't concatenate two
strings of bytes!
If these bytes mean something or something else, this is a concern for the
user of the program that feeds it these bytes. The program itself could be
oblivious to that.
------
sytelus
Title is overblown. At best this might be "disaster" for string/bytes types
but many would argue even that is not the case.
------
pontifier
This one (Python 3) does not spark joy.
Somehow python, as a whole, started to feel like it needed too much
boilerplate and special fiddling to do simple things. I felt like I spent way
too much time keeping track of different environments or versions to make each
project work, and was always dissatisfied.
------
bildung
Authors problem starts right at the beginning: He mentions that POSIX
filenames consist of 8bit _bytes_ , but then uses a utf-8 _string_ as the
example filename in the first code block.
------
sprash
Python 3 is a disaster for many other reasons, UTF-8 bugs is just one of them.
So far I'm sticking with Tauthon[1] which seems to be the best of both worlds.
1.:
[https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon](https://github.com/naftaliharris/tauthon)
~~~
nas
I don't wish the Tauthon project ill but I suspect people are underestimating
how much work goes into maintaining Python 3. If the Tauthon project scope was
limited to taking Python 2.7.X and doing bug fix only releases of it, I think
it could be a successful project. Since they seem to be backporting features
from the 3.X branch, I don't see them keeping up. Python 3 has too many users
at this point. If you look at the Tauthon commit log, it seems clear they are
being left behind.
There is another problem with trying to backport selected Python 3 features.
How do you decide what gets backported? New features will introduce
incompatibility. Even if the feature is forward compatible, you end up with
code that will run on Tauthon 2.X but not on Tauthon 2.X-1. If it just a
better Python 2, that's fine. When it is some 3rd kind of thing with a
relatively tiny user base, who is going to use it?
~~~
sprash
> I suspect people are underestimating how much work goes into maintaining
> Python 3.
And I suspect people are vastly overestimating it. The latest additions to
Python look like they were made by a committee. It is the committee style work
that eats up all the man hours. The programming itself is rather simple.
> Python 3 has too many users at this point.
Most were dragged along by force. Many people are happy that 2.x versions like
Tauthon are still maintained. To all projects I'm personally involved in
(mainly scientific) python 3 offers literally ZERO advantages and only causes
additional costs.
> I don't see them keeping up. > How do you decide what gets backported? New
> features will introduce incompatibility.
You gave your own answer. All features that don't introduce incompatibility
are going to be backported. In that regard "keeping up" is also not the top
priority.
~~~
joshuamorton
Py3 is currently more performant than py2.
There are a number of py3 only features pushed for by the scientific community
(@ is the most obvious, but there are others).
~~~
sprash
> Py3 is currently more performant than py2.
No it's not. It is a clear regression. The minuscule performance improvements
stem from the enforcement of xrange() vs range(). But using xrange() on 2.x is
still faster.
~~~
joshuamorton
No, starting in 3.6 or 3.7, there are general performance improvements at the
c level in the interpreter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The End of Hosting Transfer Quotas? - 1SockChuck
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/09/03/11-goes-unlimited-with-hosting-bandwidth/
======
lsc
Unlimited works great, as long as you are okay with the provider prohibiting
anything that might actually use a lot of bandwidth.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: Digital Ocean will start collecting fees for backups - jrs235
DO subscribers have received the following email:<p>Some Important News About Backups<p>Hi there,<p>We’re in the process of updating our backup system and we wanted to give you a heads up about some changes you’ll be seeing.<p>You may have noticed that, though the cost for backups has always been 20% of your Droplet usage, you’ve never actually been charged. Don’t worry, we’re not coming to collect for past backups now. So far, we’ve been happy to offer backups, free of charge.<p>Starting in February, however, you will begin to see charges for backups on your monthly invoice. Backups will now happen on a weekly basis, with at least four backups occurring per month. You'll only be charged for a maximum of four backups in any given month and you'll never be charged for backups that fail to happen. Payment for backups occurring in February will be due on March 1st, and so forth.<p>We'll provide you with a scheduled window each week in which your backup will occur. This information will always be available in both the control panel and the API.
If you’d like a more in-depth explanation of how backups work – and when and why to use them – we’ve prepared some detailed articles on the topic:
Understanding DigitalOcean Droplet Backups
DigitalOcean Backups and Snapshots Explained
How to Choose an Effective Backup Strategy for Your VPS<p>Happy Coding,<p>Team DigitalOcean<p>UPDATE: Made paragraphs to remove wall of text.
======
squiguy7
Correct me if I am wrong, but if you enable this option when you make a
droplet a popup comes up and tells you it will cost 20% of the droplet's fees
per month. This isn't news to me as I don't use it because I have such a small
amount that I pull it down to my own machine.
~~~
jrs235
You are not wrong. What is newsworthy is that they are going to begin actually
collecting that 20% which they have not been actually charging for in the
past. This is more of a heads up for those that see an increase in their
monthly bill/charge.
------
rpietro
agree this is nuts. EC2 always an option
~~~
stephenboyd
It's an option for people who want the convenience. DO has free snapshots and
you can roll your own backup system anyway.
------
novocraig
20% for four backups per month? That's insane.
~~~
Someone1234
It is opt in in fairness. You have to set it to backup when you create the
droplet.
20% flat is not THAT crazy, backup services and EC2 and Azure both nickel and
dime a bit via bandwidth and storage fees.
~~~
toomuchtodo
To snapshot EBS volumes in EC2 is pennies per GB. 20% flat is crazy.
~~~
jrs235
Its really not though, as long as you are using the smaller droplets.
$5/month 20 GB droplet would be 80 GB of backups for $1.25 on AWS S3 that
would cost $2.40
$10/month 30 GB droplet would be 120 GB of backups for $2.50 on AWS S3 that
would cost $3.60
$20/month 40 GB droplet would be 160 GB of backups for $5.00 on AWS S3 that
would cost $4.80
$40/month 60 GB droplet would be 240 GB of backups for $10.00 on AWS S3 that
would cost $7.20
$80/month 80 GB droplet would be 320 GB of backups for $20.00 on AWS S3 that
would cost $9.6
ADD: Then if you compare outgoing to internet bandwidth costs DO is better.
Assume you use all 1 TB of your small droplets bandwidth. That's included in
your $5 while on AWS that will cost you an extra $89.91.
UPDATE: Bandwidth pricing for droplets is for incoming and outgoing, so
assuming 50/50 (bad assumption) then AWS would cost you $44.91 more per month.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
One device, 1TB of personal cloud storage - blaze33
https://www.spacemonkey.com/
======
tckr
I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the
product … so far as I have dismembered the SpaceMonkey and the 2TB hard drive
now is part of my Synology NAS setup.
SpaceMonkey's features are at best rudimentary and only usable as a personal
cloud storage. Don't even think about working in a team (to be fair, the team
is working on sharing features).
The device used huge amount of bandwidth and made the network in my coworking
space unusable.
So today I can only recommend to look into a different solution …
~~~
antr
I too was a backer in their Kickstarter campaign. Due to the poor
communication, continuous delays, and uncertainty on pricing and ownership, I
requested a refund. I then bought a synology NAS, setup it up with raid 10,
vpn, and Amazon glacier backup. I couldn't be more happy with the decision.
Since then, SpaceMonkey got acquired... which I find fascinating.
~~~
tw04
Skip the glacier and use crashplan for backup. Cheaper, and better options for
restoring your data (like having a drive mailed to your house vs. pulling it
over the WAN).
~~~
jm4
Unfortunately, Crashplan doesn't work on a Synology box. Even if you are
willing to muck around in Busybox it still won't work because there is no
inotify support. The best you can do is sync your Synology to a PC and then
upload to Crashplan from there.
Support for S3 and Glacier is built in and very easy to configure. It's not a
major issue if you have a RAID setup because it's less likely you will have to
restore from backup. I've only had single drives go bad and I hotswapped them.
I would feel much differently if I had a single drive unit.
~~~
driverdan
That's untrue. Synology devices have supported CrashPlan for a while.
DSM 4:
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToSetUpCrashPlanCloudBackup...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToSetUpCrashPlanCloudBackupHeadlessOnASynologyNASBackupStrategies.aspx)
DSM 5:
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UPDATED2014HowToSetupCrashPlan...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/UPDATED2014HowToSetupCrashPlanCloudBackupOnASynologyNASRunningDSM50.aspx)
~~~
junto
To be fair, this isn't a Synology package, it is provided by one guy who works
hard to try and get the Java Crashplan code to work on Synology. When Synology
upgrades the DSM it stops working. Check out the forums to see the pain points
people have to address to keep this headless client working:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=synology+crashplan+not+Worki...](https://www.google.com/search?q=synology+crashplan+not+Working)
It is a hack. There should be an official release from Crashplan or Synology.
Same for the other big backup cloud providers. If there was something better
and supported on Synology than Amazon S3 or Glacier, I'd personally be
prepared to get my wallet out. These companies are missing a big market of
Synology owners who are desperate for an alternative, and no I don't want to
use HiDrive.
------
unwind
So, if it's "Only $49/year" (top of page) but also provides "1TB of personal
cloud storage for $10/month" (bottom of page), how many months are there in
their years? Do I pay per year, or per month? Is the hardware "free"?
Very confusing, and that took _maybe_ 20 seconds to find.
~~~
alenlpeacock
The confusion results from two different plans:
Plan A: buy the device upfront and own it. Price includes 1 year of network
backup service. After the first year, if you want to continue the network
backup, it's $49/year ($4/month).
Plan B: don't pay anything upfront for the device and lease it plus the
service for $10/month for as long as you like.
Plan A is the only service available directly from the website currently, and
we need to clarify the copy on the webpage -- thanks for pointing out to
confusion.
~~~
gregd
As a Kickstarter backer too, we've pointed out to you guys for _months_ that
your pricing scheme was confusing and didn't make any sense. You haven't
cleared it up any since.
------
mrb
I have been watching Space Monkey for a while... I love the concept of local-
to-your-home-network storage made easy to use and easy to share anywhere, even
on devices outside your home network. This easily beats any cloud service when
it comes to synchronizing speed because I can sync at 1 Gbit/s on my GbE
network, vs. the ~10 Mbit/s uplink of my cable Internet.
There is also Pogoplug [1] which is a superior idea IMHO: the user provides
his own USB hard drive(s). This reduces the price of the device and gives more
space flexibility: you can connect any size and any number(!) of drives via a
USB hub. There is another company doing something similar to Pogoplug, but I
cannot remember their name at the moment. Of course the downside of Pogoplug
is that there is no backup. But for my own needs, I would prefer Pogoplug's
trade-off (unlimited storage & no backup & no constant Internet traffic)
compared to Space Monkey (1TB limit & automatic backup & constant ~400kbit/s
of traffic background to the SpaceMonkey distributed network).
[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/5/2910802/pogoplug-
series-4-r...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/5/2910802/pogoplug-
series-4-review) (I link to a review because the company's main website does
not do a good job of describing the product:
[http://pogoplug.com/devices](http://pogoplug.com/devices))
------
blaze33
Seeing the discussion around disk42 (Saas version of seafile)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8739094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8739094)
I thought it would be a good time to repost the space monkey link (not that
I'm affiliated nor a user) to see where we are in terms of distributed storage
protocols now.
Some q&a I had with their co-founder:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996053)
(parent discussion mostly about an alleged kickstarter scam)
~~~
notum
Actually Space Monkey was discussed before as well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564546)
While the fragmented/distributed backup approach is cool and useful some
people might not like paying $50 for the privilege of seeding other people's
files with their bandwidth.
~~~
blaze33
Thanks, I hadn't seen this thread before, I was actually thinking that an open
protocol would allow you to have a fast/reliable/etc. backup in exchange of a
share of your local storage.
Obviously if it's phrased like I'm paying to have other people use my
bandwidth, that's a big issue.
~~~
ansible
A few years ago, when Dropbox was starting to get popular, I was thinking of a
similar scheme. You would pay for the device, and then you would get X% free
cloud storage as long as it was online. Some people would prefer a fixed up
front cost and no monthly fee.
------
cabirum
"So, what a wireless speaker has to do with cloud storage?" — my first thought
after opening the website.
"Oh, its not wireless"
"And not a speaker."
------
zhte415
So, the storage and distribution model is a bit like FreeNet, distributed
across other devices, but everything is private, no sharing?
~~~
alenlpeacock
Everything is private, every user has a unique key associated with their
account, and every object (file and folder) has unique, individual encryption
keys generated for it.
Because of the way data is encrypted, the system supports sharing at the file
and folder level without granting access to other data in a user's filesystem.
------
akerl_
I admit to being confused by their security statements. Is the OS and code
running on the device open sourced? Given that it looks like the device is
handling the encryption, and I got the device from them, I don't see any
publicized way for me to verify that any encryption is actually happening.
------
RyanMcGreal
> Whether you use an iPhone, Android, Mac, or Windows, we have you covered.
Does it support Linux?
~~~
cefstat
The page [https://www.spacemonkey.com/tour](https://www.spacemonkey.com/tour)
mentions under Linux "Alpha access by request".
------
thedangler
I want to try this one.
[https://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?id=10597](https://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?id=10597)
~~~
alenlpeacock
One of the reasons Space Monkey exists:
[http://www.infoworld.com/article/2856553/cloud-
storage/you-c...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/2856553/cloud-storage/you-
cant-buy-a-cloud-at-best-buy.html)
------
kolev
People continue to abuse the term "cloud" these days...
------
rehemiau
[http://sherlybox.com/](http://sherlybox.com/)
I'd say sherlybox is a better deal
~~~
serf
[http://pogoplug.com/devices#pick](http://pogoplug.com/devices#pick)
a top end pogo plug with a 3TB drive would be cheaper and more capable
(usb3.0/sd card/user choice in HDD), or you can save fifty bucks if you don't
need multi-user support.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters - idleist
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/reddit-huffman-trump/
======
Natsu
Related discussion can be found here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027031)
------
defgeneric
This could cause a meltdown that will make previous reddit meltdowns look
tame.
Facebook higher-ups have been fired for creeping on ex-girlfriends. This is
arguably worse--editing user's posts has huge legal repercussions. I would be
pissed if I was a board member of reddit right now. A CEO is empowered and
paid for exercising good judgment and leading people, not "trolling the trolls
a bit" by violating the site's fundamental rules and creating a storm of bad
press in doing so.
~~~
pulisse
_editing user 's posts has huge legal repercussions_
Keep smoking that good stuff, SV.
------
redthrowaway
It was a stupid decision, but it's not nefarious. He got pinged every time
someone wrote "fuck /u/spez" in /r/the_donald, and he got sick of it. So he
changed "/u/spez" to the members of the /r/the_donald mod team so they would
get pinged instead.
Professional? No. But not nefarious, either.
~~~
gormo2
I agree it was not nefarious, but it was a decision that shows unbelievably
poor judgement, especially for a CEO. I'd be surprised if he keeps his
position. He's undermined his fundamental role as the leader of one of the
biggest social media sites by violating the trust that users put into the
site's administration.
The context as I understand it involves some ravenous hordes of conspiracy-
theory redditors promulgating fake news stories and doxxing innocent people.
However, by changing the text of these users comments, whatever their actions,
and by admitting to it, Steve has opened the floodgates. Now there is no
question -- in the minds of these users -- that the site is truly "against
them" and willing to not only censor them but to rewrite history as they see
it. They can no longer trust anything they read on the site.
But what is worse is the effect and message this sends to normal users. How
can, for instance, any person safely participate in an AMA now? When the real
possibility exists to have their words changed out from under them, and no way
to prove they aren't in fact the author? And from that, why would anyone post
anything potentially personally identifiable, if (in their mind) some
disgruntled admin could modify what they said to include false yet humiliating
or criminal things (e.g., throw in racial epithets, link to porn, admit
adultery / drug use) that might eventually link back to them. And how far does
this go? Can admins send PMs under the name of other users? What else? To me
at least, the scary thing is that Reddit posts that _only obliquely_ reference
personal information have already been used as the basis for surveillance and
legal action [1]...
And taking one final step back, from a business side this drama goes beyond
just being unprofessional. Reddit posts are now often linked to from news
articles. How can the media trust the source they link to? If the content of
posts are 'up for grabs' to be edited by admins in the minds of users and the
media (even if they aren't in reality), then one of Reddit's functions that is
growing in importance -- that is, news-making -- may be stymied.
Harming trust is extremely dangerous for social platforms. And when it is the
CEO themselves doing the harm, it could very well border on being suicidal for
the site.
[1]
[https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_...](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/58hae4/what_is_a_piece_of_reddit_history_every_redditor/d90lago/)
~~~
_up
I agree that this behavior is very bad and reddit lost a lot of trust. As I
understand it pizzagate wasn't entirely fabricated "fake news". Instead it
originated from strange code word ridden Podesta and Straftor Mails, that
where published by wikileaks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Airbnb CEO Rented Out His Own Unregistered Airbnb - lladnar
http://sfist.com/2016/01/14/airbnb_ceo_hasnt_registered_own_airbnb.php
======
jedberg
I'm sure all those renters will be much better off and safer now.
I understand the need to register for safety and health reasons, but it seems
silly to require it for a couch in the apartment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Web 2.0 over and out? - python_kiss
http://venturebeat.com/2007/03/21/is-web-20-over-and-out/
======
pg
How could a phrase that never meant anything in the first place be over?
What one would really have to ask is, is the Web over? And when you phrase it
that way you realize what a ridiculous question it is.
------
zkinion
Interesting article, but I wouldn't always believe those charts right away.
A graph of a coin toss can even look non-random...
~~~
sethjohn
Also, when total investement doubles from $406 M to $844 M...that's a huge
change in the market. It's hard to believe that a change in valuation from
$6.63M to $6M is an independant variable that should be taken seriously.
Also, also, the charts are for all VC money not just 2.0 (i.e. networking
etc.) companies.
My favorite piece of evidence on the demise of 2.0 is Your election to person
of the year. By time a trend makes it to the cover Time, it must be over!
------
dawie
Of course Venture capital investment is down. People are self funcding...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flywheel Raises $1.2M for Its Designer-Centric WordPress Hosting Platform - t_rave
http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/05/flywheel-raises-1-2m-for-its-designer-centric-wordpress-hosting-platform/
======
ecesena
I like the project, but I'm not convinced about the pricing model constrained
by visits. Especially the bulks/freelancers where -I assume- the number of
visits depends upon the freelancer's clients. Not to mention 10$/m for TLS...
Congrats for the round, btw!
------
samsolomon
I use Flywheel to host Signal Tower, and they have been incredibly friendly.
They also make it incredibly easy to build sites and transfer them to clients,
which has been a pain at work in the past. They are really the ideal host for
freelancers building small WordPress sites for clients that aren't going to do
maintenance.
Congrats to Rick and the Flywheel team!
------
yid
Odd choice of name, when flywheel.com is owned by the "official" SF cab-
hailing app.
~~~
seeingfurther
and there is also
[http://www.flywheelsports.com/](http://www.flywheelsports.com/)
------
timjahn
Congrats to Dusty and team!
------
Zaheer
$10/month for a hosted wordpress platform? No thanks. Name.com's Rapidpress is
$2.50/month and offers practically the same thing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Emerging seo platforms - khadim
http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/pages/emerging-seo-platforms.aspx
======
MBeuser
Seriously, did anyone look at the BruteForce EVO website?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the EVE Online Servers Deal with a 3,000 Person Battle - JGM564
http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/planning-for-war-how-the-eve-online-servers-deal-with-a-3000-person-battle
======
rauljara
The report of the battle they link to (<http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/28/eve-
online-battle-asakai/>) is even more fascinating to me. You spend hours and
hours of effort in order to get a ship, and one way of thinking about them is
as the time spent to earn them compressed into 3d form. Unlike (most) other
MMO's, battles actually destroy things. So in that youtube clip, you're
watching years and years of effort getting evaporated because of a mis-click.
In most of the games I play, the pay off of the grinding is getting to enjoy
fighting more. But I could never play EVE, because battles would be so anxiety
provoking. There would be no pleasure at all in earning a Titan, because I
would be forever terrified of losing it.
Of course, all games are kind of there to destroy your time. But for some
reason it doesn't feel quite as wasted when you have a virtual thing there
that is bad-ass in proportion to your time investment.
~~~
fatbird
That feeling of "My ship! My beautiful, beautiful ship!" is offset by the fact
that major alliances tend to have strong reimbursement programs. If your
dreadnought goes boom in a fleet op, you get the cost of another hull and
gear, and get to draw on corp/alliance stores as well.
Otherwise, they'd never get their supercap pilots out of the hanger :)
~~~
baddox
What would be the point of having all this cool stuff if no one else even gets
to see it and you don't get to use it?
~~~
fatbird
If you spent six months grinding the ISK to buy and outfit a carrier, how
willing would you be to take it into a battle where any of a hundred things
could destroy it, including server lag or a random disconnection?
~~~
baddox
I would invert the causality. Why would I spend six months outfitting a
carrier if I had no intention of using it in combat or even flying it anywhere
where other people would see it?
~~~
glesica
Same reason people spend hours tending their farmville farms...
~~~
baddox
I've never played Farmville, so I probably shouldn't speculate, but I'm under
the impression that it is at least ostensibly a social game where you invite
people to help with or at least view your farm.
~~~
glesica
Yeah, but so is EVE and other games like it. I have never played EVE for any
significant amount of time, but I did play WoW for awhile and there were tons
of things that people would sink time into for purely social reasons. I
imagine EVE is the same way. You don't just want a Titan because it is useful
in the game, you want a Titan so you can have a Titan.
------
jere
[Edit: this comment turned out not to really be about Eve and more about the
difficulty of real time MMOs]
This blows my mind. I've been thinking about writing a small multiplayer game
for a few weeks. And today I was actually doing back of the napkin
calculations. The thing that quickly became clear is bandwidth is O(n^2) where
n is the number of players in the same location, since you have to share the
location and velocity of each player with each other player.
Here's an example of a calculation I was using. It's the monthly bandwidth in
TB of having a certain amount of players in a shared space (3000 in this
case), assuming that the location/orientation/velocity of each player's ship
is contained in a measly 48 bytes and you attempt 30fps.
(48 * 30 * 3000 * 3000 * 3600 * 24 * 30) / 1e12 = 33592 TB = 33 PB
THIRTY THREE PETA BYTES to simulate a single battle for a month.
I'm looking around at various VPS providers and the bandwidth they offer.
Using the naive calculation above and the cheapest Linode offering and it'd
take $3 million/month to support a single one of these ongoing battles.
Now, I'm sure the numbers above aren't used in reality. Obviously, you can
reduce the updates per second... but not by much. You can't shave much off how
much you send. It at least gives you a sense of the orders of magnitude
required to support such a thing. Even contemplating supporting 100-1000
people at once is looking very difficult for me to pull off.
~~~
gnarbarian
I think one thing Eve has going for it (and this is only an assumption) is
that it wouldn't need to sync each player's position on each frame. It could
reduce the load dramatically by only sending the acceleration / orientation
data for a ship.
So if a ship has set a course and has stopped accelerating it doesn't need to
send anything else unless that course is changed.
~~~
jere
I haven't really played Eve, so I can't say. I'm imagining ships flying around
and changing course constantly in a battle, but if someone can give a better
description, I'd appreciate it. It'd be further reduced by several players
sharing a ship... no idea how common that is.
What I'm describing is definitely leaning more towards players that are
constantly moving around though. It helps explain to me why in Asheron's Call,
for instance, when you had too many people in the same city a "portal storm"
arose and people started getting teleported out of the city randomly.
~~~
afterburner
If you check the video you'll see it's very slow paced and the ships basically
don't seem to move at all (maybe tiny unseen ones do I don't know)
<http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/28/eve-online-battle-asakai/>
~~~
gknoy
Part of the reason it is so slow is that (as mentioned in the article) the
server slows time down (as far as 10% of normal) in order to ensure that
nothing gets lost.
------
RickHull
Fun facts: This fight was between the Honeybadger Coalition (HBC) and the
Clusterfuck Coalition (CFC). The core of the Honeybadger Coalition is TEST
Alliance, and the core of TEST Alliance is Dreddit, the "original" Reddit-
based corp (there are / have been several, some of which predate Dreddit and
have since folded).
HBC routed the CFC, which has Goonswarm as its core, which is organized around
the Something Awful forums.
TEST Alliance was nurtured by the CFC for a long time, splitting off only in
the past year to forge a more independent identity. As such, the hostilities
between these old friends is hard to gauge. At this point, the presumption is
that it's all in good fun. But that may change.
~~~
alex_c
Admittedly I haven't followed Eve politics for over a year, but I would be
very surprised to see Test and Goons get in a "real" fight (e.g. over
sovereignty or revenue-generating moons). They both treat the game in the same
way (a strange mix of competence, incompetence, and irreverence) and have too
much shared history. I suspect the only reason they're even hostile right now
is because they have absolutely no external threat and are bored.
~~~
Semaphor
Fits with what I read on Reddit when it came up. Was a fun fight and TEST won
but no one is really mad at anyone else:)
------
stephengillie
It's like each solar system is a VM, and they can't move their VMs to a new
physical server without disconnecting all clients. And all of their physical
servers are at 100% load all of the time? Oh, I guess it's 100% utilization,
not 100% load. As in, they don't spin down servers to save power during off-
hours I guess.
The time dilation is a neat solution to the server load problem, but it's sooo
annoying as a player. In beta, it was interesting to watch the entire game
desync and grind to a halt, but we could still chat and look around.
Interesting, but frustrating.
~~~
alexkus
Two main solutions (given that the article mentions that they have huge
machines already):-
A) Allow a single solar system to span multiple machines. Very hard,
especially if the server software isn't architected for this. Retrofitting
this can be nigh on impossible.
B) Have a few _huge_ machines that can be used to host scenarios like this
and, more importantly, have a way of migrating users over to the huge machine
seemlessly.
The latter can be done but it's tricky, especially if transferring game state
between instances of the server is not simple (I'm not talking about
transferring the VM itself with something like vMotion). It comes down to:-
1) Being able to make the bigger machine act as a temporary proxy pushing
connections data back to the smaller machine.
2) Having a way of telling clients to make a new connection to the bigger
machine and, once that connection is made (and the data is being proxied to
the smaller machine) cut the connection to the smaller machine. Users see no
loss of service or reconnects at all.
3) Once all clients are now being proxied by the bigger machine; pause and
transfer the game state from the smaller machine to the big machine and then
continue. Obviously it works best if a chunk of state can be transferred in
the background and then the final transfer (and pause) is as short as possible
in order to transfer over the bang up to the minute state.
Option (A) is always the proverbial "In v2 of the server we'll do it a
completely different way..."
~~~
dclowd9901
Option 4C) Create a raspberry pi cluster farm, and host every player with one
microserver.
~~~
kalleboo
How would the microservers keep up to date with each other fast enough to be
useful? "eventual consistency" doesn't work with real time strategy games.
~~~
dclowd9901
How would they not? Latency between servers would be near zero, and if they
all handled point to point transactions while broadcasting their state on each
transaction, you're getting all the power you need. We're not talking about
complex processing here. It's an RNG coupled with simple health and xyz.
~~~
kalleboo
Broadcasting their state to what? All the other nodes? So each "microserver"
would still need to handle thousands of connections and data for every player?
------
ChuckMcM
This is a nice article.
A friend of mine did some research for DARPA/NSF on internet 'crowds.' His
research was looking at the question of fractal gatherings, which was
basically you were 'near' the people around you in the virtual 3D space and
could hear what they were saying, you were adjacent to people who were one
space away but could hear them if they 'shouted' and the crowd was at a
gathering that was sharing an experience from a presenter who was 'projected'.
Basically a virtual concert venue for example where process affinity
scheduling took into account where you "were" in the 3D space. The questions
are many and as far as I can tell the folks who research this are few and far
between.
Process migration continues to be a hard thing to do. VMware and others have
made progress, virtualized interfaces and peripherals, self contained 'state'.
Works 'ok' at the VM level but still doesn't work at all AFAIK at the 'thread'
level.
World of Warcraft addresses this somewhat by 'instances' which is that under
certain circumstances (entering a dungeon for example) you and your party of
5, 10, 25, or 40 people all transition (through a loading screen) into a place
with nobody else (except you). They can dedicate machines to host an instance
and do process migration at that level.
DARPA is interested of course because they would love to have a way of
connecting warfighters into a virtual command and control center regardless of
where they are physically. Essentially being in two places at once is a big
force multiplier.
------
EarthLaunch
This was particularly interesting for me. I've already built a scalable MMO
server architecture in Erlang, which hosts all players on one world, using
server nodes that can be moved between machines. I calculate that my server
architecture can handle up to 10,000 moving players in a local area. That's
characters, not EVE-style ships (characters are heavier).
If anyone is interested in talking about this, helping, or funding me, please
get in touch. My server is called Proxima and my game is First Earth (you can
find it if you're interested). I've been slowly bootstrapping it for 3 years.
~~~
outworlder
Have you got more details? Links?
~~~
EarthLaunch
I haven't been public about my process of building the server or its details
(I just don't have time), but the game is at: <http://firstearthgame.com>
Someday I'll make time to blog about the server.
~~~
bestes
Wow, those screenshots look impressive!
------
DigitalSea
I always wondered how Eve coped with what seems like a massively data heavy
game, keeping track of battles and logging data especially for epic battles
where alliances are pitting their expensive ships against each other. Pretty
insightful article, would love to know a bit more about their development
processes and how they go about pushing new changes up. It's such a sensitive
game, changing just one thing could throw the whole game into disarray. It's
crazy when you think that they not only have to track battles, but they also
have to capture every other action and movement within the game; mining, agent
missions, the marketplace and all of the other components that rely on
accurate and up-to-date data capture and realtime reporting.
What makes this all even more crazier is the game has been around for over 10
years and counting. I still play Eve everyday, once you get past the menial
tasks, you can have some real fun with this game being a drug runner, miner or
just straight up renegade roaming the infinite environment.
------
Draiken
The environment EVE creates in almost every aspect of the game is just
fascinating.
It is the only game I ever played I actually felt an enormous thrill and
adrenaline rush when playing pvp. It doesn't matter if you're pvping alone or
with a fleet. The fact that you actually lose/gain on a fight differentiates
the game from any other MMO. Events that you may have experienced in-game can
be recorded forever and actually impacts the whole game universe.
I really hope more companies invest into having one persistent world in their
MMOs. Instead we see this segregated servers in which great
players/achievements/events are limited to this little server. It ends up
lessening the interest of many players, specially older ones.
Funny thing is that, normally, when the hit MMO stops being a hit they end up
merging lots of servers anyways. Which IMHO end up lessening even more the
time people have spent on that game.
~~~
Scramblejams
"The fact that you actually lose/gain on a fight differentiates the game from
any other MMO."
Could you please expand on this? I'm interested in this point, but I haven't
played Eve or other MMOs.
~~~
guizzy
For instance; I play Guild Wars 2. If I die, I lose a little bit of in-game
cash from having to repair my armor after restarting (less cash than I can
make in 5 minutes), and will possibly have to have to trek a couple of minutes
back to where I was.
But back when I played EVE (that's a very long time ago, the game's changed
since)... I was playing as a trucker in low-sec, essentially carrying goods in
somewhat dangerous territory. I was really lusting for T2 transports (blinged
out trucks), and it was my goal to get one. So I trained and saved for months,
until I finally could afford it. I'm not a very patient person, so I took it
for a ride before it was fully fitted with the modules I needed for my
protection. Some pirate jerk blew it up. It was insured, but I wasn't quite
able to easily replace the modules I had lost. In one fight, weeks of my in-
game time were lost.
In other MMOs, winning and losing can mean that you've wasted a few minutes of
your time. In EVE, it can mean months of wasted effort.
~~~
Scramblejams
Thanks for your reply. Do you think this game mechanic would work without the
availability of insurance? I would think all but the most hardcore would be
dissuaded.
~~~
Draiken
Well, insurance in EVE does not free you up to suicide your ship. There is a
saying in EVE "don't fly what you can't afford to lose at least 3 times". It
is a hardcore game, for those who want it to be :)
You can always just live in high-sec (safe zone) and probably never lose your
ship. Of course the game tends to reward you for taking risks.
------
plasma
Second Life (I may be wrong on the game itself) talked about how it manages
game scale across many servers.
The entire game is a virtual machine.
When a player leaves a server boundary, their player VM state is packaged up
and sent to the next world server and then resumed on that server.
Players don't even notice they crossed server boundaries, and this was
possible because the game can be paused mid flight for that player - pretty
neat.
------
clarky07
I haven't played EVE in years, but I always love reading these reports to
reminisce. It took a huge time investment but it was a lot of fun. Reading
that CFC apparently has hundreds of titans and lost 3 just in this battle is
crazy. I was playing when the first Titan was built, and I remember distinctly
when the first one was destroyed.
------
mseebach
On moving the game to a beefier server: _“This is the machine that systems get
reinforced on when players request that. Unfortunately, the same thing above
applies – anyone in the system when the move happens gets disconnected.
Because of this, it’s basically never done,”_
It seems like a fairly small addition to the game logic to allow the game to
freeze for a few seconds and be forcibly moved to another server. Is this kind
of scenario so rare that it's not worth the trouble, or am I missing something
else?
~~~
CJefferson
The problem (I believe) is that they don't have a way to 'freeze' and transfer
a running game. Think of it like any program -- it is easy to "save your work"
and load the file on another computer. It's much harder to exactly save the
state of all parts of a running program and transfer that to another computer.
Each user is represented by a stackless python program, these are hard to shut
down and move.
As you say, it could probably be done, but it would be a lot of work, which
wouldn't get used very often.
~~~
archon
The other problem is that they would have to 'pause' the entire game while the
physical move was in progress, otherwise players would still be able to move
around in the rest of the game world (other than the cluster of stars they
took offline to move them). As I understand it, this is already sort of a
problem with the Time Dilation mechanic they currently use; time moves at 10%
normal within the fight, giving people outside the slowed-down star systems
time to deploy forces at 10x speed relative to the fight.
------
warmwaffles
And of course it's a video of the former Goonswarm[GOONS] now [GEWNS]
------
Syssiphus
Aww, and now I want to start playing EVE again :).
Great article, great battle.
------
OGC
This alliance has some guy who does simultaneous translation to russian?
------
dholowiski
tl/dr: Sharding and slowing everything down.
~~~
lflux
Eve isn't sharded in the common MMO sense.
~~~
dholowiski
No, but they talked about disconnecting the battle from the surrounding solar
system, and the negative consequences. Essentially sharding.
~~~
lacksconfidence
Actually they do not disconnect the battle from the solar system the battle is
in.
What they said is they run many solar systems on one server. During a major
battle they migrate those other solar systems to different servers so that the
server only has to deal with the one system.
So in a sense, yes, each solar system is its own shard.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
German Scientists Create Aerographite, the Lightest Material in the World - japaget
http://www.sciencespacerobots.com/blog/71720122
======
rejuvenile
I used to make aerogels (a related class of materials) in high school; allow
me to give a (hopefully accurate) layperson's overview.
Aerogels formerly held the record for least dense solid. They're not gels, but
they're called aerogels because they're made from gels. As the name "aero"
implies, they're mostly air, giving them incredible strength-to-weight ratios
and insulating properties. Silica aerogels are translucent and quite amazing
to hold; it's like holding a cloud.
Aerogels are made from colloids (a.k.a. gels), which are long chains of
polymers formed in water. Free-floating around in the water, they form very
long, intricate, 3-D maze-like structures. If you've ever made JELL-O, you've
made (and eaten) a colloid. It’s the intricate structure of the colloid which
keeps the suspended water from spilling out.
Silica aerogels are formed by removing the water from a silica gel, leaving
only the maze like structure behind. This structure is very delicate, and if
you attempt to evaporate the water out near room temperature/pressure, the
capillary action of water will collapse the structure like a dried out
jellyfish. However, if you heat and pressurize the system past the critical
point, the water becomes a supercritical liquid and it can be removed without
pulling the rest of the material inwards.
It appears that what they’ve done here is similar, except they use a multi-
step process to deposit carbon on the colloid, then remove the colloid
completely, leaving nothing but a carbon maze. I presume they can't make
colloids out of carbon directly, hence the multistep process.
~~~
fusiongyro
What an awesome hobby that must be! I'd be inclined to try it if I weren't
sure I'd kill myself with chemistry.
~~~
Ralith
I am certain it's easier than you are imagining. Try it!
------
beambot
That's pretty cool. But I'm a bit confused... FTA, _the aerographite density
is 0.2 mg/cm3._
From Wikipedia on Aerogel (another very lightweight solid) [1], _The lowest-
density aerogel is a silica nanofoam at 1 mg/cm3, which is the evacuated
version of the record-aerogel of 1.9 mg/cm3. The density of air is 1.2 mg/cm3
(at 20 °C and 1 atm). Only the recently manufactured metallic microlattices
have a lower density at 0.9 mg/cm3._
How are they computing the density of the aerographite such that it doesn't
float away (having 1/6 the density of air)? Are they only considering the mass
of the carbon and not the internal air?!
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel>
~~~
ehsanu1
It's probably "evacuated" as well, ie there's no internal air. You can get the
weight inside a vacuum so it doesn't float away.
~~~
Ralith
If you RTFA, you see there's a video of them sitting on a table in regular
atmosphere. You'll also see that it's just basically a very fine carbon
hairball. They're obviously measuring the density of the thing itself, and not
the air that happens to be drifting through the gaps.
~~~
SilasX
Which is to say, they're counting the air passing through the gaps for
purposes of _volume_ but not _mass_ in the density calculation.
So, could I claim to have the lightest material if I made a hollow, porous,
giant hairball?
~~~
sigkill
As someone who has worked with metal foams, you are technically correct.
------
Arjuna
Here is the press release with further information, video and images:
[http://www.uni-
kiel.de/aktuell/pm/2012/2012-212-aerographit-...](http://www.uni-
kiel.de/aktuell/pm/2012/2012-212-aerographit-e.shtml)
Interesting potential for batteries (quoted from above link):
_"Due to its unique material characteristics, Aerographite could fit onto the
electrodes of Li-ion batteries. In that case, only a minimal amount of battery
electrolyte would be necessary, which then would lead to an important
reduction in the battery's weight. This purpose was sketched by the authors in
a recently published article. Areas of application for these small batteries
might be electronic cars or e-bikes. Thus, the material contributes to the
development of green means of transportation."_
------
stephengillie
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerographite>
_Owing to its interconnected tubular network structure, aerographite resists
tensile forces much better than other carbon foams as well as silica aerogels.
It has a very low Poisson ratio, as demonstrated by a complete shape recovery
of a 3-mm-tall sample after it was compressed down to 0.1 mm. Its ultimate
tensile strength (UTS) depends on material density..._
How soon will we see this used instead of metal frameworks or latex foam? In
aircraft wings, car seats, etc?
Even more interesting: _Upon external compression, the conductivity increases,
along with material density_. Pressure-sensitive aircraft wings? Car seats
that know what their occupants weigh?
~~~
Ralith
> Pressure-sensitive aircraft wings? Car seats that know what their occupants
> weigh?
Both of these things are pretty easy and cheap to do with existing technology.
------
btipling
The research on light and strong materials is key to one day developing space
elevators.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Cable>
I don't know what the strength of this material is or its breaking length (a
breaking length of 5,000 km is required for a space elevator), the abstract
doesn't say so, but research like this is really exciting.
~~~
ZoFreX
I don't understand geeks' obsessions with space elevators. It's not like
materials are the only obstacle holding us back - they would be continually
bombarded by meteors, and travelling up them would involve extremely long
exposure to the high radiation band of the atmosphere.
Now launch loops, that I could get excited about.
------
ajays
Aerogel (aka "solid smoke") was the lightest so far, at 1mg/cc[1] .
The density of air is 1.2 mg/cc.
FTA: "The substance weighs just 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter"
So why doesn't this thing just fly away, if its density is 0.2 mg/cc ?
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel>
~~~
jws
I suspect it is 0.2mg/cc when weighed in a vacuum.
It does point out a blurry line between substance and structure. At some
point, the voids in the material get large enough that you would call it a
structure, for instance, if you outlined a soccer ball in fine copper wire and
removed the soccer ball it would certainly be even lighter than this, but you
wouldn't call it a substance.
~~~
ars
> It does point out a blurry line between substance and structure.
It's not new.
What is the density of a boat? The density of the boat as a whole is lower
than water - so it floats.
But if you could only the materials it's made of they are all heavier.
So you have to know what you are describing.
~~~
ChuckMcM
Exactly and a boat only 'floats' because it holds out the water and thus
establishes a pressure differential. If you could put one of these things in a
vacuum chamber, then put a seal around the outside of it, and then take it
out, it would float. Except what it would really do is compress. And from the
article it looks like it would compress to a size which put it into the 3 - 5
mg/cc range if not higher.
That said, in Neal Stephenson's diamond age they used vacuum balloons as a
floatation device. something that I hope we can build at some point.
------
jere
>Think of the Aerographite as an ivy-web, which winds itself around a tree.
And than take away the tree.
I would totally expect this stuff to be transparent based on the description.
Shows what I know.
~~~
tbrownaw
The structure is on approximately the same scale as the wavelength of visible
light. I think that's in common with other recent ultra-black materials, it's
either that there's just a huge amount of surface area or some sort of
quantum-mechanics effect.
~~~
rejuvenile
Aerogels can have a surface area of ~2,500 m2 g-1, which is incredibly high.
I wonder if this material, being made of carbon and likely having a similarly
high surface area, would make a good capacitor.
~~~
Someone
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerographite#Potential_applica...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerographite#Potential_applications)
claims 1.25Wh/kg. I hope that isn't for the lightest variant; in Wh/m^3, that
wouldn't be that good.
------
gmack
IANAP, but if this material is "jet black", i.e. absorbs most light, and also
highly conductive, wouldn't it also be a great component for organic solar
cells? Graphene is apparently already an interesting candidate for this
application, promising lower costs of manufacture (if not higher efficiency).
------
uncomfytruths
If they could turn it into a thread imagine what it could do for the fashion
industry. Amazing dresses that flow in the wind even when there is no wind.
I'd be worried about strength though.
~~~
padobson
Plus one for the least geeky application, and the most marketable I've seen so
far in this post.
------
unreal37
I had a dream last week that scientists would someday be able to remove the
Higgs Boson from atoms to make truly weightless materials. I should patent
that.
As far as "flying away", from the video embedded in the linked article, you
can see the aerographite is barely able to sit still on the table before the
rod is introduced - one of them is about to fly away just sitting there. It
just "looks" extremely light.
~~~
Locke1689
The Higgs boson doesn't provide mass to anything, the Higgs field does. The
Higgs field also provides a negligible fraction of the mass of baryons.
~~~
InclinedPlane
Indeed! The Higgs field provides rest mass to electrons and other fundamental
particles. However, most of the mass of, say, a human body comes from the mass
of protons and neutrons, and that mass is almost entirely from the kinetic
energy of quarks and other nucleon constituents.
~~~
Locke1689
Actually, no. The kinetic energy is a property of the particles (thermal
energy, actually), but it does not supply their rest mass. 99% of the rest
mass of baryons is due to the strong nuclear force.
------
jhuckestein
Think about this for a second. If you wear a tracksuit made of this you'll be
able to jump higher than when you're naked.
~~~
jhuckestein
Why is this being downvoted? I'm not a physicist but to me this sounds
plausible. I think that's pretty mind-boggling.
~~~
archangel_one
Same concept as the full-body suits that competitive swimmers wore for a few
years (IIRC they are now banned) which made them more buoyant than they would
have been without.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Processing Billion-Node Graphs on an Array of Commodity SSDs - gk1
http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/5/19/paper-flashgraph-processing-billion-node-graphs-on-an-array.html
======
Smerity
I cannot recommend FlashGraph strongly enough. FlashGraph was one of the first
graph computation engines to enable near trivial analysis of the Web Data
Commons Hyperlink Graph - 3.5 billion web pages and 128 billion links.
For smaller graphs, analysis using FlashGraph is hilariously quick.
If you're interested in how this is achieved, refer to [1]. From memory, Da
Zheng said he created FlashGraph primarily as he wanted to prove how efficient
the storage system was. Full details on the FlashGraph (though FlashGraph runs
far faster now!) in the paper at [2].
Note: I'm a data scientist at Common Crawl, the dataset that the Web Data
Commons Hyperlink Graph is based upon and the main developer of Flash Graph,
Da Zheng, wrote a guest post for us on this very topic[3], so I'm rightfully
biased as to thinking this is an amazing project!
[1]:
[http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~zhengda/sc13.pdf](http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~zhengda/sc13.pdf)
[2]:
[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast15/fast15...](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/fast15/fast15-paper-
zheng.pdf)
[3]: [http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/02/analyzing-a-web-graph-
wi...](http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/02/analyzing-a-web-graph-
with-129-billion-edges-using-flashgraph/)
------
mrry
An interesting comparison point: a single core on a late-2014 MacBook Pro can
achieve runtimes for the same graph that are within a factor of 4 for WCC (461
seconds for FlashGraph versus 1700 seconds for the laptop).
[http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/...](http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/04/COST2.html)
(previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001618](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001618))
There are also results for PageRank on that graph, which make the difference
more pronounced. FlashGraph runs PageRank in 2041 seconds (I'm assuming for 30
iterations, per Section 4 of the paper), whereas the laptop takes 46000
seconds for 20 iterations.
~~~
Smerity
Absolutely spot on - between FlashGraph and Frank McSherry's COST work, the
two have really pushed the envelope on efficient large scale graph analysis.
Frank McSherry wrote a "call to arms" for the broader graph community at [1].
The main point of interest is that academia generally compared their work with
existing distributed graph processing systems, celebrating when any
achievements were made, yet not aware of the significant overheads brought on
by the distributed approach. Both Frank's work (run on a single laptop) and
FlashGraph (run on a single powerful machine) run far faster than the
distributed approach and have very few disadvantages.
Note: I'm a data scientist at Common Crawl and Frank's graph computation
discussion article was a guest post at our blog.
[1]: [http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/04/evaluating-graph-
computa...](http://blog.commoncrawl.org/2015/04/evaluating-graph-computation-
systems-performance-and-scale/)
------
nojvek
I wish there was a deeper technical explanation on how they made such a
difference with a layer of file system. Would this also improve relational db
perf?
~~~
corysama
Searching for "set-associative file system" brings up their publications
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402052](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402052)
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881961/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881961/)
[https://github.com/icoming/FlashGraph](https://github.com/icoming/FlashGraph)
------
jheriko
i can't help but wonder if this has been tested vs. just letting the os
virtualise memory for you... i'm assuming yes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NIST declares the age of SMS-based 2-factor authentication over - Osiris
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/25/nist-declares-the-age-of-sms-based-2-factor-authentication-over/
======
Matt3o12_
I don't think eliminating SMS authentication is a good idea. While it is
vulnerable to social engineering attack (and sniffing if you are near the
receiving phone), SMS authentication has proven to be invaluable for most
ordinary users. Those users are everything but eager to use anything more
secure then their 6 letter password. With tricking many users into using SMS
authentication, companies like Google have improved the overall security of
most account by a lot. While it is possible to remove an SMS authentication
mechanism, it is a lot harder and probably not worth for most accounts.
Most people will not bother to install Google authentication and just not use
2FA (who wants to steal their account anyways /s). Even if they did install
it, recovering their authentication codes if they have lost their phone is
incredible hard (because too many won't use backups – even if it is as simple
as apples iCloud backup).
What I think companyies should do is give their users a choice not to use SMS
authentication. Power users (and hopefully most high profile users) will make
use of that and normal user can just use SMS.
In the end it is always a trade off between convenience and security and sadly
convenience almost always wins for most users even for easy solutions. So we
(the developers) should provide them with the most convenient way they accept
which offers the maximum security and SMS does just that.
~~~
scrollaway
SMS auth is atrociously bad compared to offline 2fa:
\- Requires a telecom provider in the first place (in some countries, that
legally requires a passport/national ID tied to the phone number)
\- Offers no means of backup
\- Forgot to disable 2fa on that one account you log into once a year, before
changing your phone number? have fun with that
Nevermind Google Authenticator. Android and iOS should have a high quality
TOTP app installed _by default_. One that permits backups. "Users won't
install it" should NOT be a factor and if Apple/Google want their users to
start using 2FA it's in their own interest to do this anyway.
~~~
theGimp
It's still better than no 2FA, which I imagine is the alternative for the vast
majority of people.
~~~
scrollaway
Meta: Why is it that in one thread, I'm saying "same-machine 2fa is better
than no 2fa" and getting "but but it's not secure!" as replies, but when I
complain about sms auth being insecure, impractical, nonstandard and more
expensive than TOTP I'm getting "it's still better than 2fa" as a reply?
~~~
Ntrails
I agree, it _is_ bizarre to be taking different sides of the argument in
different threads...
~~~
ekimekim
I want to call this out, because I feel it's a big issue we have as humans
trying to engage in reasoned debate - the idea that an inconsistent or
changing view is somehow "weak" or invalidates the argument.
If someone is changing their opinion, that's a good thing. It means they are
taking on board new information and not blindly following their original
opinion.
If someone appears to have an inconsistent view, perhaps their position is
simply more nuanced than the simple "for or against" buckets the debate
actively tries to lump all participants into?
~~~
Ntrails
Yeah, I was sarcastically pointing out the absurdity of bitching about
different people on HN having different responses whilst he himself has
slightly different perspectives on subtly different issues...
I don't care that his view is inconsistent, I just think the complaint of
people disagreeing with him (in a comment format which encourages disagreement
more than agreement) was kinda ridiculous :)
------
ams6110
This is the perfect being the enemy of the good.
They should be calling for secure, validated SMS.
Thinking that "Joe and Jane Six-Pack" are going to use Google Authenticator,
is frankly laughable to anyone who does end-user support. But everyone
understands "get a text and enter the code here"
~~~
smsm42
Moreover, did you ever try to port Authenticator data from one device to
another? There are rumors it's possible. I work in the industry since forever,
if anybody can be called qualified for such simple task, it's me. I gave up,
too much trouble. Imagining that a regular person would even think about
getting into these woods is laughable.
Sure _Google_ allows you to port authenticator data with an easy 5-step
process. Almost nobody else does even this.
Without portability, it means losing access to your Facebook, Instagram and
Pokemon Go when you change your device? People would revolt if you do that.
So what's the alternative? We either use SMS, or we use email (which will have
like order of magnitude higher failure rate with no added security) or we
don't use 2FA at all. Or we think really hard and invent better 2FA than SMS
that works on every mobile device and is simple for the user. _Then_ we can
deprecate SMS.
~~~
bigiain
I always refuse to use the "scan QR code" thing, and everybody I've tried that
with (at least Google, Amazon, Github, Dropbox, Linode) give you a TFA secret
to type in as an alternative - I then store these in 1Password and can back
that up and use them to key Google Authenticator on additional devices. (I've
never tried to extract or backup.reuse secrets from Authenticator.)
~~~
asuffield
This only works for services using TOTP mode; HOTP prevents replay/cloning
attacks.
~~~
Rafert
The HOTP counter is something you can increment yourself if needed when
storing it somewhere?
Proper implementations of TOTP do not just rely on expiring the codes. From
chapter 5.2 of RFC 6238: "Note that a prover may send the same OTP inside a
given time-step window multiple times to a verifier. The verifier MUST NOT
accept the second attempt of the OTP after the successful validation has been
issued for the first OTP, which ensures one-time only use of an OTP."
~~~
vel0city
Yep, right at the top of page 7 of the RFC:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6238)
If it accepted the same token more than once, it couldn't possibly be called a
"one-time password".
------
Kortaggio
One of the biggest weaknesses of SMS 2FA that I didn't see the article cover
is when an attacker can socially engineer their way into your account with
your cell service provider.
I'm thinking of a high-profile example when an attacker tried to take over
h3h3's YouTube account by requesting his SIM card from T-mobile by pretending
to be a T-mobile employee:
[https://youtu.be/caVEiitI2vg](https://youtu.be/caVEiitI2vg)
~~~
legohead
The other day I forgot my Github password. When I went to go through the
password reset process, it must have triggered the 2FA because it asked for my
code. I use Google Authenticator, but I had switched to a new phone since the
last time I used GA with Github, and never scanned the code on the new phone.
So now I'm at an impasse. How do I get the code? Well, Github has a backup --
it will SMS the code to your phone! When it said this I just kind of chuckled
to myself as I also had seen the h3h3 video. Sure enough, it texted me the GA
code and I got back in control of my account.
Github actually provides a list of emergency codes that you can print out and
use as a last resort. I had printed these before and actually had them
available, but forgot about that process.
Github is trying so hard to have your account secure, but yet the SIM card
cloning threat is still there.
~~~
bigiain
Hint: don't just scan the QR codes on one device, switch to the "type in the
TFA secret" mode, and store that in your password safe (this makes it easier
to add the key to all your devices too - I have thew Google Auth app in two
phones and an iPad. I'd advise against doing that without at least considering
something better than a 4 digit pin unlock for your devices).
~~~
danieldk
_Hint: don 't just scan the QR codes on one device, switch to the "type in the
TFA secret" mode, and store that in your password safe_
I just don't use an authenticator app at all. Some password managers (e.g.
1Password) have support for storing TOTP. So, as long as I can access my
1Password vault (use a strong password!), I can access my TOTP codes.
Besides that, I prefer U2F, which is supported by GitHub.
------
wfunction
The problem with 2FA apps is that they don't also serve as an instant
notification you when someone is trying to log in as you. 2FA SMS does. This
needs to be addressed somehow before we declare the former superior.
~~~
lyonlim
Instead of SMS, wouldn't email notifications suffice? Apple (iCloud), Gmail
and Salesforce does this when there's a new login on a new device.
Furthermore, I'm not too in favour of using SMS... I have two numbers and when
I don't have both phones with me, it's a huge hassle. I end up setting up my
phones to auto forward such smses.
I use 1Password OTP support and love how it works seamlessly across my phones.
(Edited for clarity)
~~~
gambiting
When my Origin account was hacked, I found out that hackers used a very basic
vulnerability in Gmail - they've logged into my Origin account, changed the
language to Russian, and then changed the password - I received the "your
password has been changed" email, but because it was in russian, gmail
automatically put it in Spam folder and I never saw it(when I eventually found
it the message shown by gmail was "this email is in a different language than
used normally for this email address so we've automatically marked it as
spam".). Obviously by the time I realized, the "I didn't do this!" link in the
email has expired and I had to call EA to recover my account(surprisingly, I
did!).
So yeah, now I have 2FA enabled on my origin account, but I still wish I
received a text message telling me my password was changed.
------
Stratoscope
When I think of NIST, the first thing I think of is the old National Bureau of
Standards (now NIST) WWV Time and Frequency broadcast on 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20,
and sometimes 25 MHz. (You old-timers can probably hear the radio voice
already!)
This came to mind because I just read a great PDF with a detailed history and
technical description of WWV and its sister stations WWVH and WWVB:
[http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/1969.pdf](http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/1969.pdf)
Not directly related to 2FA, of course, but that PDF is recommended reading.
These people were hardcore hackers before any of us were born!
~~~
jlgaddis
The suffix of my amateur radio callsign is WWV. A few decades ago, when I
actually talked on the radio, there would always be somebody who would ask me
what the time was.
Ironically/coincidentally, nowadays I run several stratum 1 and stratum 2 time
servers.
------
viraptor
> the verifier SHALL verify that the pre-registered telephone number being
> used is actually associated with a mobile network and not with a VoIP (or
> other software-based) service
Is that possible to do this reliably in any country right now? I know you can
easily migrate numbers and the oldschool block assignments don't mean anything
in a few countries.
~~~
djsumdog
I moved out of the country and depended on my number being on Google voice to
use existing services. I'm also curious how to check if a US number is
associated with a VoIP services.
I worked for an international Telecom whose SMS gateway would just broadcast
messages to the two other national providers if the number wasn't there's (the
other providers would drop messages that didn't belong to them). That was one
of my first assignments; writing a task that would check the ported number
database and only send the SMS to the correctly ported provider.
------
niftich
Github repo for the working documents:
[https://github.com/usnistgov/800-63-3](https://github.com/usnistgov/800-63-3)
Issue tracker (discussion/request for comments):
[https://github.com/usnistgov/800-63-3/issues](https://github.com/usnistgov/800-63-3/issues)
------
techsupporter
> "...the verifier SHALL verify that the pre-registered telephone number being
> used is actually associated with a mobile network and not with a VoIP (or
> other software-based) service."
Now this bothers me. I deliberately use a service (RingTo, discontinued for
new users) to park a handful of numbers and be able to exchange SMS and MMS
with them. One of the things I do not do is give out my actual mobile number
to every random web service that wants it for "2FA," primarily because that
now opens me up to even more phone spam. With RingTo, I just set that number
to always go to voicemail but am still able to use SMS through their app.
It is arbitrary to say "one number type is acceptable for SMS verification but
another is not." I'm actually _more_ concerned that my mobile carrier will
cough up my account to an arbitrary attacker than I am about some out-of-the-
way number parking service that I log into using credentials that are not able
to be easily discovered (an alternate e-mail address and such). My mobile
carrier is a much larger target _and_ has scores of fallible humans working
for it just waiting to be socially engineered.
~~~
greggman
I agree. Namecheap currently only supports SMS 2FA. I'm abroad with a local
sim in my phone so I registered my Google Voice # with them. It would really
suck if I had to carry my USA sim at all times and swap it anytime I wanted to
login to those accounts.
Ideally they'd support the standards so I could just use one of the many
standard OTP apps
~~~
iamshs
Same problem. Don't know why namecheap doesn't support 2FA app like FreeOTP.
Would make it so much simpler and more secure at least.
~~~
rafaelm
They've been promising to implement a better 2FA option for ages. I just got
tired of waiting and moved to another registrar.
It's a shame because in general, I've never had any problems with Namecheap.
------
sdm
It's about time. Phone numbers change too much to be used as part of a
reliable 2FA. You go on a business trip or a vacation, you of course get a
pre-paid SIM card with a local number in your country of destination. It's
simple and straightforward, most airports are lined if kiosks of vendors. But
then you can't access any of your services. You can't do your work. 2FA should
be based around something that isn't tied your location and doesn't change so
regularly.
~~~
_nedR
For international travellers, I imagine its a problem. Within a country - it
is less a problem. In india at least, we have number portability between
providers, so there is little reason to change your number.
------
AdmiralAsshat
Good riddance. I live in a basement. I can't tell you how many times I've been
scrambling to log into a service that only allows SMS-based 2FA, requiring
that I then run upstairs or outside, waiting for my phone's signal to get
strong enough that it will receive the SMS, then dash back down before the
code expires.
------
tombrossman
I'm curious, do people still consider it "two factor authentication" when you
have a mobile device generating (or receiving via SMS) one-time codes and that
same mobile device syncing passwords?
For example, if your web browser or password manager is syncing your passwords
to your mobile phone, and that's the same phone the SMS codes or TOTP app runs
on, is this completely circumventing the whole concept of "two factors"?
Asking for a friend, because I'm sure no HN readers would be dumb enough to do
this...
(also, The Register covered this same story yesterday, here's my dupe
submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12157529))
~~~
chronial
See wikipedia:
> Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of computer access control in
> which a user is only granted access after successfully presenting several
> separate pieces of evidence to an authentication mechanism - typically at
> least two of the following categories: knowledge (something they know);
> possession (something they have), and inherence (something they are).
So as long as your phone is sufficiently password-protected, that is is still
2fa.
~~~
tombrossman
So a laptop or phone with a fingerprint reader and TOTP app would qualify as
well I suppose. I think many people assume that two separate devices are
necessary for proper security, and I wonder if this is true?
~~~
vel0city
Yes, it would qualify. While having additional devices does increase security
(harder to break into both the laptop and a phone, or laptop and
smartcard/yubikey/RSA SecurID token) its not entirely necessary.
Many physical security systems utilize multiple factors of authentication for
access that are tied into a single reader. They often have a badge reader
(something you have) and a fingerprint/eye scanner (something you are) or a
PIN pad/digital combo dial (something you know) all built into the same device
stuck on the wall. Sometimes they'll use separate systems for this, but the
combo units are very common.
------
roywiggins
I love Google Auth, and SMS really does have security problems, but you need a
2FA method for dumb phones, don't you? Are there Java apps for it?
~~~
niftich
Or a hardware token. It doesn't have to be a software token running on your
existing phone.
That being said, several companies [1][2][3] have in fact made software
authenticators that run on J2ME.
[1] [https://guide.duo.com/j2me](https://guide.duo.com/j2me)
[2] [http://www.aradiom.com/SolidPass/2fa-OTP-security-
token.htm](http://www.aradiom.com/SolidPass/2fa-OTP-security-token.htm)
[3] [http://www.eset.com/us/products/secure-
authentication/](http://www.eset.com/us/products/secure-authentication/)
~~~
BinaryIdiot
> Or a hardware token
The trouble is with the user (the user is always the problem). What happens if
they lose their hardware token? You _must_ have a way to recover that is not
exploitable by bad guys but usable by the good people just trying to get back
into their account.
SMS fills this pretty well despite its security flaws. I'm not convinced
hardware fixes this, at least not in any current form I've seen.
~~~
mtgx
My bank gives out hardware tokens. It's super easy to use, and I trust it way
more than using SMS, even though they tried to push me over to using SMS
(probably cost cutting move on their part). When it gets lost, they can
replace it.
~~~
BinaryIdiot
That sounds like a pretty miserable user experience though. People are
forgetful and lose things. Doing something online for the ease of it only to
have to wait for something physical seems like a big step backwards as far as
UX is concerned.
Until you make good security dead simple it'll never be used by the majority.
------
mappu
One possible impetus is the rise in SMS phishing like this:
[https://twitter.com/maccaw/status/739232334541524992](https://twitter.com/maccaw/status/739232334541524992)
How do you verify that the SMS is really from your service?
~~~
BinaryIdiot
> How do you verify that the SMS is really from your service?
The way the phone system works I don't think there is an actual way. It's
inherently insecure from multiple angles. Unless there is a way to verify it,
reliably, that I don't know about but I tried looking into this before and
found essentially nothing useful.
------
kozak
The problem with 2FA is that quite often it will turn into (a weaker) 1FA when
users gets a possibility to restore their primary password by the SMS.
------
original_idea
Wouldn't PUSH notifications over the Google and Cloud networks resolve this? I
know Google Prompt and Authy do this already because of SMS. Authy posted this
a couple weeks ago: [https://www.authy.com/blog/security-of-sms-for-2fa-what-
are-...](https://www.authy.com/blog/security-of-sms-for-2fa-what-are-your-
options/)
~~~
bdcravens
Interestingly, when you sync a new device with Authy, one of the options to
verify is SMS.
~~~
vel0city
IIRC, Authy uses this SMS challenge to authenticate users to allow you to
download the database of secrets. This db is encrypted by a passphrase which
never leaves the device. So, Authy is using SMS as one part of a multi-auth
system to get to the final unencrypted data.
That said, anyone with a SIM card able to get messages for your phone number
can download the encrypted database and attempt offline passphrase recovery.
It might take a while to brute force, they seem to use a lot of hashing rounds
as it takes a couple of seconds to verify the passphrase on a 2014 Moto X.
------
pixie_
It's annoying in a lot of services I can't use my google voice number to
authenticate.
------
mankash666
Reading through the draft, the level-2 authentication and upwards (AAL-2
[https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html#sec4](https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html#sec4)
) spec is encouraging. NIST is encouraging eliminating the password and fully
embracing cryptographic authentication (like SSH public-private keys).
------
onetimepassword
The biggest threat that other people have mentioned is using social
engineering to get a new SIM card that works with your telephone number. I
have a google alert for "sim swap fraud". It's oddly under-reported in the US,
but quite common everywhere else. How bad is this?? Well, what if at attacker
obtained more information about you (ie security questions possibly obtained
from a keylogger), then was able to get your phone number, then contacted your
bank or other investment broker and drained your accounts? Yes it happens- all
the time. It's about time that NIST declares this form of 2FA insufficient.
Hopefully the rest of the world will take notice, soon.
I prefer OTP... hopefully there aren't any other RSA-type hacks in the future.
------
ComodoHacker
What's wrong with SMS to virtual number? I mean how it's less secure than
regular number?
------
ittekimasu
Coinbase, too hasn't gotten the memo yet.
[https://community.coinbase.com/t/can-i-use-google-
authentica...](https://community.coinbase.com/t/can-i-use-google-
authenticator-instead-of-sms/1104)
------
davidhyde
In South Africa, this scenario is becoming a big problem: A victim's cell
phone, in their possession, is triggered to go into no-signal state which is
sometimes not noticed for hours. During this time, criminals are somehow able
to capture communication that would have originally gone to the cell phone.
Communication like 2FA passwords. This is then used to transfer money out of
the victims bank account. How can 2FA over sms be considered safe if this is
possible?
------
Glyptodon
It's fine that there are flaws with using SMS, but the alternatives --
proprietary apps, proprietary dongles -- aren't any better. They also just
create more parties you have to trust.
And if it comes down to using public/private keys, there's no reason an open
source SMS app couldn't authenticate encrypted text messages or something.
If SMS in the clear is bad (and it probably is), then whatever is okay needs
to be broadly accessible, open, and usable.
~~~
WorldMaker
«It's fine that there are flaws with using SMS, but the alternatives --
proprietary apps, proprietary dongles -- aren't any better. They also just
create more parties you have to trust.»
TOTP and HOTP are both open OATH moderated standards. You can use any app or
dongle of your choice with any provider that follows the standards. This is a
way better alternative than SMS.
------
willvarfar
Here's a story about a friend whose phone number was hacked in a banking
Trojan attack:
[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/24949768311/i-kno...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/24949768311/i-know-
someone-whose-2-factor-phone-authentication)
In this case it was a land line, but it's still a relevant empirical data
point for those weighing options.
------
Dowwie
The list of drafts and request for comments on a range of topics can be found
here:
[http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsDrafts.html](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsDrafts.html)
Other than the SMS-based 2FA work, see: \- Identity and Access Management for
Smart Home Devices \- Multifactor Authentication for e-Commerce: Online
Authentication for the Retail Sector
------
xg15
So what exactly is the alternative? I should carry around a physical security
token with me for every single account I ever made?
~~~
dchest
Get U2F FIDO USB key ([https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=u2f+fido&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Au2f+fido)) [standard,
works with Chrome & Firefox for Google, GitHub and more] and/or install Google
Authenticator on your smartphone [works with anything supporting TOTP].
------
xaduha
Any 2-factor auth is better than none.
------
forgotpwtomain
I'm somewhat surprised NIST is using github (a private company) rather than
self-hosting.
------
billpg
Does anyone have any experience of using hardware tokens (like the sealed key-
fobs) running TOTP?
For some services, I would much rather have a key-ring-ful of these devices
rather than an app on my phone which I also use for reading websites.
~~~
kabdib
I use a mix of
\- Google two-factor
\- Service-specific two-factor (e.g., Steam authenticator, which provides
other features beyond TOTP)
\- Non time-based authenticators; Yubikeys are great, and appear to be made of
some indestructible material that survives multiple trips through the wash.
------
bdamm
Eventually the government will issue identity cards with certificated key
pairs.
------
cmurf
My bank uses SMS based 2FA. I'll send them this link and reiterate they should
support U2F, or at least TOTP supported by Google Authenticator.
If SMS is problematic for 2FA, why isn't it problematic for account recovery?
------
retox
I never used SMS 2fa because I don't want my phone number out there.
------
ungzd
And still in "secure" messengers like Telegram SMS is primary authentication
method, not even secondary for 2-factor. Despite documented cases of account
hijacks this way.
------
nutanc
"For now, services can continue with SMS as long as it isn’t via a service
that virtualizes phone numbers"
How much of an affect will this have on companies providing such a service.
------
Illniyar
I failed to find in the article the reason why it's frowned upon, are there
reasons published in the guide?
------
turnip1979
The headline seems a bit click-baity. It seems to merely add some suggested
guidelines to how this is done.
------
nxzero
If SMS is out, any form of verification or identity tied to phone numbers
should be too.
------
tlrobinson
> To avoid red tape, the Institute is trying out a new method for reviewing
> and commenting on the guidelines that isn’t quite so official: GitHub.
Ironically, GitHub uses SMS-based 2-factor authentication...
~~~
petetnt
Or alternatively authenticator based 2FA, which is their suggested way.
~~~
lorenzhs
Or alternatively U2F, which uses a dongle and is phishing-proof.
------
Kiro
I will never ever use 2FA if it's not via SMS. I just don't care enough to be
bothered.
~~~
bigiain
You've never had anybody try to seriously take over the email account you
manage domains names with, have you?
(Try owning a domain name with the word "anonymous" in it, and watch the
skript-kiddies descend en-mass...)
~~~
dozzie
Well, I didn't (I'm not the OP). I host my own e-mail myself.
~~~
bigiain
I've been forwards and backwards on that one myself many times...
Do you seriously think you're more capable of securing your mail server than
Google/Microsoft/Apple?
Is the time/effort you'll spend maintaining it worth the privacy tradeoffs?
How are you dealing with outbound mail? Where are you hosting your email that
isn't already on half the spam blacklists already?
(That last one was the killer for me last time I ran a mail server of my own,
neither my home ip address, nor any of the Digital Ocean/Hertzner/Linode/AWS
vpses I could easily use/afford to make outbound mail connections with were
ever trusted by the big email providers. A self hosted mail service that
couldn't reliably get mail into the inboxes of 80+% of the people I correspond
with didn't end up being of much use... I've ended up back with Gmail and
hating myself for it.)
~~~
dozzie
> Do you seriously think you're more capable of securing your mail server than
> Google/Microsoft/Apple?
I don't know about Apple, I stay away from them.
I also stay away from Microsoft, but I had to go through some of their
products in my time, so there's good chance that I'm more capable.
And Google? Extrapolating how they interact[1] with the rest of the world,
it's not improbable, too.
[1] Did you know, they were a source for backscatter for _several years_?
> Is the time/effort you'll spend maintaining it worth the privacy tradeoffs?
Wrong question. The correct one would be: why would I give up access to server
logs (yes, I use them sometimes) just to give up my privacy on top of that?
> Where are you hosting your email that isn't already on half the spam
> blacklists already?
In a place that is not a known spam source? (Yes, this excludes AWS and
Digital Ocean.)
~~~
wtracy
>In a place that is not a known spam source?
Examples? Shall we take turns guessing the names of these elusive spam-free
providers? Your non-answer reads to me as, "Just don't use any providers that
you can actually afford, and you'll be fine!"
(Sorry if this comes across as grouchy--I can't sleep, and I have to get up
early tomorrow.)
~~~
dozzie
Well, there are smaller companies with own server rooms that offer VPS-es.
I use one in my country (Poland), and I use it since a little longer than
Amazon entered our market. I don't think such a regional provider would be of
much use to you, unless it operates in your region, of course.
What my comment boils down to is to avoid big hosting places.
------
cutie_honey
The double-speak and quack-speak is getting a little thick for me lately.
Government bodies frown heavily on end-to-end encryption, but also frown
heavily on authentication methods that are less secure.
Why, whichever directive shall I adhere to? The more secure behavior or the
less secure behavior?
Maybe I should just do whatever benefits everyone else but me.
~~~
retrogradeorbit
Remember this is the same NIST that backdoored the EC coefficients [
[http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/rigid.html](http://safecurves.cr.yp.to/rigid.html)
]. And before that devised the "explanation" of how WTC7 collapsed. [
[http://www1.ae911truth.org/en/news-
section/41-articles/927-n...](http://www1.ae911truth.org/en/news-
section/41-articles/927-nists-wtc-7-reports-filled-with-fantasy-fiction-and-
fraud-intro.html) ].
NIST is a political organisation more than a scientific one.
Here come the down votes.
~~~
Spooky23
No.
NIST is legally required to collaborate with NSA on crypto. It was widely
reported that NIST people fumed about NSA undermining heir standard and they
removed the offending crypto from the stNdard quickly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Short unique ordered ID generator[Python] - gaojiuli
https://github.com/gaojiuli/orderid
======
codegladiator
why not uuid ?
~~~
notduncansmith
or ulid? [https://github.com/ulid/spec](https://github.com/ulid/spec)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
World Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease - oracuk
http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/08/19/world-renown-heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease/
======
th0br0
Dwight C. Lundell, M.D. lost medical license in 2008. Since that time he has
been promoting books that clash with established scientific knowledge of heart
disease prevention and treatment. His book, The Great Cholesterol Lie, invites
people to "forget about everything you have been told about low-fat diets,
saturated fats, cholesterol and the causes of heart disease."
[http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html](http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html)
~~~
grannyg00se
That's a nice ad hominem collection there. Not one point I could find about
his actual claims. He didn't file his taxes properly? Bad patient review
history? These things are not relevant to the scientific claims he puts forth.
~~~
bradleyland
Ad hominem isn't always a bad thing. The fact that someone lost their medical
license is good information when evaluating professional credibility.
Professional credibility is absolutely important when evaluating someone's
claims.
------
pgcudahy
This is pure quackery. The cholesterol -> heart disease framework was
developed by the Framingham studies
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framingham_Heart_Study](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framingham_Heart_Study))
that showed a strong correlation between cholesterol and heart attacks and
strokes. Now correlation does not equal causation but decades of subsequent
studies have shown that cardiac event rates drop linearly with decrease in LDL
(a form of cholesterol)
([http://www.nature.com/nrcardio/journal/v8/n12/fig_tab/nrcard...](http://www.nature.com/nrcardio/journal/v8/n12/fig_tab/nrcardio.2011.158_F1.html)).
It has culminated so far in the JUPITER trial
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUPITER_trial](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUPITER_trial))
where people with "normal" LDL levels and no history of heart disease were
able to decrease their heart attack risk with statins by driving their LDL
even lower. The whole inflammation stuff came into play because JUPITER also
looked at an inflammatory marker called CRP. Now, that angle is still
controversial but could play a role. However, it does not invalidate the
dozens of studies linking cholesterol to heart disease. Plus there is nothing
linking this guy's quack theories on nutrition to inflammation/CRP or
ultimately to heart attacks.
I'm surprised that it made it this high on HN. Maybe people just love feeling
that "freakanomics" feeling of mental superiority that they're willing to
swallow any alternative hypothesis that challenges the norm. Maybe people just
don't trust medical science.
~~~
skylan_q
_Maybe people just love feeling that "freakanomics" feeling of mental
superiority that they're willing to swallow any alternative hypothesis that
challenges the norm. Maybe people just don't trust medical science._
I hope it's the case.
It was fat, then it was cholesterol, then it was LDL, now it's pattern B LDL
that shows a correlation. The ratio of HDL/LDL still factors in as well as
triglyceride levels. The jury is still out there as to whether that specific
type of LDL is what causes damage or is a sign of damage being caused.
To act as if we can say "cut out all cholesterol because it's bad for you" is
wrongheaded. We know there is a correlation with these factors as we measure
them in the blood. We can't say with a high degree of certainty that eating a
certain way will cause a certain effect on people. But when people are taking
in over 20% of their caloric intake as saturated fat and showing incredibly
healthy cardiovascular health readings, you've got to wonder if the common
wisdom is something we should be comfortable with.
------
ceautery
That reads too much like baloney.
------
grannyg00se
Another slam against overconsumption of sugar and processed foods. This guy
may not have the best reputation but the advice doesn't seem all that bad.
------
skylan_q
I'm glad that there will be that 1% or so of people who pick up this article
and have it change their minds. :)
That dietary cholesterol necessarily causes heart damage is taken as a matter
of faith. :(
------
nodata
tl;dr cholesterol is not the problem, things that inflame the arteries, e.g.
high processed carbs and over consumption of certain oils
------
NAFV_P
"Well,smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully." He knows
very little about smoking.
------
oracuk
In hindsight I wish I had done more than just read this article before I
submitted it.
A lesson learnt.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What docs to request from SaaS after being laid off? - saas-laid-off
I've recently been laid off from a Georgia-based SaaS. What documentation should I request?<p>I did not have any equity, so that simplifies things a bit.<p>Things that come to mind:<p>* compilation of permanent employment record
* letter of recommendation
* Paystubs<p>I'm not familiar with what I should expect to have in a permanent record.<p>Any advice or resources would be greatly appreciated.
======
bitshepherd
You're overthinking it a bit, and that's understandable.
Records and letters, in my experience, are more doing-motions-to-move than
actually doing anything. In general, nobody cares if you had a spotless
record, or were employee-of-the-interval unless it's a well-known company, in
a highly visible situation. Many of these things are simply expected, so long
as you present yourself as a level-headed individual that can GTD. At best,
they're a conversation point at some point in, before, or after, the
interview.
Once you're no longer in the employ of a company, it's more or less a done
deal, especially in terms of a layoff. Next year's taxes are about the only
thing that matter here on a long-term basis, and if they've been paying to UI
(legally, they should have been).
Mark the point of employment on your personal permanent record (read: your
resume/CV/online presence) and talk yourself up a bit in terms of what you've
done with honesty. That's one of the hardest parts when you've been freshly
laid off.
In the immediate future, what needs to happen is ensuring continuity by making
sure that you have your UI filed with the state and ready to be processed,
while looking for that next place. They tend to ask if you've been looking for
work, and you will have to show proof if they ask. The cushion, while it
lasts, tends to be helpful in such a time.
------
idoh
Those three things are not supplied / needed in my experience. You can put
your work experience on your resume, and if an employer wants to verify then
you can supply a reference contact who can vouch for these things.
When you do get laid off, usually there is a doc that outlines things like
health care, effective date of termination, payment. If you don't have that,
then I would ask for that and clarify it.
~~~
rajacombinator
This. Plus you can usually file with your local govt for unemployment benefits
in this situation, and you should.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mpemba effect: warmer water can freeze faster than colder water - mike_esspe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect
======
mattdeboard
I have no idea what this has to do with HN, but, one of the best "life hacks"
I've ever learned was from my Iraq tours: evaporative cooling.
If you're outside on a hot day and your drink is hot (in our case, it was
palettes and palettes full of bottled water), get a wash rag or a skivvy shirt
wet, wrap it around your drink container, and let it sit out in the sun. In a
little while, voila, cold drink.
Apropos of nothing.
~~~
SiVal
It works better in the shade, and best of all in the shade exposed to a
breeze. You don't need to warm the water in the rag to evaporate it. It will
evaporate in the dry air, even if cool. Putting it in the sun raises its
temperature as the evaporation lowers it. If there's a nice breeze,
evaporation will still win, but it will get cooler if you don't add energy at
the same time you are removing it.
~~~
mattdeboard
That's it, it's been awhile (6 years... wow). Thanks for the correction. Heat
+ breeze (even if the only breeze is warm).
~~~
SiVal
+1 thanks for your service
------
InclinedPlane
And nobody understands exactly why.
The British Royal Society offered a 1,000 pound prize recently for an
explanation, so far this is the winner, though it's not complete:
<http://www.rsc.org/mpemba-competition/mpemba-winner.asp>
------
sk5t
I can perceive this as nothing but a horrible, horrible failure to account for
unseen variables.
~~~
gijjk
AKA, every unsolved problem in science.
------
ck2
Didn't they prove this happens only if the water is impure?
If the water is purified, ie. steam distilled, the warm vs cold effect
disappears?
------
slm_HN
Back in my high school chemistry class this effect was noted and explained in
the following way:
Ice needs to form a particular crystalline structure when it freezes. This is
what makes ice float in water. The molecules in warm water are moving faster
and therefore have a greater chance to wander into this correct formation. The
cold water molecules are moving more slowly and simply take more time to find
the correct alignment.
There wasn't really any proof to this theory, but it was followed with a bunch
of anecdotal evidence, like Canadian's washing their cars with cold water,
etc.
------
Jach
Newton's cooling law can be written as t = -ln(T(t) - Te)/k + ln(To - Te)/k.
T(t) is the object's temperature at t, Te is the surrounding environmental
temperature that's assumed constant, To is the object's starting temperature,
and k is a constant scaling factor related to the material of the object in
question. Since this effect is contrary to that law, the law is wrong, i.e.
too simplistic. It's not hard to imagine that the surrounding Te is changed by
the object or that k of water+container can change depending on its
temperature or purity...
~~~
manglav
I don't quite follow your reasoning of why the law is wrong. You say yourself
"Te is assumed constant", yet you imagine that converting the Te from a
constant to a variable could affect the result. However, if you change Te from
a constant to a variable, Newton's Law of Cooling is null and void, because a
simplification is that Te is constant, and that allows a lot of /dt's to
cancel.
The law is correct for when you can assume a constant Te, for example an
object within a fluid flow (like an airplane wing during flight). The problem
is, for stagnant situations, convection plays a _huge_ role in heat transfer
within the air. Controlling convection is really really hard, and even harder
in a scientific setting that needs to be reproducible. Also, when dealing with
transition temperatures, various things need to be taken care of, such as
supercooling. This can literally stop working if your beaker is slightly
dirty. So the problem is there isn't a way to universally control the
conditions for this experiment. However, I did find that the winner of the RSC
paper had a suitable explanation that involves the presence of supercooling
for the colder sample of water. Essentially, if the colder sample supercools,
it will take slightly more time to freeze, because while it should have
frozen, the ice does not have a nucleation site. On the other hand, the warmer
sample does _not_ supercool, and freezes upon reaching 0 C. This experiment
only works if the temperature difference is slight, probably within 15-30 C.
Quite ingenious really!
Edit: After reading the rest of the comments, air bubble/filtered water/de-
ionized water all have great effects on ice nucleation and supercooling, which
for me supports the winner's paper.
------
jnellis
The controller/thermostat on a stabilized freezer turns on and off in a steady
state as it reaches setpoint and then drifts away from it when the motor is
off. Filling your ice cube trays with hot water forces the thermostat on
sooner, makes it stay on longer because of hysteresis in the controller
settings and so freezes faster. That is the only demonstrable reason I have
ever seen.
------
drakaal
Warm water has less disolved gas, and provides less bouyancy so particulates
that would lower the freezing point settle to the bottom. These two factors
make the water freeze faster.
This isn't "unexplained" unless you never took a college level physics course,
which is pretty typical of the people who edit WikiPedia pages.
~~~
derleth
Then why did the Royal Society create a contest to explain it?
~~~
drakaal
RSC 1000 GBP contests are to encourage youth to develop science experiments.
Did you think that amount was enough to finance a study? The 1000 GBP contests
are all things for which RSC already has answers.
------
themgt
A friend of mine swears that if you're making say a gin & tonic, filling the
glass with ice will result in less ice melting and therefore your drink will
be colder but less watery.
~~~
nohat
That makes sense - the ice cubes are below freezing, so it will take less
melting to reach melting point equilibrium temp. In this case you are simply
using the heat storage of ice rather than the phase transition energy required
to melt the ice.
------
phamilton
If I recall correctly, ice frozen after being heated has fewer air bubbles. I
wonder if there is a correlation.
~~~
marshray
The explanations I heard were that heating the water drove off trapped gases
or the warmer water took _longer_ to freeze giving them longer to escape.
------
dsjoerg
This is clearly madness.
~~~
etfb
All the best science is.
Sadly, most of the worst pseudo-science is too, which makes it largely useless
as an indicator.
Ah well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 20 Best Startups from Y Combinator’s W20 Demo Day - ajaviaad
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18/the-20-best-startups-from-y-combinators-w20-demo-day/
======
notlukesky
It’s behind a paywall.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An inexpensive way to make great looking logos - jslogan
http://www.jslogan.com/content/view/174/
======
SwellJoe
Cool idea, but all of the example logos look horrible. I'd be embarrassed to
have them on my website or product.
I think it misses the whole point that the biggest differences between a good
logo and a bad one is typeface and color scheme, and this software seems to
leave both of those in the incapable hands of the end user. Sure, having a
nice mascot or graphic mark is great to have, but this software can't solve
that problem either (because it can only provide a few pre-drawn marks, which
once used by anyone become stale and indefensible as a trademark).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you think the "democratic Internet" is over-stated? - aridiculous
A recent TED talk explaining YouTube virality says that tastemakers determine the initial spike in views. If a celebrity tweets or a journalist writes about a video, that creates the conditions for virality.<p>It got me thinking that, despite all the talk of a flat democratic Internet, the basic system of hierarchy (or oligarchy) from pre-Internet publishing and media is still fully in place. It's just that different small number of people determine what gets mass exposure.<p>What are your thoughts on this, particularly in regard to how it diverges from the public meme of a truly "democratic" Internet?
======
wmf
The term "democratic" is generally over-applied. For example, open source is
not democratic — developers have no formal responsibility to their users. (Of
course, if it was really democratic you'd have to pay taxes.)
I wouldn't call the Internet an oligarchy (it also has random information
cascades), but there are definitely power structures at work that are not
democratic (or meritocratic). It may be dangerous to believe that the Internet
is more free than it really is, because that implicitly legitimizes those
power structures. (In other words, if the system is fair and you're winning,
you obviously must be winning fairly so let's not question how you got there.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Complex Math Made Simple with Engaging Animations - jelliclesfarm
http://www.openculture.com/2019/01/complex-math-made-simple-with-engaging-animations.html
======
Gormisdomai
This seems a little parasitic. It's just links to videos from 3blue1brown's
channel [1] with very little commentary and some advertising.
[1] The channel is great, everyone should check it out.
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw)
~~~
cgrealy
Hilariously, it has a super intrusive popup asking you to disable your
adblocker so they can show you someone elses work.
------
foxes
If you aren't already aware, 3b1b made a super cool library [0] to help make
the animations in their videos.
[0] github.com/3b1b/manim
------
CGamesPlay
If you like 3Blue1Brown, definitely look at this collaboration on quaternions:
[https://eater.net/quaternions](https://eater.net/quaternions)
(But the actual submission here is blog spam.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Choosing an open-source license that's compatible with selling? - speps
I am in the process of choosing a license for a projet I'm doing. I want that code to be used in other open source projects freely. However, if people need to use it for a commercial product, they should acquire the rights from me.<p>What license would fit this? What choices are there? Any existing examples?<p>Thanks.
======
detaro
Open-source can be used commercially. Forbidding all commercial usage is
incompatible with most definitions of "open-source" and thus all important
open-source licenses. Code that can't be used in a commercial product is
useless for most open-source projects as well.
Generally it is a common pattern to dual-license code as both a) GPL or AGPL
and b) a sold commercial license and hope that commercial users prefer to pay
instead of dealing with/thinking about the consequences of using the open-
source variant.
------
mtmail
Those other open projects then need to tell all their users that part of their
code has additional restrictions in place, making in incompatible with their
licence.
~~~
speps
I've seen dual licensed projects before.
~~~
brudgers
I am not a lawyer.
A common dual license is GPL and a license that removes the copyleft
requirement and allows modifications to the code to be distributed without
source code.
There are a lot of implementation details, for example if part of the code
being licensed is GPL, then dual licensing the project can easily run afoul of
GPL.
My advice is if the project is going to be open source, focus less on a custom
license as a way of making money and more on providing valuable service to the
people using it. If making money off the license is the goal, then start with
a proprietary model and work backward form there over time.
------
brudgers
I'm not clear what 'commercial product' means in this context.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Extra domain names? Offer them to fellow news yc'ers here. - acgourley
======
gscott
This is the most amazing place to get domain names <http://www.tdnam.com>.
Some of the recent ones I have registered using tdnam are ShareCircle.com,
RealtyGoLive.com, SharedList.com, SoftwareOutpost.com, UserLinks.com, and
AskShare.com. All of them cost $10+$8 to register. People who say good domains
are gone are not totally correct.
~~~
acgourley
Thanks, that looks nice.
------
acgourley
At some point I was thinking of building a quick site to allow people to
list/give/swap domain names with a small community of developers. My rational
is that many of us sit on a pile of them we bought for past or never-to-be
completed ideas, and we could help each other out by making them available. It
would be cool if someone did build that side one day, but for now it probably
makes more sense to just piggyback on an existing community.
Of course I just had several names expire before I thought to do this, but I'm
willing to part with:
dealray.com mobophile.com mobozen.com
I'm not looking for money, but I will ask that you actually plan on using the
domain for something cool somewhat soon. The transfer of a domain off 1and1 is
a mild pita after all.
------
spking
This thread resparked my interest in building a free place to sell and buy
domains. I used to frequent Sitepoint's domain marketplace to sell some of my
domains or find some good deals, but I hate paying 10 bucks just to list.
I'll be rolling out Version 0.1 tomorrow, and you'll be able to put all of
your domains up for free. If you want me to email you with the link when it's
live, please email me at:
[email protected]
with the subject: Domain Market
~~~
acgourley
The important point is that its not just a charity to whomever wants them,
because there are many sleezy people who will just scoop them up. There needs
to be some community element, and the person giving them away should know that
either the person taking the name has also given away names, or is planning to
put the domain to good use.
~~~
spking
So I am coding this now in RoR. I think you're right, there needs to be some
sort of karma/credit system to keep the sleazeball squatters away and out of
the community. It also needs to accomodate all types of users (selling for
cash, trading, and giving away free). Hmmm...
------
louisadekoya
I own buzztricks.com; whatilooklike.com; alterpay.com; legitmp3s.com and
peerquit.com.
~~~
nextmoveone
I thought it said queerpit at first glance...lol
~~~
SwellJoe
People always think I'm saying "virtualmen.com"...Quite different, but
possibly also valid, business model.
------
fuelfive
3by5.net
cloudrocket.com
liquidmarket.org
insum.net / org
momentumapp.com
trackmomentum.com
wikiphi.com
fuel5.com
fuelfive.com
vrabbits.com
feedocracy.com
drytest.com
------
nextmoveone
I'm willing to give up:
getretarded.net smsfiend.com safemortgagesource.com strategic-mortgagedata.com
but I want at least one in return.
~~~
plusbryan
DUDE strategic-mortgagedata.com???? I've been waiting for that domain since
1994! Woot!
~~~
adrianwaj
I like getretarded.net
------
joefaron
i own kyd.net..
use to host free web space on it years ago in high school.. then my home dsl
went out and its been doing nothing since. sad story i know.
------
adrianwaj
scottmcnealy.com
groovetip.com
------
Jd
godspeaksto.us
~~~
Tichy
Hm, sure that isn't worth a lot of money? I have no experience with domain
trading, but that name sounds fairly good. Not sure how the minds of religious
people work, though.
~~~
rms
The domains that are actually worth money are the ones that generate residual
type in traffic. godspeaksto.us could be good for branding some type of
religious site that believed itself to be divinely inspired but I doubt many
people are buying domains like this to start Web 2.0 religions.
~~~
Tichy
What is residual type in traffoic? You mean people visit the site without
searching for it, by just typing the name into the url bar?
~~~
rms
Yes, exactly. This is why business.com turned out to be a bargain at nine
million.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A site I made to make London look sunnier on Street View (Chrome only) - shmeano
http://www.ianbutterworth.co.uk/sun/
======
quotemstr
Chrome only? No thanks. I'm not supporting the webkit monoculture.
~~~
shmeano
Just noticed that chrome allows the filter css3 property to be exercised on
street view. I assume this will be adopted by the other platforms too? But I'm
not a particularly educated programmer, so I don't know the likelihood!
------
gpjt
Nice. Works in Chrome on my ICS Android tablet too :-)
~~~
shmeano
Thanks! Glad to hear it.
------
whatshisface
What does this use that is only supported by chrome?
~~~
shmeano
Chrome seems to be the only browser that allows the -webkit-filter to be
applied to the street view object. -webkit-filter, or filter or whatever you
want to call it does work on other browsers, but it only works with the street
view window in chrome
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GoToMeeting Does Not Support MacBook Pro's with Retina Display - mrkuykendall
GoToMeeting has confirmed that their current version does not support Retina Display Mac Book Pros and there is no fix date in sight... or a workaround.
======
GlennDCitrix
Hi, GoToMeeting does work on the new MacBook Pro with Retina display, it just
hasn't been optimized for it yet. This will be addressed with an update to the
GoToMeeting software that is currently in the works.
@GlennDCitrix
------
henemm
I think the screen recording is the problem. It only records the upper left
forth of the screen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ethereum Foundation Researcher arrested for North Korea assistance. - cklaus
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3andj/researcher-arrested-for-allegedly-teaching-north-korea-about-ethereum
======
elcaminocomplex
Discussed at length yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665984)
------
fragsworth
It says he "participated in a discussion that touched on using it to evade
economic sanctions."
His defense is that "his presentation contained basic concepts that could be
looked up online."
Since this is all I see in the article, it really looks like a somewhat
ignorant prosecutor over-reaching. Unless there's some significant part of the
story being left out, I can't imagine he goes to prison over this.
~~~
Mikeb85
The fact he actually travelled to North Korea to give said 'presentation'
makes it likely he gave them more assistance. Helping a country evade
sanctions is a crime in the US, so dunno what he thought would happen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fiber.js - Lightweight JS inheritance model - krisk
https://github.com/linkedin/Fiber
======
ltcoleman
I applaud the effort that was taken to build this, but I would hope that none
of my devs would approach me with wanting to implement inheritance in js. IMO
the use case is very very small.
I saw a presentation on this and the performance increase was not even an
advantage with prototypes because you would have to call a js function 10,000s
of times to gain anything.
~~~
krisk
Agreed. Although benchmarking performance, in my opinion, is more of a study
than a programming advantage. It's to affirm that a model does indeed work
without flooding the system with memory intensive operations. The goodness an
inheritance model brings has more to do with simplifying code rather than
performance.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Y Combinator And The Fresh Blood Of Innocents - dwynings
http://uncrunched.com/2012/03/27/y-combinator-and-the-fresh-blood-of-innocents/
======
evan0202
Michael Arrington can find a way to make anything about himself.
------
nchuhoai
pg, take my blood, I'm innocent
... Wow that sounds even creepier than I thought
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's your opinion on websites that "force" users to use modern browsers? - ergo14
I'm about to launch my first SaaS application, it is geared specifically towards webshops, or owners of big sites, in short I don't expect general audience to use my services (basicly webdevelopers) would use it.<p>I strongly believe that web should not be slowed by Internet Explorer, and I want to use features like canvas, css shadows and other properties - without resorting to ugly hacks or image slicing to get a pleasant effect. I know IE9 will support this functionality or other users can use chrome frame if they insist to use IE.<p>Would you find it acceptable to demand from my future clients to use modern web browser?<p>I strongly believe in open technologies and what HTML5 and CSS3 has to offer and would go in that direction.
======
limedaring
Why not use things that'll degrade gracefully in less-modern browsers? shadows
are awesome, but whatever if they don't show up in other browsers.
For example: <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/>
Now, when it comes to major functionality — if your application simply won't
work in IE — you need to decide whether the tradeoff is worth it. You won't be
tarred and feathered if you have a giant sign saying people need to use a
different browser to use your application. You're simply going to lose users.
And note, the vast majority of those users aren't going to download the
browser and use your application, they're simply going to leave.
~~~
ergo14
I'm perfectly fine with idea of losing 5 users out of 100 - because 95% of my
target base will use modern browser(or less because someone that doesn't use a
decent browser will very likely be unable to benefit from my site in first
place - specifics of my target group I suppose). Anyways It's not like i'm
going to block anyone - I just don't want to support hacky code just to make
IE users happy.
It's not like the website will be non-functional to IE users - it will
probably just be ugly, thats all ;-) Which I guess is fine because its purpose
is being a tool for webdevelopers and programmers.
Also some features just don't degrade at all ;-) like canvas (unless i use
something like excanvas), but this part is competly optional to use, so not a
biggie.
Think like <https://developer.mozilla.org> \- being made to work in IE ;-)
------
obsessive1
Personally, I don't mind when sites complain about my browser, as long as
there is still an element of choice. Not all HTML5/CSS3 features are there in
stable versions of a lot of browsers, so if your site were to use a feature
only available in the latest stable version of Chrome, for example, and not
Firefox, then I would consider that to be too restrictive.
However from the sounds of it, your application should work in the latest
stable version of the major web browsers, which, in my opinion, is enough.
~~~
ergo14
Indeed, but i would find a common denominator - I would go with features
firefox 3.x, webkit, opera + ie9 support. This seems like sane compromise to
me.
------
mikecane
You're ignoring the many slow computers that are still out there in the world,
but perhaps your market won't encompass those.
I have an old PC. 1.8GHz Celeron. YouTube complained all the time that I
should get a "modern" browser. I was using Firefox 2.x -- which was faster for
me than the latest Chrome. Also, Fox could play YT videos, while Chrome and
even Safari could not. (I'd tried Fox 3.x early on, but it slowed the entire
PC to a crawl and I had to rollback to 2.x!)
I forget what frustration I encountered a week ago, but it finally drove me to
try Opera. Let me tell you that Opera is sooooo wicked fast on this old PC
that it's as if I've had an entire hardware upgrade. I'm not connected with
Opera at all, just incredibly happy in using it. Now I can visit sites I had
to avoid in the past due to multiple JScript errors (Gizmodo, io9, and the
like).
If people are hesitant to switch browsers, suggest they try Opera at least
once. As usual, TMMV.
~~~
ergo14
Well, I can only say that I don't plan to put anything resource intensive to
the layout, i'd risk to say that the website should work fast for you, not
sure how well it would look on 2.x, but keep in mind that YT uses flash that
is main resource hog(especially on linux). I'm pretty confident that it would
run fine on your pc with firefox - because my android phone can run it ;-)
That makes me think now i should install fennec on my phone and see how that
works.
~~~
mikecane
>>>because my android phone can run it ;-)
Sorry, but no. I've actually had to transfer some AVIs to my LifeDrive (400Mhz
CPU) to play them because they'd be cloggy when using vlc on this PC! (Yes,
I've scanned for malware; done _plenty_ of officially recommended optimizing
stuff -- which, btw, I should have also said I'm at XP SP2, because SP3 made
this machine crawl too!)
It could also be I have the crappiest PC on earth, one of very few.
~~~
ergo14
My phone has 560mhz procesor, hadly processing power of your pc. If you are
having issues of this kind, maybe thermal sensor on your cpu is broken and cpu
is slowing down because it things it has temperature problems, or bad drivers?
That 1.8ghz celeron should be fine for majority of tasks. Maybe you could try
downloading ubuntu live image and test there if the problem persists(its
free)? Then you would at least know if it's not a problem with your operating
system.
~~~
mikecane
Funny you should mention thermal. Had to replace heatsink retention module
recently. But that didn't help anything, really. It's just XP being all
clogged up from years of use. Can't do clean re-install. Point of no return.
------
prodigal_erik
I'd be ashamed to put out something that completely failed without nice frills
like CSS and canvas. Links (the browser) is good enough for Gmail, so that's
the level of competence I expect of myself.
~~~
ergo14
Indeed, links is awesome at showing real time charts, I agree. I'm also sure
mozilla is ashamed of their new MDN site, and FB for its facebook chat.
I need clarify, i want to use it for features, not "bling".
~~~
prodigal_erik
A real-time chart is a great progressive enhancement over the raw data. But
when I can't get the data even without the chart, that's broken. As for other
sites out there, I never claimed my opinions are commonly held. There's a long
history of shoddy work succeeding in this industry.
~~~
ergo14
Shoddy is building sites that HAVE to support IE(unless there is really a good
reason to do so) - i've done this for years and the only outcome of this is
that we contribute to the fact that users don't change their habits and use
browsers with shoddy approach to web standards. How can that be better in 21st
century?
If i'd really want i could support everything, but how long should we keep
this up? 10 years? 20?
It's like you would say that games should be built to work on 286pc's. Yet no
one complains about that (unless it's poor optimization). You were so kind to
suggest that my work is shoddy, I would say that shoddy work are websites that
use hacks, or use non-semantical markup to archieve the goal of being able to
work everywhere. Overall quality of code is sacrifaced for bacwards
compatibility with browser that uses 9 year old rendering engine? People
switch cars more often than browser versions, I fail to understand why we
allow that to happen. We have good solutions to handle legacy app
compatibility like chrome frame. Everyone has right to it's own opinion, but
is it wrong to want users to use proper browser? Even my phone is capable of
rendering charts. How can supporting everyone at all cost be better than
pushing for standards? We are forced to standards everywhere in real life, why
not in IT?
This is a nice quote about what happens if you support broken by design
browsers forever:
"Facebook explains its decision by saying that many users have complained
about unstable chat sessions, or ones that stop completely. In order to
improve the way connections are established and messages are sent, however,
the social networking giant must make changes that aren't supported by older
browsers."
I'm not saying that everything FB does is right, but I think that legacy
support sacrificing experience of everyone else is not a solution to the
problem, and this is a good example.
~~~
prodigal_erik
Step one should be valid semantic HTML 4.01 (or equivalently, XHTML 1.0 served
as text/html). That's still the current standard, and was carefully designed
to be at least accessible on every browser we've ever had. Step two is adding
CSS and JS to make the experience nicer for browsers on which it's switched on
and known to work reliably. It seems to me that a lot of devs complaining
about IE6 have a grudge because it reveals they routinely skip step one. They
had every opportunity to build something that always works and always will
_and then_ make all the shiny variations they can handle, but they prefer the
"this page optimized for arguing with customers" approach.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The best time tracker you use - belvoran
Hey,
which software or online services do you use for tracking time as freelancers?<p>So far I have been using just a simple file with notes. However now I changes my work a little bit, and I'd like to send a nice pdf with detailed report.<p>I checked toggl, looks nice, however I need to write more detailed reports. When quite a simple task took like 2 hours, I'd like to provide detailed information about all the problems I found, and how I solved that.<p>So, what stuff do you use, and which should I avoid?
======
guilhas
A combination of: \- Procrastitracker(1) \- Sent emails \- Updated tickets
(company stuff) \- Git/Svn commits \- Everything search updated files date(2)
\- Zim wiki journal feature (dump style) Alt - D creates a file for the day(2)
(1) [http://strlen.com/procrastitracker/](http://strlen.com/procrastitracker/)
(2) [https://www.voidtools.com/](https://www.voidtools.com/) (3)
[http://www.zim-wiki.org/](http://www.zim-wiki.org/)
------
welder
[https://wakatime.com/](https://wakatime.com/) (Full Disclosure: I built it)
It's fully-automatic, which makes it the best time tracker!
------
tonyarkles
I use a mix of Toggl and org-mode, to solve the exact problem you're
describing (some clients need detailed information).
I'd probably just use org-mode, but I also have a subcontractor that I need to
bill for as well. The toggl reports tell me exactly how much to invoice at the
end of the month for the both of us, and my org-mode files have all the nitty
gritty details of what I've worked on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CRDTs: The Hard Parts [video] - benrbray
https://martin.kleppmann.com/2020/07/06/crdt-hard-parts-hydra.html
======
benrbray
See also automerge [1], discussed at the end. They are currently working on
performance improvements [2]. Quoting from the repo, "automerge is a library
of data structures for building collaborative applications in JavaScript:
* You can have a copy of the application state locally on several devices (which may belong to the same user, or to different users). Each user can independently update the application state on their local device, even while offline, and save the state to local disk.
* (Similar to git, which allows you to edit files and commit changes offline.)
* When a network connection is available, Automerge figures out which changes need to be synced from one device to another, and brings them into the same state. (Similar to git, which lets you push your own changes, and pull changes from other developers, when you are online.)
* If the state was changed concurrently on different devices, Automerge automatically merges the changes together cleanly, so that everybody ends up in the same state, and no changes are lost. (Different from git: no merge conflicts to resolve!)"
[1]
[https://github.com/automerge/automerge](https://github.com/automerge/automerge)
[2]
[https://github.com/automerge/automerge/pull/253](https://github.com/automerge/automerge/pull/253)
~~~
vlovich123
It’s hard enough getting your own code to run and work correctly. When would
this be a useful development paradigm?
~~~
topicseed
Realtime collaboration on documents (e.g. source code, rich text editing,
etc).
~~~
ickyforce
When I edit code it's broken most of the time. It wouldn't make sense to
collaboratively break it in various parts for other people...
~~~
dkersten
I have done remote pair programming many times though and in that case it’s
perfectly ok, because you’re communicating with the other person/people and
can let each other know if you will break something.
For that use case, I can see this being very useful.
------
gritzko
"Data laced with history" (2018) [1] is very relevant here. Interestingly,
that extensive post obsessively vivisects RON 1.0 (Replicated Object Notation
[2] as of 2017) which was based on columnar compression techniques Automerge
recently implemented (53:24 in the talk).
Columnar formats have their upsides and downsides, though.
[1]: [http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-
history/](http://archagon.net/blog/2018/03/24/data-laced-with-history/)
[2]: [http://replicated.cc](http://replicated.cc)
~~~
lann
It's worth noting that you are the author of RON :)
~~~
gritzko
... and working hard to release the new version. Hearing the fuzzer buzzing as
we speak...
~~~
archagon
Are there changes coming to RON that aren't currently mentioned on
[http://replicated.cc](http://replicated.cc)? Any clues as to what they might
be?
~~~
gritzko
I think, the new RON oplog is the biggest change.
------
mike_red5hift
Does anyone take issue with the fact that CRDTs seem to require keeping a
history of every change ever made to the document?
Seems like it could get unwieldy very fast. Especially, in the face of a bad
actor spamming a document with updates.
I've considered using CRDTs in a few projects now, but the requirement to keep
a running log of updates forever has ruled them out. I've ended up using other
less sound (more prone to failure), but more practical methods of doing sync.
Perhaps, I'm missing something. Wouldn't be the first time.
Are there alternatives without this requirement, or that would at least allow
a cap on the update log?
~~~
appwiz
> I've ended up using other less sound (more prone to failure), but more
> practical methods of doing sync.
Could you share the alternative methods that you’ve used?
~~~
mike_red5hift
Stuff like diffing multiple json documents and merging adds, updates and
deletes where conflicts did not exist and overwriting conflicting attributes
based on timestamps (latest wins). There's some reasonably good jsonpatch
libraries out there that will do the heavy lifting.
Plenty of room for problems to arise, but it did not require keeping a log of
updates. My use cases did not require real-time collaboration and the
structure of the document was known beforehand, though.
~~~
appwiz
Got it. I’ve typically seen Operational Transforms brought up as the
alternative to CRDT for real-time collaboration. But, if you don’t need to
solve for that use case and the format is JSON, it’s a different problem to
solve and you don’t need that journal of changes.
If you have code available in the public domain, I’d love to see it.
------
infogulch
There was a recent post of a series that dives into CRDTs [1] . Someone linked
to a paper, _Chronofold: a data structure for versioned text_ [2] dated this
April, that attempts to map CRDT semantics onto text editing. It's still on my
list.
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737639)
[2]:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.09511v4.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.09511v4.pdf)
------
alextheparrot
This spawned an idea, which I feel a need to post.
It seems the hard part about CRDT is choosing the correct commutative
function, as merging two operations in line with user intent is non-trivial.
Would it be possible to use a combination of superposition (Please correct me
if this word is wrong) and pruning to derive user intent?
The idea being that instead of combine being (A, A): A (A commutative
semigroup), couldn’t we represent the operation as (A, A): Set[A] and have a
way of showing the user set results in a way that their next operation shows
us the “correct” interpretation.
He’s doing this implicitly with the file tree example, wherein operations that
don’t create trees usually defy user expectations (Symlinks aside), so he
decides to prune those choices from the result Set[A] before introducing a
heuristic to further prune the set. There’s still an issue of users having
opposite intent, but at that point it just seems like we need to introduce
“Set pruning” or “Superposition collapse” operations as a user-level primitive
and then rely on recursion to resolve the possible nesting of these result
sets.
Does this riff with anyone / does anyone have further thoughts on this
formulation?
~~~
benrbray
This sounds similar to the concept of a "multi-value register" [1] I've seen
in a few places while reading about CRDTs the last couple days. Is that what
you're looking for? The idea is that each process maintains a vector clock
with the latest timestamp from all other processes, and we don't delete values
until one version can be verified to be "later" than all the others.
[1] Section 3.2ish of
[https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00555588/document](https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00555588/document)
~~~
alextheparrot
This was 100% the path I think I was traveling (Thank you for the link). I had
a hard time grocking the complete specification from the paper, but the README
of this repository that implements CRDTs in that frame was helpful [1].
The core part is separating the "merge" from the "resolve" state. Merging
state can be done in a variety of ways, so in the default formulation there
seems to be a focus on making the "merge" operation also "resolve" to only one
value, when really there could be multiple formally valid merges that the
client may desire (Which is part of the difficulty that the video notes as he
proposes a variety of possible file system mutations for a set of two
uncoordinated operations).
The cleanest clarification of my thought process is similar to the following:
Given the operation Merge(4, 2), I could propose that there are two valid ways
to perform this merge, addition and multiplication. This means the result
would be either 6 or 8. The act of returning a single value (6 or 8) changes
that proposal into a statement, though, which is the "resolve".
One subversion of this restriction is to return a set of all possible results
for the operations we think are valid, so {6, 8}. At this point, the user can
say (Either explicitly or implicitly) "I actually want 6" and we resolve it to
the single value of {6}. There are also special cases like Merge(2, 2), where
this whole situation is especially ergonomic because the merge operations are
equivalent.
There are problems, of course, with this approach.
One issue is the need to categorize all possible operations the user may think
are valid for Merge(4,2). If the user intended to do division, the result set
proposed above will not include the state that they would expect. Still, this
seems more general now, as we just need to gather the set of operations that
the user may think are valid instead of assuming which one is valid. There's
also a ranking problem that then exists at the UX level, as we need to find a
way to cleanly propose this set of alternatives.
Another issue is, of course, exists if both users propose conflicting
resolutions (Actor1 says "I want multiplication" and Actor2 says "I want
addition"). This is the issue with decoupling the "merge" and "resolve" steps,
as now we may cause a fork in the model which causes a fundamental divergence
of the collaborator's data.
[1] [https://github.com/rust-crdt/rust-crdt](https://github.com/rust-
crdt/rust-crdt)
------
sfvisser
From my (admittedly very limited) experience implementing CRDTs it became
clear that even technically correct is not good enough. Optimistic merge
strategies require a very clear understanding of user intent and expectation.
Properly consistent can still mean utterly confusing.
~~~
topicseed
Exactly that which is pushing many people away from CRDTs despite them being
mathematically proven true, and towards Operational Transformation.
~~~
heavenlyblue
OT is just a fancy name for a CRDT.
~~~
sagichmal
No, it isn't.
------
hencq
First off, this is an excellent talk. The presenter explains the different
topics in a way that even a layman like me can easily follow along. The
compression scheme he presents at the end seems very interesting as well.
I do wonder if in practice OT isn't a simpler solution for most applications.
He mentions the differences in the beginning of the presentation and the main
advantage of CRDTs is that they don't need a central server. It seems to me
that for e.g. a web app you have a central server anyway so all the extra
complexity of CRDTs isn't needed. I know almost nothing about this though, so
would love for someone more knowledgeable to explain why I might be wrong.
~~~
vivekseth
For single server/database web-apps, CRDTs might be useful because they allow
offline edits, and (to me at least) they are simple to understand and
implement. OT does allow offline edits too, but (I think) has poor performance
if there are many offline edits.
For multi server/database web-apps, CRDTs might be useful because they reduce
the centralization required for collaboration, and increase the fault
tolerance. In a load balanced web app, different clients could connect to
different servers/databases and stil achieve eventual consistency when those
back-end systems sync up. If any of those systems go down, in theory traffic
could be routed to other systems seamlessly.
------
migueloller
I recently shared a thread [1] on Twitter with CRDT resources I found useful
if you’re interested in that kind of thing.
[1]
[https://twitter.com/ollermi/status/1279067350269124609?s=21](https://twitter.com/ollermi/status/1279067350269124609?s=21)
------
sradman
CRDTs are great examples of what the NoSQL movement called Eventual
Consistency. I never understood why this movement assumed that abandoning
ACID-style consistency automatically gave you Eventual Consistency.
As a side question, have any new algorithms been developed over the last
decade that have significantly improved automatic source branch merging?
~~~
Taek
Eventual consistency and ACID are not at odds, you can have one or the other
or neither or both.
~~~
dboreham
Not true. Eventual consistency can not (provably) provide consensus.
~~~
IggleSniggle
sure it can! A particle can be _either_ this or that until someone looks at
it, and when they do, the act of looking at it causes the state to collapse
and propagate. Sure, a partitioned group may come to alternate realities
before they reunite, but then you just get to do the same thing again! Like
Conways Game of Life, except with application state.
(I am joking of course)
------
benwr
If anyone is interested, I've been trying to think about the problem of moving
ranges in a list-structured CRDT for a couple of weeks now for a side project,
and I've got a candidate that seems to satisfy the most obvious constraints.
I'd be really interested in any feedback / holes you can poke in my solution!
Rough notes are here:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p1K3sxgKGYMEBH72r-lnP9Gn...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p1K3sxgKGYMEBH72r-lnP9GnBm5N15h77C81W15kPiE/edit?usp=sharing)
~~~
anchpop
This is interesting! I've been looking for a good sequence crdt to implement
in my Rust CRDT toolkit [0], which is still very much a work in progress but I
want to make it really useful. Do you know how this compares to yjs [1]?
[0]: [https://github.com/anchpop/crdts](https://github.com/anchpop/crdts) [1]:
[https://github.com/yjs/yjs](https://github.com/yjs/yjs)
~~~
benwr
I hadn't looked at yjs; I'll check it out! [edit: It looks to me like yjs is
much more flexible than my design here, but doesn't include an ability to move
ranges of lists to different locations]
Darn, and just after I'd implemented it myself in terrible beginner Rust! I
might get started reimplementing it using your tool :)
------
mdptt
What an excellent talk, many thanks.
One idea comes to my mind (a bit out of topic): as we can store the complete
editing history in a document (even including mouse movements) with a fairly
small overhead using the ideas of automerge, would this be useful for
distinguishing texts that are generated by machines and by humans? Or to
detect plagiarism?
~~~
williamstein
I wrote the realtime sync and edit history code in cocalc.com, which is used
by instructors to teach courses that use jupyter notebooks with realtime
collab. Instructors do regularly suspect and diagnose instances of cheating by
students due to us storing the complete edit history. We don't automate this -
it's more that they are grading, get suspicious, and use the edit history
manually to investigate further.
------
6510
I thought about this once and came to the conclusion that the problem doesn't
exist: Anger is the only thing you can accomplish by typing letters into the
sentence I'm writing. If the goal is not anger but to write text only one
person can write a sentence at a time.
The solution then becomes really simple: You insert your cursor where you want
to edit. You wait for the text and/or background of that paragraph to change
color. Light green would do nicely.
Other users will see that paragraph turn red.
The paragraph is now under your control. If someone else desires to edit a
sentence in YOUR paragraph that sentence changes color again and the side bar
displays a dialog allowing you (the owner) to 1) hand over the paragraph to
the new author, 2) hand over only that sentence or 3) ignore the request.
Dumb software wins!
~~~
sleepinseattle
That falls apart as soon as the author with the locked paragraph leaves the
document open while they’re doing something else, preventing others from
editing.
~~~
Ozzie_osman
Or if network connectivity isn't guaranteed.
~~~
6510
I really don't get it. You want to add thousands of lines of code and complex
data structures with tons of edge cases so that I can interrupt you while you
write??? It's just not desired functionality. Poor network connectivity is not
an excuse to break your workflow.
You simply do not assign 2 people to a task that can only be done by a single
person.
It is like a system where 2 people can poor coffee into the same cup at the
same time. We deal with the cup overflowing with some drainage (marvel at our
creation of course!) but then 12 people put sugar in the cup. Solution: we
overflow the cup further to dilute it! We solve the mobility issue by spilling
a bit more coffee out of the cup and whip the bottom with just the right type
of towel or napkin. The only problem that remains is both drinking from it at
the same time.
------
sillysaurusx
Hmm. Does anyone know of a transcript? I can’t watch right now, only read.
I wonder if there’s some free YouTube transcription service... even just
showing the captions would work.
Oh, hm. It’s not on YouTube anyway.
~~~
benrbray
Actually, the video on the page is a YouTube embed and the English captions
are pretty good (although understandably it struggles with CRDT jargon).
I found that the last 4-5 references listed in the link are pretty accessible,
and most of the diagrams from the talk are taken from one of the papers by
Kleppmann.
------
archagon
Great talk! I look forward to diving into "Interleaving anomalies in
collaborative text editors" to see how Kleppmann et al fixed the RGA
interleaving issue.
The section on moving items in a list makes my mind jump to Causal Trees
(≈RGA). The problem here is that a) we need the concept of a list bucket or
slot, and b) we also need to preserve the sequential integrity of runs of
items as in text editing. In CT/RGA, each letter/item is simultaneously a list
bucket and its contents. I wonder if this problem could be solved by adding a
"reanchor" op that moves the "contents" (and some/all children) of a letter op
to the "bucket" of another letter op?
Each reanchor op would have the job of "moving" a subtree of text to a new
parent bucket. (Under the hood, the subtree would obviously remain
topologically unchanged for convergence purposes, but the reanchor op would
inform how the tree is parsed and turned into a user-visible list or string.)
First, the reanchor op would need to reference the start and end letter/item
ops in a given subtree; and second, the reanchor op would need to reference
the letter/item op into whose bucket the subtree contents will be moved. If
the set of subtrees for a range of text/items contains multiple independent
subtrees, they would each need their own reanchor op. Concurrent moves of the
same subtree would be resolved as LWW, similar to the Kleppmann proposal.
Let's say you have a graph for string "ABCD" that looks roughly like this,
sans metadata:
+---+
| A |
++-++
| |
v--+ +--v
+---+ +---+
| B | | C |
+---+ +-+-+
|
v
+-+-+
| D |
+---+
If you wanted to move "CD" after "A", you would add the following op:
+---+
| A +<---------+
++-++ |
| | |
v--+ +--v |
+---+ +---+ |
| B | | C +<---+ |
+---+ +-+-+ | |
| | |
v | |
+-+-+ ++-++
| D +<--+ m |
+---+ +---+
"m" references "C" and "D" as the subtree range, and "A" as the target bucket.
The string would render as "ACDB".
We can get cycles with this scheme, but as far as strings or lists are
concerned, this doesn't actually matter, since the parent references aren't
reflected in the output (as they would be with an explicit tree data
structure). If, concurrently to this, another device wanted to move "A" after
"C", the merged graph would look like this:
+---+ +---+
| m +-->+ A +<---------+
+-+-+ ++-++ |
| | | |
| v--+ +--v |
| +---+ +---+ |
| | B | | C +<---+ |
| +---+ +-+-+ | |
+---------^ | | |
v | |
+-+-+ ++-++
| D +<--+ m |
+---+ +---+
How does this get resolved? Well, we can simply read this as "move the
contents of 'A' to the bucket for 'C', and move the contents of subtree 'C'
through 'D' to the bucket for 'A'." The string would consequently render as
"CDBA", as we would expect.
This is just a sketch, not sure if it would actually work in practice. Pain
points are a) moving multiple subtrees in a somewhat atomic way (when the
range to be moved covers more than a single run of items), b) sane results
when overlapping ranges are moved concurrently, c) moving items to a bucket
whose contents had already been moved before, and d) parsing performance,
especially given the fact that we'll now have ops (and their children) whose
contents might end up in arbitrary places in the output string or list. Might
just end up with a slow, confusing, and labyrinthine data structure.
There's also the question of intent: does the user want to move a range of
items to the slot currently occupied by a different item, or do they want to
move that range to the right of that item? Lists of notes will want the
former, while strings will usually want the latter. Perhaps the reanchor op
could explicitly differentiate between these two cases.
~~~
martinkl
Interesting idea, but the devil is in the details. Especially two concurrent
moves of partially overlapping ranges of characters is a tricky case to
handle, and it is not obvious to me how your scheme would deal with this.
Another fun case is two concurrent range moves in which the destination of the
first move falls within the second move's source range, and the destination of
the second move falls within the first move's source range. How do you handle
this?
I expect that any algorithm solving this problem will need a formal proof of
correctness, because it's very easy to miss edge cases when using informal
reasoning.
------
jwr
Incidentally, Martin's book ("Designing Data-Intensive Applications") is
excellent and highly recommended reading. If you find yourself saying things
like "this database is ACID compliant", "we have an SQL database with
transactions, so we're fine" or "let's just add replication to Postgres and
we'll be fine", you need to read this book.
~~~
swyx
> If you find yourself saying things like "this database is ACID compliant",
> "we have an SQL database with transactions, so we're fine" or "let's just
> add replication to Postgres and we'll be fine", you need to read this book.
can you elaborate why? are these sentences fundamentally wrong? they dont
appear so.
~~~
robto
The entire book is about when and how these statements turn out to not be
absolutely true. And it's not a short book. I don't have my copy in front of
me right now, so I won't get into specifics. But I consider it one of the most
important books I've read, if only for making me realize how difficult it is
to get distributed systems correct. Or, rather, learning that getting
distributed systems correct is impossible and what sort of tradeoffs you can
make in order to keep things mostly working.
And it turns out that most services that I find myself working on these days
are distributed systems, so having a healthy respect for all the ways things
can break is a useful place to be.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Let me take care of that - hk__2
http://bobspace.com/let-me-take-care-of-that
======
Procrastes
I agree it's a good way to take responsibility, but I can see it getting out
of control if you don't leave people the opportunity to learn. I've had a
problem going too far this way and creating a team where, no matter how much a
I simplified and documented, no one could fix build problems but me. I've
since backed off a bit on later projects and made sure people get their hands
dirty early so they don't feel like I "own" the build (or an app or module or
whatever).
------
budivoogt
Great advice. Lending a hand on subjects which you know you can just do better
can save a lot of time, and you can avoid frustration by just communicating
that you're taking the responsibility.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: API builder, user management, analytics and management platform - aoprisan
https://github.com/andreioprisan/apignite
======
aoprisan
I'll improve the note on the repo as well, but basically the proof of concept
was to have something read PHP classes and parse out functions and parameters,
then output it to a database that could be manipulated through a UI. A very
rough class parser and UI were put together to show what else could be built
out, but it's by no means functional or feature complete, just a proof of
concept. Also, the code is quite dirty, there were 2 other contributors who
jumped on the project and contributed as part of the 24 hour TechCrunch NY
hackathon 2012. Perhaps someone will find elements of this useful or perhaps
it's utter garbage :)
------
jtreminio
Just going through the code, I have to say I'm not a big fan of the quality.
~~~
aoprisan
it was put together at the techcrunch hackathon last year
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Waterfalls - duffyred
https://vimeo.com/eagleisystems/rocknwater
======
luck87
The video is really amazing. But try to remove the HD quality! ehhh.. what?!
it becames one of the ugliest video I've never seen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Too Much Tea Causes Unusual Bone Disease - uladzislau
http://news.yahoo.com/too-much-tea-causes-unusual-bone-disease-222359924.html
======
anigbrowl
Oh no! I drink a lot of tea...
_47 year old woman...drank a pitcher of tea made from at least 100 tea bags
daily, for 17 years_
Whew, not even close. Also, WTF. Glad to see that simply halting the excess
consumption should allow her body to repair the imbalance over time.
~~~
YokoZar
At some point you wonder if putting more teabags into the same pitcher doesn't
actually make it any stronger. There's gotta be a saturation point for tea
solutes. Except maybe for the flouride in them.
~~~
eksith
It stops being stronger at some point I think. The water can only hold so much
of the infusion. I have no scientific evidence other than my own observations
-- and that's far from scientific.
"Too much" is generally a relative term depending on where you're from
(although this lady didn't fit the customs of the locale) since people drink
it both in the morning, evening and stometimes in the afternoon.
These cases also tend to show up in Sri Lanka, which has a tea culture as
well. We also need to keep in mind that some areas have naturally high levels
of fluoride in the groundwater. Without reading the detailed article (TBA),
it's hard to tell if that played a part too.
Edit: Something smells fishy.
_Pass it on: A 47-year-old U.S. woman developed a bone disease after drinking
a pitcher of tea a day for 17 years._
The actual case hasn't been published in detail and the link to the case :
<http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm1200995>
But it mentions: _Brewed tea has one of the highest fluoride contents among
beverages in the United States._ I'd like to see some actual backup of that
with hard data.
~~~
phaus
When I make tea, I find that as little as an extra 3g of tea, or an extra
minute of steeping can ruin an entire pot. I can't imagine dumping several
ounces of dried tea leaves into a single pot of tea, which is pretty much what
this lady was doing.
~~~
eksith
Agreed. At the most, tea should be left to infuse for 1 minute (loose tea less
than that), especially for Black tea blends. Any more and it just kills the
flavor.
I'm willing to bet she was doing it for some sort of DIY health thing. People
do silly things like over-doing something if they think it's good for you.
Well, that then makes it bad for you.
There's a great book on all this called The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo :
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea>
A very good read on the subject. I think Google Books probably has a free
translation.
~~~
eru
> Agreed. At the most, tea should be left to infuse for 1 minute (loose tea
> less than that), especially for Black tea blends. Any more and it just kills
> the flavor.
Depends. I can leave my Pu-Erh in overnight, and the flavour is still fine.
(But Pu-Erh is well known for that.)
~~~
eksith
Pu-erh is not like ordinary loose tea so it's quite safe to do that. Without
stirring or pressing, you don't get too much of the flavor into the water and
it's much more coarse. You'll find a lot of the green teas also don't over-
flavor the water because of this.
~~~
eru
Yes. I guess your 1-minute rule is more appropriate for black teas than
anything else. I like my teas more overbrewed in any case.
------
acabal
Too much of anything is going to mess with your body. I would have been
surprised if drinking the equivalent of 100 tea bags daily for 17 years
_didn't_ mess this woman up.
------
Shenglong
I am disgusted that they chose to measure _tea_ in _bags_.
/teasnob
~~~
eru
Yes. But it seems that lady made her tea from bags.
------
lenazegher
This is pure fluff.
------
Daishiman
Linkbait headline. You probably shouldn't each 50 packs of artificial
sweetener a day either, or 5 pounds of ice cream.
------
rbanffy
"100 tea bags daily, for 17 years" almost qualifies as an OCD.
------
advm
<http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174>
------
OGinparadise
_after she drank a pitcher of tea made from at least 100 tea bags daily, for
17 years, researchers report._
Duh! Also 100 tea bags daily is a lot more than what people call "too much"!
Too much water will also cause death
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/bushwalker-died-from-
drinking...](http://www.smh.com.au/national/bushwalker-died-from-drinking-too-
much-water-20120917-2621c.html)
------
WayneDB
Was there ever any proof that _drinking_ fluoride prevents cavities? (As
opposed to applying it directly to the teeth.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How long can you go without saying "I want"? - nate
http://blog.inklingmarkets.com/2010/04/how-long-can-you-go-without-saying-i.html
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Trivial - I never say "I want ...".
I say "I'd like ..."
~~~
jodrellblank
searchyc.com for: RiderOfGiraffes "I want" - 36 results.
~~~
nate
Rider! :)
~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
<grin>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review my Startup: Pitch - stop re-writing the same emails - Tawheed
I've been doing a lot of customer development lately, and so I built a little web-app that helps me templatize my e-mail pitches and send them faster.<p>I figure this can help a lot of other startups, so check it out and please share your feedback.<p>http://pitchapp.com
======
ScottWhigham
1) Volume on video demo should be higher
2) Better mic on video demo - got tired of hearing sibilant ssssssssss within
20 seconds
3) Better demo
4) Less compression on audio on video demo
5) Does Tawheed really want his actual email address in your demo video?
6) I see the need but don't get it. Why is it free? How will you make money?
If you don't make money, then you close. If you close, I've wasted x hours of
work.
------
jarsj
I fail to understand the need.
GMail has a lab feature called "Canned response", it does exactly what you do
and its integrated into Gmail.
Also, search-and-forward would work just fine.
~~~
Tawheed
Canned responses work pretty well, but still not as tight of a workflow as I'd
like.
Also, I'm working on a premium version where you can track Opens and click-
throughs on the links you share -- helping you A/B test and see ROI of your
pitches.
~~~
apsurd
I like "A/B test your emails" better. I understand the problem of having to
rewrite emails over and over again that are delivering the same message for
the same goal, but need to be tailored to some specific-case scenarios. You
might be entering into the email newsletter space with the more functionality
you roll out so I would think it best to concentrate on those instances where
you are doing customer development type stuff. The need to reach out to people
in a very personal way entails that I DON'T spam them from an email
newsletter, but yes I would want to approach it in a systemized fashion. Have
a way to iterate on emails and refine your pitch - I like that.
------
Tawheed
Link: <http://pitchapp.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Please sign petition to throw out Mandlesons Internet Bill (UK) - bumblebird
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/
======
Nekojoe
Is there any other action people in the UK can take? I don't have much faith
in the number10.gov.uk petition page.
The number 1 petition there was for Gordon Brown to resign [1],[2]
Despite getting more than 72,000 signatures, the response [3] was more like a
boilerplate reply.
[1] <http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/>
[2] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/27/downing-
stree...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/27/downing-street-
website-resignation-petition)
[3]<http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page21213>
~~~
bumblebird
I thought it had a good effect with the Turing apology. It's hardly likely a
Prime Minister would resign based on an online petition though.
~~~
philh
The Turing apology wasn't something anyone in power cared about. Granting
petitions like that makes them look benevolent (and us feel empowered), but
doesn't interfere with their plans.
------
tom_rath
An e-peititon is going to do nothing. This nonsense distracts people from
actual effort and helps bills like this get passed.
If you want to make an impact, the minimum you should do is write a letter to
your MP, on paper, sign it and send it to them by post. Letters and phone
calls (but particularly letters) are the currency your MP uses to gauge public
opinion. Use them.
~~~
bumblebird
I think the whole point of the government petition website is to gauge public
opinion. I think it'll do more than 'nothing'. I'd agree though, write letters
as well.
~~~
tom_rath
It actually does less than nothing.
Since an e-petition site like the one linked gives people opposed to an issue
the impression that they've accomplished something, those people are that much
less likely to do something substantive to resolve the issue they're concerned
about [Citation_Needed -- I couldn't be bothered to find it].
So, less is actually done to oppose the issue than if the site never existed
in the first place. It actually _helps_ those who are in favour of the issue
opposed.
E-petitions aren't useless: They're _worse_ than useless.
~~~
bumblebird
How about all the times the e-petitions on number10.gov.org have been reported
in the mainstream media?
Now each article which reports on the issue will be able to say "An issue
which has seen X sign a petition against it".
Also it's likely to make the news in more places.
~~~
eswat
But how many of those e-petitions with the media traction actually got
meaningful results, other than making the news in more places?
------
RiderOfGiraffes
Done.
~~~
pierrefar
Hardly. It's promising to be a long slug.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IPhone Push Notifications for any IMAP account - talison
https://msgpush.com/
======
modoc
The privacy concerns here are obvious... Neat service otherwise, but I don't
trust too many people with my e-mail.
~~~
RK
People seem to be very loose with their account info these days when it comes
to convenience.
You'd never give your password to someone if they asked you in person, but if
it's a website, that's a whole different scenario.
~~~
patio11
You wouldn't. I wouldn't. We are not most people.
Many people will give their password to anyone who asks, and most will give
their password to someone who offers them a candy bar.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3639679.stm>
------
whalesalad
An open source self-hosted implementation of this would be terrific :) I too
would not trust this service, it seems pretty fly-by-night.
~~~
modoc
Yeah, I'd love to be able to add real push notifications to postfix.
~~~
strlen
I think you meant something like dovecot, instead. Postfix is an MTA, not an
imap daemon. I'd _very much_ like to see a dovecot extension to do push.
~~~
modoc
Yes sorry:( Up too late on a deployment. Dovecot is great.
------
jsz0
Has it been entirely proven that the iPhone only checks IMAP accounts on a 15
minute interval? I've never stop watched it but I feel like it's much shorter.
I've seem some speculation that it depends on wifi vs. 3G connectivity. It
seems to me that messages show up in my desktop client (IMAP-IDLE aware) only
a few minutes before they hit my iPhone. My gut feeling is the iPhone is
probably 3 or 4 minutes behind my desktop client (IMAP-IDLE aware) Has anyone
been able to confirm or deny the 15 minute interval or is it just my
imagination and poor sense of time?
(I do have a separate MobileMe e-mail account account as well. Perhaps it
changes the IMAP intervals system wide?)
------
steadicat
Doesn't work if you're also using Google Sync. The iPhone will only let you
add one "Exchange" account.
We just have to wait till Google implements push for Gmail.
~~~
Skeuomorph
Far as I can tell, this isn't an exchange account, just an unread email badge.
I say far as I can tell, because during the registration, when I saw they were
asking for password instead of using SSO, I abandoned.
------
bharris
If you choose to disregard the privacy issue, don't get too attached. Their
privacy policy states that they plan to charge for the service once it's out
of beta:
_"Information collected may include: contact information such as your name,
phone/cell numbers (during the course of technical support incidences), e-mail
address(es), e-mail password(s) (to monitor your mail account for new
messages), an identifying question for security check purposes, billing
information (if you choose to join our service post Beta) and information
related to those of our service(s) in which you have expressed an interest."_
------
zain
I really wish they had _any_ information about the technical details behind
this. Do they mirror your email on their exchange server or something?
~~~
nudded
They don't mirror your mail, you receive a pushed mail on the msgpush account
telling you new mail has arrived. You still have to read it on your regular
account
~~~
nailer
What protocol do they use on the msgpush account? Push IMAP? Something else
the iPhone supports?
~~~
Skeuomorph
Yes, "something else" the iPhone supports in OS 3.0, which is "push
notifications".
These is a background notification service any iPhone app can use that can
show a text message on the screen and update a counter (aka "badge") on the
icon of an app that isn't running.
Push notification in iPhone OS 3.x is not to be confused with Exchange or
ActiveSync so-called Push email.
------
jasonlbaptiste
Is there a jailbreak way to modify the settings so it checks it faster than
every 15 minutes?
~~~
nailer
I don't understand - isn't this push? Shouldn't you be notified immediately,
rather than pulling every 15 minutes?
------
yan
This service/app will fall apart as soon as Apple adds this feature.
~~~
Skeuomorph
Apple would prefer for you to use Mobile Me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
International Obfuscated C Code Contest Winners - lelf
http://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2012
======
biot
Tromp's entry is amazing.
Source: <http://www.ioccc.org/2012/tromp/tromp.c>
Spoiler: <http://www.ioccc.org/2012/tromp/hint.html>
It's based on a minimal implementation of Binary Lambda Calculus:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_lambda_calculus>
~~~
batgaijin
Did he _invent_ Binary Lambda Calculus as well?!?
~~~
jlgreco
"Binary lambda calculus is a new idea introduced by John Tromp in 2008"
Apparently so. Wow.
------
ioccc
We hope you enjoy the 21st IOCCC results - we enjoyed judging the entries.
If you have any feedback on the competition for the Judges, please contact us
using the details at <http://www.ioccc.org/contact.html>
Thanks. SimonC.
~~~
wtracy
Just curious, since you're handy to ask: How do the judges view code that
depends on external (but cross-platform and FOSS) libraries? Only Xlib is
specifically mentioned in the rules.
I'm specifically thinking of libpng, but I'm sure one could think of other
meaningful examples.
~~~
dlowe
I don't know the official policy, but anecdotally, I won with an entry that
used libperl back in 2000: <http://www.ioccc.org/years.html#2000_dlowe>
~~~
Natsu
I love this bit of history from the hint :)
Aside: history... Larry Wall wrote the original Perl in 1986-87, the same two
successive years he won the IOCCC. I hope this program helps you to realize
that this was no fluke - that Perl and Obfuscation are as inseparable as, say,
camels and humps.
------
dlowe
FWIW, if anyone is curious to see the process of building my entry ("Conway's
game of death") I just made the repo public: <https://github.com/dlowe/death>
This contest is great. I'm so glad it's happening regularly again :)
~~~
omoikane
Process of building my entry is mostly in spoiler.html.gz. For your viewing
convenience, it's also here: <http://uguu-
archive.appspot.com/nyaruko/edit.html>
~~~
dlowe
How did you record that?
~~~
omoikane
A VIM script snapshots the file every so often, and another program turns the
recording into HTML. Package for both is here:
<http://uguu.org/arc_homura.html>
Manual: <http://uguu-archive.appspot.com/homura/manual.html>
~~~
dlowe
Fantastic. Thanks :)
------
kqr2
There's actually a book that covers some of the old contest winners:
_Obfuscated C And Other Mysteries_ by Don Libes
[http://www.amazon.com/Obfuscated-Other-Mysteries-Don-
Libes/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Obfuscated-Other-Mysteries-Don-
Libes/dp/0471578053/)
~~~
johnx123-up
My all time favorite is Wesley's code in 1992 that prints world map (found
through _A to Z of C_ ):
main(l
,a,n,d)char**a;{
for(d=atoi(a[1])/10*80-
atoi(a[2])/5-596;n="@NKA\
CLCCGZAAQBEAADAFaISADJABBA^\
SNLGAQABDAXIMBAACTBATAHDBAN\
ZcEMMCCCCAAhEIJFAEAAABAfHJE\
TBdFLDAANEfDNBPHdBcBBBEA_AL\
H E L L O, W O R L D! "
[l++-3];)for(;n-->64;)
putchar(!d+++33^
l&1);}
~~~
pooriaazimi
Care to share the output also (for those who don't have a C compiler handy)?
Thanks!
~~~
zer
<https://gist.github.com/3910435>
------
saint-loup
Fun fact: David Madore, co-author of the conspiratorial contest, actually
didn't mean to obfuscate his code.
The winner page: <http://www.ioccc.org/2012/grothe/hint.html>
The source in french:
[http://www.madore.org/~david/weblog/2012-10.html#d.2012-10-1...](http://www.madore.org/~david/weblog/2012-10.html#d.2012-10-14.2083)
------
16s
deckmyn.c is my favorite. That's beautiful source code.
Edit: This one is fun to look at too:
<http://www.ioccc.org/2012/hamano/hamano.c>
~~~
makomk
hou.c is kind of neat too. Looks like a big blob, but actually forms an image
via cunning use of syntax highlighting.
~~~
rlt3
Is it supposed to be Kyubey? I pulled it up in vim, but the syntax
highlighting didn't expose anything for me.
~~~
Tobu
It is. Though it only works well if you use it like this: ./hou ansi.txt hou.c
------
ewanmcteagle
Seems to be the same John Tromp of the Computer Go bet.
<http://dcook.org/gobet/>
~~~
Evbn
Wow, John accurately predicted the year computer Go would beat him, 15 years
in advance, and made a $1000 by being slightly conservative. Nice long bet!
------
venomsnake
Amazing entries.
These are also the winners for "language you currently hate" clear code
contest.
------
customary
I must admit I was disappointed in last year's contest winners, namely their
general focus. I thought maybe something had been lost in the years the
contest was not running. But these entries are great! Binary lambda calculus?
Top notch.
IOCCC is back!
Check this out
{ echo one;echo two;echo tres;}|./kang
result: the sum in hex
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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