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So I started a conference Space City JS - matthiasak
http://spacecityjs.com
======
matthiasak
Been a TON of work. Would love feedback on the design, marketing, etc.
If anyone lives in TX, would love to have you attend :-)
| {
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Damien Katz: CouchDB in the Browser - newsit
http://damienkatz.net/2009/04/couchdb_in_the_browser.html
======
andymoe
I would be interested to hear thoughts on how CouchDB would compare to Google
gears from those that have worked with either. Would it make sense for Google
to expand the gears API into some kind of monster that would make it easier to
work with app engine or similar by only writing client side JS?
What about a JS lib that allows you to interact with gears as if it were
CouchDB? This gets you a little wider audience since you only have to ask
people to install Google gears. And what user does not trust the Google brand
:)
~~~
BerislavLopac
I wonder how difficult would it be to include support for SQLite right there
in the browser, or at least an ECMAScript implementation... Kinda like Adobe
did with AIR.
~~~
teej
Webkit already does this - [http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-
html5-client-side-dat...](http://webkit.org/blog/126/webkit-does-html5-client-
side-database-storage/)
------
stcredzero
No reason why the machine running the browser can't be a part of "the cloud."
(It may be an intermittently connected bandwidth-poor outskirt of it, but a
part just the same.)
------
oldgregg
CouchDB is fantastic, I think it's still too early to see the impact it's
going to have down the road... Getting past the RDBMS way of thinking about
data really creates opportunity for new applications... I just don't
understand the emphasis on offline syncing. Seems like 1999 all over again.
~~~
vdm
Offline is a default, and defaults rule.
| {
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Google Encrypted Subdomain - abrbhat
https://encrypted.google.com/
======
Sami_Lehtinen
What's the actual point? Because I'm missing it.
~~~
iwintermute
If I recall correctly encrypted.google.com used https by default at the times
where google.com was via http. Now it's the same as a normal one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Remonit, a GeekTool-like monitoring app for the cloud - zefei
http://zef.io/remonit/
======
zefei
This is a personal project of mine, and is still a work in progress right now.
I use it personally to show console outputs on my phone.
On Linux, you probably need to create a .desktop file for the app.
| {
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Ask HN: Advice for those in high school? - garry__
Hi HN,<p>My brother referred me to this site. I'm in highschool right now (Junior), and am interested in learning programming. I'm trying to figure out this space right now. I've learned some Java on my own, but want to upgrade my skill set so I can (eventually) be a part of a startup. I'm wondering what languages are valuable to learn, and what the best resources for that are.<p>Overall, I'm just looking for some guidance to propel me into the same space as some of you guys. I was inspired by that Ferross story recently, and in general want to dedicate myself to learning all the skills necessary to be in a similar position in a few years. Advice from some of the veterans on here would be appreciated..
======
folz
I, too, am in high school, but have been programming for several years. One of
the best things that I've been able to do that I wholeheartedly recommend you
try to do as well is to find someone in your school or community that knows
computer science (the theory and principles involved, not just how to
program). A solid knowledge of computer science is a terrific foundation to
have, but it's hard to learn on your own. If you have a mentor (I found mine
in my school's computer science teacher, and a professor at my local college),
you will have someone to guide you and someone to go to when you're confused
about something.
In addition, as tommynazareth said, find something to make. It doesn't have to
be the next Facebook or the Linux 2.8 kernel, but you should find something
that you can program. You mentioned Android/iPhone applications were something
you were interested in doing. If that is the case, try deciding on a single-
functionality app like, for example, a "Where's My Car" clone, where you
create an app that remembers where the user last parked his car by using the
Android's GPS data. Or maybe you want to make an app that can interact with
Twitter. Whatever the case is, pick something and make it. If you have a
mentor, you can go to him or her if you get stuck (or even for project
ideas!). Contributing to open-source projects (once you're comfortable
programming in whatever language the open-source project is in) is a great way
to not only make contacts in the programming world and improve your skill set,
but also add to your college and job resume.
If you're interested in learning CS theory on your own, the more power to you.
How To Design Programs, mentioned previously, is a great textbook -- in fact,
it's the same one I used when I was first starting out. MIT's OpenCourseWare
has copies of most MIT class lectures, and you can try to follow along.
Stanford has something similar. Read pretty much anything by O'Reilly. If you
want your brain to explode, you can try working your way through Don Knuth's
Art of Computer Programming. Since you mentioned "languages ... valuable to
learn," check out why's (poignant) guide to ruby at
[http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-
guide/book/chapter-1.htm...](http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-
guide/book/chapter-1.html) (although programming languages come and go like
grains of sand on the wheel of time).
The most important thing of all, though, is to never stop wanting to learn.
TED talks can provide the inspiration for that.
Now I must go and finish my homework that I have due for tomorrow. Hope this
helped.
~~~
eof
> (although programming languages come and go like grains of sand on the wheel
> of time).
C what I did there?
------
motxilo
"What you'll wish you'd known", by Paul Graham, intended for high-schoolers:
<http://paulgraham.com/hs.html>
------
smiler
A bit leftfield, but...
Although it remains to be seen what will happen to languages - learn a second
language (human) fluently.
I always thought that being a native English speaker put me at such an
advantage compared to people from other parts of the world in business, but a
lot of my peers in Western Europe are fluent in English and of course fluent
in their own language, if not fluent in another as well.
If you're in the USA, it might be less of an issue (I'm in the UK), but I
think it will be an increasingly important differentiator, particuarly if you
work for a company which is looking to diversify overseas or is a multi-
national.
It will also bring many other benefits 1\. Freedom to travel lots of places
(ok, you can get by on English in most places, but being fluent in either
French or Spanish opens up a whole new world of places you can travel to
confidently)
2\. If you travel a fair bit, it just makes you a more confident person. (I
haven't travelled much myself, but obviously friends etc have and those who
have travelled are more confident, more outgoing and probably more likely to
succeed)
3\. Having being involved in work for clients overseas, although they can
speak fluent English - there is kudos and also deeper understanding if you can
speak their language as well.
As well as programming languages, learn a second human language, I sure as
wish I had kept up some of mine. It will keep you in good stead for both
business and life.
------
wh-uws
First off exactly like folz and others have said. Make something. BUILD
SOMETHING as people often call it. It can be as simple as you want.
Make sure to avoid feeling inferior with whatever it is however it comes out.
ALOT of programming is learning by doing. Don't get caught up in well "all I
did was x". You can still learn alot from actually having done x that can help
you when you eventually want to make y.
Next its good that you are getting started early.
I wish I had the foresight to ask this question of a community like HN (much
less known about/ had HN) back in high school especially so I could have
gotten started working on subjects like the ones you can read here
[http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-take-to-become-a-
programme...](http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-take-to-become-a-programmer-
as-good-as-a-typical-programmer-working-at-Google)
I've been learning programming since about middle school (about to graduate
from college now) and I'm still learning everyday. People well into their
careers from CEOs to new hires will tell you the same.
Dive into something, start small and scale up. You'll be amazed at what you
can come up with given time.
------
sahillavingia
What I did: downloaded the Stanford courses on iPhone development, spent two
weeks working (really, playing) my ass off. Spent the next four weeks making
my first app (<http://colorstreamapp.com/>). Was excited to make millions on
release!!!
Made nothing. Worked harder, made some. Worked more, made more. Now it's a
decent income stream and I've gone from a nobody to a less-nobody.
Age is less of a barrier every year. Get started ASAP. As pg often says, if
you're so passionate about something, why aren't you working on it RIGHT NOW?
Good luck!
------
garry__
To be a bit more specific, I'm currently interested in creating some mobile
apps for the various platforms (android, iphone, win7, etc). But I want to
develop a skill set that will allow me to have a general understanding of the
whole domain (sort of like a liberal arts education but in the scope of
software development and programming). General resources, as well as advice
for somebody just starting out in this field are all appreciated.
~~~
tommynazareth
Write a simple Android app and you'll start gaining experience in software
development. If you want to balance that by studying some computer science,
there are a wealth of top notch textbooks freely available. How To Design
Programs is probably a good place to start.
------
tommynazareth
There are so many directions to go and so much advice out there. To cut away
all of the fat, I'd say 'Make Something'. Decide on something you want to make
and finish a piece of it today. Eventually you'll find a technology stack that
works for you, a niche you can serve, etc., but start today with just creating
something. Learning involves a lot of consuming, but above all you need to
learn to be a maker.
------
maxdemarzi
If you can watch TV, you can watch these MIT classes on computer programming.
Classics, you'll fall in love.
[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-
sussma...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-
lectures/)
------
ashleyreddy
1\. Figure out the kind of stuff your interested in. 2 Determine the kind of
tools others use to build said stuff. 3\. Learn those tools. 4\. Build
something cool.
| {
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Flattr does not work on smallish blogs - preek
http://blog.dispatched.ch/2010/10/31/flattr-does-not-work-on-smallish-blogs/
======
3pt14159
Why doesn't flattr just give people a javascript bookmark? Just click on the
bookmark and it will register that site as being flattred, once a site has 10
(or a hundred) flattr hits flattr the company can attempt to contact the site
owner. The problem with all these micropayment sites is that only 0.01% of
site visitors use them and only 0.01% of websites use them, so the odds of
actually coming across a micropayments site, even if you have a flatter
account, is so low that it is silly.
Also, there should be a public aspect when I flattr someone, I should be able
to do it privately if I want to, but if my friends are following my flattr.
That does two things, it makes it transparent that flattr is not just a scam,
because if there are 1000 people that flattr a xkcd comic and xkcd comes out
and says that he never got a dime then criminal charges can be pressed. The
second thing it does is it shows which sites are actually worth checking out.
I assume that there is going to be a long tail of flattrs, to handle that
flattr should keep a pool of money set aside that earns interest, that way
they can give someone the net present value of their flattrs when they finally
get their cheque 3 years later.
~~~
eileentso
Great suggestion/comment (and example with xkcd). Have a look at the public
Flattr wishlist which includes a bookmarklet to drag-n-drop for people to use
-- <https://flattr.com/wishlist>
We'll try to contact as many people as possible (more straightforward with
specific websites/pages, harder to achieve for say comments on a blog post,
etc). Please keep the feedback and suggestions coming!
------
Udo
Well, it's kind of obvious why it doesn't work. I visit a lot of blogs and
can't remember that I ever stumbled across a flatter gadget. To be fair, I
probably wouldn't have noticed anyway. Still, I believe the idea behind flattr
is valuable. It will probably be a long time until it gains any traction,
let's hope they hold out that long. Because chances are Facebook WILL copy
this and it will be an instant success then.
~~~
parbo
Paying to hit "Like"? That is a really good idea actually. Wouldn't it also
make sense if Flattr-ing something also "liked" it on Facebook? Something like
posting "XYZ Flattrd foo.com" on XYZ's wall. That would also bring marketing
to the Flattr concept.
~~~
viraptor
They already do that on both Facebook and Twitter. Connecting your account is
optional though.
<http://twitter.com/#search?q=flattred>
------
mrkurt
Flattr fascinates me, but it has this big problem. A site like the one I work
for isn't going to use it because the Flattr user base isn't big enough to
make it worthwhile. They need big sites onboard, though, or they'll never get
the coverage necessary to make it worthwhile.
I think the title for this could be "Flattr doesn't work because there aren't
enough Flattr users".
~~~
AndrewMoffat
Sounds like a very difficult wall to get over. I imagine most people will hear
about Flattr through a blog or some service accepting payments with it. Only
if they're curious enough about it will they go find out what it is, and then
once they understand that they work of registering is so that other people can
have their money, they have to still be compelled to signup and use it.
Unless each blog/service using it makes it explicit that they're accepting
flattr donations, but nobody wants to be that site sounding like they're
begging for handouts.
------
roschdal
The fact that this blog hasn't received any Flattrs in 10000 pageviews doesn't
mean that Flattr does not work for other types of content.
I have used Flattr for a while on <http://freeciv.net> and have received over
200 flattrs recently.
~~~
preek
I'm glad you made some revenue and/or publicity via flattr. But may I say that
I pointed to that in my article:
"By no means does my experiment imply any significant validity for the general
public, but I see no reason to keep the advertising buttons on my blog,
either."
BTW: Thanks for that link. It has been quite some time that I played FreeCIV.
To make it playable online is a nice feat. Thanks for that!
------
kilian
It seems to work reasonably well* on my small blog :) anecdote, data etc.
*With reasonably well I mean I make about break even, which is good enough for me.
------
pornel
I wish I could show Flattr button only to Flattr users.
~~~
preek
Great point! If that were possible, I'd put them back online.
It wouldn't "spread the word", but hey - right now I'd be doing advertisement
without benefits.
------
preek
I had to redirect traffic from my WP installation to posterous. My server was
not able to take the load. Thanks HN for the interest in my humble thoughts.
------
noglorp
I really think Flattr is misapplied to blogs, to be honest.
I don't want to go around giving micro payments to bloggers to be honest. The
things that make me want to Flattr are, well, THINGS.
Applications, tech demos, pieces of art. Things that make me have fun and feel
appreciative, rather than things that make me go "Oh, that is useful
information" or "Oh, that is an insightful comment".
------
sp4rki
I don't think flattr will work just because this type of service needs a huge
user base and a huge customer base to work. IMO the best thing that could
happen to flattr, is being bought by Facebook. Facebook has the users and the
range to actually make this work, though I doubt the overhead is worth it for
them.
------
StavrosK
Extrapolation does not work on smallish sample sizes.
~~~
preek
I know about that and pointed that out. Anyway, do you mathematically see a
good reason to keep advertising a service from the sample it does not work in?
~~~
StavrosK
I'm afraid I don't understand the question :/ My issue was with the submission
title, mostly.
------
mischa_u
As I don't see any flattr gadget on the dispatched.ch blog, maybe the author
forgot to enable it explains the lack of results?
~~~
preek
"but I see no reason to keep the advertising buttons on my blog, either"
I disabled them today, just before posting. Thanks for letting me know,
anyway^^
------
citricsquid
<http://notch.tumblr.com> uses it too.
| {
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CISSP certification:Are multiple choice tests the best way to hire infosec pros? - jor-el
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/07/cissp-certification-how-to-hire-infosec-pros/
======
Godel_unicode
The CISSP was never intended to be a technical cert. It's for managers, to
certify that in the week before the test they learned what most of the words
mean by cramming (and then likely forgot half of them). The funniest part to
me is that I've never met anyone who thought it was actually a good measure of
security knowledge, and yet it's widely acknowledged as the benchmark for
being a security professional.
It's also a great example of the network effect; it's only valuable because
lots of people have one. Therefore, you can use it as part of the HR screen
and still get some people through to interview.
~~~
danpalmer
> The funniest part to me is that I've never met anyone who thought it was
> actually a good measure of security knowledge
I've met CISSP qualified managers who think it's amazing.
------
benbenbenben
I feel the best analogy for CISSP is 'an mile wide and an inch deep'. I was
under the impression it was a baseline certification to filter out those who
don't know the basics.
------
prdonahue
No.
------
internaut
No.
| {
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India's invisible innovation - koolhead17
http://www.ted.com/talks/nirmalya_kumar_india_s_invisible_entrepreneurs.html
Can India become a global hub for innovation? Nirmalya Kumar thinks it already has. He details four types of "invisible innovation" currently coming out of India and explains why companies that used to just outsource manufacturing jobs are starting to move top management positions overseas, too. (Filmed at TEDxLondonBusinessSchool.)<p>Nirmalya Kumar is a professor of Marketing at the London Business School and a passionate voice for new entrepreneurs in India
======
stinger
the "sinking skill ladder" concept is interesting
| {
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Helm Values Schema Generation - karuppiah7890
https://github.com/karuppiah7890/helm-schema-gen
======
verdverm
We use Cuelang instead for many many reasons, 'cue export' provides
sophisticated merging and correctness guarantees. 'cue import' will turn
existing config / schema formats to Cue and if you are really adventures, try
cue get to do the same to Go
~~~
karuppiah7890
I'm checking out Cuelang! :) Thanks for mentioning about this. In fact, I have
noticed that there are lots of tools around configuration management now a
days, though I have not tried any of them really. For example -
[https://github.com/open-policy-agent/conftest](https://github.com/open-
policy-agent/conftest) . Let me give Cuelang and others a try and also, I
wouldn't try to reinvent the wheel. My aim was just to provide
values.json.schema if people want to use helm's feature. Looks like there are
external standalone tools that can help with config validation for any DSLs.
Nice
------
karuppiah7890
Planning to use Helm (github.com/helm/helm) v3's values.schema.json feature ?
You can generate it instead of writing it from scratch
| {
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Free and Open Source Software Is Dead - coliveira
https://medium.com/@gr33ndata/free-and-open-source-software-is-dead-8a95bac74716
======
fsflover
> Which means, if tomorrow, Python and all the libraries I use became closed
> source softwares, I wouldn’t notice a difference as long as the cloud
> provider my business uses will still provide them as part of its package.
AGPL is not mentioned, but it should solve the problem, shouldn’t it?
| {
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Uncommon date picker - laruiss
http://laruiss.github.io/smart-date/
======
k__
Date and time pickers seem to be the eternal struggle of UI.
There is so much about time that can be of interest.
Picking a time of the day, picking a day of the week, picking a date, a date
with a time, a period, a Month, a Year... Often the whole widgets are so
flexible, that it takes forever to get the right pick so you resort to short-
cut buttons with pre-defined values, but you can't litter your screen estate
with them either...
Anyway, I like your approach, but I would remove these slow-ass animations,
they take away the speed this approach has to offer :)
| {
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The 8bit democracy - potomak
You don't need to be a great artist to make a 16x16 pixel art drawing, this is the 8bit democracy.<p>You can find a proof of concept at Draw! latest drawings gallery.
======
potomak
Gallery: <http://drawbang.com>
| {
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Road to Robotic Parking Is Littered with Faulty Projects - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/us/road-to-robotic-parking-islittered-with-faulty-projects.html
======
Animats
There are many good robotic parking systems, but the US-developed ones tend to
be one-offs, and are not engineered well enough.
The design problems are mostly basic mechanical design problems. Some systems
park a car on a flat pallet, then move the pallet. This has the risk of the
car rolling if the brakes don't hold. The more robust systems have a curb on
both sides of the pallet and depressions for the wheels, or curbs that rise at
each end. (This should be mandatory in earthquake zones.) This also gives the
driver more guidance on getting the car positioned properly. The modern
systems all check with light beams for proper positioning, but it's better if
there are also physical obstacles.
There are palletless systems, where rows of rails rise up under the wheels and
lift the car for transport, but those seem to be less popular.
The better designs have more than one retrieval mechanism that can access each
slot, so if one fails, the system can still operate, but more slowly.
The lifts have to have the usual safety devices of a freight elevator. There
is no excuse for an elevator falling, which has happened.
The usual problems of exposed machinery apply. Everything has to be built for
a wet, hostile environment. Optical sensors must survive dirt. Limit switches
must survive being banged on. Motors must be weatherproof. Some of these
parking systems are repurposed automated warehouse designs, and that's a
marginal approach. You want someone on the design team who's designed for a
harsh environment, like railroading. "Move fast and break things" will not
work.
------
Larrikin
This is a solved problem in Japan and its actually annoying seeing space being
wasted in Tokyo by traditional ground level only parking lots, since they
could have built a much taller structure to serve more cars.
------
jostmey
A huge complex and probably expensive system is made so that people can wait
while their car is brought to them instead of driving it out themselves. This
idea will never make it.
~~~
csours
Except in places where land is very expensive, for example, Tokyo or NYC.
In addition these systems can be used to good effect in auto manufacturing.
BMW has one for finished vehicles; the GM plant I worked at in Arlington TX
has one for painted bodies.
Throughput is definitely an issue; in the manufacturing system I worked with,
a vehicle could be stored or retrieved in about 1 minute; but these are
uniform size and shape, and are not finished products. 6 minutes seems like a
very long time, unless you have an app to pre-retrieve your vehicle.
Also I wouldn't care to design one for all of the various types and sized of
vehicles.
~~~
laxatives
Similarly this is very common in small boat/dinghy storage where land values
near water is very high (albeit with a lot less automation). Raised racks
store boats long term and an operator has to retrieve it on request.
------
teambob
"...like a high-tech vending machine." Well there's your problem
------
cleverjake
philadelphia has had one for years - works great.
[http://liftparking.com/](http://liftparking.com/)
| {
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Carlos Matias La Borde's answer: I have an idea of an app but can't code it - CarolineW
https://www.quora.com/App-developers-I-need-someone-who-would-like-to-be-my-partner-50-50-I-have-an-idea-of-an-app-but-cant-code-it-Is-anyone-interested/answer/Carlos-Matias-La-Borde?share=1
======
cjbenedikt
Not a very smart way of looking at it. With this attitude Steve Jobs had never
been able to create Apple
| {
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Ask HN: What is the main reason for using JavaScript for creating backend/APIs? - gls2ro
Never asked myself this so far, but I am very curious what are the reasons/advantages for using Javascript on the server?
======
lioeters
A few that come to mind..
\- Leveraging the skill set of existing team
\- Using the same language and shared code between client and server; for
example, shared functions or data schema, and server-side rendering
------
moocowtruck
if you need a backend api and all you have is javascript developers, or you're
proof of concepting something quick.. probably only reasons i can think of
| {
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Onword - a simple, distraction-free writing web app - _dte
http://onword.co
======
pestaa
I'm a bit hesitant to click through. What will I get when I sign up? Will it
cost me anything now or later? Can I bring my own domain? Is there anything I
can bring my domain to? And first of all, why is it any better than my
favorite text editor that has no need to connect to the internet, no browsers,
no URLs and no accounts to connect. Sounds like a good niche product, though.
------
lemiffe
Come on! Public posts with no warning? I mean, I seriously thought I could
start migrating all my short stories. I actually migrated 4 of them. Then I
noticed the URLs being generated. Then I messed with the IDs and found out I
can see anyone's posts! Developers: Consider. Please.
------
spindritf
Very neat, I like the general feel, including simplicity and colours, the
minimal permissions from twitter and the list of documents, though I don't
know why saving changes quits to the list. It also forces a pretty narrow
column for text (~20 characters).
It's hard to get that feeling of immersion with a webapp though. You can
fullscreen, I know, but browsers tend to be easily excitable. Locally, I'm
using pyRoom[1] which just covers everything and with a little configuration
can show nothing except for the text you're writing.
[1] <http://pyroom.org/features.html>
------
abozi
I like it. It's simple and I guess it does what it says it does.
However, it's no different to other "minimal writers".
Plus, personally, I don't "just write". By that, I need formatting, I need
bullet points. I need bold, italics, underlines if I want to emphasize, stress
and make my point. It's great to just write things down and I guess this
wouldn't be for heavily formatted documents, but I feel that it's just too
minimal for my use.
------
teopeurt
Is it by design that all notes are public?<http://onword.co/100>
Love the Interface.
------
caiob
The save button could be hidden for less distraction (Use SUPER + S to save)
and logo + logout link on hover only.
------
kiwidrew
I don't have a Twitter account. Is it too hard to add at least one other
signup method for folks like myself?
------
dirkk0
very nice. I would've wished for an even more pulled back interface. I tried
to do prototype something similar some time ago, but never finished it:
<http://jsfiddle.net/dirkk0/MySJf/show/>
------
pruett
looks fantastic no doubt. i am hesitant to click the twitter auth button,
however. maybe some sort of app preview would cure my (and possible some
others') paranoia?
looks great, well done!
------
Julianhearn
Nicely done, but how is this better than using google docs?
------
joshuahornby
Nice app. But i dont understand the point.
------
spleeder
The app is beautifully simple. Good job.
------
pan69
Like try it but I don't use Twitter.
------
thesmok
This app very lacks autosaving.
------
Swizec
This looks really cool!
I've used a lot of distraction-free writing tools in the past. First it was
DarkRoom, then I tried that thingy that was/is a YC startup ... forget the
name, but it had the feature of recording your editing so you could view it
later. Lately I'm using iA Writer to write my book and it's the best I've used
so far.
The idea behind iA Writer and Onword looks pretty much the same - take away my
freedoms and force me to focus on the writing.
But I think iA Writer is better at it. Because it's native, it can take over
my whole screen, very important because it then feels like I'm writing paper
where the "screen" also doesn't have any other features. I also prefer iA's
colour scheme ... but this is just a preference.
I will give Onword a try, but for any serious writing I would need files on a
hard drive.
~~~
lemiffe
Please notice posts are PUBLIC by design, but it is not specified anywhere.
You can navigate to any post by using a (sequential) ID in the URL. Just in
case you have not noticed.
------
CHEWX
@teopeurt "Thanks everyone. Just a heads up - currently, all posts are public
to _anyone_. Bear that in mind. Private posts are coming." From Twitter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Making Facebook’s software infrastructure more energy efficient with Autoscale - otterley
https://code.facebook.com/posts/816473015039157/making-facebook-s-software-infrastructure-more-energy-efficient-with-autoscale/
======
bhouston
Vfx companies have software that turn off renddr farm machines in periods of
low load. I helped write software that did this backin 2006.
Basically, we found it was possible to shut down machines in periods of low
load and then use "Wake On Lan" to start them up once load picked up again.
I am unsure if the on-off power cycling reduces machine longevity.
Might be something worth exploring at Facebook.
~~~
mschuster91
> I am unsure if the on-off power cycling reduces machine longevity.
Possibly the disks are the most vulnerable components. I wonder if it would be
possible in software to shut down the CPUs and have only disks + network
running...
~~~
donavanm
A bit late to the party on this one. Check out cpu "c states" and things like
intels "speedstep." Modern cpus can reduce/shutdown power to individual
packages and cores. This can reduce power consumption from a hundred tdp to
tens of tdp.
The downside is latency associated with changing state. Depending on the
change it can be hundreds or thousands of micros to go through these states.
On a server workload this can introduce huge latency outliers as a request
blocks on a core to wake up.
~~~
mschuster91
I was more after "shut down _everything_ except the disks" to have the
absolute minimum running and the disks spinning to reduce wear on the engines.
If you're shutting down, you have massive latency anyway but if it's possible
to at least save all the power not required for keeping disks up that 'd be
great.
------
praseodym
This is one of these things where virtualisation can help even more. For
example, VMware can dynamically put servers in standby mode when demand is low
and power them up again when needed:
[http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/features/drs-
dpm](http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/features/drs-dpm)
~~~
SEJeff
You know that would be trivial to do with bare metal and out of band
management cards like Dell Dracs, IBM RSA cards, HP ILOs, or generic IPMI
BMCs, right?
Virtualization doesn't really add much of anything for that specific problem
other than increased context switching and slightly lower performance.
Disclaimer: building this type of thing (on bare metal) is a chunk of my day
job. I see it as unbelievably trivial. In fact, the same ideas are behind
Rackspace's "OnMetal" initiative:
[http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/onmetal/](http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/onmetal/)
~~~
devicenull
Getting IPMI controllers to do what you want is anything but trivial :)
~~~
thrownaway2424
Seriously. A person who would advocate using IPMI at scale has either never
owned an IPMI card or has never worked at scale or both. The just don't work,
and they erase whatever power savings you're trying to achieve.
~~~
wmf
Real servers can't be bought without IPMI and AFAIK the BMC cannot be turned
off, so it's probably not worth worrying about BMC power if there's nothing
you can do about it.
~~~
thrownaway2424
Sure, but as you're aware facebook, google, et al don't buy "real servers",
they buy servers that actually meet their requirements. That's why "real
vendors" like HP have missed the boat on selling millions of servers into the
cloud.
~~~
wmf
Speaking of Facebook specifically, the evolution is interesting. They replaced
BMCs with the reboot-on-LAN hack but then their next motherboard version had
BMCs again. It would be interesting to hear the story behind that.
------
meatmanek
You could probably get a similar effect by using HAProxy's "balance first"
algorithm, which chooses the first available server with an available
connection slot (as defined by maxconn). If you did this, you'd want to set
maxconn pretty conservatively.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
13% of international calls now go via Skype - mcantelon
http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/30579-13-percent-of-international-calls-now-go-via-skype
======
JoeAltmaier
I stopped using Skype when they embezzled my account. I put money into a Skype
account to call outside vendors, then my vendors got Skype so I didn't need to
any more. Months later I got notified Skype was absconding with my "dormant"
money. Not dormant account - still used that every day. Apparently money gets
stale just sitting there, so they decided it was theirs to keep. Customer
support said it was "standard accounting practice". For embezzlers anyway. SO
anyway I would never trust Skype with my money, any more than say a guy in an
alley with watches for sale.
~~~
cjlars
It does seem a little odd, but this actually is standard practice.
When a company is holding money for you, with the expectation of you spending
it on some service or good the company can hold on to those funds for only so
long before they need to recognize it as revenue. The reason they need to
recognize it as revenue is because if they didn't, they would be subject to an
ever ballooning set of obligations to provide service to people who don't
redeem their prepayed minutes.
So why does Skype take your money after a few short months of inactivity
instead of, say, two years? 1\. Part of it is that current tax law requires
that you recognize the money as a gain before too long a period (this
increases profits and tax revenues, btw) 2\. Skype decision makers decided to
go with the flow on the issue, at a cost to customer satisfaction. ("Hey, they
want us to take the free money, let's take the free money")
As an aside, redemption rates after 3 months are ridiculously low. Since they
are going to get to keep the money regardless, Skype's only gain is on the
service they wouldn't have to provide versus a longer grace period. Which
considering profit margins and so forth, is likely negligible. So like I said,
it is standard practice, but it's also bad business.
For more, look into the matching principal:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_principle>
------
Jach
That percentage amazes me.
Anyway, when the other person doesn't have Skype or I want to call an actual
phone, I prefer localphone ( <http://www.localphone.com/> ). On average I
think their rates are cheaper than Skype's (.9 cents/min for US and Canada),
plus I can use different clients.
~~~
davecardwell
Hi Jach. I work for Localphone, so it’s nice to see us mentioned here! We are
definitely cheaper than Skype to most destinations - on a crude country-by-
country basis we’re cheaper to at least 95% of countries.
If you weren’t aware, Localphone-to-Localphone calls are free too when using
VoIP.
------
drinian
As a SIP user, this disappoints me; it's just one proprietary network to
another.
~~~
stcredzero
I might jump from Skype to SIP if I had some more information. As it is, I'm
not aware that I know any SIP users. Are there rating sites for SIP providers,
apps, and hardware?
~~~
davecardwell
Between <http://www.dslreports.com/> and <http://www.voip-info.org/> you
should be able to find all the information you need.
~~~
stcredzero
With some collation and searching on my part.
------
tom_ilsinszki
There is a potential danger with Skype. If I know correctly, phone companies
(at least in eastern Europe) have to meet some standards set by the
government. Since Skype is not a phone company, it does not have to meet any
of these standards:
[http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_happened_on_august_1...](http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_happened_on_august_16.html)
~~~
lkjuhgfghjk
Even 'real' phone companies don't have to meet standards for international
calls. And if somebody cuts a cable - Skype's IP packets are likely to route
around a problem quicker than an East European state telecoms company can
negotiate a pairing agreement with another cable provider.
------
stcredzero
I bought my Mom a Skype WiFi phone. Now she talks to her sisters in Korea
hours at a time, and it only costs $12 a month. No need to turn on the iMac.
Just turn on the family room lights, and the Wifi router comes on, and she
uses "the other" handset.
~~~
jimmyjim
Oh cool, a Skype WiFi phone. Can you make a suggestion please? How much did it
cost?
I've to have my mom use the computer with the USB mic, and it usually turns
out to be a big hassle.
~~~
stcredzero
The phone I got my mom is this one:
<http://amzn.com/B002V45UEE> (IPEVO)
------
puredemo
I wonder how high that percentage would jump if Skype launched its own line of
Skype-enabled phones.
~~~
trin_
well they already sell those ...
<http://shop.skype.com/phones/>
i think i even saw some phones branded as "skype ready" or something similar
in brick and mortar store
------
billpg
87% don't?
~~~
bosse
I use SIP with Localphone as long as I don't need the video features of Skype,
mainly because it's more flexible for me (SIP integrated in my desk phone,
Ekiga and my S60 phone) and for the called party (not needing a computer)
~~~
davecardwell
You should generally find that we’re cheaper to most countries than Skype too,
with equal or better quality.
Do you consider video to be a must-have feature? It’s something we could look
into supporting since it’s all just SIP to us.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Free API For Sentiment Analysis From ViralHeat - emilyann
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/08/free-api-for-sentiment-analysi.php
======
johnrobertreed
Another deeper article on the intelligent attributes to the API:
[http://semanticweb.com/get-your-free-sentiment-analysis-
api-...](http://semanticweb.com/get-your-free-sentiment-analysis-api-
here_b22468)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lessons from Fred Rogers - brudgers
http://www.nextavenue.org/learn-from-mister-rogers-as-adults/
======
yttrium
A nice article, although I feel like a bulleted list of curated advice from
Mr. Rogers life is understating and downplaying the insightful life lessons he
taught so regularly.
For a significantly better read, refer to the following profile written for
esquire by Tom Junod:
[http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a27134/ca...](http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a27134/can-
you-say-hero-esq1198/)
You will laugh, and cry, and ultimately remember why Fred Rogers was as
important to you as a child, and why his lessons are still directly applicable
today.
~~~
humanrebar
I agree that's a better read. Especially since it mentioned Mr. Roger's faith
in God. Many either don't know, forget, or ignore that he was an ordained
minister.
For example:
"I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's
best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God
does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly
sacred." \-- Fred Rogers
I believe Fred Rogers didn't believe in God because he was a great man. I
believe he was who he was partly because of his belief in God.
~~~
reneherse
Could you elaborate? For instance, which god did he have faith in?
~~~
humanrebar
He was a Presbyterian. A protestant Christian.
------
dharmon
After reading this article I re-watched videos of Fred Rogers' speaking in
front of the Senate committee (highly recommended watching), his lifetime emmy
acceptance, and his brief appearance on Letterman.
While watching them I was trying to figure out, what is it about this gentle,
soft-spoken person that is so utterly captivating? Had he been speaking in
front of the Senate today, I can't imagine a single person stopping to check
their phone.
I'm sure the answer is multi-faceted, but I think a huge aspect is his head-
to-toe, 100% Authenticity. I think there's an important lesson to draw there,
and its something I see repeated elsewhere (blogosphere, TV, etc.). There's
something captivating about authenticity.
The interesting thing is that it doesn't have to be as pure as Rogers'.
Sometimes it is just an undercurrent with lots of stylization on top, but that
authenticity somehow resonates with humans.
It also reminds me of an old Charlie Rose interview with Quentin Tarantino (to
jump to the other end of the spectrum). He is talking about the process of
writing, and how he has this inner voice constantly reminding him, "tell the
truth", and how he can't watch his movies with some family / friends because
it's too embarrassing: he's put a bit of himself up on the screen.
Now obviously Pulp Fiction is not a true story, but I think what he means is
that under the hyper-stylized veneer, there is an authentic voice, even in a
bizarre made-up world, and that, as much as the shocking revival scene, or
hilarious Walken monologue, struck a nerve with audiences.
So my takeaway from Fred Rogers is to be authentic. Even if not as completely
as him, make sure in whatever you do, there is some aspect of your true self
in it. It resonates with people, and it probably feels good for you, too.
~~~
MrZongle2
_" So my takeaway from Fred Rogers is to be authentic. Even if not as
completely as him, make sure in whatever you do, there is some aspect of your
true self in it. It resonates with people, and it probably feels good for you,
too."_
I think this is a fantastic point, especially at a time where it seems like
just about _everybody_ has an angle and an agenda. When you're cynical and
you're presented with somebody who seems authentic and genuine, you start
looking for the "tells" and the weasel words...the cracks in the smiley-face
veneer. The longer one has to look for them, the more astonishing the person
seems to be (and, hopefully, turns out to be).
I think the other captivating aspect of Fred Rogers is that he seemed truly
concerned about _individuals_ , and that was reflected in his ability to
communicate. He didn't lump people into demographic groups, or political
tribes, or any other types of social categorization that seems the standard
nowadays. I'm sure he recognized such efforts, but they didn't matter when it
came to making a simple human connection.
I think this interest and _drive_ to connect with people is equally as
important as his authenticity. A Ron Swanson-type person could be _authentic_
and admirable, but nowhere near as empathetic. By the same token, someone
could be as empathetic, but if they were inconsistent they wouldn't be as
admirable.
Fred Rogers was a rare cat indeed, at least in terms of those who were/are in
the media. As someone who feels nowhere near as consistent or empathetic, my
respect for him has skyrocketed since having children.
~~~
bykovich
Mr. Rogers was kind in a way that's almost painful -- but exactly not because
it's in any way accusatory.
------
StClaire
He was as nice of a guy as he portrayed on TV
My mom met him. She worked PR for the United Way in Pittsburgh and did a favor
for someone at PBS. They asked what they could do in return and she said she
wanted to meet Mr Rogers.
They had a wonderful lunch a few days later
~~~
amerine
What a wonderful tidbit to share! So glad your mom was able to meet him and
enjoy a meal together.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My int is too big - ingve
http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/my-int-is-too-big
======
rwmj
Some of this comes about from the choice of LP64 (32 bit ints on 64 bit
platforms[0]). There seems no sensible reason why ints are 32 bit on a 64 bit
platform, it only introduces inefficiency[1] and these kinds of problems.
The one argument I've seen is there would be no 32 bit type (since the next
smallest integer, ie. short, would be 16 bit), but a compiler could easily
have a __builtin_int32 mapped to C99 standard int32_t etc.
In C code that we write, we have a rule that every use of plain 'int' must be
justified - it's a "code smell". Most places where 'int' is used should be
replaced with 'size_t' (if used as an index to an array), or a C99 int32_t
etc.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#64-bit_data_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#64-bit_data_models)
[1]
[https://gist.github.com/rygorous/e0f055bfb74e3d5f0af20690759...](https://gist.github.com/rygorous/e0f055bfb74e3d5f0af20690759de5a7)
~~~
caf
_In C code that we write, we have a rule that every use of plain 'int' must be
justified - it's a "code smell". Most places where 'int' is used should be
replaced with 'size_t' (if used as an index to an array), or a C99 int32_t
etc._
I completely disagree (except with the size_t bit - I agree with that). In my
view, it's usages of int32_t and similar that should be justified: why you do
you need _exactly_ 32 bits and 2s complement representation - why does _at
least_ 32 bits and unspecific representation not suffice?
~~~
cronjobber
> why does at least 32 bits and unspecific representation not suffice?
Because that doesn't help you. Static reasoning becomes harder. Dynamic checks
(pretending the exact size is unknown) are possible but .. the exact size _is_
statically known (just not to the programmer). It is a waste.
The sentiment is right, but the solution is metaprogramming, not unhelpfully
underspecified types.
------
gleenn
Whenever I get back into Clojure and use type hinting, I usually forget that
Clojure doesn't allow ints, only longs. Kind of a strange choice given the JVM
supports signed variants of the common word lengths. But then I read articles
like this.
I'm a pretty high-level language user (read: I don't do C, et al), so when I
read stuff like this it always makes me cringe and be happy Hickey decided to
keep it simple. 64 bits, everywhere! (God save us when things go to 128)
~~~
marcosdumay
> God save us when things go to 128
That will take a while. And even then, people will likely keep using 64 bits
for most things.
~~~
IshKebab
I doubt we'll ever have more than 2^64 bytes of RAM, so that will probably
never happen.
(Please don't make the obvious reply.)
~~~
marcosdumay
Even if we have more than 2^64 bytes (that's 16 EB, not really an astronomical
amount) of RAM, it's not obvious that the optimum way to use them will be by
placing everything at the same address space.
~~~
simcop2387
Yea i'd fully expect something like PAE to be more useful and common. Even if
something is using more than 16EB of ram, i can't imagine it'll be a single
process and instead it'll be larger distributed system instead, leaving each
process smaller than that. Just filling up 16 EB of ram right now would take:
< simcop2387> farnsworth: eta[16 EiB, 19200 MiB/s] - #now# -> "years"
< farnsworth> simcop2387: 2177.63532452879 years
based on marketing info on DDR4. So at the very least it's going to take a
while before we even have to worry about a max of 16EiB in address space.
------
mytummyhertz
i actually realized that the original fix to the int overflow was UB, not tim.
as usual, tim gets all the credit ;)
(i mean, he did send the email)
------
jdironman
I have to say this article is writing about topics leagues ahead of the
average computer user but in a way they could (well...most of them.)
understand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
App Container and Docker - thousandx
https://coreos.com/blog/app-container-and-docker/
======
nstott
This is useful for us.
We've been using containers rather heavily in our infrastructure for a few
years now (neither rocket, nor docker) and we've developed our own toolset to
handle the container images, and to manage the containers.
Even though although it kind of deprecates a lot of our work, I really see the
value in having a standard that can be used with different container runtimes,
and I'll be looking at migrating our internal format to the app container
specs. Having tools like this to handle migrations makes a lot of sense to me.
We can continue developing our tools, without marrying a specific backend.
~~~
josh2600
You can take a look at the work we've done with containers if you want over at
Terminal.com. You can run it on your own metal too if you'd like.
We wrote a blog post about running docker containers on it too a while ago:
[https://blog.terminal.com/docker-without-containers-
pulldock...](https://blog.terminal.com/docker-without-containers-pulldocker/)
~~~
nstott
That looks like a useful tool
We're running on (mostly) raw lxc, with networking via openvswitch, cgroups,
yada yada. so I don't think it's applicable to us at this point
A containerized world makes a lot of sense, but it still seems like a really
young ecosystem. It's really the 'wild west'at this point.
To be honest, I'd rather back an accepted standard, then a specific
implementation.
Don't get me wrong, Tools like this are super valuable, and generally make my
day to day life easier
------
Goopplesoft
Shykes latest comment on that github thread has a point:
[https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/10776#issuecomment-743...](https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/10776#issuecomment-74346219)
Interesting move by CoreOS here to create what will likely be a false
dichotomy for docker in the public sphere (as an indicator of their openness).
If you truly believe docker is fundamentally flawed you'd be doing your users
a disservice writing this. If its transitionary, create your own docker
fork/binary instead of a public scene to try to force dockers hand. Lots of
fragmentation to come, which sucks because the ecosystem is so important.
~~~
panarky
Shykes > _Can someone explain to me how the user benefits from this?_
As a user, it would be fantastic to run my App Container images on Docker
hosts, and Docker images on Rocket hosts.
If only I could move my virtual machine images this easily and avoid high
switching costs between platforms.
Shykes > _just do it in your own project and let the best project win ... you
have to choose one or the other_
Bullshit. If it's open, let the best idea win. If this is a bad idea, then let
the community examine it and it will lose on the merits.
Don't force me into a false dichotomy.
~~~
Goopplesoft
> just do it in your own project and let the best project win > Bullshit. If
> it's open, let the best idea win.
So are you suggesting docker should merge and maintain support for a container
spec they weren't involved with which, was created because docker is
"fundamentally flawed"?
I'm sure the pull-request author knew that this would do nothing more than
cause fuss in the community. Shykes comment seems to me like it was a response
to what seems like a hardly legitimate PR and much like a PR stunt.
Docker has 722 contributors on github, I'm sure the community will discuss and
decide what to do with this while I watch this battle play out and work with
both products.
~~~
burke
I can't speak for panarky, but there are two separate issues here:
1\. Rocket implementing the docker image format
2\. Rocket PR'ing the rocket image format to docker.
It is 100% reasonable and likely a good business move to reject the PR, but
the only reason to be mad about (1) is if it benefits the end user in a way
that weakens Docker's market share, which it does.
------
efuquen
> At the same time as adding Docker support to Rocket, we have also opened a
> pull-request that enables Docker to run appc images (ACIs).
I really hope this lands and something constructive can come out of it. There
is a lot more that can be gained by these communities working together and not
promoting divisiveness.
~~~
AndrewHampton
I agree, I think it would be much better for everyone if the two container
specs merged.
However, after reading "This is a simple functional PR..." in the blog post, I
was surprised to see the PR adds over 38k lines of code. Seems like that will
take a while to review.
~~~
shawnps
Most of those lines added are appc getting vendorized
------
ABS
little bit of snark: wasn't Docker "fundamentally flawed"? If that was really
the premise to launch Rocket why bother with this humongous PR?
Don't get me wrong, I totally see how this is good for Rocket, just be honest
and admit the "fundamentally flawed" argument was mainly smoke and mirrors to
justify a defensive-offensive move by a VC-backed, for-profit company launched
against another VC-backed, for-profit company.
Again nothing wrong with that, it's business and in fact a good move but in my
eyes CoreOS lost quite some trust when they tried to potray Rocket as a
selfless act of kindness towards the community that needed to be saved.
~~~
philips
All of us want containers to be successful, they solve a ton of problems. But,
part of that success is getting the format and the security correct. And we
want to have that technical discussion and settle on those best practices for
all implementations.
There are things in the App Container spec that we would like to see in
Docker, this is why we put in the work to make a spec, write the code to make
it work and start a technical discussion. This has been the goal since the
beginning. The problems that exist in the current Docker Engine that we would
like to address are technical and real:
1) We believe in having a decentralized and user controlled signing mechanism.
In the appc specification and rocket we use the DNS federated namespace. See
the `rkt trust` subcommand and the signing section of the ACI spec.
2) We believe that image IDs should be backed by a cryptographic identity. It
should be possible for a user to say: "run container `sha512-abed`" and have
the result be identical on every machine because it is backed by a
cryptographic hash.
In rocket another thing we wanted to do was enable running the download/import
steps outside of being a root user. For example today you can download and
import an image from disk in the native ACI format with rkt. And in the next
release `rkt fetch` will be runnable as a user in the same unix group as
`/var/lib/rkt/`.
~~~
dmourati
"they solve a ton of problems"
Name two?
~~~
m_mueller
Deploying to a cleanly defined fresh state without paying any performance
penalty. Documenting your dependencies by writing the deployment script
(=Dockerfile) and not having to reinvent the wheel everytime (image
inheritance). Sandboxing linux applications without paying any performance
penalty. Creating a PaaS where your services internally always see the same
standard port, externally they're linked together through docker, thus
separating the routing concerns from your application logic.
~~~
dmourati
These are all great but I get the most of the same benefits from VMs and many
more:
fresh state/ no performance penalty (AMI+autoscaling) Document dependencies,
not reinvent (Packer file) Sandboxing (same) Always use same standard port
(easier with VMs as 1:1 map)
I know most people think that containers/docker/whatever new stack does these
things better and they may be right. The benefits however don't outweigh the
costs in weaker toolset and less mature stack.
For my use cases, the biggest problem is that containers don't solve the
"where does this run" question. Whenever I ask this, people loudly exclaim
"anywhere!" which is the same as "I don't know" to me.
AWS AMIs run in 11 regions x N AZs around the world. This solves a much bigger
technical problem for me than "it's lighter weight and easier to do
incremental releases on top of" which seem to be the only things in favor of
containers.
Many people, including Amazon, say "run containers on VMs!" This seems
unnecessarily complex for little additional gain.
I'm really curious if the containerization folks are using Packer and if not
why not.
~~~
eropple
I run containers in Amazon. Not using their service, because their service is
silly, but on Mesos.
I am not locked into a 1:1 tenancy between applications and instances (though
I could have it if I wanted). Multitenancy is trivial. I have the ability to
spin up new instances of my applications to combat spike loads or instance
failures in single-digit seconds rather than in minutes. My developers can run
every container within a single boot2docker VM instead of incurring the
overhead of running six virtual machines. It's easier to integration-test
because my test harness doesn't have to fight with Amazon, but can rather use
a portable, cross-service system in Mesos. In addition, I don't have to
autoscale with the crude primitive of an instance in production. Multitenancy
means that I can scale individual applications within the cluster to its
headroom, and only when the entire cluster nears capacity must I autoscale. I
can better leverage economies of scale, while allowing me to leverage more
vCPU power to applications that need it (running two dozen applications on a
c3.8xlarge is very unlikely to bring to bear at any given time _less_
computational performance to a given application than running each application
on its own m3.medium).
I could do this without containers and with only Mesos. It would be worse, but
I could do it. I could not do this at all with baked AMIs and instances
without spending more money, doing more work, and being frustrated by my
environment. I know this I've built the same system you describe (I preferred
vagrant-aws because when something broke it was easier to debug, but we moved
to Packer before I left) and I would never go back to it. It was more fragile
and harder to componentize than a containerized architecture with a smart
resource allocation layer. The running context of a container _should_ be
"anywhere", and it _should_ be "I don't know", and you caring about that is a
defect in your mental model.
~~~
dmourati
Thanks for the reply.
------
Gigablah
I think this is the first "PR PR" I've ever seen :)
------
i_have_to_speak
Wow, almost as easy as "apt-get install redis".. (ducks)
~~~
lclarkmichalek
Oh, containers don't improve on apt-get install. They mostly improve apt-get
purge.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Awesome Visual Regression Testing Tool - neilellis
https://applitools.com/
======
neilellis
I'm not affiliated, I'm just a huge fan.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
$15M Granted by Leverhulme to New AI Research Center at Cambridge - ivank
http://futureoflife.org/2015/12/03/15-million-granted-to-new-ai-research-center-at-cambridge-university/
======
varjag
To social sciences research, really.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Verizon changes mind, cancels $2 payment fee - 11031a
http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/verizon-changes-mind-cancels-2-payment-fee-20111230/
======
tsunamifury
This stunt was pulled by a certain west coast Big 4 Bank with their 3$ debit
card fee. The media uproar caused them to 'rescind' the fee, then just tack on
a $15 fee per month for all checking accounts with less than a $10,000 balance
-- obviously a significant higher fee affecting 100% of their customers rather
than x%<100\. By then no was willing to go through the news cycle again to
cover it because it was old news by then.
I'd be somewhat surprised if Verizon isn't doing the same thing.
~~~
bane
In politics it's called the Overton Window...I wonder if there's a similar
name for this in corporate terms?
------
resnamen
Just watch, they'll just obfuscate the wording and re-add it on Tuesday. "Data
transmission surcharge", or something.
~~~
re_todd
Or they will increase everyone's rates by $2, then a week later offer a $2
reduction for paying via the methods they want you to. And the sheeple will be
grateful.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
THey want you to use online payment, and pay the $2 fee! The fee isn't to
discourage use or direct users; its there because most everybody uses online
payments, won't quit even if there's a fee, and they see a way to make a buck
on a captive audience.
Its the free market, I guess. They can charge whatever they want, and we can
shop around for a better deal. Except all those people with a contract.
~~~
pmiller2
Actually, they want people to use automatic payment, not one-time online or
phone payments.
------
bjornsteffanson
2011 was exciting in that, for what seems like the first time, mass consumer
reaction played a significant role in affecting the decision-making of several
corporations: Bank of America, Netflix, GoDaddy, and now Verizon.
Hopefully this will continue.
------
msluyter
I'm curious; if Verizon was just a bit more patient, they might have tried,
say, a .25$ fee first, and then just gradually increased it over time. I
suspect nobody would have noticed in that case. Insert boiling frog analogy.
------
siculars
Pay us for paying us. Seriously? What are these people thinking?
~~~
97s
ATT had something very similar in my area. I used to go to the store to pay.
They would charge me 3 dollars to pay in cash.
It was outrageous. They eventually dropped the charge along with the ability
to pay in store.
~~~
erichocean
My favorite is that Wells Fargo charges $5 to cash a check drawn on their
bank, at their own bank, if you don't have an account with them.
This is true even if the check is for, say $10, or even just $2.
AFAIK they still have this policy today.
~~~
philipmorg
In one case, a Wells Fargo bank flat out refused to cash a Wells Fargo check.
They said I could open an account there and then they'd be happy to honor the
check. Of course.
------
MichaelApproved
With the ability to limit class action lawsuits, cell phone companies are
going to keep trying to push the limits of what the market will allow. The FCC
and bad PR are the primary weapons left to fight abuses like these.
_"The U.S. Supreme Court has handed corporations a major victory. By a 5-4
vote, the court ruled Wednesday that companies can enforce contracts that bar
consumers and employees from banding together to bring class action suits.
Ever read that long cell phone contract you signed when you enrolled for
service? Well, look again. It likely has a provision requiring all disputes to
be resolved by arbitration and barring consumers from banding together in a
class action. Your credit card agreement, your cable agreement and maybe even
your employment agreement have similar clauses"_
[http://www.npr.org/2011/04/28/135785797/supreme-court-
impose...](http://www.npr.org/2011/04/28/135785797/supreme-court-imposes-
limits-on-class-actions)
------
coryl
Ticketmaster has these kinds of fees. How come the mob hasn't been successful
at pressuring them so far?
~~~
Terretta
You mean apart from where Ticketmaster is now having to refund these fees for
years past?
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-01/tech/30462126...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-01/tech/30462126_1_ticketmaster-
ticket-order-credits)
~~~
missrobot
Yes--although according to the article, "Ticketmaster can continue to profit
off transactions — they just have to say they're doing so on their website."
Plus, as far as I understand it the settlement is a coupon award, meaning you
get $1.50 back the next time you buy from Ticketmaster. So if you decided they
were in fact deceptive and you don't want to give them your business again
(difficult if you ever want to see another concert, I agree), you get nothing.
I'm not an expert on class action lawsuits but this whole thing seemed like it
didn't benefit the consumer much, but was worth multi-millions for the firm
bringing the suit.
~~~
zem
i believe that the general point of class action suits is to punish the
company rather than to benefit the individual consumers.
------
r00fus
Mission Accomplished.
Now they'll get what they want: fearful, alert users who can't quit VZ (due to
lack of competitor coverage) will move their payments towards ACH/autopay.
Everyone else is blissfully unaware.
------
missrobot
Glad Verizon cancelled their fee, but $2 is nothing compared to what the
airlines charge for booking over the phone...I can understand why a company
would want to discourage people tying up their service reps, but making you
pay for the privilege of buying something...?
~~~
jedbrown
How about a discount for buying it in a way that costs the vendor less?
~~~
philwelch
If they raise the prices first, it even works out the same!
------
vertr
Is it me, or has 2011 been the year of the corporate tech PR blunder?
~~~
simonsarris
I don't think this is necessarily related to tech (see: banks), its just a
trend this year we've seen, and I think I know why.
In my unprofessional observations, I think that faced with declining consumer
revenue (or just the mere perception of potential future declining consumer
revenue) many CEOs considered schemes to make their stock prices/quarterlies
look better regardless. Below are some I can think of from this year that had
zero point except to pad accounting numbers for a small period of time.
If successful:
* Netflix's qwikster would have made the stock look better by shedding off the less %profit part.
* HP's considering of ditching their consumer computer division would have made their stock look better for the same reason (corporate customers = more %profit)
* Bank of America's/Wells Fargo debit fees, same reasoning, higher %profit for nothing
* Verizon, same reasoning
All of these would have buffed short term numbers but were panned because
either the consumers and the press "caught on", or more accurately, caught on
too early.
Part of the blame lies on companies/CEOs thinking very short term. Steve Jobs
or John Chambers (long term CEOs) would probably dismiss all of the above out
of hand. Part of the blame lies on speculators/investors who turn into
doomsayers overnight if every quarter does not look incredible compared to the
previous.
~~~
vertr
I considered banks, but I think the backlash comes down harder on tech
companies because we instantly jump to criticizing on social media, and they
are more susceptible to it's effects.
~~~
simonsarris
Yes I think you are right, it comes down harder on tech companies because of
their audience, but that audience (social-media saavy) is growing much wider
and more mainstream, and we as consumers are lucky to live in this age where
we can actually create a tangible media backlash so early!
Another commentor mentioned Ticketmaster. They were fortunate enough to
establish absurd fees before the social media era really took hold.
If social media existed as well as it does today 10 years ago, I do not think
we would be paying so much for things like Ticketmaster or cell phone texting
precisely because of the backlash we are capable of creating these days.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What I learned by bringing down LinkedIn.com - johnvega
https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/13/what-i-learned-by-bringing-down-linkedin-com/
======
kleopullin
This is a solid read for anyone in any field. There's a time when you have no
confidence, then false confidence, then real confidence with knowledge of your
own limits.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Service lets you "certify" a document using the Bitcoin blockchain - obiefernandez
http://www.proofofexistence.com/
======
machrider
This idea is generally called "trusted timestamping":
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping)
One example would be to take a photo of a rental car showing damage at the
time you rented it and be able to prove it was taken at that time. Then the
rental company cannot later claim you caused the damage.
This is a pretty clever use of the blockchain as a publicly-visible and
authenticated timestamp. This way, the site's owners do not have to establish
themselves as a legal authority on timekeeping in order for this to be a
trusted service.
~~~
diminish
I was developing a similar online notary. My idea is to timestamp open code,
docs etc create a prior case database against patent trolls and goliaths.
~~~
nl
Are there any documented cases where that would help?
It seems to me that the real problem is convincing a jury that a prior piece
of work is related to a patented piece of work.
~~~
diminish
yes you might be right, NIST standardized timestamping methods are themselves
full of patents. And I believe Jury would accept only those + a certified
authority which would want to be testify in front of Jury.
~~~
nl
_NIST standardized timestamping methods are themselves full of patents_
hu?
_And I believe Jury would accept only those + a certified authority which
would want to be testify in front of Jury._
I think you've missed my point. I'm saying that the problem isn't the _TIME_
of the prior art, it is proving to a civilian jury that prior art relates to a
patent.
------
jd007
This is definitely a cool idea, but there could be potential issues if it is
to be relied upon for long periods of time. If at any point in the future the
hash algorithm used (SHA256 right now it seems) is found to be vulnerable then
it could invalidate all past certifications. You don't really even need a full
collision attack, a chosen prefix collision attack is enough to completely
destroy the system's validity. MD5 is already vulnerable to chosen prefix
attacks, maybe in 5 or 10 years SHA256 will be too...
Perhaps using a combination of different hash algorithms that we know are
secure today to certify a file together would be a potential solution to the
problem. It's not perfect, but at least this way all the algorithms used need
to be compromised for the certification to break.
~~~
skriticos2
Collisions are a problem if you want to corrupt data, not if you specifically
want a human validate it in a single document.
E.g.:
I claim that I authored the string "foo bar" with hash "1f2ec52b7743687..".
Now you find a collision and go to court arguing:
>> Your honor, but "3HSSHog*8FF9 z!!!!ady94765&$^#" also has the same hash!
I think the court will still assume that "foo bar" is the correct original,
not the garbled collision data you produce. And you still can't deny that the
original produces the correct hash.
~~~
beagle3
That's not why it would be a problem.
The problem is that I can author "foo bar" and "moo bar" constructed to hash
the same, and then assert retroactively which one I meant. While collisions
are likely to have random binary garbage in them, it may not matter - I am on
phone now, but IIRC I have two PDFs on my desktop that have the same MD5, one
of which viewed is an airbus pamphlet, the other being a Boeing one. (created
by Dan Kaminski, IIRC)
~~~
adamryman
Can we see them?
~~~
beagle3
I guess they are on a backup or misremembered - but examples are really easy
to find on the net if you want them:
[http://th.informatik.uni-
mannheim.de/people/lucks/HashCollis...](http://th.informatik.uni-
mannheim.de/people/lucks/HashCollisions/)
[http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/ChosenPrefixCollisions/](http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/ChosenPrefixCollisions/)
has a multicollision: 12 PDF files with different content and the same MD5
hash.
------
nadaviv
I also developed a similar project:
[https://www.btproof.com/](https://www.btproof.com/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790382)
Recent changes to Bitcoin made the method I'm using to timestamp the data on
the blockchain somewhat problematic [1], but I'll be working on an update once
I release another Bitcoin-related project I'm currently working on (hopefully
in the coming days).
[1]
[https://github.com/shesek/btproof/issues/1](https://github.com/shesek/btproof/issues/1)
------
gnerd
The idea is cool but it might be too early for people to use the blockchain
like this as right now BitCoin can support 7 transactions per second.
Once that hard limit is lifted, and things like this can scale and support
demand, applications like this could be very interesting.
One thing though, it says the BTC involved in the transaction is unspendable,
isn't that a bad thing? I imagine an idea like this that didn't render any
amount of BTC unspendable would be ideal.
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Current_bottlenecks](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Current_bottlenecks)
~~~
SilasX
Wow, didn't realize that! That's bad news, since the current daily transaction
rate (~100k) is within an order of magnitude of the daily limit (~600k = 7 x
3600 x 24).
Fortunately, the doubling time is, from eyeballing the chart below, about 6
months, so that allows ~1-2 years for a fix.
[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30day...](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=30days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=1&address=)
~~~
gnerd
Well I was expecting there would be a significant jump in transaction volume
as news spreads, prices rise, more services were offered in BTC and more
countries get local exchanges. You also seem to miss that its not the total
number of transactions per day you need to worry about, its the transactions
per second.
There are surely periods of frenzy in the day where we cannot support 7
transactions per second as more economic activity takes place, even if the
total transactions for the day is well under 600000. Its not like the
transactions are neatly distributed on a flat line throughout the day.
There must also be some consideration that each time this is done, the BTC in
the transaction is rendered unspendable and so it is taken out of the market.
So I guess its not good if something like this could scale on top of BitCoin.
------
martin_
A couple of great developers from HackTX a couple of weeks back created
something similar during the hackathon there in just 24 hours.
[https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hacktx/hacks/proveme](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/hacktx/hacks/proveme)
with a demo copy @ [http://162.242.216.46/](http://162.242.216.46/)
~~~
wyager
I'm one of the two developers.
I got the proof server working again so you can play with it.
Try proving data and typing in "testing" (lowercase). It will tell you when we
put it in the blockchain. This file should also work:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRX...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRXKptjOPo_kitten.jpg)
It's a little patchy, but it does work! Payments are fake, and don't do
anything! So don't pay! I don't know how much our Bitcoin wallet has left in
it. I'll try to remember what we've uploaded so you can try it out.
Bitcoin/crypto code here: [https://github.com/wyager/hacktx-
proveme](https://github.com/wyager/hacktx-proveme)
------
wyager
My friend and I did this as well for a hackathon (HackTX) a few days ago!
162.242.216.46
Try proving data and typing in "testing" (lowercase). It will tell you when we
put it in the blockchain. This file should also work:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRX...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/filepicker%2FvCleswcKTpuRXKptjOPo_kitten.jpg)
Here is our bitcoin/crypto stuff. [https://github.com/wyager/hacktx-
proveme](https://github.com/wyager/hacktx-proveme)
It's not up to my usual quality because we did it in 24 hours with a sleep
break! Please don't judge me on this :p
------
taway2012
Couple questions.
1) AFAIK, bitcoin has "comments" within transactions. Why not embed the
checksum as a comment in a transaction between wallets you control?
2) In the approach described here, no coins are being sent with the
transaction (right?). Are blockchain participants really accepting NOP
transactions involving 0 BTC transfers. Maybe I missed something.
3) As others pointed out, requiring the whole file to be uploaded is a non-
starter for anybody savvy enough to be using this service. Users should be
able to directly specify the checksum.
~~~
clarkmoody
1) Comments are enabled as a service by blockchain.info. For details on how
the Genesis Block (and comment by Satoshi) was formed, look at the Bitcoin
Wiki[1]
2) Coins are being sent. The Developer page says you must send at least
0.00000001 BTC. _Edit: actually 500000 Satoshi._
3) Agree. So does the service. See the Developer Page[2]
[1]
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block)
[2]
[http://www.proofofexistence.com/developers](http://www.proofofexistence.com/developers)
~~~
Natanael
5460 satoshis is the current default minimum that Bitcoin itself allows (other
transactions are valid, but won't be forwarded, thus you need to hand it over
to a miner yourself for inclusion in a block).
------
lucisferre
Can anyone eli5 exactly what this accomplishes. What sort of scenario would
this work for. I'm assuming some sort of legal purposes.
~~~
shabble
It's a way to use the bitcoin blockchain as a non-centralised way to record
the fact that you were in possession of a particular file at a particular
time, without exposing what that file is, or who you are.
The problem has been around for a long time, especially when dealing with
semi-intangibles like Priority for scientific discoveries, or proof of first
invention for patents[1]
One solution is to present proof to a trusted but private notary, who can copy
or stamp or otherwise indicate that he has seen your documents and so they
must have existed at least since the date indicated.
But counterfeiting, forgery, untrustworthy notaries, etc, all make this a less
than ideal solution. So we add computers & crypto.
The document in question is condensed down to a single cryptographic hash,
which (should[2]) to all intents and purposes be unique for a given document,
despite being only a few tens of characters long, regardless of the size of
the original input.
This hash then serves as proof[3] that you have the source document, without
anyone being able to turn it back into the original document. This is a very
one-way process.
Then, you need to find someone to vouch for your hash and indicate when they
first saw it. You can do this with lawyers/notaries again as before[4], which
partly solves the forgery problem, but not the trust one.
The solution proposed here is to store that hash in the bitcoin block-chain,
which is a distributed log of all transactions on the bitcoin network, which
has 3 nice properties:
1\. It's append-only. Once your hash is encoded in there, it's staying there
as long as bitcoin exists[5].
2\. It's peer-to-peer/distributed. There's no single controlling organisation
you need to trust for answers.
3\. It's updated regularly enough that timestamps can be relatively fine-
grained.
So you stuff it in there using this tool or whatever, and then X years hence
when you need to prove you'd actually created that file in 2013, you should be
able to prove that to most people's satisfaction.
This is a loose take on the matter and glosses over whole swathes of other
complexities involved, but is probably close enough for [non]government work
:)
[1] That is, who discovered/did something first. You may want to be able to
claim you did in future, but without making it public at the time, because you
might tip your rivals off to the idea before you've fully developed it. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_priority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_priority)
[2] Breaking (or "colliding") hashes is a whole subfield of cryptography
research, and some pretty impressive things have been done there. It's why you
probably shouldn't use MD5 for anything nowadays, for example. But again,
we'll handwave "Done Properly = unique identifier".
[3] Well, in the same way that a password proves that you're the/a person who
knows that password - if you did it right and never told anyone, it should be
exclusively you. But if it leaks somehow, others could represent the hash as
belonging to something they own. But if they only have the hash and not the
original source document, there are relatively easy tests that could
distinguish them. That's not very important here though.
[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping)
[5] well, mostly. But it's _really_ hard, and the same capabilities let you
defraud the rest of the bitcoin network with double-spending and whatnot, so
unless your timestamp priority is super-important, you're probably ok.
~~~
xerophtye
One question. I know that its nearly impossible to reverse a good hash or to
create a doc that will knowingly return the same hash. So PREDICTING a
collision (finding a doc that will collide with a given doc) is very very very
difficult. But Due to the size of the output and input space we know for a
fact that collisions do exist (right?) So if a very large number of documents
are timestamped using this, their hashes WILL collide right? I mean there is a
POSSIBILITY that you may find proof for a doc that wasn't actually stored
here, right?
(Just wondering. Not throwing criticism. I actually LOVE this idea!)
------
twakefield
I wonder if these concepts could be used to change the way land records are
maintained and eliminate the need for title insurance [1] in the U.S. I am no
expert but the current system doesn't seemed to have changed much in the past
century or so. This results in a lucrative business (title insurance) that
effectively insures against book keeping mistakes.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance)
~~~
dminor
If some claim to title is omitted from the public record, how exactly would
this guard against it?
------
spiritplumber
Two thoughts.
1) Will this have legal weight? I know that the whole "prove paternity of an
invention by sending a certified letter containing the design through the
mail, and not opening it until you need it" thing doesn't very much work, if
it goes to court you tend to be told "OK, what you say is true in the physical
universe, but you did not go through our blessed channels, so nyah nyah nyah".
2) Anything that makes bitcoins more legitimate / part of the world's
infrastructure decreases the chance of bitcoin going away as a system. I think
the idea for the bitcoin community is to make the system as a whole "too big
to fail" before governments decide that they want to get rid of it.
~~~
nwh
> _Will this have legal weight?_
I doubt it. If I have to fax something for it to be a legal document, such an
antiquated system will ignore any advances made around it.
~~~
bjt
The law doesn't pretend that signatures and fax machines are magic. Contracts
written on bar napkins can be enforced.
Any time you introduce evidence, you have to establish its credibility. The
first time a signing system like this is used it's likely to take the court
some time to understand, but there's no legal doctrine forbidding it.
Source: I am a (not practicing anymore) lawyer.
------
yonilevy
I believe you could implement it in such a way that the coins involved are
spendable, relying on "Pay to script hash":
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016)
------
rlpb
"Your document will not be uploaded. The cryptographic digest is calculated
client-side."
That's great, but I have to trust you there. For a document that really
matters, I don't think I would.
How about a box that allows me to specify my own SHA256 instead?
~~~
nsomaru
There is a developer API that allows you to do this:
http://www.proofofexistence.com/developers
~~~
rlpb
That's not the same as making it available for users though, is it?
------
flashmob
How about miner's fee, is that added to the transaction?
In the About, they say that they make 2 undependable dust transactions.
Would there be any incentive for miners to confirm these transactions and
store them in the blockchain? If there's no incentive to confirm the
transactions, then the miners might find a way to filter these out of the
blockchain.
See also dust transactions:
[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10986/what-is-
mea...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10986/what-is-meant-by-
bitcoin-dust)
[http://bitcoinfees.com/](http://bitcoinfees.com/)
------
eddywebs
nice concept ! apparently sha-1 is vulnerable to collisions
([http://eprint.iacr.org/2008/469.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2008/469.pdf))
how are they handled ?
~~~
sp332
It uses SHA-256, not SHA-1.
------
richardlblair
So, if I could automate this, could I use this to prove in court that logs
were created, and not tampered with?
Just trying to think of practical uses of this cool project, and it's the
first thing that came to mind.
~~~
delinka
Yes. Or that a contract was not created before a certain date. Or, as another
poster suggested, that a photo of a damaged rental car was taken before you
took possession of the car.
~~~
tghw
_Or that a contract was not created before a certain date._
I think you have that one backwards. You can demonstrate a contract _did_
exist at a certain date. There is no proof of non-existence before that date.
~~~
GhotiFish
you're right, it can be used to prove that a contract with both signatures
existed before a date, not after. So if Alice makes an agreement with Bob,
Alice can't turn around and say that the contract was only ratified after
Alice failed to meet certain obligations.
Then again, digital signatures come with a timestamp, Alice could lie about
that timestamp, but it would be obvious to Bob that she did.
Fun to think about.
------
Mizza
Cool! I worked on something similar before:
[https://github.com/Miserlou/CitizenMediaNotary](https://github.com/Miserlou/CitizenMediaNotary)
I've also got an idea related to this which involves a global array of
satellites in order to add a geo component to this kind of verification..
------
EGreg
This would help to certify that a contract was signed at a particular time by
both sides, and then included in the blockchain.
It would also help certify that a particular person created a document, once
again because it was signed by their personal key and included in the
blockchain.
It basically functions as a certain timestamp.
------
runn1ng
well... you can save actual files to namecoin blockchain if you try a little.
my script that does exactly that (not updated, maybe won't work now)
[https://github.com/runn1ng/namecoin-
files](https://github.com/runn1ng/namecoin-files)
------
Crito
It would be nice if you included some UI for just pasting in a bunch of hashes
myself.
------
tlo
Article about this topic: [http://erratasec.blogspot.de/2013/05/bitcoin-is-
public-ledge...](http://erratasec.blogspot.de/2013/05/bitcoin-is-public-
ledger.html)
------
jmcqk6
Now this is fricken awesome. I can imagine all sorts of instances where this
is applicable. What about as a replacement for a notary public in some cases?
Very nice work, and a genius idea.
------
superuser2
Would this have any legal standing? Legally valid but insecure will trump
secure but inadmissable in nearly. situation where having a certified
timestamp is useful.
------
deepinsand
Couldn't I also publish the checksum on Twitter? Although it's not
decentralized, it's probably equally trusted in the eyes of the legal system.
~~~
resonator
Yes you could, however, this isn't only about the trustworthiness of your
claim. More importantly it's about the trustworthiness of the longevity of the
data.
Twitter can remove a single post or turn off their servers and your prove is
gone. That's not so easy for a BitCoin transaction. Once it's added to the
blockchain it's there for as long as anyone is running a bitcoin node.
------
iand
I was thinking along similar lines today, but geared more towards proof of
title.
------
orenmazor
brilliant.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Github Changelog tool - craigtaub
https://github-changelog.com/
======
wickedOne
502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)
------
craigtaub
Tired of keeping an eye on multiple Github repository Changelogs at once? Give
this new tool a try.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
From file-sharing to prison: A Megaupload programmer tells his story - nols
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/from-file-sharing-to-prison-a-megaupload-programmer-tells-his-story/
======
nulagrithom
> I had to be made an example of as a warning to all IT people who were
> intending to work in similar companies.
That's scary. I'm supposed to police my employers actions? To some extent I
can understand, but that puts a lot of IT people in awkward positions. Do
Dropbox employees need to worry that infringing content is being taken down
fast enough, lest the face prosecution?
I didn't follow Megaupload too closely, so I hope I'm blowing this out of
proportion...
~~~
cm3
> Do Dropbox employees need to worry that infringing content is being taken
> down fast enough, lest the face prosecution?
Not as long a Dropbox doesn't offend the wrong people.
~~~
TobbenTM
Not as long Condoleezza Rice is on the board.
~~~
letitleak
If saying an employee acted without authorization and/or tampering with the
papertrail will save a few million in fines then you better hope no one like
that is on your board. But your stock options will be safe.. though you
probably wont be entitled to them.
------
jondubois
So basically employers/entrepreneurs get all the rewards if their companies
succeed but if they fail, it's the employees who take the fall.
And then, when things do work out, these 'entrepreneurs' are the ones who
boast about how they overcame adversity in the face of impossible odds.
Now I understand why Donald Trump is so popular in the US. People just lost
all faith in the system; so they might as well get some entertainment out of
it.
~~~
chris11
I wouldn't exactly say that the system has let Kim off at all. Sure, he hasn't
spent any serious time in jail, but it's just because the U.S. hasn't been
able to get him extradited. In fact they've pursued him so aggressively that
it's helped his fight against extradition.
~~~
jerguismi
And the other employees and Kim probably didn't come voluntarily to US. The US
government would be happy to have Kim thrown to prison as well, but they
haven't been able to catch him.
"Like Dotcom, Nõmm next spent a significant amount of time fighting
extradition. But eventually in 2015, he voluntarily traveled to the US and was
arrested in Virginia."
------
cm3
Some of the coders from Lovoo (dating site/app) may be next. They created fake
bots for male customers which the german IT magazine c't reported on last year
based on a set of Outlook mailbox dumps they were handed. Now the police
raided Lovoo HQ.
[https://mopo24.de/nachrichten/razzia-grossaufgebot-
polizei-s...](https://mopo24.de/nachrichten/razzia-grossaufgebot-polizei-
stuermt-firmenzentrale-von-lovoo-69557)
[http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-
Artikeln/Int...](http://www.heise.de/forum/c-t/Kommentare-zu-c-t-
Artikeln/Interne-Mails-bekraeftigen-Abzock-Verdacht-gegen-Dating-Plattform-
Lovoo/The-LOVOO-SCAM-BEWARE/posting-24557526/show/)
[http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/2016/06/fraud-
wi...](http://onlinedatingsoundbarrier.blogspot.de/2016/06/fraud-with-fake-
profiles-police-raid-on.html)
What's the thought process behind documenting the illegal activities in email
threads? It makes you wonder if they honestly thought they were just
developing test bots for QA purposes.
~~~
petercooper
What's the actual law/potential charge behind the Lovoo situation? Creating
fake users to make a Web site popular is hardly new:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-
of...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-
accounts--2) .. In the UK, at least, I believe what Lovoo appears to have done
would be treated as false advertising which generally results in fines for the
company, but not jail time for employees (at least, in my limited experience
reading about such cases).
~~~
cm3
IANAL, but tricking paid users to believe they're in contact with real humans,
with whom they have the hope of getting into some relationship, is on another
level.
------
eel
I do not understand how the US can charge someone with copyright infringement
if that person is not a US citizen and has never been to the US. Is there an
international agreement on how to handle infringement? Can Americans be
extradited for infringing upon copyrights from other countries?
~~~
waynecochran
I assume if you are involved in stealing property from folks in the US (I
assume many of the owners of the stolen material are American companies), the
US has the right to extradite you. Seems reasonable to me.
~~~
DanBC
Sure. Is that reciprocal? Would the US extradite a US citizen from the US to
eg France to face prosecution for copyright infringement?
~~~
brokenmachine
Haha, thanks for the good laugh!
------
coldcode
Clearly our prison system in the US is terrible. Of course most other
countries are even worse but you'd think we would be more civilized. It's also
embarrassing that the only person they were able to put in jail was a simple
programmer.
~~~
ArkyBeagle
I don't know if it's available any more but there was a series on The History
Channel ( from back when it had, y'know, history on it ) called "The Big
House" with Paul Sorvino narrating that covers how this came to be.
I realized a massive high school being built in my (then) home town had an
architecture based on prison design. Not only were prisons a political
innovation, but they had a lot to do with how architecture developed.
~~~
lostlogin
Have you more info on this? That is a pretty amazing observation. Did you
mention it to anyone?
~~~
ArkyBeagle
I did now :)
------
ocdtrekkie
It's a little sad specifically his own government didn't provide him much
help. Numerous other issues with the US aside, I've always been reasonably
confident that if I'm out of the country, the American embassy will help me.
And going after the IT staff is pretty awful. Generally speaking, we're just
there to make it work. While I make a point to work jobs and clients I think
do good work and are moral entities, the reality is, IT doesn't generally
decide what a company does or what messes they get themselves involved with.
~~~
lisivka
See case of John Demjanjuk[1] . USA citizen was extradited twice: to Israel
and to Germany as "nazi". After his death, FBI confirmed that they know that
he is innocent.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk)
~~~
Xylakant
> After his death, FBI confirmed that they know that he is innocent.
Nitpick: The FBI confirmed that according to their opinion one piece of
evidence was a fake.
~~~
lisivka
Major evidence is fake. Do you know any other evidences?
Throughout three decades of US hearings, an extradition, a death sentence
followed by acquittal in Israel, a deportation and now a trial in Munich, the
arguments have relied heavily on the photo ID from an SS training camp that
indicates Demjanjuk was sent to Sobibor.
Claims that the card and other evidence against Demjanjuk are Soviet forgeries
have repeatedly been made by Demjanjuk's defense attorneys. However, the FBI
report provides the first known confirmation that American investigators had
similar doubts.
[http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html](http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4056137,00.html)
------
Steeeve
I have heard about the "Diesel Tour" before. It's a little disturbing.
------
hrbrtglm
So this guy was jailed because he coded an advertising platform and a video
hosting service. I know Mega was on a thin shady line, but what has he done
wrong to be jailed in USA ?
~~~
FilterSweep
The UK has a law called "Joint Criminal Enterprise" which is oft critiqued[0].
In America, this same concept is a de-facto legal and social standard to apply
"Guilty by Association" wherever it can.
So, in the USA, it can be (incorrectly) argued - by very, _very_ high powered
RIAA legal team - that this was aiding and abetting.[1] It's absolutely wrong,
but this is the legal world we live in as developers.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_purpose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_purpose)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting)
~~~
hrbrtglm
All right, in fact, I think the law you explained is even fair and needed to
prosecute some "Joint Criminal Enterprise". But in this specific case, how
could it be "incorrectly" argued, "absolutely wrong" and not dismissed by a
judge. I mean, how can you trust the justice if only the poor chap is the one
going to jail. Yeah, I'm naive, I know.
------
gcb0
why not a interview with fbi or the DA? the "reporter" dont even mention if
they were reached for comment.
yeah the little guy was screwed. we got that from the tittle.
~~~
jontas
This was an interview telling one person's side of the story, and it was
presented that way I am all in favor of fair, honest and balanced reporting,
but in this case I don't think anything was done incorrectly. This was not a
"straight facts" piece, it was a subjective interview and clearly labeled as
such.
------
anc84
I was hoping this would have some more detail about the actual allegations
against him and his testimony and verdict.
------
aaronchall
> I don’t believe the US will help Estonia in any war. They also promised to
> help Ukraine, but did they really?
No. No we have not, and it is to our shame.
------
moyok
As someone working on a side project that allows people to upload data
publically (think something like codepen), what can I do to stay away from
trouble like this?
------
superobserver
"All Kim ever cared about was how to promote himself on Twitter."
In sum, he's a total scumbag. I thought he was a cool guy, but now I think
otherwise.
------
ensiferum
Crazy how the FBI has become the biatch of the american copyright mafia even
to a degree of tromping and violating people's rights in other continents. GO
USA!
What exactly was the claim against this software eng? By this article it
almost sounds like the FBI (guided by the copyright mafia) fabricated a case
against some defenseless software dev just to gain more leverage on dotcom.
~~~
jsprogrammer
Remember when GS got the FBI to arrest and prosecute a programmer who did
nothing wrong? The arresting agents couldn't even articulate why they were
arresting the programmer.
------
k__
So this guy is in prison, but Dotcom is free?!
~~~
webkike
They're both free now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Europe is no longer an innovation leader. - respinal
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/europe-is-no-longer-an-innovation-leader-heres-how-it-can-get-ahead/
======
louis_pasteur
Today's innovation leader is that dragon who started his life as a copycat.
People used to make fun of "Made in China" once and today, they produce most
innovative mobile devices that people use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Aerial photos reveal the stark divide between rich and poor - JonEllis
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-45257901
======
subsubsub
These sort of photos, while interesting visually, prove nothing and say even
less.
Except that rich people and poor people exist and that if you're a developer
you should be careful where you build lest your new development appear in a
moralizing photographic exhibition.
To be clear, I am not saying inequality does not exist or that there aren't
real problems of disparity of wealth, just that drawing very wide conclusions
from proximity is probably a bad idea.
~~~
zzt
These photos are powerful, and say a lot about inequality in just a handful of
scenes.
The ideal situation would be for everyone to live in functionally identical
dwellings that provide their every need. Somewhat like the world described by
E. M. Forster in The Machine Stops, except without the dystopian aspect of
fully enclosed spaces and unmaintained infrastructure.
Until we reach that pinnacle of human existence, we should all work towards
preventing the majority of the world's population living in poverty. A good
start would be redistributing the ill-gotten wealth of that lucky minority who
lord it over everyone else in a perpetual state of power-hungry me-too
selfishness.
~~~
taneq
> Until we reach that pinnacle of human existence, we should all work towards
> preventing the majority of the world's population living in poverty.
Are talking about absolute or relative poverty? I absolutely agree that no
human should go without food, clean water, shelter, and sanitation. But I
absolutely disagree that a 50" flatscreen TV should be considered a human
right just because Bill Gates has a 200" flatscreen TV.
> A good start would be redistributing the ill-gotten wealth of that lucky
> minority who lord it over everyone else in a perpetual state of power-hungry
> me-too selfishness.
So if you work hard, and are resourceful and inventive, at what point does
your wealth become ill-gotten and subject to redistribution?
~~~
snarfybarfy
Well one good point would be with your death.
Inheriting large fortunes has obviously nothing to do with resourcefulness and
inventiveness.
~~~
taneq
My wealth is mine to do what I want with, including to give it to someone else
(unless you're proposing that wealth be somehow nontransferable?)
Inheritance isn't about the receiver getting something for nothing, it's about
the right of the deceased to have their possessions disposed of as they see
fit.
~~~
snarfybarfy
Why would it only be about one side? Why is it NOT about the reveiver getting
something for free? Why do I have to pay income tax on money I earned by
working all year?
I agree it is morally more complicated on the giver side, but on the taker
side it is fairly clear cut.
On the other hand the giver is dead and why should he have any more rights?
------
21
On a bigger scale, Whole Foods versus Walmart in California:
[https://i2.wp.com/famvin.org/en/files/2013/03/Walmart-and-
Wh...](https://i2.wp.com/famvin.org/en/files/2013/03/Walmart-and-Whole-
Foods.jpg)
~~~
abraham_lincoln
Interesting where the 2 spots that have both a Walmart and Whole Foods.
~~~
fipple
The Mountain View Whole Foods and Walmart are across the street from each
other (along with Target and Trader Joe’s).
~~~
whataboutism
If you aren't familiar with this neighborhood, it is incredibly pedestrian
friendly, not only can you walk to all of those stores, it is located next to
a Caltrain station.
~~~
jchrisa
Pedestrian friendly _for the Bay Area_. It's still a car-strewn wasteland by
most civilized standards. I used to walk to lunch there multiple times a week,
and bike to work a few times a week also. I do not care much for the Bay
Area's suburban form.
~~~
whataboutism
I worked at your old company :-)
------
JoeAltmaier
I'm always confused by these kind of pictures. The 'developed' spaces have
apartment towers and dense construction - many more people appear to live
there per acre. If land is at such a premium (and the towers seem to indicate
this) then how on earth does the shack-dweller afford so much land
(relatively) for their very-much-lower density housing? Sure maybe 20 people
live in a shack, I understand that, but in the same area as half a dozen
shacks you could build an apartment building that houses thousands.
Further by this measure, it appears that there are many, many more apartment
dwellers than shack dwellers. Because shacks are one story tall after all, so
the population density per acre is relatively low.
What am I missing?
~~~
21
Location, location, location.
Price per square m/ft is much lower in the slum than in the gated community.
If you couldn't aford a place in the gated community, would you use that money
to buy a place in the slum? Or would you try elsewhere?
The problem in general is not absolute lack of space for building (except
islands like Japan, ...), but lack of place to build in desirable locations.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
They are across a fence from one another. If land was at a premium, I'd assume
somebody in power would burn the slums and sell the land? That's what I don't
get.
~~~
21
Apparently that happens:
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/mumbais-slums-make-way-for-
luxu...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/mumbais-slums-make-way-for-luxury-
residential-towers-1485259208)
~~~
personlurking
In Brazil as well (as India), though it mostly happened in the 20th century.
------
harshulpandav
This exists probably in all countries. I also don't quite get the message out
of these pictures. Or if it is even a matter which needs to be solved. If it
is, redistribution of wealth is not practical IMO.
~~~
petermcneeley
Let me paraphrase what you said:
"I dont see the problem. If there is a problem I dont know we should solve it.
If there is a problem we shouldnt solve it because its natural. If it is a
problem and we should deal with it we shouldnt use redistribution."
Isnt there a name for this type of reasoning?
~~~
lkbm
Kettle logic:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettle_logic)
~~~
r00fus
Why do legal arguments constantly seem to use this method all the time?
~~~
closeparen
Guessing: a defense needs to establish reasonable doubt, not an airtight
theory of the case.
------
mmirate
If this link isn't the kind of boring pure-ideology flamebait that we all hate
so dearly, then I don't know what is.
(cf the overly-impassioned, albeit correct, top-voted comment; and its wholly
equal-and-opposite counterpart)
------
Xcelerate
Not to quite the same degree, but I find it interesting how you can discern
the border of Atherton, CA from the surrounding area just by looking at the
density of trees in the satellite view.
~~~
underwater
The visual difference is almost as pronounced in this view:
[https://binged.it/2wgPj2m](https://binged.it/2wgPj2m) (easier to see in
Bing). The difference being the houses on the "poor" side are multi-million
dollar homes.
------
amelius
How about building a poor-man's house as an extension to a rich-man's house?
That way, the poor man can work for the rich man without travel expenses.
------
modells
In CA, 101 acts as that wall between PA and EPA. The differences are more
subtle: less trees.
[https://goo.gl/maps/c6t8e6dtHbn](https://goo.gl/maps/c6t8e6dtHbn)
Trees are one of the major factors affecting property value. If antifa really
wanted to attack the 1%, they would covertly kill trees around the richest
folks' homes and start fast-food franchises nearby.
~~~
Pulcinella
Antifa is anti-fascist not anti-wealth. The are a lot of leftists who are
both, but they are not the same thing. Antifa groups don’t protest Republican
political rally’s, for example.
~~~
Turing_Machine
Antifa isn't any more "anti-fascist" than the People's Democratic Republic of
(North) Korea is a "democratic republic", or than old-school _Pravda_
contained truth.
They are violent communists.
P.S. there haven't been any real fascists for, like, 70 years. So, mission
accomplished then?
~~~
v_lisivka
Wikipedia: Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of radical authoritarian
ultranationalism,[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible
suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the
economy,[3] which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.
Putin? Dictatorial power: yes, suppression of opposition: yes, forcible
regimentation of society and of the economy: yes, radical ultranationalism:
yes.
~~~
Turing_Machine
I have not noticed any "antifa" "protests" in Moscow, have you?
Wikipedia is a poor source for such definitions, by the way. It reflects the
political agenda of the last person to edit the page.
In _fact_ , fascism (and national socialism in general) are heresies of
socialism. Fascists are only "on the right" if you're Stalin. Fascism and
communism have far more commonalities than they have differences.
For example, Mussolini was a high official in the Italian Socialist party
until he broke with the "international" socialists during WWI, and switched to
his own brand of "national" socialism.
Neither type of socialism has much in common with the classical liberalism
that has historically been the guiding philosophy of the United States.
In practice, "fascist" today appears to simply mean "someone who isn't a
communist".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GCHQ 'intervened' over Harry Potter leak - jackgavigan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36010426
======
NamTaf
"A spokesperson for GCHQ told the Sunday Times: "We don't comment on our
defence against the dark arts."
I don't care about anything else, I'm just so glad that someone at GCHQ
maintains their sense of humour whilst being a spook.
~~~
jMyles
> I'm just so glad that someone at GCHQ maintains their sense of humour whilst
> being a spook.
> I don't care about anything else
I suspect that's exactly the intention of this sort of PR.
~~~
madaxe_again
That is indeed the purpose of this PR, and PR it absolutely is, as they did
_not_ prevent the leak of the book - I for one read it as a PDF several days
before it was published.
This is up there with the piece they ran a few days ago about how they saved
us from shitty smart meters, which were instituted and approved by another
department of government (ofgem). They're playing themselves off against
themselves in order to make you think of them as GCHQ as better, when the
whole is still just as rotten as it ever was.
------
awetyq345y345r
It's telling that they forgot to mention that their 'interventions' ultimately
failed and that the book was leaked online anyway.
------
partycoder
Book sales for Harry Potter are $7.7 billion dollars. They are just protecting
domestic business.
To put things in perspective BAE systems revenue was $25 billion some years
ago.
~~~
mtgx
So spy agencies' purpose is to help domestic business now?
~~~
extra88
To _protect_ domestic business, yes. As stated in the article, "GCHQ, based in
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, is a secret intelligence agency which monitors
electronic communication to prevent terrorism and tackle serious and organised
crime."
Spy agencies should not help domestic businesses by engaging in serious crime,
i.e. industrial espionage, though some nations' intelligence agencies,
including France's have done so.
~~~
DanBC
Including the US, who misused ECHELON to help their aerospace industry.
~~~
extra88
If you're referring to the Airbus example, the NSA exposing Airbus's crimes
which benefited a U.S. competitor, I'm okay with that. There's a big
difference between exposing crimes, even if only selectively, and sharing non-
criminal information. The claims about the CIA spying on Japanese government
officials and car manufacturers to benefit the U.S. in trade deals is very
different, and wrong.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Concerns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Concerns)
------
taneq
"There was [an instance] where a child was going to die
of an awful childhood condition before the book came
out," he said. "So we did the only thing we could do and
referred it to the author to decide how to handle it
because it's her story, not ours.
"History doesn't tell the outcome of that sad story, but
I'm sure it was a happy one."
Poor turn of phrase when talking about "a child about to die of an awful
childhood condition". O.o
------
sevenfive_
"There was [an instance] where a child was going to die of an awful childhood
condition before the book came out," he said. "So we did the only thing we
could do and referred it to the author to decide how to handle it because it's
her story, not ours. "History doesn't tell the outcome of that sad story, but
I'm sure it was a happy one."
Ouch.
~~~
Normal_gaussian
An interesting quote.
I know I wouldn't publicise it - it is rather vulgar to use the death of a
child to improve ones public images; publicly granting such a request will
also bring the problem of more being made in the future.
There is also the risk to the book to consider. I can completely understand if
an author chose not to give anybody special consideration. It is an
unfortunate fact that it is impossible to guarantee the security of such a
reading.
Not an easy decision, and I think the publisher is speaking out of turn by
mentioning that such events have been considered.
~~~
ceejayoz
> Not an easy decision, and I think the publisher is speaking out of turn by
> mentioning that such events have been considered.
Such events have already been publicly confirmed. Here's two:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1417303/J.-K.-Rowling-
read-unfinished-book-to-dying-girl.html)
[http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Natalie_McDonald](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Natalie_McDonald)
------
pieter_mj
As a Belgian, i can't wait until the British vote themselves out of the
European Union. GCHQ is the prime reason. They and other organizations like
them are the cancer of a modern democratic society.
~~~
arethuza
Why do you think that whether the UK is in or out of the EU has any impact on
who GCHQ and SIS/MI6 spies on?
~~~
hackerboos
If anything I would imagine they would be able to violate EU law even more
without the accountability to Brussels.
------
whoopdedo
And how many times did they discover stolen credit cards, or evidence of
identity theft, and helpfully notified the banks and account holders?
~~~
Normal_gaussian
Banks have made many decisions about the acceptable level of credit card and
identity theft. These essentially come down to - quite a bit is ok. For all
you know GCHQ does report such evidence, but if they don't I would expect it
to be because nothing will realistically be done about it.
When something unusual, or of a large magnitude, comes along these
organisations will talk with each other to help mitigate the damage.
GCHQ does a lot of good work alongside invading our privacy.
~~~
ZanyProgrammer
I know anecdotal evidence and all that, but I've never received a genuine
report from a bank saying that a card has been stolen, but I've gotten a lot
of annoying false positives saying my card has been declined because I've
traveled more than a 2 hour drive away from home and had the nerve to use it.
~~~
Normal_gaussian
That is consistent with a good detector for a rare event - the false positives
will outnumber the true positives. This is known as the false positive paradox
[0].
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positive_paradox)
------
stuaxo
> However, after a page was read to an editor, it was determined to be fake.
So someone at GCHQ finds a story someone has wrote pretending to be new Harry
Potter, and that warrants them ringing them up ??
~~~
nicky0
You make it sound like making one short phone call is a drastic, unwarranted
step. Come on, it's just a phone call.
------
raverbashing
> Bloomsbury's Nigel Newton said GCHQ contacted him in 2005 after it
> apparently discovered an early copy of The Half Blood-Prince on the
> internet.
> However, after a page was read to an editor, it was determined to be fake.
This is hilarious
There was a lot of crap being put online being named for an upcoming book,
usually fanfic (especially at the time of Book 5 and 6)
But it was easy to tell
------
throw7
Half-blood Prince Spoiler Alert. GCHQ notified. Of National Security Import.
------
nxzero
Almost sounds like an attempt by someone at GCHQ to get a copy of the book
before it was released. Given how popular the book was, this would have been a
great asset for "trading" with sources.
~~~
nicky0
With logic like this you probably think the moon landings were faked too.
------
ddp
That's not a world I want to live in.
------
mtgx
So is this what the doubling of GCHQ's budget is going to be used for?
Protecting against the piracy of various novels and movies?
I thought it was to stop terrorism or something like that. Silly me.
~~~
alfiedotwtf
With the money that the series has generated, it's probably gone over some
threshold to consider it a "national security" issue.
~~~
chris_wot
I think that's highly unlikely.
~~~
alfiedotwtf
The NSA intervened during an Airbus tender worth $6 Billion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Concerns
Harry Potter generated revenue: over $24 Billion:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/total-harry-potter-franchise-revenue/
"National security" is money.
~~~
chris_wot
In that case, I stand corrected.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Programmer Hierarchy - jarrodvanda
http://i.imgur.com/G7WyP.gif
======
plesn
The way programmers see each other was especially good in the "language
matrix" : <http://i.imgur.com/1gF1j.jpg>
~~~
alttab
I like how the only difference between Java and Ruby to a Lisp guy is Sarah
Palin's boobs.
------
rue
Odd conflict, I did not find this [Funny] even though the title promised such.
------
olefoo
The better map would represent this as a doubly linked circular list since
pretty much any type of programmer considers the language they are most
effective in to make them superior to every other sort of programmer.
I don't know what it is about programming as a profession, but something which
ought to be humbling (have you ever created a bug-free program of any
consequence?), produces a surprisingly large number of people who are
insufferably arrogant out of all proportion to their accomplishments.
Or perhaps the arrogance is defensive, and is built around the fear of being
found out as a fallible human being, not some godlike creator.
------
nowarninglabel
Glad to see Java programmers were right where they belong.
~~~
crpatino
Java's now 2 orders of magnitude below Visual Basic? Do I smell a reflective
relationship in there?
------
jacquesm
Shouldn't clojure be at the very top there, on the left above lisp? ;)
Smalltalk is conspicuously absent.
~~~
olalonde
Shouldn't Verilog/VHDL be on top? :)
~~~
jacquesm
Hehe, good point. How about the soldering iron then? Or the wire-wrap gun?
------
alinajaf
Am I the only one here who has a broad smattering of skills in that graph
(around about C, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, HTML etc.) and don't see myself
inferior/superior to anyone on that list? Incompetent programmers are
incompetent no matter what language they use to (not) get the job done.
------
alttab
I dont see a lot of Java/Pascal animosity, although as a full time Rubyist I
could at least tip my hat at the arrogance. I'd say ObjC and Flash/Flex/Fusion
are absent and would put the Ruby guys on their feet - simply because these
guys (on average) make 20k more.
------
binomial
I'd expect it to be more of a cyclic graph in reality.
------
ansgri
Clojure: superior from both Lisp and Java ends ^_-
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U.S. Oil Output Tops 12M Barrels a Day for First Time - aginovski
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-oil-output-tops-12-120000720.html
======
jorge-d
Oil is such a great industry.
Most of the oil production increase in the last years in the US is due to
fracking; such an amazing technology where a bunch of chemicals are injected
directly into the ground. Ted-ed has a good video about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tudal_4x4F0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tudal_4x4F0)
Lets screw up the environment by not quitting our society's oil dependency so
that a few shareholders of [INSERT_RANDOM_OIL_COMPANY_hERE] can enjoy all the
$$$ while future generations (and probably us too given how fast this go) get
to pay the price.
~~~
rayiner
> Lets screw up the environment by not quitting our society's oil dependency
> so that a few shareholders of [INSERT_RANDOM_OIL_COMPANY_hERE] can enjoy all
> the $$$ while future generations (and probably us too given how fast this
> go) get to pay the price.
This is sanctimonious and inaccurate. Oil allows our consumer culture to
exist. We make plastic crap with oil, we import it from China using oil, we
deliver it using oil to an amazon warehouse, and then deliver it again using
oil to a Prime Member. That cycle, in turn, supports everyone else’s job.
Indeed, the very web is built in that oil consumption cycle, since Google runs
the web and 98% of Google’s business is helping sell more plastic crap to
people.
Oil and gas is not particularly profitable. In fact it’s less profitable than
average:
[http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/...](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/roe.html).
Return on equity is single digits, versus 20%+ for companies like Facebook.
~~~
jtr1
Please stick to the community guidelines and respond directly to the argument.
Calling a response "sanctimonious drivel" does not make your reply more
compelling.
~~~
rayiner
The fact that OP is being sanctimonious is highly relevant to the point I’m
making. It’s one thing to hold the opinion that we need to eliminate oil use
because of the serious environmental repercussions. But if you’re living in
america enjoying American employment options and living standards, you don’t
get to engage in “holier than thou” “us versus them” rhetoric. Our entire
economy and all of our jobs are predicated on cheap energy. Oil companies make
a lot of money because they deliver an essential, high demand product. But
given that oil and gas is less profitable than your average industry (as you’d
expect a commodity to be) there is no basis for acting as if the benefits of
cheap oil flow to oil company shareholders. It flows overwhelmingly to
consumers.
~~~
jtr1
I'm not saying OP made a stellar point, but "drivel" is an unnecessarily
aggressive descriptor here. Try to assume good faith and draw out an argument
that elevates the overall discussion. You're raising a worthwhile concern.
Raise it in a way that invites, rather than shuts down discussion.
~~~
rayiner
You're right, "drivel" was unwarranted. I have deleted that.
~~~
18pfsmt
I drunkenly invited someone to Denver at my expense for a duel the other day
(not literally, but figuratively). All this partisan, populist rhetoric is
driving some of us a bit nuts, but you are usually a voice of reason. It's ok
to slip up from time to time.
------
docker_up
The transformation of the US for largest importer to largest exporter in only
a few years is stunning.
Unfortunately, this is a geopolitical tactic to crush Saudi Arabia and other
oil-producing nations like Iran so that it defunds terrorism. The tipping
point for the US between electric cars and gas is about $6/gallon from what
I've read. CA is getting close, I'm paying $4/gallon but most of that is taxes
these days. We can't move forward until we get rid of $2/gallon gas throughout
the country.
~~~
pjc50
It's not so much a tactic as a technologically-enabled event. The US is not
about to "crush" Saudi Arabia, it's actively fighting along side them in
Yemen.
UK petrol prices have been close to equivalent of $6/USgal for a while -
currently about £1.20 per liter, £4.50/USgal = $5.67, and electric cars are
still pretty scarce. Hybrid taxis have been popular for a while though.
~~~
CalRobert
The falling cost of EV's and renewable energy is a relatively recent
phenomenon too, though. Even 5 years ago vs. now, the choice to buy EV has
gotten easier.
If I were in the market for a new car, I'd be looking at EV's. I drive about
5-6000 miles a year and can't really justify the money, though (and tbh 6,000
miles a year at 50+mpg means driving is a relatively small part of my carbon
footprint. Really, I need to fly less)
------
pjc50
Or 0.43 metric tons CO2/barrel, per [https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-
gases-equivalencies-ca...](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-
equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references)
------
rcMgD2BwE72F
“Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created
a lot of value for shareholders.”
------
ComputerGuru
Just yesterday, OPEC agreed to continue to reduce production through 2020 to
counter falling demand/prices.
Edit: Falling demand for _OPEC_ oil, I mean.
~~~
adventured
They're not countering falling demand, so much as trying to keep prices high
in the face of a wall of supply from the US. They're constraining their own
supply, while the US absorbs most of the demand growth. OPEC's forecast for
2019 remains for an expectation of about a million barrels per day of global
growth, mostly coming from India and China.
------
cronix
Yet gas prices keep going up. Someone is making a lot of money.
------
MentallyRetired
Wasn't there a political expectation that if we produced our own oil, the
price would drop? That was false from the start because we're a part of OPEC,
right?
~~~
skrowl
The United States is not a member of OPEC, if that's "us" and "we" to you
[https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/25.htm](https://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/25.htm)
------
francisofascii
Oil execs and lobbyists are worried about renewables. Better extract as much
profit as we can now before renewable energy tech gets better. Keep prices low
so consumption stays high. Convince the American people domestic drilling is a
good thing, even though it depletes oil reserves for the long term. The oil
industry today is similar to the logging industry a century ago.
------
perfunctory
> Crude output from the Permian is expected to jump 50% by 2025, according to
> BloombergNEF
------
entropea
Glad to see we're hitting climate goals.
------
googoogaga
Good. The more oil we pump, the less we import, the more we export
(generally). Obviously different industries require different flavors of oil,
but tight oil usually has great characteristics - light and sweet. A lot of
people don't know this, but the oil industry was founded almost entirely by
Americans, its good to see the US back on top.
I've had the pleasure of working for a large driller as a software engineer.
The innovation in drill tech is unbelievable. I hope all of you get the chance
to read about the upstream industry - phenomenal work being done. Oil is an
industry where a ton of the knowledge is only documented in books or the minds
of the workforce. so better yet, visit your local rig site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Homeless hackers head to Noisebridge for shelter - bifrost
http://kalw.org/post/homeless-hackers-head-noisebridge-shelter
======
cgag
There have been times I've wanted to read in the library at noisebridge, but
all the couches are just covered in people sleeping, it's pretty frustrating.
I feel for homeless people, but I don't think it should be noisebridge's
problem. I know I'm more tolerant than most and it discourages me from coming,
I'm sure there are many more who are driven away by it.
~~~
infinity0
"not my problem" might seem like a reasonable position to take, but you can
extend this argument and eventually conclude it's no-one's problem. or worse,
some magical "other party's" (welfare state?) problem. this "not my problem"
attitude is a big contribution to income inequality. it's "not my problem" to
try to develop basic living conditions in those slums, all I give a shit is
about this flashy shopping centre full of non-essentials!
not a very good long-term solution for a real problem. as the article says, a
more productive approach is to ask, "how do you hack San Francisco's
homelessness problem?"
~~~
cgag
I agree, but are you letting homeless people sleep in your house or in your
office? Letting them sleep at noisebridge doesn't do much to help the problem
in the large, and impairs it as a space to hang out and work on projects with
like minded people, which as far as I know is the idea behind noisebridge.
~~~
infinity0
letting them sleep won't help much, but kicking them out _without thinking
about trying to solve the issue in some other way_ just makes things worse.
then, you're just brushing dirt under the carpet.
a more sincere argument would be, "it's not my problem or noisebridge's
problem, but there ought to be _something_ to solve that problem, so let's
think about how to solve it - rather than simply stating 'it's not my problem'
and burying our heads in the sand".
~~~
cgag
I have thought about it and I still haven't cracked it. The best idea I've
heard is the whole basic income idea. I don't know what you want me to do
though.
------
ltcoleman
In my opinion, all hacker spaces, co-working spaces, etc. need somebody to be
the "bad cop". Building any size community requires members to participate.
Tech people in particular are generally less likely to want to cause
confrontation, but for the betterment of the community some policing is always
needed. It really goes back to respect. Respect the community, and it will
respect you back.
~~~
mcpherrinm
Definitely. Maybe Noisebridge is a cool place to be, but I hear stories like
this often enough and it really makes me never want to go there.
I've been to plenty of other spaces and it can be a cool scene, but
Noisebridge's reputation isn't good.
~~~
cgag
If you're in SF you should stop by sometime, it's still overall a cool place
to be, it's easy to get a distorted image of the place through the mailinglist
and news articles.
------
bifrost
For the record, this is sadly one of the reasons I don't hang out there more.
I can deal with bikeshedding and organizational issues, but the threat of
bedbugs/violence are not things I am super interested in.
I do go there specifically to meet up with people, and I do occasionally hang
out on the FreeNode IRC channel, but thats about it these days.
I still love the concept of Noisebridge and it needs to exist, but I am not
really a participant there right now.
------
varelse
I once went there for a meeting. It's easy to miss the place because it's in a
nondescript residential building in the middle of a somewhat iffy part of the
Mission district.
I arrived in the middle of a confrontation that almost turned violent. I can't
see how anyone could get work done in such a space but maybe I'm just an old
fogie. The experience made me really appreciate what I have.
~~~
derleth
> I arrived in the middle of a confrontation that almost turned violent.
Lemme guess: Lisp vs Haskell?
~~~
rbanffy
My favorite tribal thing will always be MSX vs Apple II...
Yes. I'm that old.
~~~
samstave
Slide rule vs vax!
~~~
zeckalpha
VAX? PDP.
~~~
varelse
Colossal Cave versus The Great Underground Empire?
Hurkle versus Mugwump versus Wumpus for the trifecta?
------
narrator
Three easy rules would solve everything:
1\. No TVs allowed on premise - Gets rid of slackers, stoners and people who
don't like to work.
2\. No alcohol - Gets rid of endless trouble and alcoholics.
3\. People must shower on a regular basis - Gets rid of the mentally ill.
~~~
j_baker
I'm inclined to say that hacker spaces should _have_ showers. That way there's
no excuse. Plus, it makes it easier to work out there as well.
------
Matti
"I'm about to explain to the people sleeping in the bunk beds that the bunk
beds are not for sleeping.
It is hard for me to type the above statement without laughing, but I
persevere."
[https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-
discuss/20...](https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-
discuss/2013-August/038854.html)
~~~
GuiA
Some context for people who are not familiar with Noisebridge: the bunk beds
are meant to provide a designated setting for napping.
[https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Hacker_Stacker_Napping_Pods](https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Hacker_Stacker_Napping_Pods)
------
misuba
Housing strikes me as a pretty hackable problem. There's a lot of space
between "residential hotels," Extended Stay America, and Airbnb, and there's a
lot of potential especially in high-rent areas to come in under the cost of
studio apartments by a lot, but still not be hovels.
If Soylent can find a market, surely there's a market for housing for hackers.
(It sounds like this isn't really quite the problem Noisebridge faces, but
it's what it made me think of.)
~~~
cinquemb
This made wonder about the situation with a lot of houses that were foreclosed
on over the years that are off the market ("owned" by banks and left in
various conditions).
I wonder if someone could use the zillow api (or something in the open) in
someway to deduce spaces/homes where people could invoke adverse possession
and somehow work it into concepts of hackerspaces as far as funding and usage
is concerned (maybe with some support of local communities as far as outreach
and image is concerned), but with more lax requirements when it comes to
allowing people to habitate.
IANAL, so all the specifics of how it would work out are hazy to me.
~~~
varelse
Unless you are a real estate pro, it is utter folly to rent your house out in
SF due to the many provisions of the Ellis Act.
[http://www.sftu.org](http://www.sftu.org)
In here you will find so many overly tenant-friendly rules and rights that
unless you can afford a really great lawyer to help you navigate them, it's
easy for small time landlords to get screwed over hard. This probably means
you.
I'm sure these rules were all instituted for good reasons, but IMO they've
become an inane and insane entitlement
I witnessed their effect personally some years ago when one of the creators of
bittorrent invoked the Ellis Act on an ex-girlfriend of mine who wanted to
take the top floor of her house off the rental market. He nearly drove her to
bankruptcy.
I'm not saying this is what always happens, but just seeing it occur once is
more than enough to persuade one to never ever even consider being a landlord
there.
~~~
cinquemb
I'm not talking about renting at all. I'm talking about "anyone, including
corporations, the federal government, states, and municipal corporations, can
be an adverse possessor"[0], but in this case some entity (e.g. hackerspace
group ltd|org|corp|llc) that raises funds like traditional hackerspace groups
in order to pay property taxes on residential homes that are being claimed in
adverse possession.
This is just an idea I had in the moment though, but in my eyes, banks will
give the most push back, though I'm sure some kinda of deal could be made if
mutual ground can be found.
[0] [http://legal-
dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Adverse+posses...](http://legal-
dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Adverse+possession)
------
amha
"And now they’re asking themselves a hard question: how do you hack San
Francisco's homelessness problem?"
------
hobs
I like that "I am just hacking this sandwich."
------
irunbackwards
There's a pretty large discussion going on about this on the Noisebridge
mailing list, just forwarded this link.
~~~
dkuntz2
Is it a public list? Can you post that link?
~~~
deleted_account
This may be the referenced thread:
[https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-
discuss/20...](https://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-
discuss/2013-August/038836.html)
------
SixTwo_BlackMan
The article is alarmist, hardly anyone shoots up in the space anymore.
[https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2013_05_21#Di...](https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Meeting_Notes_2013_05_21#DiscussionNotes)
------
yawnyawn
this is enough of an issue that someone started a 'rooster brigade' to wake
the sleepers up:
[https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Rooster_Brigade](https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Rooster_Brigade)
------
deckar01
If you can hack together some rent money, you can stay 2 blocks from
Noisebridge at 20mission. A lot of my roommates are "hacking" life at Burning
Man, but I might see if we can coordinate a Noisebridge group.
20mission.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A quick and simple image placeholder service - dongsheng
http://placehold.it/
======
yarone
Similar (and more interesting?) service launched (and was posted on HN) about
1 year ago: <http://placekitten.com/>
~~~
dave1010uk
Or: <http://placedog.com>
------
kingkool68
[http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/list-of-dummy-image-
gene...](http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/list-of-dummy-image-generators/)
------
spektom
I wonder in what situation such a service can be used? Thanks.
------
gcb
The referrer log of this should be interesting :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I'm 23, An Entrepreneur, and Fucking Terrified. - zhamilton89
https://medium.com/p/6cfbf7e256b3
======
untog
I don't like judging people based on their age. It seems like a really blunt
instrument that unfairly groups people together who do not belong there. But
as someone who is only just pushing 30, I can say that you are talking the
same kind of nonsense I did in my early 20s.
_" To all of the people who say that the best thing to do is get a good job,
buy a nice house, and to put the max into a 401k that the company will match:
Fuck you. It’s not what I want. Mediocrity is worse than failure."_
Mediocrity is not worse than failure. Try being homeless. Except when you say
'failure' you mean "maybe I'll have to move back in with my parents". You have
an enormous safety net allowing you to be so disdainful of "mediocrity", don't
take it for granted.
Stop romanticising driving yourself into the ground. Stop thinking you are
better than your peers that have "sold out" by taking (gasp) jobs. It sounds
like you've lived life very much on your own terms until now, but life doesn't
work that way indefinitely. At some point you have to make compromises in
order to achieve what you want. Deal with it.
Take a job as a developer. You'll make good money. Make sure it _isn 't_ for a
demanding startup. Something that guarantees exiting the office at 5pm every
day. Then go home and work on your startup. Plough your free time into your
startup, and when you have enough of a ramp you can quit your day job and
transition to the startup full time.
You are not a unique butterfly that is owed the opportunity to only ever do
exactly what you want.
~~~
prawks
To back up your point, in what world is having a good job, nice house, and
large retirement savings "mediocre"?
~~~
mathattack
When you come from the country club life (first paragraph) it is indeed
mediocre.
I'll toss in the counterpoint that having kids that are thrilled to see you,
even if you live in a tiny apartment, is anything but mediocre.
The OP seems to have a lot of priorities out of whack.
~~~
mindcrime
_To back up your point, in what world is having a good job, nice house, and
large retirement savings "mediocre"? reply_
_When you come from the country club life (first paragraph) it is indeed
mediocre._
I would consider that mediocre as well, and I grew up about as far from
"country club" life as you can get. As in, dirt-poor, below-the-poverty-line,
white-trash from rural southeastern NC.
Of course, some of that is that we constantly raise the bar for ourselves
(well, I do anyway). Maybe the scenario above would have sounded like heaven
to me when I was 20, but it doesn't now. Just the "job" part gives me the
creeps. I, for one, don't want a traditional "job" at all. My standard of the
line between mediocre life and successful life involves a big element of being
able to control my own fate to a greater degree, and some ability to call my
own shots. Translated, that means running a company I own, not working for
somebody else.
_The OP seems to have a lot of priorities out of whack._
Meh. Who are we to judge? A person's priorities are their priorities... there
is no "right" or "wrong" on this.
~~~
mathattack
I would argue that having your own company just shifts the control from your
boss to your customers. The one difference is you now have more control over
resources.
~~~
AnIrishDuck
My dad, the sole attorney in his private practice firm, put it this way: "When
you work a job, you have one boss. When you own a company, you have hundreds."
------
JonFish85
"To all of the people who say that the best thing to do is get a good job, buy
a nice house, and to put the max into a 401k that the company will match: It’s
not what I want. Mediocrity is worse than failure."
Cool. Then if/when you want to retire and have no savings, don't go dipping
into my 401k. I'm 100% for you making your decisions and wish you nothing but
the best. But when it's time to pay the piper, your kids are getting ready for
college and you have to tell them you can't afford to help them at all, you
live with that.
Obviously there's a case where you hit the jackpot and become insanely
wealthy. I wish this for you, but reality is that it probably won't happen.
Live with your decisions, for better or worse. But in 15 years, let's not be
having a conversation where you're whining about not being able to afford a
house, or not being able to pay for your kids' college, etc. And when you go
to retire, please don't vote for taxes being raised on my 401k to pay for your
retirement.
------
visakanv
I relate to you a lot, so if I'm harsh towards you I'm really just being harsh
to myself.
You're not really saying anything. You're describing your emotional state, but
that's it. You say you're afraid, but you're not actually getting to the root
of your fear. Sure, you don't want mediocrity. Who does, anyway? (Rhetorical
question.)
Is this just a pep-talk? If so, all the best to you, live long and prosper,
focus, work hard, all that good stuff. But I have a feeling that you have
something you want to be addressing, but you're not actually doing it.
I'm 23 too. I'm married to my childhood sweetheart and we have a home. I have
a great job doing marketing in a tech firm. Her heart's desire is to travel.
I'd like to take her around the world, and write novels and essays about
whatever MY heart desires. But I too have bills to pay (and my job's awesome,
anyway, so what's my problem?) And I too am afraid that my ambitions and
vision for myself and reality might not be easy to swallow, and/or that I
might hurt people along the way. I've already cut ties with some of my closest
friends.
Here's a guess that's going to sound a little pessimistic, but it's just a
guess and I could be totally wrong, and it's more about me than it is about
you- but I think you're going to find yourself returning to this exact same
position several times.
Not sure why I'm writing this, being messy and jumbled and all, but it's
probably the same reason why you wrote your post. So, uh, here it is.
Life's crazy. You're crazy. I'm crazy. Cheers to that. Once you're done
analysing and reviewing your emotional state, though, don't forget to get
around to doing the work- because that's what actually matters, and that's
what people will actually want to read about, pay you for, etc. That's the
real legacy you'll build.
~~~
oinksoft
Getting married, particularly when you're the primary earner, does an awful
lot for your perspective. You can't be so cavalier as the author when somebody
depends on you to put food on the table, and that's usually a good thing
(especially in terms of relating to the rest of the world that is wrapped up
in family life).
~~~
visakanv
That it does. It almost immediately made me realize how much of my earlier
thinking was narcissistic, romanticized, self-entitled bullshit.
I'm finding this an interesting position to be in now, because I completely
relate to OP, but I also... don't. It's like hearing a teenage boy telling you
how much he's well and truly in love with a girl he met that afternoon. You
don't want to falsely encourage him, but you don't want to cruelly discourage
him either... just trying to be helpful in some way, if that's in any way
possible. Cause I think I could've used some help then.
------
edw519
Being an "Entrepreneur" is about one thing only: solving others' problems.
Everything else is window dressing or worse, diversions.
This rant includes all kinds of stuff about "me", "my life", "my philosphies",
"my problems", "my future", "my", "my", "my"...
Where's mention of others, their problems, and the solutions?
OP may call himself "An Entrepreneur", but supplies no data to support that
claim. Sadly, an all-too-often recurring theme these days.
------
david927
Oh god. Don't do this. Don't go out like a meteor. It's romantic and
exciting... and stupid. There's a time when every doctor has to look at the
clock and call the time of death, and you have to do that for your startup.
Remember the "be honest with yourself" rule? It's part of that. Be brave.
To give up is not defeat; it's rallying. Maybe at Accenture you'll learn your
future customers, find something to enhance, or exploit. You don't know. But
above all you have to be honest with yourself and why you wanted this: are you
the driver and the company the car, or are you the car and the company the
driver?*
*In other words, is the company what is trying to be delivered and you're just taking it there, or do you want to go somewhere and the company is the means to do that.
------
epa
If you are really going to devote 100% of your time you can't have this
mentality. Typical white, wealthy, suburban nerd who identified himself by his
possessions and not by his accomplishments. To be an entrepreneur you have to
be fearless, you need to realize the risk and mitigate, you need to identify
your weakness and strengthen it. Enough of this I have everything and im
scared of losing it mentality, stop crying, you will be fine.
An entrepreneur must have heart and passion. If you have time to think about
these things your not busy enough. Focus on your business and the problems
your business faces. YOU are the business. you life should be the business.
Your personal problems don't matter. run and don't look back. Do not compare
yourself to anyone but your competitors. Be strong, live on.
------
mathattack
Reading the title my first thought is, "You should be."
Reading the first paragraph I think, "Here's a spoiled brat complaining"
When I read, "We move higher, we fly faster, we get meaner." I start to lose
sympathy. It's another of "Woe unto me, the underappreciated superstar from
the country club."
------
ironchef
What's wrong with 9 to 5ing, learning more, and doing your own thing on your
own time for a while. There's NOTHING wrong with that. Don't buy into the
romantic notion that you have to give 110% to your startup or it's not worth
doing. Pragmatism is ok. Pragmatism is not mediocrity. Don't confuse the two.
There's a lot of hyperbole and rhetoric in the startup world. Don't buy into
it. Plenty of startups have been launched (and done well) in people's "off
time".
~~~
niuzeta
I am young, just out of university, had a passion for writing, did a major-cs-
minor-literature.
Now I do 9 to 5, and write after work. Life is good for me and I am happy
because I love my work and after-work.
The purist obsession that you need to be 100% devoted to something is beyond
me, but like I said, I am happy and know that I am happy because I knew this
would make me happy.
The OP has a different opinion of happiness, and it's his happiness, and I
don't find it offensive.
~~~
frenchy
It's not so much his opinion of happiness, but his looking-down on other
opinions of happiness.
~~~
niuzeta
exactly. that's why I'm rather unsettled by the article. However, I've seen a
little too many of young-and-ambitious kinds that I've gotten used to them by
now. Whether that's a good thing or bad is not for me, though.
------
freyr
> _The idea of three twenty-somethings in a studio apartment, writing code and
> eating ramen is romantic to entrepreneurs._
Really? Maybe to aspiring entrepreneurs in their teens and very early
twenties, that sounds romantic. To everyone else, that likely sounds awful.
You're 23. You don't really know anything yet. Maybe a little, but not much.
You're parents aren't in charge now, you're out of school, and now you're
going to learn about life. And you're arriving at the same realizations that
most people do around that age. You're figuring out that living your dream has
real costs. You're figuring out that your adult relationships will suffer,
hard. You'll see your peers move up the corporate ladder, and it'll feel like
you're just watching from the sidelines. And if you go the 9-5 (let's be
honest, more likely an 8-6), they're going to be your boss someday.
But you're also 23. You're incredibly young, and you still have time to mess
up. And you'll have the rest of your life to run the rat race, if that's what
you one day choose.
So stop stressing, but do get your priorities straight. You'll need to work
within the constraints set by your priorities.
The biggest constraint might be your relationship. It's normal that your
girlfriend doesn't share in your dream of ramen noodles and Three Buck Chuck.
And it doesn't get easier, especially if she wants kids. If you're in a
promising relationship, maybe you're realizing that it matters more to you
than your work. On the other hand, relationships come and go, often
unpredictably. You have to figure out how to handle that for yourself.
Good luck!
~~~
speeder
I am 25, eating ramen, living with lots of people in a cramped house, and
seeing my money get burned paying debts.
I have a startup because lack of choice (here in Brazil programmers are very
badly paid, and I don't figured yet how to move... most countries has some
weird requeriment or another that I cannot meet).
It is not romantic at all, it suck.
5 years ago my dream was have a 9-5 job, a house, a wife and kids. This proved
kinda impossible here...
Now my dream is become absurdly rich and own a farm... And I have that dream
because since I was forced into a risky situation, I plan in failing, or
having great rewards... I had no choice in having a risk, but since I have
lots of risk, at least I can choose to really go for it...
But I am sure, that if I could have a 9-5 job, house and wife, I would be
perfectly happy.
------
camworld
I'm not sure I see the fucking point of using fucking swear words.
~~~
Xcelerate
Normally I don't upvote posts like yours but I did here. I'm not sure why
every article on Medium (that I see posted on HN) has to have that word in the
title. Eventually it just loses its impact. Maybe it's to grab attention, but
then I would say more thought needs to go into the headline anyway.
~~~
RyanZAG
I think the swearwords are particularly fitting here. Using swear words for no
good reason is a decent indicator of immaturity, and this rant is one of the
more immature things I've read lately. Some type of entitled flailing, so much
so that he actually believes he can force his reality on the world.
------
ulisesrmzroche
TLDR from your favorite slush-pile-as-a-startup: It's an entitled WASP
roughing it at the country-club and whose startup isn't working whining about
how terribly unfair life - but FUCK THE NORMIES!
You have to learn when to fold them, my dude. Better to say here ran a coward
than here died the brave.
------
zwieback
I read your other posts - I think you're right to be terrified.
~~~
csdrane
+1
@zhamilton89:
You've written a lot where you identify as being an entrepreneur, but I can't
find anything you've written on what you're working on. Your other pieces for
medium seem to avoid answering this question. What is your project's goal?
------
fennecfoxen
"To all of the people who say that the best thing to do is get a good job, buy
a nice house, and to put the max into a 401k that the company will match: Fuck
you. It’s not what I want. Mediocrity is worse than failure."
Hey, man, if that's not what you want, that's cool and all, but I'm just going
to defend myself and my buddies with good jobs and stuffed 401(k)s: There are
other things besides Business that matter to people. For instance, I'd rather
be a middling-to-decent family-man than a wildly successful entrepreneur, any
day of the week.
There's a lot to give up in pursuit of your dreams, whether that dream is
family or success or artistic fulfillment or travel... Sometimes you can
choose to have some of column A and some of column B at the expense of being
"mediocre" (or at least not-99.999th-percentile) at both - but maybe sometimes
that leaves you a better person overall.
Anyway. Whatever floats your boat; just don't be too down on the rest of the
world's strategies or anything
~~~
mgkimsal
More to the point, most 'wantrepreneurs' rely on customers being in the middle
class or higher, and having discretionary incomes from their stuffed 401ks to
spend on their product/service/Saas/etc. To call that lifestyle 'mediocrity'
and insult the very people that you need to grow your business is beyond the
pale.
Just wait until he starts hiring people. He'll _need_ those people who are
satisfied when their work life is 'mediocre' by his terms.
Silicon Valley startup porn is harmful to many people, and I think the OP
might be one of the harmed.
~~~
mindcrime
_To call that lifestyle 'mediocrity' and insult the very people that you need
to grow your business is beyond the pale._
FWIW, I think "mediocre" is relative and very personal. A stable job, a modest
house, a 401(k) with some money in it, etc., would be mediocre for me, because
that just isn't what I want. But I would never argue that it's mediocre in any
universal or objective sense. Whether someone's life is mediocre or not is
entirely relative to _their_ ambitions, goals, and priorities.
So if you ever hear me describe that kind of life as mediocre, know that that
only means it isn't the kind of life I aspire to.
In fact, I go home sometimes to visit my best friend... he works as an over
the road truck driver, doesn't make a ton of money, has a modest home, etc.,
but has a great wife and three kids. I would never call his life mediocre, and
I'm even jealous in certain regards at times. I'll even be the first to say
that he has accomplished more than I have in a lot of ways, while I'm off
chasing entrepreneurial dreams and big ambitions.
_Silicon Valley startup porn is harmful to many people_
No doubt. But for some of us, it's not just "I want to be rich". I mean, I
joke about a lot of things (search for my old posts here mentioning the word
'Maserati' for example), but the real driver for me is the need to be free. I
want to run my own company and have plenty of money, just for the degree of
freedom that entails. I can't stand the idea of having a "boss" in the
traditional sense, somebody who can come in and order me around and keep me
under his thumb. I want "FU money" because I want the freedom to say "FU" and
go do what _I_ want to do. But that's just a reflection of my self-centered,
radical individualist, libertarian nature.
~~~
mgkimsal
"I want to run my own company and have plenty of money,"
There are plenty of ways you could be 'free' without owning a company. We all
need FU money, but if 'freedom' is the ultimate goal, you could reduce your
wants and probably have FU money after a year or so at a decent job, then move
to some asian island and live decently off the interest.
That's not the 'freedom' most of us aspire to though. :)
~~~
mindcrime
_There are plenty of ways you could be 'free' without owning a company._
Oh yeah, no doubt. That's the problem with engaging in too much reductionism
in conversations like this. Human motivation is always more complex than just
one or two things. I want to build a startup for other reasons than just
financial independence, for sure. I guess the way I'd put it is:
"Founding a startup and growing a successful, profitable company seems - to me
- to be the best path to satisfying a large number of my goals and ambitions
and priorities, to an adequate degree, without compromising any of my
fundamental principles".
Or think of it as an optimization problem... my calculations optimize the
system of equations best by starting a company, based on what I know right
now.
~~~
mgkimsal
BTW, are you ever back in NC?
~~~
mindcrime
Oh yeah, I've been back since mid June, modulo a two week trip to Miami that I
just returned from. I'm sitting at the Barnes & Noble at New Hope Commons now,
writing this. :-)
We should get together again sometime soon, and do lunch or drinks or
something. Shoot me an email or give me a call and let's see what we can line
up.
------
orionblastar
Never give up, don't end your life. Failure is a part of life, we humans learn
from our mistakes. If you ever read "Dune" or watched the movie "Fear is the
mind killer." and it makes a lot of sense that statement.
I am 45, and I am having a hard time. I am flat broke, disabled, and 100K in
medical debt. No startups want to hire me, nobody wants to help me, and I did
a great job when I was working and did two startups of my own.
[http://www.greatdox.com/documentaries/](http://www.greatdox.com/documentaries/)
I want to do documentaries on various topics because I faced a lot of stuff in
my life and I don't want to see others suffer as I have, as I have seen many
others suffer. Know that you are not alone. I have software I want to develop
as well.
[http://www.greatdox.com/software/](http://www.greatdox.com/software/)
~~~
surfmike
"No startups want to hire me, nobody wants to help me" \--> why does your
profile then say "I am not looking for work, or joining a startup" ?
~~~
orionblastar
because I am going through a period of healing. Before I ended up on
disability nobody wanted to hire me or let me join a startup. I had just been
in a hospital recently and almost had a stroke and heart attack with high
blood pressure, and found I have a defective heart valve. I had to take some
time off to heal.
What I am trying to do is side-projects on my own. If you think I can better
do that by joining a startup and getting work, I can change my status. But I
had tried for over a decade and got nothing, before I put that status up.
~~~
surfmike
Ah ok. Best of luck. Side projects make great portfolios too, I hope they work
out for you, or otherwise they can be a great thing to show future potential
employers.
~~~
orionblastar
Well if I cannot find work, I'll keep working on side projects until I can
find work.
------
dc_ploy
I work to live, and not live to work. I'm that 22 year old sucker that took a
job as a developer out of college making 65k+. I work at a great company and
am surrounded by people smarter than me. It's a comfy job and enough to pay
rent and take my gf out for vacation. Screw me right?
------
mbesto
Been there, done that. Welcome to the club buddy! Name a prominent successful
entrepreneur and there's a VERY good chance they've felt the same exact way
you do. Yes, even Steve f'n Jobs.
As an entrepreneur I often have people (who are 9-5'rs) saying to me "that's
awesome you're doing it on your own. I'm so envious". Yet, they have no idea
the sacrifices that are required to make it on your own. The reality is that
they are scared shitless to do it themselves. Take pride in knowing you are
doing something 95% of the "comfortable" population in the world are scared as
hell to do themselves.
Feel free to get in touch (contact in profile) if you wanna talk things
through over Skype.
------
agibsonccc
Taking a job temporarily isn't the end of the world. Everyone needs an income
of some kind. The only key to this is persistence. If you want it bad enough
"giving in" won't affect you. It's taken me a few years to figure out what I
want to do all while learning what a business is, how sales work, and
everything else that's involved. Do it for the journey, not the end result.
There's nothing romantic about it. Independence comes at a cost: risk. Look at
what you're doing objectively and you'll do fine. No matter how invincible you
might feel in your 20's, failure is going to happen anyways. It's how you roll
with the punches that will determine whether you come out on top or not. In
the end everyone's goals are different. Many people are happy with getting a
job somewhere. The rough and ramen lifestyle isn't for everyone. Many people
just want to have a family, and frankly there's nothing wrong with it.
Source: I'm 23 too, but I don't pretend to be awesome. I'm just a stubborn kid
looking to achieve something and getting by however necessary.
------
graeme
A lot of people rightly point out the melodrama in this post, and that the OP
has it better than he realizes.
There's still some truth here. I'm 28, and doing ok now. I'm financially
stable, and have 2K a month in recurring revenue + what I earn from short term
engagements.
My peers now think what I'm doing is cool, and my parents now appear to accept
that I'm not a hobo.
But, for the first year and a half, it was very tough emotionally. I was doing
fine materially, but earning far less than I would have from a job.
I knew that what I was working on had potential. In fact, my short term (6-12
month) predictions were pretty spot on.
But that was based on my understanding of my niche. Others couldn't see inside
my head. It was very, very hard for my parents to see that what I was doing
would be worthwhile.
Now that I have externally verifiable metrics of success, it is much easier to
convince people that what I'm doing is a good idea.
That in turn makes my work easier. I always felt that what I was doing was
worthwhile. But it's a lot easier to work on something when your peers agree
with your assessment.
------
cko
I'm only 27 myself, so I don't have much wisdom to share, but...
You did say that living your well-off lifestyle costs very little.
"I want to give the same unwavering devotion to my children as my parents gave
to me, but I want to do it in a way that does not lead to living paycheck to
paycheck."
You wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck if you accepted a job. I'm a
pharmacist. It's OK money - I'm sure software developers can get more. You can
build up savings and investments for a few years while developing some
projects on the side. This gives you breathing room. It seems like you're
walking a tightrope right now - with fear of losing what you already have
(girlfriend, material stuff) and fear of this idea you call "mediocrity"
pushing you along.
At this point no one's going to write an epic poem about my life. I'm arrogant
enough to hate "mediocrity" as well, but it's a small price to pay for peace
of mind.
------
itsallbs
I remember when I was this dramatic. I have no doubt that the emotions he
experiences are very real, but he has no frame of reference to see all this
for what it is: not really a big deal. If he fails, it sounds like he has a
safety net and support to get on his feet and try again. There's no shame in
being "mediocre" and having a 9-5 as long as he doesn't get complacent and
lose his drive.
Any decent entrepreneur, however, is not going to lose that drive and desire.
I know I haven't, and I've yet to achieve what this kid has. Even if he fails,
he tried. He'll learn a ton and will be better-equipped for the next go-round.
------
codegeek
Like untog said, I don't like judging people based on their age as well. But
here is the reality. A 20 year old even if a superstar entrepreneur has not
experienced the ups and downs of life enough as a 30 year old. (I am 32) A 30
year old not the same like a 40 year old and so on...
If the OP wants to be free, it comes with a cost. Plain and simple. Don't want
to be like your friends who have 9-5, a wife, a kid ? Thats fine. But be
willing to pay the price for it as well.
I only want to say this "There is a cost and price for _everything_ you
do/want in your life". You decide what is worth to you.
------
ajiang
If this were written by an aspiring actor, refusing to live a life of non-
fame, putting his family and loved ones through hardship because he refuses to
take that steady job, how much differently would this be perceived?
------
ebbv
And a kindly "Fuck you." for calling those of us who choose to work "normal"
jobs mediocre and sell outs. You're a douche. Here's hoping you grow up.
------
niuzeta
You seem to be romanticizing a little too much to be realistic, yet you seem
to be realistic enough to assess the current situation.
My advice is to lower your expectation a little. A mediocrity is better than a
total failure. Consider achieving mediocrity _the_ failure, which you would be
willing to take before aiming for the big thing, again. Try living homeless
for a week, and you'll know.
We're young and sometimes the balance between the ideal and the real can be
stammering to hold.
------
7Figures2Commas
If you're 23, an entrepreneur, fucking terrified _and have time to write about
it_ , you're doing it wrong.
------
brianbreslin
A lot of times I wonder if people become entrepreneurs because they think its
this fun lifestyle? Or do they think its an instant path to riches? Or do they
fear a 9-5 job? Or are they doing it for the reason I do it: to create
something?
Psychologists could have a field day with entrepreneurs.
------
mgkimsal
"The Dip", referenced in this article, is something I've had a lot of people
recommend to me, yet (seemingly) goes 100% against the "fail fast" mentality
also espoused by many others. Any thoughts on how/if these are reconciled?
------
JT123
Go read this to find what it could be
[http://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/commitment-to-
win](http://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/commitment-to-win)
------
dkrich
Where is the mention of his business? I don't have any clue what he is
actually trying to build.
If there is no business, this article should be titled "I'm 23 and Fucking
Terrified of Hard Work."
------
capkutay
Does anyone know what company the writer of this article started?
------
willholloway
I've been there, Zach and I feel your pain. The furiously maddening aspect of
the entire ordeal is just how little money you actually need to be free, and
how the lack of that little bit of money can wreak havoc on your entire life
and nervous system.
Oh what wonders could be conjured with a soothing $2500 per month trust fund
deposit! How quickly things could move forward, with doubt and existential
dread erased!
Sadly, we are just well educated serfs holding the arrogant pretense that we
can become lords. We can, but its not going to be easy.
So I feel you, and I read what you wrote carefully and I sympathize so here is
my advice.
I would suggest recalibrating your concept of what is old. 23 is incredibly
young. Forget about what your friends are doing. Half those guys getting
married and having kids young are wishing they were free like you are right
now.
This experience will teach you some things, but what doesn't kill you doesn't
necessarily make you stronger. More likely it causes burnout and the dwindling
of your dendrites.
I wouldn't prolong it for romantic notions.
Consider pivoting towards becoming cowboy auxiliary engineering help for
companies that already have revenue. You can retain your freedom and get much
needed cash.
This is what I have done, and put my own product visions on hold. It is quite
good. I retain my freedom and people send me large sums via paypal. It is a
strategic retreat. Sometimes you advance ahead of your supply lines and
strategy dictates a pause.
Also, ignore your guilt about not taking your girlfriend out more.
Don't move. I was living in a penthouse studio apartment in Boulder and I
thought a move to Austin would be worth it to lower expenses. The time and
stress of the move was is no way worth it.
Depending on where you live, sell your car. The faster you do this the better.
It is the most expensive non critical thing that you own.
Think of the one thing you can do today to bring in $5000 and do that.
Godspeed, you crazy bastard. You're probably just insane enough to pull this
heist off and cheat your capitalist oppressors out of the smug satisfaction
they have when you stay in your place.
------
lutusp
Quote "A business partner that compliments my skills perfectly."
No, in point of fact, he _complements_ your skills perfectly.
~~~
AlisdairSH
"Hey Zach, you could sell ice to Eskimos!" "Hey Zach, you're a visionary the
likes of whom we haven't seen since Steve Jobs!"
------
6d0debc071
"If at first you don't succeed try, try, try again. And then quit, no point in
being bull-headed about it."
------
mindcrime
Good stuff. I'm with you Zach. Except I'm 40, so I feel slightly different
forms of terror than you do. And I don't have the beautiful, intelligent
girlfriend. Or a motorcycle.
_To all of the people who say that the best thing to do is get a good job,
buy a nice house, and to put the max into a 401k that the company will match:_
When I was a young boy
They said you're only gettin' older
But how was I to know then
That they'd be cryin' on my shoulder
Put your money in a big house
Get yourself a pretty wife
She'll collect your life insurance
When she connects you with a knife [1]
_Fuck you. It’s not what I want. Mediocrity is worse than failure._
Yeah, absolutely. I've tolerated mediocrity for too much of my life, due to a
misguided faith in the old saws "patience is a virtue" and "good things come
to those who wait", etc.
So now I'm on the cusp of "old", and have a startup that I have a lot of
confidence in (but, then again, entrepreneurs almost have to have an
irrational level of confidence and optimism!), but the terror of basically
having to acknowledge "this is probably my last 'at bat'".
If this doesn't succeed, by the time we fail, I think I'll be too old and too
tired to bother trying again. That means I write off all hope of living the
life I really want to live. At that point, I doubt I'll see much point in
living, so I kinda expect that if it happens, I'll load my car up with booze,
and head to Vegas to drink myself to death, ala Nick Cage's character in
_Leaving Las Vegas_.
_Can we make it while living modest lifestyles? I think yes. It will be hard,
but fuck… it’s going to be hard anyway._
I think so, but, speaking as an "older guy", I'll just say this: be aggressive
as fuck about pursuing your dreams. And if you're going to sacrifice a bit and
do some element of the "entre-monk" thing, it's probably more tolerable in
your 20's than in your 30's, or (worse) your 40's. I'm not saying you have to
do the entre-monk thing, mind you. But I am saying that you probably can't
afford to coast, and do too much playing around being patient.
_I am starting to truly understand why the people that seem to make the best
entrepreneurs are empirically unstable. You can’t go into this shit with a
sane disposition._
Agreed.
[1]:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUkqBRC1zUA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUkqBRC1zUA)
------
jstalin
Still takes about 5 seconds for me to see anything render other than the "M"
in the corner.
------
adeptus
You wrote all that at 23? You should be writing for a living! Forget code,
write in English.
~~~
mjhea0
i agree - the writing is amazing. you did such a great job of conveying a lot
of what i feel on a daily basis. i'm 30, and i work freelance. i rarely sleep.
very little social life. it amazes me on a daily basis that i somehow still
have friends - and a girlfriend - considering how much i neglect those around
me in favor of doing what i love. where is the balance? i, too, want a wife
and kids someday.
anyhow, great piece. as long as you can live another day, the opportunity is
there for something big to happen. i've gone from the lowest of lows to the
highest of highs in a matter of a few hours.
perhaps reframing what success really is would help. i know how hard that can
be, though. take it easy on yourself. not many people can do what you're
doing. measuring yourself to those living a so-called "normal" lifestyle is
unfair to yourself. you've chosen a different path, a path that, believe me,
many would love but are too scared to make.
------
coin
I really wish that medium.com would not disable pinchzoom on iOS devices.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Erlang Web: open source framework for applications - prakash
http://www.erlang-web.org/about.html
======
henning
It's a bit unfortunate that there's already an Erlang framework called
"ErlyWeb".
~~~
speek
Didn't people stop developing that?
~~~
a-priori
People? It's exclusively Yariv as far as I know.
Last I heard he's gotten hooked on Numenta's approach to AI, so I guess you
could say he's on a hiatus. The source is available though -- I maintain a
mirror of his repository on GitHub.
------
mindaugas
What about erlang web frameworks on top of Mochiweb ? Is there any?
~~~
fcesarini
We plan on integrating mochi web to the erlang-web. So far, it handles inets
and yaws. Adding mochi web is not that hard, and help is always welcome :-)
------
speek
Yes!
More Erlang Frameworks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BBC: Slack 'bans users' who have visited US sanctioned countries - jwildeboer
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46642760
======
troydavis
This is a dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18730314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18730314)
Original discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107)
------
tim333
The bans seem a little over the top compared with what is legally required. I
went to Iran in 1993 - I wonder if I'm on the list!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Harness Could Allow Dogs, Humans to Communicate - marklabedz
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/11/06/361730797/innovation-harness-could-allow-dogs-humans-to-communicate
======
fractallyte
Dogs already communicate with humans - it's just that most humans are too
'dumb' to understand the signals being conveyed: body language, scent,
vocalization, behavior...
------
bitwize
"My master made me this collar so that I could--SQUIRREL!!!"
First thing I thought of.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reminis: Digital Photo Courier, Delivers the photos you took to their owners - ozgurozkan
https://be.remin.ist/pro/
======
ozgurozkan
Show your face to the camera and subscribe to your future photos that can be
uploaded here: [https://www.reminis.app](https://www.reminis.app)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
S3 Failure Raises Questions About Cloud Design - whalliburton
http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/07/s3-failure-raises-questions-about-cloud.html
======
mdasen
Everyone is treating this failure as if them managing a MogileFS system (or
just sticking the content on network attached storage) would never see
downtime. It's silly.
Maybe you could have done better. Maybe you would have lost all your data
permanently. Let's not be so over-the-top that we think our infrastructures
don't have vulnerabilities. That's what I like about Smugmug. They at least
cop to the fact that their more expensive internal systems had problems too.
~~~
wmf
I don't know the name for it, but there's a psychological difference between
risks that you could have prevented and ones that you couldn't have. People
think driving is safer than flying _because they're doing the driving_.
------
sanj
"But what we had never considered is that our "anti-normalization" design
principle also relates to stability of design."
You might not have thought of it. But Werner Vogels did.
[http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/12/eventually_consi...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/12/eventually_consistent.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you bookmark? - neurocroc
I recently started moving all my bookmarks from Safari to a mind map I am making (https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map) and I really love how flexible this format really is.<p>I had a lot of bookmarks and had quite a lot of difficulty trying to find the one bookmark or that one article that I have read. Now everything is kept in a mind map sorted by topics. I am also able to share my bookmarks in the open in this way.<p>Does anyone else use a similar workflow? I am curious how do you actually stay on top of this vast beast, that internet is.
======
ddingus
Two ways:
One, in browser. I do use folders.
The other is seriously old school, but I like it. Drop addresses into a set of
folders as shortcuts, or "Web jumpers" as they were called in SGI Irix, where
I first started doing that.
I get folder names, shortcut title, and address text to search on. Works
reasonably well.
I also have a text file with search engines and terms I find useful.
------
simplehuman
Meemo
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stevey's Google Platforms Rant - UkiahSmith
https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
======
IronWolve
He is correct about amazons blindness and accessibility features, kindle books
via app and web has poor to none screen reading ability. I know they want to
force people to buy the audible versions, or buy the kindle tablet that has
the reader, but if your on PC and viewing with a browser, there is no reason
to not support microsoft's built in reader.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask PG: Mr. G, is it a promise? - jdileo
Mr. G., Will applications submitted without yet having a co-founder still be reviewed by yourself, JL, RTM or TB?<p>Respectfully asked, of course.
======
pg
I'm unsure of the scope of the or, but assuming it's the narrower: yes, every
application gets reviewed by at least one human.
When there's a class of applications we don't want to get (e.g. from groups
none of whom can participate in person), we ask people not to submit them.
~~~
jdileo
thanks for quick reply, sir. make it a great day.
------
pclark
I think there have been quite a few startups accepted into YC with only 1
founder. Wasn't Divvyshot 1 founder initially?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What happened to the app Yo? - aml183
Does anyone use it anymore? Do they have any money left? Haven't heard anything
======
theworstshill
Yo
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Ok, so I just moved to SF.. Now what? - 10dpd
======
moocow01
You'll probably need to be a bit more specific about your situation to get
meaningful responses.
------
pat2man
Just chill, hang out, get to know the people and places around you. Don't
worry about doing everything perfectly.
------
Marcus10110
attend Nerd Nite SF this Wednesday: <http://sf.nerdnite.com/>
------
jsrivaya
Now team up and go with the flow
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How secure is Linux's random number generator? - hpaavola
http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-July/004728.html
======
nullc
The annoying thing is that the Linux RNG is really limiting without something
like RdRand.
It used to be that most drivers contributed to the randomness pool, so it
seldom ran short. It used to be that you could configure the size of the pool,
so if you were running short you could make it larger. But then it was
discovered that the pool resizing had a locally exploitable vulnerability so
it was removed, leaving it always at the smallest value; and it was realized
that many driver sources weren't very random and/or were externally
controllable so most were removed.
The end effect is that much server hardware only gets about 50-100 bits per
second added only to a pool of 4096, and /dev/random is constantly running out
leading to weird performance problems (like ssh connections taking a long
time). This results in a desperate need to replace /dev/random with something
like RdRand when it could just otherwise be another untrusted contributor if
the rest of the system around /dev/random were sane.
~~~
raverbashing
Apparently, for some "security experts" it's damned if you do, damned if you
don't
If you don't use RdRand then you have few sources of "true" randomness, hence,
your RNG is predictable, manipulable and you're an idiot and a 5 year old can
break your crypto
If you use RdRand then "blah blah blah this is opaque", hence, your RNG is
predictable, manipulable and you're an idiot and a 5 year old can break your
crypto
Perfect solutions exist only in labs and my impression is that most of these
"experts" make things less secure.
~~~
nullc
Meh. Simply making the default pool larger would go a long way towards moving
systems out of a desperate situation. With that done there would be a lot less
reason to short circuit it and go RdRand only.
No one is concerned about RdRand as a contributing source— with other genuine
source of randomness RdRand isn't likely a back door once mixed in.
~~~
tytso
Making the pool larger isn't sufficient for embedded systems that don't have a
lot of sources of entropy in the first place. Especially since very often the
most critical secrets (such as the RSA keys for the certificates used by
network printers, for example) are generated when the embedded system is first
installed, where even if you have a larger pool, there isn't any opportunity
to fill with the extremely limited amount of entropy available to said device.
~~~
raverbashing
Yes, this is _very_ bad in embedded systems
As in your example, the only source of entropy a network printer has: network
data, easy to manipulate or even no activity. So no way to generate keys for
example.
In some cases hardware sources are a must. Yes, in the end you'll need to
trust them
------
olympus
Just because something is closed source doesn't mean it's insecure. RdRand
meets various standards for RNGs and the dieharder tests don't show anything
of concern. While you can't be 100 percent sure of the reliability of RdRand
because you can't audit it, I feel safe trusting it for all but the most
critical of applications. Here's a blog post describing testing RdRand with
dieharder: [http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2012/10/intel-
rdrand-...](http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2012/10/intel-rdrand-
instruction-revisited.html)
~~~
oellegaard
You are right that closed source doesn't mean its insecure - on the other
hand, open source could prove that it is indeed secure. With new scandals
coming up every week these days, about hidden backdoors in security software,
I trust open source more than ever before.
~~~
tptacek
Ironically, it's particularly vis a vis cryptographic random number generation
where we can most easily show open source cryptography failing its users;
Debian fatally broke the OpenSSL CSPRNG so badly that attackers could remotely
brute force SSH keys.
~~~
tankenmate
Whereas with closed source you would _almost never_ know. Crypto is very hard
to do properly, but at least with open source you have the possibility of
independent third party analysis.
~~~
lmm
Wasn't the debian vulnerability discovered because someone noticed that two
different servers had the same key? That would have gone down exactly the same
with closed source.
------
dave1010uk
For those that aren't aware, the security of a rand number generator is very
important:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack)
~~~
surement
A personal favourite:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976)
~~~
homeomorphic
That was a wonderful read. Thank you.
------
sejje
Am I the only guy who can't figure out how to navigate mailing lists archives?
These things are internet hell.
~~~
jevinskie
I agree. Try searching for the title on gmane.org
~~~
ReidZB
Here's the list on gmane:
[http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.cryptography.rando...](http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.cryptography.randombit)
Not sure how to link a particular article in that view. The 'direct link'
sends you to an article-only page. But the message by the OP appears as the
third top-level thread in that view.
~~~
secure
The link is
[http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.cryptography.ran...](http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.security.cryptography.randombit/4689)
You get to that by clicking on the subject in the bottom frame.
------
guns
And here is the mailing list thread that the author refers to:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/7/29/366](https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/7/29/366)
~~~
semenko
There was a lot more follow-up later, see e.g.
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/5/422](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/5/422)
The important commit here is:
[http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.g...](http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=c2557a303ab6712bb6e09447df828c557c710ac9)
Excerpted:
_Change get_random_bytes() to not use the HW RNG, even if it is avaiable.
The reason for this is that the hw random number generator is fast (if it is
present), but it requires that we trust the hardware manufacturer to have not
put in a back door. (For example, an increasing counter encrypted by an AES
key known to the NSA.)
It's unlikely that Intel (for example) was paid off by the US Government to do
this, but it's impossible for them to prove otherwise \--- especially since
Bull Mountain is documented to use AES as a whitener. Hence, the output of an
evil, trojan-horse version of RDRAND is statistically indistinguishable from
an RDRAND implemented to the specifications claimed by Intel. Short of using a
tunnelling electronic microscope to reverse engineer an Ivy Bridge chip and
disassembling and analyzing the CPU microcode, there's no way for us to tell
for sure._
------
acqq
The best approach to have is IMHO here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//dev/random](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//dev/random)
_Gutterman, Pinkas, & Reinman in March 2006 published a detailed
cryptographic analysis of the Linux random number generator[5] in which they
describe several weaknesses. Perhaps the most severe issue they report is with
embedded or Live CD systems such as routers and diskless clients, for which
the bootup state is predictable and the available supply of entropy from the
environment may be limited. For a system with non-volatile memory, they
recommend saving some state from the RNG at shutdown so that it can be
included in the RNG state on the next reboot. In the case of a router for
which network traffic represents the primary available source of entropy, they
note that saving state across reboots "would require potential attackers to
either eavesdrop on all network traffic" from when the router is first put
into service, or obtain direct access to the router's internal state. This
issue, they note, is particularly critical in the case of a wireless router
whose network traffic can be captured from a distance, and which may be using
the RNG to generate keys for data encryption._
It shouldn't be a religious but an engineering problem. If you manage keep
some state between reboots and use it after the next reboot, you're making it
hard enough for anybody not having the physical access to that state. Then you
can also use RdRand to mix it with the output of your stream based on your
state, and with other sources of entropy if you have them. If RdRand turns out
to be suspicious, you're at least much better off than using only hard coded
states.
Anybody knows if some kind of described state is used now?
~~~
caf
Yes - for example this is done by /etc/init.d/urandom on Debian and Ubuntu
systems.
~~~
acqq
My question was for /dev/random. The main problem RdRand solves is quantity:
obtaining a lot of random bits per second. Even if they were produced in a way
that somebody knows possible weaknesses, mixing them with something
cryptographically strong where we control the seed we'd preserve quite a high
throughput. I know that there is /dev/urandom which can often be good enough,
but I know that too much applications in fact prefer to use /dev/random so
making /dev/random robust has sense.
I see Ted Ts'o commented too, and as I understand, having RdRand is still much
better compared to having the platforms without it. There's a lot more to care
about than is RdRand "perfect" and once you have something like RdRand you can
use it safely enough, compared to not having anything.
~~~
caf
It applies to /dev/random too - the same write() implementation is used
kernel-side for both devices so it doesn't matter which one you write to.
The seed that is saved at shutdown and reloaded at startup will alter the
internal state of the /dev/random pool, but it won't add to the entropy
estimate (which makes sense). This means that the output will be more robust,
but it could still block waiting for "real" entropy.
------
denrober
Prior two Edward Snowden's whistle blowing I think you could perceive the
maintainer as paranoid around leaving the project (see linked thread) however
now I think you can't discount what, if any, cooperation technology companies
have been providing to the NSA.
~~~
dfc
I am not sure I agree that before Snowden this could have been perceived as
paranoid. As part of the discussion on the crypto list Ben Laurie brings up an
important point:
_" But what's the argument for _not_ mixing their probably-not-backdoored RNG
with other entropy?"_[1]
Does your answer to this really change that much "pre-Snowden"?
[1]
[http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-July/...](http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-July/004745.html)
------
tptacek
So this is logic that more or less rules out all hardware encryption,
including HSMs, right?
~~~
vilda
No. In fact it's a matter of trust.
You can trust Skype that calls are encrypted and cannot be eavesdropped, you
can trust Verizon that your cellphone metadata are not passed to government
automatically, and you can trust Intel that their rnd is not backdoored.
Or you don't.
~~~
tptacek
Help me understand how someone who believes rdrand might be backdoored could
trust any HSM?
~~~
chiph
You can't, if you're that serious/paranoid about it.
It's possible that the HSM maker wasn't approached by the NSA and is secure,
but there are very few of them in the US so chances of the NSA having missed
one is very low. Plus, without a STM to inspect the silicon and reverse-
engineer it, how would you know?
So what if you buy one made outside the US? Say, China. Well, there's the
obvious possibility that the Chinese authorities have backdoored the silicon.
But my guess is that the Chinese maker just cloned one of the US vendors,
including the portions inserted by the NSA...
------
benmmurphy
this is my favourite conspiracy theory that the CPUs are backdoored. just
assign a bunch of registers with some special values and execute a specific
instruction and the CPU will drop all memory protection. take something like
google's NACL or a javascript JIT where you have enough control over the
registers and you have a permanent browser exploit.
~~~
marshray
The best backdoors are indistinguishable from dumb bugs when they're
discovered.
They'd looks something like Debian's OpenSSL. But I believe that was _not_ an
intentional backdoor.
------
tytso
There are several different ways in which randomness is used in the kernel.
One general class of randomness is things like randomizing the sequence
numbers and port numbers of new network connections. If you can predict the
result of this randomness, it becomes easier to carry out attacks such as
hijacking a TCP connection. (Note that if the active attacker controls the
path between the source and the destination, they'll be able to do this
regardless of the strength of the RNG; this makes just makes it easier if they
don't have 100% control of the routing.)
Another class of randomness is that which is used to randomize the layout of
shared libraries, stacks, etc. --- address space layout randomization (ALSR).
If someone is able to guess the randomness used by ASLR, then they will be
able to more easily exploit stack overrun attacks, since they won't need to
guess where the stack is, and where various bits of executable segments might
end up in the address space's layout.
Another case of randomness is to create crypto keys; either long-term keys
such as RSA/DSA keys, or symmetric session keys. If someone screws this up,
that's when the "bad guy" (in this case, people are worried about the NSA
being the bad guy) can get access to encrypted information.
It is only the first two use cases where we use RDRAND without doing any
further post-processing. These are cases where the failure of the RNG is not
catastrophic, and/or performance is extremely critical.
We do not use RDRAND without first mixing it with other bits of randomness
gather in the system for anything that is emitted via /dev/random or
/dev/urandom, because we know that this is used for session keys and for long-
term RSA/DSA keys.
The bigger problem, and it's one that we worry a huge amount about it, is the
embedded ARM use cases which do not have RDRAND, and for which there is
precious little randomness available when the system is first initialized ---
and oh, did I mention that this is when long-term secrets such as SSH and
x.509 keys tend to be generated in things like printers and embedded/mobile
devices and when they are first unwrapped and plugged in, when the amount of
entropy gathered by the entropy pool is usually close to zero? What we
desperately need to do is to require that all such devices have a hardware
random number generator --- but the problem is that there are product managers
who are trying to shave fractions of a penny off of the BOM cost, and those
folks are clueless about the difference between cost and value as far as high-
quality random number generators are concerned.
What if the RNG has been compromised by the NSA? Well, that's where you need
to mix in other sources of randomness into the entropy pool. The password used
by the user when he or she first logs into an android device, for example.
Screen digitizer input from the user while they are first going through the
setup process. In the case of a consumer grade wireless router, it could sniff
the network for a while and use packet inter-arrival times and mix that into
the entropy pool. Yes, someone who is on the home network at that time will
know those numbers, but hopefully someone who is in a position to spy on those
numbers, isn't also going to have access at the same time the super-secret NSA
key used to gimmick the RDRAND instruction (assuming that is gimmicked, which
is effectively impossible for us to prove or disprove.) But then again, your
wireless router isn't going to have access to unencrypted plaintext which is
critical --- if you're sending anything out your wireless network without
first encrypting it first, I would hope that you would consider it completely
bare and exposed!
If you are super paranoid, you'll need to find a hardware random generator
which you've built yourself --- and hopefully you are competent enough to
actually build a real HWRNG, and not something which is sampling 60 Hz hum (or
50 Hz hum if you are in Europe :-), and mix that into the entropy pool as
well. In that case, even if the Intel RDRAND is compromised six ways from
Sunday, the NSA won't have access to the output from the HWRNG --- and if it
turns out you were incompetent and your HWRNG is bogus, at least RDRAND is
also getting mixed into the entropy pool.
And if I were in China, I'd use a hardware chip built in China for the RNG,
and combine that with an Intel chip. That way even if the HWRNG chip is
compromised by the MSS, and even if RDRAND is compromised by the NSA, the
combination is hopefully stronger since presumably (hopefully!) it's unlikely
that the MSS and the NSA are collaborating with each other at that deep a
level. Ultimately, of course, if you don't trust Intel, you don't trust the
silicon fab, etc., then you'll have to build your own computer from scratch,
write your own compiler from scratch, etc.
(MIT CS undergrads used to have all of that knowledge, starting with building
a computer out of TTL chips and how to build a Scheme interpreter from machine
code, etc. But not any more, alas. Now they learn Python and it's assumed that
it's impossible to understand the entire software stack, let alone the entire
hardware stack, so you don't even try to teach it. But that's another
rant....)
~~~
gngeal
_If you are super paranoid, you 'll need to find a hardware random generator
which you've built yourself --- and hopefully you are competent enough to
actually build a real HWRNG, and not something which is sampling 60 Hz hum (or
50 Hz hum if you are in Europe :-), and mix that into the entropy pool as
well._
What do you propose as a low cost solution? I've seen some interesting
suggestions, such as having a small fish bowl or tube or tank, having air
pumped into the bottom, and sampling the patterns of bubbles with some CV
solution. Sounds geeky, would make for a nice decoration on one's table, but
building it seems like quite a job.
~~~
rational_indian
I think a zener diode based solution will suffice in a pinch
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_generator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_generator)
~~~
gngeal
Hmm. Haven't thought of that. Comparatively simple, yet also compact at the
same time. Thanks, nice!
~~~
rational_indian
Solid state FTW! :)
------
DanBC
What's the suggested attack here?
That Intel is cooperating with the TLAs and providing a weak on-chip random
number generator? Or a random number generator that can be made to be weak? Or
what?
And how credible is the risk when that information is used to seed a pool of
entropy, rather than being used raw?
------
teawithcarl
A longer excerpt from the same email list:
[http://cryptome.org/2013/07/intel-bed-
nsa.htm](http://cryptome.org/2013/07/intel-bed-nsa.htm)
------
marshray
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/7/31/139](https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/7/31/139)
_Since there was a minor amount of confusion I want to clarify: RDRAND
architecturally has weaker security guarantees than the documented interface
for /dev/random, so we can't just replace all users of extract_entropy() with
RDRAND._
I still don't get it.
~~~
wtallis
What don't you get? RDRAND is an interface to a non-blocking PRNG backed by a
HWRNG. You can't directly get the output of the HWRNG. Intel uses the PRNG to
condition the output of the HWRNG, but it will still give you numbers if the
HWRNG is having trouble (HWRNG errors can be detected, but the RDRAND
instruction itself doesn't trap on HWRNG failures). If you trust Intel's PRNG
sufficiently, then you can use RDRAND directly for /dev/urandom, but it takes
a lot more trust to use it for /dev/random.
~~~
marshray
It's documented to have the potential to not return random data, so in that
sense it's blocking like Linux' /dev/random. Sample code shows some type of
polling loop IIRC.
------
cambecc
So... taking this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, if you don't
trust RDRAND, then you should also not trust _any_ of the hardware the OS runs
on. I imagine there would be much easier ways for Intel to implement backdoors
to the system than through the non-deterministic random number generator.
------
pronoiac
What does it take to reverse engineer the silicon? I thought I'd seen an
project for automating it, but I can't find it.
~~~
nullc
Even reversing the silicon won't likely help— and, uhh. Reversing a state of
the art CPU is not do-at-home stuff.
The reason it won't help is that the design is _explicitly_ microcoded. E.g.
RDRAND triggers running loadable microcode which is supposed to read the real
RNG and AES it. Maybe there is an unrelated "bug" that allows that microcode
to be corrupted after some particular instruction sequence happens. All your
investigation would turn up everything looking like normal.
~~~
pronoiac
It looks like the microcode is _also_ encrypted. But perhaps _that encryption_
could be reverse engineered from silicon? The Silicon Zoo tutorial noted that
Pentium I-era chips were "easily viewable" [1], probably with optical
microscopes. So perhaps some parts of some newer Intel processors can be done
at home. So, the "plan of attack" (ha!):
* decap an Intel CPU and scan it
* decode the microcode encryption
* figure out how the hardware RNG works with the microcode (it's AES? ok.)
* and then analyzing the system of microcode and hardware for robustness and security.
Yeah, this is hand-wavey and probably _incredibly_ implausible. But it seems
like an interesting and challenging project or three.
[1] [http://siliconzoo.org/tutorial.html](http://siliconzoo.org/tutorial.html)
------
Qantourisc
Lame answer I know but: recompile kernel (or patch) out this crappy Intel HW
support then ? And IIRC the Linux pseudo random generator was quite good. The
only problem is exhausting the entropy pool.
~~~
__alexs
I believe you can add 'nordrand' to your boot flags to turn off the kernel's
usage of it.
------
bobbyi_settv
Further down the thread:
> Not to mention, Intel have been in bed with the NSA for the longest time.
> Secret areas on the chip, pop instructions, microcode and all that ...
What does "pop instructions" refer to here?
~~~
nitrogen
AIUI the story goes like this: for a long time NSA required all CPU vendors to
provide a "popcount" instruction (to count the number of one bits in a
register) for any hardware contract. NSA was buying a lot of Intel processors,
but Intel CPUs lacked a documented popcount instruction until very recently.
So, there was speculation that an undocumented opcode would function as a
popcount instruction in older Intel CPUs (perhaps after modifying the CPU
microcode), and from there people speculate that there may be other
undocumented instructions and CPU features. Or so the story goes.
------
jMyles
Wow. So not very?
------
ivanbrussik
ugh had no idea intel was built into the core
i distrust
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Upcoming AWS Security Maintenance - mattybrennan
https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/maintenance-2015-03/
======
josh2600
If you use Terminal on top of AWS (one deployment option) we can just migrate
your workloads without rebooting.
The way it works is that you read the RAM pages from one machine to another in
real time and when the RAM cache is almost synchronized you slam the IP
address over to the new box (and then you let Amazon reboot your old box and
then migrate back post-upgrade if you want to).
You can try it out on our public cloud at terminal.com if you'd like to (we
auto-migrate all of our customers off of the degrading hardware before it
reboots on our public cloud, but you can control that if you're running
terminal as your infrastructure).
~~~
geofft
... how?? That is seriously nifty.
Are you migrating just a process tree / other contained environment, or the
entire machine?
Are you using CRIU or similar? Do open TCP connections survive the transfer?
~~~
josh2600
We wrote a bunch of hacks to the linux kernel to do it.
Custom container implementation, custom networking, custom storage.
It's just really good hardcore kernel engineering.
If you wanna talk more and you're in SF, come to our meetup on the 10th:
machinelearningsf.eventbrite.com.
Edit: the whole machine including RAM cache, CPU instructions, IP connections,
etc. is carried over. We can also resize your machine in seconds while it's
running.
~~~
stephenr
Is this somehow different to Xen Live Migration/VMware Vmotion/etc?
~~~
josh2600
Yes. VMWare VMotion and Xen Live Migration are both VM migration tools, not
containers.
The difference is subtle, but important. VMs have overhead because of
virtualizing the kernel, Containers don't (or rather containers benefit from
kernel performance much more than VMs).
In other words, you can achieve the same thing with VMotion, but it's slower
and more overhead and harder to manage.
~~~
stephenr
Ah I didn't even know you're a container based shop. So you're moving live
containers between aws provided xen vms.
~~~
josh2600
Or on Bare-metal. It works just the same on Xen but slower because of the VM
overhead.
Containers are really only part of the solution, there's a lot of other things
you have to think about if you want to build a better mousetrap in the
virtualization world (like networking and storage).
------
elmin
It's a bit odd that they don't stop launching new VMs on the old hardware.
That would allow people who wanted to control the transition to just stop and
start their VMs.
~~~
skywhopper
This was my reaction, too. Thinking it over some, I think it's likely that
certain tiers of instance types are more affected than others. And it's also
likely that even though AWS seems to have lots of open capacity available,
they probably are operating at a pretty high percentage, so gradually idling
10% of their host hardware would probably put a pinch on availability. The
average lifetime of instances may also be a factor. I have a few long-running
instances going most of the time, but I do tend to start and stop dozens of
instances within minutes, depending on what I'm working on. So for those use
cases, it hardly matters.
And of course, Amazon has an interest in encouraging its users to build their
systems in a cloud-friendly way. ie, properly designed services on AWS should
not suffer from having a handful of VMs get rebooted at any time. So, from
that POV, it's just good medicine to encourage the culture they built their
service to accommodate.
~~~
michaelt
they probably are operating at a pretty
high percentage, so gradually idling 10%
of their host hardware would probably
put a pinch on availability
If they can withstand the loss of one of out of three availability zones, they
must have at least 33% spare capacity in each AZ, ready for new instances to
start to take up the slack from the lost AZ.
Even if they have more availability zones than the three they show to users, I
would hope they would have more than 10% spare capacity!
~~~
Xorlev
They do have more than 3 AZs. Our account has access to 5 distinct zones and I
suspect there are more than that.
~~~
discodave
That depends which region you're in. us-east has like 5 AZs but some of the
small regions like Sydney have only two.
~~~
vacri
All regions have a minimum of 3 zones, but the client doesn't always see all
of them. Sydney has 3 AZs, but you only get to see 2, for example.
~~~
count
Not all regions (see US GovCloud for example).
------
zytek
Been there, done that. AWS re:Boot in September 2014 showed us how good it was
to invest in Ansible roles for all parts of our infrastructure. Still, a lot
of hassle for Ops Team, especially that it was done during DevOps Days Warsaw
;-) AWS also said '10%' then, but for us it was 81 out of ~300 instances.
What is sad is that we learn about it from Hacker News and not from AWS, even
when we have premium support and our own account manager. :/
Let's see how many of us did their homework after previous "xen update", and
how much "10%" is now ;-)
~~~
soccerdave
I have 19 instances (18 in US-West-2) and none of them are affected. I would
guess that lots of people here run in us-east-1 since that's the longest
running region and I would bet that a lot of that 10% exists there. So, it may
be 10% total in all regions but higher percentage if you run in us-east-1.
Just a guess though.
~~~
pkapkg
44% of my instances in us-west-2 are affected, 55% of my instance in us-
east-1, and 18% of my instances in eu-west-1 are affected. It seems to be tied
pretty tightly to instance types.
Overall, I'm looking at a huge quantity of affected servers. That said, I
don't blame AWS. I blame my incompetent architect for designing systems that
are incredibly hard to upgrade, and that can't be rebooted safely. Definitely
not bitter at that idiocy at all.
~~~
andrioni
Yeah, I'd guess it depends mainly on what type of instances you run. Only one
of the 28 instances I'm running right now (all in us-east-1) is going to be
rebooted, and it is the only old generation instance I still run (it's a
hi1.4xlarge). None of my M3s, C3s or R3s are affected, even though some are
still on PV.
------
hendersoon
Linode forced a reboot for us last night also. They did not disclose why, for
some reason, even though I pointedly asked. Downtime was ~20 minutes.
These must be some seriously bad mojo to force reboots with little to no
notice over a week before they're scheduled to leave embargo.
~~~
VonGuard
Yup: [http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/](http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/)
5 undisclosed Xen vulns. Wheeeeee!
------
WestCoastJustin
Related: Five new undisclosed Xen vulnerabilities (xen.org)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9116937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9116937)
------
jamescun
We contacted SoftLayer about this issue, they literally had not heard anything
about it and they would "contact their datacenter team".
If they treat it like the last round of Xen vulnerabilities, they will simply
place a warning on their dashboard an hour beforehand - not sending out any
form of email notice. The first we knew about it was when we started receiving
alerts from nagios.
~~~
blacksmith_tb
Sigh. I opened a ticket with Softlayer regarding it, too. And got pretty much
exactly the same response - nothing is scheduled 'at this time' but they will
'let us know' if they need to reboot any of the hosts we're on. Joy.
~~~
iancarroll
I just got notified that they'll be sending times for the reboots soon (if
needed).
------
ericcholis
Rackspace notice regarding the same patch:
[https://community.rackspace.com/general/f/53/t/4978](https://community.rackspace.com/general/f/53/t/4978)
I wasn't able to find anything on Digital Ocean's public facing websites.
~~~
akerl_
DigitalOcean uses KVM, I thought? Assuming that's true, they're almost
certainly not affected.
If they are using Xen, they shouldn't know the details of the vuln yet as they
aren't on the pre-disclosure list:
[http://www.xenproject.org/security-
policy.html](http://www.xenproject.org/security-policy.html)
~~~
infamouscow
DigitalOcean uses KVM.
------
edibleEnergy
They've updated the announcement, most of the restarts have been cancelled due
to them being able to upgrade the machines without reboots.
------
mrsirduke
I think it will be interesting to see how other providers handles this.
------
alimoeeny
Anybody knows what this 10% mean? I mean :
a) only 10% of the fleet are running a version of the hypervisor that is
affected by the bug
b) based on the turnover rate, they expect 10% to need rebooting under the
customers by the date the bugs are being released.
c) 10% are running a combination of the affected hypervisor and vm's that are
reasonably at risk of exploitation, other's may have the faulty hypervisor but
either are being used as single tenant (there is no risk of someone breaking
out and affecting someone else) or are running vm's that may not be able to
break out depending on the nature of bugs.
Just speculating, any ideas?
~~~
geofft
In the past, Xen has has vulnerabilities based on things different between
Intel and AMD processors, or even between different processors from the same
company. It seems likely that the fleet is all running the same version of the
hypervisor, but the bug only matters on 10% of their hardware.
Here's a previous Xen vulnerability based on Intel implementing the SYSRET
instruction (originally introduced by AMD, along with SYSCALL; Intel's version
of this was SYSENTER and SYSEXIT, with different semantics about kernel stacks
and things) in a slightly different way from how AMD implemented it. Both
Intel's docs and AMD's docs were accurate for their own processors, but if you
only read AMD's docs, you'd implement syscalls in a way that was vulnerable on
Intel.
[https://blog.xenproject.org/2012/06/13/the-intel-sysret-
priv...](https://blog.xenproject.org/2012/06/13/the-intel-sysret-privilege-
escalation/)
~~~
cortesoft
In this case, as is explained in the post, the reason it is only 10% is
because the newer hardware can be upgraded without requiring a reboot.
------
teh
Does anyone know what this means for spot instances?
------
admbk
Wouldn't using kpatch remove the need to reboot instances ?
------
thebouv
Rackspace is doing the same due to the Xen vulns announced.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking (2016) - ForHackernews
https://www.propublica.org/article/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking
======
mtmail
The reaction back in October 2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12760003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12760003)
~~~
dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12769178)
------
petilon
If you want to see an example of the devious means now employed by Google,
open Chrome settings and turn off "Allow Chrome sign-in". Then go to Gmail and
sign in. You are now signed into Chrome, regardless of the setting. By signing
into Gmail you are sharing your identity with the browser itself.
Microsoft's Chromium-based Edge can't arrive soon enough.
~~~
mulmen
It still blows my mind that any technologically literate person would use
Chrome as their primary browser in 2019. Or 2018, or really ever.
The incentives for Google are perverse, this is really simple reasoning.
Google will continue their MS-esque Embrace-Extend-Extinguish march until only
Chrome is left. That people who should know better willingly enable this
disaster terrifies me.
~~~
distant_hat
My company is a Google shop, we use Google docs for collaboration, Gmail, and
Google Calendar, and Google Hangouts, and Meet and all that. All of this works
best in Chrome. On Safari you get huge RAM bloat necessitating killing the
browser every few days, same with Firefox, some things like video meets don't
work at all.
~~~
mulmen
Sounds exactly like IE6 in “Microsoft shops”.
------
macinjosh
The more 'advantages' Google gives Chrome in the area of tracking/data
collection the more I worry that websites will begin to only test for and/or
work on Chrome. Seems like it could soon be a logical business decision since
it has large market share, it is cross platform, and is heading in the
direction of being hostile towards priacy, i.e. enables business models based
on tracking and data collection.
Tell your friends and family to ditch Chrome for Firefox.
------
hopler
The article is not accurate. The article is about this change[0], which is
simply clarifying that DoubleClick isn't the only data source and linking to
the new control panel where the opt-in/out settings UI is (there was no link
before). The policy document change is an improvement, and isn't a change in
privacy. If too don't like the new policy (up to you), then logically you
didn't like the old policy either.
[https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/20160325-201...](https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/archive/20160325-20160628/)
~~~
mda
Please don't disturb the daily HN Google bashing session.
------
resters
Just a reminder that Google is a major defense contractor. The incentive to
create highly targeted ads is the same basic incentive that exists to create
highly targeted threat assessments and social credit scores.
~~~
eitally
Wait wat!? Source, please?
~~~
resters
Google has a large sales force that targets government agencies, defense,
etc., with its products and services.
As for the incentives, it's a logical argument:
1) Google is a large, powerful entity.
2) Powerful entities benefit from a preservation of the status quo.
3) Powerful entities must stay on the good side of governments.
4) Social upheaval is a threat to Google's business model.
5) Google's ad business has led to tools that are superior to those built by
governments.
Thus, the sales team realizes the opportunity to sell the proprietary tech to
government entities. Once this business relationship begins the team effort to
suppress some ideas and amplify others, to militarize the core technology,
becomes impossible to stop.
Google is at this point a defense contractor to many governments. There has
recently been hubbub about Google behaving in this way toward the Chinese
government, but what people are missing is that the core service google offers
is desired by all governments. Put succinctly, governments all want a great
firewall and a social credit score. This is what Google and Facebook sell.
Consider that in the US it's conceivable that a search interface could be
built for private user data that also includes the feature of automatically
submitting and obtaining a warrant so that all searches performed are legal.
The friction associated with needing to obtain a warrant has been removed
completely in the US, and likely never even existed under other regimes. In
either case, Google is happy to militarize all of the data and technology that
it has built.
AI (Google's main thrust) is a particularly insidious form of this because a
"trained" AI is a unique combination of data and algorithm. In essence, the
data set is baked into the algorithm. So Google can (for example) train a gait
analysis algorithm intended to predict violent acts on citizens of one regime,
and sell the resulting "trained" product to other regimes.
Governments have a strong need for information about thought crimes and
evidence for premeditation of all sorts of antisocial acts. Google and
Facebook have created trillions in market value for firms by doing the same
thing for consumer behavior but it's worth many more Trillions when applied to
criminality and the softer sister definition, "anti-social" behavior.
When will learning about a third party candidate be viewed as an antisocial
act by Google and Facebook? Quite likely this happened in 2017.
------
wtmt
This needs (2016) in the title. It has also been discussed before, as pointed
by mtmail here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don’t Let a Security Breach Kill Your Million Dollar Idea - pallavkaushish
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140404073832-113597752-startups-don-t-let-a-security-breach-kill-your-million-dollar-idea?trk=object-title
======
alka0309
These are some good steps to follow for securing your startup.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Six year old PDF loop bug affects most major implementations - hannob
https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/59-Six-year-old-PDF-loop-bug-affects-most-major-implementations.html
======
plicense
PDFium used by Chrome internally uses Foxit PDF library to read and extract
information from the PDF.
Google basically bought Foxit's library and open sourced it - but looks like
the open source version isn't keeping up with the upstream commercial version
of Foxit because the latest Foxit reader doesn't seem to have this bug.
~~~
sebazzz
Wonder why they didn't go for pdf.js, since Chrome already has (had) superior
JS performance.
~~~
izacus
Because PDF.js doesn't come close to performance of native C++ code of pdfium
(our tests showed 3-10x slowdown).
~~~
pier25
Indeed. PDF.js works for simple PDFs but once you start adding complex
layouts, big images, vector graphics, etc, the experience becomes horrible on
mediocre hardware. At least the last time I evaluated it.
Hopefully Web Assembly will change this.
------
Semaphor
FWIW, I have no problems with the file in Sumatra.
[https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org](https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org)
~~~
_pmf_
Very underrated software. Incredible work from a single developer.
~~~
yoodenvranx
Yes, the website looks a bit sketchy and the GUI is a bit dated but the
software is top notch! If you need a small pdf/ebook reader then Sumatrapdf is
a very good choice.
------
timendum
Firefox 57 will contains the pdf.js version with this bug fixed
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1393476](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1393476)
Also Chromium changes have been merged [https://pdfium-
review.googlesource.com/c/pdfium/+/12391](https://pdfium-
review.googlesource.com/c/pdfium/+/12391)
------
walterbell
What's the best way to check a few thousand PDFs for potential malware? Would
a Linux VM with SE Linux + minimal whitelisted operations on the PDF reader be
sufficient? Is there a sandbox equivalent for Windows or Mac, which could
detect attempts to break out of the sandbox?
~~~
arfar
QubesOS has a really nice solution for opening untrusted PDFs:
[https://micahflee.com/2016/07/how-qubes-makes-handling-
pdfs-...](https://micahflee.com/2016/07/how-qubes-makes-handling-pdfs-way-
safer/)
------
nathan_f77
That's good to know. I'm working on a service that processes PDFs, so I was
concerned that someone could bring down my server by uploading one of these.
The pdf-reader gem throws a "stack level too deep" exception after about a
second. There's also a ton of other issues on pdf-reader:
[https://github.com/yob/pdf-reader/issues](https://github.com/yob/pdf-
reader/issues)
Good reminder that any kind of file processing needs to be heavily sandboxed.
------
DrMoisheP
Though this file's bug did not adversely affect Sumatra or PDF-XChange, it
DOES crash Windows Search routine when it attempts to add loop-edited.pdf to
its index. Windows Explorer also crashed (and restarted itself successfully)
on trying to change the extension to avoid indexing. Renaming worked on the
second try. Download with caution!
------
WalterBright
> the test cases I provided never got added to the test suite.
I don't understand that. The test cases we fix (for D) always wind up in the
regression test suite. It would be impossible to move D forward otherwise.
------
_pmf_
Is is an actual bug does the exploit rely on certain legal PDF parameters that
cause quasi-infinite behavior when actually rendering it (i.e. the PDF
equivalent of a ZIP bomb)?
~~~
tyingq
It's circular references created via the "xref" portion of a PDF document. An
implementation that blindly chased a circular reference would be a bug in my
view.
------
carapace
Don't bury the lede!
> In the best cases the maintainers of the affected software take the bug
> triggering sample and use it in their test suite. I think this should be a
> standard practice.
> ... maintainers of parsers for common file formats could also take a look at
> their competitors and check their test suites.
------
kuschku
KDE’s Okular is interestingly not affected. This is at least the 3rd major PDF
bug this year where evince is affected, but not Okular.
Anyone have an insight into why evince seems to be so much more often
affected?
~~~
lower
Is evince actually still affected? The article says that it was affected
initially (i.e. six years ago), but that the bug has since been fixed.
Both Okular and Evince use poppler for pdf rendering, so they should both get
the fix from poppler.
------
amelius
> This isn't a major security issue, the impact is a denial of service.
Probably just denial of _your own_ service, not everybody else's.
~~~
yorwba
Anyone who tries to open the PDF with a naive parser will be affected.
For example, Google appears to crawl PDFs for their search index. If their
crawlers crash after exhausting their memory limit, and if those failures
trigger automatic retries, it would tie up a bunch of their resources they'd
rather allocate elsewhere.
Some anti-virus scanners probably also try to open PDFs, so if you can crash
them reliably, you'll be able to hide an actual malicious payload.
------
kencausey
MuPDF seems to be unaffected.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: An online tool to track and compare cryptocurrency predictions - analreceiver
https://www.cryptopunditapp.com
======
madeuptempacct
I like the idea, but clicking on your site, I have no idea what's going on.
You are putting up a lot of info, and none of it is relevant. Your formula, is
quite frankly, shit. You just wanted to look clever.
In short, I don't think the site gives me what I want - the ability to check
if the guy yelling "Buy now" has a proven track record.
~~~
analreceiver
Thank you, I struggle when I try to think of a way to best present the data
and the formula can be greatly improved.
In your opinion, what info would be relevant to see in the main page for each
coin?
~~~
madeuptempacct
I would start with the main coins and do them well. I think you are trying to
bite off too much. Start of with BTC - it's in the media the most and is
talked about the most. You can add Ethereum, EOS, Monero, etc later.
Then have a list of the "best" predictions of Bitcoin. I.e. Bob Lee (made up
name) says "$25,000 by March 2019".
My main problem with your site is that I don't think you can rank these people
with your formula. There is a lot that goes into it - their reputation (some
guy vs crypto hedge fund manager), their number of roughly successful
predictions, how many predictions they have made (success ratio), etc.
I know this is very generic, but hopefully it helps a little bit.
------
analreceiver
I'm open to suggestions and collaborations.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Border agents threatened to “be dicks,” take my phone if I didn’t unlock it - ryan_j_naughton
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/man-border-agents-threatened-to-be-dicks-take-my-phone-if-i-didnt-unlock-it/
======
a3n
> After he unlocked his iPhone SE, agents took it out of sight for five to 10
> minutes before giving it back and sending him on his way.
I would have let them keep it, or thrown it away.
------
dTal
>There was a chance that they would eventually find and search my laptop
anyway, but I thought if I turned over my phone, they might be satisfied with
that. I unlocked my phone and handed it over. The agent asked for my passcode.
I selectively ignored him and chose instead to answer the other agent's
questions about some items in my bag. I assume the agent with the phone
decided to take it while it was still unlocked rather than wait for me to
answer and risk having the phone relock and me change my mind.
Genius. 5-10 minutes after "giving in" he was on his way, laptop unsearched.
This suggests a defense - have two phones...
~~~
devopsproject
> laptop unsearched
I'd imagine your phone as much, if not more, info on it than a laptop. Plus it
has the ability to track your location and everything bit of data sent and
received. And who know what was installed on it.
I'd agree with the two phones, but they phone they "searched" should be thrown
into a garbage can
------
tinus_hn
I wonder what the next step is once people are used to this kind of abuse.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
San Francisco declares state of emergency to prepare for coronavirus - wglb
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-state-of-emergency-coronavirus-covid19-outbreak-2020-2#the-citys-tech-conference-scene-has-also-taken-a-hit-1
======
fluxsauce
While the sensationalist headline is technically accurate, both the headline
and the linked article bury the intent and context of the declaration. In
short, don't panic.
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-mayor-
London-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-mayor-London-Breed-
declares-state-of-emergency-15083811.php)
> There have been no confirmed coronavirus cases in San Francisco to date, but
> as infections continue to rise across the world, “we need to allocate more
> resources to make sure we are prepared,” Breed said at a press conference
> announcing the emergency declaration.
> “To be clear, this declaration of emergency is all about preparedness. By
> declaring a state of emergency we are prioritizing the safety of our
> communities by being prepared.”
~~~
koheripbal
I feel like the debate between the "don't panic" crowd and the "preppers" is a
useless semantic debate between extremists.
You want to react the _appropriate_ amount. For the time being, you should go
about your normal routine, but like the CDC said today, you should _prepare_
for some major lifestyle disruptions.
~~~
iliveinchina
I can comment on a couple unexpected shortages we've seen in Asia: toilet
paper, due to panic buying, and hand sanitizer.
There are also some concerns about medicines unrelated to the virus because
many meds are produced in China and the supply chain here is all screwed up.
So some might consider getting medicine refills for 30 days (or however long
your insurance will let you) in advance. You also might not want to have to go
wait in line at a pharmacy during a pandemic.
In terms of work: it may make sense to start thinking about what kind of work
can be done efficiently remotely vs. on-site.
You also may want to think about finances in case the world sees a significant
economic contraction. If lots of countries replicate what has happened in
China, the world economy will be highly disrupted for at least a couple
months.
~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Super useful comment. R.e. toilet paper, random observation: buy a bidet and
you basically won't need to buy tp very much any more. They are very
inexpensive at least in the states. You can get one for $20 or so.
~~~
AstralStorm
Hopefully you have running water. I'd still recommend keeping some TP in case
water goes out in toilet.
~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Yep, we have a backup supply. That said if there's no running water for a
prolonged period we are eventually going to start having other problems. Fwiw
I don't think that is an anticipated outcome even of a global covid-19
pandemic.
------
asiachick
Whether or not this turns into a real pandemic I'm really curious how the
world survives a real one in the sense of all the disruption.
Sure some desk based jobs can be done at home but it seems like nearly every
restaurant, bar, and store would likely go out of business. As would airlines,
trains, maybe hotels. Grocery stores would have to go 100% delivery only?
Maybe be open 24/7 so people can spread out? Or would I need to wear a hazmat
suit to get food? Note: there was a family riding the bullet train in cheap
hazmat suits a few days ago.
I really have no idea. I suppose you can look at cities in China and see a
full response.
I see lots of people saying "prepare" but then list having a week of supplies.
Seem more like you'd need 6 to 12 months of supplies. Unlike an earthquake a
pandemic would hopefully not stop the water flow or electricity like say an
earthquake might but conversely it will be much longer before it's declared
safe to return to any normal routine.
~~~
mikekchar
As much as I hate to say it like this, a pandemic is only going to kill
something like 5% of the population at the top end. The Spanish flu in 1918
infected 500 million people, which was 27% of the population (according to
Wikipedia). The death toll was about 40-50 million (possibly up to 100 million
at worst). It was one of the most deadly worldwide infections in the history
of the world, but probably killed less than 3% of the population.
A pandemic is going to severely hurt the economy, but it won't completely stop
it. It will not be the case that nothing will be produced for months on end.
People _will_ go to work. Farmers _will_ produce food. There _will_ be shops.
But things will also be in short supply. Prices will probably rise. Poor
people will be hit harder and there will probably be some famine (or at least
more than there is now). But things will still continue.
In an event like an earthquake, entire distribution lines are shut down
because you can't physically get somewhere. With a pandemic, things will be in
short supply because labour is in short supply.
~~~
e_proxus
> Poor people will be hit harder and there will probably be some famine
I wonder how the extreme wealth distribution today will affect this. Although
looking at statistics [1] it seems it was even worse in 1922 (no numbers for
1918).
[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth)
------
wiseleo
San Francisco has Moscone Center. One unlucky unscreened attendee and good bye
world. Skipping all conventions until all clear.
------
tebuevd
It's only a matter of time before this becomes a massive problem for the city.
I applaud UCSF for not letting the two patients from Santa Clara start a local
outbreak.
------
pmoriarty
It boggles the mind that there was absolutely no mention of COVID-19
preparedness at the recent Democratic debates, and that Trump's been trying to
significantly cut the budget of the CDC.
Our leaders have their heads buried in the sand.
At least SF is trying to prepare.
~~~
IvyMike
> absolutely no mention of COVID-19 preparedness at the recent Democratic
> debates
I guess you are referring to an older debate but here is what they said on the
subject tonight.
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-
coronavirus-o...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/democratic-debate-coronavirus-
outbreak-democrats-how-they-would-respond/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Galaxy S III preorders approach 10 million - kemper
http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/18/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-preorders-9-million/
======
cryptoz
This phone is one of the most exciting things happening, at least for me: It
has a barometer! Joining the ranks of the Galaxy Nexus, Note, and Moto Xoom.
Except, I think the SGS3 is way more popular than any of those others (by a
couple orders of magnitude in some cases).
I'm the developer of pressureNET, an open source Android project to build a
live, global barometer network. The project has seen solid growth, but not on
the scale that would allow for groundbreaking weather prediction. We get about
17,000 measurements per day, but I think I need something like 1,000,000.
Does anyone have ideas that could help me with marketing and growing the
network with the release of this phone? I've been posting to Reddit, XDA, HN,
Twitter, Facebook, etc, but I worry about spamming them and I think I have
saturated my audience there.
Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask, but I'm anxious about missing out
on all these new barometer users.
~~~
pnachbaur
Given that a barometer is seemingly so rare on the market (and your app is
probably one of the few set to take advantage of it) maybe you could talk to
Samsung about a cross-promotional type deal? It could allow them to further
differentiate and market their phone, and you'd get your data!
~~~
cryptoz
I've been thinking about contacting the manufacturers for a while, but the
task is daunting. Does this kind of thing actually work? I'll definitely
investigate this with the kind of response I've had here on HN, it sounds like
it may almost be common. Thanks for the help!
~~~
StavrosK
Who cares? If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Just contact them.
------
weiran
This is bullshit, the "preorders" are from carriers not actual customers.
Samsung could sell zero units and still claim to have 9 million preorders.
> Samsung Electronics Co has received some 9 million pre-orders for its third-
> generation Galaxy S smartphone __from more than 100 global carriers __, the
> Korea Economic Daily reported on Friday.
Source: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-
idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/18/us-samsung-
idUSBRE84H00X20120518)
The number of "news" sites just blindly reposting this as if it were actual
customers is frankly disgusting.
~~~
akmiller
What is your point exactly? I'm pretty certain the carriers do their homework
before placing orders. They don't want a ton of inventory just sitting on
their shelves. So the carriers expect to sell them and Samsung did sell them
(doesn't matter who bought them).
~~~
tvon
The point is it doesn't matter how many units they sell to Best Buy, what
matters is how many units they sell to consumers.
This happens all the time, we hear about X millions of units "shipped" only to
find out months later that a small fraction of those actually made it into
consumers hands.
~~~
bsphil
Given the incredible popularity of the GS2 among the Android community, I'd
say it's not unreasonable to think the GS3 will sell well.
~~~
bradleyland
No one is saying it won't sell well. They're saying that reporting carrier
orders as "sales pre-orders" lacks an important detail. Thus, some are calling
bullshit on the headline.
------
6ren
Chipset Exynos 4212 Quad
CPU Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9
GPU Mali-400MP
<http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9300_galaxy_s_iii-4238.php>
The Mali-400MP is quad-core (x2 from before)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos> This seems feasible, with similar
battery life, as they've shrunk the process to half the area: 45^2 vs 32^2.
Its performance per core is comparable the sgx543 of the iPhone/iPad.
[http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-
hardwar...](http://www.arm.com/products/multimedia/mali-graphics-
hardware/mali-400-mp.php) vs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR#Series_5XT>
(though depends on the clock actually used)
So, this phone's GPU is similar to the "new iPad"3 (quad-core sgx543). (Apple
have also done a shrink, but it's only used in the old iPad 2 so far...)
I think quad-core _CPUs_ are past the point of diminishing returns (consider
the latest Transformer); multi-core are still hard to code for, and they are
usually underutilized on desktops.
Note: the iPad 4 is likely to have the next in the GPU series (Rogue 6200),
which apparently is comparable to the xenos GPU in the xbox360. So, it's
leapfrog, jumping x2 as far each year.
~~~
nextparadigms
Both ARM CPU's and GPU's seem to jump 2x in performance every year, so at
least so far, they've been moving faster than Moore's Law.
Personally, I'm looking forward to the Exynos 5250 chip, with a dual core 2
Ghz Cortex A15 CPU and a Mali T-604 GPU (new Midgard architecture) that's
supposed to be 4x faster than Mali400 (the original in GS2), so probably 2x or
faster than the current overclocked Mali400 in GS3 (will also support OpenCL).
This chip should appear in some tablets and phones, and maybe even a
Chromebook by the end of the year.
I'm also looking forward to them pairing Cortex A15 with the ultra-low-power
Cortex A7, maybe in a 2+2 core configuration. Samsung mentioned that they
might be ready with Cortex A7 by the end of the year, but in general we can
expect Cortex A7 to arrive next year.
I would prefer this over something like a pure Cortex A15 quad core chip,
which should also appear next year. Starting with 2014 we should see the
successor of Cortex A15 in dual core version, based on the 64 bit ARMv8
architecture.
------
gcp
I find it quite ironic that the same site posted this article 2 weeks ago:
[http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/04/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-htc-
oppor...](http://www.bgr.com/2012/05/04/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-htc-opportunity/)
Basically saying that the SGS3 looks like a dud and HTC is where it's at. HTC
currently isn't able to import phones into the US.
~~~
bookwormAT
Do you remember how much fun they had with the size of the Galaxy Note?
BGR,buisinessinsider,gruber,siegler,the verge,... The whole techmeme club.
Then Samsung sold 5 million Notes in the first months.
~~~
dmix
A ton of films get trashed by critics and imdb then go on to be commercially
successful.
That doesn't mean it was a good piece of film. More likely it was accessible
everywhere and well marketed.
~~~
bookwormAT
this is a good argument for sales vs quality.
But the lesson with the Galaxy Note was that many people want a device with a
5.3 in screen, and the critique was that people do not want a device with a
5.3 in screen.
Remember that Samsung sold the Note together with the Galaxy S2 (same
hardware, smaller screen, higher marketing budget) and even smaller form
factors.
Or, to put it another way: The lesson is that there is no "average consumer".
~~~
falling
_> Remember that Samsung sold the Note together with the Galaxy S2 (same
hardware, smaller screen, higher marketing budget) and even smaller form
factors._
The Note has been promoted much more than the S2. In SF I see as much ads for
the Note as you used to see for the iPad 2 when it came out, which means
they’re everywhere.
Last week three guys with Samsung t-shirts stopped me on the street to make me
try it.
------
kaolinite
Has BGR ever written an article longer than a few paragraphs? (Edit: huh..
that struck a nerve it would seem).
~~~
mpclark
First rule of tech blogging -- all stories, even those best reported as just
one line, must be expanded to meet Google News's minimum word count
requirement.
------
unconed
Still waiting for a high end Android phone that isn't enormous.
------
samhan
Now this is quite amazing . Has Samsung also started to attract an albeit
smaller apple like following .. ?
~~~
objclxt
It's certainly a good indicator of smartphone demand, although I'm not sure
it's comparable with iPhone 4S pre-orders. I _suspect_ that a lot of the S3
pre-orders are direct from carriers, rather than individuals, so it's more of
a 'product shipped' rather than 'product sold' statistic.
I could of course be totally wrong, although as it's a leaked stat it's hard
to know exactly how a 'pre-order' is being defined...but in my office (of
about 180 people, all mobile facing) far fewer people have pre-ordered the S3
versus the iPhone 4S.
~~~
jk
I guess Samsung phones are more popular outside US. Among my colleagues, of 10
smartphones, 8 are Samsung ones (includes 3 Samsung Notes) and only one
iPhone4S.
~~~
objclxt
Our split is fairly even (I lead a mobile dev team in London, both Android &
iOS). Maybe it's a demographic thing: most developers have a Galaxy Nexus, and
they don't really see any compelling reason to move on to the S3 right now.
------
mvasilkov
> CPU Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 > GPU Mali-400MP
Finally, smooth animations?
~~~
hammersend
I've been getting smooth animations on my Nexus S ever since I put ICS on it a
few months back and this phone "only" has a 1 GHz single core CPU and 512 MB
of RAM.
------
swah
I just got my first Android phone (a 1ghz dual-core 512mb LG) and it its
fuckin slow :( (my iPhone 3GS felt way way snappier).
~~~
darkstalker
That's because in iOS the UI has maximum priority. It can even pause the app
so the UI keeps a high framerate.
~~~
rsynnott
This is a myth, introduced by an uninformed Google intern in a blog post.
Hint; start Skype on an iPhone, switch to another app, and scroll a list. Note
how your Skype call continues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Take Back the Internet - anu_gupta
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/take_back_the_i.html
======
Mithrandir
Previous discussion (when this essay was published in The Guardian):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6336373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6336373)
------
seiji
We definitely can "take back the internet," [1] but it will take time,
concerted distributed efforts, and focus. I wrote a rant about how we've been
caught with our collective pants down recently: [http://matt.sh/introducing-
dx](http://matt.sh/introducing-dx)
My approach is more "get funding so a few dozen smart people can live and
focus 100% on fixing things" rather than letting people just play around on
nights and weekends.
Ubuntu got people to pay a total of $12 million for a _fantasy phone_. A
phone. People's lives are so empty they will pay for things that don't exist
in the hopes it makes them happier at some unspecified date in the future.
Can we focus that faith and optimism into funding real problems and get a
paltry five million to fix the entire world?
[1]: The world is a lot bigger than the Internet — there's much we need to set
back on track in addition to Internet stewardship.
~~~
hga
Thwarting the security state's ambitions has much greater risks than plunking
down some money for a "fantasy phone"....
~~~
seiji
"Technology is hard, let's go shopping?"
~~~
hga
Heh. More like "Shopping is fun, and that NSA squirrel isn't really shiny
enough ... yet."
But taken the way you put it, you need to pick your battles, which includes
specifically what and _when_ you fight. Right now I think the odds in the
political arena are good, given the stunning results of the Amash Amendment
vote ... but if that proves to be wrong then perhaps that sometime later, and
in the meanwhile other battles should be a focus, and perhaps none right now
("let's go shopping").
And then there's my bottom line: none of this is risk free. Including doing
nothing, although way too many underestimate the risk of that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zyptonite – a aecure Skype challenger now in beta for Android - velmu
https://zyptonite.com/blog/android
======
dewiz
I'd like to know how they tackle battery consumption in a server-less
architecture. Skype P2P was a huge battery drainer, linked to the number of
contacts you have. For instance if you have 50 contacts plus group chats, the
client needs to sync one by one and share the data with 50+ points, which
might come and go. I care about privacy and latency, I'm not buying the
argument that p2p is a solution for those though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The H.264 Debacle: We're Complaining to the Wrong People - vvatsa
http://www.osnews.com/story/23273/The_H_264_Debacle_We_re_Complaining_to_the_Wrong_People
======
macrael
This is complete nonsense.
Read this instead: [http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-
whatwg.org/2009-Jun...](http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-
whatwg.org/2009-June/020620.html)
Straight from the horses mouth, that is the state of HTML5 video and why we
got there. The posted article is built on the idea that HTML5 requires H.264
when that is not the case at all. The spec does not specify a codec for use on
the video tag, just as it doesn't for the img tag.
More importantly, the authors claim "we can cut to the chase and try to get
the HTML5 spec fixed--in which case the commercial vendors would have to fix
their implementations in order to be considered compliant." is bogus as well.
The spec is a delicate balance. If something is spec'd out, but major vendors
are not going to implement it, then you have accomplished nothing by putting
it in the spec, and in fact, the spec actually harmful at that point because
people will believe it is implemented correctly. The spec is only useful
insofar as it is a set of things that all the players can agree to implement.
I do recommend reading through the email I linked to, in it Ian Hixie, by
responding to emails he received, lays out a lot of the thinking that guided
the making of the spec.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
The link is good, but you repeat the highly misleading claim that video
shouldn't specify a codec because img tag doesn't specify an image format.
If that's the case then why did Hixie spec an interoperable codec in the first
place? I think the answer is obvious when you count the number and quality of
competing, royalty-free image formats that uphold the basic principles of the
web versus the number and quality of competing, royalty-free video codecs.
Claiming that not specifying a codec will lead to anything other than a de-
facto standard of the non-royalty free H.264 is ridiculously, shockingly
disingenuous. It's just shady lawyering to claim that pushing for a codec,
that by its very nature can't be in the spec, and having its rivals removed
from the spec, is anything other than the equivalent of having it in the spec.
~~~
macrael
I never said that the spec should not specify a video codec, I was just trying
to set the record straight. In fact, I didn't claim anything about the spec at
all, I just summarized some of Hixie's points. If you aren't satisfied with
what I wrote, I recommend reading Hixie's words. Please let me know if I
misrepresented him. And, I disagree that not having it in the spec is the
equivalent of having it in the spec. The problem is that the spec is useless
when, as Hixie puts it, it becomes fiction. Mandating either Theora _or_ H.264
in the spec would have been useless because either Firefox/Opera would be
violating the spec or Safari/IE would be. So the only option left to them was
to leave it out of the spec, something that Hixie was not happy about but
seems like the right thing to do. If a codec comes along that all the vendors
can agree to implement, then it is likely that will go into the spec, but
until then it will remain blank.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
I agree with Hixie that putting it in the spec is pointless if Apple and
Microsoft are going to go against the spec.
I disagree that just by forcing the spec to be changed from requiring Theora
that Apple and Microsoft now get off the hook for their actions.
You said, repeating an often made claim, _The spec does not specify a codec
for use on the video tag, just as it doesn't for the img tag._ Which is
factually correct _now_ , after Apple refused to implement the spec as it was
and Hixie edited the spec to reflect reality. Hixie claims he will add a codec
back, once one is found suitable, which means both royalty-free and
implemented by the big players.
You appear to have done it by accident, but you'll find comments elsewhere in
the thread that make the argument that he has no right to specify any codec in
HTML5, whether Theora or a future royalty-free codec, and make the parallel to
the img tag not specifying an image format. This is clearly not Hixie's
position, and I don't think it generally holds any water.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
>I agree with Hixie that putting it in the spec is pointless if Apple and
Microsoft are going to go against the spec.
I disagree.
The spec should enable the web to be used unencumbered by patented
software/codecs.
Ogg Theora or any other free+open container and codec (VP8?) would enable
people to use FOSS software to create video and put that video on the web
without being beholden to the H264 patent holders group ("MPEG LA").
Microsoft or Apple Computers or whoever would then be required to implement a
viewer in their browser in order to comply with the spec. If they don't then
they don't get to label themselves "standards compliant" without committing
fraud and can't badge themselves with W3C compliance without
trademark/copyright infringements.
If Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, etc., implement the full spec this applies
pressure to obstinate commercial megoliths to also move to implement it.
What we have here is akin to knowing that the GIF patent situation (Unisys
trying to get money from nearly everyone on the internet) is around the
corner, already having PNG but not requiring that browsers implement PNG.
I think the situation is far worse than the GIF situation though, eg
[http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Vid...](http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-
LA) . Now [http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/know-your-
rights-h-264-pa...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/know-your-
rights-h-264-patent-licensing-and-you/) Engadget did a review of the situation
in which the MPEG-LA say that they're not really going to hold their license
terms (which mean that you can't shoot film on _any_ camera and use it
commercially without purchasing a license) against people and basically
they're really nice and we shouldn't be afraid of them. Which I agree, we have
nothing to fear until the spec is widely implemented and the open license on
H264 gets pulled out from under everyone in 2015 and MPEG-LA attempt to pull a
Unisys.
------
ZeroGravitas
A lively discussion, but most seem to miss the fact that the spec did require
Theora (though not exclusively, just as a baseline to ensure interoperability)
and Apple, with a little help from Nokia, had it removed from the spec because
they refused to implement it.
So if Apple aren't the right people to complain to, I don't know who is.
(Probably if Microsoft had implemented Theora then it would have been added
back to the spec, as Apple would have been in a clear minority then, so
complain to them too).
~~~
lurch_mojoff
The working group tasked with creating HTML5 has a charter that defines what
are they supposed to work on and deliver. The codec of the content served
through the video tag is outside of the scope defined in said charter. Apple,
among others, have argued only that. What Microsoft could have done might have
had impact on the outcome of h.264 vs. Theora, but it would not have changed
the HTML5 specification.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
Can you actually point to Apple arguing that about the charter scope? I recall
them arguing that Theora was not efficient enough, that it didn't have
sufficient hardware support, that it had patent issues and probably a few
other arguments. I don't remember them ever making that specific point about
the HTML5 charter.
~~~
lurch_mojoff
Unfortunately I cannot off the cuff cite a source (if I find one I'll add a
link to it, though). I can tell you the context in which I came across this. A
couple of months ago there was a story that Adobe were "sabotaging" HTML5 - in
reality it was Larry Masinter, Adobe's representative in the HTML WG, arguing
that the canvas API falls outside of the charter of the working group. In one
of the blogposts in defense of Adobe's position the author quoted similar
objections that Apple and Microsoft have made regarding <audio> and <video>
codec support when HTML5 was still in transition from WHATWG to W3C.
Apple have most certainly expressed concerns about Theora's performance and
patent situation and I'm sure they still have them. However, those concerns
were pertinent when HTML5 was being developed by WHATWG, because WHATWG are
not limiting the scope of any work they do. That's not the case with W3C's
HTML WG.
------
lurch_mojoff
W3C is in no way, shape or form "allowing H.264 to infiltrate its way". The
HTML5 spec does not require or endorse h.264 or any other codec. Opera's, and
Mozilla's I believe, attempt to sneak a codec requirement in the spec (Theora)
was shot down, and rightly so, because it falls outside of the scope of HTML5,
just as the encoding of image files displayed through the img tag is outside
of its scope.
------
vvatsa
"""The fact is, the W3C is violating its own principles by allowing H.264 to
infiltrate its way into the next HTML spec."""
I think this is a very valid point, w3c is suppose to promote open tools for
the web of consumers and authors regardless their technology. A patented tool
does not promote this.
~~~
DrJokepu
Within W3C's mission statement ( <http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission> ),
this is not mentioned. Can you provide a reference to back up this claim?
(that is, that W3C is supposed to promote open tools or would violate any of
its principles by not requiring to support any particular video encoding)
------
greyfade
Horse shit.
If the spec forbade "the" codec, the offending vendors will simply _violate_
the spec and claim some kind of justification for it.
Yes, we're complaining to the wrong people. No, going to the W3C is not the
answer.
I tend to think that if we can get people to stop _using_ h.264 for _anything_
, then freer codecs could gain traction - particularly On2's (now Google's)
VP8.
Or, taking the bigger perspective, we should be complaining to the US
Congress: patents are the problem, not Microsoft's choice in codecs. If there
were no patents to license, this wouldn't be an issue at all.
------
bartl
The real fix would be to abolish software patents, and with it, the licences.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: HN Pop Quiz – Useless Trivia Quiz about Hacker News - karimf
https://www.hnpopquiz.com
======
JJarrard
Hilarious loading text
------
motyar
is it opensource?
~~~
njsubedi
Yes, there is a link at the bottom of the last page.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ClojureScript 101 - swannodette
http://swannodette.github.io/2013/11/07/clojurescript-101/
======
swannodette
If there's something in the tutorial that trips anyone up or doesn't make
sense please let me know and I will amend.
I'm pretty excited about the latest release of ClojureScript that makes all
this possible. With respect to speed of incremental compiles, code size,
performance of generated code, and debugging we're finally in a good place
(with of course many improvements planned in the near future).
None of this would have been possible without the tireless work of 62
contributors over the past two years,
[http://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/](http://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/).
A big thank you to all!
Happy hacking!
~~~
benmathes
Couldn't really get started (with the latest clean install of leiningen from
homebrew).
$ lein cljsbuild auto async-tutl
...
java.lang.Exception: Unknown build identifier: async-tutl
Did the name of the tutorial change?
edit: ell instead of 1. I guess that's why I use a heavily-serifed font for my
coding. I even re-read the command several times looking for a simple typo to
catch exactly this problem.
~~~
chongli
You have a typo there. The proper command is:
$ lein cljsbuild auto async-tut1
Note the _one_ instead of the _ell_.
------
michaelsbradley
Is there a maintained web page or cheat sheet somewhere that lists the
functions and macros unique to ClojureScript?
The API Overview[1] page for Clojure itself is great, and many of those
facilities are 1-to-1 in cljs. For individual libs, like core.async, it's easy
enough to go look in the cljs namespaces (i.e. the source code) to see what's
available.
But it seems there are at least several important facilities unique to
ClojureScript and it would be great if they were spelled out somewhere readily
accessible and linked to from the main README[2]. Digging through the source
is a bit more challenging given that there's more to wade through than for
individual libs.
[1] [http://clojure.github.io/clojure/](http://clojure.github.io/clojure/)
[2]
[https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/README....](https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/README.md)
~~~
michaelsbradley
For example: I'm aware of 'js*', but where is it defined? Where is it
documented? Does it have any "gotchas" that are explained somewhere?
~~~
swannodette
js* should not be used - it's an implementation detail. I agree we could do a
better job documenting what's unique to ClojureScript over Clojure.
------
stewbrew
Since this is supposed to be a 101 tutorial, could you please add (maybe in a
later episode) some info on debugging and on parsing the stack trace.
When I add the text
1+"
to core.clsj and have auto compile running, I get a gigantic stack trace but
none of the entries points me to the line where the error occured. I wonder
how people are supposed to handle a code base bigger than a few lines of code
and I stop following the tutorial before having written a single line of
clojurescript.
~~~
stolio
Clojure stack traces in general are pretty verbose. A few thoughts from a
fellow user (not ClojureScript specific, but remember we're doing all of this
in a Clojure project):
The top few lines of the stack trace have the most information. Entering some
blank space or clearing your terminal will make it easier to find the top.
The errors are often caught way down in Java land so you can be left trying to
map Java errors and types into your own code - I've learned to ignore 80%+ of
the trace for this reason.
There's a bit of a learning curve to figure out what _this_ can't be cast to
_that_ might mean, both for Java types and Clojure types. For example a
missing opening paren may give a (roughly) "number can't be cast to sequence"
error. A missing closing paren will generally throw an End Of File (EOF)
error.
A lot of the time you can get a line number from the top entry in the stack
trace, they'll be in parentheses and aren't labeled terribly well - but once
you find it once you'll know where it is forever.
Sometimes, in certain situations - especially with macros that call across
files (like for testing) - the stack trace might be completely unhelpful.
I'm definitely hopeful that this situation will improve in the future (and
maybe we can get an Edwin style debugger? Please?) In the meantime we can use
tools to help us at least keep our braces organized since that's half the
difficult to trace problems right there. For Emacs some swear by paredit, I'm
still working on my system but it includes electric-parens, rainbow-parens (so
helpful!) and auto-closing parens.
Also, it's not as robust as Emacs but Lighttable offers some decent
parentheses handling out of the box (I went back to Emacs after Lighttable was
making connections to outside servers that I at least didn't mean to ask it to
and didn't have time to deal with. Other than that Lighttable was great).
------
andreypopp
Recreated in pure js with ES6 generators —
[http://andreypopp.com/posts/2013-11-09-recreating-core-
async...](http://andreypopp.com/posts/2013-11-09-recreating-core-async-
tutorial-with-es6-generators.html)
~~~
swannodette
Fantastic! :)
------
minikomi
Thank you for such a straightforward train I thought/workflow post. Would love
to see something detailing how to deal with state in clojurescript. Use atoms?
Pass the world in and return it modified? Dispatch within go funcs using
symbols at the head of lists?
~~~
michaelsbradley
Jim Duey's protocol-monads[1] library is compatible with ClojureScript, and
the State monad[2] can be a great for mechanism for "passing around the
world". It's not always the best choice, but it's a good option to have in
your toolbelt:
[1] [https://github.com/jduey/protocol-
monads](https://github.com/jduey/protocol-monads)
[2] [https://github.com/jduey/protocol-
monads/blob/master/src/clj...](https://github.com/jduey/protocol-
monads/blob/master/src/clj/monads/core.clj#L280)
~~~
graue
In what circumstances is it the best choice? I get the impression that monad
libraries in dynamic languages are basically toys, or are written to show off.
If I'm wrong, I'd love to see examples of how you used them in a ClojureScript
project, why (other than novelty value) you chose them over other approaches
like atoms, and how they worked out in practice.
~~~
michaelsbradley
That's a fair question, to be sure.
However, your comments regarding monads see a bit off. I've seen the same
sentiments expressed elsewhere (i.e. by others), so I think they represent
something of a common misunderstanding.
First of all, monads are simply programming patterns which relate a set of
values to a set of of functions. For any monad X, we can say that a function
is monadic if it returns a value in the X Monad. The set of values are
precisely those such that the following three Monad Laws[1] hold:
[ Using JavaScript syntax, they can be approximated as... ]
_Left Identity_
mBind( mReturn(x), f ) == f(x);
// => true
_Right Identity_
mBind( mReturn(x), mReturn ) == mReturn(x);
// => true
_Associativity_
mBind( mBind( mReturn(x), f ), g ) == mBind( mReturn(x), function(x) { return mBind( f(x), g ); } );
// => true
Above, x is any value in the Monad X; f and g are monadic functions for the
same monad. The definitions of mBind and mReturn will vary depending on the
monad, but the same laws (and sometimes additional properties) hold for each
group of things taken as a whole – the monadic values, monadic functions, and
the mBind and mReturn pair for those values and functions.
As you can see, there is nothing special that requires a statically typed
language. That being said, if your language is statically typed, and even more
so if its type system has advanced capabilities (e.g. Haskell's type system),
then the relationships between the monadic values and functions can be
leveraged to do a number of useful things, including catching a host of errors
at compile time (though that's true regardless of monads).
If your language is dynamically typed, then you won't get those extra
benefits, but you can still take advantage of the fact that monads can
abstract away a great deal of plumbing between various pieces of your program.
Sometimes the "monad patterns" will appear in a language under another name,
or will be used "under the hood" to implement a particular API.
Clojure/Script's `let` for example is essentially the Identity Monad; and its
`for` is very much akin to the List Monad (the same is true for list
comprehensions in other languages). The core.async library involves an
inspiring application of the State Monad pattern[2].
In my case, I'm working on an SCXML-like[3] framework which builds on Google
Polymer, core.async and protocol-monads (and core.logic at some point?). By
using the State Monad pattern (together with trampolines and core.async
channels), the algorithms of SCXML can be implemented in a manner that's not
dependent on side effects, instead flowing the "global state" between the
computational steps in a manner that is consisent and relatively easy to
reason about. To boot, by using channels to link together steps in the
"mainEventLoop", time is deliberately yielded back to the CPU, making the
framework even more concurrency friendly. The project will be open source
soon, and I can follow up with some links to source code once it goes public
on GitHub.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(functional_programming)#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_\(functional_programming\)#Monad_laws)
[2]
[https://github.com/clojure/core.async/blob/master/src/main/c...](https://github.com/clojure/core.async/blob/master/src/main/clojure/clojure/core/async/impl/ioc_macros.clj#L53)
[&]
[https://github.com/clojure/core.async/blob/master/src/main/c...](https://github.com/clojure/core.async/blob/master/src/main/clojure/cljs/core/async/impl/ioc_macros.clj#L46)
[3] [http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/](http://www.w3.org/TR/scxml/)
~~~
graue
You've piqued my interest around the state monad specifically, and I just
added a long but promising-looking article on it[1] to my reading queue.
However:
> _Sometimes the "monad patterns" will appear in a language under another
> name, or will be used "under the hood" to implement a particular API.
> Clojure/Script's `let` for example is essentially the Identity Monad; and
> its `for` is very much akin to the List Monad (the same is true for list
> comprehensions in other languages)._
I knew this from reading monad tutorials. And yes, certainly there exist
useful things that happen to be monads. But I question the usefulness of
explicitly pointing that out and saying, "Here's a monad library. I'm going to
use this monad library to build X. You can use all the normal monadic
functions on X, because it's a monad", as opposed to putting the monad stuff
to the side and just building X. What would you gain from building `let` or
list comprehensions atop a monad library? Would it be worth the users you'd
confuse? The concept of monad is far too abstract to be intuitive to most
people, so there is a cognitive cost to making people think about them.
1\. [http://brandon.si/code/the-state-monad-a-tutorial-for-the-
co...](http://brandon.si/code/the-state-monad-a-tutorial-for-the-confused/)
~~~
michaelsbradley
Jim Duey's blog post on the State Monad was helpful to me[1].
I agree that one shouldn't reach for monads just because one finds them
interesting or neat, or challenging for that matter.
An analogy: consider that in many cases, `while` and `for` loops are great
when looping is what's called for. But there are many times when recursion is
more attractive still. But what to do if your language doesn't have TCO, and
blowing the callstack is a real concern? Well, then you can use
trampolines![2]
Now, trampolines are great, but you don't need to always reach for them. An
analysis should be done of the problem at hand, and "the right tool chosen for
the task", which may be a simple `while` loop. The same goes for monads. Are
there cases where the State Monad makes the most sense among other programming
patterns? Yes, I think so. Particularly, when you are trying to model a multi-
step and nested-steps computation where the steps are intertwined in such a
way that one can easily identify "global state" at work. In that case, the
State Monad is a tool that will let you thread the global state through the
steps and levels of computation without having to twist yourself into knots
doing it some other way AND without relying on unfettered mutability.
[1]
[http://www.clojure.net/2012/02/10/State/](http://www.clojure.net/2012/02/10/State/)
[2] [http://raganwald.com/2013/03/28/trampolines-in-
javascript.ht...](http://raganwald.com/2013/03/28/trampolines-in-
javascript.html)
[&] [http://clojure.github.io/clojure/clojure.core-
api.html#cloju...](http://clojure.github.io/clojure/clojure.core-
api.html#clojure.core/trampoline)
------
nico
It looks great, thanks! Here's another one I just saw:
[https://github.com/magomimmo/modern-
cljs/blob/master/doc/tut...](https://github.com/magomimmo/modern-
cljs/blob/master/doc/tutorial-01.md)
I got started with CLJS about a year ago but ran into performance issues with
the specific application I was building, hopefully things have improved now.
~~~
swannodette_
ClojureScript has had performance escape hatches for some time. It's pretty
much always possible to get the performance of hand written JS, important
otherwise our data structures would be lame. We'll likely document these
techniques in the future.
------
john2x
Great write up.
ClojureScript 102 should be how to get a REPL running ;)
~~~
jbeja
Could you please do one that explain how to actually debug in CLJS.
~~~
poppingtonic
Using `lein cljsbuild auto` should enable you to see problems in your
clojurescript code as soon as you save it, and using the browser's js console
enables you to see problems in the compiled/generated js. The stack trace
printed out in case of an exception is usually informative enough. I
experienced its helpfulness quite recently during my study of OP's example.
------
DigitalJack
Nice. I spent like an hour today looking for a leiningen clojurescript
template, so I'm happy to see Mies.
It doesn't show up when googling for "leiningen clojurescript template." I
wonder if maybe mentioning leiningen in the readme would change that.
------
sherbondy
Hey swannodette, just curious about why you ended the <input> tag in your
tutorial. Was this deliberate?
~~~
sherbondy
Hmm, I seem to have found a limitation/bug in go blocks. I didn't know about
the nifty "." syntax for calling methods on js objects, eg: (. js/console (log
"hi")).
Anyway, I thought this was great, so I tried doing it inside of a go block,
like so: (go (while true) (. js/console (log (<! clicks))))
And this yielded a compiler warning: WARNING: Use of undeclared Var async-
tut1.core/log at line 50 src/async_tut1/core.cljs
So there seems to be a problem with namespace resolution and the go macro? Or
maybe a bug with "." in particular? Works fine when I do (.log js/console (<!
clicks))
Either way, I would try to be consistent about your notation throughout the
article. Either use (.log js/console ...) or use (. js/console (log ...)).
Core.async in the browser is a ton of fun otherwise! Kudos.
~~~
omni
I think this is a typo in the article. If you remove the parenthesis right
before log, this should work. You're using the dot form to chain log onto
js/console. When you write "(log" instead of just "log", it tries to call log
as its own function, not as a method of js/console. This is why it tells you
it's never seen that variable before.
(go (while true) (. js/console log (<! clicks)))
------
krosaen
Perfect intro to core.async in a web app - just enough of an example (jsonp
within a click handler would require a nested callback).
It would be nice to update the tutorial with a final instruction on compiling
with advanced mode so people can see that the end result is a reasonable sized
js file.
------
macmac
Incorporating a browser REPL into the template would be fantastic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you have documents which help clean up when you're dead? - sirwitti
On December 23rd the girlfriend of a friend died at 25 in a car accident and last week Aaron Swartz died which got me thinking about what happened if I died today.<p>Actually it would be a huge mess I fear. So i took an hour and put together some of the (to me) important information about accounts I have on websites (like Facebook, Twitter,..), about my cellphone and so on.<p>Did you plan for such a scenario? Do you have such documents? And how do you manage and let your family know about it.<p>This is also a matter of security and trust. You're giving someone a lot of power over your life...
======
anderspetersson
This summer I went to Afghanistan to work for the Swedish Army, the work
involved quite some risk. The weeks before I left I took the time to write
such documents.
These documents includes everything from how I wanted my funeral to be, ie
cremation or not, what songs, where (I live long away from the place I grow
up) I want to have my grave, if I want to donate organs etc, but also
information about my online life and password to different accounts.
Luckily I did not get hurt and are now home working with my startup, but I've
keept the documents stored on a place where my girlfriend knows where they are
(but I would see If she peeked), since I could get hit by a car when I walk
over the street or whatever.
I'm sure my relatives would benefit from the docs if I suddenly go away.
------
runarb
A friend of me had such a document. Both his grandfather and father died from
a hart attach so he may have been more prepared then most for a young death.
When the family opened his safe (!) there was an envelope with documents
describing several online accounts and a letter of attorney.
The gay had quite the active social life on the net. The family received about
100-150 phone calls from people, that for them was totally strangers, the
first couple of days. Most was basically wondering about what was happening.
Updating his social media status helped a lot.
------
codegeek
I always think about this. In fact, I have seriously considered making this
document for my wife since I don't think even she knows everything.
------
mike-cardwell
JOOI, why do you care what happens to your Facebook and Twitter accounts after
you die?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A map of one million scientific papers from the arXiv - Amorymeltzer
http://paperscape.org
======
dstyrb
This is one of the things most scientists envy physicists for. I would
estimate 95% of those papers are copyrighted, and yet, since we have had this
structure for so long, no publisher tries to pursue us for sharing our work
with the public for free.
I don't know about other fields of physics, but in astro, most of the data is
free access as well. I personally work only with public data and I'm paid to
do it. A string attached to governmental funding from the Euro or NSF is
usually a mandated free access database.
Sometimes I take for granted the fact that my morning ritual involves reading
every publication in my field from the day before, without license. And then I
download some free data, program in my free languages, write in my free latex
editor, and then publish my work for free in a place anyone can read it. It's
utopic.
edit: two archives with a lot of different missions data for example:
[http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/frontpage/](http://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/frontpage/)
[https://archive.stsci.edu](https://archive.stsci.edu)
------
FrankenPC
Side note: My dad (RIP. Princeton PhD high energy physics working at UCSD as a
professor/researcher.) lived in the high energy realm for decades. He worked
on every major particle accelerator known and some unknown.
True story. He had a hobby going in a public storage unit with a surplus
military linear accelerator. Smallish. About 30 feet long. Of course it
required huge amounts of power so he cut a hole in the unit and ran a line to
the nearest pole and siphoned 480 mains volts. And the gamma radiation was
very dangerous so he hauled in several tons of lead destined for EPA long term
sequestering. We worked one summer building shielding walls and measuring the
operational radiation. After the unit was 'safely' running, we would take
various pieces of thrown away Lucite from the physics machine shop and turn
them into polished beam trees (Google it). We then gave them away for
Christmas gifts. What fun for a 10 year old kid!
~~~
jacquesm
That's a lovely story.
~~~
FrankenPC
Thanks. An addendum to his life: Apparently my dad led an early experiment at
Fermi lab that discovered scaling violations which led to QCD. It was a while
until it was officially confirmed and published. He also worked with a
physicist named Masek at a Stanford SPEAR experiment which discovered a new
quark/anti-quark. Neither got recognition which is how the good old boys
network functions in basic research.
~~~
jacquesm
You should really do some digging and do a proper write up, it would make one
hell of a story and I'm sure your dad would approve. So many people working
hard without any recognition but that's no reason not to illuminate that a
bit.
~~~
FrankenPC
He's gone. And I only have the anecdotal info from colleagues he worked with.
MANY scientists are swept under the carpet due to the recognition power play
that occurs at the high institutional echelons. I can't prove that either. My
dad was a modest man and never extolled his past successes. So, I'll never
really know.
------
mrdrozdov
Amazing. This got me thinking about citation counts. The most cited paper in
Computer Science of all time is Vapnik's Statistical Learning Theory (1998)
with about 10k citations. The most cited paper of any kind of all time is
Protein measurement with the folin phenol reagent by Lowry et al. (1951) with
> 300k citations. There's a big time gap here, but not big enough to make up
for a > 290k difference in citations. I always thought that CS was one of the
more prolific paper writing communities, clearly not the case.
PS. I'm not sure which paper in the arXiv has the greatest number of
citations. I don't think either of these papers are there.
~~~
danharaj
It was my understanding that CS is more of a conference-going community rather
than a paper-writing community.
~~~
seccess
It is true that CS is more conference-oriented, however most top conferences
require that a paper be submitted, reviewed, and (if accepted) published in
the conference proceedings before you can present your work there. This does
vary by discipline though: algs/theory is more traditional journal oriented, I
believe.
------
kartikkumar
Wow awesome! Only a couple of weeks ago I tweeted about the idea of building a
genealogy tree by walking along a graph generated by arXiv. This is a really
neat visualization. Is the codebase open-source?
~~~
ethikal
Yes, see [https://github.com/paperscape](https://github.com/paperscape)
~~~
kartikkumar
Excellent, thanks!
------
kaeluka
Somewhere in this cloud is the paper that could change your life and you have
no idea which one it is.
~~~
iyn
Any ideas how could 'content discovery' work (or be improved) with the
research papers? What is the current standard, just the
keywords/topics/authors or is there something else?
~~~
kaeluka
Content discovery does work using citations. How it can be meaningfully
improved, I don't know. Often, the missing piece will come from a completely
different discipline. I don't see how this gap could be bridged using only
citations, unfortunately.
~~~
iyn
That's the thing. I understand that citations are good enough when you know
what you're looking for (at least from my perspective), but imo there's no
good solution to finding seemingly unrelated paper/research that could be 'the
missing piece', hence the question about 'content discovery' :).
------
mdturnerphys
This is seems to be quite hampered by only including references that are found
in the arXiv. Two of my papers from grad school are surrounded by papers that
have very little to do with them. My three papers that are on the arXiv are
very spread out, with the distance between two of them being ~90% of the map
height and the third somewhere in the middle. They are all in physics, but
very focused on experiment and apparatus. I think that physics theory (vs.
experiment) is over-represented on the arXiv and connections to theory papers
are much more influential on the map. It would be interesting to redo this
with a database like [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/),
which doesn't depend on author self-selection.
------
mangeletti
Nice work.
I was thinking while navigating this that, if I was researching something
related to physics, etc., this would much better than using some a engine,
because you might not know exactly what you want to look for, until you see
it.
------
udev
This map is beautiful!
But what does (x,y) position mean? If two papers are close on the map are they
also close in some other aspect?
I mean, what gave this map this particular shape?
~~~
Buetol
This has been most probably applied a force-directed layout:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-
directed_graph_drawing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-
directed_graph_drawing)
Basically, it's like having a spring between each node (paper) and letting the
equilibrium do the rest.
~~~
carlob
Yes. From their facebook about page:
> In laying out the map, an N-body algorithm is run to determine positions
> based on references between the papers. There are two “forces” involved in
> the N-body calculation: each paper is repelled from all other papers using
> an anti-gravity inverse-distance force, and each paper is attracted to all
> of its references using a spring modelled by Hooke’s law.
However it must have taken them a while to converge for 10^6 particles.
~~~
Buetol
It's actually pretty fast now, could take max one day to get something like
that with
[https://github.com/anvaka/ngraph.offline.layout](https://github.com/anvaka/ngraph.offline.layout)
------
mech4bg
Previous discussion about this with some technical details from one of the
authors:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6314730)
------
DrNuke
Papers are the top of the iceberg if we consider applied science and
technology. Patents, actual products / services and, above all, money
generated are much more important imho.
------
visarga
So few CS papers compared to physics.
~~~
bnegreve
CS folks are not really used to upload their papers on the arXiv. So this is
probably not a good indication of the number of papers published in each
field.
~~~
jwcrux
Any good resources where CS folks typically upload their papers? I've used the
Google/Twitter/etc. "published research" pages, but those are obviously
company-specific.
~~~
seccess
Many CS researchers publish in conferences, not journals, so they tend to be
pretty spread around. Each field usually has a major conference whose
proceedings are worth looking into when they roll around. Of course,
conference papers are behind paywalls, but you can usually find a free version
if you search the authors/paper title in Google Scholar. The system could be
better.
------
chlestakoff
I am curious about the 2D embedding method: what constitutes a vector in the
original "paper space" and how the 2D clusters where determined.
------
pravj
Interesting. I visit arXiv often and notice that most of the new papers are in
the 'astrophysics' and 'high-energy' field, and the map exactly resembles
that.
Can you please enlighten us about the technical details behind the scene,
right from collecting the data to processing it.
I'm also working with a large graph entity and would love to read about your
process.
~~~
pravj
I see that the data is little old, found the GitHub organization for
'paperscape', a tool to visualize arXiv.
https://github.com/paperscape
------
nekopa
How could we go about making a 3D version of this? I had a distinct feeling of
travelling a galaxy using this. It could be awesome to actually be sitting in
a 'spaceship' (knowledgeship?) and travelling the paths between these papers
~~~
jkldotio
Yes, both tSNE and force-directed layouts can do 3D as well as 2D. The
following link goes to a "spaceship" force-directed visualisation of Python
Github projects, the same author has used his engine for other visualisations
too.
[https://github.com/anvaka/allpypi](https://github.com/anvaka/allpypi)
------
Luc
Very nice and potentially useful. Is there a way to click through to the
papers from there? I feel like it should be possible.
EDIT: Site is probably getting hammered, I just needed to wait a minute for
everything to load.
~~~
pc86
If you click on the individual paper there will be a popup in the upper right
that contains various links.
------
mrdrozdov
How can one tell how many citations a paper has?
EDIT: Clicking a paper and then "(citations)" will you show the one-level
graph of citations, and under the search bar you can see how many results
there were.
------
new_hackers
Wow very cool!! I was looking at the little dots around the edge of the
cluster and thought, "hmm I wonder what these are?". Then I realized I needed
to dust my monitor...
------
ecesena
Can you specify a search query in the url?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GHC 8.2.1 available - based2
https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2017-July/014422.html
======
BooneJS
Has anyone switched to the LLVM backend, or do most people still use the
default backend?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Old Moon Rover Beams Surprising Laser Flashes to Earth - ccarpenterg
http://spacefellowship.com/news/art20673/old-moon-rover-beams-surprising-laser-flashes-to-earth.html
======
JoeAltmaier
Looks like a B-movie robot
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Large Problems in Django Mostly Solved (How to use APIs and Data Migration) - metamemetics
http://ericholscher.com/tag/largeproblems/
======
hartror
Right this means "problems" in the sense that 1+1 is a "problem" not
"problems" as in fundamental issues with Django which was my immediate
thought. Had me confused for a second, silly preconceptions!
Apart from some slight naming issue they're a good set of posts! I love south
to death for data migrating and am surprised they didn't merge it into contrib
for 1.2
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Gmail “Dot Addresses” to Commit Fraud - 0xmohit
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/02/using_gmail_dot.html
======
wuunderbar
> Each of these accounts is associated with a different stolen identity, but
> all email from these services are received by the same Gmail account. Thus,
> the group is able to centralize and organize their fraudulent activity
> around a small set of email accounts, thereby increasing productivity and
> making it easier to continue their fraudulent behavior.
I'm sure there are creative & compelling uses of Gmail dot addresses to commit
fraud out there, but this one barely counts as fraud. I'm not sure what the
point of the article is.
~~~
deweller
Fraudsters are taking advantage of email aliases to get other people to pay
for someone else's account.
Example:
1) Fraudster create an account and put in a bogus card number.
2) Fraudster changes account email address to [email protected].
[email protected] already exists in Netflix's DB - but [email protected]
does not, so Netflix is ok with this.
3) Netflix emails [email protected] and says "hey your card is bad, please
update it" by clicking here.
4) The real [email protected] receives the email, clicks the link and is
taken directly to a "update your card screen" and types in their credit card
information.
5) Fraudster has their Netflix account paid for by the real Joe Smith.
Granted, Netflix could fix this by requiring a login before updating billing
details. But the dot aliases in Gmail are a part of the scam.
~~~
SteveNuts
A few years ago I noticed an uptick in services sending out "magic links" that
take you direct to their service, already signed in. I've always thought there
has to be some sort of vulnerability in that, perhaps this is it?
~~~
ggggtez
The fact that netflix lets you create an account without verifying you
actually own the email address they are sending the token to is the real bug.
Besides, even without a magic link, they could still phish you into clicking a
link to a malicious page that performed a login-csrf which would have the same
effect.
------
giornogiovanna
> Thus, the group is able to centralize and organize their fraudulent activity
> around a small set of email accounts, thereby increasing productivity and
> making it easier to continue their fraudulent behavior.
How were Gmail's dot-addresses a central feature of this fraud? It looks like
it just made it a tiny bit more convenient. And regarding the Netflix example,
why isn't it 100% on them for not verifying email addresses?
~~~
ganoushoreilly
I agree, it implies they were using the . as a means to generate new emails vs
the . actually playing a pivotal role in a specific compromise. I've actually
used the . and + feature for years to manage different accounts.
~~~
throwaway5752
I know, this is infuriating. Dots and extensions are part of the spec, and
it's the fault of the party mishandling them.
------
mindslight
An email address should not be treated as some kind of closed-world
constraining identifier, but purely as an open-world point of contact. The
suggestion seems to be that businesses should view Gmail addresses with dots
as a sign of "abuse", presumably how the same broken philosophy views
Mailinator addresses. In reality if you're concerned about either of these,
you're doing something wrong.
Schneier should know better than to give credence to this snake oiled tripe.
------
wtmt
The part about tricking Netflix users was posted and discussed here before.
[1]
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16781959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16781959)
------
tfandango
I was convinced someone was trying to perpetrate fraud against me using my
gmail address w/o the dots. I just didn't understand how. I continuously got
(and still get) emails from Amazon about app purchases (all free) because
someone has created an account using my gmail address minus the dots. I have
called Amazon 3 times and each time they have either removed my address from
the other person's account, or deactivated the account (or so they said).
And then I finally got an email from someone, the alleged fraudster? Asking me
to stop using their email address......
------
ASalazarMX
This is a non-issue, I'm surprised it's on front page. If you can defraud
companies just by making email aliases, what's stopping those hardened
criminals from just registering new addresses?
Companies have had procedures for dealing with duplicate
addresses/telephones/email addresses since forever, and if they don't, it's a
fault of their business model.
------
asaph
What other vanity email providers besides Gmail implement "dot addresses" or
similar systems for their email addresses?
Update: The table on this wikipedia page provides a list under the "Address
Modifiers" column. Curiously, it doesn't mention dot addresses for Gmail, only
plus addressing.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_provider...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers#Features)
~~~
ASalazarMX
If we're nitpicking, it would be why Google allows dot aliases for regular
accounts, but not for G Suite, while allowing plus-sign aliases for both.
~~~
nerdkid93
If I had to guess, because corporate admins want to have separate inboxes for
people with similar names... 1 with a "." and one without.
~~~
ASalazarMX
That's more trouble than it's worth. [email protected] and
[email protected] will receive many emails not intended to them.
------
golem14
[https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-
falsehood#emails](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood#emails)
------
leni536
> _The account "[email protected]" maps to the exact same address as
> "[email protected]" and "[email protected]" \-- and so
> on._
Just a minor nit: the distinct _addresses_ map to the same _inbox_ or _google
account_. I fail to see how this breaks email.
~~~
ASalazarMX
Wait till he finds out about [email protected]
------
nerdkid93
This is a poorly sourced article. Where does this metric come from? > Submit
48 credit card applications at four US-based financial institutions, resulting
in the approval of at least $65,000 in fraudulent credit How does one even
open a line of credit with just an email address?
------
vkhn
I've used dot addresses in referral queues to bump myself up the queue.
Remember the Oneplus referral based phone ordering/shipping? Yep, I cheated
that one just to see if it would work.
It did.
------
seba_dos1
I have a catch-all domain. Just imagine all the fraud possibilities!
------
mike503
Can someone flag this as bullshit?
------
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
What a dumb article. Whoever considers email addresses to be identities is an
idiot, they are not, they are simply a contact address, and obviously you can
have as many of those as you want. If your software can't deal with this fact,
your software is broken.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Fil – A playground for in-browser interpreters - fka
https://github.com/fatiherikli/fil
======
neoberg
Wonderful stuff...thanks for posting! :)
------
emiralp
Fucking awesome!
------
mstdokumaci
i'm fascinated by real time output.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Baghdadi Story Reveals Divided – and Broken – News Media - Reedx
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/baghdadi-trump-washington-post-headline-fox-news-904945/
======
duckMuppet
Yeh I'm not sure this author understands his audience.
Further, I'm not sure any intellectually serious person has taken ANY U.S.
news based outlet serious for 5 or 10 years now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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How Apple evolved and eliminated the home button over a decade - flyosity
https://9to5mac.com/2017/09/15/apple-iphone-home-button-evolution-elimination/
======
qubex
I'm surprised to read that using the sleep button and home button combination
to take screenshots was only introduced with iOS 2 (iPhone OS 2, actually, in
the nomenclature of the era): I seem to remember it presaging that, but maybe
I'm mistaken.
Personally I shall not miss the home button, as I abhor it's mechanical nature
and have wanted it gone since forever. That said, I'm not very enthused by the
iPhone X either, on account of the utter loss of TouchID. I always considered
building fingerprint recognition into a screen to be tantamount to science-
fiction, but I also kept hoping Apple would find a way of pulling it off well
before the feature weaved its way into the rumour mill. Oh well... I suppose
it'll be the hallmark feature of iPhone X+1.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Electrodacus: Open-Source Solar Battery Management System Introduction and Setup - devy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCspxDLZR9U
======
throwaway189262
This is awesome! Some background for those not familiar with the space. A BMS
is used to keep Lithium Ion batteries charged property.
When building a large Lion battery, you typically do it by stringing a bunch
of small ones together. You can do this easily at home. But chaining lithium
ion in series is dangerous without a battery controller. Overcharged cells
especially.
This limitation has really hampered the DIY solar and EV communities. Solar
equipment and EV parts for small vehicles like scooters are readily available.
But there's no affordable BMS for using lithium batteries. The cheapest ones
are around $1000. That's why this project is so important.
Used lithium ion batteries with plenty of life left are becoming common on the
grey market as EV market penetration increases. The battery packs from hybrids
are the perfect size for solar backup power in vans and RVs. Tesla packs are
also great because they're built subdivided into conveniently sized modules
that run about 24V. This is a great voltage for using existing RV power
equipment.
The problem is, these battery modules have BMS integrated with the vehicle
electronics. They won't work without one, so until now the only option is to
pay $1000 for a commercial unit. Since the packs themselves cost less than
that, it's not viable to reuse EV batteries.
Automotive batteries are otherwise perfect for solar and RV use. They're about
5 kilowatt hours for hybrid packs and tesla modules. This is enough power that
you can throw a bunch of panels on the roof and run your whole RV solar 24/7
in sunny places. Even the AC. Car modules also support extremely high
charge/discharge rates. So you can run big stuff like toasters without
worrying about damaging the batteries. Tesla EV modules are about 6X lighter
than the equivalent traditional RV batteries, and can handle maybe 30X the
current. And they're half the cost.
100% solar RV's are finally realistic with used EV cells. Heat pump, AC,
induction cooking. You can supply all needs except food and water with solar.
An affordable BMS is the last barrier for me to use EV cells, so it looks like
I'm going to have a fun project coming up :)
The author of this video is a brilliant guy with a ton of other videos on off
grid power.
The site for the new BMS
[http://www.electrodacus.com/](http://www.electrodacus.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Volvo acquires Luxe - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/volvo-acquires-car-valet-startup-luxe-to-boost-its-digital-services-business/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
relaunched
This seems like a talent acquisition play. There was probably a lot of work
that went into find a soft place for the whole team to land; so, kudos to the
leaders / investors / whomever helped make this happen.
It's not a big exit, but if you are a luxe employee, it's the best of the
worst outcomes.
~~~
Flammy
> It's not a big exit, but if you are a luxe employee, it's the best of the
> worst outcomes.
This data wasn't in the article. It is probably the more likely outcome, but
we just don't know (yet).
~~~
elsewhen
i know this isn't definitive, but the article does include: "One source close
to the deal tells us that the terms here were closely guarded, and that the
assumption at this point is that it was ‘pennies on the dollar’ based on the
last valuation."
------
__abc
What's Volvo's motivation here? The entire Luxe business model was wildly
unprofitable and the UX as a consumer (egregious weight times at both drop off
and pick up) was awful.
~~~
moonka
I used it a few times in Seattle under a promo, and it was so painful. Getting
the timing down so the valet wasn't waiting out in the rain for awhile waiting
for me was difficult, and than it always took 15-20 minutes longer for them to
get my car back to me than what was shown in the app. I found myself better
off just using Lyft when I'm worried about parking.
------
vadym909
How can you be a tech company and expect to make tech company margins when all
you do is aggregate demand, parking spots and valets to match them. Luxe
making $3/hr x 200 valets and maybe a bit more on the parking arbitrage during
peak hrs.
Sounds like any of the local garage joints. I feel some markets are best left
fragmented.
~~~
eldavido
Not sure about "fragmented" but perhaps not VC-appropriate.
This stuff will all go away once (a) the non top-tier investors realize their
entire portfolios are underwater and (b) interest rates rise a bit.
Stepping back, it is pretty remarkable that a company I've heard of, with a
launched product and some degree of use, just _fails_ like this. Tech
entrepreneurship is hard.
------
asanwal
More proof that if you lose money on every transaction, you can't make it up
in volume.
The on-demand valet parking space has been a great place to lose money. Zirx
pivoted, Caarbon failed and now this acqui-hire of Luxe which was somehow
valued at $157M in its last round.[1]
Other companies in the space haven't raised in a while including Ubo of China
and ValetAnywhere.
[1] source: CB Insights
------
inji
Reasonable acquisition to expand the Volvo Concierge [0] services. The digital
services are likely the strongest selling point in a few years when luxuary
car makers all offers self driving, electric powered cars.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPKDy7k5hHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPKDy7k5hHE)
| {
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Stop writing Regular Expressions – Express them with Verbal Expressions - adamstac
http://thechangelog.com/stop-writing-regular-expressions-express-them-with-verbal-expressions/
======
antichaos
Stop writing URLs as strings. Express them with VerbalResourceLocator:
var vrl = VRL().
schema("https").
tld("com").
sld("ycombinator").
subdomain("news").
path("/item").
query({"id": "6164276"});
Seriously though, Verbal Expression is a great way to turn terse regexps into
un-reusable verbiage that barely improves readability.
~~~
rtpg
Speak for yourself, this is a lot clearer for me. I'm used to navigating
grammars, but I can't deal with regex (way too terse). Especially when I'm not
just matching, but I want to extract info. Some verbosity can go a long way to
making things clearer.
Don't know if this is the solution I'm looking for though
~~~
gojomo
If the terse run-together-ness of usual regexes is unclear, you may also want
to look into 'freespace' formatting... which lets you insert insignificant
whitespace to break the regex into logical groups/lines, and even add inline
comments:
[http://www.regular-expressions.info/freespacing.html](http://www.regular-
expressions.info/freespacing.html)
------
gyepi
I had never heard of this before. The stated goal is to simplify difficult
regular expressions, but the examples seem to be more complicated than the
corresponding regexes. Maybe I'm just old school.
I'm not sure that someone who relies on this would be able to debug the
resulting generated regex when something doesn't work as expected.
~~~
kcorbitt
I agree that for someone who already has the skills to reason with regexes
this has little to offer. But I'm not ready to count the idea out yet -- it's
easy to underestimate the length to which people will go to avoid being forced
to learn a new way to think. Easy string matching without regexes would have
been extremely appealing to my just-starting-programming self.
------
cleaver
I'm always a bit wary of posts that tell me to "Stop doing X". I'm also pretty
comfortable with regular expressions. They take you outside of the procedural
comfort zone, but are a valuable tool that will pay off to learn.
Still, it's worth a shot trying to create a tool like this. What I don't get
is how they would handle subexpressions.
~~~
stphnclysmth
Looking at the wiki, I don't think it does handle them. I reckon that if jehna
when to the trouble of making this, he knows of at least one use case, even if
it's his own. I appreciate that he's shared his work. That said, from my own
experience, by the time a regular expression becomes difficult for me to
parse, there are subexpressions, negative lookbehinds, and other less
comprehensible regex features that this library doesn't seem to support.
------
keithgabryelski
when you pretend you aren't using regular expressions, then you have two
problems.
------
eurleif
pyparsing
([http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/](http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/)) is more
object-oriented and composable, and it can parse recursive grammars.
~~~
eru
And of course there's also Parsec ([http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/daan/download/...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/daan/download/parsec/parsec.html)) for Haskell.
~~~
FreakLegion
My first thought was that "Verbal Expressions" are simply parser combinators,
which of course can do things that individual regular expressions can't do.
From the examples though it looks like this is just translating to regular
expressions under the hood, which would make it considerably less powerful
than Parsec and other parser combinator libs.
------
grkovalev
What is news? it's LINQ just for string
------
DavidSJ
Looks like cl-ppcre.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is the number of JavaScript programmers in the world? - tomek_zemla
In considering any type of for profit tool/tutorial/ebook that is targeting specifically JavaScript programmers it would be useful to know the potential size of the market.<p>So, I would love to figure out the estimate for the number of active JavaScript programmers. By 'active' I mean people that write JavaScript code (full-time, part-time or as part of their academic work) vs. HTML/Web integrators who occasionally tweak/copy/paste JS snippets.
======
trcollinson
A very large number?
I will now attempt to give you a more helpful answer that might indirectly
answer your question. In the other HN thread out there today "Those making
$1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?" one of the answers is
from Wes Bos who made a book and series of videos on Sublime Text editor. He
claims, and I have no reason to believe he would lie, he has grossed $80k in 3
months selling the book at $45 and the book and videos at $60.
Is the JavaScript engineering market large enough to make money off of
tutorials/ebooks? I would say if the content is good, the writing is well
done, and the marketing is fresh, you will do exceptionally well. If Sublime
Text Editor can bring in that kind of money, can you imagine JavaScript? Of
course, the flip side of that coin is market saturation.
Another way to answer this would be, if your biggest concern is potential size
of the market, you should be golden. It is huge.
~~~
tomek_zemla
I read the thread you mention and I am actually one of the people who spent
$45 on that book and did find it useful to get faster at Sublime Text.
The ideas I am considering would address the needs of a subset of JavaScript
programmers - specifically ones doing work with HTML5 Canvas API. There are
some books and resources obviously, but none I would consider very good. My
inspiration here is the quality of work of Jon Duckett -
[http://javascriptbook.com](http://javascriptbook.com) \- great content and
exceptional design!
So, I am looking for the estimate of JS programmers in order to estimate a
small subset that would enjoy high quality Canvas graphics programming
content...
~~~
MichaelBurge
You could release a chapter or two for free, and request people sign up on a
mailing list to receive further updates on your book. This would give you some
indication of interest in your book.
~~~
tomek_zemla
Yes, this is the exact thinking! But, I would like to make the most educated
guess what subject matter would work before writing two chapters of a book.
Programming graphics on Canvas is a niche and I would love to know if it's a
10K programmers crowd or 100K in size?
------
patrice71
Hi, what is a javascript programmer ? For exemple in my case i am a C/C++/Obj
C programmer mainly, but i run a french seo agency (
[https://www.sitepenalise.fr](https://www.sitepenalise.fr) \- shameless plug )
and i use javascript once in a while to help customers with problems on their
websites, does that make me a javascript programmer ? Note that javascript can
also be used on non internet things, such as the unity game engine... so it's
very well spread..
~~~
tomek_zemla
Somebody who uses actively the language on regular basis and has interest to
learn more about it to be more efficient and might have interest in JavaScript
tools and/or utilities that might his/her work easier. Or... another take.
Somebody who types JavaScript code at least a few hours per week on regular
basis. That's my rough definition.
------
v_ignatyev
I propose to focus on web developers when trying to calculate the number of
active JS coders, because practically any web programmer is JS coder more or
less. I do a lot in Python and AngularJS, the most in Python, and I'd be glad
to read your book.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Explaining the discrepancy in galaxy rotational curves, without dark matter - Protostome
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/201908.0046/v1
======
Causality1
A question I have about dark matter is how its presence has affected our sub-
galactic measurements. If the galaxy is filled with a diffuse cloud of dark
matter, then so is our solar system and the space around our planet. Are our
instruments sensitive enough to detect its effects on the motion of bodies
around the sun? Is the presence of dark matter near us something we have to
account for when comparing physical constants derived from first principles or
underlying theory to the values we actually measure?
~~~
Protostome
This is one of the explanations: [https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-
ethan-if-dark-matt...](https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-if-
dark-matter-is-everywhere-why-havent-we-detected-it-in-our-solar-
system-67ca11f94b1f)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to licence for a MultiCore architecture? Pt II - TonyMaley
http://tony.cqd.be/how-to-licence-for-a-multicore-architecture-p
SpringSource TC server and VMWare Virtual Image Licencing policies.
======
TonyMaley
Would really welcome a good discussion on this topic. I feel there is much to
learn on how companies should licence software for a highly scalable elastic
multicore platform.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages - randall
http://wordsafety.com/?hn=1
======
pavlov
Hey guys, I made this last week as a two-evening side project. Happy to see it
posted here, thanks randall!
I know the word lists aren't complete. This was the best I could do given the
time constraint, the fact that I don't actually speak 19 languages... And
also, after two evenings of googling dirty words, I started feeling like I'm
about to acquire Tourette's in some unknown language ;)
I'll update the database with the words submitted here and through the form on
the site. Thanks!
\--
Edit -- here's Google Analytics for this site after 1 hour on the HN
frontpage:
[http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_1736.jpg](http://wordsafety.com/img/analytics_2015-08-25_1736.jpg)
This is a site that had essentially zero traffic before HN, so I figured this
would be a potentially interesting glimpse into HN's audience.
~~~
thekevan
You may want to look at slang as well. I tried both "knob" and "bell end". It
said both were safe. Maybe they may be safe-ish in the US, but in Britain they
are definitely slang words that could result in quite a chuckle if you named
your app that.
~~~
pyre
Or "root" in Australia.
~~~
RIMR
Quick, somebody point me in the direction of some witty australian UNIX jokes.
~~~
pavlov
What did the sysadmin buy her wife for Valentine's Day? A rootkit.
(Just made that one up... Not genuine Australian. Also, I can't tell jokes.)
~~~
tacticus
well your jokes certainly fit.
------
BasDirks
Dutch:
[http://www.taalkabaal.nl/scheldwoorden/indexa.php](http://www.taalkabaal.nl/scheldwoorden/indexa.php)
Have fun. Some of these are spelled incorrectly, so run them through a spell-
checker.
While I'm at it, let me translate some personal favourites. I realize they are
quite long and unlikely candidates for the next hot SF start-up, but why keep
knowledge away from the masses:
adderengebroedsels - offspring of vipers
argeologisch kontfossiel - archaeological ass fossil
bosuil - Strix aluco
duinbewoner - dune dweller
ebverzuiper - person who drowns during ebb (burnnn)
greppelheks - ditch witch
ingeblikte atlas - canned atlas (??)
janksnor - literally "crying mustache"
kamelenzuurvleesoog - literally "camels-Sauerbraten-eye" (???)
mountendeldarmbeklimmer -- literally "climber of Mt. rectum"
paashaasschaamhaarverzamelaar -- literally "collector of Easter Bunny pubes"
rioolpinguin -- sewer pinguin
tepelbaviaan -- nipple baboon
I have submitted several short and useful Dutch words to grant myself license
for this comment.
~~~
itsybitsycoder
I want to start a razor startup now just so I can call it Janksnor.
~~~
devbug
Dollar Shave Club... but for Scandinavia.
Or a brutally fast Handlebars implementation.
------
orjan
"He had a computer that knew all the names of all the companies, and another
one that checked if the made-up word meant "dickhead" or something in Chinese
or Swedish."
\-- William Gibson, "Mona Lisa Overdrive"
[https://books.google.se/books?id=QojrNYyGMyEC&pg=PA118#v=one...](https://books.google.se/books?id=QojrNYyGMyEC&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false)
------
mcorrand
"bite" is safe according to this tool. Any french speaker does a double take
when they see that word though, especially in certain sentences.
For reference: [https://askafrenchguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/petite-
bites-...](https://askafrenchguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/petite-bites-pauvre-
nancy/)
Edit: Yes, I have submitted it to the database, it should get vetted
eventually. A crowdsourced process for the vetting could be fun too!
~~~
baby
"pipi" as well
[http://i.imgur.com/VcSKnTb.png](http://i.imgur.com/VcSKnTb.png)
~~~
Qantourisc
In Dutch pipi is dialect for urination, often used when talking/referring to
children.
~~~
eridal
In Spanish it's exactly the same.
I wonder were the roots of that is?
~~~
yetihehe
In polish it's "psipsi" which is clearly an onomatopoeia.
------
arihant
So this seems to work for a very small subset of the words I typed. Also, it
seems to only check against dictionary meaning and not cultural usage.
"Tatsu" means "to stand" in Japanese, but is culturally used for erection.
This is just an example, I tried a bunch which I know and none were flagged.
~~~
LoSboccacc
I think this is a case of 'the product is YOU!'
notice the little box 'enter word here'? :P
~~~
JoeAltmaier
That box doesn't seem to permit adding cultural referents / context. If we
added all normal words that _can_ have another meaning, it'd flag almost
everything.
------
olympus
I saw this and immediately thought of an old story where General Motors tried
to sell the Chevy Nova in South America. It hardly sold at all in South
America even though it was a hugely popular car in North America. The reason
turned out to be that "No va" in Spanish translates to "won't go" so GM was
basically trying to sell a sporty car with a misleading name.
Unfortunately this website wouldn't have helped GM sell the Nova since it's
only looking for profanity, but I think that the concept is great and clearly
needed. I hope you develop it further and get to make some money off of it.
Great job!
~~~
nerevarthelame
For what it's worth, the "Nova" story is a myth:
[http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp)
~~~
rmetzler
Here is a whole list of cultural misunderstandings of car manufacturers
[http://www.oddee.com/item_93544.aspx](http://www.oddee.com/item_93544.aspx)
------
candeira
One of the most recent corporate mishaps I've learned of is Microsoft Nokia
calling their phone "Lumia", when in Spain "lumi" or "lumia" is an informal
word to mean "prostitute".
Your app doesn't reflect that. I was going to say that you need to source
slang dictionaries, but this one is in the Diccionario de la Real Academia:
[http://buscon.rae.es/drae/srv/search?val=lumia](http://buscon.rae.es/drae/srv/search?val=lumia)
And even in the first random online bilingual dictionary Google threw up:
[http://diccionario.sensagent.com/lumi/es-
en/](http://diccionario.sensagent.com/lumi/es-en/)
So maybe do a bit of scraping/spidering of multilingual dictionaries, starting
with your collected list of bad words?
~~~
dbbolton
I think Wiktionary is a great and underutilized resource. Fairly good
coverage, free, and easily amendable. There is in fact an entry for _lumia_ :
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lumia#Spanish](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lumia#Spanish)
It's actually the basis for a site called The Alternative Dictionaries which
features "colorful extracts": [http://www.alternative-
dictionaries.net/](http://www.alternative-dictionaries.net/)
------
elros
I'd be really interested in knowing how do they do the phonetic matching.
Things like, the nonexistent English word "bocket" sounding like Brazilian
slang for blowjob ("boquete"), but only when spoken the way a Brazilian would.
I think this cross-pronouncing thing would actually be harder to tackle: It's
more important to try to match the way users on their home locale would say
the foreign term, than the way the foreign people would say it.
To illustrate what I mean, consider the word Skype, said in Portuguese, is
pronounced as if it were spelt in English as "Shkuipy" (I mean [ʃkaj'pi]).
~~~
djrogers
The lack of phonetic matching is a problem - the most (in?)famous example of
this was the Chevy Nova, which phonetically sounds like 'doesn't go' in
spanish.
~~~
elros
Regarding the Chevy Nova, I always found that story very hard to believe.
While it may seem plausible for someone who does not speak Spanish, someone
who does would quickly note the fact that "no va" is pronounced /no'βa/
(stress on the second syllable) while Nova would be pronounced /'no.βa/
(stress on the first syllable).
These two sounds would not be perceived by a Spanish speaker as being the
same.
~~~
amyjess
Yes, I've heard that saying "Nova" is read as _no va_ is like saying "notable"
is read as "no table".
(of course, the classic Spanish screw-up is the Mitsubishi Pajero, which has
no excuse whatsoever: that's unambiguously the Mitsubishi Wanker)
~~~
danieltillett
I always thought that someone in Mitsubishi named the Pajero knowing exactly
what it meant in Spanish as a joke.
------
616c
Obligatory Arabic story of the last few years: the Pakistani ambassador who
was rejected for service in the Gulf, because his name is Akbar Zib.
This is Arabic for biggest cock.
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%8A%D8%B1%20%D8%A8%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%B3%D8%AA%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A%20%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%A8%D8%B1%20%D8%B2%D8%A8)
No reputable source mentions this; only crap newspapers in different countries
mention this. But every person I know in the Arab world knows this internet
meme.
Almost as bad as naming your son after a deceased Libyan dictator, before he
was dead of course. Perhaps I know one of those too. Talking about parenting
jokes.
~~~
ndrscr
There's a guy on Israeli TV named גיא פינס--pronounced "Guy Penis." How's that
for a name?
~~~
ccleve
The classic example of this is the Ford Pinto. That was a naming mistake. (Try
it)
------
maartenscholl
"expertsexchange" only matches the Chinese “cha”, and not "sex" or
"sexchange".
~~~
tomkwok
Coincidentally cha1 ("1" here means the first tone in pinyin) is a sexual
innuendo alluding to sexual intercourse. The character itself, which means "to
insert", has nothing to do with sex in normal usage though. And most
importantly, there is virtually zero resemblance between the pronunciation of
"change" and that of "cha1".
> to have sex (lit. insert).
> Source: a long list of Chinese profanity on Wikipedia.[0]
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity)
------
sanbor
Tried the Spanish word "pajero" (usually translated to "wanker" or "tosser").
Mitsubishi named a car "Pajero" and they had to change the name to "Montero"
in Spanish speaking countries.
Another unfortunate car name is Suzuki Moco. This word neither appears in this
app. "Moco" means "snot" or "booger" in Spanish.
~~~
cossatot
I have found it's important when emailing/texting in Spanish to put the tilde
in 'año', when I normally wouldn't bother with an American keyboard.
~~~
ghurtado
US-Based native Spanish speaker here. Very important indeed, specially when
asking someone their age :) Whenever the ñ is not available (foreign
keyboards, mobile, etc...), a decent substitute is "anyo", which is
phonetically equivalent and also happens to be the Ladino variant of the word.
~~~
pvaldes
Agno is safer (same idea as in 'gnu'). "Anyo" is close phonetically to
"anillo", that is a ring, but also a common source of jokes about little
Frodo's sexuallity.
~~~
notNow
I think Catalan people don't have the "ñ" letter in their alphabet and they
use instead this combination "ny" for that particular sound.
~~~
pvaldes
Well, catalan people have the ñ letter in their alphabet because they are
spaniards, is just that some of them prefer to ignore this for political
reasons, and they choose instead to do simple things complicated.
Both systems are a question of convenience, so no one is perfect. You can
choose between the useful (and trendy in two or three spanish communities)
"ny" or the older "gn" charged of historical context and showing lots of
connections with other latin languages like french. Be aware also that "ny"
leads easily to a "nll" sound that can be annoying, specially when is placed
next to an 'i'.
This is just a personal opinion. Is perfecty ok if you think different, but if
you are interested in mastering the second language with more native speakers
in the world, I'll suggest to avoid the political experiments of the modern
catalan and save yourself a lot of future headaches with grammar and
orthography. To replace the 'ñ' by '~n' will work in most of the cases also.
~~~
6t6t6
And this, kids, is how a Spanish hater looks like.
If anyone is interested, Catalan[1] is a Latin language spoken in Catalonia
and other areas of the North East of Spain, South of France and a city in
Italy. It is also the official language of a country: Andorra.
It has about 10 million speakers[2], a bit more that Swedish, that is an
official working language in the EU.
Its use has been forbidden in Spain during 300 years[3] -until the death of
the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco- but, even though it has managed
to survive until today.
And there's a top level domain, .cat[4], that is intended for websites that
use Catalan language.
Also, and we don't use Catalan because we are doing political experiments, or
to annoy Spanish people. We use it because, for some of us, is our native
language!
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#Number_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Europe#Number_of_speakers)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language#Spanish_state...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_language#Spanish_state:_18th_to_20th_centuries)
[4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cat)
~~~
pvaldes
And this, kids, is one of the many problems with some Catalonian people.
Persecutory delusion. "Spain hates us".
~~~
6t6t6
I was answering to you, not to all Spain.
And I did because I think that your comment stating that Catalan language and
culture are a "political experiment" is not only offensive to Catalans -and
anybody a little common sense- but also shows that you have a huge lack of
understanding about Spanish culture and history.
------
personlurking
Pretty cool. And the example I chose, funny.
I searched "foda" (f--- in Brazil) just to try it out, here's the result,
which actually mentions the Amazon.
[http://i.imgur.com/CUpSgN6.png](http://i.imgur.com/CUpSgN6.png)
~~~
schoen
You don't have to go very deep into the Amazon at all for that to be an
insult. :-) What an amusing example.
------
eterm
There needs to be a "No results found" type result. Currently it's impossible
to tell the difference between no result and an empty result.
------
orf
Interesting, I recently found out that one of my usernames on a popular game
means "shitman" in finnish or swedish, not through this site though (and it
doesn't appear to bring anything up). Great idea though!
Also the word search field has an XSS, try entering
"<script>alert(1)</script>". Not sure if it's a big deal but it's good to be
safe.
------
odabaxok
I believe you can make a good use of
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/](http://www.urbandictionary.com/) to update
your database, because there are also lot of foreign words, which you miss at
the moment. (pula - Romanian for dick, fasz - Hungarian for dick, piča -
Czech/Slovak for cunt, etc.)
~~~
anonfunction
They have an unofficial API[1] that could be used.
[1]
[http://api.urbandictionary.com/v0/define?term=culo](http://api.urbandictionary.com/v0/define?term=culo)
------
ecesena
Suggestion for improvement: numbers.
I was about to name a project "Plate88", and a couple of people independently
pointed out a reference to the nazi salute [1].
We then renamed it to Plate28, hopefully safer.
Anyway, maybe worth considering these use cases.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_\(number\))
~~~
protomyth
Which brings us to the second part of naming things. I wouldn't tell someone
in NASCAR country that 88 means a nazi salute unless you really want to
offend.
~~~
ecesena
Exactly -- we want to do a healthy/educational thing, imagine our surprise
knowing that...
~~~
protomyth
I guess I would say the bad meaning of 88 is not very relevant and certainly
shouldn't stop a company operating in Asia from using it. Heck, a golf company
using 88 would mean double snowmen rather than any dark meaning beyond a bad
score.
------
lifeisstillgood
It's great :-)
However, could I Suggest there are two markets for this and you might be
falling between two stools.
Firstly there is the market we have here - looking for dirty words in
different languages. I _love_ the petites bites ad - and it would be great to
have a crowd sourced "daily WTF" site of amusing failures
But the usage of your site looks ... Serious, with half an eye maybe on
charging marketing departments for access. Which is almost impossible because
no sane database can catch MR2.
But if the entertainment site catches on, you have a ready made list of
reliable dirty-minded experts whose private opinions and double entendres you
can charge marketing depts to put their ideas in front of them -
confidentially ensuring they don't screw up. And given that the number of
language to language potential screwups is n^^2 and the experts are n you
should be ok.
Anyway - it's a lovely idea and reminds me of Douglas Adams' "Go stick your
head in a pig".
------
Someone
_" Results for “Hello”
“hell”
English: heck
Direct match at start or end, potentially serious issue! 335 million native
speakers, about 1.5 billion speakers in total."_
Isn't that overdoing it a little?
~~~
Retra
False positives are far more useful than false negatives.
------
paulsutter
Excellent idea.
Given the number of people here who missed the "add a word" function, you
might want to mention it up top with a negative result.
> No results found for this search. It looks likely that it's safe...
say this in hopes to get fuller coverage because it looks like a useful tool.
~~~
pavlov
I updated the "no results" text, thanks!
------
SNvD7vEJ
Yeah, also, a classic one we had here in Sweden:
Honda released this new small car model named "Honda Fitta", and one of the
slogans were something like "small on the outside, large on inside".
In Swedish, "Fitta" is a crude word for female genitalia.
The car was quickly renamed "Honda Jazz".
A link to a Swedish article, translated by Google:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.automotorsport.se%2Fartiklar%2Fnyheter%2F20020403%2Ffitta-
blev-dyr-affar-for-honda&edit-text=)
~~~
DonaldFisk
I was going to post something about this myself, but decided it was still
unverified. The Auto Motor & Sport article was as far as the trail took me. It
quotes the Dagens Nyheter, which in turn quotes an anonymous Japanese car
magazine, whose article may or may not be true (if it exists at all).
This has the hallmarks of an urban legend: Japanese car manufacturers do have
previous form with the Toyota MR2 and Mitsubishi Pajero, so the story is
plausible; there's a moral here; and the story has not been followed all the
way to its original source.
------
kinow
There's a company here in New Zealand called RaboDirect. Rabo means "tail" in
Portuguese (and in Spanish maybe?). But it can also mean arse or ass. In most
cases I'd think people were talking about arses than about tails. This was not
caught by wordsafety :/
Not sure if you are breaking up words. I remember a friend told me about some
algorithm that works for that, and is used by German linguists... not exactly
stemmers, but there was another thing that could be useful too.
Anyway, thanks for sharing! Looking great.
------
petercooper
I've submitted it but it brought up nothing for "wog". Did this due to the
"wogrammer"/"wog" issue pointed out on Twitter yesterday. I haven't heard it
in recent years but "wog" was used much like the n-word when I was a kid in
the UK and appears to still carry some of that meaning:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog)
"slope" is another, but I don't know if I'll submit it since no-one seemed to
have heard of it at the time. Jeremy Clarkson got in trouble over it though -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/top-
gear/10995483/Jeremy...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/top-
gear/10995483/Jeremy-Clarksons-slope-joke-on-Top-Gear-was-deliberate-use-of-
racist-term-Ofcom-rules.html)
I absolutely love the idea of having a newsletter on the backend full of awful
words submitted though - a rather "cute" idea.
------
avar
I looked up "Bora". No results. The Volkswagen Bora was somewhat famous in
Iceland because "Bora" means "Anus". You could drive the Volkswagen Anus! The
vendor went out of its way to mispronounce the name in their TV ads as "Bóra",
which would be like pronouncing "Anus" as "Aneece" or something like that.
------
pablomolnar
As we are in the subject, does the brand names "Dickies" "Dick's Sporting
Goods" or even the character "Dick Tracy" seems awkward name choices for US
people/native english speakers?
As a ESL, the first time I heard of them it was kind of funny. I guess when
one grows up in the context of those names is not that appalling...
~~~
cmpb
You're exactly right. Growing up with the words removes them from being
recognizable as dirty. Note also, Dick is a name (or nickname for Richard).
Language is weird sometimes...
------
temuze
This is great! There are certain puns/combos that would be really hard to
catch though.
For example - the Ford Nova. In Spanish, it literally translates to "no va"
"doesn't go". Terrible name for a car.
I'm unsure how to make this understand the context of the product, but that
would be the next step
~~~
nvader
I've always been pretty skeptical about Nova in particular. It's like an
English speaker going to a restaurant named "Notable": we wouldn't expect to
have to eat on the floor.
------
werber
This is really a shame, I would hate to see unintentionally awful things in
corporate media go away!
------
markdown
How do you account for spelling?
In Fijian, "caita" means "fuck" or "fuck it", but the word is pronounced
"thaita". From a fijian perspective, seeing both "caita" and "thaita" would
bring the swear-word to mind.
------
osipov
It fails on the classic Nova check:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevy_II_/_Nova#Urba...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevy_II_/_Nova#Urban_legend)
~~~
pavlov
It would be really hard to capture this kind of double meaning that only
applies to a certain product category... "Doesn't go" is certainly an unwanted
association for a car, but it wouldn't matter for most products.
To make it more complicated, "nova" actually has the same astronomical meaning
in Spanish as in English:
[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova)
So it's fine in some contexts, bad in some very specific context. Someone
smarter than me will probably crack problems like this with AI...
------
tucif
It would be nice this detected double meaning phrases, although it might be
hard to implement. In spanish many combinations of 'safe' words will generate
very 'unsafe' meanings, probably many other languages too.
------
davidw
Italian one needs work. It did not have 'minchia' in it, which is no longer
even all that regional, AFAIK. Didn't have 'mona' either, although that could
be foregiven as it's dialect in the Veneto.
~~~
ragazzina
italian is definitely lacking. it doesn't recognize STOCATSO nor ESTIGRANQATSI
nor euphemisms such as patata, passera..
------
tsotha
If only Miyazaki would have had this when he named _Laputa: Castle in the sky_
~~~
jcl
FWIW, he got the name from Jonathan Swift:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa)
~~~
tsotha
Who... apparently didn't speak Spanish.
~~~
desdiv
>As "la puta" means "the whore" (see Spanish profanity), some Spanish editions
of "Gulliver's Travels" use "Lapuntu", "Laput", "Lapuda" and "Lupata" as
bowdlerisations. It is likely, given Swift's brand of satire, that he was
aware of the Spanish meaning. (Gulliver, himself, claimed Spanish among the
many languages in which he was fluent.)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa)
------
limaoscarjuliet
Do not trust yet - list is not complete. Some known Polish bad words are not
there.
~~~
aluhut
Phonetic does not work also. Tried qrwa, qurwa, kuhrwa,. Nothing. They also
find hui (russian) but not huj or chuj.
~~~
yetihehe
Yeah, I've had some fine time trying to remember most of polish swear words.
But it will probably never properly take into account the variety of word
"pierdolić".
------
jstoiko
Just tried the word "crotte" which means "dung" in french. It returned "No
results found for this search. It looks likely that it's safe." Phew, it's a
good thing I speak french :)
------
raverbashing
Maybe it should include English words as well?
Beaver returns nothing
'caca' and 'pede' do return, so props for that
'bosta' matches but maybe Josta should?
'sharmuta' also matches (with a different spelling, but it's probably a
variation)
~~~
pimlottc
Yes, it seems to be missing a fair bit of English slang, like "fanny", "root",
"gigolo"...
------
mojobot
False positive: "hat" was flagged for "idiot" in English. I can't find a
dictionary with that definition, and it's not one that I'm familiar with as a
native speaker.
------
JoeAltmaier
Is a start. How about death and failure type words? Muerta doesn't elicit any
warning. And 'Nova' is famous for its Spanish meaning (apocryphal?) - words
like that might be hard to catch.
------
V-2
It's reasonably good - I tested it for Polish swearwords, it misses some no-
nos, such as "alfons" (which stands for "pimp"), I actually submitted this :)
It reminded me of this major company
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osram)
whose name happens to be "future tense conjugation of verb >to shit<" (a spot-
on match, and the website correctly detects it) :)
It was founded in 1919 when the website didn't exist yet
------
fabiofzero
Found a hole on my first try. 'Foda' in Portuguese is 'fuck', yet the app
deemed it to be safe. 'Foda-se' (fuck you) wasn't there either - submitted
both.
------
rramdin
I've been blessed to name my new startup "Phucker."
~~~
probinso
"phuck" works as well
------
alanh
> _We respect your privacy — input is never logged or monitored._
Except it _is_ logged and monitored by the US Government because this site
uses unencrypted HTTP.
Otherwise, a commendable sentiment…
------
cwkoss
Anyone find any real-world matches? I was able to get positives by typing in
foreign curses directly, but couldn't find any startups with foreign curses in
their name.
~~~
elros
Not a startup, but yesterday I was impressed with the font Skolar, which name
I mistakenly remembered as Skola, and apparently it's considered close enough
to "Chola", which is Hindi for clitoris.
The "level of worriness" does go down (pun intended) when I type the font's
correct name.
------
hiraki9
Similar app for iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/profanity-
check/id923020053](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/profanity-
check/id923020053)
Blog post: [http://blog.lexiconbranding.com/2015/05/12/our-first-
iphone-...](http://blog.lexiconbranding.com/2015/05/12/our-first-iphone-app-
profanity-check/)
------
bbrazil
Doesn't catch "tineh", which is apparently a derogatory term for Indians
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tineh](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tineh),
so probably wise to also check UD and Google.
I was going to have that as part of my company name until I discovered that
(tineh is a transliteration of the word for "fire" in Irish).
------
wyclif
'Results for “nova”: Spanish: did you know that the popular anecdote about the
Chevrolet Nova is an urban legend? Google for "snopes nova".'
I liked that.
------
rlidwka
It doesn't list the word "Belgium". Even though according to Douglas Adams
that's the most offensive word in the galaxy. :)
------
sytelus
This would sell much better as baby name checker.
------
GhotiFish
Where was this when these guys were picking their name?
[http://pidora.ca/](http://pidora.ca/)
~~~
vaskas
155 million native speakers.
------
berbatof
Aren't you the creator of Pixel Conduit? I used your tool for some VFX works
and recently saw that you are creating software for web animations, but it ia
a surprise to see you come up with such a tool. By the way, I am planning to
create a slang database for Turkish and Turkic languages. I would like to
share the database with you as I develop.
------
tomsmeding
It seems that "fuk" is not recognised as sounding like "fuck". Might want to
look at that phonetic matcher :)
~~~
edeion
While it could help some people around to know about it:
[http://www.tripadvisor.fr/Restaurant_Review-g298113-d4906941...](http://www.tripadvisor.fr/Restaurant_Review-g298113-d4906941-Reviews-
Fukyu_an-Takayama_Gifu_Prefecture_Chubu.html)
------
maartenscholl
I think this should also do a phoneme based comparison, for example the photo
sharing website Flickr is pronounced like this word (as a slang word it is
well known)
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flikker](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flikker)
~~~
ludamad
Do you know of any high-quality phonemic dictionaries?
~~~
schoen
There is such a thing for English, the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary.
Very, very useful, although specific to American English.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMU_Pronouncing_Dictionary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMU_Pronouncing_Dictionary)
I've succeeding in using it to solve puzzles that had to do with how words
were pronounced, as opposed to how they were spelled.
------
lvh
Excellent idea, but the lists need to be expanded. Didn't catch any of the
Slavic words I threw its way.
------
babuskov
Is Russian really supported? I tried both Cyrillic and Latin transliteration
of some words and it reports it's all safe. For example, try any of the
Russian synonyms for "shit". "говно" transliterates to "govno" and both check
out as safe.
------
semicolondev
Submitted bunch of Nepali swear words. People in Nepal will laugh out a loud
when English speaking people talk about renting a Condo or generating a Rand
number. Here are few /swear/ words in Nepali (Spoken by ~30M people)
Chick
Goo
Moose
Turi
Condo
Moot
Rand
Chalk
Lado
PuT
Fuse
If you are wondering what these words mean check this:
[http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Nepali](http://www.youswear.com/index.asp?language=Nepali)
~~~
igravious
Turi and Lado are not words in English? (Unless I'm very much mistaken). All
the other's are, bar Rand, but that is a variable name beloved of coders!
~~~
semicolondev
Turi prefixes Turing (which means the act of pissing in Nepali) and Lado is
popular in Spanish i guess.
------
pvaldes
One of the funniest in Spain: facultad (faculty). An innocent word, with a
very common and poisoned abbreviature. "Nos vamos a la fac" (We go to the
university). English speakers always hear another thing. Totally homophone
with the called "f-word"
------
bernardom
I added "cu" (Portuguese for "ass"), but I'm not able to get it to match.
Guessing there's a size limit?
I wonder if it makes sense to add "ku" as well? When I was a kid, I'd always
giggle at the American candy bar "Kudos."
This is really cool....
Kudos.
------
cosmez
No results found for this search. There's a reasonable chance that it's
safe...
But you can never be quite sure. There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the
world. Somewhere deep in the Amazonian jungle, "anal" could be an insult that
gets you killed.
~~~
princeb
not only that (incomplete coverage of languages) - words can also have
phonetic similarities to vulgarities without the same spelling.
------
cmenge
It wouldn't have saved Mitsubishi:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero)
But I like the idea and will submit a few words
------
iskander
Missed a few of the ones I tried:
"zina" "eir" "khuee" "popa"
------
joshmn
I use a similar method to find brandable names and domain names. I'll input a
word or synonym of into Google Lang Tools and translate it into all the
available languages. I've had really good success in doing so.
------
RIMR
So there's a restaurant near me called "Pho King". It's pho king delicious.
Anyway, this tool doesn't know how 'pho' is pronounced in Vietnamese because
it didn't catch it.
------
akie
It literally fails on the first word I tried, the/a Dutch word for 'penis':
[http://imgur.com/Mw6Efx0](http://imgur.com/Mw6Efx0)
------
solidpy
If you are still here, it would be useful if we could link to a word, e.g.:
[http://wordsafety.com?word=dimwit](http://wordsafety.com?word=dimwit)
------
schoen
This seems like a nice idea, but many of the comments here are pointing to
omissions that the people commenting feel could be serious.
I guess I see six kinds of potential difficulties:
① There are so many languages out there, including languages will millions of
speakers who might eventually come across your thing. Maybe that's not an
issue for tangible products that will be marketed to specific territories.
② There are so many slang terms out there; each individual language might well
have thousands of terms that have a rude, sexual, or excretory meaning, or
that are used as a slur against some group. Also, some languages have
expletives that don't correspond to expletives in other languages.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_profanity)
③ People have pointed out that phonetic matching is hard when you're dealing
with different languages' orthographies and phonologies, and you can have the
problem of "the source language's intended pronunciation sounds like an
offensive word in the other language", "the other language's likely
pronunciation of the written term sounds like an offensive word in the other
language", or even other combinations among highly multilingual populations.
"Sounds like" is sometimes challenging to automate in software, for example
because epenthesis of a vowel may not be enough to remove the association.
(But I think Levenshtein edit distance between phonemic transcriptions can
kind of sort of work.)
Also, the "MR2" example someone gave shows that understanding how people will
pronounce something in different languages is complicated: you have to know
that the number two in French is "deux" /dø/.
④ People might also perceive something as an offensive reference that isn't
even familiar to people elsewhere, like a reference to an upsetting person,
place, or event. Reportedly some people in India have named people and
businesses after Adolf Hitler just because he was famous, for example. I bet
it's easy to do this cross-culturally in general.
⑤ As people point out with the Chevy Nova story, there might be a reason why a
product name would become the target of ridicule in a particular language even
if it's not offensive. That's true even if it didn't literally happen to the
Chevy Nova.
⑥ It might even turn out that the space of offensive references is so dense
that there is nothing that isn't a near-homophone of something pretty
offensive in _some_ language.
Anyway, I think this project is really neat; I'm just reminded from people's
comments that natural language is hard! There's scope to keep expanding this
site, and I think there are also existing "cultural consultant" businesses
that try to deal with these problems through human review (I wonder how many
of them have consultants on contract from many widely varying cultures, which
seems especially useful in the Internet era).
~~~
schoen
A funny page that might be support for point ⑥ is
[https://web.archive.org/web/20071112172929/http://members.ao...](https://web.archive.org/web/20071112172929/http://members.aol.com/yahyam/coincidence.html)
If you can take an arbitrary word and find a coincidental homophonous synonym
(or antonym) in some other language, you can probably find a coincidental
homophonous expletive or sexual reference in some other language too!
(These coincidences are _not_ cognates -- that's part of what "coincidence"
means here.)
------
maxhou
I'd have expected a small easteregg for the word "bro" ;)
------
AtlasLion
Searched for Tina but it found nothing, in North Africa it means pu$$y,
~~~
markdown
What are we, five year olds?
Pussy.
------
ajonit
You seem to have a good grip on Hindi words :) This is a good idea. Last I
heard, Accenture spent good amount of $$$ to verify the name in several
languages before fixing on that name!
------
glibgil
"cu" gets a pass.
[https://translate.google.com/#pt/en/cu](https://translate.google.com/#pt/en/cu)
------
thetruthseeker1
It will be great if the program checks for phonetically similar words as well,
currently, looks like it doesn't. Bhat (India), pronounced like 'butt' is not
flagged.
------
randunel
It doesn't match some balkanic or eastern european words.
Some of us don't appreciate tracking links, please get rid of tracking so we
don't have to manually edit the urls.
------
DarkContinent
I tried Tessa and it means "to pee." How come it is not on the list? I know
it's not a swear word, but it's still a name with negative connotations.
~~~
Rockdtben
There is a form to submit words that are missing.
------
garfieldnate
Funny, it gets Siri, which has to be katakana-ized specially, but it misses
both ketu and ketsu. What kind of database are you using? This is a great
idea, by the way.
------
nutjob123
Results for “home” “ho” English: woman Direct match at start or end,
potentially serious issue! 335 million native speakers, about 1.5 billion
speakers in total.
------
tptacek
Misses "matasano" -> "quack doctor".
------
PaulHoule
The phonetic matching doesn't catch "Phuck"
------
sandworm101
It's missing rather a big one. "Mist" means something very different in
german.
My point: Is this connected to dictionaries or is it all crowdsourced data?
~~~
personlurking
Isn't 'mist' like 'darn' in English?
~~~
pluma
"Darn" is a minced oath. Mist, simply means "crap" or "manure". A pile of
manure is called "Misthaufen" (crap heap), a pitchfork for handling manure is
called "Mistforke" or "Mistgabel" (crap fork). It's a bit vulgar but so is the
subject matter.
But you can also use it as a general expression of discontent: "Mist!" is
something you might exclaim if you just dropped something expensive and
fragile. It's still vulgar but it's something you'd find far more appropriate
around the young ones than the harsher "Scheiße!" (shit).
It's basically the little brother of "shit" in the same way as "dumb" is the
little brother of "retarded".
You might legitimately hear someone curse at the "Mistkatze" (Katze = cat)
that just peed on the bed, or the "Mistauto" (Auto = car) that refuses to
start or simply shout "So ein Mist!" when they find out they've spent the past
hour aligning the wallpaper upside down.
The equivalent of "damn" would be "verdammt" and there are minced oaths for
that in German as well (although nowadays they're generally considered cute
and not something you'd use only because you're mild-mannered or religious).
~~~
sandworm101
Man, don't put "dumb" anywhere near "retarded". I don't want another literal
user for a word (retarded=delayed, dumb=mute) to disappear in the name of
political correctness.
To quote from TGOTG: "This dumb tree, he is my friend." Groot is dumb because
his is effectively a mute. Drax was not commenting in any way on his
intelligence.
------
scoopr
Ah good, it matches ‘perse’, which was a slight amusement when seeing the
expensive clothing brand ‘James Perse’ while visiting the US :)
------
paulnechifor
While you have this on the front page, why not start a repo where people can
send pull requests, rather than submit one word at a time?
------
normloman
This doesn't work for Esperanto. Fiku vin!
------
konne88
I would have expected "Coq" to fail.
~~~
xigency
I would have expected Cox Communications to fail.
------
serverholic
FYI this doesn't check for words that sound like swear words. For example,
it'll detect Fuck but not Fack.
~~~
eterm
With the input box I suspect they want the database to be crowdsourced. I
wonder if they vet the input, if we all try hard enough might we get
hackernews into the swear list?
------
ivankirigin
I searched "gift" expecting "poison" from German, and was disappointed when
nothing came up.
------
sterl
Missing Zune which means Penis in Quebec.
------
dradtke
It didn't catch anything on "phuck," despite claiming that it checks
phonetically.
Still a nice idea, though.
------
return0
Doesnt detect any greek curse words
------
wordbank
You'll have a real hard time with Slavic languages. ;)
Trying to add all the things you missed meanwhile.
------
Hydral1k
Interesting. You even have support for converting ß to ss. e.g. scheissekopf
-> scheiße
------
briholt
It doesn't have "pinche" which is about the most common Mexican curse word.
------
Aardwolf
Doesn't support even the most dirty Dutch words! Could use more languages :)
------
jagermo
The guys at Wix should have had that before they entered the german market.
------
mrbig4545
It says "pute" is fine, but google translate says otherwise…
edit: I submitted it
------
hougaard
Missing danish ! There are some really good curse words in danish :)
------
magic_beans
"Bite"... means "dick" in french...
------
donatj
> Results for “boomerang”
> “bum”
> English: butt
> Direct match at start or end, potentially serious issue!
lol.
------
dark_knight3141
Very nice ! could save the day in foreign country
------
tegansnyder
There might be a good service in this as an API.
------
philfrasty
wix.com should have had a look at that site...
------
JJN
Wang. No results found! Kimmy. No results found!
Interesting.
------
carrotleads
tried a few words from Indian languages and got matches for other languages..
Interesting to see how you have implemented this...
------
hokkos
Doesn't work in French : caca, bite
------
adad95
"GIT" is safe. hehehehe
------
xd1936
Solid.
[http://i.imgur.com/tnjNMs1.png](http://i.imgur.com/tnjNMs1.png)
~~~
dandrino
For those who don't get the reference, there is an urban legend that the Chevy
Nova sold poorly in Spanish-speaking countries because "no va" translates to
"no go".
------
zobzu
tried a few common insults in my native tongue (french) and it detected
none...
------
gre
mensa means stupid in spanish.
------
BasDirks
submitted a bunch in Dutch.
------
RomanPushkin
pajero is not safe
~~~
marianov
Was the first thing I tried being from Argentina. Big fail.
------
anEasternGoat
poo is all good.
------
gernig
Searched for Imen, nothing.
Lousy program
~~~
randall
Fix it then! Contribute. This is a 2 day program. Help him out!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YC News. Open external links in new tabs. It's about time - pharin
It's about time hacker news implemented a 'target="_blank"' feature in their links outside of the news.ycombinator.com domain. Don't you?
======
MichaelCrawford
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
If I want to open into a new tab, then I will open it that way myself.
~~~
pharin
Jeez. Very strong reactions against that. I guess I might be the only one
feeling that pain. I guess I will have to write my own bookmarklet for that.
------
DanBC
There is a suggestions thread for this kind of stuff. Or you could email the,.
Or there's a github. But, if you're going to make this kind of thread it might
have been better as a poll. "Do you want links to open in new tabs? 12345
where 1 is "YES" and 5 is "NO".
Me, I'm going to say strong no. I prefer predictable links.
~~~
pharin
Ok. I'll use the suggestions thread next time
------
allendoerfer
No we don't. We like to have choices. You can click with your scroll-wheel or
hold ctrl.
------
izolate
target _blank is evil. bad UX to control the user behavior. use your middle-
click or ctrl/cmd+click if you want this silly feature.
~~~
pharin
Lol. It's not evil if I'm at a news aggregator where I expect to be clicking
on multiple aggregated news items. Think about how many Ctrl and Cmd key
presses that will be saved. Jeez!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Vertcoin (VTC) is currently being 51% attacked - whichcoin
https://medium.com/@mwnesbitt/vertcoin-vtc-is-currently-being-51-attacked-53ab633c08a4
======
kenny_r
The animated gif embedded in the article is incredibly hard to follow, since
it has no controls to pause or go back to the previous frame. I wish the
author had just embedded it as a series of images.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Seneca: On the Shortness of Life - stingraycharles
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e.html
======
mattjaynes
For a very accessible and practical guide to Seneca (and other stoic
philosophers), check out "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic
Joy" by William Irvine
The title is a little cheesy, but the content is gold. It's one of the books I
re-read (or re-listen to via Audible) multiple times a year. I find the
repetition is really valuable since I can slip so easily back into my old
thought patterns.
When I count books that have been most helpful to me, this one is at the top
of the list (followed by "War of Art" by Pressfield).
For a synopsis, check out Derek Sivers book notes on it:
[https://sivers.org/book/StoicJoy](https://sivers.org/book/StoicJoy)
Derek's intro to the notes: "Rating: 10/10\. Almost too personal for me to
give an objective review, because I found when reading it that the quirky
philosophy I've been living my life by since 17 matches up exactly with a
2000-year-old philosophy called Stoicism. Mine was self-developed haphazardly,
so it was fascinating to read the refined developed original. Really
resonated."
~~~
dome82
I agree with you. I re-read it multiple times and doing it again in these
days. The content has been so helpful in critical situations in my life like
the death of my father. I should probably buy the Audible version too...
Another great book that I would like to suggest is Meditations by Marcus
Aurelius.
~~~
ca98am79
+1 for Meditations
------
ealloc
Seneca sounds extremely privileged to me. His advice might be useful to rich
people, but not the vast majority of people (in his time, or ours) who have to
work hard just to survive.
His main complaint is against rich people who "squandered in luxury and
carelessness", the various ways in which "riches [are] a burden", how men care
too much about the "limit of their lands". Almost every sentence seems spoken
to someone too rich for his own good, with too many slaves, mistresses,
clients, and land.
It fits in with my picture of Rome as having a strong class hierarchy (and up
to 30% slaves!). This are the words from the "optimo iure" to themselves.
~~~
eruditely
Your comment is so out of line. You are still wealthier than him by vast
amounts. So no matter what you think he sounds like. You can still benefit
from his advice.
~~~
graeme
I agree with your sentiment, but I doubt this is true. Seneca was just about
the richest man in Rome. He ran the empire from behind the scenes, along with
Burrus for several years.
There were certainly many things Seneca didn't have access to from our time.
But I think on any sensible measure he was wealthier than almost anyone alive
today.
We've made many advances, but we forget that whatever we have often merely
replaced an older version that did the job well enough, especially for those
with means.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger#Imperial_adv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger#Imperial_advisor)
~~~
eruditely
You are still incorrect. The average wealth and rate of innovation is richer
you have more aggregate wealth in all the forms that matter to you(Dental)
except possibly status.
I'm pretty sure he wish he had dentistry.
------
pjmlp
This is why it is so valuable to preserve the writings across centuries.
I always find a deep sense of joy being able to read such interesting thoughts
that were put on paper, papyrus, wood, stone so many centuries ago.
In a similar timeframe will anyone be able to read our digital thoughts?
~~~
MrRage
> In a similar timeframe will anyone be able to read our digital thoughts?
Lots of famous writing from the ancient world doesn't survive in the original
and had to be copied; what we have is copies of copies of copies, etc. And
plenty of ancient works are lost.
We will need to copy to newer media what is important for archival purposes
even now it seems.
~~~
sebkomianos
Once concern is that while we still discover ancient works, with digital if
something is lost, it's 99% lost for good.
------
k-mcgrady
I recently started reading "Letters from a Stoic" [1] and I'd highly recommend
it. It's a collection of letters, each a few pages long, written by Seneca. I
read one a day and have a pen nearby as I'll typically find at least 5 useful
pieces of advice or useful ways of looking at things differently.
[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-Stoic-Epistulae-Lucilium-
Cla...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-Stoic-Epistulae-Lucilium-
Classics/dp/0140442103)
Edit: in fact the letter I read yesterday was, like the one posted here, on
life. Some things I liked from it:
"...death ought to be right there before the eyes of a young man just as much
as an old one. [...] Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were
the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our
lives."
"To live under constraint is a misfortune, but there is no constraint to live
under constraint."
"Whoever has said 'I have lived' receives a windfall every day he gets up in
the morning."
------
petercooper
I wrote some notes with choice quotes, etc, on this book several years ago:
[http://peterc.org/pedia/seneca-shortness-of-
life/](http://peterc.org/pedia/seneca-shortness-of-life/) \- it might whet the
appetite of anyone without the time to read the full thing right now.
------
randomacct001
This is why I keep coming back to HN. Everyday I find weird and wonderful
surprises on the front page.
~~~
untothebreach
I really enjoy the writings of the Stoic philosophers. If you enjoyed Seneca,
you should check out Marcus Aurelius' Meditations[1] and Epictetus'
Discourses[2]
EDIT: changed the links to Project Gutenberg links on jwdunne's suggestion
1:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680)
2:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10661](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10661)
~~~
jwdunne
Because of age of the writings, you can probably find free digital copies on
Gutenberg.org. I'm sure that's how I got Meditations.
~~~
untothebreach
Good idea. Edited to include them.
------
Padding
Stoicism is an interesting way to look at things and it certainly does make
for some engaging mental exercises .. but I'm not sure how much actual value
it can provide to everyday life.
One major problem with it, speaking as a 30-year old, is that it's not trivial
to come up with some "ultimage goal" or "prime principle" for life. But maybe
that's just me being unimaginative and isn't necessarily a flaw of the
philosophy itself.
The real issue is that being consequent about stoicism seems to always result
in contradiction given mankind's current state of knowledge. On one hand
stoicism is concerned with not wasting time (on indulgences) and at the same
time it ignores that a market economy (embedded in a democratic society) is
the only way we know of, that can reliably force a larger population to strive
for efficiency.
Of course the market economy isn't free - we pay for it by e.g. giving up
moral values. It still allows for huge bubbles of inefficiency to form -
things like complicance regulations that provide zero real value and only
serve as market barriers. And of course we're all just fallible selfish
humans, so there's no shortage of people studying and abusing these processes.
But all these points are, practically speaking, irrelevant, seeing as how
there are no (better) alternatives (yet).
So what is a stoic to do? Give up on a proven path to efficiency because he
doesn't want to be a "tool"?
Just imagine how much more of our time would be wasted if there weren't an
army of "tools" out there, working 8 hours a day towards the "indulgence" of
ensuring that there is allways enough fresh milk stocked in the supermarkets
of our cities.
~~~
Renaud
Stoicism is a personal philosophy. It doesn't concern itself with the whole of
human kind but with you. That much is clear in that stoicism advise you
against the temptation for fame, power, money, vice.
It's a philosophy that embraces fatalism and keep you on the path of finding
your nature and then keeping on that path, just being yourself, without
regards for external influences.
The notion of duty is however very strong in stoicism: social duty is part of
your nature. You have to accept your obligations and perform them the best you
can, without search for external rewards.
All in all, stoicism is a search for personal tranquillity, inner peace. It's
not even a philosophy of efficiency, at least I've never seen it described as
such.
Stoicism doesn't rely on "tools" either. You can be a milkman and still adopt
stoicism as your personal philosophy of life.
Duty is a very big part of stoicism: it acknowledges that we live in a social
world and that our nature, our role, requires that we perform our duties to
the best of our abilities. This is the only way to achieve some sort of peace,
by removing the fact that you need something eternal to yourself to find
satisfaction about what you do.
So, you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an
office worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter. You'll only achieve peace if you find
your own way to derive satisfaction in whatever fortune you find yourself in
at a given instant. In short: accept what fate threw at you, don't sweat what
you can't control, and learn to make the best of it.
I'd say it's a perfect philosophy for today.
~~~
Padding
> accept what fate threw at you, don't sweat what you can't control, and learn
> to make the best of it.
Yes, that's what drew me in at first too. But the details seem sketchy.
> It's not even a philosophy of efficiency
I believe that ultimately it is.
What is the point of giving up on deriving happiness from external sources, if
not to make the path to happiness a shorter and easier one? What is the point
of not worrying about things outside your control, if not to help focus your
efforts on the things you can actually impact? What is the point of
tranquility, if not to allow for more concious rational thought? How is that
not efficiency?
> you can be a janitor, collect rubbish, be a developer, a manager, an office
> worker, a CEO, it doesn't matter
By being a "tool" I didn't mean someone engaging in menial jobs. One can have
a prestigeous well-paid job, and still be bored to death, because his heart
isn't in it, or because tasks are perceived as too repetitive or too petty. (I
hope I'm not offending anyone by saying this, but just think of e.g. divorce
lawyers if you need an example.) Yet at the same time that individual might
be, because fate saw fit that way, the perfect person for that particular job
in a given society.
How can one both accept the fate (or duty?) he was dealt (or that his younger
self chose for him), and at the same time still stop wasting his life? How can
one find meaning in a process, that over the years has evolved to become
devoid of meaning, because ultimately that's what is necessary for it to
achieve peak efficiency? E.g. Like lawyers and doctors detaching themselves
from their clients and patients, because they'll burn out otherwise. (Again,
no offense intended, this is just the first thing to come to mind.)
> Stoicism is a personal philosophy. It doesn't concern itself with the whole
> of human kind but with you.
That doesn't invalidate any of my original points. The market economy benefits
the majority of it's participants. I.e., someone feeling like a tool, wouldn't
just quit because of some overall concern for society, but simply because he's
still wasting less time this way.
Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt
some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one
that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove
difficult to engender support.
(By "new" I mean currently unknown/unpopular amongst that broader public.)
~~~
Renaud
> I believe that ultimately it is.
Then we'll have to disagree. Being more "efficient" may be a by-product of
stoicism, but it's not a measure of it and it's not a stated goal. At any
rate, stoicism is not a shortcut to happiness. It's a arduous one because it
takes practice and conscious effort.
Stoicism isn't about removing external pleasures either, the philosophers warn
us about the dangers of seeking pleasure where it could trap us. They never
said you shouldn't enjoy what surrounds you, on the contrary, they urge you to
take pleasure in the things that are accessible to you instead of lusting for
things that you believe will bring you pleasure.
You can call that efficiency if you wish, but that's a strange way of putting
it.
>Another concern also is that if we advocate to some broader public to adopt
some "new" philosohpy, I think it's a prerequisite that that philosphy be one
that ensures the wellbeing of a society as a whole. Otherwise it might prove
difficult to engender support.
I think this is a delusion: billions of people believe in mainstream religions
that have encouraged bigotry, hatred and wars. Countless have died in the
process.
Stoicism doesn't promote intolerance. It promotes reason, compassion, an
awareness of our personal place in the world and our responsibilities to it.
In terms of well being for the world, I'll take that over most other forms of
philosophies. You are perfectly free to wait until something better (for you)
comes along.
------
buster
Also a good read is Ciceros Cato Maior de Senectute:
[http://www.bartleby.com/9/2/1.html](http://www.bartleby.com/9/2/1.html) A
philosophical story about aging and death
~~~
sundance0
+1 for de Senectute. Very insightful work
------
riemannzeta
Those who feel they have discovered a treasure here should consider reading
Seneca "On Anger" and Musonius Rufus also.
------
msane
I would not have expected Seneca to be the top result. Good on you HN.
------
michaelsbradley
Those interested in Stoicism, and who are curious if and how its ideals might
be "baptized" and employed in a Christian philosophy of life, ought to look
into the writings of Fr. Alphonsus Rodriguez, who has been described by some
as a "Christian Seneca":
_Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues_
[https://archive.org/details/PPCV-Manresa](https://archive.org/details/PPCV-
Manresa)
~~~
jcromartie
Not to mention the church fathers called him "our Seneca"
------
jcromartie
Perhaps I just need to keep reading, but he seems to be speaking against
squandering time, being engrossed, attached (hints of Buddhism here), etc.,
but he does not offer any advice other than seizing the day and tending to
your own desires, which sounds a lot like the hedonism he is denouncing at the
very same time. Are there some activities that are not vices, and are not
"giving away" your time?
~~~
andreer
Skip to Chapter XIV, if you must.
"Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone
really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own
lifetime only".
------
anvarik
I am currently reading Letters from a Stoic, somehow the style resembles
except the fact that it is not written to Lucilius
~~~
freshfey
Letters from a Stoic is one of my favorite books on life in general. Almost
everyone I gave the book found something applicable for his/her life -
definitely a recommended read!
------
IvyMike
I'm not sure why this is on HN today, but in a Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon kind
of way, I just came across it yesterday. It was in this commencement speech at
University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts by musician/artist/writer
Dessa. It's 22 minutes long, so maybe you'll skip it, but it's a surprisingly
inspiring and motivating speech: [http://youtu.be/u38ue-
XxHtw](http://youtu.be/u38ue-XxHtw)
~~~
ssm008
Yeah, read about Seneca yesterday. I like the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, makes
things feel special.
~~~
krsree
Went thru an e-mail yesterday from Amazon that my wish-list book by
Seneca:Letters from Stoic was on discount, but couldnt buy it on time. BM
Phenomenon again!
------
myhf
(49 CE)
------
sbmassey
Of course, in practice Seneca was considered rather hypocritical. But I guess
being an important aristocrat during the reign of Nero does that to you.
The best book I have read on the Stoics is the Cambridge Companion to the
Stoics, by the way, which has articles on every aspect of the philosophical
movement.
------
EGreg
I have read this, and my question is, what kind of activities does Seneca
consider NOT wasting time?
~~~
Raphael
Philosophizing?
~~~
EGreg
That's it? So sex is a waste of time? And what is the point of philosophizing?
------
0800899g
crazy how the stoics and buddhists never met .
~~~
akurilin
I was going to say, there are so many wonderful parallels between the two
philosophies. No reason not to merge them.
------
3rd3
Summary: An unexamined life without art and wisdom is short.
------
stingraycharles
This is an essay I will always remember. It helped me get through a burn-out,
and contains a lot of wise lessons. One quote specifically touched me:
"The part of life we really live is small."5 For all the rest of existence is
not life, but merely time.
Cherish the moments you really live. The moments you create your memories.
~~~
thret
I like: "You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply,
though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is
perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of
immortals."
~~~
stingraycharles
There are so many beautiful gems in there. This one might be particulary good
for the HN community also:
"Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those
who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in
order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to
live! "
People, here on HN also, are so busy planning their future life ("I will
retire when I'm 40!"), that they spend all their life planning their life,
without actually living their life.
Ah... I could give a seminar about this essay. It helped me in so many ways.
------
kartman
Yup, the printed version of this book is always a go to favorite read of mine.
Highly recommend. Among Stoics I found this most easy and good to read
repeatedly.
In some ways Benjamin Franklin's autobiography also feels similar, not sure
why.
------
delinquentme
And imagine how wise he would be now if still alive. Fight Aging.
~~~
reasonattlm
Seneca: "Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that
comes before it - the fear of it."
Insofar as death is oblivion, the destruction of the self, it is rational to
be unconcerned about being dead. You won't exist to have feelings on the
matter - which is exactly the same situation as for all time prior to the
point in your development at which you like to think that you became yourself.
Equally, it is rational to be very concerned about being dead at some point in
the future. Humans are creatures of action. We like to achieve, observe, and
experience. We place value upon these things, and death will stop us from
gathering that value.
So the world of people might be divided at any point in time into (a) the
group that is horrified by the prospect of oblivion, and (b) the group that is
unbothered by personal extinction. It's a very sharp dividing line, not often
explored in casual conversation, for all that one person's views might cross
back and forth between camps over the years. Try a poll of the folk you know
at some point in time: I think you'll find the results interesting.
Whatever your opinions on oblivion, however, it seems near universally agreed
that the process of becoming dead is something to be feared - so much so that
we work to hide the ugly reality from daily life, we put it from our mind, and
we even rise up in anger to confront those trying to do something about it by
fighting aging through the development of new medicine.
Terrible pain, injury, and degeneration are not on anyone's wish list. But
we'll all be receiving these dubious gifts anyway - unless something is done
about it. The difference between our age and the age of the Greek stoics is
that we have the chance to do something about it: defeat aging by repairing
its damage, improve our biochemistry, and ultimately replace our bodies with
superior technology that is immune to all that plagues us now.
~~~
tcopeland
> Insofar as death is oblivion
But that's the rub, right? When we have shuffled off this mortal coil...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[Ask-HN] Is anyone using pythonfutures with python 2.6? - deathflute
http://code.google.com/p/pythonfutures/
I wanted to build a high level API over multiprocessing, but it seems that Brian has already done all the work. Does anyone have any experience with this package?<p>I am planning on using the python 2.6 version.
======
deathflute
I wanted to write a high-level API on top on multiprocessing, but it seems
that this project has already done this. However, it is unclear if this has
been used/tested much with python 2.6.
If you have used this package, please share your comments.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
One Step Closer To A Holodeck: Eon's ICube - edw519
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/04/one_step_closer_to_a_holodeck.php
======
ggchappell
There may be something interesting here, but it's tough figuring anything out
about it. This article, in particular, doesn't give any indication that the
ICUBE is any better than a CAVE, and that was introduced in 1993.
Eon's own page is a little better:
<http://www.eonreality.com/products_icube.html>
But it's still a bit heavy on the hype. E.g., "Unlike the older generation
CAVE®, the EON ICUBE is easy to use even for non programmers ...." Give me a
break. Yes, non-programmers can use computers, but someone still needs to
write the programs. Also: "On top of that, the system is fully compatible with
tracking and input devices." That's more of a baseline requirement than
anything remotely close to revolutionary.
On the other hand, "Typically, high-end immersive systems have until today
been complex, difficult to use and expensive to maintain." _They have indeed_
, and anyone who can do something about one of these problems has done a great
thing. And "utilizes a new light enhancing rigid wall material" sounds like it
might be something nifty.
In any case, it's nice to see new VR products coming out. The field has
definitely languished in the past decade.
------
jonah
I'm partial to UCSB's AlloSphere: <http://www.allosphere.ucsb.edu/>
------
jgamman
i've always thought a large compressed liquid 'sack' pressed hard up against
some bearings could be controlled via motors etc so that when you walk the
sack rotates instead of you moving - imagine a mouse wheel big enough to stand
on...
~~~
bemmu
Like this? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKSodRhEvA8>
My favorite one: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQw1tsgrJOs>
There's also this suggestion which just puts a piece of floor under you where
you need, but currently it seems a bit scary to try. I imagine if I suddenly
jumped to some direction I would end up falling:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYsvB2y2Ero>
These are all from a blog I found: <http://cb.nowan.net/blog/tag/locomotion/>
~~~
jgamman
thanks! and crap - yet another example of 'i'll never have an original
idea...' deflation kicking in about now
------
JeremyBanks
That looks amazing, but I'm curious how well it would work with two users. I
know it says that it's supported, but one would assume that it would have to
make some compromises, since it wouldn't be able to adapt to the positions and
orientations of two people as well as it could one.
------
DanielBMarkham
Now all they need to do is pair up with those other guys who were doing real-
time ray-tracing
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Plant-based diet can fight climate change – UN - dustinmoris
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49238749
======
jefflombardjr
> They said that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut
> down on eating meat.
This.
These articles are not calling for full vegetarianism/veganism. This is really
quite doable. You really don't need meat with every single meal.
Instead of eating meat with every meal, I try to limit chicken/salmon to once
or twice a day, and red meat to once or twice a week. I feel better too. I
don't recommend eating those nasty vegan patties... they are so processed. If
you're able to grow a victory garden [0] and/or focus on eating more fresh
fruits and vegetables - it's better for the environment and your health.
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden)
~~~
majkinetor
> You really don't need meat with every single meal.
That is some weird BS. I definitely don't need meat every single meal but I
need animal every single meal - meat or liver or eggs or milk or whatever, AND
meat every single day.
Given that plants are more often evil then not (think allergy, natural
pesticides etc), I don't really want to trade my health and fight the nature
of this universe we live in for the dubious potential benefit on climate
change.
I very much doubt its better for environment. There are so many contra
arguments that I don't need to repeat those here.
~~~
colobas
In what sense do you mean you "need animal every single meal"? "Need" as in
"want really bad, can't live without it", or "need" as in "my body won't
function properly without it"?
Also, can you give some examples of the contra-arguments you mentioned?
Thanks
~~~
majkinetor
In a sense that I need to feel great and healthy. I can live without anything
basically, can live on supplements in extreme but do I want to ? No.
Judging from the extreme levels of body logging in previous 10 years, and from
the fact that I had some sort of trouble always prior to eating animals as
main thing, I can say with confidence that all my metrics improved - I have
better labs, fitness and health today then when I was 20 years younger.
I eat 4 eggs and bacon every breakfast in last 10 years.
Example of contra-arguments: killing animals that don't care about your farm
or work (lots of small animals, but some are basically extinct like orangutans
cuz of palm oil stuff), poisoning environment with monoculture and Roundup,
taxing the healthcare system and other people because you can't really live on
plants without multiple deficiencies and so on...
You can't really fight the universe, that is the main point. You are not made
to eat plants, our digestive structure and acid barrier tells that story for
sure. Of course, we are all biochemically unique so I totally understand that
there are incompatible people but those are exceptions and rules are pretty
clear.
I am against animal suffering but animals eating other animals and plants
being just another living creature and not divine intervention to provide food
for other living creatures is how this universe functions.
~~~
jefflombardjr
> You are not made to eat plants
This is completely false, please stop. We're omnivores:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/12/23/how-humans-
evo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/12/23/how-humans-evolved-to-
be-natural-omnivores/#11f2482e7af5)
McArdle, John. "Humans are Omnivores". Vegetarian Resource Group. Retrieved 6
October 2013.
Robert E. C. Wildman; Denis M. Medeiros (2000). Advanced Human Nutrition. CRC
Press. p. 37. ISBN 978-0849385667. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
Robert Mari Womack (2010). The Anthropology of Health and Healing. Rowman &
Littlefield. p. 243. ISBN 978-0759110441. Retrieved 6 October 2013.
~~~
majkinetor
OK, let me rephrase - we are not made to eat plants completely or even
dominantly. pH of our acid barrier is consistent with this among other thing.
BTW, Vegetarian Resource Group doesn't sound like conflict of interest at
all... :S
Anyway, no amount of authority will beat my personal experience. I ate plants,
a lot, for decades. Now I don't that much (only some vegetables and nuts). I
feel and look much better in previous decade (so not placebo). Period for me.
YMMV.
------
maxencecornet
If you really want to have an impact while still eating meat, just stop eating
beef altogether
The amount of food and water needed to produce 1kg of beef meat is just insane
Eat poultry or fish instead
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio)
>Cattle is the worst at something like 15:1. Aquaculture, specifically tilapia
and catfish, is good at under 2:1
~~~
mytailorisrich
The starting point they use for fish is the wild fish caught to feed them. The
real impact is thus probably not better than cattle's.
Cattle is sometimes bred extensively on land not suited for agriculture and
the only way to turn grass into food. It's not all bad.
------
mns
Shouldn't this be more about having a diet based on local foods rather than
just be vegetarian/vegan? I'm saying this after seeing a couple of
documentaries on german tv where they were showing the impact of almond and
avocado "crops" in North and South America. It's crazy how much water and
terrain needs to be used and de-forested for these things, I know avocado is
seen as a super-food and everybody is crazy bout it now, same with almond
milk/drinks, but still, looking at a lot of the vegan options that we have
here, you look in your plate and see that more than half of the ingredients
from a whatever bowl or vegan lunch are brought to you half way around the
globe from a country where they destroyed forests and natural environments
just so you can enjoy these things.
~~~
JamesLefrere
No, it shouldn't. The majority of the deforestation happening now (e.g. in
Brazil) is to raise cattle, or to produce feed such as soybeans for farmed
animals; the water for almonds and avocado trees pales in comparison to these
activities, as do food miles.
A vegan diet saves much more than a carnist one does, even if it's more local;
here in Europe, we have sheep deserts (e.g. Iceland, much of UK) that can be
rewilded if more people adopt a vegan diet.
------
paulhallett
It's always worth remembering that you can have an impact and still eat red
meat. Cutting out meat on two or three days a week makes an impact. Most of my
non-veggie friends treat meat like a treat, and only eat it on weekends.
------
majkinetor
Plant based diet can also fight your good health too...
------
MperorM
and more importantly, a plant-based diet will significantly reduce the
suffering of sentient life.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Evernote CEO calls BS on “the best product doesn’t always win” - derekc
http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2010/05/28/evernote-best-product-founder-institute/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Venturebeat+(VentureBeat)
======
pwhelan
Budweiser, Miller, Coors vs. Dogfish Head, Southern Tier, Bell's (though best
is pretty subjective)
He makes a good point that you should invest heavily in the product, but that
doesn't mean that the rest of business isn't incredibly important too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ebay is ripe for start-up competition - quoderat
http://www.michaelalanmiller.com/?p=496
======
watmough
The main problem with an eBay type startup would be the vast number of
scammers who would immediately be able to deploy their scams to the new site.
eBay and PayPal have a vast ongoing fight with scammers, phishers, fraudsters,
which surely sours the pot for any competitors.
That said, I'd love to see a competitor to eBay.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Blog Wandering – Explore Blogs Visually - cdarwin
https://blogwandering.com
======
cdarwin
Blog Wandering is a free tool that allows a user to explore a blog visually:
you choose a blog from which to start and you get a map composed of the author
and of her/his commenters, then you can click on a commenter and open the map
of her/his blog, if she/he owns one, and so on. Double clicking on a user
opens a blog in a new tab, right clicking opens the gravatar profile. If you
have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Man Could Rule The World - tzs
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/man-could-rule-world
======
olefoo
Interesting to see such an alarmist title attached to an article about graph
theory and data mining.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming Sucks (2014) - robin_reala
http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
======
djaychela
A great read, I actually laughed out loud in places with some of the
descriptions, and I think I've met half the bridge engineering team in a past
life.
------
colund
Seems to be a lot of text with a lot of random complaints about code. I think
the author has misunderstood the value of code. It's not inherent but related
to the corresponding business value.
------
robin_reala
cfeduke linked to this from the comments on ‘What is Code?’, seemed worthy of
its own submission.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Common Lisp Quick Reference, with comprehensive index - alrex021
http://cheatsheetheap.com/common-lisp-quick-reference/
======
zachbeane
<http://clqr.berlios.de/> is a better link for this resource.
------
mnemonik
I have found that the things that have been most helpful as I learn CL are
C-c C-d d ;; Describe symbol that the cursor is on
C-c C-d h ;; Open up the hyperspec entry for the current symbol
and
C-c C-d a ;; Search symbols and documentation
in SLIME.
~~~
zachbeane
I look up stuff in the hyperspec about 200 times per day in CL hacking mode.
Quick access to the CLHS and the ability to parse its style are essential for
a serious CL hacker.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Build Your Own 8x4 Foot Whiteboard for $15 (Instead of $200+) - nickjj
https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/build-your-own-8x4-foot-whiteboard-for-15-dollars-instead-of-200
======
Multicomp
Not to be pedantic but haven't our open-office plans shown us that a lot of
non-porous surfaces can be used a whiteboard including glass, formaldehyde(as
seen in the article), and even most thin gloss plastics?
I could totally be wrong of course.
~~~
nickjj
I wouldn't want to try and mount an 8 foot by 4 foot piece of glass on my
wall, and I'm guessing the contrast would be a lot worse than the recommended
material in the article.
All I know is, you can walk into any Home Depot and for $15 bucks, walk out
with the supplies you need to easily amount it onto any wall in about 5-10
minutes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Discontinues All Current Zunes - antdaddy
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/zune-discontinues-all-current-zunes/
======
acg
Outside tech circles, I'm not sure I know anyone who knows what a Zune is.
~~~
dannyr
When I was traveling in Central America last year, I saw a number of Israelis
with Zunes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Supreme Court Looks at the Math of Gerrymandering - anjalik
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/the-supreme-court-looks-at-the-math-of-gerrymandering
======
aqsalose
This paper on arXiv about the proposed measure (efficiency gap) is worth
reading: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.10812](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.10812)
I still have not about EG, but in general I agree with some of the sentiment
of the paper I linked: these things are difficult to properly catch with just
one measure.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SF Hackerhouse needs to be filled - xachmo
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/4910918938.html
======
xachmo
inb4 sorry if this borders on spam
Trying to get some good technical (hw/sw/physics/+) together in our SF pad.
Will be 8-10 people and 1-2 dogs in all. If you're down and looking to move ,
send an email. If you just want to be on the email list for our hackathons and
other events of awesome , send an email. Mention hackernews for bonus points
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Computers Are Useless. They Can Only Give You Answers” (2011) - Tomte
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/05/computers-useless/
======
lordnacho
I'm not sure this quote is as insightful as it's made out to be.
Questions and answers are not a one-way system of thinking. Who hasn't thought
of more questions after being given an answer?
For example, statistics require a computer to calculate. They answer questions
like "what is the unemployment rate?". Once you get a number, say a time
series, you are going to ask "what affects the unemployment rate", essentially
asking what the generating function is. This in turn leads to more and more
calculations, a whole web causality.
So computers are not providing questions any less than answers.
~~~
woodruffw
_You_ asked the question here, not the computer. There is causality there, but
it's one-sided: ask a question, get a response, and use the response to inform
a new question. In other words, nothing about the response _itself_ begs the
question.
Edit: "One-sided" is probably ambiguous. What I mean: You don't ask the
computer _why_ it responded the way it did to your initial question, at least
in any meaningful sense. You understand, abstractly, that the organization of
instructions in the computer's program interacted with the input to produce an
output. You might ask _yourself_ why the response is something unexpected, but
it seems strange to ask a state machine for a reason in the same way that we
might ask a child to justify their dislike of brussels sprout.
~~~
lordnacho
>> You asked the question here, not the computer.
But the computer can be coded to do causal calculus. Which is an elegant way
for it to reason about the observations it sees. The data tells the machine
what is a possible graph of causality, and what is ruled out. Adding more data
changes the graph. Now you could say the machine can't dream up what to try to
measure that's not already there, but I don't see why it's terribly different
from what a person does; a person just happens to have a very wide range of
experiences to draw from.
About the child and the brussel sprout, it's because they don't like the
taste. They don't like the taste because they're evolved to like certain
tastes, where the term "evolved" hides a complex history of genetic
interaction with the environment, and "taste" hides parameters discovered
during this interaction. Essentially, the child has certain priors in his head
about what's good for him. Not all that different from a calculating machine.
Now the child may not understand this, because he can't consciously examine
the chemicals in his brain, but the computer is built in such a way that we
can, so we tend to think the computer is somehow less complex.
~~~
woodruffw
> But the computer can be coded to do causal calculus. Which is an elegant way
> for it to reason about the observations it sees.
I'm not convinced that number-crunching could be fairly cast into the same
pattern of rationality as reasoning. For one, reasoning seems to imply the
potential for a multitude of (not necessarily correct or even veridical)
outcomes - it is possible to reason as a human being about what to eat for
dinner without predicating that on an "acceptable" meal.
In contrast, there is only one (and necessarily veridical) outcome for the
sort of "reasoning" that a computer does. You can make that outcome very
complex by virtue of a very complex program, but any deviation from it would
be something _wrong_ with the machine or program, not just another outcome.
> About the child and the brussel sprout, it's because they don't like the
> taste.
Possibly. It could also be that they've never had them but have heard their
friends complaining about them, or that they just don't like the way they
look.
What's interesting is that any of these would be a reasonable response from a
child (or an adult). Contrast that to the explanations we would accept for a
machine failing to produce the correct outcome - would it be _reasonable_ to
say (beyond in a colloquial sense) that my desktop "didn't like" the input I
gave it?
~~~
lordnacho
>>In contrast, there is only one (and necessarily veridical) outcome for the
sort of "reasoning" that a computer does.
Why? Say a human is driving a car, and a kid steps out on the road, you can
swerve, or you can stop. Same goes with a computer. Except with a computer,
you can have all the stats about the likely outcomes to hand immediately and
choose whichever is marginally better. It's only the right choice to the
extent that the data says one choice is superior to the other. You can easily
imagine that if the choices are close to each other, the machine would just
pick one of them. Or even do whatever improves the data gathering, eg if one
of the choices had been picked a lot less that the other.
In general there's scope for optimization when you have data and calculation
power, but there's also scope for satisficing, ie doing any of several things
that will give an acceptable outcome.
>>would it be reasonable to say (beyond in a colloquial sense) that my desktop
"didn't like" the input I gave it?
Yes. The only difference between the kid and the computer is the kid evolved
naturally, and one of the things he got from evolution is self-interest. Of
course a machine can have self-interest as well, but we don't use the language
of preferences to describe it.
------
qwrusz
Such fascinating comments on here. I think it would be interesting to find a
provocative quote said by a computer scientist about art and then see how
artists debate/discuss the quote's meaning.
My 2 cents on this quote:
1\. This quote is about art. Not about computers. Picasso was an artist (and a
great salesman, PR-man, self-promoter btw). But he didn't know shit about
computers or "calculating machines" or whatever octogenarians called them
"mechanical brains" back then. This quote is about art.
2\. The quote seems to be widely misunderstood by a surprisingly large
percentage of people who don't get it. Firstly, it's just a quote. I'm not
sure why it gets as much attention as it does, but everyone needs to chill. I
feel maybe people get offended quickly by it or get caught up in who said it
and then everyone forgets to read it closely...Here goes:
The quote is illogical. The quote makes no sense. This is prima facie.
Something cannot be "useless" and have a use. Even if a thing has one single
use, it is not and cannot be called, "useless". Assuming computers only give
you answers, that would be a use and so they cannot be called "useless". e.g.
can you say "Thermometers are useless, they only tell you temperature" or
"Easels are useless, they only hold the paintings"? Hopefully you see
illogical structure and fallacy of what he is saying.
Funny how a computer would not accept the logic of the quote. But I don't
think that was intentional.
Next: Without going into to much context on Picasso's view on art and
technology (which he was not against), I think one way to understand the quote
is to flip it: What is the point of art? A question asked by many for a long
time..."Art is useless. It just gives you questions".
~~~
lawpoop
It's illogical, but surely you can see that it's a rhetorical device in the
service of his message.
New knowledge comes from asking novel questions.
I haven't yet seen a computer pose an interest question, something no one has
ever thought of yet. I don't mean questions about art, or meaning, or "What
happened in 1750?" but novel questions in mathematics, cosmology, physics,
etc.
They do seem to be answer-calculating machines.
------
drallison
This seems to be a restatement of Richard Hamming's motto expressed in
_Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers_ (1962):
_The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers._
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Yelp craters 30% as advertisers abandon the site - breitling
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/yelp-craters-30percent-as-advertisers-abandon-the-site.html
======
mlrtime
I don't have any sympathy for a site that purposely cripples the web mobile
site to force you to install their app. They lock you out of pictures after
around 20 so you have to go to desktop or install their crappy app. Yelp will
not be missed.
~~~
wilg
I think one of the most interesting/telling user experience things in the
industry today is why people feel so strongly about not installing apps. It
seems like it spans most people, from novice users all the way to technology
experts.
Personally, I've never understood it, since nearly every mobile website is
terrible. I prefer installing the app.
Seems like a key problem for mobile OS vendors to solve.
If you don't like it, why not?
~~~
smelendez
Well, it's especially annoying with something like Yelp that you often use on
the go and sometimes in stressful situations (somebody in your group is hungry
and ornery).
Downloading an app can take an unpredictable amount of time and bandwidth, and
once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password, deal
with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .
~~~
pyr0hu
> once you download it you may have to log in, remember or set a password,
> deal with 2FA, click a verification email, etc. .
like you don't have to do those on a website?
~~~
azeotropic
Ugh. Yes, but there are many fewer sites that actually _need_ this than those
that deploy it just so they can harvest emails.
The only sites that need this are those where users are adding content _and_
the site is moderated, and then login should only be required for moderated
actions.
So Yelp should require a login to leave a review, but not to read one.
------
vikingcaffiene
Good. Yelp is utter trash. They've shaken down several friends of mine who own
and run restaurants. Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1
star reviews start magically appearing on your business Its a well known
racket and they should be run out of town on a rail for it.
On a more personal note, they also refused to adequately protect my wife when
we encountered and reported an unscrupulous vendor who threatened my wife and
exposed her personal information on the site.
There is a very real need for this kind of thing but Yelp has proven time and
time again that they can't be trusted to deliver it.
~~~
thoughtexplorer
> Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start
> magically appearing on your business
How do you square that claim given that both current and former Yelp employees
say they do no such thing?
How do you know those reviews are fake vs coincidence? I've heard a lot of
anecdotes and conspiracies about this, but have never seen actual proof. No
documents, recorded phone calls, court cases etc? And given how many people
have worked at Yelp it's strange no one has blown the whistle yet if they
engage in such practices. They would be an instant hero.
~~~
parthdesai
There is a whole article on cbc about it.
Here is the link: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-
bu...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-businesses-
into-paying-for-better-reviews-1.2899308)
~~~
istjohn
That article is hardly conclusive.
There are plenty of salty business owners, and somewhat understandably. Yelp
is far more proactive than, say, Amazon in policing reviews with its automated
software. They do sometimes filter legitimate reviews, particularly when a
reviewer has few other reviews on the site and is very flattering to the
business. They do not want businesses to game the system by bribing customers
or recruiting friends and family.
But of course, sometimes this incorrectly flags legitimate positive reviews.
And when simultaneous negative reviews don't get filtered, this is
understandably frustrating for businesses. And it doesn't take much
imagination for a slightly paranoid owner to wonder if Yelp's pushy sales
efforts have a nefarious undertone.
But this aggressive quality control is what makes Yelp ratings so much more
useful than Amazon ratings. And if businesses can keep attracting positive
reviews, especially from established reviewers on the platform, and perhaps
more importantly, avoid negative reviews, their ratings will rise. And they
will have to fight Yelp's slightly trigger-happy automated review moderation
whether or not they give money to a Yelp sales rep.
------
cletus
Good.
The Yelp app/site is basically the same it was 5 years ago. Rather than
innovate they chose to:
\- Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites (those that
advertised with Yelp rank higher, negative reviews can mysteriously disappear
for advertisers)
\- Whine to regulators about Google is stealing content from them (by, you
know, serving a snippet of content that Yelp allows to be scraped).
\- Harass users to install their (shitty) app.
This is just bad management/leadership to the core and such a waste
opportunity. A telltale sign of this is the demonization of some nefarious
third-party and blaming all your woes on them, which they've clearly done with
Google. Don't think that's effective? Look at the current state of US
politics.
I really have no time for these shenanigans.
~~~
kadendogthing
>Opt for the shakedown/extortion method of ranking sites
Do you have any proof of this?
~~~
deelowe
No. No one does because it doesn't happen.
------
allochthon
I can't relate to the negativity I see here. I like Yelp quite a lot. There
have been a number occasions where I've found an excellent local restaurant
that I wouldn't have otherwise found.
Admittedly, you have to know what you're doing. If you're in a food desert,
like some parts of the US, you'll need to take those 4 and 4.5 star restaurant
profiles with a grain of salt. What I would really like: the ability to select
other users whose tastes are similar to mine that Yelp would then use to
influence the ratings I see. This might also protect against paid spam reviews
and over-picky reviewers.
~~~
dunpeal
Yelp was involved in more than a few shady dealings over the years, and most
people remember that.
They manipulate their own rating for money, and for that reason many consider
these ratings - their core product - to be unreliable and misleading.
They will not be missed.
~~~
DerfNet
I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's
probably more just Google eating their lunch.
~~~
acdha
I don't know, I've heard an awful lot of people who aren't tech/privacy nerds
joke about how Yelp allows you to pay to remove bad reviews or add fake ones.
It seems to be a common belief in at least the food industry and that employs
an awful lot of people who may hear and propagate it.
~~~
istjohn
And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a
manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal
experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection
system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do
great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.
~~~
acdha
My point was that it was widespread. There are so many small businesses that
you don’t need that high a percentage to have bad experiences with sales
critters or be conspiracy minded for a lot of people to hear the claim.
------
duxup
I abandoned Yelp as a user pretty quick as it was just too much to filter
through so many reviews by people who 1) Had some one off bad experience that
is probably not representative of anything. 2) Wished that place they reviewed
was like some other place that is kinda the same but ... it's twice the price
so why are you comparing?
~~~
ghaff
It's not great but TBH I still find it to be better than nothing. You've
pretty much described every review site on the Internet. "My hotel room in
Manhattan was small." You don't say.
I still prefer Zagat (though it's not what it was when it was pretty much
limited to foodies) where it's available. But if I'm in an area I don't know
well I still will take Yelp over picking a restaurant on total whim or because
it has a clever name.
~~~
dfxm12
Your choices aren't just Yelp and nothing though. There are things that are
better than both, like Foursquare.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
Tripadvisor has always been best for me, in the UK, but you do have to
interpret reviews carefully.
~~~
ghaff
Yelp tends to be worse outside the US so I tend to agree Tripadvisor is
relatively better. But in the US, I'll often look at Tripadvisor for B&Bs etc.
but I tend to come back to Yelp for restaurants.
------
SnowingXIV
Yelp is incredibly annoying as a business owner. After signing up to setup
basic NAP consistency, they will automatically flag it as some sort of tag
often incorrectly and then continue to call and email you asking to spend
advertising dollars on their site for months. Even after asking them to no
longer do so.
I'm glad google reviews and others have taken their place.
~~~
52-6F-62
My girlfriend is one of the main operators of a small chain of board game
cafes here— her experience is pretty well the same as yours.
They rely on Google reviews and Facebook reviews. Facebook has even been toxic
enough with false stories pushed in attempts to defame the company for money.
I haven't heard the same about Google reviews and Reddit has been strangely
fair.
I just never liked Yelp. It seems like it spoiled very early on.
edit: Just told her the news. Her response: "Good. Yelp is evil."
~~~
3minus1
> Facebook has even been toxic enough with false stories pushed in attempts to
> defame the company for money.
Could you explain what you mean here?
~~~
52-6F-62
It was more that the environment (Facebook, in this case) has allowed toxic
situations where less scrupulous patrons were taking advantage of the social
network to spread falsehoods for an attempt at personal gain by viral
traction. Basically tell the lie fast and hard enough that the targeted party
was helpless to defend themselves.
Thankfully it didn't play out that way. The company has a decent amount of
respect in this town, and the situation was well documented in advance.
------
momentmaker
Maybe now local businesses are realizing they don't want deal with the mob-
like business practice Yelp had been accustomed to over the years.
~~~
lgleason
Yeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.
~~~
vageli
> Yeah, but Google reviews are essentially the same thing.
How so? I've registered businesses on Google and never gotten a sales call
from a Google rep.
~~~
lgleason
have a mob go after your business on Google reviews and then try to get them
removed.
------
nasalgoat
If your business model is essentially extortion, you have to wonder about
long-term viability.
~~~
vinceguidry
The actual mob still seems to be doing well.
~~~
nosequel
Is it? The NY and Boston mobs are pretty well dead these days.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
They've just pivoted into "legitimate" government. The middle bunch of the org
chart of some government departments in MA is sprinkled with these people.
Edit: some vs most. I can't speak for all of the departments.
------
Upvoter33
In contrast to many posters here, I really like Yelp (as a user, at least,
never been a restaurant owner). I sort by number of reviews and find places
that are highly rated (4 stars or so) and almost always this has worked well.
Other services I've tried are not nearly as easy to use or reliable.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
What other services have you tried. Where in the World are you.
~~~
ilikehurdles
For what it's worth, I've tried Google (absolute and total bottom of the
barrel trash level reviews in my opinion -- cannot say enough bad things about
that review quality) and Tripadvisor (not bad, better for lodging and sights
than food). I do like Eater but it's a different service and not user-driven.
I'm in the US. Have been all over the place, all over both coasts, texas, and
colorado.
------
stanleydrew
I bet Apple will be snooping around for a cheap acquisition here. Apple
already uses Yelp for their place data in Apple Maps and they are still way
behind Google.
Eventually Apple will probably need to have its own place data if it wants to
continue to compete in maps. Yelp would give them a starting point.
~~~
rchaud
Doesn't Apple tend to buy relatively unknown companies and fold their IP into
their products? Beats Audio was the only major one I remember them absorbing,
and was rebranded as Apple Music.
But Beats had that upscale demographic and positive brand image that Apple
covets so dearly, whereas Yelp feels very much like a bygone brand of the
2010s IPO rush (along with Groupon and Foursquare). Not sure Apple would be
interested. They can just pay for the POI data. Why buy the cow when all you
need is the milk?
~~~
stanleydrew
I don't think Apple cares about any Yelp "IP". It's a local establishment
discovery and review site.
You suggest "they can just pay for the POI data." Which is basically what I'm
suggesting.
Yelp's actual underlying asset is its POI database. Apple might want that if
they decide to own rather than rent (which is a transition Google made a while
back). Not at any price, but if Yelp continues to struggle the valuation might
make sense.
~~~
skinnymuch
Wouldn’t Foursquare make more sense as a much much cheaper acquisiton if none
of the things actually driving most of Yelp’s value don’t matter? Yelp is
still valued at close to $3B. If it recovers half of what it lost, Apple would
have to pay close to $4B for Yelp. If it doesn’t recover at all, still talking
over $3B.
While Foursquare wouldn’t even be for $1B. It was last valued at $300M 3 years
ago and just raised money again. So at worst it’s 4x cheaper. At best, 5x or
6x cheaper. The business model probably fits better too with having an
enterprise package with Apple Maps.
------
adwordsjedi
Great news! I run a local service company and stopped advertising with Yelp
several months ago. No transparency how clicks go to $12 when they used to be
$5. That's not even a click to your site, just your Yelp profile still on
their site!
On top of it, my 5 star reviews keep getting filtered, even ones that have
shown for months. Meanwhile two recent 1-star reviews we got with people from
brand new accounts still show just fine.
GOOD RIDDANCE, hope they go BK. They deserve it.
~~~
gscott
I spoke to them for insurance clicks and it was around $25-30 a click. Might
as well just buy Google PPC ads for the same amount and get more value.
------
27182818284
I've never met the owner of a bar/eatery/brewery that liked Yelp. All of them
dealt with Yelp as a necessary evil.
~~~
elsewhen
Yelp positions their product primarily as a consumer service; the fact that
the other side of the marketplace (service providers) is dissatisfied may
affect Yelp's business but not necessarily the product they provide to
consumers.
------
skadamou
Does anyone else find that their best restaurant experiences come from places
that only show up on a yelp search several pages down (if at all)? A number of
years ago I stopped using yelp to find places to eat in my hometown because I
found that the app completely overlooked smaller, locally run places for big
name places near tourist hot spots.
~~~
crazygringo
Nope, not if you sort by rating instead of default (which seems to include
things like popularity).
Yelp ratings (at least here in NYC) are the most reliable signal of a
restaurant's quality I've ever found, particularly when you look at the
histogram.
If a place has significantly more 5-star ratings than 4-star, you're basically
guaranteed it will be amazing.
And it has more 4-star than 5-star (assuming it's also more 4-star than
3-star), it's probably fine but there's a reason it's not getting 5 stars, and
it's unlikely to be amazing.
Obviously this relies on having a large enough sample size (e.g. 30+).
------
zachruss92
Yelp ads were completely ineffective for me as a business. I was paying about
$900/mo for 3 months (they force a contract) and literally got 0 leads (calls,
clicks, messages, etc...). If I was even able to get a project from Yelp ads
it would have been worth it. I can't imagine if you're a restaurant (where the
average sale is a _lot_ less than web design/development services) that you
can make any money advertising on Yelp. No surprise that ad sales are going
down/staying stagnant.
------
notyourday
Yelp in NYC is infuriating to use. Not only it does not know neighborhoods, it
is incapable of identifying rivers that separate areas. Ask it for places in
Greenpoint and it would happily include stuff in Manhattan, sometimes well
before it runs out of the Greenpoint options which could be OK had Greenpoint
not been separated from Manhattan by the East River.
Yelp is also happy to manipulate reviews contrary to their denials. It is
rather funny, of course, because it seems that no one in the tech leadership
of the company understands how easy it is to take a screenshot of a review.
~~~
smelendez
It was honestly faster to do a lot of searches with the old paper Zagat books
than modern Yelp, since they were compiled by people who understood the cities
they were covering.
I don't remember this being as much of an issue when Yelp launched? It seems
like there are certain restaurants (advertisers? mathematically trending
places?) that they're determined to shoehorn into any search result.
Also, it's frustrating how every review site I've tried constantly turns off
the "open now" filter. I get that people want to plan tomorrow's lunch at
10pm, but other people just want to quickly find a decent place to take their
hungry friends.
------
yalogin
The problem is even now Yelp is probably the best resource out there for
finding new restaurants but I find Yelp poorly run. There is no innovation,
the UI hasn’t been updated or changed since the first release. They have so
much potential, for example, they should have been the leaders in delivery and
should have provided the api for Uber eats. They just don’t do anything
outside of maintaining the servers for their basic service, at least that’s
what it feels like.
~~~
rchaud
What you are describing sounds like a lot of work for not much payoff, and
that's not what you pursue once you IPO. Yelp just became yet another "we sell
ads" company, and that's not surprising considering that it was basically an
online directory with reviews.
------
radium3d
These large corporations need to knock off the bullshit and make their
websites well developed and designed in-browser apps. Something so simple
could save Yelp and many others. There is no need to have a native app unless
you require certain hardware features that are unavailable on the browser to
meet your apps purpose.
------
haloux
Yelp is one of those YMMV apps. Absolutely terrible for smaller cities like
Albuquerque, NM.
I miss the days when their competitor, Urbanspoon, was really pushing the
envelope on a great customer experience and review variety.
~~~
Marsymars
Old Urbanspoon reviews are still available on Zomato, but recent reviews (in
my area) seem few and far between. Activity seems to be mostly on fb and
google maps now.
To me, every time there's a migration of platform for restaurant reviews, the
user experience gets _worse_. :(
------
sxp62000
Yelp is full of wannabe food critics/influencer types who complain about the
ambience or quality of service. I always get the impression that these people
only go to places that are already popular. For things not related to
food/drinks, Yelp is no better than Google.
Also, they focus too much on search/ratings, so finding a place is harder when
you aren't quite sure what you're in the mood for. I hope Yelp focuses more on
the discovery aspect, because right now that's happening on Instagram and
blogs like Eater.
~~~
thebigspacefuck
Tons of places have low Yelp reviews but decent Google reviews and in my
experience, the Google reviews are more accurate. I think it's because you get
more off the cuff honest opinions from Google users instead of someone that
went out of their way to get on Yelp.
------
Mikeb85
They've tried to hold restaurants and other small businesses hostage for years
and never expected that, given how despised they are, someone would displace
them?
The way they run their business is comical as well. In my city Yelp is
basically a non-factor. Businesses that have 500 Google or OpenTable reviews
will often have a dozen Yelp reviews at most, yet Yelp will constantly phone
you trying to get you to sign up for their services... Usually very
aggressively and during peak business hours.
------
vco1
I've always enjoyed Louis Rossmann yelp rants. A week ago he posted a great
interview with some people who made a documentary about yelp practices of
bullying businneses to join their service Link:
[https://youtu.be/BHEbVh3Yhrw](https://youtu.be/BHEbVh3Yhrw)
------
osdiab
I wonder if there’s a way to get the quality of reviews and rankings from
Tabelog in the USA - for those who don’t know its the Japanese equivalent
service and diners are so critical that most restaurants have 3 stars, 3.5 is
an exceptionally good one and 4 and up generally have Michelin stars; I’ve
never been disappointed by a decently rated restaurant on it.
The magic sauce for them might be cultural; though there’s definitely room for
a better (probably nonlinear) type of reviewing system in the market given how
bad quality Yelp reviews are in comparison.
------
_cs2017_
This has probably nothing to do with them losing advertisers, but I really
dislike the app UX. Examples:
1\. Videos auto play in the app, stopping my music or whatever else I'm
listening to. And I can't disable that feature.
2\. Frequent crashes and other glitches (eg, the Recent category doesn't
actually show many of the places I visited today).
3\. No way to save default settings, like sort by rating. So with every search
I have to manually set those preferences. Similarly, no way to save searches
or even to go back to a previous search I just ran.
~~~
antichronology
google maps has a lot of ratings and I find is good at suggesting a list of
places from which I can select one. Look into the explore around me feature
------
Opossum
I have a question: Would it be possible to do something like Fakespot for Yelp
reviews or just restaurant reviews in general? I can appreciate that the
problem is harder than say spotting fake Amazon reviews, but it seems
plausible.
Given that there is really no good verification for restaurant reviews, there
must be a ton of fake reviews out there. In theory, it would not be too hard
to periodically crawl reviews and figure out when/if they got deleted and use
that dataset to find patterns.
------
xfitm3
Yelp is an unscrupulous business, however, I do find it useful. I don't read
the reviews but I enjoy looking at pictures of food before choosing a
restaurant.
------
1024core
Yelp is tanking because it is putting profits before customers.
Case in point: let's say you're looking for a restaurant in a certain area,
maybe in San Francisco? So you zoom into that area and do a search: find "x"
in the map.
So what do they do? They zoom out (sometimes, far out) to include some
advertisers.
Rule #1 if you have a customer-facing product: if you give the users choice,
_then respect that choice!_ Always respect the user. Always.
------
lalos
For vegetarians and vegans be sure to try out HappyCow, it's a must have when
traveling. Disclaimer: free website but the iOS app costs some money.
------
robodale
As Yelp finishes flushing itself down the toilet, I wonder what opportunities
can open up for similar services that actually provide value?
------
pbreit
Wow, $YELP has almost $1b in revenues, $800m in cash and trading at a $2.5b
market cap.
Yelp took far too long to go big into self-service advertising.
------
oh-kumudo
Well, you don't really have to have distinguished insights to tell that Yelp
is doing a horrible job as an advertising company. Their ads are unattractive
and annoying. What is fundamentally wrong with their business model is that,
good restaurants don't need ads to wow customers: they are already
oversubscribed, only troubled ones do.
------
_august
Foursquare! I've been using it pretty regularly and it always seems to give me
cool neighborhood gems compared to over-advertised entires that Yelp gives
you. You can kinda even feel that the app was built with some heart.
Also, I love the filters on there compared to Google (Google maps always seems
to hide a lot of places)
------
myth_buster
The only redeemable feature on Yelp that I come to often (from Google Maps) is
Open Now, where I can fill in a time and it filters for that time. If its
close to closing time, its rare that I want to know what's open right now
given I've to drive to that location.
Other than that, I get the same value prop else where.
------
exabrial
Good. Being an asshole to both consumers and small businesses should end in
this outcome.
------
forkandwait
Am I the only one who considers companies like Internet pollution and hopes
they all die?
------
dreamcompiler
Good. [https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-
role/](https://thetechnoskeptic.com/yelp-extortion-starring-role/)
------
Misdicorl
Here's to hoping the replacement will implement an old school Netflix style
recommendation engine.
Some people rate taco bell 5 stars, some 1 star. These people should not
influence ratings for eachother.
------
tyingq
Don't forget to give Yelp a rating: [https://yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-
francisco](https://yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco)
------
JetSpiegel
"Adds zero net new advertising customers" means advertisers are abandoning the
site?
Money 'abandoned' my wallet when I payed for my friend's dinner and she payed
me back.
------
gdsdfe
there was numerous accounts of extortion and bullying in regards to yelp in
the past, I am so not suprised by this and it's just going to get worst
------
PHGamer
I think the bigger issue simply is no one goes to yelp, they go to deliver
sites now because no one ones to leave their house
------
xd1936
Man. They just bought NoWait too, which was an awesome service. I hope they
don't drag it down with them into the abyss.
------
phendrenad2
Now Apple will have to build their own rating tool for their maps app. Can't
say that's a bad thing.
------
fipple
No sympathy for them but Google completely trust-fucked them and the DOJ is
too incompetent to care.
------
Circumnavigate
Good riddance, that is one of the most unethical corporations won the
internet.
------
segmondy
I use yelp as a yellow page, that's it. I never look at the reviews.
------
sharemywin
I don't understand why they don't offer delivery like grubhub?
~~~
dominotw
Yea they could have easily added reservations ( opentable) , deliveries (
grubhub) , group dining ( meetup).
~~~
greglindahl
Yelp purchased a reservations startup SeatMe, which worked out so well that
they bought another reservations startup Nowait.
------
advertising
You should be able to decide if you want to be listed on yelp or not.
------
jessaustin
Wow people have passionate opinions about Yelp. If I need a quick meal while
on the road, I just pick out some fast place. If I want a nice meal, I cook
it. Spending a lot of my own money at a restaurant is only very rarely a
satisfying experience.
------
dawhizkid
a Yelp-like Token Curated Registry (TCRs) would be very interesting
------
minikites
Looks like enough people figured out Yelp was a computerized protection
racket.
------
sys_64738
Shareholders let out a yelp when they saw the numbers!
------
jordache
Good!
------
eruci
Welp!
------
artursapek
It all comes back around in the end.
------
Alex3917
Fuck Yelp. They’ve been deleting my reviews of restaurants that haven’t paid
them enough.
------
crkhms
I don't get the negativity here, Yelp is an incredibly useful service;
especially living in NYC. With such a dense amount of restaurants in the city,
you need some way to cut out the cruft.
I'm yet to eat at a Yelp 4-star restaurant in NYC that I didn't think was
good. Besides Foursquare as an alternative, the reviews on Google,
TripAdvisor, etc. are all way too inflated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IAd: Apple to Launch New Mobile Ad Platform? - MykalMorton
http://mashable.com/2010/03/27/apple-iad/
======
eli
Well, the story is that they wanted to buy AdMob but Google outbid them, so
this isn't too much of a surprise.
------
eam
iAd sounds too much like iPad, if true maybe they can name it iVertise, if
it's available of course.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nokia Sues Apple Over iPhone - anupj
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489221111114540.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular
======
RiderOfGiraffes
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=896889>
------
nym
Full text?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China Censors Bad Economic News Amid Signs of Slower Growth - CPAhem
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/business/china-censor-economic-news.html
======
mabbo
This should really terrify us all.
The Chinese economy is not just inflated, it's now an enormous chunk of the
world economy. Throw in their really wild housing bubble [0] and it's a time
bomb. Globalization has made everything cheaper, but it's tied us all together
in many ways. They won't fall over alone.
Hiding news that the economy isn't doing well distorts incentives. Those with
political connections will know what's really happening and take full
advantage. Those without will make poor choices. Like buying a 4th unfinished
condo as an investment.
[0][https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-
china...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china-can-t-
fix-its-housing-bubble)
~~~
rqs
Actually, before the trade gone bad, many local governments in China already
installed some limits on the housing bubble. For example, in some place, you
can only buy house, but unable to sell it. This will limit how many money can
flood back to the economy.
So far, that policy is effective. After all, nobody want to play the Japanese
character during what's after the "Japanese economic miracle"[0]. And the
housing bubble thing is like textbook example of "How not do your economy".
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle)
~~~
seanmcdirmid
This has always been true though. The government basically controls the real
estate companies, and they won’t list/show your house beneath a certain price.
When prices weaken, volume simply plummets as no one can sell because the real
estate companies won’t allow for discounting. That isn’t a really a new thing,
it has been going on for at least a decade.
In many cases, what we have in China is much worse than japan since artificial
intervention is much deeper and prolonged.
~~~
panarky
Not only in China.
In 2010, the US Securities and Exchange Commission restricted the ability to
sell shares short if the share price has declined more than 10%.
[https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-26.htm](https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-26.htm)
Curious how there is no equivalent restriction on purchases if the share price
has increased by 10%.
~~~
slededit
It’s a very temporary restriction not at all comparable. It applies only until
the next uptick and is essentially a strengthening of the circuit breaker
rules.
These rules are designed to slow trading down on the order of minutes to hours
so market participants can catch up and make rational decisions. This is
completely different than broad market distortions pervasive in both Japan and
China - both in intent and effect.
~~~
panarky
_> These rules are designed to slow trading down_
If this were true, then there would be a symmetric rule to restrict purchases
when prices increase.
Since the rule only restricts sales and not purchases, its purpose must be to
prevent price declines, not to regulate the velocity of trading.
~~~
slededit
Unlike with upswings, down swings come with margin calls which can cause
downward spirals. The market can certainly get irrational on the upswing as
well but the feedback mechanisms are more muted and slower.
------
alecco
The kind of "bad economic news" censored:
TABLE-China bond defaults rise over 56 pct from 2017 at $8.74 bln
[https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-
defaults/table...](https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-
defaults/table-china-bond-defaults-rise-over-56-pct-from-2017-at-874-bln-
idUSL8N1WD3CR)
~~~
paradite
How about stopping the baseless accusations thrown at China?
[http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/doc-
ifyteqtq9368408.shtml?cre=tianyi&mod=pcpager_fintoutiao&loc=1&r=9&doct=0&rfunc=100&tj=none&tr=9)
[http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-
ihinpmn...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-
ihinpmnq8345092.shtml)
[http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/doc-
ihcyszrz8981691.shtml)
[http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml](http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml)
[http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html](http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html)
Edit: Looks like I'm being flagged for pointing out the false accusations?
Slowly losing my faith in HN.
~~~
King-Aaron
> How about stopping the baseless accusations thrown at China?
Apologies, but all the links you posted are in chinese, and google translate
just turns them into mostly garbage so Im struggling with the context of your
comment.
But I'm not sure what this issue here is, the user above you pointed out "the
kind of information being censored" as an example of what's being discussed in
the parent article, and that seems unrelated to the argument "Stop throwing
baseless accusations about X".
Is the problem with the accusation that China is censoring economic
information, or is it that the default rate as used in this example is
inaccurate?
~~~
paradite
The example is inaccurate, or rather false and misleading.
~~~
King-Aaron
Welllllll I don't really think that was the point of the comment, rather it
was showing an example of what content has been blocked.
~~~
paradite
I'm not sure where the misunderstanding is.
The article is about censoring economic news.
The top comment suggests an example of economic news that is censored.
Anyone reading the comments would assume that the example news is indeed
censored.
However, that was not the case, as shown in the links I provided. (If they
were censored, the pages would have been taken down retrospectively)
I'm pointing out that example is a false accusation of the content being
censored.
~~~
mads
What were the links posted? They were flagged and removed.
~~~
paradite
Just some links to articles in Chinese websites that talks about defaults
recently:
[http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/do...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-04-13/doc-
ifyteqtq9368408.shtml?cre=tianyi&mod=pcpager_fintoutiao&loc=1&r=9&doct=0&rfunc=100&tj=none&tr=9)
[http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-
ihinpmn...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/2018-08-31/doc-
ihinpmnq8345092.shtml)
[http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/do...](http://finance.sina.com.cn/money/bond/research/2018-06-15/doc-
ihcyszrz8981691.shtml)
[http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml](http://bond.jrj.com.cn/2018/09/30133825154607.shtml)
[http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html](http://bond.hexun.com/2018-08-01/193639187.html)
~~~
pas
I interpreted OP's comment as meaning that this particular reuters link is
censored, not necessarily all URLs with the same semantic content. Probably
censors are not vigilant enough.
~~~
notabot
The context of the NYT article is that bad news in Chinese media is censored.
GP already said "the kind of ...", which was not about a specific piece or a
specific link, so it would be natural for me to interpret GP's comment as "the
semantic content about defaults is censored in China", which is not true
according to @paradite.
------
lolc
The interesting thing for me here is a problem with all censorship: Those
doing the censoring need to understand the issue to work effectively. So the
censorship bulletins need to provide enough information that they become a
source of truth. It gives investors an incentive to read them, because they
are a factor in where the market moves.
~~~
07d046
I think it's partly censorship, and partly the secrecy around the creation of
economic (and other) data. When people are incentivised to report inaccurate
data and have the ability to do so, they will. This is an old problem. Emperor
Kangxi developed a secret palace memorial system in the seventeenth century to
learn from trusted eunuchs if the grain prices his senior officials were
reporting were accurate, and if his son was a monster, and things like that.
------
datavirtue
Chinese "leaders" are in way over their head trying to direct the economy. Now
they don't know what the people really know. Something tells me that clear and
open information is the best choice but they have already gone down the rabbit
hole.
~~~
toss1
Yes, and even if the are actually fully informed and very skilled, there are
severe limitations on what "management" of press and psychology can do.
In an economy, an excess must eventually be corrected. The problems are that
it's a dynamic super-multi-variable system and tends to overshoot in both
directions. Ideally, an excess would self-correct soon and gently, but many
information loops have too long a lag. Hence, the warning that "markets can
remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".
In cases where the bubble is moderate, 'management' may well keep the
psycology from falling too far and overcorrecting, buying time, so that the
situation can correct without a crash.
However, it also continues the excess for far longer, and often allowing a far
greater degree of excess. So, if the excess breaks through the management, the
crash will be _ _much_ _ steeper and deeper, overshooting far on the downside.
I'm not sure if the PRC doesn't understand this risk, or if it does and is
just in too deep to do anything else.
Either way, it is a seriously growing risk for them and globally.
~~~
datavirtue
They way to prevent irrational markets out running your solvency is to avoid
easy lending/borrowing in the good times.
~~~
toss1
Of course, but the Chinese needed to do that a decade ago -- it is way too
late for that now...
Usually the central banks serve that function by raising interest rates in
better times as the economy heats up. China's? Not so much. Seems they might
need to learn this lesson the hard way.
------
rossdavidh
Cannot help but wonder if we are seeing, right here in this comment section
here, people paid to counter any discussion of a bad Chinese economy. Of
course, I'll probably never know for sure.
~~~
gwern
Chinese censorship doesn't appear to work that way: largely domestic, and
focused on adding friction and distraction rather than criticism/rebuttal -
[https://qz.com/311832/hacked-emails-reveal-chinas-
elaborate-...](https://qz.com/311832/hacked-emails-reveal-chinas-elaborate-
and-absurd-internet-propaganda-machine/)
[https://gking.harvard.edu/50c](https://gking.harvard.edu/50c)
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/experiment_0.pd...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/experiment_0.pdf)
------
bayesian_horse
It would really have surprised me to hear that they didn't.
Though there seems to be some relevance to the government's numbers, otherwise
the market would totally ignore them.
------
ciucanu
I wouldn't be surprised to read this kind of news about some of the Eastern
Europe countries in the future.
~~~
switch007
I wouldn't be surprised to read this kind of news about Western European
countries in the future !
~~~
ciucanu
East 2nd, East 2nd, at least this time.
------
buboard
When your business is to run a regulated economy, neglecting to censor the bad
news would be a bad sign for your investors.
------
glandium
I'm not particularly convinced this is much worse than what happens in the
west, where people get their news from biased sources, be they Fox News, CNN,
or Facebook. Sure, there's the theoretical difference, censorship is bad,
etc., but practically speaking, the result does not feel that different...
~~~
charlysl
It is much worse, given that in the west biased reporting and cover ups can be
publicly denounced, whether by other biased sources at the other end of the
spectrum or in social media, whereas in China it is not allowed to disclose by
any means that bad economic news is being suppressed.
~~~
cmoscoso
Unless you are Alex Jones.
~~~
sgift
Last time I checked he was fully able to spit whatever nonsense he wanted out
into the world without being send to any reeducation camps.
~~~
mistermann
Whether anyone in the mainstream will encounter his message is another matter.
Pointing out that no rights have been violated entirely misses/avoids the
point.
------
arnoldtheai
Trump does exactly the same. What's the difference.
~~~
gaius
I guarantee that Trump has zero influence on how the NYT reports on the
economy.
~~~
phyller
That's not true, if a piece of economic information would be damaging to Trump
it would likely get even more coverage.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Isn’t that the opposite of influence though?
~~~
justtopost
Not if you know how to spin it. Like him or not, Trump is unquestionably good
at getting 'bad' press to work in his favor. Any power, positive or negative,
can be harnessed if you are clever enough. To what end, well, thats a
different discussion.
------
yAnonymous
I want to condemn this, but given the current state in western countries, I'd
feel like a hypocrite.
We have so much light censorship and politicians get to lie without any
consequences. The institutions who play along are rewarded and those who try
to speak out about it are discredited.
There's illegal surveillance that we only get to know about from
whistleblowers.
Political correctness is used to silence millions of people and invalidate
opinions without having to debate anyone.
Elections are won through illegal social media campaigns.
If anything, China is copying us.
~~~
virmundi
I agree with the general thesis that many different forms of censorship occur
in the West. I agree that the Left tends to use political correctness as it’s
means to make people fear being called a bigot. However no one illegally won
an election from outside sources. The Russians paid about 100k in ads on
Facebook. Doris spent millions. We have more to fear from internal threats
than from external.
China is not copying us. Corruption is universal. It’s a question of degrees.
The US has less corruption and more access to correct what does exist than the
Chinese. What they learned from us, if anything, is how technology can control
things. Given that they’ve had advanced tech on the past and did similar
things to suppress inconvenient truth, I’d say they are pretty much doing what
they’ve always done back to the days of the emperor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The World Famous staff on Chromebook: No deal - philipdlang
http://www.scroogled.com/chromebook
======
chasing
What the _fuck_ is wrong with Microsoft's marketing departments?
I'm to understand that Pawn Shops won't exchange the used Chromebook you
bought for your mom but then decided to, what, _steal back_ so you could put
it in hock in order to scrape together enough cash to get a bus to Hollywood
where you'll wait tables for six years whilst failing audition after audition
before finally being shat out the butt end of the porn industry?
I bet the Chromebook doesn't even make people dance in board meetings like the
Surface apparently does.
~~~
gkoberger
The ad says she got it "as a gift _from_ my mom", but your point still stands.
~~~
chasing
Ah. She kind of swallowed the "from." Thought she said "for my mom."
------
amaks
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have
absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a
big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't
bring much culture into their products." Steve Jobs
~~~
Bhel
I wouldn't quote Jobs in scenarios like this, given that he pulled a pretty
similar thing with the whole Flash thing: a misinformation campaing with the
sole purpose of attacking the competition with fallacies and sketchy
arguments.
~~~
snowwrestler
He was right about Flash--Adobe never did get it running well on mobile
devices, despite trying very hard to do so on Android.
~~~
kbrosnan
Flash runs reasonably well on Android considering development for it stopped
at v11.1.
The bigger problem for Flash on Android is the vast amount of content that
expects mouse interactions. Small click areas and hover events are nearly
impossible to interact with on a phone.
------
zmmmmm
Has there ever been such a low ball PR campaign by such a large company? It's
seriously hard to think of any major company that's come out with such sleazy
tactics as this against a direct competitor. Can you ever imagine Google or
Apple running direct to consumer ads referring to Microsoft as "Microshaft" or
some other slogan? Even on Reddit, things such as "M$" usually result in a
torrent of down votes.
It's a fascinating strategy, and I'm kind of scared what it will mean if it
works: can you imagine an all out war with every company doing this? I hope
Google has the self control and patience not to return fire.
~~~
kenjackson
Apple had a whole TV campaign with Justin Long mocking Microsoft. It was
pretty successful I recall.
~~~
rpedroso
I tend to agree with you, but there are some differences:
A) Most of the "Mac vs PC" ads focused on showcasing ways Apple products were
superior to Microsoft ones [1]. This isn't universally true though [2].
Regardless, that strategy is better than showing people break dance with your
tablets.
B) The "Scroogled" campaign has a different, more aggressive tone to it. The
whimsical background music in the Apple ads don't come across as forcefully as
the term "Scroogled" does. I suspect this tone is more off-putting.
[1] See some of the ads here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z0Ia5jDt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5z0Ia5jDt4)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DWLyrljLDk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DWLyrljLDk)
~~~
shaneofalltrad
What about the "Internet Exploder"(that term is true). Microsoft has taken
it's fare share of insulting and I don't believe calling things "Scroogled"
made by Google are far from the truth. It is funny because it is true, they
are using some great coding, marketing and anything else under the sun to
screw us or at least the competition (we as consumers will pay soon enough).
We all know this. They have great products, but that is NOT a typical laptop,
it is a glorified Search Engine. I personally have insulted Microsoft products
a lot in my time, but you have to admit, they are getting scroogled by many of
these hyped up minimalist products, that do not offer half of what a PC, MAC
or *nix (Ubuntu/Mint) can give you.
------
nl
[http://www.scroogled.com/Home](http://www.scroogled.com/Home) says "stop
Google reading your email". The same page links to
[http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/microsoft-
se...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/microsoft-services-
agreement), which says, in part:
_we may occasionally use automated means to isolate information from email,
chats, or photos in order to help detect and protect against spam and malware,
or to improve the services with new features that makes them easier to use.
When processing your content, Microsoft takes steps to help preserve your
privacy._
That document links to [http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-
us/default.mspx](http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.mspx), which says:
_We use the information we collect to provide the services you request. Our
services may include the display of personalized content and advertising._
Pot. Kettle. Black.
~~~
lsaferite
> Pot. Kettle. Black.
My favorite variation of that is, "Pot, meet Kettle."
------
gkoberger
I'm pretty sure the Scroogled campaign is really just brilliant marketing
orchestrated by Google to make Microsoft look bad.
~~~
amaks
No, in that case scroogled.com would require a Google+ account.
~~~
schuke
ha, good one.
------
notacoward
They just don't Get It. I'm typing this on a Chromebook right now - the 14" HP
one. It's cheap, it's light, it's pleasant to use. That's the value prop.
Microsoft claims you can get the same with Windows, so the very first thing I
did was check the specs and reviews for the models they tout. Are they really
that comparable?
* Approximately same price, same screen size and resolution, same processor and memory.
* Four pounds vs. three. Oops, not so light any more.
* Battery life (according to reviews) is around _three hours_ , vs. this Chromebook going all day.
* Typical Windows suspend/resume times, vs. true instant-on for the Chromebook. It's actually disconcerting to have everything _right there_ before I've even sat back on the sofa.
* Typical Windows upgrade/maintenance cycle (and malware), vs. no worries on the Chromebook.
I have other laptops that I use when I need to do more serious work. One of
them even runs Windows, though mostly as a host for a Linux VM. But _at this
price point_ there's nothing running Windows that can match the overall
Chromebook experience. Until there is, sleazy marketing stunts like this only
make it obvious that they're desperate.
~~~
praxulus
> (and malware)
Has this really been a problem since XP SP2? Maybe I haven't been using my
windows machine enough, but I honestly can't remember having any malware
issues in quite a few years.
~~~
krisdol
That really depends on what version of windows was out when you grew out of
your early teens. It is still around, absolutely, but I feel like the typical
hn reader browses wisely enough to never encounter it.
------
recuter
Just a heads up:
Google is basically subsidizing Chromebooks at this point. An Acer C720 costs
as much as a _Kindle_ and is very close to some sort of price floor ($199),
yet it comes with $120 worth of Drive storage (100GB @ $5 x 24 months) and
some other stuff.
You can blow away ChromeOS and use these as a regular PC laptop. 1/5 the price
of an 11" Macbook Air yet comparable in many ways. I feel like they are giving
them away to buy market share.
~~~
teraflop
> 1/5 the price of an 11" Macbook Air yet comparable in many ways.
Comparable in some ways, yeah, but from the specs, it looks to me like there
are more differences than similarities: the C270 is a bit thicker and heavier,
the CPU is way slower, you get 16GB of storage instead of 128GB, 2GB of RAM
instead of 4GB, the display is lackluster (according to reviews), the camera
is lower resolution, there's no keyboard backlight... and so on.
That said, it's still an incredible value for the money.
~~~
tedmiston
> the display is lackluster
This is putting it _very_ nicely. It has low contrast, and really poor viewing
angles in terms of legibility and color. It's plenty bright enough though. Now
if only I could get f.lux on it...
~~~
abrowne
Have you starred this issue?
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=217173](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=217173)
------
Gustomaximus
As a marketing person this makes me cringe for my industry, expecially in the
tech world where we are not always the most popular department. Microsoft
should be able to attract great marketing talent so I don't understand why
they keep putting out this quality of advertising.
Clearly the ad budget is there to have options and talented people work on
their briefs. Having a dig at competitors is fine now and again. I once did
very cheap video that poked fun at Google that went a little viral/popular but
it was done in fun, as much mocking ourself, not like this. And I cant believe
one marketing team in MS has produced this steady stream of flops over the
years. It makes me wonder what environment they have that creates this output.
A year or so ago I considered writing to them looking for work as I feel they
are in a great position to stop being the bad guys and let other companies
take that mantle. The need to be brave and approach the market in an open
honest format. On top of which they often have good tech that doesn't get
explained correctly and falls by the wayside. But doing marketing like this,
they'd be better doing nothing.
------
downer95
Pawn Broker: Moral Bankruptcy
Reality TV Star: Moral Bankruptcy
Microsoft Shill: Moral Bankruptcy
In hockey, that's called a hat trick.
------
hankcharles
I got to Scroogled.com and thought it was some anti-google site cobbled
together by a cranky blogger out looking for some corporate interest
representing 'the man' to pick on. I can't believe it was assembled by the
marketing department of one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
I think the actual ad is at least a bit clever, but this 'scroogled!'
catchword and in particular this absurd website they came up with just makes
the whole thing nauseating.
~~~
klipt
> I got to Scroogled.com and thought it was some anti-google site cobbled
> together by a cranky blogger out looking for some corporate interest
> representing 'the man' to pick on.
Funny you should say that ... There used to be a site called scroogle.org
which was kind of like that, allowing "anonymous" searches by scraping Google
while advertising gold and libertarianism on the side.
------
NamTaf
Whoever greenlighted this needs to be made to jump around yelling
'developers!' for an hour as punishment. It's woeful and tacky.
------
rmccue
One of their "Chromebook Can'ts" is called Document Incompatibility [1]. It's
definitely Google's fault that Microsoft uses a proprietary format to lock-out
everyone else.
[1]:
[http://www.scroogled.com/chromebook/OSCants](http://www.scroogled.com/chromebook/OSCants)
~~~
cdh
OpenXML is a proprietary format?
That seems like a stretch to me.
------
Alterlife
I guess Microsoft hired one of the folks who wrote Sarah Palin's talking
points. 'Not a real PC' ? What is a 'real' PC?
Most of those 'negative' things could be said of an iPad.
Screw... pled?
and a majority of those things would be true for the Microsoft Surface RT
device as well.
Screwcrowsoft.
~~~
taspeotis
Scrapple your iPad and buy a Surface at these now Microsoft-ic prices.
~~~
Alterlife
Good idea, except I don't have an iPad.
:-)
------
austinl
This reminds me of last year when Microsoft tried to get #DroidRage trending
on Twitter, and large part of the community responded with #WindowsRage[1]. I
hope offensive advertising campaigns like this one continue to work against
them in some way.
I have no issues with Microsoft products - it is purely this kind of
advertising is that makes me anti-Microsoft. The whole Scroogled campaign is
an embarrassment.
[1][http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/6/3734852/twitter-
droidrage-...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/6/3734852/twitter-droidrage-
windowsrage-windows-phone-microsoft)
------
voltagex_
Microsoft are doing great work elsewhere, why tarnish it with this campaign?
------
GigabyteCoin
That's almost as bad as the political attack ads I see these days...
I'm surprised they didn't mention Larry Page's former friends or love
interests.
That is absolutely disgusting, Microsoft.
I gladly typed this on my arch linux laptop.
------
jeffehobbs
Christ, that is sad. It's just sad.
------
nl
This is going to backfire.
All it will take is one Kickstarter campaign to fund an anti-Microsoft ad (and
isn't _that_ a tempting target), and a site to aggregate all the entries. The
media will do the rest..
I'd _bet_ they would get professional entries from major advertising houses,
just because of the media exposure it would be bound to get.
------
chestnut-tree
This is a terrible campaign as many have pointed out and makes Microsoft come
across as a little hysterical and rabid (not to mention a tad hypocritical).
Just to be clear, I have no love for either Microsoft or Google. But the irony
is that many of the points that Microsoft are trying to put across about
ChromeOS are actually legitimate concerns for many users.
For example, you cannot print in ChromeOS when offline and only a limited
number of printers are available through Google's cloud print service.
Offline mode is important to many users who may have patchy or non-existent
internet access at times.
Apps that run in the browser are still limited compared to their desktop
equivalents. This isn't an issue for everyone, but what Microsoft fails to
persuade in its copy is how much more capable desktop apps are. And maybe for
some users they would be happier with the desktop equivalent rather than the
limited web version. (They could have demonstrated this easily by showing some
simple but attractive documents or tasks that are impossible to recreate in
Google's web apps).
And then, of course, there are the privacy implications of signing into
ChromeOS to do anything. Just what does Google track and record? Do they
record every print job you send through it's cloud printing service? Do they
track your activity in their web apps? I know many users simply don't care,
but for me the privacy implications are horrendous. If you're always signed
into ChromeOS, Google knows how often you're online, where you browse, how
often you use certain apps - basically everything you do on the Chromebook.
Of course, Microsoft are no better on the privacy front, but they don't have
the online reach of Google. Windows 8.1 requires signing into the OS with an
email address (but it can be bypassed quite easily), and when you're using a
desktop app you're not generally being tracked. In other words, you can have
pretty good privacy on a desktop system. Can the same be said for ChromeOS?
------
quaffapint
I make my living on MS products and while they are better at things lately,
this is just an embarrassment.
~~~
digler999
"lately" ? They've been around for what, 30 years ? Do you know what kind of
shame it is to only "lately" get better at things ? They should be prosecuted
for fraud for selling an OS that just gets rooted, 10 years strong, by a few
lines of malformed javascript.
------
Bhel
This is quite common in markets where there are only two or three competitors:
instead of focusing on showing why your product is good, you simply bash the
competition.
Pepsi vs Coca-Cola is a great example. Elections in countries with only two
parties is another perfect example of this.
It's been happening for a while and it will continue, since it yields results:
The ones educated enough limit themselves to a "sigh. seriously?" and keep on
using what they know it's best for them.
Then there's the target market: the ignorant masses, who will fall to these
strategies, prove them useful and validate them as good marketing strategies.
The funny thing here is that there's a similiar thread every 24 hours and
people always react like this is something new, and like the company in turn
is super evil for doing it.
------
jfacorro
I've had a chromebook (the Samsung model) for the past 4 months I've been
travelling around the world. It has proved to be a practical, light (1 kg) and
powerful little computer. Using crouton, I've installed lubuntu so that I can
have Linux and ChromeOS running at the same time. I've been able to work
coding Clojure, installed GIMP and Inkscape, watched movies and I could have
installed Open Office but I didn't really seem to need it. Maybe the
chromebook hasn't found a market yet, but I think it's the most practical
computer I've owned. I think I would prefer a Macbook Air but the price is 4+
times the one for a Chromebook, which might well be worth it but I don't have
the money for now :P.
------
vanadium
Cringeworthy, and about a year and a half too late to even seize on pop-
culture relevance.
------
mattchamb
I am generally positive towards Microsoft, but this scroogled crap just makes
me cringe.
------
Samuel_Michon
I find it interesting that Microsoft claims in this clip that a laptop isn’t a
laptop if it doesn’t run Apple iTunes.
Personally, I can’t stand iTunes on Windows, but hey, clearly Microsoft knows
what consumers want.
------
ISL
-1 for the Pawn Stars folks. That's a real bummer.
~~~
T0m_Paine
Best I can do is -.75. I'm not trying to beat you up I think it's a really
fair deal. In recent years the market has taken a major hit and -.75 is really
the best I can do.
------
glimmung
Can't help chuckling as I happily read this on an HP Chromebook 11 because I'm
taking a break after the Windows machine died during Windows update.
At least I have a machine to work on while I spend the next six hours
reinstalling and patching Windows.
------
joelrunyon
Serious question - do you need a google+ account for a chromebook?
------
RachelF
Perhaps they can use the money to buy acting lessons
------
skc
They are very tacky, the same way I felt about Apples "Im a PC" ads.
------
Killah911
how is this getting upvoted? A stupid ad, made to look like it's not an ad,
WTF? This needs to get off HN and find its home on Fark or something.
------
malkia
Hello Microsoft... From Acer C710 Chromebook....
------
timpattinson
But can it play Battletoads?
------
mgback
Tacky, much?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why You Should Think Twice About Opting-In to the Delicious-AVOS Transfer - samoa
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/why-you-should-think-twice-about-opting-in-to-the-delicious-avos-transfer/331
======
dlsspy
I only thought once.
The del.icio.us API would allow them to grab pretty much all of it anyway.
I've already migrated mine out to a couchdb-based clone:
[http://xlson.com/2011/01/13/out-off-delicious-and-into-
your-...](http://xlson.com/2011/01/13/out-off-delicious-and-into-your-
couch.html)
This has the nice benefits of always being local and being impossible to take
away from me. :)
(well, I did break my couchdb build with an experimental branch on an
experimental OS, but I'll sort that out later)
~~~
joshu
The API does not give access to other people's accounts.
~~~
eli
Yeah, but I don't get to decide what terms other people opt-in to either.
------
ares2012
Sounds like fear mongering. There aren't any terms in there that you won't
find on other sites that allow users to post content. The company is
protecting itself from misuse in a way that might not have been necessary when
the Delicious service first launched in the early days of Web 2.0.
~~~
pyre
> The company is protecting itself from misuse
No. They are _re-defining_ what the term 'misuse' means (from one agreement to
the next). If posting 'obscene' links is not forbidden, then how is it a
'misuse' of the system?
Also, this is the same argument that gets used by large tech companies like
Microsoft for building their patent portfolios. It's 'only for defense,' so
long as there is no reason to use if offensively.
Would you allow the government to put CCTV cameras inside of your home so long
as their promised to only use them in case someone breaks into your home (as
evidence in a trial)? Once they were installed, and their 'foot is in the
door,' how long do you think it will be before that usage is expanded beyond
the original promise through a series a baby steps?
Overly broad legal wording as a 'defensive' move is a cancer on our society.
~~~
pstack
No, I agree with the fear-mongering. I guess the author needed to fill article
space, this week.
I'm a privacy-nut type of person and I hate restrictive and absurd licenses.
I'm a fan of telling the man to eat it. Note that I'm not justifying
restrictive or broad legal agreements, either. I think it's stupid. I just
don't think it's any more stupid than similar agreements for similar sites
that provide similar services that most of you (including the author of that
article) already use every day.
However, I don't see anything in the agreement that you wouldn't normally see
on any _other_ social networking site. Unlike some other online bookmarking
services, Delicious _is_ a social-networking/bookmarking service, which would
explain the concern over content and age and so on. It would perturb me if I
was having to agree with something like that for a service which was only me
saving bookmarks with comments and tags for my own use that only I would see
or access via my own account for myself, but that isn't what Delicious has
turned into. Very possibly, they may have even bigger "social networking"
ambitions for the service after the purchase, which may further necessitate
such stringent clauses.
Besides, if one cared much about that sort of thing, chances are that they
wouldn't stop using Delicious _now_ , because they would have already stopped
using Delicious when Yahoo! bought them, for similar concerns over privacy and
agreements.
~~~
dotBen
I don't think the author wrote the piece to fill article space because she is
sitting across the dinner table from me and we've been discussing it all
evening :)
The issue - which has already been reiterated above - is that the Ts & Cs that
the existing service operates under are changing to a far more restricted set.
Your argument kinda meanders around being a privacy nut and sticking it the
the man, then you say you are not justifying a stupid agreement then you say
all agreements at all sites are stupid anyway. I've no idea what your point
is, frankly.
But you do say that the new terms are totally like all other social network
sites. Well the old/existing delicious is a social network (as you state) and
the new terms are very much not like the old terms. Clearly not all social
network terms are equal.
_Besides, if one cared much about that sort of thing, chances are that they
wouldn't stop using Delicious now, because they would have already stopped
using Delicious when Yahoo! bought them, for similar concerns over privacy and
agreements._
Except that the Ts and Cs didn't change much when Y! acquired them which is
why there was no need to opt-in like there is now.
~~~
shareme
It snot changing to a more restrictive set just a more defined set of TOS
terms rather than being ignorant of things in the USA such as DCMA, etc.
~~~
pyre
What in the DMCA covers offensive or obscene material? I thought that it only
covered copyright.
------
giberson
While the policy change does fundamentally allow the company to determine what
content to keep and to remove I'm not sure how that provides you with a valid
concern about opting in your data for the transfer.
IE, if you don't opt in you're basically self censoring yourself as none of
the data will get used. If you do opt in, then the majority of it may remain
[or be stricken depending on the content you favored bookmarking].
Rather your statement should read "Think twice about opting-out of the
delicious-avos transfer. If you opt out then NONE of your data will be kept".
~~~
cracki
The issue is control and safety. I expect my bookmarks to be complete, to
_not_ disappear silently and randomly.
I'd rather build my own little bookmarking system on a LAMP server (I will
probably do that) than subject my digital life to a company that threatens to
cut holes in it.
------
eli
I think it's a good question to ask AVOS. It could well just be broilerplate
legalese.
That said, it's quite easy to backup your Delicious links. Probably a good
idea to do that regularly regardless of the terms.
------
cracki
sweet little command to dump your delicious bookmarks (copied/stolen from the
Scrumptious setup guide):
curl -u <user>[:<pass>] -o mine.xml https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all
That's now running hourly on my computer. I'll write myself a "loss check"
too, to see if any of my "questionable" (private) bookmarks start
disappearing.
~~~
realityloop
unfortunately this currently returns:
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <result code="api temporarily
unavailable" /> <!-- fe02.api.del.ac4.yahoo.net uncompressed/chunked Sun May 1
07:46:07 UTC 2011 -->
------
mahrain
It sure seems like the new South Park episode got people to read terms and
conditions ;-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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