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Why Echo Chambers Are Useful [pdf] - crunchiebones
https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/jm_papers/921/echochambers.pdf
======
austincheney
The problem with echo chambers isn't so much verification (is the information
accurate?) but rather validation (is the process of acceptance rational or
qualified?).
Echo chambers tend to be hyper-subjective, which means new information is
accepted or rejected on the basis of content-oriented rules opposed to whether
decisions upon the information are valid, qualified, or balanced. That
suggests the injection of precisely targeted information focusing on group
acceptance is the only criteria of success, which makes the group dangerously
susceptible to manipulation.
Counter-intuitively echo chambers are primarily desirable for a number of
irrational reasons not related to subject matter. People tend to find security
in conforming group dynamics, generally fear originality, and strongly enjoy
commitment even in opposition to strong evidence.
Contrarily, in echo chamber opposed groups the primary qualifier of
information acceptance is process of argumentation. The idea or information
that survives a brutal, but process-approved, argument is the most worthy.
That form of objectivity can be emotionally disruptive for persons not
prepared or understanding of the group process.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> Contrarily, in echo chamber opposed groups the primary qualifier of
> information acceptance is process of argumentation.
Ostensibly, but there's a lot of people notionally opposed to echo chambers
who are very happy in their own.
~~~
moorhosj
Lots of people are hypocrites or just completely oblivious to the cocoons
they’ve built.
------
Just_Smith
I found this an interesting read, and it certainly makes a good point. Echo
chambers are definitely going to have a greater net throughput of information
compared to a network in which members aren't keen to share with one another
due to perceived differences. So overall, members of an echo chamber can end
up more informed than if they hadn't been. However, I think it's important to
note that modern discourse isn't critical solely of echo chambers, but also of
their effects when false information is introduced into one. The same trust
that allows more informed members also facilitates misinformation.
That being said, it's probably more effective to use that lack of verification
to police misinformation within the echo chamber than to introduce members
that could offer contradictory - but also potentially false - information. It
would just require some added diligence from members of the echo chamber.
~~~
nl
_it 's probably more effective to use that lack of verification to police
misinformation within the echo chamber than to introduce members that could
offer contradictory - but also potentially false - information._
Putting aside the verification problem for a minute, doesn't the echo chamber
problem lead almost automatically to group think?
I do machine learning, and I see a strong analogy here with overfitting. If
all the data is from a subset of of population and it is never validated
outside that subset then the model will become strong on that subset data but
much weaker outside.
In machine learning we use a variety of regularization techniques to combat
this. One thing that actually works pretty well to build _robust_ models is (a
small amount of) mislabeled data: the model learns not to depend on any single
feature.
~~~
pjc50
What do people actually mean by "groupthink" here and why precisely is it bad?
Everyone drives on the same side of the road and (mostly) follows the same
traffic rules and we don't call it "groupdrive".
Surely having everyone believe the same _true_ thing isn't actually bad -
nobody calls Maxwell's equations "groupthink" unless they're trying to sell
you a perpetual motion machine.
~~~
nl
_Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people
in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an
irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to
minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation
of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and
by isolating themselves from outside influences_
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink)
The most commonly used example is the Bay of Pigs invasion, where no one
advising Kennedy raised any possible negative consequences. That’s seen in
contrast to the Cuban Missile crisis a few years later where Kennedy actively
sort contrary advice.
------
starbeast
On a related note, I have recently been wondering if the large scale swings in
society from being outgoing to being insular and back, might be evolutionarily
beneficial due to the speed of genetic drift varying for different sizes of
breeding populations.
Small populations get the fast drift for adaptation, but mixing those with
other adaptations from other small populations gets strength in depth, so you
have two opposing evolutionary strategies, one which prefers isolation of
groups and one that prefers mixing.
Over evolutionary timescales, oscillating between these two behaviours could
presumably get baked into the genes, so leading our politics to swing between
isolation and gregariousness as part of a natural evolutionary cycle.
------
kopo
Very interesting. I have had this feeling watching political
news/gamergate/comicgate/damore etc.
Too much energy gets expended trying to convince/shame/punish the other side.
None of it imho has produced outcomes or increased understanding.
When dealing with unknown unknowns/ambiguity etc why not just split the
groups, let them go do their thing on two separate islands, like running two
parallel jobs based on contradictory assumptions and let the best job win.
How do we split without causing a mess is the big question? We maybe in an
overly connected state atm or certain issues require disconnection and echo
chambers.
Thought experiment (slightly ridiculous and loaded but use your imagination
here) - there is a lot of talk about splitting up Google for example. What if
Google is split on an issue like unconscious bias training. Those who support
it produce one search engine and those who don't (damore camp) produce
another. Don't we get better information over all?
Right now when I read a "this is how you need to think" article on CNN, I
shake my head and go look at what Fox has to say. And when Fox is fawning over
Trump I go the other way.
~~~
Arbalest
I've had a similar thought experiment before, where basically you let people
of different political leanings go to their own countries with their like
minded ilk. Two problems arise:
1\. People tend to hold complex combinations of views which may not completely
align with everyone else. How many partitions do you need in order to make
this work?
2\. Mobility remains an issue. People simply don't have the resources to get
up and go to something they actually support and build it up.
~~~
TangoTrotFox
I've also had similar thought experiments here. But take it a step further.
It's probably safe to say that the current biggest divide in society is in
political ideology. Let's just call this left/right, though that's far from
precise. Imagine we placed all 'left' individuals in one US, and all 'right'
individuals in another completely identical (in terms of physical resources,
preexisting infrastructure, etc) US. And migration between these two nations
was freely and instantly allowed, but only if you absolutely abided the
initial ideological split. How long would it take before these two nations
then had their own internal splits with people dividing themselves among some
new subissue?
Of course you hit on this with #1, but I think the answer is that there is no
limit to the number of partitions. In other words that division is itself
inevitable. So rather than trying to ideologically homogenize ourselves, I
think it's more important to for people to embrace diversity of views as
opposed to attack everything that doesn't conform to, what to them, seems self
evident. Because for 'the other side', their views are likely seen as
identically self evident. When sides remain incapable of doing anything except
working to antagonize the other, in the end the only way things would be
resolved is by force of arms which is certainly something almost nobody wants.
------
usefulcat
This is an interesting idea (that echo chambers may be objectively useful in
certain ways), but to me the bigger question is, even if that is true, how
much of a factor is it compared to more mundane causes like plain old
cognitive dissonance?
------
radiowave
Disappointed to discover this isn't about acoustics.
~~~
anonytrary
You shouldn't be surprised, "echo chamber" has taken a new meaning ever since
social media became influential.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Data on what poor people buy when they’re just given cash - kafkaesq
http://qz.com/853651/definitive-data-on-what-poor-people-buy-when-theyre-just-given-cash/
======
rcdmd
The "definitive data" is a meta-analysis of economic studies and hidden behind
a paywall[1]. The linked article doesn't have any data or charts.
[1]
[http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/689575](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/689575)
~~~
Noseshine
I don't know how controversial it will be to post this here (heavily moderated
/r/science on reddit removed a post when I did this some time ago), but enter
that URL on Sci-Hub _( "The Pirate Bay of science" [0])_ and enjoy:
[http://sci-hub.cc/](http://sci-hub.cc/)
About Sci-Hub: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-
Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)
[0] [http://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-
uploade...](http://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-uploaded-
millions-of-journal-articles-in-an-attempt-to-open-up-science)
------
jonteru
It's not evident from the short article, but was this a one time payment or
monthly allowance? I would imagine that one time or non regular payment would
work better than monthly so people don't start to rely on it too much and
become lazy.
~~~
nickthemagicman
Where do they teach you to talk like this? What evidence do you have that
giving people money makes them lazy?
There's no evidence for what you just said. It's insane that you believe that.
------
blakesterz
>> This negative result is supported by data from Latin America, Africa, and
Asia, for both conditional and unconditional cash transfer programs.
I wonder if the same results are seen in North America?
[http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/689575](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/689575)
------
tomohawk
Anecdotal, but I got to know quite a few of the people where I used to live
who were receiving section 8 and other welfare benefits. For pretty much all
of them, anything that could be converted or exchanged for some sort of cash,
would be. Then it was used for drugs. In one case, a mother with 6 children
was due to have heat cut off because she had found a way to divert the money
to drugs instead of to pay for heat. The food stamps for food was similarly
diverted even though her kids didn't have enough to eat.
So, lets say we provide cash payments to people and they still don't pay for
their own basic needs. What then? Are we prepared to say, "too bad you have no
heat this winter. I guess you get to be cold."? Where does it end?
~~~
undersuit
So making it harder to convert benefits to cash doesn't work to stop drug use.
Making drugs illegal doesn't stop drug use. Why do we care about drug use?
As this is your anecdote, did you make any attempts to protect those children?
Maybe give them some food or call Child Protection Services? Or were you just
morally outraged that the mother would use drugs?
~~~
thescribe
On the other hand, society seems to have an interest in making sure children
do not starve, but I think you would be hard pressed to show society has an
interest in subsidizing what amounts to a hobby.
~~~
undersuit
I don't know man. I just did a crappy google search and found that horse
breeding as a hobby allows a certain amount of deductions[1]. OH, but
undersuit that sounds more like a business. Dude, the IRS considers many
factors when deciding if your activity is a business or a hobby.
Most cities subsidize casual sports with public fields and courts.
We have a moral opposition to drugs, not a moral opposition to hobbies.
[1] [https://www.hrblock.com/get-answers/taxes/income/hobby-
loss-...](https://www.hrblock.com/get-answers/taxes/income/hobby-loss-
rules-10798)
------
g00gler
Pretty interesting. I use the money I get for holidays almost exclusively for
cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling.
Someone should perform a survey of middle to upper class people and see what
they spend free money on. Are they just projecting their insecurities on other
people?
------
protomyth
A nice summary would be: Hope changes spending habits.
------
Neliquat
Would this have the same effect if the money was distributed evenly between
the sexes? The articles mention of most money going to mothers seems to skew
the results such that the title seems hopeful at best, and perhaps
disingenuous as written by someone who should know better.
------
Yhippa
> Regardless of why, the idea that poor people will use any cash they get for
> cigarettes and alcohol has been laid to waste.
Pretty bold claim.
------
gaspoweredcat
kind of a misleading title as it doesnt actually say what its spent on, just
that it isnt spent on cigs and alcohol as they expected
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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StickNFind - Bluetooth tracker to stick anywhere - equilibrium
http://www.sticknfind.com/
======
laserDinosaur
"Of course, because we don't really know direction, the radar Screen can only
be used to approximate the distance of the Stick-N-Find to your phone, but not
direction."
That seems really pointless then. "Your suitcase is: 5.3 miles away".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rapamycin’s secrets unearthed - sohkamyung
https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i29/Rapamycins-Secrets-Unearthed.html
======
tominous
/...they needed to modify the molecule.. because the initial patent on
rapamycin expired in 1992. The company would need a novel compound to market
it in oncology./
So they had a good drug candidate already but needed to tweak it because of
the vagaries of IP law.
What a ridiculous situation. Has anyone devised a Shkreli-proof solution to
this public policy issue?
~~~
colechristensen
>Has anyone devised a Shkreli-proof solution to this public policy issue?
A tax on pharma profits which can be offset by both R&D on un-patentable
medicine and production of out-of-patent medicine. This would go to fund
(along with public funds) open drug research with statutory public domain
results.
~~~
tominous
That seems like only a partial solution. How do you allocate the resources
efficiently where they are needed most? How do you avoid waste? How do you
avoid kickbacks and corruption and pork-barelling? How do you minimise
administrative costs and delays?
Patents are good in that they tap into market economics to provide those
functions, but they seem incomplete in cases like this.
~~~
cam_l
"How do you avoid waste? How do you avoid kickbacks and corruption and pork-
barelling?"
This is often brought up in relation to public vs private funding. But private
funding is also massively wasteful and also involves a lot of pork barrelling.
It just isn't centralised or accountable.
Speculation, failed products (or worse yet, successful but bad or useless
products), failed businesses, and sales, compliance, patent and procurement
costs, all sit on top of the cost of designing and producing drugs. All split
up between different parties initially, but in the end shouldered by the
general public, both in outright costs and also in opportunity costs.
I reckon we could bear quite a bit of waste before it became worse than the
private sector.
~~~
tominous
I don't see how public spending is immune to speculation, failed products,
compliance and procurement costs! The rest are features, not bugs:
* failed businesses free up resources for more productive activity
* sales provide a feedback loop to ensure an efficient level of production
* patents provide an incentive for fast deployment of new technologies
And private spending is far more accountable because if an investor loses too
much money they are out of the game, whereas if a bureaucrat or politician
spends too much money they gain a bigger budget and a captive constituency.
Anyway I'm not too interested in this general discussion; I'd be more keen on
hearing if there are specific solutions to solve this particular problem,
whether using private or public money. Not just "fund it" which isn't really
meaningful without details.
~~~
cam_l
Well, I never said that it was not, although I think the mix is somewhat
different between private and public. Speculation and failed products might be
reduced with public funding, but procurement costs might be increased, for
example.
Anyway, I was making the point that while the costs of those things might
exist for both sectors—in the private sector they are split between multiple
parties but they are invisible and unaccountable—in the end they are still
borne by the consumer. On top of all that, you have lost opportunity costs
ie.in a private funded system we end up paying for things we don't even need,
rather than paying too much for something we do.
I just see this issue of public sector waste raised, and it seems to me more a
shibboleth than an accurate portrayal of the situation. Which is not to say
there are not very real issues around corruption and poor procurement with
government. But these exist in the private sector also, we just call it
business.
------
webaholic
tl;dr:
Don't rush to get your daily dose of rapamycin yet. It is untested in Humans
for aging purposes.
Instead, reduce your calorie intake. This has a similar effect to what
Rapamycin stimulates.
Eat less and prosper.
~~~
sdm
Or just don't eat meat and get the same effects as calorie restriction:
* [http://nutritionfacts.org/video/caloric-restriction-vs-anima...](http://nutritionfacts.org/video/caloric-restriction-vs-animal-protein-restriction/)
* [http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-benefits-of-caloric-rest...](http://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-benefits-of-caloric-restriction-without-the-actual-restricting/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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TheStartupBus.com - ca98am79
http://www.thestartupbus.com/
======
puppetsock
Can we declare this "startup scenester" thing to have officially jumped the
shark now?
~~~
rossover
Agreed!
------
goodgoblin
I guess hellonwheels.com was already taken
------
gregdetre
if the number of users drops below 50, will the bus explode?
------
vital101
I can barely read in a moving vehicle, let alone launch a start up.
~~~
beilabs
Wait till you see the vehicle that they'll be travelling in...
Best of luck to @EliasBiz for organizing it; if I was in the US I'd definitely
be on it.
------
andrewljohnson
Using a laptop while in a car makes me nauseous.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you receive USD for work abroad without getting ripped off? - waterlooalex
To those that work for a US company (but live elsewhere), how do you get paid, and do you manage to avoid horrible fees?
======
mdekkers
We use transferwise for almost all of our international payments. transferwise
rocks. We used to use XETrade, but this isn't available to us where we
currently live and work. Our bank(s) hate us for using transferwise, and
actually try many different ways to stop us from using it (except for making
the process cheaper - funny thing, that)
~~~
waterlooalex
I'm curious, are those payments for work you've done for a US company?
I do love what transferwise is doing, thats awesome that the banks are riled
up about it :)
~~~
mdekkers
Yes, and we use it pay companies in the US that we use. Anything that annoys
the banks is OK in my book :)
------
khronnuz
I've used Paypal because it was very simple to setup, until I realised how
much I was losing, then I setup a bank to bank international wire, which took
some time because most account managers I have talked had no idea how to do.
It still takes some fees, but a lot less compared to Paypal.
~~~
waterlooalex
Wire transfers always seem to take so long. How long do they take for you?
~~~
toomuchtodo
Wire transfers should be instantaneous. ACH transfers take 2-5 days.
~~~
waterlooalex
Even international wire transfers? Eg US to another country.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Yes.
~~~
waterlooalex
Wow. When ever I've done cross border wires they take at minumum 1 day.
------
donw
I've got a business bank account with Chase, and they'll do currency
conversions and international transfers, via online banking, with a minimum of
fees.
They've also got a credit card (Sapphire Preferred, I believe) that has no
currency exchange fees, and has both a chip (useful in Europe) and a magstrip
(useful everywhere else).
If you set up a local bank account, keep the FBAR in mind.
------
maguay
Some banks—such as Thailand's Bangkok Bank—have a US branch just for receiving
transfers. That way, you have a US routing number along with your normal local
bank account number, and then can get your US pay despoiled just as if it were
going to a US account. Fees tend to be lower than manually wiring money each
month.
~~~
waterlooalex
Thats pretty slick.
------
therealmarv
You mean bank transfer fees?! You cannot avoid them unless you also have an US
bank account which you won't get if you are not living in the US. Private
money transfer is pretty cheap with well known services like e.g. Paypal (I'm
guessing this is one of the main reasons Paypal exists, easy and cheap).
~~~
benologist
Paypal's cheapness varies by country, here in Costa Rica they only work with
one bank who charge 0.5% per transaction with a generous $11 minimum fee.
~~~
waterlooalex
Does PayPal also charge their international fee and currency exchange fee?
[https://www.paypal.com/cr/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-
xborde...](https://www.paypal.com/cr/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-xborder-fees-
outside&countries=)
[https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/article...](https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/article/?solutionId=FAQ1976&topicID=FEES_US&m=TCI)
~~~
benologist
The bank fees are separate and on top of PayPal's, moving money to/from PayPal
can only be done through their website instead of PayPal's and they collect
their fees that way.
------
seekingcharlie
I have a US bank account & use OzForex (you can use USForex as a US citizen).
I've also used XE Trade in the past.
Transferwise is awesome (much better UI), but not as good as OZ/USForex or XE
in terms of rates.
------
anthony_barker
A lot of this is dependent on where you live? Are you billing via a
US/International LLC? Or is this a direct contract? do you spend USD in the
current country or another currency?
------
PedroSena
At least here in Brazil the best way is to convert the USD to Bitcoins and
sell it in the local market, however not every company is willing to do so.
When there is no such option: Wire transfer
~~~
waterlooalex
Is it safe to use Bitcoin?
~~~
Someone1234
No.
Bitcoin is very volatile, so you could lose or gain unknown amounts during the
"transfer" (even if it is within a few minutes).
Additionally unlike a traditional wire transfer you cannot prove that you're
transferring it to yourself (it is an anonymous currency by design after all)
therefore they could come after you for tax (or worse accuse you of
laundering).
Wires are a rip-off. However the costs are knowable and there is a very low
risk of any misunderstanding from the big G in either country.
I use a company called XE, and to be frank it is a huge PITA. But at least all
money is completely traceable/verifiable (the broker is almost too paranoid
about fraud, that's why it is such a pain) and the fees are relatively low. It
would be very easy to prove with XE that I sent it to myself.
~~~
waterlooalex
A friend had mentioned XE to me, it looked like a good option. What makes it a
PITA? You mentioned broker but I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
~~~
mattm
I also use XE. I think he might be referring to setup. Setting up an account
takes a lot of documentation and took a few weeks IIRC. Once it's setup
though, things are easy.
------
hackerboos
TransferWise.
~~~
waterlooalex
I read about them, they sound awesome. Is your employer happy to use them?
~~~
hackerboos
I just use it to send money to myself internationally.
------
canterburry
Is no one here aware of WesternUnion? It's the oldest and largest money
transfer company around.
~~~
waterlooalex
[https://transferwise.com/blog/2012-04/send-money-abroad-
comp...](https://transferwise.com/blog/2012-04/send-money-abroad-comparison/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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We have lived and worked in an Airstream for the last few years - alexcasalboni
http://live.watsonswander.com/
======
timmaah
Thanks for submitting. Too bad it didn't take off.
(I'm the creator of linked page)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Monitoring service/server with Arduino microcontroller - helwr
http://burnsforce.com/original-guides/project-arduino-nagios-server-monitoring/
======
jellisjapan
Really cool, but I'd love to see the code you use to monitor your gmail
account as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Open Source equivalent of Kindling app? - dawson
Can anyone suggest/recommend an open source equivalent of Kindling app (MindTouch etc)? Thank you
======
dawson
<http://www.kindlingapp.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Koobface worm infects Twitter - abennett
http://www.itworld.com/security/71349/koobface-worm-infects-twitter
======
bcl
How does a Twitter account become 'infected'? From reading the article this
sounds like a Windows virus that has infected the user's computer and is using
their Twitter credentials to spread it to their followers. So technically the
account isn't infected, it has been compromised by the virus.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Gun v0.1.0 – The Easiest Database Ever - marknadal
http://gundb.io/#step1
======
barakm
From the blog:
> Because gun is not a database (NoDB), it is a persisted distributed cache.
This I believe.
> The fatal flaw with databases is that they assume some centralized
> authority. While this may be the case initially when you are small, it
> always ceases to be true when you become large enough that concurrency is
> unavoidable.
Partially true. Though that's not necessarily a "fatal flaw", and calling it
such is troubling. Yes, concurrency is unavoidable when you become large
enough but you also want your data to be, well, consistent and persistent, but
then you go on...
> No amount of leader election and consensus algorithms can patch this without
> facing an unjustified amount of complexity. Gun resolves all this by biting
> the bullet - it solves the hard problems first, not last.
Where in the code, pray tell, is it solving these problems? The fact that you
also claim to be an AP system (and conflate this with ACID) makes me strongly
wonder what your notions on Consistency actually are.
"Just a cache" needs some consistency as well, I'll point out, but you may not
care as much about stale reads.
> It gets data synchronization and conflict resolution right from the
> beginning, so it never has to rely on vulnerable leader election or
> consensus locking.
From what I'm starting to understand you're, at best, shuffling that off to S3
or "other storage engines" \-- you've still got to pay the cost. You can't
really claim to do linearizability without, well, actually doing
linearizability.
So, maybe it's a cache, sure. And you seem to like to work on the developer
API, nothing wrong there. But there's nothing new under the sun and I'm really
skeptical that hard distributed database problems are solved in one large JS
file.
~~~
marknadal
Clarification, I said GUN is NOT acid compliant from your "usual"
understanding of the term, since GUN is AP. Most people assume acid means CP.
ACID is very vague though, and I'd like to explore it more by writing tests to
either confirm or deny whether GUN supports it or not (would you be interested
in helping build those tests?). I also want to get some Jepsen like tests up
as well.
Data convergence (data sync) is guaranteed by the Hypothetical Amnesia Machine
algorithm, which is completely deterministic and idempotent. There is some
details on it in the wiki, let me know if you have any questions. I also did a
tech talk on it.
In NO way does gun rely on S3 for consistency. That would be horrible. Check
out the algorithm and slam me with questions/critiques. Thanks for looking. :)
~~~
qqueue
Is the Hypothetical Amnesia Machine algorithm backed by any scholarly
research, or can you at least cite some papers with similar techniques? Blog
posts and javascript are nice, but I have a certain fondness for LaTeX-
generated PDFs whenever data integrity is involved, e.g. HyperDex's pretty
excellent papers:
[http://hyperdex.org/papers/](http://hyperdex.org/papers/)
~~~
marknadal
No papers yet, but I've been working on building up connection with academics
and hiring them. So hopefully expect to see something published, but the
process takes a while.
Meanwhile I'm actively working on building towards a simulation system and an
actual high-scale deployable battle testing environment. Think of these as
taking the theory from scholastic research, and actually implementing them in
practical settings that anybody can run.
I'd also like to get a TLA+ specification going. If you have any experience in
this stuff, please please please contact me [email protected] because this is
important to me.
~~~
roeme
When I read your responses, I can‘t shake the feeling I'm talking to some
snake oil salesman in a nice suit.¹
And to be honest, GUN‘s docs sound similar. Heavy on how to use, and how
awesome everything is, but as soon as one tries to understand stuff, it‘s
either WIP or “team up with me/us!”. _eyebrow rises_
And the claim of “building up connection with academics and hiring them” falls
perfectly in line with this. Why the hell can‘t you describe what you did by
yourself? If it's so awesome, why don‘t you just _die_ to explain it to
everyone who asks? Or, $DEITY forbid, should the “academics” lend some
credibility to GUN, even if it's with just their title? What's this HAM about?
Maybe it's just me, but all this with a rather complex naming convention
(souls...) and code...
eh, I'll go with “show us teh algoz”. Or describe it.
¹) To illustrate: « I'm actively working [...]» – I'd like to see you
passively working.
~~~
marknadal
Have you looked at the Wiki?
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/Conflict-Resolution-
with-G...](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/Conflict-Resolution-with-Guns)
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/How-to-Create-
GUN](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/How-to-Create-GUN)
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VIOJc0bdzUNs7yXMLKCc...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VIOJc0bdzUNs7yXMLKCcgwU8ZZqMh-G4XDJt8JRtvSA/edit#slide=id.g6c37d5900_0378)
No snake oil. It is a state machine operating over a boundary function.
However words like that sound super jargony which sounds vague, despite the
fact that people spend their entire lives working on just these problems sets
and their nuances.
I'm happy to discuss the workings, and I'd encourage you to try and use GUN
and see if it can withstand your concurrency attacks. Challenge accepted?
Edit: This person (in the comments below, please upvote him), and my reply,
best addresses the most important questions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969)
~~~
zero_iq
You're happy to discuss the workings? How about writing them down
somewhere...? All your documentation, such as it is, describes things using
terms that you never actually define or explain. Your code is just as bad.
Worse in fact, because it introduces yet further terms that are not in the
documentation.
Your Conflict-Resolution-with-Guns page simply says 'see gun.HAM' for the
explanation. No indication where this can be found. It isn't in the source
repository and it isn't in the wiki. A google search reveals nothing.
The 'algorithm' presented on How-to-Create-GUN is meaningless because you
don't define any of the return values. I can see how it maps some input values
to some output values, but nowhere do you say what any of those return values
actually mean, what I should do with them, or why they are useful.
e.g. return {amnesiaQuarantine: true} ... what does this mean? What should be
done with that return value? What is an amnesiaQuarantine?
e.g. return {quarantineState: true} ... what does this mean? How does it
differ from amnesiaQuarantine: true? What is a quarantineState? How should I
react to receiving this return value?
Your documentation says a lot, but doesn't actually define anything, and is
ultimately meaningless. This is why people are giving you a hard time and
asking so many questions.
Most people reading will not know: what amnesiaQuarantine is, what amnesiState
is, what the Hypothetical Amnesia Machine thought experiment is, what a
boundary function is (there are multiple definitions - what are you using?),
what 'converge: true means', what 'incoming: true' means, what state: true
means (given that you say other ' _state ' variables are _times* -- how the
hell does a boolean represent a time, what 'you have not properly handled
recursion through your data' means. What is a 'soul'? What happens to the data
when particular values are stored? Where are things stored? What is the data
flow? How are things shared? How does sync happen?
Imagine you don't know what any of your terminology means - like everybody
reading your documentation. Treat each term like an undefined variable. Now
try to understand your document. You can't. Those undefine terms are never
'set' anywhere. It doesn't make any sense. As soon as it gets close to
actually explaining anything it just handwaves, or leaves you with undefined
terminology.
You don't define what kind of persistence you implement or what consistency
guarantees (worse: your explanations do not seem consistent). You don't define
how your conflict resolution works (the 'explanation' given is tantamount to
Star Trek technobabble). You don't define how data is transferred. Your slides
are useless without any notes.
In your code you say that ACID is vague. It really isn't. Your explanation of
how you meet ACID _is_ extremely vague however, using what appear to be
truisms and contradictions, and yet more undefined terms that seem to have
little to do with anything mentioned in the documentation. Your code is poorly
structured, and badly commented. It uses 'cool' sounding gun-related
terminology ('shot', 'roulette', etc.) without defining what the hell those
things mean. There is nothing in the code that actually seems to do anything
with consistency
Your HAM algorithm - the very crux of your system as stated in your
documentation, remains unexplained, and WORSE.. has a TODO: comment noting
that it might not work and needs further investigation. This comment also
mentions rollbacks.... yet nowhere else in the code or documentation says
anything about rollbacks, and it's not clear why rollbacks would even be
needed according to the (vague) explanation of HAM.
Your further explanations in these comments STILL do not actually describe
precisely what HAM is or how it works. If you cannot do this in a simple and
elegant manner, then NOBODY will be able to use or trust your database system.
If you want anybody to take you seriously, you must write a simple and concise
explanation of HAM, including definitions of all your terms.
Frankly, it is so vague, and so unclear how it works that I am starting to
think this is the product of some kind of mental illness...
Sorry to be so harsh, but nobody seems to be getting through to you.
EDIT: I'm reminded of Einstein's quote: "If you can't explain it simply, you
don't understand it well enough."
~~~
marknadal
Terms, defined here:
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/semantics](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/semantics)
Explanation of the conflict resolution in simple terms, here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969)
.
Return values, with comments explaining their purpose, here:
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/How-to-Create-
GUN](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/How-to-Create-GUN) (I know you
referenced this already, but did you read the comments explaining each return
value? Edit: upon further reading your comment, it looks like you did, you
just didn't like them. Perhaps I should make them more concise)
Slides (no audio/video unfortunately) on what operations to apply given the
HAM return values, here:
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VIOJc0bdzUNs7yXMLKCc...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VIOJc0bdzUNs7yXMLKCcgwU8ZZqMh-G4XDJt8JRtvSA/edit#slide=id.g6c37d5900_0378)
Persistence, currently S3 or localhost-testing-only disk. Persistence is a
plugin.
ACID: Please link me to your favorite explanation of ACID that is clear and
concise. I'll try and base my reply off that. I haven't found any good ones.
GUN is AP, not CP.
People are taking me seriously, enough that I have contributors and funding.
Some people don't take me seriously, and I'm trying hard to open up to them
and be honest.
Do I need better documentation? Yes. Do I have documentation? At least some,
yes.
What else can I handle for you?
~~~
zero_iq
You still have not described HAM except in the vaguest of terms. You have
addressed very few of my questions.
What is the Hypothetical Amnesia Machine thought experiment? Where have you
described this, or where can a description be found? What do the return values
mean? The comments are very little help. What situations do they cover?
How does this relate to your algorithm? Please explain the algorithm in simple
terms, with precise definitions.
Your slides provide NO USEFUL INFORMATION WHATSOEVER. If you cannot see that
someone who doesn't already know what HAM is will be TOTALLY UNABLE to
understand your slides, then you have a serious problem seeing things from
another's point of view and should get somebody else to do your documentation
for you.
Believe me, it's not from lack of trying on my part. I'm not stupid. I'm an
experienced developer and familiar with the internal workings of many
different database systems. It's my job and my hobby. I have maintained and
contributed to several database systems. Your slides are intriguing but
meaningless to me.
Your list of definitions ('Semantics') redefines many things that already have
perfectly good definitions, and declares new terminology for concepts that
already have perfectly good labels.
Many of the definitions are vague or even nonsensical/self-inconsistent.
For example: "soul': is the practically unique, immutable identifier for a
node".
OK, so it's an identifier for a Node. So it's a Node ID. Why don't you just
call it that?
But what does 'practically unique' mean? Something is either unique, or it
isn't. It might be unique in a particular context, e.g. only in one instance
of the database, or application, or server, ... or... what?
And what's a 'node'? "A group of no, one, some, or all fields, as they change
over time." Well, you've redefined a perfectly good piece of jargon with a new
and vague description. Node seems like a really bad word for this. In what way
is a set of fields anything like a 'node' in the general sense? How does a
node capture things over time? Is it a list, a history, an event log....?
"A group of no, one, some, or all" is better known as a 'set'. This is
universally-accepted mathematical terminology. Except you've redefined that
too.
And if something is a set of fields.... hey, how about calling it a field set?
You know, like everybody else does...? Oh, no, let's call it a node
instead....
My favourite: "Sent: proof that a message was received, might contain data
that needs no receipt." The more you study this sentence, the more nonsensical
and ambiguous it becomes. For a start, why not call it 'Received'? Or even
'Receipt', because that's the common noun for an item showing proof of
receipt. Except, that you might need to prove receipt of data that needs no
receipt... It is a _ridiculous_ definition.
I'm sorry, but I can't take you seriously.
Frankly, it sounds like you yourself don't understand the domain and concepts
you are describing, and are handwaving to cover your lack of knowledge. The
fact that you provide your own terminology for things that could quite easily
be described in standard terms betrays a lack of theoretical background, and
ignorance of the state-of-the-art.
I'd venture a guess that your being REALLY, REALLY bad at explaining things
may be correlated with the fact that you're apparently really good at
describing tiny things in the most grandiose and self-aggrandizing terms. This
seems to be ubiquitous across all your github projects. Redefining things
unnecessarily, solving things that already have simple solutions, describing
toy apps as radical revolutionary game-changers. I suspect your inability to
explain things stems from this narcissism/egocentrism.
~~~
karlgrz
Abso-fucking-lutely.
------
dang
A few disagreements in this thread have crossed over into being disrespectful.
This is a gentle reminder that you can (and on Hacker News, please do)
disagree without calling names.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
------
bitanarch
A few questions.
1\. How do you define the operating boundaries for your time stamps? What is
too low and too high and why?
2\. What are the expected use cases for your conflict resolution algorithm?
The HAM function you proposed would just overwrite one string with another and
so for things like collaborative document editing, user intention isn't
preserved.
3\. Where is the vector clock defined in your code? I can only see
Gun.time.is() in a brief glance at your code... and it is just getting the
UNIX timestamp in milliseconds.
~~~
marknadal
Wonderful questions! Actually some of the best in the entire thread I think.
1\. See (3) but first read:
A) The upper boundary is defined by the current machine's local clock, which
could have skew or drift.
B) The lower boundary is defined by the last known update on an individual
record (down to the UUID+field).
2\. The expected use case is for this conflict resolution algorithm is for
basic field/value pairs (terms defined here:
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/semantics](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/semantics),
and here: [https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/JSON-Data-
Format](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/JSON-Data-Format)) within a UUID an
object (called a node, as in a node in a graph).
This is what HAM works off and is considered the lowest level atomic pieces
(the value). In order to sync on collaborative text you need to build an OT
layer on top of this (I plan on doing this, possibly integrating with ShareJS
as another mentioned). You cannot collaboratively sync on atomic values by
themselves, you must define a CRDT for that - plugins/modules for them will be
coming later.
3\. Vector Clocks. HAM does not assume what the sort key is for state, it just
assumes it is a value it can do <, <=, ===, =>, > comparisons on.
A) Vector clocks have a vulnerability that if you are working with
temporary/ephemeral machines, the clocks will constantly get reset and have to
play "catch up". However, network partitions are highly likely, so there is no
guarantee that two machines won't issue a conflicting vector clock. If this
happens, there is no standard way of dealing with this, although there are
plenty of work arounds.
B) Timestamps also have a vulnerability, that is if you set your local clock
ahead (say 2 years in the future) then it will "always win" wiping out other
peers valid values. However you unfortunately cannot determine in an untrusted
network whether a peer is being malicious about being 2 years in the future,
or if they are actually at a different point in timespace - like a GPS
satellite or on Mars, or went offline in the subway.
C) As a result, this is why I combine them together via the boundary function.
The upper and lower boundaries of the state machine provide the relative
"vector" for the untrusted timestamp in the delta update.
The benefits of this technique are two fold:
1) You get deterministic and idempotent resolution within a special-relativity
timeframe in a decentralized system without gossip (consensus).
2) If you do run GUN within your own trusted network, you can use the
timestamps to calculate drift between machines and then readjust the boundary
function of the state machine. Thus giving you a highly accurate "objective"
view of your data across peers, which if the latency is low enough could
indicate it is worth creating locks (but thus sacrificing Availability).
Hope this was clear enough! Any questions? I'm going to be reposting this in
the rest of the thread.
------
SlyShy
I don't know if I should consider this "the easiest database ever" or "gun is
not a database" (from the FAQ). Github says "a distributed, embedded, graph
database engine".
I think some clarification around the marketing could do a world of good.
~~~
marknadal
Good point, oh boy - caught me red handed. shameshame.
What I'm trying to get across is that it is the easiest database because it is
not your traditional master-slave database, and it doesn't require maintaining
any database process. It is indeed just a cache, but it has all the benefits
of a database.
~~~
lberger
I'm lost. How does it have all the benefits of a database, without any
persistence? That doesn't sound like a database at all.
~~~
marknadal
Persistence is just a plugin/module/hook. Currently it plugs into a very
never-should-ever-be-deployed file on disk (for easy local testing only) and
S3.
We're going to be adding more storage engines though! Hopefully building an
open source S3 that uses fancy algorithms to store on disk and on peers.
However I don't know that stuff, somebody else is doing it (or I'm hiring -
we're funded!).
------
nolanl
Interesting project! It seems to share a lot of the goals and design choices
of PouchDB/CouchDB: distributed, offline-first, eventually consistent,
deterministic conflict resolution, etc.
One big difference I can see is that it's only using LocalStorage, which has
good cross-browser support, but only allows 5-10MB maximum. Are there plans to
add IndexedDB/WebSQL support so that users can store more data?
~~~
marknadal
Yes! Thanks.
LocalStorage implementation is just the default plugin, and I chose it first
because of its compatibility. I'd like to get IndexedDB support in there as
well. Interested in helping?
------
gkya
I wanted to read the text on the page, but the styling, with the shadow, or
the gloss, or whatever it is, it is giving my astigmatic eyes pain, so I
couldn't, I'm sorry.
~~~
marknadal
sorry about that. IDK why but it makes it easier on my eyes, maybe I should do
a survey (I'm probably just weird) and then fix it.
~~~
adambard
I definitely remember complaining about this exact thing a year ago :P. At
least you toned down the shadow a bit.
~~~
marknadal
awwwe you remember me! Happy face! For... being "that guy" that had blurry
text. Shoot, sad face. Thanks for sticking around :).
~~~
adambard
Heh, I remembered the project too, I was just reminded of the blurry text by
the blurry text.
If you find a high contrast hard on the eyes you could drop it a bit by just
making the lettering a lighter grey in leiu of the drop shadow. Just don't
overdo it or you'll get people complaining about that.
------
ArekDymalski
It looks very promising. However I wonder who is the intended user of Gun:
1\. "full-stack" developers who just want to save time and/or benefit from
NoDB aspect 2\. Beginners and front-end developers who don't anything about
databases?
In case of group 1 your marketing seems to be insufficiently technical as many
people here have already noted.
In case of group 2 (which I belong to) things look completely different. As a
beginner whose learning efforts are constantly disheartened by tutorials and
courses which end at "locally hosted HelloWorld app" phase, I'd be more than
happy seeing: 1\. step-by-step, layman-friendly tutorial on installing Gun on
S3 and other platforms. 2\. _very_ well commented example app demonstrating
how to create typical functionalities.
With such approach you will keep the "Dropbox of databases" promise which
sounds very exciting. Actually I think that something like this should be an
obligatory feature on Codeacademy or any web development MOOC dedicated to
beginners.
~~~
marknadal
Great questions.
1\. As of right now, focusing on beginner/front-end devs who just want an easy
open source Firebase like database. People building small experimental apps,
since we have finished our battle-testing suite yet.
However, I'd also highly encourage full stack developers to get involved and
try it out and give us feedback. For small projects it'll probably save you
time, but the plugin/modules ecosystem (aka features) aren't mature enough
that you'll be writing a lot of your own logic. Which please do! We need them!
If you don't want to run GUN on localhost, I'll host a GUN server for you. :)
You are right, I need to get better docs/tutorials and information out on
this, so laymen don't get disheartened.
Is there anything I can do to help? Thanks for your comment!
~~~
ArekDymalski
Thanks Mark, I'll keep an eye on the docs page then. I'll also keep the thumbs
up :)
------
rawnlq
Have you heard of sharejs [http://sharejs.org/](http://sharejs.org/)? It's
made by an ex-Google-wave engineer and uses operational transforms for
eventual consistency. It seems like you guys are solving similar problems.
I mention this because Dropbox has their own "Dropbox for Databases" called
Datastore:
[https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore](https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore)
which is based on Operational Transforms:
[https://blogs.dropbox.com/developers/2013/07/how-the-
datasto...](https://blogs.dropbox.com/developers/2013/07/how-the-datastore-
api-handles-conflicts-part-1-basics-of-offline-conflict-handling/)
~~~
marknadal
Actually yes! I'm one of the people who accidentaly sparked a long discussion
in the #1 issues thread:
[https://github.com/share/ShareJS/issues/1](https://github.com/share/ShareJS/issues/1)
that I've seen other people on HN link to.
GUN doesn't have OT-style text collaboration yet, so go with ShareJS if that
is what you need now. I do plan on implementing it on top of GUN though, or
trying to get ShareJS integrated with GUN. Joseph is a really great guy.
Yupe, I've talked to Steve Marx at Dropbox Datastore at a hackathon before.
He's a great guy as well. They're using algorithms that require some
centralized conflict resolution though. Which is great, but I'm interested in
the decentralized side.
------
theseoafs
I dislike that the webpage actually has very little information about what the
tool does, what use cases it is suitable for, what the architecture is like,
etc.
Here's an important question the homepage doesn't answer: is it ACID?
~~~
marknadal
Good point, I'll try and move the blog to another page and replace it with
more details.
The fastest summary is that it is an Open Source Firebase.
Flat up answer for ACID: honestly, not how you traditionally would think, as
it favors AP of the CAP theorem.
However, ACID terminology is actually pretty vague
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID)). Here
is my comments about ACID in the code:
A - Atomic, if you set a full node, or nodes of nodes, if any value is in error then nothing will be set.
If you want sets to be independent of each other, you need to set each piece of the data individually.
C - Consistency, if you use any reserved symbols or similar, the operation will be rejected as it could lead to an invalid read and thus an invalid state.
I - Isolation, the conflict resolution algorithm guarantees idempotent transactions, across every peer, regardless of any partition,
including a peer acting by itself or one having been disconnected from the network.
D - Durability, if the acknowledgement receipt is received, then the state at which the final persistence hook was called on is guaranteed to have been written.
The live state at point of confirmation may or may not be different than when it was called.
If this causes any application-level concern, it can compare against the live data by immediately reading it, or accessing the logs if enabled.
If you have any specific further questions I am happy to answer. It has
support for vector-clock/timestamp "state" transactions.
~~~
akerl_
I'm attempting to draw a connection between your comments on ACID and what
ACID actually means, and there doesn't appear to be any parallel.
~~~
marknadal
I understand what you mean.
Could you do me a favor and point me to your favorite description of ACID?
------
tomphoolery
> 400 Bad Request
[https://github.com/amark/gun](https://github.com/amark/gun)
~~~
marknadal
oh snap, the HN "DDOS" has peaked! I'll see what I can do to get things back
online. Thanks for putting the github link in here in case others get the same
issue.
------
karlgrz
I would really love if this actually worked as promised. Way too much
skepticism and not nearly enough proof. Kudos for actually putting this out
there, though. It'd be great to prove everyone wrong, but I will not hold my
breath.
Good luck!
~~~
marknadal
You can try messing with it yourself by, doing (if you already have
node/npm/git installed and familiar with terminal):
git clone http://github.com/amark/gun
cd gun/examples && npm install
node express.js 8080
Then open it in a couple of browser tabs on different devices, change their
system clock, try refreshing data, crashing things. etc.
I'm also trying to figure out how to write simulated tests (like Jepsen) that
will do all of this for you and give you the results of what failed/succeeded.
Till then, let me know if you see anything break.
~~~
karlgrz
I'm not going to spin this up on 1000 nodes to make sure it handles the kind
of load needed to simulate actual production traffic (which is what you would
need to actually figure out if this would hold up to some kind of large scale
load that Riak or Cassandra would be able to handle). Maybe you should do that
yourself and document it to prove how good your product is!
~~~
marknadal
You don't need to spin up a 1,000 nodes.
You can just spin up a 1,000 tabs.
Since they all run the same algorithm!
Yes, I am working on more tests to prove myself wrong or right. Please bare
with me as I/we make progress, because it is literally only a few contributors
and me.
This is v0.1.0 for a reason, not v1. Lots ahead, but please play with it while
we work on developing the test suite.
~~~
karlgrz
I appreciate the suggestion and response. Understand it is v.0.1.0 but you
should also understand that when you bring something like this out with next
to no academic backing behind your theories and algorithms there is DEFINITELY
going to be skepticism and doubt.
You are exactly right, though. It's early, and I'll give you the benefit of
the doubt that you will achieve what you want.
Also know that there is a TON of research in these areas (which you clearly
are aware of based on your comments in this thread) that basically refutes a
lot of what you are claiming. I would love to see more clear documentation
along with actual proofs showing how your algorithm is sound.
Until then, good luck, and I look forward to hearing about your success!
~~~
marknadal
Thanks! :)
Quick question though: I'm claiming an AP system, not that I have all three.
What research are you referring to that suggests you can't have
idempotent/deterministic conflict resolution? CRDTs are out there in the wild
and working. Do you have any papers in mind?
~~~
karlgrz
I'm not saying you claimed to have all three.
Only paper I would have in mind is the CRDT paper from Letia, Preguiça, and
Shapiro which I'm sure you're already familiar with.
The thing that bothers me the most is that it appears your entire algorithm
(Hypothetical Amnesia Machine) has no proofs behind it. Specifically, your
wiki article here:
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/Conflict-Resolution-
with-G...](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/Conflict-Resolution-with-Guns)
Has a giant hole where the substance would be. That bothers me because you are
putting this potentially cool thing out there WAY BEFORE you have done the
actual work.
Again, I applaud the fact that you actually put this together and you
implemented it. And I understand it's v.0.1.0. That's fine.
Claiming this: "All conflict resolution happens locally in each peer using a
deterministic algorithm. Such that eventual consistency is guaranteed across
all writes within the mesh, with fault tolerant retries built in at each step.
Data integrity is now a breeze."
without any proof that algorithm actually does this reliably and WITHOUT DATA
LOSS bothers me. There is so much snake oil out there, you don't need to be
starting off on the wrong foot.
I'm no expert at this stuff (I've only been working on distributed systems for
about 5 years) but I'm also not claiming to be an expert. I just know that
there is a lot of hand waving out there, and I think it would be important to
actually prove your algorithm.
My 2¢.
~~~
marknadal
This person (in the comments above/below, please upvote him), and my reply,
best addresses the most important questions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969)
Please don't assume I haven't done the "actual work", I have. The academic
side of the equation with proofs is going to take much longer than the
timeframe from my investors for this seed round. I openly admit that, but I'd
rather do good of getting this out in peoples hands to actually play and build
stuff with.
To be honest, I'll probably want to get Jepsen tests and the sort built before
the academic side of the equation is completed. Thank you for being skeptical
(I like that), but please don't ignore or not experiment with something just
because a paper hasn't been published yet. Who knows, if you did play with it,
you might like it enough to help write the paper - but maybe that is me being
too optimistic.
Blessings.
~~~
karlgrz
That is good information, thanks for that.
------
danbruc
There is no way this can work. Merging data changes can inherently not be
automated in the general case. Deciding if a change from foo to bar should win
over a change from foo to baz depends on the semantics of those strings. There
are some cases, for example counters, with simple and clear semantics where
you can build reusable and robust solutions for. You can also handle the
general case with simple policies like last write wins. But there is no way
any algorithm will ever be able to figure out whether to choose bar or baz,
not at last because I could arbitrarily declare any of the two outcomes
correct.
~~~
marknadal
Every change can be preserved in a history/append-only/log/stream. So you
don't have to "lose" data from another "winning". However, the algorithm will
by default select one, you can then code it at the app level for the user to
select a new winner.
The general case here is very UUID based key/value pairs. Anything beyond
that, you should be using CRDTs and OT like algorithms, which I will be
building on top of GUN.
However, in the meanwhile, I challenge you to try running the example folder
from the GitHub ReadMe and seeing if you can break the automated sync and
cause data divergence!
Edit: This person (in the comments below, please upvote him), and my reply,
best addresses the most important questions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077969)
------
nathan7
Awesome to finally see Gun on here, Mark! What still worries me is the
reliance on external storage services, although a good local storage service
could be built for Gun. Other than that, I'm glad to finally see docs!
------
stephanfroede
Cool approach. I had some fights with Neo4J and taming IO. I did fall back on
a 2nd Level Cache, which is nothing else than a huge hash map/KV store in
memory.
~~~
marknadal
Thanks! Interested in joining and working on these types of problems? You seem
to have some pretty good skills. Shoot me an email [email protected]
------
glittershark
You guys seriously need to work on your SEO - Googling "gundb" has the page
show up with the text "Your browser does not support frames...".
~~~
marknadal
Oh my goodness #fail. Thank you for spotting this. I'll try to figure out how
to fix it (probably by not being cheap by domain masking).
------
fiatjaf
If it "is just a cache" and the data is distributed among every client, where
is the data at each time before it is persisted to S3?
~~~
marknadal
Great question, I'm going to C&P a reply I did previously:
1\. In memory in the browser tab's process.
2\. If available, in the browser's localstorage or fallback.
3\. In the server process's memory.
4\. If available, on disk in the server.
5\. If in a multi-machine setup, any other connected server that is subscribed
to that data set, being in memory (3) or in disk (4) if available.
6\. If configured, in a machine log on S3.
7\. Persisted to S3, which replicates and shards it for you internally.
8\. If configured, in a revision file on S3.
9\. If configured, in a multi-region S3 setup, redundantly in many places.
(2) is not cleared till an acknowledgment that (7) is confirmed. (1) is not
cleared until an acknowledgement that (7) is confirmed or if the tab is
exited. In the case of (7) it is no longer the delta/diff, but a snapshot of
that current data set with that delta/diff's update. Retries from (1) ~ (5)
will happen at various events, if the confirmations are not satisfied. If a
conflict has already occurred by (3) the acknowledgement from (5) will include
a notification that the value has already been updated, along with the
standard delta/diff of that conflicting update being sent down. Meaning (5)
does not guarantee that your delta/diff has "won", only that it has been saved
or is already outdated.
Worst case condition is that (2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9) are turned off, in which your
user's data is as volatile as them preemptively leaving the page (although I
suppose you could use an onbeforeunload to warn them) - however this behavior
is the current norm for most http post based forms and apps. Actually, pardon
me, worst case condition is that everything is offline simultaneously, however
this is not really interesting because then users won't even be able to access
your app in the first place.
------
kainolophobia
I've looked at your "Hypothetical Amnesia Machine algorithm" and have a few
questions.
First though, I'd like you to read this: [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/lamport/pubs/t...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/people/lamport/pubs/time-clocks.pdf)
~~~
marknadal
Yes, I've looked at this paper before - I should reread it though.
I've done a tech talk (not recorded though) on the pros/cons of vector-clocks
and timestamps. I have some very specific insights which I should probably
write a paper on. Or at least get the tech talk recorded or written down.
There are some slides at the bottom of:
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/How-to-Create-
GUN](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki/How-to-Create-GUN) .
What questions may I answer?
------
fiatjaf
The demo is a little confusing because it loads two iframes and seen to be
faking it, but yes it works and no, it is not faking it.
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4374976/gun/web/tabs.htm...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4374976/gun/web/tabs.html?key=random/sdcws4mU0)
~~~
marknadal
Thank you for noticing this. :)
My original tutorial actually required the user to physically open up multiple
tabs and have them be side-by-side. However it was a mess and people didn't
like it. So I opted to fake it... while still depending upon the real tech
underneath.
HOWEVER, it is just running on a freebie heroku box, so it is probably bound
to crash/fall-over soon.
------
lux
As a "self-hosted Firebase", I'd love to see something like their integrations
with various JS frameworks, for ex:
[https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/libraries/react/](https://www.firebase.com/docs/web/libraries/react/)
~~~
marknadal
YES! We're actively working on trying to get adapters built for React,
Angular, Ember, Backbone, etc. but we're a super tiny team.
Would you be interested in contributing? You could really help make a big
difference.
~~~
lux
Awesome! I've starred the project on Github. I'm in startup mode and juggling
way too many things these days, but maybe I can find a free evening :)
~~~
marknadal
sweet, shoot me an email [email protected] to talk more.
------
marknadal
Hey everyone! If you have any questions, I'll be here for the next several
hours. Also check out the GitHub Wiki:
[https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki](https://github.com/amark/gun/wiki) .
------
bhz
Have you tried redis?
[http://try.redis.io/](http://try.redis.io/)
~~~
marknadal
I love redis! My first proof of concept of GUN used redis as the
persistence/storage layer. But I moved off of it since I wanted a fully
embedded solution.
Data wise the difference is that Redis doesn't support graphs. But you could
easily build that on top of Redis, so you could argue GUN is just graph data
ontop of Redis (well, not anymore) with a conflict resolution algorithm baked
in.
~~~
bhz
I'll have to give Gun a go when I have the chance. Thank you for providing the
contrast.
------
Yadi
Hey Mark! Congrats, it looks awesome, good to see this here!
------
trithagoras
...Is there a glow effect around all the text?
------
protomyth
Congrats. What is the license? I must be missing where it is and the source
code I checked doesn't have it.
~~~
marknadal
Thanks!
Honestly, I might put this up to an open-source vote.
I personally learn towards the MIT and the ZLIB license,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib_License](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib_License)
.
However I also know a lot of other databases are doing AGPL, I think for
monetary reasons. Which :/ I might also want to consider.
But as I said, I honestly think this should be a combination of community
decision.
Could people reply back with what license they'd like?
~~~
wongarsu
If you want everyone to use your database, MIT or ZLIB are clearly superior.
For you(r company) that would limit your monetization options to support and
similar, which is certainly not ideal.
If you value free software (as opposed to open source), AGPL is a good option
and allows you to sell more permissive licenses to everyone who needs one.
If you actually want to make money with this, it's really a question of your
business model. I would use it with either license.
~~~
lclarkmichalek
Why would using AGPL imply not valuing open source?
~~~
jackbravo
Because open source guys value having more people using your code, and using
AGPL discourages some people from using it because they can't keep their
modifications private?
------
samuelcouch
This is really awesome! Excited to use it.
------
mmagin
"With all new flavors like banana, fizzbitch, and GUN!"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3qncy5Qfk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3qncy5Qfk)
------
sigmonsays
This is the best troll ever
------
curiously
this seems like a great tool. hosting firebase on my own is what I want to
build real time apps, is this possible?
I have the same concerns for meteor which I have for this as well, which is
security and scalability.
How does Gun address those two things?
~~~
marknadal
Great questions.
Hosting on your own: Yes.
Security: Currently a "Roll Your Own" approach, where you wrap GUN behind some
firewall/throttling like system.
Why? Because permissions are so app-specific behavior, I haven't figured out
how to generalize it. I don't think it is possible to do it, so in the future
we'll probably provide various security plugins that come with app specific
assumptions.
Scalability: Run the example folder in the GitHub Readme, and open up hundreds
of tabs. Gun is running individually in all of them. See how it handles that.
I'm trying to have a production-grade battle-testing suite developed soon,
such that you could just run a script, it would ask you how much you want to
spend on the test, and then it would deploy a ton of GUN peers to the cloud
and generate a ton of traffic and load. This is not available yet, but
something I'm focusing on within the next 6months or year.
Anything I can help with?
------
eridius
Why is it called Gun? The name is a little off-putting. What's next, a
database called Kill? How about Murder? Genocide?
Edit: The fact that I'm being downvoted for voicing a concern about the naming
is really disappointing. This is a serious issue, and I would appreciate a
response, not being buried.
~~~
marknadal
I didn't downvote you, so please don't think I'm the one trying to bury you.
I'm calling it GUN because it is powerful and therefore a dangerous tool to
wield. Because I'm going with a fully decentralized/distributed system, it has
also generated some controversy with people.
Fact is, centralized/master-slave consensus based databases are incredibly
popular right now. Things like Riak, Cassandra's CRDTs are not getting enough
traction as they should - but probably because they can be difficult to set
up. I'm trying to blow this all out of the water and make distributed database
systems easy for developers.
So I'm admittedly going for an edgy name. I'm not wanting to kill anybody,
just centralized software.
~~~
eridius
Thanks for the response. I didn't think you were the one trying to bury me,
but I appreciate the fact that you care.
I'm glad to hear that you are aware of the fact that this is a loaded term and
that you intentionally chose it because you wanted an edgy name. While I'm
still not a fan of it, I feel much better about it knowing the reason behind
the naming. And I think you need to put this info somewhere on the site and
the GitHub project. I read gunned.io, and I skimmed the README of your GitHub,
and nowhere did you even acknowledge that the name was edge, much less
indicate that this was an intentional choice. I would urge you to add a FAQ
entry on gundb.io, add a wiki page to your GitHub repo, and put a line
somewhere in the README (perhaps at the bottom) linking to that wiki page.
Otherwise, you're going to end up with more people than just me thinking that
you chose a potentially-offensive name as opposed to a deliberately edgy one.
Speaking of your GitHub repo, you should also add gundb.io as the webpage for
the repo, and probably link to it in the README.
| {
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Getting Started with WordPress Static Site Generators - illuminea
https://snipcart.com/blog/wordpress-static-site-generator
======
illuminea
Covers the exciting growing trend of WordPress and Jamstack and how they can
actually go together.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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MinimaLT: Minimal-latency Networking Through Better Security [pdf] - m0nastic
http://cr.yp.to/tcpip/minimalt-20130522.pdf
======
ableal
Worth a look (authors include D.J. Bernstein):
_We describe here MinimaLT, a secure network protocol which delivers
protected data on the rst packet of a typical client-server connection.
MinimaLT provides substantial protections and is extraordinarily simple to con
figure and use. In particular, it provides cryptographic authentication of
servers and users; encryption of communication; simplicity of protocol,
implementation, and con guration; clean IP-address mobility; and DoS
protections"_
~~~
mrmekon
If I hadn't seen DJB's name on this, I would have read the abstract and
thought "bullshit!" Now I just assume it's the most brilliant protocol ever
written, and the source code is completely illegible :D
------
Historiopode
While I lack the skill set to fully appreciate the paper, I must say that it
is very refreshing to see innovative proposals on this kind of all-important
foundational elements.
These are the kind of submissions that make HN worth visiting, for all its
problems. ;)
------
tmoertel
One more important tidbit from the paper:
_We plan to soon release Ethos_ [experimental robust-security OS] _and our
Linux MinimaLT implementation as open source software._
~~~
aidenn0
<http://www.ethos-os.org/index.html>
------
dfc
Does anyone know why there is no affiliation listed for djb? Did he retire?
(Side note: I am not sure why it was downvoted, I apologize if my question is
offensive/problematic for people. )
~~~
lvh
It is provided, just typeset weirdly. UIC is centered between the first four
authors (Petullo, Zhang, Solworth, Bernstein). AFAIK all four of those are at
UIC :)
According to the author's own website[1], his position at UIC is ongoing, as
well.
[1]: <http://cr.yp.to/positions.html>
| {
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What and where are the stack and heap? - gs7
http://stackoverflow.com/a/80113
======
derefr
If this article is news for you, this might be a helpful corollary:
_Threads_ and _processes_ are both units of execution. (A unit of execution
is like a virtual processor -- a separate instruction pointer that makes its
way through your code, doing computations and following jumps.)
Both _threads_ and _processes_ have their own stacks. You reserve a new stack
when you fork(), or when you spawn a thread.
But only _processes_ have their own heaps. In fact, this is the defining
distinction between threads and processes: if you're sharing your heap with
other execution-units, you're a thread; if you have your own isolated heap,
you're a separate process.
~~~
fiatmoney
You can also mmap a chunk of memory and share it between processes.
~~~
blibble
also there's nothing stopping a thread having its own logical heap.
grandparent is confusing the concept of address space and heap.
~~~
derefr
Address spaces are just an _implementation detail_. You can have both
processes and threads on an architecture without any such concept. The _point_
\-- the theory -- behind processes, is to separate your heap from your
neighbor's heap, so pointers in your heap pointing at addresses in theirs
won't be valid, or vice-versa. You could do this with virtual-memory mapping,
memory segmentation, tagged pointers, domain-taint as static type checking,
etc. and you'd get the same result.
Why only the heap? Since pointers on the stack can only (coherently) point
into the same stack, or to the heap--and pointers on the heap can't point back
into any stack--then stacks are already isolated. (Registers follow the same
isolation rules as stack entries, if you want a register-machine.)
The reason you want to isolate your heap in the first place, the benefit you
get, is that an isolated heap is an isolated graph for any garbage-collection
system to pass over, and an isolated set-of-blocks-of-bytes for an exception
to throw out or the OOM killer to discard. As soon as you have an isolated
heap, in other words, you get all the _practical_ advantages that come with
running in a separate process.
If you implement a bytecode interpreter that can concurrently switch between
several instruction pointers with their own _stacks_ , then you've implemented
green-threads. If each of those instruction pointers also has their own _heap_
, you've implemented virtual processes.
~~~
haberman
If you are programming to the level of abstraction of an ISO C or C++ program
(or a higher-level language/abstraction), then the stack and heap are your
primitives and address spaces are an implementation detail.
If you are programming to the level of abstraction of POSIX, then address
spaces are fundamental and the stack and heap are just convenience interfaces
around mmap().
The fact that the StackOverflow question was asking for more OS-level details
than the existing explanations they had found suggests that this is the time
to provide actual implementation details instead of answering in more
abstractions.
~~~
derefr
I'm not talking about programming, I'm talking about computer science. A heap
(really, an object reference digraph) is a mathematical object that you can
prove theorems about. An address space is just one way to isolate a block of
memory, a way to enforce _on a Von Neumann architecture_ the preconditions
that allow for that mathematical object to be instantiated and manipulated.
Not every machine is an x86 with an MMU.
~~~
haberman
> A heap (really, an object reference digraph) is a mathematical object that
> you can prove theorems about.
So is a Pseudo-Riemannian manifold. But neither of these is what the person
was asking questions about. They were asking about programming on computers
with operating systems.
------
terhechte
Uli Kusterer has a really good, very graphical, description in his "Masters of
the Void" series, too:
[http://masters-of-the-void.com/book5.htm](http://masters-of-the-
void.com/book5.htm)
------
com2kid
I'd argue against there being "only 1 heap". Only one OS provided heap, sure,
but in C++ it is quite common to overload new and allocate into a separate
statically declared buffer.
(See: Video games!"
And, as usual, no mention was made of static allocations! :(
~~~
kabdib
Oh yes.
Heaps for allocating textures. Object-type-specific heaps for things like
sounds and models. "Smart" heaps that can invalidate their contents under
memory pressure (and maybe automatically bring stuff back in, possibly
speculatively). Heaps that are good for lots of small allocations. Heaps that
either do or do not allow multiple threads to use them. Heaps that are
position-independent and that can be used in shared memory buffers (which can
be mapped to different addresses in different processes). I could go on.
I wrote a lot of the memory management stuff for the Apple Newton, and it had
several types of heaps:
\- A common "Macintosh-like" heap with both fixed and sliding blocks (even
with a VM system managing the page for you, fragmentation matters when memory
is tight). Most threads played in this heap, and keeping it sane was kind of
hard.
\- A couple of heaps for the kernel, for managing its objects (it's been a
while, I don't remember why there was more than one).
\- A heap that could supply (limited) amounts of memory for interrupt
handlers.
\- The NewtonScript object heap (owned by the NewtonScript environment).
I'm pretty sure there were a couple more heaps, but I've forgotten the
details. Our main worry was fragmentation, and I'd say that things probably
weren't segmented enough and that we needed even more heaps than we shipped
with.
A heap is just a data structure. Ain't nothing magic.
~~~
yongjik
I wouldn't call a heap a "data structure", though. It will lead to mighty
confusion, as heap-the-data-structure has nothing to do with heap-in-which-
you-allocate-memory.
------
mtdewcmu
The stack is a concept that's built into the CPU to handle function calls.
Every time you call a function, there is a return address that needs to be
stored. Since you need to hang on to a return address for every function that
is currently in progress, and you use them in the reverse order that they were
stored, what you need is exactly a stack. The stack is usually (always?)
located at the top of memory and grows down. In addition to return addresses,
it can be used to store data associated with an in-progress function, like
arguments, local variables, and cpu state data that needs to be temporarily
stored.
So that's the stack. The concept of the heap, on the other hand, isn't built
into the CPU, and is sort of a vague abstraction implemented by programming
languages. The first thing to know about how it differs from the stack: it's
not a stack. Stack reads and writes follow LIFO; reads and writes to the heap
can potentially be in any order. The heap is usually (always?) located close
to the bottom of memory, and grows up. So the stack and heap grow toward each
other. At the lowest level, the heap is basically just memory that can be used
as the application sees fit. Data on the heap isn't inherently tied to an in-
progress function call, so it can last indefinitely (at least, until the
process ends). The programming language or the C library typically provide a
means to subdivide the heap memory into discrete blocks as needed in response
to an explicit or implicit memory allocation request (e.g. malloc(), new), and
keep track of what memory is available and what is currently allocated.
Differences between the stack and the heap:
* the stack is limited in size, so it is easy to overflow and crash if you try to store too much data there. the heap, in contrast, is designed to grow as much as needed * the stack is managed primarily by instructions built into the cpu. the heap is managed by library calls and system calls * the difference in speed between the two refers to the speed of allocating or freeing a chunk. the stack can inherently do this quickly, because the location for the memory is predetermined. since the heap can do allocations and deallocations in any order, finding memory for blocks is inherently more complicated and slower. * since the fundamental purpose of the stack is to store data about in-progress functions, it follows that every executing thread has its own stack and usually only accesses its own. the heap, on the other hand, has no association to a thread of execution, which consequently means that multiple threads can share the same heap, and locking and synchronization must come into play when the heap metadata has to change. The locking is typically transparent, but the net result is to make allocations and deallocations even slower in threaded code.
~~~
skj
The concept of the stack is built into the CPU? That's news to me... I mean,
I'm not a hardware guy so I guess I could have been misinformed, but I thought
it was something the OS managed as a reserved chunk of main memory (like the
heap).
Registers are built into the CPU, but that's a different thing than the stack.
~~~
a-priori
In the x86 family anyway, it's kinda-sorta 'built in'. It is possible to avoid
using the stack -- it's done in interrupt handlers which do not have a stack
of their own and must avoid clobbering it -- but most code uses it fairly
frequently and there are many auxiliary instructions that push and pop from
the stack.
In addition to some explicit stack-related instructions like PUSH/POP,
PUSHF/POPF, PUSHA/POPA, PUSHAD/POPAD and many others, certain other operations
assume you have a valid stack and act on it. For example, the CALL function
(used to call a procedure/function) will push a return address to the stack,
and RET (used to return to the caller at the end of a procedure/method) will
pop the return address to the stack and jump to it.
These instructions are fairly essential to the function calling conventions
for typical code, enough that it's reasonable to say that the concept of the
stack is 'built into' x86 processors.
Partly this is because the x86 processor is a beast with an instruction for
everything. Other more RISCy architectures tend to not bake in the stack, and
instead you use any general-purpose register as a stack pointer and manipulate
it manually with regular instructions.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_instruction_listings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_instruction_listings)
~~~
joezydeco
Lots of smaller microprocessors _live_ by the stack. Aside from the typical
JSR/RET stuff with pushing the program counter, you can also do very
lightweight programming tricks with the stack pointer.
For example, you can pass arguments to an assembly subroutine by putting the
data right after the JSR call. The called subroutine pulls the args by
manipulating the stack pointer and the return will jump PC after the argument
date.
You can also use stack pointer to briefly allocate a small amount of memory
for scratch inside a routine instead of allocating heap or using globals. This
is a big help on small micros where you _might_ get a scratch register or two
normally but now you need 4 or 8 bytes for a quick piece of work.
------
pramodliv1
I remember the first time when I worked on multithreaded C++ project. I
allocated a structure on the stack and passed its address to a queue which was
received by another thread and the inevitable segfault happened. My mistake
provided a lot of laughs for the entire team.
Also see [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8468210/stack-vs-
heap-c](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8468210/stack-vs-heap-c)
~~~
ksk
I understand what you meant but to be a bit pedantic, you can freely allocate
structures on the stack and pass it around. You might have heard of a few of
them .. cout, cin :P
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Mixing Signals - sebkomianos
https://samgentle.com/posts/2015-10-02-mixing-signals
======
SNvD7vEJ
If equipment would enter active state instead of standby state when power is
applied, all devices left in standby mode in the house would be turned on
after a power glitch, wouldn't it?
So, you might wake up in the middle of the night with all your devices
blaring, or coming home from a trip finding the neighbors mad about you having
your sound systems turned on 24/7.
This might be one reason that standby is the initial state of devices.
~~~
FreeFull
I think the argument is more that devices shouldn't have a standby state in
the first place.
~~~
nine_k
They can't be remotely activated of they don't. You just can make the standby
state more efficient: a phone on standby consumes much less than a TV.
------
sycren
The article states this - "Well, it turns out that all this environmental
friendliness is starting to trip over itself, because most devices now start
up in standby mode."
Is this the best way for energy efficiency or should there be a different
standard?
~~~
sgentle
I'm of the opinion that devices that have a standby mode should either have an
option to power on in standby mode, or remember the mode they were in when
powered off. Many computer firmwares have a setting like this.
Though I think what's really missing is a reputable general standard for
device control. The master/slave power board thing is a kind of hack using the
most primitive kind of signalling we can manage at the moment.
In my ideal world I'd have a control panel somewhere where I could set up
rules like "the sound system needs the TV to be on". Maybe the TV could even
know that it should turn on the sound system it is connected to, though that's
crazy optimistic for the current state of home automation.
~~~
Bouncingsoul1
In theory HDMI-CEC could do this, well if all your devices support CEC. You
would have got chances with your homecinema though. They even have an
opensourcelib now [http://libcec.pulse-eight.com/](http://libcec.pulse-
eight.com/) .Saw this for the first time, haven't done any AV-Projects in the
past years, but maybe I give it a try
------
bonobo3000
WOOOOOOW thats an awesome hack!
------
revelation
I used to do the power strip on/off dance for my devices until I had a PSU
just straight blow up. Now I'm not so sure the 1W standby power is worth the
increased risk of failure.
| {
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Real Men and Intentions - zacjszewczyk
http://zacjszewczyk.com/Structure/Real%20Men%20and%20Intentions.htm
======
woah
Is that all you wrote?
| {
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Apple's investment into Clangd and refactoring tooling - artisdom
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2018-April/057668.html
======
DannyBee
So, just because there seems to be confusion:
Clangd already exists. It already supports LSP. It is already part of the llvm
project. It was written by !Apple, and used by a wide number of people.
(I want to make sure these people still get credit, i already see people in
this thread thanking apple for supporting LSP, which is not actually what
happened).
What apple has proposed contributing is: Making clangd work with xcode, and
extensions to LSP.
This is great (as long as the second ends up standardized over time).
But the benefits people listed here so far already exist in clangd. The main
benefit to work is "xcode support" and "better refactoring" which is awesome
:)
~~~
oflannabhra
The proposal is to split the LSP implementation into a transport layer and a
logical layer. The current LSP implementation is directly tied to JSON-RPC.
Apple's end goal is, as you say, to get clangd to work with Xcode. However,
having a replaceable transport layer for LSP could benefit lots of people
other than Apple.
~~~
DannyBee
Sure, it's nice, but again, being pragmatic, nobody else has desired such a
thing that much.
Ie so far the "lots of people" have not materialized, even outside clangd.
I can certainly think of use cases for such a thing, but most people seem
happy enough with json-rpc at the moment.
Part of that is likely that trying to speak LSP over a non local connection
may be a fools errand anyway. It's a chatty protocol no matter what the
transport.
~~~
oflannabhra
Just because Apple is the first doesn't mean there won't be others. Maybe
others have not materialized because the upfront cost of updating clangd was
judged too high.
JSON-RPC has several alternatives that very large software companies have
vested interests in: gRPC and XPC.
You seem more knowledgeable of these technologies than I am, though. It just
seems to me a good thing that 1) Apple, and consequently, all iOS and macOS
developers will be using clangd, and 2) Apple is putting significant effort
into improving clangd. I'm not sure why any of that news or optimism needs to
be quenched.
~~~
DannyBee
My point was precisely that plenty of languages have LSP implementations at
this point, an f even in those, nobody has cared much to try to find an
alternative to json rpc.
As for 2, all I'll say is based on history in llvm projects, I'm not anywhere
near as optimistic as you. The history here is simply not one of all great
things. The PR is, but the reality is much more mixed (some really great
things, some really not so great). So while I certainly am hopeful, it's
definitely not the unbridled optimism everyone displays here.
~~~
kenferry
You don't think apple's support of llvm and clang has been important to the
project? That's REALLY pushing it.
~~~
DannyBee
That's not what i said at all. I said some things have been really great, some
really not so great. This isn't even a controversial view among long-time
llvmers.
Heck, last time i asked him (a few months ago), even Chris Lattner agreed with
my view, and he used to run his stuff at Apple, so i don't think it's
unreasonable.
I think it's perfectly okay to be cautiously optimistic instead of fawningly
happy.
Do you actually have data or a real argument you'd like to use to suggest
otherwise (IE that it's been all overwhelmingly positive?)
------
saagarjha
I'm glad to see that Apple is putting work into making their tooling better
and easier to work with, but I'm still not clear on the benefits of this
change. Would someone care to enlighten me? Currently, the benefits of
libclang that I see are that I can easily drop it into a project without
requiring a lot of dependencies, and I don't need to figure out how to get
permission to run different processes and manage interprocess communication
between them–if anyone doubts that this will be an issue, on iOS neither of
these is really supported at all. In addition, I don't require a daemon to
constantly be running to analyze my code. (Why is this bad? Take a look at
Swift's sourcekitd.)
~~~
vhbit
> if anyone doubts that this will be an issue, on iOS neither of these is
> really supported at all
What for you might need it on iOS? Server is meant to run on a development
machine.
~~~
JDevlieghere
> What for you might need it on iOS? Server is meant to run on a development
> machine.
While I totally agree, I can see the author's point. Think for example about
Swift Playgrounds.
------
CodeArtisan
There is an article from 2010 titled "Emacs is dead" that is being reposted on
HN from time to time. The author args that the greatness of Emacs is to rely
on external, editor agnostic tools where text act as an universal
interface/medium but that the practice is fading out, and thus the dead of
Emacs. Now, ten years later, Apple announces this. Emacs, the undead?
[https://tkf.github.io/2013/06/04/Emacs-is-
dead.html](https://tkf.github.io/2013/06/04/Emacs-is-dead.html)
~~~
oblio
I think you might be right, but the greater context is highly ironic.
The company resurrecting the Emacs concepts is Microsoft. They're the ones
that created OmniSharp, bringing the idea of language servers to the
programming mainstream. They then created the Language Server Protocol for
what now is Emacs's biggest long term rival in the flexible editor arena:
Visual Studio Code.
Visual Studio Code is for the moment on a somewhat bloated and shaky
foundation because of Electron. But otherwise its design is quite solid. And
even that foundation will probably become a lot stronger in the next few years
as WebAssembly gains wide adoption. Visual Studio Code itself is written in
Typescript and it's not hard to imagine Microsoft adding a WASM backend to it.
~~~
terminalcommand
I think Emacs's greatest strength comes from the ability to use a single
scripting language throughout the whole editor. I can quickly write up some
ELISP statement to do anything, if I like it I can put it in a file and load
it. If I want to share it, I put it in an extension.
I've just looked up the official tutorial on making an extension in VS Code.
It seemed cumbersome. You need a code generator to lay the foundations, you
need to consult the API docs etc.
With Emacs you can learn as you go and the editor itself guides you if you
ever get stuck. You can read the source of any part of Emacs you like, change
it on the fly, evaluate and try it (except for some core modules written in
C). And I think that's the beauty of Emacs. Emacs is easy to tinker with.
~~~
oblio
Yeah, but I have a million monkeys^Wdevelopers at my back for
Javascript/Typescript. How many divisions does Lisp have?
~~~
fourthark
Out of curiosity I looked it up. It's a factor of 200: 3788 packages on MELPA,
vs 650000 packages on NPM.
------
pjmlp
Looking forward to it.
It is really nice to finally start having C++ environments close to the
promise of Energize C++ and Visual Age C++ 4.
~~~
codetrotter
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25r6pw/a_demo_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25r6pw/a_demo_of_lucids_1993_graphical_cc_programming/)
They mentioned incremental compilation in the first few seconds of the video.
Didn’t watch the rest of the video yet.
I’ve always wished for incremental compilation. Imagine incremental
compilation that was so fine grained it would recompile only the functions you
changed. Of course this makes full-program optimization impossible but I think
most of us don’t compile at the highest optimization levels during development
anyway because doing so slows down builds without any benefit for development
builds. For production builds we use the highest optimization levels of
course.
Additionally I would like to have hot patching. I know some people have this,
personally I’ve never had that.
If anyone knows about any systems for hot patching Rust code please let me
know :)
~~~
pjmlp
While not perfect, Visual C++ makes it a nice experience.
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/10/05/faster-c-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/10/05/faster-
c-build-cycle-in-vs-15-with-debugfastlink/)
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/4khtbfyf.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/4khtbfyf.aspx)
------
fowl2
I'm assuming this is the "LSP" discussed?
[https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-
protocol/](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/)
Mapping json-rpc onto xpc... Sure why not
~~~
fokinsean
Woah I had never seen this before. That's really cool. So in theory you can
make your own editor and provide a ton of IDE-like features by communicating
with this server?
Are there any other implementations of LSP by other orgs?
~~~
evmar
[https://langserver.org/](https://langserver.org/)
------
jupp0r
I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand it's really nice to see Apple jump on the LSP train and use
standard tooling for their IDE to interact with language tools.
On the other hand, instead of having a consistent strategy of using proper LSP
(which by specification is JSONRPC), they are shoehorning LSP on top of their
in-house XPC transport. To do that they're planning to introduce additional
complexity to clangd (a transport abstraction), while actually defeating one
of the main purposes of LSP, which is reducing the m-times-n complexity
problem of matching compilers with tools to an m-plus-n complexity problem. No
other tools (unless they support LSP-over-XPC as well) will be able to talk to
XCode. XCode won't be able to talk to other tools. I hope they rethink that
decision, keep clangd simple and instead adopt proper (JSONRPC) LSP in all of
their other tools for Swift, etc instead. That way they'd not only open up
XCode to clangd, but also all other editors to their refactoring tools for
Swift, etc.
------
raverbashing
Could someone explain what's the difference between both approaches and what
are the advantages of Clangd?
~~~
ninkendo
Moving language parsing/refactoring/etc into a separate daemon is a step
towards unifying tooling around specific protocols for interacting with
compilers. Microsoft's effort towards a single language server protocol is
worth mentioning: [https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-
protocol](https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol)
I'd love to see a future when new languages/compilers can implement this
protocol for their external compiling daemons and just get support in all the
various text editors/IDEs automatically.
------
vhbit
I hope that it also means there will be Apple-provided LSP server for Swift
soon.
~~~
solarexplorer
There is one already: SourceKit [http://www.jpsim.com/uncovering-
sourcekit/](http://www.jpsim.com/uncovering-sourcekit/)
------
woolvalley
This is great news! More parts of xcode are being exposed as open source and
clangd is getting more engineering resources.
------
Game_Ender
Does anyone have any details about Apples cross language indexer they mention?
A good indexer is the key to and efficient language server and I think
clangd’s is a little weak right now.
------
flamedoge
I tried building Clangd in trunk but failed to build.
~~~
DannyBee
We build and use it every day, so ... report it on the list?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wifi antenna made from a tetra-brik juice box - pizza
http://www.drivebywifiguide.com/TetraBrikHowTo.htm
======
Kaibeezy
OK, what was the sci fi story with the aliens that lived on a planet with an
opaque atmosphere, so they had box-shaped antenna heads and “saw” with strong
microwave(?) beams?
------
pewdiepotpie
nom nom pringles and tetra juice, and warcraft a la nieghbor.
The one tweak i would make is the antenna element AKA "toothpick" is depicted
as a blunt end cut. It may be non essential however its called toothpick
because the terminus is pointy. The gain in transmitted energy may put you in
FCC fine territory, and if you couple this with a WRT upgrade to your router,
its possible to produce hazardous energy levels.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NetBSD Kernel Drivers Compiled to Javascript and Run in Browser - self
http://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/kernel_drivers_compiled_to_javascript
======
jfaucett
this is extemely cool :) I didn't know about emscripten, I just found many
nice projects on that link so here it is again:
<https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It’s a rails world babe and it ain’t magic - mlitwiniuk
https://prograils.com/posts/its-a-rails-world-babe-and-it-aint-magic
======
inkkin
It's so nice to remember those memories. The good old days. Im kindda moved to
tears.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows 8 for software developers: the Longhorn dream reborn? - hugorodgerbrown
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/06/windows-8-for-software-developers-the-longhorn-dream-reborn.ars/
======
larsberg
This article gets more than a smidge of its history wrong. For instance, it
makes it seem as if WPF (nee Avalon) was written by DevDiv in isolation from
Windows, where in reality the Avalon team was mostly made of the former IE
team after its legal dismemberment. In fact, we moved my team (which was
focused on developer tools on, for, and made with WPF) from DevDiv buildings
into Windows buildings just so we could build apps and tools for Avalon to
help test their platform.
But, it was a big effort. And even coming from inside of Windows, getting the
rest of the shell to run on a whole new stack -- from drivers, through C++
layers, through managed -- was a challenge, especially with all of the other
things going on in Longhorn. Sometimes, you bite off more than you can chew,
especially when you make the dependency stack too deep.
Also, all of this happened _long_ before Silverlight efforts started... XAML
came out of the WPF work. Arguing Silverlight stole DevDiv focus from WPF
during the Longhorn timeframe is temporally impossible. Certainly, you could
argue DevDiv was being pulled in many directions with the concurrent efforts
to placate the VB4 crowd, push out a new version of VS, figure out a new
syntax for Managed C++, compete with the then-rapidly-expanding Java tools
ecosystem, and support all of the internal and demanding partners (especially
SQL and other Windows efforts). But a substantial portion of both the tools
and .NET runtime team's efforts were spent making Avalon perform, and I don't
think that even now anybody who was there would claim that more DevDiv
resources could have made the "Windows Shell is now made from WPF" effort
succeed in the desired schedule.
------
brudgers
The article plays on the ambiguity in the phrase "Windows is not based on
.NET."
On the one hand, if "Windows" refers to the black box bits and pieces of code
which make up the Windows operating system, then it is pretty much true that
Windows is not based on .NET.
On the other hand, if "Windows" refers to the interfaces to the black box with
which software developers _typically_ interact, then it is largely true that
Windows is based on .NET because .NET provides control of the operating system
for the vast majority of projects. Yes, there are exceptions - but from a
practical standpoint, the working of the black box is irrelevant for most
projects and it appears that Microsoft recognized this when Longhorn was
shelved.
The speculation that the javascript/HTML5 model indicates a fundamental
architectural shift in the Windows OS core seems to be unjustifed - the
meaningful evidence for such an architectural shift being underway is the
demonstrated ability of Windows 8 to run on diverse architectures.
Which is why the FUD being disseminated about the Javascript HTML model is so
interesting. It is nothing new; merely another implementation of an idea
Microsoft has been kicking around for years: i.e. HTA's (HTML Applications)
have been a part of Windows for more than a decade.
[<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application>]
[[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms536496%28v=VS.85%2...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms536496%28v=VS.85%29.aspx)]
In addition given that .NET can provide total control of the browser and that
such a browser exists on the Windows platform in the form of IE, the whole
javascript/html model Microsoft demonstrates can be seen as just another layer
running on top of .NET.
~~~
ern
_refers to the interfaces to the black box with which software developers
typically interact, then it is largely true that Windows is based on .NET
because .NET provides control of the operating system for the vast majority of
projects_
I agree that the vast majority of Windows thick client _business_ projects
developed in the last few years probably target .NET, but, looking at the
start menu on my Vista laptop currently, apart from dev tools, PAINT.NET and
Keepass 2.0 (which still maintains a 1.x Win32 release), every other end-user
application installed on my machine does not run on .NET.
EDIT: In fact, I only run Keepass 2.0 for Mono compatibility on Ubuntu. I also
would guess that a default Ubuntu desktop install has more dependencies on
Mono, than a default Windows install does on .NET.
------
nhebb
I sell a Windows application targeted toward business users. 57% of my site's
visitors are still running XP. Of those who purchase, 50% are XP, 40% are Win
7, and 10% are Vista users. So forgive me for not getting excited about
changes to any upcoming version of Windows because until the folks in Redmond
design an OS that businesses are interested in, it's mostly moot.
~~~
goalieca
The thing that kills me is that XP is basically 10 years old now. It still
"adds a new device" every time i plug in a usb key.
~~~
melling
Why should this change? Microsoft has invested billions in Vista and Windows
7. It's time to upgrade. Supporting all the legacy costs Microsoft money that
can be better spent on future enhancements.
~~~
cturner
Microsoft has invested billions in Vista and Windows 7.
It's time to upgrade
Non-sequiter.
You can buy support for legacy versions of VMS, Unix and OS/2.
Supporting all the legacy costs Microsoft money that
can be better spent on future enhancements.
It would be definitely be cost-effective to sell Windows XP support.
The reason for withdrawing XP support are strategic, not cost-oriented (nor
customer-oriented!!)
------
MetallicCloud
How can there be so much in fighting within Microsoft?
Surely there must be a manager somewhere that looks over both teams and makes
sure they aren't trying to shaft each other.
~~~
StrawberryFrog
I'd imagine that that manager is Steve Balmer, or only 1 level below him. The
heads of WinDiv (<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ssinofsky/> ) and
DevDiv (Not sure who that is - Scott Guthrie or his boss?) are pretty senior.
Has the infighting gotten worse since Bill Gates handed over?
~~~
michael_dorfman
ScottGu's boss is Soma (<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/somasegar/>),
if I am not mistaken.
~~~
StrawberryFrog
Ok. Still, I get the feeling that Balmer should be sorting this out and
setting direction. or making sure that someone does. Doing the "vision thing".
Leading, basically.
------
extension
Developers asked about Windows APIs. Then Windows builds leaked to the
internet with the new APIs. Maybe they got their answer?
------
io
This might be interesting in ten years, when virtually everybody's running
Win8 or later and I can consider using the new API.
------
Blunt
".NET would be the way to write Windows applications. Win32 would still exist
for backwards compatibility, but it would be frozen and left static."
OMG, Another non-technical person trying to write about technology again
<sigh>
~~~
z92
Just curious. How is it wrong?
~~~
artmageddon
In my opinion, it's very misleading because the .Net framework relies on the
Win32 API to interact with the operating system. Without Win32, there's no
.Net, so if Microsoft plans to make upgrades/updates to the OS, how can it do
so when Win32 is "frozen and static?" While it's clear that they will
eventually(hopefully) rewrite the main applications(Explorer, Calculator, etc)
to use .Net, that last part didn't seem to make sense given the dependency of
.Net on Win32.
Edit: Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm looking to make sure I
understand. I based my comment off of David Morton / nobugz's comments in the
following thread:
[http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/netfxbcl/thread/a...](http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/netfxbcl/thread/ac6a20d5-3d18-4eb2-acd6-5bae1774f14a)
~~~
rahoulb
As I remember it (and it is a long time ago), one of the key promises of
Longhorn was it was to make .Net a peer of Win32.
At the time (Win2K, WinXP time) there were a few ways to write apps that ran
on Windows - Win32 was the preferred way (using a C api), but there was also a
much neglected POSIX layer, the DOS API and Win16 (the last two using what
they called "virtualization" though I don't know exactly how it worked).
COM, MFC, .NET (and Delphi) built layers over the top of Win32 - so if it
wasn't in Win32 it couldn't be done.
The promise of Longhorn was that .Net would become a peer to Win32, not a
layer over the top of it, so it could become the foundation for moving the
core of Windows forwards (as the parent says, freezing Win32 and adding stuff
to .NET).
And then the security issues over XP and the ever increasing delays to
Longhorn prompted the "Longhorn reset" (in about 2003?), which threw this away
(making Vista a shinier version of XP with an annoying security model, rather
than a fundamental rethinking of the internals of Windows).
~~~
kenjackson
_As I remember it (and it is a long time ago), one of the key promises of
Longhorn was it was to make .Net a peer of Win32._
I don't recall that, and I don't think it would make sense (although I'm not
saying it wasn't the case). Win32 provides so many services it would be
foolish to reimplement them. And .NET and Win32 come from the same company. If
there was a feature that the .NET team needed exposed, it would probably be
easier to get them from the Windows team than to plumb it themselves in a
subsystem.
~~~
rahoulb
Well one thing i definitely do remember about Microsoft at that time was their
"white papers" that were little more than made-up visions of a utopian future
(which when implemented fell a long way short).
My favourite (from a bit earlier - mid 90s I think) was the "zero-
configuration PC" - no matter which PC you logged into it would know all your
settings, programmes and documents - which eventually materialised as a
"synchronised My Documents folder".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Id built Wolfenstein 3D using Commander Keen tech - Impossible
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/344672/How_id_built_Wolfenstein_3D_using_Commander_Keen_tech.php
======
Jayschwa
Hovertank and Catacomb, the games between Keen and Wolfenstein, are both open-
sourced:
[https://github.com/FlatRockSoft/Hovertank3D](https://github.com/FlatRockSoft/Hovertank3D)
[https://github.com/CatacombGames/Catacomb3D](https://github.com/CatacombGames/Catacomb3D)
I'm the current owner of the Catacomb games, and have been working on
improving and porting them in my spare time (not publicly available yet, but
will be When It's Done). Fabien's Game Engine Black Book has been an
invaluable resource for me. I highly recommend it!
~~~
abeisgreat
How did you become the current owner? I'm very curious about how you went
about obtaining the rights.
~~~
Jayschwa
The original publisher, Softdisk sold many of its assets to Flat Rock Software
in the 2000s. Flat Rock sold off bits and pieces over the years, and the
Catacomb games were one of the last things it held [1]. In 2017, I wrote a toy
implementation of Catacomb 3D in WebGL [2]. Since the project used art that
was under copyright, I contacted Richard at Flat Rock to ask permission to use
it. That conversation eventually led to me deciding to buy the overall game
ownership from him [3].
[1]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150101022225/http://www.flatro...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150101022225/http://www.flatrocksoft.com/)
[2]:
[https://github.com/jayschwa/CatacombWebGL](https://github.com/jayschwa/CatacombWebGL)
[3]:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170623155041/http://www.flatro...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170623155041/http://www.flatrocksoft.com/)
~~~
jackpirate
Wow! Mind if I ask what the price is to the rights of an old game like
Catacomb?
~~~
mysterydip
I was looking into buying that IP a few years ago, and the asking price was
affordable (I just didn't have the $ at the time so I went onto other
projects). Glad to see someone doing something with it, I think it's perfect
for a remake.
~~~
theresistor
Would you be willing to share an order of magnitude?
~~~
mysterydip
It was high four figures
------
leshokunin
It can’t be understated how much impact Wolfenstein 3D and Doom had. Commander
Keen was already quite the tech demo, with scrolling on a PC without dedicated
hardware; the most advanced platforming you’d see at the time would be Price
of Persia.
Wolf 3D felt like a next gen tech demo out of time. It was great fun, it was
violent, it looked unlike anything else (besides Ultima Underworld). Of
course, that monumental achievement looks insignificant when compared with
Doom, which single-handedly added stairs, different floors, multiplayer (!)
and modding.
Most of us here work in software. To see software so casually come in,
introduce never seen before concepts, it’s so impressive to me. I don’t think
That I know of something having quite this impact in other aspects of
software.
~~~
BurningFrog
I've played much "better" games than Doom in many ways, but never one so
revolutionary for its time, and I've never been so genuinely _afraid_ when
playing.
But seriously: Overstated! You mean overstated!
~~~
hnzix
_> so genuinely afraid_
As a little tyke I used to actually duck left of my monitor when an imp threw
a fireball with my heart thumping. Replaying as an adult I'm like wtf that's
just a lumpy mass of pixels, how could I have been so scared?
~~~
ygra
I remember watching my father play Descent and that was pretty much the first
real 3D game I've seen (Germany, so there was a bit of trouble with Doom and
Wolfenstein). And I was constantly trying to peek around corners by moving my
head.
~~~
monster99
You should all check out overload by the original descent developers.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/)
------
doomlaser
Impressive id went through development of Quake 3 with no version control.
When I was interning at Apple back in the day I had a side project of porting
wolf3d to OS X, and it was the first occasion I had where I came to admire
John Carmack's code directly. His game source code is something I recommend
checking out to coders interested in gamedev.
Also, I have fond memories of poking around making DOS experiments in Borland
C++ as a teen.
But speaking of version control — I guess that's just how things were done in
the 90s. I read recently that not only was Final Fantasy 7 developed and
shipped without it, but Squaresoft contemporaneously lost the final
PlayStation source code and art assets. The studio contracted to port it to PC
was supplied with a mishmash of non-final code and assets.
~~~
mr_toad
Version control software was a lot more primitive and less fun to use in the
90s. On Unix you had CVS, on Windows just VSS. SVN, Mercurial and Git all came
post 2000.
~~~
hinkley
And it took SVN a couple extra years to be performant on Windows, which at the
time was still the dominant development environment in many places.
Maybe my second SVN project, we had a monorepo, Windows, and a virus scanner
(multiply pull time by five). I'd come in in the morning, log in, do an svn
up, go get coffee and say hi to the people I was collaborating with, and be
back to my desk all before it finished.
Many days I only synced to head twice because it was a pain in the ass, and
the SVN maintainers were not at all sympathetic. A new contributor
consolidated the config files and cut the number of file open operations by a
couple orders of magnitude. I don't think we ever properly thanked that guy.
~~~
dev_dull
> _A new contributor consolidated the config files and cut the number of file
> open operations by a couple orders of magnitude. I don 't think we ever
> properly thanked that guy._
Unspoken benefit of “new person” — eventually someone not desensitized to the
crap will throw up their hands and fix it.
~~~
vidarh
Sometimes it's so tiny too, but requires you to look at code that nobody else
has a reason to look at any more.
I once increased performance of a CMS by 30 percent my first day in the job
because I happened to spot a handful of lines of unnecessary string copying
while trying to figure out how the thing worked.
Everyone else could have, but none of them had any reason to look at that part
of the code because it worked.
------
cgrealy
"We didn’t have a version control system. Surprisingly, we went all the way to
Quake 3 without one, then we started using Visual Source Safe."
That is both impressive and terrifying. I'm old enough to remember when I
first started using VSS, and being amazed at how awesome source control was :D
These days, it's hard to look back at SourceSafe with anything other than
horror....
~~~
alain94040
There was a transition from the 80s to late 90s: until you had some kind of
network, the important thing was to backup your machine. Daily if you can.
Even if you had been running a local revision control on your local machine,
you wouldn't be protected enough, so backups were more important.
Once networking and servers became more prevalent, it slowly made sense that
backups turned into revision control. If your machine crashes, there is a
remote repo you can connect to and get back to where you were.
------
bluedino
>> Everybody was working witht he best PC money could buy, a high end
386DX/33MHz with 4MB of RAM
According to a May 15, 1990 issue of PC Magazine, that was a $3,500-4,000 USD
machine back then.
Used to develop Wolf3D, but only good for about 8fps when Doom (ID's next hit)
came out.
~~~
rhacker
Interestingly that's the exact PC my dad bought us when we were kids. I loved
how computers back then had a turbo button, but I could never figure out why
anyone would turn off turbo! :P
~~~
spion
I believe it was due to programs (mainly games) that relied on clock speed to
work. If you ran some of them with turbo, they were so fast they were
unplayable.
------
snvsn
"Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture"
has an excellent account of how Romero and Carmack built these games.
~~~
abraae
I've tried using that book to explain to people how "real" software
development works. How the inception of the real cool shit, the stuff that
spawns a company, is almost always 2, 3 or a small handful of people working
late, night after night, living on pizzas and cola, churning code. And how
that apparent anarchy is a more productive environment that ten pointy headed
bosses plugging away at their gantt charts and a hundred 9 to 5 developers
carrying out their orders.
~~~
untog
Not that I want to be seen defending pointy headed bosses, but I think there's
a fair amount of survivorship bias in your statement. How many groups of 2-3
people have worked late, lived on pizza and coke and produced absolute
garbage? Quite a few, but you never hear about them because they aren't
notable.
You don't have to get into pointy headed boss territory to be a successful
programmer _and_ leave the office at a respectable time every day.
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Are many successful game programmers in corporate environments leaving the
office at a respectable time every day? I definitely don't get that impression
at all.
At least in a 2/3 man team surviving on pizza and Coke you're not lining
someone else's pockets with millions of dollars only to be thrown out onto the
street at the end of the process.
------
bitwize
A version of Keen's tile editor was used to create maps for games as recent as
_Rise of the Triad_ , which was itself built on a modified Wolfenstein engine.
~~~
jonny_eh
> as recent as Rise of the Triad
Released December 21, 1994
~~~
gmueckl
That game got a remake a couple of years ago. I don't know if they were
referring to that.
~~~
SketchySeaBeast
If they were still using the Keen Tile Editor that'd be amazing.
~~~
bitwize
I was referring to the original -- which was still released after _Doom_ came
out.
------
filereaper
John Romero mentions this in his talk - "The Early Days of Id Software"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFziBfvAFnM)
~~~
filereaper
John talks about Id's Software Principles, one of the YouTube commenters (Sean
Ramey) summarized them below:
1\. No prototypes. Just make the game. Polish as you go. Don't depend on
polish happening later. Always maintain constantly shippable code. (Large
teams require more planning though.)
2\. It's incredibly important that your game can always be run by your team.
Bulletproof your engine by providing defaults (for input data) upon load
failure.
3\. Keep your code absolutely simple. Keep looking at your functions and
figure out how you can simplify further.
4\. Great tools help make great games. Spend as much time on tools as
possible.
5\. We are our own best testing team and should never allow anyone else to
experience bugs or see the game crash. Don't waste others' time. Test
thoroughly before checking in your code.
6\. As soon as you see a bug, you fix it. Do not continue on. If you don't fix
your bugs your new code will be built on a buggy codebase and ensure an
unstable foundation.
7\. Use a development system that is superior to your target.
8\. Write your code for this game only - not for a future game. You're going
to be writing new code later because you'll be smarter.
9\. Encapsulate functionality to ensure design consistency. This minimizes
mistakes and saves design time.
10\. Try to code transparently. Tell your lead and peers exactly how you are
going to solve your current task and get feedback and advice. Do not treat
game programming like each coder is a black box. The project could go off the
rails and cause delays.
11\. Programming is a creative art form based in logic. Every programmer is
different and will code differently. It's the output that matters.
Extra advice:
1\. Only program for a few minutes and test code immediately. Try not to code
for even as long as 30 minutes. This is will help to avoid debugging because
you will catch bugs sooner, and won't have as wide an area of code to look
through for the bug.
------
LocalH
Interesting how they make sure to mention the use of 320x200 during graphic
editing to maintain proper aspect ratio, then display screenshots from the
game in improper aspect ratio
------
bcheung
Wow, those screenshots bring back memories. Used that same exact IDE to make
games when I was a kid. It was an amazing time to be programming.
------
scarface74
And notice that they used an IDE. So that kind of gives credence to the idea
and the HN meme that “10x developers don’t use IDE’s” is BS....
~~~
bonzini
You are not making an equal comparison. DOS at the time didn't have multiple
windows or multitasking. People that don't use IDEs these days still use
multiple terminals or windows.
Using the Borland C++ IDE in 1991 is way more similar to using Emacs these
days, than Visual Studio Code.
~~~
scarface74
The source code for Doom 3 (circa 2004) was released on Github - it was a
Visual Studio solution.
[http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/](http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/)
------
QuadrupleA
Great article - cool to get an inside look at tools, IDE environments, art
sketches etc.
Such an exciting time for PC games, with ID way out at the forefront - highly
recommend the Masters of Doom book mentioned in the article too, it's a deep
dive into the making and eventual impact of Doom. Great snapshot of the ID
guys and of that time period.
------
m12k
For anyone curious about the technical details, there's a decent description
of how Adaptive Tile Refresh works in the wikipedia article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh)
------
btilly
I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D for many hours back in grad school.
Then Doom came out, and I found out the hard way that I get motion sickness
from playing immersive games with good graphics. :-(
I've not been able to play first person shooters since. But I sure loved
Wolfenstein 3D.
~~~
lostmyoldone
Used to get severe motion sickness too until I figured out it went away at
high FPS. At least for well made games with low input latency.
With a good 1000Hz wired mouse and games I where I get _at least_ 100fps,
preferably >144fps, I don't feel anything at all when I play. Still can't
watch others play though.
~~~
btilly
My curiosity is not sufficient to test whether the same is true for me.
Particularly not since if I get immersed in the game, by the time I realize it
is happening it is too late. The potential upside just isn't there to make it
worthwhile.
However I've also found that 3-D systems that everyone else oohs over whose
operators promise don't cause motion sickness any more, always do. Really
fast. So I'm apparently on the sensitive end of motion sickness from computer
systems.
------
mobilemidget
These two titles in one sentence, make me wonder how a 3d shooter version of
Commander Keen would be with current day graphics.....
------
acjohnson55
My dad brought copies of both of these games home on floppy disk, which is
what got me into computers.
------
x3ro
Shameless plug: this reminds me of how I once spent an afternoon compiling the
open sourced version of Keen Dreams using Borland C++ 3.1 :D
[http://x3ro.de/2014/09/18/keen-dreams-
dosbox.html](http://x3ro.de/2014/09/18/keen-dreams-dosbox.html)
------
Yajirobe
What is the blue-yellow IDE/editor called?
~~~
pjmlp
It is quite clear on the figure captions, Borland C++ 3.1.
~~~
gmueckl
You could even license the UI library from Borland for use in your own
programs. And Turbo Pascal had the exact same look.
Later, there was a near clone of the Borland IDE called RHIDE which wrapped
DJGPP, a GCC port for DOS/DPMS. I had some fun times with that.
~~~
antod
_> You could even license the UI library from Borland for use in your own
programs. And Turbo Pascal had the exact same look._
Turbo Vision?
~~~
dfox
They even released the C++ version as public domain. Free Pascal uses it's own
Free Vision which is back port of the TUI support into Graphics Vision[1]
(which in turn is LGPL's reimplementation of Turbo Vision API in graphical
mode)
[1]
[https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe/mkm/mkmeng.html](https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe/mkm/mkmeng.html)
------
Endy
I miss Keen.
------
m3kw9
Now that’s a flex!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Government responded to the petition against UK new surveillance laws - vvvv
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/173199?reveal_response=yes
======
GordonS
> It protects both privacy and security
I literally spit coffee all over my monitor when I read that, so thanks UK gov
:/
> The Government is clear that, at a time of heightened security threat, it is
> essential
Ah, because 'terrorists'. A tiny minority that these laws would never do
anything to stop. Now it makes sense?!
~~~
rubberstamp
I did expect some response along those lines, but this is utterly ridiculous.
They say it protects privacy and security and essentially getting access to
all your internet activities. What happened to get a warrant if law
enforcement need to start monitoring on some one?
I wonder what the debate would look like? It would probably be well rehearsed
with all the appropriate dialogues which has the right amount of words
"terrorists" and "pedophile" mixed with it and life made difficult to anyone
who calls bullshit on these kind of intrusive laws.
~~~
GordonS
>and life made difficult to anyone who calls bullshit on these kind of
intrusive laws
That started over a week ago.
A spokewoman for the Home Office said this when asked about ordinary people
circumventing logging by using a VPN:
"Terrorists and serious criminals will always seek to avoid detection"[1]
In that context, this is basically implying that anyone who values their
privacy must be a terrorist or criminal. It scares me where we are going with
this...
[1]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38068078](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38068078)
------
mvip
Remember kids, if you want any otherwise bizarre law passed, take a note from
GCHQ and NSA: use the words "terrorism" and "pedophiles" in the text as
frequently as possible. Then it doesn't matter how bizarre the rest is.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
"I Won The Windows Phone Challenge, But Lost 'Just Because'" - AgentConundrum
http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone-challenge-but-lost-just-because/
======
Lewisham
Microsoft has a knack for choosing (and approving) the most boneheaded PR
stints in the business... do they pay companies for this nonsense or do they
just come up with it themselves?
In a nutshell, the campaign is "Watch us humiliate you and the phone you are
spending a lot of your hard-earned money on." Why would anyone think that
making consumers feel _bad_ is going to lead them to having the warm, fuzzy
feelings necessary to buy their product?
Last year's marketing for Windows Phone was awful because it _didn't show the
phone_. Show the phone! It looks great. Tell consumers why they should want
it. Not "it does what your phone does, just a bit faster in rigged
competitions." Show it working with Xbox. With Hotmail. Show its hubs. "Ever
wonder what Dave is doing? On Facebook? On Foursquare? On Twitter? Now you
know."
Apple and Google keep knocking their campaigns out the park because they're
built on honesty. Microsoft's campaigns are built on gimmicks and bullshit,
and it shows.
~~~
stfu
Absolutely. The idea is just asking for trouble - there will always be at
least some dude who feels that he was treaded unfairly and reallies up the
internets. Plus I am not sure how important the "speed" factor for most users
really is. There are the fuzzy Apples, the Androids of freedom, the business
berrys, but I am not sure if speed is an adequate positioning.
~~~
ugh
Emphasizing speed misses qualities people actually love about Windows Phone 7
by miles. Only someone who is disconnected from or unfamiliar with the product
will come up with stuff like that.
There is the stark and fresh design that (independently of whatever merits it
might have) makes other mobile operating systems look old. There is the
cohesiveness of the experience that even makes iOS look like it doesn’t know
what it wants to be. There is the integration with Facebook that makes the
phone personal without having to do anything†.
All those are things actual people praised about Windows Phone 7. Not speed in
some highly constrained scenarios.
—
† If you use Facebook a lot. This might shock some people on HN, but most
people who also can buy a smartphone do.
~~~
onemoreact
Can you be more specific? I found Windows Phone 7 to be terrible as in worse
than Android, iPhone, and Blackberry bad. The tile interface falls down vary
quickly and the app store is a ghost town.
~~~
Yhippa
How is WP7 worse than the others? How does the tile interface "fall down"?
~~~
onemoreact
There is a lot I don't like about Windows 7 phones but I am going to stick
with the tile interface because it's the most obviously bad design.
Smooth scrolling looks cool, but locating something in the middle of a long
list is much easier with separate pages. Which is not such a big deal, but
tiles take up more space than the old button interface so you don't get to
display a lot of them at the same time.
Basicly, 2 tiles wide * 4 tiles tall = at most 8 per tiles page. Sliding up
and down one page works fine, but what if you want 17 tiles? you now slide a
little and look for what you want to hit which you can't do with muscle
memory. Compare with both iPhone and Android which fit 20 apps per page just
fine no scrolling required.
As to updates, texts, email, phone calls have value. Knowing what temperature
is is right now in two city's at the same time is practically pointless. As in
how often do you want this vs. the actual forecast over some period of time?
PS: And I don't say this as someone that hates MS. I am a C# developer, with
an MSDN subscription who like a lot of what they have been up to recently. I
even liked Vista on good hardware, but I just think there phone OS is
terrible.
------
noonespecial
It sounds to me like all of the contests were set to be won by
_preconfiguration_ , not phone speed. Having two live-tiles already set up
with the winning condition, known in advance only by the employee is hardly a
contest.
They didn't just not want to pay out. They likely didn't even know how. It was
never even considered a possibility.
~~~
recoiledsnake
>They didn't just not want to pay out. They likely didn't even know how. It
was never even considered a possibility.
There have been previous losses and money was paid.
[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/arch...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2012/01/12/video-
windows-phone-wins-88-of-smokedbywindowsphone-challenges-at-ces-2012.aspx)
This might be a couple of rogue employees doing this instead of a company
policy.
~~~
vibrunazo
That seems like a different and very specific event. But have there been any
actual laptops awarded on these window store competitions?
------
bobbles
This reddit discussion has many people coming forward that 'won' and then
didn't get anything for it:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/)
There is also a post by someone that 'tied' and then went to win on the next
turn, even though their own terms of the contest state that in the event of a
tie, the customer wins.
~~~
ilamont
Here's one example:
_TL;DR They were throttling their wifi and when I beat them with LTE they
didn't pay up saying it has to be one the first try._
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/c45037b)
Another one:
_I too took on the challenge. Which was to post a message to facebook and
email the same message to myself as well. Microsoft phone has a me tile, that
posts to social media through windows live. Which is connected to your other
social media networks such as Facebook, twitter and linked in. However, it
does not email you. The guy argued that posting a status to windows live did
the same thing. It does not, and therefore I lost._
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/c44yu6a)
But a few said they were able to win a gift certificate, like this person:
_The first challenge was to find a five star restaurant in the area. I used
my voice feature to search Google and yelled got it. Right when I said got it
the employee was naming a restaurant and said we tied...So the second one was
find a movie time for a movie playing in the theater at Tysons Corner. I used
my voice to text feature again to search Google and found a time. This time
there were like 3 other employees around and one of them said, "Dude, he got
it." The manager eventually came out with my $100 gift card. They have it all
set up on their phone to just click a button and the answer pops up. For some
reason, the movie application took longer to load then normal which is why I
won._
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/c44zwkz)
------
vibrunazo
How exactly does these work? Are the competitor only told the rules (what you
should actually do) just at the time and not allowed to make any preparation.
While the windows phone is prepared specifically for that task? (I'd imagine
showing 2 separate weather apps in the homescreen isn't something the average
windows phone will be prepared for. Or the ones I saw certainly didn't)
------
fruchtose
There needs to be a public apology over this. Maybe I am too naive, but it's
disheartening that Microsoft would use such shady advertising tactics. I am
sure that employees were not allowed to actually award participants any money.
If this instruction did not come down from corporate, it probably originated
from a manager with a desire to impress the higher-ups.
------
bravura
After you say you won but were told you lost, 'I was then asked to snap a
photo in front of a sign that read along the lines of “My Android was smoked
by Windows Phone” before leaving the store.'
You should have declined.
~~~
AgentConundrum
I didn't write this post. I added quotes around the title to try to
distinguish this point.
That said, I agree. The OP commented on the reddit thread for this[1], which
is where I found this before posting it to HN, and said that he took the
picture because he had signed something agreeing to be used in advertising.
Other commenters pointed out that Microsoft had broken the agreement already
so he was under no obligation to comply.
Without having read the rules, which may list specific obligations, my
reaction is that I would have told them that they were perfectly welcome to
use whatever footage or photos they had taken during the event, but that there
was no way I would pose for them after they refused to admit I'd won.
[1]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/rdgtz/i_won_the_windows_phone_challenge_but_lost_just/)
~~~
bravura
"Other commenters pointed out that Microsoft had broken the agreement already
so he was under no obligation to comply."
Additionally, it would have turned into a way worse PR fiasco if in any way
they tried to force him to comply. So legally and practically, nothing would
have happened.
------
atularora
Someone from Microsoft did apologize -
<https://twitter.com/#!/BenThePCGuy/status/184123838949359616>
~~~
potatolicious
Wow. Just wow. Just when you think they couldn't possibly bungle this any
further.
tl;dr: MS rep apologizes and invites him back for a rematch. Because it's like
he hasn't already won the challenge or something.
~~~
zalew
did you just provide a TLDR for a tweet?!
~~~
ben0x539
Following a twitter link involves copying the url, pasting it to the address
bar, backspacing the "#!/" and adding "m." before twitter.com, because
twitter's dumb hashbang scheme can't deal with noscript. Reading the tl;dr is
much faster!
~~~
ranit8
I use noscript and I get this horrible url, but it shows the correct tweet
(i'm not logged in). Yet it's much better reading the posted tldr.
https://twitter.com/BenThePCGuy/statuses/184123838949359616?_escaped_fragment_=/BenThePCGuy/status/184123838949359616#!/BenThePCGuy/status/184123838949359616
------
talmand
Seems to me the MS employee was cheating to begin with by choosing a task the
phone was already configured for that is not a normal use. The guy even
realized this at that moment when he felt he won out of pure luck. The
challenge might as well have been "let's see who can display a logo of a
Microsoft product on the screen first".
------
Hari_Seldon
Still can't get used to these Microsoft Stores. I should probably get over it,
but every time time I see one, it strikes me that they're copying Apple in a
really lame way.
~~~
Drbble
Visiting UVillage in Seattle is bizarre. You get the Apple Store that we all
know. And you get the Sony Style store which is like the Apple Store but
overcomplicated and weird in that Sony way, with 3-D TVs and pink Memory
Sticks. And now we have the Microsoft Store, directly across the parking lot
from Apple, with exactly the same floorplan and layout, but made with
chintzier materials and a distracting video wall and Surface table locked on
to a nonsensical tower defense game. It's like Windows incarnate: an ugly copy
of Apple design, with no comprehension of why the Apple design works.
Google should open a store too, and fill it with a bunch of free toys and
cover the walls with third-party ads.
~~~
fruchtose
Google would have to open several different stores. They are all slightly
different as the interior designer sees fit, and the plans for each are all
several years outdated. Each store is several different stories tall, but some
sections have been roped off and are in the process of being demolished--even
though some people liked those parts. All the employees ask if you know other
people who have been to the store, even though you don't use the Google store
enough to care. Occasionally sales reps walk up to you and ask you if you want
to buy a product tangentially related to something you were just thinking
about ( _how did they know?_ ); all you can do is shake your head and walk
away until the next salesperson comes up to you. Overall you get the feeling
that you'd rather be in and out of the store as quickly as possible.
------
Vergle
Incredibly grating story, I hope someone is made to apologize.
------
wizzard
How maddening. Don't create promotions like this if you're not going to pay
out.
~~~
mlreed328
Seriously. Who dreams this stuff up?
It can't go well in the age of the Internet. This is the top story on a couple
of sites I read. All it would take is for the mainstream (non-tech) press to
pick it up to create some real bad publicity.
------
rbanffy
Actually, a much more realistic image of that specific Microsoft Store is
here:
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112837958187789332975/alb...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/112837958187789332975/albums/5719596296605234049/5719613308177275186)
~~~
jcromartie
I was confused as to why there was a picture of an Apple Store with the
article... I always forget that there is such a thing as a Microsoft Store.
~~~
rbanffy
The funny trivia is that Microsoft's store is almost exactly in front of the
Apple Store. The previous picture in the album was taken from that Apple Store
a couple seconds earlier.
------
robryan
Can't say the ability to see 2 cities weather at the same time has even been
important in my choice of phone. These should really be based on things people
are actually considering when buying a phone otherwise they seem really
pointless.
------
pasbesoin
I'm not certain how one would gain sufficient attention/interest to cause an
effective response, but IIRC (and IANAL) such contests typically have rather
strict laws to follow; the foremost but not sole reason being, to avoid being
categorized as gambling. Another being to avoid being used or misused as a
mechanism to distribute payments to favored parties (one reason for the
ubiquitous disclaimers that employees of company XYZ are ineligible to
participate).
If they are not adhering to the rules that define their contest, they may be
at risk of some significant criminal infractions.
------
pbhjpbhj
Isn't this fraud?
------
lucisferre
Anyone remember the Pepsi challenge? Anyone remember Pepsi?
------
KenCochrane
Well, even if you did really win, you would have still lost, your prize would
have been a windows laptop, who wants one of those anyway?
------
acerimmer
Perhaps the employees can keep every $1000 they don't lose. That would be a
strong motivation for cheating.
Or they have a quota for losses per day.
~~~
kamjam
You think that perhaps they get to keep the quota of laptops that have not
been won?
I know if I was working in one of those stores an awful lot of my friends
would be smoking the windows phone... sorry, ahem, not friends, I meant
"random strangers that I have never met before, isn't that right"...
------
hsshah
This reminds me of their Vista PR stunt where they tricked unsuspecting users
to give favorable feedback about Vista on camera.
~~~
jasonlotito
While what you say is accurate, its misleading. The reviews were accurate, and
favorable. They just weren't told it was Vista (iirc, they were told it was
the next version).
------
tbsdy
Perhaps time to provide the store with some feedback?
[http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Microsoft%20%20Store/Feedback.asp...](http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Microsoft%20%20Store/Feedback.aspx?formID=70&Market=en-
us)
------
alvarosm
All Microsoft contests are like that, just promotional. They choose the winner
according to what they think will look better for Microsoft itself.
I participated in the Imagine Cup a few years ago when I was finishing college
and our project was technically light-years ahead of the others. We got only
the 3rd place. Two ridiculous web app-like gimmicks were 1st and 2nd. Oh and
the guy in 5th place clearly deserved the 2nd place.
Even though I knew what it would be like beforehand, I have to admit I didn't
anticipate getting screwed so badly. Our project was so cool there was no way
it couldn't win, right? apparently not, Microsoft has no shame. It left a
bitter aftertaste. On the other hand, I liked the 3rd place prize better than
the 1st prize :)
~~~
TomGullen
How can we possibly sympathise with this? The OP is about a definitive
injustice, no one could possibly comment on your case
~~~
alvarosm
¿? I don't want you to sympathise or comment on my case, why would I?. I'm
just saying that's how any Microsoft contest works, they use people and when
things don't turn out the exact way Microsoft wants they screw them.
My point is this is not an isolated case, it's Microsoft policy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tor: 'Mystery' spike in hidden addresses - escapologybb
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35614335
======
dacox
Bitcoin Core v0.12.0 was just released.
From the release notes,
Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor's control socket API, to create and destroy 'ephemeral' hidden services programmatically. Bitcoin Core has been updated to make use of this.
This means that if Tor is running (and proper authorization is available), Bitcoin Core automatically creates a hidden service to listen on, without manual configuration. Bitcoin Core will also use Tor automatically to connect to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be successfully opened. This will positively affect the number of available .onion nodes and their usage.
This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening, and a connection to Tor can be made. It can be configured with the -listenonion, -torcontrol and -torpassword settings. To show verbose debugging information, pass -debug=tor
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-n...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/release-
notes/release-notes-0.12.0.md#automatically-use-tor-hidden-services)
~~~
ikeboy
There are around 200 nodes with 12.0 installed as of now.
[https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/?q=/Satoshi:0.12.0/](https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/?q=/Satoshi:0.12.0/)
Not all of them are going to be on machines with Tor running.
------
schoen
A different hypothesis on the tor-talk list was a piece of ransomware that
generates a hidden service per victim:
[https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
talk/2016-Februar...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
talk/2016-February/040318.html)
~~~
huuu
Exactly my first reaction.
At the moment we get hundreds of Locky mails per day.
There is a huge spike in ransomware at the moment. And all ransom has to be
paid via a tor location.
~~~
arprocter
We started blocking .docm at the mail server (it uses a Word macro to
download)
~~~
SCHiM
That won't block all macro viruses. You need a dedicated program/firewall for
this, filtering on extension won't work. Older .doc formats can also have
macro's included and will work in newer (as well as older) versions of word.
~~~
arprocter
This was just to prevent this specific attack - kind of a stopgap until the AV
detects it properly.
IIRC last time I checked the Word doc on virustotal it was picked up 22/55.
Fortunately at least AV did pick up the payload when a user let the macro
run...
Edit, ran it by virustotal again and got 28/55
------
finnn
This is a blogspam version of [http://www.profwoodward.org/2016/02/what-just-
happened-on-to...](http://www.profwoodward.org/2016/02/what-just-happened-on-
tor-network.html)
~~~
chatmasta
Which is blogspam of [https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
talk/2016-Februar...](https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-
talk/2016-February/040302.html)
------
boondaburrah
Could this be related to Ricochet getting press?
~~~
AdmiralAsshat
From the article:
_One possibility, he said, might be a sudden swell in the popularity of
Ricochet, an app that uses Tor to allow anonymous instant messaging between
users._
------
dookahku
Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor's control socket
API, to create and destroy 'ephemeral' hidden services programmatically.
Bitcoin Core has been updated to make use of this.
This means that if Tor is running (and proper authorization is available),
Bitcoin Core automatically creates a hidden service to listen on, without
manual configuration. Bitcoin Core will also use Tor automatically to connect
to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be successfully opened. This
will positively affect the number of available .onion nodes and their usage.
This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening, and a
connection to Tor can be made. It can be configured with the -listenonion,
-torcontrol and -torpassword settings. To show verbose debugging information,
pass -debug=tor.
------
telescope7
Measuring the Leakage of Onion at the Root:
[https://www.petsymposium.org/2014/papers/Thomas.pdf](https://www.petsymposium.org/2014/papers/Thomas.pdf)
------
aivosha
are these spikes in exit nodes ?
~~~
gruez
no, these are spikes in hidden services.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sharp sues Hisense over a foreign “gag order” - ssheth
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/sharp-sues-hisense-over-a-foreign-gag-order/
======
Boothroid
I have a Hisense TV and it's pretty good - 50", 4k, £400 - I can't complain. I
don't know what Sharp is like in the US but over here they've always been a
middling brand so amused to see that they think their supposedly good name is
being ruined. Sharp TVs have always been mediocre!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WebUSB API - cosenal
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb-devices-on-the-web
======
EJTH
Interesting, but what practical uses does this have, besides for authenticator
hardware (like two-factor "usb sticks" etc) ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
C hyper reference - adamnemecek
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/~simpsons/char/
======
Cheyana
This is great, thanks for posting it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Where in the world is Eduardo Saverin (story from early Facebook) - wmorein
http://larrycheng.com/2009/06/15/where-in-the-world-is-eduardo-saverin/
======
byrneseyeview
Looks like Ben Mezrich (fiction author who sold a lot better when he relabeled
his books nonfiction:
[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/06/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/06/house_of_cards/))
is using Severin as a source for his next book:
<http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20080522/FREE/760602535>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The JustDecompile .NET decompiler engine has been open-sourced - jbevain
https://github.com/telerik/JustDecompileEngine
======
exhilaration
How does this compare to dotPeek from JetBrains?
[https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/](https://www.jetbrains.com/decompiler/)
~~~
felickz2
Much better for newer features... for async/await dotpeek would show state
machine ( which was actually cool to see), but JustDecompile would actually
show me async await in decompiled code.
ALSO, coolest feature is decompile to csproj ... very nice ;)
~~~
ttrashh
I had the opposite experience. DotPeek created much better code. using
statements were decompiled as usings, JustDecompile produced try/finally
blocks.
------
taco_emoji
[http://ilspy.net/](http://ilspy.net/) is what I generally use. Functionally
modeled after .NET Reflector.
------
userbinator
A .NET decompiler written in .NET: I bet "let's try it on itself!" was not an
uncommon thought among its users already.
It wasn't this one, but years ago I remember using a decompiler to look
through things like the system libraries and the (relatively few) apps written
in it at the time, and it was quite interesting how much metadata was
available (if it hadn't been obfuscated). I think it's fun and enlightening to
take things apart, see how they work, and modify them, so that aspect of .NET
really appealed to me, but I still prefer native code for its efficiency and
succinctness...
~~~
frik
Before Minecraft, there was "Infiniminer" \- a decompiler was involved:
Zachtronics discontinued development of the game less than a month after its
first release as the result of its source code leak. As Barth had not
obfuscated the C# .NET source code of the game, it was decompiled and
extracted from the binaries. Hackers modified the code to make mods, but also
started making clients that would target vulnerabilities in the game as well
as build incompatible game forks that fragmented its user base. Barth, who was
making the game for free, then lost interest and dropped the project, as
development of the game had become too difficult.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Barth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Barth)
"Proto-MineCraft Abandoned Due To Epic Error" article:
[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/20/proto-
minecraft-a...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/20/proto-minecraft-
abandoned-due-to-epic-error/)
The Minecraft mods-support relies on a decompiler too:
[http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Programs_and_editors/Minecraf...](http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Programs_and_editors/Minecraft_Coder_Pack)
~~~
emodendroket
Is it really an "epic error" to allow someone to see the source code of your
program?
~~~
frik
It's the headline of the rockpapershotgun.com article, that's simply their
writing style. I added quote around the title, to make it clear that it's the
articles title and not my opinion.
~~~
emodendroket
Sorry, I realize that; I just take issue with their claim.
------
ThinkBeat
With the release of Roslyn wont writing things like these be a lot easier?
------
DevKoala
This tool helped a lot back then. I would also use DotPeek.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Relicensing the GraphQL specification - Sujan
https://code.facebook.com/posts/121714468491809/relicensing-the-graphql-specification/
======
dfee
This is huge news. The specification is licensed via the OWFA
[http://www.openwebfoundation.org/legal/the-
owf-1-0-agreement...](http://www.openwebfoundation.org/legal/the-
owf-1-0-agreements/owfa-1-0) while GraphQL.js and relay are being relicensed
under MIT.
------
mrahmadawais
Group Admin Thanks for sharing man. It's a good news. I am not sure about this
license. How does it compare to MIT?
------
PaulHoule
If only they would do this for zstd.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Osquery Security Audit - hiby007
http://yahoo-security.tumblr.com/post/118445868880/osquery-security-audit
======
kbar13
It would be cool if there were links to the reports and/or more detail about
the issues they found.
~~~
lstyls
Agreed, without details for others to learn from this post seems little more
than self-promotion.
~~~
bigiain
The "bad guys" aren't waiting around and complaining that no-one's spoon
feeding them working exploits, they're busy right now reading the git commits.
There's a whole group of commmits around the 4th that I'd look at in detail if
I were curious:
[https://github.com/facebook/osquery/commits/master](https://github.com/facebook/osquery/commits/master)
------
arca_vorago
Could someone please explain why I would want this over or possibly in
combination with ossec, which I am enjoying greatly these days.
------
sweis
Facebook is hiring for open source security engineers, by the way:
[https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?req=a0I1200000G4...](https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?req=a0I1200000G4M4hEAF)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jonathan Riddell forced out of Kubuntu against the Kubuntu Council's wishes - amyjess
http://lwn.net/Articles/645973/
======
sciurus
There's a good explanation of the players involved at
[https://kver.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/making-sense-of-the-
ku...](https://kver.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/making-sense-of-the-
kubuntucanonical-leadership-spat/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Misleading charts of 2015, fixed - mikek
http://qz.com/580859/the-most-misleading-charts-of-2015-fixed/
======
freditup
I would argue the last "good" chart example, a chart of mass-shootings per
president, is misleading as it compares four two-term presidents (Obama, W.
Bush, Clinton, and Reagan) to a single-term president (H.W. Bush).
~~~
scholia
Deleted comment as I was talking about the wrong graph....
------
lucb1e
The first one was indeed a bad chart, the others simply lying with data. That
might as well have been wrong in written text...
------
rodionos
There is lies and there is statistics :). For more reading on the subject, I
recommend Beautiful Evidence by E. Tufte. He's a classic when it comes to
infoviz.
------
eanzenberg
So this complains about not including the 0 on the y-axis but then complains
about it in the national review global temp chart.
If you have an agenda it will show through, regardless of what you do. Both
graphs accurately portray the data, but most of the public doesn't care to
interpret graphs objectively.
~~~
icegreentea
You'll notice that in his 'best version' of the education chart, the y axis
also does not start at zero. More precisely, the point he made was that
_column_ charts should always start at 0. He makes no blanket statements about
line graphs to show trending.
Also technically any graph that isn't numerically wrong is a problem of the
public not taking care.
~~~
contrast
Technically according to what rule?
------
jsprogrammer
Should follow up on the lack of 2008 PP data. Might show up as an abortion
peak...possibly why it has apparently been witheld.
Uh..downmods?
~~~
sitharus
You're saying a missing report, probably the result of miss filing the data,
is a malicious attempt to hide some sort of abortion spike in 2008.
If you find sources you might get upvotes, but given the available information
it's probably simply missing.
~~~
jsprogrammer
Interesting perspective. What harm do you think occurs by 'hiding' such
information? (You'll also note that I did not use the word _malicious_ , nor
imply its meaning.)
The source of the data would necessarily need to be Planned Parenthood, yet
the data for only that particular year is missing.
Anyway, I'm not here for the upvotes; only facts and analysis. It is simply a
fact that only the data for 2008 is missing. The onus is on PP to produce
either the data or the reason why the data has not yet been produced.
~~~
mwfunk
You explicitly said the data was withheld (not missing), and theorized that it
was to hide a spike in abortions. You follow it up by explaining that the
missing data in the chart must be missing because PP didn't provide it.
~~~
jsprogrammer
Found the report: [https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/14436304/ppfa-
annual-...](https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/14436304/ppfa-annual-
report-08-09-final-12-10-10)
Supports up to 25% YOY change from 2007. Can you find this report on PP's
site? Or the breakdown of the absolute values?
~~~
FireBeyond
And yet the report from Politifact in QZ that explicitly shows "year over year
change" shows no such thing:
\- 5% in 2007
\- 9% in 2009
\- -1% in 2010
\- 2% in 2011
\- -2% in 2012
\- 0% in 2013
~~~
jsprogrammer
Please read the thread. You missed the 2008 report (as did politifact). I
linked to the 2008 report which does not show absolute service number
breakdowns; only rounded (or, perhaps, truncated [in which case the YOY change
could be significantly higher than 25%]) percentages from a total.
Why would PP deviate from their standard reporting practices?
~~~
FireBeyond
I did read the thread. You quoted a report that showed '25% year over year'.
With the numbers of this report, there would have to be a 100% increase in
2008 (that reverted back to "normal" levels in 2009) to average out to that
level.
Even rounding numbers would not account for the discrepancy between "2% more
this year than last" and "25% more this year than last".
~~~
jsprogrammer
Its not percent of a percent. It's percent of an absolute change.
1st derivative vs 2nd derivative.
Edit: hmm, maybe I misunderstood your point. I don't think the politifact or
qz YOY data from 2009 is based on 2008 (but rather, 2007 [technically not YOY
then]). How would they have calculated the YOY without the absolute number for
2008?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to build something that lasts 10k years - wpietri
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190611-how-to-build-something-that-lasts-10000-years
======
vincnetas
Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last
for 100.000 years.
There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this
lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out,
what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to
opening the door.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-
HxmFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk)
~~~
phito
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention
to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a
powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated
here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning
about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the
center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place
physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
time_nuclear_waste_warnin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-
time_nuclear_waste_warning_messages)
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Funny thing is, if we discovered some ancient tomb or burial site with these
messages we'd write it off as superstition and open it up anyway. I'm not sure
some future civilization would be any different.
~~~
sago
I agree. Hiding something and saying "please don't look for it," seems
extraordinarily naïve of human nature.
If the threat is widespread human and environmental destruction, I wonder if
an additional layer of warning does not need to consist of more constrained
lethality. "We're going to show you what this stuff is, you should've really
paid attention to the warnings."
"It is a place of evil: all who venture into the pit die in agony within a few
days," seems like something that would have more cultural weight. And be
trivially re-discoverable at any point. People don't go wandering into lava to
see what's below. People wouldn't have stripped the Egyptian tombs if the
warnings on the wall consistently came true. Perhaps the best warning of
danger is danger.
And then, if the threat model is drilling, it seems to me very unlikely that a
future mining civilisation would not understand pictures, maps and diagrams
illustrating the content. Is an illustration really more culturally ambiguous
than language?
~~~
jaggederest
Especially given we know cave paintings from several thousand years ago are
relatively intelligible. People hunting bison.
------
ninju
The ROI for all the NASA investments
>Over 20 years ago when I started this project in researching bearings, we
found the perfect solution: an all ceramic bearing created for use in
satellites and spacecraft
>There was only one problem: when I first heard of these bearings, __they cost
tens of thousands of dollars __and were only used in aerospace.
>...they have become more common and are now __used in roller blades and
fidget spinners and can cost as little as $10 __
~~~
agumonkey
Who studies these evolutions ? Is there a fastest curve to low price ? not too
fast to avoid killing incentives for people working on it in the first place
but avoiding stalls too.
------
oftenwrong
"The Rosetta Stone didn't survive thousands of years in the desert because of
some intrinsic cultural value. It survived because it's made of stone. ... The
future disagrees about what is and is not important, and why. That's the
defining characteristic of the future. No one today cares what the Rosetta
Stone actually says, yet it is more important to us (as the key to
hieroglyphics) than it was to the society that made it."
[http://carlos.bueno.org/2008/08/save-
web.html](http://carlos.bueno.org/2008/08/save-web.html)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20171104052354/http://carlos.bue...](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104052354/http://carlos.bueno.org/2008/08/save-
web.html)
(I am a bit amused to realise, after reviewing the Internet Archive snapshots,
that this article has changed quite a bit over the years.)
~~~
masklinn
> "The Rosetta Stone didn't survive thousands of years in the desert because
> of some intrinsic cultural value.
I get the point but the reference is pretty crummy, the rosetta stone is a
very young artefact on the scale of long-term preservation (most extant bog
bodies are older).
------
newman8r
the lazy man's way to make something that will last thousands(or more) years:
dry stone masonry. I've built a few walls, they're not going anywhere.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone)
~~~
onion2k
The mechanical stability of a drystone wall is amazing, but the political
stability of the border it represents is very, very fragile. It won't fall
over but someone might knock it down. That's the problem the Long Now clock
might have solved - it's been marketed as a symbol of human persistence.
People are being persuaded that it's important. We maintain our symbolic
icons. That political stability is what might keep it standing for millenia,
unless people forget what it means.
~~~
jpalomaki
Could you get a space vehicle on a trajectory that brings it close to earth
only every 1000 - 10000 years?
Add there some mechanism that draws attention and transmits it’s message
through radio. Would it be doable to have some primitive electronics that
would survive so long?
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Seems it would be possible to have it spin on its axis so that it reflects the
light from the sun towards Earth in some kind of pulsing flashing manner. That
would attract attention. No need for electronics. Of course encoding a message
in the flash would be almost impossible, but it could serve as a beacon for a
future civilisation to attempt to go up there and retrieve it.
~~~
glaurung_
Maybe facet the mirrors so that the reflections would flicker in some
something like Morse code. I imagine it would be very difficult to decipher
and could only convey a few bytes though.
Maybe just send a sealed capsule capable of re-entry into an orbit that would
actually intersect earth in a few hundred thousand years. I doubt we're
capable of that sort of precision though..
------
adolph
Snoopy may last that long:
_After Stafford and Cernan docked with Charlie Brown and re-entered it,
Snoopy 's ascent stage was sent on a trajectory past the Moon into a
heliocentric orbit by firing its engine to fuel depletion (unlike the
subsequent Apollo 11 ascent stage, which was left in lunar orbit to eventually
crash; all ascent stages after Apollo 11 were instead intentionally steered
into the Moon to obtain readings from seismometers placed on the surface,
except for the one on Apollo 13, which did not land but was used as a "life
boat" to get the crew back to Earth, and burned up in Earth's atmosphere.)
Snoopy's ascent stage orbit was not tracked after 1969, and its current
location is unknown. In 2011, a group of amateur astronomers in the UK started
a project to search for it. It is the only once-crewed spacecraft still in
outer space without a crew._
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_10)
~~~
chrischattin
They may have just succeeded...
[https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-are-98-sure-they-
ve...](https://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-are-98-sure-they-ve-found-
snoopy-the-missing-apollo-capsule-drifting-in-space)
------
andrewla
The only way to build something that lasts 10k years is to build hundreds of
things designed to last 10k years, and maybe one or two of them will actually
last. That's the only technique that's worked in the past.
~~~
mywittyname
Some future archeologist is going to dig up a cell phone.
~~~
jandrese
And it will be a Nokia 3310 that still works and has 30% battery life
remaining.
------
bambax
> _engineers are building a clock in the Texan desert that will last for
> 10,000 years_
Well, we don't know that. There is no way to know. Selling this to rich guys
like Bezos is kind of like selling "after the rapture pet care"...
~~~
jotm
It wont last 10,000 years. Nothing more complicated than scribblings on a
tough rock will, and even those will likely be indecipherable.
Seed banks are especially funny/sad. They need to constantly produce seeds,
which means constant growth of male/female plants, under human supervision.
No seeds last more than a few years under ideal conditions. Even DNA is
unrecoverable/unusable after a few centuries iiirc.
~~~
asdff
>Even DNA is unrecoverable/unusable after a few centuries iiirc
Only if poorly stored. We have plenty of neanderthal DNA, because we have lots
of neanderthal teeth which we drill into to extract this ancient DNA. Properly
stored, DNA can last thousands of years, I'd wager indefinitely in the right
buffer and in liquid nitrogen.
------
Causality1
This is an admirable project but realistically speaking, six weeks after it's
no longer being visited every day some 4channer is going to hike out, break it
with a hammer, and then draw dicks on it.
~~~
jrootabega
They thought of that, the clock is almost completely made of hammers and
dicks.
------
juanuys
The best description of building something that lasts I've seen in recent
fiction is Cixin Liu's Death's End [1] where he writes [2] about mankind's
museum (a forever tombstone).
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End)
[2]
[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUkoCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT539&lp...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUkoCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT539&lpg=PT539&dq=death%27s+end+Luo+Ji+museum&source=bl&ots=ZnTy2OYgV4&sig=ACfU3U1SzAqJmzFS9kmwZvYfzKDtyyiD8w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq_aTzieTiAhUJxoUKHbCZBr0Q6AEwBnoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=death's%20end%20Luo%20Ji%20museum&f=false)
~~~
jandrese
The forever tombstone was destroyed when the universe was flattened.
------
theaeolist
Make it disposable. Make it from plastic.
~~~
oftenwrong
Perhaps our descendants, 10000 years in the future, will be exploring the
purpose of The Great Pacific garbage patch.
~~~
cobbzilla
Assuming some break with history or loss of cultural memory, after 10k years
of photodisintegration and absorption into the biosphere, there will be no
Garbage Patch.
Our descendants would then be left to wonder at the odd adaptations that life
must have made to accommodate complex polymers into their biology, and where
those complex polymers might have come from.
------
syn0byte
Step one I assume is calling it "interim" or "temporary".
------
ptah
If you can somehow come up with a way to keep time using a forest, it would be
way easier
~~~
aetherspawn
That’s a really interesting idea.
If you plant a tree that lasts for 10,000 years (is there such?), I wonder if
you can use its height or the shadow it casts (trunk thickness) to measure
time.
Of course, someone would just come and kill it. Unless you can make it
undesirable to get close to it.. for example fill it with thousands of snakes
and spiders.
~~~
abdullahkhalids
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-
living_organis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-
living_organisms)
As far as we know, there are a few clonal plant colonies that have survived
longer than 10K years. No individual plants have quite made it to 10K, but
some have made it past 2-3K years.
~~~
scrumbledober
Scientists recently discovered a bristlecone pine over 5000 years old
[https://www.livescience.com/29152-oldest-tree-in-
world.html](https://www.livescience.com/29152-oldest-tree-in-world.html)
------
roland35
Without giving away any spoilers, this idea was touched on in Cixin Liu's
Three Body Problem (later on in trilogy) as a way to memorialize humanity to
other civilizations in the future.
------
grandridge
Make something out of plastic?
------
amypellegrini
I don't think software developers could survive this test...
------
KboPAacDA3
It may be designed for 10,000 years, but it will fail at year 3000 because the
gears will get clogged from the blood of human sacrifices.
~~~
jandrese
I think "designed to last for 10,000 years" and "moving parts" are largely
mutually exclusive.
------
FrozenVoid
Thats easy: build it out of 10m thick acid-resistant stainless steel walls.
------
tabtab
1\. use COBOL.
------
toinetoine
No memory leaks
------
msiyer
We can learn from Nature - atoms, photons, DNA... all last long. Really long.
~~~
jotm
Atoms, photons, sure. DNA is dead for all practical purposes after less than
1000 years.
~~~
asdff
We have neanderthal DNA sequenced. All depends on storage conditions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Where is the fashionable mathematics? - karlicoss
https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/where-is-the-fashionable-mathematics/
======
dwheeler
Article says:
> 1\. There is a large community of mathematicians out there who simply cannot
> join these communities because the learning curve is too high and much of
> the documentation is written for computer scientists.
> 2\. Even if a mathematician battles their way into one of these communities,
> there is a risk that they will not find the kind of mathematics which they
> are being taught, or teaching, in their own department, and there is a very
> big risk that they will not find much fashionable mathematics.
> My explicit question to all the people in these formal proof verification
> communities is: what are you doing about this?
I think many of the formal proof verification communities are trying to
address these. I will focus on Metamath, especially its set.mm database that
focuses on classical logic + ZFC (
[http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/mmset.html](http://us.metamath.org/mpeuni/mmset.html)
), but much of the following applies to all of them.
I think the main problem is that too many mathematicians expect computer
systems to have all the capabilities of a well-trained graduate mathematician.
Yet the problem is hard. Computers are much better at some things (they don't
get bored or sleepy), and humans are much better at other things (seeing the
big picture & having insights into how to combine "unrelated" ideas). Much
would be better if the formalization and traditional mathematics communities
had more "meetings of the minds" & communication in general.
Focusing on these questions:
1\. The high learning curve is true for all systems, that's true. To be fair,
mathematics has a high learning curve, you don't learn how to do it in a week.
The problem is that although tools are very good at _verifying_ formalized
proofs, they are not great at coming up with the proofs themselves. I do agree
that the documentation could be improved so "non computer scientists" could do
things more easily. I think much of what's needed is for traditional
mathematicians to engage with the formalization community, to make it clearer
what's missing. There also needs to be work (and funding) on improved tooling,
which implies a need for more funding (I'll discuss that below).
2\. "They will not find much fashionable mathematics." There's a chicken-and-
egg problem here. It takes a while to get proofs up to the "basics" of
mathematics as expected by people work on "fashionable" mathematics. Here I
think the solution is to have many people working to build up those basics.
Take a look at my visualization of Metamath set.mm; note that it took many
years for it to build up, and only when many people joined did it start
seriously growing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC1g8FmFcUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC1g8FmFcUU)
The _real_ bottom line is that there really needs to be more funding on tools
& formalized systems. Metamath isn't funded at all to my knowledge. Lean and
Coq have some funding, but nothing like the funding of many other fields. We
should be impressed about how far they've come in spite of that.
A broader problem is that mathematicians typically accept a proof if a paper
_seems_ to be okay to another mathematician. When the math and proofs were
simpler, that was probably fine, and since computers weren't very capable
that's all we could do anyway. But today's math (and proofs) are far more
complex, and it's becoming absurd to leave that as our standard of proof.
Computers are available now; we should be using them.
~~~
kragen
If I understand the context correctly, Buzzard wrote this post as a step
toward solving the problems you state (mathematicians are unconvinced of the
usefulness of proof assistants, many people need to join in to build things up
in a proof assistant, documentation needs work, input from mathematicians is
needed).
------
kragen
Kevin Buzzard is doing really interesting work here, and I think that it's
quite plausible that having fashionable mathematicians formalizing fashionable
math in whatever proof assistant they choose will represent a significant step
forward both for mathematical research and for the practice of programming,
which is unavoidably formal in precisely the way math historically isn't. By
formalizing it to that level, we will substantially increase our intellectual
powers and make vast new fields tractable for formal reasoning, which also
makes them tractable for programming.
I'm not sure whether the beauty-contest winner will be LEAN (as Buzzard is
promoting in this blog post), Metamath, or what. It may turn out that, say,
Isabelle-HoTT or HoTT/Agda or something to pull ahead of LEAN, for example —
certainly HoTT is a lot more fashionable among mathematicians than the CoC,
and that might turn out to be either for a good reason (that manifests in
technical advances in HoTT resulting in easier proofs) or a sufficiently
strong social push to overcome the added friction.
It's sure going to be interesting, though.
~~~
prox
One of these questions I never dared to ask; What does formal mean in the area
of mathematics? Is it like finalizing a formula / proof?
~~~
kragen
I'm not the ideal person to ask, never having published a novel mathematical
result and not having particularly deep knowledge of math, but I understand
"formal" in this context to mean "mechanical". A formal manipulation of
symbols is, as I understand it, one that you can carry out without attaching
any _meaning_ to the symbols you are manipulating.
This is not the same thing as "rigorous", because it's entirely possible for a
formal manipulation to be unsound (with respect to some theory). For example,
suppose you want to prove that a left multiplicative identity is also a right
identity; that is, ∀ _x_ : 1· _x_ = _x_ ⇒ ∀ _x_ : _x_ ·1 = _x_. You can apply
commutativity and rearrange the symbols to get a proof — that's a purely
formal technique, and it's correct and rigorous for, say, complex-number
multiplication. But if you're thinking of some other multiplication
operations, like that of square matrices of some size, or of quaternions,
that's not a rigorous proof, because those multiplication operations aren't
commutative. (But in those cases it turns out to be a correct theorem anyway,
because they _are_ associative.)
Compiling a program is another operation that is formal but rarely rigorous.
The hope of using proof assistants in math is that by _formalizing_ our
reasoning, we can _also_ make it more rigorous, with the aid of computers and
a great deal of cleverness. Most mathematicians are not yet convinced.
~~~
lonelappde
That's not quite right.
Rigor means not hand-waving about things that a skeptic might doubt, not
skipping corner cases, etc.
Formal means doing things like a computer -- strictly symbolic analysis that
doesn't claim to do the impossible task accurately map back to our informal
ideas of what things mean.
Formality is across a chasm -- it's the most accurate kind of math we can do,
but it can't be trusted to say that a formal proof about say complex numbers
actually applies to what you are thinking about when you day "complex
numbers".
As is said, "It is impossible to pass from the informal by purely formal
means."
Here's a better explanation: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-difference-
between-rigorous-an...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-difference-between-
rigorous-and-formal-mathematics)
~~~
kragen
This is in accordance with my understanding, but since you seem to think I was
saying something different, I think your expression of it is clearer than mine
was.
------
zozbot234
Not very surprising. When it comes to formal verification, you get the biggest
bang for the buck (by far) via focusing on what the nLab wiki calls
'synthetic' mathematics, viz. fairly self-contained subfields where the 'rules
of the game' may be somewhat complex in their own terms, but can be stated
without relying on a massive amount of prereqs. 'Fashionable' math tends to be
just the opposite: easy, logically-simple entailments, but building on very
complex prereqs.
It's obvious why formalizing the latter is comparatively hard: you need to
work on the prerequisites first, since your formalization won't be usable
without them! Also, since the formalized-math field is still quite fragmented,
large projects (such as formalizing a big chunk of some basic curriculum) are
discouraged to an even greater extent - quite simply, it can't be assumed that
others will be building upon that work.
------
kenkubota
My comment on Kevin Buzzard's intervention:
[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/metamath/Fgn0qZEzCko/bvVem1B...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/metamath/Fgn0qZEzCko/bvVem1BZCQAJ)
Link list of the discussion threads: [https://owlofminerva.net/kubota/update-
to-the-foundations-of...](https://owlofminerva.net/kubota/update-to-the-
foundations-of-mathematics/)
------
amvalo
The answer is simple: these systems aren't mature enough to formalize the
modern fashionable math. They need better ergonomics and perhaps better
underlying theory before we attempt that.
~~~
kragen
What would the better ergonomics look like? Do you have an idea what might be
wrong with the theory?
~~~
amvalo
The biggest pain point with the theory was its handling of equality, which
HoTT fixes.
Ergonomically.. well it's hard to describe TBH, the easiest way to see is to
just download one of these systems and try using them. You try to prove a
theorem and everything just ends up taking way longer than you'd expect.
Mostly because you can't gloss over small details the way mathematicians will
do informally. Every small turn of phrase like "for large enough N" or
"without loss of generality" can become dozens of extra lines of code.
~~~
kragen
I didn't mean to doubt your claim — my limited experience is that proof
assistants are totally inscrutable, although I've been inspired by some of the
Lean and Agda stuff I've been seeing lately. I just wanted to ask for your
perspective, since it's probably more informed than mine!
It seems to me that if you want to _formalize_ the small details, you will
necessarily have to do something different with some of those small details,
won't you? Maybe a tactic search can find a formal and rigorous proof without
you having to _write_ those dozens of extra lines by hand, but simply glossing
over them seems like it would defeat the goal of formalization.
------
dang
Related from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21200721)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20909404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20909404)
------
kalyantm
A little off topic, I'm genuinely interested in diving into Math again. Never
appreciated it in college (Comp Sci Engineering, had the first year with some
engineering maths) but now i really want to get into it again. (Calculas,
trignometry and statistics) Can anyone point me to resources/path on how/where
to begin?
~~~
drchewbacca
If you can program you might like Metamath, it feels quite a lot like writing
code.
Here is the main site.
[http://us.metamath.org/index.html](http://us.metamath.org/index.html)
Here is the book which can help with understanding.
[http://us.metamath.org/downloads/metamath.pdf](http://us.metamath.org/downloads/metamath.pdf)
Here are some tutorials for MMJ2 which is the main proof assistant to use,
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1jSu6GGefBm7RBP0Id2S...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1jSu6GGefBm7RBP0Id2Sa9uyVuyhioAC)
it can be found here,
[http://us.metamath.org/#mmj2](http://us.metamath.org/#mmj2)
Here are some beginners proof exercises which are a good place to start out
[http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmtheorems289.html#mm28844b](http://us.metamath.org/mpegif/mmtheorems289.html#mm28844b)
I will warn you though it is a bit like the wild west, it is not easy to
accomplish anything and it is exciting to be on the frontier.
The community is really cool, you can chat with them here.
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/metamath](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/metamath)
------
booleandilemma
An article about fashionable mathematics and no mention of category theory?
~~~
neonate
In his famous talk from a few months ago he dismisses it as not-real-
mathematics. I found it hard to tell whether he was being unironically
provocative, trollish, or just cheeky.
~~~
kevinbuzzard
I was being intentionally provocative. On the other hand I feel like there are
plenty of people in my (mathematics) department who would say that "normal"
fields like geometry, topology, algebra, number theory and analysis are where
the action is happening, and category theory is just a tool which we use to
get "normal" maths done. On the other hand now Scholze is beginning to use
infinity categories more in his work, this might change -- but it might not.
Maybe in 10 years time there will be a book "infinity categories for the
working mathematician" which we all read the first ten pages of and this is
all that most of us need. Note that category theorists like Hyland and
Johnstone have retired from Cambridge now and have not been replaced -- in the
UK now you are more likely to find a category theorist working in a computer
science department than a mathematics department. Whether or not it is "real
mathematics", it is certainly a fact that in the UK at least it is an
extremely small community, whereas our departments are full of number
theorists, geometers, topologists, analysts and algebraists all of whom need
to know essentially no category theory beyond the basic language of adjoint
and representable functors.
------
Koshkin
Looks like Geometric Algebra is something that has been talked about quite a
lot lately. (It is "vector algebra done right.")
~~~
madhadron
Geometric algebra is something that hasn't found a "killer app," if you will.
The largest users of vector calculus are physicists and engineers, and those
communities have 1) enormous existing literature using Gibbs-Heaviside
vectors, and 2) enormous institutional investment in teaching them across
departments. We haven't found a justification for switching that would
outweigh the amount of inertia involved.
It's hardly a new thing. David Hestenes has been writing books about its
advantages in physics since the 1960's.
------
nathias
HoTT so hot right now...
~~~
auggierose
But its inventor is really cold.
------
yters
I feel like mathematicians should make the same effort for non mathematicians.
Why do all these weird terms even matter to anyone else besides a self
selected group of mathematicians? If they don't, why should anyone care about
such things, just as the author asked why mathematicians should care about
formal proof systems? Academia in general is so used to not having to justify
their interests to anyone else that many seem to live in their own isolated
little worlds. Gone are the days when the 'uni' in university meant a unified
realm of knowledge. We should rename 'university' to be 'diversity.'
However, the origin story of academia with Greek philosophy sought to not
merely subsist in rapidly fracturing groups of special interest, but to also
seek the unifying underlying ideas. Similarly with the scholastics in the
medieval era, which actually birthed our university system.
I believe academia has lost its way, which may spell its end. Which is
unfortunate for our civilization, as it is so fundamentally tied to the quest
for wisdom and knowledge.
~~~
miscPerson
Mathematics is modern ontology.
We’re not great at predicting which parts of ontology are eventually useful in
other fields — mostly physics and other hard science, but more recently
computer science, economics + finance, and even things like sociology and
linguistics.
So we let the people who self-select to be ontologists guide what the field
researches — and this has generally been fairly effective. Certainly more
effective than if we’d only looked at things which had immediate, obvious use.
Complex numbers, widely used in science and engineering, were once regarded as
suspect abstract nonsense. That’s why they’re called “imaginary numbers”: it
was a pejorative name that stuck.
We have cryptography, computers, modern physics, and modern finance to show
for our efforts, among other things.
It simply takes time (like, decades to centuries) for new ontological ideas to
propagate to other fields. We’re hoping that formalizing into HoTT and other
computer friendly systems will allow us to align with software development,
and speed the process up.
That seems to be going well, and at an accelerating pace.
The hope is that HoTT and category theory give us a framework to do exactly
what you propose — more easily specify and interlink knowledge.
Expect results around 2050.
It took around 40-60 years for category theory to have a big impact — but now
it is in fields as far away from mathematics as linguistics. Hopefully HoTT
will get there a little faster, but it’s still going to take decades to go
from niche research to widely used in mathematics to widely used across
disciplines.
So, to summarize:
1\. Because we’re bad at predicting the future and abstract math has often
turned out to be useful later.
2\. Mathematics is trying to do exactly what you propose with knowledge, via
exactly the programs this blog is talking about.
~~~
yters
I disagree that all knowledge, or even the most important items of
knoknowledge, are reducible to mathematics.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HTC Willfully Violates the GPL in T-Mobile's New G2 Android Phone - peter123
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/sjs/htc-willfully-violates-gpl-t-mobiles-new-g2-android-phone
======
Osiris
What I don't understand is _why_ phone manufactures are even worried about
rooting. If it's about service and warranty, they can simply make it clear
that replacing the OS voids the warranty and they won't provide service for
the phone.
Besides warranty and service costs, what else are they so worried about that
they feel it necessary to add these protection measures?
Surely the percent of customers that root/mod a phone is so small that it's
not worth the man-power and engineering to try to "fix" the problem. It seems
there must be some other concern they are trying to resolve that escapes me.
~~~
roel_v
I guess it's because virus writers also to try to root the devices to install
rootkits. I'm quite in favor of requiring hardware mods (although I'd prefer a
jumper...) to modify the OS.
~~~
yason
But they can do that now already, just like the regular phone-rooting hackers.
~~~
roel_v
The article mentioned that the new version needed hardware hacking to root.
Maybe at one point a software hack will be found, I don't know. I'm just
saying that there is a legitimate reason to lock down the software, especially
for a mass market product like a phone.
------
duncan_bayne
Call them, and demand that your complaint be escalated. Call back daily until
this is fixed. Unlike emails which can be disregarded phone calls cost money
to process. This means that the FOSS community can impose a financial cost on
non-compliance without going through the courts.
I just got off the phone to HTC Australia, and apparently they'll be getting
in touch. If everyone did that ...
~~~
jackolas
Just bring legal action or ask the SLFC to investigate.
~~~
bdonlan
Only a copyright holder can bring legal action in this case. If you're just a
customer, you can't bring action by yourself, as you're not a party to the
violation or license agreement between HTC and the copyright holder(s).
~~~
sprout
If you've bought a G2, you are a copyright holder for the code in question.
~~~
klync
If you buy a copy of a copyright-able work, you are a licensee. The "copyright
holder" is the person who owns the legal ability to specify and grant the
rights under which the work may be copied.
------
peregrine
This is only become an issue because of the new security permissions on the
phone. If the phone was easily hackable nobody would be complaining.
That said HTC played some mean tricks here, such as releasing the souce for
the HTC magic with bits and pieces of the vision source clearly removed. At
the same time while we were trying to reverse engineer this code and the
binary we saw major inconsistencies even though the disks are the same model
and spec.
They(HTC & TMO) really made it hard this time but once we figure out how this
works once it will likely be just as easy to hack as before.
------
hartror
"within 90 to 120 days"
Maybe this tactic has something to do with product life cycle though I can't
think what. Surely a phone has a longer shelf life than 3 months . .
~~~
codedivine
Well it may not necessarily be malicious. Maybe the developers responsible for
say preparing the source tarball properly have just been given a lot of other
pressing work.
~~~
doki_pen
There is no preparing. They don't own the code. They need to release it in
exactly the same state it was in when deployed as binary. Otherwise, they are
violating copyright (often referred to as pirates).
That said, I'm almost certain that the linux kernel is released under a
modified form of the GPL, or at least Linus refuses to enforce parts of the
GPL. Binary modules and blobs are a clear violation of GPL, but they exist in
the Linux kernel to a great extent. There has been some fighting over the
issue in the past.
At any rate, I know that Linus is not as adamant about freedom as RMS. He's
using the GPL as a tool and not a principal. There was the whole Tivo-ization
argument, where Linus supported the hardware manufacturer and RMS released
GPLv3 explicitly forbidding that type of stuff.
~~~
kelnos
_That said, I'm almost certain that the linux kernel is released under a
modified form of the GPL..._
Nope, it's standard stock GPLv2-only. There's a _clarification_ included in
the COPYING file that reminds people that userspace binaries that use the
documented system call interface are not considered derived works, but that's
not a modification of the license; it's just included for clarity reasons.
_or at least Linus refuses to enforce parts of the GPL._
Not entirely. He's stated that he doesn't believe that a kernel module is
automatically a derived work of the kernel. For example, he's of the opinion
that the nvidia binary driver is not a derived work of Linux because the
driver core was first designed and written for a completely different OS.
Regardless, Linus Torvalds is not the last word on this: just about any kernel
contributor with copyright ownership could file suit.
_There is no preparing. They don't own the code. They need to release it in
exactly the same state it was in when deployed as binary. Otherwise, they are
violating copyright (often referred to as pirates)._
Exactly.
------
jrockway
Blog posts do not help. Take them to court.
~~~
adnam
Blog posts absolutely _do_ help.
~~~
kleiba
Good argument.
~~~
adnam
Just stating the obvious.
------
ssp
I wonder where they got the _within the requirements of the open source
community_. It doesn't sound like something they would just make up.
~~~
Vivtek
Sounds like something their lawyers made up, perhaps?
The first comment on the post has a pretty relevant paragraph, which I think
sounds plausible: _Section 3(b) allows you to provide a written offer for
source. I think HTC is interpreting this to mean that if you respond to their
written offer for source, there's obviously going to be a delay for them to
get your written request, put together the source code and send it back to
you, and they've decided that 90 to 120 days is a reasonable amount of time
for that._
The commenter also says it seems this is pushing it, and I agree - but HTC's
lawyers clearly think it's worth the risk.
~~~
bryanlarsen
Although further comments point out that there was no written offer provided,
so that section is irrelevant.
------
masklinn
Which is surprising how? Android's aim has always been to be open for
manufacturers and providers. The user-wise openness is an implementation
detail and may or may not be there.
And the more time passes, the better manufacturers and carriers get acquainted
with the platform, the least common Android devices will be open as far as the
user is concerned.
~~~
wazoox
> The user-wise openness is an implementation detail and may or may not be
> there.
This is not an implementation detail for the GPL.
------
nextparadigms
If Google really wants Android to be open sourced, then it should be open
source for users too, not just carriers. I'm pretty sure HTC did something
illegal here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Kimberly Clark hacked Redshift optimization saving over $250k - yanivleven
https://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2018/2/how-kimberly-clark-saved-250k-platform-powered-tableau-amazon-redshift-and-panoply
======
Johnc314
what can you optimize on Redshift? I mean you still need to define data type,
schema distribution key...So its still be a pain in the ass.
~~~
scapecast
What’s the PIA you’re referring to?
~~~
Johnc314
well before we used Panoply we used Redshift.
And it was a pain it didn't scale, changing data types was a bitch, even the
amount of GB stored was sometimes off. I mean, today we use Panoply so it
offsets a lot of the crap that goes into maintaining Redshift.
But I think that Redshift is just not good enough today and without Panoply
its close to impossible to have real scale on it.
~~~
yanivleven
John Im not sure I understand your first comment, using Panoply you dont need
to do any of that and with Panoply's automation they were able to optimize and
save all that time and money
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Entire Japan coast shifted 2.4 metres, earth axis moves ten inches - kevruger
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Japan+earthquake+factbox+Entire+Japan+coast+shifted+metres+earth+axis+moves+inches/4425617/story.html
======
tokenadult
For someone who has lived through a massive earthquake (as I did in Taiwan in
1989), the disturbing thing, even for someone who has lived in earthquake
zones for years, is the aftershocks. They build up to a doubt about whether
the earth can ever be counted on to lie still. Now after more than a decade of
living somewhere where earthquakes are unknown, I largely am back to counting
on the earth beneath my feet to lie still. (The danger here, and it is a
considerable danger, is slipping and falling on ice. That paralyzed my dad for
the last six years of his life.) The earthquake news from Japan brings back a
lot of memories from the Ring of Fire. Many people there will be wondering
over the next few weeks if the term "solid ground" has any meaning at all.
~~~
X-Istence
I lived in Phoenix when there was an Earthquake somewhere down south in Mexico
and I felt it. The earth was moving back and forth, the blinds on my window
moved back and forth and not ever having felt an Earthquake it was the
weirdest feeling in the world.
I can't imagine a strong earthquake or what it would feel like, but Phoenix
which is definitely not known for its earthquakes moving underneath my feet
made me more wary about what I am walking on than ever before.
~~~
gnaritas
When was this? I've been in Phoenix for 20 years have never heard of anyone
here saying such a thing.
~~~
X-Istence
Last year, sometime around April if I remember correctly... let me check my
Facebook backup. (Yay for searching a big huge HTML document)
April 4, 2010 is when it happened, sometime late in the morning, afternoon. I
just remember just waking up and trying to decide if I should go take a shower
or not, and thus lying in bed.
[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/201...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2010/20100404.php)
[http://www.examiner.com/supernatural-christianity-in-
phoenix...](http://www.examiner.com/supernatural-christianity-in-
phoenix/phoenix-area-feels-easter-sunday-earthquake)
------
jevinskie
Does this affect the orbit of satellites? Do satellite location services like
GPS need recalibration?
~~~
jerf
It will not greatly affect the orbit of any satellite, because the Earth's
center of gravity can't be shifted by any action internal to the Earth itself
by conservation of momentum, excepting somehow raising some part of Earth
above the relevant orbits which no earthquake is going to do. Otherwise to
change the trajectory of Earth's center of gravity requires an external force
of some sort. Some small effect from a different mass distribution will be
caused and it will have to be taken into effect, but when you care about these
effects as far as I know you have to measure them empirically anyhow, because
if you care at that level of detail it turns out there's a lot of noise as the
Earth warms and cools and has various flows within it and as water moves
hither and yon and so on. So while it will have some effect it is merely one
of very many such things.
Technically speaking, it won't require any recalibration either, because when
the satellites tell you that you are 2.4 meters away from where you were
yesterday when standing in the "same location", _they're right_. (Assuming
this number is reliable.) GPS doesn't really tell you where you are "on the
surface", they tell you where you are within the sphere they encompass and
from there we map that back to the surface location with other knowledge our
systems have. If Madagascar took it upon itself to go dock with Australia
tomorrow, the GPS satellite system itself would not need to be updated. All
the things that _use_ GPS and have some reason to expect Madagascar to be in a
certain location would need to be updated.
~~~
Rexxar
> It will not greatly affect the orbit of any satellite, because the Earth's
> center of gravity can't be shifted ...
Even if the center of gravity is not moved, there is an impact on
trajectories. We are used to use a simplification that consider only the
gravity center (using this theorem
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem>) but this theorem doesn't apply
if we want to be really precise.
~~~
jerf
Is it the case that you might explain such a thing with words that look
something like "Some small effect from a different mass distribution will be
caused and it will have to be taken into effect, but when you care about these
effects as far as I know you have to measure them empirically anyhow, because
if you care at that level of detail it turns out there's a lot of noise as the
Earth warms and cools and has various flows within it and as water moves
hither and yon and so on. So while it will have some effect it is merely one
of very many such things."? If only I had thought to add such words to my
original post. Alas.
------
silentbicycle
I've felt a distant earthquake once, in _Michigan_ (not exactly an earthquake
zone) - it was deeply unnerving, particularly in an office on the fifth floor
of an old factory building. I can't imagine being trapped amidst suddenly
collapsing buildings, or knowing that it could potentially happen any time. I
hope the worst is over and people have reconnecting with their families by
now.
Also, I don't want to trivialize what the Japanese are going through, but why
does Japan move in metric while the Earth moves in imperial units? Sheesh.
~~~
athom
How long ago was that? I felt one from Michigan myself a few years back, that
originated down in southern Indiana. That was around 3 or 4AM, though, so
unless you were working late or living in your office...
The American midwest may not be earthquake central, but it has its faults. New
Madrid, in particular:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone>
I remember the noise around Iben Browning's 1989/90 prediction, but it looks
like nothing major has happened there since. Yet.
~~~
silentbicycle
It was this one, last June:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Central_Canada_earthquake> .
------
seigenblues
somewhere in Japan, someone has hardcoded GPS locations into their autonomous
dishwashing robot, and is now wondering why it can't find the sink...
(btw, another version of the story with citations, attributed quotes is here:
[http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.earthq...](http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/japan.earthquake.tsunami.earth/index.html))
------
angus77
Now, isn't that _so_ Canadian? The headline mixes metric _and_ imperial.
------
hysterix
The power of the northridge earthquake was indescribable. To think that this
quake in Japan was more powerful blows me away. During the northridge quake,
it literally felt like the entire world was coming to an end.
~~~
Bud
The Japan quake (8.9) was over 900 times more powerful than Northridge (6.7).
Each point on the Richter scale is a 30x increase in energy.
------
Pyrodogg
Contains some bullet points with nothing to back them or the headline up. Has
some videos though if you haven't caught them elsewhere.
------
spoiledtechie
The U.S. military is planning an excursion and training exercise later this
year on the Madrid Fault. My company is planning on demoing some new tech
there. <http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2003/fs017-03/images/madrid.jpg>.
Last time it hit, the bells range in Massachusetts around 1890. If one were to
hit today expected loss of life is in the 1000's. They would expect a total
loss of infrastructure for stuff that has been built over 100 years ago. They
have no earthquake building codes so imagine something that would destroy
buildings just like the one did in Japan. Happily only several hundred were
lost compared to what is expect of the Madrid fault.
------
arrogant
I live in Florida, and I'll take the risk of hurricanes and tornadoes any day
over earthquakes. Just the sudden and unavoidable nature of earthquakes makes
them seem orders of magnitude worse to me.
~~~
codex
How do you feel about the risk that most of Florida will be underwater in a
few decades?
~~~
arrogant
Let the whole state go under. I'll be long gone by then. (All kidding aside, I
haven't really heard anything about that, and it isn't a pleasant thought. Any
particular articles on the subject that you've seen?)
~~~
codex
I'm only half-joking. The sealevel rise estimates are all over the map (no pun
intended). For one estimation on the effect on Florida, see:
[http://www.globalwarmingart.com/sealevel?lat=30.487&lng=...](http://www.globalwarmingart.com/sealevel?lat=30.487&lng=-84.375&zoom=5)
For one estimate of +2m, see: [http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-
stories/article/...](http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-
stories/article/global-warming-may-cause-2m-sea-level-rise-this-century-say-
experts.html)
Again, I don't know how likely this is, but Florida is one of the most
vulnerable states in the US. The prize probably goes to Louisiana with North
Carolina in the top 3.
------
maayank
a. does it mean that the velocity of earth's rotation changed? b. and thus, by
virtue of relativity, time (for us earth people)?
~~~
brazzy
If the rotation speed of earth changed (and this is definitely possible), then
by a really, really tiny amount (something like a day getting a thousandth of
a second longer or shorter)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Freelance: Junior Data analyst - reggiepret
Hi,
I am currently living in Boston, MA for around 4 months and can remotely help out with data analysis and a bit of model building. I am fresh out of the Udacity Data analyst nano-degree and Stanford Machine Learning Edx (Andrew Nq's course). My background is in Chemical/process engineering.
Comment below if you need someone to look at some of your data to help your business!
======
mtmail
Add yourself to the monthly
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16967544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16967544)
~~~
reggiepret
Thank you!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What happens when GitHub decides you're not a human - type0
http://www.stevenmaude.co.uk/posts/what-happens-when-github-decides-youre-not-a-human
======
mekicha
It would be interesting to know how the 'harmless' bot came to that
conclusion. On a serious note, I do entertain the fear of losing my work or
files on a service because of some arbitrary decision by whoever. Knew a case
of someone who had her blogger account shut down due to a complaint against
her that turned out to be false.
~~~
type0
In githubs defense, they are pretty quick to restore it if you have been
falsely flagged.
> It would be interesting to know how the 'harmless' bot came to that
> conclusion.
If you copy paste a bunch on their website their bot might think you're
spamming (my own experience).
------
arkitaip
It's even worse when Google starts doubting your identity. These days, their
Recaptcha system annoys me on multiple sites, sometimes asking me to solve 4-5
different puzzles.
------
throwaway84018
This can happen if you use Tor. They remove all the pull requests, issues, and
comments you have made on all repositories.
It can happen multiple times, even after your account was restored.
~~~
type0
> It can happen multiple times, even after your account was restored.
This is actually most concerning. Although I understand that there is such a
thing as selling legitimate accounts to spammers the fear of getting falsely
flagged again makes me cautious of using their service to anything mission
critical.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nushell – A New Type of Shell - diablo1
https://www.nushell.sh/
======
_jal
> For a quick start we recommend you to read our book
That... is not a good way to entice me to try something.
~~~
mden
Just curious why you think so. Bash manuals tend to be pretty long and it
seems they also provide a quick reference for commands right in the same docs
page. Is it the "book" aspect of it?
~~~
ivanbakel
Because a book is a big upfront cognitive investment - and if it's written
well, it will begin with the assumption that you already want to use Nushell,
because why else would you have the book?
If you want to entice users, they need to see something immediately valuable,
and it needs to come with essentially no investment on their part.
------
cryptonector
We've seen earlier posts of this. It's a shell that works on the premise that
data is tabular. It's pretty neat. I'm not sure I can ever leave the
traditional Unix shells behind though. I'm much more interested in a shell
integrated with jq or something like that, but the reality is that Unix
commands' input and output data types are not very well described or strongly
typed, and that makes anything much better than the shell's we've got
difficult to deal with.
I wonder if we could have a standard by which a command could indicate what
input and output data types it consumes/produces for a given command-line, as
well as what sorts of side-effects a command-line might have... Then we could
have shells implement some type system. Where you expect XML you can use
XPath, where you expect JSON you can use jq, and so on, and the shell could
display tabulated output where possible, and not where not.
~~~
skissane
> I wonder if we could have a standard by which a command could indicate what
> input and output data types it consumes/produces for a given command-line
I have suggested something very similar in the past, see my below comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675847)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17882025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17882025)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880897)
~~~
cryptonector
I was thinking of something more static than dynamic. In any case, I suspect
neither is workable.
------
steveklabnik
I've been using nu as my main shell for... a month now? Happy to answer any
questions.
I am not a heavy shell user, (I do almost everything in a terminal or a web
browser, I just don't use shell-specific features a ton) and there's been some
adjustment, but I like it!
~~~
Taikonerd
One thing I'm wondering: I know that you have to do some "massaging" of
programs' output, to get it into nushell's named-columns model. For example,
the "Parse formatted commit messages" in the cookbook:
[https://www.nushell.sh/cookbook/en/git.html](https://www.nushell.sh/cookbook/en/git.html).
You specify a custom format string, then split it, and name the columns.
Did you have to spend a lot of time doing that kind of massaging?
~~~
steveklabnik
I have mostly used this stuff with built in commands and so haven’t had to do
a ton of massaging.
------
trboyden
They totally blew it. Should have called it Nutshell.
~~~
UtahDave
I actually thought it did say "Nutshell" when I read the title. When I clicked
through to the actual page and saw it was "Nushell" I came back here to
verify. :)
------
Taikonerd
I've been meaning to learn Nushell. Its key selling point, for me, is that it
has ONE way of sorting / filtering columns, instead of different ways for _ls_
versus _cp_ versus _du_ , etc.
~~~
nailer
pwsh is great for that too (and has a huge standard library).
------
otabdeveloper4
This place is as good a place for this link as any:
[https://tkatchev.bitbucket.io/tab/](https://tkatchev.bitbucket.io/tab/)
Enjoy. :)
P.S., Not spam, I'm the author.
------
Taikonerd
One thing I think the nushell guys should include in their "about" page is an
answer to the question, "how is this different from PowerShell?"
The analogy to PowerShell is unavoidable -- they even make it themselves in
the docs. I'm totally willing to believe there are important differences, but
I wish they'd highlight them straight off the bat.
------
VectorLock
I love the concept of this. Something like this for JSON would be great. Kind
of sick of `jq`.
~~~
qqii
Have you seen jc[0]? Now for the json bash interface the only thing that's
missing a nicer json renderer (perhaps table format) to have a similar feature
parity to Nushell.
[0]:
[https://github.com/kellyjonbrazil/jc](https://github.com/kellyjonbrazil/jc)
~~~
kbrazil
I'm not sure if this fits your use case, but I also created jtbl to print the
json output (say from jc) as a table in the terminal.
[https://github.com/kellyjonbrazil/jtbl](https://github.com/kellyjonbrazil/jtbl)
~~~
qqii
Interesting project, it'll definitely be something I consider! I've been
hacking together things with gron[0] and coreutils when I do want tabular
data. jello looks pretty interesting too, but I'm not sure if I agree with
python syntax.
[0]: [https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron](https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron)
~~~
kbrazil
Yep, I get it with the python syntax. It's not for everyone but the goal is to
democratize the JSON processing for the masses that know python where more
complex jq queries can be daunting. Jello also supports gron-like output with
the -s option.
------
haecceity
It looks like this is trying to do what powershell does pretty well. Pushing
tabular data through pipes and filtering on columns and rows and such. It
helps that all the commands in powershell outputs tabular data. Has anyone
tried using powershell on linux?
~~~
qqii
I used powershell a bit when I was mainly using Windows and tried it briefly
when moving back to Linux. The biggest issue is when you're stepping outside
of powershell commands which return nice objects and run linux scripts or
executables. Eventually I took the path of least resistance and just switched
to bash with jq/jc to fulfill my structured needs, but I'm sure someone could
create a jc for gnu/etc to powershell.
------
L3viathan
This looks good in theory, but in practice many of its examples are cheating:
`ps`, `ls`, etc. are something like shell builtins, so your memorized `ps`
arguments won't work with this, for example.
------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006)
------
einpoklum
Isn't it enough to just provide a formatter for use with existing shells?
------
physicsyogi
This seems like something that could be useful for data scientists.
------
juped
Compare to Powershell, which also works with structured objects.
------
dan-robertson
I’ve been thinking about what I’d want in a new shell for a little while.
Suffice it to say: not this.
This decides that the problem is mostly the unix commands not working together
the way the author would like but I’m already pretty happy with the way unix
commands work, I know how to use awk and I have a bunch of tools for different
kinds of structured data.
So instead I will go off topic and describe the new shell that I would
actually like to see:
A shell is (at least as far as I’m concerned) a program for running other
programs, and connecting them together. I would not constrain myself to
running inside a fixed grid character terminal if I could help it.
The thing I would focus on is interactivity and modifiability of commands.
Most of my time at a command line is doing one of two things:
1\. Typing simple commands to e.g. start systems or query their state or
otherwise poke them. Here command has a more traditional meaning than
“invocation of a program which may do arbitrary things”.
2\. Piecing together pipelines to extract some data and do things with it
(first I write a command to get some data and probably pipe it into less, then
I try writing a bit of sed on the end and piping that into less, then some
awk, and so on until I have the pipeline I want)
For 1, I would want things to mostly work like bash.
For 2, I would want something more. Instead of using regular pipes, add an
intermediate program (or use the shell). At first it can just hold onto the
input as well as sending it to the output. That would make it easy to inspect
what is going into a pipe. I guess it may eventually want to stop building
memory usage so maybe it could have a large ring buffer instead. I would also
like to be able to get some pv like behaviour to see progress. This could also
be switched into something with lower overhead. I think it would all be
reasonably cheap with splice, tee, and vmsplice (I’m not interested in support
for non Linux platforms).
I’d want the ability to e.g. write my command with a trailing pipe, see some
output, and then interactively add more stages to the pipeline
Ideally, I’d like an interactive awk-like tool where I can see the effect of
my partly-written command as I write it.
I’d want ssh to be treated in a first-class reasonably transparent way where I
don’t need to think about complicated quoting rules. But maybe somehow
efficiently trying to avoid too much bandwidth or remote computation.
I think I would want it to mostly run inside emacs but able to spawn a fast
terminal emulator automatically as necessary for large files or long lines
(you may be surprised to know that a shell in emacs tends to give you much
lower typing latency than typical terminal emulators because Mac’s handles its
own rendering and line editing whereas a terminal emulator must send the key
to bash through a pty which then sends back some terminal control codes which
must be interpreted before the display may be rendered.
------
thanatropism
... the Wolfram Shell?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tell HN: Couldn't Sleep Last Night, Wrote a (No-Flash) HTML5 Viewer for YouTube - ComputerGuru
http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/watch-youtube-videos-in-html5/
======
ComputerGuru
I was bored last night and browsing YouTube in bed on my MacBook, and as
usual, when I reached an HD video the fans kicked in and the laptop got hot.
Since YouTube now stores the .mp4 version of (most) videos on their servers, I
figured it was inevitable that someone had coded something or the other to
take advantage of it and view them in streaming format via HTML5 video
containers.
When I didn't find one I wrote this instead. It's really basic, but it gets
the job done. Give it a YouTube link and it'll display the HTML5 video. The
userscript adds a link to the HTML5 viewer for all video pages on YouTube.
~~~
tsuraan
I'm not having any luck loading your page, so maybe it's explained there, but
how do you get to the .mp4 version of a file? pwnyoutube often works, but it's
also often down. I'd love to just be able to download the video and watch it
locally, if the .mp4 link allows that.
~~~
dreish
javascript:(function(){url='http://deturl.com/download-video.js';document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).src=url;})();
I've never had a problem using this.
~~~
louislouis
sexy!
------
rufo
If you haven't seen ClickToFlash yet, it can transparently replace the YouTube
flash player with an HTML5 <video> element in Safari:
<http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/>
~~~
swombat
From that link:
"Block evil Adobe Flash"
Great, more ideologists.
~~~
wtallis
Aren't there enough objectively bad things about Flash to justify summarizing
it as "evil"? It does so many bad things to a web site's accessibility,
usability, download size, security, and performance that anybody with a
genuine interest in making the web a better place should be encouraging
migration to the open standards based alternatives. Now that HTML5 features
are available, it seems that the only significant things Flash has going for
it are a large install base and a decent authoring tool.
~~~
swombat
There's enough bad things about almost any good thing...
I use Flash (Flex, actually) for my company's website and it works very well
for us. Blanket-labelling it as evil is just silly. Flash is no more evil than
a hammer.
------
drawkbox
Google/youtube beat you to it in April: <http://www.youtube.com/html5>
Must be viewed in Chrome Also show a video of their O3D technology, similar to
WebGL.
~~~
ComputerGuru
That's just a sample. No way to load other videos in the HTML5 viewer.
fyi, the link works great in Safari.
~~~
drawkbox
True. But the player code is all there. It should work in any html5 enabled
browser (Safari 4, Chrome, and FF 3.5) although FF 3.5 is having some issues
with it.
This does highlight one problem with html5 based video, different browsers
will interpret it differently no matter how hard standards are pushed. Flash
video (FLV) saved us from that and all the horrible players like Real Media,
Windows Media and Quicktime by being consistent and working across all browser
as long as you have the plugin.
------
ComputerGuru
OK, it's going to be super-slow right now because it's already been
slashdotted.
Don't know why it's taking it down so badly, MySQL has been acting up for the
past fortnight :S
EDIT: Just swapped services (from Apache to IIS) and it looks like
everything's doing better.
------
spazmaster
Very nice! Just watched Did you Know 4.0 in HTML5 and the activity on the CPU
on my MBP was super low, unlike when watching it in Flash. Thanks for staying
up the night!
~~~
ComputerGuru
Thank you! and you're welcome :)
------
yesimahuman
This seems cool. It's not working for me though, the video never plays and the
track scan and volume buttons have a blue border around them. I'm on FF 3.5.5
~~~
ComputerGuru
You need to manually press the play button. The numbers are a lie (0:00/0:00)
and the blue border only appears in FF (silly thing requires a border=0 which
I'll add later). It may take a while on slower internet and some videos do not
have an MP4 upload on YouTube. However, the YouTube slider _does_ work and you
can use it to skip to any part of the movie.
~~~
mlLK
Only browser I got your app working in was Chrome. What browser were you
primarily testing the application in? What version? Because Firefox just
released an update this morning and it could very well be the culprit.
I not only could not get Firefox (3.5.5), IE7, or Safari to work with your
HTML5 YouTube app, but I could not get YouTube's app to work either; I hope
this fact mitigates your worries.
~~~
ComputerGuru
Main development was with Safari, WebKit, Chrome, and Firefox on OS X.
Couldn't get it to work with Camino.
Tested as well on Chrome for Windows. Of course, Internet Explorer doesn't
work.
EDIT: Sorry, guess that's the effect of an all-nighter. It actually doesn't
load in Firefox for me, either.
~~~
mlLK
Well I'm not gonna blame you for it not working in Firefox. I've actually had
to re-write client-side code (generally just quick hacks, similar to your
project) solely for Firefox patching some sort of quirk or behavior change
into their browser. It can get especially annoying if you're always testing
with the most recent version.
Nevertheless its a neat app. ;)
------
r11t
Here is a browser bookmarklet for your Youtube HTML5 video viewer :
<http://gist.github.com/229475>
------
chrischen
This is really cool. And I have a question about HTML5 video in general: how
would an HTML5 player prevent users from messing with ads if it were used by a
site like Hulu?
~~~
kwamenum86
HTML5 video is not supposed to be used for video streaming at all. I think it
is doubtful that companies with the concerns you described would use the video
tag.
~~~
rimantas
What makes you think so?
~~~
kwamenum86
What makes me think HTML5 is not for streaming? Streaming video technology
works differently.
What makes me think companies with the concerns outlined by the OP would not
consider HTML5? It would be much more difficult to control their content.
Flash is great as a hard to penetrate content container. Exposing your content
by using HTML + JS to display it is less than ideal if you want to serve
ads/make it difficult to steal content.
~~~
chrischen
<http://www.youtube.com/html5>
Youtube streams the file. Youtube also serves ads. Youtube, as exemplified by
the OP and by my link is experimenting with an HTML5 player. But you are
right. HTML5 has this problem of exposing the player, so any mechanisms in the
javascript to force ad viewing can be more easily defeated.
A possible solution would be to track user session and force a new ad on every
new session (so you can't clear cookies). That way ad tracking can persist
outside of the video player itself by using the cookie.
The other problem is, who serves video files themselves anymore? So if
Youtube, or any other video services who depend on _ads_ to keep themselves
afloat can't use the HTML5 video tag, who will?
~~~
kwamenum86
Who will? Anyone who wants to serve video without interstitial ads. Think
about the world before Youtube-like sites. How did we embed video? Often times
hosted on our own servers. If I want to serve up a dynamic video for example,
right now Youtube-like services do not allow me to do that. I think dynamic
video is a great use case for the video tag e.g. splicing a use photo into
video.
It seems to me that unless the ad is prepended to the actual video file then
using javascript we can tell when an ad is playing and kill it/skip to the
"real" content. On the other hand the average user probably does not have the
expertise to kill ads, so maybe the point is moot.
~~~
chrischen
Yes but someone can easily make a browser extension that kills it for them.
Or use firebug and inject javascript into the page.
I think people stopped embedding videos and started using third party tools
because it makes it _easier_. Third party tools will always make it easier. No
need to worry about bandwidth, file space, etc (even if the cost of these
items are going down). And as long as these tools make it easier, these tools
will probably want control of their players and will want to put ads in them.
------
gcanyon
On my macbook, using this viewer causes Safari to take about 20% CPU. Same
video using flash takes about 13%. Flash doesn't seem to be CPU-evil on my
machine.
------
JMiao
thinking it would be nice if you also let us view a random video link rather
than find/copy/paste.
------
radley
A crow eating a dead rat? (Zhuangzi)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple and Cisco Partner to Deliver Fast Lane for iOS Enterprise Users - davidbarker
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/08/31Apple-and-Cisco-Partner-to-Deliver-Fast-Lane-for-iOS-Enterprise-Users.html
======
mtgx
Fast lane? Really?
~~~
ocdtrekkie
It doesn't sound like this is actually a net neutrality thing, just a really
poor choice of words.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WeWork calls time on free beer and wine at North American sites - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/30/wework-ends-free-beer-wine-north-american-sites
======
mpochwat
Given the cost cutting situation with Softbank, not that surprised.
I've worked in a dozen different Wework locations (as a digital nomad). Beer
is also one of the perks I rarely use. Sure it's nice to know you can have a
beer in the evening, but it's not something you want to have everyday when
being productive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: HackerNews user search engine - sideproject
https://hackernews.club
======
sideproject
Hello HN'ers,
I wanted an easier way to search for users of HackerNews, view their
submissions and comments.
There are lots of things I wanted to include, but just wanted to get this out
there to get some feedback. Would love to hear what you guys think.
Note : I think there was a similar site a few years ago called "hackernewser"
\- I'm not sure what happened to it because it now gives an error. Anyway,
this project was partially inspired by that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Graylog2 v0.20.0 released - lennartkoopmann
http://graylog2.org/wow/such/0.20.0/
======
atmosx
By going through the page I understood:
* Graylog2 is probably version 2 of Graylog (fair enough) * It's a data analytics platform, where you can feed your syslog. * Has a REST interface
What I would like to understand but was not able to:
* Do they open source both client and server? * Is it only a server app with a web interface? * To they sell anything at all? (support, plans, etc)
~~~
lennartkoopmann
It's all open source, you can feed _any_ data, not only sylog and TORCH
([http://www.torch.sh](http://www.torch.sh)) is selling commercial services.
Also take a look at:
[http://support.torch.sh/help/kb/general/graylog2-architectur...](http://support.torch.sh/help/kb/general/graylog2-architecture-
high-level-overview)
The feedback here definitely helped us identify that we need to make our
websites more obvious about what Graylog2 is actually doing. Thanks!
------
Don_E
We are heavy users of both Graylog2 and Logstash and they both shine at
different things at the moment.
In an enterprise context with lots and lots of logs Graylog2 is making the
process of segregating access to certain logs very,very easy. It's interface
is a lot less "bling bling" than Kibana but much easier to use for a certain
type of users.
Logstash is still king for parsing logs into structured events (and we use it
a LOT - our current config file is ~2.5k lines) but we had issues with
stability and loosing messages (crashes due to character issues, etc).
The core of Graylog2 rocks - it's stable and very performant (we are pushing
30k+ msgs/s over a single node with room to spare) and the support we have
received from the Graylog2 team has been nothing but awesome.
I am confident that they will catch up with Kibana (in terms of
visualisations) very, very quickly.
------
cdelsolar
I have been unable to use Graylog for a long time now; if anyone can provide
any pointers I'd greatly appreciate it. No matter what installation method I
try, eventually my Graylog instance crashes, or Mongo crashes, or
Elasticsearch crashes, or my hard drive gets filled up with huge amounts of
error logs and the whole system grinds to a halt, etc etc etc. I am using an
Azure "large" instance and trying to log about 300 or so messages per second.
I make sure to only log enough messages so that old ones get thrown away
before the hard drive fills up, but it doesn't matter, it still crashes. It
also crashes if I add an external large drive and log to there, eventually I
will get an insanely large number of elasticsearch errors.
I eventually had to take it down because it keeps crashing but now I have no
error information. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
~~~
lennartkoopmann
Please contact the mailing list and we are happy to help. 300 msgs/sec is not
much and we should easily get that unter control. :)
------
btgeekboy
I started playing with this over the weekend. Great stuff.
Also, if you're on the fence about whether to use this or Kibana, they're
compatible with each other, so give them both a try. (Set up Graylog2, point
Kibana at G2's elasticsearch instance, profit.)
------
izzydata
I don't know if it is just my browser, but at the top of the page where it
says "everything we learned from users" the "d" in learned and the "f" in
users are on-top of eachother.
Sorry I don't have anything constructive to post.
~~~
lennartkoopmann
oh, what browser is that?
~~~
izzydata
Chrome on Fedora Linux. Here is a screenshot.
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58437091/Selection_016.p...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58437091/Selection_016.png)
~~~
lennartkoopmann
Thank you! I'll look into that.
------
tweiss
Great to see that there is (almost) always a great open source alternative to
expensive proprietary IP products! Splunk can become very expensive very
quickly if you have a lot of data, so this is great news. Wish they would have
shorter release cycles though...
~~~
lennartkoopmann
Thanks! :) Regarding the release cycles: We just released v0.20.1 - just a
week after v0.20.0.
It took us a while to build us this foundation but now we are constantly
releasing updates on top.
------
tomsthumb
It would be nice to know what Graylog actually is after reading the entire
linked page. It left a fluffy impression, but most (all) of the information
there is explaining nice things _about_ Graylog.
This seems suboptimal from a marketing perspective.
~~~
rossjudson
It has 2000 commits and a REST interface. Was there something else you needed
to know?
~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
That page seems to be targeted more at people who already know or have used
graylog in the past. If you go to the main website it's more clear and there
is a screencast.
------
hijinks
This has come a long way since I last used it around 3 or so years ago. I'm
looking forward to trying it now since it's re-done and ditched mongodb for
elasticsearch.
------
bdcravens
in the URL: "/wow/such/0.20.0/"
in one of the first screen shots: "wow such monitor"
I'm guessing that was just a test name for the purpose of the screenshot, or
so I hope.
However, speaking in general (and not just aiming it at this project), can we
please leave the cutesy little Doge talk out of documentation and marketing?
I'd say that's true of all "memes" in general. In theory anyone can look at a
project if it's useful, and believe it or not, not everyone spends enough time
on Reddit or 4Chan to have a clue about what a Doge or a Harlem Shake is.
tldr; such dogetalk. much child-like. so annoy. wow.
~~~
meritt
I'm ambivalent on this topic. The dogespeak in this particular announcement
made me chuckle and envisioned the team as people I'd personally get along
with. They're catering to like-minded individuals.
If I had opened an IBM-enterprise-blah wall of text, I'd probably have not
spent nearly as much time learning about their product.
~~~
bdcravens
I think the project is a great one whether you work in an enterprise or wear
thick plastic glasses and an ironic t-shirt from some startup no one has heard
of.
"catering to like-minded individuals": yes, people with logs they need to
analyze. That could be a 20 year-old with a MBA stickered up, or a 53 year old
analyst working inside of a Active Domain enterprise.
------
cstuder
Has anyone compared Kibana with Graylog 0.20 series recently?
My use case is (currently) more in exceptions catching than performance
monitoring. Judging from that screenshots alone, I would say that Graylog is a
better fit for me.
~~~
lennartkoopmann
Kibana is a great product for very dynamic analysis and is definitely still
better there than Graylog2. However, we hear from a lot of people that they
prefer Graylog2 for monitoring and searching.
Also Graylog2 has stuff like a user/role model, (authenticated) REST APIs and
generally a more integrated approach.
I suggest you give both a spin and decide. :) Both products are easy to setup.
~~~
ysleepy
No Kerberos auth via reverse Proxy. Nobody uses it in our team because its the
only app where they need to enter a password.
A shame since it should be very easy to implement similar to the REMOTE_USER
env in other langs, maybe via X-Authenticated header or something for play.
~~~
btgeekboy
There's an issue on GitHub for this; I've wanted it as well.
[https://github.com/Graylog2/graylog2-web-
interface/issues/56...](https://github.com/Graylog2/graylog2-web-
interface/issues/560)
------
xfalcox
Does this compare to logstash? I'm trying to decide what log aggregator use,
and I don't have much time to test both. BTW, I'm running SLES 11 SP 2.
------
e12e
Oh, this is great news. One more project off my never-ending todo-list (write
log aggregator backed by elastic search). Nice to see binary packages for
Debian too!
------
scotth
Is the graylog beast still the logo? I love that guy.
~~~
lennartkoopmann
Unfortunately not! It came with permission from theoatmeal but now that we
approach bigger things with Graylog2 we felt like we have to get an own logo.
You can still expect stuff like the famous Party Gorilla (aka "That drunk
sloth") though. ...and rumors are that he might come back in some way.
------
meritt
Never heard of Graylog and after some introductory reading, I'll be giving it
a spin today. Thanks!
------
kordless
Congratulations to you and the team Lennart. It looks awesome. Will try it
out!
------
reiz
Great news. Many Thanks for all the hard work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How long to commit to your startup? - akg
It's very common that I hear, "most startups fail because the founders gave up too early". Surely, determination and tenacity goes a long way in creating a startup, but at what point do you decide to cut your losses and move on.<p>I find that the more time I put into something the harder it is to leave it behind because there is always that lingering optimism that we are at the cusp of exiting the trough of sorrow.<p>What do you think are good indicators for leaving one's current venture for other opportunities?
======
dwj
I think you really need some traction from the very beginning, otherwise it is
unlikely to be successful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Norwegian ISP: dig your own fiber trench, save $400 - tewks
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/norwegian-isp-dig-your-own-fiber-trench-save-400.ars
======
abstractbill
_The obvious downside is that passionate customers are more likely to complain
whenever they see shortcomings in the product._
That is not a downside. It's another upside.
------
Xichekolas
I think the most impressive thing was how they lined up support _before_
deploying the network. That seems like a win for everyone involved, as they
don't have to make huge speculative capital outlays... they already know they
will have customers. Presumably the customers reap the cost savings in the
form of lower bills.
~~~
axod
BT did this with the ADSL rollout in the UK. They only upgraded exchanges
where the demand from locals went over a threshold.
It actually angered quite a few towns and villages that didn't have sufficient
percentage interest to get their exchange upgraded to handle ADSL. They had to
do their own local canvasing etc which I guess was a good way to get people to
do marketing for free.
~~~
imajes
what's really interesting about this is how BT are going to be pushing through
their ADSL2/fiber upgrade- they need to make it commercially viable so are
going to be requiring some strict resale restrictions etc. :(
------
m_eiman
In Sweden we've used a similar system. The state has provided financial
support for creating economic associations (not sure of the term there, but
it's what my dictionary tells me) that build and own fibre networks.
It's been very successful in the country side, where the people of e.g. a
village formed the association and then built their own network. These
networks are then connected for municipality's backbone, and it's done.
Prices per month for Internet access in nets connected to my local backbone,
symmetrical: 10Mbps for $24, 30Mbps for $34, 100/10Mbps asym for $35. There's
also an additional $10 or so for access to the backbone.
Each member of the association pays something like $5000 for their part of the
network, but that's tax deductible to some extent.
~~~
Xichekolas
In the US, we'd probably call these 'economic associations' co-operatives, or
co-ops for short.
There are several municipalities trying to do something like that here. The
problem is that the local telephone and cable companies lobby state
governments to pass laws making it illegal to do so. It's rather ridiculous.
~~~
sp332
Burlington Telecom is one of the more successful, from Vermont:
<http://www.burlingtontelecom.net/>
------
alex_c
I know very little about telecom infrastructure, so this might have a really
obvious answer - but why does the last stretch HAVE to to be underground? In
other words, why isn't a "skip the trench, save $400" model feasible?
~~~
imajes
I would suggest that:
\- fiber is relatively more expensive than simple copper strands; \- hanging a
cable from a telephone pole to the house is not resilient to weather; \- fiber
can snap easily, and needs to be wrapped in thick protection: see point 2 \-
most of it comes underground now so it'd be a waste to break out into the air
and: wifi from cabinets in the street would be weird. :)
~~~
Xichekolas
But is there any reason I couldn't run it in plastic tubing along the bottom
of my fence for instance?
Only thing I can think of is below freezing temps, which you wouldn't get when
below the frost line.
------
pasbesoin
Unrelated except for the impression it forms in me: This story reminds me of
encountering one of the chief officers of a small/midsize electric power
company in Iowa, back in the 1980's. They were actively working _with_ Amory
Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, on energy conservation because they
recognized that the resultant leveling of peak generation demands made them
_more_ profitable. They sold less power, but their margins improved enough to
more than compensate. Everyone won.
It's always impressive to find a company willing to think outside of the
established "box", and to work with their customers. To my mind, it represents
a generalized form of hacking. It's not just about technology, per se, it's
about finding a better way -- and, when speaking of commerce, making a
business out of it.
Kudos.
~~~
pchristensen
God bless Amory Lovins. Every time I hear about something new he has done, I
wish the story had been heard instead by someone who wasn't already such a
fan.
------
aaronblohowiak
This will probably make a lot of Norwegians happy. While the construction and
public works in Norway are top-notch, they are not known for their speed of
execution ;) hopefully this will let the eager geeks be a little more
impatient.
------
russell
It works in the US too. I lived in a neighborhood served by a small mutual
water company (160 houses). When we needed to replace old 4 inch mains by new
6 inch mains, the neighbors did all the in-the-trenches manual labor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Texas cancer researcher was called ‘foolish’, then won the Nobel Prize (2018) - new_guy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/25/texas-scientist-was-called-foolish-arguing-immune-system-could-fight-cancer-then-he-won-nobel-prize/
======
gojomo
In the very early 80s, as a middle-school student in the suburbs of Houston
with a new Apple ][+, I attended a personal computing show downtown.
One of the booths was showing off a game, called "Killer T-Cell" if I remember
correctly, based on some local university research. You'd move a little T-Cell
around, through a changing pink maze of good tissue, to absorb & destroy any
cancerous (purple?) cells that popped up.
It used hi-res mode but seemed to be played on a grid based on the Apple ][+'s
low-res mode – and sometimes that mode flashed through as well. (I can't
remember if that was a glitch or purposeful effect.) It was pretty crude in
graphics and gameplay, but we bought it, for maybe $5 or $10, on a 5.25"
floppy – moreso for the novelty and intellectual content than anything else.
Over 37 years ago, that game conveyed to me the idea that people probably get
a lot of microcancers all the time, which are routinely cleaned up by the
immune system's T-cells, and only become a problem when the immune system is
finally overwhelmed or tricked.
Dr. Allison's Wikipedia page suggests he was at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer
Center at that time, in his early 30s. I wonder if the game was motivated by
his research... or even if he was the person who sold me that game.
~~~
antoncohen
The professor that created "Killer T-Cell" was Dr. Elton Stubblefield[1][2].
Both Dr. Elton Stubblefield and Dr. James Allison were at University of Texas
MD Anderson Center in Houston.
[1] [https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/28/Beating-cancer-
the-v...](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/28/Beating-cancer-the-video-
way/9982404625600/)
[2]
[http://jplaffont.photoshelter.com/image/I0000BBbrdiNVlfI](http://jplaffont.photoshelter.com/image/I0000BBbrdiNVlfI)
~~~
gojomo
Thank you! My searches had turned up nothing. (Was something like Lexis-Nexus
needed to find that old UPI story?)
------
ramraj07
As some context, in 2001, a couple of scientists many might consider to be the
closest to the "leaders of cancer research" wrote a seminal review in the
journal Cell called as "hallmarks of cancer" where they set out to define 7
essential (or what they thought was essential) things that a tumor has to do
to be defined as cancerous.
That list did not include any mention whatsoever of the immune system. IIRC
the only mention of the immune system was in one sentence deep in the review
where they just casually disregard it.
I was still in high school when this review came out so I probably can't say I
would have thought differently but at least to me that review was indicative
of the fairly myopic way research happens in general, even today. Imagine this
- two of the leaders of the field who are supposed to fill out ten pages of
all the things that could affect or be affected by a developing cancer, and it
did not fathom to the that the immune system had something to do with it?
The more outrageous thing is its not unheard of that the immune system has a
role to play. People had suspected a long time that even chemo therapy in
general only works via the immune response. It's the level of insulation
between immunologists and cancer biologists that was to blame. People just
decided to stick to one gene or disease and really didn't want to give a shit
about anything else happening in biology with serious thought. No wonder it
has taken us so long!
And if you think Im being too harsh, a decade later in 2011 the same authors
wrote an amended review to update their original. By now it had become obvious
that the immune system presented both a formidable barrier at first and an
essential ally in later steps for any cancer to be able to grow and thrive.
Don't know about you, but that sounds like an essential "Hallmark" of cancer
to me. But then of course lest we correct ourselves, the researchers just
grouped the immune checkpoint as one of the several other "supplemental"
hallmarks that were discovered since.
~~~
Retric
Being factually incorrect does not mean they made a mistake.
The correct response to _every_ science idea is extreme skepticism without
evidence. That’s not to say we should avoid gathering evidence, just that the
default needs to be conservative.
~~~
kosievdmerwe
The problem is that the more established scientists can play politics and
deny/reduce funding for the "crazy" idea.
There needs to be balance. I see people religiously hold to the orthodoxy of
scientific knowledge rather than the scientific method. But there's also the
case where established scientists are financially reliant on what the
orthodoxy is as that's what their research is about.
The world is complicated and not intuitive and I'm aware there's a distinction
between rejection and skepticism, but I feel that people err to rejection much
too easily.
Some examples of the weirdness of the world: Quantum mechanics and the fact
that it's possible to build a windpowered land vehicle that travels directly
down wind faster than the wind.
Trying to find other examples, I've run across Boltzmann who committed suicide
in 1906 likely due to all the pressure he faced trying to get people to accept
the idea atoms exist.
~~~
GeekyBear
>The problem is that the more established scientists can play politics
One of my favorite examples of how religiously dogmatic scientists can be
about existing theory is centered around the discovery of quasicrystals.
Daniel Shechtman won the Nobel prize for discovering a form of crystals that
formed regular non-repeating patterns like Penrose tiles or the tiles used on
some Mosques.
As evidence, he had electron microscope images of the materiel, very clearly
proving the veracity of his discovery, yet double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling
took particular pleasure in making his life a living hell, declaring that
"there is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasiscientists".
>In an interview this year with the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Shechtman
said: "People just laughed at me." He recalled how Linus Pauling, a colossus
of science and a double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening "crusade"
against him. After telling Shechtman to go back and read a crystallography
textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for "bringing
disgrace" on the team.
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/oct/05/nobel-
prize-...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/oct/05/nobel-prize-
chemistry-work-quasicrystals)
You would think that scientists would be willing to accept physical evidence
even if it isn't covered by existing theory, but sadly, they are perfectly
willing to reject it.
~~~
Retric
I think we need to separate cases with actual evidence like what you are
describing from default behavior. With a little evidence you can defend
spending a little more resources studying the same thing. Over time that
feedback loop works to both efficiently spend money and change orthodoxy.
That’s different from saying X seems likely based on gut feeling or whatever.
In the case with zero evidence the goal is to find the cheapest way to gather
any support and this initial effort is generally cheap enough to self fund. If
not, looking for funding outside of normal channels is a viable option.
That proof of concept stage is something of a road block, but less so than
generally portrayed.
------
mrosett
This stuff matters. I was fortunate enough to join a
[trial]([https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00636168](https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00636168))
for Yervoy the summer before it was approved by the FDA. Based on my reading
of the outcomes, there's a 1-in-4 chance that I'd be dead if I hadn't gotten
the drug through that trial. (It was initially double-blind but has since been
unblinded, so I know I was dosed with it.)
------
Grustaf
I wonder if there are Nobel prize winners that were never called foolish.
~~~
chubot
It reminds me of the "sounds like a bad idea" / "is a good idea" Venn diagram
for startups.
If it sounded like a good idea and was a good idea, then a bunch of people
would have already tried it. There would be steady progress by many people,
and steady competition. There would be no "breakthrough" by a single person /
company.
If it sounded like a bad idea and was a bad idea, then either nobody tried it,
or a contrarian tried it and quietly failed.
------
jameszol
This reminds me of a book called The Power of Starting Something Stupid, by
Richie Norton. The book tells several stories just like this one, where it
seems like peers or others are criticizing your work as “stupid” but you get
it done anyways because you know it is worthwhile, then finally the world
rewards you handsomely for it.
------
ngcc_hk
Nothing new. Read the about paradigm shift. You cannot work if you doubt every
library you used may be hacked (or your assumption or idea is wrong about
field X). Even if it is wrong obviously eg black body radiation you still
continue. What one should know how it is not if but when the library was
hacked (or your assumption is wrong), ...
------
ilrwbwrkhv
[https://outline.com/D2GuNJ](https://outline.com/D2GuNJ)
------
squirrelicus
Relevant: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-
out...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-out/)
tl;dr
The kinds of ideas that people who innovate come up with are found at the
extremes of convention, and are not distinguishable from crazy whether they
are right or wrong, and
You should expect an innovator to produce dumb ideas all the time. In other
words, forgive the smart, for they know not when they dumb.
Edit: this is also why we can be justified praising Elon Musk for SpaceX and,
to a lesser extent Tesla, and also ignore complete and utter nonsense like
Hyperloop and his cave submarine.
------
negamax
Tyranny of success..
------
sorenn111
I think this lends credence to the Thiel/Eric Weinstein notion of allowing
scientists and innovators to be irreverent because many new discoveries have
to run against the grain. I've heard Weinstein postulate one of the great
strengths of Western education is the fostering of such irreverence.
~~~
RandomTisk
I've heard physicist Michio Kaku say something similar, that western thought
historically has rewarded the mavericks but that eastern thought has tended
towards a "the tallest blade of grass is cut down first" mentality. I think it
was him who said that had Bill Gates been born in China, his peers would have
made his success very unlikely.
~~~
papermill
This is simply historically false. From Galileo and copernicus to even the
scientists positing germ theory in the 1800s, mavericks who fought against
orthodoxy have been persecuted. Even today, in our colleges, "mavericks" are
punished and attacked. Our most famous maverick, Socrates, was forced to
commit suicide.
It's true bill gates wouldn't have amounted to much had he been born in 1950s
china because china was heavily undeveloped. But had he been born later in the
60s or 70s with china opening up, he could have been a Jack Ma.
------
new_guy
Full Title: A Texas scientist was called ‘foolish’ for arguing the immune
system could fight cancer. Then he won the Nobel Prize.
It got a little mangled with the length constraint.
~~~
jhbadger
And in-between the critiques of his idea and the prize winning, Allison
actually showed evidence that checkpoint blockade worked. That's what kind of
annoys me about stories that describe science in these terms. It's as if the
authors want the reader to take away the moral "Don't criticize scientists
with seemingly crazy ideas; they might be right!". But criticizing crazy ideas
up until the point where they are shown not to be crazy is exactly how science
works.
~~~
doitLP
True, but it is also important to be aware of the hand-wavy hubris/entrenched
viewpoints that might prevent those ideas from having the chance to prove
themselves right. “Science proceeds one funeral at a time”
~~~
chrisbrandow
It’s a fundamental tension in the scientific method. We create models for how
reality works. We _know_ that they are imperfect and incomplete, but at times
we forget and therefore treat an idea or even observation that violates the
model as “impossible”.
Multiple observations ultimately dispel this failure but single observations
are easy to dismiss. This is also why crazy but ultimately correct ideas are
difficult to distinguish from crazy and wrong ideas.
And academics spend a lot of time teaching people to understand the models,
and are always looking for errors that arise from an incomplete or incorrect
understanding of the models. So, it is very natural to treat new theories that
violate an incomplete model the same way. Especially in fields like medicine
where it is nearly impossible to truly isolate single factors and outcomes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alexis and Steve are leaving Reddit - shimon
http://blog.reddit.com/2009/10/fare-thee-well-reddit.html
======
zck
On one hand, I'm a little surprised. On the other, I'm not:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9clji/where_did_m...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9clji/where_did_my_post_about_searscoms_urlhackable/c0c98im?context=3)
~~~
kn0thing
In fact, it has nothing to do with our departure. We've been preparing for
this for the last 6 months or so.
~~~
zck
It's not that I suspected that specific issue made you guys decide to leave,
It's more of I'm somewhat surprised you're leaving at all. Then again, I saw
it coming when spez posted "Ask me again in a couple of months".
Anyway, thanks for building an awesome site. Have fun in Armenia, and good
luck in whatever you do after that.
~~~
kn0thing
Ah, indeed. Well, thanks for using reddit and making it awesome. We know it
would be a pretty crappy site if only Steve and I were still submitting the
links like back on day 0.
~~~
blhack
Out of curiosity, how long after you guys started it did you start seeing a
lot of people other than you post links?
I run a similar website and it has just been my friends and I posting for
about a year now (which is fine with us)...interestingly (and one of the
coolest feelings I've ever gotten, I'm sure you can totally relate) somebody
that I had never even heard of posted my website to yours last night and told
people to check it out...Since then we've gotten about 200 signups (and 3-4
people that have been hanging out on there all day today).
Was it pretty quick after you launched reddit that you started seeing a ton of
people using it? I had quite a while ago accepted that it would likely just be
my friends and I posting on mine...
~~~
kn0thing
A little under two weeks, after a PG mention in an essay. Sounds like you got
a similar boost from a reddit appearance (oh, if only we'd had reddit to
promote on back then...). Be sure to engage those users, especially if they
write you; users who care enough to write feedback -- that's gold.
Then a week or so after that, we had a splendid day - neither Steve nor I
needed to submit any links, we just used the site like anyone else.
It was a good thing, too, because I was hitting my limit of aliases&passwords
to remember.
~~~
blhack
_A little under two weeks_
Well I definitely feel like a loser now, haha.
Glad I saw you posting here. I'm sure that it's gotten old by now (although I
hope it hasn't) but seriously good job on reddit. That website is leaps and
bounds about its competition (who is its competition anyhow? digg? fark?).
I've spent more time there than I have anywhere else...truly an awesome
awesome awesome community.
I hope you guys realize that, to people like me, you are literally a
superstar, thanks a lot for responding to my question :).
~~~
kn0thing
Like a loser? Nonsense! The important part of that sentence is "after a PG
mention in an essay." Just get PG to start a radical new kind of investment
firm and be the first portfolio company to launch, then make sure he writes an
essay where he namedrops you with a link -- easy as pie!
Seriously, though, that had a lot to do with getting reddit off to such a good
start. Who wouldn't want a bunch of PG readers to set the tone of their social
news website? :)
Hope you keep coming back to our Internet crack. I'd consider any website
trying to steal people's attention when they're bored at work competition :)
but the Internet is a big place, there's plenty of room.
~~~
astine
I thought that I'd let you know, I got so addicted to Reddit once that I had
to block it in order to get my life back. Good luck with your new ventures!
You've done some awesome stuff.
------
ivenkys
At one point,probably right at the beginning,Reddit was a bona-fide news-
aggregation site. Now, its just an outpost of 4Chan, at least the main page
definitely is. Nothing wrong with that except the contents and quality of
comments and postings have gone into a completely different direction.
~~~
theycallmemorty
If you dig deeper there is still a lot of good stuff. It turns out that the
idea of having each subreddit be a small 'community' kinda works. Each day my
wife checks out /r/Frugal just to see if there is anything new. She doesn't
really have any use for the rest of the site unless she's REALLY trying to
kill time but the Frugal reddit does a great job of aggregating stories she's
interested in.
If all you look at are /r/funny, /r/pics and /r/politics then you're missing
out.
~~~
kn0thing
This is something we still need to improve. Too few visitors to reddit
understand or even know about how this vast network of user-created reddits
should work. See, here I go wanting to mock a new redesign up in photoshop...
~~~
teach
I've been a reddit lurker for 4 years, and I was one of the hordes clamoring
for tags back in the day. When subreddits were introduced instead, I was a bit
disappointed. But now, these many years later, I can see how the subreddits
become independent communities in a way that tags would _never_ have
accomplished.
I'm still proud of you guys for that decision. Thanks for a great site that I
still spend way too much time reading every day.
------
larrykubin
Congrats and good luck on your next adventure.
Reddit is still my favorite site on the internet. I can't count the number of
times I've laughed out loud while reading AskReddit and IAmA. My wife probably
spends 2-3 hours a day on reddit. We both have reddit t-shirts. Yeah, I'm a
fan.
~~~
potatolicious
Am I the only one who has the opposite impression of Reddit? Maybe I should
read more of the humor reddits instead of the "serious" ones, 'cos my
impression of Reddit's userbase is a group of judgmental, yet poorly informed
people, yelling and screaming at things about which they know little.
I actually installed a Greasemonkey script to filter for words like tazer and
Sears :S
It's still incredible how much throughput reddit can push for content of all
types - but I've long since given up trying to read the comments (Slashdot on
the other hand, seems to be maintaining its quality of discussion fairly
well).
~~~
quizbiz
No you are not the only one. I guess Reddit comments in most part are not to
be taken seriously?
~~~
potatolicious
But good, insightful discussion and commentary is infinitely more interesting
than any source article by itself. 'Tis why I read Slashdot and HN.
------
theycallmemorty
Alexis and Steve: how much of this had to do with the 'censorship' you alluded
to when the atheism/front-page and sears/'hacking' issues happened?
I see to recall a comment from one of you saying that you couldn't talk about
it much now, but you would be able to 'in a couple months.'
~~~
larrykubin
I thought they were leaving due to it being the end of their vesting period
~~~
theycallmemorty
Sure. But they probably had the option to stay longer and possibly could've
left earlier if they wanted to violate their contract and lose money. (This is
speculation on my part. I have no idea what the terms of the conde nast sale
were)
------
prakash
Congrats, Alexis & Steve! Can't wait to see what you come up with next.
~~~
kn0thing
Thanks! I'm going to try and get my <http://breadpig.posterous.com> going, but
there's always <http://alexisohanian.com> if you'd like the scoop on what
we're working on next...
reddit is going to be hard to top, or even match, so please keep your
expectations measured :)
It's funny how much weight we put in past success as an indicator of future
success, no matter how much we may repeat the mantra that it's not. Going from
spec-ing out features for reddit with Steve in an apartment to acquisition
16months later is the kind of thing that can only happen with a tremendous
amount of chance.
~~~
iamelgringo
Congrats! You guys made something that really has changed the internets. I'm
convinced that Ron Paul wouldn't have even been on the political radar this
past fall had it not been for Reddit. That's pretty impressive when you think
about it.
And, I'm going to be launching a social news site soon geared towards
business/financial topics. I'd love to be able to pick your brain a bit about
the process of building reddit. I think you guys would have some pretty
amazing insights to offer. I'd love to pick your brain over coffee and/or beer
at some point. If you're interested, ping me: iamelgringo at
google's_email_service dot com
~~~
kn0thing
I hope you're taking advantage of our open-source reddit code.
<http://code.reddit.com>
Email on the way. I've always encouraged folks to bring on the competition :)
social news is far from done.
------
brown9-2
Can someone explain what benefit Conde Nast sees in owning reddit?
I'm not trying to be offensive or anything, I just don't understand how reddit
fits into the Conde Nast business.
(and yeah, I realize this question is about three years late to the party)
~~~
dc2k08
I think the demographic that uses reddit is often regarded as the most
difficult and skeptical demographic to market to. Owning reddit probably gives
them some fairly useful data and allows them to monitor trends and perhaps
better position their more-for-retail brands to attract this user-base.
~~~
kn0thing
I agree with this sentiment, though I wish the reality were more like your
theory for smarter brand positioning. On paper, it's a very attractive
demographic -- 26 median age, pre-dominently male, affluent and well-educated.
It's oft pitched as Wired readers, only about a decade younger (Wired is an
extremely well loved brand by advertisers).
~~~
jrockway
It says a lot about society in general when you consider Reddit users to be
"well-educated".
------
Alex3917
Funny, it doesn't seem like that long ago that Aaron wrote that post about
going out to celebrate Halloween right after they were acquired.
~~~
fleaflicker
and _...scrunched up [his] face to look a little angry, and said "I'm a dot-
com millionaire" with utter seriousness_
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/theafterparty>
~~~
kn0thing
I'd forgotten about this. I trust none of you take/took this as hard
journalism, but it's good story-telling. I do remember that particular quote,
though. I'm more of a Jack Sparrow guy myself (Hurray for 3 years of costume
recycling! Gotta love sequels).
Re-reading this, three years later, I'm struck by how incredibly guilty Aaron
appears to feel on the night of our acquisition. More than anything else, I
know I felt relieved. Make no mistake, when you're working through it, there
is nothing glamorous or care-free about slogging through a startup acquisition
(yet I hope you can all enjoy that suffering one day with your respective
startups).
~~~
aaronsw
I had a bad case of survivor's guilt that month. I got over it pretty soon
afterward, though.
------
ajju
Good luck with your next endeavors guys. I still remember when kn0thing sent
me some free reddit stickers for submitting feedback, back in '06.
~~~
kn0thing
Stickers, pins, and shirts are the currency of web 2.0 - I'm happy it left a
lasting impression on you. Though I told myself (and probably a few others)
that this kind of thing helped, it's nice to hear some anecdotal evidence.
Thanks (and for using reddit for so long).
~~~
ajju
The stickers had symbolic value. The fact that you acknowledged my feedback
with something more than an automated thank you email was what left a lasting
impression.
The reddit alien was my first bumper sticker. At some point I thought about
what made me put it on my car and I realized that the flattering human
acknowledgment I received to the feedback made me feel like I was responsible
for a tiny bit of all that was good with Reddit.
I have since used this approach (it's almost insulting to call it a tactic) to
my own advantage with my startup. So thank you, for what the stickers taught
me :)
If I had met you at a party and you had given me some free Reddit stickers it
would not have meant as much.
------
fjabre
Would have done exactly the same thing in their shoes.
And just remember, without Reddit, all we'd have is Digg and ultra cool Kevin
Rose hipsters dancing in the streets.. What an awful world that would be..
Best of luck to Alexis and Steve and thanks for your awesome contribution to
the landscape.
------
niyazpk
Am I the only one feeling bad?
Thanks you guys for building such an awesome community. The internet was
different after reddit.
For me it is very difficult to love a startup after the founders have left.
Not very logical I know. I guess I will use reddit again, but for now I have
given up my dream of buying a t-shirt from the stores. I don't feel like doing
so.
~~~
blhack
Don't feel like that! What makes reddit so awesome is the community that these
guys have built. It's not like they're going to suddenly stop being funny
because the founders left!
I'm sure they'll both keep posting and using the site...keep in mind that it's
been their baby for like, 4 years. I'll bet they use it everyday; it would be
like me trying to give up reddit, pretty much impossible since I've used it
every day for the last couple of years.
I say get a narwahl shirt, it makes other redditors easier to spot!
------
catch23
I bet they're applying for the YC W09 round!
~~~
kn0thing
If you get a chance, do ask Steve what Twitter-app he's working on for the new
YC round :)
------
gaborcselle
Congrats Alexis & Steve!
------
ALee
On to Breadpig! We all know that will be worth a lot more than Reddit.
~~~
kn0thing
Somehow I think there won't be a liquidity event with breadpig...
------
rms
Congrats guys!
------
staunch
Thank you. Good job. Good luck.
------
clistctrl
At the Startup Bootcamp, I thought he was alluding to this.
~~~
kn0thing
Curses! What tipped you off?
------
bdfh42
Leaving long after any of their user base over the age of sizteen I would have
thought.
~~~
kn0thing
Ahh, sweet sizteen, to have that year all over again...
~~~
nir
Kind of ironic for someone from Reddit to nitpick over a typo...
~~~
aquateen
Actually, when Reddit first added comments, I read many meta-comments about
grammar/punctuation/spelling. I remember being surprised by how much people
cared considering they were comments on a website.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ReMarkable MicroSD Hack - davisr
http://www.davisr.me/projects/remarkable-microsd/
======
davisr
This is my hack. I submitted it hoping that it will inspire a discussion about
other cool hacks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
McDonald's All-Day Breakfast Takes Toll on Jack in the Box - makphir
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/mcdonald-s-all-day-breakfast-takes-toll-on-jack-in-the-box-sales
======
herbst
Would be interesting as you are a specific target audience.
Do any of you guys even eat at McDonalds? I mean sure i did as Kid when i
didn't knew better, but i reasonable Adult?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anatomy of LinkedIn Options Bet That Probably Lost Money: Chart - princeb
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-13/anatomy-of-linkedin-options-bet-that-probably-lost-money-chart
======
princeb
posted in reference to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11895582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11895582)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why are more than 10M homes vacant in India? - koolhead17
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-32644293
======
chdir
For a working class person with no black income (unaccounted/un-taxed), home
buying experience has deteriorated in this housing boom. Builders often don't
sell you directly. They forward you to a middleman/broker. You are shown the
least desirable units as "available" & the rest all sold out (a lie). You are
expected to pay a sizable portion of the price as black money (could be as
high as 60%). The promised completion date drags on for years. The whole real
estate boom is targeted & fueled by black money owners.
Edit: And there are umpteen number of violations of regulations for
earthquake, fire safety, building laws. Almost all builders double sell you
the common land in the name of "reserved parking", clearly considered illegal
by the court.
~~~
cubancigar11
It is completely true. Actually, most of the problems in India can be traced
back to previous generation (current old generation). They:
1) Did the most corruption. It wasn't that bad before it.
2) Created all the draconian laws to 'correct' Indian culture.
3) Put pressure on current generation to 'own a house' at the age of 25-30,
while they themselves like all the people before them got their house at the
ripe age of 50-60.
4) Themselves a product and participant of socialist government with anti-
private business attitude, they increased the age of retirement for government
jobs. You meet one government employee and tell him/her that you work for some
IT company and they will mock you for 'getting undeserved salaries' and 'being
ignorant of bureaucracy', whether it is for getting a passport or driving
license.
~~~
dman
Do you think there are meetings and secret societies where the older
generation coordinates to plot the down fall of the newer generation?
~~~
sswaner
Maybe BJP and Congress are the groups you label "secret societies". It is not
unheard of for parties to cater to the political views of their most active
constituencies.
~~~
cubancigar11
Thanks. It should be understandable that young people do not have enough
patience to get what they want by way of voting or talking to MLA/MPs.
------
netcan
This level of reporting is really silly. I'm always surprised how common it is
to print a bunch of facts and/or speculations/opinions loosely wrangled
together with two-bit economics. It's really insulting to the reader.
Even psychology doesn't get this kind of abuse. Can you imagine an article
that lists off divorce rate, some happiness survey, psychiatric drug
statistics and ties it all together narratively with a single-sentence theory
about 21st century loneliness, stressful work lives, the trouble with living
online social lives or anything else that an average tabloid reader might
suggest as a reason.
Here we have some suggestion that tax evasion is involved, some stats about
housing shortages, slum housing and no information relevant to the obvious
question: why do people buy flats and them leave them empty?
Come on BBC.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Can you imagine an article that lists off divorce rate, some happiness
survey, psychiatric drug statistics and ties it all together narratively with
a single-sentence theory about 21st century loneliness, stressful work lives,
the trouble with living online social lives or anything else that an average
tabloid reader might suggest as a reason.
Yes, that's pretty normal actually. People even think it's quite intellectual.
------
npalli
I was curious and looked at vacant homes across the world.
So the US has about 13 Million vacant homes (with 1/4th the population of
India). [1]
China has anywhere from 69 to 85 million vacant homes (approx. same population
as India)
EU has about 11 Million vacant homes (with 40% of the population of India).
[3]
I would say a lot more fine grained analysis is required to say if this is a
problem or not.
[1]
[http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr113/q113press.pdf](http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr113/q113press.pdf)
[2]
[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-em...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-empty-
properties-enough-house-homeless-continent-twice)
~~~
chappar
>>China has anywhere from 69 to 85 million vacant homes (approx. same
population as India)
I am not sure I understand this calculation. India's population is more than a
billion
~~~
npalli
I meant China has approx. the same population as India.
------
cies
> Why are more than 10M homes vacant in India?
So why? BBC basically answers with the following: because some people earn
more money this way. Tell me something new BBC.
Let me posit another reason: because squatting these empty houses is not
allowed.
If squatting these long-term empty places was allowed they would be:
1\. sold/rented at a more fair market price,
2\. squatted (in which case they are also not empty anymore).
~~~
golergka
Well, let's just throw out the whole private property concept while we're at
it, why not?
~~~
jaredklewis
Is squatting totally incompatible with property rights? Until several years
ago, I believe the Netherlands had quite strong squatting rights in addition
to basic property rights.
Property rights in most countries are mitigated by a variety of competing
communal rights such as eminent domain, zoning, and environmental laws. I
think squatting rights could potentially protect communal rights in a similar
way.
~~~
nine_k
Squatting definitely _limits_ your property rights. Imagine that if your
backpack is vacant for some time, and someone put tacitly someting into it,
you'd be legally obliged to carry it around.
I suspect that squatting rights only affect obviously neglected property. I
suppose the empty houses and apartments are reasonably guarded and are not as
neglected as a closed and half-dismantled building. Also, squatting does
damage the property, hopefully in minor ways. Imagine that your empty backpack
was loaded with pizza slices: totally benign, but you'll have to clean the
backpack thoroughly.
------
yalogin
The main reason is that renting out these houses is not safe at all. Many
middle class people fear that the renter will occupy the house and not move
out. It happens all too often apparently and given the entirely corrupt law
enforcement officials and idiotic laws home owners would rather lock it up
than renting.
~~~
netcan
Why would you buy it then?
~~~
cubancigar11
Land is a boom waiting to go bust. Unfortunately, most naysayers are currently
basking in seriously ridiculous amount of cash :P
------
foolinaround
the major issue not mentioned as to why these homes are vacant is the problem
of eviction of tenants.
The laws are so lax that folks often buy property with clean money, and just
keep it locked up rather than realizing the rent potential.
The growth in prices has so far ensure that even then, buying and locking up
property is lucrative.
~~~
brickcap
This is very true. I have known tenants who adversely possess the property and
make owners fight for decades before they are evicted. Generally as long as
the tenant is paying rent there are very few grounds on which he can get
evicted.
Most of laws favour the tenants(in one sense it is right) but it is not
uncommon for them to take undue advantage. And people who rent without a
contract of some sorts usually pay the price. Most of them though would rather
prefer to keep it vacant than put it in any danger of dispute.
~~~
kamaal
>>Generally as long as the tenant is paying rent there are very few grounds on
which he can get evicted.
Not exactly, Most people make the tenants sign a 12-18 months rental
agreements these days, with a very heavy deposit amount in cities in
Bangalore. Those agreements are pretty serious legal documents.
~~~
brickcap
>Those agreements are pretty serious legal documents.
I agree :) what I am saying is, my observation has been that many people don't
do agreements. If you have an agreement with an express expiry date (12-18
months as you say) it is all good. Most people don't. For many people the
problem is lack of knowledge. For something as ordinary as renting they don't
even consider the need for going to a lawyer/agent and getting a contract
done.
What you say about Banglore is opposite to my observation and it makes me
happy that people there are smart enough to enter into a contract before
renting their house. It is good both for the tenant as well as the landlord.
Noida is also a pretty popular IT city and people renting out their homes make
no contract. Even in my own city (gurgaon) letting without a contract is
pretty common. Mostly there are no disputes. But when there are they are long
and bitter.
------
linux_devil
Investments in property is booming in India . Don't know if it's a bubble or
not . But I cannot afford one right now (not even as investment ) , reason its
too expensive and loan is not my cup of tea and I think investing same money
in your own startup will be worth more ( as experience)
~~~
VLM
"I think investing same money in ... startup will be worth more"
You are correct on a micro-level but there are also macro-level issues when
capital and rent (rent of money) are tied up in non-productive assets. An
individual who buys a $1M house cannot put that $1M into a startup, but also
on a societal level a bank that loans $100M of mortgages cannot loan that
$100M to build infrastructure or a new manufacturing plant or a (large)
school. So high price of non-productive assets hurt the macro scale as much or
more than it hurts micro scale. Its very bad for the economy when the best
thing to do with a pile of money is buy something that doesn't produce
anything or grow anything. Its as bad economically as stuffing the money into
a mattress.
~~~
alextgordon
> on a societal level a bank that loans $100M of mortgages cannot loan that
> $100M to build infrastructure or a new manufacturing plant or a (large)
> school
As a technicality, the whole point of modern banking is that banks can loan
out the same money over, and over, and over again.
So in fact you can eat your cake and have it too.
~~~
VLM
There are limits to that of course. Aside from that, I don't think it changes
the bigger pix that "everything" involved in making a non-productive capital
investment is unavailable for productive investments. Can't build a rail line
thru there, can't that wood and stone into an office building. All that energy
and labor invested, you're never going to get a return on that.
I'm not saying a world devoid of art and fun is a good goal, but am saying
that going way overboard to one extreme is going to result in blowback.
------
somberi
It helps to think of these "vessels" that conduit black money not as Houses in
the strict sense. From a policy planning perspective it helps to remove the
errant variable (in this case excess of homes).
------
gamekathu
same situation in US or other "First World" countries - nobody bats an eye,
and if in India : "Everyone loses their minds!" Just Saying
~~~
XJOKOLAT
I would suggest that:
1) It isn't the same situation. The level of corruption and absolute poverty
levels are not comparable.
2) Where there are similarities in "first world" countries (e.g. empty housing
stock), eyes are very definitely batted. At least in the UK.
3) I would argue that 10 million empty homes in India, where there is
significant slum situation, which is basically accepted and regarded as
"normal", even in the capital city, is more eyebrow-raising than an empty home
situation a "first world" country. I don't actually see anyone losing their
minds though.
~~~
cpncrunch
Similar situation (apart from the corruption and poverty) in Vancouver.
Average detached 2-storey home price is $1.27M, average condo is $506k. It's
completely unaffordable by the average working person. Lots of condos are
purchased by overseas investors and left empty.
Also, I'm not entirely sure why 10 million empty homes in a country with 1
billion people is a big deal. That's just 4% of the housing stock (assuming
average of 4 people per home). There seems to be an assumption that you can
just put the slum dwellers into the empty condos, which doesn't necessarily
seem realistic. (I'm not saying that they shouldn't get decent housing, but I
think it will need to be done in a different way).
------
kamaal
This largely because these are high rising apartments on the outskirts of
cities, purchased with an intent of renting them out for side income. The net
result is there are too many of them. And since they are far away from
schools/hospitals/markets and other amenities, nobody really opts for rent in
these places. Eventually as the cities grow this may change, but note as time
goes your apartment ages too(and so does its value). There is a huge debate
whether as to buying an apartment is a better idea or a buying a plot given
these circumstances. Every one wants a rent income, very few want the struggle
of buying the land, protecting it from encroachers and build it later[which is
an circus in itself], most want a ready made flat. Both have their own
advantages and disadvantages. Like in all cases good investments are a lot of
hardwork and stressful.
Inside the cities houses are always in epic demand. The situation there is
totally different.
------
aaron695
As a logic experiment for people in well off countries have a think about what
would happen if people built 10 million mansions and left them empty.
Firstly it wouldn't happen even with black money. There's no point having
assets you can't use. You're better off just paying the tax and collecting
rent.
There'd be a lot of jobs building them.
And the housing market would become cheaper since they have to be sold at some
point.
This is a pretty awful BBC, quoting some sort of site, that quotes a Managing
Director of a large property constant.
The firm doesn't seem to have produced a report, it seems to be based off an
interview, or just a comment of some sort.
[https://twitter.com/cbreasia/status/593669907172237312](https://twitter.com/cbreasia/status/593669907172237312)
------
xnull2guest
This reminds me that both India and China are building a huge number of cities
all wired up to collect data on everything, so that they can be micromanaged
and studied.
Modi promised to build 100 "Smart Cities" \- a lot of it with foreign and
private investment dollars.
~~~
miji
yeah, its called system science
~~~
xnull2guest
It was my understanding that Smart Cities were a new and exciting concept. But
yeah, systems science is going to play an important role.
~~~
yummyfajitas
I interviewed once at a company helping to build "smart cities" in India and
in Malaysia. The idea sounded really cool, and I'd love to do statistics for
something other than making people buy stuff online.
They actually just wanted a white guy with a Ph.D. to schmooze with clients,
and were willing to pay 8 lac/month for it. It was unclear what "smart city"
meant to them - the best I could tell it was just spinning up a hadoop cluster
to big data the traffic light control systems. (Smart traffic light controls
already exist and run perfectly fine on a laptop.)
~~~
VLM
"It was unclear what "smart city" meant to them"
Maximize tax/fee revenue while minimizing operating expenses to reduce the
standard of living of all residents as low as possible in an individualized
detailed manner just barely above rebellion or property abandonment, at least
in practice. Then sell it to the rubes as being a social or cultural change
where you can ignore all the tech its going to be the first city on the planet
where human nature took a day off and we'll all live together in perfect peace
and harmony. Sell the financial benefits "rich get richer" and all that to the
leaders, sell a line of BS about human nature changing to the rubes. Its
basically an atheist cult in the sense that it operates as a traditional cult
WRT somewhat extreme exploitation of the participants, but subtract the higher
metaphysical beings marketing message that cults have, or insert big data /
big government itself as the higher metaphysical being.
Its like the dichotomy of internet of things. What you ship is a fridge where
corporate sends a special packet to make the compressor burn out when
quarterly sales are below their target while selling all formerly private
personal data gathered to every corporation on the planet for whatever you can
get. What you sell to the rubes is fuzzy bunnies of the corporation caring
about your organic nutritional needs by ordering orange juice from peapod
automatically when it detects a low level or monitoring for expired food or
the "wrong" beverages stored inside.
The similarity is the message has nothing to do with the purpose or operation,
at a level of dissonance never before seen on the consumer markets.
~~~
yummyfajitas
If it were anything like what you describe, I'd probably have given a lot more
consideration to joining. Your proposed policy is likely to be superior to
democracy - democracies like Detroit can't even maintain standard of living
high enough to avoid abandonment. Plus you can avoid a lot of rent seeking -
if consumer surplus can be created by a massive increase in housing (ala SF,
Mumbai), locals don't get to vote for rent seeking policies.
In reality they didn't have anything remotely so coherent. It was just a
variant of "lets hadoop all 200mb of our big data into the NoSQL for business
intelligence insights".
------
bandrami
Are they counting the vacant half-built chawls in neighborhoods like
Chinchpokli or the dockyards? I'd never seen so many half-completed and
abandoned housing projects until I moved to Mumbai.
~~~
kang
Come to Noida. Advise is you better do not.
------
skbohra123
An article without much substance, just couple of figures and speculations but
no deeper study.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Conference Codes of Conduct: Is 'Ladies Lingerie' a Harmless Joke or Harassment? - rustcharm
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/is-this-old-lingerie-joke-harmless-or-harassment/559760/?single_page=true
======
rustcharm
This is our future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best Way to Get Started with ML Using JavaScript? - ___karim
======
sonabinu
Andrej Karpathy's blog has examples of JavaScript implementation of Neural
Networks.
[https://github.com/karpathy/convnetjs](https://github.com/karpathy/convnetjs)
------
adriansky
Have you try Tensorflow.js to run ML on the browser. I think is a good place
to start
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Complete, Persistent Compromise of Netgear Wireless Routers - Hoff
http://shadow-file.blogspot.com/2013/10/complete-persistent-compromise-of.html
======
zdw
This, along with bufferbloat [1], is why you run OpenWRT or another similarly
modern, fully open source distro on your home routers.
Right now, the best supported devices are ath9k's, so things like the Buffalo
WZR-* models are ideal.
The WNDR 4700 model specifically doesn't have good support for 3rd party
firmware [2] due to it's use of NAND flash in an unsupported manner, so if you
have that model you're kind of sunk at this point.
1\. [http://www.bufferbloat.net](http://www.bufferbloat.net)
2\.
[http://wikidevi.com/wiki/Netgear_WNDR4700](http://wikidevi.com/wiki/Netgear_WNDR4700)
~~~
mbell
If you want a more hardened setup I recommend pfsense, a freeBSD based
firewall/router disto [0]. It'll run on any number of mini/nano boards and
several companies sell prebuilt boxes. It can run as a wifi AP as well but I
find that a separate AP works best.
[0] [http://www.pfsense.org/](http://www.pfsense.org/)
~~~
mcpherrinm
What do you use as a separate AP? My cursory searching indicates there exist
enterprise-grade APs requiring a controller device, overkill for my apartment,
or I use your standard bestbuy device like we're wanting to be avoiding in
this thread.
~~~
mbell
Most consumer routers actually work fairly well as APs. Once you've turned off
all the routing functionality, which are the most complex and resource
intensive bits, they seems to actually be pretty stable. I'm currently using
an Asus RT-AC66U, which is complete overkill, but I wanted reliable AC wifi
and it was the best option at the time. Prior to that I was using an Asus
EA-N66R AP.
As for how this relates to the exploit discussed here, your only using it as
an AP, you'll very rarely need to login after the first setup since it really
isn't doing much, just Wifi <-> Ethernet bridging. If using a consumer router
the WAN port isn't connected to anything, no outside access to worry about
(unless you did some funky forwarding on the pfsense box). You should also
disable management via Wifi. That limits any access to a wired connection to
the network, meaning someone is already in your apartment to physically patch
in with an ethernet cable. Any security bets are off at that point. If you
want super extra special security you can setup firewall rules on the pfsense
box that only make the AP's IP address accessible from a particular port.
As dumb as this exploit is on the part of netgear, remember that to exploit it
the attacker had to have already broken the WPA2 security to access the wifi
or physically plugged in with ethernet. The first vector can be avoided by
simply turning off management via wifi.
~~~
nitrogen
_As dumb as this exploit is on the part of netgear, remember that to exploit
it the attacker had to have already broken the WPA2 security to access the
wifi or physically plugged in with ethernet. The first vector can be avoided
by simply turning off management via wifi._
Or accessed your router internally via JavaScript, img tag, or iframe hidden
on a malicious or compromised page. XSRF is real.
Edit: granted, browsers limit what JavaScript can do across sites, but
request-only access is enough to change DNS settings to something malicious,
and if the attacker can inject unescaped content into the page in some way,
then they can run JavaScript on the router page and send data back that way.
Edit2: I'm not certain, but I think the timing of image load events could be
used to determine success/failure of router actions loaded through a hidden
img tag.
------
Glyptodon
I have a WNDR 4700 and I can't replicate as described. However, I've also
never trusted the stupid thing since it stores passwords in clear text (or at
least is happy to display them in clear text on one of its admin pages).
~~~
dgesang
Even major browsers store/show passwords in clear text, can it be that wrong?
;)
~~~
graue
That's different. Browsers need to show your password to external websites to
prove to others that you're you. This requires storing the actual password.
They expose saved passwords in the UI because if they didn't, it would create
a false sense of security. There's always going to be some way to get the
saved passwords, or the feature wouldn't work.
The router admin interface only needs to _check_ your password. It can do that
by storing only a cryptographic hash, not the password itself.
~~~
darkmighty
I think they could however, as a default behavior, store each password
encrypted individually using itself as a key, that way no plaintext passwords
would need to be stored at all.
~~~
kcorbitt
Then you would have to type in the password each time you wanted to use it
anyway. Not much sense in storing anything in that case. :)
~~~
darkmighty
Yup that's right, my bad. I were thinking of a way of somehow not requiring
input yet providing passwords without plaintext storage.
What would _actually_ work I guess would be storing a hash of <the password, a
unique string provided through https auth>. So for the first time the browser
would hash the pass and afterwards just provide the pass to the server as a
hash without requiring input, acting as a normal pass to the server. However,
that would either require some sort of universal agreement among browsers to
work, which is tricky to require, or some browser-server protocol in which the
browser would only carry such procedure to supported servers. If a supported
server is accessed through a non-supported browser, the server itself would
perform the hash.
Probably too much of a hassle just in name of abolishing plaintext passwords
on browsers, but I couldn't think of anything simpler. However, fun to imagine
:)
Obs: This would have the extra bonus of depriving knowledge of plaintext
passwords to servers (in case they are compromised, the attacker would not get
to try the pass across other services) and preventing password extraction
through impersonation of webpages (although this is already guaranteed by
https to some extent).
~~~
entropy_
If servers accepted a hash of a password instead of the actual password then
the hash becomes the password. Ie, possession of the hash is equivalent to
possession of the password since it can be used to authenticate.
Therefore, this is no different than storing them in plaintext. Furthermore,
it would mean that if the hashes got stolen because a server was compromised
those could be used as passwords and that would make it pointless to hash them
in the first place.
In other words, no, that wouldn't work.
------
greglindahl
One alternative to underpowered routers running OpenWRT or pfsense is to use a
beaglebone black as your router. It's got well-supported wifi devices with
antennae available, and you're not compromising on clock or ram.
~~~
tux1968
Except the BBB only does 10/100 Ethernet so can't really operate as a modern
router. The advantage of say an OpenWRT modded D-Link DIR-825, is it includes
a gigabit router that handles internal traffic while the cpu handles the
firewall and vpn to the outside world. Because local traffic is handled by
completely separate silicon inside the router, CPU and ram is not a
constraint.
~~~
lmz
Doesn't that separate silicon handle switching, not routing?
~~~
tux1968
yes you're right, thanks for the correction.
------
uptown
Exploit doesn't appear to work on a WNDR3700v2. I'm hoping it doesn't, as this
has been the only router I've ever liked after years of dealing with complete
garbage.
------
cbrauchli
If you have a Netgear WNDR3700v2 or a WNDR3800, check out Cerowrt [1]. The
latest stable build, 3.7.5-2, has been _exceptionally_ stable for me, and
fast. I would highly recommend it.
1\.
[http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt](http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt)
------
ChuckMcM
So has anyone used any of the open hardware alternatives, like routerboard.com
? Seems like having the schematics and the firmware would be a reasonable
place to be.
~~~
voltagex_
I looked into these kind of things but I'm in an odd position where I need an
ADSL2+ chipset of a certain kind (Broadcom with good noise filtering) because
of the state of my phonelines.
I was looking into running an ADSL modem in full-bridge mode (you'd be
surprised how many of these modems don't support that anymore) + a routerboard
or mirotik product, but when you add up the cost and configuration time it
just wasn't worth it.
I'm currently running a Billion 7800VDPX, which I now have the GPL sources to
(after some prodding). When I finally have some time to sit down and risk
bricking my device, I'll have a look at getting OpenWRT working (although at
last glance they were never going to support ADSL).
tl;dr: open hardware alternatives aren't easy enough to drop in yet, or
they're not really open -
[http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:License](http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:License)
------
camkego
This post, and other recent ones like it, indicate to me the importance of
running a port scan and making sure no management abilities are exposed over
the WAN side of these devices. Any suggestions on good, fast online port
scanners?
~~~
rogerbinns
In addition to management, a bunch of these can serve up files to the WAN
side. On Netgear devices it is in a USB storage section.
I do scans from cellular devices (Fing on Android and iOS, is passable for
popular ports) and my laptop (nmap) when out and about.
------
girvo
Question: I have Cable internet here in Aus (100mb/10mb) and I like my
connection, but we have to use Telstra's silly modem, and they refused to
activate any other one on the network.
So, lets assume I don't trust this AP and Modem to be secure (fair enough
assumption in my opinion) -- the best way would be to perhaps build my own
Wireless AP running pfsense, on a BeagleBone Black or similar?
Cable -> Telstra Modem w/out Wireless -> pfsense AP -> Network
Would that be the most secure way to handle that situation?
~~~
tedunangst
Since pfsense won't run on a beaglebone, that's a non starter. I also have my
doubts as to a beaglebone's ability to reliably push 100mb of traffic.
~~~
girvo
Ah, that was just an admittedly poorly-researched example. I basically just
meant a board that'll run open-source code.
------
chojeen
Do companies like Netgear not have a team whose only purpose is to try to
break their own products? I thought that was a primary source of employment
for infosec types.
------
jasiek
Ah, this just illustrates how much hardware companies suck at building
software.
------
holyjaw
I like that this was technical and informative, but still talked down to
people like me who aren't at all knowledgable with how infosec works. Great
read; wish I could find more like it.
~~~
sillysaurus2
Which part did you feel was talking down to you? I need to know in order to
improve my own writing.
~~~
LukeShu
I don't think he meant "talk down" in a negative way. I think he was trying to
say that it clearly explained things to someone who doesn't know about the
topic (while still being full of details to someone who does).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you think of Cloud Computing? - alexcasalboni
I would like to keep this question open and span both technical and non-technical aspects/values/problems/doubts, gathering both direct users' and outsiders' thoughts.
======
lucasjcm
You should Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It
really helped me out in situations like this.
~~~
ljk
how is the book relevant to cloud computing?
------
daxfohl
I use AWS, Heroku, DigitalOcean every day because they fulfill a need, for
cheaper than I could do myself. What's to "think" about it? What do you
"think" about car washes?
------
MalcolmDiggs
Unfortunately that term has been used in so many ways that it's practically
meaningless at this point. Did you have a particular definition of 'Cloud
Computing' in mind?
------
jlgaddis
Can you be a little more vague?
~~~
wanghq
OP already did her/his best.
------
bambang150
I think cloud computing is a great thing. Pretty soon computers will be
totally small, and you won't ever need to worry about losing data. Plenty of
ways to protect it. So long as there is competition between cloud companies,
people would drop a provider in a hurry if they thought their data was being
compromised.
------
_RPM
the "cloud" is a term used by uniformed non technical people. They don't know
what they are saying when they use it. However, the "cloud" is simply access
to data over a network. Emulating local data storage, but really accessed over
a network.
~~~
eropple
I very strongly disagree. "The cloud" is generally understood, in my circles
(and we're quite informed, though not uniformed, and just a teensy bit
technical) to be elastically provisioned compute resources that allow us to
avoid carrying inventory and turn CAPEX into OPEX.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lessons learned from declined job applications - thomson
https://medium.com/business-startup-development-and-more/553c44bb57ca
======
jonsterling
A lot of good lessons to be found in here---but not necessarily the ones the
author intended to write about, perhaps.
This entire post seems like a last-ditch attempt to get re-noticed by the
company that rejected him (far be it from me to impute motives on the writer
of a Medium post, but here I am). It may in fact be something much less
embarrassing than that, and I hope it is.
Furthermore, his beatification of the Buffer "blog" is bizarre: it's a
Buzzfeed-style trash-bin of top ten tips for increasing your Social Marketing
nonsense. “Become the writer that I want to be”? Perhaps we understand the
term differently.
Nonetheless, we should all take to heart his parting note, "DO NOT let
rejection and self-doubt keep you from moving forward with your goals." I'd
just add, "Don't publish too much of what you write when you're down."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Here's Why You Read Reviews First, BEFORE Buying (read the comments) - edburgess
http://jaypeeonline.net/wordpress-plugins/wp-member/
======
DisposaBoy
> don’t know what the plugin is like as i’ve not been able to use it!
Not to detract from the issue here but that quote seeed a little strange to
me. Something's not right. Why would your production server need to support
any features for you to try something. Even worse why you test it on your
production server first.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Real-time simulations of muscle-based locomotion - mh-cx
http://vimeo.com/87494655
======
mh-cx
More details:
[http://www.goatstream.com/research/thesis/index.html](http://www.goatstream.com/research/thesis/index.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you see Ask HN question beyond last 84? - techsin101
There is no way to sort, or go back. But links are alive, if you saved them. I literally can't view questions asked a month ago.<p>Is there a way to go back to older ask hn
======
kentbrew
[https://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com](https://web.archive.org/web/*/news.ycombinator.com)
may be your friend. Click the Ask link on any page; URL pattern looks like
this:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180318060328/https://news.ycom...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180318060328/https://news.ycombinator.com/ask)
------
greenyoda
You could just search for articles with "Ask HN:" in the title:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn:&sort=byDate&prefix=f...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ask%20hn:&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)
You can sort the results by date or popularity, and apply various date
filters.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DAG Rosenstein’s “Responsible Encryption” Demand Is Bad - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/deputy-attorney-general-rosensteins-responsible-encryption-demand-bad-and-he
======
liquidise
This is a well-written piece that takes a step toward clearly discussing tech
security issues in laymen's terms. Which is an important step.
The failure to adequately describe the security landscape to those outside the
technology sector is the greatest failure of technologists in the last 5-10
years. The NSA revelations were lost on america as a whole. They were muddied
by confusing technologies and what many considered to be treasonous means.
In this regard, snowden was the whistleblower technologists needed, not the
one america needed. The person or company to bear that standard has yet to be
identified.
I would say our job as technologists is two-fold: first, we must continue to
press our organizations for privacy and the security of our users. The e2e
encryption focus is a great example of this.
Just as important is our ability to communicate security problems in a manner
accessible to the common voter. Without their understanding, and passionate
support, privacy in the tech sector will be relegated to the "anarchists" and
criminals. Tor suffers this treatment and e2e encryption is already being
painted in a similar light. It is essential that pieces like this continue to
be written.
Collectively, we need to learn to distill this complex issue into language
everyone empathizes with as much as technologists do.
~~~
sametmax
The reality is much simpler: security issues in computing don't affect the
layman's life enough so that people feel concerned about it.
A few people are conned, or have their identity stolen. But the vast majority
just had a slow windows XP and a few toolbars attached to their web browser.
They couldn't care less.
As for bigger issues, like gov spying, it's exactly the same. They can't see
any link between it and their personal life, and have no interest in
projecting what could happen in the future as they have no will to participate
in building the system they live in. Caring for society is a niche feeling.
The only thing that would make people react would be a massive and violent
catastrophy, with strong symbolic value. And remember that equifax didn't cut
it: the outrage barely trickled to outside the geek circles. So it needs to be
bigger, and simpler to understand.
------
dane-pgp
> Examples include the central management of security keys and operating
> system updates; the scanning of content, like your e-mails, for advertising
> purposes;
Now that Google, an advertising company, has given up scanning the contents of
emails for advertising purposes: [https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-
gains-traction-in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-
traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-
align/) the necessity/reasonableness of this practice is highly questionable,
but I suppose "for spam-filtering purposes" would be a clever alternative
argument there. (Even with encrypted emails, though, there might be enough
unencrypted metadata for accurate spam detection).
Perhaps the real lesson for us here is the danger of centrally managed
operating system updates. The fact that Rosenstein is already aware of this
attack vector, and thinks so highly of it, suggests it could be a priority to
address this. One technology that would be helpful here is Binary
Transparency:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Binary_Transparency](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Binary_Transparency)
so a user can at least be sure that they are being given the same updates as
everyone else; and if researchers can audit the updates they can hopefully
find "if userId = 123456" payloads. You'd have to trust the OS to not support
"secret updates" which happen without your consent, but ideally this too would
be addressed by an initial audit, or a TOFU policy.
------
sneak
This worked for “responsible disclosure”, attempting and mostly succeeding to
frame the completey responsible practice of “full disclosure” as implicitly
irresponsible.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t work for the DoJ.
~~~
nl
What exactly do you mean by "full disclosure" here? If you mean disclosure of
zero days with no warning, then yes, generally responsible disclosure is more
desirable. I'm not aware of any security professional who disagrees with this
stance.
~~~
sneak
I am a security professional who thinks full and immediate disclosure is
always responsible and professional and desirable.
~~~
sneak
Example: Today, I found out that on the close order of a thousand people at
Yubikey, Infineon, Microsoft, Google, Lenovo, and Fujitsu knew that my
Yubikey’s RSA keys were weak—IN FEBRUARY.
I found out today.
Two legs good. Four legs bad. Post that shit to the mailing list. There are
far more good people than bad people. Stop covering for the fact that huge
corporations are risk-averse and slow to make changes; that’s baking bias into
the process.
~~~
nl
I don't think anyone would (or should!) argue that 9 months delay is
responsible disclosure. If they do then they are wrong.
But dumping zero days isn't any better.
This 2003 paper from SANS[1] talks about the BugTrac policy of full disclosure
after 14 days, but says most recommend 30 days. I think that is a reasonable
expectation.
[1] [https://www.sans.org/reading-
room/whitepapers/threats/define...](https://www.sans.org/reading-
room/whitepapers/threats/define-responsible-disclosure-932)
~~~
sneak
All those companies argued that for the last 9 months they sat on the Yubikey
vuln key issue.
------
yuhong
I should mention that I suspect that the more likely that FBI investigations
are successful, the more government debt they receive. Which is why the debt-
based economy is flawed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Stripped-Down Blogging Tool Exemplifies Antisocial Media - jonbaer
https://www.wired.com/story/this-stripped-down-blogging-tool-exemplifies-antisocial-media
======
Simulacra
Sounds like the very early days of web logging.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Request for developers: Freeciv web client - roschdal
http://code.google.com/p/freeciv-forever/wiki/FreecivWebClientRequestForDevelopers
======
roschdal
Developers are hereby invited to participate in this open source project with
the aim of creating a version of Civilization which can be played online in a
browser!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter open sourced twemcache, its memcached fork - zxypoo
http://engineering.twitter.com/2012/07/caching-with-twemcache.html
======
facorreia
The Memcached maintainer's reaction to this sudden, large code drop of a fork
and the way it was communicated to the community:
<https://github.com/twitter/twemcache/issues/2>
------
zxypoo
They also announced twemproxy (a fast, light-weight proxy for memcached) which
was quietly open sourced before: <https://github.com/twitter/twemproxy>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The day I became a millionaire - dsr12
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-day-i-became-a-millionaire-55d7dc4d8293
======
krallja
Post: (2015)
The actual day it happened: 2006
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gowalla MILF (terrible linkbait, but clever) - jacquesm
http://gowallamilf.bram.us/
======
jacquesm
That's a really clever thing, to take an existing and very catchy acronym,
then to tack on a new meaning. There has to be a better use for that trick!
If you could somehow get rid of the feeling of 'I've been tricked' after
landing on the page it might even go somewhere. The bounce rate of that page
must be a record.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup School Radio: How Optimizely Knew It Was on to Something Big - loyalelectron
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-startup-school-radio-how-optimizely-knew-it-was-on-to-something-big
======
lubos
People who paid them up-front were basically companies they've done some
business with before.
It's good to work your network to get first customers but every startup can do
that. It's just common sense.
And nowhere in the article Optimizely claims this was how they knew they were
onto "something big". So the title is misleading.
~~~
loyalelectron
Fair point on the title -- perhaps I should have left it at "on to something."
Will keep in mind for next time.
~~~
duncanawoods
Thanks for these I will give it a listen.
Even "on to something" is a click-bait title which HN guidelines say should be
neutered. IMHO you don't need to force it, just be classy and straight-forward
e.g. "YC Startup School Radio Ep. 3 - Optimizely & Lawn Love" or something.
------
jak1192
Really been enjoying these podcasts. Very cool to hear these first-hand
stories
------
diego
I know companies that did the same thing, only they were not onto something
big. Having customers pre-product is a good signal. I'm sure that the class of
companies for which this happens have a much higher success rates than a
typical startup. However, that's far from knowing you've hit something big.
That's something you can only say in hindsight.
------
marktangotango
Serious question; what is the deal with the something-ly.com names? It just
seems really odd and me-too-ish to my ear.
~~~
timdorr
Because of the .ly TLD. Many companies employed a play on words to have a
single-word domain for any word ending in -ly. Bit.ly is probably the most
well-known.
The problem is that .ly is managed by Libya, and they tend to have restrictive
laws and government practices that many people take issue with. So, many
companies just got the -ly.com versions of their domains and made the switch.
~~~
beambot
To expand upon your comment.... those startups used something.ly domains when
they were small and just starting out -- i.e. before they could afford to buy
something-ly.com. Once they had traction and raised money, they purchased the
proper domain. It's the same reason TheFacebook later dropped "The".
------
faithfone
When the guys at Optimizely asked for money upfront for their new software
idea, were they already backed by YC?
------
tarr11
I wonder if they collected the check up front. Big difference there too...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most time management is rubbish - oscardelben
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/03/26/most-time-management-is-rubbish-here-are-ten-things-that-work-for-me/
======
chime
Overall, I agree that time management does not work for everyone in the same
way. I certainly hate Outlook yelling at me 10 times a day about doing X and
attending Y. Thankfully, I am in a position where I am not obligated to live
by Outlook and can choose my own system.
I wrote a super simple webapp <http://untodos.com/> (mostly for myself) that
is pretty much the opposite of every time/schedule management app out there. I
don't care about the preciseness of the tasks, I care about the priority.
Inside my mind, I can't visualize 4:15pm-5:45pm Friday next week. The only
time horizons my mind intuitively understands are today, soon, and whenever.
My app and now my life is designed around that principle. After years of being
burdened with feeling stressed and overworked, I think I finally have a handle
on my busy schedule now and I know my stress is much lower.
My biggest gripe with traditional time management method is that you lose
sight of the big picture and only concentrate on the small urgencies. We
forget the important due to the urgent. If writing a book is one of your life
goals, where does it fit on a calendar? I know where it fits on mine, in the
"whenever" section. Once a day, I go over my "today", "soon" and "whenever"
sections and move things around as I deem necessary.
I feel my view of managing my time is more encompassing than
compartmentalizing. I am one person, I don't want "buy groceries" on a
separate list from "meet clients" because both happen within hours of each
other anyway. My life is one life, why have separate types of calendars and
events. I thought deeply about what actually matters to me and realized that
all I care about a task is whether it is "work/chore" or "fun/relaxing." As
long as I have a bunch of fun tasks interspersed between my regular chore
todos, I can manage my time well.
I guess the key lesson about time management is that you have to know yourself
and figure out what works best for you. For some, it's Outlook, for some it's
GCal synced with iPhone using RememberTheMilk app merged with iCal feeds from
your fridge. And for some like me, it's just a no-deadline, no-reminder list
of tasks with varying priorities. Find what works for you and grow with it.
And if something doesn't work, don't blame yourself and personalize the stress
as being caused by your inefficiencies but rather seek a system that fits your
personality.
~~~
davidbnewquist
Your "work/chore/business", "fun/relaxing/pleasure" dichotomy seems to be
universal. I can look at any task on my to-do list and instantly put it in one
of those buckets. Probably anyone with a to-do list can.
Why is this?! Assuming this ability is universal (and not just something chime
and I are good at:), there must be an innate psychological reason. Possibly
even a "simple" reason.
I will venture a guess: real or imagined self-threat is always associated with
failure to complete a "work" task. This is never true for an individual "play"
task.
Thoughts?
~~~
chime
My method of dividing the tasks into two buckets is very simple. Is it fun? If
it takes me more than 5 seconds to answer that question, it's not fun. Fun is
easy to categorize. So the complement of fun is thus easy to categorize too.
The reason I break it down into two is because of how I look at tasks with
respect to stress. Nearly every task either adds (even if slightly) to my
stress or relieves it. Very few are on the border and if they are on the
border, I'd say they add to my stress just because they're not actually
relieving it. My goal is to mix it all up in a healthy balance that best suits
my personality.
~~~
davidbnewquist
I may not have posed my question clearly.
You say: "Nearly every task either adds ... to my stress or relieves it." My
question is: why does this seems to be true for everyone?
The answer is not necessarily related to energy or time expenditure. For me,
playing consecutive games of intense full-court basketball is
fun/relaxing/play.
------
visitor4rmindia
I find David Allen's "Getting Things Done" to be an excellent system for
managing tasks.
I've been using GTD for the past four years and I can honestly say it has
really improved my handling of time and tasks.
Additionally, it has really really reduced my stress levels because I _know_ I
haven't forgotten anything and I never miss anything important.
~~~
sgoraya
I've tried a to implement GTD a few times but am never able to stick with it -
Its an interesting system and the only one that I ever tried to implement.
I called David Allen's company to see how much the 'coach' would cost so that
a couple of my colleagues and I could get started, but it was way too high for
me to consider.
I always revert back to moleskine & 3x5 notecards.
~~~
jlees
I tried implementing GTD but it didn't stick either. However, there are tons
of useful things you can pick up just by reading GTD-the-book, going through
some of the methods and seeing what clicks with you. For me the two-minute-
rule and concept of breaking a task down into actionable steps really changed
the way I do things.
Another thing I picked up from GTD was 43 folders - although I don't use it as
gospel, the concept of sticking things that don't have to be done yet away in
a folder for when they _do_ need to be done saves me so much brain-bandwidth
(I use RTM to manage this).
I recommend the book to everyone, really; even if you don't end up a GTD-
lifehacker, I'm pretty sure you'll find a few things that work.
------
jwilliams
This actually isn't too bad - It's basically a rehash of the things you'd
expect, but with some personal commentary.
I think the big thing about time management is it all comes down to this uber-
productivity philosophy. Works well for getting "stuff" done, but sometimes
being productive means having a terrific idea when you're out on a hike.
For me, time management is simply about getting all the cruft (bills, etc,
etc) out of my life -- and enabling me to be free the rest of the time... So,
I think a lot of these productivity kicks are probably really useful -- they
just take it too far.
~~~
electromagnetic
The problem I have with most time management techniques is that I'm a writer.
Sometimes sitting down and trying to write for an hour is like trying to bleed
a stone, some days it just isn't going to happen.
I've noticed I can easily get 3,000 words done in a few days without a
problem, but the extra 2,000 words before I finish a chapter tends to screw me
up. Suddenly I'm doing two jobs at once, I have to finish one story line but
tie it to the next. I also hate the advice of 'you should write _n_ words a
day no matter what', because it's inherently useless advice. I don't write
unless I'm writing something I know is half-way decent, I don't believe I
should write simply for writings sake.
I don't think any programmer here would add an extra 500 lines of random code
'just cause'.
------
russell
The only time management advice that I took to heart was "If it takes less
than 5 minutes, do it now, don't schedule it." It is amazing how much stress
it saves, particularly with my SO, and it takes about as much time to do it as
write it down
------
esila
I'm really surprised that one has yet to mention this book / system - Time
Management For System Administrators:
<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007836/>
This is a wonderful system focusing on goals, priorities, proper breakdown of
tasks, stress management, relaxation, maintaining focus, etc. It gives a
wonderful breakdown of how to manage planners, and this system has been
working for me for years now. Hope you find some value out of this!
------
ryanwaggoner
"Time management systems don't work...for me...well, except for this one."
~~~
coglethorpe
The author's apparent todo list:
\- Write blog post
\- Put paid link to one site in.
\- Do internal SEO to other post with paid link
------
raintrees
I have recently been wondering if all of this multitasking I was so proud of
is a prime reason that time seems to pass too quickly... You mean it's almost
April already?
I have been working at purposely slowing down, doing a more thorough job. My
clients and friends seem to appreciate having my full attention. So does my
wife :)
And I still get enough done that I am satisfied. Maybe it is because I am not
having to do things over so much?
~~~
josefresco
You have too much free time. Get some more clients so you can make more money.
Doesn't your wife want ...'things'?!?
~~~
raintrees
But then I would have less time to pore over HN!
------
josefresco
In other news ...Most Top 10 Lists are Rubbish
More at 11
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Primer on Bézier Curves, §39: B-Splines - TheRealPomax
https://pomax.github.io/bezierinfo/#bsplines
======
TheRealPomax
After several years of people asking for a section on B-Splines in the "Primer
on Bézier Curves" I've finally been able to add the maths, graphics, and
explanations for how these type of curves work, so if you were one of the
people waiting for an explanation of B-Splines alongside Bézier Curves: it's
finally been added, go hit up that direct link =)
(I posted this earlier today, but someone mistakenly marked it as a duplicate
and an admin removed the hash from the URL without realising that would
completely change what the link points to. As such, I'm reposting the link in
the hopes no one changes it this time round, because it's absolutely not a
duplicate for the base URL: it's a link straight to new content at the end of
a very long article)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism - wyclif
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/06/29/bullshit-jobs-and-the-yoke-of-managerial-feudalism
======
perfunctory
One of my most favorite essays on the subject: [0]
In February 1968 New York City sanitation workers went on strike. After just
six days a state of emergency was declared, and after nine days the city had
to give up and give the strikers their way.
In May 1970 Ireland’s bank employees decided to go on strike.
At the outset, pundits predicted that life in Ireland would come to a
standstill.
> Heading into the summer of 1970, Ireland braced itself for the worst.
> And then something odd happened. Or more accurately, nothing much happened
> at all.
> In July, the The Times of England reported that the “figures and trends
> which are available indicate that the dispute has not had an adverse effect
> on the economy so far.” A few months later, the Central Bank of Ireland drew
> up the final balance. “The Irish economy continued to function for a
> reasonably long period of time with its main clearing banks closed for
> business,” it concluded. Not only that, the economy had continued to grow.
In the end, the strike would last ... a whole six months!
[0] [http://evonomics.com/why-garbage-men-should-earn-more-
than-b...](http://evonomics.com/why-garbage-men-should-earn-more-than-
bankers/)
~~~
dagw
One big difference is these cases I suspect is the power of unions and
regulations. If some enterprising people in New York had tried to set up their
own ad hoc sanitation service where they'd drive around a neighborhood in a
van and for a dollar a bag they'd drive your trash to the dump they'd be
stomped down on by unions and regulations in a flash. If a hypothetical Irish
banking union had sent thugs each pub acting as an ad hoc clearing house or
convinced the brewers union to not deliver beer to 'strike breaking' pubs the
the situation probably would have played out very differently.
Basically the real conclusion should be that strikes only work if there is
also some additional force preventing outside people from filling the void
left by the striking workers.
~~~
davidgrenier
If the situation is shit are you so sure that someone would come in to fill in
the void? Your scenario relies on the fact that people, in desperate need,
were willing to pay more which is exactly what those on strike revendicated.
~~~
clarkmoody
If the alternatives are doing a nasty job or not having any money, there are
plenty of people who will do the job.
In the case of the union, their wages were probably artificially high due to
the government keeping out competition.
> someone would come in to fill in the void
If a good or services is demanded by the consumer, then someone will find a
way to satisfy that demand, barring market interference by the state (for
legal business - you get black markets otherwise).
~~~
davidgrenier
I agree that someone will come in and fill the job, but it will cost more to
swap your entire staff, why not front the salary your employees asked for in
the first place. Turnover costs a fortune.
------
Areading314
Lots of stuff just plain wrong, e.g.:
> If you can’t afford to send your kid to a top college and then support them
> for 2-3 years doing unpaid internships in some place like New York or San
> Francisco, forget it, you’re locked out
<s>Unpaid internships aren't a thing in the US, they are not even
legal</s>Looks like they are a thing...maybe just outside of tech. Or:
> Something like 37-40% of workers according to surveys say their jobs make no
> difference.
The whole idea of bullshit jobs is based on people's own assessment of their
work? You should really ask the people paying their salary whether the job is
useful or not since they are the ones paying for it.
Labor productivity is constantly increasing, if you measure it in a
systematic, rather than anecdotal way. Here is an article about some trends in
US labor productivity, notice that even though growth has slowed it is still
steadily increasing: [https://www.brookings.edu/research/understanding-us-
producti...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/understanding-us-productivity-
trends-from-the-bottom-up/)
~~~
sien
Yeah.
Graeber's theory of what jobs are BS doesn't really work. For instance, say a
surgeon decides 'hey, y'know people are going to die anyway, my work is
useless' then according to Graeber's definition their work is BS while most
people would say it is useful work.
But one that says that anything people pay for does't really work either. Say
I'm rich and pay you $100K a year to go somewhere and do nothing. Surely that
is useless.
However, no doubt there really are quite a lot of jobs out there that don't
need to be done. I've certainly had pretty pointless jobs. 37% of people say
their job is pretty much useless which is remarkable.
Graeber's book is worth a read, my review is here for anyone interested (
[https://reviewsien.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/bullshit-
jobs-a-...](https://reviewsien.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/bullshit-jobs-a-
theory/) )
~~~
tokyodude
Sometimes I do wonder though, even "good" jobs (for some definition of
"good"). For example, I can work on some tech, say mp5 (made that up), knowing
full well it will be replaced in 5-10yrs by mp6. Now I get maybe the
person/team who invented mp5 are bringing the world forward. But as some
programmer on Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Safari, Chrome, or Firefox adding
mp5 support to those OSes there's a part of me that knows my work is temporary
and it bugs me for some reason.
And that's not even at the point of BS for most people saying their job is BS.
another random thought is when you know you're being asked to do something in
an inefficient way. The job might not be useless but your time is being wasted
and it feels awful.
~~~
nsgi
It's not really temporary in that example, though, if mp5 existed for some
period of time there will always be mp5 files that some people will want to
play and adding support ensures those files are never lost.
------
ryandrake
I’ll leave this here:
“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to
earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a
technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of
today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.
We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be
employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian
theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors
and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true
business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it
was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had
to earn a living.”
\- R. Buckminster Fuller
~~~
snarf21
I don't necessarily disagree. But how do all these non-workers afford a new
iPhone X and a Netflix subscription and apartment? I have no idea but it is a
non trivial thing to solve.
~~~
firethief
Bucky was suggesting that it's no longer inherently necessary for everyone to
have a "job" as we see it. You're pointing out that our society demands it.
These views are definitely not in disagreement. In the kind of post-scarcity
society Mr. Fuller was talking about, having a place to live and the other
essentials of life would not be contingent on earning one's keep; if it were,
people wouldn't be free to go back to school and think about the things they
want to think about.
------
EZ-E
A lot of full time bullshit jobs become this way because of the full-time
9-to-6 requirement. These jobs usually don't justify a full time position by
themselves so it leads to people making up work and responsabilities to
justify the job's existence. ie : a designer without assignment pushing an
unneeded graphical revamp to avoid being laid off, a manager pushing new
features which has almost no use to seem busy etc
~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I cannot imagine having a full time design job if you are not at a design
agency... what would you even be doing 80% of the time?!
~~~
wott
Well, why do you think we have so many re-designs (and re-structuring, and re-
packaging, and re-writing, and so on)? To keep people busy and believing that
they matter.
You don't need to imagine, it is right here, everywhere around, in
programming, in tech and in almost all other trades.
~~~
ryandrake
Bingo. Software engineers, raise your hand if you’ve ever worked for company
where your project had to undergo a full UI/UX overhaul with every major
release. This is why. These designers have a portfolio to build up, and your
software is their perpetually blank canvas!
------
mrhappyunhappy
As a UX UI designer my profession is total bullshit. It would be meaningful if
I were helping design educational apps for kids or information hubs to enrich
the world around me but the bulk of my work consists of helping companies sell
more shit to people who don’t actually need it. SaaS, ecommerce, web, most of
mobile apps - all bullshit toxic parasitic garbage that does not need to exist
and yet I help drive that industry. My life has had no professional purpose to
this point and if I dropped dead today the world would be non the wiser. To
make up for all the bullshit I produce, I try to work as little as possible to
spend as much time as possible with my family. I’ve got it down to 5 working
hours a week so far and we are getting by fine. If I can get it down to 1 hour
a week I will feel more satisfied.
~~~
wool_gather
I'm very sympathetic. The project that I'm on is building software for a
company that I detest.
> 5 working hours a week
Nice that you're able to live out your priorities! Is this contract work? That
would be quite remarkable if you were a (nominally, apparently) full-time
employee somewhere. Does your family have another person with income?
~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Design and business consulting. I am not cheap but returns are worth it.
Family has additional real estate income but we are not dependent on it.
------
theprotocol
>One thing it shows is that the whole “lean and mean” ideal is applied much
more to productive workers than to office cubicles. It’s not at all uncommon
for the same executives who pride themselves on downsizing and speed-ups on
the shop floor, or in delivery and so forth, to use the money saved at least
in part to fill their offices with feudal retinues of basically useless
flunkies.
This part resonated with me, having seen it first hand throughout my career.
Some of the most productive people remained under constant threat of being
downsized lest they increase their output even further in some way,
disproportionately compared to those in other positions.
~~~
Noumenon72
I don't think you mean "lest" here -- they didn't threaten them to prevent
them from increasing their output, they threatened them "unless" they
increased their output.
~~~
theprotocol
Yep, I caught that a while after posting and kicked myself for it but failed
to edit it as I got distracted. Thanks nonetheless. :)
------
zby
I think it would be useful to divide that between jobs that are 'zero-sum',
jobs that are useless for the people who do it because they don't understand
what they are doing and jobs that are really just accidents. The root cause of
the increase of all these is the complexity of our lives:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17263041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17263041)
Some more on the 'zero-sum jobs' (a metaphor) - jobs that are useful to the
direct employer but are useless to the bigger organism. This can happen on
many levels: a manager employing someone just to have bigger department
(manager is the employer the biggger organism is the company), army (the
employer is the particular state the bigger organism is the whole
civilization). There are also cases where something is useless only partially
- like advertising which does a useful job of informing customers, but that
job is kind of the least important for it. There are also cases where there is
like a pair of jobs to it: like police and thieves.
~~~
bachbach
I do not believe our lives and systems are significantly more complex than
than of our great-grandparents. Instead I believe we are under an illusion.
The world has always been a complex place, but we manage that by many layers
of abstraction, mostly innate but also by social organization.
The failures of social organization and complex coordination are genuine, but
they're not occurring because our world is much more complex. I have a
speculation on the cause which can be convincingly demonstrated but it's the
species of topic where HN is liable to change the colour of your text in its
lalalalalalala-itsnothappening-mode.
Under most lights our world is more simple than it used to be. You didn't have
to fetch a pail of water from the well this morning. Your clothes: washed,
possibly dried by machines in a process that used to take a day out of every
week. Your food... you see the picture. Getting blitzed by streams of
information on the internet isn't the same thing as the world becoming more
complex, that's partly a choice and something people used to do with a library
card - besides most of the web is not especially information dense and that's
another illusion. When we do a lot of the human version of context switching
it doesn't take much to overwhelm our sense of proportion.
~~~
kthejoker2
It's certainly not just the Internet that has gotten more complex.
Grocery stores have gone from an average of 9,000 products for sale in 1975 to
over 55,000 today. Similar expansions of products exist in communication,
finance, automotive, fashion, appliances...
There were approximately 2,000 federal crimes in 1900. Today there are nearly
5,000.
People with college degrees skyrocketed from about 10% in 1970 to well over
25% today. Stanfofd conferred degrees in 22 majors in 1968; they offer over
120 today.
And to take a small but real example for me, when I went to consider a
preschool for my 4 year old, I received more literature on curriculum,
activities, nutritional programs, Harvard studies, diversity initiatives, and
instructor CVs ... Than I did when I chose my university back in 1998.
Or take my job as a Microsoft platform analytics professional. When I started
out it was just SQL Server and its 5-10 components. Now someone coming into
the same level is expected to have understanding of machine learning and AI,
Big Data, chatbots, log analytics and other streaming/event sourcing
capabilities, cloud architecture ..oh yeah and SQL Server and its 10-15
components ...
I can cite examples in medicine, finance, communications, linguistics (6
million words in Urban Dictionary, most of which aren't in the OED), pop
culture ...
Taken together you would easily see that all the "convenience" and
"simplicity" you're touting is completely offset by the amount of cognitive
processing we have to do to navigate our modern world. We have all been forced
to carve out mental fiefdoms - filter bubbles - just to cope. And that's led
to the break down in coordination you cite - there is less empathy because I
simply can't connect with the many someones out there with a vastly different
set of life choices than me, at least not collectively.
To celebrate diversity is to acknowledge and embrace that we can come together
on anything at all given the vast gulfs between most of us.
~~~
bachbach
This may be a semantic argument. I probably mean 'complex' as in useful
production by being more sophisticated and you probably mean 'complex' as in
there is more of it in a variety of ways.
------
redleggedfrog
I think the article makes some really good points about the bullsh*t jobs and
their effect, but I ponder the final two paragraphs in which this is said:
"Just think what kind of culture, music, science, ideas might result if all
those people were liberated to do things they actually thought were
important."
Would this really be true? I've heard that an artist needs something to
struggle against, something to constrain the medium they're working in, to
inspire the creation. Just having it be wide open is not optimal.
I think it's much the same for any field. You have to be challenged to have
your spirit moved to take action. You have to have a focus for your intent.
Just having copious amounts of free time might not be the cornucopia of
wonderful ideas and creations proposed in the article.
~~~
fullshark
I used to think it was true, but with the rise of
YouTube/SoundCloud/DeviantArt the internet I no longer think it’s true. Most
people really don’t have that much interesting to say. From a social
perspective I don’t think we are missing out on great art. People would be
happier though.
~~~
repolfx
No? But all those sites are filled with great art of various sorts. The
combination of easy publishing and relatively easy lives has created the sort
of "millions of people being creative and doing art" that utopians always
imagined.
------
habosa
Many times when we believe a job is bullshit we are falling victim to the
paradox of the library.
Go to your favorite library. Take one book and destroy it. Is it still a
library? Yes, of course. Destroy three more ... still a library. But what if
you keep going? Clearly one book is not a library. So ... where is the
crossing point?
The same is true of many jobs. Yes if I was vaporized tomorrow my team would
still function pretty fine. But that doesn't mean my job is bullshit. It means
that we're overstaffed for the average demand. It probably also means that 9-5
is a bit silly. But if you got rid of all of us you'd have a problem, and the
company can afford a bit of slack capacity.
~~~
FussyZeus
For a medium sized business you're probably right, but for a huge C-Corp? What
possible project is Bank of America going to undertake that will actually, to
borrow a metaphor from cars, redline their staff? Where everyone is coming in
and working nonstop from open to close to get something done?
~~~
vec
Is BofA going to redline all of their staff? No. But absorbing a spike at a
single department or branch is another story, and it wouldn't surprise me if
having excess capacity already on hand is more efficient overall than trying
to reassign individual workers on demand.
Besides, actually working on a team that's redlined is _exhausting_ , and
doing it for more than a few weeks is a recipe for burnout. There's real
business value in high employee morale and a low turnover rate, and having
some amount of built in slack at normal operating capacity seems like a
relatively cheap and reliable mechanism to safeguard that value long term.
~~~
FussyZeus
Except the article is saying that employee morale in these places is in the
toilet, so apparently it's not all that effective.
------
molteanu
> Just think what kind of culture, music, science, ideas might result if all
> those people were liberated to do things they actually thought were
> important.
Is there really any reason to believe that this would amount to anything?
Sure, there might be some people out there who would do useful or important
work. But isn't there also the possibility that the majority of people would
just feed their pleasure side all day long? Without any constraints, maybe we
would just consume, have fun and go to the beach all day long?
Maybe a rather unintended purpose of some of these bullshit jobs is to put a
strain on the endless desires some of us might have.
~~~
coldtea
> _But isn 't there also the possibility that the majority of people would
> just feed their pleasure side all day long? Without any constraints, maybe
> we would just consume, have fun and go to the beach all day long?_
And why not? Is there some ethical imperative that says you should not "have
fun and go to the beach all day long", if you have what you need to go by?
I'd extend Pascal's praise of idleness: ""All human evil comes from a single
cause, man's inability to sit still in a room." \-- to including "go to the
beach" and such along with sitting still in a room.
The point (and I think Pascal's point) is not doing nothing, but in being able
to be content without having to create schemes and busywork when there's no
need for any, but instead find satisfaction to being itself.
~~~
davemp
Pascal is talking about an inherent need in humans to be busy. I do not see
how denying such a need would be very effective at increasing satisfaction.
Ignoring human nature just seems idealistic to me, like ignoring the target
architecture of the software you're trying to hyper-optimize.
~~~
coldtea
> _Ignoring human nature just seems idealistic to me_
Well, evolutionary humans started as animals not much different in behavior
and inherent needs than gorillas. All civilization has been made by "ignoring
human nature" in its original form and thus transforming it.
------
PaulAJ
Reading about the choice between reasonable pay and rewarding work, I was
reminded of this Dilbert cartoon. As usual, Scott Adams got there first.
[http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-02](http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-06-02)
------
ram_rar
Honestly, if it wasnt for health insurance benefits that comes with full time
jobs. I would gladly work as a freelancer and build software that actually has
a real world impact.
~~~
isolli
Hasn't Obamacare addressed that? Or are you worried that the exchanges may go
away?
~~~
weiming
Speaking from experience, premiums go up every year, coverage
decreases/copayments increase, and plans often get discontinued. I've had to
switch to a different plan three times now.
------
golergka
> Something like 37-40% of workers according to surveys say their jobs make no
> difference.
I'm simply not convinced that if a worker believes that his job makes no
difference it really is so.
Most people I ran into don't really understand importance of such things as
safety, maintenance, record-keeping and other things that don't give instant
gratification. Taxi drivers are constantly surprised that I buckle up in the
rear seat (while they don't buckle up themselves in the drivers') and tell me
that I shouldn't worry about the police - without giving any thought to actual
security. Junior developers that I mentor always have to be reminded about
good practices and not cutting corners - and I am certain that they're much
brighter than average developer out there.
It's very easy to imagine how such people would see their jobs as meaningless
while they're actually performing a neccessary, although not often needed,
function.
~~~
perfunctory
In my anecdotal experience it's actually the highly educated people, very well
aware of what they do, who often find their jobs meaningless.
------
holografix
I’d love to see a study of whether so called “bullshit jobs” rise in
percentage to real jobs at a business when the number of employees goes up.
Ie: 100 employees = 10% bs 1000 employees = 25% bs
I’ve deal with whole groups at people at certain organisations that I simply
used to call: “corporate politicians”. They don’t produce anything, they get
information from A, manipulate it to make them look good, then broadcast it or
send it straight to B. A good way to test for one is to tell them at an
appropriate time that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.
If you get smiles and nods and winks, you’re dealing with one. I guess they
never stop to consider that if everyone thought like that, no one would know
anything.
------
granshaw
There’s a difference between the position itself being useless and someone
being underutilized. Businesses often staff up to be able to react quickly if
needs change, although most of the time some staff might be given just
busywork, leading to the impression that they have a bullshit job.
------
troels
Not sure I buy in to the whole thesis here, but I really like the term
"managerial feudalism" \- Great little soundbite.
------
alexandercrohde
I found this aside really interesting, it helped me understand other
perspectives:
"Everyone hates the political class who they see (in my opinion, quite
rightly) as basically a bunch of crooks. But all the other resentments make it
very difficult for anyone to get together to do anything about it. To a large
extent, our societies have come to be held together by envy and resentment:
not envy of the rich, but in many cases, envy of those who are seen as in some
ways morally superior, or resentment of those who claim moral superiority but
who are seen as hypocritical. "
------
haaen
David Graeber doesn't even acknowledge that most bullshit jobs are in
governments. The man is really an intellectual: he lacks common sense. Also,
when Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant confronted him with other pitfalls in his
reasoning, he walked out of the room twice.
[https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/-er-is-een-
ongeloof...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/-er-is-een-
ongelooflijke-hoeveelheid-dode-tijd-bijgekomen-~bcc09392/)
------
cyborgx7
>“People want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way
that makes some kind a positive difference.”
This sounds like people are just rediscovering alienation[1] again.
1.:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation)
------
wolfi1
somehow this reminds me of the telephone sanitizers of Golgafrincham
------
Jaruzel
Link to the original Essay:
_On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant by David Graeber_
[https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)
------
asimpletune
Has anyone read his book?
~~~
jostylr
He explored in detail his theory of five different kinds of bullshit jobs and
supplied some very memorable anecdotes. He had some analysis of economic
trends coinciding. For example, 40% of the workforce in the 1940s was in
farming, now it is 1%. Automation happened and his theory is that instead of
massive unemployment, our system basically created this bullshit jobs level.
It is kind of a feudal capitalist version of a guaranteed job benefit.
I found it quite enjoyable and particularly the explanation and relation to
feudal ideas. Why are productive workers being squeezed out while the
managerial class is expanding? Shouldn't the opposite actually happen (fewer
workers with better automated oversight controls should need less managers,
not more).
His final chapter leads to a proposal about UBI as a way of walking out of
this trap.
He explores the explosion of administration in universities. Basically, lots
of money flowing in and it has to go somewhere. So it goes to a level that can
be easily cut (administrators) instead, of say, paying adjuncts more which is
not easy to walk back from.
It is a fast read and has some interesting ideas in it. It is not a definitive
scholarly piece of work, but it provides a starting point for understanding
how bs jobs arise when there is plenty of excess going on (lots of profits =>
bs jobs )
Some related readings: "Debt, A 5,000 Year History" and "The View from Flyover
Country"
~~~
hyperpape
How well does he characterize what those bullshit jobs are? Which industries
are they in? What are their titles, what are they doing on a daily basis?
Most of his examples in interviews sound like office workers, but what
percentage of office workers would have to be working bullshit jobs for his
37-40% numbers to be realistic? I have a hard time squaring his claim with
what I know about the jobs people do: See, for instance, a breakdown by
industry: [https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-
industry-...](https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-
sector.htm), or by occupation: [https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupational-
projections-and-...](https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupational-projections-
and-characteristics.htm)
~~~
jostylr
I take his piece to largely be about self-identified bullshit jobs. While many
of the jobs he describes, such as transcribing boxes on a form into a system
that is never consulted by anyone or hiring someone to guard an entirely empty
room, are clearly useless to society, he also describes jobs that have some
benefit to someone, but the one performing them feels wasted. While many jobs
have various stresses, both mental and physical, he wanted to explore the
particular stress of not having much, if anything, to do as well as the stress
of doing stuff that is pointless or harmful.
He does categorize the types of bs jobs into several categories:
1\. Flunkies. They are largely around to make others feel more important by
having others around. Often busy little tasks that don't seem to have much to
do with a job description or being useful. Sometimes they sit somewhere just
as a warm body. 2\. Goons. Largely those without social value. An example
might be someone who edits advertisements to make women look unrealistically
thin in a way that makes real women feel bad about themselves. These are non-
good PR types, corporate lawyers, telemarketers... 3\. Duct Tapers. These are
people doing something that only exists because the problem is not fixed, for
some reason. Example is of a form submission setup that must be routed to a
person because they decided to change the format but did not change a program.
Or being a "proofreader" of someone whose reports are beyond awful. 4\. Box
Tickers. They serve to simply ensure that some rule is being observed.
Example: someone filling out a preference form that someone has to put in
somewhere but the results are never consulted. Others might be highlighting
pointless forms, helping people jump through government hoops, asking for
funds, or be bureaucrats almost anywhere. 5\. Taskmasters. People who assign
tasks to others even though those others could easily figure out what they
need to do (Type 1) or people who create and oversee bullshit jobs (Type 2):
"strategic" and other buzzwordy bullshit.
In addition to those, there are useful jobs that only exist to support useless
jobs, such as those cleaning offices of those are useless.
I am not sure where he puts the following, but he had two stories of people
where they were essentially hanging out just for an emergency to happen: an
engineer managing a rapid response team that never, ever got called to do
anything and a caretaker for an elderly woman who was largely fine, but could
not be left alone. He writes how they at first tried to find something to do
with themselves in a productive fashion, but then simply couldn't take it
anymore and quit.
I think he wanted to explore what are the implications of jobs where the one
doing it feels useless, whether they were actually useless or not.
The 30-40% of jobs figure comes from both limited surveys where people rate
their jobs as well as looking at some statistical growth of jobs. As
automation took away a lot of physically productive jobs in the past 70 years,
jobs in the information/management/financial sectors grew to fill in that gap,
which is roughly 30-40% from the graphs he provided. In his mind, particularly
as he is an anarchist, such jobs are majority useless and/or harmful.
For me, I'm simply interested in the idea of finding ways to help people find
engaging work because I think society benefits from that the most. I also
found it interesting that the ones who had the hardest time being in a useless
job are from the working class. While uselessness and boredom is soul crushing
for everyone, there are systems of raising that it more palatable.
I would also say that this is largely a starting point for many further
explorations of these ideas. This is a narrative of exploration, not a fully
flushed out scientific theory. It was definitely written with a popular
audience in mind in order to, hopefully, stimulate more analysis rather than a
report on findings.
~~~
hyperpape
Thanks. I ask because while feeling like your job is useless is sad, the
really provocative claim is that most people are sitting around doing nothing
of value to anyone.
And having read your description of the useless jobs, I'll reiterate that
while I'd entertain the idea that 40% of people think their jobs are bullshit,
I don't think those 5 categories possibly contain 40% of workers.
------
black_puppydog
The General Intellect Unit podcast also discusses Graeber's work [1]. They
call themselves 'Cybernetic Marxists' so don't expect this to be neutral. :P
[1]:
[http://generalintellectunit.net/e/013-alternatives/](http://generalintellectunit.net/e/013-alternatives/)
------
lurcio
vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas
------
dawidw
“People want to feel they are transforming the world around them in a way that
makes some kind a positive difference.” - That's the bullshit. I just want to
make positive difference in my wallet. And then I can think about the rest of
the world.
~~~
Hermel
Yes, the wallet is usually the first priority. However, I believe that doing
work that has a deeper meaning is more satisfying. I've observed that it is
for example very demotivating for employees if their work gets dismissed (i.e.
when they worked hard on a project for months and then the project gets
cancelled).
~~~
dawidw
Of course - if two jobs give similar income, you look at other factors. But if
you can earn 10x more than now but in bullshit work (playing all day computer
games etc. - as described in article) which job would you choose?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New FreeBSD Code of Conduct - ksec
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2020-June/001959.html
======
mkl
See discussion from a few hours ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23471365)
------
kstenerud
Good! I like seeing a short CoC that describes the spirit of participation
rather than legalistic rules of participation. There are of course risks to
either approach when it comes to bad actors (from the top or the bottom), but
I think a spirit guide is more robust in the long run.
------
okasaki
So many projects have a COC these days. Does anyone have any examples of them
being applied?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cruz, Lee, Duffy Increase Scrutiny on Obama Planned Internet Giveaway - gist
https://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2765
======
gist
For reference:
[http://domainnamewire.com/2016/08/13/ted-cruz-asks-doj-
revie...](http://domainnamewire.com/2016/08/13/ted-cruz-asks-doj-review-com-
pricing/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google should highlight all similar places on maps - rajeshbatra
======
dalke
As in, all the places with a karst topography in one color, all the places
with a population density of more than 1000/sq km another color, and those
places with wild rabbit populations a third?
In other words, what does "similar" mean, how many people would agree with
your definition, and why should Google do this?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Rise of the 1099 Economy: More Americans Are Becoming Their Own Bosses - edward
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2012/07/25/the-rise-of-the-1099-economy-more-americans-are-becoming-their-own-bosses/
======
jacquesm
More people starting out for themselves can have several causes, and one of
those strongly correlates with unemployment. Not everybody that starts for
themselves does so because they think that 'working for the man' is no longer
for them, as often as not it is that the man has decided that he has surplus
employees and kicks them to the curb. That those people then need income and
that many of them are then forced to start their own business or perish is a
direct effect of this. If you throw that many people into the meatgrinder some
of them will succeed but let's not pretend that those choices were made of
free will.
~~~
happyscrappy
Being your own boss has huge advantages, tax and otherwise, at least in the
US.
~~~
_delirium
There are some significant disadvantages as well, though. One is that there
are fairly large cost/access disadvantages for healthcare compared to being
part of a corporate group plan, although Obamacare has improved the access
part.
~~~
cylinder
Obamacare hasn't improved the access part unless you're subsidized. Maybe the
plans are a little better, but you're still paying exorbitant premiums,
especially in corrupted states like New York where you've got to subsidize the
high incomes of medical malpractice lawyers.
Important to note that employees of large corps are still paying big premiums,
they just think they're not because the employer is paying half or more. But
if those costs weren't there they could be passed to the employee as wages.
This is one of the strongest explanations for the stagnation and decline of
wages in the US over the last couple decades. If we made everyone buy their
own insurance, there'd be riots in the streets.
~~~
_delirium
> Obamacare hasn't improved the access part unless you're subsidized.
That's the "cost" part of cost/access; access is whether you can get health
coverage at all. Pre-Obamacare, access to healthcare was pretty dicey outside
a corporate health plan, up to the insurer whether they were interested. If
you had significant negative health history, you effectively had to work for a
large corporation in order to get under the group umbrella. My own health is
fortunately good, but I have more than one friend who chose not to start a
company or join a small startup because of the healthcare issue (one has a
congenital heart problem, which poses no issue for getting corporate group
coverage, but previously made individual coverage a no-go).
~~~
zrail
I'm part of that group of people. I held back on starting my own business for
almost a year because I would not have had access to health insurance at all
due to my medical history. Obamacare means that I can buy it. After that it's
just money. Bill a few more hours and/or raise my rate a few percent and I
don't notice the difference.
------
jeffreyrogers
Funny how we went from the 17th/18th century model of self employed craftsmen,
to the 19th/20th century model of working for a large manufacturer, and now
the trend appears to be back towards self employment.
Of course, as jacquesm noted in his comment, a lot of this is probably due to
people being unable to find other, desirable work.
~~~
happyscrappy
While it is great if people started businesses when they can't find work this
has not been my experience. The people that I see starting businesses are the
most ambitious and are seeking more.
~~~
georgemcbay
Well "starting a business" and being a 1099 earner are conceptually two very
different things that only sometimes overlap, though within this thread they
are often being used interchangeably (probably because the article this thread
is about conflates them in some places).
I know of a few people who are now 1099 earners not because they wanted to
"start a business" in the traditional sense but rather because they are
working through temporary staffing agencies structured this way to avoid the
benefits they would otherwise have to provide when using full-time W2
employees. Celebrating this state of affairs as people being empowered to
become their own bosses is very misleading. To be fair to the original
article, it does make mention of the fact that this situation is not all
roses, but the message is overall somewhat muddled by the title and overall
gist.
------
mark_l_watson
Except for working at WebMind and Google, I have been a 1099 consultant for
about 16 years.
One thing I worry about is the USA government, that seems very keen on
extracting taxes from non-rich people, will start plugging up some of the fair
tax right offs that 1099 workers get.
The first part of this process, I think, has been the pressure on companies to
make people work as W-2 workers. W-2 workers have fewer tax write offs.
~~~
deskamess
What are the disadvantages for companies to make people work as W-2? Is there
more paperwork on their part?
~~~
justboxing
As @snowwrestler has mentioned, the disadvantages arise from the Company
required to take on liability for damages, work not completed etc, as well as
the provision of benefits (sick leave, retirement plans etc).
In the context of being an Independent Contractor however, my experience has
been that very few companies are willing to directly hire a person as a 1099
Software Contractor. A majority of them have you come on as a "W-2
Contractor". What this means is that the Recruiting Company "forces" you to
sign up with them as a "W-2 Contractor", and they in essence withhold taxes,
and provide mostly Sh*ty benefits, and give you a lower rate than if you were
an independent 1099 Contractor.
On the flip side, the Company at which you will be performing your work has
none of the risks associated with 1099 Contractors, and can fire you at any
time without any risk of a lawsuit from you, since their legal agreement is
with the recruiting company that hired you as a "W-2 Contractor", and not with
you directly.
Hope this makes sense.
I hate this situation and I wish some Jobs / Career startup company would
address this pain point, i.e. software engineer forced to go through "W-2
Companies" and hence getting a lesser hourly rate and thrust with benefits
that the contractor doesn't need (as his spouse may have medical benefits from
a fulltime job etc). i.e. it would be cool if a startup career website could
connect 1099 Independent Contractors with the Companies that need them, and
get them the higher rates that are currently being "eaten" by the middle-men /
brokers that masquerade as Recruiting Companies and make you get on a W-2 at a
much much lower rate.
~~~
usernamepc
Like many others have mentioned, the client companies don't want to be
involved in hiring 1099s directly because of the liability (lookup
google/odesk). What our startup
[http://www.oncontracting.com](http://www.oncontracting.com) is doing instead
is making the staffing space more transparent and empowering contractors with
information- so you can lookup the various preferred staffing agencies that
service certain clients and then shop among them to go with whoever charges
the lowest markup.
------
xacaxulu
It's almost as if there is some sort of huge incentive for organizations to
not have full time employees or have to pay for their healthcare, vacation
days, taxes etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Web developers: Help us with our market analysis - tzaman
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2FTRC55
======
tzaman
Hey, we are conducting a small market analysis and we kindly ask if you could
take 2 minutes to answer 16 short questions. (The target market are web
developers)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump's executive order targets political bias at Twitter and Facebook: draft - tobltobs
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-trump-executive-order-social/trumps-executive-order-targets-political-bias-at-twitter-and-facebook-draft-idUSKBN2340MW
======
pr_nik
The gameplan might be to build a direct connection between the vast financial
resources of the republican party and their ability to influence online
audiences. This has already worked quite well with the Super PACs which amount
to unlimited anonymous donations to parties or candidates. This was declared
legal based on the 1st amendment in 2010. The same goal could be pursued here:
cite 1st amendment and rule by decree that fact-checking violates 1st
amendment principles, fight it out up to the supreme court (which is firmly in
republican hands) and then write it into law for the foreseeable future. In
the meantime, sue social media providers for ridiculous sums if they provide
fact-checking prior to the election. Technically, you still have a democracy,
albeit one that is no longer united in its perception of reality.
~~~
deathgrips
The 1st amendment isn't the issue here. The issue is Facebook pretending to be
a publisher when it is in fact much more like a newspaper editor. You don't
get to run a private company with unparalleled influence over US politics and
not play by the rules of other media companies.
~~~
raesene9
All social media sites effectively curate content by dictating what is allowed
on the platform and what is not, and removing content which doesn't meet those
requirements.
This isn't just about facebook and twitter, it's about _every_ site that
allows user generated content, reddit, Hacker News, Instagram, heck even Stack
Exchange counts, I'd imagine.
~~~
deathgrips
As long as those sites curate according to their transparent terms of use
these rules wouldn't apply to them.
~~~
raesene9
I'd argue there's no such thing as "transparent terms of use" that wouldn't be
open to legal challenge. Twitter and facebook have terms of use, they're as
transparent as any other site in that regard.
Reddit has banned whole sub-reddits and shadowbanned others, Hacker news has
human mods who make qualitative decisions to curate conversations on this
site.
This hits every forum, every newsgroup, every site that has user generated
content.
------
DarkWiiPlayer
> The order asks the FCC to examine whether actions related to the editing of
> content by social media companies should potentially lead to the platform
> forfeiting its protections under section 230.
Honestly, that part seems very reasonable. If a platform curates or modifies
content or promotes it beyond what some system thinks the specific user might
like, then yes, the platform should be responsible for that content.
The real question would be, should the platform become responsible for _all_
ontent, or just the content it curates / modifies / promotes?
My opinion is that this should work on a per-content basis, where the platform
only becomes legally responsible for a unit of content once it associates
itself with it by promoting, modifying, etc. this content. Whether it is
realistic to enforce it this way is, of course, another question.
~~~
sytelus
This is actually much more far reaching. Websites modify user content all the
time. For example, if you post link on Twitter, you don't decide thumbnails.
Another example, appending an ad or "fact check" link are modifications of
user's original content. Technically, if you change your website's theme or
design in future, you modified all of user content as well.
~~~
yadco
I think you do choose to use the thumbnails and metadata of the site you are
linking to and allowing the site to change it.
------
originalvichy
Imagine being a part of a party that has been pushing for the destruction of
net neutrality, and complain that specific services on the internet are
censoring the internet.
Deciding what traffic to allow on the networks is OK but services shouldn’t be
allowed to police things on their own platform.
------
zpeti
I guess this was inevitable in the end, it must have come to this, but I just
find what twitter did so silly. At least if they'd have used some sort of
impartial looking fact checker, or an independent panel, or something, as
facebook is doing, perhaps they would have prolonged this for longer.
But calling CNN a fact checker on the president is so inherently stupid, it's
asking for trouble. And of course CNN couldn't get their facts right either,
so they are blatantly just representing the other side and not "facts".
Twitter really could have done a better job here.
~~~
dmarchand90
I love that they started to fact check the president, but the very stupid
choice to use CNN basically means that shot themselves in the foot...
~~~
Rapzid
Perhaps they did it to antagonize him. CNN is probably Trump's least favorite
news outlet.
Besides, all news outlets post a bunch of BS under the cover of "analysis",
"opinion", and "op-ed" pieces. Those are all carefully crafted to engage a
target audience. NYT does it. WAPO does it. CNN. They are all running outrage
factories just producing slightly different flavors..
~~~
blaser-waffle
> Perhaps they did it to antagonize him. CNN is probably Trump's least
> favorite news outlet.
That's the point, me thinks
------
Operyl
All of this because they finally chose to draw a line in the sand. Wow.
------
puranjay
What's stopping another company - or Twitter itself - moving somewhere outside
the US jurisdiction?
I can't imagine it would be easy to regulate a service that isn't really
location dependent.
~~~
bcoates
Too much of their revenue comes from the US. Big US advertisers would be
incredibly skeeved out by advertising to US users via a US jurisdiction
dodging middleman.
They could survive just fine as a communication tool but not so much as a
business.
~~~
puranjay
If US advertisers are comfortable advertising on TikTok, I can't see any
reason why would be skeeved out by a largely American-owned company
headquartered in Europe
------
seanwilson
> The executive order would require the Federal Communications Commission
> (FCC) to propose and clarify regulations under Section 230 of the
> Communications Decency Act, a federal law largely exempting online platforms
> from legal liability for the material their users post. Such changes could
> expose tech companies to more lawsuits.
> The order asks the FCC to examine whether actions related to the editing of
> content by social media companies should potentially lead to the platform
> forfeiting its protections under section 230.
> It requires the agency to look at whether a social media platform uses
> deceptive policies to moderate content and if its policies are inconsistent
> with its terms of service.
Is there any merit to this?
------
ilaksh
> The draft order also states that the White House Office of Digital Strategy
> will re-establish a tool to help citizens report cases of online censorship.
> Called the White House Tech Bias Reporting Tool, it will collect complaints
> of online censorship and submit them to the Department of Justice and the
> Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
> It requires the FTC to then “consider taking action”, look into whether
> complaints violate the law, develop a report describing such complaints and
> make the report publicly available.
------
lazyjones
IANAL, but this seems reasonable and similar to what e.g. Germany is already
practising: if you assume responsibility of your users' content by
verifying/correcting it, you are held liable. For example, portals that
collect user reviews and check whether they are complete and correct:
[https://medien-internet-und-
recht.de/volltext.php?mir_dok_id...](https://medien-internet-und-
recht.de/volltext.php?mir_dok_id=2820) (German).
~~~
grumple
It’s not reasonable in context, which is as a temper tantrum resulting from
having a fact check posted alongside Trump’s blatant lies. The content wasn’t
edited and taking responsibility for the speech of others is absurd.
~~~
syshum
>>resulting from having a fact check posted
Except for the Fact
1\. It was on opinion not a statement of fact that needed fact checking
2\. Twitter supports directly an opposing opinion
3\. The "Fact Check" organizations linked are provably bias and are not fact
check organizations
4\. The links went to opposing opinion pieces not a statement of fact
~~~
grumple
Let's take a look at the tweets in question:
> There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than
> substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged
> & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of
> California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the
> state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will
> be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom
> have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This
> will be a Rigged Election. No way!
This composed two tweets. It's from an authority figure (granted, one known to
be extremely untrustworthy). There are many statements of "fact", or what any
reasonable reader would take as assertions of fact.
Sentence one:
> There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than
> substantially fraudulent.
This is clearly a statement of fact. It's asserting (and context is important
here, because Trump has repeatedly said mail in voting is rife with fraud)
that mail-in voting is rife with fraud. Even a charitable interpretation would
have to see this as intended to degrade trust in our voting system (to what
end?) and discourage voting. If I say "The sun will rise tomorrow", it's a
statement of fact, even though it's about the future.
> Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed
> out & fraudulently signed.
Again, this is a statement of fact. There is no qualifying clause to make this
opinion, such as "I believe", or "I think".
> The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone
> living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get
> one.
Another statement of fact, this one clearly about the present.
> That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people,
> many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to
> vote.
Statement of fact.
> This will be a Rigged Election.
Again, a statement of fact.
That's five lies in 6 sentences.
Now let's look at the Fact Check link - it goes here:
[https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384](https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384)
This is a feed leading to many articles from many sources about the matter in
question.
~~~
swamp40
* >> That's five lies in 6 sentences.*
Zero lies in 6 sentences, says I.
------
T-A
I guess somebody at the White House is reading HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23330463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23330463)
~~~
bcoates
I don't get it, is there a legal obligation for twitter to follow its own
terms of service?
This EO seems to be a nothingburger, the courts have already established that
the text of 230 creates broad immunity, they aren't going to defer to the FCC
about that.
Has the FTC even established that platforms have obligations towards their
non-customer users?
~~~
rsynnott
> I don't get it, is there a legal obligation for twitter to follow its own
> terms of service?
The ToS will be written to allow discretion; that is why Trump hasn't been
banned.
------
sneak
Here comes the real deal government-on-server censorship, not the fake stuff
that they’re complaining about.
Censorship platforms, even the “good guys” who only censor occasionally or
predictably or “according to law” (or whatever), are all vulnerable to this.
The state can threaten them with guns and imprisonment, ultimately, and they
have no immediate recourse. The content comes down. Maybe it gets restored
later, after the election or war is over. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, it
comes down today. Neither Jack nor Sundar are going to jail to protect your
hosting account showing videos of war crimes.
This is an inherent danger in all censorship platforms. Whether you like Jack
or not, trusting him not to censor arbitrarily (while Twitter always has the
technical capability) is not a reasonable choice for the society-wide message
bus.
This failure mode is inherent in these censorship-possible systems, and it
must be addressed if we are to maintain publishing that cannot be suppressed
by the state during emergencies.
[https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-
bias/](https://sneak.berlin/20200421/normalcy-bias/)
~~~
deathgrips
Twitter is being threatened because they are arbitrarily censoring people.
~~~
raverbashing
It's a private platform
~~~
deathgrips
Yes, they are an unaccountable private platform that influence public
elections.
------
boomboomsubban
>The working group will also monitor or create watch-lists of users based on
their interactions with content or other users
What the hell does this mean? As it sounds like they're arbitrarily creating a
list of people they'll actively target for enforcement of state laws.
------
w_t_payne
On the face of it this seems to be a dangerous step towards the industry being
coopted by the lunatic conspiratorial fringes and forced to spread their
dangerous nonsense against our will. Not a game I'd be happy to play.
------
psych-W
Seems like we're relying now upon the same "bureaucracy" that was detested
when someone got what he wanted. Now someone very delusional is butthurt. Good
thing twitter can basically do whatever they want - it's a private company,
first amendment rights are not in question here. If crazies want to eat their
fish tank cleaner, but twitter wouldn't let them post selfies promoting this
stupidity, then stupid people need to learn how to create their own company
and isolate from reality a little longer like maybe a few more generations. I
bet that'll work well...
------
cft
Section 230 should stay but the definition of re-publisher vs publisher should
be narrowed down.
The law should be written such that if you go beyond removing spam and illegal
content, and especially if you are editorializing user-submitted content, you
are are a publisher, rather than a re-publisher.
This will put large platforms in a situation where they will have to chose
whether they maintain neutrality. Each platform can then pick whether to be a
publisher or a re-publisher.
------
nojito
Very clever. This has nothing to do with the twitter tagging of his tweet that
everyone is talking about.
The tagging incident just accelerated the idea that social media shouldn’t
enjoy the cost benefits from being classified as a publisher or a platform
depending on how much it costs to answer a legal question poised to them.
This has nothing to do with free speech, so I completely expect the
conversation to go completely off the rails.
------
ENOTTY
Here is a link to a purported draft of the EO: [https://kateklonick.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/05/DRAFT-EO-...](https://kateklonick.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/05/DRAFT-EO-Preventing-Online-Censorship.pdf)
~~~
loopz
Rich coming from leadership that is implementing new tricks of deception and
manipulation on an ongoing basis.
------
tinus_hn
Do people really not see through this transparent attempt at distraction?
------
apatters
Why does the federal government miss the ball Every. Single. Time?
Twitter censoring conservatives wouldn't be a big deal if Twitter had more
competitors. America keeps on saying it's committed to free and open markets.
Why doesn't it make one here?
Break up Twitter. Or make them open up their protocols. Or whatever. I don't
care. Just promote competition. Enough of these quasi-fascist state regulated
oligopolies run and reaped by 1-3 companies while the rest of us stand in the
bread lines. It's not the American way, not the democratic way, not the
capitalist way, and I'm sick of it.
~~~
loopz
Isn't this what the free market is supposed to deliver? Now you want a
marginalized gov under fire to save you?
~~~
apatters
There's nothing marginalized about the American government, it's the biggest
and most powerful government in the world and it has an unfathomably huge
budget.
I haven't seen a free market in America in decades.
Free markets can be destroyed by governments or by megacorps, but most often
they're destroyed by a collaboration between the two.
Put two and two together and resist.
------
netcan
It's so depressing how low the bar is, for regulatory frameworks.
Maybe it's totally co-opted by industry incumbents, and serves as a moat
against competition. Maybe it's about electoral politics. IE, the problem is
stifling of specific voices supportive of Trump... or the opposite. We can't
even hope that it will be designed logically to serve a principle or goal.
I'm not saying regulation (or better legislation) isn't necessary. Twitter set
out to be the "public square" and succeeded. It's a privately controlled
public square. This _is_ a problem for democracy. It's no joke either. Twitter
& Facebook can and have been the launch point for elections, revolutions,
coups and such. "It's their site, they can do what they want" is not, IMO,
reasonable.
On a related point "platform monopolies," are a well established problem, and
we've even had some court ruling to that effect. Courts are narrow though.
Legislation is the only way to establish principles.
This should be a "step back and think big picture" situation. Establish
principles that guarantee freedoms, media diversity or whatever the goals are.
Instead, the debate will be dictated by electoral considerations... on both
the pro and con side. I doubt they're even thinking past the immediate
election.
------
archagon
If we accept corporations as people, I wish some of the ones with actual power
had the backbone and gall to do a bit of civil disobedience, instead of
rolling over at the first sign of trouble. Twitter should double down and add
a fact-check sticker to every single Trump lie, past and current — to hell
with lawsuits and the FCC. Otherwise, we'll "maybe parts of this sound
reasonable" our way straight into an authoritarian, thought-shaping,
Republican-ruled dictatorship. Surely, even the people who scoffed at this
idea a few years ago can see this future taking shape.
I am aghast that there's _any_ support of this in the once-countercultural
Silicon Valley. It's abhorrent and shameful, and it makes me fear that maybe
the gravity well is already too large to escape.
------
jonnypotty
Fight America, please.
------
GnarlyWhale
This period of Trump benefiting off unfettered, direct access to the public,
and Twitter benefiting off of greater clout through hosting the president is
most definitely coming to a conclusion.
------
sudhirj
In scenario 1, this is a Sabre rattling move, where Trump is hoping that the
social media companies will allow his nonsense against the threat of more
legal headaches from section 230 complaints and violations. This might happen.
In scenario 2, this backfires phenomenally against the very bullshit that
Trump is trying to protect - the goal of section 230 seems to be enforcement
of terms of service, and the first action of companies trying to enforce their
terms against hate speech and lies will be to block Trump and his entire
cohort.
Seems like a risky play, threatening someone with legal action if they don’t
destroy you hoping that the threat will get them to stop destroying you.
This might also just the universe conspiring against Trump - he’s plugging OAN
and Fox is slowly inching away from him, choosing to break on mask wearing.
His Twitter soapbox now carries a bullshit warning on the stuff he says, his
other platforms will follow, now that precedent has been set. The Democrats
have chosen a nominee white enough to appeal to Trump supporters but black
enough to have Obama in his corner. A black man was murdered by a MAGA cop,
causing riots and police overreaction. There might not be an avalanche yet,
but this is the scene where there’s a slight rumbling sound and everybody
looks up at the mountain.
~~~
syshum
Personally I hope twitter does ban Trump, but not for the same reasons I
suspect you do. Not because I believe he has violated a nebulous and
subjective "hate speech" policy, not be cause I believe "Trump lies" and all
Democrats are pure virtue and sunshine (which is largely the opinion of the
twitterverse)
No I hope they do, because Trump will select another platform, and that
Platform will see a HUGE boost and hopefully start to crack the foundation of
the Silicon Valley social media oligopoly
I want to see a return to Open Protocols, and Federated Communications, not 4
or 5 companies controlling most human communications
------
alpacaillama
I hope they look into whether social media platforms can use safe harbour
(Section 230) stuff or not. Personally I don’t think so. Since they do act as
publishers.
I know HN will focus on the Trump part but I am more interested in hearing
about what you think of section 230, safe harbour, social media as publishers.
~~~
loopz
I've not much love for administrators' love for banning posts and users for
unquantifiable reasons. This from 30 years of experience on the matter. One
gets to see all kinds of variations, and there's absolutely nothing new here
in core powergames and surrounding mechanics.
However, such social media platforms can either exist in any form protected by
freedom of speech, or they cannot exist at all. This as no moderation is
illegal and frowned upon, purported to sway public opinion with false data.
The thing is, the power games are inseparable from the mechanics, no matter
how well-intentioned on either "side". The inevitable outcome is separation of
users, which happens again, and again. What we will see coming is the Great
Divide, caused by social media technologies, powered by tribal human nature
and selfishness.
------
Causality1
If Twitter just up and bans him I will laugh so hard I'm likely to stroke out.
~~~
deathgrips
Hahaha political censorship is so funny hahaha
~~~
arrrg
Ordinary users would be banned for the stuff he said. No question about that.
Twitter is already giving the president a lot of leeway in what he can say.
------
cletus
So I would guess that Twitter is internally torn apart on this. I imagine the
rank-and-file for the most part despise Trump but as a business Twitter (and
its shareholders) are more than happy to be the Propaganda Wing of the
Republican Party.
So I imagine an effort to distance themselves from the outright lies of the
commander-in-chief was token resistance to this role, probably aimed at
mollifying the collective consciences of the employees.
But it's doomed and they've fallen into a trap. Here's how this is going to
go:
There is simply no line in the sand you can draw between objective truth and
objective lies. What's more, even if you can, propagated lies exist because
people want to believe them and they see any effort to disabuse them of their
provably false views (eg vaccines cause autism) as biased actors trying to
hide the "truth".
Human nature can be ugly at times.
The take on Section 230 is actually an interesting one and I imagine that's
going all the way to the Supreme Court if the administration pushes on this.
Like you can remove objectionable or illegal content from your platform (in
fact you're required to by law) and still maintain safe harbor but where does
that end? If you're Google you don't want Youtube filled up with a bunch of
racist crap. It's bad for your brand. That content may fall under free speech
(from a S230 perspective) and if you decide to remove it for the health of the
platform and/or the value of your brand, does safe harbor still apply?
Whatever the case, this administration needs to lose in the next election.
Badly. The attack on societal norms and institutitotions is unprecedented and
reprehensible and I so would like Trump, McConnell, Ivanka, Jared, Pompeo,
Barr and a whole bunch of others to end up in prison after all this is over.
This is what scares me the most: in the Watergate era even Republicans found
Nixon's behaviour beyond the pale. I am utterly convinced that if that
happened today there'd be a strict party-line vote as the President's party
would happily look the other way.
Look no further than the administration's so far successful efforts to block
Congressional oversight. At no time in history did any administration think it
was totally above the law. Make no mistake: that's what they're doing. Worse,
no administration so blatantly engaging in obstruction would've continued to
have ~40% of the population support it no matter what. Thanks to decades of
gerrymandering in state Houses and voter suppression that 40% almost controls
the election by itself as higher-population states are essentially
disenfranchises in the modern electoral system.
For the record, I'm against the popular vote deciding the presidential
election but that's a whole other topic.
How anyone who can call themselves "Christian" and support this president and
his policies is utterly beyond me.
~~~
zrail
> in the Watergate era even Republicans found Nixon's behaviour beyond the
> pale. I am utterly convinced that if that happened today there'd be a strict
> party-line vote as the President's party would happily look the other way.
This already happened. I know it's hard to remember six months ago, but the
president* was impeached by the House and was acquitted on a party line vote
in the Senate.
~~~
cletus
My point is that Nixon quit to avoid an inevitable impeachment. Today he
wouldn’t have to because he’d get a party line vote. Norms of acceptable
conduct have been greatly eroded.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Please – A Cross-Language Build System - nikolay
https://please.build
======
qznc
I'd say meson is the most direct competitor. They don't mention it in the FAQ
though.
[http://mesonbuild.com/](http://mesonbuild.com/)
~~~
lolikoisuru
>supported languages include C, C++, D, Fortran, Java, Rust
So it isn't general purpose?
------
CJefferson
Cross language but not cross platform -- no windows support, and none planned.
~~~
qznc
Noted. [https://github.com/qznc/annoying-build-
systems#please](https://github.com/qznc/annoying-build-systems#please)
~~~
arunc
No love for D's DUB on your list?
~~~
qznc
I left out package managers from all languages and focused on generic build
systems. The line is blurry though. Feel free to send a pull request.
------
bringtheaction
I Googled to find the repository of a build system I wanted to mention and
stumbled upon something else that I found interesting;
[https://shakebuild.com/](https://shakebuild.com/)
> Shake is a library for writing build systems. Most large projects have a
> custom-written build system, and developers working on the project are
> likely to run the build system many times a day, spending a noticeable
> amount of time waiting for the build system. This document explains why you
> might pick Shake over alternative tools for writing build systems (e.g.
> make, Ant, Scons).
[https://shakebuild.com/why](https://shakebuild.com/why)
Shake is written in Haskell and is open source.
~~~
carterschonwald
One of the larger public projects working to migrate to shake over time is
ghc. The current ghc build system uses a recursive make setup, and all that
such entails. (:
------
ComputerGuru
Since this thread has long since devolved into a discussion about build
systems in general: if you don’t need a build system with Windows support, go
with tup which is otherwise awesome. If you don’t care about bloat in your dev
tools, go with meson (modern scons replacement). If you need cross platform
and don’t like requirements on needless runtimes, I’m still searching for a
good replacement for cmake (BSD Makefiles accomplish much of the same with a
saner syntax just not as portably unless you need the ninja/msvc/qt/xcode
intermediate build files).
Premake was promising but I fear it fell victim to early hype syndrome.
~~~
aidenn0
What's wrong with tup on windows? (I've never used it on windows, but its docs
say that windows is supported).
~~~
ComputerGuru
Tup requires fuse because they use fuse to monitor the file system for changes
instead of kqueue/inotify/FindFirstChangeNotification.
Fuse support on Windows is a no-go, very unstable, broken, and unavailable by
default.
------
jopsen
Why do all these build systems have magic built-in rules and special syntax?
Custom languages, etc.
makefiles without any magic are comprehensible, but people quickly add magic
:(
~~~
aidenn0
gnumake has at least a half-dozen magic built-in rules, no?
~~~
lloeki
A bit more than a half dozen, but mostly inconsequential:
[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Catalogue...](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Catalogue-
of-Rules.html)
------
suvelx
I have used please, on a project also written by the please developers, of
which I am not.
While my experience of `plz` may have been mired by the project that used it,
I can't say I found it added anything special.
It arguably doesn't meet the needs of the `plz` developers themselves, as
evidenced by the custom build-rules in the project that overrode the built-
ins. And at one point, it was suggested to us that we drop Plz and move to
buck/bazel/pants which was suggested would be a relatively simple replacement.
Sure, it built stuff, but the general impression was it got in the way, while
due to the way it was configured, was essential to keeping the project
running.
And why are there 20 releases on the 25th of November?
------
MadcapJake
> Also we chose the domain name before almost anything else (priorities!).
I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem :P
------
egnehots
This looks so similar to Bazel..
What's the advantage of using Please?
~~~
shoover
It's tuned to the preferences of another company; if you prefer their taste on
the finer points, that's one. Secondly, it's written in Go, so installation
should be simpler.
~~~
iainmerrick
What's hard about "brew install bazel"?
~~~
numbsafari
Why should I have to install the jdk for a build tool when I’m not using Java
myself?
~~~
abiox
i don't notice people complaining about needing ruby, python, perl or other
things installed for a given tool that depends on them nearly as much as java.
interesting.
~~~
zaarn
I actually do (internally) complain when some tool uses python/perl/ruby. It's
usually painful to install and maintain compared to most C or Go in this case.
Especially virtualenvs are an axe I like to grind.
------
alexeiz
When it comes to a build system with Python-like syntax, I prefer Waf
([https://github.com/waf-project/waf](https://github.com/waf-project/waf)) to
the rest of the competing solutions. It's written in Python, provides
excellent support for many build scenarios, but can be extended with Python
scripts without any restrictions, and has minimal dependencies (literally, you
can supply Waf packed binary with your project and it'll work on all major
platforms that have Python).
------
bfrog
Meson and Ninja being adopted by gnome is game changing
------
ball_of_lint
I dislike that the only way they list to install is "curl
[https://get.please.build](https://get.please.build) | bash". I know it's fast
and easy but it really leaves your computer at their mercy.
~~~
staticassertion
How? It's over HTTPS, and you're already trusting them to execute code on your
system... and it's not even root...
I see no way in which this "leaves your computer at their mercy" more than any
other process of purposefully executing code they control on your system.
~~~
merlinsbrain
I agree with the point you’re making and you clearly know what you’re talking
about but:
I would caution you to use the phrase “no way in which” when discussing
security - the less informed may read this and believe it.
While an edge case and requiring a mailicious targeted attack in this case
there’s at least the possibility of being MiTM’d.
The problem - as you’re probably aware - with using absolute terms when
speaking about a case like this is that it’s easy to extrapolate this sense of
safety to something that may lead to an attack that requires much less
precision thank convincing the browser that the MiTM proxy is “please.build”.
~~~
ktta
>the less informed may read this and believe it.
What they should be doing is to understand what's actually going on.
Once you download and run software from a TLS enabled website, you're putting
trust in that website. It doesn't really matter if you are doing 'curl
[https://example.com](https://example.com) | bash' or downloading a binary.
They can't be MITMed any more so with the curl way than downloading a binary.
That's all there is to it. I realize there are many security people who advice
against doing the curl thing, but I feel people should realize it is a rule of
thumb with unsecured websites.
~~~
merlinsbrain
Completely agree that they should understand what’s going on however:
It’s sometimes easy to forget that there are various reasons people are less
informed. For people early in the career for example, reading security advice
on HN and believing it is not unheard of especially when you have real experts
on here who know what they’re talking about.
Something that is “all there is to it” for you is not necessarily the same for
someone else. I’m not saying it’s anyones job to inform them; just that it’s
better not to speak in absolutes.
If security folks say something, I assume there’s a good reason until I become
a security folk myself - it’s one of those fields where being sceptical about
everything third-party helps.
My point really wasn’t about the MITM but a there’s always a possibility that
a proxy on a public/compromised network can intervene between you and a
“secured” website.
Binaries can be verified with checksums to make sure that the artifact hosted
on the repository is indeed what you received. You are 100% correct that you
are still trusting the code from the third party developer though!
~~~
ktta
>My point really wasn’t about the MITM but a there’s always a possibility that
a proxy on a public/compromised network can intervene between you and a
“secured” website.
Same can happen to a binary.
>Binaries can be verified with checksums to make sure that the artifact hosted
on the repository is indeed what you received
Here's the problem. The checksum is usually on the same page the binary is
located. Which pretty much defeats the purpose.
~~~
merlinsbrain
I see, and this was your original point.
I guess the only threat there (that I can see) is that the install script can
be malicious, but your point was that you’re trusting the owners of the
website anyway by downloading their binary and executing their code locally.
It can be argued that it’s probably easier to ship malicious code outside the
main repository (e.g. in an install script) but I do not have a good counter
besides this weak argument.
The checksum is indeed usually on the same page and does make it useless in my
hypothetical MITM.
------
ttsda
The name is not very google friendly. It took me a bit longer than I would
have liked to find examples for my specific use-case.
~~~
_asummers
I could see them using "plzbuild" as their version of "golang", for the same
problem.
------
millstone
Apologies in advance for shitting on this, but PLEASE STOP BUILDING BUILD
SYSTEMS.
We already have a serious incompatibility problem with projects using
autotools vs CMake vs Meson vs gyp vs Boost.Build vs SCons vs BUCK vs... and
now we throw Please onto the pile.
It sucks when you find a smallish library and discover it uses an esoteric
build system whose dependencies dwarf the library themselves (cough Yoga). The
OSS community needs build system consolidation, not tacking on a 15th wheel to
the cart.
Read the FAQ, it's just bananas:
> It [Bazel] is a great system but we have slightly different goals
> We preferred [Buck] to other options available, but again we're focused on
> different goals
> we didn't think it [Pants] was the ideal fit for us at the time
"All other systems had slightly different goals or weren't the exactly ideal
fit, so rather than contribute to or extend them we poured an enormous amount
of energy into rebuilding them in a slightly different way."
Relevant: [http://www.rojtberg.net/1481/do-not-use-
meson/](http://www.rojtberg.net/1481/do-not-use-meson/)
~~~
iriei283
PRs welcome
This is awful demanding. Not entirely unexpected in tech tho
“Why don’t others fix my frustration in open source projects!” they shout with
no hint of irony
~~~
foo101
Please don't make such low-effort, insinuating, cliche comments on Hacker
News. It makes the reading experience very poor.
Consider that the parent comment author might already be making pull requests
to the projects of his interest. The snarky "PRs welcome" is therefore
unnecessary and unwelcome. Everyone here knows PRs are welcome in an open
source project. Some of us do send PRs. But whether someone sends PRs or not
has no bearing on whether one can appreciate or criticize an idea as long as
it is done in a substantive manner.
In fact, whether the parent comment author sends PRs or not is orthogonal to
his complaint that we have too many build systems that is increasing the
burden on users and maintainers. If you have something to say against this
point, please do so on its own merit in a substantive manner without
insinuations or ad-hominem attacks.
------
rajangdavis
Very cool site!
------
EtDybNuvCu
Why would I use this instead of Nix?
~~~
pknopf
Do people use Nix for building and deploying project dependencies? Example
project? Can you consume the result in a format that isn't all Nix-y
symlinked?
~~~
EtDybNuvCu
nixpkgs contains tools for building Docker-compatible container images with
`dockerTools`, and also AppImage-style standalone executables with `nix-
bundle`.
My project, as well as many other projects, ships its own default.nix for
builds. Linking an example would deanonymize this account a little too much,
but there's plenty of examples out there.
------
malkia
Please bazel, buck or pants?
~~~
iainmerrick
Since Bazel is a version of the thing everybody is copying (Google’s internal
build system Blaze) I would say Bazel is most likely the best of the bunch.
I’ve used Buck; it’s slow. I haven’t tried Pants.
~~~
malkia
I've used blaze for 2.5 years, best build system ever, but haven't used at all
"pants please or buck"
------
gelo
So err... where is C# / Mono in all this?
------
nvus
Nice work, I will try using it on my next project. 404 Not Found WinLover at
localhost.
~~~
abiox
is the 404 thing humor? the meaning is a bit unclear.
------
funkythingss
this looks very interesting! Has anyone used it before?
~~~
lolikoisuru
>well I tried but they dont have samples so I gave up, no point in spending
hours in reading docs and setting up something for a build system that may be
useless. It also seemed suspiciously identical to bazel with really no
features that may be special in any way? I mean really, why use this and not
just bazel. The webpage doesnt even say
I agree with this guy. It shouldn't be that hard to include an example of an
advanced script.
[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#toc-
Compl...](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#toc-Complex-
Makefile-Example)
------
pjjw
favorite thing about it is their use of the pragmatapro font on the website
------
dingo_bat
Is there a problem with cmake? Why are people still inventing new build
systems?
~~~
flohofwoe
cmake cons (IMHO):
\- the archaic custom scripting language (that's its main problem)
\- there are many ways to do the same thing, resulting in each (non-trivial)
build script looking different
\- for the above reason, importing dependencies written by somebody else is
non-trivial, and its often better to rewrite the cmake scripts completely
\- it lacks some 'integration features' found in more modern systems like
Rust's cargo: (1) proper dependency/package management (2) run targets (3)
switching between build configurations should be easier (not just
release/debug, also different build target platforms)
cmake pros (also IMHO):
\- can generate IDE project files (that's what most new build systems
completely ignore)
\- very good cross-compilation support
\- describing a simple build is reasonably simple
\- broad support for build tools and IDEs
~~~
ihnorton
Microsoft (both vscode and studio) seems to be moving toward ide adaptation —
parsing output from other compilers, supporting compilation databases and
folder-only (non solution) projects. Perhaps this, combined with Clang
viability for MSVC ABI, will reduce the impetus for cross-platform projects to
use cmake just to support Windows. Of course, there’s added inertia in favor
of cmake due to LLVM, Boost, and others moving over. Not to mention that
Microsoft now also supports the “cmake server” concept (there will be some
deep irony if after 20 years of “we need cmake to support Microsoft” the
argument for the next N years becomes “we should use cmake _because_ Microsoft
supports it”).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Livejournal Done Right: The Case for a Social Network with Built-in Privacy - randomwalker
http://33bits.org/2009/09/09/livejournal-done-right-the-case-for-a-social-network-with-built-in-privacy/
======
neilk
Thanks for writing this, Arvind. I've often tried to explain what was good
about LJ to other technologists.
LJ is largely shunned by the technology elite. I think this is because it
doesn't meet their needs -- it isn't a very good platform for increasing one's
personal authority on a topic. But the privacy culture was superior.
For most non-technology-elite, privacy is sine qua non. At my former job
(Upcoming.org), we allow everyone in the world to see what events you are
planning to attend. The event also displays a very public list of all those
intending to attend. Techno-elite users like this because they are often
looking to be highly visible at certain conferences, and even make connections
with people they barely know yet. The elite of certain music and social scenes
also want this. But user testing showed that this freaked the average person
out quite a lot and they couldn't see the use of it. For them, social data was
inherently personal and private.
It might be that everyone in the world will eventually live a little bit like
the techno-elite, and want more random connections and live more in public.
But for richer, more personal relationships, we will need some sort of cross-
site privacy system.
------
randomwalker
(Author here.) My writing has frequently been at the intersection of my
academic and start-up lives, and has been of interest to HN. Hoping to kick up
some discussion on this post.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Corkboard app, all in HTML/CSS/Javascript - timothyjcoulter
http://corkboard.me
======
timothyjcoulter
Hey! Go to <http://corkboard.me> instead of the link set by ycombinator.
corkboard.me automatically gives each person their own personal corkboard, but
it does this through a 302 redirect. I should probably change this in the
future, but for now go directly to <http://corkboard.me> for your own.
(Admins, if you could change the link I'd appreciate it. Thanks!) -- Tim
~~~
canadaduane
It seems to have been updated to the direct link now. Neat simple site.
------
sili
It would be nice to be able to zoom in and out to see more or less at a time.
In general, this concept lands itself well for Google maps API where you model
your board as a map and it handles scrolling and zooming for you.
Edit: something similar to this <http://www.conwaylife.com/>
~~~
Timmy_C
The zoom in my browser seems to work fine.
~~~
shaunxcode
for me (ffox 3.5.15 on mac) it zooms the text but not the images, I would
expect it to shrink/expand the images as well so you could see more at once.
~~~
ido
Do you have View->Zoom->Zoom Text Only enabled?
(OT: you are using an out of date version of ff, latest is 3.6.12)
~~~
shaunxcode
Hey, late reply but no I do not have zoom text only turned on.
------
Kilimanjaro
Off topic as usual, but interesting from the developer and user point of view.
If you are going to give me a 10 char ID, please make it all lower case and
without numbers, I hate hitting shift or having to move my eyes from the
keyboard to the numpad and back.
So, aren't 26 lowercase chars enough?
26^10 = 141,167,095,653,376
A hundred and forty trillion options!
* Hey Tim, nice app btw.
~~~
rudasn
I see this type of ID everywhere and I'm curious as to how they are created
and how "random" they are (the chances of generating two of the same). A
python snippet would be great, of course :)
~~~
Kilimanjaro
id=''.join(Random().sample(string.ascii_lowercase,10))
~~~
lvh
Not really. Random.sample samples from a population multiple times: that means
no doubles (unless they were in the population as well). Try it: sample 30
times from string.ascii_lowercase. Since you did it with 10, less than
len(population), it didn't croak, but it also doesn't get you the numbers
mentioned above.
Here's one I like better: "".join(random.choice(string.ascii_lowercase) for _
in xrange(len))
~~~
Kilimanjaro
Hmm, if that's the case then 26x25x24... still gives you twenty trillion
unique ids with non-repeating chars. Not bad after all.
Will have that in mind.
------
wushupork
I did a corkboard concept over a year ago but it was mostly a UI exercise that
incorporated mouse gestures for input (there was no backend).
[http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2009/04/13/concept-virtual-
corkb...](http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2009/04/13/concept-virtual-corkboard-
with-handwriting-recognition-for-large-interactive-walls/) Flash-haters don't
hate
------
mike-cardwell
Doesn't work with some character sets. I just entered:
これは、いくつかの日本です
Then went away and came back, and all the characters had turned to question
marks.
~~~
harisenbon
That's strange, Japanese input worked for me. (Chrome / Japanese Win7)
Maybe they fixed it?
~~~
harisenbon
Nevermind, you can write, just not save. I assume they're using a latin-based
field in their DB...
~~~
kazuya
That could be the case. I often don't notice encoding issues until my
colleagues complain their entries in Japanese are messed up.
~~~
mike-cardwell
This is one of the first things I test when I find a site like this. Most web
developers don't seem to take into consideration things like character sets
and encoding, yet they are so important.
------
golfga
It would be nice if you allowed us to rename our corkboard
(corkboard.me/[my_name_or_whatever]) to something more meaningful, then I can
get to it from work or home without checking my delicious account.
~~~
timothyjcoulter
This is very easy to do. Will be in the next release. --Tim
------
adovenmuehle
Could you make it more obvious where to click and hold to drag?
I think you want to allow the user to select the text with the mouse without
moving the note, but maybe some kind of styling at the bottom and top of the
note to designate a "drag" zone.
~~~
smokinn
I agree. It would be much clearer if you used a hover css property and put
cursor: move;
~~~
timothyjcoulter
Noted (on my own corkboard!). Will come soon.
------
Rygu
Very cool! I need some more colors and other type of post-it (photos?) though
before I seriously consider using it...
~~~
arethuza
If you paste an image URL into a note it shows the image
~~~
gommm
not working under safari 4.0.4
------
snarfman
Looks like a neat idea, but can you please add a Terms of Service page, even
if it's just a brief one? That might set folks a bit more at ease for posting
their TODOs and reminders.
------
Robin_Message
Looks really good. One small refinement: deleted notes could appear on a list
in the corner say - maybe with a screwed up motif - so I can recover something
I delete by accident :-)
~~~
jollyjerry
You could even build in a wastebasket paper toss game :)
Great simple app.
~~~
prawn
Feature bloat alert!
------
pshapiro
Very cool, well built.. but from a UX/UI perspective, it strikes me as a
little bit odd that I would be sticking post-its to a cork board. Maybe a
refrigerator or whiteboard texture would be more fitting. Or, so that you
don't have to change your domain and branding, you can add thumbtack graphics.
------
thetomreynolds
Works nicely in iOS too. Well done.
------
wushupork
Very well done. It's nice and simple as software should be.
------
kls
This thing would be great for story-boarding if it supported images and other
media types. IFrame would be cool to be able to bring in external content into
one of the notes. With a few more features, you got yourself a winner here.
Making the controls contextual to the note could keep it simple. Let me know
if you do decide to add other media types, I would be an avid user.
~~~
hugs
It does support images. Paste an image url into a new note, then hit return.
For example: <http://corkboard.me/mTJPwxMRha>
~~~
kls
Nice how does one add an image, I don't see any ways to add one. As well
another nice feature would be the ability to group notes. So that when a user
adds an image they could drop sticky's on it and then group them so that they
move together.
------
jason_slack
Kick Ass!. Plain and Simple.
Some refinements - Mac, 10.6.5, Firefox 3.6.12, Creating a new note only
happens in the lower right corner. I have to drag it more to be able to use
the note.
I would pay to use this on my small biz intranet. i.e license it.
~~~
timothyjcoulter
Thanks Jason! I thinking about ways of monetizing this. Send me your email or
twitter handle and we can talk about getting you in as beta users (to tim [at]
timothyjcoulter.com, free/low cost in exchange for feedback).
Bug noted. Will def check it out!
------
dezwald
Great Job - A month ago I had the thought of creating a similar cork board
concept app myself, using html/js/css - today I open HN and I see your app -
well done!
------
lightopia
It appears that two browsers (Firefox and Chrome) on the same machine can edit
a board, but it can't be edited by two or more machines at the same time.
Bummer.
------
shapedbyregret
Nicely done. I attempted doing something similar but it was not executed as
cleanly as yours. Is there a way to pin items so I don't accidentally move
them?
------
snes
Couple of bugs in Opera 11 beta.
New notes only appear in the middle of the entire board. When I close a note,
it pops up a new one.
------
joeag
Would be cool to be able to draw lines and labels for columns, rows or squares
to organize the post-its.
------
mikelbring
Really neat, but what if I get lost? Maybe some sorta thing to zoom out, not
sure. But its really nice!
~~~
timothyjcoulter
Definitely. I'm thinking how I can implement that, possibly a mini-map or a
snazzy zoom out feature. Definitely will come in a future release.
------
ashnyc
What can i say... you make my dream look bad :) good job, cant wait to see
where you take it
------
coffeejunk
creating a new note by double clicking would be nice, since the rate of notes
created by mistake would be lower :) plus the image url feature doesn't work
with any of my browsers (Mac OSX 10.6.5 Safari 5, Chrome 8, Firefox 4)
~~~
timothyjcoulter
Thanks! Noted. For the image url, are you pressing enter after pasting your
URL? Let me know if that doesn't work, and if not, we'll drill down into why
it's not working for you (def want to fix it if it isn't).
~~~
coffeejunk
doesn't matter if i press enter or not.
~~~
coffeejunk
png and jpg are now working :)
------
ashnyc
Imagine how great this would be on a big multie touch screen
------
Vekz
Is the source code for this available, besides view source?
------
kellysutton
Loving the simplicity. Can't wait to see where you take it!
~~~
allang
Agreed. Looks like it has potential. Nice work!
------
emeltzer
very nice. i will use this as it is.
------
spinlock
That is really, really cool.
------
justinAlcon
clean
------
cancelbubble
Needs localStorage.
~~~
jws
… but still retain server based storage
… and resolving my offline updates with the server
… even the provably incompatible ones
We are users! We want everything! Especially the impossible. And keep it free.
~~~
cpharmston
This could be awesome, if done transparently. The greatest appeal of this
application is it's straight-up simplicity: you click, start typing and your
notes are stored. Feature bloat would really detract from this experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Blackhole – semantic and modular SASS / CSS framework - alinseba
http://www.html5depot.com/blackhole
======
blackhole
This looks like a nice CSS framework, but I am beginning to regret my choice
of username.
~~~
alinseba
Hehe, no problem. Thanks for the feedback.
------
mosselman
I like Jane Doe
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The top 25 UK web 2.0 start ups | The Register - brett
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/16/the_top_25_uk_web_startups/
======
sharpshoot
I don't think these are the "top 25" UK web 2.0 startups. I think i'll write
an alternative list.
~~~
danw
"With no agenda other than they're interesting, here's 25 UK-based startups
that I think are worth watching in 2007. It's a very personal list - it's not
based on financial metrics, user bases, or likelihood of being bought by
Google. So this isn't the top 25 UK startups, in other words. It's just 25
cool ones."
I'd be interested to see your list, I'm tempted to draw up my own to see where
the overlap is between different "top apps" lists
------
jwecker
I hope these do well, but when I apply my internal "would I pay for it"
measurement (I never click on ads [and try to ignore branding] so ad-based
revenue sites don't make the cut) there was only one on that list that I
myself would pay for- the first one, Garlik. That's just me, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
100 Awesome PR Tools Which Get Press and Exposure for Startups - dannydonchev
https://justreachout.io/blog/pr-tools-which-get-press-exposure-for-startups/
======
joshmn
Nice list. Comprehensive list. Obviously, they'll put themselves first, but I
don't mind especially considering the transparency:
> Cons: “Free demo” is very limited. You need to pay to get anything done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why rats can't vomit, and why humans do - marketer
http://www.ratbehavior.org/vomit.htm
======
ojbyrne
My sister has pet rats, and I had to babysit them for a while. They're
actually really cool, smart and interesting. I recently finished the book "The
Omnivore's Dilemma" which draws a lot of parallels between rats and humans
(basically we have a lot of the same adaptations around eating). I'd recommend
the book and the pet.
------
prospero
Out of all the submissions on the site, this is my favorite.
------
dcurtis
Did anyone else feel a little tiny bit like vomiting while reading this?
It's fascinating.
~~~
tdavis
The most fascinating thing to me is that people have actually devoted studies
to finding out whether or not a large swath of animals can vomit.
~~~
etal
People have devoted _careers_ to finding out which animals can vomit. A fellow
named Borison has numerous entries on the final table -- assuming it's the
same person, this bright spark hit the scene in 1953 with the finding that
crab-eating macaques and rhesus monkeys can spew; and decades later, in 1981,
he followed up with the surprising finding that while most rodents can't
upchuck, the woodchuck could.
~~~
tdavis
My God. You're _right_. I don't really know what to think here.
~~~
shimon
I'm thinking we need to register vomitr.com and crowdsource this. A community
of people answering the question: Is your favorite pet species vomiting right
now?
~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Unfortunately, yes. I just spent the last few evenings steam cleaning my
carpets because my dog has a very sensitive digestive system...
~~~
tdavis
Imagine our fortune if we were to engineer a non-vomiting dog! Also, cats. No
more hair balls. Growing up around no less than 2 dogs and a cat throughout my
entire adolescence gives me a desire for this tech. It would also make a good
Founder story!
------
PieSquared
I have no idea how this is hacker news, put I found it pretty interesting
nonetheless. :)
~~~
davidw
Articles like this may not be "on topic", but they're unlikely to devolve into
flame wars, and attract people interested in flame wars, as would an article
about politics or (often) economics.
------
maurycy
The table under Evolution of vomiting is especially interesting. Never saw
vommiting pigeon!
~~~
ars
I don't know if it counts as "vomiting" but it's how they feed the chicks,
they regurgitate partially digested food.
Before you get disgusted: some humans will chew food in the month to feed to a
baby. And pigeons can't chew.
~~~
blogimus
The article explains the difference between vomiting and regurgitation. In
general, vomiting is active and requires coordination of many muscles.
Regurgitation is passive.
~~~
ars
Pigeon regurgitation is active though. They do it on purpose to feed a chick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An AI can simulate an economy millions of times to create fairer tax policy - doener
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/05/1001142/ai-reinforcement-learning-simulate-economy-fairer-tax-policy-income-inequality-recession-pandemic
======
rodiger
I'm all for more data-driven policy. However, I think it's tough for models
like this to accurately gauge how people respond to actual policy changes.
Also, there's been a push for "clearer" tax policy with numbers people can
remember and subconsciously feel good about. In my experience those optics
would be difficult to replicate with a black box like this.
------
verdverm
Given "AI's" inability to understand time and temporal relations, and given
the incredible amount of hidden dynamics and game theory in economics, just
going to go ahead and facepalm
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Update your Kindle or it will stop working - blahedo
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/your-kindle-is-going-to-stop-working-unless-you-update-by-22-march/ar-AAgBBrq
======
tzs
That's a bit of an overstatement. If you don't update your Kindle it will
continue to work as an e-reader. Content already on it will keep working, and
you will be able to load new content via USB.
You just won't have the right certificates in
/opt/usr/java/lib/security/cacerts to access Amazon network services.
------
blahedo
Who owns that hardware you paid for? Not you, apparently.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
San Francisco homeless tax helps spur departure of another high-profile company - jackfoxy
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2019/11/san-franciscos-homeless-tax-helps-spur-departure-of-another-high-profile-company/
======
Fjolsvith
Capitalism allows freedom to escape socialism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your recommended books from 2015 - hobolord
What books have you read in 2015 that you'd recommend to others, fiction and nonfiction both welcome.<p>I'll start with a fiction book of "A Fine Balance"- Rohinton Mistry and a nonfiction book of "The Psychopath Test"-Ron Jonson
======
JSeymourATL
Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis,
Steven Kotler -- a solid, thought provoking, yet quick easy read >
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609444-bold](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609444-bold)
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big : Kind of the Story of My
Life by Scott Adams -- I love anyone who asserts "passion is bullshit", this a
surprisingly enjoyable read on many levels.>
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-
at-a...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17859574-how-to-fail-at-almost-
everything-and-still-win-big?from_search=true&search_version=service)
------
mksm
\- Our Mathematical Universe ([http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-
Universe-Ultimate-Rea...](http://www.amazon.com/Our-Mathematical-Universe-
Ultimate-Reality/dp/0307599809))
\- The Martian ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir-
ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Martian-Novel-Andy-Weir-
ebook/dp/B00EMXBDMA))
\- Zero to One ([http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-
Future/dp/0804...](http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-
Future/dp/0804139296))
\- The Hard Thing About Hard Things ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-
About-Things/dp/0062273...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Hard-Thing-About-
Things/dp/0062273205))
------
aprdm
2nd edition was dec/14\.
[http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)
amazing book about programming and js
------
KararCBB
Founders at Work from Jessica Livingston Start with Why from Simon Sinek Both
are awesome books if you are starting a startup!
------
Mz
_Salt Dreams_ \-- about the history of water usage in Southern California.
------
hackerboos
I've read:
Elixir in Action by Sasa Jurić
Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas
Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! by Fred Hebert
All recommended.
------
ruraljuror
Published in 2015: _Amnesia_ by Peter Carey
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dissastisfied, Some Wall Street Technologists Flee for Start-Up Life - sak84
http://www.observer.com/2010/media/programming-dummies-dissastisfied-some-wall-street-technologists-flee-start-life
======
nsoonhui
But even quants are not immune to the feeling that what they're doing for a living is not adding up to anything.
Not sure about this, but isn't the quants who are responsible for developing
new pricing models for some esoteric options, new algos to capture the
fleeting abnormalities in the market , improving (say) the existing Gauss
Copula method that so that 2007 subprime crisis could be predicted or being
avoided altogether (<http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant>)
and so on.
How can you say that kind of work is unsatisfying and lacking of creativity?
~~~
frankc
It's not that it isn't interesting or creative (at times). It's that there
isn't much social redeeming value. You might as well be a professional poker
player, except your are hated instead of admired. Now that the status is gone,
it really hits you that you are pretty much a leech on society. I say that as
someone who works in this industry and has thought often about an exit
strategy, but the money is still too good be to justify a the risk of a
startup.
~~~
nsoonhui
I see. But I wouldn't be bothered about whether my work has "social redeeming
value".
For me, it's much more important to firstly earn good money, secondly do
something creative, not just typical CRUD applications.
And whether or not a work has "social redeeming value" is highly subjective.
I, for one, don't think that Twitter has any bit of "social redeeming value".
I can't see how a 140-char limit sentence can add much to our society.
------
endtime
I share office space with Andrew - didn't actually know he'd been at a bank,
but I can verify that he seems pretty happy to be doing what he's doing.
I never worked full time at a bank, but I did a summer internship in Goldman's
tech division and the work was extremely boring. I didn't really get the
impression that anyone on my team was having fun, with the possible exception
of my manager. I'm sure there are some tech jobs at the big banks which _are_
fun, but I think they're the minority.
------
lifeoffbi
wonder if this influx of NYC bankers will be better or worse for the consumer
internet world - don't know if the ethics and values of banking translate to
those of web startups.
~~~
gcheong
I don't see web startups as inherently being more ethical than that of the
average investment bank, but in any case the IT people are not usually dealing
with the same ethics decisions as those doing the investing at an investment
bank.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you think it is a good idea to invest in an Apple Computer? - sanosuke
I'm only interested in taking a look at the Swift programming language. And there is some articles saying that it will become Open Source later in this year. So I don't know if it is a good investment, Apple computers are expensive for my pocket.
======
SCAQTony
As a long time user, I find that the super amazing quality aspect of Apple
products and software is slipping. iTunes gets worse and worse. Apple music
looks anemic. The OSX interface was disappointing and the Apple watch totally
underwhelmed me. I am a minority here but if I were to invest in Apple, it
would because of it's driverless car development and the fact that Apple
products would sync with it. That unto itself could possible "drive" them into
becoming the first trillion-dollar company.
~~~
monroepe
Kind of off topic, but iTunes is just the worst. Every time I use it I just
become so angry.
~~~
coolvd1312
Takes forever to open! :/ And no updates in UX for a long time now.
~~~
SCAQTony
...And the "Where's Waldo" interface updates challenges me every time to find
my freaking music.
------
coolvd1312
If you're making the decision just for the sake of Swift Programming. Don't.
Not a great idea to spend a lot to shift to Mac for that reason alone. That
being said, there are lots of other reasons why Mac works great.
I was a PC User for as long as I can remember. I used windows since Windows 95
and all the way up till Windows 7. I got a chance to buy a MacBook Bro when I
joined college. And then it suddenly flashed how I wasted all my childhood
with windows. Linux at least would've been better. The reason I say this
similar to that of other people who made the transition.
The whole OSX ecosystem is very user friendly. The learning curve is shallow
and once you get used to a Mac, you'll really start questioning how you did
things on your PC before.
I'm both a designer and a developer. And my Mac gives me the best of both
worlds. I can both develop freely with no worries on my mac with no terminal
or bash problems(unlike the command prompt). Also, all the designer tools run
very smooth on a Mac. There's a reason why all professional artists use Mac.
The popular saying goes "Once you go Mac, You never go back". You really
don't.
The decision might seem hard with so much to cost on a product. One thing I
can assure is that it's worth it. You can take the leap.:)
P.S. There are some shortcomings with the latest OSX releases, but I think
Apple will fix all of them eventually making for a better user experience.
------
saluki
If you do any development get a mac, I wish I'd switched sooner. I always had
issues with Rails using a PC. Then I tried the same tutorials on a friend's
macbook and they just worked saving tons of time. Virtual machines on windows
had issues, just work on OSX, windows terminal meh. I can't imagine going
back.
I use a 13" macbook air it has plenty of power/screen size for development so
you don't have to go top of the line. (You can add an external monitor for
less than $200, asus monitor $150, $10 thunderbolt to hdmi cable on Amazon).
You can get a 13"MBair refurbished or on sale at best buy for $849 right now.
------
maxharris
I got my first MacBook Pro seven years ago, and I can't imagine going back to
Linux or Windows again. The vast majority of people that I know (at work or
otherwise) use Macs, and it's been this way for years.
------
monroepe
I grew up mostly with Windows with some Linux sprinkled in during college. I
could never understand why people would pay so much for Apple computers. That
being said I bought a Mac Book Pro for work about a year and a half ago and I
love it. It is super fast and easy to use. I hate using my wife's Windows PC.
I would recommend paying the money if you are looking for a nice laptop (or
desktop I guess) to code on. But if you are just buying it to code in Swift I
don't think it is worth it. I would just wait until it is open source.
------
kristianp
The Hacker News community alone adds a few percentage points to Apple's sales.
If you ask here, the answer will be "yes" :).
------
codegeek
yes yes and yes. I just bought my macbook pro (first time mac user) and loving
it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Important Changes to Mandrill - ceylanismail
http://blog.mailchimp.com/important-changes-to-mandrill/
======
rwhitman
Seriously cannot trust a new product offering from _anyone_ these days.
Newsletters and transactional emails are _not_ the same service. I signed up a
client for transactional emails on Mandrill because the client was already
locked into a newsletter vendor who doesn't support transactional emails. Now
I need to explain to them why they need a _second_ monthly newsletter vendor
subscription? One that serves no purpose to their marketing team and was
totally _free_ until recently.
Plus I get the honor of having to justify why I made this choice in the first
place. Or have to deal with scrambling to evaluate and migrate to a new vendor
in less than 2 months, probably out of pocket too.
I purposely pointed the client to Mandrill because it was backed by Mailchimp
and therefore less likely to fail than a startup.
I trust in a new product from an established company, and a year later come up
looking foolish to my client. This isn't the first time Mailchimp has pulled
the rug out from under me in front of a client. Not making the same mistake
again. You're dead to me Mailchimp. Dead to me.
~~~
kkt262
You and thousands of others man. I f*ckin hate Mailchimp.
~~~
homero
Scum bags
------
kijin
MailChimp's pricing is best suited for companies that send a lot of bulk
messages to a relatively constant number of users (subscribers). This includes
weekly newsletters, catalogues, etc. In order to justify the cost, you need to
send at least a couple of bulk emails to your entire userbase every month.
Mandrill was best suited for companies that usually don't send anything to
their entire userbase, only random notifications and verifications for
individual users. This probably includes most non-annoying web services. The
only time they need to notify everyone at once is if they'd had a security
breach or if they're shutting down.
I'm not sure whether there's a large enough intersection between these two
sets to justify treating the latter as an "add-on" to the former.
Of course it's MailChimp's decision to make, and they might have found that
the first set of customers actually make them the most money. But given that
people around here seem to be increasingly wary of bulk email of any kind, I
wonder if that will continue to be true in the future.
------
samsonasu
This reminds me of when Urban Airship shut down their free transactional push
notification service a while back. It turns out theres so much more money in
the marketing side than the transactional side (profit center vs cost center),
and if you're going to run a marketing company it doesn't make sense to give
away a service to people who will never become the type of customer you want.
We've been referring clients to mandrill for a long time on many different
project and although a few have had enough success to hit the level where they
start paying, for the most part it's been just a giveaway. It doesn't make it
any less painful for those clients that we now need to switch (especially the
few that are using the inbound features - ugh) but I can see where they're
coming from in this change.
------
etjossem
$20 w/MailChimp Transactional: 25,000 mails
$20 w/SendGrid: 100,000 mails
So let me know if you're thinking about switching. I'd be happy to intro you
to someone on our team.
Disclosure: I'm with SendGrid. :)
~~~
jrs235
It's more expensive than that for MailChimp, if I understand things correctly.
On top of $20 for 25,000 emails you have to have a paid monthly MailChimp
account. Or did I misunderstand something?
~~~
etjossem
That's correct - you also need to have a paid MailChimp account. With
SendGrid, use of the marketing product is the add-on (not the other way
around).
------
homero
Nice way to throw us under the bus! Not even a grandfather. Spending hours
hunting down api keys and installing new libraries. Thanks!
------
nish1500
This is absurd. In my case, the monthly price just went up 8X.
Time to explore other options.
------
cmrn
I guess this means I will be looking for a new transactional email service.
Those of you that have experience with MailGun and SendGrid, which do you
prefer and why?
~~~
jrs235
I don't have experience with MailGun but I do with SendGrid. I have been very
happy with SendGrid.
------
homero
It's a cash grab, nothing more. There's people stuck without a developer and
are forced to pay or get a broken site. Mailchimp knows this.
------
20years
Mailgun, Sendgrid, Postmark are all alternatives. Mailgun is what I mostly
use.
~~~
dceddia
For the people like me who were happily using Mandrill's free plan and would
like to continue to do that:
\- Mailgun offers 10,000 emails/month for free
\- SendGrid offers 12,000 emails/month for free
\- Postmark gives you 25,000 free emails when you sign up, but they start
costing money when those run out
------
kkt262
Wow. Death to Mandrill. That sucks so much...
~~~
hodoublesy
Seriously... what were they thinking?! I hope someone from @mandrill can chime
in.
------
homero
I'm using sendgrid for transactional. Sendy + ses for marketing. Costs me
cents per month.
~~~
homero
Beware that sendy comes with many backdoors though. Put it in a vm with a
strong firewall.
~~~
dceddia
Can you elaborate? I was planning to start using Sendy, but hiding it behind a
firewall seems like it would break the signups, click tracking, open tracking,
etc.
~~~
nathanelward
Compared to Sendy, I would suggest to use EasySendy Pro, I myself shifted to
this service, having previously used Sendy. Pro gives many independence of
connecting multiple SMTP servers other than, Amazon SES. Also, it is hosted
web application and have plans to integrate social and push services very
shortly. This cross channel will help us connecting our end customers
instantly and smoothly.
------
mr_than
Do any other providers offer CSS inlining? This has been a great Mandrill
feature. I have a number of domains all sending only few 100 emails/month, but
the formatting is important. The cost jump to MailChimp monthly + Mandrill is
tremendous.
~~~
homero
sendgrid has transactional templates but it'll require more work
------
nathanelward
So my move to shift with services like Easysendy Pro which connects to
multiple SMTP relay services and manages all my newsletter and templates was
worthful. Also they will be connecting my subscribers to push and social
notifications soon.
------
techdragon
The matching thread from Mandrill's blog is being discussed over here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reclaim your abandonware - bradleybuda
https://alva.link/post/reclaim-your-abandonware/
======
bradleybuda
Since the page title isn't very clear: this is a mini-tutorial on how to us a
disassembler to patch the recently abandoned Twitter for Mac app to support
280 character tweets. Mods, feel free to update to a more informative title.
~~~
gus_massa
The unofficial extended guidelines recommend to use the subtitle of the page,
but in this case that is not useful. Another alternative is a relevant
sentence, but ... that is not useful.
I wrote this, that tries to use the text in the article: "update abandonware
Twitter macOS client to support 280-character"
(I prefer "patch abandonware Twitter macOS client to support 280-character",
but the article never use "patch".)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Migrating from Google Analytics - gorkemcetin
https://thomashunter.name/posts/2018-12-28-migrating-from-google-analytics
======
georgewfraser
If you are thinking of migrating away from GA, I highly recommend you move to
a data warehouse based solution, where you store each _event_ permanently in a
data warehouse like Snowflake or BigQuery. There are two client side pixels
that you can self-host: snowplow.js and segment. It’s hard to find
instructions for self hosting segment but I’ve made an example at
[https://github.com/fivetran/self-hosted-analytics-
js](https://github.com/fivetran/self-hosted-analytics-js)
The advantage of doing it this way is you preserve the event level data
forever and you can write arbitrary SQL against it. You will need a BI tool to
visualize; there are several excellent ones with free or cheap tiers for small
companies.
~~~
buremba
That's the path many data-driven companies take lately. Most companies start
with plug-and-play solutions such as GA or Mixpanel but as they start to dig
into their customer data, they either hire data engineers or use ETL solutions
to collect their raw event data into a data warehouse and BI tools in order to
track their own metrics.
That way, you will have more control and be able to ask any question you want.
We have been working on a tool that basically connects to your Segment or
Snowplow data and run ad-hoc analysis similar to Mixpanel and GA so that you
don't need to adopt generic BI tools and write SQL every time you create a new
report. I was going to create a Show HN post but since your comment is quite
relevant to the topic, I wanted to share the product analytics tools that we
have been working on, [https://rakam.io](https://rakam.io). The announcement
blog post is also here: [https://blog.rakam.io/update-we-built-rakam-ui-from-
scratch-...](https://blog.rakam.io/update-we-built-rakam-ui-from-scratch-and-
made-it-even-better/)
P.S: I also genuinely appreciate the work the people have done at Countly,
it's often not easy to use ETL tools to set up your own data pipeline and
create your own metrics yourself so they're a great alternative if you don't
want to get stuck with GA or third-party SaaS alternatives.
~~~
karmelapple
We’re thinking of storing data into Elastic - any thoughts on that approach,
or recommendations on how / what to do?
~~~
sologoub
This also depends on why you are choosing this technology - is it part of your
existing stack or do you have in-house experts in this tech?
While Lucene synax is very powerful, it is not SQL as pointed out by the OP.
If you have a lot of spare developer time and people skilled in this, it will
likely work well for a while (potentially a really long while).
Going with something like BigQuery or Redshift enables you to utilize other
tech to supplement or accelerate skill sets, such as paying a SaaS for
visualization/analysis tools (Looker, Mode, etc).
In particular, separation of storage and processing helps avoid costs when you
are not using the data. With elastic, I believe you need the cluster whether
you are using it or not. BigQuery will only charge you for compute you use and
pennies for storage. Same thing for Athena/Redshift spectrum. Snowflake is
similar, but I believe for enterprise contracts it a bit more complex with
minimums and such.
Structuring data is another really important consideration - will you need to
normalize and will you need to update labels/dimensions? That’s just the
start.
~~~
karmelapple
> is it part of your existing stack or do you have in-house experts in this
> tech?
Nope and nope. That's definitely the scary / unknown part!
> If you have a lot of spare developer time and people skilled in this, it
> will likely work well for a while (potentially a really long while).
We don't have a lot of spare developer time and people. However, the Elastic
docs make our fairly straightforward use case - dump lots of events in and
filter them by date and about 4 different properties - seem not too daunting.
The way it's sold on the Elastic site these days seems like a very "batteries
included" kind of approach - am I interpreting their marketing a little too
positively? Are we kidding ourselves? Would love to hear more about your
thoughts!
> Structuring data is another really important consideration - will you need
> to normalize and will you need to update labels/dimensions? That’s just the
> start.
We don't expect much.
Thanks for mentioning the other technologies, too! The way we're structuring
it allows us to either use Elastic, SQL, or something else entirely, so
thankfully we're fairly agnostic on the data store. If Elastic turns out to be
a time sink, we'll have no hesitation trying something else out.
------
goodroot
Nice post! I have been thinking much about this for my own written works...
My strange conclusion was to not capture analytics at all. My loose metric is
now: which posts inspire people to email me directly?
I have decided I do not want to know what you read, how long you read it,
where you came from... Only whether or not you felt something. And data will
not tell me this.
~~~
tlavoie
Interesting! I was reading all the comments, wondering if anyone would express
the concept that maybe, just maybe, all of this might not be that useful after
all.
More specifically, how often does all of this really need to be down to the
individual person (or IP address) at all? Even if you know that piece of
information at an ephemeral level, my own suspicion is that aggregate data
should be sufficient for any non-creepy use case.
Perhaps one way to phrase the question, how would having personal-level
details in the analytics change the actions you might perform based on
available data?
------
harianus
I think it's great we are moving away from big data collectors and running our
own servers. What I usually see is people storing their users' data on servers
that are situated in locations where governments can get access to the data on
the servers without the owner knowing about it. It's maybe going far in
protecting the privacy of your users, but it's something a lot of solutions on
the internet don't think about.
That's why I moved Simple Analytics'
([https://simpleanalytics.io](https://simpleanalytics.io)) servers to Iceland
where the law will forbid peeking in data before actually informing the owner
of the server. I encrypted my server so if anything happens I can just turn it
off and it will be nearly impossible to get any user data.
~~~
akudha
_I encrypted my server_
Could you please share which Iceland host you are using? Also, what is the
process you're following to encrypt your server?
~~~
harianus
I'm using 1984 [1]. I'm writing a blog post on this soon [2], but in short I
use Ubuntu Server LVM [3], unlock my system via Dropbear SSH (a very small SSH
client)[4] and did move the entry point of incoming data to another server
which will store the incoming data only when the main server is down. This is
because I want to keep recording incoming data and my encrypted server can't
boot without me entering a password. So in case of a power failure the data of
my customers will still be recorded.
[1] [https://1984.is](https://1984.is)
[2] [https://blog.simpleanalytics.io](https://blog.simpleanalytics.io)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_%28Linu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_%28Linux%29)
[4]
[https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html](https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html)
------
leowoo91
Good to see new tooling on analytics. Another alternative is Matomo (Piwik,
formerly) [https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo](https://github.com/matomo-
org/matomo)
~~~
gorkemcetin
Maybe not very new, as Countly is around for 7 years :-)
~~~
ksec
But no one has ever heard of it Recommend it around popular Internet forum. (
Although there are various submission but never gained any traction )
One reason could be Countly doesn't offer transparent pricing. People tends to
switch off when they see call for quote.
~~~
gorkemcetin
More than 15000 mobile apps are already using it, Gartner recommends it - but
you are right - more traction is always better. Re transparent pricing, it is
a complicated process when you sell an enterprise product with many addons,
support options, configurations etc, that is why on-prem customizable
solutions don't usually have price tags.
------
teej
> Which pages were featured and on which social media platforms?
This was the “killer feature” of the Google Analytics replacement I built for
myself a few years back. I would grab referrers for social and scrape them to
give a more useful report of the source of traffic.
Unfortunately this is challenging or impossible for many social platforms due
to HTTPS everywhere, the prevalence of outbound link scrubbing, and app-driven
embedded web views.
I still think it would be a killer feature to know who tweeted you out or
which subreddit you are trending on but it’s just not feasible to do based on
a website pixel alone.
~~~
ndnxhs
How does https stop this? I understand many websites will redirect before
loading a link to clear the referrer data which is a good thing since the
referrer header has been abused far too much.
I imagine originally its intent was for website owners to see what other
websites linked to them but now it gets used to track the users
------
dceddia
I always like to hear about new (to me) analytics options. Currently I use GA
+ Clicky, and I've considered getting rid of GA for a while. One option that
looks attractive is Fathom, which can be used either as a SaaS or self-hosted,
and is more focused on privacy than most.
Clicky: [https://clicky.com](https://clicky.com)
Fathom: [https://usefathom.com/](https://usefathom.com/)
~~~
ksec
I have always wondered, it is either something is doggy about Clicky, or
others are really expensive. Clickly could do a million page view for
$20/month, while others, even the simple ones that aren't as feature rich such
as Fathom, offer anywhere from $29 / $50, to Matomo which is over $250 per
month.
What's the Catch?
~~~
gorkemcetin
Check if your analytics vendor can do drilling and segmentation, and be able
to dig into raw data. If that is possible (+which is a hard thing to
implement), then costs are way higher.
------
pablo-massa
I have the same concerns with Google Analytics and tried to install Matomo [1]
for my personal website [2] few months ago, seems a more robust tool than
Countly [3] to me, maybe I'm wrong.
But I had an error installing Matomo and got not help in the official forum
[4], if someone here can help me I will appreciate it, I'm not a developer
(I'm also considering get rid of analytics tools for good, anyone?). Thanks.
[1] [https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/)
[2] [https://count.ly/](https://count.ly/)
[3] [https://pablomassa.com/](https://pablomassa.com/)
[4] [https://forum.matomo.org/t/fatal-error-on-
installation/29949](https://forum.matomo.org/t/fatal-error-on-
installation/29949)
~~~
chinathrow
From [4] I learn:
"I have a Hostgator shared hosting with PHP 5.5."
PHP 5.5 is EOL since mid of 2017. Can't you switch to newer version such as
7.2?
Matomo itself does not even display the required version according to [1].
Their FAQ talks about 5.3 - which is horribly ancient too.
[1]
[https://matomo.org/docs/installation/](https://matomo.org/docs/installation/)
~~~
Findus23
Hi,
I have to agree that one should be using PHP 7.2. It also gives a nice
performance boost to Matomo. The required PHP version for Matomo is shown in
[1] (5.5.9 or greater) Can you please send me a link to the FAQ page
mentioning 5.3 (e.g. to [email protected]) so they can be updated?
[1]
[https://matomo.org/docs/requirements/](https://matomo.org/docs/requirements/)
~~~
chinathrow
My mistake, I was skimming the docs only but overlooked the specially linked
requirements. I would go further though and remove outdated PHP versions from
that page and only recommend maintained versions.
Additionally, the error described by OP looks like autoloading is broken.
------
blakesterz
Anyone else miss Urchin? Google bought them and used it to build Analytics.
For me at least, Urchin was vastly superior. I feel like Analytics is built
for sites that run Google Ads to sell more ads. Urchin was for people who ran
websites who wanted to learn more about their site and readers.
~~~
toomuchtodo
I loved the hosted version of Urchin that processed web server logs locally
(or would grab them remotely with ssh/sftp/ftp). A shame that product was
deprecated post-acquisition.
------
darekkay
> What posts are popular this week?
> How is the site doing compared to last week?
If this is really all the information you need, try out a server-side solution
like GoAccess [0]. It is a little bit harder to set up than copy&pasting an
HTML snippet, but it is well worth it (privacy, performance, etc).
[0] [https://goaccess.io/](https://goaccess.io/)
~~~
danyork
The challenge with any server-side solution is the huge amount of _caching_
that takes place within the web infrastructure. Many sites sit behind CDNs,
but even without CDNs, many ISPs and enterprises run their own caching proxy
servers on the edge of their networks. Browsers also have their own caching of
recent pages. The result of all the caching is that it is possible that very
few of the visitors actually connect to the origin server.
For that reason, most analytics systems use come kind of client-side tracking
code that runs within the client web browser. That way it works regardless of
whatever caching happens.
~~~
darekkay
Server-side analytics is not a silver bullet, but it's great for the quoted
use case. While it has the mentioned disadvantages, so do client-side
solutions. Many people run adblockers and it's easy - sometimes even a default
- to simply block Google Analytics & co. So yes, if you really need exact
statistics, you should probably run both client-side and server-side
analytics. But for a rough "what's popular?" estimate, there's no need to
impose (one more) JS file on your users. I've switched from GA to GoAccess a
few years ago (running both for a few months), and while the absolute numbers
were off by ~10%, the _ratio_ was almost the same. But then again, I'm just
running a blog and not a business.
------
firatdemirel
That's a great migration for the open-source community. As Thomas mentioned on
his post, Google is a cornerstone of "centralized internet" and we should make
this kind of migrations to stop them. #2pac
------
radium3d
I'm curious how these alternative options (countly, matomo, snowplow, etc)
handle fake referral traffic compared to how Google analytics handles it.
~~~
georgewfraser
Not well! Your best bet is to
* Sync your (snowplow, segment, ...) data to a data warehouse
* Try to clean up your data with SQL
* Keep running GA so you can compare your numbers to GA
~~~
coderintherye
That's exactly what we do. Snowplow does a good job, but having the comparison
points in GA is very helpful.
------
pawal
Is there a privacy friendly analytics tool that does not set cookies and store
data Forever? I don't really care about perfect user analytics, just good
enough. Maybe by analysing logs. In the 90's there was s lot of good tools
like this, but now everybody has gone cloud. I can't imagine the tools offered
today are compatible with GDPR.
~~~
Findus23
Hi,
You can configure Matomo [1] to both not use any cookies [2] and to
automatically delete just the raw data or all data that is older than x
months. Log Analytics is also possible.
If you want something that is far more minimalistic, but also Open Source and
self-hostable, you can take a look at [3]. (Not sure about how they use
cookies)
(Disclaimer: I am part of the Matomo team)
[1] [https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/) [2]
[https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_157/](https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_157/)
[3] [https://usefathom.com/](https://usefathom.com/)
------
RA_Fisher
Lately I've been pondering whether client-side analytic scripts generate
truncated data by design? That is, a payload goes to the client but before a
response can be sent to some backend server the client terminates (one example
being a tab close) before the analytic code finishes. If this is the case my
understanding is that it'd result in an unknowable underestimation of http
responses. I'm still exploring the space and would be interested to know if
others had thought about this?
~~~
lmkg
There is a browser API called Beacon whose purpose is to address this specific
edge-case. Google Analytics supports it as an option.
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Beacon_API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Beacon_API)
------
jagthebeetle
A small point (although I don't claim it militates against the central impulse
of the article), is that serving analytics.js through gtag.js is obviously
going to inflate the tag size unnecessarily. The latter is a unified interface
for all of Google's various page snippets. Also, though not recommended,
there's no reason you can't self-host GA, although practically speaking
Google-hosted GA is likelier cached more often and on pretty snappy geolocated
servers.
------
_up
Is anyone using Yandex.metrica? It seems to offer a lot of features and is
even completely free. But nobody seems to be talking about it. Where is the
catch?
------
Tsubasachan
Considering GA is blocked by every adblocker I wouldn't rely too much on it
anyway.
------
johnchristopher
Hmm. Most viewed pages, time spent... okay.
But GA provide segments that marketers need. How do you get that kind of data
without google of the fa pixel ?
------
evantahler
Any interest in helping me build a countly alternative?
~~~
chvid
I think there is but what would you make different?
~~~
justinclift
Not have a 1 liner installation script that's a security nightmare? :)
eg, this is the Countly one (specifically run as root):
wget -qO- http://c.ly/install | bash
If someone manages to break into the c.ly redirection service, or the
website/CDN/etc serving that, new users would likely be in for a bad time. And
the problem could be very subtle, if it's done by someone clueful.
Just for added er.. goodness (/s), the Countly instructions also need people
to:
Disable SELinux on Red Hat or CentOS if it's enabled.
Countly may not work on a server where SELinux is enabled.
In order to disable SELinux, run "setenforce 0".
_sigh_
------
Envision_Envi
Waiting For new tools..will see how accurate they work compared to google
analytics.
------
envisionintel
A good one..!! Everything has some advantages and some disadvantages.
------
Ylodi
Is there any cookieless analytics solution?
~~~
pkz
Matomo can be set up for cookie less tracking. It will of course impact some
metrics. More here:
[https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_157/](https://matomo.org/faq/general/faq_157/)
------
Brosper
Only advantage is that it weight less?
I don't feel convinced to switch :(
~~~
jstanley
The advantage is that you're not selling out your user's browsing habits to
the biggest surveillance company in the world.
That your pages are now lighter too is just a bonus.
------
homero
Why countly and not piwik?
------
alexnewman
Yea, it's crippleware. Anything good is payfor
~~~
the_common_man
What is crippleware? GA?
~~~
alexnewman
countly
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most volunteering is a waste of time for anyone except the volunteer - jseliger
http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/most-volunteering-is-a-waste-of-time-for-anyone-except-the-volunteer/
======
ghshephard
The article mentions this, but it certainly bears repeating - the _best_ kind
of volunteers are the ones who have developed their 10,000 hours of expertise
in their profession, and then volunteer their time.
Back in 1998, a small group of us volunteers took the Red Cross in Palo Alto
and wired it up for Ethernet Networking in a single weekend. I'd had about 6
years of pretty intensive IT training, so was able to manage the Network
Stacks on the Network/Desktops (They were using Novell networking in the Red
Cross, and trust me when I say it was not a foregone conclusion that your
workstation would be able to talk to your NIC, let alone your Network back in
1998. IRQs, himem.sys and such).
The guy leading the cable plant, and punchdowns had been doing so for close to
8 years, and had every type of cable plant certification you can think of. He
also got his Cabling company to donate a truckload of brand-new Cat 5E
cabling, tools, etc..
Ironically, the least skilled volunteer on our team, (for this kind of work),
was a guy by the name of Ed McCreight (though he was still pretty damn handy,
and certainly held his own when running cable) - who I only learned later was
a fairly Sr. Scientist at Adobe working on their PDF engine, and, oh yeah, had
co-invented the B-Tree.
------
anouk_anca
Well, yes, volunteering in Africa does not make sense from a cost-benefit
perspective, unless you actually posses a skill that is in short supply over
there (i.e. doctors). However, volunteering at your local homeless shelter,
orphanage, retirement home or women's shelter, where your work does not incur
any extra costs for the institution you are helping, is a completely different
thing.
~~~
vacri
It depends how short-sighted your goals are. If your goal is solely "build a
house in rural Angola", then yes, hire local talent. If your goals include
"making our youth more worldly, exposing them to other cultures" or "extend
soft power by building bridges between citizens", then it's very worthwhile.
The author of the article strikes me as a 'worth of everything and value of
nothing' type person, only seeing the literal end goal.
~~~
anouk_anca
Those goals are not strictly related to volunteering though, they can be
accomplished with exchange programs or tourism (if done through local tour
guides). The main issue with voluntourism is that it does not promote
sustainable growth in the communities it is trying to help, and therefore is
not a good long term solution for the problems it is trying to solve. Not to
mention taking jobs away from local workers who could really need the money.
~~~
vacri
_Not to mention taking jobs away from local workers who could really need the
money._
Jobs that aren't currently being done? Is it really a stolen job if it wasn't
being done?
Another problem with foreign aid is that if you don't actively manage it
yourself, corruption can very easily divert it (and regularly does). At least
by sending in the kids, some of it actually gets spent on the intended target.
Maybe the kids made a shitty house that has to be rebuilt, but hey, at least
now the bricks are in the right place... and now there's a job for that local
worker you wanted.
My point is that the article has an extremely simplified view of what's going
on. There's a number of interests and angles at play here, not just the
'veiled selfishness' that the author is painting of the volunteers.
------
quadrangle
This isn't a problem with volunteering, it's a problem with _most
volunteering_.
It's the same fact as "most jobs are bullshit" As in
[http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs/)
There's tons of waste an inefficiency in our world today, and most people fool
themselves into thinking what they are doing matters. But if we just question
things, we _can_ find ways to actually help whether in our careers or as
volunteers.
~~~
vacri
My guess is also that the organisations the author mentioned actually mean "we
don't want _more_ volunteers" rather than "we don't want volunteers at all".
It's an important semantic difference, since the value of a volunteer in the
former statement is not nil.
~~~
quadrangle
Right, I wasn't disagreeing with the article, just giving it a different
frame.
~~~
vacri
I am disagreeing with the article, because I think it's very highly slanted.
_" Someone with a skill that can be sold for a couple hundred dollars an hour
is better off doing that, and then donating their wages to hire at least ten
people for ten dollars an hour."_, for example. Because people that actually
earn a couple of hundred dollars per hour are just not that common - it's
arguing from an extreme outlier. The _median_ full-time wage in the US is
something like $42k - half of full time employees earn less than this, which
works out to ~$20/hour. And only 1/3 of Americans are full-time employees.
The arguments about charities not wanting to be swamped by the unskilled are
fair points, but at the same time, charities still do need unskilled hands.
They just don't need crazy amounts of them. The article should have been more
about the imbalance in skill requirements, not that charities basically only
want experts in the field. And even then, you don't need to be a ten-year
expert to be skilled enough for a lot of the things a charity work requires.
One week's pulling cable would be enough experience to really help out with
ghshephard's example above. Sure, a professional netadmin would be better, but
a few days cable-jerking would have made someone baseline useful. Likewise
team management skills can be very handy in managing the unskilled hordes, and
it doesn't take anything like 10 years to gain those kinds of skills.
Taking the article on its merits, no-one would be able to volunteer until
their late 20s, which is clearly an absurd concept.
------
gaelenh
I've volunteered almost every week for the last 6 years running free STEM
programs in local schools in Brooklyn. The robotics program I started runs
entirely off of volunteers, most of whom I've never met before their first day
and certainly aren't robotic specialists. About 40 4th graders from 3 schools
get ~40 hours of free robotics classes every year. Not bad for a bunch of
unpaid volunteers. To be clear, the robotics program wouldn't exist without
us, and everyone--the kids, parents, school--are all very happy we do it.
New York Cares is a non-profit that organizes volunteers for all sorts of
community organizations. Knitting at senior centers, arts and crafts at
transitional housing centers, cooking programs at rec centers. Again, the
programs wouldn't exist without the volunteers, and the intended recipients
definitely enjoy them and benefit.
The robotics program was recently written about in a Brooklyn local paper:
[http://www.homereporternews.com/news/school_news/sunset-
spar...](http://www.homereporternews.com/news/school_news/sunset-spark-
robotics-class-sparks-kids-
imaginations/article_0d188258-f273-11e3-9eea-0019bb2963f4.html)
------
j4pe
I wonder what the author thinks can be done to improve volunteerism?
Here in the Philippines I met a troop of British deaf-assistance volunteers,
visiting for three months, who don't know sign language and happily admit
their own uselessness. Clearly this is suboptimal. But the only solution he
presents in the piece - make money and give it to NGOs to hire professionals -
sounds, well, not exactly surprising coming from a grant writing consultant.
The authors of books like Dead Aid [1] and White Man's Burden [2] would have a
few research-backed criticisms of what his suggested approach does to NGOs'
effectiveness.
I was hoping to find some in-trade NGO hacks for travel volunteerism, or
Doctors Without Borders for Everything, but without any new approach
presented, this piece is just complaining about a pretty obvious problem.
\-------------------
[1] Dead Aid [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6184317-dead-
aid](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6184317-dead-aid) [2] White Man's
Burden
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33513.The_White_Man_s_Bu...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33513.The_White_Man_s_Burden)
------
vacri
_Be an example to others by becoming an expert, instead of by sacrificing time
that should be optimally spent doing something useful for a large number of
people._
10,000 hours in days to become an expert = 416 full 24-hour days. 1 week in
days in developing nation helping out = 7 full 24-hour days.
Helping out somewhere doesn't make a dint in that 10k hours; it's not like
it's an either/or.
------
sportanova
I just felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of high school
juniors suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gradberry Spamming GitHub Users - JoshTriplett
Gradberry appears to be mass-spamming contributors to various github repositories. See http://pastebin.com/mmjkUY0w for one example, and https://twitter.com/jacobian/status/585287293860093952 for another.
======
swang
Omniref also spammed me via either npm or github, telling me my project was on
their site and that I should "claim" ownership for the documentation for it.
Omniref is also a YC startup.
I found it pretty annoying because they're essentially telling me to claim
'ownership' of it and splintering where people should be getting help from. At
least my library isn't that popular anyways otherwise I'd be much more angry
(and more annoyed)
So I guess essentially YC is advising their companies to start spamming
developers?
~~~
haakon
Sounds like "growth hacking" to me. Basically a fancy word for "spam from a
startup".
------
iba99
Hi guys, founders here, we genuinely apologize to the community for for doing
this. As a lesson to other founders and startups, here is exactly how it
happened:
\- Through github, we selected a total of 200 devs (13-14 from each repo that
correlated with an open position)- based on their commits, prior experience,
etc- If they seemed like the right fit for the position, we sent them an
email.
It was a dumb decision, period. And we promise to never do this sort of thing
again. Recruiter spam (or any other sort of spam) sucks, and we should have
known better. Lesson learnt.
~~~
trcollinson
Your honesty is admirable. But this delves into a much deeper question. What
exactly makes you different from every other recruitment house? Companies come
looking for talent and pay a fee or a percentage for the people they find. You
have a database of talent which is curated based on some way of looking at
github commit history. I guess I can see how that can be quite useful when
trying to hire someone.
But then from this situation it looks like you aren't getting the type of
talent you need to fill the positions you have. So you did what most
recruitment firms do. You sent out a form letter trying to get the best talent
you could find (like the Director of Security for Heroku) to sign up for your
service to keep the companies that are looking for happy.
I am not trying to make you look bad or whatnot. You've already apologized.
But I (and I would imagine quite a few others here on HN) use a lot of
recruitment services either to be hired or to hire others. Can you talk a bit
as to how you plan to be different and find or place that talent better in the
future?
------
chinathrow
Spammy startups are becoming more common these days, both US based and Europe
based.
What these spammy startups not know or simply ignore: spamming anyone in
Europe without prior consent (e.g. opt-in for newsletter) is against the law
and therefore illegal and ripe for legal action.
~~~
Symbiote
The recommended first step from the UK Information Commissioner's Office [1]
is to ask the company to stop. The next step is the ICO asks them to stop.
The second step was very effective at ending the daily texts I was getting
from a local pizza place.
[1] [https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/spam-
emails/](https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/spam-emails/)
------
jsmeaton
This is really really gross spamming. Especially so because they are targeting
potential customers/users that would be vehemently against this kind of spam
in the first place. It's really extremely stupid and unethical.
Interesting to note that YC backed this company. I wonder if YC were aware of
their user gathering methods (doubtful).
------
haakon
I hate GitHub spam. One of them told me basically "we saw you had one commit
in that repo a year ago so you're obviously a core developer with that project
so this is not spam because it's super relevant for you".
Gradberry is apologising on twitter now with the same bs:
[https://twitter.com/gradberry/with_replies](https://twitter.com/gradberry/with_replies)
("we sent one email since your profile matched out job requirements, sorry
about that!", "sorry man :( We did genuinely like your repo commits though.")
I hope this blows up in their faces. Spam is spam.
------
DanBC
Here's their YC page: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/gradberry-yc-w15-curates-
technic...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/gradberry-yc-w15-curates-technical-
talent)
The Techcrunch article: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/03/from-pakistan-to-y-
combinat...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/03/from-pakistan-to-y-combinator-
gradberry-vets-technical-talent/)
Post from one of th founders
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9143684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9143684)
------
jsmthrowaway
I can't even put myself in a place, mentally, where receiving this message
would make me want to do or feel something positive.
Who responds well to this? Seriously, who sees this and thinks, "sign me up?"
Am I just out of touch here?
~~~
troels
I wonder what a "super clean commit" looks like anyway?
~~~
westi
White space only changes? ;)
------
JoshTriplett
For the record, the original title before someone edited it was "Gradberry (YC
W15) Spamming GitHub Users"; the parenthetical was then edited out.
~~~
chrisdotcode
Was this prevented from hitting the front-page as well? It's top 5 in /ask,
but did the people responsible for the title edit disallow it from being on
the front-page such to prevent bad YC press?
If my theory is true, I will be extremely disappointed.
------
msoad
Hired is doing the same. I got almost 10 emails from Hired since they started
spamming me.
My approach is just deleting the emails. I have some powerful Gmail filters
that tag emails based on their content so every know and then I go to the tag
I created for those emails and quickly review all of them (mostly based on
title) and then delete all.
~~~
JoshTriplett
Is there anyone out there who actually chases down spam sources and actively
stops them at the source (via anti-spam laws, abuse@ addresses, ISP/datacenter
reporting, domain registrar reporting, working with ISPs about customers
running botnet nodes, fixing exploitable web forms, etc)? I would pay non-
trivial amounts of money per month to a company to which I could bounce spam
mails and receive satisfying notes later about spam providers they've zapped
out of existence.
------
krat0sprakhar
> If you are open to go where no coder where gone before, click here to
> engage.
Wow, that's a rather _interesting_ call to action.
------
kbar13
this is happening more and more often. Use a fake/anonymous email address for
GitHub:
[https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email-
address-...](https://help.github.com/articles/keeping-your-email-address-
private/)
~~~
dchest
Don't worry, if they know your name and domain, they will try to figure out
your email address ;-)
[https://github.com/Gradberry/Email-
Permutator](https://github.com/Gradberry/Email-Permutator)
[http://gb-emailvalidator.azurewebsites.net/](http://gb-
emailvalidator.azurewebsites.net/)
~~~
chinathrow
These tools are tools for spammers. Sorry - but come on guys. Read up on the
laws!
~~~
ncza
Nono, they are leveraging the market opportunity to generate viral leads with
growth hacking.
~~~
chinathrow
Buy ads, call people and ask politely if you can send them more information.
But don't spam.
~~~
reinhardt
GP was being sarcastic
------
asadlionpk
I wonder what would have been the right way to acquire developers in this
case. What is more effective than being unethical and spamming people?
~~~
ArekDymalski
I have the same question. Without a doubt GitHub seems to be a perfect channel
for that. I'm wondering where is the spam border? Let's say I'll _manually_
choose 100 developers who seem to be a good fit for early adopters and
_manually_ mail them something like "Hi! I'm X from Y. Here at G we are doing
Z for developers like you. I'd appreciate your feedback"
I'm afraid that some of these people would still consider this spam, even if
the intentions are genuine.
~~~
shawabawa3
> I'm afraid that some of these people would still consider this spam
Because it is. It's unsolicited mass emailing
A _genuine_ email would be "Hi, this is X from Y, we met at Z and you told me
you were interested in A, I have a few startups doing work around A, B and C,
would you be interested?"
Or something like that
~~~
asadlionpk
Yes that would be a genuine email but wouldn't apply in this case. How can
Gradberry send genuine emails.
------
trumbitta2
Well, I for one didn't know anything about this Gradberry before reading this
on the front page.
Mission accomplished, I guess?
~~~
mryan
The adage "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is no longer true, if it
ever was.
Sure, I've now heard of Gradberry, but my association is "those spammers who
scraped GitHub for email addresses". Any email I get from them will be
immediately deleted.
------
thebiglebrewski
Do you guys know why this isn't on the front page or Hckrnews anymore?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337265)
------
aikah
That's growth hacking for you ! disgusting and way too frequent.
------
csense
Before authoring commits that I plan to send to Github, I run:
git config user.email [email protected]
Frankly I'm surprised spammers aren't a bigger problem on Github, given that
it's one of the few websites that makes it fairly easy to get a plaintext dump
of large numbers of email addresses.
------
joshfriend
I once got a spam message like this about a repository that i _starred_. I
made no commits, opened no issues, just starred!
------
mahouse
Uh, front page. Wave goodbye to the money.
------
Faither
Wow, that's a rather interesting call to action.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Extraordinary support? You’d better blow my mind. - mootothemax
http://tbbuck.com/extraordinary-support-youd-better-blow-my-mind/
======
nmcfarl
Personally I’d never claim to offer extraordinary support - the expense is
insane. There are cheaper ways to brand - with much smaller downsides.
My experience is that people who are building things and doing things in a
company are actually not competent to offer support. There are real skills -
mainly people skills, that CSRs have that you didn’t hire the builders for.
Additional a giant percent of good support is speedy responses, and long
conversations. Both things that require lots of man hours. So you need a ton
of CSRs. Which is expensive in itself.
But then - customers have an insane way of finding critical bugs, and making
completely reasonable requests that had never occurred to you. Things that
require builder and makers of your product to be fully accessible to your
CSRs. So you need to staff for that as well.
And that gets you to good. How you move from that to extraordinary is some
thing I don’t know how to do (And I’ve read a lot of what Tony Hsieh has to
say), but I do know it’s going to be extraordinarily expensive.
~~~
praptak
> Things that require builder and makers of your product to be fully
> accessible to your CSRs. So you need to staff for that as well.
From the perspective of said builder/maker I can say this can grow into a huge
problem if not handled well. Once your product/service gets deployed in
multiple timezones, your support turns into 24/7, even if not advertised as
such.
Suddenly the developers whose jobs used to be nice cosy nine to five start
getting called at ungodly hours to offer some insight into customer problems.
Nobody likes that, especially not without getting paid.
~~~
nmcfarl
I know - I’ve been there. The obvious starting place is to hire people who
know this isn’t 9-5 gig, (so nothing is sudden). But of course that drives up
wages a bit :) Boy is this an expensive problem to solve.
~~~
toomuchtodo
24/7 support of complex infrastructure? That's always going to be expensive :)
------
kylemaxwell
Puffery and hyperbole are all too common in marketing. "Extraordinary
support", "incredibly advanced technology", or my least favorite, "beautiful
design" (:puke:).
Nobody should ever believe a marketer when they say anything until the
delivery matches. Sure, you can set some tentative expectations (e.g. "this
payment processor will process payments"), but to go much further than that
could invite accusations of naivete.
------
huhtenberg
It's just a rant about some poor support experience with name calling.
~~~
Hansi
True, but it does act as a word of warning against using their services I
guess.
~~~
pc86
It does exactly that, which is why I don't think it belongs on HN. I didn't
click on that link to listen to someone I've never heard of complain about a
service I've never heard of. I was expecting an intelligent opinion (and in
these comments, a discussion) about what exactly "extraordinary support"
means.
Anyway, I think you're exactly right.
------
nodata
In fairness, it never said "extraordinarily _good_ support".
~~~
codegeek
Just talking semantics. But we all know what it was supposed to mean
------
codegeek
As a customer, I don't really care about _extraordinary_ support. I care that
_when_ and _if_ I have an issue, you do your _best_ in trying to resolve the
issue. What I absolutely hate is being forwarded from one guy/dept to another
without a real resolution. Yes some problems are user errors, some could be
hard to solve right away but for me, extraordinary support would mean that you
took time to understand _my specific_ case and are working diligently towards
a resolution. Rest is all fluff.
------
blindfly
This reminds me of a lone developer who balances hundreds of clients, where
each client expects same day personalized replies with nothing but the right
answers.
~~~
codegeek
"where each client expects "
The lone developer should ensure that client expectations are correctly set.
Honestly, it is their responsibility and not the customers. Customers always
want everything unde the sun. How you handle their expectations is the key.
------
lubos
here is how to do extraordinary support: lower customer's expectations and
then exceed them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Professional racial discrimination testers in St. Louis, circa 1992 - Alex3917
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6921625143558152171&q=%22true+colors%22+discrimination&total=6&start=0&num=100&so=0&type=search&plindex=5
======
byrneseyeview
That is an interesting story. What would be _really_ interesting, though, is
to read about the company that saw through this kind of prejudice -- that
hired the equally-qualified minority workers at wages depressed by such
prejudice, and then made a killing. It happened with women -- Greenspan
Townsend hired lots of female economists, because they were underpriced -- but
I've lived in St. Louis, and I do not recall any successful businesses that
emphasized hiring minorities, outside of sports and entertainment.
This reminds me of _Blink_ , in which Malcolm Gladwell dwells on a similar
habit of used car salesman. It is fortunate that Gladwell's career as a
journalist has given him more insight into auto sales than all those guys who
do it for a living -- but what's sad is that he can't convince jurist and
economist Richard Posner that it's because car salesman are immoral, not
because they are making intelligent deductions from available data
(<http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-blink.html>).
~~~
anewaccountname
>What would be really interesting, though, is to read about the company that
saw through this kind of prejudice -- that hired the equally-qualified
minority workers at wages depressed by such prejudice, and then made a
killing.
It isn't that simple. I'm from South Carolina, and racism is all around. A
company could do as you say and hire some killer black salesmen at a huge
discount and it won't matter: they will sell less only because they are black.
A computer repair shop could hire an all black staff of technicians, and leave
white people as the people-facing storefront (not that this would be remotely
legal or moral), and it wouldn't matter: there would literally be
conversations all over the place about how you shouldn't take your computer to
such and such's; they use "nigger" repairmen.
~~~
byrneseyeview
Oh! So it's not a story about businesses being prejudice _at all_. It's a
story about bad consumers! I get it. That makes sense. Why would anyone focus
on the businesses, though, when they're making a perfectly rational decision
-- perhaps because the media are making the perfectly rational decision to
outrage their audience using weak arguments that, as an added bonus, blame the
big bad businessman instead of the average consumer.
I also don't understand how you can say that when I cite the obvious example
of Greenspan hiring women. How did he survive when everyone was complaining
about his bitch of a research assistant? How do companies that hire other
minorities do it? Surely someone out there should start opening white-owned
laundromats, to capture the valuable racist demographic which has somehow been
convinced to patronize the many Korean-owned laundry companies in the US. I
would argue the same about a gentiles-only investment bank, but even if banks
like that _did_ appeal to prejudice, they didn't do it especially well.
If that's your theory, what's your answer: how is it that racism explains how
one ethnic group fails, but fails to explain how other ethnic groups are more
successful than the racist whites who are allegedly holding them down?
~~~
byrneseyeview
Prejudice _d_.
------
Alex3917
This was apparently digitized off someone's VCR so there is some weirdness for
the first few seconds. Also, the actual segment is only 16 minutes long even
though the video runs for 23 min.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Any companies allow 2-3 months off/year - anonhippie
I genuinely love software engineering and am pretty good at it but am not an internet famous engineer. I also love travel/adventuring and don't want to wait for retirement before I can take long, frequent (annually) hiking/climbing/surfing trips. Are there any companies out there that offer 2-3 month long annual vacations? I'm looking specifically for companies in the US that pay market-rate but obviously prorated salaries.
======
pcvarmint
Intel offers a 2-month paid sabbatical every 7 years of service, or a 1-month
paid sabbatical every 4 years of service. There are many other companies which
have sabbaticals. [0] [1]
[0] [http://yoursabbatical.com/learn/workplaces-for-
sabbaticals/](http://yoursabbatical.com/learn/workplaces-for-sabbaticals/)
[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/12/pf/companies-that-pay-you-
to...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/12/pf/companies-that-pay-you-to-take-a-
big-break/index.html?iid=EL)
------
gigatexal
Have you thought about freelancing?
------
spejson
trivago, but it's not in the US.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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