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Ask HN: Did you quit your full-time job? - kohanz
A lot of us on HN toy with the idea of leaving full-time work for more freedom. Be that freedom part-time work, consulting/contracting, a start-up, or what have you, for many of us it remains but a dream (with all the rosy characteristics of a dream too).<p>I would love to hear more personal stories from people who have taken this path. I'm equally interested in successes and failures. I'd love to hear from young and old, single and married, no kids and multiple kids.<p>Thank you in advance for sharing!
======
ndcrandall
I left work in a way that I believe is less cold turkey and helped ease the
transition. Instead of quitting, I told my supervisor that I would like to
work as a contractor. My reason for doing so was to live elsewhere and be more
flexible with my schedule.
Since I was so valuable to the company at the time, they were just happy I
wasn't quitting. After a few months of contracting I told them I was done and
by then I had other opportunities come my way. It worked out very well.
------
atom-morgan
I may be able to add more later this week. Right now, I'm planning on leaving
my job this Friday with no job offers lined up. Not sure what I'm going to do
just yet. I've submitted my resume to a few places in town. Perhaps I'll try
freelancing if things get too bad.
------
davidsmith8900
\- Yes. 3-4 years ago. Do you mind doing a poll?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rewrite the OS, Change the World - cindywu123
https://medium.com/the-os-fund/rewrite-the-os-68fb43ddc95f
======
devnonymous
Is it just me or is there a trend these days to announce big 'lets-change-the-
world-by-<some revolutionary scheme or other>' and then do pretty much more of
the same ol' thing everyone is trying to do ? I mean, yeah, there are
innovative 'world-changing-quantum-leap-moments' that have happened in history
but even those happened ...ehe.. ^grew organically^ ..for lack of a better
phrase, or in other words, happened when it was the right time for them to
happen. Big leaps of development seldom occur by just announcing plans and
throwing a bunch of money to the problem. They take time and incremental
steps. The tone of this article is just annoying and offensive since it
presumes nobody else sees the problems or wants to change the mess we are in,
or even if they do, the only reason they are holding back is due to lack of
funds or risks in 'long-term plays'. This directly conflicts everything that
the articles starts off with and does a disservice to any one who is involved
with solving large problems _right now_.
------
fernly
This is just confused. He appears, perhaps, to be using "OS" as a metaphor for
"basic conceptual approaches" or maybe for "common assumptions and attitudes"
\-- but if that is the case it is just impossible to imagine what kind of
"breakthrough" he hopes to get. Or, if it is talking about actual OS's, which
one(s)? Does he even realize there are different OS's in phones, in laptops,
in embedded systems? What kind of "breakthrough" does he imagine would change
all of them?
------
0X1A
The writing in this leads me to believe that this person knows very little
about how operating systems work, or what they even are.
------
davidholmesnyc
I was excited at the start. But then I couldn't figure out where this article
was going because it started talking about us going to space and polio.My take
on the headline is that I don't believe the OS needs to be rewritten;I think
that GUI's and user experience on Linux needs to be redefined.I know we can do
better so why don't we do better.
------
wyc
I got excited because I thought I could get paid for writing new crazy
computer operating systems. But after reading the article, I was just
confused...until I found this snappy headline on some news site:
"Bryan Johnson, founder of Braintree Inc., has launched a $100 million venture
fund to pursue groundbreaking ideas"
------
Mithaldu
> The OS Fund invests
What now? Are they funding or investing?
~~~
devnonymous
Investing. From ([http://osfund.co/working-with-us](http://osfund.co/working-
with-us)):
> How We Invest
>
> We seek to partner with future-literate entrepreneurs who understand our
> unique time and place in history, and whose overriding ambition in life is to
> author a better future for humanity.
>
> We primarily invest in companies during the earlier stages of their
> existence. However, we are most interested in businesses that *have a working
> (or near) product and a clear path to commercialization*.
>
...aaand like I said in another comment here, pretty much more of the same ol'
thing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Top Ways to Blow a Job Interview - cwan
http://www.fins.com/Finance/Articles/SB129416698193872447/Top-Ten-Ways-to-Blow-a-Job-Interview?Type=4
======
jrockway
The first few things don't bother me. Running late? Who cares? Wearing a
T-Shirt? Excellent, so am I. Your cell phone rings? Hit decline and move on.
(Or hey, maybe your kid is dying. Take the call.)
The only thing that's ever bothered me is when someone doesn't know the answer
to a technical question, and then aggressively bullshits me.
Example: we ask, "so, you've used Perl OO before, can you write us an example
class on the board". He does, and instead of "my $self = shift" or "my ($self)
= @_" in the methods, he writes "my $self = $_". Easy thing to miss on a
whiteboard, no big deal. We ask, "are you sure it's my $self = $_?" he
replies, "yes definitely". We mention that it would be $_[0] or @_ or shift,
but he starts yelling about how $_ and $_[0] are the same thing.
They're not. No hire.
(And if he had said something like, "oh, it's so weird looking on the
whiteboard, I'm not really sure", that would have been fine. Next question,
plenty of time to redeem yourself. But if you are going to yell about a
trivial mistake... well, I'm glad we caught this in the interview. Not only do
you not know Perl, you aren't even nice.)
------
bioh42_2
I have never sent a thank you note. Not for any job I've ever had. Not for
those who really wanted me and fought for me and made me great offers, never.
Perhaps I am rude, or perhaps companies looking to make money are not looking
for "polite" developers?
And cellphones are rude, but it is not rude if you can not or forgot to turn
yours off and it rings. It is not rude to apologize and briefly take the call
if only to explain why you can't talk on the phone now. It is not even rude to
strongly apologize further if the call turns out to be important and you have
to take <5 minutes to deal with it. This applies equally to both sides.
------
varjag
Interesting, but
> 4\. Wait a week to send a thank you note. Or don't send one at all.
got me thinking. Is it an American thing? What are you thanking them for
anyway?
~~~
dougb
I've never sent a thank you note. I've received maybe 1 from the ~200
interviews I've conducted in 15 years. ( The candidate that sent it was
awful.) Is anyone offended if they don't receive one ?
~~~
bartonfink
I can't say it would really make a big difference to get a "thank you" and
I've never sent more than cursory thanks.
One thing I have done, though, when interviewing for a job, is to not ask all
my ?'s when the interview enters the "what do you have to ask about us?"
phase. I try to keep one in reserve and send that to someone in my interview
loop after the fact. I feel that it shows continued interest in the position
and I have never gotten a negative reaction from anyone for asking a follow-up
?.
------
pluies
> And if you really don't want the job: "Take a call during the interview from
> a girl you just started dating and sweet-talk her."
Priorities, priorities... :)
------
edw519
Top Ways for a Company to Blow a Job Interview
1\. Make me wait in the waiting room past our appointment time. My time is as
valuable as yours.
2\. Make me meet with Human Resources first. My time is as valuable as yours.
3\. Make me fill out forms. This can be done in advance. There's this thing
call "the internet".
4\. Don't shake my hand. (I have no idea why this happens, but it does.)
5\. Begin the conversation with anything other than, "Hello," or "Nice to meet
you." Again, why would the first words of any interview be, "How would you
handle mass emails?"
6\. Don't give me your business card. As a job applicant, I'm just as
important as any vendor or business associate. This is a good chance to
demonstate it.
7\. Criticize my job history. Here is the reason I've had 9 jobs in the past 5
years: Because there were poorly run businesses, assholes, and mismatches. The
reason I'm here is to try to fix all that. Move along.
8\. Expect me to have 10 years experience in every possible technology your
entire enterprise uses. I can learn what I need. Promise.
9\. Ask me how many gas stations are in the United States, how many ping pong
balls fit in a bus, or why manhole covers are round. Frankly, I don't give a
shit. There, now you have the results for both your I.Q. test and your
personality test.
10\. Don't follow up. I know that I'm probably not the only person your
interviewing and this may take some time. Extend me the same courtesy you
would the window washers. Don't make me email you every week.
~~~
mellery451
Well said. #8 really resonates with me. There has never been a time when I
haven't been able to get up to speed on a new stack/toolset within a few days
(weeks at most). Why, oh, why can't companies just focus on hiring
smart/curious/motivated problem solvers? I happen to think it comes down to
lazyness - it's too hard to find those people, so companies resort to keyword
soup.
------
kenkeiter
... Did anyone else read the title and do a double-take?
~~~
gcaprio
yyyup......Thought HN was being taken over.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Typed Clojure prevents Null Pointer Exceptions - swannodette
http://frenchy64.github.io/2013/10/04/null-pointer.html
======
goldfeld
cowcatcher, you're hellbanned. As for your question:
"If you want typesafe functional programming on the JVM, why not just use
Scala?"
Well, because some people like Clojure and Scala doesn't have enough
parentheses.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dennis Ritchie - Anon84
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ritchie
======
JoshTriplett
The discussion page and the edit history provide a fascinating view into
Wikipedia policies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Insight Data Engineering Fellows Program - yurisagalov
http://insightdataengineering.com/
======
jakek
I'm the founder of the Insight Data Science Fellows Program, and the new
Insight Data Engineering Fellows Program we just launched above. With the Data
Science program, which helps PhDs transition to industry, we're at 70+ alumni
working as data scientists at companies like Facebook, Square, LinkedIn,
Airbnb, etc.
This new Data Engineering Program is NOT restricted to PhDs, and open to all
professional engineers or BS/MS graduates. It's still free, just like the Data
Science Program, and is designed for people who want to leverage their
existing software engineering skills to transition to a career in data.
Happy to answer any questions here.
~~~
chubot
Do you teach people about "hygiene", e.g. data provenance, versioning, and how
to design schemas? I work on "big data" stuff at one of these major companies,
and IMO the state of things is pretty sad. A typical pipeline involves a bunch
of files strewn about a distributed file system, or a pretty messy database,
especially when multiple teams are involved.
The tools (I use) don't encourage good practices or have good defaults. You
have to put in extra effort and write proper metadata, etc.
I think things are just new so this kind of issue doesn't get much attention
yet. Curious to see if anyone has written anything about it. I guess academics
and government and people who have to keep data around for a long period of
time will have thought more about this.
~~~
jakek
The entire program is based entirely around professional data engineers from
the mentor companies coming in to share their best practices with the group,
which the Fellows than work to implement in their projects. A number of
mentors have told me they will focus on the topics you mentioned. That said I
would love to get your take on this too. Would love it if you drop me a line
at [email protected] with any suggestions. Thanks!
------
yurisagalov
I've been following Jake's Insight Data Science program for quite some time
and continue to be amazed and impressed by the quality of his fellows (all top
University grads) and the quality of the companies hiring...
Super excited for his new Data Engineering program!
~~~
gautamsivakumar
I second this. I've met a number of the Insight Data Scientists, and they are
incredibly impressive. It will be very interesting to watch the progression of
those lucky enough to get into the Data Engineering program.
------
carls
Hey Jake, Carl here :-)
Congrats on the launch of the new program! Really excited to see the growth
and spread of the Insight program.
------
daemonk
I remember seeing this a few months ago and that one of the requirements for
applying is that your motivation is to ultimately get a job in silicon valley.
And the program will facilitate that goal. Is that still the case? Is our
acceptance dependent on whether we want to get a job through you guys? Are we
going to be limited to the companies on your list?
------
juxtaposicion
I hope this program grows. The thirst for high-quality data engineers is
unquenchable.
------
tayk
This looks awesome. I'm really excited about this. Just wondering though, how
many sessions a year will there be?
------
jeffrey89
All the previous fellows are PhDs/post-docs.Well.
~~~
jakek
The reason for this is that the Insight Data Science Fellows Program is
designed for (and only accept applications from) PhDs/postdocs. The new stand-
alone Data Engineering program
([http://insightdataengineering.com](http://insightdataengineering.com)) is
open to all applicants, as long as they have good engineering/CS fundamentals,
regardless of level of education or discipline.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Show HN: Wavo.me - A social network for music to take on Spotify and iTunes. - glesperance
https://wavo.me/
======
borgopants
This looks really interesting, but to be completely honest, I lost all
interest once I saw that there was no other option but to sign up with
Facebook.
As a developer, I understand the business and UX need for it, but it still
manages to turn me away from really interesting services. It looks like you're
looking to improve on this pain-point, so I'll definitely check this out
later. :)
I'd also love it if the About page was on your own site as well. Linking to
the Facebook app page feels like you were a little rushed.
~~~
astalwick
Hey borgopants -- I'm one of the devs at wavo.
We've gotten the same feedback from several people, and we know it's a
priority. Artists and labels, in particular, have asked for non-Facebook login
methods. It's on its way, promise. We just haven't quite made it there yet.
~~~
borgopants
No problem. As I said, looks like a really interesting service and I've saved
it so that I'll check it out once you guys add separate account options.
Great UI on the homepage though! Keep up the good work.
------
cclark20
I’m one of the co-founders and just wanted to give a bit more info on what
we’re trying to do with wavo.me. We’re artists, bloggers, event organizers and
fans. We’ve felt for some time that existing services are missing key parts of
the music experience. A truly excellent music service should connect artists,
bloggers, labels and fans together. It should create a community that
encourages discovery and dialogue. Wavo.me is our attempt to create a social
network for music.
We’ve started with a service similar to Pinterest -- A simple and beautiful
way to discover, collect and share music with friends.
It’s a big project. We’re at the very beginning and we’d love your feedback.
(FYI, you can only sign up with Facebook right now... We know, we know...
alternative ways of signing in are coming, along with a mobile version)
~~~
Maro
I think it's a bit disingenuous to compare yourself to Spotify (at least on
HN). I think a big part of Spotify's business is that they have agreements
with the big 4 record companies for each country, and they're rolling out
their service as they get the deals signed in each country. So if I use
Spotify, I'm listening to music legally, and a lot of music is available.
You are using Youtube, so you're limited by what's on Youtube, and various
other strings attached.
Anyway, I think the site is a lot of fun, rock on! =)
~~~
cclark20
Yes, you're 100% right. When you look at it from a business model point of
view, we're not at all the same as spotify - at least not yet. What I was
trying to get at, though, is that we're really trying to fix what's broken
about the existing experience - Spotify has some social elements, but it's not
their DNA. iTunes had ping, but that didn't last. What we want to do with wavo
is really connect artists, labels and fans together in a meaningful way to
create a shared experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Just as an aside: its not clear in the Uex but you can also search Soundcloud.
------
graue
FYI for anyone else running Ghostery: you have to disable it to get the site
to load at all. Seems to get stuck in a permanent "loading" loop if it doesn't
detect the FB social plugin script.
Developers: if you care about privacy-conscious users, you may want to fix
that.
~~~
astalwick
Ah, interesting! Thanks for letting us know, we're looking into that right
now.
Regarding Facebook, we do require Facebook to login (as mentioned elsewhere,
we're going to add other ways to log in soon) and we require the Facebook SDK
for some of our social stuff. That said, we should handle this better - we
shouldn't get stuck in a permanent loading loop!
~~~
colkassad
It's amazing how much I miss out on because I don't have a Facebook account. I
accept that this is a choice I made, but it's amazing how much of a second-
class citizen it makes you feel like these days.
~~~
graue
Really? What else have you missed out on that you'd otherwise want to use?
Plenty of sites have a prominent Facebook sign-in button they steer you
towards, but will reluctantly give you a username/password, if you insist.
Songkick, for instance, or the very cool 2u.fm site that another HNer posted
here recently. Others accept Facebook or Twitter, or Facebook or Google.
But Facebook-only seems pretty uncommon. All I can think of are TechCrunch
comments, and the Scoble-beloved Highlight app for iOS. Most developers seem
to avoid going Facebook-only because they face a backlash (as the devs behind
this site have acknowledged already).
~~~
wlesieutre
Spotify was a big one, but it looks as though they added non-facebook signups
back in recently.
------
blackysky
I like wavo but before I tell you why I like it let me tell you what I don’t
like. I simply hate the whole facebook sign in option… (looks like I’m not the
only one) Therefore it’s been a long time since I had checked my wavo profile.
I don’t hate facebook but sometimes you don’t want to share every single
thing.
Now what I like: the UI is great.
Let me dig deeper and share with you my experience with wavo. Like I said I
never sign in but every week I receive an e-mail from them. In that e-mail I
have links to a playlist. The playlist is what’s popular at the moment on
wavo.
This is the single feature that I love because I am able to discover new
artists and new songs. Some songs are mainstream but the vast majority is not.
Of course I would love to tell you that there are more features on wavo but I
simply don’t bother to sign in.
~~~
cclark20
We recently added clearer ways to turn seamless sharing off with Facebook. You
can either disable it for four hours by clicking on the switch in the top
right or by going into your preferences and disabling it permanently.
Right now Facebook makes life easy in certain ways and is obviously an
effective way to acquire users but we're getting to the point where we've got
most of the basic user experience figured out so a secondary way of signing in
is moving up in our priority list. Really glad you like the emails and hope we
can get you on-boarded into the full experience soon.
------
andrewcross
The UI is phenomenal, the overemphasis on Facebook sharing (not login) annoyed
me though. I really, really don't want you auto-posting what I'm listening
to/doing to Facebook. Spotify & Songza do it and it drives me insane.
It's actually the main reason why I stopped using SocialCam & Viddy. I
couldn't trust the service. "Normals" probably don't have the same problem
with it, but I personally hate it.
(As a side-note, I have no problem posting great songs I listen to on Hype
Machine to Facebook & Twitter. I just want to be in control of what is
posted.)
~~~
glesperance
Hey Andrew, wavo co-founder here.
We definitely understand that some of our users prefer not to use the social
sharing features of our app ; hence we added the capability to turn those off,
either temporarily with the use of the "social-sharing" switch at the top of
the interface --or-- permanently via the preference dialog that you can find
in the top left menu.
~~~
andrewcross
Thanks for the response. I fully get why you're doing it and appreciate the
options to turn them off. With that said, it's really just a band-aid to
appease the vocal opponents.
My mental model of sharing (and I'd bet it's shared by many others as well) is
that there needs to be an explicit "sharing action" taken. I should know
exactly what happens when I do something - I don't on your site. As a result,
I never get to the "aha" moment because I'm afraid to click on anything.
~~~
cclark20
You are definitely right and we'll be continually looking at better ways to
integrate seamless sharing into the app.
Seamless sharing is also a "band-aid." It gets users sharing your app at the
beginning but there's definitely some users who are turned off by it.
So although this is where a lot of our referral traffic comes from at the
moment there are undoubtedly better ways to do this and we're working on it.
These are early iterations on the product and we'll be circling back very
soon.
------
420365247
Very much dislike having to use Facebook account...lame... If users want to
integrate Facebook give that option to them, but dont exclusively require a FB
login...laame
UI is a little confusing and could be overwhelming for alot of folks.
However...This is a nice idea here. I have found several really great songs I
had never heard of before in minutes! Perfect for people at work wanting to
find new tunes.
What happens if a video that is on the popular list is deleted at some point
by the source?
~~~
astalwick
If the source video is deleted, Wavo simply skips that video and moves on to
the next in the playlist.
And yeah, when we have the username/password pair sign-up, we'll simply have
an option in the app preferences that will allow the user to additionally
connect their facebook account if they like. If not - no problem.
------
ScottWhigham
I would've loved to try it and I don't mind the Connect with Facebook option
like some folks do (I prefer it). But I didn't try it because it said that you
required access to my email address. No thanks. My email isn't hidden or
special (it's in my profile, for example) but I have a real problem with
giving it up in exchange for registration without a clear reason ("We need
your email to do x, y, and z") and without a clear sense of whether you're
going to sell my info.
~~~
cclark20
Hi Scott,
To answer your question here: we use your email to send you notifications of
likes/comments/follows as well as three emails a week of trending music on
wavo. Eventually this email will be personalized to you. As for why it's not
clear up front - we made a conscious effort to keep the landing page as clean
as possible. Ideally, our explanation should be part of the facebook connect
dialog, but that's not actually possible. Probably when we add multiple signin
options, we'll add more explanatory text there.
------
kentosi
Hi guys,
Great app. Awesome UI.
Two things: 1 - Typo I noticed straight away: "Refer someone to wavo and
increate your reach by +20." increate --> increase. 2 - On that note, how DO i
refer someone? As in, how can the application know that it was I who referred
them?
~~~
astalwick
Sorry, I meant to reply earlier, but got distracted by a bug.
Thanks for pointing out the typo! That's probably been kicking around there
for awhile now. :-)
Wavo detects a referral by checking for referral tokens in the url's
querystring. When you share a song, share a playlist, etc, from within the app
itself (with one of the share buttons, for example), Wavo crafts a url with
this referral token. When a user follows that url and signs up, that referral
is credited to you. Obviously, this doesn't catch everything (if you simply
copy the url from the browser bar and share it with a friend, you won't get
reach points), but it gets us part of the way there.
------
hilti
Great site! I'm listening to "Slow Dancing in a burning room" while writing
this comment.
You can even listen to "lisp programming" ;-)
<https://wavo.me/search/yt/lisp%20programming>
~~~
astalwick
Yeah, we're kind of relying on context within the UI here to keep Wavo focused
on music. That said, there's nothing technically stopping you from creating a
playlist of any youtube or soundcloud content you like. :-)
------
jitl
This looks very similar to the new MySpace: <http://new.myspace.com>, except
it features Facebook integration where new.MySpace has much richer features
for content producers.
------
vytasgd
very cool stuff. It was a little confusing for me to get which things were
actually the "playlists" versus the tracks versus the charts.
do you have a bug-report system or anything set up? after clicking on a chart,
under the div "influencers" the tooltip isn't displaying properly. (background
of the tooltip might be transparent or something, I'll look into it more to
figure out exactly what the problem is)
Otherwise, cool site. I'm actually working on a company that might be an
interesting partnership for you. my email should be on my profile if you are
interested.
------
Kylekramer
Turned off by the tacky as heck (and surely unlicensed) Ryan Gosling/Kate
Upton posters I have seen all over Montreal promoting this. Not to mention the
misleading hubris.
------
hissworks
You're going to have a hard time competing with Soundcloud. Soundcloud is
where the artists are, and thus it's where the fans go.
------
Inversechi
Well done! This is awesome - such a nice UX :)
------
chr1z
After sharing on Twitter it suggests me to follow @https <http://d.pr/i/dyHM>
~~~
glesperance
Well, THAT is odd. I'll look into it right now. Thanks for the heads up!
------
tjbiddle
I actually said "Very Beautiful" out loud, alone, in my office. Really, really
great UI & UX - Well done!
------
pfraze
The UI is gorgeous; well done there.
~~~
astalwick
Thanks, really glad you like it! We've spent a ton of time on the interface.
(You would not believe the amount of UI we've designed, thrown away,
redesigned, and thrown away again)
~~~
yohann305
First thought I had was that UI would look awesome on a TV screen. I just
stopped using spotify and I'm now using wavo. Any chance of a desktop app? I
like app responsiveness.
~~~
astalwick
Our first priority, I think, is probably to make a mobile version of the site
available. Personally, I'd love to be able to use wavo on an ipad.
That said, you're right, a desktop app would be great! It would be nice to be
able to pause/play/skip tracks using the hardware buttons on my laptop, too.
------
nickpresta
Seems cool but I noticed a problem with Chrome on OSX (I assume this affects
all browsers).
The right scroll arrow is blocked by the page scroll bar:
<http://i.imgur.com/YfVUf.png>
It is very difficult/frustrating to click on that arrow.
~~~
sp332
Chrome on Windows doesn't "hover" the scrollbar over the content, so it's much
easier to click there.
------
yohann305
How do you pronounce wavo.me?
~~~
cclark20
Way - vo - me
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is going on with NIST’s SHA-3? - NelsonMinar
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/joseph-lorenzo-hall/2409what-heck-going-nist%E2%80%99s-encryption-standard-sha-3
======
marshray
Basically, NIST seems to be reasoning that because Keccack's sponge
construction has no internal resistance to meet-in-the-middle attacks, the
collision and preimage resistances are the same.
An upper bound on the security of Keccack is set by the expression
c + r = 1600.
'c' represents the internal bandwidth of the hash that is not directly
controllable by an attacker.
'r' is the rate (bits per expensive f() function invocation) at which the
message input can be processed.
Due to some basic and well-understood attacks, we know that Keccak cannot be
more secure than c/2 bits.
NIST was planning to assign SHA-3-256 and SHA-3-512 having 128 and 256 bits of
security respectively. On one hand, this sounds like a nice conservative
overall security rating based on the (lower) collision resistance.
But NIST plans to re-tune these internal constants downwards, setting c to 256
or 512. Whereas the competition final round submission specified c = 448 and
1024 bits. The resulting speed boost is 24% and 89%.
I don't think anyone should presume ill intent here on the part of NIST. But
it sure doesn't seem like a good time to propose cutting security margins down
to the limit of publicly-known attacks. The idea of a hash function which
outputs 256 bits having only 128 bits of preimage resistance is unprecedented.
~~~
nly
> the collision and preimage resistances are the same.
> The idea of a hash function which outputs 256 bits having only 128 bits of
> preimage resistance is unprecedented.
But does the SHA-3 construction mean a collision attack will further enable a
preimage attack? Most breaks in recent cryptographic hashes have been confined
to collision attacks. Even MD5 (publicly) hasn't been shown to be vulnerable
to a viable preimage attack.
It's worth remembering that just to _count_ to 2^128 it'll take a 3 GHz core
with a single cycle increment instruction, along with a billion of its
friends, over 3 and a half trillion years.
Also, even if a 128 bit meet in the middle could be computed, it'd require an
unfathomable amount of memory.
~~~
afhof
Its deeply troublesome when these kinds of comments come up for two reasons:
first and lesser: its wrong; secondly: its inconspicuously wrong. Processor
speeds double approximately every generation which we can estimate is once
every two years.
What do we have to count to: 2^128 = 3.402823669209385e+38
How many times can we count in a year with a 3GHz core: 3e9 * 3600 * 24 *
365.24 = 9.4670208e+16
In two years, when processing speeds have doubled? 9.4670208e+16 * 2 =
1.89340416e+17
How many years until a core can complete count to 2^128 in a year?
log(3.4028e+38 / 9.467e+16) / log(2) * 2 = 143.21
So, in 143 years a single computer will be able to count to 2^128 in a single
year. That's still a long time, but its WAY WAY less than the trillions of
years people quote. Add in as many extra cores/machines/datacenters/planets of
extra processors and you aren't really indefinitely secure. You are secure for
a limited number of years and that's it.
~~~
emillon
> Processor speeds double approximately every generation which we can estimate
> is once every two years.
Do you have any sources to back up this claim? Max processor speed has stalled
to ~4GHz since 2005. If you're referring to Moore's law, it concerns the
amount of transistors in ICs, and will eventually hit a limit (not before 10
years, but not after 140 years).
~~~
zimpenfish
I think "speed" here is "flops", not "hertz".
------
nullc
DJB posted to the NIST SHA3 mailing list a couple days ago suggesting fixing R
at 1024, giving the hash a capacity of 576 and a security against preimage
attacks of >= 256 bits in all configurations.
This sounds pretty prudent. It avoids any security gotchas, and will also make
life easier for implementers because the hash will consume a nice round 1024
bits of data at a time for all hash sizes.
This config would have slightly greater anticipated security at 256 bits than
the submission, somewhat worse at 512 bit output— but in both cases be better
than NIST's proposed parameters... and the performance impact would be
relatively modest.
------
floody-berry
> it should be based on completely different underlying mathematics
Wasn't that shoe-horned in at the end? There were no requirements that it not
be e.g. ARX based, or AES based, etc. It wasn't until the final round that any
choices were made based on being as alien as possible, where BLAKE's equal
security margin and B+/A+ hardware/software performance was tossed out for
Keccak's A+/D-.
Also of interest is that DJB's CubeHash was widely panned during the
competition for having the exact same "weakened preimage in exchange for
performance" tradeoff that is now being made for Keccak.
~~~
duaneb
Well of course they want you to use hardware encryption, much easier to
backdoor more or less invisibly.
~~~
AnthonyMouse
Also provides a significant performance advantage to attackers with custom
hardware.
------
HansHarmannij
I once had the opportunity to talk with Joan Daemen, one of the designers of
Keccak, and also of AES. He said that he liked to do what he did, because it's
fun, but he didn't really believe that it was very usefull. Because everything
has backdoors. At that time I didn't think much of it, I just thought it was
kinda funny that an important cryptographer had such views about his work. But
in the light of the NSA developments it's a bit different. I have no idea what
to think of it. Did he know about what the NSA did? Or was he just a bit
pessimistic, but he turned out to be right?
This does of course not mean that he made backdoors in AES and Keccak for the
NSA. If that were the case he probably would not be allowed to speak about it,
and he did talk about it very non-chalantly.
------
pbarreto
Also, this setting does not address the security of MAC constructions based on
SHA-3.
For instance, HMAC over SHA-2-256 or SHA-2-512/256 with a 256-bit key is
expected to attain 256-bit security (i.e. the MAC size equals the security
level).
Yet SHA-3-256 would not reach anything above 128-bit security, even though the
MAC is 256 bits long; to attain 256-bit security one would have to scale the
MAC size up to 512 bits instead.
~~~
Dylan16807
I _think_ you would be safe using SHA-3-512 and truncating to 256 bits but
that is a rather ridiculous way to set up a cryptographic primitive.
~~~
pbsd
Well, not so much now that SHA-3 is length-extension resistant, eschewing the
need for HMAC. A standard MAC mode has to be defined anyway, and truncating
the output might as well be part of it.
------
ballard
As a backup, ECHO (nist round 2) has the nice properties of being expensive in
both hw and sw execution speed, in addition to being based on existing crypto.
Go impl here, from yours truly:
[https://github.com/steakknife/echo](https://github.com/steakknife/echo)
~~~
msandford
Yeah I can't understand why everyone wants "fast" so badly. Something which
deliberately can't be made fast is the way to ensure security. I don't really
care if my SSL negotiation takes an extra 1ms or if my purchases on Amazon
cost an extra $0.001 each because of the expense of the hash functions. I'd
like security, thanks. When the price is so trivial, who really cares if it's
10x as expensive?
~~~
rainsford
Because there are a lot of ways to make a fast thing slow in cases where
"slow" improves security. And at the same thing you're not hurting performance
in cases where a slow function doesn't significantly help security and
performance might be important.
Making your hash function twice as slow means you've halved the number of hash
operations you can perform with fixed computational power. On the other hand,
in many situations the resultant doubling of your security margin makes
absolutely no practical difference since the existing margin is many, many
order of magnitude away from any attacker's capabilities. Making things twice
as hard on an attacker sounds impressive, until you think of it like asking
someone to travel _2_ billion light years instead of only 1 billion. Both are
ridiculously outside of our current capabilities, but anyone able to travel 1
billion light years is likely going to be able to travel 2 billion as well.
In more specific terms, making a function with 256 bit security 10x slower has
a pretty dramatic impact on performance with a resulting security increase to
about 259 bits of security. You have a fairly marginal security increase for
making your function 10 times slower. Modern cryptography is fast, but it's
not yet fast enough that running at 1/10th the speed won't be noticeable in
many situations.
~~~
antihero
Would a simpler way to put it be that if you make something fast and do it
lots of times, it's difficult to speed up. If you make something slow and it's
done significantly less times, there's the risk that someone will make it a
lot faster?
------
kzrdude
The author doesn't seem to have all the facts. The Keccak team suggested these
changes (Go back to Fosdem, Feb 2013 and one of them has a talk). The whole
point was that Keccak won the competition by meeting the spec NIST formulated.
Then they proceeded to present how they thought a menu of hash strengths and
security guarantees would be structured in a smarter way.
~~~
marshray
Keccak with a very specific set of parameters is what was submitted to each
round of the competition. That was also what was cryptanalyzed by all those
folks contributing their time.
I know I wasn't the only one who was a little bit surprised when NIST said
"Keccak is SHA-3, now let's see how to standardize a hash function and other
applications out of it".
------
dsl
Can someone fix the title? SHA3 is not an encryption standard.
~~~
NelsonMinar
I've long since given up trying to give meaningful titles to Hacker News posts
since the anonymous silent moderators rewrite them.
The blog post I linked is titled "What the heck is going on with NIST’s
cryptographic standard, SHA-3?" and that's the title I went with, saving the
trouble of someone rewriting it without notification. But they rewrote it
anyway. The title I would have chosen is "NIST's ability to do crypto work
compromised by NSA", fwiw.
~~~
dchest
Look at the linked URL:
.../2409what-heck-going-nist%E2%80%99s-encryption-standard-sha-3
------
AsymetricCom
I think this is an excellent example for the application of duck typing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's your ideal development setup? - anonfunction
Hey Hackers, I'm in a position where I can get any computer/monitor/keyboard/etc... but don't know what is considered the best hardware these days.<p>For context I'll be writing a lot of Node.js / Golang code while going between the office and home. I'd also like to do typical stuff like browsing HN and watching netflix.<p>What would you prefer for your development work space? Feel free to include any extras such as desks, chairs, plants, etc...
======
facorreia
If you're going to switch between the office and home you'll probably benefit
from a laptop instead of trying to keep 2 machines in sync. If you're a Mac
person that would be a MacBook Pro; if not, equivalent hardware running
Windows or Linux. Of course make sure it has lots of RAM (at least 16GB) and a
large, fast SSD, and at least a 4 core i7 processor.
For your office workstation, you'll probably want:
* Dedicated keyboard: either a mechanical keyboard ([http://lifehacker.com/how-to-choose-the-best-mechanical-keyb...](http://lifehacker.com/how-to-choose-the-best-mechanical-keyboard-and-why-you-511140347)) or a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard ([https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/keyboar...](https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/products/keyboards/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop/l5v-00001)). Mine is a CM Storm QuickFire TK ([http://www.amazon.com/CM-Storm-QuickFire-TK-Mechanical/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/CM-Storm-QuickFire-TK-Mechanical/dp/B00A378L4C)).
* A wireless mouse of your choice (I usually click on them and get the one with the lowest, less annoying click noise -- My current one is a Logitech M280). Or a touch mouse from Apple or Microsoft if you're into that.
* A large monitor or 3. There's a lot of options and it ultimately comes to personal taste. For working you'll want an IPS panel (not TN). You may want a large 4k monitor, or 2x27" 4k monitors, or perhaps a single 34" monitor to avoid context-switching (like a Dell U3415W that I currently use: [http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=hk&l...](http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=hk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=hkbsd1&sku=210-AEBV)).
* A good headphone for conferences, like the Microsoft LifeChat LX-6000 ([https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/business/lifecha...](https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-us/business/lifechat-lx-6000-for-business/7xf-00001)).
* You need a chair that can be adjusted, and a desk that is solid enough. You don't necessarily need to spend a crazy amount of money for good results. See [http://lifehacker.com/5409915/top-10-ergonomic-upgrades-for-...](http://lifehacker.com/5409915/top-10-ergonomic-upgrades-for-your-workspace) and [http://lifehacker.com/5755870/how-to-ergonomically-optimize-...](http://lifehacker.com/5755870/how-to-ergonomically-optimize-your-workspace)
~~~
anonfunction
This is exactly what I was hoping for.
I'll go with your setup because it's pretty much exactly what I had in mind
and similar to my previous setup besides the mechanical keyboard and
headphones.
Thanks for the very detailed help and providing links!
~~~
humbleMouse
Somebody I work with has 2x27 inch 4k monitors and when they are in 4k mode
you can't even read code because the text is so small.
I would recommend getting 2x22 inch monitors. I work better with 22 inch
monitors because my eyes don't have to dart around the screen all time time to
keep track of things. Different strokes, but I personally think 27 inch
monitors for coding is ridiculous and anti-productive.
~~~
facorreia
Of course you can always increase the font size. And OS X has better support
for 4k than Windows; on Linux it's still pretty bad.
Since I run Linux, this was one of the factors for choosing a 34" display at
3440 x 1440 with a "normal" pixel density of 110 DPI.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New 9front release “KÄPTN BLAUBÄR” - snvzz
http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/news/2015/07/19/0/
======
jpm9
\o/
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cumulus - control your cloud from your Android phone - ke4qqq
http://cloudstack.org/blog/102-cumulus-manage-your-cloud-from-an-android-device.html
======
paulhauggis
I'm really sick of hearing about "the cloud". It reminds me of "web 2.0" and
".net"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cog: Bringing the power of the command line to chat - sciurus
https://github.com/operable/cog
======
rhoml
Congrats on this launch pretty exited to see its evolution
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On the Turing Completeness of MS PowerPoint [pdf] - chrisdotcode
https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/twildenh/PowerPointTM/Paper.pdf
======
chrisdotcode
Associated YouTube video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Two Minute Papers – Deep Neural Network Learns Van Gogh's Art - midko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R9bJGNHltQ
======
qCOVET
Every selfie on instagram would soon turn into a Picasso masterpiece .. lol
Great post - thanks for sharing !
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage - bensummers
http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
======
sh1mmer
One of the smart guys in our (Y!) cloud team just point out something to me
that hadn't occurred to me.
This system is definitely optimized for backup. That totally make sense for
Backblaze. However it's important to not compare this like for like with
something like S3 which is optimized for much better read/write performance.
At the basic level the cooling on this system seems minimal. Those tightly
packed drives would sure get hot if they were all spinning a lot. More than
that since they are using commodity consumer hardware, and they already used
up their PCIe slots for the SATA controllers there isn't any place to add
anything more than the gitabit (I assume) ethernet jack on the mobo. That
means there throughput is limited.
Again, this is a great system for backup. Most of the data will just sit
happily sipping little power. However, if you are thinking of this as
equivalent to a filer, that's an unfair comparison.
~~~
Andys
Fast 120mm fans can move a pretty decent amount of air - up to 120 ft^3/min
each, and they used three in parallel.
It would take about a dozen 80mm normal-speed computer fans to reach this.
------
dmillar
This is unbelievably awesome. Can you imagine what we could achieve if every
company had this level of transparency?
~~~
PStamatiou
Thinking the exact same thing! While technology isn't more than any typical
hacker can slap together in their apartment (minus maybe the case fab), I
think the application is ingenious and the full blog post about it, like
dmillar, pointed out is rather awe-inspiring. And I was all happy because my
new Core i7 box has 2TB of space and 6GB of ram... sigh
That being said - did seagate ever fix their firmware issue on the 1.5TB
drives that would cause random corruption? (heard about it maybe 6 months ago)
~~~
jbellis
> While technology isn't more than any typical hacker can slap together in
> their apartment
I think you missed the part about testing a dozen SATA cards, etc.
The attention to detail here is a lot more than something you'd slap together
in your apartment.
~~~
Periodic
This is what always gets in my way. It takes a lot of work and a lot of
expertise to put together a home-grown system that works as well as one from
the major vendors. If you're only going to be using one or two, you're much
better off going to one of those major vendors because a large part of the
price is their expertise and testing that went into it. For a large setup like
Backblaze they can spread the cost of design over many systems, but for
smaller companies it just isn't feasible.
We hacker types love to think that we could do the same thing in no time with
little budget, and I'm sure we could get a first approximation. But the devil
is in the details. Debugging the complex interaction of 20 different hardware
components is not my idea of fun.
Hats off to them, particularly for sharing.
~~~
uhgygghhj
I did this as an inhouse backup for a data warehousing app. Just slapping 4
ide cards into a case and putting 16x250gb IDE drives on them resulted in a
system that would copy about 1 disk worth before hanging with some fault or
suddenly dropping to 1% speed.
Just because you can in theory hook 40 drives to n cards doesn't mean it will
work - well done to them
------
edw519
I always thought it was best to focus on what I did best (application
software) and leave the infostructure to others. Until I saw this:
Raw Drives $81,000
Backblaze $117,000
Dell $826,000
Sun $1,000,000
NetApp $1,714,000
Amazon $2,806,000
EMC $2,860,000
I had no idea. Kinda makes one rethink what business they want to be in.
~~~
cperciva
Backblaze $117,000
[...]
Amazon $2,806,000
I cry foul. Backblaze's "67 TB" pods actually only hold 58.5 TB, so their
hardware cost per PB of storage is $134k, not $117k; and that's without any
high-level redundancy. Servers fail -- both catastrophically, and by silently
corrupting bits -- and Backblaze's $134k / PB doesn't have any protection
against that. Datacenters also fail -- power outages, cut fibre, FBI raids,
etc. -- and any system which stores all of its data in a single datacenter
lacks any protection against that. Store each file on two different servers in
each of two different datecenters, and suddenly Backblaze's $134k turns into
$536k. The price for Amazon, in contrast, is based on the assumption that
their prices remain fixed for the next 3 years -- which seems a rather radical
assumption.
Is backblaze's solution cheaper than S3? Absolutely. But they're also twisting
the numbers a bit.
~~~
skolor
Interesting, but Amazon doesn't guarantee most of those things. They guarantee
a 99.99% uptime, but that isn't counting a complete datacenter failure. In
fact, it sounds to me as if they have a similar set up to the backblaze
people.
99.99% uptime means roughly 1 hour per year of downtime. I don't know what the
specific failure rates on the components are, but it seems reasonable that A)
the data drives are hot-swappable, and will not cause downtime when they are
replaced and B) the rest of the components fail once a year (or less) and take
~10 minutes to replace and reboot the system. With 4 main places of failure
(PSU, Boot Drive, Motherboard/Ram/CPU, Drive controllers), as long as you have
staff constantly on call and they can respond within 5 minutes of a failure,
99.99% uptime seems reasonable.
I don't know where you got the idea that your data was on 4 different servers
when using S3. I can't find even the slightest amount of information on that.
Yes, that would be nice, and it is cool to think that, but its rather doubtful
that they're actually doing that (or they could probably add another 9 to
their uptime).
~~~
lecha
Re. geographical redundancy, see comment
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=422574> :
"Amazon keeps at least 3 copies of your data (which is what you need for high
reliability) in at least 2 different geographical locations. "
I can't find the original source supporting that statement, but I also know it
to be true based on direct contact with AWS team. (I'm using AWS since private
alpha of EC2 in 2005)
~~~
skolor
I can't find that anywhere either, and would be interested in seing it. In
fact, all I can find is: _A bucket can be located in the United States or in
Europe. All objects within the bucket will be stored in the bucket’s location,
but the objects can be accessed from anywhere._ which seem to imply that your
data is located in one location, not 2.
In addition, looking at the actual S3 contract, they're really only
guaranteeing at 99.9% uptime, which allows for up to 8 hours of downtime a
year, more than enough to completely re-build the outer server once a year, as
long as they can keep the data intact (which they seem more than capable of
with their setup, once again assuming their data center is not completely
destroyed).
------
gstar
They might have missed a trick here.
To address vibration, acoustics and gyroscopic effect, what I've seen done in
highly dense enclosures is to rotate every second drive around 180 degrees in
a bit of a shotgun approach to balancing stuff.
Still, awesome.
~~~
ciupicri
This has sounded ok for me too, but when I've thought a bit about it I've
realized that the drives must be synchronized so that each one would "cancel"
each others vibrations. The vibrations generated by the drives might have
indeed the same amplitude and (spatial and temporal) frequency, but I doubt
that they'll have the same phase offset. For this to happen they would need to
be started at _exactly_ the same time which I don't think that happens in
practice.
Do you have some pictures of those enclosures?
~~~
gstar
I don't have pictures. I can describe, though.
Two disks were mounted in a frame linearly, both screwed to the frame, with
the power/sata connectors toward the middle of the frame, and one drive
upside-down.
These cassettes were removable as a unit for hot-swap, and were inserted
linearly into a half-deep 19" rack enclosure.
That the two drives were physically connected to the same frame, and removed
and replaced as a unit would make it seem as if they would be started in
phase. Now I'm not physicist, but I'm not 100% sure that's so important - if
you have two gyroscopes contra-rotating and firmly connected, running at the
same speed, surely they resist movement by sheer gyroscopic effect?
------
tsuraan
67TB of storage, with 4GB of cache. I'd really love to see some performance
numbers versus the way-too-expensive competition. If the systems are being
used as tape drive replacements, I could see this working well, but as an
actual NAS-like device, I can't imaging how it could perform acceptably. Of
course, if those Intel motherboards have the dual 1Gb/s NICs that Intel boards
generally do, it will probably take a while to fill the drives anyhow.
~~~
notaddicted
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(67+TB)+%2F+(2*(1+Gb%2F...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(67+TB\)+%2F+\(2*\(1+Gb%2Fs\)+))
It'll take 3 days at the theoretical max of the networking equipment to
read/write the 67TB. The overhead of HTTPS constrains the networking so this
is too low.
I'd expect that their internet connection (i.e. in/out of the data center) is
the real bottleneck.
I believe that the system _is_ being used as a tape drive replacement.
~~~
lsc
If the load is relatively sequential, then yeah. But if the load is mostly
random, then there is an argument for having more cache.
------
eleitl
This made the Beowulf list yesterday, and below is what I wrote in response:
"Seagate ST31500341AS 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 3.5″ Aargh! Should be
definitely substituted by 2 TByte WD RE4 drive.
Today I've built a 32 TByte raw storage Supermicro box with X8DDAi (dual-
socket Nehalem, 24 GByte RAM, IPMI), two LSI SAS3081E-R and OpenSolaris sees
all (WD2002FYPS) drives so far (the board refuses to boot from DVD when more
than 12 drives are in though probably to some BIOS brain damage, so you have
to manually build a raidz-2 with all 16 drives in it once Solaris has booted
up). The drives are about 3170 EUR sans VAT total for all 16, the box itself
around 3000 EUR sans VAT. I presume Linux with RAID 6 would work (haven't
checked yet), too, and if you need more you can use a cluster FS.
Maybe not as cheap as a Backblaze, but off-shelf (BTO) and you get what you
pay for.
------
swombat
Wow.
Do they offer S3-like storage? They should. If they can offer something like
S3, but at one third of a penny per gigabyte per month (heck, let's splash out
- a whole penny per gigabyte per month) I know quite a few people who'll be
interested in talking to them... (including myself)
~~~
jacquesm
Apparently they use HTTPS for input/output using tomcat and some custom
application.
That's a strange choice, HTTPS would incur quite a bit of overhead for
something that is essentially a (large) drive at the end of a network cable
used internally only. Why the encryption ?
quote from the article:
"A Backblaze Storage Pod isn’t a complete building block until it boots and is
on the network. The pods boot 64-bit Debian 4 Linux and the JFS file system,
and they are self-contained appliances, where all access to and from the pods
is through HTTPS. Below is a layer cake diagram.
Starting at the bottom, there are 45 hard drives exposed through the SATA
controllers. We then use the fdisk tool on Linux to create one partition per
drive. On top of that, we cluster 15 hard drives into a single RAID6 volume
with two parity drives (out of the 15). The RAID6 is created with the mdadm
utility. On top of that is the JFS file system, and the only access we then
allow to this totally self-contained storage building block is through HTTPS
running custom Backblaze application layer logic in Apache Tomcat 5.5."
That's an odd choice for a storage server protocol stack.
~~~
antonovka
_That's a strange choice, HTTPS would incur quite a bit of overhead for
something that is essentially a (large) drive at the end of a network cable
used internally only. Why the encryption ?_
To help prevent a network compromise from resulting in storage management
compromise? Just because something is internal doesn't mean it's safe. Once a
host/network segment is compromised, you don't want it to be easy to jump to
the next.
Otherwise, you've built M&M security. Hard candy shell on the outside, soft
gooey chocolate insides. Mmm.
------
thaumaturgy
I have been searching high and low for something like this for months -- I
have a number of clients that have been begging me for this, as well as
something for my own needs.
I'm excitedly posting a link to this on my personal site, and today I have a
lot of phone calls to make to clients.
Why is it that the best products and services are also the hardest to find
when you're looking for them?
------
ShabbyDoo
What terrified me was the number of low-level issues they had to address. SATA
protocol problems, custom-designed SATA cards? Wow. I'd have no idea how to
begin with that stuff. As other posters have noted, this company's business is
storage. How many PB must one host for such specialization to make sense?
------
Bjoern
What a pity, I'd like to have a way to store just a encrypted backup directly
(via ssh) instead of installing a app which crawls my system. Oh did I mention
I use Linux? _sign_
Does somebody know any other company which provides this solution? I don't
trust other people to crawl my system and to "encrypt" it for me.
EDIT: Added Question
~~~
bestes
Did you look at tarsnap (<http://www.tarsnap.com/>)? I don't use it, but read
about it here quite a bit and it sounds really great.
------
datums
Service Idea: S3 offsite backups. Run <http://www.eucalyptus.com/open/> on
this kind of hardware.
------
ALee
These guys are very very good at what they do. Btw folks, no funding and
they're already profitable. Gleb and crew rock!
------
preview
I wonder about the single point of failure posed by the power supplies. One
failed box is not a big deal (since I assume the data is replicated over
several). But, what if they get a bad batch of supplies and see a relatively
high failure rate? I wonder how high a power supply failure rate they can
handle.
The need to stagger the power on of the two supplies poses a problem. What if
power to a data center is lost? When power is restored, all box will try to
start, blowing all fuses. Granted, this is a catastrophic event, so its
frequency should be very low. But, this also seems like an area that could be
automated.
~~~
lsc
You should only use 75% of the rated capacity of a circuit, which means you
have enough power to turn them all on at once.
some of the more expensive managed power supplies also support a staggered
power on after power fail. But I don't worry about it; only using 75% of the
power circuit solves that problem for me.
~~~
preview
Unfortunately, using 75% of the rated capacity may not be enough to handle the
inrush. The article discusses this point, "...if you power up both PSUs at the
same time, it can draw a large (14 amp) spike of 120V power from the socket."
That would mean one pod per 20A circuit. Ugh. In normal operating conditions,
a 5.6A max load would allow three pods per circuit.
Addressing this would require a little bit of design, but the problem is
relatively simple. If they wanted to get fancy, they could add a chaining
feature--pods on the same circuit would be connected together so that they'd
power on serially. This would get away from their goal of using off-the-shelf
parts. It is, as with many things, an engineering trade-off.
~~~
lsc
The PDUs that support 'staggered power-on' are 'off the shelf' - if that is
not an option (really, we're talking maybe $500 for each 20a circuit, retail)
the next thing I'd do is set 'power on after power fail' to off, then have
some remotely accessible way to trip the power button. (I'm working on a
solution to that particular problem, but that's not 'off the shelf' - yeah,
everything is on PDUs I can trip remotely, but there are reasons why it is
much better to ungracefully reboot with the 'reset' jumper than to
ungracefully reboot via cutting off the power.)
from there it would be easy enough to have an automated process turn on
servers one at a time.
------
psranga
Great stuff. Would anybody care to clarify why access is through HTTPS and not
HTTP?
I presume all accesses to these pods are from within their data center? Or do
they directly expose these boxes to clients (whoa!)?
~~~
phsr
BackBlaze runs online, off-site backups (like Mozy and Carbonite) at $5/month
for unlimited storage. HTTPS is used to keep client data protected, I assume
------
durana
The price comparison with other solutions isn't really fair. The cost per PB
of these storage building blocks is directly compared to complete storage
solutions from companies like NetApp and EMC. In the end the cost of the
complete solution they assemble these building blocks into may well be cheaper
than solutions from other companies and that's the number they should be using
for comparison.
------
modoc
I love how open they are about their solution, and I also want one for
Christmas:)
------
jwilliams
Awesome. Brings up a few questions for me (sure there are answers, just
curious really).
Why a Core 2? An Atom mobo would be lower power and cheaper. Why 4Gb? Seems
like an overkill. They are using a HD to boot. Couldn't they boot of a USB
key?
~~~
yellowbkpk
I don't know for sure, but there might not be an Atom-based board that has as
many PCI/PCIe slots.
~~~
jwilliams
Good point. The one I've got only has one PCI in fact.
------
byoung2
Very interesting insight! I may try building a scaled-down version just for
fun.
The cost comparison between raw drives, their custom solution, and Amazon S3,
etc was a little skewed. S3 is designed for pay as you go storage so you're
not paying for capacity you don't need. If you just need a few dozen
gigabytes, it's a much better deal. If you need terabytes or a petabyte, a
dedicated storage solution is more economical.
It's the same argument as vacation house vs timeshare. If you lived in a
timeshare all year, it would cost more than buying the house.
------
pmorici
Seems along the same lines as Capricorn Tech. <http://www.capricorn-
tech.com/products.php>
~~~
ggruschow
Not really. BackBlaze's post is about how to get on-line storage up for the
lowest cost per bit. They appear to have done a great job at quadrupling the
density of standard 1U setups for a similar price.
Capricorn appears to be in the business of selling standard 4 drive per 1U
setups _and support_. The fact you have to contact their sales department to
even get close to a price seems to indicate they're not competing on price.
------
dabeeeenster
What happens when one of the PSU's fails catastrophically, pushing a big
electrical surge through the hard disks, frying half of them?
I didn't see anything in here that discusses that eventuality? And when you
have that many servers, it IS going to happen at some point...
~~~
papercrane
It's addressed in the section "A Backblaze Storage Pod is a Building Block"
From the article:
When you run a datacenter with thousands of hard drives, CPUs, motherboards,
and power supplies, you are going to have hardware failures it’s irrefutable.
Backblaze Storage Pods are building blocks upon which a larger system can be
organized that doesn’t allow for a single point of failure.
~~~
dabeeeenster
Sounds to me like they haven't implemented this yet. I wouldn't want my data
on that sort of solution. Backed up data would surely need a level of
geographic redundancy.
~~~
papercrane
In the next section they say they have implemented the machine level
redundancy. As for geographic redundancy I think the idea is that you use them
for that. As in you backup your data locally and then send it to them as a
redundant copy.
------
sh1mmer
I'd love to hear what they are doing to monitor their system. They didn't
mention that. 3 out of 15 drives failures to loose a volume seems quite likely
at that scale.
I'd like to know what levels of warnings and alarms they use with which
system, e.g. nagios, etc.
------
sschueller
How do you replace a drive? With so many drives it seems like a lot of effort
to pull the entire server out to just access one drive.
~~~
papercrane
They have three raid-6 volumes per machine, so they probably leave it in the
rack until two of the volumes are unusable and then refurbish the machine.
~~~
rarrrrrr
I doubt it very much. When drives start failing out of a RAID6 array, you lose
it's ability to automatically detect and correct single bit errors on disk.
With that much data, single bit errors will happen predictably.
If their usage patterns are anything like ours, disk failures are well under
normal rates. Most backup data is stored and ignored. The drives just don't
get much stress. Downing a machine for maintenance is probably acceptable to
their usage pattern.
------
tricky
effing love this.
I wonder what the reliability stats on this setup is, though. Is it really
cheaper to jam all those drives in one unit without redundant PSU's, MB's, or
a boot drive?
I'd guess you'd have to build at least 2 of these units and mirror them to get
any sort of reliability. And, at that point, how long does it take to copy 58
TB across https?
data is hard.
~~~
skolor
I would assume they don't care about any of the hardware, just the data. If
you look at the setup, and how the drives are raided, there 45 drives are sub-
divided into 15 raid arrays, of which it would take 3 to die before they lost
data. Essentially, they would need 20% of their drives to die simultaneously
for them to lose data.
Now, for the rest of the hardware, its not that important to if it fails. If
one of the other components die, you're only looking at some down time (and a
possible dead hard drive or two from a PSU dying, which I assume they monitor
regularly). As long as the data is secure and in one piece, it doesn't really
matter whether the pod is up or down, until someone needs the data. Just send
out your repair guy to replace it and reboot it, and its fine.
------
silverscreen
Great read! Why a seperated boot disk? Why can't that be on the storage array?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What GUI SQL client do you use? - pmikal
I used to use Toad, but never really liked it. Isn't there something better with support for MySQL and Oracle? SQL Developer? Aqua Data Studio? PL/SQL Developer? What's your preference? What are the free options?
======
nshah
I use SQuirrelSQL[<http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net/>] and it works
great... it's free, open-source and cross-platform... what else could I ask
for.
------
ejs
I usually use MySQL Query Browser: <http://dev.mysql.com/doc/query-
browser/en/>. I am on ubuntu, not sure what other platforms it handles.
------
jawngee
Aqua Data Studio
------
pclark
Sequel Pro
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Immunotherapy cancer drug hailed as 'game changer' - sjcsjc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37588541
======
randcraw
If you have cancer, as I may still do (after prostate surgery), PD-1 and PD-L1
immunotherapy simply is NOT a game changer. On average, you live another 6
months, but only if you pass a screening to get the treatment, which most
patients fail. So in practice, even with these drugs, the outcome of getting
cancer is significant only in a statistical sense. Hardly a breakthrough.
I also happen to work for one of the two pharmas making these drugs, and it
PISSES ME OFF no end how much overpromotion this advancement is getting. Fact
is, if you have cancer, you're still going to die, at best a year later than
if you were on chemo. So the lucky few who pass immuno-screening and then get
these drugs will benefit mostly by avoiding chemo, not by living significantly
longer, much less getting cured.
Added to its modest actual outcome, the COST of this treatment is insane -
profiteering of the worst kind. Charging a dying person $80,000 for an extra
3-6 months of life while promoting the drug as a 'breakthrough' is just plain
wrong. It's a violation of the Hippocratic oath. And it's caused me to lose
the little bit of my remaining faith in the value of working in this industry.
'As good as it gets' is a pitiful rallying cry when battling cancer, IMHO.
~~~
feelix
It seems like the PR engine is on overdrive for this drug. And it looks the
BBC are spewing it out without giving it any thought at all. Or perhaps the
reported was paid?
I'm not saying it has no value, I'm saying that their PR is wildly out of
control and it's reflecting on the poor state of journalism more than the
efficacy of the drug.
Here is a scathing review of it and the PR engine behind it from the NYT just
a month ago, ironically: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/cancer-
drug-ads-vs...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/cancer-drug-ads-vs-
cancer-drug-reality.html)
OPDIVO is another name for nivolumab.
No one should call a cancer treatment drug a 'game changer' unless it
literally cures cancer in something like 90% of cases. Otherwise it's
spreading false hope and it is actually immoral - if you consider that nearly
everybody has been affected by cancer either directly or indirectly.
~~~
danieltillett
Actually any drug that cures people with cancer even a small percentage is a
game changer. A drug that cured 5% of all cancers would be fantastic given
most drugs just delay progression with very bad side effects.
Our metrics are really skewed - we reward companies that develop drugs that
increase average life expectancy by a few months in a large percentage of the
target population and which cure nobody, not those that cure even if it is
only a small percentage of the target populations.
The really bad thing is we are doing almost nothing to develop treatments that
prevent cancer in the first place (well nothing gets to the clinic). The three
really big advances in cancer treatment in the last 100 years have been the
HPV vaccine, Hep B vaccine / anit-Hep C drugs, and antibiotic treatment of
Helicobacter (stomach cancer). All of these are preventive treatments that
have “cured" millions of cancers.
~~~
feelix
How would you consider a drug that cures 5% of cancers a "game changer"?
Do you know what a game changer is? Hint: It means the game changes. In this
case it would mean that cancer is at least 50% obviated.
~~~
danieltillett
The reason it is a game changer in we are now trying to cure not just increase
survival. Once you have a method that can cure people with advanced cancers
that all other treatments types fail on you have a game changer.
~~~
feelix
I'd certainly like to think that's the case, although unfortunately it does
not seem to be. If you read the article I posted in my initial comment, for
example, it seems like this involves value combined with PR BS.
If you think that's not the case and it truly is a game changer please do
share why
~~~
danieltillett
The immunological drugs really are game changers. Up until now we have had
three basic ways of treating cancer: cut, irradiate or poison. These basically
never work on advanced cancers, or cancers that come back after initial
treatment.
The immunological drugs turn the immune system against the cancer and this
approach can cure cancers that are untreatable using other methods. It is
still really early days, but the immunological drugs are able to take patients
that are weeks from death, and for which everything else has failed, and cure
them.
What we really need to know if why it does not work for everyone, but it
provides a crack into which we can hammer a wedge.
~~~
feelix
Indeed the class of immunological drugs look like they could be a game changer
at some point in the future.
However the question is around the use of the term for this specific drug
right now.
~~~
danieltillett
Well this drug is curing people with terminal cancers - something we have not
ever been able to do before. Game changer does not have to mean we have
perfection, just the previous approach is no longer valid and we are tackling
the problem in a new way.
In the field, immunological drugs have given investigators hope that we know
that cancer is able to be cured and we now just have to figure out the best
way to do it - in the past we really didn’t have an approach that had a chance
of making cancer a curable disease. Sure there were some approaches that might
work on some cancers or some approaches that would hold the cancer at bay for
a time, but nothing that gave hope of general cure.
To put it more succinctly, terminal is no longer terminal.
------
refurb
To some folks this may not seem like much of a benefit, but these improvements
add up over time. I could only find this example, but in the last 40 years,
the 5-year survival rate for breast cancer patients has gone from ~75% to 92%.
All of that benefit was recognized at once, but rather incremental benefits
added up over time.
I wish I could have the table I saw for colorectal cancer. Really amazing.
We're talking average overall survival going from 6 months to 5 years in the
span of a few decades. This isn't the one I was thinking of, but it's a great
example.[1]
[1][https://www.bowelcanceraustralia.org/images/Bowel_Cancer_Aus...](https://www.bowelcanceraustralia.org/images/Bowel_Cancer_Australia_Advocacy_Therapeutic_Progress_660.jpg)
~~~
danieltillett
Unfortunately a large percentage of this increase has been from detecting
early cancers which push out the time to death by pulling back the time of
detection - we are not having an impact on the course of disease that the
numbers would suggest.
I hate 5 year survival as a metric. We should be targeting 10+ years survival
(or death from any other cause) as a metric. Five years is just too short a
time to know if you have beaten cancer.
~~~
sachingulaya
For measuring survival my old lab championed the Kaplan-meier estimator for
its ability to censor non-cancer causes of death. The 5yr survival can be
heavily skewed if patients are dying from secondary causes such as heart
attacks, getting hit by a bus, etc. Oftentimes patients with cancer have other
serious comorbidities.
~~~
danieltillett
Exactly. Most people getting cancer are pretty old. Time to death might make
sense in paediatric cancers, but not in 80 year olds.
------
wbkang
Just to clarify, this immunotherapy is legit science has nothing to do with
the typical "immune system booster" bullcrap.
------
OrthoMetaPara
Apparently, these tumors proliferate because they are able to trick killer T
cells into not attacking them. The antibody, nivolumab, inhibits this
signaling pathway so that the T-cells are capable of attacking the tumor.
From: Gettinger SN, Horn L, Gandhi L, et al. Overall Survival and Long-Term
Safety of Nivolumab (Anti–Programmed Death 1 Antibody, BMS-936558, ONO-4538)
in Patients With Previously Treated Advanced Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer.
Journal of Clinical Oncology. 2015;33(18):2004-2012.
doi:10.1200/JCO.2014.58.3708.
_Programmed death 1 (PD-1) is an immune checkpoint receptor expressed on
activated T cells, which normally serves to dampen the immune response to
protect against excessive inflammation and the development of autoimmunity.
However, in the setting of malignancy, PD-1 signaling, driven primarily by
adaptive expression of programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) within the tumor,
inactivates primed T cells that recognize tumor-specific antigens, allowing
tumor growth and metastasis. PD-1 pathway blockade with monoclonal antibodies
offers a novel approach to restoring T cell–mediated antitumor immunity, with
the potential for application across a broad population of patients with
NSCLC._
From the article:
_In a trial of more than 350 patients, published in the New England Journal
of Medicine, 36% treated with the immunotherapy drug nivolumab were alive
after one year compared with 17% who received chemotherapy._
That seems like a small improvement rather than a "game changer."
~~~
JoshTko
Doubling survival rates while having far less severe side effects along with
proven effectiveness on multiple different types of cancer is definitely a
major breakthrough. This is also based on human trails and not rats in a lab.
~~~
danieltillett
I wish most cancers treatments were tested in rats in the lab - most of the
time they only get tested in inbred mice which are a terrible model for human
cancer.
------
ourmandave
Forget flying cars. I'd love to live in a future where we can say, "Remember
when cancer was a thing people had to worry about?"
And the anti-vaxxers would be stupidly blessed to not know what it was like.
~~~
apathy
Hey if they have their way, we'll all "continue to study" HPV vaccines so that
more girls can die of cervical cancer.
Fuck those cynical monsters. I don't wish people ill lightly, but they're
taking chances with the lives of their children and of others, and I just
can't stand that.
~~~
nikolay
I think you're a cynical monster. And, by the way, this is not a binary
situation - you either get vaccinated, or you don't.
I'm not per se against vaccines, but I'm against the following I can think of
right now:
\- To lower insurance costs, we inject infants, and toddlers with many
vaccines at a time, often without much space between shots either. My kids are
fully vaccinated but on a spaced-out schedule, and our family doctor fully
supports this as a smart choice. There are toxins in vaccines and the more you
put at once, the greater the toxicity, so, an intelligent person would try to
space out, don't you agree?
\- Again, to lower costs, all kinds of questionable preservatives were/are
used in vaccines - just like with drugs where you have generics and brand
ones, I'd rather have choices and pay extra to get a less toxic form if
available. Although ethylmercury is pretty much out (mostly thanks to anti-
vaxxers), I'm pretty sure there are other better choices at higher costs;
\- Hepatitis vaccine given to infants is usually not justified and could be
delayed unless justified by a simple blood test;
\- Studies just confirmed that tetanus vaccine works twice long as previously
thought - why schedules are not immediately adjusted to both cut costs, and
reduce risks?
\- Flu vaccine is useless if not harmful.
~~~
apathy
The only reason you know that Tamiflu is useless is "cynical monsters" like me
who bite the hand that feeds them.
As far as spacing doses, just like anything else it's subject to revision.
Nonavalent HPV vaccines produce antibodies against nearly every HPV variant
known, reduce the likelihood of HPV integration, and for someone who has
verified that at least a quarter of head & neck squamous, almost half of anal,
and far better than half of cervical carcinomas show HPV integrations,
typically right into the middle of tumor suppressors or onto oncogene
promoters, this is a big deal. These cases are preventable. Not preventing
them, when it's relatively cheap and available, is (to me) APPALLING.
The antivaxxer pricks are cynical for relying on the rest of us, who are
responsible enough to assume a TINY risk to our kids in order to protect them
and others, to take the risks so they can enjoy the benefits of herd immunity.
If that isn't the definition of cynical, I don't know what is. It's on a level
with the Soviets celebrating the "eradication" of smallpox while internally
working to weaponize it.
Provided a child develops appropriate immunity by the time they're regularly
interacting with others, I could care less about the spacing. But that's not
really what this is about, is it?
If you have kids and you don't get them vaccinated on an appropriate schedule,
you are being a cynical prick. If you fight HPV vaccination because it might
"make girls promiscuous", you are a cynical prick. You are presuming to judge
risks for others, risks which we as a society have determined are
unacceptable. And that makes you a cynical prick, if indeed you do it. (Maybe
you're playing devils advocate, I don't know. But I really hate this line of
reasoning, and on balance, it doesn't hold water.)
~~~
nikolay
Sorry, but Tamiflu is an anti-viral drug, not a vaccine, and it is effective.
Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and instead of low-class name calling,
which is what cynical pricks do for a living, use solid arguments, and clever
policies. So far, there's being only arrogance from the pro-vaxxer community.
~~~
apathy
I see. Where's your rebuttal regarding nonavalent Gardasil, the actual topic
of conversation here? When you can provide some evidence (any evidence,
really) that the immediate risks outweigh the benefits, I'll be impressed.
Meanwhile, enjoying the benefits of herd immunity while other people and their
kids take the risks is the definition of cynicism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How many IT Consultants does it take to migrate a business into the cloud? - ManuJ
http://www.getapp.com/blog/how-many-it-consultants-does-it-take-to-migrate-a-business-into-the-cloud/
======
eitally
If you're only using consultants you're doing it wrong. I moved 16,000
employees to Gmail in three months, but the pilot and preparation phases
lasted 12 months. It took about 6 dedicated internal staffers to work the
project and multiple thousands of hours of localized and personalized training
led by other IT employees. ... and I'd consider this a big success. Compare it
to the City of LA's Gmail migration, which is being conducted almost
completely by CSC and moving very slowly (at significant expense).
~~~
eitally
Captain Obvious: It's even worse if you're doing anything related to critical
business systems. This was just a simplistic example to get the ball rolling.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Android alternative (CyanogenMod) gets $7M funding boost - dan1234
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24160554
======
brickmort
That's pretty awesome, I only really learned about CyanogenMod this week. Has
anybody tried installing it on their device?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Arguing the Point (on uBeam physics) - itcrowd
http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2017/06/arguing-point.html?m=1
======
cottsak
Easy video summary of above
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dqzVlhFkA)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Iteratee-based IO in Haskell at Tsuru Capital - dons
http://blog.kfish.org/2011/09/iteratees-at-tsuru.html
======
tumult
I work at Tsuru Capital. (Apparently we have a contributors file for the
iteratees library, and I never added myself.)
Feel free to ask questions here. I'll try my best to respond to them. We're
preparing for ICFP tomorrow, and my train back from Yokohama was pretty late,
so I probably won't be able to answer right away.
~~~
tsuraan
It looks like you guys are using the iteratee library; why did you choose that
over the enumerator one? I've been trying to learn enumerator, mostly because
it's what Snap is built on, but I'd love to hear about why one is better than
the other. I know that in the enumerator library, stream converters
(Enumeratees) make my brain hurt; are they any easier in iteratee?
~~~
jmillikin
(I'm the author of enumerator)
I originally wrote/released the enumerator package because iteratees seemed
really interesting, but I didn't like the function names or docs. That's it.
The sole advantage enumerator has is that it's prettier.
Compare:
mapStream :: (Monad m, ListLike (s el) el, ListLike (s el') el', NullPoint (s el), LooseMap s el el') => (el -> el') -> Enumeratee (s el) (s el') m a
Map the stream: another iteratee transformer Given the stream of elements of the
type el and the function (el->el'), build a nested stream of elements of the type
el' and apply the given iteratee to it.
with:
map :: Monad m => (ao -> ai) -> Enumeratee ao ai m b
map f applies f to each input element and feeds the
resulting outputs to the inner iteratee.
I figured a simplified package would be useful as sort of a tutorial before
people upgraded to "full" iteratees. I never planned on it becoming heavily
used as itself.
~~~
tsuraan
I guess the biggest problem I have trying to figure out Enumeratees is that I
want them to transform Enumerators into other Enumerators, but they seem to do
something different, and I'm not exactly sure what. Enumeratees are actually
Iteratees, but they have a strange "b" that's actually a Step. It boggles my
mind somehow, probably because I'm trying to work out how that's equivalent to
an Enumerator converter.
After wrestling with this since thursday, I wrote a function that's something
like (wrapEnum :: Enumerator ai m b -> IO (Enumerator ao m b)), so I can
convert an enumerator of one type into an enumerator of another type (I'm not
looking at the code right now; that signature is obviously lacking, but it's
the idea, anyhow). I think that's probably horribly wrong, but I just can't
wrap my head around the type and behaviour of Enumeratees, even after reading
the really pretty and simple ones that come with the snap-core package.
I think the idea is awesome, and I'm very happy about being able to use other
people's Enumeratees like the various compression ones and ideas that I can
express as a map or a fold, but I'm definitely missing something.
~~~
jmillikin
The extra complexity is for dealing with extra data. Say you're mapping
ByteString->Text. The iteratee reads one char, then says it's done. What do
you do with the extra bytes and text?
Making them return a Step allows both types of extra input to be stored, and
possibly consumed later by other iteratees.
You can use (=$) or ($=) to modify how extra input is handled (by discarding
it at certain points). Your wrapEnum is probably a special case of ($=).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Guy strips at PDX airport, court rules not guilty, TSA still wants to punish him - majke
http://www.kgw.com/news/Naked-fliers-attorneys-ask-for-acquittal-162908166.html
======
toomuchcoffee
>But things aren’t over for Brennan yet. The TSA is also investigating him to
see if he possibly interfered with the screening process. If found guilty, he
could be forced to pay an $11,000 fine _and be put on the no-fly list._
[italic mine]
Wow. What a country.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Incorporating your business should be vastly simpler - mathoda
http://mathoda.com/archives/209
======
admoin
Anyone who has tried to start a company in most other countries (where
starting a company can take months and thousands of dollars in fees or even
bribes) would never write something like this. The US is on the easy end of
the spectrum, definitely.
Also, what the author seems to be suggesting is really just a "Company
Corporation" or a "MyCorporation" (both large companies that do most of this
work for you for not a ridiculously high fee), rather than any real change of
law. I also did a google search for "incorporate", and the first few google
ads were big companies that streamline the process for you.
A final small note- I would prefer that we keep a small toll charge for
incorporation. It does cost the states money to process applications and keep
track of filings, and it allows people to create a limited liability shield
(not something I think we should be giving away for free).
This is similar to the logic that makes me think we'd be better off with a
very very small "penny black" type of email tax (like 1/10th of a cent or
less), just to discourage spammers.
------
DenisM
Having just gone through the pain I would like to offer free advice (at your
own risk, duh):
First, figure out among yourself few things:
How much money, IP and time do you put in?
On what conditions do you break up? Firing for cause/without cause? Is there a
vesting schedule?
These questions will take quite a few long and awkward discussions but it is a
lot better to have it now rather than later. Really-really. Start early.
Second, find your local startup community and ask for references for a good,
inexpensive incorporation lawyer. Pick one with best references and take the
outcome of previous step to him/her. Make sure to read and understand
everything (especially the deadlines) before you sign anything.
Small Business Development Centers could be a source of cheap advice, cheaper
than asking same questions from a lawyer.
------
goodkarma
We run our own business, and I have set up several subsidiary companies in the
process. If your ownership structure is simple, it is actually pretty easy to
get started. Here's what I do:
1\. have your state filings done by a registration service (I have set up
several LLCs through "the company corporation") and get their starter kit with
books, seal, certificates, etc.
2\. register for an EIN number with the IRS. you can do this online for free:
<https://sa1.www4.irs.gov/modiein/individual/index.jsp>
3\. once you have a EIN, you can open a bank account
------
yummyfajitas
I agree, things might be better if it were simpler. But I don't like this
"company.gov" idea if it gives the feds any regulatory power.
Currently, most corporate details are regulated by the states. In the article,
it's mentioned that incorporation costs over $900 in cali. In NJ, it is much
cheaper, and Delaware is particularly nice (YC does all it's paperwork through
Delaware, no?).
If the feds get this kind of power, I'd be worried that the whole nation would
look like California rather than like Delaware.
------
enris
It's the same here in Finland. There are lots of different organizations,
programs and places to get help(I bet goverment funded), but actually they
should just make the process more simpler.
------
corentin
There should be no paperwork _at all_.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: A reasonable deployment solution for small-scale kiosk apps? - c61746961
We need to find a solution for the deploy, monitor, update cycle for small-scale, multi-platform (mac, windows, linux), LAN-bound kiosk apps. So far we have survived writing our own tooling for specific tasks but it's quickly getting out of hand due to the increasing amount of clients we need to support.<p>After an admittedly cursory examination of a few popular solutions (docker, nomad, kubernetes) it seems their use is mostly concerned with the big-scale infrastructure side of things, and so far it's unclear to us whether they can be adapted to ad-hoc distribution / versioning on LAN and local storage.<p>If anyone is able to point us in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.
======
dozzie
Try CFEngine or similar tools. They have some learning curve, but they do well
also for small number of machines (i.e. don't add too big overhead for
operator).
------
pjungwir
I had a project last year where we had to deploy to a few executives' laptops,
running in a company that was so paranoid they had no Internet connection. But
they expected to release this app as a SaaS product eventually, and so wanted
it built it with a standard webapp stack (Rails/Postgres). For the initial
install and later updates, they would temporarily bring the laptops to a
separate location to get online. A couple laptops were running Windows and
some OS X.
For the laptop deployment, I wrote a Chef script to provision a Vagrant VM,
then saved it as a .box file. We delivered the .box file along with short
.bat/.sh scripts to start it up. It sometimes felt like we should have used
something trendier, like Docker, although Docker seemed like a bad fit both
because of the Windows/OS X requirement and the multiple processes (Postgres,
Unicorn, Nginx, background jobs....).
They actually volunteered how impressed they were by the smoothness of the
install process. (!)
We had a sh/bat file to run Capistrano for app updates, so as long as no
system changes were needed, that was very easy. Delivering system updates
(e.g. now we need ImageMagick installed....) was painful though. A couple
times we actually abused Rails database migrations as a poor-man's
configuration management tool. :-) The .box file was very large, and we would
have to replace the old VM without wiping out the database. I think there are
easier ways to solve this problem than we used, e.g. Packer, but I wasn't
aware of them then. I'm still not 100% sure they would have worked for us.
Anyway, this seems kind of similar to your LAN-bound kiosks.
I would definitely not use Kubernetes, which is really intended for a
datacenter. I haven't tried Nomad so I can't speak to that. I might be willing
to try Docker nowadays---I think it would allow incremental system updates and
so alleviate the pain of moving big .box files, and you could keep the
database outside of the image. I would still probably run it in a Linux VM
though, since I don't really trust Docker for Windows/Mac yet.
But in general, I think the new devops tools we read about on Hacker News are
intended for a different use-case than yours, so I would not feel bad for
passing them by. I certainly sometimes questioned my decision to avoid Docker,
and got asked by a lot of people why we weren't using it (none of whom had
experience with it). But I think it was the right decision to use older, more
battle-tested tools, and ones that were a better fit for what we had to do.
On-prem software is really a whole different beast from webapps you host. It
requires a different QA process, a robust install tool, and a good plan for
handling updates.
~~~
c61746961
Thanks for the detailed answer, going to check those tools out no doubt.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When Taco Bell 'Bought' the Liberty Bell - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/when-taco-bell-bought-the-liberty-bell/
======
zephjc
A la The Simpsons when Tanzania was renamed "New Zanzibar" and then later
renamed "Pepsi Presents New Zanzibar".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Tellur – manage personal finances using custom-built tasks - wtsn
https://www.tellur.io/premades/build
======
wtsn
Hi everyone, I'm a co-founder of Tellur, a task-based personal finance
manager. Users connect bank accounts (similar to Mint) then add custom tasks
(similar to IFTTT) to track and manage personal finances.
The link goes straight to our task editor, but you can also add shared tasks
others created. Here's a quick video I made as an introduction to the editor:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4pxcnSb9sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4pxcnSb9sw)
Right now the only action for a task is to send an email, but that will change
soon. We're working on adding support for push notifications, text and money
transfers.
------
mgberlin
The interface is very confusing. When I clicked on the first blank after
'When' I expected to be able to choose some noun but there weren't any.
~~~
wtsn
Thanks for the feedback. I agree that at times the left-to-right approach you
described can feel more intuitive than the top down approach we have right
now. Ideally we'd like to combine the best of both.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Varoufakis and the fake finger [video] - QuantumRoar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-1LQu6mAE
======
QuantumRoar
English subtitles start at 3:00
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lisp Is Not Functional - nuriaion
http://letoverlambda.com/index.cl/guest/chap5.html
======
ColinWright
I posted this 12 hours ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2888735>
Thunderous silence met it - I wonder if this will fare better.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nearly half of white Harvard students are athletes/children of alumni/donors - gist
https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/09/penn-upenn-philadelphia-harvard-admissions-legacy-athletes
======
Hasz
You want to revitalize rural America AND solve this tricky problem of too many
qualified kids, not enough spots?
Let's bring a new wave of land grant universities. The feds own like ~90% of
Nevada, let's put a top tier research university smack dab in the middle of
it. Put up some new facilities, draw faculty away from other top tier
universities/the rest of the world, and start pumping all these bright, but
otherwise undistinguished kids into a place where they CAN distinguish
themselves. All that sweet, sweet federal cash flows in, and you can bet
people will set up shop around it. For the feds, it's a cheap investment, but
one that has paid for itself a thousand times over.
Make it a public bell labs in the desert, then do it across rural America.
Huntsville (kind of) did it, why can't we do it again?
~~~
fzeroracer
What about the bright kids that can't afford to move away?
What about the crumbling infrastructure in those rural areas which falls apart
if you made any attempt to move people out there?
Or what do you do about the poor rural folk you displace through what is
essentially extremely sudden government gentrification?
Honestly we have plenty of universities, many of which are not Harvard but
still have incredible professors and bright students. Instead of building
universities in the middle of nowhere, we should take that money to make
higher education (whether it's trade or not) free and help fund people move to
those universities. This is a far quicker solution than hoping to fix the
problem 20-30 years from now when we need a solution today.
~~~
autoexec
> Instead of building universities in the middle of nowhere, we should take
> that money to make higher education (whether it's trade or not) free and
> help fund people move to those universities.
Do we even need people to move to physical buildings? If we improve our
internet infrastructure we can offer 24/7 education to everyone anywhere in
the country. The idea of forcing students to move to a specific place and
attend classes at a specific time every day seems somewhat dated.
~~~
csa
> Do we even need people to move to physical buildings? If we improve our
> internet infrastructure we can offer 24/7 education to everyone anywhere in
> the country. The idea of forcing students to move to a specific place and
> attend classes at a specific time every day seems somewhat dated.
Lambda School would like to say hello.
(no affiliation... just a fan)
~~~
TheAdamAndChe
As would Western Governors University(alumnus here).
------
drak0n1c
Given the recent data on racial admission percentages [1], it appears that out
of all the demographics non-elite non-legacy whites face the hardest time
getting into Harvard, due to half of the already below societally-
proportionate spots being reserved for legacy admissions.
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21130080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21130080)
~~~
taurath
So... everyone's right. The strata being argued about isn't primarily about
race, its economic and social class. We are super good at avoiding this in the
US.
~~~
bilbo0s
I was just about to point out, but I didn't know if people would take it the
wrong way, that the number of blacks who are non-rich and non-athlete is
vanishingly small. Not only at Harvard, but I'm pretty sure this is the case
at most universities.
The point being that whether you're white or black, being rich or being an
athlete is the best way into Harvard. If you're neither, I think you're pretty
much screwed. There really are just way too many intelligent students out
there these days, you need something more than just a test score.
Just the sad reality nowadays.
~~~
rtkwe
It's a natural outcome of the limited space I think.
Given loads of plain smart people and limited ability to measure the
difference between them what measures can you use? Extra curricular activities
seem like a decent measure simply because they take up time so all other
things being equal the student who had a time consuming extra curricular
activity was probably either a) better at time management, b) harder working,
or c) smarter and able to complete the same work in a shorter amount of time.
~~~
taurath
Or extra curriculars mean you were rich, or at least your parents were enough
to afford you doing other things.
~~~
rtkwe
That really depends on the extra curricular though. There's plenty that aren't
expensive at all: Scouting, (most) sports, and volunteering. Those all demand
mostly time commitments with small outlays for relatively cheap equipment.
------
Animats
Wow. That seriously devalues a Harvard diploma in hiring decisions.
Especially since Harvard is easy once you get in. 97.5% graduation rate. It's
not like they're flunking out the losers among the legacy admits. UC Berkeley
is around 90%.
~~~
LordFast
And that's the overall number. Berkeley's College of Engineering programs have
lower graduation numbers.
P.S. It shouldn't be a good thing to brutally weed out students. Facts are
facts though.
~~~
devnulloverflow
It's not about weeding anyone out. Or at least not trying to.
An Engineering degree that really teaches stuff will be difficult. And some
students will find it is not for them and leave. Preferably early before they
have invested too much in it.
~~~
topkai22
There are some serious problems with the pathways to engineering majors
though. I don't know if it is still the case, but I remember my state school
expected calculus pre-calculus in high school as the norm for engineering
majors. To get to that level of mathematics in high school you had to progress
from to Alegbra II to FST, to pre-calc or calculus, but you were only required
by the school system to take up through Alegbra II, which a lot of students
got to in 9th grade. That means that you had to decide to be an engineer at
age 14 and keep taking math.
The reason why students exit engineering programs isn't just the material- it
can be a terrible teacher (hello physics professor with a thick accent that
would insult their students for being stupid), the culture, or being
underprepared for the material with no clear path forward to becoming
prepared.
~~~
vonmoltke
> To get to that level of mathematics in high school you had to progress from
> to Alegbra II to FST, to pre-calc or calculus, but you were only required by
> the school system to take up through Alegbra II
What's FST?
In my district, students were required to go through Algebra II and Geometry.
We were also required to take three years of math. As a result, kids who took
Algebra I in middle School went Algebra II->Geometry->Precal, while those who
didn't went Algebra I-> Algebra II->Geometry. One group had the requirements
by default, and the other didn't need to decide until senior year.
~~~
topkai22
FST was functions statistics and trig. Might not be a thing anymore.
We required 3 years of high school math, but if you did algebra in 7th grade
it counted toward the requirement. A lot of higher tracked kids were done with
thier math requirement by the end of 9th grade as a result.
~~~
vonmoltke
Oh, in my district (at the time) you had to take three math classes _in high
school_ , regardless of what level you were at.
------
s17n
It's pretty amazing to me that we, as a society, are willing to accept legacy
admissions. We spend so much time and energy and money trying to make sure
that our educational system gives everybody equal opportunity when this one
thing matters so much more than eg universal pre-k.
~~~
GordonS
As a non-American, I'm unsure about some of the terminology being used here -
what are "legacy admissions"?
~~~
spats1990
The descendants of alumni:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences)
~~~
GordonS
Wow, it boggles my mind that would be accepted nowadays?!
------
haunter
As a clueless european why is that a problem if we are talking about a private
university? Wouldn't that be more of a problem if it was a public university
funded by public (tax) money?
~~~
seibelj
There is a large group of obsessed upper-middle class parents that believe you
_must_ go to Harvard (or another Ivy League school) to succeed in life.
Sadly, the jobs that are most dominated by nepotism and politics (law,
government, academic professors of softer subjects) it really does help to go
to Harvard or similar and have the brand name. Value-producing industries in
the private sector are not exclusively merit-based, but it's much more likely
you can go from the bottom to the top by starting a competitive business. And
starting a business does not require going to Harvard.
~~~
esoterica
But raising $100m from VCs is a lot easier if you did go to Harvard.
~~~
seibelj
I totally agree, but it is still _possible_. If you build a $100m revenue per
year business starting from nothing, no one can take it away from you in
America (currently at least, who knows about the future). Many people have
successfully done this.
However, I have yet to see anyone become a Supreme Court Justice who went to
community college. I believe almost all of them went to Harvard or Yale...
~~~
tathougies
> a Supreme Court Justice who went to community college
To be fair, you cannot become an attorney just going to community college. You
need a graduate degree. Graduate school admissions do not have the legacy
admissions preference that undergrad does. While true that all current SC
judges went to Harvard or Yale, they did not necessarily go for undergrad. For
example, Clarence Thomas went to Conception Abbey Seminary for undergrad,
which is a little-known school in Kansas.
~~~
seibelj
IMO I should not have to go to any college to become an attorney. California
does not require attending law school to take the bar exam and become a
licensed attorney. The law is written on paper, case law is produced by the
courts, and the techniques for comprehending and using law are not rocket
science and can be self-taught using books.
Expecting that only top-tier colleges can train good lawyers is elitist
nonsense, just more gate keeping by the upper class.
~~~
tathougies
I actually agree with you! Most cases should be able to be settled in court
just by the two parties at odds. If the law is too complicated so as not to
allow that, the law is what needs to change, not the individuals seeking
redress.
------
maehwasu
So Harvard makes it overly hard for non-athlete/legacy white kids to get in
relative to other groups, while also favoring them when they're from those
categories?
Speaking as an alum who will never donate or allow his kids to apply there:
fuck them.
------
abhisuri97
This is basically a summary of the Duke paper from a few days ago.
See discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21037400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21037400)
------
bedhead
I'm sure there are plenty of dipshit kids who got admitted based on their
family's history and donations to the school. I'm also sure that if a couple
people meet at Harvard and have a kid, that kid has a way-better-than-average
chance of being really smart - smart enough to get into Harvard anyway. The
genetic lottery creates a big self-selection bias here. I'd be interested in
seeing more stats that could help illuminate what percent of this group (alum,
athletes) are dipshits vs genetic lottery winners who are legitimately worthy.
~~~
CJefferson
These kinds of stats are basically impossible to produce while children of
alumni get to skip the queue and get in much more easily.
If what you say is true, the problem seems easily fixable -- makes children of
alumni enter through the normal channels, and not mention their parents, and
if they will get in if they deserve to.
~~~
bedhead
No university would ever do that (effectively anonymize applications) because
donations would plummet to almost zero. If there are no perks - one of the big
ones being your kids have a good chance of being admitted - what's the point?
~~~
CJefferson
No US University. This type of thing doesn't happen in the UK (although I will
admit, it wouldn't shock me if a few similar things happen on the quiet).
------
paulgb
Direct link to paper:
[http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf](http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/legacyathlete.pdf)
------
angry_octet
It would be interesting if they got different diplomas depending on what basis
they were admitted. BA(History, Sports), BSc(Chemistry,Donor), MD(Legacy). I'd
be happier if the doctors at least we're not legacy advantaged. Of course,
legacy might be a determinative factor in life success, but I'd prefer the
doctor who got in on academic merit alone.
~~~
oarabbus_
>Of course, legacy might be a determinative factor in life success, but I'd
prefer the doctor who got in on academic merit alone.
I agree with you, but to play devil's advocate: I think it's very possible
that the legacy child of two doctors becomes a better doctor than a more
academically-talented student.
~~~
purple_ducks
> I think it's very possible that the legacy child of two doctors becomes a
> better doctor than a more academically-talented student
Mom & Dad doing patient diagnosis & surgery at home to bond with the kids...
Sounds more problematic than a software engineer opening up the editor.
~~~
oarabbus_
I cannot tell if you're being serious, but I'd doubt the scenario you
described is commonplace.
Do you think that academic talent implies success in medical practice? It is a
necessary but not sufficient condition.
------
gnicholas
< _The study, published on Sept. 11, concluded that only one-quarter of these
students would have received admission had it not been for their advantageous
circumstances._
I can see legacy status being referred to as an "advantageous circumstance."
But being a D1 recruited athlete takes years of dedication and hard work. It
isn't some circumstance that someone finds him/herself in.
~~~
segmondy
yeah, unless you're a fake athlete. how many professional athletes have come
out of Harvard?
~~~
gnicholas
Probably not as many as D1 athletes from schools that are less
prestigious/academically rigorous. But that's probably partly because the non-
athletic options for Harvard grads are so plentiful. Also, just because
they're not all going to the big leagues doesn't mean that they didn't work
very, very hard to be attractive recruits for a top D1 school. That was my
point, and isn't undercut by the fact that most do not go on to compete
professionally.
------
mnm1
So the system is working exactly as intended. The question is why do certain
companies value students from schools like Harvard and Yale when they know
many of those students are fairly average or even stupid? Clearly, it's not
about achievement but about lineage and social connections.
------
Arete314159
I would love to see a lawsuit arguing that any school that takes federal funds
can't have legacy admissions.
~~~
Analemma_
That's probably where we're headed. If this isn't already required by law (I'm
genuinely unsure), I suspect this would be a rare case where Congress could
easily muster bipartisan support to make it so.
~~~
Ericson2314
Oh I wouldn't count on that; I mean if it came to a vote maybe but it
wouldn't.
------
JumpCrisscross
Legacy admissions ( _i.e._ institutionalized nepotism) and institutional
advancement ( _i.e._ institutionalized bribery) are anachronistic. Given
universities are tax exempt, it seems reasonable to require those wanting to
keep these programs pay taxes on their businesses and endowments.
------
rb808
Harvard is not as a charity designed just to produce the brightest minds. Its
a private club for the rich and powerful. Yes they invite a lot of very smart
and ambitious people, but educating smart people only part of its core
mission. If you don't like it don't apply, stick to one of the regular schools
which only take the highest grades.
------
kjgkjhfkjf
Is it possible that jews, asian-americans, and academic faculty and donors
place a greater emphasis on adademic education than other demographics, and
raise their children in a way that makes them more likely to be successful in
academic settings?
~~~
themoonbus
Sure, its possible that they place "greater emphasis on academic education"
etc., but then you have to ask yourself what is the reason behind this.
As an Asian American who has had good academic success, my best guess is its
socioeconomic. Asians who came to the US in the 70s - 80s often were highly
educated, upper middle class, and they had resources to raise their kids
towards academic success. They certainly faced some struggles, but were not
socially disadvantaged in the way that other minority groups in the US have
been.
You may not have meant it this way, but your post reads like a racist dog
whistle.
------
kazinator
Suggested title edit: {athletes|children of {alumni|donors}}.
------
killjoywashere
Time for unpopular facts: Harvard is more proximate to Europe. Conversely, the
UC system favors Asian international students over all others. One could argue
Harvard is at least pro-US by comparison. Which is ironic considering they're
a private institution, while the UC system is state-funded.
What's especially interesting to me is, based on Asian-American population
demographics, those who feel most slighted by Harvard are probably on the West
Coast.
~~~
tathougies
According to UC Berkeley
([https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files...](https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/student-
stats2018.pdf)), in 2018, they had 6569 international students enrolled out of
a total of 42,519
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley)).
This means that 15% of the UC population was international.
On the contrary, Harvard admits about 21% international students:
[https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-
university/s...](https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-
university/student-life/international/).
By that metric, UC berkeley is way more pro-America than Harvard, because UC
berkeley educates more Americans as a percentage of its class.
You should probably attempt to cite facts when making statements.
~~~
fireattack
He said UC system, your data is only for UCB.
Not saying his opinion is not baseless or wrong, but your rebuttal is flawed
as well.
~~~
tathougies
You're not wrong. The assumption was that UCB is broadly representative.
Looking at the full system data:
[https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-
enrol...](https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-enrollment-
glance)
Given my own knowledge of the UC system, berkeley seems the most
international, which is why I thought simply citing berkeley would be enough.
But, point taken. Let's look into the system data.
The total UC enrollment is 286271. Of this, there are 40219 Non-resident
international students, which means there are 14% international students in
the UC system as a whole. Thus, my using just berkeley actually shifted the
data in my opponent's favor, since -- as I hypothesized -- Berkeley does
indeed have more international students as a percentage of enrollment.
~~~
fireattack
Thanks for the data.
Campus-wise, my anecdotal observation would be Irvine or Davis has most of
international students by percentage, though.
~~~
sagarm
According to the data gp linked, Irvine and Davis are 16% and 27% white. If
you were assuming all non-whites at Irvine or Davis were not American, let
this be a teachable moment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How necessary is it for a Master's in Computer Science? - shaganappi200
Hi,<p>I am currently a third year undergraduate studying computer science at University of California, San Diego. I have a few questions regarding graduate school and was hoping to get some insight.<p>- Process of applying to grad school (Whats important, Is it similar like undergrad?, How should I prepare?).<p>- Masters in CS? MBA? Business in CS? Law + CS? What opportunities would each offer? Are the opportunities different?<p>- Which grad schools, if any should I aim for. Does it matter on the school? Do some look better than others in particular?<p>- What should I look for in a grad school? Which factors should I weigh more over others?<p>- When to attend grad school: Work for a year first? Immediately?<p>- Employment opportunities before and after. How is it affected?<p>I would love to get your guys' input on these questions. Thanks!
======
bartonfink
Unless you're positive you want to go the academic route, I'd highly recommend
working for a year or so first, and I don't mean as an intern. I remember
folks from my M.S. who came straight from undergrad, and by and large they had
trouble with the sort of things that you'd simply _know_ if you'd worked on
production code before. For example, in a database architecture class, one
student actively argued with me on theoretical grounds (chiefly that it breaks
the concept of defined primary keys) when I pointed out that it's common for
commercial RDBMS's to be able to create autoincrementing identity columns for
tables. Another student opened up separate copies of Eclipse for each file he
wanted to edit, and then asked me why he was having performance issues on his
machine.
I know that computer science != programming, but you can get a significant
amount of knowledge from just a small investment in time in the "real world",
and that knowledge may prove quite useful later in your studies.
~~~
queensnake
Plus, at least when I went back, it was like a glorious vacation for the first
couple of semesters - nothing to do but Learn New Stuff (what a concept!) and
do tidy, school-sized projects :)
------
geekytenny
>Masters in CS? MBA? Business in CS? Law + CS?
Make up your mind first, then u will know.
>What opportunities would each offer?
Endless opportunities..as far as you can see or imagine. But i would be biased
towards CS because you can make a product and be off to the market very
easily...if you know what you are doing...
>Employment opportunities before and after. How is it affected?
Help lower unemployment stats......think of creating jobs instead.
~~~
dlikhten
Furthermore I would never encourage anyone to do nothing but stay in achedemia
for long periods of time. That is unless the job demands it (my wife is a
Speach Language Pathologist and cannot work until she has a M.S. in SLP
period) however I don't have a masters. I was considering getting one
eventually in a field like AI or something but I would want to ensure I go to
a very respectable school where I am guaranteed to find some awesome research
projects to work on.
End-of-the-day a Master is for a specialization you want to work on for
specific type of jobs. Generally past a B.S. is not required in 99% of the
market especially if you are good.
------
alecbenzer
I'm also (as in, "I, too, am") wondering what grad schools look for down the
line. How much do things like school reputation and prestige matter
(specifically in CS)? GPA? Curriculum (eg, do honors courses help), stuff like
that? GRE scores? Research? Internships? Do any of these matter more than
others?
------
veyron
What do you want to do after education? That will govern your education
decisions
~~~
shaganappi200
I'm not exactly sure yet, but I currently have a lot of interest in
application development. I plan on becoming a software developer and working
in the industry. At the same time, I read a lot of business and tech blogs
about start-ups and do find immense interest in that also. That may also be a
path I would like to pursue. Still exploring....
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is GIT Greedy? - marknadal
https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/1008424416424980480
======
c3534l
This has nothing to do with Git and everything to do with GPL. GPL is the
reason why things like Linux and Git have such a strong community: if you use
GPL code, you have to contribute back to open-source. GPL is greedy in the
sense that it won't let you combine it with closed source code. It's not
greedy in any monetary sense. Either be part of the community or find another
tool.
------
geezerjay
I don't understand how anyone can try to spin having to respect the author's
rights when using their work as being "greedy". I mean, a guy picks up someone
else's life work, wants to sell it as his own work after doing some minor
tweaks, and once he is faced with the need to comply with the original
author's requests he has the gall to describe that as being greedy?
It seems to me that the only greedy part in this deal is the guys who want to
take other people's work and ignore the rights to those who actually created
the stuff they want to sell as their's.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - tosh
https://med.stanford.edu/chronicfatiguesyndrome.html
======
dang
A New Yorker article on this topic has also been on HN today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18321230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18321230).
Both threads are good.
------
monotone666
I’ve been diagnosed with CFS. I had a diagnosis of Kawasaki disease,
autoimmune vasculitis, at age 3. And reoccurring fevers and sore throats every
three months (coresponds with lifecycle of EBV). Pneumonia and mono as a
teenager. I’ve had a mild case of CFS for a little over six years that became
more severe three years ago, both following mono infections. I’m unable to
work without a recovery period that lasts for days. During a year long
infection with the Epistein Barr Virus I lost my sense of smell, started
losing my hearing, have problems with depth perception/driving, and the
sustained focus required for reading. I lost my ability to do circuit analysis
and BASH. I used to be a high level athlete and lost half my strength. I got
very lucky and discovered that iodine can treat Epistein Barr Virus, otherwise
the prognosis for a EBV infection of longer than 6 months (CAEBV) is death.
The requirements to get disability in the United States for the disease of CFS
basically requires a diagnosis of CAEBV plus a impossible to prove
“subjective” criteria that basically guarantees you will have to go in front
of a judge and be subjected to their opinion of the condition. When shopping
for a lawyer I was refused to even have it on my application as a disabling
condition despite it being listed in the social security “blue book.”
I’m also missing 10% of my mitochondrial DNA and have a gene which is the
single largest risk factor for MS (also caused by EBV).
I lost my mind during the last infection.
The virus is interesting. It’s one of the most common viruses and has an
ability to cause the body to “forget” adaptive immunity. It reproduces in
response to low vitamin B12 levels or mitochondrial dysfunction.
~~~
monting
That’s a tough situation, I feel for you. Not implying this is the solution,
but I’m curious if you’ve tried ketogenic diets/fasting? They induce
mitochondrial biogenesis, and appear to affect immunity positively.
*edited spelling
~~~
monotone666
I eat a low carb diet. I don’t think ketogenic is a good idea due to liver and
kidney damage. I do intermittent fasting everyday. I keep meaning to go on a
longer fast every now and then...
I recently got food stamps so I’ve been enjoying food more :)
------
ambrop7
A personal anecdote: recently I came quite close to being diagnosed with CFS
or fibromyalgia but luckily found out I have primary hyperparathyroidism. I
have no idea how all the doctors could have missed it, I had to figure it out
myself.
"Of all the missed diagnoses of ME/CFS and fibromyalgia, primary
hyperparathyroidism proves to be one of the most tragic simply as a result of
how treatable the condition is relative to the suffering it can cause."
[https://phoenixrising.me/archives/23988](https://phoenixrising.me/archives/23988)
~~~
jdhn
How did you figure it out, did you look at the results of your blood test and
do a self-diagnosis from there?
~~~
ambrop7
I've been trying to diagnose myself for a long time (about a year) before I
figured it out. By that time I've been to my doctor multiple times, to two
orthopedic doctors, one gastroenterologist, had 3 spine MRIs, gastroscopy,
abdominal ultrasound, chest X-ray, a bone scan, lots of lab tests incuding
lyme disease, probably other tests and physical therapy. I was to the ER twice
where they also had no clue. Someone even advised a psychiatry referral which
I did not go for. I got on the right track when I was studying endocrine
diseases and happened to include calcium on a panel of blood tests I ordered
for myself (presumably because I stumbled upon hyperparathyroidism). Once
calcium came back high, it was clear after 2 more blood tests, and the doctors
at the Norman Parathyroid Center (where I'm having surgery) confirmed it based
on my lab reports. I'm having surgery in 2 days.
~~~
mildavw
Good luck. Just wanted to chime in that my Dad had similar (albeit milder than
yours) issues and ran across the Norman Parathyroid Center website while
researching his problems. He had surgery there about 6 weeks ago and indeed
they found and removed a dime sized tumor.
He has high praise for the docs there. And he’s had an excellent recovery.
Energy and alertness has returned full force! Hope your results are similar.
~~~
ambrop7
Thanks. Indeed I read only praise of this place, and their web site is an
excellent source of information. It is now quite certain I have this but until
I get the surgery and see the problems resolving I still worry a _little_ bit
if we're right :)
Supposedly it is rare in young people (I'm 29), maybe that had something to do
with nobody seeing this.
------
Tycho
My father started suffering from ME/CFS about 20 years ago. Fortunately it is
not so severe that he can’t enjoy life, but he had to stop working (and the
authorities didn’t support early retirement because it’s not a well understood
condition).
I remember my father was initially off work with a virus, and then
subsequently was diagnosed with some sort of thyroid condition which required
lifelong prescription drugs to treat. But he never fully recovered (complained
of constant fatigue, muscle aches in the morning, and a flu-like feeling) and
eventually was diagnosed with ME, although there is no test to prove it
definitively, whatever it is.
------
JazzXP
My wife suffers from CFS, and for the first two years, she was pretty much bed
ridden. The first six months she couldn't even read in bed because she was so
exhausted she couldn't concentrate enough. Lucky we had a dog to keep her
company.
We tried various techniques through the years including modafinil (and
sleeping tablets at night to counteract that), but nothing really worked
beyond a temporary solution.
These days (7ish years later) she can work full time as long as she maintains
her energy envelope. So doesn't do much on weekends, needs to rest up.
------
jessriedel
Is there evidence of a well-defined physiological mechanism rather than merely
being a symptom cluster that might be purely psychological? Some brief
Googling suggests that CFS is sometimes precipitated by various viral or
bacterial infections, which is a step in the right direction, but I haven't
read anything yet that rules out the alternative hypothesis that this is a
(cluster of related) psychological disorders that is sometimes prompted by a
life event. The dozen patient organizations campaigning for recognition is a
bit of a red flag.
~~~
DubiousPusher
First I want to say that determining something as Psychological doesn't put
you in much better of a position than just saying something is a somatic
condition we just don't understand yet. Secondly, to sufferers who are upset
by this idea, please don't be. Yes, when the vast majority of people hear that
a condition is psychological, they somehow think it's easier to deal with,
less real, madeup or somehow not physical. This is wrong and any good
physician will treat you with the exact same empathy and respect whether they
believe something is psychogenic or somatic.
Ok, with that out of the way, the answer to your question is yes and no. Some
folks emphasize the comorbidity of ME/CFS with depression to try and establish
ME/CFS as a psychogenic illness. Some cases of CFS improve with the
introduction SSRIs. Which further embeds this belief. But its entirely
possible that the depression is a result of the day-to-day suffering. And the
improvement reported with SSRIs isn't just a result of the sufferer's
generally improved disposition.
The main difficulty with CFS is that it is currently a bucket diagnosis. So,
you end with people in that bucket that have other diseases. For example,
there are probably a good number of people in the CFS bucket that have an
autoimmune disorder like Rheumatoid Arthritis or Spondylopathies because the
mechanisms of diagnoses for these are somewhat unreliable and the effects of
treatment are purely subjective if blood tests are consistently normal.
Without some differentiator, it's really difficult to study the condition with
confidence. Any effect or symptom sampling will be diluted if our bucket has
multiple diseases in it. It's because of this that I think sufferers should
resist the temptation to pitch their tent around the CFS flag. But I do
understand the yearning to have a name by which to call your affliction.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
"Comorbidity" \- but which causes which? Depression can absolutely lead to
fatigue. But if you were healthy, and suddenly you have absolutely no energy,
and your brain is fuzzy, and you're sleeping 14 hours a day and still don't
have any energy the other 10 hours, well, _that 's depressing_.
~~~
DubiousPusher
This is why I wrote...
> But its entirely possible that the depression is a result of the day-to-day
> suffering. And the improvement reported with SSRIs isn't just a result of
> the sufferer's generally improved disposition.
Though I meant is where I wrote isn't there.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Note to self: Read more thoroughly next time...
Mea culpa.
------
cpncrunch
Montoya is still prescribing Valcyte for patients even though his own study
found that there was no significant difference between Valcyte and placebo
(even though the Valcyte arm had more symptoms at baseline):
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jmv.23713](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jmv.23713)
------
teyc
Ron Davis, also at Stanford, has been working on some diagnostics on severely
ill MECFS patients. It is a severe disease that has been underfunded and under
researched for many years. My son got sick steadily over years, and luckily
his is not as severe as others, but it got me very worried.
------
lukestevens
For HNers with ME/CFS (or an interest in it) I can recommend last year's
documentary Unrest by Jennifer Brea:
[https://www.unrest.film/](https://www.unrest.film/). It's available on
Netflix.
It's a confronting look at the human side of severe ME, and a call for greater
recognition. If you've had people around you struggle to understand what
you're dealing with, showing them Unrest could help a lot. Check it out.
~~~
cpncrunch
While it's a good movie, I found it very negative in that it didn't show any
recovery stories. Jen herself seems to have recovered a lot, and has been
travelling around the world to talk about Unrest.
------
Madmallard
I think in several cases the cause can be traced to taking multiple courses of
ciprofloxacin or other fluoroquinolones which have been known to be
mitochondrial topoisomerase poisons for decades. The drugs are super dangerous
for public health and should be reserved for last resorts and the medical
industry is finally catching on.
If you ruin the mitochondrias ability to reproduce you will develop latent
muscular and neurological dysfunction.
~~~
monotone666
There was a study in 2008 that showed the majority of people with chronic
fatigue had mitochrondrail dysfunction that corelated with the severity of
symptoms.
~~~
cpncrunch
If you mean Myhill, her studies haven't been replicated. More recent studies
have shown similar mitochondrial ATP between patients and controls.
[http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/content/early/2018/04/16/BST2...](http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/content/early/2018/04/16/BST20170503)
------
giardini
Anyone tried BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) for Epstein-Barr Virus or CFS? It
is claimed to be active against lipid-containing viruses like EPV:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butylated_hydroxytoluene#Healt...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butylated_hydroxytoluene#Health_effects)
------
kobayashi
Related longform article from a first-person perspective:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-
illne...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-illness)
Edit: Weird...this article now also on the first page of HN.
------
Hydraulix989
Sleep apnea at the surface looks like CFS since you aren't consciously aware
that you stop breathing in your sleep but still feel tired all of the time
when you wake up in the morning.
~~~
dkarl
Lots of things look like CFS on the surface, including depression. I expect
there will turn out to be many distinct physical diseases responsible for what
we call CFS, as well as simply depression. I remember first reading about CFS
over a decade ago when most of the information available on the internet was
on sufferers' blogs and forums and being struck by the prejudice against
mental illness. There were a lot of comments to the effect that, "The doctors
said it was all in my head, but then I learned that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
is a real disease! It totally changed my life knowing that I was sick and not
crazy! I don't have to hate myself anymore." A lot of anger was directed at
doctors who suggested psychological explanations. Even saying, "We can't find
any physical cause, so maybe you should talk to a psychologist as well,"
(which sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me) was treated as a
disrespectful, belittling, arrogant, and sexist. Which I suppose it was in
many cases — there's certainly enough prejudice to go around. But for me as
someone seeing a therapist for depression it certainly made me look at the
people around me differently, having that unguarded glimpse into the revulsion
that some people feel.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Debunking the Cul-de-Sac - matylda
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2011/09/street-grids/124/
======
baltcode
One way to use the older city areas would be to be able to construct modern
buildings in them. Unfortunately, the alternative to suburbia is old,
awkwardly divided apartments made out of older houses with inefficient heating
and AC, and little ventilation. It will be hard to rearrange the suburban
landscape so fast, but some sort of free market "gentrification" may not be a
bad idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
#everykey is is a f•••ing game changer - superchink
http://www.whoismcafee.com/everykey-is-is-a-f%e2%80%a2%e2%80%a2%e2%80%a2ing-game-changer/
======
based2
[http://www.gemalto.com/press/Pages/Gemalto-enables-strong-
au...](http://www.gemalto.com/press/Pages/Gemalto-enables-strong-
authentication-on-any-device-via-Bluetooth-Smart-technology.aspx)
[http://www.safenet-inc.com/multi-factor-
authentication/authe...](http://www.safenet-inc.com/multi-factor-
authentication/authentication-as-a-service/sas-safenet-authentication-
service/)
[http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090136035](http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090136035)
[http://www.nfcworld.com/2015/12/11/340570/gemalto-brings-
pki...](http://www.nfcworld.com/2015/12/11/340570/gemalto-brings-pki-based-
authentication-mobile-devices-ble/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pay-with-a-Selfie, a human-centred digital payment system - blopeur
https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.07187
======
justboxing
I thought this was a spoof / 'The Onion' style story, then I saw this.
> The Pay-with-a-Group-Selfie (PGS) project, funded by the Melinda & Bill
> Gates Foundation, has developed a micro-payment system that supports
> everyday small transactions...
~~~
iRobbery
I thought it was a 'Black Mirror' episode title that i missed at first
glance..
------
timae
We (Ticketleap) did something similar in ticketing.
[https://www.ticketleap.com/info/selfie-
ticket](https://www.ticketleap.com/info/selfie-ticket)
------
jt2190
From the paper:
> [Pay with a Group Selfie (PGS)] is a mobile payment technique that leverages
> on face-to-face exchanges where pictures taken with mobile phones are used
> to embed all information (the parties’ identities, the exchanged
> goods/services, and the price) of a business transaction. The system relies
> on Visual Cryptography (VC) to generate two untamperable shares of the
> selfie showing the transaction. The buyer and the seller hold a share each,
> and the transaction can be checked simply by stacking the shares.
------
seandougall
I have a hard time considering something "human-centred" when the very concept
seems completely inaccessible to people with visual or motor impairments.
------
mankash666
Possibly one of the worse funding decisions by bill gates' foundation.
Even in poor, rural communities in India, more feasible payment methods backed
by the government (BHIM) seems more practical than this paper
------
msingh_5
Ah we built something similar at a hackathon a couple of years ago as a joke.
Was briefly the owner of paybyselfie.com.
------
gaetanrickter
"The gesture - taking a selfie - has become part of the lifestyle of mobile
phone users worldwide, including non-technology-savvy ones." Since when has
taking a picture with a mobile phone been relegated only to "technology-savvy"
people?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are the new TLDs bad for business? - erdaniels
I’ve noticed an increasing amount of generic TLDs being created. There are generic ones owned by obscure companies like .band and then others like .beauty owned by L’Oréal. In the former case, this feels like squatting and in the latter, monopolization on a whole namespace. In either case, it takes an exorbitant amount of money for the average person or company to get a generic TLD. What are people’a thoughts on the process for getting a TLD when it comes to pricing and the rules? Personally, I’m worried that we will have a polluted namespace with confusion about the legitimacy of certain TLDs.<p>Reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
======
newscracker
Here's my personal, not so useful take on this. At some point, there will be
some confusion with so many TLDs and names (if it's not there already). This
is why it's more important to worry about your brand name being unique or
recognizable first and then worry about which TLDs to use. Marketing should
take care of surfacing your domain.TLD in searches and social media.
If you don't have a business with profit in hundreds of millions of dollars a
year (or revenues in billions of dollars a year with no profit), then you
should just go with whatever domain and TLD you get, preferring the originals,
like .com and .net, then preferring any ccTLDs, and then preferring other
TLDs. I don't think many common people recognize and understand that something
like .google or .amazon is really a website address. Don't worry about the
TLDs that you cannot get because of the price or because it's being squatted.
If you do have a business with profit in hundreds of millions of dollars a
year (or revenues in billions of dollars a year with no profit), spend a low
fraction of a digit percent of it on brand management by engaging a company
that can help you figure out the right mix of domain name, brand value, which
squatted domain to buy, how to buy it for cheaper, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Fiber Is Vastly Superior to Cable and 5G - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g
======
gnode
The article is correct that fiber connections can provide a higher bitrate
than cable and 5G, but it fails to explain why that makes it a better social
or economic proposition.
My 200Mb/s DOCSIS cable connection is well below the theoretical maximum, and
is good enough for streaming 8K video, downloading a Linux distro in seconds,
downloading a game in a few minutes, etc. The social effect of having this,
versus 0.1Mb/s connectivity I had before is huge, but greater bandwidth would
not greatly change my experience.
If the aim is to improve the lives of as many people as possible, it takes
more to justify a more expensive project, than just: it will be faster.
My primary concern as a politician would be which solution can be affordable
and adequate for the largest number of people who do not currently have
something adequate.
~~~
bsder
Every order of magnitude change in _upload_ speed has spawned a whole host of
new applications to take advantage of it.
Upload is the key--not download.
~~~
steve1977
Most people do not create content that is worthy of any high amount of upload
bandwidth. Why would you think that upload speed is so important?
~~~
bsder
Because every bump in upload speed created some new application.
email, online services, graphical online services, the web, limewire etc.,
bittorrent etc.
It's not about what everybody can create. It's about what a _select few_ can
create.
The goal is to give the same tools to the person in the middle of nowhere as
if they were the most connected person on the planet.
------
Isamu
Perhaps the title should be "Why policymakers should support fiber over cable
and 5G". This is about public policy, it's not a technical discussion.
------
EricE
If it's a decision between wired or wireless, wired is always better. Period.
Luckily I have FIOS but my parents are stuck on really crappy DSL or mediocre
cable.
------
oarla
Why is there no mention of the initial cost to lay down fiber? I expect that
would be quite significant compared to wireless links and I am not even
thinking of the costs that might be associated with maintenance of the fibers
once it is laid down and operational.
~~~
jkoberg
The dirty secret of 5G is that they have to run fiber to every street corner
anyway just to backhaul the very-short-range base stations.
For a marginal additional cost, you can run it down the street to every house,
and consumers aren't forced into a artificial-scarcity "purchase by the
gigabyte" scheme run by wireless carriers.
~~~
mv1
Yes, but with 5G, I now have high speed internet on your block too, and so
does everyone else.
~~~
mmphosis
Except that my devices don't have 5G or fiber ports. I have WIFI and Ethernet
ports.
~~~
trcarney
The fiber line goes to your house then gets converted to Ethernet via a modem;
just like cable does now. In fact when i had FIOS, the fiber was converted to
coax before it came into may apartment, then went to the modem and cable box.
So from a user perspective, it wasn't any different than cable.
------
rkwasny
It's not about speed, it's about reliability. We have a backup 5G connection
for an office in central London, when it rains heavily it just goes down.
Cable/Fibre does not have this problem.
------
bifrost
This is such a superficial and terrible article, its like if you gave an
intern an outline and they could only use wikipedia to complete it.
While I appreciate what they're trying to do, this comes off as ridiculous to
those of us who actually have built or build parts of the internet.
The TLDR of this article is "With current technology you can move more bits
with light and electrons than you can with RF", which is likely to stay true
for the forseeable future.
What they left out is that most fiber service providers use PON, which doesn't
give you the top end of what your physical fiber can do.
Here's a handy article about it: [https://www.electronicdesign.com/what-s-
difference-between/w...](https://www.electronicdesign.com/what-s-difference-
between/what-s-difference-between-epon-and-gpon-optical-fiber-networks)
~~~
sp332
The article was co-written by EFF's senior legislative counsel. It's intended
to be a position paper to influence policy, not a technical deep dive.
~~~
bifrost
Yes, and it shows they don't understand the technology.
This is almost as bad as "the internet is a series of tubes" to a network
engineer...
~~~
admax88q
How do they not understand the technology? They clearly compared the
theoretical max to each technology as options for last mile connectivity.
If you have last mile fiber into your home, then you're capable if receiving
10Tbps. Yes a PON setup won't actually provide that, but they never state that
someone would offer those speeds, only the theoretical last mile capacity.
The point of the article is to counter lobbyist claims that we don't need
fibre investment because cable and 5g are fast enough. This article points out
that even in their best case that is not true.
~~~
bifrost
They don't understand how PON works, think of it like FDDI or even DOCSIS;
You'd never be capable of receiving 10Tbps due to fiber topology... The 10Tbps
number requires DWDM anyways, its like saying a Kia is a Lamborghini.
The Cable/Wireless carriers will use this misdetermination to undermine what
these guys are saying so in the end its unhelpful.
They'd have a much better time pointing out that existing cableco's have
mismanaged their DOCSIS networks and that Comcast is considered the WORST
company in this country (even worse than Monsanto) because of how poorly they
manage their networks. There's also so little adoption for "Wireless to the
Home" that its pointless to consider that a reasonable option.
~~~
didibus
I'm not sure I really understand your alternative. It's not like in practical
terms, providers will achieve the theoretical max of RF or cable either. What
are you suggesting instead?
~~~
bifrost
What I'm saying is they're talking out of their behinds, which will ultimately
hurt us all.
~~~
aeternum
You clearly know about this, but your comments are not very substantive. It
might be more valuable to explain what the article is getting wrong. Many HN
readers are fairly technical and interested in stuff like this.
~~~
bifrost
Based on the downvoting, I'm unconvinced they're actually interested in this
:)
I can tell you this -> Any time anything network/internet infrastructure gets
posted here on HN, its a mess. My friends in NANOG have stopped bothering.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is GitHub down? - A_Ghz
http://www.github.com/
======
ovechtrick
no
------
ddorian43
no
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Data Center Map - yoda_sl
http://www.datacentermap.com/
======
yoda_sl
I came across that site earlier today : potentially interesting if their data
is accurate and you are trying to find a hosting/cloud service nearby where
you are.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming Language Development: The Past 5 Years - jashkenas
http://blog.fogus.me/2011/10/18/programming-language-development-the-past-5-years/
======
hammerdr
I spent some time doing several small programming exercises in Ioke. I've also
done similar exercises in several programming languages ranging from C to Java
to Haskell to Ioke.
Ioke was ridiculously clean in almost every scenario. The only part I missed
was that I didn't delve deep enough to really use the macros to their fullest
extent. Something that would take 50 lines of idiomatic Ruby took 10 lines of
Ioke. Ruby is already a very expressive language and yet Ioke could express
the same thing in half the amount of code.
The author of this post is not kidding when he says that Ola designed the
language with no regard for performance. The language is slow.
However, Ola is working on a language that learns from the expressiveness of
Ioke but is a bit more practical. It's called Seph and is at <http://www.seph-
lang.org>
And, finally, a small story: I was spending a few nights a week writing Ioke
and trying it out about a year ago. Ola spoke about Ioke at an internal
company presentation (sort of a mini-conference) and afterwards I started to
talk about the language with him and Brian Guthrie. We talked about the
language constructions and how we solved problems in the language, etc. etc.
Finally, I get around to asking the question, "So, after writing Ioke for
these past few weeks, I feel like I have no idea if I'm writing idiomatic
Ioke!" Both of them look at me as if I'm a crazy person and finally Ola smiles
and says, "There need to be more than 10 developers writing in a language for
there to be idiomatic anything." Playing with these languages are fun but
messy! Don't be afraid to make mistakes and just dive in.
~~~
beagle3
You (and Ola ...) really should take a look at the APL / J / K family. All are
10-100x times more expressive than Ruby/Python, and 100x-1000x times more
expressive than C and Java.
They are all quite fast, with K being super-blazing-fast.
I can't do these languages justice in a comment -- but have a look at
<https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona/wiki/Idioms> and
<https://github.com/kevinlawler/kona/wiki> \- you are in for a shock about how
unexpressive everything you've used so far is (and you don't have to give up
speed to get that)
~~~
skrebbel
Short isn't equal to expressive. Making every operation a single character
does not really help understandability, IMO.
~~~
beagle3
APL/K's expressiveness does not come from making every operation a single
character (although they do work together nicely).
It comes from selecting a good set of primitive elements and their rules of
interaction. It turns out (for K) that ~40 primitives are sufficient to cover
what you need, and it is therefore possibly to assign these to single ascii
characters (20 unary, 20 binary; e.g. "x _y" is multiplication, but "_ x" is
"first element of x". Most languages overload unary/binary on the same
symbol).
Take, for example, the "maximum substring sum" problem (see link in the K
idioms above). Using K syntax, it's
|/0(0|+)\
Using Q syntax (K with words instead of characters), it becomes
max over 0 (0 max +) scan
Three times longer, hardly using any non-alphabet characters. Just as
unreadable to the uninitiated, and still 10 times shorter than a comparable
Python or ruby implementation.
Once you do get used to thinking in APLish or Kish, then the first version to
the second version is like "a+b*c-d" to "a added to b times c and then d is
subtracted". I know which one I prefer.
Short isn't equal to expressive, but your comment is irrelevant to APL or K.
------
necubi
For anyone interested in AGDA, I found this [0] paper really helpful for
getting my head around dependent typing. I sort of doubt that dependently
typed languages are ever going to catch on, but they embody some seriously
cool ideas about how to verify program correctness.
Also, AGDA has probably the most flexible syntax for defining function
fixiness, letting you easily define new "syntax":
if_then_else_ : {A : Set} -> Bool -> A -> A -> A
if true then x else y = x
if false then x else y = y
[0] <http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~ulfn/papers/afp08/tutorial.pdf>
------
ehsanu1
fogus mentions OMeta, which is amazing in my own humble opinion. You can,
extremely concisely, create a parser for a language you dream up. The author
of OMeta has an example of parsing JavaScript in 200 lines of OMeta. OMeta can
also parse itself in about 40 LOC. This conciseness is the reason Alan Kay's
Viewpoints Research Institute is using it for their STEPS project (attempting
a full GUI system from "scratch" in 20k LOC). They use it to compile all the
languages in the project, and even make use of it in their 200 LOC TCP
implementation.
The example gist provided really doesn't do it justice (partly because there's
a variant with slightly lighter syntax). Check out the sandbox for OMeta/JS
(there are several OMetas, each for its own host language), which has several
projects you can check out: <http://tinlizzie.org/ometa-js/#Sample_Project>
~~~
alexandros
Let me add to the OMeta love. I did my PhD using OMeta/JS, and I'm using it
now in my startup. I find it's a perfect companion to CoffeeScript, both of
them compiling to JavaScript as they do.
~~~
ehsanu1
Awesome, would you have a link to your PhD thesis? Couldn't find it on your
blog. Also wondering how you're using OMeta for your startup?
Since you mention CoffeeScript, since I've found out about OMeta last week,
I've started a little work on a CoffeeScript compiler in OMeta. Have some
basic stuff working, but error messages for parsing kinda suck: the best I can
do with OMeta/JS as currently implemented seems to be noting the position at
which there's a parsing error.
~~~
jashkenas
I'd love to see a CoffeeScript compiler implemented in OMeta -- please post it
to the GitHub Issues if you come up with something neat.
~~~
ehsanu1
Sure thing, glad to see the interest.
------
FraaJad
I'm surprised that Factor was not featured.
[1]: <http://factorcode.org/> [2]:
[http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Factor/Features/The%20lan...](http://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Factor/Features/The%20language)
~~~
technomancy
This article is specifically about languages created in the past 5 years, so
Factor doesn't qualify.
~~~
FraaJad
Ah, yes. Technically that is a good reason.
However, Factor has gotten a lot of new features in the recent years. For a
relatively young language (7 years) the last 5 years are quite significant.
------
wgrover
Cheers for including Scratch (a graphical programming language aimed at kids).
Scratch is worth playing with, if only to witness the potential (and
drawbacks) of graphical programming languages. Now back to my LabVIEW code...
------
jules
Magpie: <http://magpie.stuffwithstuff.com/>
Had a very interesting approach to its type system, but that has been
temporarily disabled because the language was changed to use multiple instead
of single dispatch.
------
jxcole
So he seems to not like Go or Arc. I like Go a lot but I am always interested
to hear other opinions. While I'm sure he has good reasons for this, I wish he
would have included them. It seems like he's saying "I don't really like this,
here's a link!"
~~~
Detrus
_Those languages were meant to stretch your mind_
Go is not in the mind stretching camp, it's just practical. It's made from
existing ideas that you would have seen in other languages that came and went.
So in that sense it's not interesting and yet it is.
~~~
adeelk
Actually, the comment about mind-stretching was referring to the languages in
his “Perlis Languages” post.
------
mark_l_watson
A good read. Michael is one of the few people who I read just about everything
that they write.
Using alternative languages is refreshing, both new and old. After many days
of doing Java server side (and some web dev in SmartGWT) for a customer, I
cleared out the cobwebs tonight by installing both SBCL and Clozure Common
Lisp on a new MBA, configured Quicklisp for both, and started updating some of
my old utilities and programs to build and run with the Quicklisp package
manager (that I wish I had ten years ago), tried hacking a bit with weblocks
and clouchdb (yeah, I spelled that right). I have done a lot of Lisp
development since 1980, but not so much this year except for some Clojure for
a customer, so I had fun, even if Common Lisp is a _lot_ older than 5 years
old!
My favorites on his list of new languages: Clojure and CoffesScript.
CoffesScript is a good, practical idea. Although I have never used Scratch, I
have sat with my granddaughter while she uses it.
------
jfb
Good stuff. It makes me long for more time in the day and more neurons in the
skull.
------
djhworld
Just reading the Shen example has made me question my choice of learning
Clojure, with the simple example of partial application.
I dream for the day when you can just do (map (* 2) [1 2 3]) in Clojure
~~~
paulkoer
On one hand I feel the same - Shen looks incredibly nice. And it features a
lot of things that I hope Clojure will have in the future (such as an optional
static type-systems and high portability due to Clojure in Clojure). Then on
the other hand a language's usefulness is to a large degree determined by
having a minimal viable userbase - you just cannot write every library
yourself. And by being highly pragmatic, running on the JVM and so forth (and
probably many other things I don't comprehend) Clojure has achieved just this.
So I think right now its the most practical Lisp. If Shen has a lot of nice
features maybe we can learn from it!
~~~
bitcracker
You don't need Shen features in Clojure because the Shen team aims to provide
a compiler for KLambda which is a very small subset of Lisp. It should be no
problem to implement KLambda in Clojure.
Quote from <https://groups.google.com/group/qilang>:
"Much of the work necessary for converting to Clojure or Python (Or any other
non-tco language) is being done as a pass over KLambda right now in my JS
port. Once this is finalized, it should be relatively easy to port the
transformed KLambda code to any architecture that supports exceptions or
labels."
------
nathanwdavis
I'm disappointed F# was not on his list. Not surprised though.
~~~
eddieplan9
To be fair, F# is, instead of a new language, mostly a re-implementation of
OCaml for .Net platform, in the same camp as IronRuby and IronPython. They
even refer it as Caml.net sometimes:
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/cambridge/projects/fs...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/um/cambridge/projects/fsharp/ack.aspx)
------
ThaddeusQuay2
Here's my partial list, of what I can remember at the moment, and in no
particular order.
1) Opa
"Opa is a concise and elegant language for writing distributed web
applications." - <http://opalang.org>
"Opa is an open source programming language for web applications." -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opa_(programming_language)>
There is much to say about Opa. I recommend going through the references in
the Wikipedia article.
2) BaCon
"BaCon is a free BASIC to C converter for Unix-based systems. BaCon intends to
be a programming aid in creating tools which can be compiled on different
platforms (including 64bit environments). It tries to revive the days of the
good old BASIC." - <http://basic-converter.org>
BaCon is interesting because: 1) all you need is a shell and a C compiler, 2)
it was created by Peter van Eerten, who also made GTK-server, and 3) it
converts lazily, effectively making a BASIC-like wrapper for C, thereby
allowing easy access to some of the more interesting aspects of C, which would
not normally be available in BASIC.
3) Spin
"Spin is a multitasking high level computer programming language created by
Parallax's Chip Gracey, who also designed the Propeller microcontroller on
which it runs, for their line of Propeller microcontrollers." -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_Propeller#Built_in_SPI...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_Propeller#Built_in_SPIN_byte_code_interpreter)
4) Agena
"Agena provides you with all the means you need to implement your ideas
quickly: fast real and complex arithmetics, efficient text processing,
graphics, flexible data structures, intelligent procedures, simple package
management, plus various configuration facilities in multi-user environments.
The syntax resembles very simplified Algol 68 with elements taken from Maple,
Lua and SQL. Agena is based on the ANSI C source code of Lua." -
<http://agena.sourceforge.net>
5) Monkey
"Monkey is a brand spanking new programming language that allows you to create
apps on multiple platforms with the greatest of ease. Monkey works by
translating Monkey code to one of a different number of languages at compile
time - including C++, C#, Java, Javascript and Actionscript." -
<http://monkeycoder.co.nz>
"In 2011, BRL released a new cross-platform programming language called Monkey
and its first official module called Mojo. Monkey has a very similar syntax to
BlitzMax, but instead of compiling direct to assembly code, translates Monkey
source files into source for a chosen language, framework or platform." -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_BASIC#Monkey_and_Mojo>
6) LOLCODE
"LOLCODE is an esoteric programming language inspired by the language
expressed in examples of the lolcat Internet meme. The language was created in
2007 by Adam Lindsay, researcher at the Computing Department of Lancaster
University." - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE>
7) Neko
"Neko is a high-level dynamicly typed programming language. It can be used as
an embedded scripting language. It has been designed to provide a common
runtime for several different languages. Learning and using Neko is very easy.
You can easily extend the language with C libraries. You can also write
generators from your own language to Neko and then use the Neko Runtime to
compile, run, and access existing libraries." - <http://nekovm.org>
"Neko is a high-level dynamically typed programming language developed by
Nicolas Cannasse as part of R&D efforts at Motion-Twin." -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(programming_language)>
Neko is one of the targets for haXe, and was created by the same guy. Neko is
six years old, but given its importance, I think that's close enough.
8) Piet
"Piet is a programming language in which programs look like abstract
paintings. The language is named after Piet Mondrian, who pioneered the field
of geometric abstract art." - <http://dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html>
"Piet is an esoteric programming language designed by David Morgan-Mar, whose
programs are bitmaps that look like abstract art. The compilation is guided by
a "pointer" that moves around the image, from one continuous coloured region
to the next. Procedures are carried through when the pointer exits a region.
Piet was named after the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian." -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_(programming_language)>
I don't know the age of Piet, but the 99 Bottles of Beer example is from just
over five years ago.
<http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-piet-1269.html>
\--------------------------------------------------
Before anyone complains, the article says:
"In this post I will provide a list of fairly new languages (let’s say 5 years
with a little flex) that display interesting features and display higher-order
thinking in the way that they tend toward an evolution of past learnings in
programming language thinking. Not all of these languages enjoy active
development, but the more important point is that they represent in some way
"new language thinking". Remember that this goal does not necessarily mean
"innovative"."
I think that each of the languages I've specified applies, although, for some,
my interpretation of "evolution" may have been a bit loose.
~~~
minikomi
Do you know any more about how monkey came about? The about page is pretty
sparse.. but it seems to be a pretty vibrant community.
~~~
ThaddeusQuay2
I don't have any special knowledge of any of these languages, but the full
version of Monkey costs $120. If you are willing to spend that much, then you
might want to first look at a more mature competitor, NS Basic, which has been
around, in one form or another, since 1998, and which costs about the same as
Monkey. I'm not sure what all of the differences and similarities are, but I
notice that they released an update to their "NS Basic/App Studio" today.
<http://nsbasic.com>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Basic>
------
ThaddeusQuay2
In addition to my list of eight, in another comment here, I am throwing in
Logtalk. I wouldn't label it as "9", given that it came out in 1998, but it's
worth noting, because it is still developed, and because its depth fits with
the spirit of the original post.
"Logtalk is an object-oriented logic programming language that can use most
Prolog implementations as a back-end compiler. As a multi-paradigm language,
it includes support for both prototypes and classes, protocols (interfaces),
component-based programming through category-based composition, event-driven
programming, and high-level multi-threading programming." -
<http://logtalk.org>
"Logtalk is an object-oriented logic programming language that extends the
Prolog language with a feature set suitable for programming in the large. It
provides support for encapsulation and data hiding, separation of concerns and
enhanced code reuse. Logtalk uses standard Prolog syntax with the addition of
a few operators and directives. Logtalk is distributed under an open source
license and can run using ISO-compliant Prolog implementations as the back-end
compiler." - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logtalk>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Coming This Year - vanya
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/05/mozilla-firefox-31-coming-this.html
======
Xichekolas
Of course, FF3 was originally slated for over a year ago and it's just now
happening, so take the timeline with a grain of salt. On the other hand,
delays (within reason) are fine as long as they lead to a better product,
which seems the case for FF3.
------
PieSquared
FF3, which I have been using for a while, has been great so far. So, even
though this is later than expected, I'd still like to thank the Firefox team
for making a web browser I like. Good luck on 3.1!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A political news aggregator you can comment on - kaczordon
https://www.newscomment.us/
======
chishaku
The only visible comment is... not good.
How would one go about seeding a political news site with constructive
comments?
As good as HN can be for discussion, many/most? political threads (especially
pandemic or protest related lately) devolve very quickly.
Tough problem. Kudos for shipping.
~~~
kaczordon
Agreed, it's the community that makes it useful. I mainly made this for my
friends to use, was curious what HN users would think, although didn't expect
such a toxic comment so soon...[edit] I'm leaving that comment up for a bit as
it illustrates the problem I think. Perhaps a minimum word count with a valid
word filter would help push people in the right direction or gamification,
something like the
tribunal([https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tribunal](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tribunal))
from League of Legends to ban toxic members.
~~~
11thEarlOfMar
HN has built-in community sculpting. That comment would be downvoted and
possibly even deleted by HN mods.
How about a requirement to post support for the comment. I.e., reasoning
behind the statement with links to sources, kind of like Wikipedia. We do it
as a convention on HN, but maybe making it a requirement is appropriate for
polarized topics:
"My opinion is xyz because abc and you can clearly see that abc is proven by
this quote: ' _my quote from the below linked article_ '
From: www.thebelowlink.com/intelligentreasoning.html
~~~
DoreenMichele
_That comment would be ...possibly even deleted by HN mods._
This assertion runs counter to everything I understand about how HN moderation
operates. I don't believe the HN mods do any such thing.
------
01100011
Political comments suck. > 90% of them are just rehashed talking points and
they quickly devolve into echo chambers for the dominant voting bloc. I'd much
rather see an aggregator using something like an argument map.
~~~
asdfman123
/r/moderatepolitics on reddit is halfway decent. It's definitely liberal, but
the way people discuss things is moderate, if that makes sense. It's not
complete partisanship, and occasionally beliefs get questioned.
Reddit and Hacker News both solve the problem of "how do you host a site to
allow for political discussion?"
To get good debate, you have to curate a social community by effective
moderation. You see it on reddit all the time -- some communities are utter
trash, and some are much better. It's a social problem, not a technological
one.
~~~
klenwell
A variation on this theme: make people frame their comments as falsifiable
predictions. This is what Philip Tetlock advocates with his Superforecasting
concept and sorta implemented here:
[https://www.gjopen.com/](https://www.gjopen.com/)
The hitch: making good falsifiable or verifiable predictions is tough and
time-consuming. Evaluating and judging them requires even more moderation.
And let's face it: most online comments are not about advancing the public
discourse. They're about getting a quick dopamine hit.
~~~
afarrell
Sometimes, it is about thinking-out-loud about an idea.
That is to say, getting multiple dopamine hits as you type a long comment and
imagine people on the internet being impressed by a comment you wouldn't be
motivated enough to journal about.
~~~
chishaku
This is a really good point.
------
kaczordon
I got pretty tired of seeing political news/discussion on my facebook so I
made a dedicated site for it that aggregates news headlines, inspired by
hacker news. Lemme know what you think or if there are any features you think
would be useful on a site like this.
~~~
searchableguy
Seems very US centric. Where are you getting your data from? Facebook?
~~~
Minor49er
The TLD indicates that it is intended for US politics.
~~~
searchableguy
Ah, missed that. Good luck to OP. I think aggregating political content
without extensive filtering is radioactive material so I would be curious
about how they plan to tackle this.
~~~
kaczordon
Yeah US centric since that's what I'm most familiar with. I'm also very
interested in gaming mechanics so I'm looking into ways of game-ifying
constructive user submissions but without active moderation it is probably
impossible.
------
evo_9
It’s perhaps better to rebrand this as an unbiased or third party political
news site or something like that. That’s the cool part of this, as others have
pointed out it’s going to devolve rapidly into a political flame war cesspool.
Love the aggregation part of it though, nice job!
~~~
kaczordon
Thanks! I agree I did build this trying to include sources from left, right
and center so that someone could get a sense of the climate in a quick glance
without being in the FB news algorithm bubble. Getting people to use it is
another thing entirely.
~~~
evo_9
I think that’s a really smart approach. The bulk of the country are near
center not the extreme edges. A site that organically gathers and represents
that middle effectively would be beneficial to everyone.
------
site-packages1
This seems like reddit except people don't submit the stories themselves? So
far the comments are of very poor quality, but to be fair that's a small
sample size (6), or maybe a large sample size (100% of the comments on the
site).
~~~
kaczordon
Basically yeah, a simple news feed without an algorithm but with the option of
filtering by popular stories of the day.
~~~
site-packages1
That’s cool. If this were my project, I’d be spending long days seeding
comments myself under different usernames with different POVs, and trying to
get a handful of legitimate thoughtful users on there. Not an impossible task,
good luck!
------
nvr219
I do everything I can to do the opposite of read comments on political news
articles so if you make the opposite of this product I'll subscribe.
~~~
kaczordon
I was hoping for it to be more of a long form style place for aggregating
opinions. Perhaps a minimum word count to ensure only more thought out
opinions would be allowed.
------
ajoy
We do the aggregation part :
[https://www.thefactual.com/news](https://www.thefactual.com/news)
We tried a forum with comments before and it's not easy. But we did learn a
lot of lessons and plan to introduce a version of it soon.
~~~
evo_9
Nice but you guys might want to create a sort of ‘low-fi’ interface like this.
It’s a ton easier on the eyes esp mobile and is a nice change from the typical
news site.
~~~
ajoy
We had a hard time showing users why we are different from other
aggregators/curators.
Eg. we extract 3 most information dense sentences from article, we show
different political perspectives, we analyze the articles and score them, we
group related articles to a story into a cluster etc.
It's a fine line between showing too much and showing too little.
We also plan on building an app soon.
------
the_arun
How do you make money? ads?
~~~
kaczordon
Or sponsored political thinkers giving an opinion people would want to read.
Not really concerned with that right now, just wanted to make something I’d
want to use myself.
------
artembugara
How do you aggregate news?
~~~
kaczordon
I picked a few RSS feeds of news sources on the right, left and center based
off of [https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-
chart/](https://www.adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/)
~~~
basch
some of my favorite lists of sources, for your inspiration
[https://www.memeorandum.com/lb](https://www.memeorandum.com/lb)
[https://redef.com/charts/sources/total](https://redef.com/charts/sources/total)
[https://aldaily.com/media/](https://aldaily.com/media/)
[https://longform.org/archive/publications](https://longform.org/archive/publications)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Possible discovery of Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour Off US Coast - curtis
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/19/wreck-of-captain-cooks-hms-endeavour-discovered-off-coast-of-america
======
sjclemmy
I live in Northern England and a couple of years ago my wife and I visited the
town of Staithes[0][1] on the the North Yorkshire coast. To get there from
where we live you have to go around the North York Moors, either travelling
east and north up the coast or north and east. If you take the latter route
you can end up going through Cook's childhood home of Great Ayton. I had no
idea Cook was from around there and that he lived in Staithes.
Staithes (along with Robin Hood's Bay[2] further south) is an amazing example
of what English fishing ports were once like and I encourage everyone to visit
if you have the opportunity.
[0]
[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Staithes](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Staithes)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staithes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staithes)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood%27s_Bay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood%27s_Bay)
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Robin Hood's Bay is well worth the effort.
But that whole coastal strip is full of special places, from the bird colonies
at Flamborough to gothic Whitby.
------
Tomminn
I'm a kiwi. The ship is on our 50c coins, but has always seemed almost
mythical to me. This would be pretty damn cool.
~~~
keithnz
kiwi too, and yes, this would be a cool find. This ship is such a significant
part of the south pacifics history.
~~~
Applethief
Also Kiwi. Amazing News...
~~~
bacon_waffle
Checking in from Dunedin ;)
Too bad it sounds like Endeavour will stay up there, but what an amazing find!
------
everdev
> It was scuttled in 1778 along with 12 other ships to act as a blockade in
> the lead up to the battle of Rhode Island.
Why would sinking a ship act as a blockade? I can see if it was in shallow
water, but I'm presuming these shipwrecks are in deeper water since they're
only now being discovered.
~~~
chrsstrm
Well, this is just a random guess, but as you can see here [0], the navigation
channel where a linked article roughly located the wreck [1] seems to vary in
depth between 50-120'. Looking at a similar style ship from the same timeframe
[2], we see a main mast height taller than the water depth in that location. I
would imagine if you scuttled the ships in a precise pattern, it would make it
incredibly difficult for a ship under wind power to enter the port and avoid
hitting the mast of a scuttled ship. I just happened to be in Newport this
summer and learned about the area's history. The people who lived there were
very accomplished seamen and I would not doubt their knowledge was put to good
use in setting up that blockade.
[0]
[http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/13223.shtml](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/13223.shtml)
[1] [https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/hms-endeavour-
fou...](https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/hms-endeavour-found-one-of-
the-greatest-maritime-mysteries-of-all-time-solved-20180919-p504lx.html)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution)
~~~
ilikepi
It's a little odd that the article says this:
> The site is located just off Goat Island, a small island in the Narragansett
> Bay.
...but the map in the article doesn't actually reflect this. The little red
circle is southwest of Brenton Point, and it's a couple miles away from the
vicinity of Goat Island. I guess whomever put the map together phoned it
in...or decided there wasn't enough room on the map to place the circle more
accurately.
------
escherplex
Seems there wasn't much of an appreciation for items of historic significance
in those days. Although data is sketchy, _HMS Resolution_ used in Cook's
second and third voyages of discovery apparently suffered a similar
ignominious fate (from Wikipedia)
_Her fate, by some cruel twist of historical irony, is as incredible as
Endeavour 's – she [Resolution] was sold to the French, rechristened La
Liberte, and transformed into a whaler, then ended her days rotting in Newport
Harbor. She settled to the bottom just a mile from Endeavour_
And yet items of monarchical conspicuous consumption like the crown jewels are
afforded meticulous preservation resources. /s
~~~
adrianratnapala
There will always be a selection effect here. You need hindsight to know with
any accuracy what is old junk, vs. what is of historical interest.
------
ada1981
I read this as Captain Hook the first time...
~~~
jvzr
This is exactly what I read and I was actually confused why people were
suddenly talking of a certain Captain Cook ('who is this guy?!') in this
thread
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Go Language is faster than the Computer Language Benchmarks Game thinks - gbin
http://klaig.blogspot.be/2012/09/the-go-language-is-faster-than-computer.html
======
CJefferson
The title is misleading, and the article is hard to read.
The central complaint seems to be that the language shoot-out uses the 'go'
compiler. This doesn't seem surprisingly, seeing as this is what the go
website tells users to use.
There is however a gcc frontend for go, complete as of July and still not in
many distributions (this isn't a go problem, man distros haven't updated yet
to gcc 4.7.1).
So the real headline should be 'Computer Language Benchmarks uses google's go
compiler, gccgo is faster'
~~~
markokocic
That is one of the things I miss in Shootout. Before, there were allowed
multiple implementations for each language, and users could see how big
difference between Lua and Luajit is, or how Python2 compares to Python 3.
Now that there is only one implementation for each language allowed, some
important information is missing from the site.
~~~
malkia
Wait... Is luajit is back in the benchmark shootout?
~~~
masklinn
no
------
masklinn
1\. Languages are not fast (or slow), implementations are. The language
semantics can help or hinder, but in and of itself a language doesn't run.
2\. This is old news. The Shootout was debatable before, but 12~18 months ago
it suddenly decided that only one implementation of each language (picked
completely arbitrarily and according to no clear cut rules, and sometimes
allowing two implementations e.g. Python gets CPython 3, Lua gets Lua, but
Ruby gets both MRI 1.9 and JRuby, Erlang gets HiPE and Javascript gets V8)
would be allowed after — as far as I understand — a spat with the pypy team.
~~~
wheaties
JRuby really is a different language than Ruby. Not only is it built on a
different ecosystem of libraries (anything on the JVM vs anything for Ruby)
but there are language extensions that make it operate differently (Java
MBeans being one of them.)
~~~
masklinn
> JRuby really is a different language than Ruby.
No, JRuby is a JVM-based implementation of Ruby.
> Not only is it built on a different ecosystem of libraries (anything on the
> JVM vs anything for Ruby)
Irrelevant, you can make the same claim about any impementation of a language:
GHC has extensions to Haskell, why isn't JHC benched as well? IronPython can
use .Net libraries but not Python C-API libraries, why isn't it there?
> there are language extensions
Which are not used in the shootout and — again – are irrelevant anyway.
------
jbellis
A trivial benchmark that doesn't actually run long enough or do enough
allocation to exercise the GC isn't going to be representative of real-world
performance in any case.
~~~
igouy
A trivial assertion without supporting evidence for the claims.
------
anuraj
Go is unlikely to be faster than Java (JVM is very optimized) in the near
future. So rerun your benchmarks!
~~~
Tuna-Fish
In a sufficiently short test (where the jit cannot show it's chops) I'd expect
go to win.
The tests in the benchmark game are totally useless anyway. When given a load
that does not stress the L1i, modern CPUs perform pretty much completely
differently than they do on real loads with more than 32kB of code. Given such
a small code snippet, the CPU will never fail a (theoretically predictable)
branch, will never spill L1, and, on SNB, will in fact never even have to
decode an instruction after the uOP cache is primed.
~~~
batista
> _When given a load that does not stress the L1i, modern CPUs perform pretty
> much completely differently than they do on real loads with more than 32kB
> of code._
Even if that's the case, one would assume that would hold for ALL languages,
so you get a fair comparison at that...
~~~
lmm
In the same way that a bicycle race is a fair way to compare sprinters as long
as you have all of them ride bicycles. It's a fair benchmark, but it's not
benchmarking the case that's actually important.
~~~
batista
No, it's like comparing sprinters by having them run, and someone telling you:
"hey, the problem is not that sprinter X is ten times slower. The problem is
what you want to do in the real world. Do you want to go from A to B? Why not
take the bus, etc".
[I'm not saying this about the L1i cache case specially, which is a good
point, but rather for the prevalent response to any benchmark in Go-land, a
defensive attitude which I have not witnessed in any other language community.
Usually Python, JS, Ruby, Rust etc guys get on to fixing such microbenchmark
behavior or explain why it's as it is. Go guys just propose you forget about
it and rewrite your code in another way].
I don't care about a specific real world case of getting from A to B, or how
it can be done faster in another way. I care about measuring sprinters. The
case that's important here is benchmarking itself. How fast each and every
instruction of a similar type executes in a language.
E.g if I do:
for i in range(10): print i
and
for i:=0; i<10; i++ { fmt.Print(i); }
I don't care if this kind of code is not representative of an actual program,
I don't care if the code inside the loop might take more time in most cases, I
don't care if I can write some particular program using some other structure.
I only want to know why this takes X time in Python and c*X time in Go, and if
the c factor can be improved.
Suggestions about "real world programs" and "write this another way and then
measure" in this regard are counter-productive, because they focus not on raw
benchmarking the language but on specific cases.
~~~
Tuna-Fish
I'd like to point out that I'm not one from the goland, and in fact I find the
language quite disappointing. However, the fact that the benchmarks are rather
meaningless is a real problem, because languages use resources differently,
and thus resource exhaustion affects them differently.
A notable example is C++-style templates (typically every codepath is expanded
independently) vs java-style generics (one codepath with checks for types).
C++-style absolutely dominates in small benchmarks, because it provides the
best possible code. However, if you use a lot of them on different types, it's
very easy for them to totally ruin your performance due to resource
exhaustion. Some of the very largest performance gains I've ever gotten from a
small optimization (on the order of 10x real improvement for a spot change to
a few dozen lines, with no change to algorithms) involved removing C++
templates, storing tags, and adding a few case statements based on them.
> I'm not saying this about the L1i cache case specially, which is a good
> point
Note that L1i is not the only, or even the biggest offender. BTB slots are
another very critical one. Predicted branches are essentially free on modern
OoO cores, and business logic often contains inhuman amounts of what's
essentially if trees. Have enough branches in your main loop that the BTB
overflows, and thanks to LRU replacement, all those ifs turn from costing half
a cycle to costing ~10 cycles or so. Properly optimizing for that case is very
different from optimizing for some microbenchmark with a 100 bytes of code.
And again, this is not praise for on an indictment against some language. I'm
not saying that C++ is slow, it was just an easy example of a case where
things change when the codebase gets bigger. What I am saying is that the
performance shootout is essentially useless, and promotes the kind of
optimizations that either don't really help, or even hurt speed in the large.
If performance actually matters to you, you are much better off measuring
things like competing mature XML parsers or the like. While there are a lot of
things wrong with using that to measure the speed of your favorite language,
it's still _less wrong_ than using a five-line microbenchmark.
~~~
igouy
>>If performance actually matters to you, you are much better off measuring
things like competing mature XML parsers or the like.<<
Please tell us where we can see that comparison!
>>less wrong than using a five-line microbenchmark<<
The trouble with that hyperbole is that someone's already mentioned their
five-line microbenchmark in this discussion --
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544096>
The alternatives to the benchmarks game that people come up with are usually
worse, not better.
------
markokrajnc
I tested simple a simple Go program with a for loop counting from 1 to several
millions and making simple integer calculations and the same with Java. Java
was 4-5x faster than Go.
It looks like HotSpot VM is preety much optimized and that Go still needs a
lot of compiler optimizations...
I know that this test isn´t representative and complete, but it is a good
smoke test for first comparison. C and Go should be faster than Java in pure
integer numerics (or at least as fast as Java)...
~~~
supersillyus
Why should C and Go (AOT compiled) be faster than Java for pure integer
numerics? For long-running simple tight loops of numerics, I'd assume HotSpot
would be faster.
~~~
igouy
Don't assume -- measure.
------
SeanDav
OT:
I am a bit of a fan of dark backgrounds but you got to be careful with the
colours for links etc. Dark grey on Darker Grey is not very visible.
Additionally the article is not clearly laid out and if it didn't have "Go" in
the title would not have had a chance at high front page spot on HN.
Oh well such is life at the moment.
~~~
gbin
Indeed, fixed the horrible link color. I also agree, Go is really hyped at the
moment.
------
halostatue
Personally, I'm surprised that anyone takes the shootout seriously. In my
experience, benchmarks of this sort are about as useful and trustworthy as GPU
benchmark results provided by a GPU vendor.
After having spent a little while looking over the site, I've got to give
igouy props for fixing many of the worst problems that existed on the site a
few years back (some of the micro-benchmarks that used to exist were
questionable, at best; some of the implementations were even worse). It is a
far better presented, qualified, and curated site than it used to be.
I still don't think it's a _useful_ site and that people would be better off
ignoring it, but with the changes made, I don't think it's a _harmful_ site
anymore.
~~~
igouy
>>useful<<
"#1. To show working programs written in less familiar programming languages"
>>trustworthy<<
Are you saying that you believe the measurements to be falsified?
~~~
halostatue
Benchmarking is, in general, useless without context. I believe that something
like the CLBG fails "useful" in the sense that the curated programs are
themselves of limited utility. Showing different benchmark implementations
illustrates _some_ things about different programming languages, but IMO these
differences are of limited utility when learning languages.
Do I believe that your measurements are falsified? No. But generalized
benchmarks (that is, without meaningful context to the problem that you're
trying to solve) are truthy, at best—sort of like statistics presented out of
context (such as the 47% figure floating around in political circles).
As I said, I think the way that the CLBG is presented now is much better than
it was presented as the Shootout. I just don't think that it's useful toward
real software development.
~~~
igouy
I'm sorry about the reply I made a few days ago -- it doesn't seem to address
what you wrote.
>>limited utility<<
I don't think there's anything on the website that suggests the benchmarks
game provides some sort of perfect, definitive and ultimate statement about
anything at all.
On the contrary -- "Here you'll find provisional facts about the performance
of programs written in ≈24 different programming languages for a dozen simple
tasks."
>>useful toward real software development<<
That would be depend on how well informed the "real" software developers are,
and there seem to be plenty of programmers with strange ideas about languages
they haven't used.
------
Rickasaurus
One datapoint is not meaningful here. Give it a go with the entire suite.
------
Uchikoma
As long as someone in our industry writes "smoking scala, clojure, java and
lisp" we have not progressed from being children, playing with toys in our
sandbox with a mine-is-bigger-than-yours attitude. Sad.
~~~
ryeguy
Oh please. It's a simple informal choice of words. To many people, programming
languages are toys too, because programming is a hobby. It doesn't have to be
all uptight super business speak all the time.
~~~
silentOpen
It doesn't have to be tribal, either.
~~~
silentOpen
Is it really so hard to understand that the language shootout promotes the
same sort of (misinformed) tribalism-by-language that the blog post author
both dislikes (otherwise, why concern yourself over relatively pointless
microbenchmarks of single implementations?) and reinforces (apparently
"smoking" other languages is good?). What happened to objective assessment?
~~~
igouy
Is it really so hard to understand that it hasn't been called _the language
shootout_ for over 5 years - and you are promoting "the same sort of
(misinformed) tribalism-by-language" by talking about it in those terms?
My guess is that your mistaken view of what the benchmarks game promotes
reflects a lack of familiarity with what the website says about itself on the
homepage and the Help page and the Conclusions page and ...
~~~
silentOpen
_Is it really so hard to understand that it hasn't been called the language
shootout for over 5 years - and you are promoting "the same sort of
(misinformed) tribalism-by-language" by talking about it in those terms?_
The "benchmarks game" is largely the same as when it was called the "language
shootout" now with more caveats plastered about. Please explain to me which
language tribe I am promoting by calling the "benchmarks game" by its original
name? Is it the tribe of skeptics? Perhaps use an HTTP 301 to redirect
<[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/>](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/>);
to
<[http://microbenchmarks.alioth.debian.org/>](http://microbenchmarks.alioth.debian.org/>);
and expunge "shootout" from all names?
_My guess is that your mistaken view of what the benchmarks game promotes
reflects a lack of familiarity with what the website says about itself on the
homepage and the Help page and the Conclusions page and ..._
Instead of guessing what my "view" "reflects", consider what the "benchmarks
game" has promoted in TFA:
Title: "The Go Language is faster than the computer language benchmarks game
thinks it is"
Well, this isn't what the "benchmarks game" says it measures anywhere (in
fact, the site explicitly decries this interpretation) and yet this is what it
indirectly promotes in various language communities (and linkbait tastes
good).
Conclusion: "So Go should be between C and Clean, smoking scala, clojure, java
and lisp."
Again, this isn't what the site says it measures (it measures some aspects of
some implementations, not languages) and yet this is how it is portrayed by
third parties. I understand that it is difficult to give people a lot of
'easy' data and simultaneously educate them about the reasonable limits of
inference based on those data. I understand that the benchmarks game has taken
great pains to try to educate its readers and inform their conclusions. I
don't know if it will ever be enough -- people (as we can see) like easy
answers and aren't willing to 0.) do the work to get more complete data sets
and 1.) temper their findings with objective reality instead of drawing
misinformed conclusions.
Do you see how the easily-digestible plots (indirectly) promote tribalism over
rationality? Do you see how a plot is worth a thousand words?
~~~
igouy
Talking about the benchmarks game as a shootout promotes "the same sort of
(misinformed) tribalism-by-language" -- I didn't say you were promoting a
particular language tribe.
>>Perhaps use an HTTP 301 to redirect<<
Perhaps that was understood 5 years ago, and there are obstacles to that
approach. (Not that I think that's actually why people like to talk about _the
shootout_.)
>>promoted in TFA<<
Here you are -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4544096>
He's talking about this -- [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-
nuts/KqA1Jlpu2nM/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-
nuts/KqA1Jlpu2nM/discussion)
He came up with it all by himself, the same way people make factorial
performance comparisons.
>>(and linkbait tastes good)<<
This kind of traffic-less blog post isn't a benefit -- stackoverflow is by far
the main source of link traffic, and much more traffic comes from direct
search.
>>Do you see how the easily-digestible plots (indirectly) promote tribalism
over rationality?<<
Do you see how you can intervene and explain what the plots actually say?
------
batista
>*The Go Language is faster than the Computer Language Benchmarks Game thinks
That's what Go advocates always say, but, for a static language with tight
memory structures, it's not that fast at all.
Now, he does compile with gcc go, which is faster, but using the go tool I
frequently find for lots of use cases it's about 50-100% faster than Python,
or 2-5 times slower than Java.
Not every impressive -- it probably needs a better compiler with more
optimizations and a better GC.
When you point that out the the golang mailing list, it's mostly met with la-
la-hands-in-the-ears denial, and suggestions to rewrite your program in a
smarter way and micro-optimize it. But I don't want to find the optimal
algorithm for something -- I want to compare speed, and for that same-ish
algorithms in same-ish languages are fine.
(Though, Russ Cox said the current HEAD has a lot of optimizations and is
quite faster, so things might be improving there).
~~~
tptacek
Not meaning this snarkily, but: if you write a program in Java and it's 2x
faster than a Go program written in the same style, why not just write in
Java?
~~~
batista
Well, and I mean this kinda snarkily, who said people don't?
I, for one, found that for some kinds of work I do, Go doesn't give that much
of a performance advantage, so I'm exploring other languages.
That said, even if Java gives you 2x, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't
complain about Go.
E.g you might like Go's semantics and syntax, or it might have other benefits
for you. That you like those things about Go, doesn't mean you don't get to
say "shame about the performance".
~~~
tptacek
I guess I'm just saying, Go's syntax and semantics aren't enough of a win for
you to deal with the performance hit you take compared to Java. So use Java.
It's not a moral issue.
~~~
batista
Well, I hoped to use Go to avoid both:
a) writing in C for performance (and having to setup glib et al to make it
comfortable)
and:
b) carrying the JVM with me to run something.
(And, no, I won't consider AOT compilers for Java. I want to deal with
reasonably mature and widespread technologies and tooling).
So, there are my constraints. Given those, maybe C++ is the ticket. D is not
mainstream enough, and Rust I've played with and I like very much but is still
in flux.
~~~
tptacek
I wrote three paragraphs of response here, as is my wont, and realized before
hitting "reply" that that's the wrong tack.
Let's be specific. What are you building or considering, where your current
options are C and the JVM? How does Go fall down on that work load?
I've got a fair bit of professional experience in both C (~10 years shipping
code continuously in it) and Java, and I've spent the last couple weeks in Go
--- not long enough to be a true believer, but enough to have some practical
experience.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Interview with Magnus Carlsen, the current #1 chess player - trafficlight
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6187
======
mburney
_"When I am feeling good, I train a lot. When I feel bad, I don’t bother. I
don’t enjoy working to a timetable. Systematic learning would kill me."_
I really like this approach. I find learning how to write software works the
same way for me. I tried learning using a schedule, but it never worked for
me. It is nice to know there is a chess grandmaster that has the same
approach.
~~~
kunqiana
"feeling good" seems a bit generic here. I doubt he means the same thing as
inspiration. The competitive nature of chess and the fact that it is a "game",
is usually enough to motivate someone to work harder after winning a few games
(ie warcraft). Where as in writing and writing software there are more mental
blocks and success and gratifications are generally slower, and also harder to
get back on track if you start "feeling bad". So I think discipline is more
important in activities that takes longer to feel gratified.
------
mark_l_watson
I would guess that his "secret" is that he loves the game of chess. I like
both chess and Go but realized my limitations (I did poorly in the US Chess
Open in 1976, and I never broke the Shodan level in Go) a long time ago; I
still play both games, but I prefer to study "famous" games since I am just
good enough to appreciate other people's great games.
------
andrewljohnson
He sounds pretty crazy... par for the course for chess champions of course.
There's a lot to read between the lines with what he says about Kasparov...
and he already thinks he's better.
~~~
wakeupthedawn
Well he is better than Kasparov now. If they played a match, he'd definitely
win.
~~~
greyman
You are right that Carlsen would probably win, but not because he is "better".
I remember Kasparov himself commented on this issue recently, saying something
like since he doesn't already plays competitive chess, his intuition is not
that sharp, while Carlsen is more in shape.
Overall, I consider Kasparov to be the best chess player ever, while Carlsen
has a potential to be at least as good as Kasparov was in his best years.
Overall, I am happy that those two came together.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coda is a next-generation spreadsheet designed to make Excel a thing of the past - el_duderino
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16497444/coda-spreadsheet-krypton-shishir-mehrotra
======
abricot
Doesn't look like a spreadsheet to me.
It falls more into the space that are occupied by Podio[1] and Zoho Creator[2]
- where you basically create small apps to support your business workflow.
[1] [https://podio.com](https://podio.com) [2]
[https://www.zoho.eu/creator/](https://www.zoho.eu/creator/)
~~~
type0
or airtable
------
LordHog
Personally, I still don't like these web apps. I want something that run
local. I am not sure if only runs in the cloud or will there be a local
version or not.
~~~
rpedela
Currently it only runs on the desktop.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Student invents technology to produce world’s ‘cheapest’ power - abrimo
http://www.thedailystar.net/beta2/news/student-invents-technology-to-produce-worlds-cheapest-power/
======
kken
And yet another perpetuum mobile. Does not work, is scam.
~~~
mrmagooey
Indeed, why people upvote these things is beyond me.
~~~
officialjunk
Don't have the links handy right now, but there are patents for these types of
physics hocus pocus "inventions."
Also, why does the title of this submission have quotes around "cheapest?"
------
moocowduckquack
My favourite one of these is this stupidness in Brazil, which seemingly has
decided that the problem with perpetual motion was just that nobody had built
it big enough yet, or something -
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Frarenergia.com.br%2F&act=url)
\- apparently they are currently building a second one in Illinois.
_" O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you
created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after
gold."_
Leonardo da Vinci
~~~
lowmagnet
That's cg.
~~~
moocowduckquack
maybe - _" Now, before you all scream “Photoshopped,” take a gander at a
FotoForensics analysis of one of the images, where ELA (error level analysis)
seems to indicate consistent levels of compression. EXIF data shows the
pictures were shot with a Sony DSC-WX5 and saved in PhotoScape. It may be
simpler than that: you can easily recognize the same employees in different
shots from different angles, and there are quite a lot of photos. RAR
Energia’s most recent endeavor—a second machine in Gilman Illinois—seems to
have been erected in the past two months. The Gilman warehouse is located on
property belonging to bio-diesel manufacturing firm Incobrasa Industries
(named a “Company of the [RAR Energia] group” on the RAR Energia site). Here’s
a little internet sleuthing for your consideration: a photo of the completed
warehouse and a Google maps link to the location in question (40.763176,
-88.012706). Note the distinctly shaped building in the background (another
view here, during construction), which can be found due south of the location
indicated in the Google maps link. We’re not suggesting that you completely
rule out image manipulation, but if it’s Photoshopped, it’s a damned elaborate
job."_ \- [http://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-
rea...](http://hackaday.com/2013/11/30/gravity-powered-generator-real-or-
fake/)
------
lervag
If it sounds to good to be true...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anonymous Hijacks Federal Website Over Aaron Swartz Suicide - Jaigus
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/anonymous-hijacks-federal-website-threatens-doj-document-dump-174943824--abc-news-politics.html
======
lemcoe9
I may get flamed for asking this, but am I the only one that thinks the Swartz
suicide has been over-reacted to by HN and the tech community at large? In no
way to I mean to be disrespectful or callous, but it seems that there is way
too much coverage of his suicide.
~~~
archgoon
I think the real issue is that everyone (both Hacker News types and the public
at large) has, up until now, been far too complacent about computer law and
the justice system in general.
We should be making this much noise more often.
~~~
mpyne
Computer law, absolutely. But I'd be careful about the untrained tinkering
with the justice system. A lot of the "features" it now sports are due to even
worse corruption in the past.
IMHO the best fix that could be done with the justice system is to simply
decriminalize many existing classifications of "crime" that are essentially
minor and victimless. Even what little Aaron did caused more harm than someone
smoking pot in their home or consensual sexting with their 1-year-younger
girlfriend.
But I can't overstress enough how all of these failings (computer crime, harsh
sentences on negligible offenses) lie at the hands of the legislature at
large, not the courts.
------
doe88
I really think for once Anonymous guys should shut up and find another _cause_
to _defend_ , because If they wanted to harm the currently insightful ongoing
debate on the handling of the Aaron Swartz's case they wouldn't do otherwise.
And btw the actions of Aaron Swartz were not even remotely comparable with the
reckless behavior of Anonymous. All this can do is make Aaron Swartz guilty by
association in the mind of the average person when she hear about the actions
of Anonymous. It doesn't serve any meaningful purpose.
~~~
wildranter
The guy killed himself for something greater then you. So what are you
standing for anyway?
As far from as I see you're just saying a bunch of words instead of doing
something meaningful like he did.
Man up or shut up.
~~~
derleth
> Man up or shut up.
This is sexist. That's why you lose.
~~~
reinhardt
Oh FFS with the sexism police in HN
------
ctbeiser
Anonymous needs to get a better understanding of the effects of their actions.
I'm all for taking illegal but morally acceptable actions on a calculated and
reasonable basis. Using vigilante website-takeovers as a way to call for a
more fair justice system is not reasonable. A pseudo-criminal, intellectually
unsophisticated hacking collective's endorsement does not do justice to the
reality that Aaron was hounded despite lacking any substantial wrongdoing, as
acknowledged by JSTOR's lawyers.
------
The1TrueGuy
Mr. Swartz was a canary in our coal mine. When tyranny encouraged his death we
all became more acutely aware of it, yet another thing we owe him gratitude
for no matter how much we wish he'd toughed it out so we could crack a beer
with him. For very good reasons Anonymous has done something I doubt myself or
most of you would have the courage to undertake and I am grateful to them.
Blank is Beautiful!
------
film42
Cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sV8dPXf...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sV8dPXftnTcJ:www.ussc.gov/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
------
berlinbrown
Hijacking a website is so 1990s. Hack a website and then give me all the
logins. That would be kind of interesting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Peer to peer learning - pal_25
what do you think will be the future of classroom learning?do you think live streaming will replace going to school much the same way sms/emails replaced post offices?
======
TaiFood
For the worst possible education, live streaming fills that void.
Much of learning is communication, not avoidance.
~~~
pal_25
I mean ,most developing countries i.e Africa are experiencing growth in mobile
phone usage yet infrastructure such as roads are being still bad or worse
crippled by corruption.A lot of cars get stuck along the road in cities with
most people going to mostly school:: during holidays the traffic can be
observed to have reduced tremendously.Think of spicing distance learning with
live streaming ..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Visualizing Apache Log Data with Minecraft - wallflower
https://streamsets.com/blog/visualizing-apache-log-data-minecraft/
======
smrxx
Is that a UNIX filesystem?
------
icedata
reminds me of Codecity
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stores closing at a record pace - mjfern
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/22/news/credit-suisse-retail/index.html
======
woogiewonka
I wonder what will happen with all that retail space? There was an interesting
TED talk about dying shopping malls that was also quite depressing at the same
time. I can see how this trend will only continue with convenience that comes
with shopping online.
I'm also curious what this trend will do in terms of pollution from increased
shipping.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hyper – Hypervisor-agnostic Docker engine - tbronchain
https://hyper.sh/
======
mbreese
I like this idea. It's a stripped down VM capable of only running containers.
There are a couple of downsides, compared to straight docker though - you have
to go through the VM layer for disk io. So, if you have a shared volume, there
will be a performance hit.
However, you get a big boost for security.
This type of tech could make it possible to use (Docker) containers in a true
multi-tenant system.
One question though - is it possible to specify the vmem and vcpus for the
qemu VM? (Either from the command line or pod file?)
~~~
feld
Containers have been used in multi-tenant systems for years in both Solaris
and FreeBSD via zones and jails
~~~
gnepzhao
Not sure how secure they are. But sounds a bit scary to run my app in a
shared-kernel environment.
~~~
feld
Docker also uses a shared kernel...
edit: and why is it different than a shared hypervisor? Hypervisors have
exploits, too...
~~~
gnepzhao
Yes, but the nature of lxc makes it much easier to exploits.
------
neilellis
Would be nice to have this on Macs too no more crappy VirtualBox ;-)
~~~
divideby0
You can do Docker with VMWare using Docker Machine:
docker-machine create -d vmwarefusion --vmwarefusion-boot2docker-url
[https://github.com/cloudnativeapps/boot2docker/releases/down...](https://github.com/cloudnativeapps/boot2docker/releases/download/v1.6.0-vmw/boot2docker-1.6.0-vmw.iso)
my-docker-machine --vmwarefusion-memory 4096 --vmwarefusion-disk-size 30000
------
zobzu
it seems very similar to clearcontainer that was announced a few days ago,
i.e. interesting since both are much nicer than "traditional container"
solutions.
Now for the interesting stuff.. init process (C):
[https://github.com/hyperhq/hyperstart](https://github.com/hyperhq/hyperstart)
Daemon (Go):
[https://github.com/hyperhq/hyper/tree/master/hyperdaemon](https://github.com/hyperhq/hyper/tree/master/hyperdaemon)
Stuff to replace with overlayfs ;)
[https://github.com/hyperhq/hyper/tree/master/storage/aufs](https://github.com/hyperhq/hyper/tree/master/storage/aufs)
~~~
gnawux
yes, we do not support overlayfs yet, but will. overlayfs is the future of
unionfs, and aufs is the current. :)
------
kj92
Looks interesting. How is this different from Clear Container several days
ago?
~~~
tbronchain
Hi there,
Thanks for your interest in Hyper!
We also noticed the release announcement of Clear Containers a few days ago.
There are 2 main differences, the first being on the technology used, CC using
RKT, while Hyper is based on Docker images. There is also a difference in term
of philosophy, where Hyper aims to be a technology-neutral open source
solution.
Hyper also have more features, such as running a Pod rather than one image on
a hypervisor as a schedule unit.
For more details, please check our FAQ
([https://hyper.sh/faq.html](https://hyper.sh/faq.html))
~~~
philips
I don't feel this is correct. rkt can run docker images[1] and once the clear
containers patches[2] land you will be able to run a docker image or an appc
image inside of a VM under rkt.
[1]
[https://github.com/coreos/rkt/blob/master/Documentation/comm...](https://github.com/coreos/rkt/blob/master/Documentation/commands.md#fetch-
from-a-docker-registry)
[2]
[https://github.com/coreos/rkt/pull/946](https://github.com/coreos/rkt/pull/946)
~~~
josephjacks
I think the question was specifically in the context of CC.
------
bandrami
Have we reached Peak Container yet?
~~~
tbronchain
Hi there, I am not sure what do you mean by "Peak Container"?
~~~
bandrami
Sorry, it's a pun on "Peak Oil" (the idea that at some point we're going to
pump and all the oil in the earth will be gone).
Not a dig at Hyper in particular (which looks cool), just that the "containers
as service configuration management" market is extremely saturated right now.
~~~
tbronchain
The idea behind hyper is to propose something slightly different, answering
the security issues you can have with containers.
------
MCRed
Are there good management and orchestration tools for Xen (or other
hypervisor)? One of the things about Docker is that I'm having trouble finding
good tools for managing an infrastructure of Docker containers. I know this is
being worked on, yes, but it's early days and I need something that is mature.
If anyone can suggest Xen admin stuff, I'd really appreciate it.
~~~
Tiksi
There's xenserver (tools) which was opensourced a little while ago.
Most configuration management systems also have modules for managing xen. At
the moment I'm writing some CFM code using saltstack with the xapi and virt
for my own stuff, as I'm not a huge fan of the xenserver and xen cloud
platform abstractions.
------
lsllc
Is this just a cross platform boot2docker?
~~~
tbronchain
Hi,
Hyper and Boot2docker are two really distinct products.
The difference is, one (boot2docker) let you run containers on not compatible
OSes, while the other one (Hyper) let you run each container, distinctly, in a
dedicated VM.
Hope that helps :)
~~~
m_mueller
Sorry, but I don't quite get it. What's the advantage over having a dedicated
VM per container?
~~~
tbronchain
Isolation, and security. As @mbreese perfectly said, "This type of tech could
make it possible to use (Docker) containers in a true multi-tenant system."
With Hyper, all your containers will run their own kernel, instead of sharing
the host's one.
~~~
techdragon
It sounds like the shit Microsoft was gibbering about a little while ago,
about how they would integrate their HyperV technology into their docker
runtime
~~~
scprodigy
Hmm, I happen to know some details of that. It is actually a quite powerful
technology with some out-of-box ideas.
------
throwaway5522
Hmm, something seems strangely familiar about this code.
[https://github.com/hyperhq/hyper/blob/master/storage/aufs/au...](https://github.com/hyperhq/hyper/blob/master/storage/aufs/aufs.go#L118)
[https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/daemon/graphdri...](https://github.com/docker/docker/blob/master/daemon/graphdriver/aufs/aufs.go#L420)
~~~
quesera
Luckily, the Apache Public License is compatible with itself.
------
boynux
That looks very interesting, I'm wondering how "container management" will be
handled and how scalable is it?
~~~
tbronchain
Hi there, Thanks for your interest :) Container management is handled the same
way it is in Docker (Hyper directly uses the Docker hub, and you can directly
`hyper pull` Docker images). About scalability, it is, again, very similar to
Docker's scalability. Hyper isn't compatible with some Docker components such
as Compose or Swarm yet, but it is on the roadmap. You can try Hyper following
the installation procedure:
[https://docs.hyper.sh/get_started/install.html](https://docs.hyper.sh/get_started/install.html)
------
jacques_chester
Is this just a stripped down type-2 hypervisor guest kernel, or is there
something else going on?
~~~
gnawux
Hi,
It does not run a full guest OS on the hypervisor, instead, initrd itself
launches a group of docker images, aka Pod on it.
~~~
jzila
So you're running all the containers on the initrd kernel?
~~~
otoburb
I had the same question, and had to dig a little into the Google Pod
documentation for this handy explanation: "In terms of Docker constructs, a
pod consists of a colocated group of Docker containers with shared
volumes."[1]
Based on the above tidbit, each Pod contains a few containers, thus a Pod (and
hence all of the containers in the Pod) will indeed be running on the initrd
kernel from the HyperVM instance.
The key point is that this applies for _each_ HyperVM (i.e. one HyperVM
launched per Pod). It seems the idea is that wherever you'd normally launch a
container, you can now instead launch a lighweight VM that behaves like a
container (i.e. fast to launch & small footprint) with default virtualization
benefits.
Basically, if you replace all instances of the term "HyperVM" with
"ContainerVM", it may help to parse their explanations more easily.
[1]
[https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/maste...](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/pods.md)
------
mrmondo
The first you see when you load that page is a website telling you to curl to
bash.
The next thing you see is a gif that didn't seem to tell me what it actually
is.
I notice that it uses Kernel 4.0.1 - which is great that they're using
something modern, however 4.0.1 has a critical EXT4 bug that causes major data
corruption. This has been fixed in 4.1 RC5.
A lot of typos throughout the site too:
\- "Subscribe to the lastest Hyper news." \- " Pod is the first class in
Hyper"
I won't even mention the use of comic sans on their diagrams...
~~~
kordless
> I won't even mention the use of comic sans on their diagrams...
Actually, you just did.
------
nostalgiac
>curl -sSL [https://hyper.sh/install](https://hyper.sh/install) | bash
Seriously? Developers need to stop sprouting this crap as an install method.
Nobody in their sane mine should curl a script into bash to install a product.
~~~
Meai
There is no difference to running an executable. In fact, this is the BEST way
to offer installation to users. He is literally showing you the source code so
you can decide whether you actually want to run it or not. This stupid meme of
not wanting to run scripts is just that: a meme.
~~~
panhandlr
How many production servers have you been responsible for in your lifetime?
"There is no difference to running an executable. "
... There are these following differences.
1\. That url, assuming no malicious 3rd-party/nation-state is spoofing the
response, could return any different version of the installer resource at any
given time.
2\. That url might not always be available, for any number of reasons, and how
is someone who wants to "discover" this software when they are looking through
their available package list?
3\. Who knows what that url is "suppose to do" ... there is no signing
process, peer review process, nothing, you get whatever the apache server on
the other side of that HTTP request wants to give you, and your gonna send
that right into your root shell...
4\. Unlike a package, sitting in my personal safe, self host, audited, self-
verified debian package repository mirror ... this URL might not work
tomorrow, it might not work at 3:35am when my primary server took a shit and i
need to rebuild the whole stack... who knows what this URL will do in between
subsequent runs... it could return 2 different things when I am trying to
build a cluster of this product.
~~~
quesera
0\. Thousands. Tens of thousands, probably.
1\. True of any download link as well.
2\. See 1.
3\. See 1, unspoken comparison to trusted package archives excepted.
4\. Yes, getting your software into an official publishing channel is
preferable, but not automatic, not immediate, and not without update latency.
I'm 110% with you on hating pipe to shell, however. Your arguments don't
really address the issue.
And note also that you can just clone from github if you don't like piping to
shell. And nothing prevents you from packaging it yourself in your own trusted
repository. If you run serious infrastructure, you already do this.
------
markhahn
Wake me up when there's a Docker-independent hypervisor engine.
~~~
tbronchain
Hi there, not sure what you mean by Docker-independent hypervisor engine?
Hyper uses Docker images format in order to ship containers, but is totally
independent from Docker engine.
------
TheHippo
I like how the animation in the header of the website requires two of my CPU
cores at full speed.
Also offering piping to bash as first alternative for installing something.
~~~
quesera
I _agree_ with you on both counts, but still find your comment gratuitously
negative.
This looks like a very cool thing, and an important missing piece.
~~~
dimino
It's "gratuitously negative" to ask me to pipe a script I download from the
Internet into bash directly.
They _really_ should, for security reasons, spend the 5 seconds it'd take to
separate those into two commands, or come up with a better way to do things
(which would probably take more than 5 or 30 seconds).
Reminds me of pip (python packaging manager), who will, almost
narcissistically, remind you about how important it is to use secure
connections for python repos, and in fact will refuse to run without a bevy of
flags set explicitly allowing any kind of insecure or unverified package, but
first ask you to download and run a python script with an embedded binary,
because that's the only way they could think of to get bootstrapping working.
~~~
Gigablah
"Separate those into two commands"? That's it? Really?
This just screams "cargo cult".
~~~
icebraining
Not really. By separating the two commands and using && between the two, you
ensure the script will download successfully before executing, instead of
potentially leaving you with the software half-installed.
------
zobzu
"When VMs take tens of seconds to boot, Hyper is able to launch instances in
sub-second"
tens of a second would be +- same as sub second ;)
~~~
rimantas
Tenths, maybe; tens—not so much.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Months Before Reddit Purge, The_Donald Users Created a New Home - TakakiTohno
https://onezero.medium.com/months-before-reddit-purge-the-donald-users-created-a-new-home-a732f79e4f04
======
Andaith
I’ve become a bit disillusioned by grassroots organising given how easy it
seems to be to fake. This place claims to be self-funded, but I wonder. It’s
exactly the sort of thing a foreign adversary would fund just to cause trouble
in the U.S.
I feel like the internet has caused a sort of problem of how easily the public
can be pushed to vote against their own interests. It’s a cheap way for
foreign countries to “attack” a democracy without ever risking serious
retaliation, and I haven’t seen an answer to it. Or even corporations to
protect their interests at the cost of having people vote against their own
interests.
Off the top of my head I can think of two answers: walled garden(I think of
this as the Chinese approach) and high education levels(I think of this as the
Swiss approach, but I have no idea how effective it is).
Thoughts on how to solve this problem?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: WeTopTen – Create top 10 of books, movies, albums and more - duplikey
http://wetopten.com
======
duplikey
Another of my experiment. This time playing with amazon and fb APIs. I'll
probably add some open graph integration in the next days.
Any feedback is appreciated ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I made a 3D game in 2 KB of JavaScript - pjmlp
http://frankforce.com/?p=7427
======
rsiqueira
The first ideas of this 3D road game was created in just 140 characters (or
less) and posted here (Dwitter) by him (Frank Force's nickname is
"KilledByAPixel"):
[https://www.dwitter.net/h/road](https://www.dwitter.net/h/road) And many
other tiny 3D effects and engines in JavaScript were created by Dwitter's
users, like these demos:
[https://www.dwitter.net/h/d3](https://www.dwitter.net/h/d3)
~~~
tomxor
Hi Rodrigo!
Just wanted to add... Dwitter is awesome for learning stuff like this, since
everything is so absurdly small you know the ceiling of time required for
understanding a dweet is pretty low - yet at the same time it's surprising how
advanced techniques can get in this tiny space.
This makes them so tempting. I sometimes struggle to pick up or return to a
technical book when work/life etc gets busy, but when someone posts an
interesting new dweet I often can't stop myself from pulling it to pieces.
------
midgetjones
Seems to be struggling a bit. Alternate link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200309074327/http://frankforce...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200309074327/http://frankforce.com/?p=7427)
~~~
itronitron
here is the codepen link from same article >>
[https://codepen.io/KilledByAPixel/pen/poJdLwB](https://codepen.io/KilledByAPixel/pen/poJdLwB)
~~~
TruthSHIFT
FYI, there is no jump button. Also, those are rocks, not ramps. Jumping is not
a gameplay mechanic in this game.
~~~
KilledByAPixel
Double click to jump.
~~~
krossitalk
Thanks. Wish the controls were more obvious. After learning this the game is
actually quite playable.
------
sbr464
You could get the minified code size lower with a few tricks below. This
allows the minifier to stop using the longer method names. It also has the
benefit of eliminating an object property lookup which is significantly slower
than accessing a variable (under a microscope of course, if called many
times). Probably 5-10% savings by doing this for the Math methods.
1\. Create variables for any global/builtins (setTimeout/clearTimeout,
requestAnimationFrame, etc) at the top of the file.
2\. Create variables for global object properties, especially if used multiple
times or they have longer names (Object.assign, Object.hasOwnProperty,
Math.cos, Math.sin , JSON.stringify).
3\. For non globals, within functions, create variables for any object
properties or methods that are called multiple times to be worth it; like in
formulas where obj.width/height is called 4-5 times, the minifier can't
optimize the property name.
4\. For Class instance methods that don't allow creating variables for methods
(You have to call the method with the class, since they operate on "this"
context) but don't have anything unique about "this", you can create a
variable once within a function, then just bind itself. If you are using it
multiple times to be worth it.
const classMethod = ClassInstance.classMethod.bind(ClassInstance)
would be minified to
const Z = X.classMethod.bind(X)
and (in the minified code) used as Z() instead of X.classMethod()
5\. In longer functions that use "this.whatever" many times, you can create a
variable once for "this" (t or _this etc) and the minifier will be able to
eliminate those bytes.
------
jsgamedev
This is very impressive!
Lots of counterintuitive observations when you realize the objective is for
compressed 2k size, which means that duplicate code is actually a good thing!
It reminds me of this 3d maze in 1k of javascript from many years ago:
[https://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/459](https://js1k.com/2010-first/demo/459)
~~~
KilledByAPixel
Thanks, I also referenced this jk1k racing game in the post...
[https://js1k.com/2019-x/demo/4006](https://js1k.com/2019-x/demo/4006)
------
throwaway77384
I absolutely love projects like this. It's so interesting working within these
constraints.
So, js1k is not continuing? On the js1k site I can't see anything stating
this. Nothing on the subreddit either. Where is that information coming from?
It's a real shame that this great tradition may not continue, though, perhaps
the js2k+ will be the next big thing ;)
~~~
woogley
Only thing I can find is this tweet from the organizer.
[https://twitter.com/kuvos/status/1213546333707083778](https://twitter.com/kuvos/status/1213546333707083778)
~~~
pjmlp
Love the WASM remark on his tweet.
Think WASM coding like the original Demoscene demos.
~~~
tracker1
Not sure about the 2k+zip, but I do think that there will be a _LOT_ of
progress in wasm+canvas for interactive programming... of course this leaves
out accessibility, so hopefully it's done with some constraint depending on
the space.
------
jfkebwjsbx
I love these projects, but writing statements like "full HD" and "Realistic
driving physics and collisions" is a bit too much unless it is tongue-in-cheek
:)
~~~
KilledByAPixel
HD because many tiny games like this do not stretch to fill the whole window.
It requires extra code to do this and have everything scale properly.
~~~
buzzerbetrayed
I've never heard "HD" be used to mean "full width"
~~~
KilledByAPixel
Do you have an HD monitor? If so the game is in HD. Many tiny games and demos
like this are rendered to a smaller canvas and will either not stretch to fill
your monitor or are rendered at a lower then HD resolution.
~~~
jfkebwjsbx
When people use that term for games, it usually means the assets have been
reworked to look better.
In this case, I guess that would be the procedural generation of the
background and trees, for instance, to give it better quality than simple
triangles.
~~~
path411
No, it means the assets have been reworked to support a higher resolution.
~~~
jfkebwjsbx
That's what I said.
------
nathell
Also in the genre of tiny racing games, this 2004 entry from IOCCC comes to
mind:
[https://www.ioccc.org/2004/vik1.c](https://www.ioccc.org/2004/vik1.c)
------
sccxy
Controls:
Mouse = Steer
Click = Brake
Double Click = Jump
[https://github.com/KilledByAPixel/HueJumper2k](https://github.com/KilledByAPixel/HueJumper2k)
------
agys
In the minified code there are still a lot of Math.PI, Math.sin, Math.cos…
could this not be optimised further with something like s=Math.sin…?
~~~
vanderZwan
I was about to say _" well, it's probably a lot of work to verify that s isn't
already a mangled variable name"_ but then I realized that doing what you
suggested in the pre-minified code should work, yeah.
So not only are you right, it's actually super easy. Just do this at the top
level of your code:
const {cos, sin, PI /* etc */} = Math;
~~~
KilledByAPixel
You could do that, but it would not compress as well. For example the word
const is not use anywhere in the 2k version, while Math. is used about 40
times so it becomes essentially free when compressed.
~~~
vanderZwan
> _For example the word const is not use anywhere in the 2k version, while
> Math. is used about 40 times so it becomes essentially free when
> compressed._
Except that the word const does seem to be used in the uncompressed version,
so we don't know what happens during compression in the Closure compiler, no?
Or is the 2k version pre-Closure compiler different from the uncompressed
version?
Either way the only way to know is to try because asymptotically free is all
well and good, but without measurement we don't know the actual behavior in
practice and we are just making assumptions about how well or how badly things
compress and how the mangling process works out.
~~~
KilledByAPixel
Ok, I just tried it. Removing every Math. and adding
let{cos,sin,PI,min,max,tan,atan2,abs,ceil}=Math; to the top. It worked better
then I expected, though it is still 1 byte larger then without. Could
potentially be a win in some situations.
~~~
vanderZwan
Nice! Thanks for trying!
> _it is still 1 byte larger then without_
That's actually pretty cool, because together with your earlier remark of ~40x
occurrences of Math.<whatever> that means we have a ballpark figure for where
the tipping point is!
------
notkaiho
And thanks to this article I've learned about the Google Closure compiler:
[https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler](https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler)
~~~
Cthulhu_
Is it still relevant and updated nowadays? IIRC that one's been around for at
least a decade already.
~~~
lvh
Absolutely. It took a long time for everyone to catch up on basic features
(Closure had modules figured out while the rest of the JS community still had
several competing standards), but it’s still tremendously effective.
The only downside is the compiler itself runs on the JVM, and most developers
ostensibly prefer a single platform. Given how much other software you need to
make a development environment work, this seems silly to me.
~~~
Scarbutt
A real downside and the reason it never took off, is that you have to annotate
all your Javascript code to really leverage the Closure compiler.
Google also doesn't really advertised the use of Closure, you have to go out
of your way to find it in their developer website or google it to find it.
It's really just an internal tool.
They break backwards compatibility in the Closure Library so much that
projects that adopted Closure (like Clojurescript), are stuck with a library
from 2017. The project is maintained only to serve Google.
~~~
nathell
> They break backwards compatibility in the Closure Library so much that
> projects that adopted Closure (like Clojurescript), are stuck with a library
> from 2017. The project is maintained only to serve Google.
Is that the case? The current version of ClojureScript depends on
org.clojure.google-closure-library 0.0-20191016 – I know it's a fork, but I'm
not sure to what extent it is being synced with upstream.
~~~
Scarbutt
Their repo says they are using version "0.0-20170809-b9c14c6b"
[https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/deps.ed...](https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/deps.edn)
[https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/project...](https://github.com/clojure/clojurescript/blob/master/project.clj)
------
tabtab
I made a 2D game in 3 KB of JavaScript. Not quite as impressive I suppose.
------
aylmao
In the final, minified code there's a lot of calls to Math methods (sin, cos,
tan). I wonder if there's potential to shrink this even more with some
assignments:
M=Math,s=M.sin,c=M.cos,p=M.PI,a=M.abs; // etc.
~~~
carterehsmith
That's what minifiers/uglifiers do? Perhaps OP did not want to use them.
~~~
aylmao
As far as I know minifiers don't do this since it changes semantics. Take this
for example:
// 1
doSomething();
console.log(Math.sin(2));
// 2
var s = Math.sin;
doSomething();
console.log(s(2));
Now, consider this definition for `doSomething()`:
function doSomething() {
Math.sin = x => x
}
Now, the first prints 2 and the second snippet prints 0.9092.
Keeping track of globals to get around this is complicated. Even if you do,
you can't always be sure the behaviour of the code isn't changing since
`doSomething` could be defined in a module your minifier doesn't know about.
------
6510
It looks great, runs smoothly but I'm not having a gameplay experience.
~~~
notkaiho
What do you mean by a 'gameplay experience' in this case?
~~~
6510
I don't want to hate on the creation at all but its hard not to sound like
that in text.
On commodore 64 games tried to have nice graphics, nice music and interesting
mechanics. Lots of games failed at 1 of the 3. Sometimes they did really well
with the other challenges but with few exceptions it doesn't make up for it.
I think if 2 kb is the challenge the game mechanics are the best hope to make
up for the lack of sound and visuals.
Reminds me of burning rubber. A game with truly ugly graphics and terrible
music that is quite hilarious to play.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKSbOyGy_Qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKSbOyGy_Qo)
~~~
egypturnash
...which is a shameless clone of Data East’s Bump ‘n’ Jump/Burnin’ Rubber,
which had much better art and sound.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=99gnxjpeL7s](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=99gnxjpeL7s)
~~~
6510
haha, so they kept only the game play. It makes a lot more sense now.
------
iron4o
Why are there trees in them middle of the road? ;D
~~~
KilledByAPixel
Alien trees...
------
franblas
Nice ! :) Looks like a raycasting engine like this one
[https://www.playfuljs.com/a-first-person-engine-
in-265-lines...](https://www.playfuljs.com/a-first-person-engine-
in-265-lines/)
~~~
KilledByAPixel
Nope! It is not a raycasting engine at all, but instead built similar to old
school racing game tech.
~~~
winrid
Could you help us understand how it's not ray casting? OP doesn't mean ray
tracing by the way. Ray casting is the tech used in Wolf3D for example, or
maybe I'm preaching to the choir.
~~~
fenwick67
Since the car only goes forward, there's no reason to have any depth or
visibility testing, things are just rendered in order (painter's algorithm).
------
dlsso
Makes you wonder if the 70gb installs of modern games are really necessary.
Also, obligatory kkrieger link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger)
~~~
ssully
It's an impressive project, but it shouldn't make you question why games are
so large these days.
~~~
KilledByAPixel
I think there is a middle ground of many indie games I see on steam that are
much larger then they should really be.
As a dev, one problem I saw often is UE4 is massive, well over a hundred meg
for just the base engine.
~~~
meheleventyone
Binary size is a drop in the ocean most of the size of game installs is in
assets.
~~~
Sohcahtoa82
While true, you do have to ask how the hell there could possibly be 100 MB of
_just code_.
Consider Windows calculator. In Windows 10, it consumes 15+ MB of RAM. When
desktops have 8+ GB of RAM, 15 MB is essentially nothing. And yet, 15 MB is an
astronomical amount of RAM considering the functionality Calculator offers.
There's really no reason it should be more than a couple hundred kilobytes.
~~~
rafaelvasco
I didn't have a look at the code but the binaries aren't just code. Apart from
things like embedded icons and stuff, there can be lots of engine embedded
resources inside;
------
mosselman
The game is pretty fun and playable for its size. Nice work!
------
m00dy
damn,
I was reading the blog post and mistakenly refreshed the page. Now, BW is
exhausted. I didn't know...
------
pettycashstash2
resource limit reached.....
------
IvanK_net
It reminds me my 3D demo in 47 lines of JS (without WebGL) :)
[https://jsfiddle.net/06L845jx/86/](https://jsfiddle.net/06L845jx/86/)
And 54 lines of JS:
[https://jsfiddle.net/06L845jx/127/](https://jsfiddle.net/06L845jx/127/)
~~~
numlock86
> It reminds me my 3D demo in 47 lines of JS
How exactly?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Breaking News: Google Has Removed Gab's Android App from the Google Play Store - DanAndersen
https://twitter.com/getongab/status/898314927697416192
======
Boothroid
I think we are at a really worrying time. We need to speak up for free speech.
Actions like this are a form of censorship. A small number of corporations
should not get to decide what software we use. Time and time again we've seen
big companies up to no good. Why the hell should we trust that they have our
best interests at heart? Facism can come from either side.
------
CM30
Hmm, this seems like it could be seen as anti competitive, especially if
similar sites which allow similar content (read, most large social media
sites) can get their apps onto the Play Store. Would Google remove Twitter or
Facebook for the same stuff?
Personally, I doubt they would, and that opens up a can of worms where:
1\. The rules clearly don't apply the same to popular apps as they do to less
popular ones (which admittedly also seems to be true of Google's search engine
with websites in general).
2\. Newer competitors to large social sites would have to be stricter on their
content to get accepted onto the Google Play Store, or what not.
Feels very unfair to people running competitors to the large social media
sites, since Google have proved they're willing to unfairly punish them for
the exact same stuff a larger service would get away with.
------
alva
Presumably removed due to "hate speech" of the users. Will they be removing
Twitter next?
~~~
DanAndersen
The ability of tech mega-corps to throw their weight around and decide which
services prevail and which ones don't is pretty impressive.
Given the breakneck speed of no-platforming, I fully expect to see (within the
next three months) Google's DNS to refuse to resolve sites on an ideological
blacklist, and then various ISPs will follow suit. After all, "it's their own
private service."
------
observation
Could get hit by anti-trust. IANAL of course.
------
MollyR
Have other Twitter Clones been banned ?
------
sakabasataka
Good. If you want to preach hate, you are free to make your own platform to do
so.
------
slater
Good.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IdeaBlob Funding $10,000 each month for the most popular start up idea - wastedbrains
http://ideablob.com/
======
dyu
Wouldn't people just downvote all others and get all their friends to vote on
his own? I didn't read it carefully; maybe they have something to prevent
that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This payload is currently being distributed using the Shellshock vulnerability - jnotarstefano
https://gist.github.com/jacquerie/0569a4a192b06f25d764
======
wtracy
I see some Portuguese variable names. That suggests to me that one or more of
the people involved are from Brazil.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
War and Planets: Astronomical Tables in the History of Science - Petiver
https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2016/06/07/war-and-planets/
======
eternalban
It would be more appropriate to title this the "Euro-Centric History of
Science" or simply "History of European Science". There were serious and
productive investigations into this matter _long_ before Europeans got
science.
~~~
Avshalom
If any one is interested in ancient Mesopotamian astronomical tables the name
you want is Otto Neugebauer. His book Astronomical Cuneiform Texts is pretty
much the authoritative resource and it's fairly fascinating.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_E._Neugebauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_E._Neugebauer)
~~~
eternalban
Thank you for the reference, Avshalom. Found a good biographical memoir
online: [http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-
memoirs/m...](http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-
memoirs/memoir-pdfs/neugebauer-otto.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Extension Monitor to detect high-risk browser extensions - flysonic10
https://extensionmonitor.com/blog/introducing-extension-monitor
======
ziddoap
Instant pop-up of a chat, from "Matt - A Real Human" is a significant turn-off
for me.
For a company that is promoting privacy, it's also discouraging to see that
your privacy policy seems to only apply additional data protection rights to
those within the EEA, rather than universally applying them. I'm hoping, in
good faith, that this applies to everyone but is specifically spelled out for
those within the EEA. If this is the case, you might want to be clear that
those rights apply to everyone, not just those residing in the EEA. (If not -
I'd love to hear the justification!)
~~~
flysonic10
Thanks for the feedback. Privacy rights are meant to apply to everyone. Will
check the wording of the privacy policy to make that clear.
Regarding the instant popup, unfortunately I'm not able to keep it hidden with
Drift, but wanted to make sure visitors know they can easily reach me.
~~~
reneberlin
I would like to know more about how the scoring-system works. I think this
will be added, don't hurry - but i am curious how that works in "realtime".
Every second younbeloved extension can potentially turn into your enemy.
And how does IT react on a match? Unplug the machine from the net? Close the
browser? Turn off power? Sirenes?
I love the idea of your service. But how to execute countermeasures, when the
red flag is raised?
~~~
flysonic10
Realtime refers to installations, not necessarily the threat of the extension.
If a user installs an extension, you should know if the extension is a threat
as soon as possible whether or not it has exposed data.
Scoring is a complex problem and there's some literature on the subject. We
can break down scoring / threat intelligence into a few buckets:
\- Known bad actors: some extensions are known bad actors. They've exposed
data and even made the news for it. Let's make sure those are absolutely not
running in your environment.
\- Heuristic classification: a number of heuristics can be used to score the
threat of an extension, for example, the permissions it requests, its content
security policy, etc...
\- Automated code review: even if an extension developer is not themselves
intentionally malicious, the extension may be using outdated or vulnerable
libraries that can be exploited by others.
\- Manual review: there are over 200k extensions so an extensive manual review
of each is not practical. Still, for the most popular extensions, a manual
review can effectively score the extension based on factors that are difficult
to automate. For example, review of the privacy policy, investigation of the
owner entity and its business practices, etc...
\- Corroboration / triangulation: a category of threat detection that
Extension Monitor will be able to provide at scale is that of cross-
referencing installations with purchased data to single out likely sources.
These may also apply to a single extension across versions / time.
Regarding counter-measures, Extension Monitor is read-only at this time, so
remedying the threat is environment specific. Some fleet management solutions
may provide this. Other self-managed machines would require the machines
administrator to remove the extension. Some teams that already allowlist or
blocklist extensions would find the threat scores useful in their own manual
investigations of which extensions to allow or block.
Hope this helps,
Will (still a real human... and not a Matt)
------
helb
The website seems a bit broken (in Firefox 67):
\- "Log in" link does nothing
\- this green link(?) also does nothing
[https://i.vgy.me/D0oGjd.png](https://i.vgy.me/D0oGjd.png)
\- the Pricing page is empty
[https://i.vgy.me/17yhiD.png](https://i.vgy.me/17yhiD.png) (it works in Chrome
though)
\- the newsletter form layout is broken
[https://i.vgy.me/P4qtHn.png](https://i.vgy.me/P4qtHn.png) (seems okay in
Chrome too)
~~~
flysonic10
Thanks for reporting these. I'll check it out in Firefox.
I heard about the pricing section being an issue for some but haven't been
able to reproduce it. I'm going to setup BrowserStack to find all of the
issues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Any cool startups hiring? - jkaykin
Hey! I am young, ambitious, crazy, and I have had experience working for a few startups doing marketing, sales and some product management. I can also code front-end and design as well but I enjoy doing more of the business/marketing side of things.<p>I consider myself an out of the box thinker and love talking to people. I am 18 but don't let my age scare you, it just means I am more optimistic and move and think quicker.<p>My email address is in my profile.<p>Thanks for reading!
======
nopassrecover
If you haven't already you should check out the Who's Hiring threads (latest:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4463689>).
Also check out AngelList (<https://angel.co/>) and HN Jobs
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs>).
Finally, having a link to a blog / personal page / LinkedIn never hurts
either.
P.S. Email addresses are private in profiles, you'll need to add it to your
"About" section.
------
keiferski
Stick around for another ~week or so (Oct 1) and you'll see the monthly Who's
Hiring thread.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year - DickingAround
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/
======
a3n
It would be more interesting to see asset forfeiture compared to armed
robbery, since that is essentially what happens when police, with a gun on
their hip and the right to use it, take your assets without legal judgement.
------
cryoshon
"Still, boil down all the numbers and caveats above and you arrive at a simple
fact: In the United States, in 2014, more cash and property transferred hands
via civil asset forfeiture than via burglary. The total value of asset
forfeitures was more than one-third of the total value of property stolen by
criminals in 2014."
Ah, these are some really revolutionary statistics. People who were not
accused of any crime were robbed by the police for larger quantities of money
than actually taken from homes forcefully by the traditional image of
"criminals". Via this information we can say with confidence that the law
enforcement agencies are the larger criminals when it comes to direct monetary
abduction from the public. This leaves us in a shitty position, because we can
no longer rely on law enforcement to provide support for our society.
We know with confidence that American LEOs will steal, spy on, beat,
dehumanize, ignore, and murder the public without righteous comeuppance from
the political or legal systems. To be clear, this kind of endemic bad behavior
is what reliably drives people to vigilanteeism and anti-police violence.
Barring that, I think a rational response to law enforcement abuses is in
order.
There's a few prongs to this strategy, the most important of which is
political pressure, meaning organizing direct monetary bribery of politicians
via campaign donations near the time of elections; loudly donating large sums
of money to radical police reformists running for public office will go a long
way in solving the problem, as this signals to other politicians, the police
and the public that people are serious about solving the problem of villainous
law enforcement. From here, things get real: I suggest a boycott of assisting
law enforcement with information technology projects in an attempt to handicap
their efficiency, making them realize that the public will resist them if they
continue bad behavior. I also suggest shaming and social exclusion of people
working in or associated with law enforcement-- I know this won't go far, but
it's worth a shot. At least it's nonviolent.
------
BillTheCat
Is there any reason, aside from the $1.7 billion from Bernie Madoff, as to why
the amount seized has risen so much in the last 10 years?
Was there some case that made it much easier for law enforcement to seize
assets this way?
~~~
bingo_the_dog
Perhaps a better question would be "What is the median forfeiture amount?".
Without additional data points or underlying explanation, this article is
nothing but click-bait.
~~~
elipsey
I agree that it would be nice to have more data. It might be hard to get "big
picture" data for this. I would imagine that police deptments are not
incentivized to publish details in a convenient, highly visible, summarized
form.
Forbes says $1250 was avg. seized property value in MN.
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/09/12/a...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/09/12/after-
cops-seized-and-kept-cash-washington-d-c-settles-almost-million-dollar-civil-
forfeiture-class-action/)
This link claims that the avg. cash seizure amount in Phillidelphia from 2010
to present was $550:
[http://ij.org/action-post/seize-first-ask-questions-later-
ph...](http://ij.org/action-post/seize-first-ask-questions-later-philadelphia-
police-take-over-6-million-a-year-in-civil-asset-forfeiture/)
These hardly sound like the sort "untouchable" organized crime cases that
these programs were touted to address.
------
r721
Recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10591250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10591250)
------
Terr_
> Here's an interesting factoid about contemporary policing
Pedantic correction: Properly speaking, a "factoid" is something which is NOT
a fact fact, but resembles one. Similarly to how an android is not a man.
I realize people are starting to use it like "small fact", but, uh, get off my
lawn.
~~~
rahimnathwani
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10482128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10482128)
~~~
Terr_
Why are you linking to my own comments?
------
tosseraccount
Taxes and more debt are not always popular.
Growing government has figured out how to turn the courthouse and police
station into profit centers with a lot less blowback than raising taxes and
going deeper into the hole with bonds.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China's Dystopian Social Credit System - rm2889
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278?pfmredir=sm
======
chrisco255
I'm sort of terrified that democracy, individualism, and freedom might die
within the span of a decade or two, with the advent of AI and its abuse by
those in power. China will likely also use and leverage this system to monitor
and influence external governments and individuals. And I wonder what the
spillover of that will be?
~~~
laughingman2
There is this anime called psycho-pass, that explores how an AI assigns jobs
based on psychological profile aka Psycho-Pass, identify criminals for police
to execute or jail etc.
Very good take on how things might be.
------
sseth
Its like reading 1984. But now its happening.
I hope the democracies come together to fight this. We have taken our freedoms
for granted. I think we will now have to earn them. We should not forget that
modern democracy is just a couple of hundred years old. It is not a given that
they will always be around.
~~~
GW150914
I think we have bigger fish to fry closer to home when it comes to preserving
whatever versions of democracy we have. We’re not going to effectively fight
China when we do so much business with them, and a war would be catastrophic.
Meanwhile if you care about freedom and democracy, the (re-)rise of populism,
and even fascism seems like something we are capable of fighting.
If we want to change China in the long term, we should probably get our own
houses in order so that we can actually occupy the moral high ground. Sweden,
Germany, Italy, France Austria, the UK, all have either slid hard to the
Right, or have flirted with the likes of Marine Le Pen, Lega Nord, Alternative
For Germany, and so on. Then you have Hungary and Poland going fully off the
deep end, and oh yes, Trump. All in all our table is full before we pretend
thst we have either the political will or leverage to make China change. We
might even have to accept that the Chinese people more or less have to fight
for change themselves, or not, because we’re too busy doing business with
Beijing to worry about their concentration camps.
~~~
thecopy
> If we want to change China in the long term, we should probably get our own
> houses in order so that we can actually occupy the moral high ground.
> Sweden, Germany, Italy, France Austria, the UK, all have either slid hard to
> the Right,
Do i read you correctly that you believe it is impossible to be moral and at
the same time hold conservative views?
~~~
GW150914
Only if you read neo-fascism/far-right populism and conservative as the same
things, in which case I’d say... yes. I’d point out that by no means did _I_
attempt to conflate those things with conservatism though. I think being moral
and believing in smaller governments, gradual change, and other conservative
ideas can be consistent with morality. I think that xenophobia, bigotry and a
return to the worst ideologies of Europe’s recent past is not.
All in all, it might be helpful to quote me more fully, or not at all, since
the fragment you chose is unhelpful taken out of context. I’d like to think
that in context, what I meant was clear and hard to take in the sense you seem
to want to frame it.
~~~
thecopy
I did not mean to misrepresent your meaning. I think often a heated
argumentation starts when people use the same words but have different
interpretation of those words. For example, what "right" means. Here it seems
you used "Right" to describe neo-fascism/far-right populism when at least me
did not read it like that.
I believe this is the root cause of a lot of flame wars on social media.
~~~
mercer
That's an excellent observation. I find myself conflating 'right' with all the
bad things mentioned above, even though I find myself (surprisingly)
sympathetic to various elements of this 'right' when I take the time to
reflect.
In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and
ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go
into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I
mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-
managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do.
I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that
exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the
one-dimensional left-right divide...
------
tonteldoos
Every time this topic comes up, I think of Nosedive (Black Mirror S3E1 [1]),
and wonder how anyone can think this will end well.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_\(Black_Mirror\))
------
turtlecloud
Meh. I think it will be a net positive imo. Will help in socially engineering
a more peaceful country.
As a group it will be good. For an individual it will suck. We all know how
difficult it is to change ourselves.
Most foreseeable change I can see is that Chinese tourists being seen as nicer
and more friendly as the rude ones with low social scores won’t be able to get
a visa.
~~~
netwanderer2
Last time I checked, freedom of movement is an essential human rights. It's
all good as long as it doesn't happen to you right? You see, when you allow
someone to dictate every detail of how you should live your life, that means
you're being oppressed. We are all different individuals with different needs.
Does the person dictating your life have the same needs as you? NO! Someone
has set up a template based on their own ideas and completely ignored your own
personal preferences. You have been reduced to nothing more than a bot or a
walking dead at this point.
One thing I agree is that if this is what China want to do with their country
then let them have a go at it. It's their country, people have different
values and beliefs in China that citizens from the West will never understand.
We can disagree with them, but it is not right for us to interfere or try
changing the way how their society functions. Only the future will tell what's
best for all of us.
~~~
turtlecloud
Well.... you may view it as oppression, but they prob view it as the gov
taking care of them. 2 sides to the issue.
Collectivists will love it. Individualists will hate it.
~~~
netwanderer2
I agree completely. As you mentioned, it's collectivism vs. individualism,
people from the West with different values and beliefs system would not be
able to understand what drives and motivates the average Chinese citizens, and
vice versa. We can sit here and point our fingers all day, but does it really
matter if the people who live there are happy? The two systems have vastly
different principles, it's unreasonable and impossible to conform them into
one.
Nothing in life is black and white as we tend to label them. There are always
pros and cons in everything. As we approach the age of AI, this chapter could
even be considered as a new experiment in the history of humankind. None of us
can accurately predict the future so it might actually be beneficial to
witness the outcome from such experiment. Good or bad, there will be something
here for everyone to learn.
------
netwanderer2
Human made video game "The Sims", now we have officially reversed it and turn
ourselves into those game characters. The AI is now shaping our behaviors and
dictating what we buy, eat, and drink. The scores are even live and updated in
real time. Well done human, you have played yourself.
------
wpdev_63
it's interesting there aren't alot of comments in this thread.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mozilla is financing the open competitor to Facebooks free-internet - rufus42
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/10/13/bringing-the-power-of-the-internet-to-the-next-billion-and-beyond/
======
brudgers
Current submission title is editorialized.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google’s Quantum Dream May Be Just Around the Corner - jonbaer
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602283/googles-quantum-dream-may-be-just-around-the-corner/
======
alex_duf
I wonder what impact these will have on cryptography when it will be available
to a few actors, but not the rest of the world yet...
~~~
WilliamDhalgren
when they really get there, all current public crypto is just broken.
Symmetric is just weakened; basically you need to double the keysize. And
there's prob a backlog of messages those actors can then decrypt.
Besides that, everyone needs to move to post-quantum public key cryptographic
algorithms. Seems there's usable methods already now, except the signatures
will be enormous untill some other, better post-quantum methods are proven
safe.
~~Here's an overview of the SOTA there from 32c3 ; I was surprised how usable
it already seems:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=424LHQQB2DE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=424LHQQB2DE)
~~ EDIT: shit, sry that's not the correct video; I'll find it in a sec, I
hope..
Or, if you're a bank or a state or otherwise can have a direct 1hop link to
your communication partner, you can just use quantum cryptography for extra,
physical assurances.
~~~
WilliamDhalgren
I guess its quite obvious by now, but sadly I couldn't dig up the video
anymore. apologies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Hardware startup looking for good industrial Design firms - moegdaog
Looking for a good industrial design firm for Proto-typing a hardware concept that has to do with 3.mm jack instalation in smartphone's. I don't see any other way in constructing this piece of hardware other then going through an industrial design firm. I want to see if its possible to construct what it is i need, it doesn't matter where they are located as long as its in the U.S. Please recommend any hardware firms if you think it will help, i'm located in the east coast.
======
moegdaog
hmm, thought ide get a response for this. I tried looking through the archives
but no dice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How sustainable is pursing ride-hailing as a standalone service? - michakeleq
https://diane.substack.com/p/how-sustainable-is-pursing-ride-hailing
======
dianee
Non ride-hailing ambitions from a ride-hailing company, Gojek.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple ID security: Should I be worried? - chmars
http://www.betalogue.com/2013/02/12/apple-id-security/
======
rafitorres
Because I was there early, my iCloud email/Apple ID is a fairly short but
uncommon word, and I receive at least three of these emails every week. I also
constantly get subscribed to newsletters I never requested, and receive many
messages (both emails and through iMessage) from people who thought they were
contacting someone else.
I have two theories on why is this:
1\. There is at least one person out there in the world who is convinced they
own my iCloud email address, but have "forgotten" their password, so they keep
trying to reset it. Meanwhile they keep giving out the address as though it
were theirs.
2\. There's simply an astounding number of people using iCloud, many of them
technically unsophisticated users, so data entry mistakes in login forms and
other places will be more common.
I do reset my password every week or so, just to be safe.
------
thirdstation
"If nothing else happens in the next little while, I will eventually buy
something else and enter my credit card information again, but I simply do not
like this way of not addressing perfectly valid concerns about identity theft
and Apple ID security."
Companies will continue to ignore customer security and other, lesser customer
service issues if they think you'll come back anyway.
------
drucken
It is surprisingly difficult to remove credit card information from an Apple
ID. There seems to be no way to do it online.
You must use iTunes (machine of the installation seems to be irrelevant) or an
iOS device and in some cases there is no guarantee it will work without
providing new payment information.
~~~
nwh
It is possible to do it, in the same manner that it is possible to create an
account without a credit card at all.
This is slightly dated, so it might not be the case now. Originally every
AppleID had to have a credit card assigned, the form wouldn't let you progress
without one. The trick was to fill in the form with fake data, go to the next
screen where it would error out, and then when you clicked back a "no credit
card" option would appear at the bottom.
Removing a credit card is possible. Crank open the iTunes app and the option
is there. You just don't seem to be able to do it on their website, as far as
I could see.
------
nirvana
Someone from a portuguese speaking country thinks that your email address is
theirs and that their password is not working and is trying to reset it. That
seems to be what's happening here.
~~~
lukeman
Exactly. I get the same thing to an email address that is secondary on my
account but someone else was able to create an account with at one point or
another (the email being addressed to a name other than your own is the
giveaway).
It's not anything evil, just some poor guy (in my case) who can no longer
access his account and is trying to reset the password.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Why The Hell Do I Need Types? Because Fahrenheit can't be less than −459.67 - dade
http://geekabyte.blogspot.nl/2014/04/why-hell-do-i-need-types-because.html
======
dragonwriter
While the _general_ concept is valid, the _specific_ example in the headline
relies on the idea that negative absolute temperature cannot exist, which is
false. [1]
Perhaps more significantly, the article could use some examples of how
different approaches to typing solve this problem, and discussing pros and
cons; "not all numbers are valid for all numeric-valued variables" is a fairly
shallow observation standing on its own.
[1] See, e.g., [http://www.quantum-munich.de/research/negative-absolute-
temp...](http://www.quantum-munich.de/research/negative-absolute-temperature/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
xkcd: Real Programmers - nickb
http://xkcd.com/378/
======
juanpablo
I set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to
contain this comment right here.... and I invented the Mac... and Paul Graham.
------
dawnerd
Sadly, so true. This goes with operating systems as well.
~~~
__
Emacs subsumes them?
~~~
almost
yes :p
------
danw
Sigh, welcome to reddit
~~~
vegashacker
I upmodded you, but I also upmodded this comic. Obviously if the front page of
news.yc was riddled with comics and other image links, that would be lame, but
on the other hand, this xkcd was inspired, and I'm really glad I saw it (which
is my litmus test for upvoting posts).
Yeah yeah. I should probably just add xkcd to my RSS feed.
------
cos
for as xenophobic as rms is, emacs is one hell of a kinky slut.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Processing.js: How to create links with Custom fonts - f1lt3r
http://processingjs.org/source/canvas-text-links/canvas-text-link.html
======
axod
You can't select the text, it doesn't behave like text (Can't resize it in
browser), so what's the advantage over just using images?
~~~
f1lt3r
It was not meant to behave like text as such. It was a quick before-breakfast
response to someone's "how-to" request. Processing.js is a visualization
language, not a replacement for browser technology, apologies to those who
were expecting some kind of all-singing miracle-link.
~~~
axod
It's cool for what it is, I was just wondering if it had some advantage over
images that I couldn't yet see.
~~~
f1lt3r
Well someone requested it as a demo because they are creating an interactive
canvas program in which the text being displayed will change every time the
script is run. Obviously that makes using images impossible. With regards to
using images for the glyphs, it's slower and requires more KBs across the
board.
------
GHFigs
Good for Processing.js, but those desiring a replacement for sIFR or @font-
face will be disappointed. Every browser that supports the Canvas does or is
expected to support @font-face as well, so there is no advantage there, and
the required conversion to SVG only shifts the embedding rights problem one
step away from the browser.
~~~
iamcalledrob
Well, true, IE doesn't support <canvas> out of the box, but you can make it
support it with something like excanvas.
<http://excanvas.sourceforge.net/>
------
Corrado
These tricks don't work in all browsers. For example, I was completely unable
to trigger it on iPhone. As 'alternate' browsers become more prevalant these
tricks become more risky.
~~~
f1lt3r
Easy enough to make it work for iPhone though, if that's what you are trying
to do.
------
uggedal
Should have used mouseClicked() instead of mousePressed() (latter takes you to
the href location before the mouse is released). Should also have used the
mouseButton variable to determine if it's a left mouse click. As it stands now
a right click also takes you to the target page.
~~~
f1lt3r
Changed the example (and updated processing.js) to include mouseClicked().
------
twism
Is it just me or does the verbosity of the processingjs code for custom fonts
bother anyone else?
~~~
f1lt3r
What are you getting at exactly? The code in the demo script or the code in
the library?
~~~
twism
The demo script. Any of the demos as a matter of fact.
~~~
f1lt3r
Well it really is designed as a low-barrier language. It doesn't have all the
shortcuts you'd see in a low-level language. Even though you can use
JavaScript in Processing.js, I usually try to make sure my examples run in the
Native Java application also, which requires greater verbosity of course.
------
f1lt3r
Updated this.
------
TweedHeads
Never click on a link you don't see where it takes you. You can get goatseed.
Is it possible to show the url in the browser's status bar?
~~~
f1lt3r
Ironically showing the url in the browsers status bar is automatically
disabled in Firefox because for goatseed reasons.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Colors of Dribbble - nspeller
http://nathanspeller.com/color-pickers/
======
sp332
A bit off topic, but I hope this isn't true: _Additionally, there won’t be any
new colors years from now. The color spectrum of the future will be exactly
the same as it is today. It’s neat to think we already have access to the
color palettes of the year 3000._ The usual sRGB colorspace used by most of
the web is a small fraction of visible colors. Don't get me wrong, it covers
most use cases just fine, but it would be nice to fill out the rest sometime.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB> (The colored blobby area represents all
the shades the human eye can see, and the little triangle represents the
colors in sRGB.) Oh and more contrast would be great too!
~~~
rjvin
related: Here's an illusion that lets you see true cyan.
[http://www.moillusions.com/2006/03/eclipse-of-mars-
illusion....](http://www.moillusions.com/2006/03/eclipse-of-mars-
illusion.html)
Your eyes can see the color, but your monitor can't represent it.
~~~
msutherl
Just the thought of being able to use that color in design. The depth is
moving.
When I do lighting installations, I always insist on RGBA fixtures so you can
get true warm colors – another thing you can't do with RGB displays.
------
mnicole
Some more palette creation tools/resources:
<http://www.colourlovers.com/>
<http://colllor.com/>
<http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/iwanthue/>
<http://www.eigenlogik.com/spectrum/> (OS X 10.7+ app)
~~~
danenania
I just bought Spectrum and I'm really impressed. I've always wanted a tool
like this.
~~~
mnicole
Right? I was incredibly surprised that there aren't others like it (Kuler
angers me for reasons I will not get into here). Colourlovers has ColorSchemer
(<http://www.colorschemer.com/osx_info.php>) but I'm not a fan of the
interface or the price tag.
------
skc
It works just fine in Internet Explorer 10.
Wonder what the purpose of the "Sorry, no Internet Explorer" is.
~~~
simba-hiiipower
i was wondering the same. working perfectly for me as well..
seems its just cool to post things like that without bothering to test if it,
in fact, does work.
------
TomNomNom
Slightly related: another useful tool for picking colours is Kuler
(<https://kuler.adobe.com/>)
------
rafeed
I really like the concept and execution. Nice work! I'd like to know how you
aggregated the color data. I found the js on github
([https://github.com/nathanspeller/nathanspeller.github.com/bl...](https://github.com/nathanspeller/nathanspeller.github.com/blob/master/javascripts/colors.js))
and it just seems like you have a giant manually entered list of all the
colors that are popular now, which won't be updated unless you update the
colors.
------
dpham
I'm glad people are toying around with client-side color algorithms and coming
up with ways for people to dynamically choose aesthetically nice colors. I
worked on this project <http://dph.am/projects/ImageEyeDropper/> about a year
ago to let people grab colors off an image, find the color range with the
highest frequency, and perform some of these color theory functions.
------
smaili
Awesome tool! Love the _Sorry, no Internet Explorer_ note. It's always nice to
let users know of browsers that aren't supported by your website :)
One minor suggestion: it would be nice to add a simple tooltip on hover of the
different swatches and circles that give the rgb/hex value of that particular
swatch/circle.
------
danenania
This is awesome! It would be great if I could input a specific hex value for
the base color instead of just randomizing.
------
justhw
Great stuff. Offtopic,I recently started designing with crowdsourced pallets
from colourlovers and it's been pleasant. You can actually search by mood/feel
and you get nice set of colors.
<http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes>
------
willtheperson
I always find that starting with a selection of color can really jumpstart a
design. It'd be really cool if this could also pull from other sources. If I
could specify "1970s america" and get color pallets from photos or scanned
design works, it would be truly awesome.
------
mutatio
Nice concept. There's plenty of algorithmic methods of color scheming out
there: \- <http://encycolorpedia.com/> \- <https://kuler.adobe.com/>
------
JeremyKolb
You should make it possible for people to explore it a bit more organically,
say I click on a color, it should show other pallets with that color. It would
also be nice to have an easy save image feature if someone finds a color they
really like.
------
sengstrom
Snazzy app - I've used a little program called Agave (for Gnome) for this
<http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/> \- it seems to be based on similar
principles.
------
tannerc
Neat. I don't know what to do with it though now that I have it.
Generating clear palettes as a result of the palettes discovered would be
immensely helpful for designers.
------
annnnd
Nice! It would be much more useful if one could pick the color manually
(instead of random) though.
------
marshallford
pretty neat mate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TIOBE Index for May 2016 - Jerry2
http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index
======
WoodenChair
I see Java has spiked this year. Is there any accounting for that other than
the vagaries of how the index is calculated?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
30 years ago, this anime invented the Internet - gondwana
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2931716
======
gondwana
It's WONDERFULLY USEFUL and INTERESTING.
See also:
[http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2931716](http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2931716)
and
[http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2931852](http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2931852)
~~~
gondwana
First one should have been
[http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2956144](http://www.tubechop.com/watch/2956144)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Popular movies for every year since 1927 - khet
http://kumailht.com/the-movie-project/
======
raquo
That's a nice summary of things I didn't have time to watch and should
probably go back to at some point.
As for some feedback – I'd rather see the title un-truncated, or at least see
a tooltip with a full title on hover. It's a problem because of all the
sequels having similar titles.
It would also be nice if thumbnails were of bigger size on bigger screens.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Making Moves for Women in the Workforce : Just Do It : Glassbreakers - laurenmo
https://medium.com/@laurenmosenthal/just-do-it-a3a80647873a
======
emcarey
I love this!! Really interesting to get a product perspective on this process
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Is Systems Engineering / Infrastructure Eng. / Sys Administration Dead? - mancerayder
After my most recent job searches, I've been rudely awakened to the fact that systems engineering is barely in existence anymore. People with Systems knowledge as their first-class skillset have been replaced with software developers with SOME systems knowledge.<p>The cycle in companies seems to be: devs make infra, early on. Infra either doesn't scale, or it's too time consuming / painful to maintain and sometimes lacks redundancy, monitoring, and so forth. Next, companies seek to hire more devs, except devs that have significant systems experience: AWS, load balancing, configuration management, etc. They have trouble finding these so salaries for what has become "DevOps" have ballooned. Now to be a DevOps means to understand math algorithms, lots of software architecture, lots of AWS, and basic Linux skills.<p>I've been a Linux infrastructure engineer / SA / SRE / "DevOps" for the past 15+ years. I've been writing code (first Perl, now Python) for most of that time. I've been setting up configuration management (first custom stuff, now Puppet/Ansible/etc.) for most of that time. I've always considered that a Systems / Linux Administrator who can't code or automate well is either junior or not very good. I have a strong understanding of Linux internals.<p>Yet, I am finding myself forced to rebrand as a <i>DEVELOPER</i>, as in these "DevOps" roles I'm asked very little about my core skillset: Linux, and a lot about algorithms, coding and CI systems.<p>Is the future of systems administration actually full-blown software development?<p>Do you have a similar story?
======
danenania
I think there's a ton of value in people who are experts in systems and stay
focused in that area, but I do see the importance of sys admins also being
developers and having firsthand understanding of the developer perspective.
On the other side of the coin, it's also very important that developers
(particularly senior developers) have a healthy understanding of the full
pipeline that brings code from their laptop to end-users.
These two realms of software are yin and yang. How to best approach one
depends on your approach to the other, and vice versa.
If developers and sys admins don't have quite a lot of overlap, the goals that
each are optimizing for can diverge pretty quickly. 'DevOps' seems to have
emerged out of people's recognition of this problem.
All that said, you could well be right that companies are overweighting
development knowledge and underweighting the ops side. It's easy to end up
with 'ops debt' that becomes crushing when developers put off dealing with it
for too long.
------
bradknowles
Hardware administration has shifted left. Most places work in VMs these days,
and many have little or no hardware of their own at all. More and more
hardware is being owned and operated by fewer and fewer big shops, many of
whom provide services to those who need VMs.
Classic systems administration is also shifting left. Either you go with the
shift, or you find a way to make yourself useful to those who are left. What
is called DevOps today would be a case of the latter, although there are those
of us who have been doing that same kind of stuff for twenty, thirty, or even
more years - we were doing DevOps before DevOps was a name that had been
coined.
As more and more stuff moves into the cloud, many of us will become Platform
Engineers. We don’t do DevOps much any more, except for the big platforms that
really need that. The rest will be providing the tools and guard rails that
the developers need to allow them to do quick self-service with “serverless”
frameworks, built on top of the tools provided by the big cloud providers.
------
mancerayder
In my opinion, systems people are the ones who predict how to correctly
architect infrastructure environments in order to minimize downtime, maximize
scalability and minimize operational overhead.
My gut feeling is that companies are doing themselves a disservice by focusing
on core software development skills and minimal engineering on the systems
side.
------
vgy7ujm
Sysadmins have become operators unless they learned to code and rebranded
themselves devops. Operator salaries sucks so people are careful not to be
associated with sysadmin/operator stigma, it's just easier to say
developer/devops to stay relevant for higher paid jobs.
| {
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Iteration in One Language and Then All the Others - pkd
https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/18/iteration-in-one-language-then-all-the-others/
======
geezerjay
After a quick read, the article sounds a bit iffy in the technical accuracy
department.
Take what it says about C. It states that C only has support for C's for
loops. Well, this is patently false for anyone who managed to go past the
first week of any intro to programming in C course. The author's insight on
how to use most programming languages is rather shallow and limited.
In short, the article reads like something written by someone with some
experience writing Python code, but entirely oblivious how to write code in
any other programming language.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin was supposed to change the world. What happened? - kgwgk
http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/21/13669662/bitcoin-ethereum-future-explained
======
boznz
Well, at a guess, and I stand to be corrected on every point..
1\. Only benefits early adopters (and money launderers of course)
2\. Far too volatile. Nothing too back it up eg a country or a standard to
underpin it, average Joe would be daft to convert real money to it.
3\. The mining methodology sucks. Seriously all those CPU cycles wasted
solving pointless algorithms, from every standpoint its just wrong. You want
to mine, go and get a fucking pick and shovel and get something real!
4\. Big government and financial businesses will move on it sometime but in
the meantime just holding bitcoins is a red flag for the wrong people to keep
an eye on you
5\. [Insert whatever worry you have about putting your money into a `un-
breakable` technology here]
6\. zero benefit over any other currency or standard (except Zimbabwean
dollars or see point 1)
7\. Nobody really understands it (including me), I just asked by wife she
thought it was like an itunes card top up and she is fairly clued.
God I could go on forever from my position of no authority :-)
Seriously the financial system is flawed as fuck, but its a hell of a lot
better than this, until bitcoins or any crypto currency/icoin are managed by
an AI from a network of space stations with a few billion of real assets to
back it up I will keep my savings where they are thank you
~~~
mywittyname
> 6\. zero benefit over any other currency or standard (except Zimbabwean
> dollars or see point 1)
Zero benefit is being generous -- BC has negative benefit. The fact that there
is a limited pool of coins means that the value of a bitcoin varies as a
function of dollar inflows/outflows for each day. In other words, it's a poor
store of value because it fluctuates in value the more it's used.
It would have zero benefit if you could sell back bitcoins at the same value
you bought them at on a previous day, like you can with dollars (i.e., you can
get nearly the same amount of value from a dollar today as you can tomorrow).
------
mywittyname
It turns out that the issues that Bitcoin supporters/investors thought were
major problems, aren't. The entire economy trusts the government, banks, and
the Federal Reserve. It has to because entire economy ceases to function
without this trust. People aren't going to own land if they don't trust
government to back the deeds, they aren't going to engage in business if they
can't trust the government to predictably uphold their contracts, etc. So even
when people swear they don't trust them, the actions suggest implicitly, they
do.
The technology behind bitcoin is really interesting, but it was applied to the
wrong field. You don't need a fancy distributed, verifiable, eventually
consistent database to handle financial transactions. People in developed
countries use banks, and people with limited access to banks for whatever
reason (prisoners, refugees, etc) use cigarettes, coffee packets, bottle caps.
All you really need to facilitate transactions is a general consensus on what
to use, the network effect will do the rest.
------
aminok
IMHO, the only thing that prevented a total takeover by Bitcoin was the block
size limit. Many, including myself, simply stopped promoting Bitcoin to
businesses, due to the limit, and all of the momentum ran out. I spoke
personally to a start-up that had been working on a major service that would
have boosted the Bitcoin ecosystem, that said the block size limit was the
reason they were pivoting away from it, and at the time I was confident the
community would push through a hard fork to raise the limit and told them so.
When it became clear that wouldn't happen, it was a hugely demoralizing
development.
Major Bitcoin VC Roger Ver has experienced this as well:
[https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/block-size-
disc...](https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/block-size-discussion-
between-erik-voorhees-and-roger-ver-t6016.html)
>I know of multiple large companies who specifically have decided NOT to
integrate bitcoin at this time because their user base would overwhelm the the
current Blockchain capacity.
This has been termed the Fidelity Effect, after the decision by Fidelity to
postpone a Bitcoin project due to the block size limit:
[https://youtu.be/TgjrS-BPWDQ?t=3h31m13s](https://youtu.be/TgjrS-
BPWDQ?t=3h31m13s)
------
Fej
Not strictly related to why it didn't change the world - but the large amount
of Bitcoin mining has resulted in the negative externality of significant
greenhouse gas emissions.
So much money, energy, and CO2 spent solving pointless math problems.
~~~
maletor
This is a common misconception.
> No more so than the wastefulness of mining gold out of the ground, melting
> it down and shaping it into bars, and then putting it back underground
> again. Not to mention the building of big fancy buildings, the waste of
> energy printing and minting all the various fiat currencies, the
> transportation thereof in armored cars by no less than two security guards
> for each who could probably be doing something more productive, etc.
> As far as mediums of exchange go, Bitcoin is actually quite economical of
> resources, compared to others.
~~~
davidgerard
This is completely false in terms of what you get per transaction.
------
jron
*Bitcoin companies were supposed to change the world.
What happened? Nearly all of those companies failed to understand that
Bitcoin, at its core, is a bearer instrument with two goals: censorship
resistance and bootstrapping to fulfill as many properties of ideal money as
possible. Bitcoin has already changed the world and you don't really need to
look any farther than Wikileaks and darknet markets. Bitcoin doesn't care if
you agree them either.
------
informatimago
Well, it's obvious:
1- lack of anonymity.
2- the size limitations make it better suited for a inter-bank compensation
system than to an actual universal electronic wallet system.
3- banks are happy with their current system.
4- and foremost, it's not a free money system. See:
[http://en.trm.creationmonetaire.info/](http://en.trm.creationmonetaire.info/)
------
davidgerard
Bitcoin was struck the fatal blow when the bubble popped and Mt. Gox died.
Everything since has been nostalgia for its past dreams.
The main problem is that it was built on crank economic assumptions. It is
_literally_ an implementation of Federal Reserve/gold bug conspiracist
economic theories and weird Bircher ideas of where inflation comes from -
that's actually its point. The white paper alludes to this, the Bitcoin 0.1
release notes are clear about it:
> The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required
> to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the
> currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that
> trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it
> electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely
> a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them
> not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs
> make micropayments impossible.
Bitcoin failed at every one of the aspirations here. The price is ridiculously
volatile and has had multiple bubbles (this should be impossible with a fixed
supply if Bitcoin economic theories were true); the unregulated exchanges
(with no central bank backing) front-run their customers, paint the tape to
manipulate the price, and are hacked or just steal their users' funds; and
transaction fees and the unreliability of transactions make micropayments
completely unfeasible. Because all of this is based in crank ideas that don't
work in practice.
Ethereum is hipper, but has similar problems with ever working properly.
(Remember the Skype chat where the devs admitted sorting out its problems
would take several years?) Its basic problem is that smart contracts require
humans to program perfectly, and even the _best and brightest_ of Ethereum
coders came up with The DAO, a $150 million clustercuddle.
If you follow the "Venezuelans are turning to Bitcoin" link, you'll see the
actual number is ... 370 BTC traded a week. This may not rock the central
banksters to their foundations.
Almost all Bitcoin use is speculation on Chinese exchanges; day trader
gambling, basically. I need to find the figures, but it's something like
95-97%. Next is the drug trade, next is ransomware. Western Bitcoin advocates
are a sideshow, except the actual core developers.
(I am literally writing a book on this, God help me. I have read more and
worse PDF white papers than any human should have to suffer. Currently 30k
words and six weeks into writing a 15k short I was supposed to take 2 days on.
[http://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/](http://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/) )
~~~
petertodd
> The main problem is that it was built on crank economic assumptions. It is
> literally an implementation of Federal Reserve/gold bug conspiracist
> economic theories and weird Bircher ideas of where inflation comes from -
> that's actually its point.
Speaking as one of those western developers - and as someone with a standard
economics education - what makes you think those economic assumptions hurt
Bitcoin itself?
Sure deflation is a terrible thing for _economies_ , but that has no bearing
on the success and value of the currency itself. What matters for a currency
that people aren't forced to use is that it maintains its value, which is
exactly what the eventual deflation in Bitcoin does. Equally, _currently_
Bitcoin's monetary supply is highly inflationary, about 8%/year right now
iirc, and will remain high for years to come.
Let's not let our economic education prejudice us; Bitcoin is a good example
of how good monetary policy is often similar to taxes in general in terms of
the conflict between what's good for individuals and what's good for society
as a whole.
~~~
pjc50
> maintains its value
But it doesn't maintain a steady _purchasing power_ , because the price
fluctuates around all over the place!
Inflation has very little to do with money supply, especially M0, and
everything to do with the availability of goods.
~~~
davidgerard
Yep. The John Birch Society literally tries to redefine "inflation" as "the
central bank makes more cash available" (more M0, though they don't use such
highfalutin terms), because ridiculous bollocks is much easier to prove if you
assume your conclusion.
Bitcoin ideology assumes that inflation is a purely monetary phenomenon, and
that Bitcoin is immune due to its strictly limited supply. This was
demonstrated stupendously false when the price of a bitcoin dropped from $1000
in late 2013 to $200 in early 2015 - 400% inflation - while supply only went
up 10%.
The conventional view is that inflation is a phenomenon of consumer prices,
consumer confidence, productivity, commodity and asset prices, etc., which a
central bank then responds to with monetary policy. The conspiracist view is
that it's the central bank intervention _causing_ it.
Even people who've suffered bitcoiners' strident blaring ideological lunacy
frequently don't realise the depths of economic delusion that goes into the
ideology. I suppose we can be grateful that they adopted only Eustace Mullins'
central bank conspiracy theories and not his antisemitism. Mostly, anyway.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to improve quality of development? - abhishekdesai
I am co-founder of DIGICorp (www.digi-corp.com), a software development company based in India. We are doing decent amount of work for various clients across globe. We work mainly on .NET and PHP platforms and we have team of around 40 to 50 developers.<p>Even though we are doing some cool work (check some of our work on our website) I feel quality of development is still not good enough. We have a good team but probably we are not able to get the best output.<p>I am following the practices mentioned in the book "Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of great management" and I am really satisfied with the output I am getting from my project managers. Now it is the developers who need my attention.<p>How can I make them great developers from just good developers? I know it is in genes but I also believe that we can also train them to greatness.<p>any ideas? suggestions?
======
makecheck
Developers are motivated by interesting work, and like to have chances to grow
their skill set. Also, most developers I know hate rules: give them credit for
knowing how to code, don't bog them down with arbitrary things like a 500 page
policy manual. Finally, you hired your developers to write code, so make sure
you aren't wasting their time on non-development tasks.
One way to keep work interesting is to give every developer at least two
projects. This allows a person to switch between them if one becomes boring or
frustrating for a few hours. You could even encourage small pet projects that
developers are very enthusiastic about, even if the projects are not
completely work-related.
You should invest in a bookshelf of manuals, and make a "cheat sheet" of
places to look online for help in your technologies (PHP and .NET). Make sure
everyone knows a few of your in-house experts. Developers should not have to
look far to improve.
Give developers a lot of leeway. Avoid large policy manuals and rulebooks,
instead occasionally remind them of simple guidelines like "follow the style
of the rest of the code in the file", and "create libraries to handle the
really mundane stuff". Be _very_ open to new ideas, even if this means a new
language (I have seen projects spiral to their doom because the actual goal
was incredibly awkward to implement in the "preferred" languages of the
developers).
And finally, as I said, keep developers developing. Don't waste their time
forcing them to (for instance) manually enter information into some form, such
as a spreadsheet, or manually produce something like a set of progress slides
for management. Focus on the _information_ you want from them, and have your
managers simply ask for that information in voice or plain text. Your managers
should be producing the pretty forms.
~~~
abhishekdesai
yes we are giving all these freedoms right now but still we can definitely
improve upon them. still you think there will be some major improvement? i am
planning to implement code inspection to improve code quality over all. whats
your take on that ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linus Torvalds's Double Pointer Problem [video] - petercooper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiAhUYCUDVc
======
lightlyused
Link to interview referenced:
[https://meta.slashdot.org/story/12/10/11/0030249/linus-
torva...](https://meta.slashdot.org/story/12/10/11/0030249/linus-torvalds-
answers-your-questions)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Modded Roomba screams in mortal pain when it runs into things - viniciosbarros
https://mashable.com/article/modded-roomba-that-screams-in-pain/
======
furriephillips
Michael Reeves' YouTube channel is hilarious
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtHaxi4GTYDpJgMSGy7AeSw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtHaxi4GTYDpJgMSGy7AeSw/videos)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
San Francisco Police Accessed Private Camera Network to Spy on Protestors - dannyobrien
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/san-francisco-police-accessed-business-district-camera-network-spy-protestors
======
Bostonian
Original title is, "San Francisco Police Accessed Business District Camera
Network to Spy on Protestors".
The businesses in a business district probably _want_ the police to use
technology to identify rioters and looters.
------
imheretolearn
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23969257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23969257)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: CTO vs. VP of Engineering - safetywerd
Note: I'm posting this under a different account than I normally use on HN because I want to remain anonymous.<p>For the last 2+ years I've been the CTO for a technically successful startup. I have successfully navigated the company around some very real disasters and have built a highly dedicated tech team that has excelled at realizing the technical vision of the product; despite whatever curve balls have been thrown at us - externally or internally. In those two+ years, I've worn every hat one could wear (from IA to project management to product development to systems admin to front end development to back end development) and have worn those hats as well as I could. We've staffed up to the point that I no longer am wearing as many hats, which I am grateful for, but still have a few key roles to fill, mostly in the project management category.<p>Several months ago, we hired a new CEO, whom I partially respect, but don't necessarily like. As is typical, his first criticisms were aimed squarely at the tech team because the tech team is always the first to blame - despite the fact we've always done what we said we would when we said we would. Obviously, as the only part of the company that produces tangibles, it's fairly easy to square operational issues on us. I've fought those criticisms as well as I could, but have been unable to make him see the real problem is the front office's lack of vision and an inability to communicate clearly whatever vision they might have. I've done the best I can given the sheer number of things I am required to do during the day, but, as anyone can correctly surmise, isn't the best I could do if I had a more singular focus. It's really hard to context switch from installing nagios on our production servers to doing IA to doing project management; all within the span of a few hours, day after day. It wears one down.<p>So he recommends we hire a VP of Engineering, which I agree to. It makes sense. Let that person run the process and let me focus on the bigger picture, architecture, product, etc. But then I read the job description and notice the line where it says this role reports directly to the CEO. Which means, since the entire tech staff is reporting to the VP of E, that I lose my staff. When I bring this up with the CEO, he tells me that I should see this VPE as a peer. Say what? It's bad enough that I have to explain to employees that have been with the company for 2+ years they are going to have a new boss, but now that boss doesn't even report to me?<p>Am I being paranoid that I'm being marginalized for an ill-perceived picture of the tech team? Is the CEO playing politics? I'm at a complete loss.<p>Advice?
======
spolsky
The CEO has decided that you have technical ability but not management
ability. He doesn't want to lose your nagios-installation skills but he thinks
that an imaginary person whom he has not yet met or hired will be better than
you at leading the tech team. He's happy to let you keep the fancy CTO title
and perks so you don't lose face, or because he doesn't want a confrontation.
I would guess based on your comments and the fact that you're asking this
question that politics are not your strong suit. "Politics", b.t.w., is just
the natural state of people working together... it can be dysfunctional or
functional, but as soon as you have 3 people, you have some kind of politics.
Since politics are a major component of management, you may actually be
happier not doing management.
In situations like this the CEO is probably overestimating his ability to find
a Magical VP Technology that will magically solve all his problems (unless he
has someone in mind, a buddy from a previous company, for example). Likely he
will spend 6-9 months trying to find someone, finally hire someone imperfect
in despair, and spend the next year or two discovering that person is
incompetent, too. But now I'm really just projecting.
If you don't like the CEO it may be time to move on. Life is to short to work
with people you don't enjoy spending time with.
~~~
tonystubblebine
I definitely read the same thing as spolsky, based on your language that
you're not nailing the managing up and out parts of the VPE role, which is why
the CEO is looking for someone else.
I know a lot of people project negative intentions onto the CEO in this
situation, but it's his job to make a call about what's needed here and it
seems like his call is that you aren't up to snuff. At the VPE level, it's not
enough to be technically right, you need to be able to turn the engineering
group into a cog that runs with the other cogs that the CEO is putting in
place.
When I was in this position our board introduced me to some potential mentors
with more VPE experience. They all had one identical piece of advice: measure
everything and then use that to control the dialogue about engineering with
the board and the other managers.
That advice seemed overly political to me (especially the bit about
controlling the dialogue). I've come to two realizations about it.
One, a lot of the people who judge you have extremely strong personalities and
if you aren't presenting an equally strong opinion, then you won't be able to
have a conversation as equals. Facts are what give you backbone.
Two, when you put down an engineering process, half the value is in making
your team more efficient, and the other half is in presenting a predictable
interface to the rest of the company so that they can get their jobs done.
That outward part of your responsibility was the key realization as these
people took on more responsibility.
I don't think all is lost for you. Some people would probably project onto the
CEO that he has a personal dislike for you, but all you can really infer is
that he wants a different type of leader in the VPE position. You would show
that type of leadership if you went to him, explained the problems/risks of
finding an experienced VPE, and then laid out your plan for becoming that
person including asking for a mentor and a proposal for an engineering process
that gave him more insight into the company.
Now you might not want this role or might not have the opportunity. In that
case, life is too short. Go start your own company.
I think the situation if fascinating and wish you'd left some way to contact
you. You should definitely put together a strategy for any of the roles, VPE,
CTO, or former-employee, and get some good advice.
------
code_devil
In my company, the CTO and CEO are the co-founders. The CTO has a PHd and our
revolutionary product is pretty much his brain child implemented by the tech
staff under them. We also have a VP of Engineering that they hired. (a
Director of Eng in their previous venture). However, the VP of Eng reports to
the CEO. The CTO has his own set of staff and they basically brainstorm on new
ideas. We engineers respect all of them, but the CTO is definitely placed at a
higher pedestal because the bread & butter produect being his idea. But, the
CTO does not deal with most of the engineering staff except a few members who
are working under him for some latest ideas or our product in the R&D phase,
not released to the market yet. As an analogy, the CTO is more like a College
professor with a bunch of RA's under him :)
I am not sure what your background in your company is. Just wanted to share
what i saw in my company.
------
pg
Sounds to me like he's trying to push you aside.
------
sah
It's normal for the VP Eng to be a peer of the CTO and report directly to the
CEO. That said, you are almost certainly being marginalized. Your CEO likely
knows he needs your irreplaceable understanding of the company's technology,
but otherwise wants you out of the way.
Replacing you as manager is probably not going to work out well unless he
already has someone good in mind. CEOs rarely understand how much difficulty
they'll have identifying competent tech managers. He's in danger of finding
someone who does a great job of "managing up" and a poor job of getting things
done efficiently and correctly.
If you can't prevent the hire, making sure you hire someone competent is
probably the most significant thing you can do for the company.
~~~
sah
I should have added: if you _can_ prevent the hire, probably the most
significant thing you can do for the company is to learn how to correct the
problems, real or perceived, that have led to the desire for a new engineering
manager.
------
dennykmiu
It sounds like from what you are describing, you are more like the VP of
Engineering and less the CTO of the company. VP of Engineering should report
directly to the CEO and should be responsible for the entire engineering
staff, similar to the VP of Sales who also reports directly to the CEO and
should be responsible for the entire sales staff. If the CEO believes that he
needs a new VP of Engineering, then essentially he is telling you that he is
not happy with your performance and he needs to replace you.
------
ajju
I worked in a company where the VP of Engineering didn't report to the CTO. It
made some sense because the CTO mostly directed the 6 months into the future
vision of the company (next features, next product). This worked ok because
the CTO had a research team that reported to him and the VP of Engg had the
development team reporting to him but it was not optimal.
The issues we faced were:
\- CTO+Research team builds some amazing enhancements for the product but have
to fight to get them into the next release (Dev claimed there was no time for
regression testing..but next cycle there will be)
\- Dev team thought the research team were ivory tower elites (even though
this was not the case). There were Ph.D.s and people who never went to college
on the team.
\- Research team eventually thought they were superior (reaction to having all
their input regularly ignored by dev team)
In short, if your company has a legitimate need for a research or forward
looking team, there may be a way to make this situation work, but not without
regular political disputes and bitterness between teams. Try to find a way to
have the VP report to you.
------
marhar
At my old company we called the CTO "chief termination officer". It was
basically the de-staging area for tech people who had enough visibility that
they didn't want to get rid of them outright.
------
andrewf
I'm skipping over the issue of your CEO's motives - he could hate you and want
you out, but assuming he doesn't..
_despite the fact we've always done what we said we would when we said we
would._
So you've got the commitment thing down: you make commitments and then stick
to them. That's a reasonable baseline for reliability, but there is a whole
world of value-add beyond it. The VPEng should be working to improve the
company's ability to deliver product - even when the problems that need
solving aren't with his direct reports.
In particular, you say the front office has problems communicating their
vision. Do you work to improve their flawed and/or vague requirements, or do
you let them hang themselves, and point to the requirements document when
they're unhappy with the end result?
Longer term, have you tried to move towards more iterative processes
(prototyping during requirements gathering, agile processes, etc) to reduce
the damage done by poor requirements?
You sound like you are happier around, and have performed better in, the
technical aspects of your job than the management aspects. Your CEO may
(grain-of-salt) have noticed this. He could even be trying to give you what he
thinks you want.
Consider that your CEO may have a management structure in mind where the
process-and-timelines guy sits between him and the development team. Maybe you
could have this job if you wanted it - but it would mean hiring a CTO to worry
about the bigger picture, architecture, product etc. Your boss probably
doesn't want to pervert the reporting structure he has in mind just so that
roles in it matches what you want to do.
------
vseloved
[http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/10/cto-vs-vp-
engineerin...](http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/10/cto-vs-vp-
engineering.html)
------
cpierret
New CEO probably thinks that the engineering team is a mess and someone has to
fix it. Stop implementing Nagios yourself (and any non business critical
issues), and ask the CEO for some freelance to do the job instead. If he
argues that he has no money for that, run away fast (he has money to hire a VP
Eng...). If he agrees, then start building a trust relationship with him
quickly. Tech tasks usually can wait, where your CEO cannot (yes computers are
nicer than CEO, but CEO signs your paycheck) Focus on customer needs and your
colleagues' need: how can you help sales/presales and marketing do their job ?
Ask them what they need to succeed and give them the product they need. If you
cannot because you don't have the resources, be clear about it and have them
decide which tradeoff with you (or have the CEO allocate more resources).
Become accountable: Learn to say "No" to mission impossible and avoid saying
"No" when you could if you had more resources, just say "I could if ..." and
have them participate in the tradeoff decisions. Write things down once the
decision is made and email it after the meetings. If you think that this is
too late for that, or that the sales/marketing guys have no clue (or are
trying to cover), quit... and start again elsewhere.
------
seshagiric
The new CEO is taking away your advantage of working in a startup: \- when you
were CTO, you were critical for the company. When the VP comes, you will
eventually become commodity (and expandable) \- your influence in the company
is being cut into half \- you will lose your flexibility (or agility) in
getting things done (the process guy also now has to put his say)
Talk to the founders and the new CEO. If the VP engg. makes sense have him to
report to you. If not move on like Spolsky says.
------
psranga
You're being marginalized. But I'm not sure if you're capable of being VPE but
are being passed over because the CEO wants to bring in a buddy or because you
are genuinely extremely unsuited for the job.
If you don't want to be marginalized, fight to get the VPE position. If you're
going to get fired or further marginalized for fighting, you might as well
learn now so that you'll win next time. If you get VPE, learn the skills
required to be a great VPE and prove him wrong. Ask point blank for the
position and find out why the CEO thinks you're unsuitable for VPE.
For some reason suits think management is not learnable/teachable. You sound
smart; it's quite possible you'll be able to learn the required skills.
IMHO, people who think management is about "people skills" and "politics" are
the clueless ones. Read up "High Output Management" by Andy Grove, a hard-core
geek if ever there was one. He turned out to be an amazing manager too. Bill
Gates, even harder-core nerd also turned out be an amazing manager.
To my mind, management is more similar to programming than to party planning
(where people skills are really required). The manager's job is to set up
systems and processes which will result in maximum output. To do this, you
need to be analytical, quantitative, data-driven, open to being proven wrong
etc. Do you see how you've been practicing all of these skills as a techie? Do
the same for a proper manager's job skills and you'll see the overlap.
As an aside, I think all managers should have some individual responsibility
also. Otherwise they will be tempted to create problems that can be 'solved'
to justify their existence.
Re: "politics is not your strong suit" comments: you're expect things to work
rationally but they seem to be irrational. Being techie who's always open to
the possibility that you might be wrong, you're getting a second opinion to
check your conclusions. Nothing wrong with that; that's a strength.
------
danbmil99
work on your resume dude, and start going to lots of parties. Or just suck it
up and make yourself as useful and unobtrusive as possible (times be rough out
there). The CEO wants to sideline you; you're not his guy. He needs someone
malleable and loyal to him only.
Read The Prince.
------
gfodor
Two cents here. Similar situation happened to myself, except I wasn't the CTO
but the de-facto "lead architect" of a major project/death march that had all
of the stereotypical problems you read about again and again: product
mismanagement, feature creep, overzealous salesforce, and heightened
expectations reaching the impossible.
Much like yourself, I had been put in charge of an incredibly difficult
project and somehow managed to grow a solid engineering team and build the
system with them and get something out the door. 500k lines of C#, unit tests
integration tests, the whole 9 yards over two years. We had finally launched
(late and with much more baked in than accounted for) and started to tighten
up iterations and bring in customer feedback. (Yes! We really had no customers
using our system for two years during development!) I of course was under a
lot of stress as feature backlogs grew and defects lists exploded because the
software wasn't rolled out slowly and incrementally to clients but instead
sold from day zero as if it was 100% rock solid.
So, as you probably had, I had my lunch with the CEO where I was being asked
(ie told) that a new VP of Engineering position was going to be pursued to fix
all the horrible problems plaguing the software development team. The problems
which, at least from our perspective, had little to do with us since we pulled
off not one but a series of those small miracles that only happen at 4AM by
yourself in the tech room. However, taxed was I and naive, so I figured hey,
what the heck, maybe I'll be able to write code some more if this magical
hypothetical person can swoop in and take care of all that other nasty
business like "talking to the sales guys and telling them not to sell features
that don't exist."
So, we interviewed for this position fully unaware of what it was, exactly, we
were looking for. Being young engineers if a candidate came in and had managed
teams before _and_ knew what unit tests were we were thrilled. We had no idea
though what to look for, what red flags there were in hiring this person, so
the third person or so who came in to talk to us ultimately was hired since
it's hard to say no to someone who you don't even know how to judge. (And you
can't, of course, just hire the first or second candidate that walks in the
door because then you just look like you don't know what you're doing!)
So soon after this new hire we began interviewing for additional developer
positions, but all folks that came in to meet us for interviews were
developers this new VP of Engineering worked with in the past. As it turns
out, the first candidate didn't know how regular expressions worked, so I said
"no hire." The second, turned out, worked with a friend of mine some years
back and spent days on end simply reorganizing the file structure of their svn
repository, and so again, I said "no hire."
Well, they both still work there and I have long since left. Our system we
worked on for years completely thrown out for yet another re-write from
scratch, now to be done the "right way". The all stars on the team I helped
build are all gone except one who has a family to support, all moved on to do
startups or larger more innovative software companies.
A long story, yes, but I'd urge you if nothing else to consider the impact a
hire like this can have on your entire team, since they will now be the ones
making the hiring decisions. If you cannot trust them with that (and it's hard
to trust anyone with that after just a few interviews), I'd say push back as
hard as you can on this particular decision and try to, as PG says, "be
resourceful" and bootstrap solutions from folks already in the organization
you _can_ trust.
~~~
plinkplonk
". Similar situation happened to myself, except I wasn't the CTO but the de-
facto "lead architect" of a major project/death "
Ohh that brings back memories. A Senior Vice President at one of the largest
software companies in the world asked me to meet him because he was looking
for a "lead architect" for an "elite group" he was putting together. I met him
and went over what he needed in detail and it seemed like there was a good fit
(and the senior VP was a very nice person).I specifically asked him " So who
makes technical decisions? " the answer "You do of course, you are the
architect. You'll be reporting to me so just keep me in the loop". So I
accepted the offer.
By the time I joined a week later, I found that I would be reporting to a
(newly hired) "Director of Engineering" and would have a "dotted line
reporting relationship" to a "Chief Architect" (who in turn reported to a
[Company] Chief Architect. The VP Engg chap I reported to (he turned out to be
a very Dilbertian middle manager type) reported to a VP India, who reported to
a Senior VP, Emerging Markets, who reported to yet another VP who reported to
the CEO. The "Chief Architect" who I had a reporting relationship with was a
very nice person but couldn't code to save his life and always spoke in very
abstract terms like "scaling Enterprise SOA across business units".
The VP who hired me led a "product development" group totally disconnected
from what we were doing.
I found I could make hardly any decisions but had to attend plenty of meetings
about meetings. A memorable meeting was when I had to deal with the "General
manager (SCM)" to demand Licenses of the company standard proprietary Version
Control system for my team and he asked me "Do you really need Version
Control? Couldn't you just use directories? Make a directory per version and
save your code in it. We back up all the directories every day "(!!).
Long story short, I felt like I was working in Arkham Asylum but the money was
good so I stayed a few months and left with a nice bank balance and am now
back in consulting mode.
Getting back to the point, from what I've observed of company politics it
looks like the CEO has a two step plan to get rid of the Original Post-er.
First, cut away your power base by having all the dev chaps report to the new
guy and then ask " so what does he do here anyway?". He probably just wants to
keep you around for a while as "insurance" . If I were you (depending on how
much power you have with the board/founders) I would either (a) make sure I
had some real work to do as CTO (in the corporate world this often means
having people report to you )even after the VP chap were hired (b) make sure
the hire didn't happen, in practice this depends on how much clout you have in
the existing setup or (c) start making plans to leave.
The good news is that even in he case of option (c), you have some time to
make your move. If you have a sound enough financial base, you should probably
quit immediately.
My 2 cents. But ultimately only you know the finer details of your situation
that make a difference.
Good Luck man!
------
known
Traditionally, CTO is responsible for eliciting business requirements,
designing and developing technical solution and coordinating project
activities.
VPE is responsible for deployment, technical support, bug fixing and
coordinating marketing activities.
------
acgourley
The VP need not marginalize the CTO, often he just removes tedium from the
CTO. If you get a VP Eng and modify the company org chart, and at the same
time your influence in the company dwindles, I don't believe it will be
causation.
------
jwilliams
This is a rough question - but are there areas in the tech area that you see
requiring improvement? If so, what are they? Irrespective of the political
state, do you see the CTO/VPeng setup redressing them?
------
ooorrr
I'm the guy on the other side of the table: I'm the VP of Engineering who gets
brought in. The circumstances are always the same - the CEO/COO/BoD doesn't
believe that the CTO is the person they can trust to build great software and
great processes. (This may or may not be true, and the company may or may not
be doing that already - I've seen both. This is subjective even if you know
what you're talking about.)
A few simple notes, and please know I don't wish to be insulting, just clear:
\--This person is absolutely going to report to the CEO. The CEO is the person
making the decision, and if he trusted you to build and run the organization,
he would have had you hire the VPE. (On a related note, you missed an
opportunity to fill a hole for the company that the CEO recognized.)
CEOs (and any leader of a large, multi-fxnal organization) want their direct
reports to be the people they can trust to get something done. You aren't that
guy - the CEO doesn't want to go through you to find out how the engineering
org is working, or he would have kept you in charge - so the VPE isn't going
to work for you. Done.
\--The CTO/VPE peer relationship is perfectly reasonable. Sometimes it's a
hierarchy, sometimes it's not. Usually when it's a hierarchy, it's because the
CTO also runs other groups (like ops, tech support, etc.), and so is known by
the CEO etc. to be a capable manager. You are not.
So when I read your note, I can't tell if
1) you're upset because you want to keep doing the VPE job, but you aren't
going to get the opportunity; 2) you're happy doing the CTO/Chief Architect
job, but are frustrated/saddened by how it was handled.
You really do need to make this call. If it's #1, sorry - best you can do here
is help hire a great VPE and leech on to learn from her. (Lot to be said for
that.)
If it's #2, the good part is that if the VPE is the right kind of egg, this
can be very good for you:
1) Many VPEs do this job because they don't want to be the Chief Architect.
Some have the capability, some did once, some just don't, but you rarely have
someone competing for your job or responsibility.
2) You get to wipe your hands of everything besides making sure the company
technically designs great software. As a company grows, that's a huge bonus.
You have to genuinely _want_ to do this job when things get ugly or when
negotiations get tricky.
3) Your time with the CEO almost certainly diminishes, but that's ok, because
you get to work with the people who matter more to you.
I like what I do, and when I find a great CTO, that's awesome - it means that
I can help on architecture occasionally, but really I get to focus on the
problems I'm there to solve, knowing that many eyes are keeping us out of
architectural trouble. So, make a friend (and if you're in Seattle, I'm always
available).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intellectual Ventures Paid Consultant To Get Unions To Fight Patent Reform - yanw
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110316/23442113522/contract-dispute-reveals-that-intellectual-ventures-paid-consultant-to-get-unions-to-fight-patent-reform.shtml
======
RickHull
A good way to frame this behavior that makes clear why it is revolting:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking>
The economic concept of rent is where a firm in an advantageous position uses
that position to extract wealth without doing anything productive. Much of the
divisiveness between the two dominant U.S. political parties can be explained
in these terms:
The Left thinks that corporate privilege enables rent-seeking behavior (e.g.
finance), while the Right thinks that government privilege enables rent-
seeking behavior (e.g. regulatory capture, public sector unions).
It may seem like all economic activity is rent-seeking, and this is true to an
extent -- everyone wants to sit back and let prior work bring in income today.
Competition is what checks rent-seeking -- such behavior often goes hand-in-
hand with a monopoly position, which is why you see it where there is heavy
government involvement (e.g. patents, public sector services).
What I would like to see is the calling-out of rent-seeking behavior from both
sides. This is the way forward to a more united, wholesome, just economic /
political system.
~~~
yummyfajitas
_...everyone wants to sit back and let prior work bring in income today_
This isn't rent seeking. This is simply enjoying rents from value creation.
Rent seeking is when actively seek out rents by engaging in
unproductive/harmful activities in order to continue receiving rents.
For example, getting a patent to prevent others from building similar works is
rent seeking [1]. Or forming a union to prevent others from undercutting you
is rent seeking. Similarly, creating regulatory requirements that crush small
players (e.g., Walmart's attempts to raise the minimum wage, Phillip Morris
attempts to increase tobacco regulation) is also rent seeking.
[1] Of course, patents might still be beneficial if the rents extracted are
smaller than the value created which would not otherwise be created in the
absence of patents.
------
noonespecial
Just once I'd like to find out that reality doesn't turn out as rotten as I
can possible imagine it. To hear somewhere, someone, on some board said, "ya
know, we've made enough this quarter, lets _not_ make giant asses of ourselves
by usurping and corrupting the system that allowed us to do so."
~~~
berntb
Move to my native Sweden, it is a not-so-capitalistic economy which is clean,
with very little corruption and backroom dealings. Just ask the politicians.
But before you go, I wonder if you might be interested in buying a bridge to a
really good price...?
(At least you get to find out _some_ of this stuff in the US. In many other
countries the 'ol boy's clubs are just too tight. I think I'll send money to
WikiLeaks, even though they seem a bit weird.)
Edit: Thanks, dexen. Sigh, I aimed for humorous and informative, not
sarcastic. (I can't upvote you, since my "avg" is too low after questioning
news sources which people claimed were good without having references. I
probably came off as sarcastic then, too.)
~~~
dexen
Be aware the sarcasm of your post is easy to miss with cursory read.
------
rwmj
What's amazing is how little money was involved. $30K / month, about $360K /
year. In return, millions in extortion fees and a huge drag on the economy.
~~~
yummyfajitas
It's also rather likely that unions and patent holders have some shared
interests, so I doubt this is solely about the money.
Both patent holders and unions are rent seekers. Strict patent laws make
monopolies/oligopolies easier to form, and unions find it easier to extract
rents from monopolies/oligopolies than from competitive markets.
In a monopolistic/oligopolistic situation, the monopoly can extract rents from
customers, and the union can demand their cut. In a competitive market with
many players, profit margins will be thinner, and it's likely that the non-
union shops will undercut the union shops. So this move might be as much about
shared interests, or at least shared ideology, as it is about money.
~~~
gjm11
Is it actually true that unions find it easier to extract rents from
monopolies or oligopolies than from competitive markets?
Imagine that all software without exception is made by Microsoft. Then (near
enough) all software developers have to work for Microsoft. That gives
Microsoft a lot of bargaining power against its employees, unionized or
ionized. The only way in which the Universal Programmers' Union is better off
in this world than in the real one is that Microsoft (having a monopoly) may
be under less pressure from the market to sell its software cheaper, and
therefore may be better able to pay rent to the unionized programmers. Fair
enough, but is there any actual reason to think that that outweighs MS's gain
in bargaining power over its employees? (Which exactly parallels the gain in
bargaining power over its customers that makes it better able to afford to pay
what its employees demand, if that seems worth doing.)
~~~
yummyfajitas
A monopoly and a union have equivalent bargaining power. The union members
have only vastly inferior substitutes for employment (e.g. Dairy Queen), and
the company has only inferior substitutes for labor (temps). It's in both of
their best interests to eventually agree to split the rents.
In a competitive market, there is less rent to split (e.g., 5% profit margin
instead of 15%) and there is always a third possibility: the unionized
employer goes bankrupt and only non-unionized employers remain. So producers
(as a class, not any individual one) get to survive, while the union (as a
class) is destroyed.
But don't take my word for it. Go take a look at the world. The primary
bastions of unionization seem to be monopolies or oligopolies: the government,
Big 3 automakers (in their heyday, at least), cable companies and the like.
Unionization also declined (outside the government) as the country became more
competitive.
Think about what nearly happened to the auto industry. Consumers suffered with
crappy overpriced cars, and the Big 3 + unions enjoyed their rents. Then the
market became more competitive, and absent government intervention, the
unionized part of the sector would have died. The unions seem desperately
afraid of this effect in education which is why they fight tooth and nail
against charters/vouchers.
------
nikcub
This made me angry at first, and then I thought that IV were being smart and
doing what everybody else does in a political fight: attempt to exert
influence by paying for it.
I am more inclined to blame the representatives who make legislative decisions
based on who is funding them .
~~~
Devilboy
The Reps need the money. More money means more ad campaigns and better chance
to stay in power. The system is to blame I think. Not enough oversight or
regulation?
~~~
anamax
> Not enough oversight or regulation?
More of the same is bound to work...
When there are benefits to buying legislation, legislators will be bought.
If you don't want govt to be corrupt, you can't ask it to run things.
As they said in "WarGames" - the only way to win is to not play the game.
~~~
jordan0day
Hrm -- this seems a little too... nihilistic? I mean, I agree, the system is
highly flawed and quite possibly broken, but it's the system we live in. If we
don't like the system, we can either withdraw from it completely, as you're
advocating, or at least try to change it for the better. If you withdraw, it's
only going to get worse.
~~~
VladRussian
It seems Gandhi didn't think so.
~~~
anamax
What was Gandi's big success?
He had four big campaigns. One was Hindu-Muslim unity. Another was to block
the import (into India) of British textiles. The third was ending
"untouchability". The fourth was to get the UK out of India.
The latter succeeded, but since the UK couldn't afford to be in India and its
PM at the time was an anti-Imperialist, it's unclear how much effect Gandi
had. As to the others ....
However, he does get good press.
------
tzs
Let me try this again, more verbosely, since I appear to have overestimated
the audience when I tried to ask this more concisely:
So? How is this different from what pretty much every other company large
enough to afford lobbying (Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat, Amazon, Wal
Mart, Comcast, and a gazillion others) does?
There's only one interesting (in the sense that it is at all out of the
ordinary) thing in that article, and no one has mentioned it.
~~~
ChuckMcM
Put it in an different context,
Lets say you were married, lets say you had an affair, lets say that the news
of this came to light and your spouse yelled and screamed at you.
How do you think they would answer the question: "So? How is this any
different from what every other person who has had an affair?"
The answer is that the question itself is flawed, whether or not other
companies attempt to game the system is irrelevant if the gaming itself is an
insult.
We know people will attempt to manipulate society and governments to their
ends, we can all be offended when they do so in an attempt to enrich
themselves at the expense of the greater good.
~~~
tzs
What gaming of the system?
There's a company. They have an opinion on a piece of proposed legislation.
They present their arguments to another organization and ask the other
organization to support their position.
That is not gaming the system. That's ordinary participation in the political
process.
~~~
ChuckMcM
"What gaming of the system?"
If an organization objects to legislation and presents those objections
themselves, its fairly transparent what they want and why.
When an organization attempts to inject objections to legislation through an
obfuscated channel (in the above case unions) to both take advantage of the
political capital of unions (on which many politicians rely for campaign
contributions) and to avoid the obvious conflict of interest that would come
out of a company that makes its living as a patent troll objecting to patent
reform. That is 'gaming' the system.
Note that gaming isn't illegal, its just politics, but as someone once said,
"Maneuvering the system for the public good is leadership, maneuvering the
system for the public good and your personal benefit is public - private
cooperation, but maneuvering the system for your benefit and harming the
public good in the process, well that's just dirty politics."
------
allertonm
"They also asked him to try to keep Intellectual Venture's involvement in
derailing patent reform quiet, since top investors in IV, such as Bill Gates,
supported patent reform."
Stay classy, IV.
------
VladRussian
one racket talks to another.
------
tzs
So?
~~~
dexen
Are you American? I'm not, but it seems to me unions are important force in
american politics.
From time to time, news surface how unions surprisingly stand up and take
strong stance on something unrelated to protecting the empoyees. <weasel
words>Which makes some suspect corruption</weasel words>. This story seems to
validate that.
~~~
tzs
Depending on who you believe, patents are either a vital component of keeping
companies innovating and profitable (which is good for employees), or they are
dragging companies down and making them waste money working around bad patents
and dealing with patent troll lawsuits (which is bad for employees).
Either way, they seem within scope for unions interested in protecting
employee interests.
~~~
dexen
You seem to believe there are only two sides to the discussion. There are
three, actually: two very vocal partizan sides, and a third side doing actual
research. Scientists have spoken on patents and other forms of Intellectual
Property protection. I believe [1] in science, do you?
\----
[1] in the _figurative_ sense ONLY. Science is not matter of belief; nor the
beliefs I hold personally have anything to do with science.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: When does a startup stop being a startup? - hellweaver666
I recently read an article that referred to Digg as a startup. Is Digg still a startup? They've been around for years now. What makes a startup a startup, and when does one stop being a startup?
======
bdfh42
How about on IPO, sale to third party or when the founders give up?
------
vaksel
a) When they break even with their original investment and have decent profits
for their size
b) When they are considered the leader in their niche
c) When the original founders are no longer at the helm. (Bringing in a CEO
for example/IPO)
d) More than 100 employees
But that's just me
~~~
csakon
Does this mean you don't consider 37signals a startup?
I would agree to no, they are not. They are a leader in their niche (simple
small business products) and they are profitable beyond their original
investment.
I can't recall how magazine publications refer to them (as a startup or a
company based out of Chicago)
~~~
rms
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173000>
------
pclark
given that they rely on external funding, I'd say they were a startup.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Equity as compensation to interns - mbenchi10
What do you guys think of giving equity away to interns as compensation?
What stage do you think it makes less sense?
======
sethammons
Step 1: pay your interns a fair wage in cash. After you complete step 1, you
can do what what you like with equity :). I feel that equity equates to "skin
in the game" but is also very close to a lotto ticket. I'd consider a program
where interns get options if they return for full time employment after they
complete school and then stay for a proper vesting period (1-4 years).
Granted, normal employees should get that program too. So maybe you sweeten
the deal for interns by reducing time to vest or extra options for having
interned.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: Fewer lines of clever code or more lines of clearer code? - technoguyrob
This is a question mostly geared towards helping my own programming style (and of course maybe yours, by example), so if you can please reply to give me some input, that would be great.<p>I'm writing a Javascript calendar sort of like Google Calendar's functionality but with more collaboration features. For the events that actually show on the calendar, I wrote this function that converts positions on the calendar (left and right CSS offsets) to UNIX timestamps (and another function that does vice-versa). In the code below, the parameter "el" is a jQuery encapsulation of the DIV that holds the event, the "isEndTime" parameter is whether to look at the beginning of the DIV or the end (i.e., start or end of the event), the this.parent.timeStart variable holds a Date that begins at the very top left of the calendar (midnight at first Sunday of the week), the this.parent.timeslice variable is a shortcut/cache for the number of seconds that one column in the calendar represents (i.e., # of seconds in a day), the this.hSpacing variable holds the CSS "left" offsets of the 7 columns as an array (60, 210, 360, etc., for a 1024-wide window resolution), this.vSpacing is the vertical # of pixels in one half-hour block (each day is partitioned into 48 rows of half-hour blocks), and this.borderWidth is just the width of the border between half-hour blocks.<p>Within a minute or two, would you be able to comprehend the following? (the whitespacing is a little ugly, but I can't go over 80 characters horizontally)<p><pre><code> _dom2time : function(el, isEndTime) {
// The function px2num below takes a DIV element and CSS attribute like "left", and
// returns the number of px that CSS attribute was assigned.
// For example, a DIV with left:50px called with attr equal to 'left'
// would return 50.
var px2num = function(el, attr) { return
parseInt(j(el).css(attr).substr(0,el.css(attr).indexOf('px'))); };
return
(this.parent.timeStart.getTime() / 1000) +
parseInt(this.parent.timeslice * (
(function(n){for(var i in this.hSpacing) if (n <= this.hSpacing[i])
return i;}).apply(this, [px2num(el, 'left')]) +
((px2num(el,'top') + (!isEndTime ? 0 :
px2num(el,'height') + this.borderWidth)) /
(this.parent.rows*this.vSpacing))));
}
</code></pre>
If you can't understand it, let me just take a second to explain. The UNIX timestamp at a given position is given by the time at the start of the week, plus the days before that event, plus the seconds up until the event on the day of the event. So, I take the start-of-the-week timestamp, and then take the number of seconds in a day times the "fraction" of a day the event occurs at (it would be 5.5 for an event occuring on Friday at noon). Traditionally, this code would've been done very different by starting maybe with some variable which accumulated the time up until the event (starting with the beginning of the week, then adding the days up until, then the seconds in that day up until), but instead it's all compressed into one return statement. When I had written this, it came naturally, but when I stopped to look, I realized "Wow...this might be kind of hard to follow". And yet it's much fewer lines of code than a "traditional" approach would've used. What would you prefer?<p>EDIT: Am I writing Lisp in Javascript?
======
irrelative
Ultimately, it comes down to who will maintain this. If you're hoping to pass
off ownership of this and let someone else maintain it, go for the longer but
simpler approach.
If it's something that you'll be in charge of forever, get as clever as you
can :)
Remember the words of Kernighan: "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the
code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as
possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it."
~~~
brlewis
Kernighan is in error for those cases where in the process of coming up with a
clever solution you make yourself smarter.
~~~
mechanical_fish
Yes, but beware: Additional smartness does not always stick.
And smartness can be highly conditional. Clever code is often written by calm
and well-rested people, but its showstopping bugs are often fixed at 3am by
panicked people who are losing thousands of dollars per second.
------
pmjordan
Your problem here is that you're mixing logic and presentation, so it's
neither clever nor clear. I'm not 100% sure what you're trying to do (your
explanation again mixes everything together making it hard to understand) but
I _think_ you want to do this:
\- Transform the screen position to a week-based relative coordinate system.
\- Convert that spatial coordinate into a time stamp represented as seconds
since the epoch.
That's a minimum of two steps, two verbs and therefore two separate functions.
Step 1 can be broken down further by introducing helper functions for
inspecting the DOM, decoupling the representation of the UI elements from your
actual screen-space coordinate system, as CSS isn't in a nicely-scriptable
format.
Once you've done this, you'll discover the result to be only marginally
longer, but highly reusable.
~~~
technoguyrob
Sorry for not being clear about that. The purpose of this helper method (hence
the underline before that name) is to take an event positioned in the DOM and
convert its position into a timestamp for that event. Probably the only place
this will be called is when some change is made to the DOM of the event. For
example, when it is resized, it'll have a different height as well as "top"
offset, so that'll have to be translated into a timestamp. I don't know any
other way to do this that would be fundamentally different, since at some
point the pixel-based resizing is going to have to become a timestamp. Nothing
in this function will be used anywhere else, hence I didn't make any more
helper functions for my helper function. Thanks!
EDIT: And yes, I agree, if I ever decide to make events more fancy than just
dropping in a DIV on the timetable, I'll probably have to do a bit more. But
of course, only a couple things will change then, and I can just write those
as helper functions for this function.
~~~
aaronblohowiak
A separation of concerns is not just good for flexibility, it also helps with
debuggability and readability and is a reflection of ability.
------
nostrademons
It's confusing for me...I had to puzzle it out to understand it, and even then
don't fully understand it. If I were writing this from scratch, I'd skip all
the pixel computations and instead add "day" and "halfHour" attributes onto
the elements themselves as you're building the display (or just attach a UNIX
time directly, as neilk suggests). Then computing the UNIX time is just:
this.parent.timeStart.getTime() +
((parseInt(el.attr('day'), 10) * 48) +
(parseInt(el.attr('halfHour'), 10)) * 30 * 60 * 1000;
A couple readability/bugfixing comments on the exising code:
1.) In C-family languages, I really don't like functions that have the closing
brace on the same line. I've tried it in my own code a couple times and always
had to go back and change it when I went to reread the code. I have no problem
with it in Lisp, but it's so different from normal coding C-like coding
conventions that it makes skimming the code very difficult.
2.) parseInt automatically skips everything after the first non-numeric
character, so you don't need the substr in px2num.
3.) You should get in the habit of supplying a radix argument to parseInt
(i.e. parseInt(el.css(attr), 10)), because otherwise it'll interpret it in
octal if the string starts with 0, which can lead to very strange bugs.
4.) When you have a known number of arguments, use function.call(obj, arg1,
arg2) instead of function.apply(obj, [arg1, arg2]).
5.) In this case, it's probably clearer if you just used an accumulator; using
a closure doesn't buy you anything, and means you need to mess with the this
parameter.
~~~
technoguyrob
The pixel computations are done because of the way this is used in the
calendar. When a user resizes the event, some kind of pixel computation is
going to happen at some point, since mouse coordinates have to be transferred
in some way to "left" and "top" offsets (perhaps by first translating to the
start time and end time abstractions). This was probably the dirtiest part in
that respect, as it is the point at which I chose to translate between pixels
into usable data. It's a helper function, so to speak, so I don't have to deal
with any of this in my more general abstract code (which does indeed follow
the much more "clean" approach). Hence the underline before the method's name.
:) (this is part of an object)
1\. I agree, but they're tiny inline functions so that's why I did that. I'll
refrain from doing that from now on as this seems to be a general consensus.
2&3\. Aah, good point. I just went back and looked at an old JS project and
noticed I was doing both of these properly with parseInt. I've forgotten
though as I haven't done too much heavy Javascript for a while before this.
Thanks so much!
4\. I've used call before like that but for some reason I forgot about it and
switched to apply. Thanks!
5\. Ok, that's what I wondered. The comments so far seem to agree this would
be better for readability. I don't plan on anyone else even touching this
code, so indeed like someone else suggested that could be an important factor,
as indeed if this wasn't a personal project I would've used a more orthodox
(i.e., less compressed) approach.
That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
EDIT: Also, if I used "day" and "halfHour" attributes they would be hardcoded.
Maybe someday I'd like to change to hour blocks, or have a view in four-hour
blocks instead of half-hour. I am using this object as an abstract class that
handles a calendar view, which will be passed specifics for the view. For
example, the day view will be initialized like this:
arguments.callee.$.__init.call(this,
{timeblock:1800, rows:48, cols:1, timedir:0,
startTime:startTime,
timename:'day', container:'daycontainer'}
);
Where the "arguments.callee" stuff is just calling the (inherited) superclass
initialization function. This way, if a New World Order appears and ever
decides to make 5-day instead of 7-day weeks, all I have to do is change one
line of code. ;) (while that's true, the real reason for me doing this is so I
don't have to write code 3 times for a day, week, and month view)
That's (partially) why I didn't do something like hardcode "day" or "halfHour"
attributes (although I do store all this information in the object--the method
I showed above is a computational helper function).
------
midnightmonster
Fewer lines of clearer code: I reject the dichotomy.
So first you have four lines of comment explaining a completely unnecessary
helper function--px2num(el,'top') doesn't save a lot over
parseInt(el.css('top')), and the later is clearer. Then you have all packed
into your return something that's technically one line but actually takes
seven lines to display in a way that it can actually be read.
So could this be written clearer in less than ~12 lines? Oh yes. First, why
are we working in seconds when JavaScript uses milliseconds natively? Assuming
that's really necessary, you must do myDate.getTime()/1000 an awful lot. So
let's assume you added a getTimestamp method to Date.prototype. And I'm going
to assume that el.style.left actually has to equal one of the members of
hSpacing--it doesn't make sense that you'd allow dropping without snapping to
the grid _and_ that you'd only want the right result if they happened to drop
left of the day column but not if they drop one px right.
And it looks like you've got jQuery mapped to j instead of $, which is weird
but ok.
function domStartTime(el) {
var week = this.parent;
return week.timeStart.getTimestamp() +
week.timeslice * j.inArray(parseInt(el.css('left')),this.hSpacing) +
(parseInt(el.css('top')) + this.borderWidth) / week.rows / this.vSpacing;
}
function domEndTime(el) {
return domStartTime(el) +
parseInt(el.css('height')) / this.parent.rows / this.vSpacing;
}
------
jamesjyu
I am totally in the simple, but longer camp. There's absolutely no benefit
from being overly clever about your implementations. It's just going to take
you 10x longer down the road to figure out how to debug the damn thing.
My first programming job was a shop where we actually wrote _reference_ code
that would be implemented by other companies into various chipsets. There was
no room for lack of clarity there. Everything, absolutely everything, must be
crystal clear. I've taken many of the things I've learned there to all my
other programming projects.
------
neilk
_I wrote this function that converts positions on the calendar (left and right
CSS offsets) to UNIX timestamps (and another function that does vice-versa)._
This seems like a very bad design. Is it really better than simply attaching a
time property to every div at calendar creation? You are coupling presentation
and data, which is in general a terrible idea.
Also, you realize that other countries arrange days of the week differently?
If you ever internationalize, you will be in a world of pain. If you ever
decide you want column width to vary for some reason, again you are fucked.
You can sometimes justify tricky Javascript since download speed is a factor.
However, your JS strikes me as probably more wordy and complex than the
straightforward solution.
Tricky techniques that exploit tight coupling are almost always wrong.
~~~
technoguyrob
Yes, I skipped over a few of the specifics. The "Saturday/Sunday" at the end
of the week versus "Sunday at the beginning" is taken care of, I was just
using that as an example to explain; internationalization works fine. The time
property is already attached to the DIV; however, this will be recomputed
based on some DOM-change to the event. It makes it simpler, since (for
example) when the user resizes the event, I can just deal with the physical
resizing of the DOM object, and once they're done, translate it to the
timestamp. I'm a presentation/data separation freak to the point of having no
Python code include any HTML, and no HTML include any JS (except the <script>
tag). However, this is a case where presentation and data are very intimately
attached. Maybe I should have explained that I don't use this to get the time
of the event. However, when the user resizes the event, at some point that
connection between data and presentation has to be made, since their resizing
is ultimately caused by pixel-based mouse coordinates. Also, the varying
column width is taken care of, as none of this is hardcoded. The vertical and
horizontal spacings are computed by looking at offets, and recomputed during
window resizing.
Does that make my approach any better? I think that addresses every issue. I
agree, though, there are better ways to do this, but this isn't a priority
project for me so I haven't put as much thought into it as I'd like. Thanks,
Neal.
~~~
neilk
Okay, I think I get it now. You want the user to "stretch" the DOM element
representing a schedule item, and then when the user is done stretching, you
will translate the movement into a real start and end time.
To borrow MVC terminology, your DOM element is then effectively a controller +
view in one. Just like we might translate a slider at 50% into 128/256, it's
okay to take its properties and then translate those into your model.
Presumably you poll the DOM object as it is being dragged, or fire off events
when it stops being dragged, which updates the model in near-real-time. Do I
understand it?
This is actually a good idea then. Although you want to be careful that your
controller doesn't rely on magic constants to do its conversion, it should
derive those from some initialization from something representing a "layout".
But you seem to have done this.
To get back to your original question... I did find the code hard to read. I
don't have the time to unravel it to make it clearer, but personally, I always
like to state the problem as clearly as I can up front, in an expression that
approaches pseudocode. Like "return getStartOfWeekTime(el) +
getOffsetTime(el)". This hides away the hard bits in smaller routines, and the
clueless maintenance programmer (i.e. you in one month) will understand what's
going on right away and where the bugs might be. But if this is too slow you
may have to bite the bullet and live with something hard to read.
~~~
technoguyrob
Exactly! And yes, all those "magic numbers" are derived. For example...
this.hSpacing = Array.prototype.slice.call(this.parent.blocks.filter(
function(n){ return n < _this.parent.cols; })
.map(function(n,o){ return o.offsetLeft; })
);
Your function names and decomposition are indeed much easier to read. Thanks
again, Neal!
------
xirium
You should have more abstraction. Date handling code is rarely clear.
Embedding it presentation code is rarely advisable. Calculate day of week in
one function. Calculate time of day in another function then generate position
based on these functions.
------
watmough
Won't this completely break down in a DOM simulator?
It seems like a bad idea to couple data with presentation.
I'm quite honestly dismayed when my team try stupid things like this. I can
give a recent example, of where we perform stats from data stored in a grid,
where performance of the grid is terrible, and it drags the stats performance
into the ground, instead of quickly calculating/caching the stats from the
data directly.
If you suggest adding data caching functionality to a GUI grid, I will start
crying!
~~~
technoguyrob
This is the dirtiest component of going between DOM and the event abstraction
(start and end times). When someone resizes the event or moves it, it's going
to take some kind of pixel calculations at one point or another, even if
they're very generalized, since they used their mouse to do that. This is the
point at which I decided to deal with that. Otherwise the events are all
handled abstractly. The data isn't necessarily coupled with the presentation,
but for example the way they move the event around on the DOM when they're
dragging and dropping (presentation) has to be ___translated_ __into data at
one point or another (and so the function is called dom2time--translating
presentation to data :).
~~~
watmough
I went back and re-read your explanation above, and my constructive criticism
would be the following:
1\. Use a table, or horizontal grid of divs to represent the calendar. You can
write different server or client side code to render different presentations,
e.g. calendar, 5 day view, 7 day view etc.
2\. In this grid, tag each div with the appropriate date stamp as appropriate
for your application.
3\. Build code on the client side to track mouse drags, clicks, or whatever
you need to provide the user with a great experience specifying start and end
times.
None of this sounds that hard or tricky, and I would certainly be happier with
an approach that separated out generating time tagged divs from the
presentation and selection mechanism.
~~~
technoguyrob
Yeah, I did all this. :) For part 2, I still need a helper function like this
because the timestamp changes (when the user resizes, moves, etc.). Does that
make more sense? I have a grid of DIVs, on which I position events on top of.
EDIT: I see what you mean. For part 3, for example, I want "12:05", not
"12:04:27". Yeah, I was getting to that.
------
makecheck
It is sometimes reasonable to "compress" released code, especially if it can
be done automatically and there is benefit to doing so. In the case of
JavaScript, the main benefit is that the file download size is smaller.
However, unless there is an absolutely measurable and significant advantage, I
find "clever" code to be far more trouble than it is worth. Engineer time is
very expensive, and you don't want people sitting and studying code for very
long just to figure out how to change it safely.
------
sigstoat
put back the intermediate variables. just because you don't name them doesn't
mean the compiler doesn't have to store temporary results. you might as well
give them names so the next person can read this.
~~~
bprater
Agreed, that's the biggest issue with clever code. I'm easily tempted to do it
too.
But mashing everything together into a big lump just makes for a exhausting
debugging session in six months.
------
shiro
In general, if I need to maintain someone else's code, what I see the most
important is that the author's _intent_ is expressed clearly. Whether it is
clever-and-compressed code or simple-and-verbose code seems a secondary issue.
Longer code that has too much details (such as too many names for intermediate
variables) could obscure the intent of the author, and I'd rather prefer
clever code to it as far as it's intent is clear, for I can make it black-box
in my mind while I'm reading the whole and only analyze it lazily as needed.
------
pjackson
I won't comment on the design concerns. Many people have done that and I could
swing either way on your choice of implementation strategies. Instead, I'd
like to comment solely on the code.
As an agilist, I'd say: "The code works, so it adds business value, and
therefore the rest doesn't matter." However, I am not solely an agilist. I
believe this code is too hard to maintain.
This code is terse, which is often good. However, it is also too clever for me
to follow in a few minutes. It's a library function, so there isn't much to
gain from being terse or clever.
You could do one of several things, but here are the two I'd consider:
1\. Keep the logic the way it is, and attempt to use formatting and commenting
to make it easier to follow. Use more vertical lines and maybe use sidebar
commenting to make each line clear in its intent.
2\. Follow the advice of the folks who say that you're not really saving
compiler time and unroll the logic into more definitive chunks that use
variables to illustrate what you're up to.
In this case, I prefer #2, because I suspect you may have put more effort into
writing fewer lines than you may have been able to put into a solution that
used more lines. If you consider the cost-per-line-of-code, you may not have
saved anything.
That said, congratulations. You may want to consider entering an obfuscated
code content. :) (Just kidding).
------
jlouis
You should favor simple, elegant and flexible code. Why? Because it tends to
be the code that is the easiest to prove correct. Even if you don't want to
prove it correct, that kind of code tends to be easy to read, easy to adapt
and easy to change.
My preferred measurement is to look at how easy it would be to prove a couple
of nontrivial theorems about the code you are looking at. The easier that
would be, in a perceived view, the better I find the code. If you kludged 2-3
things of no relation into the same function, it proves to be extremely hard
to state meaningful cases in proofs about it.
Good code arises with 2 things: Persistence and iteration. It is when you
leave code and never come back to improve it that things begin to go wrong.
Think about it: All successful source code projects have these two traits.
People keep coming back to read old code and improve it. They persistently
iterate the code into better shape. Hence, you should favor code that is easy
to read and understand. If it is not, then it will be rewritten in the next
iteration when someone glances at it. Unless it contains some elegant piece
that saves you a lot of the headache -- you will know when you try to rewrite
it into "simpler" code. The persistence and iteration of old code to better
it, is what most bad management do not understand about software construction.
------
rcoder
What you have there is a gen-you-wine clusterfsck, my friend.
You need at least a handful of variables to name and hold your intermediate
values. Putting names on things is _good_. It lets you refactor and debug your
code in a reasonable way, without doing partial function application in your
head.
Furthermore, it aids in doing reasonable functional decomposition. If you have
several terms to which you're applying similar operations, that may be a
natural target for abstraction via a function. Without the intermediate
assignments, though, the syntactic noise of parenthesis, ternary statements,
and weird spacing tends to mask the commonalities in actual code flow.
Even worse, by making so many inline function definitions and applications,
you've re-defined 'this' to mean several different things in a single scope.
Full-time JS jockies may be used to that, but it makes _my_ head hurt.
Code like this screams to me that the author would rather rewrite it
completely (or force someone else to do so) than change it.
------
wataguy
It's worth noting that in some parts of the world (including the US) there are
days which are 23 hours long and others which are 25 hours long, which occur
when daylight savings time starts and stops. (I'm guessing your calendar isn't
high resolution enough to worry about leap seconds.) So if I'm reading your
code aright, the timestamp will be off by an hour on two Sundays a year in
places where DST is observed.
But to answer your original question, I'd have to say it depends. If the
clever stuff is really much more efficient, or less likely to break in unusual
circumstances, I say use it, but document it carefully. Otherwise, best to
code it clearly.
------
tlrobinson
1\. With better formatting it would be more readable. It's hard keeping track
of the parens and braces.
2\. What's with the call to parseInt? Are you trying to floor it? If so, just
use Math.floor()
3\. If you know the number of parameters to a function call you can use
method.call(this, arg1) instead of method.apply(this, [arg1]). Slightly more
readable, IMO.
Overall I would say this is a little _too_ clever. I'd use a few extra lines
to make it more clear.
------
Hoff
If you find yourself wondering if your code is sufficiently clear or
appropriately maintainable, then you already know the answer.
When there is doubt, there is no doubt.
------
narag
I prefer to write slightly longer, clearer code.
What I find infuriating is writing the same code all over again, with little
variations over many files.
------
pierrefar
In general, I prefer more clever code that gets documented extensively.
Sometimes you can get too clever and introduce funky bugs.
------
keefe
(clever code is faster)?clever:clearer...wait, what?
~~~
technoguyrob
Clearly clever...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bjarne Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology - mk44
http://www.morganstanley.com/profiles/bjarne-stroustrup-managing-director-technology/
======
jonalmeida
I met some ambassadors from Morgan Stanley who were wearing a shirt which had
a list of check boxes that went something like this:
[ ] Had a holiday recently
[ ] ???
[x] Met inventor of C++
------
mehrzad
He still teaches a grad-level (I think?) course here at Columbia. How I envy
the students in that class.
~~~
urs2102
It's an incredible class - I luckily got into it. It's pretty much like
watching a John Carmack keynote where he just unloads all the crazy ideas
buzzing around his head. He's a great guy - if there are any questions you
want me to ask him - I'd be happy to for you.
------
urs2102
He is also a visiting professor at Columbia's computer science department and
mentioned that a big reason for coming to New York was really to be close to
his grand kids. I am currently in a course on C++ language library design at
Columbia with him - and I can comfortably say that he's one of the most humble
and down-to-earth professors in the department (IMHO).
His class is awesome for not only hearing his stories like why it's called C++
instead of ++C, but learning about all the little details in C++ today and
what's to come for C++17 and on. If anyone has any questions they want me to
ask him, I'd be happy to do so.
------
ChuckMcM
Ok, is it just me that thought it telling that all the folks in the carousel
at the bottom of the page are wearing suits (and ties for the men) but Bjarne
has a open necked shirt on?
That said, I really resonate with this statement of his: _" I wanted to get
back to solving real-world problems."_
I tend to be most motivated when I've got a problem to solve which can be
expressed in terms of real world gains (usually in efficiency). Interesting to
hear that he didn't think he could do that in academia.
~~~
gadders
I work in IT for an investment bank. No-one really wears ties any more, except
for interviews. A few people don't even wear suits. Some people even wear
brown shoes and pockets on the fronts of their shirts.
------
billions
Nicolae Tesla died a poor man. Who are we to judge others' career choices?
------
tdicola
Funny to see some of HN hating on Morgan Stanley and Wall Street. You're
biting the hand that feeds you...
~~~
thaumaturgy
Some resourceful people have co-opted the term "hacker" to refer to people who
are very good at chasing money.
Not all the hackers have gotten that memo though.
------
maxlybbert
> Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems
> to solve there tackling difficult problems.
Well, as a professor, he did get some code into some JPL projects (
[http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/mbd09.pdf) ,
[http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/sec09.pdf) ,
[http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/autonomics09.pdf)
, [http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/fdc_jcse.pdf) ,
[http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/autonomics2008.pdf)
and [http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf](http://stroustrup.com/isorc2008.pdf)
). ( _Some_ information about MDS and goal oriented software can be found on
JPL's website,
[http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/](http://mds.jpl.nasa.gov/public/) ).
------
adamnemecek
Hasn't he been there for some time now?
~~~
mk44
yes, since 2014. But this wasn't widely known
~~~
adamnemecek
ah ok. i think that i learned it within the last year from his site
([http://www.stroustrup.com/](http://www.stroustrup.com/)) which has a very
90's vibe to it so i categorized it as old news.
------
zak_mc_kracken
> What motivated you to leave academia to join Morgan Stanley?
$$$
Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, he's earned it. But the whole
spiel about wanting to get back to solving real world problems... Come on,
now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve
there tackling difficult problems.
But Morgan Stanley? Decade old technology spending most of your time
interfacing twenty year old languages to mainframes. Nothing that will make
your heart pound there.
But the money... oh yeah, the money. No argument there.
~~~
patio11
I think you greatly underestimate the programming challenges available in
large investment banks, from "We ingest literally thousands of separate
sources, many of them time-series, at the rate of gigabytes per second." to
"How does one manage a programming team of _ten thousand people_ split between
six countries?" to "Where do we strike the balance between the-most-fault-
tolerant-computer-is-one-that-is-powered-off and a-bug-in-our-application-can-
bring-down-the-firm?" to "We have an open-ended research brief which is
attempting to answer the question 'Are any 2+ parts of the world's most
complicated black-box system correlated with each other in a way that nobody
knows yet?' to which any answer in the affirmative is instantly verifiable by
the presence of the river of money falling into our bank account that it
implies."
Plus some of Wall Street's hijinks are positively Googlesque. It's a place
where "I wonder if we can do image recognition on spy satellite photos to
count cars in parking lots to get an estimate of traffic to a retailer before
they publish their quarterlies" was met with "OH HECK YES WE CAN DO THAT."
~~~
davidw
> the programming challenges available in large investment banks
Agreed - they have some interesting technical challenges.
> "I wonder if we can do image recognition on spy satellite photos to count
> cars in parking lots to get an estimate of traffic to a retailer before they
> publish their quarterlies"
That, however, feels, at first glance, a bit zero-sum. Is that investment
making the world better in some way?
Not that I think anything should get in the way of them doing stuff like that,
but it feels a bit hollow in the grand scheme of things.
~~~
ovi256
Better evaluation and pricing of equity leads to better allocation of capital,
which leads to value creation, which is not zero sum.
Now, if the the better-pricers manage to capture all the value they create,
that is another question. But even then, they'll have to spend it sometime. A
yacht builder is paid, and so on.
------
rawnlq
Thought it would be cool to check out what some of the other language
inventors were/are doing:
Guido van Rossum (Python) - Google, Dropbox
Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) - WePay, Etsy, Jelastic
Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby) - Heroku
------
bch
What would he _do_ there in that capacity? I think of him as a technically
brilliant engineer -- a "Managing Director, Morgan Stanley" and Bjarne
Stroustrup just don't sound compatible (to me) on the surface... at least he's
getting paid, though.
~~~
sanswork
Managing Director isn't exactly as high up in the chain at MS as it sounds and
he could definitely still be getting his hands dirty directly with technical
decisions at that level. When I worked there I worked with one MD who was 3rd
in line on the pager list and was more than comfortable logging into the
servers to resolve problems if there was an issue that for some reason 1st and
2nd level weren't in a position to respond to.
Edit: I got MD/ED backwards. Ignore the above.
~~~
elmyraduff
Managing Director is the highest up in chain and it covers highest levels of
management. In fact, CEO of Morgan Stanley is a Managing Director.
But of course an MD can decide to 'get his hands dirty'. It is a personal
decision.
~~~
sanswork
ED was higher than MD when I was there unless I'm remembering it backwards it
was over a decade ago.
We had an ED who ran a few large projects and had 2 MD's under him(and above
me).
Edit: Just did a bit of googling and it looks like I did have them backwards.
Thanks for the correction.
------
mk44
This is surprising to me. I can't exactly point to why...
~~~
huac
I would guess it's very important to MS to hire top technical talent. Having a
big name on staff (doesn't get that much bigger than the C++ designer) helps
do that - it's a competitive advantage for MS over traditional tech companies
and over other banks.
------
mk44
OP here. My original title was "The Inventor of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup Works
at Morgan Stanley", and after 20 minutes, it somehow changed "Bjarne
Stroustrup – Managing Director, Technology". WHAT'S GOING ON
HERE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
~~~
tlb
Titles of submissions should match the title of the article. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
~~~
thaumaturgy
In this case though the edited title gives less information than the original
one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Live SEO Course with Moz's Rand Fishkin - sytse
https://courses.platzi.com/courses/seo-training/
======
sytse
I think Rand is pretty awesome and the Platzi people did a great job on our
GitLab course, looking forward to this starting in 8 minutes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Seneca - On the Shortness of Life - stingraycharles
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e.html
======
stingraycharles
I personally find this one of the most inspiring pieces i've recently read,
and I think it's of interest to a lot of HN'ers.
"Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those
who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in
order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to
live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet
postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it
comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter."
That is something that's stuck in my head ever since.
Related to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601281>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stanley Milgram: The Perils of Obedience - brlewis
http://www.paulgraham.com/perils.html
A thought-provoking study of authority vs. responsibility. It becomes relevant to startups when they start hiring.
======
brlewis
Besides being thought-provoking, this excerpt from a 1974 book describes a
behavior pattern that becomes relevant to startups when they begin hiring.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Identity Card Semantic Segmentation (Pytorch) - s3nhxx
https://github.com/s3nh/unet-midv500
======
s3nhxx
U-net based Id Card semantic segmentation using open sourced midv500 dataset.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Only 565 people have ever been to space. Virgin Galactic plans to send 3000 more - 123six
https://www.kevinrooke.com/post/virgin-galactic-and-the-potential-of-space-tourism
======
ncmncm
"Been to space" and "been in orbit" are very, very different things. To my
knowledge, Virgin only has plans for the first.
~~~
123six
Correct, and being in orbit is not a requirement to be considered an
astronaut. The threshold for being "in space" is 80km of altitude, a height
that all Virgin Galactic customer flights will pass.
~~~
ncmncm
It is only considered astronautics among those who haven't orbited.
On Virgin you get a glimpse of curved horizon, and stars in daytime, at the
expense of about the filthiest kind of rocket ever used. Really, the fuel is
basically burning tires.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to extract uranium from seawater for nuclear power (2017) - forgot_my_pwd
https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/how-extract-uranium-seawater-nuclear-power
======
herdodoodo
Uranium is not the only element/mineral of interest that is dissolved in
seawater. Research has been done on this stuff before. I'm glad it's being
done, but unfortunately this will remain unviable when compared to open-pit or
underground mining (even accounting for the risk of depending on foreign
suppliers + transportation costs of importing).
The biggest reserves are in Canada and Australia, not really countries we have
to worry about cutting off supply anytime soon. We have bigger strategic
mineral concerns (REMs and China)
Cool tech, won't leave the lab. Just like the billion "metal-ion/air/water"
batteries that get shilled non-stop.
~~~
sandworm101
>> The biggest reserves are in Canada and Australia, not really countries we
have to worry about cutting off supply anytime soon.
Unless you are Iran. North Korea. Or anyone else currently not able to buy
uranium from Canada.
~~~
pfdietz
Uranium is quite common, if you don't care too much about cost. If you own a
house with a suburban lot, the top meter of soil in your yard probably
contains several kilograms of uranium.
~~~
sandworm101
>> the top meter of soil in your yard probably contains several kilograms of
uranium.
No. That is way way off. Grams ... more likely milligrams and even that sounds
too much.
~~~
akiselev
According to [1], "the normal concentration of uranium in soil is 300 μg/kg to
11.7 mg/kg." According to [2], the density of topsoil ranges from 1,100 to
2,500 kg/m^3. One acre is about 4,000 m^2, so a conservative estimate is that
there is about 1.3 kg of uranium in 1 meter of top soil on a 1 acre lot. (4000
m^3 * 1100 kg/m^3 * 3x10^-7). That's just the low end - taking the midway
point for both yields over 40kg (4000 m^3 * 1800 kg/m^3 * 6 mg/kg).
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_in_the_environment)
[2]
[https://structx.com/Soil_Properties_002.html](https://structx.com/Soil_Properties_002.html)
~~~
masonic
on a 1 acre lot
Not many of us have all of an acre lot for our homes.
~~~
akiselev
According to [1], 2 billion people are subsistence farmers with under 5
hectares. The population adjusted average seems to be around a quarter of a
hectare (~0.6 acres) _per person_ (which sounds low to me, as someone who has
grown my own food without automation).
10^9 == many of us. Unless your definition of "us" is hacker news readers.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture)
------
Krasnol
Related:
Nuclear Power Worldwide: Development Plans in Newcomer Countries Negligible
* An analysis of current decommissioning and new construction projects reveals a downward trend in nuclear power worldwide
* Only four newcomer countries are currently constructing nuclear power plants and all are plagued by financial difficulties and delays
* An econometric analysis suggests that countries classified as potential newcomers tend to be less democratic
* On the supply side, the dominant driving force is the geopolitical interests of countries that export nuclear power
* Within the relevant international organizations, Germany should work to ensure that no support is given to the construction of nuclear power plants in newcomer countries
[https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261...](https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.742611.de/dwr-20-11-1.pdf)
------
jws
Aluminum is 1000 times more abundant in seawater than (edit)uranium. Lithium
is about 60 times as abundant. With uranium at $32/lb, aluminum at $0.75/lb
and lithium at $6/lb it seems that aluminum and lithium would reach commercial
viability first.
Magnesium has already made it with significant production coming from
seawater.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
I don't think your first sentence says what you think it does...
------
elihu
“Concentrations are tiny, on the order of a single grain of salt dissolved in
a liter of water,” said Yi Cui, a materials scientist and co-author of a paper
in Nature Energy. “But the oceans are so vast that if we can extract these
trace amounts cost effectively, the supply would be endless.”
That's a lot more uranium than I would have guessed. According to the top few
google results, it's about 3 milligrams per cubic meter.
------
epistasis
Great, now can anyone build a reactor that will be cheaper than solar +
batteries?
Problems like these make me think of jetpacks or flying cars. It turns out
that the future isn't what we thought it would be from the sci-fi ideas of the
mid 20th century. It's a lot cooler in some ways, and far far more boring in
others. (I want my jetpack)
~~~
mehrdadn
For anyone who hasn't seen these yet:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPvKl6ezyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VPvKl6ezyc)
Also see:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAJM5L9hhBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAJM5L9hhBs)
~~~
epistasis
These are incredible and I hadn't seen them, thank you!
------
aaron695
> How to extract uranium from seawater for nuclear power
“Concentrations are tiny, on the order of a single grain of salt dissolved in
a liter of water”
This sounds way to much, I can boil a litre of water in the kitchen and have a
grain of Uranium?
From Yahoo answers
Grain of Salt - 2.25 mg (.00008 ounces).
Uranium - 3 micrograms per liter (0.00000045 ounces per gallon)
Yahoo answers didn't have how much energy 3 micrograms of Uranium can create.
I'd guess if we could get a way to extract it with an algae or something, the
energy(sunlight) it uses would be better off stored and burned.
~~~
wtallis
Going based on numbers from Wikipedia, U-235 is good for 83.14 TJ/kg, but that
isotope only has a natural abundance of 0.72%. So 3 micrograms of uranium in
the natural proportions would get you around 1800 J ignoring any contribution
from other isotopes (ie. you're not using a breeder reactor). That means your
uranium extraction method needs to be very energy efficient indeed.
~~~
acidburnNSA
Oh yeah, you pretty much have to use breeder reactors to use seawater uranium.
That has been the plan all along, e.g. Cohen 83:
[http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/...](http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/docs/pad11983cohen.pdf)
------
econcon
Anyone who comes with Thorium reactor, India will gladly supply their Thorium
for your power requirement provided you give them working Thorium reactor.
~~~
PopeDotNinja
Illinois EnergyProf just did a video on Thorium power. I enjoyed it.
[https://youtu.be/5zJ7fuRPmxc](https://youtu.be/5zJ7fuRPmxc)
------
justatdotin
thats a lot of water to pump. I notice they don't mention a cost: spot price
for U remains low, and renewables cheaper.
~~~
caymanjim
Who said anything about pumping water? As far as I can tell, this is meant to
be a passive collection system.
------
denkmoon
How does one enforce nuclear non-proliferation if any country can extract
uranium from seawater?
~~~
titzer
Uranium enrichment to a suitable level is a seriously involved industrial
process that requires thousands of supersonic centrifuges to do at scale. This
is not something that flies under the radar easily. It's also very energy
intensive to run those centrifuges, so it's difficult to conceal.
~~~
PopeDotNinja
Illinois EnergyProf has a video I enjoyed on uranium enrichment.
[https://youtu.be/z8mUCBG49N8](https://youtu.be/z8mUCBG49N8)
------
anonu
Article from 2017. Also not very informative IMHO about how this process
actually works
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apache Kafka Security on Kubernetes, Automated - matyix
https://banzaicloud.com/blog/kafka-security-k8s/
======
skbly7
Looks like the solution is something available only on BanzaiCloud?
How different is it from strimz-kafka-operator which do most the listed stuff
and even more for any Kubernetes cluster or OpenShift?
[https://github.com/strimzi/strimzi-kafka-
operator](https://github.com/strimzi/strimzi-kafka-operator)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How much should I raise in my angel round? How should I spend it? - ggonweb
http://calacanis.com/2015/01/21/how-much-should-i-raise-in-my-angel-round-how-should-i-spend-it/
======
austenallred
This is pretty damn spot on. My company raised $700k, and just hired the
fourth person for our four-person team. I've had a lot of people ask me about
how our expenses work out, so I figure I'll be a little bit transparent in
hopes of helping newer folks out.
Person 1: Business/operations/marketing/CEO stuff (but still likes to get
hands dirty in code when possible). 60k/yr, lots of stock.
Person 2: Brilliant programmer, mostly back-end. 115k/yr, lots of stock
(family + student loans).
Person 3: Good programmer, mostly front-end. 120k/yr, a little stock.
Person 4: Great designer/product/UX. Can write HTML/CSS/JS, but it's usually
faster for him to pass it off to #3. $100k/yr, a little stock.
The salaries are, of course, dependent on our needs and personal
circumstances. The person who makes 60k has practically no expenses, at least
relative to some of the other members of the team. We're also distributed
geographically, so the salaries will change slightly in SF vs. middle-of-
nowhere, but that's the gist of what I consider the classic team.
After taxes, office space, etc. Our burn will last us just more than 18 months
(we're frugal on this stuff - didn't need new computers or many monitors or
other stuff). We also spend about $500/month on various types of software. If
something slows us down even a couple days, it's cheaper for us to buy a
software solution than to pay salaries while everyone works through it
manually.
Everyone has to be a generalist to a certain extent, but we all naturally
gravitate to what we're good at. It took us a long time to hire person #3 - we
thought we would be able to get away without him/her, but adding him/her feels
like it's doubled the rate at which we can ship product. We formerly
compensated for it by having #1 and #4 do his job, and that really slowed
things down.
Now we have every opportunity to do what we need to do. It's all up to us.
Hope that is helpful to someone.
~~~
loceng
Mind sharing where you were at (product wise) prior to the $700k raise?
~~~
austenallred
Launched for one month, 50k "users" and 250k page views in the first month.
Users is in quotes because we only required a username to sign up, so it was
pretty close to measuring active unique visitors.
But most importantly we had a really compelling story and go to market
strategy in a really big market. Over 50% off the investors we talked to
invested, which is absurd, so don't feel like that's the minimum either.
~~~
adambenayoun
I love it when founders will only take what they need and not automatically
adjust their salaries to each other even when their life circumstances are
different.
------
joshu
if you have a mostly working product and starting to scale up, $750 is okay-
ish. eg you have a saas that's already starting to grow or whatever.
if you are still figuring out what you are building, it's too little. it will
be very hard to raise again.
all except for one startup i invested in at a lower total raise ($500k) has
died; they had even less runway to figure things out.
~~~
vasilipupkin
I've invested in a bunch that have raised 1mln+ but that extra money just
prolongs the same misery, while creating the illusion that they still have the
funds to figure things out. I recommend maybe 1 mln rather than 750.
~~~
joshu
Yes. Not saying anything guarantees success, but too short a runway can ensure
failure.
------
skrebbel
To me, someone who lives in what the author calls "the real world", $750k
sounds like a _humongous_ pile of cash. I have a hard time matching this with
the word "seed".
How far do SV angels expect you to be before they'll put that kind of money on
the table? Idea? Prototype? Users? Ramen profitable? Ramen profitable and 4x
monthly growth? Weekly?
~~~
patio11
It depends, and there are factors which can make the usual rules not apply.
The right team / the right story / the right moment / the right competitive
dynamic among investors / etc means you can raise on, essentially, nothing
else. If you have to ask whether this will apply in your case, it will not.
Anecdotally, the bar for a seed round in software is a) the product exists, b)
real people are using it happily every day, and c) you're collecting proof
points that it is a nascent business. (As distinct from a hobby project.)
If forced to put a number on it, for B2B SaaS, you've got either an LOI or
contract for an anchor enterprise customer paying $50k+ or you've got
thousands a month in low-touch revenue and it is increasing rapidly. Note that
thousands is not tens of thousands. It may have been a while ago.
There are also huge X factors here. Location is one. Ask Matt Wensing about
the frustrations of having the White House Situation Room as a paying client
and being told that that was insufficient grounds to fund them because the TAM
of WHSRs was 1 and, as they already had it, the investor didn't see the growth
story.
~~~
skrebbel
Thanks, just wanted to be sure. No seed investment before
team+product+users/customers+real turnover. Turns out the valley isn't that
different from the real world after all!
------
_random_
London: $50-100k USD for 40% (Gaming). Don't come here.
~~~
iamwithnail
Really? I mean, that represents astonishingly bad value for a bunch of
reasons. The first is that that's not SEIS covered, because it vastly reduces
(by 70%) the risk exposure of the capital, and consequently the %. Especially
if you'll include video games tax credits on thus back end that let you
stretch that runway. Beyond that, you've also not used the full SEIS value
-£150k, so again, shot yourself in there foot. This wouldn't be typical of
valuations that I see working with startups, it's far more in the order of
10-17.5% for £150k (with SEIS coverage). Gaming is obviously it's own beast,
but the same rules on making the investment tax efficient for the investor
apply, and I'm surprised anyone gets any investment with ought SEIS any more.
With that in mind - advice is always to raise as high as you can on angel,
because it's covered for the investor, and you can only do it once.
------
syllogism
> and have $120k in legal, accounting, and capex spending (your laptops).
So about 100k for legal and accounting? Is that normal?
~~~
jasonmcalacanis
You can have some fees deferred. but $3k per person for computers is $12k...
company formation is $5-10k, convertible note is $5-10k, terms of service, IP
assignment, etc. Patents are $10-50k depending on how far you take them.
$120k is high, but not outrageous.
~~~
vasilipupkin
at that stage, patents are probably a waste of time for a startup, wouldn't
you say ?
~~~
kacperp
I guess it doesn't necessary have to be filing patents, but rather checking
whether you'll be infringing any.
~~~
kazagistar
Isn't that exactly what you don't want to do, since infringement is almost
impossible to avoid, and wilful infringement costs more?
------
peterjancelis
$35K per month for a team of 4 seems ridiculous to me. And $500 for a desk,
really?
I live in Vietnam, serviced room in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City, eat out in
restaurants daily and spend about $1000 per month.
~~~
vasilipupkin
and I am sure Vietnam is awesome, but is it awesome for building a startup?
Numbers say no, otherwise most startups would be in Vietnam, not in SF :)
------
dude_abides
A useful reminder: Brin and Page raised $100K in their angel round (from Andy
Bechtolsheim). Their company HQ was a friend's garage.
~~~
iolothebard
1990s were a long time ago as well.
~~~
api
Everything else has gotten cheaper, so if it weren't for cost of living you
could probably do it on half that now.
The problem is that while hardware, cloud, bandwidth, etc. has collapsed in
prices since the late 90s, real estate has arguably undergone hyperinflation.
As a result, people can't cope with low salaries as easily unless they're
just-out-of-college types with no footprint.
~~~
pbreit
"Everything else has gotten cheaper"
Except people.
------
jv22222
What is a typical % of equity to give away for the $750k?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Playdar - Music Content Resolver - tzury
http://www.playdar.org/about.html
======
timdorr
I'm actually very excited about this. I run a coworking facility in Atlanta
(Ignition Alley) and we have a central music system that has just been Pandora
for now. But this presents us with new options that we wouldn't have before.
Primarily, I can start building out a music voting system to let those in the
space vote up music they want to hear from any source available to the system,
defaulting back to Pandora, if there's nothing left. It will be like iTunes DJ
+ Pandora for continual music awesomeness. I'm stoked to get started!
------
metabrew
Playdar is consuming most of my spare time at the mo :) We're pretty active on
the IRC channel (linked from the site) so join and say hello if you're
interested in investigating/using/contributing.
I'll be at the boston music hackday in november talking about Playdar too.
------
baroova
You featured on newscientist.
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18070-innovation-
ultim...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18070-innovation-ultimate-net-
jukebox-may-provoke-next-shift-in-music.html)
------
stevejohnson
I would love to try this, but the binaries are outdated and I do not care
enough to download a recent version of Erlang, or the other libraries it
requires. If anyone feels like building it for Intel, I would love to hear
about it.
~~~
metabrew
There is an experimental OS X package, you'd need to ask on IRC for it atm
(mxcl is crafting it). Windows packages will be next.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Taste for Makers (2002) - misframer
http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
======
quizotic
Back when I was a 16 year old mediocre chess player, the captain of our high
school team took me aside, set up a position and asked "Do you like white or
black?" I looked at the board and said "I don't know." And channeling a Yoda
then decades in the future, he said "That is why you lose."
His name was Matthew Looks, and his point was that it doesn't matter whether
you're right or wrong. It only matters that you have a visceral opinion.
If you believe something or care about something strongly, it gets you to
engage. If it turns out that you're objectively wrong, the clash will focus
your attention and you'll learn. Just having an opinion, just caring, will
bring out a better game.
This is how I interpret PG's post on taste. Having good taste is wonderful.
But having taste, even bad taste, is better than not caring at all.
~~~
solve
Sounds like some of the worst advice I've ever heard.
~~~
adwn
I agree. There are already too many people in this world with strong opinions
on topics they don't fully understand. We certainly do not need even more of
them.
~~~
deciplex
Uh, you're both really missing the important part:
> If it turns out that you're objectively wrong, the clash will focus your
> attention _and you 'll learn_.
Yeah, if you have a bunch of ill-informed wrong opinions and, out of some
stubborn ignorance, you refuse to update them when the conflicting evidence
comes crashing in all around you, then you will be a stupid person. However,
if you have a bunch of wrong opinions which you then turn into _right_
opinions after reality keeps kicking you in the ass, then you are on the road
to being a smart person.
But if you're apathetic, you won't even notice reality kicking you in the ass.
Reality won't even bother with you. You're right that having wrong opinions
_as a steady state_ is worse than having no opinion, but the whole point of GP
was not to be in a steady state in the first place.
~~~
adwn
> _Yeah, if you have a bunch of ill-informed wrong opinions and, out of some
> stubborn ignorance, you refuse to update them when the conflicting evidence
> comes crashing in all around you [...]_
There's a ton of research demonstrating that once you've formed an opinion,
you'll actively defend this opinion in the face of contrary evidence. Everyone
does this to some extend, and the best prevention is to not form a premature
opinion.
> _But if you 're apathetic [...]_
That's a false dichotomy. It is very well possible to not form an opinion and
still be interested in a topic.
~~~
deciplex
> _There 's a ton of research demonstrating that once you've formed an
> opinion, you'll actively defend this opinion in the face of contrary
> evidence. Everyone does this to some extend, and the best prevention is to
> not form a premature opinion._
Yes, everyone does this at least a little bit because that's how human brains
work. But you can be aware of it and compensate for it, if you make the truth
(and, by extension, _actually being right_ ) your highest goal. Just throwing
your hands in the air and giving up, seems to me equivalent to saying
"everyone has biases, the best way to avoid them is to not think".
That said, obviously I am not suggesting that you just form opinions before
you know _anything_. The example given was a chess position. The OP knew
enough about chess that he could have picked a side had he taken time to
examine the position well. If he had initially chosen black, but white was the
stronger, he could have perhaps reached this conclusion after evaluating
black's position a little more carefully. Then he could update his opinion to
prefer white. But he did none of that, because he didn't care enough to form
any opinion at all, _even though he had enough information to do so_.
> _That 's a false dichotomy._
Ugh, yes okay if taken absolutely literally, yes it is a false dichotomy. I
mean, I guess I took it as a given that readers would understand that there
are _degrees_ of apathy, and that you might be in a mental state where
_sometimes_ you notice reality kicking you in the ass, and then sometimes you
_don 't_, and so I didn't have to explain that part, and that they would give
me just enough benefit of the doubt to suppose that I also understand this,
but yes it's true that apathy is not a binary thing, nor is self-awareness.
Conceded. Congratulations and I award you one Internet argument point.
So just to be clear, my position is that _the more apathetic you are about a
thing, the less likely you are to notice your wrong opinions about that
thing_. Is that better?
> _It is very well possible to not form an opinion and still be interested in
> a topic._
About as possible as it is to change your opinion on new evidence? Of course
it's possible, although if I had to guess between two people which of them is
interested in a topic, I'd go with the person who has the opinion, and I'd be
right more often than I'd be wrong.
------
melling
I wish I'd known 20 years ago how important design was going to be. Getting my
10,000 hours of design isn't going to be easy. I started this course a few
days ago on Udacity:
[https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-the-design-of-
everyd...](https://www.udacity.com/course/intro-to-the-design-of-everyday-
things--design101)
And I'm using this subredit to learn how to draw:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals](http://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals)
------
Jun8
It's amazing how close pg's ideas in this essay are to those of David
Deutsch's in his _Beginning of Infinity_ , e.g. on the topic of why flowers
are beautiful to humans as well as insects
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMiP2SM8Tpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMiP2SM8Tpk)).
~~~
nicklovescode
I was happy to see someone else bring up that book as well. I did not imagine
someone else or make a connection
------
mlpinit
"In math and engineering, recursion, especially, is a big win. Inductive
proofs are wonderfully short. In software, a problem that can be solved by
recursion is nearly always best solved that way."
I don't make use of recursion very often but this statement doesn't sound
right to me. Actually the opposite seems right. If you read the chapter on
recursion from Concrete Mathematics (I'm thinking about the The Tower of
Hanoi, Lines in the Plane and The Josephus Problem here, it seems obvious that
a closed form is much faster, simpler and according to the blog post more
beautiful. Does anybody with more extensive knowledge on the topic care to
comment on this?
~~~
sirsar
I find inductive proofs tend to leave me hanging - I become convinced that the
conclusion is true, but I still have no intuition as to _why_. For example,
Wikipedia's proof [0] that sum of 0..n == n(n+1)/2 is convincing, but
unenlightening. There are proofs which seem much more "elegant" to me, for
example, pairing (1+n) == (2+n-1) == (3+n-2) ... (n/2 + (n/2 + 1)) [1], or
constructing triangles [also 1].
[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction#Example](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction#Example)
[1] [http://betterexplained.com/articles/techniques-for-adding-
th...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/techniques-for-adding-the-
numbers-1-to-100/)
~~~
mlpinit
The book I mentioned above, Concrete Mathematics, talks about how to develop
an intuition when it comes to induction. One of the advice mentioned is to
always start with smallest cases possible because that makes the problem
easier to understand. I suppose the more you practice the better your
intuition becomes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dutch IRS and DigiD Under DDOS Attack - morphle
https://nos.nl/artikel/2221096-belastingdienst-en-digid-getroffen-door-ddos-aanvallen.html
======
maribonk
They have suffered many DDOS and certificate attacks before, and are known for
their bad security. But this US owned Dutch company products are still made
mandatory by the Dutch government.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiD)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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