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Why American Workers Without Much Education Are Being Hammered - jacinda
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/upshot/why-workers-without-much-education-are-being-hammered.html
======
blfr
The article doesn't mention immigration even in passing. Sure, there's
globalization and improvements in technology but there are also millions of
people increasing the supply of labour, especially for jobs that don't require
much skill or certification.
~~~
humanrebar
And it doesn't mention that even the most educated workers are not keeping
pace with real GDP growth.
The analysis basically books down to "supply exceeds demand, uneducated
hardest hit". I would have liked to see more analysis on the ultimate reason
for the lack of demand for workers.
Finally, it bugs me when people blame technology for destroying jobs and not
society, employees, and employers for thinking simple, repetitive jobs are
viable long-term career paths. Distilled to absurdity, we could pay people to
dig holes and refill them, but robots will always be orders of magnitude
better at that. Why blame the robot and not everyone else for not realizing
hole-digger is a job with an expiration date?
~~~
normloman
Few people think a repetitive, unskilled job is a viable career path. People
take these jobs because they have no other choice. Not everyone can go to
college.
~~~
humanrebar
You don't have to go to college to think strategically about your next job,
not just the current one.
> People take these jobs because they have no other choice.
You take a job because you have no other choice. You stay at a job past the
expiration date because:
* nobody told you that jobs have expiration dates
* you know but think you'll deal with that problem later
...I think it's important for us to create a culture that encourages people to
think about their jobs and careers strategically. The broader conversation
revolves around statements like "people are stuck" or "they need retraining
and/or education". I don't think those statements and attitudes are helping
people enough, especially when bootstrapping, self-education, and content
creation are cheaper and easier than ever.
~~~
normloman
You have to be in a good position just for the option of bootstrapping, and
educating yourself. If you're working two jobs just to keep the lights on, you
don't have the time or money. And self education doesn't mean much if you
can't list a degree on your resume. It's not hopeless, but it's hard!
------
ck2
The trade deal Obama really wants to sign is going to put the final nail in
the uneducated worker's coffin. Every remaining low wage job that can be
exported, will be exported. The rest will be automated as much as possible.
Then we are going to have this weird culture where the people serving you food
have college degrees and are desperately trying to pay off student loans.
Meanwhile everyone else will think they can just make a startup or small
business to survive but there will be so many copycats the customer base will
be too fractured.
We better discover nearly free power soon or things are going to get ugly for
the 98% in the next decade.
~~~
kfk
It is worth mentioning that an economy that produces higher added value will
have a fallback on the lower classes too. While the delta in wealth between
the rich and the poor has been increasing, in relative terms the poor have
been getting richer. A poor today is way better than a poor 50 years ago or
even 20 years ago. If you are concerned about what poor people can do, then
think to all those products that now are too expensive but that a future
richer society might want. For instance, in Germany (richer country than
mine), is very normal to buy local/bio/laborIntensive goods like traditional
food and so on, this is all stuff that non educated people can do and will do
in the future.
~~~
mistermann
I generally agree with this, but in some locations an exception to this is
real estate, in that a growing subset of the market are becoming increasingly
priced out of ever buying anything. Interestingly, the US for the most part is
not currently suffering from this due to the bursting of the housing bubble.
~~~
kfk
Yeah, but the thing is, we are not really running out of flats/houses, we are
running out of space in the cities. That is a way less bleak future than the
parent proposed, it just means that poor people will leave far from the city
center, but can we really blame that? Is that even a problem? People leave
where they can afford, that's just the reality, as long as they can afford a
good house with heating and all the other nice stuff, I think location is not
that much of an issue.
~~~
mtbcoder
Location is a big issue for people who rely on public transportation to get to
their places of employment. It's not always feasible to live far away from
where the jobs are and not everyone can simply telecommute or otherwise work
from home.
------
Shivetya
Having worked for a security company; rent a cops; I was surprised by the
types of people who took up the job. While there is a good amount of turnover
there are many who are there for life. Most had a high school diploma and some
had more. We did have college kids working their way from school, sitting at a
post and doing periodic walks does lend time to study and it wasn't
discouraged.
At first I was concerned because one of my jobs was to insure that payroll
checks were printed on time and delivered to sites by payday or when required
by law; terminations and those who quit in some states are required to be paid
within a set amount of time. Having talked to only a few I found many simply
liked the job because a) it was easy, b) schedules were nearly fixed, and c)
the uniform imparted a sense of import. I never really ran into anyone I
wouldn't want to have watching over a site. Those types tend to self weed
themselves out.
Even in a day and age of automation there is still the comfort level many get
from having a person about. Not all guards are low paid but many are.
Immigration reform will hit many sectors hard; likely the security sector as
well. So the question becomes, how do you lessen the burden of all the fees
for government services these people have to pay? We might not be able to
legislate their pay to a level everyone is happy about but there are many
costs of living imposed by government that could be restructured based on
income.
~~~
hollerith
What fees for government services do you refer to?
~~~
zo1
I believe he's referring to Taxes.
------
randomname2
The point of the article is interesting, _among those who have a job at all_ ,
managerial workers and independent professionals are making more money while
the majority of workers are making less.
However while uneducated "workers" may be suffering, among the educated there
are more and more "non-workers":
[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11327662](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11327662)
------
NTDF9
Are we really this Myopic?
Americans think that they deserve a certain standard of living. Why? Why do
you deserve it? I don't see a good answer to this.
For a country emphasizing competition and capitalism so much, I find it
hilarious when Americans start complaining about being out-competed (by other
countries or by college grads or by smarter people).
The reality is that, in society, not everyone can get everything. The real
issue is with glamorizing excessive profits.
Also, we can't expect only the good parts of globalization. If we want $10
t-shirts made by a worker in Bangladesh, we had better be prepared to lose the
job to them. They are doing it cheaper and better than entitled us.
There's a solution! Tax the rich (and corporations) more and redistribute
wealth in a fair way that creates more local opportunities, but we know where
this discussion goes.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Americans think that they deserve a certain standard of living. Why? Why do
you deserve it? I don't see a good answer to this.
Because they built a society that can provide it. To everyone.
A good life for people _is the goal_. The _terminal_ goal. You don't have to
justify doing good for people; you have to justify making their lives _worse_.
~~~
NTDF9
>> Because they built a society that can provide it. To everyone.
That society was built on exploiting global resources and issues eg: selling
weapons for wars, extracting oil, gold and diamonds from countries with
uneducated leaders, manufacturing stuff from countries where living wage is
lower aka making lives worse.
Just think about it! When those other countries start becoming more and more
educated and start turning things for their own good, this great American
society is going to have to suffer.
Let's say there are two people (American and Chinese) in this world and one
t-shirt manufactured. The American was always able to afford it. Now the
Chinese can afford it and can outbid the American. Doesn't the standard of
living of the American drop? Yes.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
Economics doesn't work that way. The profit margins of the American capitalist
may have been higher when the Chinese were poor, but actual total world
productivity (the amount of stuff available to share around) has gone _up_ as
the Chinese have gotten richer. The development of the Third World is a
positive-sum, ahaha, development.
~~~
NTDF9
Economics does work that. The amount of resources are limited by: a. Quantity
of raw materials available for use b. Skill (labor and/or machines) to convert
those raw materials into something useful.
So while America had a lot of a and b, the rest of the world is having that
now too. So America has lesser of a and b as a proportion of total a an b
------
CodeSheikh
Min wage should be increased by certain significant percentage but definitely
not by 100% to $15. That is basically saying "no need to study in high school
or go to college because you can still make around 30k based on min wage". 30k
is a starting salary for a lot of college fresh graduates. This could in-
return can also create economic imbalance among classes (abridging the gap
between high school drop out and fresh college graduate)
~~~
danans
Local minimum wages should be raised in a manner commensurate with local
inflation. In places like the Bay Area and NYC, $15/hr isn't much considering
the enormous cost of living - hence the term "living wage".
$15/hr is probably too high for a part of the country with a very low cost of
living like Mississippi.
The federal minimum wage sets the absolute bare minimum.
The often mentioned radical alternative is Basic Income, which would eliminate
all minimum wages and push up wages on the low end by tightening the labor
market (because many on the low-income end of the labor spectrum would opt not
to work).
------
deedubaya
Maybe the correlation isn't education => low paying jobs, but motivation =>
low paying jobs?
I've seen a lot of people just "settle" with a crappy job which pays poorly
just because they aren't motivated to go find something better or more
challenging on a day-to-day basis. Some of these people have gone through
college, some haven't.
~~~
snowwrestler
The above will be a controversial post because there are plenty of highly
motivated people who work hard but never get rich. For example a day laborer
construction worker has to get up very early, perform tiring physical labor
all day, and then do it again the next day. Many work more than 5 days per
week to make ends meet. I bet that not many web developers could make it as a
day laborer for long!
That said, the question of "motivation" now has a deeper subtext thanks to
recent research on early childhood development and the impact of family and
community on each individual's development and achievement.
Rather than an inherent personal quality (which is easily corrupted into a
proxy for "worth" or "deserving"), we are learning that motivation is heavily
influenced by factors outside a child's control, like how much loving
attention they receive, how many words they hear per hour, the level of
violence they witness or experience, the number of books in their home, the
professional success of their parent or parents, the average socio-economic
level of success in their school district, etc.
So, to say that maybe the answer is motivation, is not as much of an answer as
it used to be. Now we want to know where motivation comes from, and what we
can do to improve that.
~~~
deedubaya
> So, to say that maybe the answer is motivation, is not as much of an answer
> as it used to be.
Definitely. It's sad that these outside factors influence something so
important, but that doesn't change the fact that some people are motivated and
some are not, does it?
~~~
danans
I think the point is that there are systemic factors that affect motivation
that far swamp out an individual's drive, especially in their formative years.
These can include, but are not limited to: violence and trauma in one's
community and family, lack of reliable parents or positive role models in
one's community, childhood economic pressure towards physical survival and
meeting basic day-to-day needs.
These are all things that individuals born into poverty in the US face at
disproportionate levels, and they can have a negative effect on motivation. We
generally don't fault people for the very harsh circumstances they are born
into.
~~~
deedubaya
Yes, I understand that the PC thing to do is to not fault people for such
things.
But the fact remains, which sucks, but still.
Where do we draw the line? I was attacked by a dog when I was a child which
was very violent and traumatic for me. I also grew up "are we going to eat
tonight" poor. Do I qualify?
~~~
snowwrestler
This isn't about you. It's about how we use scientific knowledge to make
better policy decisions.
We learned that people need vitamin C to prevent scurvy; now we have
government policies and cultural norms that make sure that every child gets
enough vitamin C.
As our scientific understanding of brain development grows, we'll (hopefully)
develop norms and policies to make sure kids get what they need there too. You
can see today the early stages of that process with respect to exercise, and
more recently, sleep.
------
briandear
Is there causation between no high school diploma and lower wages? They are
certainly correlated.
~~~
njharman
I always assumed (and still believe) they are both (lack of eduction, lack of
well paying employment) are both results of other root causes. In other words
if you couldn't make it through high-school or college (for whatever reason,
ability, environment, access, attitude, etc) then whatever those reasons are
make you also unable to acquire and keep a decent job.
~~~
zo1
>" _[..]then whatever those reasons are make you also unable to acquire and
keep a decent job._ "
And unfortunately for them, it doesn't keep them from inflicting the same
life-outlook on their offspring. Greatest tragedy of our society, that we
overlook that.
~~~
JustSomeNobody
We supposed to neuter people?
~~~
zo1
Of course not, that's horrible.
I'll leave it to the smart statists out there to figure out how to remedy this
tragedy whilst staying within the "moral framework" they have in-place
already. You know, the thing that makes it "illegal" to carry bad-plants in
your pocket while simultaneously making it legal to bring innocent life into
this world without being able to take care of it, and ultimately making it
suffer.
------
dataker
The article should be named' Why Blue-Collar Workers Are Being Hammered'.
The matter of the fact is that in most blue-collar jobs, salaries stagnate
after years of experience.
Having an education only do 2 things:
\- Gives one the ability for a white-collar job
\- With the same stagnation, blue-collar salaries become 'higher' and most
workers are complacent about it
~~~
genericresponse
It's the same for the bulk of white collar workers as well in most industries,
they just stagnate later.
~~~
dataker
White collars have always had better salary growth than others.
Generally, blue-collars rely largely on 'manual labor' and, therefore, after
its peak productivity, they hit a depreciative tendency(younger
employees/outsourcing/...) .
White collars rely largely on networking and influence, hence its
'productivity' continues to grow.
The more 'manual work' one performs, the smaller his salary growth is.
------
CodeSheikh
btw..why on the earth this article is on HN?! Are people comparing tech worker
salaries as an ideal model for the entire economic class? I am confused by the
upvoters here.
~~~
randomdata
There is always infighting on HN of whether a degree is important for being a
developer. As such, anything that paints education in a positive, or negative,
light will reach the front page.
| {
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} |
'We are all Thomas More’s children’ – 500 years of Utopia - Hooke
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/04/thomas-more-utopia-500-years-china-mieville-ursula-le-guin
======
IslaDeEncanta
Utopian socialism's failures are the reason Marxism came about as a
structured, disciplined critique of class society. Idealism is no way to make
people's lives better. Instead, you must understand the root causes of
oppression in order to attempt to overcome it.
~~~
MichaelMoser123
disciplined Marxist society also needs a manager class, turns out that
managers have their own self interests - namely they needed stability/lack of
purges and had the urge of turning public property into their own private
property. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
Ah, yes. I remember how that was a major problem under literally every leftist
regime ever tried, and has never been a problem under even one capitalist
regime.
I'm certainly enjoying the glorious capitalist utopia we live in today, where
perfect market competition has eliminated all the old woes of human life! Why,
if I can afford the loan payments, I won't even have to die of old age! /s
~~~
AnimalMuppet
OK, you're saying that capitalism is the problem, not the solution. But saying
that disciplined Marxism is the solution hasn't worked out very well in
practice, either - not better than capitalism, in fact.
------
dvh
I've tried to read Utopia but that book is written so dreadfully I had to drop
it after 20 pages or so.
~~~
jhbadger
That would be the translator's fault (unless you can read Renaissance Latin --
which is not quite the the same as classical Latin).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AWDwR3 Beta 7 - davidw
http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2008/12/26/AWDwR3-Beta-7
======
davidw
I thought this was interesting because it shows how quickly Rails hurtles
forward.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chrome's JavaScript challenge to Silverlight - raju
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10034365-92.html
======
icey
I guess the author's spell check doesn't work for JIT-ed (the article kept
saying "jittered")
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Star Trek Series Makes Massive Science Blunder - wslh
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2017/10/30/new-star-trek-series-makes-massive-science-blunder/#5372b7881b37
======
DrScump
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585924](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585924)
------
flukus
We need to stop linking to sites that block ad blockers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pownce vs Digg: Who Will Kevin Rose Back? - nickb
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/pownce-vs-digg-who-will-kevin-rose-back/
======
stillmotion
I felt like Kevin's role into Pownce was a little superficial. Understanding
that he has no programming skills, and Leah developed the concept herself, it
is almost like Kevin was asked to step in as a poster child for Pownce so that
Leah could get some serious users.
Stepping away from all of that, I believe that Kevin is becoming more and more
consumed by his Digg baby, and doesn't have the time that he used to have to
back all these projects that he "diggs". I think in the next few months, the
community will see where Kevin's heart is and we will soon understand if Kevin
still has his eye's set on Pownce.
~~~
alaskamiller
the digg-pownce-rev3 incest:
leah culver and daniel burka are going out
daniel burka designs for digg and rev3
kevin rose admitted he advises and "brainstorms"
~~~
aaroneous
Like OMG, didn't you know Leah Culver is dating Brad Fitzpatrick?? ;]
~~~
alaskamiller
well either wag or uncov failed me :(
------
nanijoe
Kevin Rose has no programming skills? Is this a documented fact? How did he
build digg then?
~~~
alaskamiller
i see you have not heard of the fabled digg origin story:
kevin rose is a college drop out, he was a CS major. he does tech stuff and
then landed on a tv channel that focuses on web and tech stuff.
he contacted slashdot asking them to update their site based on this idea of
letting users vote up or down a story. slashdot told him to go away.
kevin rose hired a programmer online for $600 to get his idea started anyways.
after the site's made he pimps it on tv and all his nerd friends.
16 year old "hax0r" kids went to the site in droves. most adblock the ads.
here we are today.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Test refactored code in python easily - nerandell
https://github.com/nerandell/seamus
======
cjhanks
As long as your function is idempotent, I suppose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BitCoin and International Crime - canweriotnow
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-bitcoin-20131125,0,3265347.story
======
lukeqsee
"Stop Bitcoin. Save the children (and rhinos, too, while you're at it)!"
When will we learn that money and systems (especially X new technology) aren't
the issue (or the solution)? People are both. Until society admits both its
faults and its failed solutions, it probably will be plagued with deplorable
crimes such as those facilitated by Bitcoin (and USD and CAD and CHF, for that
matter).
------
canweriotnow
Submitter here - I hate, hate, hate this post. It is the worst FUD I have seen
in some time, and I'm only posting b/c I think it needs the full HN lens.
Please don't think I agree with a single word.
~~~
jnbiche
Agreed. I'd be interested in hearing Prof. Green's rebuttal -- I'm sure he's
long since thought these issues through very carefully.
One of the commenters to the article mentioned, money was never designed to be
a tracking system. That "feature" has only been added over the past few
decades.
And law enforcement will always be inconvenienced in a free society, the kind
our founding fathers most definitely envisioned here in the U.S. (and
elsewhere, I'm sure).
~~~
canweriotnow
Let's hope there is a rebuttal... his last major blog post[1] was censored by
his university. In a flash of reason, the decision was reversed (woohoo
academic freedom!)
In this case, since Zerocoin is actually a university-sponsored project (from
the Johns Hopkins Information Securuty Institute), we can hope for a
response... hopefully it will be a rebuttal from the researchers and not a
kneejerk response from administrators.
Even beyond its obvious utility (for good or ill), zerocoin is a fascinating
problem in cryptographic research, and we should be grateful it's occuring in
the light of day and not as some super-secret project.
[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa-
mat...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/nsa-matthew-
green-takedown-blog-post-johns-hopkins)
------
mgback
Here is the real crime... It is a currency that no government can manipulate
or control. Bitcoin with tumblers is "true" economic freedom from any
beaurocratic or government control. You get the bad... But you also get the
infinite good of not having any government able to take your wealth away from
you at its whim.
------
mschuster91
As if rhino poachers would ever use bitcoin, lol. After all, the money has to
enter and exit the BTC world (e.g. at places like MtGox), where it can and
will be recorded.
Far too risky for poachers and large-scale criminals.
------
jamhan
Playing the devil's advocate here:
In 30 years time, you consider retiring, and you have a significant portion of
your savings in Zerocoin. Someone, somehow, manages to fraudulently acquire
your Zerocoin savings, perhaps through a flaw in the Zerocoin system itself.
You go to the authorities, and ask them to help you recover your stolen
retirement savings. They reply, "Sorry, as you know, Zerocoin is completely
anonymous. We can't help you, no-one can."
What do you do?
~~~
rbehrends
Simple: You don't invest in Bitcoin/Zerocoin in the first place.
Digital currencies are the online equivalent of cash, not of a savings account
or stocks. Like regular cash, it can be stolen (e.g., by hacking into your
computer) or lost (hard drive crash with an outdated backup), and thus, you
shouldn't have more on hand than you can afford to lose.
Different rules apply to speculators, of course, but you are talking about
retirement savings. Putting your retirement savings in a Bitcoin wallet is
about the same as having a pile of cash under your mattress.
~~~
jamhan
That much is already clear. I'm more interested in comments from those who
appear to think Bitcoin/Zerocoin is an "infinite good":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806395)
------
a3voices
Bitcoins don't kill people, people kill people.
~~~
mdelias
Rhinos don't poach Rhinos, Bitcoins poach Rhinos
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Monzo Launches Monzo Plus - rvz
https://monzo.com/i/monzo-plus
======
mytailorisrich
Virtual cards might a useful feature (or not) but is it worth £5 a month?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I wonder if China managed to steal Google's ssl certificates? - blackswan
http://friendfeed.com/paul/cae98f58/i-wonder-if-china-managed-to-steal-google-ssl
======
rit
No, they couldn't decrypt anything.
They'd need the private keys. And the passwords for the private keys.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Yale Students Demand Resignations from Faculty Members Over Halloween Email - randomname2
https://www.thefire.org/yale-students-demand-resignations-from-faculty-members-over-halloween-email/
======
eximius
Some telling quotes:
"...one student who, in a Yale Herald piece published today, criticized the
invitation and argued that Nicholas Christakis “needs to stop instigating more
debate.”"
“So, my question is: are you going to say that? Or not?” she asked. “Cause
then, I could just leave if you’re not gonna say that.” - Not particularly
telling, but I find the sheer lack of expressiveness amusing.
""" “As your position as master, it is your job to create a place of comfort
and home for the students that live in Silliman,” one student says. “You have
not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as
master. Do you understand that?”
When Christakis disagreed, the student proceeded to yell at him.
“Who the fuck hired you?” she asked, arguing that Christakis should “step
down” because being master is “not about creating an intellectual space,” but
rather “creating a home.” """
The ignorance is strong at Yale, apparently.
------
whitehat2k9
The student who used profanities and obscenities should be immediately
expelled and charged with disorderly conduct. Indeed, conduct unbecoming of a
college student, at an Ivy League university no less.
------
medymed
Recipe for dealing with cultural conflicts at Yale: 1\. Express indignation
2\. Convene a committee 3\. Produce a report recommending hiring new
administrator for diversity/cultural-somethingness 4\. Hire administrator
It will happen...just wait for it...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linux-insides: System calls in the Linux kernel, Part 2 - 0xAX
https://github.com/0xAX/linux-insides/blob/master/SysCall/syscall-2.md
======
amluto
I'm in the process of rewriting basically all of the 32-bit syscall code and a
decent amount of the 64-bit code. Enjoy!
~~~
Someone
1\. Why?
2\. (How) will you keep the interface compatible?
~~~
caf
As I understand it, the aim is to move as much of it as possible into C
(rather than asm). Ultimately this should make it more maintainable, and lessy
buggy.
Backwards compatibility is a given.
~~~
Someone
Less buggy in the sense of "bugs make it into a release" or less prone to
regressions that get discovered soon? I would the former, but would be
interested in an example of the latter.
Also, I would guess that also runs the risk of making it less portable across
compilers (you need non-standard compiler features to implement this in C). Is
that a concern?
~~~
amluto
> Also, I would guess that also runs the risk of making it less portable
> across compilers (you need non-standard compiler features to implement this
> in C). Is that a concern?
Actually, no. My code implements just enough in asm that the C part is a
normal function using the normal C ABI.
There are some microoptimizations that would be possible if I were to rely on
__builtin_frame_address, but GCC has some highly questionable optimizations
(or arguably outright bugs) that make me quite nervous about using it.
------
dnautics
Does anyone know why syscall variables are loaded into registers in linux
instead of left on the stack (as in freebsd, iirc)?
My guess would be performance... If that's the case has anyone benchmarked
that?
------
oso2k
This seems a lot more complicated than what I implemented in rt0 [0].
[0] [https://github.com/lpsantil/rt0](https://github.com/lpsantil/rt0)
~~~
caf
This is describing the kernel side of the syscall boundary, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dropbox is my publish button, too. (Nginx + Dropbox = easy publishing) - inportb
http://dl.inportb.com/dropbox/
======
sixtofour
I can be convinced otherwise, but this doesn't seem to be within the spirit of
my free agreement with Dropbox. It's as if I took my host's invitation to
"make myself at home" literally, and ate all his ice cream while he was at
work.
~~~
inportb
<http://www.dropbox.com/help/45>
We watch carefully for any fraudulent use of Dropbox public
links and will suspend suspicious links when they are
detected. Links that use up more than 10GB/day for Basic
(free) accounts and 250GB/day for Pro (paid) accounts are
automatically suspended.
Your host's freezer has usage limits that prevent you from eating all the ice
cream. Be careful what you share on Dropbox and implement sane cache settings
on your reverse proxy, and your usage should fall within the limits.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
how should I chain function call in coffeescript - hbbio
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10204281/how-should-i-chain-function-call-in-coffeescript
======
sil3ntmac
I like coffeescript. Lots of web devs that write ruby all day like
coffeescript. tbh I think coffeescript is worth it just to never have to write
"function(){..." or "this." again. It's also worth it for its free OOP
features. It will have quirks, like what you see here, but I have hit these
pain points and still love it.
~~~
hbbio
Maybe it's because I never did Ruby then.
Beyond the title bait, since you have to know JS quirks anyway, and since
CoffeeScript adds its own burden (like in the link), I really don't see the
point of using it.
Also, the 'function' keyword is a very visible marker when I read code and
this has became unconscious. I now believe that the quantity of code you write
doesn't matter: readability matters most.
------
rietta
I like CoffeeScript a lot actually. It seems to me that in some circumstances
JavaScript is a new assembly language. Just because it is the native language
of the runtime environment doesn't mean that it is the best tool for a
programmer who is working to solve a particular, complex problem using it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Bitdeli, a scripting platform for real-time data - juriga
Hi fellow HNers,<p>We just opened up Bitdeli for free public beta at<p>https://bitdeli.com<p>Bitdeli allows you to process real-time data with plain Python scripts and access the results over a friendly HTTP API.<p>You can use it to create live visualizations and dashboards without having to worry about servers. See examples here: http://bl.ocks.org/2009621 and http://bl.ocks.org/1983818<p>We would love to hear your feedback and comments!
======
jflatow
Clickable links:
<https://bitdeli.com>
<http://bl.ocks.org/2009621>
<http://bl.ocks.org/1983818>
------
vtuulos
Btw, remember to check out our in-browser editor. It lets you run arbitrary
Python code with live data on the fly.
Click "fork script" on any script page, e.g. here
<https://bitdeli.com/scripts/94/convert-bart-xml-to-json>
I (Ville, one of the founders of Bitdeli) am happy to answer any questions
here.
------
tzm
Thanks for releasing this. Looks great too. Do you have a product roadmap that
we can view?
------
dfc
I thought doing an "ask hn" with links/URLs in the content of the post was
forbidden?
------
hnwh
would be nice to see more visualizations
~~~
vtuulos
Thanks - we will be adding more examples in the near future.
Creating a visualization with Bitdeli is not hard at all if you know
JavaScript and little Python - see a tutorial here:
[http://blog.bitdeli.com/2012/03/14/how-to-visualize-
geograph...](http://blog.bitdeli.com/2012/03/14/how-to-visualize-geographic-
data-with-bitdeli/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing - kamran20
https://foxtype.com/concise
======
kerkeslager
In theory this is a great idea, but not a single implementation I've seen fits
my needs.
I'm not going to use a writing tool that requires me to change my entire
workflow. This (and every other tool I've seen that does something similar[1])
requires me to use their editor. If I want to do something like edit a comment
on HN, it requires copy/paste to do that.
More crippling than that, these editors don't support anything besides the
writing simplification features. HTML breaks it, markdown breaks it, and it
can't do WYSIWYG (Hemingway does this last, but not well).
I don't mean to criticize the tools too harshly: linguistic processing of any
kind is hard and they do a good job at that. I can certainly see how this
would be useful for someone who writes more seriously than I do and can take
the time to write first and mark up or format in a different editor later. And
the effort to make it something I would use is large. I would probably want a
browser plugin that watched my text areas and handled markdown, and a vim
plugin. :)
But for me, not having integration with my workflow makes it too complicated
to use and the value it provides isn't large enough for me to change my
workflow.
[1] [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)
~~~
microcolonel
Hemingway is actually pretty simple, I'm writing a library which implements
something similar. "Grammarly" exists, but I think the suggestions are silly.
This Foxtype editor is fancy, but Hemingway produces better results in
practice.
What programming language would a library for this have to be in for it to be
especially useful? I'm doing it in JavaScript for now, since I can think of
immediate cases where I can embed it. Elisp will come immediately after that,
since I compose my emails in Emacs most of the time. Next on the docket might
be a C version, with the intent that you could add it to GTK+ apps.
~~~
kerkeslager
> What programming language would a library for this have to be in for it to
> be especially useful? I'm doing it in JavaScript for now, since I can think
> of immediate cases where I can embed it.
I think JavaScript is a pretty good start as that can be made into a browser
plugin and a command line tool relatively simply.
------
Anthony-G
I’m an admirer of the writing of George Orwell so I thought it would be
fitting to paste the first two paragraphs of his 1946 essay, “Politics and the
English Language”.
It suggested removing a number of _modifier phrases_. These phrases were not
redundant and removing them would result in loss of important detail,
information and/or emphasis. In some cases removing those words would result
in nonsensical or syntactically incorrect sentences. Further experimentation
showed that it complained about “mostly” and “many” as modifiers but not
“some”.
It highlighted a number of _long noun phrases_ but none of these could be
suitably shortened, and Orwell’s uses of the passive voice were mostly
appropriate; re-phrasing these to be in the active voice would result in
awkward prose. Its _left branching sentences_ were not rambling at all.
On the plus side, I thought its highlighting of _long sentences_ worked well
but not all long sentences are difficult to parse and a succession of multiple
short sentences can have an unnatural rhythm. It also failed to take into
account that colons and semi-colons can be used to separate main clauses.
I wouldn’t use it myself, but I can see how it could be a useful tool for
considering how a sentence can be rephrased and encouraging awareness of the
issues it highlights.
------
conistonwater
This reminds me of the "Hemingway" app that failed Hemingway:
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416)
Can I also just point out that "I was exhausted." is not passive voice! And
"Our work here is done." also shouldn't be highlighted, it's absolutely fine.
What the hell? With these kinds of false positives, this seems like it would
do more harm than good.
~~~
jlos
The app is correct, both of those phrases are passive.
Grammatically the passive voice uses the equative verb to be with a past
participle of the verb. Both those phrases satisfy that condition.
Semantically, the passive voice involves action being done to the subject.
Both those phrases also meet that condition. Rearrange them and you'l see:
[1] "I was exhuasted" \--> "${SUBJECT} exhausted me". The phrase may not seem
passive because you've elided the subject, which is part of the problem of the
passive voice, it lacks clarity
[2] "Our work here is done" \--> "We completed our work" Like the first
phrase, this phrase elides the subject of this sentence, the individuals doing
the work. In this case, including the subject ("We") may feel repetitive
because of the pronoun "our", but its still more precise.
Also, passive voice isn't bad, however it most often lacks clarity. Sometimes
that's okay, and sometimes you want some flexibility with your sentences for
effect, such as ending a sentence with the subject (one of the primary reasons
to use the passive voice).
~~~
conistonwater
> _" ${SUBJECT} exhausted me"_
I don't think that a correct analysis of the sentence. The _exhausted_ is an
adjective, similar to _I am tired_ , but saying "Something tired me" would
have a totally different meaning, because it's a different, unrelated
sentence. ("I am covered in green paint." also doesn't seem like it's passive
voice, but maybe I'm wrong.) As far as I can tell, "our work here is done" is
indeed passive voice, but it is also perfectly fine English, and thus must not
be highlighted.
"I was exhausted" absolutely does _not_ "lack clarity". What could it possibly
be unclear about?
Looking at
[http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf](http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf),
I'm also suspicious of your definition of passive (p.7):
> _...passives do not always contain be and do not always contain a past
> participle. They also do not always obscure the role or responsibility of
> the doer. They may or may not have a subject (the passive clause in any
> monument defaced by vandals does not), and they may or may not have a by-
> phrase (The president has been assassinated does not). Sometimes they
> specify the agent of an action very clearly (as in It was thrown at them by
> hooligans), and sometimes not (as in It was thrown at them); sometimes they
> specify the undergoer (as in A surfer was attacked by a shark) and sometimes
> not (as in Being attacked by a shark is no fun). Often (as in (3)) there is
> no action whatsoever, rendering the strange phrase “receives the action”
> inappropriate._
~~~
ar-jan
For those who won't read the whole thing, here's the relevant part regarding
sentences like "I was exhausted":
> The term ‘adjectival passive’ is often applied (perhaps not very
> felicitously) to active clauses with predicative adjective phrases in which
> the adjective derives from the past participle of a verb and has a passive-
> like meaning. There is frequently an ambiguity between be passives and
> adjectival ones. For example, The door was locked is ambiguous: as a be
> passive it says that at a particular time someone took the action of locking
> the door, and as an adjectival passive it says that during some past time
> period the door was in its locked state. Since the complement in this kind
> of clause is an adjective phrase, verbs other than be can be used (The door
> seemed locked, as far as I could tell), and so can adjectives derived with
> the negative prefix un- (The island was uninhabited by humans).
------
jccc
"Four score and seven years ago..."
[http://i.imgur.com/K0Mhkse.png](http://i.imgur.com/K0Mhkse.png)
[I'm not snarking, by the way. Just playing with it. It's perfectly okay to
have a tool optimized for, say, business correspondence.]
------
multinglets
I feel like every 4 or 5 years, everyone gets together and celebrates terse
writing like it's some new insight.
~~~
daveguy
> I feel like every 4 or 5 years, everyone gets together and celebrates terse
> writing like it's some new insight.
Every 4 or 5 years everyone celebrates terse writing like it's new.
FTFY.
~~~
ksenzee
Writers periodically resurrect brevity.
~~~
sillysaurus3
Concise is better than brief.
~~~
BunnyRubenstein
Write right.
------
transpy
I say it is interesting. It's from the same guys from 'Watch a machine-
learning system parse the grammatical structure of sentences'. AFAIK, here
they are implementing automatic summarization, aided presumably by the
accuracy of their parser. I signed up and I look forward to trying it.
------
bearcobra
The variable pricing is pretty interesting. In one session I got $1, $3 and
$5, while another gave $5, $12, and $20. $5 felt like a good deal considering
what I pay annually for Grammarly. I'd be curious what their average is.
------
titzer
Most writing needs pruning. Not mine. Thanks. :P
------
jwally
Reminds me of this:
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8074243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8074243)
------
Zolomon
Is there no beauty in painting vivid pictures through colourful expression?
Sure, being terse makes consumption faster and easier, but don't you trade
that for the tool of directing the reader's imagination?
I guess the skill is in being terse yet still descriptive?
~~~
combatentropy
The examples in this tool can be misleading, especially if you haven't read
the classics like _The Elements of Style_ and _On Writing Well_. Ridding your
writing of fluff is central to their teaching, but not at the expense of
detail.
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words,
a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing
should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This
requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid
all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
\--- William Strunk Jr., _The Elements of Style_
Instead of quoting them at length, I will let you read them when you have
time. The Elements of Style is less than 100 pages, and most of On Writing
Well is tied up in the first four chapters.
~~~
eru
Be very careful with the Elements of Style. Not everyone shares their
prescriptions (and their descriptions are mostly wrong).
------
huac
[http://draftin.com](http://draftin.com) has something like this as well
------
kolapuriya
Testing this by using it to write a blog post. So far so good. It's pretty
nifty for "pruning" dense writing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cyborg Beetles with Remote Control - nkurz
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22111
======
nkurz
Ethically and scientifically, this seems stunning: a radio receiver is
attached to a live beetle, with probes inserted capable of flight instruction.
And these are inserted in a pupal phase, so as to not be visible in the adult.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: JSON pretty print with modern user interface and ssl - yadakhov
https://jsonprettyprint.org?
======
stephenr
So this is basically `python -m json.tool` via a browser right?
Still not sure I understand the purpose of all these single use sites that
replicate functionality already present on most developer machines.
Like I said earlier, the next thing will be "println" as a web service. It
just echoes back the input with "\n" appended.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
London's Tulip tower 'could confuse air traffic control systems' - AnatMl2
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/nov/28/london-tulip-tower-norman-foster-air-traffic-control-systems
======
zimpenfish
The sad thing is that with London's urban planning committees having
apparently taken all leave of their aesthetic senses, this will almost
certainly be approved to become another hideous blight on the skyline just
like its taller neighbour across the river.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How do you manage programming burnout? - madhadron
I went to a colleague today and asked, pointing at my head, "What do you do when you've got the singed feeling?" He knew exactly what I meant, but neither of us had ever talked about it before. I don't know anyone who has written about it. Am I missing a whole field of reading material?<p>I do mean manage, not avoid. From years of programming, I know that I only have three to four hours of sustainable programming per day in me, but the last three days I chose to program nine hour days because. I was rebuilding a core data structure, and I knew that I would need an hour per session to get that piece of code into my head. Now I'm paying for it. Last night my dreams were bizarre, and today I may as well not bother coding at all. Tomorrow I might or might not, depending on how well I sleep.<p>So, in the interest of bringing this out of silence, how many hours a day can you program sustainably? How common are the folks who can program much more than three or four hours sustainably (from stories about Greenblatt among others, they seem to exist)? How do you manage your good hours?
======
padwiki
As important as it can be to keep the model of the system you are building in
"ram", it is actually more important to allow your brain to digest and process
new information with genuine downtime. The way I approach it is to "pulse"
through the day with absolutely uninterrupted programming sessions of 1-2
hours interspersed with 20-30 minute breaks to allow time to digest. It is
extremely important to maintain focus in the "on" times and not to feed new
information into the wetware during the "off" times. For me, this required
quitting reddit completely and limiting other news feed and communication
quite drastically. The other key factor is to start your day producing instead
of consuming (read about it here, as a matter of fact). Makes a surprising
difference in your mindset.
The end result? I can sustain a solid hours 8+ hours a day of real engineering
for 5-6 days a week without running too serious a risk of the burnout you
describe whereas before I would be lucky to manage 3-4.
------
mistercow
You might be surprised at how much programming you can do in a day if you work
on two or more different kinds of projects. Shifting gears can be difficult,
but taking a break from one project to work on a side project can actually let
you recharge a bit for the main project.
Mental fatigue is not just a function of effort. It's also a function of
monotony.
------
staunch
Productivity comes and goes in waves. Restful sleep increases the amount of
time the wave is in and decreases the time the wave is out.
If you haven't slept soundly and regularly over a period of 5+ days I'd
concentrate on that before worrying about _anything_ else.
I came to this realization myself a few years ago and it was quite an
epiphany. I realized that nearly all my bouts of nonproductive could be traced
back to poor sleep habits.
I think sleep should be treated as methodically and rigorously as any form of
exercise. When you sleep, how well you sleep, when you wake up, what you
eat/drink before you sleep, etc, etc.
When I'm doing good on sleep I manage to program productively for around 6-10
hours a day and it's generally invigorating rather than draining.
~~~
mgallivan
I remember when I first started to learn C in university - we had a
(relatively) large project due and I had yet to start. I convinced myself to
program for something like 30 hours straight.
It seems to be a bit of a badge to pull all nighters, but I can safely say
that 80% of the time I spent in that stretch had no impact on my code at all.
I would make stupid mistakes, and introduces more bugs trying to fix those
mistakes.
There comes a time when you realize that a lack of sleep not only reduces
productivity, it can actually hurt your existing code base.
------
fwilliams
Exercise! I work as a software engineer and spend my days coding. I also
maintain a number of personal projects on the side which I try to work on
daily. If I don't work out or do something physical that day, I get restless
and eventually my productivity drops.
~~~
devs1010
yes, this is definitely true
------
devs1010
I like to think I can program more than 3-4 hours a day sustainably, I know
I've had days where I worked for 8 hours (although its not always pure
programming) and then came home and worked for hours more on personal
projects, or also worked on the weekend on a personal project for many hours.
The thing is though that I have a habit of distracting myself fairly often by
going on here to read articles, Reddit, etc, I'd say I normally wouldn't go
more than half an hour without some forced distraction, often times even more
often that that. I think doing something like this can help to keep you
mentally fresh, at least it seems to work for me
------
suyash
Start early morning and get to the hardest problems, I am usually best in the
morning before lunch after lunch, my productivity is relatively down so I try
to come in to office early when there are less distractions and leave in the
evening on time so I can spend time on my hobbies/activities and not get
burned out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
‘We have a fire in the cockpit!’: the Apollo 1 disaster 50 years later - Hooke
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/01/26/50-years-ago-three-astronauts-died-in-the-apollo-1-fire/
======
SmellyGeekBoy
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Ars Technica story that was on the
front page a couple of days back:
[https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/01/apollo-1-fire-
inve...](https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/01/apollo-1-fire-
investigation/)
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13478422)
~~~
acqq
In that discussion, see the comment of "19670127", he first say he remembered
"Batman" to be interrupted on ABC with the news. Then he discovered that
"Batman" wasn't in ABC's Friday prime time schedule. Is it possible that the
described interruption happened before the prime time?
The event happened 23:31:19 UTC Jan 27 1967, says Wikipedia.
------
hashkb
> It was a lesson NASA would have to learn again after the space shuttle
> Challenger disaster. And again after the space shuttle Columbia disaster.
So... it's a lesson NASA hasn't learned?
I see the same phenomenon in the software industry (with less terrible
consequences) where attention to quality spikes after disasters and then
subsides over time as complacency sets back in.
~~~
woliveirajr
I don't think that Challenger and Columbia suffered the same problems. They
weren't even close.
Unless the problem is "there was some lack of understanding in the potential
danger of it, and everything should be aborted setting a lower acceptable
risk", or something like that.
Which would not only impacted and prevented Challenger and Columbia, but would
have stopped probably all other missions, since it's impossible to know for
sure how high or low the acceptable-risk-bar should be put.
~~~
Waterluvian
Didn't Feynman famously conclude that Challenger was largely to the blame of a
culture that didn't respect safety over timeline and budget? That part felt a
lot like Apollo 1. I recall reading that there was a fundamental ignorance at
critical levels of management t on how risk is even measured.
~~~
woliveirajr
Yes, in the end it can be disrespect for safety... but in the long run, it's
easy to miss details that can lead to problems or disasters.
Sometimes one person misses reporting something that seemed to be small, but
have consequences. Sometimes one reports so much because, well, "hey I
warned", but it gets lost on many others warnings that were issued and didn't
happen, and people aren't sensitive to warnings anymore.
It's not easy to set the limit on where everybody should be worried and where
it's just acceptable or even noticed.
------
schlowmo
I must admit that I first started reading about the details from the Apollo 1
disaster after hearing the Public Service Broadcasting[0] song "Fire In The
Cockpit" from their "Race for Space" album. The album is a concept album about
the American and Soviet space race using samples from various speeches, news
shows and NASA public relation stuff.
The band says about the song (which they never play at their live shows):
> "The fire on Apollo 1 was such an important and terrible chapter in the
> program that it felt wrong to leave it out of our version of the story.
> [...] We wanted to treat it with respect and not come up with some trite or
> overly emotional song, so we just kept it very, very simple and tried to pay
> a quiet, but terrifying tribute to those three men."[0]
There is so much historic stuff in this album that I can highly recommend it
to anyone interested in the history of space missions.
[0]
[http://publicservicebroadcasting.net/](http://publicservicebroadcasting.net/)
[1]
[http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=37821](http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=37821)
------
js2
Also, tomorrow is 31 years since Challenger:
[http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0128.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0128.html)
I was in 8th grade. People still watched the shuttle launches on TV then. It
was on in many of the classrooms, but the bell rang to switch periods shortly
before launch. I was moving between rooms when I heard someone say something
about an explosion. I ducked into the nearest room where the TV was on. I'll
never forgot the images of that day.
Also, Feb 1 will be 14 years for Columbia. It never occurred to me before how
close together on the calendar all three events are.
------
obilgic
I guess this 'web' link trick doesn't work anymore
~~~
laumars
This is probably a really stupid question (yet to have my morning cup of earl
grey), but which failing trick are you referring to?
~~~
kanamekun
There's a link called "web" on this page that links to Google:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%98We%20have%20a%20fir...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%98We%20have%20a%20fire%20in%20the%20cockpit!%E2%80%99%3A%20the%20Apollo%201%20disaster%2050%20years%20later)
It lets you into news sites that have some sort of paywall/registration
requirement, but that whitelist Google.
~~~
buzer
Isn't that cloaking which is against Google's webmaster guidelines?
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en)
[EDIT] Apparently they have added "First click free" policy
[https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en](https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hitch: Scalable TLS termination proxy - jjoe
https://hitch-tls.org
======
mwpmaybe
I'm definitely interested in this if for no other reason than Varnish is a
particular nice piece of software. I would like to see a detailed feature and
performance comparison between Hitch and HAproxy but I can't seem to find one.
If only I had more time!
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9687330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9687330)
~~~
jjoe
Varnish needs its "own" native TLS termination badly. I'm not sure if an
external proxy like Hitch will successfully fill the gap. I understand phk's
stance on Varnish doing ssl but with this announcement, it's clear pressure's
mounting.
~~~
mwpmaybe
I may be in the minority but I actually prefer that they are two different
layers. Keeps my compression (and DoS) cores separate from my encryption cores
and gives me two different levers to pull for scalability. HAproxy is so good
at what it does and Varnish is so good at what it does that while there is
some overlap (e.g. request/response rewriting) I can't help but think that any
attempt to merge the two feature-sets would result in something vastly
inferior.
~~~
jjoe
The reason I think Varnish needs a native TLS implementation is to be able to
talk directly to TLS backends. Otherwise you have a gaping hole in your stack
should one need Varnish to communicate over the Internet.
~~~
mwpmaybe
Ah, interesting. It looks like that feature has been added to Varnish Cache
Plus, but it hasn't yet made its way into the generally-available open source
product.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open for discussion: PDF as HTML-replacement - albertzeyer
While browsing with Chrome and displaying a few random PDFs with its very fast and nice built-in PDF-viewer, I had these thoughts:<p>* It looks so much cleaner and better than many HTML pages.<p>* It looks consistent and everywhere the same.<p>* It loads faster than a similar sized HTML.<p>* What about having PDF as a replacement for HTML?<p>* It also has support for hyperlinks.<p>* It lacks some dynamic elements.<p>* Not sure if something like HTTP POST is possible.<p>* Those things could be added though.<p>* Chromes built-in PDF-viewer may be a good starting point to implement this.<p>* If Google itself would do this and add such support in Chrome, chances are good that this spreads fast.
======
colinsidoti
Why constrain ourselves to the proportions of physical paper if we're not
using physical paper as our medium? The current suite of technologies is much
more suited towards all viewing devices. Just in general, web technology has
come a very, very long way in the past 5 years in terms of CSS, JS, and even
Flash. We've nearly reached a point where web developers have agreed a
standard method of development. PDF was not developed for interactive web
development and all of their form features are noticeably afterthoughts. The
list goes on and on, switching from HTML to PDF just doesn't make sense.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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DuckDuckGo ups content farm banning by promoting wikiHow in 0-click - epi0Bauqu
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2011/02/04/duckduckgo-follows-content-farm-banning-with-promoting-wikihow-content
======
jdp23
DuckDuckGo continues to impress. And sometimes editorial decisions are better
than algorithms: since most users view most Demand Media articles as spam, DDG
and Blekko get good results without investing a lot of engineering investment
simply by banning them. Meanwhile Google had to work out algorithmic changes
and test them at scale -- with the risk that they unintentionally get rid of
stuff from other sites that most people actually _do_ want to see. So it's a
tough situation for Google, especially when you factor into account potential
impact on all the advertising revenue they're generating from these spam
sites.
~~~
moultano
I agree that it's harder for Google, because we don't have the luxury of hard
coding rankings, but I take big issue with this:
> _So it's a tough situation for Google, especially when you factor into
> account potential impact on all the advertising revenue they're generating
> from these spam sites._
Adsense revenue does not enter in to ranking decisions. Our evaluation process
is far from perfect, but revenue is _not_ part of it. We're not blind to the
fact that a lot of scummy sites run adsense, but the even scummier ones have
already been kicked out of adsense and now use other ad networks or affiliate
programs. "Denying spammers revenue" has been at times the explicit goal of
projects that launched.
~~~
jdp23
The tough situation I was talking about is that the net result of investing
all this engineering effort to keep up with Duck Duck Go and Blekko still is
likely to wind up as a revenue loss for Google.
In terms of AdSense revenue influencing search results, it would be great if
Google published their ranking algorithms and implementations so that people
could verify it for themselves. [Ditto for Microsoft of course.] But okay,
I'll take your word for it that it's not factored explicitly into the ranking
calculations and that you've done the analysis to make sure that it doesn't
indirectly influence calculations. Even so, it may have affected resource
decisions. At the organizational level, did the specter of losing tens of
millions in ad revenue had something to do with why Google waited so long to
start to address the problem?
~~~
moultano
> _Even so, it may have affected resource decisions. At the organizational
> level, did the specter of losing tens of millions in ad revenue had
> something to do with why Google waited so long to start to address the
> problem?_
At the organizational level, Google is essentially chaos. In search quality in
particular, once you've demonstrated that you can do useful stuff on your own,
you're pretty much free to work on whatever you think is important. I don't
think there's even a _mechanism_ for shifting priorities like that.
We've been working on this issue for a long time, and made some progress.
These efforts started _long_ before the recent spat of news articles. I've
personally been working on it for over a year. The central issue is that it's
very difficult to make changes that sacrifice "on-topic-ness" for "good-ness"
that don't make the results in general worse. You can expect some big changes
here very shortly though.
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Coinlab (Y Combinator funded) sues MtGox - dcc1
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1dl6uz/coinlab_sues_mtgox/
Coinlab (Ycombinator funded) sues MtGox
======
ewoodrich
My understanding is that Coinlab (in the best case) was only able to handle a
very limited number of number of daily transactions. This was presumably due
to a combination of liability and supply issues that would prevent them from
being a general supply for BTC until they had reached the sufficient "critical
mass".
I'm surprised Mt. Gox would enter into such an ambitious relationship without
exploring the negative signals (limited exchange capacity, very much unproven
market record, limited userbase). IANAL, so I can't weight the evidence of the
lawsuit sufficiently, but if the terms were that explicit (with no escape
clauses or relevant conditions), then Mt. Gox has demonstrated they have very
little institutional stability. In many ways, it seem more likely that Coinlab
is very much vulnerable to such an attack, but that is purely speculation.
Technical infrastructure for an exchange is obviously essential -- but the
business and legal framework for a system that is inextricably connected with
currency should be demonstrably stable. I am curious to see how the facts are
revealed.
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Is a Perfect Storm Forming For Distributed Social Networking? - edw519
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_a_perfect_storm_forming_for_distributed_social_networking.php
======
anigbrowl
Quite likely, though not for the exact reasons the author thinks. I have this
theory that while some sites trade on content (this one for example), those
that trade on specific functionality tend to be just incubators for technology
that becomes widespread if its any good.
People inside the full-service site enjoy a more structured net experience
that would be difficult to create otherwise, as well as a multiplicity of
special features that are unique. But eventually, the overhead of maintaining
existing features means change takes place slowly within the site compared to
what's taking place outside, and those who relied heavily on it as a portal
eventually discover that the benefits offered by the site are no longer unique
and disperse.
Remember when CompuServe and AOL towered above all other virtual communities?
------
m_eiman
Interesting. Maybe there's a slight chance someone will be interested in my
toy project at the moment, a distributed replacement for Twitter (as opposed
to the other five hundred ones like it... But it's a fun exercise).
"Only" need to time the release with a particularly bad case of downtime for
Twitter and have suitable connections to media. Did someone say that the
better tech doesn't always win? ;)
------
socratees
Users experience a feeling of betrayal? Users know the service is going to be
sold to someone at some point, and that's why the service was created in the
first place. And investor knows that the only way to make a profit is to sell
the service.
~~~
rpdillon
Yeah, but just because something is sold doesn't mean it has to die. In the
case of FriendFeed, Facebook has all but said it's going to kill it; they
bought FriendFeed because they wanted the people, not the product.
Not so in the case of Google with Writely (Docs) or Grand Central (Google
Voice).
~~~
bkudria
Or Dodgeba..oh wait, no, never mind. (What was the point of that again?)
------
sahaj
check out what google is doing with orkut:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JNgKNRSgm0>
this is comparable to the facebook "like" feature, but goes a step beyond.
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InstallMonetizer (YC W12) is officially closed - tainstallmon
http://www.installmonetizer.com/
======
josh_carterPDX
Can you discuss what happen? Why did you chose to close down?
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Agate: A Data Analysis Library for Journalists - benderbending
https://source.opennews.org/en-US/articles/introducing-agate/
======
minimaxir
It's worth noting that for journalists, analyzing data is only half the
battle.
Sites like FiveThirtyEight and The Economist usually have separate graphics
departments who use nonstatistical tools like Illustrator to annotate and
apply custom theming. Good visualization is an huge part of a persuasive
argument, and so being able to do both is important (and languages like R have
good native plotting as well)
Additionally, looking at the agate code Jupyter notebook, it appears that the
processing syntax is very, very similar to pandas (despite the warning against
it) aside from the print_bars method, so I'm confused about the specific
utility of the module.
From the post comments, after someone else noted the similarities too:
> _You 're right, most of my problems with pandas are not in its interfaces.
> My problems there are with the overhead of the numpy dependency, its
> confusing handling of text, nulls, etc. (inherited from numpy) and its
> documentation aimed at advanced users rather than beginners._
~~~
staringmonkey
Hello! Author of the library here. Just want to point out that I am a
journalist and very active in the data journalism community. (6+ years) Both
the sites you name-check have journalists who do production online graphics
that don't go through the traditional Illustrator workflow and news
organizations are increasingly discarding that antiquated pattern. (I've made
a hundred graphics for NPR and I don't even have a copy of Illustrator
installed.)
To your second point, that's fine. The most common feedback I've gotten is "I
don't see what purpose this serves that X doesn't already fulfill!" Well okay
then, you don't gotta use it. But given the fact I've done this job for years,
working with the very folks who it's targeted at, I think it's probably safe
to assume I've got some reasons. (Which you will find enumerated in the blog
post and documentation.)
~~~
JPKab
hey man, good work on agate. I like it.
I actually used to live right near the NPR offices in Crystal City.
You might know a pythonista I know who used to work there and is now doing a
machine learning start-up. (his name is Greg)
------
huac
I don't think the syntax is _that_ much nicer than dplyr in R (thank you Based
Hadley). But the approach (focusing on less-technical users and reducing
headaches) is certainly good.
I do really like the graphs being printed in console. Is this common
elsewhere?
------
cmiles74
Where I work, we do a lot of projects where we are replacing some aging and
wacky system (i.e., FileMaker Pro, Access, old and ignored SQL Server 7, etc.)
Our project managers might find this tool helpful, doing the data analysis in
the wacky system is pretty specialized. Dumping that data to CSV and looking
at it through a tool like this seems like it'd be a big time saver.
------
devty
is there any reason for the emphasis on "journalism" other than the fact that
the author of the library is a journalist?
~~~
staringmonkey
Journalists have some problems that tend to be somewhat peculiar to their
jobs. Some examples:
* A mix of heterogeneous and often internally inconsistent data.
* A lot of data that is categorical, free text or otherwise non-numerical.
* A need to be robust that is not always accompanied by the time necessary to become an expert programmer.
I'm sure some other folks have these problems too, though I can't think of any
other industry where folks would touch as diverse a range of data as we do.
If works for other niches, great! But I'm a journalist and I had journalism
problems in mind when I built it. I can't speak to the needs of folks in
science, finance or what have you.
~~~
bitdeveloper
I'd throw history into the ring for something that would be similar in variety
of sources, types of data, etc.
I'm looking forward to checking out the library!
~~~
staringmonkey
Yes, good point! There's a lot of crossover there and also with digital
humanities folks.
~~~
mcburton
+1 for digital humanities folks. Your emphasis on well written documentation
is a strong argument for agate over more powerful, but more confusing, data
processing libraries. I'm already thinking about using agate in my digital
humanities workshops!
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A space elevator to the moon could be doable – and surprisingly cheap - RickJWagner
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/space-elevator-moon-could-be-doable-surprisingly-cheap-ncna1051496
======
rwmj
I think a better link might be the paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.09339.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.09339.pdf)
Surprisingly (given the very bold claims) it comes from a reputable source.
------
ColinWright
One major problem with the classical Earth based Space Elevator is the problem
of security. It wouldn't take much (relatively speaking) for a terrorist
organisation to create a credible threat.
A Moon-based Space Elevator wouldn't have that problem.
| {
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Lessons from Operation “Denver,” the KGB’s Aids Disinformation Campaign - anarbadalov
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/operation-denver-kgb-aids-disinformation-campaign/
======
brandmeyer
Title nit: "Aids" should be "AIDS"
~~~
anarbadalov
it was! no idea how it got changed to "Aids"
~~~
8ytecoder
Aids is not wrong. [1]
> However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms
> where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids,
> Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).
[1]
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art201307021121335...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/en/articles/art20130702112133548)
~~~
oh_sigh
It seems weird that this overrides the actual messaging from the groups
themselves. NASA calls themselves NASA, not Nasa. English orthography is so
removed from pronunciation that it seems quite arbitrary and useless to rework
it for one specific case.
Also, it is irrelevant because this is the MIT reader press, not the BBC,and
it is literally "AIDS" in the article title. BBC has their own standards. They
don't set the standards for every article written in English.
~~~
knolax
The real reason is likely HN's broken auto-capitalization system.
------
peter_d_sherman
>"A cycle of misinformation and disinformation arose in which the KGB cited
U.S. conspiracy theories, and U.S. conspiracy theorists, in turn, began to
cite texts associated with KGB disinformation."
Forgive me -- but... _that 's hilarious_! <g>
Bridge of spies? More like _bridge of lies_...<g>
Reminds me of a quote I have long since forgotten:
_" The borrower runs in his own debt"_
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
This whole thing is akin to two students, students A and student B, where
student A is copying student B's answers on a Math (or other) Test, while
student B is simultaneously copying student A's answers, _but neither one
knows that they 're copying each others answers -- which were originally from
themselves!_ <g> (it makes no sense (how was the original answer originated,
fractal recursion, 0 becoming 1 after an infinity of recursive iterations?) --
but apparently that's what happened! <g>)
------
ttctciyf
The 1991 article "Cancer Warfare"[1] by "Richard Hatch", is interesting in
this regard.
Extensively footnoted and appearing erudite and informed, it examines the
National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Viral Cancer Program (VCP) - "launched in
1971 with great fanfare as part of Nixon’s War on Cancer" \- concluding
that:
> While Nixon ordered a supposed end to BW offensive efforts in 1969, the
> Central Intelligence Agency retained a secret BW and toxin weapon
> capability.43 Given this record of deception in the U.S. BW program, the
> Viral Cancer Program may well have used the search for a cure for cancer
> as a cover to continue its experiments on biological warfare.
(the footnote "43" refers to: _Church Committee Report, “Unauthorized
Storage of Toxic Agents” Vol. 1, pp. 189–99._ )
Along the way, it sidles _almost_ up to the notion of lab created HIV:
> One of Bionetics Research Laboratories’ most important NCI contracts
> was a massive virus inoculation program that began in 1962 and and ran
> until at least 1976, and used more than 2,000 monkeys. Dr. Robert Gallo,
> the controversial head of the current U.S. AIDS research program at NCI
> and its chief of its tumor cell biology laboratory, and Dr. Jack
> Gruber, formerly of VCP and then NIH, were project officers for the
> inoculation program. The monkeys were injected with everything from
> human cancer tissues to rare viruses and even sheep’s blood in an effort
> to find a transmissible cancer. Many of these monkeys succumbed to
> immunosuppression after infection with the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus,
> the first known immunosuppressive retrovirus,31 a class of viruses that
> includes the human immunodeficiency virus.
[...]
> Experiments performed under NCI contract included many dangerous
> viral inoculation programs, like the primate inoculation program
> run by Gallo and Gruber.. So-called “species barriers” were routinely
> breached in efforts to find or create infectious cancer viruses.
> Viruses native to one species were injected into animals from another
> species in hope of triggering cancers.
When I first heard of the disinfo program covered in TFA, I immediately
thought of this article, which I first read in the mid 90's. I still wonder
how much of its content is diligent journalism and how much is high quality
disinfo.
1: [http://spitfirelist.com/news/cancer-
warfare/](http://spitfirelist.com/news/cancer-warfare/) from _Covert Action
Information Bulletin 39, Winter 1991-92_
------
m0zg
I still remember that one. Trouble with these "disinformation" campaigns is
that when your entire "news" is disinformation people don't trust it and learn
to read between the lines. And the Soviet people were experts at that by then,
so almost nobody believed this bullshit. People would jokingly say it was
invented in a CIA lab, but at that point just about any other calamity was
reported to have been created there as well, so nobody gave this any credence.
This effect was so profound that to this day "invented in a CIA lab" is used
only as a joke. Remember, this was during the years when Russian magazines
unironically wrote that "black workers in Harlem get paid in heroin" and other
ludicrous stuff like that. Coincidentally, this reminds me of the stuff I read
about Russia in US press today.
~~~
ardy42
> Trouble with these "disinformation" campaigns is that when your entire
> "news" is disinformation people don't trust it and learn to read between the
> lines. And the Soviet people were experts at that by then, so almost nobody
> believed this bullshit.
My understanding is that the the ultimate goal of disinformation _isn 't_ get
get people to believe the lies, it's to politically neutralize them by making
them cynical and mistrustful of everything, including the truth.
~~~
m0zg
There's no such thing as "truth" really. What gets reported through "official"
channels is always in accordance with someone's agenda. You may agree with
that agenda, but that doesn't make the reporting "true" in any sense of the
word. Nor does disagreeing with the agenda make reporting automatically
completely false, although people tend to perceive it as such.
Soviet people knew some version of the "truth" though, from reading between
the lines. When all the news is fake, "citizen journalism" naturally arises,
and it did in the Soviet Union. There was always the "official" version of
events that everyone knew was a lie and the "unofficial" one that you'd hear
from e.g. your relatives near to where the events took place, or, if events
took place abroad from Radio Svoboda or Voice of America on the shortwave
(naturally, with corrections for _their_ propaganda). From that you can build
up a fairly accurate version of what's really going on, if you care. Americans
are only now learning this skill, I was "born in it, molded by it".
To give you a concrete example, people knew about the real extent of Chernobyl
well before the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided it was
necessary to tell us the _sanitized_ version of the news. We did not know why
it blew up until years later, but we knew it _did_ blow up pretty much the
next day. We also knew firefighters were dousing an open reactor core without
any protective equipment, that stuff could leak into the river and poison
Kiev, etc, etc. All in spite of KGB's very best efforts to conceal the facts,
and its near unlimited power.
~~~
ardy42
> There's no such thing as "truth" really. What gets reported through
> "official" channels is always in accordance with someone's agenda. You may
> agree with that agenda, but that doesn't make the reporting "true" in any
> sense of the word. Nor does disagreeing with the agenda make reporting
> automatically completely false, although people tend to perceive it as such.
Let me put it another way: there are agendas that are more helpful to you and
your people and agendas that are more harmful; the people who put out
disinformation have the goal of making it harder for you to tell the
difference.
------
trhway
well, similarly - recent news articles on the State Department concerns few
years back about safety in the BSL4 Wuhan labs which conducted coronavirus
"gain of function" research (my non-professional understanding - trying to
make virus more deadly and virulent in order to research whether it can become
more deadly and virulent) pretty much achieved in my brain the same effect
wrt. China/coronavirus what "Denver" was trying to achieve back then wrt.
US/AIDS.
------
peisistratos
> The Covid-19 pandemic has provoked a wide range of lurid conspiracy theories
> in countries whose governments are hostile to the United States, notably
> Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela... authoritarian regimes have exploited
> widespread public fear and confusion to generate suspicions about U.S.
> motives, to stoke hostility toward the United States, and to discredit the
> U.S. government’s sincerity in combatting the global pandemic.
With Trump tweeting "LIBERATE MICHIGAN" in support of the armed anti-lockdown
group who shut down the Michigan statehouse and its lockdown efforts, I think
the so-called "authoritarian regimes" have more to "exploit" regarding "the
U.S. government's sincerity in combatting this global pandemic" than just
"widespread public fear and confusion".
| {
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Diy.js JavaScript library - Touche
http://diy.lab.io/
======
poopy_pants
JavaScript without jQuery is a thing. We get it.
------
patricklorio
I love it.
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China's Social Credit System seeks to assign scores, engineer social behaviour - clouddrover
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-31/chinas-social-credit-system-punishes-untrustworthy-citizens/9596204
======
danzig13
Terrifying. As much as anything, because I could see how it could be
justified. How awesome would it be if that guy who drives like an asshole all
the time would actually have that affect his life?
However, of course the system will be used to penalize social dissent and
change first and foremost. It would be like the perfect springboard for ad
hominem attacks. “He seems to have good points on why local officials should
not accept bribes, but he only brushes his teeth once a day.”
Just. Terrifying.
~~~
vtntimo
"How awesome would it be if that guy who drives like an asshole all the time
would actually have that affect his life?"
You clearly haven't seen the first post-Netflix Black Mirror episode.
It's a big mistake to expect people (ANY people, government or randoms, does
not matter) to use this type of ranking system in a logical, rational way.
Most people are unable to make logical and rational decisions. Just look at
what people are eating for lunch, let alone who they are voting and WHY.
Basically any ranking system of this type has two fates, depending on who does
the ranking (the people or the government):
In case of people doing the ranking, it becomes a popularity contest that
rewards what you project of yourself to the external world. Remember, your
external projection != you. This is already going on in the context of social
media, and has started a de-evolution and demise of our civilization. Nobody
cares about their inner selves anymore, and why care if what you project
brings you greater rewards from the external world.
In case of government, well, just no. Stalin-type power gripping has never
been easier. Someone criticising? Just change a single float variable (the
person's score) from say 9.7 to 0.2 and the problem solves itself.
PS. We don't need a ranking system to end someone's asshole-esque driving.
Find them, break enough facial bones and make sure they understand it was
because of their driving. I promise you that will be the end of it. If not,
there are about 44 or 358 solutions that fix the problem for good.
~~~
danzig13
I pretty much acknowledge that in my second paragraph.
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iPads < teachers - bootload
https://medium.com/bright/ipads-teachers-e51896af3930
======
jvickers
In my experience, the quality variance with teachers is much higher than with
iPads. iPads have never had the attitude problems that some teachers have had
(except some Siri edge cases perhaps).
------
sjwright
The headline is a troll; the technology revolution in education is not iPads,
it's reinventing the purpose of teachers in a classroom. The flipped
classroom[0][1] might be the single greatest advance in education in a hundred
years, made possible largely by our ability to rapidly distribute compelling
instruction.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom)
[1]
[http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_rein...](http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education)
------
golergka
From outside, US education seems astonishingly bad, especially for a 1st world
country. In US, 14 years old kids just start to learn how to solve for X,
while in Russia it's time to finish trigonometry and move to calculus.
~~~
S4M
Wow, that indeed doesn't look good. In France I learnt trigonometry at 13 (I
gonna turn 34 this year so maybe it has changed by now).
~~~
jostylr
The problem is less about when someone learns math (an easy subject once one
cares), but rather the attitude about math. In the US, people walk away from
math education hating and fearing math. "Math is important, but I can't do
math" is the attitude many have. What is the attitude of general people in
France? Do they take math ignorance as a point of pride as they do in the US
or they take math knowledge and use as a point of pride?
------
keithpeter
_" Great teachers aren’t likely to buy into the vision of any single ed tech
company. They want to integrate ideas — likely from several sources,
designers, and companies — into their own creative processes."_
I'd suggest that anyone here thinking of producing _content_ for those iPads
(or any platform) think in terms of _maximum granularity_ and adding tools for
a teacher to select items for use.
Disclaimer: I've been teaching maths for 28 years now and so may be either
part of the problem, or a 'great teacher'. I tend to let the students make up
their own mind about that one.
------
mbrock
What I learned from teachers, mostly, was to distrust authority figures. Maybe
iPads can't provide this lesson.
The article says: "Finding and growing great teachers is devilishly hard.
Retaining them is very expensive." How do we even know who is a great teacher?
One of my best teachers told me, after years of me skipping his classes to
play around with computer stuff, that he loved my style of learning. My style
was to mostly ignore school, stay out of trouble, and read and tinker on my
own.
I might be biased and wrong, but from my perspective, it seems like there's
way too much talk about teaching, and way too little about learning.
The kids in that nightmarish Indianapolis "learning center" are being
oppressed. If there's anything they're interested in on their own, they're
probably too burned out when they come home from the "learning center" to
pursue it.
And they learn that learning is something you do with someone else's
permission, guidance, and monitoring. I learned that learning happens when I'm
free to play around, follow my curiosity, and work hard with the natural zeal
of a restless child.
Alan Kay had the idea of building an educational tablet computer in 1972, and
was quite realistic about it. [1] Since he has a humanistic and child-centric
view of learning, he envisioned the tablet as a tool for children to learn on
their own. When interviewed in 2013 about whether new computing devices are
helping in the classroom, he said:
"The perspective on this is first to ask whether the current educational
practices are even using books in a powerful and educative way. Or even to ask
whether the classroom process without any special media at all is educative.
"I would say, to a distressing extent, the answer is 'no.'"
[1]: [http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-
comput...](http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-
pioneer-alan-kay/)
------
EGreg
I believe there is a smarter way to reform education with technology. The
iPads are not supposed to replace the teacher, but to maximize goals given the
real economic reality - information delivery is the commodity while personal
attention is scarce.
This is my humble proposal:
[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158)
I intend to realize it in practice and will be happy to work with people who
feel the same. If you feel there's truth in what I wrote, contact me by going
to [http://qbix.com/about](http://qbix.com/about) \- I am Greg there.
~~~
S4M
I would agree in general with your proposal, but I'd suggest replacing the
iPad by a cheap laptop, like a chromebook: it's cheaper, gives the kids more
freedom, and for the ones who will be interested, it can be a first step to
programming.
~~~
EGreg
I agree. It can be a cheap one. One of my friends actually has a company where
they produced a cheat ($50) educatioal tablet and have many schools in Brazil
using it. They are looking for apps. So I can get it to market.
~~~
S4M
I am making an app for education. For now it's a website but I will port it to
Android soon. Wanna talk?
------
bootload
read in conjunction with this ~
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9402292)
------
jholman
Relevant link:
Veritasium, "This will revolutionize education".
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEmuEWjHr5c)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla tells Germany that 98% of drivers don't find 'autopilot' misleading - sndean
http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/11/tesla-autopilot-germany/
======
midgetjones
As long as you're not on the autobahn with one of the 2%, you'll be fine!
------
mhd
They surveyed existing car owners. _After_ the news stories?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Linqit – forget about python lists - bluehat1
https://github.com/avilum/linqit
======
geoalchimista
For the example
teenagers = people.where(lambda p: 20 >= p.age >= 13)
I prefer the good ol' Pythonic way
teenagers = filter(lambda p: 13 <= p.age <= 20, people)
because I know how filter behaves, but am I certain that `where` gives me the
elements not their indices (cf. `numpy.where`)?
In another example
ages = people.age
The Pythonic way can be
ages = [p.age for p in people]
Despite having more characters to type, list comprehension is a well-known
idiom and I bet many Python programmers would be able to write it down in a
second or two.
And how would `old_people.last()` be any clearer than `old_people[-1]`? At
least from these examples, I'm not convinced it makes a strong case to switch
to the .NET Lists.
~~~
lou1306
Python also has
[p for p in people if 20 >= p.age >= 13]
which someone (I, for one) might find more readable than both the proposed
`where` method and the `filter` builtin
------
Juerd
To me, foo.where(...) looks a bit cleaner than a function call such as
filter(..., foo). But writing foo.skip(4) instead of foo[4:] is just silly.
This library consists of very thin wrappers around functionality that's
available out of the box in Python. Are these wrappers worth an extra
dependency? I think a cheat sheet for people coming from .NET would be more
useful than implementing a similar API.
------
arc2
You hate python so you made a library to make it look worse, but at least less
pythonic? I believe someone will find it useful and it frightens me
------
kyleperik
I prefer list comprehension's syntax. I could respect this if it was also
faster maybe. To me lambdas are kind of clunky in Python, and I've never been
impressed with the .NET Object Oriented builder way of dealing with lists. If
you don't format it well(which frankly is kind of difficult to do) you can end
up with many very long lines.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Leaving it behind - joakin
http://chimeces.com/post/leaving-it-behind/
======
joakin
Hi, this is my article. I am not really sure if it is allowed/correct to self
submit the writing, but I wanted to try.
I tackled the human side of leaving a long time job, without talking about the
reasons or my future projects. Because that is what comes from my insides and
that is something that is often left aside on this kind of articles.
I am not a experienced writer, feedback is greatly welcome.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fury in Cambodia as US asks to be paid back hundreds of millions in war debts - rishabhd
http://www.smh.com.au/world/fury-in-cambodia-as-us-asks-to-be-paid-back-hundreds-of-millions-in-war-debts-20170311-guvxyp.html
======
danyim
It's a shame that America (and possibly other first world countries) punish
developing countries for not bending to their will. With the massive amount
influence that the US has on the world, it's hard not to imagine that we've
become the global mafia by demanding payment--however unjust or in bad taste--
in exchange for economic and military protection.
------
mrtri
vietnam war was created to make money, it only ended after Watergate scandal
and mass protests.
McNamara admits Tonkin incident which started US sending mass troops to
vietnam never happend
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AaGVAipGp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AaGVAipGp0)
2 million personel to vietnam, 58000 US soldiers dead. in about 10 years. and
still losing
because of Rules of Engagement that were created to lose.
not allowed to bomb airfields, harbors, SAM installations, cities, dams,
powerplants etc..
[http://www.au.af.mil/au/aupress/digital/pdf/paper/t_drake_ru...](http://www.au.af.mil/au/aupress/digital/pdf/paper/t_drake_rules_of_defeat.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Online Shoppers Are Rooting for the Little Guy - Not Amazon - liuwei6
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/business/some-shoppers-rebel-against-giant-web-retailers.html
======
res0nat0r
Unfortunately I think this will only always be a small percentage of shoppers.
The lowest overall price + convenience trumps all for most people. This is why
WalMart is so big, low prices. It is a great thing to support local
businesses, but I think for the majority of online shoppers unless they can
beat or match the price + convenience + speed of large online retailers they
are not going to be looked at as a viable alternative.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Angular 2: “5 min quickstart” - medvednikov
https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/quickstart.html
======
InfiniteGraviti
For what?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: I made an app that listens for a rapper's songs and raps along in sync - skattyadz
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/02/05/tinie-tempahs-new-app-helps-lip-sync-along-latest-album/#!us2Xz
======
JustResign
Do you know that many (terrestrial) radio stations do not play songs at their
exact recorded speed?
Most are sped up a little (single-digit percentage), so they can fit more
songs (or more commercials) in each hour.
I wonder what sort of time distortion the matching algorithm can handle?
------
nhangen
Apparently very few of you read the article...
It's a smart way for a rapper to market his music. I chuckled as I watched the
video, and learned about a rapper I hadn't heard of before.
Harmless fun.
~~~
ktsmith
It was interesting but the video kept cutting out for me. I figured I'd check
out the music anyway and was greeted with a "This content is not available in
your country" message. That was a first being in the US.
------
wingerlang
On this topic I guess. I recently used shazamm (or the other one) and it - in
addition to finding the song - showed me the lyrics in real time, highlighting
the current line in the song. Really impressive.
~~~
nnnnni
That was probably soundhound
~~~
JangoSteve
Why do you say that? Shazam does it too, since 2011 when it acquired Tunezee
to power that functionality.
[http://gigaom.com/2011/06/15/shazam-makes-first-
acquisition-...](http://gigaom.com/2011/06/15/shazam-makes-first-acquisition-
introduces-lyric-synchronization/)
~~~
sejje
Guy said "(or the other one)".
Soundhound was the likely candidate.
------
edw519
Why? Why? Why the fuck?
Nerdie homes must make a buck.
Have a need? Scratch that itch.
Take a break to hack that bitch.
People hurt & need more meds,
Hacker rather show his creds.
Breakthrus needed by a sage,
But iphone apps r all the rage.
Enterprise really sucks
Hackers never get those bucks.
Web apps used to be the hack
But mobile's got a "craftsman's" back.
Analysis!
Paralysis!
Algorithms!
Distillation!
Interpretation!
Compilation!
Deployment to the cloud.
Disruption now allowed.
Users need a good solution
But all they get is more polution.
Something no one ever needed.
HN front page: he succeeded.
Nerdie homes must make a buck.
Why? Why? Why the fuck?
~~~
kohanz
It's not clear whether the above is intended as an impressive, rhyming,
satirical tribute to the OP or if it is a creative, yet sarcastic, put-down
attempt.
Regardless, I want to say that "Show HN" is my favorite type of HN post. If
what is presented is useful or marketable, all the better, but the sheer fact
that somebody built something ( _anything_ ), usually in their spare time, and
are proud enough to share it with the masses is something I applaud.
There is a lot of negativity on HN these days, but in most cases "Show HN"
threads have respectfully been spared. I sincerely hope it stays that way.
~~~
midas007
It seems like a tongue-in-cheek stylistic parody of nerdcore on top of most
rap music: bravado and aggression. ... but it's hard to tell whether it was a
joke or not, but I'm leaning towards not.
Next music app idea: every time it hears The Grateful Dead or Iron Butterfly,
a B-52 Westfalia bomber swoops in firing lolcat missiles and drops cluster
bombs that grow dandelions. (Hippies seem to be the most antithetical to the
topic to change the subject.)
------
svantana
Cute! It's pretty much the same as the Cassius app from a few years back
([https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/cassius-i-3-u-so/id399394777](https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/cassius-i-3-u-so/id399394777)),
but syncing to external audio instead. A nontrivial extension, but still very
similar from the user's perspective.
Now, if the app was able to lipsync to any tune, that would be more
impressive. It's certainly doable, see e.g. Tony Ezzat's "Mary 101" system
from 10 years back:
[http://people.csail.mit.edu/tonebone/research/mary101/](http://people.csail.mit.edu/tonebone/research/mary101/)
------
jongold
This is totally awesome; way beyond my iOS knowledge. Any pointers or tips you
learnt about audio processing along the way?
~~~
skattyadz
I'm doing FFTs at regular intervals using the Accelerate framework. Then a lot
of rolling window comparisons of frequency data to try and determine which
fingerprints these frequencies match closest.
Expect a blog post soon (Y)
~~~
n1ghtmare_
Can't wait for the blog post !
------
dmcswain
Cool! On the topic of tech and music: here's an app that lets you play your
favorite YouTube music videos and SoundCloud songs by voice:
[http://youtu.be/cyS4TlBkTns](http://youtu.be/cyS4TlBkTns)
------
gabemart
The linked page pegs one of my CPU cores to 100%. Anyone else get the same
thing?
~~~
weavie
Yup. Locked up firefox for me for quite some time. Was compiling at the time,
so didn't think too much of it..
~~~
x3c
Compiling, huh? [http://xkcd.com/303/](http://xkcd.com/303/)
------
michaelmcmillan
This is clever. I can see so many different apps using a similar technology.
------
deletes
Do you have to record each song separately?
~~~
skattyadz
It's using a ton of videos we recorded with Tinie on one grey London afternoon
------
scrrr
Off topic, but do TNW know that that page is impossible to scroll? (Safari,
brand-new MBP)
~~~
nezza-_-
Just opened Safari (latest OSX and latest updates installed) here to try it
out: Works well here, can scroll without a problem.
------
n1ghtmare_
This is an extremely cool app! I'm impressed. Good job.
------
delinka
Is this a "me, too" kind of thing? Or is it different than Sound Hound or
Shazam in some way?
Edit: ah, now I see. It syncs up video, not just scrolling text lyrics.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Haskell Platform 2011.2.0.1 is out -- major improvements for Mac users - dons
http://hackage.haskell.org/platform/?2011.2.0.1
======
lepht
I've been tooling around with Haskell for a few months now, and since the
beginning I've been impressed with the incredible amount of polish that goes
into the official distribution.
Maybe my expectations of an 'academic', FP language were low, but the clean,
navigable design of the site, and easy to use package manager, and respect for
the idioms of the various platforms (DMGs and not tar.gz's for Mac OS) show a
regard for aesthetic that that even the 'friendlier' languages like Ruby or
Python should strive for.
~~~
getsat
Orders of magnitude better than this one: <http://perl6.org>
~~~
sigzero
I am now blind. Thank you.
------
nek4life
Perfect. My copy of Learn You a Haskell for Great Good! just arrived today.
~~~
jamesbritt
Mine too. With stickers and stuff.
I've been reading it on my phone and laptop, but having a physical copy makes
it easier to follow, navigate, make notes, etc.
~~~
losvedir
Aw, stickers! Mine came earlier this week, but no stickers. Where'd you get
the book from? I ordered from Amazon because I had a giftcard, but I guess I
missed out on some sweet swag.
~~~
icey
I ordered directly from No Starch Press and got stickers (and a manga
postcard).
~~~
jamesbritt
Same here. There was a discount code on the LYAHFGG site, and it included the
physical book as well as an immediate download of the PDF.
Really a good deal. But the big point for me was the note that the author got
more money that way, too.
Edit: plus manga card, _and_ a 30% discount code.
~~~
telemachos
I'm a sucker for paper+pdf+ebook bundles, which you can usually get from
publishers but not Amazon or B/N. I also like that the author gets more.
It's great that No Starch is setting themselves up as the "quirky" compsci
book publishers (this, Eloquent Javascript, Land of Lisp). Does anyone know
if/when we can expect _Learn You an Erlang for Great Good_ in paper form?
(I'm also amused to see that I'm not the only one who was almost more excited
by the stickers than the book.[1])
[1] <http://twitter.com/#!/telemachus/status/58983940987420673>
------
chc
Can anybody explain what the major improvements for Mac users are? The link is
silent.
~~~
dons
Yep, the GHC release notes describe some important bug fixes (particularly the
XCode 4 issue affected a lot of users):
[http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.3/html/users_guide/release-7...](http://haskell.org/ghc/docs/7.0.3/html/users_guide/release-7-0-3.html)
------
esmooov
So now that we have <https://github.com/kripken/emscripten> and a reliable
LLVM backend for GHC, has anyone tried compiling Haskell to JavaScript? My
instinct is that the world would explode but I can't be sure.
------
aristidb
It seems like they changed the following since the last version:
GHC 7.0.2 -> 7.0.3 and text 0.11.0.5 -> 0.11.0.6.
So this is a pure bugfix release, as the version number would indicate.
------
necubi
This is much appreciated. I made the mistake of deleting my XCode 3
installation when I installed 4, which ended up breaking GHC compilation.
According to the changelog they've fixed that issue in this release.
------
BasDirks
Today is a good day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wells Fargo double charged everyone on their bill pays today - Leustad
Happened everyone today. If you have a bill payment which paid yesterday, processed today and will be sent tomorrow, I'd say go check your account. Mine and my wife's account along with a lot of people got double charged today. We've called the customer service and they've said that everyone was charged double and they are fixing it.<p>Well, this sounds like wells fargo played with our money overnight and giving them back to us.<p>What are your thoughts?
======
thisisit
They have gone through a massive investigation so doing something like this is
strange.
So, until proven otherwise it's safer to assume Hanlon's razor - Never
attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
~~~
neosavvy
I was just thinking of switching all my accounts from Chase to Wells Fargo
because Chase isn't located in my new town.
This is a good reminder as to why I should choose a different bank. Thanks for
posting.
~~~
ams6110
Use a local credit union. None of the big national banks have demonstrated
that they can be trusted.
~~~
rconti
For anyone worried about leaving a "big" bank, often credit unions will offer
mobile deposit and free (reimbursed) ATM withdrawls. I'm actually happier
using a bank with no local branches because there's no more thinking about
driving to the "right" ATM. (mine reimburses up to $15/mo which is more than
enough for me; these days even the sketchy taqueria ATMs only charge $1.25 or
so where it used to be $3+)
~~~
semi-extrinsic
WTF do you use ATM withdrawals for at a frequency where you care about $3
charges?
~~~
jklein11
If you are taking out $100 at a time that is 3%
------
pfarnsworth
I used to work in payments. This happens sometimes, it's a bug it's not
something nefarious, and it's really disruptive.
Many, many people will be put in a negative balance. Wells Fargo is probably
one of those banks that don't order bill payments chronologically, but
probably by amount, so things could get very very messy. There will be a lot
of NSF charges that will need to be reversed, or Line of Credit charges for
those accounts that have automatic line of credit to avoid NSF charges. But
missed payments because of NSF will also be a problem as well, unless Wells
Fargo foots the entire extra amount so that customers don't get massively
fucked up.
~~~
segmondy
I work in payments too. I don't know how this happens using an ACID DB.
Everything is done within a transaction and extra checks are done to make sure
that payments/debits happen ONCE and all once.
~~~
gowld
Probably two separate databases.
~~~
segmondy
Distributed Transactions
------
tristor
I was once double charged on an auto-billed mortgage payment two weeks before
Christmas causing all my other bills to bounce. This is why I no longer trust
auto billing services from anyone and hate Wells Fargo.
~~~
cortesoft
It might happen every now and then, but I still trust auto-pay to make fewer
mistakes than me. I have accidentally missed bills way more often than auto
pay has messed up.
Plus, when auto pay messes up, the bank will usually make it right and you
don’t have to pay any fees. If you mess up, you will have to eat the fees
(usually).
------
HenryBemis
Probably some job scheduling issue; maybe a job got stuck (dependencies or
what have you) and the techie just thought to re-run the job(s) without
checking the progress of the "stuck one". I could as well have ran for 99.999%
and got stuck on the last account (ZZTop's:) and then it run again
"successfully" and the techie went home happy for saving the day. And after
all the complains start coming in IT thought just what I thought and went
through the support tickets and saw the "Job-Mother-Of-All-Payments" was ran
twice.
Now they should be having a chat with their BAs and their Finance on how to
reverse the duplicates.
~~~
bridanp
Unfortunately I was part of one of these at a much smaller bank in the past. A
job that "memo posted" checking accounts failed. When we restarted the job, we
tagged the restart to the wrong step. We should have hit the restore step
first, prior to the posting failure. Instead, we tagged the one right after,
duplicating the posting for all accounts that had successfully passed on the
first run. It was thousands of transactions that had to be backed out before
they were hard posted. It was an awful feeling when we realized it, made more
awful to know we caused people so much trouble that day. Anyway, I'm telling
the story because it doesn't have to be because Wells Fargo is inherently bad.
Their management has made some significant errors lately that could be
considered criminal. But in this case, I'd side with it being program, job
scheduling, or technical admin errors. I'm almost 100% positive the people
responsible are just sick about it right now.
------
strict9
Ugh, saw this and checked. Yep, my mortgage payment taken out twice, with a
plethora of overdraft protection notices afterward as it keeps taking money
out of my other accounts.
Inertia, and the fact I don't want to lose a credit card acct I've had open
forever, has kept me with WF. But those two are rapidly becoming nothing
compared to all the BS from this bank.
~~~
forbiddenlake
Don't close the credit card, but move everything else away, and put one bill
on the card (or just use it twice a year for gum)?
~~~
craftyguy
I don't think you even need to do that? I had a wells fargo cc open for over a
decade with only 1 charge in the previous 8 years. I closed it last year
because, fuck wells fargo.
~~~
cortesoft
If there is no fee, keeping it open can help your credit score; a major factor
for your credit is what percentage of your available credit you use, so having
a credit card you don’t use simply adds to your total available credit.
~~~
dronescanfly
Honest question: Shouldn't credit be measured solely on the basis of currently
available money and monthly income? (+how responsible you were with previous
credit repayments)
I don't comprehend how having a cc but not actually using it leads to being
trusted more
~~~
toast0
The credit scoring alhorithms don't look at historic balances for credit
cards, just current balance and available credit, status and age of the
account. Having an account open for a long time that isn't currently late is a
proxy for 'has paid bills consistently' even if it may not be accurate. If you
regularly were really late, the algorithm assumes your account would have been
closed.
------
denvercoder904
This happened to my girlfriend's checking account last week. She was charged
an overdraft fee because auto pay decided to charge two days earlier. Then all
traces of the transaction magically disappeared from her transaction history.
Luckily, she took some screenshots of it. We just shrugged it off but I'm
going to investigate it now.
~~~
cortesoft
Did the overdraft fee also disappear?
------
zaptheimpaler
I wouldn't assume it was intentional, could very well be a bug. Anyways, as
long as they fix it soon... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
------
jmpz
Not seeing any other reference to this in the news..
~~~
astura
[http://www.statesman.com/business/wells-fargo-customers-
find...](http://www.statesman.com/business/wells-fargo-customers-find-
accounts-drained-mistaken-double-charges/PP0dDlnbsATuGFYwcm7q4O/)
------
jdblair
This morning its all fixed and the balance is correct. The double transactions
were all in "pending" when I went to sleep (including overdraft transfers). I
bet this isn't the first time something like this has happened due to a glitch
in an overnight batch job.
------
neverbroken907
I was double charged as well! Just got off the phone with customer service
after a mini heart attack. They say this will be fixed by 8am...but why in the
hell did it happen in the first place? I found this thread searching for any
news on this "system glitch".
------
Leustad
As of this morning, all duplicate charges was cleared. Charged amounts
returned to the accounts and the over draft fees was erased.
------
WindowsFon4life
First month off of WF, and I'm soo happy.
------
AlexandrB
I think it's time for Wells Fargo to get out of retail banking. Between the
several well-documented instances of account fraud and now this it's apparent
their priorities are not about providing good customer service to individuals.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How scientists taught monkeys the concept of money - sidwyn
http://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monkeys-the-concept-of-money-not-long-after-the-first-prostitute-monkey-appeared/
======
sharkbot
The name Marc Hauser piqued my interest. He has been accused of scientific
misconduct [1], and his research has been tainted. Take this article with a
suitable grain of salt...
[1] [http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/08/harvard-
de...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/08/harvard-dean-
confirms-misconduct.html), via Wikipedia
~~~
starwed
Ah, but he wasn't involved in this study -- one of the researchers had worked
with him on a previous study, and that's why his name came up.
------
tome
I nearly misread this for "How scientists taught monkeys the concept of
monkey". That would have been an interesting self-awareness experience for the
monkeys!
------
scott_s
The paper itself is quite readable:
[http://www.q-group.org/archives_folder/pdf/spring2008/ChenBe...](http://www.q-group.org/archives_folder/pdf/spring2008/ChenBehavioralBiases.pdf)
------
libraryatnight
The writing is atrocious. "...are the two researchers who have had made the
study." or "It’s exactly this selfish desires that they tried to exploit and
experiment with great success..."
I barely made it through.
~~~
scott_s
The experimental description also leaves out key information in understanding
what they did. I linked to the real paper in this thread which seems much more
readable.
------
reuser
Token economies are as old as the hills. It's also called "secondary
reinforcement" - although cognitive psychologists will be bothered on
ideological grounds if you reference any psychology from before 1950 or so
------
jonhendry
I think Santos gave a TED talk, which might be better than this article.
I saw her talk at Harvard Medical School when I was working there. She's a
good speaker and gives an entertaining talk.
<http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html>
------
brohee
Fascinating. I didn't read (yet) the paper linked in the article, but was the
prostitution case a male buying service from a female or something else?
~~~
simcop2387
I took a look and couldn't find it anywhere in there. I think this may have
come from outside the paper.
------
spacefungus
The description given is kind of weak in this particular article, but the
other papers linked in this comment thread are pretty good. Apparently they're
working on finding physiological mechanisms for this stuff, I was reading
about it recently. Like, literally what chemicals in brains cause this sort of
behavior. If I can find the link I'll post it...
------
vorg
1\. Teach some monkeys about money.
2\. Let them loose in South America.
3\. Wait a while.
4\. Get some monkeys addicted to tobacco, let them loose, and wait longer.
5\. Install surveillance stations in the jungle and start taxing the
transactions.
Some countries could do very well out of having a sudden influx of Pan
citizens.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Indentation-Based Racket Syntax with Macros and Infix Operators - tonyg
https://github.com/tonyg/racket-something
======
tonyg
It's experimental, but supports things like the interactive shell I mentioned
in this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16879995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16879995)
Example of a use of the shell library with the special syntax:
[https://github.com/tonyg/racket-
something/blob/master/exampl...](https://github.com/tonyg/racket-
something/blob/master/examples/sh.rkt)
Screencast of an interactive session. Very simple, but shows some of the
basics: [https://asciinema.org/a/83450](https://asciinema.org/a/83450)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Who killed Nokia? Nokia did - chmars
http://alumnimagazine.insead.edu/who-killed-nokia-nokia-did/
======
trm42
Nokia had long term plan which looked promising: They bought first Trolltech
for QT and after that started doing Meego* (albeit too slowly) but the idea
was to have one development platform for all their new and old phone platforms
and QT fit the bill really nicely. But in the end the QT plan was really half-
assed because getting it into Symbian took too long time and Meego was even
slower project.
The first Meego phone N9 and it's unpublished sibling N950 (with the best
qwerty hardware ever) were better phones than Android phones at that time, but
when they released the N9 it was already known that Nokia will switch to
Windows Phone and there was no point in buying N9 or developing apps for it.
They even had the QT + QT Quick setup working and showing lots of promise for
writing javascript apps for different platforms. Sigh.
So if they've had the guts to execute the QT plan and Meego as a first
priority projects + skipping Elop, the situation could be a lot different.
Meego still feels more Linuxy than Android.
* Of course creating first Maemo on top of GTK and after that switching to QT sounded weird and with Meego there was other parties like Samsung and Intel meddling around so they lost lot of steam in that transition too.
~~~
nextos
The N9 was one of the best designed phones I've ever seen [1]. It's really
frustrating Nokia did not follow the Maemo/Meego path. As a developer I'm not
so fond of smartphones because they are not little computers, but locked down
devices. Nokia's view was aligned with mine, as the first device of the series
was an "Internet Tablet" (N770, released Q2 2005!)
Why they followed an erratic path instead of going full steam ahead with their
Maemo/Meego platform is quite well described by the article, but does not
sound less stupid to an outsider. They had a device that was in some fronts
superior to iPhone much earlier, but they got stuck with Symbian first and
Microsoft afterwards.
[1]
[http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review](http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review)
~~~
hobarrera
Have you followed Jolla? Jolla's phone is a true N9 successor, and far from
being locked down.
~~~
trm42
They have done awesome job but the Jolla Phone is old (and was low-end even
when it was published compared to its price) and their tablet crowdsourcing
project suffered quite badly as they lost some other funding for a moment and
their device manufacturers sold the devices elsewhere as Android devices.
Basically Jolla has promised to refund the crowdsourcing funds within this
year, but still it was big setback for the project. I've tested the tablet and
it was surprisingly solid in H/W and S/W sense. Just hoping they'll survive
and can get meaningful market share somehow. Kudos to them anyway.
------
lordnacho
As one middle manager pointed out to us, at Apple the top managers are
engineers. “We make everything into a business case and use figures to prove
what’s good, whereas Apple is engineer-driven.” Top managers acknowledged to
us that “there was no real software competence in the top management team”.
That stood out for me. Whenever I've worked with managers who didn't
understand the field, interactions have always gone something like this:
Manager: Can we deliver X?
Team: Sure, it will take 3 months.
Manager: Can we deliver X in 2 months?
Team: No, I told you 3 months.
Manager: I need it done in 2...
And how it proceeded depended a lot on how bone-headed the manager was.
Sometimes they would effectively let someone competent on the team do the
management. Sometimes they would just try to bully until they got the answer
they were looking for.
~~~
kabdib
"What if I got some more people to help out?"
"Five months."
"You guys are too slow. I'm going to give it to team B over there. They say
they can do it in two months, no problem."
"You'll be asking us to help out _that_ team in about a year."
It is amazing how little value most managers add.
~~~
madeofpalk
Sounds like you're working in a pretty crappy place.
I don't consider my employer to be exceptionally great, but at least there's
no managers stupid enough to act like that, or developers to tolerate it.
~~~
kabdib
Oh, that's from very long ago. And most of them weren't that bad. And I _have_
had good managers, really good ones who added value, but only 3-4 really
qualify (in 35 years).
I work in a flat organization now. No managers at all. So it's an interesting
perspective.
------
zerr
At least they bought and LGPLed Qt before dying. That's a huge contribution to
world.
~~~
trm42
Nowadays QT is doing well with LGPL + Commercial licensing. It's really good
thing Nokia didn't hug it to death.
~~~
zerr
I also wander what would happen if Nokia have gone with Maemo platform with Qt
as an official SDK, instead of switching to Windows...
------
raesene9
My feeling for what went wrong for Nokia, which kind of chimes with what's
here is that the problem is that they couldn't decide a strategic platform and
stick with it. There was a lot of differences between the Symbian crew and the
Maemo crew.
The prime example of this , for me, was the Nokia N900. It was their flagship
phone, I got one in their store in London and within 6 months it was pretty
much unsupported, as Nokia changed focus again.
Also whilst the hardware was good the software wasn't great quality...
~~~
trm42
One of the things Apple changed was how the software was perceived for phones.
Nokia (or the others) didn't update that much the firmwares for the old
models. They just fixed the problems and added features to the new models.
They were coming from simple phones that were not flashable in the beginning
and they just wanted to sell more phones instead of supporting the old ones.
It's ironic how Apple is selling amazing amounts of phones with just few
models and upgrading the software and features few times a year.
~~~
seba_dos1
The Internet Tablet series, which is what N900 came from, actually was a bit
different. Nokia N800 got an update from OS2007 to OS2008, and Nokia 770,
while officially supported from OS2005 to OS2006, has been updated via semi-
official "Hacker Editions" all the way to OS2008. It was N900's Maemo 5
(Fremantle) where they finally stopped supporting earlier models.
------
kpil
At the time, the Finns seemed to be rather proud of the "management by
perkele" culture.
Also, the traditional industrial product development cycle (requirement
specifications document driven waterfall) does not produce good design, as it
takes many iterations to figure out what's good in reality. It's hard to
change an engineering culture.
~~~
seivan
You can still have management by perkele but make sure management understand
what engineers actually do.
~~~
hga
By this you mean management would better understand how their extreme perkele
is forcing those under them to lie, and they could construct a better view of
reality through better adjustments of how they view those lies???
How about focusing on creating a culture where the people under you don't have
to lie, who's jobs and careers, and therefore families, aren't threatened when
they tell the truth to those above them?
------
Geee
I think the biggest mistake in their engineering execution was skimping on the
specs of their phones. For example, the "flagship" N97 was released with a
resistive screen, 433Mhz ARM11 processor, and without a GPU (they already had
GPUs in some earlier models). N97 would have been a "decent" phone with modern
specs, and bought them more time to innovate in software.
~~~
trm42
Yep that was one their problems. Bought an used Sony Ericsson P800 running UIQ
and used it for years because it had ten times more ram than new Nokia Symbian
phones in 2005-2007. Something like 10 MB vs 128. Of course the UIQ system was
iPhone of the early 2000s but quite few noticed it and in Finland everybody
were chanting Nokia Nokia Nokia.
EDIT: Forgot to say that few earlier Nokia models had accelerated GPU but the
OS and the developers didn't use those, so they just stopped adding the GPUs
later on ;D
~~~
Ezhik
Oh man, I remember I wanted to get a P910. Interesting phone line, that was.
~~~
trm42
The UX design of the P* line and M600 was really something at the day. The
last ones P1i and M600 started converting more and more of the UI to finger
touch instead of stylus control. And it ran so smoothly on nowadays obsoleted
hardware <3
------
aleem
This article seems to have a personal axe to grind.
Building an OS is hard, building an SDK is hard and so is building an IDE to
go with it. Nokia is not a software company. It could not have competed with
Google, Apple or Microsoft on the software platform. These companies have
their own OS. They have their own browsers and even programming languages they
can claim their own. They have massive developer ecosystems.
The fact that Nokia failed has little to do with Nokia itself and more to do
with the disruptive power of software.
It really had just two options. Get acquired or adopt a third-party platform.
Google was not interested post Motorola acquisition. Microsoft had its own
demons to deal with. There was little wiggle room.
Had Motorola not been acquired, it would have gone the same route, fizzled
into oblivion. RIMM is going the same route.
For all their trying, these companies don't have the software DNA.
~~~
trm42
According to rumors Nokia had lots of discussion with MS and Google about
which platform they should take. Got the impression that the proposition from
MS was somehow better and at least initially gave more room to move for Nokia.
Later on got the impression that lots of things didn't went as was promised.
But, Nokia is still alive and the situation seems to be a lot rosier for them
after selling the mobile phone business. They got good price and got really
cheap loan from Microsoft as part of the deal. Of course in PR side Nokia
didn't have to kick out the phone engineers. Microsoft is handling that still
and getting the negative PR from that.
One has to remember that earlier Ericsson quit the phone business as well by
selling that to Sony. Actually those phones got better after that :)
~~~
aleem
Yes, that's exactly right. Ballmer wanted to react to Google's Motorola
acquisition and Nokia got a good deal out of it. Ballmer was heavily
criticized (by the board no less) and the acquisition was mostly a write-off
[1]. Compare this to Google's Motorola acquisition, it's clear that Nokia was
a bad buy and Elop netted the company the most amount of money possible so all
in all a good outcome for Nokia. As per Don Harrison, head of M&A at Google:
[2]
> I think the Motorola transaction has been a success for us. Financially, we
> bought the asset for $12.5 billion. It had $3 billion in cash; we were able
> to sell the Home division for $2.5 billion; we ended selling the handset
> division for $3 billion. There were some other tax assets as well. When you
> work through the math, you realize we spent between $2.5 billion and $3.5
> billion for the patent assets. At the time, the nearest comparable
> transaction was the Nortel patent auction where Microsoft and Apple teamed
> up to buy that asset for $4.5 billion. And there’s a good argument that the
> Motorola patent portfolio is a better portfolio.
Which is why the INSEAD article seems so off base.
[1]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-just-undid-
stev...](http://www.businessinsider.com/satya-nadella-just-undid-steve-
ballmers-last-big-mistake-2015-7) [2]:
[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/12/a-peek-at-googles-
ma-...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/12/a-peek-at-googles-ma-
ambitions/)
------
dvirsky
It's interesting that Samsung were in a similar position around that time (and
also had Bada in the works at the time). But around 2010-2011 they just hopped
on the Android bandwagon and went all in with it, and won big time.
Which reminds me, what's up with Tizen? Are they still trying to push it?
~~~
trm42
It seems they are keeping Bada -> Tizen around just to have some leverage over
Google. If some negoatiations are really tough with Google, they can say "hey,
let's forget the whole thing and we'll start using Tizen instead of Android".
They don't really want to do that but it's a good plan B.
~~~
bitmapbrother
It's also a good way to commit business suicide. Plan B would relegate them to
a has been in the smartphone market as the others rush in to fill the void.
------
StripeNoGood
A trojan horse from the MS did it...
~~~
doikor
Nokia was in big trouble / dying years before that.
~~~
ryanlol
Nokia was in trouble indeed, but the damage caused by that memo was
irreversible.
I remember the day it came out, it was the day everyone who I knew at Nokia
realised that they'd soon need new jobs.
------
andmarios
My theory about Nokia's fall is that it was primarily driven by the company's
inability to succeed in the United States.
The first iPhone was indeed good, but still it wasn't a clear win for Apple.
Nokia had impressive software and features that took many years for the
competitors to catch up. In the same time, Nokia would have to catch up to the
iPhone's (usable) touch interface but couldn't make it in time.
Apple (and other US companies) have a huge marketing machine; hollywood,
various tv programs, music industry etc. Once this marketing machine worked
for Apple, Nokia had no chance of success since it hadn't an established
audience in the US to keep the company's image afloat until it delivered
something better.
I believe this is also the reason the shareholders accepted so easily
Microsoft and/or Elop. Elop did the worst possible move imho, during a period
of heavy competition, he changed the company's roadmap, without thinking about
the implications. You just can't pivot that fast on such a complex product.
Also by doing this he alienated the company's audience in Europe.
------
digi_owl
My personal take on it is "boardroom meddling".
Rather than allow the share price to slump some and their CEO to put his long
term play in to action, the board ousted him and brought in a short term sock
puppet. And he was given one objective, goose the share price.
You will find this behavior up and down the tech world.
Take a look at HP for example. They went through 3 CEOs in nearly as many
years. From that we have an aborted attempt at getting into the mobile
business with WebOS as just one example.
Hell, consider what Dell said after buying back his namesake company. That now
they were free to pursue less profitable long term goals.
------
Aoyagi
>Nokia needed a better operating system for its phones to match Apple’s iOS
I strongly disagree. Symbian just needed a few optimisation, which it got. It
got them too late, but it did. Maemo/MeeGo was probably more capable than iOS
is today. And what exactly are those "quality problems of N95" they speak of?
Nokia was indeed wounded by incompetent management, but Microsoft was the one
who stepped in and finished the job.
~~~
threeseed
> Maemo/MeeGo was probably more capable than iOS is today
This is just a ridiculous statement.
The iOS security architecture alone is more sophisticated and capable than
Meego was. When you add all the various _Frameworks and_ Kits iOS is an
extremely broad operating system that even Android can't keep up with.
> but Microsoft was the one who stepped in and finished the job
No. There simply isn't room in the marketplace for more than three platforms.
And Microsoft having better services, better engineers and a lot more money
was always going to take that third spot.
~~~
seba_dos1
I think "more capable" meant that Maemo was just a regular GNU/Linux running
in your pocket, adjusted just enough to work well in such form factor. The
system was yours just like it is on your PC.
iOS, when compared to that, is a child's toy, designed to keep you from
breaking it.
Of course for some it's a feature.
------
f00fc0d3
It is exactly the same what is happening to Nokia Networks. What saves them is
fact that mobile networks market is pretty much closed and there is very high
barrier of entry. If the market would be more open (patents!) - Nokia wouldn't
survive a day there.
Nokia top management have no clue about technology, they are not engineers so
you can sell them any s##t you what if you have smooth talk.
Nokia suffers also from politics and internal battles between sites and
organizations (basically Finns vs everybody else). This results in ubiquitous
NIH syndrome. Nokia Net reinvents wheel all the time, and almost every time
they get a square.
------
SixSigma
Hardware, software & management - I think someone is missing something
fundamental.
I had an N95, I thought it was quite a good piece of kit.
What people never seem to mention is that the iPhone had a generous data plan,
whereas I was paying by the byte.
That is a massive difference in use case.
~~~
trm42
The hardware of N95 was the pinnacle of Nokia engineering. They stuffed lots
of new stuff there like A-GPS receiver, accelerometer, 3D-accelerated GPU,
lots of flash storage, better camera etc but the Symbian UX was horrible (it
was from the beginning but tech feature -driven engineers didn't understand
that at all).
N95 had so much of features that nobody used them. They just were happy with
all the stuff they never used. Been talking about the subject to lots of
people who bought the phone then.
N95 was released the same year Apple demoed iPhone first time. N95 sold really
well then. Nokia's old management has told afterwards they were so lulled by
the success of N95 they were not worried about iPhone at all. They did N96
which was even more stuffed than N95 but with the same UX flaws.
~~~
Aoyagi
If I could choose between a touch-only sleek smartphone and modernised version
of N95 with all its original features, I'd definitely go with the N95.
~~~
trm42
I would like to have touch-phone with a full QWERTY keyboard. Just like the
dev-only Nokia N950 ;-)
In hardware design sense it's really well engineered:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N950](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N950)
------
perseusprime11
Isn't the bottom line technical incompetence more than anything else?
------
vatotemking
They should have released an android phone when android came out. They lost a
lot of time trying to make symbian work as a smartphone and later using
windows phone os which is the smallest ecosystem among the 3 (iOS, Android,
WP)
~~~
4ec327
Hope you realize Symbian was in the market several years before Android
arrived.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hulu Profitable? Please - jmorin007
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/hulu-profitable-please
======
run4yourlives
_> Gross profit does not include the costs of selling advertising (10% of
sales), marketing, product development (Hulu's platform), or management or
administration salaries_
Sorry, what? Is this some new definition of profit being used here?
Let's stick to calling revenue revenue, and profit profit.
~~~
aristus
That is the precise definition of gross profit: the revenue of one widget sale
minus the "materials and labor" cost of producing one widget. Gross profit
does not include fixed costs, backoffice costs, overhead, etc. You are
thinking maybe of "net profit".
The difference is basically that if you have gross profits, you can get to
'net net' profit just by growing your market share. If you are not gross
profitable, selling 10-cent apples for 8 cents, you are screwed no matter what
your other costs are.
~~~
run4yourlives
And you've just described why I hate the definition.
_> The difference is basically that if you have gross profits, you can get to
'net net' profit just by growing your market share._
How many more companies must flounder under this logic. I know it makes sense,
but in reality, "gross profit" is just a way of making a situation appear
better than it is.
Profit is the difference between all revenue and all costs. There are many
variables than can be adjusted on either side of the equation.
To throw out a few costs, and they recalculate your "profit margins" is like
calculating the inflation rate without using the cost of food and oil ~ fuzzy
accounting, designed only to obscure in order to prove a stated position.
~~~
aristus
Well, not quite. Different measures of profit help you figure out which bits
to concentrate on, just like having a good profiler helps you pinpoint
bottlenecks.
In this particular case, showing that a company can get to gross profit
streaming purely by web is valuable info -- it shows that the hoops Joost is
going through to do P2P distribution may not be necessary. It also chips away
at the assumption that pipe-owners have a natural advantage. I did some work
in this area, and I had thought Hulu would get murdered by their bandwidth
costs.
~~~
run4yourlives
_Different measures of profit help you figure out which bits to concentrate
on,_
My argument is that they almost always make bad situations look better, and in
effect you end up ignoring core problems to focus on a much easier to believe
"bit to concentrate on".
For me, as a founder, the best numbers are the ones that are the most
difficult to beautify, since those will be the ones that are ultimately most
accurate to the health of the overall business.
------
iamdave
> _Hulu has fewer than 1/10th as many users as YouTube and serves an even
> smaller fraction of streams, so that is entirely possible._
Hulu also markets to a completely different crowd. YouTube is user-generated
content. Hulu is a user-focused service. That's not a hard dichotomy to
perceive, so on that front alone it's pretty obvious to know that numbers will
be different.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: ML data annotations and tagging made easy - mohi13
https://dataturks.com/datalicious.php
======
syllogism
What's your policy on data ownership once the data (and annotations) have been
sent to you? Do you reserve the right to keep and use the data that's sent to
you? Your privacy policy page only talks about personally identifying
information, not usage rights.
~~~
mohi13
Hi thanks for the comment and thanks for SpaCy, have used it a few times and
found it really powerful.
Also what you are doing with prodi.gy is also pretty interesting with active
learning and stuff.
W.r.t privacy policy the data is owned by the users and he can delete it as he
sees fit. We will never access it.
~~~
syllogism
Thanks!
Yeah the active learning is one reason we made it a downloadable tool. We
couldn't figure out how to make that work well as a SaaS.
That said, there's definitely advantages to the SaaS design too, so I think
the products take different shapes. It's good to see more tools in this space,
and your free usage for open data plan should be really useful for
researchers.
~~~
brd
Could you elaborate on the reasons you didn't go SaaS? Were there other
reasons besides technical configurability and sheer scale of data?
To provide a little context, we're currently building an annotation tool that
will be accessible by clients and seriously considered prodigy. I'm curious to
know what pitfalls we may not be anticipating with that model.
P.S. Your work on SpaCy is nothing short of awesome. Thanks you.
~~~
syllogism
Well, a major consideration is that uploading data to a third party is a huge
barrier. Imagine you want to work on internal messages between your users, or
support tickets, or emails within your company. Because spaCy is open-source,
we already had a lot of users where data privacy was a 100% non-negotiable
requirement. There are already a lot of people doing cloud stuff, so it made a
lot of sense for us to think about self-hosted tools.
We also had a slightly different idea about what makes annotation or data
collection "hard" or painful.
If you start back at a business or product need, you first have to sketch out
how you're going to structure your solution before you can start annotating
the data. For instance, you might need to decide whether to do sentence
classification, or tag spans of text, or recognize structured relations. You
need to figure out how to select which texts to annotate, or which parts.
Maybe your documents are long, and it's efficient to annotate only the start
of the document. Maybe the information is rare, and a lot of effort should go
into getting the right filtering process before you annotate your text.
These types of considerations are really basic -- they arise on every new
thing you do. You can develop better or worse intuitions, but in the end you
have to make a bunch of decisions, and making them blindly is really
inefficient.
Prodigy addresses this by letting a single developer quickly iterate on trying
out different ideas. You can filter the stream of examples however you like,
plug together the components in different ways, and build complicated
pipelines. You might start by selecting examples for entity annotation by
keyword, but then decide your keywords suck, so you build a text classifier to
select the examples. Then you might apply a sentence-based classifier to all
examples of a given entity type, to identify the presence of some relation.
This pipeline of three models is very quick to build once you know you need to
build it --- and Prodigy helps you figure out whether an approach is working
within a couple of hours.
We could have given developers all of these pieces as REST endpoints...But
that would give you a really miserable workflow. If what we're trying to give
you is a bunch of functions you can compose in different ways, we should just
let you program.
In short, we think the big problems with ML/data science/AI are that the
technologies are so unpredictable. If you're at a point where you know exactly
the inputs and outputs of all your models, and you just need to 10x your data
set, you've really almost won already --- you're at the happy state of knowing
you can turn $ into %. That's a great problem to have, because it's not the
_big_ problem. The big problem is the unpredictability.
The best solution to unpredictability is rapid iteration, and to do that we
need to give data scientists the tools to figure out which supervised
approaches seem most promising. And if developers are working with a bunch of
composable pieces themselves, it may as well be a library. Making it a SaaS
just makes the product worse.
------
minimaxir
This appears to be inspired by Amazon's MTurk, which data people typically use
for manual data labelling; as a result, you may want to change the name.
CrowdFlower ([https://www.crowdflower.com](https://www.crowdflower.com)) is
also a very large company in this space already.
~~~
mohi13
Yeah even we think of it as your personal MTurk. You can do the annotation
with your team/network and not have to depend on crowdsourcing it.
Don't you think in that context the name is kinda appropriate?
~~~
minimaxir
Amazon's trademark lawyers may see that differently.
~~~
denzil_correa
"Mechanical Turk" is an 18th century fake chess machine.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk)
~~~
riku_iki
Trademarks are scoped within vertical/business sector/industry.
------
aldanor
There’s also a recent Prodigy by the same folks who make SpaCy -
[https://prodi.gy](https://prodi.gy) (disclaimer: I’m not affiliated, but
participated in their beta).
~~~
mohi13
Yeah that's true, the above commenter _syllogism_ is the founder of Spacy I
guess. Similar tool but for a different purpose.
------
nicodjimenez
This seems like a copycat product [https://prodi.gy/](https://prodi.gy/) I
would use this product because they are actual AI people who will help you
customize your product for your use case.
------
gajju3588
Biggest usecase for me will be to create golden data set to create some hold-
out set to iterate algorithm on.
~~~
mohi13
That certainly is one use case. Even for an auto-generated training data it is
almost always the case to have some noise in the data and taking out the
golden set from that is rarely an option, we always need to do some manual
tagging and cleaning. Thanks for the feedback.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What has been your experience with InfluxDB in production? - rd22
I am looking for a timeseries DB for IoT data and InfluxDB seems to have a lot of chatter.
However, when I did deeper I see that the OSS version is not distributed. So, I am looking for experiences from people how are you scaling Influx clusters and your experience in production.
======
krageon
The OSS version is limited in what you can use it for even if you can find it.
The paid version is very expensive. Thus, I would never use it for anything
where my ethical concerns come into play.
However, once you have it running it does appear to work. I've seen production
setups that ingest a fair amount of data per day and they don't need a lot of
maintenance, which is always nice.
------
iDemonix
Not the answer you're looking for, but I found it too busy, unintuitive, and
the lack of non-distribution for the OSS version finished off my test run. I
use Graphite, have done for years, and am quite happy with it.
On a further note, I attended Grafanacon and saw a few keynotes given by the
CEO of InfluxDB and have never been more turned off of using a product by a
single person.
------
dylz
You pay for it. I've not enjoyed using the Influx "API" either, or some of
their bizarre API practices such as returning HTTP 200 OK with a failure
message.
Federated prometheus or timescaledb maybe?
------
Kaladin
There was lot of memory leak when used as the storage for prometheus for our
kubernetes cluster. we ditched it after trying various versions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Future Isn't What It Used to Be ... So Change It - urbangangster
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140204211441-2293140-the-future-isn-t-what-it-used-to-be-so-change-it
======
getglue
Good article
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Save Bistro Elan - revorad
http://paulgraham.com/saveelan.html
======
thaumaturgy
...wait, you mean cool startups that are getting lots of help & attention &
funding actually need a place to eat? Gee, it's a shame nobody's as interested
in providing support to _those_ businesses
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2609076>).
It's unlikely that this business can be saved; if they're anything like most
such small shops, they've been struggling for a long time without any of the
kind of support that sexy YC startups receive. They likely have razor-thin
margins and not a lot of money in the bank; getting their rent raised on them
is just the straw breaking their back. They'll "pivot", but only as much as
their meager resources will allow.
I've seen way too many good small businesses just completely fall over lately,
but since they don't offer the kind of investment opportunity that the next
Google does, nobody cares.
...unless it happens to be _their_ favorite little sandwich shop.
~~~
dstein
How long until pg starts up FoodCombinator to help restaurant entrepreneurs
disrupt the food industry?
~~~
tzs
I once spent some time thinking about a way to help restaurant entrepreneurs
(and make some money off of them). I didn't think of the analogy to
YCombinator, but it is kind of the same idea. Here's my idea.
You build a restaurant, with a special kitchen. The kitchen is split into 4 or
so separate work area, each fully equipped and with room for a chef and his
assistants to work. There is one shared pantry and shared big walk in
refrigerator. Each of the separate work areas has its own smaller pantry and
fridge.
Each of the separate work areas is run by a separate chef, who leases the spot
from you. There is a single menu, with a section for each chef's dishes, and
the menu makes sure to prominently name the chefs.
You handle front of house. You also handle the wine, and maybe you also run a
bar. You also keep the shared pantry and fridge stocked with all the
ingredients that should be found in any fine restaurant's kitchen. (The
individual chefs deal with stocking any speciality ingredients they need).
Decor, advertising, and basically everything else other than composing the
menu and cooking the food is handled by you.
The chefs set the prices in their section of the menu. You handle all the
money, calculating each chef's share and paying them. You deal with the
accounting, taxes, and all that.
The idea here is that a young, talented chef who doesn't yet have the
resources to go out and open a restaurant can lease a spot in your food
incubator, where all he has to worry about is covering 1/4th of a menu with
fine food and building up a following. When he's well known and people are
coming in just to eat his food, he can go off and start his own restaurant
(perhaps with an investment from you--you've had a chance to see how he is as
a chef, and to see at least some of his management skills by watching him
manage his assistants).
Note also that this is a good place for the diners. When you are going out
with someone, and you want Italian and they want Mexican, why argue about it?
Go to the food incubator and one of you can order from the Italian chef's part
of the menu and one from the Mexican chef's part of the menu. Think of it as
essentially the fine dining or gourmet equivalent of the food court.
The beauty of this is that there are ALWAYS going to be young chefs who want
to get out from being an anonymous sous chef at someone else's restaurant and
move up to their own place, and so there should always be chefs eager to lease
a spot at your food incubator to get that started. If they succeed, great! If
they fail, there's someone else to take their place--and since you are making
your money out of leasing space to them, you make money in either case. (On
top of what you are getting for the wine and bar).
~~~
bartonfink
Sounds like a really intriguing idea. I thought of one hurdle you didn't
address, though. It's not a showstopper, but since this is your idea, I'm
curious whether you think it needs to be addressed and, if so, how you'd go
about it. Isn't part of the experience at a nice restaurant that you have a
wait staff that knows the menu inside and out and can make recommendations? If
you effectively have 4 menus that are all changing relatively frequently, it
seems like you're asking a tremendous amount of the wait staff, which is
either going to drive up your labor cost or make it nearly impossible to find
waiters? After all, if you're able to familiarize yourself with 16 new menus a
year to the point that you know how every dish is prepared and what
compliments what, you can probably do something with more social standing. Do
you see this as a problem?
~~~
tzs
Good question. I think the menus from each chef would be relatively small,
showcasing their top 2 or 3 dishes, so it would not be like the waiters need
to learn 4 restaurant's worth of menus.
Also, since the purpose of the restaurant is to showcase the chefs, and the
clientele is going to largely be foodies, perhaps information on preparation
and such would be included on the menu.
It might be good to have the chefs come out during service and meet the
customers. After all, as I said, the chefs are there to build their
reputations, and the customers are likely to be foodies. If the chefs can
build up good will with them, they are likely to get more buzz and more good
blog write ups when they eventually go off and open their own place.
------
djm
_There are probably quite a few regulars at Bistro Elan who could buy the
building and become their new landlord_
PG: Have you considered buying it yourself? I'm assuming that you are one of
those regulars and can probably afford it. You said the business was doing
well in another comment so I assume they could continue paying you rent at
their current rate.
------
dagw
On the one hand I get that losing your favorite restaurant kind of sucks, but
on the other hand is it really worthwhile to artificially keep alive a company
that cannot survive on its own. Also if the place is as good as pg seems to
indicate then the people involved will no doubt find a new kitchen to call
home and will be serving the food you love in short order. I mean my favorite
Japanese place has closed down twice in recent times, but the head chef, and
the reason the places where awesome, is still cooking.
~~~
pg
It's doing fine as a business. The landlord is trying to take advantage of
them by raising the rent dramatically. Restaurants aren't very mobile.
~~~
dagw
_Restaurants aren't very mobile._
Depends on what defines a restaurant, is it the building or the people. While
the building itself isn't mobile, the people who run the restaurant certainly
are. If the manager, head chef, sous chef, maitre d', and a few other key
people where to close up shop at their current location and set up a new place
serving the same food a couple of blocks down the road, wouldn't that count as
mobile. Sure it will cost a bit of cash upfront, but if they can negotiate a
better deal on the rent, they'll quickly make that back.
------
rbanffy
I am not familiar with restaurant prices in California, but theirs seem low.
Can't a raise in prices compensate for the rent? Would that make them less
competitive compared to surrounding places? For how long until those places
have to raise prices too?
<http://www.bistroelan.com/Bistro_Elan/Dinner_menu.html>
Also, can they expand and start serving dinner at the Birch St location,
partly subsidizing the operation at the California Avenue place?
------
rbanffy
Would there be a way for those regulars to pool their resources into a non-
profit that would keep the place alive?
~~~
ltamake
Was thinking about this. Sort of a "donation fund" to save the restaurant.
~~~
rbanffy
Maybe there is already a non-profit willing to preserve such things. I don't
live nearby (in fact, I live in another country) so I can't really say how
meaningful the restaurant is to the history of Palo Alto (I'll take pg's word)
and its preservation may really interest some already existing entity.
------
aaronblohowiak
For a tastier and more intimate (literally mom and pop) experience, I prefer
le petit bistro on el camino.
------
staunch
Maybe some of the PayPal Mafia could "take care" of the problem. I mean, ya
know, buy the building or something.
------
aarghh
This is Kepler's all over again.
~~~
rbanffy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_Books>
------
thisuser
The logical conclusion of the intuition to save this restaurant from rentiers
is that all of the FIRE industries should be owned by the community that
enables them, not private hands of a few psychopaths.
~~~
shii
Psychopaths?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clojure 2015 Year in Review - andrioni
http://stuartsierra.com/2015/12/31/clojure-2015-year-in-review
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10821493).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is It Immoral to Not Block Ads? - ingve
http://oleb.net/blog/2015/08/is-it-immoral-to-not-block-ads/
======
aburan28
"But, the argument goes, isn’t ad blocking the new stealing? " No. No. No.
Advertisers are the real thieves stealing your data and personal information
all for the sole purpose of targeted advertising.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How many vetted users does Hacker News have now? - kempbellt
I'm curious how many users are on here now, that are above the karma threshold. Similarly, are there metrics posted anywhere with HN stats?
======
grugagag
Some users have posted in 2,3 to 7-8 years. Does this count? Do you mean to
ask active users? That would be interesting to know for sure but not
essential. What makes HN great is the quality of users’s input. If there were
10000 active users it would seem not very much but it’s quite a lot if you
think about it...
Anyway, it’d be interesting to know the answer to this query
~~~
grugagag
I meant haven’t. There are accounts whose last comments were 7-8 years ago.
Technically those shouldn’t count as the active users. Also lots of users have
a few handles or use throwaways for certain delicate subjects. Should those
count as well? I guess it’d be hard to come up with a correct number even for
HN
~~~
jslakro
It's not only the comments I think to mark favorites or support a post is also
activity
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Asynctasks – introduce vscode's build/task system to vim - skywind3000
As vim 8.0 released in 2017, we have got many wonderful plugins like: LSP, DAP and asynchronous linters. Even things like vimspector which could only been imagined in emacs in the past, now become reality in vim.<p>But vim is still lack of an elegent task system to speed up your inner software development cycle (edit, compile, test). A lot of people are still dealing with those building, testing and deploying tasks in such a primitive or flaky way. Therefor, I decide to create a plugin and introduce vscode's task like machanisms to vim.<p>https://github.com/skywind3000/asynctasks.vim
======
skywind3000
clickable link:
[https://github.com/skywind3000/asynctasks.vim](https://github.com/skywind3000/asynctasks.vim)
------
yesenadam
Seems like this should be a Show Hn?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How The New York Times Uses Software to Recognize Members of Congress - beriboy
https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-software-to-recognize-members-of-congress-29b46dd426c7
======
davidkuhta
The example made me lol: "Mitch McConnell (red, almost certainly - confidence
= 100.0)
On that note, they could utilize the box color to match the party affiliation.
~~~
danschumann
No no no! Snap chat filters with a donkey or an elephant!! XD
~~~
TomK32
as long as you don't use that to retrain the software...
------
nkassis
I'm waiting for journalists to walk around with google glass type device to do
this on the fly. Bonus it could record what they see and hear for later use.
~~~
SurrealSoul
I can't wait to live in that future, glasses that let you know if you bumped
into anyone famous
~~~
darkkindness
I get the excitement, but this sounds like a terrifying future for famous
people.
~~~
mygo
also sounds like a terrifying future for child kidnappers or fugitives or
anyone on some wanted list.
whether they deserve to be on that wanted list or not
I mean right now we have cameras everywhere but they’re not all HD so the govt
can’t run facial recognition reliably plus they need access to all the
cameras. But when people voluntarily put facial recognition devices on their
own selves, en masse? Wow.
Sounds like something Google or Amazon could benefit from practically giving
away.
~~~
J-dawg
Am I right that sex offender registers are public in the US? And they
sometimes include people convicted of very minor crimes?
Yep, definitely a Black Mirror episode in the making.
~~~
mygo
you are correct
------
rhacker
I was hoping to read an article about NYTimes setting up video cameras outside
of popular restaurants in DC and using ML to perform facial recognition on
everyone to try to find members of congress and well known lobbyists. oh
well... it would be like TMZ-4-DC
~~~
Maxious
Why set up video cameras when people bring their own...
> Rachel Shorey found members of Congress at an event hosted by a SuperPAC by
> trawling through images found on social media and finding matches.
------
ericsoderstrom
The author says that training their own model would have been too hard due to
lack of training data, but evidently Rekognition had sufficient training data
to make it work? Why can't NYT use the same training set Rekognition uses?
Does Amazon somehow have a secret non-public collection of celebrity photos?
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It shouldn't take an intern too long to collect a representative set of
Congress people and other high officials for training. Maintaining it would
not be an undue burden. That would eliminate the false positive matches for
all the unwanted celebs. Clearly Amazon's models aren't that great to begin
with so there's little reason to stick with them.
Wrap it up into a simple native app and you can bypass the MMS BS. Even
better, a sufficiently capable dev could integrate an opensource recognition
library [1] to have it entirely implemented on the device.
[1] [https://github.com/rudybrian/tuFace](https://github.com/rudybrian/tuFace)
~~~
jeremyjbowers
Hi! I'm Jeremy, one of the developers.
We'll probably work on something like this for the next version. One reason
it's harder than you think: We would have to buy / own rights to the
photographs before we could use them to train -- most of those photos are
owned by Getty or the AP. And our own photographs are perfectly lit and
square, which made them awful for training face recognition.
The other hangup (which I didn't get to in the article) is having to add /
remove people. New members are constantly being added and that's a maintenance
burden for us. Amazon usually has the new member within a day or two. (Our
team is very small and we have a lot of other responsibilities!)
But good points, definitely.
~~~
hooloovoo_zoo
"We would have to buy / own rights to the photographs before we could use them
to train..."
Is this actually true?
~~~
djrogers
Really doesn’t matter - the legal team at the NYT thinks it might be, and
lawyers exist to tell people “you’d better not”.
~~~
acct1771
And it's our job, as someone who knows what a computer is, to move forward
with common sense if they're overreaching which, is their job.
They have every incentive to be as conservative in their advice as possible,
and no incentives to "allow" risks. Doesn't increase their compensation any.
------
AdmiralAsshat
I can't wait to see how long it takes Congress to pass a law making it illegal
to use facial recognition software on members of Congress.
(And no one else)
~~~
2RTZZSro
Thankfully, only high capacity assault facial recognition software is likely
to be banned as a result.
------
Isamu
So you should be able to send a selfie to this api and it will tell you which
member of congress you look most like
~~~
reaperducer
Except in Illinois, where sending the data off device is illegal.
(See previous HN discussion)
~~~
Something1234
If you're going to state something is illegal, you need to provide a source.
What previous discussion?
~~~
mehrdadn
It was 6 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17177663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17177663)
------
jonknee
It would be fun to see which members are the most requested by NYT reports.
~~~
jeremyjbowers
Oh, that is interesting. Also, hi Jon!
------
otakucode
I have wanted for awhile to build a site which trained a machine learning
system on the various data made available surrounding Congresspeople and
information on members which were eventually found to be guilty of adultery or
other similar crimes - then produce a score for every member of Congress
rating how likely it is that they are cheating on their spouse, or taking
bribes, or similar. Give them a sneak preview into the types of systems they
are aiding and abetting in the creation of. I am uncertain of whether it could
be considered defamation to have a brainless machine learning system decide
there's an 85% chance some random member of Congress is an adulterer. I don't
actually believe that any such system could ever reach any reasonable level of
actual effectiveness due to the fundamental complexities of human behavior and
circumstance, but that's not stopping the law enforcement side of things from
moving forward so I don't see why it ought to stop the side trying to point
out fundamental flaws in the strategy.
~~~
smacktoward
_> adultery or other similar crimes_
Adultery is not a crime.
(You can argue that it's an indicator of a person's character, or lack
thereof, sure. But that's something different.)
~~~
panarky
Lying about it is an impeachable offense.
~~~
smt88
Only under oath
------
mlthoughts2018
This is an embarrasingly bad approach to face recognition for a small set of
frequently photographed people.
Several comments from the article give me concern
\- They seem to think Rekognition is a panacea for their problem, but there
are many known issues with Rekognition celebrity detection. Not to mention
that the cost-per-request is often highly unfavorable compared with building a
higher-accuracy, situation-specific solution with extensions to pre-trained
models.
\- They say some interns took a “novel approach” by creating a hard coded
look-up table for disambiguating similar politician-celebrity pairs. This
creates awful tech debt and failure cases. I’m not knocking it too hard
because it’s pragmatic, which is a good sign about those interns, but this
should be seen as a necessary wart to be improved, not a point of pride.
\- As others have pointed out, even considering turnover in Congress, it seems
like people who report on Congress for their full time job should recognize
them. It truly seems like a silly, wasteful use of resources to solve this
with computer vision.
This is all consistent with what I’ve heard from colleagues at NYT data
science. As well as people I’ve known in data science bootcamps around New
York, like Insight, who heard recruiting pitches.
Their department seems self-aggrandizing, using highly overwrought
personalization models and seeming to have 538-envy for how they want their
data science work to come off despite 538 exiting, among other important
figures like Mike Bostock.
It just comes off as a place that wants to do status signalling to _seem_ like
a machine learning or data science thought-leader, but they don’t pay
competitively or do what’s needed to retain good people and would rather do
patchwork stuff like this with interns than to take the work a little more
seriously.
I don’t get the impression it’s a place serious ML practitioners would want to
go.
------
smsm42
Isn't this the same technology that would allow surveillance on every private
citizen?
> Most recently, Rachel Shorey found members of Congress at an event hosted by
> a SuperPAC by trawling through images found on social media and finding
> matches.
I bet nothing in the technology says "member of Congress" or depends on the
target being member of Congress. So anybody can mine social media and collect
surveillance data on people. And that is probably already happening.
------
asdsa5325
TL;DR: They use a API from Amazon that's already trained for Congressmen.
------
djhworld
If anything this article doesn't reflect well on Rekognition
------
DINKDINK
>Nope, it’s too hard! Computer vision and face recognition are legitimately
difficult computer science problems.
Someone is woefully ignorant how good facial-recognition surveillance is.
~~~
SmooL
There's a difference between "difficult" and "can't be done". Yes, facial
recognition has come a long way, but it's still non-trivial to set up a custom
facial recognition service for your particular needs.
------
evan_
the obvious next step to this would be to build a mobile app with a built-in
model to recognize everyone deemed important using live video from the camera.
------
dqpb
Cool. Maybe next they can tackle subscriptions without ads.
------
rootsudo
This reminds me of Casino Royale. Wow.
------
forapurpose
Hmmm ... your job is to cover the actions of 540 people elected to DC, many of
whom you already recognize, and you can't remember what they look like? I'm
not a journalist, but that seems like an essential thing to memorize, along
with some minor metadata (locale, party, a bit of bio). Spend a weekend and do
it.
Every profession has things you can look up and things you just have to
memorize. 540 people isn't much - can sports journalists recognize 540
athletes? Otherwise you'll be in situations where you don't have an
opportunity to look them up (e.g., can't get a photo, no time, etc.), and
you'll have many false negatives: If you don't know what they look like, you
won't realize it's a member of Congress at the party with the coke.
~~~
danso
As the article states up top, there's decent churn in Congress, making this
more than a one-time or annual thing. Also, it's not just members of Congress
who are important to cover in a beat, but their senior staff members and
aides.
Spending a significant amount of time developing a process for face
memorization and undertaking it would be an example of needless/premature
optimization, especially for people who may be covering Congress tangentially.
Most of a Congress reporter's job does not depend on having random encounters
with members of Congress.
~~~
forapurpose
> Most of a Congress reporter's job does not depend on having random
> encounters with members of Congress.
So much for my fantasy of a reporter's life; press conferences and hearings
sound boring. But I will nitpick a minor point:
> there's decent churn in Congress, making this more than a one-time or annual
> thing
I don't remember the rate at which incumbents are re-elected, but it's pretty
damn high. Unfortunately, after you memorize them once, you'd only have to
learn a few more at a time.
~~~
Spooky23
The House turns over a lot. The Senate is a different story, those guys
fossilize.
~~~
forapurpose
> The House turns over a lot. The Senate is a different story
I respectfully refer the gentleperson from Spooky to the following:
[https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php](https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php)
_Few things in life are more predictable than the chances of an incumbent
member of the U.S. House of Representatives winning reelection._
They don't provide a number but eyeballing the chart, I think that number
starts with a "9" over several decades, and is increasing. Here's an article
that says it was around 96.6% in 2014;[0] it must be embarrassing to find
yourself in the bottom 3.4 percent of any group.
(It also says House members are reelected more often than Senate members.)
[0] [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2014/nov/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2014/nov/11/facebook-posts/congress-has-11-approval-
ratings-96-incumbent-re-e/)
~~~
Spooky23
You’re totally right, but being a rank and file congressman is kinda
miserable... many transition to other offices, federal/state appointments,
etc.
------
laser
_A text-based interface is easiest for reporters to use, so while texting is
slow, it’s superior to a web service in the low-bandwidth environment of the
Capitol._
This is disturbing to hear. How can our congress make the best decisions
possible if it can't access and communicate relevant information quickly? The
ROI to the United States of simply having a high-bandwidth network at this
global powerspot is so obvious that I had just assumed it was the case—so to
hear that reporters can't even use a web interface to quickly send images is
frightening if true, and perhaps even indicative of a broader issue of our
government's inability to effectively execute, partially rooted in its
inability to empower itself with the tools necessary to effectively execute.
* _Edited at burkaman 's prompt to be less sensationalist_
~~~
tomatotomato37
It's the 3G connection used by the public in one of the basement floors of the
capital building that has low bandwidth. The capital has its own internal
network for congressmen and their staffers, they just don't let random
reporters connect to it
~~~
jeremyjbowers
Even worse (weirder), the Senate bans electronic devices on the floor. If a
Senator wants info, they have to sprint out one of the doors to the lobby
where they have an aide waiting with an iPad (usually).
~~~
jeremyjbowers
The House allows iPads on the floor, and reporters are allowed to bring
laptops into the gallery. It's how we get our live votes transcribed!
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/insider/how-we-beat-
the-h...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/insider/how-we-beat-the-house-in-
tallying-the-health-care-vote.html)
~~~
walshemj
Interesting quite different to the HOC where the result of a division (vote)
is read out quite soon after.
I have worked at large 500+ delegate conferences using parliamentary
procedures and now they often use electronic systems for both teller and card
votes which is much faster
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Google Says Spectre and Meltdown Are Too Difficult to Fix - Merad
https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/12556-google-says-spectre-and-meltdown-are-too-difficult-to-fix.html
======
guiambros
The conclusion is beautifully scary:
_" Computer systems have become massively complex in pursuit of the seemingly
number-one goal of performance. We’ve been extraordinarily successful at
making them faster and more powerful, but also more complicated, facilitated
by our many ways of creating abstractions. The tower of abstractions has
allowed us to gain confidence in our designs through separate reasoning and
verification, separating hardware from software, and introducing security
boundaries. But we see again that our abstractions leak, side-channels exist
outside of our models, and now, down deep in the hardware where we were not
supposed to see, there are vulnerabilities in the very chips we deployed the
world over. Our models, our mental models, are wrong; we have been trading
security for performance and complexity all along and didn’t know it. It is
now a painful irony that today, defense requires even more complexity with
software mitigations, most of which we know to be incomplete. And complexity
makes these three open problems all that much harder. Spectre is perhaps, too
appropriately named, as it seems destined to haunt us for a long time."_
Worth reading the paper [1].
[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178)
------
smueller1234
Maybe link to the paper this is based on instead?
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05178)
------
londons_explore
Summary:. Never consider data in a process to be confidential if you have evil
code in the same process (even if it is in a virtual machine or interpreted).
It doesn't actually seem _too_ big a limitation. Apart from JavaScript, EBPF,
postscript, etc. there aren't that many places that potentially evil code is
run alongside confidential data.
All those now have to be split out into separate worker processes to be
secure. The worker processes can have partially shared address spaces through
memory mapping, letting the programmer decide what will be shared with the
untrusted code.
~~~
anoncake
> All those now have to be split out into separate worker processes to be
> secure.
How can separate processes help if, as the article says, even virtual machines
are problematic?
It looks like the only solution is to stop running untrusted code. That
includes Javascript.
~~~
londons_explore
Late follow up here...
Virtual machines are affected because the VM kernel is 'running' in the same
process as the virtual machine software, and can therefore exfiltrate data.
------
anfilt
Paper makes some interesting points. Honestly, found some more interesting
statements than just the overview of the paper this response references.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are you happy with product search? - ComNik
While trying to buy a new phone online, I suddenly realized how much I dislike product search.<p>I'll get autocomplete and recommendations, and I'll most certainly end up with a nice list of products to choose from, but I find it very hard to make a final decision without reading through pages of reviews, google for more information or check youtube for hands-on footage.<p>So, I thought I'd ask what the HN community thinks about product search.<p>Thank you for your thoughts (:
======
creativeone
I go through similar trials when choosing electronic devices. Its especially
bad if the item is new on the market.. One thing that you didnt mention are
friends' input. If I get a good review from a friend who I trust about the
subject, that can help me decide. And that is something that hasn't been
covered well online...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brexit multiplied the number of Finnish travelers to London - velmu
http://metropolitan.fi/entry/brexit-multiplied-the-number-of-finnish-travelers-to-london
======
aspratley
It was also the week that a lot of Finns start their summer holidays so
presumably a seasonal expectation as well. I'm sure a weak pound plays a part,
but hardly breaking news.
~~~
shrikant
Also, a Finn (Henri Kontinen) is doing pretty well at Wimbledon, so a bunch of
people may be coming to watch him play.
------
joelrunyon
This is from "week to week" \- shouldn't it be compared to the same time last
year instead?
Initially, I would think that sales would go up in mid-summer anyways.
~~~
danmaz74
Well, a weaker pound can also help to bring in more tourists for sure.
~~~
joelrunyon
I'm not saying that can't happen - I'm saying the metric they're using is
flawed.
------
s_dev
This isn't really massively newsworthy or particularly insightful -- however
Brexit and it's consequences are though.
The only underpinning piece of insight at play I can gather from this piece is
that when a currency drops in value it attracts tourists of which I think is
fairly basic economics and something that most of HN already fairly au fait
with.
I mean this article would be fairly low down on Bloom's pyramid for me. Am I
missing something here perhaps?
~~~
ZenoArrow
I'd suggest the current frenzy surrounding Brexit means that many news outlets
are looking for articles to write about it, regardless of whether they're
insightful or not. Hopefully things will calm down after Article 50 is invoked
and the financial markets stabilise.
~~~
gambiting
Why would they stabilise after triggering article 50? At the moment it seems
they are going up in hope that no one will trigger article 50, but actually
doing it will send them into another plunge once again? No?
~~~
s_dev
>Why would they stabilise after triggering article 50?
Introduces certainty. No one knows when exactly they'll invoke it or if they
will currently just that it seems very likely.
Additional knowledge/information changes probabilities. More information means
less risk. Less risk, less volatility.
------
rbanffy
A friend of mine joked that buying from amazon.co.uk now has a site-wide 20%
discount.
~~~
Bombthecat
I looked up a few things to check if they are worth buying.
Nope, no real discount. Already priced in :(
~~~
rbanffy
Amazon's vast AI reacts very quickly to negate any advantage meatware thinks
it has.
------
Bombthecat
They all come to prepare moving stuff over to the eu :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U.S. Losing the World's Biggest Manufacturing Race: Electric Vehicles - jseliger
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulbledsoe/2019/04/08/america-is-losing-the-worlds-biggest-manufacturing-and-climate-race-electric-vehicles/#3d9a2da111e1
======
woodandsteel
This article has it exactly right. The EV revolution is about to happen. That
is because plunging battery prices mean that in another two or three years EV
sticker prices for larger cars will match that of ICE's, and in following
years will match for smaller ones. [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/17/bnef-
shocker-electric-c...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/17/bnef-shocker-
electric-cars-price-competitive-in-2020-as-battery-costs-plummet/)
Given that operating expenses for EV's are much lower, market demand will
suddenly swing over to EV's. The only limit to growth will be how fast battery
production and EV production will be able to expand. And this will turn the
auto industry, and everything associated with it, on its head.
What past history shows is that when there is a radical technical revolution
like this, many if not all of the incumbents will go out of business, and many
if not all of the new market leaders will be startups. And the transition is
not an easy one, it is not like and ICE manufacturer can just decide one day
to start making EV's and be doing so a year later. It takes years to develop
the expertise and supply chain.
So the companies that are not pushing hard today are going to be in very
serious trouble in a few years. And at present that includes most American
manufacturers. Only GM seems semi-serious. And that in turn means the
government should be doing everything right now to encourage them to get to
work on EV's.
One final point. There is endless coverage about Tesla, and it certainly
deserves a great deal of attention. But the press is largely missing the
important story, which is that the EV revolution is starting to get going all
around the world.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How often you overtime over weekends? - groomed
======
detaro
Extremely seldom, and only out of my own choice (e.g. because I know I want to
work less hours the next week)
------
rorykoehler
I did it once in the last 3 years and it was worth ~$1m to my company.
~~~
groomed
You caused a downtime :)?
------
robbya
I spend weekends with family. The last year, never did weekend work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop Asking Me Math Puzzles to Figure Out If I Can Code (2013) - juancampa
https://countaleph.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/
======
combatentropy
I agree. I've coded for more than a dozen years, and the most advanced math I
ever had to use was modular arithmetic --- which is actually quite simple. I
call it advanced because I went all the way through algebra, geometry,
trigonometry, and calculus, and I never once had a lesson on the modulus. I
learned it on the job out of desperation. As many of you know, it comes up a
few times in certain programming problems. While I find pi intriguing and the
100 Prisoners Problem fun to ponder, I never was into math like some people,
and I dread the day I have one of those kinds of interviews.
In fact my background is in English. I tripped into programming quite against
my will and now love it, and I always thought that all those math nerds who
think programming is most like math never really understood English
Composition, because I see parallels all the time (the kind taught in The
Elements of Style and On Writing Well, which are classics but actually unlike
most writing books). Emma said, "To my surprise, CS wasn't different from math
at all." To my surprise, CS wasn't different from English at all (again,
English Composition, not English Literature).
By the way, I will say that Emma not only is a master of math but also
English. Her article was very well written. As casual as it seems, its
rhythms, word choice, and humor are masterful. It outstrips the attempts of
most bloggers who try to be chummy and funny and who wind up just being
annoying.
Actually what programming most reminds me of is organizing, sort of like
cleaning my room, trying to fit suitcases in a trunk, or filing papers. Which
items are most like each other? How can we fit them more closely together?
What if we rotate this one or repackage that one into a different shape? I
suppose then it is like architecture or engineering, although I've never
formally studied either one.
------
C4stor
I think the key quote here is :
> "Listen, the very last thing I want is to sound ungrateful. At that first
> job, I learned all of those things I listed, and more, because the senior
> engineers patiently sat with me and put up with my stupid questions and
> never got frustrated with me, even when I got frustrated with myself. But it
> took me more than a year."
So, you tell me a company succesfully trained you, fresh out of school, in a
little more than a year ? It seems to me their recruitment process was
actually very good !
Had they pick someone clueless about maths, but good at everything else you
listed, they may have never successfully trained her in years.
Of course, maybe maths wasn't relevant at all for the job, in which case it
probably was a bad process still, but without more information, it looks
correct to me.
------
commandlinefan
> CS theory and problem-solving skills are the important things, the difficult
> things, and if you know them, everything else is easy.
Wow, this is really fascinating to me, because yes, I absolutely thought that
- this blog post is the first time I've ever heard anybody suggest otherwise.
A smart software manager would be working to pair up people like her who are
good at and enjoy algorithmic puzzle solving but not as interested in the code
with people like me who aren't so great at solving riddles but can apply stuff
like a mofo. Instead they insist on trying to save money by finding a one-
size-fits-all solution to every problem and end up losing more than they could
ever save churning through people they see as pawns and expendable resources.
------
avmich
> In a particularly egregious example of this, when I was interviewing for my
> second job out of college, I was asked to come up with an algorithm to
> eventually sink a submarine with unknown (but integral) position and
> velocity that was somewhere on a number line. (Spoiler alert: to solve this
> problem, you need to know how to enumerate the rationals.) Once again, zero
> lines of code.
Once a new employee in a company posted this problem for discussion, claiming
that the wording is intentionally changed to make it unsearchable, and the
year was 2008. So I'm really interested how this wording came here - was the
task popular enough to make it to the Web afterwards or is Emma's knowledge
traceable to that employee through a chain of interested people? Or is there
some other explanation?
------
kstenerud
There are problems with evaluating people all around. I had a recruiter flat
out tell me I'm simply unqualified for the position. Had I not been so
passionate about the product and company, I'd have moved on. Instead, I did an
end run around the recruiter and accepted an offer within a couple of weeks.
------
Madmallard
Recruiter, with evidence that better problem solvers on the spot are more
competent: Nope.
~~~
cheez
My hypothesis is that on-the-spot problem solvers are likely good at playing
office politics, which can lead to the appearance of being more competent. I
have never seen a quick thinker be bad at office politics.
~~~
solveit
Clearly you've never been to grad school in pure maths.
~~~
cheez
Grad schools aren't an analogous environment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Where to find resources on population simulation? - windsurfer
I'd like to try my hand on making a world population game similar to Pandemic[1], but with more realism and a much nicer interface using more modern web technologies. My background is more focused on the interface side of things, but I'm not afraid of spending time and learning algorithms.<p>Where could I find some papers or examples of this kind of simulation? I'm aware that there are many HNers that have math backgrounds, so I would appreciate the help.<p>[1](warning: sound and uses Flash): http://www.kongregate.com/games/DarkRealmStudios/pandemic-2
======
ableal
You might try starting from this link, which was posted a few days ago:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation>
~~~
windsurfer
Thanks, that's actually really helpful!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Gel Coatings May Lead to Better Catheters and Condoms - QAPereo
http://news.mit.edu/2017/new-gel-coatings-better-catheters-condoms-0718
======
dekhn
this groups releases a press release every few years touting their product,
and saying it's going to be in everything. So far, I don't think there are any
products that include it, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Researchers propose a way to build the first space-time crystal - Zenst
http://phys.org/news/2012-09-clock-space-time-crystal.html
======
kibwen
Very interesting, I didn't realize if was possible for _anything_ to survive
the heat death of the universe. The answer to my immediate question:
_"'While a space-time crystal looks like a perpetual motion machine and may
seem implausible at first glance,' Li says, 'keep in mind that a
superconductor or even a normal metal ring can support persistent electron
currents in its quantum ground state under the right conditions.' [ ... ] Li
is quick to point out that their proposed space-time crystal is not a
perpetual motion machine because being at the lowest quantum energy state,
there is no energy output."_
~~~
smoyer
I was also thinking of this as a perpetual motion machine but perhaps the
slightest attempt to use force of the moving ions would cause the rotation to
stop. My non-physicist brain says if you have something that will move
forever, it sounds like free energy!
~~~
Zenst
I believe that because we are talking about quantum effect energy, then it is
a case of any form of measuring would effect it. That is to say any attempt to
extract (which could be deemed a form of measuring/observing) any energy from
it would be at the expense of the source. Can think of it as quantum friction
if that helps. Perhaps a betetr way to explain it would be a atom, which has
the classic solarsystem effect with orbiting electrons. Now we have managed to
tap into that energy and that is the atomic bomb and later nucleur power
stations. Now you know in those cases the original source of material/energy
is changed and that is it in a nutshell, by measuring/observing/tapping into
that level of energy will effect it and in a way introduces friction into a
frictionless state of energy.
~~~
alainbryden
So while it might survive the heat death of the universe, there could be no
way to measure it.
~~~
ars
You would measure it by giving it energy, but not enough to perturb it. You
give it exactly as much as it gives back, so you don't cause any changes.
------
beernutz
How would you read the state? If, at the lowest energy state, there is no
energy output, would even photons change the state? If so how would you read
the "time" from it?
Does that make any sense?
~~~
jrajav
Via quantum entanglement, possibly? I honestly have no clue either, but they
hint at entanglement, and they don't seem to be worried about observation:
"Peng Zhang, another co-author and member of Zhang's research group, notes
that a space-time crystal might also be used to store and transfer quantum
information across different rotational states in both space and time."
------
marshray
Can someone explain how this thing is different than an ordinary ring of like
atoms (e.g., benzene) rotating in a magnetic field?
What experiment can I perform to distinguish a "space-time crystal" from a
non-STC in ordinary peroidic motion?
------
zan2434
Can you manipulate future and past states by manipulating the current state?
I'm not too knowledgeable about the matter but it seems like if the crystal's
states at certain points in time are fixed from its inception then it can be
manipulated to transfer information to future and past states of the crystal.
~~~
VLM
Its only state is its very exotic looking ground state, at least compared to
all the other ground states I can think of at this moment. So no manipulating
the state because the definition of the thing is its a constant ground state.
There's a fun thermodynamic argument that does not fit in the margins of this
hacker news explaining why you can not transmit information by lowering
entropy on something already in its ground state.
As for transferring information in general, see "light cones". Going forwards
you can't send info further away than the speed of light would reach, and
going backwards there isn't much of a light cone...
This prevents information from being stored inside the system, but does not
prevent the system from being used "in bulk" as information storage. Crude
analogy is you could make a Turing machine where "mark" equals drop one of
these crystals on the tape "space" equals wipe it off or flip it upside down
or whatever. Or you could make essentially a punchcard by building a 10x10
array of them and smashing some of them in a pattern... theoretically the
unsmashed ones would never ever decay, and the smashed ones are too
complicated to spontaneously reform, so a large collection of them aligned in
certain patterns would actually make a pretty decent ultra long term storage
media.
------
stcredzero
I can imagine some future analogue of Danny Hillis constructing one of these
things, entombed inside the a planet sized crystal extracted from the heart of
a gas giant, parked in intergalactic space. The purpose would be to save the
universe from heat death by ensuring that time will always have meaning.
------
powertower
Is that entire article just trying to say that the ion-ring, which is in it's
lowest energy state, rotates at a perfect rate (will never speed up or slow
down) and hence you have the central peace of a very accurate time keeper?...
------
sp332
Is the speed of the electrons quantized, or can you "tune" the period
continuously? Either would be useful.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can you tell how many sections are inside a citrus without cutting it open? - nickb
http://www.krampf.com/experiments/Science_Experiment4.html
======
ubudesign
how to tell how much javascript errors are in a page without seeing the source
code? type javascirpt: in your browsers address :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple has a gajillion dollars. Devs still have to pay $100. - BryanLunduke
http://lunduke.com/?p=2301
======
bluedevil2k
There are hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store, most of which are
terrible. Imagine how many would be in there if there was no $100 fee.
~~~
vibrunazo
Shouldn't better search or discovery algorithms or UI, be a more elegant
solution than just brute-forcing a paywall into it?
Think of the children. I mean, seriously, how many of us were young highschool
hackers who would have just loved the opportunity to build something awesome
for smartphones. But would be halted by Apple's fine?
~~~
smd80
You can build all you want; the tools are available with a free developer
account. The fee only applies if you want to distribute your apps through the
app store. But the tools are way better -- and way cheaper, even after the $99
-- than they were when I was a young highschool hacker.
------
lukeholder
I see the developer fee as just a barrier to entry to submit apps to the
marketing place - kinda just to stop the riff-raff. I suspect it also is
linked to the the legal agreement as some type of consideration.
~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
There already exists a $1500 barrier to entry: the cost of a Mac.
Thanks though, if I want to load programs on my iPhone, I'll do so through
Cydia.
~~~
nachteilig
Mac mini starts at $599. And no need to be hostile--he's making a legitimate
point. By charging a relatively modest fee to use the store--the tools
themselves are free, unlike things like VS--Apple is making sure people have
minute skin in the game.
~~~
SpikeDad
Of course. Even here people can't resist the Apple hate pronunciations. What
do people think they'd be developing if it wasn't for Apple? Would the $X
billions of dollars paid to App developers be made some other way? Basic
games?
~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
I didn't believe I was being hostile. It's just a matter of fact statement
that if I need programs loaded for me and friends, I'll send it to Cydia.
I cannot afford a MacBook, nor the 100$ fee to develop.
------
tzaman
Although I agree with the point made here, Apple probably wouldn't have a
gajillion if they weren't charging developers (not the only income, I know).
"Palace is made of bricks" we like to say.
------
awj
Yes, and can you imagine how much worse the app store would be if the people
screening apps didn't have apple charging a $100 cover?
------
mikescar
What's the point? Either pay the $100, or don't.
How much cash money Apple has is orthogonal to how the developer program is
structured. Maybe the $100 fee has benefits for gatekeeping purposes, but
that's a separate evaluation and discussion.
I'm not an iOS dev, and anything I would do on mobile would be Android first,
so I don't have any reason to try to defend Apple here.
------
cpt1138
Probably the first tier of "keeping out the riff-raff"
------
ISeemToBeAVerb
More than anything, I think the intention behind the developer fee is to act
as an additional buffer against low-quality developers. Personally, I have no
objection to it. If you're serious about putting time into developing for
Apple, $100 bucks isn't really all that big a deal. Furthermore, 30% isn't a
bad deal either considering that Apple is providing you with a large platform
for distribution as well as potential exposure.
------
jpxxx
They would have less than a gajillion dollars if they let any robo-scambucket
inject malicious and worthless products into their many Gardens of Algorithmic
Delight.
Access to a quarter billion users with one-click credit cards is either worth
$100 to you or it isn't.
------
TwistedWeasel
This is only a problem for people who plan to make <$100 from their app
~~~
mistercow
Which includes 100% of freeware, and 99% of weekend "hey let's put this on the
net and see if people want it" projects.
Both of those things used to be a big part of the Mac software ecosystem, but
they're slowly dying away. And if Apple moves forward with its apparent plan
to prohibit unsigned code from running by default, while charging $99/year for
the privilege of having your code signed, both will be effectively extinct
within the next year.
~~~
chaffneue
Agreed. I run an open source project and would love to make an iPhone app, but
it's an out of pocket expense that I can't justify. It's a shame and I'm sure
it's a pain other open source projects feel. I really hope they don't go fully
down that path for OSX. Maybe an alternative would be a free software key, or
something just to help collaboration and improve the social coding aspect.
They could even corral the apps in a different way to lower the QA stakes, so
our free spirited hacker lifestyle doesn't have to mess with Apple's mojo.
------
TwistedWeasel
If I had bought one share in Apple six years ago then they would have paid for
five years of developer membership fees.
------
alpad
Translation:
'Wah wah. Mommy won't let me eat cake! but me like CAKKKEE SO MUCH! Mommy
mean! Mommy have so much cake not let me have any. Stupid Mommy.'
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Everyone Wants Facebook's Libra to Be Regulated. But How? - rblion
https://www.wired.com/story/everyone-wants-facebooks-libra-regulated-but-how/
======
whenchamenia
Its not that we want regulation, we just don't want ZuckBucks. At all.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SQL Teaching – Codecademy for SQL - rhc2104
http://www.sqlteaching.com/
======
krat0sprakhar
As a backend developer, I've been increasingly trying to reduce my reliance on
ORMs and instead focus on writing SQL. Owing to my poor SQL chops, I spent a
couple of weeks working through @danso's data journalism course[0]. It is a
fantastic introduction to SQL, even for all non-technical people (forwarded to
my business analyst friends as well).
Amongst other topics, it covers aggregations, joins, grouping and gives a good
well-rounded introduction to performance characteristics and best practices.
For those wondering "where to go from here", don't look any further and give
the course a shot.
[0] - [http://www.padjo.org/](http://www.padjo.org/)
~~~
PJDK
Why the move away from ORMs? I've certainly banged my head against the wall
with them any number of times, but I wouldn't want to give up the compile time
checking of queries when I make a db change.
~~~
collyw
Maybe it depends on your ORM.
I use the Django ORM most of the time, and it is great for quick stuff.
Say I have to do a bulk update, with a few conditions thrown in. MySQL becomes
too much hassle trying to parse the first digit out of a string ,and updating
another field with that. A simple script using the Django ORM won't take long
to do that and will be far easier than trying to work around MySQL's limited
string functions.
On the other hand Django's ORM doesn't handle some pretty common cases
(conditional aggregates are the first thing that comes to mind). Or complex
joins on more than one field. I looks around, and there are ways of hacking
these things into the ORM, but they really don't seem worth the bother, when
you can use SQL for the query.
~~~
jeffasinger
This is why I'm so excited for django 1.8, it introduces the ability to use
pretty much any SQL function in aggregates, annotations and order bys,
including CASE.
~~~
collyw
Where can I read about this?
------
veb
I believe that visualization plays a huge part in learning. In reality, you'll
never see "current tables" looking like that. I checked Google Images ("sqlite
result") and it seems that you could benefit heaps by designing your tables a
bit better so they look like
[http://i.stack.imgur.com/9CXVO.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9CXVO.png)
perhaps.
I would also pay a little more attention to explaining what something is, and
why you do it like that. Instead to me it feels more like "copy and paste this
command, click run" and so you're not really learning at all. Why SELECT? Why
am I using *?
I realise these explanations may come in the later lessons, but from the very
beginning I should know what these are (syntax-wise). Then, as things become
progressively different I can understand and follow.
I love sites like this, I think they're so beneficial but my main gripes are
usually just that: the results, they really need to feel more real-world, and
practical-like. Then, I want to know the why/what/how about everything in what
I'm doing.
That's just me though. I may be good at SQL, but I'm damn sure I've probably
missed a lot of simple things!
Is there a way to sign my email up for updates? I'd like to follow the
progress!
EDIT: Ah there is:
[https://github.com/rhc2104/sqlteaching](https://github.com/rhc2104/sqlteaching)
~~~
rhc2104
Thanks for the feedback!
SQL Teaching is designed for non-technical people that want to learn the
basics of data analysis. Just learning SELECT with WHERE clauses and basic
joins get them pretty far.
The Github repo is:
[https://github.com/rhc2104/sqlteaching](https://github.com/rhc2104/sqlteaching)
, so I guess following that repo is a way of following progress.
~~~
veb
Heh, found it just before your comment. :)
Keep up the great work.
------
chernevik
IMHO, I think the material here is too brief, and insufficiently progressive,
to help a beginner move to confidence. To master concepts, people need
repetition, and application of concepts to problems of sufficient difference
to see the fundamentals of the concept apart from any particular. Giving
people a dozen tasks, each introducing some different concept, won't leave
them with a basis for a confident understanding.
I also think beginners need:
\- A strong grasp of DISTINCT. This prepares them for the division of tables
into subsets by GROUP BY, which is vital to an understanding of how
aggregation and window functions operate. ORDER BY can used to show beginners
how they can first organize the data, and see how different values in
different fields can be used to segregate records into groups.
\- WHERE is important but actually not that hard to communicate. The key
things about WHERE are one, you can specify true / false expressions whose
evaluation dictates inclusion or exclusion of a record (this is crucial to
understanding how a JOIN works), and two, you can use IN to compare a record's
value to a _list_ of values. Once someone grasps this, it becomes very easy
for them to see how a subquery works.
\- A strong grasp of how subqueries work. One of the great strengths of SQL is
the ability to encapsulate complexity into a subquery and pass that result on
to another query for further use.
\- A thorough walk-through on "how" JOINs work. What does it mean to JOIN two
records? To JOIN two tables? How do we "filter" that join of two tables? (All
of this at a _conceptual_ level, taking care to note that how we might think
through a complicated join is _not_ how the operation is implemented by the
software.) What is the difference between an INNER JOIN and a LEFT JOIN, and
how are these differences useful?
\- Some discussion of just what exactly SQL is, what it is used for, and what
it isn't used for. The tool has to be placed into some context so that
beginners are oriented to where they will encounter it and what they can use
it for. In particular they need to understand its interface, and the textual /
non-visual nature of that interface. Most people are accustomed to working
with computers through GUIs. The textual nature of SQL makes it very
different, in profound ways, from the vast majority of tools people use on
computers.
~~~
buckbova
If your code is littered with DISTINCT clauses either you are doing something
wrong or the data design is poor.
DISTINCT leads to expensive SORT operations and effectively poor performance.
~~~
swyman
I'm genuinely curious. Would you mind elaborating or pointing me to another
resource that goes into detail on why this is the case?
~~~
buckbova
The poor design part or the performance part?
The use of DISTINCT everywhere smells of denormalized tables. Now if you are
in data warehouse or reporting position, then this likely makes sense. I tend
to work in transactional applications and keep the redundancy down to an
absolute minimum. I abstract away some of the complicated queries with views,
procs, and functions where allowable.
As for performance, different rdbms implement this differently, but the
general query plan category for GROUP BY and DISTINCT is SORT. If you are
querying something where you have multiple subqueries with DISTINCT and you
and ordering the final results, you are adding extra sort operations to the
query plan, hence hurting performance.
I tend to design everything to optimize read operations because there tends to
be much more read than write in systems I work in. For me this means
denormalized and heavily indexed where table/index scans are extremely rare.
On smaller data sets, some rdbms always scan tables because it saves
operations based on table statistics.
I hope this helps.
------
xtrumanx
I guess this is the client-side alternative to SQLZOO[0] which is a fantastic
resource I used to use back in the day to sharpen my SQL skills.
Been doing SQL for so long now but only recently have I been exposed to how
powerful indices and learning how to read the execution plan is.
I realize this is beginner stuff based on a local browser-based SQLite but I
wish more learning resources like this and SQLZOO had an advanced section to
discuss performance issues you may encounter once you have a large enough
dataset. For years I just assumed we just had so much data that having to wait
for the query to complete was natural until I tried figuring out how to
resolve a deadlock issue we've been having an accidentally figured out how to
tune queries to run instantaneously.
There are probably many people out like my former self who know the basics and
also have to maintain huge databases.
By the way, if you're one of them, "Use the Index, Luke"[1] is where I learned
everything I needed to know about creating indices (though I don't think it
has much about reading execution plans).
[0] [http://sqlzoo.net](http://sqlzoo.net) [1] use-the-index-luke.com
~~~
hobs
It depends on what engine you are using once you are talking about xplans, if
you are into SQL Server and you are looking for a great book to reference
thats almost all practical "this is how stuff is going to be interpreted",
check out [http://www.amazon.com/SQL-Server-Query-Performance-
Tuning/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/SQL-Server-Query-Performance-
Tuning/dp/1430267437/) by Grant Fritchey (the previous book had Sajal Dam)
Additionally, SQLPass puts out a great DVD every year and in the past year or
two they had some great talks about how to read xplans, why they are actually
lies, and going into things like statistics io, measuring recompile/cpu time,
determining if implicit conversions are causing issues, etc etc etc
~~~
xtrumanx
It seems that the SQLPass requires registration to enter the "Session
Recordings" page so I'll have to look into it later.
I googled "execution plan lie" and the only stuff that comes up is regarding
how Oracle's Explain Plan sometimes provided inaccurate information. Is that
what you were referring to?
I guess explains why Microsoft labelled their version of Explain Plan "
_Estimated_ Execution Plan". I mostly just include the actual execution plan
when running the query so I can get the real execution plan and the io stats
all in one go.
~~~
hobs
Actual execution plan's costs in SQL Server still contain a lot of estimates,
I have seen SQL Server guide you in the wrong direction if you are looking at
the thing "costing" the most, when in fact I find when I am doing perf tuning
my biggest first steps are: 1\. Is the code pants on head stupid and not set
based or not sargable 2\. Do the query plans clearly misinterpret the data and
why that is
My current process is: 1\. set statistics io on; set nocount on; 2\. Grab
actual execution plan, throwing it in sql sentry plan explorer (free edition)
(holy crap good) 3\. Finding which estimates are off in the breakdown in 2 4\.
Investigating specific code areas where estimates are vastly different than
actual, fixing whatever issue (implicit conversions, udfs, old stats, etc)
arises 5\. Consider adding indexes if needed 6\. Paste outputs of both stats
into [http://www.statisticsparser.com/](http://www.statisticsparser.com/) (you
can have it print things as headers, so I like print 'test a' go exec sp_proc
@params go print 'test b' go exec sp_proc2 @params ) 7\. Compare if I did it
right or not by checking overall reads, cpu time, etc
Update: I have the videos in question on my dropbox, I dont know if they would
like a public link, so if you dont want to sign up let me know via my email in
my profile and I will send them to you.
------
brudgers
One thing that makes CodeAcademy successful is an attention to gamification. I
think sketching some of that out is a priority for the next iteration. Clear
game mechanics is what keeps people coming back to a platform like this.
------
andrewstuart2
I would most definitely love to see some table design thrown in there as well,
with ER diagrams, cardinality, and normalization (bonus points for really
explaining _why_ well). I just noticed this is on GitHub, so if I get a
chance, I'd certainly like to contribute :-)
From my talks with a few of my great programmer friends, it seems this is an
area that more people could use some bolstering.
------
clay_to_n
In the 'Select specific columns' lesson, FROM isn't capitalized. Not an error
but could cause confusion. Same with AND in its lesson. It might also be nice
in the first lesson to explain that the caps aren't necessary, but make it
more understandable.
In the first lesson, after the paragraph "Imagine we have a table...", it
might help to display an actual table there. I was a bit confused, reading
through the whole page and not visually seeing any table. Only after I started
writing the command did I realize I had a table underneath the input box.
Overall, looks really good! Not a bad place to start for developers who
haven't used SQL before but want to get a simple working knowledge of it.
~~~
teddyuk
<personalOpinionPleaseDontCry>Capitalization doesn't make it more readable -
just use a ide (or whatever) with syntax colouring and your sorted.
</personalOpinionPleaseDontCry>
~~~
vertex-four
It is a convention, much the same as variable/function/class naming
conventions and whitespace conventions, that makes it easier to read an
arbitrary piece of code when you come up to it for the first time.
------
contradictioned
Also: "SQL Island", where you text-adventure-like play a game through SQL
[http://wwwlgis.informatik.uni-
kl.de/extra/game/](http://wwwlgis.informatik.uni-kl.de/extra/game/)
~~~
Orangeair
Is there by any chance an English version available?
~~~
contradictioned
Mh on my settings it was english by default. With this parameter it should
work: [http://wwwlgis.informatik.uni-
kl.de/extra/game/?lang=en](http://wwwlgis.informatik.uni-
kl.de/extra/game/?lang=en)
~~~
Orangeair
Weird. It did not want to be in English for me on Chrome or IE. Thanks for the
link.
------
nissimk
Looks good for the basics, but as some other folks mentioned here, it would
benefit from some articles about design, and even more importantly, rationale.
I hear from so many programmers "why?" They don't understand the benefits of
relational. This perspective ranges from old school programmers that just want
to store data in the file system, to newcomers that like mongoDB or other
object stores.
In my point of view, the main answer to "why relational" is that with an rdbms
you can answer ad-hoc questions by writing a query rather than writing a
program. Even as a programmer, having the power of SQL on the server is really
great for analytics.
Furthermore, as an ORM hater, I would say that query results should be
processed in your programming language as a table structure rather than
converting to specific objects per table. If you're building a CRUD system and
the screens update one or two objects/tables at a time, then an ORM is useful,
but if you're doing any kind of analytics, any object structure other than a
table or list of dictionaries is cumbersome and encourages code over sql which
is a bad thing.
~~~
thanksgiving
> encourages code over sql which is a bad thing
Not saying you are incorrect but you made an assertion here. Can you please
elaborate?
~~~
astine
Not certain about the OP's reasoning, but doing aggregate functions on the
database server is often more performant than doing the same in your
application. This is, in part, because of the smaller result set sizes.
Also, it's useful having logic baked into the database rather than your
application in the case that you need a different application to connect to
your database. It's a problem, for example, if you're maintaining your foreign
key relationships through ActiveRecords's relations and ignoring it on the
server. It makes it much easier for junk data to get in the database.
------
AlisdairO
Good stuff!
You might want to be a little careful with ensuring an aggressive query
timeout. I ran the following:
select * from family_members f1, family_members f2, family_members f3,
family_members f4, family_members f5, family_members f6, family_members f7,
family_members f8
This took a while to run - I didn't go any further as I didn't want to damage
the site during your launch, but add a few more cartesian products in there
and it could hurt.
~~~
rhc2104
Thanks for the heads up. I actually use Sql.js (SQLite in JavaScript), so
there is currently no server-side component of the website.
~~~
AlisdairO
Ah, fantastic! I assumed based on the mention of SQLite on the front page.
~~~
mdellabitta
This is pretty much the DOS version of "why are you hitting yourself"
~~~
AlisdairO
Indeed :-)
I actually had no idea sql.js existed up until now. Seems like it could be
pretty useful.
------
asafira
I was looking for a way to sharpen my SQL skills a few months ago, and after
being annoyed with some of the very, very beginner stuff out there I found
this:
[http://www.sql-ex.ru/](http://www.sql-ex.ru/)
The site can be slow sometimes, but I have found queries/puzzles that (a) have
shown me use-cases for functions and capabilities I have never used and (b)
can be challenging! Later they apparently focus more on optimization, but I
haven't gotten there. (Especially since they have hundreds of these more
difficult queries). I've done about 70ish so far.
What do you guys think about it? Overall, never going to be useful, or a good
resource to get better with SQL?
------
villek
Looks like a great start!
One thing that would be essential is better feedback on errors. Currently, if
I enter an invalid SQL query I’m only told that it was incorrect. For
beginners, this can be frustrating.
------
avinassh
I have learnt SQL from [https://sqlzoo.net](https://sqlzoo.net) It's a really
good site with options of other database system syntax also.
~~~
AlisdairO
This is a self-plug, but you might find
[http://pgexercises.com](http://pgexercises.com) useful as well.
~~~
avinassh
Hey your exercises are really good. I am half way through it and so far I am
enjoying it a lot.
~~~
AlisdairO
fab - I'm really glad you like it!
------
elyase
I also like [http://datamonkey.pro](http://datamonkey.pro).
------
uberneo
looks good and might be helpful for somebody starting with SQL . You can add
some advanced version as well with some more complex examples and use cases
with inner queries , UPSERTS n all
------
domoarevil
Cool, will check, thanks.
Despite the clunky UI, I've found that www.sql-ex.com provides the best medium
to tricky problems for those wanting a refresher. (MS T-SQL centric.)
------
zer00
This is awesome!
One thing though, any reason you have Mary making 10% less than Dave in your
first data set? Seems like kind of a weird thing to include.
------
warkid
Cool! One should be able to run his code by pressing something like Ctrl/Alt-
Enter, instead of reaching for mouse all the time.
------
nodesocket
Very nice. Love to see a few more intermediate examples using LEFT and RIGHT
OUTER and INNER JOIN, HAVING, UNION, and sub-queries.
------
gauravgupta
Looks useful. You should submit this on [http://hackr.io](http://hackr.io) as
well.
------
allworknoplay
Good start. Many others have suggested other query types. I would also suggest
that you cover inserts as well.
------
mohdmaqboolalam
completed the course thanks for the tutorials.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to tell X years of experience vs. one year X times? - BossingAround
======
stevenalowe
Ask what they’ve learned
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Z80 arithmetic: also surprisingly terrible (2018) - rutenspitz
http://cowlark.com/2018-03-18-z80-arithmetic/index.html
======
flohofwoe
I don't think the 8-bit CPU instruction sets were designed with code-
generation for high-level languages in mind, but to make it easier to write
assembly by hand.
And each 8-bit CPU had its specialties, and it wasn't uncommon that computers
were designed around those specialties.
For instance when you look at the video memory layout of Z80 computers like
the ZX Spectrum or CPC, those often have a weird non-linear arrangement, which
only makes sense with the special 16-bit register pairs on the Z80.
E.g. when the 16-bit register pair HL is used as a video memory address, the
memory layout was often such that H and L could basically be used as X and Y
coordinates. E.g. incrementing L gets you to the next character on the same
line, and incrementing H to the first pixel line of the character line below.
The KC85/4 (East German home computer) even had a 90 degree rotated memory
layout of 320x256 pixels, 8 horizontal pixels grouped in a byte, so the video
memory was a matrix of 40 columns by 256 lines.
Put the column (0..39) into H, and the line (0..255) into L, and you have the
complete video memory address (or rather offset, H must 0x80 + column, because
video memory started at 0x8000). Increment or decrement H to move to the next
or previous column, and L to get to the next or previous line.
edit: messed up the number of columns, it's 40, not 80 :)
~~~
mtkd
There was little enough memory to get an asm program doing anything material
using HiSoft DevPac assembler let alone using a high-level lang.
The instruction set was very limited (in comparison to i386 etc.) so the
learning curve was not steep and writing in assembler was, in practice, no
more time consuming than using C now - once you were in the flow.
However due to the resource constraints you not only had to dry out everything
into functions as you would with C today - but often had to manually mutate
parts of the function instruction set code by poking in new values before
calling to change the behaviour to avoid wasting memory on branches etc.
For large writes people would often move the stack pointer around as PUSH BC
etc. were faster than LD at writing an address and inc(dec?) the pointer. I
seem to remember IX/IY being avoided as much as poss as they were quite
costly.
------
garganzol
When you write Z80 assembly you mostly use registers. Nobody writes it like
shown in the article! I spent a lot of my time writing Z80 assembly manually.
The code in article is somewhat artificial, inefficient and unnatural to my
eye.
EDIT: The code in article addendum is OK. The author finally caught up to Z80
style after many trials and errors. This is how idiomatic Z80 assembly looks
like.
~~~
Sharlin
Well, it _is_ artificial in the sense that it's meant to be code emitted by
the code generator of a compiler for a high-level language with very different
idioms. And the architectures of these early microcomputers obviously don't
exactly prioritize being easy compiler targets.
~~~
userbinator
Here's a sample of compiled Z80 code (the bootloader for one of these:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player)
) generated by a C compiler --- of course, a commercial one and not a cheap
one at that (IAR Embedded Workbench for Z80.) You can see that it has
absolutely no problem using nearly all the registers:
[https://pastebin.com/raw/f3919adf](https://pastebin.com/raw/f3919adf)
------
Arnt
I must be an assembly programmer, because my immediate reaction to this was:
WHY ARE THEY WRITING TO MEMORY ALL THE TIME! The code just looks
uncomfortable. Like a word-by-word translation from a foreign language. Like
forth written by someone who tried to keep the stack empty and all the data in
variables.
~~~
jacquesm
Because the Z80 doesn't really have a whole lot of registers that you could
use for general storage. Even the 6502 (and the 6809) would try to keep the
cycle count down by storing stuff in the zero page (or direct page on the
'09).
Z80 assembly tends to be very easy to read because you don't have to keep a
mental map of what lives in which register, A really is the accumulator and
the only register that you can use to do anything more complex than inc or dec
to.
Contrast
[https://www.masswerk.at/6502/6502_instruction_set.html](https://www.masswerk.at/6502/6502_instruction_set.html)
with
[http://clrhome.org/table/](http://clrhome.org/table/)
And see how much more effective the 6502 set is when it comes to empowering
the various registers. The 6502 does not need 'shift' codes (slow) either.
I've programmed both, and even though they both have their charm I would
prefer to code the 6502 for the same problem (and I'd much prefer to use the
6809 over either).
~~~
Arnt
I wrote a lot of Z80, very little 6502. They felt very different to me. Code
written by one couldn't be ported to the other, but had to be rewritten.
Didn't have much trouble storing things in B/C/D/E/BC/DE, at least I don't
remember it as a problem. The innermost loops had to get top priority when
deciding what each register was used for, that's all.
~~~
jonsen
_Code written by one couldn 't be ported to the other, but had to be
rewritten._
That’s not my experience. I once ported a program from the 6800 (the mother of
the 6502) to the Z80. It was very straight forward. But to my surprise the
version on the much “fancier” Z80 turned out to be both larger and slower
despite the Z80 ran a little faster clock speed.
~~~
floofy222
I don't think the OP literally meant that porting code was impossible, but
rather, that it was very hard to do so and have the result run efficiently.
~~~
Arnt
(OP speaking for himself:) When I ported Z80 code to the 6502 literally, the
result didn't use the zero page to its full effect, because the zero page was
so much bigger than the Z80's extra registers. When I ported 6502 to Z80
literally (I mean code that used the zero page well), too much of the zero-
page work had to be replaced with memory work and not enough with the nice
fast registers.
------
mrob
>(Incidentally, the 6502 can do this in 10 bytes and 14 cycles. The Z80 is
terrifyingly slow.)
It's misleading to call the Z80 "terrifyingly slow" based on cycle counts
without mentioning that it clocked higher than the 6502. E.g. the Apple II ran
at just over 1MHz, while the ZX Spectrum ran at 3.5MHz (although with wait
states for accessing the memory area shared by the graphics hardware).
~~~
tonyedgecombe
That's a little unfair, the BBC Micro ran at 2 MHz and was released before the
Spectrum.
~~~
masklinn
It's not wrong though, the 6502 _was_ much slower clocked that equivalent
contemporaries.
However IIRC most contemporary architectures were closer to the Z80, so the
6502 was considered impressive because it was competitive despite a much lower
clock rate.
~~~
jonsen
1 MHz clock on the 6800 family of processors, including the 6502, is
equivalent to 2 MHz clock on the Z80. The 6800 architecture used a so called
two-phase clock. Each phase, positive and negative, of the clock cycle was
used to do work.
~~~
timbit42
I would suggest it is between 2 and 3 times, but it depends on what kind of
code you are running.
------
jgrahamc
A good reference for Z80 programming is Rodnay Zaks' Programming the Z80. On
page 94 at the start of the chapter Basic Programming Techniques there's a
section on 8-bit addition. The program is as follows:
LD A,(ADR1) LOAD OP1 INTO A
LD HL,ADR2 LOAD ADDRESS OF OP2 INTO HL
ADD A,(HL) ADD OP2 TO OP1
LD (ADR3),A SAVE RESULT RES AT ADR3
this is the idiomatic Z80 way. That book goes on to show how to do 16-bit and
32-bit arithmetic the Z80 way.
[http://www.z80.info/zip/zaks_book.pdf](http://www.z80.info/zip/zaks_book.pdf)
~~~
stevekemp
Rodnay Zaks is a name I remember very well from my Spectrum-days. I have a
small collection of Z80-books which I've carried around, across countries, for
the past 30 years.
I should go dig out an emulator soon! (I usually have a game or two of "Chaos:
The Battle of Wizards" every six months or so.)
------
twtw
I would have appreciated some historical context for the z80 in this post.
8,500 transistors (equiv to ~2800 nand gates in depletion-load nmos logic * )
and not really designed to be a compiler target. I'd say the z80 is pretty
impressive - but certainly with quirks.
I would have enjoyed that kind of framing much more than "lol the z80 sux!"
* Not saying the z80 was implemented with all nand, just providing the figure as a reference.
~~~
FullyFunctional
While that's 100% true and Z-80's design has a legacy explanation, HOWEVER
freed of the legacy requirement, there's no technical reasons why Zilog
couldn't have created a much better compiler target.
------
Doctor_Fegg
Like any 8-bit CPU, the Z80 had plenty of coding optimisations you soon
learned. First one that came to mind reading this: instead of ld bc,4; ldir,
it’s faster just to do ldi; ldi; ldi; ldi.
There’s also a set of “alternate registers” you could swap in with exx, which
sometimes enabled faster arithmetic without hitting memory.
~~~
jgrahamc
Yep. The trade off is that takes 3 more bytes but it's a great example of the
thinking that went into writing 'tight' code for these processors. You're
doing a loop unroll for speed and taking up more space, depending on what evil
trick you're up to (e.g. hiding code inside a 128 byte unused spot in the
BDOS) one might be better than the other.
------
maire
This article brought back so many memories!
My first job out of college was writing z80 assembly language at Cromemco.
Later we ported everything to the 68000. We didn't write anything in a higher
level language because it was too slow. In fact the entire CDOS and Cromix OSs
were written by a single person. He originally wrote everything in c - but
when he ran it was so slow. He then rewrote everything directly in z80
assembly language and kept the c code as comments. Raw c code were the only
comments in the code.
I wrote the graphics drivers for screen and printer and a wysiwyg word
processor. There were no floating point processors. All math was in the
registers (as stated in the article. You can still render a lot of graphics by
converting your renderer to additions and multiplication by 2 (register shift
left and right). I was happy to find years later that code that I derived to
render circles and arcs using only 1 bit step and multiplication by 2 was also
derived by someone else and published in graphics books. You live within
limitations when that is your only option.
------
Steve44
I learned Z80 through the Sinclair stable but did play around with the 6502
and found I much preferred the Z80 way of working.
One notable thing here is they are writing a code generator and not actually
programming in assembly. As a result their modules need to be more general
purpose than if directly programming.
~~~
_Codemonkeyism
Same experience here. Came from a C64 (6202) to a CPC (Z80) in the 80s and the
Z80 felt much more powerful and expressive with its instruction set and
registers - also the instruction set of the Z80 felt more logical and planned.
~~~
beagle3
Indeed it felt that way, but in practice the 6502’s indirect addressing gives
you 128 16-bit registers compared to the z80’s 5+3
(hl,de,bc,ix,iy,hl’,de’,bc’) which is a winner for code generation and macro
programming.
~~~
_Codemonkeyism
No longer an expert in Z80 - and perhaps I never was as much of my assembler
career was Amiga 68k - but didn't the Z80 also have indirect adressing?
~~~
beagle3
No[0]. To read a byte through a pointer at IX, you have to:
LD L,(IX+0)
LD H,(IX+1)
LD A,(HL)
On the 6502, you can do that in one instruction[0] if your X or Y registers
are zero (and more often than not, you can use the indexed-indirect or
indirect-indexed to save even more instructions):
LDA ($40,X) ; if X == 0, and $40 is your pointer.
[0] [https://8bitnotes.com/2017/05/z80-addressing-
modes/](https://8bitnotes.com/2017/05/z80-addressing-modes/)
[1]
[http://www.obelisk.me.uk/6502/addressing.html](http://www.obelisk.me.uk/6502/addressing.html)
~~~
Steve44
From memory the IX and IY instructions took a lot of clock cycles and I
avoided them unless there was a really good reason to use them.
I've just had a quick look at an instruction cycle table and it seems that
without indexing they took 4 cycles more than HL then with an index that
increased to 12 more.
Ref from search returning
[http://www.z80.info/z80time.txt](http://www.z80.info/z80time.txt)
------
jussij
FWIW I learnt to program Z80 assembler using the MicroBee personal computer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee)
That was during my schooling years of 10, 11 and 12 prior to going on to study
engineering.
While studying engineering, I then got to work with 6502 assembler and while I
have no doubt that earlier Z80 experience help greatly, I still remember
thinking, writing assembler for the Z80 seemed to be so much easier than
coding for the 6502.
------
toolslive
I also seem to remember (I programmed this one in the late 80s, back when my
memory was good) that overflowing the 16 bit register did not set the proper
flags.
Still, compared to the 6502, this one had lots of comfort.
------
howard941
> And only A can be directly written to or from memory
I think the author might to write that only A can be indirectly written to or
from memory but even that isn't correct as demonstrated by the code bits that
retrieve and store from and to ram @HL (and IY/IX+blah). The 8080 was able to
directly read and write HL. The Z80 could do it for IX, IY, and IIRC BC and DE
too.
------
azhenley
I once implemented a [partial] Z80 emulator. It is a fantastic learning
project, especially if you haven't had to touch a lot of assembly in the past.
Even back when I did this, there were a plethora of resources on how to
emulate the Z80.
------
Accacin
This is a nice read for someone who has just started to learning GB ASM, I
know the processor in the game boy isn't exactly a Z80 (or an 8080) but it's
quite similar.
~~~
vanderZwan
I would recommend _Z80 Assember In 28 Days_ instead
[http://tutorials.eeems.ca/](http://tutorials.eeems.ca/)
------
unwiredben
Font fail: I kept reading 3op as 30p and was wondering what some of this
meant. 3-op would be clearer.
------
raverbashing
I'd say performance was of secondary importance when making it easy to program
assembly and silicon real estate were more important factors.
------
timonoko
Re-inventing the wheel, son? Z80 had CP/M Turbo Pascal with floating point
arithmetics. According to Byte-magazine, it left burn marks on the table,
because it was "lightning fast"
~~~
peteri
The z80 version only supported recursion if it was specifically enabled so I
suspect it tended use fixed locations for variables. Z80 support for a
traditional stack frame for recursion isn't very good (although IX,IY with
offsets could work).
~~~
jonsen
I’d guess that it used the old times trick of saving the return address by
modifying the code of the called subroutine. A recursive call would then
overwrite the primary callers return address.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Transfer Jet: 375 Mb/s wireless connection - tsally
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/transfer-jet-ready-for-its-close-up/
======
blasdel
But can the peripheral device read data from it's mediocre SD card at anywhere
near that rate?
------
tsally
Link to video:
[http://crackle.com/c/Blogs_and_Podcasts/Transfer_Jet_technol...](http://crackle.com/c/Blogs_and_Podcasts/Transfer_Jet_technology/2145310)
According to the video it can achieve tranfer speeds up to 560 MB/s.
~~~
andreyf
You mean M _b_ /s ;)
~~~
sprice
In the video the guy states it is faster than USB and Firewire and is 560
"mega-bytes per second."
~~~
Xichekolas
560 megabits/s is faster than USB 2.0 or Firewire400.
560 megabytes/s is probably too fast to matter for the average consumer.
~~~
Goronmon
_560 megabytes/s is probably too fast to matter for the average consumer._
You sure you don't want to put a expiration date on that statement? ;)
~~~
Xichekolas
'is', being the present tense third person form of the verb 'to be' generally
implies 'currently'.
Obviously someday that'll be considered quite slow.
------
sprice
wikipedia says 560 Mb/s max, 375 Mb/s effective.
Who is getting their bits and bytes mixed up?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dear future pressfriendly engineer - joelandren
dear future pressfriendly engineer,<p>so it's xmas eve and i'm lying on the couch, got my feet up and am on my third finger of scotch. my wife and i put the kids to sleep a few hours ago and wrapped some presents. i'm excited about the air hockey table, but i bet it will be broken within a few hours of opening it.<p>personally i'm checking out a spy show called the game on bbc america. i hope it's good. paul, my cofounder and cto (even though he hates that title) is back east visiting with family and in a few hours will be playing with the toys that he says he bought for his son. our head of pr operations jeremy is finally grabbing some downtime after a crazy couple months. our growth has impacted him the most and he's keeping it chill and having a quiet holiday with the wife. nisa, our staff millenial, has gone off to Tahoe to play in the snow for the next couple of days.<p>right now i’m eating cookies that my son left out for santa. i wonder — how am i so fortunate to be the ceo of a startup where people understand work/life balance? don't get me wrong, i was on calls all morning and I pinged Paul because we needed to chat for five minutes about something.<p>i can't be 100% sure but i think people choose to work here because, even though they love pressfriendly. they understand that they are better employees and team members if they pull back once and awhile and recharge. a mission and a passion only take you so far. we're not working on the manhattan project or fighting ebola, that feature change can wait until next monday.<p>given the holidays, my calendar is pretty tight. family events, old college friends to see and catching up on a few shows on netflix. if you want to be an engineer at pressfriendly and help startups with their PR, shoot me an email ([email protected]). we could setup a google hangout for mid-january and i can tell you more.<p>talk whenever, joel
======
pskittle
It's funny how alike you'll think
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8794956)
------
yen223
You may or may not have misspelled your email address in the second-last
paragraph.
~~~
joelandren
Haha, so I did. It may or may not be a screening mechanism.
------
toomuchtodo
Brilliant response Joel. Merry Christmas!
~~~
joelandren
Thx. You too!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's your favourite API? - dholowiski
What web API do you find the most useful? Which one provides really good information or allows you to make amazing things happen?
======
pdenya
Stripe and Mailgun and Twitter are some of the best documented, clearest to
use APIs.
The Google Maps API i can usually get cool stuff happening with quickly.
My favorites overall are probably Sunlight labs APIs though:
<http://services.sunlightlabs.com/>
~~~
dholowiski
The sunlight labs stuff looks cool.
------
mukundmohan
Google analytics API. We use it, have been for a few months and its excellent.
------
garnaat
I still think the Amazon S3 API is really nice.
------
johncoltrane
Zencoder's api is solid and easy to work with.
------
jfaucett
for(facebook=0,Win32=0,twitter=1; !(facebook && twitter); ++twitter) {}
------
mrkmcknz
Twilio.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When designers code: Dots - a game about connecting - paulbz
http://blog.betaworks.com/post/49362721037/dots-a-game-about-connecting
======
j2kun
Oh great. Another iOS only app. Would be a better article if maybe they
described what you do in the game.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets - coloneltcb
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-23/alphabet-s-waymo-sues-uber-for-stealing-self-driving-patents?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
======
chollida1
From another source to provide some colour:
> According to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in California, Waymo
> accuses Anthony Levandowski, an engineer who left Google to found Otto and
> now serves as a top ranking Uber executive, stole 14,000 highly confidential
> documents from Google before departing to start his own company. Among the
> documents were schematics of a circuit board and details about radar and
> LIDAR technology, Waymo says
> The lawsuit claims that a team of ex-Google engineers used critical
> technology, including the Lidar laser sensors, in the autonomous trucking
> startup they founded, and which Uber later acquired
I was confused as to what stealing a patent actually meant:)
Waymo has also posted this....
[https://medium.com/@waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-
otto...](https://medium.com/@waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and-
uber-86f4f98902a1#.mn83yyh0t)
From this post...
> Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing
> in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of
> machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board —
> except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR
> design.
> We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony
> Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary
> design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of
> Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server,
> Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his
> company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly
> confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and
> testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop.
> Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase
> forensic fingerprints.
Ooops, that does sound bad after a first read.
~~~
tajen
How does Google build such forsenics? Do they have spyware monitoring all
their company laptops?
~~~
startupdiscuss
This was the noteworthy part for me as well.
They had to know that he:
1\. modified the software on his laptop
2\. logged into an area he should not have had access to (this is probably
standard)
3\. attached an external drive (possible, but standard?)
4\. and they got all this info _after_ he deleted the drive, which means they
either went in and found remaining data on the drive or else they captured the
info in real time.
I suppose if the drive is clean now, and they know he downloaded data, they
can infer that he wiped it.
I suppose that if they know he accessed it, and there was software on his
computer preventing him from doing so, they can infer that he downloaded
something to overcome it.
But knowing that he connected to an external drive implies active monitoring.
That's the part I am most curious about.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
This is all information a rudimentary desktop auditing tool can gather and
store on a server. Most collect both hardware (which would include connected
devices) and software inventory. Anyone SHOULD be auditing company PCs on a
relatively regular basis. It wouldn't surprise me if Google was auditing much
more frequently than the average and could catch something like this in the
act.
~~~
086421357909764
Yup, lots of firms using HIDS that gather all sorts of system data. OSSEC is
what I've seen rather frequently for this.
------
w00tw00tw00t
I had an interview there where the manager asked me to leave my laptop behind
and go for a walk. I was hesitant after hearing stories of Uber conducting
electronic espionage against its competitors. They could easily bypass Macbook
security with a USB device (I had heard of that on HN too) so I was very
nervous to leave my laptop behind and noted its exact orientation and position
on the table. Sure enough when I returned my laptop had changed both position
and orientation, but only enough to tell if you had specifically memorized it.
I could be paranoid. They could have simply moved things on the desk. But
anyway, people who are paranoid like me are advised not to take their laptops
into Uber interviews. They are capable of just about anything, or so thinks my
now paranoid self.
~~~
rajathagasthya
> They could easily bypass Macbook security with a USB device
Isn't this only possible if the laptop is unlocked?
~~~
andreyf
It's not possible unless you have zero-days against the USB drivers or
firmware on your laptop, in which case being logged in or not doesn't really
matter.
~~~
w00tw00tw00t
Proof I'm paranoid. My greater point, however, is that they have done some
really shady stuff, and stealing competitor's IP is part of their culture, so
their behavior itself promotes and justifies paranoia on my part and on the
part of anyone looking to work for or do business with Uber.
Reputation is everything.
~~~
maverick_iceman
It's pretty stupid to get paranoid over this. As GP pointed out if you logged
out then it's very unlikely that they will get access.
~~~
w00tw00tw00t
I think it's pretty stupid to consider any consumer device to be secure
enough. I did hear on HN some time before that interview that some USB device
can be used to bypass the lock screen, which was the basis for my worrying.
Now, some are saying in this thread that it is possible (or at least was at
the time) while others saying that it is not (and was not) -- Even an educated
sample of tech folks cannot make up their mind, so there is (or at least was)
room for justified concern... no?
~~~
andreyf
I think the consensus is that it's possible, but expensive. So like, nation-
state espionage yes, corporate espionage no. But anyone who actually knows
anything won't be talking about it on HN ;)
------
dantiberian
A really critical thing that hasn't got much attention is that shortly before
leaving Waymo, Levandowski had a meeting with senior Uber execs(!). The day
after the meeting, he formed 280 Systems which became Otto.
The implication in the filing is that Uber planned this with Levandowski, and
he only created Otto as a plausible corporate vehicle for developing the LiDAR
technology before Uber acquired them. Given what we know about Uber and the
assertions in the complaint, this sounds entirely plausible, maybe even
likely.
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)
~~~
fullshark
Paragraph 48 if anyone is wondering.
------
Fricken
In related news, Tesla is accusing ex-autopilot director Sterling Anderson of
stealing code from Tesla before starting up Aurora with Chris Urmson (the
former CTO of Alphabet's self driving car program):
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/tesla-sues-ex-autopilot-
di...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/26/tesla-sues-ex-autopilot-director-for-
taking-proprietary-info-poaching-employees/)
------
glibgil
> searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued
> laptop
That could mean he downloaded an SFTP client like Cyberduck. He could have
searched the internet for a client and then installed it. It doesn't say he
did not have auth.
Imagine a Google security engineer being deposed for this lawsuit.
Lawyer: "Show me on the MacBook how he downloaded the files"
Engineer: "Well, he used Cyberduck"
Lawyer: "Is that part of the Mac?"
Engineer: "No, he'd have to download it separately"
Lawyer: "So, he searched for and installed specialized software onto his
company-issued laptop?"
Engineer: "Um, sure"
Lawyer: "Thank you, that's all the questions I had"
~~~
msbarnett
> That could mean he downloaded an SFTP client like Cyberduck. He could have
> searched the internet for a client and then installed it. It doesn't say he
> did not have auth.
They weren't trying to claim he hacked in. They're making the case he went out
of his way to get his hands on these documents, and building a timeline that
suggests _why_ he went to that trouble.
------
twinkletwinkle
Interesting. I vividly remember a commenter here on a thread about Uber's
acquisition of Otto. The user said based on the timeline and filings, it
seemed like Otto hadn't really accomplished anything yet, and was probably
founded purely to be acquired by Uber. I wonder if there's even more here...
------
golfer
Does anyone else remember this New Yorker profile [1] of Anthony Levandowski
and self driving cars? Way back from 2013, when this tech was still novel.
Google let Levandowski run the show for this piece -- his name is mentioned 57
times in the article. Goes to show how important and trusted he was in
Google's universe.
[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/25/auto-
correct](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/25/auto-correct)
~~~
Animats
Sure. I met him when he was still a student at UC Berkeley. He was the one who
built the self-driving, self-balancing motorcycle for the 2005 DARPA Grand
Challenge. It didn't navigate that well or get all that far, but it was really
cool.
------
fasteddie
Maybe I have a selective memory as a former Zynga employee, but generally
these "stolen documents" lawsuits in high profile tech companies have
generally turned out to be pretty factual. Easy to prove, and hard to fake.
~~~
icelancer
And lawsuits like this generally don't get filed unless it's near slam-dunk
considering the burden of proof is high on stolen electronic documents.
~~~
Kostchei
Considering even with logging off: journaling file systems, "user assist",
device connection logs, pre-fetch (or your OS's equivalent)- these are all
huge tranches of data if you are looking at a system shortly after an event.
Ask me 6 months later- probably not. Give me a system that hasn't even
rebooted, has a heap of ram and hasn't been used much since- 6 weeks is fine,
not ideal, but doable.
~~~
valleyer
Journaling filesystems don't "journal" all the activity in perpetuity. They
typically just journal the changes until they're committed to disk, usually
for less than a second.
See [http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-
design.pdf](http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf),
section 7.2 "How Does Journaling Work?".
------
jplayer01
I always was incredibly surprised at how quickly Uber had working self-driving
cars (with the required, highly specialized hardware). Guess this explains it.
~~~
tyingq
Uber acquired Otto around 08/2016\. I don't think this explains it.
~~~
amaks
Who knows maybe they had somebody else from the Google self driving car
project to steal self-driving car secrets earlier. Based on what this
Levandowski guy did the industrial espionage may go unnoticed. I'm wondering
if Waymo will require Uber to reveal schematics of their self-driving car
project as part of the law suite.
~~~
tyingq
I have doubts what was stolen was actually any of the secret sauce. An
interface board for a lidar unit is probably one of the most simple things on
the list.
The actual self driving software, and more importantly, all of the collected
data from the waymo fleet would have been the key.
~~~
makomk
Not so much an interface board as a whole new tested design for a LIDAR unit,
including a unique patented optics setup and laser driver circuit, according
to the complaint. Also testing, manufacturing, and characterization procedures
and results and information on suppliers for the parts required. The PCB was
just the component whose accidental disclosure lead them to conclude that Uber
and Otto were using the stolen design. Since the PCB apparently dictates the
position and orientation of the laser diodes and sensors, presumably it would
only be useful if they copied the whole thing.
~~~
tyingq
Interesting. Is the specific Lidar unit really that big a differentiator? I
understand they aren't cheap or simple, but it seems odd that each self
driving car company would want to design their own. I would guess you would
rather have some healthy ecosystem of suppliers...Velodyne, etc.
~~~
bsder
> it seems odd that each self driving car company would want to design their
> own
They don't _want_ to do this, so, if they do, it's because they _had_ to do
this.
Practically all of the current sensor suites are expensive, bulky, and power
hungry. If you want them on lots of cars, you need to reduce all 3 of those
characteristics dramatically.
------
sriram_sun
What kind of employee would download 14K files to a personal drive right
before quitting? It is trivially easy to watch what files get copied over to
external drives.
I think you can follow the money trail here and find some answers for sure.
Now if Uber/Otto has a clause that prohibits employees from bringing in
confidential data from previous companies, how can they be held liable? Does
Google have to prove that those stolen documents were actually used in Uber
designs?
~~~
dba7dba
A supplier of Google received the file from Uber and that supplier forwarded
it to Google. This means the file was sent out by Uber to a supplier to try to
get parts made. I think that's proof enough.
Btw that's 1 very sharp eyed engineer, whoever that is...
~~~
MertsA
>Btw that's 1 very sharp eyed engineer, whoever that is...
It sounds like this was entirely accidental on the supplier's part.
------
jpeg_hero
Lots of Juice here.
Complaint:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)
>Waymo was recently – and apparently inadvertently – copied on an email from
one of its LiDAR component vendors.
Is this going to be a legal test of that annoying lawyer email footer
language?
>This message contains information from xxxxxx that may be confidential and
privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, please refrain from any
disclosure, copying, distribution, or use of this information and note that
such actions are prohibited. If you have received this information in error,
please notify the sender immediately by telephone or by replying to this
transmission.
Ha! More legalese BS that never holds up.
> Otto launched publicly in May 2016, and was quickly acquired by Uber in
> August 2016 for $680 million.
The fact pattern here is going to be absolutely brutal for Uber. A non-
technical judge is going to see the allegation: ex-google employee downloads
technical documents in December 2015, launches a company 5 months later in May
2016, and is bought for $680M (later speculated to be $1B+) for all its
technical accomplishments. How much fundamental research did they do in the 3
months between May-16 and August-16?!?!? Or was it just to buy the stolen IP
that google had developed over 7 years?!? Brutal for Uber!
\--
A public company recently settled a similar lawsuit (competitor hires exec,
exec is proven to have downloaded documents) for $130M on much smaller
numbers. And the defendant was run through the legal wringer first.
[http://www.geekwire.com/2016/zillow-realtor-com-operator-
mov...](http://www.geekwire.com/2016/zillow-realtor-com-operator-move-move-
reach/)
Expect Uber spankage, bigly.
> shortly after Mr. Levandowski received his final multi-million dollar
> payment from Google
Funny because of all the recent press that Google paid autonomous driving
talent too much that they left!
>Infringement of Patent No. 9,368,936 (Against All Defendants)
Real nasty. If a trade secrets lawsuit is an arrow, throwing in a patent
infringement claim too, is poison tipped and barbed!
This is some good "old skool Google" where they used to show broad competence
across many domains; in this case legal.
------
Fricken
Presumably you're in Arizona at the moment, Mr. Levandowski, it's close to the
border, run for it!
We'll take a moment to remember the salad days, when you were just a crazy
college kid who showed up at the Darpa Grand Challenge with a self driving
motorcycle:
[https://youtu.be/XOgkNh_IPjU](https://youtu.be/XOgkNh_IPjU)
------
bitL
This is going to be interesting to watch. Alphabet just:
\- went nuclear on Uber/Otto
\- revealed what they track internally to all their employees
~~~
GooglyMoogly
When your company stores very private info on billions of people, and is
actively attacked (sometimes successfully) by the top intelligence agencies of
the world[1][2], you have to be extremely careful, and monitor everything.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora)
[2] [https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-
companies-s...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-companies-
slap-back-at-the-n-s-a-s-smiley-face)
~~~
thr0waway1239
Some people might see an irony in your comment.
Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in 2009 "...banks that are too big to fail are
too big to exist..."
My theory is that the too big to exist theory is now true for basically all
the tech giants. Generally, everyone who knows the kind of tracking these
companies do (internal and external) agree this is true, except those who
benefit from the companies' continued existence e.g. employees, investors,
shareholders.
~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
You conveniently forgot consumers.
~~~
thr0waway1239
On the other hand, imagine if the data collection never stops and one of the
big companies gets hacked, or faces a serious competitive threat making it
more likely to sell its data, starts going out of business, or needs to
cooperate by sharing its data in return for government favors, or needs to
share data to get access to foreign markets etc. I have a feeling this
venerable "consumer" is going to learn a painful lesson one of these days.
------
the_watcher
Minor fix: Waymo is suing for stealing secrets, not patents. As far as I know,
it's not actually possible to steal a patent.
~~~
lindowe
Infringement of patents (the ’273 patent, entitled “Microrod Compression of
Laser Beam in Combination with Transmit Lens")
~~~
ssambros
Infringement, yes, but how can you 'steal' a patent?
~~~
the_watcher
That was exactly my point. Patents are definitionally impossible to steal
(unless, I guess, you somehow are able to get access to the patent database
and change the patent holder?)
------
tlrobinson
Well, that would help explain how Otto went from nothing to $680 million
acquisition in ~7 months.
------
danjoc
There's something very wrong in the world when the people who invent things
aren't the main beneficiary of their own inventions.
Edit: A guy downloads 9.7GB of other people's work, walks off with it, and
sells it. Flushing years of work from hundreds of engineers down the toilet.
You down voters really support that? Amazing.
~~~
untilHellbanned
Otto was a YC company so there's your answer. People condone a lot of awful if
they 1) make money off it; 2) Have some emotional connection to it
~~~
changdizzle
As far as I know Otto wasn't YC - are you sure you're not thinking of Cruise
(which was acquired by GM)?
~~~
CardenB
He could be thinking of starsky robotics
------
Animats
Google might have been better off with patents than trade secrets. There are
financial penalties for theft of trade secrets, but once the secret is out, no
injunctions. The one who stole it can use it. With patents, injunctions are
available, although hard to get.
Anyway, several companies are developing automotive LIDAR units which are
better than Google's rotating things. Quantergy and Velodyne claim to be close
to low-cost solid state LIDARs, and ASC has good ones now at a high price
point. (An ASC unit just docked the Dragon spacecraft with the ISS.) By the
time this gets to court, Google's secret technology will be obsolete.
The question is whether Uber will defend Levandowski or leave him to twist
slowly, slowly in the wind and go to jail.
~~~
revelation
I doubt there is any hot technology in some LIDAR interface board in the first
place.
~~~
Animats
There's a lot to be done at the semiconductor level for solid state LIDAR. The
ASC units work great, but the sensor requires an InGaAs fab, like night vision
sensors, to get good light sensitivity and thus range. Others are talking
about getting good performance with a sensor that can be made in a CMOS fab,
but nobody is shipping yet. This is an area where Waymo has a strong interest,
even if they're not making the sensors themselves.
------
guelo
Wow this has got to be the worse single month for a company that I've ever
seen.
~~~
_audakel
Or Microsoft antitrust?
~~~
edblarney
Please - Microsoft antitrust was nothing like this.
Microsoft was basically extremely successful - and then became a monopoly
provider. In general, I wouldn't call this an 'immoral act' or whatever.
Also - I'd suggest that Google is just as much a Monopoly provider as MS ever
was, they could face the same type of case in EU soon.
Stealing IP, lying, corruption - this is in a whole different league from
being so successful that you become a monopoly.
------
croddin
It looks like bloomberg updated the title to: "Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber
Stole Self-Driving Secrets", which makes more sense. We should change the
title here.
------
praneshp
Could a mod change the title to "Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-
Driving Secrets", which is what the Bloomberg article says (for now)?
~~~
grzm
To expedite this, you may want to email the mods directly via the Contact link
in the footer.
------
aramadia
Direct link to the complaint:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)
------
donjh
And Google Ventures is an Uber investor... so Google is effectively suing one
of their own portfolio companies.
~~~
twblalock
Companies sue other companies they have relationships with fairly often.
For example, Samsung is still a hardware supplier to Apple, so Apple is suing
its own supplier in the Apple v. Samsung case.
~~~
dba7dba
And not to mention other Samsung subsidiaries (that make display, RAM, CPU)
were probably crying bloody murder to Samsung Handphone division...
------
home_boi
Despite the damning alleged evidence, I get the feeling that all the offenders
knew that they would be found out ahead of time, evaluated the risk reward
trade-off and decided that they could somehow get away with it.
Are there any lawyers here who could make an educated guess how they could?
~~~
bmon
Well a good start would be using a different supplier than Waymo.
------
jfoster
> Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing
> in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of
> machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board —
> except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR
> design.
Doesn't sound plausible. At a minimum, this would have to be the "dumbed down"
version of how they uncovered this.
------
selftemp
Copy-pasting from my comment on Reddit.
The first thing that caught my attention after reading the whole lawsuit!
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dzPLynxaXuQjY3dkllZ2ZKb0k/view)
[Item 42- 49] itself is some of the timings regarding Otto's inception and
Uber's acquisition.
Timeline:
* Levandowski first registered the domain for his then(now Otto) company on Nov'15
* The suit says on 3rd of Dec'15 he searched for the LIDAR docs and on 11th of Dec'15, he downloaded 14,000 docs from Google's servers.
* Google alleges that on Jan'16, Levandowski told his colleagues that he plans to replicate the Waymo tech at one of Waymo's competitor.
* One of the damning allegation from Waymo is that he met with top execs at Uber at their HQ in SF on Jan 14th 2016.
* Just a day later on 15th he officially formed one of his company(280 Systems, now part of Otto), later on Feb 1st he also registered his other company(Otto Trucking) Feb 1st.
* Strangely after working at Google for about 7 years, he quit Google without a notice(from suit) on Jan 27th.
This is from the interview Bloomberg's did after Uber acquired Otto: 'Kalanick
began courting Levandowski this spring, broaching the possibility of an
acquisition during a series of 10-mile night walks from the Soma neighborhood
where Uber is also headquartered to the Golden Gate Bridge. The two men would
leave their offices separately—to avoid being seen by employees, the press, or
competitors. They’d grab takeout food, then rendezvous near the city’s Ferry
Building. Levandowski says he saw a union as a way to bring the company’s
trucks to market faster.'
From the above details, it can imply any of these three things might have
happened,
* Scenario 1: He or Uber didn't do anything different from the official story so far.
* Scenario 2: Levandowski went to Uber saying he has custom LIDAR tech but ended up starting his own company the next day and 8 months later Uber just bought them for $680M for the team and tech he alleged stole from Waymo.
* Scenario 3: Levandowski went to Uber in Jan'16, said he has the tech for custom LIDAR, Uber wants it, but there is non-suspicious way for taking the tech directly to Uber since Levandowski alone can't build it. Instead Uber suggests to spin off his own company, hire a team (mostly from Waymo), put together a demo in Nevada desert. This brings in all the press and validity that Otto has the self-driving tech and team. So at this point Otto and Levandowski is a Self-driving tech startup not a LIDAR startup. Now Uber can come in, acquire this hot startup and team, in a market that's worth Trillions. Now Uber is suddenly in the trucking business, gets a huge PR and valuation bump. In this process they also get the LIDAR tech that's build in just 9 months.
What it means is that if the 3rd theory is true, Uber was always buying the
LIDAR tech from Levandowski even before he left Waymo. Otto and other
components are just a proxy so that it gives them a great story without any
suspicions.
To put things into perspective, a single Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR that almost
all self-driving companies use costs around $75,000. Waymo says their
equivalent custom alternative costs less than 10% (<$7000). This is a huge
cost saving for a tech that is going to go in 100,000+ cars Uber hopes to have
in the market in the future. So yea, this can be a bullshit Lawsuit (based on
the evidence, less likely) or a well executed corporate espionage!
~~~
ma2rten
It could also be that Levandowski met with Uber execs as the lawsuit claims,
but didn't tell them he had stolen the documents.
~~~
webXL
That could very well be true. _wink_ _wink_
"I know it's hard to believe, Travis, but while I worked for a company doing
the exact the same thing as this company, at nights, I _singlehandedly_
created this trove of patentable technology that will revolutionize the
automobile industry, which _coincidently_ , _really_ , my former employer is
spending billions to do. You have to trust me."
~~~
ma2rten
If I had stolen a bunch of trade secrets I wouldn't tell my company's
competitor.
[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jul/07/marketingandpr.drink)
------
dnautics
Is the HN headline correct? The bloomberg article says "trade secrets" which
are very different from patents, the video also says that this is not
primarily a patent case.
edit: 0:48 in the video
------
monktastic1
His favorite quote: "I drink your milkshake."
Wish I were kidding.
------
sebleon
Seems like Google/Waymo has known about this for a while, funny how they timed
this lawsuit announcement during the Fowler blog post uproar
~~~
equalarrow
Yup, timing is everything. For press.. I doubt tho, this will affect the
lawsuit.
------
amaks
Things couldn't be worse for Uber these days. Sexual harassment scandal, Didi
Chuxing plans for global expansion, now this lawsuit.
------
giis
Interesting questions for google employees:
Does Google force you to use specific version of OS?
Do they have pre-installed software?
Is it not-okay to format and install any OS you want?
I work in startups, they provide only laptops and doesnt care about OS or
software. There is no mandatory software requirement from company side.
~~~
QuercusMax
For eng workstations, virtually all are Goobuntu unless you have a reallllly
good reason (e.g. CAD software for mech e's, or work on Windows Chrome).
For laptops, they're essentially just used as a dumb web terminal + ssh. You
can get mac, goobuntu, or maybe even Windows. Since you aren't allowed to have
source code on laptops (except certain special exceptions), it's not as big of
a concern.
~~~
valleyer
You aren't allowed to have source on your laptop? How do you edit it? Through
some web editor? Serious question!
~~~
UncleMeat
SSH or a web editor.
~~~
valleyer
That sounds awful! Is that just a "laptop" rule (i.e. are "desktops" exempt)?
~~~
cobookman
Workstations mount what's called citc (clients in the cloud). And you can use
whatever ide or editor you like. Code is never downloaded directly to the
desktop. You don't really notice any performance issues with this and you get
the benefit of being able to build or include any library without having to
download it all.
Laptops can't mount citc, and you need to either SSH/rdp into a workstation or
use a web based code editor.
Once you've used citc/Piper/blaze you'll find it's a great system and there is
no good alternative... Yet
As for OS choice I believe only goobuntu can be used to modify Google's code
repo.
~~~
CardenB
Wish they used citc/Git/blaze... but oh well. There's a wrapper internally but
I heard it was crap, so I never used it.
~~~
refulgentis
It's heavily used now. Works very well.
------
lsh123
Google was on the other side before:
[https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-
google/](https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-google/)
~~~
zaatar
What was the outcome of this lawsuit?
~~~
lsh123
Was curious too, can't find it anywhere.
------
mylons
uber is a DUMPSTER FIRE right now. feel bad for the engineers there who didn't
steal anything.
------
seesomesense
Sounds a bit like the Aleynikov saga..
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/aleynikov...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/aleynikov-
s-conviction-is-reinstated-by-state-appeals-court)
------
sriram_sun
The medium article also notes that a couple more employees stole confidential
information. Five years later Waymo employees will be bitching and moaning
about corporate overreach and will have these fucktards to thank. (If
allegations are proved).
------
huangc10
> Alphabet’s venture capital arm, GV -- formerly known as Google Ventures --
> is an early backer of Uber.
Correct me if I am wrong, but does that mean Alphabet is suing itself since
Alphabet owns both Google Venture, Waymo and has an investment in Uber...?
~~~
kyleschiller
Yeah, that's wrong, being an investor in a company doesn't make you liable for
their actions.
It does mean that Alphabet stands to lose something if they win the lawsuit,
though whatever stake they do have in Uber is obviously negligible compared to
WayMo itself.
------
lexap
The timing here is just way too coincidental. Coming at a fresh nadir in
Uber's standing in the tech industry, the week after Fowler's post.
For how long did Google know Levandowski had swiped its secrets?
This is how PR war is waged.
------
samfisher83
Google has shares in uber. If they sue them and win their shares are
theoretically worth less. I guess if they win enough money it works out.
------
powera
Patents, or Trade Secrets?
~~~
rrdharan
Misappropriating trade secrets and infringing on patents, as per the Waymo
blogpost:
[https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-
otto-...](https://medium.com/waymo/a-note-on-our-lawsuit-against-otto-and-
uber-86f4f98902a1#.c48mb4c3b)
------
gumby
dang: just like we have warnings for [video] and [pdf] could we have warnings
for autoplay video? I accidentally had the sound enabled on my computer.
------
james_niro
I need popcorn and front row seat for this
------
brilliantcode
This will put a permanent blow to Uber, it's in a tight spot already and self
driving cars are it's only chance of survival.
If there's anyway to short Uber or any of the other unicorns kept afloat by
low interest venture capital, please let me know.
------
zump
Anyone here would do the same thing.
~~~
bmon
Maybe you might, but if you give me the choice of being in jail or not, I
think I'd rather keep my windows unbarred.
~~~
zump
He's not going to jail, he's white.
~~~
dang
We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring
repeated requests to stop.
If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected]
and promise to follow the rules in the future.
------
dba7dba
So a junior engineer took the files, left Waymo to join Uber and tried to pass
off the files?
Correction. So he's not really a junior engineer. But how can he not think
that everything he access on the Google's network is monitored?
~~~
hluska
Not quite...
First, Levandowski is far from a junior engineer. He's been described as the
tech lead at Waymo and worked on Google Maps and Streetview.
Second, he left Waymo to co-found Otto, a startup which existed for six months
before Uber acquired it for several hundred million dollars.
Third, he's now described as a senior executive at Uber.
I'm not sure where Facebook comes from here. Did I miss something??
~~~
dba7dba
Yes, yes. One must not comment on HN while coding (simple stuff) and eating
snack, and telling kids to do their homework. I work from home today.
My apologies...
~~~
hluska
Don't worry bud and thanks for your reply!! I knew there was a 50% chance that
I was severely confused and I appreciate you taking the time to clarify.
------
ww520
How can you steal patents? Those are public info.
Infringing on patents?
~~~
praneshp
The title is "Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets". I
hope the mods can change the HN article's to that.
------
KKKKkkkk1
It's sad how G lost its top engineers and is now trying to get back at them in
the courts.
------
dkarapetyan
This is a little idiotic. Alphabet let all their talent walk out the door. I'm
assuming mostly because of idiotic management and now they're suing. They're
basically losing on all sides.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Oregon Blogger Isn't a Journalist, Court Imposes $2.5M Judgement - privacyguru
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/crystal_cox_oregon_blogger_isn.php
======
kevinalexbrown
The article (which rightfully provides the original decision) ignores the
subsequent paragraph:
_Second, even if she were otherwise entitled to those protections, O.R.S.
44.530(3)specifically provides that "[t]he provisions of O.R.S. 44.520(1) do
not apply with respect to the content or source of allegedly defamatory
information, in [a] civil action for defamation wherein the defendant asserts
a defense based on the content or source of such information." Because this
case is a civil action for defamation, defendant cannot rely on the media
shield law._
This changes things somewhat. The article says "she's entitled to those
protections." This says, even if she were, here's why it doesn't apply.
NB: I think the settlement sucks, but that doesn't mean the judge was the
complete idiot the article made him out to be.
~~~
saulrh
It's worth noting that the guy that wrote the corresponding law for the State
of Washington explicitly blames obsolete laws for the nonapplicability of the
shield law: "Oregon's law was probably written before blogging was accounted
for." [1] He goes on to say that she probably would still have been judged
against, since withholding the source means she can't prove her claims are
factual, but that she still should have gotten that protection.
[1]
[http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/unlike_or...](http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/12/unlike_oregon_bloggers_are_jou.php)
~~~
CrystalLCox
I Did Provide My Source. The Court Threw It Out.
[http://www.obsidianfinancesucks.com/2011/12/in-obsidian-v-
co...](http://www.obsidianfinancesucks.com/2011/12/in-obsidian-v-cox-i-
provided.html) I was never asked to retract the post, and under Oregon
Retraction Laws denied that law because I am a blog and not TV, or Traditional
Broadcasting.
~~~
Natsu
Should talk to the EFF and see if they'll take your case. Representing
yourself in court is such a bad idea that even lawyers hire other lawyers to
represent them.
------
fleitz
" _Representing herself in court_ , Cox had argued..."
Coders and bloggers are good at what they do and in those spheres it would
generally be a good idea to defer to them for advice, however, in the sphere
of law it's generally a good idea to defer to someone with expertise in that
field.
~~~
hristov
It says there she had blogs about the legal industry, so it is likely that she
is a lawyer. Of course it is usually not a good idea to represent yourself
even if you are a lawyer, but maybe she could not afford representation.
Hopefully the ACLU would take up her cause on appeal.
~~~
c0riander
As they say, the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.
~~~
fleitz
Yup, even if you're a rockstar lawyer, it's always good to have one because
your lawyer views the case in a more impartial manner with out the emotional
attachments that you may have to the case.
It's pretty easy to get blinders on if you're representing yourself.
~~~
nitrogen
It's not just that; AIUI if you represent yourself, you can get in a lot more
trouble for saying something later decided to be false, or making a statement
not supported by evidence. There are explicit bonuses built into the system
for those who have a representative.
------
tdmackey
By representing herself and appearing largely ignorant to the law she not only
lost the case but essentially made it so that the judge could rule no other
way. Ignoring the sensationalist article and looking closer at the actual
trial documents as linked [http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/obsidian-
finance-group-v-...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/obsidian-finance-
group-v-cox) You can see that in many of her responses instead of trying to
make a legal argument she just rants about how much she hates the plaintiffs
and thinks they are idiots and states things like "This connection is further
reason as to why Defendant [sic] Crystal L. Cox Feels [sic] that Kevin Padrick
of Obsidian Finance is involved in a plot to kill her."
In addition, she replies to the platiniff "So I want to Let you know and
Obsidian Finance that I am now offering PR Services and Search Engine
Management Services starting at $2500 a month to promote Law Firms... Finance
Companies.. and to protect online reputations and promote businesses.." Which
the legal firm didn't take kindly to, "It could hardly be clearer that Ms. Cox
is attempting to use her outrageous and utterly false payments about plantiffs
as leverage to extort a payment from them."
Also, she ignored a deposition in Montana for which the plaintiffs are
requesting the court place sanctions on her which if she didn't would also
have made it trivial to move the case to another district court where some
weird wording in the Oregon shield law wouldn't have mattered.
The Judge probably wanted to hang himself after reading her motions.
~~~
bestes
Is it illegal for a judge to think? If one side presents a really bad case, do
they have to lose even if they are right?
I've experienced this myself, so maybe my comments should be thrown out as
biased.
~~~
tdmackey
When you essentially don't try to defend yourself but instead insult and
berate the court and opposing council in the legal documents you submit to the
court you open up a very large window for the judge to side against you when
there is any sort of leeway...
~~~
lywald
From a programmer point of view it makes as much sense as deleting a file if
it fails to load. Not sure why poor argumentation skills should be the cause
to a 2.4M fine. They are unrelated. The woman is not to blame, the system is
for not managing situations like this. Like I am to blame if I don't manage
exceptions in my code.
~~~
cafard
Trials are to be judged on the evidence presented in court. This is
notoriously not always the case, but it is the way the law is supposed to be.
~~~
lywald
That's what I was saying. It is not justice. It doesn't matter if this is the
definition of a trial. Invent a word for something better... And invent that
something too. Until then, law is flawed.
------
wtallis
This seems to be a case of a judge ignoring a few words in order to be able to
misinterpret a law. Oregon's media shield law applies to people who are
"connected with, employed by or engaged in any medium of communication to the
public", and defines "any medium of communication" thus:
_“Medium of communication” has its ordinary meaning and includes, but is not
limited to, any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book, pamphlet, news
service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or
network, or cable television system._
Apparently, the judge didn't spot the " _but is not limited to_ " part of that
definition.
(The text of the relevant laws: <http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/044.html>)
~~~
tedunangst
As kevinalexbrown noted, this also seems to be a case of people ignoring the
next paragraph of the decision.
~~~
Klinky
I don't really think the second paragraph matters so much. If he is saying
"bloggers aren't 'the media'" or that you essentially have to be employed by a
big name media agency in order to get protections, that is a big deal.
He could have easily said that she is part of the media, but that the law
doesn't protect those in the media from these types of lawsuits. Reading the
law, I think blogging does fall into the category that gives it protection,
even if those protections wouldn't have made a difference in this case.
------
taylorbuley
Regardless of shield laws, you absolutely cannot commit libel in public
writing.
There is a reason why Journalism Law is a first-semester course at any
respectable j-school.
~~~
delinka
"...you absolutely cannot commit libel in public writing..."
Does that mean that it's absolutely impossible to commit libel in public
writing?
Or does it mean that one "cannot" because there are dire consequences?
A la "you can never put too much water in a nuclear reactor."
~~~
Jach
Yeah, "absolutely cannot" is a strange substitute for "shouldn't" in this
case. I'd further restrict it to "...in public writing that has a decent
chance of gaining a large audience", and possibly adding "...and which is
against a party likely to notice and sue". Libel laws don't seem to deter most
of the online-based libel happening all the time.
------
fauigerzigerk
Regardless of any particular case, in my opinion, civil law is a complete
farce everywhere in the world (as far as I know).
The problem is that the risk of litigation is sometimes totally
disproportionate. While one side may risk a small budget overrun in their
legal department, the other side might find their life in ruins for decades,
including things like paying for their children's education.
I think this needs a constitutional amendment urgently.
------
bandushrew
If this is upheld, the existing 'old world' media organisations just became
gatekeepers to a very useful status.
We need to start a Bloggers Media Network.
------
mikkom
> but because she wasn't employed by an official media establishment.
What the hell is "official" media establishment? It seems that the judge is
saying thet there are separate "official" and "unofficial" establisments but
if that is the case, who decides what is official and what is not?
~~~
forensic
It's determined by the opinions they present. For instance, if the journalist
is saying there is a conspiracy, then they're a conspiracy theorist.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Screen Recording on Cloud - zafergurel
http://getone.video
======
snowpanda
This is really great! One suggestion, maybe offer an advanced option where you
can input css/html elements that you want the browser to click on.
~~~
zafergurel
Thank you. That would be a nice feature. I'll look into that :).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smuglispweeny: COBOL has Macros? - blasdel
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/03/kenny-and-firing-squad-episode-ii-cobol.html
======
Hexstream
That's pretty incomprehensible. The high number of non-sequitur overshadows
the main point... whatever it is. I couldn't read through to the end.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Poaching Auto Engineers to Build Battery Division - antr
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/02/18/business/18reuters-apple-autos-lawsuit.html?ref=business&_r=0
======
tessierashpool
What if the whole deal behind all of this media stuff is just that mainstream
journalists have figured out that iOS requires software engineers, and
hardware engineers, but they can't wrap their head around the idea that iOS
also requires battery engineers?
I'm not saying Apple _isn 't_ making a car. I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool
if they were. I'm just saying that if you're at all familiar with the history
of how the media has _always_ interacted with Apple - if you read Daring
Fireball, for instance - then something that mind-bogglingly stupid might
actually seem completely typical, in context.
~~~
tfinniga
There is definitely a bias in the media to write the most interesting story,
even if it is less plausible.
Having a car in the works is more interesting than needing better batteries
for existing/announced product lines. Much better batteries would be a strong
advantage for apple watch, for example.
------
MiguelRus
An anecdote: I recently went to a conference where a senior member of
Foster+Partners, the architecture firm close to Apple (the studio behind
Apple's new HQ, many new stores), presented the design for an autonomous
vehicle, which resembles more the "Apple minivan" concept that is being
mentioned by the press, here is that part of the presentation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=14m32s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rUH63c1n0c&t=14m32s)
~~~
bpodgursky
I think the minivan concept makes a lot of sense. The demographic that is
likely to own a minivan is likely to have their own garage, which makes
charging no hassle. A family with a minivan most likely has a second car they
could use for long-distance driving, making range anxiety less of a problem.
And they are likely to have the disposable income to invest in an electric car
in the first place.
~~~
roc
The size certainly makes sense, if driverless technology turns cars into
mobile living rooms.
If you're not driving, the entire "sporty" side of the styling and image are
out the window. Limos aren't "sporty" and no-one cares. They care that the
limo is comfortable and luxurious.
------
mdasen
Apple is smart to be grabbing A123 engineers. While people seem to remember
A123 for its auto pursuits, it also produced batteries for things like tools
from Black & Decker.
The problem with cars was that no auto manufacturer wanted to make themselves
dependent on a single source for batteries. If someone built a car around
A123's batteries, that put them in a bad position. If A123 had difficulty
producing the volume needed, there wasn't an alternative. Similarly, it would
give A123 incredible pricing power at the end of the contract term.
For a company like Black & Decker, they could offer a premium tool line based
on the batteries, but they would still be selling lower-cost tools with less
battery life or more weight. With a vehicle, altering the range or weight is a
much bigger deal.
If Apple can increase the power density of the batteries in iPhones or
MacBooks, that's a big win for them. "Solving" transportation is a very
attractive problem and everyone seems to want that. But better batteries have
much easier applications. Apple may be working on a vehicle, but if Apple can
increase its battery power density by even 30% that gives them a huge
advantage in their core markets (phones, tablets, and laptops). That's a much
more modest increase than A123. If Apple's battery efforts work well in their
current devices, one can see how an electric car might eventually happen. But
hiring people from A123 can directly help the markets where Apple makes so
much money today. Maybe electric cars are in Apple's future, but even if they
aren't, batteries definitely are.
------
Tloewald
I'm pretty skeptical about the Apple Car rumor (Jean-Louis Gassee wrote a nice
debunking piece [http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/02/15/the-fantastic-apple-
car...](http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/02/15/the-fantastic-apple-car/)), but
when the NY Times suggests that Apple specializes in mobility and electronics
it seems to make the car seem more likely.
In "Being Digital" Negroponte made the insightful assertion that the wired /
wireless world was flipping -- TVs were becoming wired while phones and
computers were becoming wireless (TVs have kind of flipped again since then).
The next shift is that we may ourselves become unshackled from our homes.
In _City_ , Clifford Simak has people living in flying houses and they simply
park where-ever they want to live for a given period. Well, flying is
impractical, but mobile seems to be coming.
------
DanielBMarkham
Battery technology is the #1 problem pervading tech right now. From robots to
iPads, we need about 10x battery storage for the same weight as we have now.
Having said that, it's shame to see all of this work in cars. I get the
feeling that Apple is just going for a huge "me too" play, hoping to make the
car into the next iPad.
But if that's what it takes for us to finally see progress? Count me in.
~~~
UUMMUU
Since the iphone all Apple seems capable of doing is playing the "me too"
card. Their innovations have stalled and they've gone from being that awesome
company that makes great dev/design laptops and really cool smart phones into
Microsoft 2.0. Tim Cook == Steve Balmer??
~~~
tashoecraft
That's pretty harsh and also ignores how Apple creates its products. It didn't
just see that everyone was doing smart watches and decided to hop on the band
wagon like Samsung or LG. They have been building and designing a product they
thought would actually do well in the market. They do purposefully try to
become the first to announce just because they can.
The iPad was considered a flop by every news outlet when it was announced.
Mocked openly about how stupid it was and how no one would buy it.
They aren't producing as many "market breaking" products, but I am sure they
are working on them. Apple needs to be careful to release products that do
very well, as sales that would be excellent for most any other company are
considered a failure for Apple.
That's not at all to say they haven't been leaving behind a lot of old
products. I will be very happy if IOS 9 is focused on debugging the software
and improving the overall experience. I just hope the next os x will be doing
that as well.
~~~
prapam2
They did hop on the phablet band wagon which i believe was mocked just like
the iPad.
~~~
dba7dba
The best ever quarter Apple has had definitely was helped by hopping on the
phablet band wagon, started by Samsung. I remember the universal mockery most
reviewers had when it was introduced.
Also Samsung (Samsung Chemical) has been involved with battery business for a
long time but they recently got rid of it.
------
julianpye
The key thing to remember is that Tesla's battery competence has its
foundation in their work with Matsushita/Panasonic - who are supplying the
tech for the battery farm in Arizona. The main reason is that manufacturing
and QA of the battery is critical. It will be interesting to see if Apple will
work with Panasonic in this space.
That said, Apple of course may be able to sell at higher margin and be able to
endure higher manufacturing cost.
------
freshfey
So is it illegal for companies to approach people about different job
opportunities? Or is it the tactics used by Apple that give A123 the right to
sue them?
~~~
tfinniga
No, poaching is legal. Apple also got sued for no-poaching agreements with
other tech companies.
I think poaching is good in many cases, since hiring someone away from their
current company usually means a higher price for their services. This means
that you're moving developers to where they're most productive for the market
as a whole.
The problem is this:
> in violation of their employment agreements
It's very possible to break an employment contract by leaving to go work
somewhere else. These might not hold up in court (depends on the state), or
Apple might just pay whatever fine the court levies.
~~~
andyjohnson0
That explains why A123 are suing their former employees, as they individually
had contractual agreements. It doesn't explain why A123 are suing Apple, since
they apparently had no contractual relationship.
IANAL, but my guess would be that the case is based on Apple allegedly
inducing one of the A123 engineers to recruit other engineers into Apple. I
don't know if that is actionable, though.
According to [1] the action is in the Massachusetts District Court, Boston.
Looks like the details are paywalled inside Pacer.
[1]
[http://dockets.justia.com/docket/massachusetts/madce/1:2015c...](http://dockets.justia.com/docket/massachusetts/madce/1:2015cv10438/167626)
~~~
Retric
Your _often_ not allowed to induce people to break contracts. It stems from
Lumeley v. Gye and has a lot of caviots.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumley_v_Gye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumley_v_Gye)
------
skywhopper
Rather than evidence of developing a car, one boring possibility: Apple is
trying to develop large-scale battery systems to more directly harness its
solar farms' ability to power its datacenters.
Or: large-scale battery systems in cars have innovations that might be scaled
down for use in computers, phones, and watches.
~~~
0942v8653
I'd _much_ prefer the latter...
------
cha-cho
"Around June 2014, Apple began aggressively poaching A123 engineers tasked
with leading some of the company's most critical projects..."
June 2014 is right around the time of Tesla's "All Our Patents Belong To You"
announcement: [http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-
yo...](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you)
------
nastygibbon
> A search of LinkedIn profiles turns up more than 60 former Tesla employees
> now employed by Apple.
I can't tell - is this a lot or hardly anything?
~~~
ghshephard
And, more importantly, how many of those Former Tesla Employees are actually
Former Apple Employees who became Tesla Employees, and then decided they would
rather go back to work for Apple?
~~~
q2
Are you suggesting that they are sent intentionally to join and know the
future plans?
~~~
echoless
It could simply be a case of disillusionment at Tesla. Also Apple employees
are known to leave Apple, either to start a company or for a sabbatical but
then go back to working at Apple once they're done.
------
o0-0o
From the article: A123 Systems is a pioneering industrial lithium-ion battery
maker, which was backed by a $249 million U.S. government grant. It filed for
bankruptcy in 2012 and has been selling off assets.
So, they take taxpayer money, go bankrupt, and then attempt to block former
employees from getting jobs?
~~~
AVTizzle
That part stood out to me as well. A123 doesn't come out of this one looking
very good at all.
------
chrismcb
Why is it when a sports team goes after another player, it us a trade. But
when a company goes after an employee, it is poaching? Yeah I get that the
sports guy is under contract. But the word "poaching" has a negative
conotation and it makes them look like a big bad evil company. When in reality
it is a win for the employee.
------
njloof
It's considered poaching to hire engineers from a company that's been bankrupt
for two years?
~~~
hga
It was a Chapter 11 reorganization, not a Chapter 7 liquidation, and the major
parts of the company were bought by two others.
------
ajays
This is pretty rich, coming from A123, since they stole their ideas from
Professor Goodenough.
------
bborud
No Apple Watch jokes? I'm disappointed in you people.
------
illumen
'Poaching' makes workers sound like slaves owned by a company.
People are not owned by companies, it's the other way around.
They are not illegally hired, so poaching is incorrectly used.
~~~
d_theorist
"Poaching" in this context does not imply illegality.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Operos – hyperscaler-grade infrastructure for everyone - dddchk
https://www.paxautoma.com/operos/
======
dddchk
Operos is a Linux-based operating system that brings hyperscaler-grade
infrastructure automation to organizations of all sizes: scheduled containers,
software defined networking, and converged storage automatically provisioned
on commodity x86 servers.
Today, at Pax Automa, we are excited to announce the first preview release of
Operos.
Please check it out and let us know what do you think.
[https://www.paxautoma.com/operos/](https://www.paxautoma.com/operos/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Heat Emission 'Most Likely Cause' of Pioneer Anomaly - pwg
http://news.discovery.com/space/new-evidence-fingers-heat-as-culprit-for-pioneer-anomaly-110725.html
======
ColinWright
Old "news" - submitted several time in the past, the most recent being this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2787120>
Here are some more submissions and discussions on the topic:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=pio...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=pioneer+anomaly)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Twitter Can be Corrosive to Marketing Efforts - fallentimes
http://www.seobook.com/how-twitter-can-be-corrossive-marketing-efforts
======
onreact-com
You have to make sure your blog and/or static website gets some exposure and
Twitter is not your number one channel of spreading your message. Then Twitter
works well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Happierco – Employee-Centric Performance Management Solution - sorich87
https://www.happierco.com
======
sorich87
Hi HN,
I’m Ulrich, co-founder of Happierco. We’re building the first employee-centric
performance management solution.
We help our users turn their company culture into a competitive advantage by
enabling the empowerment of rank-and-file employees to drive business growth
and effect change in the company.
The numerous solutions in the market all see performance management from the
lenses of managers and are just trying to build better tools for managers to
collect information.
With Happierco, we want to go further. We are bringing more value by
increasing positive interactions between the employees, enabling transparency
and faster employee development, which in turn benefits the company as a
whole.
Performance management is frequently a source of frustration for employees
across every industry, especially creative ones. So I guess it’ll be a subject
of great interest here on HN. I am looking forward to the discussion!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation - ptbello
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/18/david-miranda-detained-uk-nsa
======
rfnslyr
" _Before letting him go, they seized numerous possessions of his, including
his laptop, his cellphone, various video game consoles, DVDs, USB sticks, and
other materials. They did not say when they would return any of it, or if they
would._ "
Having my lifes work on my Macbook, this is absolutely terrifying and makes my
blood boil. What solutions do you HNers use to back up your data?
~~~
Adirael
\- Time Machine that backs every thing up hourly when I'm near that
local/network drive.
\- Daily offsite backup using BackBlaze.
\- Weekly full copy of the HDD kept outside the house (in a storage unit) in
case there's a fire or something like that (I use CarbonCopyCloner for this)
I use FileVault that (AFAIK) will make the data on my computer useless without
my user password. I could be online again with all my data as if nothing
happened in less than 24h. It would be much shorter if I kept a spare laptop
in hand, but the cost is too high and I can afford 24h.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How many social media users are real people? - nixtaken
https://gizmodo.com/how-many-social-media-users-are-real-people-1826447042
======
thephyber
It's important to understand that "bots" is a large variety of automation
levels, just as "self-driving car" has 5 levels spanning from "cruise control"
to "full automation with no ability for manual intervention".
Browser extensions, custom Python/JavaScript clients, and even just paid
outsourcing of likes/comments/retweets/captchas can all be considered "bots".
------
Minor49er
Not only is it hard to tell how many users are bots, but how many users
supplement their account activity with bots or third party integrations. A lot
of users who have business accounts will do this. For example, realtors will
post updates under their own name, but will also have services that will
schedule and post content for them automatically for new home listings. This
will only get harder to determine as time goes on because marketers nowadays
are focusing on "humanizing" their customer interactions as much as possible
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Suck at Branding - feint
http://feint.me/2010/05/how-to-suck-at-branding/
======
ThomPete
Actually most branding experts don't fall into those traps.
They do however fall into the trap of thinking that you can actively brand
something, just as you do with cattle.
At the end of the day, your brand reflect _everything_ about your company.
From call center to email updates etc. Most importantly is your product (it
didn't used to be like that)
The things that matter is the experience you give, not the narrative your
frame it within.
------
DotSauce
This was very funny. Great read, thank you. Tweeted @DotSauce
I've noticed alot of bloggers and app developers are making these mistakes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Benchmarking shared memory vs message passing on OS X - invalid_name
http://blog.antoniofrighetto.com/ipc
======
fenollp
> I have done multiple tests and then took an average, don't know how much
> these results can be reliable (since to get statistics more plausible we
> perhaps should have allocated much more memory).
Yep. Nothing to see here
~~~
invalid_name
Wanted to just note down the numbers I got by timing, as then I said, I wanted
to remark that was interesting how they are being used complementarily and had
fun to implement them.
------
muizelaar
This article is very difficult to follow. It seems to be timing the difference
between mach_msgs and System V semaphores. It does not seem to be comparing
shared memory vs message passing.
------
faragon
Title should be:
"Benchmarking OS X semaphores vs message passing".
Shared memory + spinlocks should be much faster than shared memory +
semaphores (much faster, if implemented properly, e.g. spinlock + timeout, on
timeout queue another message, again spinlock and try to copy all the
elements, etc.).
------
luckydude
As a benchmarking guy, this is pretty basic. You might take a look at lmbench,
it's open source, you could use all the timing infrastructure it provides and
provide much better results. Reading that code would be educational (and it's
very small).
Paper here: [http://mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lmbench/lmbench-
usenix.pdf](http://mcvoy.com/lm/bitmover/lmbench/lmbench-usenix.pdf)
BTW, if someone has a better starting point, please share. lmbench is just
what I happen to know.
------
omgtehlion
It is not really benchmarking. And not really about shared memory.
Sorry for being rude.
~~~
gumby
It is rude. You can say "I don't consider this benchmarking; benchmarking
would be XXX" etc. Just to say "you failed" says more about you than this
article (which does need work).
~~~
invalid_name
What kind of work would it need sorry? Anyway I can understand this may not
seem to be real benchmarking, while writing it eventually became almost an
excuse, the very original purpose was to kinda verify my Prof's thesis,
whether was really right or not. My intention was not even about to utterly
speak about benchmarking nor shared memory (which I both tried to cover
though).
~~~
gumby
First of all, your article was fine: you had a question, you thought about it
a little and got some data, and wrote it up. More people should do this.
_As an article_ it's not particularly clear in method or presentation. It's
not especially clear in what it's measuring, process, isolation of variables.
But it's not attempting to be a journal article. So that's not what I meant
about "needs work" (though it is hard to pull the message out of the wording).
But I don't think it supports your thesis. Again, thats part of what the web
is about (not every posting should be a well polished pearl) so I"m glad you
posted this. If you cared though, I'd improve your process. This post might
not be worth rewriting though -- that's up to you.
~~~
invalid_name
Yes, I got what you meant, and I know that some parts, especially those which
cover measuring, should perhaps be investigated deeper. I'll outline the
objectives better next time.
------
Inufu
It looks like what you are actually timing is the time it takes to start a
process - time for either communication method should be on the order of
microseconds or less. For better results, start the two processes first, then
measure how long it takes to send a message from process a to b and back to a.
------
xtreme
Shared memory can be a lot faster than that. MPI libraries report ~0.25 us for
1 Byte and ~400us for 4MB transfers using shared memory.
------
mainframe-mess
Sidebar: Apple's desktop operating system hasn't been called OS X for almost a
year.
There are no graphs, how is this a benchmark?
~~~
paulddraper
What is the OS?
~~~
astrodust
macOS.
~~~
paulddraper
Really??
I remember macOS.
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/MacOS_o...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/MacOS_original_logo.svg/300px-
MacOS_original_logo.svg.png)
~~~
astrodust
That's Mac OS.
Mac OS -> Mac OS X -> OS X -> macOS.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Mac_OS)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon to remove stack ranking - brad0
http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon-hunger-games-employee-review-process-change-2016-11?r=US&IR=T
======
cableshaft
About time. I can't believe any tech company, which requires collaboration and
cooperation amongst employees in order to make software, could implement a
system that encourages employees to sabotage each other's work so they can be
higher ranked.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why won't your company hire remote workers? Why not work in an office? - JoeCortopassi
This last set of "Who's Hiring?"[1] and "Freelancer? Seeking Freelancers?"[2] threads made me realize that there are two main groups that <i>can</i> help each other, but decidedly <i>won't</i>. It seems there is a large group of qualified and willing workers that have a strong desire to work from home, and another separate group that wants qualified workers to work in the physical seats that they provide. The other interesting wrinkle in all this, is <i>each side is usually willing to compromise on other important things, just because of the physical location of where the work is done</i>. On the side of the companies, there is a large unmet demand for skilled workers, to the point where compensation packages spiral out of control and barely qualified people get treated like royalty. On the freelancer side, people are willing to work oddball hours, at significantly lower pay, to have the freedom of sitting at home to work.<p><i>So my question is two parts</i>: 1) If you work in an office, why won't your company let workers telecommute full time? 2) If you telecommute, why are you unwilling to work from an office<p>------<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857714<p>[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857717
======
byoung2
I think the bigger and more established the company, the more willing they are
to allow telecommuting full time. I know people who work for Bank of America
and IBM and they have never been to the office. Those companies have tens of
thousands of employees, and the math just makes sense for them. Each remote
employee is money saved on office space, parking passes, pots of coffee, etc.
For smaller companies, it seems to be harder to accept telecommuting. It could
be that in smaller companies, the focus is growth, which is often aided by the
type of face-to-face collaboration you get from having everyone in the office.
Or it could be that bosses just don't trust what they can't see, and in
smaller companies, they are in a better position to regulate it.
The strange part is, I am many times more productive working from home than in
the office, and I have demonstrated it on many occasions at multiple
companies. Sometimes I can get a whole week's work done in a few hours at
home. Other times I sit in the office and surf the 'net all day, not getting
any work done. The bosses have never complained when they catch people goofing
off at work, as long as they put in a full day, but they are always suspicious
of people who work from home, requesting email updates throughout the day.
------
HedgeMage
Dedicated to telecommuting here, for so many reasons that I hardly know where
to begin:
* I don't want to lose 2h/day to unpaid work (i.e. 1 hour commute each way). That's 500 hours/year if I take two weeks vacation, or a little over 60 8-hour workdays per year -- time that I'm away from my loved ones and from my work -- what a waste!
* In an office environment, especially the now-trendy open office plans, it is difficult-to-impossible to manage interruptions and actually get work done efficiently.
* Most of the better jobs in my areas of expertise are outside Indianapolis, but I'm committed to staying here for family reasons.
* By working from home I avoid the tendency to eat poorly, the inevitability of getting trapped in close contact with smokers who set off my allergies, and don't bother people when I need to get up and _move_ , which means I do that more: all things that improve my health.
* Working from home means I don't have to take time off if my kid is home sick from school or has a day off, I don't have to stick him in day care, and I can keep a more stable work schedule despite the furnace guy coming or a package being delivered or whatever.
* Working from home means I can manage my work space the way I want, complete with one standing work area and one sitting, a loud-as-heck metal buckling-spring keyboard, country-western music (yes, you read that right), fountain pens, and a steady stream of oolong tea.
* I think better when I work from home, because I can step away from the keyboard and run kata for ten minutes when I'm stuck, grab the laptop and sit outside or at a local coffee shop for a change of pace, or whatever I need to do to get my mind churning.
* I have useful things like email and chat logs to help me make sure I know what's going on, as opposed to someone waylaying me in the hall on the way to the restroom and assuming that I will accurately remember what they wanted when all I really want to do is pee.
* Remote work generally comes with more flexible hours than in-office work, which means that I can accommodate parent-teacher conferences, my karate schedule, etc. while still working full time.
------
jasonkester
The short answer for why I work 100% remote? Because I can.
That's really the single greatest feature of being a developer today. You can
do your thing from pretty much anywhere in the world with no reduction in
throughput.
I can (and have) set up shop for the winter on some remote Central American
surf break. I can (and have) moved my main residence to a small village in the
French countryside where the quality of life is good and there's enough
bouldering to last me a lifetime of afternoons off. I can (and have) simply
packed my whole development world onto a 12" Thinkpad and headed off on the
road for an entire year.
And all those places have wifi. And I can work there. So I do.
So even if I found a company that did happen to have an office right next to
that perfect left reef pass off the coast of Sumatra, I probably still
wouldn't want to commit myself to working there full time. I already have an
office there. As well as everywhere else I'd like to be.
It didn't used to be like this. And it still isn't for most professions. But
it absolutely _is_ for software. As a developer, I think you'd be crazy to
pass up on it.
So yeah, that's why.
------
mchannon
Aside from the "I need to see you working" aspect, which reflects not only on
bosses but also investors (have to justify that schweet loft in SOMA that's
costing an arm and a leg), there's also the concern of IP leakage- code can be
copied by a competitor, server access can be gained, and sensitive company
activities are harder to keep under wraps.
Doesn't matter that these are probably just as if not more likely to come from
the office itself than from a remote worker.
I think in the end it comes down to access; if the server barfs or the CEO
wants to know why X is X and not Y, they highly value that in-person access,
dispatchable in seconds rather than hours or days. They want a living,
breathing being to do XYZ to. Employee productivity takes a backseat to
pointy-haired-boss productivity (and that of their cousin, pointy-haired-
investor), and since the employee isn't signing the checks..
I think it'd make an excellent thought experiment, particularly with bay area
rents being what they are, to try to launch a company where all staff must
reside in the same structure but don't have to work from there (or are even
expressly forbidden from doing much work there). Instead of "you have to work
here, where you sleep isn't our problem" it could be "you have to sleep here,
where you work isn't our problem".
Employees' rents tend to drive company's cash burn far more than meets the eye
(An $800/mo. bedroom, plus 50% for state & fed income taxes, plus ~25% for
payroll taxes, ends up socking a business' bottom line for almost $20k, when
the business could spend half that directly for the same effect), and an
employee will get far more use out of a bed than a desk (since the desk can be
their lap, coffee shop, public park, outside, etc.).
Why won't freelancers work from the office?
1) The office is 1,000 miles away and you have ties to where you live now
2) The office is in a country you don't qualify to work in
There are philosophical reasons why some freelancers choose to be freelancers,
but I think most choose the role because it's the only one possible given
where they live.
------
mcrider
I really wish I could do both. I've been telecommuting for almost 5 years now
and I'm about to go insane (not to mention that its not a good way to make
lasting connections or learn from your peers, among other reasons I dislike
telecommuting). On the other hand, I remember working in an office and being
'forced' to be there every day at a certain time is anathema to how I think
programmers should be treated. I'd like it if the entire staff comes in about
two days a week and can otherwise use a shared office space whenever they
want. In fact, I think there's probably a business opportunity there for co-
working space owners.
------
allenbrunson
This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
In the employer/employee relationship, I think the balance of power has tipped
too far towards the employer. I'm supposed to show up at their office for
eight hours a day, five days a week, fighting serious traffic both ways, which
saps a lot of my energy. Leaving for any reason other than lunch is frowned
on. I won't have any control over other people interrupting me and making
noise. I'm left with no choice but to structure my entire life around the job.
I'm more than willing to work hard, but that's too much to ask.
By working at home, I can take a nap when I'm feeling unmotivated, take two
hours off on a nice afternoon to walk my dog and then make up the hours later
when the sun has gone down, be at home to meet the repair man, and so on. My
quality of life goes up by a _lot_. This is so important to me that I'm
willing to take a serious pay cut to get it.
My experience is that working for a company that merely _allows_ remote
workers isn't enough. If the majority of the company works in a central
office, you are at a constant disadvantage. It's not that your coworkers are
conspiring against you, they just aren't going to include you in every hallway
meeting that you might have otherwise participated in. So if you want to be a
full-fledged team member in good standing, but still work remotely, you almost
_have_ to work for a company that is 100 percent remote.
I am fortunate enough to have just such a job, right now, working on iOS apps.
Boy, do I ever love it. I can only hope that it continues to work out for me,
for a long time to come.
~~~
_delirium
_In the employer/employee relationship, I think the balance of power has
tipped too far towards the employer. I'm supposed to show up at their office
for eight hours a day, five days a week, fighting serious traffic both ways,
which saps a lot of my energy. Leaving for any reason other than lunch is
frowned on._
I agree this is usually the case, but I don't think it's _tipped_ towards
that: it's been like that since at least the 19th century, and is basically
what mass employment in companies looks like. If anything, the employer's
control over working habits is somewhat more relaxed now than it used to be,
especially in tech. Programmers in 1960s IBM had to follow dress codes, and
had to be in the office at 8am, whereas most tech companies today are pretty
relaxed about both dress codes and shifted work schedules (e.g. 10am-6pm).
------
harnhua
For (1), from a young company's perspective, I've found it much easier to
communicate and steer in the same direction when a teammate on a project is in
the same room. As another person pointed out, face-to-face collaboration is
vital at the growth stage.
As for (2), I sort of telecommute (work from a cafe or public place) sometimes
when I need to work on an individual task that requires some creativity or
sustained concentration. Changing my physical environment from time to time
also seems to help stimulate creative juices. During those times, the office
environment can be detrimental.
------
jamesjguthrie
I hate working in an office, I don't know why I've been trying to find a small
space to rent myself.
So far I'm loving working remotely when I can get the peace to do so - we have
a 1 year old and my soon-to-be wife is out Monday-Friday. There's nothing
better than making money while sitting in your house coat :-)
------
pairing
Hiring a new employee to work remotely requires employers to give a lot of
blind trust to someone that is a stranger. I think trust should be earned not
given so I would not let someone start off by working remotely.
The company I work for has been burned several times by remote software
consulting firms (some well regarded) that created garbage applications. They
now require all work be done in the office, and (speaking on their behalf) the
difference is very significant. Communication is the key to success, and
remote work really complicates things unless you work hard to have a great
communication infrastructure in place.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
When Goodharting Is Optimal - laurex
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/megKzKKsoecdYqwb7
======
comex
This is just a demonstration of how naively optimizing the expected value is
not actually "optimal" in general.
There are two fundamental strategies for the robot. One is to stay on L
forever, and have a 50.1% chance of receiving... let's call it `x` amount of
reward, and a 49.9% chance of receiving nothing. The other is to move back and
forth (L, center, R, center), which has a 100% chance of receiving `x/4`
reward. (In theory the robot could also stay on R forever, but that's strictly
inferior to staying on L, even if only slightly.)
The robot can also use a mix of these two strategies, e.g. by moving back and
forth but waiting an extra turn every time it's on L. This increases the
worst-case reward at the cost of reducing the best-case reward.
Let's rephrase in gambling terms. Suppose you have a one-time offer to bet any
amount of money and then flip a fair coin (well, a 50.1/49.9% coin). If it's
heads, the money you bet is quadrupled; if it's tails, you lose the money.
Then the first option above represents betting all your money; the second
option represents betting nothing; mixing the strategies is equivalent to
betting only some of your money.
What would you do? The expected value of the money you come away with is 2x
the money you bet, so if you're optimizing for expected value, you'll bet all
the money you own. But most people wouldn't, because the risk of coming away
with nothing is not worth the possible benefit. Personally, I might bet some
of my money, but there's a good chance I'd bet nothing, because I care much
more about the worst-case scenario than the average scenario – at least when
the chance of a worst-case scenario is so high (almost 50%!).
You could argue that monetary gain is not the same thing as a reward function,
and risk aversion should be modeled as part of the reward calculation, so that
you can, in fact, optimize the expected value of the reward function. But in
that case, the robot just has a bad (or non-human-like) reward function, so
it's no surprise that it makes strange decisions.
------
g82918
This really feels like an article that is trying to say something important
about a bigger issue. But the examples and the overall tone really diminish
it. They allude a lot to things more important than them like Goodhart's law,
mainly for cache, while they talk about their own poor quality idea(a bizarre
imagined scenario far removed from, at least my, regular concerns). In the
case of an AI show a concrete example involving a robot vacuum. Otherwise it
feels like one of my junior's blowing smoke up my ass about hardware threads.
------
carlmr
>UL and UR think that that policy is optimal!
Whatever UL and UR are they're introduced as "reward functions". They "see",
they "prefer", they "think" etc. Is it normal to anthropomorphize reward
functions now?
I find it makes this article hard to read. Is this common in robotics and if
so, why would you describe reward functions in such a roundabout way?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PeerTube, a libre federated video streaming platform - buovjaga
https://medium.com/@chocobozzz/peertube-a-federated-video-streaming-platform-fa90e6c503df
======
craftyguy
Here's the website:
[https://joinpeertube.org/en/home/](https://joinpeertube.org/en/home/)
And project page:
[https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)
So you can avoid medium.
~~~
buovjaga
It is indeed weird that the PeerTube dev chooses to use Medium.
Sean Tilley has something cooking in this sphere:
[https://github.com/DeadSuperHero/postmodern](https://github.com/DeadSuperHero/postmodern)
"A federated article platform for journalists, powered by ActivityPub"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Intel Supercomputer - kiddz
https://www.businessinsider.com/intel-department-of-energy-aurora-first-exascale-supercomputer-2019-3
======
kiddz
Anyone know how long it takes for your general $2000 laptop to have the power
of a past super computer?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Easy Real Estate Investments = Oxymoron? - bmcd
Have any of you purchased real estate solely for the passive income? And how did you go about it? I have a contact that sells turnkey rentals and some cash saved up but I want to get opinions/stories before I go any further.
======
codegeek
"real estate solely for the passive income"
Now that is an oxymoron in my opinion. Real estate even though on the surface
seems passive (rent it out while you sit on a beach) is far from that. There
will be periodic maintenance, dealing with renters and god forbid you get bad
ones, big item expenses once in a while (you bought a 15 year old house and
even though the last owner did upgrades, you suddenly have to replace the
roof), rent collection (this one can be painful too).
Investing in real estate is not always a bad thing depending on your capacity
and the location/market of course. But please be aware that becoming a
landlord is not passive at all even though you will not be working at the
property on a daily basis.
~~~
akg_67
Agree with you. There is nothing passive about becoming real estate landlord.
Property management firms can manage only so much and cost a lot. They will
come to you for most big expenses and decisions. Unless you have lot of
rentals, property management firms tend to be expensive and you barely break-
even on one or two properties.
Another issue with rental real-estate is squatting and defacing of the
property if your property stays vacant for a month or two and not in good
shape.
From passive income aspect, it is better to invest in REITs to get exposure to
real-estate or join property management/ real-estate partnerships as LP/GP.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What are the best digital marketing channels? - Hashmimart
======
sharemywin
wide open question? "best"
cheapest? based on size of budget? best ROI? easiest to manage? current
customers versus new customers? marketing goal? Direct response versus
branding? what kind of product?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pornhub is giving away free premium membership in Italy - harrydry
https://twitter.com/GoodMarketingHQ/status/1238093695011958784
======
Fjolsvith
Time to set the VPN exit to an Italian city.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good newsletters/blog to sponsor? - bryanmgreen
My company is interested in the tech community and we'd like to sponsor or advertise in some good blogs/newsletters.<p>What are your favorites that might be open to this?<p>Thanks!
======
mtmail
Pretty much what [http://upstart.me/](http://upstart.me/) does. "Find targeted
email newsletters that you can sponsor"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Differential Cryptanalysis of GOST [pdf] - tetrep
http://eprint.iacr.org/2011/626.pdf
======
TheLoneWolfling
TL;DR:
> We obtain some 50 distinct attacks faster than brute force on the full
> 32-round GOST and we provide five nearly practical attacks on two major
> 128-bit variants of GOST
------
etep
Usually statements such as "This paper has some serious significance both
scientific and historical." (quoted from the article) are a flag of the exact
opposite.
I would need more context from a more trusted source to inform my own opinion
on this work.
~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Well, it's a break of the national symmetric encryption cypher of Russia.
Changing standards like that which are used in equipment in the field is
expensive. A LOT of military equipment is going to have to be changed, and if
they're using ASICs as accelerators in it they'll have to change the hardware.
Some of their equipment will use software only, but quite a lot likely
accelerates it with hardware.
So it's certainly of historical importance. It's not often that a math paper
spurs millions of dollars of changes. As for scientific importance, it's a
near-practical break in a well-used cryptosystem. The breaking of DES was a
similar event, and that's considered of scientific importance by the
cryptography community. This isn't quite as strong a break, as building a
cracker would be quite expensive, 2^101 is quite a few operations, but it's
not so far outside the realm of possibility as to be unthinkable.
~~~
oakwhiz
It seems like military equipment could benefit from removable, modular ASICs
or FPGAs designed and programmed specifically for encryption.
~~~
brohee
Are there even tamperproof FPGA?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: BackYourStack – Support your open source dependencies - znarfor
https://backyourstack.com/
======
znarfor
Hi, I'm François, an engineer at Open Collective and this is one of my first
projects there.
When I joined Open Collective, I was excited to see so many great Open Source
projects (like Babel, Webpack, etc ...) managing their financing on the
platform. However, it was also quickly clear to me that most users of these
Open Source projects have absolutely no idea about their efforts to become
financially sustainable.
Discussing this problem within the team, we thought scanning for dependencies
(such as package.json and composer.json) would be a simple way of matching
users with projects, BackYourStack was born.
We started this for the community to use and own. It's Open Source itself and
we would love to provide more detection patterns, also feature other financing
strategies (outside of Open Collective). Looking forward to your feedback!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eric Schmidt exited as a technical advisor at Alphabet in February - elsewhen
https://www.cnet.com/news/eric-schmidt-who-led-googles-transformation-into-a-tech-giant-has-left-the-company/
======
lowdose
Schmidt's comments about China made a tremendous u-turn a couple of years
back. At that time he was already talking about a future of two economic
blocks with China in the East and everything else West, giving China slowly
but surely more people & countries under the Chinese banner. I remember I
first thought Eric starred a bit too long in the Chrome browser but he was
right.
I wonder what he has seen in Beijing that made him taking notice and now
gathering force to direct a military ensemble.
Schmidt could also just retire but he chooses to double down on his patriotic
feelings. To be continued...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Starts Using a Friend Recommendations Engine - nickb
http://mashable.com/2008/06/04/facebook-friend-suggestor/
======
aneesh
What's next, "suggested wall posts"? We think this is what you want to comment
on this photo - click OK to make the comment.
I'm fine with (and actually like) the "People we think you may know" on
LinkedIn, because it actually gives me a fair number of people I know.
Facebook just hasn't gotten it right - I don't know any of those people!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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