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Fastsocket – A highly scalable socket for Linux - nicolast https://github.com/fastos/fastsocket ====== bscanlan The performance data looks interesting, but this is work based on a pretty old kernel (originally released in 2010 or so). There have been many changes and improvements added to the 3.x kernel that may overlap with this work. Publishing the code and details on github is great, but working with the kernel community and merging into the mainstream kernel is the only way for work like this to have a long-term meaningful existence - Google in particular have been doing a great job getting networking improvements in. That said, it's interesting to have this kind of thing come out of large-scale production web environments in China. ~~~ sillysaurus3 Is it possible that by using an old kernel like this one, you'd expose yourself to security vulnerabilities? I'm new to kernel programming. Is this submission suggesting that you downgrade your kernel to a 2010-era release in order to take advantage of the performance improvements, or is the submission showing some kind of modular component which you can integrate into your current kernel? If it's the former, then wouldn't you be pinning yourself to the old version of the kernel, so you'll have to integrate all updates by hand rather than receive them automatically during the normal update process? ~~~ greglindahl This kernel is what Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is currently using. Red Hat maintains it, and writes patches for security vulnerabilities. It's no surprise that Sina developed, tested, and deployed this patch against what they were running in production. ~~~ sillysaurus3 By using this kernel, will you be able to automatically receive security upgrades in the future? Or will you have to apply them manually and then recompile and install the kernel yourself? Is "developers have to apply security patches manually, then recompile and reinstall the kernel themselves rather than automatically" not a big deal in practice? ~~~ snus All distro vendors backport critical fixes for the lifetime of the operating system. RHEL6 is supported at least until 2020. 2.6.32 is also supported by kernel.org still. ------ edsiper2 Looks like its based on 2.6.32 series. I would hope they start working with the upstream Kernel otherwise this project will stay stuck in Limbo as previous initiatives to improve TCP handling at kernel level (e.g: Megapipe). This version do not support TCP_FASTOPEN, SO_REUSEPORT, TCP_AUTOCORKING, etc. ~~~ peterwwillis It's RedHat's 2.6.32 kernel, which is not the vanilla Linux 2.6.32 kernel. It's been getting backported fixes since the tree began. RedHat does not release what patches they include in their kernels, but luckily for us, Oracle maintains a project called RedPatch which publicly documents the patches going into the RHEL kernels. As an example of how this kernel is not the 2.6 tree: On April 14, 2014, in RedHat's 2.6.32-431.23.3.el6 kernel tree [1] , there was recently a patch included [2] that affects the ipv4 subsystem. You can find that same patch [3] was originally applied to the Linux kernel on April 14, 2014. This is common practice, and so RedHat kernels more closely resemble modern kernels like 3.12 than anything else. [1] [https://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=redpatch.git;a=shortlog;h=rhel...](https://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=redpatch.git;a=shortlog;h=rhel-2.6.32-431.23.3.el6) [2] [https://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=redpatch.git;a=commitdiff;h=c0...](https://oss.oracle.com/git/?p=redpatch.git;a=commitdiff;h=c01663823d746852b7632199c57ad77a84907540) [3] [http://www.serverphorums.com/read.php?12,912195](http://www.serverphorums.com/read.php?12,912195) ~~~ desdiv RedHat does not release what patches they include in their kernels Stupid question here: aren't kernel patches considered derivative works? If so, then isn't RedHat legally obligated to released them under GPL? ~~~ logic They provide the complete source, as required by the GPL. However, they do not provide patch sets neatly broken out like they used to; that's what the parent is referring to. ------ crazydoggers Why would the evaluation charts look the way they do? [https://github.com/fastos/fastsocket#online- evaluation](https://github.com/fastos/fastsocket#online-evaluation) The "before and after" CPU series have nearly the same exact fit. If the data was from separate 24 hour periods, wouldn't you expect the graphs to look different? I recognize that with a large service, you'd get repetitive load patterns, but the similarity here look a little extreme. ~~~ teraflop I find the first graph peculiar on its own. Supposedly, each line is the load on one of 8 cores on the same machine. Why would some cores experience heavier load than others, very consistently, over the course of a day? I've never seen a workload exhibit that kind of long-term, core-level affinity on Linux. ~~~ yxhuvud Well, the obvious reason for such a graph is that the network load balancing between several waiting worker processes isn't symmetrical. ~~~ teraflop Even if that was the case, there isn't normally a stable mapping between processes and physical cores. There would have to be something within the kernel itself that gives higher priority to some cores than others. Not saying that's impossible, but I've worked on machines with more than 8 cores and never seen it happen. ------ Sir_Cmpwn Is this being considered for merging upstream? What's the tech behind it, what makes it faster? ~~~ corbet The developers have not posted it to the relevant mailing lists or asked that it be merged, so, no, it is not being considered. ~~~ harry8 Maybe it's up to the more sensible in the kernel "community", to reach out to the developers of code known to be interesting to discuss what's in it for them to do the work required to get it merged, the probability of doing a ton of work, and then being ignored etc etc. There's a sense in the above of "They haven't submitted us so we don't care." It might not be the best way to make the kernel as good as it can be, if that is the goal of anyone active in the kernel "community." (And maybe it is). I have a lot of sympathy for someone publishing their code and their results and then saying "I won't play stupid kernel politics, your move." I don't know if that's what is happening here or it's cultural differences or something I haven't thought of. Nor do I know if this particular development is worthwhile merging, but hey, neither does the kernel "community" right? ------ sandGorgon does this occupy the same functional space as zeromq or nanomsg ? are there any comparisons? ~~~ Twirrim This is much lower level than those. This is all about the TCP stack. This is the OSI model, from the top down: 7) Application 6) Presentation 5) Session 4) Transport 3) Network 2) Data link 1) Physical ZeroMQ fits in neatly at the top, layer 7 (arguably it is the presentation layer too because it uses its own protocol). What this is talking about relates to network sockets which is around layers 4 and 5 (you can find lots of debate around the subject). Any speed improvements at lower levels in the stack would be seen by stuff on layers above it. ------ theyoungestgun Better yet - avoid the kernel altogether! Onload + Solarflare is a wonderful thing. ------ haosdent Great job!
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Mapping Anything with BSicons - zetter https://chriszetter.com/blog/2020/06/25/mapping-anything-with-bsicons/ ====== shakna As every BSicon has a specific purpose, especially some of the rarer ones, I wonder how difficult it would be to encode that information into a simulation? There's a couple of train simulators I enjoy playing with on my downtime, and this seems like it might be an easier path towards making a highly complicated engine for something like that. ~~~ l9k8j7h6 The BSicons are similar to the network tiles used in SimCity 4. The main work of transit modders there (Network Addon Mod) is to create additional tiles for different types of transit intersections. It would be very interesting to see one of the OSS city builders pick up BSicons as a subset of their schema. ------ ape4 The code doesn't look so pretty. I was hoping for something more semantic. First layout the tracks, then the location of the stations (on the track), then characteristics of each station, etc.
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Truth: how great a virtue is it in business? - transburgh http://foundread.com/2007/10/23/truth-how-great-a-virtue-is-it-business/ ====== gibsonf1 The article is based on analyzing a birthdate lie on a public forum. I actually always "lie" about my age on public forums where that information can be seen to avoid identity theft. A birthday is a key piece of information for identity thieves.
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Can a modern website design improve credibility? - gvidon https://ottofeller.com/blog/can-a-modern-website-design-improve-credibility ====== onreact This is a rhetorical question, isn't it? Otherwise the answer is: of course! People judge a website in milliseconds just by looking at the design. When it's cluttered etc. they leave instantly.
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Ask HN: What's a good book on breaking apart monoliths? - monolithbook I&#x27;m working with a company right now that&#x27;s struggling to maintain a huge monolith that lives on what&#x27;s basically a mainframe. <i>Everything</i> is tightly coupled, to the point that our database tables haven&#x27;t been modified in <i>fifteen years</i> -- every modification requires a new table and a JOIN.<p>Some people are starting to recognize that something smells. I&#x27;m struggling to explain alternate philosophies like &quot;cattle not pets&quot; and phrases like &quot;tightly coupled&quot;.<p>One of our less-technical managers mentioned he feels like he needs to read a book on databases, but I think what he really needs to read is something that explains how we can (and should) separate systems via things like webservices, how paradigms have shifted over the past 20 years, and how we can make our systems more adaptable to change.<p>I&#x27;m reading <i>Working Effectively with Legacy Code</i>, but that&#x27;s too deep in the nitty-gritty technical side of things.<p>Are there any good books that give more of a 10,000 foot architectural view of how to dig yourself out of a legacy monolith? ====== itamarst Maybe "Building Microservices", by Sam Newman. It's an architect-y point of view, but it's definitely got some examples of coupling-via-database and how to deal with it. It may be that a monolith is just fine, nothing inherently wrong with monoliths in many cases. Not being able to change anything... less so.
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Make your terminal look more fancy - stevemao https://github.com/stevemao/prompt-so-fancy ====== brudgers For feedback, this might make a good "Show HN".
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7 Things You Must Be Doing with Docker - agonzalezro http://blog.getcrane.com/7-things-must-docker ====== collyw "Over the next eighteen months, your enterprise will need to adopt container technology at pace. And that will put pressure on you to assess the role containers can play and adapt your infrastructure to support them" Technology adoption for the sake of it? I managed 12 years so far without Docker, why do I suddenly need it now? I Already know how to use virtualenv with Python, or a full virtual machine. Why do I suddenly need another level? Fad driven development. ~~~ landmark2 Whilst the article is written a bit like a sales pitch I believe docker makes the difference when having infrustructures requiring several machines/roles
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Ask HN: What's wrong or missing in your favorite OS? - jayphelps Whether you're a Windows, Linux, or Mac person, most hackers are very opinionated about their preferred OS.<p>My question is what "feature" (or lack thereof) do you secretly hate about it? You know, that thing you won't admit in _____ vs. _____ arguments? ====== Staydecent I really think neither OS X nor Windows has the upper hand on the other, so I'll offer my top gripe for each. OSX: Window/File Management. I've been told it's the "mac way" to open a program to create a file. I'm reliant on the OS/Finder to do this. Also, just basic window management is confusing to me. Perhaps Lion is addressing this. Windows: No terminal. ------ roadnottaken Mac OS X: lack of a remote-desktop solution. (Able to connect TO a Mac, from any other computer via RDP). I can go from Windows to Linux, Linux to Windows, and Mac to Windows/Linux... but no way to connect TO my OSX box except from another Mac. Why? ~~~ konad OSX comes with remote desktop, it's in System preferences, sharing .., remote desktop (I think). I don't have osx available to get the exact words. It's just VNC. It also has an SSH server in the same section so you can tunnel through securely. ~~~ roadnottaken Wow, thanks. I can't believe I didn't know that. I've only had a Mac for a few months.... Thanks!!! ~~~ roadnottaken FWIW, after trying VNC on OSX (via Linux and Win7) I have to give Microsoft credit for their RDP implementation. It kick's VNC's ass for speed and usability -- no contest. Still, it's nice to know how to do this on Macs. ~~~ konad The VNC implementation on OSX is particularly poor. It crashes and I have to manually restart it. On Linux the VNC is an X client so one can have multiple instances running each exposing with their own graphical shell. Does Windows RDP do that ? (I don't know). TightVNC works the best with low speed networks, it uses JPEG encoding too. BTW. is is also against the Windows EULA to use VNC server on it ! ------ spooneybarger Mac OS X: lack of a tiling window manager. at least 50% of my complaints would be solved by that one addition. 40% of my other issues would have to gut the Finder. ~~~ jayphelps You and me both brother. Some things I just don't get in OS X. Like the "zoom" button's inconsistent functionality. Hilarious that OS X Lion is going to change this button to go literally fullscreen now (without toolbars, desktop, etc) which might be pretty annoying too but I guess we'll see. ~~~ spooneybarger i like the zoom to max size for content much more than zoom to whole screen but i'm someone who never uses it anyway. i have divvy which makes my life a little more manageable. ~~~ jayphelps +1 for Divvy ------ kgo OSX: Only one global menubar really sucks for multi-monitor setups. ------ konad Plan9 - no modern web browser or media player.
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Planet Earth time lapse photos from the International Space Station - evo_9 http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/14/cosmic-bal/ ====== xbryanx Here are the original photographs and video if you want to see the astronauts' work in context with explanations: <http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Videos/CrewEarthObservationsVideos/> ------ hop Gorgeous. Music was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Muted and played Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings in the bg for better experience. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsGRglp6tvs> ~~~ splicer That Tchaikovsky recording was like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I'm okay with the composition itself, but the recording was horribly distorted. I much prefer the electronic music, or this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQQGi4gN6gI> ------ tokenadult Previous HN submission with lots of comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3232435> ------ artursapek _This new time-lapse video from Michael König shot aboard the International Space Station gives you a view of Earth that was only available to a select handful of astronauts until now._ I'm pretty sure the astronauts themselves don't see the neon-green glowing and other details that way do they? It was shot with a low-light camera. ~~~ adaml_623 The human eye is capable of seeing very faint glows. We need an astronaut to answer this one. ~~~ extension There's no way it looks like that to the naked eye. This is probably a long exposure camera with a very high dynamic range, and we're seeing the dark side of the planet. If you have a camera with a long exposure feature, try taking a 10-15 second shot of a nearly pitch black room. That will give you a sense of how this is made. ------ JeffL It's amazing how it looks so digitally enhanced, but I guess it isn't. It would be cool if more sci-fi movies and space games showed planets looking like that. ------ justsomedood This video is pretty incredible. It's so amazing to see how visible the storms and city lights are from around (I think) 250 miles away! The northern lights look surreal as well. It's cool that there is so much to see by a change in perspective. ------ run4yourlives It's very beautiful, but damn it slow down! Running this at half speed is so much more impressive. ------ splicer I had no idea lightning occurs so frequently! ~~~ extension It's probably a long exposure camera. Each frame could be exposed for many seconds or even minutes. Any lightning that strikes during that time appears in the frame. ------ DanBC San Francisco to Reno == 190 miles Earth to ISS == 220 miles ------ maeon3 We have to get off this rock asap before the next planet killer asteroid hits earth which is due soon. ~~~ Retric Random events... still random. ~~~ ericd Haha yeah... We should still try to get some of our eggs out of the basket, though.
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Why developers are afraid of user testing - subpixel http://ryandeussing.com/blog/2012/03/14/why-developers-are-afraid-of-user-testing/ ====== Boumbles Isn't the reason they've released it for free before retail so that they can find out stuff like this and adapt the UI to how users react?
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Green tea compound may halt molecular cause of often-fatal condition - upen http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/10091.html ====== baldfat I always find it funny how they test Green, Black, White or Oolong Teas separately. All teas (Not herbal infusions) are all from the same plant, Camellia sinensis. The only difference is when they are picked and for black tea they are oxidized. The only thing chemistry I have found is caffeine levels. The old belief was the highest Black and the lowest was White. This has proven to be untrue. Pill form would equal KIDNEY STONES if they contained the leaf. Tea leafs are one of the highest in oxalates (Causes most kidney stones) but tea is low/moderate in oxalates. ~~~ problems I drink a fairly high amount of black tea (about 1.5L/day) and I had read about this before a bit, but couldn't find any clear answers - what's the risk of developing kidney stones and will I have fair warning signs before permanent damage? ~~~ baldfat I drink about 1L/day I use to get kidney stones all the time. Told to stop drinking tea and dark sodas. After researching it for 10 minutes my Urologist didn't know what he was talking about. Contents of Oxalate: black tea 15 grams for 1 liter equals 15 * 5.11 = 76.65 milligrams of soluble oxalates Spinach has 645 milligrams of soluble oxalates per serving size! Cola sodas has 0 as in ZERO soluble oxalates per serving size. My doctor told me that was all new to him. I stopped going to him as a doctor. I ate spinach everyday. I stopped eat spinach I stopped having kidney stones. ~~~ gech Exactly what kind of tea do you drink? Is it iced tea, a brand? ------ ucaetano Keep in mind that you'd need to drink about 1 gallon of green tea every day (which would cause nausea and pain) to have an increase in the EGCG levels in your blood of less than 60%. [http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/9/9/3312.long](http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/9/9/3312.long) So it seems unlikely that drinking green tea would be a viable treatment. ~~~ X86BSD Actually your statement is false. I drank a gallon of green tea for years before switching to a gallon of white tea every day. I've never been nauseated or had pain from that. Ever. I pee every 20 minutes but it's never made me sick. ~~~ marricks Is this serious? If so, any particular reason why you did? ~~~ X86BSD I started this well over a decade ago, perhaps 20 years? The average person does not get NEARLY enough water per day. That was one reason, but the main reason was I knew about the anti-cancer affects of green tea as well as other healthy effects. And over the years I had nurses and medical doctors in my family tell me white tea was healthier for you that green tea. Lower caffeine, more of the same compounds and benefits green tea had. So I switched over to white tea. I am still drinking a gallon each day. Will I still get cancer? Maybe. But it won't be from a lack of doing everything I can to prevent it. ~~~ DanBC > But it won't be from a lack of doing everything I can to prevent it. You eat a large quantity of red meat and processed red meat. That increases your risk of cancer. ~~~ jessaustin Wat? How do you know OP's protein preferences? [EDIT:] ...wow. Just, wow. Do you use a spreadsheet to track the dietary preferences of various HN commentators, or do you have a frighteningly effective memory? ~~~ DanBC [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947340#11948143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11947340#11948143) > Ive been an atkins follower for... 20 years. I eat mostly meat. ------ stiGGG In my opinion tea is the most underrated hacker drink, at least in Germany. In all companies everybody drinks coffee all day long. If u drink tea, you are an alien. Especially if u prefer loose leaf tea over the the dust in bags from the supermarket, you are a little weird. I hoped the big Club Mate hype could bring some people into the tea camp, but omg even the most of the few people who drink tea doesn't know why chamomile tea isn't actually a tea... ~~~ scorpioxy Never heard of the "club mate hype" before. Would that be yerba mate drinks? Edit: Just dug a bit more. Yes it is, carbonated and mixed with some sugar. Yuck. I prefer my yerba mate the traditional way, thank you very much. Also, what's with everybody's obsession with caffeine and productivity? Why not just inject adrenaline right into your heart? Come on, people should use some "more common sense" and not overuse these substances. ------ jaboutboul can we update the title to reflect what the condition actually is? Green tea compound may halt molecular cause of often-fatal multiple myeloma ~~~ jdnier No, it affects protein folding in light chain amyloidosis, which often accompanies MM, but is a disease in itself. “The ECGC pulled the light chain into a different type of aggregate that wasn’t toxic and didn’t form fibril structures,” as happens to organs affected by amyloidosis. ------ jdnier AL (light chain) amyloidosis is a protein folding disease that causes an accumulation of amyloid protein in the organs, and is usually fatal. This green tea compound, EGCG, seems to transform light chain amyloid, "preventing the misshapen form from replicating and accumulating dangerously". More information on the disease here: [http://www.amyloidosis.org/facts/al/](http://www.amyloidosis.org/facts/al/) ~~~ jdnier Film actor Michael York has become a spokesman of sorts for people with the disease. [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/20/michael...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/20/michael- york-battle-with-amyloidosis) ------ bhouston [http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2015-2016/green- tea](http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2015-2016/green-tea)
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Mistakes in silicon chips could help boost computer power - yanw http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10134655.stm ====== coderdude So software (or another part of the CPU) will handle the errors so that the programmer doesn't have to check that every single operation worked correctly. This reminds me of how Hadoop handles failures such as a hard drive dying. If we're abstracted from the failures we really don't have to pay attention to them (except with a distributed filesystem you would need to replace dead hardware). This is a very interesting concept. Although it mentions decreased power consumption, would this also entail more performance for chips? It mentions that Moore's Law is being hampered by our "need for perfection." ~~~ forgottenpaswrd When you use a hard drive you are already using a "stable" CPU, you are sure that the checking operations(CRC...) you do are well done. How are you going to check something is well done without doing it if you don't know the solution?.Whatever you do you are going to add a ton of new logic(more consumption, and complexity and HORRIBLE BUGS on hardware level). I meet people that had to manage hardware bugs when CPUs where not as reliable as today(automatic testing in VHDL and Verilog has helped a lot), like the people that worked in the first Cray computers. It made their lives miserable, boring, repetitive and painfully slow work. The worst bug in existence for a programmer is the one that appears and disappears randomly and when you had invested months of work trying to find it on your code, you find is a hardware bug!! ~~~ reitzensteinm I always imagined that this would work by doubling up the hardware, requiring two logic units to agree, if they didn't then computation work would be redone, much like a branch prediction failing. This would obviously not help power consumption at all, but freqeuncy could probably be scaled up quite a bit. It also assumes that if an error happens it's unlikely to repeat in the same way in the second logic unit. But that may not be a reasonable assumption. ~~~ gdickie At the lowest level, you don't need to double-up, you can use an error correcting code. If the memories and registers on a chip use a multiple-error correcting code, then the underlying error rate could be quite high without making any difference in the user-visible error rate. Similarly you could use noisy-network protocols for on-chip wires, so that each signal path doesn't need to be perfect. Again you don't need to double- up. Instead you lose a small percent to overhead, and a delay in order to encode / decode. ~~~ reitzensteinm How would the error correcting code work for something like a floating point multiplication? Correcting errors in storage is simple, but correcting errors in computation seems like a significantly harder problem. ------ maushu So now, not only do we have to worry about our own mistakes, we have to worry that 1 + 1 might be 3, while programming? Great. ------ wlievens This probably applies best to specific needs. For instance, I can imagine that a lot of people would accept small errors in images rendered by their GPU in exchange for greater performance. ------ forgottenpaswrd oh, brilliant, so we need to make our software systems exponentially more complicated(when anything is possible, you need to add complexity) to gain a 30% power reduction in hardware?. And add the possibility for the computer to fail at random(statistical atypicals that are not "filtered"). I think this is not a good idea. ~~~ someone_here Keep in mind that currently, about 100 bits of memory in your computer are flipped every year just because of cosmic rays. ~~~ nudded [citation needed] (for real, I would love to know if this is true) ~~~ Retric ECC really does help. For home use non ECC memory is probably acceptable as most errors are going to be in graphics data etc. But, for a few $ more you can significantly increase your computers stability. "Recent tests give widely varying error rates with over 7 orders of magnitude difference, ranging from 10−10−10−17 error/bit•h, roughly one bit error, per hour, per gigabyte of memory to one bit error, per century, per gigabyte of memory.[7][11][12]" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random_access_memory> ------ Daniel_Newby A 1% error rate in pointer writes would be ... interesting.
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Will 2-D tin be the next super material? - hythloday http://m.phys.org/news/2013-11-d-tin-super-material.html ====== tokenadult The Physical Review Letters abstract[1] (kindly included as a link in the recycled press release[2] kindly submitted here) may lead to more information about this preliminary finding. Research lab press releases are a known part of the Science News Cycle[3] and are at best just a teaser to get actual working scientists to read the peer- reviewed journal publications to see how much those really say. There is such a visceral reaction to PhysOrg as a press-release recycling service here on Hacker News that I will, not meaning to put down the kind person who submitted this link, post some previous Hacker News comments about PhysOrg as a source below the references for this comment. It will be interesting to see what comes of this preliminary research report. [1] [http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i13/e136804](http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i13/e136804) [2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/is- it-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/is-it- journalism-or-just-a-repackaged-press-release-heres-a-tool-to-help-you-find- out/275206/) [3] [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174) SOMEWHAT LONG FAQ ON PhysOrg AS A SOURCE: PhysOrg appears to have been banned as a site to submit from by Reddit. I learned from other participants here on HN that there are better sites to submit from. Comments about PhysOrg: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869) "Yes Physorg definitely has some of the worst articles on the internet." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3149824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3149824) "I viscerally distrust anything from physorg.com. Anyone have a better option?" [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249) "Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam: [http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/](http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/) (press release), [http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/](http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/) (video), [http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien...](http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1116.pdf) (paper). "PhysOrg: just say no." [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888) "The physorg article summary is wrong, I think." [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857) "Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890900) "And note that the gravity lamp was announced on physorg.com, famous for how wrong it is about science topics." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106145) "I try and debunk/explain [shady] biological science news wherever possible here. In fact, it's typically my only contribution, but one I feel is highly important. "Your perpetual (and totally correct) crusade against PhysOrg reminds me there are others doing the same, and for that I thank you." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5276327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5276327) "Physorg? Ugh. "Didn't even bother click, came here to read comments instead. "Can HN please ban Physorg like everyone else?" ------ TeMPOraL Could this material be used for "heavy" stuff, like power transmission or lifting trains, and not only electronics? ~~~ Sharlin The square-cube law would probably end up being a problem - there's only _so_ much current that can flow through a one- or two-dimensional conductor even with zero resistance. ~~~ benjamincburns By ohm's law, zero resistance means infinite current. I don't know anything about super conductors, but I thought that was the appeal? If not, what replaces ohms law in a superconductor? Or, put differently, how is the current limit defined? ~~~ XorNot The critical current does. Superconductivity is eventually destroyed by magnetic fields, so all superconductors can only carry so much current before they quench and become regular conductors. But this isn't a superconductor - it's a ballistic conductor. The idea is that it'll ballistically transport electrons with certain energy levels, which is functionally superconductivity (they don't lose energy to the conductor itself). But, since only electrons with a certain energy can enter in the first place, and since the energy levels are defined as a Boltzmann distribution, they still have a resistance which is proportional to the band of electron energies which cannot enter. So at RT it's _great_ for a CPU, where the problem is you don't want heat being created on the die itself. But it doesn't allow you to do long-distance transmission like we'd like to with regular superconductors (since it would still have a resistance), and the mono-monolecular nature implies it wouldn't scale anyway. ~~~ hythloday Thanks so much for this comment - when reading the article I noticed it carefully circumlocuted "superconductivity", and was curious what the difference was. This perfectly explains it (and goes into further interesting detail), which is exactly what I wanted. ------ deletes That is all nice, but still theoretical. Good luck constructing material made with flourine in a very specific way. ~~~ moocowduckquack We can push single atoms around in the lab, so I don't think there will be too many problems in testing this experimentally. ~~~ Someone Maybe, but that 'fluorine' part is cause for concern ([http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_won...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php): _" The latest addition to the long list of chemicals that I never hope to encounter takes us back to the wonderful world of fluorine chemistry. I'm always struck by how much work has taken place in that field, how long ago some of it was first done, and how many violently hideous compounds have been carefully studied."_) There may be a perfectly harmless way to make this at industrial scale, but I would not bet on it. ~~~ moocowduckquack Toothpaste manufacture must be nearly impossible then. ~~~ sp332 That's sodium hexafluorosilicate (Na2SiF6). It's much less reactive than elemental fluorine. ~~~ moocowduckquack Tin fluoride is also commonly used in toothpaste under the name of stannous fluoride. ~~~ orware Hehe, I read "stannous" and immediately thought of Stannis Baratheon. ------ SeanLuke Headline is misleading. The magic phrase in the article is "could be". ------ leeoniya No. [1] (pardon the snark) [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines) ------ pistle As freely as cars on a freeway? I want better for my electrons.
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Add bytecode cache to Ruby - ksec https://github.com/github/ruby/pull/27 ====== 3JPLW What's the relationship between github/ruby and ruby/ruby? It looks like they've diverged quite a far ways away from each other, but that might just be an artifact of which branches GitHub uses when comparing the two. ~~~ randall Seems like this is Github's (the company's) fork of Ruby. ruby/ruby seems like the official ruby. ~~~ YorickPeterse Correct, Github uses their own fork to apply changes for their own needs. ~~~ 3JPLW Do you know how much they try to push their own changes back upstream? ~~~ sams99 Yes, Aman and Koichi work very closely, the main point of difference at the moment is the method cache patches, Koichi is working on getting something similar implemented in MRI ~~~ ksec Why something similar but not the same? ~~~ claudiug That is a very good question, and I also I'm curious to find out ~~~ ksec As if the Ruby Community has more then enough resources to improve on TWO Compiler / Interpreter at the same time. Isn't it better to work together then to reinvent the wheel? Speaking of compiler, the JIT for Ruby development has been very quiet for months. ------ haberman I wrote a benchmark that measures the speed of various VM parsers and the speedup that precompiling brings. I found that precompiling was a huge speed benefit: [http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/10/the-speed-of-python- ruby...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2014/10/the-speed-of-python-ruby-and- luas.html) ------ daurnimator Interesting... The Lua community has found that bytecode is actually _slower_ to load than it is to generate from source: The extra latency of loading the (larger) bytecode from disk/ssd/flash, exceeds the cpu time to lex/parse. ~~~ ploxiln On the other hand, Lua syntax is much simpler (slightly out of date: [http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how- to-par...](http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how-to-parse- ruby)) ~~~ daurnimator > slightly out of date: > [http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how-to- > par...](http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how-to-parse-ruby) Ouch.... Perhaps a lesson in making your language's grammar too complex: if you do, you'll eventually have to pre-compile. ~~~ TheLoneWolfling So has Ruby joined the ranks of languages that formally cannot be parsed due to the halting problem? I know Perl is in that category. ~~~ vidarh I don't think so. There are a few things that looks distinctly iffy in that respect on the surface, but they are resolved. e.g. is "foo" a method call or an instance variable? You can't know in isolation, but it doesn't matter at parse time, as if it's part of a larger construct that is only valid as a method call, such as if there's an argument list after "foo", it is parsed as a method call. E.g: foo = 1 foo(42) will result in: test.rb:4:in `<main>': undefined method `foo' for main:Object (NoMethodError) I think all of the potential cases that might have otherwise made Ruby impossible to formally parse are resolved in similar ways. Now, there are certainly layering violations. The aforementioned example of "foo" by itself can only be resolved by determining whether or not "foo" is in scope as a local variable at the point it is referenced, for example, but you can opt to defer the decision until after parsing. ------ Arnor How significant is the performance impact on a mid-large Ruby on Rails application? ~~~ fizx It's mostly annoying in development when your mid-large Rails app takes 30s-2m to start-up and/or reload after an edit. ~~~ vidarh Most of the time that is likely due to bundler/rubygems stuffing your load path full and causing thousands of unnecessary stat calls. The actual time spent loading/parsing files is in most cases a tiny fraction of the startup time of any large project using rubygems and bundler. I counted several hundred thousand unnecessary stat calls on the biggest app I have, and ended up with a ugly hack where we trimmed the load path around each set of require's to only paths needed by that specific gem. ~~~ foz Or, as I've seen a few times, you have circular references in your rails asset includes. ------ JulianWasTaken Hah. .pyc files are one of the worst part of Python for developers. export PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE=true is the first thing anyone should be doing. I guess it figures that we copy each others' mistakes. ~~~ michaelmior I've been coding in Python for many years and I can count on one hand the number of times that this has actually caused me any problems. ~~~ JulianWasTaken What is the total amount of time you spent during those few times, although including the amount of time to learn what happened, and how many thousands of times larger is that amount than the sum total of the time saved by caching bytecode compilation every single time you loaded a pyc for every file you ever wrote? ~~~ michaelmior Probably a few minutes spent. I'm not sure how to quantify the overhead of caching compiled bytecode, but I'm guessing it beats that. ~~~ JulianWasTaken It doesn't, which was my point :) The overhead is _tiny_ , less than milliseconds for sane modules. It's a useless optimization, especially when it can be done at install time only, say, as opposed to for every module import, but even that is somewhat silly. ~~~ michaelmior Without seeing any numbers, it doesn't mean much to me. I'm assuming someone much smarter than me has identified the benefit of bytecode caching and unless it really gets in my way, I see no need to do away with it. ------ aaronbrethorst Does anyone know, offhand (or have a good educated guess), on what the largest monolithic Ruby codebase in existence is? Is it GitHub? ~~~ ksec Cookpad from Japan? [https://speakerdeck.com/a_matsuda/the-recipe-for-the- worlds-...](https://speakerdeck.com/a_matsuda/the-recipe-for-the-worlds- largest-rails-monolith) 50 million unique user / month 15,000 Req/Sec I posted this awhile ago but didn't pulled much attention [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9161220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9161220) ------ claudiug what is the advantages of adding bytecode cache? ~~~ nnq speculating: it allows you to still be fine with a slower parser. and this means you can theoretically make the parser smarter (like make it do some inference and catch some bugs at parse-time?) without worrying that much about performance. but then again, I can't imagine what kind of bugs could a parser catch for such a dynamic language like Ruby, so they're probably just doing it to shave some milliseconds from program-start-up time... ~~~ btown With huge libraries (like SpreeCommerce, for instance), startup time can be seconds or more even on recent hardware, and the vast majority of that code isn't changing between runs. So if every gem was cached, they could see radically faster times to load their test suites across their entire organization. It's well worth it even without a smarter parser. ------ Mojah This is the equivalent of APC or OpCache in PHP's world? ~~~ Freaky PHP needs an opcache because its standard behaviour is to discard all state after each request - including all compiled bytecode - kind of emulating the CGI model. Ruby web apps on the other hand tend to be run in a loop - the script never exits after a request, it just goes back to the top of the loop to accept the next request to serve. e.g. [https://github.com/rack/rack/blob/master/lib/rack/handler/fa...](https://github.com/rack/rack/blob/master/lib/rack/handler/fastcgi.rb#L27) FCGI.each { |request| serve request, app } It's nice because it completely decouples your app's startup time from request processing time, so you can do expensive setup stuff up-front without slowing down each request. The disadvantage to that is there's not much pressure to keep startup time low, since it's only happening once. ~~~ juliangregorian Yeah man, PHP makes scaling easy, it's shared nothing by default, do you even web scale bro? /s
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Apple's A12Z Under Rosetta Outperforms Microsoft's Native Arm-Based Surface ProX - wwelch https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/29/apple-rosetta-2-a12z-beats-surface-pro-x/ ====== melling “and though forbidden, the first thing some developers did was benchmark the machine." That’s why Apple is saving the new chips for the new Macs. ~~~ olliej surprising absolutely no one :D
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Lifetimes of cryptographic hash functions - tswicegood http://valerieaurora.org/hash.html ====== ReidZB I think SHA-2 should be "minor weakness discovered" (if not outright "unbroken"), not "weakened". At the onset of the SHA-3 competition, everyone was nervous about SHA-2: it appeared as though a good attack was inevitable, what with the cryptanalytic attacks on SHA-1. But as the competition went on, things got calmer. The attacks against SHA-2 that were so expected simply weren't coming[1]. And so now the status quo is that SHA-2 seems pretty darn safe, and the real focus of the SHA-3 competition shifted towards not necessarily having a direct replacement for SHA-2, in the sense of performance, but instead having a design that was sufficiently different to not allow SHA-2 attacks to apply to it. And Keccak is just that: quite different. Anyway, my point is that SHA-2 is mislabeled. Honestly, I think cryptographers recommend it the most out of any of the hash functions currently; SHA-3's software performance is rather... lacking. [1] Some may argue that this is because cryptographers were focused on the SHA-3 candidates, but I'm not so sure ~~~ thirsteh BLAKE2 is a very good alternative if you want software performance: [https://blake2.net/](https://blake2.net/). Just stop what you're doing and look at scrypt, bcrypt or even PBKDF2-HMAC- SHA512 if you're thinking something that involves the words "passwords" and "fast hash function." ([http://throwingfire.com/storing-passwords- securely/#notpassw...](http://throwingfire.com/storing-passwords- securely/#notpasswordhashes)) ~~~ moondowner +1 for bcrypt and related solutions. [http://yorickpeterse.com/articles/use-bcrypt- fool/](http://yorickpeterse.com/articles/use-bcrypt-fool/) [http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/](http://codahale.com/how- to-safely-store-a-password/) ------ pbsd Why is SHA-2 orange? As far as I know, besides length-extension, there's no known weakness on the full hash function. ~~~ chacham15 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cryptographic_ha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_cryptographic_hash_functions) or more specifically: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38348-9_16](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38348-9_16) and [http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/016.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/016.pdf) ~~~ harshreality The attacks are on reduced-round versions of SHA-256 and SHA-512. Those do not describe any attacks faster than (dumb) brute force against SHA-256 or SHA-512. I think labeling SHA-256 as orange is highly misleading. The SHA-2 family of hashes is going nowhere unless the partial-round attacks get a lot closer to the full-round versions. They're still about 20+ rounds away. ------ josephagoss If the SHA-2 family have weaknesses, and SHA-2 is used for generating Bitcoin blocks, whoever breaks this first will be an overnight millionaire, just make sure you break them slowly (about 20 a day max) to avoid suspicion that the hashing is compromised. Sell as much as possible and then release your paper. ~~~ qnr Indeed, bitcoin is like a cryptography competition with ridiculously huge prize. 1\. Break SHA2 -> control bitcoin generation ($2500 each generated block at current prices) 2\. Break ECDSA -> unlock any addresses that have ever sent money on the blockchain 3\. Break ECDSA+SHA2+RIPEMD160 -> break ALL addresses, even those that have never sent money. Incidentally, the difference between 2 and 3 is why it is not recommended to reuse bitcoin addresses. ~~~ eterm Break any and the value of bitcoins will crash hard. You can't take millions out of a system which doesn't actually have millions worth of liquidity backing it. The total worth of all bitcoins is actually far smaller than the market capitalization of all bitcoins because the trade of them is based off an assumption that many if not most coins are dead coins. ~~~ qnr Well, MtGox monthly volume is over 1 million BTC [1] or $100 million at current prices. I think you should be able to take out at least a few million without raising suspicion In case of SHA2 compromise in particular, generating, say 20% of daily blocks would hardly be noticed (and can be easily explained as a new shipment of ASICs). This is about 720 BTC or $72000 daily. [1] [http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html](http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html) ------ ceautery The "slashdotter reaction" column is priceless! ------ Scaevolus Use of SHA-1 for digital signature generation has been deprecated by NIST since 2011. It's disallowed after 2013-- which is important for software aiming for government use. [http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-131A/sp800-13...](http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-131A/sp800-131A.pdf) ------ mistercow >[1] Note that 128-bit hashes are at best 2^64 complexity to break; using a 128-bit hash is irresponsible based on sheer digest length. Can a short hash which has not been weakened be lengthened by taking two hashes and concatenating? fixedSalt = "blah" longerHash = (salt, input) -> hash(salt + input) + hash(salt + fixedSalt + input) Edit: Never mind. Obviously an attacker would only have to break the first half of the resulting hash. But is there any valid way to lengthen a too-short hash? Not that it's of practical importance; I'm just curious academically. ~~~ sdevlin This is actually a pretty interesting question. The answer, at least for Merkle-Damgard hash functions (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-2, etc) is that concatenating (or "cascading") hash functions doesn't really improve the strength of the resulting construction. Merkle-Damgard hash functions look like this: function MD(M, H, C): for M[i] in pad(M): H := C(M[i], H) return H For message M, initial state H, and compression function C. In other words, pad the message, break it into blocks, and use the compression function to "mix" each block into the hash function's state. The final state is the result. Antoine Joux showed that for any MD hash function, generating many collisions is not much more difficult than generating one. Here's how: 1. Take the initial state H[0]. 2. Find two single-block messages that collide under C with H[0] as the input state. Call the result H[1]. 3. Now find another pair of single-block messages that collide under C with H[1] as the input state. Call the result H[2]. 4. Iterate as needed. Here's the trick: each single-block collision you find is actually doubling your set of colliding messages. This is because for each block of the message, you can select either of two candidate blocks. So if the effort required to find a collision in a b-bit hash function is 2^(b/2), the effort to find 2^n such collisions is only n * 2^(b/2). What does this mean for cascaded hash functions? Well, consider a hypothetical construction that simply concatenates a 128-bit hash function with a 160-bit function. A plan of attack might look like this: 1. Find 2^80 colliding messages under the 128-bit function. This should take roughly 80 * 2^64 ~= 2^70.3 units of "effort". 2. Evaluate each message under the 160-bit function. There's probably a collision in there somewhere. This will take around 2^80 work, dwarfing what we did in the first step. The effort to find a collision under both functions is thus only about what it takes to find a collision under the stronger of the two. Shameless plug: we will have a few problems exploring the consequences of Joux collisions in set seven of the Matasano crypto challenges. ~~~ mistercow Ah, so in fact the naive concatenating solution I gave, in addition to being just as easy because the attacker only has to break half of it, is actually even _easier_ because the attacker has two targets to collide with. What about non-concatenative methods? For example, could you do something like "shift and xor". For example, say you have a 4-byte hash function, so that: hash(salt + input) : 0x3AF9 hash(salt + fixedSalt + input) : 0x8034 then you shift one by a byte and xor like so 3AF90 xor 08034 = 32FA4 And then you could iterate that to extend to as many bytes as you want? And then maybe you'd want to xor the first and last byte together so that nothing from the first hash remains - although now I'm thinking intuitively which generally seems to be a bad idea with crytpography. ~~~ sdevlin > Ah, so in fact the naive concatenating solution I gave, in addition to being > just as easy because the attacker only has to break half of it, is actually > even easier because the attacker has two targets to collide with. I wouldn't say it's easier. Remember that we need to find a single message that generates a collision under _both_ hash functions. So our strategy is to generate a massive number of collisions for the shorter function and hope that there's one pair of messages in there that collide under the longer function. > What about non-concatenative methods? I think this will again boil down to finding a single message that generates a collision under both hash functions. It won't matter too much whether you XOR the hashes or concatenate them. ~~~ mistercow Hmm. It still seems to me that the simple concatenative method could still be broken at least slightly more quickly, since each function can be collision tested separately, but my brain is vaguely gesturing at comprehension about why xoring is still weak. I feel like we should be teaching the principles of crypto to young children so that we end up with some humans that can grok it as easily as the rest of us do algebra. But there are a great many things I would want young children to be taught if I were made the Benevolent Dictator of All School Boards. ------ jgale I guess 2004 was a crazy year for cryptography. ~~~ pbsd Indeed it was. Wang's breakthrough work [1,2] broke most of the common hash functions at the time, and later also SHA-1 [3]. The SHA-3 competition was motivated by this streak of new successful attacks. [1] [http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/199](http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/199) [2] [http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2005/EUROCRYPT/2868/286...](http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2005/EUROCRYPT/2868/2868.pdf) [3] [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11535218_2](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F11535218_2) ------ liamzebedee Sorry, why is RIPEMD-160 deprecated? I've been unable to find any supporting information as to why. ~~~ rgbrenner it appeared after sha1, receives less attention than sha1, and is slower than sha1... so why use it at all? ~~~ thirsteh Many use it because it wasn't developed by the NSA. It is a default in TrueCrypt, for example. ~~~ nly It's used in Bitcoin as well (after SHA-2) to shorten up addresses. Come to think of it, I think Tor uses it for .onion addresses... which they shorten to 80 bits (of preimage resistance!) ------ tudorconstantin Confession time: i still have some apps with salted md5 hashed passwords ~~~ thirsteh You shouldn't be using any of the functions on that page directly, anyway: [http://throwingfire.com/storing-passwords- securely/#notpassw...](http://throwingfire.com/storing-passwords- securely/#notpasswordhashes) ~~~ zanny But it does matter, because if you can exploit a weakness in the hash function you can figure out the salt, strip it, and then use your precomputed dictionary. ~~~ thirsteh That's not really how it works. Either way, you shouldn't be using just a regular "hash function" anyway. Even basic constructions like PBKDF2 use HMAC constructions where SHA1 and even MD5 are still pretty safe to use (although not very computationally expensive.) ------ dkokelley For more information on the 'weakened' state of SHA-2, see [http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/207](http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/207) (Full text PDF: [http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/207.pdf](http://eprint.iacr.org/2004/207.pdf)) ------ lmm It'd be nice to have whirlpool in the list - I remember when it was seen as the great new hope for a good hash, but I haven't heard anything about it in recent years. ------ wldlyinaccurate The Expert/Programmer/Non-expert reactions at the bottom are priceless. ------ Ricapar The "reactions" table at the bottom made my morning. ------ islon 2004 was a bad year for cryptographic hash functions... ------ rorrr2 It's missing the most important ones: Scrypt, PBKDF2, Bcrypt. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2) Scrypt being an absolute nightmare to bruteforce, even for short passwords. [http://i.stack.imgur.com/sOMvu.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sOMvu.png) ~~~ ReidZB These aren't cryptographic hash functions _exactly_ , though, at least not in the sense that a cryptographer would think. I mean, they _will_ fit just about any definition of a cryptographic hash function you can think of, but really it's not that useful to label them as such. Instead, they're usually called key derivation functions. On top of that, even if we were to include these in a hash function list, they're decidedly not the most important ones. Most important for password storage and other key derivation, perhaps, but the applications of hash functions are far more general. The preimage resistance of scrypt is reliant on SHA256, for instance. ~~~ 16s Cryptographic hash functions must be efficient to compute. Those examples (scrypt, bcrypt, etc) were designed to be difficult to compute. Those are password hash functions, not cryptogrpahic hash functions. Two totally different things with different purposes. ~~~ ReidZB Well, in complexity theory (which theoretical cryptography uses heavily), an efficiently computable function is one that has a polynomial-time algorithm to compute it. I mean, wouldn't you say that scrypt is efficient to compute? For instance, is 5 seconds not a relatively quick function evaluation? Compare that to super- polynomial-time attacks, some of which wouldn't succeed before our Sun burned out and Earth died. And if you ramp up the security parameters to an insane degree, the user can no longer compute the function themselves. That's the reason for the "efficient to compute" clause in most definitions. So, while you're right that the fact that KDFs are designed to be much slower than hashes is what really separates them, that doesn't disqualify KDFs from ( _technically_ ) being cryptographic hash functions. At least, not if you view the definition in a theoretical sense, which is the appropriate way to do so. Still, I agree with your premise; in a practical sense, KDFs shouldn't feel like they are cryptographic hashes, since their purpose is markedly different.
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Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2014) - whoishiring Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility. ====== dylandrop SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote / NYC - ControlShift Labs - [http://www.controlshiftlabs.com/](http://www.controlshiftlabs.com/) We are an organization devoted to building web tools for progressive activists and nonprofits worldwide. Right now we have two main products that we've been working on -- an online petitioning and campaigning tool, and a donations platform is in the works. Our clients include 350.org, Greenpeace India, and 38 Degrees. To get a sense for what we do, you can view the petitions platform in action here: [http://campaigns.350.org/](http://campaigns.350.org/) We're looking for part-time and possibly full-time web developers. We're located in both NYC and Buenos Aires -- a small and remote Rails company. We generally prefer those who work in the same time zone, but we still would like to talk to those who might live in different time zones. Experience with Rails is preferred, but not necessary. Drop us a line at talk - at - controlshiftlabs.com ------ antoviaque SEEKING FREELANCER -- REMOTE OK. OpenEdX Consultancy (Canada/France) Consultancy specialized on the edX project, and hiring to handle increasing demand. edX is a free software project, used by various universities and companies to run online courses. See edx.org, class.stanford.edu, france- universite-numerique-mooc.fr or codecoalition.com for examples of edX instances. It's a large Python/Django codebase, with good code standards and architecture (a lot of the edX engineers come from MIT). You would work on different clients contracts using the platform. The clients list/references include Harvard, edX themselves, the French government, and various startups & universities currently running their own instances, or looking to create one. Tasks are varied, from developing custom features for specific courses (XBlocks), customizing instances, developing generic platform features, deploying instances, working on both client/server sides, etc. Most of your work would be published as free software (edX is released under the AGPL license, which requires clients to release modifications under the same license), and you would also contribute to the free software project, pushing some of your developments upstream through pull requests, contributing features, documentation or help on mailing-lists. You would be able to work remotely from where you want, as long as you have a good internet connexion. : ) Stack: Python/Django, Ansible, AWS, Debian/Ubuntu, JS, HTML/CSS, MySQL, MongoDB Applying: Email [email protected] with: your github account, a short explanation of why you're interested and a list of links to free software contributions you have made, if any. ------ yllus SEEKING FREELANCER - Rogers Media (Toronto, Canada) Located in the downtown Toronto campus of Rogers Communications, Rogers Media is actively seeking a freelance web developer with strong PHP / WordPress knowledge and exceptional front-end (JavaScript / jQuery / CSS3) skills for an initial three-month contract, with the opportunity to turn that into much more. Our technology stack is split between WordPress (PHP/MySQL, hosted within the company) and Ruby On Rails. Our mission is to architect, create and assist the growth of brands of the likes of Sportsnet, Maclean's, Citytv, 680 News and Chatelaine, plus literally nearly a hundred others. Despite a couple of tough years for the media industry, Rogers Media remains committed to making a name for itself for having the best digital division in the Canadian media landscape. We're steadily growing our web and mobile development teams, and like in any time of uncertainty and change, there's enormous opportunity to do amazing new things. I think 2014 is going to be a great year for us. Shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] and we'll talk. ~~~ csomar Is this a local gig only? or are you open for remote freelancers? ------ yegg SEEKING FREELANCERS: DuckDuckGo (remote or local in Paoli, PA) If you're an avid DuckDuckGo user who is excited about what we're trying to accomplish check out our hiring page [https://dukgo.com/help/en_US/company/hiring](https://dukgo.com/help/en_US/company/hiring) Right now we're in need of some freelancing help in two areas: 1) devops (using Chef); 2) our community platform at duck.co (using modern Perl). ------ helloshow- SEEKING FREELANCER Front End Developer - AngularJS (Ft. Lauderdale, FL or Remote) Hello Show is modernizing a key workflow for real estate agents. The current market for real estate technology is vastly underserved and Hello Show is building the tools agents need and deserve. With our product in development, we already have beta customers who have fallen in love and are anxious to sign up now! We are a results and data driven team, and use Agile/SCRUM processes to build. Skills & Requirements: \- Javascript expert \- Expert with Angular.js and Node.js \- Expert interfacing with APIs \- Expert HTML 5 and CSS skills \- Focus on test driven development \- Appreciation for Web Accessibility and how that should translate to code. \- Insane attention to detail \- Desire and ability to continuously learn and implement new technologies \- Effective communication with team members, focusing on project requirements, capabilities, and schedule \- Love of building products that people love You are welcome to work remotely. Application Instructions: To apply, send an email to [email protected]. Be sure to reference the job posting and where you came across it. Please provide any information that will help us in our decision process (resume, portfolio, github, etc…). If you seem like a good fit, we will want you to come by for a face-to-face interview or chat on Skype. We are looking forward to hearing from you. ~~~ TJNevis To Whom It May Concern: My name is TJ Nevis and I feel I'm a good fit for this position. I recently left my full time job to pursue my business full time and I've been connecting with companies just like yours to take on outsourced/overbooked projects. I am very familiar with responsive web design and all the websites I work on are responsive. I have worked with MongoDB for over 2 years and AngularJS for about a year and a half. I've read up on books and taken online courses on both topics. I've built REST services with PHP and consumed them with AngularJS. I've also consumed social REST APIs in my applications. I know JavaScript, jQuery, and AngularJS extensively. I have used LESS and SASS and have used HTML5 and CSS3 (also animating with Angular). I use Github and Bitbucket (Git) for versioning. My business website is currently under construction, but you can take a look at my portfolio website to see projects that I have done in my spare time in the last year. I am finishing up 3 websites now that I still need to add to my portfolio. I'm very familiar with using CDN's for speed (S3 and Rackspace, mainly), using Grunt to minify CSS, HTML and JavaScript. I think we could work well together and I look forward to hearing from you soon. My personal portfolio: [http://TJNevis.com](http://TJNevis.com). ------ mvanveen SEEKING WORK: Remote or Bay Area http://mvanveen.net http://github.com/mvanveen [email protected] Some technologies I've used lately include: Python, C HTML5/CSS/JS GAE datastore, DynamoDB, S3, SQL, MySQL, Redis, Mongo AWS, Google App Engine, Heroku Bottle, Django Bootstrap, jQuery, D3, processing.js Mustache/Pystache, jinja2 Python requests, ScraPy Full stack web engineer specializing in Python. Heavy Google App Engine experience. Also versed in Django, Bottle. Heavy html5/css/js experience building responsive web sites, including with frameworks e.g. bootstrap, jQuery. More of an implementer than a designer. Past projects include the God of War website (godofwar.com), various web crawlers and data importers for various clients, and a social voting app for Google and Sunlight Foundation. I have I also have previous startup experience at Getaround, a bay area p2p car sharing marketplace. I love hacking together MVPs, building out features, building web crawlers and data importers, static analysis. Would love to hear from you and learn about your project! ------ ashkang SEEKING WORK - Remote | Tehran, Iran C/C++ on GNU/Linux with relevant tools and technologies. Resume: [http://tehlug.org/~ashkan/files/resume.pdf](http://tehlug.org/~ashkan/files/resume.pdf) || [http://tehlug.org/~ashkan/files/resume.tex](http://tehlug.org/~ashkan/files/resume.tex) email: ghassemi AT ftml DOT net Ashkan Ghassemi ------ ritchiea SEEKING WORK - New York City/Brooklyn or Remote I am a fullstack web developer who typically writes Ruby and Javascript/Coffeescript. I have been working with Rails for the last three years and working on the front end (markup and styling) since I was in high school (ten years ago). My recent projects include an XBRL parser to extract balance sheets, work on a Rails app for Bookandtable.com (checkout their staging url at [http://staging.bookandtable.com](http://staging.bookandtable.com), they're about to launch), and a JS/frontend heavy web app to endorse candidates in the NYC mayoral primary. I am looking for part time/half time work as I have one other client at the moment. I am teaching him the Rails framework as we work together re-writing his production Drupal app in Rails. [http://github.com/ritchiea](http://github.com/ritchiea) [http://andrewritchie.info](http://andrewritchie.info) ------ mvid SEEKING WORK - San Francisco - Remote - Travel Possible Experienced pair of software developers with a history in startups. Proficient in: * Python ['django', 'bottle', 'google.app.engine'] * Ruby [:rails => 'heroku'] * Javascript ['angular','backbone','node']; * Clojure '(Compojure) * Haskell, Go (and other esoterics) We've helped entrepreneurs develop their MVP, as well as large companies develop core features. We provide services such as feature development, product management, and software auditing. Previous engagements include Getaround, Codecademy, Factset, Wakemate, drip.fm, and Swiftstack, among others. For more info see our page at [http://turbines.io](http://turbines.io), or talk to us at [email protected] ------ JoeCortopassi \------------------ SEEKING WORK - Based in Southern California (Looking for remote) \------------------ Joe Cortopassi Email: joe[at]joecortopassi[dot]com Skype: joe.cortopassi \------------------ iOS developer Full stack web developer \------------------ Technologies: (not just the language, but also the appropriate frameworks and libraries) • Objective-C • iPhone/iOS • PHP • MySQL • Javascript • HTML • CSS \------------------ Specialties: • Business Analytics • Api integration and development • Persistent Data Management \------------------ [http://joecortopassi.com](http://joecortopassi.com) [http://linkedin.com/in/joecortopassi](http://linkedin.com/in/joecortopassi) [https://github.com/JoeCortopassi](https://github.com/JoeCortopassi) [https://twitter.com/JoeCortopassi](https://twitter.com/JoeCortopassi) \------------------ About Me: I started off in web development, doing mid-large size lead generation web sites. As a big part of dealing with lead generation, I became proficient in RESTful API integration and development, along with complex javascript web applications used for analytics. I then began working on iPhone and iPad applications over the years, working on apps for Cie Studios, BuySellAds, and their respective clients. My ability to understand complex api's, also helped me build connection management and caching systems for iOS apps that assured the user that their information would always be posted to the server, regardless of their data connection. \------------------ ~~~ livestyle +1 for Joe.. great team member! ------ weeksie NYC based consultant. Full stack developer (Rails since 2005). Coffee Script/Javascript. ReactJS. Backbone. More languages than you can throw a stick at. Etc. . . . _Available in April_ Either for remote or on-site consulting, particularly around getting teams set up with good development workflows. I'm great to have for a project kickoff. Lots of startup and small biz experience (ex CTO, VP Engineering, etc. . .). I'm picky. Very happy with the company that I'm consulting with now, but will be doing some heavy traveling this summer (based in Berlin for June and July). Looking for short gigs. scott weeks at gmail. Mention HN. ------ cool-RR SEEKING WORK - Remote only. (Based in Tel-Aviv.) My name is Ram Rachum, and I’m a freelance software developer. I help businesses solve their problems using software, mostly by developing web-based applications. I work mainly in Python and Django. On the technical level, it’s my responsibility to have high problem-solving skills; to design a good architecture for each project I work on; to implement that architecture quickly and effectively; and to be experienced with the languages and frameworks that I’m using, so when a problem comes up, I don’t have to spend 2 hours to research and solve it but rather just 5 minutes, because I’ve seen that problem dozen of times before. On the project-management level, it’s my responsibility to communicate clearly and honestly with the client and my collaborators on the project; to understand exactly what the client wants to build as we plan together how to build it; to always keep the client updated about progress; to have an owner mentality and make decisions with the best interest of the client in mind; to own up to mistakes when they happen; and to always get feedback as early as possible from the client and from the users, so we know we’re not wasting time going into blind alleys, and we’re spending time only on features that the users are happy with. My email is [email protected] . Send me an email and say hello. More details about me: [http://ram.rachum.com/cv/](http://ram.rachum.com/cv/) ------ ammmir SEEKING WORK - San Francisco Bay Area, CA or REMOTE, TRAVEL OK I build apps, websites, APIs, and turnkey solutions that solve critical business problems. Here are some recent projects (more at [https://www.pilvy.com/](https://www.pilvy.com/)): * An iOS VPN client for a major VPN service provider that uses iOS's built-in configuration profiles. * IVPN Client for Windows: Developed for IVPN ([https://www.ivpn.net/](https://www.ivpn.net/)), who had some unique security & privacy requirements. Based on OpenVPN. * VMware End User Computing Demo Portal ([https://www.vmwdemo.com/](https://www.vmwdemo.com/)): Allows VMware's sales and marketing teams to easily demonstrate the Horizon product suite to potential customers. Eliminated a ton of time-consuming work by automating Active Directory/LDAP account provisioning, expiry, and integration with Horizon Workspace. I'm looking for short-term (near-full time) and long-term (part-time) projects. Available from mid-February. tech: node.js, JavaScript, Objective-C/Cocoa/iOS, Ruby on Rails, C#/.NET, Python, Elixir/Erlang [https://www.pilvy.com](https://www.pilvy.com) | [https://github.com/ammmir](https://github.com/ammmir) | amir at pilvy dot com ------ akbarnama SEEKING WORK - remote only, from Mumbai-India Recently helped a couple of clients with next version of their web projects - implemented search using haystack for organicinputs.ca, integration with payment gateways like PaypalExpress, PX Fusion for next version of [http://architecturemedia.com/](http://architecturemedia.com/) [https://www.book-pay.com](https://www.book-pay.com) went live in June 2013 - developed from scratch in Django and Postgres,a site for booking seat for cycling tours offered by www.londonbicycle.com - so far 530+ users with 400+ seats booked Helped in launching [http://www.foodfan.com](http://www.foodfan.com) \- Django,Postgres, S3 for photos, Sphinx for search, Jquery 8+ years of software development experience in dotnet and Django, open to working on other technologies. Have worked with clients from US, UK and Syria A blog post - [http://www.vishalsodani.com/programming/experience-report- fr...](http://www.vishalsodani.com/programming/experience-report-fr...). [https://www.github.com/vishalsodani/](https://www.github.com/vishalsodani/) [http://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalsodani](http://www.linkedin.com/in/vishalsodani) Contact: [email protected] ------ piratebroadcast Why are there so many devs seeking work? Scary. ~~~ almost If you're a freelancer you're always "seeking work", even when you have a good amount of work currently it never hurts to have more :) ------ superplussed SEEKING WORK - remote / Berlin I'm a front-leaning, full-stack developer that is splitting time between Brooklyn and Berlin, and I am currently in Berlin. I am American, and know just a little bit of German (but am learning). I have experience with every aspect of creating an application, from mockups and UX design, to graphic design, to the full-stack implementation, to deployment. I've successfully built and sold a past start-up of mine, and have a great deal of insight with product development. Because of this, I'm probably of most value the earlier a project is in its life cycle. Backend stack: Ruby on Rails, with DBs/data stores such as MySQL, Postgres, Mongo, and Redis. I've also worked a bunch with Elastic Search. I can also use Node.js or PHP for the right project, but lately I've been doubling down on being a backend mono-glot. Frontend stack: my preference is Angular.js, and I've also worked Backbone and Meteor. I am very well-versed in current best practices, can build responsive mobile-friendly websites, and code pixel perfect CSS and HTML5. I have a great deal of graphic design experience and can help there as well. Portfolio: [http://eatingthe.com](http://eatingthe.com) Email: [email protected] ------ mamcx SEEKING WORK - Remote | Colombia | Part-time US 40 [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/cv/employer/20796](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/cv/employer/20796) [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mario-alejandro-montoya- cort%C3%...](http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mario-alejandro-montoya- cort%C3%A9s/6b/212/680) [https://www.odesk.com/users/~014afa40823bde9c3b](https://www.odesk.com/users/~014afa40823bde9c3b) 17+ years of experience creating software in use for more than +2000 users in my country and around the world. Made software for government, business and consumers. Experience: \- Python /Django (like !) - Delphi - .NET - Objective-C - iOS development (like !) - RemObjects - Sql Server - Postgres (like !) - HTML5 / JS / Bootstrap/ Zurb Foundation Better at backend but work with front-end with no problem. Check my website for my apps [http://www.elmalabarista.com](http://www.elmalabarista.com). I work with scrum/mercurial for my own apps. Have contributed small fixes to Django (update the Sql Server support, later forked as a independent project by other people). Moderator in a latin-america forum for developers (www.clubdelphi.com). Have provide training in advanced use of databases for several companies in the SENA (main government institution for work and advance in tech & startups in Colombia). Not hate Database/CRUD work! A lot of experience in integration of different tech stacks and upgrading tech on several past developments. ------ hiddentao SEEKING WORK: Remote - $100/hr [email protected] | [https://github.com/hiddentao](https://github.com/hiddentao) | [http://uk.linkedin.com/in/hiddentao](http://uk.linkedin.com/in/hiddentao) I am a full-stack web developer with 8+ years experience backed by a Computer Science degree. Primary specialities: * Javascript - Node.js, Backbone, Ember, Angular * Page speed optimisation and mobile rendering * Continuous integration (I love setting up a build :) Examples: * https://showca.se * http://www.syfy.co.uk * http://squeljs.org In the past I've also developed extensively in PHP, Python and and Java and can work with them as and when needed. Going back even further I developed in C++ for the Symbian OS. I am able to quickly ramp up on new technologies and hit the ground running. I have worked with numerous clients in various industry sectors, ranging from a two-person climate change start-up all the way to a global media corporation. I can work with your team, lead your team or go solo depending on project requirements. Originally from the UK, I am currently travelling around. ------ munimkazia Freelancer - SEEKING WORK - Mumbai, India - Remote I have just completed my ongoing projects and I am back here for more. I have been doing freelance work from reddit and HN successfully for the past year or so. I am a software engineer working in one of the country's largest e-commerce websites. I love learning and working on new technologies and platforms, but currently, my main experience is in Node.js and PHP. I also have some experience in working with Ruby and Sinatra. I work on linux, and I have deployed and managed web, database and application servers on CentOS and Ubuntu. I am familiar with bash scripting. I am also familiar with some basic Python and Go, but I have never really got a chance to work on it. One of my previous jobs involved working with a large WordPress application, so I am quite adept with WordPress too. Most of my freelance work from reddit has been on the wordpress front: Customizing and working on various plugins. I have worked with various data stores too: Mysql, mongodb, redis are the primary ones. On the front end side, I have worked on big JavaScript projects working with various html5 APIs. I dig semantic clean HTML markup and know my way around CSS. I have worked on AWS on an earlier job, though my current organization has its own servers in a data center. I like working on big problems, "architecting" solutions which scale out and working on them, and tackling and troubleshooting live issues. I usually try to work on git whenever possible. I am looking for medium to long term projects, and I love working remotely. Let me know if you have anything interesting and we can chat. Email me at [email protected]. ------ Imagenuity SEEKING WORK -- remote (or L.A./Orange County) Just want a banana, and end up getting the gorilla and jungle too? My experience will help you define your business needs, and come up with the right solution to fit your requirements. Full-Stack Developer. Front end development in Responsive HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (jQuery, jQuery mobile, JSON), and RESTful APIs built with PHP or Node.js on the server. Emphasis on a strong design to build projects that are simple and attractive. Specializing in iOS and Android apps built with Cordova/PhoneGap that work beautifully on different screen sizes and devices. 20+ years professional software developer, 15+ years freelance app website: [http://imagenuity.com](http://imagenuity.com) [http://github.com/jimbergman](http://github.com/jimbergman) [http://stackoverflow.com/users/1678813/jim- bergman](http://stackoverflow.com/users/1678813/jim-bergman) more examples of work [http://jimbergman.net](http://jimbergman.net) Lets discuss your project - contact: jim at jimbergman.net or [http://jimbergman.net/contact/](http://jimbergman.net/contact/) ------ HorizonXP SEEKING FREELANCER - Toronto, ON - Remote possible Looking for a designer, with an immediate need for web UI/UX work. We're working on an exciting project with tremendous potential in an unsexy, but niche space. We have paying customers in the pipeline, and now we need to deliver. We need a designer to help with the overall look and feel of a web-based dashboard. The goal is to take lots of technical data, information, analytics, and controls and whittle them down into a well-presented dashboard. There is potential for continuing work on this project, and others, branching into mobile app development as well. I'm being intentionally vague, as I don't want to give out too many details publicly. Suffice it to say, it's exciting enough that I left a very well- known startup in the Bay Area to move to Toronto for this. I'm looking for an A-level designer here that we could work with for the foreseeable future, so my standards are pretty high. Send me links to your past projects, portfolio, and Dribbble to xpatel [at] pulsecode [dot] ca. P.S. Our current website is a poor signal for the kind of quality we're looking for, so don't hold that against us. It also will not help you figure out what the project is. ~~~ antonsten Hi, My name is Anton Sten and I'm a UI/UX designer with 15 years of experience. I'm no stranger to work in unsexy spaces (have experience from working with pension plans to anti depressives). I have a portfolio at www.lepetitgarcon.com but would really like to discuss this opportunity with you in order to better understand how I can be of service. Looking forward to hearing back from you - feel free to email me ([email protected]) and we can setup a Skype call. I'm based in Sweden but do a lot of work for US-based companies. Thanks Anton ------ rwhitman SEEKING FREELANCERS - Remote I'm a web dev / design consultant with an increasingly demanding workload and I'm looking to bring in some help. I'm based out of NYC / LA (yes both, kinda). I need folks in 2 areas - 1) Frontend / full stack web dev (HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP). I need someone with very solid frontend web dev skills... and are comfortable and happy working with Wordpress. Some of my client projects are big demanding challenges, some of them are just CMS sites. You should be cool with either. 2) Systems work and IT referrals. I'm increasingly encountering clients that require complicated environments - multiple nodes, load balancers etc and I'm relatively useless in this area. Skills in AWS, CDNs like Akamai etc. Might be just referrals, might hire you onto the occasional project depending on the budget / scope. If you're interested, email me at [email protected] Also - I've posted in this thread on HN before for a client and we got a _lot_ of responses last time. Please please _please_ include skills, links to your work, profiles on Github or Linkedin or a resume and some background info about you. Thanks! ~~~ stevelack I'd love to discuss your front end needs with you. I am strong in HTML/CSS/JS/PHP development and have been doing a lot of Wordpress sites at various levels of complication. You can learn more about me at [http://genlack.com](http://genlack.com) and connect with me on LinkedIn at [http://linkedin.com/in/stevelack](http://linkedin.com/in/stevelack) . ------ ashraful SEEKING WORK - Remote Web+Mobile UI designer and front-end developer. 4+ years of experience with designing usable interfaces with a focus on increasing user conversions. Designed patio11's site which increased his conversion rate and profits: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/04/19/ab-testing-is- frustratin...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/04/19/ab-testing-is-frustrating/) [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/06/stripe-and-ab-testing- ma...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/06/stripe-and-ab-testing-made-me-a- small-fortune/) Also designed the VideoLAN website and the interface for VLC Media Player for Windows 8: [http://www.videolan.org](http://www.videolan.org) [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1061646928/vlc-for- the-n...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1061646928/vlc-for-the-new- windows-8-user-experience-metro/posts/372063) Experience with Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML5, CSS3, Javascript/Jquery. Knowledge of Ruby, Rails, BackboneJS, Git and Heroku. Portfolio: [http://ashraful.me/work](http://ashraful.me/work) Pricing: $55/hour Email: [email protected] ------ rglover SEEKING WORK - Remote/Chicago Designer/developer. Proficient in front-end development, Meteor development, and WordPress development. Best suited helping startups get a nice marketing site/materials together for their product (website, blog, email templates). I've worked with companies big and small designing, developing, and deploying WordPress sites that focus on promoting products or services. I offer a total package for WordPress starting at $7k: landing page, two custom page templates, blog, UI kit, assets/backups to Amazon S3, and deployment workflow (this is huge for startups). Some examples: [http://summit.co](http://summit.co) [https://properapp.com](https://properapp.com) <\-- My own product. [http://2013freelancetools.com](http://2013freelancetools.com) (not WordPress, but shows off my latest design style) [http://menlocoaching.com](http://menlocoaching.com) [http://dribbble.com/rglover](http://dribbble.com/rglover) Laid back guy, but serious about quality. Make sure you come with a real intention to get work done :) Interested? Get in touch: [email protected]. ------ Jasber SEEKING WORK - REMOTE I build beautiful iOS and Mac apps (among other things). Here's my latest: [http://www.heyfocus.com/](http://www.heyfocus.com/) I open sourced it at [https://github.com/bradjasper/focus](https://github.com/bradjasper/focus) I wrote a case study on it at [http://bradjasper.com/focus.html](http://bradjasper.com/focus.html) Another recent open-source project I made was a way to find patterns from SubtlePatterns that did really well here on HN: [http://bradjasper.com/subtle- patterns-bookmarklet/](http://bradjasper.com/subtle-patterns-bookmarklet/) Here are some common questions I get about consulting: [http://bradjasper.com/hire.html](http://bradjasper.com/hire.html) I really love working with smart & creative people—if you care a lot about building good products, services and experiences, I'd love to talk to you. GitHub: [https://github.com/bradjasper/](https://github.com/bradjasper/) Email: [email protected] ------ delinka SEEKING WORK - Atlanta area (Georgia, US) Prefer remote Languages/Tech: C, C#/.NET, SQL, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, HTML, CSS, Objective-C (OS X & iOS) Other Skills: Database design & admin, server admin About: I am an adaptive problem solver. I learn new technologies and techniques quickly. I am a “full stack” developer and administrator. Security is not an afterthought. I believe in “make it work, make it right, make it fast.” ------ bennyg SEEKING WORK - Remote - iOS I am an iOS software engineer with experience shipping apps (8 personal, and a bunch more for various enterprise clients the past couple years) and writing scalable, maintainable code. I'm atypical in the sense that I also have an art degree and can design the UI/UX of an app and then go ahead and program it too. I like working fast and want to take on short to medium-term projects that won't have varying levels of bureaucracy and maddening back-and-forth. If this sounds like the kind of project you need accomplished for iPhone or iPad, read further. \---------- Quick Portfolio: Onions for iOS - www.onions.io News/YC - [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news- yc/id592893508?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?mt=8) Red Cup - [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/red- cup/id477350446?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/red- cup/id477350446?mt=8) \---------- You can find me on GitHub as well: [https://github.com/bennyguitar](https://github.com/bennyguitar) \---------- If you want to talk further, email me: brgordon [at] ua . edu ------ tjbiddle SEEKING WORK - remote, (Traveling abroad) Currently lead DevOps at my full time employment (Inflection). My experience is in helping to find bottlenecks from development to deployment and to create a more efficient workflow. I work daily to manage a multitude of servers, all Puppet modules, packaging and deployment. I am the go-to guy when something breaks and no one else has a clue where to start looking. I'm also available for development work. Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Linux, Puppet, Git, AWS (EC2, Route53, S3, etc.) I'm extremely comfortable picking up new technologies and languages - the above listed are what I work with daily; however I can work with with whatever toolset is required. Feel free to reach me at: biddle [dot] thomas [at] google's email service [dot] com Github: [https://github.com/thomasbiddle/](https://github.com/thomasbiddle/) Personal site: [http://thomasbiddle.com/](http://thomasbiddle.com/) LinkedIn: [http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasbiddle](http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasbiddle) ------ cynicalkane SEEKING WORK -- Remote or local. I'm based out of nowhere in particular, and like to travel to interesting places. Full stack software engineer with 5+ years experience and a math background. Mostly I do heavy lifting in Java and Clojure. I've worked on complicated cloud pipelines, full-stack web apps, and in a past life, high volume, near real-time distributed trade processing applications for a Big Finance Company. I've also done work with parsing, domain specific languages, full-stack web development, custom high-speed message queues, and security and encryption. I like to solve hard problems. Github: [https://github.com/mthvedt/](https://github.com/mthvedt/) Linkedin: [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike- thvedt/11/5b4/9bb](http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mike-thvedt/11/5b4/9bb) Contact: [email protected] The buzzword list: Java, JEE, JMS, Hibernate, Spring, jUnit, Clojure, Ring/Compojure, Javascript, jQuery, Mocha, Haskell, Oracle and Postgres SQL, ElasticSearch, Redis, Mongo, AWS. ------ dpmehta02 SEEKING WORK - SF Bay Area - Remote or Local Software Developer specializing in Web and Data Engineering, freelancing while I build my startup. I spent three years as a Data Analyst, then quit and taught myself to code. I've only been freelancing for six months, so I'm willing to work at a discount while I build up my portfolio. I'm also open to bartering. Skills: Ruby/Rails, TDD, SQL, Redis, ElasticSearch, Python, R, Machine Learning, Project Management, Git, Linux/Unix, AWS, Heroku Production experience: Everything associated with large Rails projects, web crawling, data pipelines, APIs, data analysis, product management Side projects: I've built some apps in Node (Express, Meteor), and I compete in Kaggle Data Science competitions when I have time ([http://www.kaggle.com/users/30845/dpmehta02](http://www.kaggle.com/users/30845/dpmehta02)). I am particularly interested in NLP. dpmehta02[at]gmail[dot]com [https://github.com/dpmehta02](https://github.com/dpmehta02) ------ random42 SEEKING WORK - Remote _Django /Python developer_ (Major) Skills: Python, Django, ML/NLP/Analytics, Hadoop, Cassandra, Postgres/MySQL, EC2, S3, Bootstrap, jQuery I specialize in, Backend/Python development — POCs, rapid prototypes, load/performance testing etc. Server side/DB performance optimizations & design to scale. Big Data consulting — Hadoop Ecosystem + Cassandra. Have evaluated Mongo, Couchbase, Riak, DynamoDB, EMR and redshift as well for client requirements. NLP/ML/Data Science Consulting — Sentiment Analysis, NER, Classification,Clustering,Statistical modelling Find out more at Linkedin: [http://www.linkedin.com/in/mohitranka](http://www.linkedin.com/in/mohitranka) Github: [http://www.github.com/mohitranka](http://www.github.com/mohitranka) Portfolio: [http://mohitranka.com/work/](http://mohitranka.com/work/) or Email: [email protected] :) ------ donaldguy SEEKING WORK - Remote or NYC Donald Guy Graduated MIT in CS 2012 \-- Tech: Mostly been working for last few years as full-stack web developer: HTML5/CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Rails. (less preferably) Java, PHP Interested in DevOps and sys-admin stuff as well. Some experience with Chef. older experience in app, systems, embedded, and OS-level work: C++, C, x86 Assembly, 8051 Assembly, Perl, Python, bash, Scheme Would love excuses to need to learn Go, Scala, maybe Clojure; or play with Docker. Prepared to learn AngularJS, Meteor, EmberJS, probably other frameworks as needed. \-- Personal: Interested in music, fitness, social-good, social networking, education, (foreign) languages, and working with local small businesses. Have decent knowledge of craft beer. Not particularly interested in anything finance-specific, nor probably marketing/advertising-specific. Would consider full-time positions if sufficiently interesting. \-- Contact E: [email protected] [https://github.com/donaldguy](https://github.com/donaldguy) [https://www.elance.com/s/donaldbguy/](https://www.elance.com/s/donaldbguy/) ------ transmit101 SEEKING FREELANCER - local Android engineer - London - Mixlr [http://dev.mixlr.com](http://dev.mixlr.com) - Mixlr is a fast-growing platform for social live audio with millions of users across the world. We would like an experienced engineer help our small, passionate team bring the Mixlr experience to the Android world. The app will include live audio streaming, chat, discovery and all the key features that mobile users already enjoy in our successful iOS app. You will have experience of building at least one non-trivial native Android app. The following attributes would also be advantageous: * dedication to designing and building fantastic user interfaces * knowledge of live streaming protocols, especially on mobile * passion for music apps and/or audio programming * experience working with JSON and RESTful APIs * broad knowledge of different Android devices * experience with test-driven development * proficiency of at least one other language apart from Java, especially: C, C++, Ruby or JavaScript For more information please see our dev portal: [http://dev.mixlr.com](http://dev.mixlr.com) ------ dylanrw SEEKING WORK - SF Bay Area / Remote - Long or Short Term Consultation I am a Product Designer (Interaction Design/UI/UX). I have experience relevant to products from iOS & Android to Large Web Platforms. I typically consult on or perform the following: * Product management - strategy, best practices, team building, implementation. * Product design - strategy, best practices, team building, process, interaction design, ui design, iconography. * Front end dev - I tend to build most things I spec at the very least to a minimum in which there is no chance of fidelity loss from prototype to final product. I've also setup processes for growing teams and established best practices for new hires. [email protected] | [http://bvrgroup.us](http://bvrgroup.us) | [http://dribbble.com/dylanrw](http://dribbble.com/dylanrw) ------ ryanjanvier SEEKING WORK - Remote - Based in Canada Experienced (13 years) Front end developer available for short and long term remote contracts. I enjoy building amazing websites and user interfaces, with an emphasis on usability and experience. I have experience working with remote teams, managing outsourced contractors, startups (I am the co-founder of a bootstrapped startup). I have experience working with the following technologies: \- HTML/CSS \- Javascript \- Ruby on Rails \- PHP/mySQL and have also dabbled in Objective-c, Python, and Ruby. I work well with: \- Remote teams \- Outsourced contractors \- Startups and agencies \- Awesome people I am not afraid of: \- Learning new technologies \- Working remotely \- Hacking. If I don't know it, I'll figure it out. Linkedin: [http://ca.linkedin.com/in/ryanjanvier](http://ca.linkedin.com/in/ryanjanvier) Dribbble: [http://www.dribbble.com/ryanjanvier](http://www.dribbble.com/ryanjanvier) Twitter: [http://www.twitter.com/ryanjanvier](http://www.twitter.com/ryanjanvier) Email: [email protected] Portfolio: [http://thinktipi.com](http://thinktipi.com) ------ nigma SEEKING WORK - Remote or on-site (Europe/US) Backend and frontend development, mobile APIs, devops. I usually do Python, Django, mobile backends, PostgreSQL/*DB, JS, Angular, Scala, Go, system architecture, database design, automation, devops (Ansible, Salt) and whatever it takes to get the job done. I'm capable of executing all stages of projects, starting from a customer idea and ending with a ready, deployed product. I have a broad technical and domain-specific knowledge (medical, financial, automotive, location-based services, machine-learning, analytics, wavelets) and several years of experience working for startups, business customers and open-source. I deliver several projects a year. Here's some of my work: [http://en.ig.ma/projects](http://en.ig.ma/projects) [http://github.com/nigma](http://github.com/nigma) Drop me an email at [email protected] PS. I'm open to cooperation with other freelancers (design, mobile, web, etc.). ------ mryan SEEKING WORK - Remote, Amsterdam, London Syadmin as a Service Do you want to improve your scaling, resilience and reliability, but don't have a full-time Ops person on the team? Why not rent one? I work with startups and online businesses to help them spend less time worrying about technical problems, and more time growing their business. How can I help you? \- Expert sysadmin services, on tap \- Continuous Integration for your infrastructure \- Infrastructure design and implementation \- Server maintenance and optimisation (performance and cost) \- Quickly get up and running with tools like Puppet About Me I'm writing a book on AWS System Administration that will be published by O'Reilly early this year. Here's an AWS case study for an infrastructure I built: [http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case- studies/fashiolista/](http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case- studies/fashiolista/) If you think these services could help your business grow, let's talk. [email protected] ------ timrogers SEEKING WORK - Remote, based in London, UK I'm a Ruby developer based in London, looking for contract work to go alongside my part-time work at a successful YC startup and my undergraduate studies. I love working in Rails, and have particularly outstanding experience building Twilio applications, from whole-company phone systems to small SMS services. I spoke about a cloud-based phone system I built at Twilio's European conference in 2013. Apart from that, I have plenty of general Ruby experience, working with clients from charities to web hosting companies. I'm not afraid to work in Javascript, HTML5 and CSS3, and am happy to negotiate on price to find an arrangement that works for you. [https://github.com/timrogers](https://github.com/timrogers) [http://timrogers.co.uk/portfolio](http://timrogers.co.uk/portfolio) Think I can help? Drop me a line at [email protected]. ------ jfc SEEKING WORK - remote, based in Connecticut Developer and designer (4+ years), work out of my own shop, Heta ([http://heta.co](http://heta.co)). Primarily develop, design, and customize WordPress themes, or convert PSD designs or HTML/CSS/jQuery to WordPress. I'm also building an app and run my own server as a hobby. I've worked on complex sites for digital agnecies (30+ templates, 25+ plugins), as well as on smaller sites for small businesses/individuals (10 templates, 10 plugins). Technologies I use: PHP, HTML, CSS/LESS/SASS, jQuery, CodeIgniter, WordPress, mySQL, ZURB Foundation (3/4/5), Bootstrap, SVN or Git for version control, Fogbugz or Sifter for issue tracking, HipChat to stay in touch. Self-taught and resourceful. Reach out to me at: hn [at] heta [dot] co (not com). I can send you links to live sites I've developed, sites I've converted to WP, etc. ------ rmundo SEEKING WORK - REMOTE | TAIPEI Hi, iOS developer for 3+ years here, before that I was writing satellite software and firmware in C/C++ for Taiwan's space agency. I have a couple of personal apps in the app store; the most recent one scratches a personal itch: it uses facial recognition to help you tie a tie in the easiest way possible. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/face- tie/id570542131](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/face-tie/id570542131) I was iOS team lead for one of the major navigation apps in Taiwan, and have since created medium sized apps (over two dozen viewcontrollers) for multiple clients. I also have experience with Python, HTML/CSS, javascript, git/svn. I love working with people who are dedicated to designing the best user experience possible. You can find me at ray.tsaihong at gmail if interested in discussing work opportunities. Thanks! ------ nnnnnn SEEKING WORK - Remote (based in LA) Where I've worked/studied: thoughtbot, ZURB, Coveo, Atlassian, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont McKenna College Things I do: Back end dev, front end dev, full stack dev, design (I have a partner who designs), code auditing, TDD, long term or short term projects My usual stack includes: Ruby on Rails, HTML, HAML, CSS, SASS, Heroku, Angular.js, Javascript, jQuery, Postgres, Photoshop, git, Ruby, ZURB Foundation, Responsive design I can also do: Backbone.js, PSD to HTML, Bootstrap, PHP, MySQL I've worked with over 25 clients in 4 countries and am on the look out for interesting new projects. I won't belabor an explanation of my philosophy and experience on this thread, but please visit [http://nealke.mp](http://nealke.mp) or email me if you are interested in learning more. You can contact me at me( at )nealke( . )mp ------ andreasilenzi SEEKING FREELANCER - NYC/NJ/Remote - Free Music Archive freemusicarchive.org WE ARE: The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal MP3 downloads directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. We're one of the largest repositories of Creative Commons music on the web, and our curated approach means it's not just free music, it's good music. We're based out of WFMU's magic factory in Jersey City, NJ. YOU ARE: A skilled backend engineer, with solid background in modern languages and techniques. We're looking ideally some overlap with our stack which happens to be PHP/SQL, and for someone who doesn't mind working with legacy code. You'll have the chance to make valued, long-term strategic contributions to the project. For more info, send a note to andrea -at- freemusicarchive.org ------ jonnathanson SEEKING WORK -- Remote, Bay Area, or SoCal I'm a writer. I'm a pretty good one, too. (Feel free to look at my HN history and vehemently disagree, however.) I've been published in Slate, Priceonomics, Harvard Business Review, and other blogs and mags. I've been on NPR a few times, which was pretty darned fun. By day I'm a marketer and growth optimizer. But recently I've signed a book deal, and I would love to take more time to focus on it. So I'm looking for remote and freelance opportunities. The sort of work that's interesting and pays the bills, or if you're feeling unusually generous, the sort that keeps me in Teslas and Tom Ford. I do: content, web and app copy, analysis, market research, customer lifecycle communications, voice, PR strategy, etc. You need: copy that converts. Please email me if interested: jonfnathanson @ gmail.com ------ hmd SEEKING WORK - Remote only I am a full stack web developer with 4 years of experience, My technical skills: Programming: • Languages: C# , JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Python, Google Go, C++ • Tools: Visual Studio IDE (2008, 2010, 2012, 2013), Eclipse IDE, Code Vision IDE,IIS, Apache http server • Frameworks & Libraries: .net Framework (3.5, 4, 4.5), Asp.net MVC Framework, Nhibernate ,Entity Framework ,Ninject, AngularJs, jQuery ,Underscorejs, twitter Bootstrap, D3js, RequireJs ,HighCharts, • Concept: SOLID design principle, MVC design pattern, single page web application, Service Oriented Architecture, Restful Architecture Data manipulation & Analysis: • Languages: TSQL, PL/SQL, MDX • Tools: SQL Server (SSAS,SSIS,BIDS, SQL server Profiler), Oracle Database, PL SQL Developer, Power designer, MongoDB , MySQL • Concepts: OLAP & Data warehousing, Business Intelligence Also I’m willing to work with other technologies and frameworks as well (Node.js, AWS, Java …) Email me at hmd.ai.h At gmail.com ------ martey SEEKING WORK - Washington DC or remote I love Django/Python development, although I also have experience with PHP, Perl, and a variety of other languages. I can write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript by hand, configure and secure your Linux server, and optimize Apache or nginx to help your website scale. I write technical specifications, use comments in my code, and am adept at Git. Members of this community have been some of my favorite clients. I have created MVPs, debugged troubling technical issues, and provided advice. I love hearing about other people's projects and helping to make the Internet better. Portfolio: [https://marteydodoo.com/portfolio/](https://marteydodoo.com/portfolio/) Contact: [https://marteydodoo.com/contact/](https://marteydodoo.com/contact/) ------ Udo SEEKING WORK - Mannheim, Germany - Remote or onsite I'm an experienced software developer with a strong full-stack web background. I don't just build your app/site, I'll also help you put the concept together if need be, and I'm good at filling the blanks with underspecified projects. Server-side (PHP, Ruby on Rails, Node.js), client-side (HTML5/CSS/JS), also C/C++, ObjectiveC (iOS and OS X development), Java, Ruby, Delphi and many other languages and technologies. I offer scalability consulting for high-throughput web apps and can make MVPs very quickly. My background is in working with advertising agencies and scientific companies, and I have a biosciences education as well. [email protected] [http://udos.name/](http://udos.name/) By the way, I would _love_ to do a project with or for a fellow HNer one day... ~~~ livestyle Looks like your site is down. Did you have MVP packages before? ------ cgag SEEKING WORK - Remote or Bay Area http://curtis.io https://github.com/cgag [email protected] I do full stack web dev, with either Clojure or Ruby/Rails. I did Rails work full time for about the last year, and have been working in Clojure for my side projects for the last few years. I like writing clean, testable, composable, pure functions where possible in whatever language I happen to be working in. I can build a basic responsive UI with bootstrap, but I'm not much of a designer, and I'm decent at Javascript (and Clojurescript), but prefer backend work. Buzzword bingo: Ruby, Rails, TDD Clojure, Clojurescript, Ring, Compojure, Datomic HTML/CSS/Javascript/CoffeeScript Postgres, SQL AWS, Heroku ------ rk0567 SEEKING WORK - Remote I'm a full-stack web developer. Skills: HTML5, CSS3/Sass, jQuery/CoffeeScript, Bootstrap/Foundation Ruby, Sinatra, Rails, VPS/S3/Ubuntu Inbound Marketing/SEO Recent projects/experiments: http://railyo.com (400+ users) http://assembleyourpc.net (10k+ monthly users) http://scrabblewordfinder.org/ http://html5portfoliotemplate.com Checkout my blog ([http://blog.sudobits.com](http://blog.sudobits.com), [http://rameshjha.com](http://rameshjha.com)) and github profile [https://github.com/rkjha](https://github.com/rkjha) You can contact me here: ramesh at rameshjha.com. ------ akg_67 SEEKING WORK - SEATTLE WA | REMOTE Work focus: DevOps. System Integration. Infrastructure solution design, evaluation, implementation, deployment, and administration. Performance troubleshooting and management. Infrastructure focus: Data Storage (SAN, NAS, Object), Public and Private Cloud, Virtual Servers, Backup/Recovery/Archive 10+ years experience with system integration and professional services for data storage networking and associated infrastructure. Experience: All major storage array, storage network, and storage software vendors, OpenStack, Python, VMware, PHP, LAMP, MySQL, R, Tableau, jQuery, Bootstrap Familiarity: Big Data, Hadoop, MapReduce, Data Analytics, Backend Web Infrastructure, Web Development Currently managing a data analytics web service. Involved with a crowd-lending startup as technical co-founder. Email: sproutat+hn [AT] gmail ------ chatmasta SEEKING FREELANCERS - Remote My partner and I are working on an interesting VPN company. I am a Yale senior, CS major. My partner is ten years out of Wharton. We are applying to YC for summer batch. Please email me if you are talented in any of the following areas: \- Python, especially Flask \- Backbone, angular, or ember \- Apiary \- API design We are following an API centric development process. Over the next couple weeks, this will involve us completing the following tasks: \- Write an API blueprint in form of www.apiary.io \- Use apiary.io to provide API mock server \- Frontend and backend developers work in parallel \- Backend developer responsible for implementing API according to blueprint \- Frontend developer responsible for client side of website \- Client side of website interacts with API, can test with apiary mock server We want to get started as soon as possible. Please reach out. As I am a CS major and engineer, I will make this a very smooth process for all involved. Thanks. EMAIL: [email protected] ------ marcomassaro SEEKING WORK - REMOTE [http://masswerks.com](http://masswerks.com) We're a small team that builds websites and apps for startups and growing companies. _Our past clients include Buddymedia, Crazyegg, Chitika, RE /MAX, Moovweb and more._ \------------------------------------------------------ User experience \------------------------------------------------------ • Usability audits & testing • Sitemaps & Information architecture • Sketches & wireframing • Onboarding users & conversion optimization • Product strategy • Content strategy \------------------------------------------------------ Web & UI Design \------------------------------------------------------ • Landing pages • Marketing websites • Applications (admin, backend, interfaces, etc.) • Redesigns (taking a product and redesigning it from the ground up) \------------------------------------------------------ Front-end development \------------------------------------------------------ • HTML • CSS • Javascript • Responsive (for tablets and mobile devices) \------------------------------------------------------ Email [email protected] and I'll reply within minutes ------ ccarpenterg SEEKING WORK - Remote/On site I've worked for 3 startups so far doing web development. I'm also a Community TA for the Startup Engineering class and for the Machine Learning class at Coursera (Stanford). Python/Django/Tornado/GAE Framework: [https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist](https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist) [https://github.com/ccarpenterg/djangotodos](https://github.com/ccarpenterg/djangotodos) [https://github.com/ccarpenterg/tornadotodos](https://github.com/ccarpenterg/tornadotodos) node.js, express.js, ejs, Sequelize, Bookshelf: [https://github.com/ccarpenterg/bitstarter](https://github.com/ccarpenterg/bitstarter) Frontend, jQuery, D3.js, Backbone.js, AngularJS, Bootstrap: [https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist/wiki](https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist/wiki) [http://ccarpenterg.github.io/blog/us-census-visualization- wi...](http://ccarpenterg.github.io/blog/us-census-visualization-with-d3js/) [http://ccarpenterg.github.io/blog/calendar-layout- visualisin...](http://ccarpenterg.github.io/blog/calendar-layout-visualising- market-data/) IAAS/PASS: Linode, Heroku, Google App Engine, AWS Databases: Postgresql, MongoDB, Redis, mysql Tools: vim, git, Chrome Dev tools, virtualenv, foreman, vagrant, screen, emacs, dotfiles Machine Learning/Data Science: Octave, R, numpy, sci-kit-learn, pandas. [https://github.com/ccarpenterg/ML](https://github.com/ccarpenterg/ML) Visualization: D3.js, matplotlib Github: [https://github.com/ccarpenterg](https://github.com/ccarpenterg) Drop me a line: [email protected] ------ lukestevens SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote (Anywhere) I'm a designer looking for a Django or Rails developer to build v1.0 of an Analytics-based web app I've designed, documented, and built HTML templates for that are ready to go. Budget for the whole project is _low_ five figures, i.e. small, so I'm open to anyone, anywhere, with good availability over the next few months. There's a smaller, more challenging component of the app that I'd also like help with, _especially_ if you have experience with the Google Analytics API. If this is you, I would LOVE to talk to you :) I have plenty of info explaining the app, so if you're interested just ask and I'll elaborate further :) Drop me (Luke) a line at [email protected]. Thanks! ~~~ lukestevens Thanks for the response guys - I've found someone to take this on :) ------ philipmorg SEEKING WORK- Remote or Bay Area Every website and marketing push involves content. But is your content effectively supporting your business goals? Is it performing as well as you want it to? Chances are, if you hired a writer, or if you did it yourself, your content could do more to achieve your business goals. The missing ingredient is usually a careful combination of information/UX design, content, and ongoing testing. I CAN HELP If your content is not performing as well as you'd like, or you need new content for your marketing efforts, let me know and I'll gladly take some time to chat with you about potential solutions. If I'm the right fit for your needs, I'll share work samples and work up a proposal. CONTACT [email protected] ------ phildionne SEEKING WORK - Quebec, Canada - Remote Philippe Dionne - Experienced Ruby and Ruby On Rails developer \- [http://github.com/phildionne](http://github.com/phildionne) \- [http://www.linkedin.com/in/phildionne](http://www.linkedin.com/in/phildionne) About me: \- Experience building a multitenant application, maintaining and improving a medium-sized legacy codebase and building a modern and bleeding edge Rails 4.1 application \- Strive for maintainability, scalability and performance \- Adopt Ruby's community best practices \- Actively contribute to opensource Tools of choice: \- Git workflow \- PostgreSQL, MySQL \- HTML5 & CSS3 \- Bootstrap 2.0, 3.0 \- Ruby On Rails, Sinatra, Padrino \- Deploying using Heroku and Capistrano \- TDD using RSpec and Capybara \- Continuous integration using Travis CI and CircleCI \- Experience with Spree Rails' based e-commerce solution \- Consume web APIs, such as Github, Twitter, Last.fm and Soundcloud ------ kleinsch SEEKING WORK - SF Bay Area - Remote or Local - Long or Short Term Projects I'm an expert at creating APIs and building client applications (browser-based and mobile apps) powered by APIs. API Development - I've designed, built, and scaled APIs for many different application profiles, from large complex data models, event subscription architecture, high transaction volume (25K requests/second), to simple REST APIs. I have a lot of experience analyzing data models and use cases to determine API structure, architecture, and recommended implementation. I know the ins and outs of REST vs RPC, JSON vs XML, and hypermedia vs traditional. I've implemented APIs using Rails, Node.js, and Java platforms. Bottom line - if you need an API developed, I can take you through the process from start to finish. Single-Page JS App Development - I've led development on multiple single-page JavaScript apps in both desktop and mobile environments. I have significant JavaScript experience and have built full applications from scratch using Backbone.js, Ember.js, and AngularJS. Recently I worked with Balanced Payments to build a web interface for their payments platform using Ember.js. The whole project is open source - check it out! [https://github.com/balanced/balanced- dashboard](https://github.com/balanced/balanced-dashboard) Mobile App Development - I've deployed multiple apps across iOS and Android platforms for phones and tablets. I'm experienced in both native (iOS, Android) and mobile cross-platform HTML (Sencha Touch, JQuery Mobile) development. Traditional Web Development - While I've spent most of my time lately working on APIs and API-driven apps, I also have ten years of experience doing traditional server-side web development. If you need a Rails or Java generalist to build a product, augment your team or maintain existing code, get in touch! [email protected] [http://www.rasslingcats.com](http://www.rasslingcats.com) [http://www.kleinsch.com](http://www.kleinsch.com) ------ flippyhead SEEKING FREELANCERS : Pathable ([http://pathable.com](http://pathable.com)) - Seattle or REMOTE Pathable is hiring expert javascript engineers and UI designers. We're innovating how single-page applications are built and we need your help. Our industry leading social networking application is focused on conferences and events. It's 75% JavaScript and 25% Ruby. We support several open source projects including Backbone and QuiltJS. We've embraced remote working to a degree you won't find anywhere else. Learn more: [http://www.pathable.com/](http://www.pathable.com/) ~~~ namanyayg Let's talk! mail [at] namanyayg [dot] com. ------ candiru SEEKING WORK - Based in Budapest, Hungary - Remote only Back-end Java and Android developer. Over 9 years of experience in Java. I specialize in the following stack: Wicket, Spring Core, JPA/Hibernate with MySQL, and Jetty; but I'm happy to work with anything else. I think I can help you the best if what you need is an internal or client-facing web app with a fairly complex UI, but this is by no means a requirement. I can also help fixing a previous project for you. Android developer as well for around 3 years. I don't do design or front-end myself. I'm happy to work with other developers of your choice, or I can recommend you the ones I've been working closely with over the past few years. Email on my profile. ------ lucaspiller SEEKING FREELANCER - Devon, UK or remote Seeking an experienced developer fluent in HTML/CSS and JS to work on an upcoming project developing a mobile application. Responsive design and Ember (or similar) knowledge is a must. .NET/C# experience is a bonus, as that is what the backend system is running on. This will initially be a three month project, however if it goes well there will be further work. We are looking for someone to form an ongoing relationship with, if you are local there will be the option of permanent employment. To apply please email [email protected]. Make sure to include links to your work / profiles, GitHub, LinkedIn / resume and some background info. ------ karlshea SEEKING WORK ---- Remote only I'm a full-stack web developer from Milwaukee, WI looking for Drupal or backend web service projects, or to be a development partner for a designer or agency. Current focus: * Drupal 7 (Usually using Zen with Zen Grids for frontend, Panels/Views/Features/etc for backend) * PHP MVC Frameworks (Kohana, CodeIgniter) * Backbone.js * Sencha Touch * Compass/Sass Previously I've worked with a large range of technologies including five years of .NET and almost a decade of Linux server administration. Check out my work here: [http://weilstreet.com](http://weilstreet.com) Contact: [email protected] ------ gmcwhirter SEEKING WORK - Toronto / Montreal / Travel is fine Are you looking to take an existing application to the next level or build one from scratch? Thinking about rolling out an API? Maybe you're concerned about application security... We should talk, I'm a full stack engineer with 8+ years experience building secure, distributed applications using Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, JS/Backbone/Meteor, HTML/CSS, MySQL, ... and I'd love to hear from you. It has been my experience that these opportunities tend to be mutually beneficial! Of late, I've been doing a fair bit of sysadmin work so we could also talk about that if it is of interest. Until then, [email protected] ------ takatin SEEKING WORK - Remote (Coimbatore, India) \--- I have over 6 years of experience designing logos and building websites for a wide range of clients from across the globe. Thanks to this, I have built up a solid foundation in branding fundamentals and front-end development which I'll be putting to good use when working with you on your projects. I'm also excited about web apps and the backend which has led me to become quite familiar with the workings of Nginx, Node.js and MongoDB. I'm keenly interested in gaining more experience in this area so please get in touch if you're building on this stack. My design portfolio is up at dffrnt.com and you can reach me on my email, vijay at dffrnt.com ------ jaegerpicker SEEKING WORK Portland Maine, Remote work preferred Full Stack Web Developer/iOS Developer Python - Django, Flask, Tornado Groovy - Grails Ruby - Rails JS - node.js and express on the backend, backbone - ember on the front end ASP.NET MVC - C# MySql, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, redis I have the most experience with python but I've been working on web applications for 15 years and I have deployed them in several different stacks. I've contributed major parts of 4 iOS and built two completely end to end myself. I'm looking for a part time contract that I can work in the evenings and weekends (15-25 hours a week). Please feel free to shoot me any questions at shawn -at- codeartgames -dot- com . Thanks! ------ facebiff SEEKING WORK - Remote/On-site Based in Boston, MA / Providence, RI. I'm a software engineer with wide experience in dynamic programming languages. \- Expert in Ruby, Python and JavaScript \- Broad understanding of full-stack web development, operations and deployment \- Lots of experience with distributed systems, real-time apps, and software integration projects \- Wealth of experience putting together technical teams, capturing requirements, and mentoring developers \- Background in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Resume/portfolio: [http://mikeleone.com](http://mikeleone.com) [http://github.com/mleone](http://github.com/mleone) Buzzwords: ruby, python, javascript, rails, django, node.js, linux, open source, meteor.js, backbone.js ------ FiddlerClamp SEEKING WORK - Toronto or Remote Experienced technical writer and marketing writer. Online/Web help, print/PDF documentation, press releases, Web site copy, FAQs, white papers. [http://www.hiretechnicalwritertoronto.com](http://www.hiretechnicalwritertoronto.com) for more details, or [email protected] / jonathanacohen @ Twitter, [http://tinyurl.com/ly8g2sw](http://tinyurl.com/ly8g2sw) on LinkedIn. Disclosure: I am looking for full-time local/remote work, but seeking contract work in the meantime. Would rather work with you on larger/longer-term products than one-off short pieces. ------ mmmilo SEEKING WORK -- Toronto, Canada -- Remote [https://github.com/mmmilo](https://github.com/mmmilo) [http://www.pocoapps.com](http://www.pocoapps.com) \------------------------------------------- Michael Lo - iOS developer (mainly) \------------------------------------------- Objective-C (iOS) PHP (Laravel, Drupal) Front-end (AngularJS, JQuery, Bootstrap, Phonegap/Trigger.io) Tools (Git, SVN, Grunt, Composer) \------------------------------------------- Experienced mobile developer. I can work on projects of all sizes, build APIs, help develop architecture and conceptualize ideas. I've been involved from beginning (requirements, analyst) to end (deployment). I love problem solving and building elegant, clean and modern solutions. Looking to get things done! ------ thirdtruck SEEKING WORK - New York or Remote Full-stack web developer who specializes in the front-end, loves vim and TDD/BDD, and who wants to help make your fledging idea a digital reality. GitHub profile: [https://github.com/thirdtruck](https://github.com/thirdtruck) Personal project: [http://rubyai.org](http://rubyai.org) Experienced foremost in: JavaScript/CoffeeScript (Backbone.js, node.js) HTML/CSS/Sass (Bootstrap) Ruby Also experienced in: Python Perl Java MySQL You can reach me at freelance at thirdtruck.org. \--- Are you a fellow freelancer here in New York? I'm new to the city and would welcome the opportunity to meet a cohort in coding over coffee or tea. ------ badhairday Seeking Part-Time or Contract Work Philadelphia, PA or Remote I'm a motivated student with a passion for front-end Android development and full stack web development. I've worked on Android applications and devices used by millions of people around the world, I've built websites for small businesses in South Jersey, and I've hacked together projects to test run new technologies. * Email: mike [AT] mhenry [DOT] io * Website: http://mhenry.io * GitHub: http://github.com/mhenry * LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mahenry Don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks! ------ lucaspiller SEEKING WORK - Remote, UK based I'm an experienced full-stack software engineer. I primarily use Ruby on Rails, but am equally comfortable with JavaScript (frontend & Node) and Erlang. Recently I've been focusing on building MVPs for startups. A recent client has received funding from the UK government due to the work I did building their platform. I'm looking to continue working with startups to help them realise their ideas. If this is you, get in touch! \-- Portfolio: [http://lucaspiller.com/](http://lucaspiller.com/) GitHub: [https://github.com/lucaspiller/](https://github.com/lucaspiller/) Email: [email protected] ------ Oculus SEEKING WORK - Toronto/Kitchener or Remote I'm a full stack web developer based in Toronto/Kitchener. Skills: AngularJS, Node.js, Express.js, Android, D3.js, jQuery, pure Javascript, Photoshop, PostgreSQL, Nginx Experience: I've written RESTful APIs, survey Widgets, web applications, and Android apps. I also have experience with Arduino (maze solving car), 8085 Assembler, and C (both at a basic level). I'm always open to learning anything that gets the job done. Portfolio: [http://stolarsky.com](http://stolarsky.com) Github: [https://github.com/EmilS](https://github.com/EmilS) Email: [email protected] ------ jamiesyke SEEKING WORK - REMOTE - Manchester, UK Visual & UI Designer specialising in working with startups, looking for some great new clients from mid February. I have experience working with startups, both before and after funding, UX, leading design and front end teams alongside high level design skills in web & mobile. You can see some examples of my work on [http://www.syke.co/](http://www.syke.co/) or [http://dribbble.com/Jamiesyke](http://dribbble.com/Jamiesyke) and can get in touch with me if you'd like to discuss your project more at [email protected] ------ neillyons SEEKING WORK - Belfast, UK - Remote ok. Full stack web developer specialising in Django and AngularJS. Looking for opportunities to work with interesting companies doing web app development and improving business processes (eg simplification of existing processes, automation of repetitive tasks etc.) I am also interested in any opportunity to use Go professionally. In the past I've worked on high traffic sites, large enterprise sites with multiple developers, and for startup companies. Please email me if you would like to see my CV and maybe we can work together in the future. NO RECRUITERS PLEASE. Neil Lyons [email protected] neillyons.io github.com/nwjlyons twitter.com/nwjlyons ------ croissantio SEEKING WORK Croissant is a creative digital design and web application development shop. Our forte lies in creating beautifully (clicheeeee) designed minimum viable products, websites, landing pages and first iteration/version 1 applications. We will work closely with you, and converse about your ideas and vision from day one. You will be actively involved throughout the whole creation process. We currently have openings in our schedule for new clients. Get in touch with us and let's see if we're both a good fit for each other. [email protected] [http://www.croissant.io](http://www.croissant.io) Hope to hear from you soon! ------ mitchellbryson SEEKING WORK - Remote I'm a UI designer and a front-end developer. Here's some examples of my work… [http://mitchbryson.com](http://mitchbryson.com) Here's what I do best: \- Planning: wireframes, on paper or in Balsamiq \- Concepts: Photoshop mock-ups of pages and flows \- Build: HTML, CSS and JS. I prefer HAML, SASS and CoffeeScript \- Integration: I can integrate into any app or framework. I've been a designer/developer since 2002. For the last 3 years, I've been focused on helping start-ups design and build their products. Get in touch via my portfolio or [email protected]. Thanks! ~~~ iaskwhy I usually check portfolios just so I keep my own list of good designers, I'm not really seeking to hire any for now but might do so in the future. I checked your website and your works looks very interesting. I did however found two issues. \- I usually like to check sites which are part of the portfolio but I couldn't find any link to the projects which you worked on. I'd say you should consider adding it. \- The type you have chosen doesn't look that good in Windows. If you can't understand why I'm saying this you can reach me and I'll send you some screenshots. Keep up the good work! ------ samk9080 SEEKING WORK - Chicago, Il. or Remote I'm a front-end UI web developer based in Chicago, Il. Skills: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery, AngularJS, JSON, Adobe CS, Ruby on Rails, Twitter Bootstrap, SASS and AJAX Experience: I have 5+ years of experience (Fortune 500 companies, digital agencies and tech. startups). Feel free to drop me an email if you'd like to chat about your project (there is no pressure whatsoever to work with me!) Availability: In approximately 2 weeks I'll be rapping up my current project. Github: [https://github.com/ShanSM](https://github.com/ShanSM) Email: samk9080/ _at_ /gmail (Mention HN please) ------ hemangshah SEEKING WORK in computer vision, machine learning. Remote or local to Bangalore, India. 8+ years experience, ex-cofounder of tech startup. Freelancing for more than a year. Topics I've worked on: image binary segmentation, human body pose estimation, face tracking using AAM and warping, color blending, projective geometry, augmented reality, face authentication, change detection, OCR pre-processing, object detection, tracking and recognition, general classifications, etc. Feel free to connect with me at: linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/link2hemangshah email: hemang.j.shah at 'google's popular email service' \- Hemang Shah ------ lmbloomfield SEEKING WORK: Remote, Based in Australia. I focus on generating more revenue for your business, so that you get a big return on your investment. ______DIGITAL DESIGN Digital design is my passion and I specialise in Branding Identities and Website Design. I create timeless pieces that drive traffic, increase brand recognition and word-of-mouth referrals for my clients. ______WEB DEVELOPMENT I develop mobile-friendly websites that allow users to purchase anywhere, at any time. I design with the intention to specifically elicit a response (eg. purchasing my client's products) from viewers. ______CONTACT Luchia Bloomfield - [email protected] Portfolio - www.luchia.com.au Skype - lucybloomfield92 ------ buf SEEKING FREELANCER - London/SF/Remote - Eat In My Seat eatinmyseat.com WE ARE: We are early employees of Eventbrite and Uber who have broken off to start Eat In My Seat. EIMS creates a direct communication channel between venues and consumers. The premise is simple: Imagine you're at a basketball game and it's half time. You really want a beer and a burger, but _everyone_ is queuing up at the concession. Wouldn't it be better to pull out your iPhone, order from the comfort of your seat, and have the food delivered to you? YOU ARE: A Rails or iOS engineer with an eye for usability. Please email buford at eatinmyseat dot com ------ Androsynth SEEKING WORK - remote I have spent the past 5 years as a web developer working with PHP and javascript. The past 3 years I have worked at the senior/principal level. I have experience working remotely. I have learned a number of languages in my free time, but I wish to branch out professionally and I am willing to learn whatever language and framework you use to build your products. I am flexible in my work arrangements (eg time availability, contract vs employee, full time vs part time, etc). I am more interested in the engineering challenges. email me if you would like to see my resume and chat [email protected] ------ psycr SEEKING WORK - Remote or Toronto Seeking short term contracts to supplement existing employment. I am a human/machine interface designer && developer. My work consists of "from scratch" UX and interface design, from the napkin to nginx. I have considerable experience with Ruby and Javascript, years of experience with Rails, and extensive knowledge of client-side MVC. I've made contributions to Ember.js, and have written multiple 10k+ LOC apps - starting with 0.9 up to the latest 1.0 (one was recently featured on Venture Beat: [http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/22/uniiverse-releases- direct-...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/22/uniiverse-releases-direct- payments-so-anyone-can-sell-tickets-to-anything/)). I am acutely aware of the challenges/strategies associated with migrating server side architecture into the browser, leaning down views, and fattening up controllers. I am the author of an open source project called Quant ([https://github.com/jdjkelly/quant](https://github.com/jdjkelly/quant)) - a Rails API + Angular.js app to track "quantified self" data from every manufacturer willing to give it up. My work here was featured on The Verge alongside a similar project by the founder of Foursquare ([http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4392996/fitness-tracker- dat...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4392996/fitness-tracker-data- platforms-launch-giving-users-control)) Recently, I also contributed to the development of an iOS app, which is now in the app store: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/ticket-manager-by- uniiverse/...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/ticket-manager-by- uniiverse/id654814249?mt=8). I was responsible for integrating a credit card device reader with an existing checkout API, testing, and delivering a final build to the app store. Skills: Ruby, Rails, Mongo, Postgres, Sinatra, Node.js, Objective-C, Javascript, Coffeescript, Sass, Ember.js, Backbone.js, Angular.js, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3 Other tools in the box: Git, Zsh, pencils, pens, paper, Photoshop Contact is in my profile. ------ yen223 SEEKING WORK: Remote preferred. Based in Malaysia. Backend software engineer, specializing in Python/Django development. If you have the design, I can turn it into a working website. Looking for part-time gigs (10 hours/week, I currently hold a full-time job). Willing to offer discount to build my portfolio. Contact details in my profile. \--------------------------------------------- Server-side: Python - Django. Database: Postgresql OS: Ubuntu, OSX Infrastructure: AWS, Linode, Vagrant, Git. Devops: Ansible Others: I have experience building reporting systems, web crawlers and APIs. Front-end: Basic HTML/CSS/Javascript/jQuery - I don't do much design work. ------ trwired SEEKING WORK - Remote or Warsaw/Poland I am a full stack web developer located in Warsaw, Poland. I am especially well versed in the following technologies: Python * Django * Flask Web Frontend * AngularJS * HTML5 * CSS3 * JavaScript * Bootstrap, Foundation, SASS, Compass * chances are I have at least a passing familiarity with any web related technology that the industry is currently buzzing about Also * PHP, PostreSQL, Photoshop In the past I have worked for corporate clients, small businesses, start-ups and individuals. I feel right at home in any kind of project, be it just an idea that needs to take form or a legacy application with tons of dependencies and scarce documentation. Contact me at igor.kalat * gmail.com or using following phone number: +48 501-414-062 ------ ndcrandall SEEKING WORK - San Fransisco Bay Area or Remote I'm a Rails developer with several years of experience and a CS degree. My area of expertise is building APIs and integrating with external services. I will build out your MVP quickly or help engineer an existing product. Lets talk in person, hangout, or skype. Skills Ruby on Rails 3rd party APIs (Twilio, Facebook, Google, etc.) HTML / CSS / Javascript Contact [http://nicholascrandall.com](http://nicholascrandall.com) ncrandall at gmail ------ brandonhsiao SEEKING WORK - CA - remote Full-stack Python web developer. I build full sites from scratch using Python/web.py and HTML/CoffeeScript/SASS. If you have an idea, I can build an MVP for you. I work at a fixed price with a fixed deadline. For projects under $2k, no need to pay me until I'm done. last personal project: [http://robotgame.org](http://robotgame.org) github: [http://github.com/brandonhsiao](http://github.com/brandonhsiao) email: [email protected] ------ nwienert Vegas based consultant (sometimes in LA/SF). Full stack developer. Experienced in Frontend, Rails & Node based apps. Glut of other language experience as well (CS Degree). _Available in April_ Javascript architecture and advanced dev (backbone, single page apps, ember, react, game dev). Also experienced with ux/ui design. Available for remote or on-site consulting. I'm happy traveling on site for the start of a project and then continuing remote. Would prefer 1-2 month gigs. nate wienert at gmail. ------ juskrey SEEKING WORK - Small remote team from Ukraine is about Clojure, web/data development. [http://immute.co](http://immute.co) We are experienced generalists (13 and 10 years in IT dev for me and my brother - partner). Were working with C and Asm and to C# and Java in our careers. Recently trying to give a shot with Clojure consulting, as we are really experiencing all the benefits of rapid and robust development with it. Already had some projects from US, seeking for more. ------ rrbrambley SEEKING WORK - San Francisco, CA – Prefer local (not necessarily in your office), remote negotiable Mobile engineer with experience shipping Android and iOS apps. Preferably short-medium term projects. My most recent work included porting an iOS app to Android from scratch. Preferred work: Java/Android, iOS/Obj-C email: rob /at/ alwaysallthetime.com Actively working on some stuff over here: [http://github.com/rrbrambley](http://github.com/rrbrambley) ------ atox SEEKING WORK: REMOTE Location: Belgium PHP dev with 7+ years experience I've done lots of projects as a freelance consultant in Zend Framework, CodeIgniter, CakePhp and tend to be up to speed in a new project in almost no time at all. Am finishing my first Yii project right now. Early in my career I also ran my own psd to html conversion service, so I know a thing or two about front-end as well. Contact me on [http://lnkd.in/pxbvVs](http://lnkd.in/pxbvVs) ------ moron4hire SEEKING WORK - remote-only (Eastern Daylight Savings time) We are a small group of developers specializing in relational database-driven applications. We have a lot of experience with digging into other people's old, broken code and fixing it, quickly. Cleaning up and consolidating legacy databases is our bread and butter. No hairy ball of spaghetti code is too big for us. We do the work your own developers are too afraid to tackle. Find my email in my profile. ------ kyasui SEEKING WORK - Brooklyn/NYC or Remote I'm a designer and developer who can swiss army knife a lot of different tasks. I do front-end/back-end (wordpress/drupal/node.js), graphic design, interface design, branding, UI/UX etc. I'm more of a front-end guy/designer than an engineer but I believe I'm pretty good at ramping up on most things. [http://www.keiyasui.com](http://www.keiyasui.com) ------ cleverbaker SEEKING WORK : Remote || SF Bay Area || SoCal I will travel to meet you in person and work onsite. \---------- Front-end Engineer and Interactive Designer \----- My specialties are: • Mobile web development with progressive enhancement • JavaScript and CSS animations • Data visualization • PSD to responsive web development conversions • Interaction design and user experience design \----- My focuses are: • Reliable and constant communication • Fast turnaround times • Honesty and transparency • Integrity • Delivering stellar production-ready code \----- I have good experience with: • Working with agencies and startups • Producing large web apps • Multivariate testing • Co-working with teams \----- Check out [http://mibake.co](http://mibake.co) to learn more about me, my skills, and the value that I bring to your projects. ------ kingofspain SEEKING WORK - Remote Web & mobile design/dev. A bit of an all-rounder. Past things I done: Ecommerce, API's, apps for iOS and Android, intranets, medical compliance systems, CMS, CRM, surveying, events/ticketing, blah de blah. I can build your MVP or help further along the path! General skillz... Web: * HTML 5, CSS, Javascript * PHP (Codeigniter, Laravel, more...) * Responsive-ness, bootstrap, zurb or hand-coded... Mobile / Apps (iOS or Android): * Titanium * Phonegap Happy with git or mercurial, some general server admin, AWS etc. I'm UK based and happy to supply links and examples of previous work! ------ k-mcgrady SEEKING WORK - Remote Skills: iOS development (also experience with Ruby, Rails, Javascript, Android/Java) Contact: kieran[at]hotrodsoftware[dot]com About: I've been developing iOS apps professionally for 5 years. Worked on a large variety of projects and enjoy taking on new challenges and working with the latest technologies. I've had my own and clients apps reach top positions on the App Store. I'm currently seeking new clients for remote work. ------ sdegutis SEEKING WORK - Remote (or Chicago) \---------- My name is Steven Degutis. I'm a full-stack polyglot multi-platform Engineer with UX experience. I’ve done apps for web, desktop, and mobile, but my heart is in desktop apps. My workflow is doing short (1-week) iterations that add business value, where the product is fully usable at the end of each iteration. I’m looking for part-time work (10-hours per week). \---- Proficient with: * Clojure, Ring, Compojure, Hiccup, GardenCSS * ClojureScript * Datomic * iOS, AppKit * Cocoa, Objective-C * Rails, Sinatra * Web (full-stack) * User Experience (UX) Design * Ruby, Go, C * SQL (using a native ORM) * User Interface (UI) Design for Desktop \---- Some experience with: * Java, Swing * Windows: WinForms, WPF, XAML * Windows 8 apps * Python, Django \---- My weaknesses: * Responsive Design * The JavaScript language (I usually use ClojureScript instead) * User Interface (UI) Design for Web * Java, Android * Chef, designing infrastructures from scratch \---- Portfolio: * cleancoders.com: a web app written in Clojure, ClojureScript, Datomic, Ring, Compojure, and Hiccup. I wrote both the front-end and back-end, designed the architecture, and have been the sole developer. * Bahamut: a lightweight music player for Mac OS X, written in native Cocoa and Objective-C. Source code on github: [https://github.com/sdegutis/bahamut](https://github.com/sdegutis/bahamut) \---- Contact: * Email: sbdegutis gmail com * I use Skype for most communication, which is usually fastest and most convenient for both of us * If you’re local (Chicago-land area), I can meet in person once a week \---- ------ adrianmoses SEEKING WORK - Based in Los Angeles - Remote Full Stack Web developer and iOS/OSX developer. Technologies I am proficient with: \- Python \- Node.js \- Go \- Clojure \- Objective-C \- Javascript Specialize in data-driven applications, which involve: \- Data Visualizations \- API integration and custom web services \- Data mining and complex data workflows Email: [email protected] [http://adrianmoses.com](http://adrianmoses.com) [http://linkedin.com/in/adrianmoses](http://linkedin.com/in/adrianmoses) [http://github.com/ammoses89](http://github.com/ammoses89) ------ chuinard SEEKING WORK - Chicago - Remote I'm an experienced Android developer with several published apps, both for myself and for clients. I'm looking to take on 1, maybe 2 mid-sized projects within the next month. I have an Android designer who can work with me. All my apps follow Google's design guidelines and can be tablet-optimized as well. Please reach out at [email protected] if you'd like to chat more. ------ grimtrigger SEEKING WORK - New York City (NYC) or remote Full-stack web developer with focus on front-end (javascript/jquery/backbone) and phonegap/cordova. Experienced with php, mySQL, html5, css3, AJAX, JSON, and photoshop. Currently working on personal projects, but looking for freelance/contract work. Background and contact info listed at [http://aakilfernandes.com](http://aakilfernandes.com) ------ gk1 SEEKING WORK - NYC & Remote Get more users: Understand and optimize your acquisition funnel. I help start-ups measure and visualize their user acquisition funnels. Then I optimize steps of the funnel to get more qualified traffic into one end and more users/customers/leads out the other. Currently working with several fantastic startups, but always happy to chat with new ones to see if I can help. greg at gkogan dot co (keywords: marketing, growth, conversion) ------ alanclimer SEEKING WORK | Remote Freelancer in Florida \- Responsive Design \- HTML 5 / CSS 3 \- PHP \- JS \- Skeleton / Bootstrap / WP \- SEO on page / PageSpeed \- CAD & customization \- AutoLISP \- Logo Design \- Content Writer Contact: [http://alanclimer.com/contact.htm](http://alanclimer.com/contact.htm) Sample: [http://orlandovibe.com/](http://orlandovibe.com/) ------ bglenn09 SEEKING WORK - Remote, NY I'm looking for rich-client HTML5 projects, particularly mobile (with or without PhoneGap) and enterprise / line-of-business projects. I'm a full-stack developer and consultant with 15+ years experience. I focus on the following technologies: Sencha Touch, ExtJS, Backbone.js, Ruby on Rails and Node.js. Enterprises or start-ups, please email me at barry[at]barrypeerless[dot]com. Thanks! ------ yownie SEEKING WORK - Remote, Iceland. Sysadmin with deep understanding and knowledge of best practices regarding: Privacy / Anonymization technologies and practices Server Co-location / Web-hosting Operational Security Open Source Crypto tools I can provide hosting reccomendations here in Iceland as well as Remote Hands work. Also deeply interested in knowledge about Icelandic law regarding technologies like Tor, Bitcoin and Internet Infrastructure. [email protected] gpg keyid EB9A5142 ------ amarraja SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote OK after the first month. London UK (Marylebone) Seeking a developer fluent with HTML/CSS and JS to work on the front end of a suite of e-commerce websites and the accompanying tooling. Responsive design experience is a must. SASS and ASP.NET MVC experience is beneficial. Initially looking for a three month contract, possibility to extend. Shoot me a mail if you want more info: [email protected] ------ hypr_geek SEEKING WORK - Remote ~5.5 years of work experience * Java (Android ~3.5 years) * HTML5, CSS3, Javascript * Node.js * PHP (Magento) * Requirements and Architecture Design * Project Management * Open to learn new tech as and when required Based in India. Link to CV in my profile. \--- Feel free to contact me for any help on open source projects as well --- (hypr DOT geek AT gmail DOT com) ------ jf22 SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote Ok I've co-founded startup called movidhep.com which is coded in C# Asp.net MVC and uses RavenDB as a backend. We've got a couple of projects that we need some help with. One of the projects is very ravendb centric so if you have experience there definitely shoot me an email. Another project involves recording a video from a mobile app and uploading it to vimeo and/or elsewhere. ~~~ crypted Ready to help you on c# , asp.net mvc part. arjuns(dot)sapkota(at)gmail.com ------ adpfr SEEKING WORK - remote Hi, I'm a freelance software developer in Duisburg, Germany. I build web and desktop applications, with an extra focus on business, ecommerce, and operations research. Main technologies: C++, Python + Django, JavaScript + web front-end Portfolio and contact details: [http://www.dopfer- software.de/](http://www.dopfer-software.de/) ------ RomanPushkin SEEKING WORK We're small agency located in Eastern Europe. We do both design and coding, building projects from the ground up. Latest apps: [http://taskthemall.com/](http://taskthemall.com/) (on the way) [http://geekjob.ru/](http://geekjob.ru/) 10K+ users Our stack: (ASP.NET MVC, C#) || (Node.Js, JavaScript) Best money for value! Write to my email: [email protected] ------ sidmitra SEEKING WORK - Remote/Freelance Python/Django/jQuery, with extensive experience building e-commerce marketplaces. I have a research background, data analysis, playing around with NLP right now. I run a django dev shop, currently taking gigs for it. Here's my portfolio: * [http://www.cloudshuffle.com/](http://www.cloudshuffle.com/) * [http://www.sidmitra.com/portfolio.html](http://www.sidmitra.com/portfolio.html) Contact details in my profile or the link above. Here're some examples from my portfolio: * [http://turbotaxcpaselect.intuit.com](http://turbotaxcpaselect.intuit.com) \- Turbotax CPA Select, to help select accountants. * [http://www.ecomarket.com](http://www.ecomarket.com) \- An online marketplace for ethical and eco friendly products. * [http://www.teaspiller.com](http://www.teaspiller.com) \- An online marketplace for tax experts. [Recently acquired by Intuit] * [http://www.knowyourbank.com](http://www.knowyourbank.com) * [http://www.hypedsound.com/](http://www.hypedsound.com/) \- a music sharing platform, working on V2. * [http://www.garnishbar.com](http://www.garnishbar.com) \- social network, to share mixed drink recipes * [http://www.fratmusic.com](http://www.fratmusic.com) \- an online radio streaming app serving over 1.3 million uniques a month. * [http://loudfarm.com](http://loudfarm.com) \- A music event site. * Wisekangaroo: [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xpnngdyfgkgz8y2/1OnDFiIkiV](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xpnngdyfgkgz8y2/1OnDFiIkiV) \- Find a tutor. Working on relaunch in a new avatar * [http://fertilityplanit.net/](http://fertilityplanit.net/) \- A niche social network for women to privately and securely discuss fertility issues. Github: [http://github.com/sidmitra](http://github.com/sidmitra) Homepage: [http://www.sidmitra.com](http://www.sidmitra.com) ------ nclx SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote / Milano, Italy - Yolo Apps We are a young, agile and international team that has previously worked with the top companies all over the world, such as Apple, Toyota and Redbull. We're looking for freelancers to design and code iPhone and Android apps. How to apply: email nicolas,yoloapps,us with your portfolio and a list of skills. ------ logn SEEKING WORK - remote Expert in Java, web scraping, web crawling, big data, webapps. [email protected] [https://machinepublishers.com/portfolio](https://machinepublishers.com/portfolio) [http://www.linkedin.com/in/danhollingsworth/](http://www.linkedin.com/in/danhollingsworth/) $100/hr or flat-pricing ------ 12bit SEEKING WORK: Remote or San Francisco Bay Area Ruby [+ Rails], Clojure [+ Om Pedestal], JavaScript [+ Backbone.js Ember.js React], CoffeeScript, Python, C developer seeking short-term or long-term gigs. Some sample projects here: [http://projectdeck.herokuapp.com/](http://projectdeck.herokuapp.com/) ------ skyriser SEEKING WORK - On-site (Montreal, Canada) / Remote iOS Developer Freelance (Objective-C, iPhone/iPad) Web: [http://skyriser.com/](http://skyriser.com/) Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: [http://www.linkedin.com/in/christiancomeau](http://www.linkedin.com/in/christiancomeau) ------ bcroesch SEEKING FREELANCER - Chicago, IL - remote possible Federis Group We're a small software consultancy looking for front end and full stack engineers. Rails and/or mobile experience a plus, but not strictly required. Our team is based in Chicago, but we're open to remote as well. Contact: [email protected] ------ lsiunsuex SEEKING WORK Full Stack PHP Web Developer seeking freelance work (or full time employment). Recent completed work: [http://ignitedds.com](http://ignitedds.com) [https://www.p22.com](https://www.p22.com) Portfolio: [http://giamban.co](http://giamban.co) No project is to big or to small. ------ grimmdude SEEKING WORK - Remote - Based in NYC Been creating websites and web applications for 10 years. Experienced in: \- PHP, MySQL, HTML(5)/CSS(3), JavaScript, Python [http://www.grimmdude.com](http://www.grimmdude.com) [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ggrimm](http://www.linkedin.com/in/ggrimm) ------ dbotha SEEKING FREELANCER - London, UK Android developer is needed to create a small native app from scratch (Targeting Android 4.0+). Work to ideally commence on Monday February 10. On site developer is preferred but I will consider remote -- we're based 5 minutes from Oxford Circus tube station. ~~~ lucaspiller Contact details? Your email address isn't shown in your profile. ------ albedo SEEKING FREELANCERS - NYC area Lambda is a talent agency for freelance developers and designers. We help you find clients, negotiate for higher rates, and take care of the business side of freelancing. - Exceptional talent only: $100/hr minimum rate. - No recruiters or spam. We're developers too and we only match consultants with projects that fit their expertise and interest. - Serious clients only: Wanna hear about a disruptive social network for cats that "just needs a coder"? Neither do we. - Freelancers with side projects or startups are especially welcome! If that's appealing, you can read more and sign up at: [http://getlambda.com/](http://getlambda.com/) We've posted about this on HN a few times and have been amazed by the response. I apologize in advance if it takes a while for us to get back to you -- we interview everyone personally and are still ramping up the process. Right now, we're particularly looking for NYC Rails, Django, and iOS devs. ------ mekishizufu SEEKING WORK - Remote We are a small team of Ruby and JavaScript developers available for hire. We can help you design, develop and maintain your next application. From the initial idea to a running website. Find out more at [http://sensible.io](http://sensible.io) ------ dmn001 SEEKING WORK - UK, remote preferred Hi, I am looking for web scraping projects. Languages: Perl, Python Databases: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL Other Skills: data parsing, regular expressions, multi-threaded scraping, Linux, AWS S3/EC2, Heroku, Git, Rails, parsing html/xml/json, statistics and machine learning. Email: dmn001 at gmail.com ------ webjay SEEKING WORK / FREELANCER - Remote I am based in NYC and am a fullstack developer. Skills: JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Node, Backbone, Grunt, Redis, Neo4j, MongoDB, MySQL, Python, Linux, Ubuntu. [https://github.com/webjay](https://github.com/webjay) ------ andys627 SEEKING WORK - Remote / SF Hi. I'm a full stack engineer looking for short or long term contracts. I've been working lately in client side MVC apps (Angular) and Node. Portfolio: www.andrewsamuelsen.com Github: www.github.com/andypandy Thanks. Andrew [email protected] ------ moubarak SEEKING WORK - Remote, Middle East Based \- iOS/Android camera apps and computer vision libraries \- Published Android app doing 10k downloads per month ([http://radc.am](http://radc.am)) \- 2 iOS apps in beta Reach me out at mohd [dot] moubarak [at] gmail ------ mantas SEEKING WORK: REMOTE Location: Lithuania \- iOS/Mac (native objective-C) 3+ years experience \- Ruby on Rails 4+ years experience \- Javascript 5+ years experience, including one-page web apps back in IE6 days \- self-proclaimed UI/UX expert :) Email: mantas at idev.lt ------ ha8o8le SEEKING WORK - Remote or Los Angeles \-------- I am a freelance UI/UX designer specializing in apps. Check out some of my work at [http://sandersUI.com](http://sandersUI.com) ------ christiangenco SEEKING FELLOW FREELANCER - Remote or Dallas area I'd like to pair with someone to learn Ember with/from on a healthcare startup site (privately funded). An affinity for Rails is a plus. Can trade with work or bitcoins. ~~~ llmfei I'm also learning embers and use it in a interesting open source project. I like rails and use it in my several projects. We can work together. ------ sepokroce SEEKING WORK - Skopje, Macedonia - Remote - WordPress, Front-end Development, Visual Design. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gocemitevski](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gocemitevski) ------ zura SEEKING WORK - Remote or periodical onsite. Based in Georgia, Europe. Experienced C++ engineer with a diverse background, including systems programming and rich cross-platform software development. E-mail: zura.jobs 'at gmail.com ------ rjspotter SEEKING Work - Remote only - SF Based Learned Ruby in 2002 and started working with Rails professionally in 2006. [http://www.intentionally-blank.com/](http://www.intentionally-blank.com/) ------ jamespollack SEEKING WORK - San Francisco or remote [http://linkedin.com/in/jamespollack](http://linkedin.com/in/jamespollack) Full-stack Javascript Engineer ------ ericthegoodking SEEKING WORK - Remote I am a fullstack Ruby/Javascript developer. I have been working with ruby/rails framework for the past 4 years . Below are the Technologies/frameworks that i use most of the time. -Ruby -Rails -Javascript -Angular Js -HTML5 Other Interests -Natural Language Processing -Machine Learning -Learning new things Email [ericthegoodking]@[gmail.com] ------ chrisohara SEEKING WORK Full-stack developer from Sydney, Australia. I'm a Javascript (Node.js), Python and C expert. [http://github.com/chriso](http://github.com/chriso) cohara87 (at) gmail.com ------ apineda SEEKING WORK - Ontario, Canada - Remote Designer / Developer with a large range of experience. Mostly focused on web (js) and Android lately. www.alexpineda77.com @alexpineda77 I'm eager to hear from you ------ colinbartlett SEEKING WORK - Remote. Rails developer since 2006. [http://www.colinabartlett.com/](http://www.colinabartlett.com/) ------ dalien26 SEEKING WORK - MONTREAL or remote - Android - WEB Technologies : -Android -HTML/CSS -Javascript ( angular js ) -common sense of UX & UI * i like working with designer, other developer, startups, agengies. contact : damiendamien1]at[gmail]dot[com or ca.linkedin.com/in/galandamien/ ------ ujal SEEKING WORK -- Cologne, Germany or REMOTE -- preferably part-time Developer & Designer [http://mygnu.com](http://mygnu.com) ------ jbeard4 SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote Seeking an expert PhoneGap developer to help take our innovative app to the next level. Contact me at [email protected] ------ d0m App is ListRunner, a collaborative tool for teams of doctors. Listrunnerapp.com Happy to answer questions and share more information by email: phzbox at gmail. ------ csomar Seeking Work - Remote/Willing to Travel Front-end (HTML5/JavaScript) Back-end (PHP/WordPress) $80/hour. Email on my profile. ------ d0m Seeking freelancer: Looking for a great ios developer. Remote or Montreal. ~~~ mkim1030 Hey, I'm an iOS developer based in Seattle. How do we reach out to you? ------ emacsnw SEEKING WORK -- REMOTE OK (NYC) \- Python \- Pylons, Pyramid, Django, Flask \- Javascript \- Sqlalchemy \- Postgresql Contact: [email protected] ------ vram22 SEEKING WORK - REMOTE - India. Creator of xtopdf, a PDF creation toolkit for Python (used by Packt Publishing, the Software Freedom Law Center, ESRI.nl and others.) xtopdf can create both business reports and ebooks, and currently has support for the following input formats: text, DBF, CSV, TSV/TDV, XLS, XLSX, DOCX, ODBC, SQLAlchemy, MongoDB, XML, Microsoft Access, SQLite, Berkeley DB, and standard input. xtopdf runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It includes both a library you can call from your apps, and command-line tools, GUI tools (in wxPython), and web-based tools (Flask, Bottle and CherryPy). xtopdf links: [http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf](http://slid.es/vasudevram/xtopdf) [http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf](http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf) [https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf](https://bitbucket.org/vasudevram/xtopdf) [http://www.packtpub.com/article/Using_xtopdf](http://www.packtpub.com/article/Using_xtopdf) [http://google.com/search?q=xtopdf](http://google.com/search?q=xtopdf) Independent developer for the last several years, with many years of experience in many tech areas. Contracted/consulted to multiple startups based in USA and India. Earlier worked for large well-known US and Indian software companies. Skills: Good - Python, C, Linux, UNIX, many open source technologies, databases, XML-RPC, PDF programming, file and data format conversion, data munging, command-line utility development. Some: Flask, MongoDB, Bottle, various others. Worked on Ruby, Rails and Java some time earlier. Server lead / senior engineer for two commercial Rails-based dot-com products earlier, by US companies. Databases worked on: Oracle, Sybase, Informix, MySQL, SQLite, HSQLDB, MS- Access, Postgres. Worked on a best-selling retail banking product (earlier, in C with proprietary DB and UI libs). Was team leader for a database middleware product widely used in client projects by a top software company. Relevant links: Biz site: [http://www.dancingbison.com](http://www.dancingbison.com) (see Home, Products, Services, About pages there) [http://www.binpress.com/profile/vasudev- ram/3425](http://www.binpress.com/profile/vasudev-ram/3425) Posts about Python: [http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/python](http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/python) Posts about xtopdf: [http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf](http://jugad2.blogspot.com/search/label/xtopdf) Blog: [http://jugad2.blogspot.com](http://jugad2.blogspot.com) Article by me about "Developing a Linux command-line utility" (in C) was published on IBM developerWorks and translated by IBM into Chinese and Japanese for those versions of their site. Some organizations have developed production command line tools using that article as a guide. Contact info: [http://dancingbison.com/contact.html](http://dancingbison.com/contact.html) (email, Skype). Twitter: @vasudevram ------ muminoff SEEKING WORK - Based in Seoul, Korea - Remote \------------------ Sardor Muminov Email: smuminov[at]gmail[dot]com Skype: sardor.muminov Github: github.com/muminoff \------------------ Full stack web developer \------------------ Technologies: • Django • Flask/SQLAlchemy • Tornado • MySQL • PostgreSQL • Redis • Node.js (express.js, socket.io) • HTML • CSS \------------------ Environments: • Unix • Linux • SVN, Git • tmux \------------------ ------ J_Darnley SEEKING WORK - Remote; Belgium; UK, Manchester area I speak English and Dutch near fluently. I am experienced with C and Make based builds. I have some familiarity with Win32 and x86 assembly, mainly SIMD usage. Contact info and examples on my profile page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=J_Darnley](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=J_Darnley) ------ notastartup SEEKING WORK - remote (or Vancouver, BC) LAMP/jQuery/Android developer looking for contract work. I can send you my CV, github account, please click on my username for contact information. ------ satjot SEEKING FREELANCER - I created this meetup group earlier this year for iOS and Android freelancers: [http://www.meetup.com/ios-android- freelancers/](http://www.meetup.com/ios-android-freelancers/)
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13 reasons for UML’s descent into darkness - nickb http://littletutorials.com/2008/05/15/13-reasons-for-umls-descent-into-darkness/ ====== mike_organon If found #7 to be the most interesting, even beyond UML. "Pictures prove to be good at sharing ideas and allowing people to visualize concepts. But in the end words are better at describing the fine details." The same applies to many "visual programming" tools. If the text-based language is expressive enough, and doesn't need excessive boilerplate, that would be more effective and accurate than visual programming. ------ edw519 UML's sole purpose is to make people who do not know what they are doing appear as if they do. How else could pay someone $50,000 per year and bill them out at $150 per hour without them actually doing anything?
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US whistleblower dropped from speaking at Melbourne cybersecurity conference - peterkelly https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-10-08/us-whistleblower-speech-cancelled-at-cybersecurity-conference/11581986 ====== NotSammyHagar so can someone provide an explanation about why this happened? this seems to have nothing to do with australia's "we can force devs to rootkit their software" thing.
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Show HN: Queen City Brunch – A web app for brunch discovery - tedmiston http://blog.tedmiston.com/queen-city-brunch/ ====== tedmiston Co-creator here. The #1 reason we made QCBrunch is: we really love breakfast food, and every time we talk about getting it, we end up google brunch hours for each place. Many don't publish this online, and no existing POI database tracks the very specific "brunch start time and end time". Hopefully this will save some googling. Direct link - [http://qcbrunch.com](http://qcbrunch.com) ------ throwaway2016a Off topic but interesting: Queen City is also uses to refer to Manchester New Hampshire. I was curious so I found a Wikipedia entry that lists all the cities with that name: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_City) Maybe save some people some Googling. ~~~ tedmiston I had no idea there were more than a couple :o. I'll have to add Cincinnati, Ohio on the page somewhere. Thanks!
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How to Build a Robot That Will Feed You Breakfast - traxmaxx http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-build-a-robot-that-will-feed-you-breakfast ====== DrScump already posted yesterday. exact same story, same title. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10509355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10509355)
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It takes 48 seconds to view an Oracle blog post - jonny_eh https://twitter.com/peterc/status/1040723744963080192 ====== Findeton Mixing laws and big companies gets you this. Other sites will load faster but it's the government forcing you to get that popup. ~~~ Nadya The popup freezes at 99% when you click "No, you may not use cookies" but instantly completes when you click "Yes, you may track me with cookies."
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is OOP “anti-modular”? - kilimchoi http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/70831/is-objected-oriented-programming-paradigm-outdated-since-it-is-anti-modular-and ====== dragonwriter OOP suffers from a distinct lack of clear, universally accepted, definition that allows such questions to be answered well, but certainly a key component of many understandings of OOP involves centrality of mutable state and particular ways of modifying it which is at least arguably "anti-parallel", and many popular forms of OOP (particularly static, class-based OO) is prone to encourage coupling which makes really independent modularity difficult to achieve, though OOP is based on a kind of modularity which is consistent with this kind of coupling. So, on balance, maybe, kinda, depending on what kind of modularity and what kind of OOP you are talking about. ------ bobajeff It sounds to me that it's frameworks that are anti-modular.
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German intelligence claims to be able to decrypt PGP - xcallmejudasx http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fnews%2Fbundesregierung-deutsche-geheimdienste-koennen-pgp-entschluesseln-1205-92031.html&act=url ====== bhuga The translation is not amazing. The original German reveals responses that are rather dodging the question, but which very flatly state that they are able to 'generally decrypt, at least partially, communications via SSH or PGP'. It's not clear if they mean 'parts of all communications' or 'a part of all communications', and specific attack vectors are not even touched on. ------ stordoff > "Yes, the technology used is basically able to do so, depending on the type > and quality of the encryption." From that, I'd _guess_ that they are just breaking weak keys or known buggy implementations. I'd be very surprised if they have totally broken PGP.
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Help me fix photo sharing - Cheeese One the one side you have flickr who has the most amazing community but a product that has stagnated. On the other you have instagram who has had explosive growth using new social mechanics like follow. I think there is an opportunity to build a community aimed squarely at flickr, but using new mechanics. Something like twitter for images. For a taste of what it looks like this is one of the screens - http://jasonstrachan.com/clients/shoebox/SB_05.jpg<p>I am a photographer who has been photo blogging for pretty close to ten years (http://www.gosu.co.za) and could never find the right place to share and interact with other photographers, so I though I would scratch my own itch.<p>Who are we? We are a team of two who have build stuff in the past (http://listgorilla.com) I am a designer/user experience guy and my co-founder is a Java developer with great experience building rock solid applications.<p>Who are we looking for? We are looking for someone who loves to build stuff and has a strong background in Javascript. We are offering a meaningful portion of equity and chance to work on a team who is motivated and committed to building great experiences. If you happen to be a photographer even better.<p>If that sounds like you please email me ([email protected]) with some background and I'll take you through the idea.<p>Thanks, Jason ====== Cheeese Link: <http://jasonstrachan.com/clients/shoebox/SB_05.jpg> ------ Andrenid I can't offer coding help but if/when you need beta testers sign me up for sure.
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The Dozenal Society of America - adius http://www.dozenal.org/ ====== nwatson An uncle who designed jet engines at General Electric said one advantage GE had over European counterparts was the greater diversity in sheet metal gauges/thicknesses used to build the engines; they could maintain required strength throughout an engine while paring down engine weight. He attributed the better mix to the English system encouraging divisibility by 2/3/4/6 rather than 2/2.5/5/10 at various scales. ~~~ jacobolus Ideally this kind of thing should be roughly on a log scale, along the lines of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number), e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renard_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renard_series) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-series_of_preferred_numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-series_of_preferred_numbers) You can pick a coarser or finer scale depending on the particular need. For a base twelve world, I would recommend using binary logarithms written in base twelve (“dublogs”) whenever possible; 0.1 on such a scale matches one semitone in a 12-note-per-octave equal-tempered musical scale. ~~~ eadmund I'm honestly not sure what you're saying, but it _sounds_ compelling! ~~~ jacobolus I'm saying that if redesigned today for our current society (either metric or imperial) sheet metal gauges should probably use something like preferred numbers for widths. In a hypothetical base twelve world, they could instead use a log scale (think decibels) explicitly, and one nice option is to use binary logarithms, since then twelfths correspond approximately to nice duodecimal fractions. This is the basis of the Western musical scale. ------ nonbel The most interesting argument I've heard from the dozenal society is that the decimal system is inherently selfish. There is a reason that cases of beer come in packs of 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 instead of 5, 10, 15, etc. It is much more likely you will be able to divide them equally amongst a group of arbitrary size. ~~~ vole Isn't that their entire argument? ~~~ Avshalom Well it isn't usually couched in terms of morality. ------ suddensleep Only marginally related, but I spent one of my summers at PROMYS[1] doing research into which complex numbers could be successfully used as bases. As different as the various common integer bases "feel" in terms of hand- computation, there's nothing like cranking out conversions of fractions to base 1+i to make you realize that there's a whole wacky universe of number representations out there. I thought it was a really cool field of study, and I remember wishing there were more readily apparent applications. Anyone? [1] [https://www.promys.org/](https://www.promys.org/) ~~~ espeed Similarly, see Pavel Grinfeld's argument [2] advocating the vector basis L = {1, x, x²-1/3} w.r.t. Legendre polynomials. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Grinfeld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Grinfeld) [2] MathTheBeautiful: _Why {1,x,x²} Is a Terrible Basis_ [video] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYoGYQOXqTk&index=14&list=PL...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYoGYQOXqTk&index=14&list=PL..). [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendre_polynomials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendre_polynomials) ------ ceautery I stumbled onto these guys a few years back when I was going nuts about base 18 (which you can do on a standard 5x2 abacus!). I think they have their own symbols for digits > 9 instead of using 'a' and 'b' in the hexadecimal fashion. Non-standard radixes are pretty fun, and it makes you think about nebulous questions like "what does ten mean", and if you happen to carry that train of thought way past the station, "what does it mean to be a number?" ~~~ kw71 I learned base 12 arithmetic in gradeschool and the textbook used T and E for 10, 11. I'm pretty sure this was before people started using hex notation for computing and logic. ------ kabdib For a fictional treatment of converting a society to base 12, Leo Frankowski's _High Tech Knight_ series is a lighthearted and fun read (starts with _The Crosstime Engineer_ ). [I didn't like the books past the original 4, YMMV] ------ nixpulvis I wonder how they feel about base e? ------ pc2g4d I can't tell if this was meant as a joke or not
{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Beginner Web Design Mistakes - nickpettit http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/beginner-web-design-mistakes-avoid ====== nhebb > _Modals and Pop-Ups - You’ve seen this before. You click on a link to a news > article or a blog post, and a gigantic modal pop-up window covers the > content. This makes absolutely no sense._ The first thing that popped into my head was Twitter, when you click on @someone and get a popup instead of just going to their full feed. ~~~ jeffmould I actually kind of like that feature (if you can call it that). There are times when I am scanning through the feed and I see something interesting retweeted. I don't want to lose my place, but I am curious to see quickly who the person is that initially made the tweet. The popup is a quick way to do that without having to open another window or lose your place. ~~~ adamtj That's what the back button is for. I will take you back to where you were before you clicked a link, including scroll down the page to the correct position. ~~~ Jare Unfortunately, it doesn't work with infinite scroll pages or other stateful types of sites. ~~~ csense Infinite scrolling is another thing that should be avoided. ------ onion2k A 'sign up for our newsletter' modal pop-up when the user first arrives on a website is not a 'beginner web design mistake' for one simple reason that even websites made by beginners can't ignore: _They really work._ People sign up in droves. Many people have tested it. It's annoying as hell, but the fact is beginner website designers should learn to make effective websites that work for businesses, not just pretty ones. ~~~ Turing_Machine They work on clueless and naive people. If that's the audience you're after, cool. ~~~ Iftheshoefits That audience is some huge percentage of the internet userbase, because some huge percentage of people are "clueless and naive." So people who want to just make money off a widely read website would do well to do what works. Just like how in the mobile gaming space irritating pay-to-play/in-app-purchase driven "games" are the money makers, and people who make games in order to make a lot of money should probably make a game like that. ~~~ Turing_Machine Well, everyone has to make their own ethical choices. Personally, I don't need the karma of annoying the customers, regardless of how much it may seem to work in the short term. I mean, you might as well be Zynga if you're going to do that. No company survives in the long term by annoying and/or abusing their customers. ~~~ PagingCraig Don't be a drama queen. Just because you "think" something doesn't work doesn't mean it doesn't at all. ~~~ Turing_Machine I know it doesn't work with me. Also, whether it "works" or not is completely orthogonal to whether it is ethical. Reading: it matters. ------ theschnabler This article is a good example of content created only for the sake of SEO. ~~~ scottmagdalein Not really. Treehouse is a learn-to-code training tool for beginners. A blog post about typical beginner mistakes is pretty relevant to the Treehouse audience. ------ atacrawl Definitely +1 for both "Thinking Too Far Outside the Box" and "Mysterious and Complex Navigation." I experience way too much of each on a regular basis. A message I try to drill home is "people don't come to websites to be wowed, they come to either learn about something or buy something." ~~~ hfsktr Just out of curiosity are there more options than that? I don't think I'd lump Imgur or Tumblr into either of those categories. Edit: entertainment. Thought of it on my own... ------ gldalmaso Web Design Mistake: maybe don't use a 794,03 KB image on the top of your article? ~~~ Sprint Web Design Mistake: Display no more than 9 lines of text to your visitors because you managed to fill the rest of the screen with a persistent bar at the top, a persistent SOSOCIAL bar on the side and your clickbait links on the other side: [http://i.imgur.com/ruiBvN3.png](http://i.imgur.com/ruiBvN3.png) ~~~ benaiah Yeah, cause a 480px vertical on a desktop design is completely relevant to modern web development. /s Protip: you don't _have_ to snark _every. single. article._ Lay off it already. ------ sutterbomb Two of the five "mistakes" aren't always mistakes. Popups often work really well, as pointed out in another comment by onion2k. Long-form sales pages (i.e. walls of text) also really work in many contexts. Sure you want to execute both of them well, but the basic ideas aren't necessarily mistakes. Two others strike me as not really an issue or too vague to know whether it was an issue. Do beginner web designers really never use any padding and just cram everything next to each other, pixel by pixel? Can't say I've seen it. And are they really thinking too far outside the box? What would this even entail? I'll give them navigation issue, but I can't say they offered much insight for beginners to actually work from and improve their navigation. ------ zachrose If the page is for something I want to read, then a wall of text is perfect. If the page is not something I want to read, then there should be less writing, but also why are we having a disagreement about what's on your webpage if I don't want to read your content in the first place? ------ johnpark If you're looking for a well-rounded education along these lines, two books I'd recommend checking out are "Don't Make Me Think" and "The Non-Designer's Design Book." ------ at-fates-hands "Every beginner web designer and developer has done this one (myself included). They feel compelled to fill the page with interesting information and stuff for people to look at and click on." Great point. When you design a site, you should already have a solid idea of where you're trying to get a user to go and then use strategies to lead them there. Overdoing the front page with buttons and modals and shiny things that move doesn't help in that regard. Probably the first and most valuable lesson in design. ~~~ ereckers This works fine if you don't have a marketing team to answer to or a CEO who's sister has just got 3/4 of the way through her JQuery class at JC and "has some ideas". Also, this blog post comes from the perspective of a single use website. Treehouse, build a website. AirBNB, rent a pad, etc.. There are corporate websites out there with multiples of sub-companies and 100s of different product offerings all competing for space. Putting up a full screen image and a button that says "Get Started!" is the easy stuff and isn't what I would consider the definitive example of good web design. ------ pasbesoin Interaction is no substitute for information. \-- Me ~~~ buckbova I agree. The fullscreen background image, 10 words, and call to action button don't make me want to sign up for your product. If I can't find details about your product within a few seconds, I'm gone. ------ nollidge I'll add "menu navigation that relies on mouseover".
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What Would a VC Sponsored Coworking Location Look Like? - transburgh http://www.centernetworks.com/vc-coworking ====== dawie They wouldn't, People are supposed to work at home and basically sleep where they work
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IT Startup – The Card Game - zola https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kupilasmedia/it-startup-the-card-game ====== zola Not affiliated with the creator. I played it once (polish version) with work colleagues - we split into three teams and were brainstorming moves and how to hurt competitors the most. It was fun.
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Let's Encrypt ACMEv2 and Wildcard Launch Delay - cm2187 https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/acmev2-and-wildcard-launch-delay/53654 ====== sdrinf While HTTPS is being burned into the architecture of the Web, I have a humble question to ask: what is the dear HN community's next-best-option in a scenario if letsencrypt dies/gets sued/goes under/servers not accessible anymore? I ponder on this question seeing how Google is planning to increasingly depreciate HTTP. While in general, I welcome the security upgrade, the lack of next-best-free-options makes me vary of this config change locking us into a $$$paid-only web publishing system. ~~~ kemitche ACME is a protocol - I imagine most of us are hoping that, should LE fade off, one or more others take the reins and implement it. ~~~ badrabbit With PKI,a good protocol isn't the problem but rather making the cost of infrastructure keep-up worthwhile. Anyways, non-pki protocols are in the works. ~~~ sdrinf > non-pki protocols are in the works. Could you kindly link to relevant threads / RFCs / orgs / undertakings currently working on that, please? ~~~ aeden DANE might provide a solution. See specifically the section [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6698#section-2.1.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6698#section-2.1.1), certificate usage 3: 3 -- Certificate usage 3 is used to specify a certificate, or the public key of such a certificate, that MUST match the end entity certificate given by the server in TLS. This certificate usage is sometimes referred to as "domain- issued certificate" because it allows for a domain name administrator to issue certificates for a domain without involving a third-party CA. ~~~ tscs37 This would need DNS to be secured though and DNSSEC is still a bit of a mess last I checked and not enabled for a majority of DNS traffic. ~~~ aeden DNSSEC support is increasing each year, but that's just one issue. DANE would also need to be implemented by browsers for full adoption, not just as a plugin to specific browsers. Then again, I was responding to the question about an RFC or other standard, not whether it was feasible today. ;-) ~~~ tscs37 It would be feasible if DNSSEC wasn't a total mess, tbh. The support for it is still abysmal and a lot of resolvers (including the one in my router) can't handle DNSSEC responses _at all_. I think using DNS over HTTPS in conjunction with signing the response is going to be more viable since you don't have 200 ways a middle box will break it. ------ ocdtrekkie It's hard to complain about a slight deadline miss from an incredible project offering free stuff. ~~~ nodesocket Precisely the problem. Real companies mostly prefer to use paid solutions because they have comfort and confidence in knowing there is a business and backing behind it. At least I know I do. I never got the whole developer complex wanting and even expecting everything for free. Seems hypocritical and counter-entrepreneur. Also for what's worth, I've been deploying Let's Encrypt into production recently using Caddy and (on-demand) TLS and while it works, the rate limits being reset weekly is really scary and VERY VERY easy to hit. I know myself and my clients would be willing to pay for Let's Encrypt Pro (higher rate limits, etc). Take our money. ~~~ ocdtrekkie That's not Let's Encrypt's role to play though. As a user, I'd be much more skeptical of an LE cert'd site than a Verisign cert'd site. That's not a knock on LE, that's just recognizing a higher barrier to entry. Let's Encrypt's goal is to get everyone encrypted, not necessarily to ensure everyone is who they say they are. And as a fellow person who does real business at times, I often prefer paid products because I know I can get support from the company backing it. I don't think Let's Encrypt will replace the entire CA industry, and I don't think it should. (As tyingq says, monocultures are bad.) ~~~ BrandoElFollito > not necessarily to ensure everyone is who they say they are How does Verizon (to take your example) ensures this? They have the same zero verification process for the non-EV cert. ~~~ ocdtrekkie At bare minimum, getting a cert almost anywhere else requires a credit card. ~~~ BrandoElFollito This is not something which helps to decide whether the target website is what they claim to be. I can use my CC to buy faccebook.com, and I will get it (again, outside of EV). I may then be tracked by Interpol for fraud, but to the end user this does not change anything: Verizon has issued a certificate for my faccebook.com ~~~ ams6110 IYAM, any major web property such as google, facebook, credit card issuers, etc. should buy up all the most likely typo-ed versions of their domains so that this doesn't happen. The average user is going to blame Facebook anyway if they get duped into logging in at faccebook.com, and it goes to protecting their brand (trademarks are weakened if the owner doesn't defend them). ~~~ BrandoElFollito They do, and if they don't, they end up like the White House a few years ago when whitehouse.<I forgot the TLD> was bought and an almost exact replica was created, according to Rule 34. My point is that you can buy any site from a CA and no verification is done, exactly as with Let's Encrypt. Even with an EV there is no guarantee that the requester is genuine ("best effort" to check) ~~~ tialaramex With EV the checks basically care about: 1\. Does this entity exist, e.g. it's in an official government business directory and the address details match what was specified 2\. Use a third party directory (e.g. Dunn & Bradstreet) to look up this entity, and phone them. Ask to talk to some specific role at the company e.g. "Head of the IT department" and then confirm the details with that person. This involves actual humans, albeit basically call centre employees, looking at paperwork, making telephone calls, that sort of thing. I guess you could label it "best effort" but to me that signifies much less. For Americans a surprise problem with EV is that your country doesn't _have_ a central business directory. Each State runs its own directory, most businesses are registered in Delaware, regardless of their actual home state. [https://stripe.ian.sh/](https://stripe.ian.sh/) has a completely genuine Stripe, Inc. EV certificate, issued to a Stripe, Inc. just not the one that's famous. ------ MertsA Am I the only one who thinks the way we deal with certificates is just completely backwards? Why should there even be a CA at all for DV certs? We already have to trust the registrar as ultimately they can get whatever DV certs they want so why not just limit our trust to them instead of adding hundreds of additional organizations that can compromise our security? And we pay them for the privilege of doing this?? I get CAs for EV and OV certs, of course you need an additional trusted party there, but the vast majority of websites out there do not use EV or OV certs and to be fair users by and large don't even notice the difference between a DV and an EV certificate in the first place. We already have DNS, we already trust DNS to issue certificates to people, why don't we just cut out the middle man since they serve no additional purpose? ~~~ technion The thing is that "control of the DNS" can mean different things. I have control of the DNS on my network, and at the local coffee shop. I can use that to attack users, but I cannot use that to obtain a certificate. I still agree with you in a sense, an alternate solution would be great. But we that middleman is the best we have right now. ~~~ josteink > The thing is that "control of the DNS" can mean different things. In every way this discussion is related, "control of the DNS" should mean control of _the one authoritative DNS source_ , in a way which means that if a service across the internet requests a DNS record, it won't be affected by whatever DNS-trick your neighbourhood cafe's wifi may apply. Trying to muddle the discussion of a fairly straight-forward, reliable scenario with consumer-space DNS resolution is IMO not very productive. ~~~ icebraining But that's the point - the CA is needed to make a reliable verification of the data coming from the authoritative DNS source, since the consumer can't make that check themselves in an untrusted network. ------ nickjj I've been using LE from the start and it's been awesome (especially with clients like acme-tiny), but wildcards changes everything. How many of you are really going to set up a custom DNS updating script? Maybe I misread something but I remember hearing wildcard certs will only work with DNS based challenges. Wouldn't that mean the verification tool would need to support every single registrar's / DNS provider's API? For example, I host my domains (and DNS) with namesilo.com. Is a challenge script really going to know how to interface with their API to add / remove the TXT records? What about the 50 other popular DNS providers? ~~~ piracykills Yes, but there's already scripts handling many of the most popular. Check out acme.sh and remember, changing your DNS provider or hosting it yourself really isn't that bad. [https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh](https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh) ~~~ nickjj Nice, it looks like they support namesilo and ~40 others. So my suspicion seems accurate. The script will need to know how to interface with each provider and you (as an end user) will also need to be responsible for setting up your own API keys for whatever provider you use. ~~~ moviuro If you're up for the task, I've wanted to write a script (POSIX /bin/sh certainly) for interaction with DNS providers. Basically lower the entry barrier, and avoid the web interface: $ foo mydomain.org --init ovh $ foo mydomain.org my.sub A 1.2.3.4 $ foo mydomain.org my.sub AAAA 1234::abcd $ foo mydomain.org --remove my.sub A [1.2.3.4] etc. I have yet to find anything that handles any DNS changes in a simple, stupid way. Most API clients I've seen only handle one kind of request: acme.sh only does TXT challenges. DynDNS endpoint only does A records. Etc. ~~~ piracykills It'd be cool to have and it's relatively straightforward from a software engineering perspective, but it's so much boring grunt work that finding someone who wants to implement it might be challenging. If this is something you need to do a regular basis, you might consider hosting your own DNS and using BIND's nsupdate tool. ~~~ moviuro > hosting your own DNS meh. There are some things that I'd gladly host, but DNS clerly isn't among them. Too many ways to screw up, probable breakage ahead (only 1 dedicated @ OVH), so many rate-limits to implement; DNS servers a re filled with RCEs... (bind being the worst). Clearly, nope. Not doing this ;) ------ berbec Crap. I had certs set to expire on 2/28! I was going G to be saved by wildcard. Off to make a bunch of DNS entries.... ~~~ schoen Does your ACME client already support ACMEv2 and wildcards? I think only acme.sh has so far claimed to (happy to be corrected if another client has finished its implementation). ~~~ berbec I use certbot. I'm not sure as I was just planning on figuring it out for the night of expiration. ~~~ schoen I'm part of the Certbot team and I can tell you that the ACMEv2 support is still being implemented by my colleagues now; even if it had been included in a release this week or next, you would have been cutting it pretty close! Many of our users don't have the most current release because distribution packagers don't ship it right away (or even for months or years, depending on circumstances). Certbot's own autorenewals (which I originally implemented and which I hope are currently working for you -- I'm happy to try to find a way to get them to work in your deployment if they're not!) try by default to renew certificates 30 days before expiry in order to give people a lot of time to notice and intervene if something goes wrong. Consistent with that, I'd encourage all of our users not to rely on anything happening less than 30 days before expiry as part of their plan for keeping certificates current on their sites. ~~~ berbec Thank you for all your work. My renewal went through fine. I had commented it out of crontab, but went fine once I ran it. I was pleasantly surprised when tls-sni worked flawlessly. ~~~ schoen Great! One thing to know about the TLS-SNI situation is that TLS-SNI-01 has been disabled for new issuance and only works for renewals. The selection of authentication methods is pretty transparent because the ACME protocol allows the CA to state which methods it will accept for a particular domain authorization (so for the renewals it can state that TLS-SNI-01 is permitted, while for new issuance it can state that it's not, and a client can respond accordingly). Apparently the ACME WG is working on a TLS-SNI-03 method that will be safer and that might be supported by Let's Encrypt (and ACME clients) at some point. But it's also possible that TLS-SNI-01 could be disabled in the future, even for renewals, even before TLS-SNI-03. So, if you happen to have anything in your setup that prevents the use of HTTP-01 on port 80 for authentication, you should be aware that renewals could potentially stop working at some point (although this isn't imminent), and that you might also have difficulty adding new domain names to your certificates. [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/important-what-you- need-...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/important-what-you-need-to-know- about-tls-sni-validation-issues/50811) This unfortunate situation is a nice showcase of the ACME protocol's flexibility, because the CA has a way to tell the client very specifically what authentication methods to attempt or not to attempt for each domain (and if new methods are specified in the future, they can be rolled out incrementally without breaking compatibility). ~~~ tialaramex One thing that'd be good here for outside observers is for Let's Encrypt to bake a list of the Blessed Methods used into certificates as OIDs in the Policy section. Right now a researcher with 5 million Let's Encrypt certificates can see which ones use public keys with unusual patterns, how many are for names in the French .fr TLD, how many have longer key lengths, and so on, but they can't see whether the validation was done with Method 10 (which had this unexpected flaw) or some other method. Another CA (can't remember which one) was looking at doing this, and it seems like it'd be nice for Let's Encrypt too. ~~~ schoen I like this kind of thing in principle, but certificates are already getting kind of large and there are a number of other things that one might put in them via OIDs. But I realize ASN.1 is pretty concise; do you know about how much this proposal would increase the size of a certificate by? Another concern might be that users might not want this to be disclosed because it might give attackers suggestions about how to attack their renewal processes (although of course CAs have been willing to publish information, like issued certs, that some users wouldn't prefer to make public). ------ technion It's not mentioned, but I'm assuming this feature with the same original schedule: Embed SCT receipts in certificates Is also delayed? I think this has been quite underrated. ~~~ discreditable I've been following progress in their GitHub issue for it: [https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/issues/2244](https://github.com/letsencrypt/boulder/issues/2244) Most recent comment: > We're working hard on it, but will probably not land this in production > before the end of February. Still, we are very much aware of the upcoming > deadline and committed to meeting it. Thanks for the enthusiasm everyone! > :-)
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Saying Hi to Allo and Duo: new apps for smart messaging and video calling - shayannafisi https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/allo-duo-apps-messaging-video.html ====== BinaryIdiot So here's what I don't understand. Hangouts has been the main message app from Google that supports text and video chat. One of the biggest complaints about hangouts was not being able to use a phone number with it so you could essentially replace SMS with another app that's closer to an iMessage competitor. Now we have two apps, Allo and Duo. Allo somehow addresses the phone number piece...but is broken out into a separate app and is only available on Mobile (so no web or desktop clients). Duo is basically the video portion of Hangouts. Am I missing something? I mean the assistant stuff in Allo is neat and all but integration has been the key for a while to providing better usability and this just not only ignores that but introduces two new apps that somewhat sorta compete with Hangouts, its own product. Why isn't this just one, single, awesome thing? ~~~ vthallam I guess, they didn't go with Hangouts because it was basically built as extension of the web. May be they wanted to build a mobile focused messaging app from ground up which can compete with apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. It would have been if they integrated Allo and Duo into a single app though.
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Show HN: I'm building a service to help people schedule tasks - s-stude http://scheduleworkers.com ====== ColinWright Another gorgeous looking website that is clearly intended to explain what the service is, and I still haven't got a clue exactly what it does, how it works, how I'd use it, or what value I'd get from it. Does anyone else understand what it _really_ does? ~~~ s-stude I can explain what the service does: basically you submit a URL which returns any kind of data. Then you set up a schedule for a worker to go to that URL and to load a data on a scheduled basis. Every time a data is loaded it is send to you via email. So it's sort of alerting / scheduling mechanism. ------ warewolf Shoot me an email, its in My bio. I'm a UX & UI designer working on something in the same space would love to connect. ~~~ s-stude Done!
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How did organized crime attempt to ransack PayPal in the early years? - mg1313 http://www.quora.com/How-did-organized-crime-attempt-to-ransack-PayPal-in-the-early-years ====== frankel0 It is interesting to hear that eBay originally was against the use of PayPal. Did they at one time have a competing system that they were trying to push? It seems to me that anything that would allow users to simplify their payment would be a good thing. I am guessing that PayPal originally wanted to take credit cards directly (?).
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AWS stops some EC2 servers without warning - iProject http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/aws_ec2_servers_retired_with_little_warning/ ====== kelnos Not really news...
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Tensorflow 0.11rc1 Supports Cuda 8.0 Officially - wagonhelm As you can see here TensorFlow now supports Cuda 8.0<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tensorflow&#x2F;tensorflow&#x2F;releases<p>I also have this tutorial on how to install it from sources.<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wp.me&#x2F;p7GvOc-2H ====== TuringNYC Thanks very much for sharing your recipe. Several quick questions -- 1\. I'm assuming this was Ubuntu server and not desktop, is that right (judging from you not dealing with nouveau driver silliness...) 2\. Did you consider RHEL for p2p GPU support (or did you find p2p GPU support to not be worth the added cost of RHEL) ~~~ wagonhelm Ubuntu desktop, It serves my needs. I don't have time for other distros.
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Developing Service Oriented Architectures - hachiya http://lethain.com/lessons-from-developing-software-oriented-architectures/ ====== JeffJenkins If you're considering switching your monolithic application into a SOA you should consider the testing and debugging implications seriously. If your call graph goes more than one level deep then doing integration/functional testing becomes much more complicated. You have to bring up all of the services downstream in order to test functionality which crosses that boundary. You also have to worry a lot more about different versions of services talking to each other and how to test/manage that. The flip side is that the services will be much smaller, so leaf nodes in the call graph can reach a level of test coverage higher than a monolithic service. Debugging and performance testing becomes more complicated because when something is wrong you now have to look at multiple services (upstream and downstream) in order to figure out where the cause of some bug or performance issue is. You also run into the versioning issue from above where you have a new class of bug caused by mismatched versions which either have tweaked interfaces or underlying assumptions that have changed in one but not the other (because the other hasn't been deployed and those assumptions are in shared code). The bright side for debugging and performance is that once you know which service _is_ causing the issue it's way easier to find what inside the service is causing the issue. There's a lot less going on, so it's easier to reason about the state of servers. ~~~ CarlHoerberg It depends how you do SOA. We try to publish "events" rather than to "call" another service and expect responses. We try to decide as much as possible in the service that publishes an event, so that information doesn't have to be returned. Other services act on that information. Your kind of SOA sounds more like distributed RPC, which indeed is complicated. ~~~ JeffJenkins Yeah, if you can get away with that model things are simpler. The best first step into SOA to take is offloading work that doesn't need a user response to a pool of workers (often by publishing to a message bus, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread). I've implemented systems like that using Rabbit and Redis and it worked fairly well. However, some kinds of requests are fundamentally about integrating the results of a bunch of different services into a response to send to the user. In that case you somehow need to gather the results of your rpcs/events in one place to integrate them. An example is Google search where the normal results, ads, and various specialized results/knowledge graph data need to be integrated to present to the user. Another consideration is how much you want to be able to isolate services. If you have a user/auth service as in the article which completely encapsulates the database and other resources needed for data about users then you'll end up with a lot of calls into that service. It's a disadvantage because of all the reasons in my original comment, but it's great from the perspective of being able to isolate failures and build resilient systems ~~~ CarlHoerberg Ok, yes, in the case where you have to have all information on one page. Another way is of course to get that information in a ajax call, or open a SSE/Websocket connection to listen for events from the event bus. But there are of course cases where that's not feasible. And in the case of auth systems what we typically do is to have a separate app for logins/authentication, then do simple SSO or domain cookie sharing and let each sub system handle the authorization. My point is that not all SOA has to be as complicated as the article's. But if you go that way, yes, then all your points apply. ------ noelwelsh Jay Kreps epic blog post on the Log should be required reading: [http://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log- what...](http://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every- software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying) We do things very differently to that discussed in the OP (and are heavily influenced by the Krepian school of SOA.) I'd write more, but I'm on a train with flaky internet. ~~~ tom_b Awesome link. Epic is the right descriptor. You could do much, much worse if you were looking to understand data integration in practice. The links section at the bottom alone are a tremendous resource. I've stumbled across most of these over a period of years and if you started with just skimming over this article and the links, you would save yourself many hard lessons. ------ adrianhoward For a slightly different slant on SOA's I'd thoroughly recommend watching Fred George's talk on the technical side of implementing micro-service architectures from Oredev last year [https://vimeo.com/79866979](https://vimeo.com/79866979) along with his talk on Programmer Anarchy which is more about the resulting team / working patterns [https://vimeo.com/79866978](https://vimeo.com/79866978) It's moved playing with much finer-grained service architectures _way_ up my to to list. ~~~ alecthomas That first video is really interesting. It seems very reminiscent of a distributed tuple space architecture [1]. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuple_space) ------ contingencies Other big benefits you get from well defined interfaces include security - you can do application level firewalling, statistics, anomaly detection really easily - and testing (play back known traffic, literally generate every possible message and see what happens, etc.) Also, HTTP can be a poor choice in security terms for its complexity baggage (cookies, headers, methods, DNS baggage, SSL baggage, etc.). Alternatives such as MQs can be useful to consider, especially at later points in growth, since they can handle complex topologies with ease. I believe the author could benefit from making a distinction between stateful and stateless in his description of dumb and smart API clients, since state is the main factor resulting from assumptions here. ------ ndcrandall So after going back and forth with our startup on SOA or not, I have felt like separating these services out of (in our case) a monolithic Rails application has made sense. I would like to use Sinatra for one service, rails for the web interface, and possibly Python for the last service. I understand this adds a lot of overhead by creating an interface and authentication for each service. For me the logical division of services seems to make sense especially when using 'the right tool for the right job' I may be over optimizing, but I think it will pay off at a later date with more developers and the need to scale each service separately. Maybe someone can point out issues with this thinking (besides those addressed in the blog post). ~~~ dasil003 To me the crux of the issue is the interface. If you can define a very clean interface without having to do a lot of contortions to get the data you want where you need it, then extracting a service can be relatively low overhead. But what often happens is at the 30,000-foot view it looks like a service makes sense, but then when you get into the details you realize the separation can not be as clean as you first envisioned. ~~~ jaegerpicker I'd disagree with this. In my experience everytime it has seemed like the interface was too complex too support services correctly, it's been because the break for the services was at the wrong level of abstraction. SOA tends to work best when you define discreet chunks of functionality and each service is only responsible for that chunk. Just like developing testable code, you want to make those chunks as small as possible, without losing your mind at the shear number of services. For example having an order service and shipping service as opposed to a just an order service that handles everything is more likely to make sense IMO. ~~~ dasil003 Your argument doesn't seem to address my point. You're saying if the interface isn't good you're at the wrong level of abstraction. Okay. How does that contradict the idea that the interface is everything for creating a successful SOA? ~~~ jaegerpicker I'm saying that it's rare that SOA isn't a proper fit for a web application and if it seems like a poor fit you likely haven't abstracted your interfaces to the right level. Your monolithic app is going to suffer from poor design just as much as an SOA based one. Your point seemed to be that certain applications could be well designed and still not a proper fit for a SOA. I think if an app is well designed it will by default be a proper fit for SOA. If you were not implying that I apologize. I guess my position is that nearly any complex web application would benefit from SOA. ~~~ dasil003 My point was really nothing to do with whether an application is a fit for SOA. It's more about _how_ to design an SOA. Your point about a poorly designed SOA being an equally poorly designed app is well taken, but I think it's more work to design a good SOA than a good monolithic app. And this is where the effort of designing the interface comes in. In a monolithic app interfaces can be more fluid because you can have automated tests and static analysis and compile time checks verifying that a given change works. That means you can prototype and iterate faster while the business requirements may still be churning considerably. To realize the benefits of an SOA you need a much more stable interface and some way to handle validation and correctness of the wire protocol. If you do it right and come up with a stable interface, you gain the benefits of decoupling system administration, scalability, and even development to a great extent. But if you do it wrong you end up a lot more work for an equivalent business logic architecture, and if you don't have any scaling issues than the cost-benefit is likely not to be there. My rule of thumb about whether an SOA is a good idea to pursue at a given point in time is much more related to the team size than the nature of the app. ------ hartror #2 is exactly how I pitched a migration to a micro-service architecture to my CEO yesterday. Feeling rather pleased with myself right now. ------ zimpenfish Last job wanted SOA but wouldn't deploy Rabbit (or any other message bus) because "it's another thing to look after". Ended up as a simple REST-alike webservice. Which I guess includes "service" in the description... ~~~ mattmanser What's wrong with that? No need to overcomplicate stuff. That's a perfectly good solution depending on what reliability you want. ~~~ zimpenfish Oh, I have no objection to simple RESTian APIs. But they're very much not SOA. ------ nl So.. SOA. Is anyone doing SOA+ESB in a non-Enterprise environment? Is an ESB actually useful beyond the idea that it is supposed to let "non skilled" people "develop services" (which I'm somewhat cynical about)? ~~~ noelwelsh How will you manage communication between services in a SOA? If you exclusively use point-to-point welcome to spaghetti code. Our philosophy is to use point-to-point when you absolutely need another service's input to complete your task. Otherwise put a message into the bus. See the Jay Kreps blog post I linked in below. ~~~ lmm It's not spaghetti as long as your interfaces are well-defined, is it? I can see the value in a service locator/registry, but that doesn't seem like a substantial piece of the ESB pitch. When do you have a fire-and-forget case like you seem to be talking about? I can guess a few secondary concerns like logging, but most of the time if you're calling another service it's because you need a response from that service. At least for the apps I'm used to writing. ~~~ arethuza I would say "spaghettiness" is pretty much topology - not whether those interfaces are well defined or not, which is pretty much an orthogonal property. i.e. You can have a poorly defined ESB and a big pile of spaghetti with well defined interfaces. Unfortunately I have seen both!
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Strange google results - voodoochilo i am from germany. recently i found a strange phenomenon. when i search for the digits 1 through 9 on google with english as results language i get:<p>1 14.25<p>2 11.45<p>3 10.00<p>4 9.39<p>5 8.55<p>6 25.31 (??)<p>7 7.08<p>8 6.89<p>9 6.46<p>has anybody an idea why digit 6 is so overrepresented? ====== RiderOfGiraffes No idea why 6 is over-represented, but the rest of the distribution is probably explained by Benford's Law: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benfords_law> ~~~ voodoochilo ACK ------ acqq A glitch. I'm also googling from Europe now on US English google.com and I'm seeing 7.72 billion for 6. ~~~ voodoochilo still get 25 bln ------ voodoochilo the counts are in bln hits
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Lyft Seizes on Uber's Struggles as Bookings and Ridership Soar, Losses Shrink - rayuela https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-27/lyft-bookings-and-ridership-soar-while-losses-shrink ====== throwaway90125 Absent numbers showing a decline in Uber numbers, there is absolutely nothing here that suggests that Lyft's growth here is anything but organic growth. Are there any market share figures that show what the title claims?
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We are not sheep - yummyfajitas http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1029#more-1029 ====== SamAtt Let me rephrase his strategy here: If someone comes to you with an emotional argument antagonize them and eventually they'll start acting rational. I'm sorry but not only do I think this is a bad idea I'm hereby calling b#llsh#t on the author. There's no way he made sheep noises at a guy who is emotional about gun control and from that changed the guy's mind. ~~~ caffeine You're right, Sam. I am struck by the fact that the guntoter did much the opposite of what this entry's title suggests. Essentially, it's a post about trollishly winning an argument on IRC by bleeting like a sheep. A cautionary tale: people utterly convinced of their ideas will stoop to the level of beasts to avoid sensibly answering criticism. ------ knowtheory The problem with this, is that ESR may have cowed the guy into submission, but i now think that ESR is an asshole, _and_ that he's not right. I remain entirely unconvinced as to the correctness of his position. In fact, i am unclear what the full scope and description of his argument is, because he spends so much time trying to convince us that people who disagree with him are not rational. Way to fail at argument. In some cases it may be fine/appropriate to needle your interlocutors with non-logical appeals, but doing so does not win your argument. It shuts down the argument. ESRs interaction there is particularly frustrating, since his actual argument contains no content. Going to a gun club is not a rebuttal to an argument, it's an attempt to indoctrinate others through means other than logic. Firing a gun, and learning about gun safety isn't going to change my mind that an populace armed with firearms is a solution for... anything really. Besides, if we really wanted to start an armed resistance, or a guerrilla movement, we don't need guns. Al Qaeda didn't cause 9/11 with handguns, and Timothy McVey didn't blow up the Oklahoma City building with bullets. ~~~ ellyagg > Firing a gun, and learning about gun safety isn't going to change my mind > that an populace armed with firearms is a solution for... anything really. You mean aside from the scads of strong evidence such as the frequent mass shootings by terrorists in Israel until citizens were allowed to carry concealed weapons? ~~~ knowtheory I don't seem to recall the end to the intifada. :P Arming everyone doesn't solve problems. It just guarantees someone is going to die. You can say "better them than me", but again, that's not a solution. Carrying a gun may make you feel safer, but that's all it does. Some people tried to make the claim that the Virginia Tech massacre could have been avoided if students were armed on campus. Except that the shooter, who clearly did not value his own survival, caught everyone off guard. Unless you are always armed, and always vigilant someone is going to get the drop on you. Fire arms are not going to make you safer. There are always random acts of violence. Also, don't forget that the "good guys" with guns aren't infallible. They accidentally shoot bystanders or even other good guys by accident too (see the NY plainclothes policeman who was killed last week). ~~~ knowtheory Hmm, looks like the intifada did technically peter out[1], but that hasn't stopped palestinian violent resistance. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada#End_of_the_Inti...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada#End_of_the_Intifada) ------ pohl From my reading, the author's epiphany was to shift the debate away from substance towards a contest along the linear social dominance hierarchy by trying to out-alpha his opponent, making him his beta bitch. How shocking that this came from the gun-fetish demographic. (And I say that as a supporter of the 2nd amendment.) I feel that this technique is orthogonal to the topic of the debate. A more dominant and rhetorically skilled opponent might have similarly stopped the debate in its tracks by insisting that the author loved guns because he was a chicken. Then, regardless of the response, reply with "Bock bock bock b'cak!" This is the author's moment of enlightenment? I don't want people like this on my side of the gun debate. ------ robotrout Logos Ethos Pathos It's not all about the logos, folks. Not knowing that is going to bite you for the rest of your life. If somebody is venting to you about gun control, abortion, global warming, wolf reintroduction, or whether size matters, they are not going to respond to logic. A minute or two of conversation will tell you if they can be reached that way. Figure that out, and save yourself an ulcer. This fact is actually one that even a hacker should be able to grasp, as it rests purely in your realm. ------ tptacek My favorite part of his technique is that he starts from the premise that arguments like "criminals will use your guns against you" and "the weapons available to citizens are insufficient to repel the police" are "factually and historically ignorant babble". It's a good thing we had people like him "short-stopping communist counter-coups in the Baltic states". ------ anigbrowl Actually, my impression after reading the piece, is that his response is 'we are sheep with guns'. I've met two types of gun enthusiasts: the ones that like hunting o other sport shooting and are basically nerds who like throwing around statistics and how-to tips, and the ones that believe a Mad Max dystopia is coming _any day now_ , or are possibly convinced it's already here, who strike me as a bunch of paranoid lunatics. A gun is a perfectly valid home defense option, but the dystopian crowd always seem to be waiting for some kind of reverse rapture in which they'll finally get to show how well-prepared they are. They remind me of the martial-arts types that talk endlessly about what would happen if they were ever to get into a fight, but don't feel comfortable riding public transport. ------ prodigal_erik "Oh, you wanted an argument? That's next door. This is abuse." I have to admit the title did not promise a way to _use logic_ to reply to emotional arguments, as most of us were apparently hoping. ------ yummyfajitas In the interest of gathering more data points, has anyone attempted to use this technique computing debates? I'm thinking of discussions concerning sexps and significant whitespace in particular. ~~~ swombat You mean, heavy use of ad hominem attacks followed by a return to the topic? Yes, I'm sure we've all done that. And I'm sure we all have plenty of experience showing that insulting your interlocutor is not a successful means to convince them of anything whatsoever. ~~~ yummyfajitas Exactly what I mean. While it certainly is not useful in a rational debate, it could be useful (under some circumstances) to short circuit an irrational one. I'm interested, since many debates are (unfortunately) irrational. ------ Confusion There isn't an 'emotional argument masquerading as logic' anywhere in the article or the comments. Unless the suggestion is that every argument is an attempt at logic, in which case 'logical argument' is a tautology. From the article: _I think, now, that gun owners need to be replying more often to hoplophobes simply by echoing their “Baaa! Baaa! Baaaa!” back at them. Because only that reaches the actual fundamentals of the thinly- rationalized anti-firearms prejudice we so often encounter._ Yeah, because your assumption that those with an anti-firearms stance are by definition 'hoplophobe' and 'prejudiced' isn't a close-minded, arrogant, _emotional_ position at all. The 'fear' argument is easily turned around: you only think you need a gun, because you are afraid of what could happend if you didn't have one. The proper response to the presented 'arguments' are: Q: _“Why do you guys think you need firearms?”_ A: That's not an argument Q: _“Criminals will just take them from you and use them against you.”_ A: Criminals have their own guns and don't need ours. There is no evidence that the risk you name outweighs the benefits of owning a gun. Q: _“They’re useless for anything but killing.”_ A: Umm, that's the point: they can be used to kill people before they kill you. Q: _“You can’t seriously think they’re a deterrent against overreaching governments, the cops will just come for you you first.”_ A: If almost everyone has a gun, the cops can't come for 'you' first. Not only does he present stupid arguments, he is also incapable of defusing these stupid arguments and has to resort to imitating sheep. And this is supposed to be a hacker guru, someone worth imitating. God help us all... ~~~ sofal For all we know, he may have given all of the same answers you did. Have you ever tried to give intelligent responses to someone who has already decided you are wrong? This is what is meant by an "emotional argument masquerading as logic". Somebody asks seemingly logical questions with the sole intent to bait and knock down the responses no matter how logical and well thought-out they are. The author of the article eventually recognized that this was just a pissing match and tried a different approach which worked better in that particular isolated case. From your "proper response" I have to believe that you would have fallen for the bait. ~~~ Confusion If the guy was baiting, then I concur with SamAtt: _There's no way he made sheep noises at a guy who is emotional about gun control and from that changed the guy's mind._ ------ sho The problem with this technique is that everyone thinks they're right. You would be amazed and appalled to learn how opponents of, say, evolution think that they are the knowledgable few and you are the "sheep" who has been brainwashed by the scientific "man". There is little to be gained from this kind of _mano-a-mano_ debate, IMO, and much to be lost in terms of time and emotional energy. The intelligent person of programmatic means would be wise to consider how better he might make use of his time, for example in constructing appropriate systems to enable larger scale, and more effective, destruction and undermining of the ignorance in the world. ~~~ yummyfajitas I'd amend your statement. There is little _information_ to be gained from this kind of debate. You can, however, gain position, status or resources from this kind of debate. In the real world, it is often necessary to deal with irrational actors. I don't think it is a bad idea to learn how to hack people's irrationality for your own ends. It is evil to short circuit _rational_ debate, but if the debate is already irrational, why not learn how to win it? ~~~ staticshock I agree. And, in subtle ways, even rational arguments are often won with appeals to emotion. Learning how to use emotion in an argument is a very powerful tool. ~~~ yummyfajitas I think that by definition, a rational argument cannot be won with appeals to emotion. The only exception I can think of is revealing to a person that their perceived utility function is different from their actual utility function. (E.g., how happy does owning diamond necklace actually make you?) But in that case, appealing to emotion is more about revealing new information (about emotions) than overriding rational thought. ------ ahoyhere Baa baa baa. I mean: This guy needs to grow the hell up and read a book on rhetoric. Appalling. EDIT: Oh, it's ESR! That explains a lot.
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Tesla Autopilot tricked into accelerating from 35 to 85 mph with modified sign - harambae https://electrek.co/2020/02/19/tesla-autopilot-tricked-accelerate-speed-limit-sign/ ====== dmitrygr Further proving that "self driving" is approximately as hard as AGI, and is _nowhere_ near as "close" as everyone thinks to think it is. A human would have _context_ and _common sense_ and thus know that a residential street will simply not _ever_ have an 85 mph speed limit. And _yes_ , you could special case _this_ case in the code, but there are hundreds of cases where "common sense" is used in driving, and you will never teach your NNs all of it. Prediction: no actual "self driving" (to a point where driver can legally be asleep) on public streets till > 10 years from now ~~~ joshvm I don't see why you need special cases in the code. Sat nav units have had speed limits built in for years. Why not just look it up in a database? (the car knows where it is after all, and requiring a GPS fix could be mandatory - most drones won't arm without it, for example) ~~~ rypskar How much can you trust that data? My car tell me what the speed limit is by using a database and reading signs. On my commute to work there is a part where it tell me the speed limit is 5km/h when it actually is 80km/h and another place where it for a short bit shows the limit as 80km/h where the correct is 30km/h ~~~ joshvm Neither is ideal. But you should use what information you have. There is still no excuse for making a decision like 85 in a 35. Worst case this should be a disengage or the car could defer to you - eg visual warning on the dash "speed limit unclear, override?" In the UK smart motorways can vary from 30mph to 70mph according to traffic. This can change within minutes and obviously cannot be in databases. So this is a good case for sign recognition. In theory though, there is some network that's updating the speed limits and there's no technical reason why that couldn't be a public information service (maybe it already is). Then you have the sibling comments - speed limits which are time based. I would imagine this is country specific and is, mostly, a matter of public record. But would you trust CV to recognise text on a sign with specific hours? I don't know how complex the signage is, but trying to use ML for this seems absurdly wasteful of resources. Finally you have other information - how fast are the cars around you travelling? Have you detected an obstruction on the road (eg cones)? Is the weather inclement and therefore you should drive more slowly, etc. I would imaging that if self driving cars become ubiquitous there will eventually be a system for real time speed limit determination, whether that's some kind of wireless beacon at regular intervals or an online database that's kept up to date I don't know. ~~~ rypskar How is the accuracy of sign recognition on the LED signs stating the current speed limit? My experience is that it is not so good, maybe other cars are better at reading LED signs. For the car to react according to how other cars drive, you need to have other cars on the road at the same time. I have a narrow gravel road where the limit is 30km/h but safe driving is between 10 and 20, but my car tell the limit is 50km/h. It can be weeks without me seeing other cars on that road at the same time as me. Some mornings during the winter I can drive because I know where the road is, not because all of it is visible. Good luck having an autopilot doing that ~~~ joshvm Well, quite. But again this is all supplementary information. The car should have a basic idea of the speed limit from a database and it should adjust as appropriate. Similarly the car should be able to identify road surface conditions and also how much power it's needing to put in to achieve a set speed. If it's identified that traction is being lost over gravel, then it should reduce power. Equally the autopilot should consider visibility. There are plenty of roads that are national speed limit and you'd be insane to drive at 60 on them due to blind or extremely tight corners. But with LEDs this seems like massively over-engineering the problem. Why use computer vision when you can potentially broker a deal with the highways agency to get live speed limits on a particular stretch of highway? ------ rootusrootus They had to use older Teslas to make this work, because newer models don't use sign-reading to determine speed limit. Abstractly, it's interesting, if only because it probably wouldn't trick a human -- everyone would see the 85mph as BS regardless of the defaced sign. Has anyone hacked into openstreetmaps yet and fiddled with speed limits? ~~~ gizmo385 What do the newer models use? I tried to Google for it, but just kept stumbling on news articles about the OP. ~~~ bdcravens "Front-facing cameras detect speed limit signs on AP1 vehicles and display the current limit on the dashboard or center display. Limits are compared against GPS data if no signs are present or if vehicle is HW2 or HW2.5" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot#Speed_assist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot#Speed_assist) From what I've gathered elsewhere, the GPS data is OSM. ------ Robotbeat This already happens occasionally with regular drivers: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail- transp...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail- transport/11138390/Drivers-tricked-by-fake-40mph-speed-limit-signs.html) "Pranksters blamed for speeding offences after drivers caught out by 40mph signs in 30mph zone" Ironically, current Teslas are largely immune to this as they use a database of speed limits. ------ wpietri Ah, that's especially good. They just changed the 3 in "35 MPH" speed limit sign to look more like an 8, and the Teslas dutifully sped up. A mistake no human driver would make. Rodney Brooks points out that if we ever get AGI [1], we'll have solved the autonomous vehicle problem. But it's far from clear to me that we'll truly solve the problem much before then, as cars and roadways are built with GI expectations in mind. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence) ~~~ koboll >A mistake no human driver would make. And probably prosecutable as felony manslaughter, the same way removing a stop sign would be, because you're acting in a way you know will get people killed. ------ elcomet So basically they modified a 35MHP street sign to make it look like a 85MPH. I looked at it from a distance, and it was hard to tell between 35 and 85. So if it is hard for a human, then it seems obvious that a tesla would also fail to recognize a 35. Maybe the difference is that a human might not be certain and slow down just in case, whereas a deep neural network might be certain in its errors. ~~~ tmpz22 A human has the basic intuition to assume the sign itself might be wrong or misleading, the programmers of the car automation failed to realize that in a way that might've gotten someone killed. ~~~ russfink Good thing, too, that nobody stepped out in front of their car, like a kid chasing a ball, as they did their ad hoc experiment. ~~~ frosted-flakes They didn't allow the car to reach 85 m/h, for obvious reasons. ------ loser777 This is as good of a demonstration of the big "common sense" gap that end-to- end computer vision approaches have as it is of adversarial examples. Even with an occluded speed limit sign, humans have strong priors on what a sensible speed limit would be based on a more general understanding of the environment (width of lanes, curvature of roads, visibility, road quality, frequency of law enforcement vehicles ;), etc.). ~~~ castratikron Wonder if the neural net could be trained to know the speed limit? "This scene doesn't look like the usual 85 mph zone..." ~~~ fyfy18 Many cars now come with a database of speed limits and display it on the dashboard. Although this shouldn't be relied on for self driving, it could be used to double check. OSM data for types of roads and areas is pretty accurate too, so you could use that ('an 85mph speed limit for a single lane within a residential area doesn't sound correct'). This doesn't need AI, it just needs someone with common sense to come up with a few basic rules about speed limits. If there is some doubt you could prompt the driver to confirm the speed limit change, and use that to build up a database of real world data. It sounds like the Tesla is just using what the camera sees - which is bad if true. Admittedly this was tested on a race track, so maybe there is no data saying otherwise (or even the opposite). ------ aero142 If the point is that autonomous cars are succeptable to deliberate malicious actors, I've got bad news about the rest of the world. Human drivers are incredibly succeptable to me throwing a $2 brick throught the front windshield as well. It sounds like the issue is already resolved in this case. ~~~ capableweb I guess the difference here is the scope of how many you can impact. In order to get all Teslas who go past a sign on the highway, you just have to modify the sign slightly and everyone is affected (in theory). In order to affect the same amount of people with your "brick through the windshield" strategy, you'll need a lot more manpower than just a sticker on a sign. ~~~ throwanem That depends on the size of wreck you manage to cause, don't you think? In any case, it takes no more people to drop a brick than it does to sticker a sign. To be clear, I find this entire concept of unsupervised robot vehicles both dangerous and absurd - even more so than the already dangerous and absurd baseline of a society so intimately bound up with automotive travel as ours. Exceeding such a high baseline as that is in its way impressive, and certainly demonstrates the astonishing overconfidence rampant in some segments of our very young and rather careless industry, but let's not get distracted from that essential point and waste our efforts on inconsequential arguments over whether a sticker is more dangerous than a brick. ~~~ capableweb > That depends on the size of wreck you manage to cause, don't you think? No, I think it's the scope of affecting many after another without doing something more. Throwing bricks requires continues action while a sticker is a thing you do once and then it "does it for you". See it as working every day and getting paid for that, versus a savings account where you get returns without really doing anything. And sorry, I didn't really join the conversations to argue against "concept of unsupervised robot vehicles [is] both dangerous and absurd " so I agree with the rest of your message. ------ valine Putting aside the fact that this was found on an old Tesla with autopilot 1.0, this is not even a technically hard problem to solve. The current version of autopilot uses a database and gps to determine the speed limit. In the future if Tesla wants to return to a vision based speed limit system they can sanity check the vision readings against their database and throw out results like 85mph. ------ oyebenny I live in Atlanta and there's a digital speed limit sign on 75. Sometimes the light is out and when it means to say the speed limit is "55" it just says "5". Come to think of it I've always noticed traffic slowing down nearing that sign. I wonder if any Tesla's have any contribution to that. ~~~ emiliobumachar I would slow down to a speed limit of 5, even if I was sure it was a defective display. It's effectively an unknown speed limit. Maybe not if I'm _very_ familiar with the road, but not everyone is. Yes, I'm sure the courts should throw out the ticket, but sometimes they mess up, and often you lose time and money to pursue your case. ------ consp Nice for them use Tesla but I'm pretty sure you can do it with every sign reading auto throttle system. There are plenty of cruise control systems which employ similar technologies. ~~~ shiftpgdn Or a person who misreads the sign. Though the whole point is that a Tesla doesn't have the context to know that a residential zone with an 85mph speed limit sign is obviously some sort of error. ~~~ toast0 You don't need residential context. You just need US context. I have never seen an 85 MPH speed limit sign in the US, ever. Up to 65 is common, with 70 or 75 sometimes on well maintained roads between urban areas. I can't recall seeing an 80, but I feel like maybe once or twice. ~~~ drunken-serval There’s an 85mph in one place in Texas. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_S...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States) ------ sebringj What I like about Tesla is they have over the air updates using a fleet of network data to quickly address issues or exploits that may arise... but this article is quite funny exposing the gap between AI and basic human intuition. I do believe human intuition may just be another model to train from in some sense in the end. ------ asdff Some sick people get their kicks tossing rocks off of overpasses. Imagine the games people are going to play with cardboard cutouts of whatever or false signage. I predict an arms race. ~~~ Robotbeat People could already cause crashes by making fake signs or repainting lines. I think this XKCD summarizes the issue nicely: [https://m.xkcd.com/1958/](https://m.xkcd.com/1958/) ------ JMTQp8lwXL If a human drove at 85 mph because a bad actor maliciously modified the speed limit sign, would they be liable? ~~~ binarymax Co-reference resolution error: who is 'they' in your sentence? The human or the bad actor? No matter what, the answer is probably both. You can't modify street signs now anyway. You also can't drive 85 in residential/city areas. ~~~ JMTQp8lwXL The human operating the vehicle who reads a maliciously edited sign. It seems unquestionable to me anybody modifying street signs would be held liable for the modifications. ------ RcouF1uZ4gsC >The safety of Tesla's autopilot features has come under close scrutiny, but CEO Elon Musk has predicted the company will have "feature-complete full self- driving" this year. I think that is a real possibility if we are referring to years on Jupiter (which has an orbital period of 12 Earth years). ------ whyaduck So cars are using OCR on speed limit signs? Next step: sql injection. [https://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-injection-fools-speed- tr...](https://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-injection-fools-speed-traps-and- clears-your-record/) ~~~ masklinn That's pretty common IME though the ones I've driven didn't make decisions based on that. Last few cars I've rented had a speed limit sign _generally_ matching the speed limit on the dash, and on the one I rented this christmas passing a speed limit sign (or an other sign triggering a speed limit change) while on limiter or cruise control would flash a message suggesting pressing a button twice to change the configured speed to that (rather than manually adjust using the +/\- buttons). They were mediums (C-segment) and compact MPV not large or luxury, which I expect is why the sign reading was mostly to purely indicative. ------ Sohcahtoa82 While scary, it's not exactly relevant to any Tesla made after they broke off from MobilEye (Which I think was 2016?). Current Teslas don't read speed limit signs, they access an online database. Vandalize the speed limit signs all you want, as modern Teslas aren't even reading them. ------ luxuryballs Shouldn’t it know that 85 is beyond the speed limit? You’d think it would know the laws based on where the GPS is, like in some states above 80 is reckless driving. Seems trivial to make this data available. ------ posix_compliant I'm not what you'd call a self-driving car "skeptic" since I do think that we will eventually be able to iron out these types of rules, but I think it will be another 30-50 years before I feel comfortable truly trusting one. ~~~ emiliobumachar How much do you "truly trust" human drivers? ------ m0zg Sounds like an easy fix in most cases. Residential road or road work? Can't be 85, period. There are relatively few roads in the US where 85 is the actual speed limit. ------ threatofrain Don't cities have easily accessible and authoritative records on locations of important traffic controls? If so, that would make this problem a little bit easier. ------ vardump Another discussion on same topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22370346) ------ tjoff Even if it was a legitimate 85 mph sign a human would realize that the road isn't safe at 85 mph speeds. You must react to the environment as well... ------ NicoJuicy I'm a self-driving skeptic, but this test is not fair. It's also illegal to do this, so it's not a valid edge-case. ~~~ dtho Why would the legality make this test invalid or unfair? Illegal things still happen. I have seen countless street signs with graffiti on them. I could see rebellious teenagers doing this on purpose without fully understanding or caring about the consequences. Search google images for 'street sign graffiti' and you will see thousands of examples. ~~~ lostlogin There has been an outbreak of modified stop signs near me. Some are quite professionally done with stickers championing pet projects. Stop animal farming, stop eating meat etc. If they weren’t at the end of a street, they would definitely look like a marketing campaign (which I suppose is exactly what they are). ------ ebg13 I keep seeing throughout this thread statements similar to "a human would never do this", and the only thing running through my head is awe at how little otherwise smart people understand their fellow humans. Like...y'all have lost your goddamn minds. OF COURSE many humans would do it! Humans fucking drive straight into lakes because the map told them to. Humans do not have some kind of magical ward against fucking up or against being tricked. Quite the opposite. But you know what the difference is? As soon as the computer system has programmed in a record of local contextual defaults, this problem won't happen again. Say the same about humans, I dare you. ~~~ sharkmerry >> Humans fucking drive straight into lakes because the map told them to. I had to check if this was real or just a bit from the office that imprinted. Googling "humans drive into lake" only finds one incident. Which occured at midnight.[1] and if you look at the research, they didnt convert it into an 8, they simply extended the middle part of the 3 a little bit [2] [1][https://fox8.com/news/a-little-embarrassed-woman-follows- car...](https://fox8.com/news/a-little-embarrassed-woman-follows-cars-gps- straight-into-lake-huron/) [2][https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2020/02...](https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2020/02/Screenshot-2020-02-19-at-11.59.56.png) ~~~ ebg13 > _Googling "humans drive into lake" only finds one incident._ You'd find more examples if you tried _slightly_ harder ("lake" isn't the important part!): [https://kfgo.com/2020/02/10/man-drives-into-mississippi- rive...](https://kfgo.com/2020/02/10/man-drives-into-mississippi-river-while- following-google-maps/983425/) [https://www.cnet.com/news/man-drives-into-river-gps- china/](https://www.cnet.com/news/man-drives-into-river-gps-china/) [https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-watches-wife- bu...](https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/man-watches-wife-burn- alive-5435575) [https://abc13.com/587100/](https://abc13.com/587100/) [https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/gps- tracking-...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/gps-tracking- disaster-japanese-tourists-drive-straight-into-the-pacific/) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/7962212....](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/7962212.stm) [https://www.boston25news.com/news/man-drives-into-pond- while...](https://www.boston25news.com/news/man-drives-into-pond-while- following-gps-directions/538872511/) [https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/gps-leads-nj- motorist-...](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/gps-leads-nj-motorist- into-house/2123304/) [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164705/BMW-left- te...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164705/BMW-left- teetering-100ft-cliff-edge-sat-nav-directs-driver-steep-footpath.html) [https://www.westsiderag.com/2013/05/01/gps-brain-fail- driver...](https://www.westsiderag.com/2013/05/01/gps-brain-fail-driver-car- ends-up-stuck-on-riverside-park-stairs) [https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/driver- follows-g...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/driver-follows-gps- into-sand/news-story/081ea557f486757a0cdd2722892727bb) [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/waze-app-directs- dri...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/01/waze-app-directs-driver-to- drive-car-into-lake-champlain.html) [https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/2-drivers-stuck-on-train- tr...](https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/2-drivers-stuck-on-train-tracks-in- duluth-after-gps-error-1-car-hit) [https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2013/06/19/mbta-train- ac...](https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2013/06/19/mbta-train-accident-car- tracks/) [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-01/car-being-hit-by- trai...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-01/car-being-hit-by-train-after- gps-sends-onto-tracks/6818564) [https://abc7chicago.com/395218/](https://abc7chicago.com/395218/) People act like humans are immune from making idiotic decisions or from ignoring their surroundings or something. That's...super naive. ~~~ sharkmerry But in these examples, would AI driving not fail there too? Heres an example of AI driving into a river [https://electrek.co/2019/03/10/tesla-crash-river- claim-unint...](https://electrek.co/2019/03/10/tesla-crash-river-claim- unintended-accelerated/) so it happens as well. would you be fooled by the attached image in my previous comment? If you were fooled, would your default action be to accelerate by 50mph, when no other drivers are? ~~~ ebg13 > _would AI driving not fail there too?_ It might if it were relying solely on a GPS and nothing else, but, of course, none of them do that. The biggest difference is that navigation software can improve and sensors don't stop paying attention. You can't say either of those things about people who screw up in exactly the same circumstances. > _Heres an example of AI driving into a > river[https://electrek.co/2019/03/10/tesla-crash-river-claim- > unint...](https://electrek.co/2019/03/10/tesla-crash-river-claim-unint..). > so it happens as well._ Let's note that the article is skeptical that the problem was actually the car: "I want to give the driver the benefit of the doubt, but every time we have seen similar circumstances, the logs always pointed to a user mistake." But even giving the driver the benefit of the doubt and asserting as a premise that the AI caused the accident, we're still left with the fact that people unintentionally accelerate their vehicles all the damn time. If a machine does it once in a while, that's not a regression, that's the baseline. ~~~ sharkmerry >> we're still left with the fact that people unintentionally accelerate their vehicles all the goddamn time. Again, do they do this by 50+mph ALL THE GODDAMN TIME? >> If a machine does it once in a while, that's not a regression, that's the baseline. If all the machines do it at once though? The impact of self-driving failing is a lot more than 1 person, typically. Also, we dont know the rate of error. There are 1.2 Billion drivers in the world. 3.5 Billions smartphone users. Its safe to say 50% of drivers use GPS. So 600 Millions Drivers using GPS? There arent even 1 million Tesla's on the road yet and they are already having incidents. ~~~ ebg13 > _Again, do they do this by 50+mph ALL THE GODDAMN TIME?_ No. Usually they crash into something first. I can tell you one personal anecdote, though, where in 1995 the gas pedal in my truck actually got physically stuck in the down position and I had to hold the brake pedal down with one foot while wedging my other foot underneath the gas pedal to loosen it. Of course I could only do this after the several (5 or 6?) seconds it took for me to understand what was happening and then react. 6 seconds is a long time to react to a catastrophic event. Humans aren't great at it. We almost always do the wrong thing. We turn the wrong way. We push the wrong pedal. We don't understand our surroundings. We ignore our surroundings. Anyway. Please note I'm not saying that this isn't a failure of the nav system. It is. I'm saying that anyone claiming that humans are magically immune is wrong because humans are very dumb and make dumb mistakes all of the time. ~~~ reidjs Why not just pop it into neutral? ~~~ ebg13 Panic and adrenaline? I think you must have missed the part where I said "humans are very dumb and make dumb mistakes all of the time". ------ kwhitefoot Very misleading. The car will only accellerate to the speed already chosen by the driver. It doesn't seem odd for itself to accellerate up to speed limits ------ skymt XKCD on tricking self-driving cars: [https://xkcd.com/1958/](https://xkcd.com/1958/) I wanted to link that not because of the "there's an XKCD for everything" meme but because it makes an interesting point: sabotaging roads isn't difficult now, with human drivers. There's no reason to assume it would suddenly become a substantial threat when autonomous cars are commonly adopted. An issue worth considering and accounting for, but not worth public worry.
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NASA hands space enthusiasts the keys to a 1970s-era spacecraft - ghosh http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/nasa-hands-space-enthusiasts-the-keys-to-a-1970s-era-spacecraft/ ====== ColinWright Significant discussion on an earlier discussion of a different article on the same question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7772405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7772405)
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AlphaFold: Using AI for Scientific Discovery - panabee https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for-scientific-discovery ====== lucidrains For those interested, it appears as though David Baker (who dedicated his life to protein folding) has also turned to deep learning. His lab recently published [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/846279v1](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/846279v1), which seems to outperform Alphafold with a very concise architecture. Code and model is at [https://github.com/gjoni/trRosetta](https://github.com/gjoni/trRosetta) ~~~ faitswulff Do you know if he turned to deep learning after AlphaFold's stunning performance at CASP13 in 2018? I haven't heard anything from that particular niche since the "AlphaFold @ CASP13: “What just happened?”" blog post: [https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold- casp...](https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what- just-happened/) ~~~ lucidrains The author of the article you linked also has this repo, to welcome the public to start training [https://github.com/aqlaboratory/proteinnet](https://github.com/aqlaboratory/proteinnet) , following in the same veins as Imagenet ------ aabhay A colleague of mine in chemistry gave his thoughts on AI for protein folding recently: “things keep getting better, but they’re nowhere close to being good”. I think part of the issue at play here is the cost of confirming success, not simply the cost of generating a plausible solution. In most domains of AI that have shown success, the cost of confirmation is trivial (look at the image and check the label) whereas the cost of generating a plausible solution was high. Like many AI fields, I believe that the real breakthrough will not be a direct approach, but an approach the solves the most pressing barrier to using AI in the first place. ~~~ bobosha > but an approach the solves the most pressing barrier to using AI in the > first place. what do you think is the "most pressing barrier to using AI"? ~~~ ethanbond From my perspective, in the life-sciences space, it’s certainly the lack of high quality data. To be more specific, there’s tons of data, but it’s sloppy, lossy, and non standardized. Many of those discussing the promise of near future AI are either academics or new to the field. The real data landscape is so much worse than they would imagine it is. ------ rutherf0rd The best take on AlphaFold: [https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold- casp...](https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what- just-happened/) ------ sanxiyn Eagerly waiting for CASP14 in 2020. CASP is a biennial competition. AlphaFold participated in CASP13 in 2018. ------ elil17 A bit off topic, but what the hell does the word "Alpha" mean in their marketing? Are they just going to call every AI they create from now on "Alpha_" ~~~ woadwarrior01 It probably has something to do with the parent company being named Alpha_Bet. ~~~ elil17 Damn you're right ------ emmelaich Amazing. The difference between their number one position and the the second is a greater difference than any other two consecutive positions. Not an especially important metric, but impressive nonetheless. ------ xvilka I hope, it will help other folding research projects too, like Folding@Home[1], Rosetta@Home[2]. [1] [https://foldingathome.org/](https://foldingathome.org/) [2] [https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/](https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/)
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Has the modern university become just another corporation? - robg http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/magazine/30wwln-lede-t.html?ex=1348804800&en=89c1bfa23c3175ea&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss ====== Goladus This is a pointless argument until everyone agrees on the definitions of "Corporation" versus "University." The article is careless on that point, and vague about what we should do if they are really the same. He highlights a few exceptional cases, which may be representative problems but are probably not. In particular, he doesn't seem to have thought at all about the consequences of levying taxes on Universities. That seems to be the central injustice he's concerned about, but does he really think the money would be better off in government hands? He doesn't seem to have considered those implications. Personally, I think there is a ton of value in the idea of a University, in spite of the possibility for corruption and definitely in spite of anyone's attempt to abstract away random differences until corporations and universities look the same in some meaningless description. The culture of any decent university campus encourages learning in a way that you almost never see at a large company. You might compare Harvard to Google, or Xerox PARC, but start comparing second tier colleges to second tier companies and companies don't even come close. ------ karzeem "How are college students treated in this brave new academic world? Not very well, at least not if this year's spate of bad news articles is any indication." I don't know that this year's spate of bad news articles _is_ any indication. College admissions are perennially weighted towards the already-advantaged, but once you're in, I have a hard time believing that motivated students were better off 30 years ago. The number of programs and opportunities for people willing to go for them is growing constantly. Robg, your headline asks that question like it's a bad thing. There are certainly pitfalls, but it seems that if universities compete with each other more, students can only win. ~~~ robg The headline was the subtitle in the Magazine TOC and more informative than the actual headline ("Academic Business"). ~~~ karzeem It definitely summarizes the article better, so you were right to use it. I blame the Magazine, not you, for its tone. ------ aswanson For the most part, yes. ~~~ pixcavator Really? Do I need to list the differences? ~~~ aswanson Proceed, if you would. ------ jharper That would be awesome. I wish our schools were run like businesses. There would probably be less porn stars coming to speak for "diversity" week ...
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How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists - ingve http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/09/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-a-guide-for-non-scientists/ ====== neutronicus I have a little "hack" that I find _extremely_ helpful for getting a sense of specific research fields. Journal articles, even review papers, are cramped for space and so tend to be very dense. The author suggests methods for doing battle with this density, but I suggest that, before doing that, you search for a class of document that's allowed to be as expansive as the author desires, and whose authors have recently struggled to learn and understand their content, and so tend to _be_ expansive: PhD Theses Find out what research group published the research, find out which graduate students have recently graduated from that group, and _read their theses_ (if the author's command of the language of publication isn't what you'd prefer ... find another graduate student). I guarantee you it will function much better as an introduction to what the group does than trying to parse any of their journal publications. In particular, the "draw the experiment" step will often be solved for you, with photographs, at least in the fields where I've done this. ~~~ FredrikMeyer This is _very_ good advice. I am a PhD student in mathematics, and every time I try to learn a new area of math, I'm grateful when I stumble upon PhD theses about that topic. They actually include their calculations. ~~~ neutronicus Yeah, and if you _are_ actually in the field and trying to learn it (as you are and this article's intended audience is not), a nice little bonus is that PhD theses are usually formatted in a way that's very friendly to markin' 'em up as you come to grips with the material. ------ startupdiscuss This is a good guide, but I will tell you a trick that is faster, easier, and more effective: read 2 or 3 papers. All that effort you would put into doing these steps? Instead, read 1 or 2 other papers that the author refers to in the beginning. Science is a conversation. When you read the other papers, even if you don't understand them at first, you will get a sense of the conversation. Also, some writers are abysmal, and others are amazingly lucid. Hopefully one of the 3 papers you read will be the lucid one that will help you understand the other 2. ~~~ ouid There is a huge variety in the quality of writing in scientific papers, but most of it is bad, or at least totally opaque, so I'm not sure that 3 papers will give you a sense of what is good, or even have a high probability of containing a paper that you can use as an entry point, although I think your premise is correct. Probably the best evidence that a paper is a good entry point is whether or not the author cared about the abstract. A lot of scientists treat it as a chore, picking some key points from the premise, methodology, and conclusion sections, and haphazardly pasting them together into a miniature version of the paper. An abstract is a sketch of your argument. It's supposed to be how the author thinks about the work they are doing, in terms of how it relates to the work everyone else is doing. Look for an abstract which presents an argument in plain english and isn't afraid to give a little background or motivation. It might take dozens to find one though. ~~~ jacobolus Personally I find abstracts close to useless, and just skip them entirely. I’ve never found a particularly close correlation between what an abstract said and how interesting/informative/well written the rest of the paper was. YMMV. ------ closed I love how simple and clear this post is. As a kind of weird aside, if anyone ever emailed me about any of my journal articles, I would 100% respond to them (assuming they weren't a machine). I think most of my colleagues would do the same (except for articles featured in a newspaper, which might garner a lot of weird emails). ~~~ kkylin Me too, most especially if the email is from a student. I imagine the same goes for many of us who write research papers. ------ lumisota Keshav's "How to Read a Paper" [1] is a good guide, though perhaps less in the "for non-scientists" camp. [1] [http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf](http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p83-keshavA.pdf) ------ choxi > As you read, write down every single word that you don’t understand. You’re > going to have to look them all up (yes, every one. I know it’s a total pain. > But you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary. > Scientific words have extremely precise meanings). That's a great tip. I've found that a lot of papers aren't necessarily complicated, but the vocabulary is unfamiliar (but you experience the same sense of confusion with both). It's interesting that we often conflate complexity with unfamiliarity, my reading comprehension abilities improved quite a bit by understanding the difference between the two. ------ glup I don't understand the opposition to abstracts: dense means high information content, so if you know the field you can learn a whole lot (like whether you should read this paper or another one). ~~~ PeterisP Abstracts often are misleading. They're useful to decide whether you should read this paper or another one, but they're often _not_ useful to get a summary of what exactly the paper actually achieves. Often the abstract will imply a more interesting result by leaving out key aspects and limitations (which are detailed in the paper and its conclusions) that significantly change the impact of the paper, the abstract often is more like an advertisement for the paper than an effective summary. I mean, it _may_ be, but if I'd read just the abstract and go away thinking, "oh, so now there's a way to do X", I'd often be wrong. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel I recently read a paper whose abstract seemed to imply to me that its content was much more technical and specific than it actually turned out to be, which was disappointing. It was more useful in telling you the particular area of research than summarising its content. ------ ChuckMcM Oh this is awesome, well presented and clear. A couple of notes, generally if you email the author of a paper they will send you a copy. Scholar.google.com can be used to evaluate the other papers referenced, highly cited ones will be 'core' to the question, less highly cited ones will address some particular aspect of the research. For any given paper, if it cites one or two seminal papers in the field, you can build a citation cloud to create what is best described as the 'current best thinking on this big question'. You do that by following up the citations and their citations for two or three hops. (kind of like a web crawler). With something like sci-hub and some work on PDF translation, it should be possible to feed two or three 'seed' papers to an algorithm and have it produce a syllabus for the topic. ------ deorder I usually first start reading or glance over papers (and non-story books) from the end to the beginning before I read it the other way around. This has the following benefits for me: \- By knowing about the conclusion first I will better understand the motivation and why certain steps are being taken. \- I find out sooner if the paper (or book) is something I am looking for. I like to read papers unrelated to my field to learn new thing to apply. To be honest, some papers still take me a long time to understand because they usually assume you already are researching the topic (for ex. certain terms, symbols and/or variables that are not being defined). ------ nonbel There is a difference between reading and studying a paper. Many papers I just check the abstract for claims of A causes/correlates B (ie it is a "headline" claim), and look for a scatter plot of A vs B (it is missing). Then I do ctrl-F "blind" (can't find it), ctrl-F "significance" (see p-value with nearby text indicating it has been misinterpreted). Boom, paper done in under a minute. There is really no reason to study such papers unless they have some very specific information you are searching for (like division rate of a certain cell line or something). ~~~ Denvercoder9 This only works for a very small subset of studies in a subset of scientific fields. ~~~ nonbel Agreed, the OP was about medical research though, where it does apply. ------ olsgaard About identifying "The Big Question", I have a story from my days as a graduate student, where I failed to do so. I was asked to help on a project that needed to identify humans in an audio stream. During my literature review, I came across the field of "Voice Activity Detection" or VAD, which concerns itself with identifying where in an audiosignal a human voice / speech is present (as opposed to _what_ the speech is). I implemented several algorithms from the literature and tested it on the primary tests sets referenced in papers and spend a few months on this until I finally asked myself "What would happen if I gave my algorithm an audiostream of a dog barking?" The barking was identified as "voice". As it turns out, the "Big Question" in Voice Activity Detection is not to find human voices (or any voices), but to figure out when to pass on high-fidelity signals from phone calls. So the algorithms tend to only care about audio segments that are background noise and segments that are not background noise. ------ sn9 >I want to help people become more scientifically literate, so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can approach reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It’s appropriate for someone who has no background whatsoever in science or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting a basic understanding of a paper and deciding whether or not it’s a reputable study. Better advice intended to make _layman with zero background in science_ become more scientifically literate would be to tell them to read some textbooks. Later on in the article, she tells people to write down each and every thing you don't understand in an article and look them up later. And this is excellent advice for people with a background equivalent to an advanced undergraduate or higher, but for people with zero background it would be better to read some textbooks and get yourself a foundation. Honestly, even when I was in grad school in neuroscience, I asked around for advice on reading papers and the surprisingly universal response from other grad students was that it took 2 years to become reliably able to read and evaluate a research paper well. And this is 2 years in a research environment with often weekly reading groups where PIs, postdocs, grad students, and some undergrads got together to dissect some paper. These reading groups provided an environment in which you had regular feedback on your own ability to read papers by seeing all the things those more experienced than you saw and that you missed. A paper that took me 3+ hours of intense study would take a postdoc a good half hour to get more information out of. I feel like this article makes reading articles well seem a lighter undertaking than it really is. It's really no wonder we see studies misinterpreted so often on the internet, where people Google for 5 minutes and skim an abstract. ~~~ yskmt > it took 2 years to become reliably able to read and evaluate a research > paper well This completely coincides with my experience. When I started grad school, it took me a few hours to read one paper, and I probably understood only 50% of the materials even though I had some foundations in the research area from my undergrad studies. Reading textbooks is a great advice. Then one can start reading some review papers in the area to get some more depth in his/her knowledge. I think the difficulty is that it is hard to find good textbooks and review papers for the subject that one is interested in, especially when the subject is in a niche field. ------ kronos29296 As a student who needs to read research articles for my project, this article gave some new ideas on how to approach those long boring and cryptic pieces of text that just take days to understand. Thanks to the person who posted it. ------ luminati A couple things I try to do when reading research papers, inspired by these two amazing [b|v]logs. [1][https://blog.acolyer.org/](https://blog.acolyer.org/) [2][https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz](https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz) I try to paraphrase the paper into a Acolyer like 'morning paper' blog post on evernote while mentally I am directing a 'two minute paper' video on the paper :) ------ DomreiRoam I would like to have a digest or an overview written for a IT practitioner. I did go SC/IT conference and enjoyed the talks and I noticed 2 things: 1/ You learn new things and new approach that can bring value to our job 2/ It seems that the research sector discover stuff that are already known in the industry. I think it would be great to have a journal/blog that would construct a bridge between the industry and the university. ------ yamaneko This suggestion by Michael Nielsen is also very good: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666615) ------ pitt1980 What's odd to me, is that lots of professors have blogs in which they write quite a bit in plain language that doesn't require an instruction manual in order to be read ------ syphilis2 Why don't the authors do these 11 steps for us? ~~~ danielalmeida Because they are not writing for non-scientists. ~~~ pitt1980 all scientist were non-scientists first though, correct? Look, I get that there's some natural professional context and lingo that goes into these things, but for all the angst that goes into what esteem that population at large holds up the science community making their work more accessible to both novices and interested outsiders would be a nice step in the right direction ~~~ danielalmeida I agree with you. To put it simply, papers are optimized for the scientific community and making them "more accessible" to outsiders has a cost. I'd settle for better writing and presentations within the scientific community for now. If you ever find researchers that blog about their research in simple terms, I think it's safe to assume they're using their personal time to do that (I know of very few; Andy Ko [1] comes to mind). [1] [https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior](https://medium.com/bits-and- behavior) ------ amelius I'd like an answer to: how/where to ask the relevant community a question about a scientific paper. ------ minademian this is a great guide. i wish more writing on the Internet has this blend of substance, message, tone, and grit. ------ apo Sensible advice overall, but I completely disagree with these: > Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional > affiliations. and > Beware of questionable journals. Institutional affiliation and journal imprimatur should have no bearing in science. These are shortcuts for the lazy, and they introduce bias into evaluation of the paper's contents. Even more than that, dispensing advice along these lines perpetuates the myth that scientific fact is dispensed from on high. If that's the case, just let the experts do the thinking for you and don't bother your pretty little head trying to read scientific papers. If the author's approach to reading a paper only works by checking for stamps of approval, maybe the approach should be reconsidered. ~~~ burkaman They aren't shortcuts for the lazy, they're shortcuts for non-scientists who aren't capable of fully evaluating the science alone. If you're capable of objectively peer reviewing a paper, you're not the audience of this article. ~~~ apo > They aren't shortcuts for the lazy, they're shortcuts for non-scientists who > aren't capable of fully evaluating the science alone. It's a shortcut fraught with potential for deception, as even a casual glance through a site like Retraction Watch will demonstrate: [http://retractionwatch.com/](http://retractionwatch.com/) I'm not sure what you mean by "evaluating the science." A scientific paper should present a hypothesis, the author's best attempt to disprove the hypothesis, and an interpretation of the evidence gathered in the processes of testing the hypothesis. There's going to be a back-story, and it's likely to be quite involved. The article does a good job of presenting a method for navigating a paper on this basis. I don't see what checking credentials adds to the process. On the contrary, it may do harm. ~~~ semi-extrinsic While we may find the high profile cases featured on Retraction Watch mainly in high impact journals, that's precisely because unscrupulous people deem these journals _worth it to cheat to get into_. Nobody cheats to get their paper into the International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Nursing Science - because it and it's ilk are utter pieces of crap that will accept anything, up to and including randomly-generated text and pro-Sri-Lanka- highly-racist-UFO-conspiracies (real example). Teaching laypeople to avoid these is a very good idea.
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Ask HN/Google: should Google link to hotel sites instead of aggregator sites? - petervandijck You can expand this question to generalize: should Google link to, say, a tripadvisor hotel page first, or to the hotel website first? Whenever I search for a hotel or something, I always get a long list of aggregators, which I don't particularly enjoy. Hotel sites (however bad) would be better.<p>And more in general: should Google generally link to business sites (however bad) first, or link to aggregator sites (including their own) first?<p>I'm sure they could figure it out algorythmically. ====== Udo It has been my experience that more often than not, aggregator sites don't provide any value whatsoever because their only mission is to display ads and drive traffic by spamming Google's index. At least travel adviser sites offer _some_ benefit if they host real reviews (instead of just showing scraped content like the hotel's address and some images). This is one symptom of a larger problem where I feel Google search is falling flat and the quality of search results is getting progressively worse. It's not the fault of the aggregator sites themselves, either (though some of them employ very shady SEO tricks) - instead I believe the problem is that Google search increasingly ignores specific user input to serve up "what I most likely meant as opposed to what I actually typed in". I would welcome a return to stricter search phrases and maybe a few options regarding what search mode I would like to use. For example, it would be nice to be able to explicitly include or exclude aggregator sites in search results. By now, Google certainly knows enough about the nature of the URLs it indexes, they should pass this knowledge on and empower their users to make more specific queries. ~~~ paganel > aggregator sites don't provide any value whatsoever because their only > mission is to display ads and drive traffic by spamming Google's index Tripadvisor has been really helpful to me and my wife, as in we don't go to any new hotel without first checking its ratings and comments on tripadvisor. You cannot have that on a hotel's website, objective reviews I mean, nor can you have actual non-photoshopped pictures taken inside said hotels. ------ webwright Seems like "drake hotel" ought to get you to the Drake Hotel web site. "drake hotel reviews" ought to get you to an aggregator. "drake hotel reservations" ought to get you to whichever has the better prices. Google's emphasis on domain name helps a lot here, though a lot of hotels are owned by holding companies and have domain names like: <http://holdingco.com/hotelname> (hard to differentiate between that and an aggregator URL). It comes down to inbound links-- and the aggregators have armies of people doing link-building SEO work. I don't envy Google. Short of human editors, how would you fix it? ------ cletus Hotels online are a bit of a mess. Personally I'll go straight to Tripadvisor to find a hotel in an unfamiliar area. I may book there but I will also _call_ the hotel in question, particularly when my company has a corporate rate. Not because the corporate rate is betteer but because when the website tells you the hotel is full for the requested dates a person at the hotel will tell you what dates are the problem and possibly bump you up to a higher room class to make your stay possible. As an aside to people who develop hotel aggregates: 1\. Never make me register; 2\. When I search a date range show me, for each day, the rate, availability and include all room classes. This way I can easily see if a single day is the problem and adjust accordingly. In fact I'd like to combine the hotel and flight so one _one page_ I can see flight costs on my requested dates (+/- 2 days) and the matrix of per day rates and availabilities. All sites I've seen have these as too many separate steps. What's worse, refining the search can be problematic. As for Google search results, this is one area where there is simply too much noise. Hotel affiliate programs combined with cheap hosting mean thee are 234245556345 aggregators, almost all of them useless and hotel sites, except for the largest chains generally, tend to be useless. ------ dageshi Depends if the aggregator has reviews from previous customers or not, if they do then I would say it's a better source of information than the hotel website itself. Google probably thinks your more likely to be searching for reputation information on a particular hotel than stuff like "address" e.t.c. ------ gyardley Interesting, because I prefer the aggregator sites. The aggregator sites usually contain some user reviews as well as a standardized UI - one I'm already familiar with - for booking a room. On the larger aggregators, I've also already got an account with some of my booking information saved. I also believe (perhaps irrationally) that buying through a large aggregator is more secure than buying through some random hotel site's booking solution. If Google were to bump TripAdvisor in favor of direct links to hotel sites, Google would become less useful for me. The same is true, as an aside, for restaurant websites vs. Yelp. ~~~ petervandijck The problem with the aggregator sites is that they tend to hide links to the original site, email addresses and phone numbers, in order to get you to book a room through their system. ~~~ gyardley Of course, and that's how it should be. They've added the value, so they should make the money. ------ rst This one's debatable. I actually look at tripadvisor before the hotel's own web site for the reviews, and information on other nearby properties. (Hotels' own web sites are often... aspirational: <http://www.oyster.com/hotels/photo- fakeouts/>) That said, I do look at the hotel's own site too, but I've never personally seen a case where it wasn't on Google's first page. ------ tgflynn Does Google capture and use data on which of its search links people actually click on ? It seems like that information would be a very useful adjunct to PageRank for ranking search results. They could then determine an optimal ranking by maximizing the likelihood that the user will click on the top result presented. ~~~ petervandijck In fact, I believe they even capture how many users click a result and then quickly come back (back button), which indicates a result that looks good in the search results list, but that is disappointing when users actually view the page. ------ JamesDB Aggregators provide a lot of use. Gives an instant overview of the hotels prices and ratings. It would take a long time to research just that basic information for say 10 hotels in an area. ------ decasoft Another question: Would it be unfair for Google to redirect to a page where it's making money (via affiliate link)?
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Beyond Social: Read/Write in The Era of Internet of Things - seancron http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/beyond_social_web_internet_of_things.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 ====== seancron From the article: If I was an entrepreneur or developer, I wouldn't be thinking about social anymore. I'd be thinking: How can I use all of this data and build on top of it?
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Native HTML quadplay fantasy console - Tepix https://github.com/morgan3d/quadplay ====== Tepix Here's an amazing 64x64 space dogfighting game for this fantasy console: [https://twitter.com/CasualEffects/status/1167565673435926529](https://twitter.com/CasualEffects/status/1167565673435926529)
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No word for sex - Muzza http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001979.html ====== RiderOfGiraffes I remember reading a science fiction novel in which a story was recounted by one character to another of a "first contact" expedition to a world. The members of the expedition had been assured that the inhabitants were peaceful because they had no word for war. When they landed, they were slaughtered. True, the inhabitants had no word for "war" - that's not sufficiently refined. They had words for * war because of land conflict * war because of water rights * war because of ancient insult * genocide as retribution _and so on._ But no word for "war". I can't remember the novel - perhaps some of you can. If not, I just might have to re-read my collection to find it.
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Everyone Loves Google, Until It’s Too Big - peter123 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/business/22digi.html ====== mcarlin I think a much bigger problem is Wikipedia. It's a much quieter but much stronger monopoly, and the people who run it are known to be prone to cliques, drama and manipulation. Google is professional, and for the time being, not dangerous. Wikipedia is still somewhat unprofessional, and is rapidly becoming the world's source for encyclopedic knowledge. ~~~ herval everybody I know always says wikipedia is a non-trustworthy source of encyclopedic information (unless verifiable in some other source). And plus there are several wikipedias out there, it is open source - and it doesn't even make 1/1000 of the money GOOG does! in what sense is it a monopoly? ------ scorpioxy I don't know how useful it is to worry about this. Isn't this what happened to Yahoo in the late-90s, early 2k? The market will always respond to correct abnormalities. As in, when Google stops innovating, somebody else will. ------ vaksel we need viable alternatives, simply for the fact that without competition Google would have no reason to innovate. ~~~ patio11 I think it is a bit more pressing than that. They haven't stopped innovating, but their pricing for AdWords is _maddeningly_ non-transparent (its an auction, except when Google decides its not an auction) and only constrained by the availability of other viable contextual ad platforms. Of which there are, essentially, none. Anyone who disagrees with this assessment of Microsoft and Yahoo's offerings should be sentenced to actually using the things. The interfaces are garbage, the traffic is low-quality, and most damning of all there just isn't enough of it to make dealing with the other headaches a viable use of your time. Google can routinely find $600 worth of inventory for me in a month, Microsoft struggles to find $30 -- and I'm in about the most non-technical niche you could imagine using a search engine. ~~~ dotcoma agree. but I'm not sure that merging Yahoo! Search and Live Search would be much of an improvement...
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The truth about pirates of Somalia - hoffcoder http://www.africaontheblog.com/the-truth-about-somali-pirates/ ====== muyuu They forgot the part where they repeatedly rape female crew, and where they murder crew for petty reasons. Some people will feel good about "supporting the poor guy" though. ~~~ Spooky23 I think the original author's view of piracy was irrevocably tainted by watching "Jake and the Neverland Pirates". Academic sympathy for highwaymen or pirates is easy when they aren't trying to rob, ransom, or kill you. They also forgot the part where the able seamen manning those ships aren't exactly living the high lives themselves. Those sailors help captive or hurt are supporting families back at home, and sacrifice alot to do so. ------ etherael Yeah, this is stupid. They kidnap and murder pleasure cruising civilians on small yachts as well as raid, rape and murder in beach side resorts in bordering countries. You'll excuse me if I have zero sympathy. ------ enko > during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when broken hazardous waste containers > eventually found their way onto Somali shores leaving a large majority of > the population suffering from various illnesses, such as radiation sickness This sounds extremely doubtful. Tsunami-borne hazardous waste containers breaking up in Somalia en masse? _Radioactive_ waste!? And a "large majority" of Somalians were poisoned by this? I don't usually like to play the wiki-pedant but a very big [citation needed] on that. ~~~ eaurouge The dumping of hazardous waste on third world countries isn't exactly news. The given example may (or may not) be inaccurate but this is something that's been going on for decades. ------ icegreentea I think its key to keep in mind a couple view points here, that all try to minimize going to black and white. a) Consider that in general, treating the cause is more effective than treating the symptom, even if you find that kind of unsavoury. No doubt the pirates have done some bad things that are (and should be!) crimes. But just piling on the warships and spec-ops to interdict/kill all of them isn't exactly the best way to solve it, as it appears to leave one of the root causes of the phenomenon untouched anyways. We can draw parallels to American street gangs. Yes, they do totally crappy stuff. But now that we bothered studying them, we can see part of the reason of their existence is that they fill a hole in the lives of many young people in certain situations. This by no ways truly justifies theirs actions, but helps explains them, and ultimately if we want to resolve the problem in a real way (beyond just killing them all), we need to listen. b) Worthy causes can be linked to unworthy actions. People struggle with this all the time. Some people have trouble allowing any blemishes on the characters that lead their cause. Other people relish in the blemishes, and use them to discredit the entire movement. Typical examples are the slave owning Founding Fathers, and the plagiarizing Dr Martin Luthur King. ~~~ memracom Who knew that people would be human, and so imperfect? ------ spingsprong John steals Simon's fish. Therefore it's okay for Simon to rob Andrew? ~~~ eaurouge It may not be okay, but Simon may have no choice but to steal. Some of the things we do (in the US and other developed nations) have far- reaching global consequences, in certain cases destroying lives and livelihoods. But we're always outraged when these affected people react in ways we find uncomfortable. ~~~ stronglikedan > Simon may have no choice but to steal There's always a choice. Thievery is despicable. ~~~ ozy123 You can't envisage a single scenario where you would steal? Or where it was the lesser evil? ------ bausson Wow, I was quite taken aback, expecting to read about al-quaida, got robin hood instead. Still, it is only one source, but having this version of this story of those so-called pirate is definitely a plus. ~~~ stefs i've read that while the pirates were fishermen in the beginning (who really didn't have much choice), when people realised how profitable it was the trade was taken over by soldiers/mercenaries. the soldier-pirates are a lot worse than the fisherman-pirates and don't give back to the community quite as much. ------ cup On a side note, Somalia now has a semi-autonomaus transitional federal government and is actually doing a relatively good job. Not only have they implemented a .so domain but they're starting to organise and regulate the booming telecommunications industry. ------ ozh "However, an eye for an eye will make the world blind" Heh. True. ------ CmonDev Love the black strip on the top. You don't even notice it until you need it. ~~~ johnchristopher You mean that black bar ? [http://imgur.com/KdwcTRD](http://imgur.com/KdwcTRD) ~~~ durzagott This is what I see: [http://imgur.com/aI79G4g](http://imgur.com/aI79G4g) Chrome, Ubuntu 13.10 ------ cratermoon Libertarian Paradise!
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How to Work Remotely and Live to Tell the Tale - sugarenia http://blog.sugarenia.com/archives/life/how-to-work-remotely-and-live-to-tell-the-tale ====== marfilip Very well written and inspiring for us dreaming of working from home but don't even dare to try. ------ ruimiguelforte Incredibly insightful and honest.
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Ask HN: Suggestions for workout app - tmaly I just got back to the gym, and I did the free consult with the personal trainer. I have used a trainer a decade ago, but todays prices are too high. I do have a gym partner. Are there any apps out there that can be used in place of a trainer to show proper exercise form, plan a schedule based on goals, and keep a log? ====== dennybritz I like Fitocracy.
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Show HN: ReactJS Checkmark component with CSS animated transition - mjunaidi https://codepen.io/mjunaidi/pen/dyoNJRv ====== leshokunin Seems cool but I didn’t notice the animation. I tried on Safari mobile, and the transition is just instant. Is that a bug or am I thinking about the functionality wrong?
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Ask YC: NewsCred looking for interns. Any tips where to find em? - shafqat Hi all - we're looking for one or two interns. Ideally, people in college who want to work in a startup part time and earn a little cash.<p>How have other startups on HN gone about finding good interns? University job boards? Word of mouth?<p>Any suggestions on the experience? We want to make it as fulfilling (and fun) for both sides as possible, so always looking to see what worked for other people. Thanks! ====== leftnode Go speak to professors directly, or find out if local colleges have an IPP (my college, for example <http://ecs.utdallas.edu/ipp/>) program where you can register your company so they can help you out. Each professor (especially ones who teach juniors and seniors) know the talented kids in their classes and they can help you out. If the intern position doesn't require college experience, try high school computer science teachers. They usually know their star students better and the kids would much rather work doing some programming than working at Subway. ------ rishi I used Craigslist. In my experience part time student programmers are a waste of time. But you never know you could get lucky. ~~~ shafqat Hmm, interesting. Why was it a waste of time? We're have a bunch of different roles we could fulfill - techie, but also more general community manager/sales/"help everyone on the team with everything" type role. Looking back at my college days, I'd much rather do this than some of the crap jobs I used to have.
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Today's rich families in Florence were rich 700 years ago - elberto34 http://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11691818/barone-mocetti-florence ====== SmellTheGlove I'm not entirely surprised. In Florence, and probably in lots of other places too, wealth was amassed in land holdings and gold (florins being the currency). Land holdings over a 700 year horizon seems like a far better stability bet than equities, since the land itself has intrinsic value even if the occasional war or natural disaster gets rid of whatever is happening on it. Back in the 1400's, the merchant class absolutely made a great living - upper class even. But the old blue bloods (many families of which even went broke, in terms of liquidity) and nobility had land. They used that land to build business and bring in rents, and build business relationships with other upper class families, but even as the businesses faded the land remained. I mentioned some of the old Florentine nobility going broke - many of them preferred hardship to selling their land holdings. Some of them would eventually marry off a daughter to a family that desired the blue blood relationship and some land would go as dowry, thus restoring the fortune in that family (through the wealth of the inlaws). One good example is Lisa Gherardini's marriage into the del Giocondo family - she was of an old nobility fallen on harder times, while the Giocondo family were new money merchants. Some land and a few florins went with her, the Gherardini family were restored a bit and the Giocondo family remained wealthy for a long time. I'm not a historian, but I've taken a bit of an interest in Florentine history as an adult, so take this for what it's worth. A real historian would probably know better. ~~~ brador Seems land taxation + basic income would be a great combo to spread wealth around. ~~~ onetimeusename It makes more sense to try to grow the GDP and tax income instead. Taxing land in order to specifically target people with inherited land holdings has all sorts of unintended (or maybe intended) consequences because these people often do not have sufficient liquid holdings to pay the taxes. They end up having to sell off land in parcels which is an arduous and incredibly inefficient way for a government to raise revenues to 'spread wealth' and land in these cases often isn't easily parceled. Should a family sell their estate, the farmland that produces revenue that sustains the estate, or the useless swamp to cover the taxes? This isn't the sort of situation governments should be encouraging. If you have no mercy for that family, consider people whose parents buy a small plot of land that unexpectedly becomes very valuable and then the children are forced to sell the house on the death of their parents. Or the same family who finds their tax rate going up but their income staying the same because their land is suddenly in a trendy area. Taxing income to me seems like the most fair way to raise revenue because it targets liquid means. ~~~ pyoung So exempt primary residences from large tax hikes. The original promise of Prop 13 was to protect grandma from having to sell her home due to rising property values. But there have been some pretty bad side effects and a lot of the benefits are going to the commercial property owners and wealthy individuals and landlords. ~~~ tostitos1979 This could have been solved by square footage or price floors. If grandma lives in a mansion, maybe she should be paying her share :) ------ cs702 Fascinating: income mobility in one generation (PARENT -> CHILD) cannot be extrapolated to multiple generations (PARENT -> CHILD -> CHILD ...), because _socioeconomic status_ persists across generations even if income fluctuates from one generation to the next. The example given in the OP is telling: _" It's not unusual for the child of an economically successful professional to attend an elite educational institution and then move into an artistic or academic or nonprofit career or political career that might still involve traveling in elite circles but at a much lower salary level than his father's. If the professional's grandson then also attended an elite college and moved into a high-paying career in business and law, statistics would show a great deal of economic mobility while common sense would indicate three generations' worth of a high-status family."_ And it's not just Florence. The article mentions another study in Sweden that reached similar conclusions. I wonder how the US compares to European cities/countries. ~~~ dionidium Yglesias has written about this before. Class is about a lot more than your income in any given year. [http://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8592689/income- class](http://www.vox.com/2015/5/12/8592689/income-class) ~~~ antisthenes Probably the most succinct illustration of the difference between human capital, capital (traditionally known as wealth), and income that the vast majority of the American public confuse all the time and like to use interchangeably. ------ seizethecheese Ugh. If you look at the sourced article[1] the effect is actually very small: "When regressing the pseudo-descendant’s earnings on pseudo-ancestor’s earnings, the results are surprising: the long-run earnings elasticity is positive, statistically significant, and equals about 0.04. Stated differently, being the descendants of the Bernardi family (at the 90th percentile of earnings distribution in 1427) instead of the Grasso family (10th percentile of the same distribution) would entail a 5% increase in earnings among current taxpayers (after adjusting for age and gender)" [http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname- intergeneration...](http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname- intergenerational-mobility-over-six-centuries) ~~~ jerf This strikes me as proving an awfully small result too concretely. Across the several thousand ancestors you have going back 600-700 years (if not millions of ancestors; a rather conservative "one generation every 25 years" for 600 years yields 2^24-ish possible ancestors, ~16 million, though most people's family trees do not actually branch that much in the less mobile times of the past), the one from which your patrilineal name comes from is even 5% relevant to your life today? Is this one of those cases where hard science and math prove something very counterintuitive, or one of those cases where soft science and math gets popular because it was poked and prodded until it yields a counter-intuitive result that would get into the news? ~~~ panglott My thought was similar: how long ago was the most recent common ancestor of Florentines (barring immigration)? ------ flubert >Today's rich Florentines had rich ancestors Doesn't everybody alive today have rich ancestors? Like pretty much everyone is related to Charlemagne or Genghis Khan? [https://www.google.com/#q=related+to+charlemagne](https://www.google.com/#q=related+to+charlemagne) [http://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy- has...](http://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-has- competition-1.16767) ~~~ tropo Indeed, because the lower classes tended to die. ~~~ ptaipale Not necessarily; just that classes mix and have always mixed (partly out of wedlock of course). When you go back, say, twelve generations, almost everyone has a few upper class ancestors among the 8190 (part of them are anyway overlapping duplicates). (FWIW, I have an ancestor 12 generations ago who was almost a nobleman, plundering Germany in 30 Years War and getting in return an estate that was tax-free for some generations, as long as the owner promised to send in a cavalryman to the Swedish king's service. But most of my ancestors were dirt- poor peasants like almost everyone was.) ------ enoch_r I found this quite interesting: > We also find two further interesting pieces of evidence. First, we show that > intergenerational mobility in the 15th century was much lower than at > present – the intergenerational earnings elasticity between two successive > generations was estimated to be between 0.8 and 0.9, thus depicting a quasi- > immobile society in 1427. It is plausible, though we do not have direct > evidence for this, that earning elasticity was close to 1 until the 20th > century (before the Italian industrial revolution and mass schooling) and > lower in the subsequent period. This may explain why we still find some > degree of inheritance of socioeconomic status after six centuries. So Yglesias, playing the "debunked!" card[0], says "look--here is proof that our estimates of intergenerational income mobility are TOTALLY WRONG!" In fact, there's a good chance that current studies (showing high mobility) are perfectly consistent with this paper, since it found that moblity rose dramatically since the beginning of the studied period. [0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well- refut...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well-refuted/) ~~~ strictnein Yglesias consistently strikes me as someone who was told they were very clever far more than was actually warranted. ------ theandrewbailey > A lot has changed in the Italian city of Florence in the roughly 700 years > since the 1427 census The author must have been using some _really_ bad floating point math, there. ~~~ Luc 1\. 15th century (1427) 2\. 16th 3\. 17th 4\. 18th 5\. 19th 6\. 20th 7\. 21st (now) ~~~ theandrewbailey That makes about as much sense as counting the 4 months of November to February as 2 years because it exists in 2 calendar years. ~~~ maxerickson It can be an explanation of the error without being a defense of it. ------ btilly If you're going to add theories about why, let's add some more. 1) Last names matter. If you have a name associated with success, you get more chances, which results in more opportunities and a better chance of success. 2) Genetics matter. A person whose parents were unsuccessful but whose background includes genetics for intelligence and beauty will tend to have an innate advantage. 3) Family stories matter. People who know their ancestors did amazing things sometimes try to live up to the family reputation with good results. ------ mrow84 You can get a large inequality effect just from differences in inheritance between children. If we call the child who gets the bulk of the inheritance the "first child", then the first child of the first child, etc., will end up being very wealthy. You can see it in a very simple model: 1\. start with a fixed size population, each starting with the same amount of wealth 2\. pair the members of the population randomly to form two "parents" 3\. combine the wealth of the two "parents" 4\. split the wealth into two unequal parts with some fixed ratio (say 3:1) 5\. assign the two parts to two "children" of the "parents", resulting in a population of the same size as the original If you repeat the above procedure (from step 2) for only 5 or 6 generations then you get a distribution that is positively skewed, to a degree depending on the ratio (3:1 gives quite a large skew). It is a simple model, and I have only evaluated it numerically, but it shows how strong an effect you can get from only a single process (differential inheritance in this case). I am fairly certain that things like assortative mating would produce similar (compounding) effects. ~~~ mrow84 So I just did an experiment with simple assortative mating, where the population is drawn into an ordered list, with the probability of selection being proportional to wealth, and then paired off according to their order in the resulting list (so the wealthy are more likely to mate with each other). The results surprised me somewhat, though as with most things are somewhat obvious in retrospect. If you take a (model) world with unbiased inheritance (a 1:1 split between the two children), then no "mating strategy" is able to increase wealth inequality - at worst it can keep it the same as it was. This can be seen by noting that neither of the children of the two wealthiest members of the population can have more than the wealthiest of their two parents. Over many generations, unless the mating selection is _extremely_ carefully chosen, the wealth distribution will collapse to perfect equality, for any mating strategy. Assortative mating therefore can at worst exert a drag on the (natural) restoration to equality. In a (model) world with biased inheritance this leads to greater amounts of wealth inequality, because the expansion of inequality through the unequal inheritance is "resisted" less by the reduction in inequality caused by mating. In conclusion: try and treat your kids the same if you want a more equal world! ------ mfoy_ >relatively low 0.2 percent elasticity of income in the Nordic countries and a relatively high 0.5 percent elasticity of income in places like the UK, the US, and Italy. An elasticity of 1 would mean that income status is perfectly inherited between father and son, whereas an elasticity of 0 would mean no inheritance. I assume the author means 20% and 50%, respectively? If "1 percent" is all of it and "0 percent" is none of it then I assume he confused percentages with probabilities. ~~~ tokai Wouldn't you say that 50/100 = 0.5? ~~~ mfoy_ I would! However, a "probability of 0.5" and "0.5 percent" are different things by _two orders of magnitude_. "0.5 percent" is "0.5%" which is 0.5/100, not 50/100. ~~~ thechao Verizon ... statistics? ------ forkandwait The discussion of Becker reinforces my belief that the discipline of Economics exists primarily to justify pre existing power structures by using assumptions which are convenient but empirically unfounded. ~~~ enoch_r A paper by two economists finds evidence that intergenerational wealth effects have persisted over very long periods of time. They note that their results are "new and remarkable" in the context of a large existing body of empirical work studying and estimating historical intergenerational mobility. If the above reinforces your belief that "economics exists primarily to justify pre existing power structures by using assumptions which are convenient but empirically unfounded," then what exactly would weaken your position? ------ leroy_masochist I am skeptical of any study that uses Italian tax records as an empirically sound data source. Additionally, Yglesias' writeup of the study is short on specifics. What was the number of people with a given surname in 1427, and in 2011? In other words, is it possible that "Family A" was a big, wealthy and powerful family in the 1400's, but today there are only four people with that last name in Firenze and three of them happen to be in high-wage jobs? Are income figures median, or mean? Neither Valentino nor Vasco Rossi lives in Firenze, but if they did, they'd be skewing the mean income score for the Rossi name. Are we sure the people today with a given surname are the actual descendants of people in 1427? And, if they are, what do we know about whether the family has stayed wealthy in the years between then and now? All in all, this article seems more clickbait-y than insightful. ------ jerryhuang100 I guess this eco-mobiilty all depends on the social structures and political environments. There is a Chinese proverb "富不過三代", or, fortune won't last three generations. The Chinese genealogy is relatively complete and you can actually trace Confucius' offspring to this date. But you'll be surprised to find big names today rarely also have some big name ancestors 500 years ago. One reason is that the Chinese social and political are constantly changing. In China the longest dynasty Ching lasted 268 yrs. Basically every 70-150 years there is a game-of-thrones type of revolutions going on, and the entire soc-pol systems flopped. Another reason is that a common used punishment by the emperor in the past is collective punishment, i.e. if someone is sentenced to death, all his/her relatives up to three upstream and three downstream, sometimes even all cousins, are also sentenced to death. If someone did escaped they would just change their surnames (and Chinese people change surnames relatively more frequently than we would think.) That's probably why a big-shot in the history book might have no offspring to be found nowadays. ------ jkot > _The truth, however, is that we don 't really know what's going on._ Over 14 generations you will get ~ 50k relatives who live today. I bet some of them are not rich. ~~~ civilian You're not taking cousin marriage into account--- a lot of those 50k people are the same people. And I'm using the loose definition of "cousin"\-- any non-immediate, however distant, family relative. ------ phantom_oracle Anybody curious to know how wealth can be preserved in perpetuity should read up on what John D. Rockerfeller said about it. Taxation on income is a pittance to where wealthy individuals source majority of their income. A rich guys 3 kids could virtually pay zero income-tax their whole lives but live princely lives with capital gains, trusts, etc. ------ lifeisstillgood This looks like brand longevity - the nobility has great brand name awareness, and as they come under financial threat there are plenty of investors willing to marry in to the name and provide new liquidity. I doubt all the rich families of 1300 survived but I also doubt that the winners never took outside investment ~~~ internaut Yes, families of the past were a lot more like corporations today. House this or Clan that. It was basically GOT. The modern family must look weird from a historical perspective. Also in Japan men are often adopted into families to continue that line for the corporation. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_adult_adoption) ------ Kinnard Would love to see an analysis predating the Renaissance and the Black Death I imagine these had a big impact but analyses of China and England have shown even revolutions fail to displace entrenched power blocs: [http://qz.com/314720/heres-the-surprising-social-trait- that-...](http://qz.com/314720/heres-the-surprising-social-trait-that-the- english-and-chinese-have-in-common/) [https://medium.com/@blackbitcoiners/bitcoin-has-failed- cdad9...](https://medium.com/@blackbitcoiners/bitcoin-has-failed-cdad9ea3bf55) [http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2013/WP18...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2013/WP181.pdf) I'd love for pg to way in too as a former florentine, an expert of the Renaissance, a promulgator of a contemporary renaissance(through YC [hackers==painters]), and thereby, a wealth transfer/creation expert. ------ jhallenworld The wealth certainly does not always last, one example is the Vanderbilts: [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/books/more-money-than- anyo...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/24/books/more-money-than-anyone- else.html) ------ lormayna Florentine here. The owner of my company is one of them, he is from a very ancient and important family. ------ pattisapu > As Gary Becker and Nigel Tomes concluded back in 1986, "Almost all the > earnings advantages or disadvantages of ancestors are wiped out in three > generations." Ibn Khaldun said something similar too. ~~~ buckbova [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clogs_to_clogs_in_three_gener...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clogs_to_clogs_in_three_generations) I've heard it "sandals to sandals in three generations" as well. ~~~ cmdrfred I like the Italian "from stables to stars to stables" ------ otempomores Todays rich familys tell todays peasants that hard work will get them there? ------ mcv 700 years since 1427? What century are we in again?
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UNIX Text Formatting Using the -ms Macros (1984) - tlcu https://www.hactrn.net/ietf/rfcgen/textms.html ====== uranium235 I just found a brand new PAGER for man: konqueror (man:/) [https://imgur.com/a/F3o4VIu](https://imgur.com/a/F3o4VIu) ~~~ znpy Konqueror is a marvel. Too bad that KDE is now pushing that brain-damaged piece of code, Dolphin. ~~~ emilsedgh Dolphin is actually pretty much aligned with Konqueror. Konqueror can open up anything using KDE's KParts. Applications and libraries provide different KParts and Konqueror is just a shell that can open them all. Dolphin is Konqueror's KPart provider for file browsing. So basically Konqueror's file browsing capability is provided by Dolphin. ------ fanf2 I used troff to typeset a few papers, because it was relatively familiar from writing man pages and more light weight than LaTeX. And groff is installed on practically every Linux or BSD box. But I switched to LaTeX because it it more mainstream for this kind of document production workflow, so for instance we have a LaTeX template for official-looking University letters, which would be hard to reproduce using troff. And I also switched from magicpoint [http://member.wide.ad.jp/wg/mgp/](http://member.wide.ad.jp/wg/mgp/) to Beamer [https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Beamer](https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Beamer) for presentation slides. For man pages there is now the OpenBSD mandoc processor [https://mandoc.bsd.lv/](https://mandoc.bsd.lv/) which can turn semantic markup in -mdoc format in to fairly nice html and other formats. And though -mdoc is a bit weird it is easy to use, well documented, and powerful. It is so much nicer than the old -man macros! ------ tyingq Perl's POD ecosystem is worth looking at if you have similar needs today. Even if you don't use (or like) Perl. It's very easy to use, and supports a lot of different output formats. So, one source doc can create troff man pages, html, markdown, PDF, etc. [https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html](https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html) ~~~ cstross Can confirm. I wrote (for publication) about six novels using POD format plus some basic command line tools and a makefile, treating RTF as a final output format, back in the day. (I was forced to adopt Microsoft Word for checking copy-edits only when my publishers insisted on moving to a Word/InDesign based workflow and ditching paper edits -- this was around 2008. Which in turn forced me to stop using vim as my main creative tool. If I had discretion to go back to chewing on text files today, I'd probably go with Markdown or a superset thereof.) ------ uranium235 [https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/390724/how-to- create...](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/390724/how-to-create-pdf- from-linux-man-pages-so-that-style-is-presereved) ~~~ uranium235 if you want to convert to pdf some of the steps involving postscript can be skipped using something like xelatex ~~~ uranium235 sorry I forgot the purpose of the link was to provide nostalgia but here I go with all of the format and conversion paths... sorry :( ------ uranium235 [http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/roff2html.1.html](http://man7.org/linux/man- pages/man1/roff2html.1.html) ------ geertj There’s also the playfully named ‘an’ macro to format a man page: nroff -man ls.1 | less ------ donaldihunter Ha ha. Some of my University submissions were generated directly from project code using troff -ms macros. Nostalgia. ------ jhoechtl Is there a PS or PDF version around somewhere? The HTML-output doesn't cover what is possible with the ms-macros. ~~~ uranium235 heres a more recent groff implementation of it the macros: [https://linux.die.net/man/7/groff_ms](https://linux.die.net/man/7/groff_ms) prob not what you're looking for, you prob want to get ahold of the orig nroff/troff files
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Let’s Build a Simple Interpreter. Part 6 - rspivak http://ruslanspivak.com/lsbasi-part6/ ====== kevin_thibedeau The shunting yard or precedence climbing algorithms are better approaches to expression parsing. They make it trivial to add operators and change precedence levels without the convolutions of a recursive grammar. They also clear the way for user defined operators since the machinery is controlled with a table that can change dynamically. ~~~ userbinator I think shunting yard is a bit more complex since it requires a separate stack, but precedence climbing is definitely better than pure recursive- descent and follows quite straightforwardly if you try to refactor an RD parser by noticing that most of the functions are very similar, of this form: while(token in tokens[level]) consume token result = result operator[level] func[level+1]() Then you realise that you don't need to climb up each level of precedence with a function call, and instead can go right to the level of the token and consume everything "above" that level... so it's really more like "precedence jumping". This also means the call stack doesn't get deeper in proportion to the number of levels, unlike with a pure RD parser. There could be 10 or 1000 levels in the table and the running time will still be the same - linear in the number of tokens in the input. This is especially good for languages with many precedence levels like C, or more complex applications with dynamically defined operators as you mention. A more detailed explanation of this derivation is here: [https://www.engr.mun.ca/~theo/Misc/exp_parsing.htm#climbing](https://www.engr.mun.ca/~theo/Misc/exp_parsing.htm#climbing) ------ marktangotango A less verbose, in loc and exposition, example can be found here: [http://www.jroller.com/languages/entry/python_writing_a_comp...](http://www.jroller.com/languages/entry/python_writing_a_compiler_and)
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Go 1.4 will have Android Support - StandardFuture https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sYiPs2KWhNkygrmj-kJuQ1X1uYQF4aKiMZU9WR0Nw_U/edit ====== melling It's mainly for OpenGL games or other places where you would use the NDK. Wonder if it's possible to turn into a more general purpose tool for app element with enough outside help? ------ hipsterrific Finally. I'm glad Google's giving Java the boot. I had a feeling they were heading that direction after the lawsuit and the subsequent change to AOT compilation in Android 5.0.
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The Lonely Life of a Yacht Influencer - microtherion https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-lonely-life-of-a-yacht-influencer ====== giarc I'm reminded of an old colleague of mine. She worked as a food safety inspector for Cara Foods that service many airlines around the world. They have kitchens in airports and prepare the food for airlines. She would travel the world inspecting the kitchens. She would always travel business class and had an IATA pass/badge and had the ability to bump business class passenger and hold the plane. She wasn't paid well but was young, single and loved the idea of travelling the world in swank business class. She quickly learned two things, her company wasn't willing to give her time to take day trips into the city (so her sightseeing was airport hotels and the underbelly of international airports), and more importantly, flying economy feels really bad once you've spent time on business class flights. So for this influencer, I imagine it's tough to live a regular life once he is forced to. If he wants to vacation with his friends, they are renting a 20ft boat rather than a 200ft boat. ~~~ goostavos That echos my experience really closely. I spent almost 4 years traveling twice per month with each trip lasting between 3-6 days, and each day, due to work schedules, being 12+ hours long. At the end of those 4 years, I couldn't tell you anything about the actual cities I visited, but I can still describe the intricate details of the hotel/conference centers in which I basically lived. ~~~ Scoundreller But how many million tax-free hôtel and airline points did you accumulate? ~~~ ac29 A million miles is a lot. If you flew roundtrip from New York to London twice a month, it would take over 6 years to have flown a million miles: [http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LON](http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=JFK-LON) ~~~ CydeWeys You don't need to fly close to a million miles to get a million "miles"/points. Miles are based on spend now, not on distance traveled, so it's easy to rack up a million when you're flying business or first class. As an example, let's say you're a regular business traveler flying a $5k business class round-trip from NYC to London on American Airlines. You have the highest status level which gives you a 120% bonus on miles earned. Each dollar spent on the flight thus earns you 11 miles, so that one round-trip is worth 55k miles. Source: [https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage- program/miles/aadvantage-...](https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage- program/miles/aadvantage-currency.jsp) But wait, there's more. Of course you also bought the $5k flight on your AA credit card, which gives another 2 miles per dollar spent, which puts the total up to 65k miles earned for one 7k mile round-trip flight. Or maybe you put it on your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which gives you 3X Chase Ultimate Rewards points for travel spending, so 55k AA miles + 15k UR points. Now imagine that you're doing this trip several times per month and the miles/points add up very quickly; you can get to a million in no time. ~~~ skellera What airlines include card miles in your million miles count? Having a million miles is different from the million miles status which seems to be based on the first kind of miles you mentioned. ~~~ CydeWeys That wasn't the asked question though. And getting a million flown miles isn't all it's cracked up to be; you get a lower level of status guaranteed for life, but given that you're still actively traveling frequently for business you're gonna have a much better level of status anyway. And it all depends on the airline anyway. American Airlines, for example, only gives you gold status (the lowest level) for life at 1M miles. ~~~ heelix Delta did lifetime silver for 1M miles, which was their lowest level. They did give a nice Tumi suitcase at the 1M (or was it 2M?) actual miles mark, but I don't think it does much outside of a normal high status... probably zone one boarding, or something like that. Once you hit diamond status, upgrades domestically were pretty common. International... not so much. The flexibility was the really nice thing - they always would go out of their way to get you on the route you wanted if possible. With status multipliers (but flying meat space), the most I ever hit was 623k miles in a year. I suspect it was close to 300k 'real' miles. Our travel person was booking 'round the world' tickets to save money at that point. ------ stcredzero _He now made a “comfortable middle-class living,” but sitting there with me in the cabin, fretted that it could go away at any time. “This is me working a little network I’ve built using someone else’s social media platform,” he said. “If Instagram changes its algorithm slightly, there goes a bit of my business. If Instagram disconnects some of the tools I use to build and monitor my account, there goes a bit of my business. And if Instagram goes away and is replaced by something newer and better, I need to get there first, just like I did with this account. If I don’t, I’m done. I’m totally dependent on a platform that’s completely out-of-control.”_ I think this man is a bit of a canary in the coalmine for the rest of us. Even for those of us who do not depend on social media for our income, enough of human communication is wrapped up in social media to affect our lives in a significant way, whether we want it to or not. ~~~ Waterluvian Can you elaborate? The only social media I do is here and I'm not seeing the connection. ~~~ stcredzero _The only social media I do is here and I 'm not seeing the connection._ To me, HN is a refuge! ------ abainbridge This made my day. I am now totally sure I don't want a super yacht. If I did have one, I'd want the toilets to be clean and the dining room to serve good dinner. On the picture that asks if I want the yacht, the classic car or the private jet, I found myself thinking that I'd like to build a replica of the classic car. That'd be way more fun than owning any of the three and would save about 99% of the budget. I guess I missed the point. ~~~ stackola I'll take a hotwheels version of the car, and the rest in cash. Who spends $50 million on a car? ~~~ whatshisface > _Who spends $50 million on a car?_ Someone who has so much money that $50M feels the same to them as the price of the hotwheels feels to you. (Also, people without that much money who are impulsive). ~~~ C1sc0cat I don't think there are $50 million cars even one of the GT40's and Ferraris that raced at Lemmans a lot less than that. ~~~ stackola Yea, the car displayed (250 GTO) sold for $48 million at auction in 2018 ~~~ C1sc0cat Ah I sit corrected - I seem to recall one of the Lemans Ferraris was $16 Mil ------ jonnycomputer Edited: In my preferred world, no single person would be able to afford a large yacht. However, I have no problem with yachts per se. Yacht enthusiasts could join cooperatives, for example. Just like I think its silly that individuals can be so wealthy that they can afford massive private golf courses, but think that people who want to play golf should be able to join a golf club. “But for the guy who owns the Eclipse [Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch], that’s not the point. He’s not chartering that thing out. It has a submarine and a missile detection system. See, the power of owning a magnificent yacht like that is in how you’re telling the world that you’re beyond buying and selling. You have more money than there is money to have. You’ve transcended. There are no frontiers left for you on dry land. I mean, true peace is only at sea.” ~~~ protomyth And that attitude got us a luxury sales tax in the 90's that destroyed a lot of highly paid workers building luxury yachts. A lot of craftsman-style jobs rely on rich folks. A lot of manufacturing jobs rely on rich folks. Private golf courses need people. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/h...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/16/how- to-sink-an-industry-and-not-soak-the- rich/08ea5310-4a4b-4674-ab88-fad8c42cf55b/?utm_term=.6cbe1c746431) ~~~ justin66 This was quite a popular media thing among conservatives who were torqued about the evils of the 10% luxury tax in the early nineties. It was always about the yachts and yacht industry, too. It was the _opposite_ of persuasive because in reference to the luxury tax, they were _always_ going on about the freaking yachts. I imagine in the end, it did little more than make most normal people conscious of how little they cared about the yacht industry. The way the repeated messaging was effective in getting everybody talking about the same (ridiculous) thing was an early taste of what was to come in right-wing media. _The yacht costs $2,995,000, but, thanks to the current luxury tax that kicks in at $100,000, you have to fork over another $289,500. Rich people aren 't happy about paying this extra money. Even if they can afford it, they think it's unfair. And in some cases, they're refusing to pay it -- simply by refusing to buy new boats and planes._ Funny stuff. ~~~ CharlesColeman > This was quite a popular media thing among conservatives who were torqued > about the evils of the 10% luxury tax in the early nineties. It was always > about the yachts and yacht industry, too. It was the opposite of persuasive > because in reference to the luxury tax, they were always going on about the > freaking yachts. >> The yacht costs $2,995,000, but, thanks to the current luxury tax that kicks in at $100,000, you have to fork over another $289,500. Rich people aren't happy about paying this extra money. Even if they can afford it, they think it's unfair. And in some cases, they're refusing to pay it -- simply by refusing to buy new boats and planes. > Funny stuff. Hilarious, and so transparently selfish and self-serving. Something tells me that if you can afford to spend $3 million on a conspicuous-consumption item like a yacht, _you 'll still find $3.3 million affordable_. They just don't like paying taxes. I'd bet they'd have to raise the luxury tax to a level quite a bit higher than 10% to negatively affect the yacht industry. Even the tax did hurt the yacht industry, the important question is: _what did people spend their money on instead?_ If a tax kills the yacht industry, but strengthens industries more beneficial to the common good, I think that's a positive result. ~~~ pradn The incredible depreciation of yachts is a much bigger part of the cost of owning a yacht. A million-dollar yacht will go down to like 200k if that after 10 years. ~~~ noir_lord Boats are holes in the water into which you throw money. ------ TrackerFF The cross-posting and multiple accounts strategy is rampant on IG. I have two major hobbies (very unrelated), and very much the same there. It's kind of annoying, because in the end, there's no stylistic difference. So my IG feed gets bombarded with content from the same handful of people. Gets old real quick. ~~~ RankingMember I have to think that what basically amounts to spam will bring about a quality vs quantity tipping point for the platform and ultimately cause people to abandon it if not mitigated. ~~~ taude I've been pretty aggressively unfollowing accounts in Instagram. I kind-of wish they'd create a "list" feature, but I'm OK with just cutting it down to my core group of friends. When I want to see the stuff of the influencers, other things I only need in small doses, I go to the search and look at hashtags or "videos I might like". Ideally, to me, my social network would be a small group of people I know and love. ------ janlaureys So this guy has 800k followers, but most pictures only get 5k likes? I feel like I know where he got most of his following. I also don't get who he's trying to influence. Which millionaire is going to decide to buy a specific yacht because they saw an Instagram picture of it ? ~~~ gambiting So I don't know a thing about yachts, but I know a thing or two about really expensive cars. And the interesting thing is that 90% of buyers for cars $200k+ don't even try them out before buying. There are plenty of buyers who literally phone the dealership(or their assistant does) and they just make a phone order, wire the money, and they maybe come over to pick up the car unless it's delivered to them directly. The guess in the industry is that those people literally see an article or an ad for a new Lambo(or whatever) and they just buy one on an impulse. If they don't like it they'll just buy something else, doesn't matter. I can only imagine that it's somewhat similar with Yachts - you see something cool on instagram, you want it. ~~~ iguy I can't find the source, but I read somewhere that the average length of ownership of yachts over 60ft is only 9 months. Or something, maybe it's 100ft & 18 months. But astonishingly short. Which points to these not being well-considered deeply researched purchases. So I can see instagram playing a pretty big role. ~~~ michelb I work for a client that designs and builds these 100MM+ yachts. They just can't build them fast enough to keep up with demand. Some of their clients buy a yacht, and sell it within a year for a hefty profit, then buy a new one, repeat. There is quite a business in selling 'used' yachts simply because it takes 2-4 years to build a new one. ~~~ iguy Do you have any estimate of how many buyers actually want to sail around / host parties, and for how many it's some kind of tax evasion / money laundering scheme? I don't know any details but always wonder about this... an easy-to-move super-expensive asset, physically in Cannes but legally in the Bahamas... there must be many schemes. ~~~ michelb That kind of information is not something I'm privy to, but I'd say it's about 50/50\. It's definitely a laundering scheme for many. They deal with brokers obviously, and those just want a cut, never mind where it came from. But they deliver to a lot of Russian oligarchs. I bet there are tons of schemes. ------ patorjk I wonder how much he makes, and how long he thinks this gig will last. He wants to own a Yacht, but unless he's making a ton, I'm not sure how that would be possible. Also, I'm not sure it's fair to say "lonely life", the article mentioned that he has a family. If anything, he just seems like a workaholic. ~~~ Casseres I think it's very fair to say he lives a lonely life. He doesn't seem to have much if any time away from the boats. I've sailed with many men that were so loney, a good number of them had been married and divorced 4 or 5 times. Others that had kids, rarely got to see them. That's one of the reasons why I quit being a Merchant Mariner. ------ Animats There's a step beyond owning a yacht and an airliner sized private plane - having your own airport for your own private planes. The Google founders have that. They lease 1000 acres of Moffett Field. Brin was rumored to be building a giant dirigible at Moffett, but not much has been heard since 2017. ------ tnorthcutt _I’m always on the clock, always tracking my time on these expensive wristwatches with the big clock faces. And so, I’m sure to never set foot on dry land when I’m working.”_ This ending struck me as not how someone would actually speak in real life. Too poetic to be an actual quote. ------ RickJWagner Interesting hustle. I hope this article doesn't spoil his gig with his clients. ~~~ notacoward I hope it does. Don't get me wrong, I don't wish the guy ill. I hope he expects that and was ready to get out anyway. But I also don't care much for the "Instagram influencer" thing. It's a lot like political astroturf, appealing to people's preference for real-person authenticity when there's really none involved. The harder it becomes for people to make money at it, the better off we'll all be. ~~~ puranjay I mean if you're going to hustle someone, better to hustle the rich. ~~~ stronglikedan > better to hustle the rich. How so? ~~~ tom_ They've got more money. ~~~ stronglikedan I still don't understand how that makes it _better_. ~~~ CharlesColeman If you hustle someone who's poor, maybe they won't be able to make rent on their primary residence next month. If you hustle someone who's rich, they're probably still going to be rich next month. ~~~ stronglikedan "Maybe" and "probably" are a lot of assumptions. Hustling is a shitty activity that isn't made _better_ by the status of the victim. ~~~ notacoward Putting people in prison is a shitty thing too, but it's still better to do it to people who are actually a menace to society. Something doesn't have to be good in an absolute sense to be better (than an alternative) in a regular one. Even if we're just dealing with statistical probabilities, hustling the rich seems less egregious than hustling the poor. Would you have reacted so strongly if the same sentiment had been expressed as "preying on the poor is especially bad"? ~~~ stronglikedan > Would you have reacted so strongly if the same sentiment had been expressed > as "preying on the poor is especially bad"? Nope. Preying on anyone is bad. A rich person could lose everything in a hustle the same as a poor person. It's only the extent of the hustle that makes it better or worse. E.g., hustling someone for a fraction of their assets is better than taking all of their assets. The value of the assets is not relevant. ~~~ notacoward Do you seriously think taking half of a poor person's assets is the same as taking half of a rich person's? I suggest a little reading on the concept of marginal utility before making more simplistic moral statements. ------ WhompingWindows Tangentially related but wow, these yachts are a pure expression of the excesses of fossil fuel capitalism. These personal boats are extremely inefficient, far more luxurious than 99.9% of human's domiciles, and they are only utilized some small fraction of the year by their ultra-wealthy owners. It's truly a shame that so much money is poured into such utterly wasteful possessions, rather than scientific research, philanthropy, or mitigating climate change. ~~~ bigpicture > It's truly a shame that so much money is poured into such utterly wasteful > possessions When the yachts are idle, which is the majority of the time, they are typically plugged into shore power and are thus just consuming electricity from the grid. The electrical systems of these things are typically far more efficient than your home because they must generate their own electricity when at sea. As for the wasting of money, you'll note that most of the cost of building a yacht is labor because they are mostly one-off builds and can't take advantage of automation. The article mentions that they cost 10% of the purchase price per month in upkeep. The vast majority of those costs are labor. These things are among the most efficient devices for transferring wealth from the rich to the middle class. I wouldn't discourage their use at all. ~~~ iguy This all is true. I also wonder how much of the yacht business is really about money laundering or tax-evasion. Like the art collecting world. If your company buys the boat in one country, reflags it to Panama, sells it in Monaco the next tax year... I don't know any details but I'm sure there's substantial room here to massage what numbers you present to various tax collectors. ~~~ ehnto Given how short the ownership tends to last (~9 months according to an anecdote in this thread), I suspect moving or protecting money is probably part of it somewhere. I also imagine a lot of it really is just wealthy people spending for fun rather than profit. ~~~ iguy Heh, my anecdote is famous already :) Indeed, it's pretty hard to tell. Both seem entirely plausible and I just have no way to guess how such buyers think. ------ kilon I will take the money for the Yacht and buy a submarine. Enjoy the depth before we completely ruin them via climate change and pollution. ------ Antonio123123 So basically the guy has ~1m followers on instagram, is helicoptered from yacht to yacht and gets paid to hang out with rich people and wear expensive watches, in the most beautiful places. He also seems like a nice person. In contrast author looks like a douchebag, portraying him in a bad light, as a lanky lonely person, whose financial security is at the mercy of instagram. To me author looks like a petty jealous person who wants to gain by undermining others that are successful. ~~~ lawlessone i didn't get that from the author at all. They both seemed pleasant. ~~~ brootstrap I didnt get those vibes either. Wasnt it the yacht guy himself talking about his dependence on instagram? Anyways, props to instagram guy for getting his $$$ when he can. Dude is right, only a matter of time before instagram sucks and there is some new hotness. This whole social media influencer thing is kind of funny. Of course I think it is trash and that likely some large percentage of followers are bots. However, it does have some degree of power in certain circles. Just yesterday on sports radio these talk show hosts (been working for 20+ years in journalism) are quoting people on facebook/twitter etc because they have 70k followers. The host literally said, I dont know who this guy is but he has 70k followers and knows Manny Machado's dad. ~~~ Antonio123123 I got the feeling from: >lonely life >he’s kinda lost at sea >next to a lanky guy >I began to wonder, “How could anyone spend their whole life doing this?” and details, like him having a tiny cabin (you're on a boat). And of course the fact that he published what seems to me a candid conversation in such a light.
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Ask HN: Marketing methods for startups - jolenzy I would like to know, which marketing methods are the best for startups?<p>For example, my small startup http://besthi.re will be ready soon. Which marketing methods I should use?<p>Should I invest in press release distribution?<p>Maybe to try to get review at Mashable, TechCrunch, etc. How to get an article about your startup on this kind of popular websites?<p>Is there any book/blog you recommend on this topic? ====== t0 There probably isn't one best marketing method, and there's no way to know. Try a small run of all of them and see which work. As far as getting press coverage, you're better off writing a guest post about something valuable and interesting, then tying your site in at the end. For example, you might write about "10 best ways to get hired", then have the last paragraph be about you and your site. Source: I asked a guy how he got on Venturebeat. [http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/05/getting-a-good-deal-on- seo...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/05/getting-a-good-deal-on-seo-think- again/#comment-729442617) ~~~ jolenzy Thanks. I think that's a good idea. I also thought about writing a longer and high quality blog posts which offer a lot of value for job seekers, and then promote the blog post via Facebook Ads. ------ Kanbab You ought to try out adwords. You can reach millions of people looking for a job. Test out dozens of catchy phrases. And see what keywords are driving a positive ROI. You might want to also do some display advertising to drive traffic; the clicks are cheaper, but the conversion rates can be lower.
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What I Hate About Git - gammarator https://steveko.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/10-things-i-hate-about-git/ ====== dasil003 I found the #1 reason to be incredibly ironic: > _The information model is complicated – and you need to know all of it. As a > point of reference, consider Subversion: you have files, a working > directory, a repository, versions, branches, and tags. That’s pretty much > everything you need to know._ SVN's model is both simpler than stated here, but also much more complex to reason about. First of all, svn doesn't have branches or tags, it just has directories with cheap copy—tags and branches are just directories. The repository itself is also watered down pretty severely because the actual project directory is just nested in there somewhere with no formal locus. This idea of "everything is a directory" sounds simple, but in practice it's a architectural dead-end. The most obvious implication is that merging in svn will always be fraught with peril because a branch isn't a first-class citizen. I used svn (and cvs before it) for much longer than git, and yet I never felt I had any clue what svn was doing under the hood, and the experiences I had over time instilled a fear of attempting to stray off the well-worn path of the most basic commands. Although the learning curve was steep, and the CLI quite confusing, the git information model is actually much easier to grok because the primitives make more sense. After 6 months using git, I had a firmer grasp of the internals than I did after 10 years of cvs and svn. The idiosyncrasies of the UI don't really bother me because they are just superficial flaws that are easily memorized or looked up. The fact that I have the confidence to slice and dice commits to any history I can envision, with or without a network connection and remote repo, and do so with the reasonable confidence that I will never lose anything (reflog) make git the best VCS I can imagine. ~~~ perlgeek I fully agree. SVN traditionally had some things that simply didn't work, often related to file renames. I remember trying to rename a file after 'svn add' but before 'svn commit', and it simply didn't work. Maybe that's fixed now, don't know. Or merging stuff when a file was renamed in one branch and changed in the other. During my several years of SVN usage I have regularly driven SVN checkouts against a wall, where I didn't manage to recover them into a usable state, not any combinations of revert, update or other commands. This has never happened to me with git. ------ klodolph Number 1-5 are mostly "I don't want to learn new things", so I'll ignore them. Do you remember when you learned source control for the first time? I don't, it was too long ago. Just like you have to learn SVN if you've never used source control before, you have to learn Git if you've never used distributed source control before. * "Unsafe version control", and then gives examples using -f or +<refspec>, both of which advertise their destructive nature. Yes, you can also go in with SVN and obliterate history too, using svnadmin dump and svnadmin load. Git's reflog will have your back when you make mistakes, as long as the mistakes don't get too old. * "Power for the maintainer, at the expense of the contributor" Yes, most people write code on one branch for a long period of time. Git does this just fine. * "Burden of VCS maintainance pushed to contributors" First of all, nobody says that contributors have to merge. That is a decision that each project makes. Plenty of projects have the lead developers merging in everyone else's work. Second, the reason this is even an issue is because merging is such a pain in SVN that most people don't want to do it. * "Git history is a bunch of lies" Again, this is up to the individual project. Some developers like to work on six different things at the same time, and then they go back and rewrite history so that their six changes end up as six commits. The difference with SVN, is that these same developers would simply avoid committing until they're done with all six changes. Some projects expect rebased patches, some prefer proper merges. Worse, the author says that "filtering" should solve this problem, but doesn't propose how such a filter would work. * Complexity of simple tasks: Let's try not to artificially inflate the complexity of the Git tasks. For example, the Git examples assume no commit access, whereas the SVN examples assume direct commit access. If you don't have commit access to an SVN project, how do you do it? You either use git-svn and mail them a patch, or you use svn and mail them a patch. A recurring complaint seems to be that "git add" is not the same as "svn add". I don't see why it would be. It's not the same as "ssh-add" or "useradd" either. ~~~ ender7 Like others, I think telling people to RTFM is unhelpful. The OP already pointed out that the official Git documentation is bad, bad _bad._ So, already it's not just "RTFM" but "Google around for a decent Git tutorial and hope you pick the right one." Great. Add to this the fact that the Git commands are simply _poorly designed._ Yes, it is possible to understand what they do after expending a significant amount of time simply learning to think like Linus, but _why should we have to do that?_ I refer you to the gitref.org entry for 'git reset': _git reset is probably the most confusing command written by humans. I've been using Git for years, even wrote a book on it and I still get confused by what it is going to do at times._ [0] This is not a problem of people not wanting to learn DVCS concepts. This is simply people who don't want to jump through a set of arbitrary, confusing, and completely unnecessary mental hoops in order to get to the DVCS concepts they wanted to use. [0] <http://gitref.org/basic/#reset> (gitref.org is maintained by GitHub) ~~~ encoderer > The OP already pointed out that the official Git documentation is bad, bad > bad. So, already it's not just "RTFM" but "Google around for a decent Git > tutorial and hope you pick the right one." Great. I have a hard time believing that there are scores of software developers out there who have learned their craft enough to want source control but are somehow overwhelmed by the basic task of finding a good Git tutorial. The real impediment that I've observed is developers that certainly _could_ learn Git but don't because they don't see it as a good investment. That's where they're so, so wrong. Git is like power tools for your code. If you embrace and learn it, you'll be much better off for it. Yes, SVN is easier. It's also a lot less powerful. And there's always Mercurial, which is very similar to Git and addresses some of the confusing-API criticism. ~~~ CJefferson The problem with git isn't following a tutorial, the problems I have had are nasty corner cases. I have to keep looking up strange a-symmetries, like why does 'git push' push just the current branch, and 'git pull' pull all branches? Then I have to look up how to make 'git pull' pull just the current branch. Also, due to inconsistencies in how commands take branches, I sometimes realise I have a branch called 'origin/stuff', when I meant to do something with stuff on origin. It's also hard to find which branches are tracking what. Of course, you can find the options to do all these things. But there are just so many little things to learnt. The fundamental question is, does the complexity of git come from the power it offers over svn, or does it come from the most terrible UI I think I have ever seen on a command line tool? I think it is the second. I still use git every day, but I think it is putting usability by less computer-savvy users back years. ~~~ EdiX > like why does 'git push' push just the current branch, and 'git pull' pull > all branches? It's the opposite, "git push" pushes all branches and "git pull" only pulls the current branch. I think it's because push will only do fast-forward merges while pull will do any merge, and that could require a working directory to exist (but why not make push just push the current branch?) ~~~ CJefferson Sorry yes, I got the asymmetry the wrong way around :) The problem this causes (for me) is that if I have commits in other branches, 'git push' will fail (as other branches can't be fast-forwarded), but 'git pull' won't fix it. Of course, I can get around it, but it's annoying. ~~~ ben_h You can configure `git push` to push just the current branch to its configured remote, by setting 'push.default' to 'upstream'. `git config --global push.default upstream` The relevant docs (droplr'd, since you can't anchor-link into the online manpages): <http://d.pr/Rlqn> ------ monkeypizza Have people done hallway usability testing on git? i.e. just take a smart undergrad CS major and record their screen (& audio) while they try to figure out how to use it. I think this would definitely turn up some tasks within it that are way harder than they need to be. Do people really feel confident that learning git is a smooth process, not involving a lot of swearing? The answer you mostly hear when complaining about programming tools is that you need to toughen up - yet startups are founded on the idea of not doing this to their clients. Making processes super easy for clients is a good thing, and we should gather information, find the common problem spots, and fix them for our own tools! We shouldn't just keep insisting that the customer (programmers) needs to toughen up and learn (as the default answer, anyway; some things really are hard) Why isn't there user feedback tool for man pages, where it asks "Was this information helpful to you?" every time you use a man page? I bet the success rate would be pretty low. In general why isn't there any information about which man pages are good and which are terrible? They just seem frozen in time. Compared to the analytics startups get about their customers, info about man pages is nonexistent. Yet there are probably ones out there which would be rated "useless" 99% of the time, and have been for 10+ years with no change. ~~~ DeepDuh I think you bring up some good points of open source projects vs. commercial ones. In open source projects, most of the time when seeing critical feedback by users you see those "it's open source, just change it the way you want" comments. No one makes money, therefore no one depends on users being happy about the software. That's why B2B is so attractive: Your users actually WANT to pay you such that you are dependent on their happiness. Maybe we should invent a new model that combines open source with paid incentives for user desired changes. Let's say User A uses Gimp, sees something that could be simplified or added. He can't program it himself but what he can do is describing the feature he wants, possibly with screenshots or even an interface prototype. He then auctions this on a marketplace website. Other users can upvote or even chip in to A's auction such that the probability of a good developer implementing it rises. Developers have their profile with reputation, possibly linked with their stackoverflow reputation. The change gets implemented within a branch of gimp, installable by anyone using a modified package manager. If the maintainers of gimp like the change, they can merge it in such that everyone profits - the number of user downloads being a good indicator that the change is desired. ------ crazygringo Amen! I've felt like this for so long. Ignoring the unnecessary parts about GitHub, he hits the nail right on the head with: > _Git doesn’t so much have a leaky abstraction as no abstraction. There is > essentially no distinction between implementation detail and user interface. > ...Its weakness is the complexity of simple tasks._ I swear, someone needs to invent a Git-wizard program. Interactive with a wizard-like interface, it will walk you through all the common kinds of tasks, even if they're fairly advanced, explaining all the ramifications along the way. I haven't seen any programs like this -- all the GUI interfaces to git basically just translate to command-line commands, instead of trying to help you intelligently manage your workflow. I don't think it would be easy to write a wizard interface like this -- it's a UI designer's worst nightmare -- but it would certainly help. ~~~ peeters > I swear, someone needs to invent a Git-wizard program. Interactive with a > wizard-like interface, it will walk you through all the common kinds of > tasks, even if they're fairly advanced, explaining all the ramifications > along the way. Sounds like a great idea for making _one type of workflow_ easy. The great part about Git not having an abstraction is that it supports almost any workflow. You can choose what flow is right for your project. Which is, by the way, why the documentation is not task-oriented, it's data- model oriented. The same command might be used for two completely different tasks in two different processes. Other tools that aim to make the basics for committing easy do so at the expense of implicitly supporting only certain workflows. Think of something like Perforce. You don't _enforce_ your process with Perforce, you _choose_ your process so that it will work with Perforce. ~~~ crazygringo That's why I said it's a UI designer's worst nightmare. Because there are a lot of different kinds of workflows, and I don't even know how you'd begin to organize them. I mean, maybe it's not even possible. It would just be nice if it were more possible to "ease into" Git, rather than feel like you have to go through the equivalent of a college semester learning it. ~~~ saraid216 > That's why I said it's a UI designer's worst nightmare. This is the point where I think it's appropriate to link another front page article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4338845> I've learned Git about the same way I've learned *nix systems and programming languages in general: piecemeal, a step at a time, on a largely need-to-know basis. It's been 4 years now and I feel like a complete novice, but I rarely need to do anything other than (1) synching local with remote repo, (2) committing a change, and (3) using a feature branch. ------ zobzu Git is far from perfect. But, there's roughly half bullshit, half "yes but is it really an issue?" things here to me. Things like detailing the _github_ process and blaming _git_ just does not work for example. Blaming additional git features that svn simply does not have.. is also nonsense to me. Finally, you CAN rewrite history in svn, its just extremely painful. In git it's not and.. its a good thing. I prefer USEABLE history than trashy commits. And don't tell me its about having proper devs making commits. As pointed out, you get external commits in git. You can't control them without refusing them and then what? In svn you don't _even_ have the possibility to refuse them. Don't get me started on how svn is way more about the maintainer due to this... ~~~ dasil003 > _I prefer USEABLE history than trashy commits._ Yeah the other day I got into an extended debate about rebasing with another dev who just didn't get this. He maintained that it should not be possible to modify history because it all may be relevant later. I rebutted with a question: do you want a commit every time you type a character in your text editor? Version control is just another tool for code craftsmanship. You should strive to make your commits as atomic and well-described as humanly possible. git-add -i and git-rebase -i are tools that allow you to approach a more perfect history. ~~~ Animus7 > I rebutted with a question: do you want a commit every time you type a > character in your text editor? I don't get it. I want a commit every time I say I want a commit, not upon arbitrary criteria the software decides for me. And I want that commit to be irrevocably and permanently immutable, because I said I wanted it and because it might be relevant later. What am I missing? ~~~ laughinghan When you want a commit, you tell git to commit and it will commit. When you don't want to revoke or mutate a commit ("irrevocably and permanently immutable"), you don't tell git to revoke or mutate the commit and it won't revoke or mutate the commit. When you fucked up history and you want to change it, there are some simple git commands to do this and some very, very tedious svnadmin commands to do this. Some of us fuck up history and want to change it. Some of us don't. Git serves both of us well. Subversion only serves one of us well. A lot of the time we have to use the same version control system, because we want to collaborate. ~~~ klodolph Additionally, if I have admin access to the SVN repository and rewrite history, how would you ever find out unless I told you about it? In that sense Git has stronger support for immutable commits, since rewriting published history will actually cause everyone downstream to stand up and notice. ------ mrich Excellent article, this reflects much of my personal experience working with git in the last year. Our whole department (>100 people) switched as part of a move towards decoupled development/continuous integration, we used perforce before. Luckily there were three people with excellent git knowledge who could answer all questions so this helped a lot. However, I find myself relying on stackoverflow/google for some not-so-common small use cases where a glance at the manual just doesn't help (find all changes in local branch not in upstream branch x?). Also, the git commands and their options are sometimes not very logical as the article mentions (i.e. git show vs. git blame, the first needs the syntax "branch:file", the second "branch file", why? Small things like that take away from the beauty) git is powerful and I prefer it to perforce for it's possibilities, but I think tools like mercurial are a better DVCS which just didn't have enough hype at the right time. ------ Kronopath This generally sums up why I prefer Mercurial. It provides all the benefits of a distributed VCS, but with less of the complexity, at the expense of some (usually unneeded, at least for me) flexibility. ~~~ ajross Given that "everyone" knows git, and essentially no one uses hg, I think saying it involves "less complexity" is very much missing the forest for the trees. ~~~ teilo No one except for the entire Python development team. And me. ~~~ cpeterso And all of Mozilla. And Oracle's Java dev team. Windows support was a big deciding factor. ~~~ retrogradeorbit And Adium and pypy and Sphinx and gevent and almost every project on bitbucket. But _apart_ from them, "essentially no one" uses mercurial! :P ------ cheald "If the power of Git is sophisticated branching and merging, then its weakness is the complexity of simple tasks." The power of Git is its distributed nature and the fact that you can maintain local commits. When you have a single remote repository that everyone commits to, then sure, it's really easy to do things (have fun maintaining the ACL and merging any changes contributed by anyone outside the committer list via patch). If you think "it's really easy to branch" is the primary reason to use Git, you're using it wrong. ~~~ zalew > The power of Git is its distributed nature and the fact that you can > maintain local commits. that's actually the power of any DVCS. ~~~ cheald Yes, that was my point. He's comparing a VCS with a DVCS and then complaining that the "D" adds overhead. ------ pydave I think the biggest problem I have with git is that I don't understand how people can't get it. (That's assuming they understand DVCS, but don't get git. Not understanding DVCS is unsurprising.) It's like when my nonprogrammer friends who took CS101 didn't understand for loops. What?! It's just applying a concept you already understand. It's unfortunate that git re-uses some verbs from cvs/svn with different meanings, but is that really such a big hurdle? And I'm always surprised to hear complaints about git's user interface. I find the command-line interface far friendlier than others: auto-paging, colorized output, text hints of what I should do next, and fantastic tools (like bisect) in the same package. And looking through my bash history, most of my commands don't use any options (the biggest exception is git commit). Possibly this is because I do most of my git interaction through vim-fugitive (and I have aliases for commonly-used complex commands). But I think it makes more sense to have a smaller set of commands that are logically organized (rebase mangles your history, reset re- aligns based on your history, ...) than a single command for every function. ------ aneth4 Defenses of git sound remarkably like defenses of C++ syntax and feature design. In fact, I'd argue they are similarly written by people who are overly proud that they are smart enough to figure out some convoluted and arbitrary complexity, but not wise enough to realize that level complexity is unnecessary. ~~~ borplk Your comment sums the issue amazingly well. Well you look at the user interface it is clearly evident that these guys had forgotten that not everyone is a kernel hacker. And it seems as if they tried their best to make everyone else feel like an idiot because they don't have the time or want to understand the arbitrary decisions they made or are simply not smart enough to understand it. ------ MBlume I'm all for trying to find ways to improve Git's learning curve, especially for non-technical users. That said, if you're calling yourself an engineer, you've worked at a Git shop for over a month, and you're still complaining about how "hard" it is? I have absolutely zero sympathy. You're being paid twice the national average to do a job that's supposed to be mentally difficult. You use version control every day. Stop whining, learn to use your tools correctly, and stop subjecting the rest of us to your crappy, disorganized commits. ------ simplesimple Ever try to commpile git statically? Git makes you believe it's lots of small little utilities that work together. Far from it. Git relies on Perl or another scripting language, not to mention it's reliance on curl. You cannot run Git without these other sizeable programs. I can make static binaries of RCS, CVS and SVN no problem. CVS uses SSH. No silly SSL and the certificate mess. I value the simplicity. Mercurial (which seems to be a favourite among connoisseurs of versioning systems) relies on a Python intepreter, but it's reasonably contained to a single Python script; no installation required. You point Python at hg and it works. Of course, it's been said that most of the time people who ramble on and on about these systems and their esoteric features do not need the advanced features. They rarely use them, except as points in a debate over which versioning system is "the best". ~~~ jlgreco This is, by far, the strangest git complaint that I have ever heard. What are you trying to do, ship embedded devices with git on them? ~~~ develop7 "avoid holding it that way"? ~~~ jlgreco Honestly? Yes. Sometimes that is just the only reasonable response. ~~~ develop7 is there a complete list of ways I should avoid to hold git? ------ sigil I love git and prefer it to svn, but he's right. It succeeds in power and usefulness, but utterly fails in the complexity department. Someday, someone who understands the virtue of simplicity and can control their "how dare you insult my favorite tool" response will take this criticism to heart and rework git (or at least, re-porcelain it). ~~~ klodolph I think the re-porcelain option is really the most viable option here, for those who complain about git's arcane invocation. So many Git commands actually do two or three different things depending on invocation. ------ drucken Sounds like someone's just discovered how different DVCS are to centralized VCS. Still, tools like Tower, Smartgit and Github for Windows, especially Tower, make interface to Git less painful. With time, the interfaces to Git workflows can only improve, whereas what can you do with SVN? That said, he may have a point about (branch &) merge message management in Git. Perhaps this can be improved closer to git with git extensions, e.g. implementing some sort of ranking and filtration system. Related to that is users should not really have to change the structure of the VCS itself just to filter messages. ------ markkat I have to admit, it confuses the heck out of me. I am always in fear of destroying code because the documentation part is spot-on. I read and reread, and still feel like I am working on a best guess interpretation. ~~~ chris_wot Using man files and in-built help is probably always going to only give you half the story. Have you considered reading the Pro Git book? <http://git- scm.com/book> ------ pka I can't count the number of times I've googled for simple commands like "how do I revert an uncommited file to its original state"? hg revert bla.txt git ??? ... and I would still have to google for it (it's something with HEAD iirc). Its usability is atrociously bad and I don't want to spend time learning some badly designed cli interface when I can focus on more important things and use tools that make my life easier, not harder. ~~~ greghinch git checkout bla.txt ? I'm not sure how I get how that's harder. I'll throw one back, how do I do the equivalent of git stash and git cherry-pick in hg? ~~~ pka Ah, good to know. Everytime I've googled this it was something about reset --hard (or --soft) and HEAD or ^HEAD or whatever else. git stash is hg shelve. Don't know about cherry picking (I've never needed it). Anyways, the argument I'm making is not "which tool is more powerful" but "which one is easier to use while being powerful _enough_ ". For me that is Mercurial, hands down. ~~~ greghinch cherry-picking is amazing for the "oops I did that fix on master instead of the 2.x branch". git cherry-pick <hash>. done. ~~~ pka Just for the record, the transplant extension [1] seems to be how you do cherry picking in Mercurial. [1] <http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/TransplantExtension> ~~~ retrogradeorbit Transplant is a great extension and very useful in a pickle. ------ eli_gottlieb I can say this: I've used both Mercurial and Git professionally, and for distributed version control, I found Mercurial _much_ simpler to use. ------ rogerbinns My issue with git is the defaults. Generally the defaults and behaviour are geared towards large projects. It is absolutely correct in that sense - you don't want hundreds or thousands of contributors messing things up. An additional simple example is that push doesn't send tags. But generally you want the opposite defaults for small projects/number of users. For example you do want tags pushed by default so every sees them. This places a large learning curve on the small scale projects and users. Remember that most users will be perpetual intermediates. My analogy is that git is like a sharp knife. In the hands of an expert it can produce art, but in the hands of others we get blood. Some of the responses here are marvelling at the sharpness and what can be done with it, but are missing the point that others end up bloody! ~~~ dasil003 Aren't you more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife though?</strained- analogy> ~~~ tharax I think you're more likely to feel pain with a dull edge, but a sharp edge cuts easier. ~~~ dasil003 The point is it slips off the tomato and cuts your finger. ------ dcosson I find his complaint about git's lack of abstraction strange. Yes, git's syntax could definitely be more consistent, but I can't think of how you could abstract away very much of git without quickly losing power. On the other hand, one of the things I hated most about svn is that it doesn't abstract away the remote repository details at all. To do something as simple as check out a branch you have to type in the full absolute url to your repository, since a branch is basically a different folder higher up in the hierarchy. Talk about a leaky abstraction. The abstraction between version control tools and the remote server(s) you back everything up on and the power of git's underlying model are both such big wins that I really can't get too worked up about the syntax. ------ InclinedPlane Yet another anti-git rant which will merely bounce off the deflector shields of the git faithful. I doubt anything will change in terms of git usability and misfeatures until someone proves that there's a better way to do it by building an alternative that's all around better than git. But that raises the question of why one would continue to use git at that point. ~~~ ern Using Mercurial daily, I don't understand why it isn't widely viewed as the alternative to git that you mention. It seems to avoid some of the pain-points the OP lists. The idea that there are "git faithful" is a sign of how immature (in every sense) the software development field is. Masochism and complexity-worship seem to blight our field(not necessarily referring to git, which I'm not qualified to comment on) ------ tux1968 Git is _awesome_. Once you "Get it", there really is no big problem. Sure you may have to look up some syntax occasionally and make an alias or two for your common uses, but really, it's no big deal. And the benefits are compelling. Enjoy the amazing power of committing early, and committing often. Being able to revert to "10 minutes ago" is so freeing when trying out a refactoring idea. And being able to "uncommit" the last X commits to recommit them in a different order and with cleaned up messages and structure before sharing with colleagues... amazing. All the quibbles about syntax really miss the point and the power of Git. ------ akkartik He mentions three ways to irrevocably lose data. Is that really accurate? I would think old refs are still present in the repo and accessible from .git/logs, but I don't have any experience actually collaborating with git. ~~~ ben_straub Rebasing isn't really destructive. Try it: open `gitk --all`, do a rebase -i and squash all the commits together, then switch back to gitk and refresh. You'll see all the old commits still in the database, but the HEAD and master branches point at the new commits. Totally not destructive, but it does take a bit of knowledge to undo the change. Git maintains what's called a "reflog" to help with this. It's a record of every place that every ref has ever pointed in your repository. Try it: `git reflog master`. You can even see when you did pulls, and what they merged in. The only truly destructive thing you can do to your git database is `git gc`. ~~~ aneth4 > The only truly destructive thing you can do to your git database is `git > gc`. And of course we should expect garbage collection to be destructive of information that is not garbage? Didn't know that? Just read the man page. Whoops, it doesn't actually mention that, but it does mention that it may happen automatically at times. So only clever people like you know archaic undocumented side effects of git's inscrutable design, except nobody ever really knows the full story because there is so much unnecessary crud to learn in addition. Clearly more can be destructive than gc if gc can be executed by other commands and triggers by repository state. ~~~ jeltz git gc be default does only prune things older than 2 weeks so to lose your recently lost commits you would have to explicitly give a prune which is today. I do not think one can do this accidentally: git gc --prune=2012-08-05 ------ Karunamon Allow me to add one to the list: 11\. Completely different concepts for the same commands as other SCM systems. Case in point: Checkout. In every other system prior to git, going as far back as CVS in 1986, checkout meant grab a remote repo and copy it locally. In git, it suddenly means to switch branches in a repo you already have. The real "checkout" was renamed to "clone". Why not use something like "switch" instead? That's nearly 20 years of muscle memory everyone needed to relearn because.. why? Git add and SVN add do completely different things as well. Was it simply not thought of that people who use git would be switching from another system at the time, very likely to be either svn or hg? ~~~ chris_wot Yeah, but you could also argue that it doesn't make as much sense in git to call cloning a repository "checkout". Because you are cloning the repository to your very own _local_ repository, then you make your changes from that repository and then you push back to the original repository, which is a _remote_ repository. Essentially, a checkout in git is to checkout files from a particular branch into the current working directory. And that branch is actually in the index, which I would really call the repository - so actually you are indeed "checking out" files from the repository. Once you make your changes, you commit them right back into the index. ------ ecoffey Dear OP, If you're still using git from time to time and get frustrated please feel free to ping @gitdoctor on twitter. It's an account I run to try and help people use git right when they need that help. Thanks and good luck! ------ patrickaljord You don't need github to make pull requests: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- request-...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-request- pull.html) ~~~ alexanderh You dont need github for anything, period. So its very strange that it is mentioned at all when comparing it to other version control systems. ~~~ lotyrin Let me translate: 3 things I hate about (the culture surrounding) git(hub): 1,3,4,5 - I'm expected to understand the information model. 2 - The CLI is inconsistent. 6,7,8,9,10 - I'm expected to work harder so that life is easier for the maintainer. ------ cypherpnks Having used both git and hg, I very strongly agree. I learned hg first. Hg took less time to master than git took learn the basics of. The syntax of git is incredibly cumbersome in comparison -- I type a lot more. It's the standard, but relative to hg, not a very good standard. ------ mattspitz git is only complicated because it lets you do everything you may possibly want to do, often a superset of what you actually want to do. If you want svn-like commands, you can borrow someone's scripts or use a shiny GUI. I don't want svn-like commands because centralized version control is obnoxious. Don't complain because it's hard. Programming is hard, math is hard, and if you know how languages, data structures, and algorithms work, git is actually pretty easy in comparison. ~~~ retrogradeorbit I disagree. git is complicated because it does not have defaults, command line intelligence and does not have a consistent user interface. It forces you to constantly be repeating yourself and to learn a lot of detailed incantations (Like mentioning HEAD and origin and master over and over.) I say to you, don't complain that people are complaining. People are complaining for a reason. Have you tried some of the other DVCSes? Mercurial, or Darcs, or bazaar? Gits problem is not the problem domain, nor the backend. It's the user interface. That's the hard bit. ------ bendmorris Git doesn't seem to have been developed with ease of use in mind. I've found that it's very powerful, and that most things that you want to do with it are possible, but not always as easy as it could be. I'm working on a collaborative project with several inexperienced developers using various editors and operating systems, and dealing with line endings has been a serious time sink. The first step was "* text=auto" in a .gitattributes file to override everyone's local settings, as some had used custom settings when they installed Git. Apparently the developers of Git decided to not support \r as a line ending, which ended up causing headaches for us because some legacy programs still use it. Several times, someone committed changes to a file where \r\n line endings had been replaced with just \r, for whatever reason. To Git, they had just deleted the entire file and replaced it with one long line. This frequently resulted in edit conflicts where it was very difficult to tell what had actually been changed. The solution ended up being a filter: clean = LC_CTYPE=C awk '{printf(\"%s\\n\", $0)}' | LC_CTYPE=C tr '\\r' '\\n' ...which everyone now has to duplicate in each of their local .git/config on every copy of the repository they use. Coming up with that little bit of command-line wizardry, and getting everyone to install it (and making sure it worked on Windows/OS X) ended up wasting the better part of a day to accomplish what seems like a relatively simple task. So, in the end it was possible, but the process could've been much friendlier. I will say, though, that git bash is absolutely amazing and blows Cygwin out of the water for ease of use. ~~~ keenerd > ...which everyone now has to duplicate in each of their local .git/config on > every copy of the repository they use. You can use git in your .git. Add those hooks to the repository. Every dev will get them automatically on checkout. No one should have to install anything. (Well, aside from Awk.) ~~~ bendmorris That never occurred to me. Thanks for the suggestion. ------ pbiggar I'm going to be contrarian and say that he's mostly right for all of them. SVN was simpler, git is more complex. SVN did some things well that git does not so well. But this all misses the point. Git is many many times more powerful than SVN. And that complexity is really useful, even for relatively small projects. You can learn Git's complexity, removing many of SVN's advantages. But you can never get Git's power into SVN. ------ greghinch I've been using git for several years on multiple projects with teams of various sizes (admittedly none larger than 10, though I avoid projects of that size for a multitude of reasons) and have loved it a lot. Especially compared to the merge headaches of svn. Or cvs. And mercurial just gets in my way more often than not. git stash I awesome ------ why-el > The fundamental promise of any version control system is this: “Once you put > your precious source code in here, it’s safe. You can make any changes you > like, and you can always get it back. Git breaks this promise”. Right there. I don't know who made this promise, but it's not what Git is supposed to preserve. Git is distributable is it not? ------ paulhodge Number 10 is a total apples-to-oranges comparison. For an apples-to-apples comparison, the question is, do you want to give your contributors write access to your master repo? (and deal with the consequences) If contributors have write access, then Git is almost as easy. There's just one more command ("git push") compared to SVN. If contributors don't have write access, then there's no easy way to do this with SVN. Most places that I've seen will either have users submit .patch files via email, or put their changes in SVN branches (ugh). Or, they convince themselves that they'd rather just give contributors write access. Either way, Git has many handy ways to solve this problem (Github pull requests are just one of those ways), and it definitely wins on this front. ------ rbanffy I tend to summarize it like this: Git is built by people smarter than you for people smarter than you. Deal with it. Now, seriously, Git is a) immensely flexible and b) born out of the needs of Linux kernel developers (or, more specifically, Linus' needs). I would expect it to be optimized for that case. ~~~ recursive There sure is a lot of evangelizing for it if it's only intended for the 1% elite developer. ~~~ j-kidd That's exactly the problem, i.e. those people who endlessly promoting git so that they can be seen as elite developer. Their favorite past time is to share their "get it" stories with the rest of the world. Not unlike the "Are You There God? It's Me, Jesus" episode of South Park. ~~~ rbanffy Git is a tool. You use it if it solves your problem. You can certainly use it the same way you'd use Subversion and it's not any harder - it'll just behave as a version control system that can buffer commits offline with two "levels" of commit - local and remote. If you want to use the more complicated stuff, then there is no way to avoid learning the more complicated ideas. There is a lot I don't understand about Git, but, as far as my usage patterns have gone, I'm very satisfied. ~~~ j-kidd > You can certainly use it the same way you'd use Subversion and it's not any > harder - it'll just behave as a version control system that can buffer > commits offline with two "levels" of commit - local and remote. That's hg. With git, you got the index / staging area, which is unique to git (no idea if bitkeeper has it). In other tools such as svn or hg, there is no need for flags such as "commit -a", "diff --cached", and "add -N". > If you want to use the more complicated stuff, then there is no way to avoid > learning the more complicated ideas. And this is what we hate about git. Version control shouldn't be complicated for 99.9% of projects. I have used svn for 3 years and hg for 2, they get the job done just fine without cryptic commands and flags. ------ jimmyhchan [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/115983/how-do-i-add-an- em...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/115983/how-do-i-add-an-empty- directory-to-a-git-repository) Git questions on SO with more than 300 upvotes should be considered bugs. ------ methodin There are plenty of abstractions on top of git - most UI implementations abstract away the hard details, at the cost of not being able to understand what happens when something bad occurs because you never had to learn its intricacies prior. Seeing the consequences of such things it makes me appreciate git is left as raw interactions. Git is not for people that do not want to understand it. To me, it's similar to vim - its basic implementation is bare essentials and complicated concepts, but once mastered, far outweigh competitors who roll those concepts up into simpler ones and leave you with workflows on their terms. ~~~ anshumans I completely agree with you here. Having used Visual Studio as my primary editor for a long time, I finally decided to give vim a try last year given how all my hacker friends raved about it. It definitely took a few days of understanding the basic concepts and going over the steep learning curve, but now I'm way more efficient with my coding than before. It's been the same experience with git. It definitely has a steeper learning curve, especially coming from a centralized source control system like TFS and Perforce (for me at least), but having worked through that curve, I feel git has been much more useful to my workflows than what TFS or Perforce (or insert any central source control system) has ever been. ------ philwelch > Power for the maintainer, at the expense of the contributor Interestingly, SVN and Perforce are about power for the maintainer, _with no benefit at all_ for the contributor. You can't even version control your own work with those tools. ------ thangalin Issue #10. alias commit='git add && git commit && git push' ~~~ pydave I know what you're going for, but for anyone following along at home: "To avoid confusion and troubles with script usage, aliases that hide existing git commands are ignored." (from git help config) ~~~ davvid This is true, namely that _git aliases_ in ~/.gitconfig cannot override git built-ins. That said, the parent post showed what looked like a bash alias, not a git alias. ~~~ thangalin The bash alias is correct. The issue was "too many commands", which is a non- issue. You type in the commands _once_ , make it an alias, and be done with it. When switching to another repository system, change the "commit" alias, not what your fingers have to remember. ------ krosaen git::mercurial vhs::betamax I'll also say that tech folks don't like not being able to understand something, and enjoy understanding arcane things others don't (and once understood, no matter how hard it was to learn, it is suddenly "trivial"), further strengthening git's hold. I'm happy to see the author seems to understand git well enough to say, yes, I get it, and I still don't like it. I just wish he had talked about mercurial as the plausible user friendly alternative instead of svn, since svn is not distributed and therefor unsuitable for the use cases where git thrives. ------ Fando Whoever designed Git was both a skilled programmer and a crappy designer. ------ zaphar I started dvcs with Darcs but it was too slow despite having a really really good CLI. Then I switched to Git because it was fast and within a week ran into so many sharp corners I had metaphorical blood all over my codebase. After a while I learned the useful subset of Git commands and life got easier with only an occasional sharp corner intruding every few months or so. Then I discovered Mercurial. The speed was acceptable. The UI was intelligible. And I didn't hit any sharp corners. Life has been way way better ever since. ------ rjzzleep i had to work on a big corp job once they were using VSS5 in 2007. made me appreciate even CVS. if you want to have a really simple way of working with git get the github for mac client. at the same time insanely inflexible. but hey you know what in theory vss5 is quite "simple" as well. i mean how complex can a program be where distributed work is essentially happening by locking files. I had hoped op would've said something interesting that might've led into 3rd generation DVCS, but this is definitely far from. ------ parasubvert This sort of article sounds like s/unix/git/g of rants against UNIX/Linux command line & filesystem concepts that were common in the late 90's, as it was becoming clear that UNIX wasn't actually going to be killed by Windows NT, but rather was resurgent. Examples included: \- "Yuck, why such different terminology from DOS?" \- "Commands are inconsistent and there are too many, where's my One Command or (better yet) One GUI that does everything they way I think about it?" \- "Yuck, scripts that make things easier for my particular workflow, why didn't they just build it right the first time?" Fundamentally it comes down to people who believe version control is a simple problem, and git confuses that for no good reason, or those who believe version control is an inherently complicated problem, and tends to require some study to understand the concepts. Git doesn't hand-hold, it exposes the core concepts at the _data level_ , thus supporting any workflow for any size of team or work style. If you prefer a dictated workflow and task structure, there are plenty of wrappers that will help you - just don't be surprised if not every team agrees with your preferred workflow. ~~~ pwang > it exposes the core concepts at the data level But it exposes them _poorly_ , from a user interface standpoint. The beauty of UNIX, actually, is that it provided a few simplifying abstractions (block files, character devices, pipes), and everything used that. Imagine if catting the contents of something from /dev was different than piping the contents of a tarball. That's the sort of UI/UX frustrations that TFA (and others) rant about. This is not a "DVCS vs. SVN/CVS" issue. This is about git's usability. ------ hawleyal OP might have just professed "I am not technically advanced, Git has powerful features I'd never use, it should cater to me." In general, there are too many of these articles on HN about "I don't know how to use it, so it's terrible." What OP fails to grasp is the purposeful difference between Git and other revision/version control systems. Git attempts to cover anything you would ever want to do. Git is the Photoshop to SVN's Instagram. You can use Git as if it were SVN, no problem. You can do Git commit-push-pull all day long as if you were SVN commit-update, and be none the wiser. The one thing Photoshop has (as a similarly complex piece of software) that Git doesn't have is a single user interface. I don't see this as a problem. There are a bagillion Git GUI clients if you don't like the command line. Some are good, some aren't. As far as having a good strategy for using Git on a real project. I think OP needs to spend some more time on Google. Here's a good article describing the most common workflow: <http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/> ------ countzeroasl As a new DVCS user, I today just started playing with both using tutorials and books freely available on the web. I am using Mint 13 and the CLI. Of the two, the feel I get is that Mercurial is easier (more straightforward) of the two to use and Git is the more micromanage-able of the two. JMHO, but as a newcomer, it's my impression. ------ mncolinlee I especially liked the first comment about Subversion "anybody can write a simple VCS if they don’t have to make it distributed." It reminds me of my days working on a parallel compiler team. We always used to say, "we can get you answers very, very quickly if you don't mind whether they're correct or not." Just as a parallel compiler developer must worry about recurrences and data dependencies breaking parallel programs, distributed version control adds a huge level of complexity which you cannot safely hide. However, I agree with the poster that the next major version of Git should clear up several inconsistencies. (As a side note, some binaries labeled as ASCII in our Subversion repository back then caused massive corruption and shut down all development for days. Having too many assumptions made by your VCS and too few options specified by developers is bad simplicity!) ------ shredfvz Subgit and Subhg are interesting. [http://rustyklophaus.com/articles/20100124-SubmodulesAndSubr...](http://rustyklophaus.com/articles/20100124-SubmodulesAndSubreposDoneRight.html) Just use Mercurial for random private commits, send the Git people your changesets every so often: $ git init && git add . && git commit -m "Initial commit" && git remote add origin [email protected]:acct/repo.git && git push -u origin master $ subgit setup $ hg init hginit.com <\-- great resource <http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis> In Google's own words: "In terms of implementation effort, Mercurial has a clear advantage due to its efficient HTTP transport protocol. In terms of features, Git is more powerful, but this tends to be offset by it being more complicated to use." ------ chousuke I really can't agree with point #1. Most of the things he lists as being part of the complex information model are _equivalent_ and make perfect sense once you take a couple hours to understand how git works internally. And no, that's not too much to ask for a tool that you will be using nearly every day. Once you understand git's data model and "patch-oriented" behaviour, you won't have to wonder about namespaces, the index, rebasing, cherry picking or fast-forward merges. Point 5, or the fact that Git doesn't even try to hide its internal workings is actually why I prefer it over everything else. The UI can be weird at times since it evolved from just a collection of tools to operate on an on-disk, persistent and immutable data structure, but as far as being good at what it does, it's hard to beat Git. ------ loeschg _Translation: “It’s easy, Granny. Just rev to 6000, dump the clutch, and use wheel spin to get round the first corner. Up to third, then trail brake onto the freeway, late apexing but watch the marbles on the inside. Hard up to fifth, then handbrake turn to make the exit.”_ Haha! ------ chaostheory I felt the article had some fair complaints. The problem is that the author felt that going back SVN was the resolution to those complaints which I found ridiculous. My question is how does mercurial compare to git on all of the author's points? ~~~ zalew As someone who jumped from svn to hg a long time ago, I can answer simply: the transition was smooth like butter, <http://hginit.com/> explains everything on the concept, while hg's ui provides abstraction and is very svnuser-friendly, so - everything just works. <http://hgtip.com/> is also very useful. IMO it's easier to embrace git after mercurial, because the part where you understand how a DVCS works is already behind you, and you jump into the syntax and specific differences. ------ nicholassmith The issue with git is that's got all this cruft built around it, but for the most part it's very rare you need to jump into it in that level. I've been using git for about 2 years and only needed to rebase for the first time very recently. There are issues, and flaming the author saying he needs to read more is disrespectful (and ignorant of the issues), but git is a community, open source project. Not happy with the existing docs? Rewrite them, call it git for humans and off you go. I've seen projects doing work to 'nice' the command structure, so there's other people attempting it. But we can all agree git reset is _weird_. ------ snambi I have used subversion heavily. So many things are not at possible with SVN. But, it can be done in Git easily. Of-course, it requires learning and a bit of change in the mind-set. But, it is worth it. ------ smoyer I hate blogs that put pop-ups over part of the content with no way to close them (I'm not subscribing to your mail list or following you). I don't hate Git but I do agree with many of your points. There's ccomplexity that should be hidden (or more hidden) and there's inconsistencies that still catch me occasionally. I've never actually lost code on Git though it's taken me a while to find my code. It's also not fair to confuse Github's "Pull request", "Fork" and "Merge" with Git. These are still just branches and merges. ------ chris_wot 1\. Not sure his issue here - I count 9 things you need to know for Github (one of which I have _never_ needed to know - treeishes), and 7 things for SVN. It's really not that complex. 2\. The command line syntax: _But the shortcut for “git branch” combined with “git checkout”? “git checkout -b”_ Indeed. You can branch your code, but not check out the files from the index into the working tree. Perhaps the confusion here is because the author is coming from an SVN background, where checkout means something different. As for git am being obscure - sure, seems a little, but then there are two things: 1. don't use it if you don't need it, and 2. for kernel development, this is remarkably useful! 3\. Documentation: completely invalid. The man pages might seem a little terse, but then if you are looking up a command and you don't understand the terminology, then you should probably consider typing in man gittutorial Which, incidentally, can be found here: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial....](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gittutorial.html) Alternatively, if you are trying to understand how to use git (and it might be worthwhile for the author to follow this advise) then try reading the git user's manual, which can be found here: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user- manual....](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html) Hint: git rebase is explained here: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user- manual....](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user- manual.html#using-git-rebase) To understand how git checkout works, read here: [http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user- manual....](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user- manual.html#how-to-check-out) 4\. Information sprawl: actually, I consider myself to be a git newbie (mainly use github!) and frankly I've not needed to learn that much about git so far. However, whenever I've come up against something new, I've checked the documentation and after about 5-10 minutes I've understood the concept needed to get me going. I don't consider myself to be an expert in git in any way. However, as someone who has to program, I tend to find that for any system with enough power, I have to learn new things regularly. git is one of those things. Learn to love it :-) 5\. Leaky abstraction: first, don't make the title "leaky abstraction" if you don't believe that there is any abstraction in the first place. Secondly, it looks to me like they are trying to take your branch and insert it into another repository? Can't quite tell what is required here... certainly I'd love to see the way that this would be done in SVN! 6\. Power for the maintainer, not the user... ??? I'm sorry, but the author is complaining that git is powerful, and works really well in highly distributed systems where you have a lot of parallel commits? Well, uh... duh? The complaint here is that it's not usable for "ordinary" repository users. I would consider myself a fairly ordinary user, and I can honestly say that I don't consider that git is that hard to use. 7\. Unsafe version control DON'T DO THOSE THINGS! 8\. _In the traditional open source project, only one person had to deal with the complexities of branches and merges: the maintainer. Everyone else only had to update, commit, update, commit, update, commit…_ Which meant a massive bottleneck when doing branching and merging. That's the whole point of git - it's version control done large. Or otherwise known as "distributed version control". I'd recommend the author read up on some of the advantages here: <http://git-scm.com/about> 9\. I don't really have much of an opinion on this. 10\. Github != git. For the record, I love github and I really don't find it that hard to use, or anything so complex that I can't do it fairly quickly. ~~~ einhverfr _Documentation: completely invalid. The man pages might seem a little terse, but then if you are looking up a command and you don't understand the terminology, then you should probably consider typing in..._ I think a cardinal virtue of documentation is to but info where people expect to find it. Saying "Oh, you read the MANUAL. When I said RTFM, I mean the MANUAL for the TUTORIAL" isn't much of a help. If the documentation isn't where novices expect to find it, it doesn't exist. _Unsafe version control DON'T DO THOSE THINGS!_ How many can be done by accident? Are you using revision control at least in part for the ability to recover from a stupid accident? The fact that it isn't safe means you can't count on it being safe. You can't use it as essentially a way to have real point in time recovery for your repo, and it also means you can't count on it being an audit trail because at a minimum it could bet wiped out. That's fine, but it's worth stating up front that this is something Git doesn't do very well. Fine. Understand it is a tradeoff. ~~~ chousuke Doing those "unsafe" things in git by accident in a way that is unrecoverable pretty much requires you to be so drunk that you wake up the next day not remembering what you have done. forcefully pushing things to remote repositories can be denied with hooks, so if you really do not trust the people with push access you can use that. For anything else, it's pretty much always possible to undo any damage by using the reflog. In my experience, git is the least unsafe VCS I've used. if I commit a file, I know it's safe from accidental removals (as long as I don't touch .git). If I push the commit to a remote (private or public. Could even be on the same machine), it's safe from _anything_ I do locally. So if I am going to do a complicated merge or a rebase, I first make a temporary commit to save the state of the repository and ensure that I can always undo any mistakes. You can't always do that in svn, since commits are immediately public. ~~~ einhverfr _Doing those "unsafe" things in git by accident in a way that is unrecoverable pretty much requires you to be so drunk that you wake up the next day not remembering what you have done._ Or more likely not knowing what you are doing, getting disoriented and combining the wrong options. I haven't been using git for that long but I could totally see myself getting confused and typing something like that in by accident. ~~~ andrewaylett Even then, you can get back to something sane by using the reflog: master@{yesterday} refers to the master branch as it was 24 hours ago, and you can view the different things you've done to HEAD by just running `git reflog`. It's really _really_ hard to blow away the reflog without meaning to -- you're much more likely to just `rm -r` the whole repository by mistake. ------ jey This is a pretty decent criticism of git's _current UI_. The good news is that the core primitive operations underlying git are fine, and all that needs to be done is to create a better UI out of them. There's definitely room to build a great, user-friendly (commandline) user interface for git. I'd bet that the existing high-level operations like "push" and "pop" were relatively late additions. ------ y4m4 Yet another "i hate <this>" article :-) ~~~ chris_wot Indeed. It seems to be a "I hate git, because I don't understand what it is trying to achieve, and I haven't bothered to learn the concepts". Unfortunately, this tends to invalidate many of the points he is making. The author is assuming that git should work exactly the same way as subversion, except that it has a fundamentally different way of viewing version control and uses it's own terminology which can sometimes get in the way of those who know subversion. ~~~ borplk I think you are missing the point. The author is talking about unnecessary complications. Git is unnecessarily difficult to work with and understand. He is debating whether and how much of any of these is necessary. Sure we can spend time and learn it, but why should it require this much learning in the first place? ~~~ chris_wot What part, exactly, is so hard to understand? All the examples he gives aren't particularly hard to understand. For example, he complains that git pull is actually git fetch and git merge... well, that's pretty obvious. First you have to fetch the changes, then you have to merge in those changes. What is particularly illogical about that? Another example: he complains that _git branch_ combined with _git checkout_ is _git checkout -b_ (he forgets to note that you specify a branch name...). What's so non-obvious or "insane" about that? First you create a branch with _git branch newbranch_ , then you checkout files from a branch with _git checkout <branch>_. The obvious shortcut is _git checkout -b newbranch <branch>_: when you want to create a new branch, then you have to checkout the files from a branch, and the -b creates a new branch for you before you do that. The only real thing that is a little tricky to understand is the concept of refs, but even that's not really that hard to understand. Every commit has a SHA-1 reference to it, and a branch is merely a reference to a particular commit that is the head of a line of work. Remote refs are about the only other type of ref that you need to know about - all they are is a reference that points to a remote repository that you can push to or fetch from. Once you know what a ref is, most of the man pages make sense. Thus when the man page for git-push says: git-push – Update remote refs along with associated objects ... you can see that it means that it will update the remote refs (remote repositories you are pointing to). Which is what he says in his article, but all he has to really do is understand what a ref is and he wouldn't be so confused. When you think about refs, they make logical sense - all they are is like a "remote branch" of your repository. As for complexity in the concepts, let's look at what he's complaining about: _...you have files, a working tree, an index, a local repository, a remote repository, remotes (pointers to remote repositories), commits, treeishes (pointers to commits), branches, a stash_ 1\. Files - obvious 2\. A working tree - you do your work in the working tree 3\. An index - once you have made your changes in the working tree, you commit your changes to the index 4\. A local repository/a remote repository - this isn't a particularly hard concept to understand. You do you work in your own local repository. You might get that repository from someone else. You make your changes in your own repository, then you push those changes to a remote repository. Not entirely sure what is so difficult about that concept... 5\. Remotes - again, not a particularly hard concept really, as he says these are just references to remote repositories 6\. Commits - You work away on your code in the working repository (whatever directory structure you so desire). Then you commit it to the index. Which is not really any different to SVN, where you checkout a file from the SVN repository, then you make your changes, then you _commit_ your change back to the repository. Explain to me again what is so hard about this concept? 7\. Tree-ish - This is an extremely advanced part of git that most users may never encounter. You most certainly don't _need_ do know about this, though of course it is always good to do so. 8\. Branches - we _are_ talking about source control? If so, what is the issue here? Branches are not really any different in git than any other source control system. 9\. Stashes - an extremely useful feature. If you are in the middle of working on something and you want to switch branches, you normally don't want to commit those changes. So what you do is "stash" the changes onto a stack. You can reapply them later. Some excellent info can be found here: <http://git- scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Stashing> There... none of that was so hard, was it? ~~~ jebblue >> All the examples he gives aren't particularly hard to understand. For example, he complains that git pull is actually git fetch and git merge... well, that's pretty obvious. No, it isn't since the words fetch and pull mean pretty much the same thing to most people. >> What part, exactly, is so hard to understand? Looking at the length of your comment...apparently a lot, for most people. I've tried to like git, I want to like git, I don't get git. So ... in Eclipse at least I use EGit to help me make git usable. Even with that tool to make git easier to understand I still find it confusing (or confounding). ~~~ chris_wot _No, it isn't since the words fetch and pull mean pretty much the same thing to most people._ All I can say is that there are valid design decisions for seperating the two. That's why they created the shortcut - to make it easier to do what folks intend to do. When people do a pull, then they get what they want. That is the common nomenclature of git, pretty much everywhere. And to be clear, the man page for git-merge can't be any clearer: git-pull - Fetch from and merge with another repository or a local branch _Looking at the length of your comment...apparently a lot, for most people._ Which I would argue is because they are coming from SVN, and apply their experience with SVN to git. That's not really a problem for git, IMO, but more an issue for those who believe that SVN is the only way to go about doing source control. ------ swdunlop While I agree with the article in many of its finer points, the hyperbole ruins its effectiveness. For example, I don't find it frequently necessary to "log on to github and issue a pull request" to commit changes. Additionally, github != git, blaming one for the sins of the other just muddles things further. ------ salem Point 10 is not a fair comparison, since the svn example does not cover passing around patch files and trying to keep multiple svn repos in sync. How can this article complain about syntax and documentation, but leave out a discussion of submodules. As much as I like git, that's really the worst part. ------ tbatterii What I hate about git is the religious fervor surrounding it. It's a tool. And energy spent debating the good or bad of any tool could be better spent building something amazing. ------ kapuzineralex There's a lot of unfair or simply untrue comparisons in that post. ------ azat_co Interesting point of view but it please try to learn your tools better next time you write an article :) And try not be a hater, it only harms you and not doing any good. ------ jnazario thanks for a nice list. i also dislike git for many of the same reasons. i think it's crap based on those reasons, and i'm saddened it's taken off. ------ chromejs10 I like GIT. If the man pages were improved to be more human readable then I think a majority of all these "i hate git" articles will go away. ------ bitwize This is why the big boys still use Perforce. ------ briandear Another crybaby blog post by someone that wishes it were still 1997. If git syntax is that hard, then programming might not be the correct vocation. ------ BaseBand Back to SVN via email, and flash drives! I'm so glad my last day is Monday. ------ hasenj It would only take a week to properly learn git. Most people spend a lot more time to learn a programming language or an operating system. I consider git to be almost like a programming language. The information model is not complex, it's actually quite simple if you really understand it. * blob: roughly a file (without a name) * tree: roughly a dir (maps names to blobs and trees) * commit: tree + parent commit(s) + meta data (author, commit msg, etc). If you grok this core data model, a lot of things will make much more sense. <http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Internals-Git-Objects> I don't know if anyone shares my experience, but I actually found svn rather mysterious and difficult to understand. I never actually saw the point to it at all, so I never bothered using it (unless it was mandated by some authority). It's only when I understood git that I really understood what version control is supposed to be about. So, I think people who try to "dumb it down" by giving tutorials that ignore the data model and focus only on the usage are not doing anyone a favor. Git should be treated like a new programming language or a new operating system. Spend a few days reading (or watching youtube videos) about how it works and why it was designed this way. Yes, you really have to understand how it works. But it's precisely the fact that you _can_ do so, that make git the best version control system out there in my opinion. ~~~ crazygringo Taking a week to learn a computer utility seems insane to me, I think that's one of the problems. People just want some version control, they don't _want_ to learn a whole programming language to have to do it. Imagine if I had to spend a week learning how to configure my screensaver, set up hard drive backups, or install Dropbox? Forget about it. Now if git were only popular among super-power-hard-core programmers, then I don't think there would be any criticism. But it's the fact that it seems like pretty much everyone has switched to git now, because its advantages are fantastic, but it takes 100x longer to learn than any other tool I've ever used. ~~~ MBlume Oh come on. Your language, your editor, and your source control. Three things worth knowing backwards and forwards if you're going to call yourself a developer. Three things _easily_ worth spending a week grokking, if necessary. ~~~ aneth4 And then there's the thousands of libraries, debuggers, versions, deployment choices, design strategies, etc etc. Development is an endless path of learning, and git is barely learnable. And editors don't take a week to learn because you don't have to learn everything to use them. Even vi works quite well with just a few commands, and you will never NEED anything other than those, only optimize your usage. ~~~ chris_wot "git is barely learnable" - hardly! ~~~ aneth4 The fact that even experts admit they don't understand the array of options and implications for commands like reset and rebase would tend to support me here. And there is always dispute about the best way to do something as simple as back out a commit or clean large old files from a repository (very difficult with a large team). The series of incantations to do such things is always ridiculously obtuse, with non-intuitive flags and symbols. Sure the basics are learnable, and google can often reveal solutions (though rarely definitively), but I know no one with a comprehensive understanding of the majority of git fundamentals. ~~~ chris_wot I wouldn't be calling someone an expert if they don't understand what a rebase is. ~~~ retrogradeorbit "git reset is probably the most confusing command written by humans. I've been using Git for years, even wrote a book on it and I still get confused by what it is going to do at times." -- <http://gitref.org/basic/#reset>
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Why engineers don't like Twitter - sruffell http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/pop-blog/4199325/Engineers-dont-like-Twitter ====== rcfox Old people don't like Twitter, young people do. Surprise!
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RDF meets NoSQL - bensummers http://decentralyze.com/2010/03/09/rdf-meets-nosql/ ====== mark_l_watson That is a useful writeup. The Semantic Web as a technology has faced an uphill battle for acceptance but that is hopefully changing. BTW, here is a PDF link to my new SW book: <http://www.markwatson.com/opencontent/book_java.pdf> The book is just about done, so you can ignore the work in progress warning on the cover page. This is the Java/Clojure/Scala/JRuby edition. The Common Lisp edition will be delayed a while because I just accepted an AI gig that is going to require all of my focus. ~~~ mark_l_watson BTW, my book covers the use of Sesame and AllegroGraph version 4. AG 4 is not quite out yet so you will have to use Sesame for now to play with the example programs. ------ arto I also wrote some thoughts on this subject recently at: <http://blog.datagraph.org/2010/04/rdf-nosql-diff>
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A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Curves - mhb http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract ====== gus_massa The article is from 1993. Is this different from the usual graphical integration methods? Was this a interesting idea in 1993??
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Show HN: I made a tool that makes me faster listing AWS resources - jckuester https://github.com/jckuester/awsls ====== verdverm If you like code gen, check out [https://github.com/hofstadter- io/hof](https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof) There is something like this in the works, to make the clouds feel like Kubernetes, although in the case of cloud / TF, you don't need code gen at all, just cue and http ~~~ jckuester Interesting, thanks for the hint. Not sure if understand yet what you mean by "in the case of TF, you don't need code gen at all, just cue and http"... Can you explain a little bit further? ~~~ verdverm You can break a yaml like definition of your infra, like TF, into multiple "types" files, and packages. You can then combine them (like TF under the hood) but with much more sophistication and validation. Cue's main goal here is to verify what you have written is correct. You would then craft the body for API calls in Cue from your more abstract infra config, and then could use the scripting layer to make these requests. Granted, you won't have the state file, but that's a bad idea anyway. You'll have to add calls to see what's there. We are putting this kind of capability right in our tool so you can just do k8s like things where you use TF today. There are a few people around Cue already looking to skin TF or replace it, basically because Cue gives you these super powers for config, which is pretty much the majority of software.
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My 3 Essential Podcasts - danielrm26 https://danielmiessler.com/blog/3-essential-podcasts/ ====== xs Hey thanks for the list. Have you tried the Darknet Diaries podcast? Wondering what you think of it.
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Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way” - sahin-boydas https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/09/waymo-to-customers-completely-driverless-waymo-cars-are-on-the-way/ ====== Judgmentality This sounds familiar. Here's an article from 2 years ago saying the same thing: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self- drivi...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-driving- safety-driver-chandler-autonomous) Hopefully this time it's the real deal. I remain skeptical. ~~~ anoncareer0212 The difference here is that now the "public paying customers" and "full self- driving" customer groups are merged - so this means there's genuinely a paid full self-driving service launched as of today! A miracle ~~~ Judgmentality Calling this service public is misleading, especially since Waymo created the bifurcation between Waymo One (no NDA) and Early Riders (NDA). Both of these programs you have to apply for and be accepted, so neither is public. And Waymo has made no claim of merging these. The upcoming driverless rides Waymo refers to in this article could very well be for the Early Riders still under an NDA - which theoretically could already be happening based on their past announcements (although the abundance of cell phones strongly suggests this is not the case). This announcement is just a repeat of what they've said before. If they actually do it this time then that's great, but they haven't actually said anything new here. ~~~ tigershark Wait, what? Waymo does also some rides hailed via lyft, or are you saying that you have to apply also in lyft? If this is not a public service with paying customers then I don’t know one... [https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/way...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/waymo- starts-self-driving-pick-ups-for-lyft-riders/amp/) ~~~ Judgmentality I am unaware of anyone getting picked up in a self-driving car using Lyft (outside of Aptiv in Las Vegas and other testing that has nothing to do with Waymo). Although honestly I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong on this one, and there have been people that got picked up in a Waymo using Lyft, but a quick search on twitter and google shows up nothing (but I spent less than a minute searching just now and welcome being proven wrong). This just reinforces my point. Waymo can announce anything with vague terminology of things happening "soon" but we still don't have any verification of anything happening. ~~~ whyaduck Lyft has been dispatching Waymo self-driving vans (with safety drivers) in Chandler AZ for a while now. I've opted out of Waymo for my occasional rides with Lyft, so I can't say how frequently they show up. But I can say there are lots of the vans running in the service area. ~~~ xxxtentachyon Why did you opt out? ~~~ whyaduck All I can say is NDAs are a hell of a thing. ~~~ Judgmentality Wait, the Waymo Lyft drives - the ones that are supposedly public - are under NDA?! Well I guess that explains why I've never heard of it happening. ~~~ whyaduck Not that I know of. Waymo is still Waymo whether they're running rides on their own behalf, or under the Lyft name. Someone who's ridden Waymo in an early adopter program may make their decision on whether to ride Waymo under Lyft based on that experience. Get it? ------ harry8 How to predict: 1) Say what but don't say when. 2) Say when but don't say what. Never, ever, ever bet tempted to say something specific will happen in a bounded time range. Flying cars are on the way! That disease you hate, a cure is coming! Next year will be a big year for other breakthroughs not mentioned here. ~~~ p1necone This is the golden rule of software dev too - promise features or promise a release date, but _never_ both. ~~~ avip Be conservative in _what_ will be delivered, and liberal with _when_ it'll be delivered. ~~~ rightbyte Does 'a liberal' overestimate or underestimate the time needed here? ~~~ amyassin I think the liberty meant here is not estimating anything :) ------ just42 (throwaway account to protect friends at Waymo) data points of 2: 1\. took a ride, at one point a sudden violent sewering and breaking for no apparent reason - explanation from the backup driver - the truck in the next lane was too close. Then it couldn't take a left turn into the parking lot in front of Waymo HQ and was just stuck even though the maneuver was simplest to anyone. remote driver couldn't do it anything and backup driver had to do the 'normal driving'. 2: spoke to someone (again a waymo employee and her friend) just after the ride and the friend was visibly shaken and verbatim expression "worst ride of my life". This is all around the MV campus and in the last couple of months. So Waymo's claim seems way off unless they are talking about absolutely fixed paths, much like a public transit and maybe, just even then, a big maybe. ------ jonplackett I have very mixed feelings about autonomous cars. One side of me is so excited about the prospect and finds it all amazing and futuristic. I love reading about how Tesla and Waymo approach it differently. The other side of me is absolutely not ready to trust my life to a machine - even though I know I do that all the time in other ways in modern life. I think it will be people's emotional evaluation that will matter more than anything else and it will be a bumpy road to acceptance. Driverless cara will probably be safer statistically but they’ll simultaneously make errors a human wouldn’t, so some people are going to die in what will seem like really dumb ways. This will be hard to accept even though that already happens with human drivers. Probably because their mistakes will be easier to identify with and explain. ~~~ 2bitencryption every now and then I do something while driving that, IMO, requires "human cognition". Not just image recognition, obstacle avoidance, rule following, etc. Like, I'm cruising along at 45mph and a plastic bag is blown in front of my car. Yes, I see an obstacle and need to make a decision about what to do - but I do this as a human who _knows_ what a plastic bag is, and how it is far safer to drive right over it than slam on the brakes. I know a plastic bag is not, say, a Pomeranian. Another example: I'm driving, and from beyond my plane of vision, a basketball bounces onto the road up ahead. I can't see past a building, but I know I'm near a park where kids frequently play, and I know it's possible a kid comes running into the road to grab the ball. I proactively slow down. I guess you could say a leavel-5 autonomous car would see the ball and slow down anyway, but there's still that lack of cognition that concerns me. We like to think of driving as a purely rule-based game that is simple enough to model and train against. And I believe in 99% of situations, it is. But in that 1%... the plastic bags and all that... ~~~ jonplackett I think that sums it up really well. In those kind of edge cases like the basket ball, if an AI driver didn’t slow down and then killed a kid, we’d all be up in arms about It saying how obvious it was that a kid would run out, and we’d have stopped, and we’d be right. But at the same time that AI driver will have stopped in time when 10 other kids jumped out without any warning because it has much, much better reflexes. But it’ll be the first instance that will get all the airtime. ~~~ rubicon33 Nearly 1.25 million people die in road crashes each year. Think about that. Self driving cars aren't just a solution to nuisance of driving. They're a solution to one of the leading causes of DEATH and INJURY in the country. Sure there are going to be edge cases where we as humans will be able to point at the car and say "damnit, we could have prevented that"! But I sure hope when we do that, the car points right back at us and asks "And for the other 1.20 million lives I've saved this year? You would have killed them" ~~~ rayiner > Sure there are going to be edge cases where we as humans will be able to > point at the car and say "damnit, we could have prevented that"! This is a meaningless assertion unless you account for how often "edge cases" arise. If unpredictable pedestrians, unplanned road construction, etc., is an "edge case" the car basically won't work in DC or New York. ~~~ smt88 It doesn't need to work in every place to be useful or worthwhile. Sleepy truck drivers are a major safety issue by themselves, and highways are easier for SDCs to drive on. ------ colorincorrect I know this is a big task, but could someone give/link me an overview of the state of self-driving cars and the issues they currently face? I know its a hard problem but very bright minds have been doing this for a while, so I'd like to know what is the issue, since we've been told for a very long time that the technology is right on the horizon. ------ pjdemers This afternoon I was driving up Alma in Palo Alto, near the Embarcadero underpass. There was a Waymo test van behind me, and another two cars in front of me. My thought was: "look at me, actually driving my car, like a sucker". ~~~ masonic If you then proceeded to Castro and made a right, you can see the Waymos misread that intersection _every damn time_. I've also seen Waymos make panicked Lane changes near the JCC many times, _willing to come to a dead stop_ in the right lane and wait indefinitely for a break, even though it's an easy go-down-another-block-and-Uturn ------ persistent Waymo is so far ahead in this game. Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that sometimes works, and a pretty big body count. Uber has a dead pedestrian and a major lawsuit. Cruise has a lot of people on staff but virtually nothing to show for it. Lyft exists. Waymo is in production revenue service. ~~~ grecy > _Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that > behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that > sometimes works, and a pretty big body count_ I don't think you're being very accurate there. There are lots of videos of people commuting 50+ miles to and from work every day without touching anything while on the interstates, including interchanges. It's doing _a lot_ more than just lane keeping. ~~~ mdorazio I disagree. It’s completely fair. Handling basic tasks on nice freeways is exactly what adaptive cruise control + lane keeping is for. Last I checked, autopilot couldn’t even stop for a stop sign unless you count “shadow mode” claims. ~~~ xvector I have never seen another TACC implementation that doesn’t ping from side to side. Which cars have you drive with a superior cruise control implementation? ~~~ persistent Tesla will "ping" you straight into a concrete wall at full speed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z8v9he74po](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z8v9he74po) ~~~ shiftpgdn It's trying to center in an extremely large lane. An easy fix would be to not have a huge concrete wall jutting into the middle of the freeway without lane markers. I feel like people forget human drivers hit those same barriers with alarming frequency. ~~~ gundmc The lane markings looked pretty clear in this instance. That being said, Tesla's cruise control capabilities are best in class, but it's misleading marketing-speak to call it true self-driving. ------ gfodor So sounds like we'll get level 4 autonomy in 2020. Once that happens the discussion around the nature of the approach to level 5 (which is probably asymptotic) will be a welcome change vs today where people are questioning if we'll ever have a consumer successfully use an autonomous vehicle. ~~~ dev_dull the 80/20 principle says it's going to be a long, long time before level 5 autonomy is reached. That's 100% in all conditions. In fact, I would say it's more theory than attainable. There's a reason they're testing in Phoenix. It has almost no Inclement weather. Throw a little snow, mud, or sleet in there and it gets hairy fast. Level 2 is basically the 20% of effort in 80/20\. It's exponential effort from then on out. ~~~ panarky We shouldn't set a dramatically higher safety standard for autonomous drivers than human drivers. When autonomous drivers have the same or fewer injuries per billion miles driven as human drivers, then for all practical purposes it doesn't matter if it's level 4 or level 5. ~~~ ipython So it’s ok to have 1+ million dead per year? [0] If so why go through all this trouble to creat autonomous vehicles? I, for one, am glad this was not the prevailing attitude when commercial airliner regulatory bodies were set up. [0] [https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety- facts/](https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/) ~~~ triceratops Yes, even if autonomous vehicles are on average exactly as safe as human drivers, they're still worth the effort. Here are some reasons: 1\. They're cheaper. This sounds crude, until you realize that this makes things like buses and shared rides far more viable. Meaning millions of people have a better commute and collectively save many lifetimes worth of time. It can also mean less air pollution, due to less traffic congestion (this only applies if congestion pricing is done), which will also save lives. 2\. They can always get better over time. Humans can't. 3\. Fewer parking lots are needed, which makes cities far more pleasant to live in. 4\. Disabled, elderly people and children have better mobility, and aren't dependent on others to drive them everywhere. ~~~ majormajor > 1\. They're cheaper. This sounds crude, until you realize that this makes > things like buses and shared rides far more viable. Meaning millions of > people have a better commute and collectively save many lifetimes worth of > time. It can also mean less air pollution, due to less traffic congestion > (this only applies if congestion pricing is done), which will also save > lives. IMO autonomous vehicles are just going to further push public transit into something just for the poor. All the convenience and comfort and privacy of sitting in your own vehicle, but now you don't have to drive yourself! Why would you choose anything else? ~~~ anchpop Sure, but but buses would be cheaper to run if they didn't need a driver. My university runs a bus that you have to call and it drives directly to you and picks you up, I could imagine something like that being more common (for public transit) ~~~ masonic buses would be cheaper to run if they didn't need a driver But those drivers will be paid regardless, given the strength of public sector unions. So, no savings. ~~~ jodrellblank But the buses wouldn't need windscreens or wipers or chairs or steering wheels or pedals or payment/coin handling, and the drivers wouldn't need uniforms or eye tests or retraining on routes or overtime or time and a half for holidays. Bus companies won't have to insure the busses for human drivers. So, yes savings. Nyah on your "unions defending humans against exploitation are the worst thing ever" narrative. ------ mikelyons Just a reminder that they're on their way. We have no idea when they'll get here, but they just wanted to say that they haven't forgotten that we were promised driverless cars. Just to remind us in case we forgot. Just wanted to make sure that we don't forget about waymo! ------ stubish Driverless, but they didn't say autonomous (yet). I think this means the safety driver will be remote, teleoperating. It is the obvious next step, and if things go well they can start lowering the ratio of operator:car in the way that drone operations already do. ------ Causality1 Nowadays I hope it takes a very long time. As Elon Musk pointed out, once cars can independently generate income as autonomous taxis, there's no reason to sell them to the public at all. Self-driving cars isn't the death of personal driving because they'll be too convenient; it's the death of personal driving because we won't be able to buy a car at a reasonable margin over manufacturing costs. ~~~ esoterica Why would companies not sell autonomous cars if customers exist who are willing to pay a reasonable margin over manufacturing costs? The fact that autonomous taxis are viable doesn’t preclude personal car ownership. ~~~ Causality1 Because they would make far more money adding the car to their own fleet. Why sell a car for $40,000 when it could generate $300,000 in revenue over a decade? Tesla has already said they'll stop selling to the public after they have autonomous driving completely safe and working. ~~~ repsilat > _...when it could generate $300,000 in revenue over a decade?_ If markets are competitive the profits will be lower. If markets are not competitive (not many companies can make or license self-driving AI) the rest will sell cars with steering wheels. The variable that is _actually_ important is demand. If lots of people want their own car, or want to drive their car, the market will provide those things. If most people are content to rent, ownership might become an unusual luxury. ------ yourapostasy I wonder when rental car buses at airports will adopt autonomous driving. On the surface it might seem ideal because it is repeatedly the same route, but the density, diversity and loose rules of vehicular and pedestrian traffic would make it a very challenging environment for machine learning, and I speculate whether or not that might accelerate building the "dense urban environment" corpus. ------ hinkley "Driverless cars are on the way" is going to be the catchphrase of a dystopian horror movie at some point. I just don't know when. ~~~ beerandt But will they get here before fusion power? Which I hear is about 30 years out. ~~~ hinkley I'm still a little amazed that the AI hype train is still running. That's been the fusion power of CS for almost as long as fusion power has been 30 years out. ------ undefined3840 I want to see the terms of service agreement. Does anyone know if you can sue for wrongful injury or death? Or do you waive your rights away to Google? ------ choppaface Will they be the current cars, or cars with the new next-gen hardware that are substantially safer? The cars that end up driving could signal a lot to the industry. New lidar was spotted a few months ago and more recently on the Jaguar cars and the CEO said it’s an order of magnitude better: [https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2019/04/21/new- waymo-...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2019/04/21/new-waymo-lidar- spotted/) [https://medium.com/waymo/waymo-iaa- frankfurt-2019-b3cca36d84...](https://medium.com/waymo/waymo-iaa- frankfurt-2019-b3cca36d8479) One would imagine this early announcement comes in reaction to their recent “valuation” cut: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/waymo-valuation- cut-40percen...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/waymo-valuation- cut-40percent-by-morgan-stanley-to-105-billion.html) If Waymo starts driving without safety drivers en-masse, even on small fixed routes, it will signal certain takeover metrics have been hit. It will be interesting to see if Waymo uses existing cars (the ML and planners just got better) or if they use new hardware and signal a certain lidar improvement is necessary for achieving a viable takeover rate. The signal won’t be clear but should be there. And then it’s up to the rest of the industry to show how fast they can react to the change. ------ an4rchy Good to see this finally happening. I wonder how they're going to scale this out though -- AVs are still pretty expensive to build/operate (COGS/TeleOps/Maintenance etc) Haven't seen a recent study/article around cost/ROI (not sure if these have gone down significantly) -- any recommendations? ------ c3534l I'm starting to think driverless cars are this decade's big vaporware. ~~~ bgilroy26 What was last decade's big vqporware? ~~~ c3534l Ethanol fuel as a green alternative to gasoline, maybe. ------ mikerg87 This is cool. One thing that always bothers me me with these announcements, you never hear of them testing in the rain or fog in London or Boston in February or string winds in Kabaaa. ------ macspoofing If you don't put a launch date on it, it's not real. ------ baron816 I just need it to take me to the bar and back. Is that really so hard? ------ eli It’s gonna be a few years off for another ten years, at least ------ m3kw9 Hmm no mention of level 4 or 5. ~~~ jedberg Given that it is geo-fenced and they'll have staff nearby if not in the car (just not behind the wheel) I'm gonna say it's probably level 4. ------ Pxtl Relevant xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/678/](https://xkcd.com/678/) ------ seibelj I guess they are fundraising right now? Not sure why they would keep promoting something that won’t happen for a decade. ~~~ Gustomaximus 1) A decade? It's happening right now. 2) Check Alphabets/Googles bank balance. They have a few bucks they can invest for now.
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French constitutional council rejects law forcing platforms to delete content - csnover https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/19/french-constitutional-authority-rejects-law-forcing-online-platforms-to-delete-hate-speech-content/ ====== ThePowerOfFuet Cookie wall. No thanks.
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NASA's Planetary Science Division Funding and Number of Missions 2004 – 2020 - Amorymeltzer http://planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/charts/historical-levels-of-planetary-exploration-funding-fy2003-fy2019.html ====== Amorymeltzer Raw data: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AkGPD4pnAnuwdHE...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AkGPD4pnAnuwdHE1bVNRZ0ZFZmxVSTFlNTFQODIzTHc&gid=0)
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Show HN: An API to extract texts from images and PDF files - smougel http://www.stamplin.com ====== zdw What's the benefit to using this over `pdftotext` and/or `pdfimages | convert | tesseract`? ~~~ jingo The benefit is stamplin.com gets insight on what people are viewing and reading. They get to see what the user sees. They can compile a database and use or sell that information to be used for marketing purposes. Also, it's an "API" (looks more like a url poiting to a CGI program to me, but whatever). API's are "cool" and "fun", while running local programs that you have control over is old and boring and not the future of computing. ~~~ trez our API is quite new and we understand it doesn't give an outstanding value for everybody as it target easy of use for the moment but next release is going to add more advanced things. About us using your data, our privacy policy will clarify that. ------ taf2 [http://www.stamplin.com/api/](http://www.stamplin.com/api/) returns 403 when clicking on the API docs after confirming an account via email link ~~~ trez sorry, the correct url is [http://www.stamplin.com/api/docs/](http://www.stamplin.com/api/docs/) ------ angersock I come bearing gifts, if anyone would like to host some of this themselves. This follows the API documented by Stampin (minus the throttling errors)--it does not currently do the OCR, but as mentioned elsewhere by zdw you can probably get tesseract to get you like 80% of the way there. If you wanted to use that, you'd likely just replace the hacky `pdftotext` callout with your preferred toolchain. You'll need Ruby, Sinatra, and the Xpdf tools, I believe. Dual-licensed under the AGPL, BSD, and WTFPL licenses. idklol. The code: require 'sinatra' require 'json' use Rack::Logger post '/extracttext' do begin status 204 and return unless params["file"] != nil type = params["type"] || "text" lang = params["lang"] || "en" tmpfilename = params["file"][:tempfile].path `pdftotext #{tmpfilename}` File.delete(tmpfilename) convfile = File.open("#{tmpfilename}.txt","r") lines = convfile.read.split("\n") convfile.close File.delete(convfile.path) content_type "application/json" {"text"=>lines}.to_json rescue status 500 and return end end EDIT: For God's sake run this in a jail and only on an internal network! ------ rpedela I like the concept and it is a good start. Pulling text from PDFs is especially painful. I think the output format needs improvement. It is just a large array of strings. It seems like the strings are sometimes a single line, and sometimes not. My particular use case is extracting raw data from a PDF. I would like to see more structure to the output. For example, knowing where new lines, tabs, etc are located would be very helpful for parsing raw data. Here is the PDF I used to test: [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/211934/sanctionsconlist.pdf) Is there a technical reason for the 1-2MB limit or is it arbitrary? ~~~ trez Thanks for your comment! That's something we can provide pretty easily and we would try to provide that in our next release. If you want us to help you with your specific problem, please send us an email at [email protected]. The limit has been set to prevent our server from crashing as we do not have, for the moment, the financial capability to support a massive server farm. Again, if this limit prevent you from using our API, we might move the limit up if you ask it by email. ------ mappum The OCR is really useless. I tested it with some reddit "advice animal" memes (because there is a need for transcriptions). You would think that text is pretty simple and easy, but the output I got was like: /\n\nnmrs wn\ufb02qyi mm mm\nTlIIEI\ufb02|\ufb02llllM\u2018l co ~~~ trez Sorry that didn't work properly for you. We are working on improving our OCR results quality. Could you please send us at [email protected] the file you used to get this useless result? ------ gkoberger The upgrade button doesn't work, and nobody is going to hover long enough to see the "Not Available Yet" title. And the current 10 requests isn't even enough to test with. I'm excited to try this.. so figure out a way to take my money soon. ------ gnosis This looks nice except for having to depend on your servers as a middle man. Any chance you could release the code as Free or open source so that its users can use it standalone on their own machines? ~~~ trez That's not planned at the moment but if we wouldn't find a way to monetize it, we would do it for sure. ------ RivieraKid Why would someone want to use an API instead of a library? ~~~ trez some langages might not have an appropriate library, some might want to not have heavy processes on their device (mobiles). We also think that's easier to use as there is nothing to install. That mainly depends on your case. ~~~ RivieraKid I agree that there might situations where it can be useful, but: 1) Mobiles have pretty good CPUs. I think uploading and waiting for response would be slower and less reliable. 2) If the mobile user doesn't have an internet connection, the app won't work. 3) As a developer, I would be dependant on an external service, that could stop working someday. ------ rpedela Can I assume API keys are on the roadmap? I don't particularly like using my username and password. ~~~ trez Yes, we'd like to increase security on each releases. It should be available in one of the next release. ~~~ rpedela Great! ------ antrover Nice. Are you using the Tessaract OCR lib at the core of the extraction? ~~~ trez yes we do ------ it_learnses Any custom requests? Let us *know. ~~~ trez thx, I am gonna fix that ~~~ trez fixed ------ smougel Any Feedback Welcomed ~~~ sebg Looks good - does it do data tables? That's a big issue and something I've heard about (run into) many times... ~~~ trez Thanks for your comment! We would really appreciate if you could explain us in more details problems you faced. I am sending you an email if that's ok for you to discuss that. ~~~ sebg responded to your email. good luck.
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So you're thinking about investing in Bitcoin? Don't - charlysl https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/15/should-i-invest-bitcoin-dont-mr-money-moustache ====== freddealmeida Almost everything in this article is wrong. This is someone that does not understand bitcoin or crytpo. In many ways, the market is overvalued but not in every way. There is too much here to try to clear but its clear that mr. mustache has no real understanding of this. This is not tulips or finger nail clippings. this is something new. something wonderful. but yes with its own problems. ~~~ sharemywin for one tulips and nail clippings are psychical and can't be transferred around the world near instantly. ------ ddnb "Even if you win money through dumb luck, you have lost time and energy, which means you have lost." Winning money while losing time and energy is what happens to most when working a job, should we just give up on working as well then? The story about the cancerpill also isn't comparable to cryptocurrencies. "You could make the same argument about my fingernail clippings: they may have no intrinsic value, but they’re in limited supply so let’s use them as the new world currency." If everybody can agree on this then you have a new currency, no? Isn't that the same as our current currency? We just agree on pieces of paper to represent a monetary value. ~~~ gnfurlong How do you get everyone to agree when the barrier to creating yet another crypto currency is so exceptionally low? ~~~ freddealmeida Maybe explain why you think its low? I think it may actually be very hard to build one of any value. 90% of crypto is worthless. But so is 90% of fiat currency. Unless you think your Haitian currency is worth something. ~~~ sharemywin creating a crypto currency easy. creating one that lots of people will trade and use quite another. Then even if you were to get a lot of paper wealth as a founder, sell large quantities of it without disrupting the market price. ------ wozz Who the hell is writing these articles? The author sounds like the kind of person who loves his 20 second reads on Slate. I didn't expect much better coming from The Guardian. It makes me wonder, are they just pushing out these articles to force weak hands to fold or never enter in the first place? So you're thinking about writing an article about Bitcoin? Don't ------ sharemywin You could make the case for momentum investing as well. The underlying asset has value but not at the premium you paid for it. or any stock that doesn't pay a dividend it has no intrinsic cash flow. ------ sharemywin To me one of the neat early ICO projects is shared wifi access. outside of the coin that can only be traded space. which is were the true potential of crypto currencies can shine. ------ kevinios (...) we need to separate the usefulness of the underlying technology called “blockchain” from the mania of people turning bitcoin into a big dumb lottery. Blockchain is simply a nifty software invention (which is open-source and free for anyone to use), whereas bitcoin is just one well-known way to use it. (...) Will just comment on this sentence: careful here, blockchain is just one of the technologies that Bitcoin uses. But there are other important elements to Bitcoin, such as the concept of decentralization. A company or a bank can use blockchain in a centralized manner. This video by Andreas Antonopoulos (bitcoin advocate) helps make the distinction: Bitcoin vs. blockchain ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHbtp7pOftU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHbtp7pOftU)). From the video description: "Blockchains are only one of the foundational technologies. In an attempt to co-opt the interest around Bitcoin, companies and governments are trying to circle the square by creating centralised and permissioned versions while entirely missing the point: decentralization." PS: That being said, Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency using blockchain and decentralization.
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Nobody really knows why the London Tube is getting less and less crowded - ljf http://www.wired.co.uk/article/tfl-finances-transport-for-london-deficit-passenger-numbers ====== gbtw There might be a few reasons. The population is aging. People less opportunity to work for wage that can support the price especially if its anything like the Netherlands, paying to much to go from a place you don't want to be to a place you don't want to be either sucks. Even with traffic jams public transport can't compete unless you like torture. Might just be the people who were key riders just aged or fell out of income bracket that can use it. I ride a motorcycle year round instead of using 2 different public transport vehicles and walking that makes my journey 55 minutes instead 20 at a good time of day. Costs me nearly nothing in fuel, no parking cost while the public transport is up to 10 euros a day. ~~~ ljf Indeed when we lived in London I could earlier walk, then get a bus and then get a tube and that would take about an hour to get to work. Or I could cycle for 35.mins sure I had to have a shower when I got there, but I would anyway at home and was great to get some air before work and clear my head. Even if it was fume filled air. ------ ljf Added London to the title to make clearer for international reader.
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Getting started with Queue Classic - fredsters_s https://blog.rainforestqa.com/2014-04-17-getting-started-with-queue-classic/ ====== ukd1 We've been loving Queue Classic; we switched from Resque because of the awesomeness of only enqueuing jobs after a transaction is committed! If you're wondering about QC's origin, it was developed by Ryan Smith and used a lot at Heroku.
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4 Things Startups should Learn from Moneyball - skelneko http://idea-stack.blogspot.com/2012/02/5-things-startups-should-learn-from.html ====== siberianjelly i watched the firm once and have similar thoughts regarding the context. it's an excellent movie, and great post in pointing these out! ~~~ skelneko thanks glad that someone is enjoying it. :)
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iOS7 marks the best time to get started in app development - mikeyanderson https://www.codefellows.org/blogs/5-reasons-ios7-marks-the-best-time-to-get-started-in-app-development ====== RealCasually I would assert this is the _worst_ time in history to get started in app development. I have been building apps since 2008, and things have been going downhill for indie developers. Back in 2008, many large companies didn't understand the space, and indie devs were able to carve out very lucrative niches. Now, with the abundance of simple toolsets, tutorials and classes, there is an app for seemingly everything. Worse still is the price for apps has been pushed down to effectively $0. Without creative marketing or a sizable marketing budget, creating an app in today's market is brutally challenging. Sure, you can hack up a quick utility now, but the chance it pays your rent for a month is approaching zero, quickly. ~~~ mikeyanderson If you're experienced I'll bet you could get a great job at a dozen companies. ------ maxjg Worth noting that Letterpress is _not_ implemented in UIKit, it's pure OpenGL ([http://www.imore.com/loren-brichter-talks-opengl-tweetie- let...](http://www.imore.com/loren-brichter-talks-opengl-tweetie-letterpress- and-future-interface)). ~~~ meghagulati Will this make easier to make games like Letterpress? ~~~ hijk It sounds like UIKit Dynamics will make things like flicking tiles around a lot easier to implement, without creating a physics engine from scratch... And UIKit is generally more friendly to flat designs... And the whole game engine thing is built in now. But the real value of the best games comes from game-play dynamics, and not just how well the app simulates physics. Hopefully these changes in iOS will allow game-builders to focus more on the things that really matter, rather than redoing the work every game needs to do. ------ crazygringo Who on earth puts the body text in 25px?!?! I've been noticing a lot of blog fonts getting annoyingly bigger, where I keep having to zoom-out a couple of times in my browser for good legibility, but this is just flat-out INSANE. ~~~ mikeyanderson What size monitor do you have? I've written about big type on blogs here: [http://mikeyanderson.com/optimal_characters_per_line](http://mikeyanderson.com/optimal_characters_per_line) ~~~ aes Here's a data point for you: For me, the text on that article felt way too big when viewed in a full screen browser on a 1280x800 display. Frankly, it's about as bad as if the font-size were 12px or 13px. Resizing the browser window to only take half of the screen width makes it better on my eyes (it appears to be 17px). Still, after that, I felt the need to go to developer console and change line-height to 1.4. I chuckled a bit when, after these adjustments, I arrived at the sentence: > The fact you’ve read to this paragraph is proof that there is something to > my argument. I'm on a 13" Macbook Pro, and lying on a couch, so my viewing distance may be a bit closer than if I were sitting on a desk. I'm 33 years old, with relatively ok eyesight (no glasses), and totally buy your other arguments (I'm a fan of Bringhurst myself). It's just that anything more than 18px on a laptop display just feels too big. ------ mikeyanderson Any other reasons you can add? ~~~ AdrianRossouw i think there might be a small case for the more aesthetically inclined people being in the market for replacement apps that are more in-line with the new IOS design language. this MIGHT lead to opportunities for a very well written new app in a currently well populated niche to gain an advantage over existing entrants. Provided the competitors don't release a newer re-designed version post-haste. ------ devanti probably true on the development side. but on the business side, there are just so many apps popping out left and right for every niche market you can think of. ~~~ hijk ...which means everyone agrees it's a good time to be making apps? ------ dennycd iOS 7 SDK stuff is still under developer preview NDA, shouldn't be discussed in the light i think....
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Why I like Vim so much [video] - LightMachine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6omymj1JZI&feature=youtu.be ====== podiki While I don't want to start a debate over VIM versus Emacs (I think they can both be used very effectively once learned), I can't help but share a video [1] on Emacs that made me go "wow!" (The video is somewhat similar, but uses multiple-cursors to do editing all at once, while also recording a macro to repeat it.) I think the real point for Vim or Emacs is that a powerful text editor, combined with the ability to extend it, is an extremely powerful tool. [1] [http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html](http://emacsrocks.com/e13.html) ~~~ hackuser That video is great. The multiple cursors GUI is a brilliant way to visualize a repetitive operation (i.e., one that often would be recorded and executed by macro). I was going to ask if anyone else implements it, but I thought I'd search first. Does anyone know more about it? Its origins? More functionality? * Vim [https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple- cursors](https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors) * Atom (I'm not sure if it's the same functionality) [https://atom.io/packages/multi-cursor](https://atom.io/packages/multi-cursor) [https://www.lynda.com/Web-Development- tutorials/Selections-m...](https://www.lynda.com/Web-Development- tutorials/Selections-multiple-cursors/468147/486974-4.html) * Sublime [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14963775/multiple- cursor...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14963775/multiple-cursors-in- sublime-text-2-windows) EDIT: Well it seems like Sublime has had this feature since at least 2012. I suppose I should have considered text editors besides Vim, and I might have known sooner. I'll leave this post in case there are others as narrow-minded as I am ... ~~~ chillee Sublime Text was actually the text editor that innovated this functionality. If you look at the github for the vim plugin, they clearly say "True Sublime Text style multiple selections for Vim". Although I've stopped using sublime text since, sublime text really drove forward the gui text editor market. ~~~ johncoltrane No. JEdit had that feature long before Sublime Text. ~~~ chillee You seem to be right. I always though Sublime Text introduced it (lots of people seem to believe this: [https://medium.com/@schtoeffel/you-don-t-need- more-than-one-...](https://medium.com/@schtoeffel/you-don-t-need-more-than- one-cursor-in-vim-2c44117d51db)), but sublime text introduced multiple cursors with its release date in 2008, while JEdit appears to have had multiple cursors at least since 2003? ------ hasenj After years of using vim, I switched to visual studio code because it feels like a plain text editor but has all the features of IDEs that matter to me: intellisence. ~~~ nlawalker In my years of pretty much working only in Visual Studio/C#, I've occasionally poked around in vim for a few things and always immediately turned back. It was just _weird_. I didn't see the benefit of giving up all of the features and familiarity. Recently, I've found occasion to work in other languages, and after dabbling in vim for a little while, I switched to VS Code. After gaining a little bit of enlightenment about what a comfortable developer workflow looks and feels like outside of the C# ecosystem, I've had three key insights: \- I actually appreciate the transparency and flexibility of delegating so many tasks to command line tools that can be run via scripts and task runners. Thing still aren't quite as discoverable as they are in VS, but I have enough general dev experience that I know what to Google for. \- I still don't care for vim. Maybe someday, when I want to invest time in becoming a keyboard Jedi. \- Most importantly: it turns out the only feature I really, _really_ missed leaving Visual Studio was IntelliSense. Not just semi-intelligent word completion, but real IntelliSense, with inline documentation, snippets and parameter info. I don't know why anyone who has ever taken advantage of it would go without it if given the option - it is a bicycle for the programmer's mind at every skill level, from early discovery of a language's syntax and standard libraries to extreme proficiency. ~~~ WillPostForFood When you brought up the bicycle metaphor, the first thing that came to mind was training wheels. Training wheels aren't bad when you start, but training wheels quickly get in the way of really mastering riding a bike. ~~~ nlawalker I've heard this before, and I've also seen IntelliSense labelled as a crutch. I don't understand this - how does IntelliSense prevent mastery of a language? Does it make a difference if someone's mastery of a language involves them using IntelliSense? ------ grogenaut It'd be great if he actually explained any of that. One of the problems I've had with vim and emacs is the average user is so far into it they forget all of the base stuff that new users have issues with, so most guides skip all of that. It's gotten better with both of them with the package managers. However because they're so flexible I find that most users customize the key bindings in one way or another. And so when they show off how to do things it doesn't translate as all of the keys are different and I not only have to map the new feature of the new editor I have to also go through a key translation map. It is a very high barrier to entry. Same thing goes with all of the plugins people install. Emacs and vim are so far from stock on most people's machines it's impossible for me to learn by following. I took a emacs class at a very good tech conference and I was 1 minute late and missed the key bindings changes the instructor had made as the first step. I was unable to follow anything for the next 30 minutes and walked out and got my money back. (This is much more an issue with the instructor than the editor). I do like both of them and try and learn them every few years but I also try and be flexible across as many editors as I can be so I can help as many of my junior engineers out as possible. But jumping on someone's vim or emacs is like switching to dvorak. It's also pretty toxic for pairing unless everyone has agreed on setup. ------ teddyh And if you learn Emacs instead, you can skip the VIM stage completely. ~~~ pmoriarty It's better to learn both, to have more tools in your toolbox and use the right tool for the job. Both emacs and vim have their strengths and weaknesses, and it's great to have the option to use either when you need it. ~~~ podiki Or you can use things like evil [1] to have your vi-style modal editing and eat your Emacs cake too. [1] [https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil](https://github.com/emacs-evil/evil) ~~~ pmoriarty That's mostly what I use, but there are still times that I use vim because even emacs with evil doesn't do what I need (or do it easily, or as well). ------ sshine I used vi/vim for 15 years, and still do when changing configuration locally and remotely, before learning emacs for university work. At work I use Visual Studio, and for personal scribbling I use Sublime Text. I never understood the editor wars. ~~~ Torwald editor wars are like snowball fights. it only hurts if you take the wrong things too serious. ------ helthanatos Considering I go between Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Android Studio, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be using VIM or Emacs. Just a Windows centric person. ~~~ c0achmcguirk Funny, I use Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code a lot. The first extensions I install are VsVim for Visual Studio and Vim in Code. After being productive in Vim, I can't go back to using the arrow keys and the mouse. It feels like I lost a hand. ~~~ joshjje Admittedly im not a hardcore vim/ _nix user, but I am pretty proficient in_ nix and CLIs in general. Are you saying you dont use the arrow keys? :D ~~~ c0achmcguirk Ha! Sometimes. But getting around in the editor is so easy with the Vim keys that the arrow keys seem archaic. But I still push the arrow keys from time to time, you know, to make sure they still work. ~~~ joshjje Lol, it was half joke im sure you gathered. There isnt really much of a possible shortcut to doing "move the cursor 1 character to the left". ~~~ pritambaral The optimization isn't in "move the cursor 1 character to the left", it's in "move the cursor 1 character to the left _without moving your arm_ ". ------ JackMorgan One of my favorite features of Vim is the built-in history of copy/pastes with history registers. You can learn about them here: [https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim- exercises/blob...](https://github.com/steveshogren/10-minute-vim- exercises/blob/master/book_sample_history_registers.md) ------ diegoprzl I would say that an important number never go back from the keybindings/modal editing. I use them everywhere I can, from Chromium to Emacs. ------ IE6 I use IDEs when it makes sense but do often times find myself wishing their text editor behaved like VIM. ~~~ beached_whale There are plugins for many to add a vim mode. At least for Intelij based ones(Pycharm, IntelliJ, Clion) and Visual Studio ~~~ jcrben [https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim](https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim) gives you neovim inside Sublime Text, altho I haven't tried it. I couldn't stand IdeaVim, the one for the Jetbrains IntelliJ platform - felt very buggy. Such as when you open a modal and it remains in Normal mode so you can't enter text. Currently using [https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim](https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim) when using VSCode which is better but still got some rough edges. Despite a fair bit of use and study - mostly using neovim - I feel that I haven't got as much from vim as I'd expected or hoped. Switching from Normal to Insert mode - even when you get good at the one-time Normal mode commands - doesn't always elegant. There's all sorts of configurations and plugins that try to plug the gaps, but it's such a huge effort to assemble them all. For example, just installed [https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple- cursors](https://github.com/terryma/vim-multiple-cursors) today to attempt get the elegant multiple selection of modern text editors. ~~~ chillee I've been contributing to VSCodeVim quite a bit recently, so I'd love to hear if you have any suggestions for us to improve on. ------ Torwald I agree with the video: it feels amazing. That's what it is about. I can only speak as an ex-Emacs user, never used VIM, but I guess with vi-style editors the feeling is even more intense. I think this is a real valueable thing, this feeling. I wouldn't have to justify using one of those editors with any of the usual reasonings that get pulled by the adherents of these editors. The feeling and it's side effects are awesome enough. Only reason I use another editor which doesn't suck instead is that I value "macness" even more. ------ kstenerud I used vi for years when I needed to edit things or write code on remote machines. And every time I was able to work locally, I'd use an IDE and breathe a sigh of relief. It all depends on your style of development, and mine most definitely is NOT conducive to vi (or emacs). ------ throwaway7645 Not a power user, but I've used vim for a few years in linux and really like it. It blows my mind how inefficient it is to just open a file in windows, edit it, and save it just using CMD without downloading gvim. ~~~ mynameishere notepad [filename] type stuff ctrl+s Yeah, notepad isn't good, but it fits your specifications. ~~~ throwaway7645 The word of what I said technically, but not the spirit. Yes, I've done that before, but it stinks. Notepad is just far too limited for anything outside the absolute basics. Heck, I'd be happy if Windows even had Nano included. I know Win10 has some kind of native bash support, but most of my company still runs Win7 locally and will for some time. ------ jstewartmobile My biggest complaint about Vim is that I can't use the same navigational keybindings in every other program I deal with. I'll be surfing the web, type _gg_ , then pause for a second after that doesn't work. ~~~ camel_Snake [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en) What I use. ~~~ mercer There's also cVim. I don't know if either one is better, but mostly I can't believe I've been able to browse without vim keybindings for so long! ------ Arkaad What about the learning curve, though? ~~~ j605 I would say don't install plugins when you start using vim. Only install them if you cannot find something in the docs to do it easily. I found that it makes for a good learning experience after I uninstalled all the random plugins I had. As far as learning curve, do vimtutor but use the arrow keys. They don't use arrow keys because the computer didn't have one then. It doesn't make sense not to use it now.
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Italy Has Broken Up a Multi-Million-Dollar Olive Oil Scheme - clumsysmurf http://munchies.vice.com/articles/italy-just-broke-up-a-multi-million-dollar-olive-oil-scheme ====== johansch So only 10k other similar schemes to go, then? Italy is corrupt from the bottom up. :/
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Ask HN: Launching a new site next week, what do you suggest to promote it? - iuguy Hi,<p>I'm launching a site this Tuesday and was wondering if there was anyone from the HN crowd who'd like to share their experiences and advice. I followed some of the advice on the balsamiq blog (http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=198). My projected ramp up is as follows:<p>1. Set up a beta test with about 30 users. This has started to die off a little so I'm going to try to get users motivated with number 3. 2. Contacted bloggers in the niche I'm targeting (Information Security) and the people hosting the platform I'm using to promote the site on launch. 3. Set up a competition for beta testers with £100 for the first to reach 100 posts/comments.<p>Is there anything else others would recommend? Have any HN users had any similar experiences, if so what would you do? ====== emmett Just launch. Don't promote at first, except to those 30 users. When you stop getting useful complaints from the 30, start expanding it. Eventually you'll have to think about promotion, but not yet. ~~~ iuguy That's an interesting approach, similar to the soft/hollywood launch discussion earlier (sorry can't find the link). Have you got any examples of startups that have launched successfully in this manner? ~~~ emmett Google comes to mind. The traffic you get from bloggers/early adopters is rarely useful anyway, unless your service is particularly targeted at them. Before you spend resources on marketing, make sure you have your product where you want it. Unless you have a vast budget, the only way to do that is iteratively. ------ ScottWhigham * Start running AdWords even if for no other reason to start learning how to run it successfully 2-4 months from now (there is a learning curve) * Set up a Google Sitemap. * Crete your blog, post useful content, and get it indexed * Make great products
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I've improved myself hard for 10 years and feel lonely now – what should I do? - garlic-fiction Ten years ago, i was very shy, naive and could not focus on a thing for more than 10 minutes. Somehow i got annoyed by being a looser and started to improve my self as fast as possible. i have read lots of books about efficiency, health, intelligence and life. Spent a lot time in the gym and took care about my nutrition. Now, i have a decent salary, a beautiful wife and probably everything that someone would describe as a pretty nice life. I can focus for 2 hours without a problem, burn 1000 calories in the gym within an hour and my life is pretty much optimized in terms of efficiency.<p>When i compare myself to what i was 10 year ago, i am pretty much ashamed of how much i was behind. And i wish that everyone could have such an improvement. If i could choose between 10 million dollars but being how i was 10 years ago and staying how i am today, i would always choose the version of today without a thought.<p>The problem that i have now, is that i get annoyed by all the inefficiencies others have. And when i try to help someone to get more efficient, i always see that they are too lazy to sacrifice a little of their comfort zone. Even my wife is lazy. She witnesses day by day how easily i go through life and how little issues i have. But she is not willing to improve or change herself much. I guess they are satisfied with their plateau. Most of my friends are nice and funny, but i can not have much interesting discussions with them. Event with the ones that hold PhD&#x27;s.<p>Does anyone has a similar experience? And what did you do to not have the feeling that meeting friends or going to a party is a waste of time? ====== SavageBeast Credit to you for asking a very original question. I don't know anymore than I just read mind you but consider taking up a physical hobby of some sort. Preferably the kind that makes you feel like a little kid inside. Biking, rock climbing, martial arts etc (whatever it is for you). There is a thing we forget to do when we become successful, busy grown-ups and its called Play. And whatever you do, do not measure your time or progress in any way when you're playing. For me at least, the impact of truly having a great time at something all by myself at least once a week makes me a far more intersting person. Also worthy of mention, going to parties is a total waste of time - and thats the point. Unstructured social time with a drink in the hand etc. Tell a few stories, have a few laughs and take a little play time. ------ liobio1 I think you still need to improve and stop being annoyed by inefficiencies others have. You expect much from the people and this makes you unhappy. I also though that spending time with people that do not bring direct value is not very efficient, but now I would say that best relationships are with people that are independent and do not want to get some value from you and are honest/happy where they are now. Make a choice to be happy no matter if friends don't meet your expectations. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0kQTk6FJgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0kQTk6FJgs) ------ barbe If you are as intelligent as you say you are, volunteer to work for a group you can help with your skills. ~~~ garlic-fiction I would describe myself rather as efficient than intelligent. Because i also make lots of mistakes and struggle sometimes with easy things. The question is, aren't there already enough blogs and services out there that help you to improve yourself? All i can add is that it works and it is true that when you constantly work on yourself, you have a much easier life. 95% of the people i talk to only change themselves when there is no other way around it. Unless someone can bring up the intrinsic motivation to change him-/herself, it is hard to convince them. Probably an important reason is also, most people do not want to see the truth. This would mean they constantly observe their mistakes and realize that they are not as good as they thought. ------ testerofjava Can you go more in detail how you improved your self? ~~~ garlic-fiction I just see everything as a challenge to get better. How can i fill the dish washer differently to get a better result? How can i schedule my day to get everything done? How can i refill my energy as fast as possible? How can i best memorize things that i use daily (for example my credit card number)? In short, your brain is a muscle. If you train it every day, it gets better and better. Like doing push ups every day. First it is hard, but it gets easier and you can do more and more. After a while you are able to absorb and process much more details. For example when you talk to another person you not only hear the words, you also start to notice the facial expressions and how the voice changes. Also your brain automatically processes more and more if you do not distract it. The way i see it is, we are a bag of experiences. The more experiences we make, the more we can link and adapt. Therefore, reading lots of books certainly helps much. Because you get lots of new ideas that you can try out and experiment with. The key is to question everything. I not only read it but also experiment with the new knowledge and see for myself what works best. ------ barbe Volunteer for a group you can help with your skills. ------ sammaeliam You still haven't learned to spell "loser", and you have yet to learn patience. You've still got a long way to go. ~~~ garlic-fiction I am fully aware that I still have lots of room for improvement. I realise that every December when I reflect on myself and see how much I have improved throughout the year. To avoid annoying you too much, I will now use a spell checker, since English is not my mother tongue. But enough about me. It looks like you are going through a rough time right now. Do you want to talk about it?
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33 Unbelievable Places To Visit Before You Die - xtraclass http://distractify.com/culture/32-surreal-places-that-actually-exist-on-earth-i-cant-believe-this-isnt-photoshopped/ ====== scope missed one: Dallol, Ethiopia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallol,_Ethiopia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallol,_Ethiopia) [http://landscape- photos.org/modules/photoblogmodule/content/...](http://landscape- photos.org/modules/photoblogmodule/content/images/photos/1301.jpg) ------ jmpe A lot of these places will hopefully not become tourist attractions, they exist because of - not despite of - lack of human activity.
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When Persuasion Turns Deadly - douche http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147247313346/when-persuasion-turns-deadly#_=_ ====== pstuart > But the police shootings and the recent uptick in domestic racial violence > are mostly Clinton’s doings to win the election. What. The. Fuck. ??? ~~~ themartorana I love Dilbert. Then this. Feels like that time I stumbled upon Orson Scott Card's blog. ~~~ sushid I grew up reading and rereading his books in middle school. What does Orson Scott Card write about in his blogs that's so distasteful? ~~~ yolesaber [https://www.salon.com/2013/05/07/sci_fi_icon_orson_scott_car...](https://www.salon.com/2013/05/07/sci_fi_icon_orson_scott_card_hates_fan_fiction_the_homosexual_agenda_partner/) He wrote some pretty hateful thing about queer people and gay marriage in general. But I think the worst was this, which wasn't on his blog (in the same vein, tho): > In 2008, Card published his most controversial anti-gay screed yet, in the > Mormon Times, where he argued that gay marriage “marks the end of democracy > in America,” that homosexuality was a “tragic genetic mixup,” and that > allowing courts to redefine marriage was a slippery slope towards total > homosexual political rule and the classifying of anyone who disagreed as > “mentally ill" ------ yolesaber I'm no fan of Clinton but the way people frame inane conspiracies around her is astounding. They paint her as somehow everywhere and nefarious yet at the same time totally inept and unfit to lead this country. ~~~ PhantomGremlin _the way people frame inane conspiracies around her is astounding_ She herself sees plenty of conspiracies around her. Here's her direct quote[1]: _" This is — the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."_ [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right- wing_conspiracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vast_right-wing_conspiracy) ------ glimps9 > (Trump has never mentioned race in a negative way) This is my absolute favorite casual-oh-by-the-way-in-parentheses-at-the-end- of-a-paragraph statement. Ever. ~~~ lukas099 Has he mentioned race in a negative way? I don't remember him doing so. ~~~ drewrv He has retweeted white supremacist propaganda on numerous occasions. [http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/45291_We_Found_Where...](http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/45291_We_Found_Where_Donald_Trumps_Black_Crimes_Graphic_Came_From) [http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2016/jul/05/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/article/2016/jul/05/donald-trumps-star-david-tweet-recap/) ------ xrikt So he endorses clinton to stop getting harassed. Then he posts afterward that he only did it to stop getting harassed while simultaneously promoting trump. I'm sure that'll work out well for him. ~~~ drewrv He's pretty open about how he's into studying the art of "persuasion" and I think this is one of the dumb tricks. By pretending to be threatened by Clinton supporters it makes her and her supporters look bad, or at least as bad as trump supporters. ------ perseusprime11 He is saying Clinton will win in one paragraph and then he is saying Trump will win in a landslide in another paragraph. Which one is it? I read some other blog posts of this guy and now I am losing respect for the guy who came up with Dilbert. ~~~ PhantomGremlin _Which one is it?_ Bear with me on this one ... I loved the movie Pulp Fiction. In it, Jules and Vincent are stone cold killers. They do their job with cool nonchalance. But when something goes wrong they fall apart; they can't cope with changed circumstances. They're utterly helpless until Winston Wolfe rescues them. In summary, the domain over which they can be considered "experts" is very limited. Another example is Charles Barkley, a great basketball player of the not-too- distant past. When someone questioned him about his off-court behavior, he said: _" I'm not a role model... Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids."_ Same with Scott Adams. I like him as a cynical observer of the contemporary American workplace. As for who he thinks will win the election, I couldn't care less. And I surely don't won't let him influence who I vote for. You can enjoy Dilbert without knowing anything about Scott Adams. ~~~ perseusprime11 Good explanation but still can't get him out of my head Everytime I look at Dilbert. ------ JohnMunsch This isn't funny, this looks like mental illness. He needs some help. ------ Mikhail_Edoshin Just remember: The "other side" is not dumb [1][2] [1] [https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not- dumb-26...](https://medium.com/@SeanBlanda/the-other-side-is-not- dumb-2670c1294063) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10872926) ------ ljw1001 Just, sad. There's nothing the pointy-haired boss could do to top Scott Adams in real life. ------ WaltPurvis Somebody has hacked Scott Adams' account (and by "account" I mean brain). ~~~ GFK_of_xmaspast I guess those v-necked sweaters finally got to him. ------ burnitdown We need a reboot.
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Attorneys say Elizabeth Holmes isn’t paying them - ilamont https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/03/theranos-disgraced-founder-elizabeth-holmes-cant-pay-lawyers-lawyers-claim/ ====== hkmurakami "Holmes — who dropped out of Stanford University at 19 to found Theranos — and Balwani face maximum penalties of 20 years in prison and a $2.75 million fine, plus possible restitution, the Department of Justice has said. Members of her legal team in the criminal case did not respond to questions about whether Holmes has been paying them." Civil case lawyers not being paid. Criminal lawyers may be getting paid. Priorities. ~~~ travisjungroth You can’t get blood from a stone, but you can lock it up. ------ DoreenMichele _The lawyers are seeking approval from the court to stop representing Holmes._ Because they haven't been paid in a year and don't expect to ever see a dime, given the state of her finances. ~~~ paxys What law firm agrees to work for a _year_ without payment? Every one we have ever worked with would have cut us off after like a week, or max a month. Although I guess Elizabeth Holmes has swindled smarter people. ~~~ newguy1234 Its a resume builder to say the least to show that you've worked serious cases. ------ _iyig What happens if the attorneys quit, and Holmes can't afford more private lawyers? Would a public defender represent her? That'd be quite the case to pull, I'd imagine. On cases where full teams of lawyers and paralegals are needed, practically speaking, I'd be curious what sort of resources a public defender might be afforded. ~~~ nradov Public defenders don't represent defendants in civil cases. If Ms. Holmes can no longer afford an attorney then she'll have to appear pro se (or find pro bono representation). ------ hliyan Perhaps it is time that we permanently retire the misguided Silicon Valley maxim "fake it till you make it". And along with that, maybe revisit the wisdom of others such as "fail fast". ~~~ np_tedious What's wrong with "fail fast"? An honest Theranos that failed far sooner would've done little harm. "Fail fast" is about trying new things quickly and, here's the key, getting out when they start looking bad. ~~~ hliyan Nothing inherently. Except that most great discoveries/inventions were made by people who were convinced about the fundamental validity of their idea and persevered over many iterations (rather than pivoting). Consider how many years the incandescent light bulb would have been delayed had Edison (or Swan or whoever you want to credit) had failed fast with the filaments. To me, fail-fast is a very VC-centric philosophy. It's perfectly valid if your end goal is return on investment. But if your goal is to "build something", perseverance is generally a better strategy. ~~~ np_tedious > Consider how many years the incandescent light bulb would have been delayed > had Edison (or Swan or whoever you want to credit) had failed fast with the > filaments. But he did try a lot of different filament materials. It would've been really dumb to think he was going to somehow get cotton or whatever wrong material correct if he just stuck with it. Instead he had procedures and a framework to try a lot of candidates and iterate quickly. I get this argument might not be exactly fair because I can twist it to nearly anything. But that's how maxims like "fail fast" or "haste makes waste" or "a stitch in time..." works. They still have value ------ louwrentius Please read the book "Bad Blood" about Theranos if you haven't already. It's just unbelievable what happend with Theranos and how a person like Elizabeth Holmes could do what she did. ------ throwaway2048 If you stop paying your lawyers you are really screwed, because nobody is going to bother representing you in the future. ~~~ ghego1 So true ------ ymolodtsov She probably swore on blood she’d pay. ------ Simulacra I'm curious how much this is costing to defend her and the whole house of cards. ------ breck The true disgrace is this mercurynews website: [https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d2m26gTecPfCus98HJoN9LyA](https://share.icloud.com/photos/0d2m26gTecPfCus98HJoN9LyA) ~~~ alephnan What's the disgrace? ~~~ breck Check the screenshot. That’s the user experience when I clicked this link. But beyond the UX, and the stupidity of saying “private browsing is reserved for our logged in users”, think of the hypocrisy here: they want us to support freedom of the press and anonymous sources but don’t allow us to read anonymously. ~~~ zxexz The New York Times does the same thing now, too. A scary dark pattern. I wish Incognito mode was less detectable, though I’m not exactly sure how that would work. ~~~ lokedhs Qubes OS and running the browser in a disposable VM works. It should be possible to set up a lighter container with a browser whose data is completely wiped after the session competes for people who don't need or don't want to go all the way to use Qubes OS as their primate system. Surely someone must have built this already? If not, it would be an interesting project. ~~~ zxexz Qubes OS is excellent for things like that, but not really something most people are willing to use. I love Qubes OS; especially being able to have a disposable Windows 7 template VM I can game with that has a PCI passthrough for my spare graphics card. Though, it's a bit heavy for my daily driver laptop. Also, re: your browser idea - checkout the sibling comment to yours on using Chrome with a temporary data directory. ------ Porthos9K Scumbags never change. Did her attorneys honestly think Holmes would balk at stiffing them when she already proved willing and able to shaft Theranos' investors and employees? ~~~ tomhoward I'm sure she'd willingly pay them whatever it would take minimise her penalties, if she could. Occam's razor compels us to presume she's just broke. ~~~ Porthos9K Funny. Knowing her history, my razor pointed toward a proven lack of scruples. ~~~ tomhoward The outcome is what matters in this case, far more than scruples. Presuming she wants to minimise her penalty, she will pay whatever it costs to make that happen. If she's not paying, it must surely be because she's broke, rather than out of some perverse thrill of screwing people over and also getting a more severe penalty. ~~~ nordsieck > If she's not paying, it must surely be because she's broke, rather than out > of some perverse thrill of screwing people over and also getting a more > severe penalty. Precisely. The "rational" time to screw the lawyers is once the trial is over, not before. * Not actually rational because life is a multi-round game. ------ aleister_777 Well, yeah. Frankly seems like they were a bit slow on the uptake. Most companies operate at a net-30, net-90 with terms. ------ justinator I'm simply shocked. ------ Fjolsvith In related news, Michael Avenatti sues Stormy Daniels for legal fees, also. [1] 1\. [https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-avenatti-suing- stormy-...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/michael-avenatti-suing-stormy- daniels-for-millions-in-legal-backpay) ~~~ dang Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News and stop using this site for political and ideological battle? You've unfortunately done quite a bit of both, and we ban accounts that do them repeatedly. The reason is that they both go against intellectual curiosity, which is the purpose of this site. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) ~~~ kyleblarson Meantime the number 3 article on the home page is a NYT Op Ed using charts with non linear axes to make charts look scary to push their predetermined left leaning narrative. ~~~ iamasoftwaredev > push their predetermined left leaning narrative. The NYT Op Ed department is largely despised by leftists.
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The real world is mutable – consequences for system design - ash https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/RealWorldIsMutable ====== TeMPOraL No, it isn't. > _The reality of life is that the real world is not immutable. I mean that at > two levels. The first is that sometimes people make mistakes and publish > things that they very strongly wish and need to change or retract. > Pretending that they do not is ignoring reality. Beyond that, things in the > real world are almost always mutable and removable because lawyers can show > up on your doorstep with a court order to make them so_ That's not about what the world is. That's what some people think it should be, and systems (e.g. legal systems) have been created on top of real world to feature this mutability. Real world is immutable with respect to time. What happened, happened; you can't change it without a time machine. You can't just unpublish something, you have to actively work to destroy all practically accesible traces of it (and fight the people with interest in preserving these traces). So a better, more accurate way of phrasing GP's point would be: _systems designed by humans_ are mutable _by design_. Physical reality is immutable with respect to time and causality. ~~~ seanmcdirmid > Real world is immutable with respect to time. What happened, happened; you > can't change it without a time machine. You can't just unpublish something, > you have to actively work to destroy all practically accesible traces of it > (and fight the people with interest in preserving these traces). That definition doesn't make any sense. Mutability necessarily requires time to drive a change - no time passing, no mutation. Also, you are claiming that immutability is equivalent to irreversibility and the arrow of time, which I also think is a bit wonky. ~~~ TeMPOraL > _Mutability necessarily requires time to drive a change - no time passing, > no mutation._ The time that's required for mutability is the real time, the time outside of the system considered. You can mutate events recorded within a system. You can't unhappen events themselves. > _Also, you are claiming that immutability is equivalent to irreversibility > and the arrow of time, which I also think is a bit wonky._ Actually, immutability is even more evident without the arrow of time; if world(t+1) = f(world(t)), then world(t) = f^-1(world(t+1)); f and f^-1 are themselves immutable. ------ __MatrixMan__ I don't think that the exciting part about immutability in large scale distributed systems is immutability itself, but rather referential integrity-- particularly from names to arbitrary data (usually seen as cryptographic hashes that function as pointers). If that reference is mutable then there needs be some authority that handles which names resolve to which data at which times. This makes it difficult to determine at time t if the bits you received at time t-1 were the right ones for some name. In immutable designs the complexity of deciding "which version?" Is moved up in the stack (where the answer is typically mutable). In many cases, pushing this complexity out to the user is indeed the right thing to do. Sure, the ability to resist a government's desire for censorship _might_ be a design goal, but there are other reasons to prefer immutability. ~~~ dathinab I can only agree, E.g. IPFS can be seen as a mostly immutable distributed system (due to content hash based addressing). But it can fully comply with thinks like copy right or privacy related take down notices. Mainly because it only guarantees immutability of existing data, but not that the data will stay existing. (At the same time it provides a re-sharing framework which can make it really hard for lawmakers to effectively enforce such polices if people want thinks to stay online). ------ Barrin92 I prefer to adopt Daniel Dennett's model of 'useful fictions' when trying to talk about what the world 'is'. The question for developers isn't if the world is immutable or mutable, it's if mutability or immutability are _useful concepts_. To ask if the world is mutable is like asking if money is real or if the colour red is real. Does it make more sense to talk about RGB values or colours? The only reasonable answer is 'it depends'. It depends on what aspect or properties one is interested in and what lens is best suited to solve problems or which one personally finds most insightful. The world can be modelled as an immutable sequence of state transitions or as a place full of stateful objects, there isn't any clear answer and programmers shouldn't be too literal about what they perceive the problem to look like but rather think about what toolbox is most useful. ~~~ xchaotic I agree with that and therefore think immutable is not a useful abstraction as it does not approximate how things appear to be in what we perceive as real. ~~~ Barrin92 There are many domains where immutability makes intuitive sense. Accounting and bookkeeping for example, which is a huge domain within software development. A Git history is essentially a model of the world as a history of immutable states, and what we care about is the transition from one state to the next and its difference, as well as an accurate representation of each past state. But one name or ID is only ever associated with one state. It would be really horrible practise if accountants or version control systems would mutate state and overwrite history. Another domain where immutability is useful for this reason is concurrency, where it avoids a lot of conflict. ------ dustingetz Or is it, because physics! you can model mutation on top of values and in fact immutable systems do this ~~~ Geee The world (space-time state) is immutable. World space state is a pure function of time. If you call World(time) you always get the same answer. ~~~ tachyonbeam Except that there is no such thing as World(time). We don't live in a Newtonian world, we live in a relativistic universe. Time doesn't elapse at the same rate in every location, it depends on gravity and the speed you're moving at. I'd argue that since time is a local phenomena, the mutable universe interpretation makes a lot more sense. ~~~ bollu Just because the universe is relativistic doesn't mean that we can't model it. Mathematics is inherently immutable --- this is why describing programming language semantics requires the introduction of something "extra" (a state monad, hiding the mutability inside the operational / denotational semantics, whatever). We _do_ have a mathematical model of the universe --- the differential equations that govern space-time evolution describe the universe in a pure fashion: universe(t+1) = f(universe(t)). ~~~ dnautics No, you're missing the point. There is no such thing as world(time), but there is world(location, time). If you don't respect that, you'll wind up with unsustainable system designs like using atomic clocks to guarantee consistency. ~~~ k__ I think the problem here is the definition of "time". You are talking about a relativistic time and they are talking about an absolute global time. I don't know if it makes sense in some kind of way to talk about something abstract as a global time in any way. If the global absolute time goes on for 1 second, some peoples relativistic time went on more or less than a second. Can we measure this abstract concept of time? Even if it made some kind of philosophical sense? ~~~ dnautics Relativistic time is a real thing in distributed systems, even without worrying about einsteinian relativity; the premise of physics relativity is that perfect synchronization is impossible and that is highly analogous to the impossibility to perfectly synchronize nodes in a distributed system. ~~~ senderista There is a nice analogy between causal relations in special relativity and in asynchronous distributed systems, but it is no more than an analogy. Synchronized clocks are a physically feasible possibility in every realistic distributed system I’ve seen. The difficulties are merely of a technical nature. ~~~ dnautics Sure, you can get sufficiently close, and at what cost in terms of developer effort and physical infrastructure? Not everyone is Google, and in most cases if you explicitly have code that doesn't assume synchronicity you will avoid footguns that inexperienced devs will make. ------ virgilp > The first is that sometimes people make mistakes and publish things that > they very strongly wish and need to change or retract. Pretending that they > do not is ignoring reality. Really? I'd say regardless what their wishes might be, pretending that they can is ignoring reality (at least in some cases). You change or retract things as you do in accounting - by issuing amendments. Not by pretending you never published something, but by updating what you published (i.e. publishing a new version). > Beyond that, things in the real world are almost always mutable and > removable because lawyers can show up on your doorstep with a court order to > make them so, [...] If the court says 'stop serving that', you had better do > so. How does that have anything to do with immutability? Immutability is not "The president is Obama", it is "At 01 Feb 2020 my belief was that at 01 Feb 2016 the president was Obama". You can trivially say that "At 01 Feb 2020 my belief was that at 01 Feb 2020 the president was Trump" without contradicting the previous statement. You can even forget what your belief was at 01 Feb 2020. And if the ministry of truth knocks on the door, you might end up to believe, at 01 Feb 2025, that at 01 Feb 2016 the president was Trump. This way, you satisfy the ministry's desires, without violating immutability in any way. ~~~ tristanstcyr That's an idealistic argument. Sometimes you just need to delete things and there's no negotiation possible. Whether that makes sense to you or not as an engineer or scientist doesn't matter much. There are tons of things that humans want that "don't make sense" but that you need to conform to regardless. A great example of this is typically the law. ~~~ virgilp "Immutable" does not preclude deletion, that's what I'm saying. Indeed, to delete something can simply mean to publish a new version with no content. If there's no reference to the old version, it will get 'garbage-collected'/ 'forgotten' by the system. ------ dnautics This video talks about good programming practice regarding immutability and the mutable world: [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries) ------ opvasger provocative blanket statements like "the real world is immutable" (or otherwise) aren't correct, nor healthy. Some problems are more easily dealt with using tools like immutability, or mutation for that matter. as with all things in software - it depends. ------ dathinab Looking at immutability wrt. immutable data in the database/at rest then yes that a problem. Same if you build a system which can't be updated. I just don't see how many other cases of immutability have anything to do with it (like general purpose immutable data structures, statically fixed data structures, or static linking). I mean you can always change your code to comply with changes, and I would be very irritated if people believe they can put put code out into the world and never need to update it (but _not_ modify it, updating means replacing it with a mostly similar new system while carrying over all data). Through as a side not: GDPR deletion request basically have the effect that any event sourcing system which doesn't has (perma-) deletion features is unlawful to use (if you process any personal data). It also means that soft deletion is not always lawful wrt. personal data. Now for some event sourcing systems that is quite a problem. Some might cope with it through snapshots which "compact" the state and as such can have perma deletion effects if the events before the snapshot are deleted, but that only works if you can do so every week or so or you will not be able to keep with deadlines. Given that some systems want to keep logs longer than that this _is_ a problem which can lead to major additional cost if you ran into it. ~~~ zxcmx Couple of techniques; Per-record keys where the key can be deleted (this is a hard delete as your system can no longer access the data). Keep "sensitive" info out of messages (credit card stuff, PII, secrets?, whatever), events have pointers to a store just for this. All code that accesses sensitive data has to have guards in case the lookup fails. Deletion is really interesting and forces its way into your domain. For example you might be in a position where you have to delete all info about someone _except_ their payments because AML forces you to keep those for X years. ------ diminish Interesting enough several quantum interpretations assume an immutable reality ------ fnord77 I've written a lot of software. Using both mutable patterns and immutable patterns. I keep coming back to the immutable MODEL of things because it mostly works and it is easier to get right and maintain. I think the author misses the point of MODELLING your systems as immutable ------ danielovichdk A philosopher would say 'we don't know yet'. In the world we live in, based on the human accomplishments so far in history, we can say the world i immutable. But over time, we can't be certain.
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Longest Lines of Sight on Earth - pilom https://beyondhorizons.eu/lines-of-sight/ ====== btilly You can actually work out roughly how far away the horizon should be surprisingly easily. Just use the fact that if R is the radius of the Earth and you are at height h, then from you to the horizon to the center of the Earth back to you is a right angled triangle with one side of length R and the hypotenuse of length R+h. Therefore the distance to the horizon is sqrt(2Rh+h^2) which is roughly sqrt(2Rh). The Earth is roughly 6370 km which is not far from 6400, so if your eyes are 2m = 0.002 km up then the horizon is about sqrt(2 _6400_ 0.002) = sqrt(25.8) km away, which is roughly 5 km or a bit over 3 miles. If you apply this to a 6 km tall mountain, the horizon is about sqrt(2 _6370_ 6) km away which is about 276.5 km. So something of the same height at the opposite end of the horizon would be 553 km away. So the top distance of 538 km is pretty close to the maximum that we would expect. What about an airplane? An airplane flies about 11 km up. So it can see around 375 km. If you work it out, that puts the horizon about 3.37 degrees below horizontal. This isn't much, but if you take a plumb line and a right angle on an commercial flight, it is enough to actually see that the horizon is below horizontal. ~~~ kovek I had this question worded differently asked to me when I interviewed to do an undergrad at Cambridge. If you have a rope that is wrapped around earth and you lift it off the ground as much as possible, and you see that it is 10km above the ground, then how long is the rope? I was not able to answer that question right away, and their hint to draw it helped a lot. I did not end up getting accepted. ~~~ seanmcdirmid It seems like one of those stupid brain teasers tech companies used to ask that are not very correlated with success but act as arbitrary filters. ~~~ anyfoo In this case the "arbitrary filter" was filtering applicants to a university for very basic math knowledge, so I think assuming that it's correlated with success at that university is not very far fetched. ~~~ BurningFrog Sure, but it also filters for people like me, who have seen this problem at least a dozen times. ~~~ pm215 When I did my university entrance interview (for maths, at Cambridge) the interviewers were clear that they expected that some subset of candidates would have seen the problem before, and some wouldn't -- for those in the first set they'd get them to quickly go through the problem and move onto the later parts which would be new to them; for those in the second set they'd provide sufficient guidance to let the candidate walk through the problem. The point was to get any particular candidate to a point in the problem sequence where this was something new to them, and then see how they tackled things. The idea that some applicants (usually from public schools) would have been very highly prepped for interview and others (usually from state schools) would not was clearly something they were well aware of and setting their interview design up to handle. ~~~ erispoe But how do you know it's a new problem? You can always fake a little struggle and thinking your way to the solution for a problem that you know the answer already. ------ yread The link in the "done" column doesn't work - it should point to [https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles- pic...](https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles-pic-gaspard- ecrins-443-km/) It's a report how they made an actual photograph of a sunrise over 443km far. Quite amazing! BTW if you ever get the chance to go up Mt. Canigou, go for it. Since it's the first big mountain in Pyrenees from the east you have really spectacular views and it's not that difficult to hike up there. Plus they brew great beer (from iceberg water they say) in the refuge just under it. ~~~ KozmoNau7 There's something utterly awe-inspiring about huge distances, especially if you're simply not used to viewing objects at those scales. I live in a country where the highest point above sea level is ~171m. Walking in the Scottish highlands was a transcendental experience for me. ~~~ codfrantic You must be Danish, I though us Dutch had it bad (320 max) I guess we do go below sea level more which also makes this calculation more difficult :) I do agree on the utter amazement of visiting less flat places :) ------ kbenson _Mt. McKinley (6.194 m.)_ What country uses '.' as the thousands separator but speaks English? Or is this someone mixing their native language thousands separator with English? Or is there some weird interaction between country and language that makes this the preferred, or at minimum an acceptable standard form? I'm actually hoping it's one of the latter options, that would be something new to me. ~~~ burkaman .eu suggests this website was not created by native English speakers. ~~~ dwightgunning Since when does the TLD imply the native language of the website creator? Also the .eu TLD, which is a country-TLD for the European Union, consider that the UK (still in the EU), along with Ireland and Malta have English as an official language [1]. 1\. [http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/european_languages.htm](http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/european_languages.htm) ~~~ pimlottc I think it's quite reasonable; the tld suggests the location/nationality, which suggests the language. It's not ironclad, but it's implied. Those three english-speaking countries (UK, Ireland and Malta) make up roughly 13.7% of the total population of the EU; when the UK leaves, it will drop down to around 1.1%. ------ xxxxxxxx This is very cool. I'm told you can see Mt Fuji from Tokyo on a clear day, but I never managed to see it. I did manage to see Mont Blanc from my Kitchen in Lausanne, Switzerland a few times - such a beautiful sight. ~~~ nandemo Mt Fuji is only about 100km away from Tokyo. Main problem is there are tons of buildings blocking your view, but if you're at a high enough floor you can see the it even when it's a bit cloudy. For example, see the last pic here: [http://traveljapanblog.com/wordpress/tag/mt- fuji/page/3/](http://traveljapanblog.com/wordpress/tag/mt-fuji/page/3/) ------ 11thEarlOfMar I can't resist... Reminds me of the Beacons of Minas Tirith from Return of the King, probably my favorite sequence in the entire trilogy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz51CiG2nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWz51CiG2nA) ------ newman8r very cool - I'd never even given this concept a second thought. I'd like to graph these and see how they overlap - would be cool to implement networks via something like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudolite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudolite) I'd also be curious to see how this would look if you could include manmade structures like towers or skyscrapers ~~~ moxious If you included skyscrapers I bet you'd have the same list no changes. Most of these mountains are > 2km tall. ~~~ newman8r you'd still probably have one of those coordinates (of the tall mountain) remain the same, then find a tower that goes even further than the second point - although I never assume my logic is correct in geodesy/astronomy, especially when I'm tired edit* - in practice you're probably right ~~~ jdironman Laser powered ISPs anyone? I kid, but is this a possibility? ~~~ URSpider94 This exists already, from some pretty serious telecom companies, for distances of a few miles. The problem is that, in optical wavelengths, there's too much absorption and scattering in the atmosphere - fog, rain, storms, smog, smoke - that can disrupt the signal. But, in radio frequencies, this is how the microwave tower communications network works -- it's line-of-sight from tower to tower. [https://www.wired.com/2015/03/spencer-harding-the-long- lines...](https://www.wired.com/2015/03/spencer-harding-the-long-lines/) ~~~ kbart Microwave LoS is still widely used to connect cell towers for example. Look at these circular dishes in this picture[1]. 1\. [https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img- get2/I0000JUzapOxgCs0/fit...](https://ssl.c.photoshelter.com/img- get2/I0000JUzapOxgCs0/fit=1000x750/1127D-cellular-microwave-communications- tower-antenna-array.jpg) ~~~ URSpider94 The microwave network is being resurrected between Chicago and NYC as a way to shorten the communications time for high frequency traders. Even after successively purchasing straighter and straighter rights of way for fiber, the microwave path is still shorter. ------ my_first_acct According to the local paper [1], from the top of Mount Diablo (east of SF Bay) it is possible to see Mount Lassen (approx 260 km away). "Although you can’t see Mount Shasta directly, you might be able to see part of the peak, refracted by the atmosphere." (That would be 380 km). [1] [http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/11/24/bay-area-facts-what- ca...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/11/24/bay-area-facts-what-can-you-see- from-the-top-of-mount-diablo/) ------ marceldegraaf Vsauce had a video about this recently: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhxL1LzKww](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhxL1LzKww) ------ prawn K2 incorrectly listed as being in New Zealand? ~~~ knz Looks like it. Aoraki is ~3,700m and this website lists "K2" in NZ as 8,611m (same altitude as the real K2 on Wikipedia - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2)). The Southern Alps _are_ growing rapidly but not that fast! ------ jmcqk6 There are places in oregon where you can look North and see Mount Adams in washington, and look south and see Mount Shasta in california. So basically the entire heigth of oregon. I've personally done this on Paulina Peak on several occasions. ------ kovrik Does this mean that there is no known place (point) on Earth from which you can see some other point that is more than 538km away? ~~~ tristanj Under certain atmospheric conditions it may be possible to see further [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Superior_mirage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage#Superior_mirage) ~~~ Nition I wonder what the maximum you can ever see is due to atmosphereic fog. I suspect it's less than 538km. The site has photos listed for up to 381km, although the link for that one is broken. ~~~ KozmoNau7 This one is the longest: [https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de- finestrelles-pic...](https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles- pic-gaspard-ecrins-443-km/) Fog is definitely a factor. ------ a12jun Surely the longest distance would be, from the top of the highest point on Earth (top of Everest), to the horizon? ~~~ kazagistar A mountain might be past the "natural" horizon but emerge from beyond it. Thus, two mountains at the right distance and line of sight could easily have a longer horizion distance. ~~~ tzs And this is indeed the case for the ones at the top of the list. The longest possible distance to horizon is a little over 330 km, but almost 40 of the items on the list have longer line of site. In fact, it looks like every item on the list is between two points that are each farther away than the other's horizon. That raises the question of among all places on Earth where the longest line of sight is to the horizon, which has the longest line of sight? ~~~ jameshart Hawaii would be where I'd start looking for that. ~~~ jcranmer Mauna Kea is 4,207m above sea level and can definitely see the oceanic horizon. Mount Wilhelm (4509m) and Puncak Jaya (4884m) are the highest peaks in the central mountain range on the island of New Guinea, which makes the ocean horizon probably visible from those peaks. Western peaks in the Andes are perhaps 150-200km from the sea. A tall peak in that portion could probably see the ocean. Chimborazo (6263m) is ~215km from the sea as the crow flies, although there is a large valley ~100m above sea level in the way. I don't think Hawaii is the best bet. ------ vmarsy Interesting, I'm not sure how the list was created, it seems to be missing entries such as the one mentioned in that March 2015 comment at the end of the post. ------ zeristor So are there pictures of what a distant mountain actually looks like over 500km across the Earth; that is the point after all? Or is there already a YouTube video of this? ~~~ newman8r looks like someone posted this pic from the same site [https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles- pic...](https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles-pic-gaspard- ecrins-443-km/) ------ amacbride The Mount Hamilton to Half Dome in Yosemite (168 miles) is the view that blew my mind when I first saw it. [http://astronomy.snjr.net/blog/?p=416](http://astronomy.snjr.net/blog/?p=416) ------ amacbride The Mount Hamilton to Yosemite view (168 miles), is the one that blew my mind when I first saw it: [http://astronomy.snjr.net/blog/?p=416](http://astronomy.snjr.net/blog/?p=416) ~~~ hodgesrm Another good one is Mt. Diablo to Mt. Lassen, which is around 180 miles. That's the longest one I have seen in California. Tom Stienstra claimed it's 180 miles, which is a long way. [1] Other sources claim somewhat shorter distances. [1] [http://www.sfgate.com/outdoors/article/Clear-viewing-from- Mo...](http://www.sfgate.com/outdoors/article/Clear-viewing-from-Mount- Diablo-5988343.php) (Oops somebody already pointed it out!) ~~~ jackfoxy Mt. Lassen, ha. If the atmospheric conditions are good enough you can see Mt. Shasta from Mt.Diablo. I know, I have seen it. That has to be around 250 miles (I don't have the exact figure). That would be 402 kilometers and worth a mention on this list. ------ js8 OT: Is there an application that can generate panoramic view from some point of Earth based on map and altitude data (e.g. OpenStreetMaps)? ~~~ rmc FYI OSM doesn't (really) store elevation data. Individual mountain peaks are often mapped, and tagged with the elevation. But OSM doesn't store land contours like that. There are some free, open, datasources for that, like SRTM[1], ASTER[2] (and maybe OpenDEM[3], but I don't know what that's like) [1] [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SRTM](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SRTM) [2] [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ASTER](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ASTER) [3] [http://www.opendem.info/](http://www.opendem.info/) ~~~ 4ad So how are these contour lines being generated? My hike of a few months ago: [https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/route/67dcc2001bea9e9e39...](https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/route/67dcc2001bea9e9e394fa45ca935ff9f/?layer=openhikingmapHD) Also, if OSM doesn't store elevation data, then why do you need a GPS tracker with a barometric sensor in order to map for OSM? ~~~ rmc > So how are these contour lines being generated? It depends on the people make the map. That map uses Thunderforest's Outdoor style[1]. The person running that company is a long time OSM contributor, but that isn't "from the OpenStreetMap project". I suspect they are using SRTM data to generate countour lines _in addition to_ OSM to create the map > why do you need a GPS tracker with a barometric sensor in order to map for > OSM? You don't? You can map for OSM without needed a GPS tracker. You can just trace things from the aerial imagery, or add local features from memory ("There's a post office at that road junction", "the speed limit of this road is 40 kmph"). [1] [https://www.thunderforest.com/maps/outdoors/](https://www.thunderforest.com/maps/outdoors/) ------ utoku Reminds me of a habit I have which made me end up on tops of mountains occasionally. I guess the algorithm can be called "observable ascent": 1\. Look around 2\. Find a relatively close high spot that is visible 3\. Plan and climb on top of it 4\. From the peak, find the next highest spot visible 5\. Repeat Also works for other topologies. ~~~ Scarblac This fails in countries that are simply too flat (the Netherlands). ------ nprecup You can see the sisters from Mt Adams, which is ~230 km away. I'm guessing there are several more of these that the site didn't catch. You can probably easily see Mt Rainier from 300 km+ standing at the right place. How were these determined? It would cool to see a write up on how it was done. ~~~ jmcqk6 I know you can see Mount Rainier from Mary's Peak outside of Corvalais, which is 295km away. And I mentioned it in another comment here, but standing on paulina peak on a clear day, you can see both Mount Adams and Mount Shasta, more than the entire height of Oregon. ------ analog31 I wonder if this is computable from a contour map of the earth, assuming optimal atmospheric conditions. ~~~ dmurray I think that's what the site is doing already. ------ dzdt There are many more such pictures at [http://theviewshed.com/views- list/](http://theviewshed.com/views-list/) including some that boast greater distances than the original post. ------ mrb And I thought seeing Mont Blanc from my town Le Creusot, France (a 216 km line of sight) was very long... not! Apparently it would only rank 6th from the bottom of this list! ~~~ runarberg That is very nice. Here from Reykjavík, Iceland, you can see Snæfellsjökull on a clear day (about 118 km away; featured in Jules Vernes’ “Journey to the Center of the Earth”), and it seems very far away indeed. I can only imagine 216, or let alone 500+ km distances. ~~~ mrb It was the silouhette (before sunrise) that I saw. It looked very much like this: [https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles- pic...](https://beyondhorizons.eu/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestrelles-pic-gaspard- ecrins-443-km/) Edit: this is awesome, I managed to use [http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro](http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro) to simulate the view of Mont Blanc from my city: its exactly 215.2 km away: [http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro/panoramas/panqueryfull.asp...](http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro/panoramas/panqueryfull.aspx?mode=newstandard&data=lon%3A4.44706%24%24%24lat%3A46.81081%24%24%24alt%3Aauto%24%24%24altcam%3A10%24%24%24hialt%3Afalse%24%24%24resolution%3A200%24%24%24azimut%3A119%24%24%24sweep%3A4%24%24%24leftbound%3A117%24%24%24rightbound%3A121%24%24%24split%3A6%24%24%24splitnr%3A1%24%24%24tilt%3Aauto%24%24%24tiltsplit%3Afalse%24%24%24elexagg%3A1.2%24%24%24range%3A300%24%24%24colorcoding%3Afalse%24%24%24colorcodinglimit%3A221%24%24%24title%3AZugspitze%24%24%24description%3A%24%24%24email%3A%24%24%24language%3Age%24%24%24screenwidth%3A1920%24%24%24screenheight%3A1080) And as it turns out this is not the max line of sight, there is the hypothetically visible Grandes Jorasses slightly to the left (221.5 km away). You have to use the 10x zoom to see it: [http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro/panoramas/panqueryfull.asp...](http://www.udeuschle.selfhost.pro/panoramas/panqueryfull.aspx?mode=newstandard&data=lon%3A4.44706%24%24%24lat%3A46.81081%24%24%24alt%3Aauto%24%24%24altcam%3A10%24%24%24hialt%3Afalse%24%24%24resolution%3A1600%24%24%24azimut%3A119.5%24%24%24sweep%3A5%24%24%24leftbound%3A116.99375%24%24%24rightbound%3A117.74375%24%24%24split%3A7.5%24%24%24splitnr%3A1%24%24%24tilt%3A0.13697916666666665%24%24%24tiltsplit%3Afalse%24%24%24elexagg%3A1.2%24%24%24range%3A300%24%24%24colorcoding%3Afalse%24%24%24colorcodinglimit%3A221%24%24%24title%3AZugspitze%20%5BFernglas%5D%24%24%24description%3A%24%24%24email%3A%24%24%24language%3Age%24%24%24screenwidth%3A1920%24%24%24screenheight%3A1080) ------ tomxor And it's only from 5.971 m high... why people use decimals to indicate 3 orders of magnitude I will never understand... either that or they got the wrong SI unit. ~~~ mauvehaus Possibly because they're not (natively?) English-speaking Europeans: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Digit_grouping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#Digit_grouping) ------ foota I'll make a tableau public viz with these when I get home ------ gwbas1c I clicked on three pictures. Two are dead links.
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The State of European Tech 2016 - mxschumacher http://www.atomico.com/state-of-european-tech/2016 ====== kriro Regarding salary. I think 45-50k Euro is a pretty decent entry level salary in Germany if you're coming out of university (debt free) depending on the region. That may look shocking compared to the SV numbers but you can live a good life off 50k and a lot of the stuff will be taken care of (education of your children, healthcare) which reduces the stress level quite a bit. If you want to start a company, you'll face some social issues (failure is considered failure) but the infrastructure is decent enough. The social issues have changed a lot in recent years though. Anecdotally I feel like recruiting good devs right out of universities is a lot easier if you're a typical startup because many of the good developers will have fought the standard curriculum of the java-bot and be rather happy to work in a more agile setting (but still want to stay in their home country). ~~~ superuser2 Healthcare is absolutely taken care of for American six-figure tech workers. My premium is $2.50/mo and all my care is free or for a nominal fee, like $20. US healthcare _is_ systemically broken, but not for people who command high wages. Having kids in college is at _least_ 30 years out. Knowing that an expense 30 years away will be taken care of is better than the alternative, but would do nothing for my stress level in the next ~20. I don't buy that either of these things make any actual difference for an early-career programmer. Probably the most important thing is rent. I suspect most European cities can offer a 1-bedroom apartment within 30 minutes of work by foot/public transit for a much lower proportion of a developer's salary than SF can, even when developer salaries are much lower. And in places not SF, $50k USD is not particularly low for a developer salary. ~~~ hocuspocus Peace of mind with healthcare isn't so much about one-off costs when you catch a nasty flu. What happens if you're unable to work for months/years due to a health issue? Will you be able to pay your expensive rent and other expenses without worries? Also you're a bit naive if you think raising kids will cost you only once they go to college. If you compare direct (daycare, preschool) and indirect (like moving to a good neighborhood) costs in the Bay area vs. a big European city, the difference is easily 5 figures year. And then there are things like parental leave. But of course, as a 20-something you might not need these things. ~~~ superuser2 Then those (like rent, as I mentioned) are the much more compelling arguments. If I'm unable to work for months, I'll have to draw down my emergency fund (probably move somewhere cheap to slow the burn rate). If in Europe I don't have to save for this, and can freely spend all of my paycheck, then that's a huge benefit. Ditto with retirement, which takes ~15% off the top of American salaries (unless you are irresponsible or in crisis so not saving for it). Preschool is a valid point; moving to a good neighborhood is captured in rent. I'm just saying healthcare and education aren't the interesting arguments. Housing costs and socialized savings plans are. ------ lucaspiller Direct link to PDF: [http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european- tech/atom...](http://www.atomico.com/downloads/state-of-european-tech/atomico- state-of-european-tech-2016-full-report.pdf) The slideshow won't go full screen for me, so it's next to useless. ------ swampthinker Would be great if this was legible on mobile... Does anyone have a good summary? ~~~ deepnotderp First sentence is a great summary... ~~~ TeMPOraL > _We’re excited to share the second edition of The State of European Tech > report with you._ Ah, so they are excited. ~~~ deepnotderp I meant the first sentence of OP's comment lol. "not visible on mobile" ------ freekh Yeah, so this is a pr stunt. However there are many really good startup scenes here in Europe in my experience. Stockholm is one of them: "everything" in the heart and kids departments taken care of. Lots of ambition and talent. Comparatively low vagues so less burn. Lacking VCs, but the startups that have made it invest a lot here (time and money and mentoring). Compared to the craze in sf, i would say this is the perfect place to start a small and successful business. In particular in the b2b domain. So, if you can live with being well off and not insanely rich, and looking to move out of the us - you should give Stockholm a chance. ~~~ expertentipp Sweet, how's the apartment rental market in Stockholm? ------ nec4b You can ask yourself how many big companies that came into existance for example in last 20 years are from the USA or from the EU. That tells you a lot how vibrat the industry is on either side of the atlantic. ------ PunchTornado why the need for bs like this in a study: I see no limits to the ambition of young Europeans. We've broken the glass ceiling etc. Looks dumb to me. Just show me the data compared to American tech. ~~~ throwthisawayt Wait...there was a glass ceiling preventing Europeans from creating companies ? ~~~ kuschku Well, there were actual problems preventing people from creating companies. Such as the 10'000€ minimum assets that were required for an Ltd. in Germany until a few years ago. (The problem was basically: How do you handle a company going bankrupt? The legislators said that any company should always have enough assets to cover its liabilities. Obviously not compatible with the snowball-scheme based startup scene). ~~~ matt_o It's actually 25000 euros. This was somewhat fixed with the introduction of the mini-GmbH (GmbH - something like Ltd.), but a mini-GmbH comes with some extra strings attached, so it's still very far from a UK Ltd. or a US LLC in terms of ease of setting up. This is indeed an obstacle to creating a company, but there are quite a few more, all having to do with just plain ol' bureaucracy (handling monthly tax reporting, interacting with the tax authorities, handling insurance, etc.) The previous issue of The Economist made a case that these bureaucratic problems are even bigger in Italy. I've recently been kicking around the idea that it's kind of weird that some hard-hit places in the EU like Spain or Greece sport up to 50% unemployed young folks (18-35) - these people are highly educated, just out of college, eager to build/work and yet they are economically inactive. My theory is that this is because it's hard to set up any sort of business activity due to the bureaucracy. It's also socially discouraged because it's risky. ~~~ matt4077 There have always been options to start without capital requirements, usually at the price of personal liability. The idea is that you need a bit of "skin in the game" to protect vendors. If you're in something like software and have no immediate plans for employees or large investments you can get the bureaucracy done in 30 min. It's literally a one-page form with address, name, purpose. ~~~ matt_o Well, my "self-employement" form was actually 8 pages long and it featured a lot more items than address, name, purpose and processing it took about 4 weeks. To be fair, I could start my business as soon as I sent that out, but I could not invoice clients until I got the reply, which included my new tax number. This is how it works in Germany. Add on top of that the mandatory monthly VAT tax reporting. That is a significantly higher cost of entry when compared with an Ltd/LLC, not to mention a sole proprietorship. ~~~ matt4077 Here's the sole proprietorship form, it's actually one page: [http://www.hamburg.de/Dibis/form/pdf/Formular- Gewerbeanmeldu...](http://www.hamburg.de/Dibis/form/pdf/Formular- Gewerbeanmeldung.pdf) – but obviously it depends a lot on the individual circumstances (like the tax ID you need for cross-border transactions). VAT is annoying, but it's only monthly if you're above 120000 Euro or so. We've started only filling in our revenue (which I can get within a few seconds) and file the tax we paid to suppliers with the yearly declaration. It's much faster to do it all in one go. ~~~ matt_o I had to fill out this form: "Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung" and I have to report my VAT using the Elster system monthly, even though my VAT is always 0 (my clients are all outside of the EU). I went this way after consulting some other folks in Berlin and a tax consultant that I found myself. I'm kind of surprised that there's a different, easier way to go. Thanks for sharing the information. ------ wrong_variable (cough cringe PR cough) You could create similar optimistic charts for US, China, India, etc. The EU ( 550 million ) tech industry is dwarfed by the US ( 350 million ) Looking from a higher abstract plane, EU produces the least new entrepreneurs and innovative companies compared to the beast that is US and Asia. The EU also has the most unstable political and financial system globally with entire countries on the verge of defaulting on their sovereign debt. The reason why every European developer migrates to London is to escape the craziness of the continent. Every European developer's final 'dream' is to work in the US tech industry - London is the second best thing to reach. (.. Money Talks .. ) You can see how much value that tech is given in europe by just looking at the salaries in europe vs N.A - so much for valuing hard tech. Seeing that both the US and Europe have similar numbers of developers (~ 3 mil) - how is european tech industry 1/8 the size of the US ?? Oversupply of developers due to better engineering school ? ( my sides ) More like MBAs from Cambridge are not as smart as their counterparts graduating from Sloan in creating value out of tech. \-- Not an American --- Direct experience with London and Berlin tech scene --- ~~~ jfaucett Completely agree. I live in Europe, am a part of the tech scene, and am sitting in the contitental craziness you speak of in Germany. This report is largely nonsense. It talks about "top research institutions" are in Europe, neglecting the #1,#2,#4,#5, and #6 in the world are in the USA. [1] Honestly, I have no idea why an investor would want to try to tackle this nightmare of 30+ target markets, especially when you have huge homogeneous markets in the USA and Asia. 1\. [http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/universit...](http://www.topuniversities.com/university- rankings/university-subject-rankings/2016/computer-science-information- systems) ~~~ cyberpunk Hmm. I'd really like to hear more about how you see things if you've got the time.. I'm about to exit london for .de simply because of quality of life concerns; the 1000ft view I'm holding though is I'm pretty sure I'll be able to build a crew there which will have fun working on difficult problems, and hopefully even find a reasonable amount of 'stuff' to do (surely with internet access and some good staff picks that could be applied almost anywhere in the world?) -- while you're probably right in that the vast floods of VC cash won't be so available there (I don't think the situ in london is much diff anyway) or that things are more complex w/r/t markets; I'm not sure that I really care too much about "30+" target markets when we're talking B2B hardcore geekery stuff. We make an API to solve -some-random-hackernews_capable_consumer-problem- then I'm not sure having a few diff VAT rules around .eu is anything more than some extra time billed by my accountant.. What I'm more concerned about is the work/company culture differences there which will probably at a minimum will prevent me whoring myself out for some quick cash to fund my devs, should things get tight, and at a max make it much harder to sell to Gmbh's there... Are you in Germany? Ever worked with a German company or tried to integrate your product with theirs? The vogons have a quicker moving bureaucracy, I was really shocked. The crazy adherence to working hours, clocking in/out for breaks and such even for senior technical staff creates a really strange dynamic especially if you're used to letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering. This kind of free attitude to work seems largely to only exist in London, at least to me -- and once you've walked on the wild side it's hard to accept a master.. _shrug_ Germany may have excellent technical prowess in manufacturing and such; from our side of the perspective though, so far to me at de $bigcorp it seems like SAP, 2 week change windows, hour long discussions on what FTP client the customer uses, J2EE, Oracle, monitored lunch breaks and some very overqualified staff (call me 'dr') who aren't even interesting in moving faster... I guess there are a lot of startups there which follow a model more like what we're used to, but after so long you're not going to be able to avoid working with the vogons if you're selling them software they want to integrate with.. I'm not sure the majority view of big german businesses really even understood what agile was pushing for.. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'll find out soon anyhow, but things seem really fucking backwards compared to how we've been living even in the relative backwater that's London.... What's your view? ~~~ passiveincomelg I'm curious what this wild side is like. "letting your teams do whatever the hell they want as long as you're delivering" sounds like working remotely from a beach is common. Yet almost all job postings I see from companies in London are on site. Or does it mean I can leave work after six hours on very productive days? ~~~ cyberpunk Well, as it goes, as often as I'm able to (sometimes it takes a while to change the culture/gain enough trust to be left alone) I don't put _any_ requirements at all on attendance/appearence/sanity/whatever as long as everything is being done and the team is performing. Nailed all the work for the day before 12:00 and want to hit up the pub -- how could any sane person stop you? Working remote makes you more productive and no one else on the team feels you're just slacking, then go for it. It's not some intentional psychological ploy or anything, but I've found that people generally don't take the absolute piss if you let them manage themselves totally (we are all adults, after all, and who the hell am I to tell anyone how to handle themselves professionally as long as our obligations are being met) Sure, everyone has to get together sometimes, but being onsite and having a normal lifestyle doesn't work for everyone, especially some of the 'top tier' engineers I've had who tend to be a bit wild.. Pushing 'school rules' on people just leads to them exiting, and it's no use kidding yourself that they need you more than you need them. One of the best engineers I ever had had some sort of really insane drink/drugs lifestyle, he would drop commits in between 2-7am and they'd be brilliant, then he'd vanish for a few days, and repeat. Did I depend on this person completely for the whole project? No. But why should I care as long as no one else is annoyed by this behaviour on the team, and the work was solid? I've never had someone actually emigrate during a role, but often people would go away for a few weeks and it wasn't a problem, again, as long as work is being done. I'm not really sure why this isn't the case everywhere, but as long as my staff act like adults then they'll be treated as such. Onsite requirements are usually a symptom of a lack of trust or an insecure lead. ~~~ passiveincomelg That's when you are running a team, right? But it's not the norm to walk into any corp in London as a devops/dev/whatever contractor and work like this. There is no reason why you couldn't run a team that way in Berlin or anywhere else in the world. ~~~ cyberpunk Depends on your attitude really. If you rock up to a client and immediately let them set any kind of requirements on your life instead of having a "this is our goal, make it so!" relationship then a subtle kind of power relationship has been created, where they'll think it's acceptible to mandate employee rules on you like this. If you're a contractor, then the corp you're whoring out to is _NOT_ your employer and you must not let them act as such (this makes it worse for all of us, not just you). They're paying your buisness to do something for theirs, how you do that is your business and yours alone. There's no need to be a total weirdo about the whole thing and go off on one because they want you at a meeting at 10 some day or whatever -- you have to be diplomatic and be mindful of the way you're being percieved by the perm staff -- but generally I will not tolerate requests from clients w/r/t anything like attendance outside of meetings, dress code, general sobriety or whatever else which isn't impacting the deliberables we're providing, and wouldn't attempt to push them on my staff either (contract or not). I've walked away from several really lucrative contracts because of this sort of client behaviour and I don't regret that at all. Your clients aren't, and never will be in control of you, you're there because they need you and they should treat you with the respect an engineer with your day rate has earned.. _shrug_ Generally, this sort of attitude has been accepted in every contract I've had in london in the last 5 years or so.. The secret is to get this point across very soon after, or even before, starting the gig. Absolute confidence is probably rq too tho... edit: butterfingers ~~~ passiveincomelg Makes perfect sense, thanks. I think the situation here is very similar. Telling a contractor when and where to work can get the client in legal trouble ("Scheinselbstständigkeit", one of those lovely german words ;). How that works out in practice probably depends on the company. If you work a gig at Siemens it might be different than at a startup (that is funded well enough to afford freelancers). I only have experience with two big corps so far (keep coming back to the second one ;), but I've seen quite a few contractors at both and some of them were just plain flaky. That of course makes it worse for all of us as well, wrt to clients tolerance for things like remote work, etc. ~~~ cyberpunk Hmm. I'll be in Berlin next week (I missed Nikolaus and I have some belated shoes to fill; failing that though definately again around silvester) If you're up for a beer or sixteen on me, I'd really find the insider scoop useful on a more personal medium; I'm sure we could probably both get something from it, at least the worst would be a lot of free beer! You can find me on freenode as 'cyb3rpunk' (inside a shiny new irssi in some tmux somewhere so might take me a while to respond) if you're up for it -- otherwise, prost! ~~~ passiveincomelg Totally up for it! Will ping you on irc.
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All MS Windows Control Panels from 1985 to Today (Windows 1.0 to 10) - tech-historian https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/all-windows-control-panels ====== BitwiseFool I still find myself snapping to where the 'Add Remove Programs' icon would be whenever I have to uninstall something. I know it's under Programs and Features now, but it's so surprising to me that I haven't unlearned that habit.
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Windows 10 – Toddler Deletes Everything with 6 Clicks - scolfax OK, it&#x27;s a click-bait title, but check this out: You&#x27;re only 6 clicks away from wiping out your Windows 10 installation.<p>Starting from the Desktop, click on: Start &#x2F; Settings &#x2F; Update &amp; Security &#x2F; Recovery &#x2F; Get Started (Reset this PC) &#x2F; Remove Everything<p>You are never asked to enter a password, or type in &quot;Remove Everything&quot; as a fail-safe. ====== stevep98 > You are never asked to enter a password, or type in "Remove Everything" as a > fail-safe. Some people will still do that and be surprised at the result. My dad once reformatted his memory card on his camera, losing all his pictures from his vacation. He wanted to 'Change the Format' of the image (why? who knows), but instead he reformatted the card. "Are you Sure? Yes!" I once copied an empty partition over a full partition instead of vice versa. I knew I only had one copy of this important data, and was trying to back it up. Are you sure? double-check.. YUP! ~~~ MartijnHoutman Well, I had that once on my old Canon DSLR. I really wanted to change the picture format from JPEG to RAW (CR2), so I chose the 'format' option. I got into the format card menu, so I wanted to get out. There were only two options: OK and Cancel, but the interface was so bad I had no idea which button was active and which was not (the colors would invert on scrolling). A 50-50% chance, and I chose the wrong option ;) Luckily it was a quick format, so a raw scan saved my photos :) ------ venomsnake Well just ask the advertisers and they will give you all your files back. If they refuse - there is always a copy in the NSA worry not. ------ brudgers Let's assume that there are only ten options at each level of clicking. Thus a probability of 1 in (10^6 * the chance of your toddler getting unsupervised access while the computer is on and in an accepting state). ------ jjgreen You should never have given him/her the root password. ~~~ scolfax True, but... you obviously don't have kids! ;) ~~~ nadams > you obviously don't have kids "kids" should never have administrative privileges on the system (up to the point they can burn a CD - then they can have admin privileges because with enough googling they can do it themselves). And you might want to install a sandbox type program - [http://alternativeto.net/software/deep- freeze/?license=free](http://alternativeto.net/software/deep- freeze/?license=free) ~~~ scolfax Windows is a consumer operating system. You and I may know the "right" way to use it, but mother-in-laws don't like passwords, kids like Minecraft, and kids = chaos. ------ bwackwat I LOL'D.
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The Problem with Prototypes (in Perl5 subroutines) - draegtun http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/08/the-problem-with-prototypes.html ====== draegtun See related HN post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=770072>
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A brief update - rbinv https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/heading-to-usds/ ====== SwellJoe The phrasing of this makes it sound like he wants to paint it as though he's doing community service or something. But...Defense Digital Service? At the Pentagon? That's not exactly curing cancer or solving poverty. ~~~ Matt_Cutts At the risk of wading into a fraught discussion, here's an example from yesterday: [http://www.defense.gov/News-Article- View/Article/802828/cart...](http://www.defense.gov/News-Article- View/Article/802828/carter-announces-hack-the-pentagon-program-results) . Bug bounty programs have proven very effective in private industry (e.g. when Chrome pays security researchers who find vulnerabilities). The Defense Digital Service just completed one of the first bug bounty programs for the federal government. This is my personal opinion, but if bug bounty programs become more common in the government, that would mean that lots more people would be protected from hacks or identity theft. To give another example that's under the umbrella of the US Digital Service, [https://www.vets.gov/playbook/](https://www.vets.gov/playbook/) is an attempt to bring resources for veterans into a single website. Right now, veterans may have to navigate 1000+ websites, 956 different 1-800 numbers, and just deal with more hassle than they should. I interviewed at the US Digital Service but ended up at the Defense Digital Service because that's where I thought I could help the most. There's some good info about the sort of projects that people at the USDS/DDS work on at [https://www.usds.gov/work](https://www.usds.gov/work) if anyone is interested. 18F at [https://18f.gsa.gov/](https://18f.gsa.gov/) is also doing great work, with the extra benefit that people can work for the 18F remotely. 18F has also been a proponent for more open source in the government: [https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/25/noble-open- code.aspx](https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/25/noble-open-code.aspx) ~~~ hodgesrm Hi Matt! Good on you for doing this. The US Govt needs more smart citizens stepping up and getting involved instead of just criticizing. And for the anti-military types out there, ask yourself if the world is a better place if decent citizens _don 't_ get involved with the US military. ~~~ uola There's already plenty of smart decent people in the military and even more at defense companies. It's a structural, not a people, problem. What the US military does (both offline and online) mostly has widespread support among politicians and the US population. These policies are not a mistake to be corrected or something that will go away, it's a difference in opinion. If you don't support them you probably shouldn't be involved. There are many other ways to help your country with e.g. digital security. The "anti-military types" is just a cheap shot. Pretty much everyone I know who has been or are involved in a military (or government) has reservations about it (including myself). ------ f_allwein Matt is one of the nicest, most ethical people I have worked with, so I have no doubt his work in Washington will be for the benefit of society. Also, he's an expert on fighting abuse, so should be able to make some interesting contributions. ------ lifeisstillgood Digital Government is one of the great challenges of the next decades, and I am worried that we still see software as a "rockstar" can solve it profession. Conways law means that changing software to meet our needs now means hanging the whole organisation. And changing government is a whole order of challenge greater than in private sector. But I see daily the problems of scrum sprints forcing poor architectural decisions that need strong coders to push back on - and while is suspect Matt would be one of those pushing back, really the system of digitisation of government should be more - sympathetic to the challenge. I am amazed and impressed by the XDS approach (gov.uk is a leader in this) but I remain under convinced and unable to express this coherently - I will sleep on it ~~~ mmahemoff I share your concern, but how else does radical change on this level happen without a wave of rockstars (as seen with UK's GDS)? One or two isolated rockstars, or even a team of a-bit-above-average engineers, have a negligible impact when faced with a bureaucracy. Their efforts are hampered and their results can easily be dismissed as noise. Is a team of rockstars alone sufficient? No. It still needs the kind of empathetic engineers who want genuine improvement and will work to permeate their efforts through the organisation. Rockstars by definition are outstanding technically, but their mindsets can vary widely. Rockstars of the precocious, arrogant, variety aren't suited for this, but others (like Matt Cutts imo) are. ~~~ lifeisstillgood How Else is a very good question - and I fear that dropping in a "wave" of anyone is just going to end up wits one wet beach - GDS is having inspirational effect but as a private contractor who is making every effort to break into (for want of better term "let me get paid for developing open source solutions to the 2000 government needs - see [http://www.oss4gov.org](http://www.oss4gov.org)) it is clear that they are not breaking down every barrier - there is a lot to do. I am not saying I know of a better way - but rock stars don't change organisations. Meaningful change is really hard and conways law is a two way sword. If you can't change the organisation good luck having the software change it for you. Here is a longer thought : Let's look at UK schools and the department for education. The essential jobs of the department are 1) school standards and inspection (ofsted) and 2) paying the schools and so forth. Fundamentally we don't need a whole department to funnel money from treasury to headmasters. There are many pieces of software that Matt Cutts could work on there, a whole career. But we could remove the need for that department and hence that OSS software by political action. This is the point I think I am making. Software literacy is soooo vital to making sure that organisations make the right choices in their software, and software is now and will be soooo deep in all organisations (they effectively become programmable corporations) that we need software "rock stars" at the highest levels of government making the highest levels of architectural decisions But when we talk about architectural decisions at government we basically are talking ministerial level policy making. And that implies that companies are going to need to have their it architecture decided by their internal political structures - which will have to become more democratic So - yeah still not making a good point. But when we want people to come in and transform digital in government, they will quickly ask political questions. And they need political answers. Even though the leverage and driving power lies in what software can offer. ~~~ spangry _"...software is now and will be soooo deep in all organisations (they effectively become programmable corporations) that we need software "rock stars" at the highest levels of government making the highest levels of architectural decisions"_ This is the key issue. Having spent years working on 'IT in government', at both the cabinet policy advisory level and at the IT coalface level, I've formed the view that when it comes to IT policy, 99% of the policy outcome is determined by implementation detail. I think this makes government IT policy quite unique, and it's something policy people (like myself) can't wrap their heads around. Perfect example: the Australian 'Standard Business Reporting' programme ([http://www.sbr.gov.au/](http://www.sbr.gov.au/)). It's hard to fault the policy position: open up APIs for reporting to government. But they fucked up the technical implementation so badly that they are now 5 years in, $1bn in the hole, and have around 1% voluntary take-up. The relevant senior decision makers were completely IT illiterate and went with the "can't go wrong with IBM" route. Consequently, any developer that values their sanity won't come near it with a 10 foot barge pole. ~~~ lifeisstillgood But what I am saying is that just as code is the design, code is the policy The policy decisions were not "open an API" but also "use JSON" and "use fog keys for signing" and "implement the VAT submissions first" The fact those policy decisions were not made is the whole point we both seem to be making ------ danso Reminds me of when Craig Newmark did a stint with Veterans Affairs, becoming a real evangelist for the agency and getting into the nitty gritty of office IT: [http://craigconnects.org/2009/11/why-craigslist-founder- join...](http://craigconnects.org/2009/11/why-craigslist-founder-joins-va- innovation-search-panel.html) [http://craigconnects.org/2013/04/veterans-disability- claims-...](http://craigconnects.org/2013/04/veterans-disability-claims- backlog-setting-the-record-straight.html) ------ tangled_zans Can people rename this to something that makes sense? Seeing a post on the front page saying "A brief update" is so vague. An update by whom? About what? There's literally not enough information to gauge whether or not I should pursue this further without clicking on it. ------ Yhippa Anybody have experience working for the USDS? What was it like? I'm curious to know if people in industry on the East Coast recognize the program. ------ dahdum I'm surprised to see so much negativity in the thread. It's fantastic for government to add more people like Cutts, especially in a division with innovation as a goal. He brings excellent public communication skills, I'm excited to see what he'll be working on and hope they'll report broadly. ------ rambos Please help make changes in the most efficient way possible. I've seen it before when these digital agencies filled with "innovators" come only to reinvent the wheel; spending ridiculous amounts of tax payer dollars and man hours to create things that could otherwise be brought in from the private sector. Good luck, do what's right with the tax payer dollars. ------ wnevets Wow good for you for matt, hope it goes well! ------ bane Absolutely awesome. Thanks for setting an example of civil service. I'm in the D.C. area, feel free to drop me a line (email in my profile). ------ sidcool Expected and got the negative comments here. He's taking paycut and making a difference in Governance. Not Bill Gates level, but something at least. If nothing, it's better than people making condescending armchair comments here. ~~~ barryaustin It's a common part of human nature. Assigning bad moral character on the basis of group identity, rather than on individual actions, is the essence of tribalism and bigotry. Sure, the DoD has an outsized impact on people's lives and a highly controversial history including both major evil and major good. It seems to me a positive thing that someone of good character and strong capabilities would go to make things better, vs allowing bad actors to accumulate and do what bad actors do. ~~~ uola Why do think covert operations, black sites, secret courts and hidden budgets exist? Or chain of command, court martials and censorship? It's not a democratic organisation of individual actions. It's easy to say that he's of "good character" trying to make things better, but in reality he is lending his credibility to bad actors and he has little power to make things better. Keith Alexander doesn't go to defcon in jeans and a t-shirt to take input, but to sell a different image of the military. If it's anything that is human nature it's to despite evidence to the contrary justify how bad things are not your responsibility. NSA compromised google users data and here is one of the most famous googlers acting head recruiter for the military. ------ coldtea > _For example I worked on software that helped soldiers_ Soldiers deployed in the other side of the world where they have no business to be in the first place? Securing cheap oil resources and/or control of strategic interests? ~~~ BinaryIdiot Seriously, on Hacker News you're going to make a political comment that has zero to do with anything I commented on? A DoD software contractor has no control over congressional level politics. The reality is that they were there / still there so while you work to campaign for changing the reality are you suggesting we should NOT make things better for our soldiers to stay safer? Get off your high horse and make your political, off topic statements on reddit instead. ~~~ Kristine1975 _> A DoD software contractor has no control over congressional level politics._ Then just say no when the DoD asks you to work for them. _> are you suggesting we should NOT make things better for our soldiers to stay safer?_ I certainly am. The safer "our" soldiers are the more people they can murder. ~~~ dominotw we should've just Gaddafi enslave thousands of women in his harem \s. You should read the book 'Gaddafi's Harem: The Story of a Young Woman and the Abuses of Power in Libya' before going around spreading hate and supporting cruel, inhuman dictators. ~~~ coldtea Actually it shouldn't be your concern what he did in his own country. Like it's not anyone's concern that say the US puts the largest number of its citizens in jail (25% of the worlds inmates for a country with 4% of the world's population) and of which the predominant number are black. I mean it should concern people all over the world, and they should ask and lend support and diplomatic pressure to change that, but they should in no way interfere with internal politics, invade or attack the US for that. And that's something that hurts far more people (millions) compared to "some thousand". Besides, what have you accomplished now? A hell hole of a country, an ex- country, with fractions fighting from several competitive sides, millions flying and hundreds of thousands dead. Yay for getting rid of the dictator, sure turned out well. And the place is a paradise now for the sex and slave trade. Not to mention the hypocrisy of it all. Those decisions to support the rebels in official capacity wasn't because anybody really cared for the regime's victims. After all they always did and continue to do great business and have cordial relations with Saudi Arabia (how do local women fare there legally? Or search about what happens to thousands of immigrant women coming to work there as house servants etc.). It pays to think about such events beyond what the mainstream media and the official government announcements say. Read some books, and not just celebrated books that maintain the official party line of one's government, try to find the other side's story too. And historical books, for such regions, to get perspective. ------ bhartzer I seem to recall that he used to work for cia or? Can't remember exactly. ~~~ Baghard He interned at the DoD when he was a college student. Maybe you are thinking of the NSA? Though the NSA is part of DoD, I don't think it was ever confirmed that Matt worked for the NSA. ------ angry-hacker U.S needs the separation of state and corporation. ------ djrobstep It's not only not curing cancer or solving poverty, it's killing people. ~~~ BinaryIdiot While your former is true your latter is just horribly false. I worked in the DoD space for many years and the overwhelming amount of work you're most likely to do doesn't involve killing people even indirectly. More likely you're working on systems to go keep our people safe. For example I worked on software that helped soldiers look at patterns of IED placements to hopefully help them figure out where others were. I wouldn't consider what I worked on even indirectly supporting any type of killing but helping out people stay safer. ~~~ waterphone Ultimately, though, aren't you helping soldiers stay safer so they can continue to kill others? I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, but that is the reality of war and military-related work. ~~~ BinaryIdiot This is incredibly tone deaf. I'm not sure why every thread about the DoD on Hacker News always ends up with the most extreme comments that lead to: "even if you're sending cards to the soldiers you're lifting their spirits to kill more people therefore you should feel bad about yourself". I get it. You hate war. Most people hate war, even the soldiers in our army hate it. You want change? Vote and get outside and protest. Don't shit on a DoD contractor while sitting there doing nothing. Real change requires real effort. ~~~ geofft I mean, I'm doing something. I have a job that doesn't involve working for the DoD. I understand the need for people to have jobs. I'm not unhappy about individual soldiers, individual cops, individual TSA workers deciding that's how they want to get employment. (I'm sort of unhappy at society-as-a-whole for making the military such a good career decision for many people, but the fact remains that it _is_ a good career decision, and I won't begrudge that.) I'm not unhappy about you, because I have no idea what your job is or what your life is like. But this article is about a person who had an extremely good job at Google deciding that he wasn't doing enough for the world and that he could make the world a better place by working for the DoD. He could have stayed at Google; he could have even worked for the USDS for any of the non- war functions of government, if he really wanted to. I think that's fair to criticize. ~~~ robbiep How Ayn Rand do you want to go? By the same logic working for a company that pays taxes that supports the military is also helping things along. Best to withdraw entirely the efforts of your labour from the machine? ~~~ merraksh How taxes support the military is decided by lawmakers. We vote candidates based on their programs. If a candidate promised to lower contributions to defense, (s)he'd have my vote. You can have labour that doesn't feed the military. ------ programmarchy > "nice ... Pentagon ... interesting contributions" Reminds me of the study: > People with more agreeable, conscientious personalities are more likely to > make harmful choices. [1] [1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-green- mind/201406/a...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-green- mind/201406/are-polite-people-more-violent-and-destructive) ~~~ dang That's probably a fascinating study in general, but if you bring it up in the context of one specific agreeable, conscientious person, it's a personal attack, and those are not allowed here. We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927709) and marked it off-topic. ------ marco_salvatori I generally advise nice, ethical people who want to benefit society to avoid working for morally ambiguous organizations, as it can have a degradating effect on their character. Still, some people find their principles in unexpected places. And for someone who is an expert on fighting abuse, there is an rare opportunity for outstanding service to their country and the principles that made it great by applying such skills to the situation at Guantanamo. ~~~ dang We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11927709) and marked it off-topic. ------ legulere Making a difference in the branch of government that is about destroying lives in other countries. ~~~ nnutter To be a little more fair it's also about defense. ~~~ qmr The US is surrounded by two friendly nations and two big fuckoff oceans. I question the need for 'defense'. ~~~ joshmanders 9/11, Boston, Orlando, San Bernardino, nah we don't need defense, nobody can get to us. ~~~ wnoise He didn't say we didn't need police. ~~~ joshmanders Oh yeah, spray the fire extinguisher at the top of the fire instead of the base, that'll surely put it out! ~~~ TeMPOraL No, just stop "extinguishing" the fire by burning other peoples' houses down. (It's as absurd as it sounds, and yet that's essentially the US strategy for defending from terrorist attacks) ~~~ Tiksi Granted, this is basically how wildfires are extinguished, though more trees/brush than houses. ~~~ TeMPOraL True, but the context was about household fires :). ------ ocdtrekkie Note that Matt here claims he's taking a "leave from Google" to join the Defense Digital Service at the Pentagon. This is in addition to the recent announcement three months ago that Eric Schmidt would also be taking on a job at the Pentagon... also while he still works for Google. Google's partnership with our current administration has me increasingly uncomfortable. Before this year, it was generally limited to former Googlers in DC, or former government employees at Google, but this year, we have two major, very high level Google employees working directly for the Department of Defense. ~~~ Jerry2 Google and USG are joined at the hip. If you haven't seen this article, give it a read and check out those charts: [https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably- close...](https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close- relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/) ~~~ madeofpalk Completely off topic sidenote: even when completely muted, my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) makes a sound when hovering over the names in the first chart, and a different (deeper and quieter) sound when hovering over the second one. The sound appears to come from below the F2/F3/2/3 keys. I tried to record it, but its too quiet and there's too much background noise here to hear it on the video. Anyone have an idea what this would be? I presume it's the CPU/GPU underneath, but I've never heard this before. Does this happen to anyone else? ~~~ mschuster91 With my Fall 2011 MBP, it's the wall wart that produces a wide variety of sounds depending on the CPU load. Desktop motherboards are known for high-frequency sounds in response to varying load - the source are the low-voltage regulators for the different CPU domains. ------ Tannic Another turn in the swinging door between douchle and big gov ~~~ dang We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected]. We're happy to unban people when there's reason to believe that they'll only post civil and substantive comments (and particularly avoid personal attacks) in the future. ------ mtgx A lot of back and forth between Google and the U.S. government lately. Even Eric Schmidt joined the Pentagon. I think if Google would've kept the robot division, it would've inevitably become a defense contractor (even though they promised they wouldn't). Fortunately, it's going to sell it, but there's still time to become that with DeepMind, etc. ~~~ ams6110 That's because Google is Skynet, of course. ------ ebbv This is really cool Matt, but here's hoping your appointment ends before January 2017 just in case the orangutan wins.
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Starting points for data driven graphics from the FT - mgalka http://ft-interactive.github.io/visual-vocabulary/ ====== mgalka Associated repo [https://github.com/ft-interactive/visual- vocabulary](https://github.com/ft-interactive/visual-vocabulary)
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Program against your FPGA cluster like it's a single pool of accelerators - inaccel https://docs.inaccel.com/latest/tutorial/orientation ====== inaccel A product for you to build, ship and run FPGA accelerated applications
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Education hackathon is giving away a school bus - jslampe http://blog.dwolla.com/hack-to-school/ ====== arghbleargh Wow, a schoolbus! I've been wanting to get one for years, just gotta get first place now! Seriously though, I like the idea of bringing these different types of people together (students, developers, teachers). Too often people think they know how to "fix education" without seeing the perspectives of everyone involved.
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How We Support 1,650 Customers with One Representative - duaneb http://blog.statuspage.io/2-300-000-to-one-or-supporting-1650-customers-with-just-one-rep ====== huhtenberg Whether or not this number is notable depends squarely on the nature of the product/service. One-man shareware shops routinely have tens of thousands customers and handle all of the support _in addition_ to doing everything else. And hardly anyone ever brags about this. ~~~ odonnellryan I worked for several years as corporate IT support back in the day. Each employee represented around 2K user's nation wide. It was very busy and we didn't do a good job (understaffed) but we did everything. Supported ALL the applications. All hard ware. PC upgrades. You name it. You handled your 50 calls a day. It sucked, that's why we all left, but 2K+ for one person for one application stack... not that crazy. ------ itsdevlin This doesn't seem unreasonable. As a data point, we're just shy of 10k customers with one full-time support person (and two part-time). In my experience, it was the process of setting up the KB and process by which you'd answer tickets that was the most arduous. 0-10 users, easy. 10->100 OMFG EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE. 100->n becomes just an optimization problem. ------ sandworm101 1650:1? What's Microsoft's ratio? MS claims "1.5 billion people use Windows every day." 1500000000 / 1650 = 909091 Does MS have 900,000 call center people? I'm betting not. It may an apples and oranges comparison (app v. OS) but 1650:1 remains nothing special in the world of customer support. I would much rather then brag about how quickly customer concerns are dealt with or how few are routed to voicemail. ~~~ anhedonisticguy I think you'd have to include a large majority of IT personnel in this figure, as they are the likely first line of support for many windows installs. That number is probably much higher than 1 million. Apples to oranges, of course. The interesting part is that MS scaled their support to include people paid by their customers directly because their software was so business critical. ~~~ odonnellryan Even high-tier MS support isn't great. You may rely on it and `need` the support, but you don't really need it. ~~~ nostalgiac What? I'm guessing you've never actually paid for an MS Support Call? They will work through your issue no matter what until a resolution is reached. ~~~ odonnellryan I'm sure I don't have experience with every tier of their support, but I've dealt with both Microsoft Partner support and paid support contracts for both Windows Server and SQL Server. They will definitely help you, eventually, and the problem will eventually get fixed. However, eventually (in my experience) has been usually several days. ------ gscott I ran a groupware platform that had over 1,000 daily users on it myself with about 30 new organizations signing up to use it every day. The key thing was to create help videos and help hover icons everywhere possible. Eventually it was self-supporting no one ever had questions because the answers were all right there. ------ acconrad I'd be asking for a raise if I were that rep. ~~~ jo909 They rotate support duty, every engineer and even the founders do it for a week each. ~~~ odonnellryan This is the most important part of the email! I almost got fired once for very modestly bringing up the idea at a previous role ;) ------ myohan I think the challenge is not in the numbers but in the quality of support and these guys are doing it well and substantiating how they did it with solid evidence. ------ FajitaNachos Their call to action signup is pretty slick. Full page on page load, then no longer accessible once you scroll down or refresh. First time I've seen something like that in the wild. ------ philip1209 Weird, the HTTPS Anywhere chrome extensions seems to be redirecting me to status-page-blog.herokuapp.com
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How do we build encryption backdoors? - michael_fine http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2015/04/how-do-we-build-encryption-backdors.html ====== cyphar > A final, and salient feature on the key distribution approach is that it > allows only prospective eavesdropping -- that is, law enforcement must first > target a particular user, and only then can they eavesdrop on her > connections. There's no way to look backwards in time. Actually, its even weaker of an attack than that. Signal (for example) stores a copy of the keys locally on the other person's device after a conversation has been initiated (and notifies users if they've changed). You could augment this with TUF or some other updating system to make additions of new devices (or removal of old ones) also secure. So really the distribution attack only works for _first connection_. And this is why PGP key signing parties are a thing (and why I ask for two forms of government ID before signing their keys). ~~~ titanomachy The author said exactly this, in the paragraph right before the one you quoted: > Some communication systems, like Signal, allow users to compare key > fingerprints in order to verify that each received the right public key. ~~~ cyphar That's not what I said. Signal stores the key that you've already verified. So changing the key in the keyserver doesn't do anything to a device, since you haven't verified the new key from the keyserver (and it shows a warning). ~~~ sievebrain You think. Remember that you don't know what binary you were delivered, unless you personally reverse engineered it yourself. ~~~ cyphar Or compiled and side-loaded it yourself. ------ Animats He's missed the real approach - "work reduction". This is giving the cryptosystem or the random number generator some hidden property which reduces the amount of work required to break the key. We've seen this repeatedly in cryptosystems deployed with bad random number generators.[1][2] [1] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/lousy_random_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/lousy_random_nu.html) [2] [https://umaine.edu/scis/files/2014/10/The-Sad-History-of- Ran...](https://umaine.edu/scis/files/2014/10/The-Sad-History-of-Random- Bits.pdf) ~~~ tptacek I doubt he missed it, since he's one of the academic researchers working on the purported BULLRUN disclosures; his name is, for instance, on the Juniper Dual EC paper. Rather, I think you've misconstrued the post. I think? this is the blog version of a talk he did last year at Black Hat, in which he and Jim Denaro investigated ways that a government could plausibly create an _above-board_ cryptographic back door. Further: simply crippling a system's RNG doesn't create a workable backdoor, because that's not a "NOBUS" flaw: anyone who knows the RNG is busted can break the resulting cryptosystem. Dual EC isn't like that; instead, it cleverly enlists the RNG as a key escrow scheme: Dual EC's outputs can only be decrypted back to RNG state if you hold the ECC private key corresponding to the generator. Key escrow is discussed in this post. ------ reppard I believe the master key sharding he mentions based on this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing) and has actually been implemented(though I'm not sure if it is at the scale he implies) here [https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/seal.html](https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/seal.html) ~~~ titanomachy Shamir's secret-sharing is one of my favourite algorithms, and it would be certainly be useful in an escrow system. But it actually doesn't address the problem brought up by the author, which is the insecurity of having the whole key present in a single location at the moment of encryption. I think it's a fairly minor issue, since the vast majority of users would never have warrants issued for their data and their keys would never be reconstructed (assuming that a critical number of the escrow agencies follows the law). Far more troubling is the idea that I could be arrested or fined or whatever just for using strong encryption... although I don't think there is an appetite for such unenforceable laws in my country. EDIT: (from article) > Threshold crypto refers to a set of techniques for storing secret keys > across multiple locations so that decryption can be done in place without > recombining the key shares. Does Shamir's algorithm meet this requirement? My understanding was that the fragments must still be brought together in one place and the key reconstructed, although if there is a way to implement the algorithm without doing this I'd love to know about it. ~~~ Canada > the vast majority of users would never have warrants issued for their data > and their keys would never be reconstructed (assuming that a critical number > of the escrow agencies follows the law). That would require a unique backdoor key for every device. Somehow these keys would need to be generated, split into parts, and those parts securely distributed to the independent escrow agencies. There's no safe way to do that. ------ mike_hearn That's good timing, given the discussion yesterday on a similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12254960 There are a couple of things in the article I'm not sure Matt got quite right. WhatsApp does let you compare key fingerprints, believe it or not. At least you can scan QR codes to check. I don't know if doing that triggers a key change warning in future. End-to-end encryption doesn't seem to impact whether law enforcement can look backwards in time or not. Simply not logging message content is sufficient to prevent this. WhatsApp couldn't provide law enforcement with message content prior to a tap being requested even before they integrated the Signal protocol because they didn't log message content at all (or so they say). Introducing E2E crypto in the style of WhatsApp solves only one specific threat model as far as I can tell - if someone is capable of hacking your datacenter to the extent that they can siphon off and log messages by themselves without you noticing, but they aren't also capable of doing a key switcheroo. This would be a strange but possible kind of hack. Note that this assumes the users aren't storing their device keys and comparing them by hand and that the hacker can't influence the code that gets shipped. He assumes the user can detect key mismatches. Even if users can compare keys, this assumes that their client does what they think it does. It's noted in another comment here but all it takes to undo this assumption is getting Google or Apple to push a dummy binary to the specific devices of interest that claims things are encrypted even when they aren't. You wouldn't need to deploy threshold crypto 'at scale' for the proposed scheme to work. Some schemes like Shoup threshold RSA result in a normal public key: http://www.shoup.net/papers/thsig.pdf So the only part that's non standard is the software for working with the shares to decrypt, which only has to work and exist between the various agencies. But I'm not actually even sure you need special threshold crypto schemes. I guess you could also take the session key(s) and encrypt them with key 1, then encrypting that value with key 2, etc, to build up an onion of encryptions. The various participants then have to pass around the value in the same order hard-coded into the software to get it back. The advantage of this approach is you can use ordinary HSMs to protect the keys, i.e. the hardware itself enforces that the private key may never leave the hardware unless it's being cloned to another HSM. But these are all minor details. The point Matt makes is well made, which is that you can build backdoors into cryptographic systems, and the reasons people don't want to do this are primarily political rather than technical. I continue to be concerned that the tech community may be about to burn its credibility with the mainstream population for no reason by claiming this stuff is impossible to do or is completely unthinkable, when it's actually not. Opinion polling showed that there was no general consensus behind Apple's refusal to unlock the phone in the FBI case: many people don't support the tech industries absolutist position here (perhaps because they don't understand the potential mass surveillance has). Moreover, governments will generally not accept an answer of "you are imperfect thus should not have the law enforcement capability you want". Lawmakers understand and accept that civil servants will make mistakes or be openly abusive and only generally want to control the levels of error/abuse, not eliminate it. Certainly the sorts of positions the Obama administration is looking for would accommodate key revocation procedures if the government agencies in question somehow did screw up and their private key leaked out of their HSMs. I suspect they'd happily agree to temporarily losing their capability to restore system integrity if there was a procedure for restoring their access once a neutral third party had re-audited the relevant offices. This sort of detail isn't where lawmakers are at: they think in broad strokes rather than the details of procedures. ~~~ cyphar > End-to-end encryption doesn't seem to impact whether law enforcement can > look backwards in time or not. I think he was referring to the fact that the Signal protocol has perfect forward secrecy -- if you break the key today, all previous communications are still secure because they used different keys (the key is updated using the Axolotl ratchet).
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Fallback from CDN to local jQuery - shawndumas http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CDNsFailButYourScriptsDontHaveToFallbackFromCDNToLocalJQuery.aspx ====== romaniv I still find the idea of CDNS repugnant. No matter how you slice it, you rely on an external resource for important parts of your application. "What it it goes down?" is one question. But you also should be asking yourself about what will happen if it gets hacked. There are also user privacy issues, which get completely overlooked in the chase for shaving off several milliseconds off request time. A much better architecture would be to serve JavaScript from your server by default, but allow for distributed content-based caching. For example, your script tag could look like this <script src="some.js" hash="ha3ee938h8eh38a9h49ha094h" /> The hash would be calculated based on the content of the file. The browser then could fetch it from whatever source it wants. Users could cache stuff locally (across websites), without needing to dial into a CDN every time. You could even use a torrent-like network for distributed delivery of popular script libraries. ~~~ olegp It's not just a few milliseconds though. For example at <https://starthq.com>, we are based in Finland, but host on Amazon in US East. A round trip to the US is 200ms+ whereas with CloudFront it's 8ms. Before we used a CDN our page took a few seconds to load - now it takes around 200ms. I should also mention that all this happens only on first load. We embed etags in the URLs and use far off cache control expires dates, so subsequent page loads get the JS and CSS from the browser's cache. ~~~ bsimpson I think there's confusion here about the use of the term CDN. There are _public_ CDNs, like Google AJAX APIs, that allow a shared copy of an open- source library to be downloaded from a known-good location. This enables users to reuse the same copy their browser has already cached across multiple pages, but like romaniv and the OP have pointed out, you are then trusting Google to be good stewards of that resource. Conversely, you control what shows up on your own _private_ CDN, like CloudFront. Sure, there may be downside outside of your control, but nobody is going to be able to alter the resources there without your permission. ~~~ jmillikin > Conversely, you control what shows up on your own > private CDN, like CloudFront. Sure, there may be > downside outside of your control, but nobody is going > to be able to alter the resources there without your > permission. Well, CloudFront could, since they control the machines that your users are connecting to. ~~~ pyre One could say the same of any host. ~~~ jmillikin That's the point; it's silly to say that <https://some- cdn.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js> is inherently less secure than <https://my- cloudfront-proxied-site.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js> ~~~ pyre Well, it also depends on your level of trust for Google vs. CloudFront. ------ wyuenho This only works if the CDN actually returns 4xx or 5xx codes. This still won't work if the CDN is getting DDOS'ed, as in taking forever to return anything. ~~~ gavinpc Along the same lines, Chrome (maybe just webkit generally) does not fire DOMContentLoaded until external script requests have resolved _or timed out_ , even if they are _async_. Also, I don't understand why people feel so strongly about reposting this "document.write" method everywhere, which I found in some cases made my page disappear at load time. You can do the same thing using regular DOM methods, and you get more control over the process. ~~~ youngtaff I believe the blocking of DCL is expected behaviour for scripts with async attribute [http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/...](http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current- work/multipage/scripting-1.html#attr-script-async) If you insert the script using a script it's execution is delayed until after DCL ------ isalmon I personally decided to use a local file after all. Pros: \+ I can cache it for a very long time, so all my returning visitors don't have re-download it. I was very surprised to see that CDN's jquery had a very short 'Expire' headers \+ If my server is up and users can open a web page - there's a very high chance that the .js file will load as well. \+ I can combine different jquery libraries/plugins into one file, so my page can load MUCH faster Cons: \- It might load a little more slowly, because it's not on CDN. Am I missing something? ~~~ Encosia The Google CDN serves jQuery with a 365 day max-age as long as you reference a specific version (which you should be doing anyway). It only uses the shorter cache expiration, necessarily, if you want a "latest version" reference. More info here: [http://encosia.com/the-crucial-0-in-google-cdn-references- to...](http://encosia.com/the-crucial-0-in-google-cdn-references-to- jquery-1-x-0/) ------ MatthewPhillips It saddens me that ES6 modules don't have fallbacks built in. You do: import 'http://developer.yahoo.com/modules/yui3.js' as YUI; wish it was: import ['http://developer.yahoo.com/modules/yui3.js', '/libs/yui3'] as YUI; ~~~ SoftwareMaven I think the notion of "fallbacks" (and the sibling comment's "timeouts") are extremely specific to the web. However, there is some prior art on this subject in the python world: try: import simplejson as json except ImportError: import json So it might be worth contacting the committee and expressing that. ------ sleepyhead Fallback to a CDN has been blogged about for a while, don't understand why it is being upvoted now. However, do note the issues presented by Steve Souders though: [http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2013/03/18/http-archive- jqu...](http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2013/03/18/http-archive-jquery/) One thing is that only about 1% have the specified version you use on your site. ------ mrharrison If you guys take a look at html5 boilerplate <http://html5boilerplate.com/> . It has redundancy built in, so if the cdn fails, it will load your local copy. ~~~ mrharrison Also, you shouldn't be serving your content from a cdn anyway. All of your js files should be compressed into one file, browser cached, and gzipped. ~~~ dangrossman Making the file smaller doesn't reduce latency. The point of a CDN is local distribution, not just load balancing. You also get to share a cache with other sites; if you point to jQuery on Google's CDN, and the visitor has been to any other site using that CDN, they already have the file cached. ~~~ nilliams >> Making the file smaller doesn't reduce latency No, but I think the parent was making the case for combining everything into a single file (jQuery + app) which has benefits in reducing number of HTTP requests, especially important on mobile for example. >> The point of a CDN is local distribution, not just load balancing. Personally, I build web-apps for UK customers, and host in the UK, so this is a non-issue. I suspect the same is true for a lot of people building complex web-apps (i.e. apps complex enough that you should care about your build process). >> You also get to share a cache with other sites; if you point to jQuery on Google's CDN, and the visitor has been to any other site using that CDN, they already have the file cached. Not really true, they have to have hit another site that has uses that _exact version of jQuery_ in order to have it cached. There was a study done recently that illustrated this was very unlikely. I wish I could link to it, but all I can tell you is Alex Sexton referenced it on the Shoptalk podcast [1]. Edit: Another commenter has now referenced the survey in question [2]. [1] <http://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/061-with-alex-sexton/> [2] [http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2013/03/18/http-archive- jqu...](http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2013/03/18/http-archive-jquery/) ------ 3825 Will we see (a few very) popular frameworks like jQuery built into web browsers with the server just declaring what version to use? (I have a feeling that, although I have good intentions, this is a bad idea.) Thoughts? ~~~ emehrkay I hope not. Especially at the pace that these things change (just about every jQuery release is followed up by a point update a day later) ~~~ 3825 I'd like to believe Chrome* users are usually up to date on version numbers. We could update the library cache on a different schedule from browser updates. Finally, we could fall back to a CDN (with further fall back to your own server?) if the server requests jQuery 2.0.1 and the browser says sorry, best I can do is 2.0.0. My fear was more on the server-side. Can we accomplish this without further butchering the head from the standard? I can't see all browsers adopting this or it becoming a standard without a major sponsor. And like someone else mentioned, we can get about the same benefits from aggressive caching. I agree for the most part. Don't get me wrong. I love Google. I love what they do to make the web faster with their hosted libraries[1]. Correct me if I am wrong but caching the libraries from Google only helps if the the server specifies they want that particular file from Google (I'd imagine it would be a gaping security hole any other way). My thought is whether it is possible to just declare something like 1.9.1.min.jQuery.com and have the browser just recognize it and say "Oh yes I have that. No need for a server round trip. You're welcome." or "No, I don't understand what you're talking about. Give me an address so I can fetch it." Is it even worth it? jQuery 1.9.1 minified is ~90 kB, so we're probably just trying to shave off tens of milliseconds at the most. I bet we all have fruits hanging lower than this to worry about it. Another thing is that it will probably have to be a vendor-specific meta tag (as I don't see everyone getting aboard this, if anyone) in the header which I don't know is a good thing. [1] <https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/> *I believe Mozilla Firefox has also started silent updates. It'd be nice to see how quickly users update when a new build gets pushed out. ~~~ maggit You could do something like: <script src="my-copy-of-jquery.1.9.2.js.min" cannonical-uri="https://jquery.com/jquery.1.9.2.js.min" hash="SHA1-blablabla" ></script> With this setup: 1\. Old browsers could work as before 2\. New browsers could download your resource and cache it with the cannonical-uri and calculated (not declared!) hash as cache key (no dependency on third party CDNs) 3\. New browsers could serve this resource from cache if it had downloaded it before with matching cannonical-uri AND hash, disregarding src and host The hash would make sure that the jquery the user downloaded from whereever would indeed be the same jquery you are serving up. \---- Going back to your original idea, browsers could absolutely come with prepopulated caches for such resources, but they might as well fill these caches on demand. The important thing in both cases would be to allow shared caching between sites without forcing everybody to agree on which CDN is the most pleasing. Notice that the cannonical-uri is only a name, it is not supposed to be dereferenced. ~~~ 3825 That looks beautiful. So the hash basically says "I trust this source"? >>The important thing in both cases would be to allow shared caching between sites without forcing everybody to agree on which CDN is the most pleasing. Notice that the cannonical-uri is only a name, it is not supposed to be dereferenced. Yes, you put it much better than I could have. Thank you! ~~~ gertef No, the hash is how you verify that the source (or the transmission) hasn't corrupted the content. ~~~ 3825 It is a fingerprint of the file then, right? ------ jrochkind1 The document.write method makes it impossible to do async script loading, that you ordinarily could do here to improve perceived page load time. No? I mean, for instance, you couldn't load that FIRST CDN jquery as async, because you need the browser to block on it so your NEXT script tag (which also can't be loaded async, naturally, cause it has a document.write in it) can check to see if it was loaded. ~~~ xkcdfanboy Yes, that first method is hideous. Async is a necessary speedup and the `if (jQuery) ` slaughters that optimization. ------ esalman This is built into Bootstrap. ~~~ mac1175 I have seen this in the HTML5 Boilerplate code in line 27-28 [https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/master/index....](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/master/index.html) ~~~ wubbfindel FYI, You can link directly to lines in github: [https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/master/index....](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/master/index.html#L27) ~~~ waffle_ss Also, I would avoid linking to 'master' as it's a moving target (in the future such a link could point to completely different code or even a file that doesn't exist). I try to link to the actual commit that master is pointing to at the time: [https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/7a22a33d4041c...](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/7a22a33d4041c479d0962499e853501073811887/index.html#L27) ~~~ oneeyedpigeon You can also link to line ranges, which is relevant in this case: [https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/7a22a33d4041c...](https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/7a22a33d4041c479d0962499e853501073811887/index.html#L27,L28) ~~~ mac1175 Thanks! This is much helpful. ------ kmfrk The main reason you should do this is not so much as a CDN fall-back, but to prevent users from downloading redundant files retrieved from other sites. Also remember to always use the https URL for the assets, whenever able. ~~~ imjared Is there a reason to use https over a protocol-relative url? My go-to is <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"></script> ~~~ pyre Some older versions of IE don't like protocol-relative, IIRC. Depends on your target platform, and customer-base. ~~~ Encosia I've tested the protocol-relative URL in every version of IE that was available on Browsershots about a year ago (which went back even further than IE6, IIRC). None of them had trouble with it. ~~~ pyre I remember suggesting it to someone else at my previous employer and there were issues. It may have been Outlook[1] though. I can't recall off-hand. [1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303633/preventing- secure...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303633/preventing-secure- insecure-errors-by-using-protocol-relative-urls-for-image-sour) ------ jjoergensen Simple stuff should be simple ------ gwgarry I have always thought that all the stuff in common CDNs should be available in local storage by default. Common stuff like jQuery and the like. Firefox should have this as a feature where it downloads those scripts once and stores them in local storage. That way you're not leaking privacy everywhere you go to Google et. al. ~~~ addandsubtract That would be ideal, but currently local storage doesn't work across domains.
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The Surprising Usefulness of Sloppy Arithmetic - solipsist http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/fuzzy-logic-0103.html ====== jerf Despite what the article says, if you're using floating point numbers you're _already_ using sloppy arithmetic. That's not just a sarcastic point, it's actually important; given that you're already not being precise it isn't necessarily surprising that you can trade away even more precision for speed, rather than it being some sort of binary yea/nay proposition that cracks numeric algorithms wide open. "Off by 1% or so" leads me to guess it is implemented by using 8-bit numbers, and not necessarily with any particular sloppiness added by the chips, just the fact that the precision is small. Visual and audio processing could be set up in such a way that you wouldn't overflow those numbers because you know precisely what's coming in. You'd have to be careful about overflow and underflow but, per my first paragraph, you _already_ have to be careful about that. It also makes sense in such apps that silicon would be more profitably used computing more significant bits more often rather than dithering about getting the bits in the 2^-50 absolutely precisely correct, a good insight. I don't know if that's what they're doing because it's hard to reverse engineer back through a science journalist but "8 bit math processors in quantity" -> "science journalist" -> "this article" is at least plausible. ~~~ modeless Science journalism is so frustrating! Here's the version for smart people: <http://web.media.mit.edu/~bates/Summary_files/BatesTalk.pdf> In summary: Low-precision high-dynamic range arithmetic (floating point with small mantissa, ~1% error) uses ~100x less power and die area than IEEE floating point. The errors are acceptable for a huge class of applications (basically anything you'd consider running on a GPU today). ~~~ alf I don't quite understand how he gets a 10,000x speedup from a 100x transistor count decrease. Does die area increase with the square of transistor count? ~~~ pjscott What he's doing is representing numbers with their logarithms, with limited precision. A floating-point multiplier/divider, then, turns into a fairly small adder, which is much smaller and faster. Square roots and squaring turn into bit shifting. They have some clever method for doing addition/subtraction efficiently. And since they can fit all this in a small area with short critical paths, they can clock it very, very fast, and include a lot of them on a chip. ~~~ modeless It would be rather interesting programming a machine where division was faster than addition! ------ vilya The chip architecture described in the article reminds me of the DEC MasPar system [1] we had at uni back in the mid-90s. 2048 processors (IIRC), where each processor could only communicate directly with it's 8 neighbours. If you wanted to get decent performance out of it, you had to think carefully about you were going to get your data onto each of the processors. [1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasPar> ~~~ rlpb Interesting. This reminds me of cellular automata. Are we headed towards some kind of hybrid? ------ pjscott This would be beautiful for protein folding. That particular application is extremely parallel, numerically heavy, and should tolerate the loss of precision very well. It also eats up processing power like a black hole, so a few orders of magnitude speed improvement would definitely be nice. ~~~ cowsandmilk Based on my experience, different stages of folding should require differing precision. For ClusPro (protein docking, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/prot.22835>), we the first stage are rough energy functions for global sampling of the protein surface. For these functions, we use floats because it is a rigid body sampling and is very tolerant to clashes. However, when it comes to the minimization/refinement stage, we have seen weird things happen with floats and instead use doubles. Similarly, the functions used in early stages of protein folding can probably deal with loss of precision, but the stages for producing high quality structures would not. ------ sanxiyn The idea has been there for a long time: take a look at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithmic_number_system> ------ jorgem I just need a sloppy python math library, now. ~~~ tkaemming That's easy — just delete `decimal.py` from your standard library.
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Superb.net Dedicated Servers Discounts up to 70% - duck http://www.superb.net/dedicated-servers/server-specials-and-promotions/anniversary.php ====== duck I don't want to spam HN, but thought this was a good deal for anyone needing dedicated hosted servers for their startups. I don't know anyone there, but have heard some good reviews about their services. If you don't think this belongs on HN, click the flag button. :)
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How we got hosted, the Rails way - robertgaal http://blog.wakoopa.com/archives/how-we-got-hosted-the-rails-way ====== naish As an alternative, I would suggest Slicehost: http://slicehost.com I stumbled upon them last week after looking for an inexpensive dedicated server or VPS with root access. They offer slices of 4-processor RAID-1 Linux boxes (with your choice of distribution) for reasonable rates. You can add slices as you grow, up to the point of requiring a dedicated box. This is not a managed service--you have full control over your set up. They are developer centric, appear to have a great community going and have received entirely favorable reviews online (at least as far as I could find). They are very Rails friendly (their interface is developed in Rails), but also support Python, Java, PHP, LISP, etc. With root access, you can install whatever development/server environment you desire. I'm just getting set up, but so far, I have been very happy with their service. ~~~ ph Amazon (and others) will sell you time on a massive grid. Amazon's is called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and it seems like it might be a good alternative to a VPS -- the elasticity of each instance would be a boon to a quickly growing web service. I am currently developing my startup's software on a dedicated server running FreeBSD, and I am paying some attention to making it so it will scale (probably in a load balanced cluster). To this end, I have set up FreeBSD jails (low overhead chrooted full installs) so that I can test splitting up the application in various ways. I would imagine that a transparent grid system would reduce the need to worry about scalability issues for many uses. ~~~ naish EC2 is intriguing; however. it is only available to a limited number of beta testers. The waiting list appears to be lengthy... I'm not counting on gaining access any time soon. ------ mattculbreth I'd strongly encourage people on this list (who I'm going to assume are technical) to get their own VPS, not a shared account somewhere. I've been very happy with Future Hosting at http://www.futurehosting.biz/. I've got a VPS with Ubuntu on it and we completely control the box. We're paying $25/month for that server. ~~~ run4yourlives Why is that, exactly? Assuming configuring servers is not the core competency, what would be better about a VPS over a shared services? What you trade off in control you make up for in free time. Granted, as you get larger and develop traffic, the trade off will need to be re-evaluated, but I don't see any major benefits at the beginning. ~~~ brett The earlier you set up your own servers and take care of them the better you'll be at it. If your seriously strapped for time maybe you can put it off, but it's a skill you want to have. ------ drop19 I have to say this matches my experience with any shared host for a serious web app. TextDrive is super helpful with customer service but not being able to get root on your server cuts off a lot of solutions. So my advice to anyone hosting a Rails app or any other web app would be to go with a dedicated host (where you at least have a virtual server or something)
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It's the Latency, Stupid - bluesmoon http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/Latency.html ====== noonespecial Old article but a good explanation of bandwidth vs latency. Long have I labored in the paneled offices of PHB's to explain that windows networking between New York and Denver is just not going to work even tough that 10Mbit leased line is 'just as fast' as ethernet. ~~~ bluesmoon I'd like to see what the numbers are with today's hardware. I wonder how much has changed in the last 13 years. Will report my findings here. ~~~ bluesmoon hmm, looks like it still takes about 86ms to get from west coast to east coast and back. Does this mean that the network is as fast as it's gonna get? For a while at least.
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CEO of Cambridge Analytica explains hyper-targeting political campaigns (2016) - misterbowfinger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc ====== misterbowfinger FYI, Cambridge Analytica was used extensively for both the Cruz and Trump campaigns
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