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I graduated and found out I'm $200,000 in debt - nefitty
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2016/01/student_loan_crisis_at_its_ugliest_i_graduated_and_found_out_i_owe_200_000.html
======
jaksdhkj
It is the ultimate responsibility of the person taking out these unsecured
loans to figure it out. The school (UConn) may made it available, and can
certainly be better about educating their students for success, but the author
is the one who took out the loans.
The problem, as I see it, is they cannot "give back" their degree, because
they've already gotten the learning out of it. Should the lenders eat the
money because the lendee didn't pay enough attention?
Ultimately, this is a structural issue. However, the colleges are indeed
catering to people's money and desires. We all only have ourselves to blame
for this, because we buy into and develop the "American dream" of college and
a picked fence in front of a house we own.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sitzfleisch: The German concept to get more work done - sonabinu
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180903-to-have-sitzfleisch---its-a-professional-compliment
======
wirrbel
As a German I spent an abroad term in Canada, so here as a grain of salt the
difference between German and the work ethic across the pond.
9am: I arrive in the lab at around, sit at my desk and set up my stuff.
Unfortunately there was is one around to start the day with a coffee break.
10am: Canadian lab mates arrive, sit at their desks and go on facebook. noon:
After spending three hours reading papers, fitting curves to data, etc. I get
hungry. I go to lunch with a Dutch person I met in the building a couple of
weeks ago. 1.30pm: Back at my desks. Through the towers of take away junk on
my lab mates desks, I can see they made some progress on facebook. 3pm: I try
to convince some of my labmates to go for the coffee place within the building
to have a short communal coffee break. Of course everyone is too busy and
cannot socialize, except for the post-doc from india (who does not facebook)
3:45pm: Back at the desk, wrapping up the results of my day, my lab mates are
still "working". Next morning, they will tell me they stayed till 8pm in the
lab and how increadibly busy they are.
Granted, in between visiting facebook and skipping communal lunch- and coffee
breaks, they got some work done and I don't claim I delivered more results in
terms of research and learning "output".
Yet I think it summarizes my and the experience of other Germans quite well.
In Germany there is much more focus on not working long-hours but spending the
hours you work productively. A German workday of an office worker is limited
to max. 10h per day by law and my employer follows that rule religiously. Many
colleagues contractually have 35 h work weeks and working 40 h requires a
permit from the worker's council. If you are sick, you stay at home on sick
leave, you join your colleagues again when you are better. American colleagues
working here for a year or so as part of their assignment quite often start
out to send an email that they are sick and will work from home. If you are
sick, why do you work? Your job now is to get better. Quite often, breaks for
lunch or coffee are started and ended together. Only few people come into the
office with half-liter coffee mugs to consume on their desks.
Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, and office cultures of individual
companies may differ. My current company's culture is very German if you
arrive before 8am, you might be welcomed with handshakes by your colleagues.
~~~
lnsru
I would say, foreigners always do more than locals. They feel, they have prove
something, maybe less social contacts too. I observe the same behavior like
your Canadian lab mates with my young German colleagues. All day long sitting
in mobile Facebook or drinking coffee for 30 minutes every 2 hours. Germans
aren’t majority among department’s top performing people.
Edit: it’s IG Metall company and you can’t fire people easily. So low
performers accumulate over the time. Talents come and go.
~~~
foepys
> So low performers accumulate over the time.
This is an incredibly offensive statement against unions and I want to see
some proof from you for this. All large corporations in Germany have unions
and Germany is still one of the world's economic powerhouses.
~~~
dmichulke
Sometimes statements of facts may seem incredibly offensive. Others should be
able to mention those in a related discussion, even if offensive, because
otherwise the discussion is biased.
I use the word "fact" above because I think it is obvious that if firing is
hard, low performers accumulate. I'm happy to elaborate if you wish.
~~~
Firadeoclus
So where do low performers come from and where do they go to when you fire
them? What is their flow through the economy? A fired low performer will still
look for, and likely find, another job. The assumption there might be that
they will learn and try harder, but whether that is the actual effect is much
less obvious than you might think.
It's also not obvious at all that churn is good for overall productivity of an
economy. Can you show that making firing harder or easier causally affects
average productivity (or the productivity distribution) in a specific
direction?
------
sidstling
Great headline, terrible article. It mostly talks about German words and
almost nothing of German work ethics. The only interesting bit is around the
end where it quickly skirts over the fact that you need to make employees
realize they are unproductive before you can work on their behavior.
All the other stuff is just meh. I mean, the language analysis isn’t even very
good, or in depth, with terrible half-assed English translations.
Basically, don’t waste you time reading this.
~~~
lnsru
Never heard about this “Sitzfleisch” thing living in Germany many many years.
Young people don’t use it. Maybe it’s some old people thing?
~~~
pragmatick
I never use it but know the word and usually when I hear it it's more
negative, e.g. when you have guests who won't leave you might say that they
have Sitzfleisch.
~~~
hodgesrm
This is the only meaning of Sitzfleisch I have ever encountered. It's not a
compliment at least in our house.
~~~
btschaegg
Interesting. I think I only ever heard the term in context with politicians
that that were elected "too many times" by someone's standard. There, it
_certainly_ isn't meant positively -- the funny thing is that this goes rather
well with the phrase mentioning Angela Merkel at the beginning of the article.
There are more and more voices now that would prefer someone new taking her
post.
------
mrleiter
Experienced the same thing in Austria: I'm from the most western part, which
mostly has alemannic and rhaeto-romance influence and the work ethic is
"german". You have Sitzfleisch, I go to work/university at 7am and after maybe
5-10mins of relaxing, I get start working/studying. I take a break at midday
and a short one in the afternoon and leave around 5.30/6pm
People at the very eastern end of Austria, like Vienna, are far less "German".
Their work ethic is much more relaxed, and like user _wirrbel_ pointed out,
they stay late to work, simply because they start later and get less work done
in the same amount of time.
~~~
austrianguy
Very eastern end Austrian here:
Working from 7:30am to 5pm. Cannot understand the German work ethic and the
often seen German workaholics.
You work to live, you do not live to work!
~~~
TurboHaskal
I’ve been working in Germany for a decade and I’ve unfortunately never
witnessed this so called German work ethic.
I do hear about it a lot specially when talking about my home country and
ironically during coffee breaks.
------
PacifyFish
I love German words.
Disappointingly this article skirts around the obvious English translation:
“ass-in-seat.”
~~~
AstralStorm
English has a slightly more general word. It is "grit". The ability to work
continuously and without being distracted. Perseverance of effort. Ability to
execute on a long term goal efficiently.
~~~
ThePadawan
I would also consider "grit" to be a very appreciative term. "Sitzfleisch" I
would consider more neutral, a person's property rather than a virtue.
------
neftaly
Related, the book "Dreams of Earth and Sky" by Freeman Dyson:
"Why did [Oppenheimer] not succeed in scientific research as brilliantly as he
succeeded in soldiering and administration? I believe the main reason why he
failed was a lack of Sitzfleisch. Sitzfleisch is a German word with no
equivalent in English. The literal translation is “Sitflesh.”
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/comments/1k5ihx/why_did_he_not_succeed_in_scientific_research_as/)
[https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lp...](https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=5nZoBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA256&lpg=PA256&dq=+reason+why+he+failed+was+a+lack+sitzfleisch&source=bl&ots=Zm95CRp9Ev&sig=ZzCpKbJSJAENfEVDd_Ld199eXIE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwibppLBpqPdAhWBKnwKHXikDYYQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=reason%20why%20he%20failed%20was%20a%20lack%20sitzfleisch&f=false)
------
toolslive
2 Comments:
\- It's common Chess vocabulary. Sometimes you need to work for hours to be
able to win a technical position. Sitzfleisch is what it takes to do this.
\- The same word (with the same meaning) exists in Dutch: zitvlees.
------
parallel
I recently encountered an English equivalent 'ass glue'.
------
fogetti
" _Before employees can work on increasing their productivity, they need to
realise that they are underproductive_ "
This is seriously flawed (and over-generalizing). This basically assumes that
the cause of underproductivity lies with the employee. Where are the arguments
which are supporting this??
~~~
falsedan
If an employee is unproductive because they are unmotivated, they do have the
self-empowerment to say “this project isn’t motivating for me, let’s reassign
me/plan for a more motivating project next/go over what the stakeholders need
from this”. If they are lacking the skills required to succeed at the project,
they can go for training/get more experience from completing a similar,
smaller project. And if they are apathetic and feel like they can avoid
redundancy by putting in the minimal effort, they can look for a new job.
Sometimes the cause is external, like poor & changing requirements or wishful
planning, or a bad personal relationship with coworkers, but even then the
employee can feed that back to management. If they choose not to act on this
feedback, see the ‘apathy’ option above.
Source is self-management on solo projects.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pandalized: Sites Negatively Impacted by Google's Panda Update - rlander
http://www.pandalized.com/
======
bcrescimanno
Does it make me vindictive to want to see most of these sites never "recover?"
This basically reads like a list of sites that, up through the "panda" update,
I would mistakenly click on, get pissed off, and go back looking for a REAL
result.
Many of these sites were basically duping people into giving them ad
impressions with thin, stale (and sometimes stolen) content and making
people's lives more difficult. Kudos to Google for the first time in many
years making a solid stand against obvious gaming of their search results.
~~~
Turing_Machine
_I would mistakenly click on, get pissed off, and go back looking for a REAL
result._
Precisely. Virtually all of these are pure crap.
I'm sure there are some legitimate sites that became collateral damage, but
these aren't them.
------
WillyF
It's pretty interesting to see just how drastically Panda affected some very
large sites. Most of the sites shown are the kind of sites that Panda was
designed to deemphasize in the search results. It's what Google got right with
Panda.
What it doesn't seem to show is what Google got wrong with Panda. One of my
sites lost 30% traffic on the day Panda went live, and it hasn't recovered.
It's an extremely high quality site that I've put my life into for the past 4
years. I've tried a number of different things to recover, but so far I've had
no success.
My strong hunch is that it's a duplicate content issue, but I can't be sure.
I've tried using rel="canonical" and reindexing parts of my site to no avail
Google hasn't offered anything to help. I've been through their guidance on
building high quality sites:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-
guid...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-
building-high-quality.html)
It doesn't really help when you already have a high quality site and still are
penalized. I'm pretty confident that Panda improved the overall quality of
Google's SERPs, but they definitely made some mistakes. It sucks when you've
lost thousands of dollars in revenue because you're one of the mistakes.
~~~
WalterGR
My story is almost _exactly_ the same. The only difference is that my site was
hit not by the original Panda update, but by the April 11 update ("Panda
2.0".)
There was definitely collateral damage. Unfortunately for owners of such
sites, since Panda did penalize several huge sites that people hate very much,
it's viewed as an overwhelming success.
Small site owners are burning the midnight oil, posting to the "official"
Google Panda thread, and getting no feedback from Google.
~~~
antimarketing
Google has given precise and clear signals of what to do with other releases
from other teams, the Google Panda team is not directly responsible for
rankings. The information is purposefully fragmented among the different
releses, blogs etc.. of different teams. Because that is the way Google is
structured, works and also because they want to avoid giving stupid people too
much power by providing an easy "how-to" guide to rankings.
You need to be a pro. marketer and know a bit about programming to keep up
with Google's recommendations. I have done this, I simply do not want to share
this information here where marketers read and make thousands or millions off
it, but I would be glad to share that information with small site owners
privately for free, one on one. No marketing orgies allowed! :)
Simply stated, if you would for the next month study everything that Google
has released the last couple of years (80+ hour work wweks) you would realize
where they are going in the next couple of years not only theoritically, which
is very useful, but also with practical steps in how to become a friend of
Google.
The reason that Google does not produce a even more straightforward guide to
SERP / SEO field than they do right now (to lazy to link to it, because it is
not that important right now) is that most marketing people are dumb and
simply want to build an automatic system that generates money for them without
hiring someone or fixing stuff themselves. I think they, meaning Google,
consciously want to keep the human element alive and active in search engine
marketing right now, therefore you saw Panda, you saw Google+ and you will see
a lot of other things down the road as well.
You have to understand that Google sees itself as educating, if not
enlightening marketers with their activites as well.
It might surprise you, but most marketers are ignorant of how their field
really works. Having attended tons of seminars and a few conferences to boot,
they can not even grasp simple technological innovations like HTML5 Video,
even if it is explained to them nice and clearly many, many times.
So from Google's stand point, they want to make this learninge xperience slow,
step by step, and like a puzzle for a child.
(I am leaving out all the criticism of Google that I have and portraying it in
a neutral light for now)
~~~
WalterGR
_I would be glad to share that information with small site owners privately
for free, one on one._
Panda hit my site almost 5 months ago. Though I've made lots of changes, I'm
not seeing any recovery. So clearly I'm doing something wrong. As a small site
owner, I'd be ecstatic to receive any advice you can share. My email address
is [email protected].
------
bmatheny
I'm just going to point out that this site is hosted by wisegeek.com, a site
that was hit hard by the panda update (see
<http://www.quantcast.com/wisegeek.com>). Although the data is accurate, I
wouldn't feel sorry for most of these sites.
Full disclosure. I used to work for ChaCha. I am no longer associated with the
company, but in my time there I know a lot of time/effort/money went into
producing original content.
An aside. Pandalized was using a domain proxy so I connected to port 80 via
telnet which gave me back the following banner (which gave up the hostname):
Apache/2.2.8 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2 PHP/5.2.5-3+lenny2 with Suhosin-Patch
mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at
strongwiki.wisegeek.com Port 80
~~~
troels
Interesting aside. I didn't even know domain proxies existed, although I'm
sure that's common knowledge, and a fairly obvious thing to create.
Can you walk me through the way you discovered the hostname? If I `telnet
pandalized.com 80`, I don't get anything interesting back.
~~~
troels
Ah .. I got it. telnet in, then print some garbage, causing the server to
respond with an error. This comes from the main Apache instance, rather than
the individual virtualhost, and that has the hostname you mentioned. Clever.
------
rlander
Just an aside: the original title before it got edited by HN mods was "Yes,
There Are Sites Recovering From Panda".
I posted this because, although a lot of the sites affected by the algo update
were junk, there were a few casualties that did not deserve it.
I hear a lot of people asking wether it is possible to recover from the
penalty and it appears that, although AFAIK no site has been able to recover
100%, a few like Hubpages (which _is_ legit enough) are slowly recovering. [1]
[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/07/13/site-claims-to-
loosen...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/07/13/site-claims-to-loosen-
google-%E2%80%9Cdeath-grip%E2%80%9D/)
------
_delirium
On the plus side (for me), some of my niche hobby sites that have information
on a few static HTML pages, without much monetization or SEO effort, have
gotten significant rankings boosts lately. May or may not be due to Panda, but
did happen about the same time.
------
thirsteh
And pretty much all of them are a collection of poor content. Good then.
~~~
TomGullen
Yup, totally agree
------
TomGullen
Looking through the list, I see a lot of junk websites I don't want to
recover. Most people who seem to be complaining about Panda have really bad
websites. Most people wont even give you their URL after moaning about it for
a good few minutes. Perhaps it's time for them to change their strategy. I'm
sure there are legitimate 'victims' but I'm yet to see one I sympathise with.
------
Rantenki
This is not a bug. This is a feature.
------
Rusky
I love how chacha.com is the first one on that list. Of course they're doing
worse, that was the entire point. Nobody wants to find results from some
random person spewing out whatever answers they feel like.
~~~
troutwine
I never happened across chacha.com results in any of my searches. I'm unsure
of it's purpose, based on its website. What does/did it do?
~~~
dangrossman
Human-powered Q&A/search. You ask a question, a human gets paid a pittance to
answer it. They are focused on mobile now (text a question, get a text back
with an answer). Sometimes their answers show up in search results (I've
encountered them), and they're usually just a few words and not very useful.
------
timcederman
Panda killed rankings for a lot of my personal sites that I don't update
often, but still have a lot of content on them (that I created, not junk). One
of them seems to be actively excluded from search results now.
As an example of the ridiculousness of the new algo, try searching for
"shopsquad" (a friend of a friend's startup). The official site had to
purchase an ad to appear in search results. Why?
------
BasDirks
Is this site ironic? Great to see crap websites dying.
------
wtf242
My site has seen the exact opposite effect, probably because it's geared more
toward showing interesting and helpful data.
[http://chattypics.com/files/Screenshot20110903at13423PM_97j3...](http://chattypics.com/files/Screenshot20110903at13423PM_97j31h78an.png)
the site is <http://thegreatestbooks.org>
------
cookiecaper
Can someone fill me in? I don't know anything about "Panda".
~~~
acangiano
A recent update to Google's ranking algorithm aimed at penalizing content
farms and other sites with low quality content.
------
alexhawket
No surprise here, the majority of that list are sites used by internet
marketers for traffic/link building etc. They all deserve a mighty wallop
upside the head.
------
cagey
I've found www.city-data.com to be quite useful over the years. If it's
actually "pure crap", what's the corresponding "crap-free" site?
~~~
_delirium
It doesn't look like they were one of the ones penalized; they're in the
section at the bottom listing sites whose traffic was unaffected (and the
graph doesn't show any noticeable cliff).
------
baby
I thought you were talking about Panda the antivirus at first. And now I'm
wondering if it's still existing.
------
andrewcooke
what is the y axis for the alexa plots? the numbers seem to be increasing
downwards.
~~~
tatsuke95
It's overall rank. Lower is better.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Getting Started With HTML5 Game Development - rnyman
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/09/getting-started-with-html5-game-development/
======
PixelCut
We've made WebCode to make HTML5 game development in Canvas a bit easier. It
is a vector drawing app that instantly generates JavaScript Canvas code, so
you don't have to write it by hand.
We even have a little HTML5 game drawn entirely using JavaScript on our
website: [http://www.webcodeapp.com/](http://www.webcodeapp.com/)
------
eonil
ztype is awsome!
[http://phoboslab.org/ztype/](http://phoboslab.org/ztype/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alex Brown: "The entire OOXML project is now surely heading for failure" - andyu
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20100401074623393
======
juhgfcgvhnjm
The OOXML project was a great success. The point was to allow MS to claim that
there was no propriety lock in and so it was perfectly reasonable for
governments to standardize on it's format. The aim was also to ensure that
nobody could realistic produce a competitor to office using the format -
double win.
~~~
maigret
Exactly! That probably saved them from billion $$$ fines. Seen from this
angle, this is a total success.
------
sethg
Microsoft promoting one of its proprietary file formats as a “standard” when
politically expedient, and then ignoring that “standard” after the moment of
expedience has passed? Shocked! Shocked, I am!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Goldman Sachs trade secret thief claims codes were 'open source' - sweetdreams
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a1wLXjWnp_5E
======
rrival
What, they're running this? <http://www.marketcetera.com/site/>
------
michaelawill
His first mistake was leaving Goldman to begin with. In my opinion Goldman is
one of the more evil corporations out there. And there's no better place to
avoid their bubble building and bursting than to work for them, depending on
how you feel about that ethically.
------
astrodust
What the heck are codes?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why America Shouldn't Dominate the World - georgecmu
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy
======
hindsightbias
Meh, better to let China rule the world. It’s not like the US wanted to do all
the heavy lifting in the Balkans, Libya and Syria. We should have just let the
EU flail about and then charged them for our services like the KSA in 91. Get
their 2% gdp one way or another.
And not that an EU with 10x the GDP of Russia be able to protect itself. Let
us carry 60% of that burden and sit in our corner be a good boy.
~~~
jmnicolas
You're so clueless I hope you're a troll !
The US military runs a very profitable protection racket, Trump made it just
more obvious than the previous presidents.
Do you really think the US military has bases in 90% of the world just because
they are good boys and want to promote democracy, really ?
~~~
hindsightbias
You economic determinists are so precious, the world passes you by like the
water under your bridge.
I’m going to go drive my Ferrari now, from all my gains from the Balkans,
Afghanistan, Syria and Libya.
------
jppope
I'd vote to let Canada run the world. Killem with kindness! Plus adding Boxing
Day would be a big plus.
------
georgecmu
Scale the paywall: [https://archive.is/zAH7Z](https://archive.is/zAH7Z)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Aqua – A website and user system (Hapi/React/Flux) - jedireza
http://jedireza.github.io/aqua/
======
fiatjaf
I don't understand what does it do. A "website" for what? A user system? It
makes a website for me in which users can sign up and login, but then what?
~~~
jedireza
It's a starter/boilerplate.
------
joshcrowder
When I move between the pages its noticeably slow, almost like you're actually
loading a new page. I thought React was supposed to be fast?
~~~
jedireza
Yes. It's more like a few single page apps. The account and admin areas feel
much faster.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Command Lines: Alive & Kicking - joshuacc
http://uxmag.com/technology/command-lines-alive-kicking
======
nayanshah
There has to be a blend between the command line and the GUI. Even keyboard
shortcuts in applications are included in it, without which its impossible to
work for power users.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's the Difference Between Profit Sharing and Equity? - leventkaplan
======
byoung2
Profit sharing is like someone renting out a house and giving you a percent of
the rent. If they sell the house, or if no one rents, the gravy train stops.
Equity is like someone giving you a percent ownership in a house. It won't put
money in your pocket now, but you'll get paid when the house sells, assuming
it ever sells, and for more than any mortgages against it.
------
gimo4000
Equity is shares in the company.
Profit Sharing is a portion of the company profits.
Profit sharing at my company would not be worth very much. But Equity in 5-10
years could be worth a small fortune.
At a company that isn't a small startup profit sharing could be huge.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CeramicSpeed’s Driven Concept Might Become the Most Efficient Bicycle Drivetrain - untangle
https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a22092182/ceramicspeeds-driven-concept-might-become-the-worlds-most-efficient-drivetrain/
======
woodruffw
As mentioned (and slightly buried) by the article, the really fascinating part
is that we _already_ have consumer bicycle gears that deliver 97% efficiency:
a Dura Ace groupset is expensive compared to the stuff you'll get at Wall-
Mart, but they're sold at pretty much every cycling store. I wouldn't be
surprised if the Ultegra and 105 (Shimano's next two groupsets by price) were
nearly as efficient as well.
2% is nothing to sniff at in cycling (people pay thousands of dollars for that
kind of advantage), but there are other factors as well: resistance to stress
(sprints), ease of maintenance and service, and weight all factor into the
utter dominance of the current groupset design. It'll be interesting to see if
CeramicSpeed can advance their design on those fronts.
~~~
mrob
>2% is nothing to sniff at in cycling (people pay thousands of dollars for
that kind of advantage)
2% is nothing to sniff at only if you're hampered by the arbitrary UCI rules.
By far the biggest factor in cycling performance is air resistance, and the
obvious solution (fairings) is banned. The UCI has been disastrous for bicycle
technology. Most high-end buyers like to pretend they could compete
professionally one day, so they abide by the same rules, which means there's
no incentive to develop truly fast bikes.
The UCI rules should allow any safe design, and avoid giving an advantage to
richer teams by setting a price limit (bicycles are already required to be
commercially available).
~~~
jdietrich
Fairings aren't as useful as you might think in most circumstances. On an
upright bike, they need to be enormous to offer an appreciable benefit, which
makes them heavy and difficult to control in crosswinds.
The optimum solution is a recumbent bike - by going feet-first, you can reduce
your frontal area by more than 50%. With a much smaller frontal area and a
much lower center of gravity, a tail fairing becomes a practical proposition.
Fully enclosed recumbents can achieve phenomenal results in the right
conditions (Sam Whittingham's 91km hour record, Andy Wilkinson's 41 hour
LEJoG), but they immediately become a handicap with any sort of gradient
because of the ~20kg weight penalty and they're unbearably hot.
~~~
dmm
> The optimum solution is a recumbent bike
Recumbents are cool and much faster in some situations but pro cycling exists
mainly to sell stuff and upright bikes look cooler.
~~~
jdietrich
Recumbents have been banned by the UCI since 1934, so that ship has sailed. If
we had seen recumbents on the Tour de France for the last eighty years, they'd
probably look cool and upright bicycles would look weirdly old-fashioned.
------
joshontheweb
I use a single speed bike at the moment. Not because I hate gears but because
I’ve never had a geared bike that didn’t constantly click on the outside
gears. It drove me crazy trying to tune them perfectly and never succeeding.
Forget increased efficiency. If a new design emerges that accommodates gears
and is simple to tune properly, then sign me up. No idea if the design being
discussed could offer this.
~~~
nordsieck
Have you tried out a bicycle with an internal hub gear? I don't know how loud
they are, but you shouldn't have any chain binding issues (and you could
probably run a belt if you wanted).
~~~
robin_reala
I use a Gates belt drive with a Shimano hub gear and it’s nearly silent
compared to a chain.
~~~
rconti
Oh man, I had a Ghost bike with a Continental drive belt that was a constant
pain in my ass until the belt snapped at 1500 miles and practically chucked me
in front of traffic.
REI really stepped up and Ghost warrantied the entire drive system as the
Continental system was NLA; they replaced the whole thing with a Gates Drive
system which is amazing.
------
pgreenwood
If this drivetrain achieves its claims I will be very impressed. Shaft drive
designs have been around for as long as chain drives; and they have never been
as efficient. So mush is lost in the torsion of the shaft. A 2% increase in
efficiency is an absolutely massive gain. The cycling industry is littered
with flashy looking innovations that don't live up to the hype. The basic
design of a diamond frame and chain drive has not been improved upon for over
100 years.
But every now and then there are innovations that acually take hold. For
example, the slant parallelogram derailleur, hydraulic disk brakes, suspension
(for mountain bikes), and recently narrow-wide front chain rings. We shall see
how well this drivetrain goes.
~~~
jacquesm
Shaft torsion does not lose you much energy, it mostly acts as a torsion
spring: whatever you put in you will get back. The shaft will only warm up a
tiny little bit from the amount of energy that it will lose during a single
cycle.
Suspension _does_ lose you a lot of energy, which is why you'll never see it
on road bikes.
~~~
usrusr
Springs are terrible when driven by biological "pistons". Applying a certain
amount of force is much harder in some phases of the pedal stroke cycle than
in others and springs would make it impossible to go easy when you want/need
to.
~~~
jacquesm
It is a _very_ hard spring, not something squishy like front fork suspension.
The biggest downside would be eventual wear of the driveshaft, the losses will
be very low.
Note that almost every part of your bike acts as a spring in that sense, the
frame flexes a bit when you pedal, as do the cranks and the shaft. Even the
spokes in the rear wheel act as springs transmitting the force from the hub to
the rim (which is one reason why they are oriented the way they are, that way
they pull the rim along rather than that the spoke gets bent, the spoke is
stronger in that direction).
~~~
usrusr
Everything acts as a spring, and performance bicycle engineering goes to great
lengths to make them as as hard as possible. Frame flex under pedaling load is
measured, optimized against and a driver of buying decisions. Replacing the
chain with something more springy? Good luck in that market.
~~~
jacquesm
> Everything acts as a spring, and performance bicycle engineering goes to
> great lengths to make them as as hard as possible.
Indeed. So if you use a shaft to drive the rear wheel that would definitely be
part of the equation, I note they are using a hollow carbon fibre tube, which
in that particular dimension is likely not ideal for the application unless it
is given some more cross section. Even so, it is an interesting development.
> Replacing the chain with something more springy?
Chains stretch quite a bit, you'd be surprised.
~~~
mrob
"Chain stretch" is usually slang for chain wear. The chain gets longer as the
rolling elements wear down so people call it "stretch" even though the metal
isn't stretching. The actual stretch under load is very small.
~~~
jacquesm
I'm aware of the difference, but thank you anyway.
You can see the effect for yourself if you lock your rear hub and proceed to
push down on the pedal (you can see it because the pedal is a nice long
indicator effectively multiplying the distance the chain stretches).
A bit nicer setup is a micrometer at the end of a fixed section of chain with
a weight attached.
Chain _does_ stretch. About 1.5 mm under full load.
That's why you want chains with solid pins and solid plates.
What you are talking about is chain elongation as a result of wear,
essentially the accumulation of slop in the bushings the pins go through.
------
scns
Check these out: [https://pinion.eu/en](https://pinion.eu/en) a german startup
which created a gearbox for bikes which works like the one in a car. Early
Investment came from an engineer at Porsche.
Disclaimer: not affiliated
~~~
bytesmith
Unfortunately, Pinion systems haven't really gained any significant market
share due to a) really high cost b) inability to downshift under load, c) a
1.5lb weight penalty and d) the frame must be built specifically for the
Pinion system[1]. Still, always great to see new approaches like this as bike
maintenance is a huge barrier to adoption.
[1] [https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/the-pinion-
gearbo...](https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/the-pinion-gearbox-
solves-common-problems-but-creates-new-ones-a-test-ride-review/)
------
jacquesm
Very nice concept, I really like the fact that the casette is gone because it
occupies a lot of space leading to substantial weakening of the rear wheel
(the width of the hub where the spokes attach is a very larger factor in rear
wheel strength).
That gear does look like something that would do well in a meatgrinder, and
given the fall-out over just having disc brakes on racing bikes I don't think
that would pass inspection for road bike racing.
10 points for out of the box thinking though, a cardan driven racing bike is
very clever.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I _cardan shaft_ just another name for a _drive shaft_?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_shaft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_shaft)
~~~
jacquesm
Sorry, probably a dutchism...
We use the same term for the rear end of a car and for the drive train on BMW
motorcycles.
------
AtlasBarfed
Yeah, that's going to skip under load and won't stay aligned.
Might be usable as an electric assist drivetrain and it was sealed up.
~~~
mirimir
Yes. Based on that photo, I can't imaging that the set of ring gears could be
rigid enough. Unless it was inside a strong casing. As in standard
differentials.
------
NietTim
This is cool and really fascinating, technically, but ultimately a solution to
a question nobody asked and I don't see many benefits outside of a claimed
efficiency benefit while there are quite a bit of drawbacks. Also I'm failing
to see how this is different from shaft driven bikes [0] we already have had
for 'some time' now
[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft-
driven_bicycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft-driven_bicycle)
------
userbinator
_The system would have to be pretty intelligent to know how fast the system is
moving. It’d have to be pretty smart to know how fast it’s moving, which tooth
track to select to make the shift happen. Would you have to back off to shift
under high load?_
This reminds me of some newer automatic transmissions that use dog clutches,
like a manual one, relying on sensors and electronics to do the
synchronisation --- there is a very noticeable (and unpleasant) jerk in the
shifts, since it has to match the speeds precisely, and automatically reduces
throttle to do so.
Of course, with a human providing the power directly, that's not really
possible. I suppose you could add a "shift light", but IMHO that's just
overcomplicating things...
------
robert_foss
Other options include CVT which offer continuous non-integer gear ratio steps,
but a lower efficiency of about 79%.
[http://www.enviolo.com/nuvincicycling/nfinity](http://www.enviolo.com/nuvincicycling/nfinity)
------
nottorp
They mention something about an electronically assisted shifter. Doesn't that
defeat the whole point of a (non electric) bicycle?
~~~
jdietrich
Not really. All three of the major manufacturers offer electronically-
controlled derailleur gear systems. It offers minor aerodynamic benefits and
more reliable shifting performance with no real weight penalty. The battery
adds about 60 grams and the derailleurs are slightly heavier, but the shift
levers and cables are significantly lighter. That battery lasts for about 1000
miles of typical riding, which is more than enough for the target market of
racing cyclists.
The inconvenience and cost of electronic shifting isn't a good fit for leisure
and utility cycling, but it makes sense in racing where every marginal gain in
performance is valuable.
~~~
nottorp
Ah well, when I think cycling I don't think racing, I think out-of-town rides
where it helps if you're able to fix your bike using just some wrenches...
------
nkristoffersen
My grandfather told me about a bicycle he designed that uses a CVT. Curious if
that’s a better direction for the future of bicycles.
~~~
jacquesm
You can buy these today, and many e-bikes use them. About 15% power loss means
that for an un-assisted bike they are not an option.
(Dutch link: [https://www.fietsenwinkel.nl/expert-e-
bikes/nuvinci](https://www.fietsenwinkel.nl/expert-e-bikes/nuvinci) with nice
cut-out picture of how it works)
------
tomglynch
Unproven, can't yet change gears, based on an old design used over 100 years
ago that was given up on.
~~~
kwhitefoot
> based on an old design used over 100 years
Sounds interesting, can you point to some documentation?
------
bigato
> A stock Dura Ace drivetrain returned about 97-percent efficiency.
Does anybody know the numbers of efficiency in fixie and single speed
bicycles? I reckon they should be better given the absence of a derailler? I
tried to search for it, but couldn't find numbers.
~~~
21
Another article on this technology stated that the efficiency gain comes from
there being only 4 points under load versus 8 points in a chain with
derailleur system.
A fixie also has only 4 points, since the derailleur is gone, so it's
presumably more efficient.
But the big problem is that there is also an efficient human cadence (I think
around 100 RPM), and a fixie has a massive problem here. So overall, a fixie
is massively more inefficient. Which I guess is no surprise, cycling
competitions are run with geared bikes, not with fixies.
~~~
bennyelv
This doesn't sound correct to me - the derailleur is on the "slack" side of
the chain so is never under significant load.
The only load is that required to pull the chain back from the crankset under
enough tension to stop it from drooping, which is provided by the spring in
the derailleur cage.
All the load in the chain system is between the cassette and the chainrings on
the top.
Perhaps a link to the article will reveal more? There's a lot of BS in bike
technology, so I'm automatically sceptical!
~~~
21
Maybe load was not the appropriate word to use.
Smith explains that that friction in a chain-based drivetrain is created
largely at the eights points of articulation, where the chain bends around the
chain ring, cassette and pulleys.
"Any time a chain articulates, friction is created. And any time it
disengages, friction is created," Smith said. "When you think about pedaling
95rpm, you are looking at 40,000 stiction points a minute."
In the DrivEn system, those eight points are replaced by four points, each of
which rotate on ceramic bearings. The chain ring's teeth and cassette's cog
engage with the bearings on the shaft, which itself spins on bearings.
[https://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/ceramicspeed-
dri...](https://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/ceramicspeed-driven-drive-
shaft-52587/)
------
kentiko
I don't think the big cog will be stiff enough to not bend under the pressure.
------
Baeocystin
"while the 13-speed rear cog looks like the unholy union of a compact disc and
the Sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi"
After looking at the thing, it is a remarkably apt analogy, too. I wonder how
long it takes to machine.
------
bentoner
Does anyone know if this would this be UCI legal?
~~~
jacquesm
Not a chance. That gear will rip your leg to shreds in an accident.
~~~
jdietrich
I have a large scar on my calf from a conventional chainring. If your chain is
on the inner ring, your crankset is basically a blunt circular saw.
~~~
jacquesm
Ouch. I very narrowly escaped that (but did break my leg :( ). On intermediary
'sports' bikes and mountain there typically is a guard ring mounted on the
outer gear ring to mitigate some of that risk. Most road bikes don't have them
though.
------
hinkley
Would this design not be... less of a chipper shredder if they switched the
cylinders and the teeth?
~~~
King-Aaron
Yeah, I could imagine that getting the end of your jeans or a shoelace caught
in that, you're in for a bad time.
~~~
hinkley
I suppose you could do a number on your hems, but I’m more worried about feet
and calves. I’m thinking about a crash situation specifically. That thing is
more of a meat grinder than cogs. Granted, the front chainring is more of a
meat cleaver on a traditional bike. I knew a guy who got a nice free tattoo on
his right calf. Still gives me the heebies...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Things I Learnt from fast.ai v3 - raibosome
https://towardsdatascience.com/10-new-things-i-learnt-from-fast-ai-v3-4d79c1f07e33
======
panpanna
Am I one only who doesn't like the fastai approach to ML?
At times it's just a little bit too much handwaving for my taste.
~~~
windsignaling
As someone who learned ML the "traditional way" I both like and dislike it.
I like that I can quickly learn about advanced models since I already know
about / can infer the intuition / mathematical details myself most of the
time.
I dislike it because it's almost all handwaving. The way things actually work
aren't really explained (other than at a high level) so either you're stuck
with a wishy washy understanding or you will read the paper yourself.
But for some of us "in between", we're not satisfied with the layman's
explanation, yet the paper is too formal to digest. I think there's an element
of survivorship bias there, where some people just give up because they're not
getting the explanations they're looking for.
Those who are smart enough to understand papers on their own can do fine,
because they'll take the course as-is and just use it as a guide for what's
new and fresh. Those who don't know what the heck is going on (and don't care)
are happy with "plain English" explanations without looking any further.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AOL chief cuts 401k benefits, blames Obamacare and two “distressed babies” - rsobers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/06/aol-chief-cuts-401k-benefits-blames-obamacare
======
lxt
Wow. A billion dollars in profit, 12 million in his pocket each year...but the
7 million for health care has to come out of the employees' other pocket.
Also, the fact that he's blaming two babies - I find it highly unlikely,
statistically, that two such cases blew the cost of premiums for a group as
large as AOL. I'm pretty sure they had more employees with cancer that year,
for example, and that's also super-expensive.
This guy is despicable.
~~~
gum_ina_package
He's not blaming two babies, he simply stated that unforeseen events caused
the company's healthcare costs to go up unexpectedly.
~~~
727374
Sounds to me like he's blaming the babies or else he could have left them out
of it and said something like 'exceptional events'.
~~~
bilbo0s
That's EXACTLY what he should have done.
He should have said, "The cost of our medical benefits package was higher than
expected." FULL STOP.
I can't, for the life of me, see how anyone could possibly think what that man
did was appropriate.
------
givehimagun
They make 1.04 billion in profit each year and 9 million has him worried? It
also seems to be a breech of trust that he outed 2 women and their children in
this. I wonder if coworkers will have any backlash against these women. If
that does happen it then it could easily become grounds for a lawsuit against
AOL.
Also they spent $405 million on an acquisition in August (8 months ago):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_AOL)
~~~
bilbo0s
I have to admit...
the baby thing really bothered me.
If you want to make a political statement against Obama... fine... I get it.
But why drag two innocent families into this? What were these people supposed
to do??? NOT try to help their children???
That was a very classless maneuver on AOL's part. Just state that your medical
benefit costs were higher than expected this year. Don't be a douche about the
whole thing.
I apologize for the rant... just rubbed me the wrong way.
~~~
gcb0
So it served it's purpose.
Now instead of getting everyone outraged against benefit cuts for political
action, you think that is fine but want reparation for the baby comment.
forgot the name of this discourse diatribe, but apparently it's effective.
~~~
bilbo0s
What do you mean?
The entire REASON we're outraged is because we REALIZE it was nothing more
than political! If that is a technique they teach... all I can say is that it
doesn't work very well here on HN. Benefit cuts for political action has lost
A LOT of support around the tech industry today.
~~~
gcb0
because AOL has all of hacker news audience. i cant stand all the threads here
everytime aol sites have any downtime...
but you are missing the point. your words say you are not even condoning the
political move anymore because now you are outraged by the asshole baby
comment.
so, the baby comment served its purpose.
------
ryguytilidie
It's pretty distressing to me that these people are like "eh, I'll just cut a
few million in benefits for ALL MY EMPLOYEES, blame obamacare and pocket it
myself." Because we need to get people angry at the idea that their fellow man
is getting adequate healthcare!
~~~
andzt
We have had similar discussions in our own company, which is much much smaller
than AOL. It's definitely not directly caused by Obamacare, but we've watched
healthcare costs significantly rise over the last few years. And it's mostly
these "catastrophic" cases - major surgeries, expensive pregnancies etc. We
are try to figure out how we can continue offering great benefits but we'll
probably have to make a change. Not to save our billion dollar profits (I
wish), but so we can continue to function as a company and employ some great
people...
~~~
jbooth
Health insurance costs rose by 131% from 1999-2009[1], which comes out to just
under 9% inflation. That's in comparison to an average 2.5% inflation for all
goods including healthcare since 2000[2]. 2.5% inflation turns $100 into
$128.01 over 10 years. Instead, we got 231.
About 10 years ago I was in local government, we laid off teachers every
single year in order to keep paying health insurance premiums for the rest of
them. More money for less bodies.
[1][http://business.time.com/2009/09/16/health-insurance-
premium...](http://business.time.com/2009/09/16/health-insurance-premiums-
up-131-in-last-ten-years/)
[2][http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Long_Term_...](http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Long_Term_Inflation.asp)
(edit: fixed my numbers thanks to twoodfin)
~~~
twoodfin
_Healthcare costs have averaged ~15% inflation since the 90s._
Not even close[1].
CAGR of U.S. health care expenditures 1990-2012: 6.05%
CAGR of U.S. health care expenditures 2000-2012: 5.59%
And that's total spending, not accounting for population growth.
Health care expenditures have grown faster than inflation, but not anywhere
near 15% annually.
[1] [http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-
Systems/Stat...](http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-
Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-
Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/tables.pdf)
~~~
nitrogen
Healthcare expenditure is not the same thing as price of insurance.
~~~
twoodfin
I don't understand what you're suggesting. If insurance costs were rising at
~15% annually while total expenditures were rising at ~6% annually, you'd
expect to see insurance administration/profits become the #1 expenditure in
short order. But per the CMS data I linked, those were only 6% in 2012 ("Net
Cost of Health Insurance").
~~~
jbooth
Why's it have to come out as profits? Couldn't they just be a big lumbering
bureaucracy that never gets cut because they never have pricing pressure?
Paying a bunch of idiots to run around and generate paperwork isn't
profitable, but the money's still gone.
[http://business.time.com/2009/09/16/health-insurance-
premium...](http://business.time.com/2009/09/16/health-insurance-premiums-
up-131-in-last-ten-years/)
Healthcare premiums up 131% in 10 years.. that comes out closer to 9% than 6%.
And doesn't include co-pays or anything that insurance doesn't cover.
EDIT: For the record, this kind of industry BS is why liberals support single-
payer healthcare. It's not that we're commies or even that we don't understand
the inefficiency of government bureaucracy. It's that we'd prefer the dumb
public bureaucracy to our current even dumber private bureaucracy. Something
being 'private' without pricing pressure isn't capitalism.
~~~
twoodfin
_Why 's it have to come out as profits? Couldn't they just be a big lumbering
bureaucracy that never gets cut because they never have pricing pressure?_
Sure, but that would show up in the CMS numbers, and it doesn't.
Insurers are absolutely price-conscious, both of what they pay for and what
they charge. It's not as if businesses will accept year after year double
digit increases without shopping around. If there were big money to be made
undercutting existing insurers, someone would go after that market, but there
isn't: Health insurance profit margins are low single digits at best.
------
pmorici
The distressed babies thing is bizarre since when does a company have to pay
extra out of pocket for something like that like Armstrong is claiming? Isn't
that the whole point of Insurance, in case something bad happens insurance
pays?
~~~
Agathos
Most large companies self-insure. They just hire a "health insurance" company
to administer the plan.
~~~
andrewtbham
a company i worked for self-insured, but they did have insurance that kicked
in at a very high level.
------
protomyth
Well, the "distressed babies" comment is par for the course from Mr.
Armstrong. He is not doing any other tech companies CEO any favors. He does
remind me of the one psycho that attends a peaceful protest, but gets all of
the press coverage to show the protest in a bad light. He says foolish things
so he is the representative of all tech CEOs in an unfriendly, as of late,
press.
As to the health insurance, yes, its going to go up for most and with higher
deductible and premiums. All the rhetoric now meets the pavement.
~~~
jbooth
Health insurance has been increasing by ~9% a year since the late 1990s.
Obamacare is predicted by the CBO to bend the cost curve in the right
direction but it's not going to 0% or sub-inflation anytime soon. Anybody
blaming their cost structure on Obamacare is just being opportunistic,
although I guess I can't blame them. Getting a multi-billion dollar media
machine pushing a message makes it persuasive.
~~~
torkins
premiums rose by 4% for 2013, so that's the right direction, even sub 5%
edit: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/business/survey-finds-
mode...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/business/survey-finds-modest-rise-
in-health-insurance-premiums.html?_r=0)
~~~
protomyth
Your pointing to an article based on a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of
employers for 2013 without any guidance on 2014 when the ACA changes occur for
businesses. A study about a year that the ACA doesn't affect the group being
studied is not very informative.
study: [http://kff.org/private-insurance/report/2013-employer-
health...](http://kff.org/private-insurance/report/2013-employer-health-
benefits/)
~~~
jbooth
Is the national review less biased?
[http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/353475/slowdown-
health-...](http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/353475/slowdown-health-care-
inflation-here-stay-veronique-de-rugy)
~~~
protomyth
Its not the bias, its the timing - you are using numbers under one system to
prove numbers under a future different system. If anything, these numbers show
that the ACA wasn't needed as it came into effect years after in passed. Look
at the implementation dates to ACA and see what years the data in the graph is
for.
Also, article points to same [http://kff.org/health-costs/issue-
brief/assessing-the-effect...](http://kff.org/health-costs/issue-
brief/assessing-the-effects-of-the-economy-on-the-recent-slowdown-in-health-
spending-2/) \- same group
------
mortov
Wow ! Obviously sexual discrimination and workplace bullying are in favor at
AOL.
Seriously, this sounds like another 'top notch tough businessman' appointed at
immense salary.
My experience has been the first person normally claiming they are top notch
is none other than themselves, and otherwise prosperous companies with
generally good prospects seem to bleed money shortly after their arrival
(normally into their pockets) and end up as burned out shells being sold off
piecemean with some golden parachute to the outgoing top notch guy before he
repeats the performance or retires to a recently purchased, by a tax haven
based company, island in the Carribean.
And as proof of true sexual equality, there are examples where the he is a
she.
~~~
FireBeyond
Of course. The entire company's "hit" from the ACA (I'm making myself a pact
now to refuse to call it "Obamacare" again) could have been covered by half of
his salary ($12MM before bonuses or stock options).
------
ScottWhigham
It disappoints me to read the knee-jerk reactions here by those who obviously
have not gone through childbirth. To help some of you along, a "distressed
baby" would be his way of saying that the mother or baby experienced trauma or
were under life-threatening duress either during childbirth or prior. This is
not that unusual - things like umbilical cords wrapped around a neck, a small
birth canal, and other reasons can cause significant problems during
childbirth. How many millions of women and babies have died during childbirth?
Half of the commenters here are acting as though childbirth is always a safe
process.
The guy used a term that the writer of the article took offense to and you
guys are making a huge deal of it. Get over it. Imagine yourself having to
tell the same story to 100 reporters 100 times over two days. You'd try
different ways of saying it and, no doubt, at least one of those times you'd
use a word or phrase you wished you could take back.
If you're unhappy that he's bitching about paying for healthcare, fine - let
that be why you complain. But stop falling for the buzzfeed/linkbait BS titles
and "tricks" that authors use to try to make stories facebook-worthy.
~~~
nitrogen
From what I've read, people who have to tell once.the dame story 100 times
over two days are supposed to have a list of talking points that they memorize
and refuse to deviate from the list, and/or hold a press conference to tell
everyone at once.
------
geetee
Can someone please explain what a "distressed baby" is in this context? And
why did AOL foot a million dollar bill for each and then blame the mothers?
~~~
selmnoo
Because he's an asshole with a long and illustrious history of doing shit like
this?
I'm just really sad that we, the programmers and engineers, keep letting
people like him climb up the ladder.
~~~
a3n
We, the programmers and engineers, have absolutely no say in the matter. If
you wanted that influence you should have been an MBA. We're Morlocks.
~~~
mattgreenrocks
But the need to professionalize is way overdue:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-d...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-
dont-need-a-union-we-need-a-profession/)
------
vikas5678
I should point out however, that this 401K match at the end of year practice
is already a standard at IBM, which is probably the worst place to work at in
the Silicon Valley today.
~~~
throwawayandrun
...plus nowadays IBM only starts matching after a full year of employment.
Worst-case scenario, you could work 1,99 yrs and get nothing.
------
roderick3427
I wouldn't have expected this sort of behavior from a big tech company like
AOL.
~~~
timje1
Is this the same AOL that still gets a good chunk of money each year from
people that never cancelled their 56k internet subscription when they got
ADSL?
I think AOL is one large moral-free zone.
~~~
gdulli
Why is it a moral failing for AOL to leave it up to its customers to be
responsible for the decision of what services they do or don't need?
~~~
selmnoo
It's not that they're "leaving it up to its customers to be responsible", it's
strategically employing black patterns to exploit specific mistakes people
make.
Are you 100% on top of your every bill? Do you know everything going in and
going out of your bank account? Have you made any mistakes in looking over
something? My friend's dad is a CFO of a Fortune 500 company (and is a
generally well-reputed guy) - I recently found out that he's pretty bad at
managing his home finances - forgets to pay credit bills and all that.
This shit just happens. I'd rather that I deal with a company that doesn't try
to actively exploit me on my weaknesses. The companies that do this have a bad
character and I wish they just didn't exist.
~~~
gdulli
> Are you 100% on top of your every bill?
If I wasn't, I sure wouldn't blame anyone but myself for it. I wouldn't blame
the company I willingly gave money to due to my own oversight. And I wouldn't
be surprised if they didn't call me and ask me to stop paying them.
------
thedaveoflife
Obamacare: the perfect scapegoat for large companies trying to cut costs.
------
dgbsco
As an AOL employee, this news and other internal news really, REALLY makes me
want to reconsider my options.
------
bobjordan
From my view, this is a case where random big box mgt consulting firm
(McKinsey, PWC, Booz) found some loose cash on $xM engagement.
Tim then publicly regurgitated much of the internal deck logic. Obamacare may
have been his own (questionable) addition - but the two distressed babies was
definitely in the deck.
Whichever consulting firm it was obviously need's to coach those CxO's better
on implementation.
------
ceautery
The video did not include any comments about million dollar babies. It did
show him saying a 3% match on 401k is a great deal... which it isn't.
~~~
FireBeyond
Tell that to the very vast majority of Americans who work their entire lives
without "employer matching" on their 401k's...
Or a smaller but not insignificant number for whom a 401k at all is something
dreamt of.
~~~
ceautery
OK. Dear vast majority....
Actually I'm in that boat, too, but of my own doing. At where I work (a large
utility in the midwest), we match 75 cents on the dollar up to 6%, so
essentially 4.5%. I stopped contributing a few years back to try to get out of
debt faster, but kept finding creative ways to add new expenses: wife, new
daughter, another new daughter, repair that leaky roof, etc.
Still, my point was obvious: 3% is free money that shouldn't be turned down if
it's available, but to laud it as something to brag on is really grasping at
straws. 6% was the industry standard in my area... and I once worked for a
company AOL bought out.
------
thrillgore
And here I was being sympathetic to "healthcare problems" until he threw those
two mothers under the bus with that backhanded remark. Has this guy shown no
class while at AOL?
I'd like to think AOL has made a meteoric turnaround with HuffPost and Patch
especially (the content is better than the local papers in my suburban
hellhole, which isn't saying much) but maybe I spoke too soon.
------
flashgordon
On a semi-related note, what makes fetal distress cost a million dollars to
recover from? I would have thought by now this should have been part of every
pediatricians runbook. I am not any where savvy with medicine and also
apologize in advance if this sounds insensitive. That is not my intention. I
am curious as to what would make these costs be so high.
------
GuiA
_" For employees leaving to go to other employers, not matching those programs
was probably the last thing on the list for us in terms of employee benefits
that we wanted to keep."_
I can't imagine what must be at the top of the list if "no healthcare" is a
the bottom.
Sounds like even the CEO agrees that AOL is a shitty, shitty place to work
for.
------
karmelapple
If you'd like to let him know what you think about this, be sure to check him
out on twitter @timarmstrongaol
[https://twitter.com/timarmstrongaol](https://twitter.com/timarmstrongaol)
------
cfesta9
I love how he starts the video posted in the article off with "We are in the
most intense talent space in the world" Well good sir don't expect to keep any
of that talent. This sickens me.
------
sebnukem2
Someone at work gave me her email address, and it was an AOL address. I felt
like I had discovered a new living fossil, still in her thirties (guessing).
And that's how I know that AOL, somehow, is still kicking.
------
dougabug
Why would anyone with career options choose to work for AOL? He might as well
have posted a billboard declaring, "Top talent not wanted."
------
robodale
If I was a woman working there...I would GTFO. Hell, if I was any
female/male/other working there, I would GFTO.
------
uptown
What right does Mr. Armstrong have revealing private medical details about
policy-holders to the public?
------
a3n
Nut.
------
gum_ina_package
To everyone who's saying "they make X billions in profit each year and can't
afford Y million!", that's not the point. It'd be irresponsible of him to
simply eat the extra costs. Hopefully, people wake up and realize what a
horrible law Obamacare is and demand it be repealed.
~~~
astrodust
What is wrong with you? Are you suggesting AOL employees should be paid
minimum wage?
~~~
thrownaway2424
I doubt that person supports the minimum wage law.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Deleted my account on Quora, with confirmation, account/data still viewable. - samstave
I recently deleted my account with Quora [1].<p>I asked them in the email to delete the account and all data with the account.<p>They replied via email and stated they would be happy to delete my account and help me out - and they were sorry to see me go. [2]<p>Now I see that the only thing they deleted was my name and picture from my profile.<p>My account appears as "account"<p>My profile still states my Location and company affiliations.<p>"account" is still receiving upvotes and notifications in my feed. [3]<p>Posts, questions, edits, all still viewable (albeit maybe to me only) (I am using the transparent chrome extension)<p>I sent another email stating I noticed they have not complied with my request and asked for a confirmation by EOB tomorrow.<p>[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4333119<p>[2]>From: [email protected], [email protected]<p>> Hi Sam,I'd be happy to help you with your request. I've now processed your request for account deletion and you should find yourself completely removed from the site. We're sorry to see you go but hope you'll consider rejoining the Quora community some day!<p>> Thanks,<p>> Anjali<p>> User Operations<p>> Quora<p>[3] http://imgur.com/a/aY20p<p>In my original posting, I may have gone overboard calling the folks at quora "kids" (Too much wine?) - however, it appears I was dead accurate in my questioning of their morals.<p>The fact that their staff reply to me, confirm that my account is deleted and then keep all data visible and undeleted is ridiculuous.<p>Following in the footsteps of FB.<p>This reinforces why I deleted my account.<p>Zero respect for user requests/privacy.
======
chris_wot
Could have been a mistake?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: VSCode extension to copy/paste multiple code snippets in your workspace - randusercoding
https://github.com/adoi/multicopy
======
randusercoding
VS Code extension to copy and paste multiple snippets of code in your
workspace
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why Is This Flagged? - lainon
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17468033<p>This is a neutral, academic article which satisfies everything the HN guidelines solicit.<p>Is there a hidden rule to not talk about such topics on HN?
======
natch
I guess because it's an encyclopedia article, and not super on-topic for HN
which is mostly focused on news around startups and technical stuff. If we
submitted every encyclopedia article to HN there would be quite a flood of off
topic stuff.
But mostly because it's 'meh' and off topic enough that not enough people
cared to click the vouch button when it was active. And it's not news.
You can perhaps point to HN links to other off topic articles that have not
been flagged, even encyclopedia articles maybe, but you have to consider that
this topic is quite an outlier and sensitive/private for some people, and not
something they want the discussion to turn into on HN.
So (recapping a bit) they flag, and nobody cares strongly about taking HN off
track into this topic, so the flag remains.
~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
From what I have seen, it seems like the preferred encyclopedia here for non
tech things is Atlas Obscura.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Peinjector: MITM PE file infector - geographomics
https://github.com/JonDoNym/peinjector
======
redwards510
Doing some testing of my own using BDFProxy opened my eyes as to what large
sites are using http vs https for downloading files. If your primary reason
for existing is providing binaries for download, you have no excuse for
serving them up over http. I'm looking at you SourceForge.
------
Osiris
Here's another good reason to encrypt everything. With letsencrypt.org coming
online soon, maybe browsers can start providing warnings to users that try to
download files from regular HTTP connections; though that wouldn't prevent
this problem if the originating website itself is nefarious.
~~~
JoshTriplett
It'll take a while, but this does remove the last excuse sites might have for
not encrypting _everything_.
I'm hopeful that in the next decade any use of unencrypted HTTP will become
suspect, such that browsers can start showing unencrypted HTTP as explicitly
insecure, rather than just as the absence of signs of security. But it'll take
many years to get to that point.
------
s1lver
Anyone with a key for a root cert in your trusted list could apply this to
https as well I betcha. Lenovo comes to mind.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub's new buttons look like they are disabled or like labels - node-bayarea
I'm not a big Github user like many of you. I just find it really odd to click on the buttons. They just look disabled or like labels! I have to rethink before clicking. Hopefully the Github design team can make it better!
======
thrownaway954
what annoys me the most, is i can't click on the folder icon to go into the
folder, i _have_ to click on the folder name. you have no idea how annoying it
is when you see an icon and can't click on it. we have become visual people
cause of smart phone and making an icon unclickable is just bad design.
~~~
node-bayarea
Totally agree!
------
brandoncordell
I definitely prefer the old buttons.
What I absolutely can't stand is that the horizontal nav at the top isn't in a
centered container. I use a wide monitor and the the navbar is slammed all the
way to the left while the content is centered with miles of whitespace on
either side.
~~~
node-bayarea
they should do a better responsive design that takes into account wide screens
(which are very common)
------
mcdermott
The new GitHub UI is garbage, what were they thinking?
------
livealife
Is there an option to revert back to old UI, like old.github.com, similar to
reddit?
------
bromonkey
the cli interface doesn't change ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Infosys introduces new artificial intelligence platform - itprofessional4
http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/companies/infosys-introduces-new-artificial-intelligence-platform/245848/
======
pamelabuck
I don't want to be elitist but really? The company that is well-know for being
a body shop that takes all the grunt work that US companies dont want to do,
is doing AI work? I have to give their marketing dept props.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twilio looks better from afar - aaronpk
http://www.diggz.org/index.php/2012/10/16/twilio-is-like-the-worst-girlfriend/
======
robbiet480
Yet another terrible assassination piece by Johnny Diggz, the CEO of Tropo, a
quickly failing Twilio competitor. He has been a real dick since the early
days and spreads lies and rumors about Twilio.
~~~
josh2600
They're not all lies per se. Tropo/Voxeo also isn't failing :/, they just won
Deutsche Telekom's Euro business.
Voxeo doesn't always have the best marketing team, but they do have a lot of
technical expertise. Their CTO Jose is one of the funniest people I've ever
seen on a panel and he's a delight to converse with.
I don't think any of the metaphors at play here hit the nail on the head.
Voxeo is a large, lumbering enterprise fighting its way into the Carrier world
by virtue of erosion. Twilio is the nimble web-focused startup burning the
candle at both ends trying to fight the night away.
It's not yet clear which strategy will prevail, but I don't think the
mudslinging is the right course either.
Disclaimer: I'm the community manager at 2600hz, which is innovating on the
application switching layer of voice communications. We're also full open-
source.
~~~
robbiet480
I say "Tropo is failing" and I mean that their adoption rate is much lower
then Twilio is. I'm sure Voxeo has tons of money to throw at Tropo until they
run out.
I haven't heard of 2600hz before, great name. I'll check it out!
~~~
mpermar
I am curious here. Is there any place to check Twilio or Tropo adoption rate?
I'd love to get some numbers.
~~~
josh2600
Twilio has like ~150,000 devs in ~4 years, Tropo has like ~300,000 devs in ~16
years. Those are the numbers I hear thrown out, but I'd love to get some
harder details.
------
josh2600
Hello,
So I have a slightly different take on this. (Disclaimer: I'm the community
manager for 2600hz).
I've always thought Twilio was trying to get acquired (their deals with AT&T
and Microsoft seemed to imply a conversation was happening in this regard at
the very least) but for a valuation north of $1B. My personal feeling is that
you can't get a $1B valuation without Mobile and Twilio doesn't really do
mobile in the same way 2600hz doesn't really do mobile (at least not yet).
The walled Garden that is Carrier-land prevents native dialing (dialing
through the handset dialer instead of a native app/web app/plugin). Becoming
an MVNO is super risky, but I was really encouraged by Twilio's announcement
with AT&T and even more so by Voxeo's announcement with Deutsche.
This is a big world and the clear winner of the voice API war will be crowned
in the mid 20-teen's not now. If your argument is that Twilio will burn out
before their acquired, my reply is: Maybe. That's the risk they took, and it's
similar to the risk Square took (see this leaked chart:
<http://i.imgur.com/b1Sm9.png>).
I admire Twilio because they're the best developer evangelism team I've ever
seen. Yes they spend a ton on marketing and they might be the Groupon of Voice
APIs, but the fact is that they're doing it, and if they get acquired all of
the Voice API companies will benefit from their success.
In short, Twilio doing well actually benefits Voxeo and so I don't understand
the worst girlfriend analogy. I'm by no means in love with Twilio, but you
have to admire them for what they do: they're hands-down the best evangelists
for any platform out there. Their developer engagement is nothing short of
awesome.
Cheers,
Joshua
~~~
ryanwaggoner
Is that chart leaked? Looks like just an outside estimate by Business Insider:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-06/research/3112...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-06/research/31125966_1_credit-
card-specific-merchants-payments-networks)
~~~
josh2600
That's what I get for assuming blogs are correct. Thank you for posting the
original article, I'll edit my post above to reflect this.
Thanks!!
Oops, too late to edit, guess my mistake has to rest in stone :/.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
No problem, I only found the original because I was googling around trying to
find some interesting commentary on the "leak". In particular, why do
transaction costs grow so much faster than revenue? That almost implies that
they're going to be processing many more transactions at lower average cost
per transaction, so they'll end up paying a higher percentage of the total in
fees?
~~~
josh2600
My theory is that the additional distribution from their deals with Visa and
Starbucks didn't come with the same business terms they're able to negotiate
independently.
One small biz negotiating with Square versus the gigantic morass that is Visa.
Chances are Visa will have a more dominant negotiating position.
------
pla3rhat3r
Still waiting to find the connection in the article about how Twilio is like
the worst girlfriend you've ever had. Just seems like a jaded bias article
from a competitor. :-/
~~~
tehwebguy
Even if you take out the competitor factor the article was really about their
opinion on Twilio's status as a company.
I expected an article talking about supposedly bad cancelation or privacy
policies, something like that. Pretty bad headline.
~~~
pla3rhat3r
I see he changed the headline. Pretty funny. Not sure how this person has any
insight on Twilio financials. It'd be interesting to get this person's own
background posted on this space. I think it would pull back the veil of
ignorance displayed in his blog post.
~~~
josh2600
I don't think anyone would try to argue that Twilio is profitable. They spend
a lot of money and while they're going to move 500M minutes this year, those
minutes are not free.
The author makes several valid points but undermines the overall critical
nature with what appear to be non-sequiturs. If this article was a frank
accounting of Twilio's position with some postulative math about their
sustainability, I don't think anyone would've objected. The issue was the
accusations, most of the content is factually correct (Twilio did raise a lot
of money and continues to spend a lot of money).
What we have are two different world views, and it's not clear yet who is
correct.
~~~
pla3rhat3r
Don't get me wrong I think every company has it's issues. Some of the
companies you would think are the most stable are some of the most chaotic.
However, there aren't too many instances where an article is taken seriously
when it's written by a competitor. The fact that Johnny is writing this
article while still working at a competitor means this article is meaningless.
It holds no water. It comes off as someone who just wants to slam his
competitor. If he wants to legitimize this article, talk about the challenges
they face. Talk about the problems they've had in the past. Without it, it's a
puff piece. He might as well have published this in the Sun.
------
sciurus
Cached version at
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.di...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.diggz.org/index.php/2012/10/16/twilio-
is-like-the-worst-girlfriend/&strip=1)
------
clavalle
"Twiliots" Really?
Voxeo Prophecy is really nice (except for configuration which can be a bit of
a quagmire) and their service is good but Twilio is very, very easy to use.
This piece reminds me that I need to look at Twilio for more than SMS.
------
ChuckMcM
Interesting (if painful) space. I've played with the Twilio API and for what
we wanted (SMS to any phone, ability to dial/talk to a phone and take a
response) it seems to be fine.
That my 'phone' service doesn't offer this as part of the package is what I
find actually broken. For years and years the answer the question "How can I
use my phone?" was "Pick it up, dial, talk." which was fine when it was a
person to person communication device. But when it become a 'computer to
person' communication device it needed a computer friendly API. Had the phone
companies provided that, folks like Voxeo and Twilio and eFax wouldn't exist.
------
pratfall
I friggin hate Twilio, and I kick myself for ever getting suckered into using
it. I'm down to a single account and a single line in, but I need to port it
off, and Google doesn't care to port Twilio numbers off to GV. If Twilio could
do something other than drop calls to PSTN (I mean here, make a fuggin VoIP
call), I'd be singing a totally different song, but it's a one-trick pony.
~~~
untog
You hate Twilio because you tried to use it for something that it isn't? I
don't see what you're saying here.
------
josephlord
I'm looking at Twillio for a possible future project and this just prompted me
to look at Voxeo which I hadn't heard of. The Voxeo website just doesn't work
for me like the Twilio one does, it lacks an pricing information (that I could
find quickly) and even the developer section is mostly buzzword filled non-
information. The Twilio site gives you pricing information up front and the
developer pages show you the APIs and give some examples so that you can
really see what can be done with it.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Twilio will survive or not have to raise
prices but they make me want to use it more than Voxeo even if it has the same
capabilities.
I really do hate sites that hide the pricing and documentation or require
registration to get them although maybe A-B testing shows that gives better
results.
~~~
jdupree
Were you looking at voxeo.com or tropo.com? tropo.com is the site for the
developer API similar to Twilio, and has a documentation and pricing page
linked right on the front page.
~~~
josephlord
That looks much more like it! Will look further.
------
lbarrow
The gist of the post is that Twilio is losing money, losing talent, and
getting desperate. I don't see why the author couldn't have just said that
instead of picking a sexist blog post title -- he didn't even use the
girlfriend metaphor beyond the headline.
Edit: They've changed the title. Cool!
~~~
evan_
What was the title?
~~~
lbarrow
"Why Twilio is like like your worst girlfriend" or something along those
lines.
------
oldgregg
I really want to like twilio but it's MADNESS that you can't terminate calls
over the internet. So you're saying EVERYONE in the company has to have skype
numbers just so we can terminate calls?! I would love it if twilio client
actually worked but the sound quality makes it worthless. Hopefully WebRTC
will fix that but who knows how many more years that will be. Please please,
just bite the bullet and build a desktop app that has decent sound quality,
supports multiple accounts and can punch through firewalls. It's stunning to
me that Google Voice, Skype, and Twilio are so poor at serving business
customers.
~~~
kevinburke
We also just launched WebRTC in beta. Sign up here:
<http://www.twilio.com/beta/webrtc> or ping me - my email is in my profile.
If you haven't tried Twilio Client in a while I would encourage you to try
again - the call quality has improved dramatically over the past nine months.
------
swohns
While I don't 100% agree with the piece, our team just stopped using Twilio
and is migrating over to MoGreet beacuse of their MMS capabilities. We already
miss Twilio's strong community, but MoGreet has been incredibly responsive and
supportive.
~~~
josh2600
Seen them before. What made you go with them? Their lack of disclosed pricing
threw me off... I couldn't seem to find any info on their cost structures.
~~~
swohns
They are a much smaller operation, which means you'll get the personal touch.
On the minus side the API is less robust and there is little to no
documentation when you need it, I'd give it a stab if I were you, they made it
very easy to migrate over!
------
diggz
We know it's a terribly devastating "assassination piece by Johnny Diggz".
That's why I fucking wrote it, asshat!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: My first iOS app, a modern MUD client for iPhone and iPad - novum
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. Fortunately a friendly MUDRammer[0] appears to lend aid! http://appstore.com/mudrammeramodernmudclient<p>MUDs are online multiplayer text-based games. There are thousands, set in fantasy, medieval, Sci-Fi, absurdist, and many other worlds.<p>MUDRammer is a modern MUD client focused on speed, readability, and flexibility. It stays connected in the background[1], syncs your settings with iCloud[2], has themes and font size control, plus Triggers, Aliases, Gags, and more! More about MUDRammer: http://splinesoft.net/<p>MUDRammer is on sale through February 15 for only $1.99 (or your local equivalent).<p>Behold, iTunes redemption codes!<p><pre><code> 7HMHALPHA3TP
EE69KAF4HNK4
FHYW7K9TJYEX
L3AN74H7PRTF
LF3T3MNRAX7K
</code></pre>
[0] The name "MUDRammer" is an alias of one of my more enthusiastic Dutch mudder acquaintances.<p>[1] Up to a murky iOS maximum duration for background connections. I post a local notification after 8 minutes in the background assuming the limit is ~10 minutes, but I've also seen background sessions restored successfully after 6+ hours idle.<p>[2] Syncs only key-value preferences. I couldn't get iCloud sync to work reliably with Core Data.
======
novum
Clickable:
<http://appstore.com/mudrammeramodernmudclient>
<http://splinesoft.net/>
I'm hard at work on 1.0.1. I'd like to do gesture-based movement (e.g.
diagonal swipe up and left to go northwest) in a manner that doesn't interfere
with scrolling. It's interesting how terminal-style apps straddle the line
between keyboard and touch input.
Thanks for looking, HN.
~~~
tagabek
It looks like you've found a niche that works for you. I would be really
interested in seeing a follow up blog post on the statistics (downloads,
sales, usage metrics) of MUDRammer.
Used FHYW7K9TJYEX.
------
rszrama
Works great! Went ahead and bought it for some MUDding I've been into lately.
Turns out I already play AU on the list, too. How 'bout that! : )
~~~
novum
Thanks! I wanted to include some of the more popular MUDs, but not so many as
to be overwhelming for newbies. 1.0.1 is already with Apple and I've got some
really exciting gesture-based movement coming up in 1.1. Reviews are always
appreciated - in 1.0.1 I removed the review nag-dialog. :)
~~~
rszrama
Gesture-based movement would be very interesting. Using the app also got me to
thinking about common interactions using links - i.e. click a monster's name
to attack it, an item's name to pick it up, etc. That could take some doing,
though - how could the client distinguish between an object vs. mob, for
example.
Might be interesting to be able to hide room descriptions and tap to expand
them somehow. I don't typically use them in-game anyways, and on the app it's
even more in the way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
27 Killed in Connecticut Shooting, Including 18 Children - kankana
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school.html?smid=fb-nytimes&_r=0
======
kankana
Greatly disappointed about the event. Shameful for peopling behave like the
most underdeveloped hillbillies in the most developed country in the world.
~~~
stephengillie
Our country boasts the _most_ underdeveloped hillbillies as part of having the
_best_ of everything.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Writing a browser extension for three browsers - einaregilsson
http://einaregilsson.com/writing-a-browser-extension-for-three-browsers/
======
ejcx
In my previous work at a company that made it's money from a browser
extension, I saw what hell it was to develop browser extensions for all major
browsers.
I should note it looks like this issue is mostly fixed going forward. The
chrome extension model won, and Firefox and Windows Edge are supposed to be
supporting either directly or through electrolysis.
I.E. was not an extension, but a toolbar, written in C++ (being C++ the
debugger was Windows visual studios so it was doable). Firefox was Xul based
and almost impossible to debug at the time (much improved in recent months),
and chrome just worked.
~~~
yokohummer7
That's interesting. I've only made some toy extensions for both Chrome and
Firefox, and I've got an impression that Firefox's extension model is somehow
more "powerful", and Chrome's is a bit limited. But after reading the
experiences shown in this thread, it seems that Firefox's model is actually
harder to use in practice. Would this be related to the maxim that "less is
better"?
~~~
einaregilsson
The old Firefox extension model, XUL/XPCOM is definitely a lot more powerful.
You can basically access anything and do anything. On the other hand much of
it is not documented and you're on your own in figuring out how it works. But
they're trying to move people off that model, and onto the Add-on SDK or the
chrome model, which is a lot easier to work with, and better documented.
------
Mithaldu
*two browsers
Opera 15+ is merely a fork of Chrome with some slight ui modifications. It
does not merit being called a browser in its own right.
~~~
einaregilsson
Should maybe have been 2 and a half browsers. There are some slight
differences, e.g. the way options pages are opened from the extension page,
but basically Opera is just Chrome. What is the point of Opera, I don't really
know why anyone would use it, but it was basically free to make the extension
work for it, so I decided to include it.
~~~
Mithaldu
> What is the point of Opera
Opera up to version 12 was a great standalone browser with UI and performance
characteristics still surpassing all competitors even at this point in time.
(As long as you exclude JS-heavy things.)
However at some point MBAs managed to take over, decided to continue making
most of the company income with their mobile ad network.
Developing Opera 12 further was expensive, so they figured out a way to keep
most of the users (for the ad revenue), while radically slashing the dev
expenditure on the browser: Fork and rebrand chrome, while adding a few token
features, pretend Opera 12 doesn't exist, and push people heavily to
"upgrade".
------
martin-adams
I wrote my first extension for a proof of concept project for Chrome last
month, and I literally had my first working example doing something
interesting within 2 minutes.
I tried to do the same in FireFox, and gave up. I couldn't get my head around
the documentation without taking a day out to get going.
~~~
einaregilsson
Firefox is also starting its third extension model now. At first it was
XUL/XPCOM where extensions could basically hook into ANYTHING in the browser,
then there was the Add-on SDK (formerly Jetpack), which is kind of nice, but a
lot more limited, and now they're going with WebExtensions, because, well,
Firefox basically does nothing but copy Chrome anymore ;)
But yes, that does make it complicated to figure out what's the best way to
make stuff for Firefox.
~~~
evilpie
>Firefox basically does nothing but copy Chrome anymore ;)
Thanks
If you can wait for the WebExtension API. If not use Jetpack. Don't write new
extensions with XUL/XPCOM.
~~~
einaregilsson
Sorry, that was unnecessarily snarky. But it does seem like Chrome is leading
and Firefox is following on a lot of things. The look, multiprocess, extension
model, all things that started in Chrome.
I was pleasantly surprised by Jetpack though, the jpm tool is very nice.
~~~
vinay427
As a primarily Firefox user on Linux I do agree with you about Firefox mostly
following Chromium these days. It seemed like for a long time Chromium was
adding in features Firefox had with improved implementations, but now Firefox
appears to be lagging. The Firefox extension model did allow for extensions
like DownThemAll which I don't think can survive in this generation of
extension models.
~~~
icebraining
Yes; I have no problem with adding an API to make simple things easy, but
TreeStyleTabs, VIMperator, Firebug, all of them need something more powerful
than the Chrome model. I really hope they don't deprecate the old model and
leave power users out in the cold.
And frankly, the old model is not so bad; if you're building any kind of
extension that does more than connecting a button to an HTTP call, the couple
of hours you'll need to get started are irrelevant in the long run.
------
tonetheman
I have written browser extensions in Chrome very successfully. And failed
horribly with Firefox.
Now when I see any working extension in Firefox I marvel at how much work that
person must have put in to get it to work. Over time hopefully Firefox will
get better. But the extensions have been bad for a while...
~~~
icebraining
I've built a Firefox extension (now abandoned), which even used XPCOM, and
while the documentation was spotty (this was back in 2010, it may have
improved), it wasn't particularly difficult. The fact that you can easily
unzip any extension and look at its source makes up for a lot of gaps in the
docs.
------
kitsunesoba
It’s not mentioned in the article (understandably), but writing an extension
for desktop Safari is very similar to writing an extension for Chrome. One can
even use the same codebase in most cases — the biggest differences are that
Safari is a little more conservative in what it gives extensions access to and
any Chrome-specific JS obviously won't work.
~~~
einaregilsson
But you need a Apple developer license to develop for Safari, and that costs
99$ per year :/
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The FroYo update: a list of phones confirmed for Android 2.2 - Thracks
http://tech.icrontic.com/articles/the-android-2-2-update-what-phones-get-froyo/
======
aditya
It is open source software - right? Why aren't there any homegrown releases
for these updates that bring them to your phone before your carrier does? Or,
am I missing something?
~~~
Thracks
IIRC, Google has released the Android 2.2 kernels to their open source
project, but it will take time for homebrewers to polish them up for
tomorrow's unsupported handsets.
Every major Android phone is likely to get the update, but it'll take time and
betas.
//EDIT: In many cases, the homebrew community DOES provide ROMs before the
carrier. The Samsung Moment, HTC Hero and HTC Droid Eris were all given
Android 2.1 by the community before their respective carriers pulled the
trigger.
------
ZeroGravitas
Seems odd to conclude that slower phones won't get an update, when the key
feature of the update is faster speed. I'm not saying his conclusion (that
only a subset of phones will get official update support to 2.2) is
necessarily wrong. It just lacks internal logic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clojure Protocols and the Expression Problem - fogus
http://formpluslogic.blogspot.com/2010/08/clojure-protocols-and-expression.html
======
pwpwp
This looks nice, but I have a small nit to pick: the expression problem
concerns _static_ type safety, so discussing it in the context of an
untyped/dynamically typechecked language is a bit off.
------
raju
The author mentions this presentation by Stuart Halloway on Vimeo at the end
of the article - Reiterating it here - <http://vimeo.com/11236603>
I watched the video yesterday, and reading this article after the fact helped
articulate some of what Stuart was covering in his presentation. YMMV.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Radio Shack's TRS-80 turns 35 today. Please don't call it "Trash-80." - technologizer
http://techland.time.com/2012/08/03/trs-80/
======
geophile
I loved my TRS 80. It was an affordable computer, and I could hack on it in
Z80 assembler or BASIC. (I loaded the assembler from a cassette tape, played
on a Radio Shack cassette player.) I really liked the PDP-11 instruction set,
and thought that the Z80 was a better approximation of it than the 6502
available in the Apple ][.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Weaveworks announces subscription for upstream Kubernetes - slgeorge
https://www.weave.works/blog/operate-and-scale-kubernetes-with-our-support
======
slgeorge
This is a totally a product announcement, and to declare interest I work for
Weaveworks. As it's Kubecon EU starting tomorrow there should be a lot of
interesting news about K8s. Already wandering around there are more vendors
and a bigger range of interests represented. Hope the talks will be as good!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Classic: about so called web apps - linopolus
http://web.archive.org/web/20120509105723/http://teddziuba.com/2008/09/a-web-os-are-you-dense.html
======
shakna
> The "Web Operating System" just highlights how much journalists don't know
> about computers.
And how hard it is to predict the future of IT. Google was a nobody back then,
and now they're a goliath that people can't get away from.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ReactOS 0.4.0 Released - ekianjo
https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-040-released
======
mhd
I'm quite impressed that they can load graphics drivers now. Those generally
seem to be arcane as heck, delving deeply into the internals of not just the
applications they support (e.g. games), but the operating system itself.
Although I guess this is a more basic level, i.e. not using Nvidia drivers to
run 3DMark...
~~~
adam12
I've got a bunch of old games that I can no longer run on Windows 8/10\. If
they can get some of those running smoothly, ReactOS will see a surge in new
users.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
With its NTVDM, ReactOS can actually play DOS games out-of-the-box, which is
something modern (64-bit) Windows releases can't do.
~~~
speeder
As a hardcore gamer, gamedev and old games lover, I am finding sadder and
sadder that certain games are getting increasingly forgotten by everyone, and
noone even remember they are in dire need of tools to make them work.
It is the games from Windows 98 and XP era, many used some combination of GDI
and DDraw that doesn't work at all on new Windows versions, DDraw emulation is
mostly broken, and pity you if the game used DDrawEx (it was to mix DDraw with
D3D).
For example I am currently trying to figure a way to play SimCity 4 properly,
the game is too demanding to run in an emulator, so some kind of native
implementation is needed, but it also uses DDrawEx, that is very poorly
supported in all OSes except Windows 98, ME and XP (it doesn't work in XP
contemporary NTs either).
I think this is the kind of games the OP is happy ReactOS maybe will
implement... because for DOS games, DosBox is more than enough already in most
cases (there are some exceptions, like Noctis that is incredibly CPU-intensive
and runs at 3 FPS in DosBox).
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
You could try running Windows 98 under VirtualBox.
~~~
sspiff
Those old operating systems are quite a pain in VirtualBox. Qemu does a much
better job, in this case. VirtualBox's emulated hardware is too new for some
systems, and Win98/Win95 flood the CPU during idle time (because that's how
things worked back then), causing the input processing from the VM to lag
significantly.
Regardless though, this would legally require you to acquire a licensed copy
of Windows 98, which will only become harder and harder down the road. Unless
Microsoft decides to "free" all legacy software at some point.
ReactOS and WINE solve this problem in a different way, by providing open
source solutions that everyone can use, copy and archive without cost or
consequence.
------
mmastrac
The longevity of this project is really impressive. I remember seeing it in
the early days of Wine and thinking that it was a monumentally difficult
challenge.
------
exizt88
Please don't hijack scroll on web pages.
~~~
adam12
The scrolling seems fine to me.
~~~
cstrahan
They're using kinetic/smooth scrolling, which is included in theme they're
using from Okler. If you look in the JS, you'll see:
Plugin Name: smoothScroll for jQuery.
Written by: Okler Themes - (http://www.okler.net)
And here's a forum where a customer asks to disable it:
[http://www.okler.net/forums/topic/disable-scrolling-
effect/](http://www.okler.net/forums/topic/disable-scrolling-effect/)
Another offender:
[https://www.astralgameservers.com/](https://www.astralgameservers.com/)
Inertial/kinetic scrolling is _incredibly_ frustrating when implemented in JS.
On my Mac, sure, if I swipe my fingers and let go, I expect the OS to emulate
a free-spinning scroll wheel. But when it's emulated in JS, there's no way for
the code to know whether I lifted my fingers, so it defaults to making the
page skid around uncontrollably, when I intend to quickly swipe - while
keeping my fingers down at the end - to go to a precise offset in the page.
It's visually a cute a effect, but I have no idea how anyone thinks that it
makes for anything other than an utterly infuriating user experience.
------
coltonv
So I've heard the name ReactOS several times on here but never really been
drawn in by the posts about it. Can someone explain why they would use it over
Windows/their preferred Linux distro?
i ask out of curiosity not criticism. it seems like a cool project so I'm
wondering it's benefits over existing OSes.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's free, it's open-source, it's Windows-like, and it can run Windows
applications. It's very lightweight and has a live CD.
~~~
alkonaut
Those are all good of course, but how long before it is _significantly_ better
(faster, more compatible, easier) than e.g. doing the same with Wine? is it
already?
~~~
cookiecaper
It doesn't do the same thing. ReactOS is a full reimplementation, including
the Windows kernel. You can boot your system with it. One of the main goals is
to provide for the loading of Windows drivers. ReactOS and WINE share code for
userspace to the extent possible.
~~~
alkonaut
I see. Is the reason it wants to use Windows drivers that it hopes to get
better performance in comparison to Wine or VMs?
~~~
userulluipeste
The hardware vendors used to pour more effort into the Windows drivers than
into the other ones. (I think it's not about being unfair or against FSF
ideology, it was just that the market so far was still heavily in the Windows'
courtyard, so they were kind of forced to give in and have the other platforms
only on lower priority.)
------
pippy
I've often thought there's a massive market for ReactOS in legacy support.
There's so many platforms (ATMs, flight controllers, banking software) that
use unsupported windows versions. Many of these platforms would pay an arm and
a leg for ongoing support and security updates.
~~~
chris_wot
Actually, I'm curious, but for slightly different reasons. Windows can _still_
technically support other architectures than x86; if ReactOS is truly
compatible (which it evidently is!) then I wonder how hard it would be for
them to port the HAL layer to things like SPARC.
~~~
slipstream-
uh, Windows does support other architectures than x86: currently, it supports
x86, x64, ARM and ARM64. (and as Windows Server 2008 R2 is still supported,
the IA64 version is also still suppored)
~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, I know. But it will never support SPARC. Or anything other than the
architectures you mention. Windows can still support these other
architectures, I'd love to see it happen. ReactOS might be the way that it's
made to occur.
~~~
chungy
Definitely. Microsoft doesn't see commercial value in supporting, eg, a SPARC
version, especially when it won't run existing x86 apps. It'd be a huge lost
cost in development just to make one.
ReactOS isn't driven by the same market forces. Anybody with enough
determination can port it to SPARC and fly away :)
Windows NT 4 supported x86, MIPS, PowerPC, and Alpha. All but one were dropped
with Windows 2000... and it wasn't until XP that non-x86 returned (initially
IA-64, and x86_64 in three more years after initial release).
------
andersonmvd
The project is neat, but they should not be proud of "9,000,000+ lines of code
And growing!". Less is more. A security audit for example would be very slow
already, given the number of lines.
~~~
exadeci
Windows XP had 45 Millions lines of code, the Linux kernel has 20 Millions
lines of code.
So it's pretty small.
[http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Source_lines_of_code#/Example](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Source_lines_of_code#/Example)
------
eatonphil
Does this run internet explorer? This would be interesting for Koreans wanting
something easier than Windows but still needing online payments [0].
On a different topic, does this run any IIS software? Does anyone use this to
run any servers?
[0] [http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-
scrap-...](http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-scrap-
activex-payment-requirement-bad-news-for-internet-explorer/)
------
dingdingdang
Congratulations to the team :). Personally I'm really happy that someone is
doing this work.. although I wish they would aim for baking in a per-app-
sandbox-environment - in short order user empowerment is going to define
successful computing projects (just look at the rise of Qubes OS and I bet
this is still in its pre-viral state - if Apple get compromised by gov and are
vocal about it then it will educate a generation of users about the importance
of storing data safely!)
------
donlzx
Kudos to the ReactOS team. I've tried the 0.3.x release about ten years ago
and was a little disappointed. However, after a decade I've got a new
perspective to appreciate their work.
I've kept several of my used laptops (Toshiba Satellite laptop, IBM Thinkpads,
Lenovo Thinkpads, etc.) mainly for commemorative purpose. However, they can
still boot and works fine with outdated OS's and extinct software. A potential
very good use of them is to open my old archived documents, but I'd rather not
to mess with these fragile machines.
When I checked my old archives, usually only plain texts and JPEG photos files
are fine with current OS's and softwares. Nealy all my old software projects
(mostly with Visual C++) no longer compile or run, or missing dependencies
(DLLs, component libraries, tools, etc.). Even though I've backup most of the
tools I used at that time, most of them would be a huge pain or impossible to
reinstall correctly with right system dependencies.
Therefore I've come to think that the only meaningful archives are data with
executables, i.e, documents with related spec, contemporary software and OS.
In this aspect, a good Internet archive methodology should be like this: 1)
data; 2) Fully installed and working software packages; 3) Running free OS
such as Linux and ReactOS; 4) OS emulator on available hardware such as
Virtualbox and KVM.
The importance of ReactOS here is that we will have a working OS on modern
emulator or hardware for archiving purpose.
I'm omitting the hardware platform here, but it should be the other important
aspect of archiving our knowledges.
------
arturhoo
Genuine question: is there a reason for the downloads to be hosted at source
forge?
~~~
flxn
Two weeks ago the new owner of SourceForge terminated the controversial
"DevShare" program. [https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-
fut...](https://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-acquisition-and-future-
plans/)
So it should be safe again.
~~~
Piskvorrr
Nah. Reputation is hard to build, but eeeeasy to destroy; saying "trust us
that you can trust us again" doesn't magically revert it to previous version
(at least a suspicion remains of "...until we have another Wonderful Idea at
an indeterminate point in the future").
------
flz
10 years since the previous release ...
I'd really like to know how many people are actually using ReactOS for another
purpose than testing or developing it.
~~~
xenophonf
Dude, this is _Hacker_ News. Who cares? This is cool!
Also: Their latest release was 0.3.17 in 2014, with the 0.4.0 release
candidates coming out late last year. So it hasn't been 10 years between
releases, but around 1.5 years.
~~~
gedrap
While usually I'd agree with your snarky comment, I am genuinely curious about
this too. It's not some yetanother.js hacked together in a night but years
(decades!) of man hours.
What's pushing them and stopping from giving up?
~~~
stryan
I believe the Russian Government has considered/is giving them support so that
probably helps. Otherwise, a passion for the project and love of the craft
most likely.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's almost all a volunteer effort. They get the odd donation from time to
time, and they had a crowdfunding campaign, but they really don't get that
much money.
------
mixmastamyk
Awesome, I'd love an updated (traditional) Windows 2k/XP GUI with windows and
linux tools in it. :)
Interesting... I appreciate the faithful reproduction, but they've also copied
the outright bad designs like the tiny environment variable window in the
system control panel I always hated. ;)
Noticed they used a source-forge download instead of a torrent. :/
~~~
ConceptJunkie
Yeah, and that tiny environment variable window lasted at least through
Windows 7. You would think with 10s of thousands of developers, they could fix
these kinds of things.
------
rchowe
I wonder if ReactOS could target the same APIs as the upcoming Nano Server [1]
in Windows Server 2016. They'd have to make it entirely 64-bit and implement
some closed Microsoft protocols like WMI and DISM, but it could be a pretty
cool drop-in replacement for any server apps that people decide to target to
Nano Server.
[1]
[https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2015/04/08...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2015/04/08/microsoft-
announces-nano-server-for-modern-apps-and-cloud/)
~~~
userulluipeste
On IRC the developers have mentioned (as wishful thinking) a minimal (i.e. a
stripped-down) version, with only kernel, drivers, and a few other small
miscellaneous parts over which dedicated applications could run. This would be
something for embedded systems and other specialized machines (basically
servers) unlike the all-encomprising common version of ReactOS. That having
been said, it's important to understand that one of the reasons for nano is...
well, OS size, which for a "normal" version got to tens of GBytes! Currently,
ReactOS is (and I think that's a lot --) under 200 MB with all its bells and
whistles.
------
an4rchy
I came in thinking this was something related to React Native (i.e open source
OS for Android etc), but was pleasantly surprised to learn about this new OS,
quite an achievement, seeing as they've been going on for 10 years.
------
chris_wot
I really wish they had pointers to the source commits in their bug tracker.
That would be fascinating :-)
------
gosukiwi
Very interesting project. I'll make sure to test it when they release 1.0 :)
~~~
alexandre_m
At this pace it'll be your grandchildren that will test it.
~~~
eloisant
They're having a heated race with GNU Hurd to be the first on your grandson's
desktop!
~~~
wagglycocks
They can enjoy the 1.0 version of Dwarf Fortress while they're at it
------
zackify
scroll hijacking....
------
ericmuyser
Always a little disappointed when I remember ReactOS does not mean React.js
OS.
~~~
chris_wot
ReactOS has been around for a lot longer than React.js.
However... if there was a React.js OS, then I'd love to see ReactOS run on
React.js OS. At that point, I'd love to see this run on ReactOS.
~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> ReactOS has been around for a lot longer than React.js.
It'll probably still be around long after React.js has faded into obscurity,
too ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Picking Locks with Audio Technology - ingve
https://cacm.acm.org/news/246744-picking-locks-with-audio-technology/fulltext
======
Pick-A-Hill2019
Dug out a link to the orginal research paper (mainly because I was a bit
skeptical of the claims)
[https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~junhan/papers/SpiKey_HotMobile2...](https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~junhan/papers/SpiKey_HotMobile20_CamReady.pdf)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kubernetes 1.10 released - el_duderino
http://blog.kubernetes.io/2018/03/kubernetes-1.10-stabilizing-storage-security-networking.html
======
wolfgang42
Is there an easy way to get a single-node production-ready Kubernetes
instance? I'd like to start using the Auto DevOps features that GitLab is
adding, but all the tutorials I can find either have you installing minikube
on your laptop or setting up a high-availability cluster with at least 3
hosts. Right now I'm using CoreOS and managing Docker containers with systemd
and shell scripts, which works all right but is tedious and kind of hard to
keep track of. I don't have anything that needs to autoscale or fail over or
do high availability, I just want something that integrates nicely and makes
it easy to deploy containers.
EDIT: I should have clarified, I want to self-host this on our internal VMWare
cluster, rather than run it on GKE.
~~~
moondev
Sure. Install kubeadm on the node, "kubeadm init", install a pod network, then
remove the master taint
~~~
m1sta_
Reminds me of the plumbis “How is it made”.
------
wpietri
I'm very curious to hear field reports from people who switched to using
Kubernetes in production in the last year or so. Why'd you do it? What got
better and what got worse? And are you happy with the change?
~~~
linsomniac
One data point: I've wanted to but so far have not made much progress. I'd say
my biggest impediment has been documentation: I can get it installed, but
making it work seems to be beyond the scope of the documentation. I got
closest once I found out about "kubespray" to install the cluster rather than
using the official Kubernetes installation docs process.
I spent a couple weeks not quite full time going through tutorials, reading
the documentation, reading blog posts and searching for solutions to the
problems I was having. My biggest problem was with exposing the services "to
the outside world". I got a cluster up quickly and could deploy example
services to it, but unless I SSH port forwarded to the cluster members I
couldn't access the services. I spent a lot of time trying to get various
ingress configurations working but really couldn't find anything beyond an
introductory level documentation to the various options.
Kubespray and one blog post I stumbled across got me most of the way there,
but at that point I had well run out of time for the proof of concept and had
to get back to other work.
My impression was that Kubernetes is targeted to the large enterprise where
you're going to go all in with containers and can dedicate a month or two to
coming up to speed. Many of the discussions I saw talked about or gave the
impression of dozens of nodes and months of setup.
Other options I'll probably look at when I have time to look at it again: Deis
[https://deis.com/](https://deis.com/) , Dokku
[http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/](http://dokku.viewdocs.io/dokku/) , Flynn
[https://flynn.io/](https://flynn.io/) , LXC
[https://linuxcontainers.org/lxc/introduction/](https://linuxcontainers.org/lxc/introduction/)
and (though I'd been trying to avoid it) Docker Swarm
[https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/](https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/)
~~~
andrewstuart2
Are you trying to play around, or set up a working cluster? If you just want
to play around, I'd suggest just using minikube to get things going.
Anecdotally, I got an HA cluster running across 3 boxes in the space of about
a month, with maybe 2-3 hours a day spent on it. The key for me was iterating,
and probably that I have good experience with infrastructure in general. I
started out with a single, insecure machine, added workers, then upgraded the
workers to masters in an HA configuration.
I don't think it is really that hard to get a cluster going if you have some
infrastructure and networking experience, especially if you start with low
expectations and just tackle one thing at a time incrementally.
~~~
oso2k
Full Disclosure: I work for Red Hat in the Container and PaaS Practice in
Consulting.
At Red Hat, we define an HA OpenShift/Kubernetes cluster as 3x3xN (3 masters,
3 infra nodes, 3 or more app nodes) [0] which means the API, etcd, the hosted
local Container Registry, the Routers, and the App Nodes all provide (N-1)/2
fault tolerance.
Not to brag, since we're well practiced at this, but I can get a 3x3x3 cluster
in a few hours, I've lead customer to a basic 3x3x3 install (no hands on
keyboard) in less than 2 days, and our consultants are able to install a
cluster in 3-5 working days about 90% of the time, even with impediments like
corporate proxies, wonky DNS or AD/LDAP, not so Enterprise Load Balancers, and
disconnected installs. Making a cluster read for production is about right-
sizing and doing good testing.
[0] [http://v1.uncontained.io/playbooks/installation/#cluster-
des...](http://v1.uncontained.io/playbooks/installation/#cluster-design-
architecture)
~~~
user5994461
One last challenge. Can you do all the setup without being root?
~~~
oso2k
As long the user can install packages (say, via /etc/sudoers file), make
config changes, Yes. That's supported by our installer [0].
[0] [https://github.com/openshift/openshift-
ansible/blob/master/i...](https://github.com/openshift/openshift-
ansible/blob/master/inventory/hosts.example#L32-L43)
------
BaconJuice
Hi..can someone ELI5 to me what Kubernetes is? Also what's the best way to get
started/tutorials you can recommend for a new user? Thank you!
~~~
moistoreos
To follow this up, can anyone explain the benefits over Docker? I've used
Docker before but am unfamiliar with Kubernetes terminology. I do understand
it's an open source project by Google.
~~~
p3llin0r3
Kubernetes USES docker, so it's not a competitor.
The main benefits over the competing docker project, Docker Swarm, is that it
does WAY MORE, is 100% free and open source, and has much better adoption.
I would argue that with Docker Swarm you have to bring the glue yourself, and
it doesn't really solve any of the hard problems. Kubernets on the other hand
is an all-in-one package that solves a LOT of hard problems for you.
~~~
moistoreos
+1 for open source then. Thanks for the explanation.
------
ascendantlogic
They need some sort of LTS versioning. Keeping up with their breakneck
development pace is a job all its own.
~~~
manojlds
Kops has not released a 1.9 version yet. Even k8s projects can't keep up.
~~~
AlexB138
Kops generally stays one release behind. 1.9 is being end to end tested in the
last week. I wouldn't use that as an example of not keeping up, it's the
established cycle for the project.
~~~
justinsb
kops 1.9 is very close to ready now, but this is a longer lag than normal.
We've historically released kops 1.x when we consider that k8s 1.x is stable,
including all the networking providers and ecosystem components. That's
typically about a month after release.
User feedback has been that that we want to keep that, but that we should also
offer an alpha/beta of 1.10 much sooner, so that users that want to try out
1.10 today can do so (and so we get feedback earlier). So watch for kops 1.10
alpha very soon, and 1.11 alpha much earlier in the 1.11 cycle.
~~~
iooi
For those that aren't aware, justinsb is the author of kops. Looking forward
to the 1.9 release.
~~~
justinsb
Ah - sorry, probably should have disclaimered that! I did write the original
kops code, but now there's a pretty active set of contributors working on kops
(and contributions are always welcome and appreciated!)
------
cube2222
Can anybody share their experiences with running applications that use
persistent volumes on bare metal kubernetes?
I mean without cloud services like Google cloud persistent disks.
~~~
scurvy
+1 for "regular" Ceph. Don't bother with that rook stuff. Just setup a regular
Ceph cluster and go. Kubernetes handles its stuff and a (much more reliable
and stable) Ceph cluster handles blocks and files.
~~~
stormbeard
Can you explain what's wrong with Rook? I thought it was supposed to make life
easier when running Ceph.
------
humbleMouse
Openshift from redhat is built on kubernetes. Openshift offers a free tier to
try out their cloud services. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to try it
out.
I'm not affiliated with redhat in any way but I have enjoyed using the
openshift platform.
Here's the link for anyone interested:
[https://www.openshift.com/pricing/index.html](https://www.openshift.com/pricing/index.html)
~~~
bmaupin
[http://openshift.io](http://openshift.io) is also built on Kubernetes (by
virtue of using openshift.com for its deployment pieces)
------
CSDude
Good to see CSI is gaining traction. Only if we could build containers inside
K8S pods safely, I would be very happy. Maintaining a stupid Docker cluster
for just building containers is really a burden.
~~~
codereflection
Seems someone else was able to get it that working:
[https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/building-container-images-
sec...](https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/building-container-images-securely-on-
kubernetes/)
~~~
kuschku
If the gitlab ci provider for kubernetes would get this feature, it’d be
amazing.
I could finally run gitlab’s CI safely on kubernetes and generate containers.
~~~
tuananh
i have a problem of running gitlab runner within k8s. the docker layer is not
cached. is there anyway to fix this?
~~~
joshlambert
In my experience the GitLab Runner on k8s should utilized the cache. Are you
using Docker-in-Docker by chance? By default, I don't think it can cache data
between jobs.
~~~
tuananh
can you share your config.toml for k8s runner?
------
dekhn
I switched to k8s about a year and a half ago before deploying a modest
frontend/backend pair. although there is some friction, I generally like the
approach (I used to use borg, so it's a pretty low barrier).
The biggest problem I have is debugging all the moving parts when there are
~10+ minute async responses to config changes.
~~~
majewsky
10 minutes? That sounds a lot. We usually have 1-2 minutes wait time for a
changed ConfigMap to reach a running pod, or for a Deployment to roll over to
a new ReplicaSet. (That's on k8s 1.4.)
------
iooi
Has anyone been using CoreDNS as Alpha in 1.9, or tried the Beta now in 1.10?
What was your use case and reason for switching? How is it better than
KubeDNS?
~~~
scurvy
We've been using CoreDNS for a bit now, and it's much better than KubeDNS. We
found that KubeDNS would time out and drop requests from time to time. No such
issues with CoreDNS. Would recommend (at least from a reliability standpoint).
~~~
iooi
Thanks for sharing. How are you monitoring timeouts and dropped requests on
KubeDNS?
~~~
scurvy
We were running with shorter TTL's on service records, and upstream apps threw
rashes of errors when queries timed out.
------
abledon
I see some people who use Elixir/Erlang ecosystems then shove them into a
kubernetes system. Isn't this going against what the Elixir/Erlang system
already provides ? What are the usecases for this?
~~~
troutwine
> Isn't this going against what the Elixir/Erlang system already provides?
No?
So, I guess, let's dig into that a little bit. Erlang's always kind of left
the health and safety of your deployed system as a whole up to you, being
preoccupied with giving you tools for understanding and maintaining its
internal operation. OTP provides two semi-unique things: supervision of
computation with control of failure bubble-up and hot code reloading. Hot code
reloading isn't used all that much in practice, outside of domains where it's
_very important_ that the whole system can never be offline and load balancing
techniques are not applicable. That's a specific niche and, sure, probably one
that kubernetes can't service. With regard to supervision, there's no
incompatibility between OTP's approach and a deployment consisting of of
ephemeral nodes that live and then die by some external mechanism. Seems to me
that kubernetes is no different a deployment target in this regard than is
terraform/packer, hot-swapped servers in a rack or any of the other deploy
methods I've seen in my career.
------
TuringNYC
For the folks who have implemented K8 in Production - curious if you use it to
do resource management as well, or, if you also use something like Mesosphere
in conjunction? Or would you stick with a like-stack (DCOS+Marathon)?
There is surprisingly little online discussion/documentation on the intersect
of Resource Management and Container orchestration. Not sure if it is too
early in the curve, a dark art, not actually done, or what...
~~~
ianburrell
Kubernetes does resource management; all cluster scheduler systems do. The
difference between Kubernetes and Mesos for resource management is that
resource requests and limits are optional in Kubernetes and mandatory in
Mesos. It is best practice to specify resources in Kubernetes.
------
noselasd
I'm still wondering about going with plain kubernetes, or investing time in
OpenShift. Any insights from people that have tried both ways ?
~~~
swozey
I've run vanilla k8s for about 3 years now in prod but am also fairly familiar
(and really like) Openshift Origin. I usually tell people asking this question
the following;
OO comes with a bunch of really nice quality of life improvements that are
missing (but in a lot of cases can be added via 3rd party TPR/CRDs/etc) in k8s
but you aren't deviating so far from k8s that you won't be able to go work on
vanilla k8s in the future. Not at all. Most of the additional stuff are
annotations that simply wouldn't do anything and you'd remove them if you
moved from OO to k8s.
I think that if you're brand new to the environment OO can really help you get
running quickly. You just have to make sure that you do in fact dive in to the
actual k8s yaml and deal with ingresses, prometheus, grafana, RBAC, etc at
some point. I haven't used OO in awhile but I believe you could successfully
do most of what I do day to day via yaml/json through the OO UI.
On the flip side a lot of people will probably tell you to start from k8s,
whether that's GKE or AWS or minikube or wherever and go through the k8s the
hard way. Personally, and I help people quite frequently on the k8s slack, I
feel like that leads a lot of people down a path of frustration. It may be
perfect for your style of learning or it may just scare you off.
Now when it comes to OO you are at the behest of their releases. Their most
recent release was Nov 2017 and k8s 1.10 was just cut. I'm not sure what
version OO is on now, evidently they changed their versioning numbers to not
correspond to the k8s version.
Join #kubernetes-users and #kubernetes-novice on slack.k8s.io if you need any
help. It's a vibrant community. You can message me directly @ mikej if you'd
like.
edit: Ok OO 3.7 is k8s 1.9, that's perfect. I wait a few months before jumping
into new major.
~~~
smarterclayton
I’m about to cut OO 3.9 (based on 1.9) - we’ve been waiting for the subpath
CVE fixes and regressions to get sorted out before we cut a release.
~~~
swozey
Awesome! I mentioned this in #openshift-users. The OO website still states;
> An OpenShift Origin release corresponds to the Kubernetes distribution - for
> example, OpenShift 1.7 includes Kubernetes 1.7.
I had to dig around to figure out the version, might want to update that. :)
And great work, btw, OO is fantastic.
------
sthomas1618
Something I've been wondering about: how stable is Kubernetes service
discovery? I.e. can it entirely replace something like eureka? Is there any
reason not to use Kubernetes provided service discovery?
~~~
dmourati
Depends if _all_ service discovery sources and targets are all within k8s. If
so, k8s works well, if not, not so much.
------
yingxie3
Funny that this and Soloman leaving Docker showed up on the same page.
------
FooBarWidget
I am hearing that everybody is interested in Kubernetes, yet relatively few
people are actually using Kubernetes in production.
Are you using Kubernetes? And if not, what is your reason not to?
~~~
SamLevin88
I'm not so sure about that last part. We (Kinvey, www.kinvey.com) have been
using it for customer-facing services in production for over a year. Results
have exceeded our expectations.
------
linsomniac
Funny so many people are talking here about how fast Kubernetes is moving...
That's one of the complaints about Docker Swarm that led me to rule it out...
------
kubectl
I am looking for,
Kubectl auth login, is it available yet ?
------
tomerbd
so cool, would be even cooler at 1.20
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What causes a top 10 front page post to jump to slot #79 in seconds? - jqueryin
Seriously mods, this is taking things a little too far.<p>We went from #9 with a vote, submission time, and comment count matching a current top 10 post to all the way to #79 in the matter of a minute. Linked is the screenshot showing just how disproportionate the ratings are.<p>http://imgur.com/g3PdsNL<p>I'm sure some HNers have an idea of how the algorithm works or what went on here. Needless to say I'm very disappointed.
======
dang
> Seriously mods, this is taking things a little too far.
No moderator touched your post. It fell in rank because users flagged it.
It's against the HN guidelines to turn questions like this into Ask HN
threads. Please don't do that. As the guidelines say, you should email
[email protected] instead.
Also: when a post is flagged, a repost counts as a duplicate. Otherwise flags
wouldn't mean anything.
~~~
jqueryin
Define flagging. I've been a member of HN for almost 5 years with low to
medium activity and all I get is upvote/downvote capabilities. As far as I can
see, there were minimal downvotes from me watching (or at least equivalent to
upvotes), so the flagging seemed to be a group effort near instantaneously.
Things immediately went from good to bad in the matter of seconds, so there's
alot of power in whatever ranking is required to "flag".
~~~
krapp
Flagging is when you click the link that says "flag". Like I just did for this
thread.
~~~
jqueryin
You're funny. Upvote for you.
------
pbhjpbhj
It looks from the comments,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7985678),
that mod(s) thought it was a deceptive post that was more like an advert than
a story.
What technically, or in context of startups, is notable about the site/offer?
Perhaps you'd be better blogging about pop.co's setup and submitting that if
you want to use HN for promotion.
~~~
jqueryin
The post title was literally our selling point which was the exact features
offered. I'll have to reply to the mod.
------
leepowers
My guess is an upvote collusion algorithm got tripped somehow. The post is
obviously being penalized for some reason.
~~~
jqueryin
To the point on upvote collusion, I think the mods really need to rethink
things a bit. I utilize HN on a daily basis and check it periodically
throughout the day. If I see a post of a friend's site, I upvote it. The
notion of being flagged because friends or acquaintances familiar with your
startup being happy for you is by no means a reason to degrade a post.
What the OPs are really saying is they'll let it slide for their friends and
network, but not for those they're unfamiliar with. This is outright
unacceptable behavior and I think methods of accountability should be added.
If a startup didn't have friends, fans, and followers, than what do they have
guys? Nothing. And I'll be damned if I don't work for an awesome startup doing
awesome things that earned it's spot on the front page. It's a shame.
~~~
dragonwriter
> What the OPs are really saying is they'll let it slide for their friends and
> network, but not others.
OP? Usually, when I've seen that in a forum, it means "Original Poster", the
submitter of the post to which the comment thread is attached -- but clearly
that's not what you mean here. Do you mean the mods?
And, no, the voting ring detector is, from everything that has been said about
it, algorithmic, so its just as wrong for anyones "friends and network" as for
anyone else's.
> This is outright unacceptable behavior and I think methods of accountability
> should be added.
I'm sure if you ask nicely, YC will refund 100% of the HN membership fee you
paid if you are unsatisfied.
> If a startup didn't have friends, fans, and followers, than what do they
> have guys?
The idea of HN is that things should be promoted in visibility based on the
interest to the community at large based on the content, not based on
collusion of groups to promote them. Hence the voting ring detector. There's
plenty of venues for promotion that don't work that way, but I don't see why
anyone (other than YC) is entitled to demand that HN change.
~~~
jqueryin
Correct on mods, I was ranting too fast. I'll maintain my rights to rant on
occasion if something smells fishy. The post had legitimate interest, a
comment chain, and votes in both directions. The algorithm seems to be at
fault but I won't know for sure without some feedback. I sent an email out, so
I guess we'll wait and see.
------
jqueryin
Hold on folks, it's now #181. It seems as though some form of exponential
decay has been enabled by moderators.
I'd like to propose formal explanations whenever things like this occur.
Accountability should be the name of the game. I want to know who performed
the action, what action was performed, and why.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Hold on folks, it's now #181. It seems as though some form of exponential
> decay has been enabled by moderators.
Time-based exponential decay is the norm. Per the FAQ [1]:
_How are stories ranked?_
_On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were
submitted._
Also, from the guidelines [2]:
_Please don 't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us
questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you
want to say something to us, please send it to [email protected]._
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
~~~
jqueryin
While I understand this, we had a direct comparable front page item I
mentioned that goes entirely against the decay. This is a case of accelerated
decay enforced by an OP IMO.
------
Mz
By my manual count, 6 of the 16 comments in the discussion are by you and you
are also the person who submitted the piece. I have tried to tell others this
and people think I am being a bitch when I do so, but commenting too much in
your own submission seems to not be a good idea.
I wrote about my own experience/observations here:
[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/so-you-
made-...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/so-you-made-front-
page.html)
Can't be bothered to read it? The main take away is: Submit your piece, allow
yourself between one and three GOOD comments, then stfu and let _other people_
talk about your thingamajig.
~~~
jqueryin
I'll have to take your advice on this one in the future. This crowd is getting
as rough as /r/.
~~~
Mz
You know, I am female and I used to really be given hell at times on HN. It
took me a long time to understand why that was (most of which is not relevant
to this discussion) but I don't think it helps you at all to talk about "this
crowd is getting as rough as..." etc type stuff. If I had just been looking to
blame people here, I imagine I would have ended up banned. Instead, I took
some time off, figured some things out, and was eventually able to return to a
much more successful experience. As far as I can tell, that means I am
currently the highest ranking (in terms of karma) actively participating
female member. And this is a forum that is fairly notoriously unwelcoming of
women. So I think I speak from both a place of success and the school of hard
knocks on this one.
From what I can tell, there is some sort of algorithm that drops you off the
front page if you comment too much in your own submissions. Most likely, the
mods have good reasons for that. If you want to do well here, it helps to
understand the technical environment as well as the social environment. If you
don't want to understand it as a path to improving your performance, if,
instead, you just want to blame someone and complain, well, it's been nice
knowing you. You won't get far here. That kind of thing does not play well
anywhere and it seems to play especially poorly here.
~~~
jqueryin
Mods responded via email and said it was from users flagging the post. I won't
elaborate further, but thanks for the words of advice!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The rise of programmable self - Garbage
http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/programmable-self-motivation-hacks-digital-data.html
======
dreeves
I'm pretty excited about this movement (if it's fair to call it that yet)
since my startup, Beeminder (mentioned in the article!), pretty much
epitomizes the author's definition of Programmable Self (ie, quantified self +
motivation hacks).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why No One Is Beating Tesla's Range - prostoalex
https://jalopnik.com/why-no-one-is-beating-teslas-range-1837952903
======
kenhwang
No one's beating Tesla's range because no one is willing to use the NCA
battery chemistry. All the other automakers stick to NMC (for very good
reason). Tesla will have a ~20% range and cost advantage just by nature of
using NCA over NMC.
~~~
mikeash
That doesn’t seem to explain why other cars are getting less range from
batteries with similar capacity.
~~~
kenhwang
NMC batteries needs to be much bigger/heavier to match the capacity of NCA due
to NCA's better energy density. Then you have both the increased weight and
increased cooling burden associated with the larger NMC battery that
negatively impact range.
~~~
mikeash
That doesn’t add up. The I-PACE and Taycan both have similar weight to the
Model X, yet are substantially less efficient. The e-tron is lighter than a
Model S and has absolutely horrible efficiency.
~~~
kenhwang
The e-tron is similar in weight, size, and power to the Model X and pretty
much gets within 10% of its efficiency comparing WLTP ratings. I think the
efficiency loss can be explained by cooling (if this article is to be believed
that Audi has more complicated/expensive cooling) and aerodynamics (it has a
normal SUV profile vs the coupe of the Model X).
~~~
mikeash
I found about 250 miles for the e-Tron and 315 miles for the Model X competing
WLTP ratings. I imagine aerodynamics are a huge factor in this difference.
~~~
kenhwang
For 83.6kWh usable battery on the e-tron vs 95kWh on the Model X.
~~~
mikeash
Ah, I just saw 95kWh and figured it was close. I didn't realize the usable was
so different.
I'm a bit suspicious of the WLTP ratings for these cars. The EPA rating for
the Model X Long Range is 325 miles, while the e-tron's EPA rating is only 204
miles. Any idea why the Model X would score lower on WLTP while the e-tron
would score so much higher?
~~~
kenhwang
They probably just have different blends of city/highway/speeds. Just like how
gasoline cars have different estimates from different testing agencies,
electric cars do too because they all have different efficiency curves.
The ratings generally try to mimic the driving conditions of the region and
automakers tend to optimize for their home turf. So it's not too surprising
the American automaker does better on the American test and the Europeans do
better on the European test.
------
nemosaltat
This article seems to frame the shared cooling system as a flaw. For a
different perspective: [1] “Sean Mitchell, Detroit veteran Sandy Munro of
Munro and Associates mentioned that among the Model 3’s unique components, its
“Superbottle” is one of the most innovative. Combining two pumps, one heat
exchanger, and one coolant valve in one cleverly-designed bottle, the Model
3’s cooling system is arguably the most unique in the auto industry.“
[1] [https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-superbottle-
disrupti...](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-superbottle-disruption-
video/)
~~~
cowsandmilk
Except the article is a comparison to the model S, not the model 3...
~~~
DiabloD3
Model 3 is just a scaled down Model S using a lot of the same core technology.
------
Benjammer
This is, at best, "sponsored content" from Audi, and at worst, an Audi
advertisement directly written by a PR firm. Why is this on the front page of
HN?
~~~
braythwayt
The first sentence is absolutely true. And frankly, unsurprising to anyone who
has been around the magazine industry for longer than a week or two.
As they used to say of computer magazines in their heyday, “Everything in the
magazine is an advertisement, some of which are labeled as such.”
Paul Graham wrote an essay about PR in this site’s early days called “The
Submarine,” where he credited PR for the success of his own startup that he
sold to Yahoo.
PR is part of the game, and recognizing it as such is part of the game.
BUt with respect to your second sentence, just because it’s PR doesn’t
necessarily mean it is false or misleading. That assumption would be an ad
hominem fallacy.
A PR piece planted in Jalopnik isn’t that much different than an interview
with the CEO. You know the CEO is stating their company’s official position,
but you may still want to hear their point of view.
I 100% agree it is useful to make sure that everyone reading this be aware
that it is mostly ghost-written by VW Group. But once you are aware of that,
it is still useful to read it and debate amongst ourselves whether their
claims are reasonable and informative.
Personally, I thought the article did a good job of explaining that they were
repeating VW’s claims. It did not feel like they were pretending to print the
views of a so-called “independent think tank.️“
JM2C.
~~~
Benjammer
I just honestly don't think it's even worth it for us to discuss this article
on a somewhat technical, popular discussion forum like HN. It doesn't make any
attempt to give background/contextual information about any of the specific
issues discussed, it simply jumps right into pushing the Audi features and
openly bashing Tesla with vague generalizations; for example:
"Motor cooling is the weak link in the Tesla Model S, with motor heat soaking
usually responsible for power reductions under hard driving."
It doesn't explain the motivations of either company's designers and
engineers, it doesn't give background science on cooling technologies, and it
doesn't even really explain why Audi's system is better. It just says Audi has
"more aggressive and redundant cooling systems," and that Tesla's cooling, "is
the weak link in the Tesla Model S," with little-to-no further explanation.
If you are talking about an interview with a CEO where they focus on how they
are better than one specific competitor, and come off petty, shallow, and
unreasonably biased, then I would have similar feelings about that content. A
bunch of us here talking about this article is what a marketing analyst's or
PR agent's dreams are made of.
~~~
braythwayt
One of the pleasures of HN for me is that when a shallow article is published,
sometimes a bunch of people chime in and give more thorough explanations, e.g.
the discussion here about the tradeoffs between the battery technologies used
by Tesla versus Audi (and just about everyone else).
If the article serves as an invitation to a good conversation, I’m all for it.
But of course, sometimes an article is so bad that the entire conversation is
composed of people debunking its nonsense.
Or worse, certain highly emotional topics get posted, and everyone just yells
past each other. Regardless of the quality of the OP, the conversation makes
me feel like I lose 50 points of IQ when I read the comments.
I sum, I agree that sometimes, bad articles make for bad conversations. Did
this one? Maybe, maybe not, I’ll accept your word for it if you think poorly
of the quality of conversation around it.
------
ineedasername
The article still doesn't explain the 166 mile difference in range despite
only 5kwh difference in battery capacity. Walling off 12% doesn't cover the
difference nor does the 4% difference in weight. Is there an efficiency
difference?
~~~
rawland
This article smeels like PR to me. Especially as Porsche, Audi and VW are
basically the same company [0] and struggling to sell their EVs.
Tesla is the dominating force. Some numbers from Norway:
[https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/16/tesla-
model-3-12-4-of-a...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/16/tesla-
model-3-12-4-of-all-norwegian-vehicle-sales-january-july-2019/)
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group#Subsidiaries_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group#Subsidiaries_and_brands)
~~~
clouddrover
Volkswagen Group is the biggest car company in the world at the moment, with
Toyota a close second. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands. Pretty soon
they'll also be the biggest electric car company in the world, purely because
they're spending the most money on it:
[https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-91b-spend-evs-
out...](https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-91b-spend-evs-outpaces-
investment-rivals)
They'll release multiple EVs across multiple brands every year from now on.
Volkswagen's MEB platform is going to allow them to produce cars with
equivalent range to Tesla's at a lower price point. Volkswagen says their
battery cost is now below $100 per kilowatt hour:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/business/volkswagen-
trade...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/business/volkswagen-trademark-
electric-vehicles.html)
That's the advantage of the economies of scale Volkswagen will be able to
achieve with MEB, both from in-house production and from licensing the
platform to other manufacturers from small manufacturers like e.Go to large
manufacturers like Ford.
~~~
mschuster91
But still: a VW (or for that matter _any_ other car than a Tesla) will not
have one thing that makes Tesla unique: software. Even discarding the fact
that Tesla has probably the most data worldwide to train self-driving AI and
way more experience in building fully-electric cars, no one comes remotely
close to what Tesla can do. Modern non-Tesla still are sold with "map updates"
ffs, and something like "remote software update" is totally unheard of.
Tesla's strength is software and extreme agility in software development. The
other car manufacturers are prevented by their sheer size and corporate
infighting culture to catch up and they will be for years to come.
~~~
lpcvoid
I'd counter argue that it's maybe not that bad to have proven, formally
validated software in the field, which is what traditional software developers
in the automotive sectors did for decades. You tend to push out less crap if
you are forced to make sure it works well from the start due to lack of
updates.
At least the German Automotive industry relies very much on formal
verification and model driven development for this reason.
~~~
solarkraft
Except the UI stuff they push out _is_ utter crap. It's slowly improving, but
I if I understand the industry correctly the efforts that are leading to that
started many years ago.
Meanwhile when Tesla releases a bug they can ship a fix within days.
Why arbitrarily limit your development like that? To make some money off your
customer being forced to go to the dealer to get an update? That's just
terrible UX.
------
zokier
Even using the quoted 83.6 kWh figure as comparison, tesla gets 50% more miles
per kWh. That is still pretty stark difference.
~~~
kensai
Good point. Well, I guess we need to wait 7-8 years until the batteries from
other manufacturers become worn and see if their claims stand.
Battery reliability in the long term as well as sustained performance should
not be underestimated.
------
clouddrover
Some manufacturers are beating Tesla on price and range. The Hyundai Kona can
be bought for a bit less than a similarly priced Model 3 and the Kona has more
range at that price point. The Volkswagen ID.3 will come with three battery
sizes for 330km, 420km, and 550km WLTP range and they will be cheaper than the
equivalent range Model 3s.
~~~
mamon
WLTP range is different measurment that Tesla's EPA range. Conversion rate is
approximately 1.12:1 ([1]), so ID.3 EPA range would be 491 km.
[1] [https://insideevs.com/features/343231/heres-how-to-
calculate...](https://insideevs.com/features/343231/heres-how-to-calculate-
conflicting-ev-range-test-cycles-epa-wltp-nedc/)
~~~
clouddrover
There's no need to do conversions. Just look at the WLTP ranges on Tesla's
European sites. Here's the Irish version of the site for the Model 3:
[https://www.tesla.com/en_IE/model3/design?redirect=no#batter...](https://www.tesla.com/en_IE/model3/design?redirect=no#battery)
------
beamatronic
I just want more reliable car choices for driving in the car pool lane. There
are a number of plug in hybrids SUVs from Lexus, Porsche, and BMW that are not
on the approved eligible list. Deferring my next purchase into infinity in the
mean time.
------
elonissexyaf
.
~~~
ineedasername
I believe traditional manufacturers probably know more about building cars
that can last (thought not in all cases certainly). But yeah, this does come
off as a bit hype-ish over details that probably matter a lot less to buyers.
~~~
greendesk
Traditional manufacturers also know that they make money from maintaining
cars. If traditional manufacturers make cars that last, they will go out of
business.
~~~
ineedasername
There's a balance they have to strike. If you can't on average get 7-10 years
out of a car with normal preventative maintenance, you won't sell many as both
those who buy for the long term and the secondary market for used cars will
avoid.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Outrageous - IE IQ Story is a hoax - dsdirect
http://www.webjives.org/outrageous-ie-iq-story-is-a-hoax
======
ColinWright
Same story, much discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840626>
Documenting the re-submissions: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840900>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microservices without the Servers - alexbilbie
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/microservices-without-the-servers/
======
baconmania
This is Amazon's wet dream. Your app isn't an app at all, it's just a
collection of configs on the AWS Console. When and if the time comes to
migrate off of AWS, you realize you don't actually have an app to migrate.
~~~
arihant
Or, you realize that your processes are so minimalistic and well structured
due to lack of options, that you only have to write a custom request router
over the weekend to migrate.
Also, Lambda-like options are available with most PaaS providers now.
It is not much different and might be easier than migrating web app from a
custom PaaS. The only issue is, and has always been, the migration of data.
And I don't see that getting solved until some startup writes a bunch of
layers on top of a bunch of providers. It's very tricky, for good reasons.
~~~
IanCal
> Also, Lambda-like options are available with most PaaS providers now.
Which other ones are there? I used to use PiCloud until they were bought out
by dropbox and it atrophied. Shame, it was exactly what I wanted in a service.
~~~
_Marak_
[http://hook.io](http://hook.io) is an open-source microservice platform.
We launched a month before Amazon Lambda, and have better features like full
support for streaming HTTP.
~~~
georgefrick
But you don't have future price information; so it's a bit hard for an actual
enterprise recommendation. This will cost X in the future, but it's free for
now? Free for now is great for me as a tinkerer/developer; but I couldn't
recommend it to a client?
~~~
_Marak_
We do offer paid accounts, and in fact already have a nice size group of
paying customers.
Still in the process of establishing our service tiers, but our basic hosting
plan starts at $5.00 per month.
[http://hook.io/pricing](http://hook.io/pricing)
------
paulspringett
Interesting that the article talks about load tests but omits any results.
I was trying out a Gateway API + Lambda + DynamoDB setup in the hope that it
would be a highly scalable data capture solution.
Sadly the marketing doesn't match the reality. The performance both in terms
of reqs/sec and response time were pretty poor.
At 20 reqs/sec - no errors and majority of response times around 300ms
At 45 reqs/sec - 40% of responses took more than 1200ms, min request time was
~350ms
At 50 reqs/sec - v slow response times, lots of SSL handshake timeout errors.
I think requests were throttled by Lambda but I would expect a 429 response as
per the docs rather than SSL errors.
My hope was that Lambda would spin up more functions as demand increased, but
if you read the FAQs carefully it looks as though there are default limits.
You can ask these to be changed but that doesn't make scaling very realtime.
~~~
balls187
Correct. Lambda isn't designed for high data through put. That's what Amazon
Kinesis is for. Each Kinesis shard can handle 1000KB/s data injestion rates.
You would write your data to a kinesis stream, then use Lambda to respond to
the kinesis event to write data to your DynamoDB table.
~~~
paulspringett
Thanks for the info on this, I hadn't seen Kinesis before. I also tried
something similar with S3 upload but Kinesis looks a much better solution for
what I'm trying to do.
------
raspasov
I see a lot of people disagreeing with the overall direction of "less servers,
more services". I totally get it, I used to be one of those people, but I
think the shift to "less hassle development" is inevitable.
5 years ago people used to debate whether we should use a virtualized server
vs. a physical one. You still can see similar discussions but rarely - we all
have more or less agreed that using AWS/Rackspace/etc. is good for a business
in majority of use cases.
I think 5 years from now we'll still be debating servers vs. services, but the
prevailing wisdom will be that "services" have won.
~~~
alexro
It may well be so that companies will run their private clouds on the
colocated servers. What wins in that case?
~~~
raspasov
Maybe for some companies/use cases, however my feeling is that the setup time
and dealing with hardware directly will always be too much hassle for the
majority.
~~~
alexro
Except they will deal with hardware anyway - there are about several thousand
different devices in our offices. How difficult is it to get another 2 admins
- and two could be enough in the modern world of everything automated.
------
xchaotic
It is pretty cool but not really serverless, you are still handling http
requests via Amazon API gateway and in general you are relying and paying for
quite a lot of Amazon services. Not sure how much better this approach is to
serving image magic via PHP for example, it would be good to see some numbers.
~~~
philsnow
This removes nearly all of "devops". You don't have to mess around with
figuring out how many ec2 instances you need (or deal with auto-scaling
groups), how to secure the linux or whatever you stick on the ec2 instances,
etc.
There's still a ton of creating zip file artifacts of your lambda payloads
(instead of pushing to a magic git repository that amazon controls, say), so
there's a bit of "build monkey"ing to do instead of "devops"ery. But I think a
lot of shops will be happy to make that trade, as "build" is closer to their
core experience than "devops".
~~~
maratd
Yes, you get rid of devops.
You gain vendor lock-in. You are now tied to the Amazon platform. If they shut
down or suspend your account, for any reason, you are out of business. You are
also paying premium for the platform, with the cost of devops built in.
I'll take an open ecosystem that gives me options to migrate my business
anytime over a proprietary solution.
~~~
curiousjorge
pretty much this. amazon can at any point shut down any of these services or
nerf it. if you built everything up to this point on amazon and they shut it
down, it's more work.
~~~
maratd
To add to your point, they have done this before and are still doing it. There
is no guarantee of continued service.
[http://recode.net/2015/03/18/amazon-will-shut-down-amazon-
we...](http://recode.net/2015/03/18/amazon-will-shut-down-amazon-webstore-its-
competitor-to-shopify-and-bigcommerce/)
~~~
duskwuff
Amazon Webstore wasn't part of AWS, though. It was part of their commerce wing
- very different.
~~~
curiousjorge
remember PiCloud? they shut down after I spent a quarter building around their
API calls. I never want to repeat that mistake and you also get the bonus of
being able to sell your source code or deploy local cloud if an enterprise are
willing to pay extra for it.
------
manigandham
Are servers really that hard to manage these days? This seems like way more
work and pretty limited in what it can really do, especially compared to a few
lines of code in any decent web framework that can perform a lot faster.
~~~
herval
If you're a single developer/small team with a very small product, managing
servers is a chore that won't add any value to the product you're building.
So you either spend very little time on it and build servers adhoc
("snowflake" style - SSH in, install some stuff, etc), or you spend precious
time doing "the right thing" \- which right now is a huge universe of options
(Chef/Puppet/Ansible, Docker/other containers/no containers, etc).
If you're part of a larger team, not having a properly structured
infrastructure is a nightmare - specially when it comes to scaling or dealing
with failures of all kinds.
TLDR; - yes, I'd say it's somewhat hard...
~~~
joeyspn
> I'd say it's somewhat hard...
I don't think it's hard, it's just time consuming. And we all know that "time
is money", specially for small teams or solo devs (as you pointed out).
~~~
herval
Doing it right is hard. Scaling infrastructure throughout multiple zones while
keeping data as consistent as possible, deployments as easy as possible and
having as few SPOFs as possible is pretty difficult (and done differently by
every single team). The range of things that can go wrong is huge...
~~~
joeyspn
Not every product needs AZ from the start (specially for small teams or
solopreneurs), in most cases you'll be doing over-engineering. And in the use
cases you need AZs and _do it right_ new tools like convox* are really easy to
use and can save you a lot work. It's never been this easy to manage your own
infrastructure.
During the years I've used ssh, puppet, fabric, ansible, capistrano, cloud
formation, etc for managing servers and infrastructure. And I think that the
main benefit of any PaaS, AWS Lambda or AWS API Gateway is (obviously) that
they're time saving and abstract the internals. In fact I use them in several
_small_ projects.
* [https://www.convox.com](https://www.convox.com)
------
seiji
"Microservices without the Servers: the Uberization of IaaS as PaaS for SaaS"
Like when you say you have no carbon footprint because you don't own a car,
even though you call a taxi every time you want to go somewhere?
Are microservices different from SOA? Or is it just a more modern, streamlined
buzzword?
You say "microservices," but all I see is "omg, you realize inter-node latency
isn't a trivial component to ignore when building interactive services,
right?"
~~~
hyperpallium
Yes, microservices are just a rebranding of a SOA subset.
[http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html#Microser...](http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html#MicroservicesAndSoa)
But I think this direction is inevitable, and we'll soon see freemium
microservices.
Amazon's "Lambda" page (esp scroll down to the "benefits"
[https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/) ) shows it's
more like offloading some tasks (like worker threads in the cloud).
I had a play with the second (linked) app, SquirrelBin
[http://squirrelbin.com/](http://squirrelbin.com/) which can edit and run
javascript snippets. The latency is awful, 2-3 seconds for me (I'm in
Australia, but that should only add 200ms roundtrip or so). They seem to spin
up (reuse?) an entire instance for _each request_ \- it's incredible that it's
as fast as it is.
But the problem is the architecture of this specific app: the delay would be
fine if you could edit-run-loop code locally, without the cloud. But they
wanted to demonstrate quick development (for them) by just making a CRUD app,
using AWS Lambda existing http endpoints for PUT, POST, GET, DEL. So after
editing you have to save, load and run - and each one interacts with the
cloud. BTW the article about SquirrelBin
[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-squirrelbin-
archite...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/the-squirrelbin-architecture-
a-serverless-microservice-using-aws-lambda/)
~~~
seiji
_They seem to spin up (reuse?) an entire instance for each request_
There are some clever platforms running on bare Xen (no direct OS) that can
spin up an entire instance and destroy it on every request pretty quickly.
[http://erlangonxen.org](http://erlangonxen.org) is a great example. 100ms to
boot your entire "system" for production usage.
------
jacques_chester
Here's how I deploy code, without having to modify it:
cf push myapp
It figures out the language/runtime I'm using (Java, Ruby, Go, NodeJS, PHP),
builds the code with a buildpack, then hands it off to a cloud controller
which places it in a container. My code gets wired to traffic routing, log
collection and injected services. I can deploy a 600Mb Java blockbuster using
8Gb of RAM per instance or I can push a 400kb Go app that needs 8Mb of RAM per
instance.
I don't need to read special documentation, I don't need special Java
annotations.
I just push. _And it just works._
I'm talking about Cloud Foundry. It runs on AWS. And vSphere. And OpenStack.
It's opensource and doesn't tie you to a single vendor or cloud forever.
I worked on it for a while, in the buildpacks team, so I'm a one-eyed fan.
Seriously: why are we still talking about devops? _It 's a solved problem_.
Use Heroku. Install Cloud Foundry. Install OpenShift. And get back to focusing
on user value, not tinkering.
Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal Labs, part of Pivotal, which donates the
largest amount of engineering effort on Cloud Foundry (followed by IBM).
~~~
MichaelGG
As a note, I decided to look up CF based on this comment. This lead me to
cloudfoundry.org, which appears entirely devoid of content. Just useless talk
about "heavyweights" and so on. The menu didn't appear to have any links to
anything useful either. Clicking on products lead to a page with three product
names. Having visited the site, I'm actually now negatively disposed towards
it (but your comment outweighs my experience, and I'll still attempt to check
it out).
Granted I only spent a minute, but if this is a typical experience, I'm unsure
how anyone would come to the conclusion that there's any software worth using
there.
~~~
jacques_chester
Frankly, I agree with you. We suck at developer outreach. It bugs me.
Unless you know where to find the docs[0], they're not obvious. There's a
single master repo[1], but it's oriented at _deployment_ and works by
aggregating dozens of sub-projects[2] into a BOSH release and BOSH deployment.
... which requires you to know what the hell BOSH[3] is ...
So recently we started trying to make it easier. The best place to start
tinkering is Lattice[4], which is a cutdown extract of Cloud Foundry. or
Pivotal Web Services[5]. Or IBM BlueMix, I guess[6].
[0] [http://docs.cloudfoundry.org/](http://docs.cloudfoundry.org/)
[1] [https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cf-
release](https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cf-release)
[2] [https://github.com/cloudfoundry](https://github.com/cloudfoundry) and
[https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-
incubator)
[3] [http://bosh.io/docs](http://bosh.io/docs)
[4] [http://lattice.cf/docs](http://lattice.cf/docs)
[5] [https://run.pivotal.io/](https://run.pivotal.io/)
[6] [https://console.ng.bluemix.net/](https://console.ng.bluemix.net/)
~~~
MichaelGG
Thanks for the links, much appreciated! How does CF compare to go.cd? Will
there be a lot of setup work required?
~~~
jacques_chester
go.cd fills a different role. Funnily enough go.cd was the main CI system used
for Cloud Foundry, though it's being steadily replaced by concourse.ci.
Cloud Foundry is a bear to install because you will probably wind up needing
to wrap your head around BOSH, the IaaS orchestration tool. Once you get past
that hump it's relatively obvious. Getting past the hump is tough.
Bear in mind that it's a _complete_ PaaS. The kind of thing you bet your
company on (and our customers do). BOSH is a heavyweight system that predates
a lot of later tools like Terraform or Cloud Formation. On the other hand, we
use BOSH to update Pivotal Web Services to the latest cf-release every 2 weeks
or so and basically, nobody ever notices. It just works.
The easiest way to start is either Lattice or a public Cloud Foundry
installation. The former has the advantage of being easy to install on a
laptop, and it's intended for developers to tinker with. The latter has the
advantage that someone else ran `bosh deploy` and is provisioning the VMs that
Cloud Foundry runs on. Pivotal Web Service (based on AWS) and IBM BlueMix
(based on SoftLayer, I think) are the two main ones.
~~~
vacri
> _Getting past the hump is tough._
So... it's not a solved problem after all? :)
~~~
jacques_chester
Oh you :)
You only have to install CF once, not every time you deploy. After that it's
easy to upgrade. We do so on Pivotal Web Services every time cf-release is
incremented, which is approximately fortnightly.
------
daviding
I'm playing with these exact things now and it is very enjoyable so far.
My main worry is not on the technical side but on how things are charged for.
If I build something that starts to get used I am covered in terms of
scalability, but not in a way that protects me from 'cost scalability' so to
speak. I know I can set up billing alerts and hit a big 'shutdown' button in
response to high load, but what I don't think I can do is throttle these
services based on the money I want to budget/spend. With my own services I
have a hard cost limit, with a hard scalability limit, or rather I just accept
that my response times will go down or fail once I've allocated all I can
afford.
If there something for AWS in terms of 'cost throttling'? It may be a gap in
their services, especially for people want to build things that might get
traction?
~~~
bpicolo
As a small user, I've bemoaned the lack of 'cost throttling' for a while. I
spend minimally and don't want to worry about e.g. private key leaks that cost
a fortune, or some malicious traffic hitting my s3 hard.
~~~
aluskuiuc
One of the easiest mitigations to this is to not even create credentials that
have access to do anything that could run up a bill in any short amount of
time. Between the Console (access protected with an MFA token) and IAM roles,
neither you or your application ought to ever have to handle raw AWS secrets.
~~~
bpicolo
Yeah, I do use IAM roles heavily, 2fa, etc : )
------
pea
Great to see Lambda stepping up their serverless game. We're big fans of this
approach and are hacking on something similar to this at StackHut[1], but:
* Mostly OSS to avoid lock-in
* Git integration
* Full stack specification (OS, dependencies, etc.)
* Python/ES6 support (Ruby and PHP coming)
* Client libs so you can call your functions 'natively' in other languages.
It would be awesome to hear what people would like us to build for them. Here
is a blog-post on how to build a PDF -> image converter:
[http://blog.stackhut.com/it-was-meant-to-be/](http://blog.stackhut.com/it-
was-meant-to-be/)
[1] [https://stackhut.com](https://stackhut.com)
~~~
Jake232
I think your pricing scheme[1] could put a lot of people off. I fall into the
category where I'd be fine on the free tier (< 10 private services), and yet I
don't _want_ a free service.
I know if it's free, then it's going to be under some kind of fair usage
policy, and you're going to rate limit me or have some kind of restrictions
eventually. There's no way it can be sustainably free if I start to push it
really hard. I'd prefer to just know the limits upfront, or have some kind of
usage based pricing.
[1]. [http://stackhut.com/#/pricing](http://stackhut.com/#/pricing)
~~~
pea
Hey Jake -- thanks for your feedback, that is really helpful.
We're going to add some better pricing. How would you like this to work?
\- per month, flat rate, ups w/ usage \- per request \- per compute / storage
We really like the idea of only paying for the compute you actually use a la
lambda; one of my gripes with Heroku was having to pay $x when the server was
only in use for short bursts. Why should I pay for downtime?
That said, we've actually had many people say they would prefer per month, as
it is more predictable and they are worried it could spiral out of control.
I would be super interested to hear your thoughts.
~~~
Jake232
I'm not sure that per-request would work; because the resources that a request
takes can vary wildly in resources used / time taken. PiCloud (somewhat
similar idea) used to charge based on processing time essentially (down to the
millisecond I believe).
I personally think that is the correct kind of pricing for something like
this; but monthly plans including X time/requests would likely be a good idea.
------
patsplat
The current problem with this architecture is the network cannot be used as a
security layer. Databases, search engines, etc need ports opened to the public
rather than to selected servers.
~~~
dikaiosune
If you're on a private network (like your own DC), I'd argue that network-
based security is a poor idea because then an attacker just needs to plug in
and have pretty easy access.
If you're on the public cloud, I'd argue that this is an even bigger problem
as you're then relying on VPC (or the equivalent) to always work correctly.
Why not ignore the networking and just build in robust security? Pubkey
authentication where possible, random long passwords where not? Retry limits
for clients, network intrusion detection, etc. To me, relying on the network
to keep you secure seems a bit like a crutch.
~~~
patsplat
This is an optimistic counterpoint.
However realistically nearly all persistence services such as MySQL, Postgres,
MongoDB, Memcache, ElasticSearch, etc either have been insufficiently hardened
as a public service or flat out are not intended to be used on a public port
and depend on the network for security.
There is not currently an option to connect an RDS database instance to a
Lambda function without opening said database instance up to the public. It's
a problem.
You are correct that SSH tunneling could be used to provide security but such
usage is not yet a standard approach.
~~~
twagner
Totally agree. It's our most requested feature on the Lambda team and a
priority to enable.
------
tw04
Awesome, right up until you need a feature they don't want to offer, or they
decide to sunset a feature you're the only one using, and you have absolutely
0 control over it.
~~~
_Marak_
If you are interested in a 100% open-source version of Amazon Lambda, you can
check out [http://hook.io/](http://hook.io/)
------
cdnsteve
Lamda does not work inside a vpc nor can it connect to one. You cannot use RDS
period. This severly limits options currently available from a database and
security perspective.
~~~
midnightjasmine
AFAIK the AWS team is working on this. It's one of the most asked for
features.
------
cptnbob
Too much vendor lock in. Will keep my VMs thanks.
~~~
saintfiends
Exactly. What if amazon decides to close your account, because you know.. they
can. Now you're pretty much screwed.
With traditional VPS you just point ansible/salt/puppet to new servers and
you're good to go.
~~~
cptnbob
Ironically this happened to me due to a card expiry fuck up.
~~~
saintfiends
Same thing happened to me. Card got expired but they wouldn't let us add a new
card (or payment method as they call it) because the account was in some
invalid state. When asked what it was, they couldn't give the details due to
legal reasons.
It took about 2 months with support (Business support) and finally they chose
to close the account.
We created a new account with a new card and migrated our AWS infrastructure.
Unfortunately we still have to use AWS..for now.
------
zkhalique
I came here expecting to read about "distributed computing in the peer to peer
network" and instead found a how-to for "servers-as-a-service" from Amazon.
Check this out instead:
[https://crowdprocess.com/](https://crowdprocess.com/)
------
amirmc
Folks interested in this might like to know that ContainerCon also had a
session on Containers and Unikernels.
[http://sched.co/3YUJ](http://sched.co/3YUJ)
A write up and audio from that session is also available.
[http://thenewstack.io/the-comparison-and-context-of-
unikerne...](http://thenewstack.io/the-comparison-and-context-of-unikernels-
and-containers/)
------
hackaflocka
This is a misleading title. Managed cloud services run on servers. There has
to be a better title. For a moment I thought they were proposing P2P hosting.
~~~
ahallock
The implication is that you don't have to provision any servers to execute
your code. That is the "serverless" part.
~~~
turing_bot_3c
But the name is terrible. It is like saying, going from A to B without a car
by using a Taxi.
------
droithomme
This article only makes sense if you don't know what servers are, and believe
"the cloud" doesn't use them.
------
loafoe
Beware, link-bait! Title should really be "Microservices without non-Amazon
Services", which if you remove the double negate really says "Microservices
with Amazon Services", which is well.. not that interesting IMO. I'd rather
write against CloudFoundry which abstract away AWS.
~~~
Animats
Also note the total absence of any reference to cost and billing. This isn't
free.
~~~
scottdw2
Lambda has a fairly generous free tier.
Here are the details on pricing:
[https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/pricing/)
You get up to 1M requests / month and 400,000 GB-seconds of compute time per
month.
A default lambda function uses 128 MB of ram (0.125 GB), which gives you about
3.2 M seconds of compute time (time actually spent executing requests) every
month for free.
Thus if you have functions that take 500 ms on average, and use the default
amount of RAM, you can process about 6.4 M requests in a month for a total
bill of $1.20.
Above the free tier limits you pay $0.20 per million requests, and $0.1667 per
million GB-seconds.
The pricing is fairly attractive.
------
balls187
I built
[http://vat.landedcost.avalara.com/](http://vat.landedcost.avalara.com/) using
this same architecture pattern.
The site is served up via S3, and the back-end logic is a Lambda module that
wraps a SOAP API.
------
jontro
I made a pretty cool lambda this week converting using mandrill inbound email
api, processing this through lambda, then posting it to my redmine docker
server. After a lot of fiddling (lambdas doesnt support x-www-form-urlencoded)
it now works great.
~~~
athrun
Have you seen this?
[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=673863](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=673863)
It's a mapping template for the AWS API Gateway you can use to convert both
HTML form POSTed data and HTTP GET query string data to JSON.
~~~
jontro
Yeah, I used a mapping template similar to this. Sorry for the late reply
------
sandGorgon
Is there a particular reason why Amazon chose JavaScript? I'm seeing more and
more PAAS services going nodejs first/only and am wondering if there's an
underlying reason.
~~~
twagner
AWS Lambda supports nodejs and jvm-based languages (Java, Scala, Clojure,
etc.) directly, and lets you run Python, shell scripts, and arbitrary
executables as well. We started with nodejs because it worked nicely for
expressing our initial launch scenario, event handlers.
~~~
sandGorgon
yes - I am aware that you support Python, etc. .. but nodejs is your first
class language. For example, even your docs only mention nodejs (and java
recently) [1]
what is _even_ more interesting is that you felt it worked nicely for
expressing event handlers. Can you talk a bit more about that - very
interesting to see why not something like python or ruby. I know that nodejs
is a callback-oriented _framework_... was it the fact that you can test
locally on nodejs consistently versus what would be the expected output on
Lambda ?
[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/faqs/](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/faqs/)
------
drinchev
I was thinking... How can you use server less webapp with SEO-friendly dynamic
url structure, e.g. Ecommerce, social network, etc. does anyone have an idea
on that?
~~~
rev_bird
I don't think servers have a lot to do with this -- when you go to a URL, and
a page gets returned, why does it matter where the data came from?
For example: Say you've got an AngularJS app sitting in S3 or something, and
your backend is a Node.js app running in Lambda. Google finds a link to
"random-new-social-network.com/profile/drinchev" somewhere and tries to index
it -- their request is routed to "random-new-social-network.com," where
Angular recognizes "/profile/drinchev" as a route to a profile for some user
named drinchev, pulls in the "profile" template, and spits out your profile,
where Google can read it and call it a day.
If you're talking about search engines getting along with Javascript-reliant
sites, that's a different story, but I don't think I see the problem.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Haiku R1/beta2 has been released - waddlesplash
https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2020-06-09_haiku_r1_beta2/
======
charlesdaniels
I'm glad to see Haiku is still making progress!
I really enjoy the visual style of Haiku. The look-n-feel of it seems better
to me than any other UI I've seen, and I say that as someone who never used
BeOS, so it's not the nostalgia talking.
It would be really cool if Haiku was able to get to a state were it's usable
as a daily driver. I think having an OS and interface more focused on a single
user at a graphical terminal rather than a multi-user system with graphics
tacked on would be positive.
BeFS also has some really great ideas that aren't replicated in other more
modern FSes, namely it includes database-like functionality that enables some
really neat features via a standardized interface, rather than hiding them
away in vendor-specific file formats. If you're interested, Practical File
System Design[0] uses beFS as it's example filesystem (and it's also a really
good book in general).
0 - [https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic-
Giamp...](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic-
Giampaolo/dp/1558604979)
~~~
mdasen
I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot like Apple
Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9: [https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3...](https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3ce39de8d4e8e2b489a2a93880-780x585.jpg).
I'm curious what you like about it. I personally miss a lot of design things
that have fallen out of style.
On Windows, it feels like everything is blindingly white/soft grey with no
texture or borders to help my eyes focus. Transparency is used without regard
for its utility. Instead of using borders, they use space which ends up
wasting a lot of screen real-estate. The differentiation between active and
background window is very subtle.
macOS has many of the same issues. Scroll bars aren't shown unless you're
scrolling. You can change this behavior, but still. Background windows are
hard to differentiate from foreground windows. Transparency is used for
seemingly no reason.
That said, macOS does offer better design queues than Windows 10. The macOS
finder will use a slightly different color for the left panel than the main
work area. Windows 10 uses the same white for both areas drawing focus as if
they're equal. Buttons in macOS have a very subtle bump out to show that
they're buttons vs just being completely flat. There are usually small borders
between things.
Take this screenshot: [https://thehacktoday.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/screensh...](https://thehacktoday.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/screenshot-folder.png). There's no border between the
back/forward/up buttons and the content below. Everything is the same white.
Clickable items have no real indication that they're buttons. macOS:
[https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-m...](https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-
music-in-macos-catalina-finder-1.jpg). You can see more clear demarcations.
Buttons clearly stick out a little, the left panel is a different color with a
tiny border, the title bar is a different color with a gradient, etc.
Haiku's design harkens back to a day when we demarcated things. Haiku's active
windows are yellow while background windows are grey
([https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS.png)).
This makes it instantly clear what is the top window. There are borders on
everything and a subtle beveled effect.
Is that the kind of stuff that you like about Haiku's UI? Is it something els?
~~~
cmrdporcupine
I agree with all your points. But worth pointing out that BeOS predates Mac OS
8 and 9. Not sure if there's a line of influence between the two, but uthere's
definitely a 1990s 'demarcated' design; not just with colour but with simple
visual elements.
And attention to physical placement. Windows 95 made a strange choice when it
placed the 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it entirely
possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac
positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this worse by
choosing in its first versions to make the function of the buttons unclear
until the mouse moved over them.
I really enjoyed Sun's "OpenLook" design back in the day:
[http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png](http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png)
Minimalist while not being spartan or unclear.Skeuomorphism but not overdone.
~~~
charlesdaniels
While we're talking about cool old UIs, I'll also point out IRIX 4dwm[0]
(google image search "IRIX 4dwm" for more examples). It's far before my time,
but based on the screenshots out there on the 'net it seems like a pretty good
UI for it's time period.
0 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX)
~~~
cmrdporcupine
That's just Motif isn't it?
Well, I guess it's a custom shell for Motif.
~~~
charlesdaniels
That, and a custom set of applications which might have been written in Motif.
There have definitely been better UIs since then, but for it’s time I it seems
pretty impressive.
~~~
cmrdporcupine
It's very much a shame that licensing on Motif was so restrictive. At a time
when Unix desperately needed a standardized toolkit, the wrong moves were
made, and fragmentation was the result.
------
colesantiago
Interesting to see this isn't another linux distribution, but a _real_ OS.
Some of the software ported to this OS [0] (some not on this list but looking
at their repo [1] ):
LibreOffice
Krita
Telegram
Jetbrains (PyCharm, ItelliJ)
Rust, Node.JS, Python, Java 12
Qt Creator
Arduino
Obviously there's more in their repo, looking promising though. (Try find your
favourite software in there!)
[0] [https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-
notes#mor...](https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-notes#more-
ported-software)
[1] [https://depot.haiku-os.org](https://depot.haiku-os.org)
~~~
badsectoracula
Though IMO this misses the point of the OS which is the deep integration and
fast UI the native APIs allow that these cross platform applications (and any
application ported to Haiku through Qt and Java) ignore. There is no real
reason to use Haiku over some Linux desktop (you can even make XFCE look kinda
similar to Haiku/BeOS if you want) if the applications you use do not take
advantage of it.
~~~
waddlesplash
As a Haiku developer (and user, naturally!) I have to disagree. Obviously
native software would be preferred, just as it is on macOS, but I am pretty
sure that macOS users will tell you that they still prefer macOS, even if they
are using Firefox, or JetBrains, or Inkscape, etc., yes?
The Linux desktop is a horribly fragmented and fragile ecosystem. Haiku lacks
a lot of features the Linux kernel has, but the overall system architecture
and design is significantly cleaner and less fundamentally fragile.
~~~
badsectoracula
I never implied that the Haiku developers would dislike these applications, so
i'm not sure you being a Haiku developer has anything to do with your
disagreement.
And yes, macOS users probably also tell you that they prefer macOS, though
note that they also are often _very_ loud about preferring software that takes
advantage of their OS' features because this is why they use that OS.
The thing is, macOS has a much richer selection of software than Haiku has
(and most likely, ever have) so macOS users at least can fall back to those.
But if all you are going to use on Haiku is ported software that ignores
native APIs then what is the point of using an OS with less hardware support
and features?
The Linux desktop being fragmented doesn't mean much - your Qt application
ported to Haiku will also work on KDE perfectly fine and chances are even if
you limit your software selection to Qt-only applications, you'll still have
more applications to work with. Though that fragmentation is really a poor
description since there are standards you can rely on, like X11 - sure someone
might be using Gnome or XFCE or Window Maker or i3 or whatever as their
desktop, but applications do not target those environments, they target a
lower level of the stack that is shared among these and making an application
on XFCE doesn't mean it'll only run under XFCE.
So yeah, it might look fragmented, but unless you are some custom support
worker that tries to navigate someone through the UI via phone, that isn't
much of an issue in practice (and "in practice" is the important bit here
because the reasons i've seen people put forth for having Qt/Java applications
ported to Haiku and ignore Haiku's own APIs are all about practicality - which
ignores the elephant in the room which is that if you care about practicality
using Haiku in the first place wouldn't be a good choice anyway).
~~~
dundarious
Being a developer (and a user as they acknowledge), they have relatively deep
experience with the system and the benefits of "native" vs. ported apps.
Because of that, they have a reasonable basis of knowledge in order to dispute
your statement about the suitability of Haiku for someone using those apps, or
the benefits of using those apps on Haiku.
~~~
badsectoracula
They may have (i don't know) but they didn't dispute anything, they just said
that they disagree and the rest was about what macOS users would probably say
and something about how Linux is more fragmented and how in theory Haiku is
better but neither of those had anything to do with what i wrote.
------
dang
Those curious for more may wish to see also:
2018
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127)
2017
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918)
2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056)
2013
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766)
2012
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941)
2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827)
2009
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844)
Sundry:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E0%20haiku-
os.org&sort=byDate&type=story)
------
aquabeagle
I've tried Haiku a few times and liked it, but it feels like the beta label
has been around forever and is not doing them any favors. It's 2020, you're
not publishing software as a big-box release in stores, just cut a release
already and then keep iterating!
From Wikipedia:
_It wasn 't until September, 2009 that Haiku reached its first milestone with
the release of Haiku R1/Alpha 1. Then in November, 2012 the R1/Alpha 4.1 was
released, while work continued on nightly builds.[8] On September 28, 2018,
the Haiku R1/Beta 1 was released.[9] On June 9, 2020, Haiku R1/Beta 2 was
released._
Almost 11 years and it's still not out of beta?!
~~~
waddlesplash
What can I say? We have extremely stringent quality standards ;)
The "beta" label signified that we had implemented all the features we thought
mandatory for R1. Of course there are new ones in this release (like HiDPI
support or the NVMe driver) because we still want to use Haiku on contemporary
hardware, so changes still get made. But largely we are more oriented towards
stabilization and "usability", i.e. fixing bugs or minor enhancements that get
in the way of actually using Haiku.
But it's also the case that we do not get a massive amount of work done every
month; probably around or less than a "man-month" between the dozen or two
developers.
~~~
Koshkin
ReactOS is still in alpha after 22 years. I guess their standards are even
higher.
~~~
bryan_w
To be fair windows does keep introducing new API. BeOS has been "stable" for
some time now
~~~
Koshkin
IIRC the goal was to be _driver-compatible_ (with Windows Server 2003).
------
return
The actual R1/Beta 2 release notes provide more details on what's in this
release [0]:
[0] [https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-
notes/](https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-notes/)
------
olah_1
Hidden gem of the Haiku project is the "Learning to Code in C++" tutorials.
[https://www.haiku-os.org/development/](https://www.haiku-os.org/development/)
------
trarman
I'm amazed! On a whim, I tried installing it to my old ASUS EEE 7" netbook.
Everything seems to work! Haiku just breathed new life into that old device.
~~~
UncleSlacky
I tried the last major beta release on my 701 4G, but couldn't get it to work,
I think due to the minimum screen resolution requirements. I'll try again with
this one - some people on the Haiku community forums reported success with
their 7" netbooks.
------
mullsork
Congrats to the Haiku team! I recently started testing it out, hoping to
contribute soon, and it's pretty neat. I last played with it 10 years ago, and
it feels a lot more solid today. Really looking forward to what's in store for
R2 when R1 is released!
------
MintelIE
I used BeOS for a couple years in the 1990s as my exclusive OS. It had all the
software I needed at the time. I especially liked the feature where you could
clone your whole working system to another drive or partition, live. That
actually saved me on a couple occasions, I would perform a weekly backup of my
whole live system to a secondary drive.
It's so nice to see this project making great progress.
------
yjftsjthsd-h
By complete coincidence, today was the day that I finally decided to try Haiku
on a spare laptop... and it just worked. Battery's recognized, display's
running at full resolution (no VESA or whatever), wifi worked without issue.
I'm typing this comment in WebPositive:) This is actually pretty great.
------
libx
Haiku lags and will lag main stream operating systems regarding drivers for
hardware. But if they could make it run in Raspberry Pis, with one set of
hardware it would be awesome. A light weight operating system on a light
weight computer.
RPi's could be the killer "app" for Haiku.
~~~
waddlesplash
Honestly the main way we lag right now is missing sleep support (nobody has
attempted it) and 3D acceleration.
Otherwise, Haiku runs on modern hardware just fine. I have a custom build from
this year under my desk with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8c16t), an NVMe drive, and
Haiku boots off the NVMe and runs great with all 16 threads. It even can
connect to the internet via the WiFi card on the motherboard.
~~~
hedora
I’m curious. I’ve long suspected hardware compatibility would get easier as
everything moves into the same package as the CPU.
Have things been playing out that way?
~~~
waddlesplash
Sort of. Things like USB, which past 1.0 has only one controller per
generation, released the current controller design in 2010 with the first
chipsets on the market in 2011. So that at least is less of a moving target
than it once was.
But, I mean, NVMe follows on SATA much like SATA followed on IDE, so on that
front things are not so different. And for WiFi, there is not a common device
interface for that, so each new generation of hardware from each manufacturer
requires a large chunk of new driver code. Haiku reuses FreeBSD's WiFi drivers
and 802.11 layer, but as you can see, they are having a hard time keeping up
(only recently was one developer hired part-time to work on it, I believe.)
So, it's kind of a wash, really -- on x86 commodity PC hardware, that is. Part
of the reason Haiku on ARM still has not taken off is how wildly diverse that
ecosystem is, especially how much of a moving target it is.
------
miki123211
How does Haiku's accessibility story look like? Any plans for a screen reader?
Blind user here, I would like to try this out and see what all this fuss is
about, but I think I can't. Can someone explain what's so great about Haiku's
UI?
~~~
waddlesplash
(Haiku developer here.) The way the UI is structured, creating a screen reader
would not be too difficult, and I think one of our developers attempted it at
one point, but it was certainly never finished and is not usable right now.
Sorry :(
Beyond the spirit of and compatibility with BeOS, Haiku's advantages are being
full-fledged desktop operating system developed by a single team as a single
unit (that is, unlike Linux or the BSDs where the kernel, window manager, GUI
toolkit, application suite, etc. are developed by separate teams and combined
by yet other groups); and also our occasionally unique approach to systems
design and implementation (for instance, the Haiku package manager is based
around a union mount of block-compressed filesystem images.)
The UI itself is reminiscent of 1990s UIs (gradients, bevels, more saturated
colors), with a modern feel (modern fonts, antialiasing, etc.) The window
borders are not rectangular, but are instead yellow "tabs" which are only as
wide as their text is, and so windows from separate applications can be
"stacked" and used as a unit, like tabs within applications.
------
jug
Interesting— two showstoppers for me fixed since Beta 1. USB 3 is now much
better supported including as boot devices, and NVMe drives are now also
supported. I might just be able to at least boot and see this! Judging by
this, the traction actually sounds decent. Wait - what? It’s 10+ years old.
Yes, but that was just two major improvements out of several, and during 20
months.
------
rwmj
Haiku has a really lovely smooth "90s-style" graphical interface. Always
responsive whether you run it locally or (as I more often do) run it in a VM.
------
memexy
The ideals of Haiku are great but is anyone using it consistently? If they are
what workflows benefit from Haiku's feature set?
I understand the theoretical benefits. I'm curious if anyone is actually using
Haiku features in some non-trivial way, e.g.
> Database-like file system (BFS) with support for indexed metadata
A filesystem with indexed metadata sounds great but who is actually using it
and how?
I tried to search for comments with the obvious phrases but all I found was
this comment from 10 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1335692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1335692).
~~~
jessermeyer
> A filesystem with indexed metadata sounds great but who is actually using it
> and how?
One of my first sour experiences with NTFS was the horror involved in learning
how to find which files have changed since some given time in a directory. I
expected a SQL-ish interface but...omg. omg.
The reason for tracking changes in files was for hot loading art assets into a
running program.
~~~
memexy
Yup, filesystems in general should have a database/SQL interface. I'm
currently using CouchDB and Apache Tika to index and search my files. It works
but there is no way people who are not programmers would enjoy using such a
system. It's extremely inelegant and requires constant context switching and
I'd much rather be using an operating system that had all this functionality
as part of the filesystem interface.
~~~
mycall
> Yup, filesystems in general should have a database/SQL interface
That's basically what FILESTREAM is in SQL Server if you squint.
------
qwerty456127
It has one of (together with QNX Photon) the most beautiful widget look-and-
feels I've ever seen. Can I have similar for Qt, Gtk and/or Windows?
------
moreorless
It has been a long long time since I gave Haiku a look. It is getting there.
Setup on KVM took less than a minute. Looking nice. Networking seems a little
slow when loading web pages, otherwise looks good. I miss WebPositive.
~~~
extro
WebPositive is included.
~~~
moreorless
Yes. I know. I am posting from it right now.
------
wodenokoto
Legends of BeOS’s fast multimedia handling still lives on and I wonder if
Haiku has some sort of edge today when it comes to playing multimedia or
recording music?
~~~
slantyyz
It was bonkers. I could barely play two videos simultaneously on my Pentium in
Windows 9x, but I could play four simultaneously on the same box booted into
BeOS. The OS was small and fast.
------
croo
I tried haiku back in 2011, it was a fun 2 hour then I forgot about it. Since
that short experience, every other year news find me that it reached a new
milestone.
It does sound like fun to write a new os... but this project is at least 10
years old. How and why did it survive and reached beta? Why does it still
exist?
What practical applications does this OS has (or will have) over the commonly
knowns?
~~~
azinman2
Why do people work on old cars? For the love of it.
~~~
vvpan
So you are saying Haiku is a hobby project with no goal of being um...
"production"? Are you sure that people building it feel the same way?
~~~
azinman2
Considering it's a small set of developers who all work part time re-
implementing an OS from the 90s that failed when it was a commercial entity
fully staffed, it's hard to imagine that they're super serious about it being
a "production" OS.
~~~
chipotle_coyote
A couple quick comments:
(1) While Be, Inc., failed, it's debatable whether it failed because the OS
wasn't good enough. It was certainly being used in commercial production in
certain places already -- not just by hobbyists. Steinberg was selling a BeOS
version of their (very high-grade and expensive!) audio production system,
Nuendo, and I actually _saw_ Level Control Systems' CueStation, an "audio
automation system" for Broadway-grade live performance systems, running on
BeOS in the wild -- it was running the control booth of Cirque de Soleil's
permanent installation at Disney World. BeOS was doing _shockingly_ well in
attracting commercial applications in 1997-1999 given its tiny user base --
what they were failing at was attracting hardware companies to ship pre-
installed systems. Be's management was dead set on the idea that "steady and
slow growth as a niche OS" just wouldn't do, and they needed to either be the
next Apple or die trying. And, when they punted on desktop BeOS in favor of a
custom version for what turned out to be the absolutely imaginary market for
internet appliances, they pretty much chose "die trying."
(2) I think it depends on what you mean by "production". I mean, it's probably
never going to be competing with Linux servers. But is it possible it could be
competitive with Linux as a desktop OS? Maybe. A few years ago I wouldn't have
been that optimistic, but they've done a tremendous job with ports.
~~~
city41
> what they were failing at was attracting hardware companies to ship pre-
> installed systems.
Microsoft told hardware manufacturers that if they ship machines with BeOS
they would charge them more for Windows licenses.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131109045719/http://www.intern...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131109045719/http://www.internetnews.com/ent-
news/print.php/3073811/)
------
noisy_boy
Window stacking is one of the best features of Haiku. Gnome should consider
useful features like this to improve the user experience.
~~~
yyx
If they implement it, then it would be a hamburger menu.
~~~
noisy_boy
Its all three vertical dots and/or gear icon now. Only place I can see the
hamburger menu is Firefox.
------
bjoli
I just saw that it has guile and Emacs. Together with Firefox that means 99%
of my computer usage is covered.
~~~
anthk
WebPositive and/or Qupzilla/Falkon.
------
lordleft
I remember folks who would wax nostalgic about BeOS, and claim it trounced
Unix & Windows when it came to performance. Could anyone speak to the
technical strengths / interesting aspects of this OS?
~~~
kitotik
I think most of the perceived performance was a result of pervasive multi
threading, which was novel at the time.
For example, I remember being able to simultaneously play 5-6 mp3 files, load
a web page, play an mpeg video, and browse the local file system while having
complete UI responsiveness and no audible/visual glitches. This was pretty
much unheard of at the time, especially on modest consumer hardware (pentium 2
~350mhz IIRC)
~~~
slantyyz
Yeah that pretty much sums it up. The OS ran circles around pretty much any
other OS you had running on the same hardware.
I remember the OS installing in a crazy short amount of time.
~~~
einr
It booted in ~10 seconds on my Pentium II 266 system, which was a VERY BIG
DEAL back then.
------
berry6
It reminds me (maybe just for me) old Amiga OS called "Workbench". I mean I
like this.
------
snicker7
I would love a faithful replication of the BeOS/Haiku desktop on Linux.
~~~
waddlesplash
People have tried it before, but all those projects are now defunct.
Ultimately it winds up being "just another Linux desktop environment", or even
a mere reskin of another DE. The kind of deep system integration that is
possible when the entire system is developed as one project is extremely
difficult, if not actually impossible, to do in the Linux ecosystem.
~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Crazy idea: Have you ever thought of porting your desktop environment to
Genode? ( [https://genode.org/](https://genode.org/) ) And fully integrating
their Sculpt into it? I mean, on Amd64 you are already binary incompatible, so
that wouldn't count as an argument against it.
~~~
waddlesplash
Someone suggested it (but then, the community is large enough that all far-
fetched-but-not-impossible ideas have probably been mentioned at one point or
another :)).
I don't really know what the differences between porting Haiku's userland to
that or to Linux would be. Everyone loves to make arguments about how
microkernels are so great and all, but there still isn't a major operating
system or distribution with a significant number of everyday users on one.
Plus, all of our same philosophical objections to using the Linux (or any
other kernel) as the basis for Haiku would still apply.
~~~
chelmuth
Also some one started it with HoG (Haiku on Genode) [https://discuss.haiku-
os.org/t/genode-and-haiku/8384](https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/genode-and-
haiku/8384)
~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Phew! Not so crazy I am...
------
agambrahma
I get (I think) how this is different from a Linux desktop, being developed in
entirety as a single project, instead of being split into a kernel, and user-
space distro, and fragmented apps on top of that, but ... is there a tl;dr on
how this compares to (say) FreeBSD, which is another "kernel + user-space in
one package" thing?
~~~
waddlesplash
FreeBSD still runs X11 and a bunch of other applications on top of it to get a
working desktop, and the result is ... even less pleasant than the Linux
desktop, according to some reviews:
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-
linux-d...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-distro-
review-freebsd-12-1-release/)
------
Koshkin
So..... Why would Jane the User pick Haiku OS over, say, Ubuntu?
~~~
jdboyd
Because she really wants something fringe and not really Unix. I'd be
surprised if there was any user or developer that didn't do Haiku as a hobby.
I've never heard of a single person making money from it.
~~~
waddlesplash
Well, you're about to:
[http://tunetrackersystems.com/](http://tunetrackersystems.com/)
~~~
OldHand2018
I think that's really impressive. An expensive piece of software shipping an
operating system to go along with it. And they have a video showing worldwide
installations, demonstrating that it is a successful product. Well done!
------
dmichulke
Took me a while to figure out what it is:
"While the first release(s) of Haiku will be very much like the _BeOS R5, the
operating system it is reimplementing_ ..."
~~~
wtallis
The domain name is _haiku-os.org_. Every page includes an "About" link at the
top, and the root page has a two-sentence description in a large font at the
top.
They really couldn't make it any easier to figure out what Haiku is.
~~~
dmichulke
The news release doesn't show a thing about what it is nor is there a link.
The URL with an OS in the name tells me what category it is in but not the USP
(I don't really get that from the two sentences either but at least it's
something)
So I went looking (not via Home or About because usually they are useless,
YMMV) but via Documents.
So here I am, saying that it took me a while to figure out what it was.
~~~
vhodges
There is no USP really... it's an OpenSource reimplementation of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS)
(before your time?). Haiku has been around in some guise or other since the
early 2000's.
BeOS was/is pervasively threaded and took full advantage of multiple cores (a
very novel thing when it came out - BeBox had two PPC processors).
Similar projects include: ReactOS (Windows 2000), AROS (AmigaOS), FreeDOS (MS-
DOS), FreeMiNT (Atari ST). I think there might even be one for OS/2
~~~
slantyyz
For all intents and purposes, if you had no exposure to BeOS, you won't really
get why this project exists.
It is so crazy to think that we could be living in a completely different
world today had Apple opted to acquire BeOS instead of NeXT.
~~~
toyg
I suspect Apple would have struggled to attract the amount of developers they
did, by moving to a non-unix systems; which in turn might have hampered their
efforts on mobile.
~~~
slantyyz
Well the bigger impact is that Steve Jobs may not have ever returned to Apple.
------
LargoLasskhyfv
Sigh. Probably will try it later. Did try the R1/beta1, and had to fiddle in
the BIOS to get usable output on secondary display (can't remember if i
managed dual-screen) on intel graphics. Liked the look and feel of it, mostly.
Because on the secondary display on 24"@1920X1200 the icons looked somehow
stretched wide, but just a little. Not so on the internal 13"@1280x800.
Question is: what to do with it? How stable is the FS? Where are the
videos/intros which _really_ show what i can do with it, which i can't with
other desktops? Haven't found a really compelling reason so far. (Hmmm, seems
like they updated their slideshows and list of videos...)
Would FreeCiv stop slowing down to a crawl on larger maps in late game? Could
i abuse AQEMU as performant dockerthingy for the applications i need?
~~~
stOneskull
> Question is: what to do with it?
perfect for an old 32 bit computer lying around. a computer for the
grandparents. or the kids. or dual-boot into it for a focus for writing, with
minimal distractions.
~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Dual-booting _is_ a distraction to me. Could also blow up some editor into
fullscreen while having no messengers/mails running and be done with it.
------
jqpabc123
Haiku looks like an interesting project. I like the concept and the consistent
design, but ... it is still missing one critical feature ... a viable business
model.
Linux is an example of what to expect without this critical piece. Decades of
manhours from some of the best and brightest, millions of lines of code ...
and a miniscule marketshare on the desktop.
~~~
agildehaus
It's not a business. Why does there have to be a business model?
~~~
jqpabc123
It doesn't need one --- as long as it only aspires to be another hobbyist OS
with a miniscule desktop user base.
~~~
agildehaus
It aspires to be something the developers enjoy hacking on and using, which is
the very reason it exists at all. Why you seem to think it needs to be more
than that is puzzling.
I'm sure the developers would love for it to be more than that, but there's a
limit to what can be done and it's ASTONISHING what they have done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pediff – tools for visually comparing web pages - duxet
https://github.com/Schibsted-Tech-Polska/stp.pediff
======
anomie
We've been using a similar tool ([https://github.com/BBC-
News/wraith](https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith)) for a little while now and
it's transformed our way of working - 50 page layouts x 5 responsive
breakpoints verified with a high degree of confidence in minutes on every
build.
Well worth the effort to take the time to set up such a tool, particularly if
you have a large UI test matrix - we couldn't possibly verify all the
different page layouts and sizes before we introduced wraith
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why are managed database services so expensive? - g_delgado14
I noticed that on virtually any platform that provides managed databases (Digital Ocean, GCP, AWS, etc etc) has non-linear price increases. I use a managed db service personally and it's easily 90% of my infrastructure bill. Why is that? What's going on under the hood? Is it really that costly for a service provider to provide a reliable and safe db?<p>----<p>Edit; I was referencing specifically postgresql, mongodb, and mysql
======
verdverm
You can often configure these a bit, things like number of open connections
allowed.
Is it expensive? Is managing it yourself actually cheaper? How do salaries
effect this calculation?
------
quintes
Think about configuring a multi az sync replication dB yourself. Then back it
up regularly. Then make it scaleable. Patch management. It pays for itself!
------
sharemywin
which database? is it a licensing thing?
~~~
g_delgado14
I've mostly noticed this with postgresql
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Company sent email to 400+ applicants without BCC. Hilarity and stupidity ensued - eru_melkor
http://i.imgur.com/mXJk5xN.jpg
======
nougatine
Either my sense of humour is different or this is not hilarious at all.
Embarrassing for the company, maybe, but hilarious?
------
pyrophane
Well, stupidity anyway. Do programming jobs really get 400+ applicants?
~~~
eru_melkor
Judging from this email, yes it does. It should be noted that it is a remote
position.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nobody Cares - timf
http://bhorowitz.com/2011/10/08/nobody-cares/
======
jessedhillon
At the risk of pounding the Jobs-is-dead meme too hard, this reminds me of a
good story I read recently about Steve Jobs:
_Jobs tells the VP that if the garbage in his office is not being emptied
regularly for some reason, he would ask the janitor what the problem is. The
janitor could reasonably respond by saying, "Well, the lock on the door was
changed, and I couldn't get a key."
An irritation for Jobs, for an understandable excuse for why the janitor
couldn't do his job. As a janitor, he's allowed to have excuses.
"When you're the janitor, reasons matter," Jobs tells newly minted VPs,
according to Lashinsky.
"Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering," says
Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is "crossed when you become a VP."_[1]
[1]
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-07/tech/30043798...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-05-07/tech/30043798_1_janitor-
steve-jobs-vp#ixzz1aDW7Q1Y0)
~~~
raganwald
We can go back further than that. Hal Geneen was the CEO famous for expanding
ITT into a multi-national conglomerate using rigorous metrics-driven
management. His favourite saying was,
“Managers must manage.” As in, your job as a manager is to overcome the
obstacles, not to use them for excuses. What do you manage if not the
impediments to success?
~~~
sausagefeet
So true. It reminds me of working on a project and there are so many times
when some piece of the stack that we didn't write is acting up. You want, so
bad, to say "well, we can't do this because X has a bug in it". But then you
remind yourself that your users don't care why your product doesn't work, just
that it does. And you spend some frustrating amount of time finding a work
around.
~~~
emp_
You just described my last few years working with SharePoint :)
------
kb101
This post reads more like the author trying to come to terms with his own
tortured, confrontational, win/lose outlook on running a company. It also
reads like a case of passive/aggressive venting on a portfolio company CEO who
is driving him nuts, or the aggregate of several such cases.
In any case, this is not useful advice. And patently untrue. When the chips
are down, people do care, and people help out, if you explain the challenges
you are facing and the odds you are up against. Not least of all, "your mama".
The article also strikes me as a misinterpretation of the quote and the
exchange between owner and coach. I would read it differently... the coach is
at his wits end, calls the owner for advice, and the owner doesn't merely say
"nobody cares"! He says "just coach your team". Meaning, don't worry about all
the things you thought you were going to do (with the team roster you thought
you had) and just hang in there, stick to your core strength (coaching) and do
your best to make it work.
No wonder the author has anguished posts on his blog like "What’s The Most
Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology" wherein we read such gems
of wisdom as "It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the
CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown."
Not really. The first rule is relax, don't take yourself so damn seriously.
Actually, there are no rules. Isn't that why you became CEO?
People infected with attitudes like this suck all the life and joy out of
doing business. It's not all about people standing around yelling "no excuses!
yo' mama don't care!" at each other. Carrying around excess psychological
freight like this only slows you down, makes you hate yourself and the
industry, etc. If there are problems, you deal with them. Often times, solving
problems means figuring out the parameters of the difficulty, putting all the
resources you can against the problem, and then going and finding the right
people who care to help you out with the rest.
~~~
Cushman
I like this. I think there's a common fallacy where people want to think that
other people are more selfish and uncaring than they are. Maybe it makes it
all seem more explicable?
But it's not true. Humans haven't managed to colonize the whole planet because
we're so mean to each other-- that doesn't even make sense. The physical
universe is impartial and uncaring; people have succeeded primarily because,
most of the time, we _aren't_.
We have access to such great information sources these days, we hear so much
about war, crime, and poverty, it's easy to forget that we actually live in
the most peaceful, prosperous times that mankind has ever seen. It's so easy
to get ahead for a little while by screwing the other guy, we forget that the
only reason any of us exist is because a relatively short time ago, and ever
since, some apes realized that if they just put aside their differences and
worked together for a little while, they could conquer the world. _And they
were right._
A little bit of trust, humility, and respect for humanity goes a long way.
Have a problem? Tell your mother. She probably can't do much to help, but
she'll _care_ , and that is way more important than people think.
------
fredwilson
I think this is great advice for a CEO's emotional well being. But it isn't
true. I know I care a ton about the challenges our portfolio companies face
and I know many other stakeholders who do too. Capitalism isnt uncaring
~~~
dmor
Sounds like some good tough love for CEOs (and everyone else really) who care
too much. That's probably most of them, and a whole lot of employees,
investors, and even customers too.
IMO the why matters, but only for a moment, and then the "what are you going
to do next?" has to become the focus. That way caring so deeply doesn't become
unproductive -- you grieve the pain of mistakes and unfortunate outcomes for
no more than a minute or two ("and this too will pass") and then keep moving.
Startups are like sharks, if we stop moving we die.
------
sajid
This is great advice that applies to life as much as to work.
Just changing the last three words of the last paragraph gives:
"All the mental energy that you use to elaborate your misery would be far
better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your
current mess. It’s best to spend zero time on what you could have done and all
of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares, just LIVE
YOUR LIFE."
------
dredmorbius
No. You should care.
If it's your own team/project/company, odds are very good that it's not the
things you're doing right that are in the way, it's the things that you're
doing wrong, or that are going wrong. A systematic analysis of failure modes
("5 whys" in Scrum) is going to help.
Education is learning from other people's mistakes. If the it's another
organization's problems or failures, then learning from them is a great way to
avoid making the same mistake yourself. When forwarding the recent AmEx
information disclosure story to my team, I added the question "do we have a
'?debug=true' feature?"
comp.risks has been one of my go-to reading sources for a few decades. There's
a reason for that.
To point on the story: identifying causes (and corrections) for injuries has
been a big part of professional sports in the past decade. Moneyball is a
story of doing highly systematic analysis of what it takes to win (and
avoiding the mistakes leading to losses), in a manner any scrappy startup can
appreciate: not enough money.
And much of the story of early industrial organization (and risk management)
was taking a statistical approach to production (and loss) and realizing that
though both were based on stochastic principles, this did _not_ mean that the
conditions or outcomes were unmanageable.
~~~
sausagefeet
He's not saying _you_ shouldn't care, he's saying nobody else cares what the
reason is. Nobody is going to give him a win just because his best players are
out.
~~~
vacri
Sure they care. Sports fans are easier on a coach if they know he's got an
injured team; customers are easier on businesses if they know the reason their
product isn't working is due to an independant third party.
------
mathattack
This is a great lesson in capitalism. When you're the boss, nobody gives your
partial credit for good attempts. Either the team succeeds and everyone is
happy, or they don't, and the boss takes the fall.
Taking this a step beyond the intended message (of football and business),
this shows an interesting dichotomy in education in jobs. In many countries
(example: Japan, France) school is results based, with admissions based soley
on rigorous exams. The real world is softer based more on credentials and
connections than results. Compare that to the US... Being a good football
player (or trombone player) can help you get into school, but the real world
is much less forgiving.
Our economy has tough times, but the unforgiving cruel world helps us stay
strong.
~~~
Klinky
_"This is a great lesson in capitalism. When you're the boss, nobody gives
your partial credit for good attempts. Either the team succeeds and everyone
is happy, or they don't, and the boss takes the fall."_
Perhaps in pure capitalism & small business, but what with the era of large
salaries & golden parachutes often those who mislead aren't really "punished".
There is also plenty of CYA & scapegoating in the professional world along
with a lot of people who eat it up.
------
dmk23
This should not stop at the CEO level, it needs to apply to every job within
the company, at every level.
Nobody cares about your excuses, whoever you are. Everyone's job involves
goals, milestones and deadline. If you are performing you deserve commensurate
rewards, if you are failing nobody should care to hear your excuses - only
what could you fix and perhaps why you believe you deserve another chance.
The performance of the CEO and overall company performance depends on everyone
pulling their weight. If the CEO does not enforce accountability throughout
the entire organization, he/she is heading for failure and nobody would care
about their sorry fate!
~~~
coffeemug
Most employees have a very different mindset. It seems that a company composed
only of people who understand and follow the 'nobody cares' principle would be
a perfectly operating entity where everyone always smoothly goes in the right
direction, but I'm not actually convinced that's possible. 'Nobody cares'
personal philosophy is very much correlated with alpha personalities, and you
can't have a team where everyone is an alpha - they'll rip each other apart
with conflicts. It's very tricky to balance this well - I'd like to see how
different leaders do it in organizations of different sizes.
~~~
nostrademons
The incentives at a typical corporation are also not setup to encourage
"nobody cares" attitudes. Employees are paid whatever the results are, unless
they do something egregiously bad. They have every incentive to care about
their effort and motivations - that's what they get fired for - and no
incentive to care about results. That's diametrically opposed from an equity-
owning cofounder (who basically can't be fired, unless the board forces them
out) but doesn't get paid anything unless the company succeeds.
You could argue that this is the _reason_ why anyone would accept a salaried
employment position. In a well-run knowledge organization, employees have just
as much freedom as startup founders do. The difference is risk assignment:
under an employment agreement, the employer assumes the risk (and reward) that
the product may fail despite the employee's best efforts, while in a startup,
the founder assumes the risk that the company may fail for reasons outside his
control. (The incentives issue actually falls out of this as a form of moral
hazard.)
Note that the alternative of paying everyone by results doesn't always work
either. Many financial firms use this approach. The problem is that
realistically, in a decent-sized organization, people _don't_ have a
measurable effect on outcomes, and results will be dominated by randomness
anyway. If you pay for results but results are not under the worker's control,
you end up incentivizing risky behavior, because the worker's upside is
potentially unlimited but their downside is generally capped at "everything
they own". This was the problem at Enron, LTCM, and many hedge funds in the
financial crisis.
------
DannoHung
Is this meant to be taken as advice or something? Because it's useless advice.
He could have at least said something like, "Be prepared for the day when all
your assumptions about how to proceed are upended and you are left with
nothing. Be mentally prepared to be broadsided by fate. Be operationally
prepared to rebuild from scratch. Be prepared to get a carton of Tums and make
the tough decision that gives you a bloody ulcer."
~~~
daeken
I think you completely missed the point. The point is this: nobody cares why
you failed, just that you failed, so put your energy towards finding a way to
turn it into a win rather than coming up with an excuse for why it all fell
apart.
------
Alex3917
There's no asterisks in startups.
~~~
staunch
Not even Twilio? :-)
------
whyme
When Parcell asked: "What should I do?” .... is he not, in fact, spending his
time on "what you might do" ?
Kinda makes the story pointless, if you ask me.
------
bennesvig
This reminds me of one of my favorite drawings from Hugh MacLeod
(www.gapingvoid.com)
Nobody Cares: Population 6 Billion
[http://alecsharp.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/nobody-
cares.jp...](http://alecsharp.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/nobody-cares.jpg)
------
mechnik
The NYT obit for Al Davis
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sports/football/al-
davis-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sports/football/al-davis-owner-
of-raiders-dies-at-82.html)
------
jwingy
RIP Al. I'm no Raider fan, but I definitely respect your passion for your team
and football!
------
Hitchhiker
or.. put more succinctly
" Success has many fathers, failure none. "
The above has an interesting spin to it. Failure is often caused by not having
enough people to care.
" Care " itself is strongly associated with being a father.
------
daniel-cussen
Typo: "As I was feely sorry for myself..."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla and Tucker – Similarities Between Automakers - jonbaer
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a21094/what-tesla-needs-to-learn-from-tucker/
======
Animats
The law here is the FTC's "Mail Order Rule".[1] Properly, Tesla allows
consumers to cancel your order at any time and receive a full refund. The
other requirement is that if Tesla misses their ship date, they have to send
the consumer a letter with a new ship date and an option to cancel. That part
is "opt-out". If, 30 days after the original ship date, the product hasn't
shipped, a refund has to be sent unless the customer explicitly requests
otherwise. That part is "opt-in". The seller can't just keep the money at that
point.
This is why, if you're selling online, you have to make sure not to take
orders you can't fill in time. In the early days of the Internet, this was a
big problem, because many sites had online ordering systems that had no
connection to inventory control. By now, everybody with a clue knows to check
inventory in the shopping cart program.
[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/bus...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/business-guide-ftcs-mail-internet-or-telephone-order)
~~~
rasz_pl
I seem to remember hearing in one of Computer History Museum interviews that
in the early days of home computers it was actually illegal to sell Computer
by mail :o !?
------
vvanders
Given Musk's legal jujutsu w/ SpaceX and ULA I think Tesla is much less
susceptible to similar issues.
It's just anecdotal evidence but it seems like Telsa has plenty of momentum
and real tangible products.
~~~
adventured
GM and Ford are drastically less powerful today than they were in Tucker's
time. By 1945-1950, GM was already the global leader in auto sales, and of
course Ford had been a juggernaut for some time as well.
That's the biggest difference.
Toyota, Honda, BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan, Mazda - the
combination of those companies effectively neutered the old GM / Ford
political monster. It sucked the money out of the old Detroit political
machine, making it far less fearsome and influential in DC.
The GM / Ford that Musk is facing off against, is a joke compared to what it
used to be able to bring to the table in terms of abusing the system to stop
competition.
~~~
Shivetya
However as GM has proved that they can pivot quickly and bring a product to
market faster than Tesla. They have the supplier relationships needed as well
as the manufacturing and testing expertise to do so. They key is having
management that wants to do it.
I suspect Ford could as well but their leadership isn't as willing to change
direction as GMs does.
~~~
Grishnakh
Perhaps, but GM also has a worse reputation than Ford among buyers. Ford's
reputation among the American brands is the best, while GM's is not that
great, though Chrysler's is even worse.
If I want to buy a reliable, high-quality car that I know is going to last 10
years and not have the interior plastics all looking nasty and faded and
falling apart after a mere half-decade, GM is one of the last brands I'd think
of. No one thinks that Cadillacs are serious competition to real luxury cars
like Mercedes.
I think Tesla would do much better partnering with a Japanese automaker. They
know how to build high-quality cars in high volume, and they have great
reputations too, which is important if you're trying to sell $100k cars.
~~~
Grishnakh
I'll also add that if they have to partner with an American automaker, Ford is
surely the best choice as long as they don't stick that ugly blue oval logo on
their cars. Ford has a lot of experience partnering with other brands in
mutually-beneficial relationships: they did it before with both Volvo and
Mazda. In both cases, it seems like all 3 companies benefited from the
arrangement.
------
S_A_P
The article is ok I guess. Although I think this is more a book plug than true
analysis. I've often thought of the tesla/tucker parallel and how hard it is
to get a foothold in a capital intensive business as a start up. However I
don't think the parallels stick. Tesla has built and delivered a sizable
number of cars. I think the political influence of the big 3 is much lower now
as well. For tesla, I think that it's survival hinges upon delivering the
model 3 on time and at high quality. Along with a lot of other things going
right as well. I probably make about 50k too little to comfortably afford a
model x but I would love to own one some day. Quirks and all.
~~~
gutnor
> I think that it's survival hinges upon delivering the model 3 on time and at
> high quality
... and in sufficient quantities. They have proven the technology, the
approach and the readiness of the market. The last thing they need to prove is
their capacity to scale.
If they achieve their target (i.e. Model 3 generally available in 2018), they
will have built a serious lead over the competition - meaning several years
(at least 2) on that sweet sweet market unchallenged.
Of course, Tesla has failed to deliver in time, at expected price or in
expected quantities before. Time will tell.
~~~
S_A_P
Agree. This is the biggest risk. Right now I think they have enough cache that
I would jump to electric for them where I may be too skeptical to buy an
electric ford. Delivering high quantity with high quality on time will almost
guarantee success.
------
vatotemking
Public perception is big factor too. In Tucker's time info is disseminated via
radio. If the radio host is bias and hostile towards your business, then good
luck. Now we have internet.
------
pmarreck
"Tucker: A Man And His Dream" was a good movie. I too thought of the Musk
parallel many times.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Algorithm That Unscrambles Fractured Images - sgy
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/534146/the-algorithm-that-unscrambles-fractured-images/
======
evanb
This reminds me of dual photography:
[http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dual_photography/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dual_photography/)
in the sense that I imagine unscrambling the glittered image will be
significantly easier if you can plug in known sources to the transfer matrix.
Edit: the video there didn't work for me any more, here's the youtube link
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_tpq5ejFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_tpq5ejFQ)
------
dsfsdfd
It has occurred to me a number of times that it might be possible to reverse
this process and create a light field display.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unsupervised sentiment neuron - gdb
https://blog.openai.com/unsupervised-sentiment-neuron/
======
ericjang
Why are people being so critical about this work? Sure, the blog post provides
a simplified picture about what the system is actually capable of, but it's
still helpful for a non-ML audience to get a better understanding of the high-
level motivation behind the work. The OpenAI folks are trying to educate the
broader public as well, not just ML/AI researchers.
Imagine if this discovery were made by some undergraduate student who had
little experience in the traditions of how ML benchmark experiments are done,
or was just starting out her ML career. Would we be just as critical?
As a researcher, I like seeing shorter communications like these, as it
illuminates the thinking process of the researcher. Read ML papers for the
ideas, not the results :)
I personally don't mind blog posts that have a bit of hyped-up publicity. It's
thanks to groups like DeepMind and OpenAI that have captured public
imagination on the subject and accelerated such interest in prospective
students in studying ML + AI + robotics. If the hype is indeed unjustified,
then it'll become irrelevant in the long-term. One caveat is that researchers
should be very careful to not mislead reporters who are looking for the next
"killer robots" story. But that doesn't really apply here.
~~~
eanzenberg
Is it wrong to be critical of research? Back in my previous life of doing
basic research I scrutinized papers left and right.
[http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-
effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)
towards the end has similar methodology and is 1.5 years old.
Hype is an interesting thing especially when it comes from laymen.
~~~
laingc
As someone familiar with the field, you likely know this already, but the
similarities between the Karpathy post from 2015 and this work from OpenAI is
likely because Karpathy is a founder and lead researcher at OpenAI.
~~~
eanzenberg
Ya but he's surprisingly absent from being a paper author.
------
1024core
I don't know, but this seems a bit hyped in places.
They start with:
> Our L1-regularized model matches multichannel CNN performance with only 11
> labeled examples, and state-of-the-art CT-LSTM Ensembles with 232 examples.
Hmm, that sounds pretty impressive. But then later you read:
> We first trained a multiplicative LSTM with 4,096 units on a corpus of 82
> million Amazon reviews to predict the next character in a chunk of text.
> Training took one month across four NVIDIA Pascal GPUs
Wait, what? How did "232 examples" transform into "82 million"??
OK, I get it: they pretrained the network on the 82M reviews, and then trained
the last layer to do the sentiment analysis. But you can't honestly claim that
you did great with just 232 examples!
~~~
derefr
This actually demonstrates something very interesting, I think: you can take
an ML model trained with the "low-level prerequisite knowledge" of a subject,
and then _very quickly and easily_ teach it a high-level concept that relies
on that knowledge.
Which, now that I think about it, makes the human brain and its amazing
adaptive general-game-playing abilities a bit less mysterious. Since _we
humans_ all have these huge corpuses of sense-data we've been receiving
reinforcement signals about since birth, we've likely built up all sorts of
low-level models which we just use to predict the world for reflex responses a
little bit better and faster (speech models so we can respond to what people
are saying even as they're still saying it, visual models so we can throw
spears where lions are _going_ to be instead of where they are, etc.) But
those low-level predictive models make it nearly effortless to build higher-
level models.
I wonder if we'd take a giant leap forward in AI if we just managed to
scan+emulate a regular animal brain (say, of a rat), and then built the AI as
a neocortex-equivalent for that brain. It would have instant access to
thousands or millions of pre-trained low-level predictive models, which it
could easily discover as having outputs correlated to success and thus "attach
to" during its own training.
~~~
emcq
What you describe is exactly what practitioners in the field have been doing
for years. I think that's why the parent is a bit puzzled at the publication,
as it's difficult to understand what's novel.
~~~
Cybiote
Yes, I agree with you but with a caveat. Semi-supervised learning is well
known but has, I'll argue, recently fallen out of fashion in favor of throwing
gallons more of labeled data at a really big neural net, crossing your fingers
and hoping for the best. Usually, the neural net is either a really big conv-
net with a novel architecture or a biLSTM with some elaboration on attention
(which is actually closer to memory/state).
Most of the time, in neural net land, what people are doing with the fine
tuning part is taking a model trained on looaads of supervised data, chopping
off the head and using those features to train on smaller data. This OpenAI
method is different in that it used patterns it learned on its own, instead of
the recently more common technique of features extracted from a heavily label
trained model to reduce the supervised learning burden in a nearby domain.
Arguably yes, this is an ancient technique but it has mostly been forgotten
when it became clear that many problems are surmountable with a large enough
helping of GPUs and a small moon's worth of data. OpenAI's is a good idea
because it makes you say 'yeah that's obvious, pretrain a simple char rnn on
loads of free text and oh wait, why has no one tried this before!?'
What is interesting here is that such a straight forward method compares so
well to glittering methods that laboriously advanced the state of the art.
What I also found surprising was that there was a 'neuron' that was tracking
something very close to sentiment. Why?
A bit of thinking and I came to a simple idea. One way of looking at the LSTM
in the practical setting (as opposed to a theoretically Turing Equivalent
thing) is as a really big finite state rube goldberg machine. In learning to
predict the next character, it makes sense that one set or part of a set of
states it can enter/track is extremely correlated with what we humans call
sentiment in review text.
In summary, the trained model can be thought of as a computable theory of
amazon reviews that also works really well on IMDB reviews (and probably short
but probably not sarcastic text reviews in general).
~~~
dnautics
thanks for clarifying this- it isn't _transfer learning_ at all, more like the
techniques like, digging through LSTMs _post hoc_ to find the neuron
responsible for opening and closing quotation marks (insert karpathy youtube
vid here), except for a more "high level" feature - in this case, sentiment.
------
srush
If you are interested in looking at the model in more detail, we (@harvardnlp)
have uploaded the model features to LSTMVis [1]. We ran their code on amazon
reviews and are showing a subset of the learned features. Haven't had a chance
to look further yet, but it is interesting to play with.
[1]
[http://lstm.seas.harvard.edu/client/pattern_finder.html?data...](http://lstm.seas.harvard.edu/client/pattern_finder.html?data_set=32sentiment&source=states::states&pos=110&brush=28,31&queried=true&ex_cells=)
------
YCode
The synthetic text they generated was surprisingly realistic, despite being
generic.
If I were perusing a dozen reviews I probably wouldn't have spotted the AI-
generated ones in the crowd.
~~~
haddr
We are getting better and better with automatic text generation. I wonder who
will be the copyright owner of an AI-generated text, comments, songs, etc.?
~~~
gallerdude
A weird thought: at some point AI short stories may be far more profound than
our own.
~~~
beaconstudios
at the moment, AI short stories are derivative, so it's unlikely. They may
well be better than the average, if trained on highly regarded works, but
they're not completely novel.
~~~
happycube
At the moment RNN's can't remember context, so they can make stuff that
_looks_ correct, but only on the surface.
I think that'll change, eventually...
~~~
visarga
We need some kind of hierarchical approach, and/or memory.
------
nl
So char-by-char models is the next Word2Vec then. Pretty impressive results.
It would be interesting to see how it performed for other NLP tasks. I'd be
pretty interested to see how many neurons it uses to attempt something like
stance detection.
_Data-parallelism was used across 4 Pascal Titan X gpus to speed up training
and increase effective memory size. Training took approximately one month._
Everytime I look at something like this I find a line like that and go: "ok
that's ncie.. I'll wait for the trained model".
~~~
rspeer
Yeah, part of what let word2vec make such a splash that it became the one word
embedding model everyone has heard of, is that the word2vec team released
their model.
This is a really cool example OpenAI has, but I don't know why I should
ultimately care about their character model more than anyone else's if all
we've got is their description of how cool it is.
I hope OpenAI defies their reputation for closedness and releases the model.
~~~
gdb
Yep weights will be up soon!
EDIT: in fact, weights were up at launch:
[https://github.com/openai/generating-reviews-discovering-
sen...](https://github.com/openai/generating-reviews-discovering-
sentiment/commit/15bfb78e4d5e92d5b5129a8b6ad86b100349eb5e)
~~~
rspeer
Sorry for my pessimistic outlook, then! Thanks.
------
emcq
It's very difficult to understand what the contributions are here. From what
I've read so far this feels more of a proposal for future research or a press
release than advancing the state of the art.
* Using large models trained on lots of data to provide the foundation for sample efficient smaller models is common.
* Transfer learning, fine tuning, character RNNs is common.
Were there any insights learned that give a deeper understanding of these
phenomena?
Not knowing too much about the sentiment space, it's hard to tell how
significant the resulting model is.
~~~
kleiba
* _advancing the state of the art_
It says right at the top: "we get 91.8% accuracy versus the previous best of
90.2%" on a standard sentiment corpus. In addition, their method needs less
training data than previous approaches.
* _Were there any insights learned that give a deeper understanding of these phenomena?_
The main appeal lies in the fact that a model trained on a (1) different and
(2) very general task basically "in passing" also learned to predict sentiment
(i.e., a specialized task that more or less arose from the domain the general
model was trained on), and pretty much through a single neuron (out of the
4096 used). The authors speculate that this might be a general effect that
could also be transferred to other prediction tasks.
~~~
emcq
If the main contribution here is the quality of the model and its interesting
and powerful representation of text, I hope OpenAI does something
distruptively different and releases the weights and trained model.
The accidental sentiment neuron is a function of the model, distribution of
the input dataset, and the optimizer finding nice saddle points. Insight into
these foundational components would make these results amazing. It sounded
like training on other datasets doesn't have the same sentiment properties,
which provides a lever to explore these concepts more.
At the moment it feels like the Google cat neuron. It attracted a lot of
intrigue but the individual contribution from that in terms of research was
more on the infrastructure side, and few people seem to refer back to that
publication at this point.
That said OpenAIs mission in itself doesn't necessarily require novel
research. For example, the gym is fostering a competitive atmosphere for the
community to work on RL which hopefully leads to more progress in the field.
Training a model for a month is difficult and if it has captured interesting
phenomena it seems in the interest of the community to release the weights and
model. It would be hard for the community to reproduce this without a month of
compute and 83M Amazon reviews.
~~~
mappingbabeljc
Hi there, the weights and model are here:
[https://github.com/openai/generating-reviews-discovering-
sen...](https://github.com/openai/generating-reviews-discovering-sentiment)
~~~
emcq
This is awesome, thanks! My apologies I must have missed it somewhere.
------
wackspurt
(Apologies for the slightly incoherent post below)
I've been noticing a lot of work that digs into ML model internals (as they've
done here to find the sentiment neuron) to understand why they work or use
them to do something. Let me recall interesting instances of this:
1\. Sander Dieleman's blog post about using CNNs at Spotify to do content-
based recommendations for music. He didn't write about the system performance
but collected playlists that maximally activated each of the CNN filters
(early layer filters picked up on primitive audio features, later ones picked
up on more abstract features). The filters were essentially learning the
musical elements specific to various subgenres.
2\. The ELI5 - Explain Like I'm Five - Python Library. It explains the outputs
of many linear classifiers. I've used it to explain why a text classifier was
given a certain prediction: it highlights features to show how much or little
they contribute to the prediction (dark red for negative contribution, dark
green for positive contribution).
3\. FairML: Auditing black-box models. Inspecting the model to find which
features are important. With privacy and security concerns too!
Since deep learning/machine learning is very empirical at this stage, I think
improvements in instrumentation can lead to ML/DL being adopted for more kinds
of problems. For example: chemical/biological data. I'd be highly curious to
what new ways of inspecting such kinds of data would be insightful (we can
play audio input that maximally active filters for a music-related network, we
can visualize what filters are learning in an object detection network, etc.)
------
tshadley
"The selected model reaches 1.12 bits per byte."
([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01444.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.01444.pdf))
For context, Claude Shannon found that humans could model English text with an
entropy of 0.6 to 1.3 bits per character
([http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shannon1950.pdf](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/Shannon1950.pdf))
------
itchyjunk
I would imagine stuff like sarcasm is still out of reach though. It seems hard
for humans to understand it in text based communication. Also using anything
out of the standard sentimental model might throw it off. "This product is as
good as <product x> (where product x has been known to perform bad." I am just
trying to think of scenarios where a sentimental model would fail.
Sentimental neuron sounds fascinating too. I didn't realize individual neurons
could be talked about or understood outside of the concept of the NN. I am
thinking in terms of "black box" its often referenced to in some articles.
Since one of the research goal for openai is to train language model on
jokes[0], I wonder how this neuron would perform with a joke corpus.
\----------------------------
[0] [https://openai.com/requests-for-
research/#funnybot](https://openai.com/requests-for-research/#funnybot)
~~~
wackspurt
>>>Sentimental neuron sounds fascinating too. I didn't realize individual
neurons could be talked about or understood outside of the concept of the NN.
I am thinking in terms of "black box" its often referenced to in some
articles.
Yes, I agree. I recall seeing such individual neuron analysis before in
Karpathy's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks". He
takes a char-rnn that was training to predict the next character for source
code and finds neurons that have learned to do paranthesis/bracket
opening/closing.
------
aabajian
I'm trying to understand this statement:
"The sentiment neuron within our model can classify reviews as negative or
positive, even though the model is trained only to predict the next character
in the text."
If you look closely at the colorized paragraph in their paper/website, you can
see that the major sentiment jumps (e.g. from green to light-green and from
light-orangish to red) occur with period characters. Perhaps the insight is
that periods delineate the boundary of sentiment. For example:
I like this movie. I liked this movie, but not that much. I initially hated
the movie, but ended up loving it.
The period tells the model that the thought has ended.
My question for the team: How well does the model perform if you remove
periods?
~~~
jcoffland
Why would that matter? Human understanding of sentiment would also go down if
you removed vital information such as punctuation.
~~~
aabajian
My point would be to see how much the model is relying on punctuation. It
could provide insight as to why character-based models outperform word-based
models for sentiment analysis.
------
d--b
Can someone explain what is "unsupervised" about this? I'm guessing this is
what confuses me most.
I think this work is interesting, although when you think about it, it's kind
of normal that the model converges to a point where there is a neuron that
indicates whether the review is positive or negative. There are probably a lot
of other traits that can be found in the "features" layer as well.
There are probably neurons that can predict the geographical location of the
author, based on the words they use.
There are probably neurons that can predict that the author favors short
sentences over long explanations.
But what makes this "unsupervised"?
~~~
fiter
I wouldn't expect that the neurons are orthogonal on a set of features which
we find interesting (sentiment, geographical location). They could be bound up
in some other basis of features that we do not find interesting. Other people
do not expect this because there are papers about how to incentivize neurons
to correspond to interesting features.
~~~
wackspurt
>> Other people do not expect this because there are papers about how to
incentivize neurons to correspond to interesting features.
Could you clarify that statement? Are you saying that it was unusual for this
group to find such a neuron? Also, I did not know that there are papers on how
to incentivize neurons to correspond to interesting features. Could you please
give me some references on those?
~~~
fiter
The paper I was thinking of is called: "InfoGAN: Interpretable Representation
Learning by Information Maximizing Generative Adversarial Nets"[0]. I do not
have experience training and investigating neural nets, but from what I read
in that paper, there's no reason to presume you'll find neurons that represent
a feature you're interested in. In the paper they alter the reward function to
get neurons that correspond to the features they are interested in.
[0]
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03657v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03657v1.pdf)
------
huula
Machine Learning has become more and more like archaeology after people start
saying "empirically" more and only provide a single or limited datasets.
------
andreyk
I think it's fair to criticize this blog post for being unclear on what
exactly is novel here; pre-training is a straighforward and old idea, but the
blog post does not even mention this. Having accessible write ups for AI work
is great, but surely it should not be confusing to domain experts or be
written in such a way as to exacerbate the rampant oversimplification or
misreporting in popular press about AI. Still, it is a cool mostly-
experimental/empirical result, and it's good that these blog posts exist these
days.
For what it's worth, the paper predictably does a better job of covering the
previous work and stating what their motivation was: "The experimental and
evaluation protocols may be underestimating the quality of unsupervised
representation learning for sentences and documents due to certain seemingly
insignificant design decisions. Hill et al. (2016) also raises concern about
current evaluation tasks in their recent work which provides a thorough survey
of architectures and objectives for learning unsupervised sentence
representations - including the above mentioned skip-thoughts. In this work,
we test whether this is the case. We focus in on the task of sentiment
analysis and attempt to learn an unsupervised representation that accurately
contains this concept. Mikolov et al. (2013) showed that word-level recurrent
language modelling supports the learning of useful word vectors and we are
interested in pushing this line of work. As an approach, we consider the
popular research benchmark of byte (character) level language modelling due to
its further simplicity and generality. We are also interested in evaluating
this approach as it is not immediately clear whether such a low-level training
objective supports the learning of high-level representations." So, they
question some built in assumptions from the past by training on lower-level
data (characters), with a bigger dataset and more varied evaluation.
The interesting result they highlight is that a single model unit is able to
perform so well with their representation: "It is an open question why our
model recovers the concept of sentiment in such a precise, disentangled,
interpretable, and manipulable way. It is possible that sentiment as a
conditioning feature has strong predictive capability for language modelling.
This is likely since sentiment is such an important component of a review" ,
which I tend to agree with... train a on a whole lot of reviews, it's only
natural to train a regressor for review sentiment.
------
eanzenberg
I think one of the most amazing parts of this is how accessible the hardware
is right now. You can get world-class AI results with the cost of less than
most used cars. In addition, with so many resources freely available through
open-source, the ability to get started is very accessible.
------
stillsut
> The model struggles the more the input text diverges from review data
This is where I fear the results will fail to scale. The ability to represent
'sentiment' as one neuron, and its ground truth as uni-dimensional seems most
true to corpuses of online reviews where the entire point is to communicate
whether you're happy with the thing that came out of the box. Most other forms
of writing communicate sentiment in a more multi-dimensional way, and the
subject of sentiment is more varied than a single item shipped in a box.
In otherwords, the unreasonable simplicity of modelling a complex feature like
sentiment with this method, is something of an artifact of this dataset.
------
gallerdude
The neural network is savage enough to learn "I would have given it zero
stars, but that was not an option." Are we humans that predictable?
~~~
teraflop
The training data consisted of 82 million reviews, so I'm sure that phrase (or
slight variants) occurred hundreds of thousands of times.
~~~
visarga
Could be checked by counting n-grams to see just how much it differs from
other reviews.
------
anonymfus
This article is not accessible. It puts all textual examples into images and
ever has some absolutely unnecessary animation. Please fix it.
~~~
ebildsten
Thanks for pointing this out! We've moved the textual examples into html,
added alt text for images, and will be reviewing feature posts for
accessibility
------
ChuckMcM
This is a great name for a band :-). That said, I found the paper really
interesting. I tend to think about LSTM systems as series expansions and using
that as an analogy don't find it unusual that you can figure out the dominant
(or first) coefficient of the expansion and that it has a really strong impact
on the output.
------
kamalbanga
What they have done is semi-supervised learning (Char-RNN) + supervised
training of sentiment. Another way to do is semi-supervised learning
(Word2Vec) + supervised training of sentiment. If first approach works better,
does it imply that character level learning is more performant than word level
learning?
------
mdibaiee
As far as I understand, it means that there must be a relation between a
character's sentiment and what the next character can (/should) be for neural
network to use this as a feature, am I right?
Does this mean we have unconsciously developed a language that exposes such
relations?
~~~
vhold
They muse about the reason behind the sentiment neuron in the paper.
"It is an open question why our model recovers the concept of sentiment in
such a precise, disentangled, interpretable, and manipulable way. It is
possible that sentiment as a conditioning feature has strong predictive
capability for language modelling. This is likely since sentiment is such an
important component of a review."
They go on to frame that as an important consideration for further work like
this:
"Our work highlights the sensitivity of learned representations to the data
distribution they are trained on. The results make clear that it is
unrealistic to expect a model trained on a corpus of books, where the two most
common genres are Romance and Fantasy, to learn an encoding which preserves
the exact sentiment of a review."
I'm wondering if a "funniness" neuron could be discovered in a model trained
on millions of jokes of various funniness, or what sorts of undiscovered
meaning there is in other neurons in this model.
------
kvh
Impressive the abstraction NNs can achieve from just character prediction. Do
the other systems they compare to also use 81M Amazon reviews for training?
Seems disingenuous to claim "state-of-the-art" and "less data" if they
haven't.
------
auvi
just wondering, how many AI programs (models with complete source code) OpenAI
has released?
~~~
tshadley
Lot of stuff here: [https://github.com/openai](https://github.com/openai)
------
du_bing
Train on character-by-character basis, this is really incredible, quite
opposite to human's intuition about language, but it seems a brilliant idea,
and OpenAI tried it out, great!
------
mrfusion
why did they do this character by character? Would word by word make sense?
Other than punctuation I'm not seeing why specific characters are meaningful
units.
~~~
tshadley
Word by word would require adding prior knowledge of words into the system,
and they're trying to "start from scratch" as much as possible.
------
djangowithme
Why is the linear combination used to train the sentiment classifier? Why does
its result get taken into account?
Is this linear combination between 2 different strings?
------
changoplatanero
What's the easiest way to make a text heatmap like the ones in their blog?
------
sushirain
Very interesting. I wonder if they tried to predict part-of-speech tags.
~~~
visarga
That would probably work. Karpathy's character based RNN could detect semantic
meaning in text and code. [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-
effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)
------
grandalf
This has amazing potential for use in sock puppet accounts.
------
curuinor
moved that needle I guess
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ballmer says Microsoft intends to become industry leader in cloud computing - eplanit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/12/AR2010071205166.html?wprss=rss_technology
======
marssaxman
Ballmer says a lot of things. It has been years since Microsoft has
successfully followed through on its intent to become a leader of some new
industry. Even the Xbox, after ten years of investment, barely shows up on
Microsoft's balance sheet, and I can't think of anything they've launched
since that has had comparable success.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Firefox 79 - caution
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/firefox-79/
======
shantara
Android version comes with a completely new design, and empty "What's new"
section in Google Play gave no indication it's going be such a major change.
Even more importantly, it has overridden data collection preferences after the
update. Check "Settings > Data collection". I had to disable "Marketing data"
and "Experiments" toggles. Not cool!
~~~
coldpie
I suspect that approximately no one reads that "What's new" section, and they
know it. Even Google just leaves it with whatever happened to be in the field
in summer of 2018 when they stopped updating it.
~~~
phreack
It's infuriating! Netflix even goes as far as condescendingly saying "don't
you worry about this kind of stuff, you worry about what to watch next". It's
ridiculous, if you're gonna require patch notes they must either be part of
the app review, or be optional from the start!
~~~
rurp
I strongly agree, especially since I hate 95% of the changes they make.
Netflix has the most user hostile design of any media app that I use. I'm
still a subscriber for now, but it will be the first one I cut.
~~~
FridgeSeal
> Netflix has the most user hostile design of any media app that I use
Personally I give that award to Spotify.
~~~
aksss
Yeah, Spotify feels like a really cluttered small shed in the backyard; like I
have to step over all sorts of crap to get what I’m after, and every day the
stuff is cluttered up in a slightly different way and somebody randomly hangs
a big Michelle Obama poster or some other crap from the ceiling once in a
while. Very annoying. Desktop app is mildly more tolerable than mobile.
------
jpdus
For me, Fenix on Android is the worst update ever. I use Firefox as my main
browser on Android since almost 10 years and my whole mobile workflow depends
on the awesome Tab Queue-feature (new tabs from other Apps like
Twitter/Slack/Mails are opened in the background).
With Fenix, Mozilla decided to just abandon that feature. Issues are closed,
it got removed from the feature list [1] and further questions are ignored. I
fully understand that you can't keep every feature everywhere, but this was
THE main benefit of Firefox (besides ublock) for me and if you look at
GitHub/Reddit/Twitter I am not the only one.
Now I have to stick to an outdated browser because of an (for me) completely
unnecessary, degrading update :/.
[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-
mobile/fenix/issues/470](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/470)
~~~
iggldiggl
More missing features:
\- Recently closed tabs (AFAIK "Undo close tab" currently fakes it by not
actually closing the tab until the "Undo close tab" popup has disappeared)
\- The Firefox share target that actually gave you a choice whether you'd like
to open the page in Firefox directly, merely bookmark it or use Sync to send
it to some other Firefox instance without having to actually open the page in
Firefox first
\- Add-on support that isn't limited to a few blessed "Recommended extensions"
\- viewing local HTML files is not possible (although admittedly Google hasn't
helped there, either, by vastly complicating file system access in recent
Android versions, and their purported replacement method is absolutely
unsuitable for HTML files that depend on additional resources such as images,
styles, scripts, other HTML files etc., but in the end it was still Mozilla's
decision to disallow it completely right now)
\- about:config
\- View source
\- bfcache is broken
\- cannot force-refresh a page
\- the tab import from the previous versions drops all the session history of
those tabs, i.e. it only imports the currently viewed page, but you can no
longer go back or forward
------
agurk
For Wayland users DMA-BUF video textures are now used when the Video
Acceleration API (VA-API) is enabled.
I personally saw a number of regressions[0] on Debian testing for video
playback on the beta releases for 79, but it largely seems to have settled
down now.
[0] particularly this one:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643855](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1643855)
(Copied from my comment on the submission for the official release notes)
------
sp332
Firefox releases come out every 6 weeks. It helps to put something in the
title that explains what's interesting about this one.
~~~
ProAm
Hopefully they changed the address bar back to be non-Chromeified.
~~~
boogies
Haven't used it in a while, but when I did it was always easy to switch the
behavior (for a power user, and I think the omnibar is much more appealing to
non power users as it's visually simpler, big, and easier to click — unifying
the search and address bar _is_ what you're talking about, right?).
~~~
ProAm
Its not easy to switch back anymore and breaks a lot of functionality if you
do. But its crazy that you have to accept serious UI/UX changes to get
security fixes too.
~~~
boogies
What functionality does it break?
> But its crazy that you have to accept serious UI/UX changes to get security
> fixes too.
It is sad, but it basically seems par for the course for big, semi-commercial
software. I don't like Mozilla, but I appreciate them making an alternative to
the massive Chrome near-monopoly that's not only just as fast and lighter but
competitively easy to use for normal people. I personally switched to Waterfox
years ago, and Pale Moon not long after that. It receives some security fixes
slightly after FF (they're fixed after Mozilla publishes the issue), but some
of them are not applicable
([http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml](http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml))
. Overall, to me then Pentadactyl is worth worse than that, and I think you
might love the UI.
~~~
ProAm
> It is sad, but it basically seems par for the course for big, semi-
> commercial software
I totally get why they do it too, Im a big Mozilla fan and have been for a
long time. Im glad there is browser competition, I love their take on Add-ons
and allowing the user to make decisions for themselves. They are fighting the
good fight, Im just expressing my opinions on things I don't like, but Im
still going to use FF. I did stop upgrading with version 76 because it was
just too much change and disruptive enough for me to downgrade and turn off
the installer.
Ive never seen Pentadactyl, Ill check it out.
------
nine_k
Highlights:
\- Return of shared memory between parts of the same page (including web
workers). Parallel processing becomes more efficient, good for complex apps
and games.
\- Time-traveling debugger of sorts: search for "restart frame".
~~~
inetknght
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910775)
~~~
lilyball
Or not, because that's just FUD.
`dom.workers.serialized-sab-access` is the flag they've put in so that way
they can disable concurrent execution of JS threads that share memory in case
a novel cross-process attack shows up. Spectre is purely an in-process attack
and the whole article that comment is attached to is about the work they did
to enable shared memory while defending against Spectre.
`dom.workers.serialized-sab-access` does not affect Spectre. It appears to be
intended for preventing a novel cross-process attack from leveraging shared
memory in other processes into becoming a high-resolution timer.
Also note that threads that have access to shared memory in Firefox 79 also
have access to the full high-resolution performance.now(), and flipping
dom.workers.serialized-sab-access doesn't affect that.
------
marcopolo
"The reference-types proposal is now supported. It provides a new type,
externref, which can hold any JavaScript value, for example strings, DOM
references, or objects."
This is exciting! It opens up faster possibilities for wasm apps
------
saagarjha
I wonder if we could try something new and have all discussion related to
Mozilla or Firefox as a whole, including comparisons to other browsers,
privacy, and how much battery it uses on macOS in just one thread so people
can collapse it.
~~~
AnonHP
Post an “Ask HN” on this, perhaps, and request those who know more or have
direct experiences across versions and browsers to weigh in?
~~~
saagarjha
No need, it comes up every time anyways. Just looking to find a more
productive outlet for that discussion.
------
freediver
Every few versions I would check Firefox on macOS just to see if they make any
progress with battery drain.
And... Firefox 79 with one active tab is taking 6x more energy than Safari
with 20+ tabs.
[https://imgur.com/a/LyhnbKZ](https://imgur.com/a/LyhnbKZ)
Maybe it is better on other OSes, but on macOS nothing beats Webkit in terms
of performance.
Not to mention the home page bloat - Firefox is starting to look like cnn of
browsers.
~~~
sleepless
home page bloat? person woman man camera tv?
Care to share more details?
~~~
freediver
I mean this:
[https://imgur.com/a/aYutjsO](https://imgur.com/a/aYutjsO)
Having to see mentions of Nazi camps on my home page or seeing a notification
for Facebook containers although I don't use Facebook. All that bloat being
enabled by default is troublesome and goes against very principles Mozilla
advocates.
~~~
roca
It is two clicks to remove that entire "Highlights" section.
~~~
freediver
I think you missed the point of “behavior enabled by design”. Of course I can
remove it, as can someone who just stepped into a pile of poo clean their
shoes. We’d just prefer that the pile of poo didn’t exist by default.
~~~
roca
No "principle Mozilla advocates" says that the start page should default to
blank.
~~~
bzb3
It should not default to ads, at least.
~~~
roca
Very little of the content on the default start page is ever paid advertising.
AFAIK it's a few of the Highlights, sometimes.
~~~
bzb3
So they look like ads, which erode trust from users, and they don't even get
paid for them. That just makes it more stupid.
~~~
roca
They're mostly thumbnails of Web sites people have recently visited or visited
frequently, i.e. they look familiar. I don't think they look like ads to most
people, and I certainly wouldn't conclude they do without actual data.
------
shultays
Thumbnails are buggy. Auto complete doesnt work in some cases. No tab
reordering, open in new tab order is weird. Home page is worse. No addons...
lots of other small annoyances.
And worst of it, no about config. I dont like the direction mozilla is taking.
Do they have any reasoning for no abour config.
This is quite a downgrade, I think I am switching to another browser on
mobile.
------
matsemann
Completely rewamped Android.
Feels very snappy. Upgrade was a breeze. Only one addon that didn't work, hope
full addon support is back soon.
~~~
tallanvor
All of the add-ons I use are now unsupported. It's extremely frustrating and
unwelcome for them to break things like this.
~~~
0x49d1
Eh.. They had to: probably they will add more robust support of extensions in
the future, but for now they had to re-implement some basic browser functions
+ add something new to attract new customers (like "Collections").
------
recursive
For me, "Restart stack frame" is probably the biggest impact I've seen in a
while.
------
adrian17
Same question as the last time [0]: I see the benefit of wasm extensions and I
see how to enable them in "manual" compilation (for rustc, -C target-
feature=+bulk-memory), but I didn't yet find a documented way of using them in
wider used setups like wasm-pack. I'd love to try recompiling a full project
with these features, but I just can't find out how to do it.
The release notes say "The wasm-bindgen documentation includes guidance for
taking advantage of externref from Rust", but I didn't yet find anything about
it there either.
[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23690406)
------
jknz
I would hope the key presses required to use the native search among opened
tabs had changed.
\- Ctrl-L to go to the address bar
\- release Ctrl (otherwise, the next keypress fail)
\- Shift-6 to type "%" in the address bar
\- space
\- [your query and hit tab/enter to navigate results]
The last bullet is a close to ideal, native search among open tabs and make it
so smooth to find an opened tab among dozens. But the key presses necessary to
get there? Who can use that without weekly hospital stays for finger RSIs?
I love firefox. If someone, somewhere reads this, please please please think
of simpler key presses to use this nice, already built functionality.
(I know non-native extensions provide similar feature. But native would be so
cool and stable, especially that it's already built).
~~~
sbierwagen
What keyboard layout are you on that puts % on 6?
~~~
jknz
That was Shift+5, not 6. Thanks for pointing that out :)
------
ComodoHacker
In 78 they've added a persistent Google search as a top line in URL bar drop-
down list. I couldn't find it documented anywhere neither in release notes nor
in help topics.
Does anyone by chance knows how to remove it?
~~~
infogulch
about:preferences#search
aka Menu > Options | Search | Search Suggestions > Provide Search Suggestions
~~~
ComodoHacker
No, it's not suggestions. Suggestions are disabled.
------
hackcasual
A lot of good WebAssembly stuff in there. WASM threads, bulk memory ops are
big performance wins, and reference types huge for DOM interoperation.
------
tumblewit
Firefox 80 is scheduled to come with vaapi for X11 which will be a major
release for those with distro like PopOS or those that use i3wm
------
lytefm
This update has, for the first time in over 10 years, rendered Firefox pretty
much unusable for me on Ubuntu: Both the URL and the search bar are completely
broken - neither autocomplete nor searching via google/DDG works. The only way
to open a URL is to type it in full. Not cool. I guess I should move to ESR.
------
The_rationalist
does "better source map for SCSS" means that devtools will show scss variables
? big if true
------
formerly_proven
Doesn't contain a fix for the tearing on Windows 10 with Hardware Graphics
Scheduling.
------
sam_goody
It's a small thing, but I have found the usage of the logical and/or/null to
be much cleaner.
a ??= 3;
(It would be even nicer if it could mean the same thing in PHP.)
------
50
Sweet! This update fixes the issue where you weren't able to play videos on
Firefox 78 with the MacOS Big Sur Beta.
------
lrnStats
Anyone using something other than Firefox or chrome?
~~~
bradgessler
Safari. Works great.
~~~
lrnStats
Meh, that requires trusting Apple. No thanks.
------
potiuper
The summary section could use work.
------
johnisgood
> Firefox 79.0 released with master password renamed to primary password
Jeez...
------
robotmay
Have they reverted the godawful address bar change yet?
------
grezql
Firefox, current, is really slow on video rendering. Youtube on 1080p kinda
freezes at times. Same video works perfectly in Chrome
Im on Win10, this happenened on win8.1 aswell.
~~~
boogies
Are you sure it's not just YouTube? Alphabet's arbitrarily changed YT's
behaviour based on the browser's UA string in the past, and used deprecated
APIs only implemented in Chrome.
~~~
konart
Youtube was updated to the v1 quite some time ago with a fresh Polymer version
>Polymer.version
3.4.1
------
The_rationalist
meanwhile chromium has async stack traces since 2017
[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/05/devtools-r...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/05/devtools-
release-notes)
~~~
hu3
TIL. Thanks for sharing.
I also didn't know Chrome could emulate different levels of slow network.
------
marcrosoft
I’ve tried Firefox about once a year for the past five years and always
immediately go back to chromium. Scrolling is always broken out of the box on
all platforms I’ve tried (Linux and macOS).
Edit: trying again, the macOS track pad seems ok but scroll wheel behavior is
different. Firefox requires 2-3 times the scrolling distance and transitions
slowly to the final scroll destination. Chrome does not.
Edit 2: I’m almost positive it’s smooth scrolling. Some people hate it and
some like it. This reddit thread sums up:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5zoa1t/do_you_use_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5zoa1t/do_you_use_smooth_scrolling/)
~~~
confounded
Never encountered this, same platforms. What do you mean by broken?
~~~
marcrosoft
If I were to guess I think it has something to do with “smooth scrolling”. The
behavior is scroll the mouse wheel three clicks/times to move the page.
Expected behavior is move the wheel at all and the page moves.
Also on a track pad the page should move in sync with your fingers. It doesn’t
in Firefox.
~~~
acdha
That’s what happens on a clean install on Windows or MacOS. You might want to
reset any custom settings and remove any extensions to see if it still
reproduced.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Slogging and Schlepping Are Key Startup Values - sk2code
http://www.fastcompany.com/3006142/paul-graham-and-buster-benson-why-slogging-and-schlepping-are-key-startup-values
======
jeremyjh
One pattern that has held-back my personal side-projects from ever achieving
any real value (other than my own education) is that I'm always finding ways
to drop back of schlepping and back into experimentation and analysis. Knowing
this tendency in myself has held me back from any serious contemplation of
actually quitting my job to start a business; I can schlep with the best when
the goal is in sight and preferably there is a gun to my head (like an insane
deadline I've signed up for). But I don't know how to do it when the value of
the work is questionable, or so far down the road that I can't really see it
from where I am now. I'm constantly plagued with "what if no one ever wants to
use this?"
~~~
RyanZAG
Great point. From what I've read and experienced, you're right on the money:
there is a very good chance no one ever wants to use it.
Don't let this paralyze you though - it's why the idea of an MVP and
Kickstarter are so popular right now. The best advice I've heard on this
topic: just give it the best shot you can, fail fast if it doesn't get
traction, and try to learn as much as possible from failing so that your next
project is less likely to fail.
This gives you a really great deadline too: MPV in 2 months, fail if no
traction in 6 months (or even faster?).
Alternatively, if you really don't like the above idea or you can't build your
idea into an MPV in a couple months, stick with your current job and work on
your product on the side. This let's you take as long as you need to make the
product, removes the pressure of starving, and can turn into an enjoyable
hobby even if you don't get much traction.
------
aegiso
This is a shameless regurgitation of an article. Do yourself a favor and read
the source material, which is worlds more insightful.
<http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html>
~~~
mashmac2
A direct copy from the Buster Benson source as well, which is more insightful
than the article, too!
<http://wayoftheduck.com/long-slog>
------
shawnreilly
Paul's original article (linked by aegiso) is awesome, and I couldn’t agree
more. When I did my first Startup (that failed) I was trying to do something
that was Fun. After experiencing failure and learning my lesson(s), I realized
that Fun is not necessarily the best focus to build a business. My second
attempt (which is where I am now) has a focus on Value, which has been much
more successful. I believe that Value is directly determined by what pain
points you solve, and how many people they affect. In many ways I've had to
train myself to identify the biggest pain points that fall within my
experience/knowledge, and just go for it!! I'm a designer, but as a technical
co-founder, I put a strong emphasis on Product Vision, Business Models, and
solving Big Problems. The bottom line, anything is possible. We just have to
identify what needs to be built, and build it! I'm learning how to code, but
I've realized that team work makes the dream work. So right now my goal is to
build a few strong founding teams for a few of my highly ambitious ideas. I am
experimenting with a new concept (a team building exercise) that shares
similarities with some of the new ‘Studio Startup’ models people are using. I
will be essentially 'CrowdFounding' the Projects, open to anyone that can
execute. Hopefully I can succeed and solve some of these huge problems I've
identified (mostly related to Infrastructure and Security)
------
arbuge
Quite so. I'm thinking that the whole lean startup movement in some ways
exacerbates the schlep blindness problem PG refers to. If you expect instant
rewards/feedback/traction before discarding an idea, you might sometimes be
overlooking something.
~~~
thebear
Good point. I've always felt uncomfortable with the lean startup mantra "If
it's not working out, pivot." If something's not working out, it could be for
one of two reasons: either you're doing the wrong thing, or what you're doing
needs more time and hard work, that is, you just met the schlep. Deciding
which one of the two you're looking at is incredibly hard. I don't think that
there are any rules. The pivoting mantra just kinda glosses over that whole
problem. The best advice I could distil from it would be, "If it's not working
out, don't cling to it at all cost, consider pivoting." Ok.
~~~
mdda
IMHO, this isn't really what the Lean Startup mantra is all about. Lean-wise,
one is really trying to see where there is customer/product fit. When there
is, it's like finding a filter's resonance point : Suddenly you've found
people's hot buttons.
[ no, no, meh, hmm, YESYESYES, hmm, meh, no, no]
The key to the Lean part is only doing a schlep when you've identified that
it'll pay off once done. Don't schlep until you've got evidence that the
destination will be worth the trip.
~~~
thebear
_Don't schlep until you've got evidence that the destination will be worth the
trip._
I see what you're saying. I just think that this leaves unresolved the one
crucial question: what constitutes "evidence that the destination will be
worth the trip?"
------
onlyup
Also known as "hard work". If this blog provided any insight or new ideas to
you then ... god help you.
~~~
nachteilig
Sometimes people need to be reminded of this. A lot of the representation the
press gives seems to imply that people simply walk into money. As usual, pg
gives some perspective.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Elephants Don’t Explode: How Nature Solves Bigness - aaossa
http://noticing.co/on-size-and-metabolism/
======
Terr_
This reminds me of an old (1928) piece titled "On Being The Right Size" by JBS
Haldane [0], which lightly touches on many different concerns related to
sizing:
> Of course tall land animals have other difficulties. They have to pump their
> blood to greater heights than a man, and, therefore, require a larger blood
> pressure and tougher blood-vessels. A great many men die from burst
> arteries, greater for an elephant or a giraffe.
[https://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-
size.html](https://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html)
------
Bartweiss
I'm confused by the slider task. The explanation simply says that voles eat
much more than elephants _per unit of body mass_ , but the sliders suggest
that voles literally eat more food per day than elephants.
Are the grass pictures supposed to be interpreted relative to the size of the
animals next to them?
~~~
mrec
Yes, the article seems to be mostly a roundabout restatement of Kleiber's Law
[1]
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law)
------
LeifCarrotson
> 402
> Plot twist!
> Payment required...
> This embedded plot has reached the maximum allowable views given the owner's
> current subscription.
> Please visit the subscriptions page to learn more about upgrading.
Don't see many 402s!
Also, D3 is awesome. Don't pay to show a graph, either draw it in any
visualization tool and take a screenshot for the article, or use locally
hosted D3.
------
seanalltogether
Here's another fun read on why sizes matter as it relates to monster movies
[http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/](http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/)
~~~
rewrew
This is a great link -- thanks for posting!
------
devy
I visited San Diego Zoo a few months ago. In SDZ's Safari park, they host one
of the biggest elephant park in North America. I remember the tour guide
mentioned Elephants are so huge that if you lay down for more than 4 hours,
there are pretty high chance they won't stand up and eventually leading to
death due to the size of their body.
~~~
readams
"Elephants in zoos sleep for four to six hours a day, but in their natural
surroundings the elephants rested for only two hours, mainly at night." [1]
[1] [http://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-39126993](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39126993)
------
eridius
This article is interesting, but all it talks about is why big animals have a
lower metabolic rate than small ones. I wish it would have also addressed the
question of why small animals have a higher metabolic rate than big ones. If
elephants can get away with having such a low metabolic rate, why can't voles?
~~~
ufmace
That's what the article is all about. It's temperature management. Smaller
warm-blooded animals have less mass to generate heat and higher surface area
to volume ratio to dissipate it faster. They need a much higher metabolic rate
to maintain body temperature, especially when the environment is very cold.
They would freeze if they had the same rate as the elephant.
Large warm-blooded animals have more mass generating more heat and less
surface area to dissipate it. They need a much lower rate or they would
overheat. Not to mention the objectively huge amount of food and air
circulation that would be required to maintain that rate.
If either animal had the other's metabolic rate, it would be dead within
hours, if not minutes.
~~~
eridius
Couldn't smaller animals just evolve better insulation instead? Surely it
would be easier to survive if they didn't have to eat so much.
~~~
lawdog
Evolution doesn't pick the optimal solution, it just weeds out the solutions
ones that aren't good enough.
------
ak217
I thought this would be about allometric scaling of organs. But if we're on
the topic of metabolism, I wonder what the rate of cancer is for shrews vs.
elephants, once the metabolism and lifespan are somehow accounted for.
~~~
tbirrell
What does metabolism have to do with cancer?
~~~
24gttghh
Quite possibly, a lot:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-
effect-a...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-an-
old-idea-revived-starve-cancer-to-death.html)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect)
------
guelo
That was hard to read. Would have been much easier if they just got to the
point.
------
jger15
Geoffrey West's book Scale gets into this -- good read.
[https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-
Sustainabi...](https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-
Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582/)
------
amelius
Also, at the cell level, large animals should have a better self-protecting
mechanism against cancer, because more cells means a higher probability of
cell-divisions going awry.
------
transparentlabs
The difference in metabolic rates between large and small animals is directly
linked to why large animals typically have longer lifespans the smaller ones.
------
eridius
Since the embedded plot isn't showing up, you can see it at
[https://plot.ly/~aatish/115/an-ounce-of-a-smaller-
creature-g...](https://plot.ly/~aatish/115/an-ounce-of-a-smaller-creature-
gulps-more-air-than-an-ounce-of-a-bigger-creature/)
------
theoh
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen wrote a couple of books on this topic. Googling Bonner
and Schmidt-Nielsen together seems to bring up some surveys of the literature.
------
Florin_Andrei
Volume vs area, basically.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The creator of Pepe the Frog is suing Infowars - noyaav
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/07/us/pepe-frog-infowars-lawsuit-matt-furie-trnd/index.html
======
tinus_hn
Their argument is they have 1st amendment protection. Good luck with that!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What is SageMathCloud: let's clear some things up - williamstein
http://sagemath.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-sagemathcloud-lets-clear-some.html
======
fafner
I really hope SMC succeeds. Sage is pretty awesome and probably the closest
thing we have as a free software alternative to things like Mathematica. But
Sage still needs a lot of work. E.g., the packaging is simply bad. It's just
one giant source tree containing almost every dependency including GCC and
Python. That's just ridiculous.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows update knocks out internet connections - AndrewDucker
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38301548
======
EKSolutions
So Microsoft recommend rebooting your machine and then if that doesn't work,
go to their website for further instructions?
It's "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue" all over again!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Fulfillment Center Tours - savara
http://amazonfctours.com/
======
hackcasual
Down for me, archive.org from September: [https://web-
beta.archive.org/web/20160917172140/http://amazo...](https://web-
beta.archive.org/web/20160917172140/http://amazonfctours.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ShowHN: LinkThing - dreadsword
http://www.linkthing.co
This is not a startup, and there's no business here. Its a "scratching an itch" weekend project. I'm a link junkie, and like to save big collections of stuff - be it travel info for an upcoming trip, funny gifs, or whatehaveyou. There's no social, and no discovery.<p>I just wanted a super simple, very flexible, lightweight link index. I also wanted to play around with Bootstrap and JQuery.<p>Originally, I built LinkThing on the Twitter API. It used twitter Oauth, and did some neat stuff, like index links in your tweets. But - I don't feel like figuring out how to comply with the new API guidelines, so I've backed it all out, and have built a standalone user account system, and there you go.<p>LinkThing is missing several things:
1. Don't lose your password. The password reset thing referenced in the "join" form doesn't actually exist yet.
2. Links that you add aren't currently editable; but that's almost there. Note: You <i>can</i> delete them.
3. There's some real low-hanging fruit missing, like a bookmarklet, that I'll get too shortly as well.<p>Anyhow, I posted a note about this in another thread some time ago, and wanted to share an update. As noted, this is a weekend warrior / fun project, so don't hold back - I haven't quit my day job for this. Its been fun to develop, and I've actually ended up being a pretty devoted user of it, at home and at work, and it would be cool if some other people found it useful too.<p>I wrote a brief into blurb here that will give you some flavor:<p>http://linkthing.co/doc_getting_started.php<p>Feedback/comments/complaints are appreciated. Please note:
- To join, you just need a username and a password, email address is not required.
- You can delete all of your data and erase any record that you ever joined LinkThing via the "Delete Account Data" link that you'll find under your username dropdown once you've signed in.
======
senko
Signed up, I like the simplicity of the thing (no discovery/social is a plus
for me). Some thoughts:
1\. You don't ask for confirmation for "dangerous" things: When deleting a
link - I was expecting to be able to fish it out back from some kind of Trash,
or perhaps have a temporary "Undo" option). When clearing the account, again
it apparently didn't ask me for confirmation (I didn't have any links at the
moment, in case you only ask if there's data in it).
2\. On a site such as this, I'd love to have an export option, in case I ever
want to leave (or you need to shut down). It could be as simple as just
producing a plain HTML with the bookmarks.
3\. When you click on a link, it opens a new window to go to it. Fair enough.
But the click count isn't incremented in the existing page (obviously, a minor
nitpick).
4\. Bookmarklet for bookmarking pages directly would be nice. Here's a shot at
it here: [http://dobarkod.hr-test.s3.amazonaws.com/tmp/linkthingco-
boo...](http://dobarkod.hr-test.s3.amazonaws.com/tmp/linkthingco-
bookmarklet.html) (drag to bookmarks bar to save). Ideally, it'd redirect to
the linkthing.co afterwards.
~~~
dreadsword
Hey! Thank-you for trying it out, and for your feedback. 1\. I hear you on the
confirmation for Dangerous actions point... I've almost seriously screwed
myself on the Delete Account Data one. That's definitely on my to-do list. 2\.
Export - also agreed. What kind of format would be useful? CSV, or an XML
schema of some kind? 3\. Good catch on the click counter - I'll have to think
through that one - perhaps just a cosmetic non-ajax increment. 4\. Thank-you
very much - That's exactly what I was thinking; I'll steal that code (thank-
you!) and implement tonight, and will post back here.
Thanks again for trying it out and sharing your insightful feedback - its
appreciated!
R
~~~
senko
I think any textual representation of the links would be good - possibly a
HTML file with the links themselves might be the easiest option.
Regarding the counter, yeah, I'd just "cheat" and increment it locally, no
need to go back to the server for it (after all, you know it was exactly one
click).
Also, to add: Thanks for a nice service, well done!
I'll try to use it for a couple of days and see if it sticks (I'm notoriously
bad at bookmarking, or rather, revisiting bookmarks).
~~~
dreadsword
Hey - just a quick note - As per your suggestion, I've added an export feature
under the username drop down that spits out a quote-encapsulated CSV file.
------
dreadsword
This is not a startup, and there's no business here. Its a "scratching an
itch" weekend project. I'm a link junkie, and like to save big collections of
stuff - be it travel info for an upcoming trip, funny gifs, or whatehaveyou.
There's no social, and no discovery.
I just wanted a super simple, very flexible, lightweight link index. I also
wanted to play around with Bootstrap and JQuery.
Originally, I built LinkThing on the Twitter API. It used twitter Oauth, and
did some neat stuff, like index links in your tweets. But - I don't feel like
figuring out how to comply with the new API guidelines, so I've backed it all
out, and have built a standalone user account system, and there you go.
LinkThing is missing several things: 1\. Don't lose your password. The
password reset thing referenced in the "join" form doesn't actually exist yet.
2\. Links that you add aren't currently editable; but that's almost there.
Note: You _can_ delete them. 3\. There's some real low-hanging fruit missing,
like a bookmarklet, that I'll get too shortly as well.
Anyhow, I posted a note about this in another thread some time ago, and wanted
to share an update. As noted, this is a weekend warrior / fun project, so
don't hold back - I haven't quit my day job for this. Its been fun to develop,
and I've actually ended up being a pretty devoted user of it, at home and at
work, and it would be cool if some other people found it useful too.
I wrote a brief into blurb here that will give you some flavor:
<http://linkthing.co/doc_getting_started.php>
Feedback/comments/complaints are appreciated. Please note: \- To join, you
just need a username and a password, email address is not required. \- You can
delete all of your data and erase any record that you ever joined LinkThing
via the "Delete Account Data" link that you'll find under your username
dropdown once you've signed in.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientist quits antimissile panel, saying task is impossible (1985) - Thimothy
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/12/world/scientist-quits-antimissile-panel-saying-task-is-impossible.html
======
dogma1138
Things have surely changes in 30 years, because effective missile defense is a
reality these days.
That said SDI wasn't a failure, the "Star Wars" part of it kinda was, but
sensor, targeting solutions, ABM (heck one of the original SDI systems - ERIS
is quite functional to this day) technologies serve as the base for the US's
current missile defense shield and they do work.
SDI also lead to quite a few significant developments in both chemical and
more importantly solid state laser.
Hubble also owes a large debt to SDI, there have been several experiments
regarding bouncing ground based lasers of mirrors in space in which they've
actually launched mirrors and bounced a laser over 1 or more of them. Both the
mirror manufacturing technology and more importantly the ground breaking
tracking and stabilization technology which allowed them to bounce of a laser
of a freaking tiny mirror in space were used in the HST.
~~~
rlucas
Can you elaborate on or source your claim about ERIS?
I'm genuinely interested in the historical and scientific question of the
viability of ABM at scale. I enjoyed a course perhaps 15 years ago with a
professor who asserted that the challenge was intractable due to the limits of
physics. Yet, I have also heard from a former aerospace engineer on the
Patriot system that such objections are poppycock.
ERIS was not in the matters we studied, though THAAD and the then-recent
midcourse interceptor tests were.
~~~
dogma1138
Apperantly ERIS (Exoatmospheric Reentry-vehicle Interceptor Subsystem) wasn't
deployed directly but transferred into THAAD and GMD.
[http://astronautix.com/lvs/eris.htm](http://astronautix.com/lvs/eris.htm)
Scale is a different question, it's a matter of number of interceptors vs
number of threats.
Iron Dome and it's evolution Stunner/David's Sling(used the Radar, tracking
and core interceptor form ID with an added booster stage) are quite capable of
handling large salvos.
HAMAS attempted to saturate the Iron Dome missile defense shield with large
salvos of 30-60 launches but the system still continued to operate with a very
good success rate.
Now Iron Dome has an advantage over systems that would presumably be employed
to counter mainly nuclear threats as it can ignore targets that will not
directly hit populated areas which would be somewhat harder to ignore when
nukes are in play. Any leakage of munitions is also not as huge of a threat as
with nuclear warheads, but losing 2 cities instead of 40 is still worth every
penny if it ever will come to a nuclear exchange, and with a rogue actor /
single launch all of your interceptors can focus on a single target which
gives you very good leakage protection.
From my experience what scientists often miss is that a system doesn't have to
be 100% effective, and you also can have multiple systems (which is the
current doctrine, early/co-stage interception, exo-atmospheric interception,
terminal stage interception, near target interception etc.) and depending on
your target hit success rate use multiple interceptors.
Missile defense is very real, systems like Iron Dome are bigger technological
advancement than things like GMD they can intercept a target as small as a
mortar shell in under 30 seconds which one would never thought would've been
possible even 10 years ago.
However considering that 15 years ago systems like Arrow (2) and Agies/SM-3
were already in advance testing or already deployed with quite a successful
track record I'm not sure why a professor would argue that physics make it
impossible, It was never a question of physics to some extent more about
sensors, software, and the ability to actually terminally guide interceptors
well enough to hit anything, but even during the years of SDI some branches of
the program had successful intercepts.
------
Bud
Of course, we now know that the Reagan Administration knew that the "Star
Wars" anti-missile systems were not going to actually work. The goal was never
for them to work as advertised. The goal was to convince the USSR that they
would work, and force the USSR to spend huge amounts of money trying to keep
up. And it worked.
~~~
akiselev
Do you have any reading materials about the effects the SDI had on the Soviet
aerospace program? The only citations I can find from a cursory search don't
seem particularly reliable or authoritative in this matter (largely off hand
comments by talking heads, even Carl Sagan).
I hear this out economic strategy repeated often as a post-hoc justification
but based on first hand accounts (my maternal grandparents met while working
on the Sputnik rocket and my entire family lived through this period in the
USSR as engineers), my understanding is that although some spending in
defense/aerospace rose during that time, the writing was on the wall for the
USSR and it's space program by the late 70s. According to my grandparents it
was impossible to reconcile the propaganda with what they were experiencing as
engineers actually working in aerospace/defense. Apart from the politically
doomed Buran, there wasn't even any ambition to try and match the United
States except for geopolitical posturing.
~~~
TheCowboy
There were earlier reports of Soviet economic weakness that predate Reagan. As
early as 1975, Senator Moynihan had predicted the demise of the USSR for
economic and ethnic reasons. I think at best the policy accelerated the
process.
My view is that if the Soviet system was inherently inefficient, and it was,
then it should eventually lead to collapse or reform if left to its own
course. It didn't seem to necessitate such an wasteful expenditure that lead
to a collapse that was terribly managed. It's not difficult to imagine worse
scenarios where the Soviet nuclear arsenal played some role.
That said, Reagan's original argument for increased spending was that the
Soviet Union's military capability was relatively stronger.
~~~
dalke
"It's not difficult to imagine.."
Certainly. The question is, is there any actual evidence?
Quoting
[http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_e...](http://russianforces.org/podvig/2013/03/did_star_wars_help_end_the_col.shtml)
, which examines the topic:
> As could be expected, the data on the Soviet strategic programs in the 1980s
> clearly show that the U.S. policies and actions and its strategic buildup
> and the Strategic Defense Initiative program in particular, had a
> significant impact on the choices made by the Soviet leadership at that
> time. However, the nature of this influence, its mechanisms and the effect
> of the U.S. actions strongly indicates that these actions did not help bring
> the end of the Cold War.
> The new evidence on the Soviet response to SDI largely corroborates the
> prevailing view that the Soviet Union eventually realized that this program
> does not present a danger to its security, for it could be relatively easily
> countered with simple and effective countermeasures. The evidence also helps
> answer some important questions about the concerns that the Soviet Union had
> about the U.S. program, the reasoning behind the choices that the Soviet
> leadership made, and the process that led to those choices.
> ...
> The issue of the Soviet own program that was produced in response to SDI
> brings a question of whether the burden that it imposed on the Soviet
> economy was a factor in the decision of the Soviet leadership to initiate
> reforms or even in accelerating the demise of the Soviet Union. The answer
> to this question is most certainly negative. While the package of anti-SDI
> programs was supposed to be a massive effort, comparable in scale to its
> U.S. counterpart, very few of these projects were actually new. The most
> expensive programs, such as the Moscow missile defense system or the
> "Energiya-Buran" heavy launcher, or the second-tier programs like the "Skif"
> space-based laser, existed long before SDI. When they became part of the
> "D-20" or "SK-1000" programs, they did not require any additional commitment
> of resources. Most of the projects included in the package never went beyond
> paper research and those that did were among the least expensive ones.
> Overall, while the military spending was certainly putting a heavy burden on
> the Soviet economy, there is no evidence that SDI or the Soviet response to
> it increased that burden in any substantial way.[89] Documents show that the
> issues of effectiveness of the military programs or shifting resources to
> the civilian sector had not became prominent in the internal discussions
> until about 1988, when the key decisions about SDI and the response programs
> had already been made.[90]
~~~
TheCowboy
Sorry, I think I wasn't clear in what I was suggesting with the sentence:
"It's not difficult to imagine worse scenarios where the Soviet nuclear
arsenal played some role."
I meant outcomes such as where a fringe general in the USSR felt it was a
legitimate threat requiring a first strike, or an unmanaged collapse lead to
dissemination and use of nuclear weapons. Basically, a successful policy can
easily become a Pyrrhic victory.
But this is interesting information, thanks for sharing it.
------
qwerty_asdf
The scientist, David L. Parnas, a professor at the
University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parnas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Parnas)
------
DanielBMarkham
Last week I got through reading "The Dead Hand", which I will plug again.
Great book. I saw and lived these things as a armed forces member and citizen.
It was really cool to finally be able to see behind the scenes.
The most amusing thing about the story of the end of the cold war was SDI.
Reagan, contrary to popular belief, was not a cowboy. His goal was actually to
completely eliminate nuclear missiles, and he told his staff this several
times. Whenever he said this, however, the clique of those in power went
berserko. How could he advocate such a thing! So they most always managed to
shut him down, prevent him from ever going public with his dream.
Gorbachev, likewise, was a prisoner of the system he was in. The armed forces
had a huge -- and mostly secret -- budget. They were into everything. They
were paranoid and highly suspicious of anything having to do with the U.S.
They were more and more detached from reality. For a while there, soviet spies
were instructed to start gathering clues that a surprise nuclear attack was
underway, even though nobody in the west had anything like that in mind. Given
that amount of craziness, Gorbachev's goal was never to end communism, it was
to open things up and try to make the system work better. He genuinely cared
for the little guy, and saw that the system was not working.
Additionally, the Soviets had reached the point where everybody in the system
(mostly) knew how messed up it was. They just couldn't do anything about it.
People wanted somebody, somehow to fix things.
During a meeting with a physicist, Reagan first heard the idea of a missile
defense. He latched on to it right away, although it took many months to go
public. What better way to eliminate nuclear weapons than to make them
obsolete? It wouldn't be offensive, it would be something to prevent damage.
Who could oppose that?
Now the funny part is that even though this was mostly just an idea in
Reagan's head, it drove the Soviet's crazy. How much work had been done? Did
the Americans have a working weapon? What technologies should we develop? The
natural Russian paranoia and distrust of the U.S. fed into what was just a
dream on the American side. (Yes, I understand that money was spent, but SDI
was something that was going to take decades. Initial progress was extremely
slow.)
So the Soviet armed forces spent all kinds of resources pouring over SDI and
trying to come up with a response. What did they fear? Space-based nuclear
weapons and nuclear-powered space-based lasers, not SDI itself. Finally they
came up with their own plan to create their own SDI -- a hugely expensive
program. After all, how could you plan to counter something that doesn't
currently exist? When the Soviet government looked at those projected
expenses, along with the failing economy, the lost war in Afghanistan, and
many other factors? It was obvious that something had to change.
It's a fascinating story because although the system on the U.S. side could
certainly shut down the president from doing something so radical as proposing
an elimination of nuclear weapons, what could they do about the guy just
having a dream? He had an idea. People have ideas. Nobody really knew how to
stop him from talking about his ideas. But the idea alone, whether it worked
or not, was just another straw on the camel's back that eventually brought
down a huge system of governance. Amazing story.
~~~
Zigurd
My anecdotally informed opinion is that Soviet science advisors thought the
Space Shuttle was key to making SDI work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Avenger (2015) - Thevet
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-avenger
======
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251586)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Conversations With Myself: What Should I Work On? - bdfh42
http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/8853//Startup-Conversations-With-Myself-What-Should-I-Work-On.aspx
======
elv
imo the only thing you should work on is THAT thing that keep you up all
nights and that you cant get it out of your head: your passion
~~~
dshah
Indeed, passion (at a macro-level) is important. But even within your passion
lies a long list of tactical things that need to be selected from.
The challenge is limited resources. You can't do everything (regardless of
level of passion), so you have to find some way to pick where you allocate
your time and energy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JQuery for LaTeX in HTML - tav
http://groups.google.com/group/whits/browse_thread/thread/d3bdfcde37ebcb2e/75c0c952b2e46019?show_docid=75c0c952b2e46019
======
jasondavies
See also: <http://www.mathjax.org/>
Used in <http://mathoverflow.net/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What tips or tricks do you use for fast and efficient note taking? - mtrpcic
I often find myself wanting to document various pieces of information during meetings or my commute, but often the information is coming at me faster than I can put it all on paper. I end up getting flustered and the quality of my printing degrades as I try to scrawl everything down. What shorthands, tips, tricks, or other note-taking quirks do you use to make your life easier?
======
aethertap
I tend to use notes as a self-test rather than for logging what's been said.
For example, as I hear something important, I'll write a small question to the
effect of "what is X?" or even just "X?"
Then (this is the important part) _soon_ after the note-taking session is
done, I go back and answer all my questions from memory, in writing. That lets
me get tons of stuff down on paper later at a slower pace, and it also helps
to cement the stuff in my mind because I'm not distracted by trying to write
it all down while it's happening. Forcing myself to recall it also does a lot
to make it stick.
Usually I can use my questions as cues to go look up the stuff I forget, and
if there's something that I know I'll forget and won't be able to look up,
I'll try to write that down (that's pretty rare though).
~~~
maraglee
Yes! The most valuable information is usually not the pure content but rather
things that deviate from that. So contextual information, relationships
between things, knowing what's important (the gist) and what's unclear.
Especially the last part tends to be what at the end of the day gives new
insights
------
KhalPanda
> ...coming at me faster than I can put it all on paper
So don't. :-)
I don't know if 'paper' was a figure-of-speech to mean 'some recorded format',
but if it was, get yourself a cheap Chromebook. I (and I expect most) can type
a lot faster than they can write, so that's step one.
Step two is to just work on making your notes as brief and concise whilst
still being intelligible to _you_. Unless whatever somebody is saying is
extremely densely packed with critical information, there is a lot of filler
you easily can cut out.
For example, if someone read your post to me, all I would write is:
\- Tips for efficient/effective notes?
------
sukonik
I personally like AudioNote for class notes, for times when content comes at
me fast. This way you can silently record them while you type for better
recall later.
Another option is just to use an app like Notes+ or Apple's notes app.
------
alltakendamned
I like this method of taking notes:
[http://bulletjournal.com/](http://bulletjournal.com/)
------
misframer
I do what databases do with WALs :). I write stuff down as I get it, and then
organize later.
------
atian
Caffeine. You can continue summarizing as you are but afterwards you'll be
able to recall better.
~~~
sukonik
Caffeine is great!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How did you implement Authorisation/Access Control for your SaaS product - devj
I have been tasked to implement access control in a multi-tenant SaaS product. Would be really helpful if you can share your experiences in implementing RBAC/ABAC/etc and also point to relevant articles or OSS projects to understand it better.
======
twunde
There are a couple of components that make up Auth.
* Authorization - How do I confirm who this person is?
* Identity - Everything about the person. Think name, email, address, tenant_id
* Permissions/roles - What can this person do?
I'm going to discuss this with the assumption that you're using some sort of
relational database. If you're using something else, you should be able to
adjust accordingly. Keep in mind that your web framework probably has
libraries for all of these and standard practices since every app that
requires you to sign in had this..
Let's start off with roles and permissions. Typically, most companies will
want at a minimum an admin user and a regular user. This usually ends up
expanding to include specialized roles such as accounting, who would only have
access to billing information, auditor, which would be a read-only role.
Identity - Unless you're just starting a project, this has probably been
implemented already and may be called users, customers or employees. This can
be one table or a set of tables and would include the relevant information
about the person logging into your system. At the very least this includes
name, email, and tenant_id.
Authorization - Typically this will start out with username/password login
combinations, but is often expanded to include 2FA-login flows, single sign on
(OAuth flows using SAML or Active Directory/LDAP authentication). That there
can be multiple auth workflows is a good reason to keep these as separate
tables from your user table(s).
A good open-source example is Discourse
([https://github.com/discourse/discourse](https://github.com/discourse/discourse)).
It's a good case because it does have SSO options
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trade in your iPad, get a $200 gift card - kapkapkap
http://content.microsoftstore.com/en-us/offers?WT.mc_id=PromoEmail_iPadTradein_9-5-13_GetDetails#offer-tablet-trade
======
t0
Their recycler ([http://cexchange.com/](http://cexchange.com/)) will resell
the iPads to cover the $200 loss, which will actually create more competition
for surface. This isn't too brilliant of a strategy.
~~~
eupharis
Presumably this trade-in will be done by people who are thinking, "I'm not
crazy about my iPad. I want to try something new." If Microsoft convinces
these customers to try Surface versus something else (aka Android), it's a
win.
The iPads will be resold to someone thinking, "I want to try a tablet, but
I've never tried an iPad." Which is a different market segment.
Also, a $200 gift card != $200 cash. Some estimates say 20% of gift cards in
the US are not redeemed. See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_card#Redemption_rate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_card#Redemption_rate)
And even for the cards that are redeemed, Microsoft is making a profit off
every $ that is spent. Plus interest on any gift card balance.
It's not far-fetched to imagine Microsoft making 30%+ profit off this, while
increasing the (dismal) market share of Surface devices.
~~~
sspiff
Or a person thinking "I want a cheap iPad for the kids", but either way, those
people are less likely to buy a Surface, so your argument makes sense.
------
benihana
The only tablet I'd trade my iPad in for is a newer iPad.
~~~
reginaldjcooper
I certainly wouldn't trade it in for a Surface, I might trade it in for an
Android.
All the stuff I get is either free-as-in-libre or something my wife is going
to enjoy using. Surface is neither, with the bonus that whoever was in charge
was clueless enough to load it with 40G of software.
~~~
TheAnimus
I feel sometimes as if I'm alone for liking my Surface RT.
8.1 for outlook was the real clincher. Before I hadn't really _liked_ any
tablets I'd used.
But now this thing really does go everywhere. Office is rather integral to my
workflow, every alternative I've tried hasn't cut the mustard. Now when I'm
away, I've got my laptop and my 'office slab'. The touch cover actually works
rather well, I won't mind typing out a good long email on it without wanting
to slam the device into the wall (which my Nexus 7 makes me want to do).
It is also remarkably adept at just working with anything I slam on the USB. I
can use it to backup my SD cards to a USB HDD when travelling (having lost an
SD card last year half way through my holiday I'm paranoid!) or I just plug in
my USB headset for Skype. It can browse the web including pages that have bad
touch events (ie menu comes down on mouse over, not mouse down).
And it does flash.
I've only got an iPad 2 to compare against for speed, and yes whilst I'd like
it faster, it isn't problematic.
I can't really see a lot of the hate on the Surface, as a product it isn't
really there yet. But neither is my iPad or my Nexus.
~~~
reginaldjcooper
That's awesome, I'm glad you like it. Now that you mention it, I recall
thinking of the keyboard cover as a great idea.
I guess many things you list are orthogonal to what I would want it for (and I
am quite pleased that there's no more Flash), so I don't see it as an
improvement to the iPad, nor is it any more open.
------
ryankshaw
Some time ago I saw something that Microsoft gets $15 for every android device
sold while google gets 0 (because of patent extortion). It would be pretty
funny to see something now that says "Microsoft makes more in Q4 off iPad re-
sales than from surface sales" note: I'm saying profit, not revenue, because
of how much they have to subsidize surfaces thus making negative profit while
at the same time re-selling the ipads they got for $200 at market rates, thus
making a profit.
------
superuser2
The rather amusing side effect of this marketing strategy is that Microsoft is
buying a bunch of iPads. What are they going to do with them?
~~~
halisaurus
Sell them! It's working for Apple.
~~~
superuser2
I have a feeling Apple's advertising team could have some fun with the fact
that Microsoft is selling iPads.
------
locksley
Not worth it, you can sell an iPad 2 for $270 on eBay.
proof:
[http://www.thepricegeek.com/results/ipad+2](http://www.thepricegeek.com/results/ipad+2)
~~~
sliverstorm
Sure, but both eBay and PayPal take a cut of the transaction, and the size of
that cut has been growing. What is it now, 15% each?
~~~
akandiah
No, ~15% in total. So, you're getting a better deal from eBay.
~~~
goblin89
Selling requires more effort and is risker due to buyer protection. It seems
that Microsoft found the sweet spot.
~~~
bodyfour
Yeah, I'd much rather take $200 from a store than ~$233 with the bother and
risk of an eBay sale. It's not even close for me.
However even better is just keeping my iPad since it's working fine, thanks.
------
jmduke
I bought an iPad 2 last summer for $200. This honestly isn't a bad way to get
rid of it, except my biggest issue with getting a Surface at this point is my
unfamiliarity with the Windows platform -- I'm not saying I wouldn't be able
to use the thing, it's just that there would be a subconscious effort being
made that I don't really feel like dealing with (at least.)
Still, I think having $200 to spend on Microsoft stuff isn't a bad trade.
Office is expensive.
~~~
ScottWhigham
Weird. I just sold an iPad2 on ebay last month for $300. Looking at eBay, that
is the current going price for a used iPad 2 in good condition (as mine was).
So when I saw MSFT offering $200, I thought this was a bad deal for their
consumers.
------
tinbad
In comparison: Gazelle offers $175 for an iPad 2 WIFI-only 32GB (Microsoft
doesn't accept iPad 1). You can say that on average they will make more on
those iPads than they are giving away in value for MS products.
In other words, Microsoft is trying to come off cheap.
------
vnayak
Or you can sell it on craigslist for $400
------
jbrooksuk
I've tried both versions of the Surface and each time my opinion is "I wish
they'd split their OS, like Apple." \- people usually don't need an entire
desktop OS (with touch screen functions or not) on a tablet, they want a
tablet OS - like iOS.
------
broken_symlink
The only ipad I have to trade is a first generation one, which they don't
accept. Oh well...
------
kirpekar
Does not include the iPad 1.
~~~
fitzhume
It really seems like Apple left early iPad adopters out in the cold. Last
major OS update wouldn't work on iPad 1, nor does it count for any trade-in
ANYWHERE it seems like.
~~~
interpol_p
iPad 1 had a _very_ decent lifespan compared to the tablets released by
competing manufacturers shortly afterwards.
~~~
slantyyz
>> iPad 1 had a very decent lifespan
I beg to differ. I assumed that I would get 3 years out of my iPad 1 but
barely got two.
I made the wrong bet by placing blind trust into Apple when I paid extra for
the 64GB version to ensure that it was 'future proof'. Sadly, by the time I
upgraded to iOS 5.x, the iPad became slow as molasses and the browser would
crash every 5-10 minutes.
Don't even get me started on how iOS 6.x has turned my iPhone 4 into a pig.
I'd be a hell of a lot happier if Apple would let you easily downgrade the
OS'es of their mobile devices.
~~~
eaurouge
Really? I still have my iPad 1. Browsing HN on it as we speak. It's running
iOS 5. The only downside is that the percentage of apps I can install is
diminishing rapidly. Still, I bought it primarily to consume media: audio,
video and books. And I reckon I have at least one more year before I would
feel compelled to upgrade.
~~~
gurkendoktor
If yours doesn't crash all the time because WebKit runs out of memory, then
you're luckier than me (and a few people on the Apple forums). For me, the
usable lifespan ended with the introduction of iOS 5 (my friend's iPad on 4.3
is much more stable).
------
DH61AG
And then they will use the iPads themselves because their products suck?
------
smallsharptools
Pass
------
anuraj
MS, isn't it a trade down - rather than trade in?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Former Google exec, Android founder accused of having a 'sex ring' in complaint - CPLX
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/07/02/android-creator-andy-rubin-accused-having-sex-ring-ex-wife/1634963001/
======
nske
"Sex ring"? What does that even mean? A company exec liked sex, was likely
unfaithful towards his wife and was also likely violating company policy by
having sex with subordinates. Why should this matter to anyone beyond his wife
and his employer? It's nobody else's business.
~~~
privateSFacct
Let's be clear around the allegations.
Three days before getting married and two weeks before she was going to give
birth to his child he asked her to sign a pre-nup. He suggested she use an
"independent" lawyer - and recommended the same attorney who had represented
HIM in previous divorce proceedings. They then allegedly didn't disclose all
his assets (so the decision to waive an interest would be informed) and her
attorney they claim was actually working for Rubin and knew of the fact that
he had a history of cheating and a bunch of other stuff given his past work on
the divorce much less how much the attorney might value his relationship with
Rubin (rich guy / senior at google). No conflict waiver was even prepared or
signed.
The sex ring claims come from the allegation that Rubin procured the services
of women to have sex with other men.
Plenty of other unpleasant claims.
This all in the context of a marriage where he has made promises to someone.
As to who might mind or be interested?
The employees he supervised might mind - especially since he allegedly
pressured them into sexual relationships while simultaneously having lots of
other sex. Crappy work environment and disease risks.
The public might mind. A poor black guy running a sex ring might end up in
significant criminal trouble. A white guy working for google get's paid $80
million by google and no chance of criminal action.
These tech execs are masters of the universe in their areas. The tone at the
top of a company absolutely filters down into their product approach and
adherence to an ethical framework. Look at decisions around user controls in
Android under Andy (terrible) vs iPhone (better). Are these necessarily
linked? Maybe not - but you do tend to see a tone filter through a crazy
number of places in various ways. So the public might like to know if the
folks running the show are total amoral bastards.
The list goes on.
I hope she takes him to the cleaners.
Additional public interest in these situations is the special casing for these
guys - behavior that no one else could get away with.
~~~
nske
We don't know what exactly happened. They can work their problems out between
them or in a court room. Reading allegations and passing judgement on people
that we don't know should be reserved for tabloid readers.
~~~
privateSFacct
Sure - but let's not pretend we can't even understand the allegations.
"Sex ring"? What does that even mean?
Someone liked sex is not the issue. Someone cheating is not the issue being
litigated.
That said, agreed - two sides to the story and I'm sure we'll get another
version of what happened.
------
strikelaserclaw
She is trying to make the case look as good as possible to get that pre-nup
annulled and get some sweet google money.
------
norswap
This doesn't belong here.
~~~
aneutron
Completely agree
------
peteretep
This page is causing serious death and destruction to Safari on iOS
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does this software exist? - ScottWhigham
As a musician on the side, I've come across a "problem" that I'm hoping someone can help me solve. Here's the "problem":<p>* I have a group of songs that I play (let's say 50) that is a fairly static list<p>* I want to be able to plan out set lists based on those songs for various gigs and then print out the set lists in advance<p>Right now, I'm using a kludgey combination of Excel and Word (Windows guy, but I do have a MBP). It sucks - I make the list of songs in Excel, then I create a separate document for each night (and copy/paste the songs in).<p>Ideally there's a piece of software that lets me drag and drop the song onto a "view" (or whatever) that I can save/retrieve/print. I'm just trying to simplify the process of creating a set list. Sure, I could create it but it seems like this should exist already (but I can't find it).<p>Any ideas?
======
pbhjpbhj
Maybe some of the software used for "setlists" for worship songs in Church
services would help? You can do things like print lyrics with chords, "song
books" and such; a basic feature is preparing a list of songs for the expected
running order.
Only ones I know of (from research a few years ago on FOSS apps for this)
<http://opensong.org/d/about>, <http://www.easyslides.com/index.php/features>,
<http://openlp.org/en/features>, <http://www.lyricue.org/>.
There are very mature paid apps for this sort of thing too.
HTH.
------
dmlorenzetti
You could use TeX or LaTeX. Create an individual file for each song,
containing whatever information you want to print for it. Presumably there are
music-oriented LaTeX extensions that can pretty-print the lines and clefs or
whatever (not a musician, so I don't know what, exactly, a set list should
look like).
Then your play list for each night consists of a sequence of songs you want to
play:
\input songs/stairway-to-heaven.tex
\input songs/take-me-out-to-the-ballgame.tex
\input songs/venus-in-furs.tex
As you get more sophisticated, or as your needs grow, you can define macros
that control what gets printed, or how.
~~~
batista
How is this better than doing it in Excel with copy/paste as he does now?
What benefit does LaTeX bring, so that he has to install some hundreds of mbs
of a TeX distro and learn the basics to work in it? Does he need elaborate
math symbols or fine grained typography for a set list?
------
ScottWhigham
I just found an iOS app called "Set List Keeper" that works 100% and is free.
[http://itunes.apple.com/mo/app/set-list-
keeper/id514144626?m...](http://itunes.apple.com/mo/app/set-list-
keeper/id514144626?mt=8)
There are things I wish it had but they are minor things.
Thanks everyone for the help!
------
ScottWhigham
The iTunes playlist thing makes me think of another option: creating a
"Contact" for each song title in a contact mgmt app, and then creating a
"Group"/"Category" for each set and adding that contact to that group. It's
the same thing - just a different twist on how to think about it.
------
ChuckMcM
Lets say you have all of these songs on your iPod, you can create a 'playlist'
and then print that out in iTunes. I used to do that with MusicMatch when I
made a CD for the road, burn the playlist to the CD and print the playlist for
the label.
~~~
ScottWhigham
Yeah, Playlist is exactly what I'm talking about. I didn't know you could
print a playlist.
------
batista
You could create an iTunes playlist with your songs.
1) Create a playlist with all the songs.
2) Right click on it, and click "duplicate".
3) Drag the songs to the order you want. Remove any songs you don't want in
this set.
4) From the menu, go "File -> Print" and select song list.
Repeat steps 2 to 3 as many times you want. You can also rename the set
playlist, to reflect the set name (e.g "2012-22-09").
Alternatively: you could also use some "todo management" style software to
print lists of things (in your case, song names) that you can re-arrange.
Bento might also be an option.
~~~
ScottWhigham
That's great - thank you. The iTunes playlist option will be "good enough" for
my purposes. It's a hacky way to do it but at least I'll have a reason to use
iTunes for something other than backing up/configuring my phone haha.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Space Cadet pinball won the Windows desktop - davidst
http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/14948/space-cadet-pinball-windows-history/
======
mrspeaker
In 2005 I started to dabble with reverse engineering, and the first target I
ever attempted was 3D Pinball... and amazingly enough I found a never-before-
found cheat code (and some other bits from Cinematronics).
I wrote up an article that went a bit viral at the time:
[http://www.mrspeaker.net/2006/01/07/hacking-
pinball/](http://www.mrspeaker.net/2006/01/07/hacking-pinball/). 3d-pinball-
related keywords are still among the highest search terms in my logs ;)
~~~
coldpie
You discovered that? Neat! I came here to post this link, which includes info
about the debug mode and other hidden features.
[https://tcrf.net/3D_Pinball:_Space_Cadet](https://tcrf.net/3D_Pinball:_Space_Cadet)
------
bluedino
Anyone know the story behind Hover!
Including something like that on the Windows 95 CD was an odd decision. Sure,
on one hand it shows Windows 95 can do 3D graphics/games, but it was such a
terrible game and the performance was so terrible, it just added fuel to
'Windows sucks for games' fire.
~~~
ambiate
I am very thankful for Hover and Pinball. They made me want a faster and less
buggy computer. This resulted in wonderful mishaps -- deleting Win system
files, recovering into Vector Linux, trying Win 3.11 for WG, and finally
ending up in Win98 SE. All the in between is free knowledge. All due to Hover
running at 3FPS on my Cirrus Logic onboard gpu/100mhz cpu.
In my heart, the reason for Hover -- to plant a seed forging low level
algorithm programmers.
------
DDR0
There was an updated version of Space Cadet on the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Drop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Drop)
I got as a kid. (I somehow played that before I found the standard windows
version, so I might be a bit biased. ;) ) The Marble Drop version is way more
polished windows version, everything 'just works' a little better. Shots line
up better, graphics are better... it feels like a really solid patch. Plus,
two new tables, "pirates" and "dragons"!
~~~
DDR0
Ah, here it is!
[https://tcrf.net/Full_Tilt!_Pinball](https://tcrf.net/Full_Tilt!_Pinball)
------
SeanDav
Available at Majorgeeks:
[http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_windows_pi...](http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_windows_pinball_space_cadet.html)
Anyone want to comment on how safe this download site is?
~~~
scholia
Majorgeeks is excellent. However, their refusal to accept money to distribute
crapware means they are extremely dependent on donations. ISTR they were
having to lay off staff...
------
clamprecht
Does anyone remember Night Mission pinball for the C64 and early PC? Is Space
Cadet related to Night Mission at all?
[http://thehouseofgames.org/index.php?t=10&id=358](http://thehouseofgames.org/index.php?t=10&id=358)
And a video of game play:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ttoAfg7Ehc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ttoAfg7Ehc)
------
greggarious
Ah pinball.
I got banned from all school computers for "hacking" after I started using the
MS Word 97 pinball easter egg to play pinball in typing class when they
removed the "official" pinball game:
[http://www.eeggs.com/items/763.html](http://www.eeggs.com/items/763.html)
------
nsxwolf
I always enjoyed how it would instantly peg the CPU to 100% on every system I
ever ran it on.
~~~
art0rz
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/01/49888...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/01/498882.aspx)
------
TazeTSchnitzel
Alongside Windows 95 Plus!, it was also in Windows NT 4, which incorporated
most of the 95 Plus! stuff.
Which is kinda ironic given it's a business OS. Office workers get Pinball
free, home users have to pay extra!
~~~
jon-wood
NT 4 was fantastic. It may not have run games particularly well, but it was so
much more stable than Windows 95, and gave me my first introduction to
networking.
------
tacos
"[David Cole, head of the Windows 95 production team] grumbled… ‘Can’t we just
get a game of pinball or something like that?’"
I can't decide whether to deride the lameness or celebrate the pragmatism of
this statement. It does capture Mr. Cole perfectly, though -- and perhaps
hints why everything he touched after Win95 turned sour.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anker’s minuscule 27W USB-C brick - robin_reala
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/10/25/18022106/anker-powerport-atom-pd-1-27w-usb-c-brick-gallium-nitride
======
ggm
Schuko, British and Aussie pinouts?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why are FOSS projects beginner unfriendly? - thewhitetulip
I have been in the FOSS community since a few years now and projects either lack documentation or they don't actually support new comers to the projects. I faced an issue recently about docs too, it seems like big projects do not care about total newcomers, why is it so?
======
dvhh
As it is for even closed source project, documentation and support are a major
pain, and are not as rewarding as aligning correct lines of codes.
I will try to use a gross misrepresentation of a new-comer, but chances are
they will ask trivial question that do not concern the project ( or are
already answered ), some resources ( developer time ) will be used in favor of
answering/guiding the newcomer ( who probably did not have search the usual
sources before asking the question ).
Documentation is quite a pain to maintain, as it requires a good grasp of the
English language ( mostly ), and quite a lot of empathy to figure out who the
documentation is for. Additionally you have to make sure the documentation is
accurate as the software change.
Returning the question: do you accurately comment the code you write for fun ?
~~~
thewhitetulip
>do you accurately comment the code you write for fun
Mostly, yes. But not when I am learning stuff, for eg,
[http://github.com/thewhitetulip/Tasks](http://github.com/thewhitetulip/Tasks)
is a small app I built, there are next to no comments there because I was
learning the language and thus didn't write much comments there.
I understand docs are pain to maintain, but a good FOSS project which is
coding related (like a code library) is an amalgamation of the code AND the
docs. The first preference goes to the lib with a great documentation.
>not as rewarding as aligning correct lines of codes
Yes, but when we look at the reward incorrectly! Yes, nobody will hail your
contribution, but the fact that the project will be hailed because of the docs
is not thought about mostly.
>but chances are they will ask trivial question that do not concern the
project
This might not be a gross misrepresentation, but yes, sometimes there will be
audience who doesn't fit in your project's audience, but what about the
audience who fits?
I recently started learning a front end framework, I am totally new to a front
end framework, I do not like frameworks, I learned and wrote a book on Go
without using framework ([https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-
anti-textboo...](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-
textbook/)).
The docs are awesome of the project, I mean it. They teach the basics of the
framework but _not_ how to use it in an actual project. Yes, if I know how to
bind a variable via the docs it is great, but I do not know how to build a
single page app just by reading how to bind a variable. It is a pre-requisite
though.
For a framework which wants to be the top framework, I feel that there needs
to be docs not just about the APIs but also about how to use it in a real
project.
P.S: In the past, while commenting partially negatively about something, a
person had taken huge efforts to crawl back on my HN/reddit comment history
and calling out the names, I am intentionally leaving the name out of the
comment; This is a general thing across all projects, not just the one I am
complaining about.
------
itamarst
Some do - see [https://openhatch.org/](https://openhatch.org/)
------
meric
How would I make this project more friendly to newcomers?
[http://github.com/meric/l2l](http://github.com/meric/l2l) Is it a matter of
documentation?
~~~
thewhitetulip
One should be able to read the docs and understand things rather than have to
google every other thing.
The contributors need to be actively helpful on the chat list etc
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UI / UX Design Interviews – Luca Burgio - frankiefreesbie
https://medium.com/ux-design-interviews/3a4d85289cc3
======
frankiefreesbie
Frank : The “design” is an important part of our analogic life. What is the
role of the designer in our digital life?
Luca : I think now design has a central role in our digital life and not only
there. Look around you, design has a key role in every product you see now in
our society.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Users Abandon Forms with Select Menus - antimid
http://uxmovement.com/forms/why-users-abandon-forms-with-select-menus/
======
kileywm
The article suggests radio buttons instead of most select menus.
I can appreciate the ease with which one can skim radio buttons vs select
options; however, once there are more than a few options, the sprawl of radio
buttons can be a little ridiculous.
The screen space required to display 50 states via radio buttons vs select
menu is tremendous. At that point, I suspect it would be difficult to
determine where the list of radio options end and the next form field begins.
~~~
navait
Zip code is usually a better way if it's relevant - you can fill in the
state/town automatically.
Obviously, there are situations where that would not apply.
~~~
eric_the_read
Even with ZIP codes, they don't always map to a single state.
[http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/167333](http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/167333)
lists 13 zip codes that map to multiple states, never mind cities.
------
EdiX
More users start forms than finish them
Imagine if the opposite happened!
~~~
coldtea
What's so special about the opposite? It can easily be achieved.
10 users start 10 forms each, but leave them incomplete.
100 other users then finish one each of those forms.
So you have 10 users starting 100 forms and 100 users finishing said 100
forms, thus "more users finishing forms than users starting them".
~~~
mwfunk
Well, call me crazy, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and postulate that
in the context of this discussion, the people finishing the forms are presumed
to be the same people who started them. You could probably also find loopholes
if you take into account things like time travel paradoxes but I'm not sure if
it really adds anything. :)
~~~
coldtea
Yeah, mostly tongue in cheek response.
------
CamperBob2
One common reason is if your form contains multiple
select menus. Research shows that forms with select
menus often get abandoned. This is because they take
more time and effort to complete.
No, actually, in my case at least, it's because they often don't include the
option that applies to my situation. When that happens (and there's no 'Other'
selection option) I'll either pick something at random, or abandon the form.
------
molecule
This strikes me as somewhat of a mish-mash:
\- It predominantly addresses the lowest-common-denominator subset of users:
beginning / un-savvy users who are using a site / its forms for the first
time, but the article attempts to make a point by referencing behaviors of
familiar, advanced users: navigating a form's fields using the keyboard: _Most
forms begin with text fields where users type in their input. But when a
select menu appears, they have to move their hands from keyboard to mouse to
select an option. This interrupts their typing flow and slows them down._
\- Discourages the use of select menus because they are 'hard to read' and
require 'dexterous mouse maneuvering', but both of these can be mitigated via
CSS.
The article has good points and has some good recommendations and is useful
for its target use case, but the absolutist prescription, 'The Only Time to
Use a Select Menu', seems to only address a specific case: using a form on an
unfamiliar site for the first time, which would be fine for the article if
were stated as such. However, there are many times when a select menu is
appropriate: familiar users who use a site multiple times, when available
space and / or menu population precludes the use of radio buttons, etc.
------
ramanathanrv
The article is postulating only a theory. We have seen the opposite true in
credit card forms where users have to input card expiry date. No matter what
sort of formatting we did, users always typed expiry wrong and our JS would
point it out. We finally had to abandon input text boxes in favor of select
boxes for card expiry month & year. We measured the eventual success rate and
that turned out to be higher as well.
My guess is that since the scope is so narrow (1 out of 12 choices for month)
and selection is very obvious, perhaps people made lesser mistakes here.
Select boxes are more effective in mobiles as typing takes more effort than
tapping.
~~~
blacksmith_tb
This is something that is badly implemented on many, many checkout forms,
partly due to using selects/dropdowns (since they conceal how the choices are
formatted), but mainly because an amazing number of sites seem to think it's
reasonable to offer only January, February, March instead of the 01, 02, 03
that actually appear on all credit cards. This not only stops you from
focusing that element and typing to choose it, but opens up the possibility
the user will choose July for 06, for example.
------
mschuster91
There's another solution: cascaded dropdowns.
One common, nasty example is a list of countries in online shops. Many at
least either pre-fill based on IP geolocation or stick the most common target
countries at the top, but there are also some sites that sort alphabetically,
or worse, group by continent and then sort.
This can be solved by having only one dropdown visible with the continent;
once this is selected, a dropdown with the country appears below, and
optionally a third dropdown for the county/state (e.g. USA, optionally in
Germany but no one requires the state in Germany anyway).
Downside of this approach, though, is that browsers cannot auto-fill.
On a sidenote, I remember that you can "annotate" input HTML elements to ease
auto-fill (besides the obvious type=tel/fax/email). Can anyone please give me
a hint? I seem to be too stupid to find the guide for this again :(
~~~
detaro
I find the multi-dropdown pattern even more annoying. Yes, the individual
choices are smaller, but then I have to click/tab-select the next drop-down
multiple times, wait for fold-out animation, understand what the options are,
repeat, and there often are strange bugs, e.g. if you try to fix an error.
Non-dropdown selects next to each other are better for this pattern IMHO, but
take space.
Searchable dropdowns/autocompleting text fields really should be part of the
HTML standard...
------
agateau
I disagree with the article for two reasons:
1\. Many computer-illiterate users always click to switch from one input to
another, so clicking on a select does not make them much slower
2\. Many users are not aware that the text part of a radio button is actually
clickable and will loose time precisely aiming at the round circle to select
it. And they are unfortunately often right to aim at the circle because of the
many loosely design pages which do not make the text part of a radio button
clickable.
~~~
fibbery
I think that's why they were suggesting to make it a button with a radio
button inside it(?), but that seems kind of wacky to me
------
asimuvPR
Devils advocate here: use select menus to reduce the amount of support tickers
from users. The html form version of the automated telephone menu.
~~~
rubidium
I've seen this before in IT tech support. Invariably there's some drop down
where none of the selections apply to my issue, but it's required to pick one.
I always pick the most dire issue.
------
girzel
Select menus are bad, but multiple select menus are a new level of anti-user
hostility. With single select at least you can use the keyboard; with multiple
select you're in for keyboard-plus-mouse-plus-squinting pain, and a real
possibility of screwing it up and having to start again.
I run a site where user input often takes the form of long select menus. I'm
typically dead against javascript "helpers", but this is a use case that just
screams for ajax and dynamic field munging. I still haven't gotten around to
doing it, though...
------
kazinator
> _But when a select menu appears, they have to move their hands from keyboard
> to mouse to select an option. This interrupts their typing flow and slows
> them down._
Simply not true. They do not _have_ to; they just don't know that when the
keyboard focus is on the list or combo box, they can go through the selections
using the arrow keys.
But even for those who know the keyboard shortcuts, long lists are annoying,
like long lists of countries (most of which will never produce a paying
customer for that site), or lists of of years starting from 1900.
~~~
CM30
To be honest, that reminds me.
Why do sites use drop down menus for years like that?
I mean, in new browsers (or older ones with Javascript) you can add perfectly
good calendars for things like date of birth, booking date, etc. In other
ones, you can just let them type in the value in some restricted format. Who
honestly cares if someone claims to be 150 years old?
~~~
kazinator
Moreover, if you want to be able to filter out bogus entries, you have to let
users _enter_ bogus info. If you put in too many constraints, you hamstring
your ability to tell bogus from good. For instance if you reject 555-NNNN
phone numbers because 555 is fake, the determined user will enter a more
convincing fake phone number.
------
StillBored
Uh, apparently the author didn't notice that on a couple platforms, you can
generally type into a select box and it will act sorta like an autocomplete. I
do this all the time for US state select boxes, I tab into them and press 'T',
'T' which generally gives me 'TX' which follows 'TN'.
Select boxes are for long exclusive lists. I would like to see all the US
states in a radio grouping... Not..
~~~
wccrawford
The author, and a lot of computer users. My parents would have no idea that
that kind of thing could work. Even if they were told, they would likely
forget because they do it so seldom.
~~~
StillBored
Well, computer users aren't the problem its all the UX "experts" that have
never read a HID document for any major platform (especially desktop ones).
I don't care if grandma once a week has to reach for the mouse to fill in an
select box. What I care about are the applications/sites that break any number
of imput devices (particularly keyboard, but frequently desktop touch, or pen
based) because they think they know better and decide to invent some new
paradigm without understanding the existing ones. This is part of my gripe
with much of the last 10 years of windows, which broke a lot functional
paradigms without replacing them with an alternative. Or they 1/2 broke
something.
Take the right click on the task bar to open an applications system menu which
worked from windows 95->vista. That operation now gives one the nearly useless
option to pin the application. Now when a window is offscreen and I need to
move it onscreen, and the app developer broke the alt-space keyboard
combination you have to know that MS changed (and didn't really document it
anywhere) the behavior too the very mac like, shift click. Pretty much the
only place in windows that the mouse buttons have keyboard modifiers. Its like
the guy who wrote it couldn't figure out how to add a "pin to taskbar" option
to the system menu.
------
protomyth
The biggest complain I see from users is the Mobile Picker part of the
argument. It does make like a pain when you cannot read the options in their
entirety. An improved picker would be better. I am not really convinced of the
other arguments.
Also, putting items in the menu is some random order is not real helpful.
------
some_guy1234
Uhh, how about some forms ask for too much information, or are too long!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Automate OS Image Build Pipelines with EC2 Image Builder - Trisell
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/automate-os-image-build-pipelines-with-ec2-image-builder/
======
alexellisuk
Does this remove the need for packer?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
'Sonic Attack' Symptoms Reportedly Spreading to US Diplomats Around the World - mikece
https://gizmodo.com/bizarre-sonic-attack-symptoms-reportedly-spreading-to-u-1827132459
======
fithisux
Mass hysteria?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cost of Employer-Provided Health Insurance Rises Toward $19k a Year - myroon5
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/cost-of-employer-provided-health-insurance-rises-toward-19-000-a-year-1505838600
======
costcopizza
I don't think employers should even offer health insurance.
Leave it to the consumer to buy just like all other insurance. In fact the
increase in wages could be used to fund a basic preventative care plan (read
not full on single payer) for all Americans.
~~~
fragsworth
But as an employer in the U.S., you get to write off medical insurance as an
expense that isn't counted as income for the employee. It's entirely tax free,
and a rational employee will take it into account as part of their
compensation package.
If you don't want employers to give it to employees, then we should fix the
tax situation.
~~~
dangero
You nailed it. When I started my own consulting business I just about fell out
of my chair when my accountant said I couldn’t write off my health coverage. I
pay about $19K a year and that’s after taxes so more like $25K+.
~~~
zaroth
Read this [1], then, consider firing your accountant and filing an amended
return.
[1] -
[https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch06.html#en_US_2016_p...](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p535/ch06.html#en_US_2016_publink1000208843)
~~~
dangero
S-Corp greater than 2% ownership. This means I can sort of write it off, but
only after the corporation providing the money through payroll which means
paying tax on it upfront. Doing it that way could end up costing me money
because payroll taxes are higher than corporate dividends.
In general I think the point is, why can corporations just straight write off
premiums for their employees when self-employed types have all these special
rules to follow vs just a standard deduction?
~~~
didgeoridoo
If you're an officer in an S-Corp, you're required to pay yourself a "market
rate" salary for payroll tax purposes, and cannot legally use the salary/draw
distinction as a tax avoidance strategy. If you're not paying yourself a
salary, the IRS gets very annoyed.
If you're a sole proprietor, the tax impact should be equivalent whether you
choose to take draws or salary:
> Sole proprietors and members of partnerships are free to pay themselves — or
> otherwise take the profits out of their businesses — whenever they’d like.
> Payroll withholdings do not apply, but each individual essentially pays the
> equivalent on his or her reported income at tax time.
[https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/payroll/salary-or-draw-
how-t...](https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/payroll/salary-or-draw-how-to-pay-
yourself-as-business-owner/)
~~~
dangero
Paying the health insurance through payroll would be in addition to the fair
and reasonable salary. Say I set a fair and reasonable salary of $65,000, then
I want the S-Corp to cover my health insurance $20,000 a year then I need to
set payroll to $85,000.
Yes, I could continue to pay myself just $65,000, but the IRS could come
knocking and say, "you said you paid for health insurance through S-Corp
payroll, so that means you only gave yourself a $45,000 salary which is not
fair and reasonable.
------
patrickg_zill
My view: we need price transparency.
Find out a medical code, call 3 different hospitals in your area and try to
nail them down on a price for that billing code - the variance will be large;
but given they should all have similar price structures and pay wages that are
roughly the same, they shouldn't vary by much more than 5% ...
~~~
cptskippy
Price transparency doesn't really help when you can't factor in all the
potential costs and unknowns. It certainly is of no use when there's a life
threatening emergency.
A birth might be a flat $4000 but what happens if the mother has high blood
pressure and needs to be on a magnesium drip? Or the baby is in distress and
there's an emergency caesarean? Are you going to call around for a better
rate?
The problem with our medical system is insurance. Insurance companies are
always playing games to avoid paying bills and they force medical providers to
play games to get paid. Vast amounts of money are wasted in billing and claims
departments trying to process or deny claims.
It's gotten to the point where an insurer can fine the insured for submitting
a claim with a code that requires prior authorization after seeking care from
a healthcare provider. I'm not sure how pricey transparency would help with
that.
~~~
leifaffles
This is a particularly naive understanding of markets.
To restate your argument: there are sometimes unpredictable health care events
that arise for which one cannot negotiate, bargain, and price compare in
advance. Therefore, price transparency doesn't work.
The problem is you wouldn't make this argument about any other sort of good
(for example, an emergency or home car repair) because you know exactly how
markets function in those cases.
The answer is: when there's price transparency, and consumers are incentivized
to shop around and demand lower prices, prices come down. This benefits not
only yourself, but also consumers who don't want to (or are unable to) perform
this role themselves.
This is why you pay cheap prices at the grocery store even if you don't
haggle, clip coupons, and so on. This is why "emergency" home and car repair
(while it may cost more) does not cost an order of magnitude more than "non-
emergency" home or car repair.
~~~
speedplane
Some reasons why healthcare markets are not nearly as efficient as other well-
functioning markets (like car insurance):
\- Prices are extremely inelastic: You'll pay whatever you have to not die.
\- Consumers have far less control over what they purchase: they are told to
purchase things by doctors, who may have different incentives.
\- Healthcare isn't a "commodity" that can be easily swapped out. Prescription
drugs may be commodities, but doctors are not. People won't easily swap
doctors, making the entire system less efficient.
\- There is no "perfect information", in economics speak: people know very
little about what the quality of care they are receiving.
\- It's extremely expensive to bring healthcare "products" to market (e.g.,
new drugs, hospitals, etc.). Like building a nuclear plant, very high capital
costs reduce the number of players that can enter.
------
watertom
The only solution is for employers to stop offering healthcare. Give the
equivalent in salary to employees and let the employee figure it out. When
this starts to en masses healthcare will get figured really quickly, i.e.
single payer
The Fortune 1,000 won’t do this because they can control employees, wages and
competition. Getting a small company off the ground is so much harder because
only recent grads are willing to take a job without healthcare. I’ve turned
down a dozen companies because of healthcare issues.
I also find it strange that we discuss guaranteed income as a viable solution
but not guaranteed healthcare.
~~~
pfranz
I know lobbyists are pushing their agenda, but why is nobody talking about the
economic freedom of untethering employment to heathcare? So many people are
tied to less than ideal jobs or prevented from starting their own business
because of insurance. You also constantly hear about companies hiring
contractors or cutting hours just under the margin where they owe benefits.
It's funny that I often hear about how expensive COBRA is and how it's not a
good deal. That's what your employer is paying for your insurance. (in an
ideal world) that is would-be compensation of your's.
I know the actual cost of healthcare isn't pretty, but it does no one favors
by hiding it and tying it to your employer with weird tax incentives.
------
l8again
Bernie Sanders "Medicare for All" plan makes all the sense in the world.
Expand medicare for everyone. Pay the government instead of insurance premium.
Medical costs go down. Doctors/hospitals might earn less, but will have
guaranteed payments. Medicare, a government program, is considered the gold
standard of healthcare, so this isn't the government's first rodeo.
~~~
slickdifferent
If you think government run healthcare is the solution you should talk to any
military member or veteran; people are literally killing themselves in VA
parking lots because the care is so bad.
~~~
pgodzin
Isn't a big part of it the huge wait times because VA hospitals are
overburdened by the number of vets? If they were covered by any hospital in
their area rather than specific VA hospitals, presumably the care would be a
lot better.
~~~
schmidty
And who controls for the number of vets and the number of VA hospitals? The
government.
Do you think they would do better in a bigger version of this for the whole
country?
------
unabridged
Health insurance companies are running out of time and they know it, this is
their last ditch effort to get as much money as possible. There is no point to
lower prices, why gain market share if there is no "later" when you can
extract more profit? Why enter the health insurance market if you are not sure
how long it will last?
~~~
refurb
Huh? You think it's the insurance companies who are making the profit? You do
realize that ACA caps their margins, right?
~~~
projectileboy
But only on policies issued through ACA marketplaces, no? Most health
insurance in the US comes through employers.
------
vadym909
About time for someone to start offering an insurance plan where all
consultation is via facetime/video chat and expensive non-critical operations
are done in Mexico or a ship parked in Int'l waters close to major cities on
either coast. Only get an emergency room insurance for the US!
~~~
wavefunction
That or provide universal health care not tied to employment.
Given my experiences with in-person doctors I think video-chatting with one
would be about the most idiotic waste of my time possible.
~~~
timsayshey
Where I'm from 90% of what a general practitioner does is give out
antibiotics. I hate the over prescription of antibiotics but they could easily
prescribe that over video chat. This would keep sick people at home and allow
doctors to focus on people that actual need to come in to be physically
examined.
------
uptown
This page has some good data on 2018 rate increases, provider changes, mandate
enforcement, etc.
[http://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/an-early-
look-a...](http://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/an-early-look-
at-2018-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-on-aca-exchanges/)
------
frgtpsswrdlame
Is there a good breakdown of where those dollars go?
~~~
tyingq
You mean once it goes from the employer to the insurer?
Here's an article on Blue Cross that covers profits, claims, etc:
[http://www.wral.com/blue-cross-profits-soar-as-losses-on-
aca...](http://www.wral.com/blue-cross-profits-soar-as-losses-on-aca-policies-
fall/16559789/)
------
myroon5
Paywall bypass link:
[https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/amp/artic...](https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/cost-
of-employer-provided-health-insurance-rises-toward-19-000-a-year-1505838600)
~~~
jaytaylor
Not sure why you've been downvoted, doesn't seem very nice considering most of
us are stuck behind the paywall for this article.
Thanks.
------
md2be
There are simple answers Health Insurance affordability in the US. Rationing.
No NOT via a single payer system where some all-knowing official decides who
does and does not get care. Rather, the rationing is done by the buyer. For
example, Buyer one could decide to only buy a policy which covers only generic
drugs, which would exclude all patented drugs (newer and even superior), Buyer
2 could decide to buy a policy which covers generic drugs and patented drugs
in one or more specialties (e.g., cardiac). The theme is let the buyer decide,
not everyone wants to live the last 10 years of their life struggling to
regain their youth.
~~~
comicjk
Are there examples of such a system working anywhere? It sounds plausible, but
the fact that it didn't arise pre-Obamacare gives me pause. It seems like the
demand for it might not be prevalent enough, or the savings too small.
I'm interested in new models, but I'm tired of the US thinking it has to be
special with its healthcare system and wasting a trillion dollars a year.
------
wahern
With Kaiser Permanente Northern California, for a family of 4 $18k buys you a
gold plan with $0 deductible, and $20k buys a platinum plan. This is on the
open market. I just priced it on their website. Most plans are substantially
cheaper.
HMOs are really the way to go, but unfortunately Americans stupidly prefer to
pay a huge premium for more choice (or at least one very specific dimension of
choice). A family member who is a long-time partner at a law firm forced her
firm to purchase a plan that allowed her to keep her doctor of 20+ years. This
happened during the nationwide market reconfiguration as the mandates rolled
out and insurers aggressively re-architected their plans and provider
networks. Now she rants and raves about how Obamacare raised the costs of
healthcare, and her partners resent her for forcing the huge premiums on
everybody. She's totally unwilling to consider that the problem was entirely
of her own making; that her firm could be paying a fraction of their current
costs for the same quality of care, just not including that one specific
doctor.
HMOs aren't very common, and in many regions they seem to suck. Fortunately,
Northern California Kaiser is one of the best hospital systems in the nation.
If you live in the Bay Area I highly recommend it. Kaiser aggressively pursues
cost-cutting measures and efficient service delivery procedures. Appointments
go through a phone bank of nurses with a rotating staff doctor, so minor
illnesses like a cold or flu don't require wasting your primary physician's
time. For more serious but still common injuries like a broken wrist you're
directed to, e.g., their sport injury unit clinic; again saving both the ER
and the primary physician's time. Kaiser runs their own labs, and the volume
of people their labs efficiently handle is incredible. All the doctors are
employees (as opposed to independent, affiliated providers like in many for-
profit hospitals), and Kaiser doctors very consistently apply uniform policies
on best practices, prescriptions, etc. I think they're large enough that they
run their own studies; at least that's the sense I get when I've inquired
about why they choose X instead of Y.
All of this comes across to some people as impersonal, but personally I think
it's amazing. I've never had an interaction (nor have any of my family
members, AFAIK) that left me feeling cheated for attention, even though
there's always the sense that everybody--doctors, nurses, staff--is working to
keep things moving along at a brisk pace. The way they've balanced conflicting
requirements is really laudable. After being with Kaiser for many years, other
hospital systems seem downright chaotic.
------
NTDF9
It's cheaper to fly to India, stay in an upscale hotel, meet personable
doctors, get treatment, relax and come back.
Not saying this is practical for everything but people really should start
considering alternate countries for healthcare.
The US is a mess.
------
justforFranz
Hey, doctors have a lot of shitty real estate investments they need to cover.
------
ryanmarsh
Currently spending $18,382.32/yr
Math checks out.
~~~
tertius
Bonkers.
If you're a christian you could lower that considerably. Medishare.
------
transverse
More paywalled crap. Don't you have a better link?
------
unit91
What?! Surely this can't be possible. We already have an _Affordable_ Care
Act...
~~~
nasredin
_Knock on wood_
------
sbenitoj
It genuinely blows my mind that some of the top comments are pro-socialized
medicine.
This is a forum populated primarily by hackers and people interested in
starting or working at start-ups -- should we also have a single payer of all
hackers? The notion is laughable, but it's put forth seriously when it comes
to medical care. Like all problems of costs being "too high" this one is
caused by artificially restricted supply (govt regulation of medical system)
and skyrocketing demand (much of which is driven by the abysmal nutrition
advice the US govt has doled out over the past 50 years which has only made
2/3 of the country obese and overweight).
Control economies do not work, how much more evidence do we need before people
stop saying "this time is different, we just need the RIGHT people this time"?
~~~
comicjk
I'm not in favor of single payer healthcare, but to say there's no evidence
that it works is inaccurate. Healthcare in Canada provides the same health
outcomes as ours for half the price. If that doesn't interest you because they
do it with the wrong philosophy, you're an ideologue. In fact, the evidence
that your proposed changes would give a 50% reduction in cost seems a lot
slimmer than the case for straight-up single payer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What kind of developer do I need? - xxshadmakuxx
Hello, I'm looking do develop what I would believe to be a web-based app. I do not possess the technical skills to create it myself so I'm kind of in the dark as to where to start and what kind of developer I'd even need. The Idea itself is not particularly new or groundbreaking, but I'd like to improve on what's out there. I'm looking to create a site that lets users input data, choose a "theme" or template, and create beautiful infographics based on the data inputted. The user could then further customize colors and logos and finally, give them the image format to download. Users would have the ability to store logos on the site for easy access to customization of future graphics even set up profiles with color preferences....what kind of developer would I need to accomplish this? How could I vet them and make sure they know their stuff? and what would it possibly cost to create something like this? Thank you for your help and experience.
======
jayhuang
I'm mostly going to comment on the latter part of your question about vetting
a developer for this project.
As you mentioned you don't have the technical skills to create this project
yourself, it would be quite difficult to be able to vet someone more reliably
than random chance.
Obviously it would make sense for you to ask to see any related projects
they've made, but I'd recommend having a technical friend help out with the
vetting. Aside from past projects and their contribution to these projects,
perhaps ask for a high level breakdown of how they would tackle this project.
Have your technical friend to overlook this breakdown should weed out people
who'd have little chance of delivering.
Hopefully others can chime in here, good luck!
------
willwong
If you have the money for it, I would suggest going with a service like
ziptask or gun.io. They will do all the technical heavy lifting for you
(figuring out requirements, vetting / hiring, project management, testing).
You will likely spend around $15k-30k (very rough estimate) and have your app
within 3-6 months. Then you will pay a couple hundred a month in
server/bandwidth costs to keep the thing running.
Otherwise, you are looking for a "full-stack web developer". Though I would
really suggest going with an agency for a project like this. Hiring and
managing freelancers is hard.
------
sharemywin
If you do use a freelancer make sure you set up milestones and have it
delivered and hosted and you get source code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JavaScript with apples: var vs. let vs. const - ggregoire
https://twitter.com/kosamari/status/806941856777011200
======
jayajay
I just stopped using `var` entirely, and now I almost exclusively use `const`
everywhere unless I'm dealing with flags or counters in which case I use
`let`.
~~~
draw_down
Yep, there is no (good) reason to use var anymore.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best way to block an EC2-hosted scraper? - brandnewlow
Hey, HN,<p>Windy Citizen gets slooooow about once every hour and according to our logs, around this same time, someone or something is making a ton of requests to our RSS feeds, grabbing hundreds of them at once.<p>From what I can tell, the thing grabbing this stuff is hosted on Amazon EC2. I've tried blocking the IP address before but it seems to refresh and then the problem comes back. How do I shut this idiot down?<p>The feed URLs being grabbed are all have the following URL format: /neighborhood/<i></i><i>/feed<p>These are old URLs from a prior schema we had. They're not even valid anymore. I think this is part of the problem. Basically this scraper is causing a ton of 404s every 30 minutes.<p>Is there a way to just block out anything trying to hit URLs that match a regex for that URL structure? Something else?<p>Update: I've added this to my nginx.conf file:<p>location ~</i> /neighborhoods/[-\w]+/feed/?$ {
deny all;
}<p>And it appears to be working. It's successfully sending a 403 when people request those URLs.<p>Now, anyone have suggestions for fun things I can redirect the scraper to?
======
jrockway
I use an iptables rule like:
# connection limit for HTTP
-A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --syn --dport www -m connlimit ! --connlimit-above 128 --connlimit-mask 24 -j ACCEPT
This basically means, "only accept requests to port 80 if the /24 has fewer
than 128 open connections". It is to kill things like Slowloris, but you can
bring the limit down and kill scrapers. You can also block based on connection
rate:
-N RATE_CHECK
-A INPUT -p tcp -m multiport --dports www -m state --state NEW -j RATE_CHECK
-A RATE_CHECK -m recent --set --name RATE
-A RATE_CHECK -m recent --update --seconds 60 --hitcount 4 --name RATE -j REJECT
-A RATE_CHECK -p tcp -m multiport --dports www -j ACCEPT
This will deny any connection that is the 5th connection or higher in a single
minute. I use this rule for ssh and smtp, but some tweaking might be adequate
for a web server.
(Note: all these rules are for default deny with a rule like "-A INPUT -m
state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT" to ignore established states. If
your firewall setup is different, then the rules will need to be modified.)
There is also a program called fail2ban that will read logs and apply
temporary bans based on what the logs say.
My solution to this problem is to just cache agressively. Hundreds of requests
per second is nothing for Varnish.
~~~
ehutch79
be careful with things like this, it could get you locked out of your server
very quick.
denyhosts and fail2ban are better ideas for dropping bad actors on the net.
~~~
jrockway
It's not a problem; the rules only apply to eth0, but I connect over tun0.
And, it's time-limited to 60 seconds either way. And, I have web console
access.
So this is not something I worry about. ssh password crackers and script
kiddies taking down my website are a little more worrisome.
------
tptacek
Do you have a document on your site establishing that this idiot is violating
your acceptable use policy? Then you should report them to Amazon's abuse
group:
[http://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/co...](http://aws-
portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/contactus/AWSAbuse)
You can use technical countermeasures to defend your site, but you'd be doing
the rest of the Internet a favor to get them knocked off Amazon.
~~~
brandnewlow
We do. I'll send that over to them. Great idea!
~~~
CWuestefeld
Have you heard back from Amazon? We've got a similar incident going on, which
I reported last Friday (3 business days ago), but haven't yet seen any
acknowledgment from them.
------
joshu
Feed them rss containing uniquely generated strings. Then google for the
unique strings.
Also, block generic user-agents on rss feeds. Most everyone was able to change
theirs for delicious, and we did an insane amount of rss traffic.
~~~
a5seo
I found this to work very well.
Only thing is you need to append keys randomly, say one out of 5 requests, in
different locations if possible. And you should hand out 20 or so different
unique strings.
Then use google alerts to find them republishing your stuff an send DMCA
takedown notices with Google (don't send them a c&d first so you have the
element of surprise and maximum chance of causing real pain). If they don't
take care of the DMCA issue with Google, Google will remove their pages from
the index. They won't know why but their site will slowly die.
~~~
joshu
google alerts = clever.
the other thing to do is include some some encoding of the served-to IP
address (maybe md5 of the first and last half of the IP?)
~~~
ay
To generate the unique string, do SHA1(content + TheirIP + unique secret). The
chance of collision is practically zero. Also, you can then conclusively prove
that it was _you_ who created this unique string - which may come in handy.
(Talking about SHA1 because I used it myself in a lighter version - just a
hash of my name - to check how the search engines work with the content of my
little blog).
~~~
a5seo
I like it, but you need to do this in a way that you append a
known/deterministic string so you can monitor THAT one in Google Alerts.
I don't care whether the unique strings collide (although I love the idea of
being able to tie the IP address of the crawler to the page on which the
content was published for maximum evidence collection), I just want Google
Alerts to find them reliably AND I don't want the spammer to catch on and be
able to easily remove the unique strings before I catch him.
The only way for him to find my little landmines (to strip them) would be to
read through every piece of content he scraped from me.
~~~
ay
By the way - thinking of all this - why would not you turn this scraper into a
free advertisement for you ? If you can detect when it crawls your site, just
insert randomly the backlinks to your site into the content you give out to
them.
This way you will _want_ that they steal more from you :-)
(how to put these backlinks in a way that would be difficult to remove - is
another story. But if you use other links, e.g. tinyurl, in your material -
then you could probably use that :-) Still fairly simple to remove but would
require more work from them.)
------
subway
Interestingly I don't see any mention of your robots.txt, or if the scraper
identified themselves in the UA string. If the person or organization running
the scraper is legit, they would probably like to know their software is
misbehaving, so that they can fix the issue. Did you attempt to contact them
before launching into a cat and mouse game?
~~~
petercooper
Yeah, definitely try contacting them first. Even if their software is being
idiotic, they might be a fellow startup or someone who's a bit technically dim
but has reasonable intentions. Of course, if you get the brush off, then you
have carte blanche for raising hell ;-)
------
bretpiatt
You can use varnish to cache all of these requests and just never expire them.
Make the page as small as possible. It'll make the overhead of serving the
requests as low as possible.
<http://www.varnish-cache.org/>
~~~
buro9
You can also use Varnish ACLs to block the EC2 IP addresses.
And if they have a really obvious user-agent you could block that using
Varnish: [http://omninoggin.com/web-development/block-unwanted-spam-
bo...](http://omninoggin.com/web-development/block-unwanted-spam-bots-using-
varnish-vcl/)
And if you're not afraid of using Varnish's VCL InlineC stuff, then you could
add rate limiting to Varnish: [http://drcarter.info/2010/04/how-fighting-
against-scraping-u...](http://drcarter.info/2010/04/how-fighting-against-
scraping-using-varnish-vcl-inline-c-memcached/)
Basically... Varnish has become my Swiss army tool for rejecting crap traffic
(and caching good traffic obviously).
------
joewest
Amazon previously kept a semi-official list of all netblocks for EC2 in their
forum. They've recently moved to posting updates as official announcements,
here is the latest:
<https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=877>
It's interesting to see the size of their deployments measured in usable IP
space.
------
kleinmatic
If something like this can slow your servers down, you're probably going to be
in serious trouble when you get an inbound link from a heavily trafficked
site. I'd recommend you put a caching proxy like Varnish in front of your web
server process.
Varnish serves 404s quickly and happily, and will keep the storm from even
reaching your apaches. You won't even notice it when the scrapers come in.
------
bbuffone
You can simply contact Amazon AWS and report them. Having run yottaa.com live
for the last 6 months our monitoring nodes have been reported and if they are
causing problems we fix them.
We are try to provide valuable service to people and would want to know that
we are causing problems. We have implemented the ability to work with
robots.txt files.
If the nodes are not from a legitimate service then they will be shutdown.
------
rphlx
The proper way to fix this is to add a per-IP rate limiter to the entire site.
Most other fixes are just a cat-n-mouse game.
------
getsat
If you're feeling nefarious, 301 their requests to a static, empty RSS feed.
If you can figure out who's actually running it (does the user agent say?),
simply sending them an email and asking them to throttle their script may be
the simplest solution.
~~~
brandnewlow
Agent doesn't say unfortunately.
~~~
joewest
You should report the behavior to Amazon:
[http://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/co...](http://aws-
portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/html-forms-controller/contactus/AWSAbuse)
In my experience they take it seriously and deal with it promptly.
------
mike-cardwell
Depends on the technology you're using to serve the rss feeds. I'd consider
writing something to tail my access logs and automatically update firewall
rules when a host generates a certain number of 404's in a certain period of
time.
~~~
mooism2
It shouldn't be too difficult to write a fail2ban rule to do this.
------
cheald
mod_rewrite does exactly what you want here. Rewrite urls matching that
pattern to a static file, so the request returns quickly and has very little
overhead.
------
eli
I assume you're running Apache? Have you taken a look at ModSecurity?
I found it a little tricky to set up (the core rules it ships with by default
are way too aggressive, IMHO), but it does exactly what you're asking: block
requests by regex.
~~~
brandnewlow
We're on a hybrid nginx/apache setup.
I just added some lines to my nginx.conf though that appear to be working
based on tips from here and elsewhere:
location ~* /neighborhoods/[-\w]+/feed/?$ { deny all; }
------
neworbit
this is why I love HN, all the suggestions have been actually constructive and
nobody is suggesting 4channy nonsense
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: This guy copied my site / idea. What should i do? - adamqureshi
I have a start up i launched a year ago. Its making me some side income. https://onlyusedtesla.com/<p>Then a customer of mine sent me this:
https://usedtesla.io/<p>Anyone have any advice on what todo? Im not really that worried and this is the 2nd time it happ. But like to hire a lawyer and everything i can't afford it. Any help? Thank you.
======
steve_taylor
Unless you can point to site data being copied across, it’s just competition.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Impedance Mismatch - johns
http://www.unfactor.com/blogengine.net/post/2008/05/Impedance-Mismatch.aspx
======
michael_dorfman
A nice piece. I'm not sure why some people find the notion that the object
model is usually different from the database model so difficult to understand
or accept. I've seen more than one project tie itself in knots trying to write
application code directly off the database model of the domain, rather than
creating an appropriate object model.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple offers Safari users safer browsing with USB security key support - tuiopopiutoiu
https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/06/apple-safari-usb-security-key-support/
======
ERD0L
Safari is so underrated, if only FF could be better on Mac
~~~
Synaesthesia
I love Safari, for it’s syncing with my phone and password features, as well
as its performance.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How did you hack your home? - selmat
Do you have any DIY hacks you have made in your home?<p>Any usefull or just interesting project with rpy, arduino, custom atmel and other diy platform count.
======
ocdtrekkie
Oddly, my favorite is an LED strip in my bathroom. It's very subtly animated,
but the point is, it's red. Whenever I wake up at night, and need to go to the
bathroom, I turn it on instead of the overhead light so it doesn't hurt my
eyes. :)
Easily my dumbest thing by by far the most appreciated.
------
TDettmering
In the pre-Smartphone era (not really, but I didn't buy one back then), I
built a printer that would output a daily report every morning that I could
just take with me:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/sfg/albums/72157623026358605](https://www.flickr.com/photos/sfg/albums/72157623026358605)
I used an old POS printer from eBay and an Arduino with an Ethernet shield. It
was a fun thing, but was made obsolete by smartphones.
~~~
richerlariviere
I love your project. Bridging virtual and material component is so satisfying
:).
------
quickthrower2
I got a sheet of tarp* under the verandah to prevent water leaking through to
the garage.
Pulled off the door handles that were broken. Gone handleless - you have to
stick your hand under the gap at the bottom to open if it is too stuck.
Covered the couch in plastic liner to prevent spills.
Used a spare council collection bin as a compost heap.
*As in Tarpaulin, not a bailout. This one prevents a literal bailout.
------
Samon
I've built a few raspberry pi based home automation systems, from relays
switching my garden lights and irrigation, to 3D printed brackets and pulleys
to convert my manual curtain tracks to motorised ones, WiFi controlled power
sockets to switch lamps, and even a full aquarium control system managing the
lighting (colour temperature and brightness), filter and aeration, and heater.
I'm currently using NodeRED to build the logic and provide a web interface.
~~~
richerlariviere
The aquarium project is nice! Is your project open source?
------
wowca
Created an automated chicken coop door which opens/closes the door based on
sunlight.
It consists of:
1. Chicken coop
2. Old wiper motor to drive the door up/down (the door is suspended on fishing line)
3. Arduino Nano
4. Motor control shield
5. Light sensor
6. 2 mechanical switches for the door positions (stop the motor if switch is pressed)
7. Old car battery
8. 3 chinese 12V 15W solar panels
------
jxub
Divorced my wife. After that, my Arduino experiments feel pretty limited in
impact on my household.
~~~
quickthrower2
The title says "hack" not "lose"
~~~
jxub
She's a lawyer so I got a decent alimony tho
------
bryan11
Added waterproof liner under kitchen and bathroom sinks so water leaks don't
damage cabinets. Also added battery powered water leak alarms.
Got tired of carrying laundry downstairs, so I changed one bathroom cabinet
drawer into a laundry chute.
------
hemantv
Maybe not something I made explicitly. But here are few things 1\. A keyless
lock. 2\. Automatic garage door opener 3\. An occupancy sensor in my work with
timer of 20 minutes 4\. Google home for everything else.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Think the heatwave was bad? Climate already hitting key tipping points - pseudolus
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-heatwaves/think-the-heatwave-was-bad-climate-already-hitting-key-tipping-points-idUSKCN1UN065
======
mnm1
I really hope this can be done without the help and with the actual opposition
from countries like the US, Hungary, Poland, and the other fascist or pseudo
fascist countries opposing it. I highly doubt it though. I think what we need
to start thinking about is how to live in a world with a +3° average
temperature that can no longer be avoided. It's almost time to accept our fate
and try to figure out the next steps because we are not going to prevent this
catastrophe. Should be interesting times ahead. I don't think our children
will be too happy or forgiving of our generation. Hopefully they don't put us
oldies in concentration camps and exterminate us for what we did to them, but
if they did, I couldn't blame them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple suppliers aim to resume full production in China despite coronavirus fears - exposay
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-suppliers-aim-resume-full-production-china-february-coronavirus-fears-2020-2
======
tpmx
Electronic component suppliers (e.g Distrelec) started sending "we're on top
of this, promise"-type emails to customers already.
My slightly informed guess: this will have a first peak in march or so, and
then a second one in the late summer/autumn.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat - cammm
https://engineering.riotgames.com/news/riots-approach-anti-cheat
======
exgamedev
Back when I worked in games we would detect cheaters and then shadow ban.
Quarantine them by only matching them into games with other cheaters.
You may still have to ban them from certain elements of your game, like player
economies (auction house, etc). But the more legitimate their experience looks
the better.
The idea is that instead of fully banning them and triggering the next
iteration of the arms race, you trap and release them into a competitive arena
for cheaters. It's actually fun for them to compete with each other at who can
cheat the hardest and no one else gets hurt. We hooked them up with a
community rep. They found bugs and generally improved our security. Everyone
won.
There's no way to win with an adversarial approach to cheating IMO, not when
you let the client run on their machine
~~~
reificator
Sure. Until you're playing Dark Souls for the first time, you get summoned to
help someone with a boss, and then get invaded by someone with a 360 degree
one-shot kill spell that breaks all your weapons and armor, gives you an
egghead that you can't remove unless you know where to go, and gives you an
item that marks you as a cheater so you now get constantly invaded by
exclusively cheaters.
The item that marks you as a cheater might have been a drop in another
invasion, I don't remember. The point remains, once the cheaters realize you
have a separate cheaters' matchmaking system, they will weaponize that too.
~~~
dkersten
> The item that marks you as a cheater might have been a drop in another
> invasion, I don't remember.
I believe they can do it completely passively, so you’re kinda screwed if it
happens to you :( This is sadly the nature of trusting what clients send you:
a hacked client can send whatever it wants and the “anti cheat” in Dark Souls
sadly seems to simply just check if an item should be possible, meaning a
cheater can trick the game into punishing non-cheaters. Luckily this hasn’t
been a problem for me on console, but it certainly does suck on PC :(
~~~
reificator
And of course, if it didn't punish non-cheaters, then cheaters could simply
cheat the items in on one account, invade/summon another of their own
accounts, (or passworded summon in the remaster) and then give the new account
the items.
There's no winning against cheaters as long as you trust the client. (And it's
possible to do it on consoles too, just more rare as the tools are readily
available on PC.)
~~~
dkersten
> There's no winning against cheaters as long as you trust the client.
Indeed.
> And it’s possible to do it on consoles too
Sure, but the barrier to entry is higher, so its not done as often. I’ve never
_noticed_ someone who was obviously cheating (which doesn’t mean I’ve never
encountered any, but if I have, they’ve never been so severe as to do the
things mentioned here or for me to notice it)
------
Teknoman117
I have mixed feelings about anti-cheat, especially in the last few years. A
lot of them are getting rather intrusive. Take Player Unknown's Battlegrounds
for instance, which uses BattlEye. It actually injects a kernel mode driver
into Windows that spies on whatever else your system is doing and exfiltrates
unknown data in the name of "guaranteeing a fair game experience." I didn't
even realize that this is what it was doing until my system crashed one day
and the cause was some .sys file in PUBG.
It'll also randomly kick you from games for having various programs installed
or running. Programs such as VMware. You have to disable all VMware services
or PUBG will kick you randomly for using "unauthorized applications." God
forbid you have any VMs running, that might amount to a ban (seriously).
Worse still is that when you take your complaints to their social media, or in
anyway speak ill of it, you get hordes of fanboys saying that you shouldn't
install anything other than games on your PC or you're a dirty cheater. "Oh
you want to do things _other_ than gaming on your PC? You should buy another
PC then."
Don't even get me started about trying to run games in a virtual machine w/
GPU passthrough. The communities will tear you a new one telling you to do
things "normally" and by attempting to use anything other than the "normal"
setup makes you a cheater. Just google anything like "steam vac kvm" or
"battleye kvm" and you'll get hordes of people claiming they heard some guy
say virtualization is the future of game cheating therefore VMs are cheating
tools and should be banned.
Seriously, if I could get a refund for every game that uses BattlEye, I would
try.
/rant
~~~
xd
I've been out of gaming for some years but this reminds me of similar issues
with PunkBuster. I'd spend hours pulling my hair out trying to figure out why
I was being booted from games. The worst bit was, it didn't actually stop
cheaters.
~~~
AngryData
Oh god... I forgot punkbuster even existed, what an absolute pile of garbage.
So many hours wasted on dealing with that shit and reading redundant and
useless forum posts where everyone just copy pasted the same shit over and
over.
------
withinrafael
So I'm not seeing anything particularly novel here. In fact, I think most AAA
titles do most if not all of these things today. It really just boils down to
understanding your title's threat model and mitigating the threats.
I think the article missed an opportunity to talk about false positive rates,
the workflow for users to get unbanned due to false positives (usually a very
nasty process), performance, platform support (Windows, for example, has
encrypted app packaging [1], anti-cheat monitoring [2], and protected
processes [3] built in), and the privacy implications of uploading non-game-
related Windows driver and process data.
[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/packaging/creat...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/packaging/create-app-package-with-makeappx-tool)
[2,3] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/packaging/app-c...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/uwp/packaging/app-capability-declarations)
~~~
m-p-3
> usually a very nasty process
especially with how opaque the whole flagging is.
I understand why they do it and a game environment is not a democracy or a
court of law, but it's hard to defend yourself when you do not have access to
the evidences.
~~~
half-kh-hacker
Videogame cheat developer here (although, not for the game mentioned in the
article) -- The mentality of game companies is if the 'evidence' of the anti-
cheat flag is made accessible to users, cheat devs will use the same evidence
to overcome the existing detections in place.
The oft-used 'arms race' analogy for this would be like sending blueprints of
your newly-fabricated weapons to the adversary.
~~~
SteveNuts
I've always been curious about this, do you get paid, and if so how?
~~~
behringer
People love cheating so much they pay for the tools to do so.
The fact is 99 out of 100 banned users were actually banned for good reason
and are lying about not cheating. Half of those will also dmit to cheating but
beg for forgiveness as if they aren't quite literally destroying the game and
everyone's enjoyment of it. That less than 1 percent that is truly innocent is
nearly impossible to service because of all the noise.
~~~
hermitdev
Cheating definitely sours a gaming community, as does falsely accusing people
of cheating. I left the original (circa early 2000s) Counter Strike community
after being routinely accused of cheating. I have never once cheated in a
online multiplayer game. But, some people just couldn't grasp that I was
really that (comparatively) good & quick of a shot. Also, I don't think they
realized that certain materials could be shot through with a powerful enough
weapon. I probably had a bit of a leg up on most people, too, as I had state
of the art hardware for the time (I had dual P4 Xeons, 3GB RDRAM & the best at
the time GeForce AGP card in 2002) and a single to low double digit ping for
most servers being on a university OC-3 line.
~~~
macintux
Your comment reminded me of a frustrating evening on bzflag.
Long ago I was using a custom Linux box with a slow GPU, and on one map no
matter how hard I tried (and no matter how many fellow players watched trying
to help me get the timing right) I simply couldn’t jump to the first level of
a building.
I’d never experienced a hardware limitation quite like that.
~~~
behringer
Haha neat. That was probably caused by the physics engine running slower than
needed. If you do a rough friction calculation based on the frame rate you
will end up with more friction at 20 fps vs 40 or 60.
------
crsv
This is a great technical breakdown of some modern high level approaches to
common cheats. I think this the most transparent approach (even though the
author admits leaving some detail out) to modern anti-cheat for massive
multiplayer games. Good on riot for having an open dialogue about this. I
don't think you'd ever see someone like Valve going a transparent route with
something like this. (Not making a judgement on that decision, just an
observation).
~~~
johnmg
Fair context: I make cheats/utilities this exact game being talked about in
this article, so perhaps my opinion on the subject is biased or even invalid.
I partially disagree about the transparency of this article, while they do
explain most of their approach to anti-cheat (and that is pretty cool for them
to do), they seem to leave out any mention of anything that could be
controversial.
It suppose that it does make sense to not mention the implementation details
of their anti-cheat, but I wish that they would be a little more transparent
about how/when/what they snoop around and send to their servers. The current
Mac game client for League Of Legends contains full debug symbols and it
doesn't have Packman (the packer described in this article), which makes it
quite easy to look through the symbols. Inside you can find all of the anti-
cheat-related network packets, in specific:
PKT_C2S_EnumDrivers PKT_C2S_EnumProcesses PKT_C2S_EnumDrives
PKT_C2S_EnumHandles PKT_C2S_EnumRecentFiles PKT_C2S_EnumModules
PKT_C2S_ProcessorData PKT_C2S_SystemState PKT_C2S_ModuleLoadNotification
PKT_S2C_SendModule PKT_C2S_ModuleResponse
Now, I personally expect anti-cheat to snoop around my system when I'm doing
something shady like scanning its memory. However, if I was a normal user of
the game, I would be a bit concerned to know that it might be sending my
recently used file names, drive names, system driver names, currently running
processes, processor information, system state, and even entire binary files
that it automatically deems as "suspicious", to their servers.
~~~
ipython
Wouldn't that run afoul of GDPR?
~~~
munchbunny
Not necessarily. GDPR isn't a blanket ban on collecting/using this info
without consent, it's a policy that consent is required for non-essential
collection/usage. You could argue that anti-cheat is essential for an online
multiplayer game like this.
I think it's sketchy to collect this much info, but I don't think it's
explicitly illegal.
~~~
mikekchar
It's a bit more complicated than that. You have to do a few things. First you
have to tell the customer that you are collecting their data. Then you have to
tell them under what lawful basis you are collecting their data. The user then
has various rights (depending on the lawful basis you choose) to object, etc.
If you must collect and use the data in order to fulfil the contract (i.e.,
there is no other way to do it -- for example you need to get their address in
order to ship them a package), then you can just do it (as long as you tell
them that you are doing it). For most other lawful bases, you have to allow
them to object, in which case you have to stop using the data.
I think the real question is whether or not the information in question is
personally identifiable information. If it's not, then GDPR doesn't apply. I
think you could make a pretty strong argument that it doesn't apply, as long
as you take pains to ensure that you can't identify the person from the
information.
~~~
civilitty
> I think you could make a pretty strong argument that it doesn't apply, as
> long as you take pains to ensure that you can't identify the person from the
> information.
That would entirely defeat the purpose of an anti-cheat system. You have to
have some sort of personally identifiable information attached to the data
being sent in to the server, otherwise how are you going to ban the cheaters?
Even IP addresses are personal identifiers as far as the GDPR is concerned and
even if they're not storing it long term, just sending the user data over the
wire is enough to trigger the data collection portions of the GDPR.
~~~
mynameisss
Instead of using an IP address to identify cheaters the game could assign a
unique random generated ID to players. Then they could ban that id without
using IP. I think this scheme complies with the GDPR if you take care of not
binding that ID with other user personal information.
~~~
lwansbrough
If you can identify a physical person with a unique identifier, it is PII
according to GDPR, I believe.
~~~
mynameisss
You can apply a one way function to an IP to obtain an ID and then maintain a
database of bad IDs. For example you could compute this ID by the SHA256(IP +
secret salt). Since way one function don't allow you to recover the IP, the ID
is not PII. If you detect an IP which has bad ID the connecting ban that IP
from the game. I think this respect the GDPR, you don't maintain a list of IPs
or any other PII.
~~~
civilitty
The second you use this ID to tag data you're sending over to the servers,
that ID could easily lose any claim to anonymity for the purpose of the GDPR
because the anti-cheat system vacuums up a vast trove of information. All it
takes is one email "Re: Claim for Your Local Psychiatrist Bob" or a document
named "John Doe Jr - First Grade Book Report.docx" showing up in the titles of
your open windows (that many anticheat systems send to a remote server) and
boom, that ID and all of the data attached to it are now a radioactive
liability.
------
stcredzero
Here's my project's approach to Anti-Cheat.
1, 2, 3) Everything on the server. Server's version always wins. Server is the
authoritative source. Granted, I have a mathematical advantage in the game's
particular movement mechanics which makes this easy to get away with. The
other game mechanics are also designed with facilitating this in mind.
Corollary: The client is almost nothing and trusted with nothing. It's pretty
much a dumb terminal for displaying moving things, syncing their motion with
the server.
4) Scripting -- if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! We're going to publish an API
to allow for user scripting. We plan on releasing the client as Open Source,
allowing people to modify and extend the client.
5) Cryptographically hard RNG and procedural generation. If you want to know
what's in Star System 7, Galaxy Grid 123987236-87324958, you're going to have
to go there yourself. We don't even know ourselves!
Regarding #4 -- This is going to be a design philosophy. Anything we can't
enforce, we will allow and co-opt into the game!
~~~
SXX
Very unfortunately what you explain here only work for very specific type of
gameplay. For instance almost nothing works when you need to secure first-
person shooter simply because it's skill-based gameplay where it's also very
easy to cheat for the bot.
~~~
vladimirralev
Nvidia has geforce now [http://www.nvidia.com/object/cloud-
gaming.html](http://www.nvidia.com/object/cloud-gaming.html) and people with
good internet connection have been able to play FPS games. Granted, the
latency and the FPS are worse than a local game, but surprisingly it is
unnoticeable to many people.
~~~
SXX
Streaming wont help against cheating in FPS, aimbot just going to use machine
learning to determine enemy location and conrrols are not problem.
------
infogulch
The game is 100% online. Could you have a piece of the networking protocol
where the server sends little snippets of executable code over the network
_during the game_ that read some specific locations in memory, do some
processing, and send the results back to the server in the next packet? You
could do things like check the starting address and length of loaded dlls, or
take the hash of some random span of machine code, or even random locations in
the heap, all of which may or may not actually be verified on the other end.
You can use any number of obsfucation tricks to hide their purpose (if they
even have one) and you could even randomly generate them. And since the server
expects the response in the next client packet it would be literally
impossible for a cheater to manually deconstruct them, and even be difficult
for automatic analysis tools to have enough time to do anything meaningful
with it.
You can reduce the security nightmare from the user's perspective by only
allowing machine code that's on a tight whitelist. Allow it to read from
anywhere, and only let it write to a dedicated little sandbox area with e.g.
fixed addresses.
~~~
bitexploder
If you restrict the machine code it makes it that much easier for me to write
an emulator to execute your machine code and return the result. It might even
be trivial. It is a never ending Ouroboros. You build a more clever mouse
trap, I will design a more clever mouse. If I have all your code and am
running it on my computer it will be a matter of time before I can back out
whatever obfuscation or technique you are doing and undo it. You may have some
hope in network delivery of graphics only. If I am not running the game client
code, and just streaming the game from one of your servers, you have a chance
at keeping your client safe.
~~~
jonjojr
"If I have all your code and am running it on my computer it will be a matter
of time before I can back out whatever obfuscation or technique you are doing
and undo it."
sure try to undo a block-chain and see what happens.
The code will be encrypted with a unique key that will need to be registered
on the server with your account. Change that code and it invalidates your
entire build along with your account. case closed.
~~~
bitexploder
I think you are missing my point. This concept in client computing security
basically chains back to the halting problem. You can't /know/ what I am doing
with my computer. You can build a very elaborate trap / obfuscation and it
might be hard, really hard, to defeat it or circumvent it, but it is a
certainty that I can. The block-chain has absolutely nothing to do with client
code security because it has a network enforced mechanism. What the
grandparent was suggesting was running some nugget of code in a little VM (or
actually on my machine), computing a result, and then returning the result to
the server to make a security decision. The problem is I control that machine
performing that computation and your security decision as the server is based
solely on the computation performed on my computer. A skilled reverse engineer
will just hook your code in the right place, intercept that security check and
have it return the right bytes back to your server, while still doing whatever
client side cheats they wanted to do.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice%27s_theorem)
<\--- this is all about program behavior and did the user actually run the
code you sent them. Block chain is about "did I possess certain data" (such as
a private key to sign a transaction) and not about "did I run certain code".
~~~
mikekchar
You are absolutely correct, but it occurs to me that CPU designers could
actually implement a kind of RSA style memory fetch instruction. The CPU would
generate a public/private key pair, where the private key is not accessible by
any means. The client would send the public key to the server, which would in
turn encrypt the memory location(s) that it wishes to inspect. There would
then be an instruction on client's CPU which would accept that encrypted
memory location and return the contents, without divulging location. The CPU
could regenerate the public/private key values for each request. I can't
imagine defeating that kind of scheme without hardware hacks. The more that I
think about it, the more I wonder why no-one has done it before, because it
seems useful. Probably there is something I'm missing...
~~~
unknownid
How do you prevent the cheat doing a MITM attack and changing keys?
~~~
mikekchar
Yes, you are right. That's what I was missing :-)
~~~
bitexploder
The answer, and it has dark implications, to me, is Trusted Computing. Never
let the user have full control. Do this key exchange on a base OS or some
other VM the user can never touch (e.g. Knox / TrustZone). Still, we can
exploit our way to this trusted OS and MiTM there, but it takes much more
skill. With Trusted Computing the base OS can more simply install a "spy" to
keep track of a games memory / code to ensure it is only ever loaded and
executed from memory that is essentially made read only after the program is
loaded but before it executes. The trusted OS verifies the program code, the
OS, etc, and if it all checks out, let's the code run. Of course it goes back
to the halting problem, but if the programs memory is unexecutable and modern
exploit mitigation is applied the game is now in a considerably sturdier mouse
trap :)
------
swanson
I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into some
kind of training mode. It's a bit like the argument that no one would pirate
if they content was easy to get for a reasonable price.
If players could train with the spell range circles, skill shot path
projection, last hit helpers, etc in a sanctioned way, I wonder how much this
would remove the desire to seek out the cheating programs.
Edit: I see they have a "training mode" already:
[https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-
updates/features...](https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-
updates/features/practice-purpose)
~~~
tylerhou
> I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into
> some kind of training mode.
The game would probably be more vulnerable then, because now you have "cheat"
scripts designed to work with the game.
> If players could train with the spell range circles, skill shot path
> projection, last hit helpers, etc in a sanctioned way, I wonder how much
> this would remove the desire to seek out the cheating programs.
People who cheat aren't trying to practice; they're trying to win games. There
already exists a "practice mode" which lowers cooldowns and shows tower
ranges. And it doesn't make sense to practice with cheats because it won't
help you play the game without cheats very much.
~~~
Arnavion
>The game would probably be more vulnerable then, because now you have "cheat"
scripts designed to work with the game.
That's possible. For example, World of Warships is a game where you fire big
ship-mounted guns and must learn to take shell travel time and target relative
velocity into account to hit moving targets. There used to be a cheat which
did those calculations for you and showed you a reticle you could aim at
instead. IIRC this cheat relied on code that existed within the game already
and was just not used.
~~~
NeedMoreTea
So basically the same reasons real warships developed rangekeepers resulted in
a game targeting computer? :)
------
larrik
Unfortunately, their latest anti-cheat measures broke the ability to play on
Wine.
Guess no LoL for me anymore.
~~~
rcoveson
They broke GPU passthrough setups as well at first. There was some community
backlash and they rolled that back, and I believe they also mentioned they
intended to work with the wine people on a solution for that as well.
~~~
EvangelicalPig
How did it break GPU passthrough?
Then again I heard recent versions of VAC detect running under a KVM
hypervisor and kick you out of CS:GO servers.
~~~
Teknoman117
That's unfortunate to hear that VAC looks for KVM. I was planning on moving my
gaming partition to just a VM and using GPU passthrough. It's how I have my
work PC setup, figured I'd replicate it at home.
~~~
EvangelicalPig
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
I plan to reverse engineer VAC sometime to figure out how the detection works.
------
jayjohnson
Good timing, I am using my own AI (keras + tensorflow) stack to predict in-
game hackers on ARK Survival Evolved with an AWS EC2 instance. Here's some
background on the fully open-sourced stack: [https://github.com/jay-
johnson/train-ai-with-django-swagger-...](https://github.com/jay-
johnson/train-ai-with-django-swagger-jwt) with docs
[http://antinex.readthedocs.io/](http://antinex.readthedocs.io/) I would love
some players, but I'm still load testing how many players the game server can
use + make real time predictions without impacting the game. Reach out if you
want to try it out!
------
alkonaut
Message to EA: don’t try to be clever. Make simple query based bans, after the
fact. Sift through the event tables and make trivial questions like if A
killed B with a weapon that is not possible to use on the map - then he
cheated. Check for ridiculous (not just suspicious) activity.
The cheaters that ruin games aren’t the ones that make players better such as
discrete wallhacks. It’s the trolls that are immortal and flying. They
blatantly cheat just for the response to their trolling, and they empty a
server in a matter of minutes. But just _because_ they are so very blatantly
cheating, they should be quite simple to detect in logs too. If someone has
200 kills with an ammo box in a 5 minute round that’s enough to say it’s
definitely a cheat. Yet these people do it over and over with NO obvious
response to reports. Focus on THIS type of cheating (which is _trolling_ , not
gaining an advantage). Only after that look at more subtle cheating.
------
pythonaut_16
I'd love to see a game where cheating and scripting is the primary means of
gameplay. By default the game would present a very simple UI but players would
be encouraged to write and share scripts enabling varying levels and types of
functionality.
As a game developer your job then would be to write interesting enough systems
for players to exploit to come up with interesting gameplay. I can imagine a
scenario where different Overwatch-style "classes" emerge all built from the
same basic game elements.
~~~
Assossa
Check out [http://www.pwnadventure.com/](http://www.pwnadventure.com/)
"Pwn Adventure 3: Pwnie Island is a limited-release, first-person, true open-
world MMORPG set on a beautiful island where anything could happen. That's
because this game is intentionally vulnerable to all kinds of silly hacks!
Flying, endless cash, and more are all one client change or network proxy
away. Are you ready for the mayhem?!"
"Pwn Adventure 3 was originally during Shmoocon 2015, from January 16-18,
2015. While the CTF is now over, we are still running the servers in a limited
capacity so others can try it."
~~~
rubicon33
Recently (last week or so), there has been a hacker in PUBG who is using a
flying car. I had never seen this cheat before, EXCEPT in "LiveOverflow" 's
YouTube videos of pwnadventure!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzM4o6qxssk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzM4o6qxssk)
In this series he managed to get his player to be able to fly.
I can't help but wonder if whoever that hacker is that developed the recent
PUBG cheat, got his inspiration from pwnadventure and this series :)
~~~
mrguyorama
I had a cheat back in Halo 2 for Vista that could make the Warthog fly. A
flying car in a game is really not new
------
jrockway
I am surprised people don't virtualize the game and do their analysis at a
level that the OS and game can't detect. Ultimately, these games trust that
the hardware they're running on behaves according to specification. That is
clearly an unwise assumption. Cheaters may not be taking this path today, but
it gets easier and easier as time goes on, and it sounds like they're not
prepared at all. (Some other comments mention that current games look for
virtualization software installed on the same OS install that the game is
running on and fails the integrity check if found. I can't imagine that stops
anyone actually determined to cheat. I imagine it annoys people that test
their Docker images on the same machine they play the game on, though.)
Even if virtualization is detectable, you can also take the computer entirely
out of the loop. The state of the art for aimbots seems to be reading game
memory and applying synthetic mouse movements at the OS level. That is quite a
blunt instrument to apply and I'm sure that no game has a major problem with
this kind of aimbot. A more elegant aimbot would look at the video of the
game, look for targets, and provide the necessary mouse movements over USB. At
best, the only countermeasure is to make enemies harder to see or to learn
some heuristic in mouse movement that differentiates the bot from a human...
but injecting randomness is straightforward and nobody needs a 100% accurate
aimbot anyway. The pros destroy you with 30% accuracy.
Finally, it's unclear if there is even any advantage to be gained by cheating.
If you want a higher rank in a competitive game, you can just pay someone to
play on your account. From what I've read on Reddit... many of the people
offering these services are apparently professional players. No anti-debugger
hook is going to detect that.
It should be interesting to see how this advances. While games that rely
solely on mechanics or information hiding are clearly doomed in the long run,
it's probably good news for the rest of the software industry. What is your
cloud provider really doing? Is your own software compromised? The tools used
to cheat in games will be quite valuable in answering these questions and
protecting your users from people that actually have something tangible to
gain from these actions.
------
maerF0x0
IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting
factor to how you want to play?
For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how
good someone is. Why should that be? It's a strategy game. Imagine if you
could express your ideas effectively into actual game actions?
~~~
echohack5
(As a former high level StarCraft / SC2 player / caster).
It's not chess. That's why.
There is a real physical aspect to the game. Training your fingers to hit
certain combinations quickly to execute build orders, and mix in micro is key.
Pro players use hot packs to warm up their hands, or glasses to aid their
eyes.
The game developer takes a lot of care to ensure the UI / hotkeys / peripheral
setups are optimized for pro players.
Using external tools to defeat this setup simply isn't fair and diminishes
skill built into the hands and muscle memory of players. Even at a mid-level
of skill, people learn simple combos. For example, a Protoss player hitting
"4+e" because that's where they have hotkeyed all their Nexuses and e is the
hotkey to build probes.
~~~
maerF0x0
Many responses are saying the same thing, so I'm going to respond to you ...
> It's not chess.
I agree it's not chess, and chess often has a time component to it. The
realtime nature of a game doesnt mean you should have to be able to "move" in
realtime, IMO it would be superior if it tracked more closely to your ability
to react, intellectually, in realtime. That is, real time thought more than
realtime motion. Ergonomic aids would help people to convert their thoughts
into real game plays without limiting them to their body's capabilities. But I
also admit this is my opinion and it's clearly an arbitrarily decided dividing
line between how much should a game be about myelinating certain move patterns
(spread out troops, cast a spell, select production groups) and how much a
game should be about quality of thought in realtime (I see he made units X,
How am i going to respond? I have many minerals, should I spend them on tech
or units?) ...
~~~
vkou
With enough mechanical aides, the game balance breaks.
For example, SC2 has a very cheap unit called the roach. When burrowed, it
can't attack, but regenerates health incredibly quickly.
It's trivial to write a cheat that will, whenever one of your roaches starts
taking damage, causes it to burrow, and whenever it stops taking damage,
unburrow.
The unit is balanced around human control - no human can, with perfect
accuracy, choreograph burrows and unburrows of individual roaches in a pack of
~60.
With such a cheat, roaches punch way above their weight, completely breaking
the rock-paper-scissors balance of the game.
~~~
maerF0x0
I do not deny that the game mechanics would vastly change. The strategy would
shift away from "How can I micro these roaches" vs "How can i effectively
attack burrowing/unburrowing roaches" to "How can i ensure I get roaches" vs
"How can I frustrate/prevent my opponent from getting them in the first
place"... As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the
equilibrium in some manner and I assume would require human intervention to
re-establish a "fun" gameplay.
~~~
vkou
> How can i ensure I get roaches
Which is trivial for any skilled player, because they are an incredibly cheap,
low-tech unit, and passive base defenses are currently very good at fending
off very early aggression.
> As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in
> some manner
Yes, and sometimes, the equilibrium settles on an incredibly shallow,
uninteresting game-space.
StarCraft is a game of a number of rock-paper-scissors cycles, all operating
at the same time. Greedy expansion - versus rushing versus safe plays. Economy
versus army versus tech. Roaches versus marauders versus zerglings.
Sometimes, due to patch changes, poor balancing, or because player skill
improved, the game ends up stuck in a quagmire, where the risk/reward ratio
for many of these options is completely out of whack. The game stagnates, and
becomes incredibly unfun to play, and to watch.
Throwing a wrench into balance, by allowing auto-scripts, which have an
incredibly uneven effect on the different units, mechanics, and races in the
game is far more likely to push it into an unfun equilibrium, then a fun one.
~~~
maerF0x0
Yes, but keep in mind this idea and thread is not about SC2 specifically. It
used SC2 as an example of the class of games that I personally believe I would
find improved by removing the mechanical aspect of the game allowing me to
focus on the fun part -- Making decisions and giving instructions patterns
more than "micro"
------
aclelland
Great write-up. I'm my job we spend a lot of time dealing with hackers and
cheats for our mobile and PC games.
We tend to see similar exploits across all our games (memory hacking, fake
IAPs, etc) which lets us build an armoury of anti-cheat tools.
What I find most interesting is where hackers don't focus their attention. It
took almost 4 years for them realise the encryption key for our assets was
easily accessible using the 'strings' tool in Linux - once they found it we
had a busy few days stopping modders from impacting legitimate players.
~~~
orliesaurus
You're probably dealing with newbie reverse engineers, do you work for a
triple A game publishing studio or an indie game shop? People who want to
"mess" with games are usually doing it so that they can make a lot of money
from it and therefore hunt big triple A games...the people I've seen do proper
reverse engineer on triple A game to bypass ie. Blizzard's anticheat in World
of Warcraft now all work for big "anti-virus" companies
------
euske
Cheat, anti-cheat, antivirus, malware, and to a lesser extent debugger and
profiler. All these tools are going after each other in the same territory:
monitoring a certain system activity to report or intervene. To me, it looks
that all these functions are traditionally in the realm of operating system.
Are we going to have a new middle layer or a new OS architecture for catering
things like this? I'm curious.
~~~
stcredzero
I'm working on this.
------
outworlder
I wonder, given that nowadays access to vast amounts of computing power on
demand is easy, if it would be effective to generate unique builds for each
and every player. Just like they already do, but tailored for each downloader.
Which would get tied to an account, and to a given fingerprint.
~~~
colordrops
What problem would that solve?
~~~
sthomas1618
I think he's implying a cheater's injected DDL would be tailored for a
specific build, so if they shared it with others, it would be ineffective. And
not only that, but based on how the Cheater.DDL is targeting the build, they
could identify the account that made the cheat.
------
shmerl
Does it hinder Linux gamers who are using Wine? A lot of such anti-cheats
can't figure out when Wine is used and ban Linux users. Some also ban custom
D3D implementations like DXVK even if they are really correctly implementing
the API.
~~~
phoe-krk
Yes - it hit the news that LoL will no longer work on Wine or virtual machines
because of these anti-cheat measures.
~~~
rcoveson
Can't speak for Wine users, but VMs are working now. The workaround was found
within days of the patch (they were just checking for the CPU feature
"hypervisor"), and they actually ended up rolling back that check due to the
community response.
------
yadaeno
Some of this is pure evil.
> We block this very common technique by making sure that when the value is
> changed by taking damage, the value is actually moved as well.
> To introduce more entropy, we also made sure that each value uses slightly
> different encryption.
> At compile time, a randomly selected type of anti-debug check is inserted
> into each of the locations where a check was requested in the code.
Ive always wondered where you store the key that decrypts code at run time. On
phones and DVD players the key is stored on hardware but it does not seem like
an exe has this luxury.
~~~
bsamuels
it doesn't matter where you store the key as long as it's not easy to figure
out for the disassembly program
~~~
yadaeno
If its out in the open it sort of defeats the purpose doesn't it? If you know
the key + encryption scheme you could decrypt all the .text in a single pass.
------
walrus01
One of the things I'm not seeing is what kind of statistical data they're
collecting and storing for prevalence of discovered cheats/scripts/bots, on a
per-ISP basis. Since they know and log the IP that every user connects to the
game from, they can certainly profile it down to at least as granular as the
individual /24\. For example if there's a college dorm full of students where
somebody has shared a recent script/bot, the behavior could be correlated
between time, place and IP.
Thereby allowing them to develop IP space reputation lists that contain the
relative likelihood of bots/scripts being run (sort of like SMTP spam RBLs,
but not an all-or-nothing, more of a weighted distributed reputation scale).
There is also a league of legends mobile android/iOS app. If you set it up to
require location permission, they could begin to correlate the physical
location of cheaters with their specific IP block. For example if somebody is
at home on their wifi, their phone is connected to their home router, and
their desktop PC with a cheat script are all going outbound to the internet
through the same NAT, and coming from the same /32 (in ipv4) address.
I'm willing to bet that if plotted on a map you could develop hotspots. Of
course they would also match the density of players in general. But perhaps
certain trends could be identified.
------
username3
The best way to prevent cheating is by streaming games. Game streaming
services are the future of multiplayer games. Edit: I mean cloud gaming like
OnLive, not Twitch.
~~~
SteveNuts
Aren't there massive video latency issues with this? People spend tons of
money to get the absolute best frame rates and monitor response times, I can't
imagine hardcore gamers wanting to have tens of ms additional latency in their
gaming.
~~~
stcredzero
You can have real-time games whose mechanics are designed around latency. My
game is one example. In fact, I would assert that for now, you have to design
around latency in real-time multiplayer games. Until round-trip latency for
your entire userbase is below 40ms, it will be an issue.
~~~
earenndil
I'd say 30ms, not not 40. Because a single frame is 16.6ms, so 30ms round-trip
would bring one-way down to below one frame of latency (potentially with a
small amount of jitter).
~~~
stcredzero
It sounds surprisingly high, but a lot of the population won't notice 40ms
round trip. Some of it will know. It also depends on the game's mechanics. Not
all games are FPS. Not all games have action significant down to one frame.
Some of my favorite real time games involve making decisions about once every
5 seconds which will result in a turning point in another 15 to 30 seconds
which will get you killed or leave you victorious.
------
hathawsh
What I wonder is how the encryption keys are stored. There are obvious ways to
obfuscate keys, but at decryption time, the keys need to be exposed plainly in
memory, don't they? So how do game makers like Riot prevent debuggers from
discovering the keys and revealing them to everyone? Does every player have
different keys?
~~~
unnouinceput
A good solution will not only generate keys for each player, will even
generate different keys for same player each time that player starts a new
gaming session. Start game->generate keys for session->play game->throw keys
away.
------
Avery3R
Even if they move a memory value when it's changed they still need to have a
pointer somewhere to it's new location. If you can find that pointer you can
still read/write at will. This is actually one of the things covered by Cheat
Engine's tutorial.
------
wumbovii
I wonder if there is any defense against adversaries that use computer vision
and just digest the actual raw images and overlaying information, so there
aren't any hooks into the software itself.
~~~
frenchie14
Overwatch changes the colors of its heatlh bars slightly every match so that
aimbots can't lock on it
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/6imjce/todays_pa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/6imjce/todays_patch_includes_defensive_measure_against/)
------
rmrfrmrf
These are all just various degrees of obfuscation that will be defeated if
it's worth the money.
In particular these approaches seem weak to hardware, firmware, and driver
side-channels.
~~~
meowface
All anti-cheating techniques are fallible. It's impossible to build a perfect
cheat detection/prevention, just like it's impossible to build something that
will always detect all malware, etc. The client code is always going to be on
the player's computer and has to execute on the player's computer. There's no
way around that.
You can't guarantee effectiveness, but you can make it very hard to reverse
engineer and circumvent, and you can constantly change techniques so that
adversaries need to put in more work. It's an ever-evolving cat-and-mouse
game.
------
lifeisstillgood
One of the things coming out of this is that _legitimate_ coding within a game
(for example teaching children how to code - a very important point for me at
this point in life) is almost out the window
I love minecraft for their RPi version but beyond that, I don't know of any
games that have that kids pull and can still be taught
it's something like "we used to turn on a PC and see a command line. now we
have to jailbreak something"
~~~
phit_
you can still do so with most drm free singleplayer titles
~~~
lifeisstillgood
can you suggest any please :-)
------
Kagerjay
Is this approach similar to ones used in VAC (valve) or easyanticheat, or
battleye?
Some of the above are notorious for consuming client resources. Easy anticheat
is known for banning players in unrelated games that they cheated on. (E.g.
cheat on pubg, get banned in a different game that you didn't cheat if both
games use easyanticheat)
This is a great writeup but I'd love to see how 3rd party anticheat programs
work
------
reassembled
This talks about common techniques for protecting Windows binaries but what
about their Mac client? Are similar techniques also applicable to Mac?
~~~
lucb1e
I don't know much about OS X except that they use the Mach-O executable format
(unlike PE in the article), but I know that the ELF format as used on Linux
and many other unixes is similar in that it also has a section where the code
resides, so they can encrypt only that part. And inserting checks into the
code is also portable of course.
It would have been interesting if they had talked about different platforms,
but alas, it's quite a superficial article...
------
AlexAffe
What great insight! As a developer I wonder how you implement such methods and
still be sure the code runs at desired speeds. Benchmarks? I'd really love to
see the workflow of implementing new behaviours. I mean... incremental
decryption of distinct pieces of code during execution seems so tough to
thoroughly test! Not to speak of debugging... I am genuinely stunned.
------
limonkufu
I wish to see how they dealt with the overhead because of all the encryption,
checks etc. performance-wise? I know LOL is quite an old game so they mastered
these points. I am especially curious because lately I play PUBG and when PUBG
does something about cheat it effectively kills performance.
------
dawhizkid
Free startup idea: sift science for anti-cheat for gaming industry
------
shiburizu
slightly related: The LoL end user client that they wrote with CEF(!) is one
of the worst game clients I've used.
Edit: It's CEF not Electron
~~~
sandov
It's crap, but at least it's better than the old one written in Adobe Air.
------
Illniyar
Ha obfuscation. The best way to get management off your ass to prevent hacking
without actually preventing hacking.
------
paulie_a
I got into developing by modding doom with a hex editor. Giving my SimCity
virtually unlimited money. Cheating in a video game is fun and standard
practice in my opinion.
~~~
maxton
Cheating in single-player games is absolutely fun and a good way to introduce
oneself to reverse-engineering. The key difference, though, is that cheating
in multiplayer games can directly (usually negatively) impact the experience
of other people playing the game.
------
rimsy
The next step is to rewrite it all in Brainfuck.
------
mikec3010
I wonder if there's an optimization to be made about tolerating a minimum
amount of cheating while being vociferous about the countermeasures? Along the
same lines as "no such thing as bad publicity", having just enough cheating to
piss off a few people and getting them to talk about it and the
countermeasures seems like a great way to get free advertising and game
engagement of players just curious to see who is cheating or the drama between
cat and mouse.
~~~
fredophile
You won't find any companies with competitive online games that turn a blind
eye to cheating. If you consider a game with a cheater as being ruined for the
other players, a very small number of cheaters can ruin games for a large
portion of the players.
For a rough example of how the math works, let's say we have a game that is
5v5. If we have 100 players, 1 player cheating, and everyone plays once you
end up with 9 players having their game ruined. That's 9% of players impacted
by having 1% of the players cheating.
~~~
mikec3010
I'm not suggesting they tolerate it completely. Just that they make the game
slightly "cheatable" then counteract it enough for there to be a known
controversy.
~~~
fredophile
No one is intentionally making it possible to cheat in their games. Cheaters
and cheat detection/prevention are in a constant arms race. You can't just
allow a little cheating. The people that develop cheats will share them and
those cheats become more widespread.
Your whole argument is also based on the idea that there is no such thing as
bad publicity. This is incorrect. If your game gets a reputation for being
full of cheaters then people will leave your game and probably not come back.
If the first time you hear about a game, all you hear is that it is full of
cheaters are you going to head out to the store to buy a copy?
------
megaman22
I sorta miss the way cheat codes and exploits were seen back in the long ago
days when I started gaming. They were fun little easter eggs and things to
mess around with if you got stuck and couldn't progress past a certain point.
Or just weird things to have fun with. Of course, pretty much everything was
single-player, so it didn't impact anybody else if you wanted to turn on no-
clip mode to get around some pain-in-the-ass jumping puzzle in Half-Life, or
spawn a nuke-launching spaceman in Age of Empires. And the hours and hours
spent button-mashing trying to get new and unusual finishing moves in Mortal
Kombat...
------
rjvbk
>We don’t share the state of other players if it doesn’t need to be shared, so
we can avoid common cheats like “map hacks” (revealing all players on the
map). >We let the server’s game simulation make the authoritative game
decisions and generally don’t trust the information received from the client,
which helps prevent common cheats like “god mode” and “disconnect hacks,”
barring any overlooked exploits. >Our network protocol has been obfuscated,
and we change this obfuscation regularly so that making a network-level bot is
much more difficult.
I hope they are proud of doing the obvious. That's like having a webpage and
bragging about escaping strings that you insert into a SQL table...
~~~
mopierotti
The first point is actually something that game developers have failed to do
in many cases. For example if they want client syncing to require transferring
very little data, they may only send player inputs across the wire, meaning
that each client needs to know everything, even if the final decision about
game state is made by a server.
~~~
rjvbk
Yeah, the same many developers haven't escaped strings they inserted into SQL
tables, leading to SQL injections. Does this mean if I don't do that I have a
right to brag about it? If I wrote a post saying "look at me, I escape
strings" the response here would be "cool story bro". This isn't any
different.
------
atesti
Great writeup, and nice that they mention telemetry only once and work more
with obfuscation than the usual process scanning, document scanning,
blacklisting and reporting all back to shady servers, etc.
It's scary that one can easily get nasty anticheat software installed, even
when playing only single player(!) games.
~~~
squeaky-clean
League of Legends is an online-only multiplayer game.
~~~
atesti
I know, that's why I wrote about single player games. Many games have both and
the telemetry for anti cheating is not needed for single player.
------
sthomas1618
I feel like the industry would be better off being transparent about anti-
cheat strategies and maybe even embracing open-source. Protecting "secret
sauce" is basically admitting their anti-cheat are largely through obfuscation
and can be defeated by knowing any details.
~~~
monocasa
You obviously shouldn't rely entirely on security through obscurity, but
obfuscation can absolutely be an important component of defense in depth.
Especially when your attackers own the hardware.
~~~
def_true_false
Or you could design the game mechanics so that client-side cheating offers
little advantage... but that would probably require doing more than ripping
off a popular mod of another game.
~~~
B-Con
That's literally impossible. The entire _point_ of the game is to have client-
side input and for that input to be generated by a human and not a computer.
There's no way to move that to a server.
~~~
wild_preference
I’m pretty sure their comment only really existed to dismiss LoL as a “copy of
a popular mod”.
~~~
def_true_false
I'm merely saying that they could have avoided some of the issues if they
designed a new game from scratch.
~~~
B-Con
These problems are inherent to nature of being in the real-time PvP genre.
And AFAIK LoL was designed from scratch, it's Dota that actually based on the
code of the WoW mod. Not that it matters today, that code is long gone.
~~~
def_true_false
I wasn't talking about the code.
Btw, you are thinking of Aeon of Strife (Starcraft mod). World of Warcraft
hasn't even been released back then.
~~~
monocasa
He's thinking of DotA, the Warcraft mod.
------
jonjojr
Use blockchain.
It is a very simplified comment, but behind that you can expand the topic to
include many advantage a blockchain can provide during multiplayer games.
EDIT: yes it is a very unpopular topic, but deep down many of you who are
developers, know that blockchain can solve many of these issues with
cheater.dll
~~~
lucb1e
Reason for downvote: you seem to have no clue about blockchain or cheater.dll
whatsoever.
~~~
jonjojr
Blockchain is all I work on and you seem to not understand my suggestion.
cheater.dll needs to be loaded in memory along with the game. Correct, right?
If the original build of the game has already generated an encryption key that
is stored on a server or a distributed ledger using your account, then
tampering with the origonal build in memory will result in generating and
invalod key thus changing the ledger or the stored key on the server, and not
matching the ledger. If this happens then it invalidates your build and the
distributed ledger would need to updated, but since that is not allowed in
this instance all ledgers would reject your change and flag the block and the
account. Making it easier to find who attempted a change. Sure this can be
done on a server but because of the tamper proof inherited by a distributed
ledger it would make it harder for this code to be shared. The cheater can
still change the code but it would not be able to share it.
~~~
BenjiWiebe
How would it invalidate the build? How would the server find out the build was
tampered with? Why would my hacked game add anything to a blockchain? I've
followed blockchain tech closely since '13 and your comment makes no sense.
~~~
jonjojr
apparently not close enough.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OCaml: what you gain - edwintorok
http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2014/02/13/ocaml-what-you-gain/
======
nathell
I have very fond memories of OCaml. It was OCaml that introduced me to
functional programming, way back in 2000 in my freshman year at the uni. I'm a
Lisper/Clojurian these days, but I think warmly of OCaml's type system, the
speed, the self-containedness of the distribution, and the fact that getting
the code to compile tends to mean getting it to actually work.
My #1 gripe with OCaml is the fact that its strings are composed of single-
byte characters. I know there's Camomile, but not having it as part of the
language core creates a sense of disintegration akin to PHP and Python 2.
There's also this: [http://www.podval.org/~sds/ocaml-
sucks.html](http://www.podval.org/~sds/ocaml-sucks.html) which I mostly agree
with.
But, all in all, OCaml rocks.
~~~
fzltrp
> I know there's Camomile
Camomille is great, but it exhaustively covers the _whole_ UTF standard, which
you might not need for more casual uses. There are other libraries bringing
lighter support for UTF strings (ocamlnet for instance I believe).
Nevertheless, Camomille does a pretty good job if you're concerned by
compliance.
> There's also this: [http://www.podval.org/~sds/ocaml-
> sucks.html](http://www.podval.org/~sds/ocaml-sucks.html) which I mostly
> agree with.
It's a pretty old page. I'm not sure its content is still accurate. I'll have
to look into that.
~~~
agumonkey
> created: 2007-01-31 > updated: 2013-02-11
not that old, even though ocaml metabolic rate increased a lot in the recent
years
~~~
fzltrp
Well, I don't know. The "No polymorphism" section is misleading (though
polymorphism doesn't carry the same meaning from one language to the next):
There's this comment on higher order functions not being supported which
surprises me. See the section 7.13[1] and 7.14 of the OCaml documentation.
These features are availabe since ver 3.12 of the distribution.
[1]: [http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-
ocaml-4.01/extn.html#se...](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-
ocaml-4.01/extn.html#sec227)
------
p4bl0
If you program in OCaml be sure to checkout Batteries [1], it is an extension
(which also replaces some stuff) to the standard library which eliminate most
of the criticisms I had against OCaml. Also, don't try to avoid opam [2], I
didn't really want to use it at first because I always prefer to use my
system's package manager (using Debian), but it makes your life so much
easier.
[1]
[http://batteries.forge.ocamlcore.org/](http://batteries.forge.ocamlcore.org/)
[2] [https://opam.ocaml.org/](https://opam.ocaml.org/)
~~~
amirmc
Do people try to avoid using package managers? Why? On my system I regularly
use homebrew and opam but also have occasional need for pip, cabal and more
recently npm. Not everything is packaged upstream (nor would I expect it to
be).
I can't imagine how the OCaml ecosystem worked before opam as it's rapidly
become a fundamental tool.
~~~
p4bl0
I don't know, my instinct tells me that I should avoid having many independent
package managers in order to keep everything in the same place and avoid
conflicts. But I don't really have any reasons to think that those are better
ways to do things.
~~~
tommorris
My instinct agrees with you, but for one small matter. Ubuntu only just
started packaging Ruby 1.9.3 - a version that came out years ago and which is
to be deprecated next year - in the latest version.
I don't know about OCaml but trying to do Ruby or Python development without
using pip or gems (not to mention virtualenvs or RVM gemsets etc.) seems like
an exercise in futility and perpetual brokenness.
I'd like it if system package managers could actually keep up with the needs
of developers, but they seem to have failed. Until they can get their shit
together, we now have the irritation of managing all these many, many
language-specific package managers rather than just using apt-get like sane
people. If the system level package manager were able to talk to the language
level package managers, that'd be a big improvement.
The number of times I've typed `sudo gem install nokogiri` and then had to
fumble around and work out exactly which variant of libxml-dev-0 or whatever
is needed before I can install a RubyGem with a native dependency shows we've
got some brokenness that needs fixing.
~~~
technomancy
> I'd like it if system package managers could actually keep up with the needs
> of developers, but they seem to have failed.
I would argue that they fail at this because it's a goal that's in direct
conflict with their primary goal: to serve end users. The needs of developers
are dramatically different. Having multiple versions of a package is a must
for developers, but would just cause weird unpredictable issues for end users.
(Unless you are very clever and do something like Nix, of course.)
I wrote more about this topic here:
[http://technomancy.us/151](http://technomancy.us/151)
------
srean
If I may repeat an old comment of mine, lightly edited for freshness (I dont
mean to hijack this thread. It is not often that I get an opportunity to
interact with people on HN who are fond of OCaML or are likely to have an
interest in it. This is the exact demographics who might appreciate Felix)
--
For the early adopters and experimenters amongst you, you might like Felix
[http://felix-lang.org/share/src/web/tut/tutorial.fdoc](http://felix-
lang.org/share/src/web/tut/tutorial.fdoc)
The site is undergoing a major reorganization right now, so some links will
break.
It is a whole program optimized, strongly typed, polymorphic, ML like language
that can interact effortlessly with C and C++ and has coroutines baked in. It
has type-classes as well as modules. Functions written in it may be exported
as a CPython module. This might be useful if one wants to gradually transition
from a Python based src tree.
Its own demo webserver is based on coroutines, this is the same webserver that
serves the language tutorials. It uses a mix of lazy and eager evaluation for
performance and compiles down to C++. Execution speed is comparable to hand
written C++, mostly better. Its grammar is programmable in the sense that it
is loaded as a library. So in the same way that languages may acquire
libraries, Felix may acquire domain specific syntax.
With inaccuracies in analogies assumed, Felix is to C++ what F# is to C# or to
some extent Scala is to Java.
It is also mostly a one man effort but with a feverish pace of development so
it comes with its associated advantages and disadvantages.
Tooling info is here [http://felix-
lang.org/share/src/web/ref/tools.fdoc](http://felix-
lang.org/share/src/web/ref/tools.fdoc)
The author likes to call it a scripting language but it really is a
fullfledged statically compiled language with a single push button build-and-
execute command. [http://felix-lang.org/](http://felix-lang.org/) The
"fastest" claim is a bit playful and tongue in cheek, but it is indeed quite
fast and not hard to beat or meet C with.
--
Removing comment and putting it here to conserve real estate.
@zem I think you just blew your cover :) As I said its been mostly a one man
effort, so there are areas that need work. Its an exciting language, welcome
aboard.
@jnbiche Oh no! I am by no means the creator, just someone who finds it
exciting.
~~~
scott_s
Please respond to comments directly rather than trying to "preserve real
estate". It makes it much more difficult to follow conversations.
~~~
srean
Noted.
I had participated in a rather contentious thread today and there the nesting
had gone way out of hand. That and I did not want my comment to be the
dominant conversation on this post.
I got downvoted here, so its likely that my within-post conversation annoyed
some. Yes, I know you didn't downvote. Its also possible I came across as a
conversation hijacker. That was certainly not my intent. Have to say the blog
posts are strikingly well written. In fact quite surprised how a Python
aficionado takes to OcaML like duck to water so quickly. (Duck typing pun
narrowly avoided)
------
rjzzleep
You might like F# even more(well except that clr is not as good outside of
windows, but still pretty decent)
As my coworker at the time put it. If Ocaml and python had a baby together it
would be f#
~~~
doorhammer
I'm a big fan of F# as well. I haven't tried it outside of windows, on mono.
I've always wondered how well supported mono was and what the library
ecosystem was like (I could just google that, and probably will)
Any personal experience with it?
Right now I'm diving into haskell, partly because I want a static, type-
inferred, functional language on linux (my home platform of choice) and partly
because I like the idea of using a language that has really pure (functionally
and generally) ideas it's trying to implement. Digging it a lot so far as
well.
~~~
balakk
F# has a huge following on macs. The Xamarin guys drive it, and practically
every major open source .Net library is available for mono.
I haven't tested it on linux, but I've found it works pretty well on macs.
~~~
latkin
The Seattle F# user group just had an event last night, and the first talk was
1 hour on how to create iOS apps with F# using Xamarin/Mac. If anyone is
interested, a recording is at
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MriHEnq5MR4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MriHEnq5MR4)
------
Buttons840
OCaml looks really good, I've heard good things about it for awhile now. I'd
like to learn more but and currently learning Haskell and want to focus on
learning that for awhile.
Does anyone know why OCaml gets compared to Haskell so often? It sounds like
OCaml doesn't force a purely functional paradigm on you, so how is it any more
functional that a number of good scripting languages (Python, Ruby, Peal,
etc)?
~~~
tel
OCaml has a similar type system to Haskell's. It has algebraic data types. It
also has all the normal higher order functions and combinators "done right".
It also commits strongly to using first class modules as an organizational
component atop the functional core.
I don't think "functional" means a whole lot. Many languages with lightweight,
first-class lambdas like to jump on that bandwagon by implementing
map/fold/scan/take combinators on lists, sometimes even lazy ones, but that
whole game is just a sideshow to the real meat of what makes Hindley-Milner
typed languages with ADTs quite fun to work in.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Hindley-Milner is fun until you need nominal subtyping or mutable assignment,
then the whole "semi-unification is undecidable in general" comes up to bite
you.
~~~
tel
How does HM get in the way of mutable assignment?
~~~
emillon
Polymorphism (more precisely, generalization of unknown types) is incompatible
with references. For example:
let r = ref []
Here r has type 'a list ref (reference to a list of 'a where 'a is unknown).
r := ["hello"]
r has type 'a list ref, := has type 'a ref -> 'a -> unit, and ["hello"] has
type string list, so it works (if we instantiate 'a with string).
let n = 1 + (List.head !r)
1 has type int, + has type int -> int -> int, and we can type (List.head !r)
as int since we can type !r as int list since we can type r as int ref list
(this time instantiating 'a by int).
So, we just added an int and a string and the program will probably crash.
What's wrong is that every line is correct but because of the mutable store,
the program as a whole is incorrectly typed.
The solution is to generalize only a subset of all syntactic constructs. The
historic solution in Ocaml is to never generalize expressions that may
allocate memory (that's the "value restriction") . For example, a function
application (like f x, or ref []) may allocate, but a variable or a constant
(like x or 1 or []) can not. That's why [] has type 'a list but ref [] has
type '_a list ref ('_a can be unified only once, so in the above example an
error would occur at the "let n").
~~~
tel
Ahh, that's sort of obvious in retrospect, but I was blinded thinking in terms
of Haskell where IO protects against such generalization.
~~~
emillon
The equivalent Haskell program is
import Data.IORef
main :: IO ()
main = do
r <- newIORef []
writeIORef r ["Hello"]
x <- readIORef r
print $ x + 1
return ()
The reference is bound by "r <-", ie a lambda (as this desugars to ">>= \ r
->"), and lambdas are never generalized (even in ocaml).
I think that the reason why it works is that because there is no way to let-
bind r except with a toplevel unsafePerformIO.
~~~
tel
Yup, that's precisely what I forgot to think about.
------
raphinou
I'm planning to learn ocaml in the coming weeks, as I want to try ocsigen
([http://ocsigen.org/](http://ocsigen.org/)). Seems to me there is good
activity in the Ocaml community lately (eg new books came out recently)
~~~
p4bl0
I like OCaml but really, Ocisgen is crap. People making it have no idea how
today's web works.
Some parts of it (lwt, js_of_ocaml) are nice and maybe useful piece of code,
but you don't want to use the framework as a whole to develop a webapp.
The problem with Ocsigen is that it reinvents the meaning of everything, even
the HTTP verbs, to suit its internal needs. For example, it is not possible
(or it must be very painful) to make an API for your Ocsigen app so that other
apps can interact with yours. First, you have to forget PUTs, HEADs, and
DELETEs, but also GETs and POSTs are used incoherently by the resulting code
to update parts of the webpage, submit forms, etc.
If you want to make a site/webapp that only focus on itself and never have to
interact with anything else than its visitors, then Ocsigen might be a
suitable tool for the job, otherwise I wouldn't use it.
Disclaimer: I only used Ocsigen for one day, it was at JFLO, which expansion
in French would translate to French Ocsigen Lectures Day. I get what I know of
it and what I'm saying here by the day-long courses and hands-on tutorials
given by Ocsigen developers and by discussing these problems with them
afterwards.
------
mercurial
> Another example is the Config object. When I started the Python code back in
> 2005, I was very excited about using the idea of dependency injection for
> connecting together software modules (this is the basis of how 0install runs
> programs). Yet, for some reason I can’t explain, it didn’t occur to me to
> use a dependency injection style within the code. Instead, I made a load of
> singleton objects. Later, in an attempt to make things more testable, I
> moved all the singletons to a Config object and passed that around
> everywhere. I wasn’t proud of this design even at the time, but it was the
> simplest way forward.
That's called a "god object", unless I'm mistaken. It's an abomination in any
language. I have the misfortune of maintaining a codebase with this "feature".
Never, ever, do anything like this.
~~~
raphinou
Never used or inherited such a design, but I'm curious about what practical
problem you encoutered. Care to illustrate?
~~~
mercurial
Once you have implemented this design pervasively, you can forget about
reusing your code in another context. Because it is impossible to tell which
part of the god object is needed in a given part of the code, you have to
initialize everything in the god object. With a bit of luck, you're working in
Java and mixing this anti-pattern with some Spring dependency injection, in
order to make this mess really impossible to untangle.
And obviously it encourages mixing up layers. Why have modularity when you can
access your data access components from anywhere?
And in general, circular dependencies are a code smell. Whenever I thought I
needed to use them, I came to realize it was the wrong decision.
------
swah
OCaml is a great language, but IIRC the creators didn't talk much to the
community, about where they were going, etc. Contrast with Clojure, Golang,
Python... So many people steer away and go bet on something else.
~~~
avsm
The conversation between the OCaml creators and the community is a lot more
focussed. Back in 2005 when we were developing the Xen toolstack using OCaml
[1], I subscribed Xensource to the Caml Consortium [2]. This let us meet with
the main team once a year, and air our concerns in a structured way. This is
so much easier to handle than a firehose of e-mails. Nowadays I still attend
the annual Consortium meeting, but more in a capacity of reporting on our
activities at OCaml Labs and there are still a healthy set of industrial users
who like this mode of interaction.
[1] [http://anil.recoil.org/papers/2010-icfp-
xen.pdf](http://anil.recoil.org/papers/2010-icfp-xen.pdf) [2]
[http://caml.inria.fr/consortium/](http://caml.inria.fr/consortium/)
------
supercoder
But what you lose seems to be readability if going by this code sample
let menu = GMenu.menu () in let explain = GMenu.menu_item ~packing:menu#add
~label:"Explain this decision" () in explain#connect#activate ~callback:(fun
() -> show_explanation impl) |> ignore; menu#popup ~button:(B.button bev)
~time:(B.time bev);
~~~
fzltrp
I don't know how other similar languages deal with GUI. It's always sort of
hairy, obscure code when you look at it closely. Mainstream languages (like
Java) usually give you GUI building tools which generate all the boilerplate
stuff, but if you look at that generated code, it doesn't look so appealing
either imho.
If you know the GUI libraries inside out, then the code becomes much easier to
grasp though. The lablgtk library (which provides gtk support) is quite well
written, providing both a modular interface and objects, but indeed there's a
learning curve.
Lastly, you might find it more palatable with a little bit of formatting:
let menu = GMenu.menu () in
let explain = GMenu.menu_item ~packing:menu#add ~label:"Explain this decision" () in
let callback () = show_explanation impl in
explain#connect#activate ~callback |> ignore;
menu#popup ~button:(B.button bev) ~time:(B.time bev)
~~~
Eiwatah4
> I don't know how other similar languages deal with GUI. It's always sort of
> hairy, obscure code when you look at it closely.
The best languages for GUIs I've seen are specialized declarative DSLs. Things
like QML, XAML, JavaFX FXML, XUL, and even HTML. Anything else very much
sucks, in my experience.
~~~
danieldk
And Qt pre-QML. The user interface is declaratively described in XML (which
can be edited visually with Qt Designer). You then use a utility (uic) to
generate e.g. C++ class which you can use through composition and inheritance.
UI events are wired to code through Qt's signal/slot system.
------
thebiglebrewski
Title made me think of this
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MgWFU3JhM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9MgWFU3JhM)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Sort image downloads automatically using Stowbots - nlowell
http://stowbots.com
======
nlowell
Hi everyone,
Super excited to share this with you all!
I'll be in the comments for any questions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla remotely extends range of vehicles for free in Florida - riccardo_gr
https://electrek.co/2017/09/09/tesla-extends-range-vehicles-for-free-in-florida-escape-hurricane-irma/amp/
======
eponeponepon
non-AMP version here: [https://electrek.co/2017/09/09/tesla-extends-range-
vehicles-...](https://electrek.co/2017/09/09/tesla-extends-range-vehicles-for-
free-in-florida-escape-hurricane-irma/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best Developer Tools? - fapi1974
I’m writing a blog post about the best developer tools available at various points in the app lifecycle – everything from design to build to market and monetize. I put together a survey, which you can access here:<p>https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CVMDYQW<p>Or you can just upvote and discuss as appropriate in comments. I'll collate the results and share here.
======
fapi1974
Cross-platform app development
~~~
fapi1974
Appcelerator
------
fapi1974
Lifetime Value (LTV) Analysis
~~~
fapi1974
Kissmetrics
------
fapi1974
Cross-platform game engine
~~~
fapi1974
Yo Yo Games
------
fapi1974
Social Game Platform
~~~
fapi1974
Papaya
------
fapi1974
3rd Party Tracking
~~~
fapi1974
HasOffers
------
fapi1974
Mobile Ad Network
~~~
fapi1974
Sponsorpay
------
fapi1974
Appstore SEO
~~~
fapi1974
Appstore Rankings
------
fapi1974
App Testing
~~~
fapi1974
Android Emulator
------
fapi1974
Wireframing
~~~
fapi1974
Wireframe Sketcher
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In praise of Dewey - wallflower
https://aeon.co/essays/dewey-knew-how-to-teach-democracy-and-we-must-not-forget-it
======
spodek
One of my favorite observations from John Dewey is that children constantly
ask questions... except in the classroom. It's worth thinking about for a
while and what it says about our goals in education.
What are we doing that where we want people to learn we create an environment
to make active and curious people passive and non-curious?
I expected I would like teaching when I started. Since learning about Dewey
and his legacy and concluding that I would not lecture or give tests, I love
teaching. Most of my students say they've never taken a course like mine and
want to know how they can take more.
------
cafard
Diane Ravitch's book _The Uncertain Crusade_ has an interesting chapter on the
rise and decline of "progressive education." Dewey himself was not happy with
all that went under that name. Based on the little I have read of Dewey, his
model of a school demanded better and better-trained teachers than what it
aimed to replace. However, given how vaguely he wrote, he could hardly blame
others for misunderstanding.
------
maxlybbert
We should politicize education. That will end well.
~~~
chris_st
How about we educate politicians?
~~~
maxlybbert
I just found it surprising that the article immediately had to draw political
lines. As if nobody could enjoy learning about Dewey unless they first knew
who was good and who was evil, and why they're evil.
------
maitredusoi
In France Dewey influenced Freinet :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9lestin_Freinet)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hardcore C++: why "this" sometimes doesn't equal "this" - AndreyKarpov
http://joostdevblog.blogspot.ru/2013/03/hardcore-c-why-this-sometimes-doesnt.html
======
yew
It's worth noting that (at least as far as I'm aware) the standard doesn't
require this method of implementing multiple inheritance.
Although most implementations do use it (and Stroustrup wrote a paper about
it, see
[http://static.usenix.org/publications/compsystems/1989/fall_...](http://static.usenix.org/publications/compsystems/1989/fall_stroustrup.pdf)).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FBI operating fleet of surveillance aircraft flying over US cities - denzil_correa
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveillance-government-planes-cities
======
deathhand
> _The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it
> uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating
> new cover companies to shield the government’s involvement, and could
> endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP
> declined the FBI’s request because the companies’ names – as well as common
> addresses linked to the Justice Department – are listed on public documents
> and in government databases._
Glad to see AP still has gumption.
~~~
shit_parade2
If only that gumption extended to the US tax payer footing the bill to be
spied upon.
~~~
kenbellows
... are you suggesting that the entire US population refuse to pay any taxes
until surveillance issues are fixed? Because that's a terrible idea.
~~~
baddox
I wouldn't suggest that such a plan is remotely likely, but a massive
organized tax protest would be interesting and probably even beneficial.
~~~
istvan__
Totally agree. The first country where people do this will write history about
who is really in charge in a country.
~~~
ianstallings
That's already happened - December 16, 1773.
~~~
istvan__
That is slightly different but similar. I am expecting a sovereign country's
citizens to do something like that, as far as I know that did not happen yet.
------
jjwiseman
I've written up my findings (almost 100 aircraft, 17 front companies) and how
I reached them at [https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-
surveillan...](https://storify.com/jjwiseman/tracking-fbi-aerial-surveillance)
~~~
jjwiseman
The surprising thing was how easy it was to do this. Really, all you had to do
was look: These planes seem to literally use (unencrypted, easily decoded)
transponder codes that mean "FBI surveillance", the public records show
company names that mostly fit a simple regex, and one of the front companies
even has the exact same address as the U.S. Dept of Justice.
~~~
god_bless_texas
JJ,
I love your research on this, with SDR Dongle.
I'm building up my ADS-B receiver with a NooTech SDR. One question, you talked
about capturing squawks with your SDR - did you try for ADS-B or do you know
if these aircraft employ it? This would give you location.
Kudos to you, man!
~~~
jjwiseman
Yes, I use dump1090 which can decode Mode S/ADS-B with or without location and
Mode A/C.
------
msane
I think this is our future, whether it's dystopian or not.
Technology is eventually going to make it impossible to really prevent
"Persistent aerial surveillance". What requires an expensive small blimp today
might become the size of a ping pong ball (or wide area flock of them) and
come out of a 3D printer tomorrow.
So who will be using such tech? Governments and private entities alike - we
can try to legislate against either but technology will probably overpower the
legislation quickly.
So what is the impact of this sort of technology? Maybe it's not all George
Orwell. Your bike was stolen on Third St at 1pm? Roll the video back or
forwards to know exactly where the thief is. Someone shot up a nightclub and
rushed out in a crowd? automated video analysis caught them.
Yes it sounds scary if it were a monopolized power, but eventually I don't
think government will be able to hold monopoly on it.
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I think it sounds scary anyway.
I mean, I'd know everything about you -- where you lived, where you shopped,
where you worked, where you ate out, where your friends lived, what you did
with your friends, when you did it, etc.
I could even get further than you might imagine: I probably have a really good
guess (>0.99) what you do at your work, given your activities outside of work
and the people you associate with.
I tell your boss when you lie about being sick, I tell your insurance how
often you do risky things when not driving, I tell your ex where she can find
you at the club.
This is the future you're presenting, and claiming that there's some upside.
On the contrary, I think humans can't handle it, and are literally going to
drive themselves insane with machines.
~~~
Symmetry
You think people can't handle it but it's actually pretty close to the way
most people lived before urbanization brought anonymity to the masses. Now,
technological changes might eliminate privacy which would be unprecedented but
it's anonymity that's historically weird, not its lack.
~~~
verbin217
Anonymity sure. We're talking about privacy. It's always been at least non-
zero available.
~~~
tonyhb
Live in a faraday cage. I'm only semi-joking; I think that it could be a
solution to your issue if you're _that_ concerned about it. Whatever the
outcome technology is going to be persistently ubiquitous.
~~~
mirimir
That's not necessary. Also, lack of emissions would attract attention, and so
be counterproductive. But using shielded equipment in a shielded room, that
would be prudent for private work.
------
diafygi
_> "Aircraft surveillance has become an indispensable intelligence collection
and investigative technique which serves as a force multiplier to the ground
teams," the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1m for the
program._
Holy military state, Batman! It seems that the FBI has really taken to heart
the change in mission statement from "law enforcement" to "national
security"[1].
_> The surveillance flights comply with agency rules, an FBI spokesman said.
Those rules, which are heavily redacted in publicly available documents, limit
the types of equipment the agency can use, as well as the justifications and
duration of the surveillance._
Given the duration and location of these aircraft, it's very hard to see how
these aren't an illegal search, given the past few years of judicial
rulings[2][3]. It's become very clear that collecting movement data, even if
that movement data is public, requires a warrant. No wonder the FBI wants to
keep a layer of fake companies between it and these planes. Also, if you do
collect wide area data for a specific target, can you keep the wide area data
for use later on for another purpose?
I volunteer for an organization[4] that works with cities to adopt privacy
policies regarding the data they collect, receive, and share. To date, our
privacy policies have mostly been focused on disclosing how local offices are
sharing local data (license plate readers, stingrays, etc.) with the feds, but
now it seems we need to add sections about disclosing incoming data feeds from
the feds.
[1]: [http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/fbis-main-mission-now-
not...](http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/fbis-main-mission-now-not-law-
enforcement)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_%282012...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_%282012%29)
[3]: [https://www.eff.org/cases/united-states-v-
vargas](https://www.eff.org/cases/united-states-v-vargas)
[4]: [http://www.restorethe4th.com/](http://www.restorethe4th.com/)
~~~
rayiner
It falls squarely within California v. Ciraolo, which says there is no
expectation of privacy in anything visible from the air. It also common sense.
Any shmuck with a general aviation license can take up an ultralight and see
what he can see. So can the government.
Jones involved a trespass on the suspect's property. Totally different
situation.
~~~
shabble
Without knowing the details, it seems like they shouldn't really distil
'expectation of privacy' down a simple binary "could someone not breaking the
law observe them or not" test.
IMO, the efforts to which that hypothetical person would have to go should
influence just how much privacy a person could 'expect' to have. Otherwise why
do people bother putting up privacy fences around their garden, when anyone
could just fly over? Or hoist a camera on a stick?
The problem being that the more effort required to observe, the more confident
an ordinary person could presume to be unobserved.
When we have UAVs that can loiter around (in public airspace, of course)
random buildings and bounce laser microphones off the windows, along with
thermal imaging and gait detection of individuals at a price that is
affordable by average people, would that change 'expectation of privacy'?
As long as the tech is embargoed or ridicuously expensive, there's a distinct
skew where the government can afford it and Joe Shmuck The Reasonable
Individual can't.
In fact, the mere ability to continuously loiter for extended periods and make
recordings is probably beyond an individual who doesn't have refueling support
or additional friends in similarly equipped craft to change watches.
"If they _could_ , then we can, will, and do"
~~~
armorsmith42
The Illustrated Guide to the Law has some discussion of this question here:
[http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2201](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2201)
~~~
rayiner
Wow. That's great.
This panel explains why there is no 4th amendment protection of information
you store in the cloud:
[http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2210](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2210).
------
themartorana
When it was imagined, we called it "distopian" \- books were written and
immortalized, movies were made, warnings were served.
When it happened, there was barely a murmur.
~~~
denzil_correa
> When it was imagined, we called it "distopian"
I always though it was "dystopian" but your spelling made me check again.
Apparently, "distopia" is used in some romance languages like
Spanish -
[http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distop%C3%ADa](http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distop%C3%ADa)
Portuguese -
[http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distopia](http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distopia)
Italian -
[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distopia](http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distopia)
~~~
themartorana
Neat. I didn't do that on purpose... I misspelled it, but I'll leave it since
you have a neat point.
------
suprgeek
Video/Cell surveillance with a Judges order by the FBI (a NON-FISA Judge - the
FISA ones are Rubber Stamps) is how the process is supposed to work.
The article raises two deeply troubling points:
1) That they operate without specific Judges orders - this means that they are
pretty much Dragnets sweeping up vast swathes of information indiscriminately.
2) They are used to help in "disturbances" (by presumably recording Video &
Cell info?). So even civil disobedience is prime target for these flights.
The combination points to a major overreach by the Feds. The temptation to use
all that info in one way or another (Parallel Construction for e.g.) is too
great. Needs ACLU & possibly EFF to sue & the courts to shutdown this crap.
------
thoward
To me it makes sense that the FBI needs a fleet of surveillance planes for
investigations. It also makes sense that these aircraft carry civilian livery
to be low-profile (same idea as an unmarked pursuit car).
What seems f-ked up are the shell companies. Why not come out and say "we have
surveillance planes; we need them for investigations; here's how much money
we've allocated in our budget to operate them."
The FBI shouldn't need to hide this.
~~~
jjwiseman
The FBI using front companies for aerial surveillance of suspects seems fine
to me; That's just doing their job of criminal investigation.
The worrying part is seeing their planes overhead for hours at a time, which
looks more like potential persistent surveillance, or a dragnet that sweeps up
hundreds or thousands of people into whatever video/cellphone recording
they're doing.
~~~
pdkl95
> doing their job of criminal investigation
That hasn't been the FBI's job for some time now. They joined the
"intelligence community" club and now claim is now about "national security".
[http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/05/fbi-drops-law-
enforcemen...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/05/fbi-drops-law-enforcement-
as-primary-mission/)
So why is it necessary to fly spy planes _domestically_ to protect "national
security". That would imply we've already been invaded... or their purpose is
something else entirely.
~~~
tedunangst
Having a primary function doesn't mean they don't have other functions as
well, such as criminal investigations.
------
bediger4000
How can an ordinary person tell if one of these spy planes is currently
overhead?
Is there some way to dink with them, similar to Matt Blaze's in-band
signalling vulnerabilities discovery(s)
([http://www.crypto.com/papers/wiretap.pdf](http://www.crypto.com/papers/wiretap.pdf))
? You know, use old phones that still have SIM cards, but have them try to
register constantly? I'm a bit vague on cellphone protocol details, so spare
me the nit picking, and get on with the revelations.
~~~
toufka
from u/jjwiseman
>DOJ/FBI surveillance aircraft often squawk 4414 or 4415 on their
transponders.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508812)
~~~
cinquemb
I think this is a great thing about HN. Through the noise of the donate links
to this and that, others help propagate information how they are building
tools that could help decrease the asymmetry of the landscape/ increase
transparency surrounding these things in ways more grounded in realism.
Hak5 had a couple episodes dealing with getting set up with SDR and such to be
able to do this for yourself[0] that I didn't see covered in that thread which
might be useful for others as well.
[0] [http://hak5.org/episodes/hak5-1525](http://hak5.org/episodes/hak5-1525)
------
themeek
A host of interviews and discussions in Washington such as the Holder
interview on drone use in America and the legislation from the FAA on drones
highly suggests that large drone systems (ARGUS) will be permanently placed in
America's skys and that the use of predator drones on American citizens inside
American borders deemed to be a threat to national security would be proper
depending on official policy.
------
ninkendo
Haven't they always done this? They've always used surveillance vans parked
outside of suspect's houses with listening equipment, for example. They even
used fake company names on the sides of the vans. Why should we be surprised
they're using airplanes too?
~~~
higherpurpose
Because now they can spy on millions vs 1. I think that makes the difference.
~~~
linkregister
> Because now they can spy on millions
I didn't see that part of the article, can you link me to some resources for
the planes having that level of camera and computer vision technology?
~~~
awch
ARGUS-IS
"ARGUS is an advanced camera system that uses hundreds of cellphone cameras in
a mosaic to video and auto-track every moving object within a 36 square mile
area.
ARGUS is a form of Wide Area Persistent Surveillance that allows for one
camera to provide such detailed video that users can collect 'pattern-of-life'
data and track individual people inside the footage anywhere within the field
of regard."
[0] [https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s](https://youtu.be/QGxNyaXfJsA?t=51s)
[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-
IS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS)
~~~
linkregister
So I did the deep dive of the ARGUS-IS wikipedia article. The majority of
sources were regarding the possibilities of such a system. The one
authoritative source, from fbo.gov, was an RFP. It appears that such
capability doesn't exist, though it is interesting that a government agency is
actively working toward the capability.
However, since you asserted that such a thing _could_ happen, your link
supports your point. I think it should have been qualified that the technology
doesn't exist yet in the interest of full disclosure.
~~~
awch
I'm a little confused about what you're trying to say.
Light googling indicates that this is an extant system that has been fitted to
aircraft since 2009:
"DARPA, working in partnership with the Army Night Vision and Electronic
Sensors Directorate, Air Force, Air Force Research Laboratory and National
Geospatial Agency, conducted its first test flights using the ARGUS system
last year [2009]."
The DoD indicates that the system was operationally deployed to Afghanistan in
Q1 2011. [0]
LLNL has an article describing the system's optics, technical specs, and their
work on processing the data streams it generates. [1]
BAE released an IR upgrade in 2010:
"BAE System's first flight tests of ARGUS-IR's predecessor, ARGUS-IS,
concluded last October aboard a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter." [2]
[0]
[http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62138](http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62138)
[1]
[https://str.llnl.gov/AprMay11/vaidya.html](https://str.llnl.gov/AprMay11/vaidya.html)
[2] [http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_028152/bae-systems-
wi...](http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_028152/bae-systems-
wins-499-million-contract-to-develop-on-board-processor-and-integrate-darpas-
argus-ir-nighttime-persistent-surveillance-system)?
~~~
linkregister
Thanks for the added info. I didn't do any googling; I limited my commentary
to the source you provided (I didn't look at the youtube video, that method
usually carries a low signal to noise ratio). The wikipedia article is light
on actual information about the ARGUS IS; the primary source is an article
with the title "drone nightmare" in it. Other advertised capabilities don't
exist yet. I will add your sources to the wikipedia article, they are much
better than what is there.
I don't think that it should be expected that I exhaustively comb search
engines to find support for your point; I think that it's reasonable that I
look solely at the source you gave me.
That said, I found the capabilities in your first (0th) source to be chilling.
That source definitely supports your point.
------
morgante
Honestly, unlike what the NSA is doing, this doesn't outrage me. Surveillance
aircraft only see what is visible from the air—primarily public spaces.
When I'm in a public space, I don't have any expectation of privacy. Heck, a
single private citizen intent on tracking my every move could easily "surveil"
me in this way.
If the FBI is only exercising techniques which a private citizen could deploy,
I really don't care. I fully expect that every minute I'm in public is being
documented—it's spying on private communications which really outrages me.
~~~
ojbyrne
"Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify
thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they are
not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics
cell towers into coughing up basic subscriber information, is rare."
~~~
morgante
It appears that they do, however, get a warrant before collecting information
via Stingrays.
------
ohitsdom
I feel like I'm not understanding the implications of this, because my
reaction is "meh". Can't the FBI fly helicopters now without a warrant? What's
different about this compared with past behavior? I guess I'd be more
interested to learn what equipment they have on the planes, because that can
greatly impact the work they are doing. I'm definitely concerned about drones
taking over this work with better tech, but I feel like I should be up in arms
about these flights and I'm not.
------
whoisthemachine
If you need to hide your surveillance behind fake companies, then you can
probably surmise that it will not be met with public approval.
------
skidoo
This isn't exactly new.
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/14/government-
plan...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/14/government-planes-mimic-
cellphone-towers-to-collect-user-data-report)
~~~
jjwiseman
Yes! There are even articles from 3013 about the FBI using small planes for
aerial surveillance, including IMSI-catchers. I think the reason the story
might be catching on now is because of the compelling nature of seeing
screenshots of multiple circle tracks over multiple cities, and even seeing
photos of the planes and their camera turrets.
------
tzs
> Most flight patterns occurred in counter-clockwise orbits up to several
> miles wide and roughly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003
> newsletter from the company FLIR Systems Inc, which makes camera technology
> such as seen on the planes, described flying slowly in left-handed patterns.
The way they mentioned counter-clockwise orbits and then talk about FLIR's
newsletter mentioning left-handed patterns seems to be trying to use the
left/counter-clockwise aspects to connect the two.
That seems rather a stretch. Pilots have better visibility to the left in most
small planes, and so left turns are preferred. Also, propellers usually rotate
clockwise, which causes some biases toward the left I believe, which may make
it slightly easier to do left turns.
------
eruditely
I think the realities of statecraft in the twenty-first century has made stuff
like this to be impossible to do without, from what it seems like these
agencies are not evil and they have merely had to evolve to the realities of
this era.
I do not like it nor enjoy it but it seems like Russian/Chinese intelligence
have free reign in america whereas our agencies are under constant assault by
the public and all other nations versus us. Sometimes I fear we are bringing
down the state with out actions.
------
sgnelson
I might have missed it somewhere, but I'm curious as to what cities they were
flying over. Does anyone have a link/list of the cities that the FBI has been
flying over?
------
shmerl
Watchbird[1] coming next?
[1].
[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579)
See also
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121205/21484221251/nyc-a...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121205/21484221251/nyc-
artists-satirizes-law-enforcement-drone-program-gets-book-thrown-him-
nypd.shtml)
------
ck2
If they actually had a warrant to look for some specific person or group of
people I'd actually have no problem with this. Gangs, drug dealers, etc.
The problem is as usual, they feel they are above any judicial review, even if
they know they would just get a rubber stamp from a "go to" judge.
------
dsugarman
This looks like the answer to a recent HN frontpage question
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825)
------
Lukeas14
\- the FBI’s planes “are not equipped, designed or used for bulk collection
activities or mass surveillance”
At least not wittingly.
------
xacaxulu
For your safety.
------
patrickg_zill
It is amazing how prescient the movie "Enemy of the State" (with Will Smith,
Gene Hackman) was. And how it holds up to a second viewing even today.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
I recommend you watch Coppola's _The Conversation_ as well, which is what
originally inspired EotS. It's far more atmospheric and psychologically tense.
~~~
rsync
Agreed - The Conversation is quite good.
------
happyscrappy
Wait until HN learns about satellite surveillance.
~~~
josefresco
FBI Agent on Foot: OK
FBI Agent in a Van: OK
FBI Agent in a Plane: Not OK
I'm assuming an FBI agent in a satellite would be _really_ not OK.
~~~
discardorama
Strawman. The issue is not the presence of the pilot in the airplane; it's the
presence of high-res cameras, StingRays, etc.
------
rasz_pl
Are we sure its FBI and not some bigger 4 eyes operation? "Mystery Plane With
No Callsign Circles South London For Hours":
[http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/22/mystery-plane-
no-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/22/mystery-plane-no-
callsign_n_5608777.html)
------
comrade1
As mentioned in a previous thread on this topic - they don't have to register
surveillance blimps, tethered or free-flying. Based on altitude I think.
~~~
fnordfnordfnord
They do, they appeared on sectionals as obstacles
[https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/10/28/2010-272...](https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/10/28/2010-27251/revocation-
of-restricted-areas-r-3807-glencoe-la-and-r-6320-matagorda-tx)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Even GitHub’s innocent Octocat has a hidden face - adichat
https://medium.com/@adityatakesnote/even-githubs-innocent-octocat-has-an-hidden-face-d3eb3599c3ff
======
t0mbstone
I expected this article to be an analysis of the Octocat logo, showing some
sort of hidden face.
Instead, it was just a bunch of random facts about Github?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SILE Typesetting System - gkya
http://sile-typesetter.org/what-is/
======
qznc
Compared to TeX I miss two things: Math mode and TikZ.
One of the quality marks of TeX for me, is that the fonts match everywhere.
For inline math, the x-height of normal and math font is the same. The font
and text size used in plots is identical to the normal text.
~~~
rawfan
No math is pretty much a dealbreaker for most people, I guess.
~~~
simoncozens
It depends on what world you operate in. For science-related work, then yes, I
agree it's a dealbreaker. SILE is currently focused towards humanities
publishing where not having math support is not really that big a deal. But I
would like to see it added, and have been looking into how hard it would be to
get MathJAX support.
------
resoluteteeth
This was probably posted because it was discussed in the thread for the
Patoline typesetting system yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13674879](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13674879)
~~~
gkya
Yes, it made me recall this, though I first saw it in FOSDEM '15 talks [1]. I
thought it'd be nice to see what people think about this as I'm in the looks
for a TeX alternative.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BIP_N9qQm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BIP_N9qQm4)
~~~
rhythmvs
SILE indeed looks great, promising to come on par with the typesetting quality
we have come to expect since TeX: Knuth-Plass line breaking, Unicode and
OpenType font features support, complete with contextual shaping, Cassowary
constraint solver, parallel text, multiple apparati, foot and marginal notes,
vertical typesetting… This is a typographer’s dream!
But, like TeX and friends (LaTeX, ConTeXt, etc.), creating stylesheets and
document templates still looks like a pain with SILE and alike. At least from
the perspective of designers who have come to expect a strict separation of
concerns between document structure/semantics and its styling, and who are
used to work with a declarative stylesheet-based language like the prevalent
CSS, as opposed to the macros of TeX, and its document model which conflates
semantical markup with inline styling instructions.
Similar initiatives like SILE, which attempt to port TeX to newer languages
while untangling macro spaghetti, like Cló¹ and Rinohtype², didn’t consider
CSS-based stylesheets either. Which is a pity, especially with highly
developed W3C Working Draft open standard specifications³ for paged media
being out quite some time now.
That’s exactly what makes PDF formatters like Prince⁴, which accepts standard
html and css as its input, so immensely attractive: users can continue to use
the (Web) technologies they already know (html, javascript, css) and enjoy a
strict separation of concerns between document contents, templates and make-
up. Unfortunately, there exist no FLOSS alternatives.
Once in a while, people are coming up with the question whether there are TeX
flavors which do support `.css` as an input.⁵ Peculiar too that no project
exists to create a compiler to convert and map css style rules, selectors and
properties to something which TeX does understand. (Except may this⁶ one.)
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=824yVKUPFjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=824yVKUPFjU)
[2]
[https://github.com/brechtm/rinohtype](https://github.com/brechtm/rinohtype)
[3] [http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-page/](http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-page/) [4]
[http://www.princexml.com/](http://www.princexml.com/) [5] e.g.
[http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/139067/i-have-a-
dream...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/139067/i-have-a-dream-using-
css-to-style-a-tex-document) [6]
[https://github.com/yannisl/phd/blob/master/phd.dtx](https://github.com/yannisl/phd/blob/master/phd.dtx)
~~~
leandrod
As a lazy Debian user, I checked all of these and found none on Debian
repositories, which due to Ubuntu and other direct or indirect derivatives is
probably the best way of making such software widely available and known.
------
majewsky
So I'm curious and click on the "Examples" link in the navigation, and there's
just no justification for the first picture. ;)
~~~
qznc
And a glaring "overfull hbox" between the two columns "means".
And shouldn't the "grid layout" feature assure that the baselines of the two
columns match?
And the kerning problem in "T able of Contents"
;)
~~~
majewsky
Oh dear, yes. You just keep seeing more and more errors the longer you look.
This isn't meant to demean the people working on SILE. It just goes to show
how complex typesetting is.
------
gravypod
What goes into writing a typesetting system like this? I know kerning is one
thing that is needed but I'm assuming there's a lot more then just spacing
letters.
I'd love for someone to write a full post about how it works.
Also this does look really good.
~~~
fusiongyro
_TeX by Topic_ was a much clearer resource to me than _the TeXBook_ although
one eventually has to go back and read that. TeX seems like a reasonable
approximation of it, but it's definitely slanted towards text-heavy and
mathematical stuff, which is pretty far from what something like InDesign is
mostly about. I'm just an appreciator, not an implementer, but this is my
overview of typesetting text:
First, you have to build words from letters; this is where kerning comes into
it.
Second, you have to build lines. TeX calls this "horizontal mode" and this is
where inter-word spacing and justification matter. TeX uses a "boxes-and-glue"
model, so during line building it's essentially putting stretchable glue
between each word, and then when the line is built, it spreads the space
evenly between all the pieces of glue to achieve justification. Glue has a
natural size as well as minimum and maximum values; this along with
hyphenation has to do with calculating the line "badness."
Third, you have to build paragraphs. This is what TeX calls "vertical mode."
Between each line of text, it inserts vertical glue that works similarly to
the horizontal glue mentioned above. Another glue is used between paragraphs.
TeX worries about widow and orphan lines here; other calculations are made to
prevent or allow them. This is like badness but I think it has another name.
Finally, you have to build pages. With TeX, this happens periodically as it
notices it has enough material (or you force it by calling the right kind of
eject). By default, this invokes a page building macro which you can
customize. This part of TeX feels pretty 1970s and hackish, but essentially,
there is a variable that contains a box with the supposed contents of the
page, your job is to assign a box to a certain location and remove some of the
contents of the input box. LaTeX's "float" mechanism is actually built _on top
of_ this mechanism, but as it's pretty procedural, you can certainly achieve
other effects here.
So that's the birds-eye-view I acquired a few years ago when I did some in
depth playing with TeX. First you build words, then lines, then paragraphs,
then pages. There are different considerations at each stage of that but TeX
attempts to subsume everything in that overall flow.
I think that process probably generalizes nicely for some things and is almost
inadequate for others. I'm not sure how ConTeXt achieves the grid layout; I
imagine they are relying on some complicated Lua code to pull it off, because
TeX really doesn't care unless you make it.
~~~
Mikhail_Edoshin
There's also _TeX: The Program_ that is a literate code for TeX. It's in
Pascal though and littered with literate macros, so it's rather hard to read.
------
toomim
Do any of these work in HTML, or web browsers, where the page changes size and
doesn't have fixed breaks? Where you can just scroll and scroll?
I'd love beautiful typesetting on the web, where I actually write and read. I
don't use paper.
~~~
username223
Note that I use paper, because I am an old person. They're very different
problems.
In print, you have to deal with page breaks and positioning of figures, but
you know everyone will see the same thing. Doing this right requires human
attention, but you can produce beautiful layouts, even with multiple columns
and oddly-shaped text boxes.
On the web, everyone sees a single "page," but those pages are all different.
Even simple two-column justified text is mostly garbage on the web, and forget
trying to float figures close to their references. Web designers have mostly
given up, resorting to either huge margins, or an ugly wide wall of giant-font
text. Print-quality layout and typesetting on the web is very far away.
~~~
coliveira
Completely true, but for fairness the reason is that the web was not created
as a tool for text layout. The goal was exactly the opposite, to make the text
independent of layout and displayed differently in the different browsers.
Doing good text layout on the web is practically an intractable problem. On
the other hand, we already have software capable of doing this, such as PDF.
~~~
username223
I don't know if Tim Berners-Lee thought about layout. SGML was text with
semantic information, and HTML was text with cross-references. Back when
displays were tiny low-resolution things little better than terminals, and
most web pages were just text with a few images, layout didn't matter. It was
all ugly. Now that displays are larger than books, and pages are heavy enough
to contain the entire Gutenberg Bible, people are starting to care.
Maybe in 5-10 years, with enough server-side computing power and bandwidth,
sites will ask for the client's screen size and desired font size, then serve
an appropriate PDF.
------
amelius
Does this support arbitrarily nested environments?
One thing that always bugged me in LaTeX was exactly this. Nesting
environments often gave me odd results, or errors.
~~~
rawfan
Looking at the FOSDEM'15 talk linked above, it appears to support this.
------
amelius
It seems the latest release (0.9.4) is from August 2016.
Any idea when the 1.0.0 milestone will be reached?
~~~
simoncozens
1.0.0 will be reached when, given an appropriate style sheet, SILE can perform
unsupervised typesetting of an arbitrary USX file (XML-based Bible translation
document) to publication standard.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AWS Rekognition vs. Microsoft Cognitive Services vs. VisageCloud - bocse
https://www.facebook.com/VisageCloud/posts/1509145412440473
======
bocse
More details on [https://visagecloud.com](https://visagecloud.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Scaling NPM in VMs with Npmserve - whockey
https://blog.plaid.com/npmserve/
======
polymathist
Wow! I think it's worth emphasizing that in the given example, the time taken
to install all dependencies went from 8m10s to 7.5s. Seems like a huge
productivity boon for any teams working with Node.
~~~
ilaksh
Is there really no way to get closer to normal performance for networking in
Virtual Box?
Also, why not use Linux VPS? Also, take a look at Docker as an alternative to
Vagrant/Chef. Also, take a look at pnpm.
~~~
dmerrick
Infrastructure guy at Plaid here.
> Is there really no way to get closer to normal performance for networking in
> Virtual Box?
Unfortunately not! It takes many different tweaks, tunes, and hacks to squeeze
performance out of VirtualBox. To make matters worse, NPM as a tool is pretty
slow in general -- in fact it's become somewhat of a joke in the community[1].
npmserve solves this by offloading the work to a remote server, so the npm
install process becomes as simple as fetching and expanding a tarball.
> Also, why not use Linux VPS?
This is something we may move to if performance becomes an even bigger issue.
We use vagrant-aws[2] in our integration testing environment to achieve a
similar effect.
> Also, take a look at Docker as an alternative to Vagrant/Chef.
We don't currently use Docker (in this use-case at least). It's definitely an
option, though! Using Chef here is pretty handy, insofar as we can use the
same infrastructure code we use on production, so our developer environments
are as close to production as possible.
> Also, take a look at pnpm.
Nice, this is the first I've heard of this project. We looked at ied[3], but
we weren't comfortable moving over to it without also moving our production
infrastructure.
[1]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/nplaym
[2]: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant-aws
[3]: https://github.com/alexanderGugel/ied
------
jbergens
Wouldn't it be easier to commit node_modules to the source control server?
Then you don't have to do npm install on build servers.
~~~
coltonv
The problem is checking megabyte after megabyte of the massive dependency
trees that everyone is obsessed burdens source control pretty hard.
------
stephenr
The root issue is clearly NPM's terrible performance, but it seems to have
been exacerbated here by VirtualBox's terrible networking.
Given that you're talking about developer environments, wouldn't it have been
simpler to just try a different virtualisation tool like Parallels, VMWare or
(if you're on Windows) Hyper-V ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ranking Programming Languages by Size of Community and Number of Projects - ghurlman
http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/ranking-programming-languages.php
======
timtadh
Original blog post here: [http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-
popularity-of-pr...](http://www.dataists.com/2010/12/ranking-the-popularity-
of-programming-langauges/)
RWW pretty much just repackaged the original post with a small amount of
commentary.
------
augustl
The title should really include "on Github". If you included GNU projects and
BSD and so on, you'd get a lot more C, for example.
~~~
aeurielesn
I think that even just adding sourceforge may have pumped C a lot more.
------
mynameishere
Not going to squint at that. But really, ranking languages by money involved:
COBOL 1.0
JAVA 0.1
C++ 0.1
.NET 0.05
OTHER 0.0000001
~~~
Keyframe
ADA must be at 0.75 at least then!
------
noelwelsh
There are obvious holes in the methodology, so I wouldn't take the content of
the post too seriously. What I do think is great about this post is how the
authors generated a bunch of hits from an hour or so of work. Pick a topic
with wide interest, do some simple (but non-trivial, if you aren't used to the
tools) analysis, watch the traffic roll in! It's a good model for anyone
trying to drive traffic to their site.
~~~
noglorp
Being successful on the internet is easy! Just create interesting content, and
then generate viewers!
------
astrofinch
Programming languages, databases, and browsers ranked based on a variety of
characteristics:
<http://hammerprinciple.com/>
------
aeurielesn
I wonder whether using unanswered questions from SO was a good idea.
Shouldn't it mean that the community is lacking cohesion?
------
stcredzero
I'd be interested in the trends! What communities are growing, which ones are
shrinking, and which ones are stable?
------
Havoc
I'm surprised to see so many assembly projects on github. Also, Delphi is
missing from the tiers.
------
berntb
Just out of curiosity, as I've not started with Github (yet).
How many environments for languages/operating systems have most of their stuff
in pre-github systems (CPAN and Perlmonks for Perl, kernels, etc)?
~~~
chrisaycock
You could also make the argument that older languages are discussed on sites
other than StackOverflow (ie, Google Groups, direct forums, etc). I get the
impression it all washes out in the end.
~~~
berntb
Perlmonks which I mentioned, is a StackOverflow variant since a decade, or so.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Surveillance Capitalism - bottle2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism
======
dang
For a topic as well-covered as this
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=comments%3E0%20Surveillance%20Capitalism&sort=byDate&type=story&storyText=none))
it would be better to submit something more specific than a Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia submissions are good for extremely obscure things.
------
Hakashiro
My issue with the term is that governments are, and will ever be more invasive
with our private data than private companies. This makes sense: the government
will never be held accountable for data hoarding, and in fact kinda needs to
hoard data to prosecute tax fraud and ensure law enforcement, but private
businesses want to make sure people still use them, even if their users are
privacy conscious.
Moreover, a bunch of fully for-profit companies are living off of exclusively
selling privacy. Their only reason to exist is protecting their customer's
information. Think ProtonMail, Tutanota, TunnelBear, privacy.com, the Mozilla
Foundation (to a certain extent), Qwant, DuckDuckGo, and so on and so forth.
I very much preferred the previous term: "Government Surveillance". As some
other comments on this page also pointed out, this loss of privacy comes with
the benefit of productivity and reduced friction, while government
surveillance rarely ever has a positive side to it (except catching criminals,
and even so at the expense of non-criminals' privacy).
~~~
encom
Key difference: You elect your government, and if you aren't happy with how
they're doing things, you can vote them out. I never voted for Zuckerberg,
Bezos, Cook or whoever runs Google.
~~~
fbonetti
If you aren't happy with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, etc, you can choose
not to be a customer of them. You can't opt out of paying taxes.
~~~
encom
I'm not a customer of Google nor Facebook, but they're still tracking me all
over the internet.
------
usr1106
Capitalism isn't seen as anything bad in most countries after the cold war.
I would prefer the term privacy prostitution or data prostitution. You sell
your privacy in exchange for getting "free" search, "free" news, "free" maps,
"free" email. Of course such services cannot be free of cost.
Traditionally Germany had a law that you are not allowed to give "gifts" when
selling something. So when offering a car they were not allowed to give a
"free" grill or something like that. The goal was to protect consumers from
intrasparent pricing and unfair business practices. Some market-liberalist
politicians abandoned the law many years ago, because consumers are "mature
enough" to make their own decisions.
So how many consumers decide to pay for the internet services they use instead
of being tracked?
~~~
surround
> Capitalism isn't seen as anything bad in most countries after the cold war.
It’s called “surveillance capitalism” because companies are _capitalizing_ on
selling people’s data. It differentiates it from _government_ surveillance.
~~~
Fnoord
In a corrupt (nation) state, you could for example buy some information about
a person, via the government. Corruptcy is not a black-white definition. There
are a lot of shades, wheels in a machine, etc. So a state is not merely
corrupt, yes or no.
------
0x8BADF00D
I’d rather have surveillance capitalism than government
surveillance/authoritarianism. The worst thing these guys can do is try to
sell me a porn subscription I don’t need. Government surveillance is much
worse.
~~~
pirocks
I can imagine a number of worse things that surveillance capitalists could do,
like sell services to the aforementioned governments, or sell your porn
subscription to someone else.
~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
And practically, all the data collected by private corporations can be
obtained by governments via a subpoena. Until it could be changed, all
corporate surveillance is ultimately government surveillance. And there's
strong evidence suggests that it occurs at a routine basis. Although some
companies like Lavabit showed respectable efforts to be independent and
privacy-respecting, on the other hand, some companies actively cooperating
with the government, or even oppressive regimes without regards of ethics. So
yes, government surveillance is worse than corporate surveillance, but the
latter can be seriously harmful in many cases as well.
------
netcan
The term "capitalism" is a mind-trap, vaguely encompassing everything..
carrying in political baggage but adda almost no actual information.
~~~
mr_spothawk
well... in modern parlance perhaps.
but the word has a specific and precise definition despite peoples' ignorance
of it.
------
Barrin92
I listened to the Econtalk episode with Zuboff and Roberts a while ago and I
wasn't really sold on her arguments despite actually being personally quite to
the left on economic issues usually.
The problem I had with the critique is that the answer to surveillance
capitalism always seems to be a return to privacy. Big Business is to big, we
need to claim data autonomy,be democratic, and so on.
I think the reason why surveillance capitalism is so successful is because
people actually like the automation and transparency. There's always this
"wake up sheeple" element to the critique that in my opinion just doesn't
address the fact that people simply value the utility they gain out of these
tools higher than privacy. I think the better way forward is to align the
interests of end consumers and business rather than attempting to retreat back
into private spaces.
~~~
Fnoord
> I think the reason why surveillance capitalism is so successful is because
> people actually like the automation and transparency.
(I still have to read her book.)
They pay with their privacy, but the payment is not at all transparent. In a
way, it already happened: if you upgraded to Windows 10 for free back in the
days (before GDPR), you paid with your privacy. If you use Android instead of
iOS, you have a cheaper device, but you pay with your privacy. The Apple tax
is high in a lot of countries. Too high for the masses. In essence, an iOS
device is a status symbol that you paid with money instead of your privacy.
~~~
Barrin92
>but you pay with your privacy
And I think that's a perfectly okay choice to make. I don't know why I
shouldn't pay with my information, given that I'm aware of it. I'm fine with
having an android phone and using the few hundred bucks I save on something
else.
My information has some value, and by trading that information to a company
that provides me with a service I get something out of it. If I keep data
private that I don't mind sharing and instead would say, pay with cash, I'd
lose out on getting some value out of my data.
Now I think there is an interesting discussion to be had if users could
organise to leverage the value they get out of their data, people have talked
about a sort of 'data union' to collectively bargain for a higher return, but
in principle I don't mind using my data as a currency.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Copycattery (and why it won't serve you) - pjrvs
http://pjrvs.com/copycats/
======
pjrvs
I welcome comments here or on twitter (@pjrvs), since I don't use comments on
my own site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Appleseed 1.8.0-beta - franzb
https://github.com/appleseedhq/appleseed/releases/tag/1.8.0-beta
======
chakharsh14
1.8.0 Beta is really a good release. Lots of improvement and fixes been made.
Kudos to whole Appleseed development team.
[https://show-box.ooo/](https://show-box.ooo/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Luminati – Anonymity Network for Web Crawlers - luminati
http://luminati.io/
======
rcsorensen
What's the cost?
How are the tunnels set up?
This looks very much like it could be a thin pricing layer over a hacked
botnet, which wouldn't be right to support at all.
~~~
hobs
If you look at the parent company (hola.org), they created a p2p "free"
network where people join it and then their traffic gets routed through each
other.
Sounds like a voluntary botnet that they are monetizing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sharon Van Etten found the drive to make music again - kikitee
https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/music-2/remind-me-tomorrow-interview-sharon-van-etten/
======
markoman
Her most well known song is 'Every time the sun comes up', which features in
the Volvo Wedding & Lighthouse commerical which came out a few year years ago.
Another widely played song of hers is 'Taking Chances', but there are several
others. She is an original but raw talent and her videos are a bit uneven but
when she shines, the result is brilliance. She is influencing others, and that
is always a good sign.
------
tdumitrescu
HN crowd is more likely to know her from her acting role on _The OA_, but she
was putting out great music long before that. Can't wait for the new album to
arrive in a few days.
~~~
ambivalents
It's available on Spotify now.
------
oceanghost
A soul so much more beautiful than mine...
I want every town, I need you to know There's nothing left to sell me, I'm
broke I just want these holes for when I try to run For no reason, or so I'm
told Don't you think I know you're only trying to save yourself Don't you
think I know you're only trying to save yourself Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh Ancient
in one long, incidental month You had a bad day, I want home You still make me
smile, as much as I am reeling It has been a while, please don't make me show
I'm not your gal Don't you think I know you're only trying to save yourself
Don't you think I know you're only trying to save yourself Just like everyone
else Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh Try and make me feel like I'm
your number one Every other one, well, shit, get real Know you're balding
still, you're older than you feel Think a little harder, a little modest and
humble be I won't wait around Don't you think I know you're only trying to
save yourself Don't you think I know you're only trying to save yourself Just
like everyone else You're just like everyone else You're just like everyone
else You're just like everyone else
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why jwz uses Safari instead of Firefox - pavel_lishin
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/04/why-i-use-safari-instead-of-firefox/
======
mdaniel
I have moral opposition to using any browser that is deeply integrated into
the OS. We have seen IE, and let us hope that we do not return to that dark
age. I would never claim that just because a browser runs as an _application_
rather than a _pseudo-service_ makes it secure, but I feel confident in saying
that it makes it _more_ secure. Attack surface, et al.
~~~
rollypolly
What's your opinion of ChromeOS? (It doesn't get more deeply integrated than
that.)
~~~
mdaniel
My opinion of ChromeOS is that it is a toy, but please read that knowing that
I am not their target audience. Plus, my understanding is that the marketing
message is "the browser is the OS" but under the covers it's a Linux platform.
I am not extremely educated on ChromeOS, but you asked my opinion.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reline – reformatting text width of files and piped text - CodeHustler
https://github.com/JaredMHall/reline
======
pwg
How does this differ from the 'fmt' utility included in the GNU textutils set?
~~~
CodeHustler
I thought that fmt only separated text by columns not by characters or words?
~~~
pwg
You are thinking of 'col'. 'fmt' reflows paragraphs:
NAME
fmt - simple optimal text formatter
SYNOPSIS
fmt [-WIDTH] [OPTION]... [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION
Reformat each paragraph in the FILE(s), writing to
standard output. The option -WIDTH is an abbreviated
form of --width=DIGITS. Mandatory arguments to long
options are mandatory for short options too.
-c, --crown-margin
preserve indentation of first two lines
-p, --prefix=STRING
reformat only lines beginning with STRING,
reattaching the prefix to reformatted lines
-s, --split-only
split long lines, but do not refill
-t, --tagged-paragraph
indentation of first line different from
second
-u, --uniform-spacing
one space between words, two after sentences
-w, --width=WIDTH
maximum line width (default of 75 columns)
-g, --goal=WIDTH
goal width (default of 93% of width)
--help display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit
With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.
~~~
CodeHustler
Oh ok.
I still can't figure out how to achieve the same functionality with fmt
though. Am I doing something wrong, or does `fmt` just not provide the same
functionality as `reline`?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How does one get into energy entrepreneurship (e.g. solar)? - zxcvvcxz
Say I want to manufacture/sell solar modules to buildings in my city or something like that. Where would one get started? Background/theoretical knowledge is an obvious starting point, but then...?
======
mchannon
Having done exactly that, would recommend first coming up with a business
plan, recognizing that you have to pay yourself, recognizing the pitfalls of
selling your own panels (there are many that aren't obvious), and figuring out
how you can make money enough to grow the business and support yourself better
than you could by just getting a job.
This is a very tough business to do well in these days, particularly if you go
it alone. That's why I no longer am in it. Feel free to message me if you want
specific questions answered.
------
alokv28
Most energy entrepreneurs I know started out leveraging government programs
including SBIR/STTR, ARPA-E and DOE grants, and national lab facilities.
------
sajclarke151
One simple way would be to start teaching consumers about solar energy and
perform an energy audit on their homes. Scale that up to big businesses if you
want to charge more - however a sound knowledge of the local electrical code
(and standards) is necessary if you want to do the energy audit properly.
Use the findings of the energy audit to propose an energy plan. Partner with
an electrical supplier to re-sell solar panels to your clients
------
amac
Become a dealer or reseller and learn the business. Solar panels will be like
almost any other product i.e there's a market, a margin etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Subsets and Splits