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Show HN: A curated list of awesome web apps - vasanthv
https://github.com/vasanthv/awesome-web-apps
======
bradknowles
It’s not a curated list of awesome anything if you don’t annotate each entry
and tell us what it does and why it is awesome at doing it.
IMO, of course.
~~~
vasanthv
Makesense, renamed it to [https://github.com/vasanthv/web-app-
hunt](https://github.com/vasanthv/web-app-hunt)
------
ChrisGranger
I like lists like this.
Server not found for Typen...
~~~
vasanthv
I am marking those dead services which were once alive. Will change it to dead
service.
| {
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TSMC and OIP Deliver Industry’s First Complete Design Infrastructure 5nm Process - ytch
https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?action=detail&newsid=THPGWQTHTH&language=E
======
doe88
As an outsider I would never had anticipated Intel being leapfroged like that
in such a short window of time. As side effect it probably largely contributed
to the resurrection of AMD (coupled with the fact they probably produced with
Ryzen a good design at the right time). I would like to know if Intel just
fumbled or if TSMC stepped-up their game, or more likely a little bit of both?
~~~
ksec
A little bit of both. Intel's 10nm is now officially 2 years late. If they had
7nm now they would still be in the lead given its ( original ) 7nm plan were
roughly equivalent to TSMC 5nm.
TSMC also gained lots of momentum from the Smartphone Revolution. All of a
sudden you have a 1.3B Smartphone Market, from SoC, Wireless BaseBand, and all
sort of other component Fabbed with TSMC, compared to Intel's 250M PC Market.
Now of course Intel make many times higher margin, but considered TSMC has a
diverse group of clients utilising its current and old Fab compared to Intel
doing it all by themselves, TSMC now has similar resources to Intel and
innovate.
And compared to Intel which has big leaps across generation, TSMC's approach
were to iterate, so you get 16nm, 16mn+, 10nm, 7nm, 7nm EUV, 5nm EUV, all of
them were iteration of previous generation.
------
phkahler
>> Compared with TSMC’s 7nm process, its innovative scaling features deliver
1.8X logic density and 15% speed gain on an ARM® Cortex®-A72 core, along with
superior SRAM and analog area reduction enabled by the process architecture.
Since process names have largely lost any meaning I just wanted to see if they
compared density to their own previous node. I was not disappointed, though
they don't mention the actual SRAM density change.
------
mjevans
Wow, that's really small, and also really close to the theoretical limits (I
recalled and thus looked for confirmation of that memory).
It seems like moving past 5nm is going to be... a lot differnet.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire)
(edit to add) Nanowire is mentioned as the next likely node after 5nm on that
article, but it doesn't link back:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer)
~~~
thechao
Don’t conflate “effective feature size” (the 5nm used in this article) with
“real” feature size (or, more importantly, pitch), with transistor size.
Transistors are still _huge_ compared to atoms—think hundreds of thousands, or
millions. The issues at this scale are all electrical. (Bullshit terms like
“quantum tunneling” are bandied about; the scientific use isn’t wrong, but any
journalist using the term probably is.)
There’s a _lot_ of room down there, below the extended Moore’s law, just not
always so CMOS-ey.
~~~
bogomipz
Could you elaborate, what does “effective feature size” mean in the context of
process technology?
~~~
thechao
It's my personal way of politely saying "marketing bullshit". The real
importance of 5nm vs. 7nm is the density of the transistors. A large portion
of the recent gains in transistor density have been from reducing the pitch
(the space between) transistors, rather than shrinking the size of the
transistor.
~~~
bogomipz
Ah ok, that's quite funny. Does pitch reduction result in performance gains
indirectly though - more transistors per chip?
~~~
thechao
That's an ultra-qualified "yes". Hardware isn't magic. Once you've got a
Turing-complete device, software can cover the rest. However, HW
implementations of functionality are 'better' than software in the sense of
being _either_ faster _or_ more power-efficient. (Or some trade-off.) Our
chips are _better_ because we can throw more customized hardware to side-step
(slow; power-hungry) software implementations. We have access to more
customized HW because we have more transistors.
If you're asking long-run questions in terms of HW/SW stack performance, I
strongly suspect we've got another 3-10 doublings with "just more HW". If any
of the post-patterning mechanisms pan out we could, theoretically, get another
15-20 doublings by going all the way down to atoms. After that ... I dunno;
sort of the realm of scifi at that point.
~~~
bogomipz
Thanks that all makes good sense. I was curious about "post-pattering
mechanisms"? Is this a new area in fab process technology? Might you have some
links? Another 15-20 doublings from where we are today is pretty awesome.
~~~
dfrage
Patterning is the use of multiple masks to get fine features smaller than the
wavelength of light you're using where in previous larger feature nodes one
mask sufficed:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_patterning)
It's very expensive in terms of tooling, since you need a lot more more masks,
and production time spend in lithography steps. See this comment in this
discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570724)
for a bit more.
------
wmf
I guess the Apple A14 and maybe AMD Zen 4 will use this process.
------
olliej
Can anyone with more understanding of these things given a run down on how
this 5nm compares to 5/7/10nm from other companies?
~~~
mappu
Layman POV:
\- TSMC are the only company currently shipping real products at 7nm, and 5nm
is a full generation ahead beyond that - nobody else is anywhere close to 5nm.
\- Samsung will have a 7nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to
TSMC's current 7nm (data point: the Galaxy S10 ships with either the Exynos
9820 on Samsung's "8nm" (enhanced/rebranded 10nm) process, or the broadly-
similar-performance-with-better-power-efficiency Snapdragon 855 on TSMC 7nm)
\- Intel will have a 10nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to TSMC's
current 7nm. They are still shipping 14nm as their leading node.
\- Global Foundries have stopped further investment beyond 14nm.
~~~
ksec
>\- Intel will have a 10nm later this year that is broadly equivalent to
TSMC's _current_ 7nm. They are still shipping 14nm as their leading node.
Just to add, by that time TSMC will have an improved 7nm based on EUV.
I wonder what happens after TSMC 3nm, that is roughly 2022 / 2023\. I am
pretty sure we can do 2nm, but without another market expansion to further
spread the cost of unit, I wonder who will be able to afford these leading
nodes. With every generation being much more expensive than previous gen.
Smartphone unit shipment are not growing, in fact leading node Mobile SoC are
likely shrinking on a YoY basis due to slower replacement cycle.
We surely haven't reach the technical limit of SemiConductors, but it looks to
me we reach the Market / Economical Limit.
~~~
baybal2
Equipment sales were actually going down for close to 3 years now. We are up
for long winter in the industry.
7nm is here to stay. 5nm is possible it is just an optimisation of 7nm SAQP
and can be done without radical increase of maskset costs.
After that, we are going down the rabbit hole of EUV litho.
A poorly held secret in the industry is that fabs want to use EUV to not to
make <7nm, but to make economical <40nm litho with single exposure.
The biggest increase in cost after 40nm were due to increased numbers of
exposures and more non-device and metal layers.
Cheap 20nm, single exposure planar litho will be a very commercially
attractive process for a lot of things.
~~~
ksec
>Equipment sales were actually going down for close to 3 years now. We are up
for long winter in the industry.
I heard some say this, Would it really be "Winter" though? I guess from
equipment manufacture perspective that is yes. From the industry as whole I
guess it is just longer cycle, more cost reduction from technology stand
points.
>A poorly held secret in the industry is that fabs want to use EUV to not to
make <7nm, but to make economical <40nm litho with single exposure.
I guess that is still many years out? Considering all the ASML EUV unit are
fully booked till 2021, and with increasing use of EUV from Intel I guess that
is likely to continue till 2023 / 2024.
It would be quite some time before we can make super cheap 20nm components.
~~~
baybal2
> I heard some say this, Would it really be "Winter" though?
Yes, serious economists hired by fab companies almost all think so. See, fab
ecosystem can't create demand by itself, it relies on clients selling new
fancy things, and there are no new fancy things on the horizon, and even
"megaclients" are scaling down new orders.
The one overt ways fabs can stimulate consumption is by inventing ground
breaking new concepts, and then giving them away... As was with chip cameras
(smartphones, optical mouses) RF integration (think of every SoC with wireless
today,) MEMS, power on silicon...
Even on that from, there is little new things coming.
> I guess that is still many years out? Considering all the ASML EUV unit are
> fully booked till 2021, and with increasing use of EUV from Intel I guess
> that is likely to continue till 2023 / 2024.
1 single exposure on planar EUV process can replace 10+ multiple patterning
exposures. So, even with a dramatically lower throughput, it can slash process
times, and shoot up yields.
------
mensetmanusman
Interesting that the CEO of Intel saying ‘no’ to Steve Jobs results in this
happening 15 years later.
------
no1youknowz
What does this mean for Apple? Could we see a 5nm Arm MBPr from them in 2021?
I would really love to see this and a macbook which finally does not throttle
under load and is really quiet.
------
thesz
5nm is 150 atoms wide. "Several tens of atoms" is a definition of nanoscale,
from what I remember.
------
ww520
Cooler Nvdia chips? More pixels cranked through the video cards? 8K or 16K
videos coming?
~~~
CoolGuySteve
Unless NVidia skips 7nm altogether, AMD is more likely to take advantage since
AMD is already releasing Navi on 7nm later this year.
It also remains to be seen what the yields are for 5nm. It might be the case
that only small area chips like cell phone SoCs and laptop CPUs can be
manufactured for a long time, as was the case with 12nm and 7nm. GPUs
typically need as much area as they can get to fit more compute cores.
------
azinman2
So it seems Intel has fully last it’s manufacturing lead now?
~~~
nardi
Intel lost its lead a long time ago. Now they are falling further behind.
| {
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Announcing the Second Edition of Infrastructure as Code - mooreds
https://infrastructure-as-code.com/book/2019/12/10/announcing-second-edition.html
======
santoriv
I really hope this book has some discussion regarding Pulumi in addition to
the normal Terraform discussion. My team switched over to Pulumi recently
after using Terraform for a couple of years and it's so much easier to work
with. It would be a shame if it is not at least included in the discussion.
~~~
vageli
> I really hope this book has some discussion regarding Pulumi in addition to
> the normal Terraform discussion. My team switched over to Pulumi recently
> after using Terraform for a couple of years and it's so much easier to work
> with. It would be a shame if it is not at least included in the discussion.
Could you speak more to some of the ways it was easier to work with? How was
the transition and what was the migration strategy?
~~~
yourapostasy
Just looking between the two (where I'm at we've adopted Terraform), I wish
where I'm at would switch to Pulumi as well. After seeing the contortions
required under Terraform when someone strays from Terraform's pre-conceived
notions embedded into HCL DSL, I'm convinced that at-scale (>200 servers,
arguably >100 servers), there is no satisfactory way around the "learn to
code" requirement in devops at this layer interacting with infrastructure.
~~~
pm90
It doesn't seem to have the same level of provider support though. I would
rather pick a tool thats well supported by cloud providers if I need to use it
for production stuff.
~~~
yourapostasy
Extremely good point, thank you for making it!
Where I'm at, we just so happen to only be in the initial phases of a cloud
strategy, and it happens to align with Pulumi's current support of AWS. So
Pulumi's execution of a multi-vendor solution will bear keeping a close eye
upon.
We're likely in for a few years yet of fragmented API wars amongst the cloud
vendors, before the value extraction from uncoordinated API's levels off
enough that a more universal API is adopted for a progressively-larger "core
cloud" of defined services (we're kind of seeing that with cloud object
storage for example), W3C-style.
~~~
pm90
Not sure what you mean. I don’t think there will be any api wars; likely
providers will support tooling that can talk to their apis. This is currently
the case for Terraform where different cloud officially support the tf
modules. If they start supporting Pulumi, that would be when I would be
comfortable switching to the tool.
~~~
pathseeker
It's a sad day when the tool you are using to call an API over HTTPS has to be
supported by AWS for people to use it.
~~~
pm90
There's absolutely nothing sad about setting expectations over quality of
service for infrastructure management tools. HTTP as a protocol wasn't
designed to be e.g. the language for expressively communicating complex state
changes when managing cloud infrastructure.
A better analogy, would be if e.g. the NFS protocol spec wasn't enough to use
NFS file systems, but required vendor support to work correctly.
------
jsaundersdev
The oreilly site to buy is not http :yuck:
~~~
giancarlostoro
Thats one thing I wish were enforced more than anything. SSL or better for
financial transactions online. Surprised its HTTP. Maybe they redirect once
you are actually paying? I have seen that be the case.
~~~
penagwin
Redirecting to https is still problematic though.
Let's say your websites homepage only uses http but the login form is over
https. You can MiTM the homepage, and change the login link to haX0r.xyz and
then proxy the login.
~~~
MichaelApproved
Is that the case here?
| {
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Ask HN: Bootstrap alternatives? - mkrecny
======
beat
I've started using Foundation, and like it so far. It's less prescriptive
visually than Bootstrap.
------
razvvan
Zurb Foundation
------
gustavomx
Foundation
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The likely end of DownThemAll - deltaprotocol
http://www.downthemall.net/the-likely-end-of-downthemall/
======
tptacek
There is no piece of software in the world harder to secure than a browser.
There's almost no other piece of software where compromises have higher
stakes. Further, the verdict is probably in on whether browsers should use
multi-process sandboxes, and how careful they need to be about privilege-
escalated Javascript, which is an _enormous_ loophole for runtime security
measures like ASLR and DEP.
Firefox's multi-process model is apparently called Electrolysis. Electrolysis
apparently breaks XUL extensions.
If that's the short term cost of getting Firefox to the same level of security
that Chrome is at, it seems more than worth it.
If this were an encrypted messaging application like TextSecure making an
extension-breaking announcement for security, we'd have no trouble
understanding the stakes. What some people seem to have a hard time accepting
is that their browser is their most important encrypted messaging application.
~~~
aaron695
> If that's the short term cost of getting Firefox to the same level of
> security that Chrome is at, it seems more than worth it.
Without the extensions I perhaps see no point to FF. Is secure and dead worth
it?
Plus is there evidence of issues around this in the wild? Is it worth the risk
of being a possible FF killer?
~~~
Ellipsis753
I'm in the same boat as you.
I use Firefox purely for a large number of quite complex extensions (which
have no Chrome equivalent). If these no longer work or ever extension has a
similar version in Chrome I guess I'll switch to Chromium.
Then again. Perhaps there will be some kind of long term fork of Firefox
before the switch?
~~~
joenathan
If my FF extensions break I'll probably switch to Edge, it's faster and will
be using the same extension API. The only reason I use FF is the extensions
that can't be found anywhere else.
------
nathanb
I think some of this might be Firefox OS mentality creeping into the browser.
I have used Firefox since right after it stopped being called Firebird (0.8 -
0.9 days). I loved it because it seemed to be built around an aesthetic of
tinkering. Coming from Konqueror, which is like the tape deck in your mom's
minivan, Firefox was like a fancy hi-fi sound system. You get decent sound
with the defaults, but if you really know what you're doing you can produce
jaw-dropping results.
In grad school, I did some research work examining and improving a Firefox
extension. I had toyed with extension writing before, but the power that
extensions had over the DOM on one end and the whole browser experience on the
other end was amazing.
Now, I think Mozilla developers have gotten the Firefox OS mentality and are
treating the browser core like a kernel. Sure, you can do anything you want in
user mode, but the kernel is inviolable.
I understand that Firefox is a Big Boy browser now. People are using it the
world over; using it in corporate settings; trusting it to keep their personal
information safe. That has got to put a lot of pressure on the Mozilla devs to
make sure the browser is locked down as tight as can be.
I can install the Developer Edition. I can still tinker. I can customize my
own experience to my heart's content. But as an extension author myself, I
sympathize mightily with the developers of DownThemAll. I want to make others'
browsing experiences better too, and lately I feel like Mozilla have been
working against me rather than with me on this.
Firefox is actually a really good browser. They've made some pretty
questionable decisions of late, but I do think their tech is as good as any
browser tech out there today. But I liked Firefox not because I like _their_
browser but because I could make it _my_ browser, and Mozilla keep making it
harder to do that. That makes me sad.
------
hyperion2010
This seems like a classic case if thinking people use your software for the
core features you develop. I hate to break it to you but people don't use
windows for the control panel. Firefox and other browsers have become
development platforms and many of their "users" don't use their platform for
its 'control panel,' they use it for some useful tool built on top of it.
To use a linux kernel term, this breaks userspace (might be a sign that
browsers have some serious OS envy). This is particularly bad because if many
of your users use your platform for a tool that only works on an old,
unsupported version (think XP), you actually make the security situation WORSE
since those users don't care about security, they care about the tools they
need to get their jobs done. They are still going to use those tools and you
have just left them hanging out to dry from a security perspective. Talk about
passing the buck.
~~~
pcwalton
> To use a linux kernel term, this breaks userspace (might be a sign that
> browsers have some serious OS envy).
No, the equivalent of breaking userspace would be breaking the Web platform.
This is more like breaking the in-kernel API for .ko modules—and the official
Linux policy on this is [1]. Firefox has always been much _less_ inclined to
break its internal XPCOM APIs than the Linux kernel has been to break its
internal in-kernel APIs.
[1]:
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt)
~~~
hollerith
>No, the equivalent of breaking userspace would be breaking the Web platform.
Suppose someone secretly believes that the true users of my web browser are
the owners of the web sites I visit. (Perhaps they own a web site or they make
their living working for web-site owners, which makes it natural for them to
care about the freedoms and the interests of site owners more than they care
about my freedoms and interests.)
That secret belief would tend to make them overestimate the usefulness of the
Javascript that the sites I visit cause to execute on my browser and to
underestimate the usefulness and importance of any extensions or add-ons I
choose to install on my browser.
I think the true situation is that there are two important userspaces -- one
in which front-end web-app code runs and another in which extensions and add-
ons run. (There is some overlap between these two userspaces.)
Also, one of the arguments being given for the need to restrict what add-ons
can do is security even though most exploits of the browser are caused not by
the user's installing a bad add-on, but rather by the user's visiting a bad
web page. Yet I see no one on this page mentioning the latter kind of exploits
(which an add-on can sometimes protect against, for example, by blocking ads).
------
carlosrg
I don't know if it's very smart to limit one of the most distinctive features
of Firefox, the powerful add-ons available. Erodes the differences between
Firefox and other browsers. If Firefox is going to be just another Chrome,
people will just use Chrome.
~~~
AstroJetson
I agree, if they are all going to look alike, work alike and the base is now
Chrome, then might as well use Chrome. But frankly if I wanted to use Chrome
then I'd be using Chrome now.
I've stopped the version madness here, I have some plugins that I love that
preclude me from going forward. I'd rather see the team go "Hey we have 2.3
million person years of backlogged bugs, we are going to fix them before we
make a fundamental change to the browser.
Security is an issue, but with my work machine I'm not hitting sites that
would put me at risk.
~~~
cwyers
> Security is an issue, but with my work machine I'm not hitting sites that
> would put me at risk.
How can you possibly know this for certain?
------
justin_
I'll be pretty upset if the addons that let you modify the Firefox UI via XUL
have to go away. Tree-style tabs[1] for example is one of the major extensions
keeping me with FF. There's really no alternative for Chrome since they can't
completely change the tab UI like Firefox can. Check out the screenshots!
[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tree-style-
ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)
~~~
thristian
Tree Style Tabs is one of my favourite browser extensions of all time, but
it's alreody pretty broken on Firefox 42, and apparently it depends quite a
bit on reaching into the browser's UI code and rewritiing chunks of it. I will
be very sad if it breaks completely, but not very surprised.
~~~
efng
when I lose Tree Style Tabs, I will be deeply saddened and how I browse will
be greatly changed.
------
beloch
From the Firefox announcement:
Re: Why they are removing XUL:
"XPCOM and XUL are two of the most fundamental technologies to Firefox. The
ability to write much of the browser in JavaScript has been a huge advantage
for Mozilla. It also makes Firefox far more customizable than other browsers.
However, the add-on model that arose naturally from these technologies is
extremely permissive. Add-ons have complete access to Firefox’s internal
implementation. This lack of modularity leads to many problems.
A permissive add-on model means that we have limited flexibility in changing
the foundations of Firefox.
...
"The tight coupling between the browser and its add-ons also creates shorter-
term problems for Firefox development. It’s not uncommon for Firefox
development to be delayed because of broken add-ons. In the most extreme
cases, changes to the formatting of a method in Firefox can trigger problems
caused by add-ons that modify our code via regular expressions. Add-ons can
also cause Firefox to crash when they use APIs in unexpected ways.
Re: When XUL is being ripped out
Consequently, we have decided to deprecate add-ons that depend on XUL, XPCOM,
and XBL. We don’t have a specific timeline for deprecation, but most likely it
will take place within 12 to 18 months from now. "
Re: The gap in capability
"A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons cannot possibly be
built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they currently exist. Over the
coming year, we will seek feedback from the development community, and will
continue to develop and extend the WebExtension API to support as much of the
functionality needed by the most popular Firefox extensions as possible."
\-------------------------------
It's overly optimistic to assume add-on developers will have new versions
ready in just a year if the API they're expected to rewrite everything in
isn't even ready yet. I can understand why Mozilla is making this move, but
it's being rushed. If WebExtension were ready _today_ then this announcement
would be more reasonable, but it's not even close!
Hopefully Mozilla is just trying to scare their add-on developers into action,
so they'll speak up and tell Mozilla exactly what they need from WebExtension.
Starting over in a new API means a lot of existing add-ons will probably die
anyways, but hopefully the important ones will make the move if Mozilla gives
them enough time and support.
~~~
cwyers
> add-ons that modify our code via regular expressions
That's... actually kinda terrifying.
~~~
mook
It is. And it's done because Firefox doesn't expose the right hooks and isn't
interested in exposing them. They obviously know what's happening already.
From the addon's point of view, the option is do it via regular expressions or
not at all; it turns out the most users don't actually care how things get
done.
------
geofft
From a technical point of view, what is DownThemAll? It seems like it looks at
the structure of the current web page, identifies all links, and then
downloads them (in some cases using range requests, as with '90s-era download
accelerators), with options for pausing and resuming downloads and renaming
them in certain ways.
What prevents this from being done using a Chrome extension to look at the
page structure and render some UI, plus a bit of native code using the native
messaging API to actually store the files on disk?
[https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/nativeMessaging)
"Developer frustration" is a more-than-valid reason, but I'm trying to
understand if this is a claim that _no software like DownThemAll can possibly
be written_ without Mozilla introducing purpose-built extension APIs.
~~~
aaron695
The main reason people install it I thought is because
1\. It allows downloads to start and stop. No more 90% of that iso then having
to start again.
2\. It opens up 4 thingies on the file and downloads simultaneously. So 4
times quicker if the website is restricting bandwidth per connection.
~~~
geofft
> 1\. It allows downloads to start and stop. No more 90% of that iso then
> having to start again.
I'm surprised Firefox doesn't do this itself, as in, this sounds like a clear
bug. Is there some reason the upstream project by itself doesn't get this
right?
> 2\. It opens up 4 thingies on the file and downloads simultaneously. So 4
> times quicker if the website is restricting bandwidth per connection.
... this works in 2015? I'm pretty sure I remember people trying this and
website owners deploying countermeasures in the '90s.
Is this secretly a bufferbloat workaround or something?
~~~
lorddoig
> this works in 2015? I'm pretty sure I remember people trying this and
> website owners deploying countermeasures in the '90s.
Oh yes, it works. It works wonders. It can very often quadruple the d/l rate.
------
blinkingled
Speaking of Download managers - Chrome still doesn't have a decent one and I
for one will miss DownThemAll if it goes away - it is definitely a useful
piece of software.
Wonder what the new signing and addon development policies will do to FF
market share - there won't be any reason not to just use Chrome anymore. I get
the security part but the reason I use FF is because it is less memory hungry
and has these extensions that either are not on Chrome or work poorly on it.
~~~
chillacy
I used to use DTA on Firefox but switched a few years ago to native ones. I
ended up writing one [http://maxelapp.com/](http://maxelapp.com/) which works
for Macs. It can intercept downloads from Chrome with a chrome extension
------
dangoor
As people have been saying in the thread that links to the announcement, it is
not at all clear that extensions that today can do things in Firefox that are
not possible in Chrome will be unable to do those things in the future. The
_mechanism_ for things like changing tab management and such would surely
change, but that doesn't mean there won't be one.
~~~
smacktoward
It also doesn't mean there _will_ be one. Uncertainty about the future of an
API is bad, it always causes developers who build on that API to panic and
assume the worst.
~~~
brighteyes
Uncertainty is bad, but it's unavoidable in this case, for two reasons:
* They need feedback from addon makers in order to design the new API.
* Mozilla does all its work in the open anyhow.
There is no way to avoid an announcement about an intention to change the API,
before stating the API in full. Yes, it caused uncertainty, and that's a
downside, but open development is generally worth it.
~~~
mook
> There is no way to avoid an announcement about an intention to change the
> API, before stating the API in full. Yes, it caused uncertainty, and that's
> a downside, but open development is generally worth it.
It's quite possible to announce that they're starting to implement the new
API, wait a year or two until it's capable enough, _then_ start talking about
deprecating the existing one. Just like it was possible to finish implementing
extension signing (or at least to the extent that people can automate signing)
before deciding on a time frame to enforce it, or to get the automatic SSL
certificate issuer (Let's Encrypt) working before talking about deprecating
non-SSL HTTP traffic.
Basically, don't put the cart before the horse, let people implement
transition plans. Wanting to have better things is fine; scaring people
without having actionable mitigation strategies isn't so nice.
~~~
brighteyes
I agree a more organized PR approach might be more effective, but it would be
impossible to keep a secret like that when you're doing open development.
People would quickly ask "what is the long-term plan here?" and you can't lie
to them.
~~~
mook
> People would quickly ask "what is the long-term plan here?" and you can't
> lie to them.
Sure; but you wouldn't need to. Just don't have a time line set (as opposed to
the 12 ~ 18 months set here). They've done it once with Jetpack already, that
just didn't go anywhere because the APIs weren't flexible enough to actually
not need all the underlying guts. Hopefully this one would have better
results, but that requires lots of work on the part of Mozilla to actually
implement enough API surface for the thing to be useful.
~~~
brighteyes
So you're suggesting they say "we intend to deprecate this feature", but _not_
give a timeline?
It seems much more open and fair to give a timeline. That way it's predictable
and lets people plan.
~~~
mook
> So you're suggesting they say "we intend to deprecate this feature", but not
> give a timeline?
Yes; but that only works if they don't actually _have_ a timeline. Do the
necessary work to let people explore options, then evaluate and give a
timeline (in the same order as what it took to get all that implemented).
The timeline currently is "you have 12 to 18 months, but can't actually
start". That's pretty much a recipe for frustration.
~~~
brighteyes
I guess it's a matter of opinion, but I greatly prefer it they way they did
it.
Announcing "this is going away" without a timeline would make me worry "when?
now? in a month?" Instead, by saying "12 to 18 months", I know this is a long-
term thing and I can plan for it. The timeline is very useful information.
~~~
feanaro
But the point is that they _shouldn 't_ have set the timeline until a
replacement was reasonably in place. They could (and should) have said "this
is going away 12 to 18 months after we've been able to determine what APIs are
needed and implemented them".
------
timdafweak
Not just DTA, but FireGestures, Easy DragToGo, and all the amazing extensions
that made me stick by Firefox even though most of my colleagues left for
Chrome. It is a sad day.
~~~
Nadya
It's a sad day for me because I use FireGestures entirely for their wheel
gesture "[Popup] List all tabs" that allows me to scroll between my tabs from
anywhere on the page. It's a strange feature that I've only been able to find
in FireGestures (and wish I could find as a stand-alone extension).
I use DTA! with AntiContainer quite frequently.
Palemoon doesn't (properly) support Tab Groups, so I refuse to use it. The
add-on is broken and doesn't restore tabs if the browser crashes.
I feel like my only option is to disable FF updates and hope I never get bit
by a security issue. As GNU IceCat doesn't work on my machine. Or learn how to
compile from source and maintain my own personal fork...
(And before anyone suggests it, using Aurora/Web Dev version is not an option
for me. I've already been there, tried that.)
------
johansch
They should spearhead the work on pushing the spec people (and in extension
the actual developer teams) at the browser companies to support what is needed
to implement DownThemAll in Chrome/Opera/Safari/New Firefox. I have the
feeling there isn't that much that is lacking today (sparse file writing
support?).
This is clearly a use case that users want.
(DownThemAll is the sole reason I have Firefox installed. Would love to have
it work in e.g. Chrome.)
------
akavel
As to NoScript:
\- from a linked Mozilla blog post:
_> [...] A major challenge we face is that many Firefox add-ons cannot
possibly be built using either WebExtensions or the SDK as they currently
exist. Over the coming year, we will seek feedback from the development
community, and will continue to develop and extend the WebExtension API to
support as much of the functionality needed by the most popular Firefox
extensions as possible. [...]_
([https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-
dev...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-developing-
firefox-add-ons/))
\- then, from a link posted at the end of the Mozilla blog post (in an
"Update" section):
_> [...] One concern people have is that their favorite add-on is no longer
going to be supported, especially add-ons for power users. Some of the ones
being mentioned are:_
_> [...] NoScript, [...]_
_> We’re working with Giorgio Maone, the developer of NoScript, to design the
APIs he needs to implement NoScript as a WebExtension. [...]_
([https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-
add-o...](https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-on-
changes/))
~~~
Excavator
Giorgio's post on the matter:
[https://hackademix.net/2015/08/22/webextensions-api-
noscript...](https://hackademix.net/2015/08/22/webextensions-api-noscript/)
------
tacone
Don't be so pessimistic. 18 months are a lot of time, Mozilla folks are smart
and often listen to their users, there's the browser.html experiment going on,
etc.
I have a gut feeling that in a way or another, things will roughly be the same
for extensions developers.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Also, Mozilla are going to have their developers work with add-on developers
to help port them.
------
rhelmer
First, see [https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-
add-o...](https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/firefox-add-on-
changes/)
1\. these ideas are being announced far in advance of any actual changes
2\. firefox devs (see link above) actively want to support current popular
extensions, by adding to the Web Extension APIs
In fact, you can participate in this discussion with Mozilla devs more
directly:
[https://webextensions.uservoice.com/forums/315663-webextensi...](https://webextensions.uservoice.com/forums/315663-webextension-
api-ideas)
Nobody working on Firefox _wants_ to take away your most useful extensions,
become a "clone" of Chrome (or any other browser) or otherwise has ulterior
motives. The goals is really about improving performance and security and
making add-ons easier to write and port between browsers.
~~~
nathanb
Unintended consequences are still consequences.
Most extensions are developed by volunteers; many of the rest are, at best,
subsidized as a second job through donations or ad affiliates. These
volunteers don't always have the time to fight for the APIs they need.
DownThemAll has been around for a long time. I'm sure its developers are as
passionate and involved as you will find anywhere in the Firefox ecosystem.
But for the past couple of years, and especially recently, it has felt like
Mozilla are working against extension developers rather than for them.
Each developer must decide individually when the sunk cost becomes too much.
This move will probably be that point for a number of developers.
~~~
rhelmer
Good points, and I'll respond to the "sunk cost" bit by adding that backwards
compatibility is a double-edged sword. My favorite pet example of this is MS
versus Apple - the former has historically cared deeply about being backwards
compatible, while the latter has gone through several hardware and software
architecture changes that have required total rewrites from third-party
developers.
The situation with Firefox is a little trickier, staying backwards-compatible
for _web content_ has always been an important goal, but anything living
inside the _browser chrome_ does not get the same assurances.
Right now extensions live somewhere between these two worlds, and we've had
over a decade of experience with them so I think it's time to carve out their
own space, with dependable APIs that are more stable than the internal browser
APIs, but faster-moving and more privileged than the web.
------
aidenn0
"The new APIs would only allow for a severely limited in functionality,
severely stripped down DownThemAll! at best."
This is speculation. The new APIs aren't finished yet, and the announcement
they linked to specifically addresses this concern, stating that the new APIs
_as implemented today_ don't allow for a lot of existing addons functionality,
and specifically states their intention to work with addon developers to
ensure that the functionality can be added.
------
s_dev
Shame, I used to use it back in college. Like most colleges there was a proxy
so torrenting without ssh tunnelling was difficult and I didn't have a server
to tunnel in to anyway.
Most people just bought RapidShare (also gone) and downthemall saved mind
numbing ctrl+c/v for .rar files along with being able to pause and resume
downloads which few others have seemed to grasp as well as they did.
------
Havoc
How DTA is this dominant at all is a bit of a mystery to me. It allows me to
download sequentially names files in rudimentary batches yes but thats not
exactly mindblowing tech.
~~~
Nadya
This is a large reason why:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-
mover_advantage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage)
But what you listed also isn't all it provides. Imagine being 99% done with a
35.6GB download. If Firefox crashes, you get to start that download _from the
beginning_. As if you hadn't downloaded any part of it at all.
DTA would recover and you'd download 1% of that 35.6GB instead of the entire
35.6GB.
That's a large reason to use DTA over the built-in download manager by itself.
~~~
douche
One would hope that anyone providing a 35GB download would provide a torrent
or magnet-link download. Maybe I'm wrong, but is seeding the torrent any more
expensive than the same bandwidth from a web/ftp server? And then, it's also
possible to offload some of the bandwidth onto the swarm, assuming there's
more than one concurrent download.
It is a little amazing that the downloading functionality provided out-of-the-
box in all the major browsers is such hot garbage still.
~~~
Nadya
So instead of a download manager I need a torrenting program? ;) That's just
shifting the problem of "poor downloading" to a different tool. Many would
prefer to not have to install another program and would prefer installing an
add-on for a program they already have installed.
I do agree with you about torrent/magnet link being provided. Though sometimes
large .iso downloads don't come with a torrent/magnet link.
E:
Regardless of file size - even if the download is only 20mb - it's annoying to
have to redownload the entire 20mb instead of starting where it left off. What
if I'm having connection issues? What if the server is having connection
issues? Starting at n% and slowly making progress is better than starting from
0% or having the download be impossible...
------
brillenfux
At this point, would it make sense to fork Firefox?
~~~
smalley
I think that's what the Pale Moon
([https://www.palemoon.org/](https://www.palemoon.org/)) folks were doing some
time ago. I'm pretty sure they support most of the original firefox extensions
without the signing etc.
~~~
cauterized
Too bad there's no Mac version.
~~~
richardboegli
Pale Moon for Mac OSX 24.7.1
[https://forum.palemoon.org/viewforum.php?f=41](https://forum.palemoon.org/viewforum.php?f=41)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10099556)
------
Karunamon
Something I just thought of... if these changes are presumably meant to keep
malware addons out of the browser, then it's necessarily operating in an
infected environment.
(I.e. something already had the ability to do things in the context of the
user without that user's permission, and we're just preventing it from doing
this one thing via restricting what the user can do)
In what way does this meaningfully secure the browser from malware, with that
in mind? If I've got code running in the user's account, I don't need to hook
into the browser engine to direct the user at popup ads, phishing sites,
harvest their keystrokes, or do any number of other evil things. Hooking into
the browser is one of the _least_ interesting things that evil me could be
doing. I've got access to the browser's memory, the TCP stream, the ability to
launch whatever programs the user does, and am probably traveling along with a
payload to allow for privilege escalation.
So, WTF?
~~~
mschuster91
The problem these days is established extensions that get legitimately sold or
their access data hacked, and malware rolled out to the users.
Or extensions which actually do their job, but after a delay, e.g. a month,
deploy the malware payload.
Enforcing someone from Mozilla to take a look at the actual APIs used in the
extension is a pretty reasonable way to prevent a lot of this.
Also, disallowing local installs of unsigned stuff is usually a good practice
- lots of "download managers" is bundled with "premium" "extensions" turning
out to be toolbars collecting and shipping off your data, replacing your ads
etc.
~~~
mook
> The problem these days is established extensions that get legitimately sold
> or their access data hacked, and malware rolled out to the users.
Published extensions on addons.mozilla.org (i.e. the built-in extension
distribution channel) already go through a review for every update. Someone
from Mozilla _already_ has to take a look.
Of course, the addon review queue is currently ~ 10 weeks (according to their
blog, from Aug 12). Relative to the 6 week Firefox release cycle, it's like
saying if Apple enforced application signing for OSX where you need to submit
your app, wait a year and a half, then get a signed version back.
------
rcxdude
For me, tree style tabs and the ability to have 100s of tabs open is the
killer feature of firefox, and the reason I don't use any other browser. I
will likely stop updating if these cease to work, and switch to any other
browser which allows me to continue my workflow (or maybe start developing my
own fork).
I suspect that a substantial portion of firefox's remaining users are there
not because of the core browser (which is now almost indistinguishable from
chrome), but because of an extension which either no-one cares or no-one is
able to port to another browser.
------
Parafernalia
I've started searching for an alternative download accelerator. So far, the
best option seems to be the Citrio browser. It's downloading capabilities are
on par with dTa: [http://www.tutorialspoint.com/articles/citrio-a-chrome-
like-...](http://www.tutorialspoint.com/articles/citrio-a-chrome-like-browser-
with-a-built-in-download-manager)
------
jfb
People still use download managers? I honestly had no idea.
~~~
chillacy
DTA was pretty good for its download acceleration abilities. That's still
useful, especially for content hosted far away.
~~~
jfb
Yeah, I don't doubt it. I've been spoiled by living close to the data I want
to download. I imagine that people at the far end of attenuated links would
have a very different experience.
------
scrollinondubs
Mozilla is dead. Long live Mozilla Extended Support Release!
[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/organizations/)
~~~
hadrien01
Here's hoping the old extension system deprecation comes after the release of
ESR 45, so we can have support for old extensions until March 2017!
------
ionised
Man, if my favourite extensions no longer work properly then I don't know what
I'll do.
I think I might have to go full Stallman and wget + email html-only web pages
to myself.
------
fuzzythinker
Off topic. The url reads like down-the-mall in all lower case. s/Can be a
pivot if no backoff from Mozilla/s
------
mbrownnyc
Am I the only one who can't read an article when the text is aligned on the
left size of a window like that?
------
cooleng
Mozilla begin to abuse their power
------
eiji
I'm maintaining two Add-Ons with around 20k active users. I agree with his
predictions, but I also find it hard to give to much attention to voices like
the one expressed here.
It's hard for me to tell how much of this is genuine concern, or just how many
donations or how much income he will loose because of this. I never see
numbers from these Add-Ons. The one in question here has 1,300,000 daily
active users.
Sure, if I make $1500 per month on an Add-On, I would be very upset if things
change. Then I'd rather see the XUL/XPCOM stuff around for another 15 years.
~~~
tn123
Thanks for implying I'm in it for the money without even knowing me. Nice ad
hominem you got there.
Let's just say that the donations do not nearly cover the time I spend
developing add-ons, helping other add-on developers out with their questions,
volunteering on AMO, writing patches for core Firefox and so on.
~~~
eiji
I'm sorry if I offended you. All I'm saying is you could be in a position of
conflict of interest. Unfortunately, your user base would never mobilize on
your behalf, because they don't understand the technical details behind the
comprehensive Firefox extension system that would be deprecated.
That's a problem. The user don't understand what they are about to loose, but
the big name developers with millions of users have a vested interest in the
status quo. I don't have a solution for that. There are a lot of Add-On
developers out there for which this is a business. Firefox extensions can
generate an income.
At least you make no secret about it. The euro coins are right next to the
article. I mean that in a good way.
------
tomc1985
This, along with all the other simplifications in tech lately, along with
everyone's inexplicable obsession with tablets/phablets/phones, signals the
end of the power user era
------
tunap
This is what happens when humans achieve success. Rather than maintain the
course they are obligated to exploit to the nth in order to squeeze every gram
of return from an idea(product) until they can get no more. Then, they will
get creative and pull out every hook & crook to squeeze some more. Thanks
Mozilla, for everything up until your mass-collection, feature- bloat,
entrapment blitz you've set out upon. Perhaps DTA will make their plug-in
compatible with PaleMtoon now. Chances are the forks will come out on top &
Moz can go f-up Thunderbird & Seamonkey for awhil as their top-heavy pyramid
topples.
edit:admittedly a pipe dream, markets ruled by duops and oligops never lose
the top players, they just cannibalize each othet and bloat.
~~~
AustinScript
I don't understand what is being exploited?
~~~
tunap
The end-user, of course.
"Surreptitious spying is all the rage. Everybody is doing it."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Indian PSLV successfully lofts multiple satellites - swatkat
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/02/pslv-launch-multi-sats/
======
teeboy
Go ISRO! I wish the Indian Govt did one less scam a year and granted a 10X
increase in ISRO budget. But you are doing some amazing work on an operating
budget less than a big American University. Stay Strong ! And go Mars in 2014!
~~~
swatkat
You're right! Mars mission and GSLV Mk III are the ones to look out for.
------
stochastician
One of the awesome satellites was BRITE, made by the UTIAS group
<http://universe.utoronto.ca/BRITE> at the University of Toronto!
~~~
manaskarekar
Also the awesome NEOSsat!
<http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/neossat/>
~~~
runejuhl
And the awesome AAUSAT3: <http://www.space.aau.dk/aausat3/>
It's the third cubesat developed at Aalborg University in Denmark. From their
homepage:
"The AAUSAT3 educational project was initiated in the fall 2007 - introducing
students to all aspects of satellite design and development. The objective of
the AAUSAT3 mission is to fly two different types of AIS (Automated
Identifications System) receivers. One of the AIS receivers onboard AAUSAT3 is
an SDR (Software Defined Radio) based AIS receiver. The other AIS receiver is
a conventional hardware receiver. The goal of AAUSAT3 is to investigate the
quality of ship monitoring from space."
\--
[http://www.space.aau.dk/aausat3/index.php?n=Tech.AAUSAT3InDe...](http://www.space.aau.dk/aausat3/index.php?n=Tech.AAUSAT3InDetails)
------
msantos
Part of the payload is a nano satellite - STRaND-1 - developed by the
University of Surrey (England), that amongst other things got a Google Nexus
phone onboard loaded with a custom app which will test if "in space no-one can
hear you scream" <http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21577780>
~~~
edwardc
The Scream in Space 'experiment' uses screams uploaded to YouTube as part of a
competition last year: <http://www.screaminspace.com/> (and since this is HN,
<https://github.com/cuspaceflight/SpaceScream>).
------
tn13
ISRO has been delivering tangible output with limited resources. They are also
profitable.
------
jamadagni
I wish GSLV was ready, wish ISRO has more budget, wish we have a bigger
workforce in space R&D. I'm sad that after so many years we don't have a
reliable launcher other than PSLV, though it GETS the work done.
------
playhard
Video of the launch
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wyJMDi07ZKM#t=52s)
~~~
liquidwax
It _looks_ like they're still using windows 98
~~~
sankalpshere
What matters is how they are used! Computers used during first moon landing
were less powerful than today's cellphone chip. :)
~~~
pugmarx
:D
------
naanalla
one thing particularly good about ISRO's recent strategy is to launch as many
satellites as possible. It's cost effective and also helping academic
satellites. and PSLV the workhorse of ISRO.
~~~
swatkat
Yes. I am looking forward to seeing Antrix (ISRO's commercial division,
<http://www.antrix.gov.in>) doing more commercial launch services.
~~~
rushil92
Aren't all these foreign satellites launched via the antrix programme?
~~~
pkhagah
I guess they are. ISRO also has a plan to eventually let private players build
complete PSLV system(currently they build 80% components) and operate them.
Leaving ISRO to concentrate more on GSLV and reusable rocket more.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lawsuit Filed To Prove Happy Birthday Is In The Public Domain - davidbarker
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/11165823451/filmmaker-finally-aims-to-get-court-to-admit-that-happy-birthday-is-public-domain.shtml
======
dang
A dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8092864).
------
j4kp07
Relevant:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coronavirus: How the UK government failed to develop a contact-tracing app - davidbarker
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-inside-story-of-how-government-failed-to-develop-a-contact-tracing-app-12031282
======
quattrofan
It's pretty clear the time is fast approaching for big tech to be dealt with
and ideally broken up. Once this Coronavirus situation is under control I hope
the EU starts this ball rolling.
~~~
Arnt
Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
"citing a statistic some believe was inaccurate: that the app's Bluetooth
system, which was supposed to detect nearby phones as a way of tracking
potentially risky contacts, only detected 4% of iPhones, rendering it
effectively useless." Assuming the developers are telling the truth. Do you
want the phone OS to let apps apps detect other people nearby? What you want
is a big privacy hole, and remember that the phone OS has to to be ready. It
has to allow that hole _before_ an urgent app comes along that _you_ want to
use it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: New SEO tool for content and technical SEO analysis - gregory90
https://seodity.com
======
gregory90
Hello!
For the last few months we’ve been working on a new tool for analyzing
websites.
In the first iteration we’ve focused on the analysis of the content and
technical aspects. While entering one address our crawler precisely analyzes
each webpage. The most significant elements that we check are as follows:
\- the most frequent key words in the whole website and each webpage
separately (whether they appear in the title, description, alt, url, h1-h6
attributes)
\- the amount of the content (key words in the whole website, webpages, in
relation to html, etc.)
\- popularity of webpages in the social media (useful e.g. during research of
the competition’s articles)
\- SEO technical aspects (title, description, h1...h6 elements, alt)
\- SSL certificates when it is valid and when it expires
\- image optimization
\- on-site link correctness verification
On the basis of all elements we determine the original Seodity Rank, with the
usage of which one can sort webpages.
Plan for the future (works have already been initiated):
\- backlinks
\- automatic competition verification on the basis of the Google search
results (analysis of each competitive webpage separately and drawing
conclusions + prompts)
\- white-label report adjusted to the Client’s audit
From the beginning, in the substantive terms, our friends related to the
affiliation market helped us a lot. They praise the tool very much.
We’ll be very grateful for your suggestions and proposals concerning adding
additional elements to the tool. Please let us know what else you would like
to analyze.
Thanks in advance!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Photogenic Alchemy - Photo developed in Absinthe? - cheeyoonlee
http://www.synapseshots.com/photogenicalchemy/#prettyPhoto
======
cheeyoonlee
Just mesmerized by the results...chemical explanations of occurrences to each
effect would be extremely interesting!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing Tectonic – A Kubernetes and CoreOS Platform - lucasjans
https://tectonic.com/blog/announcing-tectonic/
======
mackwic
> Tectonic is a commercial distribution of the combined Kubernetes and CoreOS
> stack.
> Tectonic pre-packages all of the open source components required to build a
> Google-style infrastructure and adds additional commercial features, such as
> a management console, corporate SSO integration, and Quay, our enterprise
> ready container registry.
Well, I don't care. Fix etcd before anything. Cluster recovery doesn't work
well (it's an understatement), etcd has issues with high loads, and leader
election has its quirks. CoreOs is barely usable at this state.
This is the kind of thing you need to expect when running a CoreOS cluster:
[https://github.com/coreos/etcd/issues/863](https://github.com/coreos/etcd/issues/863).
etcd is not "production ready", well, this should be taken care of as it's a
central part of the system.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing the Internet.org App - djug
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/07/introducing-the-internet-org-app/
======
quink
> The Internet.org app will be available first to Airtel subscribers in Zambia
> and we’ll continue to improve the experience and roll it out to other parts
> of the world.
And by coincidence this is how net neutrality as a concept will not be a thing
in Zambia going forward.
Screw you, Facebook. Your efforts to lock in the next few billion into an
ecosystem controlled by you are utterly despicable.
[http://i.imgur.com/5RrWm.png](http://i.imgur.com/5RrWm.png)
If you truly cared about doing something good, how about creating something
like standardising a low bandwidth HTTP header? How about just channelling
money into actual investments in infrastructure? How about working on
multicasting information cheaply out instead of unicasting it to every single
locked in member of your ecosystem? Why Wikipedia and not Urban Dictionary,
Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg or GitHub?
Please let us know if you're going to be the winners and losers picker in the
way I can see from the screenshots of your app so we may, and this may be a
tad hyperbolic, prepare your very well deserved destruction. Who exactly
elected Mr. Zuckerberg as Mr. "I decide what free (pun intended) speech is"?
~~~
walterbell
It's unfortunate that 7 commercial entities have adopted the internet.org
brand. When I read the headline, I assumed this was from the Internet Society,
but they are [http://www.internetsociety.org](http://www.internetsociety.org)
.
Anyone know which non-profit organizations have a governance role in
internet.org?
------
choffee
Is there somewhere to complain about the domain name being an .org as this
seems to be the opposite of the internet. Why don't they just give people
200Mb of free data if they really want to promote the internet. A better site
name might be corpnet.com lockinnet.com.
~~~
sfeng
They're giving people something for free. It's hard to complain about that.
~~~
walterbell
7 corporations get to decide what the word "internet" means or which
books/sites are free? What about the other N-7 corporations in the world?
------
raman325
The optimist in me applauds Facebook for the effort to provide basic data
access to the developing world.
The pessimist in me wonders if this is simply a brilliant strategy by Facebook
to acquire the 4.5 billion people who aren't currently connected without
having to compete with others. What's different between this and getting rid
of net neutrality aside from side stepping the government entirely and doing
it under the premise of helping the world become a better place?
The realist in me guesses that they probably see both sides and consider it a
win/win scenario. I mean, wouldn't you?
~~~
devcpp
>wouldn't you
No I wouldn't. I've hoped too many times that this kind of monopolist-but-
beneficial scheme would work for the best, only to be consistently
disappointed that the company behind it will use it only for its own interests
when it's in a bad situation. And then everyone wonders "why did we let this
happen?" Yeah...
~~~
whistlerbrk
Agreed, and questionable integrations like _this_ feel connected to me:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/30/sprint-tries-a-
facebo...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/30/sprint-tries-a-facebook-
only-wireless-plan/)
------
aaronbrethorst
One of my sisters and her husband live in Zambia, where they do public health
work. Specifically, he works on malaria[1], and one of the greatest challenges
he faces is field data collection. Enabling everyone with a compatible phone
to send in data would, I'm sure, be incredibly valuable.
I'm bummed that there aren't any public health tools included in this app.
Hopefully they'll consider adding something like that in the future.
[1] Malaria affects almost 1/3 of the country's population annually:
[http://www.unicef.org/zambia/5109_8454.html](http://www.unicef.org/zambia/5109_8454.html)
~~~
cine
FactsForLife is included, doesn't that count as a public health tool? Not sure
what you mean specifically, but this appears to at least educate around a lot
of health topics.
[http://www.factsforlifeglobal.org/](http://www.factsforlifeglobal.org/)
I can see the value of data collection too though, but I think for a person
accessing the internet for the first time, they would be more interested in
gaining information than sending data about themselves into the void.
------
dm2
I guess it's official, Facebook isn't going anywhere and will continue to
become more and more part of our lives. They're getting close to the level of
Google (which I do trust with my data because they are transparent about most
issues before people start asking them to be).
[http://newsroom.fb.com/pages-directory/](http://newsroom.fb.com/pages-
directory/)
[http://newsroom.fb.com/resources-projects/](http://newsroom.fb.com/resources-
projects/)
We can avoid Facebook all we want but one of these days there is going to be
an app or product that's superior to all competitors and were going to be
required to use our Facebook login, for many of us it's already happened.
I wish they would allow us to restrict what information was given to apps,
whether or not the apps "required" it. I never login with Facebook but
sometimes check the permissions it asks for, all friends, all info, etc are
the norm. I don't want any service to have access to my list of friends,
photos (that not even friends can see), and any app my friends have can access
my information, I just don't trust the apps/services not to misuse the data or
to have the data stolen.
I'm starting to trust Facebook a little more, but it's going to take time. I
do trust Facebook more than some sites like LinkedIn, but that's not saying
much, LinkedIn will never have my approval.
More open-source technologies (and services) and less requirements to "connect
your Facebook profile" would go a long way in my opinion. Give users the
option to connect Facebook and the adoption rate (and trust level) will be
much greater.
~~~
kome
How can you trust facebook? How a non net-neutral Internet is good for Zambia?
It's just clever marketing from facebook. Nothing else. Creating news
costumers _forced_ to use faceboook to keep his numbers high and growing.
Its shady privacy policy and unethical experiments (and don't forget the NSA
collaboration) makes of Facebook one of the worst corporations out there.
I invite you to close your account.
~~~
dm2
You're probably right, I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt, they
have been trying very hard the past few years to recreate their image and
implement privacy controls.
I saw recently one person talking about when you delete your Facebook account
it's a true delete rather than a soft-delete, but I'm not sure how true that
is, stuff like that goes a long way and matters to me.
~~~
kybernetyk
> I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt
You can't give them that benefit because their company culture was founded on
"They trust me — dumb fucks" [0]
[0]
[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg)
------
Kinnard
Wait. I don't understand. Why not just give people http?
~~~
aw3c2
They would get the wrong idea. Access to information should not be free, the
internet as it happened to develop was a mistake. We must make sure we don't
let the third-world make the same.
~~~
reitanqild
Meta: For anyone who didn't recognize it at first sight, this is sarcasm.
Relevant such even if I and you don't necessarily agree.
(If you are about to downvote parent because he is wrong, read up on sarcasm
and count to ten. If you happen to think it was more irrelavant or more out-
of-place than most stuff here I can certainly see that, go ahead and downvote
: )
PS: This comment really shouldn't be necessary but I have seen examples lately
of people failing to not only appreciate well-placed sarcasm but also
recognize it, as seen by the fact that they will start arguing how the parent
comment is wrong. Sarcasm, well used, is^h^h used to be a very powerful
technique because of the way it can expose the stupidity of something.
~~~
pjc50
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)
There are plenty of powerful people seriously arguing that the free internet
is a bad thing.
------
gioele
Welcome to the Internet where you exist only if you beg the powers that be to
include you in a list.
This is the first time in my life I see a "country" going from democracy to
aristocracy.
------
ChikkaChiChi
It's going to take Amazon being added to a list like this before the rest of
the Capitalists lose their minds over this.
* Where is the documentation about the methodology for selecting what apps are available?
* Why is Accuweather, a private company, offered top billing over other global wearther forecasting services?
* Why is Google given "Internet Search" billing over Bing or DuckDuckGo? What happens if a company in Zambia wants to create their own search engine? How can they penetrate a market?
I wasn't expecting the closed Internet to ramp up this quickly, but this is
absolutely terrifying to me from a consumer and business viewpoint.
------
skyebook
Net Neutrality issues aside (even though they scare me), it bothers me that
they'd produce this in English as only 16% of the population speaks
English.[0] A tiny percentage of Zambians claim English as their first
language, what about the rest of the people who either don't have access to
schools (where English is taught[1]) or don't have the level of comprehension
required to navigate.
I would venture a guess that by filtering the numbers of English speakers by
those who own mobile phones you'd jack up the percentage of English speakers,
still.. this feels like it was designed more as a play to drive new users to
sites than to genuinely get good information into the hands of those who need
it.
Of course, I can't actually find the app anywhere, so if it were to come out
that the app actually includes Bemba or Nyanja localizations.. I'd be taking a
different tone. (FWIW, Facebook doesn't appear to support either [2])
[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-
sp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-
speaking_population)
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Zambia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Zambia)
[2]
[https://www.facebook.com/translations/FacebookLocales.xml](https://www.facebook.com/translations/FacebookLocales.xml)
------
fred_durst
Interesting timing considering Sprint just announced the Facebook plan for
$12/month.
And internet.org reeks of imperialism in the worst way.
~~~
smanuel
Yep, and all the hypocrisy...
Internet.org — Every one of us. Everywhere. Connected.
When the blatant truth is:
Internet.org — Every one of us. Everywhere. Connected. Through Facebook.
Because we need MOAR users! To serve MOAR ads.
~~~
fred_durst
I don't know. I think its closer to the good ol' East India Company pushing
Opium around the world. No one needs Facebook. It's addictive and warps a
persons perspective of the world around them and their friends and family.
------
lucb1e
My perspective on this as I just said to someone:
It's an opportunity I wouldn't pass on I guess, but this is basically net
neutrality in reverse.
When companies start deciding which websites are free and for which you pay
the "normal" price, suddenly the normal price is extra.
</open-internet>
\---
So yeah a Facebook app that offers Facebook access for free. How convenient,
right? For good measure throw in another few services that look good but are
still limited (google search without being able to click any links? Lovely)
and we have something that we can present as a good thing to the world.
~~~
walterbell
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town)
~~~
jonnykry
Wow. I feel deceived for thinking this was a good idea.
I mean, it is a good idea... but this link's relevance is troubling.
~~~
walterbell
Facebook PR has the analytics benefit of a big database of human emotions.
Much opportunity for fine tuning of messages :(
------
martius
It's hard to have a clear perspective on this.
Obviously it's again net neutrality, and there are probably a lot of better
ways to give access to Internet to people who don't have it. On the other end,
I'd like to think it can be really useful to some people.
I regret however that the conditions and the process to be integrated to the
app are not clearly stated.
For instance, it should be required that a service is accessible without
restriction of any kind, and be interoperable... and Facebook Messenger
doesn't meet these requirements.
------
happyshadows
Seems like a throwback to the days of the web portal (ala Yahoo.)
~~~
frik
yes, like a mixture of:
* original _The Microsoft Network_ (1994-1995) the MSN client that shipped with Win95 (instead of a web browser) that was meant as an alternative to the WWW; or similar limited portal services like America Online, CompuServe that are now obsolete
* portal websites with widgets like Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN (1996+)
* HTML5 web app store (btw. the Mozilla smartphone shown in the video already has an official Mozilla web app store)
------
sniuff
I don't understand why is everyone here crying how evil this is. They are
going to provide FREE Internet access to the basic websites and how that is a
bad thing?
~~~
__david__
It's not free "internet" access. The "Internet" is the place where I can route
arbitrary IP packets to any other host on the net. It is _not_ 7 or 8 sites
chosen by God speaking HTTP on port 80 (443 if you're lucky).
------
miralabs
I dont get the included Google Search. If you have limited sites where you can
use the data, what's the use of searching the internet?
------
recursion1133
Wow, this is annoying. But, people should have access to the internet, so it's
good I suppose. It really looks like someone's trying a new form of
censorship. Here's hoping Google brings free speech to people (facebook is the
king of sleezily building reputation). Also looks like facebook's trying to
get rid of Google.
------
frik
The _internet.org_ website is down:
[http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/internet.org.html](http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/internet.org.html)
500 Internal Server Error
\-- [http://www.internet.org](http://www.internet.org)
~~~
pations9
Site is working here without a problem.
~~~
frik
Internet.org was down for everyone two hours ago. I checked it also with
isitdownrightnow.com and downforeveryoneorjustme.com. Probably the
Reddit/Slashdot/HN effect or a DNS cache on their side.
It works fine now.
------
sgarbi
you want the internet to be widespread? Promote things like long-range wifi
and mesh networks.
~~~
dm2
This is a great idea for Facebook! They're in the perfect position to have
widespread adoption quickly and the service would be invaluable. Privacy would
be key though, they'd have to opensource it and prove to people that it's
secure and private.
~~~
bithive123
Ideally Facebook would engineer itself out of existence, but I'm not holding
my breath.
~~~
dm2
Won't happen, I've been waiting for them to become like MySpace but it just
hasn't happened.
Facebook is the best at social media, there's no denying that. I would support
them if they would have stayed small, simple, and private, but they kept
adding, tracking, Sharing, Liking, Poking, etc.
------
djtidau
What a good way to do some social good whilst also opening up a new userbase
that was not previously accessible.
With Facebook and FaceBook Messages both in the available applications, they
get a foothold there ahead of their competitors.
~~~
thejosh
Ah yes, because the very poor have a good disposable income.
------
wegi
If they want to privde Internet for everyone, why don't they use their money
to fund, for example, DTN research? Ah right, then they couldn't collect every
move the internet user makes onlne.
------
SimeVidas
“Internet.org is a global partnership between technology leaders, nonprofits,
local communities and experts…” - Which nonprofits? Not listed in the founding
members.
------
alokyadav15
Its nice to see , Indian Telecom giant "Airtel" is one of the partners of
internet.org
------
fiatjaf
Somalia has fast internet everywhere despite not having had a State for almost
20 years.
Despite?
------
aestetix
I love how this is posted on facebook.com and not internet.org.
------
sparkzilla
First Ebola, now Facebook.
------
exit
this is anti net neutrality
------
volent
It's funny how they describe the app as "providing a set of [...] basic
services" and they include Facebook.
Not a basic service at all in my opinion.
(Also there is no Twitter, what a surprise !)
~~~
octo_t
communication is a basic service (and human right!)
~~~
__david__
Are you implying that access to Facebook is a human right?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Half-Life HeadCrab Zombie Rendered in WebGL w/ animation - darien
http://www.webgl.com/2012/04/webgl-demo-half-life-zombie-model/
======
zrgiu_
While this doesn't really show anything we haven't seen before done in WebGL,
it's good to have because it shrinks the perception of the gap between browser
and native apps/games.
We saw tons of demos of what WebGL can do (i think the Quake one still being
the best port of a destkop game to webgl), now it's time to bring the games to
the browser, even if just one zombie at a time.
~~~
darien
I definitely agree with you. One of the hurdles (from what I can understand)
is that not many of the WebGL frameworks support robust physics and collision
detection (Fundamental to any 3D game). This is being addressed however, most
recently by the CubicVR WebGL framework, which you can see an example of in
their 'Physics Vehicle Truck Heightfield Demo'
[http://www.webgl.com/2012/03/webgl-game-demo-cubicvr-
physics...](http://www.webgl.com/2012/03/webgl-game-demo-cubicvr-physics-
vehicle/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smartphone app recognizes stress and depression - matthijs_
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530876/this-phone-app-knows-if-youre-depressed/
======
matthijs_
The Dartmouth research this article mentions:
Authors: Rui Wang, Fanglin Chen, Zhenyu Chen, Tianxing Li, Gabriella Harari,
Stefanie Tignor, Xia Zhou, Dror Ben-Zeev and Andrew T. Campbell
StudentLife: Assessing Mental Health, Academic Performance and Behavioral
Trends of College Students using Smartphones
[http://studentlife.cs.dartmouth.edu/studentlife.pdf](http://studentlife.cs.dartmouth.edu/studentlife.pdf)
------
nitin_flanker
Even Microsoft is working on a mood driven device that works based on the
emotional state of a user. They have filed a patent application for this
concept.
The mood driven device uses various sensors to determine mood of a user and
then change its shape that visually mirrors user’s emotional state.
The patent application also suggests that Microsoft will work on a robotic
butterfly that will move its wings according to your mood that represents your
emotional state.
You can read more about it here -
[http://greybmusings.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/microsoft-
devic...](http://greybmusings.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/microsoft-device-that-
behaves-based-on-your-mood/)
------
_--_
Isn't owning a smartphone a sign of depression by itself?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
P5.js: Processing for today’s web - bpierre
http://p5js.org
======
html5web
Holy shit! This is great presentation
[http://hello.p5js.org/](http://hello.p5js.org/)
~~~
nfoz
> Your browser doesn't support all of the features required for this demo.
> Please consider using the latest version of Chrome.
I guess "today's web" is not an Open web, and has a single-point-of-failure
hard-dependency on Google (at multiple levels).
~~~
acdha
It also works in Firefox, Opera, and WebKit. The only modern browsers left out
appears to be Safari 7 (no WebGL) and IE (Web Audio).
Give it a year and both of those are likely to work.
~~~
fred_durst
Indeed. If the authors stop by, consider changing the message to something
more like
"Your browser does no appear to support a couple things required to play this
presentation(WebGL, Web Audio etc). The latest versions of several browsers
do. You might want to try one of those instead."
~~~
_lmccart
thanks, yes, working on a fix right now. we also want to make it clear that
those things are not necessarily required for p5.js itself, just the demo.
~~~
soperj
but they're obviously required to do things in the demo no?
------
bGriz
I'm naive. What makes this comparable to - or better than - D3 js, Easel js,
Three js, Raphael js, Kinetic js, Paper js, Famo.us js, Impact js... and boy
I'm sure I can think of many more. I realize they don't all share the same
feature sets... but I'm not understanding what makes this new or exciting.
Edit: Maybe I don't get the "processing" part... isn't this about creating
interactive experiences? The examples demonstrate so and I didn't see examples
of processing complex data sets or anything. Would love to hear some
elaboration on it.
I noticed the statement "p5.dom lets you interact with HTML5 objects beyond
the canvas, including video, audio, webcam, input, and text." This is
interesting. Perhaps the point here is P5 manages more interactive components
without the developer having to mash different tools together?
~~~
thathonkey
There's plenty of reasons why there would be such a state of affairs. Probably
the biggest is that there is no clear winner in this space. D3 is shoring up,
but it is quite a bit more complex for non-devs IMHO than what this looks to
be. Frankly this is a pretty lazy comment. You could just look at the link's
"Start" page for <5 minutes and see for yourself why it's different enough to
warrant existence and could legitimately be in the running with the X other JS
frameworks that have overlap in canvas drawing.
I mean it's in beta, clearly, and people are in here harping about the
accessibility of one of the presentations on the site and comparing it to
relatively mature (eg D3 is on v3) frameworks. That isn't very fair.
~~~
bGriz
| You could just look at the link's "Start" page for <5 minutes and see for
yourself why it's different enough to warrant existence
Honestly I'm not seeing what's different. I'm working on a hybrid canvas/html5
feature app right now. A good portion of the API (p5js.org/reference) feels,
well, typical.
I don't want to discredit the project, it does look nice. You're point about
beta is good.
In fairness, this appears to be targeted towards non-programmers, and having
been deep in UI for years I may be missing the simplicity sake.
Also, I had no interest in slamming them for a temp broken browser context...
rather I'm trying to understand what makes this awesome. In years of browser
UIE I hadn't heard of [http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/).
~~~
barkingcat
Yes, the "processing" refers to the name of a programming language /
programming environment originally founded / created by people at the MIT
Media Lab.
It is not referring to "processing" anything as a verb, but the name of the
programming language outlined at
[https://www.processing.org](https://www.processing.org)
processing.js and this p5js are interpreters for the processing language built
in javascript (so that people can write processing scripts in javascript).
You probably haven't heard of it in browser ui/development because it's not
specific to the browser.
Many people use it to build interactive art environments both virtually and in
the real world (tied to things like servos and light machines, etc) - and a
lot of people use it to teach interactive graphics to kids or newcomers to
programming.
So it's a totally different thing than what you are thinking of. It doesn't
compete at all with any of the graphics libraries because it's for a different
purpose.
------
ghostwords
Have you guys seen Bret Victor's criticism of Processing in
[http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/)?
~~~
davebees
This seems to be more a criticism of Khan Academy's live Processing editor.
~~~
ghostwords
There are lessons there for improving live editing environments (whether Khan
Academy's, or p5.js', or ...), but also a call to rethink teaching
(programming) in general.
Processing is clearly on the right track given all the wonderful things that
have already been made with it ... consider how many more people it could
reach, how much more wonder could exist, if Processing were to move beyond
`ellipse(50, 50, 80, 80)` (for example).
------
filearts
If you would like a simple environment to play with p5.js right now, I've
created a simple template in Plunker:
[http://plnkr.co/edit/tpl:ElV3rt?p=preview](http://plnkr.co/edit/tpl:ElV3rt?p=preview)
Have fun and great job on the library!
~~~
filearts
I've always loved the simplicity and beauty of Boids [1] by Craig Reynolds.
Here is the flocking demo from the p5.js website [2] for your editing
pleasure:
[http://plnkr.co/edit/C2afiQ?p=preview](http://plnkr.co/edit/C2afiQ?p=preview)
[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids)
[2]
[http://p5js.org/learn/demos/Hello_P5_Flocking.php](http://p5js.org/learn/demos/Hello_P5_Flocking.php)
------
mbrzuzy
I don't mean to be that guy, I'm genuinely curious. Is this pretty much the
same thing as [http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/) ?
~~~
shiffman
See: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-
than-...](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-than-
processingjs)
~~~
twright
This looks more attuned for Javascript and Web development. Here's an overview
of some differences too: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing-
transition](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing-transition)
------
Osmium
Shame there's no 3D; I guess it's still Three.js for now. They have plans for
it though, and it looks like a great start so far otherwise, and they have
official support from the Processing foundation too.
------
arikrak
How does this compare to [http://processingjs.org/](http://processingjs.org/)
?
~~~
jffry
See [1] (via [2])
[1] [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-
than-...](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-than-
processingjs)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8144626)
------
SoapSeller
From the "Start" page:
If you didn't type it correctly, you might not see anything. If this happens, make sure that you've copied the example code exactly
This is definitely a big no-no if your goal is "to make coding accessible for
artists, designers, educators, and beginners".
~~~
_lmccart
good feedback, what would you recommend as an alternative wording? would love
to improve it.
~~~
tomphoolery
I don't think that's what he means. I interpreted that as criticism to the way
your language handles errors. At the very least, there should be _some_ kind
of feedback to the user, especially if you're making this with the intention
of drawing in non-programmers.
After all, JavaScript was invented for this exact purpose...and we all know
how many "content creators" and non-programmers are using that...
~~~
evhan55
:)
------
smrtinsert
Is processing.js deprecated now? Are both js implementations going to co-
exist? Seems a little unfortunate that there is an obvious split without any
hard language describing the future.
------
nutate
Great return to the roots for processing. Always more of a fan from the
periphery than a user. It harkens back to the original days when they only had
the proce55ing domain.
------
WhitneyLand
It's cool. Great to have this spirit, keep going.
Feedback: The editor currently starts up showing an empty function. Would be
nice to add a line of code in there for instant gratification of seeing
something draw from code right away.
Shouldn’t have to explicitly call createCanvas() for simple apps. Why not do
it by default to match the current window size?
Can’t get the editor to refresh without stopping and starting, I assume that’s
a beta issue?
~~~
_lmccart
great feedback! command+r will refresh, but maybe we need to add an explicit
button. other good points, too. would you mind posting these thoughts here:
[https://github.com/antiboredom/jside/issues](https://github.com/antiboredom/jside/issues)
~~~
WhitneyLand
sure, done. good luck.
------
atmt
hm, im not sure what to think about this. Despite beeing another
'framework/library' that promises to ease the learning curve for non
programmers to produce graphics, i do not fully understand why using it should
be more easier than drawing to blank 'raw' canvas element with a bunch of
wrapped drawing methods. Eg. why do i need to an 'updatePixels' wrapper of
putImageData, just to ensure syntax equality, overall the abstraction layer
just seems really thin. Should we not accept that every platform has its own
tools, and stop making the ultimate crossplatforn artist drawing framework.
Wouldnt it be better to accept the languages own features and try building
stuff on top of that, instead of trying to mimic another language, also
without considering the target languages limits (eg. p5.js isnt caching
anything, constantly getting context via getContext('2d') is just slow...).
sorry for the rant
~~~
ghostwords
Accessibility matters! The fewer barriers to entry, the fewer interested
people your project will turn away.
~~~
atmt
For sure, the initial barrier is really low, but when it comes to actually
building stuff with it, you still have to deal with the js way of doing it,
handling classes, obviously totally not like the java counterpart, or
collecting your projects resources in script tags, which is messy. At some
point you also have to drop the global methods, which seems to be the obvious
first benefit. Im just not sure if teaching a dogmatic processing like way is
the way to go in js, or general
~~~
ghostwords
Agreed, I wish you didn't have to deal with JavaScript's quirks (or script
tags even).
------
cordite
The presentation was really well done, it kept my attention and the
interactivity helped make their points.
------
_nullandnull_
I am super excited about this. I don't have much background in Javascript but
I used processing back in the day. This sounds like fun to mess around with.
Thanks for posting.
------
aikah
It basically looks like processingjs without the processing language.
Couldnt they contribute to processingjs directly instead of creating yet
another framework?
~~~
_lmccart
this is a different direction than processingjs with different goals, read
more here: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-
than-...](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js#how-is-this-different-than-
processingjs)
------
msane
Looking for examples / demos.
~~~
justboxing
Demos: [http://p5js.org/learn/#demos](http://p5js.org/learn/#demos)
Getting Started Guide: [http://p5js.org/get-started/](http://p5js.org/get-
started/)
Transition Code: [https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing-
transition](https://github.com/lmccart/p5.js/wiki/Processing-transition)
~~~
legutierr
Looking through those examples, it seems like all of the functions that p5
provides are dropped into the global scope. Do you know if there is any easy
way to cause all of those functions to live inside a "p5" object or something?
~~~
saaaam
Yes - you can instantiate a p5 object:
[http://p5js.org/learn/examples/Instance_Mode_Instantiation.p...](http://p5js.org/learn/examples/Instance_Mode_Instantiation.php)
------
ausjke
awesome stuff, this is one of the best way to get kids involved in programming
too.
------
joeyspn
Really cool! Reminds me a lot of ActionScript but (finally) for the browser
------
balls187
Many of the examples did not work for me in Firefox (latest-OSX).
------
alessioalex
Too bad it's GPL licensed instead of a more permissive one :(
~~~
belorn
Poor you. You are only getting software, for no cost, offered with permission
to use it, modify it, and distribute it for no additional cost to whom you
want.
If only they would allow you to take the software and then put restriction on
it. It is after all those restrictions that really matter, not the software.
Too bad that adding restrictions is not included in the deal.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tobacco industry generates highest net income per employee - qwerty2020
http://erikrood.com/Posts/NIPE.html
======
jmarbach
One reason for this is because the Tobacco industry benefits enormously from
manufacturing economies of scale. Take for example Reynolds American's
(mentioned in the article) largest manufacturing facility in Tobaccoville,
near their HQ in Winston-Salem. The Tobaccoville plant is capable of producing
110 billion cigarettes a year¹, and employs just ~1,200 people².
Let's say the average revenue per cigarette pack is $5, and there are 20
cigarettes in a pack. That works out to $0.25 revenue per cigarette. The
Reynolds Tobaccoville plant is capable of producing $27.5 billion in revenue
alone ($0.25 x 110 billion), for a labor cost of roughly 90 million (1,200 x
$75,000).
1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/23/business/what-s-new-in-
tob...](http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/23/business/what-s-new-in-tobacco-in-
tiny-tobaccoville-a-giant-plant.html) 2\.
[http://www.journalnow.com/business/business_news/local/updat...](http://www.journalnow.com/business/business_news/local/update-
reynolds-to-create-jobs-in-tobaccoville-to-expand-
vuse/article_cc60b98c-e283-11e3-ac51-001a4bcf6878.html)
~~~
jldugger
Crayola also has like 1,200 employees manufacturing packs of paper wrapped
tubes of product for 5 bucks a pop. What about cigarettes is more beneficial
for economies of scale?
~~~
flogic
Cigarettes are literally dried up leaves. Their customers light the product on
fire and then buy more the next day. Given that as a viable business model,
how do you not make ridiculous quantities of money?
~~~
TylerE
That is true, but I feel obliged to point out that tobacco is an incredibly
difficult and labor-intensive crop.
~~~
cglace
But they don't have to grow it.
~~~
TylerE
But they still have to buy it from people who do, and the difficulty is
reflected in raw material prices.
From
[http://www.nasda.org/File.aspx?id=48147](http://www.nasda.org/File.aspx?id=48147)
Types of Tobacco & December 2016 Avg. Price/lb. – Flue Cured $5.12 – Fire
Cured $7.25 – Burley $5.09 – Maryland $4.86 – Dark Air Cured $6.54 –
Pennsylvania Seedleaf $5.23
For comparison, wheat is around $6 per bushel. A bushel is 56 lbs.
~~~
cglace
You can get roughly 22 packs of cigarettes from a pound of tobacco. Lets say
RJ Reynolds sells those packs for 2.50 wholesale. 22 * 2.50 = 55. 10x the cost
of a lb of tobacco doesn't seem too bad.
------
M4v3R
It's a shame and a terrible irony that one of the most successful industries
on our planet is also one of the leading causes of deaths on Earth.
~~~
Clubber
>is also one of the leading causes of deaths on Earth.
The methods of calculating that 400,000 number are highly suspect.
_Nearly 60 percent of the deaths occur at age 70 or above; nearly 45 percent
at age 75 or above; and almost 17 percent at the grand old age of 85 or above!
Nevertheless, without the slightest embarrassment, the public health community
persists in characterizing those deaths as “premature.”_
_tobacco-related deaths occur at an average age of roughly 72, an age at
which mortality is not unusual among smokers and non-smokers alike._
[https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/blowing-
smoke-a...](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/blowing-smoke-about-
tobaccorelated-deaths)
I'm not disagreeing that they are harmful, but 400,000 deaths a year is
hyperbole. Governments make a lot of money on that hyperbole too.
_In Fiscal Year 2010, the federal excise tax on cigarettes (currently $1.01
per pack) brought in $15.5 billion in revenue._
_In 2009, states raked in more than $24 billion by taxing cigarettes and $8.8
billion in settlement payments from tobacco companies_
[http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/28/what-would-an-america-
with...](http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/28/what-would-an-america-without-
smokers-cost/)
------
ianferrel
Sure. Imagine how much income the crack industry would produce if they didn't
have to waste so much labor avoiding law enforcement.
~~~
theparanoid
Just look at Miami in the 80s.
------
setgree
I would be interested in more summary statistics rather than just mean (NIPE),
particularly median. What story is actually being told by this data, that
tobacco growth and sales are highly automated and they employ relatively few
people, or that execs are disproportionately compensated relative to other
industries, or what?
~~~
qwerty2020
Author here -- boxplot distribution is in the article.
Also, any story I could string together would definitely be speculative, so
just stuck to the few facts I know for purposes of article. Will speculate
here, however :) -- I'm going to guess primary driver is efficient
manufacturing coupled with simple product offering. (e.g. this isn't some Tech
company employing X% of it's workforce for R&D purposes)
------
gmiller123456
I used to work for Brown & Williamson Tobacco (though I did not receive my
$608k per year), and I can absolutely attest that their profits are not as the
author suggests "return on talent". I worked at corporate HQ, which is
probably very different from the factories where the cigarettes were actually
made. The vast majority of people spent the vast majority of their time
looking for work to do, because we quite literally had nothing to do. We had
something like 20 corporate holidays, plus many other "bonus" holidays
announced a day or two ahead of time, and many half-days. One story goes that
the CEO was talking to someone about our building and someone on the street
asked her "How many people work in that building", and her response was "Oh,
about half".
------
tryingagainbro
A pack of cigarettes is about 20 gram, or about 2/3 of an ounce. So tobacco
used to make a pack, is not free, but pretty close to it. Factories cost money
but after the initial investment, they mint cash...
I'm almost certain that Marlboro would sell you a gazillion packs for around
$1 each on the black market---complete with e Vegas trip and hookers--if they
could. Smuggling, to avoid taxes, was a huge business a while back when
getting away with it was much easier.
Taxes and advertising cost a lot.
------
jakeogh
160kμSv? Why?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRL7o2kPqw0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRL7o2kPqw0)
Without the combustion and rads is nicotine interesting on it's own?
------
chinathrow
And highest externalities too?
------
Iv
Who would have guessed that addiction sells.
------
itomato
Excellent news for Legal Cannabis.
------
sytelus
Tabacco - average of $609k per employee
Oil, Gas, & Consumable fuels - average of $421k per employee
I think top 5 public software companies (GOOG, MSFT, FB, AMZN, AAPL) averages
more than Tabacco.
~~~
pinot
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=microsoft+net+income+%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=microsoft+net+income+%2F+microsoft+employees&dataset=)
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?dataset=&i=google+net+inc...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?dataset=&i=google+net+income+%2F+google+employees)
Facebook, however:
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?dataset=&i=facebook+net+i...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?dataset=&i=facebook+net+income+%2F+facebook+employees)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The $1,632 Copy Of Microsoft Vista - nreece
http://consumerist.com/tag/windows/?i=5010868&t=microsoft-and-the-1632-copy-of-vista
======
sriramk
Its probably a bad thing to reveal which company I work for here :).
The right people at MSFT are on the case (on a Sunday morning during Memorial
Day weekend no less) and are trying to sort things out. I left a comment on
the Consumerist post asking Bill to send me an email so that we can speed
things along.
------
LogicHoleFlaw
There's no excuse for billing mistakes like this. But everyone needs to be
aware that using a debit card for purchases like these (any large dollar
amount) can cause problems like this. If the gentleman in question had used a
credit card a solution would be one chargeback away. Debit cards are
convenient but their great weakness is that if there is a mistake with your
account you are locked away from your money until it is resolved. With credit
it is the card issuer's money which is under contention. Protect yourself. Use
a credit card for purchases, then pay off the balance. It's safer than giving
a merchant direct access to your bank account.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Awesome Ssh Tricks - mds
http://criticalfutures.com/2011/03/9-awesome-ssh-tricks/
======
benawabe896
These have been good to me. Nice way to preserve permissions as well.
tar czf - files/ | ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar xzvf - "
ssh whatever.com "cd /path/to/; tar czf - files/" | tar xzvf -
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wisee uses wi-fi signals to recognise body gestures - jamesbritt
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22780640
======
Eduardo3rd
Even though the article does not go into a large amount of detail about it,
the actual paper [0] does a fairly good job addressing the issue of
interference with the signal. I'm still skeptical about the potential for
something like this, but it would be a very cool solution to ubiquitous
control systems if they can iron out the kinks.
[0] <http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/wisee_paper.pdf>
------
ColinWright
Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5824286>
Currently #9 on the front page.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lua 5.2.0 (work1) now available - silentbicycle
http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2010-01/msg00260.html
======
twrensch
There's some information in the readme.html file included with the
distribution, and a bit more in the manual.
Work versions are aimed at the active lua community as a way to get feedback
on features before they are finalized.
Very quick summary:
new syntax for lexical 'sandbox' environments
hex escapes in strings
tables and strings support _len metamethod
__pairs and __ipairs metamethod for iterator support
improvements to GC, week tables, xpcall
~~~
asb
One of the Lua authors has recently posted a more thorough summary:
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/61505>
The in keyword has been very controversial as with it comes the deprecation of
setfenv and getfenv, which are very useful for sandboxing and other tricks.
The inclusion of a standard bit operations library is also a big deal, though
Mike Pall (author of LuaJIT and LuaBitOp) has raised some objections.
~~~
silentbicycle
Indeed. About a week ago, I wrote an extension to load modules in a proxy for
hot code loading. It's pretty closely tied to get/setfenv. It's still too new
to share, but I'm going to see if I can get it working with 5.2. Requiring the
debug library (for debug.[sg]etfenv) will be a dealbreaker for some people.
------
nuclear_eclipse
Is there a good overview anywhere summarizing the changes/improvements since
Lua 5.1?
~~~
whyenot
Yes, Roberto Ierusalimschy posted a more complete list of changes to the email
list:
<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.lua.general/61505>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Messagify - a private Disqus for web apps. Feedback? - alabut
http://messagify.com
Hey HN, I'm a longtime reader and this is my first Show HN (exciting!) It's a collaboration between me and two friends, and we're building this upon another app we made called EmailYak, an API to receive email. We're trying something new and releasing the documentation to an app while we're still building it.<p>We'd love feedback. Do you belong to any of these categories?<p>1) You've built an app with two distinct groups of users (say, people with cars and those looking for a ride) and they were able to communicate with each other. Did you expose personal email addresses? Did you send notification emails that people could reply to directly in their inbox? Or were they only able to read and reply to messages on your site?<p>2) You built an app where you wished users could message each other but didn't add that feature. What stopped you? Did you try to parse incoming email? What tools or APIs did you try out?<p>If you note which group(s) above you belong to in your comment that'd be great :)<p>Thanks so much for the help!
======
RobertAdams
Hey HN, I'm a longtime reader and this is my first Show HN (exciting!) It's a
collaboration between me and two friends, and we're building this upon another
app we made called EmailYak, an API to receive email. We're trying something
new and releasing the documentation to an app while we're still building it.
We'd love feedback. Do you belong to any of these categories?
1) You've built an app with two distinct groups of users (say, people with
cars and those looking for a ride) and they were able to communicate with each
other. Did you expose personal email addresses? Did you send notification
emails that people could reply to directly in their inbox? Or were they only
able to read and reply to messages on your site?
2) You built an app where you wished users could message each other but didn't
add that feature. What stopped you? Did you try to parse incoming email? What
tools or APIs did you try out?
If you note which group(s) above you belong to in your comment that'd be great
:)
Thanks so much for the help!
------
ammmir
hi, one of the guys behind Messagify here. we're trying to make it easier to
to build messaging apps, starting with commenting. much like what Disqus did
for blog comments, we want to do for web apps in general. i'll be happy to
answer any questions.
~~~
masonhensley
We're are about to start building a internal commenting system for our web
app, so I wish we had access to your beta. Looks good from what I see. May be
a little too late (for me) depending on when you let people have access.
Side note: as much as I understand the vitality of launch rock, as a pre-
launched co-founder, I'm not about to start spamming what little audience I
have to get access to something I want to test drive around the block. Good
luck to you. I want to try your product out, but I'm not going to mess around
with launch rock.
~~~
ammmir
thanks, feel free to email [email protected] if you want us to let you
know when we're closer to beta :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ReactOS 0.3.17 is about to be released - userulluipeste
http://community.reactos.org/index.php/news/reactos-0-3-17-is-about-to-be-released
======
jeditobe
[http://reboot.pro/topic/20149-ntfs-now-supported-in-
reactos-...](http://reboot.pro/topic/20149-ntfs-now-supported-in-reactos-
livecd/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shadow banned by fingerprint? - justintestin
My old account "get" is shadow banned. I have no idea why. So I tried to make a new one "GetMeAway". I used a new IP and deleted cookies. Yet the new one was immediately shadowbanned too. Does HN use fingerprinting for this? Writing this via a proxy and a VM.
======
detaro
HN is unlikely to tell you how their anti-abuse system works, but you can
always e-mail the mods and ask them to unban your old account.
~~~
get
Maybe your are right and it's something they don't talk about. But maybe we,
the users, can have a discussion about it.
I mailed them the last time I posted something. They unblocked the post then.
But it feels a bit cumbersome to go that route every time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Project 5050 [video] - spking
http://www.project5050.org/
======
goodroot
Woohoo!
I once heard a metaphor on HN for the growth of software products. Building
technology as War.
Start-up: Your initial core of members make up the ELITE team. They are the
ones that storm the enemy lines, cutting the throats of the enemy generals,
and bombing key strategic targets. Only the best, of the best, of the best,
need apply. There is glory to be had.
Fledgling: Next, come the infantry. The boat is full to storm the beaches. It
is gruelling work; support queries, scalability issues: bring the people,
bring the degrees, bring the money!
Business: Finally, once the beaches have been stormed, its time to initiate
the systemic takeover. Secret police and politics; restructure, assimilate,
grow, grow, grow.
I do not repeat it because I like it. It stuck out to be because I felt it was
accurate. It bothered me. Working in this industry for 10++ years has been
psychologically bizarre. It is time to turn the page on this energy.
Tech no longer needs "War". It needs teachers, Moms, spirits, love, and
patience.
Good luck, Project 5050!
~~~
sxp
The "Commandos, Infantry, and Police" metaphor is from t Robert X. Cringely:
[https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-
police/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/)
It's a good description of any high-risk human endeavour like a startup.
------
caust1c
The initial video doesn't tell me anything about what project5050 is about.
The following text was below the fold for me:
> Join CS50's own Hailey James '19 as she meets with CS50 alumni to talk about
> struggles they faced in Computer Science.
Seems important to mention in the video.
~~~
komali2
Where did you find that text? I wasn't about to watch a bunch of videos to
figure out what a thing is and was hunting desperately for a tagline.
How hard is it to just have a single line of text at the top of a website (or
under the banner, whatever) describing what the company/organization/project
does? I can't believe how often I come across the website of startups, non-
profits, and (shockingly often) libraries/packages/node modules that just
kinda assume you know what they're about, or hide it all behind videos or
something.
I'm not a greybeard here with my javascript turned off. I just don't like
watching videos to gain information.
EDIT: Just thought of another - kickstarters are a HUGE offender.
~~~
alexkavon
> Where did you find that text?
It's underneath the first video.
------
leggomylibro
Nice! Creating things using programmable logic is something that can and
should be extremely accessible these days, with all the tools and communities
available.
But people still seem to have difficulty getting started; computing is a
bewilderingly large field of study, and it's distressingly common to see
people write it off as something "for experts". Efforts like these CS50 MOOCs
seem to do a great job of providing people with the basic language that they
need to learn more about the particular areas which they are interested in,
which is hugely encouraging.
------
discreditable
It would be nice if the site had some text describing what it is.
------
falcon620
I clicked this thinking it be would something related to the 5050 LED RGB
chip. I feel cheated.
~~~
Kiro
There are millions of things called 5050 or 50/50.
------
jsight
What's the deal with the shaky camera? It makes it effectively unwatchable.
------
to_bpr
Post seems to be encountering manipulation. Very little content on the site
beyond a couple of youtube videos and zero interest in the comments, yet 4th
place on the frontpage.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It's impossible to opt out of unsolicited emails from Heroku? “That is correct” - rickymetz2
https://imgur.com/a/96yoKrq
======
m-p-3
That would be a violation of the Anti-Spam Legislation in Canada.
------
eesmith
Would that be a GDPR violation?
~~~
throwaway73629
My understanding is that it would be a GDPR violation if the email were truly
unsolicited. In this case, it’s apparently possible to opt out of the emails,
albeit in an inconvenient manner, so I’m not sure it count as a violation.
~~~
eesmith
I got the impression that it was impossible to opt out. The only solution
offered was to ask the ex-client - a third party - to change the settings.
That is not opting out.
~~~
throwaway73629
If it went to court, I’m not sure what the court would decide. The solution
offered was indeed to ask the ex-client to change the settings. The GDPR
requires that those controlling personal data must offer a way opting out.
What I’m not sure about is whether Heroku would be seen as legally controlling
the personal data. Perhaps the ex-client is the one who has this control and
who must offer an opt out. It would be interesting to know if any similar
cases have already been judged.
~~~
eesmith
Hmmm. I see your point.
I don't know if Heroku is the data processor or controller in this case, but I
think it's the data processor. Let's suppose the ex-client is the data
controller. The first thing is to tell the ex-client to change the settings,
which doesn't seem to have been the case here.
If the ex-client does not change the settings (eg, perhaps from incompetence),
and Heroku know about the issue, then are they obligated as a data processor
to inform the ex-client that there is an GDPR violation? That's my reading of
the last part of 28.3 GDPR.
And if that violation continues? ... I have no clue.
No idea either of if this relationship is covered under GDPR.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica - rock57
https://www.yahoo.com/news/facebook-suspended-account-whistleblower-exposed-221429183.html
======
JumpCrisscross
The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach, quibbling over what to
call it and now this, is mind-blowing. Their "it wasn't a robbery because we
left the front door open" excuse may finally bring about trans-Atlantic
regulation of social media.
~~~
sithadmin
>The arrogance of Facebook's response to this breach
Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was
responsible for? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the chain of
events is:
1.) Third party (Aleksandr Kogan) creates 'personality quiz' app, Facebook
users opt-in to share information from their profile
2.) Aleksandr Kogan hands off data gathered by the app to Cambridge Analytica,
violating Facebook TOS
3.) Whistleblower (Christopher Wylie) lets world know that (2) happened
4.) Media / public gets out pitchforks and blames incident on Facebook
It really seems like Aleksandr Kogan, not Facebook, is the problem here.
~~~
bogomipz
>"Is it even clear that there was a 'breach' of any kind that Facebook was
responsible for?"
How about a breach of basic responsibility to inform users that their data has
been used inappropriately and transferred to a third party. FB knew about this
as far back as 2015[1]. Did they let users know at any point? No.
Further FB's Chief Security Officers's tweets on Friday failed to show any
concern for FB users who were used as pawns. His main concern was to point out
that this wasn't actually a FB problem.
And let's not forget that Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that fake news on
Facebook influenced the US elections as "a pretty crazy idea."[2]
So the "pitchforks" are a culmination of a significantly longer time frame and
not just a reaction to this single news story.
[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/11/senator-
ted-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/11/senator-ted-cruz-
president-campaign-facebook-user-data)
[2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-
fake-news-us-election-mark-zuckerberg-donald-trump)
~~~
felipeerias
"These guys unlawfully got data from a lot of our users. Surely they will
delete it if we ask them to, right?
"Now they want to buy a lot of ads on our platform, great!
"Also their ads are getting a lot of engagement somehow, let's make it cheaper
for them to buy more!"
------
dpwm
I'm still shaken with the magnitude and strength of the revelations that have
been made in the last five hours on Cambridge Analytica (though some of the
things sound more like SCL -- they share the same CEO).
At 7pm GMT we had the Channel 4 News investigation[0] which featured Alexander
Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, in which he appeared to be bragging to a
fictional Sri Lankan businessman (who was in fact an undercover reporter)
about the things they can do to discredit his opponents involving (with a
delicious dose of irony) hidden cameras. Such tactics sounded a lot like they
may involve trafficking of Ukrainian sex workers. There were also things that
sounded a lot like blackmail and spreading of things that may not be true.
Then, just after that undercover story broke we had the Facebook raid, which
really looked a lot to my untrained eye like heroic efforts to protect data of
the more evidential variety from being unnecessarily breached to the
authorities or the public.
At 10.30pm we got an interview [1], filmed before the undercover reporting
broke, with Alexander Nix. Most memorable to me was Mr Nix seemed to attempt
to confidently assure us that Dr Aleksandr Kogan had merely shared with them
the gradients with which to build additional models upon and had never shared
the data harvested from FB as the whistleblower in this article had alleged.
We were also either told or given the impression that this was a great big
misunderstanding and all part of a spectacularly coordinated attack by
journalists who were upset about Trump.
[0] [https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-
revealed-t...](https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-
trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-
entrap-politicians-investigation)
[1] [https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight](https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight)
------
fortythirteen
Just get the f### off Facebook, already.
If you're the kind of person who votes based on targeted advertising, or the
hyperbolic posts of people who vote based on targeted advertising, don't ask
Facebook to change. Get the f### off Facebook.
If you don't like how Facebook is being used as an addictive propaganda tool
_by any and all political actors, including Facebook itself,_ then get the
f### off Facebook.
Ask the Facebook "friends" you care about for an email address, phone number,
or other messaging account and get the f### off Facebook.
You don't need up to the minute information on the playdate of your cousin's
college room mate's toddler. Get the f### off Facebook.
~~~
maxerickson
Enough with the #. If you want to swear, swear. If you don't want to swear,
don't.
For fuck's sake.
~~~
fancyfish
Hell yeah, as a New Yorker I wholeheartedly agree.
~~~
DogPawHat
As a fecking Irishman, I also agree
~~~
BrandoElFollito
Moi aussi, crotte.
------
medyadaily
I have a personal story from inside facebook to share. and when I shared this
story on my facebook my personal facebook was suspended too.
5 years ago Facebook recruiter reached out to me and invited me to the W hotel
in Chicago. I was very excited -not for the job- but for the opportunity to
meet with senior Facebook managers and tell them about an evil thing Facebook
does. Here is the background story:
I am Kurdish from Iran. And Iran has many provinces. one of them is called
Kurdistan. In Facebook profile section for Hometown you could pick all of the
Iranian provinces except Kurdistan.
And at first I thought it was a bug. For years and years we submitted bug
reports and collected petitions for Facebook they never responded why the
Kurdistan province cannot be picked while other provinces could be picked.
Till one day, An internal document -guidance- leaked out of Facebook. That
explained it all ! One of the pages was talking about Kurdistan. In which they
had explained any reference to Kurdistan is considered terrorism. That was on
the request of Turkish government.
In "Turkey", the word Kurdistan is forbidden. and many people in Turkey been
prisoned for speaking Kurdish. however in "Iran" we officially have a province
called "Kurdistan Province). and Iranian government recognizes the name
Kurdistan for my homeland.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Iran)
But Facebook decided to enforce the Turkish government racist rule on other
countries that have Kurdistan (Iran, Iraq, Syria...)
Also in that leaked guidance memo. Kurdistan flag was considered illegal. And
hundreds of Kurdish pages and accounts got banned for having Kurdistan flag.
While Kurdish flag is illegal in Turkey. Kurdish flag is officially recognized
in the Constitution of Iraq for Kurdistan regional government.
So when they invited me to W Hotel to recruit me. I was like yes finally I can
meet the people in person. Because as a Kurd I have no importance and they
will never respond to me but a software engineer I am pretty attractive on the
market.
So I asked the question from one of the managers. And told them my story this
for years and years I send them emails and nobody got back to me and we made
petitions about this so-called bug.
He said these things are decided by higher management.
I told him how often do you show this disagreement to higher managers or Mark
Zuckerburg's policies if you have a different opinion. He responded if I
disagree with them I wouldn't work there.
I left the W Hotel in Chicago 5 years ago refusing to proceed with a job on
FB. I knew Facebook is on the wrong path. And today I see that prediction
coming true.
Even today when Turkey committed a massacre in Kurdish city of Afrin, Facebook
blocked many voices inside the city who were showing massacres by Turkish
government.
10 years ago FB came after kurds and you said not my problem. Today they are
coming after all of u
~~~
scoggs
I just find it disgusting that, as a company, they feel they have the right to
act in such a way. At the end of the day I guess it's safe to assume that
somebody inside or outside of Facebook has an agenda to proceed with actions
like these and I'm sure there are many other cases of things like this around
the world but the entire thing just leaves the worst taste in my mouth.
~~~
manfredo
My disgust lies with the regime that's suppressing that regional identity.
Unless we have reason to believe that Facebook would still disallow the
Kurdistan option even if governments didn't criminalize recognition of
Kurdistan, then this blame rests on Turkey.
I can't find a reason to fault Facebook's response to this harmful government
policy. Would it be better to allow people to select the "Kurdistan" option,
knowing full well that this could cause people to be imprisoned, or killed?
"Facebook disallows selecting of contested regional identities" is bad, but
not nearly as bad as "Facebook helps oppressive governments hunt down
disenfranchised people".
~~~
medyadaily
I can confirm iranian government not only does not have any problem with word
Kurdistan, Iran has an official Province called Kurdistan, and it is
constitutional. (same with Iraq) and I am form Iran living in USA, I should be
allowed to enter my hometown's province, just like every other iranian
proviince( Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, ...) but Facebook enforces Turkey's
disgusting rules on Iran too.
------
darawk
Why are people calling this a data breach? As I understand it, CA just scraped
the data from users who authorized their app to do so. Am I missing something
here?
~~~
IAmEveryone
Facebook did not authorize data retention. CA’s actions were therefore
unauthorized use of data, which is the textbook definition of a data breach.
~~~
darawk
...you mean facebook said "don't keep this" and then they kept it? And people
are calling that a breach?
~~~
dragonwriter
Well, no, the breach happened when the data was acquired under false (bogus
“academic use”) pretenses and then transferred to CA, thus taking personal
data contrary to both the will of the subjects and the policy of the entity
through which it was taken; the “dont keep this” was a (pitiful) post-breach
mitigation effort by Facebook.
------
donarb
This has bigger implications than just data breaches, it goes to campaign
finance violations of the Trump campaign. Cambridge Analytica shared an
address in Beverley Hills with Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon's political
consulting company called Glittering Steel. The implication is that GS used
Cambridge's data to target users on Facebook with political ads for Trump all
while being paid by a PAC called Make America 1 that was believed to be funded
by Robert Mercer and his family.
This Twitter user has numerous posts about this. Not sure exactly who they
are, but they have multiple sources of information about this story.
[https://twitter.com/emlas/status/975138624911151104](https://twitter.com/emlas/status/975138624911151104)
------
tango12
I was so terrified about how India was almost serious about letting Facebook
Zero / free basics or whatever happen.
I feel extremely concerned also that new generations are growing up without
knowing how the web was intended to be de-centralised and "free" and self-
correcting.
Maybe that doesn't work at scale and things need regulation, but I feel like
there was a chance to set culture and tone so that even when a large number of
people would come on to the Internet, it would be more with a Wikipedia like
attitude perhaps.
Now imagine if the first introduction to the Internet for a billion-ish people
in India (current penetration is 460mil) would have been through Facebook's
internet.org. Imagine if that happened in a country as large as India set that
precedent for other countries with low internet penetration.
I used to scoff in university at a batchmate who told me over lunch that he
doesn't use gmail because Google is too large and could become evil. I'm not
scoffing anymore I guess.
------
jhayward
Reporting that I read said they suspended him because he wouldn't sign what I
inferred was an NDA to advise them on how to understand and mitigate the
problem.
------
mlamat
In about 20 minutes, an explosive documentary about this will be airing on
Channel 4 BBC.
~~~
garblegarble
>Channel 4 BBC
Just a side-note, Channel 4 is an entirely separate wholly commercial public-
service broadcaster, whereas the BBC is publicly funded via a license that's
required to watch live TV
~~~
bodyfour
Yes, the fact that "BBC4" and "Channel 4" are completely different things is
(understandably) missed by nearly everyone outside the UK.
~~~
mlamat
Sorry, my mistake. You learn something new every day.
------
mcguire
Yahoo just delivered a full-screen, "Your computer has been infected with
digital ebola" page when I visited that link.
------
thrillgore
Guys, you suspended the wrong account.
------
Overtonwindow
Damage Control.
------
mtgx
Watch how they say it was an error, if this blows up. Just watch.
~~~
jackhack
Somewhere at Facebook is a poor Winston Smith, throwing scraps of paper down
the memory hole and editing yesterday's headlines. (edit: And at google, and
reddit, and youtube, and ...)
------
artemisyna
Given how the guy took data then refused to cooperate when asked, I think his
account being suspended makes sense...
[https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10104702799873151](https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10104702799873151)
------
matt4077
This is arguably correct. While it may be more pragmatic to practice lenience
with wistleblowers, there is no moral principle to shield them from all
consequences of their actions.
This guy was not just an observer of unethical practices. He was the technical
lead for this behavior.
Whistleblower protections usually shield you from retribution by your
employer. What people argue for when they criticize Facebook over this is more
akin to immunity.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JointJS 0.8 Released - filters, gradients and ports - durman
http://jointjs.com/blog/jointjs-0-8-released.html
======
flipchart
How does this library compare to d3?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I was partially deaf for the last couple of years - comet
http://bycomet.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/ear-wax-i-was-partially-deaf-for-the-last-couple-of-years/
======
sambeau
A taxi driver once told me great story about an old man in his local bar. *
_pushes light gently to provide suitable on-boat ambiance_ *
'Gunner' McIntosh _(or similar: this was Glasgow, Scotland)_ had been deaf
since he operated a big anti-aircraft in the Second World War. He would sit in
the corner of the bar and the regulars would have to shout at him to be
understood.
According to the taxi driver, the night before giving me a lift, he had walked
into his local bar and bellowed a greeting at the old man, as usual, and in
response the old man had jumped out of his skin.
It transpired that earlier in the day, during a medical check-up, a doctor had
discovered both his ears had been blocked by a massive build-up of earwax and
behind that there was ancient cotton wool that had most-likely been placed
there by a young Gunner McIntosh during the war.
Once removed, he said, he had the hearing of a healthy 21-year-old man.
------
byuu
I lost hearing in my left ear for the same reason. Ear kept blocking up more
and more frequently until it stayed permanently shut. Tried the store peroxide
kits, they didn't work at all for me. It's such an unnerving experience
because you really fear it's something permanent.
Finally got it cleaned out by a doctor, and just wow. It really is as if you
have bionic hearing. Everything sounded enhanced, and had a lot of extra
treble. Very much like you've turned up the volume by 50% or so. Things like
the garage door opening became too loud to bear, and I had to cover my ears
for it.
For a few days, I had wondered if this was how we were supposed to hear, and
that my hearing was just impaired for a long time. But it quickly fades back
to what you're used to as your ear builds up a normal, healthy amount of wax
again. Still, for those brief few days, it's quite the experience.
~~~
masklinn
> But it quickly fades back to what you're used to as your ear builds up a
> normal, healthy amount of wax again.
No, it fades back because your brain re-adapts. It's somewhat similar to
day/night vision, during blockage the ear/brain complex cranks up sensibility
to try and hear things, once the ear's clean it dials back sensibility because
there's no need for it.
There's no such thing as "heatlhy amount of wax" because it's not supposed to
build up (let alone build up so much it block out the ear canal or presses
against the eardrum, which is how it lowers hearing). Normally, earwax is
secreted in the outer third of the ear and slowly travels outwards before
flaking out.
(I say that being a frequent sufferer of accumulating and impacted earwax,
earwax buildup is one of the banes of my existence)
~~~
outworlder
Yeah, me too.
Once my ear got clogged,as happened with the original poster. However, the
auditory impairment was nowhere that much. It seems that, as long as there is
a path to the outside, you can hear almost as well.
Once it happened, I now have to go to the doctor 2 - 4 times per year to get
it cleaned. If I don't let it build up that much, then the cleaning is easy.
And, as the doctor is a specialist, he will not use the syringe, unless as a
last resort.
------
shanselman
It always strikes me how often we hear that folks either won't go to the
doctor to get something looked at, or they go to the doc and get the answer
and then simply aren't compliant. If it's broken, fix it. I've never
understood the logic behind avoiding the doc.
~~~
reeses
The best are people who lie to the doctor. Unless you're hoping to defraud
someone (get meds, insurance, whatever) it's not only pointless, it's so
counterproductive.
"I haven't pooped in a week." "Hmm, how many servings of roughage do you eat
per day?" "All of them. I eat ten apples for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and
I eat the solids left in the juicer after making my all-organic smoothies."
"OK, I guess we'll have to do a DRE. Do you mind if my interns help?"
"How often do you floss." "Ten times a day." "That's curious, because your
gums started bleeding like a Tarantino movie when my hygienist waved the box
of floss in your general direction."
I learned the hard way when I faked appendicitis and ended up in surgery when
I was 12. :-)
~~~
WalterBright
I tried lying to the dentist when I was a kid about how often I brushed my
teeth. He just laughed at me.
~~~
taeric
I always had the opposite as a child. They would commend me on how I must have
done a decent job since the last checkup. Reality is I probably only
brushed/flossed 3 or 4 times in that interval.
------
brazzy
As a kid I once lost a tooth and wanted to keep it, but since I had nowhere to
put it at the moment, I shoved it into my ear. Then I forgot about it.
So of course a couple of weeks later I was at the doctor with a blocked ear.
When it came out, he was rather surprised - said that he'd removed all kinds
of things from kids' ears, but never before a tooth...
------
jleyank
Glad it was just wax and that your hearing's ok. As somebody who is quite deaf
I heartily recommend that people pay attention to their hearing. Get a test to
establish a baseline and then check every 5-10 years if no problems or
ringing, shorter otherwise. And if you find yourself losing soft consonant
sounds, or piss off people with your tv volume, get it checked ASAP.
Hearing loss sucks as even with modern aids, hearing in crowds tends to be
difficult at best. Oh, watch your meds for things that can cause sudden loss
(aspirin?).
I'll admit that's its nice to feel music, though, rather than just hear it...
------
bobowzki
Haha I'm an MD and I like doing that because of the immediate results :-)
~~~
reeses
The pop is awesome. Also, the sheer grossness of a really good extraction is a
thing to be respected.
------
Cthulhu_
I had it for a couple days, fun times having a cold while in an airplane, :p.
Turning my head sideways and shaking fixed it.
As for the unease with noises, I guess it's understandable; one, the people
that don't mind are probably used to it. Two, if you haven't been able to hear
for a while, your hearing will get sharper and it'll have much more of an
impact.
Three, I too get uneasy when having to listen to busy train stations and the
like. I usually wear earbuds (with music) for that reason. And get stressed /
uneasy whenever those don't work.
------
hudibras
James Altucher had the same thing happen to him. He even had the same reaction
once it was over: "I'm a superhero!"
[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/03/about-the-time-i-
went-d...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/03/about-the-time-i-went-deaf/)
------
makmanalp
Awesome story! I always wonder how safe for your eardrums it is when they
rapidly inject water into your ear like that. Also, if you have mild tinnitus
from going to concerts and such, not having your ears blocked helps a ton with
not hearing it.
------
ilanco
Car horns are meant to be used in emergencies only, mostly to prevent
accidents. Unfortunately in some countries like Israel (where I live) it has
become more of a device for expressing anger or frustration.
~~~
Brajeshwar
Similar happenings here in India. Everyone honks for every 10th breath they
take while driving.
~~~
brazzy
True story: I've worked on a QA workflow system for a large car maker. One of
the tickets I saw said something like this:
Problem: Cars delivered to India come in for warranty repairs of the horns
unusually often.
Root cause analysis: The horns are designed for 50k activation cycles. Due to
the more intensive use in India, this is insufficient.
They were still debating whether to build in a sturdier horn everywhere or
just for the Indian market...
------
bitJericho
500 rs?? Good thing you don't live in the states, would have been a 5000
dollar operation!
~~~
Forplax
Normally I'm happy to jump into a "bash US healthcare" conversation, but as
someone who recently experienced exactly this issue off-insurance, I can tell
you that office visit + procedure runs anywhere from $200-$400 out of pocket.
Since it's a 5 minute in-office thing, most of that cost would be hidden
behind a copay to those with decent insurance.
Nothing like 500Rs, to be sure. But not quite four figures yet.
~~~
bitJericho
As most people don't have 500 dollars to pay the clinic up front, this would
have been an ER visit for the majority of Americans.
------
jhprks
wow, this happened to me too, the deafness came to me really quick, one ear
and the other one. I was very nervous, I thought some thing serious was
happening to my hearing. I had a doctor check out my ears, it turned out to be
a small pea sized earwax in both of my ears...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: 12 Days of Christmas for Techies - alexellisuk
https://blog.alexellis.io/your-12-days-of-tech-christmas/
======
lowpro
Honestly I hope most techies actually use the holidays for... holiday things.
These are great and seem like a lot of fun! However, I can't imagine another
industry where people take twelve days off to improve their work skills.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is your serverless system as good as you think? Are your sure? - rehemagi
https://medium.com/@rehemagi/is-your-serverless-as-good-as-you-think-it-is-2baa3d36b1de
======
BoorishBears
Yes, because we use Cloudwatch and we monitor DLQ events.
That should be standard operating procedure.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jim Rogers: I would urge anyone to buy a farm - cwan
http://www.smh.com.au/business/reserve-earns-praise-but-not-our-politicians-20100518-vc69.html
======
hugh3
_The only disappointment I've had is that your politicians are as bad as the
ones in America. If the Australian government keeps running up such gigantic
debts, the lucky country is going to run out of luck_
What's he on about here? Australian government debt is tiny compared to the US
or most of Europe. And we don't have vast unfunded pension obligations
looming.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
iOS Backdoor Services Proof of Concept - taylorhalliday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ymf0UsEuw
======
owenwil
I'm tired of the misinformation around this - the requirements to do this mean
the user needs to know exactly what they're doing: 1) Unlock the phone 2)
Trust the connected PC on the prompt
Isn't it inherently compromised after that's done? Essentially giving admin
access to the connected PC.
~~~
mynameisvlad
If they've already gotten to the trust screen, they don't need the backdoor to
get your data. Your phone is unlocked and the data is available by just using
the apps themselves.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Google Cloud AutoML to Classify Poisonous Australian Spiders - mattfrasernz
https://shinesolutions.com/2018/03/14/using-google-cloud-automl-vision-to-classify-poisonous-australian-spiders/
======
michaelgreen
This is huge, and it's only an alpha. I begun reading about AutoML/Neural
Architecture searches around ~year ago and something I've been thinking about
is:
Why doesn't this just move the optimization problem? Aren't you now just
optimizing your DeepRL network rather than the network you're trying to
optimize?
~~~
nl
The idea of AutoML (in this case[1]) is to improve the NN architecture for a
given type of problem.
In "normal" machine learning this is basically hyperparmater optimization for
a given dataset (eg, the depth of a random forest, XGB parameters, the best
random seed/jk )
In this case is tests different combinations of operators on a known dataset
to see what performs the best. So it is optimizing the prediction network
(Also this isn't DeepRL, it's a deep neural network. I think that was a typo)
[1] [https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/using-machine-
learni...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/using-machine-learning-to-
explore.html)
~~~
michaelgreen
Jeff Dean talks about AutoML using RL and in the paper " Neural Architecture
Search with Reinforcement Learning" it also talks about this.
Also it seems different from more traditional hyperparameter optimization
because it makes novel cells. So the structure of the network isn't limited to
our existing library of layers/cells.
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01578](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01578)
[https://youtu.be/HcStlHGpjN8?t=2073](https://youtu.be/HcStlHGpjN8?t=2073)
~~~
nl
"Novel Cells" are combinations of existing operators.
It's entirely true that these are combinations that humans haven't (and
probably wouldn't) come up with.
I don't want to underplay this. "It's similar to hyperparameter search" makes
it sound like it isn't interesting or novel, which is untrue. I completely
believe it is a revolutionary way to build software (so much so that I quit my
job, raised funding and are working on a similar space of problems).
But it isn't doing something like inventing a new math operations similar to
the other operators which humans put together to form cells/layers. It is
rearranging and choosing those operators in new ways.
~~~
michaelgreen
Okay I see what you're saying and I completely agree.
~~~
nl
You maybe interested in their most recent paper and blog post from today:
[https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/using-
evolutionary-a...](https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/using-evolutionary-
automl-to-discover.html)
~~~
michaelgreen
Wow thanks, reading it now (:
------
Zhenya
Something like this could actually save lives. Take a photo of what bit you,
then the app could provide an answer (with a confidence level) of "do I need
to go to the hospital" and provide a few example apps for various matches with
level of danger.
Thanks for sharing!
~~~
dbaupp
I don't think it is actually likely to save lives, because spiders _very_
rarely kill. As far as I can tell, there's been one death from a spider bite
in Australia in 40 years: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/young-
man-dies-a...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/12/young-man-dies-
after-spider-bite-during-australian-bushwalk/) .
~~~
thomasfoster96
That’s probably because it’s fairly widely known (in Australia) that if you’re
bitten by a red-back or funnel-web spider that you seek medical attention, as
you would for a venomous snake. A quickly treated bite is almost never fatal.
The app helps people make the decision as to whether its a harmless spider or
something that requires urgent medical attention.
~~~
murukesh_s
But what if you are in between a trek or in woods? Are there generic anti-
venom kits available that you can carry?
~~~
thomasfoster96
If you’re going bush walking, you’d usually take a snake bite bandage. If
you’re otherwise healthy and have other people with you, you’ve got a few
hours to get yourself to a hospital or ambulance.
------
bastih
I like the content of this blog post, but the use of stock photos was really
off-putting and I had to almost force myself to keep on reading.
------
juskrey
Isn't that something available in, say, Mathematica in 3 lines of code?
[https://wolfram.com/language/11/image-and-signal-
processing/...](https://wolfram.com/language/11/image-and-signal-
processing/image-recognition-using-deep-learning.html)
~~~
nl
No.
The example there is 7 lines (counting the NN description as one line). That's
using a (easy) pre-existing dataset too, and a primative neural network.
That's roughly the same as in Python using something like the fast.ai library.
I think that comes for 4 lines (not including data wrangling or inputs):
data = ImageClassifierData.from_paths(PATH, tfms=tfms_from_model(arch, sz))
learn = ConvLearner.pretrained(arch, data, precompute=True) learn.fit(0.01, 2)
log_preds = learn.predict()
See [1]
Also note that this AutoML version uses zero lines of code.
[1]
[https://github.com/fastai/fastai/blob/master/courses/dl1/les...](https://github.com/fastai/fastai/blob/master/courses/dl1/lesson1.ipynb)
------
gajju3588
Auto labeling would be way forward for Supervised Algorithms. Get some data to
annotate from your team, and tag rest of them using auto-labeling.
[https://dataturks.com/](https://dataturks.com/) could be such player, Not
sure how will these survive in front of Google.
~~~
nl
There's no such thing as auto-labeling.
Data Turks is manual labeling.
There is active learning[1] and related algorithms where you trace the
boundary of your classifier and pass examples along that boundary to be
manually labeled (as they are the ones the classifier is most unsure about).
But there is nothing "auto" about this - it's just being smart about where to
deploy the manual labor.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning_(machine_learn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_learning_\(machine_learning\))
~~~
gajju3588
Lets say we want to create a labeled data for text summarization for medium
articles. Could the highlighted part be used as summary, its not auto labeled
per se, but can be a proxy and passed to labelers to verify/edit.
~~~
nl
Sure. There are lots of useful proxies for labeled data.
It's worth noting that highlighted sections in Medium articles probably aren't
great summaries (they are more a representation of important points - which is
a useful thing to predict as well).
For example, many summarizer systems are trained on the single-line summaries
given in news media systems. There have been attempts to use Tweets as
summaries for linked articles too.
------
thejosh
How long does it take to get access to AutoML?
------
rrmoelker
Does anyone know a bit more about the pricing? All I can find online is Google
learning infrastructure cost.
------
neurostimulant
Is it possible to export the trained model from AutoML for offline use?
~~~
milesokeefe
They haven't come to a decision as to whether that will be offered AFAIK. I
really hope they decide to allow downloading the model.
------
dzhiurgis
If pictures are already from Google, wouldn't it be simpler to post image to
Google's Vision API and then grep results against the list of poisonous
spiders?
------
skeleton
I'm surprised someone is yet to point out the error of using the word
poisonous instead of venomous. I suppose it's not important to the article.
~~~
socceroos
Although, if you do decide to nibble one you may find it is indeed
disagreeable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Judge tells copyright troll to put up or shut up on porn lawsuits - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/judge-tells-copyright-troll-to-put-up-or-shut-up-on-porn-lawsuits/
======
1simonsayz
"This summer, a California judge referred to Malibu's lawsuits in that state
as "essentially an extortion scheme." Its exactly that, an extortion scheme.
Its all about making a quick buck
------
tomjen3
Great so now when you deal with extortion you also have to factor in the risk
that the judge ends up forcing you to pay money you don't have to fight a
frevious lawsuit.
I wonder how much the lawyers guild payed him.
------
ntumlin
Don't mess with people's porn. This will usher in an era of no more patent
trolls.
Or, more likely, everything will continue on as normal.
~~~
daeken
Er, this is a copyright case. What does this have to do with patents?
~~~
derleth
> Er, this is a copyright case. What does this have to do with patents?
A concerted effort to bring everything under the umbrella of 'Intellectual
Property', so they can claim that violating any of the laws relating to
copyright, trademarks, trade dress, patents, and so on is morally equivalent
to stealing $50 from an old lady.
Maybe it would have worked better if they tried to equate it to rape, instead.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: With-React-Hooks - kesne
https://github.com/kesne/with-react-hooks
======
kesne
Author here.
React Hooks are kind of cool, but they're a bit too magic because you use them
in functions and functions don't have state. Classes have state, and we all
understand them, so I thought it'd be nice to bring the useful parts of hooks
into classes, so I built exactly that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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We're getting closer to the quantum internet, but what is it? - retpirato
https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/future-tech/quantum-internet.htm
======
retpirato
[https://youtu.be/jxZD2QdutEc](https://youtu.be/jxZD2QdutEc) also mentions
quantum internet
| {
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Never Hate. Only Ever Destroy. - baha_man
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/never-hate-only-ever-destroy.html
======
maxklein
This is how I see it: The startup scene is like a big mall where one quarter
have shops selling stuff that people are looking for, and the other 3/4 are
borrowing money to buy lottery tickets. Every now and then, one of them will
win the lottery, driving the others into an even greater frenzy.
And people like Arrington and Graham are on the sidelines with megaphones
cheering on the lottery ticket buyers because, it turns out, they are earning
a 6% cut on ticket sales.
~~~
pg
YC only benefits from a small percentage of startups. The rest on average
_decrease_ our returns, because some compete with the ones we fund.
~~~
brlewis
It seems like a lot of YC startups have more partners than competitors, but
maybe those are just the ones most visible to me, e.g. disqus, clickpass,
tipjoy. Snipshot, one with a lot of competition, still has more than twice as
many partners as competitors. The only YC company I know of that was stopped
by competition was Kiko, and its competition was not a small startup.
~~~
pg
Nearly all have competitors. Plus any startup trying to raise money has to
compete with pretty much every other startup currently trying to.
------
goodgoblin
I like the post - loved the presentation as well - the longest presentation
that I have ever sat through on the web.
I realize his arguments are sort of drummed up for effect, but I thought the
analogy between VC and patronage was weak. Its true they were both systems
whereby rich people would pay talented poorer people to make things for them,
but the further connection - the reason for the payments and the building,
doesn't hold up. Do VC's really want to build companies to feel good about
themselves, or to show off, or to look better? Only if those companies make
money. Pets.com was a stupid idea and if anything the VCs that invested in it
have probably never lived it down. Not too successful as a vanity project.
Also, the VCs aren't investing their own money, so they are responsible to do
more than look good, while those whose actual cash is invested (angel's aside)
aren't well known - nor do they appear to seek out reknown.
Anyway - I figure this wasn't a legal case he was pleading, just my .02
~~~
raganwald
"Do VC's really want to build companies to feel good about themselves, or to
show off, or to look better? Only if those companies make money."
I think you misunderstand the VC business. They charge a fee for managing
money. Therefore, their business is attracting investment. This is exactly how
mutual funds operate as well.
Now, they stand to make money when their funds make money through various
incentives and so forth. But by far the biggest incentive is that if they have
a home run, they get more money invested, which means more management fees.
So aren't they incented to make money for their investors?
Not really: if they have a string of modest investments, averaging out to
making money, they will not attract a lot of capital: the money will flow to
the VCs that have name brand hits.
Whereas if they have a ton of total and otherwise embarrassing failures but
hit one out of the park, they will get a ton of new money when they start
another fund.
Or if their portfolio companies are the darlings of the press, they will get a
ton of new money when they start another fund
So...
Their strongest incentives are to own companies that get a lot of press and
hopefully get a few really press-worthy hits.
That is a lot like patronage to me.
~~~
jcl
I have to agree with goodgoblin: VC is not quite like patronage.
Patronage is gift culture; its message is: "Look how much I can afford to give
away!" A patron patronizes something not merely with a risk of losing money --
losing money is the expectation and practically the goal. VCs, on the other
hand, invest in something with the hope that they will eventually have more
money than they started with.
You point out that ambitious VCs will invest in riskier propositions to
increase their chances of a big hit. But their motivation for doing this is so
that the big hit draws more money for the next round. This feedback loop
(money -> fame -> more money -> more fame) is not present in patronage,
because a patron's fame is not expected to lead to significantly more money.
~~~
raganwald
There is room for both of the expressions "a lot like patronage" and "not
quite like patronage" to be true.
The big question about using patronage as a metaphor is whether discussing the
ways in which Venture Capitalism 'is' and 'is not' like Patronage leads to
greater insight.
What do you think?
~~~
jcl
You are correct -- the insight is what matters. But in this case, I do not
think the patronage analogy is helping.
Giles brings up patronage as an explanation for why VCs -- who are otherwise
interested in money -- are not interested in hearing about a profitable
microloan business. From the patronage analogy he gathers that they are more
interested in power than money, hence their class hierarchy and why microloans
are beneath them.
I feel the patronage analogy misses the point because it implies that VCs are
somehow not interested in profit. If you follow this logic through, you'd
conclude that startups are profit-losing ventures kept alive only for the
power trips of VCs. While this may be true in a few cases, I think it is an
incorrect conclusion, since VCs _are_ interested in profit (or, at least,
their investors are), and there is apparently enough return in startups that
investors do not go elsewhere.
There is a simpler explanation for why VCs are not interested in microloans:
it is far enough out of their geographic and technical areas that they don't
think they could do very well at it.
------
davidmathers
When he brought up Grameen Bank as the kind of thing that TechCrunch wouldn't
bother reporting on I became incredulous and thought "um, Kiva?" So I went to
techcrunch.com to find their post on Kiva. Which doesn't exist. Not only have
they never written directly about Kiva but when they mention it they
characterize it as a p2p-lending site rather than as a microfinance
organization.
~~~
davidmathers
omfg. This is from the CrunchBase description of Kiva:
"Kiva is alone in their business model of online p2p lending to entrepreneurs
in developing countries as a nonprofit entity. Other p2p lending sites, like
Prosper, Zopa and Lending Club, make lower-risk loans to people in the same
country as for-profit entities. Online p2p lending is new and it is hard to
maneuver around financial regulations to make higher-risk, international loans
as a for-profit entity, which is partly why Kiva formed as a non-profit."
Looks like these "new jounalists" could learn a bit from the New York Times:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section4.t-6.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section4.t-6.html)
------
deathbyzen
Dead insightful and well put. About the only thing I read TechCrunch for is to
get invites to beta start-ups. I don't care about MA's perspective on Silicon
Valley.
~~~
rudyfink
I agree. It could be a false perception, but it seems there used to be a far
greater amount of start-up reviews. What was a great way to discover new and
interesting products/services seems to have changed into editorial on the
valley, technology issues, and financials.
I liked this when it started, as it was a little bit of the "behind the
scenes" of the products/services I liked learning about. I think it has since
gotten a bit out of hand.
------
Lagged2Death
The fact that a person's name often makes a lousy search term is the very
reason we have brands and branding, it's one of the reasons internet semi-
anonymity or pseudonymhood can be so interesting and useful, and it's one
reason to question the future of businesses that assume we all wish to
consolidate the shards of our multifaceted online identities.
------
josefresco
"you ridiculous MBA-having suit-wearing dumber-than-a-monkey Friends-episode-
reject J-Crew-catalog muppetfuckers.... you scum-gobbling weasel-brained
magic-eight-ball-flipping clueless fucking nimrods."
Funniest thing I've read all week.
------
GHFigs
Indeed. The primary metric by which bloggers are judged is popularity, which
we long ago dismissed as being a terrible measure of value. Popular books,
popular music, popular movies, popular television -- these are rarely our best
works.
It's as though we've forgotten this on the web though, and re-instituted a
hierarchy of who matters that is based on meticulously engineered stacks of
grade-A bullshit, which, surprise, surprise, favors peddlers of distraction
and get-rich-quick schemes of all sorts. We've replaced "Old Media" with
"Tomorrow's Old Media".
Technorati even equates machine-estimated popularity with "Authority", a
dangerously loaded word and wholly inaccurate besides. Certainly popularity
means _something_ , but it doesn't say much at all about whether any person,
even someone in the ostensible target audience, should pay any attention at
all.
~~~
blang
Although, don't we sometimes unfairly criticize entities that are popular only
because they are popular?
[http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/40-indi...](http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/40-indie-
music/)
------
tx
Did you watch the video of his presentation? (the link is at the bottom of the
article). Very entertaining.
------
jrockway
Good article, but why does he take screenshots of his email and attach them to
the post instead of just cutting and pasting the text into the post?
I personally have no trouble reading it, but pictures of text are not very
easy to read for some people.
~~~
giles_bowkett
I like the pretty colors.
Also, Blogger is fucking evil, and it eats the > from quoting e-mails, which
sometimes is a very time-consuming bug.
By the way mad apologies but I'm actually banning my own blog from my view of
Hacker News, using a Greasemonkey script in Firefox. I would seriously kill
people to defend my right to post gifs instead of cutting and pasting text,
even though I realize it's ridiculous. Reasonable people can disagree, but for
the rest of us, there's Greasemonkey.
~~~
olefoo
Congratulations on pointing out the emperor's lack of clothing.
I have a question for you. If the VCs are the Medicis of the modern age what
would our Da Vinci look like? Or our Michelangelo?
How would we recognize greatness amongst us?
~~~
anamax
Were they recognized at the time?
Michelangelo did get one of the most prestigous jobs of his time, but what
about the rest of the now-recognized great artists - were they more popular
than the hacks of their day?
------
TrevorJ
From the outside, all the infighting makes the blogging scene feel like high
school again.
------
menloparkbum
I didn't understand what this was about. Cory Doctorow and TechCrunch are bad,
because TechCrunch doesn't like Rails and never wrote about Grameen Bank? plz
advise.
| {
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jQuery 1.4.3 Released - nathanhammond
http://github.com/jquery/jquery/commit/2d201873ff47b927a8c1efcee07191a47033744c
From the jQuery blog:
There are a few areas in jQuery that have seen extensive changes since 1.4.2 was released:
* .css() and related css-handling methods were all overhauled.
* Logic for determining element visibility and toggling of display in animation code.
* Much of the traversing logic has been improved and changed (is, filter, closest, find).<p>Why are you still reading? Go update your sites!
======
jusob
Does anybody have a link to the release notes?
~~~
logic
Not the release notes, but here's the documentation/changelog (note the "new
in 1.4.3" tags):
<http://api.jquery.com/category/version/1.4.3/>
Also, it's on their CDN now:
<http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.3.js>
<http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.3.min.js>
Release notes look like they'll appear here tomorrow, during the conference:
<http://blog.jquery.com/2010/10/16/jquery-143-released/>
| {
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Into the Grey Zone - evilsimon
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/08/grey-zone-can-one-really-be-conscious-while-coma
======
subroutine
Consciousness is a very interesting epiphenomenon. It piques intellectual
interest across the board, from first year psychology students, to Nobel
Laureates like Francis Crick [1]. I still cringe whenever I remember the time
I boldly announced to my would-be undergrad thesis advisor "I want to study
the origins of consciousness!" Thankfully she was wonderful advisor with a
knack for cultivating more practical research interests, and within weeks I
was decapitating rats in the name of science.
I've been studying biological neural networks (bNN) for about ten to fifteen
years, and artificial neural networks (aNN) for the past four or five (aNN
were something I first learned about in Kutner circa 2005[2], oblivious to
their future utility in machine learning). It's been interesting to observe
how fast the field of machine learning has progressed aNN theory and
application. IMO it has basically caught up to neurobiology - not so much as a
body of knowledge but in the elucidation of the key components that allow NN
to acquire and retrieve information (the modulation of synaptic weights, and
efficient functions to update these weights). Machines are now smarter than
ever, and have the capacity for adaptive behavior. A triumphant feat, no
doubt.
But within all that progress, we still have no fucking clue what consciousness
is about. We don't have a roadmap to get there. We don't know where it resides
in the brain (somewhere distributed among cortex presumably). And we don't
have a solid strategy for ML attempts at AI consciousness. The best we can
offer is: "just keep building these things more powerful and more parallel and
maybe it will eventually pop out". Who knows, maybe it will. But it probably
doesn't work like that. For all we know consciousness may be a dirty trick, or
nothing at all. Sure, we can think about thinking; it's a handy tool developed
by billions of eukaryotic cells working together, to keep themselves alive (or
at least to proliferate their shared dna).
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonishing_Hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonishing_Hypothesis)
2\.
[https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rkulik/mat3378/mat3378-tex...](https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/rkulik/mat3378/mat3378-textbook.pdf)
~~~
crocal
It is a topic that fascinates me. Would you have a more extensive read list to
recommend (graduate textbook level)?
Note: Without decapitating rats, if possible...
~~~
subroutine
I think you might enjoy "In Search of Memory" by Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel
(pdf linked below). He provides an entertaining and informative narrative
documenting the history of neuroscience (a history Kandel himself heavily
influenced). Kandel also wrote 'Principles of Neural Science', a 1400 page
tome that some regard as the neuroscience bible. If you are more interested in
the latest happenings, run a google scholar search for articles by Huganir,
R.Nicoll, or R.Malinow (Malinow had an interesting paper recently called
'Engineering a Memory'). Or if you are interested in neuro methods look up
whats been done in the Karl Deisseroth lab.
[http://evolbiol.ru/docs/docs/large_files/kandel.pdf](http://evolbiol.ru/docs/docs/large_files/kandel.pdf)
~~~
crocal
Thanks!
------
smegel
I think you chose the wrong half of the original title.
| {
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This nasty new Android ransomware encrypts your phone – and changes your PIN - excalibur
http://www.zdnet.com/article/this-nasty-new-android-ransomware-encrypts-your-phone-and-changes-your-pin/
======
excalibur
Better URL:
[https://www.welivesecurity.com/2017/10/13/doublelocker-
innov...](https://www.welivesecurity.com/2017/10/13/doublelocker-innovative-
android-malware/)
| {
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New apps designed to reduce depression and anxiety - upen
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2017/01/apps-to-reduce-depression-anxiety/
======
innocentoldguy
The article doesn't mention what platforms these apps currently run on. This
may change in the future, but for now it looks like they are Android-only.
Here is a link to the apps themselves:
[https://intellicare.cbits.northwestern.edu](https://intellicare.cbits.northwestern.edu)
| {
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Show HN: Shorty – A dead simple URL shortener service (with analytics) - Syncbo
https://github.com/shorty/
======
gokaygurcan
[https://github.com/shorty/](https://github.com/shorty/) is a user with no
repository from UK. Are you sure that the url is correct?
------
johnmurch
Correct URL -
[https://github.com/PadamSethia/shorty](https://github.com/PadamSethia/shorty)
------
nolastan
Love the simplicity. What is the "Tag URL"?
------
helb
Just curious – was there any particular reason to use MySQL directly, instead
of eg. SQLAlchemy?
| {
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Inssist – Instagram Assistant - inssist
https://inssist.com
======
inssist
A free Chrome extension for Instagram that offers post scheduling, videos &
photos uploads from desktop, insights, account analytics, DMs and more.
| {
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I made a patch for Mozilla, and you can do it too - martius
http://marti.us/w/2014-07-19-Mozilla-BSP.html
======
paulrouget
I've been working with new contributors for some years now. Here are some
advices:
\- find a mentor. It will helps a lot (use
[http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/);](http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/\);)
\- for the first bugs, writing code is not usually the hard part.
Understanding bugzilla and writing tests are; \- ask for a commit access level
1 early to have access to the try servers (to run the tests); \- finish what
you start. Bug is fixed when it lands, not when a patch is attached; \-
mozilla hackers are nice people, ask questions on IRC. There's no stupid
questions (we all started from zero too);
Everything will get much easier after the first bug fix. And motivation grows
a lot once you have finally landed some code :)
~~~
dfabulich
It would be helpful if the Mozilla Bugzilla had some way of opting in to
identifying that you have a mentor, so that it would be easy for reviewers to
see, "hey, this person's working pretty hard on this bug, but he hasn't
declared a mentor. We should suggest that he find a mentor."
I say this as a person who wasted two years working on a Firefox patch, which,
in hindsight, would have landed in a month or two if I'd had a mentor. (Not
that I'm bitter.)
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347174](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347174)
~~~
jgraham
As of a few weeks ago, bugzilla has a "mentor" field which is being used to
identify bugs that are good for new contributors to work on and the correct
person to mentor them. It would certainly make sense for someone looking to
work on a bug with no suggested mentor to ask for one. If you have any
suggestions for how to make this work well in the UI, it would be good to
hear; expecting people to notice "this bug doesn't have a mentor field so I
should ask for one" seems rather unlikely to work.
The bug that you worked on was a bit of an outlier in the sense that:
* It modified relatively complex parts of the code. * There was initially no (HTML) spec for the feature. * There was initially insufficient information to know what the spec for the feature ought to say.
So I think a mentor might well have told you "this is not a good first bug".
Of course that make it all the more impressive that you pushed through the
difficulties and got the patch landed and the spec fixed along the way. Thank
you for that! The main delays seem to have been waiting for review, which a
mentor may or may not have been able to help with depending on whether there
were other less-busy qualified reviewers, and waiting for the patch to land,
which these days we have a better process for and so which wouldn't happen
again.
~~~
dfabulich
I asked around on IRC after the fact; it was generally agreed that I should
have requested other reviewers rather than waiting months for feedback. If
only I'd known!
But that's kind of my point. "Mentored bugs" is an interesting approach, but
normally people have mentors, not bugs, and I think that having a
"mentor/mentee" field on user profiles may be the right approach for Mozilla;
the field would show up on comments/patches I post.
That way, the reviewer could have seen on my profile that I'm new to fixing
Mozilla bugs and unmentored, and in his first review, he could have suggested,
"I think you should fix these things, and BTW, I think you should find a
mentor to shepherd you through this process."
------
vasi
I did it!
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=548763](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=548763)
Unfortunately it took quite a long time, the Mozilla process is quite
confusing to a newcomer, even one with a lot of open source project
experience. I definitely second the recommendation of finding a mentor.
~~~
agentultra
I don't think I would have been able to get my two patches into Mozilla if it
wasn't for the mentored bugs program. It's incredibly useful and I wish more
projects would implement it. _ahem_ openstack _cough_.
~~~
desipenguin
openstack is a "commercial" open source. Several (if not most) developers who
contribute are paid by "companies" \- so typically new "contributors" find
mentors within their "company"
------
Diastro
In your post you mentionned that a goo way to start working with open-source
project it to look for smaller scale projects to contribute on github. If been
working hard to make it easier for people to find interesting/smaller projects
on github by creating the /r/coolgithubprojects and the
[http://coolgithubprojects.com/](http://coolgithubprojects.com/) website
lately. It's not perfect but anyone who's looking to contribute and find
interesting will (I hope) find these tool useful. They're not perfect yet but
we'are working hard to making open source project sharing as easy as
possible!. My 2 cents.
~~~
bleakcabal
I have also created a site designed to help people find smaller scale Github
projects. You can find it here : [http://gilles-
leblanc.github.io/dispatcher/](http://gilles-leblanc.github.io/dispatcher/)
------
gluxon
I've done this a few times for bugs that have personally annoyed me. Gotta
say, it's easy to get started and the reviewers are amazing.
------
zokier
I wonder how much of his positive experience is due the fact that he decided
to contribute to Servo instead of one of the "main" Mozilla projects (Gecko,
SpiderMonkey, Firefox etc). Less hairy codebase, smaller community, github-
based, and probably lot more suitable low-hanging fruits.
~~~
__david__
I got a couple patches through to Firefox proper. One was a fairly easy
bugfix[1], but the other[2] took me lots and lots of iterations to get
correct. The mentor was _extremely_ patient, taking what I think was more time
to explain to me how to do it right than it would have taken him/her to just
do it themselves.
The worst part for me wasn't understanding the code (though following through
some of the XPCOM stuff is tough), but working with Mercurial. I was tempted
several times to abandon it and use a git mirror. Anyone that says patch
queues are equivalent to git rebase is crazy.
[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1006656](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1006656)
[2]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=907310](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=907310)
~~~
daleharvey
If you dont need to actually push the code to the reposity (which you wont for
the first bunch of patches) it is totally fine to use git, the github mirror
is at
[https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev](https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev)
and you can just upload patches for review
~~~
cpeterso
Mozilla also hosts its own git server:
[http://git.mozilla.org/](http://git.mozilla.org/)
------
DomingesZ
What's kind of skills for programming with Mozilla?
~~~
padenot
Basically, anything. Have a look at
[http://www.whatcanidoformozilla.org](http://www.whatcanidoformozilla.org) to
have a glimpse on what you can do for the project.
~~~
gknoy
Thank you for sharing that. I had NO IDEA that the Mozilla team had such
diverse needs, and had always assumed that it was all over my head.
------
jonalmeida
I think the real take away is that this same experience can be applied to any
large open source project that seems daunting to new comers, not just for
Mozilla.
I had a similar experience with emscripten (yeah I know, Mozilla too)
initially. So I start working on a project with the following steps:
\- Download code \- Setup environment \- Run test suite (if exists) \- Play
with simple bits of code by hard coding changes and building it to see it's
effect. \- ... sleep? \- Attempt baby bug first
------
izietto
I made one single patch for Mozilla [1], and I love how it was easy for me to
receive informations about how to submit a patch correctly and how to improve
my fix, even if I have a big language disadvantage (my english is poor).
I hope I'll have the chance to contribute again to this great open source
browser.
[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=935741](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=935741)
------
barkingllama
Too bad we can't patch IE.
~~~
_random_
...and JavaScript. And HTML.
------
terminado
...but can I patch the look and feel of the user interface, or are we not
permitted to patch superficial things that affect "branding" and user
experience?
I liked Firefox 28, not Firefox 29 and up.
~~~
rockdoe
Given that people have written add-ons to do just that, there's no need to
even make patches for it.
~~~
cpeterso
The "Classic Theme Restorer" add-on works pretty well and has a lot of
preference to tweak the UI to your liking:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemer...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Offline Disk Import for Google Cloud Storage - ship your HDDs to Google - rasterizer
https://developers.google.com/storage/docs/early-access
======
octo_t
For me to upload 3TB on my shoddy connection would take about 290 days or so.
If I ever needed to put that much data in the cloud, you can bet I'd use
something like this.
------
Sami_Lehtinen
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a jumbo jet full of magnetic tape.
~~~
bane
even worse latency/bandwidth payoffs:
1) a hundred car locomotive
2) a cargo ship
3) more fun, if you simply need loads of data at a particular place in the
universe at a particular time, and that place and time happens to align with
the movement of the Earth, you can just load up a warehouse with the data and
just wait. It's a special case that just happens to turn out to be highly
optimal.
(it's similar to the theoretical time machine which is just a comfortable
chair in a quiet room, it's guaranteed to take you into the future)
------
EvanAnderson
If your connection is so bad that you have to resort to shipping physical
media to upload data efficiently I wonder how you're going to make effective
use of the data once it's loaded into "the cloud". I understand that most
consumer Internet connectivity (in the United States, at least) is asymmetric,
but it seems like constrained upstream capacity would go hand-in-hand with
constrained downstream capacity, too. I understand "seeding" the remote
storage for backup applications, where you wouldn't be frequently accessing a
large amount of the corpus, but I wonder how this would work with applications
like moving your personal media library out to remote servers if you were one
of these people with a connection that's so bad that you need to resort to
moving physical substrate around to move bits.
------
Ellipsis753
Very cool. I would be interested to know how they get the data off the
harddrive again. Would this work with a broken harddrive (by swapping the
disk) or do they just plug it in somewhere and wait a couple of days while
everything copies off. I would probably guess the latter but who knows?
~~~
toomuchtodo
They just plug it in and run an import process, very similar to how Amazon's
AWS Import/Export process works:
[http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/](http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/)
If you need data recovered, you're going to have to run ddrescue yourself.
Now, what would be really cool? If they had multiple locations to do the
import from (Provo, Austin, KC/MO anyone?), so you could get the data to them
quicker when they have a sizable backhaul nearby.
------
shimsham
What next?! Access to our wireless networks?
~~~
mslot
Probably whatever AWS did 4 years ago.
------
Paul12345534
Their pricing for the hard drive is reasonable but their storage pricing is
higher than what I pay with Crashplan ;) I haven't taken advantage of
Crashplan's initial drive seeding because my upload speed is fast enough.
~~~
Paul12345534
2TB uploaded so far to Crashplan in around 3 months.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Please review my startup: flashissue.com - eranation
We launched FlashIssue, a web app for curating newsletters quickly using existing web content about two months ago and got great reviews from users, but we would like to help convert more users to the point of sending the newsletter through us (or the mailchimp integration)<p>We would also like to hear any comments or suggestions on our Chrome web clipper extension that integrates with the app (link to it in the app)<p>The app is before a professional design iteration (we are aware it doesn't look pretty), but we would like to improve usability as much as possible when we brief the design agency.<p>Appreciate your comments
======
laesvirta
I like the concept and the editor - it looks very smooth and easy to use,
however, your landing page doesn't really convey the greatness of the app!
Some of the issues I had with it: \- the first screenful of the landing page
doesn't tell me anything. Only at the very bottom of the page you get to what
flashissue is actually all about - the editor. The "Super simple" box that you
use to describe the tool or the workflow doesn't really doesn't really help me
to get the concept, of course a video would be great, but if you don't have
it, maybe you could do a better job at illustrating how "fetching" and
"creating" is done. Since I didn't get the first two screenfuls (help picture
& super simple), I'm not really going to get the "we work with these guys
either). So rearranging the messaging could help a lot.
\- could you consider allowing visitors to use the editor without logging in?
And require them to log in only after they're getting ready to publish the
newsletter. This could help you to show the ease of use.
\- Some of the tutorial boxes in the editor went off the bottom of my screen
(13" mac book pro with chrome)
\- The web clipper doesn't really stand out, I had a hard time finding it.
Once I installed it, you threw me on a new page recommending me to restart my
browser and sign-up (I was already signed up). I know you're still early, but
I would have liked to be able to choose the element I want to clip from the
page instead of just clipping the whole page.
I hope this helps!
~~~
eranation
This is really great feedback, thanks, will update once we have something new
to show as remedy of all the above. Thanks again, this is very helpful.
------
reiz
I like the page. It looks simple but professional. Don't care so much about
the design. Of course it shouldn't be ugly and hurt my eye. But on the other
site you don't have to win a UX contest with your page.
I like the approach to fetch content from a website or a blog and create a
Newsletter out of it. Most time I create a blog post and the same content I
send out as a newsletter.
2 points I don't like. First of all, there is the pricing? Is it really for
free? How do you make money? And the second point. There is the registration
form? I saw that I can login via FB and Google. That's cool. But sometimes I
want to sign up with my corporate identity. Login with FB and google should
always be optional. But beside that it should be possible to sign up with
username, email and password.
I hope my feedback is helpful.
~~~
eranation
Thank you so much for the feedback, Yes we intend to have a pricing soon, we
are still trying to improve our experience and conversion rates before we do
:)
I am glad you mentioned it (login), we started working on it and will put this
as a higher priority. I think this is one of the big barriers indeed for
corporate users.
again, thank you so much
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are some cool ideas for a Chat Bot? - hugofonseca
I want to build bots as a side project, and would appreciate some ideas.
They could be just productivity increase ideas (e.g. solve human problems/needs in a office(?)), or just for fun.
I'm thinking about integrating with Slack, but not necessarily limiting the platform.
Thanks for any help.
======
alex_hitchins
I too have been thinking around this area. My first thought was some bot that
could be used to determine if a chat agent was a bot or not. I didn't see that
having much value however in the long run.
------
brudgers
Curious what bots you're working on currently.
~~~
hugofonseca
I've created one that solves the problem of finding out which meeting room is
available right now or at a later time (for a defined period 15,30, 60 min) in
a pool of 15/20 meeting rooms. It can be a pain to find out in the calendar
interface, so the bot only returns the available rooms, and with a simple
click, boom, you book it... added some extra functionalities around this main
feature.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Empty-Stomach Intelligence - lbr
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section1C.t-1.html
======
gpcz
This reminds me of a passage from Ben Franklin's "Autobiography" about
vegetarianism, but could be reinterpreted as a statement on the benefits of
being hungry:
"When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one
Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother,
being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his
apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an
inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself
acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as
boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then
proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he
paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I
presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional
fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the
rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone,
and, despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a
bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-
cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for
study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of
head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and
drinking."
Perhaps Steve Jobs's "stay hungry, stay foolish" quote was literal as well.
------
jackschultz
> The finding was startling, but “it makes sense,” Horvath says. “When you are
> hungry, you need to focus your entire system on finding food in the
> environment.”
I never liked these types of rationalization. If the result was opposite, you
can easily say that it would make sense because when full, you can concentrate
fully on the task at hand, rather than on finding food.
~~~
PakG1
No you can't. This is one of the first fallacies taught in Logic 101. If A
then B, does not mean if !A then !B.
~~~
_delirium
His or her point is that the "evidence" at hand can be rationalized either
way. That is because there is no causal evidence about the relationship
between hunger and productivity adduced here.
~~~
PakG1
Thanks for clarifying the point for me instead of simply downvoting. I see
what was meant here now. But I think the point could have been made better by
pointing out the lack of causal evidence, rather than complaining how it could
be rationalized because pretty much anything in the world can be rationalized
if you try hard enough.
~~~
seabee
The point was made best because it presented a counterexample. Merely pointing
out 'ad-hoc fallacy' (or similarly, my pet hate 'citation needed') might make
the author and a few other people feel good about themselves for seeing the
flaws, but it's a lazy response which adds the smallest value greater than
saying "I disagree", and is better suited to a points-scoring exercise rather
than a discussion.
------
fchollet
Even assuming that the human brain somehow "works better" in a state of hunger
(which this study does not prove), I would still do better work in a state of
satiation.
The number one factor for doing good work is to sit down, get in the zone, and
stay concentrated on your work. I find that being hungry is very distracting
--hunger constantly nagging you out of your task with the urge of getting up
and grabbing a snack. So independently of how well hunger makes the brain
work, for me hunger is detrimental to the only thing that matters.
~~~
graeme
You say you " _would_ still do better". Does this mean you've not actually
tested your belief empirically?
I find hunger is one of the least well understood of our bodily functions,
despite it being accessible to every one of us. Few people test it.
From my experience, and from the experience of everyone I've every talked to
who tries intermittent fasting: You won't get hungry, once you adapt. Most of
us adapted in a few days.
I don't eat until 12-1, and I get up around 8. Hunger never bothers me until
lunchtime, and I feel clear headed and productive all morning.
If you HAVE tried this experiment, then apologies. But I find it very
irritating that so many people i. Have very strong opinions on the matter of
fasting ii. Have never experimented to see how they react to fasting
~~~
superuser2
Fasting signals your body to aggressively conserve resources, making less
available to you and optimizing for maximum fat content. Which is why it's not
an effective dieting technique. When you "get used to it" your body has
reduced its energy consumption but also the energy available to you and your
brain.
The mice are doing better at _getting themselves fed_ but I wonder what the
impact of hunger is on higher order functions like programming, relationships,
management, etc...
~~~
Nav_Panel
It takes a very long time for your body to go into "starvation mode."
Intermittent fasting is actually a reasonably effective dieting technique
assuming you don't binge eat afterward to "make up the difference."
Good source: [http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-
debun...](http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-
debunked.html)
> Looking at the numerous studies I've read, the earliest evidence for lowered
> metabolic rate in response to fasting occurred after 60 hours[0] (-8% in
> resting metabolic rate). Other studies show metabolic rate is not impacted
> until 72-96 hours have passed (George Cahill has contributed a lot on this
> topic).
> Seemingly paradoxical, metabolic rate is actually increased in short-term
> fasting. For some concrete numbers, studies have shown an increase of 3.6% -
> 10% after 36-48 hours[1,2].
[0]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3661473](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3661473)
[1]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2405717](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2405717)
[2]:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292)
~~~
superuser2
Parent seems to be talking about long-term permanent strategy, not sub-72-hour
increments. I apologize if that was incorrect.
~~~
graeme
I said I don't eat until 12. A 16 hour fast, typically.
------
crazygringo
I don't know if I'm different, or what -- but I simply _cannot_ concentrate on
an empty stomach. When I find myself just staring at the computer screen,
unable to write code -- it's usually because it's 11am and I didn't eat enough
breakfast, or 11pm and I didn't eat enough dinner. It's not the distraction of
hunger, it's just that my brain isn't getting the energy it needs to think
properly. I _have_ to go snack on something (usually substantial) to get
enough energy going back to my brain -- and then I'm fine.
In fact, I've often been mystified by people trying to lose weight who barely
eat anything all day, yet still manage to get work done effectively,
participate in meetings intelligently, etc. I wish I could, but I swear, when
I'm hungry it's like my IQ is cut in half.
Still, just from talking with friends about it, it seems like I'm the outlier
here.
~~~
Malician
This is somewhat related and quite interesting.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/health/nutrition/20best.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/health/nutrition/20best.html?ref=health)
I have a similar issue. From what I can tell using my layman's understanding
of the nutrition involved, fat or protein will give you steady energy
throughout the day, but sugar or refined carbs (like white bread) will just
temporarily spike your blood sugar and lead to much unhappiness a little
later.
Either way, if I don't pay attention to my energy intake, I don't necessarily
get hungry - I just end up slouched in front of the computer accomplishing
nothing without the energy to even get up and move. My thinking falls into
repetitive ruts - I'll attack a problem from the same direction over and over,
neglect any sort of creative solution, or even fail to execute a basic
troubleshooting routine I should know applies.
The article still seems to apply, though: being too full is really terrible
for maximum motivation and really getting things done. It may be best to eat
good, solid meals, but none of them too massive, and not just before you need
to do hard work.
------
kgarten
I wonder why it's so difficult for news reporter and journalists to link to
the actual paper. "According to researchers at Yale Medical School ..." great
start (irony ;) ). Here's the paper link (unfortunately behind a paywall):
[http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n8/full/nn.3147.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n8/full/nn.3147.html)
Given the paper I find these sentences highly speculative: "... causes mice to
take in information more quickly, and to retain it better — basically, it
makes them smarter. And that’s very likely to be true for humans as well."
To broad and too vague, ... there are too many influences on knowledge
acquisition (information intake)
~~~
gwern
Always check Google Scholar, which in this case (
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=866211161589883826...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=8662111615898838267&hl=en&as_sdt=0,9)
) turns up two public copies:
[https://www.med.upenn.edu/ngg/user_docs/Dietrichetal2012Natu...](https://www.med.upenn.edu/ngg/user_docs/Dietrichetal2012NatureNeuroscience.pdf)
/
[http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228063201_AgRP_neuro...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228063201_AgRP_neurons_regulate_development_of_dopamine_neuronal_plasticity_and_nonfood-
associated_behaviors/file/79e41502949107cec2.pdf)
Not that I'd place any weight on this. Mice responses differ from group to
group, breed to breed, and need not generalize to humans at all (
[http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#fn97](http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#fn97) ).
In particular, if hunger really did improve general cognitive performance in
humans, it should be trivial to show this! Take two groups of undergrads, keep
them busy for a few hours so they miss lunch, administer IQ test; done.
In fact, it's so trivial that it's been studied in any number of contexts,
particularly dieting:
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hunger%20cognitive%20per...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hunger%20cognitive%20performance)
I dunno about you guys, but skimming over the abstracts and titles, I'm not
thinking 'hunger will turn me into a genius'...
------
beagle3
Hunger and appetite are not the same thing, although they are often conflated.
I doubt anyone posting here has actually felt hunger.
That feeling of "I should eat something now" is either appetite, or ritual
(and/or carb addiction). If you are not malnourished, it often takes 20 days
of fasting for hunger to appear (as many as 40), and when it arrives, you'll
realize it is there: It's not a feeling that goes away if you're immersed in a
book, work project or video game. It's a feeling that you'll be willing to
fight for food now, if needs be. (Addiction can also cause that feeling, but
addiction will go away if your mind is taken with other things. They just feel
different in a way that I don't know how to describe).
Despite living in a western society, I have experienced it several times. The
first, involuntarily (was a vegetarian in the army, and despite rules to the
contrary, there was only sufficient amounts of food if you ate meat), and not
fasting - I just wasn't eating enough for over a month, and then it came with
a sudden force.
The other times, I lost my appetite, so I didn't eat until it came back (as I
often do). Usually, appetite comes back within a day or two. A few times, it
took over 10 and over 20 days.
Food consumption, hunger and appetite have no simple linear relationship.
After two days of fasting (voluntary or forced), the appetite disappears. I
know that seems very unlikely to anyone who hasn't tried it, because it seems
like the appetite (or a feeling you call hunger) just keeps getting stronger
when you don't eat - to the point that it would be impossible to sustain if it
continued linearly. But it doesn't - it just goes away after a couple of days,
your body switches to some kind of maintenance mode (characterized by ketosis)
that actually feels good.
------
kvee
How do we reconcile this with hunger causing ego depletion and choice fatigue?
([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-
fro...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-
decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all))
~~~
Bsharp
Reconciliation: NYT wants to report on something that sounds interesting and
people will talk about.
------
alabut
There's similar findings that a hungry stomach can make you more awake and
even cure jet lag. It goes back to the 80's - Ronald Reagan used the technique
to look fresh when landing across the globe.
[http://blogs.hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-
lag/](http://blogs.hbr.org/2009/05/a-fast-solution-to-jet-lag/)
When I learned about it last year, I figured it might also work as a technique
to pull off all-nighters and tried it out whenever we had a press embargo for
some feature we hadn't even created yet. It seemed to help a lot, especially
for someone like me that usually needs an absurd amount of sleep to function.
------
capex
There is a difference between being actually hungry, and beginning to feel the
need to eat. Other commenters are comparing hungry kids not being able to
focus on learning, which is absolutely true. Its not just the hunger for them,
its about food insecurity. They don't know if they'll get food tomorrow, so
the idea of staying fed is primordial there.
That said, for me, a state of feeling light-headed with the need to eat in the
background works best. Satiation is a never ending pit, you'll need to fill in
15 minutes after you last felt satiated. But if you can ignore that little
sugar-triggered signal, focus becomes both easier and intense.
------
chenster
Since I started working from home, I found that I'm super focus and productive
in the morning after consuming a cup of coffee. My productivity is at its
lowest after lunch, even a light one, feeling my glucose is running low.
I found it helps to take a small break and do 15 min walk and come back to
work re-boost my attention again. Another thing that helps is to maintain a
low in-door temperature definitely adds more O2 to my brain. Maybe that's why
my last workplace is always so cold with AC blasts at its max.
~~~
eru
Have you tried a standing desk or a walk and nap after lunch?
Those things did make a difference for me.
------
DanBC
I'm having trouble calibrating what people mean by "hungry" in this thread.
Obviously they're nowhere near the eating disordered end of "hungry". (Where
people use a lot of cognition on counting calories and working out how to burn
more calories or evade monitoring, to the point that physical movements slow
down, because they're concentrating so hard on other stuff.)
But is this just missing one meal? or missing a day of food?
------
klt0825
This is actually one of the reasons I do what is now called "Intermittent
Fasting". I found in my teens that I was much, much more focused and alert on
an empty stomach. I've always assumed it had to do my insulin response to
meals as low-carb diets had a similar effect but not eating during the day was
just easier.
------
talles
For me, almost everything feels better with an empty stomach. Studying,
working or just having a good time. I do some small water fasts during my
month (1-2 days fasts) and these days are definitely the best ones: I feel
lighter with a clearer mind.
But there is on thing in the article that I think is BS: “When you are hungry,
you need to focus your entire system on finding food in the environment”. I'm
not an expert in this area but I always believed that this benefits were due
the shutdown and cleanse of your digestive system.
------
jules
I see a major flaw in the generalization from hungry mice solve a maze faster
to hungry mice are more intelligent (let alone humans). Supposedly you train
the mice to solve a maze by giving them a food reward. It stands to reason
that the hungry mice are simply more motivated to get the food reward. If you
had given the mice some other kind of reward when they solved the maze (e.g.
sex) then the hungry mice may not solve it faster, but sex deprived mice may.
------
bernatfp
That's exactly what I've been noticing with myself. As time passes from my
last meal, I start becoming more productive, I can read faster, remember many
more things... I feel like my brain weights less. On the other side, just
after having had lunch I need to have a short nap, otherwise it takes me like
1h to be fully operative again.
------
sfrechtling
I also find that I perform best when I fast for the morning, and then have a
rather large lunch. Its a little hard around 11am, but I don't crash as easily
- and I'm able to push through problems easier afterwards.
The only thing I find is that it sometimes impacts on my creativity; I'm not
able to think of alternate solutions.
------
rlwolfcastle
_The stimulation of hunger, the researchers announced in the March issue of
Nature Neuroscience, causes mice to take in information more quickly, and to
retain it better — basically, it makes them smarter. And that’s very likely to
be true for humans as well._
I am a little sceptical of the claim in the last sentence.
------
amjaeger
When the lab rats are in the maze, is the prize for successfully exiting the
maze a piece of cheese or other food? If so I wonder if this test effective.
If I'm hungry I can probably find the fastest route to a store or restaurant,
but I'm not sure about improved calculus skills.
------
lbr
I notice this all the time - focus better hungry. Just did some research and
dug up the article.
~~~
michaelchum
Same here, I feel more focused and have stronger mental acuity when my stomach
is empty
------
jamesrom
Hunger works for me. I'm less likely to procrastinate if I'm hungry. I can
concentrate better. I can more easily tune out everything else.
Music : Ears :: Hunger : Brain, at least when concentrating.
------
robmcm
So should we be giving kids state sponsored school breakfasts or not?
~~~
patatino
Good question. I once saw a documentary about this topic. They pointed out a
lot of the kids went to school without breakfast at home, because their
parents were poor. After implementing a sponsored breakfast at school grades
improved a lot. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the documentary.
~~~
vidarh
The poverty issue might very well mean that these meals might be beneficial
primarily by counteracting chronic under/malnourishment and that this is a
more important effect than any benefits of short-term fasting / hunger.
But there are other potential effects as well: It is one thing to be hungry if
you are able to decide yourself what to do. Another when dealing with
authority. We can tell when my four year old son is getting hungry before he
notices it himself because he starts getting cranky when we try to interfere
with what he is doing.
Purely guessing based on that anecdote, it might also well be these kids would
perform better at _what they want to do_ when hungry, but that they are more
docile and find it easier to sit still and pay attention to the teacher when
well fed.
For my part, I used to prefer to go to school without breakfast for many
years, but then again I was usually allowed to sit and work on whatever I
wanted most of the time in many classes, as I was usually ahead.
Of course this is all speculation.
~~~
hmsimha
Your speculation definitely resonates with me. I always had a hard time
sitting still and paying attention in class if I was hungry. For whatever
reason, if I've gone a little bit too long without eating enough, I end up
experiencing sharp pains in my stomach that are incredibly distracting, even
though I doubt I ever went long enough without food to truly have an empty
stomach.
------
terranstyler
This study basically says that Ghrelin makes you smarter. It may well be that
this is to counter the effect of lower blood sugar due to hunger.
Being hungry could still make you "dumber".
------
cperciva
So much for the "kids can't learn if they're hungry" argument for subsidized
or free school breakfast and lunch programs...
------
thejosh
I've heard the same thing somewhere, where if you need to go to the toilet
that's the best time to make a decision.
~~~
hackula1
I find that in this situation, my response is always the same: "Just do it..
be right back"
------
md224
(2006)
------
islon
tl;dr: hunger makes mice smarter, likely to be true for humans as well.
------
contextual
_The stimulation of hunger... causes mice to take in information more quickly,
and to retain it better — basically, it makes them smarter. And that’s very
likely to be true for humans as well._
So based on a so-called scientific study of mice, we have this great insight
on how humans think. This study and ergo this article are either wrong, or
mice are so close to humans in the way they behave that it's ethically and
scientifically indefensible to conduct harmful and lethal experiments on them.
In other words, if mice are such a reliable proxy for human beings, we
shouldn't experiment on them because they are people too. If they are not
reliable proxies, then we need to stop using them as such.
That fundamental question is largely being ignored in the scientific
community, but until it's answered, these studies are bad science.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I was turned down for a job at a tech startup because I’m male - vs2
https://medium.com/@stigmapseudonym/i-was-turned-down-for-a-job-at-a-tech-startup-because-im-male-c1ea6dc87733
======
andy_felsil
This article has already been submitted 1 hour earlier:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8172047)
.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: PHP Tricks and Best Practices? - jmtame
Hi everyone,<p>I have scoured the YC forum for a post on great PHP tricks and best practices, but found nothing. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I would appreciate it if anyone knows of great sites or tutorials. I use CodeIgniter (excellent classes, typical MVC setup) and jQuery (uses a lot of method chaining, huge fan of this). But I still find myself writing a lot of native PHP for my app.<p>For example, I wasn't aware of the list() function until someone was helping me write a method to convert times. I've noticed when working with another programmer on a project that he's using sprintf() instead, and it surprisingly makes the code a lot cleaner. I'm finding myself doing more algorithm-style methods, dealing a lot with arrays and a bunch of if's/conditionals (tertiary if's are great!).<p>Just using these as examples, I feel like there should be a cheatsheet of best practices and ways to minimize the amount of native code written somewhere but I'm not seeing it =]<p>*Edit: I'm going to open up CI's class files and look at how they wrote everything. Perhaps a good way of doing this is to look at other frameworks? Any suggestions there?
======
agotterer
You should learn how SPL (standard PHP library) works. Most PHP developers
don't even know it exists! In my opinion its one of the most powerful parts of
PHP if you can learn to use it correctly.
<http://us.php.net/spl>
<http://www.php.net/~helly/php/ext/spl/>
The documentation on php.net is pretty lacking. Heres are some tutorials and
examples:
<http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Introduction-to-SPL.html>
[http://devzone.zend.com/article/2565-The-Standard-PHP-
Librar...](http://devzone.zend.com/article/2565-The-Standard-PHP-Library-SPL)
~~~
neovive
For some more SPL examples, read through the source of the KohanaPHP framework
(<http://www.kohanaphp.com>). The framework was originally a fork of
CodeIgniter, but has evolved into a completely new and powerful framework --
completely written in PHP5. The framework source is very well written and has
some excellent examples of using SPL and OOP along with some nice helpers and
libraries.
------
ericwaller
Something that took me a number of projects and maintenance type work to
realize is to use "helper" functions wherever possible.
For example, a profile link:
<a href="/user/profile/<?=$user->id?>"><?=$user->name?></a>
Write a simple function:
function user_profile_link ($user) {
return '<a href="/user/profile/$user->profile">$user->name</a>';
}
And use it:
<?=user_profile_link($user)?>
I used to think the extra code upfront wasn't worth it, but after dealing with
a bunch of 300+ line templates for a while, I can tell you that it definitely
is.
Also, you can see a use of string interpolation (a common use case for
sprintf), ie "count is: $count"
~~~
pwoods
So is anyone using Smarty anymore? Or is this short form php now all the rage?
Just curious because I'd update if it was.
~~~
bprater
I could never understand the advantage of using a templating system inside
another templating system. Smarty has loops. PHP has loops. Did I miss the
train?
~~~
kwamenum86
Smarty produces slightly cleaner code but is worthless otherwise IMHO.
------
rshao
This is a bit of a specific one, but the array_shift function is really slow
on large arrays. The workaround I found is to use array_slice and unset the
array index afterward.
Overall though, I find out about a lot of cool things just from the comments
on the php.net site. For example, I learned how to use pcntl_fork from the
socket_accept page, and then I found out about socket_create_listen from one
of the process control pages.
My approach is basically just to figure out what I want to do on a higher
level, and look for sample code on all the individual parts. Then who knows, I
might discover something amazing.
------
texec
If you want to review very clean code you should better look at the Zend
Framework. It's very good object orientated PHP 5 Code.
------
auston
Have you looked through this: <http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/> ?
It has a lot of a lot, so you don't have to write so much native PHP. Even
Rasmus recommends it as his "framework" of choice (although he does not "like"
frameworks).
------
gearslips
Some of the stuff you've mentioned is really good old-school stuff, like list
and sprintf, that's fallen out of vogue.
With regard to suggestions to check out Zend Framework, my advice is: Don't.
~~~
RossM
I'd say check it out - to read - but don't use it. They've got some
interesting things in there, like OpenID implementation that's worth a read.
------
shaunxcode
fluent expressions (when uses appropriately) can be great for constructing
DSLs. Also any time you see boiler plate code take the time to refactor to
eliminate it - often times figuring out how to do that will make new
abstractions apparent. As a matter of practice search for the coolest things
you can do in python (list comprehensions etc.), lisp and ruby and figure out
how to do things in a similar way (if possible) in php.
Such as:
//python version:
noprimes = [j for i in range(2, 8) for j in range(i*2, 50, i)]
primes = [x for x in range(2, 50) if x not in noprimes]
//phparrayplus version:
$noprimes = xR(2,8)->for_each('xR($x*2,50,$x)->out()')->flatten();
$primes = xR(2,50)->diff($noprimes);
//common lisp:
(loop for x from 0 to 100 if (> (* x x) 3) collect (* 2 x))
//phparrayplus version:
$C = xR(100)->if_only('($x*$x) > 3')->for_each('2*$x');
//factorial in phparrayplus, nothing else to compare this too - just cool:
function fac($n){
return xR(1,$n)->reduce('$x*$y');
}
~~~
apgwoz
Is "phparrayplus" a library you wrote. If so, where can it be had?
~~~
shaunxcode
yes, it should be available next week on
<http://code.google.com/p/phparrayplus>
------
DanHulton
I've had trouble for a while now with chained ifs, as in:
[CHUNK A]
if (chunk a succeeds) {
[CHUNK B]
if (chunk b succeeds) {
[CHUNK C]
if (chunk c succeeds) {
echo 'yay!'
}
else {
echo 'boo!';
}
}
else {
echo 'boo!';
}
}
else {
echo 'boo!';
}
This gets messy if there's anything interesting in those chunks. Instead, take
advantage of short-circuiting and put those chunks in functions. Then you can
rewrite the above as:
$success = do_chunk_a();
$success = $success && do_chunk_b();
$success = $success && do_chunk_c();
echo $success ? 'yay!' : 'boo!';
Also, use the ternary operator EVERYWHERE YOU CAN - you'll clean up so much
code with it.
~~~
nuclear_eclipse
even better is:
$success =
do_chunk_a() &&
do_chunk_b() &&
do_chunk_c();
...
------
pwoods
Don't look at other frameworks. I did that and found it a complete waste of
time. The best I found was to loosely follow the Ideals of a framework you
like. I say loosely because frameworks always have the best intentions but
they can't be built for everyone. So sometime I've had to cheat. I've seen
code where somebody has made a work around instead of cheating and it's a
mess.
Other than that my personal preference is to use jquery for form submits and
manipulation, smarty for templating and everything is tied together following
MVC ideals. Class inheritance is where it's at too. Simple one is that your
Page class inherits the functions in your DB access class which inherits your
config class. Silly I know but it works great for me. Which in the end is the
point.
~~~
pwoods
Oh and also sometime I stop writing features and review the code base thus
far. This allows me to bring everything up to snuff with the the latest Ideas
I may have had. I've rewritten my own code about 20 times and it's now the way
I like it.
------
grotesk
If PHP is your choice and not the result of prior mismanagement, then I would
immediately schedule a two-week vacation. Rent a suite at a hotel with no
internet service. Bring your laptop. Pick a language: Scheme, Groovy, Python,
Ruby, Clojure, scala, Haskell... and implement something fun for twelve days.
Do nothing but immerse yourself in the language. Take a couple days of rest.
Then return to work freed of the huge mistake that is PHP.
------
senthil_rajasek
More a trick than a best practice, heredoc
[http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#langua...](http://us.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.heredoc)
You should recognize this immediately if you have done any unix shell
scripting.
I use it to spit out large pieces of HTML.
------
kwamenum86
Write your own collection of object oriented php classes or use someone
else's. This will speed up your projects a ton. I tend to stay away from
frameworks unless it is commissioned work that involves a lot of boiler plate
code (forum, blog, etc.).
------
haasted
I think it would be a better idea to look at an application than a framework.
It will likely match your future work better.
MediaWiki has in my experience a very well-written codebase, so I would
designate it a good candidate for code-reading.
------
sunkencity
if speed of execution is relevant, just use echo (which takes any number of
arguments), and single quoted strings (concatenating, or parsing double quoted
strings is slower):
function user_profile_link ($user) { echo '<a href="/user/', $user->profile,
'">', $user->name, '</a>'; }
------
thwarted
list() isn't a function, it just looks like one, just like array() looks like
a function but isn't. There apparently wasn't enough syntax to spend on making
things like this less ambiguous, but now we do have \ as a namespace
separator.
------
andreyf
Cool PHP trick: write a compiler from a better language to PHP and write your
code in that ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Really clever augmented reality advertising - adriand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9JT0Fs3JXM
======
Dellort
Really impractical with current technology for augmented reality. Maybe with
an overlay on glasses or something, but this is stupid.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Falling in Love with the Dark - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/falling-in-love-with-the-dark?utm_source=tss&utm_medium=desktop&utm_campaign=linkfrom
======
chrissnell
Once a year, some buddies from all over the country and I get together to
spend a week in the deserts of Southern Utah and the Colorado Plateau. It's a
driving adventure (we all drive old Land Rovers) but nights are spent in
improvised campsites, as far as we can get from paved roads and civilizations.
The rocks and the trees are beautiful but the night sky...the night sky is
indescribable. We sit on our chairs around the campfire and watch the
satellites and cross-country flights pass overhead. The Milky Way so bright
that it almost lights the land like a moon. Some evenings, I set up my camera
and tripod and do my best attempt at night photography. Here are few of my
favorites:
Cedar Mesa, Utah:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5551249303/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5551249303/in/set-72157626204989387/lightbox/)
La Sal Mountains, Utah:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114443927/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114443927/in/set-72157625240335210)
Comb Ridge, Utah:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6305032340/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6305032340/in/set-72157627908526209/lightbox/)
Moonrise over Canyonlands National Park:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6940180396/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/6940180396/in/set-72157629835662677/lightbox/)
Elk Ridge campsite, Abajo Mountains, Utah:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/8762668240/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/8762668240/in/set-72157633554934498/lightbox/)
La Sal Mountains, Utah:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114444819/in/set-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/5114444819/in/set-72157625240335210/lightbox/)
~~~
cesarbs
How can I learn to prepare for something like this? How can I find out where
the good spots are? My wife and I would love to go on such an adventure, but
we fear for things like bears and other predatory animals.
~~~
chrissnell
[http://expeditionportal.com](http://expeditionportal.com)
[http://overlandjournal.com](http://overlandjournal.com)
------
georgemcbay
Living in San Diego, I love having the option of driving out to Anza Borrego
to see the stars.
If you haven't seen them in a true "dark sky" setting, I highly recommend it.
You'll be shocked how many of them you see and how there are just layers and
layers of them everywhere and being able to see the milky way with the naked
eye is incredible. I doubt it comes close the so-called "Overview effect"
Astronauts talk about when they see the Earth from... not the Earth, but it is
still quite powerful and humbling when you're used to looking up and seeing
half a dozen stars on a good night.
~~~
endgame
Going out to sea and looking up was an experience I'll never forget.
~~~
_mgr
This. Even with the lights on the decks of the cruise ship I was still able to
see layers and an expanse of stars I haven't seen since I tramped around the
the Nelson Lakes area of New Zealand when I was younger.
------
kourt
The worst part is that we're failing even on simple things that could reduce
light pollution, such as using outdoor fixtures that direct the light only
downward.
The International Dark Sky Association exists, but I don't know how successful
they have been. [http://www.darksky.org/lighting-codes/simple-guidelines-
to-l...](http://www.darksky.org/lighting-codes/simple-guidelines-to-lighting-
regulations)
------
cellover
Hubert Reeves sums it up really well:
"The first effect, and I would say the most dramatic, is that it steals the
sky. People no longer see the sky. There are many people out there who have
never seen the Milky Way, who have never seen zodiacal light. Sometimes I ask
people, "Do you know what zodiacal light is?" Three-quarters of them do not
know, they have never even heard the word. It's part of something that held
great significance in the past. It's contact with the sky. It's that feeling
you get when you go outside on a beautiful starry night, Milky Way and all.
That contact was present throughout humanity until only a few decades ago."
We greatly underestimate the fundamental and mystical implications of these
changes on the inhabitants of this planet.
------
wyager
I've spent the last few years in big cities; Austin, LA, NYC. A few weeks ago
I took a brief trip to a small town in Idaho with negligible light pollution.
I had completely forgotten the look of a clear night sky. It was absolutely
breathtaking. I felt as though I was going to fall away from the earth.
I truly hope that in the long term, humanity can build infrastructure that
doesn't destroy access to the night sky.
------
jacquesm
Super nice article. I miss the Canadian Northern rural nightskies very much so
I was pleasantly surprised last weekend when the sky was completely clear
while camping somewhere in the mountains in Romania. I never realized that
being in a valley the mountains are even more effective at blocking out any
light pollution than mere distance will do and the view was absolutely
spectacular.
Living out of a very tiny RV for a couple of days is an exercise in compromise
but the rewards are definitely worth it.
------
jakeogh
In Tucson AZ we have few streetlights. It's nice. You can take a walk and see
better because your night vision is not constantly being reset. A 45min drive
up any of our local mountains and the Milky Way is bright and center,
satellites whizzing by.
The International Dark Sky Association (unsuprisingly based here) has
resources for people interested in reclaiming their night sky:
[http://www.darksky.org/](http://www.darksky.org/)
~~~
frossie
Factoid: At Kitt Peak National Observatory, a working astronomical site, you
get more light pollution from the Homeland Security / Border Patrol
checkpoints that you do from the nearby city of Tucson.
1,000W bulbs: Just Say No.
~~~
jakeogh
I was in the Santa Ritas last weekend and noticed the same thing. The local
interrogation point outshined the city. Our tax dollars at work.
------
bradly
I was hiking Mount Whitney a few weeks ago and by far the most spectacular
site was the sky at night. Better than highest peak or the purest mountain
lake, the sky was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Definitely worthy of planning
a vacation around.
------
Gracana
I didn't realize how important it was for me to see the night sky until I
moved to a densely populated area. It's weird to look up and see nothing but a
glowing haze.
~~~
Pyrodogg
It's kind of terrifying to visit my parents place in the countryside. I
actually _need_ my headlights. While it's not going to be safe for everyone, I
could very well drive across my brightly-lit metro area with no driving
lights, in the dead of night, with little issue.
On the other hand, out under the clear sky, I'd be off the road in under a
mile without lights. It's Dark out there.
------
asaddhamani
This is a problem I feel very deeply about. When I was a kid, I would look up
in the sky and see stars. Now, all I see is an orangish hue. Spotting even a
single star at night these days is a difficult task.
I sincerely hope we can solve this problem of lights spoiling the night sky
for everyone. Especially street lights, those are the worst. I hate having to
go to a forest to be able to see the sky I could once see from the roof of my
house.
------
kamjam
I spent a few weeks trekking trekking around the northern part of India a few
years ago, around the foothills of the Himalaya mountain range. Miles from
anything, only access is by foot and the only power was available by a
generator that ran from 6am-10am and 6pm-10pm. It's amazing what is out there.
What amazed me the most was the number of shooting stars I saw, what I thought
was a rare occurrence but if it is dark enough even the smallest particle of
dust throws out an amazing glow as it enters our atmosphere.
For those of you in the Southern UK, I highly recommend a camping trip to
Durdle Door. The camp site is a few hundred metres from the cliff edge and
miles from any light pollution. Amazing views of the nigh sky from there too:
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=durdle+door+night+sky&tbm=...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=durdle+door+night+sky&tbm=isch)
------
quarterwave
Thanks for posting this link, I now begin to understand what Shakespeare meant
by 'spangled starlight sheen' [A Midsummer Night's Dream].
------
kgmpers
The City Dark is a pleasant documentary about the loss of our night skies and
what it means for us and other animals. Great soundtrack.
[http://www.thecitydark.com/](http://www.thecitydark.com/)
Trailer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1fTkF8PIu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1fTkF8PIu0)
------
cellover
Here are good resources to find dark areas:
darksitefinder.com/maps.html (world coverage but not really detailed)
[http://avex-asso.org/dossiers/pl/france/zoom/cdf-normale.htm...](http://avex-
asso.org/dossiers/pl/france/zoom/cdf-normale.html) (France only, very
detailed)
~~~
mast
Attilla Danko has some really useful information on his website
[http://cleardarksky.com/csk/](http://cleardarksky.com/csk/)
He can generate clear sky charts for most of Canada and the U.S. You can see
light pollution maps and there are links to this Google Maps light pollution
overlay:
[http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html](http://djlorenz.github.io/astronomy/lp2006/overlay/dark.html)
~~~
mkaziz
This is great, thanks.
------
bmurali
I remember my first time watching the sky in pitch darkness! It was in death
valley and the picture is so vivid in my memory. I was amazed, shocked and
delighted all at the same time to see so many stars in the sky! It's a view I
miss to this day.
------
cesarbs
Anyone knows what is a good place around the Seattle area to watch the sky at
night? I know I'll probably have to drive quite a bit out of the city, but I'm
looking for an option where I don't have to leave the state just for that :)
~~~
mikestew
Note that I've done none of this, but if you're looking for "closest possible"
I'd travel out to the Snoqualmie Pass area and head up something like NF-54 to
Stampede Pass. Probably still too much light, but it's an hour one-way. Don't
try it in the winter, and a Subaru Outback-ish vehicle would be preferred
(though I saw a late-model Mustang come off Stampede Pass this past week). One
of these days I'll take my R1200GS motorcycle up there in the middle of the
night.
If you're looking for more dark, but more travel time, just about anything
between Snoqualmie Pass and Spokane and off I-90 a ways should offer a good
bit of darkness. Think US-97 toward the Canadian border: open high desert, not
a lot of civilization.
------
UrMomReadsHN
Does anyone know of a site that lists good stargazing spots? Whenever I try to
look I get some "top 10 places in the world." Well, that doesn't help me since
I'm looking somewhere that is close enough to drive to.
~~~
MiguelVieira
[http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/](http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/)
~~~
UrMomReadsHN
Great! Thanks!
------
moron4hire
This was one of the things that bothered me the most about moving to a city as
an adult. I didn't miss the people I grew up with (heeeeell no), but I noticed
the lack of a night sky actually started to wear on me.
------
neilunadkat12
I remember being out in the isle of Skye for a couple of nights during the
summer and thats honestly when I thought, man there a lot of stars in the
sky.. Somethings you can't notice in a city..
------
CaRDiaK
Great article. Recently subscribed to the quarterly prints from Nautil.us,
they are incredibly well put together and look fantastic.
------
nilsimsa
I used to get a pretty clear view of the milky way in Flag Staff, AZ a decade
back. I wonder if that is still possible now.
------
nether
Even I, an ancient wizard, am boggled by this. Why have we squandered our
night skies?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Making the web faster with SPDY and HTTP/2 - cleverjake
http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/making-web-faster-with-spdy-and-http2.html
======
cpg
SPDY is a common sense protocol in many ways. It seems simple but it has quite
a few wrinkles when implementing it properly.
As a way to learn Go I started a Go SPDY library[1] and to demo it also
released a SPDY proxy and origin server [2].
At this point we're about to release a service in our startup to do streaming.
I'm looking for users who want to bang on this library and help shake more
bugs to make it more and more solid. Interested? :)
[1] [https://github.com/amahi/spdy](https://github.com/amahi/spdy) [2]
[https://github.com/amahi/spdy-proxy](https://github.com/amahi/spdy-proxy)
~~~
thrownaway2424
[http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.net/spdy](http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.net/spdy)
?
~~~
cpg
This is a low level, data-structure type of library, whereas the one we wrote
is part of a stack between HTTP and SPDY.
------
IvyMike
Tangential, but it's fun to see which sites are actually delivering you
content over SPDY.
FF SPDY indicator: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/spdy-
indicato...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/spdy-indicator/)
Chrome SPDY indicator: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spdy-
indicator/mpb...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spdy-
indicator/mpbpobfflnpcgagjijhmgnchggcjblin?hl=en)
In my little sphere of internet usage: Big sites like Google, Facebook, and
Twitter appear to almost always use SPDY. HN uses SPDY. And very few other
sites. (I think wikipedia is a surprising non-user, but I'm not a web guy, so
what do I know.)
~~~
newman314
I don't see HN using SPDY anymore... Anyone else?
------
spyder
Looks like they also experiment with the QUIC protocol on their sites (on
YouTube too) because there is a HTTP header called: Alternate-Protocol
443:quic in their requests. QUIC isn't enabled by default in Chrome but you
can enable it in chrome://flags and then you can also check chrome://net-
internals/#events to see if there are any "QUIC SESSION" when you load a page.
Benchmark shows they still have to work on it:
[http://www.connectify.me/taking-google-quic-for-a-test-
drive...](http://www.connectify.me/taking-google-quic-for-a-test-drive/)
------
Lagged2Death
SPDY is a good idea in general, but the average web site shouldn't be expected
to see the same gains that a Google property (which is tuned like a mofo and
which is usually hosted entirely through Google-controlled domains) will:
[http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-
thought/](http://www.guypo.com/technical/not-as-spdy-as-you-thought/)
HTTP's high-frequency back-and-forth shuffle is a good thing to eliminate, but
most of the time, there are more serious bottlenecks somewhere else.
You can play with it easily enough in FF: set network.http.spdy.enabled to
FALSE and see if Google News really seems any different to you as a human
being.
------
bct
anotherbadlogin: You have been hellbanned for a long time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Review of MVC - fcoury
http://mikepackdev.com/blog_posts/34-a-review-of-mvc
======
azza-bazoo
"a program is without value before it is used by an end user for something
valuable"
Nice snippet of advice there. Also the rest of Trygve's original post is an
excellent reminder (and in simple terms) of MVC as an idea, rather than MVC as
a label to slap on the next bit of JS code you publish on github ... which is
basically all the intro paragraph says.
~~~
sageikosa
Pattern not product? I agree.
I do believe that many nouvelle programmers in their rush to absorb and
contribute to the art integrate too many things too quickly and try to
fabricate the magic recipe they just learned about into a hammer they can
pound on everything regardless of whether the particular problem is a nail or
not.
~~~
alttab
I would say the same thing about over-using and integrating frameworks.
Backbone, NodeJS Mustache and coffee script. For what? If all a programmer has
ever done is use frameworks they will never understand tacitly the problem its
trying to solve.
I'm a strong advocate for using no framework, then building your own, then and
only then introducing a library or framework because they can do it better.
This allows you to understand the pain of its absence, understand how to
fundamentally solve the problem through abstraction or organization, and then
fully leverage and reap the benefits of a well designed framework.
Some would say you don't need to walk 100 miles to understand the value of a
car. But thats from the product side. I would say you need to understand the
weaknesses of a car to build the next generation vehicle.
------
Xurinos
Here are a couple of the reports:
Including Thing: <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/1979/mvc-1/1979-05-MVC.pdf>
Revision: <http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~trygver/1979/mvc-2/1979-12-MVC.pdf>
------
chris_wot
It's interesting that MVC is mostly introduced to most people as part of a web
based architecture. From my understanding of MVC, the view can be updated by
the model, and view can update the model. Which makes sense in the context
that you have multiple views into the model. This doesn't tend to happen with
web based MVC.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google is stalking me (iOS). Did I agree? - tomas789
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/timeline
======
tomas789
I just found out, that Google has my history of visited places and they are
collecting it for quite long time. I'd never agreed to this consciously. Where
did they get my agreement from?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Blackstone Plans Orbitz IPO - rbc
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070510/orbitz_ipo.html?.v=1
======
rbc
I'm curious how ITA Software will be affected by this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Success Breeds Success in Startups - quizbiz
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-028.pdf
======
randomwalker
Summary: a previously successful entrepreneur is two-thirds more likely to
succeed in his next venture than a first-time entrepreneur. Part of this
difference is (obviously) attributable to skill, but the paper makes and
supports the claim that part of it is due to the fact that past success
improves perception, making it easier get funded and to hire smart people. The
key statement (slightly edited) is:
"Successful entrepreneurs are somewhat better than unsuccessful ones; the
differential is amplified by their ability to attract more and better
resources."
They define success as going public, but claim that "the findings are similar"
if success is defined to include acquisitions and mergers.
~~~
vaksel
It pretty much boils down to funds and streetcred. A first time entrepreneur
starts out with 5-20K in savings and no connections. A failed entrepreneur is
also in the same boat, no money, maybe a few connections.
Meanwhile a repeat successful entrepreneur has a few mil in the bank, street
cred to get VC $$$ and free media coverage. And that gets them that starting
core of users to help grow the service during hte early days.
------
joepestro
Totally agree. Gaining initial traction is magnitudes harder as a first time
entrepreneur. Would Twitter be at its current level if Evan Williams didn't
have the credibility that came from founding Blogger?
------
robertgaal
When linking to a PDF: please put this in the title. I hate 'em.
~~~
sachinag
Um, that's why the Scribd link is automagically generated.
~~~
bonsaitree
Then it should say [pdf] and not [scribd].
The latter is to a proprietary web document viewer for PDF files.
The link provided is directly to a PDF file.
One is most definitely not the other. As much as some folks may wish it,
Scribd != PDF.
| {
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Huawei to offload undersea telecoms cable business - jmsflknr
https://www.ft.com/content/cb093112-85d1-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2
======
rurban
Non paywall: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-usa-
cable/chi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-usa-cable/chinas-
huawei-to-sell-undersea-cable-business-buyers-exchange-filing-shows-
idUSKCN1T40BS)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Innovations For Poor Farmers - vicpara
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Innovation
======
vicpara
I like the fact that it frames the term "innovative" in a space where maybe
very few expect it. My first intuition was toward some fancy tech or smart
materials. I was surprised to find out innovative for them means tackling
mundane and trivial big problems in cheaper and more effective way: like more
fine tuned crops for the type of land or milk jug. I love this guy!
------
slashnull
A cheap, reliable, simple milk jug design, mass-produced until the marginal
cost just vanishes.
Educational fucking videos. Understanding the conditions where food is
cultivated. Growing stronger crops.
This is just beautifully simple, realistic and down-to-earth.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Testing Database Transactions in Go - marvinblum
https://marvinblum.de/blog/testing-database-transactions-in-go-jEaOGXravM
======
theptip
This covers one possible deadlock, but there are so many more ways to do this.
More common (IME) is a true logic deadlock, particularly if you are using
strict serialization (say, your DB stores a ledger of financial transactions).
It’s actually really hard to test that your DB is using transactions
correctly, since the error cases tend to be races which don’t show up under
low load.
We built a prototype tool in Python where you can monkeypatch the transaction
context manager, and pause the primary thread’s execution just before
committing, so that you can then do evil stuff like running a competing thread
of the same or other DB operations to try to break invariants. But even this
won’t catch everything; there is a combinatorial explosion of test points and
you can’t compare them all in a large app.
I haven’t seen any folks writing about this, another approach would be to wire
up some him thing smarter like Jepsen to direct the anomaly search, Kyle said
some folks have reported doing this but nobody has published. I’m interested
to know if anyone has had success with this sort of transaction/correctness
testing.
~~~
cheez
Most people use queues to do this. At least I do.
------
morelisp
The easiest way I have found to avoid this error is simply not to pass the
`db` around so much. Every data access function (even seemingly trivial ones)
should take a `Tx` instead. This also makes your code "composition-ready" if
necessary later.
IMO the standard library should provide something that wraps a `Tx` and a
`Context` together, as usually I want every statement issued from a
transaction bounded in lifetime by the same one I provided to `BeginTx`. This
would provide even more incentive to pass around `Tx`s rather than `DB`s,
since those functions also often need a context anyway.
~~~
marvinblum
I agree. I usually have a "model" package abstracting the database access
behind functions accepting a transaction. But since I'm using the max open
connections for all tests, I can be pretty confident I don't have open
transactions somewhere, so I often take the shortcut and just query on "db"
directly.
------
sethammons
Don’t forget to measure first. You can metric out the number of connections
periodically and see if you are capping out. See
[https://golang.org/pkg/database/sql/#DBStats](https://golang.org/pkg/database/sql/#DBStats)
~~~
stevehiehn
Thanks! Thats a really good tip. I didn't know I had easy access to the db
client stats!
------
ugizashinje
In order to get proper error response when deadlock occurs in testing (not
just in Go), use isolation level serializable on every transaction /
connection. This is simplest most effective way I have found so far, also you
can get in detail why/where it happened. Watch out for different packages test
executions since they run in parallel by default, use
go test -p 1
------
marvinblum
Hey guys, this is just a quick tip on how to make sure you don't screw up the
database connection pool in Go. This might also apply to other languages and
frameworks. I've seen dozens of articles about concurrency and multithreading,
but not so many about this type of deadlocks, and I experienced some
production bugs because of this.
~~~
rivo
Maybe I'm assuming too much but it wouldn't occur to me to let tx.Commit()
depend on the outcome of another connection (here: db.Query()). Either use
tx.Query() (which I guess is partly what you're advocating) or put db.Query()
in a different goroutine and let tx.Commit() proceed.
It is quite similar to other Go concepts. For example, you don't want to have
circular dependencies between channels. The difference is that such a thing
would fail very quickly whereas dependent DB connections would only fail after
the connections are exhausted.
~~~
jerf
There's a lot of people who have a lot of SQL database experience in a
synchronous, one-thread context, who know how to use transactions and have
simply never thought about the way the implicit guarantees of a synchronous,
one-thread context harmonize conveniently with transactional usage. Once you
have interleaved computations, either via some sort of callback system or via
threading, suddenly there's some extra concepts to understand, such as the way
most database systems (if not all of them, but I'm hedging here) tie
transactions to the specific DB socket you are communicating with, and this
concept tends to poke its way up to even the highest-level API. APIs like Go's
designed to support this by having an explicit concept of "transaction" also
tend to be tricky because it's still so easy to use a non-transactional select
even in the middle of a transaction just by accident, because it's surfacing a
concept that the accidental context of the other APIs people have used always
took care of automatically, with no visible signature on the API.
I don't think there's necessarily anything "special" about this, I think it's
just a case where there's a lot of people with years or even decades of
experience in that context, and it simply doesn't immediately occur to them
that in a higher-concurrency world they need to modify these skills.
I suspect there's also rather a lot of database + application combinations out
in the real world that, by coincidence and a bit of hacking around problems as
they arise, "just happen to work" with the highly characteristic access
patterns used by the web pages that can access the DB and the transaction
isolation settings in the DB. Using any more concurrent and looser access to
the DB is likely to expose a lot of problems that in some sense existed all
along, but were just never quite uncovered before with the old access
patterns.
(It isn't really Go. Threading an old-school C program will raise the same
issues, or going async in a scripting language.)
------
jordic
Python context managers are a great way to prevent this type of issues. Anyway
feels like a bit strange to not use the current connection (from between the
transaction) to query things. Perhaps the problem is between the API, because
it's not explicit the borrow/leave of connections from the pool.
------
envolt
This site is blocked on my office proxy under "Adult/Mature Content" category
~~~
marvinblum
Yeah because of my last name :( Some filters seem to be a bit too aggressive.
I copied it to Medium:
[https://medium.com/@dekugelschieber/testing-database-
transac...](https://medium.com/@dekugelschieber/testing-database-transactions-
in-go-12cf617cbe21)
~~~
kingnothing
What is "blum"? Google is just returning kitchen cabinet parts, etc.
~~~
marvinblum
Blume means flower in german. But the "urban dictionary" spits out weird
translations for it, and it seems like some blockers are configured in an
interesting way :P
------
throwaway189262
This problem is solved in most languages by wrapping endpoint code in an
interceptor that creates and cleans up the transaction for you.
I'm not a fan of Go because it encourages hacks like this. The language is not
expressive enough to handle database transactions properly. So it's suggested
to try to catch bad situations with a linter instead.
What a timeless Goland solution to the problem. They should put "fix it with a
linter" on hats and sell them at Go rallies. You could make billions
~~~
morelisp
> an interceptor that creates and cleans up the transaction for you.
I'm not sure about the word "interceptor" here because in Go and every other
language I know which does this it is merely a wrapper, but Go does this. From
some vantage, the problem only arises _because_ Go does this - if it instead
forced you to create a transaction the resource allocation, and so possibility
of exhaustion, would be a lot more obvious.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Concurrency vs. Parallelism and the Erlang Advantage - nathan_long
http://nathanmlong.com/2017/06/concurrency-vs-paralellism/
======
ac2u
Funnily enough, I also employ lunchtime food prep scenarios to help explain
similar topics.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Datomic: The most innovative DB you've never heard of - nwjsmith
http://augustl.com/blog/2016/datomic_the_most_innovative_db_youve_never_heard_of/
======
nickpsecurity
Great summary! Might have to check it out. Plus, even if they don't want to
grow, they could always partner with a company that handles the sales,
support, etc while cutting them a slice of licenses. Even feature creep could
be handled with a fork that the company maintains with core engineers being
consultants for occasional hard problem.
------
j-pb
Great DB, horrible license.
~~~
HillRat
Love the use of Prolog, hate the mirror-world EULA. If they haven't updated
the license from the last time I looked, it's a non-starter for any
reasonably-sized commercial entity with contract controls; there's no way in
hell it would pass review with legal, which is odd for a company that's
looking to make money off its product.
~~~
j-pb
It's actually not Prolog but Datalog. Prologs non turing complete, but with
logic consistent, little query language brother ^^.
------
finnjohnsen2
Cool, I like innovation to my CRUD life
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coming Soon: The Five Dollar ATM Fee - pbj
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/03/16/its-coming-the-5-atm-fee/
======
nanoanderson
In the UK, 97% of ATM transactions are done using free-to-use LINK-network
ATMs (<http://www.link.co.uk/> &
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATM_usage_fees#United_Kingdom>). I feel that
there are situations where pay-to-use ATMs are acceptable as a matter of
convenience (convenience stores, subways, airports, etc.), but it boggles my
mind that I can go to RiteAid to buy a $1 juice bottle and withdraw $40
without penalty, but to use the Chase ATM across the street (I'm a Bank of
America customer) I have to pay Chase $2.75 AND Bank of America a $2.00 out-
of-network-ATM fee.
------
jbooth
Maybe that'll be enough pricing pressure for someone to fix that stupid
system. Routine transactions shouldn't cost 2 bucks a pop.
Not sure how that works when the banks control too many of the pieces, though.
------
r00fus
Go Credit Unions.
My credit union refunds ATM fees charged by other banks, and through their CU
network, all CU ATMs are free, and I can even walk into networked CU and do
some operations as if I were at the local branch.
Don't support the criminal banksters who aren't beholden to their depositors.
~~~
colanderman
The basic (and only) credit card my CU offers is fantastic. 10.90% flat APR on
EVERYTHING, and absolutely no fees. (This even includes cash advances.)
To me, credit unions are truly a "hacker's" bank. No frills or gimmicks leaves
room for more savings and better customer service than commercial banks. Kind
of like getting a barebones unmanaged VPS compared to managed shared webspace
from GoDaddy.
------
masterponomo
The main issue banks are dealing with is the Congressional move to limit debit
card interchange fees. I have spent a good part of the past 25 years working
on systems that allow acquiring banks to claim the lowest interchange fee.
It's not a trivial process, and acquirers and merchants make significant
investments to improve things at the point of sale. They expect to recoup some
of that investment by paying lower interchange fees. For a simple example, one
of the earliest (circa 1985) distinctions was between electronically-capture
and paper-keyed transactions. Electronic qualified for a lower fee because it
was more secure, more accurate, and more timely. Then within electronic-
capture, the networks began rewarding quicker deposits--deposit within 7 days
and pay a lower rate, then 3 days, then 1 day. Now there are many, many
(perhaps 100's) of fee programs worldwide, with each card network having its
own rules and technologies. By crudely limiting fees to an unrealistic
0.12/transaction, Congress is destroying the marketplace effects that drive
innovation in the networks. Banks are justified in an equally crude reaction:
you take away our ability to price a service realistically over here, so I
guess we'd better raise another price over there.
~~~
natnat
First of all, it's the Federal Reserve, not congress, who is limiting
transaction fees. Second of all, 12 cents is not an unreasonably low cost for
a transaction. The payment networks cost virtually nothing to operate, and
this becomes abundantly clear when you look at the profit margins of companies
like Visa and MasterCard, which are higher than virtually any other company
out there.
There is very little innovation in payment networks. There are established
players -- Visa and MasterCard -- who charge merchants 1% or more of every
purchase made. They pass along much of this money to banks, and payment
networks essentially end up competing on how high their fees can possibly be
so that banks choose their brand of card. And because the payment networks
demand that merchants charge the same price for cash or card, retailers are
forced to increase their prices for consumers who pay in cash.
If there were real competition, we would see payment networks competing to
lower their fees. But you don't see that.
~~~
masterponomo
I stand corrected. The point of sale devices, the card association IT systems
and networks, the bank IT and networks (a worldwide network that predated the
'net), the whole departments of people who support merchants, the fraud
prevention measures, the training, the government and card association rules
compliance--all integral parts of "the payment networks" are cost free. I
should have reasoned backwards from a company's profit margins and realized
that these infrastructure costs don't exist, and operating costs are an
illusion. I should have also realized that the move into chip cards, the use
of heavy-duty encryption, the rapid adoption of contactless payments products,
the support for e-commerce in a world where identify verification can be a
challenge, exposing the bank to untold risk, all are not innovations, they're
just the cost-free hobbies of some rich bank persons. Thank you for the
enlightenment, you smecking genius. I will now hang my head in shame for
speaking out of turn after actually working on these systems for a quarter
century and not realizing that it was so inexpensive.
------
locopati
Chase can kiss my credit cards good by if that's the case. I don't hold
checking/savings accounts with Chase, but that doesn't mean I need to support
this behavior via their credit cards. Citibank is on the edge of being booted
as well for similar reasons. Hey banks, you are here to hold my money under
FDIC protection, not find ways to chip away at it.
------
jameskilton
But, there's _always_ been a fee for using the ATM of a bank you're not a
member of.
Feels like FUD to me.
~~~
iaskwhy
Coming from a small European country, it's one of those things that you think
it's really weird about countries like United States. Here you can withdraw
money without paying anything from any ATM. I never even saw a ATM asking for
a fee.
When I went to NYC it wasn't easy to find ATMs without fees (and then there
was the problem of my card being part of the Maestro network which isn't
available everywhere).
~~~
colanderman
On the other hand, the few times I've been to the EU, it wasn't easy to find
public restrooms without fees :) In the US, I've never seen a public restroom
that charged.
(Actually I saw one, at a tourist destination in Martha's Vineyard, that had a
suggested donation. I was flabbergasted.)
~~~
iaskwhy
That's very true! The trick is to enter a cafe and ask for a bottle of water
while taking the chance to ask "oh, by the way, where's the restroom?"
~~~
colanderman
Ah, similar to how one gets "free" WiFi in the States by ordering some coffee
from a Starbucks :) I am touring Europe in a couple months and will keep this
in mind, thanks!
~~~
iaskwhy
I'd say it's the same logic but usually a bottle of water in Europe is much
cheaper than any coffee from Starbucks. :)
------
kevinburke
I'd recommend switching to a bank account that refunds ATM withdrawals at
other bank ATMs. My bank - Ally Bank - has free ATM withdrawals at any ATM.
This easily saves me $20 a month in time and money.
~~~
streeter
I fully agree. Not only does Ally refund ATM withdrawals at banks in the US,
but also at banks overseas.
While slightly annoying to make deposits, it is worth it to not pay fees and
to be able to get money anywhere. And like most banks now, they offer easy
online bill pay for free.
~~~
kevinburke
Disagree about deposits actually - for me anyway it's way easier to put things
in my mailbox than to drive to the bank.
------
jasonkester
I can never figure out why people complain about ATM fees. Especially when
those same people proceed to take $20 out of an ATM, thus maximizing the fee
($5/$25 = 20%!)
The math is not particularly difficult: Always take out the absolute maximum
that the machine will give you. $5/$505 =~ 1%. That's close enough to zero to
ignore. Feel free to stash most of that cash in your sock drawer if you don't
want to carry it around.
~~~
jonknee
... Most people who complain about said fees don't have the sort of funds to
do that. Not to mention not wanting to walk around with $500 (which you will
have to do unless the ATM happens to be in your sock drawer already).
~~~
jasonkester
OK, I'll grant you a window from birth up to two months after graduating from
college (I too remember transferring my last $10 from savings to checking so
that there would be a full $20 to withdraw). After that, you have no excuse
not to be able to pull $500 from a cash machine every couple months.
Remember, once it's out you don't have to spend it all that day. I tend to
pull cash out maybe once every month or so, depending on how much I go out.
It's really just life skills we're talking about. ATMs only enter the
discussion as a symptom.
~~~
jonknee
Besides the fact a lot of people have much less money than you, I think you
also use ATMs much differently. If you're not traveling the world, the primary
use of ATMs is getting cash when you need it, not getting out a large bulk sum
a few times a year which is then hidden and dolled out incrementally for times
you think you might need cash ahead of time. That can easily be done at the
bank when cashing those huge checks everyone apparently starts getting after
college.
~~~
jasonkester
That's the life skills I talked about above.
\- If you have a job and ever get to the point where you have only $500 in
savings, that is a huge red flag that you're doing something wrong. You should
immediately stop buying things and budget your income so that you're saving a
few hundred dollars a month, and endeavor never to get below a certain
comfortable pad. If you're in IT, you can easily get a $10k pad in place
within one year of having your first job. Once that's in place, _then_ you can
think about owning a television and other consumables. Not before.
\- If you regularly find yourself with no money in your wallet, that's a
symptom that you're not thinking ahead. I tend to keep between $50 and $200 in
my wallet. If I buy something and notice that I've only got a couple 20's in
there, I'll make a note to either stock up from the sock drawer or hit an ATM
when I get a chance. ATMs are a way to get money out of the bank. It's best
not to think of them as a replacement for your wallet (since that's the way to
maximize your fees).
You don't have to have lots of money to do these basic things. I was doing
them when I made $34k/year.
------
alanh
Saw this announced on network news. The anchorlady said a $5 fee on a $100
withdrawal was like a 10% tax…
~~~
kbob
Aside from the obvious arithmetic error, they are not the same at all. Tax
revenues are spent on public works and societal benefits, whereas bank fees
are kept by the bank.
~~~
colanderman
Maybe that's why she doubled it.
------
bartonfink
I can't tell if the article is talking about ATM fees for using an
unaffiliated ATM or if Wells Fargo is going to start charging people for using
Wells Fargo ATMs. The wsj links to another article that has one of those
obnoxious "click to continue reading" banners, which is where I stopped. Does
anyone know what this is actually talking about?
------
nicksergeant
As a member of a bank who gives me my ATM fees back, I say bring it on.
~~~
alanh
I see the benefit of belonging to such a bank, but if other banks “bring it”
might it become too costly for your bank to keep paying your fees for you?
------
dman
Hope the banks push it too far and create a financial incentive for new
players in the finance industry.
------
viggity
If you don't want to pay 5 for the fee, don't use the machine. It really is
that simple. The owner of the ATM has the right to charge whatever the hell
they want, it is their property, they have to service the machine why
shouldn't they get to pick how much to charge?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
3D-printed skull simulates sensations of brain surgery - graeham
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24741-3dprinted-skull-simulates-sensations-of-brain-surgery.html#.UqpZa_RdV8E
======
pramalin
Wow. It is one the best application of 3D printers I have seen.
One nitpick: The name of the professor is incorrectly split in the article.
His actual name is Vickneswaran A/L Mathaneswaran. I have learned that A/L
stands for "son of" in Malaysia. Westerners get confused because many people
of Indian origin have only one name and use their father's name as last name.
~~~
graeham
I think its quite cool as well. Great application of the technology, where the
custom capabilities of 3D printing make it a true advantage. On demand, custom
surgical training tools and implants are the future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Recommended Readings in AI - a list by Russell and Norvig - fogus
http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/books.html
======
Dn_Ab
Ever since Euclid listed (collected?) his axioms the march towards AI became
inevitable. People don't realize how much AI "failures" have contriubted to
computing, programming and society in general. Some examples include lisp,
functional programming, garbage collection, object oriented programming and
Walmart.
~~~
samfoo
Forgive my ignorance, I'm actually curious. How did AI failures contribute to
FP, garbage collection, and OO?
~~~
schwabacher
And Walmart?
~~~
wmf
AFAIK operations research and supply chain management use techniques
originating from AI.
~~~
onan_barbarian
AFAWK (As Far As Wikipedia Knows), operations research as a formal area kicked
off in 1937 and had 1000 people working on it in Britain during World War 2.
It may in fact be true that some techniques from AI have cross-fertilized but
the credibility of the claim that "we owe operations research and supply chain
management to AI" is very low.
What's next: Minsky traveled back in time in a LISP Machine and impregnated
the Rev. Bayes' mother?
I'm willing to give 'em Prolog (take it, please!) but the confluence of FP and
AI might owe more to the fact that AI (especially 'strong AI') was considered
a Big Deal early on in computing and as such, ideas that were invented/used
contemporaneously tend to be associated with AI.
------
dvse
I never understood the popularity of their AI text - the discussion of topics
other than the most basic search methods is uniformly obtuse and the authors
hardly ever make any of the important connections with literature outside
their "field", e.g. between reinforcement learning and classical control (see
for example Russ Tedrake's notes on OCW [1])
1\. [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-
comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science/6-832-underactuated-robotics-spring-2009/).
~~~
kenjackson
Do you have a better AI text? I recently (years ago) tried to teach from
Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis ([http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-
Intelligence-Synthesis-Nils...](http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-
Synthesis-Nils-Nilsson/dp/1558604677)), but found it seriously lacking.
For practicing programmers I've found books like "AI for Game Programmers" to
be surprisingly good. Although clearly not the breadth or theoretical basis of
an actual text.
What would be nice are video lectures of a class that follows this text, ala
the SICP lectures from MIT.
~~~
dvse
Certainly nothing remotely comparable to SICP exists. From my point of view
people who are interested in these topics are much better off getting some
intuition for basic problems in scientific computing and then making the
requisite connections themselves. I can wholeheartedly recommend the recent
book by Gilbert Strang "Computational Science and Engineering" [1] and
companion video lectures for MIT courses 18.085 and 18.086.
1\. <http://www-math.mit.edu/cse/>
~~~
kenjackson
Thanks for the Strang link. For some reason never noticed this text and
lecture videos. He's definitely a treasure in the realm of math education.
------
SeanLuke
Sadly, it's three editions and AIMA is still hopeless regarding stochastic
optimization (genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, ant colony
optimization, hill climbing, and the like), and gradient-based optimization.
It seems they don't want to be bothered about the significant difference
between search and optimization. So they stick all the stochastic optimization
stuff into a section called "local search and optimization", and place it
underneath the Search chapter (it's not search, and almost none of it is
local). And then separate out optimization methods like gradient descent etc.,
placing them under "local search in continuous spaces", as if (1) they were
search and (2) stochastic optimization wasn't applied to continuous spaces.
And if this wasn't muddled enough, their recommended books for stochastic
optimization aren't under the Search chapter at all -- they've been placed
under the Machine Learning chapter. And it's a strange collection.
I'm pretty disappointed with AIMA's seemingly poor understanding of this area.
Well, I guess at least it's better than their cursory treatment of multiagent
systems.
~~~
bpodgursky
How is optimization not a form of search? It's a search through the solution
space which tries to find a global minima or maxima.
Also, of the techniques you list, simulated annealing, hill climbing and
gradient-based optimization are all local search methods (genetic algorithms
may or may not be, depending on your emphasis on mutation vs recombination.)
~~~
Dn_Ab
I agree with you, most of those methods are local and optimization is a form
of search typically used for continuous and usually differentiable spaces. One
can also say search is a form of optimization.
But Based on my readings genetic algorithms are more known to be susceptible
to local minima, while simulated annealing in theory is a global method.
\---
As for genetic algorithms - for optimization I prefer Differential Evolution.
For Exploration maybe genetic algorithms are more fruitfull although I think
Genetic programming and Learning Classifier Systems be slept on. Speaking of
slept on - another under appreciated but much more used method is stochastic
gradient descent. Global optimums might be overrated.
~~~
SeanLuke
> _But Based on my readings genetic algorithms are more known to be
> susceptible to local minima, while simulated annealing in theory is a global
> method._
Both simulated annealing and genetic algorithms are global methods, and both
can get caught in local minima. The same goes for pretty much every other
global stochastic optimization method out there.
Simulated annealing got this "special" reputation among engineers back in the
'80s because the Metropolis algorithm had a formal proof of global guarantees
-- run it long enough and it's guaranteed to find the global optimum. But
nowadays most every algorithm in this category has similar guarantees. It's
relatively easy to make such a guarantee as it turns out.
I like differential evolution too, though it's pretty exploitative.
------
swannodette
This is a goldmine. Thanks for posting this. Interesting to see how much
Prolog and Lisp texts dominate the programming section :)
~~~
daviddavis
I came in here to say the same thing. I've been learning Lisp and some other
functional languages but I'm still not sure why Lisp and Prolog make such good
AI languages.
~~~
ludwigvan
Isn't it somewhat historic? Lisp was invented by McCarthy, who also coined the
term AI. It was perhaps the language AI researchers were acquainted by was
Lisp, and it remained a tradition. (There are technical reasons too, but I'm
not that qualified to list them. Here are some reasons:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/130475/why-is-lisp-
used-f...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/130475/why-is-lisp-used-for-ai)
)
~~~
cbo
Partially historic, yes. It was faster/easier for students to write their AI
programs in lisp than in any other languages for a long time. Between
functional programming, an REPL, and macros, you could find yourself doing a
lot with a little.
Prolog is also partially historic, but it has the added benefit of being
logic-based, which is the direction that AI focused on for several years.
Around that time, it was believed that AI could be done with pure symbolic
logic, and that's exactly how programming in Prolog works. This approach
eventually turned out not to work very well, but Prolog is still used in some
places because it's a very easy language for interacting with graphs and
decision trees (which are big things in AI).
~~~
eel
Lisp and Prolog are still huge in AI, at least in academia, or at least at my
university. For instance: ICARUS [1], CCalc [2], and answer set programming
solvers [3], all of which are part of active and recent research, use Lisp or
Prolog.
Prolog was and still is used precisely because it is so (relatively) easy to
specify some facts and behaviors as Horn clauses [4], which is important,
because it is one of the few places I ever hear the phrase "solvable in
polynomial time" in KRR.
[1] <http://circas.asu.edu/cogsys/papers/manual.pdf>
[2] <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/tag/cc/>
[3] <http://potassco.sourceforge.net/>
[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_clause>
------
Killah911
Any AI book list that includes "On Intelligence" as part of the reading list
is good with me...
------
gbrindisi
For your downloading needs: <http://gen.lib.rus.ec/>
~~~
dvse
I'm not sure it is wise to post links to the site on open forums.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google’s Stock-Split Plan Would Replace Stewardship With Dictatorship - cpeterso
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/opinion-wong-google-dividend/
======
sirclueless
While I agree in principle with this article's point that non-voting stock
makes more likely the possibility of an iron-clad grip by irresponsible
dictators, I don't think it is unconscionable or "evil" in Google's case.
Much of the innovation that I appreciate most coming from Google appears
financially irresponsible from the outside looking in. When Google first went
public my concern was that it would lose its ability to have its engineers
working on hundreds of long-shot projects with no projected revenues, and a
management that is open and accepting of innovation in all of its forms. If
the decision-makers at Google were only interested in squeezing the most out
of Google's bottom line, then there would be strong arguments to shut all of
that down, which _I_ think would be unconscionable: a massive waste of
potential, on a scale that only a multi-billion dollar corporation can be
capable of.
------
waqf
Sergey, Larry and Eric already have majority control of the company between
them, so what difference does the stock split make?
I can understand disapproving of the dual-class stock structure on principle,
but I don't see why people are suddenly getting upset now.
~~~
Zombieball
I am quite inexperienced in the world of stocks but out of curiosity is it
possible to see the relative power of current shareholders somewhere (e.g.
Larry owns 10%, Mr. X owns 3%, etc.)?
~~~
jedberg
It's not totally straightforward. You can start here:
<http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ir?s=GOOG+Insider+Roster>
But if you look there you'll see that Sergey currently owns no shares,
probably because they're all in a trust.
------
tptacek
Yet another Wired article optimized for rageviews. Also, someone should
explain to Wong what the word "replace" means. It does not, for instance, mean
"failure to adopt the policy decisions of a Sao Paolo stock exchange, or to
adopt a corporate structure that presages 'current discussions in the UK about
stewardship'". It means "removing what was previously there and putting
something different in its place".
------
sjwright
Google sold non-voting stock. People bought non-voting stock. What the fuck is
the problem?
------
sjwright
Dictatorship is a pretty stupid word to use. You can sell your stock in Google
at any time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Always Connected PCs enable a new culture of work - benaadams
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/12/05/always-connected-pcs-enable-a-new-culture-of-work/
======
benaadams
built in 4G LTE2/Gigabit LTE and week long battery life
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
American Express will give all parents 20 weeks of paid leave - codegeek
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/12/pf/paid-parental-leave-american-express/index.html
======
dharmon
This is a great step for what's really a sad state of affairs in the US.
My wife and I like to "joke" (it's not really funny) that we know enough to
not take a puppy or kitten away from its mother before 8 weeks, yet we make
human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. And that's in CA, other states
have lower minimums, or none at all.
To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-
bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. We also know
that time spent with parents, the mother in particular, during that first year
is super important for both mental and physical well-being. Just like we
subsidize public schools because we recognize the importance of education for
society, we should be happy to "pay for" parental leave.
~~~
rsync
"yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks"
No, we don't. We don't make them do anything. They are free to pursue whatever
course of action they choose to. Many, many parents choose not to go back to
work - ever.
I hope it works out great for AMEX and their workers - two private entities
that agreed on one detail, among many, of their compensation package. Good for
them.
Yes, I do have children - three of them, in fact - thanks for asking!
~~~
emperorcezar
There is a lot if hidden privilege that allows you to think for most people it
is a choice.
~~~
paulddraper
And there's a lot of hidden choice that you are ignoring.
A government mandate requiring companies to provide paid leave _forces_ (i.e.
opposite of choice) everyone else to pay for it.
~~~
Frondo
That is called society, and as someone who pays a lot of tax, has owned
businesses in the past, and plans to do so again, I fully support it. And I
speak out in favor of such ideas and plans, to encourage my fellow citizens to
support these as well.
~~~
paulddraper
And once you have enough citizens supporting such ideas and plans, you can
force the rest.
~~~
Frondo
Well, yes, just like taxes are a thing, and you can't drive on sidewalks or
against traffic lights, and we all pay for fire, police, courts, food
inspectors, and so on. Turns out the world is full of coercive behavior--if
you kill someone, there's generally a consequence, and so on.
Again, that's society.
------
gaur
Yet again, people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their
own (e.g., taking care of a sick parent or sibling) are ignored while
companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to
feed. I'm not saying parental leave is bad, but it's entirely eclipsed the
other reasons why someone might need to take time off work to help family.
Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my
brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many
companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.
~~~
pauleastlund
> people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own ...
> are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out
> more mouths to feed.
This is really a regrettable choice of words. There is no "fault" involved in
becoming a parent. The point you are trying to get across could have been
communicated so much more convincingly if you had checked your attitude. "This
is a great first step, but many of us have responsibilities to other family
members, also -- sick or disabled parents or siblings, for instance. It would
be terrific to see benefits that support those needs as well."
EDIT: It has been (correctly) pointed out that my translation was lossy; I
dropped the fact that no one chooses to have a sick sibling, and thus it might
be even worthier of compensation / support than parenthood. That was
unintentional, and I regret it. I still think there's a less caustic, more
productive way to make that point.
~~~
gaur
A key point that I was making (and a point which your rewriting of my comment
completely erases) is that parenthood can be planned ahead for (or avoided) to
a much greater degree than other situations that require family leave. I could
have made some anodyne choice of words that obscures this fact, but I didn't
because I wanted to make the point that if we are giving people support for
voluntarily taking on extra family burdens, then it's absolutely inexcusable
that we don't extend the same support to people who have had similar burdens
thrust upon them involuntarily.
------
nunez
Their policy is quite generous. Not only does it also apply to men, but
they'll also chip in for parents wanting to adopt:
> And employees who wish to have a child will receive up to $35,000 for
> adoption or surrogacy for up to two children.
Congrats to AMEX employees!
~~~
run4yourlives2
It's not generous, it's normal for a first world nation, and has been for
about 15 years now.
It's the US that is really, really lagging behind here. And with many
corporations multi-national, Americans should really be asking themselves why
that is.
~~~
rtkwe
It's generous in that it's in no way required of them and is way beyond what
all but a handful of companies in the US provide.
------
mathattack
Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The
real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid-
management holding it against them. If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks,
then it will be culturally ok.
~~~
lb1lf
We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering
multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to
have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except
assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that
at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue.
I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife
started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave
until May next, and have the following observations:
a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10
weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager
actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him.
Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off
work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even
get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a
temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my
work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab.
b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal
evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third
one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and
response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing
that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?'
Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor
one, but still...)
c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The
most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I
take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it -
after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first
year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain.
(No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my
wife...)
~~~
azernik
Whether or not parental leave affects career prospects depends on cultural and
employer attitudes. Even after hearing your experiences in Scandinavia, I
still think career worries are a legitimate concern for taking parental leave
in eg the United States.
~~~
alkonaut
That's why it's so important to have tax funded (not employer funded) programs
that also have allocated days for each parent, quickly making it first
_acceptable_ but soon also _expected_ for both parents to take parental
leaves. That is - if it's an explicit goal for society to have parents and men
in particular take longer parental leaves.
My coworkers and managers would probably start wondering wth my values are if
I didn't take at least 4 months with each kid. I'd look like some kind of
stone age man to then I hope).
------
cylinder
Not a solution. Leaving it up to massive cashed up corporations only isn't
fair. It hurts small businesses who cannot pay this. It needs to be mandated
at the government level, means tested and subsidized. One more advantage to
mega corporations and one more weakness for small business, add it next to the
health insurance clusterf*.
You also need a huge cultural change in the American workplace, where people
act like an employee taking time off will crash the whole company. Theyve
hardly even heard of maternity leave contracts here.
------
PrimalDual
I read a couple of comments that say this is a step in the right direction to
reverse the demographic trend in most developed countries of decreased
fertility.
I don't think that we will ever be able to compensate a couple and mother in
particular for the cost of bearing children simply because we have made child
rearing so expensive. I am not talking about education or housing costs but
rather the opportunity cost.
I don't think there is any way to adequately compensate couples for the loss
in career opportunities and wages that they forgoe by choosing to instead
spend time raising children. The unfortunate thing is that the more
financially capable a couple is to raise children the less likely they are to
do so probably because of the increased opportunity cost. I am not sure even
the most generous maternity leave policies will be able to fix that.
------
synicalx
Kids are great, future of humanity and all that (at least some of them), but I
cannot wrap my head around why businesses should have to fund them directly. I
could understand subsidising this in some other way - maybe tax
breaks/refunds, or banks providing more lucrative savings/investment options
for future parents.
I get that people want everything, and they want it yesterday. They also don't
want to have to make choices, and certainly don't want to have to plan too far
ahead. But really, if you can't survive on one income for a year, then you're
not financially secure enough to support one or more children. The problem
that paid parental leave is trying to solve isn't a short-term money problem,
it's a long-term, generation-wide pattern of financial irresponsibility. The
old 'teach a man to fish' adage sums this up pretty nicely I think.
I'm genuinely in favour of supporting parents and encouraging people to have
babies, after all I'm going to need someone to sponge bath me after I soil
myself and forget who I am when I'm 80. I just don't understand why this is
considered the 'right' way to do it.
------
randomgyatwork
In Canada every family gets 52 weeks of 55% pay.
This 'progress' is behind the rest of the world, sure its a good innovation or
whatever, but why is the USA miles behind the rest of the world in this
regard?
Parents being around for their kids is important.
~~~
cloakandswagger
Want to spend time with your kids? That's fine, just don't expect to get paid
for it.
Here's my all American take on this: you made the choice to have kids. Don't
expect companies to subsidize your child-rearing efforts, we owe you nothing.
~~~
kylepdm
I think you've completely over looked the benefits to the individual, and
society, as a whole when you allow parents to spend more time with their new
born kids.
It's really easy to say "hey you decided to have a kid, so that's on you". But
you do need children to sustain society in the future. It does them a lot of
good if their parents can spend more time with them during their infant stage.
Also that attitude is really detrimental to women. Are future mothers supposed
to choose over one day raising a kid or their careers? Doesn't society lose
out on a lot of potential if we just say "sorry, if you want a kid then you're
going to find a new job" ?
~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Im all for societal level support of parents, I just don't think the
obligation should be on corporations. I dont think a corporation should be
required to do anything but hold your position open for up to 3-6 months as a
sabbatical. (I do think we should have a parental unemployment benefit, to
make up the pay.)
But it seems fundamentally unfair to impose on the business's ability to
function (or other people's ability to get hired/promoted) because _you_ want
to have a kid.
So if you want to incentivize parents, do it through social benefits, rather
than unreasonable demands and distortions of the labor market.
~~~
ska
The Canadian 55% mentioned above is an unemployment benefit, so there is some
confusion in this thread. The obligation to the corporation is that they
maintain your job (or equivalent) for some period, I forget the details.
Corporations are free to offer top up benefit, and many do as a competitive
incentive.
~~~
twblalock
That's way better than the way people expect it to work in the US.
------
clifanatic
My kids were born 11 and 13 years ago... can I get a job there and take those
40 weeks retroactively?
------
mabbo
Every now and then I wonder if I should have stayed in the USA rather than
coming back to Canada. I could have made a lot more money. Then someone like
you says something like that, and I breath a big sigh of relief.
Thanks, I was due for one of those.
~~~
dang
Please don't react to a comment with a bad thing in it by turning that into
the entire subject and going one worse yourself. That's the opposite of civil,
substantive discussion.
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679)
and marked it off-topic.
------
revelation
It's American Express, their money is made by a bunch of servers in racks,
they could put half of their staff on paid leave for an entire quarter and the
numbers would be unchanged.
~~~
chipperyman573
Do you know what website you're on right now?
~~~
revelation
It used to be a website where people posed useful counterpoints instead of
redundant rhetorical insulting questions.
Of course the ability of a company like AMEX to offer these benefits hinges
directly on the fact that a large number of their employees are non-essential
to the value producing process.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Taking on the Freight Industry with Freightify - bluehat
http://www.freightify.com/
======
pg_bot
I am the founder of freightify, if you have any questions feel free to ask me
here or send me an email.
------
bluehat
every time he says "load" I snicker like a middle schooler
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your biggest time savers when building a SaaS? - philtar
What are some things you do when building a SaaS that save a ton of time?<p>Some that I can name:<p>* Use a web framework<p>* Customize a template instead of building from scratch (wrap bootstrap)<p>* outsource your billing (zuroa, chargify, etc.)<p>What are some tricks you can use to go from idea to product in two weeks?
======
caleblloyd
\- Outsource authentication. Use Okta, Auth0, or the likes. Especially cheap
for Enterprise SaaS apps where there will not be a lot of users.
\- Use a first-party, well-known framework for the frontend. create-react-app,
vue-cli, etc. They work well and have supported upgrade paths
\- Setup a CI/CD pipeline and testing site early. This may be an upfront
investment, but it will allow you to quickly iterate, have something to
demonstrate, and easily launch your prod site when you're ready
\- Other things I personally like are UI Framework for the frontend, ORM with
migration support for the Backend, and Swagger with automatic client library
generation. There's arguments for and against each of these but they help me
devolop faster
~~~
nodesocket
I agree writing login, forgot password, two-factor auth, change password is a
huge time suck. My fear of using a 3rd party such as Auth0 for such a critical
part of your application is vendor dependency. I've been bitten badly by 3rd
party companies shutting down, being acquired, or abandoned.
~~~
ISO-morphism
I hate to advocate for it, but AWS Cognito is _laughably cheap_ and certainly
not going anywhere. Big downside is that there isn't a way to export; you'd
have to list all usernames and have every user reset their password. Not
really helping with vendor dependency, unfortunately.
It takes a lot of sorting through terrible docs to understand, but user pools
are OpenID Connect compliant. You get canned login/mfa/forgot ui's out of the
box for every platform, and it's _so cheap_.
50k MAU with Cognito: free. [1]
50k MAU with Auth0: $850/mo. [2]
[1]
[https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/cognito/pricing/)
[2] [https://auth0.com/pricing](https://auth0.com/pricing)
EDIT: Thinking about this post a bit, it doesn't really address your key
concern of vendor lock-in and feels like a shill. My immediate gut reaction
was "who cares if you're locked in, no way can you beat the price," and that
isn't very constructive. I know on an intellectual level that history has
taught us a lot of things about monopolies and entrenched players, but
emotionally the visible price tag elicits a strong response. Maybe someday
Teddy Roosevelt will rise from his grave and save us all.
------
1ba9115454
* Use an OPINIONATED framework.
* Generate your pages server side. client side frameworks add a ton of complexity for no benefit.
* Deploy to Heroku.
* Outsource your development if you can afford to.
* Concentrate on your landing page and blog. This is how customers will find you.
* Write system tests. chrome driver or whatever your framework supports.
~~~
slow_donkey
I know a lot of people on HN say server rendered first, but imo the difference
in speed and complexity is minimal if you already know Vue/react/angular.
Really the biggest benefit of server rendered is keeping everything as a
monolith but if you have to support mobile then you need to expose an API
anyways
~~~
romanovcode
Pre-rendering techniques on all SPA is poor and will introduce a lot of
complexity.
------
Cypher
don't be afraid to tell the client no you can't support something.
------
PerfectElement
Use the stack you are most proficient in, unless you are building a SaaS in
order to teach yourself a new language/framework.
------
billconan
vue is really a time saver for me. if I need to write an internal tool, I'd
even use a vue based ui framework, like
[https://www.iviewui.com/](https://www.iviewui.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Unreplied 2.0 for SMS/iMessage, now with CLI support - nexuist
https://unreplied.app
======
nexuist
Hi HN!
I finally released version 2.0 of my Mac app, Unreplied!
it offers a status bar menu that shows you a list of messages you haven't
replied to. Even if you open the conversation, Unreplied will still keep them
on that list, to remind you to reply.
Version 2 comes with a load of new features including a top-down rewrite, Dark
Mode support, CLI support, and reminder notifications!
Announcement on my personal blog:
[https://duro.me/stories/2020/05/26/announcing-
unreplied](https://duro.me/stories/2020/05/26/announcing-unreplied)
How to use the CLI: [https://duro.me/stories/2020/05/26/unreplied-
cli](https://duro.me/stories/2020/05/26/unreplied-cli)
I'm hoping people use the CLI mode for new and creative solutions! Let me know
if you come up with any, or if you have any suggestions or questions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How a Group of Heretical Thinkers Chipped Away at the Idea of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ - hhs
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/books/review-gods-of-upper-air-charles-king.html
======
deogeo
> He started to put the word “race” in scare quotes, calling it a “dangerous
> fiction. [..] Boas and his circle confronted a bigotry that was
> scientifically endorsed at the time, and they dismantled it by showing it
> wasn’t scientific at all; today’s nativists and racists generally don’t even
> pretend to a scientific respectability”
Apply principal component analysis to human DNA, and race pops out [1,2,3]. It
seems odd the article wouldn't mention this well-known fact.
[1]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Principal_compon...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Principal_component_analysis_of_human_genetic_diversity)
[2] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Individual-
level_hum...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Individual-
level_human_population_structure2.png)
[3]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_PCA_plot_of_Xavan...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3D_PCA_plot_of_Xavante.png)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Working in a Prison Goat Milk Farm - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/20/538062911/whats-it-really-like-to-work-in-a-prison-goat-milk-farm-we-asked-inmates
======
Lazare
Prison labour is deeply problematic for ethical reasons, but I think a lot of
commentators here are misunderstanding the economics of it.
Haystack Mountain is not getting subsidised milk; they're paying market rates.
The dairy is a profit centre for the prison (which in this case is government
operated), used to defray operational costs. The prisoner's get paid a
pittance, but that helps out the prison; not Haystack (or the grocery stores
or eventual consumers). Nobody in the production chain is going to give their
output away below market rate just because they got cheap inputs.
Similarly, people suggesting that the competition is putting other dairies out
of business are off the mark, because again, the prison dairy is selling their
product at market rates. And in this particular case, the prison dairy was set
up _after_ Haystack Mountain's supplier closed, threatening to force them out
of business; they didn't close in response to the prison dairy closing.
The deeply troubling issue described in the article is _forced labour_ , where
the government can throw you in prison and then force you to work for
(basically) free. _Cheap cheese_ (or goat milk) is 1) not an ethical issue and
2) not actually happening.
~~~
freeflight
Imho it's not as simple as that, the article has a paragraph who puts it in
some perspective:
"Nobody wants to have a big goat dairy, so we did it," Joey Grisenti says.
This farm, with its guaranteed supply of low-cost workers, can survive when
other farms cannot. "A lot of people just can't afford to have the manpower
that we have here," he says.".
What does this say? That goat diaries seem to be an unprofitable business
unless you've got a "guaranteed supply of low-cost workers". So either goat
milk products are being sold too cheap or the process of goat milking needs to
be made less labor intensive.
Whatever the solution might be, one thing is for certain: These "guaranteed
low-cost workers" sure as hell ain't gonna make it easier for any private
competition to join the market, at least if said competition wants to pay
their labor fair living wages and still stay competitive.
Then there's also the fact that plenty of countries around the world manage to
produce goat milk just fine, without having to employ prison labor, among
them, even developed EU countries like France, Spain, Greece or the
Netherlands. Countries with way higher labor costs compared to the US, yet
there seems to be no shortage of goat milk there?
~~~
morley
The other side of this coin is that, for these "low-cost workers," the goat
farm gig is probably better than their alternatives.
> Workers on this farm get strip-searched. If they're caught with drugs or
> tobacco, or get in fights, they could lose this job and be sent to a higher-
> security facility with a lot less freedom. > > And then there's the pay. It
> varies, depending on the job, but most inmates on the farm earn a few
> dollars a day. That's better than most prison jobs, which typically pay less
> than a dollar a day, but still, it's cut-rate labor.
Should that opportunity cost to the prisoners in this program have weight in
whether this "cut-rate labor" is ethical or not? If the farm can't sell it's
goat milk for ethical reasons and the prisoners wind up in lower-paying or
worse jobs, was Whole Foods' righteous action actually ethical? Lots of
complex questions here. I don't know the answers here, but it's a little
annoying that one letter to Whole Foods taking the moral high ground could
handwave so much nuance.
~~~
QAPereo
>The other side of this coin is that, for these "low-cost workers," the goat
farm gig is probably better than their alternatives.
When you're talking about people who are in prison, "alternatives" can be
actual torture. I'd rather work in a stinking pit than be locked in a tiny
room 23.5 hours a day, and that last thing is always an "alternative" in
prison.
------
qq66
The biggest harm from these prison labor businesses is not to the prisoners
(who, in the article, say it's better than their alternative), but to the
other dairies out there who have to compete with businesses employing
Thirteenth Amendment slave labor. As the article points out, non-prison
dairies have a tough time staying in business, due in likely no small part to
a taxpayer subsidized competitor who doesn't really have to pay their staff.
~~~
ajnin
Interesting world we live in, where slave labour is considered a smaller issue
than a company's lost profits.
~~~
GhostVII
The prisoners all said they liked working much more than they liked being in
prison, so so wouldn't really call it "slave labour"
And even if they didn't like it, how is forcing them to do some work any worse
than forcing them to be in prison? In both cases you are forcing them to do
something they don't want to do.
~~~
nkrisc
Create laws that criminalize trivial and victimless actions -> Sentence them
to prison -> provide cheap labor as an alternative -> prisoners like cheap
labor better than prison conditions -> achieve moral high ground? Nope.
~~~
GhostVII
Aside from the 'Create laws that criminalize trivial and victimless actions',
I see nothing wrong with that, you are only making the prisoners happier
during their time in prison. Prison is partially about punishment anyways, so
really you are effectively reducing their sentence. Also I really doubt that
the government is profiting off these prisoners, it costs a lot to keep
someone in prison.
~~~
nkrisc
It's not the government that's profiting, it's the private prison companies
that lobby the government to keep themselves in business and for a steady
supply of prisoners from the enforcement of the aforementioned victimless
crimes that land people in the prisons they own.
~~~
GhostVII
The prison in the article is run by the government
------
kbart
_" Michael Allen, the activist who got Whole Foods to stop selling Haystack
Mountain's goat cheese, says he understands why prisoners like having those
jobs. But he'll keep fighting against prison labor until the workers get paid
better."_
I don't follow such logic. Inmates get free shelter, free food, free
healthcare (well, taxpayers pay for it, but that's another topic), so it's
only fair that they make up some of it by providing labor imho. Do such
activists honestly propose paying them market rates? How about people living
on minimum wage then that get to pay for everything themselves? Also, many
people go to prison without any job experience, providing them with some
increase their chances of reintegration to society. And just look at the place
of that farm (pictured in the article), I myself would accept some wage cut to
work in a place with such view.
~~~
mtgx
You're conflating multiple issues.
1) Just because you're in prison, doesn't mean you deserve to be treated like
a work animal. Some people are in there for serial murders, while the vast
majority are there for theft, tax fraud, smoking marijuana, etc - maybe even
for "resisting arrest".
2) Even if what you said made "economic sense", while disregarding any human
rights the prisoners might have, the problem is that many (or most?) of the
prisoners are now in private prisons. That means those prisons get _both_ the
taxpayer money _and_ the free labor. So both the taxpayers and the prisoners
lose, while the private prisons score a double-win. Do you think that's how it
should work, too?
~~~
icebraining
_the problem is that many (or most?) of the prisoners are now in private
prisons_
It's actually around 8%: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-
private-...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private-
prison-population-has-declined-in-recent-years/)
------
antman
"In the years after Haystack Mountain started making cheese, one of the
company's biggest problems was finding a reliable source of goat milk. Jim
Schott's small farm couldn't produce enough on its own, and every outside
supplier eventually went out of business."
Any competitor will get out of business if you have to pay your forced labor
only 1$ a day.
~~~
_Marak_
That's not how the timeline of the article reads. The prison was the last
resort after the other suppliers went out of business.
From the article, it says they were weeks away from no cheese at all. The
prison specifically stepped up the market demand. They didn't push other's out
of the market.
Haystack is paying market price for the milk. They are paying full value for
the milk and they aren't paying the labor costs of the prisoners. They are
buying milk.
------
tacostakohashi
An interesting lesson about authenticity and transparency here.
The problem here isn't so much that the prison labor is inherently unethical
(it may or may not be), but when people buy cheese at Whole Foods, they assume
it's being made by happy people living their dream on a farm they own.
When that turns out not to be true, it's a problem. If you find out about it
from an activist and not from the supplier themselves, that makes it worse.
Seems like Haystack could use this as part of their marketing story - put a
note on the cheese about it, about how they are providing meaningful work for
prisoners, it's better than working inside in a factory, it gives them skills
for when they get out.
~~~
PixelB
>>it's better than working inside in a factory, it gives them skills for when
they get out.
That argument starts to fall apart when you think about it: The skills they
are gaining are only applicable to an industry that is unsustainable outside
of slave labor.
Luckily, most people don't think about it and just take what they read at face
value.
~~~
icebraining
Would you say that if you were to switch industries right now, none of what
you've experienced in your working life would be useful in your new
profession?
------
o-
"It's a great thing," Pate tells me. "It beats the alternative. Rather than
sitting in your tiny little cell, you get to come out here."
Completely voluntary to work there though, of course.
------
alistproducer2
I recommend that everyone watch the Netflix documentary "13th." The central
theme is that slavery has never stopped being legal in the United States it
just moved to the prison system. Below is the text of that amendment.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within
the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
------
gwern
[https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)
------
weberc2
This is probably a native question, but couldn't the ethical qualms be largely
resolved by making labor voluntary (if it isn't already).
~~~
fenwick67
There are still some complex factors at work with making it optional.
For example, you are probably more likely to get parole if you perform labor.
~~~
weberc2
That doesn't seem too complex. Just make sure the parole board doesn't have
conflicts of interest.
------
bowlingx
Interesting article...I think the real inmates are the goats here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are some great startup blogs? - hackathonguy
Hey fellas!<p>What are some startups that run fantastic blogs? Looking for some inspiration for http://blog.yalabot.com.<p>I enjoy https://blog.baremetrics.com and the marvelous https://signalvnoise.com. Would love to hear your favs.<p>Thanks!
======
ceekay
Wouldn't say it's "fantastic" but people enjoy my blog on product management /
design for startups -
[https://blog.orangecaffeine.com/](https://blog.orangecaffeine.com/)
~~~
hackathonguy
Awesome, thanks!
------
hackathonguy
Clickable URLs -
[https://blog.yalabot.com](https://blog.yalabot.com)
[https://blog.baremetrics.com](https://blog.baremetrics.com)
[https://signalvnoise.com](https://signalvnoise.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ruby Developers Don't Scale - swombat
http://railsontherun.com/2008/8/27/ruby-developers-don-t-scale
======
thomasmallen
Being from San Diego, it appears the writer has more than one thing in common
with Ron Burgundy:
"Anyways, I have been quite busy preparing courses for classes I gave to a
bunch a great Engineers at one of the Fortune 100 companies based in San
Diego. I was also planning my big vacation trip to Europe and wrapping up few
projects."
Translates to:
"I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. I'm
very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of
rich mahogany."
------
rcoder
This is a theme I'm hearing from a number of directions these days: namely,
that Rails has (deservedly) attracted a lot of attention for web development,
and tempted a lot of people from the PHP and Java camps into doing Ruby, but
hasn't produced nearly as large a crop of expert Ruby developers as one might
hope.
The basic fact is that a year or two of Rails development experience doesn't
make you a good architect, systems programmer, or database administrator. Good
back-end engineers are much rarer, and should command a premium, if only
because such knowledge really does only come from years of hard-earned
experience.
------
pjackson
Oh, I dunno. I think you can get more done with a small group of super-smart
guys the you could with a big group of mediocre ones (isn't that already an
axiom?)
I think the client in this story tried to staff up the way a big waterfall or
java project typically scales up: hire as many cogs as you can and give them
each a little module to work on. In essence, they want a big group of mediocre
developers.
A bummer, but perhaps a failing of the consultant. With any adoption of new
technology or process, you have to prep the client for uncomfortable changes.
Like paying more to fewer developers, or starting work without a 300 line mpp
project plan, or whatever.
Sometimes in our roles as consultants, that's the most important job.
------
LogicHoleFlaw
_[...] you just need to get one or two great ruby guys (who will probably cost
you a lot) and find a bunch of smart people to train. You'll end up with an
awesome team of scalable rubyists ;)_
Sounds like a good strategy for many endeavors.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
David Byrne: Don't Forget the Motor City - jericsinger
http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2010/09/092310-dont-forget-the-motor-city.html
======
bryansum
Having lived in Michigan for almost all my life, I find Mr. Byrne's conclusion
and observations about Detroit to be pretty accurate. I want to point out that
not all parts of Detroit are ruinous; mid-town with Wayne State University,
the DIA (Detroit Institute of Art), and other universities in the area make
for an interesting and healthy part of town. As far as the tech scene, I'd say
it's mainly concentrated in the Ann Arbor area.
~~~
markkat
I feel the same way. My wife and I work downtown and walked down to the
Transformers filming at lunch. It's so odd to have outsiders look at Detroit.
It's both embarrassing and cathartic.
I'm in AA too. Lived in MI most my life, but moved to AA last year. Any HN
meetups? We are looking for another tech-cofounder, applying to YC this month.
~~~
jerf
There are not any HN meetups that I am aware of; based on the periodic "where
are you" posts here I'm not sure HN density is high enoungh. But there is an
active startup hub here, see <http://www.techbrewery.org/> . In the community
section, I think a2geeks.org is probably the most active site. There's
definitely enough startup activity to get you going. Either show up for the
"beer thirty" mentioned on the techbrewery's sidebar, or just stroll in and
start chatting. Make sure you meet Dug Song.
~~~
JangoSteve
I live here in A2 as well (have for a few years now). My office is just across
the hall (in the same building) as the Techbrewery, and we very much
participate in Beer:30 every Friday.
I've actually met up with a few people here on HN, and I know many many more
who are HN readers, but not really commenters. If anyone is interested in
having a cozy HN meetup in A2, contact me via email and I'd be happy to set it
up.
------
JangoSteve
Great article about the history, but unfortunately, being outside of Detroit,
the author has only barely scraped the surface of all of the amazing people
that are still in and around Detroit doing real things to make a real
difference.
Just take a look at the TEDx Detroit event [1] that I was fortunate enough to
attend last week for evidence.
If you haven't seen the amazing difference that everyday people like Chazz
Miller [2], or Claire Nelson [3], or Terry Bean [4], or many others are
making, then you don't know what's possible for Detroit.
Also, if anyone is interested, I'm excited about a great movie being made
about Detroit and what's possible, called Lemonade Detroit [5].
[1] <http://www.tedxdetroit.com/>
[2] <http://www.publicartworkz.org/>
[3] [http://www.thedindecor.com/2008/06/city-speak-and-
interview-...](http://www.thedindecor.com/2008/06/city-speak-and-interview-
with-claire-nelson-shop-owner-bureau-of-urban-living/)
[4] <http://twitter.com/motorcity>
[5] <http://lemonadedetroit.com/>
------
wyclif
Thanks for submitting this. These are the kinds of non-startup stories I like
to find on HN (I'm a fan of David Byrne's blog but I somehow missed this one).
------
rottencupcakes
Personally, I just want to see the Naive Melody video that David produced.
Fantastic song by the star of the best concert movie of all time.
------
city41
I was born and raised in a suburb of Detroit. It's sad to see it die so much
even over the course of my short life time.
I am watching the Requiem for Detroit documentary linked in the blog entry,
it's well done.
~~~
junklight
I watched that yesterday (after reading the David Byrne article last week).
Good documentary (apart from all the "show and tell" cut and paste video and
one or two of the soundtrack choices - Schools out for a burned out school!
ugh)
Loved the optimism at the end and how a bunch of people living there see it as
a really exciting place to live full of possibility.
(it also occurred to me that if anyone was going to film Samuel R. Delanys
Dhalgren - Detroit would be the place to film it)
<http://www.sfsite.com/02b/dh122.htm>
------
matrix
Detroit's story of a working-class town that failed to evolve is depressingly
familiar throughout the US in many small towns whose main industries have
moved on - for example, the old railway towns. I feel these towns die because
they lack the critical mass of people with a culture that embraces technology
and change.
Unfortunately, the pain that comes with this evolutionary process is probably
unavoidable. To change it would require a wholesale change in culture -
something that takes a generation, if not more.
------
rmason
I'm a fifth generation Detroiter and have lived in MI my entire life. The
people are like nowhere else. In my many travels, despite the state's
troubles, I haven't met anyone who has left who doesn't want to come back if
they could.
I think there is hope for converting large swaths of Detroit to farmland and
reinventing the city. As I am fond of saying any idea that has among its
supporters both Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh just has to happen ;<).
~~~
dillydally
You've met one, now!
------
z0mb0
Starting point for any SE Michigan startup folks: <http://a2newtech.org>
More about the Ann Arbor scene: [http://www.slideshare.net/dugsong/ann-arbor-
startup-communit...](http://www.slideshare.net/dugsong/ann-arbor-startup-
community-development-h109-1759718)
------
Saad_M
I’ve always wondering if farming could be a solution for Detroit? It seems to
have plenty of land and with growing shortages of basic commodities such as
Wheat on the global market surely there’s an opportunity to return large parts
of the land back to farming use.
~~~
dnewms
Many people have thought this (John Hantz), but there's a reason it hasn't
begun. The cost of cleaning up the land is too great to start cost-competitive
large scale farms.
------
arethuza
Nice to see the positive reference to Glasgow - I had forgotten that Byrne was
born in Scotland.
------
maxklein
What's wrong with having a few cities like this? If you had clean, organized
cities through the country, life would be boring and the visuals would be
monotonous.
Broken down buildings are history. A country should not be made up of suburban
sameness, just like a mole on a models face enhances her beauty, enclaves of
disorganisation can make the country as a whole more interesting and prettier.
~~~
chrischen
Because real actual people are suffering in the city. Think of the poor who
_can't_ get out. Detroit schools are in serious trouble right now. Recently in
the news they were taking donations for toilet paper. Apparently their EMS has
trouble meeting demand because it's underfunded, and just about everything
else about detroit is either underfunded or undermanned. Let's not forget
about the crime and murders.
~~~
markkat
This. Detroit isn't a painting, it is an ongoing tragedy with many kids
playing roles. When I was in my late teens, we used to go to parties and art
shows in these abandoned buildings, even in that Packard plant.
Once Gil Hill (commissioner of Beverly Hills cop fame) and the police broke in
our party with guns drawn. Before ticketing us (95% white kids from the
suburbs) he berated us, and told us not to dance in his city. It was a very
colorful tirade. He was in the wrong, but I now know where his anger was
coming from. To us, Detroit was a cool industrial wasteland scene to party in.
To him, it was a dysfunctional place where people struggle to live.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RFC7169 – No Secrecy Afforded X.509 extension silently published (on 2014-04-01) - mykhal
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7169
======
HCIdivision17
The simplicity of the signal is refreshing: TRUE if the key is shared, FALSE
if the key is shared but the signer doesn't want to explicitly say so.
Elegant.
~~~
ealexhudson
Simple, elegant, legally unworkable/wrong.
~~~
Lockal
FYI, this sentence refers to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary)
which provides a legal way to bypass criminal penalties for disclosing
information.
~~~
duaneb
Actually, the legality is unproven. There's still information being passed
from the person served with the warrant and the person being spied on.
~~~
zmanian
The legality is unproven but Apple's General Counsel's office has embraced it.
It is an increasingly mainstream idea. It should be standardized.
~~~
duaneb
Would you really give advice to hold the court in contempt?
------
ath0
April Fools Day RFC's are a grand tradition. My favorite is "The Extension of
MIME Content Types to a New Medium", RFC 1437... complete with extremely dated
Dan Quayle joke. IP over Avian Carriers, RFC 2549, is a close second.
~~~
rsfinn
Yes, but RFC 2549 was actually implemented in Norway, successfully sending a
ping and receiving responses:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Real-
li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Real-
life_implementation)
~~~
peterwwillis
HTTP error response code 418 (RFC2324) is my favorite because many servers
have actually implemented it. The recent RFC7168 extends it.
------
tc_
Believe it or not, there is actual IETF precedence for this:
[http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189#section-11](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6189#section-11)
(which they really should have cited in RFC 7169)
When the IETF was deciding whether to standards-track ZRTP or DTLS-SRTP, one
of the decision points was Phil's refusal to remove the disclosure flag from
ZRTP. The committee wouldn't consider adopting ZRTP unless the disclosure flag
was dropped.
Incidentally, this is also a case of creative patent use. Phil received a
patent for some core design elements of ZRTP, then freely licensed the patent
as long as you correctly implement the disclosure flag.
------
Lockal
What a coincidence, [https://tools.ietf.org](https://tools.ietf.org) is
vulnerable by the Heartbleed attack
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7548991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7548991)),
which is enough to consider IETF private key compromised. Remember, every joke
has a grain of truth.
------
marlin
so they've been at it since 1978. how this "tradition" have not been abandoned
many years ago is beyond me.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_RFC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_RFC)
~~~
peterwwillis
Why would they abandon it? It's fun.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Metacrap: The problems of metadata and how to solve them - pcr910303
https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm
======
bryanrasmussen
It seems every few years I end up at a job/task where this essay is useful.
------
sovok_x
In short: use unsupervised AIs and algorithms to generate metadata because
humans suck at it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nevergrad: A Python library for performing derivative-free ML optimization - jimarcey
https://code.fb.com/ai-research/nevergrad/
======
oteytaud
To the best of my knowledge, Hyperopt is limited to random search and Parzen
variants. We have more algorithms, and include test functions, deal with
noise. On the other hand, in Hyperopt conditional variables are naturally
handled, whereas for the moment Nevergrad needs user manual work on this.
Both frameworks are asynchronous.
------
breckuh
Are there any practical Pytorch examples? Say my network training time is 12
hours, I wonder how beneficial this would be for hyperparameter tuning over
just simple grid/random search? Or would I instrument my network in a way to
iterate over hyperparams faster than at every epoch/run?
~~~
oteytaud
We have not yet released examples of interfaces with Pytorch. Maybe with
moderate number of hyperparameters the benefit compared to random search will
be moderate, whereas it will be very significant with high number of
hyperparameters. It also depends on how parallel you are. In all cases we have
a wide range of algorithms with a common interface, so that you can compare.
We also use it for direct training of the weights of a network in
reinforcement learning, not only hyperparameters.
~~~
geedy
Can you elaborate on the benefit for a high number of hyper parameters?
~~~
sliem
A fundamental problem is as the number of parameters increase the probability
of sampling from the edge of the hypercube increases. You will then not
effectively explore the parameter space. This might be some what alleviated by
a concentrated multivariate normal, but I guess that has its own caveat.
If you instead have a sampling algorithm informed by the loss functions you
avoid this problem. (You instead might have to worry about local minima.)
------
snthpy
How does this compare to hyperopt?
~~~
oteytaud
To the best of my knowledge, Hyperopt is limited to random search and Parzen
variants. We have more algorithms, and include test functions, deal with
noise. On the other hand, in Hyperopt conditional variables are naturally
handled, whereas for the moment Nevergrad needs user manual work on this. Both
frameworks are asynchronous.
------
torgian
Nevergrad?
I wonder if the maker never graduated.
;-)
~~~
keypusher
> Nevergrad offers an extensive collection of algorithms that do not require
> gradient computation
~~~
torgian
I like my idea better
~~~
ngcc_hk
You are not alone
------
fulafel
Would this type of thing be suited for program synthesis or property based
testing?
~~~
oteytaud
For property-based testing I would say yes, with an objective function equal
to the margin by which the properties are satisfied.
Program synthesis only in some particular cases, like the parametrization of
programs for speed or another criterion - but not in the general case of
program synthesis.
------
mikejulietbravo
Has anyone tried this? Interested to know if results were in line with the
benchmarks.
~~~
oteytaud
We have a wide range of experiments on plenty of objective functions in games,
reinforcement learning, in real world design and machine learning
hyperparameter tuning - these reports will come soon.
------
brokensegue
isn't this the same thing as blackbox learning?
~~~
oteytaud
It's black-box optimization. This means that we just have an objective
function, without access to derivatives or whatever other information. This is
not relevant for training weights in deep learning for image classification,
or other things for which the gradient works well.
~~~
lostmsu
There was a recent paper from Uber, that GA works well for weights, so I
wouldn't drop that area right away.
~~~
oteytaud
Sure GA can be great for weights as well - but mainly when gradient is
unreliable. I would not use Nevergrad for training the weights of a
convolutional network for image classification for example; whereas I use
Nevergrad for WorldModels.
~~~
lostmsu
Doesn't the model Uber used begin with a bunch of convolutional layer sets,
since it processes raw images?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Cognitive Style of Unix - adambyrtek
http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3339907908/the-cognitive-style-of-unix
======
jaylevitt
In case you find the graphs as confusing as I did:
In the first graph (predicted results), the dotted line is "internalized"
(command line), the solid line is "externalized" (GUI), and the Y axis is
"higher is better".
In the second graph (actual results), the _solid_ line is "internalized"
(command line), the dotted line is "externalized" (GUI), and the Y axis is
"lower is better".
Kinda funny in an article about cognition.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facts about Android - jaywalker
http://www.androided.me/5-interesting-facts-about-android/
======
mda
He is playing with words.
"Fact 1: Android runs Linux. But it’s not “the Linux.”" No, It IS "the Linux".
A lot of distributions do not use vanilla Linux kernel. You are free to change
whatever part you want. It does not change the fact that it is still Linux.
"Android was not developed by Google!" Does he think current android platform
is developed by only the original members of the Android inc? It has been 5
years.
~~~
jaywalker
Your views may differ. But I would take the statement "not developed by
Google" as "not born at Google." I would compare that to SQL Server which
wasn't born at Microsoft amongst a lot of other things.
Also, the fact that Android is not Linux means that you can't take a Linux app
and port it to Android...it won't work...amongst other things there is no
glibc; there is no windowing system; etc.
~~~
rlmw
This discussion is somewhat turning into pedantry, but if it depends purely on
linux then you can probably run it as a native app. The problem is that you're
missing a lot of the system dependencies that are extensively used on Desktop
linux.
Many linux deployments are servers, and they won't run a windowing system -
that doesn't make them any less of a 'linux' distro. Programs like Apache for
example are a fundamental part of the ecosystem and aren't dependent on X.
~~~
lukeschlather
When we talk about Linux, we're usually talking about GNU/Linux. Android/Linux
is a very different beast, and it's not pedantry to draw a distinction between
them. The capabilities of GNU/Linux are closer to BSD than Android/Linux.
~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Except they're really not different. Just because Android runs a distinct
userspace and windowing system doesn't make its Linux kernel any less Linux.
You can easily install a Busybox userspace on a rooted Android device, and on
top of that you can start building an entire GNU/Linux userspace, complete
with package managers and X server. Install a VNC viewer in Android, and you
can even connect to your local X server and have a fullscreen X session.
~~~
lukeschlather
By that logic BSD is also exactly the same thing as Linux.
~~~
jaywalker
Even Mac is like a PC, then!
------
runjake
Summary:
1\. Android is a Linux derivative with non-mainline changes, suck as "wake
locks".
2\. Android uses a non-Java ME (the official Java for mobile devices) Java
environment. It's closer to Java SE.
3\. And it doesn't use the JVM, it uses Dalvik.
4\. Android was not initially developed by Google. It was acquired by them.
The company was composed of former Danger staff who worked on the Sidekick and
such. [I'd argue this point, as Android is a completely different best than
the builds that were coming out around acquisition time. The only thing that's
practically the same is that both used the Linux kernel).
5\. SQLite is pervasive in Android.
------
Tichy
Oh come on. First, these are not new at all. Second, they are not interesting
facts, they are irrelevant facts.
~~~
CodeMage
Oh, come on. First, nobody claimed they were new, just interesting. Second,
since when must something be relevant to be interesting?
Fine, it might not me interesting to you. It might not be very important or
relevant, either. It's easy enough to "vote with your feet" against it. No
need to be hostile. Bring something to the table, instead.
~~~
Tichy
I just don't understand how it got to spot #1 on HN. Maybe vote spamming? I
can't imagine any of the regular readers of HN could have been exciting by
this list.
------
statictype
_It’s widely believed that Oracle has shot itself in the foot by filing this
lawsuit._
Is it really widely believed? And how did Oracle shoot itself in the foot with
this lawsuit?
~~~
jaywalker
Here is what James Gosling had to say about one of the patents Oracle alleged
Google infringed:
Oracle finally filed a patent lawsuit against Google. Not a big surprise.
During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle where we were being
grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the
Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle. Filing patent suits was never in Sun’s genetic
code. Alas….
I hope to avoid getting dragged into the fray: they only picked one of my
patents (RE38,104) to sue over.
source:
[http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_finally_hits...](http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/the_shit_finally_hits_the)
------
bonaldi
I can smell the nerd from the first comment, which uses characters to
distinguish differing pronounciations of "th". Is that a peccadillo of his
own, or is it a thing?
~~~
elblanco
You should see the unreadable mess in his blog.
<http://thedutras.blogspot.com/>
When did English drop those letters? 400 years ago? If he really wants to use
those letters, he should also use the grammar and vocabulary constructs.
<http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8102/pg8102.html>
(all that being said, I would mind a few more letters to use in English,
particularly the schwa <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa> would make
everybody's life easier w/r to spelling).
------
jaywalker
Do you think any of the "facts" mentioned on the page are drawbacks for
Android? Let's recap: forked Linux, competing with Java ME within Java eco-
system and having a non-JVM virtual machine to run the programs.
~~~
CodeMage
I didn't get the impression that the author was presenting any of these as
drawbacks for Android. I think he or she discovered some interesting things
about Android and thought it would be fun to share them with those who didn't
know about them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Apple Almost Got Microsoft’s Kinect Game Controller - recoiledsnake
http://www.cultofmac.com/how-apple-almost-got-microsofts-kinect-game-controller/67951
======
fname
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not quite sure I follow how they "almost" got it.
Perhaps if they were negotiating numbers and figures and it just fell through
-- I could see that; but just because the initial meetings didn't go so well
or were hung up on NDAs? I don't get it.
EDIT: It is, however, a cool story to tell...
~~~
sudont
> It is, however, a cool story to tell…
Right. _Microsoft : PrimeSense :: Tartars : Joseph Boyce_
If you’re an inventor, it probably doesn’t hurt to have a origin myth. And,
I’m not quite sure if Apple is therefore the Luftwaffe or the lard...
------
tgflynn
I had been under the apparently mistaken impression that Microsoft had
developed Kinect in house.
Since Microsoft Research has such a strong computer vision team I'm surprised
that they needed to go to an outside company for this technology.
~~~
brudgers
Based on the Wikipedia entry, Microsoft developed the gesture, voice and
facial recognition software which drives the Kinect.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect#Technology>
~~~
joeyo
But Primesense developed the depth sensor.
<http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=h0GvAAAAEBAJ>
------
shasta
I'm afraid most companies have no idea how much their legal departments, with
all of the bullshit they pile on everyday business transactions, cost them.
~~~
epochwolf
I'm pretty sure the developers have an idea how much is lost.
~~~
ig1
I'm sure most developers have no idea how much money is saved by avoiding
lawsuits.
------
czhiddy
What device(s) would Apple even stick the PrimeSense technology in? The 12
watts [1] needed to drive the thing only really makes sense on desktops, and
for what - a weird experimental Minority Report style 3D interface?
[1] [http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/04/kinect-teardown-two-
camera...](http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/04/kinect-teardown-two-cameras-four-
microphones-12-watts-of-powe/)
~~~
gcheong
Apple TV maybe? Not built-in but as an add-on controller for the device and
games/apps?
~~~
czhiddy
I'm not sure how small they can make the Kinect hardware - I doubt Steve would
approve of an add-on more than 6 times the size of the Apple TV.
~~~
nitrogen
The image on this page looks like it's about a third of the size of the
Kinect:
<http://www.primesense.com/?p=487>
------
pclark
I'd hardly say Apple "almost" got it based on that anecdote.
------
brudgers
> _"'Apple is a pain in the ass,' he said, smiling."_
I'm not sure how that becomes "almost," besides, what would Apple do with a
game controller?
~~~
VomisaCaasi
Apple TV comes to my mind...
The Israelis probably did see far more wider uses for this technology, but it
seems to me Microsoft just outbid the others and then marketed this only as a
game controller. Though, I wouldn't be too surprised if we were to see more
uses for this popping up in the next version of Windows or somewhere else.
~~~
brudgers
Given how recently it was realeased, it's hard to say that the rumor of Kinect
coming to Windows has been kicking around for a while. But it wouldn't
surprise anyone at this point:
[http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2011/0120/Is-
Ki...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2011/0120/Is-Kinect-
coming-to-Windows)
~~~
contextfree
It's not exactly a "rumor", Gates and Ballmer have been talking up its
eventual PC use since well before the Kinect's release.
[http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/15/bill-gates-natal-for-
wind...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/15/bill-gates-natal-for-windows-
coming-to-an-office-near-you/)
------
mcritz
Mythical
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GNU SIP Witch 1.0 released for peer-to-peer next gen VoIP - Grauwolf
http://planet.gnu.org/gnutelephony/?p=18
======
viraptor
Does anyone know why is it "next gen"? And how does "peer-to-peer" mean in
this case?
The only description of sip witch with some actual content (that I could find)
is here: <http://www.slideshare.net/gnutelephony/harvard2010> However it's
missing some really important points and looks like technical issues are just
skipped:
\- How do users locate each other? (looks like user@domain is "known" somehow)
GNU telephony blog mentions "peer-to-peer mesh calling networks" but I can't
find any actual working prototype.
\- Why wouldn't I just use Freeswitch which can support both nat traversal and
ZRTP?
\- How do they imagine the initial connection with both sides behind the
firewall if no ports are mapped? (skype can do that due to known network of
hosts)
If they don't have some great solutions here, I'm not sure why are they
writing this from scratch instead of adding those "peer-to-peer mesh calling
networks" capabilities as a standardised protocol to PBXes which are used
nowadays (asterisk, freeswitch, yate).
~~~
MichaelGG
If it's user@domain, it's probably just using SIP URI routing. (You define
records in your domain to lookup the responsible SIP server, similar to how
email works, but more complicated just for the fun of it.)
FreeSWITCH is a great starting point, but NAT traversal isn't reliable for
point to point, for the general case. You have to consider symmetric NAT
without UPnP and firewalls that allow outbound+response, but no incoming. In
these cases, you are going to need a proxy with a public IP that can relay
audio. That's the only reliable thing that's going to work in all cases. (Just
look at the IETF's documents on NAT traversal where they come up with all
these complex ways to try to exploit limitations in certain NAT devices...)
Actual NAT traversal in SIP/RTP is very straightforward. You just ignore the
silly parts in spec that specify IPs, and just reply to the IP:port combo you
received from. For RTP, same deal. You know where you'll receive RTP, so as
soon as you get a packet there, you just reply to the IP:port it came from.
Skype's "breakthrough" that let them win so much early on was that they used
P2P to do public IP relays, since connectivity between any two points is not
guaranteed. (Had MS been smart enough to proxy audio/video in their clients
early on, they might have dominated this market to begin with...)
So, to overcome this with free software, they'd need a public IP relay system
that protects things end-to-end. If they do that, it could be worth watching.
But from that linked presentation, they expect Sipwitch to update the firewall
rules in such access. Good luck with that.
~~~
viraptor
I can't find the bits about updating firewall rules, but anyways... They keep
concentrating on the media path, while getting the signalling to the right
place is just as hard. They need some public relay and that's one part I still
haven't seen seriously mentioned yet. I disagree with "Actual NAT traversal in
SIP/RTP is very straightforward." - since there are many issues:
\- They can't use end-to-end encryption since public relay has to add
information about the public address the message came from (unless it wants to
transfer the media itself).
\- They can't allow random changes to addresses by intermediate nodes, since
that would allow trivial attack on the mesh infrastructure.
How will they stop a situation where someone creates lots of nodes, proxies
SIP, but randomises the media addresses? Media address can't be encoded at the
source, since it has to come from the relay. It wouldn't be hard for a
competing company to spawn thousands of nodes on EC2 and overload the network
with broken "relay" nodes.
~~~
MichaelGG
Sorry I should have made it clear. SIP/RTP don't work with NATs at all (public
IP and a NAT'd client) if you follow the spec. By NAT traversal with SIP, I'm
referring to this case, not NAT'd client to NAT'd client.
You're right that using relays requires some thought in order to keep it
secure.
------
advisedwang
The blog post tells us a release has occurred, who wrote it, who the FSF is,
what the relationship between Witch and Free Call is. However I can't for the
life of me figure out what GNU SIP Witch is.
~~~
p4bl0
Here: <http://www.gnutelephony.org/index.php/GNU_SIP_Witch> I found this by
following two links from the article. But it was random luck, I agree with you
that the article lack of some important informations.
------
zbowling
Asterisk not open enough for GNU?
~~~
viraptor
They might take issue with a couple of things like
<https://issues.asterisk.org/view_license_agreement.php> , "commercial
edition" based on the open one, deals between asterisk and skype which makes
closed-source skype channels available for asterisk (who knows how would it
affect skype-competitor plugins) and many others. While nothing critical, I
think GNU people might not entirely like it.
~~~
zbowling
The fsf/GNU isn't anti-commercial, just anti-proprietary. Free speech vs. Free
beer. I doubt Asterisk dealings with Skype for special access for it's
customers that pay a preium service fee really bothers them, except maybe
helping Skype propagate it's proprietary tech indirectly.
What asterisk does is no different than MySQL and QT.
------
alwillis
It’s kind of funny, but not really how they botch the description “Apple
OS/X”; all they has to say was Mac OS X.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Monad Challenges: Jump start your understanding of monads - mightybyte
http://mightybyte.github.io/monad-challenges/
======
LukeHoersten
Doug Beardsley (mightybyte) is a very prominent Haskeller. A maintainer of the
Snap Web Framework for Haskell and Co-organizer of the NYC Haskell group.
Definitely worth reading his stuff. Great tutorial as well!
------
dreamdu5t
Cool tutorials. I think it's much more effective to start with learning
functors and applicatives before monads. I'm surprised at the number of
tutorials aimed at teaching people monads who don't yet understand the more
basic type classes.
~~~
Smaug123
Coming at this from a mathematician's perspective, it's complete madness to
learn what a monad is before learning what a natural transformation (and
therefore a functor) is. I would also consider it somewhat eccentric to do
monads without learning what an adjunction is, since adjunctions are basically
why we're interested in monads in the first place.
~~~
throwupper247
Having been mildly disappointed by the simplicity of monoids, after
intimidation from the complexity in maths, i expect that something like an
adjunction is something already known to a commoner in any case, just that the
vocabulary, particaularies and relations to the concept in question are not
always obvious.
~~~
Smaug123
Monoids really are simple things. Monads are a bit less so, but they're still
fairly simple objects (as evidenced by the fact that they have a short
description, "monoids in the category of endofunctors", even if most people
don't know what that means).
Adjunctions turn up all over maths, but I've been trying for a while to come
up with an example which programmers (as opposed to mathematicians) would
quickly understand. Broadly speaking, they represent "the leanest way to add a
particular structure to something", but of course that's pretty useless for
understanding them!
------
mrcactu5
I found a math background is a disadvantage for learning Haskell, since most
mathematicians _don 't_ really use a lot of category theory. Lately that is
changing, [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1617592/is-set-
prime...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1617592/is-set-prime-with-
respect-to-the-cartesian-product?lq=1) There's a lot of confusion on how the
math version of "functor" or "monad" maps to the CS definitions.
I found this tutorial on Monads and Applicatives helpful
[http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_...](http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html)
~~~
LukeHoersten
Something that doesn't help the Math->CS understanding of Functors is, for
example, that languages like C++ use "Functor" to mean other things (function
pointer in this case).
~~~
zmmmmm
I'm curious to know which came first?
In any case it's annoying to have different languages adopting the same word
to mean vaguely related but actually completely different things. I suspect
that is why a lot of tutorials about Monads skip talking about Functors
altogether which ends up making the whole thing more confusing.
~~~
archgoon
> I'm curious to know which came first?
The math definitions. These were invented by Saunders Mac Lane and Samuel
Eilenberg back in 1945ish, about a year before ENIAC was built.
------
yyhhsj0521
Yeah so here comes another monads tutorial.
People always say that monads are not that hard and you don't need to
understand category theory to understand monads, but since people still keep
writing tutorials for them (and thus imply that we have yet to see a perfect
one that clearly explains everything you need to know about monad), I
sometimes wonder that if beginners should just start from category theory.
~~~
OscarCunningham
I know loads of category theory, but when I tried to find out how monads were
used in computer programming I was disappointing to find that no one has
written a "Monads in Haskell for Category Theorists"tutorial. :-(
------
ridiculous_fish
I have Haskell experience and would love to do these exercises, but I am
struggling with the environment.
For example, Set1 tells me to make a function fiveRands and then "check my
answers;" how do I do that? I know enough Haskell to do something like:
main = putStrLn $ show fiveRands
but putStrLn is not part of MCPrelude so this doesn't compile, and the
instructions say explicitly "Do not import any other modules."
I'm excited to try these. Please add some more hand-holding to get me and
others over the tooling and environment issues.
~~~
mightybyte
Hi, I was assuming that people would do their playing around and answer
checking in ghci. MCPrelude does not export putStrLn because it is an IO
function, which is a monad and I specifically wanted to hide all the prelude's
monad stuff. I suggest loading your file in ghci with "ghci Set1.hs". Then you
can just type "fiveRands" at the ghci prompt and it will show you the values.
~~~
ridiculous_fish
Thanks! It would be great to walk through this, in the same way that it shows
the shell commands for installation under "Getting Started."
I hardly ever use the repl because I prefer to keep my tests around. I'm
sheepish to admit this, but I only just now learned that you can pass a file
to ghci.
------
meshuggah
Great. I was wondering if anyone is interested in writing a book or a blog
titled something to the effect of "all the brutal concepts in the languages
you want to learn or respect." For example, monads in Haskell, macros and
continuations in Scheme...Maybe languages like C, Forth, Prolog, Smalltalk etc
also have such arcane concepts that "scare" people??
~~~
pklausler
I don't know about scaring people, but many programming languages have
concepts that are best demonstrated with small examples that make people say
"whoa".
For example, it's amazing that append() in Prolog can be run "backwards" from
the concatenated result to yield all the lists that can be concatenated to
produce it. Or that the monadic bind operator in Haskell (>>=) can be defined
in terms of join and fmap, or that ($) = id.
Programming languages have idiomatic expressions, and learning _why_ they do
what they do can produce enlightenment. It's no accident that C supports
syntax like 3["hello"]. It looks mysterious, but not when you know that x[y]
== *((x)+(y)) by definition. APL was especially rich in idiomatic expressions;
I suppose that it's a sign of having easily composed primitives.
~~~
Patient0
($) = id !?
< tries it out in Raskell/Ghci >
I see now why it's true, but still... Whoah!! Thanks for that!
I think your suggestion would make a terrific online book.
------
sidcool
How I only wish a similar tutorial for Scala.
~~~
kevinherron
Check out the book "Functional Programming in Scala".
[https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-
scal...](https://www.manning.com/books/functional-programming-in-scala)
------
fizixer
> Do I need to know Haskell? Yes.
This is enough for me to reject this blogpost.
No you don't need a specific language to implement any functionality that can
be implemented by a turing-complete language.
I watched Crockford's monad talk [1]. He used javascript. The only problem
with that talk is that he spent about 10 seconds or less explaining what a
monad is (and the rest of the talk on implementation issues and his own
perspective, etc, etc).
I'm still waiting for a good monad discussion without CT or Haskell. (this [2]
and this [3] look promising, both in python)
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0EF0VTs9Dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0EF0VTs9Dc)
[2] [http://www.valuedlessons.com/2008/01/monads-in-python-
with-n...](http://www.valuedlessons.com/2008/01/monads-in-python-with-nice-
syntax.html#6799472260664409462)
[3] [http://www.dustingetz.com/2012/04/07/dustins-awesome-
monad-t...](http://www.dustingetz.com/2012/04/07/dustins-awesome-monad-
tutorial-for-humans-in-python.html)
~~~
rntz
It's true that you don't need to know Haskell in order to learn about monads,
but Haskell is a perfectly reasonable language in which to write a monad
introduction.
Haskell is good for learning about monads for the same reasons monads tend to
be heavily used in Haskell, but not in other languages. Monads are both part
of Haskell's standard library, and have very useful special syntax (do-
notation). Writing out monadic code explicitly gets to be a huge pain when
using monads in another language. Typeclasses also make it convenient & easy
to write code that's generic over any monad.
~~~
imh
>Writing out monadic code explicitly gets to be a huge pain when using monads
in another language.
Couldn't any other language have a syntax like
thing.do(\x -> other thing(x)).do(
\x -> yet another thing(x)).do(
a function).do(
more stuff).do(
etc)
And then replace "\x -> whatever" with the local language's lambda syntax. The
only time you get the painful nested parens is if you want
thing.do(
\x -> f(x).do(
\y -> g(x,y)))
It's not too terribly bad.
~~~
ash
Like JavaScript Promises?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Kong – Physical Cryptocurrency - ccamrobertson
https://kong.cash/
======
ccamrobertson
Hi folks, I’m one of the contributors at Kong —
[https://kong.cash/](https://kong.cash/). Kong is a physical cryptocurrency
that looks, feels and works like traditional cash. You can think of it as an
ultra-secure, time locked cryptocurrency wallet with a fixed face value — no
one can access the token except for the holder of the note after a period of
several years. It consists of a secure element and NFC chips mounted on a
flexible PCB with a full color print. There are several gold elements that
also serve as direct i2c interfaces to challenge the secure element’s
authenticity by signing information with its private key.
Kong is based on two primary observations; (1) it’s really difficult to use
and secure cryptocurrency for most people and (2) cryptocurrency has been
useful as a means of speculation, but poor for actually buying goods and
services. It’s our hypothesis that by making cryptocurrency more like cash it
may be possible that people ultimately use it as a means of exchange.
Our background is in secure embedded hardware (Lockitron, YC S09); over the
past year we did a deep dive to really consider how cryptocurrency key
material is handled today. We found that cryptocurrency has a unique challenge
and corresponding opportunity; unlike IoT products where the cost of a breach
might be difficult to quantify, breaking a hardware wallet can yield clear
rewards to the hacker.
We developed Kong around the notion that security should be isolated to the
smallest possible footprint — in the case of Kong, to an individual single
purpose secure element chip. Doing so removes additional layers of firmware
and software in order to limit the attack surface (it also broadly questions
how good are our existing secure chips today).
To date we’ve handed out close to 2,500 Kong notes; we’re now exploring more
ways to distribute physical crypto. Take a look at
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
for an in-depth technical overview.
~~~
XMPPwocky
A user accepting these "verifies" them by assuming that two properties hold if
they connect over NFC or via pogo pins to the "gold elements", send a
challenge over this connection, and receive in response the challenge signed
with a public key associated with locked Kong tokens.
1\. the relevant private key is known to only a Kong note's secure element.
this is (hopefully) enforced by the secure element's, uh, security, and by the
issuer.
2\. the relevant private key _is_ known to _the secure element on the specific
physical Kong note the user has been given_.
2 is unenforced in your current design, from what I can see. A crafted note
can relay all communication to the secure element of another note (e.g. over
low-power RF from a single-use battery or small ultracapacitor).
better, a "dead" Kong note which performs no NFC communication can be given to
a merchant; then, a high-power NFC transceiver can be used to pretend to be
the note wirelessly (from a handful of meters away, but in a lot of situations
that's more than enough). Of course, this one only works if the verifier is
using NFC, but... This one is particularly nasty because it's relatively
straightforwards to "weaponise" \- imagine buying a "kit" off AliExpress which
contains fifty dead notes, a ProxMark, and an amplified antenna. Then, in any
situation where you're close enough to the person who'll be verifying your
notes... just give them a dead one and relay communications. Verification
passes, but what the merchant ends up putting in their cash drawer is
worthless.
~~~
londons_explore
Are there any solutions to the relay attack you describe?
Perhaps by having the secure element "lock" and "unlock" each time the note
changes hands, so that an attacker who uses a a relay will still have his note
locked in a way that makes it useless unless he gives it to the recipient to
unlock?
~~~
andreareina
Depending on how much jitter there is in the time it takes to countersign the
challenge, RTT might be one way.
------
krick
I don't get it. Is it some sort of concept art? What's the point?
Sure, it can be used as money (assuming what authors say is correct).
Virtually any physical items that are hard to fake can be used as money, as
long as people believe it's worth something. And if we are okay with
complicated and rather expensive manufacturing process (since Kong isn't
something you find in the forest), it really is a non-problem to create a new
"government-independent currency", print it and sell it. Nobody really gives a
fuck about that, because money is worthless unless you can spend it. And as
long as Costco doesn't accept Kong (or any other made-up currency), it would
be hard for you to spend it on anything other than unique hand-crafted chairs
or cocaine. And it would be hard for them to start accepting Kong notes, while
being a government-compliant entity that pays taxes, as every physical bill
they get must be accounted for and put into a cashier machine.
And, by the way, since every Kong bill is unique, it isn't any more anonymous
than dollar bills: i.e. pretty much anonymous as long as they change hands
without touching real cashier machines or ATMs, which, as it happens, is not
so long, because people don't generally exchange unique hand-crafted chairs
for cocaine, they buy/sell it, then go to Costco to get some more conventional
goods or services.
~~~
paulgerhardt
Kong has the useful property of peer-to-peer validation. Most paper currencies
printed in your basement don't.
Tokens loaded onto Kong Cash instruments and exchanged ephemerally in person
between party A and party B are more anonymous than tokens sent directly from
party A to party B electronically which will be recorded for everyone to see
forever.
It's programmable money. It's cooler than non-programmable money. We're
putting it out there as a toy.
~~~
bduerst
This is either some of the best satire in the world or I still don't get it.
Probably the latter.
~~~
Terretta
Don’t discount the former. Or performance art. Or a test for next season’s
plot from Pied Piper or Hooli.
Are we not entertained?
~~~
majortennis
there's no next season the finale was monday
------
elil17
I see so many people here frustrated with the fact that the creators are
giving nonsense answers. It's important to remember that this is a money-
making scam. Asking them how their technology provides any value to users is
like asking a Nigerian prince about the philosophy behind constitutional
monarchies.
~~~
jotakami
Usually I would agree with you but this is an intriguing concept. They
explicitly state in the white paper that this is an experiment, so treat it as
such. All I’m hearing is a lot of “contempt prior to investigation”.
~~~
the_pwner224
I agree that it is an intriguing concept. But at the same time they seem to be
ready to sell Kong for $$$. And they don't explain why there are three tiers
of rarity to the cash - shouldn't 500 KONG == 500 KONG all the time every
time? Seems like a mechanic to raise more money, just like 'rare' cosmetic
items in video games.
~~~
ccamrobertson
The "tiers" are just bundle names. We could have been super dry but decided to
make it more like collectable cards packs; our expectation is that most people
will buy Kong since it looks cool (that's totally fine with us). Our margin on
Kong is typical of other startup hardware projects; not great. We're not
raking in cash from a digital token sale.
We've made a physical product, we'll sell it to cover the costs of doing so.
~~~
qwtel
I agree that they do look cool. They remind me of euro notes but turned up a
notch or two.
But I'm wondering what made you decide to go with the generic greek bust
heads? Missed opportunity to depict some cryptography and computer pioneers
imo.
~~~
paulgerhardt
Some of the design elements are skeuomorphic throwbacks to traditional
currencies.
One design pattern among currencies is "person on front, place on back" \- we
didn't want Kong to be too geographically local so we picked the planets
(Mercury, Venus, Mars, Luna, etc) for the places and the associated Roman
pantheon. Romans used currency while Greeks famously didn't. (Lydians aside.)
------
zelly
IMO this breaks the entire security model of cryptocurrency. If these bills
are intended to be spent hand-to-hand in meatspace without cryptographic
validation on a computer, then it is no longer a cryptocurrency. It is another
paper currency like the U.S. Treasury's.
The innovation of Bitcoin was money as a purely digital artifact that cannot
be double spent. As a merchant accepting Kong bucks, I have no idea how many
duplicates of a particular Kong note there could be out there. I could find
myself in a race between many other people to move the Ether out of that
private key. To rely on embedded chips and watermarks to prevent
counterfeiting and double-spending seems like a huge step backward, like
you're trying to make a better $100 Benjamin instead of a better
cryptocurrency.
I get the idea of quick, zero-fee transactions. But there needs to be some
finality or pseudo-finality. The Lightning Network uses a similar model as
yours, but it has collateral. Analogously, in the way Lightning solved this
problem, the merchant has 5 actual Ether on file for a customer that the
customer sacrifices if they ever double spend a Kong buck at the store.
~~~
paulgerhardt
The bills are intended to be spent hand-to-hand in meatspace with
cryptographic validation. See section 2.1 [1]
The innovation of Bitcoin was decentralized electronic peer-to-peer cash. Kong
does not remove any of those elements and makes the overhead of the peer-to-
peer bit easier.
Physical cash is still the dominant form of payment. The advancement here is
figuring out how to issue physical cash without needing a central entity.
I like Bitcoin but it is anti-privacy by specification. For small transactions
I prefer cash. I would like the best of both.
[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
~~~
monocasa
What does Kong bring to the table that a gold coin does not?
~~~
ottolin
Honestly I dont think it does anything that a gold coin cant do in practical
level.
However, a gold coin will remain valid if dropped into water or fire.
------
CptFribble
If I can't take your space money down to the diner and buy a plate of bacon
and eggs with it, then as far as I'm concerned it's not real.
There's a chicken-and-egg problem that I think goes missed or unmentioned by
all these crypto startups trying to piecemeal a "solution" to the centralized
banking problem: in the monetary system, individuals have absolutely no power,
because we're at the bottom of the hierarchy of spending.
Joe Schmoe's dollar has value because he can buy a soda at the diner with it.
The diner takes the dollar because they can use it to pay their staff and buy
more supplies. The supplier takes the dollar because they can pay their staff
and and buy raw materials. And in between every layer, the banks store the
excess operating capital and profits.
Decentralized currency can only work if it can occupy every layer at once,
across the world. Anything less is just straight out worse than regular money
from a usability standpoint, and that's before you mention that now we're all
responsible for our own money security.
Yes, people out there have been wronged by the current system, but the average
modern human's relationship with money can be essentially summed up as
follows:
1\. Perform labor
2\. Receive paycheck
3\. Deposit in bank
4\. Purchase food, shelter, and netflix
So what is this kind of pseudo-money-computer-chip-paper for? No matter the
fancy technology thats woven into its fibers, if I pay the Kong people for 10
Kongs, how do I, Joe Schmoe, turn 10 Kongs into a pizza? How do I, Jane Pizza-
Maker, find a supplier that will sell me tomatoes and flour for 10 Kongs? How
do I, Rachel Dough-Maker, find a wheat farm that will accept Kongs?
All of this has to happen simultaneously, because business owners are busy and
don't have the time or the energy to incrementally work space money into their
cash flow.
Yeah sure, centralized banking has issues. But a bottom-up approach is doomed
to failure because we don't live in barter-based villages anymore. Every
transaction is part of a hierarchy of money-transfers that extend from the
local diner through dozens of entities across the planet and back again. Are
you making enough Kongs for all of them?
~~~
paulgerhardt
By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real.
I might suggest an alternate definition: Money is a transferable record of
debt valid for a period of time and amongst a network of peers.
Generally we think of money as local to a country and its government. However,
one could imagine a 'minimum viable money' that could work in a space as small
as a table and with only a handful of people - and for the purposes of a game
like Monopoly, while the game is ongoing the money in the game serves a real
purpose. From there things get pretty blurry as any World of Warcraft or Eve
player will tell you.
~~~
jen729w
> By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real.
And that's why you generally can't pay for your eggs & bacon at the diner in
Wisconsin using British pounds.
The difference here is that you can trivially go to your bank and exchange
those pounds for US dollars. Good luck getting them to exchange your Kong.
------
Barrin92
I genuine can't tell if this is satire or not. This is like one of these web-
framework to desktop and back again pieces of software
Why should anyone buy a crypto currency you can barely use anywhere in
physical form if I can just use regular cash?
~~~
biolurker1
You are missing the point of crypto in general. It is a trust less fixed
inflation and issuance decentralized non government controlled global currency
~~~
Barrin92
it is none of these things. The value of cryptocurrency swings wildly, the
primary way to interact with it is through exchanges which are ordinary
trusted institutions, and they are far from globally useable.
What you are missing is that I need to pay my bills in practice, not in
theory. I measure the value of cryptocurrency against what it delivers in
practice, not on the white paper of the people who are going to benefit from
its adoption.
~~~
biolurker1
I have paid numerous things in bitcoin and you can even pay some bills. People
do exchange it directly just not in your circles. I'm not saying that adoption
is massive yet but you need to differentiate the idea with the current status.
Value is in price discovery mode and will be for the foreseeable future but
the volatility is going down. Lastly you can argue without down voting
different opinions.
------
aazaa
I really like the concept of physical electronic cash, but in practice nobody
has figured out how to make it work.
There are many attacks to consider. The most obvious is to obtain the private
key. If you did so, you could give the note to someone else in an environment
lacking network access. This would enable double-spending - the main problem
Bitcoin solves.
The attack can range in complexity from breaking into the secure element to
physically separating the element from the note. The latter approach was used
way back to pull private keys from Casascius coins by dissolving the adhesive
on the security sticker.
I suspect not all of these kinds of attacks have been considered by the
creators.
If it becomes necessary to verify Kong with a network connection, the main
value proposition disappears. That can be done already without a physical
note.
~~~
paulgerhardt
We have considered both of those attacks and address them in section 2.2 and
3.2 of the white paper respectively[1]. The short version is the key
extraction attacks on this specific hardened chip are more expensive than the
value they escrow, and in the event a key was extracted it creates a race
condition at the period of claim not during the lifetime of its use - still
providing some utility. What Kong does that Casascius didn't is provide
guarantees that the minter never saw the private key.
[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
~~~
melcor
> in the event a key was extracted it creates a race condition at the period
> of claim not during the lifetime of its use - still providing some utility.
So say the key was extracted, you would not be aware until the "maturity" or
whatever time you can claim the real value?
How would one then know and trust that the note I'm holding on to won't be
claimed by someone else at the period of claim? As far as I see it my best
option would be to try and offload any Kong in my possession as soon as
possible for real goods or other currency.
------
luminiferous
Question: since bills can be either loaded or unloaded (either because they
haven't been put in circulation yet, or because they're counterfeit), doesn't
that mean that e.g. a vendor taking my Kong who has no trust in me would have
to individually check each bill via NFC or i2c to make sure that the contract
backing the bill is valid (and the correct amount, etc.)? And that I would
have to do the same for all the bills I get back as change? As a completely
trustless transaction, this seems like it could be entirely too slow for most
applications, without some kind of device to quickly verify multiple bills.
~~~
ccamrobertson
Ideally you should check every Kong note. In reality behavior would probably
be similar how bills are verified now; businesses regularly check $100 and $50
notes under backlights and with special pens but don't worry about lower
denominations.
A dedicated "Kong scanner" could do this very quickly.
------
Animats
From the "white paper":
_" An additional 7,340,032 Kong was issued to the Kong project for
discretionary Kong noteprinting and distribution. The upper bound for Kong
token created after five years (the point at which only the recurring lockdrop
rewards remain) is roughly 72,700,000 Kong."_
So, the promoters of this skimmed off 10% before launch. Or, more like 20% of
the first year's production.
Now, if this was set up so that it's denominated in something they don't
control, like Etherium or Bitcoin or dollars or euros or yuan, it would be
more interesting.
~~~
ccamrobertson
That's not quite fair; at launch 20% of Ethereum went to the foundation. A
massive amount of Bitcoin it still held in the wallets of its creator(s).
If Kong develops a market of its own (???) then having some token for the
project to fund the very real costs of making more Kong is helpful.
------
Jaxkr
Have you considered how this will fare in the current regulatory environment?
European countries banned Libra because they didn't want it to compete with
the Euro and the U.S. showed hostility to pre-crypto complementary currencies.
Have you considered licensing the tech to governments to make counterfeit-
proof bills?
~~~
biolurker1
You mean they would treat it as illegal goods and confiscate it at border? How
would they ban this
~~~
saxonww
However they want?
Some people might not remember the Liberty Dollar[0] from 10-20 years ago. The
depository was raided after a few years, the company issuing the currency was
shut down, and the owner/proprietor was convicted of illegally minting coins.
Kong couldn't be shut down the exact same way - these aren't coins - but I'd
be shocked if a similar thing didn't happen were Kong to become as popular as
ALD (which, come on, it won't).
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_\(private_currency\))
~~~
sah2ed
Exactly. I’m surprised that this point about the legal ramifications isn’t
higher up in the thread.
Things get complicated real fast once you move from peddling virtual to
physical currencies. I fail to see how the US wont use the same laws to shut
them down the way they did to the liberty dollar.
~~~
__m
Put Trump’s face on it, call it Trump instead of King Kong, get rid off the
laws. Profit.
------
neiman
I understand many people here, and in the world, don't like cash anymore. But
there are many others, like me, that still think that physical money gives
them a better feeling of their spending. So in my eyes Kong is a really nice
take on the cash technology, not to mention it's beautifully executed.
~~~
cortesoft
So why not just use regular cash?
~~~
newguy1234
Because "regular cash" requires trust and that trust has been routinely
violated by various governments of the world so I would rather have trustless
currency instead.
I trust math, science and verified algorithms rather than people or
governments.
~~~
cortesoft
No amount of math, science, and verified algorithms are going to make someone
else value your digital currency... you are still having to trust other people
to maintain a somewhat stable value of the asset.
Since this is always going to be true, I am probably going to go with the best
bets based on track record... I will use the currencies that have held pretty
consistent value over the last 100 years.
------
akersten
So once the time lock or whatever expires, I'm free to extract the value from
my Kong and then go double-spend the physical bills in a corner store? In the
hypothetical world where people use this, how are they expected to validate
every note they receive?
Is there an equivalent to a starch pen like a suspicious cashier might use on
a $100 bill today? Or is the process more painful? Does it require the
internet? Remembering that many cash transactions happen person-to-person, in
places with low or inconvenient connectivity.
~~~
paulgerhardt
The expiration mechanic is how Swiss Francs work and we believe a necessary
tradeoff for decentralized cash issuance to work.
Validation can be performed with any smartphone. Notes are issued in blocks so
technically if you downloaded the 2019 Kong Registry contract you would not
need connectivity to validate a note. Purpose built hardware can also be built
or existing android based POS systems updated to support kong-like validation.
Other anti-counterfeiting techniques have been explored but it the only thing
that really matters is securing the root of trust.
Technically with Swiss Francs, the notes have no value after their "expiration
date", with Kong the escrow contract unlocks and the token can be claimed off
the notes but the precedent made us comfortable enough with this tradeoff.
Alternative implementation 1) notes are not escrowed and funds can be claimed
off the bills immediately - this is effectively how paper wallets, java smart
card wallets, and trezors work. This is a gift card instrument not a cash
instrument.
Alternative implementation 2) funds are locked up into perpetuity - all tokens
are eventually lost to breakage.
Our back of the envelope expectancy was 10 years for these notes. We wanted
the majority to be reclaimable well before their anticipated breakage so we
set a claim date relatively soon in the future.
~~~
gamblor956
More importantly: you keep people trapped in your walled garden for several
years waiting until they can cash out.
------
toomim
> Kong is the first crypto-cash
No it's not.
\- [https://casascius.com/](https://casascius.com/)
\-
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Casascius_physical_bitcoins)
It looks like Kong _might_ be the first crypto-cash with an issuer that hasn't
seen its private keys. And that's cool, but it'd be good not to exaggerate
what this is.
~~~
toomim
Also, why not apply this to an existing coin, like Bitcoin, rather than
inventing _yet another_ freaking asset?
Oh yeah, because then the founders can't get rich in the ICO. Yuck.
~~~
paulgerhardt
There is no ICO. There is no token sale. Bitcoin script does not give us
enough operations to do the validation. Using the EVM was the next best
candidate. We're selling an extremely limited number of packs to validate the
concept and cover manufacturing costs. Section 4.1 of the paper goes into
details of why a purpose built token is more suitable than one designed for
other purposes[1].
[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
~~~
gamblor956
What you have described is literally an ICO...
------
the_gastropod
Poe's Law is a hell of a thing... Is this for real?
~~~
bduerst
I'm with you. The satire signals are so strong here.
------
ISL
After I buy a grilled cheese sandwich with Kong, how do I handle my taxes? It
makes every transaction have possible capital-gains tax implications.
The taxation difficulty is the single biggest reason why I stopped making
small transactions with Bitcoin. The paperwork, come April, was awful.
~~~
Twixes
It should be just like normal, non-blockchain backed currency, should it not?
~~~
nostromo
It’s more like selling stock to buy a sandwich.
If you bought the stock for $100, and now it’s worth $200, and you sell $10
worth to buy a sandwich, you have $5 of income to be reported.
~~~
Twixes
Would that be the case if you were to buy that sandwich with, say, euros
instead? They too could appreciate between purchases.
~~~
hanniabu
If you're in the US and pay with euros then yes it would technically be the
same.
~~~
iudqnolq
No. The issue is because cryptocurrencies aren't classified as currencies like
euros are by the IRS.
~~~
bananabreakfast
Still up for debate actually. IRS does consider them property but other
agencies consider it currency
~~~
iudqnolq
Future may be up for debate, current tax status isn't. And that's what matters
for what you have to pay right now.
------
EvanAnderson
I immediately thought of the currency "Kongbucks" from "Snow Crash". I was
hoping this was partially a tip-of-the-hat to Neal Stephenson.
~~~
paulgerhardt
Read section 4.3:
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
------
russdpale
I fail to see how this solves a usability issue in developed nations. This
also reintroduces the portability problems that are present in current fiat.
~~~
ccamrobertson
Japan is a fairly cash heavy developed nation. Likewise, the majority
transactions under $25 in many countries are still conducted using cash. We
don't necessarily expect people to revert to using cash; rather, Kong is a
means of handling cryptocurrency that's vastly easier to understand as an
introduction to cryptocurrency.
The usability problems are also a feature -- if Kong is burned, stolen or
otherwise destroyed, the value is lost forever. Billions of people understand
that's how cash functions and they take measures to secure it.
------
account73466
In your paper, why you acknowledge people by their name but you don't disclose
your names?
------
Uptrenda
From the whitepaper: "Kong notes do not use a secure element that allows for
general programmability." Looks like they thought this through more than a
typical drive-by 'blockchain' project. With a limited secure circuit you'll be
able to call functions that generate ECDSA key pairs on the card but without
exposing an interface to retrieve the private key. Without this basic property
you would have to fully trust that the issuer had not mass-extracted private
keys (similar to how early privacy coins had a trusted setup phase.)
Looks like they're also trying to structure this as 'reward cost for key
extraction vs cost of mounting attacks' showing they have a plan in place for
attacks. I'd argue the notes still have a tx cost though because the only way
to know if a note has a valid private key is to challenge it with a unique,
large, random number - which takes time and effort. Users of the notes will
need an app for that and have to check every note against an on-chain 'smart
contract' before accepting them? NFC might make some of that easier but there
are still usability issues there.
~~~
paulgerhardt
The NFC challenge only takes a second and ATM like machines could probably go
much quicker than that. A broader goal with ARX is to bake bounties into
"licensing fees" (or accurately, manufacturing costs) for secure elements that
would validate keys couldn't actually be extracted.
Putting (very) public bounties at various reward tiers lets one establish
something like a demand curve but for security.
------
TekMol
If the private key is inside of the note and stays the same when it changes
hands, how do I know you did not make a copy of it when you created the note?
~~~
paulgerhardt
Another contributor here. This is one of the novel advancements made by Kong.
Specifically, Kong notes use a secure element which 1) self-generates a key
pair 2) can attest the key pair was self-generated and 3) does not leak the
private portion of that key pair. Section 2 of the paper (specifically 2.2)
goes into more detail[1].
[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
~~~
TekMol
So your answer is "trust us". Because how would I know if the claims of the
hardware manufacturer (you or your supplier) are true?
This of course holds true for all hardware. When someone creates or stores a
Bitcoin key on a laptop, they are at the mercy of the laptop manufacturer.
------
bransonf
Serious question: Who is going to accept Kong as a valid form of payment? What
incentive is there to accept Kong and what guarantees its value?
One of the biggest issues plaguing cryptocurrency as a transactional currency
is the volatility of decentralized assets.
What problem is Kong fixing? “We made a physical crypto asset” isn’t
connecting the dots for me.
------
brunt
I'm assuming this is unrelated to the Kong API Gateway
[https://konghq.com/kong/](https://konghq.com/kong/)
~~~
ccamrobertson
Yes, completely unrelated.
------
fatjokes
Why would drug cartels prefer this over existing cash?
I'm phrasing the question facetiously but the underlying intent is there: how
is there more anonymity, usability, etc.?
~~~
paulgerhardt
We're not interested in doing business with drug cartels.
What is a lovely property of Kong is the only digital breadcrumb is leaves is
when notes are loaded at creation and unloaded at de-circulation. Every person
to person transaction of the instrument leaves no digital record or footprint.
Usability is superior for new users - everyone understands how cash works.
~~~
seandougall
> Every person to person transaction of the instrument leaves no digital
> record or footprint
That's true of cash as well, but that doesn't mean it's totally untraceable,
as bills still have serial numbers. I think what GP is getting at is, Kong
notes must completely lack any sort of persistent unique identifier in order
to be an improvement over cash in anonymity. Can Kong make this claim?
------
onlyrealcuzzo
This seems like a step in the wrong direction. Given the option, most people
prefer not to use cash. Making me carry something around everywhere I go to be
able to use it -- I don't see myself being more inclined to use it.
Potentially more people will accept it. But I doubt it.
------
mNovak
So in theoretical use, is everyone expected to validate authenticity of each
note exchanged?
That seems painful for small transactions, but without it you lose absolutely
all the security benefits of crypto, right? (e.g. vulnerable to good old
fashioned counterfeiting)
~~~
undersuit
Just do it like we do it in the US, $50s and $100s get checked consistently
for counterfeits, $20s sometimes, $1s, $5s, and $10s never, and $2s are
automatically assumed to be fake.
~~~
vinniejames
Why are $2's assumed fake?
~~~
dragonwriter
They are so rarely encountered than many people don't think that they are a
denomination actually issued.
~~~
undersuit
Correct, they aren't issued by anyone but cool grandpas and uncles in my
experience.
~~~
gnaritas
You must not live in a state where pot is legal; in such places $2 bills
floating around everywhere, I use them all the time. The reason: cash
businesses use them heavily to reduce the amount of physical cash they need to
maintain and move around. Pot shops occupy a gray area legally and banks don't
like to deal with them so they often operate old school: cash businesses.
I have a few in my wallet most of the time, like to use them for tips when I
eat out.
------
pimlottc
Who is the audience for this product? The page is certainly not written for
the general public. Heck, I'm a developer and I don't really understand how
this works or why it's better than existing hard currency.
~~~
newguy1234
I think the audience is 3rd world countries that don't have reliable internet,
electricity and so on. They can use these paper notes instead of United States
dollars or their domestic currency which might be in hyperinflation.
------
rahuldottech
FYI: Your website is broken on the latest Firefox with uBlock Origin and
Privacy Badger.
The email 'request access' thing doesn't work
~~~
idigit
Odd - working for me on Firefox with those plugins. What error are you
getting?
------
nostromo
One of the best things about Bitcoin is that it’s _not_ physical.
If you want a physical currency that can’t be printed, use gold bullion.
~~~
ilaksh
Maybe silver? I mean even a tiny 1/10 oz gold coin is worth $140
~~~
asdf21
You also can't tell if gold is real or gold plated, etc.
~~~
newguy1234
You can but you have to use a scientific instrument called an xrf meter.
------
torgian
I’m very skeptical. While the idea is nice ( I love physical cash and use it
every day ) there isn’t much control over counterfeiting, etc. granted, this
is also true for Fiat, but there are more controls involved.
Make a currency exchanger that exchanges bits with a scan of your device,
instantaneously, and you’ll have my attention.
~~~
ccamrobertson
> there isn’t much control over counterfeiting, etc.
Correct, this is the primary challenge of creating sound cryptocurrency and
indeed why we go into length about the hardware we use in section 2 of the
paper.
> Make a currency exchanger that exchanges bits with a scan of your device,
> instantaneously, and you’ll have my attention.
Can you elaborate?
------
Akababa
The world is moving towards cashless/mobile payments (albeit with the U.S.
strangely behind), so why do you feel physical cryptocurrency is a step in the
right direction? Do you expect Kong to face greater challenges for adoption
(compared to other cryptocurrencies) since it needs a higher critical mass of
users?
~~~
withinboredom
You haven’t been to Germany lately? Most places only accept cash, your debit
card is plastic trash.
------
jasonlaramburu
Cool! What is the cost to produce each note today, and how do you anticipate
funding that longterm?
~~~
paulgerhardt
Just a bit more expensive than the higher end notes produced by
Switzerland/Australia and less expensive than limited edition postage stamps.
We looked at existing hardware wallets like trezor and ledger and realized we
could create something like this for 1/20th the price. Once we realized the
numbers we were playing with we ran with it. Conceptually, I prefer validating
something with a cryptographic signing operations rather than looking at some
watermarks.
Kong is a proof of concept but we could always print these for other
governments.
~~~
modeless
OK, but how much is that? I don't see the point in being vague about it.
~~~
weego
I'm sure it mentioned somewhere in the range of $3 per bill, but I can't find
it now.
It's utterly impossible to sustain, it's highly likely that the physical cost
could be higher than the face value
------
numlock86
These so called "currencies" that you can't actually use as a currency (read
as: pay or trade something for) are getting more and more. Has this become
some new form of trolling in the internet now?
------
skosch
Can you comment on the history of the name, printed as 港 on the bills? For
those unaware, the character means "harbour"; it's the _Kong_ in _Hong Kong_ –
is there any relationship to the HKD?
~~~
paulgerhardt
Context:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21758004)
~~~
godot
I am not familiar with Snow Crash myself and I read the Wikipedia page [1] on
it and it makes sense what you're going for; but just want to say that for
someone who was born in HK, seeing the term 港幣 really can only mean HKD in my
head, and it's difficult for me to process that it means something else. Even
as you keep the name Kong, have you considered calling this something else in
Chinese aside from 港幣 specifically?
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)
~~~
paulgerhardt
Would love to talk about this over email. Please drop me a line.
------
eat_veggies
Can a Kong manufacturer build custom secure element chips that leak key
material? It seems that a lot of Kong's security comes from the security of
the little HSM, and if you don't trust the manufacturer then a lot of it seems
to break down.
In addition, the paper cites the cost of decapping and side channel equipment
as part of what makes double spends impractical. Given that they're fixed
costs that undoubtedly many governments and labs already own, it still seems
like it could be worth it for some people to extract Kong keys.
~~~
ccamrobertson
> Can a Kong manufacturer build custom secure element chips that leak key
> material? It seems that a lot of Kong's security comes from the security of
> the little HSM, and if you don't trust the manufacturer then a lot of it
> seems to break down.
This is perhaps the most important question. In short, yes. We use an off the
shelf secure element; if it's shown to be broken/backdoored it will influence
a vast number of embedded and IoT applications.
> In addition, the paper cites the cost of decapping and side channel
> equipment as part of what makes double spends impractical. Given that
> they're fixed costs that undoubtedly many governments and labs already own,
> it still seems like it could be worth it for some people to extract Kong
> keys.
We cite fixed costs in hardware, but not in time. Certain extraction
techniques would still take hours of time per chip. The secure element we're
using has no published attacks thus far (which is not to of course imply that
it won't be, simply that it isn't trivial).
~~~
eat_veggies
> We use an off the shelf secure element; if it's shown to be
> broken/backdoored it will influence a vast number of embedded and IoT
> applications
The scenario I'm imagining is one in which someone manufactures a note that
looks and behaves exactly like a Kong but has known key material (i.e. a
"fake" secure element). You can't verify that the secure element is real
without expensive hardware.
And what is the vision for who can mint Kongs? If only the Kong developers
can, then it's no better than USD. If anyone can do it, how will you guarantee
consistent chips, construction, design, etc. between manufacturers?
~~~
ccamrobertson
> The scenario I'm imagining is one in which someone manufactures a note that
> looks and behaves exactly like a Kong but has known key material (i.e. a
> "fake" secure element). You can't verify that the secure element is real
> without expensive hardware.
Yes, that's counterfeiting in the case of Kong. The counterfeiter would need
to first extract that key material from a previously issued Kong note by
breaking the secure element.
> And what is the vision for who can mint Kongs? If only the Kong developers
> can, then it's no better than USD.
Only the Kong project for now; whether it's better or worse is definitely
subjective. There is a ceiling for the amount of Kong that can be issued.
Also, as something more akin to an art project than a fully functioning
economy, there is no place to spend Kong today. It's ambiguous, but the fact
that the Kong project is the only issuer of the physical notes doesn't
undermine the cryptocurrency rules upon which it's based.
> If anyone can do it, how will you guarantee consistent chips, construction,
> design, etc. between manufacturers?
Section 5.1 touches on this; in short there is no solution today, but this in
an immensely important challenge. Flipping this on its head -- if we don't
have these guarantees today, how can we trust any of the places we store key
material (smartphones, laptops, IoT). It's impossible to guarantee a perfect
chip, but it is feasible to create economic incentives that deter broken
chips. We'll probably write more on this topic in the future.
------
welder
So you can't backup Kong.cash? That's one main benefit of digital currency,
why go backwards towards physical cash? Instead you should go towards the
Wechat model of instant mobile payments.
~~~
paulgerhardt
We looked at various financial instruments and saw that cryptocurrency space
lacked a cash instrument. We realized with our background we could create one.
Cash is the dominant form of consumer payments (77% world wide!) and the move
to ban cash in various places disproportionately affects the underserved and
marginalized members of society - ostensibly the audience cryptocurrency is
trying to serve first. This is an effort to meet others with terms and
technology they are comfortable and familiar with.
------
etxm
I’ll tell you what, it looks really awesome. Kudos to the designers.
------
stanislavb
I'm curious, have you tried passing an airport border security with several of
these notes, and have you been asked what they are :)? Do you have to declare
them?
~~~
ccamrobertson
Yes, they look like a bunch of circuit boards under X-Ray, it's pretty cool.
We've travelled with "unloaded" Kong thus far (i.e. not backed by token). See
section 4.1 on minting in the paper.
Even so, we're unaware of any value to the Kong token independent from Kong
notes and we are not taking steps to list it on exchanges. If Kong was to
become a means of exchange somewhere then it might need to be declared as a
monetary instrument depending on the jurisdiction.
~~~
hadlock
How do they hold up in a saltwater environment? My feitan/yubikey U2F physical
tokens are developing rust/corrosion just being on my keychain and being
thrown in a drawer on my boat for a couple hours at a time. I2C leads +
saltwater environment seems like it may cause some problems.
~~~
ccamrobertson
I doubt this version would hold up well in a salt water environment. The chips
will ultimately have a conformal coating leaving only gold contacts which
should fare better.
We have considered more robust variants that would fully seal all the
components, but this is a v2 problem.
I should add that even a corroded chip should ultimately still be accessible;
you might have to pull it off of the bill and decap it.
~~~
sgarman
Do v1 people just not get to redeem their value in x years since they become
unreadable?
~~~
ccamrobertson
The secure element chip is pretty robust on its own. Even if most of the bill
is destroyed, it will be possible to communicate with the chip in most cases.
------
GordonS
So, I'm Scottish, and _still_ often have problems in London (and indeed
abroad!) when I hand over a Scottish bank note. Scotland and England are of
course both part of the UK, and while, yes, _technically_ Scottish bank notes
are not legal tender, they have been defacto legal tender since forever.
How do you plan to tackle this mentality, where there is such hostility to
anything in the _slightest_ bit unusual?
~~~
paulgerhardt
Embrace it?
Less cheekily, I think Kong like instruments when properly adapted could
capture the best parts of local currencies (like the Bristol Pound), the messy
parts of multi-governmental currencies (like the Scottish Pound), and the nice
bits of computer validation.
In your example specifically, the Royal Bank of Scotland can still mint
Scottish Pounds but back them on chain by UK pounds.
I'm of course hand-waiving the problems here - we've made a programmable
monetary instrument. One can program things well or badly to support this kind
of interoperability.
~~~
GordonS
Ach, while I might agree with some of your sentiment, I can't help but feel
it's unrealistic; yet I accept that attitude is part of the problem.
------
drudu
I hate crypto currency and I love this. It's a way to project all the insanely
bad parts of crypto (if you hold it you own it) into the physical world. If
general btc/eth transactions are a very very complex version of SWIFT this is
the same for paper money. I can buy coke with my bitcoins but I can't do a
cool in person coke buy with bitcoins(and/or ETH). Kong solves my problem.
~~~
zelly
> I can't do a cool in person coke buy with bitcoins
Why not? Each of you can have Bitcoin wallets on your phones. I'm sure coke
heads can figure out something to talk about for 10 minutes waiting for 1
confirmation.
~~~
drudu
The operative word was "cool".
------
rkagerer
Could you elaborate a little on how this is different or better than past
projects like BitBills?
Also what do you mean by "after a period of several years"?
~~~
paulgerhardt
For lack of an epistemological framework, we can call Kong a 4th generation
wallet. If you'll bear with me:
Paper Wallet were 1st gen - one couldn't guarantee the person giving you a
paper wallet didn't have two copies or kept a copy of the private key for
themselves. Probably ok for personal use assuming you trust your printer
firmware.
Hardware Wallets were 2nd gen - seed phrases made recovering from device loss
nice but again, seed phrases were designed to be exported and cant be used as
cash. They are very useful for other applications.
Java smart cards were 3rd gen - meant to be used as pre-paid gift cards but
again these were designed for banks who wanted to handle the key material in
software and have dangerous APIs for doing such[1].
Kong - uses a specific kind of secure element which allows for key generation
but not extraction. On chain contracts convert the R1 keys used by the chip to
K1 used by most cryptocurrencies today.
The paper goes in depth on this in section 2.3 [2]
[1]
[https://docs.oracle.com/javacard/3.0.5/api/javacard/security...](https://docs.oracle.com/javacard/3.0.5/api/javacard/security/DSAPrivateKey.html)
[2]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
~~~
userbinator
_Kong - uses a specific kind of secure element which allows for key generation
but not extraction_
In other words, just like almost every other smartcard (including EMV).
~~~
paulgerhardt
See section 2.2 in the whitepaper [1]. There is not an industry specific term
that succinctly captures these requirements. Secure element isn't ideal but
it's not an HSM or TPM. PUF's are a feature not a chip category. If it's
programmable, we don't want to touch it. That goes for most smart cards / java
cards. EMV cards specifically have 'get private key' API's which would not
work for this application.
[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
------
cryptocoder
Adding ‘secure’ to the name of some chip (“‘secure’ element”) does not
automatically make it secure through magical or other means.
~~~
ccamrobertson
Correct. It's an industry term for a class of chips.
------
tossAfterUsing
Kong seems worthless to me. ETH has demonstrated it's not a reliable store of
value, if the DAO hack can just be reversed.
Instead of garbage paper tokens, here's a thing that already exists:
... can be used just like cash
... isn't limited to a particular denomination
... value can be added at any time
... fits in your butt
[https://opendime.com/](https://opendime.com/)
~~~
ududhdhd
That thing obviously cannot be used just like cash. Jesus how fucking dumb are
you people
~~~
thanatos_dem
I downvoted you for this despite agreeing with you.
Since you have a brand new username, I’m going to give you the benefit of the
doubt and assume that you’re just new here and not intentionally trolling, and
explain why.
This community values neutral statements of fact, not vulgarities or arguments
of passion. As such, while your opinion may have merit, your presentation of
it is unlikely to get you far here.
Hope that helps you thrive in this community going forward.
\- than
------
sandGorgon
Monero has the concept of private view key and spend key. The view key only
lets you check balance without loss of privacy.
View keys can be printed as a mnemonic seed (a set of meaningless English
words).
Would printing of view keys mnemonic not be equivalent to this? With the added
advantage that printing is not centralized?
~~~
ccamrobertson
I don't know enough about Monero's construction; wouldn't this be trivial to
counterfeit? Can you use this key to ultimately transfer the funds?
~~~
sandGorgon
no - the view key does not let you do any transactions. It only lets you
verify the balances. It also does so in a privacy-preserving manner.
this is full text of a View Key
_A keypair specific to Monero. The public part of it makes up the 2nd half of
monero address, and is used by the sender to generate a one-time stealth
address to where the funds are actually sent. The owner of the wallet uses the
private view key to scan the blockchain and find the funds sent to his
address. At the protocol level, the sender performs an encryption with the
recipient 's public view key, and the recipient attempts to decrypt all the
outputs on the blockchain to find the one belonging to him (where decryption
was successful). For audit purposes, it could be shared with the auditor,
along with the signed key images to prove the balance of a wallet. Sharing
only the view key would enable the auditor only to see received transactions,
but he wouldn't be able to tell if any funds were spent, so he couldn't know
the actual balance._
In the trivial case that each kong is a wallet - a view key would actually
show the balance.
------
foobar_
Unless this is going to transfer ethercoins, this is a SCAM. They are trying
to build a bank on top of smartcoins. The functionality seems like that of a
promissory note. As they keep the kong coins in their kong bang ... they will
try to make money using the volatility or something.
~~~
paulgerhardt
The functionality is basically exactly like a promissory note. A big
difference is every note stores its face value token in its own smart
contract. The only thing which can claim the funds stored in that contract is
the key self-generated on the secure element. You can manually validate that
key was self-generated (and not say programmed on there by the manufacturer).
The paper [1] details all this. You can go and make your own using the code
we've released on etherscan and github[2].
It is completely unlike other things that have come before because it only
stores keys on the secure element and only stores code in the EVM.
We're putting this out there as proof of concept. We're selling a limited
number as validation of the idea and because we believe in shipping product in
a space notorious for shipping vaporware. There is no ICO. It is technology
demonstration first and foremost.
[1]
[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5Ks...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRNRCocj4PwKMXrd1jeUGw7ASQSuEk7BDJu5KsGuWBXAX)
[2] [https://github.com/kong-org/defi_hackathon](https://github.com/kong-
org/defi_hackathon)
------
Aeolun
I honestly don’t care about the whole crypto part of this. I just see someone
selling funky banknotes and I’m going to hold onto them in the vain hope that
I’ll someday run into someone that’s done the same thing.
------
wesleyfsmith
If someone could pull this idea off--or a similar idea around physical cash it
could be a huge boon in countries like Venezuela that are primarily cash based
still but the local currency is very weak.
~~~
notahacker
Or they could use dollar bills, which unlike Kong, are redeemable for goods
and services because hundreds of millions of people want them to pay bills,
debts and taxes.
------
drudu
All the downsides of cryptocurrency and paper money rolled into a banknote
that can be break. Imagine if a large bill could become worthless since a
little chip inside got hit by a stray cosmic ray.
------
oarabbus_
My personal sentiment is one of the most powerful use-cases for crypto is
transmitting money to people across the globe within (minutes/hours). It seems
this physical crypto lacks that feature.
------
Shengbo
I like the idea of fancy cyberpunk cash but I feel like in the real world I'd
be getting the worst of both worlds if I tried to use cash thats also a
cryptocurrency.
------
fiatjaf
This is just a fancy [https://opendime.com/](https://opendime.com/) with its
own shitcoin instead of Bitcoin.
------
sansnomme
Governments do not like this. See: Liberty Dollar
------
spir
Have you guys considered decoupling your physical cash technology from the
underlying token?
Physical DAI or ETH would be most excellent.
~~~
ccamrobertson
Yes; DAI is a bit of an odd one since it's largely just a more expensive
dollar bill, but there definitely some cases where this could be interesting.
ETH would easily work too.
------
hypewatch
“Physical Cryptocurrency” sounds a lot like a “physical social network” to me.
Isn’t this effectively cash?
------
dtemkin
Not sure if this is a common problem but their contact link just dumps you to
the gmail 'about' page.
~~~
idigit
It's a "mailto" link, so it just opens up your default email app.
------
WikipediasBad
This is a fantastic project and great idea! One thing, I believe there are 2
hurdles to adoption: Kong - the unit of account/currency and Kong - the paper
money. Don't you think you're trying to do 2 things at once? Why not try this
unique technology with Dai or Tether which has a lot of traction? In fact, I
would LOVE to have Dai bills.
~~~
paulgerhardt
We've discussed this. It was a bit lower risk to validate the hardware works
with a new token than the additional complexity of Dai. A lot of other
challenges there too but we're a small team.
~~~
WikipediasBad
Sounds fair. I really like the technology though and think you guys have the
most unique take on paper crypto so if the actual token itself becomes a
barrier to adoption due to volatility/stability (which is a leading reason why
stablecoins are all the rage right now - as I'm sure you guys are aware), you
guys can license out the tech or produce bills for Tether, Dai, USDC, and
other high traction stablecoins. Our small stablecoin team (releasing product
Q1) would be interested ourselves if we were to ever get into the 9 figure
market cap range.
------
seibelj
A really cool experiment that made me think. Thanks for making this, very
cool!
------
dmitrygr
This seems like a _VERY_ cool technical solution in a desperate and fruitless
search of a problem.
> _They consist of a flexible circuit board, specialized secure element chips
> and an independent NFC interface capable of powering the secure element.
> Each secure element stores an internally-generated ECDSA key pair that is
> associated with a unique smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain_
Who wants bills that cost $3 ea, and are not likely to survive a wash?
> _flexible circuit board_
FPC != "meant to be constantly flexed". Most are not designed for a certain
(not small) bend radius and to be bent no more than a dozen times. They are
more meant to be curved once into a particular shape than to be constantly
bent.
> _I2C, raspberry pi connector_
That will do great with dry pockets and ESD
> _raspberry pi connector_
tiny holes, so your notes can catch on your keys and any other thin sharp
object in your pocket
~~~
ebg13
> _Who wants bills that ... are not likely to survive a wash?_
Americans are already used to this.
~~~
dmitrygr
I have washed $20 bills in my washing machine (by accident) a number of times
with no ill effect
------
lazzlazzlazz
Is Kong stabilized/a stablecoin or is it a commodity-style asset?
~~~
ccamrobertson
No, there is nothing backing the Kong token. See section 4 in the paper for
more of a discussion on the token issuance.
We considered various stablecoin constructions, but most of them effectively
pin to fiat which (1) seems to defeat the original intent of cryptocurrencies
(i.e. think back to 2009) as not subject to the whims of central banks and (2)
seems to just duplicate fiat currencies in a more expensive format.
Likewise we are doubtful that most folks holding BTC/ETH/etc. would actually
be willing to spend it on something, vs. just continue to hodl in a cooler
format.
~~~
lazzlazzlazz
You mentioned two stablecoin methods, but not the interesting and somewhat
successful MakerDAO approach. What do you think about that?
------
jcoffland
What's to stop someone from passing many duplicate notes?
------
lockit
How does this work? Is the first 2,500 part of your own ICO?
~~~
ccamrobertson
There is no ICO.
We're selling packs of Kong in a limited fashion to cover the costs of
manufacturing the hardware. We have a limited number of units available so
we're slowly opening up sales to our mailing list.
Take a look at sections 4.2 and 4.3 of the paper for information on our
lockdrop; this is the only other way to get Kong token. Lockdrops are a novel
means of distributing token based on opportunity cost rather than selling the
token.
~~~
luminiferous
Just to clarify, that means that I would need to 1.) purchase some packs of
Kong, which are unloaded, and then 2.) participate in a lockdrop to gain the
tokens with which to load the Kong? Seems fine and dandy wrt the acquisition
of bills, but how will adoption by vendors happen?
------
jangid
Counterfeiting will be difficult. That's for sure.
------
advisedwang
Does this mean someone needs to verify every banknote handed over to them? If
not, what's to stop me giving people unloaded notes and them assuming they
have face-value?
~~~
paulgerhardt
The imagined usability is like cash. Low denominations notes are glanced at to
sure they're intact, high denomination notes are scrutinized more closely. The
difference is one can validate these notes with a cryptographic operation
rather than a highlighter.
~~~
jiofih
Online validation dissolves you’re anonymity value proposition instantly.
Bank notes are recognized as a financial instrument by the government, and
have the accompanying legal repercussions to counterfeiting. I expect no such
strictness being applied to a private digital token, what exactly de-
incentivized someone from going crazy counterfeiting notes? Especially
considering their transactions would be anonymous too?
~~~
ccamrobertson
You could cache a list of existing notes directly from an Ethereum node for
offline verification; this cached information would work for verification
until the claim date in the smart contract.
Correct, there is no secret service that will remove counterfeit Kong which is
why you should verify it yourself or only accept it from parties you trust and
have attested to previously verifying it. Habits around verification would
likely be governed by the prevalence of counterfeits in a local money supply.
If I hear about a bunch of 1 Kong notes failing to verify as counterfeit, then
I'll likely verify every 1 Kong note before acceptance.
------
Twixes
I don't believe this will ever gain traction without a government to back you
but I've got to say, the design of these notes is amazing.
------
kristianc
So physical Kong notes collateralized by ... digital Kong tokens? Don’t see
how that could possibly go wrong. It’s Kong tokens all the way down.
------
mc3
Kong? I'll stick to Dong, thanks.
------
dav43
I should start a currency too
------
wiggler00m
Who is behind this project?
------
sabujp
these are basically like debit cards with fixed cash on them
------
jitl
Still too confusimg.
------
smashah
Vaporcash
------
arcticbull
You can actually obtain something like this by going to your bank and asking
for a roll of quarters.
------
myrloc
Why limit the bill faces to Western philosophers? Seems like a more
international approach is appropriate for both end-user adoption and the
crypto space in general. Edit: or are they all Greek gods?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Powering the Cell, Mitochondria - stunning new animation - hfinney
http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/
======
hfinney
Here is possibly a better link:
<http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_mitochondria.html>
This is a sequel to the Inner Life of a Cell animation that came out a few
years ago. It shows what happens inside the mitochondria, which supply power
to the cell.
A brief explanation:
We see a snake-like molecule go through a couple of holes. This is an unfolded
protein molecule and demonstrates that mitochondria mostly don't make their
own proteins, they have to be imported. Mitochondria have an inner and an
outer membrane so it has to go through two layers.
We follow it through the inner membrane and see the glory of the mitochondrial
interior. We zoom past (and through) a bunch of proteins that are involved in
oxidizing fuel molecules. There's a double helix DNA in the corner to remind
us that mitochondria do synthesize some of their own proteins.
We next zoom in on a piece of the inner membrane. studded with protein
complexes and surrounded by glowing molecules. Note that some of the proteins
have their bottom part spinning - these are ATP synthase, one of the most
amazing of proteins.
[Out of time now, will write more later...]
------
jared314
Direct Link (because the video did not work for me on the website):
[http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/Video/Mitochondria_480p.mo...](http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/Video/Mitochondria_480p.mov)
------
erikpukinskis
This would be insanely more useful if they would just put a few captions in.
It's really inspiring to look at, but how do I find out more? Search Google
for "the cool molecule in the harvard mitochondria animation that changes the
three bump blue thingies into the four bump glowing thingies"??
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A very creative 404 - zuu
http://www.nosh.me/404
======
ColinWright
Discussion on an earlier submission:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2835820>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DOS vulnerability in Silverlight 5s 3D (similar to WebGL DOS vulnerability) - patrickaljord
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/676134/dos-vulnerability-in-silverlight-5s-3d-similar-to-webgl-dos-vulnerability
======
kkowalczyk
I'm glad that someone demonstrated Microsoft's FUD and their double-standards
for security with a simple bit of code.
Even if Microsoft fixes this particular issue, they either can't fix every
possible variation or the same techniques that make this fixable can be used
to fix it in WebGL.
As long as you can send an arbitrary shader (which is essentially a small
piece of executable code that GPU executes) to a GPU, you can overload the
GPU. This capability is available in WebGL, Silverlight 5 and Flash.
You don't want to remove this capability, because it's the core reason GPUs
can do some things so much faster than a CPU.
You can try to sanitize shaders as much as possible (and I'm sure both
Silverlight and WebGL implementation will do their best) but it's not even
theoretically possible to decide a time complexity of arbitrary assembly code.
Writing code is about features vs. risk trade offs. Microsoft clearly has
decided that the risks are acceptable for Silverlight but somehow the same
category of risks is not acceptable for WebGL.
And if you ask me, I agree with WebGL folks and the Silverlight part of
Microsoft. The worst that can happen is slowing down your computer. This is an
annoyance but also an issue we encounter daily: both my Mac and Windows
software, including the OSes, crash and misbehave rather regularly. I accept
that because the annoyance that it causes is much less important than my
desire to use the software.
It's also an annoyance that can be generated with technologies that already
are part of the browser. A web page can exhaust any computer's memory (causing
swapping) but sending arbitrarily large images. It's easy to write JavaScript
that will eat CPU cycles. It's easy to DOS a browser by creating arbitrarily
complex DOM and update it frequently enough. All those issues can be mitigated
by browser implementors but none of them can really be fixed. And yet we
happily use the internet and we'll happily keep using it after WebGL is
implemented.
~~~
daeken
From a security perspective, a shader-based DoS is annoying, but not a _huge_
issue. Arbitrary code execution, potentially in the kernel, is. There are just
too many moving pieces, too many un/poorly-tested components, and too little
standing between a webpage and the kernel for my liking. While I want WebGL to
become huge (I really dig it), from a security standpoint I simply can't
support it in its current incarnation, and won't for a long while most likely.
That said, these are not inherent design flaws, just realities of the stack
it's on.
~~~
magicalist
shaders are not arbitrary code nor are they executed in the kernel. the same
goes with API calls. while opening APIs to new parts of a system always
exposes new risks, specious reasoning is not sufficient to determine if the
risks are manageable and mitigable.
notice that khronos and the webgl implementers have not responded with
content-less dismissals of these concerns. they have outlined the exact steps
they've taken to secure their API from the limits of the GPU model _and_ their
work to prevent buggy GPUs/drivers from executing webgl content at all. If
someone can actually demonstrate (or even speculate on a mechanism of action
of) an actual attack that isn't addressed by their current systems or (in the
case of DoS attacks) their ongoing work with OS and GPU vendors, _then_ we can
talk about fundamentally flawed. Until then it's a matter of risk assessment.
~~~
daeken
I never said that shaders are arbitrary code or that they're executed in the
kernel. WebGL in general opens up a huge attack surface, however, much of
which _is_ in the kernel. As soon as WebGL hit Webkit, I started testing it
for two reasons: 1) I do 3d art, and 2) I work in security. I understand the
systems involved quite well, and I'm still very concerned about it.
------
bjacob
They closed my bug as "fixed" but didn't give any details. I'll have a look at
it again when the next beta / final build of silverlight 5 comes out. In the
WebGL WG we are very confident that this can't be fixed without working with
GPU vendors on new robustness features in the drivers.
~~~
kenjackson
This seems like an odd way to go about doing an open standard. Don't you
usually want to let vendors work on getting things working and then come back
and standardize based on best practices?
It would seem like the WG should work with MS and Adobe to get Silverlight and
Flash working really well. Get it out in peoples hands for a year or two. And
then come back and say, "OK, we generally get 3D on the web now. Now lets
standardize it."
It really feels like this WG is in a race to hurry to get _something_ out the
door as fast as possible.
~~~
kkowalczyk
It seems to me the guy who reported the issue to Microsoft is doing the only
thing that he can effectively do to help them.
WebGL is a standard developed in an open way. If someone wants to contribute,
including Microsoft, they can send an e-mail to a mailing list and that will
reach other people working on WebGL and hopefully a productive conversation
would ensue.
Microsoft choose not to do that. Instead they issued a blanket statement to
the whole world that WebGL is insecure. They made no effort to improve the
security of WebGL and didn't leave any opening for the discussion. They just
communicated a decision.
Silverlight or IE engineers are not easily reachable and cannot be engaged in
an open, technical dialogue the way WebGL folks can.
The only venue that Microsoft provides to give feedback and bug reports is
their connect website. This is the venue that Benoit used because it was the
only venue available to him, as an individual.
No one, including WebGL engineers, has special powers to engage Microsoft in
discussion about their products. No one needs special powers to engage WebGL
folks in discussion about WebGL. So you really have your power structure
backwards.
Notice also how this bug report is constructive: it shows a specific problem
that Microsoft can fix.
Notice how Microsoft's FUD wasn't constructive: they just labeled WebGL
insecure using non-specific (therefore non-fixable) arguments.
~~~
tptacek
_The only venue that Microsoft provides to give feedback and bug reports is
their connect website. This is the venue that Benoit used because it was the
only venue available to him, as an individual._
That's not at all true, is it?
<http://www.microsoft.com/security/msrc/report.aspx>
~~~
yuhong
MSRC is generally used to report security bugs for released products only.
They do now patch some prerelease products, though.
~~~
marshray
Microsoft even started a branch for researching (and methodically disclosing)
bugs in _other_ vendors products.
<https://twitter.com/k8em0/status/83302574681374721>
This makes sense when you think about it. They likely get the crash dumps from
Mozilla's beta testers too. They definitely have a better handle on
determining their exploitability.
Nobody has more experience with video driver bugs than Microsoft.
------
AshleysBrain
Hehe... made me smile... but isn't this just Mozilla people winding up
Microsoft? It makes a pretty big point of "just like WebGL". I doubt this will
make Microsoft say "oh look they were right about WebGL, we'd better implement
it now". Everyone knows Microsoft want to promote DirectX over OpenGL, and the
legitimate-but-not-unsolvable security issues in WebGL serve as a nice excuse.
~~~
mmastrac
This is more than just a wind-up: it shows that Microsoft can't attack WebGL
on one hand and push Silverlight w/shaders on the other. This puts pressure on
them to come up with a consistent message.
~~~
kenjackson
Except MS says this is fixed in SL.
------
zandorg
I read it as 'MS DOS' and thought it was backward-compatibility gone rogue.
~~~
IvarTJ
It is surprising how excited people are with the IOS operating system.
------
bonch
From the article:
_"DoS mitigations are implemented in current internal builds and will ship
with Silverlight 5 RTM." - Microsoft_
This issue is already addressed. It's a non-issue being drummed up by
Microsoft competitors. Even John Carmack agrees with Microsoft about WebGL.
~~~
SigmundA
Then address it in WebGL in IE right? Or no just don't implement the
standard...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pirate Bay Founder Remains In Custody - w1ntermute
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-remains-locked-up-without-charges-120930/
======
Peer
Typical sensational TorrentFreak article. This is normal procedure in Swedish
courts. The Swedish legal system is different and what would be called
"charged" comes much later in the legal process. He's currently häktad[1]
which is stopping him from destroying evidence or leaving the country, like he
did previously when he fled to Cambodia.
1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_(detention)#H.C3.A4ktnin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remand_\(detention\)#H.C3.A4ktning_.28Swedish_law.29)
~~~
Karunamon
Wow, this is actually a pretty sensible arrangement.
_A person who was häktad but was not charged (or was freed after trial) is
entitled to financial compensation, with an amount determined by the
Chancellor of Justice. It is usually around 500 SEK (US$80) per day for the
suffering, somewhat more if there was media attention, plus compensation for
lost work income. 1200 people were compensated in 2007.[10] If the prisoner is
sentenced, the time as häktad counts as a part of the prison time, so that
less time will remain after the trial._
------
jws
As is allowed by Swedish law, not unusual, and approved by the district court.
They can even extend it to a month if they need to.
~~~
unreal37
The article says it was originally extended by two weeks, and then recently
extended again by another two weeks. Can they extend it more?
~~~
mongol
This comment on Reddit describes it better than I can:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10pivx/pirate_ba...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10pivx/pirate_bay_founder_remains_locked_up_without/c6fkuji)
------
benologist
Rabble rabble rabble!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ValidatorJS/A quick validator implementation - pharzan
https://github.com/pharzan/validatorJS
======
brudgers
If it meets the guidelines and want feedback, this might make a good "Show
HN".
Guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UFO: A Drone/UAV Programming Library for Rust - formalsystem
https://github.com/ajmwagar/ufo
======
bri3d
Is anyone working on flight controllers in Rust? Now that the STM targets are
maturing it seems like a perfect target. I can only find stub projects and
blog posts right now.
~~~
blt
A low level flight controller needs only statically allocated memory, so one
of the main benefits of Rust is irrelevant. The syntax is still nice though.
~~~
bluejekyll
> so one of the main benefits of Rust is irrelevant
Not sure what you mean with this comment. Even in a context like this, Rust
has a lot of safety benefits, but yes you don't have access to the stdlib, and
are restricted to core.
~~~
perennate
I think parent meant "one of the main benefits" = safety not as useful because
anyway no dynamic allocations are needed to implement a basic flight control
algorithm.
~~~
bluejekyll
It also helps with other references, shared mutability, UB, etc.
Allocation and deallocation focuses on small sliver of safety, but yes, That’s
not a concern in that context.
------
impostir
Seems cool, especially since I know nothing about programming drones. I was
glancing through the code, and ibwas wondering if there was particular reason
you split flight commands into UDP and camera controls into TCP. As I said I
know nothing about drone programming, sorry if it is obvious.
~~~
saidinesh5
Hi, Not the maintainer of the above library, but this seems similar to a
reverse engineered library for a couple of other chinese wifi quads.
Someone created a chrome app for their specific model a couple of years ago,
and their notes are available here [1]:
> The commands are simple 8 byte packets sent continuously over UDP.
> The drone creates an unprotected wireless network and streams live video to
> an android or ios app named 'RC-Leading' (there are dozens of near-identical
> apps from the manufacturer)
> The drone's IP is always 172.16.10.1
> I've captured the communications between the drone and app and there seems
> to be several rounds of back and forth of ~100 bytes worth of non-
> intelligible data over the TCP 8888 port before the video streaming begins
> (I assume this is some kind of app level handshaking)
> It streams unencrypted video over TCP port 8888 (I can view video frame info
> using ffprobe on captured packets)
There was a similar hackaday project for this [2] and some of their notes are
at [3]:
1)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HowToHack/comments/4512il/how_to_ha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/HowToHack/comments/4512il/how_to_hack_ip_camera_in_toy_drone/)
2) [https://hackaday.io/project/56102-reverse-engineering-a-
dron...](https://hackaday.io/project/56102-reverse-engineering-a-drone)
3) [https://steemit.com/drone/@highonapples/reverse-
engineering-...](https://steemit.com/drone/@highonapples/reverse-engineering-
a-drone-from-amazon-to-make-it-programmable)
(edited for formatting)
------
ada1981
This is awesome!
If anyone is interested in the software side of things, we have a fabrication
team and facility in the Pittsburgh area (proximity to CMU) right near an
airport. Early stage exploration of building personal transport drones.
Looking into a cooperative / holocracy type model. We could use some strong
engineers in our group!
------
leafario2
What hardware is required for this?
~~~
bri3d
As the README indicates, this is a networking client library to control JJRC
H61 drones over their built-in network control protocol, with the goal
apparently being to abstract over the control protocol for a variety of
drones.
------
erdleerdle
would love to talk to anyone that is big into drones and video. live streams
of builds, etc.
~~~
copterust
here is our old video of maiden flight
[https://twitter.com/copterust/status/1024724881680867328](https://twitter.com/copterust/status/1024724881680867328)
------
ingenieroariel
Does it work with the 3dr solo?
~~~
kam
No, but [https://github.com/3drobotics/rust-
mavlink](https://github.com/3drobotics/rust-mavlink) would. The enterprise
version of Solo actually ships with a Rust app running on the onboard computer
for camera control, which uses rust-mavlink to talk to the autopilot.
~~~
ingenieroariel
thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Zealand glaciers turn brown from Australian bushfires' smoke, ash and dust - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/02/new-zealand-glaciers-turn-brown-from-australian-bushfires-smoke-ash-and-dust
======
rbanffy
Can they expect floods from the decreased albedo?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best place for a professional to get a computer science degree? - alexrbarlow
I've been working professionally for about 6 years in Ruby, iOS and UNIX but I never attained a degree.<p>Recently I've been wondering if anywhere does good ones online that I could do in my spare time or whether it's even a good idea?<p>Specifically being a UK resident I'd mainly like one to more easily attain a H-1B visa but also to perhaps go over some of the deeper concepts again.
======
SEJeff
Well you could learn a lot of the underlying concepts yourself first. It would
only help you professionally. If you want to get into some C++, I _strongly_
recommend Robert Sedgewick's[1] entire set of algorithmic books
Note: I've been doing 'nix/python/perl for about 7 years professionally and
also don't have a degree. I've actually been using the Khan Academy to re-
learn some of the more advanced Algebra and Calculus bits I forgot a little
bit each night for the past few weeks. When I'm done, I'll likely find a
college that will do night school CS. Not because I need it, but because I
want to have a degree. Having used Linux as my primary operating system
fulltime for the past 12 years, I can honestly say I could teach just about
any of the Linux/Unix classes. But it is good to have accomplished something.
[1] [http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rs/) and
[http://www.amazon.com/Robert-
Sedgewick/e/B000AQ4JCO](http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Sedgewick/e/B000AQ4JCO)
------
hackerboos
UK/EU citizen?
If so bite the bullet and go full time to a decent university. Many will take
your professional experience in lieu of academic credentials.
Contact the admissions departments at your chosen institution to find out if
you qualify before applying through UCAS.
Any STEM degree can lead to a H1-B visa provided you can find an employer.
------
cblock811
What specifically do you want to get out of a CS degree? Do you want to focus
on general cs or have a specialization?
------
Bob90001
CSUN has a good program.
Edit: That's California State University, Northridge (Los Angeles County, CA -
USA).
Here's their Computer Science department website:
[http://www.csun.edu/engineering-computer-science/computer-
sc...](http://www.csun.edu/engineering-computer-science/computer-science)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Try node.js in the browser - MeProtozoan
http://jsapp.us/#!
======
anatoly
I hope someone does "Try Javascript in the browser".
------
tomjen3
anybody using node for their startup? I am not sure if it works for larger
projects, but that opinion may well be tainted by my dislike of javascript.
~~~
simonw
We have some Node.js code (not yet in production) for <http://lanyrd.com/> for
interacting with the Twitter streaming API.
My personal philosophy with Node.js is to use it for small, standalone network
servers that complement the rest of my stack - basically anything that needs
to handle large amounts of I/O. Everything I've written with Node.js so far
has been just a few hundred lines of code.
So for templating, database interaction and so on I'll keep using Django. I'll
use Node for stuff like comet/WebSocket pubsub services, handling file
uploads, rate limiting API proxies, webhook dispatching, interacting with slow
or streaming external web APIs, etc.
GitHub are using Node in this way at the moment:
[https://github.com/blog/678-meet-nodeload-the-new-
download-s...](https://github.com/blog/678-meet-nodeload-the-new-download-
server)
~~~
andrewcamel
Why is it good to use for large amounts of I/O? I'm in the process of making a
twitter-based app and I'm debating whether or not I should be using Python /
Django.
------
tamberg
Nice! Have been waiting for that since the tragic loss of AppJet. Do you plan
to provide some sort of paid hosting in order to prevent going broke due to
hosting cost?
~~~
mehi
AppJet is being hosted at <http://apps.jgate.de/>.
We also launched Erbix a few days ago: <http://www.erbix.com>
<http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1938066>
------
antimatter15
Sadly, it doesn't look like it comes with socket.io, but I just hacked
together <http://testing.jsapp.us/> which is a sort of real-time visitor
counter.
------
andrewcamel
Thanks to matthewfl (<http://twitter.com/#!/matthewfl>) for putting the time
in to make this. It's really useful for someone who wants to experiment with
node.js.
------
cmelbye
Very cool idea, but is it so hard to add _body { font-family: sans-serif; }_
(replace "sans-serif" with your favorite font if necessary) to your CSS?
------
sh1mmer
It's not really "in" the browser. It's more try Node.js using the browser.
That said, they've done a sterling job of it.
------
obsessive1
This looks great, gives me a good excuse to start experimenting with node.js
------
gorm
Very cool! Would love to learn some more on how this was done?
~~~
ammmir
i'm not sure how these guys did it, but one could do a similar setup. one of
the issues to overcome is availability of ports. since most apps will listen
on port 80, you can use the HTTP Host header to virtual host instances. a
reverse proxy can be set up at nnn.jsapp.us, look up the nnn and get an
IP:port of which (internal) node instance to pass the request to. you could
internally use UNIX domain sockets so there wouldn't be a need to worry about
TCP sockets, but your frontend proxy needs to be smart about this.
thus nnn.jsapp.us can be mapped to a single IP address. things get more tricky
if you allow people to host arbitrary TCP servers that aren't reverse-proxy
friendly. the jsapp.us implementation seems to ignore a port argument to
listen(), which seems reasonable.
the jsapp.us implementation seems to be able to keep multiple node instances
running. obviously, if more and more people start hitting the server with
their apps, this could lead to resource starvation. they probably have a
clever way of not keeping the node instances sitting idle. if a particular
nnn.jsapp.us host exists and the node instance isn't up, start it on the first
"cold" request to that host. this allows the service to keep only those
instances up and running that have had recent requests. or maybe they shut
down a user's instances only when they log out or close the editor page?
that's my take on it. someone (maybe the jsapp.us guys?) should put together
an all-in-one node.js hosting service that has a nice web-based editor based
on Bespin or Cloud9 IDE and integrates node-inspector for an awesome remote
debugging experience.
------
asymmetric
nice to see bespin used in the wild, and for such a cool project too!
~~~
unwiredben
At HP Palm, we're using Bespin as the editor for our Ares code environment for
building webOS apps. See <http://ares.palm.com/Ares/>
------
giantsquid
ctrl-b pulls up my bookmarks, not run the code. Does it work for anybody else?
~~~
NathanKP
It works in Safari, but that's because the Safari command for bookmarks is
Option+Command+B
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Doctor Diagnosed His Own Cancer with an iPhone Ultrasound - agrothberg
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609195/this-doctor-diagnosed-his-own-cancer-with-an-iphone-ultrasound/
======
nicodjimenez
Congrats to the Butterfly team! Amazing team and amazing product. Really
excited to see the impact on the medical profession.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
17 Layouts Almost Used for Phone Buttons - shawkinaw
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/the-17-designs-that-bell-almost-used-for-the-layout-of-telephone-buttons/279237/
======
CrunchyJams
A friend of mine recently brought up the idea of a curved smartphone design to
maximize thumb reach. My head nearly imploded imagining interface development
for that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the Apple Watch Ejects Water in Slow Mo - vladoh
https://youtu.be/EIEwy8rPik4
======
OtterGauze
I have reservations about Apple, but ill never deny that their product
engineering for both the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch continue to impress me.
Now if only they could get engineering like this into the Macbook line,
because that's easily the worst product they sell for engineering.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hunch Hasn't a Clue About My Intentions - cyunker
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=556&doc_id=189349
======
bhattisatish
To me hunch is not a recommendation system. To me it seems to be more of a
data collector. I have a strong feeling they are just collecting the data
generated by us and re-selling it, but pretending at the same time to
'recommend' something. A con job is all I can think.
------
angelbob
On the one hand, he has a good point buried in there: Hunch doesn't collect
enough useful information, and it doesn't do a great job with it. Fair enough.
However, his basic hostility to the idea of recommendations coming from a
machine seems misplaced. Presumably he's not out there railing against Amazon
and NetFlix recommending books and movies to all of us... And they actually do
a pretty good job.
Overall, a very poorly written article. Yes, yes, you'd like several semi-
elite celebrities of Silicon Valley to do a better job with $12 million. And
I'd like a pony.
~~~
rdl
Fundamentally bayesian antispam, netflix, and amazon all win because they
generate recommendations as a side effect of user actions (ideally "what they
buy/watch", but even just marking things with stars or tags). Hunch is a
failure because it tries to get users to explicitly generate recommendations.
Humans are unreliable self-reporters.
------
pclark
it's amusing how he calls Hunch the "la crème de la creme of Silicon Valley"
despite them being in New York. Heh :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China Hints at Use of Force in Hong Kong and Says U.S. Is Undermining Stability - hker
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/world/asia/china-military-hong-kong-taiwan-protests.html
======
geowwy
I always think it's better to go back to the original source material, so
here's the white paper mentioned:
[http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/07/24/content...](http://english.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2019/07/24/content_281476780919912.htm)
The basic message seems to be:
• As China and other countries develop, the world is shifting from unipolar
model to a multipolar one.
• The US is doubling down on unipolarity.
• China is doubling down on multipolarity.
~~~
Agustus
Absolutely not. China is doubling down on becoming the unipolarity. No where
do they go that they do not perform the same sausage tactics as the Soviets.
The question becomes, like in all non capitalistic environments, can they
succeed before their debts get to them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Self-Feeding Robots: Robots that Plug Themselves Into Wall Outlets - pufuwozu
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/01/03/self-feeding-robots-robots-plug-themselves-wall-outlets
======
pufuwozu
I am impressed that Intel has used the <http://ros.org/> stack to offload a
lot of the work. I think it shows that open-source in robotics is a great
thing!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Subsets and Splits