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BrowserLab - Cross-Browser Testing - nreece
https://browserlab.adobe.com
======
mahmud
discussion here <http://browserlab.adobe.com/>
flagged.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What metaprogrammable language do you/would like to use? - karmakaze
Like many folks here, I probably spend too much time reading about, trying and contemplate using many new languages. The (overlapping) paradigms that interest me are metaprogramming, functional, and (newer) statically-typed. I decided to focus only on metaprogrammable ones from now on (as a time saver and to step up).<p>I made a list and ordered them by how much I would be interested in using them (which combines my curiosity with current/expected adoption).<p>My short-list for metaprogrammable ones are:<p><pre><code> Clojure
Elixir
Nim
Crystal
Rust (would be higher if I did more low-level work)
Pony
</code></pre>
I left most other functional ones off my list because that's an exploration in itself for another time. I was surprised that I put Clojure and Elixir first given my preference for static types. Of all the kitchen-sink features that Nim has, I can't accept camelCased == under_scored names otherwise it could have been first. Ruby is notably absent as I use it and am looking for something better/different.<p>For future adoption, I think interoperability is a key factor, whether it's with C or in a VM runtime (e.g. JVM, CLR, BEAM, v8).<p>Which metaprogrammable language do you use or are most interested in using? How compact are your programs (i.e. how extensive do you metaprogram)?
======
pella
I just add "Julia" for this list;
Ideal for Scientific computing. ( LLVM based; Optionally typed; Dynamic )
[https://julialang.org/](https://julialang.org/)
[https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/index.html](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/index.html)
Julia Metaprogramming:
[https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/metaprogramming/inde...](https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/metaprogramming/index.html)
Julia: "Building a Language and Compiler for Machine Learning" ( compiling to
GPU; TPU )
[https://julialang.org/blog/2018/12/ml-language-
compiler](https://julialang.org/blog/2018/12/ml-language-compiler)
"Why Does Julia Work So Well?"
[https://ucidatascienceinitiative.github.io/IntroToJulia/Html...](https://ucidatascienceinitiative.github.io/IntroToJulia/Html/WhyJulia)
( _" Core Idea: Multiple Dispatch + Type Stability => Speed + Readability"_ )
~~~
celrod
I'd like to say I'm a huge fan of Julia, and don't have much experience with
metaprogramming in other languages.
I'm sure I do more of this than necessary, but much of my code ends up being
"generated functions".
@generated foo(x, y) ... end
When you write an `@generated` function, you write code that creates a Julia
expression. Using "x" and "y" in the function give you the types of these
arguments. Defining parametric structs lets you pass any information you want
(eg, array sizes) to specialize code and algorithms.
A very useful library:
[https://github.com/MikeInnes/MacroTools.jl](https://github.com/MikeInnes/MacroTools.jl)
~~~
FridgeSeal
Mike Innes produces so many cool Julia libraries!
Flux is easily the coolest ML framework I’ve used, and I’ve just discovered
Lazy.jl.
------
sametmax
Python has way more metaprogramming capabilities than people think.
Of course you can intercept pretty much anything with __dunder__methods
(attribute missing, method access, instantiation, etc), you have full
instrospection of pretty much anything (functions, objects, modules, call
stacks...) and you also have monkey patching, decorators, metaclasses,
bytecode injection...
But while we are far away from Lisp based languages, import hooks give you
access to the ast of any module, and allow to use your own parser, before the
result is loaded, to decide what to return. Which means you can pretty much
make your own syntax and import it like a regular module.
However, the reason those tools are not very well known is that the community
regards magic as dangerous as it is powerful, and everybody agrees on using it
sparingly.
Hence the only popular libs that use a lot of magic are ORM (lot of
metaclasses, dunders, etc) and test libs (monkey patching, bytecode injection,
ast parsing), but not a lot more. I don't know of any popular lib that
actually uses the import hooks to create a DSL.
~~~
mark_l_watson
The Hy language (HyLang) is a good example of this. A lisp syntax to
transformed to an AST that is executed as Python is. Hy is an interesting
project and a good bet if you really want to use Keras and TensorFlow in a
Lisp language.
------
phoe-krk
I use Common Lisp for its really insane metaprogrammability (reader macros,
compiler macros, ordinary macros, and the MOP to edit the object system) and
the ability to bend to the problem that I am trying to solve. It has decent
interoperability via its CFFI interface.
------
narimiran
> _Of all the kitchen-sink features that Nim has, I can 't accept camelCased
> == under_scored names otherwise it could have been first._
Just to clarify for the general public (because this is often a source of
confusion and misunderstandings): first letters are case-sensitive in Nim, so
you can do `var car: Car` (where `car` is a name of the variable, and `Car` is
a type).
When it comes to style-insensitivity, I also thought this would be a problem
when I discovered Nim, but now—2 years later—there was not even _one_
situation where that would cause a problem. (And if you use different styles
of the same name to mean different things in other languages: this will bite
you sooner or later)
Nim's standard library is written uniformly in camelCase style, which is what
I also accepted for my code (even though I come from snake_cased Python).
So why this even exists? To make easier to use libraries written (in another
language, e.g. C) in another style, while keeping the uniform style in your
code. Basically, this feature makes it _easier_ to use just one style
consistently.
To conclude:
If this is the only (or just a major) thing that keeps you from using Nim: I
would suggest you to reconsider and give it a chance.
~~~
karmakaze
I don't see how this is required for one drop and if that's the use case, it
sho_uLd only be used there and not everywhere. It makes it harder for tooling
and for searching for all references. Inconvenient, like spaces in filenames.
~~~
nimmer
One of the main benefits is in wrapper libraries for C. Another one is using
libraries that have a naming style that I don't like.
Searching for names is not a problem as people don't mix different styles
within the same project. Also there's nimgrep for this.
Finally, getting a compiler error when I try to use variables called
should_run and shouldrun in the same scope is a feature, not a bug: it
encourage using less misleading names.
~~~
karmakaze
If it treated 'same scope' to mean something more like a module (i.e.
library), that would be better.
Also, it should never consider hell_owl and hello_w_l to be the same, although
each could match hellOwl and helloWL. Basically it takes the style-
insensitivity too far.
~~~
nimmer
And yet, after using Nim for many years hell_owl == hello_w_l has never been a
problem. Again, it warned me in few occasions when I tried using confusing
names like new_dir and newdir.
There are style guides and nimpretty to help further.
------
avichalp
If you are asking about learning metaprogramming as a paradigm I would rather
suggest Racket. Lisps are famous for their metaprogramming capabilities and
you have Clojure at the top of your list but writing macros are way easier in
Racket than in Clojure. This is primarily because Racket IDE provides good
debugging and tracing tools. Clojure is notorious for its cryptic error
messages. This certainly doesn't help while you try to do code
transformations. Once you learn the fundamentals you can apply them in
(somewhat) more mainstream functional programming languages like Clojure or
Rust.
~~~
Rerarom
But Racket doesn't have macros a la Common Lisp, which are the most powerful
way to achieve metaprogramming in the Lisp family.
~~~
jbotz
Nonsense. Racket has hygienic macros just like CL.
~~~
TeMPOraL
CL doesn't have hygienic macros.
~~~
jbotz
I stand corrected. Racket does.
------
greggirwin
I use Red (full disclosure, I'm on the team), and have used Rebol (Red's
direct ancestor) since 2001. When I find something that works, I stick with
it, though I also keep an eye out for new things.
Red's heritage comes from Lisp, Forth, and Logo. It's homoiconic and
metacircular (it is its own meta language). Where Rebol was strictly
interpreted, Red can also be compiled, and has hygienic macros. But you don't
really need them. They're nice for moving things to compile time, but Red puts
a twist on Lisp's sexpr model that obviates the "need" for them in most cases.
Technically, you can say Red uses an fexpr model, but a more human-friendly
way to say it is that "Everything is data until it is evaluated.", and you
have a lot of control over when evaluation occurs.
For interop, Red has a system-level dialect called Red/System. It's a C level
language and is a dialect of Red. That is, Red is high level and is used to
define the Red/System dialect, which is used to implement Red. It's the circle
of life. :^) You can also compile Red as a library and call into it via an
API, so you can use it as an embedded language, or doing things like the Excel
example in this blog entry about Red's macros: [https://www.red-
lang.org/2017/03/062-libred-and-macros.html](https://www.red-
lang.org/2017/03/062-libred-and-macros.html) which also mentions one of the
easiest ways to preprocess input, with the `system/lexer/pre-load` feature.
ASTs are mentioned in a few comments, so I should add that while you can
certainly do that with Red, it's another thing that can often be avoided
entirely. With other langs and tools, you almost have to take that approach,
to make it manageable. With Red, there is a function called `parse` which
consumes input and supports BNF-like rules to process it. `Parse` is a Red
dialect, and the rules are just data it interprets. Rather than building ASTs
(though there are some cool examples, and tree-rewriting systems out there),
just interpret the input directly.
If it sounds like I'm against metaprogramming, while being on a team creating
a language that supports it deeply, that's not the case. Metaprogramming is a
great tool for thinking, but it can also make things much harder to debug and
maintain. For real work, use what makes your intent clear, and avoids as much
complexity as possible.
------
pepper_sauce
Interoperability + meta-programming? You have to go with the king, Common
Lisp! There's a bunch of implementations for different platforms [0]. It's
also much simpler to write macros in a homoiconic language like a lisp, than
using something like Rust's elaborate macro system.
Although your phrasing ('expected/future adoption') makes it sound like you
value picking a language that will have loads of jobs available. Clojure has a
few solid niches (same number of users as Kotlin IIRC) and is 'symbiotic' with
JVM and JS environments. Rust is growing and has supposedly 'safe' BEAM NIF
support. Elixir is popular with the Ruby crowd. Although I have to say, 'meta-
programming' & 'functional programming' isn't exactly the hottest job market
filter.
[0] [https://common-lisp.net/implementations](https://common-
lisp.net/implementations)
------
otobrglez
I would recommend that you definitely look into Scala. The language that was
fundamentally designed to be "scalable" with and/for frameworks. Check this
resource for more information.
\- [https://scalameta.org/](https://scalameta.org/)
\- [https://speakerdeck.com/itakeshi/metaprogramming-in-scala-
th...](https://speakerdeck.com/itakeshi/metaprogramming-in-scala-the-past-and-
the-present)
\-
[https://geirsson.com/post/2016/02/scalameta/](https://geirsson.com/post/2016/02/scalameta/)
\-
[https://github.com/milessabin/shapeless](https://github.com/milessabin/shapeless)
\- [https://vimeo.com/217863345](https://vimeo.com/217863345)
------
jbotz
If you're interested in functional programming and meta-programming as
paradigms, then you should really focus on functional first. The reason is
that functional is all about transformation of data structures as a whole (as
opposed to altering them bit by bit as in procedural programming) and meta-
programming is about treating programs as data and transforming them. You
really can only do advanced meta-programming using functional techniques. It's
no accident that Lisp is the granddaddy of both paradigms.
As for which language to use to explore these paradigms, the answer would have
to be a modern Lisp, i.e. Clojure or Racket. Of those two Clojure is more
about being a "pure functional" language and Racket more about meta-
programming... in fact Racket has been called a "meta-language".
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _You really can only do advanced meta-programming using functional
> techniques._
My `loop for (symbol value) on bindings by #'cddr` and "push onto list in a
loop, nreverse and return at the end" macros beg to disagree.
Metaprogramming is just like any other programming, except that the output is
fed to the compiler. The way Lisp is compiled, you can even use code generated
by code in code that generates other code.
That said, functional programming does indeed fit well with most of the stuff
you do when writing code that writes code.
------
mratsim
Personally, I use Nim to develop domain specific language for VM, JIT,
emulators and neural networks.
I'm currently writing a compiler for deep learning with both AOT (emitting Nim
code) and hopefully later JIT (emitting LLVM IR) capabilities complete with
SIMD support. I don't see how I could do that in another language.
My biggest successes:
\- include a quite maintainable JIT for x86_64 (compared to asmjit and xbyak I
don't need to parse or codegen the C++ code):
[https://github.com/numforge/laser/blob/master/laser/photon_j...](https://github.com/numforge/laser/blob/master/laser/photon_jit/x86_64/x86_64_ops.nim#L24-L51)
\- a DSL for neural network: [https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer#sequence-
classificati...](https://github.com/mratsim/Arraymancer#sequence-
classification-with-stacked-recurrent-neural-networks)
\- a matrix multiplication BLAS written from scratch competitive with OpenBLAS
and MKL on select matrix shape (2000x2000) but that can also support
int8/int16/int32/int64 and not just float32/float64 thanks to metaprogramming.
Expanding to new SIMD architecture (ARM) is very easy:
\--> benchmark:
[https://github.com/numforge/laser/blob/master/benchmarks/gem...](https://github.com/numforge/laser/blob/master/benchmarks/gemm/gemm_bench_float32.nim#L418-L465)
\--> Metaprogramming AVX512 support:
[https://github.com/numforge/laser/blob/master/laser/primitiv...](https://github.com/numforge/laser/blob/master/laser/primitives/matrix_multiplication/gemm_ukernel_avx512.nim)
The most important thing for me for metaprogramming is being able to operate
on the AST directly
------
nadako
Haxe has pretty good metaprogramming capabilities. It has expression macros
(compile-time evaluated calls that return expressions to be inserted at call
place) as well as type-building macros (build fields and/or define whole new
types). Both have access to compiler and system API and information about the
context (e.g. expected type).
~~~
nadako
Oh, and regarding "how compact are your programs", well every time I see
boilerplate code or reflection usage that cannot be refactored into something
nice without sacrificing clarity and/or performance, I use meta-programming to
generate it instead.
Usual suspect here is any kind of "support" code, like serialization, RPC,
dependency injection and such.
------
dom96
I have used Nim extensively and done a lot of metaprogramming in it. The
biggest risk to metaprogramming is that it allows crazy syntax that you have
to learn separately. Nim does very well here to enforce limitations which work
well in reducing this risk.
Comparing Nim's metaprogramming to Rust's shows what I mean. In Rust you can
write macros that act on token streams, so as long as the token stream is
valid it can be used. This allows libraries like the typed-html package[1].
In Nim you cannot do this unless you put the HTML in a string literal. This
limitation created a syntax that is far more idiomatic, admittedly at the
expense of familiarity for users of HTML:
buildHTML():
html():
head():
title: text "My webpage"
body:
p(class="red"): text "Hello World"
In my experience this works quite well, you can see a larger example in our
Forum's code which is written using a SPA framework called Karax[2].
Please don't let style insensitivity discourage you from using this wonderful
language.
1 - [https://docs.rs/typed-html/0.2.0/typed_html/](https://docs.rs/typed-
html/0.2.0/typed_html/)
2 - [https://github.com/nim-
lang/nimforum/blob/master/src/fronten...](https://github.com/nim-
lang/nimforum/blob/master/src/frontend/threadlist.nim#L116-L155)
~~~
karmakaze
Please don't let adherence to stlye-insensitivity limit language adoption.
~~~
dom96
If it was up to me I would have removed this feature long, but not because
it's a problem, only because of people like you who judge programming
languages based on what they see at the surface.
There are still plenty of people who dislike Python because "significant
whitespace, bleh" with no objective reason why they dislike it except "it gets
messed up when I copy the code". That's a tooling problem, just like with
style insensitivity, it's not hard to search in a style insensitive manner and
in fact all tools should allow this mode for convenience.
~~~
karmakaze
Okay, so what's the regexp for finding all the style insensitive versions of
myVariable? Something like
m_?[Yy]_?[Vv]_?[Aa]_?[Rr]_?[Ii]_?[Aa]_?[Bb]_?[Ll]_?[Ee]
I never want to type a regexp like that just to find all occurrences of a
simple var name. Even if a plugin did it for me, it would still be slower and
it doesn't help me on the command line.
------
markknol
This list is missing Haxe, which is strictly-typed (with type inferencing),
supports object-oriented, generic, and functional programming and is highly
extensible thanks to meta-programming (macros). Interoperability is where it
excels, since it compiles to to multiple language targets/platforms, including
VM bytecode.
~~~
klntsky
Note: Haxe does not typecheck macros.
See [https://haxe.org/manual/macro-ExprOf.html](https://haxe.org/manual/macro-
ExprOf.html)
For example, this seemingly ill-typed definition (which should return Int as
suggested by the type paramater, but in fact returns a string) successfully
typechecks:
class StringGetter {
public static macro function getString():haxe.macro.Expr.ExprOf<Int> {
var s:String = "";
return macro $v{s};
}
}
~~~
b2d
Incorrect. To quote the page you've linked: "For the most part, this type is
identical to Expr, but it allows constraining the type of _accepted_
expressions." or otherwise put: ExprOf only affects macro arguments, not
return value. What you want is this:
class StringGetter {
public static macro function getString() {
var s:String = "";
return macro ($v{s} : Int);
}
}
------
pritambaral
Considering only production code here.
Do use: Common Lisp, Racket, Python, Ruby
Would like to use: Julia, Rust, Elixir
I metaprogram when I see I have already built a mini-language/pattern in my
code. Even when writing Lisp, I begin with simple code without extending the
language, and only when I have written a bit do I consider looking for
patterns.
~~~
FridgeSeal
Out of curiosity, why do you have Python on your list? Python doesn’t really
support metaprogramming? I’ve written my fair share of Python but don’t
remember ever coming across anything meta in the language. Even if it has some
passing implementation, it definitely doesn’t have it in the way
Lisp/Julia/Rust/etc have it.
~~~
pritambaral
> it definitely doesn’t have it in the way Lisp/Julia/Rust/etc have it.
Yes, but then again, Rust, Julia, and Lisp are _high_ standards of
metaprogramming. Python's approach to metaprogramming, like most of its other
parts, is simple and concise. For simple tasks that are repeated often, Python
sometimes provides easy ways to abstract the how and show only the what. While
Python does have metaclasses — which, unfortunately or otherwise, I've never
needed to write — I've sometimes found myself reaching for simpler tools like
decorators, magic dunder methods, even iterators and generators. And, of
course, there's always the ability to generate Python AST, or have something
generate it for you.
Examples:
1\. the new-in-3.7 feature: dataclasses[0];
2\. the library that inspired it: attrs[1];
3\. the (de)serialisation library with a strikingly simple design:
marshmallow[2];
4\. the leaky-abstraction of SQL that makes it somewhat composable:
sqlalchemy[3];
5\. Google's python bindings for Protocol Buffers[4]; and, of course
6\. the lisp-in-Python: Hy[5];
\----
[0]:
[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0557/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0557/)
[1]: [http://www.attrs.org/](http://www.attrs.org/)
[2]:
[https://marshmallow.readthedocs.io/en/3.0/_modules/marshmall...](https://marshmallow.readthedocs.io/en/3.0/_modules/marshmallow/schema.html#Schema)
[3]:
[https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/orm/extensions/declarative...](https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/orm/extensions/declarative/api.html)
[4]: [https://developers.google.com/protocol-
buffers/docs/pythontu...](https://developers.google.com/protocol-
buffers/docs/pythontutorial?csw=1#the-protocol-buffer-api)
[5]:
[http://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/language/internals.html](http://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/language/internals.html)
------
DarkWiiPlayer
You can do some nice things in Lua [1], but the one I'm most interested in at
the moment is probably Terra [2]. Its concept is that it's a language like C,
but uses Lua as a sort of preprocessor Language, so you can use complex
macros, templates, etc. There's even a java-like class-system, if I remember
correctly.
[1]
[https://github.com/darkwiiplayer/moonxml](https://github.com/darkwiiplayer/moonxml)
[2] [http://terralang.org/](http://terralang.org/)
------
zmmmmm
It depends a bit what you mean, but Groovy is quite interesting from a meta-
programming point of view. Much of the syntax can be completely reprogrammed
at run time through an object's 'metaClass', and you can write AST
transformations that deeply rearrange the code at compile time.
Although it is certainly not as pure as the Lisp-like languages, it can be an
incredibly fast and easy way to create a DSL to solve your problems in a very
idiomatic way.
~~~
karmakaze
I never thought of Groovy for metaprogramming but it's used to make DSLs so it
makes sense. My only run in has been with Gradle which is so slow and/or a
memory hog so didn't leave a good impression on me.
~~~
zmmmmm
It's unfortunate that most people meet Groovy through Gradle. It's a really
confusing and unpleasant experience and I think is responsible for a lot of
the bad rap that Groovy gets. It's actually way better than Gradle makes it
look!
------
Insanity
When I hear metaprogramming my brain just goes "Lisp". So I am a bit surprised
to not see CL in your list. :)
------
localhostdotdev
> Ruby is notably absent as I use it and am looking for something
> better/different
what issues do you have with ruby? it's the de-facto standard for meta-
programming
I often use things like `define_method`, `constants`, `method_missing`, etc in
select places.
last fun thing I did was adding `let` and `it` to rails's tests.
~~~
karmakaze
Every large, long -lived Ruby app I've worked on eventually needs more
performance, better concurrency, and would benefit from static typing. It's
great that each company got to the point of 'a problem you want to have'. I'm
just looking for the best of both worlds: good to start, good to scale.
------
nimmer
Nim. I use it a lot and the case insensitivity has never been a problem and
it's often useful.
------
olrd
It's worth to mention Factor programming language -
[https://factorcode.org/](https://factorcode.org/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_\(programming_language\))
[https://github.com/factor/factor/](https://github.com/factor/factor/)
[http://andreaferretti.github.io/factor-
tutorial/](http://andreaferretti.github.io/factor-tutorial/) \- Good
introduction and Metaprogramming section.
------
klntsky
Haskell with TemplateHaskell is definitely worth giving a shot.
You can find good examples of its use by searching for reverse dependencies of
template-haskell package[0].
One of these is my tiny experiment that features program synthesis by given
type[1]. Recently I added an ability to handle sum types and product types
(a.k.a. Either and tuples) -- see 'rewrite' branch.
[0] [https://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/template-
haskell](https://packdeps.haskellers.com/reverse/template-haskell)
[1] [https://github.com/8084/haskell-holes-
th](https://github.com/8084/haskell-holes-th)
~~~
YorkshireSeason
Template Haskell is nice, but doesn't allow higher meta-programming, eg. meta-
meta-programmming.
------
panic
Definitely take a look at Forth: each word in the language can have separate
compile-time and run-time behavior, and the compiler is simple enough that
it's easy to extend it with your own compile-time words.
[https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/11-forth-compiler-
defin...](https://www.forth.com/starting-forth/11-forth-compiler-defining-
words/) is a good overview.
------
okaleniuk
I would love to try Rebol (or Red) for some meaningful task.
------
z3phyr
I am surprised nobody has mentioned C++
I know its hated passionately, but I learned about metaprogramming from it.
Also, imo, Racket is the best language for metaprogramming.
------
msvan
OCaml has some metaprogramming facilities through the ppx system. It wouldn't
be my first choice for metaprogramming, but it's there if you just want to
know the full map of how different languages do it. I have found the ppx
system a little bit underdocumented and challenging to use, but it can be very
powerful. OCaml fits all of your other requirements.
~~~
karmakaze
I've run into OCaml before but haven't taken the time to get into it. If I
were to, I think I might look at F# but I have no idea if the metaprogramming
is the same.
------
jb3689
I like Elixir overall as a language and love it as a platform. That said, the
metaprogramming feels passable for me. I would much prefer to write and read
things in a Lisp but it works fine in Elixir
------
Peteris
I'm interested in trying Rascal, but it's meta-meta: [https://www.rascal-
mpl.org/](https://www.rascal-mpl.org/).
------
tmaly
I am surprised Prolog did not make the list. I have used SWI Prolog on a
profession project in the past.
Its quite powerful for certain types of problem domains like expert systems.
------
anonyfox
Elixir all the way. :)
------
bradleyjg
Using github and gradle plugins I metaprogramm java. Can't recommend it
through. It's extremely error prone and hard to reason about.
------
YorkshireSeason
Scala has the most advanced meta-programming facilities. And Scala's MP is
widely used.
If you are interested in research-prototype languages,
[https://convergepl.org/](https://convergepl.org/) is interesting. But
Converge is no longer under active development.
~~~
pepper_sauce
Which features make it the most advanced?
~~~
YorkshireSeason
Compile-time MP and run-time MP. Support for AST and quasi-quote MP, and
support for LMS (= lightweight modular staging).
~~~
TeMPOraL
You haven't seen any Lisp yet, have you?
Compile and run-time MP and quasiquoting are basic features; I'd argue that a
language without these doesn't even qualify as "supporting metaprogramming".
~~~
YorkshireSeason
Sure, I'm intimately familiar with the Lisp family of languages. It lacks
features that I prefer in a modern meta-programming language, in particular an
expressive typing system with type inference, and a platform / eco-system like
the JVM.
~~~
TeMPOraL
I stand corrected, and I agree with you here on both accounts - I'd love if CL
in particular had a better type system standardized (current one sits in a
kind of uncanny valley) and a better ecosystem. CL implementations are solid,
but the mindshare unfortunately isn't there anymore.
------
chvid
JavaScript. It is awesome.
~~~
okaleniuk
Not sure if it's sarcasm. True, JavaScript is fun to meta-program. But it's
hell to debug.
~~~
chvid
You never know about sarcasm. But I just wanted to give a shoutout to good old
JavaScript as it lends itself beautifully to metaprogramming and it is
actually widely used unlike some of the more academic languages mentioned
here.
------
nirse
Something better than ruby? No such thing ;-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Grieving for Apple - mrzool
https://wincent.com/blog/grieving-for-apple
======
vessenes
I'm sure there's a word coined for these 'death of Apple' posts.
It is true that my 2020 Macbook Pro 16 is not as much better than the
competition as my 2011 Macbook Air was.
But it is still definitely the best laptop I've ever owned. I keep my laptops,
and I can reach for whichever one I want: 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 in Air,
13", 15" and now 16" form factors, and I choose the 2020. I also daily reject
a number of windows and Chromebook pieces of hardware in favor of the MBP16.
When I don't choose it, I most often choose my iPad pro at times or my iPhone.
A thorough and hard ecosystem-level look at realistic competitors just doesn't
turn up anything that even comes close in terms of just "working".
Probably the closest would be an XPS developer running Ubuntu, but that is a
completely different experience than the 'it just works' world I get to live
in with my Macbook. And, by "it just works", I include a decent package
manager with homebrew, a very solid neovim or spacemacs development
environment, a fully working highdpi environment without 'quirks', ... the
list goes on. And, Windows has no Unix underneath it plus it contains ads in
the start menu. For me, it's just not a serious option for real work.
In all, I'd say that most people agree with me; the market seems to prefer
this hardware.
~~~
itsraining
My 2020 MacBook Pro 16 crashes frequently when it goes to sleep.
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251223766](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251223766)
This has been a downgrade for me.
~~~
wilkowskidom
I had the same. Disabling power nap did it for me. If this doesn’t help I read
disabling graphic switching does it.
But yeah it’s redicules that We have to deal with this on a $3k laptop
~~~
blondin
hold on, disabling power nap won't fixes the auto log outs. it's a (new?)
security setting.
one sec...
alright okay. for anyone having the issue, you have to go to your "security &
privacy" -> click on padlock -> enter password -> click on "advanced". in the
sheet disable "Log out after X min of inactivity".
------
stevencorona
I recently (3 weeks ago) switched from OS X to Ubuntu 20.04 after a decade of
using macs as my primary desktop for software development.
I hadn't used desktop linux in about 15 years and I have to say I was
pleasantly surprised. Everything that I remembered being difficult was
straightforward. My AMD graphics card worked out of the box with dual
monitors. Bluetooth, wifi, HiDPI (two 5K displays), USB plug and play, volume
buttons on my keyboard, all seamless.
There are still a few quirks here and there (mainly HiDPI in some apps like
Spotify, which there are workarounds for), but I'm happy with my setup and
don't plan on moving back.
With Firefox, VS Code, Slack, Spotify, and 1Password X all being cross-
platform my workflow didn't even change.
~~~
acidburnNSA
Add to that excitement the new System 76 Lemur Pro 14" 2.2 lbs laptop with 40
GB of RAM and a massive 73 Wh battery and you're really going to be excited
[1]. I got one recently (moving up from an old Sony Vaio).
I've been daily driver on linux for about a decade now and have to agree that
it's awesome now.
[1] [https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur)
~~~
jjice
The price scared me at first, but I had to remember the cost of the new MBP.
Very impressive for the cost, and the 2.2 lb weight is really great,
especially for a 14". If I was looking for a laptop to serve as my main
machine, I could see this being a really strong competitor.
Seems like a great machine, as long as you're a Linux user.
~~~
pfranz
When I was comparing Mac laptops to PC alternatives they usually ended up
within a few hundred dollars. Sure, saving a few hundred dollars is nice, but
I'm fairly confident I can sell the Mac in a handful of years for a decent
price, confident I'll use it for a handful of years, I'm familiar with the
build quality and avenues for parts and replacements, and things like
trackpad, biometrics/fingerprint, and battery life are a known quantity for me
on a Mac. Saving only 10-15% made it less appealing to make the jump--
conversely, I can see people not wanting to pay an extra 10-15% to jump to a
Mac.
------
anorphirith
I went through the same cycle or frustration from apple products, I've bought
6 laptops in the past year trying out all of the competition. The truth is,
all of the alternatives, as frustrating as apple products can be, are just not
as good. And that's by a very very long shot. However fucked apple products
are, the competition is FAR behind. So I just swallow it and keep biting the
bullet.
That only applies if you want a LAPTOP, if you can live in with something
fixed to a desk, there's plenty of viable better alternatives out there.
~~~
m0xte
I disagree. I got rid of a 2013 MBP and a 2019 MBA and went back to a thinkpad
T470 running Windows 10. 300% less of a pain in the ass. Keyboard works
reliably and isn’t horrible, doesn’t get ridiculously hot, actually has enough
USB holes, can actually drive it from the keyboard without tying my fingers in
knots, battery lasts longer, less fighting against the OS, less bugs (that one
hurt to write) and it doesn’t give me a rash that bleeds on my wrists. CPU,
memory, storage is about the same as a high end MBA. Display is 1080p so runs
at 125% scale which is pretty good. If I break it I just get another one off
eBay in 48h turnaround for less than the price of just a new screen for the
MBA. Oh and it docks too and I get triple head displays...
~~~
danlugo92
You're right about everything except high dpi handling.
Also can't beat Apple on trackpad and screen quality.
~~~
m0xte
I hardly miss the Retina display. The 1080p display with 125% scaling is good
enough. It’s not spectacular but fine for a laptop.
The trackpad I didn’t like on the MacBook either. I found it made my finger
tips sore after a few hours. I’m using the TrackPoint on the T470 and have the
touchpad disabled
------
supernova87a
If the touch bar (which I agree is useless, or worse, actively
counterproductive) is the worst thing he's annoyed by, then Apple is doing
pretty well for a computer manufacturer selling 20M units annually, don't you
think?
I think we have to have some self-realization that the gripes that appear here
generally are so specialized (the MacOS Catalina notarization problem just
today) that if you sit here you think the world is coming to an end. Yet
millions of people purchase and seem to get along just fine with buying what
Apple is offering.
Now, admittedly, one of the great selling points of Apple Mac is that its
power features are (were) designed exactly for developers and professionals to
be easy and high-performing, so they need to pay attention to it. But they
generally do, don't they? The notarization problem above, let's revisit in 1
month and see if it got some attention?
I'm just saying that it's easy for your threshold for what's unacceptable has
a tendency to keep on rising, and you get unhappy with smaller and smaller
things. It's important to keep a perspective about it.
If it is truly horrible what Apple is doing or becoming, well of course you
know that Mac / Chrome / your favorite app or hardware were all born out of
being unhappy with what someone else built, and going out to build something
new themselves.
Everyone is absolutely free to go and invent the next better thing and
displace the old and tired.
~~~
cosmotic
Selling well doesn't always mean doing well or doing good.
IT departments for companies that give their staff macs will buy whatever
garbage Apple makes available because they have no other option. Same with
consumers stuck in the Apple ecosystem.
I've been holding out on buying a mac for nearly a decade because they have no
compelling products. I'm stuck using a hackintosh workstation and a crappy
windows laptop for on the go.
~~~
scarface74
Right, because most of Apple sells come from the Enterprise. Apple has a long
history of going out of its way to support big enterprise to convince them to
buy Macs.
------
brokencode
If you really believe that a company can churn out nothing but perfect
products over and over again without making any mistakes, then maybe you have
been drinking too much of Apple’s Kool-Aid. Every top company has good and bad
generations of products, and Apple is no different.
This type of post complaining about Apple losing its soul and dying has been
coming out regularly for at least the decade since I’ve been following Apple,
and probably back way farther than that.
Something about Apple makes it an irresistible target for this kind of
criticism for some reason. Check out the MacRumors forums for examples.. it’s
a group of people who track every move Apple makes, yet overwhelmingly
complain about every potential flaw.
That’s not saying that there aren’t flaws to criticize about Apple’s products,
which there certainly are. But the level of vitriol is extreme compared to
what I see directed towards most other companies (except video game
companies.. gamers are a tough crowd).
~~~
thomascgalvin
I don't think Apple should be held to a "no mistakes" standard, but for the
last few years, the trend has been toward less functionality and more user-
hostility.
Take the drop of 32 bit support. There are now huge swaths of software,
software that I paid a lot of money for, that I can no longer use if I buy new
Apple hardware or upgrade to the latest MacOS.
There are bright spots, too. The new keyboards are much, much better than the
butterflies, and the physical escape key is a welcome return.
But in general, when Apple announces something new, I'm worried about what
they're going to take away from me, not what they're going to start offering.
~~~
scarface74
Apple hasn’t shipped a 32 bit Mac since 2006. How long was Apple suppose to
keep support for 32 bit software? Should they also have kept support for PPC
software? 68K software?
~~~
dmitriid
> Apple hasn’t shipped a 32 bit Mac since 2006.
So, they could easily have given developers a roadmap/timeline of 13 years
saying "in 2020 we're going to deprecate 32bit software, please upgrade".
Instead, they gave everyone less than two years.
In comparison, the switch from PowerPC to Intel took over four years. And this
was at the time when MacOS had significantly less software available on it.
Apple themselves released the last version of software that supported PowerPCs
_7 years_ after the announcement of the transition.
~~~
scarface74
They kind of did when they announced Carbon wouldn’t have 64 bit support over
five years ago.
PowerPC support was dropped in 10.7 three versions after the first Intel Macs
came out. It was an optional download in 10.6.
------
save_ferris
I completely agree with all of this. From the costly obsession with creating
an ever-thinner MBP at the expense of usability, to the demonstrably hostile
removal of Target Display Mode in the iMac and beyond, it’s pretty clear Apple
stopped designing their “pro” products for their pro users some time ago.
They’ve gotten way too comfy with their position in the personal computing
space and I too am regularly looking at the alternatives. If the last 5 years
are any indication of how the rumored ARM migration is going to be, then we’re
in for a really rough ride.
~~~
tonyedgecombe
_From the costly obsession with creating an ever-thinner MBP at the expense of
usability_
The latest MacBook Pro is thicker than its predecessor.
------
zackmorris
I just started writing up a big spiel about the constant daily agonies I
endure while using my older Apple hardware, but after a half an hour of it, I
abandoned it.
It would take me a few days to write out the list of grievances that started
when the iPhone arrived, and how Apple splitting its attention between desktop
and mobile began the long, slow decline, and how it is reminiscent of the old
Apple/Macintosh internal wars that almost brought down the company.
Basically what it comes down to is that Apple has a trillion dollars, and
that's great and everything, but it means that it's the establishment so it
can't innovate anymore. The bottom line is now its top priority.
For Apple to save its reputation in the eyes of geeks everywhere, it would
have to listen to any geek anywhere. It would have to stare at the ground
quietly as the grievances are aired, and then have the maturity to grok what
it's heard and do something about the problems.
I know it has teams of engineers working on this stuff day and night, and even
has a great CEO and everything else. But sometimes in spite of all of that
stuff, companies flounder. It's just especially tragic when it's this dream
company that got countless millions of people interested in tech initially.
Seriously, take a break Apple. Put all the grand plans aside for a while and
listen. I guess that's it. Sorry this came out kinda harsh, I'm not mad, I'm
just disappointed.
~~~
scarface74
Why do you think Apple cares about the “geek”?
~~~
dmitriid
Because somehow they still pretend to care about power and professional users.
~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Programmers are not the only power users
~~~
dmitriid
I know. That's why I didn't say programmers. The bad quality of their hardware
and software affects all power/pro users.
------
_bxg1
I don't disagree with the thesis, but I was disappointed to see yet another
rehashing of tired power-user nitpicks about MBPro hardware details, some of
which have even been phased out already. The opening made me hopeful I was
about to read a thoughtful piece about what's changed in Apple's soul, but
instead all I got was an unoriginal rant.
------
8bitsrule
The Apple I cared about died when the Macintosh arrived. Or was it when the
rainbow logo was replaced by chrome? Or was it when they abandoned Hypercard?
Or when I had to spend hours researching how to tweak the serial port to do
31250 bps I/O MIDI? Or when the serial ports disappeared and my n x $1000 of
serial-port hardware meant I should buy a new Mac.
By the time it released mobile phones with hard-wired batteries, the good
Apple was a distant memory. Borged.
------
ncmncm
Mention of Stockholm Syndrome, in the article, is the key.
Current customers are self-selected as willing to endure any degree of
degradation, provided it is arrived at via sufficiently small steps.
Apple is fully equipped and enabled to provide well-above-average quality
products and admirable service by the high premium they charge, but instead
they pocket the difference, every time. Customers are left with the dubious
benefit of price-signaling, which is increasingly shading into sucker-
signaling.
I get that, looking only at Microsoft, it is hard to imagine stepping down.
But that was never the only alternative.
------
agentdrtran
Ah good, I was worried we'd go more than a month without one of these.
------
fmajid
Pretty much how I feel, except I have less sadness and more anger. I haven’t
bought a Mac laptop since 2015, and I bought 4 PC ones to test my migration
path to Linux, even if it proceeds glacially due to having other things to do,
and in any case 15 years of workflow takes a while to switch.
------
m0zg
After 15 years of using Apple exclusively for my "creative" work (music,
photo, video), I've switched back to Windows 10 for those needs. Paid work is
still 100% Linux (including the laptop I'm typing this on), but I ain't payin'
$6K for a workstation, sorry Tim. Especially if I can't use an NVIDIA GPU in
it. And HP Z32 4K monitor costs $200 less than the Apple _display stand_.
------
hbrown92
I couldn’t agree more, I wish a new innovative platform would emerge. Apple is
too comfortable and their products just aren’t worth it anymore.
~~~
linguae
My dream platform would be essentially a revival of OpenDoc
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFJdjk2rq4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFJdjk2rq4E)),
except it's built on top of the Common Lisp Object System, a dynamic object
system that supports multiple dispatch. Users can integrate components either
programmatically (like Unix pipes but with even more flexibility) or through a
GUI interface. GUI programs would be written in such a way where its UX is
highly flexible. The desktop environment should be fully themable, and GUI
programs written for this environment must comply with these themes. This
themability allows users to choose how they want their desktop environment to
look. If they like Material Design, they can use a desktop that adheres to
those standards. If they like classic UIs like those from the classic Mac OS
or Windows 95, then can choose those options and the programs would fit those
standards. They can use themes that have entirely different design standards.
The goals of my dream platform would be composability and flexibility, the
complete opposite of monolithic applications and opinionated UI/UX design.
This would run on Linux/BSD and would be implemented in Common Lisp, though
there will need to be some ways to allow programs written in other languages
to access CLOS objects since developers should be able to code in the
languages of their choice.
------
turtlebits
I thought everyone knew that you waited at least a year on Apple hardware and
software. I'm still on 10.14 and have no problems with it.
That said, I don't get the hate on number of ports. USB type-C is a godsend -
single cable to my monitor which provides power and USB hub.
I'm probably also in the minority on this one- I just got a new 16" Macbook
Pro work laptop, and I much prefer the keyboard on my 2018 15". The esc/touch
ID now being buttons are great. The speakers are amazing.
------
d3ntb3ev1l
I tried a world without Apple and lasted 2 months. I switched to a top of the
line Pixel phone (which is now in a box) and top of the link thinkpad. (Sold
it for next to nothing).
Overall I am glad we have choices. Everyone should make the ones that work for
them.
Give Google can’t make a decent android phone or watch after significant
acquisitions and investments, building real amazing things that make your life
better is hard.
I’m glad lots of people still are trying hard.
------
D13Fd
I disagree.
On ports, 4 is enough. At home and at work, I use standard Thunderbolt docking
stations, so ports on the laptop are irrelevant. When traveling, I typically
use at most 2 HDDs, so 4 ports is plenty. I’d honestly rather have the battery
life than the ports.
On the keyboard, they’ve fixed it in the new laptops. I agree it was awful for
a long stretch there.
On the annoying prompts, they are there for security, and I think they made
the right call generally. Everyone thinks security is so annoying, right up
until they get rooted.
On the Touch Bar, I think they missed the mark, but I appreciate the fact that
they are innovating. And in the end it’s an OK replacement for the function
keys (now that there is a physical escape key).
On the OS phoning out before running executables etc, I agree that it sounds
like a poor implementation overall. That said, I’ve never noticed any delays
from it in my 2016 MBP.
All that said, I always think it’s a good idea to try new things, and there is
no harm in switching brands/OS’s/etc. As others noted, so much software is
cross platform these days that switching is much less of a commitment than it
used to be.
------
topkai22
Apple is a phone company that has a side business in personal computers. This
is good for Apple, because the personal computer business as a whole has been
pretty stagnant for a long time. The article would have been much improved by
at least making a nod to the fact that their beloved computer make was now in
fact primarily making other devices
------
kilo_bravo_3
>it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the Apple I once loved is moribund
If there is anything more pathetic than an adult expressing love for a
publicly traded corporate entity regardless of what they make or where they're
from or how cool their marketing is, I haven't found it.
edit: Never mind-- writing a 1600 word essay about the lover-who-must-
file-10Qs who is disappointing you and then publishing it online is definitely
more pathetic.
Compare and contrast:
1\. it's increasingly obvious that the White Rock Beverage Company, Inc. I
once loved is moribund (followed by a SIXTEEN HUNDRED WORD ESSAY about how
they changed the recipe of Sioux City Root Beer and it sucks now)
2\. it's increasingly obvious that the Apple, Inc. I once loved is moribund
(followed by a SIXTEEN HUNDRED WORD ESSAY about how their laptops suck now)
------
theonemind
Hmm. The way I see it, Apple still seems to have the same basic attitude of
high-value of aesthetics over function and a "my-way-or-the-highway" attitude,
backed by just a bit less creativity in innovating actual function.
It doesn't seem that much different, but a little less satisfying, ultimately.
------
luord
I rarely use the mac that my company issued to me, but I couldn't place my
finger on why exactly. It's a general feeling that everything about it is
obnoxious and cumbersome. Probably the sum of all the little things (and more)
mentioned in this comment.
This was curiosly not the case the last time I was issued a mac, which I used
pretty much all the time and not just for work; essentially replacing my
personal (Linux) device. That was a 2016 model, when this trend had already
started, so I guess everything has exacerbated in the three years since.
------
purplezooey
Apple is not alone in making janky laptops since 2015. Most of them are junk.
They all get too hot, have too much brittle plastic, and low rez displays
unless you want to pay a high premium. I've been liking the Chuwi laptops for
$200. At least if you get a cheap laptop, pay a cheap price.
------
brandonmenc
> I bought a refurbished mid-2015 model which I love. From a utility
> perspective, it’s the best laptop they’ve ever made, with a bunch of stuff
> that you’d reasonably expect to find on a "pro" Apple laptop: namely, 8
> ports/slots
Only two of which are actual USB ports.
I'd still have to carry around a hub to use it with my mobile music production
setup.
------
stanislavb
OK, let's craft a way out.
------
monadic2
It's profit-driven software, dummy.
~~~
cosmotic
Apple seems to be driving their software toward what they _think_ the consumer
wants (and maybe even what the consumer says they want, or even choses to buy
because of), instead of what the customer _actually needs_. Yes, the customer
might feel enamored with what's being sold, but they could have been even more
enamored had Apple focused properly.
~~~
scarface74
Well, if it wasn’t what the _consumer_ wants, then why are consumers still
buying their products at a premium? Maybe it’s just not what a few outspoken
geeks want.
~~~
monadic2
Customers do buy what they want relative to other products in the market, but
absolute satisfaction could still be broadly low across the board. The
incentive to fix commonly complained about problems is tied entirely to the
speed to which their competitors respond—shared incentives prevent the market
from improving as a whole through competition.
This is especially true in markets where the capital investment required for
entry is in the billions of dollars, like smartphones, operating systems,
vehicles and other patented infrastructure (looking at you, john deere).
Overall the claim should be that “customers buy what they want from available
products”, so that the one can not claim the converse, that a customer is
necessarily satisfied with the products they purchase.
------
wedgeantilles
Buy something else then.
~~~
0xDEEPFAC
He is going to, as he says at the bottom of the article, and he has bought
2015 refurbished models to avoid the headaches.... lol?
------
thebiglebrewski
Amen
------
plerpin
I had a similarly emotional schisms with Apple, but back in 1997. I finally
became aware of Apple's penchant for designing "road apples" to fuck cost-
conscious consumers. I worked hard as a teen to buy my 62XX Performa, but
later when I found out that it was a piece of shit because Apple deliberately
designed it as a piece of shit... well, fuck them, really. No respect for
their buyers.
I switched to Windows in 1998 and didn't look back.
[https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-
macs/](https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/)
~~~
scarface74
Apple has never catered to “cost conscience” computers. Even back in the early
80s the 8 bit Apple //e’s were more expensive than competitors. T
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Memo to Stripe: Winning the hearts of Valley startups is not winning payments - rmason
https://pando.com/2014/01/24/memo-to-stripe-winning-the-hearts-of-valley-startups-is-not-winning-payments/
======
mtmail
The article is from 2014 when Stripe's valuation was $1.75b, a 44x multiple to
revenue. From the article "sky-high valuations for unproven companies aren’t
unheard of in the Valley."
Now in 2019 valuation is $22.5b. I think the article is no longer current.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nakama 2.0 Released. App Server Built with GRPC in Go - mofirouz
https://github.com/heroiclabs/nakama
======
AlimJaffer
You can read more about the release in the latest blogpost that breaks down
some of the major additions to the server:
[https://blog.heroiclabs.com/nakama-2-0-scale-for-millions-
of...](https://blog.heroiclabs.com/nakama-2-0-scale-for-millions-of-
concurrent-players-88c5cd075936)
Disclosure: I work at Heroic Labs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stanford Machine Learning course - csantini
http://theorymatters.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/stanford-machine-learning-course/
======
physcab
I'm in a Machine Learning class right now and the math is absurd. Our
professor goes over general theory in class and references some practical
applications. For homework we have to prove the theories and then create
MATLAB programs that create the figures in our textbook (Bishop). It's pretty
dense and time consuming.
However, I come from a Physics background, so the math is just different, and
may in fact be easier. However, I've been referencing my Mathematical Methods
for Physicists book (Boas) pretty often to brush up on some linear algebra
techniques.
Lastly, its been said quite a bit in these forums, but if you are just
interested in implementing this stuff, definitely check out Collective
Intelligence by Oreilly. I use that book in tandem to bring some of the high-
level concepts back down to earth. :)
Good luck
------
mlinsey
You can see example final projects for this course here...
<http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/projects2007.html>
The midterm for CS 229 was probably the hardest exam I took in college.
------
FraaJad
I read some of the ML lectures notes from OCW some time back. It was very math
heavy. Is that an MIT thing or is that how ML is taught in all universities?
~~~
jerf
I can not conceive of how one would have a "non-math heavy" machine learning
course. Machine learning is basically a branch of applied statistics, at least
in its current form. None of the algorithms are "fire and forget", such that
you can use them effectively without deeply understanding them, and one of the
first things you'll cover in your Machine Learning course is why it is
unlikely that will even happen (the No Free Lunch theorem, often over-applied
in internet debates but still a very, very important result).
(I mean, sure, you can _try_ to fire-and-forget, but for the most part you'll
either fail with no clue why, or fail to get very good results. Decision trees
might be a moderate exception, although even then you really ought to
understand how they are constructed and the implications of various choices
you can make.)
~~~
kurtosis
As a counterpoint, I seems to me that the ML field is too heavy on theory. A
lot of the theoretical papers are proposed with weak or no experimental tests.
There are very few people doing thorough experimental work. What I have in
mind is something like Chen and Goodman's comparison of different language
models - this is a great paper and I'd love to see more like it.
The obvious example of this is boosting where the theory lagged far behind the
experiment - everyone wanted to invent a theory to explain why boosting was so
effective.
hey industrialists out there - publish!
~~~
physcab
We're trying! I'm using machine learning to detect explosives. It's a
difficult problem, but it works quite well.
------
skenney26
The first lecture in this series mentions that the discussion groups are also
available via video. Has anyone found these?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's the best domain you own that you aren't currently using? - samelawrence
I just got a renewal reminder for my domain fluf.fr and it made me wonder what other funny domains are floating around the web, either unused or unknown.
======
jasonkester
Back in the early 2000's, I was planning a trip through the mid-east and
trying to get my visas sorted out.
That's when I discovered that syrianembassy.com was available.
I had nine dollars in my pocket at the time, but somehow it seemed like
something that would eventually cause me more than nine dollars worth of
hassle, were I to pick it up and put something inappropriate there.
Looking now, it seems that somebody is squatting it. Still, I'm glad that
somebody is not me.
------
jasonkester
I've been trying to come up with a use for Cramhole.com for twelve years now.
Still no luck.
For a while, I was hoping to use it for a data storage algorithm, protocol,
wrapper or container of some sort. Just so that in the future some poor souls
would be sitting around a conference table and somebody would chime in
"Couldn't we use a Cramhole for this?"
------
allwein
Up until 2 months ago, it was DownrightSimple.com. But I'm now using that for
my iOS Development Company. The other one I really like is
KeystrokeOfGenius.com, which I haven't found a use for yet. There's also
CSLounge.com, which was going to be some sort of Computer Science social
network that I never got around to working on.
------
jackweirdy
cliqu.es - well, I have something I want to build
([https://github.com/NotBobTheBuilder/cliqu.es](https://github.com/NotBobTheBuilder/cliqu.es))
but I can never find the time to commit to it.
------
amac
Octopus.org. I'm currently learning mobile development and hopefully will get
around to shipping the app (it's in the commerce space)
------
emhart
[http://comebackwithawarrant.com](http://comebackwithawarrant.com)
~~~
jlgaddis
Love it. I have two of the EFF's "Come Back With A Warrant" stickers on this
laptop (a large-ish one on the top and a smaller one just to the left of the
touchpad).
~~~
emhart
Used to use it as an email server, nowadays I just have it forward to the EFF
=P
------
josh-wrale
I recently thought about registering crumbersome.com. Have at it.. I have more
where that came from.
------
dmeagor
ThePentagon.com
------
lawncheer
bigfootmeat.com
------
6thSigma
Jotpath.com, notezoom.com, and snacks.io
------
hamiltonkibbe
wookipedia.org
------
natsu90
tumblr.dj, i'm looking to share its subdomain, but still busy doing other
project.
------
BrianOD
FTP2P.com - who wants to share?
------
Uffizi
sensepic.com & vinescan.com are probably the two best that I own.
------
stevekemp
cron.management, transient.email, proxied.io, and finally spare.io.
------
manmeet
i once bought a te.vg domain, still lying around not doing anything
------
kirchhoff
Not sure? notesure.com
------
Mankhool
thoughtministry.com
------
timhargis
Hexxa.com
------
fleclerc
blogsqr.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Collaborative vim plugin - coherentpony
https://github.com/FredKSchott/CoVim
======
bilalq
This is amazing. A pity it's not organized for vundle/pathogen, but that can
be fixed.
~~~
coherentpony
I know, I really like it. I'm surprised this article has flopped. This is
right up most of the readers' alley.
~~~
bilalq
It's probably due to all the excitement from Google I/O that stole the
spotlight away. I'm working on a fork to get Vundle working with it. I think
I'm done. Just need to test it.
~~~
coherentpony
Post a link? :)
~~~
bilalq
I made a pull request that was accepted. You should be all set .
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Snippet?? App Facilitates Social and Business Opportunities Right Around You - joannabellatrix
The Snippet?? iOS app is an on-location socializing & networking tool to find people around you and make valuable social & business connections without working an entire room or leaving it to chance. Approach & engage in in-person conversations with confidence using common interests as an icebreaker. With Snippet??, you don't have to waste time trying to work an entire room to try and find people with common professions, social hobbies, interests, or networking goals (ie find an engineer, an investor, a fellow salsa dancer). You never know what valuable opportunity or connection you could make with someone at the same venue. Now Snippet?? shows you and encourages in-person interaction, where the real connections are made. It all starts with a conversation.<p>About: Founded in October 2018. Currently only in the Apple app store, with Android & mobile web versions soon to follow.<p>https://www.facebook.com/snippetconvos<p>https://angel.co/snippet-4
======
phoenix9
I like the idea of being able to network but not necessarily sharing my
profile with everyone, is their a way to protect my privacy while still being
able to network?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why text messages are limited to 160 characters - soundsop
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging.html
======
cuerty
There is a technical aspect of the GSM encoding that most people doesn't know:
It's just 140 bytes. In most encodings (the way computers represent text as 0
and 1) one character of the english language can be seen as a byte, this is
because the 8 bits of the byte are used to represent 256 numbers that are
mapped to letters, since there is less than 127 characters (leters and
symbols) in the english alphabet, the GSM encoding use only 7 bits (less than
a byte!) to represent the letters, and taking adventaje of those bits left it
finds the way to have 20 more characters than bytes.
------
wvenable
This doesn't seem to jive with the generally accepted reasoning for the 160
character limit.
From Wikipedia:
The key idea for SMS was to use this telephony-optimized system and to
transport messages on the signalling paths needed to control the telephony
traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. In this way
unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages without
additional cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages
to 128 bytes (later improved to 160 characters), so that the messages could
fit into the existing signaling formats. Therefore the service was named
"Short Message Service"
~~~
cliff
I think that both this article and the Wikipedia article are correct.
The LA Times took the more human-centric approach to the story, which from a
technical perspective was just 'how many and which characters can we cut out
to maximize the 128 bytes available'. It also highlights the person (or the
person who lead the team of people) who actually extended the SMS control
channel to include text messages.
I think that overall the story told by the LA Times is probably a lot more
interesting to its readers than the tech behind it.
------
geeko
This article makes me think back of my first venture I started with a friend
of mine during university. We developed a j2me app which compressed the sms
and allowed you to write roughly 400 characters within one sms while still
only paying for one. Learned a lot on the way and will always think back of it
as being my most exciting "course" at uni (In fact I'm thinking on how to
revive it these days, but still very unsure).
------
ableal
About who and why, back in 1985. Didn't know someone had actually 'tested' the
message length.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Senate Passes Major Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill as Part of NDAA - aburan28
http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=3765A225-B773-4F57-B21A-A265F4B5692C
======
aburan28
I give this story 5 minutes until it is buried via the no "politics" policy
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Newborn girls named Hillary - mathoff
https://i0.wp.com/peterturchin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/hillary.jpg
======
mathoff
Source: [http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/cultural-evolution-
knew...](http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/cultural-evolution-knew-
statistics-didnt-hillary-lose/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Recovered Covid Patients Often Have Heart Damage - bookofjoe
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200729/recovered-covid-patients-often-have-heart-damage
======
bookofjoe
>Red Sox ace Eduardo Rodríguez out for season with Covid-related heart ailment
[https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/aug/01/eduardo-
rodrig...](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/aug/01/eduardo-rodriguez-
coronavirus-out-for-season)
------
bookofjoe
>Outcomes of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Recently
Recovered From Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2768916)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What cracking open a Sonos One tells us about the Sonos IPO - flashman
https://blog.bolt.io/what-cracking-open-a-sonos-one-tells-us-about-the-sonos-ipo-dcab49155643
======
pascalo
I've got lots of Sonos speakers, one in every room of my house. Before
Soundcloud was an option I wrote my own SMAPI service to get that going for
myself. Then, when I switched from Mac to Linux I created my own client app
[1] to control my speakers.
I feel Sonos have really missed a trick by not opening up their API more. Most
of the features I had a reverse engineer or check from other libraries. Their
own apps have also not exactly gotten better. For example, I _HATE_ the
unified search feature, it makes the search slow and sluggish. Controlling the
speakers from Spotify directly also never worked glitch-free for me. Other
niggles have to do with the grouping features, which are also a tad flaky and
sometimes time out or only partially group. Most of all I am annoyed by the
frequent updates asked for, without the ability to "pin" the speakers to a
version and download a specific version of the client app.
All that said, I love their speakers because they sound good. The old Play 3
and the Amp especially. I feel they should focus their efforts on making the
apps snappier and faster, not much more feature rich.
[1] [https://github.com/pascalopitz/unoffical-sonos-controller-
fo...](https://github.com/pascalopitz/unoffical-sonos-controller-for-linux)
~~~
pascalo
Also, I forgot to say: There is no way I'd put an Amazon alexa or similar
device in my home, period. I take a "speaker company" instead any day.
~~~
ModernMech
I was sad when they integrated Alexa into the Sonos One. But it did make the
Play:1 cheaper, and there's really not much room to improve on that speaker.
Love it. I just hope they keep making Alexa free options.
~~~
chmars
AirPlay support would be great though … I hate that I have to use the Sonos
app and cannot directly play music from a Mac or iPhone.
~~~
TarpitCarnivore
AirPlay 2 is coming "soon"
~~~
samwillis
But only on their newer devices! Would be ok if it was that you needed only
one new “airplay 2” device on the network to act as a bridge but no, it will
only work on the new ones (or a one and a play:1 in stereo)
~~~
TarpitCarnivore
They said if you have an AirPlay 2 capable device you can use it to pair with
older speakers. It's right in their most recent press release on the matter.
------
rgbrenner
It's cool that Amazon's product is more advanced, and that's interesting
technically... but what does that have to do with the Sonos IPO?
Beats cost $18 to make.. cheap plastic.. nothing premium about them.. they
even put a few pieces of metal in it so they feel sturdy.. People love(d?)
them. Sold for $200/pair. Company sold for $3b.
The bill of materials isn't the sole determinate of success.
~~~
dalbasal
Totally aside... I don't really understand why beats gets singled out so
often, when it comes to cost of components. IDK, I feel like beats doesn't get
enough credit as a company.
First, if you look at a shelf of products (say an airport gadget shop), beats
is not the worst value on the shelf. Most beats products are OK. Half the gear
(in general) in those shops is crap.
Second, Beats did a good job on "product". They understood what price ranges
to target. The understood what each form factor was for, and how to explain
this to consumers. Beats' actual competition was earbuds, not alternative
"studio headphones." They knew which sound qualities (bass, basically)
customers would want, for the music they actually listen to while walking
around a mall.
They aren't always the best price performance across categories, but they
aren't crap either.
Anyway, the reason I think they deserve credit is not that. _They_ understood
the implication of "wearables." _They_ are the ones that managed to build
_that_ company, with a foot in fashion and another one in electronics. Part
authority on what's cool, part predictor of what's cool.
If you do the bill of materials test on versace it won't go well.
Compare beats as the fashion-tech-wearables brand to all the smartwatch
attempts at similar. Beats stands out.
~~~
xzel
I'm sorry but their sound quality is pretty abysmal for the price; there is a
reason they're lampooned. I agree that a lot of the headphone market is poor
but 20 minutes of googling will get you some good headphones for a decent
price. That aside, I certainly agree with you they were able to build a brand,
make mostly junk products pretty fashionable and sold a lot of merchandise.
~~~
dalbasal
You can say that about literally any major electronics brand. About 5 years
ago I googled for the new "oneplus" which turned out to be a great phone at
half the price of Samsung or LG. Unknown brand. Great deal. I was happy.
Bought again.
I also once bought soy sauce that wasn't kikkoman, half price and it tasted
good. Go figure. This doesn't make Samsung or Kikkoman "junk." It makes them a
brand name.
Maybe I should put this differently....
If Beats announced today they are putting major effort into smart watches, I
would expect to soon see lots of people wearing them. I'd beats to make smart
watches that people want because they're relevant piece of culture and
utility.
If boss or plantronics announced the same... I wouldn't.
~~~
xzel
Yes I totally agree people really do buy things because of celebrity
endorsements and don't do their own research before buying most things. Its
mind boggling to me but hey to each his own. Tangent-y but I feel the worst
for the people who have their iPhone/Apple headphones turned up to 11 b/c the
earbuds don't fit their ears well, and you know, everyone in the
bus/metro/subway with them that have to listen to their music bleeding out of
their ears, too.
~~~
dalbasal
I think if we reduce this to " _people buy things because of celebrity
endorsements_ " than there isn't much to talk about.
Xerox invented the modern PC, Apple spent the next 30 years applying celebrity
endorsements and marketing nonsense to make money. That's the story. I think
this is very wrong.
If you are selecting a component to put in a device, this is a mostly
objective question. Price. Objective quality, longevity. For a person to get
value out of a thing, you _must_ cross into more "subjective" territory. If
you refuse to rely on anything that is subjective, nothing about humans makes
sense. Why do people want to look cool anyway? Why are people listening to
music?
~~~
xzel
In fact I think the psychology behind celebrity endorsements and advertising
is particularly interesting and there is a lot to talk about.
Unfortunately, this topic, audio quality, is extremely subjective, yes, like
someone mentioned in another comment to my original post. But objectively the
audio response of Beats are very bass heavy and, in my opinion, the high end
response is lacking, but other people really enjoy their beats headphones so
thats up to them. Although, the divers in Beats, for the price, are
objectively a poor purchase. You can get stronger and clearer drivers in other
headphones at a fraction of the cost. I'm not really sure where the last bit
of your posts ties in with what I've been saying but I totally agree people
will be people, especially when the topic is complex and they can just buy
what Harden/KD/etc. wears and be happy.
------
derriz
This is not directly relevant to the article - more a critique of the Sonos
product which I've wanted to get off my chest.
I was a Sonos skeptic then a convert before becoming skeptical again. I
stopped buying after the third Sonos 3 speaker.
Some basic features are missing which mean that users like me are clearly not
a focus. Primarily I want to play my own, ripped-to-FLAC media.
The most irritating thing is that users have been requesting these features
for 5+ years on the fora.
A random list of grievances:
\- No regain support - this renders the playlist feature useless unless you
want to constantly fiddle with the controller to adjust the volume between
tracks.
\- No cue support (i.e. single FLAC with a .cue file) which allows transitions
between tracks. This breaks play back for lots of classical, Opera, ED music
and classic rock albums like the Beatles' Abbey Road.
\- Multi-disc support is poor - no grouping or separate disc images. 2 CD
boxsets are o.k. but larger (4+) are unnavigable.
\- Can't handle higher than 16/48 digital rips.
\- No airplay, bluetooth, etc. support. This means you cannot use Sonos to
replace all audio speakers in your home.
\- Wierd/undocumented rules for file naming - silently ignores tracks with
quotes, colons and maybe others (these are the ones that hit me)
\- Finally the controller software has gotten worse with every update: poor
album art caching, illogical navigation, confusing search, artist search
cannot find tracks on compilations, etc.
Then again, it seems going the "smart speaker" route has boosted their
revenues. I have no interest in such functionality so I guess I'm not the
target market for Sonos.
This is a pity because much of the package is quite compelling and it wouldn't
take much effort to support libraries (rather than streaming).
(edited for formatting)
~~~
chrisan
> No airplay, bluetooth, etc. support. This means you cannot use Sonos to
> replace all audio speakers in your home.
Not ideal, but you can hookup an AppleTV to line in on a connect:amp and
airplay this way.
Insanely expensive buy in for that feature. I just happened to have the amp as
my first sonos product and an appletv I no longer use (switched to Fires)
~~~
xfitm3
I run airsonos on a local server, which exposes all my Sonos speakers over
Airplay individually.
~~~
chrisan
Ooo thanks for this! Will try it out. I already have a pi running pi-hole,
would be nice to have 1 less device sucking electricity :)
------
joshumax
> "Interestingly, this is the same system-on-a-chip used in the 6th generation
> Amazon Fire HD; maybe Amazon had a few extra laying around?"
A little-known fact about the echo smart speakers is that they run a minimally
modified version of FireOS at their core. In fact, many references to the Fire
tablet lineup can be seen around the echo firmware. Using the same SoC makes
sense in this regard as it allows for a more unified build process by enabling
kernel/driver/firmware blob reuse.
~~~
xyzzy_plugh
The original Echo ran something akin to the Kindle e-reader Linux-based OS.
Once the Fire Phone failed, many Android engineers were absorbed into the Echo
projects and the follow-on products seem to have been migrated to FireOS (or
vice versa?).
There are some sparse details about the original Echo floating around[0], but
I couldn't find the specifics.
While they may be able to share some firmware, I'd still wager their
kernels/drivers/firmware blobs are different enough due to drastically
different components interfacing with the SoC. I personally question the value
of putting Android on non-mobile screen-less devices (forgetting about the
Echo Show).
0: [https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/blog/alexa-are-you-
listenin...](https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/blog/alexa-are-you-listening/)
~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I'm not sure we should be forgetting about the Show; I can't imagine that
Amazon wants different kinds of Echo to have different operating systems, and
once you've got the screen, it makes more and more sense to reuse your
existing systems.
~~~
xyzzy_plugh
You're implying Amazon knows what it wants. They thought the Fire Phone was
going to be huge. They thought the Echo wasn't.
While reuse is nice, optimizing for experimentation and different products is
probably more useful. Given most of the magic of Alexa lives in Amazon's
servers, there seems to be less incentive to use existing solutions over what
makes sense (and is cost effective).
------
jacquesm
I was about to buy some Sonos stuff but asked if I needed to go online to
activate them (I claimed I did not have internet), and sure enough, an
internet connection is a requirement. So sorry Sonos, I am buying an
_appliance_ which I expect to function independent of your company for years
to come. If that can not be guaranteed then my money will stay in my pocket
and I will continue to use my open-source cobbled together solution even if it
is slightly less polished and convenient.
~~~
JOnAgain
I get what you’re saying, but Sonos works differently than a normal speaker.
It is playing the music, not your other device. The app is a control. So if
you turn on music and leave with your phone, the music keeps going. When other
people connect, they see your music and services, not theirs. It’s its own
thing - not just a speaker.
That said, your point about, “will it continue to work if sonos, the company,
is shut down?” Is a valid one.
~~~
mynewtb
All you described is local network, no need to involve the internet.
~~~
ModernMech
It works by streaming the music from the internet. If it's just on a local
network, it has no source of music.
~~~
JackCh
You don't have music on your local network?
~~~
ModernMech
No, I don't. All of my music is on the cloud.
------
jfindley
So he spends what looks to have been a substantial amount of time carefully
disassembling and commenting on the manufacturing processes and material
quality of two speakers, without ever even looking at the actual speaker cones
and housing at all? Seriously? I kept waiting for there to be SOME discussion
of the actual speaker itself, and even went back and re-read, figuring I must
have missed it... but no. Nope. He actually managed to do a teardown of two
speakers without ever actually looking at the most important bits. Wow.
~~~
yc-kraln
you seem to have completely missed the point of the article. it isnt a speaker
review, it is an analysis of the strategy of the company developing the
speaker. the audio quality is not germane
~~~
seizethecheese
Audio quality is _the_ reason why anyone would buy a Sonos speaker over an
echo. It's a core strategy component.
------
mahrain
He correctly identifies the silicon labs Zigbee/Bluetooth chip but then
remarks the Zigbee is not used? It's one of the major selling points of the
Echo Plus and it was sold bundled with a Philips Hue bulb for launch. After
this I doubt this guy really knows what he's talking about. Nice teardown
though.
------
TheSpiceIsLife
I don’t think it matters that the Echo Plus is technically more advanced and
that Amazon owns more of the stack.
If the Sonos One _looks_ better, is heavier, and costs more, then Sonos might
be able to sell the product further up-and-to-the-right on the Veblen good
chart.
Maybe.
I’m not convinced going public for these one trick ponies does anything other
than let the early investors cash out.
I’m just a layperson when it comes to these matters, but wouldn’t Sonos have
been acquired if their product-market fit was believed to be worth something?
~~~
BurritoAlPastor
Acquired by who? It's a luxury niche brand. Acquisition by one of the giants
they integrate with (Apple, Amazon, Spotify, etc) would inevitably result in
vendor lock-in (Apple buys them and now Amazon Music doesn't work anymore),
which would be devastating to their reputation and customer sat. A "neutral"
giant (LG?) could pick them up, but why? Who wants to diversify into luxury
home stereo? That leaves major audio companies (Sennheiser? Bose?), but those
are mostly already luxury brands, and cobranding ("Sonos by Sennheiser") could
get complicated.
The nature of the market Sonos is working in means that whatever P/M fit they
have is potentially compromised by being acquired. Weird, but that's luxury
goods for ya.
~~~
samatman
LVMH perhaps?
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Your comment prompted me to read the LVMH Wikipedia article.[1]
I didn’t realise the group owned so many labels.
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LVMH#Subsidiaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LVMH#Subsidiaries)
~~~
skinnymuch
Also didn’t know owner Arnoult catapulted to 4th richest in the world after
last year.
------
kapad
Read this for the interesting deep dive into the parts used and the insights
on manufacturing process and cost of manufacturing.
Wished the article would have also covered the tweeter and midrange on sound
quality. That seems necessary given its a breakdown of a smart Bluetooth
speaker.
Other than that, I don't see much value in the business insights the writer
has reached.
~~~
goldenkey
Aren't most PC speakers ie. integrated amplifier / 3.5mm input (is that what
they are called?) inferior to having a separate amplifier, and a DAC?
I used to buy PC speakers before I realized that I was paying for a new (but
shitty) amplifier everytime I got a new set of speakers.
Audio path is as such:
Digital File -> DAC -> 3.5mm -> Amplifier -> Speakers
Wireless audio path can cut the DAC out in well designed systems.
In any case, I think most people, even smart hackers in our group, think that
they can get amazing PC speakers..audiophile quality. Its a popular
misconception. But once you think about the physics of it, of course a 3.5mm
cable isnt delivering enough voltage to physically move speaker cones back and
forth.. So these "PC speakers" have really cramped amplifiers inside, dealing
with very high voltages.
Invest in a good amp for the main sound setup that you care about. Youll have
to buy new speakers with balanced red and white thick gauge cables but you'll
get much better sound. It saves the environment, optimizes the process.
I recommend Peachtree [1] The amp has wireless streaming, mobile apps, USB
audio from PC, skipping analog conversion. Absolutely stunning quality.
[1] [https://amzn.to/2ugzrM21](https://amzn.to/2ugzrM21)
------
lordnacho
I'm not sure why anything needed to be taken apart for him to reach his
conclusions?
Amazon is manufacturer and retailer (so no double margin), they own the Alexa
IP which does the real work in both cases, and has deep enough pockets to try
out this market (so they don't even need the margin).
If I had to have a reason why Sonos might still be worth something it's the
luxury brand value. Like owning a B&O stereo in its day. Yes you can buy
cheaper but are you a real connaisseur then?
~~~
viraptor
From my quick review, Sonos is actually the most functional device now. I
couldn't find another one which works with multiple (grouped) speakers on
wifi, uses Google Play and Spotify, and allows DLNA input. Are there any non-
luxury brand alternatives which fulfill this?
------
fake-name
I'm deeply confused why the person writing this thinks speakers are a
technology that even _can_ be "disrupted", let alone all the stuff he does
that is for all intents and purposes just reading tea leaves^H^H^H^H^Hspeaker
casings.
Sure, the manufacturing is interesting, and there is some truth to the smart
aspect of the sonos being kind of "bolted on", but the attempt to read an
entire companies outset from the manufacturing processes they use is just
stupid.
As much as software likes to go on about "disrupting" this and "reimagining"
that, manufacturing, particularly large volume manufacturing is
extraordinarily staid, and different companies have in-house experience with
different processes. Switching processes just because something is new and
shiny is just not done, because the retooling costs are enormous, and you may
not _have_ the in-house familiarity with the new processes.
Really, what it sounds like to me is that the engineers at Sonos are far
__better __at designing things for production. They didn 't need to use fancy
new tools, or design extremely exotic moldings. When it comes to cranking out
a product, the LESS fancy new processes you use, the better in almost every
case. It means the processes you're using are more predictable, you have more
vendors you can use (because they're more broadly available), and you're
likely to maybe have a old guy or two in house who's use process XXX for 40
years, and can tell you in excruciating detail _every single little thing_ you
have to worry about _before_ you even start production.
Basically, this is a single decent point (sonos is a speaker company adding
smart shit, and amazon is a internet-of-shit/retail giant adding speakers),
buried in a whole lot of hyperbole and bullshit.
~~~
cm2187
And most of the value added is in the software. The hardware is just an active
speaker with the equivalent of a raspberry pi attached. Not new tech.
I owned a set a Sonos speakers for about 5 years now and I am in the market
for a better replacement. The software has become unusable, the speakers keep
depairing, not managing to read the network drive (and shockingly only support
SMB1). But all the alternatives have moved into stasi-style “a mic behind
every radiator”. I feel slightly out of choice. I just want the music not the
spying.
~~~
Symbiote
I have a Chromecast Audio, plugged into the HiFi amplifier and good floor-
standing speakers I've owned since I was 21. I use BubbleUPnP to control it,
and have MiniDLNA running on a small server to share my music. (Though there
are other ways to expose a music collection from a phone, NAS or whatever, or
skip both of these and use Spotify or similar.)
I don't know if Google log every track I play — the Chromecast doesn't work if
my Internet connection drops — but they haven't got GDPR compliant permission
from me, so perhaps not.
Streaming the audio directly from my MacBook is unsatisfactory, it drops out a
lot. So the soundtrack to a film playing on a laptop can't be done this way, I
would instead plug the laptop directly into the HiFi. The equivalent setup
works on Linux with an ethernet connection, but was a hassle to configure and
get working so I haven't bothered with my new Linux computer.
I only have the one pair of wired speakers, I haven't tried the multi room
feature.
~~~
givinguflac
I find it hilarious that you offer a google product to someone who’s concerned
about spying.
~~~
Symbiote
According to [https://superuser.com/questions/1277872/what-kind-of-data-
is...](https://superuser.com/questions/1277872/what-kind-of-data-is-google-
chromecast-audio-collecting) the logging is easily disabled.
I would prefer a different manufacturer of a similar device, but I don't know
of any.
------
nebulous1
It's interesting that he repeatedly refers to Sonos as a "traditional speaker
manufacturer" which isn't something I would have accused Sonos of being
~~~
CamperBob2
Sonos was a manufacturer of wireless remote speakers in the BC (Before Cloud)
era. They had a good reputation until they got religion and started frog-
marching their users into the cloud against their will. Pretty much every
mention of Sonos I've seen online has been associated with complaints about
that, e.g. [http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/sonos-holding-their-
users-...](http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/sonos-holding-their-users-
hostage-cloud-account-now-required/msg1624717/#msg1624717) and
[https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-
software-228995/s...](https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-
software-228995/save-the-cr100-6800510/) .
So they appear to be a leading-edge wireless speaker manufacturer who woke up
one day and found themselves to be a little less leading-edge than they
thought they were. They are now trying to make up for lost ground by using
Amazon's IP and storefront to compete with... Amazon.
So I can see why the author of the article is bearish on these guys.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
The parents point still stands:
Sonos were always wireless remote speakers, as far as I recall.
Sonos was what you had when you wanted steaming audio around the home well
before it became popular with the advent of these new tangled gadgets.
~~~
tunap
"new tangled gadgets"
Is that a typo or is it a new(to me) adjective? Curiously apropos, regardless.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Damn touchscreens and their auto-incorrect.
It was intended to be _newfangled_.
I coin a new term: _tapographical error_
------
ggm
I don't know if anyone ever looked at the mechanical prowess of b&o back in
the LP day.. but they were basically crap. Crapper than crap. A Garrard
turntable and sme arm beat them hollow. But.. b&o had charisma and marketing.
Bests for profit giant isn't to be best, it's to be sexiest. Sonos is a sexy
brand.
------
oliwarner
Obligatory: SlimMP3/Logitech's Squeezebox[0] was the best.
Very similar line-up to the original Sonos boxes, except they released a lot
more speakerless hardware. Open source server (that could be run from the
Touch model) which is still maintained and improved. Streaming options. House-
wide sync. All for half the price of the Sonos.
It's especially galling reading that list of Sonos complaints. We've got
regain support, good .cue handling, 24/192 and higher playback depending on
your hardware, you could even do bidirectional Airplay and bluetooth (with
some kicking and screaming)... And oh yeah, you could _make your own players_
because it's all open source, open spec.
And a _feature_ (for me), none of this smart rubbish.
For those of us that have a household full of it (and spares) it's still an
amazing system... but Logitech ultimately binned it. I guess only selling one
pile of kit every 15 years didn't seem good enough business for them.
Le sigh.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_(network_music_play...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezebox_\(network_music_player\))
~~~
detaro
In DIY circles, that ecosystem seems to be still somewhat alive (with client
software running on Raspberry Pis etc), which is pretty telling about the
alternatives...
~~~
oliwarner
Oh definitely. Yeah, I've got 4 real ones and 4 DIY squeezelite's in rotation
at the moment.
And even while you can build you own, the used market is still strong.
Hardware that's been used daily for 10 years selling for 70% its original
retail pricetag. Practically unheard of for consumer tech.
Basically, Logitech are idiots. They could keep selling what they did and
still make money but it'd be trivial for them to step back in and pick up
development, but hey ho.
------
IshKebab
I'm pretty sure the holes in the Echo Plus aren't drilled. That would be
crazy! Perhaps it is injection moulded with an internal draft and then drilled
out afterwards.
~~~
IshKebab
Also I have previously looked at these holes and wondered how they
manufactured it, and the holes are clearly made in 6 groups with the same
angle of hole in each group. This is how you'd do it with injection moulding -
a load of pins attached together.
If you were CNC drilling them you'd use a CNC lathe and the hole axes would
all be normal to the surface which isn't the case.
~~~
iancmceachern
Your description confirms my suspicion. I bet they used a collapsable core. It
is the same way they're able to mold internal threads and such.
------
neya
I have a strong feeling Sonos will end up like Aiwa[1] (the original brand)
because they're in a very similar situation as Aiwa was. Aiwa died because of
a combination of bad technology bets, not being able to cope up with
technology fast enough while simultaneously struggling to fight a then
monopoly (Sony). I did a couple of teardowns and found some interesting
technical choices - The company, even in its last breath didn't let go of its
"signature" design and sound of loudspeakers. They were later acquired by Sony
and shut down for good after failed attempts at rejuvenation.
Audio is an unforgiving market. It will be interesting to see how Sonos
survives.
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwa)
~~~
antoniuschan99
I still have an Aiwa system from 1990-1994. They were almost on par with
Sony/JVC back in the day (~1996)
------
joshstrange
I loved the teardown and the article as a whole but that header was MASSIVE.
On my 13" MacBook I could see very little content. I ended up deleting the
header + nav and that mad it much better but I would have expected it to slim
down or hide once I scrolled down.
------
S_A_P
I think the author misses the point of Sonos somewhat. I don’t think they aim
to dominate the smart speaker market. They seem to be a fashionable upper
midrange device that is as much for status as it is a speaker. They market
Sonos speakers as a fancy home speaker that also happens to support Alexa.
Amazon is more the mass market option and just aims to put Alexa in every
home.
Sonos will never take over the world but will be an established niche player.
I would also agree with the sentiment of no Alexa in my home. I was an early
adopter of Amazon echo but I have given them away and will never have one in
my home again.
------
whoisjuan
I wish the author had focused only on doing a straight-forward teardown and
comparison of both products instead of inserting random comments, jokes and
business opinions.
It felt unnecessarily forced and clickbaity.
------
dawnerd
I used to own a ton of Sonos speakers and absolutely loved them. But the
software was just too damn buggy. Ended up giving them away right around the
time WiFi support rolled out and the speakers refused to stay connected.
I’m hoping for the best for them. Their customer support was absolutely top
notch. Talked on the phone with an engineer from Europe on Christmas Eve
trying to solve a weird bug in the Mac app.
------
quanticle
_Amazon sells nearly all of its Echo products through their own retail
channel, this means they don’t pay a margin to other retailers. I can’t think
of a single consumer electronics company that sells tens of millions of units
directly to consumers like that._
Doesn't Apple sell far more (of its own manufacture) than Amazon, directly to
consumers as well?
~~~
greggman
Apple sells on Amazon, Best Buy, Verison stores, T-Mobile stores etc... lots
of places.
~~~
trollied
The margin on Apple products is tiny though. As a reseller, you'd be lucky to
make 5% if you sold at the same retail price as Apple.
~~~
danpalmer
Yep. I used to work for an Apple reseller. We had a good relationship with
Apple, but selling a £150 iPod and a £15 case, we made more on the case.
Apple margins are non existent. Companies sell Apple stuff because they have
to.
~~~
amelius
So as a salesman, you would be trying to convince customers to buy the other
brand you have on store?
~~~
danpalmer
No, we didn't stock iPod/Mac competitors. There was good competition for cases
and other accessories, but we weren't told the margins between suppliers for
those. All I knew about margins was that Apple stuff was ~6-12% depending on
the product, accessories were great, and software was excellent at 50+% margin
(except for iWork/iLife), but we didn't sell much software.
------
prayerslayer
Somewhat related question: I quite enjoy such articles where people take apart
consumer electronics, although I don't know the jargon ("an extruded plastic
tube with a secondary rotational drilling operation" \- wat?). Does someone
know accessible resources (as in "no dry textbooks") for mechanical
engineering?
~~~
rwmj
Watch AvE take stuff apart on Youtube. His disassembly of the Juicero would be
a good place to start: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-
BGQfpHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ) or this one
disassembling an overpriced Dyson hairdryer:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-vJxez9UF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-vJxez9UF8)
------
yeukhon
I own Sonos One. Love it when the wifi connectivity between my
cellphone/laptop and my Sonos don’t die. Iisten Spotify and some radio
podcasts. The sound quality is great, especially the bass is pretty good. I
wish there’s a bluetooth option which would offer better connectivity quality
in short range.
~~~
stevesimmons
I bought a Sonos One for my partner and regret it.
One of our use cases is playing audio from videos of dance classes. But it
can't do this, because the WiFi streaming protocols are set up for linear
streaming, using long buffers. That kills the ability to do frequent seeking
and looping of sections of a video. Yet the most basic of crappy Bluetooth
speakers has no trouble with this.
It never occurred to me that a premium wireless speaker released in 2017 could
not do this. My fault, of course, for not researching it thoroughly enough.
But Sonos's also, for arbitrarily restricting a perfectly sensible use of
generic hardware like a speaker.
~~~
givinguflac
If you still have the One it’s getting AirPlay 2 next week which solves your
issue, assuming iOS user.
~~~
admiralpumpkin
Can you reference that timeframe? I can’t find anything from Sonos announcing
a specific date. Thanks!
------
lykahb
I'm not going to buy Sonos, Amazon Echo, smart TV or any other "smart" device.
They all have some things in common: vendor lock-in, manufacturer having more
control over the device than the owner does, and little control over your own
data.
For many websites it took quite a lot of effort to comply with the GDPR
requirements. Updating the devices firmware is harder. Without OTA
capabilities it may even be impossible. Soon we may hear some news about
manufacturers with unscrupulous practices being fined and kicked out of the
European market.
------
allengeorge
I can’t speak to their “smart” aspirations, but...it’s surprising to me that
the author lauds the Echo. Sounds like that speaker is far more demanding to
manufacture, which...isn’t necessarily a good thing.
------
amaccuish
I just wish the echo had an ethernet port. Its WiFi chip seems real flakey.
------
sg47
How long before Microsoft buys Sonos?
------
2bitencryption
this site format makes me feel like I wasted lots of money on my computer
monitor, because 30% of it is taken up by enormous banners on the top and
bottom of the screen...
~~~
jimnotgym
Have you tried Firefox reading view? No banner, and you still get the teardown
pictures.
~~~
Digit-Al
Odd. When I tried using reader view it only showed the text and not the
pictures.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why US corporations are hoarding cash and not investing (Paul Krugman) - ScottBurson
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/opinion/robber-baron-recessions.html
======
ScottBurson
This longer piece, linked to in the Krugman column, is also very interesting:
[http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.lynn-
lon...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.lynn-longman.html)
~~~
ScottBurson
Here's a quote from it:
_In dozens of cases between 1945 and 1981, antitrust officials forced large
companies like AT &T, RCA, IBM, GE, and Xerox to make available, for free, the
technologies they had developed in-house or gathered through acquisition. Over
the thirty-seven years this policy was in place, American entrepreneurs gained
access to tens of thousands of ideas—some patented, some not—including the
technologies at the heart of the semiconductor. The effect was transformative.
In Inventing the Electronic Century, the industrial historian Alfred D.
Chandler Jr. argued that the explosive growth of Silicon Valley in subsequent
decades was largely set in motion by these policies and the "middle-level
bureaucrats" in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division who enforced them
in the field._
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Turning 26 Is a Potential Death Sentence for People with Type 1 Diabetes in USA - dsr12
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/turning-26-type-1-diabetes
======
vikramkr
There's this whole biohacking/open source insulin pump community out there
which is deeply terrifying. Medical devices go through the regulation they do
for a reason, and it's scary that people are resorting to these ticking time
bombs of hacked together devices because costs are so out of control.
~~~
jki275
Your comment doesn't have anything to do with the article, but even so --
insulin costs are not the reason people are doing the open source insulin pump
modifications. They're doing them because it allows them much better fine
grained control over their insulin levels, in essence giving them an
artificial pancreas. This gives them much greater quality of life than having
to continually use test strips and injections.
Yes, we have medical regulation, and it costs possibly hundreds of millions of
dollars to bring new devices to market. They got tired of waiting.
~~~
melling
Before Obamacare, you weren’t covered until you were 26. Was it 19?
In less than a decade, the world comes to an end if you can’t be covered until
you’re 26.
Healthcare and education have outpaced inflation for several decades, and now
neither are affordable.
Perhaps the solution is to figure out how to reduce the costs?
~~~
jki275
I do agree that reducing costs of bringing new medical devices to market would
be helpful. The only way to do that, however, is to reduce the regulatory
framework a company has to comply with.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Taiwanese Kidnappers Receive $1.68M Bitcoin Ransom from Billionaire Yuk-Kwan - 666_howitzer
http://cointelegraph.com/news/115502/taiwanese-kidnappers-receive-168m-bitcoin-ransom-from-billionaire-yuk-kwan
======
celticninja
Well those coins are going to be watched and watched and watched, of course
that doesnt mean anything will come of it but they will be followed for a long
time to come.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How containers became a tech darling, and why Docker became their poster child - tosh
https://medium.com/s-c-a-l-e/how-containers-became-a-tech-darling-and-why-docker-became-their-poster-child-bfaf9ac87825
======
staunch
This answer doesn't include any mention of OpenVZ, which means you're not
asking a Linux expert. The answer sounds like the type confused competitors
invariably give, which boils down to "we did it first, they just made it
flashy and cool" and is never the real reason.
> _When you think about why would someone pick one Linux distro over the
> other, it’s because of — literally — the aesthetics of how the directories
> are laid out and what they’re called; the default shell and how much stuff
> was in there; and the packaging system. That was it._
This is straight from a Slashdot flamewar in 1998.
~~~
dasil003
It's worse than that. I was there at the founding of TextDrive, I shelled out
the cash for "lifetime hosting" which got them off the ground. You can call
this sour grapes, because it definitely is, but this picture that Jason paints
about how awesome his technology was and how he was there first on all this
stuff is laughable—because the technology _did not_ work. When he says
something like:
> _...the smartest thing we could’ve done was never let all the web 2.0
> companies go away. We had everybody back then. It was probably the biggest
> tactical error, if you will, but the tech was fine._
The reason they lost those customers was that their tech _was not_ fine. In
the early days, Jason was posting dozens of posts a day to the TextDrive forum
waxing on about how awesome the tech they were working on was, however at no
point did it ever stabilize into something reliable. It was initially sold as
being the first non-oversold shared hosting service, which implicitly promises
stability, but in fact it was half the reliability of traditional shared
hosting like Dreamhost at 10x the price.
Now it was true that they were bleeding edge, and so they got a lot of these
companies on board, and even were the first "official Rails host" before any
other shared hosting could handle Rails, and they had a lot of brand equity,
which is how they managed to have this great early customer list. But it was
all just based on hype and a compelling sales pitch from Jason. It really rubs
me the wrong way how he has parlayed his mediocre-at-best technology execution
into an image as a technology pioneer which he continues to use to leverage
himself to new heights. The guy is a mediocre technologist, but a fantastic
salesman.
~~~
jimpick
Ex-Joyent employee here, but I don't go back that far.
The company has quite the history.
I have to disagree with your characterizations. The products changed much over
the years, many things were tried, many failed. Most startups change their
product significantly over time and it's hardly surprising that the business
they are in now isn't one of the early iterations they tried and failed at.
I strongly believe that Jason is one of the best technologists on the planet.
So there.
~~~
wpietri
What puzzles me about your comment is that you don't directly refute what
Dasil003 was saying, which is that the technology didn't actually work, that
from the customer perspective the execution was "mediocre at best".
I'm sure he's a bright and likable guy, and from his resume I figure he must
be an inspiring leader. But for me, being a great technologist is all about
things actually working, about users actually getting served. Sure, one should
fail a lot in the lab, and sure, startups should be trying enough things that
some just don't have product/market fit. But that's very different to me than
promising the moon and delivering stuff that doesn't actually work.
~~~
jimpick
During my time there, the stuff was amazingly solid. It was Solaris, not
Linux, with a heavy dose of NetBSD ports. The customer support was the best in
the biz too, but only the larger customers really saw that.
There were always those legacy customers from years before who had there stuff
running on some boxes in an old datacenter that only a few of the original
staff knew about, and required continuous care and attention. Ihere's a
business lesson to learn there - if you sell a "lifetime" subscription for a
product that will become obsolete, you'll pay a lifetime PR cost in the future
when you can't continue with that product.
Coming from a pretty long Linux background, Solaris took some getting used to,
but once I figured it out, it really was a better, more solid, better
engineered solution. But Linux has a huge community - the people that loved
Solaris are the old Unix graybeards, and that community wasn't growing.
Before my time, there were some debacles, such as a storage platform product
that ended up losing data, but by the time I was there, they had learned the
lessons, and I'll still say their core stack is still superior to any Linux
based stack used in the datacenter today. It's been 4 years since I worked
there.
~~~
wpietri
Interesting. Thanks for the further details.
In their shoes I think the lesson I would learn is "don't go back on a deal".
They could have returned the money, transitioned people to another product,
shifted people to a different vendor, or offered people the option of any of
the three. I don't think it was initially a PR problem; it was bad behavior,
unilaterally breaking a promise, that got them in hot water.
------
pjc50
_I think Linux took off [versus Solaris and FreeBSD] because of package
management. I think that’s basically it. Docker’s taking off because it’s the
new package management. It’s just that simple_.
Solaris used to cost money and not ship with all kinds of user-friendly things
like a nice shell or a C compiler.
He's right about package management. This is being fought out again with the
language-specific package management systems. People want to install the tip
of the iceberg that is the software they actually want, without worrying about
the rest of the iceberg of supporting software and all its security updates
and version conflicts.
Containers also exist because UNIX has no good standard way of delegating
resources that aren't files. You can give users disk quotas but not memory
quotas. You can't delegate management of a TCP port or IP address to a user.
You can't delegate users into "sub-users" for their administrative
convenience.
Containers also answer the question of "what do I need to clean up when this
system has been compromised?" Because security is still a disaster area,
admins need a means of effectively partitioning systems and cleaning up after
breaches.
------
amelius
I haven't used Docker, but looking at the wikipedia page, it seems that most
of what Docker provides is actually supplied by the Linux kernel. So I'm
wondering: what is Docker really, besides a thin layer on top of the kernel?
~~~
NeutronBoy
There was this [1] posted not long back, and it basically says exactly that -
Docker is a convenient layer around existing kernel functions and systemd. You
can do it all manually.
[https://chimeracoder.github.io/docker-without-
docker/#1](https://chimeracoder.github.io/docker-without-docker/#1)
~~~
digi_owl
Taking systemd for granted, sheesh...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DHS Seizes Aftermarket iPhone Screens from Prominent Right-To-Repair Advocate - dsr12
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes-iphone-screens-jessa-jones
======
forapurpose
Does someone comment on whether an expansion of DHS authority is in progress?
Should the Justice Department be involved? I didn't know they could raid
domestic businesses and seize property, but it's very possible I was ignorant
of it.
I wonder because of another story, in which ICE (Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, part of DHS) raided a website that provided ads for prostitution.
ICE made this claim in the article:
_As the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, ICE is
responsible for the enforcement of laws that promote the legitimate movement
of people, goods and currency in domestic and foreign transactions. Our
allegation with this case is that the business and its principals purported
itself to be an escort service while promoting criminal acts, namely illegal
prostitution._
The movement of "people, goods, and currency" sounds like a very wide remit,
covering almost every economic transaction, any time someone takes a step on
the sidewalk, and more. In fact, it sounds like they stretch even that to
cover prostitution.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/nyregion/raid-of-
rentboy-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/27/nyregion/raid-of-rentboy-an-
escort-website-angers-gay-activists.html)
~~~
rbanffy
> they stretch even that to cover prostitution.
Considering the current president's habits, that can have serious national
security repercussions.
------
ohiovr
Don’t put logos you don’t own on parts you sell. Why is it necessary to have
logos on replacement parts anyway?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Go concurrency patterns - joubert
http://talks.golang.org/2012/concurrency.slide#1
======
sirclueless
How do goroutines get cleaned up? For example, in many of these examples they
create a goroutine that is supposed to send a message over a blocking channel
eventually. What if I use their "select + time.After()" pattern and the
timeout hits and I return. Does the goroutine hang forever? Does it constitute
a memory leak? We both hold the channel, so it can't get garbage collected, is
Go smart enough to know there aren't any more readers and the goroutine +
channel can get cleaned up?
Maybe to solve this I use a "quit" channel as they do. Do I need to worry
about what happens if a quit message is never sent, or if two routines send
one, or if the receiver is multiplexed and only one of many readers gets the
message and cleans up correctly. It sounds like the whole malloc() and free()
dance all over again, except this time I don't have any nice invariants to
reason about such as "Everything that gets malloc()ed needs to be free()d,
exactly once". Instead I need to worry that everyone is playing nice and will
terminate when asked, _and_ I need to remember to ask exactly once.
~~~
biot
Rob Pike has a Q&A at the end of his video where he answers (what sounds like)
the exact same question you ask: <http://youtu.be/f6kdp27TYZs?t=46m17s>
Essentially, it gets garbage collected without you having to worry about it
unless you're doing something fairly special.
~~~
kfl
Except that Rob Pike later in the golang-nuts groups expand on exactly that
question: [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-
nuts/bfuwmhbZHYw/di...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/golang-
nuts/bfuwmhbZHYw/discussion)
Qoute: "Goroutines are not garbage-collected. They must return from the top-
level function (or panic) to have all their resources recovered."
------
Ezra
Video of rob giving the talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kdp27TYZs
Also, this makes use of the excellent "Golang Present Tool", which makes most
of the code on the slides executable.[1]
[1]: <http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.talks/present>
------
duaneb
Completely off topic, but this is literally the worst presentation software
I've ever seen and I hate it when it pops up. It didn't fit in my screen, so I
zoomed out (or whatever the pinch movement does), at which point horizontal
scrolling stopped working, even when I zoomed back in. IIRC it didn't work at
all on the ipad.
Is it really so hard to have forward/back buttons on the slide somewhere?
~~~
kevingadd
Google presenters don't care about you unless you're running Chrome and have a
keyboard.
Pro-tip: If you load it with JS disabled, all the slides show up as plain
text. That might let you at least consume the slides' content.
EDIT: Pro-tip #2: It looks like if you tap the edge of the next/previous
slide, it should scroll onto screen. Kind of tricky, though.
------
ominous_prime
Here's a video of the talk from Google I/O 2012:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kdp27TYZs>
------
masklinn
> Rough analogy: writing to a file by name (process, Erlang) vs. writing to a
> file descriptor (channel, Go).
That analogy doesn't really work, messages can be sent to an Erlang process by
pid, how this pid came to be obtained isn't necessarily through naming (you
can also register a process to a name, in which case it is indeed like writing
to a file by name), and some of the things messages are sent to are not actual
processes (e.g. ports).
~~~
jlgreco
The way I see it is that you write to files with an fd, but and fd can point
to more than just files.
~~~
masklinn
> some of the things messages are sent to are not actual processes (e.g.
> ports).
~~~
jlgreco
Ah, fair enough. I don't know erlang. Can a process have multiple distinct
channels it receives on?
~~~
masklinn
Nope, each process has a single mailbox.
On the other hand, processes don't have to go through their mailbox
sequentially, they can prioritize messages (through pattern matching) and
handle these first even if they are the last message in the mailbox (it's
called a "selective receive"), so you get the same feature trivially by
tagging messages instead of sending a message to a different channel.
------
jws
Slide #33: _Fan-in using select_
I always get alternating Joe/Ann responses. I'm not seeing that in the code
though. It says selectors are chosen pseudo-randomly. I'm expecting Joe or Ann
to get a couple quickies in at some point.
~~~
Cyranix
If you added a trivial wait of random length before each response, mightn't
you see non-alternating behavior at times?
~~~
gizzlon
Not GP, but I also saw this.. Increasing the timeout to 0><10 seconds does
give the expected output..
But shouldn't I see this from time-to-time with 1 second as well? Hmm..
~~~
gizzlon
My rand.Intn() was always returning the same value. Seem like you have to to
seed it manually (once, in main() for example): _rand.Seed(
time.Now().UTC().UnixNano())_
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12321133/golang-random-
nu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12321133/golang-random-number-
generator-how-to-seed-properly)
_Edit:_ It's in the documentation, but you have to look for it.
" _Seed uses the provided seed value to initialize the generator to a
deterministic state. If Seed is not called, the generator behaves as if seeded
by Seed(1)_ "
------
jiggy2011
Ok, I've never actually written anything in go so humour me here.
The generally given reasons on HN that threads mapped 1:1 to pthreads are bad
seem to be as follows:
_Shared mutable state is hard._
_Memory usage is inefficient when you are allocating a fixed size stack per
thread and those threads spend most of their time blocked waiting for IO._
Let's assume you are using some thread pooling pattern , so thread startup
time is not such an issue.
Apart from perhaps better syntax with channels etc, how does go fundamentally
solve these problems in way that you cannot with standard threads?
For example, shared mutable state problems can be mitigated to a degree by
going down a "shared nothing" approach and handling shared state through some
middleman like a Queue or a SQL/NoSQL DB.
I assume go supports some form of pass by reference so you can still make
shared mutable state an issue with it if you pass a reference to a goroutine.
Each goroutine has it's own stack regardless of how many pthreads exist so
there can still be wasted memory on a blocking operation.
~~~
jerf
Nothing stops you from doing anything you want with threads, including using
them to implement very safe patterns. The problems are, 1: the thread
libraries do not afford those safe patterns, and indeed, afford very unsafe
ones (and also ones that compose poorly) 2: libraries written for the
ecosystem will end up using the poor patterns 3: lack of compiler enforcement
and how easy it is to accidentally mutate something unexpectedly mean that
unless you are superhumanly careful you will still screw something up,
somewhere.
And you are correct that Go does not enforce shared-nothing between the
goroutines. It has _better_ affordances on those fronts that conventional C,
but it is not _enforced_ as it is in Erlang or Haskell. And while I say the
affordances are "better", I still think that people screwing it up will be a
practical problem.
~~~
chubot
Yeah, this is exactly right... I have to say Go changed my thinking about
concurrency. But now I want to write a very small wrapper around pthreads that
lets you write in the actor style. It just adds those "affordances".
Go is more or less the actors style, except with the (discouraged) possibility
of sharing mutable state... even though for some reason it doesn't seem to be
advertised as such.
The reason is that I don't think Go can cover what C + Python can. C gives you
more low level control and Python is still shorter (and thus quicker). I like
Go a lot but I would rather program in C + Python (like I do now) than C +
Python + Go.
And then the other component to this is de-emphasizing the somewhat-horrible-
for-concurrency Python/C API. The library I'm talking about would have
channels, and you would have one end open in Python, and one end open in C.
Python and C are running in different threads. Rather than the crazy
subroutine/callback hell you have now with any nontrivial Python/C binding.
So basically I want to fix the C/Python interface, which is the only reason it
is awkward to program in C + Python (the languages themselves are both great),
rather than adding another language that overlaps highly with both of them.
The OS is written in C, so you've never going to get past C. If there was a
whole world written in Go, that might be reasonable... but I don't believe in
portability layers.
~~~
bcoates
What does the OS being written in C matter? libc has to make a syscall to
access OS functions just like anything else does. There's no obligation on a
language implementation to make calls through C. It's a thin enough layer that
if your language runtime is otherwise written in C you may as well, but that's
a design decision.
It would be perfectly reasonable to write a non-C language runtime targeting
Linux against syscall instructions or against Windows' documented system DLL
interfaces.
Even if it didn't there's no reason to ever add a C dependency to your system
if one of the languages you're already using has sufficient "systems"
versatility. Go is clearly intended to fill this role.
tl;dr: you can get past C just fine even on an OS written in C and the C
dependency isn't free.
~~~
rdtsc
I find this pretty interesting. It is basically using Erlang as an OS on top
of Xen. <http://erlangonxen.org/>
Haskell had a similar project but I can't remember what it was called.
~~~
dons
HaLVM. <https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM>
------
RyanZAG
How do goroutines compare to things like futures in eg. java?
The ultimate structure seems much the same: start off a worker, and then you
wait for the result with a timeout. As an example, the following code gives
the same result:
In Go:
c := make(chan Result)
go func() { c <- Web(query) } ()
go func() { c <- Image(query) } ()
go func() { c <- Video(query) } ()
for i := 0; i < 3; i++ {
result := <-c
results = append(results, result)
}
In Java:
ExecutorService executorService = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
Future[] futures = new Future[]{
executorService.submit(new Web(query)),
executorService.submit(new Image(query)),
executorService.submit(new Video(query)),
};
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
Result result = futures[i].get();
results.add(result);
}
~~~
newobj
Find an example that shows using a timeout channel along with another async
activity on another channel, and then switching on that. Then you will start
to see some elegance versus the Java way. (Sorry, in a hurry otherwise I'd
provide the link myself :(
~~~
laureny
Please do show how to do this in Go when you have a few minutes, I'm really
curious (and happy to write it in Java once I see what you mean).
~~~
ciniglio
I think they mean something like:
c = make(chan bool)
go doSomeWork(c)
select {
case b := <- c:
# do something here if something happened on the channel
case <- time.After(5 * time.Second):
# timed out :-(
}
~~~
RyanZAG
Well the timeout can be handled in java too
Result result = future.get(5, TimeUnit.Second);
if (result == null)
// do something if timed out
else
// do something with result
My original question was phrased badly though, and what I meant to ask was: is
the underlying implementation faster? Since Golang is designed as a systems
language, is the channel/gorouting system a lot more performant than the
Executor/future method of Java?
EDIT: I see what newobj is talking about now:
With the Java method, the 'task queue' in this case is very rigid and would be
hard to add futures from multiple locations, while the goroutine method allows
easy access to add new messages to the channel from anywhere.
You could probably emulate the goroutine method using a synchronized queue or
similar, but the goroutine version handles it automatically.
~~~
NateDad
FYI - you can also have 100,000 goroutines on a standard desktop without
hitting resource problems (the go authors mentioned debugging a system in
production that had 1.3 million). I doubt the same could be said for futures.
------
AndreasFrom
Off topic: Why are their slides so unusable on iPad!? I can't swipe to the
next slide without skipping that and 3 others.
~~~
mseepgood
The 'present' tool is open source, you can improve it if you have some
JavaScript skills:
[http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/?repo=talks#hg%2Fp...](http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/?repo=talks#hg%2Fpresent)
Here's the touch event handling code:
[http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/present/static/sli...](http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/present/static/slides.js?repo=talks#259)
~~~
enneff
Yes, someone, please do this. I am the author of present, but I just pulled
slides.js from another slide deck software.
It's on my list to try to fix this, but I have little experience with touch
devices. I'm sure someone with experience writing UI code for touch devices
could make quick work of this.
------
smosher
The phrase "concurrency patterns" tells me we are not yet talking about the
concurrency-oriented language of the future. This is in the sense that
patterns usually deal with the weak spots of the language, and lo, we must
build weird constructs like doing fanout (not relevant to the original
problem.) Go isn't alone here, in fact I see it every time someone thinks:
"Erlang is nice, but gee, PIDs are so darn crude."
In my mind, a language that makes concurrency the real priority (and I don't
mean to say Go, Rust, et al. shouldn't be tempered by other concerns) will not
require intermediate patterns to map the problem to the code. In other words,
something close to a 1:1 correspondence should exist between problem
concurrency and language support, including the nature of communications.
I'd like to draw a comparison to memory management in C. It's a far simpler
problem, but it's easy to illustrate that we don't (normally) need "allocation
patterns" that go beyond the problem of memory needs. You can sum it up: "If
you need memory, allocate it. Free it when you are done." The rules are simple
and the advanced memory allocation techniques aren't required to map to the
problem.
~~~
4ad
> patterns usually deal with the weak spots of the language
_Design_ patterns, as the term is usually understood, do. Using the word
"pattern" to refer to organisational structures that arise in practice is
useful and distinct than preaching design patterns like some people do for
C++.
------
martinced
_"You don't need to be an expert! Much nicer than dealing with the minutiae of
parallelism (threads, semaphores, locks, barriers, etc.)"_
Great! But then, a few slides later:
_"Go has 'sync' and 'sync/atomic' packages that provides mutexes, condition
variables, etc."_
: (
Can program written in Go still deadlock or not? I became a big of Clojure's
no-brainer "no locks at all, hence no deadlock" approach btw.
~~~
ominous_prime
Yes, you can still deadlock, but the runtime will usually panic saying that no
goroutines can advance, which is definitely nicer than just hanging. If the
core of your code is synchronized on channels, it becomes very easy to manage.
~~~
kibwen
How does the runtime detect this? I'd have suspected that such a thing would
be undecidable, but I'm not at all a concurrency expert.
~~~
jamesmiller5
The run-time checks if all goroutines are asleep and waiting for input. If
true it panics and halts the program.
It can't detect live-lock or thrashing, if you are still waking up other
goroutines but not doing anything useful it won't prevent that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon.com and The Atlantic Will Sell Short Stories on the Kindle - byrneseyeview
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/books/05fiction.html
======
waterlesscloud
$3.99 each. Gonna have to lower that price point a little. Too many people
with their hands in the till.
~~~
anigbrowl
Agree...but it strikes me that there's an opportunity here for lovers of genre
fiction. Mystery and Sci-fi magazines used to provide both a platform and a
means of earning a living for new authors, but in recent years readership of
literary periodicals has fallen.
I would not pay $3.99 for a novella (and I'm old-fashioned enough to prefer
paper when it comes to reading for pleasure) but I might consider $5 once
every month or two for a bunch of short stories.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
British views on privacy are bollocks - sweetdreams
http://trueslant.com/KashmirHill/2009/07/10/we-are-stupid-about-privacy/
======
onreact-com
There's still privacy in Britain? It's one of the most "under surveillance"
societies on the globe. So how can you have views on a topic you don't
actually view at all for utter lack of it?
This article also misses the point. It's not the same thing to post your pics
or job resume online (with birth date and current occupation as well as email)
and being watched by horny CCTV operators.
You can't blame people for using the Web for personal branding, social
networking etc. The problem is the misuse of the information by government
agencies and business.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: YCombinator.com down for everyone? - YousefED
Getting a redirect loop on different devices.
======
albertomr3
yes, since 12h ago or so..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: A solution for click bait headlines? - nvader
I'm getting really tired of seeing incomplete headlines on news articles all over the web and in my news feeds. What specifically irks me are headlines that tell you virtually nothing about the article, but try to arouse your curiosity or interest on what usually ends up being a flimsy premise.<p>When I first noticed it happening, I would be slightly annoyed that my attention had been stolen and my time wasted. That annoyance was compounded by the fact that my stolen eyeballs had provided revenue to the publisher via ads.<p>At this point, if I see a mildly interesting link, I don't know whether to click it and risk rewarding poor behaviour.<p>Are there any existing solutions I can use to determine if an article is something I want to read? (Or even nullify my view of the page if it was useless!)
======
MichaelCrawford
If the "articles" permit comments, post the links to NoScript, AdBlock Plus
and Privacy Badger.
Alternatively, email the links to the author.
Writing articles is one of the best ways to earn money online, but the common
practice yields poor results. Most articles are only long enough to make the
ads fit on the page without leaving too much blank space.
What works well for me is to spend quite a long time - anywhere from three
days to a month - to research and write an in-depth, insightful article, ask
for constructive criticism from readers, and then to post just a couple small
ad units.
This works because those who read my article will generally give me organic
links.
Clickbait articles might get clicks from those who actually read the articles,
but they're not likely to get any inlinks.
------
adam419
This is a product of a systemic issue with "journalisms'" current business
model and how they're paid.
Ryan Holiday sums it up pretty nicely in his book Trust Me I'm Lying.
After reading it and having it talk about so many things I was unable to put a
finger upon until now, I've become extremely distrustful of media in general.
It's pretty bad actually, communities like HN or getting news directly from
trusted sources on emergent networks like Twitter is really what's left.
The web has spawned "iterative journalism" and floods the internet with all
the bullshit that passes it's ethical standards. This met with a general lack
of peoples attention spans has created a god awful state of journalism.
------
smt88
I've thought about creating a Chrome extension that allows you to say "This is
clickbait" on any article, and then it'll remove it from other users' DOMs.
Or, if not remove it, at least it'll prevent you from clicking the link.
My solution is to use StayFocusd on Chrome to block sites that are almost
always clickbait. I then use FeedBin to subscribe to sites that never post
clickbait (Quartz, mainly).
That's the only solution I've found that works for me. There are probably
subreddits that would also serve your purposes.
The unfortunate thing is that hard news doesn't get clicks. Every media
company has to use clickbait to survive.
~~~
nvader
What about a chrome extension that notified you how many points a link in the
wild got on hn, reddit or similar? Seems like that would be simple to make,
and very resilient to gaming or noise.
~~~
smt88
That's a great idea.
I actually rarely come to HN itself, though, because so many links are (what I
personally consider to be) clickbait. They don't live up to the promises of
their titles.
I now use a service that converts HN posts with 150+ upvotes into a feed. That
gives me the cream of the crop, and it's limited to maybe 10 articles a day.
So your solution would probably limit _uninteresting_ posts, but I personally
am trying to find a way to limit posts that don't help me learn/grow/stay
informed.
A good example are recent posts of the Ant-Man trailer. I find it interesting,
but I don't actually get value out of watching it. I need to be protected from
my own curiosity, so to speak.
Another solution I thought of would be to have a site where editors can curate
the news every day. You find an editor you like, with similar values to you,
and you follow that editor. They can only publish a certain number of stories
a day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Any chances to eventually relocate to US if working remotely? - alptrv
Hi HN.<p>I have an offer from a local (Russian) company with headquarters in the Silicon Valley, they offer trips and working on site, they may relocate their best employees to the USA. But I was also thinking about working remotely for US companies, and the question is - given that firms hire remote workers to reduce costs is there any chances to eventually relocate to the USA?<p>Are there any success stories when someone started working remotely and then got an H1B Visa?
======
kellros
Good question. I reckon it will depend on the company you will be doing work
for. If it's a tech startup that hires you as a freelancer and later want to
hire you full time - then yes. Most other companies, probably not.
My motto generally is, don't bet the bank on anything. A lot of people and
companies try to bargain with you by quoting chance - 99.9% to their own
benefit and greatly at your loss if it doesn't pan out. (They try to make you
take on more risk than them, even though they will profit a lot more if
whatever pans out)
Simply put, do the job for the jobs' sake and keep people/companies
accountable to promises they've made. If it's not a promise, then it's
probably mumbo jumbo.
------
logn
Just my experience: I knew one worker in China brought to the US because of
exceptional skill. And I know one who came on a student visa and the company
later sponsored an H1B.
------
bartonfink
Not to piggyback, but I'd like to ask the same ? for companies in New Zealand
or Australia who'd hire an American dev who wanted to relocate down there
(eventually).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No new Covid sufferers, 300 asymptomatic, after Wuhan-wide tests - mxschumacher
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-wuhan/no-new-covid-sufferers-300-asymptomatic-after-wuhan-wide-tests-idUSKBN23915R
======
tommywiseausmom
schnikes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hospitals are a weak spot in U.S. cybersecurity - swedtrue
https://www.axios.com/hospitals-cybersecurity-medical-information-hacking-076cb826-fc69-4ba6-b3fd-57ce19ab00c6.html
======
burnte
Healthcare CIO here. This is true. Healthcare is still using paper fax. It has
a 30 year old data interchange format that no one really supports because it's
more profitable to lock in customers to your EMR. Healthcare is HORRIBLE about
upgrading anything, at changing processes, and technological progress in
general. Healthcare is VERY backwards from a tech standpoint.
Another problem is that EVERYTHING is custom, we use very, very few off the
shelf solutions. Need an EMR? Let's build it in MUMPS, a 51 year old language
that originated on the PDP7 and call it a state of the art system like Epic or
GE Healthcare. Don't like the terminal interface? Let's slap a GUI on the
front that still interacts via TTY on the back end. SQL? Nah. C, C++, or any
more modern language with more robust features and way more programmers? Nope.
Now, there are some EMRs and other healthcare-centric apps that are better
written, but they're also terrible. Healthcare is a relatively small market,
you'll never sell a million units of your app, so you charge out the wazoo for
it, get a few health systems on it, and allow they to go crazy with
customization to help lock them in. And then you try to add on modern security
features on to a system that's been growing for 50 years and it's a nightmare.
It's INCREDIBLY common for nurses and doctors to need to have administrator
access on their Windows desktops for various apps.
I was about to leave IT in general when a healthcare gig landed on me, and I'm
glad it did. I find it very refreshing to be in an industry where it's so far
behind that there are mountains of problems to tackle, even if half of them
are so stupid it makes me want to cry.
~~~
rubatuga
People need to stop hating on fax. Hospitals still use fax because it is a
much more punishable crime to tap phone lines which requires physical access,
as opposed to a server that could be infected from a hacker halfway across the
world.
~~~
keithnz
Fax is odd, it was a fantastic thing when it first came about, and it has some
desirable properties.
\- It's direct point to point communication (over a network)
\- The transport network is dedicated and not open to anyone and covered by
quite strong laws in many countries
\- It's easy to see the history of communications
\- It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something
\- It's relatively standardized and ubiquitous ( in health )
Email would be the closest thing, but it doesn't have all the advantages, and
the extra add ons that would make it better (like encryption, delivery
receipt, digital signatures) are not standardized and/or ubiquitous ( and
often hotly argued about )
So fax is the lowest common denominator, that, if it was proposed today, would
not be accepted for many of its disadvantages, but it's now hard to find a way
to replace it.
~~~
analog31
\- It's easy to see if the other end successfully received something
I think this is a biggie. It means your workflow doesn't need to include going
back later and checking to see if your document was received, and then trying
to send it some different way. You don't have to guess which way the recipient
is capable of receiving a message.
It's the original e-mail. ;-)
~~~
XaspR8d
Except seeing it was digitally received is often quite insufficient to seeing
it was received by a human it was intended for. All too often in dealing with
healthcare and gov't orgs our faxes get lost with no way of identifying where
they went. Presumably it is a mismanaged shared fax inbox where individuals
are not actually being alerted to their messages...
------
Thriptic
It's really tough. You have a function which is viewed purely as a cost
center; you have a totally porous environment where you're required to admit
tons of minimally-verified people into confidential spaces; staff and
affiliates need different levels of access from all over the world; there are
critical availability demands where temporary denial of service for security
reasons is unacceptable; device development is optimized for safety and fault
tolerance as opposed to security which isn't ever really tested for; patients
need to be able to submit tons of data in myriad forms; there are few central
clearing houses for transmitting data so people are all calling each other
with minimal validation; etc
~~~
ethbro
Oh, and you're ultimately sourcing truth from people who are minimally trained
on (and have minimal time for training on) the system.
Because they've spent the last couple decades focused on medical training.
~~~
Scoundreller
And patients that lie / dirty input.
Sure, use cousin x’s coverage. Nobody will freak out when your blood type
doesn’t match the records...
------
jtdev
It seems that hospitals are overly focused on bullshit security frameworks and
box-checking, i.e., HITRUST, which in my experience results in many dollars
going to consultants with essentially zero tangible improvement in information
security. Worse yet, the false sense of security within these hospitals due to
having a HITRUST audit report with a bunch of meaninglessness check marks
prevents them from actually doing the work of securing information properly.
Have worked in health-tech for a number of years.
~~~
watertom
Cyber security standards are in place to make the process easier to understand
for the non-technical executives, who approve the budgets.
Without the standards the executives don’t know who they should believe, and
invariably they believe the guy who sounds and acts like themselves, which
means he knows as much about cyber security as the executives.
If you know what you are doing regarding cyber security, AND you are doing all
the right things, HITRUST compliance is a cinch.
If you don’t know what you are doing regarding cyber security, HITRUST at
least gives you a fighting chance. But then that’s the rub, if you don’t know
what you are doing why are you running cyber security.
~~~
lstroud
I think they are intended to be helpful, but they are adopted as CYA that have
the side benefit of improving security.
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _that have the side benefit of improving security_
Sometimes. Other times they have the side effect of worsening security, as
line employees have to deal with bullshit "security" rules and invent
undocumented, untracked workarounds just to be able to do their jobs at all.
------
gen220
I work in health tech (full stack insurance), and sit next to security and IT,
so this is a frequent topic of conversation for us. :)
For some context, this is one of our favorite websites/datasets:
[https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf](https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf).
It is a structured archive of all reported health data breaches, major or
minor, over the last 15 years or so, as reported by the breached entities.
They’re required to report breaches as part of HIPPA compliance, or something
related to it.
It’s a fascinating quilt of stories, with patches for phishing, accidental
email attachments forwarded, and rogue admins. Fun reading. You can also load
it into sqlite and find some interesting results (leakiest companies, states
with most breaches reported, etc).
Hospitals might be a weak spot, but at least their weaknesses are ruthlessly
well documented! As opposed to, say, financial infrastructure which IME is a
similar horror show of monkey patched sftp servers.
Solving this collective technical debt is a massive coordination problem.
It’ll be interesting to see if we ever get there. My suspicion is that the
changes will be driven by monopolistic insurers, if ever, since that’s where
all the money comes from (if you go to doctor at hospital X, your coinsurance
will be Y instead of Z, because doing business with X is more/less risky due
to their documented data practices). But it’s just a suspicion, this kind of
thing might not be solved in our lifetimes.
------
tyingq
The central IT function in a US hospital also usually has little
organizational power and funding. Admissions, radiology, etc, buy whatever
hardware and software they want, and the underfunded IT department has to
figure it out.
~~~
oneepic
This may vary by hospital, but in general many hospital IT staff tend not to
be very good with computers, from my experience. Many are more focused on
business/bureaucracy, or maybe they're just unskilled. I don't mean to attack
their character, but instead to make the point that some very unqualified
people are in charge of very important systems.
(Edit: My first job was hospital IT for a few months, and my boss was actually
a pretty skilled programmer with a good grasp on security. So there are
definitely exceptions.)
I imagine not many hospitals hire security talent either, or that they do much
security beyond the "change your password" email every 6 months. Oh, and
doctors/nurses/etc tend to ignore those emails.
~~~
sidlls
Agreed with this. IT in hospitals is perpetually underfunded and basically a
playground for creatures of corporate politics. Between administrative staff
who think their medical credentials qualify them to micromanage IT decisions
and perpetually under-funded departments I'm actually shocked that their
systems aren't regularly crippled or destroyed by malicious entities.
Don't assume your medical data is secure. Systems that conform to HIPAA
regulations are just one part of their computing infrastructure, and it's
trivial to maliciously access a huge surface area outside of those specific
pieces of hardware and software--and once a malicious actor has that access,
it's not too hard to cross the gap.
------
Mountain_Skies
Recently saw an ad for an IT support position at a hospital. The list of
potential hazards in the work environment listed in the ad likely scares off
many who have plenty of other employment opportunities. And most hospitals
can't jack up the pay to compensate so attracting good talent is going to be a
problem.
~~~
vkou
> And most hospitals can't jack up the pay to compensate
I find that hard to believe in an age of $100 saline bags, $20,000
childbirths, and 15-minute-long $500 specialist visits.
~~~
Spooky23
Earlier in my career I interviewed for a health IT job that was basically a
director level position. The pay ended up being less than I was making as a
government employee for a smaller scoped job. The government gig was probably
less than an intern makes at a FAANG.
In medicine, doctors are king. Everyone else is a peon.
~~~
pasttense01
Doctors don't feel like they are kings--while they make very good money there
are massive amounts of red tape, filling out Epic...
It's the bureaucrats who are kings.
~~~
JBlue42
My doctor friends confirm. They would rather spend their time on patient care
but have to make a lot more time for the paperwork.
------
einpoklum
"Sky is blue, news at 11:00"...
Of course hospitals are a security weak spot: They're full of sensitive
patient health data shared over computer systems whose users and procurers are
not very security-literate, and often absent-minded about such issues due to
the grinding, stressful work.
------
rolph
waiting rooms are a gaping hole. nobody seems to see a problem with blabbing
out your final 4 and first,last name when thier at a desk in a room full of
whoever walked in and sat down.
un protected desktops are another issue, there is a tide of duties and an
attacker can pattern the staff and get a good idea when they will have time to
do an inside job of some sort.
~~~
Scoundreller
As with most environments, there’s a lot of trust based in a hospital running
successfully.
At least they have their own on-site security that’s experienced in taking
people down.
I continue to believe the real threats are actual insiders and remote attacks.
Dunno how far someone will get with a USB key versus sending everyone a
plausible email.
~~~
pharrington
You plug in the USB key, then you pull out the USB key.
The physical security layer at alot of hospitals is almost entirely absent,
sadly.
~~~
chapium
USB keys are blocked mostly these days. There are other huge vulnerabilities
if you have physical access and are motivated.
~~~
Bnshsysjab
From experience in plenty of industries, your statement is incorrect. Most
places suck at security and blocking removable storage, but likewise suck at
far more important controls (eg application whitelisting) for it to really
mitigate much in the first place
------
bagacrap
It seems the biggest reason they're a weak spot is that the data they store
make them a target. Retailers are also weak on security -- really, I wouldn't
trust any company that wasn't a specialist in the space, i.e. finance and tech
-- but most entities don't know so much about their clientele. Retailers don't
need to keep as much info as they do (aside from profit motives), but
hospitals probably do, so I can see this being a vulnerability that's never
closed.
~~~
sidlls
The data they have are sensitive, but that's just the reason they're a target.
They're a weak spot because of poor security practices, which is due to poorly
managed IT organizations, which is due largely to the egos of administrative
management and poor funding.
------
swader999
So are vet hospitals. At this very moment there's a chance you'll walk into
one that has fallen back to paper records and billing due to a continent wide
ransom ware attack.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/dnd7aq/ransomware_atta...](https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/dnd7aq/ransomware_attack_against_national_veterinary)
From that thread: Avimark is an old style load the EXE from a share program
with a flat file structure for the data. Most clinics are not in a domain,
just workgroup, and the share is read/write access for Everyone. So, yeah.
~~~
heartbreak
It's worse than that thread reveals. NVA was hit by a ransomware attack in
May. They're now in a _second_ attack that began in late October (ongoing).
The latest one was described by CIO Joe Leggio as a "coordinated and
sophisticated" attack in an internal email. He said it was designed to breach
the NVA system specifically and that the attackers had three separate entry
points. Only _this week_ did NVA deploy endpoint security software to every
computer in their 500+ veterinary practices.
Note: Avimark itself is not at fault here. The Avimark issue that the
practices are having is related to NVA not having a solid DR plan with working
backups. Part of the problem there is that because of Avimark's architecture,
most practices have an on-prem server that each workstation RDPs into for
using Avimark. Because this equates to 500 or so Avimark SQL Server instances
spread around the United States, it's perhaps not surprising that NVA's
unsophisticated IT department did not have working backups for each instance.
~~~
imglorp
This sounds ideal for a SaaS. Why is each practice messing around with an IT
dept and SQL and DR when it could be hosted and managed at low cost for all
them at once?
~~~
heartbreak
The industry has been really slow to move to SaaS. Avimark's primary
competitor has a strong SaaS offering with Idexx Neo [0], but NVA requires the
practices they buy to switch to Avimark.
[0] [https://www.idexx.com/en/veterinary/software-
services/neo/](https://www.idexx.com/en/veterinary/software-services/neo/)
------
keiferski
I feel like _Mr. Robot_ may have highlighted this fact (along with others) to
the general population rather effectively.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gG-6Co_v4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6gG-6Co_v4)
------
crispyambulance
Given the state of cybersecurity right now, is there any organization or
domain AT ALL which is strong and model-worthy when it comes to cybersecurity?
~~~
cm2012
Big tech. Google, especially.
~~~
xyst
To be honest, Google is the last company I want handling my health data. If
you don't check the right boxes, it could end up being "anonymized", and sold
off.
~~~
baroffoos
Google is very good at precisely controlling what happens to the data. You
never hear about some huge leak where 1B google accounts had their whole data
taken.
~~~
dredmorbius
There _have_ been two reported Google breaches, both small.
[https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/databreach/list?field_sb24_or...](https://www.oag.ca.gov/privacy/databreach/list?field_sb24_org_name_value=google&field_sb24_breach_date_value%5Bmin%5D%5Bdate%5D=&field_sb24_breach_date_value%5Bmax%5D%5Bdate%5D=)
Curiously, the "data breach" for which Google+ was supposedly shut down ... is
not listed.
------
adamnemecek
Everything in US is targetable. The main problem is that say the
power/health/<fundamental infrastructure> are all managed by 1000 different
companies who are all at different wavelength as far as OPSEC.
------
z3ugma
For those interested, I wrote a primer on M aka MUMPS at
[https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/m/](https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/m/)
------
aasasd
Possibly in one part because I see people on freelancer marketplaces making
software for hospitals, with job budgets of a couple hundred bucks. I'm ok
with freelancers in general, but I feel that integrating code from disparate
small jobs while keeping security in mind isn't gonna be so simple.
------
alwillis
I’m an IT guy; I cringe almost every time I interact with the healthcare
system.
I could pile on; all I want for now is encrypted and signed email with my
doctors. I have an S/MIME certificate; can’t see why the IT staff at the
hospitals I deal with can’t make sure my doctors have the same.
~~~
burnte
Because doctors are spoiled children. Were rolling out keyfobs for 2FA for our
e-prescribe solution, but I'm keeping the fobs because I KNOW the docs will
forget them/lose them. Docs only get soft-tokens on their phones because they
never forget their phones.
------
dang
A different hospital/security thread from a couple days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21483337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21483337)
------
Classicaldj34
How do they store their data? Why don't they use private clouds?
-Duple? [https://www.duple.io/en/](https://www.duple.io/en/)
-Nextcloud? [https://nextcloud.com/](https://nextcloud.com/)
~~~
chapium
IBM,Cerner,Dell
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Many Spreadsheets Does It Take to Run a Fortune 500 Company? - nikunjk
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/many-spreadsheets-take-run-fortune-500-company
======
greenyoda
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7994086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7994086)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unpopular ideas about social norms - imartin2k
https://juliagalef.com/2017/08/23/unpopular-ideas-about-social-norms/
======
ruytlm
Thoroughly agree that we should both encourage and train people to think more
philosophically about societal questions and social norms - even if the
outcome is just to say 'nope, I think the social norm is fine as is'.
One of the main reasons for this in my opinion is it drives empathy and
understanding; by learning to genuinely consider an argument from an opposing
viewpoint, one learns how another sees the world.
On a personal level, I've found it's been one of the most enduring and
valuable skills from an undergrad degree in philosophy; it's much harder to
hate someone, or even get annoyed or frustrated with them, when you're able to
understand them.
------
NhanH
I suspect that some of the ideas are just perceived to be unpopular, as
opposed to be actually unpopular. People might like the idea but is afraid to
say it out loud
~~~
lkesteloot
I would _love_ to see a survey where people are asked both "how much do you
agree" and "how likely are you to say so publicly". Given enough questions,
it'd also be interesting to find out if the Left or the Right generally feels
more suppressed. (I'm obsessed with the possibility that Clinton lost because
the Left pressured people to deny that they supported Trump.)
~~~
jcahill
That wouldn't work like you're hoping. You're assuming a (representative)
respondent pool that's all of these:
1\. capable of switching off preference falsification for a survey
2\. introspectively active (and accurately so) over a long enough period to
notice that they behave differentially in public and private contexts
3\. _interested in_ exposing this degree of candor for a survey, i.e.
motivated to "show the researchers" (show themselves, really) their belly
after collapsing across all the reasons they'd rather not.
Humans are primitive. Questionnaires have to be designed around that.
------
Areading314
I think its really cute that an attempt was made to cite blog articles as
references though, good job.
~~~
theWatcher37
1\. Create culture where anyone who steps outside the political or moral norm
is fired/career limited.
2\. Sneer about no "professional sources" for positions, since few people
value ideas over employment/tenure. Only people with nothing to lose
publically air those opinions, those with things to lose keep them to
themselves.
3\. Imply that anyone who thinks in the non-approved way must be like those
people/undesirables with nothing to lose, despite the silent ones having a lot
to lose.
You can say this is all tinfoil, but my engineering ethics professor told the
entire class he's had to make choices between "speaking truth to power" and
his career and that in the interest of full disclosure he chose his career +
funding. 250+ people in that room at the time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Helium Raises $17 Million, Lays Off 30 Percent of Employees - qhoxie
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/27/helium-raises-17-million-lays-off-30-percent-of-employees/
======
jacobscott
"The best articles are voted to the top by the community, but in a way that
makes it difficult to game the system. Instead of being able to vote up your
own articles or those written by your friends, readers are given a random
sample of articles and asked to compare them in pairs. This A-B approach
filters the best articles to the homepage."
This is cool; variations are used by recaptcha, etc. I wonder if this could be
used by digg? Increasing the quality/reducing gaming of community-based
ranking seems like a very good idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wal-Mart Asks Employees to Deliver Packages on Their Way Home - rayuela
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-01/wal-mart-taps-employees-for-quick-deliveries-to-take-on-amazon
======
gjhicks
This makes a lot of sense for Wal-Mart. They are asking employees to opt in to
drop off order(s) on their way home for extra money. It supposedly optimizes
the deliveries for each employee's route home. It's like giving your employees
a little uber opportunity. I wonder if there will be enough employees to make
this viable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I got my music back. At least most of it - ingve
http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/24/i-got-my-music-back-at-least-most-of-it/
======
thirstywhimbrel
Music lockers sort of terrify me.
I know there've been lots of complaints about them before,[0] and I think most
of the early complaints are actually resolved now. But I still have a
lingering bad feeling...
After playing a series of MMOs that subsequently died, or online games that
then lost all their servers, I'm just really wary of putting all my trust in a
central server somewhere.
Companies can die, or sell off parts of their business, make strange decisions
about UI or storage without noticing how it destroys someone's music in edge
cases.
I guess you're covered as long as you backup your music on a NAS too... but
it's not crazy to assume you shouldn't have to do that, so I don't blame the
author.
[0] [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/29/music-
lockers...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-03/29/music-lockers-are-
stupid)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The BLAKE3 cryptographic hash function - erwan
https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3
======
s_tec
It looks like the speedup is coming from two main changes.
The first change is reducing the number of rounds from 10 to 7. Think of it
like making a smoothie - you add bits of fruit to the drink (the input data),
then pulse the blades to blend it up (making the output hash). This change
basically runs the blades for 7 seconds instead of 10 seconds each time they
add fruit. They cite evidence that the extra 3 seconds aren't doing much -
once the fruit's fully liquid, extra blending doesn't help - but I worry that
this reduces the security margin. Maybe those extra 3 rounds aren't useful
against current attacks, but they may be useful against unknown future
attacks.
The other change they make is to break the input into 1KiB chunks, then hash
each chunk independently. Finally, they combine the individual chunk hashes
into a single big hash using a binary tree. The benefit is that if you have
4KiB of data, you can use 4-way SIMD instructions to process all four chunks
simultaneously. The more data you have, the more parallelism you can unlock,
unlike traditional hash functions that process everything sequentially. On the
flip side, modern SIMD instructions can handle 2 x 32-bit instructions just as
fast as 1 x 64-bit instructions, so building the algorithm out of 32-bit
arithmetic doesn't cost anything, but gives a big boost to low-end 32-bit
CPU's that struggle with 64-bit arithmetic. The tree structure is a big win
overall.
~~~
zokier
> but I worry that this reduces the security margin. Maybe those extra 3
> rounds aren't useful against current attacks, but they may be useful against
> unknown future attacks.
This was covered in more detail in previous "Too Much Crypto" paper [1], which
argued that many standards have excessively high round counts. Note that
Aumasson is author of both Blake3 and Too Much Crypto
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21917505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21917505)
~~~
labawi
From paper:
> Our goal is to propose numbers of rounds for which we have strong confidence
> that the algorithm will never be wounded
They take algorithms, past 10 years of _public_ crypto research and shave off
rounds, until it just about starts falling apart. AFAIU having security-
reducing attacks is the target.
I prefer to have ample confidence in my crypto algorithms. Would not recommend
BLAKE3 (without those extra rounds).
------
clarkmoody
Another benchmark:
time openssl sha256 /tmp/bigfile
real 0m28.160s
user 0m27.750s
sys 0m0.272s
time shasum -a 256 /tmp/bigfile
real 0m6.146s
user 0m5.407s
sys 0m0.560s
time b2sum /tmp/bigfile
real 0m1.732s
user 0m1.450s
sys 0m0.244s
time b3sum /tmp/bigfile
real 0m0.212s
user 0m0.996s
sys 0m0.379s
TIL OpenSSL sha256 invocation is really slow compared to the shasum program.
Also BLAKE3 is _really_ fast.
Edit: bigfile is 1GB of /dev/random
~~~
paavoova
On my machine running Ubuntu 18.04 (coreutils 8.28, openssl 1.1.1), openssl is
faster than both shasum and sha256sum.
~~~
xemdetia
Yeah as someone familiar with openssl it looks like a version of openssl that
was built incorrectly.
------
dpc_pw
So this is bao + blake2?
I remember watching Bao, a general purpose cryptographic tree hash, and
perhaps the fastest hash function in the world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dya9c2DXMqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dya9c2DXMqQ)
a while ago.
Nice job!
~~~
oconnor663
Yep that's me :) The Bao project evolved into BLAKE3, and the latest version
-- which I literally just released -- is now based on BLAKE3.
~~~
dpc_pw
Excuse my confusion. I understand "the Bao project evolved into BLAKE3", but
"is now based on BLAKE3" confuses me. Bao is based on blake3? But isn't bao
... the blake3 itself now? Circular dependency detected.
~~~
oconnor663
Ha, yes, that's confusing. The Bao project was originally two things: 1) a
custom tree hash mode, and 2) an encoding format and verified streaming
implementation based on that tree hash. The first half evolved into BLAKE3.
Now the Bao project itself is just the second half.
~~~
prilanoth
Hi, some questions...
The README lists 4 designers, including yourself. However the Bao project
doesn't list anybody, so presumably you are the only designer. What exactly
were the contributions of the other 3 people to warrant being listed?
At what point did the Bao project become "BLAKE3" and why?
~~~
loeg
All three others are principals of the Blake or Blake2 design and major
implementations.
------
loeg
Looks like they've taken _Too Much Crypto_ to heart[1] and dropped the number
of rounds from Blake2B's 12 down to 7 for Blake3:
[https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3/blob/master/reference_...](https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3/blob/master/reference_impl/reference_impl.rs#L83-L95)
[https://github.com/BLAKE2/BLAKE2/blob/master/ref/blake2b-ref...](https://github.com/BLAKE2/BLAKE2/blob/master/ref/blake2b-ref.c#L200-L211)
Which, yeah, that alone will get you a significant improvement over Blake2B.
But definitely doesn't account for the huge improvement they're showing. Most
of that is the ability to take advantage of AVX512 parallelism, I think. The
difference will be more incremental on AVX2-only amd64 or other platforms, I
think.
[1]: Well, TMC recommended 8 rounds for Blake2B and 7 for Blake2S.
~~~
zokier
> Looks like they've taken Too Much Crypto to heart
Not surprising considering that one of they is the author of Too Much Crypto
~~~
loeg
Indeed. It's also 3rd citation in their formal spec.
------
kzrdude
Just one variant, that's refreshing. And performance is impressive. What's the
short input performance like? Say for 64 bytes of input.
~~~
oconnor663
The Performance section of the spec
([https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3-specs/blob/master/blak...](https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3-specs/blob/master/blake3.pdf))
has a paragraph about short input performance. 64 bytes happens to be the
BLAKE3 block size, and performance at that length or shorter is best in class.
Look at the left edge of Figure 3
([https://i.imgur.com/smGHAKA.png](https://i.imgur.com/smGHAKA.png)).
~~~
nabla9
64 bytes happens to be the typical cache line size so it makes sense to use it
as a block size.
------
nabla9
That's impressive speedup. I just installed it and holy moly it really is
fast. All those extra cores can finally get busy. ;)
b3sum -l 256 big-2.6Gfile
real 0m0.384s
user 0m2.302s
sys 0m0.175s
b2sum -l 256 big-2.6Gfile
rear 0m3.616s
user 0m3.360s
sys 0m0.256s
(Intel® Core™ i7-8550U CPU @ 1.80GHz × 8 )
EDIT: ah, the catch. blake3 targets 128 bit security. It competes with SipHash
for speed and security
EDIT2 scratch the previous edit.
~~~
oconnor663
> ah, the catch. blake3 targets 128 bit security. It competes with SipHash for
> speed and security.
No no, BLAKE3 is a general-purpose cryptographic hash just like BLAKE2, SHA-2,
and SHA-3. The confusion here is that a hash function's security level is half
of its output size, because of the birthday problem. BLAKE3, like BLAKE2s and
SHA-256, has a 256-bit output and a 128-bit security level. (BLAKE3 also
supports extendable output, but that doesn't affect the security level.)
> holy moly it really is fast
Thank you :)
~~~
Thorrez
>security level is half of its output size
A hash can have different security levels against different attacks. BLAKE3
appears to have 128 bits of security against all attacks.
SHA3-256 was originally designed to have 128 bits of collision security and
256 bits of preimage security. NIST then made a change to it giving it 128
bits of security against all attacks. A lot of people got mad. Then NIST caved
and changed it back to 128 bits of collision security and 256 bits of preimage
security.
It looks like BLAKE3 agrees with how NIST wanted SHA3 to be. I wonder if
people will be mad at BLAKE3.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-3#Capacity_change_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-3#Capacity_change_controversy)
For a more fair performance comparison against SHA3, you should compare
against SHAKE128(256). That is, the version with 128 bits of security all
around and a 256 bit output (how NIST wanted it). Although maybe it's
pointless, because according to Wikipedia SHAKE128(256) is only 8% faster than
SHA3-256 for large inputs.
~~~
pingyong
>Although maybe it's pointless, because according to Wikipedia SHAKE128(256)
is only 8% faster than SHA3-256 for large inputs.
This is mainly due to SHA3's humongous 1600-bit state, which is not very
friendly to embedded systems. In sponge constructions with smaller states, or
generally primitives with smaller states, the difference is much larger.
Also in general I would say that small message performance is usually more
important than large message performance, since large messages with
desktop/laptop CPUs are so incredibly fast anyway with most hash functions
that the bottleneck goes somewhere else. (Storage, network, etc.)
~~~
Thorrez
I mentioned large message performance because that appeared to be what
BLAKE3's benchmarks were focusing on.
------
memco
I would be interested in how this compares on the smhasher against some of the
other fastest hash competitors like meow hash or xxhash.
~~~
loeg
I am also curious about how it performs as a PRF in places where e.g. Chacha20
is used as a keystream generator now. Also as a reduced round variant in
places where non-cryptographic PRNGs are used for very fast RNG needs: JSF,
SFC, Lehmer, Splitmix, PCG.
In my extremely limited testing (on AVX2, but not AVX512 hardware), (buffered)
reduced (four) round Chacha is only about 1.5-2x slower than fast non-
cryptographic PRNGs like JSF, SFC, Lehmer, or pcg64_fast (all with Clang -O2
-flto, the fast PRNGs are header-only implementations and only chacha is two
files).
This thing still uses 7 rounds, but that is easy to tune down. Very neat.
~~~
loup-vaillant
The "too much crypto" paper linked in the specs recommends to lower Chacha20
down to 8 rounds.
Blake3 wouldn't compete with Chacha20, it would compete with Chacha8.
~~~
oconnor663
Note that a "round" in BLAKE/2/3 is equivalent to a "double-round" in ChaCha.
~~~
loeg
Ah, ok. So 7-round Blake3 is perhaps closest to 14-round Chacha.
------
eyegor
I can't seem to find any non-rust implementations in the works yet, so I may
sit down and adapt the reference to C# this weekend. Anyone know how the
single/few threads performance holds up excluding avx512?
~~~
cesarb
There's a non-Rust implementation in the same repository, at
[https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3/tree/master/c](https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3/tree/master/c)
(in C).
~~~
rurban
Yes, but about half as slow as the Rust version, because the rust version
processes the chunks in parallel.
I'm working on exporting the rust version to C, so all can be compared
properly.
------
rurban
smhasher results without the Rust version yet (which should be ~2x faster):
[http://rurban.github.io/smhasher/doc/table.html](http://rurban.github.io/smhasher/doc/table.html)
It's of course much faster as most of the other crypto hashes, but not faster
than the hardware variants of SHA1-NI and SHA256-NI. About 4x faster than
blake2.
Faster than SipHash, not faster than SipHash13.
The tests fail on MomentChi2 dramatically, which describe how good the user-
provided random seed is mixed in. I tried by mixing a seed for IV[0], as with
all other hardened crypto hashes, and for all 8 IV's, which didn't help. So
I'm not convinced that a seeded IV is properly mixed in. Which is outside the
usage pattern of a crypto or digest hash (b3sum), but inside a normal usage.
Rust staticlib is still in work, which would parallize the hashing in chunks
for big keys. For small keys it should be even a bit slower. b3sum is so much
faster, because it uses many more tricks, such as mmap.
------
bjoli
Does anybody know of benchmarks for ARM? Or any research trying to break it?
The numbers look astonishing.
~~~
oconnor663
Take a look at Figure 5
([https://i.imgur.com/Izs23wf.png](https://i.imgur.com/Izs23wf.png)) in the
spec
([https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3-specs/blob/master/blak...](https://github.com/BLAKE3-team/BLAKE3-specs/blob/master/blake3.pdf)).
That benchmark was done on a Raspberry Pi Zero, which is a 32-bit ARM1176.
~~~
loeg
Do you have single-thread cpb benchmark figures on amd64 hardware without
AVX512?
Clearly the benefits of AVX512 really exaggerate the comparison on hardware
that supports it, and the benefit over Blake2S is pretty muted on hardware
without vector intrinsics (low end 32-bit ARM). But I'm interested in the
middle — e.g., Zen1/2 AMD, Broadwell and earlier Intel x86-64.
Thanks!
------
anticensor
Why are there no AES-like hashing algorithms out there? AES design is very
suitable to be used as a building block in a hash if you remove "add round
key" operation.
~~~
NohatCoder
I helped design Meow Hash using AES-NI. It is not general purpose crypto
strength, but ridiculously fast, targeting a theoretical performance of 16
bytes per cycle on some processors, too fast for memory to keep up.
[https://github.com/cmuratori/meow_hash](https://github.com/cmuratori/meow_hash)
~~~
mr__y
>It is not general purpose crypto strength
This made me curious. Is it because at this stage it is a proposal that has
not yet been verified/analysed or are there actual reasons that you know of
that make this not "general purpose strong"?
~~~
NohatCoder
I don't actually have proof that it isn't crypto strength. But comparing it to
other algorithms that have been broken, it seems unlikely that it would hold
given the rather modest amount of computation done.
I do believe that it meets the requirements for being a MAC function, and I'm
completely certain that it is a great non-cryptographic hash function.
------
babel_
Is it possible to benchmark agaist blake2 etc. but where they have the same
number of rounds, testing both for reducing blake2 and also increasing blake3?
Also, in that vein, offering the version with more rounds could win over the
"paranoid" for mostly being a faster Blake2 thanks to SIMD and extra features
thanks to the Merkle tree?
------
ptomato
Benchmark #1: cat b1
Time (mean ± σ): 1.076 s ± 0.007 s [User: 5.3 ms, System: 1069.4 ms]
Range (min … max): 1.069 s … 1.093 s 10 runs
Benchmark #2: sha256sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 6.583 s ± 0.064 s [User: 5.440 s, System: 1.137 s]
Range (min … max): 6.506 s … 6.695 s 10 runs
Benchmark #3: sha1sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 6.322 s ± 0.086 s [User: 5.212 s, System: 1.103 s]
Range (min … max): 6.214 s … 6.484 s 10 runs
Benchmark #4: b2sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 13.184 s ± 0.108 s [User: 12.090 s, System: 1.080 s]
Range (min … max): 13.087 s … 13.382 s 10 runs
Benchmark #5: b3sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 577.0 ms ± 5.4 ms [User: 12.276 s, System: 0.669 s]
Range (min … max): 572.4 ms … 587.0 ms 10 runs
Benchmark #6: md5sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 14.851 s ± 0.175 s [User: 13.717 s, System: 1.117 s]
Range (min … max): 14.495 s … 15.128 s 10 runs
Summary
'b3sum b1' ran
1.86 ± 0.02 times faster than 'cat b1'
10.96 ± 0.18 times faster than 'sha1sum b1'
11.41 ± 0.15 times faster than 'sha256sum b1'
22.85 ± 0.28 times faster than 'b2sum b1'
25.74 ± 0.39 times faster than 'md5sum b1'
gotdang that's some solid performance. (here running against 10GiB of random
bytes; machine has the Sha ASM extensions, which is why sha256/sha1 perform so
well)
edit: actually not a straight algo comparison, as b3sum here is heavily
benefiting from multi-threading; without that it looks more like this:
Benchmark #1: cat b1
Time (mean ± σ): 1.090 s ± 0.007 s [User: 2.9 ms, System: 1084.8 ms]
Range (min … max): 1.071 s … 1.096 s 10 runs
Benchmark #2: sha256sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 6.480 s ± 0.097 s [User: 5.359 s, System: 1.115 s]
Range (min … max): 6.346 s … 6.587 s 10 runs
Benchmark #3: sha1sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 6.120 s ± 0.090 s [User: 5.027 s, System: 1.082 s]
Range (min … max): 5.979 s … 6.233 s 10 runs
Benchmark #4: b2sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 12.866 s ± 0.208 s [User: 11.722 s, System: 1.133 s]
Range (min … max): 12.549 s … 13.124 s 10 runs
Benchmark #5: b3sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 5.813 s ± 0.079 s [User: 4.606 s, System: 1.202 s]
Range (min … max): 5.699 s … 5.933 s 10 runs
Benchmark #6: md5sum b1
Time (mean ± σ): 14.355 s ± 0.184 s [User: 13.305 s, System: 1.039 s]
Range (min … max): 14.119 s … 14.605 s 10 runs
Summary
'cat b1' ran
5.33 ± 0.08 times faster than 'b3sum b1'
5.62 ± 0.09 times faster than 'sha1sum b1'
5.95 ± 0.10 times faster than 'sha256sum b1'
11.81 ± 0.21 times faster than 'b2sum b1'
13.17 ± 0.19 times faster than 'md5sum b1'
still beating the dedicated sha extensions, but not nearly as dramatically.
------
cogman10
Where is this useful?
I'm guessing not for password hashes simply because a fast hash is bad for
passwords (makes brute forcing/rainbow tables easier).
So is this mostly just for file signing?
~~~
beefhash
Fast hashes are useful for signing, MACs (symmetric "signatures" so to speak),
key derivation (HKDF and all kinds of Diffie-Hellman handshakes come to mind),
as part of cryptographically secure PRNGs (though most of the world has moved
on to stream ciphers for that instead) and probably more.
While programming, just try to think of a scenario where having a mapping
between some kind of arbitrary data (and maybe a key) and a fixed-size,
uniformly random-looking output could be useful. Opportunities to sprinkle
some hashes on things come up quite often when you look for them.
~~~
lame-robot-hoax
So I’m not super familiar with things like this, but for example, WireGuard
uses BLAKE2 for hashing. What level of undertaking would it be to move from
BLAKE2 to BLAKE3 in regards to WireGuard? Can you just pop out BLAKE2 and pop
in BLAKE3?
~~~
aidenn0
Assuming wireguard hashes data shorter than 4k (i.e. most network packets),
there is no reason to switch; BLAKE3 is only faster than BLAKE2 on data longer
than 4k.
~~~
loeg
That isn't literally true; the reduced rounds make it faster on small inputs,
too. And jumbo packets can be 4kB or 9000B or whatever, if wireguard is used
on such an interface.
~~~
aidenn0
Does BLAKE3 reduce rounds vs BLAKE2s?
~~~
loup-vaillant
7 rounds instead of 10.
Though for Wireguard, you'd compete with Blake2b as well, which has the
advantage of using 64-bit words. And if you want a fair comparison, you should
reduce the rounds of Blake2b down to 8 (instead of 12), as recommended in
Aumasson's "Too Much Crypto".
On a 64-bit machine, such a reduced Blake2b would be much faster than Blake3
on inputs greater than 128 bytes and smaller than 4Kib.
~~~
loeg
They address this in the paper, to some extent. With SIMD, you get 128, 256,
or 512 bits of vector. You can either store 32x4, 32x8, 32x16, or 64x2, 64x4,
64x8 words. But either way you're processing N bits in parallel.
The concern about 64-bit machines and using 64-bit word sizes vs 32-bit word
sizes really only matters if your 64-bit machine doesn't have SIMD vector
extensions. (All amd64 hardware, for example, has at _least_ SSE2.) And as
they point out, being 32-bit native really helps on low-end 32-bit machines
without SIMD intrinsics.
(Re: the hypothetical, if wireguard were to do a protocol revision and replace
Blake2B with this, it would make sense to also replace Chacha20 with Chacha8
or 12 at the same time. I doubt the WG authors will do any such thing any time
soon.)
~~~
loup-vaillant
I was talking about small-ish inputs, for which vectorisation wouldn't help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shell script Mac Apps - snihalani
http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/shell-script-mac-apps
======
Argorak
A hidden gem in this post is open(1), which is one of the best command line
utilities on the mac, especially because all of the sane default that most
Apple apps have. I think
`open -a Mail mydoc.pdf` (open Mail and create a Mail with attachment
mydoc.pdf)
is my favorite line of Mac shell magic ever.
~~~
sausagefeet
Wow! Any good collection of things you can do with open?
~~~
Someone
Here is something you can do with man: type 'man _commandname_ ' to get a
description of things you can do with _commandmame_.
This may not work as intended in cases where a command has the same name as a
function. The nicely recursive 'man man' will tell you how to work around
that.
~~~
sausagefeet
You seem to be missing that the value is in combinators. See the PDF trick
above for an example of something not covered in the man page.
~~~
Someone
"Not covered in detail". From the man page:
"open -a /Applications/TextEdit.app '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/foo.txt'"
opens the document in the application specified (in this case, TextEdit)
That is exactly what the example does. The only thing that may be slightly
surprising is what Mail.app does when you drag a .pdf on it. But that is only
slightly surprising; the only alternative I can think of is that it would beep
and do nothing else.
Also, the man page has several IMO more interesting examples than this "make a
new mail from the command line, but you will have to use the GUI to fill in
the destination address and to click 'Send'".
For example, I did not know about "open -f", "open -n -W", and "open -h".
~~~
Argorak
Actually, the there is a reason why I use the short form - the rest of the
workflow is also completely keyboard based:
`open -a Mail mypdf.pdf` opens an email window that has the focus and the
cursor in the "from" field, with address book access and all. From there on,
it is:
\- Type the first letters of the contact to sent to \- Tab to "Subject", write
Subject \- Tab to Body, write the Body \- Command-Shift-D
Includes all (legally needed, yawn...) signatures, my S/Mime-setup and has
full access to my address book. Sure, its simple and the equivalent of
dragging the pdf to the Mail icon, but damn quick.
------
jmdeldin
This seems more cumbersome than opening AppleScript Editor, writing the
following, and saving the script as an app.
do shell script "my script"
Despite being an obnoxious language, AppleScript is pretty handy for
distributing shell scripts onto non-technical users' machines.
~~~
thatjoshguy
I've recently fallen in love with Automator. Although it make have a few
limitations, you can get around it by embedding AppleScript or Python.
In two minutes I made a quick and dirty system wide workflow to download the
selected URL.
------
zdw
For basic GUI interaction, there's also cocoaDialog:
<http://mstratman.github.com/cocoadialog/>
------
cleverjake
see also - <http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus>
~~~
MagerValp
Yes, please use Platypus instead, it'll save you a lot of trouble. The
article's solution is very hackish and as you can tell from the comments
you'll run into lots of issues.
------
tednaleid
It's a lot easier than the original post says (and it's mentioned in the
comments). Just rename your shell script to end in `.command` and you can have
it execute via a double click (or launch it with launchbar/quicksilver). I
have this in my .zshrc to automatically create a new .command file for the
current directory so I can easily open it up in MacVim:
<https://gist.github.com/3474341>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Censors User for Mentioning Censorship - huntermeyer
http://heatst.com/tech/facebook-censors-conservative-lauren-southern-for-mentioning-censorship/
======
xiaoma
I have to say I'm pretty disappointed. While Facebook is _legally_ allowed to
censor what they please (at least in the US), they present themselves as a
neutral platform. Their CEO was just speaking with political pundits concerned
about just this kind of behavior.
Beyond that, Facebook is much closer to a utility than a single media entity
these days and it's disturbing to see them wielding political power in this
way. They hold a great deal of power over nearly every online media publisher
around the world. Even in a case where I agree with their political slant, I
don't want to see this happening.
It pains me to say it but due to their monopoly power over the social graph,
it might be time for more regulation.
~~~
ende
You're trying to make a comparison to the regulation of common carrier
utilities but you're missing an important distinction. Regulation of certain
utilities is justifiable because those utilities enjoy a natural monopoly
granted and empowered by the government (usually due to the limitations of
land based infrastructures which naturally prevent market competition).
Facebook enjoys no such monopoly. Other digital social networks can and do
compete with it. If you don't like what facebook does, you can personally
regulate it by deactivating your account.
~~~
xiaoma
> _" If you don't like what facebook does, you can personally regulate it by
> deactivating your account."_
Likewise if someone didn't like the way AT&T's monopoly operated in the 70s,
they could simply deactivate their account. However, then as now with a
Facebook account, it would have been a self-limiting choice.
Once a communication network has the majority of people in a region on it, it
becomes nearly impossible to compete with directly and it also wields great
power in relation to its users.
~~~
ende
It's not the same thing though. The anti-competetive behavior of a company in
the telecommunications industry is grounded (literally) in the natural barrier
to entry that comes with the immense investment and government authorization
involved in land based infrastructure. These are necessary 'practical'
monopolies that are purposely created by the state in order to regulate them
as public utilizes and because it is impractical to allow multiple overlapping
land infrastructures.
Facebook does not fall anywhere close to this category of communications
network. There is no barrier to entry created by Facebook's existence.
Multiple other social networks can and do exist, and not only that but you can
simultaneously participate in all of them. They are not mutually exclusive.
Facebook is not a monopoly, it's just really popular.
Finally, Facebook is not a monopoly for the very simple reason that you are
not a customer of Facebook. Facebook does not provide you any service that you
have paid for in an economic exchange. Facebook's customers are advertisers,
and the advertisement industry is anything but a monopoly.
------
justinsaccount
"Facebook" in this case is most likely other users reporting her content. See
for example:
[http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/277657-hill...](http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-
room/news/277657-hillary-supporters-take-down-bernie-fb-pages-in-coordinated)
[http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/04/26/hillary-trolls-just-
go...](http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/04/26/hillary-trolls-just-got-facebook-
shut-bernie-groups-reporting-pornography/)
~~~
walrus01
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)
corollary: never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
a automated abuse-prevention system (in this case, people flagging posts)
doing what it was designed to do with zero human intervention.
------
mattbee
This is tinfoil-hat rubbish - all it shows is someone who was a) banned from
posting from Facebook, b) posted some conspiracy gobbledigook, then assuming
b) was the reason for a).
The banned user could have been posting racism, abuse, publicy, privately ...
without knowing all of her previous conduct it's impossible hard to tell. But
unless lots of other people corroborate their own posting bans with "talking
about censorship" it's not really convincing.
(This story written by the woman who thought Twitter's search autocomplete was
a reflection of what was posted on Twitter, rather than her own muck-raking
search history! [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/louise-mensch-
blame...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/louise-mensch-blames-
corbyn-supporters-for-anti-semitism-turns-out-its-her-own-offensive-
search-10466928.html))
~~~
daveguy
If you take out the tinfoil hat rubbish jab this is an informative post.
There's no reason to bias the reader against your opinion before they read it.
------
kinkdr
Good. Facebook is doing her a favor. Why not self-ban herself from Facebook
for life? Or to put it in a nicer way, ban Facebook from her life for ever.
I am not a lawyer, but I don't think it is illegal for Facebook to censor and
deny service to anyone they want. (Somebody can correct me if I am wrong). And
in similar fashion, everybody is perfectly free to use Facebook and comply
with their rules, or choose not to use it.
Maybe it is me, but I am having really difficult time understanding why people
take Facebook so seriously and add so much value to it. It is just another
cheap entertainment website. There are so many more.
~~~
unlinker
>Maybe it is me, but I am having really difficult time understanding why
people take Facebook so seriously and add so much value to it.
Yeah, it's you. Spend more time thinking of it and you'll realise there's a
big chunk of the population that gets their news from Facebook. Then you'll
realise how this is sort of a big deal, in its own way.
~~~
mevile
Remember way back when people had a blog with an RSS feed and anyone could
subscribe to your blog with their browser or some app to read what you had to
say instead of going through Facebook or Twitter? Remember when all that
slowly went away because people went to Facebook and Twitter? Well this is
what you get when people collectively decide apps and platforms with walled
gardens are better than the open web. Enjoy your nice and tasty shit sandwich.
It's all our own fault really.
~~~
darpa_escapee
I don't really think people made that choice consciously because they thought
walled gardens were better, there was a major push to redirect people and
content creators to those platforms.
I was very happy with the way things were until Google pulled the plug on
Reader and made it harder to follow "decentralized" content.
~~~
walrus01
They made the move because walled gardens are much easier to use, require far
less effort and have nicer friendly UIs built by large teams of UI/UX people
who have the goal of keeping people captive via browser sessions and their
mobile apps.
------
PuffinBlue
In the banking world you can get too big to fail.
I wonder if in the social media world you can get too big to allow censorship?
~~~
internaut
I wonder that too.
It's clear that even though the Net is owned by private interests it 'feels'
like a public space.
~~~
fridsun
It's advertised and designed to "feel" like a public space, in an effort to
disguise the truth of the ownership. Lack of a true public alternative is sad.
~~~
internaut
I can't quite agree with that.
The Net felt like a public space long before advertising existed on the Net.
It is still also true though that people have an illusion of ownership over
their emails in their Gmail accounts. That's why I switched away from them.
I think there does exist a role for truly public entities on the Net e.g.
Estonia's attempts but I also don't believe a normal government is capable of
providing these.
Can you take seriously an entity that can be swayed by Momsnet?
That's like running US chamber of commerce proposals past 4chan.
------
tdaltonc
> ... Mark Zuckerberg’s message hasn’t got through to Facebook’s employees.
What is this referring too?
~~~
jack9
Mark's not removing individual claims himself...ostensibly it was an employee.
However, Zuckerberg's recent message
([https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102830259184701](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102830259184701))
seems at odds with the behavior witnessed.
------
thelostagency
Well played on the video proof
~~~
mevile
The video proof only shows that's she's banned. It doesn't proof what she was
banned for. Based on the screenshots I believe her for the reason why she was
banned, not the video. Maybe a bit of a semantic quibble, but it's the
screenshots, not the videos that are damning.
~~~
daveguy
I don't see the damning screenshots. They don't seem indicative of "you are
banned", but not why. It does say she has been banned for 30 days for "posting
things not allowed". That could be anything. Are you seeing something I am
not? Banning for political opinion is definitely wrong even if not
unconstitutional since it isn't the gov (and I am liberal -- doesn't matter
the side you are on). However if she was also posting hate speech then it
would be understandable. I am not sure it is poorly conceived
moderation/censorship on Facebook's part or scapegoating on her part the
reason for the ban. Neither the screenshots nor video clarifies that.
------
gtf21
Article talks a lot about Zuckerberg but I'm unconvinced that he's working up
some big conspiracy to censor conservatives.
Definitely disappointing that this happened on FB (regardless of what is legal
- the law can't be made to fit all cases), I just doubt there's a conspiracy
going on.
On a side note: this looks like a really well written, balanced and
trustworthy source.
------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Check out some of the other submissions for heatst.com:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=heatst.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=heatst.com)
It's some wingnut site.
------
walrus01
Hey, you know, Facebook isn't obligated to publish anything. It's a 'free'
service. If you want to publish something run your own httpd. There is
absolutely nothing preventing anyone with $20 from buying their own domain,
setting up DNS on it and running a webserver through a bulk hosting company.
Oh wait, that's too hard for you? I can hear the world's smallest violin
playing.
~~~
jff
Remember you said this if they ever decide to censor someone you _agree_ with.
~~~
walrus01
Oh I'm very much aware of it. Anyone's relationship with Facebook is governed
by their TOS, nothing more. Because it's a 'free' service, you're not owed
anything by it. In fact, you're the product. Facebook wants to be the world's
largest walled garden and their entire revenue model is based on keeping
everyone trapped inside it, for the purpose of selling advertising. I would
never encourage anyone to rely solely on Facebook to publish anything they
care about, no matter where it is on the political spectrum.
You can use it as a tool to reach more people but don't become utterly
dependent upon it, that's just foolish.
Expect and plan for anything that you pay $0.00 for to disappear at any time,
for any random reason.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Case for C++ - johnmurray_io
https://itnext.io/the-case-for-c-4122a5b47130?source=friends_link&sk=ca95e477c339e9504a00791d4d8ef477
======
mikece
If one learns the latest version of Modern C++ how likely is it for one to
then get to work only with modern C++?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
User Registration Follow-up Email: A Check List - _pdeschen
http://blog.rassemblr.com/2011/01/user-registration-follow-up-email-a-check-list/
======
_pdeschen
Thanks. Those all valid points but has mentioned in the post, your millage may
vary.
Now regarding your point about the recipient (firstname, lastname): coming
from a different culture myself (fr-CA), I truly understand your concern. In
French, addressing someone on a firstname basis is indeed annoying (well for
me at least and I am not that old:-). I would be really interested in hearing
your alternatives. How to you circumvent this?
HTML email is indeed tricky and I realize I should have mention it. However,
there are interesting solutions out there to test both the rendering on
various client and its spam sensibility. I have personally used service from
Campaign Monitor which provided useful information. Check the following:
<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/design-guidelines/>
<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/testing/>
<http://litmus.com/email-previews>
<http://www.email-standards.org/>
I think your concern about up-sell technique could be legit for some B2C
markets. However, my experience with B2B (and I have metrics to back my
statement) shows that the negative impact of such up-sell is minimal in most
situation while being straight positive in some others. I DID get up-sell
conversions using such technique. But then again, I think this kind up-sell
should remain as light as possible. Not really the in-your-face-billboard
type.
This is all about knowing your target audience and adapt accordingly.
I am far from an expert though. I'm a hacker not a marketer :-) I just happen
to be interested in such communication, unavoidable being an entrepreneur.
------
Silhouette
I'm not at all sure I agree with some of these points.
Personalising by first/last name is a well-known screw-up if you're working
with international markets. Numerous cultures put their surname first,
assuming they even recognise the distinction at all. Also, being "chummy" by
addressing mails to someone on a first-name basis will annoy a significant
number of people, particularly those from older generations or, again, from
various cultures other than English-speaking Western ones.
HTML e-mail is commonly accepted these days, but you need to know what you're
doing. If you send something that looks cute in your mail client, that is no
guarantee at all that it will render even sensibly, never mind identically, in
other popular mail clients. Also, various things related to HTML e-mails are
common markers for spam, and if it's the first time you're writing to a
customer you're already the wrong side of average on a lot of popular mail
systems these days.
Finally, the upsell-in-conclusion idea sounds dangerous to me. If I've trusted
a company with my e-mail address and the first thing I get back is something
trying to sell me more stuff rather than support whatever it was I signed up
for, then my opinion of that company will instantly drop.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A forgotten twentieth-century photographer’s wild portraits of women in nature - prismatic
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-forgotten-twentieth-century-photographers-wild-portraits-of-women-in-nature
======
BelleOfTheBall
Wow, those are insanely good. “Infinitude,” 1910, in particular, looks like a
painting, sort of reminds me of "Isle of the Dead" by Böcklin. It has that
same eerie mood and feel. "Heart of the Storm" is a straight-up homage to old
epic classicist works. I never knew old photography could be this visually
striking.
~~~
vanderZwan
This is fairly common in early photographs. I think it is partially because
many early photographers were painters originally and carried the insights of
that practice over to the way they took photographs, and partially because
paintings were the main frame of reference of medium to emulate.
~~~
KineticLensman
I think the early history of photography is really interesting, in that
artists and philosophers were arguing about it as long ago as the middle of
the 19th century.
To some it mechanised art in a good way and allowed 'mass production' \- e.g.
of portraits for people who couldn't afford an artist. To others this was of
course a bad thing. Others liked the apparent objectivity of photography -
'the camera never lies'.
I read Susan Sontag's On Photography many years ago and would love to see an
updated version that takes account of our current image-saturated world.
------
eveningcoffee
Nice (and surprising) to see pictorialist work here. I would say that her work
is not forgotten but is not known by general public so well as for example
Ansel Adams is in the US. Adams belonged to the opposite school of art whose
many members actively opposed pictorialism.
------
tech-historian
Hacker News has such range. Hardcore engineering news from around the web but
also lovely excursions like this one.
Surprises like this is why I love HN.
------
acqq
A book: "Anne Brigman: A Visionary in Modern Photography" (2018) Written by
Ann M. Wolfe and Alexander Nemerov and Susan Ehrens and Kathleen Pyne and
Heather Waldroup
can also be previewed:
[https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847862870/](https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847862870/)
------
a_imho
Does not work in private window.
~~~
woadwarrior01
[https://archive.is/HuXQj](https://archive.is/HuXQj)
~~~
r0rshrk
I think the images are failing to load in this one. Does the scraping take
time ?
------
kwhitefoot
Thank you, lovely pictures!
------
justaguyhere
please tag it with NSFW, so people don't get in trouble
~~~
catsdanxe
Do people actually browse the internet at work? Like read the news, hn,
reddit, etc?
~~~
akshaybhalotia
You'd be surprised!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Can't be Solved with Money? - fezzl
http://blog.asmartbear.com/
======
gvb
Tip for fezzi: The link is to the blog main page, which breaks HN's duplicate
detection. It is better to link directly to the blog entry itself
<http://blog.asmartbear.com/startup-money.html> so us lazy readers don't have
to click twice.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I am looking for a Hacker. - youyap
I am starting a new start up and the domain is YouYap.com. I post it here and people break into it. So I am looking to find someone to joint me in this project. How do I find the best hacker?
I want to do something like this website.
======
michael_dorfman
I've written this before in response to some of your earlier questions, but I
really think you will get better quality answers to your questions if you
explain a little more clearly what it is you are asking.
I looked at the YouYap.com web site when it was up, but I haven't been able to
really figure out what your idea is. You say it is "something like this
website", but how does it intend on differentiating itself?
If you have a cool enough concept, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding
a hacker who wants to help you bring your vision into reality.
But first, you need to express the vision clearly enough that somebody
somewhere sees the "wow".
------
lanej0
I'm not sure if you've read any of the content on this site, but it's not
really a "hacker" site of the meaning you're implying. Hacker News is more
like a digg.com for people with more than a handful of neurons.
------
youyap
it going to be combination on hacker news geared towards local users. So it
will be whats going on locally. The site is just alpha now until it finished.
Now I am outsourcing the project to oversea guys but I dont think there are as
good as USA hackers. I prefer people here but I cannot afford it. So if
someone want to be part of it as volunteer. I want to run it as non profit
whereby people can donate only if they wish.
Just someone to help program little things here and there and support the
site.
I change the logo too. Hope this one is nicer.
------
babul
It really depends what you are looking for. You really need to clarify what
you want.
~~~
youyap
i want to do something like this hacker site.
------
babul
The site is down.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What if you work for a company that supports SOPA? - ncavig
What advice do you all have to someone who actually works for a company that supports SOPA but doesn't support it themselves?
======
gasull
Look for another job.
Seriously. I'm not saying you should quit right now. Find something better,
then quit. They don't deserve your talent.
~~~
nextparadigms
Make sure you tell them the reason why you quit, too. It matters.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you begin to find contracts as a freelancer? - lamroger
I'm looking to do some freelancing but don't have a network or past customers to rely on for contracts. I've been applying to Upwork jobs but it's been difficult without ratings and competing against lower priced engineers.<p>I do have experience as a DevOps engineer so I feel confident in my abilities to build production-ready infrastructure but getting the right leads is not something I'm experienced with.<p>What has worked for you?
======
itamarst
Forget Upwork, competing on price is a losing game.
Things I've known to work:
1\. Go to meetups (got a job offer once from project night at Boston Python
Meetup). 2\. Go to job listings for early stage startups looking for DevOps
people, email them saying "hey maybe you want a consultant instead?" They
might be happy for short term cost saving. Probably work with bigger
companies.
Lots of resources on
[https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/](https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/).
------
tedmiston
You have _a network_ — everyone has some start of a network!
All of my work has come through my personal network, or as a direct referral
from it. I do more independent contracting than freelance work, so if that's
something you're open to, I encourage you to reach out to founders and CTOs
you know to explore opportunities. That's what worked for me in a "tier 3"
startup city.
I would consider any of the marketplaces a last resort from the perspective of
a good developer. (People are willing to work for way too little. Think about
the advantages you have that those on the platforms don't.)
------
joeld42
Network. If you want to build up a portfolio a good way is to volunteer to
build or fix things for local non-profits, in exchange for them to give you a
testimonial and let you use their name for promotion (if you do a good job, of
course).
Don't compete on price. Pick your price and stick to it.
If you specialize in a particular piece of technology, spend time online
helping people fixing things, writing bug reports and patches for it, creating
a site with useful tools or tutorials and things like that. Then just include
a small mention on your site or your signature about your freelance work.
Don't go overboard with self-promoting, but don't neglect it either.
Keep a resume (or several targeted ones if you have different skillsets) up to
date and ready to send people.
------
Cozumel
Start a forum specialising in some software (or write your own) then as your
forum grows so will the people hiring you to perform customisations etc worked
for me.
~~~
tedmiston
A long time ago, I did something like this except it was for niche small
stores before Squarespace or Shopify existed. The spread was the same —
someone saw it then wanted one for himself, then another shop owner saw his,
etc. At the end of the day I didn't make a ton of money from it (although I
also didn't charge enough), but I did learn a lot.
------
jlgaddis
Since this question seems to come up about once a month or so, I'd say step #1
is "search HN for previous posts".
------
richardknop
Start a private limited company. Start working for companies you used to work
for as a permanent employee before. Market yourself as a consultant with
specific skillset who works on a per project basis. You come in and help the
in-house engineering team deliver the project, implement new technology etc.
Look for shorter term contracts, 6-9 months per contract. You can build up a
rolodex of clients and referrals like this which will make future contracts
come to you without you having to look for work.
~~~
tedmiston
I am curious to hear more about the dev turned consultant route. I've been
doing plenty of independent contractor software development work, but I
haven't really seen the right consulting opportunities — more higher level
strategy and business type gigs. Perhaps I just don't know where to look.
~~~
jrumbut
Openings for a consultant usually mean something more like "management
consultant" rather than technical consultant.
Usually as a technical consultant you find people who want to build something
and then guide them through the process. It can be semi-challenging to find
your first client for this sort of project because these clients don't know
what they're looking for and often don't know how much they don't know.
Once you have your first successful client like this though, others will find
you fast.
------
BjoernKW
One of my previous comments on this subject:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12744624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12744624)
Networking is key! Go to relevant events and talk to a lot of people.
Avoid freelancing sites like Upwork.
Do your own marketing (decent website etc.). If possible find a niche. DevOps
is a pretty wide range of skills and problems to solve. Can you narrow it down
to something very specific (that's in demand) you're particularly good at?
------
allfou
offer your service for free at first. People will pay you anyway (without
asking) if you do a great job. Then you get one client, then another one, then
another. Increase your price along the way while building your portfolio.
How do you get your first lead even for free? Craigslist or find ways of going
to events where people aren't technical at all. It'll come.
There's no magic trick you can't make big money without a network in life.
------
atsaloli
I started out ten years ago by shouting out to my friends, and posting on
Craigslist. I basically emailed everyone in my LinkedIn network and told them
I was available for freelance sysadmin work. Good luck!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Two Killed in Icon A5 Crash - diggernet
https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Two-Killed-In-Icon-A5-Crash-228966-1.html
======
Aaronn
In today's TFR Dispatch
([http://dispatch.learnthefinerpoints.com/issues/73#start](http://dispatch.learnthefinerpoints.com/issues/73#start))
the author writes:
"I don't get to add my opinion when I write for AVweb, so my editors cut my
last paragraph as excessively editorial in nature, but here's how that article
would have ended:
"This crash is the second hull loss for the A5 in the last two months. In both
cases, the sole occupants were ICON employees. Although the light-sport
amphibian has been reported to have docile handling and be nearly impossible
to spin, due in large part to Karkow’s work, ICON has taken heat for what some
perceive as promotion of dangerous flying. ICON’s aggressive CEO and founder,
Kirk Hawkins, is a former F-16 pilot and has staffed the company with
disproportionately large numbers of retired fighter and attack aircraft
pilots. When Flying Magazine awarded the A5 an editors’ choice award in 2015,
the staff noted 'Icon has also worked hard to cultivate a bad-boy image with
the release of videos and promotional materials that show A5 pilots performing
the sorts of aggressive low-level maneuvers that have been getting people hurt
or killed in airplanes for more than a hundred years.'"
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Flying is just exactly as
safe as you want it to be. Skill isn't a material factor in flight safety.
Karkow was a legend. Test pilot. Engineer. Soft spoken bad ass. I went up and
introduced myself to him at a conference last month, because he was a hero to
me and I wanted to shake his hand. On Monday, his aeronautical decision making
skills got left behind, and he flew into a box canyon at 40 feet. If you
passed your private pilot checkride, you have all the ADM skills you need, but
you have to elect to use them."
~~~
Aaronn
For non pilots: ADM in the last sentence refers to Aeronautical Decision-
Making
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good NLP Books for an experienced programmer - subnetvj
Hi,<p>What Natural Language Processing books can you suggest to an experienced programmer?
======
dougk7
Natural Language Processing With Python - <http://www.nltk.org/book>
Handbook of Natural Language Processing - [http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-
Language-Processing-Learning-...](http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Language-
Processing-Learning-Recognition/dp/1420085921)
------
glimcat
"Natural Language Processing & Knowledge Representation" by Iwanska & Shapiro
------
LearnYouALisp
Whew, I thought this was about something else.
~~~
anujkk
Exactly. I thought it is about Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law - cienega
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/04/protected-bike-lanes-traffic-safety-cambridge-bicycle-plan/586876/
======
just_steve_h
I've lived in Cambridge or neighboring Somerville every year but one since
1989. The cycling infrastructure is much improved and still deadly.
Just yesterday, I approached an arterial Street from a side street at 6pm.
Cars on the arterial were moving about 8 MPH. I dismounted my bike, and began
walking across the arterial in the crosswalk. As I re-mounted on the other
side and resumed riding, a white man in a mid-size SUV leaned out his window
and said loudly to me, "I hope you get hit!"
This morning on my way to work, a driver popped out of a side street from my
left side directly in front of me. As I was along side of him, he swerved hard
to the right and into a parking lot (no signal of course).
I've been a daily bike commuter in Cambridge for 12 years. We desperately need
infrastructure that forces drivers to respect cyclists as equal road users.
There is hardly a day that I don't _almost_ get hit by car while cycling.
~~~
viburnum
The thing about cycling is that it’s basically fast walking. In places where
cycling dominates people only ride as fast as a quick jogger (10 mph is a 6
minute mile). The correct model for cycling isn’t space on the road, it’s an
extra sidewalk with an accommodating turning radius. This is what you actually
see in The Netherlands. People think of public spaces as roads and as roads as
places for cars to drive and park, so they get hung up on “sharing the road,”
but really the thing to do is shrinking the road and enhancing places for
people.
~~~
zymhan
You won't find a cyclist who opposes dedicated, protected lanes that are
separate from roads and sidewalks.
It is almost always the car drivers who don't want to sacrifice the single
lane required to make a two way, protected bike lane. Case in point, Peachtree
St in Atlanta ~3 years ago.
[https://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/bike-lane-plan-for-
peachtre...](https://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/bike-lane-plan-for-peachtree-
road-hits-dead-end/vPZiz5EQrgdwDpcuyTK4cK/)
[https://www.ajc.com/news/local/bike-lanes-peachtree-road-
for...](https://www.ajc.com/news/local/bike-lanes-peachtree-road-for-the-
percent-wheels/SqL6Q0veuNzA7JlCPTSL2H/)
~~~
rayiner
Atlanta is a great example of where it makes no sense to have bike lines. I
lived in Atlanta for eight years. It’s a commuter city. The only people biking
are relatively privileged yuppies living in the fancy new apartments and
condos that have sprung up recently. Why spend public money, and inconvenience
drivers in the process, for their sake?
If we’re going to use up a lane, let’s do it in a socially responsible way and
make it a dedicated bus lane, which is what most people in need in Atlanta use
to get around.
~~~
bobwaycott
> _Why spend public money, and inconvenience drivers in the process, for their
> sake?_
Because the cyclists, too, are part of the public? It's not like that public
money is solely sourced from automobile drivers. Many people I know who live
and work and pay taxes in Atlanta cycle _and_ drive, depending on where
they're going. Are you really suggesting auto-drivers are more important
citizens whose convenience matters more than the safety of others? Should
Atlanta also start de-prioritizing safe sidewalks and crosswalks so people who
are walking all over Midtown and downtown don't inconvenience the drivers?
Suggesting the many people who aren't traveling along on 4 or more wheels
should be ignored for the sake of convenience to those who are seems awfully
silly.
~~~
wozniacki
Because the cyclists, too, are part of the
public? It's not like that public money is
solely sourced from automobile drivers.
Then, would you be not opposed to requiring bicycles to be registered,
bicyclists to be licensed & taxed just like cars & vehicular traffic does?
If you want a lane all to yourself isn't only fair that you pay your fair
share toward the building, maintenance and repair of the lanes? Why should you
get to use them free of cost?
~~~
zymhan
We do pay our fair share, over half of the road funding in Georgia comes from
general revenue, i.e. taxes everyone pays regardless of vehicle.
Don't act like my bike puts as much wear and tear on the road as your 3 ton
SUV or the 18-wheelers and delivery trucks.
------
mkoryak
I found a "simple trick that makes all drivers around me nice".
I put a pigeon on my helmet 8 years ago[1]. Everywhere I go I see smiles. I
really makes every ride fun. One of my friends recently started also doing it,
so its starting to catch on.
Pigeonriding transforms me from an awkward software engineer into an
interesting person who people want to talk to. I have only had a handful of
bad experiences[2] with drivers and other bikers in 8+ years that I have been
riding (a few of those years I commuted on a bike year-round).
[1]:[http://www.pictureboston.com/blog/2011/08/14/a-leica-
camera-...](http://www.pictureboston.com/blog/2011/08/14/a-leica-camera-
street-scene-from-bostons-north-end/)
[2]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=1&v=2hJ_hzjlQsw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=1&v=2hJ_hzjlQsw)
~~~
r_klancer
OMG DID I JUST SEE YOU IN UNION SQUARE, SOMERVILLE? (Or was it your friend?) I
noticed the pigeon.
(File under: it's a small world, I probably shouldn't act so surprised.)
~~~
mkoryak
That was my friend. He bikes in cambridge every day while I moved to the burbs
and only commute when biking for an hour wont make me cold/wet.
------
pselbert
Every person I know that bikes in Chicago has been hit at least once.
Fortunately none of them have been seriously injured, but it is a constant
danger.
There are lots of bike lanes downtown but they aren’t protected or respected.
We have a long way to go to make biking a safe form of transport like it is in
the Netherlands.
~~~
dominotw
I personally know 3 ppl that died in chicago. Two of them were my coworkers,
died in the same year. :/
Sorry but if you have kids and family you are fucking stupid to ride bikes on
the street in chicago. White bikes on sidewalks are not street art. Go to
lakeshore path/606 if you are dying to ride bikes.
I got doored 2 yrs ago escaped only with broken wrist.
~~~
bluejekyll
Then I assume you would support a similar law in Chicago as Cambridge passed?
~~~
dominotw
Yes but aren't you back on the street with no protection where there are no
bike lanes( most of chicago)?
~~~
bluejekyll
I don't know Chicago, but I do know what's happened in San Francisco over the
last 20 years. It's taken a long time, but the city is finally starting to
take protected bike lanes seriously, sadly much of that is in response to
lives lost.
When I first got here, it was just a fight for standard bike lanes. For either
to happen, more people need to get on their bikes and ride. Contributing to
your local bike coalition is also great way to help push these issues forward.
If everyone follows your advice and chooses to not ride because of the danger,
then nothing will change, and the lives lost to poor road infrastructure and
poor driver education will have been for nothing.
~~~
dominotw
> If everyone follows your advice and chooses to not ride because of the
> danger, then nothing will change
Are you seriously suggesting some ppl risk their lives for 'change'? Sorry I
really don't want to trade my life for bike lanes, there are ppl counting on
me to stay alive.
~~~
bluejekyll
No, I don't want people to risk their lives for anything. I want things to
change. 40,000 people die a year in the US while driving or riding in cars,
following your logic, that is also extremely risky, and so we shouldn't do it.
~~~
dominotw
I am not sure thats a correct analogy. Driving a car to work is not an
optional activity for most ppl. Ppl riding their bikes in the city are doing
it for fun/thrill/whatever, its an optional activity for 90% of the ppl doing
it.
I have a theory that most of these ppl would stop doing it once the
thrill/'cool factor' goes away with protected bike lanes.
~~~
bluejekyll
That's an interesting theory. I think I've seen some studies that show the
opposite:
85% increase in cycling with better infrastructure:
[https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/tomguha/85-increase-
cycling-a...](https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/tomguha/85-increase-cycling-
attributable-better-infrastructure)
This shows a direct correlation between lower risk and increased cycling:
[https://nacto.org/2016/07/20/high-quality-bike-facilities-
in...](https://nacto.org/2016/07/20/high-quality-bike-facilities-increase-
ridership-make-biking-safer/)
I especially like this quote: "A virtuous cycle is clear: With more
infrastructure come more riders. Perhaps counterintuitively, with more
infrastructure and more riders, safety improves. And the more bicycles there
are traversing a city, the more it reaps numerous returns on investment,
including the health benefits of cleaner air and greater physical activity."
from [https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/buildings-and-
cities/bike...](https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/buildings-and-cities/bike-
infrastructure)
I don't think most people who are biking while commuting are doing it purely
for the thrill, but that is a plus, no doubt.
------
chadash
> _" Local law now requires the city to erect vertical barriers between
> cyclists and cars on any roadway that’s rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured"_
I'm all for better bike lanes, but it seems kind of extreme to require this
for _all_ new roads [0]. I used to live in Cambridge and rode my bike quite a
bit. I never felt like I needed a dedicated lane on every side street, just on
the main drags (where some of the new protected bike lanes were amazing to
have).
[0] Actual ordinance available at
[http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID...](http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID=5905&highlightTerms=cycling%20safety%20ordinance).
I could be misinterpreting the language, and it seems they will allow for some
very limited exceptions, but the default seems to be that a typical side
street would have a dedicated bike lane.
EDIT: after reading the actual ordinance again (and as a comment below pointed
out), it seems that this only applies to streets that are rebuilt or improved
_and_ are part of the city's plan for streets that should include bike paths.
In other words, most random side streets wouldn't get bike paths.
~~~
strictnein
Don't they get snow? With vertical barriers I'm confused how a plow will be
able to properly clear the street.
~~~
amalcon
Most of the existing separated bike lanes are incorporated into the sidewalk,
and therefore protected by the curb. There are a few that are "protected" by
rows of parked cars or bolted-down pylons, but this would seem to not be legal
under the new law.
I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing
as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some
method.
~~~
CydeWeys
There are smaller vehicles that are used to plow just the bike lanes in some
parts of the world.
It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who
continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite
low.
~~~
LeonidasXIV
> It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people
> who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is
> quite low.
This is not necessarily true. Here in Copenhagen the amount of people cycling
in winter is not significantly less than at other times of the year. That
said, we don't have much snow, but the bike lanes are cleared before the road
lanes (to incentivize not taking the car into the city).
~~~
amalcon
The problem is more that twilight is around 4:30PM from December through
February, rather than the weather. Though I suppose this might be less of a
worry if cycling infrastructure were safer.
------
hirundo
This is long term controversial issue. If you think the right answer is
obvious you probably haven't dove down to the details, where it's much
murkier. See in particular John Forester's _Effective_Cycling_. Forester
believes that "cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of
vehicles" and are not segregated from them. There are studies in this area
pointing in both directions. One such concluded that putting bikes on multi-
use trails makes cyclists less safe. A lot depends on the design of the bike
paths, and a badly designed one can increase the risk over none at all.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_Cycling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_Cycling)
~~~
ahoy
I don't know a single cyclist who agrees with that statement.
~~~
btrettel
I've been a transportation cyclist for roughly a decade and I agree with
everything he said. Many cyclists do, particularly more experienced ones.
Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them
out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number
of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too
many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe
than if there was no bike lane.
~~~
CydeWeys
And yet protected bike lanes are proven to vastly increase the number of
people who are willing to bike, which then makes biking safer for everyone
because of sheer numbers. I'm a confident enough cyclist to bike in the
street, take the lane, and ignore all the honking assholes, but my girlfriend
isn't. The protected bike lanes are great because it means we can bike to
things together.
~~~
btrettel
I don't know if the increase in the number of cyclists outweighs the problems
with the intersections.
I get the impression from your various comments here that you have never rode
a bike in the US, so perhaps our experience differs.
On my daily commute in Austin I cross I-35 via a bike lane that is sometimes
semi-protected. I think many inexperienced cyclists think that this is "safe"
because it's sometimes protected, but I consider it to be actually a fairly
dangerous intersection that I take reluctantly. Whenever the bike lane crosses
a car lane, there are signs saying to yield to cyclists, yet I can only think
of a single instance where a driver yielded to me without me having to use my
air horn.
I can't find the details right now, but a local bike activist's wife actually
stopped cycling because she found this intersection so dangerous:
[https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5464](https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5464)
(I don't see a mention of the particular intersection in that link, but as I
recall this was it.)
Perception and reality can differ a lot, and I think that's what my criticisms
come down to.
~~~
bretthoerner
It’s sad to me that I immediately knew the crossing in Austin you were talking
about and it made me shudder. Thankfully I’ve never had to use it as a
cyclist. However I do live near a “protected lane” in Austin that puts both
bike lanes on one side of street. All that ends up doing is ensuring drivers
never check the bike lane when they turn through it. It’s awful.
~~~
CydeWeys
It sounds to me like it's a very poorly designed intersection that isn't
actually protected, then. I know some intersections like that here in NYC and
yeah, they suck (one example being 2nd Ave in Manhattan through midtown at the
bridge and tunnel). When there's a reasonable alternate route available I'll
tend to take them.
------
larrymyers
I'm a huge fan of protected bike lanes. Chicago has a few of them, and they
are far less stressful to ride on compared to just basic striping on the road.
By far the biggest issue I have with striped bike lanes is trying guess when
an Uber driver is going to do something crazy when picking up or dropping off
a passenger.
~~~
CydeWeys
My biggest problem with unprotected bike lanes here in Manhattan is that they
are _so_ frequently illegally blocked, not just by Taxis/FHVs but also by
people parking in them. And a lot of the unprotected bike lanes are basically
just the door zone of a line of parked cars, so you need to ride to the far
outside of it to avoid getting doored.
There's entire block-long stretches that I'll stay out of the unprotected bike
lane entirely for, because it's so frequently blocked or so close to parked
cars that it's more dangerous to be in there.
The protected bike lanes, on the other hand, are _much_ better. I wish we'd
get this law here.
~~~
asdff
The fine for parking your car in a bike lane should really be a tow. Predatory
towing companies in my town can grab a car in 10 minutes; it's spooky. They
even have scouts. I feel like towing companies should be chomping at the bit
to get action on this parking ignorance with bike lanes, which seems to be
universal in any city with them.
~~~
CydeWeys
Definitely. There's so much money to be made here in ticketing and towing
people that are parking illegally. You would easily pay the salaries of the
people doing it and then also send a lot more revenue back to the general
treasury.
It always astounds me that they don't have more enforcement agents out there.
On my 10 minute bike ride I routinely see at least one ticketable infraction
per minute. Hell, give me a ticket book (and a percentage cut for my trouble)
and I'll gladly go earn ticket revenue for the city myself.
------
king_panic
I used to bike every morning from my house on Morrison Ave in Somerville to
Riverside Boat Club, then from RBC to Central Square. I would then bike the
reverse in the evenings.
Rides could be treacherous because the tension between drivers and cyclists
when they share the road. There is a hard division established for commuting
by foot (sidewalks) and drivers (roads), but none for cyclists. Both cyclists
and drivers feel entitled to roads, but there are few parameters around how
they interoperate with one another.
I think designating a division for cyclists is a great idea in a city with a
high volume of cyclists.
------
danielecook
Just got back from a trip Amsterdam. If you want to see what the future of
Cambridge could be - take a trip there. The cycling infrastructure is
phenomenal and very heavily used. It seems the majority of streets had
dedicated and protected cycle lanes on both sides. Even more impressive is
that it doesn't stop at the city limits. It goes far far out into the
countryside. They even had parking garages for bikes.
------
just_steve_h
I also wonder what all our resident PRIVATE PROPERTY enthusiasts think about
on-street parking: what other of my 250 sq.ft. objects may I store on public
property for free?
~~~
misthop
how big is your car? Damn....
~~~
WhompingWindows
10 feet long, 2.5 feet wide
~~~
leetcrew
> 2.5 feet wide
no passenger seat or they all sit behind you in single file?
------
gnulinux
As a biker in Cambridge, I have mixed feelings about this. Biking in Cambridge
is subpar, I lived in Berkeley, CA 4 years and biking was MUCH more
comfortable there. I'm worried this will hinder the progress and slow down
constructing new bike lanes. I want more protection BUT I also want bike lanes
every where. If they're not gonna construct more bike lanes because now it has
more regulation, this is a negative development. If this will not happen, this
is a positive development. Time will show. I'm hopeful but skeptical.
~~~
ghaff
Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists
(and pedestrians) for some reason. Maybe it's all the students. It's probably
a net good thing that cycling lanes are being improved although there are
certainly tradeoffs given the traffic and parking situation. However, whenever
I'm driving home up Beacon Street after dark, there are invariably cyclists
zipping around with no lights, going up streets the wrong way, and pedestrians
dressed in dark colors randomly quickly stepping out from behind parked cars
into the street.
The bike lanes that now exist probably make things safer overall but there's a
lot of dangerous behavior out there on the part of many types of
infrastructure users (including cars as well).
~~~
wool_gather
> Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists
> (and pedestrians) for some reason.
There's a certain "vicious cycle" element to this. If bicycling generally
appears unsafe, then mostly (over)confident, risk-tolerant people will do it.
Those are the same people who are comfortable getting away with unwise things
like running stoplights the wrong way at dusk on their no-brakes fixie with a
single tiny red blinkie mounted high on their messenger bag. ;)
It's also tied into a common argument against biking infrastructure: "Why
would we build this? There aren't any people biking now." Chicken-egg, but
there are many people who won't bike if it seems unsafe. And those people have
a good chance of behaving more sensibly when they are convinced to ride.
~~~
just_steve_h
Right. The argument "not that many bikes, why build bike lanes?" is a bit like
"nobody crosses the river on a raft, so why build a bridge?"
------
povertyworld
Protected bike lanes are key. I commute to work by bike, and use biking as my
main form of transportation. My city has created many bike lanes, and
encourages bikers to prefer those roads. Unfortunately, bike lanes have really
just become double parking zones for delivery workers, ride shares, and people
just who don't feel like looking for a proper parking space while their
partner shops. Having to go around people double parked in the bike lane feels
much more dangerous than biking on a regular street, since I have to go out
into the middle of the road to pass them.
------
Finnucane
I live and work in Cambridge and one of the new separated lanes is on my
regular route to work. The design, I think has been mostly an improvement,
with quibbles. There's definitely less chance of getting doored, but I don't
like that the lanes go right through bus stops. Also, cars turning at
intersections don't see you on the other side of parked cars.
A big plus, though is that the city actually keeps the lane cleared in winter.
The regular bike lanes get to be pretty bad and blocked by parked cars when
there's a lot of snow.
------
souterrain
While Baltimore is reversing protected a bike lane implementation as a result
of pressure from retail business and constituents who prefer cars. (The
neighborhood in question is one of the most affluent in the city.)
[https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-
city/bs...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-
ci-roland-park-bike-lane-20190329-story.html)
~~~
dsfyu404ed
My city did that. Only they waited for most of the businesses to fold first.
What a great reward for weathering the recession those businesses got. Turns
out when you kill parking in favor of bike lanes in a small city that does a
lot of business by being a commerce destination for the surrounding towns it
doesn't work well. Also nobody bikes here because the entire city is hills
(plenty of people walk though) so bike lanes are an attempt to solve a problem
that doesn't exist but they tried it anyway because they're politically
fashionable, details of the specific situation be damned
~~~
souterrain
This part of Baltimore doesn't fit this model, however, since parking was not
removed. The bike lane was inserted between the parking zone and the curb.
Previously, the bike lane was between the rightmost travel lane and the
parking zone.
Poor driving, or factors related to poor driving, may be a contributor.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc-
baltimore-drivers-are-nearly-bad-it-gets-allstate-says/)
Or, it may just be an anti-cycling bias, but I don't have evidence to support
this.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
I'm not saying Baltimore did that. I'm just saying you can't just go around
with a hammer looking for nails because you have a politically popular hammer.
It's not going to work in every case.
------
ummonk
As both a driver and former cyclist, this is a great development that all
cities should be doing.
------
emanuensis
This is a shift from car centricity to a transport centricity for roads.
Looking back in time we had one from horses to trolleys to cars. Now we could
be beginning to see them in a broader light. Transport is growing now to
include all kinds of electrified (and Rapid!) transit, eg scooters, ebikes,
hoverboard... When i lived in Cambridge, ell before the concept of a protected
lane, bicycling was commonly known and utilized as the fastest means of
transport: the pinnacle of sneakernet.
------
Tiktaalik
Every city should be doing this. It's shameful how little attention we've paid
to cyclist safety with city designs up to this point.
~~~
Chardok
Its especially frustrating how cities will try almost anything to alleviate
traffic instead of encouraging cycling. Its less taxing on the roads, it
doesn't pollute, it doesn't require a schedule and best of all it takes up
peanuts in space compared to a parking spot.
------
barrad0s
There is already barely any parking in Cambridge, driving there already
sucks... Let's see how much worse this is gonna get.
~~~
biswaroop
Good. Parking and driving are not well-suited to narrow roads in high density
cities. There have been tons of studies that show this. This is as a Cambridge
resident who struggles to find parking when I occasionally have to. Parked
cars are truly a blight on our beautiful streets. Protected bike lanes are
definitely [edit: probably] part of the route towards greater livability.
~~~
wool_gather
I agree mostly, except that there needs to be a _usable_ non-bicycle
alternative to cars too. I love riding, but not everybody can do it all the
time, for a large variety of reasons. Reducing in-city car usage is good, but
just forcing it to be even more unpleasant is not going to solve anything.
~~~
ahoy
Sounds like a job for.... public transportation!
~~~
analog31
Indeed, cycling and public transit go hand in hand. Even in the Netherlands,
people don't ride bikes exclusively. For longer distances, they may ride their
bikes to the train station, then take transit to the city center, or something
like that. This makes it a lot easier to live without a car.
------
u801e
The major problem with protected infrastructure is that they do a poor job at
managing intersection conflicts. Intersections are where the majority of
collisions happen. If traffic cannot see other traffic when approaching an
intersection, then some type of signage or traffic signal is required to
control approaches to the intersection. But if you have too many modes of
transportation making use of the intersection, then the phased signals start
taking too long and you start having compliance issues. This then leads to
more collisions.
------
galago
I live and work in Cambridge, MA. In my opinion, Cambridge and Somerville are
not very bicycle friendly due to the fact that main streets were laid out
before cars were common. As a result, there is basically only one route (via
Beacon) to work for me via bicycle. Grid-cities like SE Portland, OR where I
formerly lived, were much easier because you can ride on a street parallel to
the artery, not on it. Its nice to see what Cambridge is doing, but its a much
harder job than other cities face.
------
danbr
I work in Kendall sq and have wanted to ride my bike into Cambridge the past 5
years.
I’m (almost) deathly afraid to ride make the short 4 mile trek across the
river for exactly this reason. I lament every day I get on the T to slog for
45 minutes on a decrepit, slow, and usually broken train system. I arrive to
work bothered by my commute almost every day.
For Boston/Cambridge being such a bio and tech hub, it’s entire transit system
(roads, busses, trains, biking) is amongst the worst I know of in the US.
Sad.
------
surge
I try to cross the street in my downtown are just walking from my parking
garage to the office and some driver's think I don't have right of way and
turn left or make right turns into me, because as a person, I don't count,
even though I have the walk signal.
I'm almost tempted to just start video recording when I'm making the trip, and
start reporting these people after getting their plate number.
------
dahfizz
So all new street construction has to include bike lanes. Is there any
provision to ensure a steady pace of road maintenance/upgrades? I think this
strategy has a real risk of stagnating the already slow rate of road
maintenance in a lot of places.
In places like Cambridge where there is money, it seems like a smart move. But
making construction more expensive won't work everywhere.
------
dsfyu404ed
As much as I hate Cambridge I'm having a hard time finding fault with this.
Bike lanes fit their needs really well.
~~~
jdgoesmarching
Are there scooter companies in Cambridge? I've been hoping they would spur
some major cities to invest in bike lanes but I'm not sure if that's the case
here.
Either way, solid win all around.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
The entire state of MA is highly unwelcoming to anything with two wheels and a
motor that is less than a motorcycle (and even then it kinda sucks for them
too). You say "scooter" or "moped" and suburban soccer moms and uptight
politicians get images of New Dehli in their heads and that's too low class
for MA so any organized attempt at doing that gets blocked by the power of
arbitrary enforcement.
As another commenters mentioned they were there briefly before the .gov told
them to get lost. The other thing about MA is that it's highly totalitarian.
The government is mostly benign and the single party nature of the state means
it doesn't cause too much discontent but trying to pull an Uber and provide a
service that has popular support before the regulators can kick you out
doesn't really work in MA because the people have little choice in the manner,
the .gov can just say "this isn't good for you" and that's the end of it.
~~~
coleca
MA already had laws statewide mandating bike lanes on new construction and
renovation. This has led to the situation near my house where a highway
intersection (Route 1 and 495) was rebuilt and a bike lane added for about
1000 feet on a road that has a 55mph speed limit. There is no bike lane on the
rest of Route 1, just around the intersection where the construction happened.
Now we have a bike lane that will never be used confusing the drivers trying
to figure out where they should be when taking the entrance ramp onto the
highway. This is a suburb around 40 miles outside of the city.
I’m all in favor of bike lanes but these types of blanket mandates aren’t the
solution because it eliminates the community’s ability to use common sense and
apply the law logically. So you wouldn’t be encouraging biking across a ramp
with no signals and cars going from 55 mph to 65 mph for example.
~~~
frosted-flakes
Well, it seems to me that constructing bike lanes piece-meal as roads are re-
built is the most cost-effective way to do it, even if it results in a super
fragmented bike lane network at first.
As far as bike lanes across freeway entrance ramps goes, great, if it's done
right. The bike lane should be painted solid green or red where it crosses the
ramp, with a "Yield to " sign. The rebuilt interchanges in my city are like
this, and the coloured lane is a visual obstruction that forces drivers to
take notice of any cyclists on it. I've both cycled on and driven across these
lanes, and they work well, far better than the alternative.
Also, bike lanes on 55 mph roads is fine if there are no alternative roads for
cyclists to use. Often, this just means paving a wide shoulder and putting
regular "" signs as reminders to drivers. Even if only a few people a day ride
it.
Edit: it looks like the commenting platform strips out the "U+1F6B2 BICYCLE"
character, used twice above.
------
tosser0001
It will be interesting to see what effect this has. A few things I predict:
1\. The price of housing with off-street parking will rise even faster now.
2\. A lot of off-street parking in the neighborhoods will be eliminated,
forcing some people who have to drive to work outside the city to move.
3\. The speeds of cars will increase because the roads will feel wider
~~~
amanaplanacanal
How wide are the typical lanes there now? I believe the newest best practice
is for 10 ft wide lanes, though many cities have been making them 12 ft for a
while. Narrower lanes are great for slowing traffic down.
------
perfunctory
Emigrate to the Netherlands. No, seriously. Vote with your feet.
~~~
IshKebab
Not really viable for most people though is it? And "it's fine in the
Netherlands so we don't need to bother here" isn't a great attitude either.
------
cure
It is funny to see Cambridge labelled a 'Boston suburb'. That was clearly
written by someone who has never visited Cambridge, MA or even the Boston
area.
~~~
est31
Never been there, could you explain?
~~~
sokoloff
I live in Cambridge, MA and would need it explained.
~~~
psychometry
Cambridge is a city of 100k people, not a suburb. For comparison, Boston has
600k.
~~~
ummonk
I wouldn't describe Cambridge as a suburb, but plenty of suburbs have
populations larger than 100k.
~~~
CydeWeys
The key distinction is that suburbs are largely residential and composed of
lower density housing, which does not describe Cambridge accurately.
~~~
ben7799
Waltham is further away too and has > 100k people. It's hard to say if these
cities are suburbs or not.
Waltham, Newton, Cambridge, etc.. are very dense.
There is a clear delineation in density with a lot of these. Usually it's
whether the town/city is inside 95, but Lexington is not very dense and is
inside.. I think Lexington fits the mold of suburb where as Newton & Waltham
feel urban.
~~~
CydeWeys
What about Somerville? I've been there a few times and at least the parts I
was in felt more like a small city than the suburbs. Everything was well-
connected with mass transit and walking seemed to be a very popular mode of
transportation (which it isn't in the 'true' suburbs I've been to).
------
framebit
I really appreciate the mental model expressed here:
[https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/15/how-to-
turn-a-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/15/how-to-turn-a-
stroad-into-a-street-or-a-road)
The TL;DR is that a street is in a dense area that's slow speed and welcoming
to all forms of transit, A road gets cars at a fast speed from point A to
point B, and a "stroad" is the worst of both worlds and a common anti-pattern
in many sprawly areas.
------
throwawaysea
Asking for anyone who might know: how is it that this article is at the #1
spot on the front page already. It was submitted by an account created 21
minutes ago, and it seems unusual that it would displace things like the
Assange story, which has over 800 comments.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
Up-vote rate over time is highly weighted and it's east coast business hours
right now so there's a lot of people from MA mashing the upvote button.
~~~
close04
The voting mechanism here is a bit opaque. I think it also considers trends.
So a an article with 60 votes in a short time period will probably climb
higher than an article with 800 votes but slow increase.
Activity on the submission (views and comments) probably also has an
influence.
------
Palptine
Cambridge can't even fix potholes and plow snow, but this is where they decide
to spend money. Some real galaxy brains.
------
ztravis
(insert bike credentials here)
For me one of the largest (if not THE largest) factor* in bike safety is route
choice, and the main factor in that for me is density and speed of car
traffic. As comfortable as I feel "vehicular" cycling (e.g. cutting across
lanes to take a true left turn, taking the lane to avoid the "dooring zone"
along parked cars), those are the moments when I am most exposed and at risk.
Likewise the safest intersections are those that do not have cars passing
through!
As an example, a colleague of mine commutes from near my house to our office,
and we take very different routes - him along a major artery with (mostly)
protected bike lanes, me along back streets with sharrows or no bike markings
at all. Even in a protected line, he has to contend with fast and constant
traffic alongside him, frequent intersections where he has no protection and
is even harder to see (since he's popping out from behind a line of parked
cars); the intersections are constantly in use and drivers turn and accelerate
faster to make smaller windows in the faster traffic. My commute along back
streets is leisurely; I can ride in the middle of the street without fear of
getting doored or getting overtaken at speed unexpectedly, and intersections
are calm. Of course the major artery is more direct (and so perhaps slightly
faster), but it's also a major designated bike route and for that reason sees
a lot of bike traffic even though I think it's less safe.
Of course in denser neighborhoods and cities it may be difficult to find "back
streets" with minimal car traffic and which still get to where you're going.
Still, I think that should be a goal of new bike infrastructure development -
I'm happy to act like a car, make turns from the correct lane, stop at red
lights, signal, etc., and I don't need a protected bike lane either - a normal
road with light, slow car traffic is fine. A set of these which connects the
major neighborhoods in a community (e.g. running parallel to arteries but not
quite in the central areas) makes for a very nice bike experience (c.f.
Berkeley's bike boulevards which is naturally my inspiration here!).
So, when this article mentions the requirement of protected bike lanes on all
streets, while I think that's great and I love seeing bicycling given more
consideration in urban planning, I also think that it seems a little coarse.
Some roads don't need to have any bike traffic at all, some roads can be
wonderful for biking without any modification at all, and some roads ought to
be made better for biking but in more nuanced ways (primarily traffic easing -
roundabouts, narrower roadways, removing through-access, etc - that
discourages car traffic without impeding bike traffic). Of course if you want
to build independent bike trails (or non-grade lanes, or other more
significant changes) that's wonderful too!
_Other important factors IMO:
_ Cyclist density - everyone should bike! Probably preaching to the choir here
but there's safety in numbers, drivers get used to seeing cyclists and how
they behave, and it makes it easier to advocate for better infrastructure.
Also relevant on a micro-level for route choice * Cycling experience/behavior
- including "vehicular" maneuvers, general awareness of dangerous/risky
situations and driver behavior * Lights
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Eric Cantor Defeated by David Brat, Tea Party Challenger, in Primary Upset - gwintrob
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/politics/eric-cantor-loses-gop-primary.html
======
higherpurpose
Apparently this is bad news for the NSA:
[http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5798554/eric-cantors-loss-is-
ba...](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/10/5798554/eric-cantors-loss-is-bad-news-for-
the-nsa)
Was mass surveillance even an issue during these elections? Not that I expect
the corrupt mainstream media to even raise such questions on behalf of the
population.
------
bratsche
I hate to be 'that guy', but does this really belong on hacker news?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin trojan caught in the wild - mike_esspe
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/all-your-bitcoins-are-ours
======
olivercameron
This is exactly why Bitcoin will never take off outside of the geek world. Can
you imagine, in a world where millions used Bitcoin, the media fallout if
users were being robbed with zero way to reclaim their money?
Knowing how little "regular" people protect their devices, this scares me.
~~~
shazow
Here's some ways to fix this and why it won't be a problem:
\- Add encryption of the wallet and a password to the Bitcoin client and
daemon. This is already being worked on and there is working prototype. It
should be in the mainstream client very soon. Wallet Private Key Encryption:
<http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8728.0>
\- Start trusted centralized institutions that hold your Bitcoins and protect
them (maybe even give you a bit of interest growth). There are already
numerous online eWallets that you can use—if you choose to keep your cash on
your person then it's your decision and you should acknowledge the risks. List
of eWallets: <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:EWallets>
~~~
gojomo
Wallet encryption isn't any help against keyloggers and other local malware
that can observe your use of the wallet. And wallet encryption simple enough
for average folks — a short passphrase of their own choosing - is easy for
digital pickpockets to crack.
~~~
wmf
Since Bitcoin miners have awesome GPUs, malware could use the victim's own GPU
to crack their wallet. (And then go back to mining... for the malware owner.)
~~~
a3_nm
Bitcoin GPU miners are a quite small subset of Bitcoin users, and they're
probably not the least knowledgeable.
~~~
jcoder
Maybe. Wasn't the victim of the recent 25k heist a miner?
~~~
DavidSJ
Yeah, but from early 2010 when most miners were still using CPUs.
------
codex
Ah, Bitcoin: the new incentive to breach computer security. Why risk stealing
credit card or bank information when you can steal Bitcoins safely and
anonymously?
~~~
weavejester
On the other hand, it's also a powerful incentive to improve computer
security.
~~~
rick888
No matter how much you improve it, there will be a never ending supply of end
users that won't install the proper updates.
~~~
weavejester
Why give them the choice? You could automatically download and apply the
updates in the background, given a sufficiently sophisticated updater. That's
basically Google's plan with ChromeOS.
------
haberman
Don't worry, we've identified the thief! Put out an arrest warrant for:
f7c956f566b11751c4d3f5ca077c0406
More seriously, it's interesting that the people who have been robbed from
could observe in detail exactly where their stolen money is flowing to. So
close, yet so far away.
------
gasull
A possible solution:
<http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=18141.0>
tl;dr: Create a bitcoin address, backup wallet.dat, delete wallet.dat from
your HD, and send your bitcoins to that address.
~~~
gojomo
Works until the malware scans the disk for keydata remnants from 'deleted'
files (or even old swap pages).
And this guy was trying to implement this 'offline savings' strategy, but
didn't completely understand the privacy lifecycle and transaction details —
and thus last the keys to a $180K balance:
<http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=11104.0;all>
Vanished in a poof of pure logic!
~~~
gasull
> _Works until the malware scans the disk for keydata remnants from 'deleted'
> files_
<http://srm.sourceforge.net/>
I don't use Windows but there's probably something similar for it.
~~~
gojomo
Even 'srm' and similar tools might not work as expected on a solid-state drive
with its own firmware and wear-leveling.
It's possible to protect your bitcoin keys from an arbitrarily-later malware
incursion... but very hard, in ways even most power-users don't consider.
I like bitcoin. The current sharp edges and tragic mishaps are useful, for
now, for learning about a new medium of exchange, which operates on a logic
different from almost anything that we could easily analogize to.
If bitcoin or a successor takes off, I suspect carrying large balances will
require specially hardened devices – secure VMs inside handhelds, perhaps?
And, a general desire for some recourse against instant irreversible
fraudulent transfers might make the 'finalization' of certain transactions
dependent on a remote secondary key approving (or failing to cancel) a
payment, within a timeframe sufficient to deliver second-channel
notification/confirmation.
------
conductr
Any one else find the FTP password amusing?
------
andrewcooke
what's with the random number generation at the start? how does rand() +
3*rand() improve on just rand()?
~~~
mootothemax
There's a great series of answers to this on StackOverflow:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3956478/understanding-
ran...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3956478/understanding-randomness)
In short: doing things like this actually _reduces_ the randomness of the end
result.
------
simias
Mmh, the "underground code snippet" looks very fishy, unless I'm missing
something:
char * appdata = getenv("APPDATA");
char * truepath = strcat(appdata, "\\Bitcoin\\wallet.dat");
------
Groxx
> _it has one motive: to locate your Bitcoin wallet.dat file and email it to
> the attacker._
Craziness. They could just send the coins to a Bitcoin address, and it
wouldn't identify them _at all_.
~~~
illumin8
Stealing your wallet.dat is easier. With a copy of your private keys they can
spend your coins from anywhere, without having to get remote access to your PC
and send them locally.
------
27182818284
The BTC clients should encrypt the wallet too.
------
olalonde
Uh? Aren't Bitcoin wallets encrypted?
~~~
gasull
They will be in the coming version.
------
maeon3
I have an idea that may fix this broken model of Bitcoin. Make sure each penny
has a "history" on it on a public server. You can't spend the money unless it
is posted for everyone to see. Each transfer of money is documented, and the
reason for the transfer and other data. And in order to spend it, you have to
validate and review each transfer of money before it. If there is anyone
stealing money, it is just a matter of looking at the history of each penny
and then tracking down the unique id to the offender who spent the money they
didn't earn.
A safe online currency can be done, but if you champion this, the United
States government are going to find you, and squish you like the insignificant
bug you are. You would be circumventing the primary income stream of the
united states with a global standardized currency.
~~~
ghshephard
Every bitcoin in existence has its history tracked back to it's origin on
every single bitcoin node.
There is an optimization for some clients to to pare down that history, but,
in general, when you start up a bitcoin node, you have the history of every
bitcoin ever created and all of it's transactions that occurred after it.
This history, in fact, is how you can be confident that the bitcoin is
authentic - unless you have greater than 50% of the computing power of the
network, you can't substitute an alternative history which would result in the
coin landing in your hands.
~~~
vegai
That seems like a highly non-scalable solution.
~~~
weavejester
It's not as bad as it seems. VISA only averages 2000 transactions per second,
for instance, which isn't actually that much in terms of data.
------
BasDirks
Problem with bitcoin: it's an eternal beta. Can't be solved either.
------
ck2
This is why we can't have nice things.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Submitting Changes to Voter Registrations Online to Disrupt Elections - hodgesmr
https://techscience.org/a/2017090601/
======
hodgesmr
Periodic reminder that attacks on physical voting don't scale.
But attacks on computers and networks do.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Basecamp was under network attack - ibsathish
https://gist.github.com/dhh/9741477
======
swanson
Some great language there: framing it as an attack by criminals (gains
sympathy from users), explains in plain-terms what a DDOS is (front door
analogy), emphasizes (twice!) that user data is safe, apologizes for the
likely downtime, informs people where to get updates.
Probably worth bookmarking this for when you [hopefully never] have to deal
with this same situation.
~~~
pdeuchler
I'm going to play devil's advocate and completely disagree with you here :)
Customers, especially non-technical ones, don't give a crap. What they want to
know is when the service will be back up, and what steps you're taking to
prevent it happening in the future, although I'm sure a certain percentage
would be interested in why this is happening in the first place (not as in the
technical breakdown, but why you didn't have a contingency plan).
If I'm a customer of Basecamp it looks to me like 37Signals is couching this
as if _they_ are the victims here, when really _I_ am the victim. They're
business isn't being disrupted... mine is! I pay them to abstract me away from
the gory details... if I wanted to deal with that stuff I'd pay people to
build it in house. My job as a customer isn't to sympathize with an outage,
it's to move to a service that won't have one.
After turning in a term paper a day late a wise professor once told me "It
doesn't matter if your excuse is true, it's still an excuse." The basic facts
are the job didn't get done, and the person to blame is the person who didn't
get the job done. Any modern web service that doesn't take the simple effort
to sign up for cloudflare or their ilk to reduce attack surface doesn't
deserve my money. (Admittedly a harsh perspective to take, but one many do
take)
~~~
davidw
Reasonable people realize that unforeseen things happen, and might empathize
with someone being targeted by a criminal enterprise a bit more than someone
who just forgot to pay the electricity bill.
There is an entire movement in Sicily dedicated to highlighting and
frequenting businesses that refuse to pay protection money, because in the
past, paying was the norm.
[http://www.addiopizzo.org/](http://www.addiopizzo.org/)
Since that's not the kind of society I want to live in, I'd rather stand firm
behind a company that refuses to deal with criminals. If companies give in as
a matter of convenience to retain customers who turn a blind eye, that will
only make the criminals stronger.
Now, certainly, there are measures they can take to mitigate the problem, but
with all the things to do in a business, I suppose it's the kind of thing that
might not be on the front burner until it happens. There are all kinds of bad,
destructive things that _could_ happen in the world, but if you spend all your
time worrying about what _could_ happen, you won't have a viable business.
It's a tricky balancing act, and I'm willing to cut some slack to someone
being targeted by criminals.
~~~
pdeuchler
I more or less agree with you, but that's kind of a false dichotomy, isn't it?
Signing up for cloudflare or using a CDN isn't giving in, it's taking measures
to protect yourself (and that's ignoring the other benefits you get). The
unfortunate fact is DDOS attacks are becoming a daily occurrence, and if you
have something to lose you should probably take measures to counteract any
possible threats.
If 37Signals was a bitcoin exchange, aka a known target of DDOS attacks, the
mood here would be drastically different... yet we've hit a tipping point
where it seems everyone is equally at risk. DDOS attacks have become a sad
cost of doing business on the internet, and just because you acknowledge that
fact and try to prevent yourself from being a target doesn't mean you're
capitulating to the criminal enterprise.
In fact, I don't see a better way of sticking it to the thugs than responding
with "Hahaha, do your worst. We'd love to see if the money we're paying X
COMPANY is worth it." And then you get to write a totally different blog post,
one where you get to brag about your excellent foresight and how you have
proven to your customers that the money they pay you buys a top-notch service.
~~~
troels
That's a bit naive though. People can always find ways to hurt you - it's a
very asymmetric fight. With a complex application such as Basecamp, you can't
really put everything behind a cdn.
~~~
cft
That's why I actually think that their thrust on pursuing the legal/FBI route
is a good one, especially if they achieve any success there. This
extortion/racket is indeed criminal and not tolerable. It would be good to
catch the racketeers and make an example of them.
------
TacticalCoder
I take it at one point people will start to believe that I work for OVH (I
really don't) but... OVH has a mandatory DDoS protection on all its dedicated
servers: fees have been slightly raised to take that mandatory protection into
account.
There are a few gotchas, including if I understand it correctly the need to
"retry twice" when you try to SSH in your server when a DDoS is going on
but...
OVH doesn't even feel a 85 Gbps attack (let alone a 20 Gbps one like in the
article). They can deal with attack much larger than that automatically.
They seem to have very good DDoS protection against the "flood" type of DDoS.
And this is pretty much transparent to users.
I hope more and more hosting company start implementing similar anti-DDoS
features: more competition would bring better protection against flood-type
DDoS and cheaper price.
Here's the explanation as to how their system works (in french but there are
several graphics):
[http://www.ovh.com/fr/a1164.protection-anti-ddos-service-
sta...](http://www.ovh.com/fr/a1164.protection-anti-ddos-service-standard)
Basically as soon as a DDoS trying to saturate your server(s) is detected the
attacker faces the problem of needing to DDoS... OVH itself.
And the DDoS doesn't even make it to your server while the legitimate trafic
still does.
I find it great that there are people actually looking for solutions to the
DDoS issue.
~~~
cordite
I have a service on OVH myself.
Though a friend at another related service had been kicked from two VPS
providers due to receiving a few DDoS attacks. These providers claimed it was
against their Terms of Service and ejected him as a customer. That day he
learned it is best to keep offsite-cross-company backups of everything, since
he did not get a single byte from his machines.
~~~
yogo
Claiming it was against the terms might be an easy out for them but is silly
since being a target is outside of your control, for the most part. Hosts will
usually null route customers without sympathy to protect other customers so
it's the price of doing business.
~~~
kalleboo
It makes a DDoS an even better extortion. "Pay up or we'll get you kicked from
your hosting provider."
~~~
alxndr
"...and potentially lose all of your data, if you haven't been planning ahead"
------
akassover
We got hit by a DDoS about a year ago. Rackspace (who normally has amazing
support) quietly null routed us and went about their day. No heads-up, trouble
ticket, or any other form of notification. They didn't even put a note in our
account so when we contacted their support to figure out why our servers were
unresponsive outside their network the poor guy who answered the phone was
just as confused as I was.
We've taken some steps since then to hopefully reduce our vulnerability. I'd
be really interested in a DDoS protection best practices guide for small SaaS
businesses.
~~~
gk1
I'm running a small SaaS business. I'm curious to hear what steps you took to
reduce your vulnerability. Could you please share so others can take the same
steps?
~~~
akassover
The biggest thing we did was remove our dependency to a single IP (this was a
unique requirement of our business). We also improved our firewall and upped
our managed service level. We're not 100% bullet proof now, but definitely
better than we were. I'd be happy to go into more detail offline.
~~~
gk1
Thanks! I'm on managed service as well, so I may be able to request some of
those things. I've never been hit but sounds like I should be proactive about
this.
------
filet
I've had really negative experience with these type of criminals.
I was hired as a CEO at an <unnamed> company ($200m+ revenue) and we were hit
by this type of attack.
Every second of being down cost us literally $10k, so we quickly negotiated
with criminals for $5k one time payment and they stopped the attack.
Unfortunataly a few weeks later we were hit by 3 new attacks. Apparently the
word had spread and these new attackers demanding $50k.
We were not going to pay $50k but I was also unable to stop the attacks. I was
let go a few days later as we had a down time of 2 days and I wasn't able to
fix this problem.
Crap.
~~~
PeterisP
That's a good reason why it's never a good idea to pay for DDOS threats - in
many other popular extortion scenarios such as kidnapping, blackmail w. secret
info or mafia 'protection money' for storefronts, the deal generally doesn't
allow other, new attackers to make the same demands, so you actually are
getting some protection - but here it does simply mark you as vulnerable.
~~~
sergiotapia
Same goes when bribing a cop here. If you bribe too much you're targeted as
easy money among the other cops here. Say for example you're caught driving
without your insurance, you bribe and then every other cop knows you don't
have insurance and squeeze you for money left and right.
Source: 3rd world south america
------
janlukacs
Although a smaller service, we were in a similar situation a couple of years
ago. We assumed it was a competitor because there were not monetary requests,
just a massive DDoS via torrents that lasted almost a week. Data center didn't
help us in any way... it was crazy. Worst thing is that 90% of customers have
no clue what a DDoS is and how hard it is to handle.
~~~
alandarev
How is torrents protocol used to DDoS you? I never came across torrents being
used as a DDoS. I would appreciate more details on what sort of torrent attack
it was, and whether you found any ways of partially neglecting damage.
~~~
Danieru
A malicious tracker, or a peer if using DHT, can claim an IP, the victim, is
active in the swarm and has valuable bits of the torrent. Then torrent clients
will try to connect to the victim.
The attack is pretty clever, being indirect it is hard to trace and because
bittorrent allows arbitrary ports you can hit a specific ip & port pair.
The one downside is the victims can be sure it is a bittorrent DDOS by
checking the attacking connection's requests. The attacker's packets will
contain bittorrent's magic connection bits.
~~~
jessaustin
_The attacker 's packets will contain bittorrent's magic connection bits._
ISTM that once you've determined bittorrent is the attack vector, the hard
part is done? Is dropping by "magic bits" harder than dropping by ip/port?
~~~
phil21
Yes. Very much harder. One can be done at line rate on any halfway decent
router, and the other requires deep packet inspection which is considerably
more expensive.
------
rdudek
Is it just me or are these attacks becomming more and more common? I hope we
can get some more details on the attack like the origination of it, type used,
and what steps were take to mitigate it. I always use information like this as
a learning opportunity :)
~~~
alandarev
When even the governments use DDoS [1] as a method to 'turn-off' services they
don't like, it will be a very long path to fight.
[1] - [https://www.quakenet.org/articles/102-press-release-irc-
netw...](https://www.quakenet.org/articles/102-press-release-irc-networks-
under-systematic-attack-from-governments)
------
joevandyk
Has anyone defended a DDoS attack on an application hosted on Amazon's
AWS/EC2?
If so, how did that go?
Did Amazon help?
~~~
mgorsuch
I was involved with a company that received several attacks on AWS. We were
premium support customers, and were able to work with our AWS TAM to get a
mitigation device in place and turned on. It was a bit shaky at that time, as
this was not a common service offering. Things may be better now.
------
wehadfun
What law enforcement do you call in these situations. I imagine it would be a
waste to call local police.
I don't know how you would get feds to pay attention?
~~~
codazoda
Assuming the ransom request wasn't fake. It's pretty likely that the attack
came from outside the US. Law enforcement will probably not be able to help at
all.
~~~
Xylakant
Why not? The US. Law enforcement obviously doesn't have jurisdiction, but as
long as a DOS is illegal in the country that the attacker sits in, the US Law
enforcement should investigate and hand off to a partner agency in that
country, acting as liaison and serving a request for extradition.
It's a different matter if the attacker is based in a country where DOS are
legal or that doesn't have any extradition treaty with the US, but that still
needs to be established.
------
vidar
Would CloudFlare help here?
~~~
timdorr
It depends if this attack is on basecamp.com or the IPs that basecamp.com
resolves to.
It appears Basecamp only has a /23, so even if they redirected traffic through
Cloudflare, the attacker could still find their direct servers fairly easily
and attack that IP. It's still possible to block, but not quite as easy as
setting up Cloudflare.
~~~
chimeracoder
> so even if they redirected traffic through Cloudflare, the attacker could
> still find their direct servers fairly easily and attack that IP.
Why would it be easier for the attacker to find their direct servers if they
only have a /23 - doesn't Cloudflare obscure the identity/location/IP of the
server on the other side?
~~~
timdorr
It's only 512 addresses, so the attacker can just switch between different IPs
until service degrades and keep on that address. Also, it's likely their
rack/cage has a limited amount of bandwidth compared to the whole datacenter,
so they can just send traffic to that range and overload the switch.
------
CanSpice
Does anybody know how many companies, upon receiving a blackmail "give us $300
or you'll be DDoSed" email, pay it? For every meetup.com or Basecamp that
resist, how many actually give in to the blackmailer's demands?
~~~
cmdkeen
It isn't $300, it's "up to $50,000"[0]
I've seen articles before saying online gambling websites often do pay up as
the downtime isn't just lost revenue but customers going elsewhere.
[0]
[http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/4/prweb9455636.htm](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/4/prweb9455636.htm)
------
ambrop7
I'm wondering what happens to botneted subscribers from which the attacks
originate. Is any attempt made to locate them and contact their ISPs? I think
there should be, and subscribers found to be participating in the attack
(presumably unknowingly) should be disconnected immediately. After all it's
the subscribers' responsibility to keep their computers botnet free. Launching
a DOS attack, even unknowingly, is probably violating the contract they signed
with their ISP.
------
norswap
Crime, crime, crime, criminal. While technically (and probably also morally)
true, was I the only one to find the emphasize weird?
~~~
Aqua_Geek
I thought it was weird until he mentioned the blackmail. DDoS-ing for the lulz
is one thing, doing it and then blackmailing the victim to get it to stop is a
whole other level.
------
codelittle
Whoever is doing this thank you for reminding me how important Basecamp is to
my business. I hope they hunt you down.
------
quarterwave
A speculative thought:
Apart from being distributed, the insidious power of DDoS appears to lie in
"subscriber-calling-server". Why not go the other way around? At least only
for specific subscription services, not general purpose web access.
The situation of a DDoS attack is first communicated by the web service
provider texting a subscriber, who texts back their present IP address. The
web service provider then "calls" the subscriber from a hitherto unknown IP
address. Of course, that address could be leaked too, but at least it's not
obvious public knowledge like a DNS entry.
Sounds like circuit switched telephony/modems rather than packet switching,
but can it be implemented in software?
~~~
sirsar
A great deal of consumers are behind NAT, and punching through that is a huge
pain. UPnP is sketchy, STUN is difficult, and custom schemes like uTP are
undocumented. You'll get the occasional consumer who is willing to forward a
port just to connect to your service, but not very often.
------
robgering
How do larger companies (like Basecamp) prepare for these kinds of risks? Do
they contract with DDoS mitigation firms beforehand, or do most tend to hire
help only when they are actually attacked?
~~~
lawncheer
DDOS firms (prolexic etc) are really expensive, I would imagine they do it on
an as-needed basis. From my experience working at a datacenter, the first line
of defense are the techs in the datacenter, for _most_ attacks, they can
blackhole offending IPs etc, and mitigate it. When it gets to the point of
being something huge though, like the meetup.com attack, I would imagine they
call in an outside firm.
------
coreymgilmore
Something along the lines of CloudFlare could be an option here. However, if
the attacker does indeed know the actual IP of the Bootcamp servers (and
Bootcamp allows traffic from IPs other than CF) that point is moot.
Set up CF, only allow traffic from CF.
On another note, having CF monitor an attack like this could help them do more
research into mitigating these attacks in general and allow them to try and
hunt the attacker. They tend to make things like this public which would
benefit everyone.
~~~
devicenull
I personally wouldn't do any business with cloudflare, while they're still
hosting the various booter sites where you can pay to run these attacks.
~~~
bybjorn
CloudFlare is hosting booter sites?
~~~
xxdesmus
CloudFlare does not host any website or it's content actually. They are not a
web hosting service.
------
olsonea
I wonder if there will be a day where on-premise solutions will be touted as
the solution to the DDoS vulnerability of cloud-based solutions, in much the
same way that there seems to be an ebb and flow between fat and thin clients
over the course of computing history.
~~~
samplonius
Because on-premise solutions are even more vulnerable to DDoS. A large data
centre will have large amounts of connectivity, giving you a lot of head room
for most types of attacks. But in this case 20Gbps of extra traffic was too
much too. What on-premise solution can handle 20Gbps of extra traffic?
And I don't think Basecamp is technically "cloud", but collocated. They appear
to own most or all of their servers.
~~~
Nacraile
If you define on-premise as being accessed over a private network (which seems
to be the idea here), then it is not directly vulnerable to DDoS at all,
because it isn't reachable from the public internet.
------
ivanca
Is there something like cloudfare but more aggressive?
Like something that tries to find exploits on the machines used in the attack
and try to shut them down, close their internet connection or inject a self-
targeting DNS or something of the sort?
~~~
Nacraile
IANAL, but I've seen this discussion come up multiple times, and the problem
is that the counterattack would technically be illegal. The fact that somebody
else has already broken the law in order to compromise an innocent bystander
does not give anybody else the right to do the same thing. Vigilantism is as
illegal on the internet as it is in the real world.
This is a huge constraint for the people (e.g. at Microsoft) who work to
identify and take down botnets: they expose themselves to significant legal/PR
risk if they do anything harmful to the bots.
~~~
ivanca
But this could be considered self-defense which is granted by most law
systems.
~~~
mobiplayer
This is like someone hitting you with someone else's arm while they're
sleeping (attackers use compromised hosts/networks) and then you go back and
burn the sleepy guy.
That doesn't sound like self-defense at all :)
~~~
ivanca
That's probably the worst analogy I have ever heard; or is this killing with
someone else hand something common... somewhere?
~~~
mobiplayer
Well, that's not common anywhere as far as I know, but you didn't say why is
it a bad analogy.
I any case let me clarify what was my purpose as it seems I'm not good at
analogies. The point is that you're attacked using compromised computers so it
is incredibly stupid to retaliate to the source of the attack.
Hope that clarifies!
~~~
ivanca
Is incredibly stupid to assume you are not liable for what you own; that's the
reason why the cardholders gets in trouble by lending his credit card to
friends or not reporting it has been stolen. The same thing with cars; if
someone else drives you car you are in big part responsible for what the car
is being used for (i.e. a friend and a bank robbery)
Hope that destroys your absurd misconception!
------
griffinheart
> When these attacks happen, the rest of the internet will sometimes put you
> in quarentine to prevent the fire from spreading.
I'm interested about what he means by quarantine.
Does it mean that ISP's will stop accepting traffic going to their servers?
------
reshambabble
Every business experiences fires that they have to put out, and their
transparency on what exactly the issue is keeps us informed and on their side.
------
stcredzero
We need the kind of concerted attention paid to this stuff that we gave to
horse thieves in the Old West.
------
stock_toaster
This is another great example of why I wish there was support for disabling
commenting on gists.
------
drewblay
Forget baecamp. Setup a webserver throw Colalbtive on it. Now you are in
control of your data (you are now also responsible for the uptime).
Colabtive: [http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/](http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/)
------
barkingcat
they did get a blackmail email so it does seem like they are being targeted by
someone.
------
ing33k
is it the first time they are facing this sorta attack ?
------
Allower
Yet another reason we should be utilizing P2P WAY more often
------
rootuid
A perfect time for those affected to test drive BaseCamp's competitor
[https://www.teamwork.com/](https://www.teamwork.com/)
~~~
xxdesmus
classy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are self-driving cars the future of mobility for disabled people? - srik901
https://theconversation.com/are-self-driving-cars-the-future-of-mobility-for-disabled-people-84037
======
DrScump
A rather obvious omission:
the author is aware of the Paratransit issue while totally ignoring the fact
that Paratransit passengers _generally need assistance from a human_ for
things like boarding assistance (in and out) and storage/retrieval/assembly of
gear/chair/etc.
That needs strikes me as making driverless vehicles an _inherently_ incomplete
solution for Paratransit needs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018 - jonbaer
https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/battle-ai-processors-begins-2018/212131505757984
======
sounds
Err, I thought NVidia already won?
Though dedicated silicon like Google's TPU will always post higher _numbers_,
GPUs have the ecosystem, the developers, the libraries, the language
(languages? CUDA is probably the only one that matters)...
That's a lot to catch up to for all the competitors listed in the article.
Yes, yes, TensorFlow is cross-platform. History has shown that a cross-
platform library or standard only serves to raise the barrier to entry for
small startups. The cross-platform library/standard has never defined the
cutting-edge or next-gen market makers. See: Posix, PDF, U2F, OpenCL/OpenGL,
Intel HDA.
And yes, there are exceptions to the rule: USB, PCIe (and SATA, SDXC, etc.),
WiFi.
~~~
deepnotderp
The computational graph abstraction can be exploited to bypass the CUDA
ecosystem btw.
~~~
sounds
That abstraction shows up in real life as a library, called TensorFlow. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung’s Bizarre Emojis - coldtea
https://hackernoon.com/samsungs-bizarre-emojis-6be568a3b7d9
======
chch
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention my favorite, the simple Cookie:
[https://emojipedia.org/cookie/](https://emojipedia.org/cookie/)
Everyone decided cookies are probably chocolate chip cookies, except Samsung,
who apparently got confused during the process...
------
gumby
Is there a Korean cultural bias in the choice? The iOS emojis (I'm an iOS user
so I"m speaking generally, and not from this article) remind me very closely
to the DoCoMo emoji I had in Japan in the 1990s.
~~~
duskwuff
Entirely possible. Emojipedia has previously noted that the Samsung Galaxy
Note 7 was missing the emoji for "Map of Japan", "Crossed Flags" (which is
typically depicted as a pair of Japanese flags), and "Chart Increasing With
Yen".
[http://blog.emojipedia.org/samsung-puts-japan-back-on-the-
ma...](http://blog.emojipedia.org/samsung-puts-japan-back-on-the-map/)
------
mort96
Why is there an annoying "open in app" button covering the content? it's just
text and pictures, my web browser handles that just fine. If I want to open it
in an app, I can open it in pocket.
~~~
brainfire
It's hosted on Medium and that's the app it's talking about. I still don't
know why anyone would do that though.
I was confused by this a while back on the Slack engineering blog - "why would
I want to open this in Slack??"
------
wand3r
Those are terrible. The grimace one wasn't terrible; so I thought, "hmm, this
is likely the worst of what is a totally trivial problem". The problem is
trivial but it went _down hill_ quality wise. I would say honestly, a new user
or user of any platform other than Samsung is going to have some awkward and
confusing exchanges.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Peter Thiel on The End of the Future - brg
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/278758
======
vannevar
Thiel ignores---perhaps deliberately, given his political leanings---the most
obvious explanation for the paradox of technological progress without economic
growth: that a rising economic tide _doesn't_ necessarily lift all boats. He
acknowledges 'a trend towards greater inequality' but doesn't pause to
consider whether the fruits of economic progress are being sucked up by the
wealthiest 1%, and that is why the rest see economic stagnation while (as he
also acknowledges) corporate profits _rose_ as a percent of GDP.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to monetize free content? - hhrowuu
What are ways besides ads and affiliate links to monetize free educational content, targeted at entrepreneurs?
======
sempron64
Patreon. Product sponsorships from SaaS companies (I assume you mean banner
ads). Paywalled content
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface - rmason
https://www.feld.com/archives/2018/07/the-holographic-display-of-the-future-is-here.html
======
doublerebel
I played with the large size version of Looking Glass at AR in Action conf
this January at MIT. It's really cool, and the coolest part is the interaction
is intuitive. You really can just touch a point on the hologram and have it
react at that point.
As others have mentioned, it requires pushing quite a number of simultaneous
views of the hologram through a hidpi display, the experienced resolution is
not very high as a result and the holograms look a bit fuzzy.
It is right now probably the best out-of-the box way to interact with
Holograms, especially in a shared environment. Hololens can't share holograms
by default, and even if the app has implemented sharing, the holograms can't
be touched. Meta glasses have some touchability thanks to their depth sensor,
but again there's no easy shared way to interact with a hologram.
I think AR like Looking Glass is underrated, they were very smart to use
natural interaction instead of gestures or a mouse/wand. That being said, I
don't see it competing with AR glasses longterm.
~~~
colanderman
Do you remember if the image varies in the vertical plane as well as the
horizontal? The demo videos only move the camera horizontally.
~~~
powerapple
if it is stacked screens, I don't see any reason it will work horizontally
only. I believe the view angle is still very limited. I'd love to use this for
Skype chat or something.
~~~
bawana
If the lenticular lens is made of columns (as those fake 3D postcards are)
then only horizontal shift is 3D-able. To display verticality, the lenticular
lenses could be hemispheres. However, to encode vertical 3D-ness you would
need 45 images for each 2 degrees off the horizontal so as your head bobs up
and down, it can pick up the off axis images. So that's 45 images x 45 axes =
2025 images per frame.
------
janoc
These lenticular autostereoscopic displays have been around for a long time
and never quite took off. There have been even 3D TVs (Philips) using this
idea. I am not quite sure what is "new" apart of yet again abusing the
"holographic" term (hint, it has zero to do with holograms or holography).
The major issues with these are the limited viewing angles and the enormous
bandwidth needed to both render the individual points of view and to actually
transfer them to the screen. Heck, a lot of computer games have problems to
generate stereoscopic (i.e. _2_ images) content at 60 or 90fps required by the
VR helmets such as Rift or Vive these days. And these guys want to push 45
distinct images at 60fps?
Good luck with that, especially for that ridiculous price for a tiny screen.
These guys offer a 4k, 50" screen:
[http://www.ultra-d.com/](http://www.ultra-d.com/)
~~~
maxton
This isn't quite the same as what you're talking about. The lenticular
displays only vary in the x-dimension, but this display seems to work in both
dimensions, which would probably create a noticeably better 3D effect.
~~~
modzu
looking glass is also x-dimension only:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-
lookin...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-looking-
glass-a-holographic-display-
for-3d-cre/comments?cursor=21131425#comment-21131424)
------
mosselman
"I think most people don’t want this 1984 vision of the future, where everyone
is geared up 16 hours a day."
I assume the author means the book '1984' by George Orwell and I come to the
conclusion that the author has never read the book and does not know what it
is about. Not every dystopian story is 1984. A far more logical reference
would have been to 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline which is in fact about a
dystopia in which people _are_ 'geared up' all the time.
I recommend both books, the first is a work of genius and is, sadly, very
relevant today and the second because it is very entertaining and might offer
insights into the development of VR in the near future.
~~~
aeorgnoieang
"1984" also just means 'dystopian'. It's not always a literal reference to
that specific work.
~~~
mung
I think it really only means 'dystopian' to people who have not read 1984.
Otherwise there is a perfectly good word:'dystopian'.
~~~
aeorgnoieang
'1984' is a particular type of dystopian; it has specific connotations,
associations, etc.
------
chmike
Holography is a very particular set of 3d image rendering technique. This
volumetric display is not holographic. To me it's a frustration. Microsoft's
highjacking of the word holography is also frustrating. Such abuse does not
server the product and it's inventors.
Truly holographic displays will emerge once we can control ligth interference
in the display.
~~~
dosy
> Truly holographic displays will emerge once we can control ligth
> interference in the display.
Could you explain this a bit more please to give an idea of the path to get
there?
~~~
_ph_
Not the poster above, but I will try a short explanation. You see an object,
because light goes from its surface (either emitted or reflected ambient
light) to your eyes. You see it in 3 dimensions, because the light differs by
the viewing angle. Holography is a technology of recording the light "emitted"
by the object. The light has to be recorded in direction and intensity. This
is done via interference between the object light (waves) and a reference
light wave, which usually is a planar wave of light.
This interference creates an interference pattern, which can be recorded by
film. The trick is, that if you develop the film to get the black and white
pattern, you can shine the reference wave onto the film and it interacts with
the interference pattern such that the object wave is reconstructed. A
hologram such is an exact recording of the light emitted by the object. This
is something the display tries to emulate by offering 64 different images, but
not quite the same. As the interference pattern is just a greyscale image, one
could use an ultra-high resolution lcd display to synthesize that - there have
been demonstrators of that, but I am not aware of a large holographic display
so far.
~~~
dosy
That's a great explanation, thanks.
For the way you described it, to me, it doesn't sound that hard.
\- Create interference pattern
\- Record interference pattern
\- Shine ref light onto pattern to recover emitted light
If done perfectly would this yield a convincing hologram (what I might try to
describe as "visual sense impression of real 3D object being present" ) ?
What are the major limitations in the current technology? You said it might be
possible for high end screen, does that mean there is hologram tech out there?
I have never seen any demonstrated.
Is there some sort of information processing problem that software could solve
on the interference pattern? Or is this more a physics problem -- maybe we do
not have the materials that can do the steps required?
~~~
_ph_
The catch is, that the patterns have the resolution of the wavelength of
light. You cannot take plain black and white film for this, you would need
extremely high resolution film material. Agfa actually produced special film
for holograms for a while, high contrast and very high resolution, but with a
sensitivity like ISO 10. The resolution is far higher than normal LCD screens
offer and that would be the main impediment. The math for calculating the
interference patterns is almost trivial, but the scale is massive. Doing it in
real-time would still require quite high-power setups, as you would have to
calculate hundreds of rays per "pixel".
~~~
dosy
This is so interesting, thanks.
From my photog background, yep ISO 10 would be very tough to work with.
------
CarbonJ
I've played around with some of Looking Glass's earlier prototypes and was
impressed with the effect. It's one of those technologies like VR - very
different in-person than seeing it in a video.
------
Animats
It's not a hologram, of course. It's a stack of flat displays.
That's been tried before, in many ways. The first try was a vibrating
mirror.[1] There's a flat rotating mirror system from FakeSpace.[2] It's not
bad; you can walk around it. Move vertically, though, and the illusion breaks
down. There's a scheme with gas ionized by intersecting laser beams. That's
very low-rez, but truly volumetric.
Eventually, someone may come up with a real hologram system with decent
resolution. A research group at MIT built one, but it was very low resolution
and single-color. It's not impossible. But this isn't it.
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw)
~~~
lhl
I'm pretty impressed by what FOVI3D [1] has been doing w/ their light field
displays. Here's a recent interview from SID Display Week this year [2] that's
refreshing because the CTO (in the interview) goes into some of the details of
the challenges they face and isn't unrealistic about how hard it'll be to
overcome them.
[1] [http://www.fovi3d.com/](http://www.fovi3d.com/)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK4544D4PUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK4544D4PUo)
------
rmason
I've wanted to watch a Broadway play in my living room that was
indistinguishable from being in the theater for close to thirty years. I'm
excited because this is the closest technology that I've seen that could make
this possible.
But I'm saddened if this is really the Apple II version of this technology
because if it takes another forty years I probably won't live to see it.
Always imagined that there would be sensors on the floor and ceiling, not
watching it in a glass box but if that's how it has to be I'm OK with it.
~~~
angel_j
In 40 years since Apple II, technology has doubled roughly 26 Moore's, or
moresies.
The same shift now-a-days should take only a year and half (40 / 26), which is
about how long it would take if you bought 64 Looking Glasses and built a DIY
array, and used ML to construct a 3D video from a 2D one, a la
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_reconstruction_from_multipl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_reconstruction_from_multiple_images)
------
hateful
"The Looking Glass generates 45 distinct views of a three-dimensional scene"
Now that GPUs can reliably generate 60 FPS, this is the next step to push that
technology. Because you'll need 45x60FPS for the same quality. And then you'll
push the 45 number higher. (yes, I know the 60 isn't visible and has to do
with control input).
~~~
pasta
I'm not sure I get your comment.
In my mind you can render $x pixels at 60fps. So the number of pixels for each
distinct view is: $x / 45.
~~~
hughes
I think it's a little more complex than that. In addition to rasterizing a
large number of pixels, the entire vertex pipeline has to run 45 times to
generate 45 projections of the scene's geometry. You're correct though in that
the rest of what happens in a frame (physics, animations & other state
updates) do not have to run 45x.
~~~
gmueckl
This is an application where ray tracing for primary rays should shine.
Instead of having to project thw scene 45 times you only need 45 sets of ray
bundles, which is really efficient. The acceleration stuctures are shared
between views. With a few pixel reordering hacks you can essentially generate
all viewpoints as a single high resolution frame.
~~~
pasta
This is exactly what I was thinking about.
With raytracing you will almost get this for free.
------
JeffreyKaine
I really want this in an arcade cabinet for a streetfighter-esque game, or
side scroller!
~~~
mbroncano
I couldn’t stop thinking of [0] after reading your comment
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_\(video_game\))
------
fhood
My first inclination was to dismiss it as a gimmick, and really it is a
gimmick, but it is so damn cool that I want one, especially if the Api's are
relatively good.
~~~
lbm
Even if it's a bit of a gimmick in its current state, it's a great step
towards something truly useful. Technology like this could be amazing in
fields like medicine and education.
------
rrdharan
This sounds cool and all but it’s not worthy of the name until you can flip
windows over and write on the back of them.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass)
------
cryptonector
The kickstarter page for it:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-
lookin...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-looking-
glass-a-holographic-display-for-3d-cre)
------
xori
I wonder if it's a 4k screen generating 45 different views in alternating
locations on the screen. Thus your new resolution is like 720x256.
From the videos they look higher res than that.
~~~
xori
If you were smart you could encode multiple views into a single pixel to get a
higher resolution, but then I figure that would limit your colour depth
availability.
~~~
hughes
How would encoding multiple view into a single pixel work with a lenticular
display? There needs to be a physical distance between each of the views.
~~~
opticalflow
This is not a lenticular display. It's a stack of 45 independent transparent
TFTs.
------
xixixao
This is only really valuable for multi-user scenarios. Just going with head
tracking would likely be much easier to introduce, as you don't need
specialized hardware (albeit it helps to improve quality). I remember this
from a years and years old demo made on PlayStation I think, anyhow here are
top results on this tech from Google:
[http://www.anxious-
bored.com/blog/2018/2/25/theparallaxview-...](http://www.anxious-
bored.com/blog/2018/2/25/theparallaxview-illusion-of-depth-by-3d-head-
tracking-on-iphone-x) [https://www.wired.com/2011/05/3-d-ipad-head-tracking-
app-now...](https://www.wired.com/2011/05/3-d-ipad-head-tracking-app-now-in-
app-store/)
~~~
nine_k
I can immediately imagine how several doctors could use such a display for
e.g. a tomogram or stereo-microscope output during a surgery, or something
like that.
It could also make a good in-store display.
------
tobbebex
A couple of years ago I worked with the 3d engine for an autostereoscopic
display at Setred
([https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zkwq_cQNLU8&feature=youtu.be](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zkwq_cQNLU8&feature=youtu.be)).
For us the DVI bandwidth was the limiting factor to deliver 40-50 views at
reasonable framerates (besides raw GPU computing power), so our display
actually had 8(!) DVI inputs. That also gave us a natural interface to add
distributed rendering, supporting up to 8 GPUs for rendering. In most cases
though, one monster PC with 3 GPUs and 5 DVIs was enough to produce
interactive framerates.
------
fezz
Looks like a lenticular display with some filtering and refraction to expand
the perceived focal plane outwards.
It also looks like it works best with a black background.
[https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/introducing-the-
looking...](https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/introducing-the-looking-
glass-a-new-interactive-holographic-display-8733cdaea40e)
------
gravypod
Unfortunate name collision with Wendle's (level1techs) and crew's Looking
Glass for sharing a frame buffer with a vm
~~~
rgovostes
It was also the name of a 3D desktop environment from Sun showed off in 2003.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass)
------
dbspin
Seems to be a direct successor to the 'HoloPlayer One' dev kit, shown off last
year by the same team -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZj9Iy8Vck&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZj9Iy8Vck&feature=youtu.be)
------
tinus_hn
Sounds like a cool idea but if you use the first name that comes to mind
you’re bound to not be the first one who thought of it. So there already are a
ton of things called Looking Glass.
------
itronitron
this is similar to what I imagined when I first read the initial press release
for Magic Leap (years ago now) albeit on a smaller scale. This looks far more
promising for the entertainment industry than vr/ar goggles. My only nit is
that they didn't use the dancing baby (from ~1998/99) for the demo video
~~~
enjrolas
all you had to do was ask
[https://youtu.be/V4vVUXNotI0](https://youtu.be/V4vVUXNotI0)
<3
~~~
itronitron
this is awesome :)
------
lawlessone
This would be great for voxatron.
------
est
Reminds me of Zebra Imaging. Does anyone know what happened to it?
~~~
jobigoud
FoVI3D.
------
_bxg1
Pretty cool, and probably will be useful in certain industries, but the title
is extremely clickbait-y. The movie holograms that are listed don't live
inside a glass box.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Greg KH: Linux stable kernel release procedure changes - bigfoot
https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/12/2/388
======
bigfoot
It's probably a good idea to concentrate maintenance efforts on fewer kernel
trees. There should probably be some kind of synchronization going on, i.e.
declaring a new "stable" kernel when there are enough major Linux distros
currently basing on it.
------
jrockway
This is a good idea. I have been on 2.6.32 forever in Debian _un_ stable, and
it's starting to get old. Yes, I could compile my own newer kernel, but then
udev breaks, and then I've wasted 5 hours :)
------
bhdn
This is very good. Sometimes it was some kind of guessing game to choose a
kernel release to use in our environment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The downside of being a generalist - skrebbel
http://rix0r.nl/blog/2013/05/26/the-downside-of-being-a-generalist/
======
skrebbel
This article really rings with me. It's odd, because usually employers say
that they prefer generalists who are smart and quick learners, but in the very
same job ads they want e.g. "at least 5 years of Rails experience" for any
somewhat senior position.
~~~
Choronzon
The best generalist fit is leadership of diverse specialists(note leadership
not management).having problem domain experience in divergent areas you can
use people with deeper knowledge in specific niches and weave things together.
However most companies regard that as an MBA problem domain.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Blog Little Things - shubhamjain
http://coffeecoder.net/blog/blog-little-things/
======
pothibo
This is the most important lesson for anyone who would like to start blogging.
So many times I've started and trashed drafts because I thought it was dumb,
stupid and that everyone ought to know what I was writing about.
But then, once in a while, I start writing a post and decide to post it
whatever happens. Every single time, I get people thanking me for writing it
up. I have people saying how it helped them.
So yes, blog little things. I don't blog little things as much as I should.
And as a side note, comments on blog are usually troll. I have so many
comments saying how I'm dumb and how I don't understand how programming works.
These people are just frustrated by their own lack of knowledge. Ignore the
troll and keep blogging. This might sound personal and what not. Feel free to
ignore this comment if you think I'm full of it :)
~~~
agumonkey
Even for you, many use blogging as a note-for-future-self.
~~~
pothibo
That's absolutely right. I can't count the times I have come back to my blog
to read about something I need to do right now that I did 6 months ago.
~~~
agumonkey
my-own-commandlinefu.com
------
melling
I keep Emacs org notes on a lot of different things. I've published a few of
them as "hidden" pages so I can reference them in Reddit or HN threads, for
instance.
[http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/programming_b...](http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/programming_by_voice.html)
[http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/rsi.html](http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/rsi.html)
[http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/keyboards.htm...](http://thespanishsite.com/public_html/org/ergo/keyboards.html)
The information isn't that well organized, of course, but it's a good start
and might save someone several hours of Google'ing.
At some point I hope to turn some of my notes into small blog posts, like I
did with my Ergonomic Keyboards post last week.
[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/the-model-01-an-
heir...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/16/the-model-01-an-heirloom-
grade-keyboard-for-serious-typists/)
There's definitely something missing one level above a search engines. More
curation and a summary.
------
Strilanc
I find that stackoverflow actually absorbs many of the "little things" I would
otherwise blog. If it's shorter than a page or two, it fits the
question/answer format really well. For example: finding a pair non-
overlapping bit vectors [1].
1:
[http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/43864/535](http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/43864/535)
------
nine_k
Corollary: learn to write and edit quickly. Else blogging about little things
will drain too much time for which you have other plans, and this will be an
incentive to stop blogging.
------
jbranchaud
This is the approach we take with TIL at Hashrocket --
[http://til.hashrocket.com/](http://til.hashrocket.com/)
~~~
thoughtpalette
I remember getting a HashRockets logo sticker at a meetup in Chi a couple of
years ago. Loved the branding!
------
wmat
Wow, did this post ever land at an opportune time for me. I just started
writing a 'first' blog post about my Hugo static site generator setup and
stopped half way through with the thought, "why would anyone care about this,
it's trivial and almost condescending to tell people how to set up Hugo".
Perhaps I'll go finish that post now.
~~~
walkon
I'd like to read it - post the link here when you're done!
------
ctdonath
I'm in the midst of the exercise "post one picture to Facebook every day for a
year". Surprising how many people respond to nearly every post, expressing
their appreciation/joy in the series, and how it gathers my thoughts &
experiences into an otherwise-soon-forgotten collection. At end of year I'll
format it into a one-off book, and have a good summary of 2015.
Next such goal is blogging a daily $1/plate recipe page. Getting that started
takes more concerted effort (having started the blog but not at that posting
rate). The results may suck, but at least it will focus the mind on something
worthwhile, and - as the OP notes - others may find it more interesting than I
expect.
If nothing else, "blog little things" makes it manageable to normalize &
improve one's writing skills and focus on what matters.
------
foolinaround
Aside:
Along with accolades for stackoverflow, I feel Google deserves some as well
for surfacing those SO pages.
------
shanecleveland
I never cease to be amazed by solutions and tips I am able to find to
seemingly mundane problems - both tech and non-tech. Always grateful to the
people offering up these "little things." Wish I found the means to do it
more.
------
rumberg
Wow. Speaks from my heart to be honest. I'm a PR guy and had a few successes
over the last months and years. One example: I helped an unknown startup with
their launch and we reached 500 million people in one month on social media
with no budget.
I know that some of these stories and pitches would be useful for others, but
I always end up thinking: 'Meh, everyone knows that.' or as a non-native
speaker 'Urgh, this is a really clumsy description. My english sucks."
I'm just thinking about making this post my 'new tab' page in Chrome.
Thank you!
~~~
jwdunne
I'm gonna be honest, I'd love to read more about your experiences. If you ever
set up a blog, feel free to email me with a link.
~~~
rumberg
Thank you! I will definitely do that. Sometimes my most successful stories
which ended up in TechCrunch (of course), WSJ, Forbes, The Guardian, etc. were
five or six sentence emails - which is a bit embarrassing sometimes.
But hey, I think I just should get started sharing the details. I think these
stories and shared knowledge could be useful after all.
------
jasonlotito
I like to turn lessons like this into triggers. In this case, the trigger is
whenever I look up something and find a solution. The trigger should activate
me wanting to document this: the original problem I searched for, and the
resulting solution.
------
GCA10
Fine advice. I write for a living, and two of my most popular posts ever were
fleeting little creations that I dashed off in 45 minutes because something
caught my eye.
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130611180041-59549-the-
no-1...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20130611180041-59549-the-no-1-job-
skill-in-2020)
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/02/19/he-
wante...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2014/02/19/he-wanted-a-job-
facebook-said-no-in-a-3-billion-mistake/)
You never know what will break through the clutter.
------
3pt14159
I started doing this recently while I've been learning the programming
language Nim. It's been fun putting together little answers as I go:
[http://nim.community/](http://nim.community/) I'm hoping that as Nim gets
more traction these answers can get more accurate and there can be a breadth
of answers that constantly stay up to date since the website is open source :)
------
dyates
I taken to writing up tutorials for tasks that take me a non-trivial amount of
effort to accomplish and are obscure enough to not have decent existing
writeups on the first page of Google searches. Little things about [automating
file upload in Ruby]([https://davidyat.es/2015/02/26/automated-file-upload-in-
ruby...](https://davidyat.es/2015/02/26/automated-file-upload-in-ruby-with-
nethttp-and-multipart/)) and [setting up a UniFi controller with
SELinux]([https://davidyat.es/2015/03/02/unifi-centos-
selinux/](https://davidyat.es/2015/03/02/unifi-centos-selinux/)). I had doubts
about whether I was actually providing worthwhile content that hadn't been
provided elsewhere before (especially in the latter post, where I paraphrased
another person's post for half the article (with credit) just to get to my
part), but they've ended up some of the most popular posts on my blog.
Even when I discover [I can't do
something]([https://davidyat.es/2015/05/13/notes-on-csrf-and-json-
apis/](https://davidyat.es/2015/05/13/notes-on-csrf-and-json-apis/)), it's
good to blog about it, just to straighten out my thoughts, contextualise my
work and aid the research of future people going down the same tracks. And
even if it's just something tiny and silly like [this awful injection-focused
SQL query]([https://davidyat.es/select-only-nth-row-in-t-
sql/](https://davidyat.es/select-only-nth-row-in-t-sql/)), it's nice to have
it written down for easy public access -- for your own benefit as much as
anyone else's.
And even if very few people ever read them, I find writing posts about little
things helps improve my understanding -- it's just a good way to organise my
thoughts and make sure I remember the stuff later on. And the benefit of
publicly accessible blogposts over a personal notebook is that I can reach
them from almost any situation I might need to, and refer friends and co-
workers struggling with the same issues to them. It's a great feeling having
someone ask "how do I do XYZ?" and being able to say "I wrote a blog about
it!". Plus it saves you the trouble of remembering long terminal commands and
exact syntax offhand.
~~~
nindalf
Hey, just one suggestion. HN doesn't support in-line links so it would be
better to replace them with references like [1] and add all the links at the
bottom of your comment.
------
thenomad
Great post - and well-timed, too. I shall get on with writing my "Lessons
Learned" post from my latest project now...
------
Taek
Stack overflow is great because its easy to find and index, and easy to figure
out which posts might be relevant to someone looking for answers via a search
engine.
Blogs are generally not as accessible. Something I put on SO or Reddit is
likely to get a lot more attention than something I put on my personal blog.
------
agentultra
Be not afraid of knowing too little. There isn't enough time in our lives to
know everything.
This is good advice: write about what you know and don't be anxious about its
significance. Just writing about it will help you remember it better. And it
might help someone else too.
------
Yhippa
I will read almost anything that shows up around here on development. You
never know what can end up being helpful. On the flip side I feel that if I
write something it's been done before. If I Google for it it probably has.
What a sad personal paradox.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Assume that _everything_ has been done before. Your personal approach to it
has not.
------
hawngyeedun
Interesting, so basically a middle ground between the conventional length of
blogs and microblogs. I wonder if that begs for a new way of
organizing/producing medium-length contents of this sort.
~~~
pyre
I think that part of the advice is that the little things can be mixed in with
more long-form content. Your blog doesn't need to necessarily be one or the
other.
------
Mz
"Light one small candle..."
------
duiker101
[https://coderwall.com](https://coderwall.com) is very good for this sort of
things.
------
chinchang
Nice piece of advice :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Low-Calorie Diet Doesn’t Prolong Life, Study of Monkeys Finds - tocomment
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/30/science/low-calorie-diet-doesnt-prolong-life-study-of-monkeys-finds.html
======
gwern
Fulltext: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-mattison.pdf>
------
aezell
As someone who recently embarked on a restricted-calorie diet, I can say that
I'm not inclined to live longer in the sense of past the average life-span.
I'm more inclined to have a higher quality of life and live long enough to see
my child into his adulthood.
That said, outside of weightloss and increased energy and stamina, I have
noticed a few things about a reduced-calorie diet (and I'm talking 1000
calories or less most days):
1) I don't think about food as anything but fuel. I no longer think of it as a
way to be social, to pass the time, or to be happy.
2) While it's possible to eat 1000 calories of calorie dense food with almost
no other nutrition (sugar), I find that hunger demands I eat things that have
more mass with less calories (vegetables and some proteins).
3) My day no longer revolves around eating. Pretty simple, but previously, I
would be very concerned with what I had eaten the day before and might eat
tomorrow. Outside of the measurements I'm keeping about caloric intake, I
seldom think about food.
4) I'm saving money. I used to eat out a lot. Eating out, except for maybe a
salad, makes it hard to reduce caloric intake. Now, I eat at home on the
pound-for-pound cheaper food we can get at the farmer's market or grocery
store.
~~~
enraged_camel
Can you elaborate on how a calorie-restricted diet can result in "increased
energy and stamina"? Specifically, if your energy intake is minimal, how do
you end up with more energy than you had in your previous diet?
~~~
gwern
More calories doesn't translate straight into more energy or stamina, or
athletes would just consume big blocks of lard.
~~~
enraged_camel
Your statement strikes me as patently false. Athletes eat a _ton_ of food
while training. Michael Phelps, for example, eats over 10,000 calories per
day.
~~~
gwern
And Phelps is all athletes? And _what_ is he eating? I'd bet it's not
optimized for caloric density.
~~~
enraged_camel
The point was not that Phelps is a representation of all athletes, but rather
that athletes do eat a ton of calories a day in order to build muscle mass and
have enough stamina for their rigorous training. There are certain exceptions,
but generally speaking, if you are training for a sport then you should have a
solid diet.
------
stephengillie
Other article: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450307>
There was a Univ of Wisconsin study, and an "Barshop Institute for Longevity
and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San
Antonio" study, and their results contradict.
~~~
crpatino
This is mentioned in the article, as well of some possible explanations why
replication was not possible. My personal favorite is:
"The University of Wisconsin’s control monkeys were allowed to eat as much as
they wanted and were fatter than those in the aging institute’s study, which
were fed in amounts that were considered enough to maintain a healthy weight
but were not unlimited."
~~~
rcthompson
This would seen to suggest that although caloric restriction may not prolong
life, an all-you-can-eat diet may shorten it.
~~~
david_shaw
> This would seen to suggest that although
> caloric restriction may not prolong life, an
> all-you-can-eat diet may shorten it.
This is basically what I came to post. A calorie restricted diet may not
prolong life compared to a healthy, normal weight, but obesity certainly cuts
lifespan short through a plethora of health issues.
~~~
learc83
Yes it can cause all kinds of health problems, but the actual decrease in
average age for a moderately obese person is only about 3 years.
------
rfugger
I don't understand the problem with eating what you feel like when you're
hungry, and stopping when you're full. You'd think a billion years of
evolution would enable us to find a decent equilibrium by listening to our
bodies. Obviously, it's the stopping when you're full part that's hard...
~~~
bunderbunder
I find your dismissiveness to be disheartening. This isn't the usual fad diet
nonsense. This is actually a finding that could be extremely interesting to
researchers who work on longevity.
This study fits in with a large array of similar research on other species of
mammals. Many of them have found that calorie restriction is associated with a
significant extension of lifespan in the model species being used.
There's also some theoretical underpinnings that render the idea plausible.
Free radicals are the cause of a number of processes that we collectively
refer to as 'aging'. Since free radicals are a product of metabolizing, the
reasoning goes that if you eat less you might produce less free radical in the
first place, which in turn might lead to less aging.
If this study is accurate, then it suggests that the aging process in primates
may not work quite the same way it does in rodents. And who knows where
further research into something like that might go; at the very least learning
more about primate biochemistry is a good way to figure out potential new
treatments for human diseases.
~~~
billswift
In fact, calorie restriction doesn't even work well in rodents. One of the
articles points out that whether calorie restriction "works" in mice depends
on the lineage, some breeds it works and some it doesn't.
------
dfxm12
I would argue that the point of a low-calorie diet isn't to live longer, but
to look "better" (this, I guess depends on just how low the calorie count is).
A lot of the things we do "look healthy" doesn't make us live longer.
~~~
herval
"looking better" also includes being able to walk without a segway, fitting on
the airplane seat, not breaking the plastic chairs at the barbecue party, not
dying with clogged arteries when you're 30, not dying with a liver full of fat
when you're 20...
I'm curious: what things that "look healthy" don't make us live longer?
~~~
tdfx
While I do agree that most attempts to "look better" will lead to better
overall health, there's some ugly sides to that, as well: bulimia, anorexia,
stimulant appetite suppressants, etc.
~~~
inkyoto
Undeserved FUD of dubious origin.
I have practiced calorie restriction for several years, and neither myself nor
any other CRONies I know, personally or impersonally, are subjected to any of
the dreadful symptoms you prescribe to - supposedly - us. I am also physically
active and exercise regularly at the gym. Yes, I am slim and lean but nowhere
near to being anorexic.
Human mind is quite amazing at painting dreadful pictures of starvation and
all sorts of miseries and suffering when it comes to depriving one of their
favourite food(s). Food as reward (or addiction), a subconscious concept, is
what drives many people into the misconceptions of calorie restriction.
~~~
tdfx
> neither myself nor any other CRONies I know, personally or impersonally, are
> subjected to any of the dreadful symptoms you prescribe to - supposedly - us
Well, there's your problem. I didn't prescribe them to you or your friends. In
fact, you seem to be confused as to what it means to be anorexic. Anorexia is
not a state of low body fat; it is "an eating disorder characterized by
immoderate food restriction and irrational fear of gaining weight, as well as
a distorted body self-perception" [1] and a serious mental health issue.
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anorexia_nervosa>
------
manfredz
Check out the recent BBC Horizon documentary on this very subject
<http://youtu.be/Pfna7nV7WaM>
------
snogglethorpe
"... if you're a monkey."
------
goggles99
They should have fed these monkeys Highly processed, sugary foods and fast
foods. Foods containing pesticides, low fiber and containing preservatives,
antibiotics and growth hormones(a typical poor American diet). Then see which
group loves longer.
This would have had far more value since it is truer to life at least for
Westerners.
The less food you eat, the less wear on your organs right? the less toxins
your body accumulates.
~~~
gwern
Why? That is of no scientific interest. Testing the specific phenomenon of
caloric restriction - substantial lifespan increases from cuts in high quality
diets - is of interest.
------
delinka
I didn't know anyone claimed longevity as a benefit of a low-calorie diet. I'd
always heard "low-calorie" used to combat obesity. And less obesity == more
longevity. But never "love longer on fewer calories." Whether this is
scientific demonstrable is another matter entirely.
My personal theory is that avoiding gluttonous behavior will do you just fine.
Stop when you're full. If you can do that, then you probably have the
sensibilities to eat a well-rounded variety of foods. And you're done. That's
it. Self-control & variety, Live Forever®
~~~
herval
If it were really that simple, we'd have no fat people (me included).
Compulsions are a hard thing to control, and if you add it to the fact that a
lot of addicting substances are the basis of everyone's diets (sugar, salt,
loads of carbs), then you see a compounding issue: personal/psychological
issues + chemical stimulation from the food you eat = hopeless obesity...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On the New Republic - samclemens
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/new-republic
======
MaysonL
If one reads this, one should make sure to read the comments, and perhaps even
follow the links in those comments.
------
lkrubner
It is possible to sustain oneself as a “public trust”, TNR simply refused to
do so what was necessary. In terms of surviving as a public trust, many of the
good examples right now come from right-leaning political organizations. The
National Review provides an example, and so does Rush Limbaugh. I disagree
with these people and organizations on nearly all issues, but I think they do
a good job of serving their base.
Let’s define “public trust” broadly, as anyone holding a public platform from
which it is understood they hope to represent the views of a particular
constituency. Rush Limbaugh does this, very profitably, and he provides
several services that his constituency finds useful: encouragement, talking
points, lines of defense for conservative principles, etc.
Though I disagree with Rush Limbaugh in almost all things, I do think he has
demonstrated an awareness of holding a public trust. I’m thinking in
particular of the time in 1993 when President Clinton worked out a budget deal
that involved all stakeholders, trading some tax increases for some budget
cuts. Allan Greenspan felt that this budget compromise was crucial to shore up
the long-term health of the American economy. The conservative grass roots
were implacable in their opposition to this deal, so Greenspan called Limbaugh
and asked Limbaugh to promote the deal on his radio show. Limbaugh refused to
do so, using the argument that he had no loyalty to the Republicans, but
rather, his loyalty was to conservative principles and he had to be loyal to
those faithful conservatives who listened to his show everyday. He felt that
this budget deal was in violation of those principles. And, in my opinion,
this is the correct way to defend a public trust.
How does The New Republic compare to Rush Limbaugh, in terms of respecting its
public trust? Very badly.
Martin Peretz owned and ran the company from 1974 to 2012, and he refused to
identify with the progressive movement that existed in the country during
those 38 years. There was, for instance, his unwillingness to hire blacks and
women. A simple Google search will reveal how many times he has been accused
of racism and sexism. More so, he has often been overtly hostile to other
magazines that are broadly part of the same progressive alliance that the TNR
was nominally a part of of. Consider the tone of contempt that he uses to
describe the TNR in 2013, after he has sold it:
"The New Republic has abandoned its liberal but heterodox tradition and
embraced a leftist outlook as predictable as that of Mother Jones or the
Nation."
He might find Mother Jones and Nation predictable, but they are doing the hard
work of finding an audience. I personally think the food sold by McDonalds is
predictable, but that is exactly why McDonalds is profitable. Running a
business, even in journalism, is not about having heterodox opinions, it is
about offering a predictable service to a constituency that wants that
service. That does not always mean telling people what they want to hear, but
it does mean understanding who your audience is, and talking to them directly,
about the concerns that you know they have (if you don't know your audience,
or you don't know their concerns, then you will fail).
The phrase “heterodox tradition” is a nice way of saying that he did not want
to be identified as a leftist. And that is fine, of course, for any individual
— each person has a right to their own unique view of the world, and their own
unique opinions. But is it a public trust if you refuse to identify with any
particular constituency? If you denounce all of the known factions in your
society, and you come up with your own unique opinions about things, then you
are one guy with some unique opinions; you do not represent the views of any
larger group, and therefore you have no constituency and you have no public
trust.
Peretz is known to have supported a few Old Left concerns (labor issues) but
he rejected most New Left concerns (racism, sexism, etc), and he was fanatic
in his defense of Israel. As an individual, he has a right to his unique
opinions, but as an institution the TNR was adrift for a very long time — it
was not conservative, and it also denounced the whole modern movement of the
progressives. (There was a brief moment in the 1970s when members of the Old
Left were looking for a way to justify the deregulation of the economy, and
for this brief stretch, TNR operated as a public trust, representing a real
public constituency which, for a brief time, had real power and was having a
real debate about the future. This was the peak moment for the TNR under
Peretz. It’s been coasting on its laurels ever since.)
How popular would Rush Limbaugh be if tomorrow he decided he was pro-abortion
and pro-big-government? His fans would be angry, and he would lose most of his
audience. And that is exactly what happened to the TNR over the last 30 years.
Some people have suggested that TNR can save itself by committing itself to
the Internet. I don't see why this should be true. Maybe it should instead be
on the radio, since radio has emerged as the platform where most Americans
listen to political talk? This is true on both the left and the right: there
is stuff like NPR for the left and stuff like Rush Limbaugh for the right. Or
we can conclude that all possible forms of media should be involved in the
project. Older people, who have money and influence, still prefer paper, the
younger crowd wants the Internet, and many busy people can only listen with
their ears while they do something else, so they want radio. My mom loves
MSNBC, and watches the political shows every night.
Radio played a huge role in American politics during the 1930s, but then for a
long time it died out. There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when it was
possible to think that television would replace radio, but then the rise of
the suburbs, and therefore long commutes to work, revived the radio as an
important form of media, and set the stage for the big political mega-stars,
like Limbaugh.
TNR did not die because it is printed on paper. TNR died because it
systematically and deliberately broke all ties with any faction that might
have been its constituency. In particular, during the last 40 or 50 years,
women and racial minorities have become central to the progressive movement,
but TNR ignored their concerns. There is a limit on how often you can express
contempt for all possible customers, and then still have any customers. I
believe that back in the 1950s and 1960s and even 1970s it operated as a real
public trust, but it stopped doing so 30 years ago. For 30 years it operated
as the personal journal of one guy who has an eccentric set of opinions that
are completely out of touch with any of the larger political movements in the
country. Again, he has a right to his own opinion, but the rest of us have a
right to ignore him. His unwillingness to represent any political faction that
exists in the USA today is what lead to the demise of TNR.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000) - ZeeshanAK
https://www.crummy.com/writing/segfault.org/Bus.html
======
an-allen
Real Story Here. A colleague and I developed a training course on the
Foundations of DevOps. We started the course off with a discussion about risk
in Software Delivery and IT in general. Attendees would often surface the
"Key-Person Risk" or the "Hit by a Bus Risk" to which we would use as a
teachable moment for pair programming, cross pollination, and measuring and
improving the time it takes for new joins to become productive with the
systems and or code base. We would illustrate that one of the ways we
mitigated the Key Person Risk with the course was to always deliver it in
pairs.
My colleague was tragically struck by a car and killed about three months ago.
The course suffered an immense blow to the knowledge capital it had - but due
to the fact that we had planned to mitigate against key-person risk by pairing
- the course was able to survive and retain a fair bit of the legacy my
colleague left behind.
I just share this to say that the getting "hit by a bus" scenario is something
that, much like this post, we throw around in jest and treat in a laissez-
faire fashion. The fact is that it is a tragic, unimaginable, event that does
in fact occur from time to time and something I will take seriously for the
rest of my life.
~~~
geofft
I'm very sorry for your loss.
I've heard "wins the lottery" as a less morbid metaphor for the same concept:
one of your employees stops working in a low-probability event. Of course the
higher-probability event is leaving their job (but somehow it's _less_ polite
to just say that); you usually get two weeks to hurriedly start documenting
things, and with the current state of employee/employer relations you might
easily get less. Or they might have several days of vacation saved up.
~~~
bryanlarsen
As far as I can tell, "hits by a bus" is actually the euphemism. The highest
probability way to lose an employee is just the employee quitting to work
somewhere else. But you can't say that because it implies that your current
workplace is suboptimal. Whereas "hits by a bus" is out of the control of your
employer, so safe to say...
~~~
gammateam
Devs stay in one place like 15 months
Occassionally a 2 year stint just so some Gen X-er that reviews their resume’
doesnt consider them too noncommittal
No need to mince words about people leaving
~~~
bauerd
Mind providing a source for this? I read this all the time but it doesn't
match my experience here in Germany.
~~~
scarface74
1.5 to 3 years doesn’t seem to be too far off the mark.
[https://insights.dice.com/2016/07/08/how-long-do-tech-
pros-s...](https://insights.dice.com/2016/07/08/how-long-do-tech-pros-stay-in-
their-jobs/)
~~~
microtherion
Hmm, data compiled from "Public Profiles". I wonder where they got "Public
Profiles", listing people's profession and length of tenure. Could it be
places like LinkedIn or Dice, and could it be that such places overrepresent
engineers inclined to switch jobs?
Personally, I'd be disinclined to interview a candidate with >= 3 jobs on the
resumé, none of which lasted longer than 2 years. Taking into account the time
spent for them to get up to speed, and the time their successors would have to
spend taking over their code, it seems unlikely that their tenure would make
much of a positive impact.
Furthermore, a key driver of experience in software engineers is maintaining
their own code over multiple product cycles. Job hoppers not only don't
acquire that experience, but may actively fall into a habit of bailing as soon
as they get sick of their own code.
~~~
scarface74
Well,two points.
\- Salary compression especially early on in your career is real. Most
companies don’t do market adjustments after you are hired and only adjust
salaries by a predetermined very low amount. The only way to get market
salaries is by frequent job changes.
\- If you have a job and people are willing to hire a job hopper, why not
leave? At some point it will be a negative but when that time comes, just stay
at a job until you get a better one. Also, if you do change jobs make sure
it’s for the right reasons. For me, it’s technology, environment, and money in
that order.
------
teacpde
The question in the article reminds me what I read yesterday about an
interview with Bram Moolenaar (author of Vim):
> How can the community ensure that the Vim project succeeds for the
> foreseeable future?
> Keep me alive.
[https://www.binpress.com/vim-creator-bram-moolenaar-
intervie...](https://www.binpress.com/vim-creator-bram-moolenaar-interview/)
------
zunzun
The methodology seems flawed in that it does not take into account that, if
the buses were self-driving, what operating system was used as this would
affect collision lethality.
------
mhh__
On a much smaller scale, I realized that I am probably the only person in my
group (of stage/ audiovisual technical folks) who understands everything
fully: I'm stopping next year, so I'm documenting how to do everything I do.
You can never have too much documentation - which isn't exactly what this
dilemma is about - but still it raises an interesting bit of planning which
should always be considered.
~~~
koonsolo
Before I left my first job, I made a document called "Koen's brain dump" where
I would document anything that only I knew.
Years later I heard from my ex-colleagues that they not only used my brain
dump, but were still extending it.
Seems like I was getting smarter without me ever realizing it ;).
------
davidscolgan
Speaking of getting hit by a bus, a friend and I are considering a consulting
service that could help mitigate bus factor risk - would love any feedback on
this idea.
We've both noticed that for nontechnical owners of small businesses that have
a heavy software component, that owner is completely at the mercy of their
lead developer. If that person leaves or "gets hit by a bus" their company
might just die, especially since they don't really know what a Github is or
how to log into anything. My friend is such a nontechnical person and hired
someone to build his SaaS app. He has felt this risk himself but we wonder if
he's just particularly perceptive.
The service would be, for a retainer fee per month a developer sits in on your
planning calls, looks over all code committed to your repo, and over time
documents how everything works and stores that documentation in a system
outside of the company (maybe an external wiki or something). Then if your
lead developer leaves, we'd help you find a new one and then train them on the
codebase using the documentation created.
~~~
schoen
Over on the Let's Encrypt Community Forum we get quite a few inquiries from
people who say "I'm the site owner and my developer [disappeared|quit|was only
hired for a one-time setup task] and my certificate expired; how do I renew
it?".
I assume this is a really common pattern for web sites in general. :-(
I don't imagine that this segment would be interested in paying for
"continuity insurance", but they might grudgingly hire someone for "tech
rescue". I guess that's a very different kind of service; I'm not sure if
there's anything in between the two.
~~~
jimnotgym
> I don't imagine that this segment would be interested in paying for
> "continuity insurance", but they might grudgingly hire someone for "tech
> rescue". I guess that's a very different kind of service; I'm not sure if
> there's anything in between the two.
Very sadly I find myself agreeing with your assessment in general. However I
was once seeking almost exactly this service, and I have to say I struggled to
find what I wanted.
------
based2
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_continuity_planning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_continuity_planning)
[https://www.cmmiconsultantblog.com/cmmi-faqs/what-is-
service...](https://www.cmmiconsultantblog.com/cmmi-faqs/what-is-service-
continuity-scon-in-context-of-cmmi-for-services/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ab601z/what_if...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ab601z/what_if_linus_torvalds_gets_hit_by_a_bus/)
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/driver-
model/bus.txt)
------
hirundo
> Our sample consisted of 200 Linus Torvaldses
If there were 200 Linus Torvaldses then after one gets hit by a bus there
would be 199 left. Even after the experiment there were at least 108.9
remaining. That should be plenty to keep Linux going. So what's the problem?
~~~
adtac
Unfortunately, they all exist in parallel. So unless we figure out how to
cryogenically freeze humans for hundreds of years, we'll run out of Torvaldii
(which I think should be the plural for Torvalds) very soon.
~~~
schoen
Torvalds is a Swedish name (Linus Torvalds is from a Swedish Finn family) and
it seems to originate as the genitive (possessive) of the name Torvald
[https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Torvald](https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Torvald)
I think this use of the genitive is a form of patronymic, like if someone
named Torvald had a son named Einar, maybe that person could be called "Einar
Torvalds" (that is, Torvald's Einar).
So it should probably have a Swedish plural
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_grammar#Plural_forms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_grammar#Plural_forms)
I'm not sure which declension it should belong to as a name (and I'll ask a
friend to speculate), but the possibilities there seem to be Torvaldsor,
Torvaldser, and Torvaldsar.
There are no Latin plurals in -i when the nominative form doesn't end in -us
or -um. If you make a Latin plural of Torvalds, it would probably be third
declension and something like Torvaldes (compare urbs 'city', urbes 'cities'),
unless the consonants change in the oblique cases.
------
pm90
I want to ask a genuine question to folks here about disaster recovery and
management. It sounds pretty horrible, but at what point do you just throw up
your hands and give up? How many people in your company would need to be hit
by a bus? Or maybe if aws went down completely for a week? I guess I'm
wondering: how far into the rabbit hole must we go?
I guess the changes of a coworker passing away are more than aws going down
for a week. I guess I'm just overwhelmed by how many scenarios we need to plan
for.
~~~
cdoxsey
This happened to some financial companies on 9/11:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_Fitzgerald#9/11_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_Fitzgerald#9/11_attacks)
------
giekaton
"What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus?” is now permanently archived on:
[https://setinblock.com/0x8006d703a45663cab96a85a4ef3e6ab94a1...](https://setinblock.com/0x8006d703a45663cab96a85a4ef3e6ab94a1410d6e70119139eea807a63ecb79e)
~~~
JeremyBanks
Do you have a license to permanently redistribute it?
~~~
giekaton
That's not a traditional form of re-distribution. In legal terms, I guess it's
a gray area.
The article is now on the blockchain. It is not published (re-distributed)
anywhere in particular. It's also encoded and not in the actual form of an
article.
~~~
JeremyBanks
Involving a technically convoluted mechanism doesn't change the fundamental
legal question here. It's just made it harder for you to undo your potential
violation.
A temporary web mirror has at least a narrow time scope and a justification.
Choosing to embed a copy of content you don't own into a permanently-public
record is a greater offense.
~~~
giekaton
I wonder where exactly do you see the violation?
Is it that I archived it on the blockchain, or that I shared a reader link to
that transaction where the article is archived?
~~~
thecatspaw
> Crummy is © 1996-2018 Leonard Richardson. Unless otherwise noted, all text
> licensed under a Creative Commons License.
You're fine. I would not recommend doing this with texts which you dont have
the copyright to.
~~~
giekaton
Yes, I also saw this later.
But for better understanding, I would love to hear more about "embed a copy of
content you don't own into a permanently-public record is a greater offense".
What is this based on? Are there any known precedents?
------
scarface74
What’s crazy is that I voluntarily try to set aside time to document and cross
train but I get push back. I don’t think anyone has ever voluntarily left the
small company I work for and they don’t think about what would happen if I
leave.
I try to cross train for a few reasons - I would never want to leave the
company in a lurch if I find a better opportunity, I don’t want to be stuck on
an implementation forever because I’m the only one that knows how to do it,
and after awhile, I forget how the systems I designed works together.
------
krapp
Ok. But what if Richard Stallman gets hit by a falling piano?
~~~
TomK32
Beer-shortage in Redmond?
~~~
ThrowawayB7
I doubt anyone in Redmond would really have cared all that much. We were
building products to sell and FOSS was* just another competitor.
* And, despite Nadella, it still is.
------
tomkat0789
There's a lot of comments considering the general case of losing a key person
on a project, but I think it'd be interesting to speculate on what happens to
Linux when Linus leaves the project! Will it go embrace, extend, exterminate?
Will there be a bunch of forks? Will Redhat/IBM/Canonical types keep it up?
------
TomK32
I got hit by a bus two years ago, granted it was more of a rude push by the
side of the bus that I was riding for 6 hours from Athens to its last stop
Preveza and the bus driver was just about to park his bus, but getting hit by
a bus is not necessary lethal. I simply got back on my feet and dusted my
pants.
~~~
danso
I don’t think the posted article is referring to non-lethal bus collisions.
~~~
roywiggins
Guess it depends on what kind of non-lethal. There's lots of ways to be
functionally knocked out of commission for a long time.
------
dikaio
The articles on HN are great but the comments are we keep me coming back,
hilarious. Have to run, need to catch my bus.
~~~
winrid
Half the time I just read the comments. I think I'm addicted. :)
------
gabrielblack
Obvious, he sends SIGBUS to the driver and then someone examines the core dump
:-) Forgive me !
------
sbr464
I'm curious how startups or venture capitalists handle risk around DevOps,
especially certificates, encryption keys, access to dns/domain names etc.
Legal processes take time, you typically need this info quickly in production.
I'm not a VC, but if I was, I would want a backup plan in place before handing
over an XX Million $ check. A smaller startup, or a seed level/pre-launch team
may only have 1 or 2 founders with "admin" level access to this info.
I always thought a "Swiss bank account" type service for DevOps would be
useful. It could handle this situation in a modern way (with a secure, modern
API etc) and would execute a certain disaster recovery plan reliably.
Obviously centralizing that kind of data/ would be a security nightmare in
itself. I'm curious how a larger VC with many companies deals with this
consistently.
I know there are services available in different areas that specialize in
handling certain data (corporate branding/identity, domain names etc) but not
as a whole.
~~~
pm90
> Swiss bank account" type service for DevOps
What does this mean? That nobody has access to production systems except
devops?
~~~
sbr464
For example, there is a copy of the most core encryption keys,
certificates/passwords etc, stored with a 3rd party, who is specialized in
dealing with this kind of info in a modern way.
Similar to how a Swiss bank is familiar with storing valuables/currency or
executing a will.
This type of service would need to be modern in the sense the info can be
updated over an API etc.
Anyone can create a DR plan and handle these issues, but then it isn't
consistent, especially from a partner (VC etc) perspective.
------
pvaldes
Mh, Good question. To avoid an unnecessary waste of fine finnish blood (Santa
Claus could get angry with me) I will try with a cute animal first
cat > /dev/bus
It seems safe enough... the kitty cat is alive
------
oferzelig
What about Antirez? I guess no one knew him back in 2000...
------
techpop10
Answer: Someone will have to clean the bus.
------
Svip
Might want to add '(2000)' to the title. I feel like Torvalds himself have
been addressing aspects of this issue this year.
~~~
soneca
Read the text, it is not what you think
~~~
Svip
I did read the text. It's humorous. But the question itself is no less
important. And considering what happened with Torvalds' position this year,
one might think it is a follow up to that question. So I think adding '(2000)'
would definitely be helpful, if not just accurate.
~~~
porphyrogene
> what happened with Torvalds' position this year
Read: He went on vacation for five weeks.
------
znpy
I am bothered by the fact that Linus is made plural as "Linus Torvaldses" and
not "Lini Torvalds".
~~~
aasasd
I'm pretty sure he's not a Roman but a Finn.
(I'm also quite sure most languages today aren't Latin, namely English isn't.
But what do I know, English speakers seem to have a different opinion.)
~~~
JorgeGT
Finland is the heir of the Roman Empire though:
[https://i.imgur.com/eNuUdTd.png](https://i.imgur.com/eNuUdTd.png)
~~~
aasasd
I'm having a hard time deciding what's more far-fetched, between this and the
actual areas of spread of Finno-Ugric languages.
------
EGreg
Why is it always a bus?
~~~
znpy
Buses are evil tools of the proprietary software corporations, this has been
widely known for a while now.
------
JohnJamesRambo
The early web was a pretty cringey place, although it is now too.
~~~
znpy
I think that it was more humorous and funny.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Self-Control in Chimpanzees Relates to General Intelligence - nabla9
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31676-7
======
tremendulo
Small reward now or larger reward later? In real life we might think: why
can't I just have _both_?
Yet it frequently _is_ a matter of 'either or' since the smaller reward robs
me of the _mental resources_ required to create or bring about the larger
reward. For example if I party now I won't get the new job later on because I
won't have the energy to learn the relevant skills.
~~~
mjfl
You can have both. Invest 10% of your salary each month in a retirement fund,
eat out with the rest, net costs like rent. You'll retire a millionaire. You
just need to size the rewards correctly.
~~~
EGreg
I never understood this... if there was some investment strategy that beat
inflation, then if everyone used it, inflation would catch up to it.
So if you invest 10% of your salary all you're doing is saving 10% adjusted
for inflation, assuming your investment vehicle doesn't do worse than
inflation. And then when you retire you just live off that.
There is no free lunch. In Capitalism, millions of people are in a rat race to
survive and eat.
~~~
WalterBright
> if there was some investment strategy that beat inflation,
There is, stocks average 7% returns after inflation.
> then if everyone used it, inflation would catch up to it.
Inflation is caused by the government printing money faster than the economy
grows, not investments.
~~~
EGreg
It can be caused by both.
Inflation is a result of a large number of people being able to pay higher
prices for the same goods.
~~~
WalterBright
The act of spending does not create money.
~~~
EGreg
That is not relevant to what we were talking about.
~~~
WalterBright
How do you think money is created?
In any case, no matter how wealthy Fred is, if Fred spends an extra $1000 on X
then he has $1000 less to spend on something else. How is that supposed to
result in inflation? Spending money doesn't magically put more money in one's
pocket (despite wishing it did!), it means you've got less money.
~~~
y4mi
Inflation means, afaik, only that the same amount of money has lesser
purchasing power than it previously had.
This is an effect that can have various causes. One of them is that the
government or Central Banks printed more money. Another way this could happen
is if there was an influx of income in your region. This effect is less
visible in today's economy with cheap and easy shipping of products, but can
still be observed in objects that are pretty much impossible to ship. The only
example that comes to my mind right now is housing.
~~~
WalterBright
> Inflation means, afaik, only that the same amount of money has lesser
> purchasing power than it previously had.
That's a tautological definition.
Money's value is determined by supply and demand, just like everything else.
If there's more money representing the same amount of goods, the money gets
devalued and you have inflation.
To understand inflation one must understand how money is created and
destroyed, i.e. what determines the supply of money. Spending money faster
does not create more supply, and McDonald's raising their prices is not
inflationary because they did not create more money.
Money is created by printing it, or by the creation of debt. Money is
destroyed by burning it or by paying down debt.
~~~
y4mi
Well, Wikipedia seems to agree with that tautological definition.
While McDonald's alone increasing their price wouldn't be inflation, it could
become that if a significant part of the businesses in that location increased
theirs as well.
It's just really hard to find examples of this today. It's mostly limited to
holiday hotzones, rent and similar.
~~~
WalterBright
> Wikipedia seems to agree with that tautological definition.
It reminds me of when I saw a technical analyst on CNBC sagely note that the
reason the P/E ratio was high was because the Price rose faster than the
Earnings. Sheesh!
It is not inflationary if McDonald's increases their prices. Spending more at
McDonald's means you have less to spend elsewhere. Your spending does not
create more money to replace it.
Consider if the money was a fixed number gold coins instead, and you'll see
that anyone raising prices does not result in more gold coins.
~~~
y4mi
well, now we've gone full circle.
Inflation does not mean that the amount of money was increased. This is "just"
the primary way a government or central bank controls the inflation
The definition of inflation is limited to the devaluement of a currency. This
means that it can only be evaluated by comparing that currency to actual goods
/ services that can be bought / used.
------
ggm
social interaction gives immediate feedback. So, if your brain(s) are hunting
to optimal strategies, being able to do net-present-value in a socialized
competition is highly likely to get strong re-inforcement.
net-present-value to determine to plant the yummy seed for a fruit tree later
has huge upsides, but demands less strong linkage ("seasons" == delay == plant
now eat in 3 years) which I think is probably a product of stronger models of
net-present-value than a chimp routinely builds.
the kinds of test they are administering have short cycles. they play to the
social interactions chimps experience in the wild.
Try and ask the chimp to deposit into a food-based "pension fund" for its
children and mates instead of eating the goodies, and see how many can learn
to accrue compound interest
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Series A rounds and board seats? - Kepler-295c
How often (in the Bay Area) do startups get through a series A round without giving away a board seat?
======
merrua
I doubt anyone will give you a truthful answer here. You might have better
luck with offline conversations.
~~~
Lordarminius
> _I doubt anyone will give you a truthful answer here...._
Why is that ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A second Brexit referendum could actually happen - okket
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/second-brexit-referendum-could-happen
======
1996
And if the second one doesn't work out the way politicians want, third time is
the charm!
~~~
okket
The politicians have a hard time to get the first vote done. I doubt there
will be a third.
Looking at the state of Brexit, it's due time to think it over, give people a
chance a to remedy a grave mistake. Or go all the way, at any cost? With a
52%/48% vote? Really?
~~~
1996
You're right, time for another attempt.
And if this next time it is 51%/49%, we can try yet another time!
That's exactly what I am suggesting: iterating until the desired results are
obtained.
~~~
okket
Do you really think the next vote will be 51%/49%? Seriously?
~~~
1996
Joke aside, I do.
~~~
okket
You might be up for a surprise.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The pursuit of excellence in programming - chibea
http://programmingzen.com/2010/07/04/the-pursuit-of-excellence-in-programming/
======
lawn
This i such a great article, I don't know where to begin.
If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery,
it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. — Michelangelo
I've always thought being a hard worker is the biggest talent of all. When I
played icehockey there where a few guys who where _extremely_ good; he scored
maybe 10 goals every game and I remember how proud I was when I stole the puck
from him once.
But he wasn't hardworking and from being considered a genius when he was a kid
he became talented when he got older and now he's just average (this is also
touched on within the article). This seems to transfer to whatever field you
look, from programming to icehockey and painting.
Although the title has programming in it the article is more about self-
improvement and learning than of anything else.
Kids who are labeled and praised because of their “innate capabilities”,
will often suffer from an overconfidence that will affect their ability to
challenge themselves through the depths of the unknown,
because they feel it would threaten their status. What if they fail?
It would mean, in their eyes, that perhaps they are not the smart person
they have been assumed to be all along.
We all have seen such kids failing here and there,
and quickly making excuses such as, “Oh, I wasn’t trying at all”.
This hurts so much because I've been exactly like this for a long time and I'm
finally trying to break out of it. I was good at math but I didn't dare to
challenge myself so I was content with being considered "talented".
It might also explain why I did so hilariously bad at french: Why try? I don't
dare to fail...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ISS Virtual Tour - kapranoff
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/virtual-tour-iss/
======
sandyarmstrong
This is awesome. If you'd like a live video tour, I recently sat down with my
5 year old to watch a wonderful video from NASA [0].
They talk about some of the facilities in a way that kids can understand, and
there's something wondrous about seeing how they move around, regularly
changing their orientations, etc.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k)
~~~
jsingleton
The coolest video I found on the ESA tour is this time-lapse one from the
Cupola. Absolutely stunning.
[http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/php/download.php?fn=/videos/F...](http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/php/download.php?fn=/videos/F_2014/F_Blue_Dot/1417170856_Timelapses_Long_HD/hires.mp4&newfn=Timelapses_Long_HD_HR.mp4)
------
torgoguys
Very cool!
Wow, I never realized how cluttered the ISS was. Stuff all over! Lots of
Thinkpads as already mentioned, but lots of lots of things: cameras, lens,
etc. I surprised at the amount of duplication. (I do realize that redundancy
is key when you can't just run to the store to replace something, but
still...)
~~~
arrrg
If you zoom in on the images you can see why they have so many cameras: loads
of dead pixels everywhere. They don’t last forever up there because of the
increased radiation. I would assume they don’t really fly stuff like still
functioning cameras with loads of dead pixels back. (Even some old iPad seems
to get good use as a wall clock next to the dining table.)
Also, if I remember correctly (from some interview with some ESA guy, I think)
people on the ground would prefer it if the station were kept tidier – but the
people up there are busy people with more important things to do than to keep
everything always super-tidy. But inventory management is apparently a big
topic and they do have a system for it. (I think even including a barcode
scanner to catalogue items.)
I mean, even still, looking at those images, I do have to say everything does
seem … tidier than usual. I think they cleaned up before they took them. Those
more improvised tours of the station from astronauts you can find on YouTube
show a station that is substantially more cluttered. Or at least seem that
way. Looking at those pictures and being familiar with others and videos of
the station my first thought was not how cluttered everything is but how tidy.
Compared to the usual state of things, at least.
------
arethuza
I'm going to put the audio-book version of _Seveneves_ on (just started
listening to it for the second time this morning) and have a good browse
around this.
~~~
d_theorist
Made me think of Seveneves as well. I bet Stephenson would have found this
thing really useful for writing the book.
------
aurelian15
This entire tour is interesting and enjoyable! Just spent an entire evening --
almost three hours -- looking around and watching the videos. Many kudos to
Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti for her very concise explanations and
demonstrations.
The panoramas are of very high quality (except for the inevitable dead
pixels). It is nice to see all the Ethernet cables, electrical outlets,
stopwatches, valves, tools or just the video projector connected via VGA to a
notebook in Node 1, just before you fly into the Russian module. And yes,
there is a striking contrast between the Russian and the US/European/Japanese
modules.
I especially recommend watching the time-lapse video shot by Alexander Gerst:
[http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/videos/F_2014/F_Blue_Dot/1417...](http://wsn.spaceflight.esa.int/videos/F_2014/F_Blue_Dot/1417170856_Timelapses_Long_HD/hires.mp4)
_Edit:_
Btw. executing the following code in the JS console
"{" + pano.getCurrentNode() + "}\",\"" + pano.getPan() + "/" + pano.getTilt() + "/" + pano.getFov()
gives you a string encoding the current position. You can restore that
position by copy and pasting it into the "pano.openURL()" method. Examples:
pano.openUrl("{node5}","216.49016925709486/38.116922404005344/47.440801242792304") // The IMAX...
pano.openUrl("{node5}","288.6799234893748/17.169120787478608/17.33030268127927") // ...and its CF cards
------
jefurii
After a bit of digging, I foudn that the wall behind the cluster of Thinkpads
in the Columbus module is made up of European Drawer Rack modules[0] which are
basically 19in racks. NASA has its own International Standard Payload Rack
(ISPR) module system[1]. It would be interesting to see some articles on the
power and data infrastructure of the station.
[0]
[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Columbus...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Columbus/European_Drawer_Rack)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Payload...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Payload_Rack)
------
gii2
Did you noticed that there are only ThinkPads there? It is the only laptop
certified to work on ISS.
~~~
Kiro
What are the requirements?
~~~
rtkwe
There's a lot that goes into space worthiness rating even beyond the technical
spec requirements. There's probably a bid request available for when they were
first considered too. No idea where to start hunting that down though.
There was a really good article[0] (plus a video talk I can't find) on a team
that modified an Android phone to go to space to interface with the SPHERES
mini satellite experiments. A short list of the things they had to do
includes:
\- No Lithium Ion battery, it takes 2+ years to get a LIon battery certified
for the ISS
\- Had to put a screen protector on, broken glass screen becomes an inhalation
hazard in zero G, BUT many materials are considered flammable in the high
oxygen environment on station.
\- Had to lobotomize the Wifi and cellular chips to ensure they'd never turn
on. Just removing the software that would control and allow them to turn on
wasn't enough.
In addition to everything in the article they have to worry about off gassing
from all the various materials that make up anything sent to space.
[0] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/how-nasa-got-an-
andro...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/how-nasa-got-an-android-
handset-ready-to-go-into-space/)
------
robryk
It's interesting to see some differences between the US-and-everyone-else and
Russian part. One that was most striking to me is cabling and piping between
modules: on the Russian side, the pipes go through the hatches, which
complicates closing the hatches but makes the cables and pipes easier to
access/repair and makes it easier to install new ones. On the other side,
there are no pipes or cables going through hatches.
There's also a hatch in the deck of Unity that seems to have nothing on the
other side (the one labelled Hab). Is it a place where a module will be added?
~~~
sudhirj
Probably stands for Habitat. I could see bunks anywhere else. I doubt the
astronauts want to show living quarters. Not much privacy as it is.
~~~
robryk
I mean the hatch in the middle of Unity's floor. It appears to have space on
the other side and is closed.
They do show living quarters in Node 2 -- there is even a video of the
interior.
------
ourmandave
If you're an early riser this site will tell you when you can watch ISS fly
over.
[http://iss.astroviewer.net/observation.php](http://iss.astroviewer.net/observation.php)
~~~
jsingleton
Nice. I remember using that to see the ISS over London on Christmas last year.
Great sight.
[http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014/12/16/space-station-
to-...](http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014/12/16/space-station-to-fly-over-
london-over-christmas/)
------
drzaiusapelord
I love the disconnect between science fiction and reality. There's no
beautiful Kubrick-esque set design here. The whole thing just looks like
someone's garage, full of nick-nacks, tools, and little projects. It just a
giant mancave, really. This is why I'm a little bored with LEO space
exploration. I can't wait for the SLS to go live and try something that isn't
this.
That said, I would love to see a ISS-like structure on the moon, perhaps also
serving as a dark-side radio telescope.
~~~
arrrg
The mundanity is what makes it real and also very cool to me. I don’t think
manned space exploration will look any different in the future … until maybe
it starts looking mundane in other ways (think mundanity of commercial air
travel). Even if we do go to Mars or other places. LEO has little to do with
that … and SLS will look just the same on the inside.
~~~
drzaiusapelord
Good point. I guess what I was trying to express that just floating in LEO is
fairly boring. My example of a moon base would be much more thrilling,
especially if it could serve as a dark-side radio telescope or even as a
space-port for deep launches.
A lot of little experiments an LEO ferrying back and forth is something we've
been able to do since at least the 60's. I would love to see some next-gen
stuff and with the SLS I will. I think NASA is very committed to a manned
asteroid mission and a return to the moon.
------
throw7
Had to laugh about the tools on board... both a set of metric and english. :D
And apparently the english set are used more often (not sure what to take away
from that... heh)
------
return0
Are the EXIT signs real or a cruel joke?
~~~
arrrg
There are Soyuz constantly docked to the ISS with enough seats for everyone on
board. Those are where you would exit the station in case of emergency. The
signs show the way.
I assume that’s the case, since that is the only explanation that does make
sense given the design – with the red stripes – and the consistent placement
of the signs. The station has two other obvious exits – the two air locks –
but those wouldn’t be used in case of an emergency and don’t need signage
throughout the station showing you the way there.
There is an exit sign right next to the US airlock, but that could also just
be there to tell you to turn left when you exit the airlock to get to the
docked Soyuz: [http://imgur.com/8UJP11Y](http://imgur.com/8UJP11Y)
If you look around you can see that the red stripe design is used throughout
the station to show you where things are you would need in an emergency, like
“Portable Breathing Apparatus”, “Fire Extinguisher” and “Fire Port” (all for
use during fires). There are also some signs with red stripes that have
different directional arrows and pictograms on them. Oh, I just zoomed in on
those and look what I found:
[http://imgur.com/3Qyl3bE](http://imgur.com/3Qyl3bE)
That’s your definite answer! The pictograms are an elaboration on the Exit
signs, showing you the directions in which you can find the Shuttle and Soyuz.
Obviously, that Shuttle pictogram – it was always docked at the other end of
the station – is kinda outdated by now. They can hopefully put some nice
Dragon/CST-100 stickers on there soon.
It seems they use red/white stripes to indicate emergency routes and equipment
and yellow/black stripes for warnings and caution signs. Blue signs to show
you where up and own, backward and forward, left and right is. As the station
is always in free fall that’s obviously arbitrary, but consistently defining
those directions in some way obviously also helps with orientation (and, I
would assume, communication between everyone working up there and those on the
ground communicating with the station). Look for the OVHD, FWD, AFT, DECK and
so on signs around the hatches. Also, look at the hatch where you enter the
Russian sector (directly beyond that and down are the Soyuz). You can see many
round glow-in-dark patches around the hatch, obviously also used to show you
the way to a Soyuz ship, especially if, say, power and lights are out.
By the way, look what I found:
[http://imgur.com/Elwl8Rf](http://imgur.com/Elwl8Rf)
It seems someone moved the equipment for some reason and patched over the
emergency sign, adding a handwritten note with the place the equipment was
moved to.
I know that they _do_ have a printer on board but, eh, I guess a handwritten
note will do. (I love looking at all of those all over the station.)
(Cosmonauts in the Russian part of the station apparently have an innate sense
of direction in space and as such do not need signs, or at least not as many.
And definitely none with such gaudy designs!)
------
deneca
I would love to see a version of this for Google Cardboard
~~~
soylentcola
Later this evening when I get home I'm gonna fire it up fullscreen in VR
Desktop (Rift rather than Cardboard). It's not 3D but 360-panoramic can still
be cool to look at.
------
harywilke
Duct Tape spotted! Zarya module. look up! three hose fittings? covered in
tape. I think i'd live in constant fear of bumping the wrong knob/pipe/lever
while floating from one module to the next.
------
jefurii
I wish there was a way to link to things in this by "room", angle, and zoom
level.
I'm really curious what some of this stuff is, like that green box in the
middle of that cluster of Thinkpads on the Columbus module, the blue box and
other stuff "beneath" the oven. Power distribution modules? Computers in
hardened cases?
~~~
jefurii
aurelian15 answered my question in another thread. Thanks aurelian15!
------
Kiro
Aren't there any windows?
~~~
plg
i think they use linux
~~~
gadrfgaesgysd
They also get apples occasionally.
------
shpx
Any chance someone has the raw pictures? They serve them as small images and
stitch them together in the browser.
------
nomercy400
This is so good. A more than decent explanation of what's going on in such a
restricted environment.
------
chmullig
Seems like their poor server is struggling with load.
------
ekianjo
The space station is full of Thinkpads :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In Defence of WordPress - ezequiel-garzon
https://ma.ttias.be/in-defence-of-wordpress/
======
girvo
I like PHP.
Right, yes, I know, that makes me crazy, but modern PHP is a fine language.
HHVM, Hack, Composer, Packagist, the PSR standards: all of that comes together
for a nice development workflow. PHP's shared-nothing architecture by default
makes horizontal scaling an exercise in simplicity.
But: I don't like WordPress. Yes, it can autoupdate -- and that's certainly
better than how things were prior, however WordPress' core code is horrendous.
There's a reason why security issues are consistently found.
The bigger issue is the sorry state of most plugins; the bulk of
vulnerabilities that end in compromise of WordPress sites are not from the
core itself, but the plugins. An autoupdater for those certainly exists, but
it doesn't help you if the people writing the plugins to begin with have no
clue how to write not-insecure software.
These days, I avoid WordPress like the plague. When I do have to work with it,
I've dragged it kicking and screaming into 2015: It lives in a Docker
container, is fully 12-factor, completely managed through Composer (including
Wordpress' core itself) and all code that I write for it is proper unit
tested, PSR-4 autoloaded namespaced classes; this allows me to avoid crappily
written plugins and rely on battle-tested libraries instead.
If and when it gets compromised, I can restore the Docker image within
seconds, or lock it down as straight HTML by exporting it as a static site
temporarily. WordPress can be decent if forced to be, but it's a lot of work
and I'd much rather use something that doesn't have so much cruft clogging it
up.
I mean heck; you still can't run the latest version of WP on anything other
than MySQL, despite technically having a DBAL. Absolutely crazy, considering
we have Doctrine or Propel!
~~~
8ig8
Knowing about WordPress and the typical use case, what do you use instead?
~~~
ceejayoz
Most people would be fine with a static site generator like Jekyll and a
third-party commenting system like Facebook or Disqus. As a bonus, it costs
pennies to host such a thing on S3.
~~~
jacques_chester
> _Most people_
We in technology are not "most people".
~~~
ceejayoz
Anyone who can manage a WordPress install should be able to get Jekyll
working, but I'd like to see it get a user-friendly GUI that takes care of the
grunt work.
------
dantiberian
A lot of people here are talking right past each other.
Is it good that WordPress has automatic security updates? Yes.
Is it bad that WordPress vulnerabilities are still so common? Yes.
Are Drupal, Joomla, or Magento better at this? It sounds like the answer is
probably no.
Does that excuse WordPress because it is better than other frameworks with
marginal track records? No.
For such a widely used framework, WordPress' security record is dismal.
Automatic updates are a great feature, but they don't replace the need for the
framework to be a lot more secure.
For someone hosting their personal blog on a $5/month VPS this is probably
good enough. For a bank to run WordPress is borderline professional negligence
at this point [1]. A lot of the comments seem to be assuming that because the
update was rolled out withing a few hours, that their window of exposure was
pretty small. The window of exposure to WordPress vulnerabilities isn't from
the time the patch is released until you are updated, it is from when an
attacker discovers the vulnerability and you are updated.
[1]: [http://ma.tt/2015/04/a-bank-website-on-
wordpress/](http://ma.tt/2015/04/a-bank-website-on-wordpress/).
~~~
pyre
Someone should do a study on where these security bugs are coming from. Are
they in new features? Introduced from refactors of old code? Are they due to
the plugin infrastructure? Is it all in old code?
~~~
punjabisingh
The bugs are coming from everywhere.
In my view, the worst ones are the ones coming from core. They've come from
old code (i.e. the comments XSS due to overly large comments) or from
including other libraries (i.e. genericons vulnerability).
I think this sort of stuff is bound to happen since WordPress is slowly
becoming the kitchen sink trying to keep up with all demands of the users.
The good part is:
* They are increasing their unit tests coverage.
* With auto-updates, the huge amount of sites that use WordPress are not left in the dark. So I consider it a feature even if it comes at a price. When the software is being used at the scale that WordPress is, it is a needed feature.
------
falcolas
So, your website can auto update itself. Know what that infers? A compromised
WordPress instance can also update itself, to be whatever the attacker wants
it to be. Hey, look, DB credentials as well, in an executable file (which can
be "updated" right alongside the rest of Wordpress).
And how do these updates happen? Via a cron system, built into WordPress. It
also has its own storage system (whose functionality can be altered at runtime
by plugins), dynamic content management (via PHP (!) stored in the DB), its
own networking stack, and more abstractions than you could shake a branch at.
Hell, I can't even figure out how to turn off cron requests (despite
explicitly setting DISABLE_WP_CRON in wp_config.php). I block those at the
nginx layer, but the noise is aggravating.
So many vectors of attack, so few ways to protect yourself.
~~~
mst
> A compromised WordPress instance can also update itself, to be whatever the
> attacker wants it to be
By this point, you're already on the other side of the airtight hatchway.
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/08/59235...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/05/08/592350.aspx)
is a good example of this point.
The goal here is to avoid the compromise in the first place, so the attacker
stays on the correct side of the hatchway.
There are plenty of logical reasons to hate wordpress, but I don't see that
this is one of them.
~~~
falcolas
> By this point, you're already on the other side of the airtight hatchway
Not really. Having the ability for a web process to write its to files which
it then executes actually opens up whole new vulnerabilities. For example: one
popular PHP exploit is writing a PHP file, then executing it on the remote
system. Can't write a file? Can't execute the exploit.
Reading and executing PHP out of the DB, and also writing user input to that
same database? Same problem. Triggering system-altering actions based on an
unsigned token? That's a vulnerability.
Letting an application be able to do more on a system than is absolutely
necessary to operate is a great way to give control and information over to
others.
~~~
girvo
_> Not really. Having the ability for a web process to write its to files
which it then executes actually opens up whole new vulnerabilities. For
example: one popular PHP exploit is writing a PHP file, then executing it on
the remote system. Can't write a file? Can't execute the exploit._
You're definitely correct, but there can be two different contexts to execute
PHP; with differing permissions. If I was to rebuild how WordPress does it's
autoupdating, I'd get rid of the god-awful HTTP "cron" crap, and have a proper
PHP CLI that can do the updating, that runs on the server and is never exposed
outside of it, and then WordPress itself, with the core outside the webroot
and the uploads folder with zero executable permissions.
Still not perfect, but it'd be a hell of a lot nicer than how it currently
runs.
~~~
plorkyeran
Replacing the self-updating with an external updater does eliminate the
problems with self-updating, but it's not a viable option for wordpress's
primary deployment target of terrible shared hosting.
------
cothomps
Nice!
As much as Wordpress gets bad pub, there is certainly the open ways in which
security is handled and patches are distributed. Far better in most ways to
commercial CMS (and even some open source) where systems seem to run unpatched
until a system upgrade or a security incident.
~~~
JeremyMorgan
clearly some folks are downvoting because unpopular opinion.
Come on, folks.
~~~
themartorana
Seriously! It's not even civil dissent, most of it is mean grandstanding.
Wordpress is ubiquitous. There are more technically challenged users than
technically inclined. So here are your options - auto updates, or I'm guessing
millions of outdated, incredibly vulnerable sites sitting on shared hosting
boxes out there. I like my Webfaction account, I'd prefer the other tenants on
my server to be as up to date as possible.
Just such unnecessary snark. The guy wrote a blog post. He's being skewered
for it.
------
JeremyMorgan
Ok, I'll be the devil's advocate here. I hate Wordpress, I really do. But
there is a reason it's so successful.
Show me another similar CMS (if that's what you want to call it) that's as
easy to install and use, in any language or platform.
Django and DotNetNuke are the only ones I can think of that come close, and
neither of them are as easy to install and work with as Wordpress. That's why
it's so popular.
Sure most HN visitors are developers working with better stuff and wouldn't be
caught dead using WP but if you're a non developer business person looking for
a quick solution it can't be beat!
We should all be working on an easy to use, yet more secure alternative.
------
cthalupa
People always beat up on software that has security vulnerabilities.
The thing is, the auto update feature is not an affirmative defense for the
criticism. There are probably plenty of legitimate defenses out there -
developing secure software is quite obviously something that is hard to get
right.
But offering auto-updating is only a defense against arguments claiming that
updating WordPress is a pain in the ass, not people claiming that the codebase
has lots of security flaws.
You also can't use other software being garbage as a defense for why some
other piece of software isn't garbage.
You have to evaluate the actual merits of WordPress in regards to the code
quality, chance of being exploited, etc. It updating automatically when
exploits are made public is not the same thing as not being vulnerable to
frequent exploitation, nor are other frameworks failing in some other way
exoneration for any failings WordPress might have.
To be clear: I don't care about WordPress, and do not have a stance on whether
or not it's great or awful. All I know for sure is that it is certainly quite
popular.
But this article is built upon a shaky premise and lots of logical fallacies.
If you want to write about how awesome it is that WordPress auto-updates, then
write about it. Just don't try to use that as a defense for criticism about
other aspects of the codebase.
------
notlisted
I was never a big a fan of WP, but… I agree the ease of updates is an
extremely important feature, especially for non-technical users. I'm working
on a small conversion project migrating content from a Joomla site to
Wordpress. The original site was running on Joomla 1.5 (Support for this
version ended in Sept. 2012!). The upgrade path was too cumbersome so the
clients just "took the risk". It was compromised several times but "cleaned up
as best we could". Needless to say, we're ditching that server.
Still not a fan of WP self-installs, but hosted on WPEgine with smart tech
support, automatic daily snapshots with the option for non-technical people to
back up or revert the whole thing with a single-click is super simple. For
added security and performance we'll be using cloudflare DNS, applied a plugin
to hide any evidence of wordpress use and use just a few well-known and
maintained plugins. Nothing is perfect, but ease of use, ease of upgrades and
ease of maintenance go a loooooong way. It's mighty budget-friendly too.
~~~
edgarvaldes
What plugin are you using to "hide" Wordpress?
~~~
jbeales
It doesn't matter because it won't help much, if at all. The script kiddies
are running scripts that check for known files in several popular CMSs, so
unless the plugin makes major changes to WP's behaviour, WordPress will still
be findable.
~~~
greg5green
Hell, I even had a non-important, BS Rails app get shut down on shared hosting
(Webfaction) because someone tried random WP exploits on it (some plugin that
accepted a POST and could be exploited via the payload). Rack stored the
payload in a temp file and Webfaction saw the tmp file as a new file I didn't
upload and suspended the app.
The first time it happened, I just deleted the file and went forward. The
second time, I just deleted the app. I know I could write a script to deal
with this, but it was just a test, playground type app. All it did was make me
say I needed to move my "blog" off WordPress and stop trying to host Rails
apps on Webfaction.
PS: The domain the Rails app was on had never hosted a WP site ever before. WP
is just so ubiquitous that that they were just trying to hack any site -- even
one that had like 3 organic visitors ever.
------
bovermyer
WordPress's code is badly designed and written in a language that I no longer
believe serves the best interests of the Internet in general.
WordPress as a globally managed app is FANTASTIC. Automattic does a superb job
of keeping on top of just about everything that comes its way. They do great
work over there, and I'm really proud of that whole team.
~~~
coldtea
> _WordPress 's code is badly designed and written in a language that I no
> longer believe serves the best interests of the Internet in general._
It's 2015. This is not your grandparents PHP.
Besides PHP serves the largest website on Earth (Facebook) and a good 20% or
more of the rest (via Wordpres, Drupal et al).
~~~
gnaritas
> Besides PHP serves the largest website on Earth (Facebook) and a good 20% or
> more of the rest (via Wordpres, Drupal et al).
Popular != good. None of those points mean anything, PHP is still a badly
designed language that lacks consistency and makes language designers feel
like puking. It's a collection of hacks more than a language.
~~~
coldtea
> _Popular != good._
That maybe so in pop music and matters of taste.
In the context of software, popular as in powering half of the web means
stable, reliable and battle-tested.
That it doesn't satisfy some ideological purity doesn't mean much.
All languages have crappy parts, especially the more popular ones. C++ has a
pile-on-kitchen-sink design, and yet it powers 90% of the desktop software
world. C has horrible safety mechanism, and it rules in systems programming.
Javascript, the other web darling, I won't even get into that. Java has all
the legacy SDK crap and the needles boilerplate ceremony, and it just got
closures like yesterday.
Sorry, but the world isn't built on Haskell and CL, and even less so in Dylan
or whatever exotic thing you have in mind.
~~~
gnaritas
> In the context of software, popular as in powering half of the web means
> stable, reliable and battle-tested.
No, it doesn't, it merely means popular.
~~~
gnaritas
Additionally, context is never relevant, popular doesn't mean quality in any
context. Something can be both popular and quality, but popularity doesn't
make something quality.
------
BorisMelnik
Let's ask one question: what CMS, CRM, programming language, operating system,
etc doesn't come out with major security flaws every once in a while?
All of them, even OpenBSD. Software has bugs, and security flaws. It is not
how buggy they are, but how well we patch them from a larger scale and that,
WordPress does extremely well.
~~~
krapp
One of the biggest strengths of Wordpress is also a fatal flaw - the
flexibility of its plugin system, and how easy it makes finding and installing
plugins and themes. Each is its own self-contained web application that runs
with the same permissions as the application itself.
Yes, this applies to any open source application, but given how huge
Wordpress' plugin landscape is, it's a big problem even if you assume the core
application itself is secure (for the sake of argument.) Almost nobody pores
over every line of code in every plugin before they install it (much less each
update) - at best they just check to see if it has a high rating.
------
ac29
The article and many commenters miss a critical flaw: wordpress only auto-
updates minor releases. 4.1.0 will be updated to 4.1.x, but not 4.2.x or
beyond.
I built a WP site about 6 months ago on 4.0.x (current at the time), since
then it has required 2 manual updates to get to 4.2.x.
As many others have noted, plugins are a bigger problem. They often break on
new major releases and update less frequently. There is a lot good about
wordpress, but the update cycle and security problems are a huge maintenance
issue.
------
Nyr
What's up with this nag? [https://i.nyr.es/Captura-de-
pantalla-2015-05-15-a-las-3.07.3...](https://i.nyr.es/Captura-de-
pantalla-2015-05-15-a-las-3.07.37-CQGEkbBxnP.png)
Your site is a simple WordPress blog, I'm sure you can perfectly host it for
$1/month.
~~~
themartorana
Seems unnecessarily snarky, unless I should have read some implied smilie
emoticon...
~~~
mahouse
Not snarky at all. That popup was an unnecessary annoyance.
~~~
themartorana
I feel like there's something about a mousetrap and a mouse here.
------
jqm
Updating plugins often breaks things. For instance, I updated our AD plugin
for a company blog a few days ago and no one could log in. I had to do some
research and eventually the plugin was rolled back from backup.
Can't wait to see what auto update breaks.
Not a fan of Wordpress. It's a lot more work than it's worth.
------
mahouse
So your point is that it does not matter that WordPress is a huge mess as long
as it updates automatically?
~~~
Mojah
No, my point is that not everything that WordPress does is _evil_.
Its auto-updates protect a very large part of internet-facing websites of
getting hacked. And it's not something a lot of other CMS's have integrated.
~~~
falcolas
Self updating requires overwriting its own files (or access to your FTP
credentials). Enabling this goes against almost every website/server hardening
guidebook out there.
It also requires allowing loopback HTTP requests in response to every incoming
request to implement a pseudo cron system.
There's a good reason most other CMSes don't implement automatic updating.
~~~
mst
If an attacker has code execution, I've already lost. Whether they have to
inject it every time or can write it to the filesystem isn't really the point.
The current system is better than no automatic updates.
One that uses a separate user that has write access would be superior, but
many users don't actually _have_ a separate user to cron that job as.
~~~
toast0
If the webserver can write to the web root, that means an vulnerability that
allows arbitrary writing can be escalated to code injection.
In a same environment, the web user wouldn't be able to write to the file
system at all, much less the web root.
Sanity being rate doesn't really justify only offering auto updates to the
insane.
~~~
mst
They created something that makes the most common sort of deployment more
secure.
This is a net improvement and therefore entirely justified.
~~~
falcolas
> This is a net improvement and therefore entirely justified.
The first does not imply the second. "Our bank is secure because we change out
the locks every few days. To facilitate this, all of the locks have their
screws on the outside - it was too much work to have someone around to open
the doors for the locksmiths all the time."
Interested in hearing how many recent vulnerabilities in WordPress were
prevented by not allowing arbitrary writes, whitelisting URLs, and blocking a
whole mess of WordPress set headers?
All of them which have occurred in the last year. We've kept up-to-date with
our updates, but every security vulnerability which has triggered a major or
minor update was prevented not by WordPress updates, but by sensible system
security.
~~~
dfcowell
I don't think anyone is suggesting that you should compromise your security to
enable auto-updating. Automatic updates are never better than correct file
permissions.
The point here is that a large number of WordPress sites _are_ running with
file permissions such that the web server can write to the web root.
By trying to auto update, those sites with poor file permissions get a minor
security benefit (shorter time between patch release and patch application)
while all of the installations running with safe file permissions are entirely
unaffected.
There's no downside to a secure site having the automatic update code. There's
a small upside to an insecure site having it.
------
wodenokoto
So what happened to Wordpress? Their slogan used to be "Code is poetry" and
today they are the punchline of every bad code anecdote told.
~~~
fsk
The only projects that nobody ridicules are the ones that nobody uses.
------
DigitalSea
I think Wordpress gets a lot of unfair blame. I often see the size of its
code-base touted as one of the reasons to avoid its use. It seems the general
consensus amongst a lot of developers out there is that Wordpress isn't OOP.
Seriously when was the last time someone building a Wordpress website had to
do anything outside of the wp-content folder? I have been working with it for
like 8 years now. I used it before it even had half the CMS features that it
has now. Making Wordpress completely OOP isn't going to make it any better
than it already is, nor will it make more people visit your website or make
you breakfast in the morning.
I don't care if the Wordpress code-base is a mixture of procedural and object-
oriented PHP code, I use the hooks/actions system to change things, I never
have a need to go into the wp-includes folder unless I am trying to work out
how a new feature works that isn't fully documented (which is extremely rare).
I also see people calling PHP a bad language because of the way Wordpress was
built on-top of it, like some can't make the distinction between the language
and the prolific CMS built on-top of it.
When a Wordpress website gets hacked, you know who should also shoulder the
blame? The developer that set it up and or the server admin that setup the
server. If you're setting up Wordpress on a server that doesn't have the
appropriate folder permissions set, the wp-config file moved back one level
from root (and thus not publicly accessible), you're using the default "wp_"
database table prefix and you use FTP to move files to and from the server
because setting up SSH access intimidates you, then it is your fault as well.
A properly secured Wordpress installation is very difficult to attack. Sure it
doesn't protect you from all attack vectors, but it goes a long way. Making
sure your username in Wordpress isn't admin always goes a long way. On all
Wordpress sites that I monitor I see numerous brute force scripts being run
trying to guess the password for a user named "admin" jokes on them, no such
user even exists, so they just instantly IP banned (which is annoying because
some seem to cycle through thousands of IP addresses). Running an old version
of Wordpress and you get attacked, is it Wordpress' fault or your own?
People love to bash Wordpress, but you want to know the harsh reality? There
is no better alternative (trust me, I tried looking once, I legitimately spent
weeks trying alternatives and found nothing better). Wordpress is the number
#1 CMS because it is the best, regardless of its code-base, nothing else
compares. Some people will try telling you to use Drupal, but they generally
don't know what they are on about. "Oh, don't use Wordpress it gets hacked all
of the time" \- no, it doesn't. Your lack of technical competency is the
reason you get hacked all of the time. A bad workman blames his tools.
My personal blog gets 3k hits per day, I see numerous attempts to hack my site
and in the 5 years I have been running Wordpress on my personal blog alone, I
have never been successfully hacked once. Because I don't just set Wordpress
up using the default settings, I use strong passwords, I use unique usernames,
I lock file and folder permissions, I move credentials out of the root
directory.
Wordpress is slightly cursed in that it has a low learning curve, it makes it
incredibly easy for just about anyone to setup their own self-hosted Wordpress
installation. While exploits are not the users fault, a lot of the most common
hacks you see on Wordpress were in part due to the fact the user kept a
default setting or set something up incorrectly.
The auto update functionality is great in Wordpress, I don't think this
feature alone is a big selling point for the CMS. The auto-update
functionality in Wordpress doesn't always work, but it is better than nothing.
As the author points out, particular Drupal and Magento are both so
complicated (even though they have clean code-bases) that they make it
difficult to perform updates or do basic tasks people take for granted in
Wordpress.
Compared to the number of times I have been infected with malware and viruses
over the years as a Windows user (many times due to my own fault), Wordpress
does not even register on the Richter scale of insecurity and annoyance in
comparison.
Lets start taking responsibility for our own actions, developers. We can't
blame PHP and Wordpress for all security issues. Somewhere along the line you
need to make some effort and not assume a CMS or framework has your best
interests at heart or has covered every possible angle.
------
stephentmcm
Yawn. More excuses for using a big old pile of spaghetti code with no testing
or dependency management. Auto-updates? big deal, any decent framework can
roll out updates on composer.
~~~
Mojah
Yet here we are; \- Drupal 7: manual updates, or funky drush commands \-
Magento: requires running shell scripts (!!) to patch at the CLI \- Joomla: no
auto updates \- Typo 3: no auto updates \- ...
Composer helps, but it helps developers. It does not help the average user
that has no clue on how to apply those patches.
People download a CMS from the internet, throw it on a cheap host and expect
it to work. Updates? What are those?
~~~
stephentmcm
And that's the problem they shouldn't be doing that. Hosting a website is not
a fun weekend project you get from Target/Walmart as a DIY kit.
People wouldn't be happy if I started building my own car to just drive around
where ever I felt like, making it 'easy' and 'safe' to just throw up a website
anywhere is an excellent way to get hacked.
~~~
coldtea
> _Hosting a website is not a fun weekend project you get from Target /Walmart
> as a DIY kit._
Why? It's not like most websites are mission critical.
Heck, even if a major business website went down for a couple of days, it
wouldn't be that much damage anyway compared to other things that can and
regularly do happen to the supply chain or market...
> _making it 'easy' and 'safe' to just throw up a website anywhere is an
> excellent way to get hacked_
Yeah, and so? Getting hacked is the end of the world?
~~~
stephentmcm
For Mummy-blogger's site about how awesome her kid is? Probably not the end of
the world, expect that now her site is sending spam and hosting malware. You'd
be pissed if your neighbour left their house unlocked while they went on
holiday and it turned into a crack-den.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wikipedia editors, locked in battle with PR firm, delete 250 accounts - Jtsummers
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/wikipedia-editors-locked-in-battle-with-pr-firm-delete-250-accounts/
======
raganwald
This should be fixed the old-fashioned way: By cutting off teh flow of money
at the source. When clients are caught directly or indirectly using sock-
puppetry and astroturfing on Wikipedia, banners should be added to the
affected pages naming and shaming the clients.
"This page has been locked by Wikipedia in response to deceptive practices
paid for by Engulf and Devour to circumvent our community standards and
mislead readers."
If you want this to stop, you have to give the clients a disincentive. That
will drive the good clients out and these firms will be left with erectile
dysfunction flim-flam as their market.
~~~
mjn
Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the
same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that
happened, cited to third-party sources. For example here's one [1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Meehan#Wikipedia_editing)
It's not supposed to be retaliation, though, so there's sometimes pushback
from Wikipedians somewhat self-consciously worried that mentioning the
Wikipedia controversy in the Wikipedia article is biasing towards too-meta an
article. Ideally it should only be included if, in some hypothetical universe,
a similar controversy not about Wikipedia (e.g. about Britannica payola) would
also merit coverage in Wikipedia. But that hypothetical is sometimes difficult
to answer.
[1] More or less randomly selected from
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies)
~~~
btilly
_Occasionally it does make its way back into their article, but ideally in the
same way anything else does: as a factual description of something that
happened, cited to third-party sources._
That one gets fun.
I occasionally look at my sisters' Wikipedia pages and laugh at the mistakes
which I know about, which I can't fix because what is already there cites
third party sources which were wrong, and I don't know of third party sources
that have correct information.
If I really cared I could get it fixed. (Just ask my sisters to make an
unambiguous statement somewhere that I can quote.) But in the meantime I get a
chuckle out of things like Wikipedia thinking that I don't exist...
~~~
chris_wot
Who is your sister?
~~~
snowwrestler
From the name I would guess Jen and Meg Tilly.
~~~
btilly
That would not be an inaccurate guess.
Other useless trivia is that our grandfather is the T in
[http://www.cmtengr.com/](http://www.cmtengr.com/).
~~~
snowwrestler
Smart family.
I think it's hilarious that Wikipedia could get something as simple as the
number of siblings wrong.
------
parennoob
Their list of services [https://www.wiki-pr.com/services/](https://www.wiki-
pr.com/services/) looks like a corporate shill's sick mockery of Wikipedia's
community standards.
I hope every single one of their spurious sockpuppet accounts get deleted.
~~~
pvnick
In addition, here is their leadership team ([https://www.wiki-
pr.com/leadership/](https://www.wiki-pr.com/leadership/)):
"DARIUS FISHER
Co-Founder, Chief Operations Officer
Darius co-founded Wiki-PR in 2010 after working alongside a crisis
communication consultant in San Francisco. As the crisis unfolded, Darius'
clients got libeled online. Darius recognized the importance of presenting his
clients fairly, accurately, and professionally on Wikipedia. He has since
built Wiki-PR into the largest Wikipedia public relations firm. Darius
graduated with a degree in Economics from Vanderbilt University.
JORDAN FRENCH
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Jordan leads Wiki-PR from its headquarters in Austin, Texas. He heads Wiki-
PR's Page Management and Crisis Editing teams. Jordan is formerly an attorney
and an engineer. Jordan is licensed to practice law in New York and
Massachusetts. He earned his law degree from Washington University in St.
Louis and his engineering degree from Vanderbilt.
STEVE NEIL
Chief Financial Officer
Prior to joining Wiki-PR, Steve served as the CFO of Diamond Foods, maker of
Kettle Brand potato chips and Pop Secret popcorn. Steve has over 30 years
experience managing operations, logistics, and finances for publicly traded
companies. Steve acquired his bachelors degree from UC Santa Barbara and his
MBA from UCLA.
ADAM MASONBRINK
Vice President of Sales
Adam manages sales and business development from Wiki-PR's office in San
Francisco, California. Prior to working with Wiki-PR, Adam held senior sales
roles at Google, Intuit, and several Bay Area startups. Adam graduated from
University of Kansas with a degree in business communications and
entrepreneurship."
Hopefully this kind of blatantly unethical behavior follows them around a bit.
I don't wish the end of a career upon anybody, but maybe a few doors end up
closing for some of these folks that would have otherwise been open.
~~~
Nicholas_C
The 50+ year old CFO looks strangely out of place next to the 20/30 something
founders.
~~~
matthewmacleod
That's a bit sketchy - I'd posit that experience is especially important for a
CFO role. Too often are interesting ideas brought down by bad financial
management.
------
tokenadult
I hope, as a Wikipedian since April 2010, that this is the beginning of a
thorough change of culture on Wikipedia in the interest of making Wikipedia
more of a genuine free online encyclopedia[1] and less of a publicity platform
for everyone who doesn't want to pay honest cash money for a paid
advertisement. There is currently a proposal discussed among Wikipedians for a
tighter policy against paid editing,[2] and as long as the new policy,
whatever it ends up being, makes for less promotional content on Wikipedia,
I'm all for it.
People who want to help Wikipedia improve as unpaid volunteers have a number
of channels for doing that. One thing that would help Wikipedia's goal of
better content quality[3] is adding more reliable sources to articles. I try
to help that process by compiling source lists in user space that any
Wikipedian can use for updating articles.[4] It's a long slog to fight the rot
on Wikipedia. Reading Wikipedia takes a sharp eye for propaganda and
advertising in disguise.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_encyclopedia)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Paid_editing_po...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Paid_editing_policy_proposal)
[3]
[https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_...](https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Improve_Content_Quality)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Accuracy_of_content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Accuracy_of_content)
[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations)
~~~
snowwrestler
I hope that Wikipedia's culture someday acknowledges that money is not the
only corrupting influence in a society.
Some of the most egregious examples of biased editing I've seen on Wikipedia
were almost certainly not paid for; they were the result of deeply held
personal beliefs about politics and religion.
Inaccurate or blatantly false edits of this type are easy to get into
Wikipedia articles because politics and religion have thousands of highly
biased third party "news" sources, so almost any ridiculous claim can be
supported with a citation.
------
CJefferson
I would be extremely surprised if (quoting from article) it is only "as many
as several hundred" accounts are being used by people paid to edit Wikipedia.
I know at least a dozen people who have a wikipedia account just to edit
articles to make where they work look good (I suppose it is not their full
time job, but it is the only reason they edit wikipedia).
~~~
jff
Is it unethical for, say, a company's "media guy" to update Wikipedia if his
company releases a major new project? "On October 1, 2013, Initech released
version 2.0 of its flagship product IniIDE Pro(tm)" I think there's a line to
draw between adding some pertinent information to keep the page from being
outdated, vs. fighting to keep all negative information off the page.
~~~
dm2
It's fine to add information.
It's not ok to remove negative information.
What about listing a company under the product or category page or placing
subtle advertisements on the page? An example would be Nest adding links to
their wikipedia to the Thermostat wikipedia page. Is that ethical? Is it
legal? Is it against wikipedias Terms of Use?
~~~
DanBC
> It's not ok to remove negative information.
Why? The BLP stuff has been clear and firm for years: Anything that is
unsourced should be removed quickly, especially if it's BLP.
Obviously, removal of suitably sourced material is a problem so I agree there.
------
jedanbik
Couldn't help but laugh when I saw the Wiki-PR affiliates page:
[https://www.wiki-pr.com/affiliates/](https://www.wiki-pr.com/affiliates/)
OUR AFFILIATES MAKE BIG MONEY.
<...>
Just leave us your name.
------
Nicholas_C
>"I'm much more worried about what happens when an unethical outfit manages to
start getting major clients and start controlling articles that our average
reader assumes are not written by corporate flaks."
Or worse, if Wikipedia's trustworthiness is tarnished beyond repair. I
remember when I was in high school 5 or 6 years back Wikipedia was kind of
seen as a joke by my peers. Now it's taken as near fact. Although I think
skepticism of anything read on the Internet or elsewhere is healthy, I would
hate to see it revert to the first state because of greedy "PR" firms.
~~~
mjn
A hope that's admittedly probably wildly optimistic is that Wikipedia could
help people get better at critically evaluating sources, since everyone knows
you are not "supposed" to take it completely uncritically on the basis of the
publisher's authority. If you get some familiarity with it gets reasonably
easy to spot which articles have something strange about them. Sometimes it's
the writing style, sometimes the tone that clearly sounds like advocacy or PR
copy rather than encyclopedia copy, sometimes the absence of or particular
choice of references, etc. I tend to also start with strong prior skepticism
depending on the area, e.g. articles on present-day companies, but not ones
big enough to attract a lot of real editors (unlike Google, Microsoft, etc.,
which do) are inherently suspect for paid editing, while articles on
mathematics, whatever other problems they might have, typically don't ring my
"might be a PR shill" warning bell.
Can be useful even outside of Wikipedia! Distinguishing between trade-
nonfiction books honestly trying to cover a subject, versus trade-nonfiction
books that are thinly veiled ads for a piece of technology (or the author's
management/diet/etc. consulting gig), has some similarities.
~~~
eru
Articles on math and physics might just be plain wrong, though. (Especially
the `entropy' article, since every armchair physicist wants to contribute.)
------
swalling
Related post previously on the front page:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6580333)
------
sbov
Depending upon how far the PR firm goes to circumvent their block, couldn't
they be brought up on hacking charges? Could the companies that hire them be
found culpable too?
~~~
rhizome
_couldn 't they be brought up on hacking charges_
Which ones?
~~~
DanBC
They've been told not to edit wikipedia. They're continuing to edit wikipedia.
That seems pretty clearly like accessing a computer system without the owner's
permission, which feels like it should be a standard bit of law.
~~~
rhizome
"Seems," and, "feels," are not enough.
~~~
DanBC
I'd be interested to hear what US lawyers would say, but using a computer
without permission is pretty much the definition used worldwide in hacking
laws.
[http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-
informat...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-
technology/computer-hacking-and-unauthorized-access-laws.aspx)
> _Hacking is breaking into computer systems, frequently with intentions to
> alter or modify existing settings. Sometimes malicious in nature, these
> break-ins may cause damage or disruption to computer systems or networks.
> People with malevolent intent are often referred to as "crackers"\--as in
> "cracking" into computers._
> _" Unauthorized access" entails approaching, trespassing within,
> communicating with, storing data in, retrieving data from, or otherwise
> intercepting and changing computer resources without consent. These laws
> relate to either or both, or any other actions that interfere with
> computers, systems, programs or networks._
~~~
potatolicious
What's "using a computer" though? The trouble with hacking laws as they stand
currently is that they are written so broadly that innocuous uses are
technically illegal, but where no one prosecutes.
I for one don't want to live in a world where everything is illegal - this
hands power to the executive and has been a major source of abuse both past
and present.
Say I tell you "DanBC, you're a jerk, you can't access my website anymore".
What happens if you visit my website? Are you "using a computer without
permission", assuming I own the server?
What is the level of interaction necessary in order for a user to graduate
from legally clear to "throw the book at the hacker"?
~~~
tomflack
While I appreciate what you're trying to say, it seems obvious that "viewing"
and "editing the content of" a website are quite different concepts. If you've
been told to no longer edit the content of my website and you continue to do
so, it would be hard to argue against a charge of unauthorized access.
------
DanBC
These paid editing services are obviously lousy and harmful to Wikipedia and
it's great that they've gone.
How well did average wikipedians deal with the editors and their clients? Was
anyone turned into a useful editor? Or were more people left frustrated and
baffled by the WP process?
------
rrrene
The main problem here seems to be: Why must every company on earth have its
own Wikipedia page?
That said, I can see why e.g. Microsoft, the East India Trading Company and
BMW should be recognized in an encyclopedia. And there are examples of
products (lines) that could/should be mentioned in a vast online encyclopedia
as well (e.g. Windows, BMW 3 series) because they influenced
industries/trends/zeitgeist and/or lifes.
But why, for the love of god, should every consultancy, contractor, forrester
and his second cousin have an entry on this site?
EDIT: typo
~~~
logn
Because wikipedia long ago decided that 'notable' had a fairly low bar.
There's really no going back now and personally I very much like the abundance
of articles, even on relatively minor people/companies/events. The
storage/serving costs for these articles is negligible, but the value to our
society (and maybe especially future ones) will be enormous.
~~~
Ras_
Some language versions have higher requirements for notability. It's hard to
set a clear cutoff point for example in sports, entertainment and companies.
When does something become wiki-notable? Everyone has their own admins,
deletion policies and arbitration mechanisms, which have and will influence
content.
Statistics show clearly that some have opted to include as many stubs as
possible via the use of bots (for example Swedish wikipedia). Tens of
thousands almost worthless stubs (like all US townships and communities) could
be machine-added at any time, but most wikis have steered clear of this kind
of doping. German wikipedia is quite the opposite in regards to pictures. They
don't allow any fair use / citation pictures, which leads to de.wiki articles
having considerably less photos than other languages.
------
ChrisNorstrom
Why are we passing this opportunity up?!?!?!
Oh Jesus Christ, common now we're a community of entrepreneurs & hackers,
someone just create a new startup that's wikipedia for people.
PeoplePedia.com is taken but here, but I've got
[http://www.infopag.es](http://www.infopag.es) so it's perfect for something
like InfoPag.es/ChrisNorstrom.
If someone wants to join in reply to this comment. So basically I'm
envisioning a wiki for people. However, there's 2 routes I can go down:
a) Anyone can create a page on a person and anyone can edit and add onto or
delete content from that page. (lots of growth, but lots of potential for
abuse)
b) People must register to create a page on themselves, anyone can edit that
page and add onto or delete content but the registered owner must approve the
edits.
Which sounds better?
~~~
chris_wot
Neither. Both sound like recipes for disaster, and impossible to administer.
In all seriousness, it's taken close to a decade for Wikipedia to develop
policies, guidelines, enforcements and practices to deal with abuses and get
decent information into articles about people.
Anyone who thinks it's easy to allow anyone to edit articles about people
hasn't tried to do it before, or are just plum crazy!
~~~
ChrisNorstrom
You've only further encouraged me. I'll start work on it this weekend.
~~~
chris_wot
Best of luck - the greatest inventions were created by those with blind
optimism :-) interestingly, it's also how they started Wikipedia...
------
malandrew
Since these companies (or at WikiPR) are refunding the money when things don't
work out they should just hire these PR companies directly via friends and
family and watch those accounts that are editing the pages they paid to edit.
Once they catch the people, they ban the accounts, revert the changes and then
demand their refund. It's a basic honeypot.
~~~
GhotiFish
based on experiences by previous clients, they would not refund the money.
------
mung
Thought off the top of my head so it's not developed or thought through, but
wouldn't Wikipedia do well to find a way of somehow connecting itself in with
academia? It might gain better resources to knowledge and people and more
credibility as a result. And make it more difficult to "just get access" to
editing a page.
------
guelo
Why doesn't Wikipedia sue this company and their clients?
------
logicallee
I've always thought Wikipedia is like the true prophecy of Isaac Asimov
(encyclopedia galactica) - but not even old Isaac could have predicted this!!
~~~
dragonwriter
IMO, Wikipedia has more in common with Douglas Adams' _Hitchhiker 's Guide to
the Galaxy_ (the fictional book featured in the series of the same title, not
the work of fiction in which it featured) than Asimov's _Encyclopedia
Galactica_.
~~~
logicallee
My point still applies :) Could you imagine PR companies warring to get their
'native content' into the _Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy_ (the book
featured in the series)? Now _that_ would have been prescient.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Justin Bieber, Venture Capitalist - Lednakashim
http://www.forbes.com/global/2012/0604/celebrity-100-12-justin-bieber-investments-venture-capitalist.html
======
citricsquid
Justin Bieber blows my mind every time I read about him and I really respect
him (mainly because his life is insane and he somehow hasn't screwed it up
yet) but his success is much more his management and Justin Bieber (the brand)
is a story of how good management can make a success.
Just looking at how the entertainment industry works is fascinating, they can
create such incredible brands in so little time. Take the boy band "One
Direction", every single teenager in the first world has heard of them, they
haven't even existed for 2 years and the hype surrounding them is huge, they
were formed artificially. There's also the boy band "The Wanted" (Bieber's
manager Scooter Braun is their manager too) who were also formed artificially,
they're growing as a brand too and there is huge hype surrounding them.
The entertainment industry appears to the outside to be very simple, most
people think that bands start out and make some music and grow in popularity
organically, but that seems to rarely be the case, SOMEONE put every
successful musician where they are and often it's a very strategic thing.
Entertainment is where the money is.
This is the sort of thing the people that want to "disrupt" the music industry
don't understand, they think that artists not getting 100% of their music
sales is a terrible thing, what they don't seem to understand is there's a
reason the music industry takes a big cut. Justin Bieber would not be making 9
figures a year if he'd sold his music on Bandcamp.
~~~
jcampbell1
Off topic, but the whole notion that tech industries "disrupt" other
industries outside of tech is confused.
If we list tech companies that massively disrupted non-tech industries, you
come up with a list like:
* Napster
* Wikipedia
* Craigslist
* AirBnB
If you list companies that didn't disrupt non-tech industries, and created new
value, you come up with a list like:
* Apple
* Microsoft
* Google
* Facebook
* Oracle
* Dropbox
Based on my naive list of companies, disruption of non-tech industries seems
overrated.
~~~
confluence
_You have to be careful with that list._
You need to look not just at the direct products produced (which may not be
disruptive in the classical sense), but also at the positive externalities
that they effect.
Apple made the computer personal when it was founded (or at least that is my
impression). That didn't disrupt too many people, but think of all the
secondary effects. People could learn to program, people could automate
things, they could reduce their reliance on word typesetters, photocopiers,
radios, television, encyclopedias - the list goes on.
Oracle did kill a lot of big government/company paper waste (not that there
isn't any left :), and stuck it into databases, effectively wiping out an
industry and creating the new data warehousing/analysts that we know of today.
Google makes research/discovery democratic - instead of editorial. It allows
people to directly connect with what they want (information/news/stuff),
disintermediating a lot of advertisting channels at a lower cost
(TV/Radio/Newspapers especially).
Microsoft got "a PC on every desk", think of all the secondary effects of that
(networking/internet/app development/programming tool etc.)
_You see my point?_
~~~
jcampbell1
I don't see your point. Your reference to "positive externalities" is the same
as what I meant by "new value".
~~~
confluence
> _If we list tech companies that massively disrupted non-tech industries, you
> come up with a list like:_
It should be Fair to say that the popularization of software, hardware and
search has disrupted quite a few industries via secondary effects - which is
what companies on the second list have done (the ones you list as non-
disruptive).
Google has destroyed the newspaper advertising model. Oracle has destroyed the
big corporate/government back offices (not all). Apple destroyed a great many
jobs (via popularization of PCs -> Lotus Notes/App development).
My point is that they are disruptive companies :).
------
enki
A hip kid investing in things he likes probably has a higher hit-miss ratio
than most VCs... :)
~~~
robryan
Especially when he also has a stack of power to influence the fortunes of
investments that he makes.
------
tlrobinson
Well, that's a step up from 50 Cent's pump and dump schemes:
[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505144_162-36943822/50-cent-
penn...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505144_162-36943822/50-cent-penny-stock-
pump--dump/)
------
pdeuchler
"These deals aren’t equity-for-endorsement trades. Bieber put cash into each
one, and few of the companies have promoted their links to the singer.
Spotify, which is still working to establish itself in the U.S., wouldn’t even
discuss Bieber’s investment."
"Bieber has come a long way in the finance department since I first broached
the subject with him a bit over a year ago. 'I have a business manager,' he
told me at the 2011 Grammys. 'That basically sums up the question.' Today
that’s changed: 'I do calls every week with my business manager and my
lawyer,' he says. 'Each week I’m learning something about my business and what
I need to know for my career.'"
"His eye for technology and trends ultimately determines the go or no-go--and
some of the investments have come through his own contacts--but the guy
actively scouting deals, whether venture capital investments or brand
extensions, has a nickname worthy of a teen idol’s manager: Scott Braun, known
to all as Scooter."
"On the tour Bieber will be showcasing the more grown-up fare of Believe--a
crucial step as he tries to transition from teen idol to adult icon. 'It’s not
really a transition, it’s just opening doors,' he insists. 'I’m trying to make
music that’s a little bit more mature and that can appeal to all ages, and I’m
not trying to lose my younger fans.'"
It sounds like he's essentially paying for glorified advertising and/or making
marketing deals. Hardly "Venture Capital". Looks an awful lot like a puff
piece to me... "teen idol to adult icon"?
~~~
corin_
Given the monetary value of his time you could argue it an investment on its
own, but since he is investing cash I don't see any way this isn't "venture
capital".
~~~
pdeuchler
"all venture capital is private equity"
[http://www.privco.com/knowledge-bank/private-equity-and-
vent...](http://www.privco.com/knowledge-bank/private-equity-and-venture-
capital)
------
DigitalSea
It's a smart move. You're not the darling of the entertainment industry
forever. One day the royalty payments won't be enough to pay the bills, the
next flavour of the month has come along and taken your revenue stream, market
and fans. Justin Bieber is setting himself up for life, venture capitalism is
a good game to get into if you have the cash like Justin to make substantial
investments in big tech startups.
Another high profile celebrity doing smart things with their money is Jessica
Simpson (she hasn't done any venture capital investing... yet but she has
quite a large empire of businesses and investments in the property market).
She buys houses, renovates them and then sells them for a profit, not bad for
someone who is portrayed as an idiot. She has clothing lines, a perfume range
and a whole heap of other pieces of equity.
It always makes me glad to hear celebrities spending their money wisely and at
the same time (even if an investment has been given for an expected return
much like every other investor would expect) people like Justin are helping
the little startup guys get a break and make a difference.
~~~
jonknee
> Justin Bieber is setting himself up for life, venture capitalism is a good
> game to get into if you have the cash like Justin to make substantial
> investments in big tech startups.
Did you miss the part about making $105M in the last 24 months? He's already
set up for many life times.
------
iag
It's very smart for these celebrities to build a brand other than what they're
currently doing. Not many singers can be hip for more a few years, and not
many models can look better when they go past 40. It's good for these people
to build a second career later on so if/when they need to switch, the options
are open.
Props to Ashton Kutcher to leading the way for venture investing. Smart move.
~~~
rhizome
Have either of them been the first investor of something that succeeded yet?
~~~
peteretep
Why do they need to have been the first investor?
~~~
rhizome
It would speak to their personal skills, the difference between "Justin
Bieber, Venture Capitalist," and "Justin Bieber(tm), Venture Capitalist."
Frankly, I think stories like this are PR designed to muddy this exact
distinction. Forbes.com is certainly not above that kind of thing.
------
MortenK
When talks fall on whether or not there is a bubble, a common argument is that
we shouldn't worry until the cab drivers and waitresses start investing. I
wonder if the argument in 10 years will be that we shouldn't worry about
bubbles, until the pop singers and actors start investing.
------
protomyth
The music's world version of VCs is to own your own label and sign new
artists. One of his was sitting at #1 on iTunes, so he seems to get the
concept.
~~~
Axsuul
Props to Usher as well.
------
maeon3
I want to know if he's going to be held responsible for his
punching/assaulting the cameraman with moves he learned from mike tyson.
If this whole situation of him assaulting a cameraman is just swept under the
rug, with his managers insisting that he never do anything like that again. It
will be an indication that news networks can even be bribed to not report on
criminal behavior. I think it's funny the managers are trying to cover up all
the court proceedings as Justin leaving for a while to do some secret
concerts. Galling. I do hope that he fails in life, show me that this world is
indeed a meritocracy after all, and that fortune can purchase fame and success
for a while. As long as you pay dearly to sustain it.
I wish I had Justin Bieber's Managers propping me up in life, I'd be a world
sensation too if that were so.
~~~
eshvk
1\. Do you actually expect his managers not to try to put a positive spin on
it for the media? A celebrity trial is not exactly in the same league as an
everyday misdemeanor case. He has a brand and he should (just like Dropbox or
Path or whatever) be allowed to defend his brand.
2.
" I do hope that he fails in life, show me that this world is indeed a
meritocracy after all, and that fortune can purchase fame and success for a
while. As long as you pay dearly to sustain it. "
This is incredibly harsh. When you say that you "want" him to fail to show you
that the world is "indeed a meritocracy", you are implicitly assuming that
there is an inherent total ordering in which he comes at the bottom and that
this is all that matters. This is a rather flawed assumption for two reasons
1) I am not even sure you can characterize an accurate objective total
ordering for music 2) Even if you did, just like in the CS tech world where
there are people who are incredibly smart but don't sell their products for a
billion dollars, I would argue that musical ability is not really the only
thing that matters when it comes to financial success. This is even more true
for pop where success is determined by the number of people who enjoy the
artist's music (and apparently from Bieber's financial success, it looks like
there is a huge bunch of people who like his product and wish to buy it.)
"I wish I had Justin Bieber's Managers propping me up in life, I'd be a world
sensation too if that were so."
Remember that he wasn't born with these magical "Managers". He also had to get
his break in the wide world before he gets these magical "Managers".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Startup Journey So Far - deepakravindran
http://blog.innoz.in/whats-the-story-on-innoz-glad-youre-curious/
======
deepakravindran
Hi all,do comment on this please :)
------
_bn
Hi,
SMSGYAN Looks like a really cool application. I'm glad to see some innovation
in God's country. However, I have just one recommendation. After reading some
of your team bios, it seems that you guys are also enjoying some of the perks
that come with success (partying, beautiful women, etc) and this is great, but
i've noticed that two of your team members have the same blog theme (the one
with the shirtless guy flexing his back muscles). I would suggest changing
that theme because you come off as a little gay.
All in all, except for that slight suggestion, keep up the good work and keep
innovating!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dtrx: Intelligent archive extraction (2006) - rw
http://brettcsmith.org/2006/x/
======
thristian
There's not a lot of things I miss from Mac OS X since moving to Linux, but
StuffIt Expander's intelligent directory-creation is definitely one of them.
It looks like dtrx is basically the same thing - thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The first great battle of the Internet is over..... - aitoehigie
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/phase-one-of-internet-is-over-and-we.html
======
tstegart
Seriously hilarious fake rant.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Run Chrome Apps on Android and iOS - tosh
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/chrome_apps_on_mobile
======
tosh
Now also with current Intel CrossWalk support:
[http://blog.chromium.org/2014/09/now-with-faster-dev-
workflo...](http://blog.chromium.org/2014/09/now-with-faster-dev-workflow-and-
modern.html)
GitHub Project: [https://github.com/MobileChromeApps/mobile-chrome-
apps](https://github.com/MobileChromeApps/mobile-chrome-apps)
Related StackOverflow answer: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23605751/do-
mobile-chrome...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23605751/do-mobile-
chrome-apps-run-in-chrome)
------
AdmiralAsshat
So does this mean that using a combination of Cordova and the recently-
available ARChon, I could theoretically run an Android app packaged as a
Chrome App running inside Chrome on an Android device?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amateur J.C. Penney Traders Beg Judge to Save Them from Wipeout - bdr
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-13/amateur-j-c-penney-traders-beg-judge-to-save-them-from-wipeout
======
60secz
Caveat emptor. Buy a dead cat on the bounce? Don't complain when it starts to
stink. If debts are greater than assets, there stock is worth $0.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Superbook: Turn your smartphone into a laptop for $99 - rfks
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-laptop-f
======
ysleepy
Well not the first of its kind. Unclear how this one exactly works. Is it
Micro HDMI over the USB-OTG or just a socket over usb and another SoC in the
Flapbook?
EDIT: Ah displaylink, I can see it getting choppy with older phones.
------
dalacv
Wish this existed for iPhone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What tech stack is in demand, and why? - pydox
======
LiamPa
Slightly out of date now but this gives you a good idea of what companies want
(no why though)
[https://blog.whoishiring.io/june-2017-in-
numbers/](https://blog.whoishiring.io/june-2017-in-numbers/)
------
shakna
COBOL and Fortran. Probably with some z/OS as well.
Much of the world's financial systems run on it, replacing it is infeasible,
but the expert's in this area are aging out (and many have retired more than
once). But the tech still needs maintaining, and is difficult to work with.
Fewer and fewer grad students seem interested in learning it, and the
expectation that you'll stay and work on this stack for 20+ years is something
that drives others away.
~~~
raverbashing
These systems will be fixed and then tossed out
Nothing is infeasible to replace, it might be costly, but not infeasible
And of course IBM is happy to get paid millions to keep backward compatibility
on the systems they sell
Nobody wants to invest their time learning a dying platform that is good for
nothing but a dead end job at a bank and won't teach anything usable in any
form of modern system (hope you like wearing a tie for your job as well)
(Fortran is still used, z/OS might be dying down as well but it runs some
modern software)
~~~
Juliate
That's exactly what we were told in 1996 (21 years ago that is) when I entered
my engineering school: to disregard Cobol and Fortran, because, you know, OLD
tech. Won't matter much longer.
If the cost of training peons to make it last and run is less than the cost of
rebuilding it, be it from scratch or piece by piece, it will matter longer
(that's the point of view of insurances, banks and big corps today, and what's
still happening in the IT industry).
~~~
dtech
They might be maintained for a foreseeable time, but if you take a job
maintaining them you've committed your entire career to only do that. That's
not appetizing to young engineers.
------
expertentipp
As for the web development the situation currently stabilized as an oligopoly
between Facebook (React) and Google (Angular). Some projects are trying Vue,
some leftover ones with Backbone, Meteor here and there, but it's overall a
minor share.
~~~
sp527
Share of new projects being spun up in Angular is probably on a serious
decline as well. I don’t see too much future potential there. React will
probably dominate for the immediate future.
~~~
kamac
Why nobody mentions ember? I thought it was the third most popular thing
behind react and angular?
~~~
kenhwang
I think ember will stick around. I even think it'll overtake Angular one day
since it has a better dev/upgrade experience. I don't think it'll ever hit
mass appeal, partially because it's quite a niche cookie cutter and the
frontend world seems to value flexibility above all else.
~~~
pandler
I have high hopes for Glimmer[1] though as something that can compete with
other view libraries and/or frameworks. I'm especially glad that Glimmer
diverges from the Ember brand a bit, because there seems to be a lot of
outdated (mis)conceptions about Ember from older versions.
I personally feel productive with Ember, but the custom object models and
getters and setters for everything are a bit of a turn off, especially after
working on an Angular project recently with typescript support. Mobx, for
instance, seems to be able to accomplish similar things as Ember but without
the custom object model and getters/setters.
[1] For those wondering, Glimmer is Ember's next iteration of view layer and
rendering engine, pulled out into a separate library. It's built from the
ground up (and so isn't subject to backwards compatibility with Ember just
yet), uses typescript, is component based, and it compiles down to op-codes
that are used to update the DOM instead of DOM-diffing.
[http://glimmerjs.com/](http://glimmerjs.com/)
------
discordance
Stackoverflow Insights might help answer your question:
[https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology-
la...](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology-languages-
over-time)
------
synicalx
Honestly not very exciting, and possible region specific to my neck of the
woods (South Australia): Office 365 and Azure.
Every non-tech company, and even some tech companies seem to be moving
whatever they can into Office 365 and Azure. Some are just moving Exchange,
others are moving Sharepoint, and some are just using Azure as an alternative
to running a VM farm on-prem (bit boring really). But MS is marketing this
HARD here and everyone seems to be buying the message.
Plenty of lower-tier 'Infrastructure Admin' type roles going all over the
place, most MSP's are looking for architecture and engineering types as well
in fairly high numbers (I count about 20-30 such roles on Linkedin). A lot of
Dev roles also seem to be angling towards "Experience with Data Lake/App
Service/Some other Azure-ey thing is preferred".
------
pgsandstrom
Living in Sweden, it seems to be to be Java and .NET that keeps the world
running. React might be the most popular frontend library though.
~~~
expertentipp
... and Java (i.e. TypeScript) in the front end, until someone realizes that
Java is nothing like JavaScript... now we have to hire some front end w* * *
*s and throw the pile of TS at them.
------
EnderMB
In the .NET universe, demand seems to continue to grow in the UK, especially
in the CMS landscape.
However, demand for lower-paying jobs using open-source CMS's like Umbraco
seems to be rising, whereas the rates for contractors are rising for the
enterprise level choices like Sitecore.
I mention contractor rates because in Bristol companies are struggling to keep
experience in full-time development. For Umbraco, we're seeing the space grow
with more full-time people, whereas if you're a developer that can work with
Sitecore you can earn a LOT more by moving into contracting. Developers are
going from £40-50k roles into £550-600 a day roles as contractors, earning
over double what they were before. It's also lucrative for recruiters, as they
get a percentage of a bigger overall salary.
Sure, it's fairly niche, and it's as unglamorous as it gets, but the work is
there if you know this proprietary CMS as it is widely used by a number of
large businesses based on its marketing platforms.
------
zaarn
Looking at the local newspaper, C# Client Applications, C++/Java Business
Applications and PHP+MySQL Websites with a few Node.js Jobs sprinkled in.
Some lonely ads are also asking for Ruby or Python.
~~~
toyg
Do people still look up jobs in newspapers? I thought those ads were just
legally-mandated foils to prove companies had looked for local people before
importing cheaper foreign talent.
~~~
zaarn
I do and they may be foils, I'm not sure on that, but if you send in your
application it's unlikely to get handled differently. It's a job ad.
------
sabalaba
TensorFlow, Linear Algebra, Calculus and Probability are in high demand right
now. They’re the building blocks for Machine Learning.
~~~
SimonPStevens
I'd question this. These things might be trending in mind share. And companies
looking to hire people with these skills might have somewhat of a shortage.
But I'm not sure they are actually in high demand.
It's easy to forget on HN that 90% of tech jobs are in 'dull' bread and butter
languages used in enterprises, and nothing to do with the latest trends.
I think the stack overflow jobs stats linked elsewhere in this thread says it
all... Java, JavaScript, Python are the most in demand languages right now.
Tensorflow doesn't even show up on their list of popular tools.
~~~
collyw
SQL has been up there for the last 20 years. I doubt its going away any time
soon either.
------
ojhughes
Kubernetes, not a stack per say but increasingly important and worth
understanding.
------
mycat
Verilog and VHDL, and related software suite; Quartus, ISE, Vivado, etc.
------
kyriakos
PHP, believe it or not there's huge demand
------
rkwasny
This awesome new framework called PlainJS :)
Really efficient some say :)
~~~
gotofritz
Absolutely not - very hard to get hired in any senior capability if that's all
you know
------
arca_vorago
Bash and sql, because it's what really keeps things running, despite constant
claims by hipster-hackers about how you should be using something else.
Real IDE usage (vim/emacs).
~~~
icebraining
Bash may keep things running, but how many developers need to know it? In my
limited experience, maybe 10%, and even they barely use it. It's just for
writing some bits of the infrastructure, which is then calcified for years.
~~~
pandler
I'm always really impressed when I check out the source of a bash program that
I use, and part of me wishes I could be at that level, but really I'm more
likely to use python for any non-trivial cli scripting. It's more that
sufficient for everything I've had to do so far, and python skills have much
wider applications beyond just scripting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China Exploits Fleet of U.S. Satellites - nwrk
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-exploits-fleet-of-u-s-satellites-to-strengthen-police-and-military-power/ar-BBWdrFk
======
boomboomsubban
This story can be summed up by "China buys satellite internet connection, and
also has a terrible human rights record." Nothing shows any real connection
between the two, and the one-sided attack is rather ridiculous. The US
military helped develop this technology exactly for this purpose, and is
actively using it to kill people across the world. On top of that, the main
satellite they mention was sold to Pakistan a year ago, which seems worth
mention if ethical concerns are the issue.
~~~
blueboo
Some of your frustration reflects how the use of "exploits" in the headline
is, for lack of a better word, problematic. In the tech news context,
"exploit" has the connotation (if not denotation) of a hack or bug being used
in an unintended way.
In this case, the word "leverage" would be more appropriate.
~~~
boomboomsubban
Though I see your point, "exploit" is a better choice as the entire point of
the article is to say China is unethical.
------
peteretep
If I was America I think I’d want my rivals to be relying on technology
provided by people I can bully into turning it off when needed
~~~
fxfan
That doesn't work.
India relied on GPS and Clinton turned off (regrettably IMHO) India's access
to high precision data in the 2000 Indo-Pak war.
India went on to build their own.
EDIT: Year was probably 1999, not sure.
~~~
bigiain
I remember talking to a sailor in the BOC Solo Round The World race in late
1990. They all knew and talked over radio to each other about "something going
on" in Late July and early August - when their GPSs started reporting much
more accurate CEP numbers, which allowed them to much more accurately detect
the ocean currents they were sailing in and position themselves most favorably
in them.
Because selective availability had been switched off.
They might have been the first civilians to be aware of Gulf War 1...
~~~
Arnt
The same thing happened north of Lofoten, in Norway. The fishermen noticed at
once that their GPS waypoints were much more precise than on the day before.
------
factsaresacred
> _U.S. officials and industry players have said the profits American
> satellite exports generated could be reinvested in development to keep the
> U.S ahead._
Lease out our competitive advantage and use the revenue to build more
competitive advantage!
Profit maximization and national security have conflicting incentives.
~~~
DuskStar
Because I'm sure there are no national security benefits from having your
rival route their communications over your infrastructure in such a way that
you can cripple them in a conflict.
~~~
factsaresacred
> _Boeing said it...was neither possible nor required by law to monitor each
> bandwidth user after a satellite it built is in space._
Except it's their infrastructure now.
~~~
halter73
If they don't own or control the satellite, it's not really their
infrastructure when push comes to shove. China might have contracts
guaranteeing bandwidth, but I doubt that matters much in an armed conflict.
~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Nothing would matter much in an armed conflict between the US and China.
~~~
halter73
Armed conflict doesn't necessarily mean all out war.
------
jaimex2
Welp. There goes Boeing's government contracts.
Space X will be celebrating this one.
------
djohnston
if by "exploit" you mean "rent capacity" then i guess... who is approving this
drivel?
------
factsaresacred
Non-paywall version: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-exploits-
fleet-of...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-exploits-fleet-of-u-s-
satellites-to-strengthen-police-and-military-power/ar-BBWdrFk)
------
azinman2
Anyone with a WSJ account care to summarize the paywall’d article?
~~~
shpx
On HN, underneath the link there's a list of other links. This thing:
43 points by nwrk 2 hours ago | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | 7
comments
Click on the one that says "web" then click on the WSJ url in the search
results and you should get the full article.
~~~
azinman2
Paywall still exists for me even with that route. My understanding was WSJ
changed their policy there.
~~~
mrb
Bypassing the paywall on desktop worked for me using mobile view:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703810)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
iPhone 7/7+ Phone Case with Built in Secure AirPod Storage - kalyxdesigns
http://www.kalyxdesigns.com
======
8draco8
This is seriously ugly design. It adds bulkiness to the phone, removes Earpods
charging (which the official case does), removes automatic pairing after
opening the case, and it just looks ridicules. I don't know whats wrong about
carrying around iPhone and Earpods in a case.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The HN Digest trial - juliancorlet
http://hndigest.wordpress.com/
======
brianchu
It isn't the article that I usually spend the most time reading. It's in the
comments where most of HN's learning value lies, and thus where most of my
time is spent. If the summaries included an outline of the
opinions/takeaways/great resources mentioned in the comments, that would make
the product that much more worthwhile.
I also tend to hoard links. If there's a great thread on Haskell, for example,
I'll bookmark it (save it to Pocket), with the intention of going back to the
thread if/when in the future I decide to learn Haskell.
Ultimately, though, the problem is that whether or not I pay for this depends
on whether this tool actually weans me off HN. If the summaries are so high
quality as to get me off HN (except to post comments myself), I would pay $50
a month for this. If I still find myself reading threads by myself on HN, I
wouldn't pay anything.
~~~
juliancorlet
A couple of excellent points there! You're right, so much of the value is in
the comments. I guess it comes down to scale. There is a minimum threshold
required to justify producing the summaries. The more subs, the more features
can be justified.
To your point on hoarding links, a comment came through from the form that
they would like to see tagging functionality. I wonder if there's something
there?
------
alexvr
I love the idea, but I don't know why your poll didn't include a $0 option.
Personally, I would prefer to simply "be interested" in an ad or two on your
site every once in a while if I enjoy the service. I think you need to show
people that your digested articles are worth >= $3 per month before you start
charging. Get some dedicated readers who really value the service by doing it
for free/with ads at first, then change to a subscription-based service. Maybe
even offer a short "early adopter" program where those who sign up early can
read for free after you start charging. Just my opinion.
~~~
juliancorlet
Hi Alex, I think a free option would be a great idea for a summary service
with a larger market, I just don't know if the HN audience could sustain it.
If I get a ton of responses who are just curious but not many willing to pay I
will come back to that as a concept.
On gauging the quality of the service, I've included a sample digest on the
site which I hope helps. However I take your point. People may well want to
see that the level of quality is sustained.
------
dy
If this service interests you, you can also subscribe for free to my Hacker
News daily summary at [http://hnsummaries.com/](http://hnsummaries.com/)
(the summaries are automatically generated)
------
samjc
What's the difference between this service and the Hacker Newsletter I already
get for free?
[http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/)
edit: "free" in the sense that I do not pay anything. However, there usually
is a sponsored ad (obviously geared towards the HN community) with the weekly
email.
~~~
juliancorlet
Hi Sam, Hacker Newsletter provides a list of the most popular links, whereas
HN Digest summarises those posts. The idea being, you might want to get the
gist of an article without reading the whole thing. I'm pretty sure Hacker
Newsletter has been around for quite a while, so it's interesting that they
have been able to make the free model work.
~~~
samjc
Are all these summaries going to be hand-written? Who will be writing them,
how many people would you have on backup in case you can't write the summaries
for that day? -- Since, you know, people would be paying for the service.
With the Hacker Newsletter, if I don't get it sometimes, I don't really care,
since it's free. However, if I were paying for a service I might feel
different about it.
I wouldn't mind trying it, but I don't think I'd pay for it. But, who knows,
others might! Good luck to you.
~~~
samjc
Here's an Idea: See how many people show interest in paying for it, and how
many do not want to pay for it. If it's worth it, let the people not wanting
to pay for it summarize it for "free" access to your service, now you don't
have to write the summaries, you just approve others' summaries.
Just an idea, also sounds like a fun project :)
~~~
juliancorlet
Awesome, awesome idea. Love it! Maybe they get a bio link out of it or
similar.
~~~
samjc
Maybe if a user writes 5-10 summaries in a month, and his summary gets picked,
he/she get's access for free the next month. Can't wait to see what you do now
:D
------
jayro
I would love to see this fly. I can't count the number of 1000+ word articles
I've read that could have been reasonably summarized in a paragraph or two.
Sure, there are long articles that are so engrossing or relevant that you
wouldn't want to skip a sentence, but in my experience they turn out to be the
rare exception.
~~~
juliancorlet
Thanks Jayro, five people have expressed interest in the few minutes this post
has been up, so fingers crossed!
------
juliancorlet
For Techzing (techzinglive.com) fans, this idea came out of Jason and Justin
debating the merits of a 'TL;DR for Hacker News' service on a recent podcast.
I figured it would be simple enough to test, hence, HN Digest.
------
vimhacking
I have a small app which provides you daily archive of HN
[http://ankushhn.herokuapp.com/days?date=20130501](http://ankushhn.herokuapp.com/days?date=20130501)
------
hayksaakian
instead of asking people what they would pay, just ask them to pay.
asking people what they would pay is so weak in the age of the internet and
stripe.
------
eranation
If this manages to summarize well, including explanation of complex long
technical articles, and top comments - SUATMM
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing The Simple iPhone App - Q6T46nT668w6i3m
https://www.simple.com/blog/Simple/announcing-the-simple-iphone-app/
======
ubercore
I WANT SIMPLE SO BAD.
Sorry, I don't mean to add noise to the conversation, but I haven't
anticipated a product like this for quite awhile. I've also been really
impressed with how responsive they are with sometimes demanding requests for
account ETAs, etc. Bodes well for their future customer service.
~~~
christiangenco
Every time I see a blog post from Simple I literally salivate. I've been on
the waiting list since February 8th and all I got was this lousy "Thank you
for signing up" email. TAKE MY MONEY ALREADY
~~~
ubercore
TAKE MY MONEY AND HELP ME SPEND IT EFFECTIVELY WHILE SAVING FOR FUTURE GOALS
WITH YOUR IMMACULATE INTERFACE!
------
ecaroth
Looks awesome... can't wait to try it! Been on the wait list for what feels
like (and probably has been) 1.5 years though... Plans/ETA for android
version?
~~~
BallinBige
to be completely honest - I am sitll confused what Simple does differently
than Mint.com
also - have been on the waiting list forever...
~~~
rickyc091
Simple is like an online banking account where as Mint requires you to have an
existing bank or credit card account. Mint just helps you to visual and
consolidate all your accounts into one easy to access area.
~~~
BallinBige
Simple requires you to have an existing bank or credit card account too,
right??
~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
No:
_Can I use Simple with my current bank?
No. You’ll transfer money to our platform, where it’s held in an FDIC-insured
account at our partner bank. Our partner holds the funds, and we take care of
the rest._
<https://simple.com/faq/>
------
felideon
Definitely look forward to having an account with Simple soon.
'Safe to spend' balance is brilliant and is something I have to do manually in
Excel by playing with numbers.
However, if I keep a zero-sum budget it would be nice to have multiple safe-
to-spend balances. If I understand correctly[1], with Simple I can presumably
just set non-bill budgets (eg. fuel, clothing, mini-savings, misc/blow) as
bills or even goals to fake it. That way, 'safe to spend' will always be $0
(give or take) — in essence managing a virtual envelope system, making my
personal finances much easier to handle than the current grunt work one has to
endure.
[1] "Safe to Spend is your account balance minus what you've saved toward
goals, minus pending contributions toward goals, minus pending bills in the
current pay cycle." [https://www.simple.com/blog/Saving/simple-budgeting-and-
rain...](https://www.simple.com/blog/Saving/simple-budgeting-and-rainy-days/)
------
rkudeshi
Any ETA on a rollout of the service to people on the waiting list?
~~~
i2pi
We began rolling out in November of last year. It's going to take us a while
to get through the entire list. I know many of you have been waiting over a
year & we deeply appreciate your patience.
------
kdommeyer
I'm surprised so many people are clamoring for this. While the system seems
excellent overall, the lack of a rewards program on the card seems like a
deal-breaker for day-to-day use. Why would I use this instead of a credit card
that gives me 1-5% cash back?
~~~
al3x
So, a couple reasons:
1\. Unless you're doing an absolute ton of spending on your rewards credit
card, any fees you pay on your credit card probably wipe out any cash you're
getting back. If you're not paying fees yourself, merchants or other
institutions may be subsidizing your rewards in ways that aren't sustainable.
Many rewards programs have been slashed during the financial crisis of the
last several years.
2\. Cash-back rewards make your personal accounting more complicated. If you
really want to set and meet financial goals, you need to be keeping close tabs
on what you spend on what card, how much you're getting back in rewards, what
fees you're paying, and where those reward dollars are going so that you're
actually accumulating wealth (saving account, brokerage account, etc.). Our
model combines an interest-bearing account with the ability to easily track
your financial goals. Keeping it all in one place is, in our experience, way
easier.
We're not crazy about the idea of rewards programs, but it's also not
something we've completely ruled out. If we can find a way to do a rewards
program that has clear incentives for our customers, merchants, and our
partner institutions, we'll explore that.
~~~
kdommeyer
Thanks for your reply.
1\. I pay no fees on my credit card. My full balance is paid automatically and
1-5% is refunded (depending on where I spent the money). To put that in
perspective, if I spend $50,000 I get back $500-2500, which is not an
insignificant amount. You are absolutely correct that rewards are subsidized
by merchant and banking fees. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't
merchants have to pay fees when accepting Visa debit cards as well?
2\. Cash-back rewards only make personal accounting more complicated if you
calculate them on an ongoing basis and pay additional fees for the credit
card. If you do neither of these you'll stay within your budget and be
rewarded with a substantial bonus every month that you can then spend or
invest.
With all that said, I agree that keeping it all in one place would be much
easier and I would love to try Simple myself. I just can't imagine replacing
my day-to-day purchases with a debit card, no matter how awesome the system
that surrounds that card may be.
~~~
felideon
And if you're not into credit cards just by principle, there's always
Perkstreet's debit card. As their tagline goes, "No fees, just perks." (Perks
being gift cards or cash back.)
------
jdoody
I wish they had something to let you know how far down you are on the wait
list and how long it will be approximately until you can finally get an
account. I signed up for the wait list nearly a year ago. Getting a bit
frustrated with how long it's taking.
~~~
al3x
Sorry, I know it's been a long wait. We hope it'll be worth it.
------
swang
Nice, I didn't know they were already taking signups.
Also I'm in Win7 on Chrome and the site font (maybe the font-weight?) makes
text on the site appear real fuzzy.
~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
Thanks. We're working on it.
~~~
yahelc
Since you're here...
I got an email in November saying "Because you got in early, you can probably
expect to get your invite by Spring of 2012."
Can I still expect that? Bank of America is killing me, and there's only so
long I can wait.
~~~
zellyn
Same situation here. Any ETA on joint accounts? I just realized that even
after my hard-won invite appears, I won't be able to share an account with my
wife... :-(
------
AznHisoka
I still think BankSimple would've made for a better brand. Simple sounds too
generic.
"Hey, have you tried this Simple app?" "What's the name of this app? Where can
I find this app?" "It's Simple" "Yeah I know, but what's the name of it?"
"Umm.. it's Simple" "Simple what?" "Just Simple" "I searched the App Store. No
app called Just Simple, dummy"
~~~
Macsenour
I agree, my first thought was "Simple what?".
~~~
Macsenour
I have no idea why this was down voted. That really was my first thought and
not meant as an insult to anyone.
------
chrisgoodrich
Simple is building a product that they are certain will be successful. VC's
should be clamoring to get involved with Simple.
Look at the Simple Twitter feed and you'll see people begging for invites.
I am still hoping for an invite Spring '12 as my last email from them
indicated. :)
------
af3
is Simple like PayPal with plastic card and nice web/app interface?
~~~
i2pi
I've been using Simple since September[0] as a complete replacement for my
bank account. That's the idea - you replace your existing checking/savings/etc
accounts with Simple.
[0]: I work there.
~~~
dsl
Shut up and take my business!
~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
Ha! We're working on it.
~~~
christiangenco
If I ever see you in person I'm going to literally throw my money at you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Naming a rhetorical tactic - MicahWedemeyer
http://peachshake.com/2011/04/07/naming-a-rhetorical-tactic/
======
MicahWedemeyer
This tactic rears its ugly head quite a bit here on HN, so I was hoping
someone might know its name.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Loma Prieta Earthquake 1989 + 2014 Mashup - Thevet
http://shawnclover.com/2014/10/08/the-loma-prieta-earthquake-1989-2014-mashup/
======
davidw
> getting under a doorway is an old wives’ tale and
Really? I hadn't heard that before. What are you supposed to do? Sturdy
desks/tables would probably be my first inclination, but if that's not
available?
> sprinting out of a building onto the sidewalk is probably the worst possible
> thing you can do.)
Yeah, you just don't have enough time for that.
~~~
albinoloverats
16-17 years ago when I lived in Menlo Park we were taught (in middle school at
the time) to get under our desks - and obviously (if London suffered from
earthquakes) I'd do pretty much the same at work now.
But what's the general advice if you're out and about? Say at a museum,
restaurant or stadium (or even walking down the street)?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Signature of Antimatter Detected in Lightning - Anon84
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/antimatter-lightning/
======
RK
_During lightning storms previously observed by spacecraft, energetic
electrons moving toward the craft slowed down and produced gamma rays._
That actually sounds like bremsstrahlung x-rays, not gamma rays. They have
very different energy spectra due to their origin. Although you can also slow
down the electrons by first producing an electron-positron pair, and then the
positron will decay into two gammas.
------
teeja
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Gamma_rays_and_the_ru...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Gamma_rays_and_the_runaway_breakdown_theory)
------
rbranson
Anyone want to shed light on why this is significant? IANAScientist.
~~~
teeja
Since the 1920s, up until a decade or so ago: "Many investigators believed
that the lower atmosphere was too dense for electrons to accelerate to speeds
high enough to emit x-rays and other high-energy particles. Instead, they
thought that lightning worked by conventional energy discharge--a bigger
version of the spark that occurs when you touch a doorknob after trudging
across the rug."
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=x-rays-
abou...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=x-rays-abound-when-
lightn)
Pilots reported red and blue jets and sprites for a long time but noone
believed them.
<http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/bluejets.htm>
How thunderstorms work is still poorly understood. This building evidence is
exciting a lot of new research and ideas. A lot of people are impressed that
the earth can generate gamma rays of higher energy than those from the sun.
------
dnewcome
"But for now, he said, the answer is up in the air." Worst pun ever.
------
CamperBob
I'd sure like to assume they have ruled out plain old lightning-induced RFI to
their instrumentation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Exploring the .NET Core Runtime - matthewwarren
http://www.mattwarren.org/2018/12/13/Exploring-the-.NET-Core-Runtime/
======
giancarlostoro
C# was the first language after Visual Basic 6 that I learned the most
seriously, and after .NET Core I got the most excited about C#. I love that I
don't have to reach to Java anymore to go cross platform, or wonder if Mono
will support my .NET project or not. In fact, thanks to .NET Core they made
.NET Standard so I _know_ if and how my project will run on a modern version
of Mono.
I also love that people are doing write ups about the source of .NET Core and
it's internals.
~~~
matthewwarren
> I also love that people are doing write ups about the source of .NET Core
> and it's internals.
Me too!
BTW, if you want more on the same topic check out
[http://mattwarren.org/2018/07/12/Presentations-and-Talks-
cov...](http://mattwarren.org/2018/07/12/Presentations-and-Talks-
covering-.NET-Internals/) and [http://mattwarren.org/2018/01/22/Resources-for-
Learning-abou...](http://mattwarren.org/2018/01/22/Resources-for-Learning-
about-.NET-Internals/)
~~~
phoenix24
thank you for the links, this is amazing!
------
bad_user
I was never impressed with .NET, I always considered it inferior to the JVM
and its ecosystem in terms of runtime capabilities, tooling and open source
available, however .NET Core moving to an open source model is super exciting,
F# looks cool and I'm happy that Java finally has true competition.
Also Matt Warren's blog is super cool.
~~~
lwansbrough
Java is not an example of a forward thinking language anymore. It has lagged
behind C# in every major feature pretty much since C# arrived in 2000. The JVM
has had solid performance improvements since forever, and may still be faster
than the CLR, but the JVM still has some pretty glaring shortcomings coming
from the .NET world. For example, Java generics (and their underlying
implementation in the JVM) suffer from type erasure which makes for an awful
developer experience in many scenarios. Java/JVM's story for asynchronous code
is also pretty pathetic. This is stuff I don't even think about anymore when
writing C# but I groan every time I have to do any "modern" programming in
Java.
~~~
bad_user
My opinion is from the other side of the fence ... type erasure is perceived
as a weakness of Java, however I believe it is one of JVM's best features,
because it didn't cripple its runtime for other languages, this being one of
the reasons for why other languages have been flourishing on the JVM (that and
the tooling and the open source culture).
To understand why, we need to talk about 2 separate things:
\---
1\. Specialization is important for performance and when speaking of .NET,
specialization for value types is subsumed in type erasure, but that's not
necessarily the case. You can have compiler-driven or even runtime-driven
specialization without reification.
In Scala for example we've had the "@specialize" annotation for a long time,
with the compiler being able to specialize generic code just fine. It's not
perfect, a better implementation eventually happened in Miniboxing [1] but it
withered away due to lack of interest and the ongoing work happening in Dotty
/ Scala 3 and its newer TASTY distribution format, which should make
specialization easier to accomplish.
Also there is on-going work to bring value types to the JVM and it's
happening: [http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/valhalla-spec-
experts...](http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/valhalla-spec-
experts/2018-May/000618.html)
That said having specialization is pretty cool for fine control of the memory
layout and Java developers have to resort to a lot of unsafe hacks for
achieving the same thing. But if that cost was paid such that languages like
Scala or Haskell could happen on top of the JVM, until they figure out how to
do it such that everybody benefits, I think it was a cost worth paying.
Also consider that the lack of specialization forced the JVM 's engineers to
get creative in other areas. For example the JVM has always been great at
inlining code at runtime, even for megamorphic call sites. And the new GraalVM
has super impressive abilities to eliminate boxing at runtime, which works for
dynamic languages too: [https://www.graalvm.org/](https://www.graalvm.org/)
\---
2\. Reification is in fact about adding info about type parameters at runtime.
This aids in using reflection to make a difference between List<int> and
List<string>, but people miss the forest from the trees.
As a matter of fact such reflection is only needed because languages like Java
or C# have very weak static type systems, compared with other languages in the
ML family. With an expressive type system, you never need reflection
capabilities.
In Haskell for example the question of whether something is a List<string> or
List<int> never, ever happens. In Scala you sometimes need it, but much rarely
and you can get it via a compiler-generated `ClassTag`, which is actually a
much better approach, because it makes it clear in the signature, this being
compile-time reflection. People also like being able to do "new T", however
that need completely goes away via proper support for type classes, which both
Haskell and Scala have, this being another special purpose band-aid.
And reification is actually a bad feature to have in the runtime, because it
makes it hard for languages to support higher-kinded types, or to build
dynamic languages.
F# does not do higher-kinded types and is less expressive for that reason than
OCaml, Scala or Haskell and the primary reason for why it doesn't do higher-
kinded types is because it would have to do type erasure by itself, thus
forgoing the performance benefits and the interoperability it has with C#.
Ironically it is support for higher-kinded types in a language that increases
its expressive capabilities to the point that you no longer need runtime
reflection. In other words ... you're blaming Java for not having a band-aid
that happened in C# due to their static type system being basically unsound
and thus needing runtime guards and reflection. You quickly get over this once
you'll start using a more expressive language ;-)
[1] [http://scala-miniboxing.org/](http://scala-miniboxing.org/)
~~~
migueldeicaza
Reflection is the least of the problems this solves.
The majority of the issues and gotchas listed in the generics FAQ for Java do
not happen in C# at all. It is liberating.
Reflection is an advanced use case that some people use, but it is rare.
The lack of flourish in. NET overtime more to what happens when a company
takes the reins of a stack and later stops working on it.
Microsoft for a while invested and designed JavaScript, Python and Ruby
versions for .NET. But when conditions changed, there was no interest to keep
the projects going. These are all observations from an outsider at the time
the projects were defunded.
Because of the siloed approach to development at the time, and the lack of an
external county around those efforts, bootstrapping a community to drive those
on their own proved to be very hard. Ruby mostly died, Python is barely
surviving.
The mood in the ecosystem went from "we can build these and speed them up" to
"this is an ongoing cost, let us rather interop with the real implementations
rather than find constant catch up".
Meanwhile, languages that Microsoft did not build did flourish, like PHP
This corporate phenomenon deserves a blog post on its own
~~~
i_s
> The lack of flourish in. NET overtime more to what happens when a company
> takes the reins of a stack and later stops working on it.
But couldn't .NET not being a good target for dynamic languages be one of the
reasons to stop working on it?
I keep hearing that .NET is a good platform for other languages, but there
doesn't seem to be much empirical evidence for it (at least in dynamic
languages).
------
eksemplar
Do people really use .NET core, and if so, why?
We’ve been a C# house for several years, decades really, and I’ve always
preferred it to JAVA so I’m actually excited for Core.
But we rarely use it. Not because it’s not great, rather because we’re more
productive with flask or Django. For Core to really make sense for us, it’d
would have to stop being so damn low level, but I guess that maybe it can’t
without sacrificing too much efficiency. More importantly it needs better
libraries for things that aren’t “built-in”.
I can certainly see why .NET developers welcome it, because they finally have
good cross platform ability. At least until they need to do authentication on
a non-standard SAML token, that though easily supported by ADFS but is a bitch
in any .NET setup.
I know we aren’t most use cases, being the public sector and running a
gazillion different tech stacks at once, but .NET has never played well once
you stepped outside it’s comfortzone and it’s always been so low level that
writing library extensions were a bitch. And that may have worked out, so far,
but I just don’t see why people stick with it when there are more productive
alternatives.
I say productive, because I don’t think .NET core is lacking technically, but
delivering solutions on time and with minimum maintenance requirements
afterward is just easier in python or JAVA and I’d imagine others as well.
But maybe I’m missing something?
~~~
pepper_sauce
What's your definition of "low level"? You keep using that word, I do not
think it means what you think it means
~~~
eksemplar
It’s having to explicitly tell the computer what you want. C# is obviously not
C, but it’s not python either.
By the time we have an app running in Django, we’re not even finished with
Entity modelling in a Core web-api.
I do think stuff like Blazor.Net is promising, but we’re not a technology
company, we support thousands of employees who only care about how
digitisation can make their lives easier as fast and as stable as possible.
.NET isn’t the best at that, at least not for us.
Dont get me wrong, I don’t dislike .NET Core, it think it’s great, I just
don’t see how it benefits me.
~~~
BjorksEgo
>Do people really use .NET core, and if so, why?
>.NET isn’t the best at that, at least not for us.
You're comparing apples and oranges, djanjo is a web framework, for creating
websites, .Net core is a cross platform compiler and the standard library that
goes with the C# programming language, which includes some stuff for creating
websites (along with desktop, CLI, services etc). Django might work best for
you but I want to create a bunch of micro services I'm not going to use it, am
I? Not to mention Django works well as a general purpose solution for general
purpose websites, If you're building anysort of heavyweight, enterprises level
web architecture you're going to want a hell of a lot more control that what
django provides for you.
~~~
eksemplar
I specifically said python, flask and Django, the guy I was replying to then
asked for an example, where I used only Django, and now you’re using that
against me?
Obviously we don’t use Django for everything. But like with web-applications,
a python script or a flask application is always more productive for us than
.NET.
~~~
BjorksEgo
I don't disagree that django and flask are good general purpose web app
frameworks, but theres a mile gap between "Not the best for general purpose
web apps" and "not good for anything", which is why I highlighted the
following question
>Do people really use .NET core, and if so, why?
------
Traubenfuchs
How much of the old CLR is in the new .net core runtime /CoreCLR?
I once read CLR via C# and it was difficult but amazing. Is all of the
knowledge in that book now worthless? What about the IL, is the IL still the
same?
~~~
tybit
They forked the CLR, cleaned it up, added cross platform support and open
sourced it, so a lot would still be relevant would be my guess. The IL has
remained unchanged other than possibly a tweak or two to support newer
features like non nullable references.
~~~
matthewwarren
Interesting fact, when they forked the CLR, they actually started with the
Silverlight code base. See [https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/NET-
Foundations-2015-...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/dotnet/NET-
Foundations-2015-03-04) (somewhere near the beginning)
I guess it makes sense. Before .NET Core, Silverlight was the most x-plat
version of the Microsoft .NET Runtime(s) (excluding Xamarin/Mono), so it
would've been a good starting point.
------
revskill
Installing .NET stacks including Runtime, SQL Server is a nightmare to me.
When an error occurs during installation process, you got stuck , hopeless and
depressed. Hey MS, fix your installation process first.
~~~
pknopf
The build scripts (for coreclr, corehost, corefx) are a mess. I worked on
getting the build working for Yocto, and there were so many things done
differently all over the place. They need a single team to go through their
entire build process, top-to-bottom.
Don't get me wrong though, I worked to integrate it into Yocto because I
_love_ .NET/C#, but the build system needs a lot of love.
~~~
matthewwarren
I don't know if it solves your specific scenario, but I do know that there's
been some work done in this area.
See [https://github.com/dotnet/source-build#net-core-build-
script...](https://github.com/dotnet/source-build#net-core-build-scripts) and
[https://github.com/dotnet/arcade#arcade](https://github.com/dotnet/arcade#arcade)
------
memsom
The "two" books mentioned that were written by Serge Lidin are basically the
same book, the latter is just an updated version. So really, there's only one
book with two editions.
~~~
matthewwarren
Ah, I didn't realise that, thanks for the info
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
2,433 Unread Emails Is An Opportunity For An Entrepreneur - dcurtis
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/23/a-crisis-in-communication/
======
mosburger
What if you knew the depth of the mail queue of the person to whom you were
writing, _before_ you wrote the e-mail? E.g., you are writing an e-mail to
your boss, and when you start writing, you see that he or she has 150 unread
e-mails. Might you change your mind and decide that it either 1.) wasn't that
important after all, or 2.) important enough to relay the message in person or
on the phone?
~~~
hollerith
Not a bad idea!
------
joshwa
IDEA: A Karma "bank" for email.
I set up an account at emailkarma.com (sadly, taken, by Xobni, no less!) as a
recipient. I set a default free karma amount (say, 100) for new senders, a
default karma amount for unsigned emails (say, 50), and route all my email
through the service. I also set up a whitelist of known good senders with an
infinite karma balance.
People who email me for the first time will automatically be issued 100 karma
points by the system. They have one of two options:
1\. People who don't know about the karma system can email me directly, but
their emails will "spend" the default amount for unsigned emails. When their
balance reaches zero, their emails get de-emphasized.
2\. People who know about the karma system can choose to spend their remaining
balance with me by tagging the email subject with [karma: pointvalue].
Unimportant emails can be assigned less value, and if they absolutely need to
email me, then they can spend more of their karma.
Incoming emails are sorted by date and by karma spend. I can reward relevance
by giving them more points to spend, and/or by setting their default karma
spend to a higher value. I can punish stupidity by adjusting karma
accordingly. Webmail interface, or a thunderbird plugin, maybe?
Senders can view their karma balance for a given recipient and default spend
(both uneditable) by emailing the service to prove identity and signing up.
Arrington, for instance, can reward good tipsters with more karma, and punish
PR trolls by slapping them with a karma penalty.
You could apply this to other forms of communication, too-- your
facebook/friendfeed, twitter, etc., though those would have to be passive
(relevance weighted by karma balance, no discrete spend available per
post/recipient).
------
pg
I agree, and YC is eager to hear proposals from startups working on cures for
email overload.
~~~
dcurtis
Wouldn't an email overload cure be the supreme complement to Xobni?
~~~
pg
It was in fact what Xobni started out working on.
~~~
serhei
So what happened to change that?
~~~
pg
They moved on to bigger ideas.
------
henning
I'd love to try to tackle a difficult but noble challenge like this, but I
myself do not suffer from email overload (having a simple life where no one
cares what you think has its perks) so I'm really not able to empathize with
people like Scoble or Mike Arrington. I'd probably do a crappy job of things.
------
mhartl
I'm not so sure about this one. There's massive selection bias: people with
the ability to complain to thousands of people are exactly those most likely
to be suffering from email overload. It certainly seems to be a growing
problem, but I haven't heard my mom, dad, or sister complain yet. I'll let
y'all know when they do. :-)
~~~
notauser
A data point in point: I'm working for a very big company at the moment.
The biggest span of control (direct reports) is 12. The number of people with
an indirect span of control of greater than 200 people is about 100.
...mind you, that 100 have a lot of money to throw at solutions. Which is why
they already have secretaries.
------
dkokelley
The thing with email is that it does not require much of a time commitment
from even the sender.
Older methods of communication like a phone call or in person meeting require
the person who initiates the conversation to invest some time in getting what
they want from the conversation.
Let's assume that the majority of the emails received are primarily for the
sender's benefit (ex. "please tell me what you think about x for my project"
"Could you do an interview for y?"). These messages should get the lowest
priority and could even be deleted if they can't be answered within a week or
two.
The next set of emails are of mutual benefit to the sender and receiver (such
as conversations between clients and companies, friends to friends, and
_productive_ internal corporate communication).
The final category is emails for the receiver's sole benefit. Automatically
generated emails _should_ be in this category, if they are to inform you that
your credit card may have been compromised. Most emails here don't require a
response from the receiver. Spam and marketing materials do not fall into this
category.
Of course in each category you could drill down by priority depending on the
situation.
~~~
mleonhard
If we had a good way to send and receive money through the Internet then it
might make sense to charge a fee to accept an incoming email. One would have a
whitelist of senders who get automatic refunds. Everyone else will be spending
_real_ _money_ to send you email.
A tiny "postage" fee might also solve spam.
~~~
dkokelley
I think that you might be on to something with the fee in the sense that you
could apply a solicitation surcharge to unapproved senders. It would only work
if it was guaranteed to get your response, otherwise it's not worth it.
What about a separate email address (or even domain) for premium email? You
could set the fee to receive an email (and adjust it to restrict flow to what
you can handle), and refund people who don't get a response from you within x
period of time. Certain senders could be excluded from paying. The senders
could even choose how much to pay (These emails were sent without payment.
Those were.)
You then publish only that address on your site/blog/whatever, and give your
personal address to friends and family.
This idea needs a lot of digging into to really see if it's viable but I like
the concept. The potential downside is that the government might like the idea
of email tax.
------
kul
anshu jain, who runs Deutsche Bank's investment banking arm had 2 full time
PAs who read his email and filtered accordingly. They were paid 7 figures and
were very smart. The top business people, I presume, don't read their email
directly. It's all filtered.
As for Mike A, I presume a huge inbox is party because he's running a huge and
growing business, and has leveraged himself to the max. In that sense, it's no
bad thing.
------
skmurphy
The unmet demand may be closer to 10,000 a day for "high volume communication"
and knowledge workers because there is a "shadow backlog" caused by the poor
performance of the current approach. There are a couple of different
categories of interaction:
I don't want to lose a key e-mail from someone new (e.g. a prospect) or
someone I want to reconnect with (e.g. an old friend) in the midst of
everything else
I want to have some answers suggested based on a collection of blog posts, a
FAQ, or some other knowledge repository.
I want to recombine a number of e-mails into a complex branching thread
because that's a work flow that a team I am a member of embraces (see
[http://www.43folders.com/2008/03/12/patterns-email-
conversat...](http://www.43folders.com/2008/03/12/patterns-email-conversation)
) so that I have the full context for the conversation.
I want to make sure I don't lose touch with folks I have had a prior shared
success with (I would like to boost my effective dunbar number).
There are several others. Please feel free to contact me directly if you would
like to continue the conversation. I think this is one area that is overdue
for a significant change in paradigm, the evidence that the current approach
isn't scaling can be found in a variety of secondary and tertiary coping
behaviors that we have come to accept without attacking the root cause. I
think there will be many approaches that continue to use SMTP as a transport
protocol but enhance the user interface with embedded analytics and
automation, as well as adding alternative forms of response to include
blogging, wikis, IM, and VoIP.
see also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143878>
------
byrneseyeview
If you read that and think "I have 24 emails a day; he must be getting about
100x as many pings for his attention," it might be worth reconsidering how
people react to his email policy. If I wanted to get in touch with this guy, I
wouldn't send an email. I'd send five, spaced an hour or two apart, with
varying subject lines. One joke, one brief and ambiguous ("re:requested") one
with caps, etc.
He'd probably be getting 400 emails a day if he didn't force people to resend
anything they expected him to read.
------
Tichy
Or an opportunity for a secretary?
~~~
skmurphy
Even with a secretary it would be hard to manage 1,000 e-mails per day, much
less 10,000 using the current e-mail clients. This would also be true of
outsourcing it to a team of hardworking Estonians, Irish, Indians, or
Canadians. Look at electronic discovery techniques (reading e-mail in a
lawsuit evidence discovery process) where you may pay dozens of attorneys to
sort through e-mail as another limit case of throwing bodies at the problem.
------
aneesh
Would an urgency metric be a solution, allowing you to sort those 2433 emails
to see the 50 that you really should reply to?
~~~
dcurtis
That would require you to sort each email based on urgency, and the only way
to do that (effectively) is to open and read the email. That's the problem.
~~~
aneesh
Point taken. Perhaps some combination of the sender and subject could be a
reasonable approximation? In my own experience, the sender almost exclusively
determines the importance or urgency of any email.
------
danw
The simple solution: A mail client that doesn't say how many unread messages
you have. If it's urgent they'll find another way of contacting you.
This is one of the great things about Twitter. Nowhere is there a "x twitters
unread" on the site. You simply dip in and out as you wish.
------
edw519
Hey kids, how about a contest?
Someone (not me) could create a control data base of say 2,433 emails. The
data base could be downloadable.
Whoever feels like it could work on their solution and in x weeks or so post
either a url for their new app, a proposal, or even a report based on the
data. The rest of us could vote just as we normally do and the top 3
contestants could compete for the top prize of ________.
(I may be onto something, but my creativity is waning. A little help please.
Any ideas?)
~~~
jasonlbaptiste
i really like that idea actually. having a controlled and constant data set,
could provide a lot of insight.
------
sbraford
If any system (attempting to solve this problem) allows one to add 2,433
emails to an "inbox", then it is doomed to fail.
Sometimes, it's the tool user, not the tool itself, that is to blame.
------
shafqat
In the world of vitamin problems, this is definately a pain killer. I wish I
had time to work on a second startup and tackle this as well. Best of luck to
those who do - I'm eagerly waiting.
------
ph0rque
How about a Bayesian solution that observes how you answer emails, and
prefills a reply (or automatically puts emails into trash) based on your
historical reaction to similar emails?
~~~
notauser
Dear Mom,
Thank you for your recipe for fairy cakes. Thanks to my previous responses to
e-mails containing the word fairy here are some links to soft core homosexual
porn.
Yours,
Soon to be out of the closet Joe, who no longer trusts the guy tuning his
auto-mail algorithm.
:)
------
rms
Hire an offshore personal assistant to read/sort your email?
------
bayareaguy
I'd love to see something along the lines of <http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html>
------
whacked_new
I think this problem is less of AI, more of HI; not so much a computing
problem but more of a cognitive one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nubrella: hands-free umbrella - mcantelon
http://www.nubrella.com/
======
jcl
An interesting idea, but it only seems to protect the head and shoulders. I'd
expect water to run along the surface of the device onto the pants of the
user, effectively making them wetter than if they had no protection at all. An
umbrella at least mostly routes the water onto the ground.
It also looks more awkward to use in a crowd than an umbrella.
------
sdurkin
Even if it works it suffers from serious Segway Syndrome. Anyone using one
looks terrible.
~~~
forgotmypasswd
I want to see someone ride a segway while wearing this. Hopefully while also
using a bluetooth headset.
~~~
GrandMasterBirt
They hint that this style might catch on.
Now granted that this is brilliant. Looks horrible or different but brilliant.
Lighter, easier to carry, more wind dynamic, covers you completely (xept feet
if wind is blowing the rain at angle) protects head from wind (thus warmer)
its great, but are we ready to be enclosed?
------
tptacek
Give up a hand, or walk around being eaten by a translucent Pac Man. I think
I'll stick with the umbrella.
~~~
jws
They can have two video game models. A yellow pacman version and a BioShock
Big Daddy.
Seriously though, depending what you spend on your hair, and what the visual
expectations are for you on the job, this could be a godsend.
~~~
Semiapies
Assuming you change clothes once you arrive at your job.
------
jf
2 minutes on the site and I can't figure out how it attaches to ones person
...
------
Zak
The primary advantage (as I see it) of an umbrella over a rubber jacket or
suit with a hood is convenience. It's quick to deploy and often very compact.
At most, it is about the same size and shape as a cane.
This product is very bulky when folded up and has a curved shape that doesn't
neatly fit in to a corner.
------
orblivion
Well, I guess the first people to use umbrellas probably looked pretty silly
too.
------
paulbaumgart
I wonder if the "aerodynamic design" and "patent pending 'shoulder straps'"
would be able to stand up to the wind on a motorcycle. If so, this could
actually be pretty useful, especially if combined with a poncho and waterproof
gloves. Almost like driving a Smart then...
~~~
MartinCron
On a motorcycle, you wear a really close-fitting umbrella called a "helmet".
Problem solved.
~~~
paulbaumgart
Does that work for you? I always get my face shield so covered in rain I can
barely see. Also, it is a cheap helmet, but the higher air humidity on rainy
days means it fogs up from the inside far too easily.
~~~
Nwallins
> _I always get my face shield so covered in rain I can barely see_
What makes you think this will be any different? Trading one plastic shield
for another doesn't seem to solve the problem.
~~~
paulbaumgart
I guess just the fact that people wear it in front of their faces while
walking/cycling and can maintain good visibility. I don't know enough about
fluid mechanics to understand how 65 mph winds factor into that, though. :-)
~~~
Nwallins
On a motorcycle, wearing a helmet, at highway speeds, if the visibility
problem is due to water droplet buildup on the face shield, you can simply
turn your head to the side, and the wind resistance will push the droplets off
to the side.
One brief turn to each side every 30 seconds or so takes care of it. Now, if
it's torrential, the problem is likely not 'static' interference but 'dynamic'
instead -- not much to do but find a place to stop.
------
og1
Looking at the homepage it shows a broken umbrella, a problem I have all the
time. What I want is a something that doesn't break so easily, a sturdier
umbrella. I don't want something that makes me look like an astronaut.
~~~
DougBTX
Ford's faster horse fallacy?
------
kp212
I work in NYC. I seriously need a better umbrella for all that walking, but I
feel like I'd be punched in the back of my Nubrella.
------
aplusbi
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkuOuxRD1Bc>
------
jpwagner
<http://bit.ly/q5YiA>
------
idleworx
it doesn't validate for TrustWave at the bottom
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Daily Muse, Community For Professional Women, Looks To Reinvent Company Profile - FluidDjango
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/22/the-daily-muse-the-community-for-professional-women-looks-to-reinvent-the-company-profile/
======
AznHisoka
Reading some of their articles, I fail to see what differentiates them from
say FastCompany, or Entrepreneur.com (besides targeting women) ? Or is this
just a pageview machine? In any case, their best bet to growing is SEO, so
maybe building a huge database of company profiles is a good way to go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Automating a multi-tiered application securely on AWS with Docker and Terraform - gosuri
https://www.airpair.com/aws/posts/ntiered-aws-docker-terraform-guide
======
sciurus
I was excited to find out recently that Hashicorp has hired Clint Shryock to
expand Terraform's support for different AWS services. If you check the git
history there's a lot of work going on to move over to aws-sdk-go. Hopefully
Terraform will reach or exceed parity with Cloudformation in the next few
releases.
[https://hashicorp.com/blog/clint-joins-
hashicorp.html](https://hashicorp.com/blog/clint-joins-hashicorp.html)
~~~
gosuri
Yeah. They are aggressive migrating to aws-sdk. I managed to fully move to
Terraform from CloudFormation and has been amazing so far!
------
willejs
Great article to explain terraform to newcomers. I am extremely excited to
move all of my infrastructure to terraform once a few more features have been
added. Its a great project, by great people, from a great company.
~~~
gosuri
Thanks for the kind words. Its an amazing tool indeed, their progress is
extremely impressive as well!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Any good (PHP) PaaS with UK datacentres? - tomardern
Hi,
Has anyone had any experience or know of any good PHP PaaS with UK datacentres that they can recommend?
Thanks,
======
leigh_t
You could try Engine Yard
([https://www.engineyard.com/](https://www.engineyard.com/)), I think they are
using EC2 (has a datacenter in Ireland).
Can't vouch for how "good" their PHP offering is having never used it,
definitely a passionate team though, I've met several of them over the years
at PHP related conferences (in the UK) as the company has grown.
~~~
aspleenic
I can vouch for it - it's solid. Feel free to jump into #engineyard on
IRCFreenode if you have any questions - or just use the trial hours to spin up
a staging version and give it a try.
------
tomardern
Had a play with Layershift - Jelastic. Seems pretty good so far. Through
Jelastic I am able to edit nginx configs, php-fpm configs and php.ini.
------
franklaemmer
shameless plug: fortrabbit (i am founder) is dedicated "PHP as a Service". Our
infrastructure provider is AWS Ireland, we have a lot of clients from the UK.
at least one alternative: [http://viaduct.io/](http://viaduct.io/) looks
promising to me. seems to be from the UK, running on own hardware.
~~~
tomardern
Nice - I'll take a look at fortrabbit. Your MYSQL Add-on pricing seems a
little steep between 64mb and 512mb. Shame you do not have anything in the
middle.
Shame that I have a wait to have a quick play. "Yeah! You will get a free slot
in 5-7 days"
Viaduct looks promising but no pricing information.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which GitHub repo has the most open issues? - hguhghuff
Any way to find that out?
======
ponyous
Why would that metric be useful? Geniuenly wondering. I learned in the past
that open issues are not indicator of how useful the library is.
Example: Worked on a project that used a library with 150 open and 3500 closed
issues. Turns out it was a disaster we had to replace. It was disaster mainly
because most closed issues were closed by a bot after 14 days and we didn't
realise this.
------
mtmail
[https://github.com/rust-lang/rust](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust)
currenly has 4738 open and 25,000 closed.
[https://github.com/golang/go](https://github.com/golang/go) currently has
4412 open and 27,000 closed.
[https://github.com/npm/npm](https://github.com/npm/npm) had 2166 before
moving to community,forum.
[https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs](https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs)
stopped at 1823 open.
[https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch)
currently has 1734 open and 18,000 closed.
~~~
egor-n
[https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues)
has 5491 open and 14800 closed issues.
------
thedevindevops
A very useful resource:
[https://www.codetriage.com/](https://www.codetriage.com/)
------
jakeogh
[https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues](https://github.com/ytdl-
org/youtube-dl/issues) has 2,350 open and 14,371 closed
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN:CPAN like archive for c - winkv
I am wondering if there is a CPAN like archive for C libs and snippets,i was able to find boost for C++,but nothing for c...also what do u think of making one(in case it does not exist)
======
jdale27
<http://ccan.ozlabs.org/>
~~~
TMK
Cool, didn't know of ccan.
------
TMK
Site which collects C libraries and snippets would be quite cool and useful.
It's pretty hard to find C libraries by googling.
------
JoachimSchipper
In addition to CCAN, there are (somewhat) general-purpose libraries like
GNOME's glib.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Connected TV Backlash? Canada's CRTC to Allow ISPs to Meter Internet - expathos
http://www.appmarket.tv/opinion/804-connected-tv-backlash-more-monopolisation-canadas-crtc-to-allow-isps-to-meter-internet.html
======
timthorn
I doubt it will "crush innovation" - we've been metered since the dawn of
broadband in the UK but I don't think we've done too badly in terms of fresh
ideas.
~~~
ljf
I was just coming to say the same thing. here in there UK (land of bbc iplayer
and now youview.com) metered broadband packages are the norm. all that has
happened is that customers have become more aware and he pushed for better
deals, and switched isps.
on a side note, so were all Canadian broadband packages unmetered / unlimited
use until now? wow, nice, what sort of speeds can most people get?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Guess my word - ColinWright
http://simbase.org/gmw/gmw.html?HN_20150905
======
bonobo3000
This is great! Inspired me to make a little script in spark-shell:
> val words = oxforddict.
filter{case s => s.exists(_.isLetter) && s.forall(Character.isUpperCase(_))}.
distinct.
map((_.toLowerCase,1))
> def lcp(a:String,b:String) = { a.zip(b).takeWhile(Function.tupled(_ == _)).map(_._1).mkString }
> implicit val wordOrdering = new Ordering[String] {
> override def compare(a:String, b:String) = { val lcpIdx = lcp(a,b).length; a.substring(lcpIdx).compareTo(b.substring(lcpIdx)) }
> }
> def nextGuess(lower:String,upper:String,g:Int) = { val candidates = words.filterByRange(lower,upper).map(_._1).collect.sorted(wordOrdering).toList; val mid = candidates.length / 2; candidates.slice(mid-g/2,mid+g/2+1) }
nextGuess: (lower: String, upper: String, g: Int)
> nextGuess("prejudice","promise",1)
res42: List[String] = List(primeness)
> nextGuess("prime","promise",10)
res47: List[String] = List(procris, procrustean, procrusteanize, procrustes, procrustesian, proctitis, proctocele, proctodaeum, proctor, proctorage, proctorial)
> nextGuess("proctor","promise",10)
res48: List[String] = List(profulgent, profundity, profuse, profusely, profuseness, profusion, profusive, prog, progenerate, progeneration, progenitor)
> nextGuess("profuse","promise",12)
ding ding!!
I love HN, and I love scala :D Thanks for posting OP. HN needs more great
technical content like this and less opinion & news, in my opinion.
~~~
normac
This raises an interesting problem--could we find the word even faster by
using something other than a standard binary search?
The first thing that comes to mind is skipping past letters that don't appear
very often at that point in a word with the current prefix--or to be more
granular, you could change your counter (here g) to a float and somehow weight
each letter by how rarely it occurs after the letters you've established so
far. So if you've currently established that the first four letters are "pro,"
and "z" almost never occurs after those letters, "z" might be given a weight
above 1 so the counter skips right past it.
------
kaoD
I wanted _more_ :) So here's my blatant clone sourcing words from the
internet:
[https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/9/embedded/result/](https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/9/embedded/result/)
And here's the code:
[https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/89/](https://jsfiddle.net/fsc5v4v0/89/)
I hope it's bug free. jQuery is really a pain to reason about, so much
implicit state all over the place. I thought React might've been a bit too
much, but halfway through it I started reconsidering my choice :P
~~~
hlmencken
This is cool but when i gave up it said congratulations and didn't show me the
word.
~~~
kaoD
Sorry, completely failed linking the URL. See sibling comment for the real
ones :)
------
louhike
Maybe you should not make answers.json public.
~~~
totony
Doesn't matter, the checking is made in Javascript, so you can console.log(
answer ) if you want to cheat anyway
------
jjuhl
Isn't this simply a game about how to do a binary search of a dictionary? How
is that exciting?
~~~
furyofantares
I think it's more about how difficult it can be to do a binary search of the
dictionary in your head. I don't want to spoil today's word, and I've tried
not to below, although there are minor spoilers.
Once I started to narrow it down it became difficult to find words between my
constraints. In one case I was making assumptions about what letters can come
after other ones while trying to generate a new word (and being aware of this
isn't enough to stop it.) And then, in the last case, when I had it narrowed
between <xyz> and <xyz>ed (think jump and jumped, for example), my brain only
wanted to search for words that were conceptually related to xyz. This was a
mistake, the goal word started with xyz but was not related to it
conceptually, but again, an awareness that my brain was favoring a search of
the concept space rather than searching the dictionary alphabetically was not
enough to remedy it.
~~~
organsnyder
I had the same experience. I locked in to the first letter within a few
guesses, but then struggled to find words that began with the second letter I
wanted to guess. Eventually, I realized that, since I was on my phone, I could
take advantage of predictive text to help me out (okay... "cheat" is probably
more accurate). I doubt that I would have figured it out on my own (due to the
word being totally unrelated to the word that makes up the first few letters).
------
dahart
Fun, I quite like it. Sad that everyone has made the leaderboard unusable, but
I'm sure the majority of the problem could be fixed in one or two lines of
code. Looks like it only became a problem today... hacker news is living up to
its name?
------
ColinWright
What a shame - a cute toy, and people just break it.
This is why we can't have nice things - remind me never to show HN anything
that's just a bit of fun. Some people really will set the world on fire just
to see if they can, and then just to watch it burn.
It's not what hacking used to be about. It used to be about making cool stuff,
and people sharing and appreciating it. Now even the simplest of toys need to
be bullet-proof and hardened.
I miss the old days.
------
DiabloD3
I love HN.
I got up early in the morning, made a nice breakfast (today? roasted turkey
legs seasoned with my own personal italian blend, with a carrot and rutabaga
mash, and a glass of whatever white wine was open and in my fridge, wasn't bad
for a $7 bottle), had a cup of coffee (fresh ground, brewed using the inverted
Aeropress method), cleaned the catbox, fed the cat (even though he probably
ate as much as I did off the turkey legs, fat bastard he is), did my morning
strength training routine, and was just waiting for it to warm up more outside
so I could go for my morning walk (September in Maine means it dips into the
40s at night and doesn't warm up into the 60s until 9am), and was otherwise
doing work (just because its Saturday doesn't mean I'm off the clock)...
... and then I check HN and find this at the top. Now I know what I'm going to
be doing for the next few hours.
~~~
petercooper
Getting past the idea of having wine with breakfast(!) what's in your personal
Italian blend?
~~~
mangamadaiyan
It could be that the wine was used to cook, not drink. Just guessing :)
~~~
dr_zoidberg
He said he had a glass, so there's the drinking. Although unusual, it's not
the first time I hear of someone drinking a glass of wine at breakfast. It's
common in some cultures.
~~~
DiabloD3
Its something I'm trying out. My culture doesn't really drink wine at all (I'm
half German, half Irish, 100% American), but since I eat one good meal a day,
I had a glass with it.
------
chippy
Note: I believe that the word stays the same each day, so there may be limited
replayability. There are two words by "joon" and "mike" to find everyday.
(I got the first in 24 tries and the second in 22 with the help of a
dictionary!)
~~~
wjoe
You can also play words from previous days by going to the leaderboard,
selecting another day at the top, then clicking "play this word"
------
reinhardt1053
Helped myself with some python, I guessed it in 16 tries.
lines = tuple(open('english_words.txt', 'r'))
min = 0;
max = len(lines)
while True :
index = min + (max-min)//2
print lines[index];
before = raw_input("Before? y/n")
if before == "y" :
max = index-1
elif before == "n" :
min = index+1
else :
break
english_words.txt can be downloaded here:
[http://www.mieliestronk.com/corncob_lowercase.txt](http://www.mieliestronk.com/corncob_lowercase.txt)
------
troels
"I couldn't find modificatory in my dictionary. Remember, you're only allowed
to guess words."
Hey - That's straight from /usr/share/dict/words
------
Gracana
Neat game, but it gave me an incorrect hint about the target word. I had
narrowed it down to somewhere in the Vs, then accidentally clicked "I give up"
and it told me the word started with a letter that comes way before v (I'm
being vague here because it looks like the word is the same for everyone and I
don't want to spoil it too badly).
------
impostervt
Could use this
[https://www.wordsapi.com](https://www.wordsapi.com)
~~~
amelius
This seems silly. Why not download the whole dictionary in one single GET.
Much faster, much less prone to failure.
------
LVB
Good stuff! I started playing it zoomed way in on my phone and had no idea the
previous guesses and bracketing words were shown. Remembering recent words
while thinking of new ones made for a nice "n-back" sort of challenge.
------
arxpoetica
It's possible to cheat on the leaderboard. Go through the game once, figure
out the word, play it again, guess the same word, first guess. Oops. ;)
~~~
drake01
Its mentioned already on Leaderboard: Select to reveal answer word:
3rd visible line on links:
[http://simbase.org/gmw/guess.cgi?by=joon&result=leaderboard](http://simbase.org/gmw/guess.cgi?by=joon&result=leaderboard)
[http://simbase.org/simbase/leagues/simbasev3/gmw/guess.cgi?b...](http://simbase.org/simbase/leagues/simbasev3/gmw/guess.cgi?by=mike&date=&sort=num&result=leaderboard)
------
minaguib
It would be nice if, while you're you're guessing, the words in your own
history have an indicator of whether each was too high or too low.
~~~
tedd4u
It does. The blue word is the closest guess before and the red word is the
closest guess after.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Would be nice if it indicated it in some way beyond colour-coding, for the
benefit of the colour-blind and those who don't catch on.
~~~
monochromatic
Blue-red colorblindness?
~~~
ant6n
blue-black colorblindness at night:
[https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/)
------
Cyph0n
I was at 14 tries, with 3 letter accuracy. I just couldn't come up with
today's word, even though I know it well..
------
kazimuth
Apparently there's an exploit, given all of the answers with INT_MIN guesses
on the leaderboard.
------
robgibbons
Bonus round: Guess how to hack the leaderboard
------
berbc
"My word is after noon."
------
SCAQTony
That was awesome: Got it in 16 guesses and I believe this would be great for
primary schools. I am going to forward it around.
------
hoke_t
console.log(answer)
------
jm0codes
when you type in words in alphabetic order, like "Ape, Best, Claim, Dumb", you
get to "Rate, Start" and it says after Rate, and before Start. So it must
start with R or S.
~~~
Hasu
That isn't a very efficient way to do it. Try doing a binary search. Start
with a word that starts with 'M', then if it's before, try one that starts
with 'F' or 'G', if it's after, try one that starts with 'S' or 'T'. You
eliminate roughly half the possible words with each guess that way, and you'll
get to your answer much more quickly than guessing in alphabetical order.
You could improve this method by finding out where the exact midpoint is in
the list of words by alphabetical order, as I'm not certain it's actually
halfway through the alphabet.
And I'd bet that some people here on HN could come up with even cleverer ways
to cut down on guesses.
------
MrBra
It's 2015, make it responsive, please.
~~~
cpeterso
Why bother?
~~~
MrBra
Because being a non native English speaker I had to read instructions and had
to swipe left and right at least ten times on my phone (and for what? For a
game which IMO is nothing new...).
Also being the page just a half dozen of divs making it responsive would have
been totally trivial, so why _not_ bother?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Silicon Zoo - kruipen
http://siliconzoo.org/
======
mattbillenstein
Also,
[http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/](http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/)
And a chip I made in college:
[http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/cincinnatibearca...](http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/cincinnatibearcats.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can you see the difference with a 4K monitor? - gjvc
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Can-you-see-the-difference-with-a-4K-monitor-729/
======
richardboegli
Yes I can.
Going back to a 1080P screen is painful.
From the article: For desktop monitors, the answer is very clear: yes! Even a
person with just 20/20 vision should be able to see the difference on any
monitor larger than just 20 inches in size and the difference becomes greater
and greater for larger monitors.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What Office document renderer for Web/Electron do you recommend? - yayr
I know there are online viewers from MS and Google, but all open source projects seem to be either dead or quite limited. Am I missing something?
======
nxj
discussion on stackoverflow:
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27957766/how-do-i-
render...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27957766/how-do-i-render-a-
word-document-doc-docx-in-the-browser-using-javascript)
There are online viewers from MS and Google. They are only good though if you
have no Electron offline scenario and want to send your data :-/
JavaScript conversion always has its limits:
[https://github.com/lalalic/docx2html](https://github.com/lalalic/docx2html) —
docx to html, most elements are supported, but project seems to be dead
[https://github.com/mwilliamson/mammoth.js](https://github.com/mwilliamson/mammoth.js)
— supports headings, lists, tables, endnotes, footnotes, images and text boxes
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/docx2html](https://www.npmjs.com/package/docx2html)
— Converts DOCX documents to HTML in the browser or nodejs, based on lalalic
library, thus also dead
[https://github.com/artburkart/docx2html](https://github.com/artburkart/docx2html)
— apparently, works in the browser, also dead
not sure, if there is a complete and supported project out there
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Static Web Apps – A Field Guide - trumbitta2
http://www.staticapps.org/?hn
======
simonw
Allow me to describe a revolutionary way of creating web applications. I call
it "Pages and forms".
If you need to display some information, you use an abstraction called a
"page" \- a full HTML document served from a URL. You can generate the HTML
using a variety well understood, easily tested server-side frameworks. You can
even just serve static HTML saved in a file.
Pages are easy to scale, easy to link to and work on every device, platform
and browser released since IE and Netscape 3 back in 1996 (or earlier if you
don't need to rely on the Host header).
How about adding interactivity? That's where "forms" come in. Forms allow your
application to request information from users and submit it back to your
server using a simple and widely understood key/value mechanism.
By combining pages and forms you can build applications that work everywhere,
are easy to link to, easy to maintain and can be scaled to handle anything you
can throw at them.
~~~
jfaucett
I see your point but sorry, its nonsense when talking about "webapps" \- as
opposed to anything largely text based and with very limited user interaction.
You are going to have to rerender the page for every single user action. The
feedback the user gets is going to be ridicously slow for marginally
complicated apps, creepingly slow on low-bandwith devices.
Just deleting an item in a paginated list will require posting data while
maintaining the query parameters in the url, running a possibly very complex
query on the server again, recalculating and rerendering the page and then
shoving that data all back to the user via expensive TCP cycles - huge waste.
A "webapp" on the otherhand makes a post to the server gets a 204, and on the
client side simply removes the corresponding dom element.
As an example, think about implementing MS Paint and the corresponding user
experience - using what you're talking about.
~~~
simonw
I agree that you'd be nuts to build an interactive drawing program like
this... But the vast majority of what people are calling "web apps" today
aren't anything like a drawing program.
I'm also personally a big fan of adding a layer if JavaScript to improve
interactivity, but the "static apps" approach advocated in the OP goes way too
far for most apps in my opinion.
------
skrebbel
These people call an app "static" when all content is _dynamically_ generated
_at runtime_ on the client-side. Everybody else calls these things "single-
page web applications". I really don't see the point of defining a new,
confusing term for an existing concept.
~~~
thruflo
I believe the point is to drive traffic to
[http://www.divshot.com](http://www.divshot.com), re-labelling their snake oil
as a uniquely cold-blooded essential along the way.
I quote from their features page:
> Fully featured? Yes. Get pushState with custom routes, clean URLs (goodbye,
> .html), and more. ... Whatever you choose, we support it.
> S'all about you, dev, s'all 'bout you.
~~~
mbleigh
Actually, we built our static hosting service because we were already
developing with a static web architecture and couldn't find an existing
acceptable option for hosting.
I'm building the platform because I believe in the technology, not espousing
the technology because I built the platform. :)
~~~
thruflo
I also believe in the technology and the general architecture you're
espousing. I found the content on
[http://www.staticapps.org](http://www.staticapps.org) well written and
constructive and the links to [http://www.divshot.com](http://www.divshot.com)
are unobtrusive.
My reaction to [http://www.divshot.com](http://www.divshot.com) is something
else entirely. To solve the "problem" of static file hosting and deployment
with a service that is "compatible with Angular and Firebase" and supports
"pushState with custom routes" is clearly disingenuous.
Not that there's anything wrong with effective marketing. If your target
audience is people who don't know what the words mean, then knock yourself
out.
~~~
mbleigh
We're trying to market to people who want to use static architecture,
regardless of experience. It's a bit of an education issue as people are
familiar with e.g. Angular and Ember but don't necessarily know what it means
to deploy them as a static app.
Can you tell me what you find disingenuous about the claims? What would appeal
to you when describing a static web hosting service?
------
hibikir
I used to work at a place that switched to only building apps this way. It was
architecturally simple, but for random business apps, there was one major
difficulty: The tooling felt like going back on a time machine. You have all
this tools out there for download, but almost all of them don't do quite what
you want, are not easy to extend without just getting tied to an old version
forever, and have trouble interacting with each other.
When you get developers that are wishing they were back using Swing because it
was easier, you know you have trouble.
~~~
fidotron
Swing is/was verbose for simple stuff, but beyond a fairly low complexity bar
it is enormously preferable to the web stack, at least from a developer
perspective.
While Java got somewhere with the whole deployment thing it was never quite as
slick as the web, and that's the killer aspect of the web really.
What is funny about the web these days is how they're very slowly reinventing
all the things NeXT were doing in the 80s, only using a lot more memory and
CPU in the process. Ironic given it started on a NeXT in the first place.
------
daleharvey
Disagree with a few things, the title 'static is better', is hyperbole, its a
different environment. Also the 'the doesnt mean they are any less capable' is
pretty much by definition wrong.
That being said I absolutely love the architecture, pretty much every
application I build these days starts with switching my github default branch
to gh-pages. I work on [http://pouchdb.com](http://pouchdb.com) and use that
for storing and syncing data. not having to worry about how my servers are
configured / how they are running, how to move an application makes me feel
like I can build what I want then when I come back in 2 years it 'just works',
with dynamic applications I always feel there is a maintenance burden that I
cant shake.
~~~
e12e
> Disagree with a few things, the title 'static is better', is hyperbole, its
> a different environment.
This.
I feel I might fall under the hn banhammer soon, but I really wish people
would actually _read_ Fieldings thesis (introducing REST) -- it's a really
good overview of the different architectures one might use for a client-server
system. It' not _just_ REST, REST is a natural conclusion drawn from the
alternatives when the goal is a highly performing system for hypermedia:
[https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/net_arch...](https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/net_arch_styles.htm#sec_3_2)
But it's worth noting that fat-client styles are also in there, and the trade-
offs mentioned are worth keeping in mind (no, there is no silver bullet -- you
actually should choose an architecture that fits your problem domain.
Shocking, isn't it?).
------
rquantz
So is this just another way to talk about the now-ubiquitous thick-client app?
Or is there something revolutionary I don't see in my cursory look at this
site? There is definitely something to be said for building separate services
as your API, rather than thinking your static assets have to be married to the
data processing backend. But calling that a static app is misleading -- it's
still dynamic, and in fact the server is still processing data, it's just
distributed.
~~~
badman_ting
The assets served to the client are static, they can be served by a simple
server, cached through CDNs, etc.
~~~
derengel
I don't know how it is static either or are you referring that it is 'static'
only from the web browser(consumer) point of view? for example, in the backend
you could be generating a value from a database.
~~~
badman_ting
It's really not worth sperging out about this. It just means the HTML/JS/CSS
assets delivered by the front-end server do not change.
~~~
mtrimpe
Sperging out? Are you serious?
~~~
abrichr
I had to look this one up:
_Sperging out: When someone goes on a long, in-depth, overly elaborate
explanation long after everyone already gets the point, but will not fucking
end._
[1]
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sperging%20ou...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sperging%20out)
~~~
mtrimpe
Just so the original author doesn't accidentally misinterpret my complete and
utter disgust for his statement as ignorance; I pretty much guessed it
instantly.
It might be a new term, but as far as I'm concerned it's as bannable an
offense as calling someone a faggot or something of that kind.
~~~
mantrax4
Gee, aren't you an outraged little fella.
~~~
mtrimpe
Ah well; thank you for your contribution. Enjoy it here; I have feeling you'll
fit right in by now.
I'll just retreat to my old-man cave to contemplate a time when the internets
had this quaint little place where conversation was civil, the news was
enlightening and everyone was striving to break free from the status quo by
going at it alone, forging our own path.
It was fun while it lasted...
~~~
mantrax4
Did those old times include being insulted and outraged at every word your co-
debaters said?
It's quite ironic for you to be sad about the lack of civil discourse, when
you used the opportunity to hijack the original point of the poster and start
discussing a 'bannable offense' on the occasion of a silly colloqual phrase
they used.
You think you're taking the high ground? I for one long for a debate where the
people talking can stay focused on a topic without being constantly insulted
by this or that for the purpose of cheap outrage.
------
foreigner
The elephant in the room is performance. They can't help mentioning "perceived
performance" but conveniently haven't gotten around to explaining that in
detail. In my experience browser performance is a struggle, and it's always
faster to do as much as possible on the server.
~~~
couchand
Also indexing by search engines or the like. Expecting a web crawler to
resolve your JavaScript code to produce a complete page is probably a recipe
for pain.
~~~
mbleigh
Search friendliness is probably the biggest problem yet to be completely
solved for static apps. There are workarounds, but they are admittedly less
than perfect.
However, given the general web development trends towards JS-driven interfaces
and upcoming standards like Web Components, I don't think it's going to stay
unsolved for much longer.
------
troels
I don't think the dichotomy of static vs. dynamic is that useful really. At
least not if they are taken to mean pre-compiled vs. generated directly as a
response to a http request. The so-called static pages are presumably still
assembled by some programmatic pipeline (aka "dynamic").
What does matter, is that pages that are the same for all users, and that
change rarely are served with proper caching headers. That way you can drop a
http-cache in front of your app and voila, you have all the same benefits that
a pre-compiled site would give you, but without the pain of having to use a
completely separate process.
The hard part is separating elements that have different frequencies of change
from each other. For some reason, this is not something that popular web
frameworks (Such as Rails) push very hard, but it's something I find extremely
useful when building web apps. A classic trick is putting user-specific
information (Such as your name + karma score in the top right corner of this
site) in a separate ajax-call, while the main page is served with hard public-
cache headers.
------
jcolemorr11
I honestly misunderstood the definition when I first read it. I've built a
variety of web apps (old php + mysql, actual static content, nodeJS +
angular), and I this terminology escaped me. I've never looked at an Angular
app and referred to it as static? In fact, what is defined here is the exact
opposite of what I'd assume was a static application.
------
bowlofpetunias
I wonder if people who advocate this as "better" have ever build anything even
remotely complex. It's this kind of simplistic tunnel vision why many
engineers look down their noses at "web development".
Also, this is nothing but a marketing site for a "static web hosting service",
which explains the superficial buzzword bingo.
~~~
mbleigh
Your derision comes with a dearth of actual reasoning as to why "complex"
applications don't work from a static architecture perspective or how you
define complexity.
------
daemonk
Isn't this really just advocating clear separation/encapsulation between
client-side and server-side? IE. create a "static" web app that can get data
from server side through REST API or allow you to plug in other sources of
data (pouchdb).
------
badman_ting
It certainly has its advantages. I would even say if you can get to a point
where your app is totally static, you should do it. But if there's even a
little server-side state things can get complicated pretty quickly.
For example, say your app uses hash/fragment URLs, and users need to be logged
in to access the app. A user hits yourapp.com/#/whatever, but isn't logged in,
so you bounce them to the login page. Except, oops, the hash/fragment doesn't
get sent to the server, so your login page doesn't know where to redirect the
client after logging in.
~~~
ethikal
There are ways around this. With ember it is possible to use browser history
to mask the hash... [http://emberjs.com/guides/routing/specifying-the-
location-ap...](http://emberjs.com/guides/routing/specifying-the-location-
api/)
------
BinaryIdiot
After looking over the site it seems to be advocating simply serving static
content statically and / or create single-page web applications.
I'm not entirely sure 100% static makes sense either. For instance serving
debug versus minified versions of a website. Sure you could compile everything
and create different outputs but that takes time and testing to setup; I
haven't worked on a team that would really have the upfront time to do that.
The alternative is loading assets via JavaScript but that's much slower than
including the links upfront.
The other issue is serving code that requires higher permissions to execute. I
would rather leave chunks out if I know if can't be accessed from the server-
side to make it a little more difficult for someone to figure out how to
exploit my website. It's certainly not foolproof nor secure but I don't want
to make it completely easy for someone to understand how all administrative
functions and permissions work either. You could probably compile different
versions of the website and control which gets served based upon
authentication but that's even more upfront cost.
~~~
mbleigh
The great thing about a static app architecture is that for things like
administrative functions you can usually easily build an entirely separate
interface and application utilizing the same back-end resources.
Security through obscurity is never sufficient, and static architecture makes
you think through those concerns more thoroughly before deploy. See
[http://www.staticapps.org/articles/authentication-and-
author...](http://www.staticapps.org/articles/authentication-and-
authorization) for more on that subject.
As to development vs production, minifying etc. that's something we're trying
to solve with multi-environment hosting at Divshot.
~~~
BinaryIdiot
It's not typically cost effective or realistic to build an entirely separate
interface for administrative functionality (in fact, for user experience
purposes, it's typically better to be able to administrator changes in place).
As I mentioned it's doable but requires additional upfront work that I have
never had time to do on any project I get to work on.
Obviously security through obscurity isn't sufficient as I said it wasn't
security :) but I don't see any reason why a static architecture should make
you think about those issues any more or less; you should already be doing so.
------
rubyn00bie
In other breaking news:
_) Earth still exists_ ) Human's breathe oxygen *) Cow's fart a lot
Not to be a total arsehole, but I mean... uhh, what's the point of this?
If anything, it sounds like, from the copy, they want you to make websites but
instead of calling it a "website" because that's un-cool? I don't get it.
// Start of semi-related rant
I would also like to call this statement in their opening paragraph complete
non-sense and almost simple minded:
"Static web architecture eases common web development headaches without
introducing additional complexity"
After many years of doing web development, I can see programming in Java,
Obj-C, or .NET is worlds easier for application development. Instead of 27
different platforms (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari on different platforms) I
have one-- the god damn operating system. Was this always the case? Nope, but
it is now.
Is it easier to write a single screen on the web using JS, HTML, and CSS?
Sure, but the return is marginally decreasing as the application grows. More
screens, more complexity, the more HTML/CSS/JS start to show their age.
Web development becomes actually more complicated than writing a native
application.
------
dpweb
The static thing - I think its a reaction to the obvious inefficiency of
dynamic pages, server processing for data that is only changed occasionally.
Consider a blog which gets posted to once a week. Do you really need dynamic
processing for every page render 24/7/365? Well, that's the way it works.
But you have to have something additional for changing data/separate API. You
can do the static site, but you still gotta have the XHR or JSONP calls to
fetch dynamic data. You get a nice separation of UI/data, easier to tweak the
UI - independent of the data (hand it off to a designer), and your separate
data server can feed multiple apps or you open it up for the world to use.
~~~
snowwrestler
> Consider a blog which gets posted to once a week. Do you really need dynamic
> processing for every page render 24/7/365? Well, that's the way it works.
Isn't this the exact problem that a reverse proxy cache solves?
~~~
dpweb
it does if you want to setup the 2nd piece, but I like nginx alot
------
AdrianRossouw
I try and keep things static unless I have really good reason to do
dynamically generated markup. There are still very good reasons for having a
backend sometimes.
There is a middle ground if you are primarily replacing a CMS though, which is
using a static site generator like jekyll.
This is something I learnt while working at [1] DevelopmentSeed. They also
built a wonderful editor for github pages called [2] Prose.
[1] [http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-
we...](http://developmentseed.org/blog/2012/07/27/build-cms-free-websites/)
[2] [http://prose.io](http://prose.io)
~~~
anishkothari
Prose is seriously awesome! Thank you :-)
------
minhajuddin
What a coincidence, I have been building a CMS which spits out static HTML
which uses the same bolt icon :)
[http://getsimplesite.com](http://getsimplesite.com)
I think static apps are best suited for very simple apps which don't have a
lot of business rules, simple CRUD apps are the best candidates for this kind
of a setup. Once you go beyond a simple app doing things on the server is much
easier.
~~~
mantrax4
And you also make the same unsubstantiated claims of superiority, without any
explanation.
What is this magical hosted CMS that limits my freedom, exactly?
~~~
minhajuddin
Many CMSes ask you to write your templating code in something which is safe to
run on the server, check
[http://get.harmonyapp.com/](http://get.harmonyapp.com/) for instance it
forces you to use liquid templates. Getsimplesite on the other hand uses plain
javascript to write page templates.
~~~
mantrax4
So then the solution that comes to mind before I drop my entire stack to use
yours, is to simply use the language the CMS itself was written in (Python,
PHP, whatever), instead of the CMS. Sorry. Work on your value proposition.
------
snowwrestler
A reverse proxy cache in front of a dynamic application can approach the best
of both worlds. If the page requested is static, you get a fully rendered set
of HTML etc. from the cache. If the page requested needs to be customized
somehow, the request passes through the cache and hits the application, which
custom-renders a new page to send back.
------
klapinat0r
Having skimmed the available articles, I'm still left asking: How does
authorization work here? As in, do you use it to 200 or 401 an url
(example.com/static/klapinat0r/feed).
Or are they simply advocating serving HTML as templates and updating with js?
If so, that's hardly news is it?
By their definition that'd be Hybrid though, right?
~~~
mbleigh
Authentication and Authorization are handled via JS calls to back-end services
that know. Did you read [http://www.staticapps.org/articles/authentication-
and-author...](http://www.staticapps.org/articles/authentication-and-
authorization) \-- if so, what doesn't make sense from that perspective?
~~~
klapinat0r
Whether or not this was a new take on static + auth, as it sounded like it was
the standard client-js apps (which you confirmed it is). Not that it's not a
valid approach, I just assumed it was something new.
------
alok-g
Web development newbie here. Is there a starter template available on these
lines that has the guts built-in, including both client and server code, user
authentication, server-side database access, a default theme, etc., where the
developer can start by defining the application-specific data models and
business logic?
~~~
jakejohnson
I recommend checking out some of the examples provided by Firebase. In
particular, something like angularFire-seed
([https://github.com/firebase/angularFire-
seed](https://github.com/firebase/angularFire-seed)) is a great way to get
started. Firebase can handle user authentication and data storage. AngularJS +
Firebase is an amazingly productive combo. Set up Bower and use Bootstrap for
the user interface, you’re all set.
It would be a great idea to set up some boilerplates for StaticApps.org
showing how easy it is to get started.
------
pygy_
What's their plan for dealing with CSRF?
For this type of app, the usual solution is to embed a token in the first
response, shared between the page and the server, and use it for authenticated
communication through the data channel (be it AJAX or a WebSocket).
Consequently, the first page can't be static.
~~~
Joeri
The token is returned by the auth service when the user logs in. The initial
page bootstraps in unauthenticated mode and always has to query the auth
service first to figure out if the user is logged in. That's how I've done it
in the past.
~~~
pygy_
How do you tell apart the app loaded in several tabs and and an attacker?
------
ams6110
So we're back to Powerbuilder again.
------
kennethkl
Why take a step back in technology?
~~~
Gracana
I think you're misunderstanding what they mean by "static." The served pages
are static html and javascript, and the javascript loads other resources from
the server. The "static" part just means there is no page rendering occurring
on the server.
~~~
otterley
Out of all the processes that must occur to render a dynamic server-side
response (database queries, computations, etc.), assembling HTML ("page
rendering") is probably one of the least expensive. This seems like a
premature optimization to me.
~~~
reverius42
It's not just a performance optimization. It's a cleaner architecture that's
easier to test.
------
dickeytk
you can totally use s3 with pushState sites. They allow you to set custom
redirection rules
~~~
mbleigh
Redirects don't maintain URL state. If I make a redirect rule that points
everything to /index.html, once I get to /index.html the browser doesn't keep
the old URL in the location bar.
------
mantrax4
Congratulations. With this arbitrary limitation you just eliminated the
cheapest, most scalable and most simple part of the entire web application -
HTML template rendering, to replace it with fragile and invisible to search
engines JavaScript logic.
I believe people in firm grasp of their common sense would take the practical
hybrid approach and do what makes sense for each specific scenario, rather
than rely on ideology to architect their app for them.
~~~
mbleigh
If you're running a mostly-public content site that depends largely on search
engine traffic, static is probably not the way to go (yet).
If your application lives mostly inside of a login, there's little reason to
force yourself to render HTML from the server rather than building reusable
APIs that can be shared across web, mobile, etc.
~~~
mantrax4
False dichotomy.
Building reusable APIs has nothing to do with forcing yourself to consume them
with client-side JS. Maybe that approach works as a training wheels type of
guide for developers who can't stay focused, but a service layer is pretty
much the norm for any competently written web app, whether a particular API
call is materialized with client-side or server-side view rendering.
Few additional points about thinking intranet apps get a pass for being
intranet:
1\. Even on the intranet, it's good for people to be able to bookmark specific
point of their navigation and query type (i.e. page, sorting order, filtering
criteria, via URL query); it matches how they use the web, and improves their
workflows and performance. People don't react well when the web app you
developed just decided to pick up all the limitation of native apps, with none
of the benefits of a native app (native UI, performance, OS integration etc.).
Don't make it a crappy wanna-be-real-app web app, just make it a good web app,
acting like a web app.
Now, sure, if you try really heard, you can emulate it with a big number of
static pages (so it works when you refresh) and manually synching everything
with the browser History API, but whoops, you just blew your budget, deadline
and doubled the number of tests your app needs to pass QA checks since your
app now has complicated history management where it didn't need any (aside
form ideology), instead of letting the browser and server work it out using
the good old school ways of handling page state.
2\. It's pointless waste to develop two set of practices, tools and processes
for creating & maintaining public apps, vs. internal apps. What for? Feeling
good inside that you saved 3% CPU on the server in view rendering? Please.
I've gotten people fired over insisting on using their own pet practices like
these (with no provable real-world benefit) over common sense, and wasting the
business time and money.
3\. In my practical the line between an intranet app and Internet apps is
thing. So if an internal app becomes public (in a limited or full-blown
capacity), it's a good idea you don't have to drop all the UI code and start
over, mkay.
I write intranet apps for a living (they mix server-side and client-side
rendering).
~~~
mbleigh
I wasn't referring to intranet vs. internet apps, but rather apps that
generate public content that can be viewed without authentication (e.g.
Twitter) vs. apps whose information is entirely restricted to authenticated
users (e.g. GMail). Basically: does the app generate stuff that needs to be
crawled by a search engine?
While client-side routing and state preservation used to be a very difficult
thing, these days it's actually pretty straightforward (ngRoute, Backbone
router, Ember router, etc).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Learn how to code without leaving your browser (HTML, JS, Python, Ruby, Java...) - myasmine
http://www.myasmine.com/free-sites-learn-how-to-code-without-leaving-your-browser
======
xlo250
Great Article!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A tiny static full-text search engine using Rust and WebAssembly (2019) - jaden
https://endler.dev/2019/tinysearch/
======
jil
I've been a fan of Matthias' project for a while. I learned about it soon
after starting Stork: [https://stork-search.net](https://stork-search.net)
They're very similar and share a lot of principles, though Matthias went full-
on towards the algorithmic aspect and I focused on the experience of including
the UI (copy-pastable from the code on the home page) and building a search
index.
I think WASM-aided in-browser search is really exciting! There are clear
benefits for content creators (embedding search on a Jamstack site has
historically been tricky) and for users alike (Caching & offline support is
pretty rad if your users are doing a lot of searching). I'm excited to see
Matthias' project get attention here!
------
jka
Does anyone else begin to feel like their role as a software developer is to
maintain a mental search index of available techniques, languages, libraries,
and metadata properties about each of them?
It's becoming so easy to compose software from available open source
components, and migrate functionality (like full-text search) to different
layers of the stack (and that's fantastic!).
It's just tricky to keep all the requirements and constraints (and
implications) in mind when selecting the appropriate libraries :)
~~~
amelius
It's sad that we still don't have automatic interoperability between
languages.
Someone should define a common API, and every language should adhere to it (or
risk not be taken seriously). This is not trivial, since some languages have
garbage collection, but it should be possible.
~~~
adwn
Like ImprobableTruth said, this isn't really possible without restricting the
expressivity of the interop API or the set of supported languages. At least
not on the function-call level.
A more flexible – though less efficient – approach would be a service-oriented
protocol. You'd send requests in the form of messages (binary or text) over a
byte-oriented bidirectional channel and receive the replies on the same
channel. Unfortunately this approach would require more code to set up than
primitive [1] function calls, and fine-grained interaction with the library
would be harder.
[1] "primitive" as in _lower-level_ , not as in _dumb_.
~~~
adwn
Dammit, now I can't think about anything else but how to design such a
protocol, and how to generate adapters which translate between this protocol
and the API of a library...
Edit: From the perspective of the interop protocol, it wouldn't make much
difference if the library runs in the same address space or in a different
process. Large blobs of data, like an picture or a long string, could be
passed via pointers (in the same process) or via shared memory (in different
processes).
~~~
asdfman123
If you're trying to make an API for all programming languages, aren't you
essentially just recreating something like the Java virtual machine but with
your own biases and assumptions inserted?
~~~
adwn
You're misunderstanding my idea. Don't think "C ABI with higher-level types
and objects", think "HTTP with more structure".
~~~
asdfman123
But it seems that kind of protocol would just be a way of telling a computer
_what_ to do, not _how_ to do it. How would that be better than any other
messaging format that exists?
Genuinely curious, because I don't fully understand this myself but the idea
is interesting.
~~~
adwn
To be honest, I don't know. It was just a quick idea, and I'm increasingly
less sure, whether it makes sense at all. Sorry to disappoint you :-(
------
krut-patel
I was looking for something similar (client side text search) and landed upon
MiniSearch[0]. While it doesn't support some of the advanced features of lunr
(like wildcard search), it was perfect for my needs. The accompanying blog
post[1] explains the trade-offs pretty well.
0 -
[https://github.com/lucaong/minisearch](https://github.com/lucaong/minisearch)
1 - [https://lucaongaro.eu/blog/2019/01/30/minisearch-client-
side...](https://lucaongaro.eu/blog/2019/01/30/minisearch-client-side-
fulltext-search-engine.html)
------
karterk
Really cool. Reading through your incremental discoveries (aka going down the
rabbit hole!) reminded me of my own adventure with building a typo tolerant
search engine (you can see it here:
[https://github.com/typesense/typesense](https://github.com/typesense/typesense)).
What began as a simple side project 4 years ago has consumed a significant
part of my free time over the last couple of years.
Web assembly is certainly going to open a lot of new avenues for doing
interesting things on the browser.
------
_bxg1
Really neat project and fantastic write-up. I always enjoy following the
journeys of people who forge into the untamed lands of WASM.
I always find myself wishing I had a good excuse to use WASM for something,
but never being able to find one, so it's exciting to see that you did! The
fact is that JavaScript logic is rarely the bottleneck in web apps. And when
it is, it's usually tangled up in UI rendering code that would be hard to
tease out into WASM. You do bring up an interesting point, though, which I
hadn't considered: WASM isn't just faster, it's _smaller_. That alone could
make it useful in some cases where the speed may not be needed!
~~~
omn1
Thanks! On top of the size benefits, I love that I can finally use languages
other than JavaScript on the frontend. I couldn't have done it in JS because
I'd have to write a BloomFilter implementation in it (which I would not be
capable of) or bundle an existing library, which would have increased code-
size (hence, defeating the point of the project). Portability is the other big
feature of wasm.
------
craig
Great post! Doesn't it make sense to load the index separately, instead of a
single bundle? RN the client would bust it's cache every time the content
changes?
~~~
omn1
This was requested before and there even was work on a prototype that has
since stalled. If you (or anyone else) is interested, please check out
[https://github.com/mre/tinysearch/pull/37](https://github.com/mre/tinysearch/pull/37).
Maybe we can get this done in a future version. :)
------
prayze
I've always been curious about this. What's the best practice for loading a
large JSON file for large sets of search results? I believe when working with
lunr in the past, I ended up making large network requests to load the entire
JSON file at once. What's the proper way to deal with this?
~~~
wereHamster
Once your website reaches a certain size, the JSON will be too big to load.
Then you'll have to offload the search request to a server. Either self-
hosted, or a service like Algolia.
~~~
pmlnr
Push the corpus into SQLite, it has built-in FTS engines[^1]. Then serve it
with anything. Unfortunately this needs server side code, but like 30 lines of
PHP.
[^1]: [https://www.sqlite.org/fts5.html](https://www.sqlite.org/fts5.html)
~~~
ComputerGuru
You can do SQLite in the browser but it’ll have to download the entire dB file
instead of only opening the pages it needs (because the naive JS port can’t
convert page requests to range requests).
~~~
woadwarrior01
It should be possible to support loading only the required pages on the
browser with SQLite compiled to WASM along with a custom VFS implementation.
Here’s a project[1] which does something similar (selectively load the SQLite
DB on demand), albeit with the SQLite file in a torrent.
[1]:
[https://github.com/bittorrent/sqltorrent](https://github.com/bittorrent/sqltorrent)
------
nmstoker
So once this loads, it sounds like it could be made to work offline. That
might open some interesting possibilities.
~~~
whb07
Wasm can be cached!
------
bitskyx
How about putting this index and search logic into a CloudFlare worker?
[https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/templates/pages/he...](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/templates/pages/hello_world_rust/#resources)
~~~
bitskyx
Then you can upload index up to 1MB and still have decent performance
[https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/limits/#numb...](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/about/limits/#number-
of-scripts)
~~~
omn1
That's a good idea. In my case, I wanted a static search that I could deploy
next to my content. Cloudflare workers would require a (free) account, but
most importantly they wouldn't work full offline. For bigger indices, that
would be a great trade-off, though. If you like, you can try pushing
tinysearch to a worker using wasm-pack. It's all Rust in the end, so you'd
only need to add a `/search` route e.g. with hyper
([https://github.com/hyperium/hyper](https://github.com/hyperium/hyper)). If
you're willing to experiment with this, don't hesitate to open a pr/issue on
Github and we can add that feature.
~~~
tmzt
It would be interesting to see a hybrid approach:
* server side WASM such as cloudflare workers and kv to build and maintain the index
* streaming copy of the simplified index to be pulled in by a browser-side wasm
* queries that go beyond the simple index forwarded to the worker
One way of simplifying would be to limit search terms to a certain length, or
only expose the most popular results.
By sharing wasm code the format can be optimized and not require a
compatibility layer or serdes.
------
hfourm
Couldn't find the search on mobile :(
~~~
codazoda
I found it, but couldn't make it work. Pixel 3a running Android 10 and the
stock Chrome browser. Hitting enter on the search field did nothing and I
can't see any other submit button. Then again, 10% of the search field is also
missing.
~~~
codazoda
On second look, it's real-time. No need to submit. The results just blend into
the page so I thought it was broken.
~~~
omn1
Sorry to hear that. Not an expert, but if you have any ideas on how to improve
the UX I'd be thankful.
------
Luff
How does it compare with flexsearch? It claims to be the fastest, smallest,
prettiest search library in town. [https://github.com/nextapps-
de/flexsearch](https://github.com/nextapps-de/flexsearch)
~~~
PaywallBuster
this one is 100% client side, flexsearch is client-server.
I guess for bigger indexes not gonna work out, as the payload will be huge and
it pushes all the work to the client.
~~~
rraghur
Nope.. Was looking into flex search today.. is all client side
------
kragen
Today's thread on the other search engine:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23473365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23473365)
------
steffan
Thanks for describing your process as well as the tool, jaden! I appreciate
your pursuit of efficiency in the download and implementation. This is
inspiring me to add Wasm to my Rust usage.
~~~
steffan
That is, thanks to Matthias. But thanks for the post, jaden
------
tuananh
this should be smaller than sth like lunr.js?
[https://lunrjs.com/guides/getting_started.html](https://lunrjs.com/guides/getting_started.html)
~~~
Groxx
potentially _much_ smaller, since you don't need to bundle the full content of
all articles to be able to search them.
------
steventhedev
How does this compare to a full reverse index? I would expect a full index to
be much simpler to implement and would compress better.
Still very impressive work, and gives me a new reason to learn Rust.
~~~
omn1
Author here. Tried a full reverse index first but it's much bigger in size -
think around two orders of magnitude, if I remember correctly.
------
unwoundmouse
I'm also curious, how does zola compare to jekyll?
~~~
guu
jekyll:
\+ plugin support
\+ large community with lots of themes/plugins
\- need to install ruby and dependencies
\- slow to build large sites
zola:
\+ easy install (precompiled binary)
\+ fast
\- smaller feature set and community
\- no plugins
------
blairanderson
this search does not work, but I enjoy your enthusiasm.
~~~
pryce
In terms of not performing what the user might expect from search behaviour,
an example I found was the following:
A word "elasticlunr", appears in the linked article, and the linked article
appears in search results, but searching any partial string such as "elastic",
"elasticl" "elasticlu" and "elasticlun" will not result in finding the linked
article. Perhaps this behaviour is intended by the author, but it may not be
intended by the various users of the site.
Oddly,
> elastic* and elasticl*
does find the linked article, but
> elasticlu* and elasticlun*
do not.
~~~
ricket
Also the search index has not been updated in 8 months so it doesn't include
the several recent articles. Which can be confusing, since those articles are
right next to the search box when you're at the homepage. I opened a github
issue for him.
~~~
omn1
Thanks for the heads-up; will fix.
The reason is, that I'm working on decoupling the search frontend from the
JSON search blobs. Want to make the frontend-part installable through npm as
well (and not just cargo as it is now). Didn't get around to adding the search
index generation to Github actions yet due to limited time. Here's the
pipeline if you want to give me a hand and add the tinysearch build:
[https://github.com/mre/mre.github.io/blob/source/.github/wor...](https://github.com/mre/mre.github.io/blob/source/.github/workflows/ci.yml)
------
boromi
Interesting use of zola, been thinking about trying gatsby.js perhaps Zola as
well now. Has anyone used either?
~~~
steffan
Just started using Zola recently. Early, but after comparing with several
other engines it seemed the best suited to my application. So far I'm happy
with it.
~~~
lwhsiao
I'm a big fan of Zola. When I need more features, I'd reach for Hugo before
Jekyll. But for most simple static sites, Zola is my favorite.
~~~
Keats
Which features are you missing the most?
------
npiit
Thanks Matthias! I learned a lot from your YouTube channel on Rust. One of my
favorite tech channels ever.
~~~
omn1
Awww. Thanks so much. I suffer from extreme impostor syndrome, which is one
reason why I didn't continue making shows. Hearing that people actually
learned something is heart-warming. If anyone is interested, the old episodes
are here: hello-rust.show
~~~
npiit
I truly mean it. Your channel is one of the best real tech channels I've ever
seen.
~~~
deathtrader666
Link to said channel please?
~~~
omn1
[https://www.youtube.com/hellorust](https://www.youtube.com/hellorust)
------
bepvte
Great stuff, but it doesn't seem to search titles
~~~
omn1
Yeah, that's a bug. XD I was ingesting the title into the bloomfilter without
making it lowercase like the rest. Then when searching, I lowercase the user
input and guess what... the title can't be matched. Whoops. ;) Will fix.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should startups invest in business cards? - erickhill
Obviously, there is a practical tension to keep costs to a minimum, especially when teams are small and frugality is important.<p>But there is also a strong need to evangelize one's product during physical meetings or chance encounters. Without getting too geeky (like emailing one's contact info to another, etc.) what do HN'ers typically do?
======
YoungEnt
Yes, 100%
A startup can't generate revenue or even continue, without the spread of word
of mouth, which is a BIG way to get new customers.
I've been there when you don't have a business card and it does 2 things:
- You look really unprofessional
- That's one person that will never remember you again.
I would advise vistaprint.com, they give 250 free business cards, you just
have to pay shipping. Here's the link: vistaprint.com/thankspandora
~~~
kposehn
I agree with the sentiment about business cards 100%. You need them, so get
them.
Do NOT get VistaPrint. The free cards they have stick their logo on the back
side. Go to OvernightPrints.com and you can get a better set for very little
money. I have tested out every single online printer in depth over the years
and they have the best business card offer for the money.
@YoungEnt - where did you get that affiliate link? ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Subsets and Splits