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Gay concentration camps in Chechnya (April 2017) - reimertz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_concentration_camps_in_Chechnya ====== reimertz This is a disgrace, history is repeating itself but people are too uneducated/ignorant/hateful/stupid to see it. edit: thanks for feedback. ~~~ FeepingCreature > tsunami of far-right populism Do we really need to drag this horrible crime into our political discussion by attributing it to our enemies? Do you really think that is helpful? ~~~ reimertz You are definitely right, thanks for pointing it out. ------ sashazykov Mufti of Chechnya promises Novaya Gazeta journalists Allah’s retribution – [https://meduza.io/en/news/2017/04/14/mufti-of-chechnya- promi...](https://meduza.io/en/news/2017/04/14/mufti-of-chechnya-promises- novaya-gazeta-journalists-allah-s- retribution?utm_source=email&utm_medium=briefly&utm_campaign=2017-04-14) ------ puppycodes I wonder if it was grindr they were using to arrest them?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks - kwamenum86 http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/The_Top_Ten_Reasons_iTunes_Sucks ====== callmeed Top 5 reasons iTunes doesn't suck: My wife, who is not a geek, can: 1\. Import CDs 2\. Buy music 3\. Arrange playlists 4\. Sync her iPhone 5\. Burn CDs All without help or frustration. ~~~ run4yourlives Double mod up (if I could) for buying music and burning cd's. itunes makes this dead simple. ------ kwamenum86 iTunes is in no way sub-par so I think the language is a little strong, however, I think that just like many pieces of popular software it is not necessarily the best. Indeed, people with free time and some know how have come up with pretty cool product features that rival or surpass some of Apple's features. Aren't we allowed to demand more even though the product is already good?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Internet Radio Copyright Is Dumb: A Comprehensive Explainer - Amorymeltzer http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/internet-radio-copyright-is-bad-and-dumb-a-comprehensive-explainer ====== njharman > The next time you have a fleeting thought about how internet radio sucks, > and could be better—well, now you know what’s to blame. It’s copyright. Can be broadened to "why does <insert aspect of creative culture> suck, blame copyright. ~~~ 6stringmerc ...and, if you want to know why things are going to continue to suck with respect to Copyright, blame Congress for letting Disney and large corporations rig the game for their interests. ~~~ hga We also have to blame the Supremes. The Constitution is reasonably clear about this in Article 1: _Section. 8. The Congress shall have Power.... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;_ Perpetual copyright is most certainly not "for limited Times", but per Wikipedia's analysis of _Eldred v. Ashcroft_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft)): _However, the major argument for the act that carried over into the case was that the Constitution specified that Congress only needed to set time limits for copyright, the length of which was left to their discretion. Thus, as long as the limit is not "forever," any limit set by Congress can be deemed constitutional._ Although I suppose we should not be surprised, given how little respect they show for so much else of the Constitution, e.g. my current pet peeve, we have a right to keep arms, but not bear them outside our dwellings, another very crabbed interpretation of clear language. ------ ohitsdom "It would be really difficult to track down every single composer for every song that’s played on the radio—so onerous that it would be nearly impossible to run a radio station." In 2015, this really shouldn't be too difficult to solve. Somehow, it isn't, so: "So under copyright law, radio stations and other entities purchase blanket licenses from associations like BMI and ASCAP, which lets them off the hook for everything they play." This would seem to screw smaller artists that aren't signed with big labels. Shouldn't this be easy to solve with software? Pay for what actually gets played. Blanket agreements only encourages stations to play composers covered by those agreements. ~~~ michael_h This is exactly my problem with how Spotify works. If I pay my $120 for a year and listen exclusively to one obscure artist, that artist will get a tiny,tiny fraction of the $80 that is payed out. Most of it will go to an artist that I probably can't stand. The explanations I've heard roughly equate to: it's too complicated. Oh really? If only there was a machine that could _easily_ keep track of all that information, we'd be all set. ~~~ parfe So go to see that artist performing live where they get a far more substantial chunk of money. Buy some merchandise direct from the band. The antiquated idea is that an artist should be getting money for doing absolutely nothing because they once recorded song months or years ago. If they want to be paid they are perfectly capable of going out and working for it. ~~~ aikah What you don't get is that if a customer subscribes to Spotify, thinking its money is going to the artists he listens, well, it isn't the case, most of the money goes to Sony and co anyway, because they have a deal upfront with Spotify where they will get X hundreds of millions no matter what. So the customer money goes directly into big label's pockets. How that "new model" is different from the old one? it's not it's exactly the same, aside from the fact that even big artists are getting ripped off. It has nothing to do with your rant about how artists should sell t-shirts, posters, mugs because you know it's not tough enough to be musician, one must also produce all that shit .... ------ happyscrappy Think of how crazy things are right now. With Spotify or Apple Music you can just make lists of all the music you want and record the output. You could do this with terrestrial radio(I did!) but you couldn't control what was played so it was quite different. The only thing stopping people from having every song they ever wanted for $10 is laziness. ~~~ jandrese Some DJs also get instructed to talk over the beginning and ends of songs to avoid people doing this. I remember being annoyed in the 90s that DJs would never STFU when the song started, but learned later that it was at the request of the cartels. Hopefully this practice died when the Internet and death of cassette tapes killed off radio mixtapes. ~~~ tempestn Wow, do you have a source for that? Always irritated too, but I never considered there might be a reason for it other than incompetence. ~~~ jandrese Only hearsay sadly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: If JavaScript could talk to databases - photon137 If JavaScript (or a JS framework) could talk to databases, would we need server-side languages/frameworks at all? ====== redredraider So you want to give clients direct access to your database? ------ dotborg Yes, for offline processing. ~~~ photon137 But that could be done without a web-specific framework right? Say I had JavaScript on the client side send me a computation request to do something massive, say on a grid - I will probably run that using C/C++/Java there and return the result to JavaScript. My point is, do we really need something to generate HTML at all at what we usually call the "server"-side? ~~~ dotborg "Generating HTML" on server side is done in some predictable time, while you can't make any assumptions about your users computer/OS performance thus the user experience will be random. It means problems and many lines of javascript code to solve them. ------ geuis You can accomplish this, after a sort, using databases like CouchDB and Mongodb. While its entirely possible to write a pure client/database web application, you are going to run into security issues. You are inherently opening up your database to the outside world, and javascript clients are inherently un- trustworthy from a security angle. If I were designing such a platform, I would segment actions into "safe" and "non-safe" areas. Safe areas would be client/database actions that are ok for the javascript client to access externally. Non-safe areas, such as account creation and editing, financial interactions, etc, would need a middle-tier server-side application layer. The middle-tier would need to act as a proxy that handles validation of database requests, etc. ------ batista Yes. For one, you don't let the intertubes (clients) all talk to your database. Second, there are tons of other stuff that we do on the server side besides talking to databases. E.g image processing, task queues, etc. And lastly, Javascript is not the most elegant of languages. No much benefit of using it in the server side, besides the mythical "so we can share code", as if server and client side do the same stuff (with the exception of input validation). ~~~ photon137 Direct client access to a database as being the most prominent concern raised here (which to me was the main concern as well) - I will need to think about it. Say we magically got rid of the security problem (thus eliminating a middle tier - and I admit it'd be some pretty mean magic), then could your second point could be addressed by this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4518443> ? Regarding your third point, I agree it's not the most elegant of languages - but if some language which _is_ elegant could run on browsers and _had_ database access capabilities, would one use that instead of having a middle tier to generate "pages"? (as things stand, much of the middleware these days generates and receives JSON/XML and data anyway - can we do away with generating that initial HTML totally?) ~~~ bartonfink Your original point was that we might not need server-side languages or frameworks at all. "The grid" is still a server - it's just not one you control directly. I don't think we'll ever get away from servers because there are definite advantages available by having computation centralized - you can have more powerful hardware available, you don't need to worry about outdated versions of code running, etc. More broadly, though - there's nothing specific to a language that allows or disallows communication with a database. That's really the realm of a library or a driver to interact with the database (an external service) through some established protocol. People have written databases with JS hooks before, but it's just not common, likely because of the security problem.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hero Worship in IT - Good or Bad? - DanielBMarkham http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/12/the_guy.php ====== mechanical_fish Well, it's true that sometimes projects fail because people uncritically follow the advice of respected authorities. On the other hand, sometimes projects fail because nobody respects authority. Every single decision, from the compiler to the database vendor to the lunch menu, is challenged by the free-thinkers on the team and then debated to death. Eighteen months go by, and the software doesn't ship. Sometimes projects fail because everyone loses the plot. Determined to avoid being trapped by the constraints of a standard methodology, but unable to find the time or the talent to develop, document, and teach a methodology of their own, the leaders fall back on the classic IT solution: handwaving. There are no established authorities or written specs, and processes like QA or release engineering evolve from week to week and are passed on by word of mouth. Eventually, the one person who knew how everything worked accepts another job, everything falls apart, and the software doesn't ship. Sometimes projects fail because the people on the team are demoralized. Without a successful company to model themselves on, they fear that they've gone down a dead end. Without a community or a written argument to back them up, they are hesitant about proposing their new ideas, all of which sound stupid. ( _"Yes, we should write tests for code that hasn't been written yet."_ _"Yes, we should ship version 0.5 even without those 'critical' features, to start getting feedback."_ ) The employees sit around in their cubes, playing Tetris and looking forward to happy hour, and the software doesn't ship. And, of course, sometimes projects fail because the team was badly put together in the first place. Anxious to avoid hiring "hero worshipers" who "do not think for themselves", the boss doesn't ask the interviewees what they think of Paul Graham, or the Joel test, or XP, or Martin Fowler, or Bruce Tate, or DHH, or Seth Godin. Five weeks later, the "team" consists of a Java developer who secretly prefers Rails, admires 37signals, and wants to work as the back-end guy at a YC-style startup; an Oracle-certified .NET developer who wants to be a VP at a $100-million IT consulting firm; a designer who knows a little PHP and wants to work part-time; and a marketing person who used to work for Procter and Gamble. These folks can't agree on anything, and the software doesn't ship. So, on balance, I think that so-called "hero worship" is pretty useful, and the IT industry needs more and better heroes. (Though I prefer the term "leaders".) ~~~ edw519 I didn't realize you worked at the same place I did. Are you the guy in the blue shirt I said hi to in the break room? ------ dpapathanasiou Those essays (especially the ones written after Viaweb and before YC) can be inspiring if you're stuck in a cube at Big Company, Inc. and neither your managers nor your fellow programmers are interested in doing anything else with their lives. That doesn't mean _everything_ Graham writes about is as compelling (the essay on philosophy is an example), though, and you're right to point out that it can go too far. ~~~ jkush I've always had an entreprenurial / always-doing-something spirit, but I do owe my decision to get the hell out of a cube to Paul Graham's essays. He's not a hero to me and I don't worship him but I still am quite glad he's around. ~~~ jgrahamc I've been lucky enough to get to know Paul a little. He invited me to take part in the first MIT Spam Conference in 2003 and I've seen him on and off since then. I don't think hero worship is appropriate, but I think Paul should be celebrated for a few things: sunny personality, good writing, openness, curiosity. There are a lot of people in the computer industry with difficult personalities, who can't communicate in writing, who are fixated on a particular technology. Paul isn't like that. Those things make him worth looking up to. ------ apathy Crux: > They want a hero -- somebody more than a mentor. This is the problem. Grow up and understand that nobody -- not Paul Graham, not DHH, not your guru-like boss that rebuilt an AIX filesystem with 'ed' -- nobody is perfect. And realize that no one can make your decisions but you. Then there is no problem. Decide -- don't follow -- and you're fine. Slavishly hanging on every word of another, imperfect human being will always get you in trouble, and it's no quality that any would-be leader should embody. If you want to follow someone else, go back to your cubicle! ------ cglee In certain societies and cultures, it's common to have a "master", "guru", or mentor to help out a young apprentice. It's actually an expected way of life. We don't seem to have that in the US, or at least, it's not taught as a necessity growing up. Paul, among others, fill this void to young, energetic, tech inclined students. You can call it hero worship, or simply some form of mentorship/apprenticeship. If anything, the celebrity around PG signals a deep desire for good, honest mentors. ~~~ downer _ > If anything, the celebrity around PG signals a deep desire for good, honest mentors._ I agree with the second part of this point; in regard to the particular subject, hopefulness that said subject will finance one's startup is an integral part of it. ------ henning This heretic has besmirched our beloved PG - seize him! Silence the blasphemer at once! ~~~ icky Chief Acolyte henning, please permit me to fetch the sacred tongue-tongs! ------ sosuke Hate to take some of the depth out of his well written article but it could be that people of varying experience and confidence find it easy and reassuring to lean on a well known mentor or hero as a way to prevent absolute failure in the eyes of others and maybe themselves. ~~~ run4yourlives Not sure why you've been downmodded, but I think you point's a pretty good one. ------ mattmaroon PG handles it well at least. I've met a lot of people who don't. ------ edw519 Albert Einstein didn't understand the concept of hero worship until be befriended Charlie Chaplin. When they were together at the premiere of City Lights, a crowd rushed their car to get a better look. A confused Einstein asked, "What does it all mean?" Chaplin replied, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing." ------ falsestprophet "...defend vigorously any sort of perceived attack against him." On that note, I will fight you. edit: I will find you old man! ------ Eliezer OMFG heroes can be imperfect! Alert the media!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
America’s aging population is leading to a doctor shortage crisis - spking https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/06/americas-aging-population-is-leading-to-a-doctor-shortage-crisis.html ====== dantheman The doctor shortage has to do with the American Medical Associate (AMA), a cartel, that successfully lobbied to reduce the number of residencies available for doctors. They also make it difficult for new medical schools to be created -- this is intentional, since as a cartel they want to limit the number of doctors so that they can demand hire wages. [https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical- associati...](https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/25/american-medical-association- opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html#15cc1fd42f28) ~~~ mrep I don't work in the healthcare industry so I have no skin in the game, but in what situations do you consider labor cartels ok because unions are exactly that and many people here seem to advocate them. Becoming a doctor from what I have read sounds like a horrible return on investment: You have to delay real wages for like 8 years while you get educated, those 8 years make you massively in debt, once you become a doctor, you have to pay off those 8 years of debt while also paying massive insurance rates. I'm not suprised doctors are trying to secure some wages after 8 years of investing in themselves while going massively in debt. ~~~ wolco The 8 years could be streamlined but it's setup to weed out many and tire out the remaining. Many of the brightest most curious people get turned off by the process the people that remain are the ones who could stand the beatdown. Then they get out start working and have to see 25,000 people a year (100/day) as a gp. There is a huge burnout process going on. I see so many doctors try to make a business on shark tank/dragons den work or they try to become media personalities. Many seem stuck because the job isn't what many would expect. They have invested heavily time/effort in study, they have high debt and they have increased expectations from family/community. ~~~ nmstoker Personally I'd rather they set up a more sustainable training approach - I'm not overly keen on having a doctor who's been "tired" out. I've seen a junior NHS doctor treating a partner in such a state of tiredness that they had to rely on mnemonics and tell us the number of things they'd be checking so that he didn't forget two minutes later and miss any out. ~~~ arcticfox Peter Attia discussed on his podcast a time when he fell asleep and fell on top of a patient while operating on them during his residency. Pretty insanely bad system. ------ Merrill It appears that Medicare keeps the fee for an office visit low. This causes the doctors to schedule frequent, short exams. They also do frequent diagnostic tests to increase revenue per visit. Less frequent, more thorough visits would seem to be more efficient for all. Lots of senior care is pretty elastic, since most visits result in no change in drugs or procedures for the patient. They are simply monitoring chronic and/or progressive conditions. ------ zelon88 Well the medical debt bubble has gotta burst eventually. My guess is right before it does the state of healthcare in the US will be so bad that women will be giving birth in minute clinics because everyone will be priced out of hospitals by then. We won't have a shortage of anything until we fix our shortage of insurance providers. ------ taxicabjesus The doctor shortage would be lessened if medical resources were allocated more intelligently. As it is, doctors have a tendency to make work for themselves. The system needs lots of doctors simply to keep their charade going. We all get to a point where we need less doctoring, not more. During the 'obamacare' debates some stupid politicians called this transition in the goals of treatment "death panels" [1], but the realists on the other side of the aisle didn't figure out how to intelligently point out that sometimes letting people die gracefully is kinder than subjecting them to every possible medical treatment. My brother works with old people in Arizona. He's paid a salary, and makes a game of trying to spend his employer's resources efficiently. On a recent visit I noted his comment about how he's just doing palliative care. Most doctors aren't on salary, and are paid via the standard medicare "fee-for- service" (FFS) [2] model, which is a good way to make people profitable to their medical providers. [0] My earlier comment about my mom's elderly friend's predicament: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224523) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-for- service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-for-service) ------ pinacarlos90 Is it just me that feels like recently the word “crisis” is being overused? not just online but by the media also ------ fhsm Shouldn’t this point to the actual report not thin reporting on its publication? [https://news.aamc.org/content/downloadable/209/](https://news.aamc.org/content/downloadable/209/) [PDF, by way of CDN redirect] Or at least the (interested sponsors) press release on the study linked in this news article? [https://news.aamc.org/press- releases/article/2019-workforce-...](https://news.aamc.org/press- releases/article/2019-workforce-projections-update/) ------ NTDF9 Rural America really really needs more doctors. The amount of time it takes to get an appointment to diagnose anything is crazy long already. ------ Madmallard Nope there's no doctor shortage. There is hospital administration greed and crappy working conditions where patient throughput is valued above all else leading to doctor burnout. I am angry at whomever wrote this for fueling the wrong argument and possibly trying to detract from the real issue. ~~~ SkyPuncher The doctor shortage isn't really about hospitals. It's a huge issue with family and primary care physicians, particularly in rural areas. Paper work requirements and misguided reimbursement goals are making it unsustainable for doctors not involved in large health systems.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What secure email provider do you use? - fizwhiz Yes, it's not easy for email to be truly secure, and yes a secure email provider may shut down (a la Lavabit). I just want to pay for a reliable service accessible via my phone (android) that doesn't mine my data and that is significantly harder to hack into. A quick search on HN yielded discussions with most people poking holes at new email products but I couldn't any definitive winner. Any suggestions? ====== mattkrea Host your own. Here's an excellent guide: [http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e- mail-in-2-ho...](http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e-mail- in-2-hours/) ------ skidoo I have happily been using the services of the A/I Collective for five years now, with no complaints or qualms. [http://www.autistici.org/en/index.html](http://www.autistici.org/en/index.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Understanding vipassana meditation - kapilkaisare http://lesswrong.com/lw/2rd/understanding_vipassana_meditation/ ====== skowmunk Having done the 10 day basic vipassana course just after high school (had to find a way to control my restless mind), can't say if it helped with any of those 4 points mentioned in the article. But, gosh, it helped me get some sleep. Finally, I could sleep in the nights instead of just staring at the fan. I could sleep wherever and whenever I wanted. Of course, its different now, that I consider sleep a necessary evil - such a waste of life. If only I could do away with it....	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Paul Kedrosky on Y Combinator - theudude2002 http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/03/03/y_combinator_ne.html ====== theudude2002 That's how I found out about Y Combinator. Thanks Paul	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Atlas of Emotions, a New Project with the Dalai Lama and Paul and Eve Ekman - sebg https://hi.stamen.com/in-2014-the-dalai-lama-asked-his-friend-scientist-dr-2a46f0c6bd80#.tqpk6qg2m ====== woodandsteel I find it interesting to look at the relationship between the basic emotions and Maslow's need theory. So for instance, if you think something is about to happen that runs strongly contrary to one of your vital needs, I suppose you will feel fear. If you see one of your basic needs being well-met, pleasure. If you think someone is acting contrary to one of you needs, you will tend to feel anger. Disgust seems to be when you think something is happening contrary to your need to avoid disease and poisons. In terms of Ekman's concepts, I am trying to explain the various triggers. Is calm a state of mind where you sit back and look at what is happening, good or bad? Maybe someone who knows something about Buddhism could explain what the Dali Lama means when he uses this term. ~~~ ewzimm To understand where the Dalai Lama is coming from, you should understand the states of transition that Buddhists identify as the relationship between the physical world and consciousness. These are sometimes called the five aggregates. I can give you my perspective on that concept from what I know, but it's going to be different from his of course. The first aggregate is the physical form. This is translated into a good or bad feeling. Next comes a perception of whether or not the thing is familiar. This then becomes a mental formation of emotions and ideas triggered by the thing. Lastly, integrates into consciousness. So in the Buddhist understanding, which is based on people's experiences in meditation, a positive or negative judgment comes before something is even recognized, so there's a separation between judgment and emotional reaction. Calmly sitting back and looking at what is happening is meant to bring awareness past the final point of consciousness when judgments and emotions have already been formed, closer to the source. A little bit like taking a tour of the farm and soup factory to see where your food came from before it got processed and put in a can. So if you're especially good at it, you should be able to see past that judgment and filtering process that your mind does with information, not ignoring it but just being aware of the filters that exist. I'm not sure if this answers your question, but what I'm getting at is that most Buddhists are interested in breaking down this process that leads from external stimulation to a conscious perception and tend to view emotions and judgments as steps in processing. He's comparing his understanding gained through a lot of internal analysis of these steps in processing to the scientific understanding of how it happens. ~~~ woodandsteel Thank you, that is a very clear answer. ------ natchiketa I am delighted to see that the five universal emotions match up with the ones in Inside Out (down to the colors): [https://i.imgur.com/2WsZGqp.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/2WsZGqp.jpg) ------ rfreytag Where is compassion? It isn't in my opinion any of enjoyment, fear, anger, disgust ... maybe sadness. But looking under sadness I see nothing suggestive to me of compassion. ~~~ jey They have it classified under "Enjoyment" as "Compassion/Joy": [http://atlasofemotions.com/#states:enjoyment](http://atlasofemotions.com/#states:enjoyment) ~~~ rfreytag Thank you. It would be very interesting to see if different languages necessitated new emotional spectra. ~~~ gerbilly From what I know of this research, these emotions are supposed to be universal and independent of language and culture. "For more than 40 years, Paul Ekman has supported the view that emotions are discrete, measurable, and physiologically distinct. Ekman's most influential work revolved around the finding that certain emotions appeared to be universally recognized, even in cultures that were preliterate and could not have learned associations for facial expressions through media."[1] [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you focus on working - jeep_b I have a hard time focusing on my tasks, whether it's because of YouTube , Reddit or HN, I always find myself doing something that completely break my work mindset.<p>Do you have any tips, philosophy or tricks? ====== _the_inflator It depends on the context, however, start with the mindset: Done is better than perfect. To finish first, first, you have to finish. Motivation follows action – not vice versa. You work or you pause. You cannot do both. If you do not work, you stare at a blanket NOT Reddit, hn. Schedule time for Reddit, HN, etc. where you MUST consume this stuff (believe me, after being forced to do it, you will get over this addiction thing very fast!) With this internalized, I set boundaries, usually time constraints, and define outcomes so that there is something tangible after the final whistle rings. I set a timer, usually at one minute, and let it repeat. This helps me to get into the groove and stay in the present moment. Soon this will annoy you, so I increase the period gradually from 1 to 3 to 5 and 10 or 15 minutes. I use Noise Cancelling Headsets, however lately I use deliberate distraction, which seems counterintuitive, but highly advisable: techno music as well as Medical Doctors. Why? Content should not excite you too much, so that you deliberately listen to it, but are annoying so that you zone out. This lets me focus. Sports psychologists recommend similar tactics. Very interesting! Train yourself, repeat it until it is a second habit. Rinse and repeat. Use an arsenal of tricks to get you going. Good luck! ------ rockyroadn adderall	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google to Remotely Remove Malware-Laden Apps From Android Devices - solipsist http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110305/google-plans-to-remotely-kill-rogue-apps-in-wake-of-android-attack/?mod=ATD_rss ====== duskwuff Anyone else find it incredibly ironic that, despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Apple's ability to remotely uninstall apps was discovered a few years ago (e.g, [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358115/Apple- iPhone-k...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358115/Apple-iPhone-kill- switch-discovered.html)), Google has ended up remote-killing apps before Apple? ------ J3L2404 From the comments after the article. >Might as well mention that those “useful” applications were ripoffs of popular applications on the store. Hackers downloaded them, modified them, then reuploaded them under similar-sounding names. Hacking aside, it’s nice to know one could always make a living downloading and reposting other people’s work to the free-for-all otherwise known as the Android Marketplace.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WSJT-X [pdf] - jhallenworld https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Work_the_World_part1.pdf ====== jhallenworld Here is part 2: [https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Work_the_World_par...](https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/Work_the_World_part2.pdf)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Good SAAS ideas - tadake Hello Everyone, I was wanting to make a list of ideas for software as a service businesses. Please post potential services that solve a real problem and would be something you would be interested in using yourself. Thanks! ====== CyberFonic When I think of a great SAAS idea, I'll implement it with my team.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them - nreece http://gizmodo.com/5418342/ridiculous-user-interfaces-in-film-and-the-man-who-designs-them ====== lt There's something that always amuses me in movies and series: something happened/is about to happen, a taskforce is created and they're running software very specific to that thing right away, with graphics, simulations, etc. Who writes all that? No one ever mentions the programmers that save the day. ------ jrnkntl The real portfolio url was on HN two days ago. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=971844> and the link: <http://blog.coleran.com/category/portfolio/screendesign> ~~~ sten_ben And a post was up on rockpapershotgun this monday: [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/30/tapitty- tapitty-t...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/30/tapitty-tapitty- tapitty-on-screen-computing) Who started all this one may wonder. ~~~ andreyf I think he did an AMA on reddit two months ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9lsp2/i_create_those_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9lsp2/i_create_those_fake_fbi_screens_and_crime/) ------ rbanffy I have to disagree on the ridiculous part. They are all busy and dense, but they are not ridiculous per se when detached from the movie they came from. Sometimes, you have to convey a very large amount of information in a very confined space. The glass-cockpits in planes are a good example - very dense displays that require some training to use. And, once it works, there is little reason not to make it look cool. ~~~ gaius Some of the best interfaces I have written have been in good old-fashioned curses. If you need a "dashboard" for a complex system for a skilled operator, you can convey an awful lot of information in a maximized xterm on a 1280x1024 screen, it's dense but it's not "cluttered" if you lay it out and use colour intelligently. ~~~ rbanffy Sure, bit it's useful to convey some information in graphical form. Many of the constructs he employs (progress circles, use of color gradients to indicate data age) are really good. The main point being, complex data doesn't have to look ugly. ------ ckuehne Funny. The German in the Bourne Identity UIs is full of errors and fake words. Then again, it is still a lot better than the "German" spoken by Nazis in Hollywood movies. ~~~ rbanffy _ACHTUNG!_ ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights> ------ Luyt However, the user interface of the Sentry Gun the marines used in Aliens II was very realistic: <http://www.inetres.com/gp/sf/aliens/sentry02.jpg> ~~~ aarongough Dead link... ~~~ Luyt Really? For me it still works. Anyway, I've made a mirror copy: ftp://motoom.net/pictures/alien-sentry02.jpg ------ warfangle If you want an overly complicated and busy (with no regard to usability) UI, just go for Enlightenment ;) In other regards, I like the choice of Ulrich Schnauss on his film reel. Big fan. Good coding 'tunes. ~~~ zurcociremer I love Enlightenment. Used to show it off to friends during presentations just for kicks. ;) Other than that it's pretty usable, though takes a while getting used to. ------ Nosferax A much more interesting user interface used in a movie was developed by Oblong (see John Underkoffler). I am talking about Minority Report ;) They are making it into a real UI. Check it out : www.oblong.com ------ genieyclo Did this guy do an IAmA on Reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9lsp2/i_create_those_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9lsp2/i_create_those_fake_fbi_screens_and_crime/) ? ------ systemtrigger I'm looking forward to Iron Man 2. Teaser: <http://mahoski.s3.amazonaws.com/ironman-big.jpg> ~~~ youngian I really enjoyed the UI stuff in Ironman. It was futuristic to be sure, but a lot of it struck me as interfaces that, given the technology, a brilliant inventor might actually use. And I'm pretty sure there was an implementation of tabs, pads, and boards ([http://design.cca.edu/graduate/uploads/pdf/IA_PARC_Ubicomp.p...](http://design.cca.edu/graduate/uploads/pdf/IA_PARC_Ubicomp.pdf)) going on there. ------ sp332 The guy who made the interface for Minority Report is actually commercializing it. <http://vimeo.com/user922585> ------ wlievens I often think that UI's for some real software should be closer to film depictions, not the other way around.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is startup equity just snake oil? - Spiritus Is equity just an excuse for start-ups to motivate lower salaries and bad work hours, which in the end don't yield much anyway? ====== AureliaDalek Think of them like lottery tickets. Yes, they could be worth millions of dollars, but the chance of that happening is very, very slim. The tradeoff for the bad hours/pay is that you'll get more autonomy in your work and the ability to really influence the product. To me, this is why you should work for a startup. Certainly not for the stock options. ~~~ ajbonkoski "The tradeoff for the bad hours/pay is that you'll get more autonomy in your work and the ability to really influence the product. To me, this is why you should work for a startup." I'm beginning to really hate hearing this over and over. So many people accept this at face value when in reality it's dubious at best. Case in point: 6 months ago I left a start-up for a medium-size company (~300-400 people) that has been around for ~15 yrs with no ambitions of going public nor taking outside investment. I get both amazing pay and an insane amount of autonomy. I doubt this could be matched by a Big or Small company. Here's the rub: Silicon Valley markets itself VERY WELL and if you're willing to internalize everything that comes out of this marketing machine, then yes... it's snake oil. I'm not diminishing the the importance or impact of entrepreneurial ventures, but I think we can do better than Cookie-cutter Generalisms repeated ad nauseam without independent thought. ~~~ fratlas Would you say your company is a rare breed? ------ cballard Yes. First of all, they'll probably just tell you how many shares you get. So, you don't even know what percentage of the total you have! But even if they did tell you, they won't show you the cap table, so there's no way to even evaluate the worth, since you can't see how much the investors are going to be paid out first. And even if you did know that, the board can just print more shares and make yours irrelevant anyways, so you _still_ can't tell what they're worth. So, assume they're worthless. ~~~ tptacek This used to be a pretty common story, but I haven't heard it in awhile. Don't accept offers that don't give you enough information to value your shares, unless equity isn't a significant part of your compensation. ~~~ x0x0 It happened to me early this year, and they were super-upset when I turned them down. An A-round startup (with investment from a16z!) that wouldn't share the denominator in the options package... I guess it takes all types. Funny enough, they're still hiring for the role. ------ brianwawok If you make your own company and get 40% of the equity or whatever.. not snake oil at all! If you join a late stage startup and get a good salary and a few shares... not snake oil, but not going to be life changing. Base your decision on the salary and what you will be working on. All the people in the middle offering you 50% of market pay plus 1% of a small company? Ya that is pretty much a scam to get cheap labor, don't fall for it. ~~~ bpchaps BJ&JG was a bit different, though. ;) It's hard to say that two guys who were new to management at the time are entirely representative of the entire small company market. Inexperienced small company market, sure, but not the market as a whole. Also, because real life slipping into HN - why the heck did your sound script pipe a python regex matcher's stdout to perl to have it immediately go directly to stdout for another pipe pick it up?! The context switches... the p&l impacting context switches.... ;) ------ ThrustVectoring I only ever value equity in terms of "percentage of the founder's share". That is, if it isn't the same kind of thing as what the founders have, then there isn't anyone negotiating on your side to keep it valuable, so it's probably not worth anything. The golden question is "if you get an exit that makes you $10m, how much money does that mean for me?" ------ bobby_9x There are many issues with getting equity when you are not investing money: 1) rounds of investments will dilute your shares 2) you have no control over the company and are now in the precarious position where the situation could get really bad, but you don't want to leave because you don't want to lose your shares (I've been there) 3) If the company is overvalued at some point, takes an investment, and then sells for less than that value, the investors will get paid back first (further reducing your chances at getting a payout). Is it snake oil? Not necessarily, but it's a huge risk and you shouldn't think of it as your path to riches. ------ poof131 Yes, more than changing the world, fake equity is what start ups are all about. The goal is to take the fake equity and try to make it real. As an example, a friend built a prototype in a couple months and with the help of someone else, he was able to raise a $1M note at a $10M cap. With 50% of the company he now has $4.5M in equity. But it’s all imaginary. Without an exit it means nothing. Employees are the ones who need to watch out for this, because the founders turn around and try to pretend the equity is real. An offer of $200k of this fake equity isn’t really $200k. And for you to ‘get rich’ and 10x your $200k, you will need to 10x the founders $4.5M of fake equity. All the founders need to do is see an exit and they are rich since the initial seed round gives them millions. So don’t worry about $ numbers, just the percent of the company. If it is early, understand the cap table and fight for your fair share. And don’t stop fighting, especially if you are adding value. Remember the founders got millions of ‘fake equity’, they can and should share. Don’t forget that the ebullient founders see a payday on most any exit whereas you won’t. I like the advice that you are either learning or earning, and if you aren’t founding you most likely are learning. Also, don’t let people talk you far below market salary since you aren’t just giving up big company salary, but also bonus and stock. Most of all though, you need to trust the founders since it’s easy for them to screw you and easy for them to screw everyone if they don’t make the right moves. Even if you build a good product and get customers, if there are bad ratchet clauses everyone but the investors will get screwed. This is geared more toward early stage. For later stage you aren’t going to see the cap table or anything else. The main thing for mid to late stages is growth: users, customers, and revenue. You are stepping on to a rocket ship priced for perfection, if it goes off trajectory your equity is going to be worthless, so don’t feel obliged to stay and help out of charity. At this point the founders have likely already made millions, the senior employees are probably going to be okay, but the noobs are going to get burned. YC and others have done a lot to help founders. Unfortunately, no one has done much to help employees. So pay attention and do your best to find people you trust. Remember, founders have every incentive to sell you the golden dream, since it’s likely to be golden for them. ------ rudimk No, not always. It's something a lot of startups misuse. But I wouldn't say that's how everybody does it. I know some startups that offer equity with a slight pay cut, just to gauge your motivation, and bump up your pay soon after. ------ mesozoic Pretty much. Would you work as hard or take as much of a paycut if you got virtual lottery tickets instead (lottery tickets that even if you win may not pay out since VCs have a higher priority stake in them) ------ forgottenpass _Is equity just an excuse for start-ups to motivate lower salaries and bad work hours, which in the end don 't yield much anyway?_ Pretty much. Unless you have your lawyer (not _a_ lawyer, _your_ lawyer) tell you otherwise assume equity as compensation is worthless. There are times and places where equity isn't meaningless, but that's not at Valley tech startups. There it's mostly used to mislead impressionable youths that haven't been burned yet. ------ relaunched It's less snake oil as it is an inheritance from a long, lost relation. Stock isn't something you can bank on, unless the company is knocking on the door of an IPO and then you are probably looking at RSUs anyway. _I 'm gonna do some math that probably doesn't apply to a new grad, but certainly could apply to an experienced SE/SWE/etc._ Look at it this way, if you are making $175k, with a 15% bonus and $55k of vesting stock at Google ("Alphabet"). Let's just assume the stock doesn't fluctuate over the course of the year. We'll call your total comp $255k real money (forgoing 401k and other benefits for simplicity). Now, you join a well-funded seed startup. They pay you $150 (even in these crazy times this is a high startup figure). Congratulations! You just became an investor. I'll save you the spiel about paying for a better environment, accelerated learning, purpose, etc...You have invested 105k a year, in exchange for .1-.25 percent of the company, if it's still a pretty small startup. Oh yeah, and year one's money gets paid mostly towards your stock cliff; you paid to accrue the first years stock until the end of the year (if you make it to the end of the year). If you leave in month 11 you get nothing. However, at month 12 you get the stock from year one, then each month you earn 1/48 of your total equity stake. _A few more simplifying assumptions. Let 's say your annual adjustments at BigCo and your annual adjustments at startup are equal, which they won't be. Also, there's no opportunity cost._ Next year you pay that $105k again. Then, the company raises a few rounds of capital, over the next 5 years. All in all you've been at the company for 7 years and paid $735k for (let's call it) .1% of a company that was worth $5 million post at the time. But, you've been diluted 30%, 20%, 15% and 7% in subsequent rounds, and then maybe re-upped a little along the way. You have 3 times your initial grant worth of stock, because you were really good at your job, so now you own .000189 % of the company. If the company has a $500 million dollar exit, with no preferences, you get $94,500. But, with all the rounds you raised, $500 million is probably gonna trigger a liquidation preferences. Let's say it took $150 million VC money to get your exit. Well, you get $66,150. Damnit... Well, that doesn't seem worth it. How big does the company have to get to make it worth it? Well, I haven't heard of any $10,000,000,000 acquisitions. So, let's say you IPO and after your lockup period, you leave the company and sell all your stock. You'll have a tax advantageous $1.89 million. Off all the startups you hear about, and many you don't, how many $10,000,000,000 exits have you heard about? And what is that risk factor worth? Now, why do people do startups? Well, let's say your startup is Facebook. After your lockup period, you had a market cap of ~$100,000,000,000. Your .1% is now worth $18.9 million. Or if you had an original .25%, $47.25. I hope you get the point. ~~~ alain94040 I think your math is a bit off. The dilution computation gives me 0.044% (before assuming you get any extra stock). With no extra stock, that gives you an exit at $150K. With the extra stock, you probably are in the $200K-$400K range. Which you do want to compare to your "investment" of $750K... So your post is very good advice to everyone. I encourage you to apply similar math. Of course, the hard part to evaluate is the variation: maybe the exit is 10X better. Or maybe it's 10X worse. How valuable is a high-risk/high-reward payoff? At least, by doing this math, you put hard numbers on just how high the payoff can be. If it turns out to be no so high, that's a great help to your decision. ~~~ p4wnc6 I think this advice is OK as long we make a heavy emphasis on the need for some probability distribution over possible exit values. Such a distribution has to account for growth of the company, ability to succeed against competitors, potential acceptance of outside funding along with restrictions like liquidity preference, and so on. No one is good at articulating these distributions, and many people who influence you during the hiring process with either be overtly nefarious in their attempts to get you to believe what their rosy-colored prior looks like, or they will be suffering from different biases (especially the earliest-stage employees). For a young engineer who may or may not have a great command over this sort of probabilistic reasoning, and may or may not know any techniques to mitigate the biases that might creep in, it can be extremely risky to advise them to determine their own personal assessment of whether the exit will be 10X better and so on. Almost always they would be better off simply saying that they can't put a useful probability distribution on it, and therefore they cannot come up with a useful model of what the equity portion would be worth. It sounds nice to teach these types of candidates about how to value the equity in terms of knowing about liquidity preference, asking about the composition of the board of directors, asking detailed questions about comparable companies and their exit numbers, and so forth. But in truth it's a bit like handing someone a loaded gun, pointing it at their foot, and saying, "you're welcome for the advice." ~~~ relaunched I don't think it's that tricky to put a general distribution on it, Chi- Squared. ------ gesman It's an effort to sell you expensive lottery ticket. You may or may not choose to play this game but odds are not in your favor. My suggestion is to postpone options/equity discussion up until after the salary discussion is settled. Let it be icing on the cake rather than replacement for the part of the cake. ------ juhq The thing is, it's all upside down. If a startup wants to get a experienced person to the team, they should offer more salary and then some options/shares instead of lower salary and possibility of options. I really don't understand why an experienced person would take a pay cut. ------ lacker No, that is too simplistic. When you get a job offer with an equity component, you should be able to estimate its value. Figure out what you think the company is worth, figure out what % of the company you own, and multiply those two numbers together. I have had friends get job offers where the equity component was worth less than $1000, and I have had friends get job offers where the equity component exceeded the salary component. It really just depends on the startup. So don't just dismiss the equity component as worthless without digging into it a bit more. ------ staunch I'd compare it to being part of a team in a poker tournament. You walk away with a share of the winnings or you walk away with nothing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Address randomization defense does not protect against stagefright exploits - gtufano http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/googles-own-researchers-challenge-key-android-security-talking-point/ ====== Spellman In a related concept, what is a reliable way of checking whether your phone has the patches? Recently I got an update to my Moto X 2nd Gen to Version 23.16.5.en.US (Verizon carrier) which takes me to Lollipop 5.1. But most lists I see about patches and which phones are fixed are from back in August. ~~~ whoopdedo Zimperium, the white hats who discovered the problem, has an app the check if your OS is vulnerable. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zimperium....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zimperium.stagefrightdetector) I think it's fair to assume anyone getting updates in the last two months has been patched. Samsung even (partially) fixed it in the two-year old S3. ~~~ discreditable It's still not completely fixed on my Samsung Galaxy S 5. According to that app I'm open to CVE-2015-3864, which doesn't seem to have any details [1]. 1\. [https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-38...](https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2015-3864) ~~~ cpncrunch The simple workaround is to just turn off MMS auto retrieval in your messaging app. PS I just got a software update for my Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 this morning, which included a fix for stagefright.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Researchers use Kinect to scan T. rex skull - el_duderino https://news.mit.edu/2017/kinect-3-d-scan-t-rex-skull-0705 ====== sohkamyung Link to the paper on PlosONE [1] [1] "A method for rapid 3D scanning and replication of large paleontological specimens" [ [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179264) ]	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon to hand over Echo audio from alleged murder after defendant consents - ghosh http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39191056 ====== koolba This should be a lesson to people who don't understand the distinction between "can't" and "won't". If you're running things yourself and control the encryption keys required to access your data, then your service provider _can 't_ be compelled to release your data as it's not possible[1][2]. If you're delegating all of that to your service provider and they have access to the raw data, then you are putting all your trust in them to protect your data and prevent it's release. And that has to cover everything from hackers, to snooping employees, to the Feds. [1]: _Kind of ... I don 't recall the Apple/FBI case going to court for a final resolution so it's possible they can compel the service provider to hack you to get the keys but at least they can't get it directly_. [2]: _And obviously they can always come after you with a court order or rubber hose (or both)._ ~~~ sesutton >If you're running things yourself and control the encryption keys required to access your data, then your service provider can't be compelled to release your data as it's not possible The court can just hold you in contempt until you do[1]. They also probably won't buy "I forgot". [1]: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/child-porn- suspe...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/child-porn-suspect- jailed-for-7-months-for-refusing-to-decrypt-hard-drives/) ~~~ saycheese If you delete the data, prior to getting the notice to produce the data and it wasn't deleted in anticipation of such a notice, sure the court could hold you in contempt, but legally you've done nothing wrong. You cannot easily make a third random third-party delete your data. ~~~ ghshephard You might put yourself in a worse position if the court compels you to produce the data, but now you can't. You better be very certain that you are able to prove that you deleted the data prior to any notice, or you might find yourself in for a long jail stay. This is what a lot of people overlook - when the court compels you to produce evidence, or ill gotten gains, saying ,"I can't" \- isn't a legal defense. ~~~ koolba > This is what a lot of people overlook - when the court compels you to > produce evidence, or ill gotten gains, saying ,"I can't" \- isn't a legal > defense. We're getting closer and closer to testing that. IANAL but I'd imagine that some combination of the 4th and 5th amendments should cover that situation. The onus would be upon the prosecutor to prove that you destroyed the evidence after the fact. As a general rule, one does not have to prove they didn't commit a crime, the prosecutor has to prove that they did. Where this gets murky is if a judge orders you to present the non-existent data as contempt of court may apply. ~~~ ghshephard There's lots of case history where people are faced with a court order compelling them to return ill-gotten gains, and when they claim "I can't do it, I don't have the money." \- they are found guilty of contempt of court if the court believes otherwise. Burden of evidence is not on the court to prove you do have the money, just as in this case, the burden wouldn't be on them to prove you can retrieve the data.... ------ wyldfire This is a non-issue. The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to and through the command or timeout expiration. Yes, it's possible that the defendants cat meowed right before the murder and it sounded like "Alexa". But it seems incredibly unlikely. Prosecutors are just trying to cover every base but the likelihood that this will yield anything is very low. ~~~ andrepd > The audio Amazon receives is from only-just-barely-before the wakeword up to > and through the command or timeout expiration. I wonder, how on earth do you know that, that you are able to dismiss it with such confidence as a non-issue. That's the problem with proprietary systems (proprietary always-on microphones at that). I would be surprised if they _weren 't_ actually listening and analysing and storing data from the microphone feed at all times. ~~~ danielvf You can just watch the network traffic from the device to see when it is streaming audio. Now this obviously doesn't rule out the device saving stuff locally, but plenty of people have verified that it does generally only send lots of data to the server when you have just asked it to wake up. ~~~ ben174 It is possible it's doing local voice recognition on all audio, and just sending the text in their payloads. If the content is encrypted, there's no way for any network snooping to determine what they're sending. ~~~ chatmasta This is software... saying there's "no way" is usually incorrect. For example, you could root the device and disable the encryption. Or, you could perform experiments in a controlled setting where you play a series of identical recordings to Alexa and measure the statistical similarity in the outgoing data for each. The encryption scheme probably provides more entropy than just the audio, so maybe statistical analysis wouldn't help, but it's a start. ------ phantarch How is echo audio data substantially different than something like a tape recorder that was live in the man's home? What about a cell phone that was on a call at the time of the alleged murder? I definitely understand wanting to ensure reasonable privacy for users, but to me it feels an awful lot of a stretch to say that the echo is off-limits in this case. ~~~ TallGuyShort Comparing it to a tape recorder is interesting. If we consider this device to be the same as a tape recorder for the purpose of admission of evidence: (1) In some states, by having this device and turning it on you have now indeed consented for the conversation to be recorded - which would alarm most users (2) In other states, it is illegal for the device to be functioning without consent of all who are conversing, and the recording is thus inadmissable as evidence. Quite the opposite of what I think you're implying by that comparison. We keep seeing that treating new technology under previous legal definitions is very unsteady ground. You can see how comparison to previous technology would protect privacy and hinder investigation in this case, but on the other hand it makes me think of compelling you to give up encryption keys because well, they're not "papers" like the 4th amendment refers to (an argument which HAS been used before). So given that, how am I supposed to know what my actual rights are in a case like this, when it's so freely interpreted either way depending on the specific case? ~~~ phantarch Thanks for the insight. In regards to comparing new technologies against previous ones to understand their legal definitions, it feels like the burden is on technologists to navigate us through the ethical minefield. I'm not very aware of what place ethicists have in many tech corporations, but it feels like most of us just build straight ahead and figure out the implications afterward. Not that we should halt progress on everything until we know if it's "good", but maybe a tech ethicist could be a kind of QA role during product development. ~~~ TallGuyShort Definitely. I think I've heard Google has a handful of ethicists on staff? I don't think it's fair for the burden to be entirely on technologists either, though, but I don't know how else to progress. Uber & friends make an interesting case in this area too: Does that business model technically violate laws in various locales? Is it fair to existing taxi companies to just throw those laws away too quickly for them to plan or without re-addressing the original issue they were there for? Could they get lawmakers to re-assess the need for those laws before they had demonstrated their value and popularity? A lot of catch-22's. ------ tribune I own an Echo and this is part of the reason it now sits unplugged. To be honest, it doesn't provide enough value for me to consider potentially compromising the privacy of my home. ~~~ shshhdhs Mentioned this in another comment, but they can only reveal voice data IF the victim said "Alexa" when the crime was taking place. If the victim didn't say "Alexa" that day, then there's nothing to reveal. ~~~ SmellyGeekBoy The main thing I'm taking away from this is that, if I ever find myself getting murdered, I'll just keep shouting "Alexa" as a last ditch attempt at getting justice from beyond the grave. Can't hurt. ~~~ diminoten I was thinking about this -- I'm too afraid to try it, but if I said, "Alexa call 911", does that functionality exist? Is there a skill I can install that would let me say something like, "Alexa start recording audio to the cloud"? ~~~ chrisfosterelli "Alexa call 911" doesn't work (at least currently) and it looks like it's against Amazon's rules to try and create a skill that calls emergency services: [https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa- sk...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills- kit/docs/alexa-skills-kit-policy-testing) ------ orless > Amazon has agreed to hand over data from an Amazon Echo that may have been > operating as an alleged murder took place, after the defendant consented. A much more interesting question is if Amazon would have released the data without the defendants conset. ~~~ lucaspiller Well Amazon actually refused at first, even when presented with warrants requesting the data, saying that they didn't see how the data would be relevant. [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39063113](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39063113) ~~~ orless I know that, I'm just pointing out that handing the data with persons consent is absolutely nothing extraordinary. Many people (also in this thread) are worried and unplug Alexa because of these news. Some accuse Amazon of putting up a fight for PR only. From my point of view, these news add nothing substantial to the Alexa customer privacy debate. It is unclear if Amazon would have (finally) handed the data over without customers consent. It is unclear how far would Amazon go fighting for customer privacy. ~~~ vidarh It's newsworthy in this case because of the initial refusal. Not because it adds anything substantial to the privacy debate, but because it means we won't get to see if their argument would be held up by the court. ------ kaino128 Can you call emergency services via Amazon Echo? I've read on a car forum I'm part of about someone who was working on their vehicle without jack stands and got trapped when their jack slipped. They used Siri to call their wife and jack the car back up. They probably would have died without it. I can easily forsee a future where consumers _ask companies_ for voice assistants that turn on automatically when they detect duress (not needing to say "Alexa ...") before one where governments actually compel product manufacturers to do this. ~~~ skocznymroczny For all you know, it could be recording all the time, and since it's a closed device, you can't prove otherwise. ~~~ Klathmon Yes and for all you know that table you bought could include a large battery, LTE receiver, and a microphone and could be recording your every sound as well. There's a limit to how much paranoia is warranted, and in this case I'm firmly in the "it's not" column. Yes, it could be recording your every sound for months on end and uploading it to evil amazon, but not only would they be in some hot water legally in some areas, but the media would have a fucking field day with it, and for what gain? To be able to listen in on your conversations? And if you want to argue that it could be remotely updated to target you to always record that data, you could always be targeted by inserting a microphone into anything else of yours (good 'ole bugs). You don't need to like them, you don't need to own them, and you don't need to be somewhere that has them, but some of us see utility in devices like this. And to me it's well worth the trade off that my recordings could be used in a court of law when requested with a warrant and I agreed to it. ~~~ shostack The comparison between a bugged table and a device whose primary purpose is to always be listening to you is a bit of a stretch, don't you think? Amazon provides cloud storage and processing to the web. Given their history of relatively ruthless (if strategically smart) business moves, I don't think it is unreasonable to consider that they could store this data for use down the line or do so at government request. This is all software based permissions that seem to be one invisible server side tweak away from becoming an always recording (not just listening for a wake word) device. I got an Amazon Tap because it required a button push to record. They just enabled the option for always listening just like the echo. In theory I control it, but clearly I do not in practice. ~~~ Klathmon To be completely honest, the "save this at government request" is a real threat, but there is nothing that amazon can realistically do to prevent that (short of physically not manufacturing the device to have a microphone, but even then is it that much of a jump from "forcing them to write code" to "forcing them to add a microphone"?) But in terms of adding this kind of surveillance stuff for greed? I just don't see it paying off. Regardless of how shady or ruthless you think amazon is, they aren't going to brazenly break 1-party and 2-party listening laws. And all it takes is one guy somewhere who owns one to discover it and it's all over. People are more than willing to give up information for very little gain, there's no reason to try and "steal" it illegally. If the argument is that amazon is a greedy company willing to do unethical things for money, where's the money in this? Where's the money in 24/7 audio recordings vs recordings of when you are speaking to the thing? ------ dade_ At this point I assume they have a warrant, so I don't understand what the problem is. People should assume their devices can and will be used against them. A much more tricky conversation is when a friend of mine discovered that fragments of his a session with his psychologist recorded by his Android Wear watch. ~~~ njharman > people should assume What I assume is that the bill of rights will not be subverted just because I use technology. The right to not be subject to search and right to not self incrimate. ~~~ dade_ It's a nice sentiment and sounds like a good legal argument. However, your constitution doesn't do me any good and doesn't help you with foreign states. Five Eyes has been a legal work around for years so keep fighting the good fight, but in the meantime I will keep expecting the best and assuming the worst. ------ gtirloni > after the defendant consented ~~~ gjjrfcbugxbhf But how long before lack of consent is considered incriminating? There are also many different jurisdictions which don't have 5th amendment style protections. ~~~ cmdrfred Wouldn't a jurisdiction without 5th amendment protections be unconstitutional? ~~~ d3ckard We do not all live in the USA. ~~~ cmdrfred This case does though and considering its a 5th amendment case I'm not sure how it would be relevant internationally. ~~~ jMyles The basis premises (privacy amidst a sea of devices which record at various times and save these recordings off-site) are universal. ------ ForHackernews I thought Amazon claimed this was impossible and they didn't have this audio? ------ sumitgt If the defendant consented, couldn't they just log into their own account and get the audio? In the app, you can hear back all the queries you made to Alexa. ------ draw_down I haven't seen a compelling use case for these things yet, including visiting the homes of people who own one. But I sure have seen a lot of deal-breakers. ~~~ _rpd I know someone who is smart and reasonably concerned about privacy issues, but she loves the thing - uses it instead of a shopping list. I was quite surprised that she would compromise for such a trivial convenience, but it made me revise the likelihood that they'll be more widely adopted. ------ heheocoenev Seriously, screw google home and Amazon echo. If I wanted a wiretap, I'd go to FISA court. ~~~ rblatz Odds are you already carry one around with you every where you go. ~~~ jsudhams It does not matter whether he carries, there lot of people around him who would carry. And for that matter i dont even believe regular land line phone.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Logging Remote vs Local - dedalus I have a bunch of servers that run webservers with a specific option to log remotely or locally. In my case remote,equals the logserver box sitting right next to the webservers on the same rack. In such a case I can make the boxes diskless and log remotely. Or else I have to have disk just for the sake of logging and not sure which approach is wise in the long term..Any ideas?? ====== bayareaguy It all depends on your network configuration and service model. What do you want to happen when your servers lose the connection to their loghost?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Elon Musk: Delete Facebook, ‘It’s Lame’ - SirLJ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/elon-musk-delete-facebook-its-lame.html ====== downerending He's not wrong. I'm off about four years now, and the _only_ thing I miss is snapshots of everyone's kids.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Django on Jython: Minding the Gap - jholloway7 http://zyasoft.com/pythoneering/2008/01/django-on-jython-minding-gap.html ====== wehriam What's the use case of Django on Jython? ~~~ wmf Performance? Deployment? Enterprisey marketing BS?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Road from Serfdom - an interview with F.A. Hayek - limist http://reason.com/archives/1992/07/01/the-road-from-serfdom/print ====== sitmaster Wow look at how clearly he answers the questions. Half his answers begin with a "Yes" or a "No." Can you imagine someone thinking and speaking this clearly these days? ~~~ matwood Yeah, whether or not you agree with Hayek, he is obviously a smart guy who has no problem articulating where he stands on an issue. I wonder if it's a generational difference. My grand parents for example have no problem telling you what they think and their reasoning on why. ------ nfnaaron "... socialism was bound to fail as an economic system because only free markets--powered by individuals wheeling and dealing in their own interest-- could generate the information necessary to intelligently coordinate social behavior. In other words, freedom is a necessary input into a prosperous economy." ~~~ jbooth Blanket assertions about socialism and capitalism are fundamentally silly. Nobody thinks it would be efficient to privatize the federal highway system and turn everything into a toll road. I've been biking recently, but I used to take the subway. That's socialist. Taking a cab would be capitalist. Did I care? Not really. Normal market goods are almost always better served by private markets. They may need to be regulated if the create significant externalities or pose risk to the economy at large. The metric should be common sense, not -isms. When picking a software platform, I pick the one best suited to the job at hand. I'd like to see some of these so-called big policy thinkers apply the same principle. ~~~ Kadin > Nobody thinks it would be efficient to privatize the federal highway system > and turn everything into a toll road. Not sure it's safe to say that. The usual arguments against making the Interstate system toll-based are practical ones: it would be a pain to operate, you'd have to have tens of thousands of tollbooths, you'd create giant traffic jams, etc. (Anyone who's ever driven down the Jersey Turnpike, pre-EZPass, can understand the horror that a lot of people think this would necessarily entail.) But from an economists' view it would probably be very efficient. Right now there's not much of a direct linkage between road users -- those who cause wear and tear to the roads -- and those who end up footing the bill. The net effect of this is a huge government subsidy to over-the-road trucking. Trucks get to drive on the roads for free and, due to their high axle loads, do the most damage to the road. The public foots the bill for maintaining and repairing that infrastructure. It's an externalized cost on the part of trucking companies. Using tolls (based on miles driven and axle weight, perhaps) would force internalization of these costs into the goods being transported, which would be more efficient from a classical economic perspective. You'd be making the price of the widget in the store more accurately reflect the inputs it requires to make it and bring it to market, which is generally regarded as a Good Thing. It might also have the side-effect of making other transportation methods (rail, ship, air) more competitive in certain edge cases. Such a scheme might be impractical, difficult to implement, or prone to siphoning for purposes other than road maintenance, but it's not inherently less efficient. [Edit for punctuation.] ~~~ stretchwithme private control of property does cost something. you need locks and alarms to manage access to real estate just as you need systems like FastTrak and EasyPass. But daily traffic jams also have a cost and building twice as much road as you really need does too. A massive unmeasured cost. ------ CWuestefeld _The rules of the game that the gold standard requires [say] that if you have an unfavorable balance of trade, you contract your currency. That's what no government can do--they'd rather go off the gold standard. In fact, I'm convinced that if we restored the gold standard now, within six months the first country would be off it and, within three years. it would completely disappear._ I wonder to what degree we can use this to explain the PIIGS problems in Europe. Of course, they don't have a gold standard. But for a given nation in the Euro, the value of the currency is fixed: they have no means of manipulating it to take pressure off their fiscal problems. ~~~ arvinjoar What Hayek said is that the bubbles popped pretty early on (which is a good thing) because they could not be maintained and continued by the institutions that existed back then. That the bubbles popped is a good thing. A gold standard keeps the inflation stable, because gold can't be printed. Hayek goes on to say that a gold standard would not work because governments have an incentive to "cheat" and blow up giant bubbles, which cannot be done successfully with a gold standard. I think that currency should not be issued by governments at all, the absence of government issued money would mean competing currencies, and in a situation where gold competes with other currencies, gold often wins the confidence of the people. ~~~ evanrmurphy That would be an interesting item to deregulate. I've always been fascinated that the U.S. government doesn't mandate an official language [1] and just incidentally uses English for most purposes (with Spanish becoming increasingly relevant). As far as I can tell, it hasn't caused any major problems for the country and may be a better way to handle the issue. Could currency be the same way? [1] Language being another item that governments tend to regulate. ------ ytilibitapmoc This quote, " _Reason:_ Is Britain irrevocably on the road to serfdom? _Hayek:_ No, not irrevocably. That's one of the misunderstandings. The Road to Selfdom was meant to be a warning: "Unless you mend your ways, you ll go to the devil." And you can always mend your ways. _Reason:_ What policy measures are currently possible to reverse the trend in Britain? _Hayek:_ So long as you give one body of organized interests, namely the trade unions, specific powers to use force to get a larger share of the market, then the market will not function. And this is supported by the public because of the historic belief that in past the trade unions have done so much to raise the standard of living of the poor that you must be kind to them. So long as this view is prevalent, I don't believe there is any hope. But you can induce change. We must now put our hope in a change of attitude. I'm afraid many of my British friends still believe, as Keynes believed, that the existing moral convictions of the English would protect them against such a fate. This is non- sense. The character of a people is as much made by the institutions as the institutions are made by the character of the people. The present British institutions contribute everything to change the British character. You cannot rely on an inherent "British character" saving the British people from their fate. But you must create institutions in which the old kinds of attitudes will be revived which are rapidly disappearing under the present system.", on the (historically) current effect of unions is priceless. ------ delackner Sorry for the long quote, but I have tried to reduce its length as much as possible while retaining meaning: "" [...] the idea that things ought to be designed in a 'just' manner means, in effect, that we must abandon the market and turn to a planned economy in which somebody decides how much each ought to have, and that means, of course, that we can only have it at the price of the complete abolition of personal liberty. "" This seems to me to be a false dichotomy. If the state sets artificial prices on some goods, say basic foodstuffs, this does not automatically lead to the complete destruction of market forces, it simply produces an artificial input in the market, leading to an equilibrium that likely to be different from the natural equilibrium. As an aside, I was really thrilled by his description of meeting Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ------ roel_v Ironic how he singles out Spain as a country that was in a position to make itself into a shining beacon of fiscal responsibility, to be emulated by the rest of the world. ~~~ stretchwithme Here's what he said about Spain: "Spain, which has to choose a new constitution. It might be prepared to adopt a sensible one. I don't think its really likely in Spain, but it's an example. And they may prove so successful that after all it is seen that there are better ways of organizing government than we have." It seems to me he is only referring to Spain's potential new constitution, that they might adopt a sensible one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Spectre/Meltdown: An Azure retrospective [video] - ToFab123 https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1190448255479336960 ====== ToFab123 Video from Microsoft's Ignite Event about patching Azure to mitigate Spectre and Meltdown bugs [https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Ignite- Cont...](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Ignite- Content-2019/Spectre-Meltdown-An-Azure-retrospective/m-p/946375) The registers description of the linked video: >The session was unusual. The main part was a video describing the build-up to the Spectre and Meltdown reveal in January 2018. The specific problem was discovered by Google's Project Zero in June 2017, but was kept under embargo for six months. Microsoft was among those companies in the know, furiously patching Windows and its Azure platform, before the embargo on disclosure lifted on 10 January 2018. Open-source systems like Linux are patched in the open, though, and changes to the kernel, along with industry sources, tipped off The Register. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/12/spectre_meltdown_mi...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/12/spectre_meltdown_microsoft_azure/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 6th Edition - mhartl https://news.learnenough.com/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-6th-edition-launch ====== mhartl This is the newly updated 6th edition of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now updated for Rails 6. Over the years, HN readers have been some of the most enthusiastic and loyal supporters of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial. Thanks—I appreciate it! ~~~ mch82 I’ve enjoyed reading many editions of Rails Tutorial, which is among the few technical documents I consider fun to read. A worthwhile read, even for people not working with Rails. And extremely cool you’ve kept Rails Tutorial current all these years! ------ mch82 Does the Rails Tutorial 6 discuss the rgeo gem (for GIS/location features)? [https://github.com/rgeo/rgeo](https://github.com/rgeo/rgeo) While Rails docs tend to be clearer, GeoDjango is one area where Django seems to have relatively more accessible documentation. [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/contrib/gis/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/contrib/gis/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New in AFL: persistent mode - edward http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2015/06/new-in-afl-persistent-mode.html ====== eridius > _On all supported OSes with the exception of MacOS X, the fork() call is > actually surprisingly fast_ I'm curious about this. What makes fork() on OS X slower than other OSes? ~~~ milspec MacOS X is BSD with the low-level part of the kernel replaced by the Mach microkernel. Another way to say this is that the high-level parts of the BSD kernel got stuffed into the Mach microkernel. This is a nasty horrid way to design an OS. Microkernels add lots of pointless overhead while making the code hard to clean up.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
10 Nobel Laureates who changed the world - LaDaDa http://mashable.com/2013/10/14/nobel-laureates-changed-world/ ====== LaDaDa Dr. Banting (1920s) should have cracked the TOP10 for his work with insulin. This research actually saved people.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Internet Archive raises National Emergency Library: 1M free books no waitlist - mekarpeles https://www.cnet.com/news/internet-archives-national-emergency-library-has-over-a-million-books-to-read-right-now/ ====== sayhar This is a big deal ~~~ mekarpeles Thanks @sayhar! specially given so many libraries across the country are currently shut down. ------ Rebelgecko legally, how are they able to do this with books that aren't public domain?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40 - bpchaps https://mchap.io/that-time-the-city-of-seattle-accidentally-gave-me-32m-emails-for-40-dollars4997.html ====== JoeSmithson I'm very surprised they gave out this information. I'm not talking about the mistake, I mean the actual request. In the UK I don't think you could even get a production order for this. Like, it's effectively getting Communications Data simultaneously against thousands of people not suspected of any crimes?? Like, do people know that by emailing their local government their email address is now free for scammers to request under FOI? Could I request this data myself, then start emailing them scam emails "I know you contacted us in June, could you call me on 555-1223 etc" This seems totally against the spirit of FOI ~~~ ehsankia The part I found even more strange is that people are sending their credit card numbers and other personal information through e-mail... ~~~ jimnotgym Are you really shocked by this? I guess you have never worked on a corporate email system! People do this all of the time. 1) They don't realise email is not secure 2) When you explain point 1, all of the other solutions seem like too much hassle so they email anyway. 3) You can tell your customers not to email you CC numbers, you can even refuse them, but they will keep sending them ~~~ tzs ...and if you provide online chat with customer support or sales, people will send credit cards in that too. If you have customer accessible support ticket submission system, that will end up with credit cards too. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) that you have to agree to follow in order to be allowed to process credit cards requires secure storage of all the cards you store--not just the cards that you intended to store or just cards that come in through channels you intended for receiving cards. This is a serious issue to take into account when choosing your chat system, ticketing system, and email system because you can't just ignore those wayward credit cards. If you choose systems whose developers did not consider this and failed to provide good tools for finding and redacting unrequested, unwanted sensitive information _you_ will end up having to hack such tools into the system yourself. ~~~ jimnotgym That is a very good point ------ mkoryak A few years ago I found a random SSD on the ground while on a walk with my son. The drive contained unencrypted records which squarly fall under HIPPA. I also did the right thing and returned it to the proper owner and told them about how their mdb files were readable by anyone. The same exact thing happened. They thanked me and then their lawyers nicely asked me to clone my hard drive and sign a bunch of shit. It was not fun at all. A lot of them thought that I hacked something. ~~~ rocqua Did you actually give them that clone and sign the documents? Or did you give push back like in the article? It feels to me like they shouldn't have much of a leg to stand on. ~~~ mkoryak I did consider fighting them for about 7 minutes. Then I remembered that they had a legal team paid for by taxpayers, while I had a toddler and a pretty decent, mostly stress free life. The laptop that I connected thier SSD to was my coding box, so I deleted all the code and secure erased the free space before they cloned it. They gave me shit about it too, because their forensic people saw days without any file activity. When I told them that it was because I removed my IP they responded with "why don't you think you need to do that? We can keep your data from falling into the wrong hands". Maybe if I was some kind of an activist I would have tried to fight it. ~~~ natch “We can keep your data from falling into the wrong hands...” just like they did for that drive you found. ------ jacquesm Interesting dataset. Data like this can be used to identify strong links between contractors and government officials. One problem is that the metadata should have only contained _anonymized_ entries for the email addresses of the counterparties of the Seattle.gov addresses, the article leaves this unclear. Another potential problem is that if a case of corruption or nepotism is identified that has not been passed to the authorities for review that the author suddenly finds himself in the possession of data that can be used to blackmail some fairly powerful people, in fact there might be fish at a higher than city level government in the trawl because there have to be links between Seattle officials and state officials. Yet another problem is that the addresses most likely contain the names of private individuals (including employees) as well, and I am not quite sure what to think of that but feel that the city has no business releasing that in cleartext. A better way for amateur sleuths and the city government to work together to battle corruption would be to release only anonymized data to protect the identities of the people working for the city, for instance by releasing only hashes of the email addresses, for instance a hash@hash format where the hash for all Seatle domains is released to the requester. All the relevant analysis could still be done, and if something interesting was found it could be released to law enforcement who in turn should have then used a judge to order de-anonymization of those entries they are interested in. ~~~ kasey_junk I'm not sure I could disagree with you more. At least in the US there is a _very strong_ expectation that communications between governmental employees is non-private except in very special circumstances. You'll note Matt says that the Police and Human Services departments have not responded, I'd guess thats not an accident because police records and personnel/medical records are largely exempt from FOIA requests. Further, the idea that sleuths (amateur seems pejorative in this case) are working _with_ city governments to battle corruption does not hold up to Matt's (or other journalists) experience. By and large the governments only provide the data because they are _required_ to, and we have made sure they are required to by representative legislative action. Had the IT dept. in Seattle not made an obvious mistake this would likely have not been a story at all and the data would have been an interesting data set for informed democratic functions. ~~~ jacquesm > between governmental employees The request contains the names of private individuals through BCC and CC headers requested and exactly when they communicated with which government officials. ~~~ kasey_junk Yes. When I say “between governmental employees” I mean between them & anyone. This is a normal expectation to the point where there are lots of rules about what public servants can even use private email addresses for. This was a big deal of course in the 2016 campaign. This is likely a cultural difference, I view the data that Matt requested as _mine_ because that governmental agent is acting in _my_ name. ------ newsbinator > After that call, I asked my lawyer to reach out to their lawyer and was > pretty much told that Seattle was approaching the problem as if they were > pursuing Computer Fraud And Abuse (CFAA) charges. For information that they > sent. Jiminey Cricket.. ------ daenz Somewhat related, I'm constantly shocked (maybe I shouldn't be anymore) at the tech ineptitude of cities that are supposed to be big tech hubs. I live in Seattle, and my regular tech complaint is we can't get the buses connected to an app that is accurate within +-10 minutes. I know it doesn't sound like much, but how much tech brainpower is here, and why isn't that tech shining more clearly? ~~~ TeMPOraL Because the problem isn't tech, but business models. No amount of tech brainpower can help when bus operators think of their schedules as data to be sold instead of given away for free. ~~~ techsupporter At least in Puget Sound, every transit operator (except for Community Transit) makes their real-time bus arrival data publicly available for free via Sound Transit's Open Transit Data service, OneBusAway: [https://www.soundtransit.org/Open-Transit- Data](https://www.soundtransit.org/Open-Transit-Data) (OneBusAway is the name of the app that shows information to end users and the name of the API service that developers can query.) I know that this service is widely available and free because I've had an API key for years and have (accidentally) pummeled the service with requests and have heard nary a peep from Sound Transit asking me for money. ~~~ TeMPOraL Good for you and your city. My hometown apparently made an exclusive deal with a startup, which I hear is why we still can't see bus schedules on Google Maps. ------ quickthrower2 The writer has fessed up to reading a lot of the emails. As evidenced by summarizing the content (e.g. cheating spouses, zabbix etc.). Wouldn't the responsible thing to do be stop reading the emails once you realise what is going on? ~~~ 0xfffff I had the same thought - he seems to have indulged in the data quite a bit to come up with such a thourough analysis. ~~~ danso What was thorough about his analysis? He mentions a few things that could easily be detected with grep within a corpus of millions of messages. ------ pnathan > The passive aggression is thick. From this I can accurately deduce that you really were talking to a person in Seattle. /local-in-joke. Pretty amazing story; Seattle, collectively, always tends to _mean_ well, but so often they stumble. ------ nickysielicki > Seattle was approaching the problem as if they were pursuing Computer Fraud > And Abuse (CFAA) charges. For information that they sent. Jiminey Cricket.. > So, I deleted the files. Isn't it great to live in a country where we have generic felonies that governments can apply to just about anything involving a computer and ruin your life? Land of the "free" and the home of the 'fraid. ~~~ giancarlostoro Where police treat you as fully guilty if you're a suspect despite you having to be thought of as innocent until proven guilty. A number of people have gone to jail because they knew not to keep their mouths shut and told cops too much that made them sound like criminals and guilty. Most people don't know where they were 2 hours ago, let alone the night of December 5th, 1957 at 2:05 AM, like SERIOUSLY? ------ OrwellianChild I can't tell whether this is a testament to the incompetence of public IT operations or an indictment of public records keeping practice. Maybe both? ~~~ btrettel Also has a good example of hostile FOIA officers. I have filed about two dozen FOIA requests, and the vast majority were fine, though usually slow. Earlier this year one longstanding request of mine was rejected because they claimed the document I wanted was export controlled. Two months later I sent in an appeal where I showed that the document in question was not export controlled (I filed another FOIA with a separate agency to check), and I suggested that they lied to me. Never got an apology, though they seem to be processing the request for real now. ~~~ c3534l Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. ~~~ anigbrowl I used to abide by this until it dawned on me that malicious people often use stupid people as a cat's paw to conceal liability. A careless disregard for the truth is itself a form of dishonesty. This argument is laid out very effectively in philosopher Harry Frankfurt's delightful short book _On Bullshit_. ------ mr_vile This whole exercise seems more damaging than constructive, and I don't really like the author's smug tone, as if he deserves praise. ~~~ warent Disagree. Obviously there was a bug in the system, the author simply uncovered it. I'd rather have a smug white/grey hat than a malicious black hat. Now the system is all the more secure thanks to his actions. ------ lsiebert So they accidentally included the first 256 characters for all the emails? yikes. ------ pontifier I was quoted almost $200k for a similar request for emails. I was trying to investigate a shady real estate deal, and they made it as difficult as possible. I was never actually able to get the information I requested. I'm completely disgusted and fed up with corruption. ~~~ rocqua Perhaps try and sell the story with some of the investigative podcasts / blogs? An apparent cover-up gets as much attraction as uncovered corruption. (As well it should). ~~~ pontifier I'm now convinced that there is no amount of evidence of wrongdoing that will actually harm crooked politicians. They control the narrative, and the courts. I don't want to end up bone saw murdered, and it feels more likely every day. ------ notafraudster In case Matt Chapman is reading this -- the contact email at the bottom of the page ([email protected]) is probably not correct, given that the domain mchap.com redirects to an australian photographer. The alternative is that the email address is correct and Matt is redirecting his domain to another Matt Chapman, which would be totally hilarious. ~~~ bpchaps Ah! Thanks! ------ doctorless To me, the most interesting thing in this entire post is the following: > Funny enough, in the middle of that question, my internet died and > interrupted the call for the first time in the six months I lived in that > house. Odd. It came back ten minutes later, and I dialed back into the > conference line, but the mood of the call pretty much 180’d. I find that when strange things happen like this, they’re hardly coincidence. Did you run a traceroute after the disconnect anywhere? Did you see an IP address change? If so, was it a significant change in the CIDR block it was within? ~~~ jacquesm That's speculative without any proof and I personally think it is a weak point in the article. I do conference calls several times per week and the number of times I've been accidentally booted out of the room are numerous. Also, once they realized they had left the room _of course_ they would continue to discuss the case and it is obvious they had to consider all possibilities, including the recipient releasing the information to others, hence the 180. ~~~ bpchaps Er, why the doubt? My internet completely died. My room mates were also affected.. Not sure how I can give proof. ~~~ jacquesm Because it is just the timing that makes you say this, and I highly doubt the city of Seattle can - on a moments notice, no less - pull the plug on any residential internet connection. _If_ true, that would be a far bigger news item than the rest of your story. ~~~ bpchaps Who knows. It was strange for me, too. ~~~ jacquesm Think about it: you see your internet connection dying as proof when they could have just as easily booted you from the conference call raising much less suspicion. I see it as proof of the opposite, they had a far easier and more direct means at their disposal to achieve the effect you say they desired. So I really do not believe that it was anything other than bad timing, all that it would take for this to happen is for your provider to reset a router somewhere. My residential connection here is pretty good, even so it goes up and down at least once every week or so whenever some firmware update is pushed to the router. ~~~ bpchaps My phone was dead at the time, so I was using my desktop with google hangouts for the call. I was not booted from the call. My internet died. End of story. I work from home, so my internet going down is a big deal for my livelihood and all that. I'm not saying that something suspicious happened, but I figured it was an interesting thing to happen. You're frankly thinking into it too much. ~~~ jacquesm > You're frankly thinking into it too much. I think that was my line. ~~~ bpchaps Pot kettle black, I guess. ------ amingilani I'm simultaneously impressed and saddened by how fast the responses for these FOIA requests were proceeded by the government. And here in my country, I needed a court order to get _at least_ an acknowledgement of my FOI request. And now I'm petition court intervention to get the FOI processed in accordance with the law. ------ marklyon This could have been an extremely valuable dataset for the legal community. The Enron data is currently guiding much of our machine learning validation, simply because it's available. ~~~ HeadInTheClouds As a general point, I totally agree with this. The Enron dataset released over ~15 years ago is still used by EDiscovery and other legal vendors along with other researchers. There have been a huge number of papers using this dataset and there are not many other datasets of its type or size available and despite its age is one of the best we have. If people are aware of legally released datasets with a similar size and content I would be interested to hear about them. ------ catchmeifyoucan I'm confused, why was he looking for this information? ~~~ Pfhreak My guess? To look for government employees whose networks are tightly coupled to a special interest or significant person/party. ------ petecooper FTA: >Seattle's first response included a bit of gobsmackery that I’ve almost become used to Brit here. I'm always amused that 'gobsmack' and its derived words are still used these days, more so across the Atlantic. Roughly translated: lost for words, typically for a short time. ------ atomical > Especially with the use of Excel, which would be useful for removing > duplicates, etc. Excel can only handle about 1 million rows, right? ~~~ philipodonnell Nah its not limited except by memory anymore AFAIK. ~~~ atomical Ah, spinning beachball time then. ------ nickthemagicman Mental note to self. Instead of reporting data breaches turn it into a torrent and make it public. ------ nzealand The dump includes email addresses, both government and private. That does not seem good. There is a surprisingly little spam. Either that is about to change, or spam didn't get included in the FOIA. ------ kerng Interesting read to learn of challenges cities have and what mistakes they make along the way, but the author comes across as defensive and quite arrogant. ------ kristofferR Awesome work! I'm glad we have people willing to go through all the hassle, so we can keep our governments responsible. ------ united893 I find the writer to be a bit of a dick in his responses. Yes, the city IT may not be at the same level as Google engineers, but there’s no need to mock their ballpark estimates, and after the mistake there’s no need to be a jerk about it. Be forthright about the error. Consider being on the other side of this, due to a careless mistake the data for many people is exposed on a random strangers hard drive. Asking for an independent third party verification is reasonable. Bringing lawyers in the mix was also unnecessary. And if more people follow in the authors actions then the state level FOIA laws may be put at risk over the long term. ~~~ newman8r I'm curious what his actual legal exposure would have been if he hadn't folded. I feel like they should have offered to compensate the author for his time in their initial request - if someone wanted to perform forensic scans on my hard drives it would be a huge inconvenience. ~~~ jacquesm Pretty massive. An accidental release where the party released to is known and unwilling to perform a remedial action can go anywhere from a slap on the wrist to a criminal investigation. That doesn't mean there will be a conviction, but de-escalation would seem to be a wise course of action in such cases. ~~~ sokoloff De-escalation? Sure. Allow a third-party forensics company hired and beholden to a presumed-hostile counterparty unfettered access to your hard drives because of their own lack of care or incompetence? Hell no! ------ nzjrs TIL there is a genre of people who call themselves FOIA nerds and who appear to be unpleasant, doing this sort of fishing for fun. ------ Markoff more than dollar per email address doesn't sound like very good deal to me ------ daodedickinson It's clear they didn't have expertise to do it, and I'm tired of reading people that know way more looking down at others over it and assuming they don't want to comply. If they hiding something and malicious, the end result wouldn't have been to send way too much, but I don't see the author realizing this fast enough. ~~~ sanotehu Agreed. You're putting an overworked, underpaid public servant in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. They complied with a far reaching request and got told their response was too far reaching? I'd quit my job if faced with a legal minefield like that, especially one not actually related to the job itself ~~~ Aeolun Why do you think complying with these requests is not part of the job for Seattle IT? I would think it’s pretty cool to retrieve this massive amount of data that I wouldn’t otherwise get to play with. ------ edoceo Author of article has no background/understanding of the "sunshine" laws in effect in WA. Those laws may (do) explain a lot of why things go this way with any/all FOIA in WA. Source: 100s of FOIA requests to various WA government agencies. ~~~ Johnny555 Can you provide more details? What is it about WA sunshine laws that make the government misunderstand a request, overestimate the cost of providing the requested data, and then provide data that was not requested resulting in a breach of disclosure laws? ~~~ edoceo Remember when Shoreline had to pay out ~$500k because of mistakes they made on a FOIA request? [https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/city- mu...](https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/city-must- pay-538555-public-records-suit-over-e-mail-metadata) It's because Washington agencies are required to cover reasonable attorneys fees for their opponents after losing open records lawsuits (one of the factors in our FOIA laws) So when Author sent the request to Seattle, they have this above cited example (and 100s of others across the the State) where a mistake could create a lawsuit the costs this loads of money. Did you know that the burden is on the agency to establish that its denial of inspection is proper? Did you know that the court could award you an amount between $5 and $100 a day for each day that access to the records was denied. So, if they don't give you everything you ask for you can sue. And it's easy (relatively) to win in WA for that because of our FOIA laws, then the agency has to pay for the lawyers and a penalty for delay of the records. For emails that means $5 * (Days of Delay) * (Number of Records). In short, if Seattle fucked up this FOIA request, denied or delayed -- that could have cost them millions of dollars. The author didn't understand that and (like a fool) blames the city and city- workers. ~~~ danso > _In short, if Seattle fucked up this FOIA request, denied or delayed -- that > could have cost them millions of dollars._ Sorry, but that sounds like bullshit. The Washington law provides for agencies to take reasonable time on a request, especially one a request that is complicated and broad. In fact, unlike the FOI law for federal and other states, the Washington law does not proscribe the number of days that an agency must respond by, only that they be made "promptly": [http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.56.520](http://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.56.520) The city of Shoreline did not have to pay out $500K "because of mistakes they made on a FOIA request", not according to what you posted: > _The City of Shoreline will have to reimburse $438,555 to cover the > plaintiffs ' costs as Washington agencies are required to cover reasonable > attorneys fees for their opponents after losing open records lawsuits. > Shoreline also agreed last year to pay a $100,000 statutory penalty after > the court found that the city violated the state public records act._ They paid $438K for fighting the request _for seven years_. They paid an additional $100K penalty because they were have found to _violated the law_. They did not pay for "mistakes", at least not mistakes in good faith. ~~~ edoceo SEATTLE – The Washington Supreme Court has upheld a $502,000 penalty for Public Records Act violations by the state Department of Labor and Industries, in a ruling which affirms that judges can calculate such fines based on each page of a withheld record. Another example in WA, the kind of thing that scares public sector employees. I have direct personal experience with this, and direct knowledge of others receiving payout from government (in WA) for similar violations (almost had to start another suit this month). Your narrow interpretation is splitting hairs. The danger is real to the government workers executing these requests Edit: two more easy to find examples [https://www.aclu.org/news/judge-fines-tacoma-police- departme...](https://www.aclu.org/news/judge-fines-tacoma-police-department- withholding-public-records-about-invasive-surveillance) www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/mar/24/justices-uphold-502000-public-records- fine-against/?amp-content=amp ~~~ danso Sorry, I don't understand what your argument is. Both articles you link to refer to large penalties imposed against government agencies for withholding the requested records, over a long period of time. In your original comment [0], you suggested that employees feared of making innocent mistakes that would lead to open records lawsuits. None of the examples you've provided describe that situation. Instead, they involve agencies (and their lawyers) who have decided to refuse a request and fight it out in the courts. What does that have to do with being a danger to employees who handle these requests? [0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18267039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18267039) ~~~ edoceo Well, spend some time with those employees, they know about these cases. This means that these employees frequently send more, faster to avoid a big public issue. The point is that individual people feel pressure and make decisions based on these articles (and many not so public cases) that in retrospect are not that great. And then some blogger makes foolish claims, as if it was incompetence rather than fear. I'll not comment further ~~~ danso I've sent quite a few FOI requests myself when I was a reporter, and my experience biases me against thinking there's a significant problem of state employees sending out FOIAs quickly/prematurely out of fear. In fact, I've never dealt with an employee who broke protocol -- for non-routine requests, the vast majority of them consult with their FOI officer/legal counsel. And they have no incentive to rush things because most FOI laws allow for a delay in response time -- Washington's law doesn't even have a set time limit in which the government has to respond. > _The point is that individual people feel pressure and make decisions based > on these articles_ That is literally the situation of every public servant -- as just about any police officer will tell you. The difference with FOI is that the law provides ample protection for government employees to take their time to get it right, and every investigative journalist I've ever worked with puts up with those delays -- it's only when the delay goes into months/years such that it's tantamount to a rejection that legal action is threatened, because the lawsuit itself takes months to resolve. The only example lawsuits you've found were ones in which the agencies refused to fulfill the request. Until you can show a single instance in which a state employee, or even an agency, was punished because they were late while trying to respond in good faith, I don't think we should assume you know what you're talking about when you claim the author has "no background/understanding" of WA's public records laws. It's especially absurd that you're trying to argue that the mistake the city of Seattle made in his case was done out of hurried fear, when the author provides correspondence that shows he and the city emailed back-and-forth from April to August before they sent him the data. A technical screwup (via internal miscommunication) is the most plausible explanation by far, as no one in the IT or FOI office had any reason to rush this request.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
3 free licenses of Balsamiq Mockups up for grabs on FuelYourCoding - sant0sk1 http://fuelyourcoding.com/giveaway-balsamiq-mockups/ ====== tjpick > I mocked up this simplified version of the FYC homepage in about 20 minutes that's not fast. I could draw that mockup on a piece of paper in 2 minutes or less.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Rockstar scores a 1, 2 with GTAIV & GTAV in all time highest review scores - restlessmedia http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/grand-theft-auto-v The hype machine was well oiled this time, but with most things Rockstar, it looks like it was justified.<p>[edit] This is the chart, I couldn't change the first one http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/ps3?view=condensed&sort=desc ====== Zoepfli If anybody is wondering which GTA5 to get - PS3 or Xbox, Digital Foundary has got you covered: [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-grand- theft...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-grand-theft- auto-5-face-off) According to them the versions are nearly identical, with a very tiny advantage to the PS3 version. In this light, it's interesting that the PS3 version got 97% while the Xbox360 version got 98%: [http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/grand-theft- aut...](http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/grand-theft-auto-v) [http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/grand-theft- auto-v](http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/grand-theft-auto-v) ~~~ bradleyland There are 26 and 37 opinion samples for the PS3 and XBox respectively. Given the small sample size and the subjectiveness of the evaluation, I would imagine that the margin of error is much higher than 1 point. ------ tremorchr I wonder what will be the rating after more than a week. ~~~ jaredmcateer Based on the reviews I saw yesterday only the Escapist was willing to even criticize the game and give it less than a 90% (they gave it 70%). Everyone else seems to have toed the line on this one. ~~~ cbg0 I saw one that criticized quite a few aspects but still gave it a 9.5, which is almost perfect. ~~~ Argorak Which, depending on how much you appreciate the scope of an endeavour, can be valid. Some of the most appreciated games of generations are deeply flawed. An example is Deus Ex, which is a very mediocre shooter, but was enjoyed by many. ~~~ objclxt > _Some of the most appreciated games of generations are deeply flawed. An > example is Deus Ex, which is a very mediocre shooter_ Deus Ex, deeply flawed? I think a lot of people would disagree with you. I suppose you could come to that view if you considered it to be a shooter, but it's really RPG first, FPS second. You can complete the entire game without firing once. I don't think Warren Spector set out to create a FPS, so I wouldn't judge the game on that basis. If anything, I think Deus Ex has got _more_ appreciated from a critical perspective as time has gone on. ~~~ Argorak Even as an RPG it was much worse than many competitors at that time. It is (basically) linear, your choices don't influence the ultimate ending (you get a final pick), which, at that time, some pure RPGs already provided. But you basically reiterate my point: Deus Ex did enough great things to cover the bad things. So it's perfectly fine to give it > 90%, while you can still find strong critique in almost any part of it, without even nitpicking. ------ nilkn It just came out, so there is considerable room for this to go down. Not saying it will, but if there's anything I learned from following game reviews in the past, it's that they frequently change drastically after the first week. ------ darkstar999 How many game reviews are bought and paid for by the industry? (not saying this game doesn't deserve it, but it makes me wonder)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dart can now produce self-contained, native executables - ceronman https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ds2emt/dart_can_now_produce_selfcontained_native/ ====== rvz This sounds like an absolutely magnificent milestone for Dart and a direct hit on developers who use SwiftUI or Electron. Finally, a mature cross-platform desktop application framework with a DSL-like style for creating efficient, self-contained apps that work on Windows, Mac and Linux with the bonus of it working on iOS and Android. This truly changes everything in the desktop app development space. ------ isoos From the original article: [https://medium.com/dartlang/dart2native-a76c815e6baf](https://medium.com/dartlang/dart2native-a76c815e6baf) "the executables created with dart2native are self-contained, they can run on machines that don’t have the Dart SDK installed. And because they’re compiled with Dart’s AOT compiler, the executables start running in just a few milliseconds." and some fun stuff: "Using Dart core libraries, dart:ffi, and the dart_console library, we can create pretty interesting console apps. The dart_console package includes a full demo of kilo, a console text editor written in just ~500 lines of Dart code. The name kilo comes from its origin, kilo.c, which was a C implementation in roughly 1000 lines of code."	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which books are “must-read” for anyone trying to learn about your field? - jackallis Books that are easy to read and beginner friendly. ====== ThorinJacobs For software development - I favor books that are about good practices generally rather than books about particular languages which work well as references. I usually recommend: * Code Complete (Steve McConnell) * The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas) * Clean Code and The Clean Coder (Robert Martin) * The Mythical Man-Month (Fred Brooks) * Test-Driven Development By Example (Kent Beck) I also recommend blogs for more bite-sized knowledge. Jeff Atwood's blog at [https://blog.codinghorror.com](https://blog.codinghorror.com) and Joel Spolsky's at [https://www.joelonsoftware.com](https://www.joelonsoftware.com) in particular have been helpful to me. ~~~ roryisok The TDD book only applies if you ascribe to the TDD philosophy, which not everyone does. The others are fairly universal though. ------ splatzone As a programmer turned musical theatre composer, I recommend these books on the craft of writing musicals: _Stephen Sondheim - Finishing the Hat / Look, I Made a Hat_ Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, Company etc) breaks down his own lyrics and explains how they work and why. He has a very analytical mind and thinks so lucidly and mathematically about his work, a true engineer and artist. Highly recommended. [http://amzn.eu/8p4E1LC](http://amzn.eu/8p4E1LC) [http://amzn.eu/jhRmjFA](http://amzn.eu/jhRmjFA) _Aaron Frankel - Writing the Broadway Musical_ A great overview of the process of writing for musical theatre, how musicals work and pitfalls to avoid [http://amzn.eu/8SAea4c](http://amzn.eu/8SAea4c) _Jack Viertel - The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows are Built_ I haven't read this book fully, but I'm looking forward to finishing it. A great breakdown of musicals and how they are put together. [http://amzn.eu/enr9dHe](http://amzn.eu/enr9dHe) ~~~ roryisok > As a programmer turned musical theatre composer Wow, that's a fascinating career path! How did you end up making that transition? ------ roryisok My field (programming) has been well covered so I'll share books about my side-field, writing. \- On Writing - Stephen King \- Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott \- Story - Robert McKee (screenwriting) \- Do the work - Stephen Pressfield (he's more famous for The War of Art but I haven't actually read that one yet) Also there are some great blogs out there \- Terrible Minds by Chuck Wendig \- The Creative Penn - Joanna Penn \- Mary Robinette Kowal's blog \- John August (screenwriting) ------ jtms Not sure it qualifies as an introduction to any particular field within tech, but for a general deep dive into the inner workings of computers: _Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software_ I just love this book! It was a joyous adventure of discovery the first time through. Subsequent reads always yield new insights. ------ curiousgal _The Elements of Statistical Learning_ or the more beginner friendly _An Introduction to Statistical Learning: With Applications in R_ ------ jachee For getting into DevOps, I believe _The Phoenix Project_ (by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford) is pretty good. ~~~ Hates_ Personally I think that's a great book for anyone who is involved in the process of delivering software, from developers to project managers. ------ sarcher I work in residential construction. Beginner friendly, 'find out if you find this interesting' kind of books: "This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House" by Bob Vila. An older book, only the carpentry is relevant today, but a nice picture-driven exploration of sensitive home renovation. "A Place of My Own: the Architecture of Daydreams" by Michael Pollan I didn't get a lot out of this because it was a pretty simple project that was being described, but it's a good look at the challenges of design, and a good primer if you're looking to do your own small project. Plus, Michael Pollan is an enjoyable writer. "House" by Tracy Kidder Follows the construction of a home in MA with a lot of builder perspective. Explores the common issues associated with running a small carpentry company frame to finish. There is also "The Apple Corps Guide to the Well-Built House" by Jim Locke which is written by a member of the firm profiled in "House" \- haven't read it yet. "Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville" by Witold Rybczynski Follows the evolution of a farm field into a subdivision. . A little more challenging: "The City in History" by Lewis Mumford Best described as a "Tome" \- a staple in intro level planning classes. "building Construction Illustrated" by Francis Ching A good illustrated primer on basic residential construction assemblies, will help with visualization of written descriptions and vocabulary. "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn" by Thomas Hubka The evolution of farm yard structures, of interest if you've ever wondered about the repeating patterns you see on New England farms. "A Field Guide to American Houses" by Virginia Savage McAlester This book will tell you what every type of house is. If I remember right, I believe it also has a section on vernacular houses. A similar book that I own but have not read is "A Field Guide to American Architecture" by Carole Rifkind. I also like, and have read, "American Vernacular: Buildings and Interiors, 1870-1960" by Herbert Gottfried "How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built" by Stewart Brand A great look at what happens after construction is completed, I love this book for it's treatment of a seldom-discussed reality of the construction trades. "Builders Guide: Cold Climates" Joseph W Lstiburek Lstiburek is opinionated, and usually right. Find more books of this style at: [https://buildingscience.com/](https://buildingscience.com/) "The Checklist Manifesto" by Atul Gawande Changed how I approach documenting and completing tasks - in a business like construction where it's hard to go in reverse, it's been a major component of my success since I first read it in 2011. Simple in concept, hard in practice. ~~~ shakethebarley Created an account to say thanks for this list. It's been something I've been looking at recently and you gave me a lot of homework :) Thanks! ~~~ sarcher You're welcome. My email address is in my profile if you have any questions in the future. ------ Tade0 For front-end development I would recommend _Eloquent JavaScript_ by Marijn Haverbeke - it's available for free. Nowadays more often than not I see beginners doing mistakes that are caused by the lack of understanding of JS's _syntax_ alone. These are usually easily aviodable problems which still do cause the ones that have them a lot of grief. EDIT: emphasis. ------ antjanus I usually recommend a few different books: _Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship_ [http://amzn.to/2vcRcgU](http://amzn.to/2vcRcgU) This book really helped me focus on code organization and seeing maintainable code as an overall goal whilst building long-term applications. I'd say that one of the reasons why the work I've done 3-4 years ago can still be used, expanded, and maintained today is because of this book. Short functions, code organization, and naming conventions all stuck with me. I'd say that unlike other programming books, this one focuses on the "art" and "organization" rather than syntax and other aspects of programming. _The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master_ [http://amzn.to/2vfeUaT](http://amzn.to/2vfeUaT) This book tackled real-world application building and practices. I'm still reading it. I liked how it tackled not only some basics of programming (resource management practices) but also project management to a certain extent. Eg. how to use prototypes, how to use "trace bullet" programs, etc. _Game Programming Patterns_ I think one of my favorites has been "Game Programming Patterns" [http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/) which is free online or you can get an ebook/print version [http://amzn.to/2veRdiO](http://amzn.to/2veRdiO) The book introduces several basic design patterns, it explains WHY they're used, how to implement them, etc. in the best way I've read so far. No CS book or online article has been able to explain these patterns as this book did. And I'm not even a game developer. Also, check out this post on dev.to -- [https://dev.to/ben/what-are-the-most- interesting-readable-so...](https://dev.to/ben/what-are-the-most-interesting- readable-software-books) it has some good answers! :) ------ davidthewatson Neal Stephenson: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line) ~~~ senorsmile I just started Snow Crash by the same author. ------ theduality For a general software developer, I have seen Code Complete (Steve McConnell) and Clean Code (Robert C. Martin) recommended a lot. I have copies of both on my desk at work. ~~~ coldtea Design Patterns (GoF), The Mythical Man-Month, ~~~ majewsky I'm skeptical about the GoF book. To often, it's been the proverbial hammer that makes you see nails everywhere. ------ autocorr _Physics of the interstellar and intergalactic medium_ by Bruce Draine for astronomy and study of the interstellar medium. ------ davidivadavid _Ogilvy on Advertising_ still the best intro to not just advertising, but marketing and communications. ------ mitchell_h how to win friends and influence people. Doesn't matter what field. I could be a bus driver or a CEO. ------ atsaloli For software development, I recommend "Understanding Software" by Max Kanat- Alexander [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075V9S57B](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075V9S57B) ------ jacobedawson For JavaScript / Front-End, "Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja" by John Resig (jQuery creator) is fantastic. The Second edition includes clarifications and explorations of ES6 & ES7 features. ------ cm2012 For direct marketing, "Being Direct: Making Advertising Pay" ------ hedgedoops2 Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts) ------ hprotagonist sorry, the books for my field just aren’t beginner friendly. Oppenheim, Schaffer and Nawab, “Signals and Systems” is a foundational text but it’s a total bear. ~~~ oldsklgdfth Linear Systems and Signals by B.P. Lathi is slightly more approachable and is a good foundation book in signal processing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Case Against Education - dsr12 https://jakeseliger.com/2018/03/12/the-case-against-education-bryan-caplan/ ====== neokantian The system forcibly taxes the population, forces the children through a funnel, and then witnesses how all of that does not work particularly well. The alternative would be to cancel Statist involvement and let the problem solve itself. We will undoubtedly see the worst emerge, as well as the best. When the Statist economy will finally be bankrupt, the alternative is what is going to emerge anyway. Therefore, I advocate helping the Statist national economy to go bankrupt. It will be the solution to a very long list of otherwise intractable problems. ------ Capaverde Has cynicism gone too far? In bureaucratic jobs maybe you can fake your way through, but in many other positions any charade eventually is exposed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
China is blocking most Google search queries - garply http://shanghaiist.com/2010/03/30/the_googlecn_googlecomhk_lockdown_h.php ====== garply More specifically, all queries entered from the Google html web forms. I can still search from the search / url bar in Chrome. The block is indeed, as the article states, keyed off of the rfai parameter in the queries. Also, Forbes picked up on the story quickly as well ([http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/30/china-blocks-google-tech- ma...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/30/china-blocks-google-tech-markets- firewall.html?boxes=techchanneltopstories)), but I found the info from The Shanghaiist more useful. ------ alexbosworth Amazon S3 has recently started to come under the block here, which is making Shanghaiist not work for me - their static CSS files are served direct from S3 buckets. ~~~ c1sc0 This is the kind of thing worrying me more than a single search engine being shut out. Once infrastructure services start to suffer it becomes effectively impossible to do (internet) business in China without VPN. I've been thinking about setting up a 'dashboard' website much like Google's services dashboard that goes beyond Google's services and includes access to websites essential to run a modern internet business. Here's my list, please add to it: Google search Wordpress / Tumblr / Other blog services Twitter Facebook Google Appengine Amazon AWS / EC3 / Mturk / etc ... other cloud service providers? ~~~ garply Even with a VPN, the Chinese environment is harmful because VPNs are slooow (relatively speaking). ------ ck2 Is this a surprise? Who exactly is going to stop them? They own half the world's debt and most of the USA's including the trillions borrowed to fund the two wars going on. They will just get a severe finger wagging from the state department. What can anyone do to change this, we can't even support the people in Iran when they are actively fighting their government. If half the American corporations left China, China would simply make clones of those companies or just seize their remaining assets and use them for themselves (like Russia does). ------ UmYeah Google is now saying that this is a technical glitch on their end. [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230473910457515...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304739104575153360362231700.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Site Hopes Automatic Arabic-English Translation Translates into Peace - quant18 http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/arabic-english-diplomacy/ ====== smallblacksun The idea that reducing language barriers will reduce conflict is questionable. There is a huge amount of conflict between the left and the right in the US where there is no language barrier, and the actual differences are far less significant than between the US and the middle east.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How can you compare Facebook and Google? - tikna http://ankitaggarwal.me/my-views/how-can-you-even-compare-facebook-with-google/ ====== pj001 i am not in a mood to compare both..my life will be almost awful without any one of them.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ponder a thought from Alain de Botton (philosopher) - auxbuss Profit is the reward for correctly understanding an aspect of reality ahead of your peers. ====== markstansbury Like, the reality that if I stab someone the throat I am free to help myself to the contents of his pocket? I'm not sure how useful that definition is. Plenty of people have correctly perceived reality far ahead of their peers and as a result reaped nothing but persecution.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: I have a colocated server that I don't fully use anymore - obilgic I have a colocated server(Dell 2950III, 8-core, 16gb ram) that I don't fully use anymore. I don't want to sell it ,because I am using it to make experiments with virtual machines(learning more about devops). It has XenServer on it. What would be the best way to make money from it so that it helps me to pay colocation hosts.<p>update: you can contact me at obilgic at usc dot edu or fisyonet at gmail dot com ====== lmm You're not going to. The admin overhead of running any service is more than you could possibly make from a single server. Run GIMPS on it and hope to hit the prize, or offer informal hosting to your friends and ask them to chip in - but with the understanding that you're not going to be rushing out at 4AM to fix things.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NASA Develops Unique Materials for the Next Generation of Aircraft - rbanffy https://www.nasa.gov/feature/glenn/2020/nasa-develops-unique-materials-for-the-next-generation-of-aircraft ====== mindcrime _After extensive process improvement and testing, NASA opened SiC fibers up for licensing through its Technology Transfer program. When a company licenses with NASA, the relationship extends far beyond the agency’s brand recognition, it provides U.S. industry with a vast network of subject matter experts, testing facilities and other partners._ This burns me up. Assuming (and I think it's a safe assumption, although I am willing to stand corrected) that this research was mostly (or exclusively) funded with public money, then there shouldn't be any "licensing" involved. Any and all patents, specifications, technical documentation, etc. should be freely available to the taxpayers who already paid for the research.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Snowden attended hacking school in India - tn13 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10495221/Edward-Snowden-attended-hacking-course-in-India.html ====== fintler So, he took a class? I don't get the point of this. ~~~ tn13 There is no point to be made here. This kind of trivia is sometimes a good break from "Why I am right and the world is wrong type posts" on HN.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Do engineers shop for clothes? - define_hipster If you're an engineer, how do you pick out new clothes to buy? Would you ever let someone do it for you (i.e. someone with good fashion sense to go with you to the mall for a couple hours to help you look your best?) ====== debacle Would I ever let someone do it for me? Sure. Would I pay for it? No. The kind of person who is an "expert" at retail fashion isn't going to be working at the price point I have in mind. ~~~ define_hipster Curious, what is that price point you have in mind? ~~~ coke12 I think a 40% price premium would be reasonable. ------ MalcolmDiggs I am devoid of fashion taste. I use a pretty simple system: when my clothes get holes in them I walk down to Target and buy more off the rack (whatever they have there that day, doesn't really matter to me). When my converse wear out I walk down to DSW and buy another pair. That being said, I'd like to have better clothes for special occasions / dates / events. I would totally pay someone to pick stuff out for me. Not for everyday clothes, but for those special outfits. ~~~ dllthomas Wearing them more often, you'll be more comfortable in them. Which is not to say you need to wear them every day, by any means, if you're not into that. ------ arh68 Shirts are fairly standard in size, I buy those online. Jeans have to be tried on (bad online experience). /r/mfa has okay guidelines. I stick hard to certain brands, to avoid sizing uncertainty. I wouldn't go full Steve Jobs and only wear black turtlenecks and dorky sneakers, but a closet full of OBDs & polos seems reasonable. I would definitely _try_ someone's recommendations, but only up to a fixed dollar limit (like $200~300). I would be prepared to bag it all up and donate it if I didn't like it. ~~~ thisGuysAccount You sound average-sized, if you can confidently say shirts are standard in size. I know a lot of guys who have a hard time finding shirts that fit. Shirts, jeans, sweaters, anything... they're all over the place in terms of fit. With shirts, you've got different torso widths, lengths, arm hole sizes (I don't know the word), depths and widths of the neck hole. A slim fit, an athletic fit, a relaxed fit, will all vary from brand to brand. With jeans, same thing. Then you've got the fabric and stitching. I'm not sure I'd buy clothes online. Too many variables. ~~~ thisGuysAccount Actually, there's something I'd pay $20 for. I mail you a list of measurements. You mail me a list of brands and styles that fit. ~~~ define_hipster Cool idea, but how do you account for variations on what certain brands consider a 33-length, for example? Like for example, 32-waist Wrangler seems to be equivalent to 30-waist Gap. Only way I know this is because I tried on the jeans at the mall and found those to be the most comfortable on me. The variation is strange and it's not just pants but also shoes sizes aren't consistent between brands either. I think the way Zappos solves this is they send you the shoes and you send them back if they don't fit well. ~~~ thisGuysAccount That's part of why it's worth $20. There would need to be some brand research done, checking the fitting and sizing of various brands, so you could know that "with a 31 inch waist, measured around the navel, I would fit in 30 inch Gap jeans and 32 inch Wranglers." That trip to try on those two pairs of jeans cost you what, an hour? two hours? ------ GotAnyMegadeth It depends what you mean by help me. If you mean ask my opinion and say things like "which one do you like more?" then no way. The reason I don't like shopping is because I have no opinion. If it was someone who you could explain "I don't want to stand out, I don't want to look like x, y or z, I don't want to talk to anyone in any shop, I don't want this to take more than w hours" Then maybe. ------ laurieg I usually pick out things that fit in plain neutral colors so I can wear lots of different combinations. When something wears out I often buy exactly the same make/model almost without thinking. When I find something that fits i regularly buy more than one in different colors. My clothes seem to wear out very quickly. I would definitely let someone do it for me. I don't know a lot about fashion and I'd love to look better. ------ dllthomas I pick out my own clothes. I think I do a good job. At this point in my life, I don't think I would trust someone else to do it for me, without a long term one-on-one relationship where we could collectively develop their understanding of my style. There have been other points in my life when it would have been more welcome. ------ fekberg I like buying clothes myself, so I wouldn't have someone do it for me all the time. However, I also like getting clothes as Birthday/Xmas gifts and my family knows what I like. My shopping is 50/50 in-store and online, when I do in-store shopping I like to have my wife with me, mostly for company and to verify what I pick fits and looks good. ------ 32faction I shop myself. I peruse GQ, and /r/mfa for style inspiration. I actually just got back from Black Friday shopping and I'm wearing these really comfortable A&F sweatpants as I type this. ~~~ dllthomas I like askandyaboutclothes.com, cut with my own style and a healthy dose of common sense... ------ informatimago Nope. Size fit color is blue (or else black, which is kind of a dark blue). No (they don't tend to respect the blue rule). Also: move to a hot country to reduce the need for clothes. ~~~ define_hipster Who's "they" that you refer to when you say "they don't tend to respect the blue rule"? ------ sp332 Sure. My criteria have been the same as informatimago, but lately I've been curious about what looks good on me and now I find myself at a loss. ------ hashtag Shop for myself. Would never let someone else buy for me sight unseen. ~~~ define_hipster What if it wasn't sight unseen? What if someone could go with you and provide you a fashionable opinion? Would you let them take the lead? ~~~ hashtag I want to say possibly but the honest truth is Nordstrom has (or had) a personal shopper option and I never used them when shopping there so I can't imagine doing so anywhere else either. ------ lstrope www.trumaker.com will set you up with a stylist that will help you make those decisions. spoiler: I'm an engineer and I work there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Case Against Tipping in America - fourmii https://www.eater.com/a/case-against-tipping ====== pepe56 „tipped minimum“ - just wow! As someone living in Asia the American tipping culture is ridiculous and highly unfair. This countr is broken on so many levels. ------ valuearb I’m still confused how the definition of a good tip changed from 15% to 20%. ~~~ ggg9990 Because popular culture is created by former waiters. In movies and TV, the classic sign of a villain is that he is a bad tipper. Most screenweiters / directors / etc. got their start while waiting tables in Los Angeles.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Learning Design - FameofLight Hi,<p>After seeing a lots of good thing about Ruby on Rails here , I started learning it. I am pretty much satisfied with my journey till now.<p>But my site sucks like hell , they have really no good design and no appeal to potential user ( even to me ) .<p>I would like to ask you where can I start learning and implementing simple but neat design.<p>I think there are so noobs out there who would like have this question.<p>Hacker News is best place to ask this question as I think.<p>Regards, Hemant Verma ====== charliepark Paul Stamatiou recently wrote a really good "intro to design for developers" here: <http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-web-design-ux-crash-course>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
[SF] Weebly is hiring! - drusenko http://www.weebly.com/jobs.html ====== drm237 The puzzle was fun. So what are people supposed to do with the secret code, email it to you? Or is there a place for it that I missed? Anyway, good way to make it interesting! ~~~ drusenko yeah, the idea is that if we get an email with a correct response, that should bring people to the top of the pack, as it demonstrates at least a certain basic understanding in JS debugging, basic concepts, etc. ------ testapplication Hmm, if they didn't make their own website using Weebly, why would I ever want to use Weebly? ~~~ derefr Because a Weebly website isn't, itself, a multi-website management interface; it's just static pages (as far as I know). Would you suggest Excel be coded in cellular formulae? ~~~ testapplication How non-Godelian of them.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New Stanford class on Cryptography - robdoherty2 http://www.crypto-class.org/ ====== innocentques Wow, does anyone know what is the system here? Has stanford just said to their faculty that this is something they can do in their spare time but stanford will not actively support it? Or is there some other arrangement going on? Also why are they not shifting away from CS classes (except for entrepreneurship). Things like signal processing and basic controllers can be taught with such a class. I would specially love the signal processing class since there are 3 classes (don't exactly remember the name) which are considered holy perfecta of signal processing. ------ tptacek Dan Boneh is _bad ass_. That's all I have to say about this. ~~~ feralchimp Do you happen to have links to his work that don't require ACM, JStor, or other membership? And...Google was my friend: <http://crypto.stanford.edu/~dabo/pubs.html> ~~~ colgur Not sure if it is retroactive but the ACM has changed their access policy a little: [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/10/131401-acms- copyright-...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/10/131401-acms-copyright- policy/fulltext). ~~~ btn The service [1] described in that article allows authors to let people download an article from the ACM via. a link on their personal website, rather than having to host the PDF themselves. There's been no change in the access policy for non-members. [1] <http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service> ------ theshadow Any chance that they might do a compilers class too? The compilers class at my school got cancelled for the fall term and I don't think I'll have a chance to take it in a future term. ~~~ Periodic The introductory compilers class, CS143, will be available to Stanford students in the spring. I have no idea if they'll put it online, but it would be consistent with their current initiatives. I think you'll have to inquire more or wait until then to find out. <http://cs.stanford.edu/courses> ------ tristanstraub doing these courses next to full time work is tough, but its just so tempting. ~~~ thebrokencube A few coworkers and I signed up for the DB class and ran into the same problem. What we decided to do instead is just read through the material whenever we get a chance and not worry too much about the assignments (unless we get time). We don't necessarily get all the benefits, but at least we're able to take something good out of it. ~~~ chrisguitarguy That's what I've been doing as well. No "certificate of accomplishment" at the end of the class, but still the benefits of learning the material. Seems like a fair trade. ~~~ candeira In my opinion, the real learning comes from doing the exercises. So if you are reading the material but not doing any quiz or exercise, you aren't learning as much. And if you aren't doing the exam, which has a time limit and you can't repeat until you get it perfect, you don't know how much you are or aren't learning. ------ geekytenny Way to go Stanford. You guys just keep blowing our minds. After all the stuff i learned for free in just 4 weeks of the current classes, i am filled with gratitude! I highly recommend these classes.. ------ pbreit Why do these classes all have unique URLs? ~~~ kmfrk They want to make it clear that there is no relation to Stanford with regards to accreditation. People unaware of these courses might conflate them with actual Stanford courses. ------ Omnipresent This question might be tangent from the intended purpose of these awesome free classes but can anyone share if some certification or acknowledgement of some sort is received upon completion? ~~~ huherto I think the plan is to have a complete Master's degree, but there haven't been any announcements regarding this. ~~~ stordoff One of the AI tutors tweeted about the possibility of offering a Master's degree for $2000. AFAIK, there hasn't been any more public discussion of this. From the courses building up, it seems quite possible. The $2000 could be to cover limited personal support, and the sitting of a proper exam, with the bulk of the teaching coming from the online videos. ~~~ pheaduch I'm not fond of the idea of giving out a recognized form of achievement as then the incentive changes from the sake of learning to earning a degree. ------ _corbett awesome, I'm reading Applied Cryptography and this will be a good supplement. The MIT OCW course doesn't have a lot of resources [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-875-cryptography-and-cryptanalysis-spring-2005/index.htm) Does anyone know from the AI course the quality of the lectures & videos? ~~~ tptacek Applied Cryptography, no matter what Matthew Green may have to say about it, is a terrible book to learn cryptography from. I highly recommend you burn it and instead pick up a copy of Practical Cryptography (or Cryptography Engineering, which is the exact same book). The mark of a good book on a security topic is, you can read it "upside down" and learn how to break things instead of build them. ~~~ waterlesscloud Why is Applied Cryptography a terrible book? ~~~ tptacek [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Atptace...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=by%3Atptacek+applied+cryptography) ~~~ JoshTriplett More specifically, the one comment in that search that provides rationale: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377187> ~~~ tptacek I disagree that it's the only comment with a rationale, but it's a fine example. Writing the same thing about the same subjects over and over again is tiresome, isn't it? (Thank you for taking the time to pick one out though). ------ rmnoon This class blew my mind. Don't take it if you're even a little bit paranoid already. =) ~~~ frio Heh, I had the same reaction after reading Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Working for an ISP and seeing how easy it is to sniff traffic only makes the paranoia worse, unfortunately. ------ Ecio78 That's really interesting and it seems, according to ml-class videos already online, that there are also subtitles available (it surely helps people like me that are not native english speaker) ------ cop359 I prefer the MIT model of just having video lectures online. You can do things at your own pace. Whats the advantage of this sign-up and do assignment that get graded by a computer model? ~~~ riffraff other already pointed out that having assignments helps, I'd add that for some people (e.g. me) a _schedule_ is a great advantage. If you are trying to learn something on your own timing it's easy to procrastinate. Maybe you could keep a faster pace but you just won't push yourself a bit. It goes without saying that people with good self discipline can do without a schedule, but for some of us it helps. ~~~ callahad I've had the opposite problem: Without a schedule, I'll binge on the material for the first few days, and then utterly burn out or fail to properly learn the information. ------ patricklynch Are the course videos online somewhere? I know the database class was basically an organized walkthrough with extra assignments for videos that were mostly already public. ------ feralchimp Forgive the stupid question, but: Is this free? And if so, are the assignments graded? ~~~ weaksauce It's free and the assignments will be graded automatically by a computer. See <http://www.ml-course.com> for a currently running Stanford course example. ~~~ gabebw It's actually <http://www.ml-class.org/> ------ molecularbutter There are 10 total, scroll to the bottom of that page. ------ dataphyte all the classes have their own domains? GoDaddy is happy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ubuntu Core On The Nexus 7 - vectorbunny http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/10/26/ubuntu-core-on-the-nexus-7/ ====== listic Is Nexus 7 the first hardware of choice for Ubuntu developers? I would love for them to start with Microsoft Surface (with keyboard as standard in some models it would kinda be the logical choice) but I understand that Nexus is a) earlier b) cheaper c) you have to start with something. Right? ~~~ zanny The transformer tablets also suit this, and also suits your responders desire for an unlocked bootloader. The reason for the Nexus 7 focus is simple. It is, by far, the most popular while being very powerful tablet with market penetration. I still think Canonical has this misguided idea that average Joe will go through the process of unlocking their Nexus 7 to install Ubuntu, but it has a reasoning behind it. I would _much_ rather see Ubuntu on my Transformer Infinity, since it has hdmi out and a keyboard dock. I could easily plug it into a monitor and have a desktop like experience that way. ~~~ josteink > I would much rather see Ubuntu on my Transformer Infinity I've loaded up Ubuntu on my original Transformer. Granted, it has a Tegra 2 CPU, which to put it mildly is not very powerful, but Nvidia has put out the required source and modules to put up a Linux distro which takes advantage of it. Maybe Ubuntu just has gotten "bloated" over the years and everyone has failed to notice because all PCs are overpowered these days, but when I booted it up on the Transformer, a machine which runs Android flawlessly, smoothly and responsive, I was severely disappointed. Everything. Was. Dead. Dead. Slow. Prepare to wait multiple, multiple seconds to open that terminal. And please don't talk aobut browser-performance. Ouch. Maybe it will run better on the newer models, but trying it out in real life was a little off-putting. On the other side: If Canonical is putting in effort to get it running well on the Nexus 7, it should translate to an overall performance-improvement across the line. And that would be welcomed very much. ~~~ zanny > Maybe Ubuntu just has gotten "bloated" over the years and everyone has > failed to notice because all PCs are overpowered these days When my terminal after starting unity is pid 12000, you can guess bloat has occured. Even on my arch boot my terminal after auto login through the x virtual console is pid ~500 still. Also, Unity uses at least 300Mb of memory, and composting. Compostinggggg. Most of the inefficiencies in a modern Arch distro, for example, are build around plug and play mostly I think. Udev, systemd, dhcp, etc are all designed to gently allow arbitrary hardware arrangements without interrupting the experience, but cost performance to determine what is available and constantly babysit the environment. ~~~ baggers The bright side of this push to get things running well on the nexus 7 is that these inefficiencies will have to be dealt with. I'm running this build the Nexus7 now and, yeah its slow, but as the goal for 13.04 is getting the performance and battery life acceptable, these developments 'should' leak back and help the whole Ubuntu experience. It might just be the itch required to get development focused on performance again. ------ achiang Oops, I posted this in a different thread elsewhere on HN (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4707925>), but figured it would be relevant to this conversation too. \--- Hi, I led the team that shipped this image, and I'm pretty proud of what we did. A few thoughts about our goals for this release. The entire point of Ubuntu core on the Nexus 7 is to highlight our desktop's performance and resource issues. We know we're way too fat in terms of memory consumption, CPU usage, disk footprint, etc. and now we have a convenient developer platform that folks can use to help us optimize our core in preparation for a future world where mobile dominates. (nb, I've been calling it Ubuntu Pilates) The great thing about Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 is that it finally provides a convenient, cheap, ARM platform where all the standard Linux tools work. Believe me, I've hacked on pandas, rpis, etc. and for what we're trying to do here, the Nexus 7 is so much easier to develop on. And if I may insert some editorial, I often see the HN crowd complain about Apple's developer policies, working around strange bugs in their black box APIs, etc. This is your chance to help build out an open platform. I'm not saying our APIs are better (in fact, they tend to be less well thought out than Apple's), but at least you have a chance to help improve things in the platform, rather than accepting whatever the platform gives you. In any case, the summary here is that for now, we've got a tight focus on improving our core OS footprint so don't expect that our current UI experience is great (it's not) or that it's a usable replacement for Android (it's not, unless you hook up a USB keyboard/mouse in which case it's just a super cheap, silent terminal). Every bit that we improve the core OS on the Nexus 7 flows back into the rest of our platform so our desktop and our server gets leaner and faster. To make it painfully obvious, this will help all your Amazon EC2 instances. :) We'd love to have any help. And stay tuned for more to come. thanks, /ac ------ dpearson I'm a little surprised that their solution for installation is to replace Android. I would think dual-booting would be easier to get developers to commit their own devices for testing. Is dual-booting not possible/really difficult on the Nexus 7? ~~~ ajross There's no real boot framework on mobile devices the way there is for PCs. Android boxes have traditionally had the ability to boot into one of two kernel+initrd environments: "recovery" and "system", and that's it. The hardware OEMs make this framework work via whatever tricks they want to play, and then ship. Obviously a second stage bootloader could be written, but it's going to be highly hardware-specific -- one for the OMAP4-based Galaxy Nexus wouldn't work with the Tegra3-based Nexus 7, etc... ~~~ drivebyacct2 Could you at least write a rebooter that would rewrite /boot and then have two "partitions"? You could go into Ubuntu and choose "reboot into Android" and it would rewrite /boot and then restart the device? I wonder how the bootloader for the Touchpad works. It had the functionality I describe though I have no idea how it was implemented. ~~~ ajross Yes, you could do that. On all the devices I've played with the kernel+initrd image is a standard format and exposed as a single partition. You'd just dd your new one over it and reboot. But this would be fragile, to say the least. ------ richbradshaw Being an Ubuntu user, and a Nexus 7 owner, I really can't see this particular implementation being of much use – the strengths of the Nexus 7 are things like Google Now, location based stuff, it's speed and ease of use etc etc. Ubuntu is great for doing computery things, like coding, or setting up servers etc. On a tablet, I'm not coding (too fiddly to type $[]@% etc), and not using it as a server, but I am using it as a map, as a book, as an email machine etc. To be honest, I'd rather run Android on a laptop, rather than Ubuntu on a tablet. ~~~ jiggy2011 Weirdly enough I'm the other way around. I have an android 2.3 device and find the UI frustrating. A mobile version of Unity with different lenses and searches would be far better, though I would want access to android apps. I would find this useful assuming I could connect a keyboard and mouse to it. Assuming Android and Ubuntu could be dual booted quickly enough and I had a decent stand for tablet I could forgo a laptop entirely. ------ 6ren This is the path to desktop disruption but Note: Nexus 7 lacks HDMI out How does performance compare - what's an equivalent netbook/laptop/desktop? BTW: Nexus 10 is looking good, cortex A-15 [http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/26/impressive- google-n...](http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/26/impressive-google- nexus-10-specs-leaked-and-android-4-2/) ------ kwijibob I would love for this to be a success. I'm a long term Linux and ubuntu user. However I do use Gnome 3.x and not Unity. My doubts are that not even the Ubuntu team will be able to reach the level of desktop polish that Google have achieved with Jelly Bean. I would prefer Ubuntu to be better as it is a more open stack. ------ Create It would be very nice to see Ubuntu Core running on the Asus Transformer Pad series with the keyboard/battery dock. The Nexus 7 and the TF700 seem to have very similar hardware around the Tegra3. ------ mtgx I think their efforts would be better spend on the upcoming Nexus 10. Larger screen to fit Ubuntu and much better CPU and GPU, too. ~~~ zanny If the Nexus 10 is sticking with Tegra apus, the Wayne series won't be out until next year, so if they target an xmas release on the Nexus 10 then they are still stuck on the same Tegra 3 (probably overclocked). ~~~ mladenkovacevic The Nexus 10 will run on the new A15 Exynos chip (5250?) with a Mali T-604 GPU - same as the new Chromebook ------ soapdog Ubuntu runs on the HP TouchPad. ------ somesaba this is my dream come true!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google moves to mainstream RSS with a simple name - prakash http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_moves_to_mainstream_rss_with_a_simple_name_change.php ====== netcan Lingo is so important. I was at a lecture once given by a top Australian political PR/Lobbyist. He recounted running the battle over some environmental policy that the National Farmers Federation (NFF) was opposing. Fascinating stuff. One of the central components was 'owning' a handful key phrases. They wanted 'sustainable' (as in economically sustainable communities).'Custodianship' (the farmers as opposed to collective) to be associated with them. He showed the progression of the use of these in the media over the campaign period. There was a 180 degree turn. All those words completely changed sides & completely changed meanings. The public attitudes (eg for/against sustainability) didn't. I wonder what RSS adoption would have been if the it had a better lingo to begin with. ~~~ thwarted Firefox displays "subscribe to this page" when you hover over the orange feed icon on the right of the address bar. The terminology is already established. Just like how it says "www" or "http", but people associate both of those with "web page". ------ JeremyChase I agree that "RSS" is not an intuitive name, but the article is making this into a bigger issue than it is. After all they are only changing the link. :) ~~~ pchristensen I wholeheartedly disagree - getting the terms right is SO important. For instance, I was about 2 yrs late to blogging because the word "blog" just confused me, but I jumped right into podcasts because I knew exactly what it was just from hearing the word. ~~~ JeremyChase Getting terms right is one thing, but _many_ sites already have such terminology. i.e.: Follow this post _link_ ------ msg RSS and site feeds are the DVR of the internet. Just thought I'd get that one in there. If you need to market it to someone, call it that. Come to think of it, that is a smoking hot idea. There really is no TiVo of the internet feed reader. You don't star your subscriptions. Your feed reader doesn't crawl out on the internet looking for more content like what you're already "recording". You can't set up a wish list... and there's no real clearinghouse of feeds (listings) or the semantic links between them (read Coding Horror? you may also like Joel on Software). I know the analogy is not perfect, but it sure seems like fertile ground... ------ Tichy My impression when trying to explain Twitter to non-geeks was that "follow" is not really that great a choice of word. It sounds rather weird actually, like a cult. That's in Germany, though, might be because I am not a native speaker. ~~~ maxwell "Follow" seems natural to me now, but I remember thinking it sounded a bit stalkerish when I first saw it. And I'm not sure it's any more comprehensible than "subscribe" for casual users. ------ mariorz Why do people who are arguably familiar with these things insist on using "RSS"? RSS is but one format, atom is growing rapidly and it is I believe already used by most Google services including Blogger. "Feeds" is the correct term and while not perfect surely better than some unpronounceable acronym. ~~~ Angostura For the same reason that people still write with a Biro or Hoover the carpet. ------ briansmith Basically, they want to turn Blogger into a Twitter-like social network that isn't limited to 140 characters. ~~~ trevorturk Tumblr already uses this lingo, too, and I think it should make more sense to people. I thought that the "RSS is like email" metaphor would work, but I think this is going to help adoption quite a bit. ------ petercooper Because "subscribe" is a term not understood by anyone to mean receiving something regularly, of course.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How the Bubble Destroyed the Middle Class - mvs http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/113086/bubble-destroyed-middle-class-marketwatch;_ylt=At4mPlCBilFtqaDeVWAOHkK7YWsA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1YTVsNjl0BHBvcwM4BHNlYwN0b3BTdG9yaWVzBHNsawNob3d0aGVidWJibGU-?mod=bb-budgeting&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode= ====== IdeaHamster Here's what I find most interesting about what has happened to the middle- class in America: When the middle-class in America was booming, you would have had to be crazy to leave America. Good job. Nice car. Family and a house? You're set! Why leave? Another way of viewing what has happened in the US over the past 20 years or so, is that the US middle-class is falling back to earth. Now the average middle-class family in America could move to just about anywhere in Europe and enjoy a pretty similar lifestyle to what they currently have in the US. Sure, gas is still more expensive and clothing is still a bit pricy, but it's nothing like it was in the 80s and early 90s. (I still remember seeing electric razors advertised for the equivalent of $150 on my first trip to Germany when the equivalent model in the US would've cost no more than $50.) Take that one step further, and the average American family could now potentially consider a move to one of the BRIC or CIVITS nations, and they would find themselves with only slightly less access to the luxuries they might expect in the US. Why is this important? Because I think that for the first time in the history of human kind, we might just be reaching the point where the choice of where to live and work could be made based solely on things like the climate or the culture instead of on things like "Can I eat?" or "Will I have a roof over my head?" That would be a world I would want to live in... ~~~ danieldk _When the middle-class in America was booming, you would have had to be crazy to leave America. Good job. Nice car. Family and a house?_ Lack of old culture? Lack of proper healthcare for everyone? Lack of decent unemployment benefits? Being stuck in your own little bubble? (No tastful bread? ;)) Do not misunderstand me, I do like the US for its nature and kind citizens. But many would never trade their life for a life in the US. Even if they were given the choice of a 'booming middle class life'. ~~~ tokenadult _Lack of old culture?_ Your comment was kind, so please interpret this as a kind reply. When I used to interpret for official visitors to the United States from China, I could take them to a cemetery in the city of Boston where there are graves that were dug before the founding of the Qing Dynasty in China. Harvard University, for example, dates to the Ming Dynasty. Similarly, here in the United States we use the ROMAN alphabet, a cultural survivor now more than 2,000 years old, and the Indo-Arabic decimal place- value numeral system (just as much of a new upstart in Europe as it is for any American), and Gregorian chant and other music that precedes the use of musical notation anywhere in the world. We have plenty of old culture here. The United States also has new culture such as ragtime, jazz (various genres), blues, soul, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop music that compare favorably in the aggregate to traditional music from anywhere in the world, broadcast media and motion pictures that were largely invented here but now enjoyed around the world, and this cool thing called the Internet that links all of us together on Hacker News. Your point is well taken. A lot of countries offer a lot of interesting lifestyle features. I would return to Taiwan (where I met my wife, and where I last lived a decade ago) at the drop of a hat. My oldest son is very interested in living in Norway, a land my ancestors left for Minnesota a century and a half ago. It's wonderful that more and more what country a person lives in is a matter of choice rather than solely a matter of birth. The trade-offs involved in living in one country rather than another involve many interesting incommeasurable issues. ~~~ danieldk _Harvard University, for example, dates to the Ming Dynasty._ I do not disagree that there are no traces of old culture. However, go to any random city in, say Europe, the middle east, or Asia. Chances are high that you will easily find artifacts from the roman age until now. Most of the US is new, in many cities you'll have to work hard to find something older than one hundred or two hundred years old. This is not a criticism, but many people appreciate cities and artifacts that are old ;). Also, with respect to culture in the other sense, the difference is huge. US city centers tend to be boring (with notable exceptions such as New York), since much of the activity is in the outskirts, and are only reachable by car. Compare this to many other countries, where city centres are cramped with pubs, small theaters, etc, and people tend to hang around until the early morning. I liked some cities int this respect (e.g. Portland), but in comparison it's still a bit dull. _The United States also has new culture such as ragtime, jazz (various genres), blues, soul, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and hip-hop music that compare favorably in the aggregate to traditional music from anywhere in the world,_ It's just marketed a whole lot better. E.g. I am into jazz mostly, and American musicians are the most well-known. But Europe had (and still has) a lively avant-garde scene, which was at least as progressive is the scene in the US. In Africa, mostly isolated and in parallel, what resembles modern jazz developed (e.g. check out the excellent Ethipiques series). One good example is Getatchew Mekurya from Ethiopia, who developed his own weird flavor of jazz, that sprung directly from traditional ethiopian music. Anyway, I digress. The rest of the world had thriving and progressive music scenes, but often failed to package is for mass consumption. _broadcast media and motion pictures that were largely invented here_ Are you kidding? Ever heard of Nosferatu, Battleship Potempkin, Le voyage dans la lune? _but now enjoyed around the world_ Hollywood movies are often looked down upon as superficial, but 'ok if you want something easy'. _and this cool thing called the Internet that links all of us together on Hacker News._ True, ARPAnet was invented in the US, but the 'interface' that we all use was invented by a Brit in Geneva ;). Sure, it had its precursors, but the point is, that in contrast to popular belief, the US did not bring us to modernism. It's a collective contribution. ------ 3pt14159 I hate misleading graphs. First off, that graph should be logarithmic to show true changes in year over year percent terms (otherwise everything looks exponential in the long term) and secondly, the y-axis should extend to near the origin. ~~~ fhars You will have to scroll a _long_ way to get near the origin on a logarithmic graph. (Or, the two parts of you advice on how to enhance the graph are mutually exclusive, the origin on a logarithmic graph is at minus infinity.) ~~~ 3pt14159 I specifically said "near" to avoid this heckle. :) ------ orofino While this is interesting, I think it misses the fundamental issue, our (American) view of wealth. If people looked at a home as a consumable with nominal value, this wouldn't be a problem. The article hints at the core issue, middle class families have on average $100K in savings. If, instead of purchasing large houses out in the suburbs with large yards, they purchased something more modest and within their means, the house wouldn't be the center of their financial universe. ~~~ nhaehnle I do believe the article is spot-on about why there is no recovery from the crisis that actually reaches the population at large. The headline is a bit misleading, however. It's not that the bubble destroyed the middle class. The bubble was a way for the middle class to continue living a happy life despite the fact that there income share was continually being reduced. Instead of consuming on income, they consumed on the housing bubble. So it's not the bubble that destroyed the middle class - the article basically says so itself - it just delayed the inevitable and made the decline much more spectacular. ------ kemiller I don't know why people keep thinking class is about personal income. Edit: this is relevant because their evidence that the middle class is shrinking comes in the form of a drop in the share of total income earned that accrues to the middle quintile, from 17% to 15%. That's an interesting result, but it doesn't really say anything interesting about the "middle class". In my book, if you have to go into work every day or you can't pay the mortgage, you're middle class. You have a job, you have secured debt, you own your home, and your income comes from employment. I will bet you that a much larger span of that spectrum, up to and including most of the top 5%, meet that description. Those at the top might be "upper middle" and enjoy a lifestyle that others envy, but that doesn't make them upper class. ~~~ knieveltech Probably because class is about personal income. ~~~ kemiller No, it's not. It's certainly not about which evenly-spaced quintile you're in. It's about HOW you make your money, and what you spend it on. Consider: do you really think everyone making 88K or more should be considered "upper class"? ~~~ knieveltech I fail to see the relevance of how one makes one's money to the class discussion and 88k is an arbitrary number. The classic "American Dream" lifestyle is typically defined as home ownership, two cars in the garage, three squares a day and sufficient disposable income to be able to comfortably afford to raise children and save for retirement. So, assuming this works as a definition of "middle class", anyone not capable of all of the previous due solely to financial constraints is therefore "lower class". Based on my experience, $120k annual household income in a low cost of living area barely squeaks over the bar if you use this metric. $175-$200k annual household income seems more realistic to me given the retirement clause. Where the line gets drawn for "upper class" is harder to define, but I think we can all agree an upper class exists. ------ julnepht "off topic" But I cannot remember when was the last time that an article from yahoo.com got over 50 votes on HN ! ------ wccrawford I really hate it when reporters use words incorrectly. "And make no mistake, the middle class has been ruined: Its wealth has been decimated, " ... They only lost 10% of their wealth? That's not so bad. Oh wait, they mean completely destroyed, not decimated. ~~~ jonnathanson The writer and history buff in me loves that you have pointed this out. But I think the word "decimate" decoupled from its original meaning sometime between the fall of the Roman Empire and today. ~~~ njharman As fellow history buff, I was fascinated to learn that decimation was used as recently as the 1930's. By Italy against Libyan tribesmen. But, I agree with you decimate has long had alternative meaning of "destroy almost completely" ~~~ jonnathanson That is interesting. And it would make sense, given that 1930s Italy was run by a dictator who had a personal obsession with proclaiming himself the heir the Roman Empire. This is a fun tangent. And apologies to everyone else who's trying to stay on topic. This is why I love nested comment systems. ------ dotcoma Bullshit. If America had a great middle class, ordinary folk would go on vacation in the summer, not to the movies like they do now and have done for decades. In the US, movies come out in the summer; even Newsweek used to have a Summer Movies special. In Europe, they come out in November or December, when the weather's shit and there's nothing better to do. ~~~ dgabriel Um, lots of families do BOTH of these things. ~~~ dotcoma Thanks for leaving a comment. A lot of (pretty fascist, imho) people seem to have just down-voted me instead.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Announcing Viviti: Build websites with no code and no hassle (we hope!) - tkiley http://viviti.com/welcome ====== bprater It's obvious there has been a tremendous amount of development time invested in the project. Looks great, feels good. There are many site builders out there, so I think execution counts for a lot. Two quick suggestions: 1) Get a demo video up on the homepage. Show a person what they can do. 2) Get a demo video up after a person has signed up. If my dad were using this, he could walk through the wizard up to the point where he arrives at his site. Then he'd get lost as to what he should click on next to accomplish whatever task is in his head. ~~~ tkiley Good points. Getting a demo video up on the homepage is a priority at this point; for orientation after sign-up, we're thinking about doing a quick overlay/popup that explains how to edit and add content. I don't think it should take more than a few hints to help people through creating their first few pages. Thanks for checking it out. ~~~ jsmcgd $0.02: I would prefer to try the site or view a video before I hand over my email address. ------ tkiley Viviti, our beloved new CMS/sitebuilder, has been under development for several years now. The CMS market is crowded, but we're going for a level of simplicity and flexibility that hasn't been achieved by any of the solutions out there right now. Feedback is always welcome! ------ webwright A code-free experience is presumably for non-geeks, right? Your signup form has a field called "hostname". Nitpicky, but... How many non- geeks have the vaguest idea wtf that means? ~~~ tomsaffell IMO this is not nitpicky - it's a crucial implementation detail. In a quick scan of the main page I saw two similar tech-speaks: \- Use your own _domain_ name (why not 'website address') \- ..with no _code_ (what does 'no code' mean to a non tech person??) This looks like a good product, but to really address the target audience it needs wording to them (or maybe you need different versions for different types of customer?). See if you can borrow someone's granny for the acid test. ~~~ felideon I agree. "Code" may not mean much to non-technical people. Something like "no programming" might be more meaningful, although I'm wondering if you could even leave it out altogether. ------ fizx The tool itself is wonderful. I'd switch my blog from wordpress to it, if it had analytics, and I knew you'd be around a year from now. Minor thing on signup: Password: ancmthdnvu Password Strength: You're kidding, right? Password: 123456 Password Strength: Admirable ~~~ netcan What did you mean by 'had analytics?' Google Analytics? If that's your issue, I think you could drop the code into the 'theme' & that'd do it. ~~~ fizx Wordpress has web analytics built into the main blog dashboard. It's nice. I could drop code into a theme, but I kinda like the ease of use there. ~~~ netcan I guess that if it come down to features, it's going to be difficult to beat old-timers off the bat. You say that apart from that, you'd switch. Why? Just something else r anything particularly good about this? ~~~ Spyckie the site is very good, but i'll have to agree with op (of this comment). analytics is very important. i would switch from wordpress to this because this has a lot more options than a blogging engine but it still can be used as one. ------ netcan There are certainly many site builders out there. The vast majority are painful to use. Especially for the type of user I think this aims at. This one is very nicely done. Both the concept (very self explanatory) & the execution are very good. I had a fairly thorough run-through & I am very impressed. I think I might have a good use for one of these, but I'd need to see if it can be used reasonably over a dial-up connection. Speed seemed to be a bit of an issue for me. Both the 'back end' & the 'front end'. This seems like a great blogging platform. I can't say that I know what you are after here. But I can say that the need I come across without really finding a solution that I'm thrilled with is more towards the traditional website end of the blob/site spectrum. The basic difference (I think) is the navigation structure. Handling a navigation with 10-50 links reasonably easily (submenu items, dynamically created sibling pages & the like) & having some tools to create a 'home page' with a different. ------ ken 1\. Show more features, or show them more in-depth. (It doesn't need to be a video, but it could be.) Unless I'm really interested, I'm not going to sign up for something just to find out what it can do. Or maybe create a shared demo account with a public password, if collaboration is one of your features. 2\. I'm wondering what this has to do with Panic's Coda, since your logo looks eerily similar to theirs, from the wavy light-green leaf right down to the water droplets and veins. ------ run4yourlives Well done, this is very good. I'm guessing you guys are Canadian as well from the cbc feed in the examples? Nice to see some good tech coming our of the great white north! Sometimes I feel all alone up here! ~~~ dinsley Thanks! We're located in British Columbia, Canada! ~~~ avibryant Where in BC? ~~~ jerrett Parksville, Vancouver Island! ~~~ bporterfield do you surf, by chance? ~~~ nerdburn i do! (interface designer) ~~~ bporterfield oh yea? Where? ~~~ nerdburn in tofino - only a few times a year :) if the weather were warmer in canada i'd go more often. you? ------ Shamiq Uhm...having a hard time finding an about page (both company about and people about). I love reading about the creators of a service :) ~~~ tkiley Shamiq, We're planning to put up an "about" page (as well as a more extended explanation of features) as soon as our designer can get it all put together visually. Should be sometime later this week. In the meantime, check out the blog: <http://blog.viviti.com/> There's quite a bit of info about the development of Viviti in there, plus links to the personal sites of all the developers. Thanks for checking it out! ~~~ jerrett And that blog links to our personal blogs, too :) ------ jbyers Fantastic editing experience, well done. ------ apmee Very good first impression. Very attractive site design - simple and elegant - and I like your tasty use of sIFR. You've clearly lavished care and attention on it and it shows. The weary exasperation of the password strength checker is a nice touch too :) ------ poppysan Check out type room. pretty similar, but works on non hosted sites as well. Also, Sythasite is very close in a lot of ways....check them out also. I am sure you have already seen these, but they are 2 outstanding competitors. Any answer to them? ~~~ tkiley Usability! ;-) In all seriousness, Viviti and typeroom share some of the same features, but it looks like typeroom is an editing tool, not a hosted solution, and that's not a market we're interested in. Synthasite is also a useful tool, but when it comes right down to it, the design of any tool makes some things impossible, some things doable, and some things easy. We're aiming to make some previously impossible things doable and some previously hard things easy, and I think so far, we're succeeding. ;-) ------ abecedarius The signup page offers to use OpenID, apparently in place of giving you an email address; then when I get back it still requires my email. It's not clear why I should have bothered to sign in with OpenID then. ------ owkaye The layout is ruined in a narrow browser window. Obviously you never gave this much thought. Why not? Sorry to sound so 'critical' but you asked for it. I hate websites like this even more than websites that make me scroll horizontally, because at least horizontal scrolling lets me see the page properly Nothing works to fix your site except a wider browser window ... :( ~~~ tkiley Thanks for pointing that out. We fixed the CSS issue, and we'll get it out to the production servers later today. ------ tmitchell This is pretty slick... I've been putting off creating a site for some side projects. This may be just the ticket! My question/feature request: Is there a way to share edit access with more than one user? This would be especially useful for the blogging features, to allow multiple contributors. ~~~ jerrett Not yet, but there will be. We have some pretty cool plans for multi-user stuff for reasons you've stated, and others :) ------ matt1 As others have said, awesome site. Seems like you've done just about everything right. I'm curious how you came up with your site's Terms of Service, which seem well done and comprehensive. Did a lawyer come up with that or did you come up with it yourselves? ~~~ jerrett Lawyer wrote it, and we consulted with him on it. We don't want to be doing anything ugly in our TOS (that said if anyone sees anything that looks out of place in there, email [email protected] so we can take a look!) ------ dlimeb Minor bugfix: your 'terms of service' link in the footer goes to /about/privacy instead of (I assume) /about/tos. ~~~ tkiley This will be fixed in production later today. Thanks! ------ jawngee You might consider some security on the sign up form. Otherwise this is pretty dope. ------ teej What value do you have over your competitors, like Weebly and Freewebs? ~~~ run4yourlives After 5 mins of farting around - usability by a long shot. ------ ctingom Can I ask a question? What led? Design or development? ~~~ jerrett Bit of both, depending on which part of the process - you might say we played leap frog? ------ anhhung one quick question, do you allow custom domain names? ~~~ tkiley We sure do. It's not yet a part of the sign-up process, but once you've created an account, you can add custom domain names. ------ eli_s You guys really have an excellent product here. Extremely easy to use, great features and looks great too. I'm sure you will get lots of users. What type of pricing will you be looking at? I think you could work on optimising the page updates. Simply swapping the image in the header resulted in a full page reload which added up to almost 1mb! This makes the site seem (slightly)slow and makes it completely inaccessible to dial up users (yes they're still out there! hehe). ~~~ tkiley Funny that you would test the header image first. We've managed to do partial updates for most content on the pages, but right now we still do a full reload (window.location.reload(true), for you DOM junkies) for image replacements. We haven't nailed down the pricing structure yet, but we will be announcing it very soon, and we'll definitely have a free version. Thanks for the feedback!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The .ly domain space to be considered unsafe - gmurphy http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe/ ====== semanticist While I'm as against Sharia law as the next privileged westerner/godless heathen, I found the complaint that the rules weren't in English really amusing. Why should a country's national ccTLD rules be in English? It's a domain space for that country, not for making convenient short URLs for Americans to use on Twitter. Why would a country run under Sharia law want to allow services like bit.ly and others to use their ccTLD to link to porn and other things they find offensive? Why is there an automatic assumption that ccTLD rules should conform to Western expectations? The only explanation I can think of is that in the back of people's heads is the idea 'it's our internet and we're just letting you weird foreigners use it'. Apart from not being true any more, I wonder how deeply that sort of thinking affects other interactions online? Or maybe I'm overthinking it all and this guy's just pissed off and ranting because he lost his domain. ~~~ kloncks I will only comment on your use of the term Sharia law. The term's widely misunderstood, especially after the events in NYC this summer. Just so that you know, Sharia "law" is just six principles: 1\. The right to the protection of life. 2\. The right to the protection of family. 3\. The right to the protection of education. 4\. The right to the protection of religion. 5\. The right to the protection of property (access to resources). 6\. The right to the protection of human dignity. That's it. At its base, eerily similar to the bill of rights. The term "shariah law" is a misnomer, because shariah is not law, but a set of principles. Controversial laws like stoning people or requiring women to be totally covered aren't in the Sharia. Those are custom interpretations by certain sects. That's why say Islamic-based laws in Saudi Arabia are radically different from those in Egypt. Just thought I'd share that. It really irked me this summer when everyone was throwing around arguments against "infecting the constitution with Sharia" even though no one actually knows what Sharia is. ~~~ InclinedPlane Is this at all representative of the way sharia exists in practice? Can you provide, say, 5 examples of Islamic countries practicing sharia according to this strict interpretation that aren't overwhelmed by the influence of religous and ethnic traditionalism? If not then aren't you just arguing semantics? If the way sharia is practiced conforms to a certain well delineated set of patterns and that differs from some ideal definition of sharia which is the correct definition? ~~~ azim I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by Sharia. It is _not_ a strict set of rules. Because of this, it is necessarily influenced by ethnic traditionalism. Now if you're looking for western countries which have Sharia courts, the United Kingdom and India are two which come to mind which allow certain civil disputes to be resolved in Sharia courts. ~~~ jacquesm For a Sharia court in the UK to have the power of law though the participants in the case all first have to agree to that though, otherwise they don't have a legal leg to stand on. So it is only after you've voluntarily agreed to be bound that the court can proceed. ------ jacquesm And to add to all of that: If you register a local version of any domain, be it .ly or anything else make sure that you understand that domains registered as such are subject to both local laws and the whims of the TLD authority. This is one of the reasons I've always stuck to .com, .net and .org, just registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot. If you're registering a cutesy domain name because it worked for del.icio.us please note that they eventually switched to the whole word. If you're doing it because 'there are no good names available' then you need to get a bit more inspiration somewhere, I've found it very easy to come up with domain names up to last week, I can't imagine the situation has changed much since then. ~~~ vog _> registering a .nl domain for example requires me to jump through all kinds of hoops, and is more expensive to boot_ This is quite interesting, because in Germany we have the exact opposite. Here, .de domains are preferable to .com/.net/.org, because .de domains are cheaper, registered more quickly with less bureaucracy and provide better data privacy for the domain holder. ~~~ jacquesm In nl the TLD admin is called SIDN, which officially stands for Stichting Internet Domeinregistratie Nederland, but the situation was/is so bad that they got the nickname Stichting Internet Dominatie Nederland which stands for something entirely different. How it can be 'more quickly' then typing in a name in a form and clicking a mouse is a mystery to me, what do you mean by that? ~~~ dfox 'more quickly' probably means that german domain registrators can directly register .de domain (and send you an invoice for it, not bill your credit card), while they use some middle-man for generic TLDs. This can cause various unexpected problems. ------ pg I think what really happened here is that someone at the Libyan domain authority decided they wanted the name and made up a story in order to seize it. I've heard of other cases of .ly names being confiscated, and for this reason we advise YC startups not to depend on them. ~~~ swombat Alternative explanation: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765420> "Violet Blue is an adult site". ~~~ kaerast Yes, and that's the reason given for this domain name being reclaimed. Drinking alcohol and women showing bare arms are both illegal under Sharia law, and the front page showed Violet Blue drinking beer and showing bare arms. It's difficult for many foreigners to know exactly what is and isn't legal under Sharia law, so it's difficult to know if a domain would be ok or not. However nic.ly are now also warning they don't allow ownership of short .ly domains by foreigners, only Libyan nationals. This sounds to me like they want more money or an excuse to take down domains they simply don't like, but is a real problem if they ever decided they want in on the bit.ly action. The vb.ly site owners keep claiming that the content may be adult but that the domain name isn't. This is a weak argument in my mind, and I believe there's a precedent of domain names registered exclusively for the act of malware propagation being taken down. ~~~ jonhendry Sharia law doesn't necessarily enter into it. You can't sell dildos and vibrators in Texas, and it's not because of Sharia law. Hindu activists in India made death threats and stormed theaters because of a film about a lesbian relationship. Sharia law is not the only reason for repressive attitudes toward sex. I mean, really. They're, what, 30-40 years behind the cultural norms of the US, in this case? You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that it's just cultural. It wasn't that long ago in the US that nothing was open on Sundays. ~~~ alanh > You don't really need to pin that on Sharia, when it's far more likely that > it's _just cultural._ (emph. added) Because cultural reasons are completely separate from religion? Religion is the only reason people like to tell others what they can and can’t do in private, _especially_ in a democracy like Texas, where it shouldn’t be considered Constitutional to outlaw "dildos and vibrators." ~~~ jonhendry A agree, but there's a tendency among some these days to tout the boogeyman of sharia law. And there's an implication that there's something alien about Libya, that being restrictive of sexual matter is somehow unique to sharia law, that without sharia law Libya would be just like the US, and that Christians wouldn't do anything similar. Which is just nonsense. Conservatives are conservative. Libya did this thing, and John Ashcroft covered up a statue's tit. Bringing sharia into it is just buying into the latest thing pants-wetting wingnuts are using to scare themselves. ~~~ alanh Maybe I’m foolish, but I think that denying the involvement of sharia law buys us nothing, but recognizing similarities with other conservative censorship tendencies (e.g. in Christendom) — as you have — can be a enlightening. ------ dont-kill-me So if someone posts a cartoon picture of muhammad, and shortens it through bit.ly, will Libya pull the domain, and in the process break millions of other shortened URLs? <http://bit.ly/cartoon-muhammad> ~~~ jacquesm The point here is not if they will, the point is that they can, and that that's why it is silly to even start using a domain like that. You don't put your business' fate in the hands of some third world countries legislation/semi governments whims. ------ ErrantX Culture clash... looking at the sites screenshot here: [http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official- vb-...](http://www.tinynibbles.com/blogarchives/2010/10/official-vb-ly-link- shortener-seized-by-libyan-government.html) (NSFW) I can see how under strict Islamic law that pic would be construed as "obscene, offensive and illegal". I have... minimal sympathy with these people - a lot of the fault lies with themselves for not understanding the rules, morals and society of the country they were buying from. I don't think that this generally makes .ly domains any more "unsafe". (on the other hand; if this is an example of Libya deliberately creating rules to seize domains that is another matter, but at least in this case the complaint seems "legitimate" so we may have to wait and see) ~~~ jacquesm That link is NSFW. ~~~ darklajid Just to add some more amusement: Why the hell would that be not safe for work? It's hard to state my question without ending up being dismissed as a troll, but I'm deeply amused by different viewpoints related to sex between western cultures. If I take a karma hit for that, so be it. Anecdote: During the football (yeah, or soccer..) worldcup in Germany images were all over the internet that showed a brochure, which was rumored to be issued by the USA's department of foreign affairs for tourists joining the event. One interesting "fact" about the german culture mentioned in there was ,that violence (on tv, online, etc) might be far less accepted over here and might be felt offensive, while nudity/references to sex might offend the traveller. I never found out if these things were real, but comments like these remind me of some interesting differences in cultures between states that otherwise often end up being regarded similar in morale and grouped as "western countries". ~~~ jacquesm It's not safe for work because plenty of people reading HN do so from their work during breaks and if they happened to be showing a page which has full- frontal nudity on it, even by accident during work hours they could get fired for that. Your - or mine - morals don't enter in to it, it's just a fact of life. So it's common courtesy to label links that are not safe for work as such. It's no trouble at all and if it helps keep the Hacker News crowd employed then I think that's a good thing to strive for. ~~~ darklajid Oh well - sure. I didn't want to criticize (sp?) the habit at all. Nor did I want to mock anyone's morale or ask for the removal of NSFW tags. What you just described is just - in my little world - a tiny, little version of the original problem discussed in the thread. For a part of the world the service vb.ly was not safe for X (work, family, whatever). For a part of the world (as explained by you) the blog entry and its sexual references/ads/etc are not safe for work. I wanted to point out the parallels, which seem (mildly) funny to me. I visited the link at work and I'm sure nobody would ever complain, let alone _think_ about bad consequences for me. Not that I imply that it should be that way or that this is in any way superior to different positions or morale standpoints. It is just - different. NSFW is in that regard a kind of a lowest common denominator (sp?), tagged on links with good intentions for sure. But using the lowest common point means also that we put a label on something that might be excessive/overly protective to others. I guess I cannot explain my feeling about these similarities in judgement, inparticular around sex/nudity/pornography, any better, sorry. Short version: I don't question the "NSFW". I want to remind the readers that the reasons why this is necessary in the first place are an interesting thought in light of this discussion. ~~~ ErrantX There is, I think, an important distinction, now that you have raised the point. In that the application of Sharia law makes a moral judgement on the content - censoring it for the promotion of, in their eyes, illegal content. In a work environment many things are not appropriate; even in the most liberal of societies pornography is much more of a private thing, enjoyed by smaller groups of people rather than being shared with the world at large. There are also other issues; like, for example, that pornography is connected with sexual excitement and sexual acts - all of which are also socially inappropriate in most workplaces (and public). So rather than a moral judgement it is a practical limitation designed to avoid awkwardness, or offence or distraction. That link, in particular, is a marginal case, where the pornography is incidental to the reason for being on the page. But within a corporate structure that doesn't matter. For what it's worth, no one will blink an eyelid where I work either. ------ andybak Am I the only person hoping that a high profile URL shortener liky bit.ly get taken offline so people learn quickly that redirecting their content's URLs through a 3rd party is a bad idea? ~~~ seldo Redirecting your content through a third party like Amazon Web Services? Or Akamai CDN? Or Rackspace? All small- to medium-size websites are the result of dozens of third party companies -- server farms, network backbones, DNS providers -- working together. Even the really gigantic sites like Google and Yahoo, who really do own their whole networks and all their hardware, use third party services extensively. In the case of a third-party URL shortener, the other party's presence is more visible but no more intrinsically unreliable. And in fact, in this instance, the redirector itself didn't go down -- what "broke" was the DNS provider, namely NIC.ly. ~~~ ianhawes You're correct that traditional content is routed through a ton of different companies, and that anyone of them can fail, but using bit.ly is essentially pointless, as it just tacts on another service that must be relied on. In 10 years when bit.ly is completely dead, 2/3rds of the tweets or other comments on the web will be rendered useless. ~~~ seldo People complain about this a lot, but the rate of link-rot of ordinary URLs is much, much greater than people believe. I run a URL shortener, and I can assure you that while all of our links still work, huge numbers of the pages they point to no longer exist. The problem is also overstated because nearly all URL shorteners (bit.ly included) are sending HTTP 301 responses. This means that the short link is _never_ indexed; only the original link is. So shorteners have no effect on pagerank/search results, which is where the longevity of pages is important (since anything not published in the very recent past is mostly discovered by search). ------ jrockway This is what your firewall is for. If the IP is from Libya, send the packets to the web server that hosts the "Libya is excellent!" page. If it's from the country that your users are in, show them the real content. Technical solutions to social problems sometimes work :) ~~~ borism of course Libya is a mythical country behind mountains higher than Himalayas and has no diplomatic missions anywhere in the world nor are it's officials able to travel let alone Google "violet blue". ------ stevefink I still don't get the recent trend of startups branding their businesses around .ly and .io. I suppose it's similar to any "hip" trend, such as gradients and rounded corners, but it always seemed legally risky to me. ~~~ jfager Why does .io seem legally risky to you? The British Indian Ocean Territory is currently a British protectorate, and the two countries that otherwise claim the islands are Mauritius and the Seychelles, both of which are peaceful and democratic. ~~~ limmeau <http://www.nic.io/rules.html> states that you may not host content under a .io domain if it is against the statutory laws of _any_ nation. ------ po _It should be noted that all vb.ly links still exist but do not function at this time. We have the database intact, and will restore your shortened URLs momentarily with a suitable domain._ It's nice that they're doing that but it's essentially worthless. The url's in the database have no value, it's the ones spread all over other people's servers, and the work that went into doing it that have value. ------ tlb If you hand a government complete power over a critical resource, and you or your peers don't vote for that government, you will regret it. The historical parallel to oil is not lost on Libya. Before 1850 or so, oil was just a nuisance mineral. When the West developed applications for it, Libya's territory, formerly a desert, was now worth trillions. Oil is now 95% of Libya's exports, and probably 95% of their international power too. Libya's government evolved to defend and exploit natural resources, and they've historically done very un-democratic things to further that goal. So please, don't hand them the keys to your startup. ------ rabble I'm not sure if this is a real change to the nic.ly policy or not. It's tricky. They say it was adult content. While vb.ly might not have had any, it was co-owned by Violet Blue, who while she is many wonderful things, she is not islamic. Violet Blue's Website: <http://www.tinynibbles.com/> It's not just Libya, the US govt which has ultimate control over .com, .org, .net, .us, .gov, etc... also has some crazy ideas. Just look at how the senate last week wanted to start revoking domain names willy nilly. ~~~ retube Whether or not adult content was physically hosted by vb.ly or not is really a technicality. If the link results in porn in your browser window... ~~~ jrockway I guess they block Google, then? ~~~ DougWebb They would probably block google.ly, or at least filter it. ~~~ logic You mean <http://www.google.com.ly/> ? ------ jff Cutesy domain names considered harmful. As somebody pointed out earlier in the thread, del.icio.us was really a terrible name. When you try to say it out loud (or even think it in your head) it comes out as "dell dot icky-o dot us"; the whole "oh, that's cute, it spells delicious" is pretty shortlived. delicious.com is way easier to say and looks better. The same thing goes for your personal sites. bob.jon.es sounds pretty stupid when you try to tell somebody "Just go to bob dot jon dot es" or "bob dot j-o-n dot e-s". Just say no to cutesy domain names. bobjones.net, not bob.jon.es; delicious.com, not del.icio.us. ------ mmaunder This reminds me of the current Dubai commercial property crisis. During the boom, everyone bought property without asking if there was a legal framework for resolving disputes. Now that there's a bust, investors are finding Dubai's opaque property laws make it very difficult to resolve disputes and get your money out. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibui...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/business/global/07dubaibuild.html?_r=1) You bought virtual commercial real-estate in Libya and now you're finding you are subject to local law and bureaucracy. Google's bet on the Greenland TDL with goo.gl is less risky but I'd be interested to see what their lawyers had the local government and ccTLD admins agree to. ------ joshu I'm reasonably sure I predicted this: <http://joshua.schachter.org/2009/04/on- url-shorteners.html> ------ njharman > it sets a precedent that all websites running on a .ly domain must comply > with Libyan Islamic/Sharia Given that Libya is a sovereign nation __and __.ly is their TLD, not a playground for you to create cute domains that seems 110% reasonable. ~~~ jdminhbg Reasonableness is orthogonal to dangerousness. It's reasonable that playing with a wild grizzly bear might end in serious injury. ~~~ njharman Fair enough, and true. I was more responding to the entitled and shocked tone that someone(entity) would act in their self interests even when they, OMG!, conflicted with petty interests of "your" own. I also have a serious twist in my nickers over abusing TLDs to get cutesy domain names. I also have a very serious twist about people who go out of their way to violate custom / abuse a system and then whine about when it doesn't work just they way they want. ------ ig1 It's slightly funny how lots of Americans are complaining about Libya's rules for .ly, but have obviously never read the rules for .us which are in many aspects worse. ------ donohoe When I was suggesting domain names for the NYTimes short URL this was a major concern. I'm sorry to see it actually happen. ------ FraaJad I would like to draw attention to the fact that US had economic embargo on Libya till 2004(?) and even today there are many items that cannot be exported to Libya. So, when your government (assuming the entrepreneur in question is American) classifies Libya as a dangerous state, it might be prudent to avoid building your identity over the domain names provided by Libya... don't you think. I remember this only because Oracle made me click a check box agreeing not to export any of their software to these "axis of evil" countries. ------ ladon86 I have two 3-letter .ly domains. Do you think it's a bad idea to use them for anything serious now? ~~~ atlbeer Everything in business has a risk associated with it. Domain names are not excluded from that analysis. The risk with .ly domains has been discussed before. This is just evidence that the risk exists and this evidence should be used to recalculate that risk. As mentioned in a similar reply in this thread a Plan B should be considered. Any sufficiently large website or business should have some disaster recovery plans, regardless and this is just another page that needs to be created for that plan What a Plan B for a domain name is? I'm not quite sure but, del.icio.us delicious.com is an example. ------ merrick I wouldn't panic yet as a .ly domain owner: "While letters ‘vb’ are quite generic and bear no offensive meaning in themselves, they’re being used as a domain name for an openly admitted ‘adult friendly URL shortener’. Now, had your domain merely been a URL shortener for general uses similar to bit.ly (as you claim) there would have been no problem with it. It is when you promote your site being solely for adult uses, or even state that you are ‘adult friendly’ to promote it that we as a Libyan Registry have an issue." There is definitely some risk, so mitigate it and buy the ly.com variant of a .ly domain to protect against this - much like ad.ly owns adly.com, embed.ly owns embedly.com. Watch what bit.ly does - likely nothing right now. If they get warning like vb.ly says they did, we will hear about it, and then every .ly owner has a problem. ------ devmonk 'You may also not know that since June 2010 .ly domains less than 4 characters long may no longer be registered by anyone who isn’t in Libya which suggests there is tension around foreign owned, high-value, short .ly domains.' What about bit.ly? Registrant: bit.ly Jessica McVea 416 West 13th Street New York NY United States Zip/Postal code: 10014 Phone: 6468398575 Domain Name: BIT.LY Created: 2008-05-18 14:50:12 Updated: 2010-03-09 18:25:33 Expired: 2011-05-18 14:50:12 Domain servers in listed order: ns4.p26.dynect.net ns3.p26.dynect.net ns2.p26.dynect.net ns1.p26.dynect.net Domain Status: ACTIVE ------ Figs Why do we even have all these stupid country specific domain extensions? Countries are not permanent entries; they come and go. What happens when a country ceases to exist, gets invaded, has a civil war...? What on earth is the benefit of having dozens and dozens of domain extensions, except to confuse people and force them to pay endless amounts for every possible misspelling of your domain? (Seriously, who the hell thought that a .cm domain extension was a good idea?!) ------ jinushaun Finally. I was wondering when somebody was going to crack down on all those .ly domain names. Web 2.0 startups with their cute domain names tend to forget that those TLDs are actually controlled by someone. I remember a while back when Italy started restricting .it domain names because so many Americans were registering .it domain names. Funny how many on here complain about Libya and their sharia requirement instead. ------ bjonathan Site is down, you can read the article with Bing's cache: [http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.co...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fbenmetcalfe.com%2fblog%2f2010%2f10%2fthe- ly-domain-space-to-be-considered-unsafe%2f&d=879317483757&mkt=fr- FR&setlang=fr-FR&w=38a5245,e3cc4722) ------ grandalf I made an adult themed URL shortener pr0n.ly and they ended up canceling the registration b/c it violated islamic law. They said that the problem was the domain name, though, not the content, and issued me age.ly instead (which I still haven't re-branded) ------ sigzero bit.ly is not gonna like that! ------ zumda I don't understand why he is so upset about the rule that three letter domain names are blocked. He should move to Switzerland, here you can't register domain names shorter than 3 letters. ~~~ jacquesm You can, actually. Just not in the .ch TLD. ------ oshane [http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia- law-o...](http://www.oshane.com/wp/2010/10/libya-imposing-sharia-law-on-ly/) ------ waxman Ask HN: Do you think bit.ly should be worried? Do you think they could feasibly switch to a backup url (like j.mp) without totally killing their service? ~~~ seldo I don't know if this is common knowledge, but all bit.ly-powered domains are actually mirrors of each other, so <http://bit.ly/bdMwyV> and <http://j.mp/bdMwyV> automatically go to the same place. This would make such a switch technically simple, but obviously you'd still break all the old bit.ly-domain links. ------ joyous You can shove your URL shorteners <http://ana.ly/> ~~~ afed3 Thanks, reporting that one too. ------ ZLOK qoiob.com uses shorter (1 char) and more stylish (symbols) domain names (and also works fine with Tweetdeck and other auto-shortening tools) <http://✰.ws/> ------ adelevie What would happen to Twitter if Bit.ly got disrupted? ~~~ Kilimanjaro REPLACE 'bit.ly' with 'tw.it' WHERE tweet CONTAINS 'bit.ly' or something like that ------ afed3 I've reported bit.ly to Libya, hopefully it'll be taken offline soon. ------ efutch HN should register under the .hn domain ------ vital101 _In Short:_ This made me chuckle. ------ ergo98 Slightly offtopic, I know, but the use of "contest" in the post confused me. For instance- "Again, while we contest that there was NO pornography or adult material on vb.ly," ... (It is used in that manner several times) That statement is essentially saying that they disagree that there was no pornography, or in essence that they agree that there was. To contest something means to disagree with it. ------ borism surprise surprise ~~~ borism no seriously, what part of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya you didn't get? ------ andreross All the Lybians did now was scare American and other Western entrepreneurs from getting anywhere near their domain. I was about to have my new startup set up with .ly domain, but now I will move to a much friendlier .it domain (in fact, I would stay away from any Muslim country domain, just in case, including .io). Those who say "oh, we don't own the Internet, how arrogant of us to even think we do..." I want to tell you one thing - yes, you can shove those Sharia countries domains to <http://ana.ly>. We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet. This Lybian Alshariff, or whatever his name is, thinks that because his government thinks that those domains are valuable THATS a reason good enough to confiscate and block them from our use. Ok, fine, do it, moron. The only problem is – once you do something as stupid as this you scare all the people AWAY from your domains, making them literally worthless. When they will realize it it will be too late – once scared people of business do not come back. ~~~ jacquesm What a terribly shortsighted comment. > We do OWN the internet, because it is us who create the Internet. That's a pretty serious mis-statement of fact right there. You don't OWN the internet because it was 'you' (whoever that is) that created it. The internet is a connection of networks, each of those networks could operate by itself, the fact that we've partitioned the address space in a way that allows us to route packets from 'sharia' ruled countries to the United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and all of the EU is to our mutual benefit. To suggest that you 'can shove those Sharia countries domains...' is to add insult to injury, nobody there asked for American and EU entrepreneurial types to buy these domains and use them, they are primarily intended for use by those countries nations. To muddy the intentions of TLDs is a questionable practice, how would you feel if Wallmart started to sell stuff under a .edu domain? Those domains are not worthless, they just are what they are, regional TLDs, specifically with the intent to enable each country to govern their own TLD as they see fit. Please _also_ notice that .us is the regional domain for the United States, and not .com , and that it too has its own set of rules. ~~~ wrs Any country that opens up its national TLD is in fact explicitly asking outsiders to "buy these domains and use them". Indeed, many national TLDs are marketed mostly to non-nationals. The government of Tuvalu apparently makes 10 percent of its revenue from the .tv domain (and wishes it had a better deal with Verisign so that was even larger). It is surely important to the countries who make this choice to maintain good relations with the "American and EU entrepreneurial types". Otherwise why did they bother? ~~~ jacquesm For the most part it is the registrars that enable this, the domain authorities are not actively stopping foreigners from buying these domains but you can't take that as an encouragement from their end. The simple fact that the terms of service are not available in English is quite a hint imo. And they bothered because they like money, but if the downsides are too much for their sensibilities (with which you are free to disagree, as do I) they can make your life miserable. Just like you're not going to be mooning anybody in downtown Singapore it probably isn't smart to host an adult site on a predominantly Muslim country TLD.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Redmine - Excellent alternative to Trac - nickb http://www.redmine.org/ ====== aggieben No Git support. No sale. Next? ~~~ jacintos Actually, as of 0.7.0 RC1, Redmine does support Git (see <http://www.redmine.org/wiki/redmine/Changelog>). It took a couple of patches, but Git support was added to the Subversion trunk and is available in the latest stable release. I haven't personally used Redmine with Git, though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Which board game would you play online? - melkael Hi there, like most people in the west now I currently am confined.<p>Thus I would love to play risk or other board games with my friends and people online. I've been struggling to find decent quality games (I've mostly looked for a risk and it was either full of flash games or of barely playable UI sites).<p>Would you know good online board games to play during the confinement ? Else would you be interested if I built something ?(probably a Risk but suggestions are more than welcome) ====== based2 [https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/On- line_Games&redirected...](https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/On- line_Games&redirectedfrom=Online_Play#) [https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/9azbnw/is_there...](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/9azbnw/is_there_any_nice_online_site_to_play_boardgames/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Where’d our app go? There’s No App for That - edw519 http://www.riverturn.com/blog/?p=455 ====== brandon272 What I don't understand is why iPhone developers expect decent treatment from Apple or continue to be surprised when their apps are removed. This developer considers Apple a "partner" (their words). Apple is not a partner. Apple has opened up an application repository where you can sell your apps through the store, but has not extended any further benefit, or made any apologies for their policy of arbitrarily removing applications that it doesn't want, for any reason. It doesn't want to discuss your applications with you, it doesn't want to hear explanations or reasoning. It makes the rules, and it does what it wants. When you operate within Apple's closed ecosystem, you play by their rules or you don't play at all.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Steve Jobs – The Lost Interview - jpswade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAJY23xio ====== boyaka Found some links for US: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17ul31_the-lost- interview-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17ul31_the-lost-interview-of- steve-jobs-part-1-of-2_lifestyle) [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18dj2c_the-lost- interview-...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18dj2c_the-lost-interview-of- steve-jobs-part-2-of-2_lifestyle)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Scientists have detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans - seycombi https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/15/its-official-the-oceans-are-losing-oxygen-posing-growing-threats-to-marine-life/?utm_term=.8e8242767461 ====== fsloth Why was it a piece of cake to regulate CFC:s but no one has the vision to strive to control CO2 and methane. I'm 37 years old. I've been scared of CO2 accumualation in the atmosphere before I went to school and I'm no genious. I can't understand why has it been so hard recognize and act on CO2. And it's not only the industry and politicians. Green parties have been the craziest in actively blocking nuclear power. Why has this been so hard to see? ~~~ api There is far more money involved, and unlike CFCs there are no easy plug and play substitutes. Nuclear power is not a panacea. It looks good on paper but in practice there are tons of hidden costs and failures can be catastrophic. It also pretty much demands hefty regulation, which further adds to the cost in both monetary and social ways. Finally there is a whole geopolitical order built around fossil fuels. Changing our energy system would fundamentally alter the power balance of the world. ~~~ throwaway5752 Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear add up to well more than current usage. Nuclear could be phased out as storage or distributed grid matured. With modifications to standards of living expectations we could live renewably as a species and save oil and gas for plastics and other materials that require hydrocarbon feedstock. The trouble is that this would result in a much lower consumption world. And lots of people in the are rich as a result unneccessary consumption. ~~~ nitrogen "modifications to standard of living expectations" are purely untenable and ultimately destructive to everything that defines human society. If you really want to get people to oppose you, try to guilt trip them, tell them they have to be too cold all winter and too hot all summer, tell them they can never travel again, cram them into tiny apartments where they can hear every bodily function their neighbor performs. The solution to resource depletion and pollution is to give people what they want in a way that's actually sustainable. Build thicker walls and floors to block sound and conserve energy. Design more efficient lighting and appliances. Develop renewable energy. Etc. Everything non-essential to human survival is everything that makes us human. ~~~ throwaway5752 I would make one quibble. The hard constraint is the sustainable part, the planet doesn't care about our intangible needs. I'm not saying that everyone should live in massive planned urban districts, but on average we have to use less than X energy across Y people, and we are very far away from averaging X/Y per capita. ~~~ nitrogen Right, there is an equation of some kind that dictates the energy balance we can sustain. I'm suggesting that there are more terms to that equation that we can adjust, and that the term of "what people want" is the most difficult. We can find ways to increase the planet's energy budget, we can find ways to increase efficiency, we can even find ways to make people _desire_ more efficient behaviors. My main concern, and maybe I misread your first comment, is that forcing or guilt-tripping or shaming people into less fulfilling lifestyles is not going to be very productive, IMO. ~~~ throwaway5752 "Right, there is an equation of some kind that dictates the energy balance we can sustain" CO2 produced/energy * energy/person * people on Earth I know it feels like I'm oversimplifying it, but of course this equation just reduces to the total amount of CO2 produced by humans. There is a ceiling to the rate we can produce it that is compatible with life as we know it on this planet, and we are over that ceiling. We can tune each of those. CO2/energy - solar, wind, and short term bridge of nuclear; energy/person - more remote work, car sharing, more insulation; # of people - vaccines, birth control access, and other programs to slow population growth. You have to understand, I believe there is a very harsh reality that we have limited time to solve this problem before we are facing an irrecoverable disaster. Best regards. ------ neom I don't know when we as humans are going to fucking get it together and start acting like a better species. I hope that the rate of climate change will push us to stop worrying about what bathroom another human decides to use or whom one selects to love and focus more on the ill's of the collective. ~~~ ianai I genuinely think people will not change until the worst affects of climate change begin. ~~~ nickparker My biggest fear today is that we're already screwed and just don't know it. This article turned out to be a "We expected this and now we've found it" but every morning I worry I'll see a headline like this and it'll be "We turned over this one rock and found something we _didn 't_ expect. Prepare for global famine in 2 years." On our current course I'm quite optimistic that we'll be able to turn the ship around - I think between tech accelerating and the climate itself starting to put the screws on us, we'll have powerful enough tools and enough resources poured into them to save ourselves. However, that's if we stay on the apparent current course. I'm really scared we'll hit a discontinuity of some sort. ~~~ specialist We know it. Release of CO2 has entered a positive feedback loop. Thawing tundra, burning forests, ocean acidification. Even this we could counter (painfully) with massive industrial scale sequestration. What worries me is methane. I'm not sure we can mitigate methane released from the tundra. And if the stuff tucked under the ocean pops, we're toast. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) ~~~ semi-extrinsic What I don't get about the positive feedback loop argument is that it seems completely at odds with what the IPCC is saying, namely limiting emissions in order to stabilize global warming at 2 degrees. If we were in a positive feedback loop, then global warming will just continue to accelerate no matter how small our emissions are. In fact, we'd be equally screwed if we magically stopped emitting CO2 in 1950, it would just take a little bit longer before we're screwed. Can anyone explain how to reconcile these arguments? ~~~ nikdaheratik Methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere nearly as long which means that, in theory, it would cause some short term warming, but then the methane would break down and we would slowly return to more normal levels. There are alot of unknowns, and while a very worst case scenario involves runaway methane causing warming, we don't know how likely this is to happen. We do know that CO2 takes hundreds of years to dissipate and will cause the ice caps to melt which will lead to higher sea levels overall. ------ codecamper Put a tax on carbon & market forces will solve everything. We'll have cleaner cities, and hopefully won't need to worry about runaway climate change. Yeah, some rich people will suffer, but that's OK they are rich and won't stop being rich when their industries are forced to change. ~~~ ars > Put a tax on carbon & market forces will solve everything. Unless you can get India and China onboard you will solve nothing. You will just end up moving more manufacturing to those countries. Total CO2 emitted will not change. ~~~ philipkglass The West could prevent emissions arbitrage with CO2 tariffs on imports set at the same cost per ton as the domestic carbon tax. Something like: goods produced abroad need to have a CO2 audit chain with proven integrity for imported goods to be CO2-taxed at the manufacturer's claimed emissions intensity. Otherwise the importing country assumes an unfavorable (high) default CO2 intensity for goods produced abroad and taxes are high. That wouldn't necessarily prevent high emissions linked to domestic-only consumption-and-production in China, India, and other developing nations, but it would be a powerful incentive as long as those countries have a lot of trade with the developed world. And it would probably tend to make developing nations' domestic-production-for-domestic-consumption activity cleaner by accelerating adoption (and pushing down costs) of lower-carbon technologies starting in export driven industries. ~~~ ars That wouldn't help. You can't "target" energy that way because it is fungible. The country would claim "all exports are made from the renewable energy, and all hydrocarbon energy is used for internal consumption". I suppose you could set import tariffs based on the entire country's energy balance, but then you disincentive any individual producer from doing anything. On top of that you can "wash" energy. Make solar cells using hydrocarbon energy, then import them to another country and claim "see, we are all solar" \- but of course they aren't since the energy used just came from a different country. As free market perfect as it seem, a CO2 tax is impossible in the details unless it was truly global (which would never work since the incentive for a country to cheap is enormous). ------ kogepathic So what can we do about it? Is anyone still seriously working on iron fertilization to encourage phytoplankton growth? [0] The main arguments I've heard against it is that we don't know what the effect will be on the ecosystem: _> The side effects of large-scale iron fertilization are not yet known. Creating phytoplankton blooms in naturally iron-poor areas of the ocean is like watering the desert: in effect it changes one type of ecosystem into another_ Well, guess what? We're going to affect the ocean ecosystems negatively if we don't reduce atmospheric CO2, and I don't see that happening any time soon. How about we just go for broke and try it out on the off chance it helps things? [0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization) ~~~ nikdaheratik It's not a great solution for a variety of reasons. First, it costs energy to extract the iron and dump it in areas of the ocean, so we'd have to do this in a way that generates less CO2 than it sucks out from the plankton (in which case, why do we need the plankton?). Second, it will cause large blooms which suck all of the O2 out of the water and fish will die off in those areas. Third, if we don't go ahead and reduce emissions, this will maybe buy time but not solve the actual problem. These sorts of solutions are only a good idea if we finally get moved over to a low carbon economy and still find we can't reduce warming any other way. ------ codeisawesome This is genuinely scary. I'm especially concerned over both the loss of food to populations, and the suggested nitrous oxide loop for further warming. ~~~ codeisawesome Could it be that as a species, humans have failed to evolve the intelligence required for ensuring long term survival, even though we have the short term ability to manipulate our environment to a certain degree of benefit. ~~~ Filligree We have enough intelligence to build technological civilization. Barely. If that had been possible at _any_ lower level of intelligence, then it would have happened sooner. We're the stupidest possible technological species. ~~~ daenz Or maybe the jump from biological to technological is actually really really ridiculously hard. We didn't evolve in a vacuum...we share and shared the earth with many other vicious species and environmental effects, and we had to come out on top. We had to evolve certain behaviors to even make it to the technological point. And the persistence of those behaviors in our evolutionary memory is what ensured we survived. And now we're just supposed to shed them off because of 100 years of technology? People are thinking too micro. Change does not happen that fast. You can't shed off in-group preferences, general selfishness, and combativeness because those are the things that literally pushed us into these higher stages of evolution. Personally I think the earth isn't fit for a long term evolution of a technological species, if its environment starts collapsing so soon. Again, 100 years is nothing in the grand scheme of things, and people are arguing that 100 years of technology is destroying the earth. We need a lot longer than 100 years to get anywhere useful. ~~~ SomeStupidPoint Not necessarily -- we just need the 5% of humans who survive the disaster to be the smart, appropriate-to-advance ones. Evolution is full of times that a species reached a chokepoint and a subgroup with a trait was selected for. No reason ecological disaster caused by technology couldn't be one of those times, even if unfortunate for most humans. Heck, global ecological disaster could be viewed as a copy-cat oxygenation event prompted by intelligent psychopaths to make room for their offspring in a crowded field. tl;dr: Humans are just parodying the great oxygenation event with the great carbonation event. ~~~ daenz I see your point, but it makes the assumption that there is a good biological trait to be selected for, and I'm unconvinced that accumulated wealth is a signal of that trait. ------ laughfactory We would solve most of this problem if we'd get people to 1) stop buying new cars unless their previous car had died, 2) stop commuting to work, and 3) stop living in situations which require lots of driving. If we incentivized companies to transition all possible staff to remote positions, we'd eliminate a huge amount of emissions. The problem is that while everyone knows cars produce a huge amount of emissions, no one is willing to not buy that fancy new car. I mean, "it gets better gas mileage!", or "it's electric!" passifies everyone's environmental concerns. Never mind that new car production is incredibly environmentally unfriendly (in most cases driving an old car, even one with poorer emissions profile or worse gas mileage, is better on net for the environment), and that all the commuting we do is disastrous for the environment. But until the problem is owned at the personal level nothing will change. A big piece of this is that politicians aren't interested in going to bat against the auto manufacturers. No politician wants to be linked to the death of such a huge industry (and a loss of hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs). The only way this will change is if all of us start to 1) live close to work (so we can walk, cycle, or simply drive less) or require remote work options, 2) own fewer and older model cars and drive them until they die, and 3) contact our elected representatives to encourage them to support law and policy which incentivizes employers to employ remote workers. We would all do well, too, to remember the three Rs: reduce (our consumption), reuse (buy used and put off replacing our possessions until absolutely necessary), and recycle (duh). But when even climate warriors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore show wanton disregard for the cost of their lifestyle on the environment (apparently they like to raise a ruckus, but expect others to do something magical about it), there's little hope for things to get much better any time soon. Talk is cheap, people; Let's see some real action on a personal level. ------ diafygi Howdy! I work in cleantech, and I guess it's that time again for your wall of links about what you can do to fight climate change. To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!" _So what can you do about it?_ Work at a new energy technology company! We are currently growing exponentially[1], and we need as many smart people as we can get. There are lots of companies hiring software engineers. _How do I find a job fighting climate change?_ I'd recommend browsing the exhibitor and speaker lists from the most recent conference in each sector (linked below). * Energy Storage[2][3] * Solar[4][5] * Wind[6] * Nuclear[7] * Electric Utilities[8][9] * Electric vehicles[10] Also, if you're in the SF bay area, I'd recommend subscribing to my Bay Area Energy Events Calendar[11]. Just start showing up to events and you'll probably find a job really quickly. [1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new- inte...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new-internet/) [2]: [http://www.esnaexpo.com/](http://www.esnaexpo.com/) [3]: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy- stora...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy-storage- summit-2016) [4]: [https://www.intersolar.us/](https://www.intersolar.us/) [5]: [http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/](http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/) [6]: [http://www.windpowerexpo.org/](http://www.windpowerexpo.org/) [7]: [https://www.nei.org/Conferences](https://www.nei.org/Conferences) [8]: [http://www.distributech.com/index.html](http://www.distributech.com/index.html) [9]: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge- world-f...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge-world- forum-2016) [10]: [http://tec.ieee.org/](http://tec.ieee.org/) [11]: [https://bayareaenergyevents.com/](https://bayareaenergyevents.com/) ------ aisofteng >The authors then used interpolation techniques for areas of the ocean where they lacked measurements. Speaking as someone that studied pure mathematics more than science, I am curious as to whether there is formal justification that this interpolation is valid. As far as I understand, global systems like this often, if not always, exhibit chaotic behavior. ------ pvaldes Must be: Sunke Schmidtko, Lothar Stramma and Martin Visbeck have detected a major change to the Earth's oceans. ------ zouhair "Total fake news". In other times this comment would mean I am a stupid person, a wannabe troll but now it is just a sad state of affairs. ------ EGreg For all the climate change deniers and skeptics that point out WaPo is a "liberal" outlet as a way to skip even reading the data: How about the scientific journal Nature ? [http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature21399](http://www.nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature21399) While I'm at it, please explain why science has become so politicized by the political right. I have _literally_ heard my conservative friends say they think "science is leftist" and Obama paid off scientists around the world to blow up a global warming hoax. Tell me, why would an American political party engage in an elaborate hoax with scientists around the world, and somehow "pay them all off", just so they would... what, raise your gas prices? Subsidize clean energy? For that matter why would scientists around the world spend years studying complicated subjects, and then decades doing research, and _NEARLY ALL_ accept a bribe from the leftists of _YOUR_ country to sabotage their own sensors and models and data? Finally - and here is the kicker - what are you afraid of if we transition away from fossi fuels? Electric cars open up electricity to be generated in a variety of ways. Wind farms have just powered _OVER HALF_ of the central USA. Investment in solar has just overtaken fossil fuels. There are plenty of jobs to be made. Why are the "conservatives" so keen on subsidizing the fossil fuel industry so the government can pick winners and losers? If fossil fuels become too expensive, that means more innovation and investment in clean energy generation! Where is the economic loss from this? I am always amazed just how much "Stockholm Syndrome" the conservatives have when it comes to big corporations. Whatever they do - big bonuses to CEOs, pollution, etc. it is always rabidly defended by a mob angry that any criticism of their destructive activities, whether by scientists or by people who lost their jobs, is "socialism" and "libtards". Do you really think preventing the rise of sea levels, deforestation and loss of millions of species through overfishing, factory farms, colony collapse disorder etc. is going to tank your economy? Isn't this the height of idiocy? ~~~ HalfwayToDice _" While I'm at it, please explain why science has become so politicized by the political right."_ I hope I can answer this from a neutral perspective. The left gave up on implementing global socialism; it was rejecting by the populations of almost every country in the world, when given a democratic choice. Then climate change came along and with it solid scientific evidence. The left jumped on it as a reason to implement a global anti-capitalist societal change towards the left. Therefore green issues were hijacked by the left, and the right responded by being anti-green. And that's how we ended up in the absurd situation we are in now. ~~~ nikdaheratik I don't think you can blame this on "the left" whatever that means, any more than you can stick all of this on a single issue on "the right". And your points about ideology are just wrong. These are complex coalitions of politicians with many different reasons behind why they act the way they do, but this entire "left vs. right" ideology is just _post facto_ reasoning for the most part. If you look at "the right" you have: 1\. Religious Conservatives that genuinely believe the Earth is 6000 years old and Evolution is a complete fabrication. These people have always been anti- Science. Antivaxxers and climate change denialists are a just the latest round of this. 2\. People who are employed or supported by the fossil fuel industry. This is the same unreasonable skepticism that you hear from the Tobacco industry, the Patent trolls, or any other group with alot of money and few scruples. They found allies in "the Right" who could use their campaign dollars and didn't care much about this issue so they just go along with it as it allowed them to get backing for issues they _do_ care about. 3\. People who just don't like "the left" and believe that if people they don't like are saying it, it must be false. This is probably the largest bloc. They don't care about climate change (much) and just follow the lead on this issue because the people who are saying "climate change isn't happening" also agree with them on a number of other issues that they do care about. ------ Asmod4n so long and thanks for all the fish	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Pibow - an update (sold 12,000 in 11 weeks) - whiskers 76 days ago I submitted this link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4257793<p>Since then the response we've had has been just unbelievable - we've opened a workshop, bought three laser-cutters, have distributors in the UK, America, and Sweden, hired a full-time staff member and also have two temporary workers helping with the backlog. Something about Pibow caught a lot of peoples imagination for sure!<p>We've learnt a huge amount during that time about setting up, insurance for light manufacturing, shipping and handling customs, dealing with bulk orders and retailers, and just generally having a blast connecting with our customers who are amazingly passionate and interested in what we're doing.<p>We've just had a guest post featured on the Raspberry Pi foundation website (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2098) which gives a bit more insight into the journey we've taken so far.<p>As our first foray into manufacturing (coming from a software/design background) this has been a really amazing experience for us both! We intend to build the business (Pimoroni) into something bigger and have plans for a few more products as soon as we have a bit of time and head space to deal with it. ====== xSwag If you don't mind, I would be very much interested in what the profit margin was on these sales. In addition, what was the procedure of contacting and collaborating with the manufacturers? ~~~ whiskers The margin on sales varies _a lot_ depending whether we sell the product (best margin) or whether a retailer orders a thousand units (worst margin). We are the manufacturers. :) ------ yossilac How did you get all your distributors? Did you just cold-call them, or did they approach you after you were featured at raspberrypi.org?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: World's first static code analysis tool for Go - serda https://github.com/SerdaOzun/Gopham ====== serda Hello, No static code analysis tool for Go existed yet, so I created one. I plan on updating in the feature with more metrics and especially visualisations for said metrics. For super obvious reasons this tool runs client side only. All you need is Docker. Feel free to report bugs/request metrics, but no promises on (timely) delivery. ------ karmakaze Go programs are so easy to build and run, why should I need Docker? Use Docker as another build environment but give me the resulting binary to run.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Working with developers who can't code - Jackypot Does anyone else have experience working with developers who just cannot code? By which I mean professional devs with terrible development skills, and little knowledge or interest in the field. I'm amazed they find jobs but they seem to.<p>Any strategies for working with someone like that? Or any stories about working with such people? ====== muzani One company I worked with had chronic overwork. Everyone was always busy on something. Everyone cooperated. But nobody got anything done. They were simply satisfied with emptying their inbox by shoving it into someone else's. For example, we'd have a meeting on a database. I'd give them the names of tables and fields. Manager forwards the agreed upon specs to everyone. But the database guy has his inbox full. He says he didn't get the email. Manager says she never followed up with him. This is not an uncommon thing, but a routine. It buys them time to finish off the next thing. A week later, I follow up with them. Manager says she deleted the old file. We do the exact same meeting again. This time database guy gets the email. However he makes typos. "routes" table becomes "route". "weight" field becomes "obj1234" field. I told the CEO either that guy leaves or I do. CEO tells me that I don't know to work in a team. I'm supposed to CC him every time I ask them to do something. Things magically worked well when I CC the CEO. But sometimes they reply to me only over an issue. When the next email is not CCed, things mysteriously go wrong again. The company is a global enterprise company with no staging server, no development server, everything is pushed to production. Source control is sending an email out with a zipped file of today's changes. They're good developers, it's just that they're too busy being busy to develop anything. ------ hackermailman Teach them by doing code reviews together. By doing this you become a better developer yourself and at the same time prevent your product from sinking and you getting sacked because nobody in management wants to hear your complaints about another coworker they want you to figure it out yourselves. Keep documentation of everything you had to rewrite to ensure high standards are kept then use these records to demand a raise/promotion later instead of telling management you want to be moved. ------ arenaninja I'm on my second job where I work with people like that. The first time, the dude was promoted to manager of the department after our manager was fired for missing a pretty big deadline (massive scope creep, very poor project management). He was very good at cultivating relationships and throwing people under the bus when it suited him. Everyone hated him by the time I left, I hated him first because he was a charlatan though, he'd complain about the API I was building but when pressed for the JSON payload he'd prefer instead he took literally weeks to not provide it while still complaining (and emailing our manager DAILY) about this. The second time (my current job), a coworker, four years of "experience". He had a hard time figuring out how to find a line of code in his IDE. We literally could not give him tasks to change the color on a button, because he could not find the button in our codebase. I helped him as much as I could, but his mentality wasn't keen on learning and I'm pretty sure he outsourced his _actual_ job because he'd show up the day after with close enough code snippets that still didn't work. Every _night_ the day after he'd made progress while he was incapable of explaining what the code did. Eventually some other peers complained, he was put on an improvement plan and let go after about 6 months The third time (current job again!) I've seen several developers more senior than I push for this or that idea or architecture, and no one in my reporting line cares enough or has enough influence for us to say "this is a horrible fucking idea and the people promoting this are incompetent". So I just do it, it's a job and gives me a paycheck in exchange for my time. If I'm not allowed the kind of influence that would make things better I figure they still expect me to work since I still expect my paycheck. The project will likely be a massive failure IMO ~~~ seventhtiger This is confusing to me. I'm a compsci grad and hobbyist programmer working in IT. I want to switch into software development. On the one hand, I'm intimidated. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do that well on a whiteboard interview, and I need to brush up on some concepts. I have around a 50 to 80% comprehension when software developers talk shop. On the other hand, I hear stories like these of people who are barely functional yet they have my dream job. ------ croo My experience is that these kind of devs only survive in big environments e.g. multinational companies. Once they become the mayoriy (or the loudest) then part of the company will match their speed over time and the development time and time itself slows down. Tasks will be measured in weeks instead hours, meetings will be about anything to further the day, deadlines will fly by with everyone pointing to each other. If there is nothing you can do to remove them the best you can do to ignore them, separate yourself, or them from everyone else. If you care enough you can try to mitigate the damage they may do. If you are surrounded by these type of developers you may want to do what I did: find a job where you can actually learn from others. I recommend small businesses as they cannot afford to have these people. ~~~ muzani I've seen them thrive in startups too. The company was incompetent, made millions. Things regularly broke (enterprise!) but the startup was backed by one of the biggest accelerators in the region, CEO hung around a lot of influential groups, media covered them a lot. They think income is slowing down because of AI, but it's really because they make bad software and are running out of customers. But it's a very unsexy field and there are no new competitors. ------ stvmlbrn Oh yeah, they are rampant in government work. I find it extremely frustrating, but I just try to focus on my responsibilities and try not to get worked up about things I can't control. It's easier said than done. As a side note, the fact that these people are able to find and keep jobs really makes me question myself. I'm not a rockstar, but I am a competent developer that can get shit done, bring value to the team, and is always trying to learn but I'm having a hard time getting a new job. It's frustrating as hell. ------ painful I recommend asking the manager to put you on a different project where your code and theirs is completely separate. Moreover, don't even worry about code reviews of their code. This advice is terrible for the company, but it's nearly optimal for you. ------ djinnandtonic Get out of your company if they're really letting people with no productivity hang around. I'd bet $99 to $1, though, that you've missed something in interacting with this person. They've held a job, presumably for some time? They're clearly producing something. ------ wrestlerman What exactly does terrible dev skills mean? What's wrong with them? ~~~ Jackypot Just programmers that can't program. Guys with years of experience tucked under their belt who struggle with simple things. I have pair programmed before with a guy to whom it wasn't obvious when to use a foreach loop, and who didn't parse test failure output for hints as to what went wrong. Everything was just a mystery. We'd make a change, test would fail and tell us exactly why (lo and behold, it was the thing we had _just_ changed) and he was unable to find the thing which was broken. It was painful to have to state the obvious (what ought to be obvious to a professional developer) all day long. ~~~ wrestlerman Oh, now I get it, thanks. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your question.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Awesome Highlighter (YC summer 08) - gabrielleydon http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/22/awesome-highlighter-isawesome/ ====== god Lets test it: <http://awurl.com/pspxuq96279> ------ cawel Nice tool. As I understand from Techcrunch, the revenue stream would come from selling their "awesome highlighter" product to media sites. The incentives for media sites to buy it? \- nice feature for their users to share highlights \- possibility to survey what their users find interesting I believe there is some revenue potential in this. It just strikes me how simple business ideas can be. Once again, value is the key, not complexity. ~~~ wallflower User annotations help make the user feel they are part of the community/creative process. Walled gardens like NYTimes might be scared (remember ThirdVoice) to let the public annotate their content - highlighting is a trojan horse to overlaying user annotations and co-opting their precious content. If I were the NYTimes, I'd be scared to sign any revenue-sharing contract unless it specifically prohibited later, more sophisticated annotations. One of the most-popular sites in Japan is a clever site that lets anyone comment directly on a video, literally. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nico_Nico_Douga> ------ maxklein And on testing it, it does not even work. I tried yahoo.com and it keeps popping up this message box telling me there is a limit of 2000 characters, when I'm selecting small paragraphs. So YC funded a startup with an idea that has been tried many times over and with a product that just does not work? Hmm, somebodies gonna lose $10.000. Not saying who, but somebody.... ~~~ webwright Evaluating a first release like this is kinda silly. It's a road, not a destination. For a v1 (or a beta, which is what this really is), you're better off evaluating the road... Regarding "tried many times over"... You mean like web search was before Google? Or MP3 players before the iPod? Or photosharing before Flickr? I'm not saying I'm convinced this idea is a winner, but come on... Predicting failure for a startup is so laughably easy that I don't know why you'd bother, unless you just wanted to feel smug. ------ wave Congratulation to hooande. I remember when he mentioned it <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174900> Awesome Highlighter uses frames to view other websites and some websites prevent their pages to be viewed in someone else's frameset (if (top != self) top.location.href = 'example.com'). There is no way I know of to disable this and need to respect their wish not be viewed in frameset. ~~~ grag Actually they appear to be caching the pages, which is how they are able to detect what is highlighted (otherwise it would be cross domain scripting). So they could just have their caching script strip out that JS and problem solved. I image that page caching could lead to problems with some sites though. I wanted to do something similar for a project I was working on but scrapped the idea because I couldn't get around the whole cross domain scripting issue, and caching just introduces a host of other problems. ------ maxklein I might be wrong, but I seem to remember seeing this same idea sometime in the web 1.0 bubble. It failed then, and since then, there have been several attempts to revive this very same business, and it fails each time. So why did YC go and fund a business that just does not seem to work? ~~~ nostrademons The environment changes. Online video sharing was tried several times during Web 1.0, but didn't catch on until YouTube in 2005 - because in the meantime, broadband and cell-phone video and social networking had penetrated millions of households. Same with social bookmarking - anyone remember Links? The fact that others have tried the same idea and failed is probably a bad indication, but it's not a hard rule that _this_ attempt will fail. ~~~ maxklein Yes, but get this: If someone had told me in 2000 that I could watch streaming video in good quality without any pauses and without needing any special computer or internet, I would have screamed excitedly: HOW? I would have WANTED it, but unfortunately, the reality of online video back then sucked bigtime. If someone had told me in 2001 there was a way to easily annote webpages and share them with my friends, I'd have yawned. BORING! Some concepts are just boring, and technology improvement does not change it. Those companies failed because people just don't have a need to mark pages. I can just copy and paste the text into emails. ~~~ nostrademons But say you take Twitter as an example. If someone had told me back in 1995 that I could send 130-character text messages to all my friends over the web, I'd have said "So?". Now I've got a bunch of friends nagging me, "Are you on Twitter yet?" (I'm not, but I do get nagged about it fairly often.) Technology doesn't just change what's possible, it changes what people want. The reason there's demand for something like Twitter is because now _everyone_ is online, nearly 24/7, and so the value of an online service that tells you what your friends are doing has gone up significantly. You may be right - actually, from a numbers perspective, you probably are. But if I had a few million to invest and the chance to blow $15K on something like AwesomeHighlighter, I'd think there was _enough_ of a possibility of success to make it worthwhile. People are reading more online, and their reading is much more participatory. That's a different environment than in 99/00. ~~~ maxklein The only potential I see is in the tiny url service part of it. But I was only aware of this AFTER testing it out. It should be emphasised more: Create a short url for a page - AND mark the parts you find interesting. Tiny url but with a marker. ------ webwright Check out: <http://blog.linebuzz.com/> They do the same thing without a plugin/bookmarklet. I dunno about most folks, but I have to have some pretty serious pain and/or desire to add clutter to my browser. ------ bayareaguy How does this differ significantly from Third Voice? <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2001/04/42803> ------ ctkrohn I love the name. It's simple, memorable, and instantly identifies what the site does. A very refreshing change from the plague of generic Web 2.0-ish non-word names. ------ noel_gomez The bookmarklet does not work for me in Safari 3.1.1 The toolbar shows up and then disappears. Has anyone else tried it in Safari? ~~~ nirmal I have and the same thing happens for me. ------ shaunxcode They should definitely set cursor:pointer on the color selector for the ffox plugin.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Insider Selling Jumps to Highest Level Since 2007 - chaostheory http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=au8cyqeJFifg&refer=home ====== minsight April 24. If it was relevant, any strategic maneuvering that one might do to avoid this catastrophe is probably now deep in the past.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Uber must be stopped - smacktoward http://www.salon.com/2014/08/31/why_uber_must_be_stopped/ ====== SocksCanClose i wonder if the author of the post has ever _talked_ to an UBER driver... that's the first thing i would recommend to anybody who wants to understand the actual economics of these companies. talk to a former cabbie who now gets to drive a nice car all day (instead of renting an old crown victoria), and pick his or her kids up from school every day. then ask yourself if "unrestrained" markets are good, or bad. ~~~ hitchhiker999 Does that invalidate the entire argument presented? ... there are certainly advantages for both cabbie and client (otherwise it wouldn't catch on). The problem is 'new stuff' being run like the 'old stuff'. It's half the revolution - the old half will eventually cause the problems (monopolies, ruthless biz practices).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Reuters uses AI to prototype automated video reports - OJFord https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/02/07/reuters-uses-ai-to-prototype-first-ever-automated-video-reports/ ====== kick _Today, it has announced a prototype for a world first: a fully automated, yet presenter-led sports news summary system._ The title is wrong! Sogou has the world-first here. Reuter's thing is specifically the "first" presenter-led _sports_ news summary system, emphasis on sports. ~~~ wyxuan Sogou is the CCTV version of an ai presenter ------ cat199 > we use an algorithm to combine Reuters real-time match photography and > reporting with a minute-by-minute data feed of what has happened in the game .. so that they can create 'presenter led' summaries at 'greater scale' \- yet, you still have to have people taking the photography and generating this minute-by-minute data.. so, why don't they just give the summary? ~~~ OJFord Because that's already a different job? e.g. the NHL has people recording plays second by second (not just minute) and photographers of course. But those people aren't the commentators, or the people in the studio. And the 6min and 30min condensed game recaps just have the commentary from the clips they include; they could make more sense with a generated track.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Zillow's second letter about McMansion Hell is still wrong - DiabloD3 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170628/01531037682/zillow-still-doesnt-get-it-second-letter-about-mcmansion-hell-is-still-just-wrong.shtml ====== jawns I'm going to disagree with most of you (and most of the commentary I've seen) that McMansion Hell's assertions of fair use are easily defensible. I come from a journalism background, where we had to wrestle with fair use restrictions quite often, and it turns out that fair-use claims when it comes to images are not as cut-and-dry as with, say, text. I'm allowed to reprint a sentence from a book in a review about that book and claim fair use, but I'm not allowed to reprint the entire book, even if I'm reviewing it, and claim fair use. But with images, those who claim fair use are typically reprinting the entire work. That tends to be a problem, because one of the four prongs of the fair-use test is the amount of the original work used. Among the relevant questions here are: could the images have been shown at a lower resolution and still gotten the point across? Could only portions of the images have been shown and still gotten the point across? Then there's the fact that she claimed in her official response that "this blog is my livelihood," which suggests that she's receiving income and is, essentially, operating as the sole proprietor of a business. Another one of the prongs of the fair-use test is the nature and purpose of the work, and you're more likely to prevail on this point if you're a nonprofit or can't be construed as a commercial operation. I'm not saying that Zillow's threats have merits. I just don't think we should all be so quick to say, "Oh, well it's OBVIOUSLY fair use." ~~~ monochromatic > I just don't think we should all be so quick to say, "Oh, well it's > OBVIOUSLY fair use." You're absolutely right on that. ANY time a legal question rests on some multi-prong factor test, it's folly to say that there's an obvious answer. There can be strong arguments one way, but it's never a slam dunk. Courts and juries are unpredictable. ~~~ FussyZeus I don't think anyone here is attempting to fathom what a court or jury _might_ decide, that's inherently unknowable. We're discussing what _should_ be decided. Frankly I think this is a textbook case of Fair Use by a combination of parody and commentary, and it seems as though it would be trivial to take Zillow to task for attempting to enforce copyright law on property it doesn't own the rights to. ~~~ monochromatic From the article: > She doesn't need to find other sources. Fair use means she can do what she's > doing and Zillow should shut up, other than maybe offering an apology. That sure sounds like an assertion of what a court or jury would actually decide, and it's far too strong. (I am a lawyer, and there's almost never a justification for being this absolute.) As for Zillow not owning the rights, it's entirely possible that it has some licensing arrangement with the rights holders that empowers it to bring suit. I have no idea, _and neither does the author._ ~~~ quickConclusion >That sure sounds like an assertion of what a court or jury would actually decide, and it's far too strong. Right now, we're in the court of public opinion, and that is definitely appropriate language for that particular court... The court of law will come later, if ever. And in this kind of business, most of damages are decided in the court of public opinion anyway, not the other one. ~~~ monochromatic "Fair use means she can do what she's doing" sure sounds like legal advice to me. ------ digitalzombie This happened to me and I sent the lawyer a cease and desist letter. He wanted me to take down my experiences I had with the company on my linkedin. After explaining to him that I have proof that I've worked on those projects the lawyers came up with bs reasons. I got angry for wasting some time of my life for proof of my work experiences so I sent him a cease and desist. The loser sent one last email and I told him to get the fuck out of my life. And that was that. I ain't ever using Zillow or Trulia. These people are in alt-fact reality. ~~~ webkike Fantastic! Knowing a little bit about the law can really help you out in modern life (one could say unfortunately). ~~~ cookiecaper That story would've been much sadder had the lawyer's client decided it was worth the money to pursue him. A lawsuit against a well-monied opponent is no joke, whether you're on the right side or not. AFAIK unlike a copyright case, it is pretty hard to lose a defamation case as long as you haven't gone too crazy, but a lawsuit can seriously damage your life whether you win or not. Knowing a little bit about the law is indeed helpful, but it doesn't seem that a little bit of legal knowledge would lead one to congratulating the grandparent on sending an inflammatory mail to opposing counsel. C&Ds are in fact frequently bluffs, so that should be considered in the response, but some companies are notoriously well-known non-bluffers; if they send a C&D, they are chomping at the bit to file the lawsuit for real. It's best to ask a real lawyer whenever you're staring down these types of possibilities. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. ------ linsomniac FYI, I'm do technology for the real estate industry, here's some back story. In Real Estate there's a huge concern about "where is my data going" (meaning the listings, photos, etc). This is a big deal to the brokers and agents. I literally just watched an hour long webinar over lunch by Wolf Net about data syndication and every few minutes they were mentioning how they've earned and work to maintain the trust of the brokers and agents by being careful with the data. Now, a significant number of agents and brokers _HATE_ Zillow. There are entire sessions at the conferences about how to keep your listings off Zillow. The reasons are varied and I won't bore you with the details, largely it is because Zillow doesn't put the listing agent's details by the listing. Zillow I imagine has to be very careful not to be seen by agents as releasing this information to other sources, or Zillow's lifeblood will cease to flow. They are teetering on the edge here and a perception by agents could cut off a lot of their data. Zillow probably has to fight this fight. Even if they lose it. They are in a much better position if they say "Hey, we fought this and the courts said we had to", that is a defense against the agents and brokers. If they don't fight it, the sentiment in the RE community could quickly turn against Zillow and cause a lot of damage to their business. This is my speculation, I don't know the internal workings of Zillow. ~~~ urethrafranklin Every time I look at listings on Zillow (hey, a person can dream) I see a realtor's photo and contact details, is that not the listing agent? ~~~ linsomniac If the text next to the agent says "Listing Agent" then yes. For listings where the agent chose to share the listing with Zillow, they will show up, maybe with a good picture, maybe not, along with a bunch of "premier agent" listings. These are agents that paid to be put on this property, like Google Adwords for Real Estate. But some listings don't have the listing agent on Zillow. See my example below. Take for example this: [https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/13911266_zpid/globalre...](https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/13911266_zpid/globalrelevanceex_sort/40.587494,-105.084014,40.537612,-105.142894_rect/13_zm/) vs: [https://www.coloproperty.com/listing/details/1125163](https://www.coloproperty.com/listing/details/1125163) Jesse is the listing agent, that second page is from the MLS and is definitely correct. The Zillow listing only lists a Premier Agent, and that is not the listing agent. ------ yonran What are the limits to what rights you can waive under the ToS of a website or app? If a website says you waive fair use, first amendment right, and your right to use your computer as you see fit for as long as you are using the website, who’s to stop them from kicking you off the website and suing you for breach of contract? I’m kind of curious because I received a C&D from craigslist a few years ago ([https://github.com/yonran/craigslist- shortcuts/blob/master/c...](https://github.com/yonran/craigslist- shortcuts/blob/master/cease-and-desist.md)). Technically I _was_ breaking the terms of service (after they revised the terms), so as I understood it, if I wanted to continue to use the website I had to comply with the terms, however onerous they were. ~~~ kelnos At best they could stop you from using their site. If they put terms in their ToS that are not legally enforceable, they'd never win a suit for breach of contract. ~~~ slantyyz Slightly related, Facebook lost a case in Canada over a forum selection clause in their standard online contract (that any legal actions have to be brought against FB in California). [1] [http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/06/clicking-agree-may-no- lon...](http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/06/clicking-agree-may-no-longer-mean- agree-everything/) ------ kinkrtyavimoodh I find it funny that big corporations routinely bully small players into submission through these bogus legal shenanigans, but when Peter Thiel bankrolled a private individual in a legitimate, bonafide court case against a big media corporation, many people had ethical issues with it. How is an individual with limited resources (money and time) supposed to ever hold their ground against $BIG_CORP? ~~~ cavanasm "Big media corporation" is an exaggeration in that case. Peter Thiel's personal wealth is such that he could have bought out Gawker dozens of times over if it had been a publicly traded company. Gawker actually settled because THEY ("$BIG_CORP") lacked the resources to fight through the whole process, and decided to cut their losses. ~~~ kinkrtyavimoodh Yeah but Hulk Hogan (who is admittedly rich but maybe not fuck-you rich) was the plaintiff. Not Thiel. And you are only proving my point. In most cases, individuals are the ones forced to settle with corporations because they don't have the resources to fight corps. The same would have happened with Hulk Hogan if he had not been bankrolled by Thiel. So, if anything, it was Thiel's actions that tipped the balance in the direction of the individual, who, mind you, was entirely in the right in this particular case. ------ rgbrgb Bummer. Great site, in an ironically snobby kind of way. I'd tell them to use Open Listings pages but we get similar takedown requests from our data providers (regional MLS associations) regarding shittylistings.com. They can revoke membership (and listings) pretty much at will. So while there's no strict legal argument against it, they probably got a vague threat from an MLS and were spooked. On that note, I'd be really interested in how their data licensing agreements work because I had heard that they pull from aggregators and not directly from MLS RETS hookups. ------ JustSomeNobody 1\. Zillow should have to pay a fine for getting the law so wrong. 2\. There needs to be proper legal protections for people against Big Co. doing this. Maybe a third party set up to look over the C & D's issued to bloggers. I don't know how this should or would work, but something needs to change. ~~~ atom_enger Can Zillow be held liable for lost revenues since Kate felt compelled to shut down the site? ~~~ emodendroket Was she making money off of it? ~~~ atom_enger She's claimed the site was her livelihood: [https://twitter.com/mcmansionhell/status/879432256363925507](https://twitter.com/mcmansionhell/status/879432256363925507) I would assume and hope that she was. I enjoyed the content and she deserved to be paid for it. But I don't know if she meant livelihood in the financial context or not, so I couldn't tell you definitively. ------ baron816 I can't attest to any legality of what McMansion Hell was doing. And I think she was well meaning in her goals--to keep people from buying and building oversized, poorly built houses--but there is still an underlying social class issue here. I was always hesitant to talk about McMansions with my friends, many of whom probably grew up in McMansions (and they already think I'm a snob). Additionally, have you ever had a friend who came to you showing off a new purchase and you were tempted to tell them that there was an objectively better choice for them? If they don't take it personally and get offended (they probably will) then they'll at least feel really shitty and probably embarrassed. It's best to let them live in ignorant bliss. ~~~ closeparen McManison buyers are not socioeconomically disadvantaged. There is plenty of architectural snobbery directed at the socioeconomically disadvantaged - "overlarge ticky-tacky" is a common enough phrase in Berkeley Planning Commission meetings with respect to apartment buildings - but criticizing $900k 3000sqft single family houses isn't that. ~~~ baron816 > McManison buyers are not socioeconomically disadvantaged. I never said they were, and that's not the point. Social class and economic class are not the same. Criticizing someone's tastes doesn't just become totally acceptable to that person if they're rich. You're still going to make them feel like crap for spending their life savings on an inferior product. And there are still going to superiority undertones to what you're saying, at least to their ear. ~~~ closeparen Sure, it would be malicious to mail people the McMansion hell posts on the houses they've just signed for, but that's not what she was doing. I used to think snobbery was obnoxious, but now the constant stream of "there's no such thing as quality, but even if there is, we shouldn't acknowledge it or its absence" seems even more grating. ~~~ look_lookatme > "there's no such thing as quality, but even if there is, we shouldn't > acknowledge it or its absence" Where do you live where this is the case? ------ LukeShu Ok, so Zillow has no copyright claim to the images. The article follows that up by loudly and repeatedly reminding us that even if Zillow did have a copyright claim, that the use of the images falls under fair use. However, is that really true? The article backs up most of its claims, except for the "fair use" one. The disclaimer on the McMansion Hell site claimed that they were used under fair use, but the author of the site is admittedly a bit unfamiliar with the law. I haven't seen an analysis of if it really is fair use from any of the coverage. ~~~ mark-r Zillow claims "we have an obligation to protect the interest of the copyright holders". If that obligation is contractual, they are acting as the agent of the copyright holder and should have the right to take legal action on their behalf. In fact they might be _compelled_ to take legal action, even if that action puts them in a poor light as it does in this case. This is where I think Techdirt is missing the picture. ~~~ criddell If that were the case, then why didn't Zillow just say that? ~~~ mark-r Saying "but the lawyers made me do it" doesn't get you a lot of sympathy. ------ huffmsa In my brief time dealing with this kind of stuff, the usual best response is to simply say "See you in Delaware." And put the ball in their court to escalate to a full blown lawsuit. ------ atom_enger Vote with your wallet. Donate to the EFF. Boycott companies like Zillow/Trulia who behave like this and use their position to harm the community. ~~~ toomuchtodo Use Redfin instead of Zillow/Trulia whenever possible. Starve the beast. (Zillow makes its money off of income from realtors seeking leads, RedFin makes its money off of actual real estate transaction fees [discounted compared to traditional commissions]) EDIT: Just read the end of the post: "Meanwhile, another organization that does understand copyright and fair use much better than Zillow is EFF. And EFF is now representing McMansion Hell." Zillow has brought a knife to a gun fight. ~~~ jimktrains2 My wife and I bought our house using a Redfin agent. They were as hands-on or -off as we liked. We could look at listings online and schedule tours and we could ask the agent for any recommendations that might fit what we're looking for, but maybe not where we were originally looking. They also helped with negotiating and closing (as you'd expect of any Realtor, but it was nice dealing with the same 2 people the whole time). > Zillow has brought a knife to a gun fight. :) I wonder if this will have any outcome for ToS, as that's was one of Zillow's complaints. ~~~ lebca To add to this point, I contacted a realtor through Zillow, had two email exchanges with him where I asked specific questions about a property. Each time, my questions were ignored, and his responses can be summarized as "are you pre-approved?" In the second email, he politely redirected me to another realtor that it appeared he was managing and I never heard from them again. ------ jonbarker still alive on google image search! ------ ewanm89 My reply would probably be something like this, after checking it with a copyright lawyer: Dear whomever it may concern at Zillow group, As you do not have rights to the images are you authorised on behalf of the rights owners to issue DMCA take-down requests under title 17 of the United States Code under penalty of perjury? Should this be the case I suggest you read Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 801 F.3d 1126 (2015) in the 9th circuit which has just been refused certioari in the US Supreme Court (2017-06-19). If you wish to continue this matter please submit a properly worded DMCA take down request. Regards, .... P.S. If you do continue this matter you obviously didn't read Lenz Vs. Universal and therefore I'll see you in court. ------ callmeed Here's what I don't get: why didn't McM Hell go to an attorney right away? This seems like a no-brainer case of fair use that any competent attorney could tell you in a free consult or less than 2 hours of billable time. And, yes, the threat letter from Zillow is total BS. But that doesn't mean Zillow _" doesn't get it"_. That's just what attorneys do. I thought everyone knew this. ~~~ atom_enger "I thought everyone knew this" is a dangerous assumption. Not only are you assuming equal knowledge access but you're also assuming equal legal access. I'd argue the legal system is not equally accessible and knowledge of the system is even less accessible. I think the only safe assumption here is that Kate did _not_ know the proper way to respond to this and asked for help from the community. I would've done the same. ~~~ callmeed I mistakenly assumed McM Hell was something closer to a business or run by business person(s). As opposed to just a blog run by a single person. My bad.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Daily Stand-Up Meetings Are a Good Tool for a Bad Manager - yegor256a http://www.yegor256.com/2015/01/08/morning-standup-meetings.html?2015-01 ====== mikerichards Standups are one of those things that 15 years ago sounded great on paper. "Yeah, everybody is communicating every morning. Our communication problems are solved!" The reality is that 90% of my standups are pointless and more importantly interrupt my most productive time of the day. ------ fsk I never understood the point of the daily meeting. To find out what other people are doing, I can just look at source control or the ticketing system. If things are properly organized, I don't really need to know 95%+ of the stuff other people are doing. When they are doing something that impacts me, they can tell me. I don't need a daily meeting for that. The only advantage of the daily meeting seems to be micromanagement. But everyone has good days and bad days. There are some days where things come easily, and days when it's a struggle to do fixes that should be quick. ~~~ DamnYuppie How are people supposed to know what you are working on if aren't communicating with them routinely? ~~~ yegor256a There are better instruments for sharing this information. You can use task tracking software, you can use emails, etc. No need to stand up for that in the middle of the office, every morning. ~~~ fsk Yeah, for example: Boss: Fred, I want you to work on the Frobitz feature. FSK worked on the Frobitz feature a little, so coordinate with him. For a daily meeting, I hear about a lot of stuff that usually has nothing to do with what I'm working on. Inevitably, two people get sidetracked and talk for 15-30 minutes on an issue that only affects them, making it a huge waste of time. (I know that isn't how daily meetings are supposed to work, but that's what happened at the place that did them.) ~~~ AnimalMuppet Peer pressure. If two people get sidetracked, after about 10-20 seconds, say, "Take it off-line. Next?" It's even better if multiple people are willing to do this, or at least to back you when you make the request. ------ DamnYuppie Some of the comments here surprise me. I have used stand up meetings for years. Yet I never thought they were for the benefit of the manager. Instead they help keep everyone abreast of what is going on and quickly sets the tone for the day if there are any key issues that need to be resolved.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nord: An arctic, north-bluish color palette - tpetry https://www.nordtheme.com/ ====== semi-extrinsic Aargh, it's kinda pretty and I _want_ to like it, but it really bugs me that these colors don't actually match their descriptions. It feels like an "arctic" color map made by people who have mainly seen the far north on Instagram. Especially the "Aurora" palette, which is made up mostly of colors that are extremely rare to see in auroras. But also the light and dark palettes without any blue in them are way off, and the description of arctic ice as green-ish is weird. Also the visual contrast between e.g. nord7 and nord8 is extremely poor. ~~~ e12e Not sure why you're down-voted - that was my initial reaction too. Especially the "aurora" palette seems at odds with the name. Add a red and a purple to the "frost"-palette, and you might at least call it "aurora" with a straight face. That said, I'm not sure pastels like these would ever capture an "artic" feel. Overall, apart from the lack of contrast, they're not half-bad. But the naming doesn't seem to reflect the colors - it seems rather arbitrary. ------ jawns I have seen lots of color palettes that look just as nice as these. But in terms of _marketing_ and _positioning_ a color palette, this is a really superb effort. The Nordic inspiration and theme, the association of emotions (peace, balance) with colors and color combos ... it's all extremely well done. Anyone else looking to market this type of work would do well to study it. ~~~ trentlott I'm baffled why people are suddenly marketing CSS themes Is it just a demonstration of skill? ------ bryanrasmussen Sometimes in the North the light will shine too brightly off the snow and blind a person a bit [https://color.a11y.com/Contrast/](https://color.a11y.com/Contrast/) finds 10 color contrast issues. And really some of the color combinations were just obviously not going to pass. But I agree it's pretty nice, and the marketing is mad men quality for a color palette. ~~~ willio58 Why should every color pallet follow accessibility standards? Especially when it is for personal use.. ~~~ bryanrasmussen I assume that persons with poor eyesight may want to use things in their capacity as persons. But sure one can decide to not provide the possibility. ------ ZeroGravitas Sounds like this project may be intending to write one, but is there any existing documentation on syntax colouring that goes beyond "what we thought looked nice"? For example, what should have similar colours and why, what should stand out the most. How far apart do two colours need to be to be effective for the various tasks involved in writing and understanding code and so on. Is there s trial research on this? ~~~ ninjaranter > Sounds like this project may be intending to write one, but is there any > existing documentation on syntax colouring that goes beyond "what we thought > looked nice"? I tried to do something link this with a color scheme for VSCode [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=narenran...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=narenranjit.chandrian) . Some highlights: * Warm Colors are used for action keywords - throw, return in programming languages, links in Markdown files. * Cold colors are used for definitions - Function names, variable values etc. * Muted neutral colors are used for punctuation, comments, and anything else which detracts from the code. I've been meaning to write a more detailed post on this (as well as an update), but comments/feedback welcome! ------ danaliv These are lovely! I might use this in some cartography work. Do these palettes take color blindness/accessibility into account? I looked around on the site (admittedly not thoroughly) but didn’t see this addressed. ~~~ arkades Speaking as a colorblind person browsing that page: I don't think they did. ------ gfiorav I’ve used this theme for 3 years or more now and I can’t live without it. It’s soothing and distinct at the same time. I have everything in this color range. There are few themes with such a wide range of ports. The support is fantastic too! Everything is on github and monitored. Give it a spin, you won’t regret it! ~~~ krtkush Any link to your works that uses this theme? ~~~ gfiorav Sorry, I now realize I've been very sloppy with my wording: I use this as a Terminal theme (Windows Console Host) [0] (you need ColorTool, which supports iterm format for themes), a vim theme (nord-vim) [1], for dircolors [2], and a tmux theme (nord-tmux) [3]. [0] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- iterm2](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-iterm2) [1] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- vim](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-vim) [2] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- dircolors](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-dircolors) [3] [https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord- tmux](https://github.com/arcticicestudio/nord-tmux) ------ dpflan Interesting. I've had the idea for generating palettes based upon captured nature scenes or animals, especially birds and fish. Now that I think about it, take it a step further to include the habitat, and there you go: ecosystem palettes. ~~~ hoyd I wrote a simple web app to find the five most dominant colours in a photo, and present them as a bottom layer to the uploaded photo with the hexadecimal code included. So much used, at least by myself I love to see detected colours in all sorts of scenes or motives. ------ aaronkjones I have used Nord for years and added it in [https://noobs- term.com](https://noobs-term.com) (terminal configuration). Coworkers commented on how nice my terminal looked and wanted to replicate it. ------ axiomdata316 Looking at the Github page it doesn't look like it's maintained very well. Some of the work on ports haven't been updated for 2 years. ~~~ majewsky Do you have any specific reason to imply they're not maintained? Most of those ports look like "Done" to me. When something is Done, then it's a _good thing_ they don't mess around with it for no good reason. ------ bjourne The theme looks a lot like Solarized dark but with a little more blue. I don't really "get" why I should prefer this theme to any of the many other color themes out there. ------ harrygeez I tried this several months ago. It's beautiful, but I find it lacking in usability. The lack of contrast is a little more straining on my eyes than I'd like ------ jackfraser MS-DOS Shell called, it wants its aesthetic back ~~~ mmgutz That would be Cobalt2 which is another fantastic blue-based theme :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: CodeAutomat - web service for converting SVGs to ObjC. Free today - PixelCut http://www.codeautomat.com ====== PixelCut Here's how it works: when you upload an SVG file, we convert it automatically to Objective-C or C# MonoTouch code. Then, we draw a preview image with the generated code. If you like the result, you can choose to buy the code. Since we've just launched CodeAutomat, the service is free for a limited time. CodeAutomat is powered by PaintCode, our full-featured vector drawing app that generates code.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The lack of a case against Python 3 - ingve http://blog.lerner.co.il/case-python-3/ ====== lorenzfx > But again, the population that will be affected is the 10% who deal with > Unicode. I doubt that only 10% of people are dealing with unicode. Rough estimate 10% of the world speak English as a first language and almost all other languages are written with (at least some) non-ascii characters. In my experience (I'm from the 90% part of the world), people new to programming and python stumble really early into some (to them) hard to debug (UnicodeDecodeError: ... can't decode byte) errors in python 2. Then it's time to explain the whole strings are not bytes, unicode, encoding and so on thing. In python 3 that's also needed, perhaps even earlier, but bugs are much easier to fix and programs fail on the first run, not when you finally enter some non-ascii characters. In my mind, python 3 clearly is superior to python 2, and would be even if nothing but the unicode support changed. ~~~ JimDabell > Rough estimate 10% of the world speak English as a first language ASCII isn't even good enough for that 10% – British people need £, which isn't in ASCII – not to mention things like em dashes, en dashes, and curly quotation marks that word processors tend to add. ~~~ guan Kids these days also use emoji. ~~~ yummyfajitas Also unicode. [http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji- list.html](http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html) ------ gnud This idea that some developers don't need to deal with unicode, really needs to die. If you're creating a web app and don't support unicode input, you're doing it wrong. You probably can't accurately store the names of your customers, for starters. ~~~ reuven OP here. I teach Python to Fortune 100 companies, more or less every day. You're totally right that people who deal with outside-world data need Unicode. Anything that deals with users _MUST_ deal with Unicode. But a huge proportion of the people I work with -- in Israel, China, and Europe -- couldn't care less about Unicode. That's because they're processing logfiles, dealing with test automation and system administration. For them, Unicode is important a very small proportion of the time. So I stand by my assertion that a small proportion of developers need to worry about Unicode. But I also agree with you that Unicode is absolutely crucial in the modern world, and that a language lacking good Unicode support isn't going to get very far. ~~~ orf > That's because they're processing logfiles, dealing with test automation and > system administration ... So I stand by my assertion that a small proportion > of developers need to worry about Unicode. You come to this conclusion based on your dealings with a small subset of developers within a small subset of companies? I think many other developers in the fortune 500 companies outside of the subset you deal with would laugh at that conclusion, then go back to developing apps that deal with people/locales all over the world. ~~~ falcolas This also describes my entire team. And the team before that. There are at least as many developers out there who don't write user facing code as those who do. When I do run across Unicode, it's just a matter of passing it through, which is usually pretty easy to do. ------ elnygren People still stuck in python2 and arguing that python2 is better than python3 is weird. I get it, more features does not mean better and newer does not mean better but seriously, just do the jump to python3. It's not that much work and the language is much nicer to work with. I've built a library with python2/3 support and do most of my work in python3. Maybe my web dev background biases me somehow, but I can't remember the last time I had problems with a major library not supporting python3. To me this seems more like tradition/age/generation -related. Those who started back in python1/2 are the ones with problems moving to python3, while young people who started with python 3.x are already running 3.5/3.6. ps. like the author said, there will always be large corporations stuck in very old techs - that doesn't mean the rest of the world too has to use Cobol or MUMPS. ~~~ geocar > but seriously, just do the jump to python3. Or jump to another language. Here's my problem: I don't program unless I get paid, and I simply cannot sell this crazy idea: "hey, you know all that software you paid me to write? how about you pay me again so you can have it in python3?" It seems like if I want my programs to run for more than ten years I shouldn't be using Python. ~~~ oblio IMO that's the wrong approach. The correct one would be: "Hey, you know all the software you want to pay me to write? It will be in Python 3 now". ~~~ guitarbill I consider Python 3 a huge benefit for a similar reason: I can avoid or charge $$$ for people still using 2.6 (e.g. on ancient RHEL). There's always somebody. 2.6 is pretty sucky, not to mention unsupported by the PSF. If you support 2.7, some "clever" manager or client will say that 2.6 support surely isn't so unreasonable. It is. 2.7 is legacy only now IMO. ~~~ lima I'm happily using and deploying Python 3.6 on CentOS 6 using pyenv. You don't have to use the system Python unless there's a policy requiring you to do so. ~~~ guitarbill I agree, and EPEL works fine on RHEL, too. But it wouldn't be _enterprise_ without some BS rules. Hence why compatibility "issues" are such a blessing for detecting enterprise BS early on. ~~~ lima You can get a more recent Python from Software Collections, too: [https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/?search=python](https://www.softwarecollections.org/en/scls/?search=python) Up to Python 3.5 and 3.6 will probably follow shortly after release. This is blessed and QA'd by Red Hat themselves, so it's as good as it gets. "My distro only has Python 2" has to be one of the worst excuses not to use Python 3 :-) Obvious exception are systems tools (did you know that Ansible modules have to compatible with Python 2.4 since that's what CentOS 5 uses?). But those are the absolute minority. ------ cesarb The biggest problem with Unicode in Python2 was not the UnicodeDecodeError/UnicodeEncodeError, it was the _latent_ UnicodeDecodeError/UnicodeEncodeError. As in, you had some code which works perfectly fine, both in your machine and in production, until someone somewhere types a word with a ç character and your code blows up with one of those two exceptions. With Python3, the same code will blow up early, even if there was no non-ASCII character for that string in your test set, and will get fixed before going into production. ~~~ fb03 That was the main reason I migrated: processing everything internally in Unicode and then encoding/decoding as needed for the outside world creates a well defined 'place-where-unicode-shit-might-bork' border in your project that allows you to not only detect unicode errors earlier, as you stated, but also keep tabs on this 'border'.... eventually you don't even have unicodeerrors in your codebase anymore, because in 3.x this pattern emerges in your head and imho it's a really good thing, it is making your think properly how your code interacts with other entities. ~~~ dom0 FTR I can't remember ever seeing a UnicodeError in Python 3 that was caused by an ill-formed program. I only saw it when someone put binary shit somewhere were only text should be (eg. that flat text file with the page title should contain text, not an .exe) Also the distinction between binary and text is the _only_ sane way to handle it. Everything else is simply ill-formed. ------ lucasnemeth I find surreal how much people underestimate how big is the population that deals with those unicodeerrors. It's SO MANY FUCKING LANGUAGES AND SO MANY PEOPLE. The majority of the world population writes using non-ASCII characters! It's a HUGE problem in Python 2. Python 3 was needed. If you don't think the Unicode change was needed and you actually work with texts in any form, you should also stop developing "for web scale" before fixing this. Because you're actually focusing on a small percentage of the world population on your software. For me Zed's argument sounds like "This is America, speak English". Specially with his quotes around "international". ~~~ softwarelimits Üክጎርöዕቿ የዪöጌረቿጠነ ልዪቿ öሀቿዪዪäፕቿዕ. ~~~ memracom Unicode problems are overrated ------ belvoran Yea, use Python2, don't use Unicode, but please add information to a registration form like: _" due to our programmers' limitations please don't enter your first name or last name as your write it, use only ASCII characters, otherwise our servers may blow up"_. PS) This is what I had to work on last year. Happy US programmers who know nothing except English. And suddenly the software blew up, just because a client wanted to enter his name. ------ tronje There's also this article [0], which sort of tears Zed's article apart bit by bit. It's honestly a fun read because of the aggressive tone (which I find deserved), and it's also informative. edit: there was a HN discussion about it as well. [1] [0] [https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for- python-3/](https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027481) ------ Sir_Cmpwn I don't have a problem with Python 3's unicode support, and I don't really understand why people do. I think it works fine, you just want to think of b'' as byte arrays instead of strings. If you're ever carrying a bytes around and passing it into string handling functions, you're Doing It Wrong. Honestly, I can't find anything wrong with Python 3's Unicode support. It's great. ~~~ minus7 Exactly. Its clear distinction between (unicode) strings and (binary) data is Python 3's biggest plus, imho. No more randomly popping up errors because something is trying to handle the binary data in your str as string; instead you'll get a nice type error. I don't understand how people do _not_ find that terribly annoying with Python 2. (seriously, tell me) ~~~ dom0 Gut feeling: there is a large intersection between the "Python 3 Unicode sucks" and "Every operating system ought to handle only bytes and never think of encoding, and file names and paths are just bytes". I have words for the latter attitude, but they're not HN-compatible. ------ SeanDav I have nothing against Python 3, but right now Python 2.7 is more than good enough for all my current requirements, and is used by every client I work with that uses Python. At some point that might start applying to Python 3, in which case I will use Python 3. In the meantime I stay out of religious programming wars and use the best tool for the job. For me, right now, that is Python 2.7. ~~~ BerislavLopac > Python 2.7 is more than good enough for all my current requirements > use the best tool for the job. For me, right now, that is Python 2.7. Sorry, but these two statements seem at odd with each other. I absolutely agree with the first principle, and I agree that in many cases 2.7 is more than good enough; however, in nearly all cases I have encountered (and I have, a lot!) Python 3 is notably better, which means that it is not "the best tool for the job". ~~~ freehunter Everyone has different needs. For your needs (for most people's needs), Py3 is better. For his needs, Py2.7 is better. It's not hard to understand. If everything he encounters, for example, is in 2.7, then that's probably the best tool for the job. If I'm commuting to work in the morning, I want a nice sedan with an automatic transmission and fuel injection because it's nice and modern and easy to use. If I'm in rural Africa though, I probably want a truck with a manual transmission and a carburetor. Sure it's outdated, but if I need a mechanic to work on it or parts that will fit it, every other car on the road there is just as outdated as mine. ~~~ BerislavLopac > If everything he encounters, for example, is in 2.7, then that's probably > the best tool for the job. I disagree. Your example describes two completely different solutions to different scenarios; but Python 3 is not a different solution, it's a subset. It has everything that 2.7 has, only improved -- which means that for each case that Py 2.7 can handle, Py 3 can handle it just as easily, or better. My comment was simply about the phrase "the best tool for the job" \-- Python 2.7 is in many cases good enough, and there is no point in switching an existing codebase if it means much more work than it brings benefits. However, when starting something new, with the goal of using "the best tool for the job", Python 3 is -- in my experience at least -- the clear winner. ------ burnbabyburn serious question: why I see really almost no complains in other languages when they introduce breaking changes? is the migration handled differently or the communities are less vocal? ~~~ ubernostrum Serious answer (seriously): because Python 3 didn't break enough stuff. For all the complaints, Python 3 was _incredibly conservative_ about making changes that would completely break existing code. String handling was basically _the_ big shift, and if you were writing good code to begin with wasn't super hard for most problem domains to adjust to. Clearing up some cruft in the way the standard library was organized wasn't hard to deal with either. And there wasn't a lot of new syntax in 3.0/3.1 and quite a bit of it was backported into 2.6/2.7 to make the transition easier. And then there was a bit of a moratorium on language changes in 3.x to give people time to catch up from their 2.x codebases. The result of which is a lot of people who didn't think Python 3 was a big enough deal to be worth putting in the effort to migrate, when the 3.x series started releasing. And now many of them are finally noticing all the cool stuff that's in 3.x now (3.6 is about to release), and noticing that their favorite tools and libraries have switched from "we support 2 and 3" to "we're dropping support for 2", and realizing they didn't take advantage of all the time they had to port stuff, and are angry and feeling left out and trying to find complaints to level at Python 3 in the hope that enough people will agree and just magically end it, port all the new features back to Python 2, and let them keep going as-is. ~~~ guitarbill > Serious answer (seriously): because Python 3 didn't break enough stuff. I could also be because there was another choice (which is what you also said). Ruby 1.8 -> 1.9 was annoying, but you weren't going to keep using 1.8 given e.g. the speed improvements of 1.9. (Also, who adds breaking changes in minor version numbers?) There's a great talk about changing the culture around Python3 at Facebook[0], I highly recommend it. Technically, it isn't so hard. Culturally, it can be pretty hard. Calling Python2 "Legacy Python" helped at my $work. My boss agreed that continuing 2.x development wasn't a good investment for the future, given the minor technical challanges involved with moving over a few years. [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRtp9NgtXiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRtp9NgtXiA) ------ forgottenacc57 The main reason that Python Unicode is hard is because of the disastrously confusingly named "encode" and "decode". It's a constant question which direction you are going - encoding or decoding, huh, what? Python 3 Unicode would be MUCH easier if encoding/decoding was more intuitive, memorable and obvious. Still an unfixed problem. Not even an acknowledged problem. ~~~ icebraining How would you design the API? ~~~ baq I'd copy directly from Rust. ~~~ icebraining Say I get a file and the name of the encoding it's in (like an XML file with a declaration), how I decode it in Rust? ------ fb03 I was a die-hard 2.x Pythonista, and as Python 3 started to reach 3.[4/5] releases, in my view it started to get really good in terms of new (and actually useful, not just bloated) features. I for instance love the way you can properly type everything, and that equates to proper interfacing, expectancy between object interactions and also (ofc!), better and smarter IDEs. Also, at the 3.5 release, most "big" libraries and frameworks were already supporting Py3.x in a stable manner, so more and more the point about being at 2.x "because I have this huge library support" got fragile in my head, and I knew what that meant: "Someday, I will actually have to migrate!" I started getting worried that the 2.x ways were too entrenched in me and that I'd never be able to migrate, that my Python (2.x) skills would become something as forgotten as my former self (childhood) Turbo Pascal antics and etc. Nonsense! Here's what happened: I was asked to work on the backend of a new website that was aiming for a fully "portable" (desktop, mobile, and whatever comes next) experience. They wanted me to write an API for it, and I started studying what framework I could use that was simple enough for an API (flask!) and for sane backend storage definition (sqlalchemy!) \- Flask on 3.x -> The more I searched about flask on 3.x, the more I found how it was really stable and production-ready. Also, using 3.x would be really nice on the whole Unicode thing, as I would not be able to make the same string/bytestring mixing assumptions I used to do so carelessly in 2.x (until something blew up...) I would actually have to enforce and handle proper Unicode throughout the api. \- SQLAlchemy on 3.x -> Really, the same. Production-ready, used throughout. These two convinced me to try to get the initial API study on 3.x, and oh boy, besides stumbling here and there with some changed syntax (mostly, simple print()'s during early stages), migrating to 3.x went real smooth! As I advanced in my 3.x studies, I started to see benefits in typing everything properly, specially between layers/borders, and it meant less typing and more intelligent autocomplete for my pycharm. Seriously, If you find yourself struggling or anxious about migrating to 3.x, just find yourself a new project and start doing it on 3.x in the most non- pretentious manner. You'll find yourself just as 'at home' as you felt in 2.x, but you'll still feel something changed for the better...you won't feel strange more than 3 days I promise you :DD ------ TeeWEE I HATE python 2 "hello how are you {}'.format(name) UnicodeDecodeError ARRRRGGGGH ~~~ jwilk SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal ------ gravypod My biggest issue is that Python 3, from an outsiders perspective, does not look at all like it's about unicode. Python 3 could very well have been done in a way that just fixed the back end implementation of python 2 (implement a string as an extension of a list) and then most things would have probably worked fine. Just handle all the unicode stuff in the back end and treat them the same exact way as Python 2 treated strings. That's not what happened and instead we had a huge change to one of the fundamental data structures of any programming language and a lot of changes that pretty much no one wanted. Packages were moved, things were renamed, etc. These are not changes that should be made. Make a fix, don't make me rewrite my code because someone else said "Eh, I like this name better". It's useless to do so and helps no one. There are now swaths of community-written documentation that are useless because every package name in the post has changed for seemingly no reason. The issue is simple: it could have been handled so much better. ------ softwarelimits I would like to understand: what was the key mistake in the transistion to Python 3 that generated this huge divide and this ultra-annoying situation for the people that still have to use Python today? What can be learned from that Python desaster to avoid such a catastrophy with some other programming language? I really would like to read some analysis about what went wrong. Thank you very much for your attention! ~~~ dagw Personally I think one big mistake was that it took literally years between python 3.0 coming out and numpy and django having a release that supported python 3. I remember python 3 coming out, being interested, looking at it for just long enough to realize that numpy wasn't supported and then not looking at it any more. Then I kind of lost interest in the intervening years and just kept working with python 2 which ended up getting back ports of many python 3 features. I think that if the teams had somehow managed to coordinate a more or less simultaneous release then much of that early momentum wouldn't have been lost. ------ sambe The big thing is not so much the changes that you need to make for Python 3, but supporting both from the same code base. Combined with the fact that this is often very necessary and will continue to be necessary for quite a while (LTS distros on Python 2.6 or 2.7), people think "why not just use the minimum?". If you have good support from things like six and good testing then it's possible, but it certainly adds a development tax. Python 3 has been adding more features (especially concurrency-related) that don't seem to be getting back-ports, or at least the libraries that support them in Python 2 lack the ergonomics of nice syntax sugar. Eventually there'll be a tipping point of all major LTS releases on 3.x and enough carrots in Python 3 that none of the little things will matter any more. ------ drej Since we keep having these discussions every now and then, here's a link to one of them from a few weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930082) ------ brudgers To me, the essay misses Shaw's point. One way to divide out the invested positions of the Python community and see his position for what it is, is to look back at when Shaw similarly pissed off the Ruby community (as distinct from the time he pissed off the Ruby-on-Rails community). This essay is among the most memorable pieces I have read on Hacker News: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120821234313/http://learncodet...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120821234313/http://learncodethehardway.org/blog/AUG_19_2012.html) ~~~ minitech What do you think his point is, then? ~~~ brudgers Having read Shaw's recent essay [0]: 1\. Because the target audience of _Learn Python the Hardway_ is very new beginners and the pedagogy is _programmed learning_ [1][2], Python 3 is a poor choice for the target audience of _Learn Python the Hard Way_. 2\. Shaw is more concerned with the welfare of the book's intended audience than adherence to the dictates of Python's leading figures. 3\. More subtly, that sales figures indicate a disconnect between the dictates of Python's leading figures and the interests of his students. From my outside position, it seems Shaw has a legitimate stake in his decision and people like this essay's author have a stake that boils down to creating drama. [0]: [https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the-end-of-coder- influence/](https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the-end-of-coder-influence/) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_learning) [2]: [http://hanselminutes.com/407/learning-code-the-hard-way- with...](http://hanselminutes.com/407/learning-code-the-hard-way-with-zed- shaw) ~~~ minitech A noble goal, but his Python 3 post is still nonsense [0]. [0]: [https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for- python-3/](https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/) ------ ralmidani I've built two (soon to be commercialized) web apps in Django over roughly a year. I don't bother to ensure Python 2 compatibility. I refuse to litter my code with unneeded imports and make my code my code uglier/harder to understand. Maybe I have the luxury of not targeting enterprises with legacy codebases. I genuinely feel sorry for people who have to go out of their way to solve compatilibility problems rather than work on more interesting problems. Edit: typo ------ heisenbit For new projects Python 3 has to compete not against Python 2 but also against other scripting languages, especially NodeJs. ~~~ jjawssd No problem tho [https://magic.io/blog/asyncpg-1m-rows-from-postgres-to- pytho...](https://magic.io/blog/asyncpg-1m-rows-from-postgres-to-python/) ------ alexchamberlain I'm unconvinced by the argument that big shops won't migrate by 2020. There is a statistic (which may be false and unproven, but I think is roughly correct) that says all code gets rewritten every 3 years. ie if you make Python 3 available to new code now, then by 2020, your code will be rewritten in Python 3 by natural attrition. That being said, its of course not that simple. However, the investment now in making core libraries compatible and deployed for both languages is likely to be much cheaper than a mass switch when Python 2 gives up the ghost. ~~~ reuven One of the companies where I teach just (in 2016) upgraded one of their core systems to Python 2.7. That's after years in which it was written in Python 2.4. Yes, 2.4, the same version my great-grandparents ran back in the Old Country. So yes, things are rewritten. And things are upgraded. But at a glacier's pace. 2020 is coming soon -- in about three years. There's no way that companies will upgrade some of these systems to Python 3 during that time. Some things, sure -- but there's a _lot_ of legacy code out there, and I don't see them spending the time and money to upgrade something that already works. ~~~ scrollaway Python 2.4 was, until fairly recently, still supported in a RHEL LTS. Enterprise being stuck with old versions isn't new. But it's a radically different world. ------ runjake > But again, the population that will be affected is the 10% who deal with > Unicode. I bet a lot more than 10% of the user base uses emoji. And even more will. ------ kozak As I said in another Python 3 HN thread, developers from cultures whose languages can be fully satisfied with the Latin-1 charset (which is the absolute majority of the developed world) just don't get how important and essential it is to have a proper (pervasive and implicit) implementation of Unicode at the language level. ~~~ bildung _> (which is the absolute majority of the developed world)_ I'm a German writing web apps using Django, and I constantly got UnicodeDecodeErrors when mingling with older browsers, uploads from Windows users, copy-pasted content from word processors etc. The problem isn't (only) whether Latin-1 has all the characters, it's what encoding gets thrown at your software. Python 3 was a blessing for handling user-provided input. ------ edblarney If you can't handle Unicode fairly well, you can't make an app that is international ... the world is a big place. I run into unicode issues on almost every project. ------ vuanotinn I can make a case against 3: it's even slower than 2. ~~~ pja Yeah, but if you’re programming in Python then speed isn’t exactly high on your language feature priority list is it? ~~~ dom0 Performance and choice of language has in most cases no correlation at all.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Reading On Paper Is Faster Than iBooks on the iPad - markwalling http://www.pcworld.com/article/200491/reading_on_paper_is_faster_than_ibooks_on_the_ipad.html ====== edster The study was interesting, yet by the author's own words incomplete with only something like 24 participants. Even then, I wasn't clear if each of the 24 read three different stories, one per device, or how the breakdown went. Also, a sensationalist headline to attract hits, the comparison was among paper, the Kindle and the iPad. Why not "Reading on paper is faster than reading on iPad or Kindle"? Finally, while the whole study was pretty pointless, reading on the iPad was slightly better than reading on the Kindle but within the margin or error. ------ hugh3 On the odd occasion I've tried reading a Nook or Kindle I've found myself reading faster and more comfortably than I would on paper -- I think this is just because of the larger print in the eBook. ~~~ silencio I've found that I read a lot more on my iPhone/iPad/Kindle because they're all more convenient than lugging around paper books and I have one or more of them on me all the time. I don't find myself reading slower than with paper, but I definitely do find myself reading more in general. That is a _huge_ plus for ebooks in my book.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The philosophies of software languages, from Go to Elixir - Supermighty https://www.welcometothejungle.co/fr/articles/languages-software-go-elixir ====== pcwalton > Multicore processors and concurrent programming > To take full advantage of multicore processors, a programming language needs > to provide mechanisms for concurrency…All of the languages in this > chapter—Go, Rust, Kotlin, and Elixir—were specifically designed to address > this need for concurrency. This confuses concurrency and parallelism. All of these languages have support for I/O concurrency. But the CPU parallelism support varies significantly. Go is fairly bad at such parallelism, because it doesn't have generics for concurrent data structures, parallel iterators, etc. Rust has pretty good support for it, with Rayon and Crossbeam. Kotlin does too, since it inherits the Java ecosystem, including the excellent java.util.concurrent package. I'm not sure about Elixir; my understanding is that the Erlang VM is not really designed around shared memory, which limits the potential for CPU parallelism. ~~~ matlin Erlang VM is actually design around full CPU utilization. It will typically spin up a thread for each core and schedule processes (Erlang not system) across them. It's actually because it's designed to not share memory that it excels at parallelism! ~~~ pcwalton This design does not do well at CPU parallelism for many workloads. Consider texture sampling in rasterization, to name just one example, in which shared memory is extremely important to get good performance. ~~~ felixgallo thing is not optimized for another thing and tradeoffs exist, more news at 11. ------ tramav > _Kotlin:_ > _Some readers will question why this chapter doesn’t include Scala. Although > it’s a language that has great support for concurrency, its original guiding > philosophy was more centered in functional programming. Kotlin, however, > which was inspired by Scala in a way, does have a specific focus on > concurrency._ Something similar can be said about Kotlin: The main design goal is the two way interop with different platform APIs (JVM, JS, LLVM). And of course it has many features a modern general purpose language is expected to have. Specifically for asynchronous progamming it has coroutines. However, I think for asynchronous and parallel computing Scala and Clojure have more to offer... ------ azw Once the revision is published I welcome more comments/corrections. I have never worked with Clojure and could easily be getting some part of what I write wrong. ~~~ azw Revision has been published ------ azw Hi, I wrote the article. I wanted to thank you for the comments, I have updated the article to reflect these corrections. ------ abc_lisper Where is clojure? ~~~ NikkiA The same place as the author's understanding of Moore's law. (Moore's law hasn't broken, because it said nothing about clock speed, it talks about transistor density, and sure enough multi-core and lithography improvements have continued that trend).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version - wil_I_am_27 https://forward.com/culture/433666/the-real-mark-zuckerberg-is-a-lot-less-impressive-than-the-movie-version/ ====== roenxi The congressional hearings are a hostile environment. The only reason to have Zuckerberg there is to get camera footage of him looking shifty and to pressure him to do whatever the politicians want him to do. His tactical and strategic goal is not to deliver 'zingers', it is ideally for the situation to go quiet and be forgotten by everyone. Failing that, an acceptable fallback is for any anti-Facebook action by government to get mired in endless committee investigations that are boring, neverending and unproductive to slow down any hostile regulation that might eventuate. Failing that, regulation that is onerous but favours Facebook by locking out any competition from the American markets. None of these will be achieved by interesting public exchanges with Congresspeople. Public government hearings are not where the serious moves are made. It is more a show-and-tell for the politicians to communicate to their voters what is being negotiated in the backrooms where real work happens. ~~~ supercanuck Only one of these parties to the negotiation works on behalf of the American people. Zuckerberg said he has 3B customers. You seems bored with the process but I would argue the job politicians are doing is equally important if not more so than the construction of an Online Ad Delivering Skinner Box, the “real work” you allude to. (Current top most on HackerNews explains how much people despise ads and pay money to avoid them) Holding powerful people accountable, publicly, creating laws and regulations and governing the rules of our society is very important to operating this country. ~~~ objektif Only if the said lawyers were doing those for the benefit of the people. Many of those lawyers would kiss Zucks ass for a million. Hearings are just theaters until we get money out of politics. ~~~ supercanuck And in a representative democracy, there is an ability for the public to remove said lawyer. We need to do that. Private Corporation there is no such method. ------ patio11 Movie dialogue is scored on being _interesting_ but there are a lot of _interesting_ responses to Congressional inquiry, including _interesting and true_ responses, which pessimize for your tactical or strategic goals. They also plausibly pessimize for Congress' goals. If you wanted to learn when Zuckerberg learned of a topic, you could send him a letter, and he would check his notes and send you a letter, and then you would know a thing you don't care about in the least. The point of grilling Zuckerberg in person about it is not to ascertain the truth, it is _to grill Zuckerberg on television_. ~~~ ohduran Congressional inquiries haven't been about finding truth since TV was invented. They are a platform for the parties involved to signal their positions. MZ is talking to his investors, AOC to her constituents. My point is: there is no conversation going on. Just people talking. ~~~ signal11 This is very true -- there are also echoes of how politicians prepare talking points in response to journalists' questions these days. The person being quizzed isn't actually prepared to answer questions, they come prepared with a set of themes to talk about and will seek to massage their answer to _almost any_ question to one of those prepared themes. The other interesting thing specifically about televised Congressional hearings is that Congresspeople have very little time -- AOC had 5 minutes, if I recollect correctly. This gives the person being grilled an advantage -- by simply taking his time with his answers he can run down the clock and be done with AOC's questions. ~~~ lotsofpulp The whole "grilling" format is just publicity for politicians. If they were really interested in answers, they would send an email and get a response back, and if they didn't they'd send a subpoena or start court proceedings. And if they really wanted to do something, they would pass legislation. But of course, you can't do that and get paid by lobbyists and/or get favors from businesses at the same time. This grilling format solves all interests. Politicians get to look like they're doing something, many gullible voters think the politicians are doing something, and the businesses being looked into get to look like there is something being done about them. ------ seanwilson I agree his answers about why political ads shouldn't be fact checked weren't good, but I found some of these "zinger" clips on Twitter really silly. > Mr. Zuckerberg, what year and month did you personally first become aware of > Cambridge Analytica?” Unless I missed that the hearing was highly related to this, why would he remember this exact date offhand? You'd be better declining to answer this question than guess and get it wrong which seems like what he did. Asking if he became aware of them before or after a specific event would have been much more reasonable. There's tons of important events in my life where I don't know the month it happened because it's not important to remember. I think he's right to say "I don't know" when he can't be completely sure. That's not a zinger. Likewise, it's not a zinger when you ask a really long question that contains several factual claims that you require clarification on, or try to force a yes/no answer to a loaded question (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_question#Complex_quest...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_question#Complex_question_fallacy)). ~~~ Cthulhu_ > Unless I missed that the hearing was highly related to this, why would he > remember this exact date offhand? Because it is one of the biggest scandals affecting Facebook in probably its entire history, and he's been grilled about it before? You'd think that once they found out his staff and advisors would make sure to tell him every single detail about it. Likewise, it should be the thing that occupies him for months on end. It's inexcusable for him to not seem to know some basic factoids about the whole thing. ~~~ fungicide Fun fact: The "oid" suffix in factoid means "like", or "resembling". So a factoid is not a true fact, but a statement resembling a fact. The word "factoid" was coined by Norman Mailer to mean "an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." So it is a source of great irony that the meaning of the word has been inverted by the press to mean a trivial but true fact. Historians of the future may have a fun time trying to figure out if our factoids are a true fact that we consider trivial, or a fact that we know is false but is believed to be true. ------ fatjokes Is this the state of journalism in this day and age? Is there any surprise that a real life CEO carefully coached by PR and lawyers is less interesting than his doppelganger in a multi-million dollar Oscar-targeted movie backed by a team of professional writers? ~~~ Pigo Are you not entertained?!? ------ bertil There was a very inspiring response from the original founding Facebook team about Sorkin’s movie (right around the time they had the entire company go and see it): like most people here know, starting a company isn’t glamorous, at all, certainly in 2004-2006. Servers going down, impossible hiring; they remember a blur of incessant crisis. They thought romanticised version of that story where they look good, say witty things and kick ass was surprising but inspiring for them. Zuckerberg has gone through media training and can be very good when he’s prepared for specific questions (see his public Q&A). He’s also notoriously focused and happy to delegate. Asking him to come talk about Libra and ask questions about Cambridge Analytica is an easy way to get vague answers. ------ toddmorey “No one had any doubts who the adult in the room was Wednesday,” ends the article. Right before the promoted content “This deadly sex habit is killing seniors!” I know that’s a bit off topic, but does speak towards the current environment of not just Facebook, but the entire internet. ~~~ bigred100 Not sure how much the idea makes sense, but these days I feel that rather than education, looks, status, etc. being the rare and difficult-to-attain markers or benefits of being of a higher class, being a generally sane person with a coherent worldview and some degree of emotional control is. ------ davidhyde Preparing and asking a bunch of interview questions is a lot easier than being on the receiving end and having to think though the legal ramifications about what you’re about to answer. Contrasting the slickness of the interviewer with the interviewee and drawing conclusions based on that is not accurate. ~~~ carloswilson I appreciate that answering questions in a grilling interview is more difficult than asking questions, but ... > “You don’t know? This was the largest data scandal with respect to your > company, that had catastrophic impacts on the 2016 election. You don’t > know?” ... but at the same time, I would certainly expect the chairman and CEO of a company to be more prepared to answer these difficult questions than what is reported in the original article. This was one of the biggest scams related to Facebook. I understand that Zukerberg's legal team may have advised him to be vague during the interview and he probably answered what is best for his company. But as citizens of the world, we should never find such vague answers acceptable. The way Cambridge Analytica has upset the process of democracy and how Facebook data was used while doing so requires Facebook to be subject to such grilling. It should be made clear to Facebook in no uncertain terms that it needs to present answers and concrete answers. ~~~ iagovar I've worked in marketing for an Agency. If Facebook had to check everything we did, they'd really had a hard time. We had multiple clients with multiple banners with multiple landing pages and all of this with a software rotating stuff with A/B tests and regressions. If a political party came to hire us, I'm sure we'll do it. This was in Spain, so I guess that there will be a lot more companies doing this in the US. Checking all of this within an acceptable timeframe for advertisers requires a lot of labor. That comes with another wide set of problems. Loosy boundaries, arbitrary bans, increased cost of ads etc etc. I have no special sympathy for Facebook, but we have to understand that this is a really hard problem to solve, and maybe there won't be any solution that satisfies the public. ~~~ jacques_chester If it's hard, then it's hard. That no perfect, complete solution is possible just means we accept the imperfect, incomplete solution if it is an improvement on the status quo. I really don't have a lot of sympathy for the woes of the advertising industry, considering the consequences. ~~~ iagovar If I, working there, found that FB was painful to work with, I'd go somewhere else, as simple as that. I won't spend two days wrestling with FB to see if my ad it's ok or not. I may not care for political advertising, since my client is not looking to "make a profit" like a traditional customer. But I definitely do for an eCommerce brand for example. Most agencies use FB because it's easy to work with and it's cheapish with a little expertise. If that dissapeares then nobody is goung to pour money on it. ------ ar7hur I had at few meetings with Zuck at Facebook after Wit.ai was acquired in 2015. To me, the real version is at least as impressive as the movie version. Then, of course, maybe was I biased by the movie and everything else I already heard about him? I'm sill wondering. ~~~ allie1 Care to share an anecdote? ------ FredrikMeyer There's a missing "real" in the title of the submission: "The Mark Zuckerberg Is a Lot Less Impressive Than the Movie Version" ------ raister Reality != Movies People are boring, bias and sometimes, really dumb (or playing dumb to avoid further persecution). ------ dimitar Slightly off-topic - why doesn't FB just ban all political ads? Is it really worth continuing to display them? Either have a coherent policy that the CEO can explain or just don't do it. ~~~ orbifold In Germany every political party gets a fixed number of slots for TV-Spots basically free of charge ahead of an election. There is no other political advertisement allowed (only the parties themselves are allowed to advertise). Unfortunately neither newspapers nor internet advertisement is as strictly regulated, but I feel like it should be eventually as well. ~~~ DrScientist Similar in the UK - set up that way to stop money being able to buy elections. Overall, election spending has been very strictly controlled. One of the problems is recently people have being getting around this with hard to trace online campaigns - using "national funding" and effectively locally targeted online campaigns. I'd like to see people being properly sanctioned for breaking the rules. In my view there are few things more serious than trying to subvert democracy. It shouldn't be normalized like it is in the US. ~~~ orbifold I agree, basically it should either not be allowed or strictly controlled how to advertise politics online. Targeted political advertisement should be banned completely. Then there is twitter, which also basically serves as a direct marketing channel for political parties. In Germany this is a huge problem especially with the AFD, they can publish lots of nonsense there, more or less unchallenged by facts or reason. ------ tyingq Popups, tiny font, etc. [https://outline.com/kFKtF3](https://outline.com/kFKtF3) ------ stared Is it only me, or for anyone else, articles written in one-sentence paragraphs are unreadable? I try, and it is hard for me to focus after a few such sentence-paragraphs. (No matter what is the topic.) ------ lifestyleguru I have to admit that there was something surreal in the short videos of hearing I saw on the internet. Congressmen/women, people of power, whom we stereotype as poker-faced, cynical, and manipulative, having people-like problems - e.g. "my granddaughter played with a mobile phone and then some creepily relevant ads started to appear", against a youngster without any formal power who cuts them off with laconic responses. ~~~ christophilus I've only seen a few clips from the interview-- clips that were supposed to show Zuckerberg getting owned by some politician or other. To be honest, the politicians seemed really childish to me. Their questions were uninformed, hostile, and off topic. I thought Zuckerberg handled himself just fine, given the circumstances. I say this as someone who thinks the world would be better off without Facebook. I don't use it. I don't invest in it. ------ RichardHeart The title is missing the word "real" Title on site: "The Real Mark Zuckerberg Is A Lot Less Impressive Than The Movie Version" ------ chooseaname Maybe if there was dramatic background music to manipulate your emotions? ------ coldtea Looks just like a guy who did something ho-hum, at the right time and with the right connections, and thanks to lots of in-between people, got 1000000000x more value that he'd ought to get. Facebook was neither impressive technology, nor original conceptually. It just was there at the right time and had the right funding. Not even for a moment did he strike as a computer genius, a business genius, or anything in between. ------ aeortiz Drop the "the". Just "Mark Zuckerberg". It's cleaner that way.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why I am not a fan of Apache Kafka - kornish https://gist.github.com/markrendle/26e423b6597685757732 ====== boredandroid This article is pretty out of date, I think the central concerns have actually been addressed. It's true that when we were working at LinkedIn Kafka tended to have much better Java support. Since founding Confluent (I'm one of the co-founders) we've really focused on improving the situation outside Java. A few specific corrections: 1\. We added full support for consumers with no interaction with zookeeper in the main kafka protocol. There is no longer any direct interaction with zookeeper from either the producer or consumer. We did this because we care a lot about the non-java clients. 2\. Kafka has been extremely disciplined about backwards compatibility. The protocol comes with versioning and changes are always implemented in a way that supports both the old and new version and can be rolled out without downtime. In the five year history of the project we did one backwards incompatible release--the break from 0.5.x-0.7.x to 0.8.x. This was done intentionally to allow us to refactor the apis. I think this is a pretty good track record. It's worth also addressing why Kafka clients directly access nodes in the cluster rather than requiring a proxy layer. The reason we do this is to allow very high throughput, partition aware processing. This is really required for use cases like stream processing that need to process data efficiently, especially in cases where you are reprocessing data. You can always build a proxy layer on top of direct access but not vice versa. Confluent (where I work) is doing two things that help the non-java client ecosystem: 1\. We maintain an open source REST proxy that provides decoupled access (albeit with a little overhead compared to the direct clients) 2\. We have picked up work on clients. We offer and fully support a c/c++ client, a python client, and have a Go client coming soon. All of these are in feature parity with the Java clients. (More on the way). Both of these efforts are open source and apache licensed and included in the open source Confluent Platform distribution of Kafka. ~~~ GauntletWizard Breaking with Zookeeper is a critical misstep. A lockservice is the critical core of any distributed system. The hardest problem in distributed systems is serialization and consensus - A lockservice provides important tooling to solve both, in a way that can be portable and consistent across diverse systems. Master election? As simple as who owns the lock. Serialization? Do an atomic update on the lockserver of the pointer-reference to the datastructure, or simply grab a lock for the duration of the commit. Service discovery? Use ephemeral nodes and prefix-scanning to discover who's online. These solutions are tried and true, but frequently ignored, as each new tooling re-invents the wheel and builds it's own infrastructure... Including Kafka, which can't decide if it's part of the Hadoop stack or it's own complete solution, and is therefore suitable for neither. I'm actually in favor of breaking with Zookeeper (It's terribly designed, has serious problems with concurrency and even consistency, and has the classic java problem of using java's internal serialization methods, which are utterly unfit for storing more than temporary data on a single host.) However, absorbing all of the demands of a lockservice into every product is not the solution to Zookeeper's failures. ~~~ yid They're not breaking with Zookeeper, it sounds like they're refactoring to make zookeeper use transparent to producers and consumers. ~~~ Sphax it's already the case fyi ------ ah- This needs a [2015]. Back then there wasn't a single usable client for .net. Since then the non-Java clients have massively improved. In particular [https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka](https://github.com/edenhill/librdkafka) is fantastic. There's also [https://github.com/dpkp/kafka- python/](https://github.com/dpkp/kafka-python/), with support for consumer groups and all the other modern features. The basic criticism of requiring a complex client is valid, however you cannot achieve the delivery guarantees that Kafka gives you without one. The alternative would be to have a local agent process like consul, but that wouldn't give you the throughput that Kafka gets. Disclaimer: I've built a C# client for Kafka based on librdkafa ([https://github.com/ah-/rdkafka-dotnet](https://github.com/ah-/rdkafka- dotnet)), so I'm biased. ~~~ kornish You're absolutely right; I've added [2015] to the title. For context: the company where I work is putting Kafka into production soon and we came across this post while trying to build an intuition for the tradeoffs of Kafka as a system. I thought I'd post it on HN to try to generate some discourse. It's good to hear that things have changed so much for the positive, though since we're using Go, the Shopify client [0] has been usable for a while. [0]: [https://github.com/Shopify/sarama](https://github.com/Shopify/sarama) ~~~ sctb We've removed the (2015) label now that there's an update at the top of the post. ------ agentgt I think in large part why people dislike Kafka is that they don't really need Kafka (and the complexity that comes with it). Don't get me wrong Kafka is good tech if really need that level of throughput but I honestly think most companies don't have that much data and/or just putting too much in the pipe. But they go with Kafka anyway I guess to "CYA" for future scaling only to find out Kafka is complicated. I mentioned this earlier (a couple days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520159)) for someone using Kafka for a logging aggregation system only to drop it for ZMQ. My other point is if your endpoint isn't fast enough it doesn't really matter what your pipe is. Pick an easy to use pipe first (like RMQ) and worry about scaling the endpoints. ~~~ evantahler I agree! We've had success using redis as our pipe... with fast consumers we regularly push MB/s of data... no problem. And redis is super easy to manage. ~~~ agentgt Yes Redis is a solid choice! And it like RabbitMQ gets the constant "single point of failure" critique (we get this crap from tech partners when we tell them how heavily we use RMQ)... oh so I have should have chosen something even more complicated so that we have multiple points of failure (I'm sort of joking and being sarcastic)? Kafka and ZMQ though are solid choices for intensive stuff... just be prepared to build extra stuff and don't complain when it gets hard :) ------ Xorlev Author doesn't understand Kafka, doesn't have a good client for his language, therefore doesn't like Kafka. Jay Kreps responds to a few of his points -- the complexity of the client is for scalability reasons. > When you Produce a Message Set onto the bus, you don't directly get back a > response telling you that the messages have successfully been persisted to > one or more partitions. At least in the Java client, this isn't true. True, if you used the async API before 0.9 you weren't able to get an ACK, but the sync producer would block until a message was published. In the new consumer, you're handed futures + the ability to provide a callback[1]. [1] [http://kafka.apache.org/082/javadoc/org/apache/kafka/clients...](http://kafka.apache.org/082/javadoc/org/apache/kafka/clients/producer/KafkaProducer.html) ~~~ pfraze There's one specific thing that I'd point out to the author: Zookeeper and load-balancers accomplish different things. If leader-election is being used, then the cluster needs to have a single authority to enforce strict consistency in the logs. A load-balancer can only distribute load between separate nodes. If there were only a load-balancer, and no leader election, then Kafka would not be able to create logs with total orders, and you'd have a different system. (We can talk about alternative architectures, but I'm doubtful there's an alternative to leader-election that maintains the same properties.) He's complaining that Zookeeper takes 6 seconds to restore uptime in a failure, which may be improvable, but it's not really bad. If you want strict consistency, you either have a leader-election protocol, or you manually reconfigure your cluster when it fails. So, it's 6 automated seconds vs N manual minutes of labor, after your pager goes off. ------ slap_shot I work with Kafka every day and don't really think the OP's concerns (it's too complex and there isn't third party driver support to the degree of Redis) are too serious. They both will be solved with time. My bigger fear is Confluent - the private company founded by many Kafka core committers and employing many Kafka committers. Confluent offers open source extensions to Kafka's core in the form of connectors (boiler plate code to connect to common sources and sinks like JDBC databases, files, and Hadoop). Confluent also offers (as of right now) one closed source product extension (Control Center - a cluster monitoring system similar to the management UI of RabbitMQ, etc) that requires enterprise subscription (several thousand dollars per node per year) after a 30 day trial. $30.9MM for a service/support based company seems like a lot of money and a drives a very high valuation that needs to show return. I personally am skeptical of service/support venture backed model[0]. My fear is that Kafka will increasingly require "enterprise" support tools with less and less support and features available to people who do not pay for enterprise support. The amount of documentation of the 0.10 release (particularly the Streams API) that resided on the Confluent page versus the Kafka page is a HUGE red flag to me. I have all the respect in the world for Jay, and the Kafka/Confluent team, but I find myself avoiding Confluent's tools (Kafka Connect and Schema Registry) because of fear that those will eventually be closed source or require an enterprise subscription. [0] I'm not an investor but I haven't seen many these models work out in the long run. A recent Podcast by A16Z touches on this subject very well, with an A16Z partner saying he believes exactly one company has pulled this model off well at venture scale - Red Hat. [http://a16z.com/2016/08/19/pricing-freemium- premium-opensour...](http://a16z.com/2016/08/19/pricing-freemium-premium- opensource/) ~~~ djhworld _My fear is that Kafka will increasingly require "enterprise" support tools with less and less support and features available to people who do not pay for enterprise support. _ I thought Kafka was an Apache project, don't they have rules against this sort of thing? ~~~ x0x0 Sure, the Apache distro of kafka won't require them. Users who buy from Confluent will download Confluent's build of kafka. Similar to how things work in the hadoop ecosystem: You can get Apache hadoop, but most users get one of Cloudera, Hortonworks, or MapR. ~~~ ptrincr As it stands though, kakfa is no where near as complicated as setting up and managing a hadoop/yarn/spark(etc etc) cluster. Without using something like Hortonwork's Ambari, it's a right pain trying to get everything installed, working together and managing it. Then you have to worry about how you are going to upgrade it. Currently you can use this chef cookbook [https://github.com/mthssdrbrg/kafka- cookbook](https://github.com/mthssdrbrg/kafka-cookbook) , along with the yahoo kafka-manager application and you can get a cluster running without much effort or complication. The cookbook has a coordination feature which allows you to use a locking mechanism ( I use consul as we use it for dns/auto registration), which allows you to roll out changes across the cluster, restarting each broker one at a time, it also allows you to upgrade in a similar fashion. ------ admnor Hi. Author of the article/gist here. It was actually written in Spring of last year, I think. I've just updated it because, as people have said, many of the issues have been addressed one way or the other: * The KafkaREST proxy makes life a little easier * librdkafka makes life a lot easier, especially when you can just download a thin wrapper around it for your chosen language * I am no longer working at the place that chose Kafka 0.8 following no testing at all for their use case, and refused to back down through months of hell both writing code and trying to keep clusters available * The people at Confluent have done a lot of good work since then, both on Kafka itself and on various auxiliary tools/products. So yeah, I would probably look at Kafka again today if I needed that kind of functionality. Screw ZooKeeper though. ------ reitanqild To be honest I think very many of us don't need Kafka. As with many other things as long as we aren't handling more than a few thousands messages/sec any decent ordinary nessage broker like ActiveMQ should do. Caveat: do not install production message bus in a vm. I recently listened to this talk which compares and explains very nicely: [https://vimeo.com/181925293](https://vimeo.com/181925293) ~~~ ah- Kafka gives you vastly better delivery guarantees than the common ActiveMQ brokers. If you put a message into Kafka and have it configured correctly, it will come out on the other end at least once. This is not the case for most of the competitors. ~~~ vidarh A lot of the time you don't need at-least once, so even picking a broker without support for it is not necessarily an issue. And at-least once can be reasonably simply layered on top (require a response at a higher level layer) at a cost, so depending on your use-case, forgoing at-least once support in the broker can very well be the right choice. ------ yummyfajitas I find the complaints that Linkedin hasn't open sourced their REST client to be a little silly. I'm in a similar situation - PHP needs to send commands into Kafka but PHP kafka libs aren't great (or maybe there are and my PHP guys don't want to use them). So I wrote a little Thrift endpoint (in Scala) which receives messages and writes to kafka. It's under 100 lines of code. Probably another couple of hundred lines for the PHP version of the thrift client. Are we really complaining that Linkedin hasn't open sourced their 200 loc rest client? ~~~ ah- I'm not sure if it was the case when the article was written, but the REST proxy is open sourced now: [https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka- rest](https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka-rest) ------ KirinDave "Really new" around November 2015. It was released in 2011 though. It's only 2 years younger than Redis, and is primarily an exercise in using Zookeeper. It's very surprising to hear people suggest Redis pubsub is a valid substitute for Kafka, when in fact it's not. It has a fundamentally different set of operating characteristics, a different sweet spot. Kafka isn't great from a consumer resumption point of view, but at least there ARE options. It's also untrue that Kafka gives no feedback on a successful message put. This is obviously a bug or design shortcoming in the post author's chosen toolchain which is correctable, and was part of the core java toolchain as of late 2015 AFAIK. I do agree that the Kafka system has an architecture that maximizes difficulty for new language bindings. Certainly C# has the tools to write an excellent implementation, assuming someone understands zookeeper well enough. ~~~ Sphax I don't understand what is difficult about thé kafka protocol. as a client you only ever need to talk to the broker. this uses a binary protocol that is really straightforward to implement. any language that can work with binary and can open a tcp socket is suitable to write a client. ~~~ KirinDave What threw me off is some disaster recovery scenarios are a lot easier if you can inspect and modify the broker data put into ZK. ~~~ Sphax having your client modify the ZK data is not a good idea, you're bound to cause problems. ~~~ KirinDave If you were in mid-block consumption in some cases it may make sense to advance your index to avoid replays. You can say, "You should have made the message consumer idempotent" and I reply, "I agree this was a consulting gig I was there to fix the problems." ;) ~~~ Sphax oh you're talking about consumer offsets ! I exclusively use kafka to store offsets since I started using kafka with 0.8.0.2 so I can set my offsets by using the kafka protocol only ------ notacoward I liked "behind a load balancer like a normal server" the best. How does the author think a load balancer works? By making an even less accurate guess about the state of servers behind it than Kafka can do via Zookeeper. AFAICT the author is just upset that Kafka isn't exactly like Redis, whereas most sane people would be quite glad it's not. ------ hifier Seems like mostly FUD. No mention of specific issues in any clients. And please have a look at other high throughput systems (like Cassandra or VoltDB) before claiming that a load balancer is the proper way to connect clients to a distributed system. ~~~ tptacek Try to be more careful about the term "FUD". I know it isn't written anywhere that this is the case, but in reality, "FUD" implies a bad-faith effort to convince people to avoid something; it means the person spreading the message doesn't care if it's true or not. There is a big difference between that kind of "FUD" and simply being incorrect or under-informed about things, even if you think people should have an obligation to be better informed before relating their opinions. ~~~ hifier Interesting. Noted. ------ falcolas Quick note - the author just did an update for an "As Of Sept 2016". TL;DR: Still not a great solution for their original problem. The development of good C/C++ libraries means he could now get around the lack of decent C# libraries. Overall architecture still pretty f'ed. ------ fusiongyro I don't have as much depth with it as the author, but I also felt like using it was kind of a bait and switch, especially coming from having read (and loved) Jay's book I Heart Logs. We're using it at my work but I'm not really in love with it and will probably be trading it out for AMQP for an event system we're planning. I was working with a junior engineer on this project, and he kept on getting confused about what features were ZooKeeper and which were Kafka. There are two complex technologies here as a first hurdle to using it. This isn't ideal. In the book he describes a scenario where your stream processors record to their own storage where they are in the stream, but Kafka's stock consumers now seem to keep track of that in ZooKeeper instead, which seems like an odd place to make the decision. We initially had a small Node.js server, just to experiment with, but I discovered that it had no error handling at all. I could put fake hostnames in and it would just hang out, as if eventually maybe they would appear and it could connect. This is really the Kafka driver's fault; we switched back to Java and the Java client worked, it's just a little overcomplex. But we also periodically came in to find the server had crashed. I still don't know why. (I'm open to it being our general ignorance and a misconfiguration or something.) In the book, Jay describes this beautiful computing model where you have these log streams and you just process them, and it's high-level and very alluring. The actual APIs that Kafka gives you are not beautiful or intuitive. Rewinding to the beginning is something you can only do after you read, for instance. We were thinking of using it like an external write-ahead-log (as described in the book) but it just doesn't really support that use-case directly through its API. It's kind of a shame, because AMQP doesn't support that use case all that well. I believe you have to decide whether you want your queue to act like a round-robin affair or as a persistent queue. Kafka sort of lets you have both; streams (ostensibly) work like persistent broadcast queues. I don't think I'll be able to use AMQP as a write-ahead-log by itself; probably I'll have to have some kind of mediating service that's just recording events to persistence and have a separate way of getting historical stuff. I spent a year or so unable to work on Kafka but telling everyone to read I Heart Logs, so getting in there a few months ago and seeing how wide the gap is between the beautiful theory and the practice has been disillusioning. Frankly, the actual system and the one in the book are pretty radically divergent. I am still a big fan of the system described in the book. I hope someday I get to use it. ~~~ gfodor Kafka Streams [1] is the library being worked on by Confluent that I think best approximates the vision for stream processing systems outlined in the book. [1] [http://docs.confluent.io/3.0.0/streams/](http://docs.confluent.io/3.0.0/streams/) ~~~ fusiongyro Thanks, I'll definitely check that out. ------ jknoepfler The linked article now includes a giant disclaimer on top more or less retracting the view expressed in the title. Please update the title to accurately reflect the linked content. Also note that the author is mostly griping because of issues which no longer exist. I've posted the author's words below: "Update, September 2016 OK, you can pretty much ignore what I wrote below this update, because it doesn't really apply anymore. I wrote this over a year ago, and at the time I had spent a couple of weeks trying to get Kafka 0.8 working with .NET and then Node.js with much frustration and very little success. I was rather angry. It keeps getting linked, though, and just popped up on Hacker News, so here's sort of an update, although I haven't used Kafka at all this year so I don't really have any new information. In the end, we managed to get things working with a Node.js client, although we continued to have problems, both with our code and with managing a Kafka/Zookeeper cluster generally. What made it worse was that I did not then, and do not now, believe that Kafka was the correct solution for that particular problem at that particular company. What they were trying to achieve could have been done more simply with any number of other messaging systems, with a subscriber reading messages off and writing them to some form of persistent storage (like Elasticsearch). I'm sure there are issues of scale or whatever where Kafka makes sense. It is true, as many people have pointed out in the comments, that my primary problem was the lack of a good Kafka client for .NET. If I'd been able to install a Kafka Nuget package and it had just worked, this would never have been written. But I couldn't. Today I could probably use a thin wrapper around librdkafka, and if I ever have to work with Kafka from .NET again, that's probably what I'll do. C/C++ libraries are great for stuff like that: C can talk to anything, and everything can talk to C. Yay. I do understand the performance-related reasons that drove the decision to design a clever-client architecture, but it was, apparently, extremely difficult to create a good client unless you were working with either Java, or with a lower-level language such as C or Go which could work with the complex protocols and implementation requirements. So, anyway, like I said, you can ignore the stuff below which was written about an old version of the software, while I was in a very bad mood. But I'm going to leave it here, in the hopes that it may serve as a warning to future developers of really complicated infrastructure components. It probably won't, though." ------ thomaslee > When you Produce a Message Set onto the bus, you don't directly get back a > response telling you that the messages have successfully been persisted to > one or more partitions. Instead, you must also Consume the bus, and you > should eventually receive multiple messages acknowledging the persistence of > each message in the set. Maybe this has changed recently, but IIRC this isn't true if your ProducerRequest has the ack bit set to 1 or 2 (i.e. leader or replica acking): [https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka/blob/79aaf19f24bb48f90...](https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka/blob/79aaf19f24bb48f90404a3e3896d115107991f4c/core/src/main/scala/kafka/api/ProducerRequest.scala#L60) The response/ack is sent directly over the socket sending the request. > If a Node dies then a "leadership election" happens, ZooKeeper is updated > with the new metadata, and your application must react to this and handle > the changes. There's a six second delay while this happens Not that I doubt it, but not sure where six seconds comes from here ... perhaps waiting for partition leader elections? It's been long enough that I can't quite remember exactly what happens during a failover. > and who knows what happens if you try and send messages to a dead node > during that time. Depends how it died, which client API you're using and how the client is configured. Some combination of: * data loss if acking is disabled (hint: enable acking) * backpressure and errors in the client until new partition leaders kick in * client socket writes hanging "forever" If the latter is surprising: no SO_SNDTIMEO in pure Java blocking socket I/O. Think the new clients may address that, but not entirely sure. As an aside: can't emphasize enough how important it is to get your configuration right early. By the time you run into problems, it's often too late. Pay heed to any tuning guides you can find. Talk to Confluent if you're still unsure. > AND HAVE THEY OPEN SOURCED THIS MAGICAL SERVER? NO, THEY BLOODY HAVEN'T. [https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka- rest](https://github.com/confluentinc/kafka-rest) this thing? FWIW, it's kind of a joke for high throughput anyway. Last time we spoke to Confluent they sort of discouraged its use for exactly that reason. Still, it's an easy bridge for folks who aren't too fussed about throughput. Not sure why you'd be using Kafka if throughput's not your thing, but y'know. > If you are using Java/Scala/Clojure/Kotlin/whatever and can use the Official > Java Client then I'm sure Kafka is a perfectly reasonable choice for a > message bus, although there are plenty of others that seem to me to be far > less bloody-minded. Despite all the gotchas, Kafka's capable of pretty incredible throughput in a fault-tolerant HA configuration. I can empathize with some of the frustrations, but past a certain scale the proposed alternatives just aren't IMHO. ------ agounaris Why someone should be a fan of Kafka? its not the team of my town its a damn hammer.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Astronomers detect regular rhythm of radio waves, with origins unknown - Brajeshwar https://phys.org/news/2020-06-astronomers-regular-rhythm-radio-unknown.html ====== jnurmine From the article: The pattern [for FRB 180916.J0158+65] begins with a noisy, four-day window, during which the source emits random bursts of radio waves, followed by a 12-day period of radio silence. How do astronomers know the bursts are random...? Or is that a shorthand here for lack of understanding about the process (like planets passing in front of the source) and therefore the pattern itself? Edit: formatting	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Can Be Done? Digital Media Policy Options for Europe (and Beyond) - DyslexicAtheist https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/what-can-be-done-digital-media-policy-options-europe-and-beyond ====== DyslexicAtheist a TLDR is on their twitter: [https://twitter.com/risj_oxford/status/1198939037031120896](https://twitter.com/risj_oxford/status/1198939037031120896)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: LinkedIn Jobs sucks for remote roles. Who will disrupt them? - josephby ====== krmmalik I was wondering exactly the same thing last night. There seem to be many innovators and disruptors in the tools for remote working space but no one in the space to help you find actual remote jobs, especially freelance gigs (Im not talking about quick jobs like those found on upwork and fiverr but serious projects) ------ josephfung Have you checked out [https://remote.com/](https://remote.com/)? ~~~ josephby Yep, they're the one that I've seen so far. Beautifully designed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What is the space overhead of Base64 encoding? - ingve https://lemire.me/blog/2019/01/30/what-is-the-space-overhead-of-base64-encoding/ ====== Jaruzel I think the angle he's going for here is that if you have inline base64 blobs in your html/css code, and that's then served by a HTTP(S) server using gzip compression, _are_ you wasting lots of space/bandwidth? and the answer is +5% to +2.5% overhead, which isn't much considering the larger advantage of a single round trip to the server as all the assets are embedded in the html document. Of course there's also the overhead of decoding all those base64 blobs in the browser, but I'm sure that's a topic for another blog post in the future :) ~~~ _petronius For the first load of the page, sure. But if you're embedding HTML and CSS, then you can't cache it separately, which means having to fetch it all on _every_ request where anything has changed, in addition to the decoding etc on every request. ~~~ masklinn That can also be an advantage, if the connection has a high throughput but a high latency (e.g. cellular networks, still), you'd much rather fetch everything in a single request. There's a slight inefficiency in the inability to independently cache assets, but even that's not necessarily a big issue: you'd mostly inline small assets. ~~~ skohan It still feels like a hack to work around a problem that should be solved at the protocol level. There's no technical reason that multiple assets couldn't be streamed over a single TCP connection. If it's a common use-case that a number of assets need to be loaded at once to display a web page, then this should be supported by HTTP. ~~~ jenscow Great idea. Let's call it HTTP/2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/2) ------ NelsonMinar I wonder if gzip has improved? 15 years ago when I tested this, it was more efficient to gzip base16 encoded data than base64 encoded data. (At least, the English dictionary.) I assume that was because the 3:4 encoding broke up patterns in the source text and messed with the compressor. But I just tested this again and it's not true anymore. $ wc -c american-english 971578 american-english $ gzip < american-english \| wc -c 259977 $ base64 < american-english \| gzip \| wc -c 429263 $ hexdump -e '"%x"' < american-english \| gzip \| wc -c 478411 ~~~ kbaker Actually, it is still true. hexdump has some confusing format options... what you were using was converting it to little-endian first before printing the hex representation, which really messed with gzip. Try this: $ hexdump -e '"%x"' < american-english \| gzip \| wc -c 463871 $ hexdump -v -e '/1 "%02x"' < american-english \| gzip \| wc -c 302515 $ base64 < american-english \| gzip \| wc -c 415737 ~~~ eadmund > converting it to little-endian first Ack, is there _anything_ little-endian doesn't ruin? /me misses 68000 assembler … ------ tln If you just compress the base64, the overhead is 5%. But if you embed within an HTML file, with a different set of character frequencies, that increases. $ cat index.html \| gzip -9 \| wc -c 14116 $ cat index.html bing.base64 \| gzip -9 \| wc -c 15994 $ expr 15994 - 14116 1878 $ cat bing.base64 \| gzip -9 \| wc -c 1432 ~~~ tinus_hn If you’re going to do an experiment like that you will probably want the file to be a whole lot bigger for more accurate results. ------ kstenerud I wrote some revised radix-based text encoding specifications to make them interoperate better with modern text processor standards (SGML, string literals, filenames, URIs, etc). I also included a representative test for how they fare on uncompressed vs pre-compressed data when compressed with gzip: [https://github.com/kstenerud/safe- encoding/blob/master/READM...](https://github.com/kstenerud/safe- encoding/blob/master/README.md#compression) radix-64 of course fares the best, but radix-85 isn't much different, and is 10% smaller uncompressed. ------ kilovoltaire The article compares raw vs base64+gzip, but I'd be interested to see gzip vs base64+gzip ~~~ leetbulb Did some further investigation: i included some text files, hex encoding, and other compression as well :) raw file list: [https://hastebin.com/vazonowuvo.txt](https://hastebin.com/vazonowuvo.txt) tsv (c/p to spreadsheet: [https://hastebin.com/ewohafucem.tsv](https://hastebin.com/ewohafucem.tsv) \--- (interesting) using bzip2, compression is better when the following file are encoded first with base64 or hex: bing.png googlelogo.png peppers_color.jpg Useless takeaways: \- prefer base64 over hex when encoding already compressed images before further compression \- prefer hex over base64 when encoding plain text / low entropy data before further compression ~~~ spurgu Heh, so gzipped png's are generally larger than non-gzipped. Samples are prob. heavily compressed though. ~~~ zrm Not just that, PNG and gzip use the same compression algorithm: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFLATE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFLATE) ------ ggm We used to argue about the cost of enforcing a linewrap under 80 in email days, without really discussing how elision of the \r\n embeds in the PEM encoded or Base64 would make this a non-issue. =Endmarker ------ sshine That reminds me of when someone asked if strings that are base64-encoded twice are regular. They are. [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49650847/determine-if- st...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49650847/determine-if-string-is- base64-encoded-twice) ~~~ tedunangst What makes base64 encoded random data not regular? ~~~ zamadatix Nothing, the top answer in the link covers that question trivially. The question on if twice encoded strings are regular is simply the more interesting one as it is not as trivial. ------ aboutruby From archive.org: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190131000036/https://lemire.me...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190131000036/https://lemire.me/blog/2019/01/30/what- is-the-space-overhead-of-base64-encoding/) ------ bdhess > Privacy-wise, base64 encoding can have benefits since it hides the content > you access in larger encrypted bundles. Uh, no. ~~~ zamadatix Based on your selected quote and short comment I think you're reading that differently than the author intended. Note the start of that paragraph (which you left out): > In some instances, base64 encoding might even improve performance, because > it avoids the need for distinct server requests. I.e. they are arguing inlining all resources and grabbing them in a single request has a smaller fingerprint. This is probably less true with HTTP/2 or QUIC ~~~ maxk42 Yes, but it's not encrypted. Furthermore the article begins with the premise of using text-only data transfer protocols such as MIME, then goes on to talk about base64-encoding _then_ gzipping data. If he were to continue talking about text-only data transfer, then he should've talked about gzipping, _then_ base64-encoding the data or if he were talking about reducing the size of the data he should've been talking about gzipping _instead_ of base64-encoding the data. Instead he seems to be talking about something which isn't compatible with MIME. So the article doesn't really seem to have a clear direction. If the point was to cut down on a single round-trip to the server then congratulations -- you've increased your page size by 2.5% and added the overhead of compression to the request -- a much higher toll than the cost of a 2nd request for non-trivial assets of the sort gzip would be effective for since it has its own overhead requirements. ~~~ zamadatix > Yes, but it's not encrypted. Would your opinion change if you reread the content with the understanding HTTPS is assumed when talking about web privacy in 2019? The author made no claim whatsoever base64 was encrypting the data, just bundling it into one generic request. > Furthermore the article begins with the premise of using text-only data > transfer protocols such as MIME, then goes on to talk about base64-encoding > then gzipping data... Would your opinion change if you reread the content with the assumption the author means to set "Content-Encoding: gzip" in the server config rather than literally gzipping the content? I think both of these are fair assumptions for the target audience of the article to assume but your disagreements with the article are only true without them. ~~~ maxk42 > Would your opinion change if you reread the content with the understanding > HTTPS is assumed when talking about web privacy in 2019? Well he began by talking about email, so no. If we want to talk about HTTPS and 2019, then let's serve the whole shebang with HTTP/2 and not worry about reducing the number of requests, which seems to be the only advantage offered. > Would your opinion change if you reread the content with the assumption That's the assumption I was forced to make, and the crux of my argument. Content-Encoding: gzip works in most servers by compressing the content on the fly -- not by precompiling. Hence my comment about adding the overhead of compression to the request. ------ ggm Another gem, is the practice of seeking the minimal encoded instance which is correctly identified as "legal" by magic. People do this for a.out, JPG, PNG &c.. ------ leetbulb The site is down, but the answer is 33%. (four output bytes for every three input bytes). It could be slightly less if you want to remove the padding and calculate what the padding _should be_ on the decoding side: base64string.length % 4. Edit: If no entropy is added, it's still ~33%. C'mon :P ~~~ BeeOnRope When it's up, you'll see the article goes a bit beyond a literal reading of the title: the topic is the overhead of base64 under the assumption that the output ends up compressed with something like gzip. ~~~ leetbulb Figured as much. Interested to see the results. My assumption is that it doesn't change much. However, I suppose that depends on the compression algorithm. ~~~ BeeOnRope In principle a good byte-wise entropy coder should recover nearly 100% of the base-64 "inflation" since no entropy is added. In practice gzip doesn't get all of it since it is an imperfect entropy coder for several reasons. ~~~ hermitdev You are correct, but gzip is a generally happy medium of cost to encode/decode and encoded size when transmitting over a fast network. For a 10 Mbps or greater link, if you use something like bzip2 or 7z, you'll likely spend more time encoding than transmitting a payload. This is from my personal experience utilizing gzip and bzip2 via Boost Iostreams to compress network payloads over a 1Gbps link. End to end latency was far superior with gzip than bzip2, despite bzip2 having a smaller transmission size. ~~~ BeeOnRope gzip is only a happy medium if your other candidates are 7z (LZMA) or bzip2, which are both stronger but slower compressors. bzip2 is essentially obsolete (off the pareto frontier), and LZMA is good but slow so will only be best if your transmission speed is low. Near the space/time tradeoff point that gzip lives, however, it is thoroughly outclassed by more modern compressors such as zstd or brotli with the appropriate settings. ------ speedplane This article compares base64 with gzipped base64 and posits that there isn't too much difference in size. That's not terribly insightful. The only reason base64 exists is because of a lack of standardized binary distribution formats, especially over the internet. There is literally no substantive difference between data, and base64 data. I'm actually quite surprised that gzipped data is 2% larger, I'd expect a smaller margin.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Great IDE vs Text Editor Debate - dsego http://blog.bittersweetryan.com/2012/02/great-ide-vs-text-editor-debate-why-i.html ====== coldtea I don't think there's a debate per se. IDE's (as a notion) are better than editors, and everyone would agree to that if IDE's (as an implementation) weren't worse than editors. I mean, if we could have an IDE with: 1) Fast, and I mean FAST, startup times and response. 2) No much visual clutter when you don't want it (unlike Eclipse/XCode/Idea/VS etc tons of toolbars and such) 3) A great editor pane, on the level of Vim/Emacs for editing code. While retaining all other IDE features (debugging integrated, refactoring, intelligent auto completion, building system, REPL, etc) then everybody would like it. Except for the total barebones kind of guys, people don't have IDEs in that they hate an IDEs feature set. They hate IDE in that they hate current IDE implementation. As proof, consider that people using Emacs/Vim/ST/TE also adds tons of plugins and settings and stuff to them to add them IDE like capabilities (project handling, tree views, debugging, AST-auto-completion, etc). ~~~ Drakim But there will never be an IDE like that. It's like saying that trucks are always better than cars, provided that the truck uses less gas, fits better into small spaces, and is easier to control. Text editors win over IDEs because outside of theory you never get an IDE like that, they are always slower, always full of clutter. I've seen some people promote certain lightweight IDEs as being just as handy as text editors, but it's simply not true. Their startup time is simply measured in several seconds seconds rather than several minutes, but it's never instant like my text editor. They have a minimalistic interface, but it's usually a lot of stuff crammed into very small menus, nothing like the text editors where I can intuitively find everything (because the text editor doesn't overreach in functionality, it's just a text editor). ~~~ coldtea > _But there will never be an IDE like that._ Nothing at all technically or theoretically prevents it. > _t's like saying that trucks are always better than cars, provided that the > truck uses less gas, fits better into small spaces, and is easier to > control._ Except those contrains only apply to physical objects such as cars. With code, you can achieve all of the requirements I described. Not because there are no compromises to be made when programming -- but because none of those compromises comes into play in this situation. You CAN have an IDE that opens fast. You CAN have an IDE with a great editor pane (embedded Vim for example). None of those are infeasible or necessary tradeoffs. > _I've seen some people promote certain lightweight IDEs as being just as > handy as text editors, but it's simply not true. Their startup time is > simply measured in several seconds seconds rather than several minutes, but > it's never instant like my text editor. They have a minimalistic interface, > but it's usually a lot of stuff crammed into very small menus, nothing like > the text editors where I can intuitively find everything (because the text > editor doesn't overreach in functionality, it's just a text editor)._ None of those are necessary characteristics of an IDE. The fact that you say "usually" admits to that. As an example: something like Sublime Text 3 can load in split seconds. The basic things it lacks to be a full IDE (refactoring support, embedded debugger, etc) are things that can be loaded on demand, so if they were added to it, startup time wouldn't be affected at all. And it could still have a minimalistic interface even with those. Why? Because, for one, nothing necessitates all panes being open at all times. E.g When you run the debugger you can see the debugger toolbar -- when editing, you don't. Etc. As for your "Their startup time is simply measured in several seconds seconds rather than several minutes, but it's never instant like my text editor". 1) As I said, something like ST3 opens instantly. 2) Even if it takes seconds, who cares? You open your editor once and you work. It's not like you reopen it all the time. If you do open it, e.g because you want an editor for sysadmin, terminal work, sure, use something else. ------ jussij The two things IDEs do well are debugging and code refactoring. To help implement these types of features the IDE embeds a version of the language inside of itself. The problem with this is you then need a new IDE for each new language. Because a good programmer's editor will try to be language neutral it does not have that luxury. But as a bonus, because the editor is not carrying around all that extra _language_ baggage the editor will always be faster than the IDE. ~~~ coldtea > _The problem with this is you then need a new IDE for each new language._ Well, it would be nice if we had some "IDE framework" to take care of all the barebones stuff (editor pane, basic UI, loading files, encoding, high level abstract support for highlighting, refactoring, embedding a terminal, etc) and people could hook it into their language to make an IDE for it. And it would have to be written in C, to not usable from all languages with a C ABI/FFI, and not be dog slow like Eclipse. ~~~ dsego How about protocols? E.g. there is a server for Javascript auto-complete running in the background. The editor has a plugin for the protocol and just sends a request for a list of completion options. ~~~ jussij The gocode autocomplete uses this approach and it works very well. ------ boksiora Sublime text - best editor ever. I am using it right now	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Diaspora Project: Building the Anti-Facebook - alexandros http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/diaspora_project_building_the_anti-facebook.php ====== thefool Meh. I don't think software people understand just how disinclined a non-software person is to do anything requiring configuring serverside stuff. Even torrents, where clients have essentially become good enough that all you have to do is install them, most people get a friend that has some understanding of computers to set them up for them. The cloud is really a better model if you want to achieve widespread adoption, and what is the point of a social network without people. ~~~ runevault That's why they build it such that people can simply pay a 3rd party that offers the service and just use them to hold their identity. Not as much control as hosting it yourself, but still not as bad as facebook where you can't leave and they hold EVERYONE's data. ~~~ thefool I'm just not convinced that enough people actually _care_ about that. The largest cell phone market is the one for generic simple phones that just make calls, regardless of the smartphone hype. The reason that IE is so ubiquitous is that a huge number of people don't really care, as long as they can get on the internet, and go on facebook and youtube and maybe a few other sites, thats enough for them. Hell, even look at dropbox, people only started using that sort of service when it went into the cloud and became dead easy. They didn't care that they were locking all their data into a hard to leave service. Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great if there was a way to recreate facebook in an open software setting, I just don't think any social network where the average user would have to either install a complicated app or pay a fee will ever get off the ground... ~~~ loup-vaillant If most people don't care, that's because they don't _know_. See, most people barely make the difference between their browser and a search engine. They don't think about the long term accessibility of their digital data, or about the preservation of their online privacy because they just don't know what it means. On the other hand, they do care about preserving (physical) family photos and important documents. They do care about their home not being spied. I see people not caring as a lack of education. Computers are ubiquitous in the western world since less than a generation. The Internet is even younger. This is just too short for people to understand them (and their hazards). Just wait 20 years, and they will understand. At this point, they will care. Now, the question is whether we can accelerate the process or not. ------ fab13n Decentralized = _much_ harder to police by governments, authorities, big corps. This can unlock radically new usages. For instance, in a fully decentralized system, you can get rid of storage limitations by storing stuff on your computer (or on the cloud in a private form). So you can share not only pics of your pets, but also your music and movies collection. If this results in something as easy to use as Facebook, but uncontrollable and perfectly able to host and protect media piracy / political dissidence / etc., we get darknets for dummies. This project or a variant thereof, if successful, could deeply change Internet by taking all power out of authorities and into people's hand. Whether it's a good or a bad thing is debatable, but it certainly is interesting. ~~~ mseebach > Whether it's a good or a bad thing is debatable Not, not really. It's a _very_ good thing, and similar to what the web did in the first place. ------ mseebach Uhh, four guys and an idea for a website. You know they'll definitely succeed because they're totally willing to sacrifice their summer internships to build it in three months and release it, scouts-honor! Sorry for the sarcasm & general negativity - but they have _nothing_. As someone else said, just build it. The concept of replacing Facebook with something open, private and distributed is not at all new - many have tried and failed before them. "We have the chops" and $10k isn't some kind of magic potion. And their biggest challenge isn't building it, it's getting people to leave Facebook for it. ------ runevault I wonder how many people have considered building something along these lines. I know I did when I started hearing about what came out of f8, and I don't even use Facebook currently. ~~~ alttab I played with this idea a full year ago. The ability to own your own data and share it out as a web service or data host. There would be no need for a centralized server, and it would provide many _competitive_ opportunities to host what I came to call "identity servers." This would create innovation as each value added provider can experiment with the direction. I won't be the first to call it now - but I can imagine the popularity of decentralized architectures catching mainstream attention. Git is getting popular, vs say SVN or CVS. Remember, the internet itself is decentralized. ~~~ runevault Yeah the ability to easily self-host an identity server or to be able to just pay someone else to be hosted on theirs is hugely important. Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update. Doing that last part securely is one of the things that hung me up when thinking about it, but I also only really dug into it for an hour or so. ~~~ wmf _Also the ability to easily move your identity and inform people you have moved so they can update._ I think DNS is the key here; it lets you move a server while keeping the same name. ~~~ Todd This can be handled by 301 redirect or it can be built into the protocol. When moving a profile from one provider to another, the standard could require a response indicating the location of the profile for a minimum period of time (such as a week or a month). A standard such as this would be crawled on a frequent basis by the social network apps built on top of it, as well as the search engines. They would all update their canonical profile addresses and that would be that--an organic, self repairing network. ~~~ wmf I don't even trust providers enough to provide a 301 redirect, but your paranoia may vary. ------ marcusbooster Ugh, software teams are the new bands. ~~~ eavc If a scintilla of the glamor of being drug-addled and minimally employed gets leeched by ambitious programmers, that's probably a net gain. ~~~ nandemo Well, we'd still need "programmer groupies". If they existed, I imagine economic growth would soar in the Western world. (Though I don't really get marcus's point/joke, probably because I haven't watched the video.) ------ eavc If loads are distributed across a network, how secure would your information be? I guess you could get around that by being explicit about how open your data is and discourage people to post sensitive info. Also, by re-federating the service of Facebook with partner companies (push pics back to flickr, status back to twitter, etc.), they could get some nice allies, reduce the bandwidth requirements dramatically, and allow granular control of users in a very clear and powerful way (flickr is set to private, for instance). Neat idea. I'd love to see it kill facebook. If there's an elegant way to detach online socialization from the profit motive while maintaining functionality, it would be good for everyone not employed by facebook to see it succeed. ~~~ DrSprout The biggest sticking point is going to be the web of trust. Facebook's walled garden is excellent at managing identity, and this would be very difficult if any random 419 scammer can set up a Diaspora server and plug into the network. Really, it seems like turn-key services are the primary solution, though the important thing is to get a competitive marketplace where some are ad- supported, some aren't, but all of them are reasonably trusted. ~~~ loup-vaillant How many e-mail do you receive that appear to come from your friends, but don't? For me, that's none. Diaspora server will be the same. Your random 419 scammer won't be able to make a lot of friends if people are a little careful. Add PGP keys and a proper web of trust, and the scammer won't be able to spoof any identity at all. ------ budu3 I don't full grasp the concept but it seems to me that making users set up their computer to act like some kind of peer is a great barrier to entry for everyday folks. ~~~ paulbaumgart From the Kickstarter page: _After we open source our source code, we hope to also provide a paid turnkey hosted service in the vein of Wordpress.com to make it easy for people who want to use Diaspora, but don’t want to deal with the fuss of setting it up._ ~~~ eavc If the only way for the average person to use the service is to pay for it, that's going to be a very tough hill to climb. ~~~ paulbaumgart Unless someone else hosts an ad-supported version that turns out to be viable. But I agree that their business model needs work. ~~~ DrSprout If its kept minimalistic, along the lines of Craigslist, they will be just fine. ------ jacquesm If facebook is stirring up this kind of sentiment then it could very well be they have a real problem on their hands. Apparently it is ok to take your users for a ride, but only so far. I'm pretty happy about all this, maybe there will be a serious push back against all these companies that see the information they hold about their users as their 'product'. What's next, distributed search engines? ~~~ qq66 Facebook is stirring up this kind of sentiment in less than 0.1% of their users. ~~~ jacquesm Google news currently lists 449 articles about this, NYT, WP, WSJ and so on. You can bet that it's visible to a lot of people. Facebooks users are for the most part not capable of building an alternative but there are people that can, and this seems to bring them from having stuff 'on the drawingboard' to actually doing it. The next privacy cock-up and this kind of article will carry a list of alternatives. ~~~ ericd To add one more, I saw a big feature article in freaking _Consumer Reports_ this month about Facebook privacy issues, and them sharing more than you think. It seems to be hitting the mainstream in a big way. ------ viraptor I see they were trying really hard, but... the movie was a torture. Or maybe it was just my impression. Also, it was funny that youtube included onesocialweb.org in the related videos at the end - it seems to be a similar concept, but I've never heard about it before. ~~~ aquinn wow <http://onesocialweb.org> actually has working code. doesnt seem to be any demo offering public registration yet though. might try and install it myself later. ------ weeksie All they need is a simple migration path for users and they (or something like them) will be able to knock Facebook out of the water—but it'll happen quietly at first, like any other disruptive technology. ~~~ runevault Considering you are now allowed to permanently store data extracted from FB with their API, I wonder just how easy/doable this would be now... ~~~ Raphael This policy was just changed. Now apps can store data as long as they like because they are in a contract with the user. ~~~ runevault I misphrased I guess, that's what I meant is now you CAN hold onto data permanently, before it was only for 24 hours. Which is why it is now possible to make export easy. ------ Raphael I find this 'social' tunnel-vision saddening. The ideal model of communication is more akin to a pastebin, where you can quickly host any data abstraction, not just people profiles. ~~~ ebiester The ideal model for you. If you can host any data abstraction without increasing the complexity, that's a different story. ------ blehn A team of four NYU CS students...what's the 10k for? Just build it! ~~~ nfnaaron rent for the summer ------ wanderr If a project like this were actually successful, it would be exciting news indeed. Not just for those who want to bail on facebook, but those who wish their blogs were more connected, or those who wish that livejournal wasn't dying a slow and pathetic death. If they are hoping to be able to hook in to existing semi-closed systems like Facebook, though, they are aiming for a moving target that, as we've seen, isn't afraid to use the law to stop users from getting their data out. I also wonder how they will handle communities. That is one thing that livejournal has always done quite well, and facebook's groups leaves a lot to be desired. I have a hard time imagining how that will work in a distributed environment, unless the community itself will not actually be distributed. ------ motters Finally! I've been waiting for someone to do something like this, and was even thinking about trying to make something similar myself recently. How hard can it be? Probably not very, compared to other projects I'm working on. I'm sure that it's not just tech geeks who would like to have some modest amount of privacy online. Just declaring that "Privacy is dead. Get over it" may be ok for a few exhibitionists and philosophers, but in the real world people do want and expect some level of privacy - especially when it comes to things like medical conditions or relationships. ------ jasonlbaptiste Is there a problem? Maybe, yeah, but for a limited audience. Will anyone ever install this? I doubt it. Good thing is the people who actually think this is enough of a problem to install some server side stuff have the technical capability to do so. I almost just typed in: Solution in search of a problem. After reading comments here + around the web I feel there is some semi problem here that might apply to a broader market- Facebook is getting creepy with how much they know and it's getting overly complicated. I just think this is a really poor way to solve the problem. ------ r0h4n One solution i can think of is, You Create your own data and keep it stored on your device(can be anything, laptop,desktop,mobile etc). When you visit some host, it knows where to find your data(we assign a common known to all social port to our host), but needs your permission to download the data.So now when a relation of yours visits the same host we visited, It can tell our relation that what we have done on the host, only after we both use a common key. ------ wwward perhaps the most positive outcome will be the outpouring of many different - but API-compatible social networking tools - all built by various naysayers and "i can do better-ists" which result in a variety of great choices. You can choose Wordpress or Moveable Type, or perhaps Apache or IIS, or AIM or GTalk. Interoperability, done earnestly and successfully, will move the challenge to the quality of user experiences and the robustness of the platform. Yes, there are many social network style applications waiting to be discovered, but this effort, Diaspora, not only has a lot of attention, but it hit at a good time - when people are openly dissatisfied with the incumbent service, and the team heading up this project has not only the support of groupies, but their school, open source software organizations, and a lot of very motivated community members. Lets hope that we can build something that will endure for the long term, and reverse the trend of user exploitation. ------ AndrewO I was just searching for something like this yesterday. I came across DiSo (<http://code.google.com/p/diso/>), which at first glance appears to be somewhat stale and a bit of a protocol soup. Anyone know if that effort is still under way? (and if there are any lessons to be learned from it?) ~~~ AndrewO Answering my own question here from the linked Q&A with Luis Villa: [http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr- villa.ht...](http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-villa.html) ------ 3pt14159 Donated 26 bucks. 1% chance of succeeding, but I want them to try. Facebook is just horrible when it comes to privacy. ~~~ something did you sign in to kickstarter with your facebook profile? kind of funny that's an option ------ nfnaaron I hope they get far enough for people to use it. My objection to twitter the instant I saw it was that it required a single host/company, unlike email that can be hosted by individuals or companies and offered on any terms imaginable. ------ madmaze It sounds like a solid idea to me, id love to see a privately owned, node- based system where anyone can own their own things. I wonder how all the separate nodes would interact with each other. Im almost tempted to back them. ~~~ papachito It already exists. It's called status.net using the ostatus protocols. ------ plq diaspora is used for people who live outside of the traditional land of their nation of origin. from my understanding, the name implies that people who don't have a social networking account from some service provider are expatriates. i think this gives too much importance to such services. nice idea, i definitely would like to see how it goes. but the name should be changed, so that it is in line with the political view it is the brainchild of. ~~~ ctd Political views aside, I agree that they'd benefit from a different name. Choose something more accessible, something like "Facebook" but not a derivative. ------ stcredzero I wonder if any of my postings about Facebook alternatives here was inspiration for this project? (Which I would love if this were the case.) ------ aheilbut What ever happened to FOAF? The way to do this is to build it on the web, not to try to create some new peer-to-peer system. ~~~ Todd FOAF has some great ideas. Unfortunately, for a system to have the level of functionality that users have come to expect, it will have to be a protocol run as web services. I think many of those ideas or even parts of the standard can be leveraged, though. ------ spudlyo I suspect that the secure sharing of music, video, and software will help drive the adoption of something like this. ------ jpr I may be naive, but how is that any different from a traditional homepage? ~~~ adnam I think it would have a private part that enables you to manage connections to other homepages, control what's public and private, and aggregates news from other connections. ------ codemechanic Guys, we have this already. Just check out the tonido project. <http://www.tonido.com> ~~~ fab13n This seems to let you host media on your computer, and to work around the need to have a fix IP address or a dyndns account. It doesn't seem to know about graphs of friends, which is the central principle of FB. FB is not about videos, YouTube is; FB is about getting the videos you like to spread across your friendship network. However, it looks like a nice application, even if it's only remotely related to Diaspora or Facebook.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The NYT’s blogs are set to be paywalled - alexandros http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/02/19/the-nyts-blogs-are-set-to-be-paywalled/ ====== petercooper Conversely, the NYT's blogs are going to end up being "reader-walled" and "traffic-walled" too. ~~~ drats Exactly, are people like Krugman going to accept more than half their audience disappearing? ------ Shamiq Let's just call it a grand experiment and see how it goes. ------ agentq The relative value of blog content vs. actual news items may be quite low in the majority of posts, looking across the general quality / salience of NYT blog posts. Though some blogs like DealBook and Economix probably have high readership, I wonder if people will really be willing to pay for opinionated tidbits. ~~~ cabalamat > _I wonder if people will really be willing to pay for opinionated tidbits_ I guess it's supply and demand: people will be willing to pay of opinionated writing on the net when there is a shortage of free opinionated writing on the net. I.e. never :-) ~~~ dpapathanasiou They've tried it before. "Times Select" was a paid feature for access to its opinion columnists (regular news was free), but it lasted just two years: [http://paidcontent.org/article/419-new-york-times-to- close-t...](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-new-york-times-to-close- timesselect-effective-wednesday/) ------ philk Oh no! If only there were other blogs on the internet. I suppose I'll just have to get a subscription then.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
JDK 8 M7 update - javinpaul http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk8-dev/2013-May/002419.html ====== hnha does anyone have experience with openjdk on windows? how well does it work for everyday end-users? ~~~ rlmw As of Java 7 openjdk is the basis for the official Oracle release of Java, and constitutes the reference implementation of Java SE. So if you've used any recent JDK release then you've used openjdk. ~~~ akulbe I think there are still some proprietary closed-source bits in the Oracle Java SE releases though. I'm no expert, but I thought I'd read something to this effect when looking this up recently. (Just in the past couple days.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Wong Kar-wai inspired filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkin - ckcheng https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/3093301/how-wong-kar-wai-hong-kong-director-mood-love-chungking ====== rado Bertolucci's “Besieged” (1998) surpassed WKW, but few people have checked it out. ~~~ perfmode Ebert really didn't enjoy it. I assume you have good reason to recommend. What did he miss? [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/besieged-1999](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/besieged-1999) ~~~ rado The French New Wave wandering spirit, the dynamic almost music video aesthetic etc. got a new life in WKW and with “Besieged” Bertollucci seemed to say, nice try kid, now watch this. All of the above plus politics, even more beauty and uncompromising vision.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bottle light inventor proud to be poor - kposehn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23536914 ====== etler This isn't an alternative to the light bulb. This is an alternative to the window for people living in slums that can't afford glass. ~~~ hcarvalhoalves Probably you've never seen a slum, so let me explain: \- Houses are juxtaposed to each other, there's no room for windows \- Roofs are corrugated, so you can't easily fit a top glass panel even if you have the money for one. \- There are transparent, fiber glass roofs, and some people use those, but often they don't get to choose the materials used to build the house, just use what is available. So this is a quite nice hack that works for most houses. ~~~ throwaway9848 All those sound plausible (having never been to a favela), and if true I agree with you on almost all counts. But it's still not a substitute for a light bulb unless it works in the dark. ~~~ revdinosaur I'm not sure that's fair. It is bulb shape and it emits light. The source of the light happens to be the sun. This is kind of like saying that tungsten lamps aren't lightbulbs because they don't work when not supplied with electricity. They're truly acting as a substitute by spreading light around a darkened area. ~~~ zorbo We're just arguing semantics here. ------ rickdale The title of this article bothers me since the article focuses much more on the bottle and light and rather than how poor and proud Alfredo Moser is. Regardless, pretty cool exposure of life in the slums, I'd bet there are more 'hacks' as a means of survival that are necessary there, but we wouldn't think twice about. I will say the article is good, just don't like the title. ~~~ throwaway420 I can understand being proud of a beneficial invention and offering something to people without taking money for it. He's done an amazing good deed and hopefully will be remembered for this. But I don't understand the title of the article because I think taking pride in poverty is a weird position to be taking. The headline might just be catchy click bait. ~~~ e3pi Proud to be poor? Not paying taxes into NSA surveillance/military state or any whatever exploitive capitalism as other collared proles. Some people are far too busy than to concern themselves with financial vanity and the distractions that follow it. Teeming masses of slum youth with linux netbooks must be high on the list of Fort Meade's threat matrix. ~~~ throwaway420 * You can be proud of opposing the NSA and the MIC and other mechanisms of destruction without volunteering for a life of destitution. * You're free to do whatever you want, but I don't think that embracing poverty is a good solution to the NSA or the MIC. Mass poverty means that the government controls everybody's means of survival (foodstamps, healthcare, etc) which equals total political control. I think that creating business solutions and voluntary organizations that oppose these things is a more viable path, and having money helps with that. Start up a secure email webservice. Startup a charity organization that can help bring relief and attention to innocent civilians being bombed or harmed by governments. * Your stance on capitalism being exploitative is a logical contradiction. A voluntary transaction can only occur in a market when both sides of a trade value what they are getting more than what they are giving up. * What we have today as an economic system is not capitalism - governments dictate the winners and losers in the marketplace and those companies with the best lobbyists always win rather than the companies who create the most value for customers. * You don't need to be a collared prole, to use your terminology. Software is all free and open source now. Start a business with some friends and live an alternative lifestyle to being a 9-5 corporate man. That's what a lot of people here currently do or are working towards. * Not being poor doesn't automatically equate to financial vanity. ~~~ jcmoscon Excellent answer! ------ julianpye True hacker, if I ever saw one. ------ D9u I live off-grid, and have done so for nearly 20 years, and I never needed indoor lighting during daylight hours. I also dislike the idea of poking holes in my roof, for any reason. I'm much more intersted in the gravity light which was featured here a few months ago. [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting- for-...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for- developing-countries) Although the initial cost may be prohibitive for the poverty stricken, it may be well within the acceptable price range for many others, and the gravity light has the added bonus of not requiring any fuel, nor does it require punching holes in one's roof. (I live in an upland rainforest) ~~~ Klinky Lights are used indoors all day long in much of the world. If you don't like poking holes in your roof, then you probably don't like sun windows either. The gravity light requires manual labor to produce light, has moving parts that are more likely to fail, is more costly, and produces less light. ~~~ duskwuff The gravity light produces a _shamefully_ small amount of power - about 100 mW ("one deciwatt") by the manufacturer's own measurement. Even given the increased efficiency of LEDs, the illumination provided by one of these "bottle lights" is still about 100x greater, it's basically free, and it doesn't require you to tend to it every 15 - 30 minutes. ~~~ tehwalrus It would, however, work as an addition to bottle lights, to be used at night. ------ lightyrs This headline is offensive. Nowhere in the article does he indicate that he is proud to be poor. Not that there would be anything wrong with that — quite the opposite, in fact, however, this headline reeks of elitism. ------ kefka Hmm. This would also be really useful in doing underground greenhouses. A tin sheet is cheap. You dig a hole, however long, wide, and deep. Then, you can get in the hole and plant whatever in there. Once done, you can cover it up with the sheet (or wood or whatever) and put the bottle-lights inside. That way, you keep the pests out of your new garden. ~~~ mattgrice It does not seem like that would be very practical. Very few economically important plants will thrive in anything less than full sunlight. This makes sense because most plants become economically important because they are productive (good at turning sunlight into something we want like calories or wood). The exceptions are plants that are grown for some valuable quality which is only needed in scarce quantities, like some spices or flowers. ~~~ PebblesRox Yeah, I didn't understand the hydroponics comment at the end. How does it work better to grow plants indoors than outside if you're using a limited amount of sunlight indoors? Are there other factors that make it worth it? ------ e3pi Down below, a deck prism illumination is astonishing. Drilling a round hole in the cabin sole is way easier, and a discarded plastic bottle is far less expensive than a vintage Criitenden & Willcox prism. Separate the bleach if you get real thirsty? Watch your head(pun?). ~~~ jared314 Deck prisms: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_prism) The main difference here is that deck prisms are flat on top, which limits the amount of light entering the prism. The water in the bottles is filled to the top, creating a dome shaped concentrator. Since water has a refractive index close to glass (~1.3 vs ~1.5) the bottom of the bottle has a similar effect to the deck prism, except with slightly more light. ------ tzm This is effectively a lightbulb that uses wireless energy. ------ opminion Interesting invention. For me, the main thing to learn from this is how much some people depend on artificial light during daylight hours (a reminder of how important hands-on experience is when hacking things to help others). ------ gngeal The numbers don't make sense to me. "It depends on how strong the sun is but it's more or less 40 to 60 watts." <\- I hope that's for the whole roof we see in the picture, not for a single bottle. What's the insolation of a single bottle top anyway? (Unless, of course, they're talking about your grandma's old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs.) ~~~ sophacles Well, at the surface, when the rays are hitting perpendicular to the planet, it's 1000 W/m^2 (approx). Of course the real problem is they are measuring the light in terms of incandescent bulb power draw, rather than something useful like lumens or candela, but due to a century of ubiquitous light bulbs, we've been rating light in the wrong units. ------ JoeAltmaier "The lamps work best with a black cap..." \- why would that be so? Wouldn't a reflective cap work well too? ~~~ lutusp All I can think of is that a black cap won't degrade as quickly because of ultraviolet exposure. Most plastics (long polymers) have chemical bonds that can be broken by the energy level provided by ultraviolet photons, so over time they turn from polymers into quasicrystals and lose their strength -- disintegrate. But a black plastic, by excluding the ultraviolet light, protects itself and lasts much longer. So a bottle that's composed of a clear plastic that naturally resists ultraviolet degradation (there are several) should be capped by a more rigid plastic (to maintain its shape). So the cap needs to be black (or at least a dark color). A reflective cap would work just as well at first, but plastics are made reflective by being painted, and the paint soon falls off, because of ... wait for it ... ultraviolet exposure. ~~~ raldi I thought black objects absorb all wavelengths, and white objects reflect them all away. ~~~ eru Real world materials are rarely ideal black bodies (or ideal reflectors). ~~~ lutusp > Real world materials are rarely ideal black bodies (or ideal reflectors). That's true, but it's also true that all objects eventually reach thermal equilibrium with their surroundings. Were this not the case, it would violate the law of energy conservation, and that's a law that's never broken. In that sense, most objects, solids and plasmas in particular, are reasonable black bodies once they achieve equilibrium. Some of them show spectral lines -- emission, absorption or both -- but in most cases those lines appear on top of a blackbody curve. The sun, for example -- perhaps surprisingly, it exhibits a classic blackbody spectrum appropriate to its surface temperature, with many spectral lines contributed primarily by its comparatively low- pressure atmosphere ([http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png)). The state of matter least like a black body is a low-pressure molecular cloud in space, which often shows only emission and absorption lines, no classic blackbody curve. The lowest pressure gases show the narrowest spectral lines, which is how we can estimate the pressure of a remote cloud of gas illuminated by distant energy sources. ------ mnml_ You can't turn off the fucking thing. ~~~ fnordfnordfnord It automatically turns itself off at night. And then back on again in the morning; and not in with the shocking "argh! my eyes!" suddenness of an incandescent, but a gradual taper that allows your eyes to adjust slowly. Also, you could use a cup and a rubber-band to cover it if you needed darkness mid-day. ------ vincie I thought of this general idea many years ago, but then decided it might be better to cut up the bottles, flatten the plastic and sew the flat pieces together to make panels to use in roofs and windows. Never got around to actually doing anything about it though. ------ cafard At some point, Heineken shipped mostly-oblong bottles to somewhere in the Dutch West Indies for use in walls. I have the impression--I read this years ago--that it was more or less a hobby of the owner. Still, it worked. ------ xanderstrike My dad built a treehouse with exactly this with liter water bottles in ~1994, he said he saw it when he was growing up with glass bottles. I hate to be a spoil sport, but this is hardly a new idea. ~~~ marcosdumay I've this guy on TV a long time ago. I'm certain it was at the 90's, but I don't remember the exact year. It's not a new idea in any way, and was certainly invented more than once. Yet, it was this guy that (by luck) made the life of several people better by communicating it. ------ return0 The comparison with edison is just ridiculous. ------ gadders Daft title and poverty or wealth are morally neutral. You could be equally proud of either. ------ Fuxy That's such an obvious solution I can't believe nobody thought of that before this guy. Weird. ------ lbebber Being very petulant here, but Uberaba is in the southwest, not in the south. ------ Arubis I spent a bit over a year promoting and installing these devices in rural West Africa (see [http://gamlight.org](http://gamlight.org)). I actually wasn't aware of Mr. Moser, having taken inspiration directly from the Liter of Light project ([http://literoflight.org](http://literoflight.org)). In terms of light, a single bottle is insufficient, but ten are enough to light up a mud block-walled, corrugate metal-roofed schoolroom. Since there's virtually zero monitoring of kids' eye health and ability, that can mean the difference between learning to read and learning to look like you're paying attention for young students. A few things to address: Night: these things don't produce any light on their own (they're essentially low-cost deck prisms). A lot of people in-country at the time I helped promote these were excited at the possibility that a full moon might produce sufficient light to see, but it's just not enough. You need to supplement these things once the sun's down. Windows: most of the buildings in rural West Africa are build of mud block, which isn't the most stable or solid of construction materials. It's cheap and readily available, but needs to be built thick and without large windows, or with significant reinforcement to any large windows, or else it crumbles. That means there's very little light coming into these rooms, even in the most sun- kissed of places. Bottle bulbs are an order of magnitude cheaper than installing iron-reinforced windows. Transparent/translucent roofing: when this stuff is available at all, it's questionable whether it will fit the corrugate pattern of an extant roof, and the quality of the translucent roofing plastics we saw in The Gambia and Senegal was quite low; it would go milky and then opaque over just a year or two, and cost more than replacing a bottle bulb would. By contrast, you can purchase corrugated tin roofing and roofing caulk in just about any West African city, and relatively affordably at that. The bottles themselves can be found cheaply or free anywhere that tourists or aid workers spend time. Black caps: it's not the color that matters, it's covering the original cap with something more durable. Once you've assured that there's no leaks in the bottle-corrugate metal interface, the cap is the most likely point of failure on these bulbs. The sun is STRONG in these places, which is a lot of stress on opaque plastics; once weakened, a small crack is enough to emit water vapor, and so a bottle bulb's contents would evaporate, requiring replacement. The real tricks involved are getting a good seal between the bottle and the corrugate tin (we used roof caulking), and making the whole process relatively efficient (it can take a while to punch these out). Once you've got that down, the production and installation process can be taught to locals, who in turn can turn a profit with their labors. I worked with one carpenter for about a year before returning to the states, and he's since picked up a few contracts with the local ministry of education and a few individual customers to install bottle lighting systems. I would be happy to go on about these things for HOURS (and have, in the past)! They're a niche solution, but they fit their niche _extremely_ well. ------ hcckhcck goog one ------ gyom The problem with the article is that they're obfuscating the fact that this does not produce light. It's basically a smarter way to poke a hole through your ceiling. It's not a device that converts energy into light. ~~~ eksith Rather odd thing to say. How it works is explained in the second paragraph after the intro : "So how does it work? Simple refraction of sunlight, explains Moser, as he fills an empty two-litre plastic bottle." I agree that it does involve poking a hole through the ceiling, but the thing's simplicity belies its utility and what may seem "obvious" after the fact doesn't make it any less significant an invention. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus) ~~~ gyom I saw that sentence with the word "refraction" and I wasn't sure if it was the whole idea or if refraction was just one part of a clever design to enhance the effects of another artificial light source. That's why I felt it was misleading. Looking at the article again, though, it's probably clearer than I originally thought it was. ------ jay_kyburz Or you could just open a window. ~~~ wyz9 I think you’re not really understanding the kind of housing this is made for. Shacks in slums don’t generally have nice triple glassed windows. ~~~ eru Yes, the alternative would be going outdoors. But in the tropics you don't want to do that during the midday sun. ~~~ Buzaga No, people absolutely take the hot sun all the time when they have to go out, they need it because their homes are dark even in the day and there's stuff you want to do inside the house in the day, like cooking, cleaning, studying... ~~~ eru Yes, you have to be outside, but you wouldn't want to be, if you can avoid it. ------ palkeo Did someone told him about « windows » ? ~~~ wyz9 Wow, I didn’t think there’d be _two_ comments saying this. This is about slums in Brazil and the Philippines, you should look up the conditions of the housing the people there live in. This is pretty high on the disconnection from reality scale.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why I Never Gave Up on My Startup - benworthen http://www.sequoiacap.com/grove/posts/jgyz/why-i-never-gave-up-on-my-startup ====== benworthen Today FireEye is a public company. But in 2008, it didn't have a product, couldn't raise money, and most of its executive team quit. Here's why Ashar Aziz, FireEye's founder, thought he still had a chance. ------ DigitalSea Wow, a market cap of about $10 billion. From a company on the verge of collapse to a company that is now doing pretty well for itself, very inspiring.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: My first product. Thoughts? - alan_h http://www.mandarintap.com/ ====== xiaoma I've been in this market for a while. From running an English school in Taiwan to trying out products as an avid learner myself to chatting with friends who have basically been building the dominant platforms for teaching Chinese, I've seen a ton of apps like this. And I have to say that yours is refreshing. Lots of new Chinese learning apps are coming out and 90% are just flashcards with an SRS. From a learning perspective, just memorizing words is a terrible way to go. (I explain why in the final minute of this video: <http://youtu.be/3cjnP6mogEU>) Don't get me wrong. I love SRSes and even contributed to Anki. But ultimately any language learning effort focused on single, decontextualized words is doomed. Learners need bigger chunks, like whole sentences or ideally extensive reading. That's why I see your app as a step in the right direction. ~~~ lucaspiller Are there any other apps / methods that you can recommend as good examples of how to learn a language? I'm trying to learn Lithuanian (GF), and there is very little material available, so I'm looking to build something myself. ~~~ dougk16 Play narrative-heavy computer games that are translated into Lithuanian. I did this to supplement other methods I used while living in Poland. The Diablos were especially well-localized. Bonus is, it teaches you all kinds of obscure words and expressions that even native speakers sometimes aren't familiar with. ------ DigitalTurk For me to seriously consider that app you should have a mode where hanzi is deemphasized (or even gone entirely). For me it's just not worth the effort to learn. I have enough trouble with spoken Chinese as is and I have little to no use for hanzi symbols. My Chinese teacher used to tell me that most of her students had the same attitude. It's to be expected. Few people stay in China for very long. Other than that the app looks really nice, actually. The examples are well- chosen and I like how it shows you how the words are constructed. ~~~ danso I agree...I started learning mandarin through the Rosetta Stone program and skipped all the Chinese character reading parts. It's just too much to learn when there's already enough to grasp with just speaking ~~~ loceng I disagree. This is how you learn things deeply. It may take more effort and focus initially, and feel harder - though that's a bit of the point -- you remember things better during stressful situations, and the additional information allows your mind to connect more different pieces together, and in different parts of your brain (visual and langage). It might take a year of review before it starts to really click, and understanding the process of learning and so setting your expectations accordingly is how you can be more successful, faster. ~~~ danso So obviously I am only speaking through assumption here, but isn't the Chinese character set almost entirely orthogonal to the language? That is, very little is lost by learning it through Pidgin? The extra year it might take to fully memorize the Chinese characters would seem to have only a glancing effect on how much conversational Chinese you could speak ~~~ tel Largely true in my experience, but without hanzi you're illiterate in China. Definitely a plausible thing for a short visit, but if you stay for a longer period I think it'd be very paralyzing. This comes from an experience I had traveling with a friend when I was a beginning fluent reader and speaker and he just a speaker. Over the few months in Beijing his confidence deteriorated and he ended up staying at home ordering the same food from the nearby market every day. I think his illiteracy contributed to that. ~~~ DigitalTurk I don't get it. If you're a foreign guy in China there are always tons of girls who'll go with you to wherever you want to go and who'll translate for you. If you speak just a little Chinese you can have a very comfortable life there. ~~~ tel Sure, it's not _impossible_ to get around. You're just always going to be dependent on said girls. Even with the foreigners-don't-need-to-know-Chinese excuse, being illiterate is difficult. ~~~ DigitalTurk Sure. I guess we're just disagreeing on how much of a problem it is and after how much time this will get to you. I suppose it's a subjective thing. ~~~ tel Agreed, my experience was stated above: I spent 4 months there and some a persons confidence deteriorate. Being slightly literate myself was frustrating but extremely manageable. ------ decktech Excellent! I'm moving to China in a few weeks and know no Mandarin, so this has already been a huge help. Obligatory feature request: I would love to be able to repeat a specific phrase. If I miss a character or want to hear the pronunciation again, I'd like to be able to fix it before moving on to the next phrase inside a lesson. Thanks! ~~~ shredfvz Highly recommend you try Skritter in addition to Mandarin Tap. No affiliation, just completely and utterly blown away by how much faster I could study Chinese during a year long intensive immersion course solely by using Skritter (threw away my notecards). From experience, Skritter can reduce your weekly study requirements from hours of painful rote memorization to "roll out of bed at 9:30, study 20 minutes before weekly quiz and ace it every time". It's fun and enjoyable to use, and furthermore you can load vocab lists from textbooks, and work through them in the proper order. This means building your vocabulary in logical ways while also learning how to write Chinese. I wish I had Mandarin Tap too though. In Skritter you can load from textbooks and customize long sentences, but I like how Mandarin Tap gives you neat categories from which to pick. This can be more expedient than working through a textbook, though working through the textbook can still be irreplaceable. TLDR; get skritter too, it's truly an amazing piece of software. Wouldn't be surprised if the founders are on HN. It's also $10/mo recurring whereas this is $3. [feedback after purchasing and using Mandarin Tap] \- The app's title on iPhone 4S is "LearnFastIOS", not Mandarin Tap. You can do better on the icon. \- The app doesn't scroll smoothly on iPhone 4S \- Interface is really lacking I'm really busy today, but I may come back to Mandarin Tap when I'm more focused on refreshing my Chinese. I'm overall not impressed, for $3 I want an interface better than a poorly scrolling big long list. ~~~ AdamTReineke I'll second Skritter if you're trying to practice character writing (which Mandarin Tap doesn't cover). They use spaced repetition and import vocab lists from textbooks, if you're using one. I picked up a cheap drawing tablet and it really helped. ------ gbraad I am a senior software engineer in 北京 and my wife works at 人大. We are both quite involved in teaching and have to say; Good pronunciations and the idea of constructing patterns and sentences is nice and refreshing. Wish we could also have a similar tool to assist with teaching English. Small issue, the app is called learnfastIOS on install. ~~~ alan_h Thanks for point that out! Correcting it promptly! (I renamed the app, as I prefer the name MandarinTap) ~~~ gbraad Makes more sense... Oh yeah, changeable font would be nice as Chinese characters are mostly about pattern recognition. And as you know, they have the stylized and abstract way... Clerical, regular, etc. This can sometimes lead to confusion to newcomers as endingsvare more fluent, angled, etc. ------ mgkimsal woh bu dong. Seriously, it looks handy. I was in Shanghai a few years ago and this would have come in handy to prepare. My brother speaks Chinese - I've fwded this to him. Your "app store" icon for the Apple one is distorted. ------ simplesoon If you don't mind, could you share your development stack. Are both the apps written using native languages (objc and java) or are you using frameworks that are cross platform (phonegap, titanium, etc)? ~~~ pure I was wondering the same thing. I was surprised that it looked like he launched Android and iOS versions at the same time, which makes me think it's probably a cross platform framework. I'd definitely love to hear more about the dev stack. ------ bdickason Looks great! I tried to check it out in the ios App Store but the link took me to a blank page (ok chrome/ios6) and didn't launch App Store as expected: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin- tap/id588224825?ls=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin- tap/id588224825?ls=1&mt=8) Removing the parameters at the end works as expected: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mandarin-tap/id588224825> ~~~ alan_h Thanks! I shall correct this promptly. ------ vineet Looks great. Reminds me a little of Duolingo <http://duolingo.com> You might want to check them out to get ideas for improving your app. ------ gbraad Found some issues in the Chinese and usability issues where the progress is wrongly calculated, question area scrolls upwards, overlapping text, etc. Have screenshots if you need. Example of a mistake in Chinese is '跑步' (running) pǎobù which is written as pǎbù. Also, the iOS examples has the .idea directory included and the Capture module and all art assets. The next button is active and therefore shows a dotted line around the button. ------ mobweb I like the design of the landing. It's very simple and effective. The only thing I would change is the font. It looks a bit boring and bootstrap-y. :) ------ DigitalTurk Speaking of apps for helping you learn Chinese. I don't know how difficult it would be to create something like this, but an app that could help with mastering tones would be very useful to me. I'd buy such an app even if it was very simple. Like if it had a start and stop button and would graph the tone of what you said in between. But, yeah, I don't know if it's feasible to create. ~~~ gbraad Some applications exist to help you recognizing tones based on the pinyin, but you want a comparison between the model and your voice? Thought Rosetta did this.. ~~~ DigitalTurk I can't seem to find this app. What I want is a graphical representation of the tone of my voice (over time). I've been told that my voice is monotone when I speak Western languages so I don't really have a good feel for what I need to do to speak in a high or low tone. If I had a graphical representation of what I was in fact doing then I think I could gain control over the tone of my voice more easily. I guess the obvious alternative is to record and play back my own voice. ~~~ gbraad Look at a demo of Rosetta Stone. Haven't touched it recently, but it should be able to do most of what you want. ------ mise Nice to see a fellow language educator. Very interesting to see your translation and audio outsourcing to Elance. We've done something for the Irish language, which has its own pronunciation complexities. The site itself is very simple as it is, just wanted to share in any case: <http://www.pronounceirish.com/> ------ Vinnix I love the idea. My thoughts about the app. 1# where do you get the information for doing the grammar and pronunciation? 2# what is your end goal for producing this? The only consideration I could say is to high a higher level view of the main application screen. Something that allows you to jump to levels/tutorials more effectively. ~~~ alan_h Agreed, it does need a little more hierarchy for navigation. Too much scrolling at the moment. #1 I outsourced all the translations (and audio recordings) on www.elance.com #2 The goal was to spend 3-4 months playing/experimenting with product design. The project is a learning exercise in how to craft something original (hopefully) and useful (even more hopefully!). I enjoy building things and playing with ideas. I guess the end-goal is to help me shape my career direction and find my next full-time job :) The reason for it being a Mandarin learning app is that I was frustrated by the existing products in the marketplace. Designing this was a very iterative process, I have a set of test users and tried all manner of mechanisms to help them learn. First couple of mechanisms I threw away because it didn't help recall and were too confusing. I had the luxury of being able to discard ideas that didn't work very quickly. ------ te Looks great. I'm interested in something like this for my 5 year old, who is already in a language immersion program. Might consider a children's version ... she's not so interested in asking about train schedules and other adult concerns, but would love to know the names of all the animals in a zoo. ~~~ alan_h Cool, I'll add in a animal wordset. I'll do the animals of the chinese zodiac (pig, dog, tiger, horse, monkeys etc). I'll also do another for the zoo (penguins, eagle etc) Please feel free to suggest new word sets. Next major release will have new lesson sets. (two weeks from today) ------ k-mcgrady I really like the design of the app and the voices are good too (I've tried several language apps where the phrases are poorly stitched together and difficult to understand). It seems like an interesting way to learn Mandarin. ------ itsnotvalid It would be hard to evaluate as I know how to speak in Mandarin (and the hardest part comes to the written language, which again I can't evaluate.) Not alone there are different favors of the written form. ------ brenfrow I would prefer if after I complete a sentence / word and it repeats it back to me in Chinese, that I could replay this so if I didn't hear it or I wanted to really memorize the pronunciation I could. ~~~ alan_h Good point, expect this feature a week on friday. (11th Jan) ------ pgrote Any idea how to get your head around the tonal part of the language? I took three years of mandarin in high school and a year as an extension as an adult. I still struggle with the tones. ------ braveheart1723 Looks great, the interface seems very minimal and easy to use. Voices are well recorded. Overall design could be improved, but at least its not ugly. Seems very usable. congrats ------ IceyEC Any thoughts about making something like this for Japanese? ~~~ alan_h For Kanji, certainly. It probably won't suit Hiragana and Katakana. ~~~ devcpp Yes, for Kanji. These hieroglyphs is what most people are having trouble learning in Japanese and Chinese, as far as I know. Grammar is hard but it's not such a barrier. ------ paulrosenzweig I just downloaded this and went through a few lessons. Very well done! One feature request: a review mode that pulls from all completed lessons ~~~ alan_h Good point, feature/bug fix backlog is full for the next two weeks but I'll implement something like that in the version to follow. Some like "Exam Mode" where it retests you on everything you have studied so far. Could also have a another list which is only words that you have made a mistake on. "Revision Mode" ------ mmackh Looks great! Only two remarks: I think the app icon would look nicer without shine + without the white line at the bottom of the icon. ~~~ alan_h The logo/icon is weak, it does need to be replaced. (and will be) ------ jbverschoor Bought it.. seems like a nice way to get started with the very very basics, also nice to show people to explain it ~~~ alan_h Thank you sir, your thoughts after using the app would be very interesting to me :) ------ tehwalrus This app looks pretty good. I would happily pay for it if there was a promise of more lessons/content later. ~~~ alan_h There shall be more lessons in the future :) If you have suggestions for what high-level word/phrase sets you would like, let me know. Unfortunately, at the moment I'm just guessing as to what people want. ------ QuantumGuy I have never seen an app like this. Interesting concept maybe do the same for Japanese or maybe Arabic? ------ jferge Nice and simple, although I would change the default bootstrap font. ------ pixie_ Nice work. What did you use for the voice over in your demo video? ~~~ alan_h I outsourced the voice over on elance.com. Lots of voice-over providers to choose from. (any language/accent you want) ~~~ pixie_ Interesting, I thought it sounded computer generated. Do you know if it was? ~~~ alan_h Nope definitely not computer generated. I seriously recommend getting professional voice overs. Originally the demo was narrated by myself, but having a professional do it makes a HUGE difference. If I showed you the same video with my voice, you would laugh :) ~~~ pixie_ Cool thanks. Makes me think of my own video voice overs.. equally horrible.. ------ w1ntermute Surprised to see that tokenadult hasn't commented yet. ------ antoniuschan99 im gon get this	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lector - A news reader for people who want one simple thing - mauriciogardini http://mauriciogardini.com/post/53784250046/lector-a-news-reader-for-people-who-want-one-simple ====== crux This might be sufficient for a first draft but it's also a great illustration of a lazy cliche that I'm seeing a lot—especially in this newly invigorated field, feed readers. This is the sort of app that leads to minimalist-style marketing. '...One simple thing: read'. The current crop of online text editors has a similar impulse: 'The app for people who just want to write.' What these apps' creators mean is that their apps strip down the experience to the bare essentials of the activity, and don't throw a lot of extraneous bullshit in your face when you're trying to get your reading/writing/weather-checking done. Which misses the mark a little bit. If your interface is simply a recapitulation of the received wisdom around feed reading, or text editing—if your app looks like what you'd get if you took all the feed readers that have been made and incorporated only those features that occur in all of them—then you haven't achieved minimalism. You've achieved superfluousness—the very thing you were trying to avoid! Minimalism, as we should all know by now, isn't simply _not including_ features. It's putting a lot of hard work into eliding the cognitive load around the accomplishment of a specific task. The text editing web app that sets my world on fire won't be another Markdown-enabled text box that lets me go to full screen, it's going to be a Markdown-enabled text box that understands my intention and fulfills it in ways that I, not being a brilliant application designer, have not yet imagined. At the very least, if you can't or won't tout a new, whiz-bang feature, get me excited about what it is that you've cut away, what you've devised how to do without, to really deliver on the promise of simplicity (that is, simplicity of use—not design or construction) and essentialism. On the other hand, the promise of a wide range of features to come, many ideas to be implemented, seems to work directly against the header of this article. One's audience should not be, I believe, people who want one simple thing now and a bunch of neat gizmos later. ~~~ juliogreff You got a point. About the features to come, I have to disagree with you tough. We didn't disclose on the page what features we're going to include, so I don't blame you. On the top of our list, there's pubsubhubbub (so your news get to you faster), a mobile webapp, offline reading and some interface tweaks that a lot of people told us they want. I don't consider this "neat gizmos", they are only supporting the one simple thing you want, which is reading. We'll not be adding tons of social features, fancy viewing modes or anything like that. ------ helper The one feature that I actually care about and no one seems to have is full text search of your feed history. This is a feature I'm willing to pay money for. Why isn't anyone doing this? ~~~ mauriciogardini Yeah, that's a feature that I want too, helper. We even discussed about it when we were deciding the features we would include in this initial release, and we decided not to include search at all. For now. Full-text search is a feature that is very resource-intensive, and providing something like that for now would be like a shot in the foot: for us, that manage the servers, which would have a bad time trying to balance the things; and for you, users, which wouldn't have a good user experience. So, yeah, it always've been on our mind, but not for now. ------ tux1968 Signed up and added a few feeds, added a double by mistake, couldn't figure out how to remove it. Waited 10 minutes and still no items in any feeds. Could turn into something nice, but I think the $36/year is a little premature at this point. Will check back. ~~~ juliogreff We're now finishing the interface to properly manage your subscriptions. Should be online within a week or so. About the feeds, the updates are taking a little longer than expected, it's around 15 to 20 minutes now. HN effect probably, I'm working on speeding things up. Let me know if things are still not working for you. ------ frio The design of this seems very similar to yoleoreader.com. I'm not having a go; I suspect that as this market space becomes more popular, we will see lots of similar designs (even if they're arrived at independently) -- but it might be worth spending some time to differentiate yourself a little more. ------ deanacus Certainly looks nice. I'm primarily curious as to whether there'll be mobile version (whether app or webapp). I couldn't see anything about it in the post or on the site. $36/year might be a touch too much at this point, but if with a mobile app, I'd definitely be willing to pay it. ~~~ juliogreff We're planning to add a webapp for mobile very soon, right after we fix the issues that invariably will pop up from the launch. We'll be avoiding native apps for now. Offline reading is also on our plans, if that's important for you. ------ muglug If your app is designed to do one thing, please take the time to find a typeface that is incredibly legible, and then set it so that scanning long paragraphs is a simple matter. That condensed typeface you've chosen, and the fit-to-width paragraph size make it harder than necessary for users. ------ anakha In light of all the recent talk of privacy, I'd want to know more about how this is handled by the service. The web page is remarkably lacking in any click throughs for detail on the bullet points. Definitely a sticking point for deciding whether to sign up. ------ dysoco The fact that we have created news readers for people who just want to read news, and blogging platforms for people who just want to blog, shows us how much we have degenerated... This shouldn't be the exception, but the norm. ------ jhasse It's missing "All feeds". ("What's new" has no list view) Otherwise very good job! I like it :) ~~~ juliogreff This has been requested a thousand of times already, and we're listening. It's on the top of our list. We're dealing with some problems about feed data right now, but as soon as they're fixed we'll start working on it. ------ irq Does this service provide an emulated Google Reader API endpoint so I can point client programs at it (like iOS's Reeder)? ~~~ juliogreff Not yet, but we wouldn't be opposed to implement it if there's enough demand. It may take a while though, as we have other priorities atm. ------ moseymosey [http://readable.cc](http://readable.cc)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
DisRedis: Python Redis client with Automated Sharding and Failover - mlader http://engineering.custommade.com/introducing-disredis-an-open-source-redis-client-to-automate-sharding-and-failover/ ====== siliconc0w It looks like you're using SHA1 as your hash algorithm which isn't a great choice for sharding. Look into using a consistent hashring algorithm. Basically you want to minimize the number of keys you need to redistribute if you add/remove nodes. [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/hash_ring/](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/hash_ring/) What would be cooler than this would be to port the CRUSH algorithm to python. CRUSH is what Ceph (distributed file system) uses to map data to storage servers. This allows you to define a 'map' of how you want data distributed - i.e by rack, row, or datacenter and it can handle replicas, failures, and overloaded systems as well. Whitepaper: [http://ceph.com/papers/weil-crush- sc06.pdf](http://ceph.com/papers/weil-crush-sc06.pdf) ------ mrchilds I'm one of the developers of DisRedis and the devops engineer running the servers. Let me know if you have any questions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to Linear-Fit a Noisy Signal with Regular Discontinuities - jgforbes https://www.jforbes.io/linear-fit-regular-discontinuities ====== jofer This particular problem pops up in quite a few domains. (We often refer to it as "phase unwrapping" in the geosciences.) The approach here is a good one so long as your noise doesn't result in lots of mistaken "wrap-arounds". However, it will fail badly in the presence of noise in many cases. It's particularly problematic when the slope changes (e.g. a polynomial) or where the slope is high and the noise is high. (Note that polynomials are still linear in the sense mentioned here: linear regression). At any rate, this is definitely a nice write-up, but a bit more discussion of where the approach breaks down would be useful. It's actually a classic example of an elegant solution that breaks down frequently in practice (i.e. it's commonly used as a teaching example in various courses). A better solution is usually more complex, domain specific, and therefore out-of-scope, but failure modes for this method make for a nice set of examples. ~~~ jgforbes Hey, I’m the author of the post. You’re completely right. I investigated this as a means for solving the phase- unwrapping problem I was working on, and while it worked relatively well, a more domain specific solution was eventually used. I purposely stayed away from mentioning phase unwrapping as I was trying to make this as accessible as possible without overloading the reader with jargon. My goal was to more show how problem transformation (like the frequency domain) can sometimes make hard problems far simpler (I was also just playing with data visualization). Looking at it now though, I probably should have added in the conclusion some external resources for people who have the background. It definitely wouldn’t have made the piece less readable, and could have added a bit more value. ~~~ jgforbes Also, and this is a major oversight on my part - I was specifically looking at fitting data generated by an affine function, not “linearly fitting data”. How I titled this is definitely confusing. Part of what interested me in writing about this though is how the discontinuities changed a trivial problem into something a bit trickier. If the data could be generated by more complex functions, then I would have forgone looking for an easy solution (as an aside, the problem I was working on had sharp timing and hardware constraints which kept me from using a more general solution). ------ GChevalier I would have instead done like this: (tldr; use a sine and cosine function regression like a linear regression. Think like solving for a free angle and a free phase instead than for a free bias and weight). 1\. Convert the hours to an angle in degrees or in radians (a simple linear transformation). 2\. Take the cos and sin of the angle to get the x and y position in a plane, respectively. 3\. Introduce a time axis such that the thing doesn't draw a circle but rather an helix (like DNA). 4\. So we now have a ton of 3D data points: (time, x, y). Create a ML model to fit a sine and a cosine to those data points to match them perfectly. Your model has only 2 free parameters to optimize for: a shared phase offset and a shared frequency. The sine uses (time, y) and the cosine (time, x). 5\. Initialize the model with a random phase offset and a frequency ideally already close to the one you think you have. Don't initialize with a too high frequency to avoid fitting just Nyquist-frequency-close-noise. 6\. Optimize! (With the least squares.) I guess that you might congerge only to a local minima and need to try different randon starting frequencies if you fail to converge. 7\. The answer to your problem is the now-optimized free parameter of the frequency. It won't sit between two bins of your fft anymore. Related: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16716302/how-do-i- fit-a-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16716302/how-do-i-fit-a-sine- curve-to-my-data-with-pylab-and-numpy) Note: This link contains images picturing the transformations I try to explain. Disclaimer: I didn't do that yet, this is just off the top of my head. If I said something wrong, please comment. Mostly about a wrong convergence to Nyquist freq or something like that (?). In the end, this way, you won't have discrete fft bins. You'll approach the problem orthogonally to that: you solve for finding the one best fft bin (frequency) directly. In other words: solve for the content in the exponential of "e" as free parameters, and for one such frequency and phase offset instead of many bins. ~~~ GChevalier Also, I forgot: to improve convergence, I'd use an Hann-Poisson window such as here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_function#Hann%E2%80%93P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_function#Hann%E2%80%93Poisson_window) I'd apply the window to randomly-sampled mini-batches of consecutive points instead of optimizing the neural network on just randomly-sampled batch points or on all the dataset at once. I guess that using an Hann-Poisson window will make the "gradient" valley easier to "ski down" with gradient descent which is a greedy algorithm. I guess that the spectral leakage caused by the Hann- Poisson window function will make the gradient landscape more monotonically decreasing in every point towards the global minima.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Paxos Made Moderately Complex - sargun http://paxos.systems ====== mslot Paxos is one of the simplest distributed algorithms out there. For a proposal i with value x: 1\. Ask everyone not to participate in proposals older than i, get a majority to agree and send back any previously accepted values. 2\. Ask everyone to accept proposal i with the newest previously accepted value or x if none, get a majority to accept. \- On failure, restart with i > max(previous proposals) That is the Paxos algorithm. Its fault-tolerance comes from the fact that you can tolerate losing the minority (1 out of 3 / 2 out of 5). There's no magic. If the majority fails, Paxos blocks. If two proposers keep blocking each other's proposals by going through round 1, Paxos can take forever. The goal of Paxos is to agree on 1 value. Once consensus is reached (majority agrees), the value can never be changed, since no one can complete round 1 without getting back the newest accepted value from at least one node. However, you can run Paxos again and again to agree on a sequence of values (e.g. transitions in a state machine). This is Multi-Paxos. The Paxos algorithm is optimal, but Multi-Paxos allows for a lot of optimizations and there is no clearly defined implementation. A pretty typical optimization is to elect a leader (through Paxos) which makes the proposals. This avoids duelling proposers and ensures you have a node that is always aware of the latest accepted value. Making this optimization requires you to make decisions that fall outside the scope of Paxos, such as how long a node remains leader, what happens if the leader fails, and what happens if two nodes think they are the leader. These optimizations can easily cause you to lose the fault-tolerance and consistency guarantees that Paxos gives you within the scope of reaching consensus on a single value. It's important to remember that Paxos itself is easy to understand and a lot of the problems in Multi-Paxos can be solved by running Paxos. You need to familiarize yourself with it as though it was a programming construct. ~~~ c_lebesgue In the step 2. you write that you "Ask everyone to accept proposal i", but to satisfy the safety property of Paxos you can only accept proposals from round "i" if you were a participant of the round "i" in the step 1. ~~~ mslot Ah true, I should have probably written "all round 1 participants". It can be enforced by the receiver as well. There are some other implied receiver-side steps that I did not write down, such as rejecting all proposals with a sequence number <i. ------ nicolast At my previous employer, I worked on Arakoon, a consistent distributed key- value store based on Multi-Paxos, implemented in OCaml, using TokyoCabinet (a fork of it) as the local storage mechanism. Implementing the protocol in an industrial setting brings up lots of ... interesting design and engineering issues for sure! See [https://github.com/Incubaid/arakoon](https://github.com/Incubaid/arakoon) ------ zphds There is a popular alternative as well, Raft. [https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/1137...](https://ramcloud.stanford.edu/wiki/download/attachments/11370504/raft.pdf) Has anyone used both? What are the pros and cons? ~~~ krenoten Raft has a dirty little secret: your cluster breaks when two nodes become partitioned from each other (but not the rest of the cluster) and one of them is the leader. Script: nodes {1, 2, 3*} where 2 and 3 are partitioned, and 3 is the current leader. Node 2 fires its leader election timer, broadcasts RequestVotes to 1 and 3, only 1 gets it, but now 3 is ignored for the term of its leadership and 2 is the only node capable of quorum. In a decent implementation 3 will be nack'd the next time it sends an AppendEntries to 1, and 1 will pass along the current term. 3 isn't hearing from the leader so broadcasts RequestVotes (either failing once due to failure to hear the current term from 1, or jumping straight into the next term, which actually increases the ratio of cluster livelock). Leadership bounces back and forth rapidly, making your cluster worthless. The current hotness is spec paxos, which gets the positive trade-offs of both cheap paxos and fast paxos, if you're able to actually implement it in your DC (has networking assumptions). ~~~ r0naa How's that a "dirty little secret"? Raft not supporting asymmetric partitions is somewhere on the third line of the original paper. Besides that, I genuinely wonder how often does this happen in the real world? I see a typical case where parts of your cluster is behind a NAT. Otherwise, what could cause an asymmetric partition? ~~~ kelnos That sounds easy, actually. Take a cloud provider like AWS. They divide their regions into "availability zones", which are supposedly in different buildings, don't share the same power, internet connectivity, etc. Say you have 3 AZs, and you put a node in each. A simple network connectivity issue between AZ 1 and 2 (but not between 1 and 3 or 2 and 3) would cause this scenario to happen, assuming I'm understanding this correctly. ------ Maro Here's a Paxos implementation in C++ that I wrote for my old startup's distributed database product: [https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb/tree/master/src/Framewo...](https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb/tree/master/src/Framework/Replication/Paxos) If you just want to agree on a leader, there's PaxosLease: [https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb/tree/master/src/Framewo...](https://github.com/scalien/scaliendb/tree/master/src/Framework/Replication/PaxosLease) ~~~ sargun What was Scalien, and its purpose? ~~~ Maro Scalien was my startup, its purpose was to sell ScalienDB and make money :) ~~~ sargun Why didn't it work out? ~~~ Maro 1\. Our selling point was: "there's a bunch of others like MongoDB out there, but they're eventually consistent; if you really care about your data, use ScalienDB, it uses Paxos and there's no consistency issues". But, (i) EC/Mongo/etc were so hyped that our message wasn't heard, (ii) people didn't really understand what we're saying, (iii) others were making false claims in their marketing that their product can also be tuned to be consistent. We didn't really understand how to market this. Contrast this with the excellent execution of Mongo. 2\. We got foobared by potential investors, we focused on one group but they eventually walked away, and by that time we ran out of money. The other side of this was long enterprise deal lifecycles. Trying to convince somebody who is big enough to pay for DB software to use your alpha thing is 6-12 months, that's the same timescale you run out of money. 3\. We did have some bugs, so we were claiming consistency/reliability, but it was an alpha product with bugs. (Of course it was, it was just us, 2 guys writing it, we didn't even have money to buy testing infrastructure!) In the end we quit after ~3.5 years, after we exhaused all options, at great personal (but not monetary) cost, eg. I got divorced shortly after. Fortunately we were able to exit gracefully from all business affairs. ------ Everlag Why list all of those variants without referring to byzantine paxos at all? Byzantine failure is everything except a clean end of participation; perhaps its worth mentioning the flavor of paxos that can deal with it. ~~~ denizz Author of the website here: Byzantine Paxos fundamentally is a very different protocol than Multi-Paxos because of the failure model it supports. The variants I included are all variants of the Multi-Paxos protocol. Because of this, even if it includes Paxos in its name it was not in the scope of this work. I can maybe extend the content of the website to cover all protocols related to Paxos and underline how they are related and how they are different and include Byzantine Paxos in that discussion. ------ midko Nitpick: Paxos is a consensus protocol, not " a protocol for state machine replication in an asynchronous environment that admits crash failures.". Consensus can be used for SMR, atomic broadcast, leader election. One can argue all of these replicate a sort of state machine. However, that dilutes the meaning of state machine replication -- replication of state with durability and performance in mind ------ eva1984 Nice writeup. Complex protocol like this always makes me wonder, how do people even test it? ~~~ gioele They have these things called "proofs": [http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/25851/correctnes...](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/25851/correctness- proofs-of-classic-paxos-and-fast-paxos) Jokes aside, there are two ways out: huge simulators or writing very very simple code that matches 1-to-1 the steps of the proof. And Lamport's writing style for proofs [1] lends itself to simple matching implementations. [1] "How to Write a 21st Century Proof" [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/proof.pdf) ------ daurnimator [http://harry.me/blog/2014/12/27/neat-algorithms- paxos/](http://harry.me/blog/2014/12/27/neat-algorithms-paxos/) is quite a good article for an introduction to PAXOS. Last time on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8806835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8806835)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Satellite Shows Armadas of Vacant Cruise Ships Huddling Together Out at Sea - gscott https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33338/satellite-images-show-armadas-of-vacant-cruise-ships-huddling-together-out-at-sea ====== a3n > With no passengers to look after and their quarantines completed, the > employees are left wondering why they haven't been allowed home. Because it's cheaper to anchor at sea for free, instead of paying dock fees. Especially if you don't pay the workers so trapped.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NASA Will Open Pristine, Sealed Samples of Moon Rock - evo_9 https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/736212760/moon-rocks-still-awe-and-scientist-hope-to-get-more ====== xenonite > the samples that were set aside during Apollo for some far-off day when new > and better instruments would allow for markedly improved analysis. However, there is no single mention about new and better instruments that are available now. Does anyone know more details here? Instead, I can imagine that there is another reason to analyze the stones just now: to generate more NASA media coverage to motivate a new lunar mission. ~~~ dsl > there is no single mention about new and better instruments that are > available now Computers that don't require vacuum tubes? Just to understand the technology of the time: the first automated blood test was invented less than 5 years prior. The scanning electron microscope becomes commercially available 5 years later. The first MRI would happen about 10 years later. ~~~ xenonite I certainly agree that there has been a lot of progress over the last 50 years. However I would still like to know which recently devised (or at least improved) instrument lead NASA to open the seals just now. Or isn’t there any? ------ tuanx5 Coincidentally, the SmarterEveryDay YouTube channel also posted [0] a video where Destin visits the mentioned repository. The organization system is fascinating. [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxZ_iPldGtI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxZ_iPldGtI) ~~~ Tarq0n I suspect it's not incidental so much as part of a PR drive around the new moon mission. ~~~ sveng The article and interview with one of the lead researchers mentions the 50th anniversary of the first landing. And also how analysis of these final sealed samples could guide potential landing site targeting for future missions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What HN Users Use (45% Mac, 63% Chrome) - johnx123-up http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/08/21/what-hacker-news-users-use/ ====== dazzawazza To be clear it's what HN Users that are interested in a web technology use.... and surprise surprise there are a lot of Macs in that sector. If you posted something interesting to games developers I'd wager a lot more Windows PCs and a lot few Macs. ~~~ pjmlp Quite true. I remember in the Games Developer Conference Europe 2009, all the Macs I managed to see, where actually running Windows. ~~~ irunbackwards Haha, I love that. Had a friend who did the same thing. But seriously: why not get a beefier computer for your buck and if you need OSX, spring for a copy and install it on a virtual machine? ~~~ sukuriant "if you need OSX, spring for a copy and install it on a virtual machine" ... because that's against the license agreement? ~~~ pjmlp Except that in most countries EULAs are actually void. ~~~ sukuriant Really? I wouldn't have guessed that. I also figured this person was in the States. I didn't even think to check ------ aw3c2 More accurately it would be "analysis of user-strings of people's browsers whose referrer was hacker news when visiting my website" ~~~ T-hawk Exactly. There will be sampling bias. Opera in particular makes it very easy to turn off sending referrer information (one click on the quick preferences menu), so Opera will be underrepresented in any data corpus derived from the referrer. ~~~ unreal37 I saw the story, but didn't click the link. So it's definitely not going to match what pg and team see when they examine their logs for actual HN Readers. ~~~ zalew it would be great if pg published these stats ------ olalonde As with the recent post on HN's age/gender, this does not reflect data obtained ~5 months ago through a HN poll [0]. On one hand, the poll probably has some self-selection bias, it is only representative of registered users and it asks "what's your primary OS" rather than "what OS are you using right now". On the other hand, the "date range picker for Twitter Bootstrap" post was probably heavily biased towards people who use Bootstrap and it measures what OS visitors were using when visiting which is not necessarily their primary OS. Anyways, here's the results from the HN poll: OS Points -- ------ OSX 3252 (40.9%) Linux 2666 (33.5%) Windows 1729 (21.7%) iOS 104 (1.3%) Android 99 (1.2%) Other Unix variant 73 (0.9%) Chrome OS 20 (0.3%) Other 15 (0.2%) [0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3786674> ------ duck From my Hacker Newsletter project (<http://hackernewsletter.com>) I can say that about 70% of HN users use Gmail. ~~~ Adirael And probably a lot of people not using Gmail use Google Apps. I rarely use my @gmail.com addresses, but all my domains with mail are managed through Google Apps. ------ brink Internet Explorer didn't even make the list for browsers. I'm not really surprised, but as a web developer it's always nice to be reassured that it's dying/dead. ~~~ Wilya You can't conclude that from his data. His audience is web developers, so obviously IE will be very low. ~~~ brink I see HN as a fringe audience. Trends in the technology world usually happen first here. I do see your point though, and I'm not drawing concrete evidence from this thread. ------ logn I'm surprised Windows users outnumber Linux users. I'd like to see a breakdown as to how this changes by time of day. I'd suspect Windows users are in second place because of the workplace. At night I bet linux gets a boost. ~~~ libria In the other stats thread[1], users self-reported themselves as Linux 34% and Windows 22%, which I was highly doubting. There are probably a lot of closet Windows users here, or it's more l337 to claim Linux (even on an anonymous poll?). I also understand there's a selection bias related to the article's content. I won't say polls are useless, but I keep being surprised how unreliable they are. [1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421971> ------ qbproger I was surprised to see that iOS is beating firefox. While this is just one website, I hadn't realized firefox had dropped so much in the ranks. It's still my browser of choice. ~~~ ajross It's not a global sample. It's a sample of HN readers only. That means it's dominated by a population focused on web development, which means it skews heavily OS X and Chrome (and to a lesser extent iOS). Firefox remains popular among the general public, though it's dropping fast in the face of some really great work by Chrome. Obviously IE remeains popular too, and it doesn't even register on the linked chart. ------ megaman821 The data is presented in a neutral way, but from the comments I get a sense that people are happy that other people use what they use. Why is an Apple (or Chrome) echo chamber desirable to having discussions with people that use a variety of technologies and software? ------ ghost91 And people without javascript or blocking w3counter are also not shown ~~~ Wilya There's a noscript fallback. If w3counter does it's job right, people without javascript should be counted. Those who explicitely block w3counter wouldn't, but that's few people, unless it's in an adblock/ghostery/... blacklist. ~~~ phaylon I'm using RequestPolicy, which I'd assume also hinders tracking even without being somehow explictely blocked. No idea how wide-spread those extensions are though. ------ BCM43 Will this still collect the data if someone is running no-script? ~~~ pixelbath Your browser (unless configured otherwise) will still send the User-Agent string with the request headers, regardless of script settings. ------ dkroy I am surprised that the estimate for Mac is so high. I would have never expected that. It could be the topics that he is posting. Either way interesting read. ------ tankbot Interesting disparity between OS X users and Safari users. ------ Kilimanjaro Less than 1% IE users is great news! ------ heartbreak Dan, the sidebar makes this page unusable on mobile (Android). ~~~ dangrossman You're not the first to say that, but I don't know why. The site's fine on my Android phone and tablet. The markup/CSS is so simple it's hard to imagine any browser having trouble with it. I've already spent enough time abusing the display model Android tablets at my local big box stores to test Improvely without buying a bunch of devices. I think if I go back again to try to live-fix my blog theme, they might kick me out. ;) ~~~ ajanuary It also breaks when zooming in ios, so if it's the same problem and you're on OS X you might be able to fix it in the simulator? ~~~ dangrossman I don't own an Apple anything, unfortunately. ~~~ ajanuary The problem is display:fixed. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4889601/css- position-fixe...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4889601/css-position- fixed-into-ipad-iphone) has a good overview of why it happens. ------ filipemonte hope to see all the web like this!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
For the New Superrich, Life Is Much More Than a Beach - shalmanese http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/business/for-the-new-superrich-life-is-much-more-than-a-beach.html ====== narrator Meh, if you did all that stuff and didn't buy anything and took coach flights and rented a little boat for the yacht stuff it would probably cost maybe about $50k a year (probably a heck of a lot less actually). The hard part, of course, is getting invited to the billionaire parties. That would make a really hilarious travel blog: The relatively poor guy going to all the rich people events. ------ harywilke An Add for a private jet company masquerading as a nytimes article. ------ holdenc Was this paid for by Jean Pigozzi? Very little new information on the lives of globe trotting wealthy elite. ------ x5n1 Why do the superrich spend most of their time around their own types. Would it not be much more fun to hang out with people who didn't have their level of wealth so they could really show off and everyone would come out better. ~~~ fsk If a superrich person was hanging around with an average joe (or even a 1%er), it would be an unequal relationship. It's like asking why supermodels don't hang out in ordinary bars. ~~~ x5n1 > it would be an unequal relationship that's not a bad thing. ------ cosmolev Nothing interesting.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Kids Should Grade Teachers - jseliger http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/?single_page=true ====== tokenadult This is one way this process has been validated, from the submitted article: "The responses did indeed help predict which classes would have the most test- score improvement at the end of the year. In math, for example, the teachers rated most highly by students delivered the equivalent of about six more months of learning than teachers with the lowest ratings. (By comparison, teachers who get a master’s degree—one of the few ways to earn a pay raise in most schools —delivered about one more month of learning per year than teachers without one.) . . . . "The survey did not ask Do you like your teacher? Is your teacher nice? This wasn’t a popularity contest. The survey mostly asked questions about what students saw, day in and day out. "Of the 36 items included in the Gates Foundation study, the five that most correlated with student learning were very straightforward: 1\. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect. 2\. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to. 3\. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time. 4\. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day. 5\. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes." Here is earlier reporting (10 December 2010) from the New York Times about the same issue: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/education/11education.html> Here is the website of Ronald Ferguson's research project at Harvard: <http://tripodproject.wpengine.com/about/our-team/> And here are some links about the project from the National Center for Teacher Effectiveness: [http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ncte/news/NCTE_Conference_Using_S...](http://www.gse.harvard.edu/ncte/news/NCTE_Conference_Using_Student_Surveys.php) LAST EDIT: I'm amazed at how many of the comments in this thread appear to be about issues thoroughly discussed in the submitted article, but unresponsive to what the submitted article said. On this kind of issue, it's an especially good practice to read the fine article before assuming what is being discussed. We all know about school, but specific proposals for school reform have specific details that make some worse than others, and can be empirically tested. ~~~ jseliger >I'm amazed at how many of the comments in this thread appear to be about issues thoroughly discussed in the submitted article, but unresponsive to what the submitted article said. I'm not, unfortunately. It seems like most people read a headline and perhaps a paragraph or two, then active their pre-existing beliefs about whatever the subject happens to me, and move on from there. That's certainly been my experience with commenters on my blog, anyway, and it's been experience in observing both online communities and in reading student papers. ------ hooande Basing teachers' pay and job security on surveys from students seems like a good idea, especially given the numbers mentioned in the article. One problem is that it might give too much power to students. I was a dick back in high school. The hacker I was back then would have figured out exactly how the testing and metrics were set up (public information) and organized a union of students to manipulate it. I can't do much with standarized test scores, they reflect on me. But a teacher quality survey? That's just a weapon. Things like this make me wish that we had some kind of Hacker in Chief, to figure out how to circumvent new systems _before_ they get implemented. ~~~ Alex3917 "But a teacher quality survey? That's just a weapon." Only if it's used as part of a (simplistic) algorithm. And besides, why would students want to fire the good teachers? That doesn't really make sense. (As someone who was sent to the principal's office on a semi-regular basis.) ~~~ ryankey I agree that other factors would prevent students having too much power, but "good" is a very subjective term. Even "effective" depends on how the students learn. Just because I think a teacher is good for challenging me, another student might hate them for being so tough. ~~~ wtallis Even if students are colluding to give poor ratings to teachers they dislike, it won't significantly alter the relative rankings of the teachers - the better the teacher, the fewer students that are willing to systematically exaggerate the teacher's weaknesses, and the best teachers (the ones who make learning _fun_ ) won't have their scores hurt at all. Students colluding will make it hard to set a threshold for "good enough" to not fire, but even if the students catch on, it should still be a good tool for identifying the best teachers. ------ dubiousjim I know more about student evaluations at the university level than at the grade levels discussed in this article. Here is an excellent overview of some of that research: <http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/sef.htm> The message one takes away from that is that (i) yes, student evaluations are a good predictor of some objective properties of a class (and other measures don't even achieve that much), but those properties aren't what teachers should be optimizing. I'd grant that (ii) it does seem worthwhile for students to see that their interests make a difference to what happens in the classroom. I'd also grant that (iii) some classroom situations may be so bad that optimizing student satisfaction may, even if not educationally ideal, still be a big improvement. And for all I know, this may be widely true at the pre-university level; but on the other hand, for all I know, giving these evaluations a big institutional role at the pre-university level could also be counter-productive...the evidence cited in the article hardly enables us to say. Any deliberation about giving student evaluations an institutionalized role should take the evidence behind (i) seriously. One promising message from the research reported in the Atlantic article is that (iv) the specific tests being discussed have been designed in ways that seem novel and especially revealing. But the article mixed that together with an indiscriminate enthusiasm for student evaluations quite generally. And I think many people will read this and say, "Duh, that's a no brainer." Yes, it is a brainer! These kinds of policy issues aren't settleable from the armchair. Even if we cleared all the political hurdles and made someone the educational policy dictator, he or she isn't going to be able to tell just from the armchair what the results of rolling out one policy rather than another is going to be. So I get frustrated with articles like this one, that report some interesting evidence but mix it together with the kind of insensitivity to the details exhibited in comments like "That research had shown something remarkable: if you asked kids the right questions, they could identify, with uncanny accuracy, their most—and least—effective teachers. The point was so obvious, it was almost embarrassing." Neither does this inspire confidence: "Some studies...have shown that professors inflate grades to get good reviews. So far, grades don’t seem to significantly influence responses to Ferguson’s survey: students who receive A’s rate teachers only about 10 percent higher than D students do, on average." I hope that readers of this site don't need an explanation of why the clause after the colon is only barely relevant to whether grades get inflated because that leads to better evaluations. It's almost irrelevant. In the first place, teachers needn't be aware of the cited fact; they may experience grade-inflation pressures differently. Also, the cited fact is compatible with the majority of current A-getters scoring their teachers in ways that are largely insensitive to the grades they get, but a minority of current A-getters and a majority of current B-getters being extremely responsive to the grades they get. The cited fact is just not what we need to know. ~~~ pdeuchler Forgive me for being glib, but this seems like a lot of words to simply say "You can't implement it because, well... you just can't!" ~~~ dubiousjim Thanks for your comment. I'm sorry that---despite using so many words---I didn't make myself understood. I didn't intend to argue that student evaluations can't or shouldn't be widely deployed. I was criticizing the sloppy, casual attitude towards the evidence displayed in the Atlantic article. And I thought I had linked to a literature review, and pointed out passages in the article, that supported that criticism. ------ PaperclipTaken I am worried about adding another metric to the way that we measure performance in schools. It's already been shown that there are problems with the standardized tests. Not that they are terrible things, but students in the US tend to disagree with their proliferation. (Perhaps they would feel less this way if there were less tests) Having students grade the teachers I think is also the same way. One of the problems is that students don't know what makes a good teacher. The tests can gear students in that direction (ie "I feel challenged but not overwhelmed in this classroom"), but if we look for too much insight from the students I think we will be misdirected. Just like we are misdirected when we pay too much attention to standardized tests. My fear is that some schools would start to look at these performance measurements as golden bullets sort the way that we've started to look at standardized tests as golden bullets. Most of jr. high was geared towards getting perfect scores on the state exams. My Junior and Senior years of high school were almost 100% (a few teachers went outside of the scope, but it was a teacher decision and not an administrative decision) geared around AP tests and the ACT. The ACT and the AP tests have their place. And I think that student evaluations of teachers have their place as well. Both are very useful when applied appropriately. I just don't want to see the system (d)evolve in such a way that too much emphasis is placed on empirical data. ~~~ wtallis "One of the problems is that students don't know what makes a good teacher." Students don't need to know what makes a good teacher. They only need to be able to assess whether they learned, and whether they had fun in the process. Whether they learned _enough_ is pretty much an orthogonal issue, and one that can and will be dealt with through standardized testing. Students also don't really need to give any thought to a teacher's specific methods in order to offer useful information. ------ rumcajz As with any self-sustaining system (politics, economy, ecology) you need a feedback loop to form among the parties with conflicting interests. If the feedback loop is broken, the system deteriorates and ultimately falls apart. If it's inefficient, the system tends to be inefficient as well. (Examples: soviet-style planned economy, rabbits in Australia etc.) This kind of thing (teachers grade students, students grade teachers) could improve the efficiency of the feedback loop and thus efficiency of the education system as a whole. ------ philwelch This is probably the root cause of grade inflation in American universities. Terrible, terrible idea. ~~~ Alex3917 Actually that would be the Vietnam war. ~~~ possibilistic Are you being facetious? If not, would you mind expanding on this? I'm greatly interested in the recent trend towards grade inflation. ~~~ Alex3917 No that's the actual reason. During the Vietnam war you would get drafted unless you were in college, which means that anyone who failed out of college was basically put on the next plane to the jungle to get killed. Since most of the faculty were anti-war (or at least relatively liberal) most colleges either dropped the grading system entirely or else made grading significantly easier. ~~~ philwelch OK, but the Vietnam War has been over for almost 40 years now, but grade inflation keeps _getting worse_. Why? ~~~ Alex3917 \- Grades don't mean anything, so there's no reason to give people bad grades. I know I quote this all the time on HN, but only because it's accurate: "A grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material." \- Despite the fact that grades don't predict workplace performance at all, companies still use them to hire people. (Basically because it's a legal way to keep out black people.) Because of this, schools can boost their US News & World Report rank by giving people better grades, since starting salary factors into the rankings in many years. \- Schools are basically run as businesses these days, and that's what the customers want. Asking why schools keep inflating grades is kind of like asking why McDonald's keeps making their chicken nuggets taste so fucking delicious. ~~~ mc32 -I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students. -Schools in Africa grade students, who are they trying to keep out? -Some schools might be run as a business; I think most aren't (they're subpar and inefficient). If they are, they're run as a mom and pop. If San Francisco schools were businesses, they'd have gone bankrupt and displaced a while ago. ~~~ Alex3917 "I don't know about you, but if I had to hire between 50 A students and 50 D students, I'd hire the A students." The science suggests that if you we're assigned both groups at random, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. ~~~ Alex3917 "Any citations for this?" There are only a handful of studies because it's considered kind of a dumb question to ask. But Alfie Kohn references some of them in his books, I think in What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated? But the ones that exist consistently show the same thing. This includes the huge internal study that Google HR did: "Unfortunately, most of the academic research suggests that the factors Google has put the most weight on — grades and interviews — are not an especially reliable way of hiring good people." "When all this was completed, Dr. Carlisle set about analyzing the two million data points the survey collected. Among the first results was confirmation that Google’s obsession with academic performance was not always correlated with success at the company." [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?e...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?ex=1325480400&en=e71cadb22a20a3c4&ei=5088) ~~~ lbo The article you link to and quote, while saying grades are less important than Google thought, goes on to say that progressive Google after doing this study and at least partially implementing its new system "Last week...hired 6 people who had a below 3.0 GPA." 6 out of an estimated 200 weekly hires. That's a far far cry from D student = A student and nobody can tell the difference. Also, all of the direct quotations from Google people in the article talk about years spent in academia, degrees like doctorates, and interviews being the poor predictors. Some of the best programmers I know dropped out of high school. Doesn't mean I couldn't tell apart a room of A students from D students or that I couldn't use the A students better for many jobs I might need to fill. ~~~ Alex3917 "That's a far far cry from D student = A student and nobody can tell the difference." That's what the results found. Google just didn't change their hiring policy accordingly. ------ jakejake Some kids would be excellent at grading teachers. Unfortunately some would just have a grudge, or just have a power trip and try to sabotage teachers. I think on average they would be a good reflection of how well-liked the teacher is, but maybe not how effective they were at teaching. For example the tough math teacher would get a bad evaluation, but the cream- puff teacher who never assigned homework and gave everyone A's would get a good evaluation. ~~~ anigbrowl _For example the tough math teacher would get a bad evaluation, but the cream- puff teacher who never assigned homework and gave everyone A's would get a good evaluation._ I always hear this objection, and it's usually brought up to discourage even experimental data gathering. I don't buy it at all, and I think it says more about the objectors' mentality than about the students'. ~~~ tptacek It's not a crazy objection; in other environments (for instance, inside corporations), peer and customer review regimes do foster CYA cultures. Also: the best teachers tend not to be the friendliest or easiest, and the issue is not just "will those teachers get bad performance reviews", but rather "will the act of measuring disrupt the behavior we're trying to measure?" ~~~ mgkimsal In many other situations that foster CYA cultures, the people doing the evaluating have as much to lose (might lose my job, lose a bonus, etc). Student/teacher situations are somewhat unique in that students don't choose to be there, and will usually be gone in 1 year, and definitely in a few years. Students have far less to lose in this situation. That may make some of the be more harsh, but it likely (based on the article) will just make more of them honest. I can't be honest with my boss because he might make life a living hell or fire me. I can certainly be honest with a teacher in a school who I'll never see again in my life. ~~~ rmc Teachers can have a very big impact on someone's life. "Oh I see you want to go to this college, wouldn't it be an awful shame if that B turned into a C...." ~~~ mgkimsal the evaluations wouldn't be done until after the class is over, from how I read it. ------ LH_Chapman This survey was part of the larger study funded by Bill Gates. The claim of "prediction" is not supported by the evidence.. the correlations with test scores were low.. and in any case, this is another example of reifying test scores and stupid concepts such as "a months worth of learning" as if all learning is the same, regardless of the subject, the grade level, the prior experience of the kids and so on. The very low correlations with test scores are not surprising and a by-product of the survey questions, designed to check whether the "good" teacher gets kids to comply with rules, defer to the teacher's authority, think of learning as not making mistakes (and for the sake of Gates, stay on task all the time). Perfect conditioning for students being taught that education is a matter of doing well on fill-in-the bubble tests that Gates and this researcher seem to value as the single best measure of great education. See this and the links within it. [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest- bloggers...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/the- biggest-flaw-in-the-gates.html) ------ alttag If the student evaluations correlate strongly with the standardized tests' measures of student progress, then: a) What's the purpose of having both? b) If the evals are preferred over the tests, will "good" teachers continue to teach to a predictable, standardized curriculum? c) Is the correlation additional evidence in favor of "differential compensation", that is, a compensation program based at least in part on exam scores? d) Even if the information supplied is similar, doesn't this extra test/survey administration detract from instructional time? Is the information gleaned sufficient to compensate for the loss of instructional time? e) Atlanta (Georgia, USA) is still reeling from a years-long cheating scandal. If such evaluations become "high stakes" (and there will likely be a push to do so, despite likely union opposition), won't these results be exploitable as well? (And perhaps even more so, through campaigning, social engineering, etc?) ~~~ wtallis "What's the purpose of having both?" What's the purpose of looking at multiple polls when you're trying to predict the outcome of the upcoming election? More evidence gives you higher confidence and lower margin of error. And as the article says, these student surveys provide clean, stable data that doesn't fluctuate very much from year to year and doesn't require much correction for race and family income. These surveys take on the order of 10-15 minutes. That's nothing compared to a battery of standardized tests. They wouldn't have to be very informative at all in order to be worth the small sacrifice of instructional time, and if they're the second-best predictor of class achievement, then they're certainly worth the time (if the results are actually used). I don't think there's going to be much movement to stop paying attention to standardized tests and curriculums, since these surveys don't measure the same thing - roughly speaking, the standardized tests seek to measure how much was learned, and these surveys add a dimension of _why_. ~~~ alttag The point being, if they're strongly correlated, the "why" can already be inferred (assuming adoption of this particular theoretical causal chain). I agree the movement toward testing is likely to continue unabated. The point was the futility of additional questions; when a strong correlation is already known, the responses can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy, so the additional information is not really "additional". Yes, social scientist prefer multi-item measures and avoiding a single source bias (particularly when publishing theory), but in the end, if the correlation is maintained, not much new is really learned. (And one of the reasons for multiple election polls is that the results change over time, and leading up to an election, that's relevant. Additionally, the entire electorate isn't polled each time, so the "cost" to the system is lower, relatively speaking.) ~~~ wtallis Let's make some simplifying assumptions: the survey identifies two causes of poor performance, a lack of academic rigor, and a poor classroom environment (such as a teacher that's mean and unresponsive to requests for help or clarification). Those two categories are weighted equally on the survey - a teacher who gets 100% on the survey is good in both categories, a teacher who gets 0% is bad in both categories, and a teacher has more than one way to score 50%. So, if both of those factors affect student performance on standardized tests, then there will be a strong correlation between the overall survey scores and the test scores. But analyzing the details of the survey results can offer actionable guidance that the test scores can't - the survey _does_ provide useful information for how mediocre teachers can improve, even when it matches the test scores in predictive power for future test scores. ------ camus next step , let kids grade there parents , and the administration calls social services when scores are low.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
UK gov may block Twitter/Facebook to prevent riots - warrenmiller http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/872080-uk-riots-david-cameron-hints-at-social-media-shut-down ====== weego Please don't use the Metro as a source of news. For reference, it is a free paper available around the UK rail network that consists largely of news deemed not worthy of being put into a tabloid with the odd major story spun into nonsense. Even then, what he said clearly hints at stopping the users using it to organise crime from having access rather than blocking it in general, so the title is somewhat inflammatory. ------ corin_ For any non-Londoners, the metro is a rag. I hate Cameron and would love a new thing to rant about him on, but there isn't one in this story. His quote specifically said _"people ... when we know they are plotting violence"_. If somebody is plotting violence and their twitter/facebook gets suspended, I'm fine with that. But no, The Metro had to lead off with _"whether it would apply only to individuals or could see networks shut down entirely"_. Terrible, terrible journalism - but you get what you pay for from free newspapers. ------ jdp23 For those who don't like Metro, the Guardian has the same quote from Cameron: "We are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/11/uk-riots- day-f...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-day-five- aftermath-live) ~~~ corin_ See my comment - it's not that the quote is wrong, it's that they have misinterpreted it to make it a more interesting story. He's talking about shutting out individuals who are planning crimes - I have no problem if he arrests those individuals, but I also wouldn't want to see an article quoting him saying "peeople planning violence, etc etc will go to prison" followed by a statement that it is unsure whether he means just those people, or the entire country is going to prison. ~~~ ajays "He's talking about shutting out individuals who are planning crimes - I have no problem if he arrests those individuals,..." Really? So if I were in London and joked about rioting, or "setting stuff on fire", in a private communication with my friends, it would be OK to arrest me even though I haven't done anything? Wow. ~~~ corin_ Well sure you can take it to one extreme and say "I could get arrested for making a joke", but I could take it to the other extreme and say "we can never prevent terror attacks because they can't be arrested until after the attack". I'm not a lawyer or a policeman, I've no idea exactly how it works, but I know I would rather murders are prevented than just punished after, and I would rather people planning on setting fire to London are prevented rather than just punished after. ------ rmc People are rightly questioning the reliability of this newspaper, however the same statment & quotes are on the official website for the British Prime Minsiter ( [http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/pm-statement-on-disorder- in-...](http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/pm-statement-on-disorder-in-england/) ) _Mr Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck by how they were organised via social media._ _Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill._ _And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them._ _So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality._ ------ rlpb Twitter kept me safe. I cancelled my plans and stayed at home, thus avoiding getting caught up in the riot. Whatever is done, the positive effects of social networking must not be undermined. ------ bobbles This story is the first related item... [http://www.metro.co.uk/news/871800-twitter-users-rally-to- jo...](http://www.metro.co.uk/news/871800-twitter-users-rally-to-join- coordinated-london-riot-clean-up) ------ bediger Good luck with that. Did riots occur before Twitter/Facebook existed? No? Well, then, carry on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HTML 5 Asteroids - gr366 http://dougmcinnes.com/html-5-asteroids/ ====== ck2 Oh heck, there goes my next hour. Wow that's fantastic. Now someone make Missile Command. Pegs my CPU though (Firefox and Chrome) Open source too: <http://github.com/dmcinnes/HTML5-Asteroids> update: I tried a few flash versions on the web to compare sorry to say they use a fraction of the CPU, at least under Flash 10.1rc4 ~~~ jrockway _Pegs my CPU though (Firefox and Chrome)_ I assume this is to intentionally maximize the framerate. ("renice" is your friend if you have something more important to do in the background.) ------ buster It shows very good why it's not ready to ditch Flash completely. I mean.. that's asteroids, i have a Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, 1024MB graphicscard und the asteroids are not smooth, they are flickering a little... ~~~ billswift I have a two and a half year old AthlonX2 with only 256 MB RAM and have no problems with it. Plus I am on dial-up, and this loads _much_ faster than Flash. ~~~ buster I mean the animations are not smooth, it's probably the algorithm that rotates the asteroids, but well.. if noone can see that, i may be more sensitive about it, but it was the first thing i noticed. ------ ZeroGravitas Surely SVG makes more sense for vector games? They should also try to recreate the arcade experience with the painted backgrounds, like from here: <http://mameworld.info/mrdo/mame_artwork/astdelux.png> ~~~ pohl Honest question here... Why would SVG make more sense than canvas? Doesn't Canvas use a similar vector drawing model that you find in Postscript, Java2D and SVG? It seems to me that the main difference between the two is that one is an API and another is markup. So what makes SVG more suited for vector games? I would think needing to have objects for each element in the SVG's XML would be unnecessary overhead, and wouldn't really buy you anything in return. ------ philwelch On a Mac Core 2 Duo MacBook with Safari, it stays below 45% CPU and is smooth as silk. This is actually better performance than Flash. ~~~ ilike I would like to know what Flash game are you comparing this simple game with. ~~~ maukdaddy Doesn't matter. ALL flash pegs my MacBook Pro CPU >50%, most of the time > 90% ~~~ joubert yeah, even ads! ------ renewableGuy Cool. But the game is very sluggish and almost non playable on iPad. I wish these html5 games were built with some consideration for iPad. Anyway, i really appreciate the effort. One step closer to a flash-less web. ~~~ jasonlotito Maybe the iPad should be built with some consideration for the web? The web shouldn't be built with consideration for a single device. The game is HTML5. Fine. The iPad obviously has performance issues with that. That's the iPad's problem. Apple didn't want Flash, they wanted HTML5 and standards. Now they have to pony up. But no, the iPad should conform to standards, and support those standards. If the iPad is not capable of supporting those standards in a usable manner, it's the iPads problem. ~~~ joubert I agree with both you and the parent. One of the problems with many sites is the expectation that there is a (dedicated) keyboard on the device that is browsing. I think when one designs something like this, take cognizance that more and more devices have virtual keyboards. ------ RyanDScott The Render Engine also has a nice demo up--I prefer its nifty particle explosions and rocket exhaust. I believe this uses the HTML5 Canvas. [http://renderengine.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/spaceroid...](http://renderengine.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/spaceroids/index.html?evolved=true) ------ cubicle67 I made a canvas variant of asteroids about a year ago. It's not up any more, but does anyone here remember it? The game over screen told you you'd died of dysentery Edit: Hey! I found it :) <http://users.tpg.com.au/_dp/dave_asteroids.html> ------ wazoox That's great, but it existed as a DHTML demo for Internet Explorer 4.0 10 years ago. So much for the hype. ~~~ ck2 1996 actually, so 14 years, wow (when did I get old?!) [http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/dhtmltech...](http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/dhtmltechcol/dndude/asteroids.htm) Only works in IE though. ------ aw3c2 Works very well with Opera too. ~~~ Pistos2 Yep. Over here, Opera 10.53 on Linux, on an Athlon X2. Uses about 75% of one of the CPUs. I'm impressed that I can hold any combination of the game-playing keys, and it doesn't falter (thrust + turn + fire). The framerate holds, and everything looks and behaves smoothly, with great responsiveness. ------ pellicle Needs audio! But very cool indeed. ------ joubert nice nice. can you texture map the objects?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You are not your thoughts - imartin2k https://roadlesstravelled.me/2017/02/03/i-think-therefore-i-no-not-thoughts/ ====== basicplus2 "“I think therefore I am”, the famous phrase uttered by renowned Philosopher Rene Descartes was perhaps one, if not the most, fundamentally flawed philosophical statements of all time (sorry Rene). To assume that I exist and I know that I exist because I think thoughts, sends us off on a dangerous trajectory where we believe that we are our thoughts" 1\. This is a wrong assumption, just because Descartes concludes thinking proves he exits does not mean Descartes believes he is his thoughts. 2\. There is nothing in what Descartes says that is "fundamentally flawed" let alone "perhaps one, if not the most, fundamentally flawed philosophical statements of all time" ~~~ CuriouslyC The problem here is the conflation of consciousness and thought. The existence of an observer is proven by cognizance of thought, but conflating the observer with the thinker is erroneous. A computer provides a useful analogy here. When I use a computer, I am aware of the output it produces via elements of the interface like the monitor. I also indirectly control what that computer produces as output. That does not mean that _I_ am the computer. This is basically just what buddhists and hindus have been saying about the nature of consciousness for thousands of years.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Talented kid: what to do? - mudil I am looking for ideas on what to do with my cousin's 8 year old (clearly gifted) kid. Ideas for pathways, scholarships, online courses, etc.<p>When Simon comes back from school, he entertains himself with math problems, and also creates for himself math problems and solves them. He's been moved to 6th grade algebra in school. He is a good reader. His other idea of fun is to play classical music on piano and compose new pieces. He is not socially awkward either: he just gets bored with most kids of his age, but enjoys smart kids and plays with them well. They live in Chicago.<p>His IQ been tested at 148 (very superior). Here's photo of his IQ report:<p>https://2nznub4x5d61ra4q12fyu67t-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/IQ-1.jpg<p>Any ideas appreciated! Thanks. ====== mswen Math - Khan Academy has it mapped out all the way to calculus - Simon can go as fast and far as he wants if that approach interests him. Music - I assume he is taking lessons - keep doing that and maybe get him exposed to someone that teaches music theory and composition as well as piano. Or, just encourage him to continue on his own in music. Not everything has to be turned into 'school'. Make sure he has access to lots of good books. Take him on trips to a well stocked library and introduce him to various non-fiction sections. In pre- internet days, when I was a kid, I got to the point where my mom would take me to the public library once a week and I would come home with a stack of 5 to 10 books (majority fiction, but not all of them) and I would have read them all by the next week. My reading addiction was helped by the fact that my parents decided not to have television in the house until us kids moved away as young adults (oh the abuse we suffered! Maybe not.) Make sure he has his own computer and access to the internet. Introduce him to Wikipedia. If he has an interest in programming help him get over the starting gate by setting up his environment and walking him through some first lessons then take a more back seat and let him go. Academically - try to get him situated in a school that has some experience working with gifted children. ~~~ ahazred8ta Mensa. The bigger the city, the better their youth resources are. [http://chicago.us.mensa.org/kids/gifted_kids.php](http://chicago.us.mensa.org/kids/gifted_kids.php) ------ closed There have already been some good suggestions on programs / things to keep him busy, so I thought I'd throw in some things to consider when encouraging a smart kid. While it's often tempting to praise a kid when they do something right by telling them they're smart, it can detract from the critical notion that success comes from meaningful practice. Some psychologists have made an interesting case for focusing on praising the work that they have put in. Smart kids may be at risk for overestimating the role intelligence plays in learning, and thereby be more fragile when encountering failure. This article gives an overview: [http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the- s-w...](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/06/the-s- word/397205/) ------ SmellTheGlove Lots of good suggestions here, but don't forget to offer up some challenges not related to the whole intelligence thing, at least not directly. Offer up some good fiction - maybe scifi is a good place to start. I was thinking Asimov, but there are many good authors in there. Throw on some Star Trek, SG-1, whatever. That's all good stuff for creativity, because it's nice to think about what's possible. Smart kids get taught a lot of stuff, but creativity is sometimes overlooked (although I don't suggest that in this case, given the music aspect). ------ Taylor_OD If he is in Chicago its worth targeting IMSA for junior and senior year of high school. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Mathematics_and_Scien...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Mathematics_and_Science_Academy) ~~~ mudil Actually, he's been admitted there and he is going next year. They received 50% off scholarship, but for my cousin it's still kinda daunting. But he is going! ~~~ belomoina Actually, it's Science and Arts Academy ------ partycoder Astronomy. Get a telescope, join a meetup. Programming. Make simple games in a language like Python. Electronics. Start off a kit like snap circuits, then try to visit your local makerspace. The game of Go. There is software for learning it, clubs (offline), as well as online teachers. The AGA keeps a list. Might also want to try Chess, but I prefer Go. ------ zzzyyyxxx "Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking." \- [http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.h...](http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html) ------ lazyant Expose him to new things, (including non-academic stuff or things he may not like initially such as sports) and get out of the way. Stress work and practice vs talent (see "the curse of the gifted"). ------ pmiller2 All I have to say is that it will probably work best to encourage and support rather than push him too hard. I see down thread he's going to high school next year; I wouldn't automatically shove him off to college after graduation. It can be really lonely at a big school when one is 6+ years younger than everyone else. He might be a candidate for unschooling. ------ colanderman Reference books for whatever he's interested in. With that age, intellect, and drive, he will eat them up. Also support his interests even if he moves on easily. Unlike others I don't think he will benefit from enrichment programs much. Even in talented-youth programs (e.g. CTY, where I've taught) teachers will find it difficult to challenge him, and it sounds like he is already self- motivated. \---- EDIT now that I have a keyboard, to expound on the teacher thing: I've been on both the giving and receiving sides of talented-youth education. The problem for students with such high IQs is not that teachers don't _know_ things they don't (they certainly do), but that teachers often have no experience with correcting the mental models & processes such intelligent children develop. E.g. when I was young, I developed (incorrect) "folk" theories as to how capacitors worked, or the meaning of dividing one by zero, etc. In both cases I was wrong, and teachers _told_ me I was wrong, but they couldn't explain _why_ I was wrong (and hence correct my underlying misconceptions). It wasn't until college that I would encounter instructors who had such a profound grasp of the subject that they could deconstruct my folk theories. (Not that my theories were deep; just that my misunderstandings were deeply rooted.) On the flip side, during the years I was a teacher/tutor, I met maybe 2-3 students whom I could tell right away I couldn't help. I could have told them things they didn't know, sure, but not anything they couldn't have read from a book. There were no flaws in their reasoning skills that I was capable of understanding, let alone fixing. To be a truly effective teacher for a highly inquisitive mind, you have to be at _least_ as intelligent, _and_ more knowledgable than the student. For someone so smart as your second cousin, it will be a very tough find. \---- EDIT2: Academics aside, here is something cynical. If your family is not upper-class, and you are primarily concerned with the kid's _success_ rather than straight-up smarts, find a friend who is upper-class and have the kid hang out with them. As someone with a middle-class upbringing, as I've entered my 30s I've come to realize how tangible class is in terms of networking and "getting ahead in life" (if that's what you're into). You can switch class with a lot of work by being very good at what you do, but it's a lot easier if you already "fit in" with the upper class because that stuff rubbed off on you when you were young. (Again, I recognize this is somewhat cynical and others probably have very different ideas.) ------ chris_va I would recommend looking at these programs: [http://cty.jhu.edu/](http://cty.jhu.edu/) ~~~ colanderman Yep I've taught at CTY. Might not be challenging for IQ 148 though. (I say this as estimated 140+.) Also $$$. (Was invited to attend when I was younger but parents couldn't afford it. Usually classes have 1 public school student to 13 private.) ------ babyrainbow > what to do? Treat him/her as a normal kid. ------ tmaly how about putting him in touch with the real life Scorpion [http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com/](http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com/) He sounds like the type of person they look for. ------ PirateJack He should work for Snapchat and design the next app that makes the world a better place. ~~~ belomoina He's determined to find a cure for cancer	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
California has about one year of water left - nickgrosvenor http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html ====== declan 80 percent of the developed water supply in California is used by agriculture. About 6 percent is industrial and commercial. That leaves 7 percent residential landscaping, and 7 percent residential non-landscaping (showers, washing machines, etc.). Source: [http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/where- we-...](http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/where-we-are/in-a- season-of-drought-where-does-the-water-go.html) Even if residential landscaping or non-landscaping water usage dropped by a quarter immediately, which seems rather unlikely, that's close to a rounding error compared to the amount of water to turn our near-desert into an agricultural breadbasket. Put another way, more water is used for almond farming alone in California than all residential landscaping or residential non-landscaping: [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html) The drought is real, but I would take op-eds like these more seriously if they acknowledged the above figures. And the fact that some cities like Sacramento still don't have everyone on metered water -- flat rate! -- and meters won't be fully installed until after 2025. Source: [http://portal.cityofsacramento.org/%20Utilities/Conservation...](http://portal.cityofsacramento.org/%20Utilities/Conservation/Water- Meters) ~~~ malkia It looks like it won't help much, but landscaping should stop. Double stop. Triple stop. No need to waste water in there, and comply with neighbor whatever regulations. ~~~ VanillaCafe I agree with OP. Solve the big problems first. If at some point landscaping ranks as a top consumer of water, then solve it. Attention and effort is a resource -- spend it where it has the most impact. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law) ------ rjett Disclaimer: I have no clue if what I'm proposing is realistic or not, but: Perhaps the federal government should step in and gradually step down the level of subsidies given to farmers in California and gradually increase subsidies given to NEW farmers in other, more water rich parts of the country. This would have the effect of moving farms to more sustainable locations in the country. Sure, the types of crops produced would change and consumer demands would have to shift with that, but that isn't the worst thing in the world. Another solution is to allow utilities to drastically increase water prices for communities that import most of their water anyways. All in all, both solutions are geared towards population displacement in unsustainable locations. Just as New Orleans is probably destined for another Katrina, SoCal is probably destined to be a desert despite the demands we've put on the land in the last century. ~~~ refurb What would happen if the gov't did nothing? 1\. Water would become more scarce in California. Not everyone would get what they need. 2\. Price of produce would go up, since there is a smaller supply. 3\. We'd start to import more produce (either from outside the country or other states) because the price is the same or lower than the new, higher CA price. 4\. Other farmers, who don't grow what CA grows, would start to because it's more profitable as prices rise. The gov't doesn't really have to do anything. That's the beauty of the free market. ~~~ CoffeeDregs I'm puzzled at the down votes you're receiving. I think you have a valid point and I generally have a similar perspective, but, in this case, it overlooks a significant externality: the destruction of the environment as rivers are pumped dry and (albeit, artificial) reservoirs run dry. Further, your solution could make the additional extraction of water quite profitable, which would further the destruction. The straightforward solution is to internalize the externality via a progressive tax on water usage. Then, as you said, the free market can regulate itself. Note: I'm not a fan of taxation, but it can be a good solution to managing externalities. ~~~ refurb _it overlooks a significant externality: the destruction of the environment as rivers are pumped dry and (albeit, artificial) reservoirs run dry_ Not sure I understand. The rivers would run dry because of no rain, not because we're taking water from them. Remember all this water we're using for irrigation was just ending up in the ocean anyways. ~~~ DougWebb Is the California produce you buy bone-dry? Probably not. It's full of that precious water. A lot may wind up in the ocean as runoff, but a lot gets exported from CA too. It eventually winds up back in the ecosystem, but the point is that it will take eons to get back into the acquifers. ------ CWuestefeld I just moved to Austin, TX 1.5 years ago. We've got our own severe drought here, and I wonder what's going to happen in the long term. Was it a mistake to move here? At least in TX, there are a couple of ways in which it's clear we're doing it to ourselves. First, we can't keep the reservoirs full because a significant amount of water flow is earmarked for rice farmers down at the mouth of the river. That's right: rice farmers. It's clearly not a good idea to be supporting a water- intensive crop in this geography. Second, Texas has a "right of capture" in its laws. That basically means that whatever water you can capture, you can have. There's a controversy near my town where a private company wants to drill well into the deep aquifer to pump and sell huge amounts of water, such that local homeowners are afraid their less-deep wells will run dry. And there's little one can do to insulate oneself: there's no way to stake claim to the part of the aquifer under your house, other than to be the first person to pump it all out. I wonder how much of this stupidity is also driving CA's problems. ~~~ pnut Not related to water per se, but I've lived in Austin for over 6 years now, and can confidently say it was a mistake to move here for me. Where do you go when you want to get out of town? Big Bend? New Orleans? Sure, 8 hours later... And beyond that, what? So much cultural desolation, for hundreds of miles. May as well be in a moon colony. Texas, where dreams go to die. Of course, these are my personal feelings, so downvote away. If you moved here because it's cheap, like most people do, like I did from the Bay area, you'll find a cheap existence, as in, you get what you pay for. ~~~ perturbation Dallas and Houston are a bit of a hike (4 and 3 hours, respectively), but San Antonio is only an hour away. I find that there's plenty of stuff to do in Austin itself anyway. (Heck, SXSW is going on _right now_.) I have a theory that a lot of people move to Austin expecting it to be somehow hermetically sealed away from Texas; if you don't like Texas, you will eventually not like Austin. What do you like about the Bay area that you miss in Austin? ------ Shivetya What has happened before will happen again. California had similar issues with mild winters and the reduced water associated with them back in the 1930s. [1][2] The difference now of course is that there are a great many more people there and a great many more farms. The Bureau of Reclamation is pretty much at fault for the lack of water available for human consumption because of mismanagement and prices below the cost which encouraged over development of farming. The current drought can likely be traced to changes in the Pacific Ocean dating to 1976 [3]. As in, we have more than time enough to see something was changing. What can be done? Rationing won't solve it all. The states need to have more control over the water that the Bureau of Reclamation currently controls. They are in a far better position to understand their needs and cooperate amongst each other instead of using the weight of Washington politics to force a way. First and foremost priorities have to be set and reasonable prices for the cost of water need to be assigned. Yes this will likely mean a reduction in farming but it is artificially propped up now by unrealistically low water prices. People also need to understand conservation and large lawns should either be restricted or the water use for such maintenance needs to be surcharged. The key is better use of resources and not redirecting the problem which is more mismanagement than natural causes. note, I haven't read much on site #2, but they consolidated nicely some NOAA charts which make it easier to view. [1] [http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/061/mwr-061-09-0251.pdf](http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/061/mwr-061-09-0251.pdf) [2] [http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/01/california- dro...](http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2015/01/california-drought- update-not-even-close-to-worst-drought- ever.html?doing_wp_cron=1426269408.9994280338287353515625) [3] [http://icecap.us/images/uploads/More_on_The_Great_Pacific_Cl...](http://icecap.us/images/uploads/More_on_The_Great_Pacific_Climate_Shift_and_the_Relationship_of_Oceans_on_Global_Temperatures.pdf) ~~~ malandrew The way I see it water consumption for household and business uses that are not farms should be on a per person basis, going up exponentially at each strata of consumption. This would not be unlike how the desirable island of Fernando de Naronha controls limits tourism, while still keeping it accessible. IIRC, every day you are on the island you pay a fee, but each day you stay the fee increases until it gets so expensive that even the rich feel it. The island is limited to 420 tourists at a time. [http://www.ilhadenoronha.com.br/ailha/taxadepreservacao_em_n...](http://www.ilhadenoronha.com.br/ailha/taxadepreservacao_em_noronha.php) Likewise, for water a person might pay a nominal rate per gallon for the first 40 gallons in a day, then the price doubles for the next 40, then doubles for the next 40, etc, etc. until it's literally unaffordable by even the rich. This would also have the nice side effect of limiting yard size, which would curb urban sprawl. ------ Flip-per Warning: strong language and opinion I'm glad each time climate change consequences hit the US instead of other countries that contributed way less, like Tuvalu. You consider this rude? Fair enough, I consider it rude to destroy the planet we are living on, at least in a way that makes it habitable for humans. Of course other countries are not innocent either, but the (institutions of the) US stand out in many ways. We need as much pressure as possible for the three big climate-relevant conferences in 2015 (Paris et cetera), this will be the best chance we get for the next couple of years. If drinking water or water to grow plants runs out maybe some people start to care finally. We all can be fucking glad if any of the upcoming changes turns out to be reversible. I'm afraid that few will be (keyword tipping points). ~~~ JimboOmega The sad truth is that the net outcome of this drought will probably hurt those in less developed countries more than Americans. Californians will not go thirsty or not be able to take showers; there's enough water for municipal supplies. Agriculture will, however, take a hit. While the valley produces a huge amount of produce, it is still a small part of the overall California economy. Prices will go up for vegetables which will need to be produced elsewhere. Americans won't really notice. SV will keep on humming. But in other places the prices for food will go up. Remember the 2007-8 food price crisis? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_world_food_pric...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_world_food_price_crisis) Most Americans don't. ~~~ happyscrappy That is not a very satisfying answer for people hoping for America's demise. ------ joshstrange So what happens when they run out of water? Are there water sources that are just undrinkable that can be cleaned up; similar to fracking now being cheap enough to compete with OPEC is there no water or just no drinkable water? Can they just "ship" or "pipe" the water in from neighboring states or are they too on the edge of a draught. Is this country-wide, just Western states, or just California and can other states give up water without risking throwing them into a draught? I know that's a bunch of questions but this article seems to raise more questions than it answers, at least for me. ~~~ tdees40 My understanding is that under most scenarios water for humans is fine, but agriculture will be totally dead in California. ~~~ joshstrange Ahh, ok they hinted at that in the article but for some reason it didn't click in my head. I wonder if the farmers will just move to neighboring states (not that it's easy to pick up and move a farm....) losing farms in California would be a huge loss: > California produces a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, > and nuts: 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of > kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 > percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots > (and the list [1] goes on and on). [0] [0] [http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2013/07/california_grows_all_of_our_fruits_and_vegetables_what_would_we_eat_without.html) [1] [http://www.motherjones.com/files/2agovstat10_web-1.pdf](http://www.motherjones.com/files/2agovstat10_web-1.pdf) ~~~ emodendroket It's not as though the drought just stops at the border of California, so that probably won't be practical. ~~~ JimboOmega But the agriculturally impacted area is, essentially, the central valley, which is entirely in California. There are areas of Oregon and Arizona impacted by the same general drought, but they are a drop in the bucket (pun partially intended). ------ ziyadb Just to add my 2 cents. I'm based in Saudi Arabia, and considering the deserted climate and environment, there are literally no persistent water sources (aside from a few select wells that are over-exploited by bottled water manufacturers). Desalination is currently (as of 2015) being used to supply 50% of Saudi Arabia's water needs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in_Saudi_Arabia) So yes, it's feasible, and just FYI, it is provided free of cost. ~~~ Someone1234 Great point. When people talk about California's water problems they make it sound as if there isn't an easy solution, but there is. The real core of this entire issue is not the methods but more the cost, it is ultimately a conversation about saving money NOT about some finite limitation on water in real terms. California could solve this issue with a pen stroke, it just might hurt their farmers, which is really what all the concern is about. If water doubled or more in price (which is realistic), that is expensive for farmers who need a ton of the stuff for their crops. So will supermarkets pay 30% more or will they look abroad? I actually think even with a higher water bill, it will still be cheaper for US retailers to buy US produce. Shipping that stuff by ocean isn't exactly cheap with the price of oil. I think where it would hurt US farms is their exports to Europe in particular, Europe is in a geographical position to buy from either the east or west, both by ocean. So if US/California crops go up in cost they might just buy them from someone else. But let us not pretend that either shipping water in from other states OR just distilling water isn't an option for California, because it is. It just might hurt farmers and make them less internationally competitive. ~~~ BashiBazouk This is part of what is needed. Water rights in California are as old as the state and extremely convoluted. Those with the older water rights have a practically guaranteed supply and generally irrigate in remarkably wasteful ways. Breaking the old water rights and increasing the price of water would push farmers to move to Israeli style computer controlled drip irrigation rather than current methods of just spraying tons of water over the field. Gov Brown was talking about bring that technology over and pushing it hard into farming... ------ noobermin So it looks like there is suddenly water everywhere in the solar system...except for California. ~~~ nosuchthing In the absence of fresh water, it becomes a matter of the energy required to clean / desalinate / or distill contaminated water. Abundant clean renewable energy would solve "rare" water issues. ~~~ stouset So would magic. We need to rid ourselves of the mythical notion of "abundant", meaning arbitrarily cheap, energy. There are only a few more doublings of global energy usage left before we heat the atmosphere significantly, not due to greenhouse gases, but by raising the equilibrium temperature of Earth as a radiating blackbody in space. TANSTAAFL. Every resource is ultimately finite. Let's live within our limits rather than justifying our actions with unrealistic fantasizing about future technology. ~~~ nosuchthing "Solar energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels by 2016", Dutche Bank [1] Recently Germany had reached a day with %50 of electricity produced by Solar. [2] [1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-29/while- you-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-29/while-you-were- getting-worked-up-over-oil-prices-this-just-happened-to-solar) [2] [http://theweek.com/speedreads/451299/germany- gets-50-percent...](http://theweek.com/speedreads/451299/germany- gets-50-percent-electricity-from-solar-first-time) ~~~ stouset This has nothing to do with us having the ability to produce "arbitrarily cheap energy". Did you even read my comment? ------ harmmonica This thread is long so this comment will likely fall pretty quickly, but this page is pretty telling in terms of usage by sector: [http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108](http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108) 1\. Environmental 50% 2\. Ag 40% 3\. Urban 10% (btw, this is particularly topical when my landlord just informed us he'd be swapping our shower heads for lower-flow ones due to increased costs in Southern Cal (bringing a toothpick to a gun fight?)) The thought process for how to decrease use, though, would be: 1\. Can we tap into environmental use and, if so, how much, or is that verboten? 2\. If no, which ag can we forgo with the least human/economic impact? 3\. If no easy answer looking at both human and economic impact of ag, which ag can we forgo with the least human impact (e.g., if none of us had an almond ever again, would the world be worse off for it? That makes killing almonds purely economic) 4\. If there's not enough from 1-3, then we've probably gotten to a life-threatening lack of water and so we get rid of crops that have the least "nutritional" value (i.e., crops that are best at sustaining life are the ones we keep) 5\. If we still can't support life, looks like it's time to desalinate, create a pipeline from east or move Of course, even though it's a drop in the bucket, we should just immediately save the 5% that's used for urban and residential landscaping (see article; ~50% of urban use is landscaping) because there's nothing "essential" about that even though there would be an economic impact (and a whole lotta angry golfers). ------ beefman Israel has built its first four desalination plants in the last 10 years. They now provide 40% of the country's potable water. The newest plant (Sorek) is the world's largest, producing over half a million cubic meters a day at a cost of $0.68 per cubic meter. Edits: I'm unable to find data on Israel's net import of calories. I suspect it's substantial, but 85% of their agricultural water supply is treated urban wastewater. I'm part of a family of four living near Berkeley, CA. We'd need 50" of rain a year to be self-sufficient on our 4000 ft^2 property, which is about twice what we get. I have no problem commandeering runoff from some place in the Sierras. But it'll have to be 8,000 ft^2, because what hits this lot (and every other lot in the neighborhood) goes straight into the bay. ------ ryguytilidie In the Bay Area, things don't seem that bad. However, I drove from LA to SF and holy wow. Everything along I5 is just a dustbowl. Farms are empty with big signs saying that there are no jobs because there is no water. However, its hard not to blame the farmers themselves. We consistently hear that it takes a gallon of water for a single Almond, yet here we are and farmers aren't looking for new crops that use less water, it's simply "give us more water" as if this is realistic... ------ rodgerd Maybe stop growing rice in a desert? Let _gasp_ other parts of the country or _double gasp_ world sell food to Americans? ------ malchow A historical view: [http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_1_california- drought.htm...](http://www.city-journal.org/2015/25_1_california-drought.html) ~~~ mikepurvis The definitive history of water development in California is this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American- Disappearing-...](http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing- Revised/dp/0140178244) It's almost thirty years old now, but the history is just as relevant, and the warnings issued similarly prescient. ~~~ ctdonath That's also available as a video documentary. Stunning history, the looming drought was inevitable. TL;DR/DW - the only reason CA has a vibrant agricultural component is because enormous amounts of water are being taken from other states and used very inefficiently. There's a hard limit on what can be redirected, and increasing demand around those sources to keep what's being taken. Sometimes a supply-and-demand curve has a brick wall: when demand outstrips supply, cost goes from dirt-cheap to incredibly expensive fast. This is often derided as "price gouging", but is a natural consequence of basic needs being supplied cheaply vs insufficiently. CA artificially increasing its water supply faces exactly that: natural growth of demand will slam into lack of sufficient supply, and those with the funds to purchase from the supply at near-any price will suddenly destroy the market for those enjoying necessities at barely-affordable prices. ------ tracker1 We have oil pipelines stretching thousands of miles... why don't we create a water pipeline, sending fresh water to the southwest? I've never really understood why this wasn't an obvious thing started 80+ years ago. We created roadways, and a fairly complex electricity grid... water transfer has been a critical thing forever, and something we haven't really addressed on a national level. Not only that, but hydrogen as fuel stores would be a very realistic scenario if water wasn't so scarce in locations where solar/wind is so ideal. ~~~ Domenic_S They're called aqueducts, and California has quite a few, typically sending water from northern california/the Sierras to Los Angeles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct) ~~~ tracker1 I'm talking about actual pipelines from the midwest/southeast to the southwest U.S. ... much larger scale projects... I know we transport water across states, but I'm talking across the country. ------ Animats Water use in California is mostly agriculture. Almond, rice, and hay production in California is going to stop. Rice and hay can come from elsewhere. Almonds are almost entirely from California, and they come from trees, so no place else can pick up the demand quickly. ------ nfriedly How feasible is desalination? If they can make that work on a large scale, then there's quite literally an ocean of water available to California. ~~~ acomjean Desalination is expensive and not great for the environment, but its starting to happen. [http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalin...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/533446/desalination- out-of-desperation/) ~~~ akkartik Don't forget solar desal. For example, [http://waterfx.co](http://waterfx.co). That would eliminate any pollution. ~~~ ceejayoz It probably wouldn't. Desalinization leaves a lot of salty brine to be disposed of. ~~~ refurb Put it back in the ocean? That's where it was before anyways. It's not like that would have any impact on the salt concentration of the ocean. ~~~ ceejayoz > It's not like that would have any impact on the salt concentration of the > ocean. Ocean-wide, no. Where it's dumped, definitely. ~~~ refurb My understanding is that desalination doesn't give you crystalline salt, but rather more salty sea water back. Of course you'd have to be careful where you dumped it as a small bay doesn't mix that well. I don't see why you couldn't pipe it out 1-2 miles from the coast. It should mix quite well. ------ zach It's fascinating to see the many reservoirs we were supposed to have built by now. The engineers of the 1950s and 1960s had a lot of big plans that were all supposed to be in place decades ago (look at the gray squares on the map): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project) A lot of people will say "the environmentalists" stopped them, but really it was that lawmakers gave environmental concerns only one effective tool -- enforcing standards via litigation. The task of resolving environmental concerns was pushed out of the political and economic arena into an adversarial process that takes a huge amount of paperwork, lawyer time and calendar time to resolve. Exactly like the Republicans with Proposition 13 (a California initiative which required supermajority voter approval for taxes), once you take fundamental powers away from the legislative and executive branches, you really limit the potential effectiveness of the government. And now California's infrastructure is a mess. ~~~ xaqfox " you really limit the potential effectiveness of the government. And now California's infrastructure is a mess." Following that same point, you also limit the potential ineffectiveness of the government and apparently that is what the people wanted. Your argument also assumes there is not such thing as too much power in the hands of "the legislative and executive". ------ cdnsteve California agricultural statistics: [http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/](http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/) California's top-ten valued commodities for 2013 are: Milk — $7.6 billion Almonds — $5.8 billion Grapes — $5.6 billion Cattle, Calves — $3.05 billion Strawberries — $2.2 billion Walnuts — $1.8 billion Lettuce — $1.7 billion Hay — $1.6 billion Tomatoes — $1.2 billion Nursery plants— $1.2 billion ~~~ SilasX Almonds use 10% of the water[1], and we're risking a empty aquifers for them when they're 0.3% of state GDP? [1] My only source on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whyenot](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whyenot) [2] 2013 GDP: ~$2 trillion [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California) ------ andlarry Most of the water is used by agriculture. You can take all the 2 minute showers you want, changing how the megafarms use all that water would have the most impact. Of course, there's this idea that the farms are the historical yeoman-type, so it's rare to see solutions involving agriculture dicussed. [http://californiawaterblog.com/2011/05/05/water%E2%80%94who-...](http://californiawaterblog.com/2011/05/05/water%E2%80%94who- uses-how-much/) > When you examine water use within the interconnected network of California > that feeds farms and cities, use is roughly 52 percent agricultural, 14 > percent urban and 33 percent environmental. ------ frandroid " A recent Field Poll showed that 94% of Californians surveyed believe that the drought is serious, and that one-third support mandatory rationing." There is a major problem, and damn if I'm going to make any personal sacrifice to help solve it. ~~~ coldcode Rationing for people does nothing since its only 10%. Rationing for ag kills farms and ag products which you then have to get from somewhere else. Unless you are a big farmer there is nothing you can do. ------ dataker I must be cursed. I spend my time between San Francisco and Sao Paulo(Brazil). Although Brazil has natural resources, Sao Paulo has been experiencing a severe drought for several months. Many residents only have water between 7am-1pm and it doesn't seem to get any better. Actually, regulators have been trying to come up with water rationing and limit its usage to two days a week. I hope CA doesn't have to go through the same thing. [http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/02/no-one-is-quite- sure-...](http://www.citylab.com/weather/2015/02/no-one-is-quite-sure-how-sao- paulo-will-survive-its-drought/385211/) ------ Teknoman117 Honestly we should probably start building desalination facilities statewide so that we can begin to supplant the natural supply. The one being built in San Diego is a few months away from coming online and it will be providing 33% of the city's water supply iirc. I know people have talked about it in the past, but usually the response is "but they are an eye sore if I go to the beach." Well, what would you rather do? die of starvation and dehydration or have a desalination plant near your beach? ~~~ nathanm412 The waste brine water is pretty toxic to the environment. Nobody believes that this will cause people to die of dehydration. Worst case scenario, if you look beyond the severe inconvenience factor of having to regulate when you can water your lawn, or if you can fill your pool, lots of farmers would lose their jobs. Almonds and rice won't be able to continue under these conditions. Beyond that, there is plenty of water to go around to keep people hydrated. ------ sporkenfang Maybe I skimmed the article a bit fast, but I saw no mention of desalination plants, which are the obvious solution (though expensive and as far as I'm aware not implemented yet). ~~~ mariusz79 It's not going to be easy to build few of them in less than a year. ~~~ joshstrange It's amazing what you can do when you've run out of water... But you are right, it would/will be a massive undertaking. I wonder if desalination will become water's "fracking", something we only turn to due to high price of what we used before or unavailability of what we used before. ~~~ _delirium I don't think the price will be near what would be needed to make desalination profitable without subsidies, though. The state _could_ choose to maintain current usage and pay whatever it takes to maintain it, but it'd be at a huge loss. The main user of California water is agriculture, and desalinating water just to use it to grow rice is a good way to burn money. ------ mark_l_watson All water subsidies should be terminated and the cost of food should reflect the amount of water used to grow the food. Too bad our special interest controlled government prevents this. ------ antidaily Just ban almonds. Problem solved. ~~~ vinhboy Maybe you were being tongue in cheek, but I kind of like this solution. Why don't we just find some non-essential crops and ban them. I am sure it will suck for that farmer, but we're not really in a position to be accommodating to every industry at this point. ~~~ wnissen Almonds get something of a bad rap because they are moderately water-intensive (1 gallon per almond) but they are also highly profitable. So it makes sense to grow them. Rice is frequently grown using the water that is released for wildlife, so it is also reasonable to keep growing. The real problem is the forage crops (alfalfa hay) that are water-intensive and cheap. Price water competitively and your problem will be solved overnight. Naturally, the farmers using the water can't allow this to happen. ------ brianbreslin This could be a boon for middle eastern water companies (Israel has some geniuses in this space) for selling into California. There are a few tactics for tackling this problem (disclaimer: I didn't read the article) \- Reduction of waste (leaks, more efficient plumbing, rationing) \- Desalination (only useful along the coast) \- Deep wells \- water extraction from the air \- water recycling \- what else? ~~~ emodendroket I think in the long-term California needs to consider desalinization but that hardly seems like something that could happen in the next year. ~~~ michaelchisari If there was the political will to do so, it could come close. The actual construction is a small part of the process, compared to securing permits and such. ------ phkahler Seems a good time to post this: [http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world...](http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en) It a TED talk about reversing desertification with farming practices. Not applicable to every crop, but here you go. ------ Mz There are things that could be done both for residential use and commercial use that could reduce how much water is needed without causing a catastrophe. Many years ago, as a kid, I read an article about experiments in the Middle East to create a small basin for individual plants (like trees) that would be the right size for holding rainwater and keeping it hydrated without risking root-rot. Think about how a shower is slightly slanted such that all the water goes to a drain in the corner. Instead of a drain in the corner, you have a plant in that corner. The basin is just a depression in the soil, with mounded up slow walls made from soil. In the residential sector, you can google "earth ships" for ideas about things currently available that would put less stress on California's water supplies. ------ aceperry This is definitely concerning. I used to wash my car and truck about every week or two when they were new. Today, I haven't washed them in over two years. During the last "big" storm in the bay area, I was hoping to go outside and wash my truck during the rain. I was down with the flu and couldn't do it, but didn't miss much. I don't think I could've washed the truck, unlike many years ago when I actually washed my car during a rainstorm. The other day, I rinsed off some bird crap from the side of my truck, it was a huge mess but I used the leftovers from a plastic bottled water. Just trying to conserve water. I feel sorry for Uber/Lyft drivers who have to keep their cars clean. ------ lotsofmangos If we ever manage to actually run out of fresh water or power on a planet that has an incoming 89 peta-watts and is mostly ocean, then if there is a galactic civilisation, we will enjoy brief celebrity as the latest species to win whatever passes for a Darwin Award. ------ entwife Regarding California agriculture, and specifically growing the produce and vegetable crops that California supplies the rest of the country. An excellent model for urban agriculture, Growing Power of Milwaukee and Chicago, provides such vegetables grown in city greenhouses (lettuce, tomatoes, greens, etc.). They do it year-round in Chicago. Some of the heat comes from compost, worm bins, fish tanks. There are several offshoot businesses (e.g. Eco City Farm here in DC) replicating their model. Growing Power offers training several times a year. So hopefully other places - urban brownfields - will take up some of the agriculture production from California in view of the water problem. ------ gkanapathy Well, [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/science/space/suddenly- it-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/science/space/suddenly-it-seems- water-is-everywhere-in-solar-system.html) ------ marcusgarvey How this gets dealt with will be very telling for the larger environmental disaster the world is facing due to prices not reflecting their true costs. ------ kin This is an opinion article, but the situation is without a doubt fact. However, next year I feel the only impact on me will be produce cost. Everything in this article tells me this is mostly an agricultural issue. What is rationing going to do when farms are pumping 2/3 of our ground water? It just buys more time for the inevitable unless someone finds a solution. ------ bearclough Does anyone have any good intel on nuclear powered desalination plants. I know desalinated water is about the most expensive around but for keeping the population with enough drinking and washing water. The agricultural impact is huge and requires more water than the people do. But, I wonder if desalination would help supply water to the populous. ------ MattHeard My back-of-the-napkin calculation tells me that watering an acre of alfalfa uses the same amount of water as having a nine-month shower with an inefficient flow. If a Pigovean tax of 1c/gallon was applied to California, an 8-minute shower would cost about 20-40c more while an acre of alfalfa would cost an extra $20,0000. ------ cpursley If water were priced correctly, this would not be a problem. Charge what it is worth and people will conserver. ------ paulsmith > the technology and expertise exist to handle this harrowing future. It will > require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades > to identify and act upon. Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin. Someone should, I don't know, start a startup or something. ------ wavesounds Why don't we run a water pipeline down from Oregon? In Portland they have so much water that their drinking fountains literally do not have an off switch. We run pipelines for oil all over the country, would it be that hard to run one for water? ~~~ crpatino The pipeline is expensive, and can move only so much volume per second. You'd need basically and artificial river. Then, there's landscape constrains. And Oregonians will veto any decision about their water siphoned to California anyways. ------ Jaymoon85 Not that anyone cares about follow up to obvious click-bait, but the LAT issued an apology admitting the headline was misleading. www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0320-drought- explainer-20150320-story.html ------ openloop So maybe crops have to change. Surely the epicenter of science and engineering can figure out a responsible way to harness solar desalinization. A bond could be offered with a nominal return to investors. ------ ck2 Burning gasoline produces water (yes, it does). Not suitable for drinking but maybe it could be reclaimed to water crops. Alternately it would be nice if there was a leap in desalination technology where it would take a tenth of the power. ------ sandworm I blame golf. Really. I learned to play on an OIL course. They mixed oil and sand to create a fairway and we carried around a piece of astroturf to place under the ball (see [http://www.panoramio.com/photo/22230833](http://www.panoramio.com/photo/22230833)). A grass course in a desert (ie most every course in california) is a totally unnecessary waste of water. When they stop spending water on golf, THEN we can talk about rationing water for household use. (Fyi, the airbase that picture was THE airbase for the first gulf war. The f117s would land there at night. Seeing a black triangle open white landing gear on approach was like something out of the x-files.) ~~~ bcherry Golf courses account for probably not more than 0.5% of all human water usage in California annually. Human water usage in CA is about 80% agricultural, 20% "urban". "Urban" covers all residential, (non-agricultural) commericial, landscaping, etc. Of the "Urban" usage, about 60% is residential, with indoor usage as the majority. Residential landscaping (lawns, pools, etc) uses at least 3 times as much as all commercial landscaping (golf courses, parks, etc). ~~~ crpatino > Golf courses account for probably not more than 0.5% of all human water > usage in California annually. Great! That's half percent point gain of a life-constraining resource at the cost of a little non-essential entertainment for a small minority of people. It's the same when you are trying to make a tight budget. First you cut off all the stupid impulse purchases. Then you figure out how much of each useful expense you are able to sacrifice. And only _then_ you decide if you can or cannot afford one single hedonic purchase per month to keep up the morale. ~~~ Jtsummers Eh, I cut out Spotify (what, $9.99/month) and saved some $120/year. Woopty do. I cut out Starbucks ($2/day since I get regular coffee) and make coffee at home I save at least twice that. I cut out fast food lunches ($6/meal) and bring cheap cold cut sandwiches (no more than $2/meal with some veggies as a side) and I save close to $1k/year. It's like profiling code. Sure there are some easy cheap gains, but when you find that 80% of your time is spent on task X you may want to focus your performance profiling on that section. EDIT: I'd like to add, that in other parts of the country (I saw this in OK and GA, at least) golf is reasonably popular even amongst the lower middle class. I don't know how it is in CA (or what percentage of courses are accessible to that economic group), but it may not be just the rich elite that would lose out if you eliminated golf courses from the state. ~~~ crpatino The point remains. Water consumption will be cut down either voluntarily or by lack of availability. You cannot chose not to cut down your consumption, but you can choose what type of consumption to cut first. Drink 10% less water and you will give yourself, in a couple of years, kidney failure. Skip shower each other day and you will give yourself a rancid bodily odor. Stop playing golf and you will give yourself... a bunch of free time to use however you like??? Why is it so hard to understand that? ~~~ Jtsummers Not much. My point wasn't that it oughtn't be considered, but that it's insignificant in the overall scheme due to how little water (as a percentage) it uses. What part about profiling this like code or a budget is so difficult? If you have one area that's costing 80% of your resources, then reducing usage there by even 1% is more effective than a 100% cut to something that only uses 0.5% of your total resources. ~~~ crpatino I never said that by only cutting frivolous usage, the problem would be solved. If 80% is agricultural usage, then agricultural cannot be not part of the solution as well. But if people keep coming up with clever arguments for not cutting their favorite usage themselves and argue that others are at fault, nobody will do anything. You are looking at the problem from the perspective of which cuts will bring the usage down faster. I am looking from the perspective of which cuts will produce less cost to society. Each point of view lets you highlight some aspect of the issue, and obscures many others by necessity. ------ lightblade What is preventing is from building canals from the Northeast to California? They are having devastating snowstorm s and we having draught. It make sense. ~~~ danans The Mississippi River system and the Rocky Mountains? ------ madaxe_again Acre-feet? Can someone translate this into furlong-leagues? Or preferably, y'know, an SI fluid measure like litres? ------ clientbiller Instead of an oil pipline, why not a water pipeline? ~~~ ars We use FAR more water than oil. A pipe large enough for oil would not even come close for water. ~~~ clientbiller more than 1 pipe? ------ ilaksh Hydroponics? ------ blake8086 I wish there was some way to change prices to alter demand. Maybe a "task force of thought leaders" can crack open an Econ 101 textbook and look at the supply and demand curve on the first page. Sorry for the sarcasm, I'm just disappointed in the "reach for regulation first" approach to dealing with shortages. ~~~ sp332 You're right, if people can't afford water to drink, they're clearly not valuable enough to live. If a farm can't afford water for crops, the crops weren't profitable enough to grow anyway. And if the rest of the nation can't afford food since some foods will be scarce without California farms, they should just be more productive. No need for regulation! ~~~ drzaiusapelord It makes more sense to farm in places that have reliable sources of water. I don't see why we need to subsidize California's crops, especially when we have so much great soil wasted on corn. Farming, in general, in the US is fairly messed up. Perhaps this crisis will lead to a fix. Maintaining the status quo and pretending everything is okay via regulation and political corruption is what got us here. Lets not continue that. ~~~ emodendroket Even if we just grant that agriculture should be moved away from CA, no one wants to just see it stop immediately for the same reason that the government didn't demolish all buildings that were made with asbestos when they determined that it was harmful to human health. ~~~ baddox I would rather see agriculture move immediately than water to literally run out. ------ shit_parade Agriculture uses the vast majority of water but most farmers pay very little, sometimes nothing, and sometimes they 'own' water rights which can be very valuable and often worth more than any of the land they farm upon. Farmers have been overdrawing from rivers and groundwater for decades and the US government has been very slow to respond. Promises of 'smart meters' or 'water markets' are often delayed with time tables being pushed further and further back. Meanwhile the government also hands out large subsidies to grow a wide variety of crops, most recently the federal government has encouraged corn for biofuel, more corn is being grown for biofuel than is being used for livestock (and effects of carbon usage for biofuel is likely 0 or even negative once you take in effect it's entire life cycle). Typically ever pound of beef takes 7 pounds of corn, pork is 5 to 1, poultry is around 3 to 1. Again, we grow more corn for biofuel than we do for livestock because of government subsidies. If anyone spends anytime at all on this issue they quickly learn that farmers are a powerful lobby, that the agricultural bill is essentially a large handout to a small, tiny, group of people. One reason this occurs is because every state gets two senators, and many middle states are essentially empty but for farmers and their communities. Government has been mismanaging water usage for decades in the US and yet the first thing people suggest is for the government to come in and fix the problems they created, the amount of cognitive dissonance this takes is staggering. ~~~ shit_parade I also want to add one more thing, 'farmers' as a category is not your salt of the earth, homespun family anymore. Most crops being grown are actually produced by large multinational conglomerates, the fact that people picture the downtrodden poor of the dust bowl whenever someone uses the word farmer is a triumph of marketing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Codecademy Labs, the easiest way to write, run, and share code online - zds http://labs.codecademy.com ====== mesher It's definitely a neat idea, but as a Python and JavaScript coder, I don't know how much I would actually use it. For Python, my code tends to rely heavily on modules that aren't found in the Python standard library, which is limited when you're using a REPL that only has vanilla Python. For JavaScript, code that I show tends to be more oriented to DOM manipulation rather than the console, so maybe that could be something that could be implemented? That said, this is probably best for teaching novice programmers, which seems to be the goal anyway with Codecademy. :) Keep up the great work, I really find what you guys are doing to be a huge contribution to education. ~~~ jQueryIsAwesome You can't even do an alert in that javascript console... IMHO one should use <http://jsfiddle.net/> or similar sites to learn javascript. ~~~ amasad Its a REPL[1]. It aims to be host environment agnostic, where you could play around with the language itself (Its accomplished by sandboxing the language in a web worker, and this is also done for Python and Ruby). Try firing up v8 or nodejs shell and do an alert. There is an added security value in that, were you can be sure that code shared by someone else won't crash your browser. We'll be releasing courses and tools soon that aims at teaching JavaScript and the DOM where you can go crazy with alerts ;) You could use console.log, console.time, console.read etc. [1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93print...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93print_loop) ------ mrleinad Really cool, although the line "You're running Ruby version 1.8.7" right after it was deprecated in the latest rails beta is a bit of a downer.. but still really cool! ~~~ amasad Its all running in your browser. So we actually compile the interpreters to JS using emscripten. We're working on ruby 1.9.3 and Python 3. And will hopefully be out soon. ------ jrubinovitz I like this a lot. I would love to be able to code in the same online terminal with someone (I'm teaching someone Python right now and she's overseas), but I know collaborative editing is a whole different beast. I may even shoot it over to some professors in case they want to use it. It's better than taking a few minutes to boot up IDLE and can get people coding on the first day without having to teach them about the terminal first. ~~~ zds Glad to hear it. The one thing you can do with your friend overseas is share sessions (check out the share button in the upper right hand corner). Let us know if you have any other suggestions! ~~~ jrubinovitz Yeah, I will try that next time we work. ------ neilparikh Quick question: Did you use the <http://repl.it> editor? Just wondering because it looks really similar. ~~~ amasad repl.it co-creator here. Yes its powered by the repl.it open-source project but more features will be built on top of it and would be integrated with other codecademy products. I just joined codecademy and I'm particularly excited about how much it would help advance repl.it as an open source project. ~~~ sebilasse that is very impressive stuff. I wonder if there is a way to load own classes and files, e.g. "require 'my_class'". ~~~ amasad Right now you could load modules from the stdlib. At some point we will add the ability to upload custom modules to our servers and require in your code. ------ anrope Just to be a jerk (not really, but sort of), I did: while True: print "foreverrrrr" Of course it looped quite persistently, and then proceeded to ignore my ctrl+c's. Any chance you could catch those to kill a runaway program? ~~~ amasad Yes, but may envolve loosing state. Will push a fix sometime this weekend. Thanks! ------ jimminy It would be nice if you had a link to sign in on the page. You have 3 links to register on the page, but not one to sign in if you already have an account. Edit: Apparently, it's not actually connected to Codecademy that way, as far as I can see. Why not? ~~~ zds Thanks - we're working on integrating everything a bit more tightly! ------ justinmares This is really cool. Can't wait for the Python lessons to come out! ------ pitt1980 codecademy.com and codeacademy.com two different entities? thats confusing as hell, I feel like one of those should have realized the other existed and branded their product differently ------ ashishg Great work evolving the product from where it was a few months ago! ------ captainaj For ruby it would be nice if gems can be used as well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Plant got rid of Junk DNA (just like Dark Angel's Max) - EvaK_de http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/05/carnivorous-plant-has-deleted-most-of-its-junk-dna/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29 ====== tocomment Did they ever explain the dark angel thing? I thought her junk dna was replaced with new genes? ~~~ EvaK_de I think they just said that she didn't have any... There is a book, which explains that Sandeman made her that way to give her immunity against a toxine, which will pollute earth's atmosphere when a certain asteroid passes very near.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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