text
stringlengths 18
17k
|
|---|
Merging multiple RSS Feeds into one
If you'd rather not rely on an external service, it's super-easy to use SimplePie ( http://simplepie.org/ ) to merge feeds and, if you'd like, output another feed: http://www.webmaster-source.com/2007/08/06/merging-rss-feeds...(Not the best tutorial, we should have one on our wiki. Disclosure: I'm the SimplePie lead maintainer.) |
Merging multiple RSS Feeds into one
I built and sold a company that focused almost entirely on this one task several years back :-) It's still going though I can't personally vouch for it as I don't use it any more. Nonetheless: http://feed.informer.com/ |
Merging multiple RSS Feeds into one
I did exactly this to make a poor man's blog planet a few years ago. The only problem is that you get a rather messy looking system of pipes and modules as you add more and more feeds. |
Merging multiple RSS Feeds into one
You could also use our WIP http://thirsst.com -- but we disabled the feed bundles for new users. Ping me at ryan@grow20.com if you care. |
Reddit is a failed state
Tbh, I found the Washington Post profile of the moderator of /r/TheFappening to be even more fascinating. johnmcjohn frequented asexuality and Asperger forums and voiced his frustration, and detailed his financial troubles and professional failures on LinkedIn and begged for money from strangers on Reddit and also moderated and advised users on /r/cocaine on how to obtain and use cocaine. "It's odd that a man with self-diagnosed asexuality created a forum as a trove of naked celebrity photos."The degree of detail of personal information that we post online if someone resourceful enough like a reporter at WashPo can gather on ourselves, both our public or pseudo-anonymous personas truly reveal everything about our professional, psychological, financial and personal lives.Recently, two events happened to me where I was confronted with IRL with what I said online which I thought was anonymous. I felt really uncomfortable initially because I felt simultaneously really rude to the people who have read my comments because it was my pure unadulterated thoughts without any real life filter; and exposed because there are honest thoughts of mine like stream-of-conscious thoughts that I'd never express in public to communicate to someone else, kind of like Jimmy Carter who answered "Yes, in my thoughts" to the question of "Have you ever cheated on your wife."Going back to the main topic of discussion, if I was exposed to the core by WashPo, I'd be no better johnmcjohn. But like johnmcjohn who made his profile public again on Twitter because "there is nothing to hide," I feel honesty in all shapes of forms, even if it exposes you as a 33-year old guy with a questionable personal/professional background who shares celeb nudies is the way to go.I post a lot of provocative comments on this forum; the first few times, it was because I felt arrogant or wanted to attack some of the people-types whom I disliked in real life online. But after someone replied to one of my comment and gave a good counter-perspective and made me learn new things and new perspective. It made me not afraid to be downvoted and keep being honest. I hope that more confrontations and humiliations come my way, so that I can learn from them. |
Reddit is a failed state
Reddit comes of smelling less than rosy in this episode. It seems as if it is ok to post the most intimate details about people as long as they are not reddit users, then suddenly privacy is really important.Link-dumps and fora in general could do a lot more to protect the privacy of victims, there are whole websites dedicated to doing harm to others, usually people who had absolutely no idea that the innocent picture they took or allowed to be taken would end up online some day to ruin their lives or cause them at a minimum great distress.I've been battling this problem for years, and even 'consenting adults' can get themselves into a ton of trouble if they do not oversee all the possible consequences of their actions.It's the main reason why I've decided to ban all forms of nudity on my website, even though I personally believe that people should be able to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes, and by extension their own homes on the net the amount of grief that can come of it nullifies any positive effects.Reddit could and should do more to stop abuses like these and hiding behind the 'free speech' banner when clearly the images distributed were distributed without the consent and probably even the knowledge of the subjects of the images is cheap and tone-deaf.Which is a pity because reddit is one of very few sites on the net that has very long term potential. |
Reddit is a failed state
There are a lot of assholes on the internet, but in general I'm unwilling to hastily put limits on freedom of speech, even when those assholes use it to be assholes.I am not sure what people are asking for: Do they want reddit to start censoring more stuff? That can quickly become a slippery slope. Do they want reddit to break DMCA laws? That's not going to happen. Do they want reddit to fall on its sword and censor nothing even if it means the demonization of reddit? Probably a bad idea too.On another note, I mostly use reddit to read /r/cpp, /r/netsec, /r/Iceland, /r/hiphopheads, /r/bourbon (and friends), /r/LosAngeles, and a collection of other interest specific subreddits. I barely noticed the recent shenanigans. When an article attempts to paint reddit as "being filled with [insert broad brush here]" I always cringe; any large site cuts across most demographics. It's filled with the same type of people who use the internet; that is, the same that are walking around in your city right now. It's filled with everyone. |
Reddit is a failed state
Reddit's true corporate philosophy looks simple. These appear to be the 2 immutable laws of Reddit, and everything else follows naturally from them:1. Anything goes2. Unless it causes immediate and obvious harm to RedditI think the mission statements from Reddit's CEO are a torturous attempt to construct a grand community vision that embodies these laws. He might say it's the other way around, and the laws grew out of the vision, but I think these laws are shaped mainly by the economic and business realities of managing a huge community on an understaffed shoestring. |
Your startup should clone the "Send Feedback" feature of Google Plus
We're actually building this sort of tool. http://bugherd.comAt the moment it is a more traditional bug tracker, but the side widget is designed to accept anonymous feedback in this sort of form as well (coming soon). |
Your startup should clone the "Send Feedback" feature of Google Plus
Hopefully feedback widgets (e.g., UserVoice) take heed and develop this and/or someone throws an open source equivalent together; I'd love to fork this on Github, lots of potential. |
Your startup should clone the "Send Feedback" feature of Google Plus
I loved the fact that they implemented a send feedback on it. If only Chrome had a send feedback button option!But I don't think it's that intuitive to black the info out. I've sent a few blackouts already and I didn't even realize I should black out the info. I didn't know I could do that until I saw someone else do it. So I think they need to make that part a lot more obvious. |
Your startup should clone the "Send Feedback" feature of Google Plus
Your startup doesn't have time to develop this (it's not trivial).Someone should offer it as a service instead. |
One New York LLC law is hurting small businesses
The law firm I used to work for had a great hack for this law. Essentially the LLC was formed with a mailing address in a county where the publishing was exceptionally cheap and after the publishing was completed the LLC address was amended to the HQ/principal place of business address. We did the publishing requirement for clients at the time of formation, for $284.95 (this was in addition to: NEW YORK STATE FILING FEES, ATTORNEY'S FEES, LLC SEAL AND BOOK, ARTICLES OF ORGANIZATION, LLC MINUTES, LLC REGULATIONS, MEMBERSHIP CERTIFICATE AND PRELIMINARY NAME SEARCH which we charged $234.95). Total w/publication $519.90, which falls in line with the article to some degree, whether that is reasonable is for the client to decide.For those that care. Section 206 of the Limited Liability Company Law of the State of New York states:
Upon the effectiveness of the initial Articles of Organization of an LLC, a copy of same or a notice containing the substance thereof shall be published once each week for six successive weeks, in two newspapers of the county in which the office of the LLC is located, one must be a daily newspaper and the other a weekly newspaper designated by the County Clerk. Proof of such publication by the Affidavit of the publisher or printer of each newspaper must be filed with New York State within 120 days after the effective date of the Articles of Organization of the LLC.As a side, I am generally pro-LLC (this is a serious legal analysis, do not just make a decision based on others advice see a corporate lawyer), but my understanding this runs counter to the general principal of SV where they are pro-Corp. |
One New York LLC law is hurting small businesses
I hate this law.This fee is to have your LLC advertised in a newspaper. This is not going to the state, but to a newspaper or journal. The fees can be high, over a $1000 in Manhattan from what I understand.This is to inform the public that you have formed an LLC with the name so they can contest it or what not.The most amazing thing is the moment you register your LLC it is published on a state website. The day after I formed mine I got about 6 calls from banks wanting to setup my business account.So the law is 100% unnecessary and corrupt.I didn't pay to have advertisements taken out. My LLC is not in good standing.What does that mean, well from what I have read I am not allowed to sue as an LLC until I come in compliance.http://www.masurlaw.com/1182/new-york-llc-publication-requir..."In addition, the Secretary of State has indicated it will not keep a record of LLCs that are not in compliance, further reducing any real liability for failing to publish."Now, my LLC is small and exists purely for organization of income, banking and taxes. If I had real liabilities, employees or large contracts, I would think twice.--edit--I just remember one more thing about the law, theater groups are exempt.http://www.dos.ny.gov/corps/llcfaq.asp#pubreq |
One New York LLC law is hurting small businesses
The explanation in the article leaves out a key piece of the whole rationale for the law. The person spearheading the change says that "[t]he original intent was to educate the public that an entity has been formed." This is only part of the story. The real purpose is to give the public notice that a limited liability entity has been formed.Historically, limited liability has not been the default, but rather has been the exception. Thus, it was considered important to give the public, including service providers and potential vendors, notice of the existence of a new limited liability entity. This way, the public, in contractual dealings with the entity, knows that their legal right to sue is circumscribed to suing only the entity itself, not the people who own and control the entity. This is a real consideration for, e.g., manufacturers that provide inventory on credit.Of course, in the internet age it's easy for any vendor to quickly check the status of a potential customer with an internet search. Also, limited liability has basically become the default for business entities, so potential service providers and vendors are always wary of the issue. And of course: nobody reads newspapers anymore. But people saying that the law is "corrupt" are way off the mark. There was a very legitimate purpose behind such notice requirements, which have long been a part of the process of creating limited-liability entities. |
One New York LLC law is hurting small businesses
"Whether or not this is true, it’s outrageous that small businesses are forced to spend money that does not go to the state nor help with incorporation."How does a journalist end a story with "whether or not this is true"? |
What is your server naming convention?
Despite the heated arguments people have about this it really doesn't matter that much. There are pros and cons to any choice, and it's mostly a matter of personal preference.If you're going to have < 50 servers you can very easily use cute names and it will probably never bite you. In fact, it's somewhat easier. Humans are pretty good with people-like names. Servers named with friendly names take on special characteristics in your head.If you're going to have 1000+ servers then it's just not practical to come up with names manually. But you'll also probably just have large numbers of the same kind of server. You could have servers named gary1 - gary434 and a standard that says "gary servers run XYZ service(s)".But, generally people encode some info in the hostname. Things like xweb23prodlax2 could be "external web server 23 in Los Angeles datacenter 2", so that's <role><instance><environment><datacenter>. If you're going to run multiple different app stacks you might also use an <app>. So hnxweb23prodlax2 might be "Hacker News' 23rd web server in LA" I don't recommend zero padding numbers (01 vs 1), since it looks bad when you break the padding's length.You may want to separate components by hyphens (which are fine in hostnames). Don't worry about keeping them under 8 chars or anything, nothing modern breaks on reasonably long hostnames. You can also use sub-domains for parts that make sense.hn-web-23-prod-lax2 isn't bad, and it's easy to parse reliably.
hn-web-23.prod.lax2.yourdomain.tld works as well (but makes your short hostname not globally unique, which probably doesn't matter).Naming locations based on the nearest and largest airport code tends to work well. Including a number in the location is a good idea, since you may end up with more than one datacenter in a location.I don't like putting actual software names in hostnames. So I'd never name a server mysql5lax2. I'd use "db" not "mysql". You might swap it out for Postgres or something, so the role is what's important.I highly recommend not using IPs for hostnames (the way EC2 does). It might work for EC2 where they're committed to never changing things, but you're probably going to have at least one server change IPs at some point, the hostname shouldn't change when that happens. Same thing with putting rack #s in or other things that are likely to change (unless you absolutely know they won't).You should use DNS (via CNAME records) to get pretty names. For example git.yourdomain.tld might be a CNAME for repo-1-corp-lax2.yourdomain.tld.An incomplete list of things you might encode in the hostname:<customer> (joeinc, hn)<app> (cms, api)<role> (web, db, dns)<instance> (number of this type)<location> (lax1, nrt2)<environment> (prod, dev, qa, corp) |
What is your server naming convention?
The large companies I worked with typically use a combination of one or more of the following on the server names:
- abbreviated physical location (city/state/data center,availability zone/country)
- abbreviated environment (demo/test/dev/prod),
- server role (db/app/web)
- sequential number/letterExamples:
ATLWEB301 (Atlanta Web 301)
DEMOVA050 (Demo Virginia 050)
NYCDB015 (New York City Database 015)The standards vary significantly, specially depending if you are talking about internal / public servers. The length also varies but most people try to stay below 15 a-z characters. I personally like to give servers more generic names and not have to worry too much about it. Ex: ATLDEMO001, DENPROD014...If the servers are public (I mean accessible via internet) most companies refrain from using any information on the server name that could facilitate a potential attack. For example: putting DB on the name of a database server.Small companies, on the other hand, have a lot more variety. I have worked on servers named after Lord of the Rings and Simpson characters, Greek mythology gods, etc... I had a frodo mysql server that gave me a lot of trouble. |
What is your server naming convention?
For servers:
3 letter abbreviation for location, first number indicating the iteration of the datacenter in that area, Second number is the floor of the building the system is at, hyphen, row number of the cabinet the system is in, Iteration of the cabinet in the row, hyphen, lowest rack unit the server is located in.eg: chi18-018-23chicago datacenter 1, floor 8, row 0, cabinet 18, rack unit 23For switches, simply:
as018-1.chi18 for an aggregation switch, int018-1.chi18 for an internal network switch, ipmi018-1.chi18 for an IPMI switch, And if you have more than switch for a purpose in that cabinet, then the name is 'as018-2.chi18'The systems are almost always connected to a switch that's in the same cabinet. Though, we keep every system documented in our inventory system, with it's specs, IP addresses, switch ports, and power outlets. System also provides bandwidth graphs from every switch, and if a server as well as ipmi are ever inaccessible, we can remotely control the PDU & Outlet as well. Though, we always have employees onsite at each datacenter to check the console & hardware. |
What is your server naming convention?
1] If you can visit a local telco wire office, go do so; especially with all these questions in mind. Telcos have dealt with this problem way before most of us were born.2] Use DNS's hierarchical nature to your advantage, e.g.tld -> domain -> telco location code -> box N = box38.lsanca.example.com3] Your network design perspective will impact how you approach naming, so be careful you don't cement with names something where the design will change, and then your names no longer make sense. |
IOS vs. Android from the Trenches
I use an Android every day, and my wife has an iPhone. The absolute biggest thing that annoyed me about using the iPhone after being used to the Android is the lack of a dedicated hardware back button. The problem you describe about an app opening the browser and then trying to get back to the app on the same screen you left it is so irritating in iOS - It's a huge glaring issue that is seamless on Android. |
IOS vs. Android from the Trenches
Deeper integration with the Android OS allowed Bump to offer more functionalities than its iOS version. Same with the Dropbox app. |
IOS vs. Android from the Trenches
I love these compare-and-contrast articles about developing on different smartphone platforms, but I'm interested to see how the second-tier ones go, as well. I've heard that webOS is a delight to develop on, WinPho is bad, and I'm not sure about Blackberry OS or the other lower-tier ones. |
IOS vs. Android from the Trenches
I personally love how android handles the latest activity window by dragging down the top area. Is there something similar on iOS4?. This and the back button are really good features. |
Steam In-Home Streaming
I have been using this on and off in beta. If possible I highly recommend a wired network connection. I have been testing it on a WRT54GL and that was not always sufficient. When my AC router is not misbehaving (ASUS RT-AC66U) I've been able to play online FPS shooters surprisingly well. Fighting games or FPS that are heavily twitch based won't work, but pretty much anything that can suffer the occasional frame drop or isn't precision works well.tl;dr You may need an N wifi router or better that is rock solid to make things run smooth. |
Steam In-Home Streaming
I've been using this more and more lately. Most recently to play Dark Souls 2 on a laptop in the living room rather than having to be sequestered upstairs in the office.It's pretty amazing how well it runs, with the input lag being minimal and the quality of visuals far surpassing what the laptop could actually handle on it's own. |
Steam In-Home Streaming
If you add Chrome as a non-steam game, you can stream netflix to your linux laptop. The audio actually syncs better than it does watching in wine! |
Steam In-Home Streaming
It's really working great, I've been using it for about the past six months (beta) and it always went great, way better than expected. I wasted hours and days trying to come with a similar solution and it always sucked. Glad they came up with something actually enjoyable. |
Want to be a mentor to a HN Startup? [gdoc]
Form leads here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tgPKuNIdWWOPUpj2ZnF8N...
for your viewing pleasure.I'm hoping this can serve as a list of people on HN who startup founders can approach easily for advice with any of the thousand given problems we face daily. |
Want to be a mentor to a HN Startup? [gdoc]
If you're in the UK, check out the ITC's mentoring scheme:http://www.itcmentoring.com/ ( http://www.wcit.org.uk/ )The quality of the mentors is really quite impressive, and we've got a lot out of the scheme. |
Want to be a mentor to a HN Startup? [gdoc]
I really like this idea! I would also like a column for location, as I think it's key to be able to meet a mentor/advisor in person. |
Want to be a mentor to a HN Startup? [gdoc]
You should put the link to the spreadsheet in the form. |
Why American Mothers are Superior
I'm writing this from Hong Kong, where I run a scholarship for young entrepreneurs in mainland China. A few thoughts:-To understand the mentality of a Chinese parent, you need to know a few things. First, the obvious one child policy, and the expectation that this one child will support their children but also their parents and grandparents (no social security, minuscule pensions and a non-existent safety net). This puts an enormous pressure on the individual to have a stable and high wage job. Lots of people on these boards are in startups (or would like to be), but few Chinese nationals are willing to take that route due to the immense risks involved. They're gambling not only their personal wealth but also the survival of their family.-School is brutal, particularly college admissions. Each student at the end of high school takes something called the gaokao. Imagine the SAT on steroids (2 days long) that you only take one and almost wholly determines what "tier" of college you get admitted into. You can take it once a year, and if you fail, you have a second chance one year later (the intervening year is usually spent studying 14+ hrs a day). You pour a gazillion college-bound kids into this crucible of death, with only a scant few slots at the other end. Even for the student goes abroad to study, they've been indoctrinated with the cutthroat and "success at all costs" mentality necessary to get ahead in China. It's a numbers game, and the numbers are stacked to make your life hell.What does this have to do with obsessive parents? Take these last two facts and mix in some historical perspective. Many of these parents either lived through or are sufficiently proximate to the turmoil of the 1960's and 1970's to know how brutal life can be for those that do not get ahead. It's not the American poverty of temp labor and living in a trailer park; it's the poverty of starving to death. It's the poverty of not having shelter from the cold, of having zero access to medical care. While this is less true of today's China, the fear of this poverty survives, even for those in relative affluence (think of your grandparents that lived through the depression and still are obsessively thrifty).I can understand why these parents are monomaniacal in ensuring (or trying to ensure) a better life for their kids. With grueling competition, a one-child policy, scant social safety nets and a vivid memory of how brutal China can be, it makes sense. |
Why American Mothers are Superior
Also worth reading is The Last Psychiatrist's response to the Chinese mothers article: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/why_chinese_mothers_a... |
Why American Mothers are Superior
It reads like we're having a child-off between exceptionally gifted Chinese children, and exceptionally gifted American children. What about normal children?I'd love to see these anecdotes turned into evidence. |
Why American Mothers are Superior
The title of the article is "Why American Mothers are Superior" but the body of the article primarily talks about the writer's own parenting, and from her description we can clearly tell that she is far from representative of the typical American mother. I am definitely not going to endorse the Chinese model, I think it has huge problems, but I think there are many 28-year-old unemployed History majors out there right now wishing that the status quo on American parenting had been a little bit different when it could have helped them. There are a lot of fat kids in theatre school, a lot of mediocre musicians, a lot of aspiring fashion designers who would maybe benefit from a little less love and a little more splash of reality. |
Modern Perl, the book, is Available.
This is great. I've been anticipating this book for a while. I'm tired of hearing the same canned complaints about perl. It's a great language. Thanks for showing us all why. :) |
Modern Perl, the book, is Available.
One question, I noticed that the pdf from from the onyxneon site is 185 pages long, when a previous draft which i downloaded from chromatic's site was 273 pages long.Where did all those pages go? |
Modern Perl, the book, is Available.
I wonder for how much longer the 'give away the PDF, sell the print version' business model will work. Not that I'm complaining! |
Modern Perl, the book, is Available.
Since I couldn't find the HTML version hosted anywhere, I posted it myself:http://danonline.net/modernperlThank you so much for writing this, chromatic! |
Ask HN: Can't stay at a company for more than an year.
You have to start analyzing, what is it that you really want out of your career? Mastery of a development stack? Creating a start-up company? Project Manager? Set a goal, start with the end in mind and from there you can dedicate your steps towards that.When you keep jumping jobs, it means you haven't figured out what you want to dedicate yourself to because you easily get distracted by 'new and interesting' things. Truthfully, when anyone is really passionate about their job, they never see it as 'work', they naturally tend to stick to it for the next 3 or more years of their life - and those people are the ones who tend to naturally create "interesting" things (ex: 10gen, 37signals, Redis, NodeJS etc.) |
Ask HN: Can't stay at a company for more than an year.
Why not go freelance? Or - a bit better - take medium-term contracts? That way you get to dive into things long enough to enjoy them, learn something new and (just as importantly, IMO) contribute something meaningful to the company you're at, then you move on as part of the agreed plan.While that is effectively what you've been doing for the past three years, it'll come with a different mindset that might mean you're happier. (I'm assuming "help me" means you're not happy). For me, that's certainly one factor in why I prefer being an independent dev - but at the same time, I also get to enjoy working on good projects with great people for a run of time.(Of course, being independent is for everyone, and has downsides, too) |
Ask HN: Can't stay at a company for more than an year.
I've changed jobs 4 times this year, same shit. Also, a new grad.I learn fucking fast, so after some months in the job I know everything and it gets fucking boring and I start to get depressed :-( |
Ask HN: Can't stay at a company for more than an year.
If you continue this trend, you are going to look like a ticking bomb to employers. They will assume you will leave within a year, and thus not hire you. Of course, unless you are a development god. |
Infographics might be more fun to look at than a company website
In this particular situation, it doesn't work at all. The infographic didn't teach me anything about the product.It starts with a segmented wheel that seems to describe the "Overall time saved". But where does that come from? Time saved doing what? Time saved by whom? And 2 cells are in grey, why is that?The graphic right below ("Future add-ons") has weird labels. What do "Good", "Great", and "Awesome" mean here? The progress bars hint at the fact that the X-axis is a quantifiable value. But they're actually arbitrary opinions. It looks like "Payment integration" is more awesome than "Advanced user search", and Referall Program and Launching Soon Page are just good. By the way, why are these two in white?The "What happens next" section displays those progress bars again. Looking at the X-axis, I see Php, Ruby, Java... So it looks like a ranking for programming languages? Well, it also says Mailchimp, Social Login and Analytics. So what is it supposed to tell exactly?I closed the infographic and went to the website. First thing I read: "User Management in the Cloud". Ok, I finally know what you do. These 5 words taught me more than your 3 Million pixels image. |
Infographics might be more fun to look at than a company website
'There's an xkcd for that' may be hackneyed but really applies in this case:https://xkcd.com/1273/ |
Infographics might be more fun to look at than a company website
I noticed that their popularity is perfectly justified when I didn’t remember even once closing an infographic before scrolling down to the very end of it (and some of them has been very long).I don't think this is true, and even if it is, unless you're in the business of making mouse wheels a user scrolling to the end is not the goal - getting a conversion (sale, signup, phone call, etc) is. The fact you scroll to the end isn't very interesting - do people call the companies they see infographics from? I don't.A good infographic is a representation of interesting data with an imaginative and informing design. Making something into an infographic doesn't have any inherent benefit. They need real thought and hard work to be useful. There are popular, dare I say even beautiful infographics, but many are dull, unimaginative ways of reporting data without actually adding anything. They're created as if Excel had an "export table as cartoon" feature.People are as likely to ignore a bad infographic as they are to ignore a bad website. |
Infographics might be more fun to look at than a company website
The infographic may be more fun to look at, but it is far less obvious where the "call to action" might go. In fact, you may be hard pressed to place one at all.And I think this is a fundamental result of the nature of the graphic Vs text.With text, however arranged, there is a flow, a direction, and we are used to gaps, pauses, and beats - punctuation, paragraphs, chapters....A graphic is closed. A graphic attempts to present everything. Nothing more. Nothing less.Achieving flow and direction in a graphic is difficult - and I'll assert, blindly and without evidence, that flow is essential to the placement of the call to action. "Ah, the end of [sentence|paragraph|story], now I [click|call|shout with joy]!"With a graphic, a button is just another part of the picture, no?The infographic is very interesting, intriguing. I just don't know what to do with it. Like shots from USA Today, it seems to tell me something, but I don't know what to conclude, and I move on to the narrative of the sports section. |
For Safer Food, Just Add Viruses
Viruses seem so weird to me. They're naturally emergent nanobots. |
For Safer Food, Just Add Viruses
Given that the human digestive tract (reportedly) contains more bacteria than the human body has cells, and they are vital to our survival, how can spraying bacteria-killers on food not be harmful? |
For Safer Food, Just Add Viruses
Elanco, sells a liquid phage product called Finalyse that is sprayed on the hides of cattle before they’re slaughtered.I'm thinking that name is just a little too on the button. |
For Safer Food, Just Add Viruses
This was fascinating. Could phages be engineered to attack mrsa and other superbugs we see in hospitals? |
Awsbox: A DiY PaaS for Node.JS
I know that Mozilla has made a concerted effort to improve their public relations and "get out there" more, but it really seems like the Moz crew is just churning out innovations and interesting products one after another. |
Awsbox: A DiY PaaS for Node.JS
I'm really excited about the idea of building a generic DiY PaaS out of docker (for container management), mesos/chronos (for scheduling and allocation), and cloudformation (for auto-scaling and bootstrapping the cluster). I don't really want to do this as a business, but I think it could exist and be really nice.Some install notes for mesos, chronos, docker on EC2: https://gist.github.com/fizx/b50319b6576773a0841a. If anyone wants to hack around with me on this, my email's in my profile. |
Awsbox: A DiY PaaS for Node.JS
Looks like a great start, that's sth I've been waiting for a long time.It would be great if it supports adding more instances (dynos?), balanced through ELB. And... worker instances. And... Some configuration management.The potential is huge! |
Awsbox: A DiY PaaS for Node.JS
Very cool. Is there anything similar for Rails? |
Lengthen My URL
was reminded of something on a similar note, shadyurl (http://shadyurl.com). "don't just shorten your url, make it suspicious and frightening..."it generates similarly ridiculous urls like:http://5z8.info/michaelangelo-virus_l6h3k_openme.exeand this project compresses files by making them much, much bigger:http://tac-compression.com/ |
Lengthen My URL
I think that http://hugeurl.com/ probably has first dibs on this joke by a couple of years. |
Lengthen My URL
Should be: http://doyouwantyoururltobelongerwellwecandothatforyouhere.c... |
Lengthen My URL
I thought this would get the original address of a shortened URL. That would actually be useful. |
Ask HN: Which CAs can you trust?
I don't know if what your threat model is here, but if you believe the NSA can suborn any CA trusted by your user's browser, then the question of which CA you use is moot. (Modulo something like certificate pinning, which helps if your advertising company that runs an enormous popular mail service also happens to also develop a popular browser.)Assuming that an adversary can get one suborned CA to sign a certificate for your domain, the adversary can use that certificate to MITM first connections to your site without causing any sort of warning message within the browser. They can then both sniff and alter messages going in either direction, including e.g. stealing credentials, cookies, and what have you. |
Ask HN: Which CAs can you trust?
With the current implementation of SSL, there really is no point in picking one CA over another for security purposes (unless you don't trust a CA with billing, etc. data). In the typical use case of a web browser, any trusted (root) CA can sign certificates for any Common Name/domain - so any government or private entity that can influence a commonly trusted CA can get a valid certificate for any site - irregardless of which CA you chose to trust.Furthermore, if done properly, your CA will never handle any of your (private) key material, so the CA itself has no special privilege with respect to the communications you sign with the private key, so there is also no reason to pick one here.The only cryptographic thing they can do right or wrong is to allow easy and hassle free revocation of your certificate in case of a key compromise..
The main factors I would consider in picking a CA are pricing, customer service, acceptance and whether they are recognized as 'extended validation'. |
Ask HN: Which CAs can you trust?
As I see it - until there's broad support for Certificate Pinning, your users browsers are going to trust all 700-ish CA Root certs that Chrome/Firefox/Safari/IE(/and others) ship with, so your choice of CA doesn't stop Mallory from creating a plausible SSL cert for your domain with her choice of compromised CAs, and have your users believe she's you no matter which CA you carefully chose.Having said that - if you're being diligent, make sure you generate your own public/private keypair and only send the CSR to the CA to sign your public key.I noticed recently that StartSSL, although they'll happily accept a CSR, also offer to generate your key pair and give you the private (and public) key. While I understand their desire to make acquiring an SSL cert as easy as possible even for non-technical people (especially since they'll give you a cert for free, so minimising support is clearly critical to their business), the idea of having my private key come from something other than a machine I trust that's completely under my control seems very wrong. |
Ask HN: Which CAs can you trust?
It sounds a bit as if you were worried your CA could hand out your key to the NSA. That's not how SSL works. CAs only certify the validity of your public key. Your private key never leaves your machine. If you are looking for a vendor that supports your cause, take a look at Namecheap: https://www.namecheap.com/ssl-certificates |
Ask HN: How do you invest?
I'm a buy & hold stock market investor in companies which have good management, care about the shareholders and of course, good balances.I use the simple strategy of (1 - my_age)% in the stock market and the rest in fixed income funds(or less risky investments, including some hedge in gold and dolar due the fact that I live in the third world and currency fluctuations happen frequently).It's funny because even though I work with software development, I don't have much interest about internet companies(read FB, TW and so on). The other sectors in the industry are less of a gamble and I like that. |
Ask HN: How do you invest?
I personally own (not through a broker) shares in a diversified portfolio of companies, all of which offer Dividend Reinvestment Plans with optional cash purchases of additional shares directly through the company's transfer agent. This means that I pay no fees when purchasing additional shares for my DRiPs, in fact, a lot of the companies I invest in offer discounts on shares purchased through their Share Purchase Plan. I mostly invest in large companies that pay reasonable dividends with long histories of stability and dividend payments/increases. My goal is to almost never stop buying, making use of dollar cost averaging, and earn a safe return that ought to still beat the market in order to save for retirement/other future investments. |
Ask HN: How do you invest?
Of the money I invest --25% in Vanguard dividend growth index fund25% in Vanguard total stock market index fund25% in Vanguard total bond market index fund25% in stocks I chose myself |
Ask HN: How do you invest?
Betterment and Bitcoin speculation for the most part. With the right knowledge, you can certainly outperform Betterment, but as a programmer I'm content just outsourcing that and saving that time for other things (like getting better at programming, for example, which implicitly earns me money as well). |
Landing page of our upcoming product. Do you understand what we do?
"Create groups, send links, share files and we’ll organize them so you don’t have to" <- This doesn't mean much to me. Maybe I didn't 'identify' with the problem you're trying to solve.If I understand correctly, you're a service that uploads e-mail attachments to a central location? Kinda like sending all -mail attachments to google Drive, then sorting by who you send to? |
Landing page of our upcoming product. Do you understand what we do?
I like your design, and the message was quite clear. It didn't take very long to find out was your product does and was value it can add to a group workflow.The parallax effects on the front page aren't very smooth when scrolling though, and my personal opinion would be to have the Russia/English navigation item displayed as the last item rather than the first. Other than that, it looks great! |
Landing page of our upcoming product. Do you understand what we do?
I understand what you're doing, but the plans (at least in English) are quite confusing. Technically they are all month to month plans, but naming them "Month" "Year" and "Eternity" is rather confusing. I would definitely think about renaming them to something not having to do with a date range. |
Landing page of our upcoming product. Do you understand what we do?
Short: no. I'm guessing it's about sharing files and commenting on those shared files. But, that's a guess. So, try another version of your explanation. |
KDE Ships First Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace
I always loved how configurable KDE is and prefer it over others. I somehow always felt more comfortable using KDE than say Unity or Gnome. Its very stable , fluid and fast now as well. However, there are certain problems that just don't seem to be addressed much -1. Cartoonish or early 2000's looking icons. They simply are not pleasing to eyes any more.2. Lack of UI widget themes. Although there is plethora of colour schemes and window decorations, which I hardly care about. What I want is complete themes, with different widgets. Its just Oxygen or Windows 98 kinda themes. GTK has really strong community in this case.3. I don't know how to put this, but most kde apps (except base apps) feel overloaded. This is common complaint too I guess. I'm not asking that they should do what GNOME is doing, but there must be something that can be done. When I use Windows, many apps still have a lot of functions but still manage to look better. I think some of this can be addressed by building a better widget set - (better tabs, toolbars with smaller icons and less whitespace overall)Overall my complaint is 90% about how it looks. |
KDE Ships First Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace
The black font over the grey window. The buttons with the cartoon icons. The hideous tray icons. Sheer ugliness.I can't believe I'm saying this, but Unity 7 is the most polished looking Linux desktop. |
KDE Ships First Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace
Linux needs professional designers as it needs programmers. It remembers me to Enligtenment old themes, a genius programmer but horrible designer, the theme the KDE people are displaying is hideous, not consistence at all. The people that designed this thing has no training in visual arts whatsoever.I have to agree that Unity looks better than this.Where is Everaldo when we need him? |
KDE Ships First Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace
I'm using KDE 4.13, and I really love it. I think it's the most usable and polished Linux desktop out there. Downloading the beta now.Thanks KDE Team. I love you. |
Machine that Levitates Objects Using Sound [video]
If we assume they want to hold objects with a size of half a centimeter, a quick calculation shows they are using a sound frequency of 68000Hz.-> 340m/s / 0.005m = 68000Hz.If we limit the frequency to above human hearing range (>20000Hz) then maximum size of objects held in this way would be about 1.7 centimeters. |
Machine that Levitates Objects Using Sound [video]
Could this be used to create a 3D display? For example, when turned off, it's just a pile of styrofoam pellets, but when on, it can use standing waves to create shapes in midair? |
Machine that Levitates Objects Using Sound [video]
I wonder if this would be a good technology for a pick-and-place robot for circuits.Obviously the palsy needs to be fixed, but assuming that's solvable, it would be interesting to see it used as perfectly sterile tweezers.Alternately, there seems to be some impressive vertical momentum imparted. Perhaps it could be used to launch small components into the air to be caught by another acoustic field, which does a more refined drop or transfer.Or... Well, there's an awful lot of applications, really. Truly cool tech.** This isn't the first time a trick like this has been done, but it's the first I've seen with such control and dexterity.Low frequency sound "halting" flow of water (illusion):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mODqQvlrgIQNon-Newtonian fluid on speaker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zoTKXXNQIUOf course yesterday's article on General Fusion showing the power of a well focused waveform:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6996683 |
Machine that Levitates Objects Using Sound [video]
I've been watching this same story submitted over and over again - it's nice to see it get some traction.In case you're wondering, the other submissions have no comments, so I won't link to them, even though the other sources may have more videos, more commentary, or better explanations. I've decided not to do the cross-referencing for a while. |
Ask HN: How do you find good designers for your projects?
I simply tried here and got lucky twice already.Simply post a 'Looking for a designer' with some basic requirements (job duration, an idea of the scope and your location preferences) and ask for portfolio links.That'll get you plenty of response.Make sure you put an email address in the text area of your profile!One of the issues some people run in to when looking for designers and programmers is that they want to scrape the bottom of the barrel pricewise, but that is going to get you in to a very long period where you'll be looking at stuff that doesn't cut it.In that case I'd suggest moving 'upmarket' a bit and spend what it's really worth. If you ever get lucky and find that $10 per hour designer or programmer that delivers stellar work let me know.One that I have no personal experience with but that has a really nice portfolio lives here: http://www.gursimran.com/ , I've spent half a day just looking through her website and flickr album, quite amazing.--edited for clarity. |
Ask HN: How do you find good designers for your projects?
You haven't mentioned any of the crowd-sourced design sites:http://99designs.com
http://crowdspring.com |
Ask HN: How do you find good designers for your projects?
I know crowdsourced design gets a lot of flack around here, but take a look at crowdspring.com or 99designs.comI used to work at CS (as a dev), so I got to see a lot of entries.You can get some good work for way less than an independent designer would charge. Some buyers ended up establishing relationships with designers they liked, too. |
Ask HN: How do you find good designers for your projects?
If you just need design (little "d"), it would be hard to recommend anything other than 99designs.com, since you can get dozens of people to do the design work you need on spec, at effectively no cost to you, then pick the best (or none at all).If you need Design (big "D"), then you get what you pay for, and you should be going with established, known quantities like an identity/brand specialized design agency. They do cost a lot of money, but that's because Design (big "d") is very hard.The difference is that Design (big "D") is about strategy and communication, whereas design (little "d") is about drawing and coloring. Sometimes you need one, sometimes you need the other, and sometimes you need both. |
Ask HN: Would you use AWS for a primary infrastructure if you're a bank?
The FDIC is where most of your IT security requirements will come from. Below I have listed a few items which make the cloud a non-starter. In summary, it costs $20+ million dollars to start a bank. The reason every small bank has the same crappy online banking and digital services is because everyone except large institutional banks has to outsource everything to a handful of third party providers who can maintain these requirements.As far as your business idea, you should check out simple.com. They have been working on the problem for years and have just barely managed to cut enough red tape to provide a not terrible user experience for a handful of tasks.Have a full accounting and audit of every VoIP device, VPN device, wireless device, switch, router, modem, firewall, and proxy server connected to the network.Demonstrate physical access controls for employees, vendors, and anyone else who may have access your equipment.Every single person with physical access to customer information devices must have a 10-year criminal background check performed (this is actually a federal law that applies to the Finance, public education, public transportation, etc industries).Formal configuration and patch management procedures for all devices (including upstream routers and switches).Diagrams of physical and logical network topologies.The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 requires physical destruction of devices storing customer data.Reporting of all physical security incidents to FDIC IT examination. |
Ask HN: Would you use AWS for a primary infrastructure if you're a bank?
Are you opening a US bank under a US charter and US law and with US insurance? Each type of institution (eg: national bank or credit union) has its own rules and covered or rfulated by a different governmental institution |
Ask HN: Would you use AWS for a primary infrastructure if you're a bank?
Almost all major datacenters have pretty high security. Your main concern should probably be securing the software, not the physical servers. |
Ask HN: Would you use AWS for a primary infrastructure if you're a bank?
Problem = banks offer poor online serviceSolution option A = Start a bank and create infrastructure to offer better online serviceSolution option B = Create infrastructure to offer better online service and sell it to banksWhich one scales? |
GWT, Cappuccino, Sproutcore: AJAX-Framework-Shootout
For a look at what we have done with GWT, check out TeamPostgreSQL (http://www.teampostgresql.com).It is a fairly complex web application both in terms of UI and functionality, developed and maintained by essentially one guy, which IMHO speaks volumes about the power of GWT to produce and manage AJAX application code. All of the code base contains zero lines of Javascript - it is all regular Java classes. |
GWT, Cappuccino, Sproutcore: AJAX-Framework-Shootout
Another one worth mentioning is qooxdoo, which I'm currently evaluating. I would probably go with Cappuccino if I had more experience with Cocoa/Objective-C. However, qooxdoo seems more approachable if you don't have the Cocoa background -- it's surprisingly well documented. Although it doesn't look as visually appealing out of the box, you can create a custom theme. |
GWT, Cappuccino, Sproutcore: AJAX-Framework-Shootout
On the note of cappuccino looking awesome (which it totally does) this kind of shows how GWT could look: http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler/#Components/Forms/FormBasic (haven't used it myself though). |
GWT, Cappuccino, Sproutcore: AJAX-Framework-Shootout
Apple has one due to come out this year called Gianduia ... and that's about all I know about it. People I trust who know more are absolutely raving about it, but, typically, details are scarce on the ground. Am very interested to see what arrives, though. |
Rogue Academic Downloader Busted by MIT Webcam Stakeout, Arrest Report Says
"For its part, JSTOR says it worked with Swartz’s lawyers to get the data back[...]"Interesting way of putting it. I would have said "removing the data from his possession" |
Rogue Academic Downloader Busted by MIT Webcam Stakeout, Arrest Report Says
manhunt for a slender guy with a backpack riding a bike on MIT’s campusWell that must've narrowed it right down. |
Rogue Academic Downloader Busted by MIT Webcam Stakeout, Arrest Report Says
>The two MIT officers and Special Agent Pickett then tried to stop Swartz, who jumped off his bike and ran away, only to be caught and handcuffed by the Secret Service Agent, according to the report.RUN FASTER. I really can't stress this enough. The reason he got caught is because he didn't run fast enough. If you're going to do stuff like this, LEARN TO RUN FAST. Cops are fat and slow. You can usually get away from them, especially in a place like MIT.http://i.imgur.com/2pMx2.jpgLook at that kid! That is not a fast-looking person. Run faster, guys. |
Rogue Academic Downloader Busted by MIT Webcam Stakeout, Arrest Report Says
Sentencing a criminal to jail is theoretically supposed to be for the good of society. So in a case like this, they'd better ask themselves if society would ultimately benefit from having him behind bars.The actual damage done here was negligible, especially considering the questionable locking-down of the content in the first place (i.e. maybe it should always have been free, and it was still valued at only $50,000 by the school, not $1 million). Swartz maybe did something stupid, but his ability to contribute to society is still far greater out of jail than in. There is also every bit of evidence to suggest that his intent is to contribute positively to society.In other words, if he serves more than a few months in jail for this, or is actually asked to pay a million dollars, I will be incredibly disheartened by the "legal" system. |
Ask HN: How do you see the future of computing ?
I hate to say it but 10 years isn’t that long a time. Keep in mind the HTML 4 spec was approved about 12 years ago and we’re still using it. So I think a lot of the building blocks we’ll be using in 10 years are probably already taking shape (HTML5 for example)That said I think the improvements we will see in 10 years will be based around the maturation of frameworks. In just about every environment, be it Rails or .Net or whatever, you see programming in general moving to a higher level. People using mature algorithms to focus only on what they need to customize and in doing so making programs that are easier to use while being a lot more stable.I think that leads to the 20 year question. As programs become more stable and a generation of kids grows up with computers they trust not to crash I think you’ll see computing in general change. Add that to cheap, widespread touch screens and I think you’ll see a lot of things that are currently "physical" become "virtual". You can already see this now with things like EC2 which turns physical computers into virtual constructs that can be manipulated through software.Think about it. Other than your oven or refrigerator what else do you even have in your house that couldn’t be made virtual? Your entertainment system, your computer, your alarm clock, etc... can all be moved "behind the screen". Even the oven and fridge can be made into components that interface with a virtual console.That’s when the fun really begins for programmers because that’s when we get into the business of creating virtual worlds. I don’t know how that will take shape exactly as far as programming is concerned but I assume you’ll start to see hybrid functionality where physical interaction becomes a lot more important than back end functionality (which again will be largely covered by frameworks at that point). In many ways it will probably mirror how physical electronics are created now. Most electronics are built using pre-fab Integrate Circuits that do most of the work. The manufacturer just creates an appearance and a user interface.Anyway, that’s one man’s opinion. |
Ask HN: How do you see the future of computing ?
I had to walk a bit to think this through. My mind works best when walking.I think touch screens will be cool toys for the toddlers, but adults will use something different. Think about it, your fingers are blocking your view just when you need it the most.I don't know what will happen, but I hope some technology would get the drones out of those cubicles. Something like chorded keyboards and holographic eye-wear combined with wireless network.If some country would start to teach the use of chorded keyboard in elementary school, it might be a huge leap for the economics of that country.If you work in small room, your ideas will be smaller too, if you work while sitting, your mind will be sitting too.Nowadays programmers work to make software for other people. That will change. In future people will increasingly do their own software as programming is already taught in some schools as a basic skill. And programmers will increasingly make software for other programmers as the percentage of programmers/workforce constantly rises.Both of these will shape programming towards "write what you want, and the machine will optimize it for you".Actually some of the programming might not be writing at all. Some people are way better with images than words, and even today dudes draw pictures to help themselves to grasp what they are doing. Look at well formed C and the python, indentation was meant to help, now in python it's the way of doing things. Same might happen for other stuff originally just meant to display the info a bit clearer. |
Ask HN: How do you see the future of computing ?
10 years from now.. too short to tell, but 20/30 years from now, I have strange thoughts.I do believe that in one day, Information Technology will invade each place, home, school, office, road... anything that exists in everyday life... I dream that everything in life will be connected and Internet will become more important than oxygene, something like cars, TV and cellphone now.The IT world will be very promising, it'll be big and no one can control it. I think. In my opinion. The IT market will be so big that even giant companies like Google and Microsoft will be nothing rather than companies dominating a niche with a considerable market share.I think in the future, the IT will grow strong, companies like msft will grow their sales but loose more market share, as the IT growth is stronger.I think it's time for many "big" companies formed of 3 or 4 poeple. Look at startup now, it's just the begining, how was the web in 95? it was a few number of websites, they made good income and dominated the web (like yahoo.com and msn.com) now they still make money, but the web grow in a way they can't control it and the market is far big than their potentiel.I think the future of IT will be so complicated that you can never, anyone, understand it... many new things everyday, startups launched each seconds... and many news, ideas and discoveries... It'll be fantastic, but we'll miss the days of the simple Hacker News interface.meet you in 2040, hope this thread still exist... |
Ask HN: How do you see the future of computing ?
I think that Martin Fowler hits the nail on the head with Illustrative Programming: "When you look at a spreadsheet, the formulae of the spreadsheet are not immediately apparent, instead what you see is the calculated numbers - an illustration of what the program does. [...] Using examples as a first class element of a programming environment crops up in other places - UI designers also have this. Providing a concrete illustration of the program output helps people understand what the program definition does, so they can more easily reason about behavior."[1]Illustrative Programming will fit particularly well with, and benefit from, programs that collect, crunch, and display data - this being area that I agree will see a lot of growth and attention.[2] "The ability to take data—to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it—that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades,"[3]Tools that are more suitable for large and complex data sets than Excel, and easier to use than R will become available. These will be used, as many current programming languages are, by people that are not trained in software development. Visualization will become much more important, so programming tool usability will improve. We'll see the influence of statisticians in our programming tools. Chasing down posts by others with similar problems and bugs will become easier. I'm not sure how much headway Illustrative Programming will make into the more hackerish areas of programming, though I hope it's a fair bit. For the best predictions on what languages will be like, just look critically at the languages that are at the start of their lifespans now (http://mythryl.org/ ? Arc?) and also at current research.I think, though, that the most interesting changes will come from the sort of programs we'll be writing, the sort of people we'll be working with, and the sort of tools we'll have available, rather than from some feature x or y of some future major language.[1] http://martinfowler.com/bliki/IllustrativeProgramming.html
[2] http://flowingdata.com/2009/06/04/rise-of-the-data-scientist...
[3] http://flowingdata.com/2009/02/25/googles-chief-economist-ha... |