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New Giant Tortoise Species Found on Galápagos Islands - Mz http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151021-galapagos-tortoise-new-species-animals-science/ ====== eggie The fact that members of all of these groups readily hybridize would violate some interpretations of the concept of species. The article exposes the arbitrariness of the concept. Also, mtDNA and microsatellites (short stretches of repetitive DNA that expand and contract quickly) offer only a fragmentary picture of genetic history. It is unfortunate that the researchers were not able to use modern sequencing techniques, but in the case of museum samples these are sometimes not possible. ~~~ btilly The existence of ring species says that there must be arbitrariness in deciding where to draw the line. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species) for an explanation. That said, where and when hybridization is possible is a complex question. For example consider the following pairs of species. (polar bears, brown bears), (horses, donkeys), (humans, chimpanzees). All are at about the same evolutionary distance from each other (current estimates are 5 million years, 4.5 million years and 6 million years). The bears happily interbreed, the equines interbreed but the babies are not generally fertile, and there are no reports of successful human/chimpanzee crosses. (No reports of anyone admitting to trying either, but it would be hard to believe that the attempt was nowhere made.) Yet in all three cases, biologists generally agree that those are pairs of distinct species. ~~~ ChrisGranger I learned of the Ivanov experiments after the topic of hybridization came up at a blog I used to follow: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ivanovich_Ivanov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ivanovich_Ivanov) ------ watson Misleading title: It sounds like they just found these turtles when in fact they just researched a group of turtles they already knew about, only to discover the group consisted of two different species - one of which is then of cause "new" to science. But I guess that means that the group which - as far as I remember - was previously close to extinction before, now is even closer to extinction since there are even fewer of them left :( ------ ck2 I hope they don't do to it what they did to the giant squid when they discovered that too (kill it). ~~~ Mz I read several articles on this. My recollection is that conservation of giant tortoises has been very successful and that identifying this as a separate species will most likely result in efforts to further increase members of this specific species. IIRC, it only has 250 members, much lower than the 2000+ members of the group it was thought to be part of. So identifying it as a separate species is expected to help increase their numbers. ------ earless1 I hope these are not as tasty as the first set we discovered ------ tychuz Looks like turtle soup is back on the menu, boys.

Video matters But which hosting service to use? - yehanyin http://blog.pragmatic.ly/how-we-choose-the-right-video-service-for-us ====== imwilsonxu Thanks for sharing. Since youtube is blocked in China(mainland), I suggest using video service like Youku and Tudou, which should support high quality video, too. Since I've been working in an angel investment company in China, after dealing with a lot of startupers, I found most of them haven't realized how big huge potential promption value video. ~~~ poshboytl I think advertisement is still a problem. You might not want your users watch the other AD. :p ~~~ imwilsonxu exactly, doesn't youtube have AD? ~~~ poshboytl I think Youtube doesn't have AD for embed player by default at least for now. :) ------ knwang Youtube also has the advantage of discoverable. The downside is that you don't "own" the comments. If someone puts in a bad comment everyone else will see. I'll give SublimeVideo a look.. seems interesting ~~~ happypeter I tried a bit SublimeVideo, it seemed a bit slow in mainland China, not so sure about this, but clearly the SublimeVideo website takes ages to load here. I finally gave it up. ------ paulyan Wistia sounds very interesting. What's the point of knowing how audience is watching? What are the metrics you want to measure? ~~~ poshboytl You might be interesting in when your users quit from the video. That can help you optimize the video or your product. And it aslo can give where the audiences from. ------ ghosTM55 High quality matters most actually, video platform is a social community as well which most people don't realize it is ------ youtoutou It really takes time for the god to realize the value of your business.

Show HN: Write redismodule in golang - wener https://github.com/wenerme/go-rm ====== wener I think redis is powerful, but with golang, it can be more powerful(e.g. eval js script, customize datatypes).Use your imagenations you can do a lot of things with redis.

Teaching Software Architecture with GitHub - SanderMak http://avandeursen.com/2013/12/30/teaching-software-architecture-with-github/ ====== jimicy Wow I wish my university offered courses like this. As a student what are good books for software engineering practices in the field right now? Also when you're doing sole projects are there specific procedures you should follow and how do they differ from when you're in a team? Lastly if it isn't too much can you post links to the course website for this,the software communications and software metrics? ~~~ jonaspf Personally I think this is a good starting point: [http://gorban.org/post/32873465932/software-architecture- che...](http://gorban.org/post/32873465932/software-architecture-cheat-sheet) In terms of books, I really like "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" ([http://aosabook.org/](http://aosabook.org/)) which is also mentioned in the blog post. For the enterprise world, "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" ([http://martinfowler.com/books/eaa.html](http://martinfowler.com/books/eaa.html)) is a good choice. However, before applying any technical software architecture methods, it is really important to understand what your stakeholders actually want/need. Unfortunately most of the time they don't even know it themselves. In my experience most software projects fail, not because of technical reasons but simply because the original problem hasn't been understood. This is where communication is key. I assume the reason why the authors of the blog post encouraged drawing diagrams and looking at different perspectives/views is to facilitate this communication. ------ programminggeek I guess this is s good approach to expose students to various software architectures and what real projects end up looking like. However, I'm not sure that this teaches the students what good architecture is/does and how it evolves over time. Which is to say, I'm not sure that this explanation says that the course teaches students how to DO good software architecture. Knowing about architecture and doing it in your own code are two different things. ------ n1ghtmare_ I'm finding it very difficult getting into a large open source project. I consider myself an experienced developer, but for some reason it feel very intimidating, especially when the code base is large. I was wondering if someone could give any tips ? ~~~ yeukhon I try to work on the software I actually use. I don't jump on a random horse and start riding to the West. I think the first step is look at your tools. What problem do you have with your tools. Is the library you using too restricted? Does it have a null/nonetype exception rasied and not properly handle? If you can't solve it because you have no idea where to start, well, at least file a ticket :) I have limited experience too. I think the first real contribution was Ansible, rewriting the hg module was critical for my use. So I did. When I was an intern at Mozilla I learned about CSP so later when I found a few minor issues with the CSP implementation in Firefox I started volunteering. My internship didn't involve a single line of writing Firefox code so it did take a while to navigate through a couple files for a newbie. But grep, mxr.mozilla.org all helped. I think even just making demos and making documentation changes is equally powerful and useful contribution. ~~~ n1ghtmare_ Awesome! This is actually quite helpful and it gave me a couple of ideas. ------ stiff It is actively harmful to teach students that software architecture is something that somehow arises from diagrams or that those kinds of silly pictures capture anything important about it. Powerful architectures come out of powerful ideas that in turn come from accumulated hard work of many people in different disciplines. One can learn much more from walking through the actual source code of some classic projects and from trying to understand the ideas that make them tick: [https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk](https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk) \- UNIX philosophy of small tools, DSLs, CS theory: state machines / regular expressions, Thompson algorithm ... [https://github.com/mirrors/emacs](https://github.com/mirrors/emacs) \- Both a program and a VM for a programming language, hooks, before/after/around advices, modes, asynchronous processing with callbacks, ... Worth to think of challenges of designing interactive programs for extensibility. [https://github.com/rails/rails](https://github.com/rails/rails) \- Metaprogramming DSLs for creating powerful libraries, again a lesson in hooks (before_save etc.), advices (around_filter etc.), ... [https://github.com/git/git](https://github.com/git/git) \- The distributed paradigm, lots of CS theory again: hashing for ensuring consistency, DAGs everywhere, ... By the way, the sentence "yet the underlying git magic sometimes resulted in frustration with the students" is hilarious in the context of a "software architecture" course. One of computer algebra systems - the idea of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_form](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_form) One of computer graphics engines - Linear algebra ... There are loads of things one can learn from those projects by studying the source in some depth, but I can't think of any valuable things one could learn by just drawing pictures of the modules and connecting them with arrows. There are also several great books that explore real software design issues and not that kind of pretentious BS, they all come from acknowledged all-time master software "architects", yet all of them almost never find diagrams or "viewpoints" useful for saying the things they want to say, and they all walk you through real issues in real programs: [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Addison-Wesley- Professiona...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional- Computng-Series/dp/0131429019) [http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence- Prog...](http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence-Programming- Studies/dp/1558601910/) [http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer- Prog...](http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs- Engineering/dp/0262510871) [http://www.amazon.com/Unix-Programming-Environment- Prentice-...](http://www.amazon.com/Unix-Programming-Environment-Prentice- Hall-Software/dp/013937681X) [http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison- Wesley...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley- Professional-Computing/dp/0321637739/) To me, the kind of approach pictured in the post, seems like copying methods from electrical or civil engineering to appear more "serious", without giving due consideration to whether they really are helpful for anything for real- world software engineering or not. The "software engineering" class which taught those kind of diagram-drawing was about the only university class I did not ever get any use from, in fact I had enough industry experience by the point I took it that it just looked silly. ~~~ currywurst The pictures are a _result_ of studying the systems in question. For example, you have given links to a couple of github repos. Now if I'm trying to create an overview of how say emacs works, I would try to identify the main sub-parts and break the system down into more manageable chunks of study. This is all what 'viewpoints' are trying to structure. None of this is evident from just the codebase unless it has been captured in some documentation, or you take the trouble to understand it yourself. You seem to have a very low opinion of software architects, but believe me, you wouldn't want to work on a 5-year old system where huge teams of developers have let loose and no one/team was responsible to ensure a cohesive, maintainable system. Viewpoints are fantastic for communication purposes, and if you feel that the particular viewpoints shown don't make much of a difference, I agree :). A student project is also not the ideal environment, but it is really valuable to know how to create them, considering the information needs of the audience (biz vs tech vs in-depth tech). And that is what this course is all about. ~~~ stiff The point is that how emacs is broken down in modules is one of the least important things about emacs. I can draw a block diagram without a "software architecture" course, thank you. In software engineering, there are of minor usefulness most of the time, if of any. There have to be persons that guide the overall development, sure, but this does not mean that those have to be "architects" living in a castle somewhere drawing those diagrams. The best "architects" are people with long experience in the trenches that know all the ins and outs, all the relevant theory, know the domain, and supervise it down to the nitty-gritty details. Linus Torvalds is a software architect for Linux, he doesn't do much coding anymore, but he isn't busy drawing diagrams without understanding the code really well either, he just is the person with the widest understanding of the whole project: [https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/547](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/10/2/547) ~~~ currywurst There are a LOT of practicing architects that really fit the mould you are describing! Linus has the big picture in his head, and perhaps if he were to draw them out, does it make him an ivory tower denizen ?! Also, ignoring how a system is modularized is typically how you get tangled codebases by introducing unexpected dependencies. Just because it is 'less interesting' doesn't make it 'unimportant'. ------ davidradcliffe What a great opportunity for these students. I wish my university had done something like this.

How I explained REST to my wife - mrlebowski http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife ====== dmor I'm a woman, and I didn't find this patronizing or sexist, unlike some of the commenters on both the post comments and here. I've gotten much more into web development in the past couple years, and this post reminds me of a handful of precious conversations I've had with incredibly smart people who took the time to bring together concretes and abstractions together in a way I could understand. I think this is a good post to share with other no-so-technical-people who you wish understood more about what you do. Maybe I should write a post on "How I Explained Marketing to My Husband" ~~~ kragen > I'm a woman, and I didn't find this patronizing or sexist, unlike some of > the commenters on both the post comments and here. I think his wife complained (in the comments) that she thought it made her sound stupid. Otherwise I agree, and I look forward to reading your post about marketing. ~~~ mikeyur If I'm having a conversation with someone about a topic I know absolutely nothing about, I sound like an idiot. "What does that do?" "Who's that?" Also, this 'conversation' was very 1-sided because the author was trying to prove a point. It really didn't matter what the wife said throughout but it let him explain further and use some real world examples for those who may not GET it. ~~~ ludwig Nice POST! ~~~ mikeyur Great way to PUT it! ------ adi92 Feels like this guy has married ELIZA ~~~ dpcan My guess is that this conversation happened entirely in his head. His wife was in the room nodding and mumbling "uh huh" while he rattled off hacker-speak for way too long. He left off his wife's last line of: "Sorry, did you say something?" ~~~ windsurfer Are you kidding? I'm sure his wife knows all about _polymorphic verbs_. ------ ivey Really old, but a classic tale that needs to resurface every 6 months or so. ~~~ mrlebowski I am not aware of anyway to make an old submitted story resurface in HN. Probably some feature like this would be good to have? ~~~ breck that is actually a really good idea. if you could easily peruse previous "days" of hackernews. if an article is really worth reading once, it should be worth reading every few months. ~~~ mikeyur "This day in Hacker News history" ------ psadauskas I find that the people who are against REST, or don't understand why its neccessary, don't really understand the finer points of HTTP, either. This post really helps describe what it is about HTTP that makes REST obvious, and easy. ~~~ thras Rest is obvious and fairly easy. It solves a specific set of real-world problems. On the other hand, that list of problems is a pretty small part of web application design. Solutions other than REST seem to work just as well. ------ blogimus When reading his intro to HTTP, I kept thinking of what Clay Shirky said, "HTTP and HTML are the Whoopee Cushion and Joy Buzzer of Internet protocols, only comprehensible as elaborate practical jokes." Read further if you're not familiar with this quote: <http://www.shirky.com/writings/evolve.html> ------ messel As a noob to web coding, I appreciated the information although the format was a bit dragged out. Good share mrlebowski, I look forward to more of your info dude. ~~~ mrlebowski Thanks, I try to share good links that I come across learning stuff at my internship place :) ------ quan Remind me of this article: [http://72.249.21.88/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s- stands-...](http://72.249.21.88/nonintersecting/2006/11/15/the-s-stands-for- simple/?year=2006&monthnum=11&day=15&name=the-s-stands-for-simple&page=) This past summer I signed up for a Java Web Service course, which made my life a living hell trying to get SOAP, WSDL, and WS-* working. It also makes me appreciate REST a lot more. ------ turtle4 So how does the machine, in these examples, request the machine understandable representation of the resource? If the 'concept' is <http://www.example.com/book/123>, from this explanation, then there should be a way to get different representations of that via different verbs, right? I guess this is where it always falls down for me, because there isn't a consistent way that all machine readable representations are flagged. Rather, we usually seem to define different URLs via extensions, for example, to define the different representations, which from this explanation seem like they should be reserved for different 'nouns' or 'concepts'. Am I misunderstanding, or is that just the state of where we are at? And are there any plans to define those new 'verbs' at some point? ~~~ kragen At the moment, generally you use GET and ask for a different Content-Type with an Accept header, or you say something like <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="foo.xml" />. In some cases you're expected to guess the alternate URL instead, maybe based on a document somewhere else, which is non-RESTian. However, it's pretty rare for someone to do what you suggest, which is to use new HTTP verbs in order to get different representations. ------ sfphotoarts "are busy writing layers of complex specifications for doing this stuff in a different way that isn’t nearly as useful or eloquent" What is that supposed to mean. HTTP is such a simple protocol that people need to invent technologies atop it because on its own it can't do much. lack of state, for example, so people came up with cookies and sessions and so on. These were necessary and an integral part of the web's evolution from the days back in the early 90's when people had 'home pages' of pictures of their cat. I personally found the article badly written, overly long and full of passive aggressive attacks at what the web has become. ~~~ tmikew For me when I first encountered this particular post on REST a couple of years ago it was like an ah ha moment. SOAP is just one complex layer. Struts is another, actually a container in a container. Having messed around in J2ee land for while this article made me realize that most folks didn't know or didn't care what a stock J2ee container could do if one started thinking RESTfully. Then we built a whole enterprise web application using just a stock J2ee container and RESTful style thinking. How much simpler! No extra frameworks to learn. The UI became completely decoupled from the services. The services are completely decoupled from the J2ee container, naturally. All the container does is resolve the nouns to a service name and give a call back to the appropriate verb method, doGet, doPut, doDelete. In fairness we are not 100% RESTful there is some legacy stuff that relies on the session. However having done a few SOAP/WSDL services and tons of Struts actions or Spring "injections" I must say that REST is in my opinion a much cleaner way to code for web apps. Whenever I hear about some implementation needing a SOAP/WSDL service I run the other way as fast as possible. I won't even debate folks about it anymore, I just refuse to work on all that complexity. As an aside I have seen here and there some frameworks the purport to use REST. I don't really get this. Why would somebody need and additional framework to make something RESTful? I have done it with J2ee and just plain Apache. I believe the web itself to _be_ the framework, I could be way off in my thinking though, it wouldn't be the first time. Anybody have any clues about what a RESTful framework is for? ~~~ jmtulloss Mostly a "RESTful framework" just allows you to easily map verb/noun combinations to functions. You create a noun (an object) with the standard verbs as methods, and it does the other stuff. Pretty basic, but it makes life easier. ------ oneplusone I am a designer so I never really got REST, but now I do. Definitely a must read. ~~~ grandalf As a designer you might enjoy the way I explain REST to people: Think of the URL as part of the User Interface. REST offers conventions that make it easy to guess the URL of what you are looking for, just as you would guess where to click/navigate to get it. I realize this only covers one aspect of REST, but I like it because I think the idea of an address as a resource which has a certain appearance (its URL) is quite powerful. edit: I realize that rest could just as easily use meaningless identifiers, but it is often the case that meaningful identifiers are used such that the user can GET desired items by guessing the URL. ~~~ blasdel NO. _NO._ REST is _absolutely not_ about being able to guess URLs -- it's about _never_ having to guess a URL. Repeat after me: _Hypertext. As. The. Engine. Of. Application. State._ Clean, meaningful, organized / structured URLs are unrelated to REST, and their presence tends to lead to the predominant anti-pattern of 'API Specifications'. Leave that bullshit in SOAP's failure pile. ~~~ grandalf Uh ... I didn't say guessing state, I said guessing what is behind the URL. as in /users/greg vs /users/davis rather than /u.exe?23q4234q34q34234234asdfa&query=true&xml=false&screen=home The point I was trying to make is that with REST, URLs have meaning in and of themselves, not dependent on the presence/absence of a variety of other aspects of state embodied in the URL... The protocol (and REST verbs) is how you add that additional meaning... and a different URL thus _means_ something different. Hence, for some universe of items, if one has an obvious meaning, the rest should. If you are using the protocol in the right way then your resource will not change depending on which verb you are using. ~~~ mreid You said: "REST offers conventions that make it easy to guess the URL of what you are looking for, just as you would guess where to click/navigate to get it." In your earlier comment it does seem as though you are talking about guessing the URL. What the other comment was alluding to with "Hypertext. As. The. Engine. Of. Application. State." (or HATEOAS, one of the main principles of REST) is that your application should never have to guess a URL. The possible URLs your application can next GET/POST/PUT/DELETE to should be given in the response to the last action it took. There is nothing in the original description of REST that says anything about URLs being human readable. That's a pleasant side-effect of a sensible design but isn't the main aim. As the original post describes, the importance of REST is to make simpler for machines (not humans) to manipulate services on the web. You should probably read a bit more about the principles of REST before confusing people with your own interpretation of what you think it is. edit: mistakenly thought HN understood markdown. edit: mistakenly thought HN understood HTML. ~~~ grandalf ok thanks for clarifying ------ njharman I still don't get it. There have been several things I never got or rather they were so obvious / intuitive to me there was nothing for me to "get". Still I spent years thinking I missed something cause so many others had such problems with them. Pointers & recursion come to mind. There just doesn't seem that much to REST (that's not a bad thing). Lot's of hype, fud, misunderstanding built up around REST. Arguments over the _proper_ way to apply REST to HTTP/Web. But, REST itself seems sort of duh, how else would you do it? It's not magical rocket science, right? ~~~ kragen Have you read Roy's dissertation? ~~~ blogimus I read it and was surprised at how readable I found it (never mind being a dissertation). <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm> What is also really good is Richardson and Ruby's "RESTful Web Services" book. They coined the term "Resource Oriented Architecture" to describe a specific REST design implementation and to side-step a religious war on what is and is not REST. ------ villiros Here's how I would explain REST to a wife: It's a made-up pile of bollox. It stands for "and now I'm going to refer to meaningless pseudo-science in an attempt to confuse you and bill more money to the project." On second though, that probably explains why I don't have a wife. ------ chanux How this can be posted again? <http://searchyc.com/How+I+explained+REST+to+my+wife> ------ duncanj It still bothers me that web browsers don't really "do" REST without Javascript. ------ keefe The title should read "how I explained REST to my trophy wife". Also, all the structured data stuff doesn't really belong in a discussion of REST, imho. SemTech researchers have been studying this problem for a long time, came up with RDF etc. Tim Berners-Lee was also you know, involved in those HTTP efforts, you can watch him discuss this topic here <http://blog.ted.com/2009/03/tim_berners_lee_web.php> . Not impressed with this REST article.

Josh Wise voted into NASCAR race by Dogecoin community [video] - milesf http://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/featured-shows/2014/5/16/sprint-cup-series-sprint-showdown-press-pass-josh-wise.html ====== milesf Say what you will about Dogecoin the technology, the Dogecoin community is really something to behold. ~~~ reitzensteinm And with crypto currencies, the community is far more important than the technology (past a minimum bar that Bitcoin has set). Dogecoins are intrinsically valuable so long as people enjoy sending/trading with them, and there's a real possibility of it becoming a widely used internet tipping currency. I made a prediction here on Jan 14, 2014 that Dogecoin's market cap would grow faster than that of Bitcoin this year (or shrink slower). I wasn't comfortable saying it in public at the time, but it's actually going pretty well (much to my surprise): Dogecoin - $7.9m -> $35m for ~4.4x growth Bitcoin - $10.4b -> $5.7b for ~0.54 growth Relatively, Dogecoin has outperformed Bitcoin (in terms of market cap) by ~8.08x. Of course, since Dogecoin inflates more quickly, this isn't representative of the result of purchasing coins and waiting (IMO a good thing). [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7050037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7050037) ------ bendoernberg People have been livestreaming marathon voting sessions on [http://votedogecar.com](http://votedogecar.com), apparently one kid voted 84,000 times. ~~~ fyrabanks People have also been (assumedly) using Shodan and default admin passwords to put "Vote for Josh" on exposed HP printers. [http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet-Experts- Onlin...](http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-LaserJet-Experts-Online/Vote- for-Josh-device-status/td-p/6438954)

The Future of Nonconformity - jeremylevy https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/opinion/substack-newsletters-writers.html ====== schwartzworld > Today, there’s the exclusion of conservatives from academic life source needed. ~~~ 082349872349872 counterexamples in the US context: [https://www.biola.edu](https://www.biola.edu) [https://www.byu.edu](https://www.byu.edu) [https://www.liberty.edu](https://www.liberty.edu)

Get it Now - Chromebooks Magically on Sale Today Through Gilt - dcawrey http://www.thechromesource.com/get-it-now-chromebooks-magically-on-sale-today-through-gilt/ ====== Tiomaidh I recently spent $50 on eBay to get an old Pentium II "ultraportable" laptop. It's very thin, has an acceptable screen size and resolution (1024x768), a keyboard bested only by my ThinkPad, and is fantastic for the two things I'm using it for: a) All the exercises from programming books (currently PAIP; after that I'll resume SICP). (It can _easily_ run Emacs, SLIME, and SBCL.) b) Web browsing, both with Chrome and links2. Did you hear the part where it cost $50? And how it runs all the software I want? Now, I'll admit it's not quite as small, nor as glossy, nor quite as fast as a Chromebook. And I do love the web, and could manage most of my life with nothing more than a browser. But I absolutely do not have a spare $500, and even if I did, I could get an <strike>iPad 2</strike> Android tablet, beefier netbook (nevermind a netbook with more flexible OS options: I'd probably dualboot ChromiumOS and "real" Linux), a Kindle DX and normal-sized Kindle, 10 of the aforementioned craptops, or any number of more practical things. Even if I was told to spend it on a novelty computer, I'd be tempted to get an OLPC for $200 and use the rest on...well, anything. This rant brought to you by someone who actually likes ChromeOS. What the heck will someone who's on the fence about it going to think?

Ask HN: Cheapest way to process $10 credit card payments - the_cat_kittles I am trying to figure out how to process payments for an iphone app. This involves choosing which gateway, merchant, and card input (jumio / card.io / all the different magnetic strip readers / others?) Most charges will be around 10 USD. Does anyone have advice on which gateway, merchant and card input method to use? What other things should influence my choices? There will be no recurring billing by the way. Any advice helps, thanks! ====== dangrossman Two options: 1) Square, because they have no fixed fee per transaction. 2.75% means 27.5c per $10 charge. It's not really something you integrate with an app, but with talking of swiping, it's not clear what the use case is. 2) PayPal micropayments. At 5% + $0.05, it's 55c per $10 charge. PayPal has a card-swipe reader the same as Square, but people can also pay with their PayPal accounts, or you can take full control over the payment interface by implementing the PayPal Pro API in your app. Both are less than the 2.9% + $0.30 offered by Stripe, Braintree, or most any low volume MOTO merchant account. I don't think anyone can recommend what the best input method is without any knowledge of what your app is or who your customers will be. ~~~ the_cat_kittles how can square offer a lower % AND no fixed transaction fee? ~~~ dangrossman Because Square is not a MOTO processor, it's a card-present processor. You can't use Square to take payments on a website. The interchange fees for card- present transactions are less than 1/2 the average fees for card-not-present transactions. If they're paying 1% but charging you 2.75%, that easily covers the fixed fee you're comparing to. They shouldn't be compared to PayPal, Stripe, etc. but to the standard merchant accounts brick-and-mortar stores get. ------ dholowiski >Payments for an iPhone app - are you selling this directly? If it goes through the iTunes store, you're required to use Apple's payment system. Are you looking for the cheapest, the easiest or some combination? Stripe seems like a no-brainer. ------ halis Stripe?

US military to tech protestors: “We’re at war; pick a side” - Sequenza https://diginomica.com/2018/12/05/us-military-to-tech-protestors-were-at-war-pick-a-side/ ====== btilly My answer to the military. As soon as you stop spying on us, stop compromising corporate networks, and stop lying to our government about doing these things, then we can discuss whose side you are on. As long as you're still doing all that, you're not on our side. That also doesn't mean we're on your opponent's side either. This isn't a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yes, the other guy is worse, but that isn't an excuse for your undermining the values that are supposed to make this country worth supporting. Do you want to know how to change my mind? Here is how. Invite Snowden home. Give him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Discontinue all of the domestic spying programs that he identified AND their successors. Do that, then we'll talk. ------ marssaxman Well, that's easy: I pick the side of "stop fighting stupid imperial wars already". There is nothing which obligates "us" to be at war, to whatever degree the United States represents any sort of a coherent "us" at this point. ~~~ xfitm3 Doesn’t military spending have a positive effects on the economy? ~~~ anonymous5133 If you are looking at pure economic activity then yes but all economic activity must be viewed based on "quality" of said activity. Do we want people spending time and resources building weapons of mass destruction or do we want that economic activity going towards exploring outer space, developing new technologies that benefit humanity positively and so on. Unfortunately, it is mutually exclusive because Earth only has so much "potential" human ability so we must determine where that human potential is being used. ~~~ Junk_Collector It's hardly mutually exclusive. Many military problems are simply human problems and because of their low tolerance for error, military systems are often very good solutions that provide large non-military benefits. The DoD needed a better way to navigate, so they invented GPS. They needed more robust communications, so they funded the internet. They needed to predict the weather to plan operations, so they funded weather radar and satellites. Even the US interstate system was supported in large part because the military wanted to have fast easy cross country logistics. ------ mjevans Make "our" side worth fighting for/with again. Liberty and Justice for all, in that order. Freedom for everyone, and a war against the existence of repressive regimes and states in all aspects. (Liberty is a bit complicated, given harm to / from others and sorting that out...) ~~~ anonymous5133 Yes but those reforms must come from within said country, not from an external force forcing it upon the nation. When an external force acts upon another country to "reform" it then often there are other agendas at play like power, control of resources and so on. ~~~ mc32 I’d agree with this. Imagine if instead of a civil war France or Britain came in and sorted things out for us. Simetimes nations have to go through that crucible themselves and figure out what works for them, provided they aren’t being belligerent against peaceful neighbors. ------ jacknews "My take: The Big Tech employee resistance is driven in large part by people who have come into adulthood after the opening of China in the 1970s and the end of the Cold War and the fall of Berlin Wall in the early 1990s." But before or during Saddam Husseins' supposed secret weapons of mass destruction, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, "Extraordinary Rendtion" at "Black Site"s, Snowden, etc, etc, etc. "This is not about doing something that’s unethical, illegal or immoral. ... We are the good guys." While the CIA/military might be fighting _for_ the good guys (though what does that even mean), I don't think they can claim to _be_ the good guys. And shame on the leadership for turning the courage and sacrifice of individuals to such methods. ~~~ devoply You know who else calls themselves the good guys, the mafia. ~~~ cf725359u [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU) The crucial point in time when you ask yourself if you might be a baddie. ------ nostrademons It always strikes me as incongruous when the government or military says "We're going to be the leaders in the Internet/AI/drones/cyberwarfare", because these are all technologies that eliminate the raison d'etre for the nation state as a social organizing principle. Historically, the modern nation state arose during the 19th century from a confluence of factors. Taking advantage of new industrial methods of production required larger, more specialized workforces; this implied greater population and larger political units. Longer supply chains also required territorial integrity, so that the nation could ensure that its means of production remained intact without physical attacks from foreign powers. These bigger nations required more social control via propaganda and extensive legal & security systems, but the emerging technologies of mass communications & mass media enabled this. The armored war machines built by these industrial supply chains dominated everything else on the battlefield, so non- industrialized empires and kingdoms fell to industrialized nation-states. Now supply chains are global and span trans-national boundaries; attempts to enforce national boundaries on these destroy industrial capacity rather than protect it. The Internet provides free information flow _across_ national boundaries. Drones and robots give the military advantage back to small groups of technologically advanced individuals. AI and huge personnel databases allow you to instantly tell friend from foe regardless of geography, eliminating one of the key advantages of territorial integrity (which would likely be reestablished on a smaller scale afterwards). Cryptocurrencies undermine the government's power to tax and track finances, with the latter ability granted instead to anyone with a lot of computer power and knowledge. Governments aren't sabre-rattling because we're on the verge of Cold War 2.0, they're sabre-rattling because they're insecure. Not just _a_ government or _the_ government - _all_ governments. The next war will likely look more like Syria than the Cold War, with a confused jumble of non-national organizations all jockeying for power, and the social organization that comes after that will likely be a form of corporate feudalism a la _Snow Crash_. Google's on its own side in that organizational structure, because all the existing sides will be defunct. ~~~ devoply Tell me when have governments have felt secure, go back to the J Edgar Hoover era, or British Imperial era. Most governments are always on the brink of multiple psychological disorders. There is no treatment for them. This is business as usual... more power for them... that's what governments are good for, accumulating as much power as they can and then trying to order the world according to their interests. And that's why these sorts of technologies are dangerous, they increase the amount of power that governments can exercise by potentially multiples and make them think that they can assert dominance everywhere which makes them more cocky and more prone to war. And that's why workers refusing to further this agenda are right and on the moral high ground. ------ davidwitt415 Counterpoint: The Pentagon is a massive fraud where over half of each tax dollar is taken without accountability. [https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget- frau...](https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-fraud/) Exclusive: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed: How US military spending keeps rising even as the Pentagon flunks its audit ------ billylindeman Google seems like they're barreling towards the wrong side of history (e.g. project dragonfly) ------ code_beers Tech protestors: “Wartime service is currently voluntary, get your own damn engineers.” ------ jchw What war are we (the U.S.) at? Would we consider it "war-time" or not right now? (Not rhetorical; kind of curious. I realize we have ongoing conflicts, but it seems like there are _always_ ongoing conflicts.) ~~~ AnimalMuppet If you count cyber, we're currently at war with Russia and China, and maybe North Korea. If you count operations aimed at our internal politics, we're currently at war with Russia and Iran. The way I see it, you'd better count cyber and political attacks. ------ jrs95 If we're at war, then who are we at war with? Do they even pose a serious threat to the U.S.? Or is this just really about money? Because it seems like it's just about money. And in case you missed it, recent increases to the defense budget were more than twice what it would cost to make college education free and it had bipartisan support. ------ jeffrallen Pro-tip: Guys who find that they need to remind you "We are the good guys" are typically not the good guys. There are plenty of people whose personal ethics allow them to work on weapons systems. To the rest of us, let's stick together and find other ways to contribute to our societies. ~~~ mc32 As mature comics can attest to, it’s not as simple as black and white, but there is lighter grey and darker gray. At the end of the day it’s better to help thjngs become lighter gray. ------ fbomb "Microsoft is going to provide the U.S. military with access to the best technology – all the technology we create." So which is it? The best technology or the technology Microsoft creates? You can't have it both ways. ------ pohl If we weren't perpetually in a state of war, that phrase would have more gravity. Maybe we should figure out how to have a few years of peace time so that people learn how to care again that we're at war. ------ tyrust Misleading title: the quote in the headline does not appear in the article. ------ _robbywashere > "At the center of Cold War 2.0 is advamced technology..." Someone forgot to deploy their WEAPONS GRADE SPELL CHECKER ------ sys_64738 The US military budget should be reduced by 50%. Even then we waste more than most others spend. ------ archagon They're nervous. Good. ------ carapace To me, it's a weird situation. I'm a left-leaning, peace-loving, pro- capitalist, pro-military person, if you can credit that. I sincerely hope that one day war will be a thing of the past. In the meantime, I'm pretty comfortable with the _Pax Americana_. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana) I know we're not perfect, but I hope and believe we're better than the other contenders for top dog, and that the world will slide into a golden age without too much more violence and death. (Is that too much to ask?) Within the milieu of sovereign nations with conflicting interests, it seems to me to be borderline treasonous to e.g. work on Project Dragonfly but not JEDI or Project Maven. I believe that technology is forcing us to a post-historical milieu where nations have given way to a global state powered by ubiquitous surveillance. I don't know whether this will turn out to look like Star Trek or North Korea, but I don't see how a technological society puts the genie back in the bottle. (Wrote a blog post about it, wanna see it? Here it is: [https://firequery.blogspot.com/2013/10/total-surveillance- is...](https://firequery.blogspot.com/2013/10/total-surveillance-is- perfection-of.html)) In this scenario, the state would have so many "soft" options to control behaviour that outright killing people would be a manifestation of the neuroses of the managers rather than a rational response. (Cf. CCP organ harvesting Falun Gong, and putting Muslims in concentration camps. These are NOT the decisions of _rational_ minds.) At that stage, war is obsolete. "The people" literally can't rebel, and there are no outsiders, so any war that occurs would be due to some psychological irruption or something, more akin to a riot. (Unless we get some sort of staged war scenario.) I'm saying that there will come a time in the future when sending robot bombs to blow up the people who want to blow you up will be recognized as an inferior strategy from the POV of operational goals. But we're not there yet. In the meantime, yes, help the military of the value-system you think is correct as much as you can, because the other bastard is still gunning for you. If you don't like war, work on technology that harmonizes value systems. This is an interesting meta-logical problem that has lots of interesting solutions (and people will even pay you well for it.)

Ask HN: Why do seemingly minor features take companies so long to implement? - tyb For example, Tinder just came out with an update today that allows users to limit their matching results within an age range, a feature that people have been asking for since the beginning. I dont understand how a feature like this couldn't be implemented in under a week, with a solid team. Why do updates like this / new features that don't sound very complicated to a user, take months to implement? Am I missing something about the development process? ====== pm24601 Doing that "minor feature" considerations (in my rough order of importance): 1\. will that feature be used by the target market that will pay money? 2\. what else isn't being done? 3\. security holes 4\. latent bug triggering ( testing and test cases ) 5\. UX issues (where to put the checkbox ) 6\. Documentation - possible confusion ( harder than you think in many cases - I go through a lot to eliminate things from UI so I don't have to explain them) 7\. possible premium feature ~~~ tyb thanks. those points are great, and I get how those can be factors in a major / delayed / completely new update for a company like dropbox ( because security holes cannot happen whatsoever (3), it already makes money off of its customers, so it should consider (1) and (7), and that it might have other features in the line (2) because they have several products / features already ). But in tinder's case, the addition of age preferences in matches is similar to their already-existing gender & location search for a couple reasons... 1) they already check a potential match's gender (and location) against the gender preference you chose, so while they're there, how much harder is to check another attribute of that match? his/her age, 2) they already have the matching preferences / UI setup (yes, decisions still have to be made about where to put a slider, but it shouldn't look too different from the distance preference slider, and it's not such a new feature that it would be confusing to the user), and 3) since they don't currently make money off their user base, tinder's main value is derived from # users, # active users, etc. There could be an argument to be made about making it a possible premium feature, but bringing in more users / giving users what they want / making them happy should be the focus. I guess when it comes down to it, I just don't understand how the development process of similar feature could take so long. ~~~ pm24601 If the feature takes any time to implements (i.e. every feature) then every point applies.

Elixir Deployment Tools Update – February 2018 - megido https://dockyard.com/blog/2018/02/28/elixir-deployment-tools-update-february-2018 ====== elcritch Handy, this should help resolve a few annoying parts of making releases.

Tesla driver reproduces fatal autopilot accident [video] - rgbrenner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QCF8tVqM3I ====== marcell I really dislike the marketing around "autopilot." The common defense of Tesla's autopilot is that there are disclaimers, and the driver should always be at 100% attention. Well, look at this, copied from Tesla's website: > _Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars_ > All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the > hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level > substantially greater than that of a human driver. [1] An average person is going to read this and think, "This care drives itself, and it's safer than me!" The rest of the page describes space-age features like switching lanes to get to an exit faster and self parking: > All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go ... Your > Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even > without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, > stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars > moving at high speed ... and park itself. They're selling a car that full on drives itself. This is not being sold as adaptive cruise control. FWIW, they included a weasel phrase by saying "hardware" is there, as opposed to software, but come on! An average person is not going to understand that distinction. I think they need to dramatically scale back the hype around this feature until it actually delivers what it promises. Edit: I'm also confused by why they need to hype up autopilot so much. They are already selling more cars than they can make, and a sexy electric car appeals to lots of people. I think it would be enough to stick with that. [1] [https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot) ~~~ phobius could be a well-meaning tech culture screw up; Most tech people know that airplane autopilots weren't end-to-end automated for the majority of their existence ~~~ Barrin92 >Most tech people know most tech people also know how "better than human" sounds to the public and the average driver. This isn't well meaning tech culture, it's a PR statement that is misleading and formulated the way it is precisely because it is a sales pitch. It's irresponsible and unethical. It should be called a 'driver assistant' and have a warning label in font size 100 that tells drivers to not treat it as autonomous and infallible. ~~~ rohit2412 I wouldn't even ask for the size 100 font, but Elon musk and Tesla to stop hyping their amazing autonomous capabilities (which are all non existent) ------ jijojv Really sad to see Autopilot is a joke and nothing more than adaptive cruise control found in common cars, despite Musk claming it was a year ago [1] Any one who owns Autopilot knows the warning at :20 is NOT a crash warning at all and is just the usual warning every minute to jiggle the wheel if you don't hold the wheel firmly enough when it can't detect you holding it. 1\. [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823632597284691969) " Yes, safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if regs disallow no driver present 23 Jan 2017" ~~~ Tepix The bad state of the road plays a huge role. There should be a "report unsafe road conditions" function in these cars to get US roads up to Belgian standards. Doesn't Ttump want to spend money on infrastructure anyway? ~~~ cm2187 Whatever state of the road, a self-driving car shouldn't run heads on into a large static obstacle. ------ jstanley This (video) is another instance where the lanes split apart but the part in the middle has absolutely no markings to indicate that you shouldn't drive there. This (photograph) is what it should look like: [http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/67/2246762_3a6ea81...](http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/24/67/2246762_3a6ea811.jpg) Is this (bad line painting) common in the US? Edit: on a second viewing, I think it actually does have some chevrons, but they're very faint. ~~~ ars There is a solid white line. It's forbidden to cross a solid while line on the freeway. What does a solid white line mean to you (in your country)? The linked video is a different story, but the image you linked makes it quite clear not to drive there. ~~~ jstanley I didn't see the car cross a solid white line in the video that this thread is about. The image I linked is showing what it _should_ look like. I agree the image I linked is perfectly clear. ~~~ ars Ah, I misunderstood you. I thought you linked to another example of a failure situation because you wrote "this is another instance". ~~~ jstanley Just realised I used the word "this" 3 different times to mean 3 different things :). I've disambiguated this now. ------ Shank Part of me wonders whether or not we're going to see mutual improvement of infrastructure with self driving cars in the future. This seems like something that you could obviously fix by adding in some kind of passive or active flag that, to a self driving car, says "woah, you're /really/ not supposed to be here." I know we're supposed to be focusing on building systems that are as capable as humans are as drivers. However, if we approached the problem from changing the roads with some kind of guide beacons, it would probably be really trivial to detect them and improve trustworthiness a lot more. We already have lane markers and chevrons and all sorts of things for humans to interpret and react to. What if self driving systems got guides that were optimized to them? Instead of having really luminescent paint, they would be radio noisey or have some other electronic fingerprint that's just as "loud" as visual and audible markers are for humans. At some point, if we want self driving cars to be the real future, we should start working the problem from both ends. When properly implemented, self driving technology is safer than normal humans -- and if we can accelerate that by adding stupid easy electronic markers to some roads, then why not? ~~~ simion314 We should also not allow software that hits a static object, the car should be able to detect solid object, should be able to detect it's speed relative to the car and to the ground, and it should detect a possible collision and take action. You can put electronics on the roads but if the cars will depend on those then it will fail when those electronics are missing. ~~~ PuffinBlue Not sure why this point isn't being more widely discussed, especially as it is a known problem[0] of almost all 'auto-pilot' systems based on radar. To me it would seem to be self-driving 101, namely - don't hit a stationary object. If the challenge is so great that current technology can't overcome the difficulties of detecting stationary objects in the path of the car (not just those stationary objects to ignore like overhead gantries) then it's time to change the language around 'autonomous' driving to ensure drivers understand the limitations. Obviously this isn't happening well enough right now as people are dying because of it. From a personal perspective, until Lidar becomes commonplace I think I would eschew the 'autonomous' modes offered in the current generation cars. [0] [https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash- radar/](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/) ------ gknoy That kind of lane marking (or lack thereof) seems very unsafe. I realize that often this is due to construction / etc but the immediately-to-the-left lane's marker was Very Clear, and didn't have a visible split in it. I had to watch it a second time to make sure that I didn't miss the indications that the lane was splitting away (other than the highway signs). This kind of thing (lack of clear markings) can be really dangerous when driving at night in the raid (road is more reflective than normal), or in an unfamiliar area. The autopilot could be better, but the road engineers should have made sure the lines were painted correctly. ~~~ trimbo > the road engineers should have made sure the lines were painted correctly If this is the intersection, they were painted correctly: [https://goo.gl/maps/QuuRiixk6Y42](https://goo.gl/maps/QuuRiixk6Y42) But in this video, the left solid white line was more visible than the right one. For whatever reason -- a trick of light, snowplows tore it up this winter, who knows. That kind of thing is going to happen and autonomous cars need to deal with it in order to be _actually autonomous_. ~~~ ilyagr I believe it's this intersection, judging by the signs in the beginning of video. Paint is not great. [https://goo.gl/maps/V9qnLYTL2tn](https://goo.gl/maps/V9qnLYTL2tn) ------ sdrothrock One thing I always wonder about is the Tesla HUD -- my gut feeling is that if instead of rendering three generic lanes, it tried to render the lanes/obstacles it saw, the driver might be more attentive while in Autopilot mode. 1\. The interface changes, and changing things are more interesting to look at. 2\. Seeing something like two lanes when you're on a five-lane high way should make a driver do a double-take and perhaps pay more attention or disengage autopilot. 3\. Ditto for obstacles. ~~~ alt_f4 or, you know, instead of looking at the HUD, you can look at the road? that interface changes naturally ------ tiredwired This video is from a highway in Illinois. 2000+ miles away from the 3/23/2018 crash. 41.7779557,-87.6309277 ~~~ Johnny555 Does it matter? Do cars act differently depending on which state they are in? Seems like a similar situation to the crash in California. ~~~ rocky1138 It does matter when the article title claims that it's a reproduction of the accident. If it's not the same location, it's not really a reproduction, even if the cause/effect is the same. ~~~ evfanknitram I don't think the word reproduction is always used as strictly as your definition. In computer software/hardware the word is used even if the geographical location and hardware is different. I don't see using it to reproduce car issues would be any different. ------ cornholio While Tesla screwed up the marketing on this product and failed to even ensure the driver is looking at the road at all times, I believe the black box approach (recover crash data from every incident and work it back into the product) is exceptionally powerful, as demonstrated in the airplane industry. It use to be that whenever an accident like this happened, people shrugged their shoulders and blamed the victim, very damaging design flaws were being corrected statistically, after many wound up dead. We now have a corporation to blame, we internalize that the human drivers cannot be trusted and technology must take over and learn from each and every accident. The safety advances this routine will bring forth cannot be overstated - and putting presure on Tesla and other manufacturers is the best way to get them. ------ greendesk Wow, I had to watch the road a second time to see markings of the split. In the beginning of the movie, I was expecting that there would be two lanes on the left and two lanes on the right. ------ modeless Tesla this month pushed out an update which makes autopilot disengage a lot less than it used to. People have been making videos all month showing much improved performance [1], but this overconfident behavior may be a side effect of the same change. [1] [https://electrek.co/2018/03/08/tesla-autopilot-update-on- off...](https://electrek.co/2018/03/08/tesla-autopilot-update-on-off-ramp- curve-of-death/) ------ mephitix Autopilot marketing is bad and Elon deserves a lot of the blame, but do we still expect to be able to trust these systems enough to not put hands on the wheel and look at the road? IMO we are still in the very early stages of this work in the industry. Personally I think bugs and flaws in systems like this are normal at this stage. I would expect the same with GM Super Cruise and I wouldn't trust that either to let go of the steering wheel. ~~~ colechristensen >I think bugs and flaws in systems like this are normal at this stage I don't think you should be able to license a vehicle to drive on public roads with such "bugs and flaws". I don't have a choice, I have to interact with public roads. My local, state, and national government owes it to me to keep experimentation off of public roads that modern life is impossible without. The problem with robot cars is they fail in very alien ways. They will be made illegal after a small number of horrific incidents where a car will kill people in ways a licensed human never would. I think the usage of the phrase "intelligence" in "Artificial Intelligence" needs to stop. It was cute in the 90s but today people are starting to actually believe it when it's really a vulnerable shallow approximation that is vulnerable to profoundly unintelligent failures and it will continue to be until there starts to be a debate on if a synthetic system is actually sentient. ~~~ mephitix It's a good point about whether they should be on public roads. At the same time, it's crucial to their success that they are and experience outlier situations. The hope is that by experiencing an outlier and making a mistake, the algorithms will be able to adapt to ensure that mistake never happens again. Humans today don't have this kind of networked, massively parallel mind to avoid the mistakes of others. Again, that's the _hope_. I think it'll be a long time before learning algorithms will take over the wheel completely - but I think we are at or near a time when these systems can and should let us know of low confidence, insufficient data to make a decision, or equal confidence of multiple outcomes. A networked AI should be able to tell us far enough in advance (e.g. while driving) for humans to step in and make the final call, based on their own rationalization, empathy, etc. ~~~ colechristensen > it's crucial to their success ... I don't care about a company's success if it requires endangering members of the public who have no choice in the matter. If we were talking about, say, astronauts and test pilots who know the risks they take and make the choice, I'd have no problem with them risking their lives. We're not. >I think it'll be a long time before learning algorithms will take over the wheel completely They did. A system called "auto pilot" drove a man at full speed into a barrier and killed him. I have a limited trust of other humans on the road. The deal is that I understand them. They behave in a way that makes sense to me, even (or especially) the mistakes they make. As another driver or a pedestrian, I can communicate a lot with a car just by looking at the driver and interpreting body language and attention. > The hope is that by experiencing an outlier and making a mistake, the > algorithms will be able to adapt to ensure that mistake never happens again. I think people are making a huge underestimation about the number and types of edge cases. If you have to teach a car not to drive into a static object at full speed, the issue sin't going to be about fixing this one problem, the issue is that if this problem exists 1000 others like it do too. I come from cold climates and country roads, I think the fact that these vehicles are being designed and tested in the bay area (or Arizona) makes them incredibly dangerous because of the fair weather bubble that the people design them in are living. Make your engineers live and work in rural northern Minnesota and maybe you'll get a bit more trust from me. ------ Too Is it the driver or the car doing the final braking in the video? Even if autopilot followed the wrong line it should perform emergency braking or evasive maneuver when the barrier is right in front of it. This is not just one error, it's two. ~~~ xuhu I assume the driver didn't want to wait and see if the car brakes at the very last moment, so it's hard to determine if the car would brake in this case. ------ blinkingled So it just fails to detect the fairly large obstacle in the road? This doesn't seem very different than the adaptive cruise control in Hondas but people somehow use it as if it's true auto pilot? ------ calvinbhai I dont own a Tesla, but have driven it and I am floored by the whatever level of Autopilot it had, but as a non-owner I still think I'd never trust the Autopilot 100% (its like when riding shotgun, I'm as attentive as the driver, or more). So, I'm not sure if the Autopilot feature is something that makes the owners trust it more, if they use it more often. Now, Tesla doesn't claim it is Level 5 Autonomous Driving with "Autopilot". Nor does it say one can drive it handsfree. Accidents can be much worse if someone drove hands/attention free with just the cruise control on. In this case of the fatal accident, I'm really surprised that the driver (as per the family) knew the problem area very well, and yet was driving with the autopilot on and not paying attention. Unless he let the Autopilot go on its own, on purpose, thinking that Model X is super safe, so a head on collision with the barrier would prove his point to Tesla, or the Autopilot became too adamant and refused to disengage, leading to the crash, not sure at what point Tesla can be held liable, if there's any. Also, I thought those barriers are super safe with enough crumple zones. Wonder how crashing into a barrier like that could lead to such a fatal accident. ------ EGreg To me this is very strange. Why do the road markings trump the objects coming up? Obviously if a giant-ass obstacle is coming up, the car should be prepared to drive around it, and to decelerate as a last resort. Moreover, if the obstacle is moving, the car has to try to extrapolate its movement in order to avoid it. How else can you pass trucks and such? Also why can’t these cars be tested autonomously with soft tops instead of a metal chassis, so colossions don’t really hurt anyone? Basically a pillow on wheels!! ~~~ rohit2412 Because Radar can't see static obstacles [https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash- radar/](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/) And Cameras (Vision) are overhyped, they are not reliable enough to recognize obstacles etc ~~~ EGreg This is why Waymo rulez [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo- invests-i...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-in- lidar-technology-cuts-costs-by-90-percent/?amp=1) ------ kfe I wonder how easy is it for Tesla to 1) find the exact problem and 2) fix it (provided it is software based). Does it mean that they first have to figure out what some "black box" neural network(s) are getting wrong and then retraining (on simulations), etc? What if city X decides to repaint all its buses and that confuses the object detection system? How log would it take to get the (hot)fix out of the door... ------ KKKKkkkk1 I can totally see how a human driver can crash in this situation if he or she is solely focused on the lane markings. This puts the lie to Tesla and Mobileye's claims that camera-based computer vision is enough for autonomy just because humans use two low-res cameras to drive. ~~~ friedman23 > This puts the lie to Tesla and Mobileye's claims that camera-based computer > vision is enough for autonomy. How are these things related? Are you suggesting that cameras are not sufficient for self driving? ~~~ sudhirj The companies are stating that they won't be using LIDAR or Radar, and that cameras are enough. Cameras tend to rely on markers of some sort - and in cases like the markers on the road were very misleading. Even a short-sighted beginner human driver who was told to carefully follow the lanes would have made the same mistake. And cars running purely on cameras are comparably to short sighted baby human drivers. ~~~ manicdee Tesla uses radar, and are working on improving their radar to return point clouds just like lidar does. Even then, cameras are enough for accurately mapping the world around the car, it’s just that Tesla’s state of the art has not matched the academic proofs of concept that have been demonstrated over the last few years. ------ est It looks like an overfitting stick-to-left-lane problem. ------ RobLach I’ve driven this road many times and it’s pretty obvious where to go. The lanes split into 2 different roads and you see the elevated way turning right in the distance so turning left would never make sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if the chevrons which are pretty worn down would be low priority on the maintenance list given how obvious it is and how annoying work there would be. ~~~ Symbiote > low priority on the maintenance list The impression abroad, from reading about collapsing bridges, is that pretty much all maintainance is low priority. On my last visit, my friend told me to avoid particular freeways near his home because chunks were falling off the bridge. ------ hutattedonmyarm What a terrible video till.e Also, why are people recording with their phones while driving (or in this case letting drive)? This doesn't look like a dashcam ------ mdekkers Fun fact - given the current implementation of Autopilot, it is insane to expect an autonomous vehicle. There should be some kind of common sense/intelligence test for would-be users of Autopilot. So far, every incident involving Autopilot that I have heard about or looked at can be summarised with "Driver was being a dumbass" ~~~ Swizec When most of your users have a problem it’s not PEBKAC, it’s bad UX. Just because a door says push, doesn’t mean it looks pushable. If it doesn’t look pushable, users will pull. If all the PR and the CEO keep saying “autopilot”, users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn’t autopilot, it should have a different name. ~~~ PhantomGremlin _If all the PR and the CEO keep saying “autopilot”, users will use it as auto pilot. If it isn’t autopilot, it should have a different name._ The word "autopilot" originated in aviation, where it _is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the aircraft._[1] Most aviation professionals understand those limitations. You're complaining that the average Tesla owner ascribes a different meaning to that word? Sadly, in aviation, over-reliance on autopilot has also led to very tragic results, the most prominent recent example being the crash of AF447, which killed 228 people.[2] Musk is doing nothing worse than Airbus, which has pushed automation to the extent that many of their pilots no longer understand the basic principles involved in aviation. They aren't pilots, they're operators of a very complex machine which has a UX that is usable in benign conditions, but that is abominably bad under difficult conditions. When faced with "temporary inconsistencies" from various sensors, the AF447 autopilot gave up and returned control to the pilots. But the pilots' inexperience in actually "flying" the aircraft, together with the awful Airbus UX, caused one pilot to say "We've lost all control of the aeroplane we don’t understand anything we’ve tried everything". In reality AF447 was a perfectly flyable aircraft. "pitch and power" was all it needed: Holding the aircraft level with pitch at IIRC 6 degrees above the horizon and applying 85% power was all that was necessary. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447) ~~~ Swizec > without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. This is exactly what the Tesla autopilot isn’t. It requires constant hands-on control. It in fact goes as far as flashing alarms when your hands are not on. ~~~ TomMarius It requires constant hands on steering wheel, but not constant control (that's just regular driving) - only readiness, just like in aviation. The difference is that you have more time to react when you're flying so hands on controls are pointless.

Airbnb: Say No to Stolen Homes - kafkaesq http://www.stolenhomes.org/ ====== kafkaesq More info on this very pertinent issue: [http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/airbnb-lists-homes- ill...](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/airbnb-lists-homes-illegal- israeli-settlements-160111110802994.html) [http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/palestinians- lambast-...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/palestinians-lambast- airbnbs-west-bank-settlement-listings-36390435) ------ WalterSear You're down.

Rapere: An Intercept Drone to Seek and Destroy Other Drones - mrb http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/rapere-intercept-drone ====== dang [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rapere&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=rapere&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Got A Good Startup? Here's 50.000 EUR For It - edragonu http://www.dragosroua.com/got-a-good-startup-heres-50-000-eur-for-it/ ====== mariust Nice...

Today I made another ultimatum - beneills http://blog.beneills.com/ultimata/ ====== jacquesm Don't over-focus on productivity. Focus on your health and happiness first and foremost, productivity is overrated. Sure it's nice to crank out a bit more than you would otherwise but I've yet to see a deadline that I couldn't extend for the time it took to cook a proper meal or to see an old friend. No need to make ultimatums.

I Am Fully Capable of Entertaining Myself in Prison for Decades If Need Be - gpresot https://theintercept.com/2016/10/16/i-am-fully-capable-of-entertaining-myself-in-prison-for-decades-if-need-be/ ====== emilga Interesting story. Reminds me of this story from _Flow_ : > Tollas Tibor, a poet who spent several years in solitary confinement during > the most repressive phases of the Hungarian communist regime, says that in > the Visegrád jail, where hundreds of intellectuals were imprisoned, the > inmates kept themselves occupied for more than a year by devising a poetry > translation contest. First, they had to decide on the poem to translate. It > took months to pass the nominations around from cell to cell, and several > more months of ingenious secret messages before the votes were tallied. > Finally it was agreed that Walt Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! was to be > the poem to translate into Hungarian, partly because it was the one that > most of the prisoners could recall from memory in the original English. Now > began the serious work: everyone sat down to make his own version of the > poem. Since no paper or writing tool was available, Tollas spread a film of > soap on the soles of his shoe, and carved the letters into it with a > toothpick. When a line was learned by heart, he covered his shoe with a new > coating of soap. As the various stanzas were written, they were memorized by > the translator and passed on to the next cell. After a while, a dozen > versions of the poem were circulating in the jail, and each was evaluated > and voted on by all the inmates. After the Whitman translation was > adjudicated, the prisoners went on to tackle a poem by Schiller. ------ pmoriarty I always thought prison would be a great place to practice meditation. Even at home, where there are lots of distractions, I can easily spend hours meditating. In prison, with much more time to waste and a lot fewer distractions, I'd probably be able to focus for much longer and get really good at it, as the more you practice, the better you get, and the better you get the easier it is for you to meditate and the longer you can meditate. Another reason meditation could be great for prison is that it could be a fantastic antidote to boredom. After a few weeks of regular meditation, I found I actually started to look forward to "boring" chores like brushing my teeth and waiting in line, which provided great opportunities for meditating (which consisted of just focusing on my breath).. and those boring times just seemed to fly by as I meditated and no longer seemed boring. Yet another reason that meditation could help in prison is because it could be used to help one "detach", in the Buddhist or Stoic sense -- not to cling to things one desires, to be content with one's circumstances and surroundings, to help with pain, anger and other emotional issues, and just to achieve peace of mind. Meditation need not rely on any physical items that can be taken away from you. If you use the technique of focusing on your breath -- your breath being something that will always be with you as long as you live -- it can always serve as an object of meditation. Meditation seems tailor-made for prison (not to mention ordinary life, where it can also help). ~~~ jkaptur Have you ever been to prison? I think you may have a romantic view. For example: > “Plaintiff is being tortured on a daily basis in Attica Correctional > Facility Special Housing Unit,” he wrote. “Plaintiff is subjected to having > to listen to loud banging all day and night” and to “screaming and yelling” > and to “feces being thrown in plaintiff’s cell” by “mentally disturbed > prisoners” who were housed near him. From [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick- hamilto...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick-hamilton- jailhouse-lawyer). Or (from an article about how prisons are putting two people in a solitary confinement cell): > The two started arguing immediately. Each had to prove that he would not be > messed with, because if something happened — if one attacked the other — > there was no escape. The only way to alert a guard was to bang on the door > and hope the sound could be heard above the din. From [https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/24/the-deadly- con...](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/24/the-deadly-consequences- of-solitary-with-a-cellmate) ~~~ sverige Yeah, most of your meditation will be on how to survive another day if you land in an American prison. ~~~ pmoriarty There's lots of variation between the kind of incarceration you might be in. Minimum security, maximum security, supermax, solitary confinement or not, federal, state, county, death row, etc. Mixed in with the general prison population or not, among murderers or among white-collar criminals? Some types of incarceration will give you more opportunities for meditation than others. If someone has the leisure to write a book in prison, or to work on some software project, work on a game (like the author of the article this HN thread is about), read, exercise, make license plates or belt buckles or perform other minimal-skilled work (like many prisoners do), get vocational training, or even simply do chores like cleanup or kitchen duty, they have great opportunities to meditate. Also, you can actually meditate while doing other things. I do it all the time -- especially when something annoying or boring is going on (like when I'm talking to my boss). Helps keep the blood pressure down. Still sounds perfect for prison to me. I'm also reminded of the Forest Monk tradition[1], where monks deliberately lived and meditated in the forest, among wild beasts, with very little to eat, and in very primitive (if any) shelters, etc. _" Fear accompanied many wilderness newcomers, due in part to the insecurity of daily life and survival but especially fear of wild animals, sickness and injury, and -- given the accretions of cultural lore -- ghosts._ _" Many forest monks record their encounters with wild animals, namely tigers, elephants, and snakes. Tigers often lurked around hermits in their open air klots at night, and the monks learned to face fear directly..._ _" In such settings the training of the mind was invaluable..._ _" A second fear that masters bade their disciples overcome was fear of corpses and spirits. The Visuddhimagga teaches the corpse meditation as a way of inculcating a spirit of impermanence but also as a practical way of conquering sexual temptation, and fear of illness and disease. But spending the night in a cemetery, whether in the open air or in a klot, could be the source of great fear._ _" The cemeteries of southeast Asia were not the tombstones and spacious lawns of the Western world. Corpses were brought and deposited in shrouds on the ground, make-shift cremations incomplete or left unfinished with nightfall. One monk records being in a cemetery at dusk when villagers brought a shrouded body and left the smoldering corpse on the ground where the monk could see it from his klot. As in any such case, the odor was overwhelming and the monk's imagination stirred. The monk was taught to recognize and observe fear, to control it with mindfulness, and ultimately to transcend it. But that seldom happened without considerable experience._ _" The third fear was fear of bodily suffering. The widespread contraction of malaria by forest-dwellers called for perseverance, especially when palliative drugs were unavalable in isolated locales. Despite suffering malarial fever, some monks did not deviate from their discipline, walking in pain or sitting stolidly in the open air during rain storms. The conviction that pain is rooted in the mind was a strong motivation to discipline._ _" In terms of physical hardship, the forest-dwelling monks contrasted their wilderness context to the cozy, rarified atmosphere of the monastery. To the forest-dwelling monks and hermits, book learning could not overcome bodily suffering. A strong intellect might mask emotional weakness, undermining mindfulness. Ajan Man, who passed a rains retreat while suffering severe stomach pains, would sometimes enter towns and villages in order to test himself against temptations of food and sensual desire. Mastering sense stimuli would guard against viewing the forest as an escape."_ Of course, some prison experiences can be even worse than this, with people actively trying to harm you, but I still think there are a lot of parallels and meditation can help in both types of situations. [1] - [http://www.hermitary.com/articles/thudong.html](http://www.hermitary.com/articles/thudong.html) ~~~ ue_ Excellent post. It's important to let people understand that meditation need not be in long times of peace and quiet on a comfy cushion. ------ scandox It's interesting that he references GURPS given that it was created by Steve Jackson Games, who were also raided by a Federal Agency and had their computers taken away without cause (Secret Service, I think). It is covered in Bruce Sterling's excellent The Hacker Crackdown [http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html](http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html) ~~~ evgen Yes, it was by the Secret Service and yes they were overly excessive in what they grabbed (e.g. everything plugged into an electrical socket that was not involved in food production), but even Loyd would probably admit by now that it was not entirely without cause... ~~~ mcv There was of course a reason why the Secret Service raided them, but that doesn't mean it was a good reason. At the time, everybody was shocked and the courts sided with Steve Jackson, but with the past 15 years, I can imagine people are now more used to this kind of invasive, ill-justified raids by law enforcement organizations, and more willing to accept this as normal behaviour. ~~~ evgen It was a good reason even if they were incorrect regarding their suspicions, and they did not have either the proper paperwork to enter the premises or the legal authority to remove what they did. As someone personally involved in the whole affair I can assure you that it was considered excessive and the Secret Service rightly deserved losing that case. ------ pmoriarty I am reminded of something that I heard on the Alcatraz audio tour (which I strongly recommend if you ever tour Alactraz, which is awesome), where a former prisoner said he made up a game to help pass the time in his months of solitary confinement: He'd take a button off of his shirt and throw the button down on to the floor of his cell, in the pitch darkness. Then he'd crawl on his hands and knees to find it. Then he'd repeat the process again. ~~~ feborges You can also see this game in the Brazilian prison movie "Carandiru" (available with english subtitles). Highly recommended. ------ mcv Part of me is actually a bit jealous that he gets to design an intricate campaign full-time. The bigger part of me is outraged that an innocent guy got locked up for uncovering a criminal conspiracy. ~~~ ChoHag And part of me is dismayed that he butted heads with the DOJ - a DOJ he was in the process of demonstrating was corrupt - and expected to come away clean. ~~~ mcphage I'm not really sure he expected to, although he still seems (justifiably) bitter about that. ------ roh0sun > The chairman and co-founder of Palantir is Peter Thiel — the same man who > more recently funded the lawsuit that destroyed Gawker, a media outlet that > had angered him, and who served as the final speaker at the Republican > National Convention. His firm continues to work closely with the U.S. > intelligence community. ~~~ pmoriarty And who recently made headlines by donating $1.25M in support of Donald Trump: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12716825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12716825) ~~~ tzakrajs Wow, gross. ~~~ SixSigma There are people in this world that have different opinions to yours. He his opposing a party that co-ordinates violet protests at political rallies as well as many, many other crimes. ------ guelo One of our political prisoners. ------ greggh Barrett is one of my best friends. He gets out soon and I can't wait for a time when he can put out articles like this every week again. It takes a lot longer to get through the process while in prison. ------ hellofunk For some reason, this is something I have very often thought about. Not because I think I'll ever to go prison, but because I've often wondered what I'd do if I didn't have access to things that please me, like a musical instrument, or a computer. I've often thought that I would also be capable of keeping my mind excited without anything, and for me the one item that always stands out is that I'd commit myself fully to number theory and just think about integers and prime numbers all day and all night, for years, trying to work out the most basic puzzles in existence. That would probably never happen, I'd more likely end up a depressed opiate addict, but the thought that it _could_ happen, even in the face of incarceration, gives me a bit of strange solace. ~~~ restalis Contrary to what we like to imagine from outside, in prison you don't get the most favorable conditions for meditation. It's still an effort to get your mind serene and ready for heavy lifting like math. It's way more productive to focus on things that both have a lesser mental demand and touch your interest on a deeper, personal level. ------ mhd Former "nerds" having grown up, finding mentions of D&D is no longer really rare, but I'm always surprised where you find GURPS. I do wonder whether prisoners might find the increased realism interesting, as there's a higher likelihood that they might actually know a bit about losing "hit points". (If it's white collar crime, the point-based accounting might be a bigger incentive) ~~~ pmoriarty GURPS is not particularly obscure, so I'm not surprised to hear mention of it. Though it definitely is more obscure than D&D, which is sadly the only RPG that a lot of gamers have ever played. ------ fsloth Is there any other backstory available? What are the actual charges? Are there any? ~~~ stplsd [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_Brown) ------ q-base Am I the only one surprised to find Peter Thiel's name in that article? Anyone who has anymore on that? ------ eddie_catflap I really like Barrett's writing, both the style and content. I look forward to seeing much more from him on his release. How he has maintained his wit throughout this episode is beyond me - especially after receiving such a harsh sentence. ------ eternalban This exact url was posted earlier [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12719095](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12719095) ------ bobsgame I always imagined I could just program something on pen and paper and that would keep me busy, and when I got out I would have a masterpiece to sell. ~~~ nibnib Has anyone ever done this? There have been successful books written in prison but not many, and that translates much better to pen and paper than software does. It sounds like something of a fantasy to be honest. ~~~ Houshalter I don't know about complex pieces of software. But many algorithms were invented on paper first (or whiteboards.) Conway's game of life became popular before computers were programmed to do it, and people executed the moves with pencil on graph paper. Turing had a chess playing algorithm which he executed by hand on paper. I've written short sections of code on a notebook before implementing it into a computer. It's slower, but it's possible, and I don't think paper is _that_ inferior to a text editor. It will definitely require a lot more debugging when you finally implement it on a computer. So maybe write lots of test cases. ~~~ nibnib >algorithms were invented on paper first This I can see, but the parent seems to be talking about commercially viable software. I think people should be careful when discussing imprisonment as some kind of distraction-free vacation for intellectual pursuits, the reality is that a large amount of time would be spent caring for your mental wellbeing. ~~~ Fjolsvith Well, most of the people I knew in prison used weight-lifting, tennis, jogging, arts and crafts, instrument playing, card games, reading, cooking, TV watching, naptime, and even alcohol to manage the mental wellbeing. What can really be tough is if you have someone on the outside you care about who is struggling with their own issues. That, more than anything, puts an imprisoned man into depression. ------ Houshalter For those who didn't read the whole thing, the part referred to by the title is at the very end. This guy constructed an insanely elaborate RPG world, which it sounds like he plays by himself: >I oversee some 70 fully realized characters as they pursue their blood-soaked vendettas against one another in accordance with the several handwritten pages of primitive, dice-based behavioral heuristics I have devised for them. Their entire world is limited to a map I’ve drawn on graph paper and taped to my wall, their stage confined to my cell’s steel wall-mounted desk on which I have created an elaborate city consisting of dozens and dozens of buildings, vehicles, vending machines, trees, dogs, rats, surveillance drones, and dwarves — a small world, yes, but one of extraordinary depth and intrigue. I make the pieces out of cardboard tea boxes, drawing and then coloring them with very sharp pencils, and I don’t mind saying that I’ve become very good at making itty-bitty tea box people over the last year or so. Otherwise a very sad story that this guy got locked up and it didn't even accomplish any change. From the discussion on the reddit, many prisons ban D&D, probably because of fear D&D sessions could turn into gangs and...: >D&D can "foster an inmate's obsession with escaping from the real life, correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior," which in turn "can compromise not only the inmate's rehabilitation and effects of positive programming but also endanger the public and jeopardize the safety and security of the institution." [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/57uz74/i_am_fully_capa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/57uz74/i_am_fully_capable_of_entertaining_myself_in/) Also the author says he couldn't do this at his previous prison because they kept taking away his books and papers. ~~~ faraggi > because they kept taking away his books and papers This is very worrying. > There is a (light?) documentary[1] which compares nordic and american > prisons which tries to compare both systems. Both have totally different > operational philosophies ergo, results. Very interesting watch but probably even better if coupled with more insightful reading. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfEsz812Q1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfEsz812Q1I) ------ anondon Not directly about the article, but the Quote of the day, which is below the article. > “Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish > contributors of the Democrats. … Could we please investigate some of the > cocksuckers?” — Richard Nixon, 1971 I don't know the context of the quote, but hatred towards Jews is something that I never really understood fully. I tried reading up a little on the history of Jews, and a few reasons seems to be (I know I am missing a lot): -first Abrahamic religion, difficult to acknowledge for Christians and Muslims -Palestine-Israel conflict creates hatred among Muslims -super successful and influential for such a small community. Without becoming a flamewar, can someone provide an objective TL;DR about hatred towards Jews? ~~~ sfrechtling I think an objective summary is going to be hard to come by. The only thing I can add is that this view is common throughout history - think Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. The stereotype of Jewish people as being involved in the processes of finances and money lending may have been one seed for this. ~~~ beagle3 In many places in 17-18th century Europe, foreigners (which usually included Jews and gypsies among others) were forbidden from owning land and engaging in quite a few honorable jobs. Jewish practice converged to require praying from a book, so the literacy rate was extremely high (not so much among the general population, especially in Eastern Europe), and as a result of both this and the restrictions, Jews were constrained to jobs like trade, bankers, lawyers, doctors, which later became much more desirable than the (previously) more honorable jobs and ownership positions that they couldn't take. IIRC, at some point in the late 19th century Germany, Jews were ~3% of the population, but were about 30% of the doctors and 70% of the lawyers; they were also over-represented among the rich. (Can't find a reference right now, so numbers might be off - but I'm quite sure about being over-represented in lucrative and rich circles). I have no idea if a percentage of jews involved with finances (among all jews) was high; But they were definitely over-represented among finance people. And besides, hating someone who's different is an established tradition among the people of the world. I don't think it is entirely irrational to suspect a group that has non trivial dealing with the land's finances, law and health - yet is distinct, marries among itself, has its own "secret" languages and rituals, and has a demonstrated history of moving around and rotating loyalties. (My statements are not politically correct, I'm afraid) ------ Rapzid The cliché-ridden passages created by the gamemaster aren't the only ones you'll find in this article.. ------ intended I really can't wait for the future, the kind of childish maliciousness we have today will be replaced with increasing technological sophistication and innovation. People working on this are probably on HN, and I can only doff my hat to them. Being employed by palantir et al is far better than being on the receiving end. ~~~ jstanley The kind of childish maliciousness we have today will be replaced with increasingly effective and omniscient childish maliciousness.

NASA Tests LDSD 'Flying Saucer' - JacobH http://www.ustream.tv/channel/5808990 ====== donpdonp From [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd/](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd/) # Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) As NASA plans ambitious new robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, the spacecraft needed to land safely on the red planet's surface necessarily becomes increasingly massive, hauling larger payloads to accommodate extended stays on the Martian surface. Current technology for decelerating from the high speed of atmospheric entry to the final stages of landing on Mars dates back to NASA's Viking Program, which put two landers on Mars in 1976. The basic Viking parachute design has been used ever since -- and was successfully used again in 2012 to deliver the Curiosity rover to Mars. NASA seeks to use atmospheric drag as a solution, saving rocket engines and fuel for final maneuvers and landing procedures. The heavier planetary landers of tomorrow, however, will require much larger drag devices than any now in use to slow them down -- and those next-generation drag devices will need to be deployed at higher supersonic speeds to safely land vehicle, crew and cargo. NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) Technology Demonstration Mission, led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will conduct full-scale, stratospheric tests of these breakthrough technologies high above Earth to prove their value for future missions to Mars. ------ brownbat Description: [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd/](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd/) Seems to be trying to figure out how to save fuel by relying on atmospheric drag to rapidly decelerate on descent to, say, Mars with extremely heavy payloads. News conference: [http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/48346813](http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/48346813) "Current technology for decelerating from the high speed of atmospheric entry to the final stages of landing on Mars dates back to NASA's Viking Program, which put two landers on Mars in 1976. The basic Viking parachute design has been used ever since -- and was successfully used again in 2012 to deliver the Curiosity rover to Mars." Viking program: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program) ------ fjarlq Intro video specifically about this test: LDSD: The Great Shakeout Test For Mars [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YwSXAba6Ik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YwSXAba6Ik) ~~~ malkia Is this Mark Adler - one of the author of zlib? According to this it looks like it's him: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Adler#Mars_Exploration_Rov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Adler#Mars_Exploration_Rover_mission) ~~~ Intermernet Yes, that would be him, he's amazing. He not only works on making Mars habitable, he's also partly responsible for the most popular image format on the web today. Full respect. ------ geerlingguy The video feed is raw, no commentary and little editing, just FYI. If you want to figure out what's going on, you need to read up on background info and also listen for 10-20 minutes :P As of 4:32 EST, it looks like a live video feed should start coming from the vehicle soon (within minutes), but timelines are changing every few minutes. I think the parachute deployment is still on schedule for 4:51 EST. [Edit: There are now commentators, so it's a bit easier to figure out what's going on and follow the progress.] ------ ortusdux Here is a timeline of the test: [http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/ldsd/pia18451/](http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/ldsd/pia18451/) ------ torrance Looks like the parachute failed to deploy cleanly. ~~~ ddunkin You can watch the air density as it falls, it was so still at the highest altitude. ~~~ Intermernet Tell ya what, In KSP I'd have waited another 30 seconds or so to deploy that 'chute... But I don't work for NASA, and that's probably why not :-) ------ neoveller Does anyone know why the live footage looks like it was taken using a security camera from the 80s? ~~~ Intermernet Didn't you know that all "space" footage is actually from a government sponsored set where they invented chroma-key compositing? Kubrik was in on all of it. Take my word for it... ------ TeMPOraL I have a distinct feeling that someone really tried to make the acronym spell "LSD". Speaking of which, does anyone here know how acronyms are created at NASA? Is it by committee or does someone just make a name that kind of sticks? ------ phusion Damn, headline isn't NASA Tests LSD In Flying Saucer. Maybe next time.

Half of the top 50 Wikipedia contributors are bots - lsb http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/vandalism-second-chances-and-bots.html ====== tptacek Before everyone freaks out about this, the bots that we're talking about are janitorial, doing things like add dates to wikitags added by human editors. You can see this right now; go find a page to add a (legit, please) {{clarify}} or {{who}} or {{where}} tag to. Add it without a date, and wait 5 minutes; Smackbot will date the tag for you. This is a good thing for _obvious reasons_. Similarly, I'm guessing the "reversion" stat here is misleading. Reversion isn't deletion; anything that moves content around the page is likely counted as well. Write a graf or two on any well-trafficked WP page and you'll probably see it moved around pretty quickly. More importantly, reversion isn't permanent. On any popular article, someone is bound to disagree with the merits of your edit. The normal way of things when I was wasting time at WP was, edit, revert, talk page, re-post copy. ~~~ lsb And that's genuinely valuable; it's helpful to know that someone's thought that this has been unclear for 2 days versus 2 years. The compressed diff will be quite small, but Wikipedia incrementally gets better. Have you ever taken too much penicillin? You'll lose some of your good bacteria and you'll get a fungus from opportunistic infections. (See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic_candidiasis> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidiasis> for examples.) Same thing with Wikipedia. Bots are really helpful for regular maintenance. ------ tokenadult I'd like to know how many are plagiarists <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Plagiarism> or persons who misrepresent their identities, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry> especially after some infamous incidents [http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/head_wikipedian.ph...](http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/03/head_wikipedian.php) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-01/Arbitration_report) of editors with a lot of trust in the Wikipedia editing community who were abusing that trust. I don't find it easy in the culture of Wikipedia to gain trust by referring to reliable sources and checking what those sources say. After edit: The phenomenon of edit wars <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars> goes a long way toward explaining why most Wikipedians have had contributions reverted, as the submitted blog post reports. ~~~ lsb As I was manually going through the top 50 list, "Darius Dhlomo, 920829" seems like someone who was banned, based on significant copyright issues. Also, plagiarism is difficult, because there are a lot of articles based on the kernel of public-domain texts, of which citation is not required. And sock puppetry is difficult, because some people keep bots that do productive work, but if human beings have trouble sensing that, I imagine it'd be much more code than the hundred lines of code that it took to process this the first time: [https://github.com/lsb/ugc-contributors/blob/master/mh- diffs...](https://github.com/lsb/ugc-contributors/blob/master/mh-diffs.rb) ------ crikli <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots> Learned something new today. I didn't have any idea Wikipedia was partially controlled by bots. I for one welcome our new NLP powered overlords. Based on that page, though, how are bots _contributing_? Editing, yes. Creating, how? ~~~ ErrantX The biggest editing bots tend to do template maintenance (so correcting formatting issues and adding dates to templates). Bots simply do tedious work (that would have to be done anyway) faster - so hence a big edit count. My bot (which notifies English Wikipedia of image deletions on Wikimedia Commons) edits about three times more than I do each month (and I am somewhere around #500 activity wise). The very top bot ClueBot NG does more than double the edits of anyone else per month; that is an anti-vandalism bot, it catches about 50% of vandalism on Wikipedia each month. So pretty crucial :) Cydebot (#2) does some sort of category maintenance (not sure what, never seen it before). SineBot (#5) goes around and signs peoples comments when they forget (handy beast). Basically it is just infrastructure; but because of the nature of the Wiki it is more visible than other forms of infrastructure :) ------ philthy "Over three quarters of contributions from registered users are from someone who's had a contribution reverted." Well this makes sense entirely since it is peer reviewed and the articles are a living ecosystem which are built off of and on top of prior submissions and versions. ~~~ lsb I approached that question from a purity standpoint: if you only limited Wikipedia to people who did things "right", where would you be? And the answer turned out to be that you wouldn't be very far. I think urban planners have found that neighborhood cohesion and community watches are far better than gated communities and lawless knifefights outside, and the online textual equivalent of community dynamics agrees with that. ~~~ tokenadult _if you only limited Wikipedia to people who did things "right", where would you be?_ Although it's notionally possible that a first editor who got something "right" (factually correct based on reliable sources) was later reverted by someone edit-warring to score a point. Sometimes a particular edit makes Wikipedia worse rather than better. If NONE of my edits had ever been reverted (several have been), I would think that I wasn't trying hard enough to check sources and correct commonplace errors. However, it's not clear at the moment whether the editors with the lowest percentages of reverted edits are those who do the best edits, or just those whose prejudices (and topic choices) avoid scrutiny by the mob of other Wikipedia amateur editors. I am conscious of this issue because I was a professional editor and researcher to make my living long before most members of the general public had ever heard of the Internet, and because most wikipedians are so young and so devoid of editing experience that they readily mistake good edits for bad. _I think urban planners have found that neighborhood cohesion and community watches are far better than gated communities_ It would be interesting to see citations to research on this issue, as well as the latest citations to research on forming online communities in which fact- checking and encouragement of careful scholarship become the group ethos. I live in a crime-free neighborhood with an annual block party and NO crime in a typical year, not gated, with good community cohesion, but also isolated from a lot of passers-by simply because it isn't a shortcut to anywhere else. Wikipedia is so exposed to the outside world, including spamming advertisers and propaganda agents of warring governments, that it may take more vigilance to protect than just an informal consensus among volunteer amateur editors. ~~~ lsb A guy I knew at the Media Lab said that Marvin Minsky tried to correct his Wikipedia article, but someone reverted it. The IP address came from inside the Media Lab, so it might have very well been him. The small-community-far-from-everything is quite similar to Wikipedia in its early years. Look at 2002-2005 and you'll see lots of anonymous Good Samaritans contributing helpful content. (Look for R6 and R7 on [http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-writes- wikipedia...](http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-writes-wikipedia- information.html) to see a time series of anonymous contributions from 2003 to 2010.) ------ alok-g While, strictly speaking, this is unrelated to this topic, something has been bugging me that I would like to bring to the attention of HN readers: BOUML is a free UML2 tool for C++, Java, Python and others. The developer, Bruno Pages, has stopped its development due to some issue with Wikipedia administrators. I attempted to get more information from Bruno but he is upset enough to not talk about it. The following is quoted verbatim from <http://bouml.free.fr/> and is all I know: "Due to the continuous license violations, attacks and insults from people of wikipedia ( the worst of them were the administrators Bapti (commons)/ Bapti (fr.wikipedia)/ Bapti (de.wikipedia) , Dereckson (commons)/ Dereckson (fr.wikipedia)/ Dereckson (de.wikipedia) and Esby (commons)/ Esby (fr.wikipedia) ), I have decided to stop work on Bouml except to fix bugs. Bruno Pagès." ------ wbhart Oh! The number of articles I have read lately where I have gone and looked up actual books and discovered that the wikipedia content is copied verbatim from the books, yet with sentences that do not correlate strung together in a way that results in totally incorrect information. And then there is the fact that for ages the Jean Claude van Damme article said he had killed 100 men with his bare hands {expletives deleted}. Many of the mathematics articles contain appalling errors. You post about the errors in the discussion page and the issue is totally ignored. There seems to be no way to work with the community process to get things fixed. I use wikipedia a lot for things that don't matter, e.g. as a structured skeleton for notes on a particular topic that I am writing for my own benefit and understanding. But as a project, I think it has basically reached its limits. There's no way to move it significantly past what it is now. ~~~ xxpor If there are significant errors, fix them yourself. There's no need to go to the discussion page. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BOLD> ~~~ CJefferson Except I find most of my changes get reverted, even if referenced or simply deleting incorrect and unreferenced information. I don't have time to enter a life-long battle keeping an article correct. ~~~ TikiTDO Something does not compute there. If your changes are getting reverted, obviously someone cares enough to notice, so it follows that they should care enough to check the discussion. Are you sure you're not just getting hit by a bot? Maybe you did not tag your changes properly? If anything, there might be a problem that the admins should look at. I would like to see some of these changes you are talking about. ~~~ woodall My experience with Wikipedia has been hit or miss. Sometimes I'll find an older article and fix it up a bit and it will stay. Other times I get my edit reverted by an over zealous neck beard who can't handle being wrong on the internet. I don't have the time to battle these types of people. This is what sunk, "Wikipedia is not a creditable source" into my brain. ------ scythe It'd be cool to see how this was calculated. Though considering the amount of auto-spellcheck and similar that goes on, it's kind of surprising to see that half of the top contributors are _human_. ~~~ davnola The source is linked from the OP. Here it is: [http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-writes- wikipedia...](http://slightlynew.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-writes-wikipedia- information.html) The author draws a wonderful parallel between bots in the Wikipedia ecosystem and bacteria in the human body. ~~~ lsb Thanks for your kind words! I was fascinated by that talk. And if you want the code + data, you can just xargs [https://github.com/lsb/ugc-contributors/blob/master/mh- diffs...](https://github.com/lsb/ugc-contributors/blob/master/mh-diffs.rb) over all of your pages-meta-history.7z files from <http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20110317/> or get the sqlite database from Infochimps from [http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/entropy-per-revision- of-w...](http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/entropy-per-revision-of-wikipedia- pages-beginning-with-m) ------ T_S_ The idea that a human and a program would use the same interface is a good one if your goal is to allow the humans to focus on adding domain knowledge and the machines to focus on the boring repetitive tasks. Consider it a design pattern, not an evil plot. ------ basseq The stat I found interesting is this one [citation needed]: while a majority of edits are done by few editors, most of the content is generated by either a) anonymous accounts or b) people who have contributed 2-3 times and haven't returned since. The editors, like the bots, represent maintenance edits. Keep that in mind the next time Jimmy Wales gives beaucoup credit to editors, or some super-user gets power-happy. ------ retube What is the motivation for this? Why would someone write a bot to add content to wikipedia? ~~~ T-hawk Also gray-to-black hat spam with links. Just like the content farms that plague Google's results, they'll push in any low-quality content in hopes of trolling some clicks to their ad- or malware-laden sites. ~~~ redthrowaway These are pretty easy to spot, and they get banned very quickly. ------ csomar I think these are bots that add links (external) to Wikipedia by some Spammers. I have seen some people doing it. ~~~ brazzy I think most of those are probably officially endorsed bots that do things like correct common misspellings, crosslink between different langauge Wikipedias and do huge one-off tasks like category reorganizations.

Show HN: 5000 best movies - arekp http://5000best.com/movies/Personalized/ ====== agscala Cool site. I love the simple interface. From a UX perspective, the header should be sticky when you scroll. I was having fun looking at the "moods" and genres that get highlighted when you hover over a movie, but after I scroll down, I can't see it anymore ~~~ arekp Great feedback. I see I should do it this way. ~~~ pooriaazimi So, please, for God's sake, use a <frame>. I hate all those javascript/CSS fancy tricks. With <frame>s, you can press space/page down key to go to next page. Those stupid CSS tricks break this 35+ year-old tradition, and add literally zero benefit. ~~~ jpb0104 Please no more frames, they are deprecated. <http://stackoverflow.com/a/4263583> and <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html> (1996). Edit: Not entirely deprecated, but are obsolete and highly discouraged. ------ julienmarie I must confess that I use this website quite daily ( in fact everytime I want to watch a movie ) since I discovered it a few weeks ago here on HN. its a real gem. I love the interface too, even if I think that we could polish just a bit the css to make it more attractive ( if you want, I volunteer :) ) ~~~ arekp I do not know when I will have time to experiment more with the website, but volunteers are always welcome. ------ clicks Pretty decent and clean interface, I like that -- I think the next step to take from here would be implementing a system that lets users keep track of a list of watched/not-watched movies. Up for it? :) Anyway, do please remark on what kind of stack you've got going and what went into making this. ~~~ arekp Thanks. We'll see. Each feature costs developer's time. Edit: the stack is G-WAN and everything is written in plain ANSI C. I wrote my own HTTP servers in C/C++ for my previous websites, but this time I tried G-WAN. I think it saved me one week of work or two. The website is running on the cheapest virtual dedicated server from 1&1 with 25% of one processor time. The total cost is less than $10 monthly. ~~~ julienmarie what is (approximately) the actual traffic and load of the server... i've been curious about g-wan for a long time :) ~~~ arekp The website should withstand several times larger traffic than the HN frontpage effect. I am not sure about the reddit effect. ------ nbush Very nice. Different but distinctive and useful design. Row selection highlighting would help with navigation; I find myself getting a bit lost when parsing such long rows. I would also like to see a bit more info about how the site works. ------ groby_b One tiny recommendation: Give a visual indication that the movie I just rated will move elsewhere. It was very confusing to see things vanish when I clicked on them :) But leaving nitpicks aside - I really like it. ------ runlevel1 I'm finding your personalization algorithm to be impressively accurate. Is there some way to download the personalized results? It wouldn't have to be pretty - even plain XML would be great. ------ wmeredith This is an awesome little web app that I immediately bookmarked for later reference. On a side note, only on HackerNews could this interface draw praise. ~~~ arekp Yes, the interface became a little complicated. The previous version was more accessible for a casual user, for example the following article about the website was received pretty enthusiastically (retweeted about 1000 times) <http://gigazine.net/news/20121012-5000-best-movies/> I guess the right way to fix it is to hide some features and add a tutorial. ~~~ wmeredith I love the functionality, I wouldn't change anything there. I would just try and clean up the interface a bit. Bring some consistency to alignments, add some hierarchy to the controls with font weights, sizing colors etc... Normal UX stuff. Honestly, it may not be a priority for you. I was NOT trying to bash. I just thought it was funny that the interface was drawing praise. As a UX Specialist at my agency, I see interfaces like this all the time (I'm usually being paid to fix them). We call this aesthetic "engineers designing". Don't take it too hard, I'm sure my PHP looks like designers engineering :) So after I used the site, my first thought was, "That's awesome, but it's definitely painful to interact with; engineers designing." Then I pop to the comments and the first one is about how much they like the interface. Excellent HN moment for me there. ~~~ arekp Yea, that Excel-table-like design probably breaks all design rules. It surprises me most when I occasionally see design professionals complementing it. I am rather a backend programmer and I have no illusions. But even the Hacker News audience does not have enough geekiness to understand my previous attempt at a movie recommender system: <http://5000best.com/movie- galaxy/> ------ hinoglu Way simple, yet charming. Loved the show-categories-on-hover feature, but it's impossible to see the categories when scrolled down. ------ marcioaguiar How does the score works? 12 Angry Men has a 9.4 score and 7th place, but when I filter by "Law" movies the score goes down to 7.5. ~~~ arekp Score is different in each of the 55 rankings. I do not know if this is clear in the interface, but "Law" is one of the rankings, not a filter. ------ aidenn0 Something seriously wrong with the "writer" credit. E.g. anything based on a book, Full Metal Alchemist. ------ pooriaazimi I'm really impressed. The "recommender" system works _really_ well. ~~~ arekp Thank you. I was in top 50 in the Netflix Prize and wrote a book about recommender systems (<http://arek-paterek.com/book/>) if someone is interested how the bread is made. ------ usaphp How come "The Godfather" is a Horror movie? ~~~ arekp I have to tune that one. Violence and blood alone should not indicate a horror. ------ usaphp once you scroll down, the whole information section becomes useless.

The New American Divide - joshuahedlund http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5 ====== joshuahedlund I'm very interested in thinking about how start-ups could address these so- called "cultural inequalities" - the article doesn't really cover the role of technology in its exploration of interesting trends and growing gaps.

Ask HN: What is the best way of following statistics on a specific industry - xoxoavi Specifically interested in the restaurant industry. Once in a while there are articles in online that show stats, percentages, infographics etc. Is there a way to make sure that everytime something like that happens I know about it. Something along the lines of Google Alerts but somehow it seems like it&#x27;s not precise enough for Google alerts? Thanks in advance :) ====== saintPirelli If you are able to identify the blogs/papers that publish what you are looking for, you could subscribe to them on feedly and use it's 'mute filters' to filter out the rest. It's a pro function in feedly, but there might be other apps which offer the same functionality. ~~~ xoxoavi Hmmm, I love Feedly, never tried the pro features. So you are essentially saying that I can filter for just statistic related acronyms? ~~~ saintPirelli Something like that would be what I would try I suppose. I guess you could also customize an rss-inbox in most e-mail clients to do something similar. ~~~ xoxoavi thank you!

Nginx + LibreSSL – a first test - zdw https://www.mare-system.de/blog/page/1405201517/ ====== stephen_g The small performance degradation could be a good thing - it may be a result of the use of explicit_bzero to clear sensitive data structures (instead of memset which was used previously) before freeing. It could mean that a fair bit of that important cleaning was being optimised out before with OpenSSL. ~~~ axaxs Possibly, but it could also be much faster with all the cruft gone. Dynamic linking has a small overhead, so would love to see an apples to apples comparison. ~~~ stephen_g Definitely to some extent, but I think the cruft would have a much smaller effect. Much of it was dead code - commented out, whole files not actually compiled, code ifdefed out, or bits of code only compiled on platforms that nobody has used this decade etc. It was making maintainability a nightmare and making it a lot harder to find bugs, but I don't think it would have had a huge performance impact. ------ AlyssaRowan Cool, it builds! Reminder: You still have RC4 enabled. It's time to take that out. ~~~ castorio yes, i know, but accoring to the blogpost below it should be no problem for newser browsers when using tls 1.2, but might e usefull to keep compatibility with very legacy clients, no? disclaimer: i'm not a crypto-guru, the ciphers used are copypasta'd from [https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best- practices/](https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best-practices/). [https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2013/03/19/r...](https://community.qualys.com/blogs/securitylabs/2013/03/19/rc4-in- tls-is-broken-now-what) ------ castorio an updated version is available, now with nginx+libressl statically linked

In Baffling Move, Huffington Post Erects Paywall Solely For NYT Employees - emmanuelory http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/01/in-baffling-move-huffington-post-erects-paywall-solely-for-nyt-employees/ ====== dhimes April Fools, I presume? ~~~ devinj Read the entire article. ------ ck2 This is actually an awesome idea, not just for April Fools. We just need the NY Times external IP pool ranges and all the bigger sites should do it for real as a protest.

Show HN: Tragopan – Minimal, dependency-free pan/zoom JavaScript library - dxchester https://github.com/team-video/tragopan ====== dxchester We use this library on [https://team.video](https://team.video) for panning and zooming around in screenshares. It can be really useful if you have situation where a colleague is sharing their hi-res screen, when meanwhile you're on a laptop with a lower-res screen, and you want to zoom in on their terminal or some part of the screenshare so that the text there can be easier to read. ~~~ xgenecloud Demo link -> [https://team-video.github.io/tragopan/](https://team- video.github.io/tragopan/) This looks good, will check out for one of our projects. ------ kevsim Looks nice! We've been looking for a lightweight solution to zooming on images in the issue tracker we're building [0]. Figured we'd end up rolling our own because we're trying to avoid adding heavy dependencies for these little things. But this looks great, we'll definitely give it a try! 0: [https://kitemaker.co](https://kitemaker.co) ------ josephernest Having infinite pan/zoom is a very exciting, you always have free room to write new things! I made BigPicture a few years ago for this purpose. Live demo: [https://josephernest.github.io/bigpicture.js/index.html](https://josephernest.github.io/bigpicture.js/index.html) Note: I never did a mobile version, so it only works on desktop; same for the website [https://bigpictu.re/demo](https://bigpictu.re/demo) ~~~ dxchester Nice, that is a cool concept. Part of the motivation with tragopan was to see if using native scrolling could be a more natural fit especially on mobile, versus the more common way of using transform/translate. On BigPicture, two bits of feedback for what it's worth: \- Maybe try `user-select: none` while a user is panning? Otherwise I end up inadvertently selecting text sometimes when I try to pan around, especially in Firefox \- I couldn't figure out how to make a given bit of text bigger or smaller, like the demo shows is obviously possible. I did make it happen a few times but then couldn't understand what steps had actually led to the change... Maybe some instructions on that, or just a floating toolbar could help (even though the toolbar-less aesthetic and approach is otherwise pretty nice!) ------ miguelmota Scroll zoom on the demo image is very choppy for me. Not sure if it's my screen or the library itself. ~~~ owenshen24 Agreed. I'm using the latest version of Firefox. ~~~ dougwbrunton Which OS? There is an issue open for Firefox on iOS: [https://github.com/team- video/tragopan/issues/3](https://github.com/team-video/tragopan/issues/3). Is yours different? ~~~ owenshen24 Firefox on Linux. ------ sambeau I'm finding it very choppy and jumpy Safari Version 13.1.1 (14609.2.9.1.3) Mojave 10.14.6 ~~~ dougwbrunton Is the toolbar jumpy (which is a known problem, I've just opened an issue for it at [https://github.com/team- video/tragopan/issues/5](https://github.com/team-video/tragopan/issues/5)), or is the zooming jumpy? ------ Jarred It works well on Chrome for desktop. On the demo page, it looks like you're using CSS that isn't supported by most browsers, which might be what causes the flickering / jank on Safari. width: max-length; scrollbar-width: none; ------ tarkin2 Very jumpy on my iphone with firefox or chrome, sadly. Okay with safari. I suspect it’s the shoddy version of webkit apple forces upon moz and google. Nice effort. I applaud any efforts to make a dependency free anything in js. ~~~ dougwbrunton Thanks for the report - I've filed it at [https://github.com/team- video/tragopan/issues/3](https://github.com/team-video/tragopan/issues/3) I couldn't reproduce the Chrome jumpiness - what version of Chrome/iOS was giving you trouble? ~~~ tarkin2 Latest ios. Chrome 70.0.3538.75. It’s a little better in chrome than ff, but when I pan up and down in chrome it jumps. ~~~ dougwbrunton Okay, thanks. ------ KaoruAoiShiho Can you write a bit about why this over other pan zoom libs. ~~~ dougwbrunton I've opened an issue to track this request: [https://github.com/team- video/tragopan/issues/4](https://github.com/team-video/tragopan/issues/4) ------ jbverschoor Very smooth

Notes on “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely - iamdave http://blog.kiwitobes.com/?p=49 I found this particularly interesting because while the central theme appears to be about market economies, there are a lot of parallels to startup theory and practice that permeates financing and money<i>. I actually learned a few things about how to develop my startup and steer potential customers in the right direction by understanding how they see what's readily available.<p></i>In the blog entry, much less the book which after looking at the first chapter, I think I need to read. ====== iamdave I found this to be a very interesting read (the blog entry that is); have not yet read the book but so far I'm seeing good notes in the author's explication that have decent parallels to startup theory, not just market economies

Is Apple losing its cool factor with techies? - cwan http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=4244&tag=nl.e101 ====== g0atbutt "Apple’s buzz with the key 18- to 24-year-old demographic…" != "IT leaders and tech-savvy business professionals" (from the article) Money speaks louder then words. This smells like link bait. ~~~ VBprogrammer I agree that the evidence presented in the article is poor, however I think the general consensus would be that Apple have lost a lot of geek points. ------ ojbyrne Making inferences about a 35 year old company based on a four month chart... not even enough to measure seasonality. And the site is techrepublic.com.com? Huh? ------ itg not really any data, but just an observance, it seems like if you walk onto a college campus these days, almost everyone is carrying a macbook compared to a few years ago when i rarely saw people with apple computers. ------ gamble No. It's only because we feel so much affection for Apple's products that their business practices provoke so much outrage. In comparison, when was the last time anyone got really worked up about Microsoft? ~~~ pedalpete How about us that don't have any affection for Apple's products? Much like Facebook, I'm personally shocked by the tactics of both these companies. People were very worked up about Microsoft and their business practices about a decade ago. Actually, I'd say people were worked up about Vista, and that is what may have opened the door more for Apple. The big differences between the two as I see it is that the questionable business practices of Microsoft were directed at manufacturers and had a somewhat indirect effect on the end users. for most people, did it matter if the default browser was/is IE? This is something that mostly effected competitors, and Microsoft never said you couldn't run another browser. By comparison, it seems the business practices at Apple affect both business and consumers. Ignoring the app store developer stuff, it is harmful to consumers to have a company tell them what they can and cannot have on their devices. Many people have talked about Apple having the right to decide what apps they sell, and I agree. The challenge is that they are the only store in the ecosystem, the only way to reach those customers (with the exception of the browser). But we wouldn't allow GM to say that you can only fill up your car at Shell. Or that your flex-fuel vehicle can only run E10. As the owner of a product, YOU get to define what you do with it. It isn't up to the manufacturer to decide. I suspect I'm going to have the same issue with Windows 7 Phone when it comes out. Controlled ecosystems are bad for innovation and consumers. ~~~ c1sc0 "..., it is harmful to consumers to have a company tell them what they can and cannot have on their devices." While I agree in theory, my practical world of PCs laden with malware & viruses tells me otherwise. Consumer protections is sometimes protecting the consumer from himself. But yeah, a 'manual override' would be nice. ------ lrm242 Personally I just ordered an Asus netbook after being all Apple for 3+ years. I'm going back to Linux... can't stand around and watch the walls close around me. ~~~ lallysingh More than that, OS X got _boring_. When's the last time they added anything interesting to it? ------ sleepingbot Yes.

How Google Works. Eric Schmidt - squiggy22 http://www.howgoogleworks.net ====== grflynn When buying, the checkout page is housed in this tiny iframe: Also - the UX is terrible, and I have no idea how I should proceed in buying this. This is Google failing to take payment for something that should be seamless enough. Screenshot: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/44261X2i2H2w1O1I1F0V/...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/f.cl.ly/items/44261X2i2H2w1O1I1F0V/a.png)

Anyone going to SXSW? - humanlever I've never been but am seriously considering making the trek.<p>I've done a few Barcamps, etc. but was wondering, what are people's thoughts on SXSW Interactive? Any advice for getting the most out of the experience?<p>PS You can vote on panels by going to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ ====== pius I will be this year, for sure. (first time) ------ sh1mmer I'm in. Austin Rocks. ------ alaskamiller I'm looking into making the trip, my first time. Arranging to get tickets, passes, hotels, and flights right now. From what I hear it's always been a kickass time.

FAST Goals Beat SMART Goals - yarapavan https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/with-goals-fast-beats-smart/ ====== yarapavan According to conventional wisdom, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. But SMART goals undervalue ambition, focus narrowly on individual performance, and ignore the importance of discussing goals throughout the year. To drive strategy execution, leaders should instead set goals that are FAST — frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent.

Immigrating to Silicon Valley: How I Got an L-1A Visa Without a Lawyer - kareemm https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/immigrating-to-silicon-valley-how-i-got-an-l-1a-visa-without-a-lawyer/ ====== marymkearney Thanks so much for sharing this. IAAL, and I found it a well-written, informative, and accurate summary of the L-1A process. I'd love to see a US immigration process that was so simple it could be 100% lawyer-free. Probably not in my lifetime though! I especially enjoyed the emphasis on compiling good documentation, paying attention to detail, and figuring out what the immigration officer will be looking for, then tailoring the application to those priorities. That's how lawyers do it, and he's right, it's not rocket science. Also appreciate the link to the Startup Grind blog. New to me, and helpful.

Rate my app: HealCam, like chatroulette only "sicker" - mudil http://healcam.com/ HealCam is a medical version of chatroulette. On the site people can connect with other patients with the same disease by using simple drop down menus (present choices:Diabetes, Weight Loss &#38; Dieting, Depression, Cancer, Pregnancy and Childbirth, and Heart Disease).<p>We think that HealCam is the first fully themed chatroullette clone, at least for the medical field. Please check us out and let me know. Thank you, people! ====== aw3c2 The headline made me think that it was a more obscene, pervert-supporting version of it. ------ dylanz Some 30 second feedback after interacting with your site... \- Why the "Leave" button? \- What is the "Next/Find" button and what does it do? \- What is auto-find? \- Why can't you pick "all" topics? I probably have more questions. I never found anybody to chat with even though there were 3 other users online (assuming the one odd out was available). Steal some of the UX from chat roulette, make it less complicated and more familiar. Great idea though. I actually have quite a lot of information/opinion/experience about a lot of the topics you have listed, and would love to contribute. ------ YooLi Hope you have a good penis filter in place. ~~~ kimfuh Sick people doing sick things. I can't believe pleasuring yourself online has gone viral. ------ tommusic Your instructions say to select a topic and then hit "Start", but the topic list is inactive until the user clicks the Start button. It took me a little while to decide to stop following the instructions. I don't know what that says about me as a person. ------ aymeric Only one person online :( Anyone wants to chat? (The fact that I had to select a Topic before I could chat wasn't obvious to me even though I read the system message) ~~~ mudil Sorry: We just launched it today. So the traffic is not there yet. But I would take an advice on how to build the traffic.:) ------ tonystubblebine My uncle just spent a few weeks in the hospital and now has a few more weeks at home recuperating. He's suffering wildly from boredom. Could this be a solution for that? ------ mukyu I managed to connect to someone (even without being able to select a topic?), but I could not seem to get anything to work. I could not enter text in the textbox; however, if I clicked emotes some texted appeared half cutoff and yet I still could not actually send a message. Camera works in the flash settings dialog, but does not seem to work in the app either. I don't know about my partner but I never saw/heard/read anything if they sent it.

Bill Atkinson HyperCard Presentation [1986] - grn http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6724403570408723520 ====== edtechdev Here's another interesting document about the development of applescript as an evolution of hypercard/hypertalk: <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2006/ashopl.pdf> For example, applescript was originally designed to support multiple dialects, including Japanese and French, but also a 'Professional' syntax dialect: English: the first character of every word whose style is bold French: le premier caractere de tous les mots dont style est gras Professional: { words | style == bold }.character[1]

Ask HN: Is this the best way to monetize with annoying our users? - mikehawkins Hi all -<p>Bit of an open question but here’s a bit more detail… I am experimenting with ways to monetize our start up’s (Riddle.com) free tools to build quizzes, polls, lists and more.<p>One option we are thinking of offering is to give all features for free, but have users pay a little to remove a small AdSense ad unit at the bottom of the content.<p>Here’s a mockup: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;aozu48jol46gdhe&#x2F;list-new-edit.png?dl=0<p>Input needed: Is the ad unit in the screenshot below too disturbing? Will it hinder our growth and will it keep people from using Riddle?<p>Our goal is to balance the benefits of wider distribution through a free model (which are working) with the need to start paying for all those servers. I really want to make it so that only large brands who can afford it would ever need to pay to use our tools, while individual bloggers and smaller sites can keep using them for free.<p>Many thanks for your thoughts!<p>Mike ====== nodata You might want to change the title. ~~~ mikehawkins Thanks - definitely open to suggestions :) we're just wrestling with the classic issue of monetisation without killing the free distribution model that's working so well for us. ~~~ nodata with -> without ~~~ mikehawkins Ugh. Man, that's truly, truly embarrassing... I completely missed it not once (writing it) but TWICE (reading your comment). I need a weekend. ;)

Ask HN: How do you find important/interesting new papers - jeffreyrogers I&#x27;m having a problem with information overload and I&#x27;m betting that some HN readers have some knowledge that will be helpful. I&#x27;m an undergrad studying computer science and math and I recently came across this paper: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1406.2572, which prompted me to begin reading more about optimization, random matrix theory, and other related topics.<p>The problem I&#x27;m facing is that I don&#x27;t know what the good papers to read are and there are so many new ones made available each day that taking the time to figure out which are relevant to me and which aren&#x27;t would take more time than I have available. I know that there have been a number of interesting, recent papers posted to HN on ML related topics lately, so presumably people are finding a way to filter the important papers from the not so important ones. Does anyone out there have tips on addressing this problem?<p>Thanks! ====== swah I just put those on Dropbox to read someday... [http://blog.fogus.me/2011/09/08/10-technical-papers-every- pr...](http://blog.fogus.me/2011/09/08/10-technical-papers-every-programmer- should-read-at-least-twice/) Also [http://paperswelove.org/](http://paperswelove.org/)

Letting Bird’s scooters fly free - caf https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/53258.html ====== cookie_monsta I believe these are the same scooters that you can swap out the motherboard using a cheap conversion kit. The guy who wrote about it got a takedown notice from Bird that the EFF ended up getting squashed. [https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/scooter-startup-bird- silen...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/11/scooter-startup-bird-silence- journalist/) ------ cyberbanjo These are the types of things that I feel like if could be made socially-viral would make some really cool real cyberpunk effects. Teach all the people with any interest how to hack the public scooters and do what they will. ~~~ 0b0001 How is it cool when people steal scooters and the companies ultimately stop to offer rental scooters? Nobody will maintain the scooters just because cool and cyberpunk and viral. [Edit: do I misinterpret your post?] ~~~ lovich How is it cool when these scooter companies steal a public good in terms of space on sidewalks? I don't recall my town voting on a bill allowing companies to park their fleet on public land free of charge. If you are making a living by stealing(and yes I equate using public land without a license as the same thing as stealing), then it's pretty hypocritical to complain that others steal from you ~~~ Cthulhu_ Draw a comparison: would it be OK to hack / steal cars because they take up space? I mean sure, scooters being dropped left and right is a problem - something Bird and co need to address, e.g. by fining anyone not leaving their items in designated areas - but transportation needs somewhere to stand. Whether said transportation is owned by a company or an individual is a moot point. ~~~ tyfon > Draw a comparison: would it be OK to hack / steal cars because they take up > space? You mean like towing cars that are parked illegally? One can not just put a car wherever one likes, renting a spot can cost quite a lot depending on where you live. When I was living in Oslo I didn't have a car but i rented my spot that came with the apartment to the neighbour for $200/month. ~~~ omegabravo Towing a car is not the same as stealing a car. If someone parks illegally you are not suddenly allowed to smash the window and take it for a joy ride. Even simpler, I'm not allowed to tow anyone else's car that has parked illegally. I don't agree with Bird's practices, but that doesn't give anyone some moral right to steal their scooters. ~~~ tyfon No, but the municipality might be allowed to "steal" it. I was playing a bit of devils advocate in the previous comment. However I've seen reckless towing destroy cars and they will hold your car until you pay up and not pay for the damages. It's a fine line. ------ flyinglizard Why on earth didn’t Bird lock down the STM32 through builtin hardware fuses, thus disabling the debug interface? Is that a consequence of moving fast and breaking things? ~~~ avian Because you must really be confident in your firmware before you start disabling debug interfaces. Most people aren't. They see more value in being able to fix their bugs after the fact than locking out potential hackers. Imagine just receiving a batch of 1000 scooters with a botched firmware, which you must write off now because you can't reprogram them due to the disabled SWD. This happens more often than you might imagine. ~~~ zwirbl They could at least have locked down the flash and RAM, triggering a flash mass erase when attempting to dump the firmware/RAM contents. Not that this would be 100% secure either, but with these STM32 HW features in place this is already significantly more difficult. ~~~ saagarjha I don’t see how making it harder to dump the firmware makes the platform any more secure. Determined attackers will get in anyways and you’ll lose out on people who are interested in poking around. ~~~ sannee It's usually done to prevent cheap chinese clones of your boards, not so much for security. ------ StrLght I don't have any experience regarding hardware reverse engineering and the only thing I didn't get from the article is how do people obtain original firmware in the first place? Do they physically disassemble a scooter to access the control board? ~~~ saagarjha > Hooking this up via an STLink and using OpenOCD allows dumping of the > firmware from both chips, which is where the fun begins. In this case, it seems so. ------ SergeAx Maybe I don't underestand something, but how is this different from just hotwiring the scooter and stealing it? ------ bafflingworld I live in Los Angeles, and locals are getting so frustrated with tourists littering these things all over the city that they're beginning to knock them over, throw them in the trash, etc. It may be immoral to hack them, but it's also immoral to treat our streets and sidewalks like a scooter landfill. ~~~ asdff In SM they painted little squares on the sidewalk where you are supposed to park them.

Apple’s latest Watch is crashing and rebooting due to Daylight Saving Time bug - lnguyen https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/8/17950300/apple-watch-series-4-reboot-crash-dst-bug ====== gargravarr You might think that a device whose first and foremost purpose for existing is telling the time, might, y'know, actually be capable of doing so? ------ Unknoob Last week I noticed that when I tried to create a Date object in Swift using a Date Formatter and passing in a string with the date where DST starts in my country it would crash my app. extension Date { static func fromString(_ string: String) -> Date { let formatter = DateFormatter() formatter.dateFormat = "yyyy-M-d" return formatter.date(from: string)! ///Force unwrap because I never pass invalid strings. } } Even though I was passing a valid string it still crashed because it couldn't parse it into a date. I solved the problem by adding a random hour to the date(All that mattered to me is the day/month/year so I just don't use the hour/minutes/seconds). I wonder if it's the same bug causing a boot loop since it's being used by iOS itself.

API for file previews, OCR and metadata (.psd, pdf, doc, ppt, more) - mcpherson http://jsbin.com/losaf/33 ====== jpdlla One of the developers here. I just wanted to say that for this demo we are using a "demo api" which doesn't need a server. You can generate previews and metadata on JavaScript only apps. For server based API calls we have a proper REST API. I can answer any question you might have.

University of Illinois issues DMCA takedown for previous years' homework - ecaron https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/313ac74e3de8b692adfed5ef2bf60436aa8e2040 ====== madaxe_again This doesn't strike me as unreasonable, given that they likely maintain the same syllabus for a number of years, and having multiple solutions for academic assignments out there in the wild will encourage less diligent students to neglect their own education. There's also the question of plagiarism. As an undergrad, I'd often post my work on my site when I handed it in. I stopped this practice when I got a 0 on a major bit of coursework (cost me a grade boundary in my degree...), as their software found it online, on my site, and they refused to view my work as anything but plagiarism. This action potentially saves students from the same fate. ~~~ akerl_ It seems fairly clear that the repos listed violate the ethical rules that the university has set, and it's entirely possible that it will aid plagiarists. That said, the DMCA does not prohibit students from encouraging others to neglect their own education, it exists to enforce copyright. IANAL, but their case that they own the copyright over the repos because their syllabus includes the questions being solved doesn't seem very solid. ~~~ LLWM It's not visible due to the takedowns, but if the students are including the original copyrighted work in its entirety, with their own original additions bundled in, it seems like the DMCA should apply. That's why commentary stuff like MST3K either only distributes their own additions or pays license fees to the copyright holders. ~~~ akerl_ Granted. In that case, this seems fairly easy for the folks who own the repos: Strip the university's IP from their code and re-release. It's a bit obnoxious because it'll gut the git history, but they have a clear path forward. ------ ianamartin Seems to me that a university's computer science department should have a better way to deal with plagiarism than this. From [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8806910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8806910) there's a link to [http://matt.might.net/teaching/compilers/spring-2015/](http://matt.might.net/teaching/compilers/spring-2015/) and I quote: ''' How to cheat in this class I've caught so many attempts at cheating in my courses that I feel the need to provide a guide to students. You may not use code you found on the web, even if modified. You may not use code you found on the web, even if it's GPL'd. Do not turn in code with a matching md5sum for your friend's assignment. You can't simply change comments and spacing. I can tokenize your input to eliminate these differences. You can't just change variable names. I'm going to diff a token stream of your assignment against others. You can't just move definitions around. Same reason as before. You can't copy only part of an assignment. Same reason as before. If you're going to cheat, you need to rewrite the assignment from scratch. ''' ~~~ bumeye Yes it's common to have software which can find plagiarism like that. However, if the student actually does these things (change all variable names and move code around) it will be hard for an examination board to decide whether this is a false positive or real plagiarism. ------ belorn The DMCA notice is likely incomplete. "a large portion of the uploaded code" can not in any reasonable way be specific enough to identify the infringing material. Thanks to it being incomplete, the owner of the github accounts can not create a defense, nor try make any changes for compliance. That should be a clear sign that the notice is unreasonable vague in the description and thus need to be denied until a complete notice has been sent. ------ colechristensen It would likely be trivial to win on the grounds of fair use for educational purposes. Upper education that relies on graded homework is, in my opinion, broken anyway. In engineering, my greatest course experiences were those where the answers were given in full when the exercises were assigned. The feedback you get by checking yourself while you are doing the work is immensely more valuable than getting graded papers returned weeks after you've done them. This, of course, allows people who don't want to learn to avoid learning, but it's the university's job to certify that you have learned things and make available the resources to learn. Policing you to learn with the graded assignments game leads to a lot of people who are really good at playing, not so good at having interest in their work or the actual material. (I knew so many people who succeeded through grey-ethical finding answers through peers and instructor's guides ... 10 people collaborating to each to 1/10th of the assignment, etc.) ------ moosey I'm just jealous that university students these days have git. I had to walk through the snow uphills both ways while I was working on my CS degree. ~~~ spacemanmatt Or even Google, for that matter. Remember libraries? ------ akerl_ Is anybody aware of the reasoning behind the redacted links? It looks like only one past DMCA in this repo has received similar treatment: [https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/4e465059012c946abd3f2fa2...](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/4e465059012c946abd3f2fa2cc1633cdd20fe2cc/2014-10-08-CS225.md) Their README suggests they only redact personally identifying info, but I assumed that was in reference to the submitter (if an individual), as the other repos didn't receive any redaction. ------ sjreese The University has no ownership?? Does the Public library have ownership if I build a program based on a book "CS241 System Programming - Here and Now" .. The Preferssor has not written or updated the work of Mr Chou - and therefore has no standing as to DMCA - It's all a UofI Buff - and GitHub folded .. [https://github.com/mukichou/cs241-2](https://github.com/mukichou/cs241-2) ------ sprkyco At my university we reviewed and assessed each others code to identify issues and help each other out. It is possible that I am misunderstanding if this applicable for this specific course. My presumption is that a vast majority of students are going to school to acquire gainful employment and jobs often require some level of code reviewing. While I do not support direct copying of someone else's homework or the distribution of a github link containing the answers to homework to students (this did not happen here but would be evidence of assisting cheating). It seems that the benefits of teaching students about version control and in depth peer code review outweigh the negative consequences of this type of "cheating". ianamartin earlier in this thread provided this link: [http://matt.might.net/teaching/compilers/spring-2015/](http://matt.might.net/teaching/compilers/spring-2015/) which is honestly the "best" solution to this particular issue. ------ lettergram Kind of amazing this is against the universities own stance on copyright ownership: "Works created independently and at the student’s own initiative for traditional academic purposes are owned by the student, but the University retains certain rights to use such works. These include class notes, reports, papers, and works prepared by the student as part of the requirements for a University degree, such as a thesis or dissertation. Note that it is the copyright only that is owned by the student. The fact that the student owns the copyright does not influence whether or not the student owns the underlying intellectual property. For example, if a thesis describes research performed in a professor’s laboratory, the University has a right to own the underlying intellectual property (e.g. laboratory notebooks, original records of the research and any resulting inventions or software.)" [http://otm.illinois.edu/studentownership](http://otm.illinois.edu/studentownership) ------ calibwam As this is an issue of copyright violation, I don't have any issue with this. A DMCA complaint fixes just this. A few years ago I got an email from a TA in a subject I took the year before, that they wanted me to take down solutions I hosted on Github. However, there was no provided code in the assignment, and it was basically implementations of previously known algorithms (A* among others). Not a formal takedown request, but they said I should understand that they had to use the same assignments each year, and if I were providing solutions this could be hard. My answer was that if they are worried about plagiarism, it's better that my solutions are public, as they can be checked against. ~~~ lmm It's not a copyright violation though, or at least not inherently. The statement of a homework problem is essentially an API, and if those are copyrightable then we're in big trouble as an industry. ~~~ calibwam Well, we can't see the code that is taken down here, but if assignment had a lot of set up code, and the assignment was to fill in some functions, there can be a copyright violation. If these repositories only included student made code, then I agree that there is a problem. ~~~ nickofbh I'm a student in CS@Illinois and I took this class last semester. For assignment one, they gave us a library and the following where we had to make a working shell (sorry for formatting): / __@file shell.c _/ #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/wait.h> #include <unistd.h> #include "log.h" log_t Log; /** * * Starting point for shell. * */ int main(int argc, char ** argv) { /** * * Analyze command line arguments * */ while(1) { /** * * Print a command prompt * */ /** * * Read the commands * */ /** * * Print the PID of the process executing the command * */ /** * * Decide which actions to take based on the command (exit, run program, etc.) * */ } return 0; } The provided code is rather sparse (by design), but the University holds copyright on it. ~~~ lmm You can use four leading spaces at the start of each line for a code block. What you've posted doesn't look substantial enough to be copyrightable to me; the idea of writing a main containing a while loop is certainly not original to the university, and the comments would presumably not be present in this repo since they'd've been replaced by working code. I sure hope the university of Illinois doesn't own the copyright on any shell _I_ write from now on, because that would be ridiculous. ------ nickofbh I can speak to this since I actually took this class last semester (Fall 2014). Homework boilerplate is distributed to students through private SVN. This typically includes some method headers or libraries. We then complete the assignment to specifications and commit it through SVN, where it is graded programmatically. Therefore, we can't modify some of the headers. The class has been taken over by a new professor. As such, it is being totally restructured and the assignments are largely being changed now. However, when I took the class with 250+ other students, plagiarism was rampant. As far as I'm aware, the course staff has indeed contacted individual repo owners on Github for take down. ------ jsaxton86 This seems reasonable to me. Pretty much every academic code of conduct requires students not to publish solutions to homework problems. This doesn't prevent the use of git, just git public repositories. Rather than just issue DMCA takedown notices, it might be useful for the University of Illinois to provide students with access to private git repositories. Of course, I suspect many students have drank the "github is your resume" kool-aid and would be less likely to use private repositories. ------ danielnaab Sharing of previous semester code (or quizzes, exams, etc) should _enhance_ the learning process, not hinder it. This is a bad and lazy policy for a school. Instructors should be creating assignments that cover the same material but are sufficiently different from one semester to the next that cheating isn't a problem. When I was in school 15+ years ago, we had officially sanctioned ways of sharing materials from previous semesters of coursework. Is that uncommon? ------ nadams Disclaimer: I went through college and currently teach part time. I wish something like github was around when I was in college - I only got into self- hosted SVN repos near my senior years. As a professor - I believe in transparency when it comes to my classes. tl;dr; What should have happened is that UofI should have worked with github to turn those repos into (free) private ones. That way the content is removed from the public and search indexes and the students can still use/review the material they created in the class later on if they want to. I have only taught 3 classes/2 subjects - object oriented (heavy programming), and operating systems (light usage). I run my own source code hosting service and will pre-provision private repos for them (for free obviously). I also encourage them to get private repos from github (you can get it for free if you need it for a class) if they don't like mine (I am not one of those teachers who force them to use their book or service - students are free to use whatever resource they want....just maybe not CVS or RCS...). I strongly recommend private because obviously I don't want other students to copy their work (but I do encourage collaboration for homework). However, most of my assignments are pretty open-ended to the point where I would notice obvious plagiarism. A few students have created public git repos because they aren't familiar with github or even git - which I am perfectly fine with. I would rather change my assignments than force a student to take down their git repo (which I should probably do anyways). The last thing that I would want is for a student to have a negative association with using source code hosting services like github. Some comments suggest that the university may claim ownership over the code - which may be BS depending on how the code was acquired. The university may have paid some guy off the street to write this code and the university hired a professor and said "you will use this code to teach your class". If this was the case - then I could be ok with this takedown. If a professor wrote it in their spare time for the class and the university is trying to claim ownership - then I have a problem with it. This does make me wonder - how many students requested private repos for their classes and shoved the code there? They won't have their code taken down obviously - so the only people who are punished are those trying to learn and understand the class and git/github. ~~~ Aradalf Also the ones who want their code in a public repo so that future employers can review it. ------ Ledyard The DMCA is only to get the repos down. This is more of a service issue where the University probably doesn't provide a standard git repo so students need to either set one up or have fun merging by hand. Unfortunately they have chosen a public GitHub repo rather than a private repo like BitBucket. Really if the class they're in provided a git repo they wouldn't have this issue. ------ spacemanmatt Seems like a reasonable way to even the playing field between independent students and members of academic and social fraternities, which traditionally handed down homework and intelligence on professors that was extremely valuable to a busy student. ------ punkcoder So are they attempting to say that the work done by students as a form of homework, is actually the property of the university? ~~~ clock86 No, often when assignments are given out you'll also give students large chunks of code or libraries to modify or work with. The DMCA says that is what the infringement is. ~~~ jabagawee Would a diff/patch be DMCA-proof then? Or would it fall under derivative works? ~~~ clock86 I'm guessing it is more likely that these repositories were searched for by staff/professors than fully specific code was searched for. I don't think you can claim that changing code absolves you of copyright issues, it might make it harder to find though. ~~~ lmm APIs shouldn't be copyrightable as they're necessary for interfacing. The solution to a homework problem shouldn't be a derivative work of the problem, and so it should be possible to distribute the solution in a way that doesn't infringe on the university's copyright. ------ comboy Seems a bit weird to me that university has copyright over homework done by students (which is my understanding because otherwise this DMCA would be baseless). It hasn't been the case at my university. ~~~ yoshuaw Many universities have this policy, but given that students have to pay (!) to enroll in a university it strikes me as odd that the university would then presume to take control of all the work they produce. ~~~ bunderbunder As a method of preventing plagiarism, it makes sense. Getting the copyright for the code into the university's possession gives them legal standing to do things like this. Ideally, of course, there'd be a process for getting exemptions - I know I would have been _irate_ if my alma mater had claimed ownership of the year's worth of work I spent on my senior thesis project. But that's also code where the risk of plagiarism is relatively low-impact, what with it being specific to that particular project. Answers to problem sets, though? Pfft, let them have it. I never had a reason to look at any of it ever again, so the value of retaining ownership to me is virtually nil. Whereas the value of having even a slight incremental improvement in the protections universities use to help me not have to spend quite so much time worrying about whether the kids I'm looking at hiring might have cheated their way through college without ever picking up proper problem- solving skills? Priceless. ~~~ dalke "Getting the copyright for the code into the university's possession" There is no copyright transfer agreement nor is this a work for hire. This case at UIUC appears to be a copyright issue related to school provided materials which were further modified by the students. ------ steven2012 What this is is an instance of an institution that doesn't want to create a new syllabus every year. Students pay tens of thousands of dollars for a modern education but the instructors simply rely on years old assignments year after year. And somehow this are worried about ethics? Is it really that hard or asking too much for this lazy department to tweak the code so that it's different from prior years? ~~~ rhino369 Tweaking your assignments but keeping the main thrust is more efficient and probably provides better experiences. The bugs get worked out, the professors and instructors have worked through it. The real issue is that students keep this stuff and pass it down year to year. I remember taking ECE 451 at Illinois and someone had taken photographs of the solutions that were posted on the wall for students to look it. ~~~ aet There are way to identify weak students even when they google all the answers. Base your grades on assignments, tests, projects, presentations, pop quiz, etc.. you will see the pattern. ~~~ rhino369 Unless things have changed since graduated way back when, the homework / machine problem sets were a fairly minor part of the grade. Really only enough to fuck your spot on the curve if you got zeros on them. Exams were like 80%+.

Win $120,000 in Hall's Developer Integration Fund - jimisir https://hall.com/integration-fund ====== UnsungHero97 This sounds really exciting, especially thinking about how I can integrate my side project with Hall! Of all the applicants chosen, does the $120K go to each applicant, or is it spread across all the applicants? Or is there only going to be a single applicant chosen? ~~~ bretthellman Thanks for asking... The $120k will be awarded based upon a balance between the number of submissions and the overall potential user impact per idea. ~~~ UnsungHero97 So is the total pool of money equal to $120K, or is it possible that more would be given away depending on the submissions? ~~~ bretthellman The total is $120k. If we wanted more we'd have to talk to our board :) ------ whoischrislam Do you have to work for a respective company for the particular integration? ~~~ bretthellman You do not! If your idea has the potential for high impact across a large # of users we would be excited to work with you. Be sure to apply. thx ~~~ AustinBGibbons Are you targeting a specific group? College students or anything like that? ~~~ bretthellman All 600M Knowledge workers. People in marketing, sales, engineering, etc... ------ pspeter3 What depth do the integrations have access to? It seems reasonable to put data into Hall, but it is possible to take data out? Eg, selecting text and attaching it to a task in Asana? ~~~ bretthellman No restrictions. What would make your life amazing? Tell us! Lets build something amazing ~~~ pspeter3 Mainly deeper integration between chat and Asana. I feel like chat has a low signal/noise ratio while task managers have a higher signal/noise ratio. I feel like this makes chat a pretty natural and great place to chat but a harder place to get structure from. I would love to be able to chat and then have if a task is referenced, have the equivalent of `grep --before-context=10 --after-context=30` automatically attached to the task. Also being able to selected text in the chat window have it converted to an attachment on a task or comments on a task would be awesome. ~~~ bretthellman Love it! Please apply!!! ------ jimisir Thanks to Vincent Garreau for particle.js and helping spruce up our Developer Integration Fund page! ------ nmb Looks cool! Any tips on what makes for a useful/compelling integration? ~~~ bretthellman An amazing integration is one where you couldn't imagine your life without it :)

The Story of Tetris [video] - dested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8 ====== jccalhoun I watched this last night. Pretty well done. Another worth watching is Tetris - From Russia with Love that aired on BBC a few years ago and is on youtube: [https://youtu.be/NhwNTo_Yr3k](https://youtu.be/NhwNTo_Yr3k) ------ ZenoArrow Great documentary, I learned a lot. If anyone wants to hear Alexey Pajitnov speak about Tetris, I can recommend this section of the Thumb Candy documentary (released in the early 2000s): [https://youtu.be/UAo4CZTGFQQ?t=40m37s](https://youtu.be/UAo4CZTGFQQ?t=40m37s) ------ cm2187 30 years later Tetris is still my most played game on my mobile. I got bored of Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, even GTA5. But after 10 consecutive years of continuous iphone Tetris playing it is still as addictive. This game is just genious. ~~~ ClassyJacket I played the hell out of Tetris on the Nintendo DS, but I just can't play it on a touchscreen unfortunately - I do wish I could play it on the way to work, but you just can't get the speed and reliability you get with clicky buttons. Fun fact: Tetris has been shown to help with mental burdens such as anxiety, PTSD, and intrusive thoughts, and anecdotally I have found this to be true. ~~~ CaliforniaKarl Has Tetris been released for the Switch yet? I’d hope that they could support the digital inputs (like the D-pad). ~~~ epicide Puyo Puyo Tetris is pretty decent. Some of the options (like endless mode) are a little hard to find. The story is weird but interesting. ~~~ voltagex_ and the Japanese Puyo Puyo Tetris might help us archive Switch games for the future, too... ~~~ epicide I'm not familiar. Care to elaborate? ~~~ voltagex_ Kinda tongue in cheek as the dumping of Switch cartridges is very rudimentary and not at the level where say, redump.org would accept them. There's a flaw in the Japanese Puyo Puyo that allowed unsigned code to run on firmware version 3 Switches. The first thing the scene will try to do other than running Doom will be dumping cartridges. You may immediately jump to piracy, but dumping carts and especially title updates is really important for preserving games into the future, as game companies have proven again and again that they either don't care or don't have the resources for proper archival. ~~~ epicide I am all for homebrew and archiving. ------ blahedo Ohhhhhh this explains something that confused me at the time and that I never followed up on. My family had a Nintendo and rented a copy of Tetris, played it for a few days, liked it. Aside from the gameplay, I remembered that they had clear level breaks and interludes where tiny Russian figures danced on the screen. Not that long after, we bought our own copy, and that stuff was totally not there.... What is now clear, in retrospect, is that the one we rented was the Tengen version, and the one we bought was the Nintendo release! The year must have been 1989 just as this was all going down. ~~~ voltagex_ Sidenote: have a look at the eBay prices for Tengen Tetris vs Nintendo Tetris. Retro collecting is another world. ------ stanislavb And you can play it here [http://www.goodoldtetris.com](http://www.goodoldtetris.com) ~~~ bringtheaction That version has neither sound nor colors, but at the same time does not look like the original shown in the documentary either. At least it's mobile friendly though. Does anyone have an online version that is in color and has sound and is also mobile friendly? ~~~ CaliforniaKarl There is an online version at [https://tetris.com/play- tetris/](https://tetris.com/play-tetris/), but I don't know if it's mobile- friendly. It's also ad-supported, so you'll need to turn ad blocking off. As for other platforms, I suggest looking here: [https://tetris.com/product- list-videogames](https://tetris.com/product-list-videogames) Why am I pointing to tetris.com? Because, those products benefit (either directly or indirectly) Tetris Holding and the Tetris Company, a co-owner of which is Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris. ------ Andrex I really enjoyed this and after it was over had no idea I had been watching it for an hour. This story could make a good movie in the vein of Pirates of Silicon Valley. That said, the note at the end about how Vladimir Pokhilko ended up killing his wife, son, and himself was more dark than I expected. What a shame. ------ my_first_acct Not completely off-topic, a 6-minute video from 2010: Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris [1] [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8) ------ mwcampbell If written histories are more your thing, Jimmy Maher did a series on Tetris for his Digital Antiquarian blog: [http://www.filfre.net/tag/tetris/](http://www.filfre.net/tag/tetris/) ------ zura A shameful plug from 2001, while we are at it :) Playable: [https://archive.org/details/tetris_201801](https://archive.org/details/tetris_201801) Tetris for DOS, text-mode but with colors! :) ------ kyo3 Love this guy's videos, recommend to check out his channel. ------ james-skemp I too watched this the other day, but I still like Chrontendo's telling much more: [https://youtu.be/Z0VKg_dJzzQ?t=29m48s](https://youtu.be/Z0VKg_dJzzQ?t=29m48s) His entire series is very well done, but episodes have slowed down, especially after starting two more series, Chronsega and Chronturbo. ------ jumpkickhit This documentary is great, I thought I knew the Tetris story, but this filled in every blank. ------ partomniscient A related documentary, about the 2010 Classic Tetris World Championship: [http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/](http://watch.ecstasyoforder.com/)

What does randomness look like? - helium http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what-does-randomness-look-like ====== anw Before clicking the link, the title reminded me of an article I had read a few years ago. The article mentioned how true randomness can be prone to heavily favoring one outcome for a long stretch; while "faked" randomness will usually try to just look random, rather than being so. Lo and behold, this is the same article I was thinking of. It seems some of the pictures are not loading now—no surprise, as it was published in 2012. For a view of this article with working pictures, check out the archived version of it: [https://web.archive.org/web/20140803073404/http://www.wired....](https://web.archive.org/web/20140803073404/http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what- does-randomness-look-like) ------ graeme This script linked to in the article is very interesting. It shows random and non-random distributions side by side: [http://bl.ocks.org/roryokane/4358325](http://bl.ocks.org/roryokane/4358325) I used to play Catan a lot with a group of engineers. I noticed that even their mathematical intuitions of randomness were off. For instance, one would try to shuffle the deck so that Knight cards were spaced evenly apart. They did it in the name of randomness, even though their deck manipulation was the opposite of random. ~~~ praptak There are some situations where it makes sense to label data as "too random". Cooked books, election fraud and steganography can sometimes be detected by checking for atypically high randomness levels. In this context it night make sense to make a game less random as it might make it more realistic. Also: Wheeeee, I'm in the article :-) ------ anon4 It looks like nothing at all... nothing at all... nothing at all...

SQL Injection Vulnerability in Rails - speleding https://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-security/browse_thread/thread/7546a238e1962f59 ====== julian37 Makes me consider to start always casting URL query parameters as a defensive measure, regardless of this specific vulnerability being patched. ~~~ michiel3 This is probably a best practice you could learn yourself to implement every time you know for sure you don't want a GET/POST variable to be a hash/array. This can also prevent other application errors when someone passes a hash/array which is used somewhere in the code where it is expected to be a string or something. ~~~ mseebach I'm not terribly familiar with the Rails feature in question, but it seems to me that GET/POST params should never be interpreted automatically. Parsing a param into any other type than a string should be explicit. ~~~ tptacek You're (respectfully) not terribly familiar with Rails, then, because the interpretation of foo[bar]=xxx as { :foo => { :bar => 'xxx' } } is one of the core patterns in the framework. Code all across the platform depends on that behavior. ~~~ sim0n This is the same with PHP. Be aware anyone using something like MongoDB, if you don't sanitize/cast your inputs, your app could be vulnerable. e.g. if you have the code: $collection->findOne( array( 'username' => $_POST['username'], 'password' => $_POST['password'] ) ); someone could POST something like username[$ne]='?'&password[$ne]='?' and login. ------ klodolph How do I read this? I just get a "sign in" wall... like all other "Google Groups" posts. ~~~ Daniel_Newby IIRC Google gets confused if you were once logged in. Either log in or delete your Google cookies. ------ fendale Sigh - why oh why doesn't Rails use bind variables? Just about every DBMS I have used supports them (Sqlite, Mysql, Oracle, Sybase I know for sure) and if you correctly bind the variables into the query, fears about SQL Injection pretty much disappear. Then there is performance - in Oracle bind variables are essential for scalability. I read somewhere that Mysql performs better without bind variables. For most databases by caching prepared statement handles and binding / executing that handle many times, it will perform better than handling many one off queries. I have benchmarked a 20% improvement in throughput on Oracle by making just that change (which is a one liner in the JDBC driver). ~~~ Morg Well maybe you should check that again. Your approach sounds like you should have stored procs instead. Using prepared statements or variable binding to fight SQL injections is not the best idea, although its widespread. In most cases where you want a prepared statement, you'd be better off using a stored proc, as you'll skip the expensive optimization every single time. MySQL is not even a real RDBMS (no ACID, no triggers, fail APIs, etc.), anyone using it should switch to PostgreSQL yesterday unless their data really doesn't matter. SQL injections are 100% avoided by user input control in the application, and the simplest way is to escape all escape characters, that may require reading a bit of doc but w/e. ~~~ fendale > Using prepared statements or variable binding to fight SQL injections is not > the best idea What is the best idea then? If you bind variables to SQL statements, you are SQL injection safe 100% of the time. There is no crafty input sequence that can fool anything. > In most cases where you want a prepared statement, you'd be better off using > a stored proc, as you'll skip the expensive optimization every single time. I am only qualified to speak about Oracle which is a DB I know extremely well. A query is a query, whether it comes from Java, Perl, Ruby or inside of a stored proc. If you prepare a statement once, and then cache that handle and execute it many times, you optimize the query one time. Also in Oracle, if you prepare-bind-execute one time only, the next time you do the same sequence of steps you Oracle doesn't have to optimize the query again - it can spot it is the same as a previous query and short circuit the process. Mysql I _think_ doesn't cache SQL statements for later reuse like Oracle, which is why binding isn't as important for _performance_ (in Oracle, not bind queries is a pretty good way to bring the database to its knees) - but its still essential for security. > SQL injections are 100% avoided by user input control in the application, > and the simplest way is to escape all escape characters What this bug has just proven, is that this escaping is not all that easy - crafty attackers can come up will all sorts of strings that seem to work around the escaping time and time again. ------ sce This only applies to ActiveRecord, I wonder if e.g. DataMapper is vulnerable in a similar way. ~~~ snyff So far, I don't think DataMapper is vulnerable. The mapping is not done in the same way (datamapper use hard coded properties). As an example, the following User.all(':email '=> {':id' => '1"'}) will throw ArgumentError: condition ":email " does not map to a property or relationship in User because of the space before any SQL request is performed. and User.all(':email '=> {':id' => '1"'}) will create the following query: Query SELECT `id`, `email`, `password` FROM `users` WHERE `email` IN ('[":id", "1\""]') ORDER BY `id` 120602 8:41:03 3 Quit ------ sams99 prepared statements often eliminate this vector ... the thing is, mysql2 the most popular db access gem for rails does not even implement prepared statements, and AR does not have a mechanism to send these to a db. In an ideal world the app passes the db gem 'select * from posts where Id = ?', [1] and then the gem takes care of preparing and executing. In all the real world web apps I have seen the number of "distinct" SQL statements they need to run are quite low (in the 100s) so preparing is a no brainer. I do not see this at all as a Ruby problem it has nothing to do with dynamic typing, I see it as a problem approach to db access. I believe Sequel (another less popular db gem for Ruby) is not even theoretically prone to these kind of issues. ------ danso Is there an example of what this special hash looks like? E resulting hash that is, not necessarily the attack that leads to its construction. ~~~ benmmurphy [http://blog.pentesterlab.com/2012/06/cve-2012-2661-exploitat...](http://blog.pentesterlab.com/2012/06/cve-2012-2661-exploitation- write-up.html) since it is already public i'm thinking of adding my own write up ~~~ speleding I don't believe in security through obscurity but I really think the author of that blog post is not doing the world a favor by explaining how to use this bug with URI encoded copy/paste examples for every script kiddie to use, less than 24 hours after it hit. Anyway, the gist is: if you have an unpatched rails server stop reading this, you need to upgrade RIGHT AWAY. ~~~ daeken Anything that makes people more aware of security issues, what's involved in exploiting vulnerabilities, and how the other side things about these things, is a _very_ good thing. The vast majority of programmers don't know a thing about security. Anything that can be done to improve that, even in the slightest, is a great thing for this world. ~~~ speleding Like I said, I'm not in favor of keeping it a secret, and I am all for making people aware, but "making people aware" does not have to be giving copy/paste examples to script kiddies of how to do the exploit within 24 hours of it being reported. ------ rabidsnail I'm surprised more type system nazis haven't come out of the woodwork. This is one of the few serious production bugs that actually would have been caught by static typing. ~~~ lsb > type system nazis As a general rule of thumb, unless you mean to say that Hindley-Milner causes genocide, say "sticklers", or "evangelists", or "fanbois" even. ------ LogicX Anyone using Nginx naxsi module to protect against this? <https://code.google.com/p/naxsi/> ------ purephase Good to know. Thanks for sharing. ------ sparknlaunch In laymen terms what does this mean? I understood SQL injections are one of the most common forms of attack, therefore why has this happened on such a popular framework? Is it user error or rails error? ~~~ danso Appears to be Rails error. ActiveRecord provides a convenient method for accessing the database layer. Part of the convenience is that thhe method handles the sanitizing part...something which, when people have to write out themselves, tend to slip up on a rare (but too often) occasion. The bug reportedly occurs by sending this method a specifically crafted input, which bypasses the sanitization that prevents injection. So devs who have placed their trust in the ActiveRecord method now have compromised systems ~~~ Morg As usual, when you trust a piece of code without reading the source, the fail will be strong. This is like java's GUID that are random but not unique, etc. you can't guess it from the function name or description, you need to know the internal process to know how it's going to explode and when. ~~~ Cloven 95% of even good developers wouldn't be able to tell when a sql sanitization function is poorly coded or has a hidden gotcha. Having the source is not nearly as important as trusting the upstream to be smart and to promptly resolve security issues when discovered. ~~~ Morg I trust noone. except maybe the pgsql guys. However, imho on the topic of SQL injection, either escaping the escape characters is enough or you should change DBMSs / APIs right away. But really, security without reading sources is blind more or less calculated risk, not security. ~~~ PetrolMan That's a really strange way of looking at things, in my opinion. There are things in life that you just have to trust implicitly. I'm not saying someone else's code falls in that category but just because it is open source and you can supposedly discover any caveats or security risks on your own does not make that task truly reasonable. I'm not in a position where I can read through all of the source code for MySQL, Apache, Passengers, Rails, Ruby, etc in order to make sure that someone hasn't made a mistake. To be honest, I'm not sure that I would recognize an error like this by just reading the code. What do you do with proprietary/closed source software? What do you do with hardware that is just as capable of poorly implementing security? What about poor decisions that really only become apparent after a security hole is discovered? ~~~ Morg First, I don't believe I need real security, that protects me from most of the worries you cited. I know it's not safe, and I don't care. It's like mail or gmail or anything, I know someone has access to my data, and I don't care because it's unavoidable/ not an issue. You have to trust, but actively try to prove wrong, that weeds out most of the crappy software, like MySQL, MSSQL (lolwut 32 trigger chain?lets cut it here silently) or others. You have to base your decision on stuff that really works rather than the latest fad, so fck ruby and all that crap, write in C, that's safe, proof is even the chinese and the military have their OS written in C. Proprietary/closed source, you remain paranoid, test it yourself for what you can think, never think it cannot be the cause. Hardware you cannot trust, have to learn where the limitations are, remain paranoid as well, question the status quo (is ECC really doing its job or am I just trusting my enterprise data to magic). Poor decisions that you realize later ? everyone makes mistakes, who cares ? IMO the main thing is, don't trust anyone to do it right, especially in IT, sometimes you come to trust a specific group, like linux kernel or pgsql because they're proven right time and again - and imo you have to leave it there, I don't want to write an OS at the moment. Most poor security decisions are related to trivial things like: -using windows -not updating your OS / kernel / tart -using _testing_ tech, like the latest release of ruby, node.js, mongolianDB, etc. -not researching tech before using it (i.e. google mysql ACID, you'll read a few of my posts from when I was pissed off to discover it was in fact just a toy db with half- implemented features) -not actively trying to hack/destroy your own creation -not spending a few K on a honeypot session -not actually knowing anything about hacking -not reading about standard hacking tactics, like SQLi for nubs, XSS, MitM HTTPS, tomato launchers and many more etc. I'm no security pro and I wouldn't pretend being one before winning several honeypots.

Character Encodings 101 - burke http://burke.libbey.me/character-encodings-101/ ====== breadbox Really minor nit: The name for the all-bits-zero byte is NUL. NULL is C's null pointer value, which is also represented by zero (but does not fit into a byte). ~~~ burke Thanks! Updated. ------ burke My theme probably doesn't work super-well on mobile. Sorry in advance for that. I haven't put much effort into theming this blog yet.

Ask HN: Apache Ignite vs. Apache Spark? - lichtenberger Hi all,<p>I know Apache Ignite quiet a bit, at least worked with the data grid API. I&#x27;m currently thinking about how to best distribute a temporal open source storage system, that is maybe in the first step simply replicate the data through a single master, which may distribute writes both asynchronous and synchronous to its followers&#x2F;slaves. I want to preserve ACID transactional semantics through some kind of consensus protocol and the single master. I don&#x27;t think that a two phase protocol is the best, though.<p>But I&#x27;m tempted to use Apache Ignite for distributing a transaction log from a single master, though I haven&#x27;t used Apache Spark (which I probably can use afterwards for the query part!?). Or maybe I should use another system like Zookeeper!?<p>Any kind of recommendations would be great -- oh and the system I&#x27;m developing is mostly written in Java (and lately some Kotlin) :-)<p>Kind regards Johannes ====== diehunde Take a look at this: [https://delta.io/](https://delta.io/)

Firefox removes core product support for RSS/Atom feeds - arayh https://www.gijsk.com/blog/2018/10/firefox-removes-core-product-support-for-rss-atom-feeds/ ====== burtonator I think I've come full circle on this... (I was one of the creators of RSS). My current company, Datastreamer: [http://www.datastreamer.io/](http://www.datastreamer.io/) Provides social media data streams for companies and search engines wanting full torrents of web content. We deprecated RSS a LONG time ago, which was for me, like abandoning your baby. I think RSS is dead in many ways but it's also still around in a sense. Mostly because of Twitter and Facebook metadata. You can accomplish 90% of what you want with RSS just by parsing the metadata on an HTML page. Because we've added NLP and content extraction algorithms on top of the content we're able to re-construct feeds that are better than the original RSS. With another app I'm working on: [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/) I might actually use something similar to build in data feeds similar to a feed reader. But man.. I can't believe I'm thinking about building in a feed reader again :-P ~~~ capdeck > You can accomplish 90% of what you want with RSS just by parsing the > metadata on an HTML page. I am not sure you can. Metadata is quite inconsistent and many websites that I have the RSS feed for block crawlers and scrapers. Advantages of RSS are common standard and design to be consumed by a bot. What we've got instead are curated fb and twitter feeds that people get hooked on and never look back. Openness is the aspect of RSS that I'll miss the most. ~~~ pteraspidomorph Very large websites aside, the RSS offer on most of the web is pretty appaling. Standards are not followed or followed poorly. Things like publication dates that are actually the upload date and completely unrelated to the date the content went online, or images that are loaded by html embedded in the description field in nonstandard ways, or sometimes in the image field, or not at all... Or it's the wrong image, because the feed is provided automatically and doesn't have the intelligence to correctly parse the content... That said, if Firefox hadn't hidden live bookmarks away several years ago they might see more use. The small subset of users who bothered to look for them and bring them back to the toolbar might even overlike the set of users who disable telemetry, too. ~~~ Sophira There's an article from 14 years ago that I remember to this day, mainly for the immortal line "RSS 2.0 is incompatible with itself": [http://www.diveintomark.link/2004/the-myth-of-rss- compatibil...](http://www.diveintomark.link/2004/the-myth-of-rss- compatibility) It goes into some detail about the various RSS incompatibilities and is well worth the read, because RSS never really got any better even afterwards. ~~~ gregknicholson Perhaps with hindsight Atom should have been called RSS 3.0. ------ SamWhited I was perfectly fine with this right up until I clicked through to their support page, which pushes Pocket as an alternative. How can they claim to support open standards on the web and lower maintenance overhead while still pushing their bloated built in centralized service that is very difficult to turn off entirely even though it should just be one button? Get rid of RSS and link me to an extension when I open a feed, fine, but then stop shipping Pocket without giving me a way to uninstall it as well. ~~~ __jal Yeah, that's just Mozilla attempting to save a stupid sunk-cost. Pocket:RSS::allowance:salary. I feel like we're entering a period when a browser shakeup is in order. Chrome is spyware. Safari is usually an implementation laggard. Firefox makes a seemingly endless stream of stupid, annoying choices. (Never used whatever MS calls nextgen-IE now.) Seems like it is time, again, for something that sucks less. ~~~ AnIdiotOnTheNet > Never used whatever MS calls nextgen-IE now. Edge. It somehow manages to be worse than IE in many circumstances (including being used to view Microsoft's own websites). ------ nachtigall For everyone looking for an alternative, Brief is an excellent add-on and I've been using it for the last 2 years: AMO: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/brief/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/brief/) GitHub: [https://github.com/brief-rss/brief](https://github.com/brief- rss/brief) It also includes a `Page action` so that an RSS icon is shown in the address bar on sites that support RSS/Atom. Great for discovery. Edit: Really strange, that `Brief` is missing in the curated list of readers that mozilla is linking to from [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/feed- reader-replacement...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/feed-reader- replacements-firefox) as alternative: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/collections/mozilla...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/collections/mozilla/refined-reading/) (This looks like a really poor list) I've seen `Brief` recommended all the time by users. I don't really mind that Firefox removes its RSS support: It was missing many features anyway and had a really poor UX. ~~~ yaantc You can check Feedbro as an alternative to Brief: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/feedbroreader](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/feedbroreader) I was a long time user of Brief but moved away during the transition to webextensions. Although Brief worked there were some performance issues at the time (maybe solved now?). Both provide a similar user experience, and are the two best RSS readers I used so far. ~~~ skosch Feedbro isn't open source, unfortunately. Brief is atrocious-looking out of the box, but you can enter your own CSS to override the styling. I've been pretty happy with it for the last few years. ------ AdmiralAsshat As much as I like RSS, one of the repeated pain points is that I'd like to actually _read_ the content in my Feed Reader, but on many of the sites I pull from, the feeds only contain the article title and maybe half of the introductory sentence before dropping a link to the full article, which I then have to click and open in my browser. To my mind, it kinda defeats the purpose of having the feed, since I could just as easily scroll the front page of the site. Was it the _intention_ of RSS from the outset that your feed would only provide a "preview" of the article, or was the hope that you would get the full body of the text? ~~~ delecti Amusingly your complaint is actually my preferred use-case. I want my RSS reader to essentially work like an automated link gatherer, because the reader's UI is inherently not going to be the intended presentation medium for most content. I exclusively open the collected links in separate tabs to read and I get annoyed when I accidentally expand them. ~~~ Dylan16807 And including the article body preserves both options as a choice. > because the reader's UI is inherently not going to be the intended > presentation medium for most content Huh, you must use RSS for different things than I do. The blogs I follow via RSS work fine, and I only go to the site for comments on some of them. The podcasts and tumblr posts work much _better_ in their respective readers than visiting any website. ~~~ anyfoo Apparently we do use it for different things. One example is Raymond Chen’s excellent blog The Old New Thing, which has formatting that often breaks completely on RSS, to the point of being unreadable (he does not have any influence on the blog software as far as I know, though). Generally, I often noticed that articles look (and sometimes convey their content) much better on their actual websites, since that’s what they were formatted for first most. Much more infuriating is that the various “Reader Modes” in browsers and e.g. Pocket sometimes not only tends to omit images, but even _whole paragraphs of the text_. It’s hard to notice that you missed a paragraph that you don’t know existed, so I don’t trust them anymore. I believe that should be less of an issue in RSS, since it of course includes the text to be displayed in the feed. Still, since I cannot be sure that authors take full attention to their RSS feeds, I prefer reading them on the website just in case some other formatting quirk messes things up. Stuff like info boxes or illustrations might not even be part of the main body. In that way, I actually prefer it when the RSS feed just contains a meaningful preview. Though I guess the correct solution would be to include both a preview and the full article, designated as such in the structure. ------ onli I'm not okay with this. It is absolutely understandable that they want to remove the feed reader integrated into Firefox, that thing did not work well and I can understand that it was a lot of work. But the feed preview? If I understand correctly that's the proper display of the RSS/Atom feed itself when opened in Firefox, like [https://www.pipes.digital/feed/14OE65qg](https://www.pipes.digital/feed/14OE65qg), which should be properly parsed in your browser. That's the absolute core a browser has to deliver: Rendering web content properly and not just to show the source code. If Firefox can't deliver that, what else does it want to deliver on? And removing this feature - like the missing feed detection in the UI - is what indeed can kills RSS, as it makes RSS inaccessible to users. Unlike the feed reader itself this can not be solved by webextensions. ~~~ nebulous1 Doesn't parse it in Chrome ~~~ onli Not sure about that, but I thought chrome is not parsing/rendering RSS at all. It's part of the problem. ~~~ nebulous1 Yeah, chrome doesn't do anything with RSS. I was responding to you saying that this is part of "the absolute core a browser has to deliver", but if the most popular browser around doesn't do it then I don't see how you can argue that this will be a major failure of Firefox Also I don't agree that this necessarily can't be done a webextension. For instance you can have add-ons like this: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/jsonview/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/jsonview/) so I assume the same would be true for RSS ~~~ onli Oh, my point there was not that it is not possible. It should even be possible with an XLST stylesheet, though last I looked that was buggy. I wanted to express that you can't make RSS accessible to users if users have to install extensions to get a proper representation (and feedreader selection) when opening a feed. This stuff has to be built in to make RSS usable for the general public. ~~~ nebulous1 I completely agree that this makes RSS less accessible. So really it depends on whether you see RSS as a core web technology, like HTML or JS. It's pretty clear that Mozilla do not, nor do Google. Personally I don't either, although I'll admit bias because I really seldom use it other than through automated means. ------ mjw1007 They say they're removing three things: \- the built-in feed preview feature \- the "live bookmarks" support \- the subscription UI They give justifications for removing the first two, but not the third. Assuming by "subscription UI" they mean the support for following a link to an RSS feed and being given the option to send the URL to my preferred online feed reader, I think that's a great shame. Making it worse, that article says "that improved replacements for those features are available via add-ons", with a link to what they say is a curated collection of readers, but none of the add-ons in that collection seem to replace the old subscription UI. ~~~ cabaalis One of the justifications from the article: > feed previews and live bookmarks are both used in around 0.01% of sessions. I'm curious the source of this data, seeing as I've switched to Firefox due to privacy concerns. ~~~ yorwba Telemetry: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health- report](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report) Edit: I just found out that you can look at the collected data at about:telemetry ~~~ jasonjayr Can the telemetry data be rigged? Are there anti-rigging measures in place? ~~~ dralley Lol, you think there's a click farm out there installing Firefox on thousands of VMs for the express purpose of throwing off Mozilla Telemetry? ------ thatsaguy RSS support in FF was always poor, but that was often enough to preview a subscription. It didn't need to be more complicated than that. On the other hand, or hay, Firefox Screenshots!! Sooo useful. Pocket? It doesn't get more federated than that! Or the dozen of DOM APIs added every year, which are probably much more complicated to maintain than a simple RSS preview feature. I really hate the general direction of how browsers are developed. ~~~ mindcrime _I really hate the general direction of how browsers are developed._ I've hated it for a while, especially as browsers move more and more away from "browsing" and become more and more of a half-ass "universal application runtime" combined with "something kinda like an X-server but not really". I kinda think we need to split browsers so they support two "modes": content mode, and application mode (or something like that) where the core functionality of the browser is rendering HTML content and, well, browsing. But a given page should be able to signal (through a meta tag or an HTTP header or something) "I'm an application" where it gets run as an application... which could still mean running in the browser as JS, or it could mean handing the thing off to a content handler to run the application outside of the browser. In my vision, the difference between "application mode" and "content mode" would be things like: in "application mode" all keybindings would pass through to the application, so you could - for example - use F1 for context sensitive help, instead of F1 triggering the browser's help menu. Also, app mode could allow things like altering the right-click context menu, while content mode might disable that. Etc. etc. ~~~ icebraining Prediction: 99% of sites would signal "I'm an application", including those that obviously are content sites. The only ones who wouldn't (personal blogs and the like) are already pretty usable, so they wouldn't gain much. ~~~ mindcrime You may be right. And honestly, I haven't spent a ton of time yet thinking about all the ways "content mode" and "application mode" would differ. A couple of obvious ideas jump out, but there's probably more to be said about this. It might also be that the right thing to do is have a fine-grained permission model where pages request specific capabilities from the browser, and the user can allow or deny, with the ability to revoke permissions if abused, or white- list sites in advance, etc. ~~~ TeMPOraL The web is shit as it is because of the war on control over content presentation. Both users and publishers want to have 100% control over users' screen. The reason 99% of sites will declare they're applications because they just won't give up control. (This is the core of the ad blocking issue, BTW.) Of course I'm an user, I'd love the split between browser and app runtime, even just so that I could not launch the latter much, telling all the sites pretending to be applications to just go to hell. ~~~ sleepybrett Honestly the last time I wrote an app for a website it was specifically because browser incompatibilities had me tearing my hair out. Calling HTML/CSS/JS standards is fucking laughable. ~~~ ry_ry Out of curiosity, when was that? Modern frontend has many issues (npm is at least a hundred of them) but browser compatibility is a solved problem for the majority of purposes. HTML had been stable since forever, and browsers will render pretty much any old shit you throw at them without too much cajoling. SVG/canvas were the last things to be cleaned up iirc, but they're pretty usable now. Most of the sharp edges on JS' DOM API implementations were smoothed off ages ago and if you want to use the newest features stuff like babel and typescript transpile es6 back to es5 with selection of polyfills. AFAIK safari still can't round opacity properly, but since that's usually a stylistic thing just use css. Vendor prefixes in css have been less relevant for a fair while, were easy to use if you wanted to throw some @keyframes down, and are a non issue of you use an auto prefixer of some description. The only problem browser is IE11, which had some admittedly wacky implementations and out-dates most of the modern frontend stack by several years. There are still weirdnesses (Firefox's font rendering, literally everything Safari does, features being implemented and deprecated simultaneously) but nothing insurmountable. ------ mooreds No one likes to see features removed from something. But this seems really reasonable given alternatives and current usage. Tough decisions like this are the way you end up with a great product. It's what you say no to, rather than what you say yes to, that lead to great products. Another favorite quote: "If it doesn't hurt, it isn't a strategic decision." I'm betting this hurt (though a brief search through the FF mailing lists didn't turn up anything), but it seems like a good strategic decision. ~~~ bachmeier "Tough decisions like this are the way you end up with a great product. It's what you say no to, rather than what you say yes to, that lead to great products." That doesn't apply in this case. Saying no would have meant they never added it to Firefox. They said yes and now they're removing it. I'm not sure who said it, but there's a saying along the lines of "If you force users to change, they go shopping." Keep in mind that the definition of "great product" depends on the person. For the average user, a product that does what you want and keeps doing it is a great product, and anything else sucks. ~~~ ams6110 They also said that the features are used by less than 0.01% of users. I assume this is based on their own telemetry. So they're really not forcing very many users to change at all. ~~~ mjw1007 They said 0.01% of _sessions_. Feed preview isn't something you expect to use every session. ------ Nadya Since this is the thread that took off for feature removal - I'll copy/paste a response I had in another thread that didn't foster more discussion. I've reinstalled a backup I kept of FF 36 - my entire workflow has slowly been gutted over the years. 1) With FF 41 I could no longer set my New Tab page to my Home Page without an add-on. As of Firefox 57 the add-on became buggy if you regularly and quickly try to { Ctrl+T -> Ctrl+L -> Begin typing URL } due to limitations with the Web Extension API. [0] 2) Lost Tab Groups as of FF 45 (the add-on isn't a full replacement of old functionality) 3) Lost many, many, many addons with FF 57 including a very specific tab management that an addon called FireGestures allowed for: using a context menu to navigate my tabs. 4) Lost Bookmark descriptions with FF 62, also lost the Developer Toolbar 5) Now losing Live Bookmarks with FF 64 I no longer recommend FF as the "power user" browser but as the "I dislike Google and want a good browser that isn't Chrome" browser. If you're a power user of some uncommonly used feature, expect it to be removed at some point. I'd love to see how Pocket usage is measured and the statistics of how many people use that trash that they have shoved down users' throats since FF 38. [0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab- overr...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-override/) ~~~ the_clarence Tree style tabs :/ ~~~ kissickas Tree Style Tabs (the add-on) is one of the two reasons I won't leave FireFox (along with NoScript). It's working fine for me after a bit of setup. What issues are you having? ~~~ the_clarence Slow as hell ------ ccnafr They announced it months ago, in July: [https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-to- re...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/mozilla-to-remove- support-for-built-in-feed-reader-from-firefox/) Here's the direct link to the internal doc: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aIMPZVy33mn34pXBUETk4lt_...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aIMPZVy33mn34pXBUETk4lt_NrJXupcMilTPFFVpmnI/edit) ~~~ mjw1007 That internal doc is rather close to the article linked here, though I notice this piece of the rationale didn't make it into the public version: « Additionally, we are working on various initiatives that operate in the same area of focus as RSS/Atom feed support, like Pocket [...] » ------ norswap What a load of bullshit. Sure it's extra code, but browsers are ginormous anyway. Removing Live Bookmarks is fine. But why get rid of the RSS auto-detection? It's a good advertisement for an immensely useful _open_ technology. Also... RSS is out and Pocket is in? Ironic. I thought Mozilla was the one fighting for the open web? Well go fuck yourself Mozilla - that's what I'm feeling right now. ~~~ orblivion Keep in mind that running an open source company is squaring a circle. The money has to come from somewhere. One corner or other has to be cut. I'm not saying we shouldn't push back, but we should understand the position they're in. They do pretty damn well all considered, and they're one of the few large organizations holding the front. ------ xte Personally I get my feed via mail (RSS2Email) because \- I can follow many site I like, instead of using an aggregator I do not own nor control; \- I can read posts/articles/listen podcasts without crappy webui full of advertisements; \- I can KEEP posts I'm interest in as long as I want, offline, indexed, tagged in my personal maildir taxonomy; I still have to find an alternative for that. Usenet of course was a far better way to follow news, ask questions etc, but unfortunately people do not know it anymore... Any modern "feed reader"/"podcatcher" I found, except elfeed are crappy, buggy, unuseful ridiculous apps that try to mimic aggregators instead of focusing on contents. ~~~ daralthus I am personally looking for the exact opposite. Read my newsletter subscriptions in my rss reader, so that I can choose the time I read them and keep email for important stuff. ~~~ xte I do that, with emails. Simply thanks to notmuch-emacs my feeds does not arrive in my inbox but in a dedicated dir and I can access it from notmuch simply hitting 'r', outside notmuch, i.e. on mobile I can simply access that dir in my IMAP taxonomy with K9 as MUA. In the past I keep them separated but manage them, especially store&search with full-post locally saved in case it disappear from their origin it was hard or ineffective. ------ putlake This is truly sad because RSS clearly fulfills a need that Facebook/Twitter feeds never will. Just last month I launched a bipartisan political news aggregator to force us out of our filter bubbles[1]. The only way I was able to do that was by consuming the politics RSS feeds for both right-leaning and left-leaning news websites. Without RSS, it's much harder to build an aggregator like this. 1\. [https://smashthebubble.com/](https://smashthebubble.com/) ------ hkai That's plainly sad. Next thing is websites will start removing rss, which means it will be harder for me to scrape them. ~~~ sp332 Hopefully RSS users will move to readers with better UIs, increasing their visibility and attracting more people to using RSS. ------ meesles I think there's an inherent conflict with RSS and content providers today. Think about it, an RSS feed allows you to get content without dealing with advertising, tracking, etc. Most modern content sites would not support that sentiment. Personally, I think RSS was one of the crowning achievements of the web. So much so that I attempted to make a little tool to 'create' RSS feeds out of websites that I want to track: [http://diyrss.info/u/meesles](http://diyrss.info/u/meesles) (the view for a logged-in user shows when new content is available to read) But again, this isn't sustainable. Any content site depending on revenue would rather users visit their site every 2 hours for content updates than use a third party like Feedly or DIYRSS. I think the solution lies in a fundamentally different revenue model for content, at least for smaller providers. ~~~ baldfat > I think there's an inherent conflict with RSS and content providers today. > Think about it, an RSS feed allows you to get content without dealing with > advertising, tracking, etc. How so? I think RSS increases advertising and tracking in actual usage of rss readers. When I want to read the article I actually have to open the webpage. The RSS feed normally gives you a headline and if your lucky the first paragraph. So I am going directly to the source when I use RSS. When I use Google News or Facebook I am going to a lot fewer websites. ~~~ meesles Because I think the sites would rather you rack up page views browsing for the content you want to read as well. They'd rather you scroll through their index page than one curated and cleaned of ads/trackers. I do agree that the actual content parsers like FB and Google are even more contrarian to what these sites want. ~~~ baldfat I'm just saying that the websites are short sighted when they attacked RSS. ------ tannhaeuser And this is why I'm so strongly against adding any more features to browsers such as WASM and new JavaScript language features and APIs: because browsers are already extremely complex programs that can't easily be created from scratch if FF decides to push their users around. I just hope all those armchair web devs who are only looking at their favourite programming language to become supported in browsers via WASM would consider how much they contribute to the death of the web by too many features. Those parties already in the game - browser vendors and self-acclaimed standard bodies - don't have an incentive to simplify the web stack, and will never be able to step back and say "the web is done" after 25 years of attempting to shoehorn a document viewer into an application platform. ------ erikrothoff I actually built my own extension for Chrome back in the day when I wanted to switch from Firefox to Chrome. It was modeled after Firefox Live Bookmarks. We've now come full circle and implemented an addon for Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feeder/](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/feeder/) ------ talonx I have always used RSS. After Google shutdown their Reader, I switched to InoReader. It's a tad slow but much better than alternatives (e.g. Feedly). The reason I prefer RSS is that I need to keep track of a lot of blogs and sites on topics of my interest, and with a feed reader I can "star" them, mark them as unread, search across them (yes!), and group them into sections so that I can process them more efficiently. Some of us just want more control without flashiness, in an organized but flexible way, in how we consume content, and RSS + a good reader is perfect for it. ~~~ ibejoeb I really can't trust hosted readers anymore. Just seems to be too expensive to operate. I switched to Digg Reader after Google Reader shut. Not sure RSS has much of a future. ------ Animats Now if they'd just remove core support for Pocket. ------ unicornporn For me, RSS is by far the best way to access web content. I've tried some self hosted RSS readers over the years but I've stayed with FreshRSS[1] for the last year. It has been a marvelous experience. Zero trouble, zero administrative burden. Self-hosted bliss. Best of all is the fact that it uses a flat file DB so it can easily be backed up, moved around and migrated. Can not recommend it enough. Also, it's PHP, so works on any cheap shared hosting. That's how I use it. One of the best things about it is escaping the algorithmically curated feeds. Every and service that I use has an RSS feed, except for Twitter. I use RSS- Bridge[2] (self hosted too) to follow users. RSS-Bridge[2] will give you feeds for just about every service you can think of. If you don't find a feed for a site, sometimes you just have to dig a little. You learn at which URIs the most commons CMSes presents their Atom/RSS feeds (hello /feed/). [1] [https://freshrss.org/](https://freshrss.org/) [2] [https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge](https://github.com/RSS- Bridge/rss-bridge) ~~~ Dotnaught I wrote vulture-feeds specifically for headline scanning via RSS. I don't want to read everything. [https://github.com/Dotnaught/vulture- feeds](https://github.com/Dotnaught/vulture-feeds) ------ newman8r Here's a repo I set up with 23 US newspapers, OPML format so you can import it into your own RSS reader. [https://github.com/newman8r/us-newspapers- opml](https://github.com/newman8r/us-newspapers-opml) ~~~ superkuh Trading feed lists is handy. I'm in. Mine covers all the sciences/tech/etc plus a _little_ politics/entertainment. Everything is sorted into categories. [http://superkuh.com/feedlist.opml](http://superkuh.com/feedlist.opml) (93KB) As long as Firefox can still render feeds I don't care if they take out the bits to manage subscriptions to third party services. That seems like fluff to me. I think most people who use RSS use native readers or, at the least, some 'cloud' reader. Not too many people need their browser to handle it explicitly. ~~~ newman8r That's a really solid list, thanks. Next time I do a weekend hackathon I want to create something that helps people like us share OPML files. All the RSS directories I've tried have been pretty subpar. The feedly directory is good, I just wish I could export the WHOLE directory as OPML (I wonder if someone's already done this) ------ tylershuster Does anyone know a good way to view RSS in Safari? I'm tired of getting "Safari cannot handle..." errors when debugging RSS. Even if I can just view the code, I'd live with that. ~~~ aikah If Safari does support XSLT, then it's up to the feed owner to create an XSL stylesheet and link it to the XML file in order to turn it into HTML, however it seems like very few developers even know what XSL is. ------ danShumway I'm conflicted. Moving RSS/Atom into webextensions is probably the right decision if you want a small, focused browser that does what it does well and that allows the community to innovate on top of it. And I want that. So I should be happy, but Firefox overall doesn't seem to necessarily be moving in that direction. Like, I still don't really get why we have Pocket integration. So now I don't know. It's a good decision that's maybe being made for the wrong reasons, and that may have bad side effects. ------ unstuckdev I already searched feeds up in my feed reader, but only because the existing Firefox feature was poorly-integrated. I never could figure out how to have it redirect feeds to a reader. I wanted something like the way you can add search engines, but for third-party RSS readers. The feature as it was didn't work very well, and they obviously weren't going to improve it. So maybe it's for the best that they remove it. ~~~ mjw1007 I think the feed reader had to register itself, using registerHandler with mimetype application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed . See [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/2/Adding_feed_readers_to_Firefox) ------ clircle This is fine IMO. Thunderbird has better RSS support. ~~~ Symbiote Indeed, but the preview functionality was very useful for deciding whether to add a particular feed. Couldn't an XSLT + XSL stylesheet achive most of what the preview function would continue to be useful for? ~~~ cubano You lost me at "...XSLT + XSL stylesheet..." I've had at least 2 experiences with that particular tech, and I found it horribly over-engineered and a total PITA to work with. On top of that, I still can't figure out exactly what problem its trying to solve, unless it purpose is job security to overpaid corporate contractors. We have HTML5 and CSS for rendering and JSON for content, and we should just leave everything else be. ~~~ aikah > I've had at least 2 experiences with that particular tech, and I found it > horribly over-engineered and a total PITA to work with. It's because XSL is (recursive) functional programming, and most developers fight that fact trying to write imperative XSL. > We have HTML5 and CSS for rendering and JSON for content, and we should just > leave everything else be. Except you're not going to anything with JSON without writing Javascript code, since neither HTML or CSS do understand JSON. XSL works without a single line of Javasript and it is still supported by most browsers. ------ qwerty456127 It sounds like a sad thing as RSS/Atom is a great thing that I would love to see regaining its popularity but in fact "RSS/Atom support" in browsers always seemed useless to me. Using the default browser facilities to read feeds felt like using Notepad to write code. There always are much better feed readers available. ------ distilpost If your use case for RSS/Atom feeds is to read mainstream news, my startup [https://distilpost.com](https://distilpost.com) can fill in very well. News aggregated from over 1k sources as well as from tweets and instagram posts and categorized both by region and subject matter. ------ seomint I really want to be outraged by this (you know Aaron Swartz and all that) but should I be? ------ ubersoldat2k7 Great! Now I'll be able to open XML files without that dumb dialog. ------ sixhobbits interesting - I just got a notification from Dropbox "On Dec 14, 2018, we're saying goodbye to the events RSS feed. We think some of your team members may have used this feed. We're focused on building better tools for viewing and monitoring activity, for admins and users alike. Here are some other ways you can see what's happening in Dropbox" I don't see any relation, but could any factor have influenced the timing of these announcements? Or is it just a coincidence that two large co's drop RSS within hours of each other. ------ zmix I feel, this may be more about Mozilla trying to get rid of XML at all. Because, why would something simple as RSS be a burden to maintain? The code has been written (!), the format well understood, the years gone should have ironed out the bugs, so what could be the problem? The only difficult thing to maintain may be an XML parser, but that is also there since the Netscape days and, for RSS, you don't need current XML technologies (XPath 2+), you are fine with XPath1. ------ sys_64738 When Google sunset Reader I was lost as that's the one and only way I access content on the Internet. I found my solution in inoreader.com which is close enough that I don't miss it. I can even login via Google SSO. But it costs some $$$ but it's a great service and worth it IMO. FWIW, I only want to see RSS feeds in a browser from any device I have and not have to own the RSS backend myself, so my method works for me. ------ djsumdog I totally forgot about the built in RSS support. I've been using a self hosted tt-rss instance for a few months and really like it. ------ futurix I much prefer a combo of Feedly and Reeder to any half-arsed RSS support built into the browsers. ------ evolve2k Why are these announcements on such a strange domain, wouldn’t an official domain be more appropriate for this type of news? Looks like a random personal blog site, I looked around first but currently still have no idea what this site is otherwise for. ~~~ severine This is the announcement that popped after updating Nightly: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/live-bookmarks- migratio...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/live-bookmarks- migration?as=u&utm_source=inproduct) I submitted it to HN right away, but it didn't get traction. ------ abrowne I heavily use both Firefox and RSS — with FeedHQ — but I've never used any of Firefox's RSS features (except the feed preview, but only incidentally, and it's nothing I'll miss.) ------ Endy With Firefox removing RSS, I think that's the final nail in the coffin for it. There is nothing left of what Firefox was, it's now just a hollow shell and a name that means nothing. ------ Semiapies They're taking out RSS? Hmph. Well, this is why I support Fire—... _Oh, shit._ ------ nephrite I like RSS very much and use it everywhere I can, but for me the live bookmark feature in Firefox kinda sucked. I use other readers like e.g. Thunderbird. ------ rmbeard A browser based feed reader is a better solution than browser tabs. A pity to lose RSS for lack of imaginative use. ------ zmix Why use RSS at all, if you can use ATOM? ~~~ handelaar The format created out of petty spite against Winer that nobody's ever used? Died on its arse when presented with millions of podcast users, didn't it? ------ yrro Cd ------ nahalz People have been bitching about Chrome too, and those things they were bitching about can also be disabled using flags. Turns out Google and the Mozilla Corporation are not so different after all! ~~~ r00fus This is reductio-ad-absurdum. Follow the money - how much money does Mozilla make from Pocket - probably a small % of their overall revenue. How much money does Google make from Ads? Close to 90%. ~~~ ngokevin Well, Mozilla's revenue is also 99.9% ads. It just comes indirectly from search engines.

IPhone sex: Google application baffled by British accents - dhimes http://www.physorg.com/news146298108.html ====== trickjarrett When Google opened the 800-GOOG-411 in the States it was discussed that they were using it to train voice recognition software. And as the number only works in the US, that would explain why the system doesn't handle English accents. ------ ConradHex >"It actually works pretty well, but I have to disguise my (North London) accent with a terrible folksy Texan tourist voice to get results. I can see this is going to be the source of much amusement and confusion." I love it! ------ electromagnetic This doesn't surprise me one bit, almost every city in the UK has a unique accents and then there's people who have a mix. My parents are from South Yorkshire, but I grew up in East Yorkshire, but then I spent a lot of time in Hull which has a long naval and fishing history. So my accent is relatively mild. However, I'm living in Canada and everybody says I have such a strong accent. Although I've been mistaken for Australian, which I find as rather strange. I know my one worst pronunciation is of 'three' as it invariably comes out as 'free', which in context rarely causes problems. Sadly my 'two' apparently sounds similar to 'three' as I've been repeatedly given one extra of things, I'm not sure if this is a strange form of politeness like the Italian's always trying to serve more food than you can eat, or if simply I constantly have to deal with retarded people when I order food. Although I shouldn't complain, getting a free cheeseburger isn't something I've got a problem with. ~~~ fendale I am from Northern Ireland and everytime I phone a call centre/hotel/whatever that is answered by someone doesn't live in the UK, I find it almost impossible to get them to hear 'two' - they always think I am saying three. In my mind I am not even saying anything like three and other 'locals' have no problem understanding me. Many others I have spoken to have the same problem here too! ~~~ trickjarrett Probably a decade ago, when voice recognition was still in its infancy. I had a cousin who was in a crash and broke her neck. In the hospital she got a state of the art machine which was a very simplistic assistant, she could verbally dial numbers, and request the nurse's station, etc. Well she soon discovered that her accent made the machine hear five as nine, no matter how she tried to change her accent, so she realized that the machine understood basic spanish and so she would use cinco for five. Given time, Google will begin to expand the search to other sections of the world. The challenge is gaining a large enough basis of data from these dialects to run the statistics and analysis. ~~~ dhimes "five" and "nine" are tough to distinguish; that's why in radio comm we say, "niner." ------ queensnake Regarding the prevalence of 'sex' and 'myspace' etc and the fact that it was trained on Google 411, it wouldn't surprise me if it was just the influence of USian Bayesian priors. ------ dhimes Amusing piece, but Google acknowledges on its website that it's only for N. American English. ------ timcederman I have to affect a terrible American accent on a fairly regular basis to get through IVRs here. Sadly I wrote about the need of voice recognition users to adopt a mild accent to get the best use out of their systems in my thesis, 4 years ago. It's unlikely to change in the short term...

Tell HN: A spiritual Start-up/experiment for world piece - kr4 (fellow HNers this is going to be a longer than usual message so forgive me in advance please!)<p>Please read first then visit to learn more: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pinprick.org&#x2F;<p>First of all, I’m writing this message because 1. I’m inspired by Om Swami [0] and 2. I think our planet need us to do something tangible, positive today immediately (not in terms of technology :p). Recent UN report says that 60 Million People Displaced By World Conflicts [1]. Tensions amongst world powers may cause another world war [2] which if happens, could devastate the whole planet with potential loss of billions of lives. World Health Organization’s first global report on antibiotic resistance reveals serious, worldwide threat to public health [3]<p>During this difficult times when our entire planet is ridden by wars, natural calamities, diseases and perversion of values, we often think that if we could do something about it. But the next thought tells us that “what a lowly individual like me can do?” and we end up abandoning the idea of making a change and rather choose acceptance as an excuse.<p>It’s true that one individual could hardly make a difference especially when the whole is collectively working against it. But the same collective efforts channelized in positive direction could make the difference we individually desire.<p>This is the need of the hour. And what do we need to do? 5 minutes meditation once a week on the same topic at the same time from wherever we are [4].<p>From time in memorial, India knows and practices meditation (Yoga) for its evolutionary and liberating effects for body, mind and soul. Modern research also verifies the positive effects of meditation [5]. For skeptics, there’s even a research on yogi’s mind capabilities [6] by a leading psychiatric institution Menninger Foundation [7] (Detailed Report [8])<p>2000 characters limit reached; to be continue as comment below. ====== kr4 (continueing remaining post) considering it an experiment, if successful, would not only be helpful for our planet but also rewarding for our individual selves. I can definitely squeeze 5 minutes out of 70080 minutes per week to see if there’s any truth in it. PS. Just like U.S. continues to produce brilliant research in technologies and material sciences, India continues to produce brilliant souls for spiritual evolution and liberation of human beings. I consider Om Swami amongst one of such evolved soul. But he’s treaded life more or less like one of us as you’d learn from his memoir [9] " In the 1990s, an eighteen-year-old headed to Australia to realize his worldly dreams. With little money or support, he struggled to survive there. Two years later, he was earning an annual income of $250,000; by the age of twenty-six, he was a multimillionaire. Yet, worldly success was merely a way station on a journey that began years ago. As an eight-year-old, he saw a vision of God in a dream, an experience that left him with a sense of deep joy and peace. The dream triggered off his desire to meet God, to see a manifestation of the Divine. He practiced astrology, intense meditation and tantra, yet God was nowhere in sight. Deeply frustrated, he dived into materialistic pursuits to distract himself from the restlessness within. After years of living the good life, he found he could no longer ignore the old restlessness; worldly pleasures just couldn't fill the void within. He moved back to India and finally did what he had always yearned to do: renounce the world and become a monk. In the Himalayas, in terrifying silence and solitude, Om Swami practised intense meditation. Death was always close as he confronted starvation, the fierce elements and wild animals. Finally, his sadhana brought him to the ultimate realization: I am what I have been seeking. This is an astounding memoir of the making of a spiritual life in today's challenging and often confusing times. If Truth Be Told: A Monk's Memoir will light up your path, wherever you are on your life's journey. " 0: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54pr9bQ8iiA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54pr9bQ8iiA) 1: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/world/60-million-people- fl...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/world/60-million-people-fleeing- chaotic-lands-un-says.html?_r=0) 2: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/08/yes- it-c...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/08/yes-it-could- happen-again/373465/) 3: [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/amr- report...](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/amr-report/en/) 4: [http://omswami.com/2015/06/the-greatest- secret.html](http://omswami.com/2015/06/the-greatest-secret.html) 5: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_on_meditation) 6: [http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/Rama.html](http://www.neilslade.com/Papers/Rama.html) 7: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menninger_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menninger_Foundation) 8: [http://www.swamij.com/pdf/swami-rama-beyond- biofeedback.pdf](http://www.swamij.com/pdf/swami-rama-beyond-biofeedback.pdf) 9: [http://www.amazon.in/If-Truth-Be-Told- Memoir/dp/9351368068/](http://www.amazon.in/If-Truth-Be-Told- Memoir/dp/9351368068/) ~~~ kseistrup IMHO, it's a mistake to make this a Facebook-only club…

Google+ Follower Stats (Who Are Your Most Influential G+ Followers?) - vanni https://github.com/vannitotaro/gpfs ====== vanni Discussion about this tiny script I wrote already started on G+: [https://plus.google.com/u/0/113250814961864918365/posts/b3VS...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/113250814961864918365/posts/b3VSxJkCdvJ) [https://plus.google.com/u/0/113250814961864918365/posts/16Qo...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/113250814961864918365/posts/16QoPzhyAtZ)

Why does WebAssembly need the relooper algorithm, instead of gotos? (2019) - tbodt http://troubles.md/posts/why-do-we-need-the-relooper-algorithm-again/ ====== int_19h "There is one thing that may have been a major factor to the decision not to adopt arbitrary CFGs for WebAssembly control flow. I believe that V8 is an exception to most compilers in that it doesn’t represent code as a CFG at all - it maintains roughly JS-compatible control flow all the way from front-end to codegen. In order to support this V8 would have to be converted to use CFGs, they’d have to implement something like Relooper internally, or they’d have to write a new WebAssembly runtime from scratch. Google was and is a major roadblock to getting this implemented as they have multiple people on the committee in charge of WebAssembly who have veto power." ~~~ est31 > they have multiple people on the committee in charge of WebAssembly who have > veto power Note that even if Google did not have people on that committee, they'd just not implement the feature in their browser, and the feature would be dead in the water. Outside of niche cases where browser choice is controlled, no web dev would adopt features that > 70% of users can't use. So the committee only reflects power dynamics that exist in the greater browser sphere. In fact, non-Google browsers probably have more seats than they have influence by raw market share. ~~~ leoc > So the committee only reflects power dynamics that exist in the greater > browser sphere. It doesn't _only_ reflect them, but also amplifies them. Quietly nobbling things in committee is surely a lot easier than having to field questions about why you aren't implementing Web standards (insert quotation marks as desired). There's also the danger of being embarrassed when someone writes a library which runs slowly on your browser and fast on others. ------ saagarjha WebAssembly makes a number of strange choices that seemingly fly in the face of convention; this is one of them. It would be really nice if it someone took some time it make a FAQ on the website to answer questions like “why doesn’t WebAssembly do x like everything else”, because otherwise it just seems that they’re just doing things differently because they can… ~~~ cwzwarich A lot of those bad WebAssembly decisions are carried over from Emscripten/Asm.js and don't have any real rationale behind them beyond that. Obviously, since JS doesn't support arbitrary control flow, Emscripten/Asm.js would need to convert to some simplified form of control flow (although not necessarily fully structured). It seems that this solution was carried over to WebAssembly without much deep thought given. There does seem to be some backwards association with Java's bytecode verification complexity issues (which are the result of a bad design, not unstructured control flow). In the big GitHub Issue ([https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/796](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/796)) on the topic, one of the core V8 developers even claims that the Java experience justifies the WebAssembly decision. However, the funclets proposal for WebAssembly ([https://github.com/WebAssembly/funclets/blob/master/proposal...](https://github.com/WebAssembly/funclets/blob/master/proposals/funclets/Overview.md)) shows that you can support arbitrary control flow with linear time verification if you choose a different design than Java. ~~~ brabel WASM is a typed bytecode format where the stack state must be validatable at compile-time, guaranteeing that no validated program can mess up the stack at runtime. Having unstructured control flow would make it pretty much impossible to do that, wouldn't it? ~~~ cwzwarich To get linear time validation, you need conditions at each control flow transfer that can be checked locally but together imply that stack usage in the function is well-formed. The funclet approach (in more ordinary terminology) is to ensure that the stack difference from function invocation upon entry to a basic block is the same across entries to that basic block, and that those additional stack entries all have the same (statically specified) type in each invocation. This is very natural when generating code from an SSA optimizer. Java bytecode traditionally didn't contain any of this branch target or type information, and required the bytecode verifier to do an iterative combined control/data-flow analysis. Even now that they added some of that type information with stack maps, it's still more complicated than it needs to be due to the historical legacy of this approach. ------ emmanueloga_ META: I don't understand why some authors go out of the way to obscure important pieces of information: * Who wrote this article? * When was this written? Was lucky to find this pieces of information in Github [1]. 1: [https://github.com/Vurich/troubles.md/blob/master/content/po...](https://github.com/Vurich/troubles.md/blob/master/content/posts/why- do-we-need-the-relooper-algorithm-again.md) ~~~ rkangel It's a common problem with news articles too - you get linked something and you don't know whether it relates to a current event or something interesting 3 years ago. ------ RodgerTheGreat Something this article doesn't appear to spell out is that the structured format WASM is constrained to means that program CFGs will never contain irreducible loops. As noted, this approach can make it harder for the AoT compilers (they have to untangle the knots to generate valid WASM bytecode), but it makes it much easier for the JIT compilers to perform analysis and transformations at runtime. In that context, it seems like a sensible engineering decision. ------ yuri91 The article says about the Stackifier algorithm: "no link for the latter, it’s only mentioned by this name in LLVM internal discussions". Since the release of this article, I wrote a blog post explaining how Stackifier works, for those who are interested: [https://medium.com/leaningtech/solving-the-structured- contro...](https://medium.com/leaningtech/solving-the-structured-control-flow- problem-once-and-for-all-5123117b1ee2) ~~~ jeltz Thanks! I used your article to successfully implement Stackifier. ~~~ yuri91 I am glad it helped somebody :) ------ titzer _sigh_ I am partly responsible for why WebAssembly is this way. You can thank/blame me for the if-else bytecodes. They are indeed, a form of compression, as they don't add expressive power. I measured carefully and they make a big difference in code size. That's why they're there! The structured control flow requirement is to benefit _all consumers_. It is only a burden on producers that come from CFGs, not from ASTs and other tree- like IRs. If you have a dominator tree, then you can generate structured control flow in linear time. LLVM does this a particular way, but there are straightforward algorithms. No, this wasn't Google throwing around its veto power or something like that. There is a good reason why control flow is structured, as hinted in comments here. 1\. Structured control flow rules out irreducible loops. Irreducible loops cause problems for _all_ JIT compilers in all browser engines, not just V8, and even in JVMs. Things get really complicated, particularly in register allocation. [1] 2\. Structured control flow guarantees a stack discipline for the use of labels, mirroring the stack discipline for values. This is not only a nice symmetry, it means that a consumer that needs to allocate space per label can reuse that space as soon as a control construct is closed. That is essentially optimal for use of consumer space resources. [1] No kidding. If you have an irreducible loop in Java bytecode, which is possible, you will never be JITed and will get stuck running 100x slower in the interpreter. We thought this through very carefully in V8. If you allow irreducible loops in Wasm, you force all engines to either stick to their lowest execution tier and run 2-100x slower, do relooping themselves, or handle the general case of irreducible loops spending multiple person-years complicating their optimizing tiers' backends for a case that is _incredibly rare_ (and probably introducing lots of bugs). In V8 we would have probably gone for the relooper option because the other two options are bad. So that's a lose, because now the engine is more complicated, doing a rewrite of the code that could as well be done better and more efficiently offline by a producer. And there is no benefit because the engine's code would be no better than what the producer would have come up with. So we'd choose the lesser of the complexity options, but get no performance benefit, in order to avoid the absurdly bad performance hit of not being able to use the optimizing tier. Bad tradeoff now matter how you slice it, IMHO. I am fully convinced we made the right choice here. We should have communicated better and the relooper algorithm and tools should textbook, off-the-shelf stuff. ~~~ kevingadd It's bizarre to me that there are complaints about the if-else bytecodes. You can call them "weird" but they're very easy to reason about, make it easy to write toy examples, are easier to generate from a compiler, and are easier to read and understand in disassembly. At the point where the author started talking about customized compression to recover the size gains they should have realized why the bytecodes exist! Early on in the spec process it was very, very useful to have them. Anyone questioning whether the lack of goto was the result of an invocation of veto power can look at the design repo and see that lots of control flow consideration and discussion happened in the open before the group finally agreed upon a solution. Many of the players involved were not Google employees at the time of the decision (I don't know if they are now): [https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/33](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/33) [https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/44](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/44) I definitely recall that people had disagreements about how control flow should work and had different goals or priorities but it was a pretty detailed and drawn-out decision-making process. I don't think it was really possible for everyone to walk away from the table happy. ~~~ sunfish As context, at the time of those issues, the control-flow restrictions were a compromise to help get the "MVP" off the ground, with the understanding that "more expressive control flow" was expected to be added later: [https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeat...](https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/blob/master/FutureFeatures.md#more- expressive-control-flow) ------ albertzeyer Interestingly I came up with a similar algorithm like Relooper when I translated C to Python code. First I translate all C code to mostly equivalent Python code but including some gotos, and then I get rid of those gotos by introducing some more loops. The current solution is simple but the resulting function could be slow. [https://github.com/albertz/PyCParser/blob/080a7b0472444fd366...](https://github.com/albertz/PyCParser/blob/080a7b0472444fd366006c44fc15e388122989bd/goto.py#L102) ------ 6510 Could someone reduce the GOTO complaints to the arguments why it is harmful. (Preferably without the considerations?) ------ heretoo The article cites Dijkstra's "considered harmful" essay, which asserts that "goto" should be removed from "higher level" languages, not "machine language". Without reading the remainder of the article, this would seem to undermine any further assertions. UPDATE: after reading the article, it seems the opposite is being shown. my bad. ~~~ saagarjha It’s brought up to prove the opposite. I would suggest reading it through, it’s quite good. ~~~ heretoo Yeah, I figured that might be happening, once I started reading further. Blame the reader. ------ The_rationalist Unpopular opinion: GraalVM is what should have been webassembly. Reasons: * True polyglotism * existing, feature complete implementation * compatibility with the existing JVM platform, and through polyglotism compatibility with almost any platform/library. ~~~ c-cube how is Graal more polyglot than wasm?! Does it support low level languages as well? Besides, it's only one implementation (controlled by Oracle) and will probably remain so forever — who would want to risk a lawsuit by reimplementing it, I wonder. wasm is already in all major browsers. It's succeeding where no JVM-based approach ever could. ~~~ wbl Graal is licensed under the GPLv2. It's free software! ~~~ toast0 GPLv2 isn't free enough to be used in a commercial browser. ~~~ Ace17 Nitpick: I assume you meant "GPLv2 isn't free enough to be used in a _proprietary_ browser".

One does not simply learn to code - 0xmohit https://medium.freecodecamp.com/one-does-not-simply-learn-to-code-f25bacdc5b62 ====== _asummers Coding IS hard. But I don't think a modicum of programming literacy and logical thinking should be hard. The problem I see in all his examples is the idea of expectations for the person learning to code, because people who don't code don't have the ability to know how hard a given software endeavor is. Games are the canonical example of something that beginner programmers would want to jump into, but game programming is notoriously tricky and you'd be drowning quickly as someone just getting started. This is exacerbated by the "coding is easy!" marketing mentioned, because they're missing the first two words of the statement. It should read "Getting into coding is easy!". I think people should be able to do basic data manipulation from reading files. I think people should be able read and write simple code in at least one language. I think people should be able to do simple database manipulation. And most importantly, II think people should be able to look at their own lives and recognize when there is something that seems like it should be automated, even if they themselves don't know how they would do it. I don't think that's unreasonable to ask. ------ StavrosK People here are talking about whether coding is hard, without defining "hard". Is coding something anyone can learn? Most probably. Is it going to take a long time? Yes. Can it be taught with immediate feedback, so people don't get frustrated and quit mid-way? Yes. Are there any such tutorials? Not that I know of. Maybe I should write one. The bigger problem is that people are motivated by different things, and if someone is excited by learning how to write a web server and serve their own webpage step by step, someone else may be completely bored by it. ~~~ andrepd I think you can talk of things being hard or easy in absolute terms. I mean, to delve fully into the most intricate details of anything is hard, whether it be programming, painting, music etc. But you can't say that, for example, music is hard. Anyone can pick up a guitar, strum 2 or 3 chords and sing along. But writing a symphony is very very hard and requires not only talent but many years of study. The same things applies for coding. Anyone can write a couple of cute programs in Python, so coding isn't necessarily "hard". Programming at a more advanced level certainly is, though. ~~~ StavrosK But that isn't a very useful metric. The question of how hard something is is pretty much equivalent to "how much time can I expect to spend on this before I learn it?". You're saying that there's coding you can do without spending too much time, and coding you can do only after spending years. Sure, but you can be reasonably effective early on, and there's an easy path to mastery (build more and more complex things). Ultimately, it's a matter of learning curves and outcomes at each point. ------ 0xmohit Based on my experience, a common problem is the ability to translate logic into code. It's not uncommon to see an algorithm not being able implemented correctly due to poor logic. Other obvious issue is the choice of underlying data types and structures. Constructs specific to the programming language in question follow. Yes, coding is NOT simple. However, I feel that it has become relatively (although only slightly) easier than it was perhaps a decade back. With numerous open source projects in almost every programming language out there, one can learn a lot by studying those. Of course, this wouldn't apply to a beginner. ------ abustamam I think learning to code is easy, and it's not because I'm so smart--plenty of my friends learned how to "code" in HTML by simply (there's that word!) reverse engineering MySpace or Xanga layouts back in the day. However, _engineering_ is a discipline, and as with any discipline, it is difficult to master. It takes hard work, dedication, and of course, discipline, to learn what to do, who to talk to when you don't know what to do, where to go to find out who to talk to, etc, etc. I thought front-end development was some sort of wizardry. I thought it was just write an HTML page, then write a JavaScript script, then write a CSS sheet, put it all in the same folder and put it onto Github pages. I'm a front-end developer! Then I learned about build tools, frameworks, architectures (MVX), and I was like, why's this so complicated?? Once all the pieces clicked and I understood how everything worked _together_ (not necessarily individually, looking at you Webpack), it became incredibly easy and rewarding to learn. Not necessarily easy to _do_ , but certainly easy to learn. ------ projectramo I can buy that many marketers and instructors lead students to believe coding feels easier than it "really" does. I find it hard to believe that the word "simply" is a giveaway. But I could be convinced. I can't remember coming across the word simply to often in tutorials. ------ crisopolis This is fairly old and I believe it was already posted by Quincy himself. ~~~ abustamam Well, two weeks is pretty old in Internet terms. ------ je42 Nice chrome extension ! :))

Inside Facebook security: defending users from hackers - mun2mun http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/25/2996321/inside-facebook-likejackers-spammers-hackers ====== barce I thought this quote was interesting: "With a high degree of certainty, we know who you would be friends with." I guess if I solved one Knuth's hard problems in one of this books and then sent a friend request telling him I solved it, it would end up in spam. How sad! The Internet is supposed to help folks get to the other side of the tracks.

Programmers can’t write algorithms without help - cryo8822 http://www.queworx.com/2019/11/04/programmers-cant-write-algorithms-without-help-again-about-the-interview-again/ ====== glitchc Yet another article showcasing how the tech interview process is fundamentally flawed. Personal anecdote: I recently underwent an interview process for a position in my field of expertise (computer vision) consisting of multiple in-person stages, whiteboard coding, product design and a take-home assignment that required developing a foundational (bubble-sort like) algorithm from scratch. After successfully completing all of these hurdles, I ended up with a low-ball offer targeting entry-level candidates. If we could have discussed the compensation up front, I wouldn’t even have bothered. ~~~ oneplane It's very weird how some of those tech interviews are done. I've luckily never had to do one of those, but from the YouTube videos of training interviews and example interviews, almost everyone seems to be asked to implement a slight variation on something to be found in a Data Structures & Problem Solving book by Weiss. Great if that is what you'll be doing all day, but regurgitating some way to get the smallest number in a list or making a directed graph for a word morphing joke hardly represents anything other than a persons skill to repeat what someone else did and wrote down decades ago. ~~~ Gunax So everyone knows that the interview isn't perfectly realistic--it's a simulation. Consider that when athletes are scouted, they are usually not asked to play in a full game of their sport. But instead certain stats like 'how fast can he run 100m' and 'how high can he jump' are used. Sure, in a real game you will never run 100m in a straight line on asphalt-- but the speed at which one runs 100m in a straight line is a good proxy for how fast one can maneuver during real play. ~~~ sithlord That's not a very good example. Athletes are being watched for 4-8 years before they are ever drafted. Colleges are watching all the high school games, and Pros are watching all the college games. ~~~ Gunax Perhaps--but it's the analogy I came up with while writing this comment. If you can replace it with a better one, go ahead. Sometimes analogies are not really meant to be perfect, but just simpler methods of communicating information. ------ starbugs > Programmers can’t write algorithms without help And that might be a good thing. How often does a normal software engineer have to write bubble sort from scratch in his daily life? If someone from my team came to me telling me he had to sort an array and wrote bubble sort from scratch, then I'd probably not be very happy with that unless there is a really good reason to spend that time on it rather than using an existing solution. ~~~ Gunax I've been a developer for almost 2 years (I know not that long) but I have never even heard of bubble sort. Looking it up, it is O(n^2). Is there a reason this is a common interview question? It doesn't seem like a sort one would ever really use, or at least it has very obscure uses. I always thought merge/quick sorts accounted for 99.9% of use cases and only ever really learned about those. ~~~ cinnamonheart The logic of bubble sort is so simple that just the description is enough for an implementation. It's a common interview question for the same reason Fizzbuzz is used -- any programmer worth their salt should be able to just write it down. Insertion and selection sort are also O(N^2), but sorts like merge and quick will use them to sort small sublists in their recursive cases because they are fast when input is small enough. ~~~ Gunax I see. I would hope one would give a description of what bubble sort is during the question. It's definitely easy to implement, it just had me worried because I had never heard of it! ------ commandlinefan Whenever this comes up, I can only assume that people are talking about very different sorts of technical interviews than I’ve ever been subject to. I’ve been working as a programmer for 25 years now and must have been through at least two dozen technical interviews in that time (one just a couple of years ago) and I’ve never had this level of pedantry thrown at me. It sounds like the poster has been rejected from a job interview for missing a semicolon or writing “length” instead of “len”. Maybe I’ve just been lucky? I did once have somebody ask me if I knew SQL - I said I did since I had written some queries using it, but not much. He asked me what command was used to add data into a database. I didn’t know (like I said, I knew the query syntax, but that was about it). That seems to me to have been a very reasonable question to ask, and a good, quick way to figure out that I didn’t really have much experience with SQL. ~~~ delinquentme Yes you're the exception. Somehow we arent really adept at interviewing at what the day-to-day requirements of a position. Instead were much more interested in edge-case stuff like bubble sort. I wonder if this is some assessment of "are they capable of substantially more complex tasks, and if so, safe to assume they're capable of less-complex minutiae. Seems about right, as often these evaluation type things are proxies. ------ lidHanteyk The tech lead who doesn't know `len()` but claims to know Python? Yes, they're incompetent. It's okay; it's a common problem in our industry, and easily remedied by study and practice. Chinese is not a great example. Native speakers have trouble reading and writing their own language; it is so complicated that people cannot remember how to write commonly-spoken words or how to read. [0][1] (Choice moment from [1] is when a university student says that Chinese literacy is as difficult as English!) Perhaps we can do better as a community to design better languages, but also we should not condone people claiming that they know the languages when they clearly don't. Yes, Python could be easier; no, Python is not _that_ hard. [0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQh1_zyig1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQh1_zyig1M) [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHskrqMqII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxHskrqMqII) ~~~ Eleopteryx >Yes, they're incompetent. So you feel confident in asserting that, at the time that the person made that tweet, the quality of the Python code that they shipped was poor, or it took an inordinate amount of time to produce? All because they had to look up len()? ~~~ commandlinefan Actually, yeah. That one jumped out at me, too: that’s kind of like saying “I know how to drive a car, but I always have to look up which one is the gas pedal and which one is the brake”. If you’ve done _anything_ in Python, the length function is ingrained in your brain, so if you honestly don’t remember it, you just haven’t written any Python (or it’s been more than 10 years). ~~~ jcranmer I routinely use several languages, and am constantly forgetting which ones use .size() and which ones .len(). It's not worth committing to memory because, if I get it wrong, the compiler will tell me "what is this function of which you speak?", and I will simply turn around and use the other one, at which point it starts compiling again, wasting me at most a minute of my time. Furthermore, I should point out that it's not out of the imagination that someone wouldn't use len() all that heavily. Python has functional operators that let you do map/reduce-style operations on lists, strings, dicts, etc. that don't require you to use length all that much. My most recent python script only uses len() in two places for more robust error reporting. ~~~ commandlinefan Well... try not to take this personally, but... that means that you're not really an expert in Python, which is what (I assume) the interviewer in the linked post was looking for. You're capable in several languages, and may be an expert in one or more of them, but if they're looking for Python expertise, asking you how to find the length of a string is a good way to get a feel for how much time you're going to need to get to where you can really be trusted to produce mission-critical Python software (which may not be a deal breaker, if you're good at a lot of other things). ------ gremlinsinc Anyone ever go in w/ an iron clad algorithm you've perfected then when asked 'Do you have any questions for us?' be like..yeah, I only work w/ the best developers can you beat my algorithm? or hell just ask them if they can do a whiteboard problem for you. See how the recruiter likes it. See if they do as good as you. Flip the script so to speak! ------ Gunax I wish I got asked questions like this. Usually it's just 'How many years of experience do you have in XYZ?' and it's almost never enough. Doesn't matter if your experience is in something similar ('Oh you used Spring boot! We are looking for Spring MVC!') and of course they just care about decades of 'experience'\--doesn't matter if you actually know it well. Then the job ends up not having any relation to what was posted anyway, so it was all moot. Yes, I am salty. I am sick of taking 'exciting' opportunities just to end up babysitting software that has no relation to the posted skills/requirements. ~~~ jagged-chisel My favorite is "Yes! We'd love to have someone with broad experience who can dive in a learn new stuff!" followed by "you've read the $TECHNOLOGY_TOOL docs, but haven't deployed anything with it? Sorry, we're taking a pass..." ------ loopz In theory, algorithms are an important aspect of CS. Having learned about them plus some experience, enables the logical thinking mindset required to develop better code. In practice, algorithms are hardly useful, either because T&M don't allow it, or the problem gets escalated when adding dependencies to existing code and services. In theory, some CS, algorithmic or systems thinking background may be that crucible required to avoid many known pitfalls and rabbit holes. In practice, developing and maintaining IT systems have nothing much in common with sports. This being something more of a distraction by ignorance and management, than anything of tangible value to people and environment. ------ zwieback Asking hard brainteasers in interviews is questionable but bubble sort is so simple anyone should be able to do it or at least start writing a correct loop to go through the list and put a useful if statement in there. If you don't remember bubblesort the interviewer could explain what the algo does and then you should be able to implement it. I'm all for looking stuff up on the web and we all have phones in our pockets but if there's to be a minimum bar it shouldn't be lower than bubblesort. ------ stephenmm I was a little skeptical of take home coding exams but the more interviewing I do it seems to be a pretty efficient way to screen candidates as it is less stressful than live coding and more realistic "simulation" of the work they will do. It also allows you to deep dive into their thought process without having to worry about semicolons. A persons ability to think through a problem and communicate it clearly will get them 75% through the hiring process in my books. (Another ~10% is curiosity). ------ dplgk Been a programmer for 20 years and doing the interview dog and pony show for the first time now. Tons of algo questions out there. Apparently memorizing algos is more important than actually knowing how to build an app front and back and knowing how a web browser, http, tcp works. And knowing dev ops and server admin and how to write maintable code. None of that matters as long as you can say which easter basket has the most eggs in O(1) time and constant space. ------ stunt String length in Python is maybe too much exaggeration unless someone hasn’t wrote Python for a long time. But, algorithms? Sure! Nobody remembers them for ever. Often you at least need to read how the algorithm works before implementing it. Obviously for most devs it is faster to just search for a sample implementation or a pseudocode. ~~~ tzs > String length in Python is maybe too much exaggeration unless someone hasn’t > wrote Python for a long time. Or they use several languages. Say you have client side code in JavaScript, with the client served by PHP on the server. You've got some log analysis scripts in Perl. You've got some SOAP services in Java. You've got some machine learning stuff in Python. You've got a mobile app in Swift. It's real easy to get confused about which of foo.length, strlen($foo), length($foo), foo.length(), len(foo), or foo.characters.count is the right one for the language you are dealing with at the moment. ------ growlist Isn't one of the key skills in tech these days knowing how to avoid having to go low-level? And if not, where does it end? Should we know hardware design? Particle physics?! ~~~ arthev Yes. ------ kps Shouldn't be a surprise; the person who wrote the algorithm without help took more than 15 minutes, and got a paper or a PhD out of it. ~~~ mark-r The first time I heard the problem of detecting a circular link in a linked list, I figured out the tortoise/hare solution in probably 15 minutes without having heard it before, so it's not impossible. ~~~ commandlinefan You should have written a paper. ~~~ mark-r I was hardly the first person to figure it out.

Mark Zuckerberg outlines how Facebook will tackle its fake news problem - nature24 http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/19/13685548/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-fake-news-problem-solutions ====== throwaway420 Isn't it amazing that now that the mainstream media's credibility and ratings are at all-time lows, and that non-corporate controlled independent media of all stripes have flourished, that the establishment has begun pushing this "fake news is a huge problem" agenda? Fake news is indeed a big problem. If your news outlet was a massive cheerleader for war and for the existence of WMDs in Iraq, you might be watching fake news. If your favorite news outlets were caught feeding certain corporate-preferred candidates questions in advance, you might be watching fake news.

Massive.js – A data mapper for Node.js and PostgreSQL - velmu https://github.com/dmfay/massive-js ====== theprotocol What advantages does this have over a simple query builder? Runtime db introspection sounds heavy and the claimed benefits of massive.js apply to raw SQL just the same, so I don't know why I should use this over raw SQL or a simple query builder like knex. I don't understand what this project brings to the table. I could be wrong, but nearly everything I read in the project documentation seems to be taking credit for SQL and not bringing any additional value to what's already there. My reaction is: "SQL is what offers this, not massive.js." So what does Massive.js do? If there's a value-add, then the documentation needs a rewrite, because I'm having a hard time finding it. ~~~ sjellis I haven't used this, but I know of it: I believe that that the idea is to provide the simplest, easiest abstraction over PostgreSQL (and only PostgreSQL). Rails does run-time introspection, and it doesn't cost much. Massive.js is written by Rob Conary, and is descended from his .NET projects Massive and SubSonic. There was a time when SubSonic was arguably the best light-weight ORM for .NET: if I ever meet him, I owe him a beer for making SubSonic.

Analyst: "Apple's 99-cent iTunes model does not build a market for apps" - ilamont http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/02/23/report-apple-app-store-lending-halo-effect-mobile-apps-industry ====== DannoHung Where's the part where Apple is forcing people to sell their apps for 99 cents? I think the real value that Apple has added is in making it cost effective to stick something up there for $1 up to $5 and still have the transaction cost be low so that it's worth someone's time to develop at that scale (and not having to worry so much about people just stealing your program because of its somewhat marginal utility). Easier for the producer, easier for the consumer.

Pointless Job Requirements - adrianhoward https://adrianhoward.com/posts/pointless-job-requirements/ ====== Minor49er This has been going on forever. The most prominent example that I think of is when developers would see postings for 10+ years Java experience at a time when Java wasn't even 10 years old. It's the same sort of thing that the author is describing. Most companies have an idea of what they want in a candidate, but a lot of it quickly turns into a wishlist. As long as you approach it like that, you'll be more inclined to apply and thus more likely to land a job. Chances are, nobody seeing a given job post with these wishlist items will fit the requirements perfectly. If the employer really wants to fill the role, they will pick the strongest candidate from the application pool. (And generally, they want to fill the role because candidate searching isn't exactly cheap for most companies.)

A couple more formal systems - hashx https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/09/11/moveprovers.html/ ====== tobinharris This almost reminds me of Z which I studied at Uni in 1999. It was kind of cool, and I enjoyed predicate logic. Now I look at it and think, WTF! Since I've never had to use this stuff for real, it would be fascinating to know what people use it for day to day? ------ kenko It's ridiculous that this isn't getting more discussion, especially considering what is.

Six U.S. Cities Make the List of Most Surveilled Places in the World - emrosecoleman https://www.routefifty.com/public-safety/2019/09/six-us-cities-make-list-most-surveilled-places-world/159983/ ====== omarhaneef My first thought was: how is NYC not on this list since it has cameras on every block, and has for decades. And then I saw this: "Atlanta was the only place in the U.S. to crack the top ten, with 15.56 cameras per thousand residents." So they are looking at cameras per 1000 residents. This seems like the wrong way to count. If you point a camera at a block, you see everyone on that block whether there is one person or 10. They should compute it as percentage of public area that is under surveillance, I think. ~~~ sweezyjeezy Yeah, it also conflates private/publicly owned cameras. As someone who lives in London, I think we get unfairly portrayed as a surveillance state, because really the vast majority of cameras are inside shops and businesses, not on the street, and not connected to any central databank. I personally don't find cameras like these troubling. Once you get out of central London, most streets don't have cameras on them. ~~~ Tomte The one time I was in London fifteen years ago, it felt like 1984. I was sitting in a bus and there were at least five or six TVs showing several camera perspectives. Including one directly at the back of my head, which showed some early signs of balding. It was the most unpleasant bus ride I have ever had. London is nuts. ~~~ kalleboo It's the posters that creep me out [http://www.adsavvy.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/12/watchful_e...](http://www.adsavvy.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/12/watchful_eyes.jpg) [http://www.adsavvy.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/12/creepcamz....](http://www.adsavvy.org/wp- content/uploads/2008/12/creepcamz.jpg) ------ AJRF Top 20 1. Chongqing, China – 2,579,890 cameras for 15,354,067 people = 168.03 cameras per 1,000 people 2. Shenzhen, China – 1,929,600 cameras for 12,128,721 people = 159.09 cameras per 1,000 people 3. Shanghai, China – 2,985,984 cameras for 26,317,104 people = 113.46 cameras per 1,000 people 4. Tianjin, China – 1,244,160 cameras for 13,396,402 people = 92.87 cameras per 1,000 people 5. Ji’nan, China – 540,463 cameras for 7,321,200 people = 73.82 cameras per 1,000 people 6. London, England (UK) – 627,707 cameras for 9,176,530 people = 68.40 cameras per 1,000 people 7. Wuhan, China – 500,000 cameras for 8,266,273 people = 60.49 cameras per 1,000 people 8. Guangzhou, China – 684,000 cameras for 12,967,862 people = 52.75 cameras per 1,000 people 9. Beijing, China – 800,000 cameras for 20,035,455 people = 39.93 cameras per 1,000 people 10. Atlanta, Georgia (US) – 7,800 cameras for 501,178 people = 15.56 cameras per 1,000 people 11. Singapore – 86,000 cameras for 5,638,676 people = 15.25 cameras per 1,000 people 12. Abu Dhabi, UAE – 20,000 cameras for 1,452,057 people = 13.77 cameras per 1,000 people 13. Chicago, Illinois (US) – 35,000 cameras for 2,679,044 people = 13.06 cameras per 1,000 people 14. Urumqi, China – 43,394 cameras for 3,500,000 people = 12.40 cameras per 1,000 people 15. Sydney, Australia – 60,000 cameras for 4,859,432 people = 12.35 cameras per 1,000 people 16. Baghdad, Iraq – 120,000 cameras for 9,760,000 people = 12.30 cameras per 1,000 people 17. Dubai, UAE – 35,000 cameras for 2,883,079 people = 12.14 cameras per 1,000 people 18. Moscow, Russia – 146,000 cameras for 12,476,171 people = 11.70 cameras per 1,000 people 19. Berlin, Germany – 39,765 cameras for 3,556,792 people = 11.18 cameras per 1,000 people 20. New Delhi, India – 179,000 cameras for 18,600,000 people = 9.62 cameras per 1,000 people ~~~ greggman2 There's a lot of comparing apples to oranges 3\. Shanghai, China – 2,985,984 cameras for 26,317,104 people = 113.46 cameras per 1,000 people 76\. Tokyo, Japan - 24,500 cameras for 37,435,191 people = 0.65 cameras per 1,000 people Well, first off what are we comparing? They list 26.3 million people for Shanghai and 37.4 million for Tokyo. That's comparing the metropolitian area of Tokyo (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba) to just the city of Shangahi. Shanghai's metropolitian area population is closer to 33 million. If we change Tokyo to the city population (9.3m) which is what they used for Shanghai then Tokyo jumps to position 40 at 2.66 cameras per 1000 people. On top of that 24,500 seems awefully low for Tokyo. There are cameras everywhere and have been since I first got here 21 years ago. I always found it strange if the Japanese are so honest (perception may be different than reality) then why do they need so many cameras? Of course I haven't counted, just saying for a city so large and seeing the cameras stick out if you're looking it feels low. All of that is the long way of saying the data is highly suspect. ~~~ testplzignore The original article - [https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds- most-surv...](https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most- surveilled-cities/) \- explains the source of the data. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tp...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bKBFiVXNzrgtW95j66Tpcj2OYmL- Gj-mKxvVvEN8aI8/edit#gid=979494433) shows the source of the camera counts. The population counts came from [http://worldpopulationreview.com/world- cities/](http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/). Just the fact that the counts came from two different places make this data pretty dubious. A better methodology would be to do a physical audit. Have some people in each city manually count the number of cameras over some area, then extrapolate from there. This has the flaw of missing hidden or inaccessible cameras, but at least would be consistent. ~~~ cameronbrown > Have some people in each city manually count the number of cameras over some > area, then extrapolate from there. This assumes a uniform distribution where one isn't obvious. Some places are bound to have more security than others. ~~~ cowpig If you cut up the municipality into uniform sizes, and then randomly sample from that to do your counts it should account for that problem I think. ~~~ greggman2 Is that true? I'd only guess there are more cameras in Times Square than Wastingtion Square in NYC. I don't know how you would divide most cities into areas of uniform camera coverage such that totaling one area is representative of all other areas in that city. Most cities have several hot spots ------ mindcrime Here's what I find interesting, and maybe slightly disturbing: there was a time when if you took a highly techie focused site like this, and posted an article on this topic, a significant portion of the responses would include variations of: "how do we hack these things to disable them?" or "How can we avoid being spotted on camera", or "How about we get together and start physically destroying these things" or "Let's vote out the bums who allowed this to happen", etc. These days? All we get is pedantic quibbling over what counts as "surveilled", and what's the most appropriate metric for calculating how surveilled a place is. I'm not sure exactly what that says about our society and culture, but I'm pretty sure I don't like it. ~~~ swiley There's no place in the world for that kind of person. Most of them have probably given up in some way and new ones are rare. ~~~ nostrademons Is that actually true? Or is it just that given their paranoia & interests, posting about it on a public message board might not be a good idea? ------ gruez The headline is slightly misleading without context on how big the list is. Otherwise you could say >Every major American city make the list of most surveilled places in the world with a list size of 500. Anyways, the list seems the top offenders seems to be China (by far) and UK (to an extent). No surprise there. The list follows a power distribution, so the first few cities on the list are significantly worse than the others. For example, Chongqing and Shenzhen (in first and second place respectively) have around 160 cameras per 1000 people, but Atlanta (first US city on the list, 10th place) only has 13.06 cameras. Other western countries on the list are lower, but don't have much less cameras. Sydney is at 15th place with 12.35 cameras and Berlin is at 19th place with 11.18 cameras. ~~~ mcbits It's not clear why the number of cameras in a city would fit a power law, which usually arises from some kind of feedback effect. More cameras -> something -> more cameras. Any ideas for what "something" is? (Also... holy shit, that's a spammy site. Blocked.) ~~~ jbattle An idea: Cameras are deployed for a few different purposes. The more discrete functions you are trying to accomplish, the more cameras you need. Example 1: Red light cameras. Only needed at specific intersections that have particular characteristics (high speed? high volume? not sure). The distribution of these probably maps more to physical space than population itself as the spacing of red lights is relatively independent of population. Example 2: Cameras that are aimed at crime suppression. These will be unevenly distributed around a city depending on where crime happens. Looking at Chicago I see particular neighborhoods heavily blanketed in cameras, others very very sparsely. The distribution of this type of camera would be quite different than traffic-control cameras. Example 3: Population monitoring cameras. I honestly don't know why China has so many cameras. Are these literally population surveillance cameras? These might be evenly distributed around a city to maximize coverage. Some of the power law distribution you see might be a result of different cities applying cameras for 1, 2, 3, N different functions (each of which requires a different number of cameras). ~~~ bpchaps A few years back I was mugged in Chicago at a busy intersection very close to a train station. Being the FOIA nerd I am, I submitted a FOIA request for the footage of the spot I was mugged at. It came back saying that no footage exists. Probing the investigator, I was told that the camera rotates randomly, and wasn't pointed in my direction. It's very difficult for me to think of Chicago's surveillance with any sort of charity, when they can't even do a single major intersection. Fun fact: Chicago's city hall has a retention period of zero days on its cameras. Go figure. ~~~ marcosdumay > Chicago's city hall has a retention period of zero days on its cameras. Does it mean that they have people watching the camera, warning the street police if they find anything, but do no recording? ~~~ bpchaps That's my understanding, yes. ~~~ logfromblammo Given that it's Chicago, my understanding would be that the officer handling the FOIA request fed you a line, and they probably didn't even look at any recorded video to see if the camera was pointed in the correct direction. Did you do a follow up request for whatever that camera actually recorded while you were getting mugged? ------ olivermarks 'Surveilled' by who is the bigger question, and what public access and rights do we have around the data produced, and is it being fed to some sort of Stasi style panopticon? It's remarkable to me the lack of public surveillance video produced after major events - the Epstein NY 'suicide' is the latest example, the 2017 UK London Bridge event another. (The latter had video from a mile away filmed with 90's technology as the main news story). I feel we are very overdue in the free world for legislation around citizen rights and access to video, and licensing for any entity or people who want to install surveillance, much like the recent drone FAA registration. ~~~ mytailorisrich There are plenty of surveillance (and other) videos of the London Bridge attack. The question is rather why would they publicise videos of people being stabbed to death or run over in HD gory details? ~~~ anigbrowl Because people want to know what happened and how. Otherwise liberty, accountability, and self-determination go out the window. ~~~ mytailorisrich We are fully informed of what happened and how, including through detailed accounts, not least because, under UK law, a public inquest took place. But, as said, I don't see the point of publicising videos of people being slaughtered. ~~~ anigbrowl There are numerous examples of public inquiries failing to provide a full picture of the truth which then came out many years later, eg in Northern Ireland. There's a documentary running on the BBC right now about the Troubles featuring lots of photographs and footage that were suppressed at the time. I don't care whether you see the point; if I wish to investigate a matter of public or historic interest, why should I be bound by _your_ preferences? ------ Hoasi > Kenneth Johnson, police commander of the Englewood district in Chicago, said > that residents shouldn’t be concerned about privacy because the cameras are > out in the open in public places. “This isn’t a secret. This isn’t an > Orwellian ‘Big Brother,’” he told the New York Times last year. This quote tells us Kenneth Johnson either did not read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or doesn't remember it well enough to talk about it. ------ asah Per capita doesn't matter for cameras, you care about per area and arguably, coverage/holes, since 10 cameras pointing at one location/direction is (often) less informative than one well placed camera. Indoors also matters a lot. To this end, I'm really surprised that NYC doesn't make the list, given 9/11. ~~~ guerrilla > per capita doesn't matter for cameras You mean it may not matter. In practice, it is probably proportional to cameras per area, so it would matter. ~~~ sieabahlpark As he said you can have 10 cameras pointing at one thing and know less information than one good placement... If indoor cameras count in this statistic then that throws off what is being watched, the people or the property for insurance purposes. ~~~ guerrilla > As he said you can have As I said, that's why it _may_ matter, not why it does. ------ mgraczyk Since moving to San Francisco 5 years ago I have been attacked on the street 4 times and had property stolen from my home 3 times. In only 1 of these cases was there a witnessing camera. I think there is a very real tradeoff between safety and privacy, and I personally feel like my city would be better off sacrificing privacy in favor of more safety. ~~~ habosa Agree. If you limit the allowed use-cases and have strict access and retention policies this could be really helpful. Of course it could be used for dumb shit like giving out jaywalking tickets en-masse. And I'm not sure there's any existing agency I trust to draw the line correctly. ------ shanecoin Atlanta Chicago Washington D.C. San Francisco San Diego Boston ~~~ AnimalMuppet And that's kind of weird. I could see Washington having heavy surveillance, for security. But Atlanta and San Diego? What's up with that? ~~~ rwmurrayVT ATL is the fraud capital of the USA and they're really only counting the tiny part of true Atlanta. San Diego has NBSD and several large shipyards in a small area. ~~~ mullen As a San Diego Native and Resident, the cameras are part of a city wide project to put "Smart StreetLights" all around the City. They don't monitor anything specific but are used to gather evidence for crimes. San Diego does not actively monitor the videos from the camera. [https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/201...](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/2019-09-14/san- diego-is-fifth-most-surveilled-city-in-america-study-says) Honestly, I am not against this but it does strike me a solution looking for a problem. ------ dfc I thought it was interesting to that the report said no correlation was found between cameras and crime. But you dig a little deeper and it's "numbeo.com survey responses about crime". It also doesn't seem like they compared crime rates over time to see if the introduction of cameras did anything. ~~~ Nasrudith Yeah - crime perception has to be the worst way to measure actual crime rates - it is essentially asking to be fooled. ------ habosa Sometimes I think about theoretically committing a crime. Just running it through in my head. I feel like in every single situation I'd have to pull some seriously Mission Impossible stuff not to get caught on some camera. I realize most crimes are not thought through very rationally, but this feels like a rational deterrent to crime. So in that sense I don't mind cameras. What would bother me is: a) Excessive video retention. It's useful in the short term as a form of evidence but in the long term it's just creepy. b) Proactive video analysis (rather than only reacting when something bad happens). I guess with how cheap storage and compute are now, (a) and (b) are inevitable. So I guess I land on the anti-camera side of things. But I know that if a crime was ever committed against me I'd really hope there was video footage! ~~~ sverige The one time I was robbed at gunpoint, there was video of the guy at a nearby gas station trying to use my cards. The cops said they got nothing useful from the video. I suspect that a lot of cameras are fairly useless in that sense. ------ 11thEarlOfMar I'm curious if they are counting the cameras in cars. Each Tesla has 3+ cameras that actively record when in Sentry Mode. A Costco parking lot in Silicon Valley will have a dozen parked at any given time. That's another 36+ cameras. I can easily imagine a police investigation requesting footage from owners who may have had active recording during a crime. The number of cameras will increase dramatically in this additional dimension, particularly as other manufacturers start adding surveillance to their vehicles. ~~~ jcims Seems if they had a warrant they could ask Tesla to provide video from any car in that area at that time. ------ elif I live in Atlanta (most surveiled in America supposedly), and I have 2 contributions to this: \- in general, per capita statistics are wonky for our city due to the unconstrained sprawl. There is a huge portion of our population that uses Atlanta daily but does not live here. \- the cameras are almost entirely for traffic monitoring and preventing crime in midtown/downtown. Where most people actually live, there is not much in way of surveillance. I am an ACLU member and feel constantly creeped out in London. Atlanta ain't it tho ------ _iyig I’d like to know how much recorded video sees human review. My impression is that cities don’t have the budget to manually review footage unless a crime is reported. I’d also be curious who has access to the recordings - if it were my decision, there’d be a nuclear missle-style buddy system and chain of custody, but I doubt it’s that secure in practice. ------ exabrial All "blue" cities unsurprisingly. It would be incredibly positive if they turned this around. The government is not the place for community action, your homes, neighbours, streets, churches, farmers markets, local watering holes, et all are. ------ merricksb Related discussion from August about same report: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20737023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20737023) ------ newsreview1 The ACLU is currently fighing several battles to keep law enforcement from being able to access drivers license photos for facial recognition in crime related matters. Interesting read. [https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy- technology/privacy-borders...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy- technology/privacy-borders-and-checkpoints/tsa-testing-face-recognition- security) ------ isthispermanent The popups on this site, good lord. ~~~ dsb5 the whole site was disgusting, I didn't even bother to read past 2 words of the headline. There was a great rant on r/web_design - welcome to the internet, no fun anymore. ------ Plough_Jogger Chicago, Washington D.C., San Francisco, San Diego, and Boston ------ cryptozeus Surprised to see Atlanta in the list. Why ? ------ JohnFen Interesting. I guess I have a couple more cities to add to my "do not visit" list. ------ Bostonian If the surveillance leads to the prompt arrest of violent criminals, it may be a good thing. I expect privacy in my home, not while on the sidewalk. ~~~ landcoctos What if cameras follow you on every trip you make to/from your home. Are you ok with a blotter on all your movements? ~~~ andreilys Related: Surveillance Camera Man on Youtube who films people without their permission in public - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP5ZVPwP7bg&t=](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP5ZVPwP7bg&t=)

Guido van Rossum: Adding Optional Static Typing to Python (2004) - yule http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=85551 ====== drdaeman Interesting. Too bad this didn't got anywhere. At least, sometimes I miss static typing in Python. Tools like dictshield work fine, but when I'm validating a structure, I have a feeling that I'm using a wrong language (but don't get me wrong, I love Python!) Type classes (like those in Haskell) should've been able to solve the problems Guido mentioned. I.e. something like `def min(Ord T => a: T, b: T) -> T` and `def min(Ord T => a: [T]) -> T`.

Show HN: Mastering Modern Payments: Using Stripe with Rails - itengelhardt https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/ ====== zrail Hey, author here. This is the second edition, which includes a significant number of edits and a brand new chapter on subscriptions. Here's a link to the preview chapters: [https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/read](https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/read)

Twitter Rolls Out New Sign-Up API - nreece http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_rolls_out_new_api_citysearch_first_to_impl.php ====== trezor Call me cynical but I can't see this not being employed for spam somehow.

Ask HN: Were there any learnings from last week's political detox? - codezero Regarding: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13108404<p>I&#x27;m curious if HN has done any analysis of the interactions, or if people have any opinions to share. ====== Huhty Honestly, I didn't even notice. And I browse here a minimum of 2-3 hrs a week.

The 20th anniversary of the Power Mac G4 Cube - merricksb https://www.wired.com/story/20-years-ago-steve-jobs-built-the-coolest-computer-ever-it-bombed/ ====== thought_alarm The Cube with matching LCD monitor and USB keyboard was way ahead of its time. A premium product at a premium price. The problem was software. Apple did not have the operating system to justify such a premium product. MacOS 9 was laughably dated, slow, and unstable, especially compared to Win2000 and WinXP, and OS X was years away from being ready. The hardware writes a check that the software can't cash. Anyone would have been better with a PowerMac or a Win2k machine. I own a Cube, and with OS X 10.4 installed it is a completely different machine. It boots faster than a modern Mac, and is light years ahead of aged Mac OS 9 and the early versions of OS X. It feels utterly modern, and takes full advantage of the tight integration between the hardware, LCD monitor, and USB peripherals. Unfortunately for Apple, OS X 10.4 was released 4 years after the Cube was cancelled. I think that if Apple had OS X 10.4 ready in 2000, we would look back at the Cube in a different way. ~~~ everdrive 10.4 was such a beautiful operating system. I really believe that Apple had the best operating system out there for the short window that 10.4 was around. ~~~ mfarris I still use 10.4 on a 2005 PowerMac several times a week for various creative projects. The ease of use is so much higher than recent MacOS versions it's not even funny. ~~~ everdrive What software are you using? Is the machine connected to the internet? ------ blakesterz I remember when this came out watching the big unveiling and absolutely LOVING it. And then. My god, that price. It was so stupidly expensive it really deserved to fail. I don't understand how they could think that would sell many units. It was a super cool looking, super small, super quiet machine that could've really worked well for many people. From the Wired article: "That didn’t happen. For one thing, the price was prohibitive—by the time you bought the display, it was almost three times the price of an iMac and even more than some PowerMacs. By and large, people don’t spend their art budget on computers." ~~~ smnrchrds How much was it? ~~~ weare138 I found the old press release. The base price was $1,799 for the 400Mhz G4 and $2,299 for the 500Mhz. Adjusted for inflation it's equivalent to $2,783 and $3,557 in today's money. [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2000/07/19Apple-Introduces- Re...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2000/07/19Apple-Introduces- Revolutionary/) ~~~ puranjay That's...not as expensive as I had expected. In my country, after taxes, a 16-inch Macbook Pro starts at nearly $3k ~~~ weare138 The big issue was how underpowered it was for the price. It was the same price as a good desktop Mac at the time but with all the limitations of the iMac. ~~~ masswerk Mind that the iMacs of the time were considerably underpowered G3s with not the best graphics. The Cube was in another league. ------ cflewis I miss Apple using color. I know they abandoned it because they want their machines to melt away and just have the screen left, but they abandoned fun in the process. Computers don't just have to be windows into a virtual space. ~~~ FreakyT Personally, what I miss is translucency! I'd really like to see translucent electronics make a comeback, it was always neat to see the inner workings. ~~~ gugagore You might enjoy this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PfsndsihY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PfsndsihY) It's about electronic devices designed to be used in prison, so they're intentionally made transparent. ~~~ sukilot It's hard to enjoy tech made for USA's cruelly overlong prison sentences. ------ gnicholas For me, the cool thing about the Cube was that I could bring it home from college in a carry-on suitcase. At the time, the laptops had G3 processors, and the G4 towers obviously didn't fit in a suitcase. But I could travel with my G4 Cube (500 MHz with DVD) in my rolling luggage and my Apple Studio Display (15", with tilt arm detached) in my shoulder bag. It was the only way to get G4 performance in a semi-portable form factor. This was great because when I went home for Christmas, I had my computer (and DVD player) in my room. And when I went to summer internships, it was easy to bring my digital life with me. I loved it! ~~~ Lammy I did this just a couple years ago when I found a Cube while traveling! [https://i.imgur.com/H8UxYCj.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/H8UxYCj.jpg) ------ giantrobot When the Cube came out I was thinking it would be what the Mac mini became. Instead it was a shitty PowerMac that cost almost as much as a PowerMac. If you wanted to use it for anything but trivial stuff you really just wanted a PowerMac. If your needs were trivial you were much better off with an iMac. Apple's 2x2 product matrix worked pretty well and the Cube didn't fit in it at all. It was a weird expensive mutant. ~~~ timw4mail Kind of like the Twentieth Anniversary Mac before it in terms of having more style than substance. ~~~ giantrobot The TAM was _way_ more style over substance than the Cube. The Cube did have some utility in that it was virtually silent. I know a lot of audio people that liked them for this reason. The TAM was a $10,000 pure luxury item. That being said I would love to add a TAM to my vintage Mac collection. ------ scott_s Curious - people have long drawn parallels between Apple and Nintendo's aesthetics for hardware and strategy, but I never realized how close the G4 Cube (July 2000) was to the Nintendo GameCube (September 2001). I still think the GameCube is the most aesthetically pleasing console. ~~~ CoolGuySteve Yeah, for all the love the G4 Cube gets, the Gamecube was much, much, smaller, had more efficient cooling, similar specs (minus the disk drive), and was 1/10th the price. The 1T-SRAM and EDRAM framebuffer caches in the Gamecube were also much more interesting on a technical level. Considering how poorly Aqua ran on the Mac's of that era, the Gamecube's 3D hardware probably would have been better suited to OS X than Apple's own. It's a far superior design imo. ~~~ reaperducer _the Gamecube was much, much, smaller, had more efficient cooling, similar specs (minus the disk drive), and was 1 /10th the price_ How many people ran Photoshop or did desktop publishing on a GameCube? ~~~ CoolGuySteve Honestly, Resident Evil 4 was far more computationally intensive than anything Photoshop does. It's applying thousands of texture filters and transformations in real time and then mapping them to polygon surfaces with lighting transforms. It's all software, some of it just costs more. ------ abruzzi I actually still have my Cube. I haven't powered it on in years, I can't bring myself to throw it out, but I can't figure anything useful for it to do. I have other PPC macs that are in regular use, but its mostly to support hardware that never made it to intel. Since I cant stick a PCI card in the Cube, it just sits there. ~~~ tyingq It makes a pretty tissue box. [https://www.applegazette.com/wp- content/uploads/g4cube_tissu...](https://www.applegazette.com/wp- content/uploads/g4cube_tissuebox-550x733.jpg) ------ jtlienwis For a minute I thought it was the Next. But that was a bomb that went off 32 years ago. ~~~ kjs3 Same here. NeXT was way cooler than any old Power Mac in a pretty box. ~~~ evgen Yeah, I am guessing you never actually tried to get any work done on one. Nothing like listening to it swap on the floptical while doing a big compile. CHUNKA-CHUNKA-CHUNKA...CHUNKA-CHUNKA. ~~~ kjs3 I actually had a lab full of them. I said they were cool, not fast. :-) Most everyone I knew who had one added a SCSI hard drive real quick to their NeXT cube and moved stuff like swap there, and eventually folks figured out how to replace the optical as the boot drive. If you were desperate, you could swap to NFS which while not much faster was usually smoother (and quieter) than swapping to the optical. ------ FabHK The Cube was great, particularly once OS X came out in the following year. But even before that, iTunes was released, and with the Harman Kardon Soundsticks [1,2] (two little speakers and a subwoofer) it was a brilliant machine for the living room. Looked great, you could work on it, surf, listen to music and watch DVDs. You could set iTunes to automatically rip CDs it hadn't ripped before, IIRC, and with the nifty mechanism it was really pleasant to pop in your entire music collection one at a time and turn it into mp3s. Rip, mix, burn [3]. And then the iPod came out in 2001 as well, and your entire collection was on the damn thing in minutes (over FireWire). Nowadays, this is all a matter of course, but back then it was way ahead of the rest. (Should have bought Apple shares...) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundSticks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundSticks) [2] [https://medium.com/@unmakr/moma-approved-harman-kardon- sound...](https://medium.com/@unmakr/moma-approved-harman-kardon-soundsticks- ii-teardown-f5ef983185cb) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ZWuhcM7t4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ZWuhcM7t4) ------ chaoticmass Back when this came out, I was 15, and still stuck in my zealous fanboyism _against_ anything Apple-- but even I had to admit it looked cool. ------ selimnairb They learned the lesson of the Cube so well, they created the 2013 Mac Pro. ------ jdofaz These were not compatible with users who set the computer on it's side, or people who would lay papers on top of it. Either way it would overheat (speaking as a former tech support person) ~~~ atrn My Cube cracked the PCBs of two graphics cards before I gave up on it. ------ heelix I was gifted one of these long after they hit their EOL. I plan to turn it into a normal x86-64 box since the form factor.. with just a minor bit of dremel work, should fit an ITX board. As a size comparison, upside down with an ITX on the bottom. [https://i.imgur.com/W1BTU4u.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/W1BTU4u.jpg) ~~~ Lammy Please don't gut a working rare classic computer :( ~~~ heelix The fact that it still runs and can even connect to the net (however unsafe that may be with its current state) has delayed the project. The power supply is flaking out. When the magic goes, it goes. One of the more amazing things was the monitor. It manages to power itself via the DVI cable. ~~~ Lammy Yeah, the internal DC/DC board is known to die if you load the machine up with a CPU/GPU upgrade, even worse if you use the ADC monitor too. It's not cheap, but Artmix makes an upgraded replacement. I promise if you get into modding the Cube it will be a million times more fun than turning such a rare machine into Yet Another Intel Box ;) [https://artmix.com/products/product/stratos- technology-power...](https://artmix.com/products/product/stratos-technology- powermac-g4-cube-high-power-vrm-unit/) ------ dhosek I bought one of these after they were discontinued as a refurb. It was a great semi-portable computer—I'd take it with a cheap flat panel display, keyboard and mouse to band rehearsals and gigs to do recordings. Absolutely silent. At the refurb price it was a pretty good deal. I sold it for not much less than I paid for it to help fund my first PowerBook. ------ mariodiana I don't remember the exact quote I read, but someone back then noted that it was a supercomputer the size of a box of tissues, and that it was (and I'm going by memory now): _One of the few things that makes the Year 2000 what it was cracked up to be._ ------ kyuudou Now I wonder if the Cobalt Qube[1] was inspired by this... 1: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_Qube) ~~~ KSS42 Maybe the other way around. Your link says Qube came out in 1998. The G4 Cube came out in 2000. ~~~ Lammy The G4 Cube was not Jobs' first cube computer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTcube) ------ paultopia That kind of move is always Apple's big failing---super-expensive, years ahead of its time but not _enough_ years ahead (and quickly self-cannibalized by better yet cheaper products), marquee products. They did that with the Lisa, and arguably with the Newton too. Though I guess the Newton wasn't Jobs's fault, like the others were. I really wanted a cube when it came out though. ------ mumblemumble I had one of these, once upon a time. The model with the capacitive power button. Great machine, but it sure was annoying when people would come by my desk to talk to me, and accidentally put my computer to sleep by absentmindedly resting a hand on a convenient surface. ------ Izkata A hint of the coming future: > “Do you really want to put a hole in this thing and put a button there?” > Jobs asked me, justifying the lack of a power switch. “Look at the energy we > put into this slot drive so you wouldn’t have a tray, and you want to ruin > that and put a button in?” ------ gigatexal I still hope they bring this back with the new Apple silicon macs. I loved the cube! ------ snorkel The Cube also had bad market timing. The dotcom bubble was bursting so the market for luxury office equipment was quickly drying up. Aside from that everyone said it looked like a overpriced tissue box. ------ KingOfCoders Loved by G4 Cube. Was my first OSX machine. Liked the hardware extension scene with CPU extensions and new graphics cards that could work in that small space and without active cooling. ------ eucryphia I did fall in love with one of these as soon as I saw it in the University shop. But the sticker price was simply unaffordable, our worplace ran MS Windows and I had a house to pay off. ------ olliej In fairness it was an astonishingly pretty machine, and I've always really wanted one - even today when it would be totally useless. Who cares if it would power cycle on sufficiently hot days :D ------ valuearb This is a testament to the greatness of Steve Jobs. It’s not just your successes that define you when you constantly are pushing the envelope. ------ regularfry I know more than one person who bought these just because Apple had released new hardware. Totally bought in to the image. ------ didip heh, one of my classmates had this. His cat loves sitting on top of it, causing it to shutdown unexpectedly. ------ elcapitan > Jobs: Yeah, we did one before. Cubes are very efficient spaces. Does anybody know what he means there? ~~~ dhosek The NeXT Cube ~~~ jmkb Also highly hyped, also bombed, but severely influential. IMO has a better claim to "coolest" than the Mac cube does. ~~~ ghaff NeXT was conceptually interesting. It had a magneto-optical drive and, as I recall, one of the pitches was that in a world of expensive computers and slow networks, especially in higher education it was an interesting concept that you could carry around a removable disk and essentially make any workstation "your" personal workstation by inserting your disk. And, yes, Jobs was quite the salesman. I wasn't at the original announcement but he reprised the announcement for the Boston Computer Society in Symphony Hall. (Which also says something about the size of the BCS at the time.) ------ nickbauman The cube was a rehash of the NeXT Cube. Why do that again? ~~~ als0 Because the NeXT Cube was an undeniable work of art... ------ kingkawn I knew someone who had one of these, it was awesome ------ sigzero I loved my cube. <3 ------ klyrs > These are all specially formulated, and it’s all proprietary, just us. It > took us six months just to formulate these plastics. They make bulletproof > vests out of it! And it’s incredibly sturdy, and it’s just beautiful! > There’s never been anything like that. How do you make something like that? > Nobody ever made anything like that! Isn’t that beautiful? I think it’s > stunning! Weird. This reads like something straight out of a Trump speech. ~~~ rowanG077 Why is that weird? Both Trump and Jobs have/had huge sway with crowds. It's not surprising to me their speech patterns are similar. ~~~ mhh__ Because Trump usually speaks in huge unpunctuated sentences? When did Steve jobs randomly say "Good genes, good genes" while explaining how good he is at nuclear ~~~ sukilot Jobs died before he got old enough to ge to that linguistic stage, thanks in part to his peculiar views on health science (another similarity to Trump) ------ staycoolboy Do I have too many blockers running, because there's no article here? Answer: Yes ~~~ neogodless This was my experience. I've got headline, lead image, one line of text and then an author bio! This is with Firefox 78.0.2 running uBlock Origin. ~~~ staycoolboy Same here, but apparently this info is worth several downvotes. ------ _threads I love it but I’m pretty sure it was built by workers in a factory, but our world only remember names of so-called « leaders »

Google Shutting Down Translate API - Alternatives - fookyong http://mygengo.com/talk/blog/translation-apis-google-shutting-down-but-are-there-alternatives/ ====== wccrawford Alternative, you mean. Singular. I don't think MyGengo is a replacement for how most people used Translate, either. At 5 cents per word, you have to have a real use for the service, instead of just willy-nilly translating anything you think of. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they provide a good service. It's just that the service Google was providing had a different audience. Edit: Removed my comment about spam. ~~~ robert_mygengo Disclosure: I'm the CEO of myGengo We offer machine translation for free, and we'll continue to do so... I don't really see how this is spam. ~~~ wccrawford You should probably make that more prominent, then. I quit reading at this part: "If you spent the $25 at Standard level, which is $.05 per word, you could translate up to 500 words - that’s almost two full pages of text." I see the next line says that you can use the service without credits, now. But by that point, I was sick of reading about a pay service that was claiming to replace a free one. That's the only spot on the page that says it, and it doesn't outright say you can get translations for free... It just says you can 'use the service without credits'. Too many people give you a 'free account' that you can't actually do anything with, and then you have to pay to do anything. In short: You are losing potential customers by not making your hook clear enough.

What OpenID Needs (Answer: Marketing) - jcwentz http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_troubles_with_openid_20.php ====== mwerty Incredibly, I could not find a concise description of how it works which was very frustrating: 1\. You want to log to site X. 2\. Instead of signing up, you enter <http://myuri> which has a a text entry that points to site Y as your open id provider. 3\. Site X asks you to log into site Y and lets you log in once site X gets an OK from site Y that you've logged in. ------ Hexayurt What OpenID needs is: 1> a fix for phishing, probably involving browser support for OpenID, so it reads the request for OpenID off the page, like browsers now pick up the option of having an RSS feed, and processes it specially 2> Time. ------ nickb Marketing? Hmmm... what about these problems? <http://www.idcorner.org/?p=161>

Flight attendant loses job for being less than 1kg overweight - onetimemanytime https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/travel-stories/flight-attendant-loses-job-for-being-less-than-1kg-overweight/news-story/ef23db0517c68b905c1998d9045ba372 ====== poulsbohemian So converting to imperial - she's 5'2, 136 pounds? That sounds like a very normal sized woman to me. I can't help but notice that she's been with the airline for 25 years and wonder if that's the real issue here, especially given the number of airlines listed in the article of not having similar weight guidelines. While perhaps this is a field necessitating certainly height / weight restrictions, this doesn't really sound like an individual who's a particular outlier in either of those areas. ~~~ tropo I don't think "very normal" is what we should accept. In an emergency, flight attendants need strength and speed. They should look like decathlon winners. ~~~ scrollaway Decathlon winners usually have other jobs. You may have to expand your search, lest you prefer having no flight attendant at all. ------ dekhn If there's a threshold, it doesn't make sense to make an exception for a person who is over the threshold, regardless of the amount. because if you did that, you just redefined the threshold (by induction, we can see this would permit people with infinite weight...) ~~~ contravariant This isn't the case. By moving the threshold less and less each time they could keep moving it indefinitely while remaining below a chosen upper bound. ~~~ dekhn but that would just converge on the chosen upper bound, which suggests that upper bound was the threshold. ~~~ contravariant Well true but you don't have to accept all the people who reach the final threshold until you've actually raised it all that way, so it allows you to reject more people while avoiding nasty near misses. It also allows you to defer the final decision indefinitely, taking into account only those near misses that actually occur. For example I reckon you could get it to converge by e.g. accepting anyone who comes closer to the threshold than anyone before, this could avoid all near misses (for some definition of 'near miss') while almost certainly remaining bounded (unproven, ask your local mathematician for advice). ~~~ onetimemanytime His point is valid though. If the cut off is 100 lbs and allow for 1 lbs more, then it really is is 101 lbs. Someone weighing 102 would still be fired and so on. Maybe older people have more problem keeping weight off (evolution) so this is also a way to keep them fit _and_ young. I get the BMI thing not being accurate but then, maybe they don't want "big-boned" or muscular women there. ------ asfarley Recently I was on an airplane where the flight attendant couldn’t walk down the aisles without jostling the seats on _both sides_. I think a weight threshold (or possibly a horizontal-span threshold) is reasonable for this occupation. ~~~ Stevvo Sometimes it feels like British Airways must have a _minimum_ BMI requirement for female flight attendants. ------ basicplus2 "160cm-tall Ms Hassim, that meant her weight could be no greater than 61kg" 61kg is NOT a healthy weight for this height, BMI is a crock [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268439) ~~~ jiofih Indeed, it’s pretty much overweight. ~~~ mr_toad Only slightly from a medical standpoint, and a fair way from being obese. ------ tropo Flight attendants should be able to rescue the 99th percentile passengers. This means carrying the passenger, unconscious or screaming, to the door of the aircraft and beyond. There may be rough ground or water. The passenger should be moved to safety, well beyond any fuel slick or fire. ~~~ cafard The 95th percentile for women is about 260 lb., for men about 285. I am not a small man, but at my fittest around age 30, I would have had a hell of a time getting somebody that weight out of an airline seat and out the door as dead or resisting weight.

GitLab 8.12 Released with Cycle Analytics and Global Code Search - dwaxe https://about.gitlab.com/2016/09/22/gitlab-8-12-released/ ====== sytse One of the highlights in this release for me are the Review Apps and the autoscaling CI on Kubernetes. Questions are welcome.

Read Discover Meteor for free today - sgdesign http://free.discovermeteor.com/ ====== pchristensen Wrote up my thoughts on DM: [http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/meteor- discovered/](http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/meteor-discovered/) tl;dr: A+ tech book that I wish every tech writer would read and take to heart, plus Meteor looks great. ------ hrjet I started reading the book, and half way through realized that the meteor sites will not work when client side javascript is disabled. Is that correct? (I realize that a workaround could be to crawl your own site and serve it statically, but that's prone to pitfalls). ~~~ meira You're half right. Meteor is a great approach to create fast, responsive and reactive web apps and it relies on javascript. It makes no sense to disable javascript to navigate. If the problem is with search crawlers, the spiderable module take care of it (but it'll improve). ------ timobile Nice idea to give free access to the book for one day. I bought it a few weeks ago can really recommend it. At the moment this is the only Meteor book I am aware of that covers all necessary topics to get you started. I experienced one minor issue though concerning reading the book on a kindle (paperwhite): [https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/book/issues/120](https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/book/issues/120) Luckily there is a workaround for that by sending the PDF to your @kindle.com email address using the subject "convert". This fixes the font issues. ------ gvnonor Nice book, covers all the fundamentals well. Thanks to the authors for this gesture. Now a digression, while Meteor hasn't hit 1.0 yet, I still wish it had some form of MVVM support baked in instead of the simple/dumb templating with Handlebars. I find Handlebars incredibly frustrating due to its lack of propert reusability/composability. It makes sense for server side apps that have a small client-side codebase, but on its own it's seriously limited and you end up generating hacky html strings using helpers. ------ gabrarlz So well written. Git commits and the instances are such a nice way to show the code running! Congrats and thanks! ~~~ sgdesign Thanks! We think it's especially useful since it lets you take advantage of GitHub's code browsing features (diffs, history, search, etc.) ~~~ gabrarlz The only downside is to keep it dated since Meteor are changing fast. ------ krrishd I'm so disappointed right now. I've really wanted to read this book for wuite a while, and it had to be available for free on finals week...really good book though, I guess it'll be worth saving up for considering how much more than a book it is. ------ gales Discover Meteor is worth every penny! In addition to being a handy resource, it's also kept very up-to-date, for example, numerous chapters were recently rewritten to use iron-router. ------ sgdesign We've also set up a chatroom if you have any questions: [http://chat.discovermeteor.com](http://chat.discovermeteor.com) ------ aryehhoffman I purchased the book, and was happy with the purchase. However, the continuing emails attempting to "upsell" me have been a bit annoying. ~~~ sgdesign Sorry about that! We do send out emails when we have a special discount going on, but since that's only every couple months I thought that would be acceptable. Feel free to unsubscribe from our mailing list if you'd prefer not to receive them though. ~~~ arunoda Isn't is possible to send those upsell messages to those who've not bought the book? ------ mot0rola This was one of the most pleasurable experiences I had building an app from a book. Kudos to all on the meteor team! ------ wavesounds How about 1/2 off the print edition while your at it? :-) ------ magic5227 You should have made people Tweet or share a link to get access first! ------ ouuyeah DiscoverMeteor rules! [http://tlk.io/discovermeteor](http://tlk.io/discovermeteor)

Big media, not popular bloggers, dominate the conversation on Twitter - cfontes http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/14/big-media-not-bloggers-with-the-most-followers-dominate-the-conversation-on-twitter/ ====== tomrod Background? What is all this?

Project Axiom: dynamic infra toolkit for red teamers and bug bounty hunters - aspenmayer https://github.com/pry0cc/axiom ====== aspenmayer Announcement thread on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/pry0cc/status/1262575988715782156](https://twitter.com/pry0cc/status/1262575988715782156) ‘Project Axiom is a set of utilities for managing a small dynamic infrastructure setup for bug bounty and pentesting.’ Packages right now: aquatone httprobe subfinder assetfinder gf masscan kxss jq SecLists gobuster nmap waybackurls amass anti-burl Golang (setup, path configured, latest version) hakrawler Zdns ffuf gau dirb subjack SQLMap fbrobe getjs openvpn dalfox

Councilmember Grosso re-introduces legislation to decriminalize sex work in DC - troydavis http://www.davidgrosso.org/grosso-analysis/2019/6/3/councilmember-david-grosso-re-introduces-legislation-to-decriminalize-sex-work-in-dc ====== troydavis A DC council hearing about this bill is occurring today: [https://twitter.com/hashtag/decrimnowdc?f=tweets&vertical=de...](https://twitter.com/hashtag/decrimnowdc?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash)

New SARS-like virus in Saudi Arabia - ck2 http://qz.com/80624/the-deadly-new-sars-like-virus-in-saudi-arabia-is-shrouded-in-mystery/ ====== qompiler The bird flu/SARS is also back in China [http://news.sky.com/story/1086087/bird-flu-death-toll-in- chi...](http://news.sky.com/story/1086087/bird-flu-death-toll-in-china- reaches-27) ------ andor I can't scroll on qz.com unless I enable Javascript. Please fix the CSS! ~~~ ck2 Yeah that site is so weird - I have it fixed in stylish and forget that other people cannot see it properly. Try the Atlantic's article: [http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/05/ncov-saudi- ara...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/05/ncov-saudi- arabia/64798/)

Laid-back and Passionate - lawira http://vesess.com/laid-back-and-passionate/ ====== hkmurakami _> Even then, though, we will stay a small team, with ‘satisfactory’ goals, and hopefully living ‘good enough’ lives._ IMO, a realignment of corporate objectives from "maximizing shareholder returns" to "giving reasonable returns (to investors)" should ideally develop in tandem as well. We're all out of whack these days; hopefully we can regain some balance to society's expectation of our careers and lives one of these days. ~~~ _pmf_ > IMO, a realignment of corporate objectives from "maximizing shareholder > returns" to "giving reasonable returns (to investors)" should ideally > develop in tandem as well. For publicly traded companies, not maximizing shareholder returns can be a criminal offense. This is the real problem. ~~~ hkmurakami Are you sure about this? The Johnson & Johnson credo which I posted above goes directly against your claim, and so does Costco's operations (where they have resisted multiple calls by Wall Street to increase prices and reduce employee pay and benefits) I can see that not maximizing returns can cause a storm in the shareholder meetings, but can you give a source for it being a "criminal offense" to refrain from doing so? ~~~ liljimmytables Also, as swombat observed: the criteria for maximising shareholder returns long-term might be (and almost certainly is) very different to the short-term milking of the company for profit. Intuitively, a law requiring that company decisions favour maximum profit over N years would be ambiguous to the point of unenforceable. ------ kinleyd Laid-back and passionate - that's an awesome combination in my book. Great post.

Jeffrey Katzenberg Blames Pandemic for Quibi’s Rough Start - adrian_mrd https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/business/media/jeffrey-katzenberg-quibi-coronavirus.html ====== TechBro8615 The guy made a boring app that nobody asked for or wanted, and assumed he could dump money into advertising dollars and endorsements to drive growth. That’s not how social apps grow. It’s got nothing to do with Coronavirus.

Make Ruby Great Again [video] - jm3 https://vimeo.com/165527044#t=28m10s ====== jm3 This link jumps to the actual beginning of the talk, skipping the preamble which is mostly specific to RSpec, focusing instead on the crisis the Ruby community currently faces[1] and the opportunity / responsibility the community has to respond. [1] namely that the shiny newness of M.E.A.N. and Node/React/Angular plus the widely discussed performance challenges of Ruby & Rails have put Ruby + Rails on the back burner in the zeitgeist. ------ Tomte "Google is not gonna drop Go. Unless they feel like it." _g_

Rails Code Quality Checklist - fogus http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/09/rails-code-quality-checklist-here.html ====== fogus And the linked checklist: [http://www.matthewpaulmoore.com/ruby-on-rails-code- quality-c...](http://www.matthewpaulmoore.com/ruby-on-rails-code-quality- checklist)

HappyEdit - an HTML5 Remake of Vim - vesln http://www.vimninjas.com/2012/10/03/happyedit-an-html5-remake-of-vim/ ====== duiker101 Why not just use Vim, that we all know is powerful and has already all it needs?

Ask HN: How do you get your first power user? - helios In pg's 5 Founders essay (http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html) he references Paul Buchheit's advice that "it's better, initially, to make a small number of users really love you than a large number kind of like you."<p>I write a blog (http://joonreport.com) and I've been struggling to get a small number of users to really love it. So I'm hoping the HN/YC community could chime in on how they got their first power user (in my case, reader)? Where did you find them (did they find you?) / How did you find them? How did you get your first user to love what you're doing -- to love what you've created?<p>For example:<p>-Did you email your friends explaining what it is and hopefully it just clicked with someone, at which point, you engaged in a constant dialogue with them?<p>-Did you submit your work to as many bloggers as possible, with the goal of them writing a story?<p>If you get a story, it seems to me that this may generate some initial traffic, but I don't think (I could definitely be wrong) this is the best solution to getting your first power user. Getting that first user who really loves you.<p>Anyway, any input you provide is much appreciated. ====== exline I feel it is a bit of stretch to compare a product user to a blog reader. Having users who love your product will a) point out things that need fixing, b) give lots of great feedback. A product is something they have to use (you hope), its solving a problem. I don't feel that way about a blog. I suppose a great reader will also provide feedback which is what you are asking about. Sorry no ideas here. I have some users who love my software, but I rarely hear from them because the software just works. But then again my product is rather boring and not fun to talk about. I got my users by having software that solves their problem and I provide top notch customer support. ~~~ helios i think you're right. with endless choice in terms of news, analysis, opinion, etc., it's difficult to get people's attention. but i think the general definition of creativity -- the production of something original and useful -- is the answer to my dilemma. in other words, i think YC's motto of "make something people want" definitely applies here. the answer is probably that people don't want just another blog to read. just another blog doesn't fix or solve anything for people. but i do think the problem of getting initial users who love what you've created is a problem for all creators. and i was hoping a useful discussion about that would be the focus of this thread. anyway, i'll keep tinkering. thanks for the input. ------ coryl I might think that the issue lies within the actual product/market fit. You really have to make life better for the power user, as that pretty much defines how they become power users. If your product doesn't or can't make life AMAZING for some small group of people, then I don't think you can get power users no matter how hard you try.

Tracking Down a Python Memory Leak - bbernard https://benbernardblog.com/tracking-down-a-freaky-python-memory-leak/ ====== guyzero "What's possible, though, is accumulating Python objects in memory and keeping strong references to them12. For instance, this happens when we build a cache (for example, a dict) that we never clear. The cache will hold references to every single item and the GC will never be able to destroy them, that is, unless the cache goes out of scope." Back when I worked with a Java memory profiling tool (JProbe!) we called these "lingerers". Not leaks, but the behaviour was similar. ~~~ stinos _The cache will hold references to every single item and the GC will never be able to destroy them, that is, unless the cache goes out of scope_ Had the reverse happening a while ago and it's nasty as well: some C++ objects were holding references to a Python objects, but due to the GC not scanning those memory regions (they're not Python-owned after all), the Python objetcs would get GC'd and all hell broke loose when the C++ tried to access the now dead Python objects. Solution is forced 'lingering', i.e. is applying some RAII adding the Python objects to a global dict and removing them when the C++ objects go out of scope. ~~~ winstonewert Ugh... No. That's not how Python's GC works. Python is reference counted. This was happening because you didn't increment the reference count for python objects you were referencing from C++. Your RAII should increment/decrement reference counts on the object, not place objects into a global dict. That's the "correct" way to reference python objects. Python's GC doesn't scan memory in the same way other languages do. Instead, it detects cycles between python objects. As long as you follow the reference counting rules correctly, you shouldn't have to worry about it. (Unless you need to detect cycles involving your C++ objects.) ~~~ stinos _Ugh... No. That 's not how Python's GC works._ You assume CPython, or some other reference counted implementation though. I'm talking about MicroPython which uses mark&sweep. And which I obviously should have mentioned but I guess I was tired and I didn't. ------ tantalor Spoiler alert, the leak is in libxml2, not Python code. ~~~ Animats This sort of thing is why calling C from Python is a marginal idea. Debugging such C is tough, especially if it manipulates Python objects in complex ways. There are many invariants of the Python data structures which must be carefully maintained by hand in C code. Getting one wrong will result in obscure bugs like the parent. "Pickle", Python's old seralizer, had a similar leak problem. It has a cache. You can reuse a Pickle stream, which is done in interprocess communication. But the cache of previously-send objects wasn't being cleared at the end of each Pickle block. I found that, did a workaround, and submitted a bug report. Not sure it was ever fixed properly. I still have a bug report in on CPickle, a "faster" implementation of Pickle written in C.[1] In a complicated situation with multiple threads using CPickle, memory becomes corrupted and the program will crash. It doesn't happen using Python Pickle, so I just quit using CPickle. The bug report got the usual "reproduce in a simpler situation" reply to make it go away, and the bug report remains open. It may be the same bug as this one [2] from 2012, although I doubt it. For parsing HTML, I use html4lib. It's slower, but it's all in Python. [1] [http://bugs.python.org/issue23655](http://bugs.python.org/issue23655) [2] [http://bugs.python.org/issue12680](http://bugs.python.org/issue12680) ~~~ bbernard I've had quite a few issues with cPickle myself, so I see what you mean. Indeed, Python packages built over C extensions can be quite hard to debug, as seen with lxml. But what makes it even harder is the fact that lxml is partly built using Cython... so you deal with Python code, C code generated with Cython, and pure C code (libxml2). ~~~ dom0 While Cython - in my experience - doesn't have many bugs, it still has some, and can, at times, generate blaringly wrong C code (iirc one simple example: slice assigmnent to a uint8_t* tries to call a Python runtime function on the uint8_t* as a PyObject*). ~~~ bbernard Good to know! My only experience so far with Cython comes from lxml. It's a weird language that seems to have a lot of corner cases, though. Just like C++/CLI. ~~~ dom0 Yes. Yes it does. Also, because it works on _two_ type systems it has many cases were you'll want to take a look at the generated C code to verify that the "cheap path" was taken and no intermediary Python objects are constructed or Py operators are used -- if performance matters, that is. On the other hand it is a radically simpler way to write bindings that also contain logic, or to write rather fast code without straying to far from Python. Plus, it can cythonize almost all code, even very dynamic code with closures, which will still often improve performance on it's own (no interpreter, but still Python runtime for every op). And that is then a nice base to do further optimizations. ------ mwcampbell The JVM community tends to prefer pure Java implementations of everything, rather than using existing C libraries like Python and Ruby. Some may see this as a bad thing, but it definitely has its benefits. One particularly relevant benefit in the context of this article is that the amount of code that can leak memory, in the conventional sense, is dramatically reduced. I suppose the same thing is happening in the Node.js ecosystem, though I don't recall if Node uses native code to parse XML. ~~~ greglindahl If you don't mind potentially slow code, that's a fine thing. Once you've measured and discovered that you're losing out on a lot of performance, it's worth evaluating whether the risk of leaks can be baked away via careful testing, which doesn't appear to have been done at all in the library used in this blog post. ~~~ brianwawok Well pure Java code is 10x to 100x faster than pure Python code. So you aren't exactly accepting slowness in that case. ~~~ greglindahl If you say so. That's not what I've observed, especially if you're talking about code where Python is the glue and all the heavy lifting is done in C or C++. ~~~ brianwawok I am comparing Java to Python. Not Java to Python code wrapping C++ code. Because in that case, we would be really comparing Java to C++ code. Which I am happy to do, but not what I did. ~~~ greglindahl This whole thread was about memory leaks caused by not sticking to a single language. ------ module0000 tldr; libxml2's C implementation leaked memory, author tracked it down. Kudos to the author for their persistence in digging down to the root of the problem. A lot of people would throw their hands up and decide to recycle the process every <N> seconds rather than analyze it to the depth the author did. ~~~ bbernard I'm the author of the post, so thanks a lot for your kind remarks. Now, the problem appears to be in libxml2, but... it's only partly true. I assure you that the best is yet to come :) ------ gravypod > "But if we're strictly speaking about Python objects within pure Python > code, then no, memory leaks are not possible - at least not in the > traditional sense of the term. The reason is that Python has its own garbage > collector (GC), so it should take care of cleaning up unused objects." I have a hard time beliving this. Java can have memory leaks so why couldn't Python? ~~~ zipfle I think that the author is defining memory leaks as permanently out of scope but not deallocated memory. In that sense I don't know of anything in vanilla Python, or Java, that would qualify as a memory leak. In the more intuitive sense of a memory leak being any failure to make objects available to garbage collection, (such as by retaining references to them in an unexpected place) leading to unchecked increases in a program's memory footprint, memory leaks are possible in either language. ------ dekhn I've used the gc module, with get_referers and get_referents, to track down various leaks. This only really helps with python-allocated object. It's trivial to end up with an unexpected strong reference. Weak references are the right way to deal with cache objects, imho. ~~~ dom0 > Weak references are the right way to deal with cache objects, imho. Yet, I disagree ;) Whether a weakref is the correct thing to use or not depends _entirely_ on the purpose of the cache. I often find myself using caches were weakref would not be very useful, because it would cool the cache a lot. ------ partycoder Reminds me of myself tracing a memory leak in a node app loading a core dump into an IllumOS VM with mdb_v8. Not so simple/friendly/happy after all. (You could argue that you could generate a heap snapshot with v8-profiler but I was against time). ~~~ bcantrill Would be curious for detail on your experiences; we do this a lot (we developed mdb_v8) and we've continued to extend/develop mdb_v8 to make it easier -- but trying to debug node memory growth is not something I would every characterize as simple, friendly or happy (despite our best efforts).

Microsoft could be unveiling Teams, its Slack competitor, next week - jonbaer http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/microsoft-could-be-unveiling-teams-its-slack-competitor-next-week/ ====== thecrumb Why?

Visualization of global income as a street - leventhan https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/ ====== AstralStorm Congratulations to gapminder for making a mobile version of the site that does not work in Firefox. Scrolling is prevented. (desktop version works just fine)

Airbnb rentals cut deep into SF housing stock, report says - lladnar http://www.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/sf-report-says-units-rented-for-short-term-reduce-long-term-housing/Content?oid=2929888 ====== kqr2 SF also needs to study how its own city policy affects housing stock. From [http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/12/23/sf_now_has_more_tha...](http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/12/23/sf_now_has_more_than_50000_units_in_the_housing_pipeline.php) : Although SF has 50000 housing units in the pipeline, it supposedly won't be completed for decades. It takes a very long time to complete a housing project: The median time of completion for projects that have been finished in the past year is 43 months from the time of first filing with SF Planning to opening As a concrete example, from [http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-San- Fran...](http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/How-San-Francisco- creates-its-own-housing-crisis-5139869.php) It took 6 years just for _approvals_ to convert a closed down Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant to about 10 units of housing. ~~~ Chevalier And the weirdest thing is when you wonder who the hell was protesting the approvals. NOBODY thinks a KFC is superior to a modern apartment building. (And even if one did, you could just allocate the first floor of all buildings to commercial leases and let KFC move in where it wants.) As far as I can tell, the only obstacle to new construction are existing property owners who fear that the appreciation of their old property's value will diminish as supply finally expands to meet demand. While they're probably right in the very short run, I'm pretty sure that turning SF into Copenhagen -- that is, 5-7 floor buildings, narrow streets dedicated to pedestrians and bikes, mixed usage between residential and commercial purposes, etc. -- would DRAMATICALLY improve long-term property values. So who the hell is fighting to keep SF car-dependent, dirty, old, and sprawling? I just can't understand the resistance to new construction. \- - - - - Edit: To answer my own question, aside from property owners, we know that car owners are ferociously defensive of parking minimums and low density. The idea is to ensure constant free parking anywhere they go and to discourage traffic they think slows them down. Trying not to sound as contemptuous as I feel, such people are making very basic errors in logic when they believe pedestrians add to, rather than subtract from, automobile congestion. Also, literally this entire country has been razed to accommodate automobile interests with the partial exception of the urban cores of New York and San Francisco. One would think that if driving were so important, such people might decide to live in an existing sprawling strip mall rather than insist on turning SF into one. ~~~ x0x0 Well, many people are living in the housing that would have to be torn down, and replaced with non-rent controlled housing. They certainly oppose it. Others don't care to live across from heavy construction for a couple years, or see already heavily oversubscribed parking and public transport in their neighborhoods get significantly worse. Try getting a seat on bart at 24th st for most of the day. Or sometimes even getting on the busses in upper haight during commute hours. As for cars, well, the difference between nyc and sf is that in the former, you can live without a car, and in sf, it is very difficult to live an adult life without a car. To list off many examples re sf: there are huge holes in public transportation, both temporally, safety wise (particularly for a petite woman), and geographically; there is not the same delivery culture for takeout, or laundry; grocery stores are far away from many places and don't deliver, though instacart helps some; there often aren't gyms or other services in reasonable (10 min) walking distance for large chunks of the city. We lived car-free in nyc and needed at least one car in sf. And once you have that car, and commit to the $600-$800/mo it costs, then you want to use it. Part of the reason to put up with occasional public transport headaches in nyc is you're saving the cost of a car. My take on public transport in sf is it would be worth it if the idiots that run what is, after all, a very rich city got their act together and improved public transport first rather than attempting to push people to not use cars in the vain hope that eventually muni and bart may be improved. ps -- muni is wildly expensive compared to any other competent city, plus very slow ps2 -- I dare say that most people who will disagree with my contention about transport in sf either haven't lived here or are young, able bodied, live in one of the few neighborhoods that are well-served, don't have kids, and often eat out or at work ~~~ ripley12 "muni is wildly expensive compared to any other competent city" This is just so not true. Transit is much more expensive in both Tokyo and London. Agreed about SF transit being awful though. ~~~ x0x0 combining the end-user and city-paid prices, it is see, eg [http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-muni-death- spiral/C...](http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/the-muni-death- spiral/Content?oid=2176739) • Your Muni is slow. With an average vehicle speed of 8.1 mph, it is far and away the slowest major urban transit system in the nation. While some of this can be blamed on San Francisco's congestion and density, there are myriad methods of speeding up service other agencies have adopted that Muni hasn't. This isn't just an inconvenience for Muni's declining ridership; it's a major financial drain on a beleaguered system. Slow vehicle speeds force Muni to spend more money to provide less service. Muni's lethargy is literally costing it millions. • For these and other reasons, Muni spends more to operate its vehicles than virtually any comparable transit agency. For every mile Muni runs a bus in this city, it spends $19.21; comparable agencies nationwide pay between $10 and $13. For every mile Muni runs a light-rail vehicle, it throws down $24.37; comparable rail services spend between $12 and $22. ~~~ ripley12 That is an interesting link, thanks. I do wish it was better about providing sources though. ------ dottedmag Welcome to Californian People's Republic.

Hello WWDC - aaronbrethorst http://wwdcwall.com/ ====== catoc Background info on how it was made: [https://medium.com/@fz/reversing-the- wall-92f22a2ad538#.q0m7...](https://medium.com/@fz/reversing-the- wall-92f22a2ad538#.q0m7omaqj)

This new App delivers trending content on any topic across all social networks - srm284 Trendis, is a new app from Cornell graduate Swapnil Mengawade that scans social networks looking for the latest trending content of choice and delivers them in one place. Facebook has selected Trendis for its early stage startup mentorship programme, FB Start. The App has already generated huge user interest and looks to redirect the course of social media engagement.<p>San Francisco, CA-03&#x2F;31&#x2F;2017—Each day mountains of online content is uploaded on platforms like Facebook and YouTube. Estimates are that 4.75 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook daily) and close to 400 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube each minute. There is so much content that it becomes difficult to find exactly what you want, when you want it or see what other people are looking at and enjoying. The mechanisms of Facebook and YouTube deliver content based on subscriptions and follows, which doesn’t often extend to new content that the user might be interested in. Trendis captures the latest trending content across all social networks every hour and delivers only the content that matches users interests in form of a social magazine. This content can be saved and catalogued into named folders, commented on or shared with friends using any channel (mail, whatsapp, message, twitter, facebook, etc.). “We knew we had a good idea with the app so seeing how many downloads we’ve gotten early on just confirmed to us that we did something right,” says Swapnil. “There is a lot of value in the app, but when asked what do we believe is our best feature we always point to our powerful search engine that gets real time content from multiple social networks in form of videos, photos and articles pertaining to the users search criteria.”<p>Trendis is currently available on Google Play Store and App Store. For more information visit:www.trendis.com. ====== ycombtej Awesome app and concept!

KiCad 4.0.0 is Out - craigjb http://kicad-pcb.org/post/release-4.0.0/ ====== tomkinstinch I've designed a dozen or so boards using KiCAD, some in commercial production. You definitely have to get into its way of thinking, but once you do KiCAD works very well (as long as you only need design-rule checking and not more complex simulation). Using keyboard shortcuts allows you to work quickly once you learn what they are. I haven't tried the new version, but from the previous stable release the feedback I have is that it needs better component and footprint management. As an open source project it should be easy for users to not only use components (this needs work), but also to contribute new ones. If you make a component locally there should be an automatic offer to upload it to an online component repository. The other thing is that I wish I could edit component fields in something approximating a spreadsheet view. I always maintain a separate BOM spreadsheet to track things beyond reference number. I'd like to list component IDs directly in KiCAD, but some (especially passive components) have very long names that clutter the schematic and silkscreen. I'd like the ability for component names to have "display" and "full" views, with the schematic showing the former and a generated BOM showing the latter. Ideally more fields would be built in too, so it wouldn't be necessary to add keys for extra fields. Something like: description, chemistry / type, package, mfg, part number mfg, part number mouser, value, tolerance, qty, reference, unit ($), ext ($), 1k pricing ($), ext 1k ($), datasheet, note This flowchart captures the KiCAD experience pretty well (though the "PCB Done" step is decidedly more time consuming than its symbol suggests):[http://docs.kicad- pcb.org/en/getting_started_in_kicad.html#k...](http://docs.kicad- pcb.org/en/getting_started_in_kicad.html#kicad-work-flow-overview) ~~~ reportingsjr Just a heads up, at least in the latest version you can add extra fields to components in eeschema. There are a handful of scripts out there that take these extra fields and generate more useful BOMs with them. KiCost is one and bomtool ([https://github.com/cpavlina/bomtool](https://github.com/cpavlina/bomtool)) is another. bomtool has more of what you are looking for, where for passives you can specify a value, tolerance, package, etc it will just search digikey and pick a component that works. The other things you mentioned I 100% agree with. more advanced DRC is something that a lot of people ask for. Not sure it will happen any time soon though. ------ StavrosK Does anyone have a good resource for learning to design PCBs? I have a breadboard with some sensors that I want to make a PCB out of, just so the wires are tidy, but I watched an Eagle tutorial and it looked like there are tens of easy to make mistakes that will ruin your board. I'm not sure if that's true, but if it is, does anyone know of a resource that will at least teach me how to make this simple PCB avoiding the most common errors? ~~~ elijahparker It's not really a tutorial, but there are some nice tips here: [http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical- articles/practical...](http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical- articles/practical-pcb-layout-tips/) For a prototype PCB fab, [http://www.oshpark.com](http://www.oshpark.com) is my favorite. ~~~ iheartmemcache This is actually a real good guide to go along with your link, which is also good -- it mentioned Kelvin sensing as the second item, haha -- for young players: [http://physics111.lib.berkeley.edu/Physics111/BSC/Readings/O...](http://physics111.lib.berkeley.edu/Physics111/BSC/Readings/OpAmps/OpAmp%20Applications/Web_Ch4_final.pdf) Don't expect to be designing 6 layer stack-ups or anything but this + Horwitz might get someone up to speed fairly quickly ------ b1gtuna Would anyone use Kicad/Eagle these days if he/she has access to Altium Designer? ~~~ nuand Would anyone use Altium, KiCad, or Eagle if they had access to OrCAD, Allegro, or PADS? Having used all of those tools, I can say that KiCad and Eagle will remain relegated to the low layer count, and at most moderately populated PCBs. Altium still has issues with large designs, but it's got its advantages, it's very easy to work with industrial designers within the Altium ecosystem. Altium also supports some decent auto-routing and DFM tools but does not have a simulator of any kind. Cadence's OrCAD and Allegro offerings, and Mentor Graphic's PADS suite have tools for everything from designing with microvia (laser etched single layer vias) to highly configurable constraint management tools that allow for configuring some very powerful auto-routers and interactive tools. The big two tools also have simulators like PSICE, and integration with RF design tools like Keysight ADS, Genesys, Momentum, Hyperlynx, and HFSS. If your design has any RF components or high speed buses like DDR, PCIe and USB, you need to run your designs through these tools to verify your design. Eagle, and KiCAD are great for breakout boards. Altium can be used for some pretty simple products. But I'd never use anything but Cadence or Mentor Graphics tools for anything that had a signal that operated at more than 50MHz. ~~~ blackguardx I think your Altium experience might be a little stale. Microvias in Altium are really easy since at least three or four years ago. It also supports basic SPICE simulation, but I've never used it. I use external SPICE and RF tools for most of my simulation needs. I've had good success designing RF boards in Altium and the only reason I would want to use Mentor Graphics would be if I had some massive digital design with high speed buses everywhere. You get what you pay for, but Altium is a solid tool at a decent price. ~~~ reportingsjr KiCad also has support for microvias and blind/buried vias in this release. There are a few high speed design tools (trace length tuning and differential pair routing) that were added and I expect more RF support will come in the next release or two. ------ bcg1 > New s-expression based pcb format (.kicad_pcb) Rock on KiCad ------ andyl How does KiCad compare to Eagle? ~~~ Ao7bei3s Favorably. Obviously, it's free and open source, with no board size / layer limitations. On the other hand, Eagle is still much more widely used in the DIY community, and most my-first-PCB-like tutorials are Eagle-based. Kicad has for years suffered from the binary release being really, really outdated. Kicad development feels pretty fast-paced. It has most or all of Eagles features, and some nice advanced features Eagle doesn't have. Especially it's PCB routing support is much better. For example, it supports push shove routing[1] and automatic trace length matching. It also shows the netname on pads (in Eagle you have to use "show" all the time). On the schematic side, It has had hierarchical sheets for many years now, whereas Eagle only gained hierarchical design support earlier this year in version 7. Things like that. There are minor workflow differences in some places. For example, it uses key combinations instead of typed commands. There's a netlist generation step between schematic editing and board editing, so going back and forth between the two isn't as straightforward as it is in Eagle. [1] If you're used to Eagle, this may blow your mind: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C02D0_kNQeM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C02D0_kNQeM) ~~~ andyjohnson0 Can you comment on the situation with component libraries for kicad? How does it compare to Eagle? I've recently tried Fritzing but keep finding that some components aren't available. Defining my own is kind of tedious. ~~~ TD-Linux I generally end up using an online tool [1] for high pin count parts. It's not the best though, someday I will write something better. BTW, in most professional contexts, parts are all created by the engineer - vendor part libraries are pretty rare. I know Altium is trying to change that, maybe soon we will see something similar happen with KiCAD. [1] [http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php](http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php) ~~~ andyjohnson0 Thanks for the link: very useful!

Apple 'accidentally' enabled iCloud and syncs data to cloud - jgrahamc https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/849534060049444866 ====== nsnick It might be possible for the government to get a court order compelling Apple to turn on iCloud syncing for particular individuals as a way to get around device encryption. Maybe that is what is going on here. ~~~ apostacy I honestly would not have been surprised to find out that Apple automatically created iCloud IDs for people if they didn't have one already.

How I got into YC as a non-technical single founder - Alex3917 http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2011/04/how-i-got-into-yc-as-a-non-technical-single-founder.html ====== 6ren I'm sorry, this is completely irrelevant, but Einstein _did_ design refrigerators and they were commercially unsuccessful: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator> ( _edited for clarity_ ) ~~~ byrneseyeview _That's the essence of a startup: having brilliant people do work that's beneath them. Big companies try to hire the right person for the job. Startups win because they don't-- because they take people so smart that they would in a big company be doing "research," and set them to work instead on problems of the most immediate and mundane sort. Think Einstein designing refrigerators._ <http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html> I wonder if that was deliberate. I also wonder if references to YC lore raise or lower your odds of getting in. Hopefully this doesn't sound snarky--PG's essays have lots of allusions that I end up referencing without remembering the source. I'd expect to do that much more in a startup-related context. ~~~ 6ren I think pg was just creating a vivid image, so its factual truth is irrelevant. I'm nonplussed at how often pg sums up my own views. One cause is that the books I read about startups are based on SV stories - while pg talks to the people who actually did them, batches of startups who are currently doing them, and he's in the story himself. Also, I've likely read some of what he's read (e.g. The Innovator's Dilemma). So, I find YC lore very helpful, because of the truths it contains. But citing it purely _as_ lore (without understanding it) would probably count as a severe negative. I'm not sure about the case of providing an alternative expression of the same idea, especially if pg's is more succinct/appropriate - but it's always helpful to speak the same dialect as your audience, if only for communication. ------ jamesbkel "Have a mindmap with the answers to all the questions they might ask." Really loved this piece of advice and highly recommend. It's something I always do before an interview/presentation/important talk. 1) As Alex mentions, this is FAR more useful in the moment than a list of bullet points or the like. 2) Like a lot of note-taking, I find that the act of thinking about and creating the mindmap has advantages in and of itself. Often the act of carefully creating it means that I don't actually need to refer to it later. I personally find this with a lot of note taking. I spend a lot of time carefully taking notes - generally a bunch of notes, comments and citations connected by a bunch of lines in different colored inks, kind of a mix of "traditional" note taking and a bit of a mindmap. The time I spend really thinking about how to best present and relate all the ideas on a single page often leads to internalizing the content so well that I never really need the notes unless I'm coming back months later. ------ donofrip This is really helpful. I'm a non-technical founder, and I'm glad to hear that there is hope. Do you think having applied previously was a positive or a negative for you? Do you think it matters that these applications were for different ideas? I'm just trying to figure out when I should apply--if it is better to wait and develop something fully functional before applying or applying now with the caveat that I need the funding to help develop the idea. I am planning to apply with a technical co-founder, but I have concerns about how we could effectively develop our product without some substantial financial backing. I don't want to put something out there half-assed and have it fail because we didn't have the right tools, only to then have someone with the resources to execute steal the idea. ~~~ stevenj If you don't put something out there half-assed, you'll wait too long to ship. Nothing is ever truly finished. You just ship it. ~~~ r00fus Corollary: fail early, fail often. Failure is often the best learning experience you can receive (if you're ready to receive it). ------ gcv I love this quote from the article: 'The coach of the Yale rowing team has a saying about high school recruiting: "7:20 2,000m time, 720 SATs. 6:20 2,000m time, 620 SATs."' In other words, it pays to be a winner. ~~~ yakto Hmmmm, I read it as it _costs_ to be a winner, as in the faster rowers have a lower SAT score (presumably from training more than studying). ~~~ matthewslotkin wrong. the idea is that if you have a good time, yale will look the other way when it comes to your academics. the better your time, the less the school cares about your SATs. the idea is extremely applicable to everything in the real world, where excellence in one dimension compensates for mediocrity in another in the eyes of others. think attractive girls or star football players. a valuable life lesson. ~~~ Alex3917 This is correct. "a valuable life lesson." It makes sense though. I never understood why classes you fail are averaged into your GPA as a 0.0 instead of just ignored. After all, the amount of stuff you don't know or can't do is always going to be effectively infinite. So how is getting an A in one class and failing 99 others any different from getting an A in one class and not taking 99 others? The current system is just an attempt to punish people for wasting university resources, it has zero to do with actually assessing the abilities of a person. ~~~ byrneseyeview That's what dropping classes is for. If you try to do something and fail--especially something that the median undergrad in your school can do successfully--it says something about you. ~~~ nostrademons That sounds backwards though. If you try to do something and fail, it should be _more_ positive than if you don't try to do it at all. ~~~ byrneseyeview For some pursuits, yes. For a corporate job, which is the default next step from a university education, no: a company would rather hire someone who knows their limits than someone who tests them, especially since the former has a more established market price. ~~~ abossy How does one know his or her limits without testing them? I'd much rather hire the kid that attempted 99 failed classes. ~~~ matthewslotkin the way you're thinking of classes is very romantic and idealistic. another way to think of them that may better model the way employers think about your GPA is to think of your GPA as a signaling game in game theory. your GPA is less of a reflection of what you know and more a reflection of your ability. if you have a high GPA you've demonstrated yourself to be a high ability intellectual, whereas if you have a low GPA you've demonstrated yourself to be a low ability intellectual. in this model the content of the class is completely irrelevant, but some employers may just be trying to employ based on potential ability, rather than on specific knowledge base or content exposure. for this reason, a kid that failed 99 classes has "signaled" that he is a low ability type. while this kid has great resolve and has probably been exposed to some interesting things, it is unlikely that his ability is very high, and therefore employers would not be psyched about hiring him. obviously this kind of model gives a very bleak valuation of education, but i think its a thoughtful one that probably is truer than we'd all like to think. ------ stevenj Thanks for writing this post. >When it came time to reapply, I did so with someone who was widely recognized as one of the smartest technical folks on HN Who was it? \--- I'm a bit surprised that YC hasn't funded another non-technical, single founder yet. Even though there's only one Steve Jobs, I'd bet several non-technical people will go on to build great tech companies in the future. Perhaps these people have just found quality technical talent to partner with, so they're co-founders. ~~~ Alex3917 "Who was it?" <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=639976> ~~~ stevenj How long had you known dfranke prior to applying? ~~~ Alex3917 I had known him for a couple years, but we'd only started working together recently. That was probably the biggest reason, although when we got to the interview we discovered that rtm had apparently done his dissertation on something similar, so he had some technical objections also. ------ gcheong All the references to rowing reminded me of these guys: <http://www.rowrenegade.org/> . I used to go out regularly for their recreational rows (<http://www.rowrenegade.org/rec_rows.html>) on the weekend and would recommend it to anyone who happens to live in the SFBay area, or is just visiting, as a fun and interesting experience and a cheap way to get out on the bay. ------ BerislavLopac Oooh, I think Alex has just designed my next business card -- just my name, and underneath it: Google me. ~~~ swalberg Taking it one step further, Matt Mullenweg's old card: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/glsims99/506973719/> ~~~ samtp A bit pompous and egotistical. Just give the person your contact info and stop trying to be cutesy. ~~~ BerislavLopac Well, business cards are by definition pompous and egotistical... <http://youtu.be/qoIvd3zzu4Y> ;) ~~~ samtp or this <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk> ------ adlep Getting in is really a step number 1. Your real goal should be making your "core" idea for the business a success. Being a single, non technical founder in an environment that is very, very technical will present you with a massive challenge ahead... So, good luck... ------ mtw what was the problem here? was it because he was single (against pg's 5th guideline <http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html> ) or because he was non- technical? ------ santana I'm also a non-technical founder and have also proven that "if there's a will, there's a way", the path might be longer but by no means should stop anyone. Congrats. ------ will_lam I still don't really get what Swagapolooza does...so you're a product launch platform in front of influencers? ~~~ Alex3917 It's like a book tour for physical consumer products. That is, if you write a book then your publisher sets you up to speak in 16 or 18 major US cities, but if you've created a product like Bacon Hot Sauce there is no such thing. That's what we're creating with our events, specifically with an audience of the most-followed bloggers and twitter users in each city. The idea is that in recent years new tech startups have been blessed with a ton of amazing opportunities, and we're trying to bring these same opportunities to everyone else. From the bloggers' point of view, one of the ways they create value is by writing about interesting new products, and what we're offering is an ethical and transparent way for them to discover these products while at the same time getting to meet and interact with the entrepreneurs behind them. Here is a good writeup that explains it better than I can: [http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/03/swag...](http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2010/03/swagapalooza_an.php) ~~~ follower "It's like a book tour for physical consumer products." And just like that, I understand your plan. Nicely phrased. ------ OasisG How does a _non-technical_ single founder get "recognized as one of the smartest _technical_ folks on HN"? Other than that, enlightening post. ~~~ byrneseyeview "When it came time to reapply, I did so with someone who was widely recognized as one of the smartest technical folks on HN." ~~~ OasisG Oh duh, I read the "with" as "as". Thx. ~~~ gcheong I did the same thing, then I read his comment on a previous post where he said the same thing and realized my mistake. I wonder if the prior paragraphs where he talks about building his online reputation may have inadvertently primed us to read the sentence that way? ~~~ Alex3917 "I wonder if the prior paragraphs where he talks about building his online reputation may have inadvertently primed us to read the sentence that way?" It's because I wrote this in a hurry so I didn't take as much time to polish the white spacing as I normally would, which makes it more difficult to read. The issue is that there are basically three or four separate ideas that are all chunkified together. I edited that sentence though to at least make it more clear.

How A State Plans to Turn Coal Country into Coding Country - nickdibari https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/us/wyoming-computer-science.html ====== bediger4000 By what process does a state like Wyoming decide to subsidize a particular industry? Because that's what this is, the state of Wyoming subsidizing the tech industry. The USA has apparently decided that all education is just vocational, in service to business, to prepare workers. I guess I'm cool with that, although my own experience with education differs. But what I want to know is how we as a society decide which businesses get the leg up of having an already trained workforce coming out of public schools. The counterpoint here, where some states (Oklahoma and Kansas come to mind) decide to not subsidize any particular industry. The have such worthless public education that they can't find locally-educated workers who can do fractions, or work a micrometer

Startup Weekend Employees win Seattle without disclosing connection - anon_sourgrapes A team composed primarily of Startup Weekend employees won the event in Seattle (evidence below) without disclosing their connection to the SW organization. While SW isn&#x27;t intended to be a contest, the event concludes with celebrity judges awarding prizes. I believe the employees should have, at a minimum, announced who they were. Anyone else see this?<p>The team Red Ride came in 1st place at the Seattle event. For full disclosure, I worked on a different team that I thought could win. When we learned that Red Ride bested us, I congratulated them, accepted a friendly defeat, and genuinely was thankful to be part of the event. Last weekend I learned that one of the group members worked for SW. Curious, I started digging and discovered that 4 of the 6 Red Ride team members currently work for SW. Am I off base this is dishonest?<p>Red Ride homepage with demo: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;redride.squarespace.com&#x2F;<p>SW blog post: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seattle.startupweekend.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;10&#x2F;startup-weekend-seattle-was-awesome-heres-a-recap&#x2F;<p>Redfin blog entry: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.redfin.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-culmination-of-seattle-startup-weekend.html<p>Team:<p>Mohammed A - High School Student<p>Dan Cromer - Software Engineer at SW<p>Ben Gilbert - Global Facilitator at SW (and also Microsoft PM)<p>Chet Kittleson - NW Regional Manager at Up Global<p>Gabe Pelegrin - (Previous) Intern at SW and now contractor<p>Demi Wetzel - Culture Manager at Up Global<p>Note: Up Global is a SW subsidiary ====== ricardobeat SW judges are not part of the organization, what kind of advantage would the team get by being members?

'He’s our hero': Hindu nationalists rally for Donald Trump in India - MollyR http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/donald-trump-india-hindu-supporters-new-delhi ====== tracker1 Not entirely surprising given Hindu history with Islam... Many, many, many millions of Hindus have been killed from jihadist efforts.

The Secret Vanishings in America's National Parks - sakopov http://dcxposed.com/2014/04/27/secret-vanishings-americas-national-parks/ ====== sparky_z There's a lot of silliness in this article, but I'll focus on one glaring example because I'm on mobile. "In 95 percent of the cases, bad weather strangely follows a disappearance, washing out footprints and other clues and making it impossible to carry on a search until the weather clears. In 98 to 99 percent of the cases, tracking dogs are unable to find a scent or simply refuse to track." There's nothing remotely sinister about this. It just means that when those things don't happen, the people get found. Tracking dog failure is a necessary condition for human disappearance. No great shock that it's found to be true whenever someone disappears mysteriously. Likewise with the missing people being found weeks later, miles from where they were last seen. The "missing people" who stick close to where they were get found pretty quickly. It's the wanderers who are difficult to find in time, and so show up in these statistics. ------ mkstowegnv Only open this if you like paranoid conspiracy theories (children not remembering where they were), paranormal possibilities (so many Devil names) and lack of critical thinking (no links for most claims), and if you like supporting political fringe websites. Oh and it's 2014. ------ ianai I feel like this is a daily critical thinking exercise for the commenters here to process. ------ bakeman > Strangely, a big percentage of these disappearances have clues in common: > Huckleberries, dogs, ... All clues point to Huckleberry Hound, known associate of Jellystone denizen Yogi Bear. ------ chrisbennet I thought this was going to be an article about Parks closing. ------ ajlinton Easy to laugh now at home with the lights on but when the sun goes down on your campsite in the Olympic National Park and the fog rolls in you'll be feeling differently. ~~~ sparky_z To the extent that this is true, it doesn't matter. You could say the same thing about any scary story told by boy scouts around the campfire.

Ask HN: Isn't taking only digital payments illegal in the US? - sova On the bill itself it says &quot;This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private&quot;<p>So how can a restaurant or cafe or any business refuse to take cold-hard cash? ====== sp332 I upvoted this not because I agree but because it's a common question. It's not against federal law at all, but some cities have started banning cashless businesses. Oh, and Massachusetts. E.g. [https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2019/03/sorry-amazon-phi...](https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2019/03/sorry-amazon-philadelphia-bans-cashless-stores/) ------ Nextgrid This means you’re supposed to accept it as payment for a debt. It says nothing about whether you should be doing business with someone, so you refuse, no debt is created in the first place and the idea of legal tender is irrelevant. ~~~ sova That was very clear thank you very much.

Ask HN: In Desperate Need of Career Advice - indianIOS Hi, I am currently in 2 years bond with my first company which will end on June 2018. I need help in what to learn which will get me maximum hike on my first switch. As there is limit of 2000 characters so I have written about me and the technologies I already know in below link<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;raw&#x2F;gEwh393L ====== tatvamasi My suggestion is to double down on what you know already (iOS, swift, etc) and do homework on about 10 companies that pay well and have a need for that skillset. Then, a couple months before your bond gets over, approach these companies and start interviewing. If you are good, you will get at least a couple offers and will be in a good position to negotiate. Note - the key is to approach these candidate companies more or less in parallel, and not serially. If you have multiple offers, you have a much better chance to make much more than what you are making today, compared to learning a new skill at this point. ------ charris0 It sounds like you're determined and self motivated, you're off to a great start! Nice work on getting downloads with your Android apps! Since you seem to have a lot of front end and app knowledge, personally I might suggest getting more familiar with back-end as a service technologies like Firebase, etc. You could then create apps/web-apps that scale without knowing loads of back-end architecture practices. To get a good spot in a next company, practice explaining your accomplishments to date succinctly, meet people, apply to multiple companies and get multiple offers lined up.

U.S. announces first criminal charges against foreign country for cyberspying - Rogerh91 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-to-announce-first-criminal-charges-against-foreign-country-for-cyberspying/2014/05/19/586c9992-df45-11e3-810f-764fe508b82d_story.html ====== jeremymcanally The point that most of you are missing is that the NSA's intelligence gathering activity and activities of that class are completely unrelated to these charges. They are being charged with _economic_ hacking activities. Trade secrets were being lifted and handed to Chinese companies. An analog would be like the NSA harvesting data from Samsung and then passing it to Apple, which is the type of stuff that we have no evidence of thus far. Regardless of your feelings on the NSA's actions, this isn't the same type of "all countries hack each other" activity. And if you think metal and solar companies are the only one suffering these sorts of attacks, you're crazy. I think it's just that the other victims don't want to be named publicly for a variety of reasons. This sort of activity is a serious problem, but you can't just file charges all willy-nilly. Fortunately the U.S. already had economic actions in motion through resolution channels pertaining to the dumping of solar tech, so it makes this sort of thing much easier to do I think. ~~~ anon1385 >An analog would be like the NSA harvesting data from Samsung and then passing it to Apple, which is the type of stuff that we have no evidence of thus far. What ? We've known that the NSA was engaging in corporate espionage on behalf of American corporations for a long time now and the American government doesn't even deny it: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820758.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820758.stm) (from 2000) >The journalist, who has spent much of his life investigating Echelon, has offered two alleged instances of US snooping in the 1990s, which he says followed the newly-elected Clinton administration's policy of "aggressive advocacy" for US firms bidding for foreign contracts. The first came from a Baltimore Sun report which said the European consortium Airbus lost a $6bn contract with Saudi Arabia after NSA found Airbus officials were offering kickbacks to a Saudi official. The paper said the agency "lifted all the faxes and phone-calls between Airbus, the Saudi national airline and the Saudi Government" to gain this information. Mr Campbell also alleges that the US firm Raytheon used information picked up from NSA snooping to secure a $1.4bn contract to supply a radar system to Brazil instead of France's Thomson-CSF. >former CIA director James Woolsey, in an article in March for the Wall Street Journal, _acknowledged that the US did conduct economic espionage against its European allies_ , though he did not specify if Echelon was involved. ~~~ mikecb That's not the same thing as stealing trade secrets and giving them to a domestic company. ~~~ anon1385 The European Parliament report is here: [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN) Here is an example: Who: NSA, What: Wind wheel for electricity generation, developed by Aloys Wobben, an engineer from East Frisia, Aim: Forwarding of technical details of Wobben's wind wheel to a US firm, Consequences: US firm patents the wind wheel before Wobben; (breach of patent rights) Sounds exactly like "stealing trade secrets and giving them to a domestic company" to me. ~~~ mikecb I couldn't find the original source "Aktenkriegerì, SZ, 29 March 2001", but it sounds like a news report. If you can find the source, I would be happy to read it and judge it based upon its reported sources. ~~~ eliteraspberrie The European Parliament report cites a single journalist, Nicky Hager. This particular allegation was based on interviews with anonymous French intelligence sources. Basically, the French government selectively leaked to a New Zealand journalist, to justify retaliation (tariffs at the EU level, which never materialized) against the US government for burning their Saudi deal. There has never been any credible evidence that US intelligence agencies pass trade secrets to American companies. ------ dmix It's so strange seeing a person in full military outfit (and Chinese) on FBI's "cyber" most wanted list: [http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber](http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber) When it pretty much has always been 20-something eastern-euro/Russian and the odd middle eastern hacker. ~~~ jcromartie Where? They might not be on that page anymore. ~~~ jcromartie I swear there were no Chinese entries on that page the first time I looked... ------ candybar For those who are calling the actions of the US "hypocritical" and others who are indiscriminately defending the US by saying "but we didn't do this and that" \- don't forget to distinguish between individuals and countries. Those who are doing this in China are most likely not doing this for China - they are taking advantage of state resources to benefit themselves and their cronies. As much as they are stealing from the US, they are stealing from their own citizens. This is good old-fashioned corruption. The loop of corruption tends to be more subtle and longer in the US, but it's also most likely the case many people who are engaged in espionage, corporate or otherwise, are out for themselves and using the information, expenditures, etc, to directly or indirectly benefit themselves. Random people from China and France and the US arguing among themselves pretending that the enemy is definitely the spying apparatus in the other country and not their own and so on is kind of missing the point and worse, doing exactly what the perpetrators want us to be doing. The discord between nations, manufactured or not, is their raison d'etre - it's what keeps them funded. With that said, holding specific individuals responsible and make their lives difficult is sounds pretty good to me. I wish this happened more often, for US officials abusing their authority as well as foreign officials. Edit: The point isn't that these people aren't employed by the Chinese government, but that the end goal is almost certainly private gains. China isn't some single unified entity where all government employees are working tirelessly for "China" or in this case, to benefit corporate titans who are much richer than they are - economic espionage on behalf of specific private sector entities is almost certainly about some quid pro quo by which government employees are monetizing their official capacity. ~~~ nichtich This is exactly what I thought. Think about the organizational challenge and the bureaucracy involved, there's no way for a "secret" spy unit's head to evaluate the economic value of all those targets, select for the ones needed, carry out the operation and distribute gained information to the corresponding domestic parties. It must work in the opposite way: the military set up the unit and recruited/trained the people for strategic missions like hacking through US military and private contractors. In the process of doing this, these people came across many other stuff, which they sell to other players through black market or backroom dealings to compensate themselves over the laughable salary they receive from the government. And I guess that's also how they got caught in the first place. Bottom line is this, for your Particular corporation to be really helped by your government, there must be some corruption involved. I think this is true everywhere, but especially true in China. ------ pdw Nice timing, Cisco just sent Obama a letter complaining about NSA tampering... [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27468794](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27468794) ------ pasbesoin I've yet to read up on this. But my initial reaction is: And zero accountability for those responsible for the gross systems mismanagement that too often enabled this activity. I fear that security on the Internet is moving towards "rubber hose" security. It's not about truly securing systems and processes; instead, physical means will be used to intimidate and "punish". And even then, it's not the truly responsible who are being intimidated. Nor, in the current circumstance, are the physical measures directly effective. Instead, we have propaganda. "Don't look at our mistakes and neglect. Spend your anger and frustration on these foreign nationals, all conveniently framed for maximum effect. And never mind that we (government as well as private industry) do the same -- we're the 'good guys'." ------ homulilly I'd say this is an instance of the pot calling the kettle black but the US has done far more than simply spy on foreign companies so calling it straight up hypocrisy is a huge understatement. ------ grymoire1 Magicians misdirect the audience using similar tactics. This is the equivalent to a woman in a skimpy outfit walking around on the stage, and bending over in a low-cut dress, while the magician switches one object for another. ------ kimdouglasmason I wonder if the Chinese will charge a few Americans with something in retaliation. Standing on its own, this action is pointless. As part of a larger strategy to provide evidence to justify future tariffs or sanctions, it would make sense. My guess is that's where the US is heading with this. ------ ant_sz hmmm... before Snowden said it out we didn't know anything about what NSA is doing, but at that time, the US government was always saying China is doing what NSA is doing. I was not accusing anything, but you see, the announcement is lack of persuasion. The spying game seems to be a zero-sum game. After charged china for spying for business, the US government may find it won't have any effect, then the best strategy will turns out to be doing the same. Think about the billions of the dollars companies spend as political contribution. After the war begins, It really doesn't matter who shot the first bullet. ~~~ AJ007 There is a lot of justifiable skepticism regarding spycraft. Read declassified accounts of the cold war. What happened swings between delusional paranoia -- where the Soviets thought the US & UK were preparing for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, to extremely serious, where the Soviets knew everything the US Navy was doing for a year. At best a zero sum game, at worst, it creates situations where wars start based on things that just aren't true. Espionage is a bit different, but still a mess. Presumably the only enforcement the US can take against those indicted here is financial -- which would mean assets that fall within the US's control. How does Beijing react? The most interesting end effect of this could be the US's loss of criminal enforcement on the global financial system, reversing much of the benefits of post 9/11 anti-money laundering policy. Co-operation occurs when both sides benefit. I suspect some people in the US State Dept are very annoyed today. ------ Havoc No doubt said Chinese persons are distraught at the prospect of never being able to visit Disneyland. Short of WWIII there isn't much way to enforce such a verdict over foreigners on foreign soil. ------ rayray I wonder what the motivation is behind these charges. I have a hard time believing this to be remotely comparable to what NSA is doing both in term of technical capability and scale. I mean, ffs, these "military hackers" use their initials in the aliases. (according to FBI's wanted page) ------ Nanzikambe Nice moral high ground there! ------ andri Well, as they say, best defense is a good offense. ~~~ tuan5 +1 ------ jacquesm And this sort of thing is why you keep the moral high ground. Too bad, it would have been an excellent case otherwise. ------ rasz_pl I didnt realize Keith B. Alexander was Chinese. Good job on bringing appropriate charges and finally impeaching that bastard. ..oh wait ------ deadfish US Press Release - 'China are the bad guys and don't forget it!' ------ madaxe_again This just in: pot calls kettle black. ------ etiam Hypocrites. ------ duaneb When can we file criminal charges against the US government? ~~~ gress At any court you like. It happens all the time. ~~~ duaneb Sure, if they want to be sued. ------ jokoon in what court exactly ? ------ Gonzih Ironic. I guess. ------ sschueller Im surprised it isn't Russia they are going after. I guess the justice dept. didn't get the memo.

Agile Plumbers - daviding http://david.ing.name/2010/12/24/agile-plumbers/ ====== daviding Merry Xmas Hacker News...

Is it OK to steal a customer? - mgrassotti ====== spicer-matthews Yes. You're not stealing if you provide a better service or product and convince them to switch.

Show HN: Getform – Simple effortless form processing - sahinyanlik http://getform.org ====== nodesocket Looks good, I'd like to see the UX of viewing form content. Also, the demo code should use https right? The demo code should also be text (use a pre tag) instead of an image screenshot. ------ fiatjaf Another Formspree[1] clone. Why simple tools like this keep being written? [1]: [https://formspree.io/](https://formspree.io/) ~~~ d2xdy2 Not really sure; I've been using Formspree for a while now with no complaints. Typeform looks interesting as well, but I haven't really found a persuasive argument to get me off of Formspree for most things. ~~~ fiatjaf What I meant wasn't that everybody should build their own form-to-email redirector, but actually the opposite: why, after Formspree, Formkeep, Typeform and various others, developers keep coming up with the same solution? I thought programmers -- especially when doing side-projects like this -- liked creating new things, thinking about newer ways of solving problems, or solving new problems. ~~~ d2xdy2 I wasn't insinuating that everyone should make their own form handler; I was just agreeing that formspree is pretty good for what it is, and I haven't really felt the need to utilize another service (or reinvent the service and shove it to HN). > I thought programmers -- especially when doing side-projects like this -- > liked creating new things, thinking about newer ways of solving problems, or > solving new problems. I half-jokingly / half-seriously blame TodoMVC for a lot of this stuff; I don't really think a form-to-email redirector is the next TodoMVC-- but I would suggest that newish devs' first experiences are cookie-cutter assignments / tutorials for inventing the same damn thing over and over again. I haven't seen a person solving a "new" or "interesting" problem at my local hackerspace in over a year; they're still arguing about what the best way to make a Todo app is. ~~~ fiatjaf I think this was very well said.

Show HN: Pipe linter output to GitHub code reviews - justinlilly http://justin.abrah.ms/misc/imhotep-code-review-assistance.html ====== sdesol Interesting. I did something similar with my product since linting was a critical component of the Q & A process where I worked as well. Linting results can be integrated into the source viewer [http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=20&cid=25&trail=](http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=20&cid=25&trail=) Or as part of the diff [http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=9&cid=14&trail=](http://ny.testdrive.gitsense.com/index?#pid=9&cid=14&trail=)