Quantum radar will expose stealth aircraft - jonbaer
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-quantum-radar-expose-stealth-aircraft.html
======
burfog
Always remember that stealth is not a boolean.

The enemy is constrained by size, cost, power, and heat dissipation. What can
be done on the ground is not the same as what can be done in a fighter plane,
and that isn't the same as what can be done in a small-diameter missile, and
that isn't the same as what can be done in an anti-aircraft shell.

The enemy might be able to briefly detect at close range, reliably track at
long range, or anything in between.

Because of this, stealth is not simply defeated, and it does not suddenly
become 100% useless.

~~~
dingaling
> and that isn't the same as what can be done in a small-diameter missile

Which was the genius idea behind Track-via-Missile in the Patriot SAM

Instead of having the missile work-out the best interception based on what it
can detect, it relays its view of the World back to the ground station which
returns its recommended geometry. Constantly and at high frequency.

And since the ground station is more powerful and can be upgraded more easily
than the missile's electronics, Patriot has made huge improvements since the
1991 Scud incidents.

In an anti-stealth context having each missile 'see' from a different angle
and being able to fuse that I to one picture is also useful in defeating
shaped reflections. It's like a network of remote, lethal sensors.

~~~
amelius
> it relays its view of the World back to the ground station which returns its
> recommended geometry.

Can't the missile jam the signal?

~~~
dotancohen
Sure it could. And then the impactor could target the jamming transmitter.
Therefore emitting a jamming signal would actually make the missile easier to
intercept.

~~~
amelius
You could attach the jammer to the missile using a wire of some random length.

~~~
dotancohen
I see that you work in software, not hardware.

------
JumpCrisscross
> *Quantum radar...works by sending one of the [entangled] photons to a
> distant object, while retaining the other member of the pair. Photons in the
> return signal are checked for telltale signatures of entanglement, allowing
> photons from the noisy environmental background to be discarded. This can
> greatly improve the radar signal-to-noise in certain situations."

Why do they need to be entangled? Aren't there other ways of checking if the
photons coming back are the ones you sent?

~~~
morcheeba
We do that now with spread-spectrum and chirps - you correlate the signal sent
with the return signal and you can pick out reflections below the noise
threshold.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_compression)

I'm guessing that this might be more effective at very small returns, where
the reflection is so small that it suffers from shot noise - the fact that the
energy comes in discrete packets makes it hard to correlate. This is another
way to verify that the photons received are the same ones sent out (and not
background noise)

------
sbisson
Back when I worked on skywave HF OTHR systems in the late 80s we knew that
they could detect and pinpoint stealth aircraft easily.

Most stealth systems are designed to either absorb or reflect millimetric
point source radar. HF long wavelength systems reflect nicely off the top
surfaces of the aircraft, which aren't designed to dissipate and absorb those
frequencies. To one of those systems a stealth aircraft shows up brighter than
a 747...

So while this is neat science, it's not economical compared to the systems
currently in use. The only real downside of OTHR systems is that you need a
couple of miles space for the transmit antenna and a big empty space for the
receiver; plus plenty of CPU to process the data.

------
arthurz
I am quite offended by how the news provider phys.org reacts to me using an ad
blocker: "It appears that you are currently using Ad Blocking software. What
are the consequences? Click here to learn more." -> Will never ever click

~~~
kwoff
Thanks, I remove those bookmarks too. (Being offended gives them more control
over you than necessary, in my opinion.)

~~~
db48x
Not if you're offended enough to never visit the domain ever again.

------
throwaway84742
I thought stealth aircraft is already visible on the latest Russian gear. They
just use different frequencies to see it. The problem now seems to be not in
seeing the plane per se, but homing the missile on a low observability target.

[http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-
buzz/americas-f-22-f-35...](http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-
buzz/americas-f-22-f-35-stealth-fighters-vs-russias-s-300-s-400-s-17394)

~~~
gandhium
> I thought stealth aircraft is already visible on the latest Russian gear

That's just a usual FUD stuff from Russians.

~~~
throwaway84742
Sure. That’s why our government pisses itself every time Russians try to
export S400.

------
jk2323
An opinionated post about another quantum radar:

Chinese "quantum radar" is a thing that cannot exist
[https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/03/chinese-quantum-radar-
is-...](https://motls.blogspot.com/2017/03/chinese-quantum-radar-is-thing-
that.html)

~~~
andrewflnr
I think that guy has gone too far in pushing against quantum woo. Also, I'm
not aware of any actual science that forbids closed time like curves, either;
AFAIK they're allowed by GR and anything that rules them out is strictly
speculative.

------
danbruc
Which reminds me of a paper I once submitted to HN, »Gravimetric Radar:
Gravity-Based Detection of a Moving Point-Mass« [1]. But I don't remember much
about it, especially how far this was from being practical and not even how
credible the paper looked. But given that I submitted it, I must at least once
have thought that it is not total nonsense.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369812)

~~~
blauditore
Lol, it's pretty ambitious to try tracking planes with gravitational effects.
But now that gravitation wave detection works, I think there are plans (or at
least ideas) to build such devices in earth or solar orbit for triangulation
of distant objects like stars and black holes. Detection arms could be much
longer and disruptions much lower than on earth, so results would me much more
accurate.

~~~
jcims
I did some noodling a while back to see if LIGO could detect the mass energy
conversion of a fission 'event' in North Korea. If memory serves it was
definitely within the range in terms of impact to the gravitational field, but
correlating a infinitessimally short pop of noise would be much more difficult
than the death waltz of binary black holes.

However, a larger array of more sensitive detectors that are immune from the
tremendous amount of terrestrial noise might make short work of it.

~~~
StormChaser_5
Why would an event in NK cause a change in gravity? Wouldn't the energy
liberated in a nuclear event would cause the same amount of gravity to be felt
elsewhere as the mass it came from?

~~~
DoctorOetker
Initially I thought the same for a couple of seconds because of mass energy
equivalence, but then I realized:

assume the fission event to occur in empty space, assume the liberated energy
is isotropically radiated, and assume all the energy is thus expanding
spherically, then the mass/energy that was initially in the mother isotope is
now after some time distributed on a spherical surface.

As long as the observer is outside of the shell of escaping energy, to the
observer the gravitational field looks like all the mass is concentrated at
the center of the expanding shell of energy, exactly where the mass/energy
originally was, and hence gravitationally undetectable.

After a while the expanding surface has past the observer, and the observer is
inside a spherically symmetric shell of mass/energy. Even if the observer is
not at the center there will no gravitational field at all according to the
observer. (consult any physicist or physics textbook, or do the exercise for
the gravitational field in a 'hollow earth'). So to the observer this looks
like a bit of disappearing mass at the location of fission event.

It seems extremely difficult to me to actually measure such an event
gravitationally though..

------
mistercow
Are there interesting spinoff technologies that having an efficient entangled
photon source would enable? My very spotty understanding makes me wonder if
this could have an impact on quantum computing. It seems like an interesting
question, since military funding is involved.

~~~
krastanov
Yes, so much so that I would not call it a spin-off, rather one of the main
tasks that people building quantum computing hardware are dealing with.

Entanglement is one of the main phenomena that permit quantum hardware to do
things infeasible on classical hardware. In the context of communication it
permits quantum key distribution, whose security depends only on quantum
mechanics being a not-too-wrong description of nature (while classical schemes
depend on less tested computational complexity conjectures). In the context of
computing, it is an integral component of many of the "fault-tolerant error
correcting" schemes, necessary in order to protect the extremely fragile
qubits (similar to what ECC RAM does for classical computing).

In the context of sensing, it does permit some cool unbelievably sensitive
detectors (the case discussed in the article), but it is only one of the
avenues of intense research.

~~~
mistercow
Does quantum computing require entanglement of more than two photons with each
other? One of the reasons I could see this not actually advancing QC is if
what's needed for quantum radar is easy generation of entangled _pairs_ ,
while QC requires something more difficult.

------
everdev
TLDR; University of Waterloo is investing $2.7M to speed up the process of
photon entanglement. One photon will be beamed to the object and the radar
response will be checked to see if it was an entangled photon that came back.

------
WillReplyfFood
What really is horrible here is the asymmetry of cost- the development of
stealth technology costed billions and took from drawinboard to reliable
implemenetation close to half a century.

And it seems that detection is always easier and cheaper. I wonder wether
radar and quantum "noise"-bombs that basically spam the enemy detection
methods would be a cheaper approach.

~~~
TickleSteve
"quantum noise bombs"... this wont work as the photons that hit the receiver
wont be entangled with the one you sent out... This makes it potentially un-
jammable in that sense.

Of course, overloading the receiver may be an attack worthy of investigating.

------
dschuetz
Quantum radar will expose quantum stealth of quantum aircraft.

I'm getting quantum sick.

~~~
krastanov
While it is true that quantum is used a lot as a buzzword, here it is used in
its literal scientific sense. And it is an exciting technology that has taken
a lot of effort to be created that does not deserve such knee-jerk
derisiveness.

~~~
dschuetz
"Quantum" is a science-y sounding word which sensationalist scientists use to
push their otherwise inexplicable "exciting" ideas for fundraising. It's a
joke in itself. A parody of what physics actually is.

Even the _actual_ scientist who formulated Quantum Electrodynamics didn't
quite understand what _quantum_ is and what to make of it, nor did he find a
way to properly explain it. This term and the theories behind it were used
just to explain some connections in phenomena, not to invent new ones! Quantum
laser, quantum liquid, quantum crystals, quantum nose, quantum ass!

There was a post here somewhere, discussing that science isn't exactly science
anymore when it very closely resembles its own stereotype. A philosopher for
example today isn't someone who actually thinks, but rather a person who
writes non-sense papers just for the sake to be published in a major journal,
because otherwise they can't find a job. So, it's not the scientists who
publish science-y papers who deserve credit. I don't know who deserves any
credit anymore. Academia makes me sick to my stomach.

~~~
krastanov
You are referring to Feynman, but you are misunderstanding his quote quite a
bit. He belongs to the "shut up and calculate" camp of science, and tried to
say that it is not worth it to try to build "intuition" about a phenomenon so
remote from the scale at which humans experience the world.

Instead of relying on hearsay to reinforce your beliefs, I implore you to
challenge them and read an intro science textbook on quantum mechanics. It is
that theory of nature that permitted us to build the day-to-day electronics
that powers our lives and our civilization, and it is empowering to understand
it. "Theoretical Minimum" is a good set of free courses with video lectures
for instance.

Or if you prefer you can just continue with your self-aggrandizing pity and
willful ignorance. It is true that there is a rat race in the sciences, but
that does not devalue the amazing advances that science has nontheless given
us.

Edit: for the more advanced I would suggest reading the first few chapters of
Sakurai's or Griffiths' Quantum Mechanics textbook - if you know math they
explain how quantum mechanics works quite well. Or Aaronson'a Quantum
Computing since Democritus if you are more interested in computational
complexity.

------
KaiserPro
Stealth aircraft haven't been stealth for a while. The Serbians managed to
destroy one F117a
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown))
and damage another.

This was because the Radar battery were using a different frequency.

You don't need a direct hit with a missile, just be close enough when you
explode it.

Also, all the "shared battle information" is done via radio, which with
passive radar will give wonderfully accurate positioning with cheap off the
shelf hardware.

~~~
greedo
Not really. The opsec was poor; the aircraft had been using the same
ingress/egress routes, so the SAM batteries knew where to look. That helps
tremendously. Also, the F-117 has to open it's bomb bay to release its weapon.
When it does so, it increases it's radar return dramatically, if only for a
very short period of time. This helped the Serbians a lot.

And passive radar isn't a thing. There's passive radio sensors, that can
theoretically detect a transmitter, but frequency hopping etc make that tough.

~~~
KaiserPro
Passive radar is a thing, because I use it.

it works by using known radio sources (ie tv transmitters) which has the
advantage of being powerful , continuous and reasonably unique signal pattern
(for timing)

radio sniffing is where you listen for the aircraft directly, and there are a
number of offerings on that front too. Phased array antenna with SDR front
ends, are smashing bits of kit.

now frequency hopping spread spectrum means you need more DSP to find the
signal, but its still there. In fact it provides nice timing signals because
they hop frequency so much. There is more, but thats for another time

In theory the frequency hopping can be random, but that requires a shared
random source, which is hard to sync.

~~~
greedo
That's not really radar though. Radar systems have a dedicated transmitter
that broadcasts. Phased array radars have transmitters as well. What you're
describing is more akin to ESM. Conflating the two definitions diminishes
both. It's like when submarine movies depict sonar using a hydrophone without
a transmitter; that's passive compared to real sonar that creates a ping.

Passive and active are both valuable in their own regimes, but they're not the
same.


The Innovator's Dilemma for SaaS Startups - edwinespinosa09
http://localhost:1313/innovators-dilemma-in-saas/
======
actraub
You linked to localhost :)

~~~
gus_massa
Just guessing: [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovators-dilemma-saas-
start...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/innovators-dilemma-saas-startups-
tomasz-tunguz)


YouTubers lost thousands of dollars as channels were mistakenly demonetized - bigpumpkin
https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-entire-channels-can-get-mistakenly-demonetized-for-months-2019-8
======
taylodl
YouTube is the only Google service I use and this news just brings to the fore
why we need a viable alternative. I understand mistakes happen and when they
do there needs to be a process to get things ironed out. Instead, the people
who are making tons of money for Google are told to pound sand - and they
wonder why people are starting to revolt against Big Tech.

------
smt88
Google has built its businesses with the assumption that software can do what
other companies use humans for (customer service, moderating communities,
recommendations, etc.)

They're right in some cases, but they dive so shallowly that their
implementation is awful compared to competitors (e.g. Play Music's
recommendations vs. Spotify's).

The cases where they're wrong, like this debacle, should make them sober up
and build a human organization until machines catch up, but of course they
won't because they don't believe anyone can compete with them.


NYT on analytical versus subjective risk management - jacobscott
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html

======
russell
An excellent article that gives you a look at the mathematical model, Value at
Risk, that brought down Wall Street. VaR turned out to be a problem because it
was accepted by the regulators and executives, but it could be gamed by the
traders.

It has a profile of Nassim Taleb, author of "The Black Swan." A Black Swan is
an unpredictable event, because the day to day probability is so low, say a
world wide liquidity crisis. Taleb argues against probability based models,
because in the long run an outlier is going to kill you. I got "The Black
Swan" for Christmas. I have read only 3 or 4 chapters so far, but I highly
recommend it. Very interesting and very entertaining.

------
mattmcknight
"For instance, if you have $50 million of weekly VaR, that means that over the
course of the next week, there is a 99 percent chance that your portfolio
won’t lose more than $50 million."

So, if you run with that strategy for, say, 2 years, the odds are one of those
weeks you will lose $50M. Sounds secure, where do I buy in? Fortunately for my
current portfolio and margin limits, it is mathematically impossible to lose
even $1m in a given week.


Vive Pro Is Targeted at Prosumers and Will Be More Expensive Than Consumer Vive - SkarredGhost
https://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-pro-targeted-prosumers-will-expensive-consumer-vive/
======
lev99
Vive Pro is mostly an incremental step. Hopefully in 3-5 iterations we can
comfortably read small text, improved screen refresh, and decrease the weight.

For screen refresh and resolution numbers I wonder if the bottle neck is
having affordable displays or having affordable GPUs.


Ask HN: Do you keep a journal, and why? - zabana
======
trykondev
I do! I started one in the summer of 2013. I originally started it as a way to
aggregate links & helpful information for my game development endeavors, but
it eventually evolved into more of a recounting of what I did or how I was
feeling on a particular day. I now have daily entries for the entire time
period since I started it, and I consider my journal to be one of my most
treasured possessions. Sometimes I'll get busy and not add entires for a few
days at a time, but I always go back and at least put a one-liner of why I was
too busy to write anything.

I've found it to be a slightly more structured & useful way to essentially
interact with my own brain -- it's a place for me to vent, a place to record
not-so-important but still fun-to-have memories, to keep notes & sort out
plans for the future.

It's a lot of fun to be able to scroll back and say "hey, what did we do for
my birthday three years ago?" :) It's also fun at times like new year's to
flip back through my journal and remind everyone what they listed for a
resolution last year.

------
grep_name
Funny, I just ordered a pocket notebook for the first time in years today. I'm
curious to see what contingent of people on HN still use a physical notebook.
I also use orgmode extensively to keep track of my intentions, media
preferences, notes, and stray ideas, but it doesn't really scratch the same
itch as a physical notebook.

The reason I had to order a physical notebook online is because I wanted a
pocket notebook with no lines, dots, or grids on the pages, which is
surprisingly hard to find. I'm attracted to the non-linear approach to
notebooking, and plan to fill this one with content in a random page-order as
things strike me. Sometimes I just have a cool thought or sentence, or just
want to slowly fill a page with something, and it can really help your
creativity solidify to have a trailing log of your weird random inspirations.
Sometimes I just transcribe lines from a song or book I like, or write down
something someone said. Some pages are just geometric shapes. Rarely, I'll
make a simple "today this happened and this is how I felt about it" page. By
the time you fill it up you have a really organic document that can help you
understand what makes you unique and what you like / care about in your daily
life, without the stress of writing a cohesive or linear work.

~~~
jolmg
I've also used org-mode and tried to make the switch to pocket notebooks[1].
My reason was that org-mode just wasn't as accessible to me. It's not as
practical to use when away from a keyboard as a physical notebook is. However,
writing as much in the physical notebook as I do in org-mode would fill it too
quickly. I also can't be as structured in the physical notebook as I can in
org-mode.

I guess I'm still figuring stuff out. Lately, I've been mostly using the
notebook for taking notes of measurements or prices at the store. Maybe in
reality my reason for trying a physical notebook is that I missed using a
writing utensil.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J535NN2)

------
PragmaticPulp
Yes, but with constraints.

Journaling is an efficient way to elucidate your stray thoughts and feelings.
Writing forces you to distill everything into cohesive paragraphs, which in
turn forces you to put some structured thought around otherwise nebulous
mental energy.

However, journaling is only helpful so long as it's supportive. If you get
stuck in reinforcing thought loops or you find it just amplifies your
frustrations, it's time to change your approach to journaling or find another
outlet for your thoughts.

------
dhagz
I do. It's rather minimal, but I like it. I use a Rhodia Goalbook, which has
numbered pages and a nice month/day view in the front. I can jot down events
on specific days, or I can do more longform stuff on the regular pages. I'm
pretty loose with how I journal, and I don't require myself to do it every
day. I'm a fan of Merlin Mann's "The first page is profound" method to get
myself in the mindset of putting whatever I want in the journal.

------
slipwalker
after reading this thread sometime ago (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20244848)
) i decided to start one. It's been an on and off endeavour, when i am most
busy, that's when i _should_ be taking those notes, and that's exactly when i
completely forget about it... :/


Autoscaling Amazon's DynamoDB - samwho
http://devblog.getinvisiblehand.com/autoscaling_dynamodb

======
mdupenois
Very cool, really like the DSL, eminently readable.


TreeScope: Finding Structural Anomalies in Semi-Structured Data [pdf] - jcr
http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p1904-Ying.pdf

======
irickt
Demo server linked in the paper:
[http://42.61.39.87/TreeScope/](http://42.61.39.87/TreeScope/)


Features are faults redux - gbrown_
http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/features-are-faults-redux
======
akkartik
I've been imagining for some time an ideal system with just two languages: one
compiled low-level one, one interpreted high-level one -- and absolutely zero
runtime configuration beyond that. Anytime you want to change how a program
behaves you would have to edit its sources. A whole system with the dwm[1]
aesthetic, basically. Always keep sources close to programs, allow the entire
system to recompile with a single command. Encourage people to micromanage
precisely which image formats they want to turn on. The only thing that is
interpreted at runtime is code in the high level language.

[1] "dwm is customized through editing its source code.."
[http://dwm.suckless.org](http://dwm.suckless.org)

------
elchief
> What’s the first thing anybody does when they get a second computer? That’s
> right, set up a kerberos domain

tedu is a funny guy

~~~
smhenderson
No doubt, especially like this line at the beginning...

 _If you’ve never heard of OpenBSD, it’s a free unix like system. So kind of
like Linux, but better in every way. Totally unbiased opinion._

But the article is also really good, a cautionary tail of what can happen
trying to please everyone. The links lead to a lot of interesting reading too.
I especially liked this one. [1]

[1] [http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite-
vim...](http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite-vim-tmux-
bug/)


Munich mall attack: Calls in Germany for tighter gun laws - benevol
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36877388
======
nunobrito
There is no problem with the current gun laws.

The problem are religious fanatics. They will hit you stones, gasoline and
fire if they have to.


My Job Interview at Google (2008) - trymas
https://catonmat.net/my-job-interview-at-google
======
120bits
> The questions were technical but not very challenging or difficult.

I might be really bad, because few of the questions were challenging and
difficult. I was expecting a rant how bad the google interview process is,
which is usually what I come across. I do agree the questions are fun and are
helpful to someone who is preparing for an interview. The interview and
programming questions covered lot of topics.

------
quirkafleeg3
> The questions were technical but not very challenging or difficult. So THATS
> why Google products are so consistantly shite...


What Should We Call the Language of Mathematica? - mh_
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/02/what-should-we-call-the-language-of-mathematica/
======
quink
Without even reading it (and avoiding looking at the comments here), I predict
that he'll advocate 'Wolfram'.

Edit: Yep... <http://imgur.com/KRyN97S.png>

I love the ramp up, first it's just mentioning that the name of the company is
Wolfram... then going underground before coming out, in bold, with Wolfram
Language, then four paragraphs before concluding that "At this point, we
pretty much have to have 'wolfram'—or at least some hint of it—in the name."
and there goes the rest of the article.

Why not just call it Wolfram and be done with it. We know there's a big ego
involved and we can't possibly bear Stephen Wolfram strain himself so much as
to not name the language after himself. Anything else would be inhumane :)

And considering the good he's done with both the quality product Mathematica
and Wolfram Alpha, it's only justified.

~~~
patmcguire
Am I missing something or is that just a surreal picture?

~~~
rtra
I think it's marking the positions of the word 'Wolfram' on the document.

------
scarmig
Wolfram has written a lot of egotistical, boring things before. I have to give
it to him: this time he's outdone himself.

Why not just outsource the naming to a flunky and then take credit for it if
s/he comes up with a good one?

------
h2s
As far as I was aware everybody was already calling this language
"Mathematica".

~~~
onedognight
With projects like Mathics[1], that aim for Language compatibility with
Mathematica, on the horizon it makes sense to want to separate the language
from the implementation.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5196551>

~~~
wmf
Seeing this post hit HN just a few days after Mathics gave me a paranoid
feeling. Why now? Is Wolfram feeling the heat and looking for a new trademark
to deny his competitors?

~~~
ics
And Mathematica 9 just came out, so maybe it was _Mathics_ feeling the heat!
Despite the vacuum-like nature of our internal HN-eval-post loop, the rest of
the world isn't standing still. It's actually a little surprising that they're
only talking about this _now_ , given how long Mathematica has been around.

------
zem
good post, but it seemed like he dismissed "tungsten" far too lightly ("And in
the direction of whimsical, there are also words like Tungsten"). it seems
like the best choice to me - it has the "wolfram" association, as well as
fitting in with the general mineral theme while differentiating itself from
the gemstone cluster. also it's easy to pronounce and rolls off the tongue
fairly readily.

~~~
jerf
You beat me by one minute. Tungsten works for me.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten> \- "Tungsten, also known as
wolfram... the free element is remarkable for its robustness, especially the
fact that it has the highest melting point of all the non-alloyed metals and
the second highest of all the elements after carbon. Also remarkable is its
high density of 19.3 times that of water, comparable to that of uranium and
gold, and much higher (about 1.7 times) than that of lead.... It is the
heaviest element known to be used by any living organism."

Not bad.

------
jpdoctor
Egotistica. (ld;o)

------
fusiongyro
I wouldn't have been surprised to learn it were already named Lingua
Mathematica, and I submit that as the best reason to give it that name (and
not some other).

~~~
fusiongyro
I thought the grammar might be wrong there, and it turns out, it is:

[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/103916/it-were-
ve...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/103916/it-were-versus-were-
i-the-proper-subjunctive-for-this-statement)

The corrected versions are: "I wouldn't have been surprised if it were already
named Lingua Mathematica..." or "I wouldn't have been surprised to learn it
was already named Lingua Mathematica..."

------
ballstothewalls
I propose "Stephen"

I have found Mathematica to be super simple learn and use, so by calling it
"Stephen" it shows how friendly and approachable the language is while
maintaining the connection to the founder's ego.

~~~
hvs
I've never heard anyone refer to Stephen Wolfram as "friendly and
approachable," and naming the language based on that reason would be both
amusing and disturbing.

~~~
mauvehaus
I, for one, don't remember Mathematica being especially "friendly and
approachable" either. Maybe for basic stuff, but my introduction to it was a
grad-level computational neuroscience class, and it was the source of a great
deal of misery in my life for a semester.

Maybe for amusement value it /should/ be named Stephen.

~~~
ballstothewalls
This is a common complaint, but I don't understand it. Most of my peers that
didnt like it had no exposure to programming, though.

I have tried to teach myself Ruby and Python before but I have never gotten
really far. I am pretty competent in Mathematica though. The key is getting
used to their documentation center where they have lots of examples.

------
logn
How about "Leibniz" in honor of the mathematician who independently invented
calculus and, compared to Newton, used a superior notation (which he took
great pains to make nice)

Or, Zinbiel.

~~~
quink
I'd agree, but unfortunately "Leibniz" is not, nor does it rhyme with or even
allude to "Wolfram" and is therefore out of the running.

------
dnc
I think Aleph is nice name. There is already Wolfram Alpha, and Aleph, while
it is related to it, is IMO more appropriate for general purpose language.

It sounds to me mystical and abstract/mathematical at the same time as it
reminds me of Blaise Pascal's definition of Nature (or God) as "an infinite
sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere"
(because Jorge Luis Borghes has a story with the same name in which he cites
the Pascal's quote :)).

------
mturmon
Wolfram prefers "Wolfram." Telling.

------
georgemcbay
A New Kind of Language

------
zwegner
One of the names he dismissed is actually a pretty good word to use to
describe the blog post: Wolframble.

------
scott_s
Ego.

------
pg
M

~~~
huhtenberg
W

~~~
networked
There is already a programming language called W [1]. It's not related to the
language of Mathematica but you could say has a little bit of relevance to
scientific computing since it was created for the HP-95LX and the HP-200LX
DOS-powered programmable calculators.

I used to have a decent collection of subroutines for it.

[1] <http://www.vttoth.com/CMS/index.php/projects/49>

------
JD557
My December PLT Game's entry was actually called Wolf:
<https://github.com/JD557/Wolf>

Thank god he didn't chose that name, then I would be the one that would need
to think of a new language name.

Anyway, as stated in other comments, Tungsten seems like a nice choice.

------
okku
1\. Mathematica or 2\. Just pick a random cool name, how about: pipe | (they
use pipe in wolfram|alpha)

------
jimmytucson

        > In the years since, the name Mathematica has been widely imitated (think Modelica, for example).

...or Metallica, for example.

Seriously, isn't sticking 'a' (or 'ica') onto the end of a word some kind of
Latin thing?

Britannica!

~~~
StefanKarpinski
The Romans were just copying Stephen Wolfram.

~~~
davrosthedalek
They were pre-covering him. Like all the pre-covers of the songs from Glee....

------
reader5000
To me, "language" implies freely available to use. This is not a critique of
mathematica nor its pricing, but merely when I think of "computer language" I
think of python or c++ or java etc.

------
opminion
Ask Umberto Eco <http://books.google.co.uk/?id=2sDMxqbibS0C>

------
xntrk
FORMATH!

~~~
snogglethorpe
FORGREATJUSTICE!

I'll get me coat.

------
EvanMiller
Why not return the favor and call it "Jobs"?

------
revorad
"Steve" would have been better, as a nod to both men.

------
jonsen
Mathematicall

------
danbmil99
"Wolf"?

------
NonEUCitizen
Wolfie ?

------
calciphus
Mash

~~~
zwegner
Weird, that's the name of a language I worked on at a former job. It was
seriously awesome, it was like a functional version of Python mixed with
assembly, and was much clearer and also faster than C++. Shame that it will
probably never see the light of day (though I have plans for a similar
replacement).


Google buys Meebo - jcdavis
http://blog.meebo.com/?p=4974
======
jry
One thing no outlet has reported is that everyone except business development
and select engineers were laid off as a result of the deal.

This all comes from someone who left Meebo recently and is still close with
people that work there.

Not sure exactly how many, but it sounds like it was a good number.

Note: I said it was the majority, that's what my friend made it sound like,
but I'm not sure.. will update once I find out

~~~
nandemo
That sounds pretty bad if true.

Is there a point of working for a startup if there's no financial upside, only
the downside?

Not being in the US, I'm curious if people getting laid-off from funded
startups get severance packages.

~~~
mikeryan
They're not getting laid off by a startup now they're getting laid off by
Google. They likely get a severance. In CA at least if they're laying off a
significant portion it's cosidered a plant closing which should give everyone
about 6 months severance.

------
michaelbuckbee
To me this makes sense as Meebo has really transformed themselves from a
"chat" company to an "advertising toolbar" company.

They (for better or worse) absolutely dominate the annoying popup toolbar at
the bottom of a website market.

Ex: <http://www.slate.com>

~~~
AznHisoka
That toolbar is godawful, and I have no idea how they managed to sign up so
many companies to display it. I mean.. it's not like they had access to all
these advertisers since they were primarily a chat company. It's something
that can be duplicated by any one of us. What gives?

~~~
jpark
It's the result of an incredible bd and ad sales team. If you look at the
senior team, esp in sales, it's a lot of very senior CNET veterans who took
along most of their experience and contacts from CNET to Meebo.

This is not something duplicated easily.

~~~
veemjeem
Yes, but it probably didn't need most of the original functionality of meebo
either. It was essentially a chat bar for webpages...

------
ALee
I met the Meebo team at SXSW in 2008 and, being the uppity entrepreneur, I
asked if I could stay in touch with them...

Even though they were super busy, Seth would take a call over the phone when
my startup was about to get acquired or when we were trying as hard as we
could to raise money in late 2008.

When I was playing a game of Underground Assassins in 2011, nobody knew my
name. So they went by my t-shirt's logo - Meebo. Honestly, six years after
they began, people still remembered their logo.

I still find it amazing how Meebo for a period of time inhabited the social
consciousness. Like art, I'm glad to have experienced it, and being in the bay
area, felt a little closer to it.

~~~
mkopinsky
Off topic, but what is underground assassins? Google is not helping.

~~~
intended
I'm guessing - and I could be wrong - but based on the fact that its a real
world thing - its likely the game where you get a bunch of people to play at
hunting/assassinating each other as they go about their daily life.

The objective is to tag enemy players and become the last player standing.

~~~
mkopinsky
I've played assassins before, which I think is what you're describing. I'm
wondering if Underground Assassins is a variation on the game, or just a
different name.

------
SpikeDad
Not good news. I do hope Google leaves the Meebo name intact so it's easy to
block their garbage with Adblock.

I assume shortly we'll be seeing new postings from Google on what new personal
information they'll be adding to the Google brain from Meebo.

------
dm8
I loved Meebo back in 2005 but they became annoying as hell with their
toolbar. I always felt that product was more of a "solution in search of a
problem".

Anyways, I'm happy for Meebo team. I'm following them for a while and they
seem to be really good guys. Especially, their founding team.

------
kul
There was a lot of Meebo coverage on TC over the years:
<http://techcrunch.com/tag/meebo/page/5/>

Early rounds were rumoured to be done at $200m valuations so with liquidation
preferences I'm not sure how much this really leaves on the table after the
investors are paid.

------
rokhayakebe
Meebo definitely went through its nine lives. I wonder what Google was trying
to acquire through this purchase.

~~~
starpilot
The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads who demonstrated their talent
in developing a product and a launching company. It'd be a safe way to hire a
few competent engineers, and I doubt the acquisition price contains much
goodwill.

~~~
jpeterson
_The talent. Meebo was started by Stanford grads..._

Can we please get over this dopey fixation on big-name elite schools?

~~~
hack_edu
Unfortunately tons of firms put a huge value in this. Try getting a high level
rockstar-ninja-badass (lol) engineer job, especially at a bay area startup,
without some sort of pedigree from a named institution. Its bullshit, but
reality.

Google used to, might still, place a degree from a top-tier institution as the
first requirement in upper level job postings.

~~~
strlen
> Unfortunately tons of firms put a huge value in this. Try getting a high
> level rockstar-ninja-badass (lol) engineer job, especially at a bay area
> startup, without some sort of pedigree from a named institution. Its
> bullshit, but reality.

I've worked at or (or received employment offers from) quite a few "name
brand" Bay Area technology companies, have received recruitment email/etc.
from many more, despite going to a university most haven't heard of.

Silicon Valley is much more meritocratic than Wall Street: if you can't pass a
coding interview, the name on your diploma will not help you. A name on your
diploma might make it easier to get interviews lined up as a student, but
undergraduate research, open source contributions, referrals from other
employees, are much more useful for that purpose.

That's not to say SV is without its own brand of homogeneity: ironically,
whenever I am on Stanford campus, I am amazed at how much more diverse it is
compared to the rest of Palo Alto.

------
1123581321
I was expecting this or a shut-down announcement soon. Meebo has never been
able to provide something valuable to enough people to become a going concern.

~~~
mibbitier
I don't think that's true. They had a lot of people using their messenger
client.

More to do with mistakes and execution. Why did they take $70m in funding?
That's a ridiculous amount of investment to take.

Why couldn't they monetize that amount of eyeballs?

~~~
danudey
Or go beyond monetizing eyeballs. Turn it into a live chat service, so
visitors to your website can instantly communicate with you. Or do what
Chatterous did and let people create custom IM group chats. Maybe they did
these things and I didn't notice, but anything seems better than 'Let's put a
toolbar at the bottom of other peoples' sites!'

~~~
catch23
Yeah, they had that back in 2007. Meebo bar appeared in Dec 2009.

see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meebo#Timeline>

------
jorgeortiz85
My first full-time job offer as I was wrapping up college in 2007 was from
Meebo. At the time, they were about 12 employees.

I didn't realize it at the time, as it was my first time going through the
interview/offer dance, but having much more experience with these things now
(from both sides of the process), I can honestly say it ranks as the best I've
ever heard of.

a) The technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been through.
It culminated in them asking me to set aside 4 hours to come into their office
and work alongside them (asking questions if I needed to), writing an HTTP
server in C.

I almost shat my pants when I heard the question, but to this day its the most
rewarding technical interview of my life. I started off with a problem I
wasn't sure I could sove in the allotted time, I _built_ something, and it
_worked_. (Well, it mostly worked. There was one elusive bug I couldn't figure
out that day. I had to leave because of another commitment, but I promised to
come back the next day and fix it. When I got back the next day, a senior
Meebo engineer had spent 3 hours debugging my code until he figured out the
problem. We code reviewed my code line-by-line as a wrap-up to the interview.)

b) The non-technical portion of the interview was the best I've ever been
through. They were very concerned about the ever-elusive "culture fit", and
the entire team made an effort to get to know me, taking me out to meals, etc.
I met all three of the co-founders (Seth, Elaine, and Sandy), all of whom I'm
sure were busy trying to build a product and grow a company, but they were
incredibly warm, genuinely interested in getting to know me, and generous with
their time.

c) They gave me a great offer. For a fresh-out-of-college student with not
much real work experience, both the salary and the equity portions of my offer
were extremely generous. I didn't even have to negotiate. At the time, Seth
explained they didn't want to go through a contentious negotiation process, so
they were opening off with a generous offer and it wasn't really open to
negotiation. It was, indeed, a generous offer. (Five years of experience
later, and I'm making less money, adjusted for inflation, than Meebo offered
me as a fresh-out-of-school untried new hire.)

d) The post-offer process was the best I've been through. At the time, I knew
nothing about startups, stock options, VC, etc. I didn't even know how much I
didn't know. At his own initiative, Seth (the CEO!), took the time to explain
the equity portion of my offer. The offer included a number of options and a
strike price (standard), but unprompted told me about the other numbers I
should be concerned with: total shares outstanding, fully diluted % stake,
preference multiples, etc. There's much more transparency about this stuff
today (blogs, etc), but at the time no one else explained this stuff to you
(and as a stupid college student, you wouldn't know to ask). Even today, in a
much more competitive hiring environment, I hear about companies that tell
experienced engineers (who know what they're negotiating) that certain numbers
which are essential to understanding an equity offer (like total number of
shares outstanding) are "confidential".

I ended up turning down the offer, but I have enormous admiration and respect
for Seth, Sandy, Elaine, and the whole team at Meebo. Congratulations on your
many successes over the years, and I hope to continue seeing great things from
you in the future.

~~~
onedev
what offer did you think was more attractive than what they offered?

~~~
jorgeortiz85
Ha! It's a long story. Let's just say I made a lot of mistakes over the course
of the next few years.

You live, you learn.

------
RossDM
This makes me sad for the future of their chat client. The toolbar may suck,
but their IOS client rocks. It synchronizes with their web chat interface, so
that you may switch between conversations on mobile/desktop.

------
franze
I don't think that (even) more developers for G+ will solve ... anything.

~~~
Karunamon
The "G+ is dead/dying" canard again? Really?

~~~
ericd
Honest question - is it not?

~~~
drivebyacct2
No. I'm just as tired of seeing it repeated here as I was hearing people
repeat "Twitter is dumb and useless and not going anywhere" 3 years ago. Just
because you don't use it or subscribe to people that use it, doesn't mean the
rest of us didn't take the time to actually utilize it.

~~~
mibbitier
People said this about Wave as well.

I'm not convinced. I tried google+, I was really impressed with the UI. I used
it for a few days, then a few weeks later I suddenly remembered it existed. I
don't think I'm alone.

Presumably they still count me as a 'user', even though I haven't used Google+
for ages.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Why do you care if they include you in their user count? Why does it bother
you?

I love Google+. I love the UI. I love the interaction I have with the people I
follow. They post good content, it's well featured, it's _fast_ on mobile
(which is something its competitors flatly can not claim) and the Circles
model works really well. For me.

Funny, I also got a shockingly huge amount of value out of Wave. It was for
very specific group-school-project sorts of things, but it has been
irreplacable in terms of simplicity and strange overlapping feature set. In
fact, as others have noted, many features that people wish to see in a
"futuristic email 2.0" were embodied by Google Wave.

I guess I reject the notion that since _you_ don't like/use it, no one does.

~~~
mibbitier
> "Why do you care if they include you in their user count? Why does it bother
> you?"

It bothers me if they're being dishonest. Tell me how many people actively
shared things on Google+ yesterday. Telling me how many people have ever used
Google+ in the past isn't useful, and is going to vastly distort peoples
perception.

> "I guess I reject the notion that since you don't like/use it, no one does."

Sure, valid point. I'd reply that out of all my facebook friends, a few tried
google+, and none actively use it that I know of. So it's not just me.

It's also telling that you got a huge amount of value out of Wave as well as
plus. Perhaps Google+ isn't that much different to Wave... in which case it's
doomed.

Release Wave -> Failing -> Buy Etherpad -> Wave fails

Release Google+ -> Failing -> Buy Meebo -> Google+ fails

Don't get me wrong, I love Google. But I can see history repeating itself
here...

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
> Release Wave -> Failing -> Buy Etherpad -> Wave fails

Except etherpad technology is actively being used in google docs, maybe more
than it has ever been used in wave, and docs is quite far from dead

------
sakopov
Nice, generic and overenthusiastic post-acquisition blog post. They'll likely
be shutdown within a few months.

------
huhtenberg
> _Thank you all for coming along for the ride!_

Reads like a farewell note to me, not very encouraging.

------
emehrkay
I like meebo, I always have and still use it (for AIM). I consider myself a
fan even though I used to hate: "They got 15 million for online instant
messaging?"

I really liked how in the early days they would show off their growth, new
office/employees, etc. when you logged in. It subconsciously acted as a source
of inspiration.

------
jamesflorentino
I honestly did not see that coming. I was a regular user of meebo way back in
2006-2008 but I don't have a solid recollection as to why I left (now using
imo.im).

I can only assume that the acquisition has something to do with Google Plus.
Well, whatever it is for, I wish them good luck.

------
KenCochrane
Looks like the site is getting crushed, I can't load the page.

~~~
markus2012
There's probably whiskey involved.

------
gfosco
Interesting... does Meebo have any patents? I really would've expected that
Google could re-develop any Meebo technology for cheaper than an acquisition.

~~~
grhino
I'm guessing the relationship Meebo has built with its customer base is more
important than the technology.

~~~
lbbb
I've been using the (old) Meebo Messenger for years. I've never had the
impression that they cared about its users a lot. There were no updates on the
user interface since I began using it, they didn't add features that were
highly requested on the feedback forums.

The toolbar thing is just... I don't know what that is. Looks useless to me.

Another thing, are there any good other web based multi messengers? I guess
they will shut this down soon then?

~~~
mibbitier
I'm pretty sure they gave up on the messenger, and decided to put all their
effort into the toolbar.

------
rorschachh
google is smart enough to realize that buying user bases doesnt work so it
must be the meebo metrics and their client install base? over the last few
years it seems like meebo has been struggling to make chat more of a commodity
than it actually is, IMO and at this price its more like a push for investors.
as for g+ - desperate times call for desperate measures.

------
ricardobeat
I hope Meebo Messenger doesn't die. It's still the best web-based chat app,
and the only way I still connect to my old MSN account.

------
jpkeisala
For a moment I was thinking they bought Meego.

------
soulclap
Meebo was useful, back then. Sometimes. But right now I am tempted to just
respond with 'A/S/L?'.

------
kevinsd
I have no doubt that startups including meebo got talents. But how does google
maintain its bar of engineer qualification? Or does it?

------
evanwolf
This is exactly the kind of talent and infrastructure you want for building
WebRTC clients for Adsense. Think enhanced, in-browser, click-to-call ads.
With video chat. Talk to other shoppers and customers, then talk directly with
the restaurant or plumber.

Or they could join the Google+ team as G brings videoconferencing in-house.

------
taylorbuley
I liked how they phrased the news in the body of the post -- "Meebo has
entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google" -- more than how they
phrased it in the headline: "Google is acquiring Meebo." I'd like to think
that if I was selling a startup I would be master of my own destiny, too.

------
zinssmeister
Why?

------
dirtyhand
Google is scared of Pinterest.

~~~
scribu
What does Pinterest have to do with live chat?

~~~
ketralnis
Even less than either has to do with their current business model of being an
advertising network through their toolbar.

------
capo
"... has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!".

Does that mean that they are expecting some sort of regulatory review before
it's a done deal or is it just standard speak?

~~~
tomkarlo
Standard language. Mergers usually can't be completed until after certain
regulatory reviews are complete. In the US, one of the most common (for larger
deals) is HSR: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-
Rodino_Antitrust_Imp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart-Scott-
Rodino_Antitrust_Improvements_Act)

------
shasty
If they are like a company I used to work for Meebo probably has a patent that
reads as follows:

System and message for sending a message using a computer system

------
shasty
Google should definitely buy ICQ next.


Driving directions from SFO to Honolulu, HI (3,621 mi, 125 hours) - yummies
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=SFO+to+Honolulu,+HI&saddr=SFO&daddr=Honolulu,+HI&hl=en&sll=37.7577,-122.4376&sspn=0.231261,0.4422&geocode=FRT7PQId3Ii0-CE_7c0aV1zypClVVVVVjHePgDE_7c0aV1zypA%3BFUAeRQEd40WX9ilNRsOMOxgAfDFsl6fzX_UoSw&oq=sfo+to+honolu&t=m&z=5

======
matt_brushlabs
I do wonder why they're asking me to drive to Seattle first. There's sailboats
in San Francisco, you know...


Employees who quit Shopify over its Breitbart ties can find new jobs - nomadicactivist
https://news.fastcompany.com/employees-who-quit-shopify-over-its-breitbart-ties-can-find-new-jobs-through-this-service-4030797
======
clickbait
I don't particularly like how it has become a normal occurrence for people to
try and ruin the lives of others simply because they have a different opinion.

~~~
flukus
I wonder how easy it will be to abuse this new system to bootstrap a company.
First clone an already successful company, then find someone politically
undesirably using the competitor. Finally release a virtue signalling
statement that gets people to use your company instead.

~~~
gydfi
It's happening already, but with pretty limited success. Voat is reddit for
people driven off reddit. Gab is twitter for people driven off twitter.
Neither of these is a roaring success just yet, but they're better positioned
than the average clone.

In general I don't think the splitters are ever likely to gain half the market
share of the original because 99% of people do not care for this kind of thing
at all.


Visualization of the Django Project, by code_swarm - DaniFong
http://oebfare.com/blog/2008/jun/24/django-code_swarm/

======
DaniFong
Incidentally, there's a gallery of code_swarm videos here.

<http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/wiki/Gallery>


Google Open-Sourced Kubernetes to Boost Its Cloud - kalgen
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-kubernetes-says-future-cloud-computing/
======
justinsb
I've been working with Kubernetes a fair bit (I'm contributing to porting it
to AWS). It's an exciting time: I believe that we'll be running everything in
containers within the next few years, and Kuberentes solves some of the big
missing pieces with actually running Docker in production across a cluster.
There are other competing systems trying to do the same thing (including
Docker Inc itself), but I think Kubernetes has a huge advantage by having
years of experience of what did and didn't work well in Borg.

Most importantly of all though, I have found it a great project to use, and a
really great project to contribute to. I think that contributions are the
lifeblood of open-source projects, and I give Kubernetes 10/10 for their
community and processes, which I think bodes very well for the future.

------
mark_l_watson
I am a little surprised that Google is join this route. Making Google Cloud
into a huge business must be a high priority. I used Borg for a while in 2013,
and it was amazingly, specially the logging for tracking down runtime
problems.

~~~
fweespeech
Why? Google hands out all sorts of papers and such a few years after the fact.

This is just another example, an open source version of Borg that will always
be a few years behind.

~~~
thockingoog
While it is true that Borg is 10 years ahead of Kubernetes, we have the
benefit of knowing where Borg arrived rather than following the same winding
course.

~~~
fweespeech
Of course, but unless there is a massive maintainability flaw in Borg, its
unlikely you can duplicate 10 years of effort AND maintain pace with
Borg's/Borg's successor(s) progress.

Well, without a huge influx of developers to the open source side.

~~~
thockingoog
First, there are a LOT of people working on Kubernetes right now.

Second, of course it will be asymptotic for a long time. But keep in mind that
we don't want or need everything that Borg has, and Borg does not have
everything that Kubernetes does. Kubernetes is not a clone of Borg - it is
inspired by the lessons and experiences we got by doing Borg. Often that means
we learned how NOT to do something.

If we can get 75% as functional as Borg in 1/3 the time, we'll be doing pretty
darn well. I think we're on track for that.

~~~
fweespeech
> If we can get 75% as functional as Borg in 1/3 the time, we'll be doing
> pretty darn well. I think we're on track for that.

I'm sure you can do that. That doesn't invalidate my statement that it isn't
surprising Google would do this _precisely because it 'll only be 75% as
functional as Borg at any given point in time_.

------
bsaul
Is it me or does anyone else interprets all the recent wave of open sourcing
as a trend to not create open standards anymore, but instead open source the
technology altogether (without even creating the standard).

Have standards failed ?

~~~
obstinate
My 2c, not speaking as a Google rep but as myself, is that if you have a
problem only a single actor needs to solve, you're going to end up with
software, not a standard. To get a standard, you have to have a situation
where the value of cooperation is higher than the cost.

There are plenty of people _now_ who need to solve the container problem, but
Googlers been working on this shit for years, before it was really on anyone
else's horizon. Google employees incepted the cgroup feature way back in 2006,
to solve problems that were already being felt acutely at that time within
Google. Folks have been working on this stuff a long time before it mattered
to anyone else, and that's why what's coming out is software rather than
standards. There is no way a big company is going to delay solutions to an
urgent strategic problem in order to be part of a democratic process for the
sake of a few people's ideals. Maybe if they'd seen it coming five or ten
years in advance, to give enough time for the standardization process to
occur, but Google was far too small and the future far too uncertain in 2001
to predict what might be needed in 2006.

~~~
sitkack
Almost every problem that containers solved, was solved with EclipseBSD
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.25.8...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.25.8401)
way back in 1998

~~~
menage
Yes, the concept of resource control wasn't new. Getting it from a research
project to the form where it was production-ready and supported for inclusion
in the mainline tree of Google's kernel of choice took a bit longer.

~~~
sitkack
I used EclipseBSD, it was production ready. The community wasn't receptive at
the time for getting it into the mainline FreeBSD tree.

For this I applaud Google for making it in, even when the masses don't see the
point.

------
digitalzombie
Kubernetes is alpha software right now. I was at a meet up last month and
there are a lot of missing features from what I recall. They're planning to
fix one of these feature with some project call Ubernetes.

While people are raving about containers, there are still security issues with
containers no?

I think VM will be here to stay for a long while and while we might have to
pay a performance and memory hit for them, they offer better isolation.

~~~
4ad
> there are still security issues with containers no?

In Linux, perhaps. However FreeBSD jails and illumos zones are rock-solid.
There's this crazy hype around containers these days and people just ignore
the stable, secure, and tried technology, I don't understand it at all!

FreeBSD and illumos are not Linux, but their still Unix-like, it's not like
you'd have to use OpenVMS. Plus you'd get other benefits too, like DTrace and
ZFS. And on illumos now you can even run Linux binaries in a zone.

So why do people simply pretend these secure technologies don't exist? Can
someone explain?

~~~
mateuszf
Because there are lot more Linux users / developers than BSD.

~~~
4ad
I don't think that "X has more users than Y" is a valid complete argument in
itself, otherwise nothing would ever change. Of course it matters in the grand
scheme of things, but the causal relationship is more complex, involves many
degrees of freedom and goes both ways.

Before docker came, Linux had LXC, which wasn't as popular as docker is now,
but it was certainly known and used by people. So when docker came, LXC had
more users than docker, and yet docker surpassed LXC in popularity in weeks,
so the "X has more users than Y" state can be changed by various factors and
it's not enough to keep the system in equilibrium.

So yes, the fact that Linux is more widely used than FreeBSD and illumos in
the developer community is certainly an important factor, but I don't see
anyone ever saying "FreeBSD is great but we want to use something supported by
a larger community", or "illumos is great, but we don't have expertise with
it", which are certainly important arguments to consider when making a
decision.

But I hardly see anyone making these arguments, or any other arguments really.
It's like these systems don't even exist. At first I attributed this to the "X
has more users than Y" factor, but then I see people having particular
problems with Linux container technology, in areas such as security, virtual
networking, etc. And these are problems already solved by FreeBSD and illumos.
Surely when you have a problem you look for alternative solutions that don't
have these problems?

But I don't see people looking over the alternatives at all. As I said, there
are many valid reasons not to use these other technologies, but I am very
perplexed that people refuse to even acknowledge the existence of them.

And now that illumos can run Linux inside a zone (and FreeBSD did this too 15
years ago, and still does for 32-bit binaries, I believe work is well underway
to extend this to 64-bit as well), I think the "I only know Linux" argument
loses some potency, you _can_ run Linux after all...

~~~
derefr
LXC and Docker are operations technologies. It takes the same codebase and
just generates a different product from it.

Switching to a different OS, however, requires different _development-time_
technologies. Some third-party dependencies like libraries you're used to
using might not even exist on the other platform.

Effectively, developers are locked into a pretty _tiny_ development-time
ecosystem: all the devs I know develop on Ubuntu (or on OSX with testing on
Ubuntu, if they can get away with it.) They depend on the apt package graph,
including PPAs.

Half of the renewed enthusiasm behind containers isn't about security; it's
about the fact that a lot of operations people prefer RPM-based distros, and
it was always really annoying to try to keep a given piece of Linux software
portable between deb-based and RPM-based distros. You needed to figure out how
to specify operation-time dependencies against at least two package graphs,
and also compile-time dependencies using autotools or similar.

In contrast, Docker and similar ops software are interesting (from one
perspective) precisely because they let devs _learn fewer things_ : you
develop your software on your Ubuntu machine, create a container that
basically replicates your development environment, "install" your software in
there, and then distribute that. Now your software can be run on some other
dev's (Ubuntu, OSX) machine, or deployed to a production (RHEL) machine. The
other deployment scenarios are pretty minor in comparison.

Or, in short: devs and ops are separate jobs. Containers make ops people do
more work/learn more things, but let devs do less work/learn fewer things.
That's why devs are enthusiastic about them: it pushes the work of packaging
their software (or writing autoconf scripts) for various platforms off their
plate.

Devs are interested in learning one thing—e.g. how to write a Dockerfile—that
lets them drop an entire stream of continuous work/learning/keeping-up they
have to do, e.g. handling changes in the multiple platforms their software
supports.

~~~
walterbell
_> Now your software can be run on some other dev's (Ubuntu, OSX) machine, or
deployed to a production (RHEL) machine. _

What about dependencies between user-space and the host kernel? Aren't all
containers forced to use the same kernel as the host?

The packaging scenario thst you describe has existed for years with VMs, where
the VM _can_ have a kernel or even OS version that is different from the host.

~~~
derefr
The main difference (besides overhead) is that a VM contains a running
collection of OS services along with your app. Because of this, the ops team
needs to be involved in keeping the VM up to date, the VM usually needs to be
"managed" with orchestration much like a physical machine, and all-in-all it's
big interdependent mess where the devs can't just forget about deploy-time
concerns.

Idiomatic usage of containers forces one particular solution for this: a
container contains one service; multiple services means multiple containers,
and the orchestration of those containers is up to the ops people and their
software.

VMs _can_ also be done this way. EC2 ephemeral instances work great for doing
a CoreOS-like "upgrade by starting up new AMIs instances and killing the old
ones" strategy.

However, since ops people can't be _guaranteed_ that random VMs they're handed
do not, in fact, have arbitrarily-old services running in them with possible
security vulnerabilities, they have to be conservative about deploying random
VMs created by devs. Thus, VMs don't tend to get created by devs; thus, the
devs still have to solve the deploy-time problem some other way to get the ops
people something they can _build into_ a VM. This isn't as much of a problem
with containers.

Unikernel VMs, on the other hand, are effectively equivalent to containers:
they both provide "just one service in a sandbox"-level granularity, that ops
can then manage as it pleases. If Unikernels had come around 10 years ago—if
Linux had been factored into a rump kernel, for example—I don't think we'd be
nearly as interested in containers today.

------
amelius
Any references to the publications containing the real blueprint?

~~~
kalgen
Borg:
[http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43438.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43438.html)
Omega:
[http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41684.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub41684.html)

------
degenerate
This has nothing to do with the article, but I absolutely hate the way wired
underlines their article links. It might fit with their magazine style design
but it's so incredibly distracting. I always want to bump it 1px up or down!

------
dkarapetyan
Google open source projects in general are just shitty. The reason is that
they don't open source the whole thing and the code ends up being full of
assumptions that don't hold because you are either not running things at
google scale or are missing certain key bits of the "secret sauce".

In any event google compute is a terrible user experience compared to the
likes of AWS and other cloud providers. Heck, even the shittiest VPS providers
tend to be better than google compute. So open sourcing their "secret sauce"
as the article puts is still missing key bits so I don't know how many people
actually fall for the good will part.

~~~
cmcluck
disclaimer: i am a founder of the Kubernetes project and did the article with
Cade at Wired. i also was product lead for compute engine back in the day fwiw
:).

I am not sure which projects you have looked at from Google in terms of Open
Source, but in the case of Kubernetes we have worked pretty hard to engage a
community outside of Google and work with the community to make sure that
Kubernetes is solid. One of the things that I like about the it is that many
of the top contributors don't work at Google. People like Red Hat have worked
very closely with us to make sure that (1) Kubernetes works well on
traditional infrastructure (2) that it is a comprehensive system that meets
enterprise needs, (3) that the usability is solid. People like Mirantis are
working to integrate Kubernetes into the OpenStack ecosystem. The project
started as a Google thing, but is bigger than a single company now.

Another thing worth noting: building a hosted commercial product (Google
Container Engine) in the open by relying exclusively on the Kubernetes code
base has helped us ensure that what we have built is explicitly _not_ locked
into Google's infrastructure, that the experience is good (since our community
has built much of the experience), and that the product solves a genuinely
broad set of problems.

Also consider that many of our early production users don't run on Google.
Many do, but many also run on AWS or on private clouds.

\-- craig

~~~
jacques_chester
I'd be interested to see whether Google follow's Pivotal's lead and donates
its IP to an independent foundation, as happened with Cloud Foundry.

Disclaimer: I work for Pivotal, in Pivotal Labs.


What is the best way to test mobile app across several networks and phones? - rokhayakebe

======
simul
In the past I have used a combination of tools: \- Smartphne emulator
developer edition (comercial) from yospace
(<http://www.yospace.com/spede.html)>

\- Two firefox extenstions: user agent switcher, wmlbrowser.

\- You can find some more info. at <http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/> . Their
mailing list is pretty good too.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Yospace is really cool. thank you

------
jsjenkins168
What language are you writing your app in? If using J2ME, I would suggest
checking out J2ME Polish to organize your builds across multiple platforms.
There is a built in device database that lists most phones along with their
supported APIs.

While it wont replace eventual real-world testing, it at least allows you to
focus in on devices that support the specific APIs, form factors, etc that you
need and ignore the ones which you do not.

The J2ME Polish GUI libraries are also excellent and work well across
different devices.

~~~
rokhayakebe
thank you. That would be nice but it doesn't test the functionality from one
operator to the other.

------
merlot-qa
Got a budget? Check with centercode.com; they have a pool of volunteer
testers, and can send out a survey to select users with the target phones on
the target networks.

No budget? It's a really tough problem. Test where you can and ask for reports
from other users. Offer something of value or interest for detailed bug
reports from platforms you can't test yourself. There are only so many J2ME
base platforms so you can group by those, but in the end you need to test on
each specific device.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Not too bad centercode. Thank you Merlot.

------
NonEUCitizen
i have not used this myself, but seems to be a good option (if claims are
true):

<http://deviceanywhere.com/index.jsp>

if you try it, i would be interested in how you find the service.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Nice. but cost too much. Thanks for the link.


5 Financial Rules for Startups - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.businessinsider.com//5-financial-rules-startups
======
thaumaturgy
Less than two years ago, I bootstrapped a consulting startup, by myself, and
made $300 in my first month. I had one client.

My goal this year was to hit $3,000 a month by the end of the year; I hit it
in June. I'm now regularly picking up new clients -- still entirely by word-
of-mouth -- I have two people working for/with me, and so far the growth isn't
showing any signs of slowing down.

While these aren't very impressive numbers, they're not too bad for one guy
with no resources starting out. It's been a good exercise in non-stop business
judo.

So, according to me:

1: Don't waste your time reading crap like this. You won't learn as much from
it as you will if you just go out and work your ass off.

2: Oh yeah, working your ass off: do that, a lot. It's been hard off and on,
but I also keep getting better at it, and now any potential competitors that
come along are going to find themselves facing off against a human dynamo.

3: I haven't figured out what #3 is yet. I've pretty much just done the first
two. What comes next depends too much on the individual and their business and
their market, so it's impossible to come up with one rule that works for
everyone. Having tried out a couple of different business "coaches", I've
found them to be completely unhelpful. So: nobody should be telling you what
to do, least of all me.

~~~
quizbiz
How do you pitch consulting? What exactly do you consult? If I may ask.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I haven't had to pitch, for the most part, and that's definitely my weakness.
I really suck at it.

One of the nice things about word-of-mouth growth is that people come to you,
and they've already heard that you're good, so all they want to know is how
much you cost and when you can come out.

For business mixers and the like, I have some pretty fancy business cards that
cost me about $.80 apiece, but they've really paid for themselves in helping
with that whole first impression thing.

I do I.T. consulting. In a nutshell, I'm one of the few guys that builds and
administrates networks and computer systems, can recover data from drives
(usually), clean up your nastiest viruses without formatting your drive,
install and troubleshoot IP telephony, as well as do software development,
reverse engineering, and all kinds of other stuff. Up until recently, I had
days where I was a telephone technician for a couple of hours, a network admin
for a couple of hours, and a programmer for the rest of the day. We've just
started a new one-obligation-per-tech-per-day policy, so that's gotten a
little easier.

I'm pretty much an affordable on-call I.T. department for anyone that needs
one.

Hey, wait-a-minute: that's not a bad pitch! _writes it down for later_

~~~
patio11
I think if you charge more, you'll find that people become automatically more
respectful of your time. You might also find that you deal less with difficult
clients who prioritize "affordable" (i.e. dirt freaking cheap) over everything
else, and as a result have a million problems which they expect you to solve
for $20. ("What? That's a lot of money! I could get my brother's cousin in
here for $15, its a generous offer!")

~~~
thaumaturgy
You are right, and I don't disagree, and I've even had a couple of clients
tell me that I should be charging more -- the usual number they offer is twice
my usual rate ($35/hr for students; $39/hr for home/home office; $45/hr for
businesses).

However, I started doing this in part because I was extremely frustrated with
the various expensive I.T. support companies and draconian vendor support
contracts, and because there's a huge under-served market of people who just
need help with stuff they don't understand, and can't afford to pay Geek
Squad's silly rates.

I wanted to be part of the solution, instead of adding to the problem.

For the most part, we have a pretty good relationship with all of our clients.
There are occasional frustrations, but most of that is due to our own growing
pains. We just "fired" a client recently after a large project went sideways
and we ended up getting a bit soaked on it; we won't hesitate to do that in
most cases, and I think it helps keep our business relationships healthier.

~~~
patio11
_huge under-served market of people who just need help with stuff they don't
understand, and can't afford to pay Geek Squad's silly rates_

I know that market very well. I sell to them and, prior to moving to Japan at
least, I was frequently their on-call tech support as a result of being
someone's sister's bridge partner's nephew.

I love my customers (and not-quite-customers since they never, you know,
actually paid money for my services) as people. I don't think they're less
intelligent or less worthwhile as human beings just because they don't
understand that the little beige box over there is not a "CPU". They don't
need to understand networking, automobile engines, or plumbing, just like I
don't need to understand the HR policies of the local streets and sanitation
department.

What they do need to understand: you can solve some problems cheaply with
products that can be produced at scale. You can teach yourself to manage some
problems cheaply with educational resources that can be produced at scale. If
you want an IT consultant with a range of skill broad enough to encompass
almost any problem you could have available to perform arbitrary tasks, it
will be _affordable_ in the sense that it will cost you far, far less than the
business value generated, but it will not be _inexpensive_ by any stretch of
the imagination.

------
brown9-2
Everyone one of this article's "rules" looks like this:

       1. In the words of Evan Williams...
       2. According to Jason Cohen...
       3. This advice from Michael Arrington of Techcrunch...
       4. According to Jason Calacanis...
       5. Those are the words of Mark Cuban...

A true list of N things ...

------
zaidf
Weird to read an article that stresses making money but is anti-marketing.

I understand most marketing is bloated. But even the best products need GOOD
marketing to bring in the dough. The solution is not to be anti-marketing.
Rather, be pro revenue focused marketing.

Unimpressed.


Google Play security metadata and offline app distribution - el_duderino
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/06/google-play-security-metadata-and.html
======
abrowne
Will this block e.g. when Android Police has an APK download of an updated app
before it rolls via normal updates?

~~~
sofaofthedamned
Nope. It just verifies that the apk came from Google Play to start with.


How to be a VC without any Capital - replicatorblog
http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/19/how-to-be-a-vc-without-any-capital/
======
arbuge
You would not, by definition, be much of a venture _capitalist_ without any
capital to command. Perhaps a better title might be "How to raise your chances
of some day being a professional VC, slim as they might be."

~~~
charlesdm
Money flows to opportunities, not the other way around. If I can put X + Y
together for $z, and I can sell it for $z*3, then it will be easy to find
someone to give me $z.

~~~
arbuge
Quite true but this kind of wheeling and dealing is not something that VCs
typically do, in my experience at least.

------
dovereconomics
> there will be plenty of angels or firms willing to cut a check or, at least,
> take a meeting.

What would keep them from ditching you and getting the deal without
commission/bonus? 'Niceness'/'Decency' doesn't really work in this industry.

~~~
joshu
I think most better funds will not engage in this. It is a bad sign for the
startup.

I often introduce companies to funds, but I just want the chance to invest
alongside, which almost always happens. I am sometimes offered advisory shares
for making a conndction which I have always declined.

~~~
replicatorblog
That was the author's point—this isn't something you do to make money, it's a
way to show good firms that you have the skills needed to be a solid
associate/analyst.

------
rmason
The article is click bait. These days if you've sold your company and have a
small amount of money to invest you might as well start your own fund, but do
it as an AngelList Syndicate.

[https://angel.co/syndicates/start](https://angel.co/syndicates/start)

If you're going to become an angel investor then why not let other people
invest alongside you? So instead of putting just $25,000 into a deal you can
put $250,000 - 500,000 into a startup. Course if you're a flop you will lose
your investors but then again that is how it works in the real VC world ;<).

------
mmastrac
> There is no clear mechanism for getting cut in on the deal in this model.

So, volunteer work?

~~~
logicallee
as far as I can tell, the author of this blog post would like to increase his
deal flow by arguing that volunteers should do his work for him, and send
vetted deals his way (after doing due diligence).

I only gave it a cursory reading though! Thoughts on my take?

~~~
replicatorblog
Not the point of the post at all. The author wrote this as advice to people
who want to break into VC, which is a common question he receives, per the
article.

------
cpach
Why not just start your own company?

~~~
replicatorblog
A few reasons:

\+ Different skill sets: VC is very much a relationship/network/finance job,
founding an operating company requires execution against many more functions,
especially product.

\+ Diversification: Often people who want to be VCs have had some success in
founding companies, but modest. If you look at most entrepreneurs turned VCs,
they sold their companies for relatively small amounts (with some notable
exceptions e.g. Rich Barton, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla). They know how hard
it is to build an amazing company. Being a VC allows you to use those hard won
skills while diversifying your portfolio.

\+ Lifestyle: Being a founder is great, but it's a roller coaster. Being a VC
is hard work, but a bit more steady state.

------
Roadgazer
Helping startups and investors to get connected and close the deal is very
valuable by itself. Though it should be real help to matter to both. And it's
not highlighted well in the article.


Have any of you used LiveScribe? Wondering if I should go for it or not - anjalimullanyny
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/13/gift-guide-gadgets-and-an-app-for-digital-bookworms-and-writers/

======
od2m
The technology itself works quite well. I did not like feel of the pen. The
roller was approximately bic quality which is unacceptable for a $200 pen. My
pen died after a couple years of virtually no use. It would probably require a
redesign of the pen, but I find I prefer gel pens nowadays and wish there was
a gel pen insert.

If you REALLY REALLY need to take notes during meetings, its the best thing
ever. I find in most meetings however, there's probably one or two facts I
really need to know. I decided that instead of taking notes I would just stop
caring about meetings. I enter those one or two facts into evernote on my
phone and I'm done with.

------
ljf
They are awesome, if you ofter review hand written notes then get one, and if
you work with people who don't mind you recording conversations (such as
requirements gathering sessions) they are really useful.

Pretty much use mine daily

~~~
anjalimullanyny
This is helpful, thanks for the comments. I don't really want it for meetings
- lately I've been writing more fiction, again, tho, and find I sometimes want
to write freehand instead of on my laptop -- but then I have to deal with
transcribing pages and pages of my looping handwriting...

------
jhcedric
I use mine to create annotated recordings of lectures. It works quite well for
that purpose. Clicking on my notes skips the recording directly to the
relevant part of the lecture.


Wikipedia Has Cancer - avery42
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-02-27/Op-ed
======
greenyoda
This article is from 2017.

It was discussed extensively 8 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21699011)

Thus, it's too early to repost it based on HN Guidelines (1 year). See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

Discussions from 2017:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287235)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15429067)


Working on a few things in your bedroom doesn't make you an expert - zachinglis
http://zachinglis.com/2012/working-on-a-few-things-in-your-bedroom-doesnt-make-you-an-expert/

======
lutusp
I scanned the linked article until I got to: "I am seeing an increased group
of what I’d call newbies and inexperienced designers having started speaking."
The remainder of the article lives up to the impression this sentence creates.

At that point I realized the author isn't in a position to criticize the
"novice" writing and speaking of others. And a Web page with a red background
doesn't demonstrate the experience and maturity the author evidently thinks he
possesses.

~~~
zachinglis
You scanned an article and made a judgement?

I've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a
major website among other things.

I never criticised people's grammar, purely where they come from.

~~~
lutusp
> You scanned an article and made a _judgement_? [emphasis added]

No, I scanned the article and made a _judgment_. If you don't want to be
judged on your use of English, improve it. What works for computer languages
should work for English too.

However unfair you believe it to be, people are going to judge you based on
your use and misuse of English, and they will often do it in a flash.
Complaining about it won't work -- all you can do is adapt and overcome, which
I am sure is within your power.

> I've worked on a variety of projects, small and huge. Lead the redesign of a
> major website among other things.

I believe you "led" the redesign of a major Website.

> I never criticised people's grammar ...

Under the circumstances, that's a wise choice.

> ... purely where they come from.

I believe you mean "where they're coming from", as in "what their attitudes
are", rather than their place of origin or residence. But I could be mistaken
-- the above might be an Americanism with no British corollary.

I find it very funny that people will unsentimentally dissect a piece of
computer code (computer "language") with the aim of extracting a 10%
improvement in its running speed, or readability, or maintainability, but will
bristle at the suggestion that the same high standards could be applied to
written language.

~~~
zachinglis
Fair enough. I made some spelling and grammar mistakes. Although a lot was due
to the fervour of all of yesterday's events.

However, your comment was about how you skipped through a post and made a snap
judgement. This doesn't help anyone - nor does it make your comments relevant.
The post was not about anyone's spelling or grammar and you were the only
person out of the thousands who read it who had a problem.

As for judgement which no doubt you're spitting vitriol at your screen, it can
be spelt either way: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement>

~~~
lutusp
> However, your comment was about how you skipped through a post and made a
> snap judgement. This doesn't help anyone - nor does it make your comments
> relevant.

On the contrary, it does both. You need to learn that, in modern times, people
are going to glance at your website, read the first few sentences, and draw a
conclusion. Again, complaining about it is pointless -- all you can do is
accommodate reality, as I am sure you can do.

Top-flight advertising executives spend a huge amount of time writing and
rewriting advertising copy, sometimes changing just one word before submitting
the result to a focus group, because a prime-time advertising spot can cost
upwards of a million dollars. Do you think they complain that consumers
rejected their offering because they chose the wrong word, or worse,
misspelled it? No, they fix the problem and get on with their lives.

Fix the problem and get on with your life.

~~~
zachinglis
> Fix the problem and get on with your life. You see the irony in your
> trolling right?

I know all about copy, rewriting and reiterating on such. This is a blog, not
a high level advertisement. Most advertising can't be changed when in the Real
World™ - whereas a blog can be.

If you don't like the article, you don't have to read it. If you want to
comment about it, read it so you actually know what you're talking about.

~~~
lutusp
> This is a blog, not a high level advertisement.

That depends. Do you actually want people to read what you write, or is this
all an exercise in lexical onanism?

> If you want to comment about it, read it so you actually know what you're
> talking about.

Your problem is not that I didn't read the article. Your problem is that I
did.

~~~
zachinglis
I get thousands of hits of people reading my articles. You are perhaps the
first who really cared that much over the last 13 years. But I mainly write on
my blog for me and those who want to read. I am not mad hungry for visitors -
I have plenty - but if people want to read then all the better.

I have read a few lines in the Bible, there for I am an expert. I have read a
few lines of a medical text book, therefore I can perform operations. I have
read a line of a blog post, therefore I know what the blog post says and about
the author.

(Also, in response to your earlier criticism about design. What do you think
design is? Prettiness? Design is about the simplest answer to the problem. As
you would have read - that was a Live Redesign, and since has been changed
with yet more fiddling. It was not meant to be.)

The truth is I received hundreds of responses via Twitter and Email (some
seemed scared to talk so openly about such a problem for fear of being
ostracised.) It is a problem and one I wanted to discuss. I've seen it less so
in the Ruby world mainly because front-end is much easier to master and slower
moving. The Ruby world is less forgiving - remember Yehuda's heckling earlier
this year.

So I wrote a post about what I felt was a serious matter and you decided that
you had read one sentence and it offended you because of your snap judgement
that you knew who I was. You decided that I know nothing about design based on
your subjective knowledge (and looking at your Geocities-style abomination of
a website - this doesn't help you any further) and the fact that I am dyslexic
and perhaps don't always get the words that I want to say out correctly. It
was a needless comment that held no value to the thread, to the subject matter
or anything.

If you had said "This content is hard to read. I wish the author would rewrite
it" then I would have acknowledged that and even perhaps done that. As I have
done once before. Instead you tried to act clever (even failing the mark on
one of the corrections.)


Simple but Interesting Features of VS2010 and C# 4.0 - yread
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/VS2010InterestingFeatures.aspx

======
numlocked
I think the only one of these that's innovative enough to be of interest to
nonusers of C# + VS is the DataTips. It's basically a small watch window you
can pin anywhere in the code, almost like a sticky note. You can pin any
number of them, anywhere in the code, and they scroll around and are visible
when viewing source & debugging. They remain in place between debugging
sessions (presumably stored in the VS project file). Seems extremely useful.
Definitely better than setting up and tearing down watch expressions all the
time.

~~~
mendicant
Yup. There's so many of these that are either irresponsible (Hiding code) or
of limited usefulness (IsNullOrEmpty) or too limited to be truly useful (Named
Parameters).

Hiding Code: I've got an idea. If you've got to hide code, maybe it _doesn't
belong in that class_. Single responsibility people.

String.IsNullOrEmpty(): Wow! Thanks MS for saving me from writing one 4 line
helper method. What would be useful is if you provided these helpers for the
other 90 that I need every project. Seriously, any C# dev can provide you with
their "utility" project that has them.

Named Parameters & Defaults: Awesome!..... unless you need something other
than a primitive, in which case you can't set default values, since it's
nothing but a fancy compiler trick.

I like C#, but really, there's not much they've added since Linq that's really
crazy interesting. Not that there isn't, but most of it isn't listed in this
article.

~~~
varunsrin
Hiding code is actually quite useful - its not meant to obscure code that
doesn't belong, as you imply.

Say for instance, I'm working on two methods that are expansive, but i'm
trying to debug a small part of those methods. To make watching breakpoints
and tracking flow easy I hide all but the necessary parts of the code.

I use regions in pretty much the same way - once I have a certain region of
functionality locked down and tested, I hide it so I can focus on the part
that's still being developed / tested.

~~~
mendicant
My point is: If your class/code/file is so big that you need to hide code to
be able to easily navigate (or worse, understand) it, you're doing something
wrong.

I understand this is a religious argument of the code world and you're likely
to disagree with me. I'm fine with that.

~~~
boyter
You are missing the point. Lots of large applications I work on maintaining
have large awful methods. This feature is excellent in these cases.

You could argue that I should re-factor the whole thing to avoid this issue,
but certain design decisions made by someone else make this a huge change, and
in the world of risk adverse enterprise applications that is not going to
happen.

~~~
hkarthik
Can you not start writing tests against those monster methods so that you've
got a refactoring safety net?

I totally agree on being practical and not refactoring methods that work
correctly. But if you find yourself in the monster methods making changes
quite often, it seems irresponsible to not refactor and leave the camp ground
cleaner for the next time you or someone else comes through it.

~~~
boyter
Its a big ball of dependencies with no chance to mock due to someone deciding
on being "clever". Its up there with being untestable.

Generally I agree. If possible clean it up, but quite often its a small one
line change, which needs to be fixed ASAP, so there is little chance to
refactor.

------
kogir
Beware default values. They're set _at the point of invocation_ at compile
time. This isn't a problem, but you need to be aware of it. For this reason
it's considered bad form to publicly use default values library assemblies -
the callers won't see any change until they too are recompiled.

See
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2011/05/19/optio...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2011/05/19/optional-
argument-corner-cases-part-four.aspx)

~~~
photon137
Isn't that a standard feature of x86 function-invocation, ie, argument values
are stored in caller's stack? (although C# runs on CLR, but still...)

------
aforty
A few of those features are ones that VB.NET developers have long been
enjoying and yet VB.NET is still looked down upon when functionally it and C#
have been equal for years.

Yes I'm a little bitter because I had to learn the disgustingly ugly syntax
that is C# when I recently switched jobs.

~~~
nopassrecover
The "ugly" c-style C# syntax is far more expressive. Using VB.NET feels like
using crayons to draw portraits.


The Good Fight - ryaninmtv
http://kevinprentiss.com/?p=156

======
edw519
As I read about OP's awakening as he talked to some of the Techstars mentors,
I kept thinking, "Haven't I heard this somewhere before?"

Then I realized that I got many of the same feelings from reading the book _Do
More Faster_ by Techstars founders David Cohen and Brad Feld. This is a
collection of essays by Techstars mentors and founders sharing their
experiences. I imagine that OP could have gotten a lot of perspective if he
had read this book first. Many others would, too. The book is excellent.

I already shared some of my favorite quotes from that book here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1974020>

I'd love to see a similar book by YCombinator mentors and founders. What a
treat that would be.


What The Sleep Habits of Famous Writers Reveal About Their Productivity - angelohuang
http://www.fastcompany.com/3026741/work-smart/what-the-sleep-habits-of-famous-writers-reveal-about-their-productivity?partner=rss&utm_content=bufferff287&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
socrates1998
This is interesting, but generally meaningless.

Studying successful people doesn't reveal secrets.

It's the problem of induction. There are probably tons of unsuccessful writers
that have similar habits and write a ton of horrible writing.

~~~
Nursie
This sort of article also seems to pander to a certain sort of personal
control-freakery - "if I just change this one more thing about myself, then
I'll be truly successful!"

------
umjames
Would love to see this for notable programmers. Don't know if the data is
available for their wake-up times.

Would also love to see how many of these writers/programmers took naps during
the day, at what time, and for how long.

------
sukuriant
Okay, so I'm basically seeing that 9am is a pretty good time to wake up; and
if you like to wake up earlier, that's good too?

This is still a very small sample of people.

------
WalterSear
What did it reveal?


How not to hire an engineer - eddieSullivan
http://www.chickenwingsw.com/scratches/programming/how-not-to-hire-an-engineer

======
briancray
I love the recent focus on hiring people, not job descriptions. I saw another
article written by David Cancel of Performable on the same subject. Technical
skills are important, mind you, but personalities can't be taught.


PURE study makes headlines, but the conclusions are misleading - jonathansizz
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutrition
======
inetsee
The link attached to the title takes you to the home page for Harvard's
Nutrition department. The actual critique of the PURE study is at
[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2017/09/08/pure...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2017/09/08/pure-
study-makes-headlines-but-the-conclusions-are-misleading/).