Ask HN: Where are optimized solutions to leetcode problems being used? - rahulskn86
Of-course sorting problems are being used everywhere but I am trying to understand other applications which require that level of algorithmic knowledge as part of the day to day engineering work.
======
keyle
\- 3D rendering in game engine

\- geo-spatial related problem, path finding etc.

\- geo positioning

\- low level networking

\- shaders code

\- physics and fluid simulation

\- GPU stuff

I mean everywhere there is a problem to solve, there is depth to explore.


Anybody Can Fire This 'Locked' Smart Gun with $15 Worth of Magnets - kevination
https://www.wired.com/story/smart-gun-fire-magnets/
======
advisedwang
The range extension and lock circumvention is bad, but only weakens back to a
regular handgun. The jamming is more scary to me as it makes the product
actively worse than if it wasn't smart at all.

~~~
alex-
I could imagine some firearm owners being willing to trade 100% reliability to
prevent a casual accident.

I imagine some firearm sales are for more recreational purposes.

~~~
dogma1138
This isn't any more likely to prevent negligent discharge than existing
safeties.

Basic fire arms etiquette is to treat any firearm as loaded and ready to fire
unless it's been explicitly cleared.

If you do not use guns for self defense then keeping them clear and keeping
ammo separate is much easier and safer.

Any type of safety can fail and relying on it is just how you get some of
these accidents.

------
arielweisberg
The description makes it sound like if you are firing weak hand (or strong
hand) you might be outside the range of the watch?

They say "just a few inches" which implies less than a foot. That's not going
to work for law enforcement or anyone really.

Honestly sounds like they didn't think too hard about real world usage. That
describes most handgun manufacturers though and isn't strictly limited to
smart gun manufacturers.

~~~
traek
The intention clearly seems to be for the watch to be worn on the same arm
that you hold the gun with.

~~~
arielweisberg
It's not safe to assume the arm that has the watch will be available to
operate gun.

People practice one handed reloads and failure drills.

Even in competition you are regularly required to alternate no strong hand
only and weak hand only so it isn't possible to put the watch on the right
hand. Proper technique also has you anchoring the unused arm.

------
LyndsySimon
To be fair, you can build a working shotgun for less than that.

------
DeonPenny
If you're doing all this bring your own gun.


Bitcode Demystified - happy-go-lucky
https://lowlevelbits.org/bitcode-demystified/
======
HHad3
When the author pointed out that bitcode may impact security, I expected to
read about how compiler optimizations that happen during compilation of LLVM
IR to machine language may introduce security issues.

However, the article only mentioned that decompilation is easier with LLVM IR,
because it is a more high-level language. It certainly is a valid point, but
addresses the topic of binary obfuscation instead for algorithmic security.

I'm thus wondering if anyone can shed some light on the real security aspects.
For example, let's say that I compile C that is supposed to run in constant
time to LLVM IR and submit it to Apple. Does Apple guarantee that their
blackbox optimizations do not introduce branches or other factors that may
result in variable timing into a constant time algorithm? Can I do anything to
ensure that my code will always run in constant time despite unknown
optimizations being applied to it in the future?

~~~
esrauch
It seems trivially obvious to me that there is no way to guarantee and code
you write won't be transformed into any runtime under arbitrary "optimization"
(transformation).

As in, you can have just a single numberic constant in your code and Apple is
permitted to insert a for loop up to that constant.

------
bla2
I only skimmed, but I found several mistakes. With bitcode, you still get one
bitcode slice per arch since LLVM bitcode isn't platform-independent. Pointers
are for example sized differently, which causes the same C file to compile to
different bitcode; preprocessor macros are different, which also causes the
same C file to compile to different bitcode; and so on. App thinning can be
implemented without bitcode, so that whole "What problems Apple’s Bitcode aims
to solve?" section is bogus.

~~~
0x0
Agreed, my impression is that the main benefit of bitcode is that it allows
Apple to rebuild apps for the purposes of fixing compiler backend bugs and
perhaps introducing improved micro-optimizations for newer CPUs generations
within the same architecture, but it certainly does not work as a "java
bytecode" layer - it definitively wouldn't enable Apple to change to a
completely different CPU architecture in newer iPhones or Macs. The LLVM IR
and the ObjectiveC/Swift/libc ABI is too architecture-specific to work as a
portability layer.

~~~
glhaynes
_my impression is that the main benefit of bitcode is that it allows Apple to
rebuild apps for the purposes of fixing compiler backend bugs and perhaps
introducing improved micro-optimizations for newer CPUs generations within the
same architecture_

This is my impression, too, but it's always seemed strange to me - are the
rare fix for a compiler bug and a few micro-optimizations worth all the
effort?

~~~
0x0
Maybe they expected more compiler bugs than usual when bringing out Swift?

------
JdeBP
Another problem with the article is the description of how compilers work. In
my experience over the years, the compilers that use assembly language as an
intermediate form, and that require an assembler, are in the minority; and the
majority of compilers that I have encountered go straight from (lowered) IR to
machine code generation.

As bla2 points out, it seems that the author has got entirely the wrong end of
the stick. App thinning isn't related to bitcode. It's about delivering a
program image that only contains the program for the instruction architecture
of the downloading client. LLVM bitcode use is, rather, about holding off
generating that final machine image until the point of download, rather than
when the developer compiled the program, theoretically allowing improvements
in code generation and IR lowering to be taken advantage of after a developer
provides a compiled application to Apple.

A better treatment of the subject appears to be [https://imore.com/app-
thinning-ios-9-explained](https://imore.com/app-thinning-ios-9-explained) .

------
someguydave
It sounds to me that Apple is preparing for the day when they ship a non-x86
mac but don't want to slow everything down with emulation.

~~~
jcranmer
Bitcode is still architecture-specific: you generally can't take LLVM IR
produced for x86-64 and expect it to run on ARM without issues.

~~~
someguydave
Understood, but I suppose what I meant was that you could write an emulator
that works at a higher level than machine-code which _could_ interpret IR on a
foreign arch.

------
eridius
This article is presumably from 2015 as it says Apple introduced Bitcode “a
few months ago”.


Why I Don't Call the Police - smacktoward
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/08/michael_brown_eric_garner_debra_harrell_just_three_examples_of_why_i_don.single.html

======
JoeAltmaier
Title amendment: when a black person is involved, and the issue is not urgent.
Because the response is disproportionate based on race.


Building a raspberry pi into a laptop - azeirah

Hey, I had this kinda crazy idea when I saw a friend log in remotely to his PI using X-server. Programs would run on the pi, and he would see them on his laptop.
I had this idea of, what if I build a raspberry pi 2 into my laptop. Not like any other pi-top project. I'll have a hybrid intel/pi laptop. I can use it to do Linux-stuff, have a portable gpio prototyping thing, I can host some local webservers, use it as a build server or
My laptop has a cd-drive that I've never used, people suggested me to put an SSD in there, no way, I'm getting a separate computer instead :D
What are your thoughts on this? What would you do with a second computer inside your laptop? Just wondering...
======
camhenlin
I installed a Raspberry Pi and an LCD with a battery in inside of an old Mac
Plus. That's kind of a laptop right?
[http://i.imgur.com/ID7chQk.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ID7chQk.jpg)

~~~
more_corn
Counts! My Mac SE at least had a handle and optional carrying case (which I
sadly didn't have). I think they were originally advertised as portable.

------
CyberFonic
I have a couple of old laptops. So when I saw your post, I thought about
pulling out the old motherboard, etc and installing a Raspberry Pi 2 in its
place. Might be tricky to get the old LCD to work correctly.

Has anybody successfully got this sort of re-engineering working?

~~~
undersuit
A number of people have been successful with the DSI connector on the Pi, but
the monitors you can use are radically different that what you'd find in a
laptop.

[http://elinux.org/RPi_Screens#Interfacing_to_non-
monitor_LCD...](http://elinux.org/RPi_Screens#Interfacing_to_non-
monitor_LCD_panels)

Oh and there is a HDMI to LVDS breakout board floating around somewhere.

------
Ezhik
Wouldn't it be more practical to just use a virtual machine in your main OS?


Twitter Chirp live broadcast on Justin.tv - evansolomon
http://www.justin.tv/twitterchirp

======
_pius
I'm streaming this on my 27" iMac and I must say, the video quality is
absolutely gorgeous, with no stuttering. Great job guys.

~~~
markkoberlein
I'm also impressed by the quality. I hope live streaming like this becomes the
standard for tech events/conferences.

------
sant0sk1
All I see is a giant Chirp logo on a blue background. Are they in intermission
or something?

~~~
tcdent
Yeah, you just missed it. They'll be back at 11:00.

~~~
samratjp
Looks like I missed it as well. Anything noteworthy so far? Something that
even non-devs would get excited about?

~~~
tbgvi
Library of Congress announced that they're archiving every tweet since
Twitters inception. Not sure if they said anything at Chirp about it yet.

[http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how-
tw...](http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-library-of-congress/how-tweet-it-is-
library-acquires-entire-twitter-archive/110775778955250)

------
tlrobinson
Application defined annotations is the most interesting thing I've heard about
so far.

------
jayliew
does anyone know if this can be replayed again afterwards? i missed the early
part

~~~
evansolomon
Yes, all the video is archived and clips will be made for each talk. We'll
post the clips here later.

~~~
jayliew
Thank you, we'll be looking forward to those!

~~~
jdeseno
<http://www.justin.tv/twitterchirp/all#r=QcLevkA~>


Square Closes $200M Series D - misiti3780
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/17/square-closes-200m-series-d-from-starbucks-citi-rizvi-at-3-25b-valuation/

======
bane
So to the stock-optioned employee what does this mean? Somebody who started
early with the company vs somebody who starts after this round? Keeping track
of the value of options after several rounds seems to be quite complicated.

~~~
bduerst
Depends on a few factors.

\- What is strike price of the option?

\- What is the expected market value of the company?

If a company is valued at $1billion dollars and has 10 million shares, then
each share is expected to be worth $100. This is a rough estimate, and assumes
that the valuation accounts for future revenue, violatility, etc.

If you have options that gives you the right to put (sell) the shares at $150,
then you are making $50 on each option, since you can buy your $100 share in
the company and sell at $150, guaranteed. 1,000 options would be $50,000
profit at that share market price and stock option strike price.

This means you can expect the option to be worth $50, except that options
typically have a date at which the options expire. The price of the option
changes relative to this date, and is worthless after the date.

This is also dependent on you being able to exercise your stock options, which
is unlikely unless the company is being publicly traded. A series D funding
means the company is still privately traded, and the market price isn't set
yet.

------
dude_abides
In comparison,

\- Facebook raised $200MM in its Series-D round with DST in 2009, at a
valuation of $10B.

\- Twitter in 2010, with plateauing growth, raised $200MM (series F), with a
valuation of 3.7 B.

Square has strong growth and a proven revenue model and still just got a
multiple of 16x. Clearly the market has adjusted its expectations quite a bit.
In other words, it is going to be quite hard for a Pinterest to raise money at
1.5B valuation today.

I'm going to have to conclude that reports of another tech bubble burst were
quite exaggerated.

~~~
mrkurt
Proven revenue can be counter intuitive when raising money. On the one hand,
it makes it much easier to raise. On the other, it's such a solid metric that
you can't build a story for investors that gives you insane valuations.

It would not surprise me to see a hot startup with really good traction/growth
and a fuzzy but credible "here's how we make money" raise at another crazy
valuation soon. If you can paint a picture of a huge market, show impressive
ownership of that market, you can let investors use their imaginations from
there.

~~~
dude_abides
Agree with you that proven revenue model doesn't help create growth multiples.

But in Square's case, the story for investors would likely have been: here's
ways x, y, z, in which we can make money, and even in case none of these
works, here's our proven revenue model.

------
stevencorona
Wonder how much of that 8 billion in payments/year they see. 2.75% (their fee)
of 8 billion is 220 million. How much of that do they have to pay out to the
payment networks?

~~~
jonknee
A lot of that depends on their average transaction size. Square charges a flat
rate despite there being per transaction fees, so 10 $1 charges are a lot less
profitable for Square than 1 $10 charge.

They almost certainly actually lose money on the $1 transactions (their fee is
under 3 cents but you'd typically have north of 20 cents of interchange fees).

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-
average-i...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regii-average-
interchange-fee.htm)

------
programminggeek
I'm curious what the plan is for that $200 million. Obviously Square is
printing money at this point, but what other direction do they see to move out
from mobile payments?

My guess is maybe they are going to go after other parts of the small biz
segment like making e-commerce easier and so on. Ultimately, if Square can get
3% off the top of every transaction a business makes for the vast majority of
businesses, there is a lot of money to be made for sure.

~~~
jonknee
> Obviously Square is printing money at this point

Not so sure that's obvious. They're processing a lot of payments for sure, but
not all of them are profitable. They spend a lot of money on hardware and
customer service. Fraud surely costs a bundle too. It's a business that only
makes sense at a very large scale.

~~~
drusenko
Agreed. 3% is an overly optimistic estimate for how much they are making off
each transaction since they are charging 2.75% and no per transaction fee and
interchange isn't too much lower than that (maybe around a 2 or 2.2% blended
rate?) Then you have to account for per-transaction fees, chargebacks, etc.

Given the pricing, I am guessing that they are making anywhere from break-even
to 1% on each transaction. At my most generous estimate, that's $80M of annual
revenue before any costs, but I'd wager they are pretty damn close to break-
even and not making too much, yet...

So I agree with you, they are growing very quickly and have pretty tremendous
potential, but I'm not sure I'd say they are "printing money".


FCC Chair Genachowski declares himself Top Cop of the Internet - Calamitous
http://www.reason.com/news/show/136278.html

======
miked
A Washington power grab at its finest. The FCC has announced that it, and it
alone, is ruler of the internet, although of course the announcement was
couched in terms of "openness". It will be interesting to see how this plays
out in the courts against First Amendment issues, when they finally collide,
as they will.


The age of the independent creator - joss82
http://tynan.com/independentcreator

======
joss82
Seriously? No one liked this one?


The Future of Layout with CSS: Grid Layouts - zastrowm
https://medium.com/@patrickbrosset/css-grid-layout-6c9cba6e8a5a
======
exodust
I avoid grids, actually hate them. But if they were part of the spec then I
might take a look when the browser support ramps up.

The problem I have with grids is they don't play nice with fluid resizing. I
aim for liquid smooth responses from desktop down to tablet, then just one
breakpoint for anything smaller than a tablet. Works for me. Any more break
points is a ticket to pain.

What I wish was easily possible with CSS alone, is a method for specific
position of an object within a list item, or properties of the list item
itself _depending_ on where and how many list items are currently present.
That way, if we have 3 list items each containing a thumbnail, the list item
could be set to 33% width. If two list items, 50% and so on. Things like a
list of thumbs could remain nice and neatly aligned at any point in the
responsive page resize. I'm not interested in hacking this with pre-
processors, we need CSS to have these tricks up its sleeve. But instead, we
get grids?

~~~
exodust
Just adding that I've finally given flexbox a go and it basically provides a
solution to the problem I mention above, so that's great. This demo is
excellent: flexboxin5.com


All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters - alan_cx
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/06/big_4_isps_will_all_embrace_network_level_filtering_to_protect_children/
======
philbarr
Forgive me for being glib, but at least one good thing out of this is that a
lot more teenagers will be inspired to become hackers.

"So when did you first get into hacking Mr. Famous Hacker X?"

"Well, I remember that, like a lot of the lads in my generation at the time, I
was trying to get round my ISPs porn-filters."

~~~
robotmay
This is actually pretty accurate for when I was in school; I learnt a lot
about proxies and networking whilst bypassing the school's content filters :D

------
andyking
So, in order to get around this DNS-based filtering, all a teenager has to do
is change the DNS servers on their computer or device to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4?
This seems like a move designed to placate rather than provide any real
protection - like all such schemes.

There's no alternative to supervising young people's internet use. Teenagers
_will_ look up porn - it's best to be adult and intelligent about it, and
protect them from its worst _effects_ , rather than trying to filter the
content itself.

~~~
retube
Yes it is impossible to completely block the distribution of such content, and
yes maybe this is a particularly weak solution. But that doesn't mean that
this or simialr efforts should not be made: they will reduce the ease of
availability which will cut down exposure to this type of material.

I actually believe that all pornography should be behind a paywall, and any
which is not is blocked (somehow). And no I am not abdicating responsibily of
my children to the state - they still need to be taught responsible online
behaviour - as I agree above such material will always be available for those
who make the effort to circumvent restrictions.

We don't not lock our houses because someone can still break in - but it
dramatically cuts down on such attempts (and we still educate our children on
why breaking into other peoples homes is a bad thing to do).

~~~
m0nty
> all pornography should be behind a paywall

You mean this?

[http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/henri-de-
toulouse-l...](http://uploads0.wikipaintings.org/images/henri-de-toulouse-
lautrec/the-medical-inspection.jpg)

Or this?

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Gustav_Kl...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Gustav_Klimt_010.jpg)

This is particularly naughty, ought to be censored:

> Yet she multiplied her prostitutions, in calling to remembrance the days of
> her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she
> doted on their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose
> issue is like the issue of horses. Thus you called to remembrance the
> lewdness of your youth, in bruising your teats by the Egyptians for the
> breasts of your youth.

~~~
retube
No, you are being deliberately obtuse. I am talking about material available
on the tubes etc.

~~~
m0nty
No, I'm not. Those pictures are sexually explicit and should be censored. The
text I quoted is not suitable for children and should be removed.

------
shocks
Hey parents, instead of trying to filter your internet connection to 'protect'
your child, why not... Er... Parent? Teach him/her what not to do online, why,
and how to stay safe. Filters will always be on step behind.

~~~
lutze
Children shouldn't be using the internet unsupervised, full stop.

~~~
takluyver
And, like lots of other things that shouldn't happen, they will. Their parent
will be desperately trying to get some work done, or cooking dinner, or
watching another child. Children now increasingly get to use tablets for
entertainment, and a parent won't be constantly watching the screen, even
though it can access the web.

I don't think network-level filters are the best way to address it. But let's
stop pretending this is as simple as telling some lazy parents to get their
act together.

~~~
workbench
If you hand your tablet off to your child like that unsupervised you're a bad
parent anyway.

Finding it really hard to sympathise with these people who can't look after
their own offspring responsibly

~~~
takluyver
Why? It's an interactive device that they can play Tetris or Angry Birds on.
It's not a stick of dynamite. Most parents will be more worried about what the
kid does to the tablet than vice versa. It's only a risky item because some
people can't stand the idea of there being any way to access the internet that
doesn't include all of the less salubrious bits.

------
Zariel
As long as its opt-in then I am all for giving parents the choice to filter
their networks, but as soon as it becomes opt-out I will be very angry about
it.

~~~
retube
why?

~~~
venomsnake
Because an ISP should be dumb pipe. They should only provide connectivity and
not mess with people connections. Opt in is enabling. Opt out is intrusion.

~~~
retube
you cannot broadcast what you want on radio or television, you cannot print
what you like in newspapers or magazines - there are rules and regulations
governing content. why should the internet be any different?

~~~
venomsnake
But I can say what I want on the telephone and write it in a mail. Internet is
point to point bi-directional communication. It is not broadcasting.

~~~
retube
Umm.. that is precisely what it is! TCP/IP maybe directionally agnostic, but
application layer protocols vary. HTTP for example is very much a broadcast
protocol.

~~~
anExcitedBeast
I'm not sure you know what "broadcast" means.

~~~
retube
Well you're just arguing semantics. Just because HTTP is a 1-to-1 connection
doesn't mean web content is not "broadcast". It's there for anyone that wants
to view it, so functionally it is exactly the same as traditional broadcast
media - it's just the mechanics of delivery which are different.

~~~
anExcitedBeast
A broadcast, by definition, is a data transmission initiated by the
broadcaster to a number of recipients. HTTP doesn't fit this definition in any
way, shape, or form. Every transaction is initiated by a request from you, the
client. Right now radio waves are being forced through you and your computer
by radio and television towers. Those are broadcasts. Hacker News is not. You
made a specific request for the content of news.ycombinator.com. If you do not
specifically ask for all this violent pornography you seem so concerned about,
it simply can not find its way to your computer. Know why? Because it's not
being broadcasted.

Beyond the "semantics" (your dismissal of which indicates you don't hold much
regard for the rule of law), you are sorely mistaken if you think state
censorship will be used exclusively to guard our fragile, sexually frustrated
youth from gangbang clips. This is how a marketplace of ideas becomes a menu
of state approved thought.

------
weavejester
If these filters are opt-in, as the article suggests, what's the problem? They
might not be particularly effective, but if they're not active by default, and
no-one's forcing them on anyone, this hardly seems like news.

~~~
muyuu
I've been put behind opt-out filters (Three mobile). Only found out I had this
filter randomly browsing and facing their wall page (it wasn't even porn or
anything remotely questionable, just a suspect URL name).

~~~
peteri
Simple to fix for three.

Change the APN to 3internet from three.co.uk

This hasn't caused me any problems on my "one plan" phone, I don't know if
this will cause issues on lower tier plans.

~~~
makomk
Note that, last time I checked, the 3internet APN gets you a globally routable
IP address that isn't behind any firewall. Which is handy but you need to be a
little careful about it.

~~~
peteri
Didn't realise that but it kind of makes sense.

------
mortov
All UK ISPs have compulsory blocks already - courtesy of the unaccountable
CEOPS under the guise of Thinking Of The Children/Child Porn. All sorts of
URLs/IPs are blocked (many of which should be blocked because they _ARE_ CP
but some are not, just judged by The Powers That Be as being unacceptable
[e.g. pirate bay]). There is no way to know what is on the list and no way to
find out - anyone inquiring is automatically classed as a CP supporter and
subject to investigation.

Coupled with the English removal of right to silence (discussed a few days
ago), the UK long ago became a scary place for anyone interested in freedom
and justice. [Scotland retains the silence right but don't expect that to help
you much.]

We're just seeing an extension of this as people have been prepared already so
it is time to extend the state monitoring and intrusion as everyone now
believes it is a Good Thing(tm) because they know deep down that they truly
love Big Brother.

(edit:spelling, twice. That's embarrassing)

~~~
porker
I can't believe we let the removal of right to silence go. When did it happen?
Did I entirely miss it, or was it before my time?

~~~
mmcnickle
As far as I know, the major change came in the 90s in the form of "it may harm
your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later
rely on in court". In other words, the court can draw conclusions about
something you initially refused to comment on, but then later answered as part
of your defence.

~~~
timw6n
Actually it was even earlier than that; adverse inferences could be drawn from
silence after the passing of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

~~~
Kliment
What a fitting year!

------
Fuxy
Great another way for them to slip in a couple of websites that are not porn
related like say... political parody. Just look at T-Mobile for an example
they block "objectionable content" like say... some links that show up on
hacker news because they include "hacking". Damn it now i need a VPN to the
free internet.

------
workbench
If people can't be responsible for their own children maybe we need to start
controlling who has children.

What passes as "parenting" in this country is an absolute joke.

Just set up broadband in a new house today, this news makes me ecstatic that I
didn't go with BT and went with an independent instead.

~~~
Fuxy
Don't most of them rely on the BT pipes anyway? So you're getting filtered
regardless.


If seeing is believing... never point your smartphone's camera at a propeller - benz145
http://www.carrypad.com/2011/07/25/if-seeing-really-is-believing-never-point-your-smartphones-camera-at-an-airplane-propeller/

======
Ronkdar
This isn't a revelation for most people (or maybe I'm biased, a lot of my
friends are pilots), but the second video there is the best demonstration I've
seen so far of why this occurs.

------
ColinWright
From 15 months ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1301295>


Ask HN: Is bioinformatics/computational biology a valuable field? - rubatuga
I’m wondering if these jobs will be valued/be in demand in the future, and how much I would earn. I’m currently doing an undergrad Bioinformatics/comp. bio. (BCB) at my university, but I’m unsure if the job market looks very good, and some google searches lead me to believe the pay isn’t great. Furthermore, to get further in the field, a PhD is generally required, which is certainly not appealing. I’m currently aiming to apply for medical school, but am also considering doing a joint degree with BCB and a comp sci major to be more competitive if I don’t get in. However this would mean graduating a bit late. Any thoughts on either my degree, or what the future holds for this field?
======
JPLeRouzic
I could tell you non-specific tips about jobs.

Differentiating yourself is important if you want to get the best pay in your
field. Some jobs are quite repetitive and could be automated easily. And a lot
of jobs in bioinformatics are re-inventing the wheel, sometimes awfully. It
would pay IMO to think at a higher level, standardize the toolset and
procedures, use the excellent tooling that the profession has already adopted.

Galaxy is a step in this direction, so it would not pay to be a good
practitionner, but it would pay to be the guy that can automate bio-
informatics jobs.

You can have also a niche competency, like knowing how to operate a specific
hardware or software. I would not bet on that approach.

You can also try some professional certification, or knowing regulations in
your field or be expert on some quality assurance procedures.

You can also try to be able to manage large bio-informatics projects from
project design to operation and strategic steering.


An Intuitive Explanation of Phase Conjugation - 100ideas
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/PhaseConjugate/PhaseConjugate.html
======
100ideas
Example: This video shows a crystal of photorefractive BaTiO3 acting as a
phase conjugate "mirror" adaptively un-distorting scattering introduced by a
sheet of ground glass between it and the image source.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RuHEliwJnA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RuHEliwJnA)


Ask HN: Tech companies which do not allow telecommuting?  - tlogan

The only two big companies I'm aware that they don't allow " working remote" are Google and Apple.<p>What about Facebook?
======
willlll
Yahoo


Creative spam? - snipek
http://snipek.com/web/11fd7a3d-0df0-4ce2-862c-b26f9b5d84a5

======
snipek
What's the most creative spam you've received? Forward that spam message to
web@snipek.com, and you can get a URL for that spam mail and share here.


Bitcoin’s Technical Flaw - nanzhong
https://medium.com/@nanzhong1/bitcoins-technical-flaw-3569fc0f7c2d
======
A2017U1
This reads like an ad for a closed source messenger only available in a few
countries. Have no idea how its related to bitcoin. Clicks perhaps?

I have plenty of criticisms for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general but
some of the claims here are amazingly absurd.

Note to author: I have used a bitcoin wallet with no troubles in China, it has
better uptime in the last decade than Amazon where you worked with
"distributed computing systems", can your messenger app do the same?

> just imagine that the Great Firewall blocks Bitcoin packets for a week,
> creating a Chinese fork and non-Chinese fork. Then it unblocks. All of a
> sudden, the non-Chinese fork would disappear. The Bitcoins that went into
> your wallet six days ago would vanish

The fact that the author doesn't understand how wrong this is despite
apparently studying Bitcoin as an AWS employee back in 2010 is scary.

~~~
nanzhong
I am the author. I'd love to understand your point. Can you give specifics?
Thanks.

~~~
A2017U1
You essentially point to a very large reorganisation and say all the tx's on
the global chain will disappear once the GFW opens up again. All orphaned
transactions go back in the mempool as unconfirmed and will be processed
later.

Simply blocking all global traffic already creates a huge monetary incentive
for miners to sidestep the rules and it's easily achieved with obfuscated
transports.

Such an action would be noticeable and considered hostile. Were they causing
network disruption you'd likely see a hardfork to memory hard algorithms or
clients blocking Chinese IP ranges.

There's certainly attacks they could try but I'm not convinced of the
effectiveness. Miners need the outside world to pay their bills as exchange
for RMB is impossible.

~~~
nanzhong
Yes, you can put the orphaned transactions back in the mempool to be processed
again. But what if the Bitcoins in those transactions are already spent on the
"winning" fork? Does it now mean that the wait for a transaction to be
considered "confirmed" needs to be longer the conventional six blocks and
potentially arbitrarily long?

China already banned non-state sanctioned VPNs in 2018. Anyone circumventing
the Great Firewall via "obfuscated transports" could get into legal trouble by
the Chinese authority. The Chinese government successfully suppressed all
dissidents and millions of protesters in 1989. Underestimate its force at your
own peril.

The whole point of the article is that a centralized entity (the Chinese
government) may be able to attack Bitcoin without controlling any mining
power. A hard fork in response to actions of a centralized entity could
shatter people's confidence in Bitcoin's promise of being decentralized.
Blocking Chinese IP ranges in a 100% reliable way is going to very difficult.
This defense is also rendered useless if someone does use a VPN to propagate
the Chinese fork (perhaps intentionally by a centralized entity).

------
brokenmachine
_> If the Great Firewall blocks Bitcoin packets, the Bitcoin network would be
partitioned and thus fork. Upon unblocking, the shorter Bitcoin chain would be
wiped out. Ignoring complicated attacks, just imagine that the Great Firewall
blocks Bitcoin packets for a week, creating a Chinese fork and non-Chinese
fork. Then it unblocks. All of a sudden, the non-Chinese fork would
disappear._

Is that true? Is it only based on how long the fork's chain are?

~~~
nanzhong
The Bitcoin protocol resolves conflicting forks by choosing the longer one
while dropping the shorter one.


Ask HN: How to Give College Students a Taste of Real World Development? - xerophyte12932

Hi! I am arranging a sort of workshop for college students and I want to expose them to professional development. A tentative list of things I want them to learn:<p>- How to write code with long-term considerations<p>- How to make our code flexible to future changes<p>- Importance of User Experience<p>- Developer-Friendly Code<p>- How Business considerations affect Technical decisions<p>- The right way to work in a dev team<p>Does anybody have any suggestion on what to add to the list or general tips on how to go about teaching them all this?
======
dalke
I once taught a short course in usability. I used an exercise I learned from
someone else: design the controls for a microwave oven. Given them a set of
requirements and have them do a paper prototype. Partway through, change the
design slightly. (In mine, started with the assumption that the time could be
set automatically from the mobile phone network, then I added the requirement
that it needed to be set manually.) Then have them do user testing for
scenarios which test those requirements.

I used someone who wasn't in the class as the test subject, which was also a
chance to mention the ethics of human testing: make sure that the test
subjects know they can stop at any time, let them know the goals of the
project, etc.

This is small enough to do in a couple of hours.

I've heard of a technique for teaching some of the ideas you want to teach.
Have them develop a code project. Part way through have the teams switch code
bases, or form new teams using the original code bases as the start. I have no
experience with that technique, and it probably takes longer than you have
time for your workshop.

As for things to cover, get a copy of Rapid Development and review it for the
topics you think are the most important. There are way more things to cover
than is possible in a workshop for inexperienced developers.


Wolfram: The Modernization of Educational Publishing - mazsa
http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/06/20/wolfram-technologies-the-modernization-of-educational-publishing/

======
mathattack
I was a little disappointed because I thought the title suggested that Wolfram
had found a way around the academic journal scam/stranglehold. Still happy
with the article.


Apple's Macintosh Commercial (1984) - searchableguy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
======
bradknowles
To quote Bugs Bunny: “What a maroon.”

It’s 1984, not 1948.


The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code (2000; Still relevant?) - OoTheNigerian
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html
======
patio11
Some parts of that have aged better than others.

You should be using source control. It might sound shocking to the Github
generation, but there was a time _not too long ago_ where important work with
millions on the line routinely got done with one copy of the code sitting on a
single workstation, and collaboration happening over network shares or email.
I worked at one of those places. It sucked. The Joel Test was part of an
evangelization movement which changed standard practices in our industry
radically, for the better.

Building in a single step? Still relevant for many projects. Less relevant
for, e.g., Rails web apps. I migth substitute "can you deploy to staging and
production in one step".

Speaking of which, a Joel Test in 2010 should include "do you have a fully
functional staging environment" and "can you recreate a dev environment from a
factory new machine in under an hour".

Fixing bugs versus writing new code, well, one might quibble with that in some
scenarios. There exist businesses where the marginal business value or
customer value of squashing an edge case bug is measurably less than new
features. I have a known bug in my shopping cart that permits abuse of
discounts. It has never been exploited. The minimum cost of fixing is several
hundred dollars. Of course I write new code rather than fixing it. You can
come up with quite a lot of similar scenarios if you're doing a lean startup
-- there is little point to rigorously debugging code which might have an
expected lifetime of a week.

~~~
edanm
"there was a time not too long ago where important work with millions on the
line routinely got done with one copy of the code sitting on a single
workstation, and collaboration happening over network shares or email. I
worked at one of those places. It sucked. The Joel Test was part of an
evangelization movement which changed standard practices in our industry
radically, for the better."

I'm all for the Joel Test, and I've definitely seen places without source
control, or with terrible or no source control.

But do you really think the Joel Test was on of the real pushers for change? I
know Joel is popular, but I'd bet the Joel Test has been read by all of 1-2%
of programmers. Moreover, I'd guess that it's the 1-2% who were already using
source control.

Don't mean to nitpick, I'm honestly wondering if I'm underestimating the
impact of this article. Completely agree with the rest of your comment.

~~~
jasonkester
Sounds like you might not have been around back at the turn of the century.

Back then, there were no blogs. There were no programmers who wrote stuff.
Joel was pretty much the first. And his stuff was really good and actionable.

So if you cared to read about your field, you were reading Joel. If you sent a
programming link to your team, chances are it was one of his articles.

Coming into the field today, it's understandable that you might not have heard
of the guy. But if you were around in the late 90s and you'd heard of
_anybody_ , you'd heard of Joel. If you were on a team in the late 90s and you
wanted to improve things, you sent around a copy of the Joel test.

So yes, I do think a lot of the credit for the higher standards we have today
goes to him.

~~~
nostrademons
That's not really true. Greenspun was the hot pundit before Joel. A bunch of
people hung out on SlashDot. And the C2 Wiki, which arguably was filled with
more experienced practitioners than Joel, has been around since 1995.

------
jasonkester
For the audience it was written for, I'd say yes.

There are still plenty of shops that score close to zero on the Joel Test.
Talk to your non-startup friends working for a big company where software is
considered a cost center. They'll tell you about the big battle they had to
get the company onto source control, and how deploying a new version of the
company website still involves copying files by hand and running some wacky
freeware database comparison tool to get the new schema changes across.

Hell, just last year I did a consulting gig for a shop that didn't even make a
distinction between dev and production before I got there. Changing the site
involved creating "index_new4.php", making your changes, smoke testing, then
renaming (or repointing links). No source control, and they didn't even have a
backup of the production database.

That's the sort of place that needs to get a copy of the Joel Test forwarded
around the dev team, up to management, etc. The things on that list are as
important today as they were 10 years ago. If anything, it carries more weight
when you show it to management by virtue of _being_ 10 years old.

------
frankus
Since so much software development is now web development, and since so much
of that lives or dies by keeping customer data safe, something like "Have you
practiced restoring from backup lately?" should go on the list.

------
tyn
"7. Do you have a spec?"

I've written succesful applications without any spec, just talking with users,
writting things down myself, showing them prototypes, repeating. In some cases
users are not able to produce a spec and even if the do they don't always
really "know what they want", that's why prototyping is so important.

~~~
pornel
That only works if you can have short iterations and client that cooperates.

I've worked on projects that didn't have usable spec, and monthly meetings had
client saying "oh, that's not what I've meant, can you redo this like that?".

------
thijsc
I think "Do you write tests" should be included. And "Do you have continuous
integration running" would be a nice replacement of having a daily build.

~~~
InclinedPlane
The "daily builds" item should at least be a "daily build & smoke test", but
for the rest I think it's at an appropriate level. Keep in mind, these are
simple questions which have the greatest differential in quality between
yes/no answers.

------
AliCollins
I have a print out of the 12 rules on the walls in my cubicle...if only for
those non-techy people in my office who then ask what it means!!

------
ryanteo
Maybe for small teams and microISVs, you could merge the advice from Patrick's
article too: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/04/20/building-highly-
reliable...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/04/20/building-highly-reliable-
websites-for-small-companies/)

------
frankus
I think even Joel might update number one to "Do you use distributed version
control?", not so much for the "distributed" part but for the "branching and
merging that just works" part.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I doubt it. The leap between proper version control and excellent version
control (distributed being the peak) is significant but not the same as the
leap between no version control and any version control. _That_ transition is
as significant as coming to use structured programming languages (over raw
machine code and assembly), or the invention of fire.

------
mathgladiator
They all are relevant to someone.

------
run4yourlives
Always relevant, which is the brilliance of it.

I say this even though I disagree with the spec rule.


Microsoft Leaks Details of 128-bit Windows 8  - silkodyssey
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/enterprise/352270/microsoft-leaks-details-of-windows-8-and-windows-9

======
codedivine
Is this site like the onion?


Ask YC: How to start becoming an entrepreneur while still being an employee - wallflower

This short piece from the NYTimes (below) piqued my interest. It offers some advice on how to act like an entrepreneur as an employee.
If you are not a burn-your-boat-on-the-shore type of person, how do you go about making the transition to full-time entrepreneur. Is it abrupt or gradual. I'm guessing gradual. As I make the transition, I'm working on building some web applications that I would find of use (language learning, memorization)
How many of you look at creating your own startup as a hobby, rather than a business, or as both?
What steps (most notably - to expand your comfort zone) do you recommend.? I've heard some crazy advice like lie down in a Starbucks for 10 seconds to desensitize yourself to what you think other people think. I'm thinking seriously of taking a break from my career to learn Spanish in a Latin American country.
[http://tinyurl.com/2k2jdf]
"First, act more like an entrepreneur at your current job. Be a maverick. Put in longer hours, give yourself a crash course on your company’s operations and strategic goals and, most important, locate a problem outside your realm of expertise and solve it. “Your boss will notice,” Mr. Corbell said. If you lack sales experience, ask for a transfer to the marketing department."
======
webwright
I realized my comment was too damn long, so I wrote a blog post.

[http://www.tonywright.com/2008/half-assed-startup-how-to-
sta...](http://www.tonywright.com/2008/half-assed-startup-how-to-start-your-
company-and-keep-your-day-job/)

~~~
ph0rque
Nice blog post, but I object to the "half-assed" phrase in the title, which
implies a lack of passion for the startup. Sometimes, I think that one _must_
keep a source of income out of necessity (and consulting is not always
feasible).

~~~
nostrademons
I worked on my startup part-time for 9 months before taking the plunge and
quitting my day job 5 months ago, and "half-assed" is pretty accurate, even if
it is a little unpleasant. In terms of the scope of what you can accomplish,
you're _severely_ handicapped by moonlighting, much moreso than the difference
in available time would suggest. Being able to think nearly continuously about
your project lets you try much more ambitious projects, which you wouldn't be
able to hold in your head otherwise.

One thing that helped me was to think of my salary as "buying time". If you
make $60K but live on $20K, then each hour you work buys you two hours of
startup time. If you make $100K but live on $40K, each hour you work buys you
an hour and a half. Shows you how important it is to get your living expenses
down.

Another thing that helps is to live like your least-successful classmates
while working like your most-successful classmates. I have English-major
friends who graduated, couldn't get a job, took a string of temp jobs and
secretarial positions, spent as much time on unemployment as off, rarely had
money to spend, and went back home to live with their parents. So, I went back
home to live with my parents, rarely spent any money, and worked at a
financial software startup. I pocket the difference between a Starbucks salary
and a financial software salary. That's given me about 4 years living expenses
to work with, even assuming I were to move out of my parents.

------
powerflex
I've tried the "just do it" approach in the past and now believe its nonsense.
Be calculating and methodical, not impetuous.

Do's/Dont's: Don't work on your stuff on employer time. Make sure you have
energy left after work for your project (sometimes that means not being the
star performer at the day job). I work my day job from 8-5, and my startup
from 6-11 EVERY WEEKDAY. Weekends its ALL DAY developement. Have a product
roadmap, release dates, and work your tail off to meet them. Do your
architecture design work during the week at lunchtime (off site). Cut anything
from your time that isnt helping you meet your goal (ie I dont even drink beer
anymore because it hinders coding).

Read this for inspiration (its short):
<http://loiclemeur.com/english/2007/12/the-idea-does-n.html>

Finally, only quit your day job when your startup is making your salary.

~~~
bootload
_"... I've tried the "just do it" approach in the past and now believe its
nonsense. Be calculating and methodical, not impetuous. ..."_

Nice description of _"project management"_ which seps boys from the men [0]
and makes a difference in completing a project. Does it allow you to be
flexible enough to adapt to experiment & change?

[0] Max Levichin talked more about this in StartupSchool '07 - (I think).

------
nikiscevak
Err yeah sure that will work. My advice: read the four hour work week. Not for
the four hours but for putting you in a position to work for yourself and work
as an employee.

Focus obsessively on your productivity on your current job and take on no new
tasks. Hopefully get your tasks done in 10 hours per week (very easy if you
get rid of all possible meetings and phone calls). Use the extra time to work
on your own startup.

~~~
brlewis
If the extra time belongs to your employer, then so does the copyright on any
work you do during that extra time. Don't write any programs, documentation or
marketing literature on employer time. Do focus on productivity, though. You
need to be in the habit of being productive.

~~~
Tekhne
It's probably wise to consult a lawyer about this, but for my part, I say go
ahead and work on your employer's time. Understand that you are taking a
calculated risk. If the risk (e.g. getting fired, losing ownership of your
work) isn't worth it, don't do it. But if it is, then stay as productive as
you were before at work while trying to be as efficient as possible (e.g. by
using methods in the Four Hour Work Week) to squeeze out extra time for your
project. On your own time, work as hard as you can without skimping on your
other obligations (e.g. family, bills, etc.).

~~~
kingnothing
I believe California has a specific law that whatever you do for yourself is
your own property, in regards to IP. I assume other states have similar laws
on the books, but it isn't universal.

------
misterbwong
<disclaimer>I'm still in the process of starting my first business and still
working for 'the man.' Take what I say with that in mind.</disclaimer>

I've mulled over this question a lot. After reading all kinds of articles and
books about founding a business, it seems to me that the key to becoming an
entrepreneur is "just do it." Nothing will teach you more about being one than
actually doing it. There is tons of GREAT advice out there but none of it will
actually become applicable until you're put in a situation where you need to
apply it.

Finish your app, start the business on the side, and see where that takes you.
Nothing like market forces to expand your comfort zone for you. If your
business starts taking so much effort and time to iterate that you need to
decide between your job and your business, take it as a good sign. If it
fails, so what? Almost all the big name founders had at least 1 failed
businesses before hitting gold-some of them had multiple failed businesses.

------
andr
Personally I've never been able to really combine work with startups. You are
single-threaded, so to speak, so doing things sequentially (work -> quit ->
start company) works better than multi-tasking. Plus, staying on the job gives
you too much comfort. Here are four things that I have done or considered
doing:

1) Try to sell your startup idea to management. Chances are it won't work, but
it's worth a try - the company might invest money or people in it. This one
actually never worked for me.

2) Try to steer your work at the job so it overlaps with your startup. E.g.,
if you think your startup should use Python, but you don't know it, persuade
your boss to use Python for your next work project, so you can get the hang of
it. Persuade your company to open source some code that could help you for
your startup.

3) If you work in a place with good bonuses (50%+ of annual salary), work
hard, wait for the bonus and quit. That's what I planned to do, but my hedge
fund went bankrupt three months before bonus time. Still, I got a decent
settlement, so it worked even better.

4) Decide you are quitting, but don't announce it. Become a bad employee. Note
that this is immoral, dangerous and potentially illegal, plus faith has its
way to play jokes on you, so after you burn the bridges with your boss you
might meet her again in a different scenario (e.g., she becomes a VC). Leave
the office earlier, start working from home more often (while actually working
on your startup), try to take a 1-2 month vacation/sabbatical, etc. Unless you
work at a 7-11, you would usually have 2-3 months before management starts
coming down on you. This way you can work on a prototype and if two months in
you realize it's not worth it, you can still recover things at the job.

~~~
wallflower
Already working on #1 and #2. In alignment with some others, trying to sell a
project that would be perfect with Ruby on Rails to the powers-that-matter. I
think #3 and #4 aren't in my nature.

------
iamdave
"act more like an entrepreneur at your current job. Be a maverick. Put in
longer hours, give yourself a crash course on your company’s operations and
strategic goals and, most important, locate a problem outside your realm of
expertise and solve it."

I think this is more reflective of someone looking for growth, than an
entrepreneur, and I say that to say this: standing out from the crowd and
working like you're worth they money they're paying you will most certainly
bring you the kind of attention outstanding entrepreneurs get and you may just
get a promotion out of it

However showing the spirit of someone who is supposed to start things should
mirror actions that look like you're wanting to start something. Make
suggestions, present solutions like the second half of the quote says to, but
in addition to this build momentum behind your ideas and show why they matter
and how they'll make improvements.

------
mpc
Just start working on your startup when you're not at work. The extended work
hours and work load will get you ready for when you make the full transition.

------
ivankirigin
I'm not sure they recall that I'm the same guy, but I sent an email to YC 16
months ago that I'm almost embarrassed by. I asked how to take action on good
ideas while staying at a job I loved at a company likely uninterested in the
ideas.

If I could go back to myself 16 months ago, I'd say: "Grow a pair and do what
you want, and only that -- ohh, and short the home mortgage industry"

It's all about the focus.

~~~
wallflower
Like drunk dialing, sometimes sending embarassing emails help remind you that
you've improved.

When did you reach the tipping point (was it a group or individual decision)
with Tipjoy?

The best quote about focus that I've ever heard: A 100 watt lightbulb can
light up a room but that same energy focused in a laser apparatus can cut
through steel.

~~~
ivankirigin
Talking about Tipjoy is what made my cofounder (also my wife) and I decide to
go for it. She was at iRobot. I was at Nokia. Both of us had excellent jobs.

The clincher that made us quit was when it became perfectly clear that those
jobs, or their equivalent, are readily available should we fail. If the worst,
worst case scenario is the status quo, why not go for it?

------
bootload
_"... how do you go about making the transition to full-time entrepreneur
..."_

Make stuff [0], release early, get some feedback and sell it.

It doesn't have to be software but it helps. If you make things nobody wants
you quickly find you can't sell it. You have to listen & adapt. It's much like
a multi-levered machine that only stays afloat if you are constantly adjusting
the levers finely adjusting the final product according to users. Input
product, make sure people know about it, adjust the 'want' lever. Listen to
what the machine is telling you. Adapt.

This process can be observed from renovating houses, art ... from sausages to
software. It is no substitute for the real thing. So burn your boats now.

[0] Stuff could be sausages, software etc, but make sure that it's product not
service or skills for hire ~
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html>

------
sonink
Assuming it is a web startup.

Build a content website on something you consider yourself good at. Try to get
users, make money through adsense, put up analytics and test it out. You would
learn a ton about how(and what) works on the internet - and possibly be making
enough by the time you are ready to quit to bootstrap your startup .

------
watmough
Well, I've started a stationery shop in my cube...

Seriously, though, I think one way would be to become more entrepenurial at
work, and try and apply some of the kind of fairly ruthless behavior that I'd
imagine you'd need to survive in a startup.

In no particular order: Focus. Get Things Done. No Fluff. Delight Customers.
Play Necessary Politics.

Another way to think of this, might be to look at all the employees that, in a
start-up environment, would sink like lead bricks, and do exactly the
opposite.

------
edw519
Your first lesson as an entrepreneur:

Your last paragraph is exactly what NOT to do. You will need every single
ounce of resources (time, energy, attention) for your start-up. The only
reason to ever do anything above the call of duty as someone else's employee
is to learn it for yourself.

Start your planning on how you will extract yourself from your current
employment, going part time or as a contractor. You will need every spare
nanosecond for your startup.

And don't sign anything. (If you already did, get a risk assessment from a
lawyer.)


Kidnappers Demand $10M MONERO (private cryptocurrency) for Tycoon's wife - wiggler00m
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/world/europe/norway-kidnapping-monero.html
======
smexi
they demanded futuer bitcoin check monero price prediction
[http://icoviral.today/2019/02/monero-price-
prediction/](http://icoviral.today/2019/02/monero-price-prediction/)

~~~
wiggler00m
what?


Announcing TypeScript 2.2 - pingec
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/02/22/announcing-typescript-2-2/
======
pixie_
Woo :) whenever I have to work with an old javascript code base now I always
add typings to it first. It makes it orders or magnitude easier to work with
and refactor after that.

------
ng12
Speaking of tooling -- has anyone had a good experience with Typescript in
IntelliJ/Webstorm? It does a fantastic job figuring out ES6 code but seems to
totally choke on Typescript. I'd like to avoid switching to Visual Studio.

~~~
XaspR8d
For passersby who were confused like I was: IntelliJ _Community Edition_ has
absolutely no support for Javascript or Typescript, which is not noted clearly
in the help docs. You apparently need Ultimate Edition to get it.

I was real excited that I could finally use the same IDE for front-end and
back-end too... :/

~~~
kakarot
The price gets lower each year for the first few years you renew your license.

My company pays for my license but I think it's hella worth it and I'd pay it
on my own if I had to.

I avoid VS like the plague and I've never really felt at home in an IDE until
I started using IntelliJ.

It's the only thing that was able to get me off of Notepad++

~~~
SquareWheel
I also avoid VS, but VSCode is nothing at all like its big brother. It's
actually very quick and lean.

If you're interested in TypeScript at all, the two were made for each other.
I'd suggest giving it a try.

Just note it's closer to a text editor with IDE functionality, rather than a
full-blown IDE itself.

~~~
kakarot
I can pretty much get that and more with Notepad++ or Sublime, though. I've
moved back to vim for simple text editing, N++ for casual writing and
organizing my thoughts. Is there any specific feature that makes it better
than other editors in your book?

~~~
kwood
Apart from Intellisense completion, a full featured integrated debugger,
version control integration wich supports line wise staging, a diff viewer, a
fast integrated terminal that even gets link detection in the next release,
proper variable renaming and a working "Go to Definition" that is even
implemented in most of the third party language plugins?

No. Pretty much the same as Notepad++.

~~~
kakarot
IntelliJ has all of those things. I'm not sure you understood my question. I
use Webstorm daily, I'm using it this very moment. I was asking about VSCode
and where it falls between IntelliJ and N++.

~~~
kwood
I understood the question – and that IntelliJ has all of those things is
exactly the point I was trying to make.

You get most of the features from a heavyweight IDE, but they managed to get
the architecture incredibly lightweight so you can use it as a "daily driver"
editor as well.

It is snappy enough to quickly edit some configuration or Markdown files (with
live preview and clickable links), it has text based configuration files, its
easy to write plugins with a couple of lines of code – and all sorts of other
things that previously could only be found on the "editor-side" of the
spectrum (export VISUAL="code -w", anyone?).

Unique selling points are quite hard to find, most things where invented
somewhere else. Its more the combination of things and walking the thin line
between the text editor and IDE worlds.

~~~
kakarot
Oh ok, I just didn't understand your answer. My apologies!

------
dandare
I have to admit I am getting lost in all these new language constructs :(. I
worry that soon I will not be able to read TS code of more experienced
programmers.

That being said, the only way forward is to learn! But there seems to be total
lack of solid learning resources with plentiful of examples and most
importantly "best practices" that explain why the new construct is better and
when to use it over the old way.

------
treehau5
I know this probably comes up each typescript thread, but I still cannot
figure out why I should use TS instead of flow + es6, and maintaining the
typing definitions always discourages me as it's one more thing that needs to
be kept up to date. Am I working on old information here?

~~~
Nemcue
Why would flow + es6 be better?

~~~
MehdiHK
Avoid vendor locking. Someday in near future if you don't like flow anymore,
you can just strip all type annotations with Babel and move on. You are not
risking ending up like coffeescript.

~~~
dangoor
TypeScript compiles to JS in a straightforward manner as well. If you wanted
to move away from TS, you could simply have the TS compiler compile to ES6 and
you're done.

~~~
MehdiHK
But that'd still be transpiled code, right? After getting rid of flow it will
be exactly same minus the type annotations. Same cannot be said about
typescript considering various language features and syntactic sugar TS
offers. Will it run? Yes. Will it feel that it was written by me? That
depends.

~~~
whatever_dude
> Same cannot be said about typescript considering various language features
> and syntactic sugar TS offers

I think you're vastly misinterpreting what TS is.

It's not anything like CoffeeScript. It's JS plus types and a few other
features like Interfaces or advanced ECMAScript features when targetting older
versions of the standard.

If you strip away types by exporting to your ECMAScript target of choice,
you'll get real JavaScript with the same style as it was written in
TypeScript.

It's exactly the same thing you'd get with Flow in that sense. The only
additional code you'd get would be for polyfills, but a) those are minimal and
b) those will only appear if you export to an older ECMAScript version than
the one you wrote it in.

There is no vendor lock.

~~~
shados
there are a few minor things like enums and decorators that will need to be
compiled because they're not standard and are not just types either (well,
const enums are i think?, but the rest are not?).

That's about it though.

------
bcherny
Object type, better index access, and the quick fixes are all great additions.
Awesome job TS team, keep it coming!

------
aduffy
My favorite: the new `object` type. Non-nullable and cannot refer to
primitives.

~~~
dsp1234
_Non-nullable_

This is incorrect, as is the announcement. The following is valid.

      class Bar{}
      let foo:object = new Bar()
      foo = null
      foo = undefined

edit:

For the people mentioning, --strictNullChecks. That applies to all types not
just object. For example, "let x:string = null" would also be an error. That
option applies to any type that is not of type Any/null/undefined, and has
been in place since 2.0. In that way, "object" is non-nullable under
strictNullChecks just as every other type is.

~~~
whatever_dude
No, object is not a nullable type.

For your code to work, you'd need to run it with strictNullChecks disabled.
That's probably what you're doing, since it's the default.

~~~
dsp1234
_since it 's the default._

It's not the default for the command line compiler. Also, all types (except
Any/null/undefined) are non-nullable under that option, so that's not what
makes object special (it's the no primitive types that is important).

      >tsc test.ts
      >tsc test.ts --strictNullChecks
      >  test.ts(3,1): error TS2322: Type 'null' is not assignable to type 'object'.

~~~
whatever_dude
> you'd need to run it with strictNullChecks disabled. That's probably what
> you're doing, since it's the default

I think you misinterpreted my reply. I meant the default is off. That's what
your code shows.

~~~
dsp1234
I did, sorry about that.

------
Fifer82
I love you Microsoft!

------
ihsw
Relaxing index-signature access is definitely great as it will make writing
code easier. Dynamic properties can lead you to hairy code but it's hard to
ignore the reality that it's used everywhere.

For example, no more awkward `e["code"]` where `e.code` is just as valid.

------
codr4life
Crumbles from the design-table. Oh look, a new object type. I'm not even sure
this is an improvement to straight JS any more, it just fails in more exotic
ways from pretending to be something it isn't. Once the choice is made to
compile to JS, there are plenty of real languages to choose from.

~~~
Nemcue
I don't think you're familiar with what TypeScript is trying to achieve. It's
not supposed to be another language entirely, but a standards-compatible type-
safe version.


EU stipulates immediate Open Access in 2020 - Vinnl
https://www.scienceguide.nl/2018/09/nwo-wil-weg-van-de-impact-factor/
======
Vinnl
This is fantastic news for science! Google Translate is pretty accurate [1],
but a summary:

The EU, European Research Council, and funders from eleven European countries,
have agreed that from 2020, European researchers can, in the general case, no
longer publish their research in journals that

\- place that work behind a paywall for a certain amount of time (embargoes)

\- require a transfer of copyright to that journal

\- charge excessive publishing fees ("Article Processing Charges")

Furthermore, from 2021 (due to existing licensing agreements), European
researchers are generally no longer allowed to publish in journals that are
not fully open access ("hybrid journals"). That includes e.g. Science and
Nature, unless they change their business models.

Some exceptions apply, e.g. when doing industry collaborations, or for
monographs. Overall, though, this appears to be a great step forward.

More details in the official announcement [2].

[1]
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scienceguide.nl%2F2018%2F09%2Fnwo-
wil-weg-van-de-impact-factor%2F&edit-text=&act=url)

[2]
[https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/](https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/)


The Very Difficult Problem of Notifications - showngo
http://brooksreview.net/2011/03/notifications/
======
Qz
It's almost like the author has never used android, seeing as android
notifications don't have any of the problems described. Notifications show up
in a part of the UI you constantly look at but can't actually interact with
(the status bar at the top), therefore you always notice when there are
notifications but it doesn't really get in your way. You can see all
notifications at once by swiping down from the status bar which drops the
notification screen in over whatever you were doing, showing all the
notifications at once. Because of this, you _can_ have a clear all button. If
you don't want to deal with a notification right away, you can just swipe back
up and go back to whatever you were doing. Doesn't seem quite so difficult.

~~~
jsz0
There's room for improvement in Android's notification system. I get serious
notification fatigue with Android. I see that there are 5 or 6 tiny
indistinguishable icons up there but I have to pull down the tray to get any
useful information. In this sense it's more like an Inbox than a notification
system to me. It also treats all notifications equally. To me a missed phone
call is a lot more important than application updates. I would prefer to get
the higher priority notifications (voicemail, SMS, etc) pushed at me more
aggressively. Ideally show them on the lock screen like WebOS does so you
don't have to unlock the device and goto the notification tray to check
manually. There's also the problem of third party apps using the notification
tray for SPAM which I do not care for one bit.

~~~
thwarted
_I would prefer to get the higher priority notifications (voicemail, SMS, etc)
pushed at me more aggressively._

Your example "higher priority" notifications are two that I care the least
about. I rarely use my phone for actually talking to people, and I don't
listen to voicemail, so those I don't care about. I do care that I missed a
call however -- who it was that called is much more important than the message
they left.

I also get so many text messages, they need to be ranked in importance by who
sent it, not that it's a text message. But setting up priorities based on
sender is a lot of work, so I wouldn't do it. _Maybe_ if it worked like
gmail's priority inbox.

------
frisco
I see this and I think, "notifications aren't a Very Difficult Problem; DNA
sequencing is a Very Difficult Problem." Living in the echo chamber can be
fun, but the way we can lose perspective is incredible.

------
joshhepworth
Ben does a great job of simplifying a host of issues down to just two, but in
the end, he seems to end up blaming the user rather than the system for the
problems in notification systems (though he does say that the systems aren't
as good as people at notifications, which is true to an extent).

The biggest issue I had with the article (besides omitting the "come back to
old notifications" problem plaguing some systems) was its overlooking of
improvements. Innovation doesn't have to come overnight, and in the mean time,
I'd love to have a better system than currently implemented. Even still, there
are systems out there that get pretty close to his nirvana. Mobile Notifier
for iOS
([http://www.flickr.com/photos/piair/5492412910/in/photostream...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/piair/5492412910/in/photostream/))
still covers up some of the screen (forcing you to take action to access that
area of the screen), but it also lets you dismiss a notification with a quick
swipe and quickly access all pending notifications.

The biggest praise I can give for the article is it's identification of people
as a problem. It's true, we likely want to know more details about more events
than in the past. It seems pretty needless all things considered, but why
should a system be terrible at meeting our needs? We create the systems to
change with our wants, after all.

------
megaduck
I'm curious what flaws he sees with the WebOS notification system. It's hands-
down the most elegant notifications I've seen on _any_ platform.

Initial notifications are minimally intrusive (similar to Growl on OS X). From
there, they can be trivially dismissed or minimized and left for later. This
makes triaging incredibly easy and lightweight.

On my Pre, I'll often set alarms on my to-dos and then use them as kind of an
on-demand dashboard of my daily tasks. As something gets finished, the
notification gets dismissed with a flick of the thumb.

On WebOS, notifications actively make me happy. In comparison, Android is kind
of clunky and the iPhone is horribly broken.

------
huge_ness
maybe this can be of some help one day:

[http://talkingpengwin.com/re-design-of-the-ios-
notification-...](http://talkingpengwin.com/re-design-of-the-ios-notification-
system)


PhpTree, a fast library to plays with trees - drupol
======
lioeters
Here's the link:
[https://github.com/drupol/phptree](https://github.com/drupol/phptree)

~~~
drupol
Thanks !


Republicans working on legislation to strip Twitter of liability protections - sehugg
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/499814-republicans-working-on-legislation-to-strip-twitter-of-federal-protections
======
foobarbazetc
So what?

Never passing the House.

~~~
Fjolsvith
Before November.


Interactive film built with Three.js and WebGL - mhax
http://thecarpandtheseagull.com

======
evanbbb
Hi, the director / coder here. Crazy to see on hacker news. We had to have it
on just Chrome because of the twin pains of time (never enough) and money
(added code, more testing, etc). For most of the project there were only
myself and one other coder doing the work.

If it isn't working for you or have questions, feel free to let me know...

~~~
bsenftner
What aspects of this are not compatible with other browsers?

~~~
evanbbb
WebGL isn't supported by IE. Firefox and Safari have patchy WebGL service.

Firefox works but grinds to such a slow pace, so we disabled it.

------
gkanai
2002 "This site is best viewed with Internet Explorer"

2012 "The film is optimised for viewing on Chrome."

Not interested in a browser-specific web experience.

~~~
unconed
Microsoft hasn't bothered to touch WebGL, clearly more interested in their own
proprietary Direct3D and Xbox ecosystem.

Apple has had partial WebGL support for years now (started with iAds), but has
never switched it on by default, not on OS X or iOS.

What exactly do you expect web developers to do? Keep making the same shitty
sites?

------
EddieB
Wow that was incredibly trippy, a great mix of technical ability with an
artistic side, it's nice to see..

------
davidwparker
Pretty disappointed by the top comments here.

IMO, this is a pretty cool "interactive film" (I'd call it a video game) that
is extremely well done via Three.js (and therefore WebGL). Good job to the
developers.

I will say that due to time, I didn't figure out what to do in each chapter.
Instead, I clicked a few things and then moved onto the next chapter.

------
Charlesmigli
WebGL is really the trend at this time! Good job. Really liked the interactive
part.

~~~
culshaw
I think trend is the wrong word, possibly shift?

It's been pushed more mainstream than other new elements for the web because
of the visual appeal.

------
rossmckegney
This is trippy and awesome :))

Here's hoping we see a lot more interactive experiences soon!

If anyone is inspired to try to build something of their own using Three.js,
we're working on tools that will help. More here:
<http://verold.com/blog/2012/11/6/threejs-needs-a-cms>

------
danvoell
Hi guys great job on the technical aspects!

I feel like the emotional and film aspects are still slightly a leap. I didn't
really feel much for the fisherman or the seagull, I was just banging away on
my spacebar.

The initial description got me interested, you are definitely trying to
explore a new concept and for that I give you props!

------
motters
No, I don't want to download Chrome.

~~~
ritcho
why not?

------
bsenftner
latest version of Chrome, on OS X 10.7.5 and it's only rendering wireframes.

~~~
evanbbb
It supposed to be wireframes. There should also be some fog that's not? Try
chapter 3. Has loads of colour once you get started.

------
wavesounds
I love these artsy indie video games I seem to be noticing more and more of
lately. The graphics and music are really cool!


3 big surprises from the Apple Watch event - stevep2007
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2894531/opensource-subnet/3-big-surprises-from-the-apple-watch-event.html

======
stevep2007
The highly anticipated Apple Watch event brought some unexpected announcements
involving new products and partnerships for Apple.


What Is Google Chrome Helper, and Why Is It Hogging My CPU Cycles? - dsr12
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/google-chrome-helper/
======
alistair75
Short version: the Wired journalist doesn't really understand what they're
talking about. I can't believe no-one has pointed this out yet.

There is a Google Chrome Helper process for each tab you have open, for each
extension you have installed, for each plugin that is currently running and
one to talk to the GPU in your system.

If you enable "Click to play" and open Chrome with one empty tab you'll still
have at least two Google Chrome Helper processes. One for the empty tab and
one for the GPU process. If you've installed any extensions you'll have more.
There is no way to "destroy the Google Chrome Helper".

That article is very badly written.

~~~
vteven
> In many cases, the plug-ins and processes they’re handling aren’t listed by
> name because the APIs don’t allow it. Google Chrome Helper is a martyr.

The author's chief complaint is that Google Chrome Helper obscures the source
of crashes/hangs, making diagnosis that much harder. The article is badly
written, sure; but the workaround does allows you to isolate suspect content
from everything else.

------
Mithaldu
Short version: It's the process that runs extensions and plugins like flash.

Interestingly the solution to problems with it is the same as implemented in
Opera 12 years ago: Configure the browser to run plugins only when the user
explicitly activates them.

~~~
gabrielhn
Info on how to set "Click to Play" in chrome settings:
[https://security.berkeley.edu/content/how-do-i-enable-
click-...](https://security.berkeley.edu/content/how-do-i-enable-click-play-
google-chrome)

~~~
maxmwood
Did this on my 2008 MacBook, still running Snow Leopard. The speed was
immediately noticeable when browsing the web.

I'd recommend it if anyone else has noticed a slow down at all.

~~~
niels_olson
I gotta ask: why are you still running Snow Leopard?

~~~
maxmwood
I don't feel there are any real benefits in upgrading. It'll just slow down my
MacBook even more.

~~~
niels_olson
Thanks for the honest reply. I wasn't trying to be judgemental, just trying to
understand specific reasons, rather than admit the nebulous cloud of
"because".

------
NinjaWarrior
This article won't help much. Many people are saying this issue occurs without
any plug-ins. I doubt it is the true cause. There are many Google Chrome
Helper CPU eating up issues. Some are obviously not plug-in and extension
related.

Chrome for Mac is almost useless because of this issue. I first encountered
this just after Maverics release and Google has not fixed it until now. Very
odd.

Issue 373923 - chromium - Google Chrome Helper Process Taking up >100% CPU on
Macs

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923)

Issue 397642 - chromium - Google Chrome Helper (not responding) on Yosemite
Beta 1

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=397642](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=397642)

Issue 399960 - chromium - Video playback, CSS transitions, and other GPU
operations drastically heat up 13" Retina Macbook Pros

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399960](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=399960)

Issue 367593 - chromium - Multiple Google Chrome Helpers are spawning and
slowing severely slowing down my browser

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=367593](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=367593)

Google Chrome Helper using far too much CPU power - Google Group

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/LfBqIl...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/LfBqIlfFoSo%5B1-25-false%5D)

------
gchokov
Switched to Safari for casual browsing because of similar issues and much
better battery life on many occasions.

~~~
tonyplee
Best solution for me is firefox + noscript. Super clean and fast.

~~~
vacri
You also get to see which sites are pulling javascript from 20+ other
locations. Sometimes it's an almost-fun game of 'hunt the snipe' to find the
javascript source that will present the actual content to you...

~~~
recursive
We have much different ideas of almost-fun.

~~~
mcovey
It really does get quite amusing when you see "oh, two blocked scripts and one
looks like their CDN, no problem" and temporarily enable them. Then the page
reloads and 13 more scripts are blocked, so you make some reasonable guesses
and it turns out the site won't play the goddamn video unless you also load
some disqus comments, send a referrer header, allow something that looks like
an XSS attack and sacrifice a goat.

I end up just leaving two browsers with different profiles loaded half the
time, one of them tweaked to be as revealing as possible, for loading stuff I
just want to see and don't want to play unblocking games with. Then when I
close it all the cookies, localstorage, etc. goes poof. As he said, it's
almost fun. Not actually fun.

------
fifthesteight
i have been wrestling with this for weeks, both professionally and personally.
I'm fairly certain that in this process/before we noticed the problem we
burned up one of our machines.

The thing is, there's no flash involved. We've narrowed it down to css3
transitions running amok. In other cases we've poorly constructed JS loops
causing problems.

Recently i've noticed it on everything (even gmail, drive and calendar) in
chrome.

No problems elsewhere, although in a side-by-side comparison with mozilla
showed mozilla nearing similar cpu usage (30-60%) but never sustained (lasting
seconds)

Not sure if this helps anyone, or if this is just 'duh.' The css3 transitions
being involved i have not read out in the wild, so i thought i'd toss that
idea out.

------
manifesto
Related bugreport:
[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=373923)

------
newman314
One of the most annoying things about Chrome is that I can't kill individual
tabs via the task manager. Occasionally one tab will go crazy, then I have to
click around trying to figure out which tab. Task manager can only close group
of tabs.

I know this isn't the same issue just a whole bunch of annoying things about
chrome

~~~
wamatt
Chrome actually has a built in Task Manager which can be super useful for this
sort of thing.

For example, it allows one to see CPU & Mem usage per tab. It also has the
ability to kill problematic tabs, extensions and background processes with
ease.

Chrome's Task Manager can be found under Menu Icon -> (More) Tools.

In fact, this feature was being used often enough, that I ended up assigning
it a shortcut. (for me: command-shift-1)

~~~
speeq
Doesn't it have a default shortcut? I think "Shift + Esc" opens it.

~~~
mh-
on windows. doesn't on mac for some reason.

------
peatmoss
Does that come along for the ride if you use Chromium rather than Chrome? I'm
not next to my Mac, but I believe I remember chromium being available through
the homebrew cask system.

I don't care if I don't have flash (actually I care to NOT have flash). So
what reason would there be to not simply run Chromium? Or am I forgetting
something useful that I'm likely using?

~~~
_asummers
Certain YouTube videos use Flash instead of HTML5, particularly at higher
resolutions. You can probably live without this, but it's worth noting.

~~~
kuschku
Not anymore—all videos can be viewed in Chromium as well (except those with
special DRM).

They’re using DASH with small .mp4 snippets. It’s also the reason why videos
don’t load completely anymore and why audio and video sometimes go out of
sync. Also the reason why nothing works as expected.

~~~
_asummers
That's good to know, thank you. I knew that they transitioned to DASH but I
didn't think that brought HTML5 everywhere. For live stream events (e.g.
Apple's announcements), do they still use Flash?

~~~
neilkathok
Apple's announcements usually use the Quicktime plugin, at least if you're
viewing on OSX. You can also usually extract the source stream and play it in
another app if you dig through the markup/scripts/etc.

------
renaudg
On the topic of Chrome performance tips, if you always have dozens of open
tabs in different windows, this nifty extension will freeze them out (unload
them) until you actually want to look at them again :
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-
suspende...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-
suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en)

In theory, this is what memory paging is for. In practice, this is higher
level and seems to work much better.

~~~
bitcuration
I disabled it after a while. Its time lapse can't be changed although
available from setting. It tends to suspend tab within a couple minutes and
constant reload when switching between tabs. Very poorly developed, a nice
idea though. A similar addon in firefox has done this long time ago and I can
keep over hundreds tabs in firefox almost all the time, while only a few is
loaded.

------
gojomo
While I haven't noticed 'Chrome Helper' problems, sometimes Chrome slows my
machine with a ton of 'lsof' processes. I suspect an updater going haywire;
more details here:

[https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/26gO8swn...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chrome/26gO8swnI8E/8ySgJvsejCAJ)

Anyone else seen or worked-around this? (It's been a while since it's
noticeably recurred, so maybe it's been fixed.)

------
Animats
Maybe plug-in execution ought to stop when the relevant page is in the
background. At least on battery-powered devices. Some Flash content tends to
run in the background, doing who knows what, probably something related to
advertising, tracking, or general obnoxiousness. On phones, "Run in
Background" is usually a privilege that's discouraged.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
Many people expect to be able to listen to say, music on youtube in one tab,
while browsing the internet in another. So it's a bit of a hard problem (not
to mention that a plugin just keeps running, and you have no real control over
it). However, all the major browsers try to throttle javascript in background
tabs. Usually by making setInterval return only once a second.

------
msoad
It doesn't go to (Not Responding) mode if you use Chrome canary with OSX
Yosemite

------
benaiah
tl;dr extensions and plugins.

------
lucio
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my disk?

------
benguild
AFAIK this has only been a real problem since Yosemite. I noticed it when
running the GM Candidates but never saw it in Mavericks.

~~~
mariehaynes
I'm on Mavericks and I see it as my top CPU hog occasionally too.

~~~
benguild
Well, everyone's downvoting me, but I swear I never noticed this until
Yosemite.

Either way, the weird thing is that if you go to the Window menu and hit Task
Manager... you can monitor extension CPU usage, etc.

I never had a problem until recently, and yet now I'm seeing red in the
Activity Manager due to Chrome. It's bizarre.

~~~
tjl
You're probably downvoted because it's been pretty widely known that Chrome is
a CPU hog on OS X. Checking the energy shaming feature, Chrome is pretty much
always in the "Apps Using Significant Energy" section. I did a quick search on
"Chrome energy OS X" and found a number of pages that mention it, all of which
date back to Mavericks which is the first time energy usage was reported
(separate from straight CPU usage).

I only use Chrome if I need to use a site with Flash and I use the "Open Page
With" item in Safari's Develop menu to open the appropriate page. Then, I quit
once I'm done with it.


Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness (2005) [pdf] - clarkevans
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/inequality_and_democratic_responsiveness.pdf
======
EarthIsHome
Every few years the oppressed get to vote on who we want to oppress us.

It's a very powerful illusion to placate the masses by tricking us into
thinking that our voices are being heard and we are participating in a
democracy.

An excerpt from Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States":

> We have here a forecast of the long history of America politics, the
> mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own
> purposes. This was not purely deciption; it involved, in part, a genuine
> recognition of lower-class grievances, which helps to account for its
> effectiveness as a tactic over the centuries.

^^ This was in the lead-up to the American revolution where the upper-class
needed to gain support from the lower-classes. The wealthy colonists were able
to redirect the lower-class's ire from wealthy colonists to the British. One
way of gaining support was allowing some lower-classes to participate in
politics or give some of them land. However, the concessions given to the
lower classes by the upper classes never materially change the power dynamics.

A contemporary example of this is the response by politicians to the George
Floyd Protests. Most politicians aren't entertaining the significant demands
of the protesters. Instead, politicians try to placate the masses (and it's
effective) by offering concessions that don't really change the root the power
dynamics that have led to the protests: e.g. remove statues, changing names of
streets to BLM, "8 can't wait" policies, etc.

------
petermcneeley
The system just works as designed.
[https://chomsky.info/commongood02/](https://chomsky.info/commongood02/)


Show HN: Snapbugz – The easiest way to discuss bugs. - grexi
http://www.snapbugz.com/
======
nwh
> " _Your browser is too old for Snapbugz._ "

Latest Chrome probably shouldn't have this.

> _" As not yet seen on:_"

Putting this at the bottom of the page with a list of popular website's icons
is disingenuous to say the least.

It's also not clear to the user, but this service silently proxies any site
you go to with little concession for what the user might be doing. Given that
they're already being so unpleasant with the bottom links, I wouldn't hesitate
to think that they are capturing user content as well. Even if they aren't
collecting private data, they're stripping SSL data and serving it back up in
plain text.

Completely unacceptable.

~~~
jamessb
With Firefox 27 (or Safari 7.0.1) on a MBP running Mavericks I get the error:

"Bummer! Creating a Snapbugz currently only works on desktop computers."

~~~
pornel
Where can I discuss that bug? ;)

[http://i.imgur.com/IGuNEzT.png](http://i.imgur.com/IGuNEzT.png)

~~~
grexi
For all having this "desktop" issue on real desktops - please give us more
information via hello @ snapbugz.com. Kudos!

~~~
pornel
My suggestion is instead of chasing UA sniffing (which is a losing
proposition), just give up on blocking "mobile" or any kind of browser.

FWIW my mobile browser is just as capable as my desktop and as long as you
don't block zooming I can deal with an "unoptimized" layout.

~~~
grexi
The creation part of snapbugz is just not ready for mobile/touch usage as UX
patterns on the annotation part are different. However, the result /
collaboration part is already finished:
[http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a](http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a)

------
smoyer
I'm against bug-tracking systems that fork a program's (or web-site's) own
bug-tracking system. You end up with multiple problems:

1) The same bug in both places, with different buy useful discussions in each.
How do you merge these two bugs? How do you mark one as a duplicate?

2) The developers of the program (or web-site) probably don't know you exist,
so while there might be a great discussion related to the bug, the person who
can actually resolve it doesn't know.

3) Assuming you're not the only "foreign" bug-tracking system for a program
(or web-site), how do you interact with the other "foreign" systems?

4) There's no barrier to entry, so there's no incentive to creating anonymous
bugs or to using the platform to rant at the developer.

You're not alone with these problems - GetSatisfaction and UserVoice have the
same issues. My suggestion would be to create such an amazing bug-tracking
system that the developers _WANT_ to use it as their primary source. Then get
bought by Github.

~~~
grexi
Thanks for your points.

Indeed we tried to solve some of your points at
[http://usersnap.com](http://usersnap.com) (the technology behind snapbugz).
We integrate with different, existing bug trackers but made the experience
that there are many people who still rely on email as a bug tracker.

------
chigley
I like the fun feature when I type the site's own URL into the search box.
First a message that reads "Do you really want to see the internet implode?",
followed by a redirect to the "Google into Google" sketch from The IT
Crowd[0].

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-
qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-qc)

~~~
bazzargh
I didn't. I actually wanted to report a bug with their site, that it lacks any
explanation of what it does and why you'd want to use it (eg, does the
feedback actually go anywhere?)

------
platinumdragon
Pretty asinine that I can't even read about what snapbugz is in my mobile. It
might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I'll never use it, because
I tried to find out more info and got slapped in the face for it. If it were
of interest, _then_ I would email myself a reminder to use it on desktop.

~~~
grexi
Creating on mobile is on our agenda for the next week. In the meantime, have a
look at the result page for mobiles please:
[http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a](http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a)

------
davidjgraph
I tried one of our sites, we force https, it seems the 's' is stripped and
loading fails. If the site is about discussing bugs, I would think a target
market is web applications, pretty much all of which will be using https.

~~~
deanclatworthy
And most bugs are often found before going into production, so client's will
be accessing the site behind an IP restriction or HTTP auth most likely.

~~~
grexi
For full HTTPS / IP-Restriction / Auth / external bug tracker support, please
have a look at [https://usersnap.com](https://usersnap.com) \- this could fit
your professional requirements.

------
tokenizerrr
Images didn't seem to load in the produced screenshot, though they did load in
the preview where I marked the area. Unfortunately I could not snapbugz
[http://www.snapbugz.com/result/minichan.org/a5a77fcb-f86a-4a...](http://www.snapbugz.com/result/minichan.org/a5a77fcb-f86a-4ad6-acc0-62eae7df6d91)
as instead it took me to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-
qc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxLmLUT-qc)

~~~
grexi
Looks like the page minichan.org does a referer-check for all images to
prevent hotlinking.

------
FreshCode
Love the "As not yet soon on:" logos at the bottom which tweets to those
publications about Snapbugz. Great marketing hack.

------
higherpurpose
Seems somewhat similar to how Google did it for Google+ in the early days. I'm
surprised it took this long for someone to replicate that feedback system to
be honest. I thought it was brilliant from the moment I saw it.

~~~
grexi
Have a look at [http://usersnap.com](http://usersnap.com) :-)

------
f_salmon
Please stop the background requests to tons of 3rd party servers. It's such an
unhealthy trend. (Now that we know that everybody and their mother tracks and
profiles us all the time.)

------
domas
If you type snapbugz.com into snapbugz.com, you can break the Internet. So
please, no one try it—even for a joke. It's not a laughing mater. You can
break the Internet.

------
grexi
For all on mobiles - here is an example result page:
[http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a](http://www.snapbugz.com/p/88a7a69a)

------
choult
I wonder how many bug reports Gizmodo.com is going to have...

~~~
grexi
a lot. really a lot.

------
nodata
I thought this was for discussing bugs in bug trackers like bugzilla. Then I
thought this was related to FogBugz, but it's neither.

------
rikf
Looks very useful to me.

One things I would do is make the permalink visible as soon in the flow as
possible.

~~~
grexi
Thanks for the input!

------
swah
So, how does one render a website properly into a PNG? Headless Chrome?

~~~
grexi
It's done by Usersnap: [https://usersnap.com/](https://usersnap.com/)

------
WednesdayBass
> Easiest way to discuss bugs

Not on mobile it's not

~~~
eatfish
I thought it was neat that they let me email myself with a reminder. This is
an MVP, it's just the right response.

------
vespaceballs6
this is very cool, I definitely plan on using it.

just curious, why only store the bug for 7 days?

~~~
grexi
You can extend the storage time by inviting others to discuss - 1day per
invite. (If you already have sth like a bug tracker / pm in place - look at
[https://usersnap.com](https://usersnap.com) ).

~~~
vespaceballs6
nice. Is the storage time simply an up-sell mechanism? or is there a technical
issue at play? again, just curious.

~~~
grexi
No, no technical issues :-)