The MOS 6502 and the Best Layout Guy in the World - skymt
http://research.swtch.com/2011/01/mos-6502-and-best-layout-guy-in-world.html
======
commandar
>The most amazing part about the whole process is that they got the 6502 right
in one try. Quoting On the Edge: Bil Herd summarizes the situation. “No chip
worked the first time,” he states emphatically. “No chip. It took seven or
nine revs [revisions], or if someone was real good they would get it in five
or six.”

In some ways (and I'm speaking in a general sense) situations like that
actually make me more nervous than when I know there's a problem. I get this
uneasy "there's no way it _really_ went that smoothly" feeling that can be
hard to shake.

Then again, my personality is to approach most things in life iteratively, so
that probably plays a part as well. Great read either way.

~~~
rbanffy
That's the sensation of working with someone who's _incredibly_ good.

And, BTW, the 6502 was a work of art. Simple, elegant and fast (even at 1
MHz), it ran rings around the Z-80's you found in more expensive computers of
the time. Plus, it was delightful to program.

~~~
amichail
_Plus, it was delightful to program._

Simple maybe, but not delightful to program. I don't know of any assembly
language that is delightful to program.

BTW, I knew someone from junior high & high school who could write code for
the 6502 using a hex dump with amazing speed. You might have heard of him:
Randy Linden.

~~~
rsc
As Doug McIlroy (inventor of pipes, diff) once said of punched cards, "It's
the kind of thing you can be nostalgic about, but it wasn't actually fun."

[http://research.swtch.com/2008/04/computing-history-at-
bell-...](http://research.swtch.com/2008/04/computing-history-at-bell-
labs.html)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Punch cards are different: there's substantially delayed gratification.

When you're a poor college student as I was, entering opcodes in a
monitor/debugger you wrote in BASIC because you couldn't afford an assembler,
then yes, assembly was fun.

Fun, that is, until you had to hand-calculate negative jump offsets. Don't
remember why, but for some reason I seem to think that the MC6809 I was
running on made it difficult to do so.

~~~
ghshephard
There must have been something special about the 6809 - I recall doing my
Digital Design course on that Chip. And yes, we didn't have an assembler,
everything was entered via opcodes either. It was a very enjoyable experience
for someone like me who wasn't a gear head, and got to play around with
SB555s, NAND Gates, and lots, and lots of wirewrapping.

------
wallflower
From Jordan Mechner's diary of the development of Prince of Persia (POP was
originally coded in 6502 Assembler. It took him four years). Reading Jordan's
full diary will take you at least eight hours but it is well worth it.

> We chatted for an hour about peripherally related topics. Broderbund,
> corporate America, the rat race, capitalism, freedom. I was seducing him.

At the critical psychological moment, I remarked: "You know, all my clipping
is done on the byte boundaries."

There was a pause

<http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/page/33/>

April 3, 1989

------
Luyt
The whole 'Reverse Engineering the 6502' talk Michael Steil gave at CCC
congress is on YouTube. I posted this earlier in a separate topic, but it
didn't pick up.

Clickable links to the 6 parts:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW9AWBFH1sA>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBE4KHKzhKc>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRBo7O_blVo>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_15RtVbqGU>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9DYmlprCKA>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZOUuqc4pk8>

------
mmphosis
Intel Core 2 - Yorkfield, 45 nm process technology, Number of Transistors: 820
Million

MOS 6502, Number of Transistors: 3510

So in theory, a chip with 65536 MOS 6502 cores each with 64K of internal RAM
(4Mb cache) could be made.

~~~
meastham
Sure, if you completely ignore all of the extra circuitry for the on-chip
network and cache coherency and everything else you would need. Transistor
density is far from the limiting factor in the number of cores we can wedge
into a single system.

~~~
jdeeny
If you assume that there is no cache (only on-die memory) and that memory is
not shared between cores, things become much simpler and scale more linearly.
Core-to-core communications and plenty of other details remain to spend man-
years ironing out, but it seems like it would be possible to approach 64k
cores or at least 16k.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
Might be able to peel out the BCD stuff from the 6502 to free up a little
additional space and approach communication between cores kinda like the
"handshake bus" GreenArrays chips use:
[http://greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-100822-...](http://greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-100822-F18A.pdf)

------
exception
I loved the 6502. Around that era I programmed the SC/MP, Z80, the 8080 and
the 6800. Although the Z80 was more powerful, the 6502 holds a special place
in my heart as it was the first CPU I worked with and I loved the simplicity
of the instruction set.

My crowning achievement was a multi-threaded kernel for a CNC punch. Since the
stack was at a fixed memory address and there was no PUSHA, I had to change
threads (in response to an IRQ) by sequentially pushing the registers on to
the stack and then swapping the stack with a block copy. It worked! Crazy :/

I loved reading this article - thanks for posting. Awesome stuff! Makes me
want to code my own circuit emulator :)

~~~
thinkingeric
Ditto that. My first programs were in assembly on the 6502, and I'm thrilled
to see it getting this attention. I'm just sorry that I don't still have the
KIM-1.

~~~
greggraham
I was planning on buying a KIM-1 when my dad surprised me by buying an Apple
II. I didn't end up writing anything in assembly on the Apple II, though. My
first assembly language was IBM-370 in college. I wish now I had started with
the KIM-1, though.

------
VMG
Here it is in all its javascript goodness:
<http://www.visual6502.org/JSSim/index.html>

------
eru
The CCC congress yielded some great talks this year.


Show HN: Preprocessor for XML and JSON. People-Friendly Syntax,code Reuse+editor - trushin
https://www.syntactik.com/
======
mtmail
A comparison against YAML would be nice as well. YAML allows reusing section
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Advanced_components](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Advanced_components)
for example.

~~~
trushin
Thanks for the feedback. I will mention YAML in the language description. Code
reuse in YAML is limited to just simple reference. In Syntactik, you can
define parameters inside an alias. It makes code reuse in Syntactik much more
useful.


Deploying JRuby apps on Google App Engine - igrigorik
http://www.igvita.com/2009/09/23/deploying-jruby-on-google-app-engine/

======
grandalf
GAE is an awesome platform. I really don't see myself ever setting up
apache/nginx/mysql ever again...


The Importance of Ron (Conway) - hshah
http://omis.me/2010/04/08/the-importance-of-ron/

======
btilly
See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248503> for yesterday's discussion
of Ron Conway that may put this in perspective.


Brazilian Kids Learn English by Video Chatting With Elderly Americans - felipelalli
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/perfect-match-brazilian-kids-learn-english-video-chatting-lonely-elderly-americans-157523
======
joshmn
Okay totally unrelated to the open-source stuff BUT.

That brought tears to my eyes. It was such a joy to see the expressions on the
faces of both the Brazilian and the hip elderly person on the other side.

Bookmarked under "Things that will make you smile"

~~~
robmcm
Someone could knock up an app using web RTC. A perfect opportunity for some
hacker out there. Some hacker that reads HN.

The trick is avoiding it becoming the next chat roulette :/

~~~
alagu
Honestly, I don't think building tech here is the hard part. It is finding the
right audience (Elderly people & Kids who want to learn English)

------
pshin45
As someone in another comment already pointed out, YC previously funded a
company called "Verbling"
([https://www.verbling.com](https://www.verbling.com)) in their Summer 2011
batch whose original selling point was to provide an instant, one-click 1:1
pairing of language learners with native speakers via videochat.

I'm not sure how well that concept caught on though... And if you check out
their website, they seem to have pivoted to a more traditional "livestreamed
language classes" model.

------
personlurking
There's a well-known problem in Brazil with English acquisition. This is due
to the actual need for it (or rather lack of), the false "become fluent"
promises by the language schools (like CNA, Fisk, Skill, Wizard, etc.), the
cost of taking a course for the student, the methodology of said schools, and
the lack of daily contact with people from other cultures in Brazil (tied to
my first point).

As for the teacher, working in a school like the ones mentioned, you get low
pay (not too many years ago it was about $7/hr) and no leeway in terms of
hours and method. Being a private, one-on-one teacher, though, one can command
higher prices ($30-50/hr in the largest cities) and have more control over
everything (just not always whether the students keep their appointments).

Nonetheless, cool video in the link.

------
efficientarch
The title change of this submission means that many early comments now make no
sense. Original title was something like "Ask HN: Is anything like this
available as open source"

~~~
robobro
Thanks, wouldn't have caught it otherwise.

To whoever changed it: why didn't you just make a second thread?

------
zvrba
News like this just make my day better. It's much more rewarding to read about
technology being used for tangible benefit to the people involved instead of
for getting rich.

~~~
oska
This isn't news, it's an ad for a language school. It's being displayed on a
website devoted to showcasing advertising and all of the advertising
production details are listed below the video.

So it's not underhand at all but it's also not an objective display of this
program. It's an ad, designed to give you warm fuzzies and, if you're in the
target demographic, consider signing up as a fee-paying student at the school
featured.

As others have said in this thread, similar projects have been tried and have
not really gained traction. Not saying that some such project may not
eventually succeed but given that there is no objective data being given on
the success of this program in the video, one should probably be somewhat
sceptical that this is anything more than a marketing tool.

------
JTxt
(EDIT: original title asked if there was something like this as open source.)

Nice. It's basicly a well managed chatroulette clone.

(EDIT: not quite, it also needs to record.)

Or try "web video conference server open source"

[https://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/](https://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/)

[http://bigbluebutton.org](http://bigbluebutton.org) (can record too)

Greggman mentioned WEBrtc, that would probably be cleaner/simpler, but it's
p2p right, so the server can't record? perhaps try [https://www.webrtc-
experiment.com/RecordRTC/](https://www.webrtc-experiment.com/RecordRTC/) ?

~~~
mkesper
In addition, the video session gets captured and evaluated afterwards.

~~~
JTxt
Good point, added bigbluebutton.org

------
jqm
I vote this idea of the month and feel it should be greatly expanded upon.

If there were an organized platform where people could chat with speakers from
all over the world in order to learn their language and culture it would be a
fantastic thing.

------
joshu
[http://www.ted.com/participate/ted-prize/prize-winning-
wishe...](http://www.ted.com/participate/ted-prize/prize-winning-
wishes/school-in-the-cloud-sugata-mitra)

Someone else came up with the idea. "School in the cloud"

~~~
fuzzythinker
Related, but I see them as being really different application and goals.
"School in the cloud" is aimed at poor and remote places where kids can
benefit from real time learning interactions (while the "teachers" do not seem
to get much materialistic benefits).

This on the other hand, is geared toward helping anyone who wants to learn a
new foreign language and connecting them to ones who do speak that language
and they benefit from having someone who is willing to talk to them. So the
goals, and users/usage are very different, aside from one is aim towards one
to many, and the other more one on one.

------
greggman
What part do you want to be open source? The software that runs the matchup? I
think most browsers support WebRTC so that problem is mostly solved. People
can use Facetime or Google+ Hangouts for free. So all that's needed is a way
to meet people. I suppose pretty much any live chat for pr0n software would do
the job as well.

I know there are other companies doing this. My friend is learning English
through [http://langrich.com](http://langrich.com) which connects students of
any age in Japan to people in cheap labor countries that speak English like
the Philipeans for example.

~~~
felipelalli
No. Basically I want a site / service that can connects specifically elderly
people with people trying to learn English. Actually don't have to be open
source, neither free. I expressed bad myself, sorry.

~~~
JTxt
Oh, then it's much more of a management problem.

There's plenty of technical solutions already, you may just want a little glue
with good ux design, fast internet, and good support staff, especially for the
elderly.

In this example, someone setup a relationship between a retirement home and an
English learning school. Outside of that, it would probably turn into a
chatroulete.

~~~
felipelalli
Exactly! :)

------
amaral-herberth
I'm a native Brazilian and I practice my english by writing texts that aren't
meant to be published and talking to myself when I'm walking home. This could
be an excellent alternative to improve my english. I'll certainly get in touch
with CNA people in my hometown :-)

------
mrcactu5
this article is very sad. it's about elderly people who have noone to talk to,
but also Brazil is poor country with a growing demand for having users speak
English.

so this "chat-roulette clone" has a lot if impact.

------
steamn
Check out Lynckia a WebRTC framework(
[https://github.com/ging/licode](https://github.com/ging/licode) ) it includes
a MCU that allows recording and more...

------
arfliw
Watching the video is the closest I've ever come to crying from something I
saw on the internet. Moving stuff.

------
karangoeluw
That does what exactly? Video chatting?

~~~
avargas
no, pair you with someone to chat. Elderly people tend to be lonely, so they
are a nice target. And students learning that language. This is genius.

~~~
mahmud
Why do you think that is a technical problem?

~~~
avargas
I didn't mean it that way, I meant it as a response to what he's asking about
"That does what exactly?"

------
glassdoor
Is the name of the app pervert by any chance?


The Music Bay: Pirate Bay Crew Instill More Fear Into The Music Industry - tortilla
http://torrentfreak.com/the-music-bay-pirate-bay-110122/
======
felipepiresrj
Does anyone have any idea what the piratebay guys are up to with the latest
announcement of "themusicbay.org"? Details ? What they're doing ? What's this
new thing they're launching ? when ? where ? is it just a hoax ? who's
bankrolling this ?

I need some insider information. I've seen all the stuff you can easily find
on google.


Top countries by robot density - bookofjoe
http://chartsbin.com/view/45327
======
nabla9
Robot density function looks like reciprocal of cheap labor function.

~~~
bookofjoe
Good point; I hadn't noticed that.


Join our hacker house for new YC companies - thejash
http://www.founderflat.com/
======
nickpinkston
I'll vouch hugely for Josh "thejash". Josh is ultra hardworking, super smart,
and the least flakey dude that I know. He's also managed a shared housing
situation for years, so he's really the ideal dude to be doing this.

Disclosure: Josh and I founded/sold a company together and overall have been
good friends for many years.

------
mbeebe
Having just gone through the winter batch, the closer you are to YC, the
easier it is going to be.

Between dinners and office hours you wind up going there frequently. Traffic
is a big pain when trying to get to the dinners on anything other than surface
streets.

~~~
thejash
Other YC alumni that I spoke with felt the same way, which is a big part of
why the final location will probably be in or near Mountain View.

~~~
jedberg
It's not so bad if you are near any Caltrain or light rail stop, since both
stop very close to YC.

------
argumentum
List of potential craigslist houses I found, mostly in palo alto or within
minutes from..

<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2957756203.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2952933250.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2956453815.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2956341339.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2946849180.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2949748841.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2949736690.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2947663166.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2957990093.html>
<http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/2948364081.html> (has basement!)

~~~
thejash
Thanks for the links!

It's tough to find huge places, so if you (or anyone) knows of suitable places
(>=6br), especially those NOT listed on craigslist/etc, please comment or send
me an email.

------
kirinan
This is a fantastic idea. I signed up for Ycombinator and since I'm moving
from Ohio, wasn't sure where I would be able to find housing. This solves that
problem. Im not sure how competitive it will be able to get into the "house",
but hopefully not that competitive.

~~~
thejash
If it ends up being really competitive (and we have more people than can fit
comfortably in one house), then we can do two or more. I have a number of
places that I'm looking at already, so I'm pretty sure we won't end up with a
situation where people can't live in any of the available houses*

*excluding rounding (like if there are 8 people and only 7 slots in one house)

~~~
kirinan
Awesome, well I plan on bringing a car if I'm accepted so whomever lives with
me will have transportation when I'm available. Good idea on getting more than
one, I think this can be profitable for you (if you are looking for that ) as
well as being a good deal for the people moving there.

~~~
thejash
I'm not looking for profit in this--it's a horrible business idea :) I'll be
happy if I get to meet some interesting people and don't lose all that much
money.

~~~
kirinan
The meeting people part makes up for any lost money anytime!

------
andrewhillman
This is a great idea. Might as well make the experience social since most YC
alumni regret not getting to know the other companies during the 3 month
period. Might be cool to have weekly pitch events/gatherings at the location.

~~~
thejash
The "regret not getting to know each other" is definitely something that I've
heard from recent YC alumni.

As for weekly gatherings--I think that might be a bit distracting for the
teams there, but I can see occasional gatherings being valuable.

~~~
carterschonwald
This. Thinking and problem solving is a social process, the human brain is
designed to be fueled via lots of nuggets of social. Theres a huge amount of
variability in what sorts of socialization different folks need and what form
it needs to take, but it's absence creates a terrifying inability to think
clearly and execute.

Foam earplugs plus around the ear headphones solve most hearing other people
distractions. :)

Point being, if my group is in YC this summer, we're definitely looking for a
social living space

------
mirsadm
I signed up (we applied for YC). Having gone through the hassle of finding a
place in a few places recently it is a huge pain in the ass. This is a great
idea but I'm not sure we'd be able to commit to a 6 month contract.

~~~
thejash
I think a 6 month contract isn't too bad, when you consider that it's
basically:

1 month for moving in before YC starts

3 months for YC

2 months for wrapping things up and finding a new place and moving

------
argumentum
Great idea.

I was thinking about creating my own post for a YC hacker house, but I'd
rather not deal with organizing and getting a landlord on board with something
like this.

------
bravura
Cost: $500 + $600 * numBedrooms) <= cost <= ($1000 + $1200 * numBedrooms)

 _You decide numBedrooms for your team. The fixed cost is to cover shared
rooms (kitchen, conference room, living room, etc)._

Larger teams will incur a larger utilization of shared resources, and hence
should pay more for shared resources. It more fair simply to divide the
overall cost.

~~~
thejash
That's true. But on the other hand, imagine this situation:

3 teams with 3 people. The house has 7 br. 2 teams each buy 3 br (for a total
of 6 of the 7 being used), then the other team buys 1 br, and they all always
work from and hang out at the house. It would be lame that that 3rd team was
paying 1/3rd the cost of each of the other teams. So this formulation was an
attempt to account for that.

Basically, my theory is--be reasonable. If you're using 42% of the house, you
should pay 42% of the costs. I'm happy to adjust the costs to make it work out
in a reasonable way.

------
larrys
I wondering what the reaction would be if a few well known and loved VC firms
(that have funded YC companies before) got involved and subsidized part of the
rent for something like this or even something on a larger scale. Thoughts on
that idea?

~~~
thejash
I'm not sure how subsidizing the rent would help the companies, especially if
they've already gotten into YC (and thus just got a bunch of investment, with
other investment pretty readily available).

Seems like it would be better to just keep the investing as direct dollars for
equity, like it is now. Unless I'm missing something? I'd be happy to be wrong
here. :)

~~~
larrys
I'm thinking of it similar to how corporations want their names on rooms
and/or buildings at colleges. Showing a level of support which, while not a
quid pro quo, shows support in a way that isn't directly linked to a benefit.

The support could come as monetary support and maybe doing the thing that PG
doesn't have the time for as mentioned here (coordinating housing):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3650877>

------
dmvaldman
Just signed up. I've been sequestered in my fortress of solitude for too
long!!...Now if only I could get accepted to YC and cash in on this deal...

------
amccloud
Where is that Zencoder house? (<http://yfrog.com/09x7fsj>)

~~~
thejash
I don't have an exact address. I spoke with Jon (of Zencoder), he said it was
somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains. Such a place is probably a little too
remote for most people (it was a 30 minute or more drive to YC)

~~~
argumentum
I don't mind, I have a car and don't mind sharing. I kind of like the idea of
living in a remote fortress, like a mad-scientist. But yeah, probably not
practical for enough people, unfortunately.

~~~
thejash
I agree with everything you said.

Hopefully you signed up and made a note about your preference for a remote
area?

~~~
argumentum
Yes, I did, though I'll only know today whether yc has a chance of happening
(interview invites go out this evening I believe).

------
citricsquid
curious, will you be funding this out of pocket with the rent from the people
living there used to reimburse yourself, or will you be using the rent paid by
the people living there to pay the rent? I assume the former but I thought it
might be worth you clarifying. Great idea, good luck!

~~~
thejash
I haven't fully decided--it's not going to be free, for sure. Probably, people
will pay me and I will pay the landlord, since that seems more convenient, but
I could easily be convinced to just have people pay directly instead.

As I said on the page, the goal is not to make money, so any payment will just
be to cover costs. I'm not quite wealthy enough to just give away the space
for free yet :)

~~~
citricsquid
My point was more that if one person flakes for whatever reason or a startup
drops out and you're financing the entire thing directly with the rent paid by
the rentees you're in for a world of hurt unless someone comes up to cover
it... I assume if you pay for it and then the rentees reimburse you the worst
case is you lose money; not that people end up homeless.

------
kcrussell
This is great! A great idea for any incubator area.

------
sparknlaunch12
Are pets allowed?

~~~
thejash
I can't see anyone objecting to a fish or something. As for cats and dogs...
my guess is probably not, either because other people would object, they would
be bothersome, or the lease would not allow for it. So it's possible, but
unlikely.

~~~
sparknlaunch
Thanks for the reply. Great idea to get like minded people together. We hope
you plan to share the stories and results from the house. Will make
interesting reading if all house mates end up making it big.


Ask HN: Cool Demo Project Ideas - greyhat

The standard (and probably true) wisdom around here is that a good way to get noticed and get the kind of job that most of us would like is to "build something".
What I'm hoping for is ideas for demo projects.  I don't need anything designed to make money or steal anyone's startup idea, just things that are fun to build and show development skills.
Demos you've seen already and liked or that have gotten people job offers are also appreciated.
======
jamesbrewer
Unfortunately topics like this never get much attention. The only thing I can
recommend is to find a topic that interests you and then just go find
something that sounds neat. It doesn't have to be the next Google and it
doesn't even have to make money, just do something.

For example, I've recently become fascinated with data mining. To explore this
area and get a basic idea of how it works, I'm playing with the Twitter API
and trying to look for neat things that can be done with the data available.
One idea I've come up with is an app that recommends people to follow based on
the hashtags that you use frequently. It's still a "half baked" idea for now,
but maybe something good will come from it.

Good luck.


Ask HN: What are good blogs/forums/etc to keep up with MySQL best practices? - ceohockey60
======
bgrainger
I wrote some guidelines (with a specific focus on .NET) recently:
[http://faithlife.codes/blog/2017/10/mysql_best_practices_for...](http://faithlife.codes/blog/2017/10/mysql_best_practices_for_dotnet/)

------
pwg
[http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html](http://sql-info.de/mysql/gotchas.html)


Toxic 'forever chemical' found in drinking water for 7.5mm California residents - AndrewBissell
https://abcnews.go.com/US/toxic-forever-chemical-pfas-found-drinking-water-75/story?id=65877630
======
calais
Those sure are some small California residents.


How Driverless Cars Can Reshape Our Cities - prostoalex
http://www.curbed.com/2016/2/25/11114222/how-driverless-cars-can-reshape-our-cities
======
sandworm101
>> A world where driverless cars are prevalent, and shared vehicle ownership
is the norm, offers a chance to rethink and reconsider the design of our urban
environment.

Those are two very different things. Cars are more than simple people movers.
They are expressions of their owners' cultures. They are displays of wealth.
They are little pieces of home that travel with you throughout your day. That
isn't going away any time soon.

Imho driverless cars will only add to traffic. No longer will cars have to
wait around for their drivers. They will be free to do all sorts of things on
the road while their owners go about their days. Kids need not take a bus to
school. The family car can take them after first dropping mom/dad at work.
Businesses need not wait for expensive employees to inspect worksites or
infrastructure. Nor will they have to install monitoring equipment. Send the
robot, a driverless car with a mounted camera is far cheaper than a fleet of
installed cameras. And parking? Forget paying. Just let the robot circle
around until you are ready to be picked up. Making driving cheaper and easier
through automation isn't going to reduce traffic.

------
repsilat
The dramatic reduction in parking is a common and reasonable conclusion, but I
think the reduction in _traffic_ is not so clear cut.

Driverless cars will reduce the cost of trips, likely inducing more demand.
You could also argue that empty driverless cars (say those travelling between
fares) naturally add to traffic levels, though this isn't a strong argument.

------
dregSkell
What a great idea. Give the cities to the disembodied sovereign cars, and
we'll all just hide from them in our cubby holes, and pray that maybe once in
a while we'll be able to catch a ride as hitchhikers.

I can see it now, roadways filled with traffic jams, and nobody sitting in any
of the cars, and no one having any idea where the cars are going, or why
they're even doing anything at all. Millions of puttering machines answering
to no one, punctuated by the occasional pedestrian fatality, as would be
demanded by statistics and the law of probability. But technology marches
forward as a higher GDP beckons.

Sounds like a great idea. Let's surround ourselves with haunted machines that
blend in with the rest of the herd amidst the rat race, and add meaningless
noise to the ambient signal of our bustling environment, so nobody will know
whether nothing is actually happening or not.

~~~
enobrev
I don't agree with this at all, but it was very well put and I enjoyed reading
it.


Quasar: a window manager for your (jailbroken) iPad - mattkopecki
http://thebigboss.org/quasar-a-window-manager-for-ipad

======
rjsamson
While its interesting, and I'm sure there are people who will love it, I'm not
sure I'd really enjoy interacting with my iPad in a multi-windowed
environment. There's something to be said for the simplicity of devoting my
attention to one app at a time.


How many different songs can there be? - sajid
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/many-different-songs-can/

======
yzh
The preemptive comments really made my day. Listening to your song, I am fully
awake now.


Be Lazy - janvdberg
https://dcgross.com/be-lazy/
======
meowface
Good points. Pretty much seems like a rephrasing of "do things that don't
scale".


Ask HN: Where's My “Flask for Cortana” or “Django for Google Now” Frameworks? - ReedJessen
======
ReedJessen
For anyone that comes along, I have found the solution.

Flask-Ask is literatlly Flask for Amazon Alexa:
[https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-
ask](https://github.com/johnwheeler/flask-ask)

------
tantalor
Pay someone.


Ask HN: Are these possible ways to slow down a blockchain? - marmalade92
I am very skeptical for the blockchain technology and although I use it as a gambling addiction (or it uses me) I still use zero crypto based technologies.
Within my skepticism, I started wondering what can make the chain vulnerable?
My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore wasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would ignore 'empty' transactions.
Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I mention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the miners have to traverse all the way to the back or are there 'checkpoints' that can assure short travels?
The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of nodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to 'break' the chain?
Excuse my ignorance.
======
jakecraige
It's not so much that miners would ignore empty transactions, it's that the
spammer would need to pay the miner fee to get each transaction in the block
which would end up being very expensive and unsustainable long term.

For the second idea, this wouldn't really work either. When each node receives
a transaction it will validate it first before broadcasting it to other nodes,
so it would be stopped from propagating through the network pretty quickly and
no one would attempt to include it in a block and run do PoW work it which is
the most time consuming part.

I suppose in theory if you had a large enough network and could target a ton
of nodes individually you might be able to do some form of damage but that's
likely a pretty impossible amount of power and similarly to the previous
example you could maybe bloat it a bit but it would be very expensive to
sustain an attack like this.

~~~
marmalade92
the 2nd idea. But in order to validate if I actually own the money it has to
traverse through the history. Now, I do not know how fast that is, or how far
back it goes. But if it has to check and lets say it takes X amount of time,
the spamming it will flood the validation without requiring a fee?

In general the 'attacks' are possible but expensive. However are they
government expensive bulletproof? especially if we target less expensive coins
aka alt coins.

------
wmf
_My first idea was flooding with almost non worthy transactions therefore
wasting the miners. This was quickly debunked as I found out the miners would
ignore 'empty' transactions._

Also, you have to pay a fee for each transaction and thus you'd have to pay
(at least) thousands of dollars of fees to clog a blockchain.
[https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-spam-attack-
stressed-n...](https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-spam-attack-stressed-
network-for-at-least-18-months-claims-software-developer/)

 _Another idea is, what if I as user A say want to transfer to user B, but I
mention an amount of coins that actually I do not own and spam it. Would the
miners have to traverse all the way to the back or are there 'checkpoints'
that can assure short travels?_

The miners keep an index of how much money everyone has (unspent transaction
output index) so they can immediately ignore such invalid transactions.

 _The last one is a bit more difficult. However can a big enough network of
nodes, insert itself and start crunching the chain errors-fully on purpose to
'break' the chain?_

This is similar to what people call the eclipse attack. However, if a victim
node can connect to even one other node that gives it a copy of the correct
blockchain then the victim will ignore the errors and use the correct chain.
[https://www.usenix.org/node/190891](https://www.usenix.org/node/190891)


Advice to Young Web Developers - EvanAnderson
https://tumblr.beesbuzz.biz/post/621010836277837824/advice-to-young-web-developers
======
mroche
> _Browsers change. Relying on browser-specific behavior means you’re relying
> on that one browser at that one point in time. Code to the standard, and
> test everywhere._

I wish this was listed at the top of the list, in the middle, and at the end.
It’s super annoying when a site or application isn’t “supported” because it
wasn’t tested in a separate browser (i.e. non-Chrome browsers).

I know it’s not always easy with a fair amount of nuance which the Chrome
Compatibility post[0] touches on, but developing the web platform should be
done openly, with the browser vendors working together to be compatible with
each other and not introduce developer or user inconvenience. Otherwise you
end up with web ownership and a fragmented platform.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23563525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23563525)

~~~
non-entity
Nothing pisses me off like getting a message that some website only supports
Chrome in 2020

~~~
jjoonathan
It's so sad that it became "acceptable" to not test in Firefox (as estimated
by the number of sites I randomly encounter that don't work in FF but do in
Chrome) right around the time that Firefox Quantum happened and Firefox became
good again :(

~~~
3131s
Firefox must have performed poorly on Windows / MacOS in the past, because
Firefox on Linux was never actually that bad.

I've used Firefox for 15+ years now and never had the problems that people
talk about.

~~~
abnry
I left Firefox in 2011 because it was unusably slow on my macbook. My recent
experience has been that it is much faster and I am considering switching
back.

~~~
adrianhel
It's the snappiest browser at the moment and I love its render as text
function and automatic ad blocking on mobile. I've made a permanent switch on
mobile, but I tend to miss the Chrome dev tools whenever I use it on a
computer.

It's also wonderful that the browser is truly privacy conscious.

~~~
Timpy
I know productivity takes a hit when you switch tools but FF dev tools are
great, it just takes some getting used to

------
CM30
Seems like a list of every web development ideal that gets upvoted on Hacker
News.

Still, I think the list can pretty much condensed down to one point:

Use whatever technology is appropriate for this site or web app.

Because a lot of developers seem to have a 'when all you have is a hammer'
attitude towards web development. They learn React/Vue/Angular/whatever, then
seemingly decide everything they will ever build will use that framework,
regardless of whether it's the right tool for the job.

A blog doesn't need to be an SPA. A static business site that never gets
updated and doesn't do anything remotely interesting doesn't need to be an
SPA. Your documentation doesn't need to be an SPA.

It's like that guy who was recreating CPanel as a WordPress plugin/install.
Sure, you could do things that way, but may want to rethink whether this is
really the best architecture to build a server control panel in.

~~~
laurentdc
I can't count the times I've started to write some basic internal tool with
React only to rm -rf everything 1 hour later and replace it with 20 lines of
jQuery/vanilla js

~~~
TheGoodBarn
Such an underrated comment.

I think theres some validity to "you're the most productive with whichever
tools you're most comfortable/familiar with", but I think people don't realize
the levels of abstraction that come with web development.

( My learning path was: Angular 2 -> 7 + sucking at CSS, Angular + Tachyons
(learning how to style), -> Angular + Custom CSS for everything, to Vue +
Custom css -> Plain HTML + Plain CSS. )

Its like the more you learn the more you understand the boilerplate of
libs/frameworks, but also understand what these large tools accomplish for
you, and then you learn to appreciate how powerful & simple the "vanilla" web
can be if you open your mind to it.

------
stevage
As a web developer, I frequently see these posts about how we should write (or
at least transpile to) HTML because it's so much simpler, and the browsers can
render it so fast, and it's the right thing to do etc etc.

But they all miss the point: writing with client-side JS based frameworks
(React, Vue, whatever) is easier, faster, more versatile. If you have the
option of writing an SPA, it's simpler quicker to build this way, and so easy
to deploy.

Sure, it renders slower. I've just signed my 25th professional client, and I
have never yet had a client who even _mentioned_ rendering speed, let alone
was willing to make any trade-off for it.

Server-side rendering or writing raw HTML are over-rated.

~~~
SPBS
If you want site longevity, HTML is the way to go. It's fine if you clients
aren't expecting to maintain their website for the next 10 years, go ahead and
use the JavaScript framework.

Tell me that React websites today will still be around in 10 years time. With
constant upkeep and maintenance, maybe. If a website is just a static website,
not making it plain HTML is a disservice. The layers of abstraction _will_
take its toll.

~~~
jjav
So much this. There is tremendous value in longevity. Writing content which is
guaranteed to be unusable in a few years is anathema to me.

On my website I have pages which date back to 1993-94. Still readable just
fine. I used to post those links to mailing lists back then and they still get
regular hits from people in that community because I've also maintained the
URLs constant.

~~~
ehnto
In my personal life I serve HTML, CSS and native, gracefully degrading JS (if
any), for the same reasons.

In my professional life though, I realised that 95% of the things I build will
be changed in the next year or so. We often inherit projects that were only
just finished, and our first task is to start changing it entirely.

So I aim for robustness of maintenance rather than robustness of the finished
product. It's inevitable that it will change, but I can anticipate that in the
same way a well engineered car can anticipate it's maintenance cycles.

------
dustingetz
1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than
your manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream,
but 10 years behind the edge 4) React was made by an OCaml programmer 5) if
you want to be that good, learn emerging languages (all of them) 5) don't
optimize for money too soon, if you follow these instructions you will
quadruple soon enough 6) Whatever your problem is that is holding you back –
drinking, eating, whatever – fix it today 7) Learn Clojure

~~~
eyelidlessness
I like your list, but I’d suggest:

8) learn a statically typed language with a good type system

Even if you end up preferring mainstream language X, learning a language that
makes you think in expressions rather than operations, and a language that
makes you think in contracts rather than knowing the runtime state in your
head, is invaluable for learning how to design, structure and maintain a
codebase

~~~
collyw
What you say sounds interesting but could you give an example of "think in
contracts" compared to and example of "knowing the runtime state in your
head".

Personally I have never really seen the advantage of staticaly typed languages
over say Python, but I do rely on the strict typing supplied by a database
instead.

~~~
eyelidlessness
What I mean is that static typing makes interface boundaries (modules,
function parameters and return types, data structures) explicit, and those
boundaries are enforced automatically. Those boundaries become a contract,
where a provided interface and its call sites must agree on in order to be
run. This is like a million little unit tests you get almost for free
(obviously you have to write the types, but they're usually declarative and
very expressive).

But it also serves as documentation of how any part of your program's state is
structured at any point. To the degree a type system is sound, and to the
degree your types are appropriately detailed, you can be assured the
documentation is correct and up to date as long as the program compiles. This
allows you to eliminate the question of "what does this data look like?" when
you're reading code, and focus more on things like whether the logic is
implemented correctly.

Since you mention it, I'll add that Python does have (optional, gradual)
static typing, and a lot of work has gone into the type system in recent
versions. It's worth spending a little time adding some static types in a
project and seeing some of these benefits. When I last worked in Python, you
had to run `mypy` to actually fail on static type errors, I don't know if this
is still the case. But you could also use an IDE (like PyCharm, surely there
are others) which will at least surface static type errors while you work.

~~~
collyw
I have been using Python type hinting recently, but I don't find it such a big
game changer. Maybe I am just used to writing code without it and it will
become clearer if I use it more. Like I say I don't like having an untyped
database, and the benefits there aren't things that are obvious straight away.

~~~
eyelidlessness
When I last worked in Python, I also didn't get much benefit, but I wasn't
using either mypy or an IDE that warns on type errors. While obviously a
different language, it wasn't until I worked with TypeScript in VSCode that I
really came to appreciate static typing. And after a few years, I don't think
I could go back to working without it.

------
fluffycritter
Hi, if possible, could the link please be updated to point to the original
post at [https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-
developer...](https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-developers) ?
The Tumblr automatic crosspost isn't really intended to be the canonical
version, and I wouldn't mind getting a server load test while we're here.

Thanks!

~~~
EvanAnderson
Sorry about that, Fluffy. Your Tumblr feed is listed first in my reader and
was moved to submit it almost immediately after reading it. Nice to see you,
BTW. Since I never post about my life anywhere I end up just being a lurker in
yours, but I'm glad to be.

------
flobosg
The source post ([https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-
developer...](https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-developers))
is a bit more readable. The list looks like, well, a list.

------
lxe
There are two that stand out to me:

> Always validate your data server-side; anything that comes from the client
> is suspect.

At least sanitize in a way that won't break the server but will throw an
error. For internal applications and side projects it's ok to just respond
with a 40X or a 50X and move on.

> To the developer, “isomorphic” code breaks down the barrier between client
> and server.

"Breaks down the barrier" sounds great, but it's actually has been rather
detrimental. "Isomorphic" is confusing even to the senior developers. Having a
very clear delimiter of what runs in the server and what runs in the client is
essential, and it makes your application much simpler to reason about. Take
`isomorphic-fetch` for example... a request from a server to another API
server has very different requirements and nuances than a request from a
browser to a server.

~~~
mattwad
OTOH, if you use Flow or Typescript, it is amazing to be able to share type-
safe interfaces across the stack (not code). I suppose you could get this from
any compiled-to-JS language too.

~~~
realtalk_sp
The realization that this permits end-to-end fullstack type safety and allows
some awesome things (like surfacing breakage at compile time in response to
changes to the data model) is a quietly brewing revolution.

~~~
jkachmar
This is in constant tension with the point that GP is making though.

If you’re not _very_ careful with your software architecture, you can
inextricably tie your frontend and backend applications together. Depending on
the size of your product, or why the growth plans are for that particular
frontend/backend app end up being, this might not be a problem.

If it becomes one, though, then every bad technical design decision made in
that `common` set of modules or packages ends up hurting you as it gets
unspooled from (at least) two components that likely have very different
architectural idioms.

~~~
realtalk_sp
When you really stop and unpack this, you can see that this is a non-issue.
Adding an object or a field to the schema (the most common operations in a
growing schema) never interfere with dependents and can be performed
independently of client adoption.

The remaining coordination issues can be solved by documenting or using e.g. a
'@Deprecated' decorator in Typescript. And, of course, you can always just
remove a field to see where the code has dependencies on it (where code breaks
during compilation).

The concerns about shared code may apply in some cases, but the global schema
is not one of them, in my experience. I do agree it takes a bit of extra
thinking to do this correctly but it's really not that difficult.

------
lucasmullens
> To the developer, “isomorphic” code breaks down the barrier between client
> and server. To a malicious client, it means they have control over the
> server too.

Huh? I don't follow this. Sharing some helpful util functions between the
frontend and backend doesn't allow malicious clients to control your server.

~~~
fluffycritter
What I was trying to (clumsily) say is that when people develop "isomorphic"
code they tend to forget that some of it runs on the client and some of it
runs on the server and the interface between the two cannot be trusted.

Form validation is a common example of where things can break, like someone
injects malicious data that's already been validated by the client-side code
and then the server assumes that the code has already been validated by the
client.

And if you don't even _know_ which code is running where, that makes it even
more dangerous.

~~~
shreddish
Hmm I guess since it's advice to young developers they might make that mistake
but any slightly experienced developer knows not to trust anything client
side. Not validating data from the client isn't exclusive to isomorphic code.

------
recursivedoubts
That's unfortunate: the back button doesn't work on the linked site.

Young developers, if you can spare a moment, try to learn what REST (and
HATEOAS) really meant:

[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-
rest.html](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-rest.html)

[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-
humans.ht...](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.html)

------
rickpmg
And make sure the back button works?

------
MrBuddyCasino
> Infinite scrolls are inhumane. People need to be able to reach “the end.”
> There are forms of eternal torment described in religious texts that are
> less mean.

If I had to pick just one, it would be this.

~~~
enriquto
Infinite scrolls are ugly, but i'm not sure artificially "paginated" text is
better. The worst thing about infinite scrolls is that you cannot search for a
word in the whole document (just on your visible part of the screen, and a
screenful below that).

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Ironically, it uses tumblr, so the damn back button is captured (try getting
back here).

This is my fave:

 _> Infinite scrolls are inhumane. People need to be able to reach “the end.”
There are forms of eternal torment described in religious texts that are less
mean._

~~~
fluffycritter
I had posted this to my own blog at [http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-
young-web-developers](http://beesbuzz.biz/blog/2934-Advice-to-young-web-
developers) and it looks like it was the Tumblr auto-crossposted version that
got submitted here. That's unfortunate.

EDIT: I've updated the Tumblr version to make this a bit more clear.

~~~
ptx
HN doesn't use markdown:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

~~~
smichel17
I use markdown on HN, partially out of protest, partially because it looks
fine enough when rendered as plain text (by design).

------
mooneater
If you step back from modern fullstack web development, it is stunning how
much accidental complexity is needed to accomplish anything at all.

~~~
adrianhel
Another thing I painfully realized: It that is not a good idea to document
HTML in HTML.

<details> <summary> It's not a good idea </summary> really.
&lt/details>

------
anonytrary
I do appreciate the author's emphasis on accessibility! However, as you read
more bullet points, you start to realize that the author is really just
venting about how much they hate modern javascript development (SPAs, VDOMs,
client-side rendering, etc.). It gets pretty obvious about 10 bullet points
down that this is the overwhelming theme of the post.

------
danjac
Not that any of this advice is bad - a lot of it I agree whole-heartedly with
- but it overestimates the amount of influence developers, let alone junior
developers, have on the final design of a corporate site. If management/design
want infinite scrolling then that's what they get, whatever the developers
say.

------
squid_demon
Advice: don't make everything slow as shit please. Note, this most likely
means writing your own trim left function and not depending on zillions of
libraries. If you can't write something as simple as this, please don't! Just
output a static web-page that loads ultra fast. Thanks young web developers!

------
devcriollo
> If you must do an infinite scroll (and you don’t), make sure that there’s
> nothing you need to reach at the bottom.

The most ignored

------
vyuh
> _Even if you need to preserve client state between page loads (for e.g.
> music or video playback) you can let the browser do most of the heavy
> lifting by fetch()ing a new page and replacing your content container at the
> DOM level._

Anyone knows of some easy to learn example of such DOM replacement?

~~~
purerandomness
Yes, look at the examples at [https://htmx.org/](https://htmx.org/)

------
partyboat1586
Unfortunately I think it's going to be a long time before web apps stop using
dark patterns like infinite scroll. It's not good for their bottom line.

~~~
inanutshellus
With infinite scroll, there is no bottom line. /s

~~~
theduder99
lol thank you

------
ithrow
This sounded more like a anti-SPA post. Maybe the title should be "Reasons for
not building a SPA".

~~~
timw4mail
SPAs are an anti-pattern.

Let's rebuild html rendering, navigation history, forms, etc, all with
Javascript, because it's the hip thing to do.

~~~
Grimm1
You're not using that word correctly, since this is not a pattern it's an
architecture.

Please don't misuse words, especially in a negative context to mean "something
I don't like", it cheapens the word in legitimate cases.

No comment on whether SPAs are worth anything though, I reserve my opinion.

~~~
arkis22
architecture doesn't contain patterns? architectures don't follow certain
patterns?

you've never seen certain architectures that smell because they're not
following an established pattern?

------
aabbcc1241
Agree we should deliver the html directly to the browser in most of the cases.
SPA are often abused and some 'webapp' sites need to load for more than 10
seconds to download the js files...

On the other hand, we want to deliver reactive experience. LiveView is an
interesting approach. It returns the html with all content at the initial GET
request, and apply partial UI update from the server. It processes the user
interactions and application logics from the server. This way you don't need
to explicitly maintain web API at all, because the render and update functions
can directly access the data repository on the server. And we don't need to do
validation twice. Liveview is implemented in Elixir and Typescript, also saw
similar implementation in php and python.

------
Minor49er
Excellent list. I would add: sometimes it's tempting to rewrite an entire site
or application to get away from a world of problems, but you could just as
easily be walking into another set of issues at the expense of lost time and
existing code value if you aren't careful.

------
theandrewbailey
What about "don't mess with scrolling"?

------
SamBoogieNYC
As someone who uses a SPA (React) for webapps - I find it very useful. I run
into issues that wouldn't happen if building purely html/css/vanilla js and
when that happens I fix the issue.

The biggest benefit of using a framework IMO is that you're given a fairly
strict structure to work within, which makes organization a lot easier. For
someone who isn't a master, having some rules "baked in", helps a lot.

That being said, I wouldn't use React to build a static page/site, that makes
no sense.

------
kanobo
People are motivated to learn and build what inspires them. Some started web
dev because they wanted to make the type of projects they saw in chrome
experiments that only run on the latest version of Chrome. Some people see
very complex SPA apps and are inspired to make complex tools that can't just
be done with HTML. Some get into web dev because they had a passion for
browser and flash games. This list isn't wrong but also doesn't take into
account the huge variety of web developers.

------
baron816
Sorry, it’s not usually up to young web developers on whether to use a SPA or
not, nor whether to prioritize accessibility.

Advocating accessibility is nice though, so do try.

------
lsalvatore
Advice to Young Frontend Web Developers: Use React. HTML is not a rich enough
framework to do client work.

Second article in a row here advocating for HTML purism. That is where I jump
in and talk about how React changed my career in 2015. Since then, my life has
had a measurable impact because of how easy building apps became thanks to
React. There is no app where I would consider not using React including
landing pages.

~~~
err4nt
What kind of software application is a landing page? When you call it a "page"
it makes it almost seem like a document of some kind...

------
pull_my_finger
> Use polyfills to support browsers that don’t yet support the standard you’re
> using.

Unless your target users can't switch their browser (it happens), I tend to
feel this is slowing new browser adoption. Developers keep coddling users by
making sure everything works, and users have no reason to upgrade. Make their
obsolete browser function like an obsolete browser and they might just update.

------
hootbootscoot
This was a very nice article. It was one of the best web-related articles I've
read in a long time. I liked it.

------
rpmisms
This is a good list. Not great, and not applicable when you're at a crappy
organization with bad traditions--likely many young web dev's position. This
is much more useful to me now that I'm in a good position at a great company
with a good culture.

------
gwbas1c
> The web is built around server-side rendering.

Grr... I read through the EmberJS tutorial and thought everything was very
cool; only to find out that the whole thing is rendered with in-browser
Javascript.

------
hejja
this article feels lacking in nuance, strong claims that aren't universally
true lead to bad reasoning.

to any "young developers" read I would say not to blindly adopt these opinions
without understanding them.

------
grimmdude
100% agree with the sentiment that client side rendering is overused.

------
abendstolz
Ah, the good ol' KISS - complexity kills.

------
hpen
Why so much hate for infinite scrolls? What if your content is "infinite". I
can't see a better way to handle that.

~~~
xemdetia
The infinite scroll problem I feel comes up most that if there was a useful
piece of information in the middle of an infinite scroll it is likely
impossible for you to return there with any sort of reliability. You can't
save the URL because it probably doesn't encode anything useful about where
you are in a most cases. You can't logically organize 'where' this information
is because its location is pure happenstance. It is pointlessly ephemeral. I
can't start on page 5, I can't start on page 100. I have to scroll and just
pray I get to get lucky which is the function of a slot machine, not someone
who's trying to present me information. If I _really_ wanted to get that much
more content I am more than happy to click the next button.

~~~
hpen
You can have infinite scroll + pagination buttons

------
secondcoming
Funny, this website broke my ipad safari browser's 'back' button. Double-tap
required.

------
hpen
I feel like posts like this are just somebody missing the web how it used to
be. I mean the Web IS an app platform now.

~~~
britch
I didn't get that sense from the post. I took that they were advocating for
basic HTML/JS when appropriate. A reminder that it's still a valid way of
doing things.

If you're building an app, yeah use React.

If you want to put some contact info on the internet, there's no reason it
can't be vanilla HTML.

Or at least that's how I read it.

~~~
hpen
Looking over the article again, I'd say your right. It was the statement "The
web is built around server-side rendering." that made me feel that way. As a
whole you're right.

However, I didn't think everyone was out making landing pages with React and
VueJS. Maybe they are.

------
jimmaswell
Why are infinite scrolls so demonized? I like them, especially if they update
the url so you can go back to the same spot. Everyone loved it when Reddit
Enhancement Suite did it way back in the day, but now Facebook does it so it's
evil.

------
Animats
_" The web is built around server-side rendering."_

That's the React definition of "server side rendering", where HTML gets
generated on the server. Real "server side rendering" would mean generating an
image server side and shipping that.

~~~
sbergot
"rendering" in a web context is pretty commonly interpreted as "creating the
html document". It is not specific to React.

------
torartc
I personally don't think this is great advice, but this is exactly the type of
advice that will get upvoted here.

------
kvetching
"Give people consistent but random stimulus and you will be habit-forming.
Getting people hooked on your product might seem like a good idea, but the
tobacco industry feels the same way."

DO NOT Listen to this. Make your site as addictive as possible. It can only
help you win at life. More users = more impact = more money = better life. So
long as it's not porn, your website won't be as bad as tobacco.

~~~
arcin
I think this is a little tone deaf to the target audience. Not all developers
want to aspire to extracting the maximum amount of resources from users. Some,
especially beginners who want to code, just want to build something and build
it well.


Show HN: Open-Source Anonymous Encrypted TLS+OTR Messaging Written in Go - RomanPushkin
https://hacktunnel.com

======
susi22
I'm still waiting for the day that somebody does a "super simple chat" with NO
dependencies. Why do they all need REDIS or some kind of persistence? Why not
just hold it in memory?

If you really have a use case where persistence & scaling is an issue you're
likely not going to use any of those chat servers anyways.

~~~
defaultcoder
One of authors is here.

Redis saves data to the disk by default but this can be turned off. That's
what we did. GUIDs of connected users are stored in memory with expiration by
the 10 min timeout.

I think scalability does not hurt privacy. It's nice to have 10 servers with
40GB memory instead of one with 4GB. Connections between servers can be
encrypted with TLS.

------
thomasjudge
"How safe is my tunnel?

Your tunnel remains safe until your password or our servers are not
compromised."

uhhh...

~~~
RomanPushkin
Fair enough, huh :) Actually, it's mentioned because we wanted to note it
somehow - it's always better to have this set up on your own server

~~~
kodablah
I haven't looked deeply into this implementation, but with OTR's forward
secrecy and 3.1+ authentication, is that not enough to defeat even the server
being compromised? (meaning, at least you would know it was compromised
assuming you trusted the actor on the other end)

~~~
Bogdanovich
If server is compromised, web app source code would probably change to
something else.


Cosmo, the Hacker 'God' Who Fell to Earth - stevewillows
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/09/cosmo-the-god-who-fell-to-earth/
======
ColinWright
Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4505003>


Porting Cython code to PyPy - vgnet
https://sage.math.washington.edu:8091/hudson/job/cython-docs/doclinks/1/src/tutorial/pypy.html

======
vgnet
Mail thread: [https://groups.google.com/group/cython-
users/browse_thread/t...](https://groups.google.com/group/cython-
users/browse_thread/thread/337a7cf758fe5345)


Why Do the Titles of Scholarly Works Sometimes Begin with the Word 'On'? - jordansmithnz
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/402576/why-do-the-titles-of-scholarly-works-sometimes-begin-with-the-word-on
======
DamonHD
Well, thank you for that thought! I'm renaming 70-odd of my articles right now
from "A Note On X" to "On X" as a useful compaction, and almost all the titles
seem fine just deleting the existing initial two words.

Not that I'm claiming to rub shoulders with Darwin and pals.

~~~
madcaptenor
You could even get rid of "On". Most people probably think Darwin's magnum
opus is titled "The Origin of Species" anyway.

~~~
DamonHD
Easy tiger! I have to take this one step at a time! B^>

------
aisofteng
From the numerous oddly wrong answers and their votes, it seems that too many
people just don't read.


Application data caching using SSDs - sgmansfield
http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-using-ssds.html
======
geodel
> The decision to use Go was deliberate, because we needed something that had
> lower latency than Java (where garbage collection pauses are an issue) and
> is more productive for developers than C, while also handling tens of
> thousands of client connections. Go fits this space well.

This is interesting. There haven't been many instances yet where Go's
memory/GC performance is compared directly and favorably to Java's
performance.

~~~
faizshah
In this case I don't think it's the raw performance they are looking for but
rather freedom from the unpredictable GC pauses. Although I think they should
have explained why they didn't use Azul Zing for this, I realize it's
expensive but this seems like the exact use case for it.

Found some interesting discussion here about this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149961)

~~~
sgmansfield
Author here (of both Rend and the post).

We really _are_ looking for raw performance, but not at any cost. I spent a
bunch of time, and continue to do so, to eliminate extra work, indirection,
and garbage.

Efficiency of runtime and development is a careful balance that Go fits well.
Rust is immature. C is difficult for people who haven't been writing it
professionally. Java (less Zing or other special cases) is too latent, even if
it's very fast when it's running because of HotSpot optimizations. The list
goes on, but I didn't see a reason to choose the others over Go, nor have I
found something yet that beats it for our use case.

Really, Java just wasn't the language for the job. Go has a lower level and
simpler interface, simpler runtime (with less indirection), and better model
for concurrency. Yes, it's a new language for us, but it was the right tool
for the job. Our garbage collection pauses are mostly under a millisecond, so
they aren't really an issue.

Zing never really was on my radar. Looking at it now I shudder to think of the
licensing costs, especially since we run tens of thousands of cache instances.
We already pay enough just to run these servers. It's also a new Java runtime
which very few people know about, and probably nobody at Netflix has used. I
would have had to learn it all independently and continue to be on my own from
then on. The Go slack team and community in general are very helpful and
supportive, and I would speculate that the same level of support isn't
available for Zing without paying.

~~~
faizshah
Cool, thanks for the insight! I love reading the thinking process behind
design decisions.

On the subject of Azul's price: I think they would give you a high volume
discount, but even half the price (1750) per server would be pretty outrageous
for your use case.

For my use case I'm going with Apache Ignite right now for tiered off heap
caching, but I'm not sure it would work for you guys. Might be worth a look
though.

I admire Netflix OSS ecosystem. Thanks for the great work you guys do!

~~~
desdiv
Just curious, is that 3500 per server per year? Or 3500 for the lifetime of
the server?

~~~
faizshah
Here's how they word it on the informational page for Zing:

“Zing® is priced on a subscription basis per server (physical or virtual).
With per-server pricing, you don’t need to worry about core counts, memory
size, or number of instances deployed per server. The single license annual
subscription price for Zing is $3500 USD per physical server, with
significantly lower prices for higher volumes and longer-term subscriptions.
Please contact us to learn about the special pricing available for start-ups
and companies with $25 million or less in annual revenue, and for ISVs and
manufacturers looking to embed/integrate Zing with their products.”

Seen here:
[https://www.azul.com/products/zing/](https://www.azul.com/products/zing/)

------
pmontra
The link redirects to a https URL that doesn't work (Firefox and Opera). I'm
not using a https anywhere addon so I was very surprised that wget
[http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-
caching...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-
using-ssds.html) doesn't get redirected. Loading the downloaded file in the
browser let me read the article.

~~~
sgmansfield
Sorry, not sure what's wrong. I tested in the latest firefox, safari, opera,
and chrome and it works for me.

Edit: blogger doesn't do SSL on custom domains. Sorry =/

~~~
notnarb
the [http://](http://) link you posted works fine, but if you attempt to
access the link via https ( [https://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-
data-cachin...](https://techblog.netflix.com/2016/05/application-data-caching-
using-ssds.html) ), I get a "Secure Connection Failed" in Firefox.

Screenshot:

[http://storage8.static.itmages.com/i/16/0525/h_1464199626_32...](http://storage8.static.itmages.com/i/16/0525/h_1464199626_3257492_39001d8e73.png)

That said, I'm not being redirected and I don't know why gp is.

~~~
sgmansfield
OK, I can reproduce. I'll forward, something seems wrong (obviously). Thanks
for reporting this.

edit: No SSL on blogger custom domains. Sorry =/

~~~
pmontra
What was the problem? I ask not to make it on my servers. Thanks.


Retailers Are Losing the Software Talent Wars - jongraehl
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/retailers-are-losing-the-software-talent-wars-12012011.html
======
jtchang
I can't believe some of you are saying they should put together a bunch of
awesome programmers and rewrite their platform from scratch.

Certainly that is an option. But rarely is it ever the correct one. Your new
platform could be as riddled with bugs as the old one.

The truth is that finding good engineers is about knowing the right
incentives. Retailers are losing the talent wars because they don't know how
to compete. And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly
isn't the only one.

Target needs to look at the right incentives for the people they want to hire.
Is telecommuting an option? How about direct authority to approve changes? Or
the chance to build your own team? These are the incentives that matter to
engineers.

The problem is cutting through all the rhetoric in hiring. Target can say "we
want to revolutionize the ecommerce industry" but do any engineers actually
believe them? That's tough.

~~~
kls
_And while salary is one lever Target can fiddle with, it certainly isn't the
only one._

I would argue set high enough it is the only lever. Many that play the start
up game do so because first and foremost, there is the chance to earn far more
than they can at an organization like Target. Sure it's a long shot but, there
is at least the chance, if large organizations started to cross that chasm. I
believe that they would indeed start to attract talent. If one could become
moderately wealthy working for Target then a lot of people would choose that
option, sure it's not the fame and fortune of making it in a start up, but a
road somewhere in the middle is a road I would imagine that many developers
would be willing to travel.

~~~
bluedanieru
That's not very realistic and they almost certainly don't have the money for
it. Moreover, increasing salary nets diminishing returns for motivating people
after a certain point, and if it sucks to work for you, then no matter how
much you pay, people are going to get bored and frustrated and leave.

~~~
kls
I would be hard pressed to believe that they do not have the money for it,
while I was at Marriott I doubled our budget for salary and did not change
head count. I raised salaries above market rate and used some of it for merit
based bonuses. It was very effective in recruiting and retaining talent. It
was not the only thing that I did, but money cannot be discounted as a
motivating factor. I will cede to your point that it the place flat out sucks
even an astronomical amount of money may not retain your talent. But I am
giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are mediocre at worst.

------
adaml_623
I think that article is neglecting the posibility that Target (as an example)
has the software engineers who are talented enough to fix the site.

But what they almost definitely have is buckets of management and procedures
preventing them from fixing the site. The kind of person who is afraid to
reboot the server because it hasn't been rebooted in 6 months. Or who says if
we do anything then we might make it worse.

~~~
codeonfire
Also lets not forget micromanaging tech managers who's one or two years of
development before they went into management (hey they figured out technology
in one year unlike all those other saps) entitles them to force their stupid
and disastrous ideas onto the engineering team.

------
Roboprog
Hmm. Rather than spend $180 or $300 million to purchase tech companies, maybe
some of these stores could try paying Silicon Valley salaries to a team of 10
or 20 devs.

20 devs * $200 K (loaded) / year = $4 M / year.

... Assuming they had a way to bootstrap an idiot-rejection-filter.

~~~
bgentry
That's a much better plan. It's funny that they are unwilling to pay above-
market salaries to a few competent devs.

~~~
ajross
It's a terrible plan. Paying a bunch of rock star salaries just gets you a
bunch of people that _say_ they are rock stars. If you don't have any on
staff, you don't actually know if they are or not (pg has an essay about
exactly this).

History is filled with these kind of rock star failures.

Buying the company gets you a team that can verifiably build the product you
want, _because they already did_. That kind of conservative risk management is
worth a ton of cash in the real world.

~~~
droithomme
$200k isn't a rock star salary.

You are correct that paying market salaries for competent engineers does not
ensure competent engineers.

However it must be noted that _not_ paying market salaries for competent
engineers definitely ensures that one employes substandard talent. The market
is working well right now and competent engineers have no problem receiving
market rate. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why competent engineers
will not find a job paying the market rate for their talent, and that is
exactly what happens. As for the companies that can not pay market rate, well
they are simply not competitive and will fail. That's how the free market
works and it is a very good thing.

Any company that requires being competitive in the tech domain needs to be
willing to pay for key talent. Companies like Target definitely need to do
everything they can. Arguments that incompetent developers are good enough are
absurd. Obviously what they have now is not working.

Building a site that can handle a nationwide retailer the size of Target,
second only to WalMart in brick and mortar stores, is completely non-trivial.
The top 2 engineers there need to be paid at least $1.5 million annual salary.
Sorry. I know many companies don't like this but there it is. Now obviously
there are many levels below this, but this requires a pretty large development
team and several below this level are going to be getting $200k-$400k. At the
bottom, the losers that are just out of college and don't know anything, those
guys are going to be making $75k to start. Because that's the starting salary.
Companies don't want to hear this. Only the fatuous useless ignorant
executives that have run the company into the ground should be paid these
salaries, in their opinion. Well, they can keep thinking that and see where it
gets them. Many will lobby Congress, that is a popular tactic. Pay a lobbying
firm $25 million and maybe you'll be able to flood the market with cheap
engineers from overseas who are willing to work for $21 an hour, and are able
to do the same things that any other $21 an hour retail employee can do.
Because the overseas guys that really know their stuff are not looking for $21
jobs, they are making the same salary as everyone else with their skill level.
Because that's how the market works.

~~~
moocow01
Sorry but in what world do you live in? Whatever world it is I'd like to join
because I've never heard of engineers making 1.5 million in salary. I think if
you look on Glassdoor you'll realize 200k is a very high salary for an
engineer at any company in SV.

(Also as a reference a Sr. Architect at Walmart.com according to Glassdoor
makes 120-130k)

~~~
Roboprog
Thanks for the data. And I won't be leaving the financial firm I work for to
go to WalMart any time soon from the sound of it :-)

------
joshwa
I work at macys.com, and here's where I recruit you!

Unlike most retailers, our e-commerce division operates on its own, and we
have the agility (and capital budget) to move quickly and act on big
opportunities. Yes, there's a lot of work and headache that's involved with
dealing with massive retail systems, and they have about as much legacy stuff
as you'd imagine a 150-year-old company with a history of giant acquisitions,
but thankfully most of us never have to think about that stuff except at the
edge of some giant diagram.

We have a whole bunch of floors in downtown SF that's just for dotcom--mostly
engineers, some QA, some product/management, etc. We're reasonably up to date
with new technologies--although we're a Java shop, some stuff gets done in
Scala, there's an active Hadoop project, and lots of big, interesting problems
in scalability, UX, big data, analytics, SEO, etc.

Example: I work on the internal-facing web product setup apps, primarily on
product image stuff. Every product has to get photographed (including getting
the physical sample from the manufacturer to the right studios, on the right
model, etc), color corrected (we sell items in 60+ colors) mapped to products
(is this the primary image? a swatch? a back view? which UPCs does it
represent? what happens if the color sells out?). This all happens at scale:
130k physical samples trafficked, 150k products, 250k images.

Too bad this is on a weekend before new year's, otherwise I'd get all my
favorite dev leaders in here to pitch you. We're growing (even in a down
economy, we're posting significant growth year after year) and hiring like
crazy (a current search shows 25 open FTE requisitions in SF, and our contract
partners even more).

The work environment is a little BigCorp-ish, but it's relaxed (it's SF, after
all), and they take work/life balance seriously, so if you're a hacker with a
family you're definitely welcome here. I work with a lot of really smart
people who get things done. Yes, we sell pants, but you get a 20% discount,
and you get to find out when things go on sale beforehand ;)

Current openings: <http://ecommerce.macysjobs.com/> Salaries are Bay-Area
competitive, full benefits package, etc.

or if you want to know more you can contact me directly at
joshua.wand@macys.com, with "Hacker News" in the subject.

 _NB going to bed now (11pm PST) but will be up in the morning to answer
questions_

~~~
chaostheory
I'm not sure if these are problems anymore @ macys.com, but here's a list of
issues I remember:

1) It is very hard for the company to match market salaries even though its
margins are pretty good for a retailer. The only retailer I know of that does
well in the salary dept is Amazon.

2) The development culture: I think this is every large retail company, but I
feel that you guys tend to favor anything coming out of Big Blue (or Big
Company X) as opposed to something technically interesting (but no longer
bleeding bleeding edge) in the open source world. You guys tend to buy stuff
instead of building. There's definitely nothing wrong with that given the
situation and culture, but I feel that it doesn't fit very well with the HN
crowd at large.

That being said, Macys.com has some of the coolest, nicest people that you'll
ever meet in the workplace; which is really great.

~~~
joshwa
To the best of my knowledge both of these issues are much improved over a few
years ago.

How long ago were you there, and working with what group?

------
hkarthik
Here in Dallas, lots of retailers have their corporate headquarters here. I've
done some consulting work for one of them in the past and a couple years ago
one of them was trying to recruit me pretty heavily for their big e-commerce
push.

Most of these companies don't have that many full time employees in their IT
departments. A handful of full time employees will oversee an army of
contractors and consultants. Most of these folks are specialized in SAP,
Oracle, Business Objects, etc and don't know the first thing about building
scalable web-based e-commerce.

The sites that do exist tend to be old, monolithic .NET or Java apps with
antiquated processes to deploy them. An old boss of mine that went to work for
one of these retailers said he had to get 5 physical signatures on a form to
push out a CSS file to the site.

~~~
kls
_had to get 5 physical signatures on a form to push out a CSS file to the
site_

That is a huge issue that developers see when they see an established company.
Then you add in existing technical ego's from other teams and you just have a
recipe for a stagnant crashing every month disaster. It's a generalization,
but we all make them, it is how we make semi-informed decisions based on loose
facts. Some large companies are wrongly maligned in the process but it's the
reality.

When I took over the web at Marriott, we separated it from IT all together and
made it a business division, in doing so we could make decisions independent
of IT approval and we I had an independent budget under my discretion. Many
companies just don't get how these slight organizational changes can make a
huge difference in a teams ability to deliver technology.

~~~
hkarthik
The retailer that tried to recruit me was led by a former startup CTO that was
doing much of what you described to try to change things. Aside from
separating IT, the other big change was to create a new campus/location with a
better dress code, no Web Sense, and a separate network domain.

This post reminds, I should check in with him and see how things are going.

------
prophetjohn
The fact is that being an engineer at Target is very likely a boring,
bureaucratic drag. The best engineers are overwhelmingly the best engineers
because they love what they do and hone their craft. Someone who takes so much
pride in what they do is not likely to get much satisfaction out of developing
a website that helps people buy a mop. It's a fine thing to do; people need
mops. But it's not a particularly interesting problem to be solving.

So, I think places like Target will always have this problem unless they're
willing to pony up the cash and offer more money than the interesting jobs.
After all, there's no reason that some behemoth like Target can't compete with
some SV startup in salary.

~~~
ams6110
Basic e-commerce for such things as mop-buying is a solved problem in 2011.
Not sure why you would even need a large team of top-notch developers at a
place like Target. A few good sysadmins and DBAs, and maybe some
graphics/front-end types.

Edit: Upon thinking about this a moment longer, I think that actually there
would be (or could be) interesting work at Target, simply because of the scale
of the operation. Though sadly you are still probably hitting the mark in the
"bureaucratic drag" assessment.

~~~
droithomme
Target is the third largest brick and mortar retailer in the US. Running a
computer network nationally for Target is not a solved problem. Sure, it's a
solved problem for #1 WalMart, using entirely custom software that WalMart
developed in house. But it's not like WalMart is selling that software to
Target.

~~~
tsotha
But how much traffic does Target get? The fact that it's the third largest
brick and mortar retailer means nothing at all.

------
desireco42
Not only that they have caps on how much developers can make, they are also
heavily miss-managed, full of crazy managers with insane ideas, consulting
companies with their own agendas, agile that is not even close to agile, etc.
You don't need to be in Silicon Valley to make decent website, you do have to
manage it and develop it properly, most don't do that.

~~~
jaggederest
Right, it's not a failure of recruiting, it's a failure of management and
environment: nobody wants to work at Target developing software no matter how
much money they pay.

~~~
reissbaker
It'd be interesting to know how much they pay, though. And how they adjust
salary over time.

------
mechanical_fish
So is it just me or does the main example in this article have a glaring flaw?
One that appears right in the first sentence?

 _For a decade, Target (TGT) outsourced its website operations to Amazon.com
(AMZN)._

I don't know about the other retailers, but Target's recruitment problem
begins and ends in this sentence. Target lost the talent war a decade ago; it
just took until now for the seeds of their destruction, _which they planted
and fertilized in Amazon's organization_ , to grow tall enough to be
noticeable.

Oh, well, I'm sure the management genius who scored a short-term boost in
profits by feeding the seed corn to Amazon collected a nice bonus.

------
sun123
I have worked in the IT department of a large IT firm. It is frustrating.
There is a long irritating procedure for doing even small things.When I
decided I'll be using jQuery in one of the screens, the guys at the "top"
stopped me saying it may violate copyright laws and stuff like that. Most
people are simply not aware of what is going on in the industry.

------
KevinMS
I must be living in some parallel universe. My resume just sits up on dice and
monster and the only hits I get every day are from the same useless
headhunters about exciting "6 month" ruby or perl gigs. Sure, I'm not the best
at selling myself, and I'm terrible at networking, but you'd think if all this
press is true about a dev talent shortage, I'd be seeing some more outreach,
even though I'd probably not be interested.

~~~
mattdeboard
> _I'm not the best at selling myself, and I'm terrible at networking_

Yeah if you want a cool job, or however you define the job you feel you
deserve, you need to sell yourself and network. Period.

~~~
KevinMS
Yea, but understand that is not my point, and I'm not asking for your Tony
Robbins like advice. If there was such a desperate market for talent out
there, I should be seeing it, regardless of whether I was selling myself or
not. Either their talent searches are incompetent or this is just manufactured
news for somebodies agenda.

~~~
brianbreslin
If they can't find you, dice or not, they won't know why they should hire you
or who you are.

~~~
KevinMS
But somehow those bottom feeding headhunters can find me and send me about 20
emails a day all for the same job.

~~~
ryanhuff
That's because you're swimming in their pond. Get out of Dice and find other
ways to meet people who work for the companies that you want to work with.

~~~
KevinMS
Guys, I'm not posting to get advice on finding a job, I'm trying to stay
relevant to the story posted.

~~~
mattdeboard
You suggested the article was 'manufactured' because your resume on DICE isn't
getting you job offers from high-end companies. We're telling you that you're
doing it wrong. It's relevant.

~~~
fractallyte
No: if a company was _really_ invested in looking for top talent, one would
expect to see prominent job postings on its website as well as
Dice/Monster/etc.

We shouldn't have to inveigle ourselves into a job in a convoluted networking
game. Post the jobs on popular boards, with relevant _informed_ requirements,
proportionate pay, and a proper hiring process.

So answer the top poster's question: _where are the job ads? Where's the
outreach from these needy companies?_

Apparently, nothing. Either the companies concerned are still in some
recruitment stone age, or the whole article is a sham.

~~~
kls
No very few people uses those sites anymore, the jobs are not there. That is
the point the other posters are making, the world has moved on, Linked-In and
other sites have become the hotbed of activity for recruiting. Headhunters are
just scouring the cracks of the internet (Dice, Monster) to find resources
that have not been put in front of these organizations, in hopes that they get
a hit. They are playing a numbers game. Tech unemployment is officially at
2.7% and I think most on this site would agree, it feels like it's somewhere
around that number.

------
jeremystine
Now that you have heard from big-Corp (Macy's) here is where I pitch you! I'm
a one man team working for my family biz Stine Home & Yard. We just launched
StineHome.com with very limited product (around 100 products) but goal by end
of 2012 is to have over 35,000 products online. Looking to bring on board
someone who has exerience with this. No bureaucratic bs. Would have a feeling
of a startup in a cool city. Preferably would live in New Orleans/Louisiana
area. If interested drop me a line at jeremystine@gmail.com with Hacker News
in subject.

------
mwsherman
Wouldn’t this state of affairs scream out for simple, off-the-shelf ecommerce?
Ecommerce platforms have been around as long as the web, but they are
enterprisey behemoths (last I looked, a long time ago).

Where is the Wordpress for retail?

~~~
mwsherman
Maybe the limiting factor is the ability to integrate with backend inventory,
etc. I suspect there is no lightweight (read: inexpensive developer) way to do
this.

(Which makes me wonder if there is a Wordpress for ERP.)

The other way to look at it is that for the 2-3 top players in a sector, there
can never be off-the-shelf. WalMart’s differentiation is incredible supply
chain, which they had to invent. Being a big guy means you are doing something
different, almost by definition.

~~~
floppydisk
Walmart is also pushing hard into R&D, see <http://www.walmartlabs.com/> . Of
all the traditional retailers, I'd say Wallyworld is the most invested in 21st
century retail tactics and actually doing a decent job of it.

~~~
ntkachov
I took a look at that website and noticed alot of the job openings were very
similar to job openings of Start-ups.

~~~
earl
Except you're working for a corporation that is actively evil. Walmart has a
long history of discriminating against women [1]; has an extremely high
percentage of employees who are on welfare (it's at minimum unseemly for an
employed person to be paid so poorly they still need welfare) (examples from
ohio[2]; general [3]; arkansas [4]; washington [5]); works hard to avoid
giving health insurance to their employees -- as of 2005 they only covered 44%
[6]; etc etc etc. There are far more reasons than the type of work to avoid
working for a corporation with such a _refined_ sense of ethics.

[1] <http://www.walmartclass.com/public_home.html>

[2]
[http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jan/12/robert...](http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/jan/12/robert-
hagan/rep-robert-hagan-slams-wal-mart-over-workers-needi/)

[3] <http://www.alternet.org/story/22298/>

[4]
[http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=...](http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1321376)

[5]
[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002791346_w...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002791346_walmart07m.html)

[6]
[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf200510...](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051020_3732_db016.htm)

~~~
kls
Yeah I have to agree with you there, it would be hard for me to believe that
Walmart would not cut high pay developers at the first opportunity. I remember
AT&T forcing my paraplegic developer buddy to train his Indian replacement or
face instant termination. To me Walmart seems like the same kind of, eternal
quest for profit type organization.


Live Captions in Hangouts Meet - oshanz
https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/04/live-captions-in-meet.html
======
oshanz
anyone knows how does it works? apparently google meet doesn't has p2p
encryption. so maybe server doing this?


1M QPS with Nginx and Ubuntu 12.04 on EC2 - nicolaskruchten
http://datacratic.com/site/blog/1m-qps-nginx-and-ubuntu-1204-ec2

======
rkwasny
1M? great Now have a look at:

[https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r10&hw=peak&test=plaintext)

~~~
rabysh
6M! that's great. But that's not comparing apples to apples, the best test
they did was using a 40 core machine with a 10gbe NIC. These cards usually
have as many receive/send queues as the number of cores the machine has, while
the ec2 instances only have 2 queues. (and most performance gains in packet
receive usually come from handling interrupts on multiple CPUs...)

Would be great to see results for ulib on c3.8xlarge machines.


Cars, newspapers and permissionless innovation - aaronbrethorst
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2015/9/1/permissionless-innovation
======
Htsthbjig
Agreed. The world simply becomes different.

I had volunteered, as I studied engineering in the past to give 3d classes to
kids for free. We have PhDs like ObiJuan making videos and releasing them over
the net teaching FreeCad, OpenScad, how to do robots and so on.

The children we teach today (10 ,11,12,13 years old and older) are incredible.
They do create their own toys.

When this people get to 18 or 20 years old, "real engineers" but with no real
experience prototyping because it was simply too expensive to fail, will not
be able to compete against them.

People will be able to prototype their own small cars soon thanks o sharing
sites like thingiverse, youmagine or github.

There will be Linus Torvals of hardware soon.


Show HN: Chat with your app's users in Slack, for free - gozmike
http://www.radialpoint.com/supportkit/slack

======
jimhi
This is awesome! Is this something we can integrate into our website too or it
is only a library for IOS? Definitely want to use this for a seamless
interaction over both platforms.

~~~
gozmike
Stay tuned. Something for your website is on its way :)

~~~
jimhi
I look forward to it, let me know if there's an email list to stay notified